Good morning. It is never a good time to be seriously ill, but this week is worse than most. The NHS is in the grip of its customary winter crisis, which typically peaks in early January. More than 125,000 posts are vacant, and about 6.5m people are on waiting lists for routine appointments, more than a million of them for more than one procedure.
Today, junior doctors in England go out on strike again, for six days. (A pay deal has already been reached in Scotland, while doctors in Wales are due to strike later this month and those in Northern Ireland are currently being balloted.) Almost a year after the first strike over pay and conditions, the dispute still appears a distance from being resolved.
