and still they can't find their own arse with a map any longer. https://www.thetimes.com/uk/scotland/article/nhs-scotland-spends-farcical-360000-on-actors-to-train-medics-0kvb5dtvf NHS Scotland spends ‘farcical’ £360,000 on actors to train medics The budget for actors to role-play patients would be better spent on frontline services, says Scottish Labour NHS Scotland has been attacked for spending hundreds of thousands of pounds on a “farcical” use of professional actors to play fake patients to help train medics. About £360,000 has been set aside to pay actors and role-players to impersonate people with illnesses and medical conditions to help doctors and nurses hone their skills. The spending is against the background of a cash-stretched NHS in Scotland. At the end of last year, Stephen Boyle, the auditor-general, warned that the finances of NHS Scotland were “unsustainable”. Earlier this month, Audit Scotland, Scotland’s spending watchdog, warned of “unprecedented” financial challenges at NHS Ayrshire & Arran, while NHS Grampian must redesign its health and social care system to balance the books. https://archive.ph/U1GmJ

Re the other week's convo. Typical bougie faux Left behaviour, she had it in spades! https://unherd.com/2025/11/jessica-mitford-faux-progressive-troublemaker/ On the other, stealing seems to have been her favourite form of economic redistribution, and not only from the rich. She took food from cafes, pilfered toiletries and household goods from kindly hosts and benefactors, and at one point snatched “a mattress from a nearby cabin” so she could get a comfortable night camping in a tent. And she didn’t mind exploiting others’ labour either. During the war, she was employed as a typist at the Office of Price Administration, but couldn’t type, so — as she herself described it in her own memoir — she would wander into the typing pool and pretend to be a boss: “I want nine copies of this by noon, please, and be sure that it’s correctly proof-read.” Later, newly arrived in San Francisco with an inconvenient baby in tow, Decca persuaded her working-class landlady to babysit “and to charge her less than half the going rate”. It’s not so clear, then, that Decca’s life functions as idealised woke inspo, for oblivious entitlement is never far enough away, even when she is poor. And she’s unlikely to win any posthumous awards for gentle parenting either. Going on honeymoon with her second husband, and faced with the problem of what to do with her two-year-old, the couple took a bus trip, “passing Constancia and her suitcase out the window to a family to whom they’d been given a letter of introduction”. And when her little boy had an inconvenient fever on the day of a house move, Decca simply deposited him at the hospital and rushed off, leaving the nurses “furious”. https://archive.ph/mADxu

Re the other week's convo Typical bougie faux Left behaviour, she had it in spades! https://unherd.com/2025/11/jessica-mitford-faux-progressive-troublemaker/ On the other, stealing seems to have been her favourite form of economic redistribution, and not only from the rich. She took food from cafes, pilfered toiletries and household goods from kindly hosts and benefactors, and at one point snatched “a mattress from a nearby cabin” so she could get a comfortable night camping in a tent. And she didn’t mind exploiting others’ labour either. During the war, she was employed as a typist at the Office of Price Administration, but couldn’t type, so — as she herself described it in her own memoir — she would wander into the typing pool and pretend to be a boss: “I want nine copies of this by noon, please, and be sure that it’s correctly proof-read.” Later, newly arrived in San Francisco with an inconvenient baby in tow, Decca persuaded her working-class landlady to babysit “and to charge her less than half the going rate”. It’s not so clear, then, that Decca’s life functions as idealised woke inspo, for oblivious entitlement is never far enough away, even when she is poor. And she’s unlikely to win any posthumous awards for gentle parenting either. Going on honeymoon with her second husband, and faced with the problem of what to do with her two-year-old, the couple took a bus trip, “passing Constancia and her suitcase out the window to a family to whom they’d been given a letter of introduction”. And when her little boy had an inconvenient fever on the day of a house move, Decca simply deposited him at the hospital and rushed off, leaving the nurses “furious”. https://archive.ph/mADxu

