The good doctor makes his return to the Daily Mail as he lambastes junior doctors at the NHS for going on strike to the detriment of British patients.

Doctors ought not to go on strike. This principle is so fundamental that it should need no discussion.

By striking for four days this week, junior doctors reveal their greed and irresponsibility because they are prepared to put their own interests above those of their patients.

In his Takimag column, Dr. Dalrymple asks some no-nonsense questions on the recent European Union edict to phase out gas-fueled cars by 2035 before tackling the thorny issue of bank failures.

These days, everybody—by which I mean every person who considers himself intelligent and educated—must have an opinion about everything. It would be socially irresponsible, even antisocial, not to be able to opine on each of the thousand burning questions of the day. The natural result is that opinion comes before its own justification, and most intellectual activity consists of finding reasons for what one already thinks. Perhaps it was ever thus.

In the March issue of The Critic, our favorite doctor takes issue with the newest inane British police slogan meant to reassure an increasingly doubtful general public.

We would like to wish all of our readers a happy and blessed Easter.

See it, say it, sorted: what does “sorted” mean in the context of the British police? If the experience of countless millions is anything to go by, it means “sorted” as far as the police are concerned, that is to say an incident is given, often somewhat reluctantly, a crime number. 

Over at The Epoch Times, the good doctor warns us of the latest politically correct, leftist censoring of a deceased writer’s books—this time the Woke commissars have come for Dame Agatha Christie’s oeuvre.

This precludes the absurd, but also sinister, retrospective editing of books such as those that Roald Dahl wrote for children, and now Agatha Christie’s detective stories—all in the name of sensitivity to people’s feelings, but in reality to exercise power and control over the population’s thoughts in the best Stalinist manner.

In the April edition of New English Review, our critical doctor reviews a book on an 18th-century English architect, while considering the uglification of much of modern global culture.

Lack of elegance to the point of ugliness has its own virtues: that is to say, its political virtues, which these days are the only virtues that count. Ugliness is democratic, or at least demotic, because it is so easy to achieve and is within the reach of everyone. Indeed, in a universe in which the second law of thermodynamics reigns, the slide to ugliness is the natural tendency of things, while beauty demands constant maintenance and a perpetual struggle against dissolution. Moreover, ugliness is cheap, but beauty tends to be expensive, or at least time-consuming.

In this week’s Takimag, the grateful doctor reminds himself—and his readers—of the need to occasionally look around and be thankful for the life that he has been given.

It is difficult—impossible would probably be a more accurate way of putting it—to be always counting one’s blessings, however great they might be. Nevertheless, it is important to try to do so at least intermittently, or else one would lose sight of them altogether and give in to self-pity, one of the few emotions that can, and often does, last a lifetime.

The dubious doctor informs us of the Parisian Left’s new lofty mission to overturn the deeply ingrained societal stereotypes concerning rats—as the city’s rat population multiplies by the hour.

It turns out that not everyone in the population or on the city council is unequivocally opposed to rats, according to an article in Le Figaro. The rat problem has become ideological, like practically all others. This broader development may be indirectly related to the downfall of the Soviet Union, after which the ideologically minded had to satisfy themselves with a cause other than Marxism, and found one wherever they could.

In his Takimag column, Theodore Dalrymple ponders which taboo will be knocked down next or sexual perversion normalized by radical progressivism in light of the Spanish government’s shocking recent decision to decriminalize bestiality. God help Spain!

Transgression has long been a term of praise for art and other critics, without much regard to what is being transgressed, but now transgression is something that has become desirable as social policy also. Find a taboo and transgress it, seems to be the way we “progress” today.

In the winter edition of City Journal, the concerned doctor reflects on the shocking Rotherham sexual abuse scandal, which was largely swept under the rug by the criminally negligent local authorities.

The toxic mix of two degraded cultures intermingling in the context of a public administration that is bloated, cowardly, unsure of itself, and rotted by ideological stupidity resulted in child abuse almost on assembly-line principles. The Rotherham scandal was some years ago now, but it was far from unique.