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Copies of “Living well with dementia” are doing more cameos than Hitch
English film director Alfred Hitchcock (“Hitch”) made cameo appearances in 39 of his 52 surviving major films.
For the films in which he appeared, he would be seen for a brief moment boarding a bus, crossing in front of a building, standing in an apartment across the courtyard, or even appearing in a newspaper photograph.
This playful gesture became one of Hitchcock’s signatures; and fans would make sport of trying to spot his cameos.
As a recurring theme, he would carry a musical instrument — especially memorable was the double bass case that he wrestles onto the train at the beginning of “Strangers on a Train”.
In “The Birds”, as Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren) enters the pet shop, Hitch is leaving with two white Sealyham terriers.
This is a film of every single ‘Hitchcock cameo’.
Here are some recent cameos.
Full details about my book are on the Radcliffe website here.
Here are further ‘tweets of support’.
@legalaware Thanks for the RT! You seem to be having huge success with your book. Delighted to see the wonderful tweets about it. Well done!
— Rebecca Huxley-Binns (@BexHuxBinns) March 26, 2014
@legalaware not ‘improvement’ but sidewards step into further dementia excursions! a great book, proud to be in it & have it in the toolkit!
— James Murray-White (@sky_larking) March 25, 2014
@charbhardy @legalaware I just read a lovely book by Laurie Lee and these words made me think of you both pic.twitter.com/CQo3SjLh63
— Peter Gordon (@PeterDLROW) March 24, 2014
@legalaware Should think so too – most important and thought-provoking book on dementia for quite a while IMHO. Don’t sell yourself short.
— Steve Milton (@SteveMilton1) March 21, 2014
Reading beautiful written, highly relevant dementia book http://t.co/sN9egivjSn by brilliant @legalaware Beg/borrow/buy if u can. Just gr8 x
— Lisa Rodrigues (@LisaSaysThis) February 22, 2014
And above all…
David Cameron's holiday, like an individual's tax arrangements, is actually none of your business
Why would you want David Cameron not to take a holiday? Perhaps you think that he should be chained to MI5 or MI6 24/7. Maybe you have some especial thing about him wanting to spend time with his wife or his family?
This “mean-mindedness”, about individuals feeling that it is their business to deprive David Cameron of a small break, beggars belief. More’s the point, it is even more astonishing that they inflict their views about this unimportant manner in such an impersonal public manner. It is a characteristic of all organisations that there is enough people in the team for operations to run smoothly. I am not saying that David Cameron, as Prime Minister, is simply a manager and we can run the country without him. But to think it is worth spending time writing about how he should not have a holiday, or even criticise him for his choice of destination, is petty, when you consider the real choices that this country faces. Should the UK government seek to crack down on aggressive tax avoidance unilaterally or is it simply an extension of shareholder primacy under the company law of many jurisdictions, not just ours? Should we seek to have more NHS services run by the private sector, so that they possibly can be run not at a loss, but to seek to deliver higher quality or value, even if returning a profit? Whatever your ideological viewpoint, these are more interesting questions that all parties need simply not to sit on. Labour didn’t do anything for years on tax avoidance, and contributed in introducing the private sector to the NHS. This may upset you: but David Cameron’s holiday is none of your business. That’s why you won’t find his holiday snaps in the newspapers, because it would be an unlawful invasion of his privacy.
A third of people will like you whatever you do. A third of people will dislike you whatever you do. A third of people will be completely indifferent whatever you do. The fact that people are concerned about David Cameron’s holidays, in the news, is more of an artefact that the media choose to report this, say, ahead of events in Syria. Or, even better, they have finally become exhausted by their own reportage on UKIP. The enthusiasm of scrutiny on this parallels the amount of disproportionate interest given to the Eton Entrance Scholarship examination past paper. The general paper is not testing the tenacity of bigoted right-wing beliefs, deeply engrained in the education system. Nor is it testing whether people are ‘fit to rule’ the country. Such paranoid beliefs simply serve to confirm what the Left hate being criticised about – the politics of envy. They also show deeply prejudiced opinions which reasonable people should find deeply worrying.