https://unherd.com/2025/11/can-britain-escape-its-housing-trap/ For most of the 20th century, private renting was a very different beast. Rent controls were introduced into the market in 1915, after landlords in Glasgow attempted to hike rates by 25% and, with most of the men fighting in war, the city’s women went on rent strike. This led to emergency war-time rental protections, which survived in some form until the Eighties. Moreover, private tenants had access to long-term security of tenure. Back then, landlords saw themselves as part of a particular community. Old-school businesses and occasionally paternalistic organisations became involved: the Sutton family, former dockers who had been investing in property since the 19th century, dominated the area of East London I grew up in. But others were sharks, who did their best to operate outside the legal structures. Associated with organised crime, they sought the most vulnerable tenants, often new immigrants. Peter Rachman, who owned more than 100 properties in West London, gained such a strong reputation for bullying and intimidating tenants that “Rachmanism” now describes this form of semi-legal landlord exploitation. Conditions in these homes were a living disaster: whole families in single rooms, outside toilets, rat infestations. But by the Seventies, all types of private landlords were dying out. Property prices were low enough that many working families could afford to buy — and decades of major building programmes meant those who couldn’t were still able to get a council house. Indeed, even Right-wing commentators at the time believed the decline of private landlords was “quite irreversible” and that within a generation they would be “as extinct as the dinosaur”. Instead, we took a different path. In 1976, the UK got itself into financial trouble and had to go to the International Monetary Fund for a bailout. The terms of the loan demanded brutal spending cuts: and specifically targeted expenditure on new council housing. The IMF wanted the state out and the private sector in. This was followed, three years later, by the arrival of Margaret Thatcher as prime minister. A leader who enthusiastically embraced the IMF’s philosophy, she cut spending on new council housing almost to nil, and introduced the Right to Buy policy, which saw millions of homes in the existing stock rapidly sold off. In 1988, Thatcher liberalised the rental market, axing rental control and introducing short-term tenancies with “no-fault” evictions. The idea was that private landlords would replace the state: people who couldn’t afford to buy would no longer get council housing. Instead, they would rent privately and claim housing benefit to meet the higher costs. As one of Thatcher’s housing ministers, George Young, said in 1991: “If people cannot afford to pay that market rent, housing benefit will take the strain.” A housing strategy for the country would mean plotting a way out of this cycle of doom, and imagining a future where we no longer treat housing as a route to quick profits and instead as essential social infrastructure which we cannot do without. https://archive.ph/Me5p1

https://unherd.com/2025/11/can-britain-escape-its-housing-trap/ For most of the 20th century, private renting was a very different beast. Rent controls were introduced into the market in 1915, after landlords in Glasgow attempted to hike rates by 25% and, with most of the men fighting in war, the city’s women went on rent strike. This led to emergency war-time rental protections, which survived in some form until the Eighties. Moreover, private tenants had access to long-term security of tenure. Back then, landlords saw themselves as part of a particular community. Old-school businesses and occasionally paternalistic organisations became involved: the Sutton family, former dockers who had been investing in property since the 19th century, dominated the area of East London I grew up in. But others were sharks, who did their best to operate outside the legal structures. Associated with organised crime, they sought the most vulnerable tenants, often new immigrants. Peter Rachman, who owned more than 100 properties in West London, gained such a strong reputation for bullying and intimidating tenants that “Rachmanism” now describes this form of semi-legal landlord exploitation. Conditions in these homes were a living disaster: whole families in single rooms, outside toilets, rat infestations. But by the Seventies, all types of private landlords were dying out. Property prices were low enough that many working families could afford to buy — and decades of major building programmes meant those who couldn’t were still able to get a council house. Indeed, even Right-wing commentators at the time believed the decline of private landlords was “quite irreversible” and that within a generation they would be “as extinct as the dinosaur”. Instead, we took a different path. In 1976, the UK got itself into financial trouble and had to go to the International Monetary Fund for a bailout. The terms of the loan demanded brutal spending cuts: and specifically targeted expenditure on new council housing. The IMF wanted the state out and the private sector in. This was followed, three years later, by the arrival of Margaret Thatcher as prime minister. A leader who enthusiastically embraced the IMF’s philosophy, she cut spending on new council housing almost to nil, and introduced the Right to Buy policy, which saw millions of homes in the existing stock rapidly sold off. In 1988, Thatcher liberalised the rental market, axing rental control and introducing short-term tenancies with “no-fault” evictions. The idea was that private landlords would replace the state: people who couldn’t afford to buy would no longer get council housing. Instead, they would rent privately and claim housing benefit to meet the higher costs. As one of Thatcher’s housing ministers, George Young, said in 1991: “If people cannot afford to pay that market rent, housing benefit will take the strain.” A housing strategy for the country would mean plotting a way out of this cycle of doom, and imagining a future where we no longer treat housing as a route to quick profits and instead as essential social infrastructure which we cannot do without. https://archive.ph/Me5p1

