Category Archives: Uncategorized

The term ‘fake news’ is doing great harm

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Joshua Habgood-Coote, University of Bristol

During a recent press conference in the UK, Donald Trump shut down a reporter from the news network he loves to hate. “CNN is fake news – I don’t take questions from CNN,” he said, moving swiftly on to a reporter from Fox News.

It’s easy to think that everyone knows what “fake news” means – it was Collins Dictionary’s word of the year in 2017, after all. But to think it stops there is mistaken – and politically dangerous. Not only do different people have opposing views about the meaning of “fake news”, in practice the term undermines the intellectual values of democracy – and there is a real possibility that it means nothing. We would be better off if we stopped using it. Continue reading →

UK Universities must soon comply with the EU Web Accessibility Directive

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By Dr Albert Sanchez-Graells, Reader in Economic Law (University of Bristol Law School).*

In 2016, the EU adopted the Web Accessibility Directive, which aim is to foster better access to the websites and mobile applications underpinning public services – in particular by people with disabilities, and especially persons with vision or hearing impairments. Continue reading →

Everyone knows about Karl Marx, but what about Friedrich Engels?

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Terrell Carver, University of Bristol

Backgrounding Marx is hard to do, especially when 2018 is the 200th anniversary of his birth and a huge number of global events are focusing on the great man. This is his usual “leader of the orchestra” position, with his life-long friend, constant benefactor and sometime co-author Engels in his usual role as second fiddle. But another 200th anniversary is fast approaching: that of Engels’s birth in 1820. Best to be forewarned and forearmed. Continue reading →

Why doctors need to improve the way we discuss assisted dying

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Creator attribution: Nick Youngson – link to – http://nyphotographic.com/                Source: http://www.thebluediamondgallery.com/a/assisted-dying.html

Paul Teed, University of Bristol

Assisted dying can be a divisive and polarising subject. But there is one aspect on which most people probably agree – the need to improve the conversations people have about death.

At the moment, there is uncertainty in the UK regarding what people – especially health professionals – can and cannot say when the topic of assisted dying comes up. Conversation can become especially stilted when it turns to patients obtaining the medical documentation required for an assisted death abroad. Continue reading →

The menopause: dreaded, derided and seldom discussed

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Sign of caution – or celebration?
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Author: Isabel de Salis, University of Bristol

Women experience the menopause between the ages of around 45 and 55, but their experiences of this significant stage of life are diverse. Each woman’s menopause is unique.

Common themes run through women’s stories, however. From our research talking with women in midlife, we found that they often talk about menopause as a normal, inevitable and natural process, which of course, it is. Seeing menopause in this way allows women to minimise symptoms and behave stoically. “It’s no big deal,” one woman told us. “You just get on with it.”

But this positive approach can also be a rebuttal of a common perception in society of the menopause as a negative event – a view which leads to denigrating women who react differently to the menopause. Continue reading →

To break Brexit talks deadlock the EU must agree ‘sufficient progress’ has been made – what does that mean?

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The next stage of the Brexit negotiations hinges upon two words: “sufficient progress”.

European Council meeting, 20-21 October 2016. European Council Flickr  CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

At the European Council meeting on October 19 and 20, leaders of the EU27 will review developments in the Brexit negotiations and establish whether they believe enough progress has been made in the first phase of talks to move on to the second phase. That would allow discussions to begin on the future relationship between the UK and the EU.

The term “sufficient progress” is embedded within the European Council’s negotiating guidelines for Article 50 – the part of the EU treaty which governs how a state leaves the bloc. It is born out of the EU’s phased approach to the Brexit negotiations, which was later confirmed by both the EU and the UK in June 2017.

The ongoing first phase of Brexit negotiations is focused on finding solutions to three key issues: the status of UK citizens in the EU and EU citizens in the UK, the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, and the settlement of the UK’s financial obligations.

Agreeing whether there has been been sufficient progress means solving these three key problems. What the agreed solution ought to look like, however, is more elusive. Continue reading →

North-South Free trade Agreements – Trade, Policy and Europe

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At the University of Bristol Law School, we are investigating the dynamics of negotiation, implementation, and enforcement of North-South trade agreements.

