A lovely name for watching night fall | Letters

Rachel Dixon’s piece about “dusking” (‘All you need is a chair and a view’: could daily ‘dusking’ make us healthier and happier?, 1 March) gave a lovely name to something I having been doing all my life, beginning as a child in the company of my Nanna, in a gas-lit kitchen in Wembley in the 1940s, with no view to speak of – just a back yard. I can see Nanna clearly, sitting on a chair wedged between the dresser and a table, the gas mantle yet to be lit by a taper that stood in a clay pot on top of the range. “Let the night take you and you will sleep all the better for it,” she used to say.And I was always a night-long sleeper – still am as I approach my 82nd birthday. Now the view is a back garden in Beeston; I sit and watch, as the night draws in, in an Ikea chair bought for £9 in 1996, and warm thanks to central heating

Betting on nuclear war: what are prediction markets and could they come to the UK?

As ballistic missiles and kamikaze drones rained down on the Middle East, one of the world’s most talked-about businesses was inviting wagers on whether nuclear Armageddon might be imminent.Polymarket is a prediction market, a relatively new breed of betting company that has burst on to the scene, particularly in the US, often seducing customers with little previous interest in gambling.Alongside its larger rival Kalshi, Polymarket offers the chance to stake money on everything from the result of last week’s Gorton and Denton byelection to whether the US will confirm the existence of aliens before 2027.Its market on nuclear Armageddon now appears to have been taken down, after widespread distaste circulating online for the prospect of wagering on the deaths of millions of humans. Polymarket did not return a request for comment

Louise Casey: England’s social care system faces ‘moment of reckoning’

England’s “creaking” adult social care system is confusing and impenetrable to the people that rely on it and held together with “sticking plasters and glue”, the head of a government-commissioned review has said in a withering critique.Louise Casey said the country faced a “moment of reckoning” over its failure to effectively and fairly meet the needs of Britain’s ageing population and rising numbers of people with chronic conditions such as dementia and Alzheimer’s.In a frank and often passionate speech, Casey said society needed to face up to the major challenge of overhauling an underpowered system in which “some needs are barely met at all and others are met late and in piecemeal and random ways”.Casey, who has been tasked with putting policy flesh on the government’s manifesto commitment to set up a national care service, said her review was examined through “the lens of the adult and their family who need social care”.“The challenge for all of us is to get this right and it is a collective one

UK’s private dentistry market faces review after price jumps of more than 23%

The UK’s competition watchdog has launched a review into the £8bn private dentistry market after the price of a consultation increased by nearly 25% over a two-year period.One in five people in Great Britain sought private dental care in 2024 in part because they could not access NHS treatment. Announcing its investigation, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said it wanted to make sure the market was “working well for UK consumers”.The CMA said dentistry played “a critical role in people’s health and wellbeing” and that demand for private services had risen sharply in recent years. Against this backdrop the regulator pointed to independent price data that showed average prices had “increased significantly”

‘A space of their own’: how cancer centres designed by top architects can offer hope

Maggie Keswick Jencks received her weekly breast cancer treatment in a windowless neon-lit room in Edinburgh’s Western general hospital. Her husband, the renowned landscape designer Charles, later described it as a kind of “architectural aversion therapy”.It was then, in the early 1990s, that the Scottish artist and garden designer imagined her own blueprint that would allow cancer patients “a space of their own” within the alienating, clinical confines of the hospital estate, one where they might “not lose the joy of living in the fear of dying”.The first Maggie’s Centre opened in Edinburgh in 1996, a year after her death, designed by Richard Murphy and housed in a converted stable block in the Western general grounds.Three decades on, there are more than 30 of these hospital-adjacent cancer support centres across the UK and overseas, and this legacy of conscious design is celebrated in a free exhibition at the V&A Dundee from Friday

UK government ‘effectively allowed’ child sexual abuse, campaigners say

Campaigners have accused the UK government of in effect allowing child abuse to continue by having an “inconsistent and arbitrary” approach to implementing recommendations from a seven-year statutory inquiry.The claim was made at the high court in London, where a judge said a legal action against the Home Office could continue.The Maggie Oliver Foundation is taking action over the government’s alleged failure to adopt all the changes recommended by the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse (IICSA), which conducted investigations between 2015 and 2022.At a hearing on Thursday, Mr Justice Kimblin allowed the legal action to continue, saying it was arguable that the foundation had a “legitimate expectation” that the government would implement the recommendations. The Home Office is defending the claim