James Mumford

Friday

8 Sep 2017
James Mumford

Family is the key for breaking the reoffending cycle

Lord Farmer’s review on prison reform, launched this week at the Centre for Social Justice think tank, is ground-breaking for a number of reasons. For starters, it gets family. In an incontestably broad consultation, comprising hundreds and hundreds of interviews with prisoners across Britain, the resounding message that came back was about family. ‘If I don’t see my family I will lose them, if I lose them what have I got left?’, one prisoner told Lord Farmer. The statistics bear this out: the odds of reoffending are 39 per cent lower for prisoners who receive family visits than for those who don't. To be left bereft by the family sucks away the motivation so critical to rehabilitation. As for the families themselves, Lord Farmer highlights the hidden sentence served by the estimated 200,000 children affected by imprisonment.

Family is the key for breaking the reoffending cycle

Saturday

26 Aug 2017
James Mumford

How to reform the care home system

The care home residents had been left on the landing in wheelchairs. That was the sight that greeted me as I walked up the stairs of the nursing home I was visiting in Wembley, north London. From above, sawdust fell as builders blithely went about their business, fixing the roof. Apart from the drilling there was no noise. No one cried for help. No one complained. It was as if no one expected anything different. The abandonment of the elderly in residential care was driven home recently by revelations of the full extent of failing homes. This year, forty per cent – yes, forty per cent – were found wanting by the regulator, the Care Quality Commission (CQC). Of a whopping sample of 5,300, 2,000 care homes were found inadequate or in need of improvement.

How to reform the care home system

Wednesday

2 Aug 2017
James Mumford

What we must learn from the tragic case of Charlie Gard

I teach bioethics, and the abiding temptation is always to design classes around rare, fiendishly complex cases. That’s how you grab the attention of bored undergraduates; the fodder you throw to budding lawyers. You jump from Tony Bland to Terry Schiavo to Karen Ann Quinlan. You ask your students to put themselves in the shoes of the respective decision-makers. What would you have done? What factors would you have considered? How would you have applied the relevant principles? It seems hasty, callous even, to reflect upon the shadow that will be cast by the Charlie Gard case. But the scale of the public outcry, the pitch of the debate, means we must think now about the future. What might the fall-out be? What consequences can we envisage? What ramifications are possible? And what must we prevent from happening? First, who will trust their doctors again? When paediatricians at Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) next inform parents that nothing more can be done, who will believe them? Communications broke down between GOSH and Charlie’s parents; can it be restored for the rest of us? Patients will inevitably be more suspicious: what are the medics not telling me? Who is making the decision about rationing of certain treatments, and why? Why is NICE (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) not approving a particular treatment I’m holding out hope for? Why not wait for more positive doctors to come out of the woodwork from America? Distrust of doctors could be compounded by distrust of judges.

What we must learn from the tragic case of Charlie Gard

Thursday

20 Jul 2017
James Mumford

In defence of offence

On Tuesday the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) announced a crackdown on gender stereotyping. Adverts suggesting men are useless around the house – racing out of the door, leaving the stove bubbling over and the dishes unwashed – could be censored because they ‘reinforce and perpetuate traditional gender roles.’ Images of beautiful mothers mopping spotless floors will be able to be banned. How do the ASA define gender stereotypes? ‘Gender stereotypes relate to body image, objectification, sexualisation, gender characteristics and roles, and mocking people for not conforming to gender stereotypes.’ Well, that’s pretty much everyone. The ASA will have the power to make billboards bare. For as far as my own body image is concerned, I don’t need to see a gorgeous half-clad model sweating with a six-pack to be mortally offended.

In defence of offence

Wednesday

20 Jan 2016
James Mumford

A truly liberal society would tolerate the Anglican church’s views on sexuality

Given how apocalyptic the predictions were, Anglicanism’s make-or-break meeting about issues of human sexuality last week proved something of a damp squib. The Anglican Communion was supposed to be rent asunder. Upheaval was imminent. Schism was certain. Conservative African Archbishops were going to be tripping over their cassocks in the rush for the door. In the end, however, unity prevailed and the status quo was (boringly) upheld as the 36 primates gathered here together voted overwhelmingly to stick to the church’s traditional view of marriage. Nothing really changed: Anglican HQ merely recognised formally the break its American division has been boasting about for over a decade. So the summit ended not with a bang but with a whimper.

