Month: June 2022

Despite the private doubts no one in Holyrood’s debating chamber wanted to listen

COVID-19 BROUGHT our lives to a standstill and everything we thought was normal was turned on its head. Instead of the NHS being there to save our lives we were suddenly told that it was our job to save the NHS. Thousands of people in need of help didn’t visit their Doctor because they believed …

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“It seems unreasonably cruel that dying people cannot see relatives’ faces” –  the harms of continued masking in healthcare 

ON 1 JUNE, NHS England quietly changed its mask guidance for healthcare settings to end the so-called ‘requirement’ for staff, patients and visitors to wear face coverings in most wards and departments. This sounds welcome enough – until you realise the new guidance largely passes the buck down to local hospitals and GP surgeries, where we are seeing masking …

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The Covid Horseshoe explained

AFTER LOSING the initial battle on covid we may be winning the war. In England at least, covid seems to have slipped from the national consciousness and, in making brave (but entirely justified) decisions to reverse vaccine passports, masks and lockdowns, England has dragged the rest of the UK, however reluctantly, along with it. How …

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How the April fall in UK GDP is related to the pandemic response

YESTERDAY the growth figure for the UK’s GDP in April was published and showed a fall by 0. 3% after a fall of 0.1% in March. Immediately commentators (and social media in particular) rushed to abuse the government. Fair enough, that’s politics and so all the old hobby-horses were trotted out.  It’s the “cost-of-living crisis …

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There should be no room for Hunt in the Cabinet 

OF ALL THE TRULY bizarre suggestions to come out of the recent no-confidence vote in the prime minister the most ridiculous has to be the proposition that Boris Johnson should build bridges with the critics in his party by making former Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt his Chancellor of the Exchequer.  Jeremy Hunt was Britain’s longest serving …

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Let’s not let Lockdowns off the hook – shortages and disruptions come from stopping our economies

AS NEW PROBLEMS crop up in our return to as near-normal living in the aftermath of Covid-19 there is a new obstacle to holding to account those responsible for the economic and social damage done by lockdowns. Some people are intentionally shifting the blame to the wrong cause. We can see it regularly in the …

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Where now for trust and respect towards the authorities?

TRAVELLING on the train last month, listening to the announcements instructing people to wear face masks, I wondered whether I was witnessing mass civil disobedience.  Only a few people were wearing masks.  No-one put them on when the announcements were made. Sadly, this was not a revolution, more a disillusion.  A general recognition that, what we had been …

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