lockdown
‘Protect the NHS’ is all very well, but when will the NHS protect us?
After refusing to issue my HRT without a blood pressure test, the GP surgery rang to offer me an appointment.…
The creeping authoritarianism of the Covid-19 restrictions
How can a country abide a government that consistently says one thing and then does the exact opposite? Whether it’s…
Johnson is in trouble over vaccine passports – and it's showing
The biggest question facing Boris Johnson at this evening’s press conference was so-called vaccine passports. Plans for his scheme were…
Johnson takes the next step out of lockdown
When Boris Johnson first unveiled his roadmap out of lockdown, there was a promise of an end to restrictions by 21…
The joy and suffering of writing a book
Spring is coming. There was snow in the garden till last week, here in Canada, where I have been spending…
Britain’s travel ban brings risks of its own
It’s time to get Britain travelling again
Talking down vaccines is a short-sighted tactic
How strange to have spent a year in a world where to hug someone outside of your household is not…
Macron's latest lockdown fiasco
On New Year’s Eve, Emmanuel Macron promised France an economic revival by the Spring. Cancel that. Instead, as the intensive…
Can we see the vaccine effect?
Britain’s Covid data is moving in the right direction. Today’s update from the Office for National Statistics confirms this on…
Boris Johnson's vaccine problem
On the day that people are finally allowed to gather in groups of six outside, tennis games get underway and wild…
Zoomers like me don't realise how lucky we are
For millennials like me, talkin’ ’bout our generation usually involves complaining. We Generation Zs – or zoomers – can’t seem…
Merkel's blundering lockdown U-turn
During her 16 years in office, Angela Merkel has produced a couple of memorable sentences that will be imprinted into…
Merkel declares a 'new pandemic' as Germany locks down again
A year on from the onset of the Covid crisis, Angela Merkel had grim news for Germans this morning: our…
Is Boris right about a third wave?
Covid deaths fell to 17 on Sunday, the lowest daily figure since 28 September and no higher than the levels…
Let's call time on Britain's gerontocracy
The boomers are eating their grandchildren. They don’t see it this way, of course, but they are doing it nonetheless.…
Why I’ve gone right off the police
‘Welcome to Victims First. Please leave your name and number and we will return your call. Beeeeeeeeeeeep!’ I had rung…
How real is the performing arts exodus?
Richard Bratby on the post-Covid exodus of talent from the performing arts
Can John Lewis and Waitrose really remain partners?
Historians of unforeseen crises talk about ‘chaos theory’ and the ‘butterfly effect’, in which a small perturbation far away —…
My plan to kick off life after lockdown
The last time I went to a football game was on Saturday 7 March last year when my 12-year-old son…
The finest humous in England: Arabica food boxes reviewed
Restaurant-goers who cannot let go of restaurants — for professional or other reasons — are floating on a sea of…
Awards season loses its shine when no one can go to the cinema
The inevitable listlessness of this year’s awards season
Has Neil Ferguson been proved right about Covid?
Calculated risk It is a year since Neil Ferguson’s Imperial College team published the paper that inspired the government to…
Why isn't Britain adopting the Danish roadmap?
Denmark’s greatest philosopher, Søren Kirkegaard, experienced only one epidemic in his lifetime, the cholera outbreak of 1853, which occurred after…
Lockdown is making a criminal of me
‘Have you had your jab, Margery?’ said one Surrey lady to another in the queue for take-away coffee at the…
The poetic beauty of science
Safe spaces, diversity quotas, gender-neutral pronouns, culturally relative facts, heteronormative hegemony. Are my right-on credentials right on enough? Am I…
