Social care
I’m taking mental notes for my old age
I know straight away, from the look on my friend Alice’s face, whether it’s a ‘bad carer’ day. Five years…
Waiting game
Who really controls the NHS?
Letters
Take care Sir: Your editorial (‘Counting the costs’, 8 January) makes valid points regarding the funding of social care. The…
The confusion at the heart of social care
Boris Johnson’s majority plunged to just 26 last night, following a rebellion over controversial changes to social care plans. Means-tested,…
Portrait of the week
Home Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, announced a new tax in the Commons branded a ‘health and social care levy’.…
The assetocracy
Why politicians are competing to bribe the affluent
Boris is in dangerous territory
The announcement of a tax increase for both workers and employers to fund more spending on health and social care…
Why Johnson’s tax gamble will pay off
Boris Johnson’s announcement today, promising he will fix the £15 billion hole in health and social care, may well be…
Can Johnson win round his social care critics?
Is Boris Johnson’s social care plan about to sail through the House of Commons? Today the Prime Minister will unveil the…
Hitting homes
The government’s social care reform plans are all wrong
Boris could pay a big price for his flawed social care shake-up
Boris Johnson pledged to ‘fix the crisis in social care’ over two years ago. Next week, the Prime Minister is…
The tax-and-spend Tories
When you ask a government minister why something hasn’t happened, you get a one-word answer: ‘Covid’. It has become the…
How do the Tories stop the rise of an ever-bigger state?
When Gordon Brown raised National Insurance in 2002 to put more money into the health service, it was seen as…
What the NHS pay rise says about Boris Johnson’s priorities
Well, that didn’t take long. Two days ago, a leaked report revealed that the government was considering using a national insurance…
Is Boris brave enough to confront the truth about the NHS?
If a government does not wish to break a manifesto promise it should punt fewer such ‘promises’ into its manifesto.…
The march of the unwhippables
‘Nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won,’ wrote the Duke of Wellington after…
Home economics
There’s nothing unjust about selling the family house to pay for care
Boris faces a painful choice over social care
If social care reform were any deeper in the long grass of political priorities, it’d probably get mistaken for a…
The truth behind ‘do not resuscitate’ orders
Coronavirus is revealing many good things about our society: the number of people willing to volunteer to help tackle the outbreak…
The in-tray of horrors that Theresa May has left for her successor
‘Dear Chief Secretary, I’m afraid there is no money. Kind regards — and good luck!’ Liam Byrne will forever be…
Does fracking really cause earthquakes?
Great shakes Shale gas commissioner Natascha Engel resigned in protest at what she called ‘absurd’ restrictions on fracking — in…
