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Dr Chris Luke wonders if the baby of rigor was thrown out with the polluted bathwater of clerical abuse in public hospitals I t almost passed me by, but the phrase “Check your privilege!!!” was all over social media a decade ago. Thinking back, it was around then that friends in London began to randomly pepper conversations with the phrase, in mocking echoes of the often-heated online interactions described dubiously as ‘debates’. Allegedly deployed to remind people – politely – that they might be a little more advantaged than others when it came to political discourse, it quickly became a verbal cudgel used to silence opponents, especially (as my darling daughters remind me regularly) those who are pre-eminently privileged in Western society: the middle-aged, middle-class, heterosexual white man, who is (as the girls tell me), ‘pale, stale, and male, like you, Daddy!’ Now, in truth, for many years, I felt anything but privileged, setting aside the immense blessing of four healthy offspring, a long-suffering and supportive – nay, saintly – wife, and the tail-wagging welcome from the dogs when I got home from work.

‘Burnout’ was the primary reflex explanation for my deep feelings of inadequacy, until – in the midst of a genuine debate on-air (suffice to say it was to do with sources of caseload) – my interlocutor, a man I’d never met, suddenly said “You know what your problem is, Chris? You’ve got a ‘siege mentality!’” By this he meant t.

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