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Druin BurchThe Spectator |
Men and women have put more effort into finding aphrodisiacs than alchemists ever put into changing lead into gold. Metals at least hold still; other...
Only in France have I ever looked forward to attending a pharmacy. Napoleonic Paris, in response to the fatal incompetence of its citizens at...
Don’t badmouth the dead, said Chilon of Sparta. Over time, the phrase became a positive injunction to say nothing of the dead unless it was good, de...
Last night, my phone, which was set to silent, erupted with the sort of siren one associates with immediately life-threatening emergencies. If you...
‘The weight is over,’ read an advert on the side of a bus outside my hospital this morning. The first really effective pill for weight loss has...
The Society of Radiographers have said racism is rising in the NHS. They give the example of a patient refusing a chest X-ray from a black...
I returned from holiday to find parched lawns and a deliciously cool babbling brook where the road had been. Up the hill stood signs warning motorists...
There have been trimmings and ornaments: the bus fare cap and the performative opening of a No. 10 North in an office block above a Manchester branch...
This weekend, the excellent health editor of the Sunday Times, Shaun Lintern, revealed how NHS England has been suppressing damaging reports from...
As a former adviser on social care reform to a Conservative prime minister, allow me to explain why Andy Burnham’s proposals on the issue – which...
Andy Burnham has announced a reduction in the cap on English bus fares, down from Starmer’s £3. Remarkably, he might be right to do so. ‘For too...
Andy Burnham has announced a reduction in the cap on English bus fares, down from Starmer’s £3. Remarkably, he might be right to do so. ‘For too...
Andy Burnham has announced a reduction in the cap on English bus fares, down from Starmer’s £3. Remarkably, he might be right to do so. ‘For too...
‘Stella Creasy’s bird-brained parrot alert,’ ran a Steerpike headline yesterday. The Labour MP for Walthamstow had posted a video of herself in...
The weather in 1976, like the football ten years before, lingers in our national memory. But already on some measures this year is worse. Back then,...
The BMA makes lots of vague demands for recognition and autonomy, control and civility – Madeline Grant, hearing similar words coming from Angela...
Keir Starmer is fond of a beer. We knew he liked beer when we knew nothing much about his policies except that they were in favour of everything...
Magdalen College, Oxford, is over-represented at The Spectator. Not long ago, Paul Johnson and Matthew d’Ancona were fixtures here. Today, there...
Magdalen College, Oxford, is over-represented at The Spectator. Not long ago, Paul Johnson and Matthew d’Ancona were fixtures here. Today, there...
After three years, and a cost to taxpayers of over £3 billion, the junior doctor strikes are finally over. For now. The vote was narrow. Of those who...
Across Britain today, people will take prescriptions to pharmacies and be told they can’t be fulfilled. After hearing a lifetime of speeches about...
Across Britain today, people will take prescriptions to pharmacies and be told they can’t be fulfilled. After hearing a lifetime of speeches about...
Across Britain today, people will take prescriptions to pharmacies and be told they can’t be fulfilled. After hearing a lifetime of speeches about...
The Ockenden Maternity Review, published today, finds the NHS is not to be trusted – not for maternity care, possibly not at all. Set up in 2022 in...
TThe junior doctors were due to strike again, and everyone was sick of the whole business. At the last minute, after a new government offer, the...
The quiet kid from my friend’s school has become a trillionaire, and many people are unhappy that this should be so. Musk’s success narrows our...
Marilyn Monroe was born a hundred years ago today. She was famous enough in her lifetime to be one of those rare figures referred to by their first...
Marilyn Monroe was born a hundred years ago today. She was famous enough in her lifetime to be one of those rare figures referred to by their first...
This April, we agreed another deal with France to stop migrants coming across the Channel. The Home Office has explained it is ‘bearing down’ on...
Older readers with bulging medicine cabinets, or parents eyeing their children’s distant futures, are not encouraged to read the New England Journal...
The world is full of people fierce in the belief that they know the right diet to make your children glow with superior health. Few are shy about...
‘Can I have one last present?’ my daughter asked earlier this week, having turned fifteen and covered the kitchen floor with torn wrapping paper....
‘Can I have one last present?’ my daughter asked earlier this week, having turned fifteen and covered the kitchen floor with torn wrapping paper....
“Leaders take responsibility,” Wes Streeting wrote, in what has already been called his Wesignation letter. The charge against Keir Starmer was...
Florence Nightingale, born in Florence on this day in 1820, made her world measurably better. She counted the dead until the living had to listen. Her...
‘The King and Queen got me to do something that nobody else was able to do, without hardly even asking!’ Donald Trump announced on Thursday. In...
Wes Streeting has said women have been treated like ‘second-class citizens whose voices don’t matter’. ‘The blunt reality is the NHS is...
Kemi Badenoch has said she will ban doctors from striking. Yesterday, asked if he would do the same, Health Secretary Wes Streeting refused to rule it...
In the emergency department, and on my wards, the strikes sit lightly. My specialty of internal medicine never closes; Easter Monday was a normal...
The hawthorn hedges are white with blossom; the countryside looks set for a wedding. Even in the small garden of my hospital, spring is inescapable....
The hawthorn hedges are white with blossom; the countryside looks set for a wedding. Even in the small garden of my hospital, spring is inescapable....
Nigel Lawson said the NHS was the closest we had to a religion. What’s needed today is someone willing to declare that this church has become...
Immediately after the Easter weekend, junior doctors are planning a six-day strike. Unless they call it off, Starmer has said today, they’ll be...
Next door to Jeremy Clarkson’s farm, behind spiked steel fencing and overlooked by edge-of-town bungalows, are the grounds of my daughter’s...
What is it that doctors actually do? The answer is not obvious and I say that as a physician who has spent the past 30 years in hospitals. But the...
What is it that doctors actually do? The answer is not obvious, and I say that as a physician who has spent the past 30 years in hospitals. But the...
What is it that doctors actually do? The answer is not obvious, and I say that as a physician who has spent the past 30 years in hospitals. But the...
Two people have died of meningitis in Kent: an eighteen year old year 13 student named as Juliette, and an unnamed 21-year-old. The outbreak has...
The BBC has described itself as being set to enter ‘managed decline’. The government is currently reviewing the broadcaster’s charter, and...
The BBC has described itself as being set to enter ‘managed decline’. The government is currently reviewing the broadcaster’s charter, and...