What, though, is weird about this entire thing is that people writing newspapers are generally not working class, not even in the Daily Mirror. And some of the people protesting the most loudly about class issues have graduated with good degrees from the University of Oxford in an arts based subject such as English. It is not long ago that black and ethic minority candidates, from relatively disadvantaged backgrounds, felt pressurised to study a vocational subject such as engineering, law or medicine, to maximise their chances of succeeding in life. But taking this argument to another extreme, nobody would wish for Oxford graduates in English to avoid deliberately discussing these topics on class or lifestyle which deeply interest them. Freedom of expression is extremely important as a qualified human right, and so long as listening to somebody exerting their freedom of expression is not automatically taken to mean ‘tolerance’ of those views, it should be a right to be defended strongly. It is clearly worrisome if professional politicians should wish to censor those people with views which are extreme, but not unlawful or illegal.
But then again this is not the first time that this country would get its knickers in a twist about the difference between the law and ethics. Tax avoidance is actively frowned upon by the professional bodies of accountancy, and everyone knows it’s complex. All sorts of people making tax decisions for entirely personal reasons, including ISAs. People’s tax affairs are none of your business. You can argue that the tax affairs of Google, Starbucks or Amazon impact upon society, but, so long as it is legal, it is strictly speaking, it is none of your business. If you have a serious gripe against the economy, tax, or the NHS, you can remedy your grievance by voting for a party which more represents your views on May 8th 2015. However, if you are interested in David Cameron’s holiday, or Eton scholarship exam questions, just realise it’s pontificating. Lazy journalism. “Entertainment”. It’s nothing interesting, or intelligent. It certainly doesn’t make this country a better place.
The English dementia policy: some personal thoughts
The last few years have seen a much welcome progression, for the better, for dementia policy in England. This has been the result of the previous Government, under which “Living well with dementia: the National Dementia Strategy” was published in 2009, and the current Government, in which the Prime Minister’s Dementia Challenge in 2012 was introduced.
Dementia is a condition which lends itself to the ‘whole person’, ‘integrated’ approach. It is not an unusual for an individual with dementia to be involved with people from the medical profession, including GPs, neurologists, geriatricians; allied health professionals, including nurses, health care assistants, physiotherapists, speech and language specialists, nutritionists or dieticians, and occupational therapists; and people in other professionals, such as ‘dementia advocates’ and lawyers. I think a lot can be done to help individuals with dementia ‘to live well'; in fact I have just finished a big book on it and you can read drafts of the introduction and conclusion here.
It is obviously critical that clinicians, especially the people likeliest to make the initial provisional diagnosis, should be in the ‘driving seat’, but it is also very important that patients, carers, family members, or other advocates are in that driving seat too. I feel this especially now, given that there is so much information available from people directly involved in with patients (such as @bethyb1886 or @whoseshoes or @dragonmisery) This patient journey is inevitably long, and to call it a ‘rollercoaster ride‘ would be a true understatement. That is why language is remarkably important, and that people with some knowledge of medicine get involved in articulating this debate. Not everyone with power and influence in dementia has a detailed knowledge of it, sadly.
I am very honoured to have my paper on the behavioural variant of frontotemporal dementia to be included as one of a handful of references in the current Oxford Textbook of Medicine. You can view this chapter, provided you do not use it for commercial gain (!), here.
I should like to direct you to the current draft of a video by Prof Alistair Burns, Chair of Psychiatry at the University of Manchester, who is the current National Clinical Lead for Dementia. You can contact him over any aspects of dementia policy on his Twitter, @ABurns1907. I strongly support Prof Burns, and here is his kind Tweet to me about my work. I agree with Prof Burns that once individuals can be given face-to-face a correct diagnosis of dementia this allows them to plan for the future, and to access appropriate services. The problem obviously comes from how clinicians arrive at that diagnosis.
I am not a clinician, although I studied medicine at Cambridge and did my PhD on dementia there too, but having written a number of reviews, book chapters, original papers, and now a book on dementia, I am deeply involved with the dementia world. I am still invited to international conferences, and I personally do not have any financial vested interests (e.g. funding, I do not work for a charity, hospital, or university, etc.) That is why I hope I can be frank about this. Clinicians will be mindful of the tragedy of telling somebody he or she has dementia or when he or she hasn’t, but needs help for severe anxiety, depression, underactive thyroid, or whatever. But likewise, we are faced with reports of a substantial underdiagnosis of dementia, for which a number of reasons could be postulated. Asking questions such as “How good is your memory?” may be a good basic initial question, but clinicians will be mindful that this test will suffer from poor specificity – there could be a lot of false positives due to other conditions.
