Jennifer Skillen

Dear Canada: tomorrow is Election Day. This is Mark Carney. Hint, hint.

There are many causes of loneliness in the UK. In rural areas 1.8 metre+ fences put up by wealthy people moving into small farming villages is 1 reason. Talk to your neighbours? Can't, they are behind a tall fence. City and rural planners have a key role in combating loneliness. #peoplecentreddesign

Pareidolia pebbly faces

I like pebbly faces katedaviesdesigns.com/2025/04/08/p...

In a recent paper I submitted reviewer 2 was mostly done by AI. 10 days is easy if you use AI. In fact why don't we just get rid of the middle people, the authors, by getting AI to write our papers and then getting AI to review them. 🤦 😠

Please Radio4, bring back A Point of View. It was a sermon for atheists and I always made sure to listen. Not because I agreed with all of them, but because they made me think.

Sue is really good at creating a clear pathway through government documents, unlike the government themselves. Well worth a read.

Is anyone else having trouble accessing @bmj.com contact through their institution? I keep getting 'Safari can't open this page' messages and similar problems in Chrome.

Queues, not demand are the biggest problem in NHS A&E departments A&Es are crowded. But not because too many people are attending them.

Crowded A&E are the biggest problem in the NHS, and kill many patients. But you have to know the cause of the problem to fix it and the cause isn't demand:
www.linkedin.com/pulse/queues...

Balancing realist review outputs with the needs of policymakers and practitioners Abstract. A realist review is a theory-driven approach to synthesizing evidence based on the realist philosophy of science. Realist reviews are conducted t

Realist reviewers, here's a banger of a new paper by a South African group whose work I've only just become aware of. Good bit of philosophy to chew on if you've time. But also seeking to make RR more practical. Enjoy! #healthpolicy

academic.oup.com/heapol/artic...

Light Waves Tom introduces his own approach to making light in winter

Tom’s Light Waves @ootlier.bsky.social katedaviesdesigns.com/2025/02/19/l...

Most NHS users in England affected by dysfunctional admin, report finds About 64% of people had difficulties with health service last year relating to communication about care

www.theguardian.com/society/2025... If only NHS had paid attention to our @thekingsfund.bsky.social publication on information disorganisation at the frontline in 2017. www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/n3et3... @JKMVidimo @wesstreeting

Exactly what patients have been saying for years. Shame no one listened to us.

“A New Academic Publishing Model”: Right-Wing Dark Money Group Launches Fringe Medical Journal The right-wing RealClear Foundation’s foray into public health has been called “a mockery of scientific process.”

A new approach to academic publishing: just pour right-wing money into your own vanity journal. “Peer reviewers” paid $500 per review but are not allowed to advise against publishing the article. Wonder who’s on the editorial board…

www.importantcontext.news/p/a-new-acad...

That was like our case. The community hospital seemed to 'rent' out the equipment to the private company. Waiting time to book directly with the hospital was shorter than to go through the private company!

We have had this here a few times. Endoscopies preformed by a national company in local hospital that refused to see my son because he didn't have a mobile phone. I tired to rebook direct with the hospital but GP surgery wouldn't allow it! CQC stepped in to reprimand private co to accept son. 🤷‍♀️

Perfectly captured.

Vive le Canada!

American science and medicine has been thrown into chaos and uncertainty over the past week. Here are some stories to get up to speed. 1/12

Thread on need to fight for evidence-based policy - a response to Trump's cabinet picks.

Based on new @bmj.com article by me, @martinmckee.bsky.social & @kentbuse.bsky.social

TLDR: Now is the time to stand up for science, not appease those in power attacking it

www.bmj.com/content/387/... 1/14

Instead of exams mine are always being late for class. It used to be late for high school, then I was late for university lectures. I knew I had made it when recently I was late showing up for a lecture I was giving!

It did once lead to a one to one conversation with an undergrad about her survey. I would like to think she took onboard what I said and that it would influence any future surveys she did.

Why I have resigned from the Royal Society The Royal Society is a venerable institution founded in 1660, whose original members included such eminent men as Christopher Wren, Robert H...

New blogpost:
deevybee.blogspot.com/2024/11/why-...

I always appreciate the 'is there anything else you want to tell us' free text entry so that I can tell people what they got wrong with their survey design. Will the AI listened to that though? Probably not.

And the idea this law may expand to non-terminal by courts is vanishingly unlikely. I was in courtroom 10 years ago when Supreme Court declared this a matter for Parliament; Strasbourg agrees. Even if it didn’t, a legal argument to extend from terminal to incurable is almost unimaginable.

Everything is about heat pumps but what about the rest like windows? We had to go for a new oil boiler recently as a heat pump was not going to work. One reason was windows but seems there is no help on that, just loft insulation and heat pumps. We have had 3 lots of loft insulation!

For patients, carers and all those that work in primary care and the ICBs: please have a watch of this video, because I think the time is finally right to adopt Nuka care here in the UK.

How many farms would be affected by Budget changes? Estimates of the number of farms affected range from 100 to 70,000.

Good breakdown of the actual impact of the inheritance tax changes on farms.

The £1m is ON TOP of standard exemptions. So it's £1.3m tax-free if includes a residence. £2.6m if the spouse inherits. £3m if kids get some too.

And the tax is on surplus, not the total.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Oh yes, that'll do nicely!

A close up of a 8 month old cockerel whose mother was an araucana so he has a yellow floppy feather Mohican and black sideboards with a bright red comb and a black beak

Well, we will just have to fill it with chickens! Lovely to see you here!

Waves!