Melanie McDonagh

A friend of mine works in a surgery in London where lots of asylum seekers go for treatment. The caseload is a snapshot of current trends in illegal immigration, and at present that means lots of Albanians.  Yep, that’s the migrant influx across the Channel we’ve been hearing so much about, and which the Albanian PM, Edi Rama, has been blaming on the British government: 'It's not about Albanians or aliens or gangsters, but it's about failed policies on borders and on crime,' he said this week.  Three cases give an idea of what’s going on. One patient was a nurse from Tirana, Albania's capital, but had found it impossible on a nurse’s wage to buy somewhere to live.

Was it just me or was Liz Truss actually smirking during her statement outside Downing Street, the one littered with cliches about spades in the ground and wince-making turns of phrase like ‘aspiration nation’? Another two years of this PM talking about being ‘determined to deliver’ (deliver what, Liz?) is going to be really hard going.  Just listen to her. Look at her. Is this really the best that we can get from a country of 67 million people? Liz Truss?

Funny, isn’t it, the way people bandy the word 'bastard' nowadays, without any notion that it pertains to the condition of being born outside marriage? It says lots about how illegitimacy was once regarded that its descriptive noun is now simply a bad word. And yet most children who were born last year are what we’d once have called illegitimate; the Office for National Statistics finds that 51.3 per cent were born to mothers who were neither married nor in a civil partnership. It’s the first time this has happened since records began, in 1845. The most troubling aspect about it is that we’re really not troubled. Time was, this situation would have raised uproar in the press. Politicians would have sounded off.

The prime minister of Kosovo has been talking about a possible war in the country, with Russia as the instigator. In an interview with La Repubblica, Albin Kurti said: 'The risk of a new conflict between Kosovo and Serbia is high. I would be irresponsible to say otherwise, especially since the world has seen what Russia has done to Ukraine. We are a democracy bordering on an autocracy, after all. Before the invasion of Ukraine, the opportunities were few, now the situation has changed. 'The first episode, a consequence of the Kremlin’s fascist idea of ​​Pan-Slavism, was Ukraine. If we have a second episode, for example in Transnistria, then the chances that a third war will take place in the Western Balkans, in particular in Kosovo, will be very high.

It’s symptomatic of the unhinged nature of the abortion debate that an MP can be heckled in parliament – and lynched online – for stating an obvious if embarrassing reality. Such is the lot of Danny Kruger, who had the further accolade of a kicking from JK Rowling. On the Roe v. Wade question, which frankly is no business of Westminster, Kruger observed that his colleagues – including Conservatives, mark you – 'think that women have an absolute right to bodily autonomy in this matter, whereas I think in the case of abortion that right is qualified by the fact that another body is involved'. 'I would offer to members who are trying to talk me down that this is a proper topic for political debate.

The Eucharist has, to use the current jargon, been weaponised in the standoff between Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the US House of Representatives, and Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco. He has banned her from receiving holy communion anywhere in his diocese because of her outspoken support for abortion. She’s been sounding off for Roe v Wade after the leaked Supreme Court draft judgment suggesting it may be reversed. Now, on a talk show, she’s counterattacked. When asked about her ban, she observed: 'I wonder about the death penalty, which I am opposed to. So is the church but they take no action against people who may not share their view.