It's not usual for the royals to reveal their personal health problems. So one can only assume that it wasn't King Charles who chose to make his cancer diagnosis public, but Sunak's government. Just as it's the government which has gagged him from promoting his green-organic hobbies...

    This obsession with a king certainly helps distract attention from the vital issues of the day, like the situation in Gaza, especially when the Tories are a good 20 points down in the opinion polls, in the year of the general election... and when their hands are dripping with blood.

    In fact, it was the very same day that Charles' cancer "revelation" was made that the Academy of Medical Sciences published the report on child health in Britain. It is shocking. Since 2014, the infant mortality rate (deaths before the age of 1 year) has been rising, to the point where Britain now comes 30th out of 49 OECD countries: Japan, with the fewest infant deaths, has 1 per 1,000; Britain has 4 times as many.

    When Professor Andrew Pollard, one of the report's authors, was asked what the cause of this increase in deaths was, he said in one word: "poverty". And poverty is rising. Since 2019, the number of children living in "extreme poverty" has more than tripled, to nearly 1 million. In Oldham, one of the very poorest boroughs in England, 7.2 babies per thousand die before they are one.

    But for adults there are even more stark differences between rich and poor. Women in the most deprived parts of the country live 19.3 fewer years than in the richest parts. For men the figure is 18.6 years.

    Another shocking fact from this report, linked to the government's pathetic dentistry "initiative",which we discuss above, is that a quarter of all kids have tooth decay - and that this is the most common reason for 6-10 year-olds to be admitted to hospital! And then, due largely to poor housing conditions - the cold, damp and black mould - we read that 1 in 11 kids have asthma, one of the worst rates in Europe. Yes, there are two societies in Britain, one for the rich, with private healthcare, and one for the rest of us, with conditions which have already regressed to those of Victorian times.