Politics

Hooray for Cardinal Vincent Nichols, who used the one day of the year when his pronouncements are amplified by the season to ‘sincerely appeal that [the government] do not again consider closing churches and places of worship.’ He said in a BBC interview he believed it had been demonstrated that the airiness of churches meant they are ‘not places where we spread the virus’. Mind you, Catholic churches weren’t as bad as the Church of England This is, of course, entirely sensible. It was nuts for churches to close at the start of lockdown, at least as spaces for prayer if not for communal worship. Pretty well any church is ‘Covid-safe’, in

It’s customary these days for people to complain that Covid restrictions mean everyday life ‘is like living in a prison.’ Believe me: it isn’t. So let’s spare a charitable thought for those whose rooms have no handles to hang a stocking on and those whose job it is to make Christmas incarceration more bearable for them. This morning, a prison population roughly the size of Scunthorpe spread across a crumbling penal archipelago of over 100 jails will wake up to a day difficult enough for most on their own outside. But for inmates, Christmas Day is made more so by pandemic restrictions, isolation from families and the municipal smell emanating from

The scaremongers have overplayed their hand. Omicron could prove disastrous, they warned. They scoffed at the early indicators from South Africa suggesting it was milder than Delta. ‘MYTH BUSTER’, declared the Sun when Chris Whitty poured cold water on the idea that Omicron might be milder than Delta. ‘Deaths could hit 6,000 a day’, screamed the Guardian, turning Sage’s worst-case scenario into a chilling headline. The news was full of it: we’re doomed. Yet now it seems pretty clear that these fearful prophecies were way off. Just a week after we were being bombarded with these visions of the Biblical horrors Omicron would visit upon our nation, it’s being reported

The shenanigans at Northcliffe House have given Mr S much to write about in recent months. Whether it’s Geordie Greig’s sudden fall from grace, Ted Verity’s promotion or Lord Rothermere’s designs on DMGT, it appears that the Daily Mail creates as much drama as it reports. Unfortunately it seems that the shock return of Paul Dacre last month has ruffled a fair few feathers in the newsroom, with some hacks fearing a return to what they call the ‘bad old days’. Amid the uncertainty and conflicting reports about comings and goings, it’s unsurprising that some young guns now see their futures elsewhere. For tonight the Times has proudly sent around an email to its staff announcing that the