This article reflects something I’ve been talking about for a while. When a diagnosis is used as a way to decide who gets access to resources or not, then this is going to result in inequality. That’s because those who can afford to pay for a diagnosis and those who understand the system will get their diagnoses more quickly. This will then enable them to access public services more quickly. Those who cannot afford to pay or who do not understand the system will be left behind on a long waiting list, or maybe won’t even get that far. There is no blame attached to this observation. It’s not an attack. Of course parents will do whatever they can to help their children, and if they have the resources to pay privately many of them will do that. But if we have a system where public services are dependent on a diagnosis, and that diagnosis can be obtained more quickly if you pay, then we are going to end up with the most affluent people receiving most services. This is a side effect of the burgeoning market in private diagnostic assessments which has sprung up over the last fifteen years. As a society, we need to look clearly at what is happening and decide whether this is the best way to allocate public resources. theguardian.com/society/2026…

Yesterday morning I took my mum to the GP feeling unwell and they found a satsuma-sized lump. She was given a referral for suspected gynaecological cancer and sent for an urgent blood test. What happened next shocked me. This is what NHS privatisation means in practice👇1/🧵

With the heroes of the @RNLI under attack again, I’m reminded of this passage from Bill Bryson.

Glad to see this story being given the coverage it deserves. Not least because @pcaruanagalizia, Daphne’s son, was Tortoise’s star reporter for many years. But more importantly because it’s a morality tale of where political corruption leads: to murder & impunity in the very heart of Europe.

Doctors X-rayed pregnant women routinely in the 1950s to check which way round the baby was lying. Nobody thought it was dangerous. Alice Stewart noticed childhood leukaemia rising sharply in Britain and set out to find why. She and her team interviewed the mothers of 1,400 children who had died of cancer, and 1,400 mothers whose children were alive, and asked them the same questions. The pattern showed up in the first 35 pairs. Children who had died were about twice as likely to have been X-rayed in the womb, and a single scan at the dose used then appeared to be enough. She published in 1956, and the response was outrage. Radiation was the technology of the future in the 1950s, and the claim that a low dose could cause cancer years later contradicted what the entire medical and nuclear establishment believed. Her methods were attacked. Her funding suffered. Doctors carried on X-raying pregnant women. It took roughly 25 years for the medical world to come round. Pregnant women were still routinely X-rayed into the late 1970s. Two decades after she told them to stop. She retired in 1974 and did her most contested work afterwards, in her seventies, examining the health records of American nuclear weapons workers. Her findings there were unwelcome enough that the Department of Energy cut off her access to the data. She spent 14 years fighting them and testified before Congress, and in 1990 the records were opened to independent researchers. She died in 2002, aged 95. The children who were never X-rayed have no idea who she was. history.rcp.ac.uk/blog/alice…

Why can’t we instead be honest about what ADHD is—and what it is not—as psychiatrist @awaisaftab is here, in an @nytimes article from earlier this year? Why the insistence on presenting it as an established neurological issue and confusing people? nytimes.com/2026/05/11/opini…

'When I married my husband three decades ago, the guest list was sprinkled with exes. Apparently, this makes us outliers in modern Britain' ‘Young people have been brainwashed into following a zero-contact policy after a breakup, which is reframed as setting healthy boundaries' But @RowanPelling argues that 'keeping exes in the fold is the ultimate sign of maturity.' Here's why ⬇️ telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/08…

Samreen just sent me this incredible poem from Afghanistan. She's stuck in a boiling hot attic with on/off electricity and a marginal internet connection. She will see if you like her poem though, and it will help.

I knew there was an eclipse today. I'd marked it on my colander.

If only we’d had more than a week’s notice of this eclipse the-londoner.co.uk/london-so…

Why was the Jason Arday story broken by a racist blogger and not the mainstream press? Because Times Higher Education was intimidated off the story by a letter from notorious libel firm Carter-Ruck. I'm publishing the letter. Its central claim may be false.

I’ve now read this wonderful book twice. Not only a rich, provocative history, but also a brilliantly combative primer. And absolutely right about Elizabeth Taylor and Henry Green.