2013

A small item in a recent edition of the British Medical Journal unintentionally revealed the state of modern England. When MP’s asked the Chief Executive of NHS England, Sir David Nicholson, how many managers had been made redundant and then rehired as a result of the latest reorganisation of the NHS, he replied: In terms of on NHS England, as … [Read on]

I have reached an age when only irritation prevents me from sinking into somnolence or mental torpor but fortunately there is no shortage of stimuli in the modern world to irritate me. Fortunately also, I enjoy the state of irritation almost as much as that of resentment or righteous indignation. I find it tones me up in the morning a … [Read on]

The whirligig of time brings in its revenges. The French newspaper, Libération, recently reported on the ravages wrought by wolves among the sheep-rearers in the remoter regions of France. Wolves are a protected species and may not be killed, whatever damage they do. Urban ecologists love them. Wolves disappeared from France in the 1930s, but re-entered from Italy in the … [Read on]

It is rarely that I go to my local cinema, for the films shown there are generally atrocious. However, I let myself be persuaded to go last night by my neighbours, though the film turned out to be just as atrocious as I had feared, shallow, sentimental, narcissistic, kitsch and boring. My neighbours gamely agreed; but at least we had … [Read on]

Public transport is the great theatre of the world, which is why I always take it (whenever I can) in preference to that frightful contraption, my motor car. You learn so much on public transport; in a car you just lose your temper. This morning at the bus stop, for example, there was an elderly man – three of four … [Read on]

Irritating though conversations on mobile phones may often be to those not involved in them, I nevertheless feel a compulsion sometimes to eavesdrop on them. They can be banal and boring, or they can be entertaining and illuminating. Oddly enough, people speak in public on their mobile phones as if they were surrounded by an invisible sound-proofed chamber. Ease of … [Read on]

Just because an economy as a whole does not grow it does not mean that no activity whatever increases. For example, there are now 4000 professional tattooists in France whereas ten years ago there were only 400. And in neighbouring Belgium last year the number of cases of euthanasia grew by a healthy 27 per cent (no pun intended). It … [Read on]

I was briefly flattered the other day to receive an e-mail from the General Medical Council asking me whether I could be its Chair (meaning Chairman). Then I realised that it was a circular, not an actual invitation to me personally: it had, presumably, been sent to everyone on its e-mailing list. What were the duties of the Chairman? The … [Read on]