Society

Even in a Beijing Spring of ceaseless surprises, the escape of the blind dissident lawyer Chen Guangcheng from rural house arrest into American protection was a sensation. The sensation soon turned into a catastrophe for him and humiliation for the United States. After his astounding escape 2 weeks ago from 18 months of house arrest and arrival at the US embassy in Beijing, Chen stated he had no intention of leaving China. Six days later he was assured by his American hosts, who now say he had cancer, that he must go to a Chinese hospital for treatment and be reunited with his and then would be free, perhaps to

Another example of the new and commendable ‘tough love’ approach adopted by health workers.  In a sense, the case of nurse Sally Miller epitomises this new movement within the NHS: the old, discredited and soppy notions of care and compassion is jettisoned in favour of an abrupt, no-nonsense vigour. Responding to a patient who, tiresomely, had pressed the buzzer in the ward in the hope of receiving palliative care, Sally said to her: ‘If you f****** press this buzzer again I am going to nail your f****** hand to the floor.’ Excellent. This follows a similarly uplifting case in South Wales. This concerned a paramedic in Cardiff who, eschewing the

Much of the post-Boris analysis in today’s press features on whether a rightwards shift is appropriate. The Daily Mail calls for a return to Tory values, while Matthew Parris in The Times says such calls are predictable and meaningless. But, to me, talk about moving to the right or the left is pretty pointless. As the Telegraph says in its leader today, what’s needed isn’t a lurch to the right, but a lurch towards the public. This comes back to the great, eternally-relevant distinction that Keith Joseph made between the ‘middle ground’ between political parties, and the ‘common ground’ between a party and the public.   The problem with what