Thursday, September 25, 2008

Here's the text of a letter I emailed to http://www.guardian.co.uk in response to this article.

I read with interest the article on Ritalin ("Doctors urged to stop use of Ritalin for under fives", The Guardian 24/9/2008, UK News P4).

My son is 8 and is diagnosed with ADHD (along with Aspergers Syndrome). He receives Ritalin on prescription.

Aware of the side effects, my wife and I resisted this prescription for a long time. In the end, under pressure from Alex's inability to handle lessons at school we accpeted it.

We have previously tried a number of different therapies to help Alex handle his condition - cranial massage, relaxation techniques, dietary intervention, enzyme supplements. We have attended a number of (superb) training courses organised by the National Autistic Society. None of these were provided by the NHS. All the therapies have been condemned as worthless by our paediatrician.

In my experience, the NHS does not provide any alternatives. Alex has never been offered psychological support. There is no NHS training for parents. Ritalin and it's alternatives are the only thing the NHS has ever offered us. Is it any wonder that prescription rates are soaring?

The new guidelines will simply make it harder for us to access the one therapy they do provide, without doing anything to fund the extra support parents likes us are so desperately in need of. The NHS has washed it's hands of these children. Shame on them.

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

There's a thoughtful analysis of Labour's current problems in this article by Madeleine Bunting from the Guardian.

I think it's particularly interesting to reflect on the thought that seismic shifts in working class voting behaviour can happen without being foreseen by the political left, and the reference to Thatcher's victory in 1979.

It strikes me that Labour - particularly under Brown - has become indistinguishable from Conservative policy.. Under such circumstances, why should the working class (or those on the left) support Labour? The only reasons left under New Labour are tribal ones, and even they are not strong when the government's agenda isn't interested in you.

I suppose the great unknown in all this however is how the financial crisis will pan out. That's a blog for another day, but it will interesting to see how it influences Brown's fortunes (conventional wisdom would dictate he's in more trouble than ever, as governments in office at times like this tend to lose the following election).

Friday, September 19, 2008

No update since before the summer holiday. Oops.

Summer passed over fine. Jessica is now in her final year before secondary school, and my evenings are filled with visiting schools to assess which ones we want to put down as her preference. The whole idea that we might not be able to get her into the school we want to terrifies me. And that's not even mentioning the eleven plus, which is still around here, and which we've decided Jessica won't be doing.

We've bought another game which has captivated the kids at the moment. Called Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds. It's sort of like a computer based Star Wars wargame. Great fun. Even managed to get them running 2-player across the home network. That caused a few rows when one blew up the other's spaceships!

Very interesting blog article by Robert Peston. I normlly can't stand the man, but this article raises the possbility that the ongoing collapse of the west's financial institutions could end up with the Chinese owning much of what's left, as they are cash rich and not as exposed as western banks. I'm working on the Marxist analysis of what's happened as we speak, and how China could fit into it - something around the international division of labour, and how the proletariat has been 'out sourced' from the west to China.