Patrick Cockburn · Leap in the Dark: Irish Unity

Once the NHS in the North [of Ireland] was one of the few institutions seen as providing a better service than the confused private/state healthcare system in the South. But now, McBride writes, the NHS in Northern Ireland ‘has become an elaborate fiction. It promises to treat everyone free at the point of need, but can’t … some people wait a decade for a hip replacement.’ Instead there is a two-tier health system, with the better-off buying private health insurance ‘while the poor are left to live in agony and die before their time’. The problem isn’t just lack of money – Northern Ireland spends more per person on healthcare than any region in the UK aside from Scotland – but that the system is badly run

Hip replacement, also known as the operation of the century.

See how I gloat! said Stalky

from The Economist

The modern worker is status-obsessed. Even the bosses of giant companies find time to post on LinkedIn, a social network that functions as a forum for gloating.

Which god does JD Vance kneel to? – New Statesman

For most of my life,” he intones, “suffering has been my pathway to God.” Perhaps he means inflicting it on other people, which in recent years has absorbed much of his attention.

Terry Eagleton in the New Statesman.

Silence of the Loans: How Loan Book Fictions Prevent Higher Education Reform – The Post-18 Project

The student loan book is not an asset. It is a political fiction that has outlived whatever usefulness it once possessed. For over a decade, it shielded the true cost of higher education from public view; now, perversely, it shields the true cost of inaction. Every year that the fiction is maintained, the Plan 5 book grows, the trap binds tighter, and the political consequences compound.

Who can afford hope?

The Post 18 Project

Prepare for a world of ad hoc coalitions

The world order built after 1945 is unravelling. Institutions as they stand are ill-prepared to avert this decline. This is a moment that comes once in a century, in which our collective prosperity is defined by what we choose to build, and how we build it. (The Economist)

I thought it was just me 😉.

From Medicine Balls Private Eye, number 1678, 26th June / 8th of July 2026; page 16.

NHS online plans to see 8.5 million patients in three years but will it steal staff away from hospitals? NHS online’s first chair is John Browett, a former Tesco.com, Dixon’s and Dunelm chief executive and ex Apple retail head. He was poached from Dixon’s by Apple in 2012 but was sacked shortly afterwards, with Bloomberg attributing this to his oversight of a “morale-sapping” culture.

Note the model: retail, not medicine or even engineering. A few lines later we learn:

Patients will be able to access online care…

From next year tech-savvy patients will apparently be able to access online appointments from specialists around the country directly through the NHS app. Any tests, scans or procedures will then happen at healthcare sites closer to patients’ homes while clinicians will be able to review notes remotely.

Patients will apparently always have the option of face-to-face appointments (if they’re prepared to wait longer), and the scheme is going to be piloted for specific conditions first.

According to the government press release, “Women’s health issues, including severe menopause symptoms and menstrual problems that can be a sign of endometriosis or fibroids, will be among the conditions available for online referrals. Prostate problems like prostate enlargement and a raised prostate-specific antigen (PSA) level will also be covered by the service, along with eye conditions including cataracts, glaucoma and macular degeneration. NHS online will also provide support for other painful and distressing conditions such as iron deficiency anaemia and inflammatory bowel disease.”

Read that again: iron deficiency anaemia??? It is hard to imagine that anybody with a medical degree could write such rubbish. Interesting to know if they will do the same for dentistry.

Three patients link.

Here is a nice link to the “Three patients” article I wrote a few years back.

This week’s Economist.

Steven Shapin · Barrel of Greenbacks: Luis Alvarez and the Bomb

A review by Steven Shapin of Collisions: A physicist’s journey from Hiroshima to the death of the dinosaurs. Author: Alec Nevala-Lee.

The Manhattan Project, which built the atomic bomb, transmuted pure theory into mass slaughter, and it changed everything for the scientists who did the work.

Oppenheimer was called the Father of the Bomb, but Alvarez was the scientist in the delivery room. At the moment the bomb was released over Hiroshima, Alvarez was fully occupied watching the oscilloscope screen that recorded data from the gauges slung under parachutes. Minutes later, he ‘looked in vain for the city that had been our target’, seeing no man-made structures on the ground. He worried that the Enola Gay bombardier had missed, but the crew on the observation plane reassured him that Hiroshima had been annihilated: ‘It was a beautiful job of bombing.’

Why Ebola came back — and a warning for the next pandemic

Speed is another blessing of modern life for viruses. A pathogen jumping into a human in Jakarta at midday can be in New York by tea time.