Reading

Dear Fellow Signers of the Declaration of Independence:

Now that our noble document is complete, it is time to address the elephant in the room: my name is much bigger than everyone else’s. I’ll be the first to admit that it is absolutely massive. Yet I must also speak this self-evident truth: it is not entirely my fault.

The fact is I thought we were all doing big signatures. That’s what I was told. Do none of you remember Thomas Jefferson—hopped up on parchment fumes and cheap barleywine—running around telling everyone our “sigs” had to be “freakin’ huge”? Then I go first, and everybody bursts out laughing like I did something foolish.

I hereby call on my brethren of the Second Continental Congress—those who I know to be defenders of liberty, progress, and the values of the Enlightenment, to which we are all fan-boyishly devoted for some reason—to publicly stand up and say everybody told John Hancock we were doing big sigs.

In 2012, as the health service was being subjected to another round of disastrous reform, a think tank was founded which aimed to push back against this effort ‘to dismantle many of the founding principles of the NHS’. In the years since, the Centre for Health and the Public Interest (CHPI) has become one of […]

The levels of overload on the NHS and the increased mortality of patients and health workers experienced during the peak moments of the pandemic offered an uncannily familiar experience to those of us who grew up with classic BBC sci-fi series such as The Day of the Triffids (1981) or Survivors (1975–7, 2008–9). In my […]

The National Health Service (NHS) and many public healthcare systems around the world are in a state of crisis. For years they’ve been allowed to deteriorate — for long enough, in fact, that plenty of powerful forces now see an opportunity to pursue profitable reforms. When people think of private healthcare, their minds naturally turn to […]

Our National Health Service (NHS) is in trouble. Over 7 million people in England are languishing on waiting lists. Cancer patients are experiencing delays to diagnosis and treatment. UK outcomes are well behind those in other comparable countries. And when emergency strikes, ambulances are struggling to get to people in time to save their life. […]

One of Labour’s most powerful campaigning weapons has been the question aimed at the Tories: is the NHS safe in Tory hands? But, as the electorate looks like putting Keir Starmer into No. 10, is it time to ask that question of Labour itself? Starmer and his Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting’s embrace of the […]

When the NHS was founded after the Second World War, the country was in approximately £27 billion worth of debt. The Labour Party had been voted into power by a working class that was determined not to be poor anymore. The NHS and other social welfare reforms were demands that were conceded under widespread popular […]

I was the consultant on call and had an enthusiastic medical student with me when I first met George in an ambulance that had been parked outside A&E for ten hours. He had mild dementia and had developed severe chest pain at 2 PM the night before. His wife had desperately called for an ambulance. […]

In the summer of 2022, the largest strike wave in three decades swept the UK. Public services, battered and bruised by over a decade of austerity, were on their knees — and those staffing them were on the brink too. From the beginning, NHS workers were at the forefront, with first cleaners and porters, and then […]

Over the course of a forty-year career, Michael Marmot has changed how the public, politicians, and academics think about health.  The professor of epidemiology and public health at University College London (UCL) and director of the UCL Institute of Health Equity has led research that challenges the orthodox view that lifestyle choices predominantly determine good […]

In the UK today, it’s hard to avoid the sense that everything is falling apart. Rents and bills are soaring, real wages are falling, and public services are crumbling. Homelessness and violent crime are on the rise, while public spaces are falling into disrepair. And all of this is taking place in the context of […]

This summer marks the seventy- fifth anniversary of the NHS. Fittingly, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and his ministers have celebrated the occasion by proposing new legislation to compel more NHS organisations to increase the numbers of NHS-funded patients sent to private hospitals. Private hospitals have been getting much less NHS money than was expected when […]

Michael Rosen is one of Britain’s most beloved public figures. A writer and poet, his We’re Going on a Bear Hunt is a fixture of childhood for millions. He also served as Children’s Laureate from 2007 to 2009 and has, for decades, been an outspoken socialist. But in recent years, he has also become one […]

‘What is to be squeezed out next year?’ Aneurin Bevan asked on resigning from the cabinet in 1951, after Clement Attlee’s government opted to cut £13 million from the health budget amid the escalating Korean War. Is it the upper half? When that has been squeezed out and the same principle holds good, what do […]

In 1951, the government’s Crown Film Unit released the film Life in Her Hands. Starring Kathleen Byron, best known for her role as a nun in Black Narcissus (1946), Life in Her Hands was an ambitious hour-long recruitment film, designed to attract women to the nursing profession. It was part of a wider national recruitment […]

This issue of Tribune was co-commissioned by Francesca Newton, our online editor, and it will be her last before departing to new opportunities. Francesca made her mark as a Tribune writer with her denunciations of the government’s hatchet job on civil liberties. Her 2020 articles on the Overseas Operations and Spy Cops Bills were our […]

‘Next week, the British Government will launch the greatest experiment in social reform ever embarked upon by the British nation.’ The formation of the National Health Service (NHS), instituted by the post-war Labour government seventy-five years ago today, was characterised at the time by Tribune as a providential moment. ‘The Great Experiment’ to which the […]

In the years since the National Health Service (NHS) was inaugurated on 5 July 1948, a comforting myth has emerged about its creation. As the NHS — variously described as a national religion and an institution akin to royalty — has taken its place among the pantheon of British institutions, establishment scribes have tried to paint it […]

Crooked Timber was inaccessible yesterday, due to a dns issue, but here’s another picture of Alexanderplatz:

How can you legally fly a plane designed in 1910?

It’s gonna be a summer Next week I head north to Chicago for Netroots Nation. Hopes for cooler, tamer weather to the north are just that. Axios: Torrential rains flooded Chicago’s streets and forced NASCAR officials to postpone a race through the city, as the National Weather Service issued hazardous weather alerts for over 110 million Americans during the extended July Fourth holiday weekend. State of play: Chicago train services were suspended, buses were temporarily rerouted and Illinois State Police said parts of Interstate highways 55 and 290 were shut due to flooding, per WLS-TV. The National Weather Service (a branch of the Commerce Department that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis promises to eliminate as president) reports: Meanwhile, the heat wave across the South will be less oppressive today, before confining southward even more on Independence Day. Nevertheless, heat indices could approach 105-110 degrees with high temperatures into the mid-90s, which can be dangerous if spending an extended amount of time outdoors.