Society

Monday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Can boosters save us from further restrictions?

The JCVI has announced that all over 18s will be offered a booster jab and that the gap between the second dose and the booster shot will be halved from six months to three. Those with weakened immune systems will be offered a fourth shot and 12 to 15-year-olds a second dose of vaccine. These announcements are clearly in response to the Omicrom variant, which appears to spread particularly quickly. Jonathan Van-Tam likened its effect on the UK’s response to the virus to a football team going down to ten men. In recent months, the UK — and in particular, England — has had a heavily vaccine-based strategy for living

Simon Wood

Do masks really halve the risk of Covid? A note on the evidence

‘Most of the trouble in life comes from misunderstanding’ as Willy Loman said in Oscar Wilde’s masterpiece An Inspector Calls. Grating isn’t it? But also a reasonable facsimile of how science reporting often reads, at least to those of us self identifying as scientists. Pre-Covid it was so. With Covid the problem has become, well, an epidemic. Recent reporting about the efficacy of masks is a classic case in point. You might remember the study in question: it certainly made headlines when it came out. ‘Mask-wearing cuts Covid incidence by 53 per cent, says global study’, stated the Guardian: ‘results from more than 30 studies from around the world were analysed

Sunday

Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

What the BBC show trial of Michael Vaughan tells us

After dropping Michael Vaughan in punishment for what he said (or might not have said) many years ago, the BBC has now given him the chance to explain himself. It took the form of Dan Walker, a BBC1 Breakfast host, confronting the accused with examples of his wrongthink and hearing his defence. That defence is pretty academic now, given that Vaughan has already been dropped from covering the Ashes this winter and may now disappear from the screens entirely. But it has given us an example of what may now lie ahead in the cancel culture we are adopting. Ten years after the Tweets comes the outrage. Then the cancellation.

Simon Clarke

Is Boris right to fear the Omicron variant?

Boris Johnson announced a new raft of coronavirus measures on Saturday, after two cases of the Omicron variant were detected in the UK. Face masks will soon be made mandatory in shops and on public transport and  PCR tests compulsory for those travelling to the UK. These new restrictions were revealed less than half a week after health authorities in South Africa informed the World Health Organisation of the discovery of the new Covid-19 variant, designated B.1.1.529 and now re-named Omicron. First isolated on 9 November, on Saturday two cases of the virus were detected in Britain, in Essex and Nottinghamshire. Is Boris Johnson right to fear this new variant?

Saturday

Robert Peston Robert Peston

Has Boris Johnson done enough to stop the Omicron variant?

The restoration of an obligation to take a PCR test within two days of return to the UK, and to isolate until receipt of a negative result, is the most important of Boris Johnson’s announcements today. In theory it will delay the seeding and spread of the new Omicron Covid-19 variant. But the relatively limited prophylactic measures unveiled alongside this – compulsory mask wearing in shops and on public transport, the obligation for any close contacts of those infected with Omicron to isolate, whether or not they test positive – will only turn out to be adequate if the new variant hasn’t already been seeded here. It is possible that

Vernon Bogdanor

Oxford should not accept money that is tainted by fascism

Dons and students at Oxford have in recent years been deeply exercised about Cecil Rhodes, who died 120 years ago. Some politically sensitive students removed a portrait of the Queen in the Magdalen graduate common room, and others even persuaded the geography department to remove a portrait of Theresa May. Yet they seem strangely silent on the implications of taking money tainted by fascism. This month it was announced that the university had been given £6 million from the Alexander Mosley Charitable Trust for a chair in biophysics. Two colleges have also taken money from the Trust — St Peter’s College received £5 million for a new block of student

Henry Hill

The British Army is becoming an American auxiliary force

What are the armed forces for? This is the question that hangs over every defence review, and one that recent governments have been averse to answering. The problem is this: since the end of the Cold War, defence has gradually slipped further and further down the political priority list. At the same time, ministers and senior officers have been reluctant to publicly scale back their ambitions for what the military should do. As a result, instead of making decisive cuts to certain capacities in order to maintain others, we have gradually shrunk all the services to the point where they face serious operational difficulties. Britain boasts two aircraft carriers, for

Richard Dobbs

The Omicron variant is now in Britain. Here’s how we beat it

As feared, Covid-19 is not going quietly. The arrival of the Omicron strain in Britain – with cases already identified in  Chelmsford and in Nottingham – is clearly not the news we wanted as we prepare for the Christmas holidays. The Prime Minister will hold a press conference later today, likely to mark a distinct change in tone. For a while, it was possible to feel that our vaccine programme, supported by better treatments, mass testing and non-pharmaceutical interventions had started to defeat the virus. So, we started to turn our focus to other activities such as levelling up, addressing the NHS waiting lists, climate change, violence against women and girls, and bickering

