Kathy Hochul and Zohran Mamdani are showing what ‘pro-family’ means | Arwa Mahdawi

When the world is in disarray I take refuge in my kitchen - and seville oranges have arrived. Paddington not yet shown up but expected soon.

very disappointing. There is a code of conduct for Royal Society fellows - it's not a value judgement to say that Musk has contravened it! see relevant bits of code and the Royal Society stated values below.

Every human life matters. But when a western life is lost we hear about their family, their life, their journey. Yesterday 14 Gazans were killed including 5 children. Can you tell me anything about any of them? english.wafa.ps/Pages/Detail...

I call on my party and my government to remove themselves entirely from X and communicate with the public where they actually participate online and can be protected from such illegality.

Does anyone know what neighbourhood health is? There is no coherent rationale for it, no structure, no funding, no staffing, no premises. This ill thought-out plan is meant to be fleshed out through grassroots involvement, but there is little understanding & even less enthusiasm in general practice

Despite repeated doom-mongering, flu case numbers reached a plateau and have been falling steadily since mid-December. Just how bad is the current flu season is and are warnings it could be the worst in decades sensationalist? www.bmj.com/content/392/...

What flips my head so much is knowing that some media institutions consider it against impartiality to voice anger at murder by government forces - impartiality, so often a word for appeasement

Nice to see this important research by colleagues @oxprimarycare.bsky.social getting some coverage.

This is sensible - I hope they will recruit some more health visitors to do it as they are very overstretched right noe.

1.9million attendances at A&E over 5years for ‘minor’ things Just 65 more GPs employed could have delivered 1.9million appointments over 5years and covered this ‘huge’ number of A&E ‘extra’ attendances Imagine what 6000 more GPs could have done if 2019 Tory commitment had been met ~ 180million

This is not the main cause of long waits for admission, or overcrowding and is not the fault of GPs. However, they try to spin the story www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

This is from 2023 I remember how good the service was for my patients before disaster struck - austerity, money wasted on private sector involvement and faux competition. We could go back, it was possible then, it's possible now.

Four senior former British Army officers – Brigadier John Deverell, Lieutenant General Sir Andrew Graham, Major General Peter Currie, and Major General Charlie Herbert – have urged Labour leader Keir Starmer to impose a full arms embargo on Israel and ban any dealings with Israeli defence companies.

The first step of course is to watch this wonderful video by @ramsesthepigeon.bsky.social www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxfx... >

That was the aim of my tribute piece last winter with An NHS Christmas Carol, kindly hosted by Andy Cowper: www.healthpolicyinsight.com/an-nhs-chris...

As expected - the BBC knows there is a deliberate slowdown in elective surgery but is still blaming the resident doctors.

@independentsage.bsky.social have consistently tried to counter the spread of infection and misinformation...great to work on this in @bmj.com with Steve Reicher (lead) and @martinmckee.bsky.social, we hope it's helpful...and thanks to Jolie Neill for edits & guidance 🙏 www.bmj.com/content/391/...

🧵1/ The Christmas @bmj.com is always an opportunity to use satire as a vehicle for serious health messaging. Borrowing from Jonathan Swift, I ask, if public health is to “work with industry,” why stop at alcohol and gambling? Why not go all the way… and collaborate with organised crime?

THREAD. A collection of photographs of birds I have met in the UK countryside. You will find the all-important captions to the photos in the alt text.

My order of @bmj.com reading: Obituaries @helensalisbury.bsky.social & @johnlauner @mancunianmedic.bsky.social Pt voice stuff Prim Care CPD Et al Seems to work…..

Robin Ince reveals to last night’s audience at a recording of Infinite Monkey Cage that the BBC has forced him to resign over his support of trans people

Very sad that I felt I had no choice but to resign from The Infinite Monkey Cage - a victory for the transphobes and other bigots - I did it because so much of the media has chosen to believe the kind and empathetic people are a fiction - they are real and so often unrepresented.

While politicians will ask you to blame resident doctors for cancelled surgery, in reality it is a deliberate slowdown to try to balance the books. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

I agree. If we’d been caught saying things like that to anyone we’d have been severely punished for it, even in the 1970’s in a time and place where attitudes were not remotely ‘woke’ we still knew how to be decent human beings and not little shits to other kids.

