John Spiers

The Sewer Rat had been tormenting the chickens for days and days. He had become The Biggest Scary Thing for Gracie. Even though she has faced The Big Scary Thing and the Bigger Scary Thing, she is not sure what to do about The Biggest Scary Thing. But Gracie is the new leader of her flock, and she has to do something. She devises The Best Plan Ever that includes an ingenious invention called The Sewer Rat Eradicator. Will it prove that chickens are brave and get rid of the Sewer Rat once and for all?This is the second book in the series titled "Once Through A Garden Gate." It includes full-page illustrations for each chapter and will introduce you to the secret lives of chickens and their friends, the songbirds.Featured in this book are The The Raven With Blue Eyes and A Squadron Of Crows.

Whether they are triumphing in The Worm Olympics Game or convincing all of the others that chickens can do more than chickens have ever done before, Gracie and Bessie are inseparable. But when the other chickens begin to move away to new homes, Gracie and Bessie are left with only each other. Who will be next? What if they are separated? Can they ever find new friends?And what will they do when one of their new friends is a chicken named Pearl who is unlike any other chicken ever?This is the first book in the series titled "Once Through A Garden Gate." It includes full-page illustrations for each chapter and will introduce you to the secret lives of chickens and their friends, the songbirds.Featured in this book are The Robin, The Living Library, and a mysterious raven who leads a flock of crows.

Late-Victorian England ushered in a new phenomenon, a 'mass' reading and book buying public. But it was a long time coming. How and when did this public ultimately emerge, and who reached it? Whose ambitions were achieved, and whose frustrated? What worked, and what didn't? How were the most popular publications created, marketed, and sold?

The critical challenges to the British NHS are the consequences of us all living longer, having to manage chronic conditions over time, expecting and demanding more, and being denied many innovative new drugs (notably, for cancer) which cannot be afforded at present by the too narrowly funded NHS. This needs to be changed, in line with more successful funding systems in Europe, Australia, and the Far East, where outcomes are much better than in the UK. This radical new book offers economic solutions based on direct financial incentives to the individual to care for themselves better, to save and invest in future funding, for a much broader funding base including the greater use of insurance, and to ask government to re-appraise the system urgently. It will be controversial, and will spark lively new debate, as well as serving as a student text for courses concerned with healthcare, and clinical practise. This new book follows Professor Spiers' several successful previously published commentaries on the NHS and public policy, including Who Decides Who Decides? Enabling choice, equity, access, improved performance and patient guaranteed care, published by Radcliffe Medical Press.

This volume explores problems concerning the series, national development and the national canon in a range of countries and their international book-trade relationships. Studies focus on issues such as the fabrication of a national canon, and on the book in war-time, the evolution of Catholic literature, imperial traditions and colonial libraries.

This volume explores problems concerning the series, national development and the national canon in a range of countries and their international book-trade relationships. Studies focus on issues such as the fabrication of a national canon, and on the book in war-time, the evolution of Catholic literature, imperial traditions and colonial libraries.

This book makes the case for 'ordinary' people to get the health and social care which the state has promised them for over 60 years but which has not been delivered. What is the case for choice? How can choice be made real for the individual? What impact can genuine, individually financially-empowered choice have on effective funding, purchasing, delivery, and outcomes? How can a genuine market grow and thrive? How can the quest for choice include the large numbers of NHS and social care staff on whom success depends? The book urges individual financial empowerment, through a life-long health savings account for all NHS and social services.

Care pathways are being developed throughout the health service to improve the quality and effectiveness of care. Are they being developed efficiently and making the most of the latest clinical computing systems? This is the first practical guide on how Information Technology and systems methods can support the development implementation and maintenance of "e-Pathways". Case studies throughout highlight team approaches to facilitation clinical knowledge management process analysis and redesign and computerisation - providing insights into how e-Pathways can be used to support high quality patient care. The information is presented in an easy-to-read style and requires no prior knowledge of IT systems. Doctors nurses and managers throughout primary and secondary care as well as healthcare information technology specialists and suppliers will find this to be essential reading. An accompanying CD-ROM includes supplementary information providing useful website links and additional material on specific topic areas.

This book explores the controversial dilemmas which meet at the intersection of medicine philosphy and law - questions concerning killing and not killing which are faced daily in health care. They embrace euthanasia abortion the care of the elderly and the demented the care of the mentally ill children and those in a persistent vegative state. Who Owns our Bodies? identifies a crisis both in ethics and in empowerment as people face often neccessarily wretched choices. It seeks a framework of guidance for practical decision-making and focuses on two key issues. First who decides on an individual's quality of life and thus on their health care treatments? Second how can patients be empowered with a structure to enable choice self-realization self-reflection and self-responsibility? John Spiers with characteristic clarity and verve offers a fundamental choice between health care experienced as hierarchy and control and the alternative of choice and self-responsibilty. He argues that health care must rely on patients deciding how much power they have not on professionals deciding how much to grant them.