At the end of the day, a mechanism such as ‘payment-by-results’ can only work if used responsibly, and does not create an environment for ‘perverse incentives’ where Trusts will be more inclined to claim for people with a ‘label’ of dementia when they actually do not have the condition at all. A double tragedy would be if these individuals had poor access to care which Prof Burns admits is “patchy”. In my own paper, with over 300 citations, on frontal dementia, seven out of eight patients had very good memory, and yet had a reliable diagnosis of early frontal dementia. Prof Burns rightly argues the term ‘timely’ should be used in preference to ‘early’ dementia, but still some influential stakeholders are using the term ‘early’ annoyingly. On the other hand, I wholeheartedly agree that the term ‘timely’ is much more fitting with the “person-centred care” approach, made popular in a widespread way by Tom Kitwood.
I am still really enthused about the substantial progress which has been made in English dementia policy. I enclose Prof Burns’ latest update (draft), and the video I recorded yesterday at my law school, for completion.
Prof Alistair Burns, National Clinical Lead for Dementia
Me (nobody) in reply
Avoiding the rollercoaster: a policy for dementia must be responsible
The last few years have seen a much welcome progression, for the better, for dementia policy in England. This has been the result of the previous Government, under which “Living well with dementia: the National Dementia Strategy” was published in 2009, and the current Government, in which the Prime Minister’s Dementia Challenge in 2012 was introduced.
Dementia is a condition which lends itself to the ‘whole person’, ‘integrated’ approach. It is not an unusual for an individual with dementia to be involved with people from the medical profession, including GPs, neurologists, geriatricians; allied health professionals, including nurses, health care assistants, physiotherapists, speech and language specialists, nutritionists or dieticians, and occupational therapists; and people in other professionals, such as ‘dementia advocates’ and lawyers. I think a lot can be done to help individuals with dementia ‘to live well'; in fact I have just finished a big book on it and you can read drafts of the introduction and conclusion here.
It is critical obviously that clinicians, especially the people likeliest to make the initial provisional diagnosis, should be in the ‘driving seat’, but it is also very important that patients, carers, family members, or other advocates are in that driving seat too. I feel this especially now, given that there is so much information available from people directly involved in with patients (such as @bethyb1886 or @whoseshoes or @dragonmisery) This patient journey is inevitably long, and to call it a ‘rollercoaster ride‘ would be a true understatement. That is why language is remarkably important, and that people with some knowledge of medicine get involved in articulating this debate. Not everyone with power and influence in dementia has a detailed knowledge of it, sadly.
I am very honoured to have my paper on the behavioural variant of frontotemporal dementia to be included as one of a handful of references in the current Oxford Textbook of Medicine. You can view this chapter, provided you do not use it for commercial gain (!), here.
I should like to direct you to the current draft of a video by Prof Alistair Burns, Chair of Psychiatry at the University of Manchester, who is the current National Clinical Lead for Dementia. You can contact him over any aspects of dementia policy on his Twitter, @ABurns1907. I strongly support Prof Burns, and here is his kind Tweet to me about my work. I agree with Prof Burns that once individuals can be given face-to-face a correct diagnosis of dementia this allows them to plan for the future, and to access appropriate services. The problem obviously comes from how clinicians arrive at that diagnosis.
I am not a clinician, although I studied medicine at Cambridge and did my PhD on dementia there too, but having written a number of reviews, book chapters, original papers, and now a book on dementia, I am deeply involved with the dementia world. I am still invited to international conferences, and I personally do not have any financial vested interests (e.g. funding, I do not work for a charity, hospital, or university, etc.) That is why I hope I can be frank about this. Clinicians will be mindful of the tragedy of telling somebody he or she has dementia or when he or she hasn’t, but needs help for severe anxiety, depression, underactive thyroid, or whatever. But likewise, we are faced with reports of a substantial underdiagnosis of dementia, for which a number of reasons could be postulated. Asking questions such as “How good is your memory?” may be a good basic initial question, but clinicians will be mindful that this test will suffer from poor specificity – there could be a lot of false positives due to other conditions.
