After 13 years in Epsom’s South Street, in 2004 we moved. There were two principal reasons for this. First, we were more than short of space: my father, 90-year old Ron, was esconced in what used to be our sitting room (we used to call it a lounge back in Colebook Close), leaving us a… Read More »
This is a revised version of an item written for Bill Cockerham’s Encyclopaedia of Medical Sociology a while back. Stigma, I noted somewhat uncontroversially, denotes the presence of an attribute that discredits its possessor. Since it is evident such attributes have varied by time and place, it is apparent that stigma and stigmatization necessarily involve… Read More »
4 November 2016 Ref: XXXXXXXXXX Dear Mr McNicol, I received today your letter stating that my ‘administrative suspension’ from the Labour Party has been lifted and that I am ‘free to resume active membership’. You say that I was suspended following posts I ‘allegedly wrote’ on twitter, which ‘may cause offence to some Party members’.… Read More »
Dear Colleague, I found my first open letter to you a difficult but necessary one to write. It effectively challenged the way you are running our CLP. Well, things have moved on haven’t they? As you know I am currently suspended from the Labour Party for ‘naughty tweets’: my best judgement is that my offence… Read More »
This is another longish blog adapted from a piece on critical theory and health that I contributed to Bill Cokcerham’s Encyclopaedia of Medical Sociology. Critical theory, I suggested, serves as an umbrella term to encompass a range of oppositional standpoints inside and outside of sociology. Marx, Marcuse, Foucault, Habermas and Deleuze and Guattari have for… Read More »
This is an adaption of a piece I wrote for Bill Cockerham’s Encyclopaedia of Medical Sociology a while ago. It stands alone but I hope it also complements other blogs I have written on critical realism’s range and merits. Since I first wrote it: (a) sadly (he was a lovely as well as talented man)… Read More »
Open Letter to Jeremy Corbyn, Leader of the Labour Party Dear Jeremy, Having rejoined the Labour Party in celebration of your election to its leadership in 2015, I was only too happy to vote for you again this year. You, John McDonnell, like-minded and loyal MPs, CLPs and hundreds of thousands of new members are… Read More »
Open Letter to Iain McNicol, General Secretary of the Labour Party Dear Iain McNicol, After over a month of repeated telephone calls and emails to the Labour Party, several assurances that I had not been purged or blocked, and three re-issues of my ballot, I was relieved to receive my ballot on Wednesday 14 September.… Read More »
I have written briefly about a few medical sociologists who, early on, played an important part in my career. George Brown and Margot Jefferys were the senior protagonists, Dave Blane, Ray Fitzpatrick and Paul Higgs their successors. This may be the moment to add to this cast. This is an easy and pleasant task because… Read More »
Dear Colleague, I recently emailed you as secretary of our CLP to say that I would no longer be attending either branch meetings or those of the CLP. This open letter is to explain why more fully than I have been able to do in our brief email exchanges, and to raise issues that I… Read More »