https://unherd.com/2025/11/can-britain-escape-its-housing-trap/ For most of the 20th century, private renting was a very different beast. Rent controls were introduced into the market in 1915, after landlords in Glasgow attempted to hike rates by 25% and, with most of the men fighting in war, the city’s women went on rent strike. This led to emergency war-time rental protections, which survived in some form until the Eighties. Moreover, private tenants had access to long-term security of tenure. Back then, landlords saw themselves as part of a particular community. Old-school businesses and occasionally paternalistic organisations became involved: the Sutton family, former dockers who had been investing in property since the 19th century, dominated the area of East London I grew up in. But others were sharks, who did their best to operate outside the legal structures. Associated with organised crime, they sought the most vulnerable tenants, often new immigrants. Peter Rachman, who owned more than 100 properties in West London, gained such a strong reputation for bullying and intimidating tenants that “Rachmanism” now describes this form of semi-legal landlord exploitation. Conditions in these homes were a living disaster: whole families in single rooms, outside toilets, rat infestations. But by the Seventies, all types of private landlords were dying out. Property prices were low enough that many working families could afford to buy — and decades of major building programmes meant those who couldn’t were still able to get a council house. Indeed, even Right-wing commentators at the time believed the decline of private landlords was “quite irreversible” and that within a generation they would be “as extinct as the dinosaur”. Instead, we took a different path. In 1976, the UK got itself into financial trouble and had to go to the International Monetary Fund for a bailout. The terms of the loan demanded brutal spending cuts: and specifically targeted expenditure on new council housing. The IMF wanted the state out and the private sector in. This was followed, three years later, by the arrival of Margaret Thatcher as prime minister. A leader who enthusiastically embraced the IMF’s philosophy, she cut spending on new council housing almost to nil, and introduced the Right to Buy policy, which saw millions of homes in the existing stock rapidly sold off. In 1988, Thatcher liberalised the rental market, axing rental control and introducing short-term tenancies with “no-fault” evictions. The idea was that private landlords would replace the state: people who couldn’t afford to buy would no longer get council housing. Instead, they would rent privately and claim housing benefit to meet the higher costs. As one of Thatcher’s housing ministers, George Young, said in 1991: “If people cannot afford to pay that market rent, housing benefit will take the strain.” A housing strategy for the country would mean plotting a way out of this cycle of doom, and imagining a future where we no longer treat housing as a route to quick profits and instead as essential social infrastructure which we cannot do without. https://archive.ph/Me5p1

https://unherd.com/2025/11/the-cruelty-of-tiktok-truthers/ There are material rewards for influencers in the true crime ecosystem: attention, clout, money (if they monetise their channel). That helps to explain the supply, but not the demand. Why should anyone want to believe dreadful and unlikely things about people like Duncan or the McCanns, when they have already suffered the worst thing imaginable? The answer is, precisely, because they have suffered the worst thing imaginable. To accept that Kate McCann or Debbie Duncan are just like any other mothers would be to accept that what happened to them could happen to anyone. Which it could. In the real world, a young man can die of one idiotic choice, and a small girl can be lost because her parents were ever so briefly inattentive. In the real world, there is no way to be “good enough” to prevent such horrors: they happen regardless of how virtuous you are. Believing in conspiracist explanations is a literal-minded way of asserting the “just-world fallacy”. It is nicer to tell ourselves that such events can only befall the wicked, and once the wickedness of the bereaved has been assumed, any depraved acts can be attributed to them. Conspiracy-world is a more moral place than the real world, governed by the same reassuringly strict rules of action-and-consequence as a snakes-and-ladders board. Conspiracy-world is also a more interesting place than the real world. Accidents and abusers are quotidian and grubby. A killer mother, though? That’s a thrilling proposition, a giddily exciting inversion of the expected order where a woman’s function is to love and nurture. The need to hate these mothers of the missing is so profound that the cycle seems irresistible. Regrettably, Duncan is learning, as the McCanns learned before her, that the truth will always be overpowered by the seduction force of a mystery. https://archive.ph/tuA8M

Good God :blob_dizzy_face:

😂 :blob_cat_giggle: