If we were to carry on rolling back state-funded care in Britain, it would inevitably be women who’d feel obliged to give up work to care for older r… - Sonia Sodha

Which brings me to the vegan burger. Take a step back and it seems bonkers that our political leaders hold firm on outlawing weed but seem loth to invoke the nanny state where it’s most needed: in avoiding catastrophic climate change. We won't succeed in this unless we persuade people to fly less and eat less meat and dairy.
That’s a gargantuan task, made harder by the demotivating knowledge that your own efforts are only likely to matter if others match them. Yet the most politicians do is half-heartedly conjure up a few green taxes in the hope they’ll nudge people in the sort of right direction. But they’re not effective enough, and also hit the poorest most.
Time for the nanny state to get more radical. We should start by banning altogether things that have literally no function, such as bottled water in a country where it’s actually safer to drink tap water. And take a leaf out of wartime Britain – climate change is no less existential a threat – and ration activities such as flying and eating meat. If you’re not that bothered about a rare steak, you can sell your coupons to someone who can’t live without a good ribeye and feel smug as you tuck into your environmentally friendly, fake-meat alternatives.

Gender-non-conforming behaviour is something to be celebrated, rather than the basis for teaching children that they may have been born in the wrong body, as some schools now do. There are many reasons why children and young people may experience gender dysphoria: it may be a sign that a child will go on to have a fixed trans identity in adulthood, but can also be associated with discomfort about puberty, grappling with same-sex attraction and childhood trauma. There is a coincidence with autism.
Yet the NHS has ignored this in embracing gender ideology's unevidenced affirmative model and has put growing numbers of young people on the path of irreversible medical treatment that can make them infertile and has potentially significant risks for their brain and physical development, without adequately exploring the reasons for their gender dysphoria.

It was an effective, if painful, reminder of how racism manifests itself: not just in words such as "Paki" but in the self-appointed white gatekeepers who see it as their business to police celebrations of the contributions made, sometimes in the face of appalling racism, by people of colour. I've lost count of the number of times I've been called a racist simply for acknowledging the ethnicity of the medical professionals who gave their lives to keep us safe.
So it’s worth reiterating why the skin colour of our fallen NHS heroes matters. It’s not just that outright racism and rising levels of Islamophobia affect the wellbeing of NHS workers willingly risking their lives to keep us all safe, it is that, as the General Medical Council has acknowledged, BAME medics face structural racism. And the government's anti-immigration rhetoric continues to legitimise discrimination at the frontline.