A truly liberal society would tolerate the Anglican church’s views on sexuality

Tuesday

31 Dec 2013
James Mumford

The best albums of 2013

As the new year beckons, James Mumford counts down the best albums of 2013. Arcade Fire, Vampire Weekend, and David Cameron's favourite - Haim, all make the list. But Coffee House readers - what would be on your top ten? 10: Phoenix, Bankrupt! The revival of the 1980s is the clear theme of my top-ten. The success of Phoenix is a fascinating story, they being in some ways the band that should-never-have-been. Not only are they French, they are also in their thirties. For many years they were an obscure act before their 2006 album It’s Never Been Like That went stratospheric. Bankrupt! is unadulterated high-octane synth-heavy pop. ‘Entertainment’ is awesome, particularly when it drops to half-time. As for ‘Trying To Be Cool’, well, it succeeds.

The best albums of 2013

Thursday

14 Nov 2013
James Mumford

The sickeningly talented Johnny Flynn

‘I am walking in some mountains’. That’s the out-of-office that pops up when I email Johnny Flynn to request an interview. The folk star and West End actor is on holiday. But he’s not doing the Three Peaks Challenge. No, he’s tracing St Paul’s third missionary journey across southern Turkey, a 30th birthday present from Bea, his wife and teenage sweetheart. ‘I’m obsessed with pilgrimages,’ Flynn says. He’s also done the Way of St James, which finishes in Santiago de Compostela. ‘I love following old routes, imagining the consciousness of those who walked them.’ When he’s come down from the mountains we sit down to talk about the recent release of his third album, Country Mile. Sporting a solid tan and raggedy beard, Flynn still appears horribly handsome.

The sickeningly talented Johnny Flynn

Thursday

31 Oct 2013
James Mumford

The fight for your life is now raging

Beneath your noses, a great change in this country is being planned. Secret polls have been taken, and a private member’s bill has been tabled. The euthanasia lobby is limbering up for the fight of its life: to change the law for once and for all. The Assisted Dying Bill, introduced by former Lord Chancellor Lord Falconer, is the fourth such to come before the House of Lords in the last decade. Since it is almost identical to the last bill, which sought to let doctors supply lethal drugs to terminally ill patients and which Parliament rejected in 2006, why is this one being introduced? The answer has largely to do with the changed composition of the Lords. Dignity in Dying, formerly the Voluntary Euthanasia Society, hopes that of the 200 new peers ennobled since 2006, enough can be swayed to secure a majority in favour of legalising euthanasia.

The fight for your life is now raging

Sunday

16 Dec 2012
James Mumford

A blank cheque to the baby boomers

After more than a decade of wrangling, it seems that a deal is finally about to be struck on long-term care of the elderly, by adopting the package proposed by economist Andrew Dilnot.  George Osborne has apparently agreed to a proposal, to be announced as early as next month, to make sure no one pays more than £75,000 towards their care costs however wealthy they are. The threshold below which their equity is exempt will also be jacked up. The estimated cost of all this is £700 million - money that this government simply does not have. To offer this at a time of cuts to further education, aircraft carriers, local authorities and welfare would be extraordinary. Yet Osborne is contemplating moving into a new sphere altogether: paying for the social care of the asset-rich middle classes.

A blank cheque to the baby boomers

Tuesday

8 May 2012
James Mumford

Politicians are avoiding the real problems with social care

‘The smell would be even worse’, says Zoe, the social worker I’m shadowing for the week, ‘were it not for the clothes.’ Trying not to touch or breathe, I survey the mounds of sweaters and jeans and dresses interspersed across the bare floorboards. The place is a disaster — junk everywhere, filling the shelves, piling up the surfaces; the sound of broken taps from the kitchen; the living room a living ruin. I’m on a housing estate in one of the Home Counties and we’ve been called out to see about putting in place a ‘preventative measure’ for Mrs R, a 90 year-old woman at risk of falls. Not having to leap Beecher’s Brook every time she needs a wash will reduce the likelihood of a hip fractures (bad for the NHS) — a logic even I can compute.

Politicians are avoiding the real problems with social care
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