Straight to the point

Hospitals are terrible places. People die in them. You should go into hospital only as a last resort. And you should escape the minute you can. As a doctor I am ashamed, saddened and embarrassed to have to tell you …

This is a long standing series of small items which have caught my eye or mind and which seem relevant, startling, amusing or all three. Occasionally, items which appear here may return as a longer piece. Mostly they will not.…

You can find the answers to this simple quiz at the bottom of the page.

When the first practical polio vaccine was made in the 1950s, monkey kidney tissue was used. It was not realised that one of the viruses

It is now common practice in care homes, nursing homes and hospitals for staff to use nasty little tricks in order to persuade their patients to take tranquillisers and sedatives. This is, of course, not done for the sake of …

The International Monetary Fund often tells small, Third World countries what to do. They like to take control and issue instructions to small governments in countries many people couldn’t find on an atlas.

But the IMF never tells big G7 …

The EU has reclassified natural gas and nuclear power as forms of renewable energy in order to make political promises of ‘net zero’ easier to meet. (Someone probably realised that wind and sunshine provide very little of our energy – …