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Showing posts from October, 2011

The stormy seas of healthcare commissioning

I've just written a piece for PLC , the leading legal information service. My brief was 1) explain the NHS and 2) explain where commissioning has come from and where it is going. My audience was local authority lawyers who may not be familiar with either of these topics. So it was one of the most ambitious pieces of work I've done for some time. It was also the longest for some time, at 5,500, although this is a tiddly wordcount for the subject matter. I suspect an MRI scan would find certain parts of my brain have grown during the course of writing it like a cab driver learning the knowledge! Anyway, here it is if you want to take a look: Health and Social Care Bill: commissioning and the health care market in the post-reform NHS . The more I look at health reform the more fascinated I am. It will, in its own way, be co-created by government, public sector staff, communities and the private sector. Just how it will come out is anyone's guess. There is such a mixture o

Rebuilding Christchurch

Have just written a piece for Construction News about construction (surprisingly) in New Zealand, Canada and Australia. I love trade journals. Geeky I know but I do. You get a privileged lense through which to examine things. New Zealand is all about rebuilding Christchurch, devastated by three earthquakes in 2010-11. It is the chance to construct a brand new city centre - pretty damn unusual. Australia is all about huge, vast, glitzy projects like the Barangaroo waterfront development with a floating hotel - their economy is booming. In Canada it's much more rugged and austere - mining the oil sands, building hospitals for their lovely free healthcare system.