At the end of the day, a mechanism such as ‘payment-by-results’ can only work if used responsibly, and does not create an environment for ‘perverse incentives’ where Trusts will be more inclined to claim for people with a ‘label’ of dementia when they actually do not have the condition at all. A double tragedy would be if these individuals had poor access to care which Prof Burns admits is “patchy”. In my own paper, with over 300 citations, on frontal dementia, seven out of eight patients had very good memory, and yet had a reliable diagnosis of early frontal dementia. Prof Burns rightly argues the term ‘timely’ should be used in preference to ‘early’ dementia, but still some influential stakeholders are using the term ‘early’ annoyingly. On the other hand, I wholeheartedly agree that the term ‘timely’ is much more fitting with the “person-centred care” approach, made popular in a widespread way by Tom Kitwood.
I am still really enthused about the substantial progress which has been made in English dementia policy. I enclose Prof Burns’ latest update (draft), and the video I recorded yesterday at my law school, for completion.
Prof Alistair Burns, National Clinical Lead for Dementia
Me (nobody) in reply
It was honour to speak to a group of suspended Doctors on the Practitioner Health Programme this morning about recovery
It was a real honour and privilege to be invited to give a talk to a group of medical Doctors who were currently suspended on the GMC Medical Register this morning (in confidence). I gave a talk for about thirty minutes, and took questions afterwards. I have enormous affection for the medical profession in fact, having obtained a First at Cambridge in 1996, and also produced a seminal paper in dementia published in a leading journal as part of my Ph.D. there. I have had nothing to do with the medical profession for several years now, apart from volunteering part-time for two medical charities in London which I no longer do.
I currently think patient safety is paramount, and Doctors with addiction problems often do not realise the effect the negative impact of their addiction on their performance. No regulatory authority can do ‘outreach’, otherwise it would be there forever, in the same way that Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous do not actively go out looking for people with addiction problems. I personally have doubts about the notion of a ‘high functioning addict’, as the addict is virtually oblivious to all the distress and débris caused by their addiction; the impact on others is much worse than on the individual himself, who can lack insight and can be in denial. Insight is something that is best for others to judge.
However, I have now been in recovery for 72 months, with things having come to a head when I was admitted in August 2007 having had an epileptic seizure and asystolic cardiac arrest. Having woken up on the top floor of the Royal Free Hospital in pitch darkness, I had to cope with recovery from alcoholism (I have never been addicted to any other drugs), and newly-acquired physical disability. I in fact could neither walk nor talk. Nonetheless, I am happy as I live with my mum in Primrose Hill, have never had any regular salaried employment since my coma in the summer of 2007, received scholarships to do my MBA and legal training (otherwise my life would have become totally unsustainable financially apart from my disability living allowance which I use for my mobility and living). I am also very proud to have completed my Master of Law with a commendation in January 2011. My greatest achievement of all has been sustaining my recovery, and my talk went very well this morning.
The message I wished to impart that personal health and recovery is much more important than temporary abstinence, ‘getting the certificate’ and carrying on with your career if you have a genuine problem. People in any discipline will often not seek help for addiction, as they worry about their training record. Some will even not enlist with a G.P., in case the GP reports them to a regulatory authority. I discussed how I had a brilliant doctor-patient relationship with my own G.P. and how the support from the Solicitors Regulation Authority (who allowed me unconditionally to do the Legal Practice Course after an extensive due diligence) had been vital, but I also fielded questions on the potential impact of stigma of stigma in the regulatory process as a barrier-to-recovery.
I gave an extensive list of my own ‘support network’, which included my own G.P., psychiatrist, my mum, other family and friends, the Practitioner Health Programme, and ‘After Care’ at my local hospital.
The Practitioner Health Programme, supported by the General Medical Council, describes itself as follows:
The Practitioner Health Programme is a free, confidential service for doctors and dentists living in London who have mental or physical health concerns and/or addiction problems.
Any medical or dental practitioner can use the service, where they have
• A mental health or addiction concern (at any level of severity) and/or
• A physical health concern (where that concern may impact on the practitioner’s performance.)
