At @JLFLitfest, I joined @SanamVakil of @ChathamHouse, and @martinwolf_ from @FT, for a discussion on China, Iran and the future balance of power, led by @NavtejSarna. One point I touched on was that energy security is fundamental to any long-term strategy in such a landscape.

🚨 NEW: A Ukrainian national and Romanian national have been found guilty of setting fire to Keir Starmer’s home and car

NEW: The Assisted Dying Bill is returning to Parliament this week. Labour MP Lauren Edwards will reintroduce it on Wednesday after coming 2nd in the private members’ ballot. “The process has been frustrated by a small minority”, she argues.

This really worries me A month ago in Wales I suffered a ruptured aneurysm in my abdomen. I lost over 2 units of blood But the Welsh ambulance service refused to send an ambulance. I was still breathing so apparently didn't need one I spent 7 hours lying on the ground in a car park. Every time I moved I threw up from the pain. The owners of the car park called 999 6x One of the people there was a fireman. He couldn't believe that 999 treated each call as a separate incident and couldn't see the details or link to previous calls. He was frustrated because they could see I was seriously ill but you can't see internal bleeding and so there was no way to persuade 999 that it actually was an emergency Eventually my husband arrived by taxi, journey of more than 3 hours from our home He gave me my pain meds (the car park people were worried about liability and I was too ill to get them myself). This meant I was able to crawl into the car and he drove me to A&E He got me into a wheelchair. We waited 75 minutes to see a doctor. I was shivering, heaped with blankets and threw up all over the floor As soon as a doctor looked at me I was taken straight to resus. The next day I was transfered by blue light ambulance to another hospital, had a blood transfusion and spent 5 days on the high dependency unit If my husband hadn't been able to come and look after me I have no idea how I would have survived. As it was I nearly didn't I would not have been able to get myself to hospital nor would I have been able to log into some digital triage system This scheme seems to assume if you're seriously ill you'll arrive by ambulance and if not you're well enough to navigate a digital portal My experience suggests that's a dangerous assumption A week later, back home in England I had another ruptured aneurysm. This time an ambulance came in 2 hours and again I was taken straight to resus It wasn't the same because I had a recent diagnosis of a ruptured aneurysm so we could tell 999 I was almost certainly bleeding internally. But I was too ill to get myself down the stairs and out to the car. We still needed that ambulance and I still wouldn't have been able to fiddle around with an ipad Proper triage REQUIRES an actual doctor to look at the patient. It takes a matter of minutes to differentiate between a life threatening emergency and not a life threatening emergency. That's not minutes to get a diagnosis but to know that the person is stable or not stable and if not that needs immediate attention Seriously ill people can't do it themselves. It doesn't matter how smart or articulate they are normally. Or how tough. Expecting people to manage their own emergency care isn't what a modern health service should do telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/06…

The Sentencing Act 2020 requires the Judge to take into account “Aggravating Factors”. These are factors which increase the seriousness of the offence.

Agreed. I've just been arguing with a poster trying to suggest Elbit is worse so although this assault was bad the protest was legitimate No. Hitting people with sledge hammers isn't legitimate. It doesn't matter what you think about the actions of third parties, if you hit someone with a sledge hammer you belong in jail And perhaps we can consider what goes through the mind of a man hitting a woman with such a brutal weapon

🚨 Pope Leo XIV has sent a WARNING to migrants, telling them how to behave when they arrive into new countries: 'Learn its language, to respect its laws, to get to know its customs, to participate in communal life and to offer your gifts with gratitude'

Most of the obituaries and tributes to David Hockney will, I imagine, focus primarily on his extraordinary craft and brilliance as an artist. Perhaps they might also mention his brilliance as a communicator (he was such a fine writer and speaker). But there was something else rather unique about him too. He was also strikingly honest about the tricks/techniques artists use and used to paint. His book Secret Knowledge is a rather wonderful detective work into how renaissance and Dutch golden age painters used glass and mirrors to help them master perspective. It's a pretty compelling case (see this video clip from a BBC doc he made alongside the book👇) though I'm sure some art historians will raise their eyebrows. Many will be aghast at the notion that greats like Vermeer might have been using lenses and camera obscuras to help them draw and paint. As if it were in some way "cheating". But Hockney was so self-evidently brilliant he was one of the few people who could document this without anyone gainsaying his own talent. There are very few artists, living or dead, who have this degree of self-confidence. Not just to know their craft, but to be bracingly honest about how it works. One other who comes to mind is Paul Simon: not just an extraordinary musician but is also an extraordinary communicator about the tricks and techniques of how to write and perform music. For many great artists, the temptation is to cloak their crafts in mystery, like a member of the magic circle. Hockney wasn't having any of it. So yes, he was a legend in all the obvious ways. But also in a few other less obvious ways as well. RIP.