How easily we slip into the unimaginable! Think back to before the pandemic — I know it’s hard. If you had been told then that travellers might be sentenced to ten years in prison for lying about which country they had recently visited, you wouldn’t have believed it. All right, you might have said, such … Read more
The pandemic didn’t begin in a Chinese laboratory. Nor did it start in Wuhan. Nor indeed, in all probability, did it start in China at all. If the Chinese were hoping to be exonerated from blame over the origins of the coronavirus that has caused nearly 2.5 million deaths worldwide, they could not have wished … Read more
Never has the thought of an ‘all-inclusive’ stay in a hotel taken on such sinister undertones. For £1,750 per person, you get ten nights in an airport Holiday Inn, Travelodge, Premier Inn or such like, where meals will be left outside your room on decontaminated trays and where you can’t open any of the windows … Read more
Legend has it that in the 1920s, the maverick journalist Claud Cockburn staged a private competition among his colleagues on The Times. The winner, he said, would be the person who managed to write the dullest headline. Cockburn himself is said to have carried the day with ‘Small Earthquake In Chile. Not Many Dead’. For … Read more
Blimey, Del Boy Hancock has struck it lucky again. He’s scored a whole bunch of testing kits off some outfit called Surescreen. A sun lotion firm? Don’t be a plonker, Rodders. Nah, they’re a top-class healthcare firm in Derby. Cushty. And the Health Sec had only gone and scored 20million of the things. Lovely jubbly! … Read more
There’s an old saying in politics: never let a good crisis go to waste. That is certainly the approach adopted by the National Education Union (NEU), Britain’s biggest representative body for teachers. With breath-taking cynicism and self-serving ruthlessness, the union is using the Covid-19 pandemic to hammer the Government over cheap political points — at … Read more
Boris Johnson used to boast that his political hero was Larry Vaughn, the mayor from Jaws, who kept beaches open despite the shark attacks. That was then, pre-Covid. Today, Boris is still taking his cue from the Spielberg classic. But he’s singing a different tune. Just when you thought it was safe . . . … Read more
Political civil war has broken out in the Johnson family — and not for the first time. The Prime Minister’s father, 80-year-old Stanley, has denounced the Government’s decision not to block the construction of Woodhouse Colliery, Britain’s first new deep coal mine in over 30 years. Last week, Johnson Sr pronounced this to be ‘a … Read more
Downing Street is abuzz with talk of a peerage for Kate Bingham — the biochemist turned venture capitalist who has masterminded Britain’s world-beating Covid-19 vaccination scheme. When she took the unpaid post last spring, Boris gave her a simple instruction: ‘Stop people from dying.’ Bingham seems well on the way to achieving that: the latest … Read more
RUTH SUNDERLAND: Rishi Sunak clearly feels enough is enough… and he’s right By Ruth Sunderland for the Daily Mail Published: 00:49 GMT, 8 February 2021 | Updated: 00:49 GMT, 8 February 2021 Rishi Sunak‘s plan to tax the obscene profits being made in the pandemic by Amazon and fellow online retailers cannot come into force … Read more