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I am finally discharged from Queen Square!
Monday was a highly emotional day for me. I was finally charged from the Neurorehabilitation clinic at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, Queen Square.
I must say that my medical team looking after me are fantastic. A dedicated team of clinicians, including neurologists at various stages of their training, the occupational therapists, the physiotherapists, and the speech-and-language therapy (SALT) people looked after me. My father and mother used to visit me religiously every day. My mother still has memories of coming to see me during visiting hours, with cooked food. My father passed away in November 2010.
The Hospital makes me extremely proud, as I practised neurology there long before I came alcoholic. I had the pleasure and honour of being on the movement disorders, cognitive disorders and dementia, neurogenetics and general neurology teams. I think the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, Queen Square, is the best hospital in the world. Therefore, while it gives me great happiness in that I no longer have seizures (my last one was on admission in 2007) and I am now physically almost back to normal, it is of massive unhappiness I will probably never go there again.
I still actively research in dementia, working for a leading UK charity in Alzheimer’s Disease. I love it there, as I make contributions to their groundbreaking work on quality-of-life and wellbeing in dementia environments. I will be writing an open letter to the General Medical Council, having done my two degrees in law and MBA by that stage, with 57 months in recovery in 2013. The GMC can have a careful read of the transcripts now which provide that their Consultant gave in the hearing, that if erased my drinking would explode. This is exactly what happened, and it’s well known within medicine that you’re at extremely high risk of meningitis if you drink heavily.
I currently have the privilege of being able to complete my legal training, and I still have unanswered questions of my own about the treatment of sick doctors.
I look forward to the challenge. My father insisted that I should fight this fiercely, on a matter of principle. Thankfully, I have an excellent consultant. The BBC will be interested to follow my submissions particularly. I think both the medical and legal professions are wonderful, though, notwithstanding what I’ve said. I must thank the regulators for law for looking at my case fairly which allows me to pursue my current dreams.
Nick Clegg and Gillian Duffy
I don’t think Nick Clegg talking to Gillian Duffy as if she’s really stupid really helped the nature of this conversation. I have never understood why Clegg is so compelled to form a coalition which ever party has the most seats, as he could have called another election; what we have now is incredibly unstable, and it’s as if Clegg has no idea what his party’s policies are, but he just wants power.
We’ll see whether this was the right approach in the May elections.
Click here to listen.
Rehab
I did a period in rehab once. It didn’t work. I have been in recovery now for 45 months. You have to have to understand addiction of alcohol to make it work. Unless you have a willpower and fully acknowledge that alcohol addiction is a lifelong medical condition you have to learn to live with, you can’t make it.
I even tried equine therapy when my late father, my mum and I were really desperate. Don’t ask me what this involved!
Here’s the brilliant track from Amy Winehouse, “Rehab”.
The 12 steps of alcohol recovery
I personally don’t do the 12 steps programme for alcohol recovery, as they practise thoroughly in the Alcoholics Anonymous.
However, all I would say is: do whatever works best for you in recovery. In my recovery, I share some of the beliefs. In other words, you are genuinely powerless over the fact you cannot individually cope with alcohol. Many ‘normal’ people can cope – you are not one of them, if you are alcoholic. I have now been in recovery now for 45 months, and I am very open about it. I attend my recovery meeting mostly everu Tuesday in North London.
You cannot do it alone, but in a sense only you can totally cure yourself – this means a life-long programme of recovery. You have to let go, confront the issues, and live life in recovery – but it is an exacting and worthwhile process, and one which I continue to enjoy.
Cognitive reserve and Alzheimer's disease biomarkers are independent determinants of cognition
Cognitive reserve and Alzheimer’s disease biomarkers are independent determinants of cognition Brain (2011) awr049 first published online April 7, 2011 doi:10.1093/brain/awr049
The link to this article in Brain is here.
