Ending HIV: How Public Health Quietly Delivered One of Britain’s Biggest Successes For most of my adult life, HIV has been treated as a permanent fact of modern life: tragic, manageable, but ultimately ineradicable. Something you mitigate, not solve. That assumption is now wrong. The UK is on track to eliminate new HIV transmissions by … Read more
UK Politics 2025 British politics in 2025 has been described as chaotic, unstable and on the brink. That description is everywhere — in headlines, in think-tank briefings, and in the permanent background noise of grievance that now passes for commentary. It is also mostly wrong. What 2025 actually shows is something more unsettling: a government … Read more
Reform UK has received a record £9 million donation from cryptocurrency investor Christopher Harborne — the largest single donation ever made by a living person to a British political party. Harborne, who is based in Thailand and also known as Chakrit Sakunkrit, is not new to UK political funding. He previously donated substantial sums to … Read more
Enshittification “Enshittification” is Cory Doctorow’s brutal but accurate term for the slow rot that takes hold of online platforms. The pattern is always the same: Each stage involves luring people in, monetising them, and once the monopoly is secure, squeezing every last drop out of the system. Amazon is the textbook case. What Amazon looks … Read more
The usual suspects on-line and in the old media are getting themselves worked up that families with a Polygamous marriage are getting an increase in benefits. This is typical of the hysteria from the Daily Express The not so hidden subtext is that these are Muslim families, and as such should not be allowed to … Read more
I’ve been overweight for about 30 years. Or at least, I’ve been over the “correct” BMI for my height. I doubt I’ll ever hit the official ideal weight on the NHS tables — and honestly, I don’t care. If anything, what I illustrate is that the definitions of what is and isn’t a healthy weight … Read more
I have lost count of the number of times politicians have declared that PFI is “dead”. It has been blamed for everything from collapsing NHS finances to dirty hospital wards and dodgy light fittings. In reality, PFI was never a policy as such. It was a capital-sourcing mechanism — a way of bringing private investment … Read more
What happened in the budget? Last week Rachel Reeves delivered the Government’s latest budget. It arrived amid a fog of leaks — some accidental, others clearly not — and a week of breathless speculation about market panic. In reality, there was a modest increase in the interest rate the Government pays on its borrowing. But … Read more
One of my old PCT colleagues died a couple of weeks back. A North East GP who was a staunch advocate of clinical leadership. If you have half an eye on the news, you’ll know something big is happening inside the NHS. But the scale of the NHS reforms 2025 is still flying under the … Read more
A year after Donald Trump clawed his way back into the White House, America looks less like a republic and more like a family business — and not a very well-run one. The wealth and security of the United States no longer matter. What matters is the wealth and power of Donald Trump and the … Read more