Insights

Thinking written down. On running businesses, on technology in care, and on the bits where the two meet. The fortnightly piece now goes out first on Substack, so subscribe free to get it by email.

Nobody is against it. That is the problem.

Why a technology everyone agrees with is still taking so long to arrive in care. I have been in a lot of rooms about care technology over the last six years and I cannot remember a single person arguing against it. Directors of adult social care want it, housing associations want it, the NHS wants it, and families, once they understand what it does, want it very much. Ministers announce it with enthusiasm every eighteen months or so. The technology works, the evidence exists,

6 days ago6 min read

Thirty years of getting it wrong enough to learn something.

I have started a Substack. I appreciate that in 2026 this is roughly as surprising as Trump announcing another invasion of a country with oil reserves, but bear with me, because the reasons are better than the announcement. For thirty years I have run businesses, fixed businesses and occasionally watched businesses do things nobody could have imagined they’d do. I have been a graduate buyer at Sainsbury’s, which taught me that a supply chain was little more than a fight for p

Oct 64 min read

The Question Nobody Is Asking About the National Care Service

Somewhere in Britain this morning, a woman in her eighties got up four times in the night. Her kitchen kettle has not boiled since yesterday lunchtime. Her movement around the house has been slowing for three weeks. In a month she will be in A&E after a fall, and a hospital discharge team will begin an assessment that captures none of it. That gap, between what is happening in someone's life and what any professional can see, is where the social care crisis actually lives. An

Jul 245 min read