Society

At Prime Minister’s Questions today, backbencher Philip Lee ambushed David Cameron on the subject of health tourism. He asked: ‘As a doctor who once had to listen incredulously to a patient explain, via a translator, that she only discovered she was nine months’ pregnant on arrival at terminal 3 at Heathrow, I was pleased to hear the statement from the Secretary of State for Health today on health tourism. Does the Prime Minister agree that although the savings are modest, the principle matters? The health service should be national, not international.’ The Prime Minister replied: ‘My hon. Friend makes a very important point. This is a national health service, not

The Spectator’s Mary Killen — otherwise known as ‘Dear Mary‘ — was on Radio 4’s Today programme this morning discussing whether or not it was right for a Sainsbury’s checkout assistant to refuse to serve a customer who was on her mobile phone. Here’s the clip from this morning’s programme, and below we’ve put together some of our favourite Dear Mary dilemmas of the last six months. listen to ‘Dear Mary on mobile phone etiquette’ on Audioboo Q. I was sitting in a South West train the other day. A woman across the aisle was making nonstop calls into her mobile phone, speaking very loudly in what sounded to me like

Should the government subsidise married couples? Arguing about whether births outside wedlock lead to worse childhood outcomes, or whether broken homes and such outcomes both stem from some third factor, really depends on one’s worldview and which studies one chooses to ignore. My own suspicion, based on the wisdom of the ages and what I read in the Daily Mail, is that social and personal problems are likely to be more prevalent on average among those who have children out of wedlock, which makes proving the case for marriage hard. In addition, the actual absence of a father on average makes a difference. But how could this be proved except

Max Hastings is one of the foremost military historians in the English-speaking world. His multi-volume history of the Second World War is magnificent. Until recently, however, I had not known that he counted soothsaying among his many accomplishments. How else, however, to explain his article in today’s Daily Mail in which the old boy outs himself as a first-class mind-reader. Hastings is responding to a presentation Alastair Campbell gave to an audience of PR types in Australia in which Mr Blair’s communications wizard, perhaps rather too glibly, noted that Winston Churchill frequently and deliberately peddled untruths during the Second World War. And yet his reputation remains higher than that of poor old

IPSA’s proposed increase in MPs’ salary is another example of how it continues to undermine the standing of parliament whilst haemorrhaging taxpayers’ money on unnecessary backroom bureaucracy. The weekend newspapers reported that the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA) is thinking about raising MPs’ salaries. Whatever your view on the right level of pay for MPs, IPSA has not only failed to tackle the long-term problems of cost and reputation, but has failed to remove the issue from the province of political parties and leaders, as intended. The evidence is clear.  IPSA has created a system where more than 90 per cent of MPs are subsidising the work they do by

Parents have an irritating habit of telling the world how wonderful, clever, gifted etc their children are. It used to annoy me, until I became a parent – and I worked out that it is a  trick of the mind. Something happens to you where you do actually believe it, and think it’s so obvious that others should notice too. Take the above picture: my as-yet-unnamed daughter, born seven hours ago. A few years ago, I would have looked at such a picture and recalled  my father’s saying that they all look either like Winston Churchill or a pound of mince. But now, to me, this is a picture of what is self-evidently the most beautiful girl in