Youths have turned their noses up at a woodland drink and drugs den after it was spread with pig dung.

What should you do if someone is foul mannered on public transport? It is spirit-crushing for everyone who witnesses it, yet intervention feels thankless or dangerous. You can report someone swearing or smoking or ranting to an official, but they are as fearful as everyone else. The signs in stations, or hospitals for that matter, warning that staff must not be threatened or abused by passengers or patients, suggest an institutionalised dread of the public. You could call the police, but that means lock-down and nobody getting to work. Furthermore, nobody expects it to lead to a conviction. The result is that we are wretchedly complicit in an uncivil society.

"To stay in a caravan. To meet Take That. To go to Cadbury World and eat loads of chocolate." Since Alice Pyne from Cumbria – 16 years old and dying from Hodgkin's lymphoma – published a "bucket list" online almost six months ago, almost all her wishes have come true.

On Monday, in a local shop, I cried. I cried because I was saying goodbye to a sweet, kind man whose smile has brightened almost every morning of my life for two years.

The mother of a six-month-old boy with Down's Syndrome has spoken of the human impact a planned mass eviction of travellers will have.

Rant

Union leaders representing thousands of staff in Southern Cross care homes staged a demonstration today outside a meeting attended by private equity companies.

Wheelchair users have been amazed by robotic legs which could help them to walk again.

Government acts in the wake of neglect exposed by The Independent

The heroine of Margaret's Forster's new novel has a curious name. Her parents have called her Isamay, named after both her grandmothers, Isa and May.

It is not enough to be shocked at the report by the Health Service Ombudsman into the care of old people in Britain's hospitals, which found thousands of examples of patients who were left hungry, thirsty, unwashed, in soiled clothes, and without adequate pain relief. We have had report after report, and platitude after platitude in official responses, but nothing seems to change. Why? It is not a question of money. New Labour has pumped billions in extra resources into healthcare.

A Chinese carer has been badly injured after clinging on to a patient's wheelchair as it plunged down a shop travelator.