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Health Policy InsightThe comments were part of a broader address in which he condemned Nato allies
Yesterday the Conservative party said that it wanted to ban political parties from distributing campaign literature in a foreign language. Announcing a plan to propose an amendement to the representation of the people bill to make this law, the shadow communities minister Paul Holmes said:
Campaigning in a foreign language as the Greens did in Gorton and Denton only fosters greater division. A coherent national culture relies on shared values, and an inclusive electoral process relies on a common tongue.
I think it’s for political parties to choose how they campaign and communicate with British voters. If they’re using British money that is funding their campaigns and they’re speaking to people who have the right to vote, then why would you not show those voters the respect of communication?
What fuels division is Nick Timothy standing up and singling out Muslim forms of worship for a ban when he’s not applying that to forms of worship that other religions are talking about.
It just doesn’t compute, does it? I worked in Number 10. Briefly, I had a Number 10 phone. There was a paranoia about devices like that falling into other people’s hands.
And so whether it was the Met Police, whether it was Morgan McSweeney, and what sounds like pretty evasive set of reporting, even when you look at that transcript, or whether it was the Number 10 security team following up something that at the time they could not have been sure had not been taken by a state actor, a phone with all sorts of government secrets potentially in it, that’s precisely why people in government have two separate phones.
I don’t believe McSwindle had his iPhone stolen
Honest believe, Matt. It’s smacks of the liar Johnson defence of ‘lost all my WhatsApp messages’. We mustn’t take the public for fools. And I am afraid this smacks of too convenient by far. I won’t do it. I will say what I actually think. And I don’t believe it. End of!
I believe the report was made. McSwindle didn’t mention that he was the chief of staff to the PM. A significant omission of he’d wanted the police to prioritise the offence.
Continue reading...Readers respond to an article on having to care for parents if you had a complicated relationship with them
Stephanie Woods is right to draw attention to how hard it can be to care for someone who didn’t care for you (The impossible task of caring for ageing parents who did not care for you, 20 March). While some carers find it a privilege to look after someone they’ve had a loving relationship with, others feel trapped by a sense of duty, or by societal expectations, to care for someone they aren’t close to or who doesn’t value them.
Changes to how social care support is funded and provided cannot come soon enough for anyone who feels that they have no choice but to care. In reality, if unpaid family carers stopped providing daily practical and emotional support to people living with dementia, there would be chaos. There are simply not enough professional home-based carers, care home places, or hospital beds, to manage the consequences of thousands of vulnerable people left alone and at risk in their own homes.
Continue reading...Ejaculation v sleep | Night-time stress | Brabazon legacy | Learning from mistakes | Pint or pony of porter
I was struck by two adjacent headlines: “More frequent ejaculations may boost men’s fertility” and “Extra 11 minutes’ sleep each night can reduce heart attack risk”. What a terrible dilemma.
Prof Gareth Williams
Rockhampton, Gloucestershire
• Given the impact of stress on the risk of heart attacks, I wonder how the worry about not sleeping for an extra 11 minutes is going to help me.
Richard Barnard
Wivenhoe, Essex
One minute, Dennis Biesma was playing with a chatbot; the next, he was convinced his sentient friend would make him a fortune. He’s just one of many people who lost control after an AI encounter
Towards the end of 2024, Dennis Biesma decided to check out ChatGPT. The Amsterdam-based IT consultant had just ended a contract early. “I had some time, so I thought: let’s have a look at this new technology everyone is talking about,” he says. “Very quickly, I became fascinated.”
Biesma has asked himself why he was vulnerable to what came next. He was nearing 50. His adult daughter had left home, his wife went out to work and, in his field, the shift since Covid to working from home had left him feeling “a little isolated”. He smoked a bit of cannabis some evenings to “chill”, but had done so for years with no ill effects. He had never experienced a mental illness. Yet within months of downloading ChatGPT, Biesma had sunk €100,000 (about £83,000) into a business startup based on a delusion, been hospitalised three times and tried to kill himself.
Continue reading...Rule change follows high court challenge brought by two doctors prevented from working in specialist fields
Doctors who have been prevented from working in the NHS while they wait for asylum decisions are celebrating after the Home Office agreed to lift the ban. The changes come into force on Thursday.
The changes to the immigration rules follow a high court challenge by two specialist doctors who had the relevant qualifications to work for the NHS but were prevented from taking up work. Doctors who have a break in their practice can quickly become deskilled. Until now, the ban has remained in place despite shortages of doctors and other healthcare professionals in some parts of the NHS.
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