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Dec 4, 2024 | 
bmj.com | Richard Smith
Richard Smith, chairUK Health Alliance on Climate ChangeI’m in favour of assisted dying, and I was pleased to see the House of Commons in the UK have a sober, rational, respectful debate on one aspect of death and dying, assisted dying. Death—“that distinguished thing,” as Henry James called it—encourages seriousness, which is one of its many virtues. But the claim I see on the front of the Daily Express, “Now future generations will be spared ordeal we suffer” is nothing short of absurd.
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Nov 27, 2024 | 
officefreedom.com | Richard Smith
1 Minute Read
As remote work and relocation schemes continue to grow in popularity, workers are increasingly seeking cities that offer the best balance of salary, job satisfaction, and lifestyle. To determine the best global cities for workers, we’ve conducted a new study, analysing 30 of the world’s bustling cities, based on factors such as average net salary, hours worked, annual leave, internet speed, job satisfaction, office space availability, and inflation rates.
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Sep 10, 2024 | 
bmj.com | Richard Smith
Richard Smith, chairUK Health Alliance on climate changeThe 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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Jul 5, 2024 | 
bmj.com | Richard Smith
Richard Smith, chairUK Health Alliance on Climate ChangeThe Romans had a formal system of declaring war, the ritual of rerum repetitio. A fetial, a special priest, wearing a woollen hairband would make demands of the enemy in its lands. If the enemy had not responded in 33 days then the Roman Senate would declare war, and the fetial would return to the enemy’s land and throw a javelin.
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May 22, 2024 | 
bmj.com | Richard Smith
Richard Smith, chairUK Health Alliance on climate changeWhy do people become whistleblowers? Why do most people not become whistleblowers? What becomes of whistleblowers?
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May 16, 2024 | 
bmj.com | Richard Smith
Richard Smith, chairUK Health Alliance on Climate ChangeLast week I listened to a radio broadcast in which a woman in her 20s with breast cancer described how she examined her breast and found a lump. She is now being treated for breast cancer. The interviewer, an older woman, interviewed her gently with empathy. There was no challenge, as there would have been to a politician, and the result was misleading and probably had some harmful messages.
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Apr 26, 2024 | 
bmj.com | Richard Smith
Richard Smith, chairUK Health Alliance on Climate ChangeHenry Miller, the witty and now dead neurologist from Newcastle, said that one of the great challenges for 21st century medical historians would be to explain the obsession with psychoanalysis in the 20th century. How did thinking what was more cult than science take over American psychiatry and bewitch intellectuals?
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Apr 9, 2024 | 
bmj.com | Richard Smith
Richard Smith, chairUK Health Alliance on Climate ChangeWinston Churchill famously said that “there is no finer investment for any community than putting milk into babies”—but perhaps he was wrong. Perhaps the baby might be the eighth child of an exhausted mother who began having children in her teens, or the baby might grow up to become a mother as a teenager and die in childbirth or from an unsafe abortion.
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Mar 6, 2024 | 
citywire.com | Richard Smith
When you are starting a relationship with a salesperson and they say: “Oh. I see you’ve got the XYZ UK fund in your portfolio, it’s crap. Our UK fund’s much better.”’Hawksmoor CIO Richard Philbin told Citywire there was nothing worse than starting a relationship with a salesperson who ‘double-guesses’ and criticizes your portfolio choices without understanding you and your investment reasons. I call this competitor reflux. It’s a disease that is prolific in so many sales people.
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Feb 28, 2024 | 
bmj.com | Richard Smith
Obituaries BMJ 2024; 384 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.q481 Cite this as: BMJ 2024;384:q481 Richard SmithLondon, UKrichardswsmith{at}yahoo.co.ukWere you lucky enough over the past 40 years to have a hot ticket for the first night of an opera or play in London or even Milan or New York, you might well have seen Linda Beecham sitting in the row in front of you.
