Get your Think Tank off my lawn!

Some of you may have opened your copy of the Sunday Times at the weekend and noticed that the NHS could apparently save over a billion pounds by introducing shorter hospital stays. What is the source of this miraculous revelation we all asked our selves in muted and humbled awe? How could this simple fact been overlooked for so long? Pity the poor patients entrapped against their will in MRSA-ridden hospitals by over paid doctors, who sit around twiddling their thumbs whilst obstructing reform and promoting inequalities in health!

We can all thank not just our lucky stars, but also that veritable nuclear power station of ground-breaking progressive thought that is the Institute for Public Policy Research. This widely respected organ of genius, bursting at the seams with intellectual might and academic rigour, has recently published an magnum opus ostentatiously entitled The Future Hospital: The progressive case for change to great fanfare and bipartisan adulation from across the political spectrum.


Dr Rant is also particularly pleased that the British Medical Association has wisely used some of his subs to sponsor this great work.

Who do we have to thank and praise for penning this encyclopaedic fountain of wisdom with such dexterity and foresight? It would appear that our two new heroes of progressive health policy are Joe Farrington Douglas and Richard Brooks.

Joe Farrington-Douglas has led the Institute's work on patient choice and equity, health system reform and hospital reconfiguration.
Before joining IPPR in 2005 Joe worked in the Cabinet Office on reducing bureaucracy and improving regulation in health, education and transport. He also worked on civil service reform and improving diversity. He has a BA in Sociology from University of Sussex and is studying for a MSc in Social Policy at the LSE.

Richard Brooks is part of the IPPR’s ‘Public services at the crossroads’ team, and work to date includes:
Fabian Society, Research Director 2004-2006
Tower Hamlets Councillor 2002-2006 (Cabinet Member for Resources 2003-2006)
Prime Minister's Strategy Unit, 2002-2003
Labour Party Policy Unit, 2001
Warburg Dillon Read Corporate Finance, 1997-1999


What the fuck?!!??!?!

Sorry, but have you seen their pictures? They look about 12 years old for fuck’s sake! They look to me like a pair of sycophantic Blairite Spin Doctors who can muster a couple of social science degrees between them, and they’re trying to influence the debate on health policy and give a credible argument in favour of the government’s idiotic blunderings in the realms healthcare and the NHS. By the looks of them they should at best be producing articles for Nuts magazine about Premiership footballers roasting Page 3 girls; a task for which I would have thought that they were better qualified.

They don't even appear to claim to have personal experience of actually running anything, let alone a hugely diverse and multifaceted organization like the NHS that deals with inordinately complex scientific problems and tries to reconcile these with both economic and emotional variables on a person-to-person basis across the geographic and social divide. They do however seem to share the conceited arrogance of the modern ‘political elite’ in believing that they alone have the mandate and skills to administer the NHS and secure it’s future. The same political elite who claim to be the guardians of Nye Bevan’s ideal of equality, yet seek to shovel the best bits of the system into the waiting mouths of the recumbent private sector, whilst simultaneously protesting their commitment to the principles of the NHS.

The IPPR claims; "We are ambitious for what can be achieved by good public policy. We aim to inform policy debates and are prepared to challenge orthodoxy and prevailing wisdom - from whatever side of the argument. This is slightly ironic given that they are aiming to create evidence to support the 'prevailing wisdom' from government. However, even more ironically they also claim that "Our agenda is simple: we want to build a fairer, more democratic and environmentally sustainable world. We are driven by these values, not by any party or interest group."......OK then, there's lots of evidence to support that isn't there?

The Institute for Public Policy Research, a self appointed ‘Think Tank’, is a foul smelling spawn of the Labour party that seeks to promote the incompetent hypocrisy of its master with the pretence of independence and academic process. A more suitable title, given their predilection for pseudo-intellectual political masturbation, would be ‘Wank Tank’.