writing
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When your world shrinks to the size of a hospital room, the window becomes your television. From the “incinerator” chimney to the drama of the air ambulance arriving from the islands, here is a look at life outside the window of Ward 27.
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Writing from a hospital bed, I see the NHS as a shield against the market. But the vultures are circling. The same tech oligarchs who want to strip-mine our digital lives are now eyeing up our medical records. Why defending socialised healthcare and self-hosting your data are two sides of the same fight.
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I can self-host my email. I can self-host my photos. But stuck in a hospital bed, I’ve realised I cannot “self-host” my groceries. When the only supermarket in reach demands your data in exchange for fair prices, privacy becomes a luxury good. A look at the failed experiment of the “Communal Clubcard” and the new digital feudalism of the weekly shop.
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Five nights into a hospital stay, sleepless and bored at 3 AM, I did what any reasonable person would do: built a simple two-player reflex game for a sight-impaired friend. Accessible, private, and playable from a hospital bed. Not every day you get to play-test a game like that.
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My 2026 resolution isn’t less screen time, it’s owning the screen. Moving my digital life onto my own VPS instead of renting space from billionaires who treat our data as raw material. Data sovereignty isn’t just for the technical elite anymore, and reclaiming it might be the first step toward a future of freedom rather than dependency.
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Reform UK just won its first contested council seat in Scotland. Mainstream politics here has started to feel like a broken smartwatch: full of features nobody asked for, always needing updates, dead battery right when you need it. Reform’s offering a different device entirely. It might be ticking backwards, but at least the display is clear.
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Moved this blog off rented hosting and onto my own Hetzner VPS, cutting monthly costs from over £12 to £3.05 while gaining full control: Docker, WireGuard, AdGuard Home, the works. No walled garden, no black box. It’s mine.