POLITICAL links: Holistic Bliss or Tristram Shandy ... II

Having mentioned the other day that health and social care related subjects are placed at the top of the links pages, of course the POLITICAL page - as awkward a cuss as ever - differs. The political topflight is missing some obvious candidates. Although there are related links in there somewhere amongst the four links pages I have not explicitly listed:

• mental health law
• (patient - carer, long-term) advocacy
• consent and capacity
• confidentiality
• professional (and other) codes of conduct
• health and safety
• or global health

Perhaps I should list these or other missing political categories? If we stop and think about it though - what do you need before you can deliver coherent health and social care? That top row are the critical determinants: the starting blocks. If DEMOCRACY, JUSTICE and LAW are absent or taken away where is care? Why in so many developing countries is health care so poor - native/ethnic medicine practices can only go so far?

In promoting 'DEMOCRACY' this in itself is a challenge of our (Western) times, given the apathy that exists in local and national politics. No surprise then that CITIZENRY & LEADERSHIP (C&L) are not far behind with their hands raised. There's a chicken and egg here: should C&L be on the front row? Then the people would have the Government they deserve on the second row. Can they be side-by-side?

HUMAN RIGHTS should be on that top row; however, HUMAN RIGHTS are surely dependent upon DEVELOPMENT to overcome POVERTY and effective LEGISLATION?

We need cognitive capacity to boot-load our person-al operating system first thing in the morning, although in terms of HUMAN RIGHTS and an individual and family's capacity to exercise choices ECONOMICS is where the buck stops. While vital money is not enough: International STANDARDS make the world go around from paper size, device operation to INFORMATION STANDARDS. I like this word GOVERNANCE because it does not have to be central, it can be peripheral - grassroots - as well and takes many forms: national, corporate, financial, clinical, information, civil, and green. Sometimes political change needs to start on the edge, that's where others can get on-board.

Communities are social entities, nebulous things as I still recall from an old course essay: Community care means whatever you want it to mean: discuss? So if community is social, then why is COMMUNITY INFORMATICS [CI] in the political links domain? Well, CI very broadly speaking seeks to promote and assure the study and use of informatics developments, specifically communications and information technologies for groups within a population who may otherwise remain disadvantaged, and so find themselves on the wrong side of the so-called digital divide. Whether your arrival is positively or negative framed in terms of social inclusion or social exclusion you must pass through Customs and Excise:

c/o the political domain.

NEWS is quite a strange thing or these days a many splendoured-multimedia-mobile kind of thing. You see the messenger is always transformed into a bizarre beast: a POLITICAL animal. The animal has long been on the endangered list, it is rarely sighted and the SCIENTISTs next door call it a 'Trust'. Because its appearance is so remarkable children are wary; so in a poll they elected to call the creature a 'can-U-really'.

Who 'owns' the news, controls it, governs the media - what difference does it make? What is news these days? The quality of health care information and news and overall what counts as news is at issue. Big brother once the epitome of totalitarianism is now equated with total trash.

Connected to the news is the global family's and a Nation's ability to SEARCH the web without censorship?

Finally then what categories are missing here politically? It's true war & peace, mass marketing, weapons of mass depletion, crime and punishment, crimes against Earth, plus management have gone AWOL.

ORGANISATIONS are in there, but personnel and human resources are not. Should they be? What do you think? What's in your political set?

"NEXT!" INTERPERSONAL links