Graeme Keeton

PR and communications professional at a very big hospital

We're all aware of the challenges faced by the NHS and its staff, and how savings have made life difficult for a lot of people working in Trusts across the UK, but what doesn't really help patients and their families - which is what the NHS is there to do - is flaming, berating, scaremongering and being straight-up inappropriate on places like Twitter.

Andy Burnham

Shadow Health Secretary

For political reasons, Jeremy Hunt has turned this whole issue into a crisis of primary care. The trouble is he has a real crisis in A&E that isn't going away - and the measures he is proposing won't solve it, as the advice from NHS England makes clear. In fact, by focusing his department's attention on the wrong target, he could make matters even worse.

Simon Gillespie

Chief Executive, British Heart Foundation

Last week, more than 50 young people from all over the country travelled to voice their support for standardised cigarette packaging at British American Tobacco's Annual General Meeting in London... Their colourful banners stated 'plain packs protect' while another read 'I don't ever wanna lose my best friend, smoking kills'.

Valerie Vaz

Labour MP for Walsall South

For all the government's tough talk of protecting the NHS, £2.2bn from the NHS budget was handed back to the Treasury in last week's budget. Ministers have let care standards slip as they obsess over an unnecessary reorganisation that's taken £3bn out of patient care when the frontline is making unprecedented savings.

Sam Feltham

Entrepreneur & Health Activist

The first MP or chief executive to swallow their pride, admit that we got it wrong and start to improve things will get a healthy hand shake from me along with personal training for life!

Michelle Beckett

Social networking consultant and science loving skeptical single mum

Although I remain sceptical about some herbal treatments, some have been scientifically proven to have bio-active properties and effects on the human body in double blind trials. St. John's Wort, to give one example. Aspirin was originally from willow bark, wasn't it?

Tiernan Douieb

Beverage heretic. Nighttime maverick. Action calligrapher. Comedian. Loser.

Partly Political Broadcast is a new, hopefully weekly project between me and excellent filmmaker Ben Hilton. It's a short of burst of comedy, with pointed views about the week's goings ons, which we decided we should do because, well, no one else was.

John Higginson

Political Editor, Metro, based in the House of Commons

Modern science really is a miracle. In the last 100 years life expectancy has almost doubled from 42 at the turn of the century to 77 now for men and 82 for women. But with this extra life has come a problem.

Caroline Argyropulo-Palmer

Freelance journalist

Going to private school is no guarantee of success. If you send your child to private school you can't breathe a sigh of relief, safe in the knowledge that your child will inherit the earth instead of collecting bins.

Rachel Carrell

CEO of DrThom, the remote healthcare service

We are on the eve of an earthquake in the National Health Service. On 6 February, Robert Francis QC, will present his report into what Health secretary Jeremy Hunt has described as "perhaps the most shocking betrayal of NHS founding values in its history".

Ben Atkinson-Willes

Founder of Active Minds, the first range of products designed specifically for people living with dementia. Visit http://www.active-minds.co.uk/index.php? for more information.

Dementia care has dominated the news agenda in recent weeks with talk of an oncoming 'dementia crisis'. Debates are ongoing around how to deliver the best standards of care to the growing numbers of people living with dementia.

Damian Collins

Conservative MP and PPS

A free press is vital to a free society and a properly functioning democracy. Once statutory regulation of the press comes in, no matter how far removed from politicians, it will call into question the integrity of the system, and lead to pressure for greater intervention in the future.

Rebecca Myers

English Literature student, feminist, freelance, tea addict

Women of America, you have totally, utterly inspired me. Between bandaging my fingernails and sighing a huge sigh of relief, I can only think to say: you really really do go, girls.

Diane Abbott

MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington

It cannot be repeated enough that there has been no new medical evidence to suggest any scientific or medical reason for a reduction in the abortion time limit since this was last debated in the House of Commons in May 2008. This debate isn't being reopened because of any new medical evidence or the current figures on abortion, but because of a toxic, politicisation of the issue by elements within the Conservative Party. It is happening because Jeremy Hunt's gratuitous attack on British women's right to choose has opened the door to parts of the Tory party to begin unwanted and distracting wrangling in parliament to reduce the time limits.

Adam McGibbon

Activist, environmentalist, "domestic extremist"

The BBC's predictable enemies are beginning to use the scandal to attack the very idea of a publically-funded, non-commercial broadcaster.

Daniella Gibb

Actress and Freelance writer

I learnt this at a town meeting in Godalming, Surrey where residents are trying to fight the supermarket chain in the hope of replicating the success of Totnes v. Costa Coffee this week. Does the success of Totnes inspire other towns to believe that they, too, can win over large corporations or was it a 'once in a blue moon' retreat? I hope that Godalming will boost this statistic because communities need some more blue moons or else all towns will become faceless replicas of branded Britain.