The objective of the study above was to investigate how a measure of educational and occupational attainment, a component of cognitive reserve, modifies the relationship between biomarkers of pathology and cognition in Alzheimer’s disease. The biomarkers evaluated quantified neurodegeneration via atrophy on magnetic resonance images, neuronal injury via cerebral spinal fluid t-tau, brain amyloid-? load via cerebral spinal fluid amyloid-?1–42 and vascular disease via white matter hyperintensities on T2/proton density magnetic resonance images. They included very large samples – 109 cognitively normal subjects, 192 amnestic patients with mild cognitive impairment and 98 patients with Alzheimer’s disease, from the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative study, who had undergone baseline lumbar puncture and magnetic resonance imaging. We combined patients with mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s disease in a group labelled ‘cognitively impaired’ subjects.
Their main conclusions included: (i) that in cognitively normal subjects, the variability in cognitive performance is explained partly by the American National Adult Reading Test and not by biomarkers of Alzheimer’s disease pathology; (ii) in cognitively impaired subjects, the American National Adult Reading Test, biomarkers of neuronal pathology (structural magnetic resonance imaging and cerebral spinal fluid t-tau) and amyloid load (cerebral spinal fluid amyloid-?1–42) all independently explain variability in general cognitive performance; and (iii) that the association between cognition and the American National Adult Reading Test was found to be additive rather than to interact with biomarkers of Alzheimer’s disease pathology.
On the Bill of Rights: response to Sadiq Khan MP on Labour List.
Sadiq Khan’s article in Labour List is entitled “Papering over the cracks of a divided government”, here.
I think a central issue in this must be whether there are any meaningful moves to get rid of the Human Rights Act. Many agree that the problems with it have not so much been with the literal legislation of it, but its interpretation.
A number of different reasons have been proposed for extending the Human Rights Act to a Bill of Rights. These have been discussed by the legislature, and include,
i) To provide a means of balancing rights with responsibilities;
ii) To provide a framework for our shared national values as part of the Prime Minister’s “Britishness” agenda;
iii) To educate the public, by providing greater clarity for people about their rights and responsibilities;
iv) To provide greater ownership of the protected rights than is the case with the HRA;
v) To include some recognition of the importance of social and economic rights such as health and education; and
vi) To protect the weak and vulnerable against the strong and powerful.
The Joint Committee on Human Rights (21 July 2008, 29th report) said at that point the following:
We regret that there is not greater clarity in the Government’s reasons for embarking on this potentially ambitious course of drawing up a Bill of Rights. A number of the Government’s reasons appear to be concerned with correcting public misperceptions about the current regime of human rights protection, under the HRA. We do not think that this is in itself a good reason for adopting a Bill of Rights. As we have consistently said in previous Reports, the Government should seek proactively to counter public misperceptions about human rights rather than encourage them by treating them as if they were true.
This must surely be a purpose of whatever government is in power and office now, surely? For example, Tom Hickman, of Blackstone Chambers, amongst other witnesses, to this Committee has apparently strongly disagreed that a Bill of Rights should be enacted purely because of perceived deficiencies in the HRA, if those deficiencies could be remedied by amending the Act itself.
I believe that the Labour and Liberal views could be reconciled, if Labour were to make its position much more in favour of civil liberties. The aforementioned Committee cites in the Report that:
We believe it is important that any UK Bill of Rights includes strong legal protections for freedoms such as freedom of assembly, freedom of expression, freedom from unreasonable search and seizure, and freedom from unwarranted intrusions on privacy, all of which are essentially negative liberties from state interference. For this reason, we believe any bill of rights should be called a UK Bill of Rights and Freedoms.
I have intuitively felt that a more natural political pact might have been between the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats, but I have long lost this battle. The fact that we are at least having a discussion about this, in an open way, must be good. I think we should, as a party, think about the direction in which we need to move on civil liberties (given the problems we had with ID cards, detention without trial, etc.), rather than our short-term electoral motives.
Source: here.
LibDems have failed to notice their cookie jar is empty
Somebody’s been at the Coalition Cookie-Jar again, and the LibDems have failed to notice – yet again.
The Tory-led government was proposing to scrap primary care trusts and give councils responsibility for public health and joint working between NHS and other services.
Health Secretary Andrew Lansley’s white paper also set out plans for local GP consortiums to take on the PCT role of commissioning hospital treatments. As expected, strategic health authorities will also be abolished.
Lansley reiterated the Department of Health’s target of £20bn savings by 2013/14. According to this article, he said abolishing PCTs would save £1bn, helping to slash NHS management costs by 45%. All the measures in the white paper, Equity and excellence: liberating the NHS, will affect health services in England only.
