coronavirus
Portrait of the week: Variants, vaccines and goodbye to Captain Sir Tom Moore
Home About 80,000 people in eight places in Surrey, London, Kent, Hertfordshire, Southport and Walsall were asked in door-to-door visits…
Quarantine heralds the death of Mid-Atlantic Man
As an ambitious journalist making my way in Fleet Street, I dreamed of becoming a Mid-Atlantic Man. Tom Wolfe came…
Portrait of the week: Vaccine battles, illegal haircuts and Biden’s chat with Boris
Home Supplies of the Pfizer vaccine (made in Belgium) were feared to be at risk from a declaration by the…
Are we returning to ‘normalcy’ or ‘normality’?
New normal Why have so many people started saying ‘normalcy’ rather than ‘normality’? — Normalcy has been traced back to…
‘Inessential’ workers have helped keep the country afloat
A common sight across Britain these past ten months has been those rainbow flags fluttering in urban and village streets:…
My taste of lockdown freedom on the Camino pilgrimage
A few of the hip young things sitting along the Lisbon quayside turned their heads my way as my walking…
Capital punishment: why wealth taxes don’t work
Why wealth taxes don’t work
The true cost of school closures – an interview with the children's commissioner
Anne Longfield, the Children’s Commissioner, on why schools must reopen
Australian border closures would work for Britain. Here’s why
Closing the borders worked Down Under. Could it work here?
Vaccine wars: the global battle for a precious resource
The vaccine wars are turning nasty
The horrifying toll of lockdown on the poor and mentally ill
I start the week with someone throwing faeces at me. I thought people were supposed to clap for doctors these…
Quarantine and the freedom paradox
Who would have thought, this time last year, that the British government would be planning to detain British nationals at…
The EU’s vaccine catastrophe is a crisis of its own making
As news emerges that both Pfizer and AstraZeneca are cutting supplies of their Covid-19 vaccines to the EU by up…
The truth about the vaccine ‘postcode lottery’
‘Postcode lottery!’ people scream when one area feels less well treated than another in a public service — in this…
What makes us think they’ll release lockdown after vaccines?
Has the coup happened yet? You have the advantage over me. It was supposed to have taken place on Sunday.…
Portrait of the week: Vaccination, inauguration and a food box denunciation
Home The government undertook to offer a first dose of vaccine to the adult population of the UK by September.…
Could the Australian approach to Covid work in Britain?
The government’s most important economic policy is its vaccination programme. The speed at which people are immunised will determine when…
How cults crumble
There’s something creepy about the way we call Donald Trump fans a cult, then watch them hungrily, hoping they’ll do…
How effective has the Covid vaccine been in Israel?
The world’s eyes are on Israel at the moment, as the country continues its phenomenally fast roll-out of the Pfizer…
How Netanyahu exploits Israel’s vaccine success
The vaccine has arrived at just the right time for the Israeli PM
Portrait of the week: Queen gets vaccinated, Trump supporters riot and gorillas catch Covid
Home The government, in the face of overwhelming numbers of people with Covid-19 being admitted to hospital, told everyone to…
What have we learnt from this pandemic?
So great have been the government’s failures over Covid that it would be easy to forget to give credit where…
The comment that baffled Boris
Real men are not supposed to confess to feeling fear. But I am frightened, second time round, about the plague.…
Footballers have made a pig’s ear of Covid rules
It’s the Portuguese piglet you feel really sorry for. The diminutive (ready cooked) porker — a festive delicacy all over…
Dear Mary: Should I rename my grandmother’s dog to avoid offense?
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