The following is a record of the findings of the panels speaking at an event held on 4 October 2017. The first panel (Clair Gammage, Maria Garcia and Tonia Novitz, chaired by Phil Syrpis) examined the external policies of the European Union (EU) particularly in the context of regionalism and free trade agreements (FTAs). The second panel (Emily Jones, Sophie Hardefeldt and Gabriel Siles-Brügge, chaired by Tonia Novitz) examined how the UK could – in the event of Brexit – depart from or improve on the practices of the EU.

EU policy relating to North-South trade agreements

Clair Gammage (Bristol) discussed the transformation of the EU’s relationship with its trade partners across the African, Caribbean, and Pacific regions and was able to point to the surprising small victories that low-income countries in the Global South had achieved when negotiating trade agreements with the EU. Continue reading →

Policy makers do not need to introduce formal structures to achieve political innovation

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Informal governance can be defined as a means of decision-making that is un-codified, non-institutional and where social relationships play crucial roles. Research evidence suggests that an analysis of informal governance is essential if we are to fully understand how political innovation occurs.

Dr Sarah Ayres, Centre for Urban and Public Policy Research

The issue of informality in policy-making is particularly timely as public managers seek to manage multifaceted policy problems within contested and uncertain environments. One view is that political decision-making has increasingly moved away from the national level of government to a more spatially diverse, temporal and fluid set of arrangements. From this perspective, policy-making is increasingly taking place in arenas where there is no generally accepted rules and norms according to which politics is to be conducted. Some argue that it is the surge of ‘wicked problems’ that have prompted this type of leadership, as multiple actors come together to solve complex policy problems. These developments raise important questions about how informal governance operates in this transforming policy landscape and the impact it has on political innovation. Yet, there is comparatively little research on the role of informality in policy-making, partly because of the complexity of studying it.

Continue reading →

Multimorbidity could cause a healthcare crisis – here’s what we can do about it

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Older patients often suffer from multiple conditions.
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Professor Chris Salisbury, Primary Health Care, University of Bristol

Multimorbidity is one of the biggest challenges facing healthcare. In recent years, a succession of research studies have shown that people with multiple health problems are more likely to have a worse quality of life, worse mental health and reduced life expectancy. The more health problems someone has, the more drugs they are likely to be prescribed and the more frequently they are likely to consult a GP or be admitted to hospital.

You might think this is all rather self-evident – it’s hardly a surprise that sick people get ill, take medicines and go to doctors more often than healthy people.

So why has multimorbidity become so prominent in discussions about healthcare over the last decade?

Continue reading →

Statins and venous thromboembolism: should statins use extend beyond lowering cholesterol?

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Dr Setor Kunutsor, Research Fellow in Evidence Synthesis/ Epidemiologist, School of Clinical Sciences, University of Bristol

Statins are well known and established for their role in the prevention of cardiovascular disease (heart attack, strokes, or angina) and this is based on their ability to lower levels of cholesterol in the blood.

However, there is evidence to suggest that statins have multiple effects and these include potential beneficial impacts on other disease conditions.

Venous thromboembolism is a condition involving the formation of blood clots in the veins of the lungs and lower limbs. It affects millions of people globally and is a preventable cause of hospital-related deaths.

Standard techniques for the prevention of venous thromboembolism include the use of elastic stockings, compression devices, patient mobility and rehabilitation, and anticoagulant therapy (blood thinning medications).

Blausen 0290 DeepVeinThrombosis

Deep Vein Thrombosis. Blausen.com staff (2014). “Medical gallery of Blausen Medical 2014“. WikiJournal of Medicine 1 (2). DOI:10.15347/wjm/2014.010.  ISSN 2002-4436

Evidence now suggests that statins also have the ability to reduce inflammation in the body and prevent the formation of blood clots. Based on these properties, there have been suggestions that statins may prevent venous thromboembolism.

Several studies have investigated this, however the evidence has not been conclusive until now.

We decided it was time to bring all the evidence together and evaluate if statins really did have a protective effect on the risk of developing venous thromboembolism.

Altogether we analysed 36 studies (13 observational cohort designs and 23 randomised controlled trials) with data on more than 3.2 million participants.

Our results showed a clear link between the use of statins and a reduced risk of developing venous thromboembolism. Continue reading →