Coronavirus
The pubs have reopened. Here is a selection of 1970s beer mats from the Scarfolk council archives. Collect them all!
An exclusive report in collaboration with the Citizens and funded by the European Fund for Investigative Journalism explores the links between a Catholic Nationalist group and the Italian far-right
Last year COVID-19 seemed simple. It was horrific, but the arguments about what to do were fairly straightforward.
On one side were people rightly horrified by its rapid spread who wanted us to stay at home and stay away from school and work and socialising in order to save lives.
On the other side were people concerned about the costs of those measures — to jobs, to education, to freedom, to mental health, and to other lives (because if we used too much of our health system fighting COVID-19, other lives might fall through the cracks).
And through it all came a kind of consensus.
Given the news, it’s hard for an environmentally-conscious socialist worker to focus on a single topic.
Think about it. Should I focus on the catastrophic drought, heat wave and/or wildfires afflicting Europe, north Africa and Asia? What about the megadrought that left Lake Mead dry? Should I focus on it, instead?
Boris Johnson’s first response was at odds with the rest of the world. But this virus does not respect his delusions of national character
There is now the terrible possibility that Britain may match or even overtake Italy and Spain as the country in Europe that suffers most from the coronavirus pandemic. This tragedy has a political, as well as a biological, epidemiology. Those seeking to trace its path may look back on a telling moment – paradoxically the one at which the government finally changed course and fell into line with most of the rest of Europe. On 20 March, Boris Johnson announced the closure of pubs, clubs and restaurants. Even as he did so, however, he made it clear that this decision was an assault on the national character.
Those who claim a ‘win for Britain’ want to distract us from the government’s incompetence and cronyism
They had to go and ruin it, didn’t they? Here is a great moment for humanity: lovely people getting a vaccination against a deadly virus that has been developed with breathtaking rapidity. And what is the image that has been injected into our brains where it will lodge like a parasite? Matt Hancock pretend-crying on Good Morning Britain like a no-hoper auditioning for clown school.
The health secretary staged his bizarre pantomime presumably because the simple emotions that any sane person might be feeling – relief, hope, a tinge of wonder at the extraordinary ingenuity of which our species is capable – are not enough. Another layer of sentiment must be slathered on.
Fintan O’Toole is a columnist with the Irish Times
It’s Wednesday and a few items caught my interest in the last few days. I have been besieged with requests to comment on the Bank of Japan’s announcement yesterday to widen the range in which it conducts yield curve control…
The French President is facing allegations of corruption over his relationship with US consultancy firm McKinsey, which in turn is increasingly embedded in the British state