"More & more, the nature of high-profile public service is repelling the best & the brightest. That is the great tragedy of our age – & the great opportunity for those who were never in it to serve the public in the first place." 🔥🔥 🔥 as ever from Marina Hyde www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

"The hard truth about underfunding palliative care is that people who are at their most vulnerable – the dying – suffer more pain, more indignity, less choice & less autonomy than they might have." Incredibly, only 30% of hospice care is NHS funded. Pls read my piece in today’s @theguardian.com.

I do not understand the Labour government's reticence over defending the BBC and social media regulation. Their long-term survival basically depends on it. Their cowardice in the face of it may be the single thing they are most remembered for. on.ft.com/3JVxC1Z via @FT

"There are soiled sheets, unvoiced fears, missed doses of morphine. The hard truth, in short, about underfunding palliative care is that people who are at their most vulnerable – the dying – suffer more pain, more indignity, less choice & less autonomy than they might have." Please read this piece:

The reaction to the Panorama edit has been nothing short of hysterical. Yes the BBC has some impartiality problems. But its biggest isn't the one you think. New piece from me. open.substack.com/pub/goodalla...

"We would never tolerate a government that chose to defund 70% of neonatal services, gambling that charities would fill the gap. Yet this is exactly the situation for end-of-life care." Please read my piece on the travesty of NHS palliative care underfunding 🙏 www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Amazon is helping fund a $300 million build of a ballroom for the White House. Independent bookstores are donating to food banks and organizations that help with food insecurity. They are not the same.

Just disgusting from 3p Lee - who wants to stigmatise, shame and risk the lives of people with disabilities. Truly gutter politics.

Heartbroken to read today’s National Audit Office report describing the postcode lottery of care faced by palliative care patients. Two thirds of hospices are in debt. Hospices are being forced to cut their staff & beds. 300 beds closed in 2024 alone. 🧵 www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

“Science is never settled” sounds reasonable—but it’s often a rhetorical trick to undermine consensus on issues like vaccines or climate change. Science evolves, but some things are overwhelmingly supported by evidence. My latest for Live Science www.livescience.com/... 1/10

Lab in surf and seals in sea. Could anything be more joyful? Harley goes wild in Norfolk 💚🐕🐟

Hugely looking forward to discussing UK maternity care, women's bodies, birth trauma & how we make things better for women with two deeply courageous campaigners & authors, former MP Theo Clarke & NHS midwife @leahhazard.bsky.social. 📆 Sun 9 Nov, 10.30am 📍 Stroud 🎟️ @stroudbookfestival.bsky.social

Of course she has. The small matter of owing £122 million to UK taxpayers for her disgusting profiteering in a global pandemic means nothing to Michelle Mone. NHS staff died in my hospital from the Covid they caught there - her dodgy PPE racket was vile.

Such a joy to discuss Max, Keira & The Story of a Heart in the company of Max's mum, Emma, & his extraordinary transplant surgeon, Asif Hasan, at Newcastle's Freeman Hospital this month 💙🫀🫁 #organdonation www.mirror.co.uk/news/tears-s...

Absolutely cannot wait to join Rob Delaney to discuss our books & what The Story of a Heart tells us about compassion, care, medical innovation & the NHS 🫀💗🩺 Thank you @intelligence2.bsky.social for arranging this dream conversation. Please join us! 📆 13 Nov 📍 Kiln Theatre, London ⏰ 7pm

Dear athletic (or less athletic, as in *me*) friends & followers… might you be up for running next October’s Oxford Half Marathon in aid of @hospiceukraine.com? 🇺🇦 We are a small charity supporting palliative care teams in Ukraine doing amazing work under ongoing conditions of war...

Yay. Priceless. The right column at the right time. And a gleefully English two fingers to the haters.

Hospital medicine in perfect pocket canine form today 💙💙💙🐕🐕🐕

Absolutely cannot wait to join Rob Delaney to discuss our books & what The Story of a Heart tells us about compassion, care, medical innovation & the NHS 🫀💗🩺 Thank you @intelligence2.bsky.social for arranging this dream conversation. Please join us! 📆 13 Nov 📍 Kiln Theatre, London ⏰ 7pm

This is Trevor Fisher, speaking to @channel4news.bsky.social from Arthur Rank Hospice in Cambridgeshire this week. As a palliative care specialist, Trevor’s interview has devastated me. His hospice has just been told Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Trust is withdrawing £800k of funding. 🧵

"The people who jostled their way into this lane for a grotesquely outsize cash bonanza and then boasted about helping the nation were profiteering, plain and simple." Brilliantly & appropriately savage from the peerless Marina Hyde 💥 www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

On @lbc.co.uk now - please tune in...

Is there a reason I ask that the Times are using a picture of asylum seekers in a boat to describe rules for migrants who came on legal routes such as skilled worker visas for doctors?

This must never be allowed to happen again, for there will be other disasters (increasingly) and other greedy unscrupulous people will try to take advantage of the professionalism and generosity of public health workers Enraging thread 👇

“As thousands of companies bid for contracts to fill the UK’s depleted PPE stockpile, Boris Johnson’s ‘VIP lane’ gave high priority to people with political connections.” www.theguardian.com/world/2025/o...

