May 2015

A friend of mine was a key prosecution witness in the trial of Victorino Chua, the nurse of Filipino origin at Stepping Hill Hospital in Stockport who has just been found guilty on two counts of murder and twenty-one counts of poisoning and attempted poisoning. I attended the trial for a day (not one of the two days on which … [Read on]

There is one consolation in the election results for the former leader of the Labour Party, Mr Miliband, and his journalistic acolytes such as Polly Toynbee: they won’t have to pay mansion tax in the near future. On the other hand, it is possible that they would never have had to pay it, for the difficulties in implementing it would … [Read on]

I abominate smoking and I do not grow or sell tobacco, nor do I have any shares in tobacco companies. During my medical career, I discouraged (not very successfully, I fear) all my patients from smoking, using all the usual arguments. Nevertheless I was startled by a figure in a recent article in the British Medical Journal titled How the … [Read on]

The former Governor of the Bank of England, Lord King, told radio audiences that, in effect, no human agency, certainly not the last Labour Government, was responsible for the economic crash from whose effects we have still not recovered. He told listeners: I am not going to talk about individual parties’ culpability because I think the real problem was a … [Read on]

A client of a neighbour of mine, who is a professional, had a complaint made against him by a client who was put up to it by a claim company, which I turn had been supplied, possibly illegally but certainly unscrupulously, with information by a solicitor. For the privilege of having the claim adjudicated by the relevant authority, my neighbour … [Read on]