The Critical Commentator

  Feast of Fools Frans Floris the Elder (c.1517-1570) Photo Credit: Shakespeare Birthplace Trust [CC BY-NC-ND] Isn't it rich? Aren't we a pair? Me here at last on the ground You in mid air. Send in the clowns.   Isn't it bliss. Don't you approve? One who keeps tearing around One who can't move. But where are the clowns? Send in the clowns.  Just when I'd stopped opening doors Finally knowing the one that I wanted was yours. Making my entrance again with my usual flair. Sure of my lines, no one was there. Don't you love farce? My fault I fear. I thought that you'd want what I want. Sorry my dear. But where are the clowns, quick send in the clowns Don't bother they're here, oh oh oh. Isn't it rich? Isn't it queer? Loosing my timing, this late in my career. And where are the clowns? There ought to be clowns. Well, maybe next year. Well, maybe next year. Well, maybe next year. (Stephen Sondheim)  Anthem of two females (married to two football...

  The First madness of Ophelia Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882) Picture Credit: Gallery Oldham [CC BY-NC-ND] Civil service bosses are routinely collecting large "performance bonuses" on top of six figure salaries. ... The latest example is the head of a failing defence quango who received a £100,00 bonus last year. Sir Simon Bollom, chief executive of Defence Equipment and Support (DE&S) ... was already paid a salary of between £275,000 and £280,000. Adrian Baguley, his deputy (salary £150,000, approximately) was paid a bonus in the region of £50,000. ... The public accounts committee has rightly described procurement as broken and criticised the waste of public money as well as a departmental culture resistant to change. The latest bonuses do nothing to instill confidence that the MoD is learning lessons. It is the same story of largesse at the tax office and the DVLA. Daljit Rehal, chief digital and information officer at HM Revenue & Customs (salary approximately...

  Shyness In 1917, The American Psychiatric Association (APA) recognised 59 psychiatric disorders. With the introduction of the  Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders  (DSM) ,  often called the psychiatrist's bible, in 1952 this rose to 128 disorders. By 1968 it was 159, 227 in 1980 and 253 in 1987. Currently DSM-1V has 347 categories and it would be a brave person who would anticipate anything other than a further increase in the next edition.   Patients Waiting to See the Doctor, with Figures Representing Their Fears Rosemary Carson (b. 1962) Photo Credit: The Wellcome Collection [Public Domain]  In his splendid book  Shyness: How Normal Behaviour Became a Sickness,  Christopher Lane concentrates on just one of the many newcomers to the diagnostic canon. Drawing on documents exchanged behind the scenes during the creation of  DSM-111, he focuses on how, with the help of psychiatrists, journalists and drug companies, shyness,...

Patients Waiting to See the Doctor, with Figures Representing Their Fears Rosemary Carson (b. 1962) Photo Credit: Wellcome Collection [CC BY]  ... This week researchers at University College London who analysed decades of research concluded that there was no convincing evidence that depression is associated with, or caused by, lower serotonin concentration. (chemical imbalance) The study hardly surprised James Davies, an academic who has long assailed what he sees as the alarming trend of over-diagnosing and over-medicalising mental distress... He is especially concerned at how prescriptions have soared while our mental health has not improved. "Here is a study showing what we've known for a long time, which is that depression isn't caused by chemical imbalances," he says. "This was a piece of mythology, which was was very useful for the pharmaceutical industry to deploy to legitimate use of their products. SSRI antidepressants." (It should be noted that oth...

... From podiums and interviews come echoes of Margaret Thatcher's cry to "roll back the frontiers of the state". First we had Grant Shapps saying the state should "get out of the way" and Nadhim Zahawi talking of slashing departmental budgets by 20 per cent; now we have Penny Mordaunt calling for "low tax ... small state" principles and Liz Truss declaring that she has a "plan to bring down the size of the state" ... Perhaps this is music to the ears of Tory members, but I find the whole thing perplexing and dispiriting.  Elephant in the Room Chierol Lai (b. 1995) and Hannah Stewart (b.1976) Photo Credit: Queen Mary, The University of London [CC BY-NC] Perplexing because this state-shrinking talk seems curiously adrift from what is happening in Britain in 2022. Are the candidates aware that ambulance crews are taking an average of 51 minutes to reach heart attack and stroke victims? Have they tried to get an appointment with a GP? Have they ...

  Summer at Cowes Philip Wilson Steer (1860-1942) Photo Credit: Manchester Art Gallery [CC BY-NC-ND] Sir, I am at a loss to understand the panic being stirred up regarding a few days of heat. It appears we are in for  very high temperatures on Monday and Tuesday, [July] followed by a drop of about 10 degrees on Wednesday. We are advised to take extreme care, make sure children are "safe", drink lots of water etc. Do they think we are stupid? In 1976 we had snow in Buxton on the first weekend of June. Two weeks later on June 23, a heatwave hit many parts of the country, with temperatures above 30C. That heatwave didn't end until August 27. Yes, some areas had problems with water supply, but guess what, people went to work, children went to school or played outside. By using common sense, two words which appear to have vanished from use these days, I am sure a couple of hot days will be bearable. (Richard Madin, Buxton, The Times, 2022) Wonderful to hear that there are glim...

  The Mouth of the River Ogmore Parker Hagarty (1859-1934) Photo Credit:The National Library of Wales [Public Domain] Water company bosses must be jailed for serious pollution, the Environment Agency (EA) said yesterday, as it revealed English water firms had overseen shocking levels of pollution in the past year. The agency said water firms' performance on pollution had declined to the worst level seen in years. It is calling for chief executives and board members to be jailed if they oversee serious, repeated pollution, saying they seemed undeterred by enforcement action and court fines for breaching environmental laws. Emma Howard Boyd, the chair of the EA, said: "Fines handed down by the courts often amount to less than a chief executive's salary ... Investors should no longer see England's water monopolies as a one-way bet." ... Southern Water and South West Water were given a one-star rating - which means a poor performance - while Anglian, Thames, Wessex an...

 Millions of people prefer to open a bottle of still water rather than turn on a tap, market research has shown. Despite a cost of living crisis, the average adult drinks almost a litre of bottled water every week. Researchers point to a growing perception that spring water is healthier. ... Emma Clifford, an associate director at Mintel [a retail analysis company] said: " The popularity of bottled water has endured despite the sustainability and money-saving benefits of using tap water instead." Still Life with Blue Bottle Roger Eliot Fry (1866-1934) Photo Credit: Yale Centre for British Art  [Public Domain] A separate poll by Yonder, a business consultancy, found that 18 per cent of Britons drank only bottled water. This excluded tap water boiled for cups of tea or coffee. A survey of 2,080 people commissioned by Air Up, which makes scented pods for tap water, found that 23 per cent of Britons threw away or recycled five to ten plastic bottles a week. A tenth of respondents...