Why do the Liberal Democrats seem impotent in pointing out obvious discrepancies? This is what the Coalition Agreement said:
- We will ensure that there is a stronger voice for patients locally through directly elected individuals on the boards of their local primary care trust (PCT). The remainder of the PCT’s board will be appointed by the relevant local authority or authorities, and the Chief Executive and principal officers will be appointed by the Secretary of State on the advice of the new independent NHS board. This will ensure the right balance between locally accountable individuals and technical expertise.
- The local PCT will act as a champion for patients and commission those residual services that are best undertaken at a wider level, rather than directly by GPs. It will also take responsibility for improving public health for people in their area, working closely with the local authority and other local organisations.
It’s therefore an odd situation where the Coalition had been wishing to extend the powers of the PCT. Now, it seems that they do not wish to preserve this for the sake of deficit reduction. Anecdotal reports suggest that Croydon is phasing out its PCT. What is really happening? Speaks for itself really.
The fallacy of the company : it's not the fault of Sky or the BBC, according to Dr Shibley Rahman
It doesn’t really matter if the BBC has made people’s lives misery due to inaccurate or incomplete reporting, or whether phone lines have actually been hacked or not – it’s all to do with the financial status of the company.
At the end of the day, the success of the company is primarily driven by profit, and the people in the company have as their prime duty the maximisation of wealth within legal boundaries. Whatever happens with Sky, and you can guarantee that there is more to come, or whatever happens with other equally large media organisations, they only really care about money. The irony is that whatever happens regarding secret bugging devices in flower pots for Mike Hollingsworth (as described by the man himself on BBC’s Any Questions), none of it really will affect the share price of Sky unless something drastic happens. The schism between morality, finance and the law is often underestimated, but comes back to bite you when you least suspect it.
Some of us are completely sick of attacks on our reputation by people who couldn’t care less apart from maximising their profit, but we’ve got used to it. Tough. It’s only the notion of enlightened shareholder value that keeps some of us sane, to keep us out of the Big Sweatshop Society inter alia.
Law schools need to manage great expectations
Now, I return to this young fellow. And the communication I have got to make is, that he has great expectations.
Great Expectations
Mr Jaggers about Pip, Chapter 18.
The reason that I am writing this blog post is because of a recent podcast entitled, “Lawcast 181: Baroness Deech, Chair of The Bar Standards Board on legal education and the regulation of the profession”
I really enjoyed this thought-provoking and interesting podcast, which I think is highly relevant to my arm of the profession too: the solicitors. I am one of hundreds of thousands bombarding the corporate law firms with my training contract application. Without a training contract, I can’t actually be admitted to the Roll of Solicitors. This obviously concerns me. The bottom line: there are thousands of students who won’t get Pupillages either, as the market is so intensively competitive.
That is why I applaud Baroness Deech so much for raising awareness of issues which are extremely important to me as a student. I am yet to do my LPC, which I will do at BPP (Waterloo) between January and September 2012, although I have completed my LLM at the College of Law (2008-2010) and GDL at BPP (2006-2008). My first five degrees were in medicine and biological natural sciences at Cambridge; as I obtained the second highest First there and my PhD following AAAA11 at A level, I can put myself firmly into the ‘academic’ camp. The further aspect to my application, which I tend not to reveal, is my strong research output in frontotemporal dementia, for reasons I’ll explain later. I decided to study law late in my life, as I became strongly interested in aspects of the law by accident (e.g. constitutional issues, regulation of financial services, access to justice) and I wished to pursue a formal qualification in it. I have no reservations about pursuing corporate law either.
I only passed my GDL, but I spent 50% of it in a wheelchair doing it by distance learning because of a two month coma due to meningitis which left me disabled. I am aware of the arguments that law course providers “mass-produce graduates” akin to a sausage factory, but in my case BPP were extraordinarily flexible and compassionate about completion of my GDL. I have loved my time there, not only because of the actual course, but because of the people that I’ve met. Many of the well-known corporate firms have told me that, whilst their official criterion is AAB at A level and a II.1, the vast majority of their good candidates have considerably better qualifications, but they can only invite a small proportion to interview. Some law firms have an intake of even 5-10 per session. My GDL pass is ‘tolerated’, only given my extenuating circumstances, I feel. I happen to believe that 20 problem questions across 7 topics in the GDL, compared to 12 difficult essays in my Finals, does not reveal much about how one can analyse different sides of an argument critically, in the first place, but my views on this are utterly irrelevant. They must surely be testing different things, and I hope that the Joint Academic Stage Board are able to make sense of this. My LLM commendation “looks better”, but one firm indeed wanted a Distinction.
