Headline, Daily Express, 19th January 2015: “’I was sacked for praying for a troubled Muslim’ says Christian nurse” This case was in the news again this week, when an Employment Tribunal appeal was rejected. Almost everything in the Express headline last year was incorrect, and much of this week’s coverage was misleading. Our news outlet […]
Author Archive | Catherine Robinson
‘Brexit’: who came up with that?
Three weeks ago I received my Senior Railcard. I have left middle age behind and can spend my remaining years travelling in cut-price comfort. This milestone was quickly followed by another. I was included as a signatory in a letter in the Times (read it here). There were an awful lot of us; I was […]
Do the right thing
The Labour Party is not being terribly effective in making arguments for staying in the European Union. Having lost the General Election, the Party has become preoccupied with factional strife. They are like a football team that has gone one down and spends more time arguing about goal keeping technique than preventing a second goal. […]
Intolerance
Stephen Fry’s programme ‘The Not So Secret Life of a Manic-Depressive: 10 Years On’ has aggravated a group of senior academic clinical psychologists. Professor Richard Bentall has received a lot of support on Twitter for blogging an open letter to Stephen Fry, which you can read here. Essentially, Bentall feels that Stephen Fry, who is […]
The Viking of 6th Avenue
In 1970, I bought my very first LP. It was a cheap double album sampler called “Fill Your Head With Rock”. I bought it with money I had been given for my 14th birthday. The album was essentially a tacky marketing ploy by CBS, but it introduced me to a number of artists that have […]
Walls come tumbling down
A long time ago, I was a militant junior doctor. I qualified too late to have anything to do with the 1975 junior doctors’ strike, but for several years I was involved in representing junior doctors in various ways. We campaigned to reduce onerous hours-of-work throughout my time in medical politics. One weekend, we arranged […]
If you stand up to a bully, they are very likely to hit you
Bullying is in the news a lot these days. Two recent examples: A few weeks ago, Labour MPs who voted for the bombing of Syria complained that constituency party members had threatened to deselect them, that they had received abusive messages and that they were being bullied. There is an appalling allegation of Conservative Party […]
Bandipur blues again
We have been in Karnataka for more than three weeks now, and we fly home after the weekend. Dr Tony Ryan has joined us, bringing his usual energy and drive. We are struggling to find time to hold all of the meetings and visits that we need, which seems ridiculous in the context of such […]
Parisian aftermath, Mysuru Saturday 14th November 2015
Countless people across the world ate a sombre breakfast today as they received news of the murderous attacks in Paris. In Mysuru, we were no different. Deaths by violence are tragic wherever they occur. I dislike the fact that my reaction to the machine gun attacks in Paris is different to my reaction to suicide […]
A tiger growls
We are halfway through our month-long visit to Mysuru, the first phase of a Tropical Health Education Trust funded project to prevent suicide amongst survivors of deliberate self-harm in South India. Four weeks away from the office is a long time, and it was difficult to find dates that worked for both Indian and UK […]