Aside from whether patients welcome the cash payments there are wider issues that need addressing, namely whether the scheme strips cash from the NHS and so weakens the service for others; will it be a subsidy for private care; and who steps in if the money is spent before the year is up?

Controversial competition regulations should be withdrawn and replaced, says BMA ahead of crucial House of Lords debate

News is the most vulnerable area for the BBC. Some advice to James Harding as he starts his job: decentralise, but don’t encourage silos. Here’s how. The first of the 'Lis Howell on Broadcasting' columns. 

By discarding the social and cultural ties of the Empire, Margaret Thatcher did away with old ideas of Britishness based on allegiance, desire, history and character. Blood was what mattered. As today's questionably 'multicultural' Britain marks her death, a look back on this journey.

A former economic civil servant tells her story of working under Thatcher. The change of culture in Whitehall and the loss of trust, she says, must now be undone.

The Coalition's response to the Mid-Staffs enquiry is hampered by its own ideological limitations and its destructive NHS privatisation.

He was a contender! openDemocracy's co-founder looks back to his frustrated attempt in 1986 to be made editor of Britain's formost leftwing weekly, the New Statesman, as he celebrates its revival on its 100th birthday. See what it might have been.