I am very upset by this change announced in the recent Budget: university maintenance grants for lower income students in England and Wales are to be scrapped from September 2016. Currently, students from families with annual incomes of £25,000 or less get the full grant of £3,387 a year. More than half a million students…
It is rumoured that the days of the BBC Trust are over and that regulatory oversight of the BBC will be transferred to OFCOM. The House of Commons Select Committee on Culture Media and Sport recommended in its report The Future of the BBC http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201415/cmselect/cmcumeds/315/31510.htm#a48 that OFCOM be the final arbiter of complaints…
I commented on this topic in part in my post “24/7” http://lordsoftheblog.net/2014/06/01/247/, where I told the tale of a patient with a life-threatening condition who had to wait in hospital from Friday until Monday for the consultants to return and the scanning machines to be switched on for use. I revert to this topic again because by bad…
Today Dame Fanny Waterman celebrates her 95th birthday. I was privileged to host a reception for her at the House of Lords a few days ago to mark her birthday, and to celebrate the Golden Anniversary of the Leeds International Piano Competition, which she founded, and which will be held again in September of this…
I join with Baroness Murphy in welcoming the legalisation of clinical procedures to overcome the transmission of the dreadful mitochondrial disease. The Lords voted by a huge majority to allow the HFEA to consider treatment on a case-by-case basis, as envisaged in the 2008 Human Fertilisation & Embryology Act, and even by the wise Baroness…