There are other questions on the application form for training contracts which raise eyebrows with me. One is the “Why law?” question, but there are people who have genuinely questioned my commitment to being a legal practitioner given my academic publications record. I run myself a student society to raise awareness of how commercial and legal worlds interact (http://legal-aware.org), but I often find students reluctant to take part unless there’s something in it for them (like, for example, a training contract application mention). I feel strongly now that law schools now need to offer quality careers advice in careers other than law, such as teaching, the financial services or charity work (e.g. in human rights). Notwithstanding that, I feel sorry for the fact that law firms have to ask this question at the point before offering a training contract, when one feels that this should have been addressed prior to assumption of a GDL/LPC/BPTC place.
The next obvious way to tackle the “Why law?” question might be therefore to cite legal experience. Whilst firms have told me officially that it doesn’t matter whether this work experience is legal or not, invariably at interview partners have asked me about my relative lack of work experience. The “social mobility” component to this is that I am now prepared to take out a loan for this – as it happens, I believe that chambers should not have to pay their interns to offer them at all. I am far too old for most solicitor vac schemes. I am now thankfully doing pro bono work at a London law centre in employment and discrimination law, and it’s great as I really want to do it as I am myself disabled, but some firms apparently wish to see ‘corporate work-experience’. This is particularly pertinent in the “Why does the culture of our firm suit you?” question. Perhaps, it’s hard to justify applying to Gordon Ramsay when all you have worked for is Burger King.
I happen to think that any education is worthwhile, as you never know when you’ll need to use it. A Professor in Law at the University of London once told me this. I am currently doing a MBA, and when I told a Legal Graduate Recruitment Advisor that I am not trying really hard to get a distinction in it but that I was doing it because I really loved how businesses operate, she sounded much less than pleased. So should it matter if you come from a ‘non-legal route’ or ‘legal route’? I argue that it shouldn’t, in the face of all those law firms who have ignored my undergraduate and doctoral studies. Should it matter I’m not a great linguist? I am learning five languages, albeit at basic level. And so we could go on.
This all is leading to my conclusion that Law Schools need to take ‘expectation management’ more seriously than they ever used to. BPP Law School prides itself as being one of the leading providers of vocational education. The School is now able to award degrees following approval from the Privy Council. The Bar Standards Board has required BPP to appoint an independent statistician to review all available admissions data for the previous 5 years and clarify that in his/her professional opinion the number of offers that BPP wishes to make should not lead to over-recruitment.
However, critically, I do not believe that BPP is unilaterally responsible for this overload in the job market.
So, finally, I should like to thank Baroness Deech enormously for making me think about such issues.
Beware the ides of March
Forgetting AV for one moment..
I think people should be encouraged to vote for the Coalition on their results as well as their aspirations for the future. If it happens that you are not bothered about poor growth, flat interest rates, rising inflation in the short-term, rising unemployment, poor GDP, the majority of universities providing courses for £9000 with minor concessions for the really poor, a debacle over forests, a fast “hatchet job” of the NHS and social care, withdrawal of “Building Schools for the Future”, scrapping of EMA and SureStart, sure, fine, vote Conservatives or Liberal Democrats.
But if you wish to cut the deficit faster, and 100% not 80%, sure vote Conservatives or Liberal Democrat. The thing is you will still have the situation above, or the consequences of it in a few years’ time, and you could see the English economy completely grind to a halt. This will make it even harder for your chosen LibDem and Tory councillors to provide local services in the community.
The LibDems make this minority Tory-led government possible. Unless LibDems voted on bloc, you’d have a debate and you’d have a choice. As it is, you don’t really have any choice at all.
Oh yes, you got a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to change the voting system (a bit). Whooppeedoo.
