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Sep 22, 2024 | 
conservativereview.com | Richard Smith
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Sep 22, 2024 | 
freebeacon.com | Richard Smith
Abraham Lincoln had a ready rejoinder for wartime critics who accused him of shredding the Constitution. To the contrary, said Lincoln; confronted with domestic rebellion he was willing to temporarily suspend part of the nation’s organic law in order to preserve the entirety, and the nation with it.
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Sep 19, 2024 | 
richardswsmith.wordpress.com | Richard Smith
I’ve only been to a political party conference once and that was, I think, in 1999. I’d been asked to chair a side meeting on carers, the huge numbers of people mostly women who do the caring in Britain—for the disabled, the elderly, and the mentally troubled. I was excited because Alan Milburn, the new Secretary of State for Health, was going to attend the meeting. What I didn’t understand is that he would attend perhaps ten other meetings on the same evening, sparing just a few moments for each.
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Sep 8, 2024 | 
richardswsmith.wordpress.com | Richard Smith
The World Health Organisation says that air pollution contributes to seven to eight million premature deaths a year, but only one person, Ella Kissi-Debrah, has ever had air pollution on their death certificate. She has it on her death certificate because of a long struggle led by her mother, Rosamund Kissi-Debrah, supported by doctors and lawyers.
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Aug 25, 2024 | 
richardswsmith.wordpress.com | Richard Smith
Standing on a train from Clapham Junction to Winchester, a journey of an hour, I’m reflecting on the sorry state of Britain. Why, I wonder, can’t Britain run enough trains on a line that includes many important destinations: Winchester, Southampton, Bournemouth, and Weymouth? Why, come to that, does it take three hours to reach Weymouth, a place that is only 130 miles from London?
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Jul 15, 2024 | 
richardswsmith.wordpress.com | Richard Smith
British prisons are dangerous places at bursting point. The only short-term option the government has is to release some prisoners, and it is about to do so. Prisoners can be categorised, as I was told years ago, as 70% sad, 20% mad, and 10% bad. Prison is not the optimal place for most prisoners: prisons are unsafe schools for criminals. Britain has far more people in prison per capita than countries like the Netherlands, not least because our sentences are much longer.
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Jul 13, 2024 | 
richardswsmith.wordpress.com | Richard Smith
On Thursday night dressed up in a dinner jacket with a new shirt, tight black shoes, and even black socks, I gave the 85th Osler Oration at the Royal College of Physicians. Afterwards we had a banquet complete with port. When I told a friend who I think knows everything that I was giving the oration, he asked who Osler was and what he discovered. William Osler (1849-1919) didn’t discover anything of note, but he is known as the Father of Modern Medicine. He could be called the doctors’ doctor.
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Jun 30, 2024 | 
richardswsmith.wordpress.com | Richard Smith
I wrote this piece for the website of the UK Health Alliance on Climate Change, which I chair. https://ukhealthalliance.org/news-item/jury-refuses-to-convict-six-climate-protesting-medics-who-damaged-j-p-morgan-bank/ I stayed away from comment, but I can share here a few thoughts.
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Jun 29, 2024 | 
richardswsmith.wordpress.com | Richard Smith
John Burnside, the Scottish writer who has just died, suffered from apophenia. Despite my medical training, I’d never heard of apophenia, but now that I learn about it I think it’s a “disease” that every one of us has. Indeed, it’s a disease, I argue below, that keeps us going and stops us succumbing to suicide. The Times in its obituary of Burnside defines apophenia as searching for meaning in random things.
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Jun 8, 2024 | 
richardswsmith.wordpress.com | Richard Smith
Britain is suffering a vapid election where politicians are content to make promises they can’t keep while ignoring major problems confronting the country. The existential threat from climate change is hardly mentioned. Britain is isolated and impoverished, many people go hungry, and its public services in poor shape. As an answer we are promised “growth,” which may well never appear and if it does may aggravate the threat from climate change.
