The Week
The government must be as ready to remove restrictions as it was to impose them
For days, the Prime Minister had been resisting the kind of measures which have placed many other countries into lockdown,…
Portrait of the week: Salmond cleared, Olympics postponed and Britain told to stay home
Coronavirus Sunday dawned with 233 people in the United Kingdom dead thus far from the coronavirus Covid-19 (a week earlier…
Portrait of the week: Coronavirus hits pubs, offices, sport, the FTSE and Mount Everest
Coronavirus The government asked all people over 70 to cease from social contact for at least 12 weeks in order…
How to be self-sufficient
Those with signs of Covid-19 are being asked to ‘self-isolate’ (Latin insula, ‘island’). But do they have the mindset for…
Sajid Javid: Why can’t my mum buy groceries?
As every Chancellor knows, behind every figure in the Treasury lie thousands of human stories. At times like these, saving…
Where does ‘helicopter money’ come from?
Taking off Who came up with the concept of ‘helicopter money’? — The term is derived from an essay in…
The cure to this crisis can be found in our communities
For the Chancellor to produce an emergency bailout package just six days after delivering his Budget is an extraordinary state…
Letters | 21 March 2020
British science Sir: Dr Fink is right that the UK bats well above its weight through curiosity-driven research (‘Back to…
Coronavirus and the lessons of the Athenian plague
Plagued by the past
Portrait of the week: Panic buying, Budget announcements and farewell to Harry and Meghan
Home At the beginning of the week 319 people in the United Kingdom had been found to be suffering from…
Letters: The BBC licence fee is an anachronism
Musical inspiration Sir: The interview with Antonio Pappano was splendid for those of us who admire him in Australia but…
Is Boris about to abandon his own debt rules?
It’s always tempting for governments to respond to economic trouble with a debt-fuelled spending splurge, but it’s a notoriously blunt…
Suzanne Moore: I was hurt that so many of my ‘colleagues’ denounced me
I have been trying to write about a great unpleasantness for some time: the trans debate that we don’t really…
Nick Robinson: Am I a superspreader?
‘Aren’t you meant to be in quarantine?’ the man in the cloakroom queue asks. I sense that his enquiry is…
The Tories cannot afford a war with the civil service
Thirteen years ago, when John Reid became Home Secretary, he declared the ministry he presided over ‘not fit for purpose’.…
Portrait of the week: Coronavirus plans, Boris’s baby and Priti Patel under fire
Home After a Cobra emergency meeting about the coronavirus Covid-19, when the number of cases in the United Kingdom had…
Letters: We need career detectives, not fast-tracked officers
We need career detectives Sir: Your lead article (Trial and error, 29 February) rightly condemns Tom Watson for pressurising police…
Is climate change making the weather more windy?
Heathrow’s nine runways When was a third runway for Heathrow first proposed? Heathrow was always planned to have multiple runways.…
Viral hysteria
Last week Ross Clark expatiated on the hysteria and panic generated by Covid-19 that threatens to send the world into…
Portrait of the week: Weinstein convicted, Harry and Meghan answer back, and coronavirus spreads in Europe
Home The government told Britons returning from 11 quarantined towns in northern Italy to isolate themselves, for fear of spreading…
Prue Leith: My carbon footprint should put me in jail
I made the mistake of saying I thought insects might help feed the world. They are high-protein, cheap to farm…
Who can use the word ‘royal’?
What a hole The World Health Organisation added processed meats to its list of ‘known’ carcinogens. A few of the…
Boris is taking an emperor’s approach to briefings
The PM is insisting that the briefings he finds in his red box every evening should be, well, brief, and…
Letters: How to really revitalise the North
Devolved or decentralised? Sir: Paul Collier (‘Northern lights’, 22 February) conflates what devolution has come to mean, in UK terms, with…
The ‘Westminster paedophile ring’ is a lesson in how not to carry out a police investigation
A cornerstone of any -functioning democracy is the separation of police and the courts on one hand, and government and…
