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We Need To Talk launched for The Eve Appeal

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Update: PDF of my story here.

I’m delighted to have a story featured in the anthology We Need to Talk, launched yesterday.  The publisher is Jurassic London—here’s the blurb from their website:

All of us, at some point, are involved in difficult conversations. Whether that’s tough talks with clients or bosses, or break-ups, or coming out, or telling someone you love them, or giving advice to that friend who just doesn’t want to hear it. Some conversations are even more difficult, as sufferers of any potentially serious illness will know.

But one thing’s for sure, these conversations are fascinating. So much so that we’ve teamed up with Kindred and The Eve Appeal, to launch a writing competition on the theme of difficult conversations.

My story is called ‘Frozen Out’, an awkward conversation between a husband and wife.  Its inclusion in the anthology is all the sweeter because the other eighteen stories are uniformly excellent.

All profits from the sale of the book are being donated to The Eve Appeal to help fund its important work fighting women’s cancers.  Hard copies of the book are available from Foyles, either in-store or via their online shop.  You can get an e-book version from Amazon.

We Need To Talk was launched yesterday at Foyles on the Southbank.  Jenny Aims has posted about it on the Kindred blog.  There’s a photo of me in it.

We Need To Talk is an awareness raising project, so let’s be aware.  The Eve Appeal chief executive Athena Lamnisos wrote the afterword for the book, and it was published earlier this week on the Huffington Post, under the title ‘We Need To Talk About Vaginas‘.

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Hurrah for NHS bureaucrats

“I want doctors with stethoscopes not bureaucrats with clipboards”
—David Cameron, 2 April 2015, #LeadersDebate

In tolerant and inclusive twenty-first century Britain, there is still one group of people that the politicians are happy to demonise: NHS managers.  During last night’s Leaders’ Debate both David Cameron and Ed Miliband were happy to trumpet policies that would see a reduction in NHS managers and an increase in doctors.
This is obviously a vote winning policy.  It’s a simple zero sum equation that ordinary people think they understand.  When we experience the NHS, we see a front-line health professional, not a back-room manager.  So more doctors and nurses, with less bureaucrats, appeals to the natural biases we have due to the way we experience the health service.
But I was sat next to a doctor during the debates and she ridiculed the policy.  If there are less managers in the NHS, then the task of managing will fall to the doctors… Who will have less time to see patients and run clinics!  The admin load placed on doctors and nurses is already a chronic complaint.
The NHS is a vast, multi-dimensional organisation. Running it is a huge logistical challenge.  The doctors, nurses, and technicians all need to be paid, co-ordinated, and to have precisely the right equipment at their disposal when the patient turns up for their appointment.  This requires managers.  The patients themselves need to be piloted through a Byzantine network of ‘healthcare pathways’ as well as the literal corridors of the hospital.  This requires managers.
Moreover, the government and professional bodies set rigorous standards and targets for the service, which are meaningless if they are not monitored.  This requires managers.  And the facilities that power the health service are some of the biggest and most complex institutions in our society.  They need hands on the tiller to set a strategic direction.  This requires managers.
There’s no point in employing more doctors and nurses if you don’t also employ management staff as well.  Otherwise the medical staff will end up doing all the admin and that will be frustrating for everyone.
Hurrah for NHS bureaucrats!

“Amateurs talk about tactics, but professionals study logistics.”
—General Robert H. Barrow, USMC (Commandant of the Marine Corps)