Here I am in 2020 in the flimsiest, most pitful PPE - like so many other NHS staff, some of whom died from the Covid they caught in their hospitals. Tory peer Michelle Mone - who today lost her legal case & must repay the govt £122m - dares to claim she’s been ‘scapegoated’. What, Michelle? 🧵

The RCP is asking Fellows to vote on key constitutional reforms, including extending the franchise. A group of 27 Fellows tabled a motion saying reform should be slowed down + done properly. Not enough information. Too many questions. Our views here: tinyurl.com/ye5k2fa2

The success of the far right is not only measured in votes and seats but in its impact on rhetoric, policy and ideology. The fact that a (nominally) social democratic head of government with a huge majority choses to say and do this is maybe the biggest success of the far right in Europe yet.

Superb news showcasing the wonder of medical science. Huntingdon's is a brutal terminal disease. This new gene therapy slows the disease's advance by 75%. One medically retired patient has now returned to work. Others, expected to need wheelchairs, are walking. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Listening to #Mammy en route to work at the moment and it is absolutely superb - only danger is laughing/crying too much to drive occasionally. Such a glorious, life-affirming book, Seamus 💚

When time is short, every moment counts. And sometimes, what matters most at the bedside isn’t morphine, other drugs or medical interventions but simple human - or, in this case - canine connection. I am sharing Cookie's photo with permission. You can just glimpse her master behind her. (1/3)

Please, @theguardian.com, stop writing headlines that give credibility to Trump’s baseless medical misinformation. The way you’re reporting this makes you part of the problem.

First Farage platformed notorious UK anti-vaxxer, Aseem Malhotra, who insinuated that Covid vaccines caused the Royal Family’s recent cancers. Now he’s openly trashing scientific method & evidence, pretending neither can be trusted & facts are a free for all. This is deeply dangerous populism.

What on Earth is this? An "in depth" BBC article about free speech in the UK that only cites examples of right-wing/ 'anti-woke' speech being suppressed. How can you mention Lucy Connolly but completely ignore Palestine Action / Just Stop Oil? Gob-smacking. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

This is such lovely news! Thank you @waterstones.bsky.social #organdonation 🩷🫀

Please know that this is Trump scaremongering. There is no good scientific evidence linking paracetamol (Tylenol) to autism. A 2024 Swedish study of 2.4 million births found no relationship whatsoever between exposure to paracetamol in utero & subsequent autism. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Proud to contribute frontline testimony to tonight's enraging @itvx.com documentary "The Covid Contracts: Follow the Money". Boris Johnson's govt squandered £8.7 billion on unusable PPE, while grifters like Michelle Mone made millions. Tonight, 10.15pm, ITV1. www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio...

Before you shrug and say “Oh. PPE again. Old news” Remember 1/ that cost lives due to reduced - or no- protection 2/ All those £billions could have been spent on crumbling NHS and school infrastructure Instead it went into Tory crony pockets That‘s your money & my money going into their pockets

Proud to contribute frontline testimony to tonight's enraging @itvx.com documentary "The Covid Contracts: Follow the Money". Boris Johnson's govt squandered £8.7 billion on unusable PPE, while grifters like Michelle Mone made millions. Tonight, 10.15pm, ITV1. www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio...

An actual quote from the Secretary of State for Business and Trade Too often people go to university to ‘explore research and knowledge’ Look forward to Wes S saying 'too often people go to hospital to have operations' or Heidi Alexander saying 'too often people go to the station to catch a train'

Shattering, vital and necessary reading on the wholly avoidable death of a child. Can only imagine the pain involved in its writing. Every medic I know, please read this 👇👇👇

First Colbert, now Kimmel. Last-minute settlements, secret side deals, multi-billion dollar mergers pending Donald Trump's approval. Trump silencing free speech stifles our democracy. It sure looks like giant media companies are enabling his authoritarianism.

All political tribes can be hypocritical but the right's current level of hypocrisy on free speech is deliberate. It's an assertion of power not a blindspot.

Beyond belief. Downing Street pandering to Trump by literally shutting down UK free speech. Shame on the government for its spinelessness. www.theguardian.com/media/2025/s...

"We will never know what diseases might have been cured or what advances in technology might have been invented had the lights not gone out in the labs." www.nytimes.com/2025/09/08/o...

Interesting to see that Farage has a history with Malhotra dating several years and Malhotra also spoke at a fringe event as well as the main event at the Reform conference so Farage has more questions to answer about platforming a known anti-vaxer

Years too late. Incredible that the GMC - whose entire raison d'être is upholding professional standards in UK medicine - has allowed Aseem Malhotra to spew out his toxic, dangerous, anti-scientific disinformation for so long. Regulatory failure at its worst. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

At work on sofa, lost in a vortex of Harley.

Too many drones to call it an accident. Putin is doing what had to be expected. A tentative attack on a NATO country to test out what happens.