NHS SOS

James Meek, 5 April 2018

“... New Labour and the Conservatives have encouraged; and the inept restructuring carried out under David Cameron in the early 2010s, sometimes called the Lansley reforms after their patron, the erstwhile Conservative health secretary Andrew Lansley. The Lansley reforms left seven local organisations responsible for healthcare in Leicestershire. Five are part ...”

Reality Instruction

James Lasdun: In Court and on the Road, 23 April 2026

“... and deep distrust of law enforcement never far from the surface. It wasn’t the repartee of David Milch’s cod-Shakespearean TV series Deadwood, but it was impressive. These people were unafraid to state the obvious, or to test established principles against their own instincts. It seemed to me that the traditional regard for civic responsibility was ...”

The Price

Dan Jacobson: The concluding part of Dan Jacobson’s interview with Ian Hamilton, 21 February 2002

“... had enough younger people whom I admired, and still had my old chums from the Review, Colin, Hugo, David Harsent; they just carried over and became part of this larger thing.Did you get any help from the eminenti who’d tried to float a magazine?None at all. I didn’t really know them. And didn’t admire them, particularly. There was a whole social aspect ...”

After Martha

Paul Laity, 25 September 2025

“... good intentions of the staff’. Writing in the British Medical Journal in 2018 the NHS consultant David Oliver argued that public (as opposed to expert) debate ‘is obsessed with the notion that, when things go wrong in healthcare, this must indicate failures by individuals. In such a narrative, systemic factors … are seen as convenient excuses for ...”

Bitter Chill of Winter

Tariq Ali: Kashmir, 19 April 2001

“... to mislead these people: what was on offer was not a ‘humanitarian war’ but an informal Camp David. ‘It needn’t even be the United States,’ he continued. ‘It could be a great man. It could be Nelson Mandela … or Bill Clinton.’The beards were unimpressed. One of the few beardless men in the audience rose to his feet and addressed the ...”

Who holds the welding rod?

James Meek: Our Turbine Futures, 15 July 2021

“... out a clear system of targets and penalties to encourage local content, the government’s only means of enforcement had been to implant ‘a slight sort of anxiety’ in the minds of wind development executives. It was clear that if the government tried to take away the wind giants’ licences because they hadn’t employed enough Brits, it would end up on ...”

‘I wouldn’t pay it either’

Simon Skinner: World Cup Wallcharts, 25 June 2026

The Power and the Glory: A New History of the World Cup 
by Jonathan Wilson.
Little Brown, 608 pp., £12.99, May, 978 0 349 14573 0
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“... rooms); the Battle of Santiago (hosts Chile against Italy in 1962, characterised by the BBC’s David Coleman as ‘the most stupid, appalling, disgusting and disgraceful exhibition of football in the history of the game’); die Wasserschlacht (the water battle) of 1974, when West Germany, the hosts, beat Poland on a waterlogged pitch that nullified the ...”