Anyone who has worked with nurses can tell you they take their job seriously. Indeed, one of the first lessons coming out of medical school for doctors such as myself is “listen to the nurses”. In part this is because they know the patient best. In part it’s because, generally speaking, they don’t suffer fools gladly. So when the nursing profession, the heartiest of all NHS staff, takes the historic move to strike it is wise to take their concerns seriously. Perhaps, of all the signals that healthcare provision in the UK is spiralling out of control (take ambulance, A&E, cancer and specialist waiting times), this is the most worrying.   Of course there is the issue of pay. Some of this relates to a sense of ...

Politicians, especially Tory politicians, love the army. They love posing with soldiers; they love talking up its virtues; and they love drafting the army in to deal with pressing problems caused by failures of other parts of the public sector.  But this attitude has suffered a small reversal of late. On Monday it was reported that health chiefs thought the plan to draft 750 members of the armed forces to drive ambulances would not prevent the worst outcomes of paramedic strike action; and that the Cabinet Office was uncertain that attaching 600 soldiers to the Border Force while its members are on strike would address the crisis in the Channel.   Separately, it seems, there is a suggestion from the Ministry of Defence that it has privately ...

The challenges that the UK economy is facing are well understood, so I will be brief: even if inflation eased to 10.7 per cent this month, it is still at a 40-year high, and many households are worried about making ends meet. It is clear to economists that supply-side issues are the cause of our predicament, namely Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine affecting fuel prices, supply chain issues exacerbated by China’s zero-Covid policy, and trade bottlenecks resulting from Brexit. We are facing a recession, although it is perhaps not as significant a downturn as expected, on account of a 0.5 per cent increase in GDP during October. What is less well articulated in the debate is the policy choices that underpin ...

Vladimir Putin’s annual year-end press conferences were always more about the spectacle than submitting to genuine scrutiny. He decided who to call upon – prompting many journalists to wave flags or handmade signs to attract his attention – and even when he did take difficult questions, he permitted no follow-ups. The most notable feature of the whole performance was generally its length, with the Russian president often fielding questions for more than four hours. Yet this bizarre annual ritual served two important functions for Putin. First, the sheer stamina it required was meant to show that he was in good physical shape – this was a stark contrast to his predecessor Boris Yeltsin, who slurred his words and looked increasingly frail ...

At first glance, sharing the most intimate aspects of your personal lives with millions of Netflix viewers appears to be an unusual way of protecting your privacy. But as we have come to realise with anything involving the Royal Family in recent years, it’s not that simple. A nation that can love and respect the Queen, while wondering "what the hell" about Prince Andrew, is accustomed to the contradictions that the monarchy can throw at us. Given how the media pursued his mother, it is absolutely understandable that Prince Harry wants to protect his family from that sort of attention. It’s therefore not a surprise that the couple have gone to the courts to do just that. Some of the intrusions have ...

BERLIN – Over the past year, Emmanuel Macron has at times received vociferous criticism from Ukrainians and Ukraine’s staunchest international backers. The French president made himself unpopular by continuing to speak with Vladimir Putin, his Russian counterpart, even after the invasion of Ukraine on 24 February (which Macron naively believed he had avoided with a last-ditch visit to Moscow earlier that month). In June, he insisted that “we must not humiliate Russia”, a remark that infuriated Ukrainians and their most vocal international supporters. The latest example of Macron’s rhetoric riling Ukrainians came in early December when the president, on a state visit to the US, said in an interview that Russia’s “fear that Nato comes right up to its doors” should be ...

Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of the now bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX, won’t be making his scheduled appearance at the US House Financial Services Committee today (13 December), having been arrested by police in the Bahamas at the direction of the US Department of Justice. Had he attended the meeting, he would (according to a transcript of his planned testimony obtained by Forbes) have begun by saying: “I would like to start by formally stating, under oath: I f***ed up.” “When all is said and done,” he reportedly planned to continue, “I’ll judge myself primarily by one metric: whether I have eventually been able to make customers whole.”  The phrase “I’ll judge myself” is good fun, because however harshly Bankman-Fried planned to judge himself ...

For all its controversies the Gender Reform Bill will effectively be waved through when it comes before the Scottish Parliament for the final time next week. Despite the outrage expressed by many feminists and other critics about the potential negative impact of the bill on women-only spaces, on the safety of young people and on parents’ rights, it will become a relatively simple matter for anyone to legally change their gender in Scotland. Though there has been a sizeable rebellion in SNP ranks over the proposals – including the first ministerial resignation over policy during Nicola Sturgeon’s reign – Labour’s acquiescence ensures the parliamentary numbers are overwhelmingly in favour. Although insiders say a majority of the Labour group at Holyrood is sceptical ...