Society

Thirty-five years ago, shortly after my 16th birthday, my parents finally got fed up with me and packed me off to boarding school. Now, half a lifetime later, my 16-year-old son is about to follow in my footsteps. The two scenarios aren’t quite the same (back then, it was my parents’ idea — this time, it’s my son who can’t wait to get away), but as I pack his trunk and think how much I’ll miss my one true pal, I can’t help wondering — am I doing the right thing? Naturally, I have no idea — like most of life’s big decisions, it’s a roll of the dice. Yes, I can

This article is an excerpt from the latest issue of The Spectator, out tomorrow. I am not surprised that Keith Vaz has been caught sleeping with male hookers. I’m one myself and so I know that overweight married Asians are our staple. We often joke that without Indians and-Middle Eastern guys, we’d all be broke. They are always married. I’ve always been sickened by the way they betray their wives, but they aren’t paying me for my judgment. There are different types of rent boy. Some are very young, slim and smooth. They are called twinks. I am dark, hairy and muscled, which appeals to certain clients who want a

The BMA’s decision to cancel the first of its planned five-day strikes yesterday was justified as a response to concerns over patient safety. Yet these warnings were nothing new. The General Medical Council issued frank advice to doctors hours earlier saying the strikes could harm patients. And the former Department of Health director Sir John Oldham – who also wrote Labour’s health policy review two years ago – also said the strikes were unethical. These interventions followed last week’s statement from the Academy of Royal Medical Colleges that, wait for it, made it clear the strikes would cause ‘real problems’ for the NHS. But amidst those warnings, Labour’s silence on patient safety was deafening. In an interview last weekend,

Junior doctors have scrapped plans to strike next week. In a dispute which looks increasingly messy and interminable, this is a small token of welcome news. But whilst the BMA has made the right decision in this instance, they are still sticking with their threat to stage three five-day walkouts in October, November and December. What’s more, in justifying why they called off the strike which was due to start on September 12, they’re trying to have their cake and eat it. After all, when industrial action was announced last week, patient safety – that all important concept which the BMA had trumpeted in the earlier stages of this row – seemed to have

Mother Theresa has been canonised today; cue for contained rapture on the part of her Missionaries of Charity and supporters in Rome and a rather different kind of satisfaction on the part of her critics, who now have a useful opportunity to air their objections to her work and cult. It’s hard to think of two groups not so much at odds but at cross purposes. The BBC news reports on the canonisation by the excellent Caroline Wyatt rehearse some of the more familiar criticisms: her hospices lack the best medical equipment and good hygiene; moreover, she took money from dictators. And according to representatives of Hindu nationalist groups, she