The Week

Leading article

Leader: Ring-fencing the NHS is only making matters worse

According to popular wisdom on the left — and even among some in the Conservative party — this ought to have been a tough week for the government. On Monday, the new £26,000 cap on benefits came into effect and with it a new principle: that no one on welfare should receive more than the average working

Portrait of the week

Portrait of the week | 18 July 2013

Home Jeremy Hunt, the Health Secretary, put into ‘special measures’ 11 hospitals among the 14 with the worst death rates examined in an inquiry by Professor Sir Bruce Keogh. Professor Sir Brian Jarman, a contributor to the report, said: ‘If you don’t have enough trained nurses, as with doctors, you get higher death rates.’ The

Diary

Ancient and modern

Why Egypt needs a Socrates

No one seems to know, or is willing to say, whether the Egyptian army’s intervention in Egyptian democracy was legal or not. Presumably that means it was illegal. But who defines the term ‘(il)legal’? The Athenians, inventors of democracy, decided the dêmos (citizens in Assembly) was sovereign: it made the law, enacted it and revoked

Barometer

Barometer | 18 July 2013

Running scared Three participants were gored at the Pamplona bull run. The event has reputation for danger, but how risky is it? —Since 1910, 15 deaths have been recorded, the last in 2009. Five of the deaths have been since 1980. — Counting of the participants began only 2011, when 20,500 people were recorded as

Letters

Letters: The Met Office answers Rupert Darwall, and a defence of Bolívar

Wild weather Sir: Weather and climate science is not an emotional or political issue — even though emotions and politics run high around it, as illustrated in Rupert Darwall’s article (‘Bad weather’, 13 July). However, it is important that opinions are rooted in evidence, and the article contains numerous errors and misrepresentations about the Met Office