I was asked which of these had helped me the most, which I thought was a very good question. I said that it was not necessarily the case that a bigger network was necessarily better, but it did need individuals to be open and truthful with you if things began to go wrong. It gave me a chance to outline the fundamental conundrum of recovery; it’s impossible to go into recovery on your own (for many this will mean going to A.A. or other meetings, and discussing recovery with close friends), but likewise the only person who can help you is yourself (no number of expensive ‘rehabs’ will on their own provide you with the ‘cure’.) This is of course a lifelong battle for me, and whilst I am very happy now as things have moved on for me, I hope I may at last help others who need help in a non-professional capacity.
Best wishes, Shibley
My talk [ edited ]
Indeed Christmas is a tough time for recovering alcoholics
Christmas is supposed to be a very tough time for recovering alcoholics. I must admit that I am extremely proud that I am now 42 months in my life-long recovery. It’s difficult, but waking up on the top floor of the Royal Free NHS Hospital having been in a coma for six weeks in 2007 had a lot to do with it. I think of my father being told the news that I was going to live, and that I had come round from my coma. At the time, he had no idea that I would have stopped drinking alcohol for good. He stood by me by thick and thin, including my Bachelors and Masters of Law between 2008 and 2010. I feel that by the end he was proud of me, but I felt dead myself thinking about his sudden death on 10th November 2010 due to a heart attack. I think of all the people and institutions who have disgusted me, but I think of the integrity and power of my father who were strong until the end, despite his own suffering. So – I didn’t think once about having a drink, although this is supposed to be the party season, but my mum and I (we live together in a small flat in Primrose Hill) think though about my father every single second. I hope you had a very nice christmas, and I wish you personally every success for a demanding 2011.
Best wishes,
Shibley
I am on
and
Anybody who doesn't understand the brilliance of Mandelson clearly doesn't 'do' irony
BBC4 aired a programme last night with the title, “Mandelson – The Real PM?”
It was enormously revealing about Lord Peter Mandelson as a person, in his extremely professional working style as a politician, as well as general demeanour as a person.
You can still watch this documentary which is about 75 minutes long here on the BBC website.
Anybody who doesn’t understand the brilliance of Mandelson clearly doesn’t ‘do’ irony. Lord Mandelson seems to embue inherent contradictions from the word go – a very guarded person privately, but a branding expert. Indeed, he is clearly very enthusiastic about marketing and branding, given his lifelong commitment to reversing the rot in Labour pre-(Blair and Campbell); he is also deeply passionate about his credentials as a professional politician, being the grandson of Herbert Morrison, Baron Morrison of Lambeth, who held the offices of Home Secretary, Foreign Security, and Deputy Prime Minister, and so he should be.
He is clearly intensely funny. The way that he makes mincemeat of low-quality journalists, especially at the BBC, was something which had me in total hysterics. He blatantly does not suffer fools gladly, and, while personally I feel he might have done better in his Prelims at the University of Oxford, he is clearly an intellectual: he has focus, enthusiasm and highly-structured analytical thoughts.
He was very driven in working for Gordon Brown, and he should indeed be proud that he was acknowledged as being the chief troubleshooter for Brown in the election campaign. He has also been remarkably full of praise for Tony Blair, about whom he is clear that he does not blame for his departure over the infamous Robinson debacle. He points his wrath very heavily in the direction of Alastair Campbell, making an extremely clever remark that he can co-exist with certain people, without liking them or being friends with me. I too am very specific regarding myself, on this point.
Mandelson shows ambition, enthusiasm and focus, with wit and extreme hard work, and he deserves to be successful. As for the ‘Prince of Darkness’ label, he has branded himself extremely successful, but Mandelson is a parody. Not being able to go beyond the depth of what he is getting at will make many people fall at the first fence. Like Andrew Gibson from the Telegraph says, he is like a supreme figure-skating champion who delights in skating over the thinnest of ice, and, like me, I suspect he enjoys fighting the most when most attacked. He does not need to worry about what people think of him – because he has won, and he knows, I hope, that he is better than his sharpest of critics.
I have been deeply cynical about Lord Mandelson previously. But not anymore – I feel honoured to give him my unfettered respect, even though I do not happen to agree with him on some issues, especially Ed Miliband.