I am about the same age as Nigel Farage. It was absolutely not normal for school children in the 70s and early 80s to behave the way he did. Is anyone else wondering why Dulwich College tolerated his vileness? - would not have been allowed in the schools I attended.

This is how Spanish TV announced the boycott of Eurovision If Russia is banned for what they're doing to Ukraine, surely Israel should be banned for what they're doing in Palestine? When is the UK going to boycott Eurovision?

2/ So maybe we could look at what @maizie333.bsky.social @docsamantha.bsky.social @mikedaube.bsky.social @felly500.bsky.social & I said @bmj.com at time? Even if the money comes, it could well make things worse. A really bad idea badly implemented. www.bmj.com/content/381/...

🧵1/ Many, but far from all health professionals working with gambling harm called for an industry funded levy to support their work. Now the legislation is in place, the money isn’t, and their services are in crisis www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

A nice story for a change as a wild beaver been discovered in Norfolk.

This is exactly what churches should be doing, calling out injustice. 📌 Lake Street Church Nativity: a bold social justice statement with ICE-like Roman soldiers, the Virgin Mary in a gas mask, baby Jesus zip-tied, Joseph on the ground, pushing viewers to think about immigration.

A new element in this anecdote. You don’t ‘banter’ with a 9 year old at 17. This is racism + cowardly bullying.

Amu Gib is extremely frail For 10 days the prison refused to acknowledge she was on hunger strike Another prisoner, Qesser (20), has dangerously low BP + high heart rate, blocked from hospital care They're political prisoners held without trial They must be bailed and proper medical treatment 🇵🇸

What is the reason for Kennedy's anti-science, anti vax obsession? Is he the 4th horse of the apocalypse in disguise of was his brain fried by all the substances in his youth? Please America, don't do this to your children.

Zero tolerance for doomerism. Stop lazily accepting that everything is screwed forever. Stop normalising low expectations. That’s part of the problem & it’s what the bastards want. It’s also a product of privilege. People in more desperate situations don’t have the option to just sit back & shrug.

1. Some good news at last. This week’s column is about the amazing thing a couple of us stumbled into three years ago, which we’ve now developed into a global research programme. It doesn’t change everything, of course, but it could help change quite a lot. + 🧵 www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Rare but welcome moment of insight from health secretary Streeting, acknowledging that he 'failed to capture the complexity of the problem' when talking about mental health and neurodiversity diagnoses.

The right try and distract us by constantly talking about immigration. Cost of Living, the NHS, the climate crisis - let's keep them on the agenda. Join.greenparty.org.uk

An excellent piece by Yasmin Khan in @theguardian.com – and I’m very relieved the preposterous case against her has been dropped. www.theguardian.com/food/comment...

Polls suggest that Reform support may have peaked, perhaps because it appeals only to a very distinctive, and noisy, minority | Stephen McNair

All of us: Why, in our judgement, Chris Mason is misleading on most political points, all the time. Because he’s incapable of political commentary that isn’t marinated in his own rightwing bias. Allegations for Labour. Free passes for Tories/Reform. Every Single Time. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Diederik Stapel was a massive watershed moment in psychology. However, he was -- and let's be slightly glib here -- some guy from The Netherlands who wrote social psychology papers. The full accounting of the Eysenck case is approx, at minimum, TWO STAPELS. retractionwatch.com/2025/12/03/n...

Lobbyist / ex Tory MP Ben Howlett has been done by an undercover sting. As ever, the most revealing thing is how very very cheap it is buy access in British media/politics — and especially how Howlett controls one of the biggest UK pol Twitter accounts! democracyforsale.substack.com/p/breaking-o...

What are 'neighbourhoods' for? 'in none of the examples of neighbourhood working offered so far have we seen anything that couldn’t be done at the practice or PCN level.' www.bmj.com/content/391/...

With Alt Text

Really useful explainer on what we know about peanut allergy and current advice to parents on how to reduce the risk of your child developing it.