lockdown
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What we can learn from Britain’s rationing mistakes
Dear Mary
Q. Our neighbours have a tennis court which, under the property’s previous owner, we enjoyed playing men’s fours on. The…
Merkel’s radical lockdown plan could quickly backfire
In its flailing response to the Covid crisis, the German government appears to have finally given up on federalism. Angela…
Is the UK taking advantage of its vaccine success?
UK GDP ever so slightly edged up in February, growing 0.4 per cent according to today’s update from the Office…
Diary
The last patient I treated was 105 years old. She has lived through two world wars, a depression and at…
Heat of the moment
Can we escape the cult of cosiness?
Letter from Los Angeles
When I arrived a month ago, one wouldn’t believe LA was suffering a major pandemic. The roads were still busy…
Real life
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…
Physicist’s notebook
Spring is coming. There was snow in the garden till last week, here in Canada, where I have been spending…
Holiday let
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.…
Real life
‘Welcome to Victims First. Please leave your name and number and we will return your call. Beeeeeeeeeeeep!’ I had rung…
Culture shock
Richard Bratby on the post-Covid exodus of talent from the performing arts
This tangled tale of Greensill and Gupta may hide systemic dangers
Historians of unforeseen crises talk about ‘chaos theory’ and the ‘butterfly effect’, in which a small perturbation far away —…