Friday

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

The ridiculous rehabilitation of Azeem Rafiq

Has Azeem Rafiq been forgiven yet? He’s certainly working on it. After finding himself on both sides of a racism scandal, the former Yorkshire cricketer’s rehabilitation PR operation has been nothing if not swift. As the story broke last week that Rafiq had sent messages mocking Jewish people, he apologised immediately: ‘I am incredibly angry at myself and I apologise to the Jewish community’. The following day, in an interview with the Jewish Chronicle, Rafiq apologised again: ‘My genuine feeling is that I deserve the flak. I f***ed up’. ‘It’s for the Jewish community to decide whether you guys accept my apology,’ he added. Is this really how apologies now

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

The snobbery of Extinction Rebellion’s Amazon blockade

Every week brings fresh proof of what a bunch of bourgeois snobs Extinction Rebellion are. The latest exhibit is their blockading of Amazon’s main distribution centres. The eco-loons and their apologists are dressing this up as a principled stand against venal capitalism. Pull the other one. This is just a noisy middle-class moan about the greedy masses and all the ‘crap’ we’re planning to buy on Black Friday. Yes, not content with irritating deliverymen, builders and other productive members of the working classes by plonking themselves on the M25 and other major roads a few weeks ago, now XR is trying to stop us from getting the things we’ve ordered

Ross Clark Ross Clark

The Omicron variant: what we know so far

Will the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2, the virus which causes Covid-19, be the black swan that pulls the world back — just when the pandemic seemed to be fading? Global markets certainly seem to think so, with sharp falls on Asian and European trading this morning. But what do we know about the new variant? The variant — otherwise known as B.1.1.529 — was only identified in Botswana on Tuesday. We have had numerous variants emerge this year, few of which have succeeded in establishing themselves as a real concern. But what is worrying virologists about Omicron is that it has an unusually high number of mutations — 50, according to South

Thursday

Tom Slater Tom Slater

The sinister attempt to silence a Yazidi survivor

Are we cancelling former Isis sex slaves now? It would seem so, at least going by this barmy story out of Toronto, Canada, where a school-board recently pulled out of an event with a survivor of the Yazidi genocide amidst fears her story could ‘foster Islamophobia’. Nadia Murad is a Yazidi human-rights campaigner and Nobel Peace Prize winner. In 2014, her family were killed by Isis as the group swept through northern Iraq. She was sold into sexual slavery. She was raped, tortured and passed around depraved militants until she eventually escaped. She has since become an advocate for the rights of Yazidis, determined to make sure the West does

Joanna Williams

When did traditional masculinity become toxic?

It’s hard for privileged white men to stay relevant in this age of identity politics but a number of fail-safe strategies have begun to emerge. Prince Harry and, to a lesser extent his older brother, have captured the mental health market by publicly discussing their issues. William’s school pal Eddie Redmayne, and pretty much the entire cast of the Harry Potter films, have spoken out in defence of the transgender community. Benedict Cumberbatch is going down the feminist route. Cumberbatch is calling time on ‘toxic masculinity’. Interviewed by Sky News ahead of the release of his latest film, a Netflix Western in which he plays the part of a rancher,

Patrick West

Does social media really make us unhappy?

It’s a well-known fact that social media makes you miserable. While Facebook forever abounds with people apparently having a marvellous time, in exotic climes, never without ubiquitous smiles and exclamations of delight, Twitter seems too often awash with malicious imbeciles, who even when they are right, still get on your nerves. At their worst, Facebook makes you hate people you do know; Twitter makes you hate people you don’t. This, at least, is a popular opinion. And the consensus that social media makes us unhappy and lonely – in that it encourages us to unfavourably and unrealistically compare our lives to those of others – has been repeated this week

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: how can I get out of a Christmas party?

Q. I belong to a fairly intimate private club which is the one reliable oasis of calm and civility that I know of outside my own home. Now an old schoolfriend is pressuring me to propose him for membership (he needs the endorsement of a club member and I am the only one he knows). He is a dear friend who has been kind to me, and I owe him a favour, but he is also extremely jovial and loud and I know he would bring raucous groups of people like himself into the club. This would spoil the atmosphere and end up by making me unpopular with other members.

Cindy Yu Cindy Yu

Peng Shuai and the return of the concubine

A high-flying Chinese businessman once told me his secret to happiness: ‘Before a man is 35, women are tools; after 35, women are toys.’ It worked for him. He married an educated woman from a good family who helped him climb the career ladder; but once established in his career, he began seeking more exciting female company. I’ve been thinking about that man since the story of the Chinese tennis player Peng Shuai broke. Peng detailed a three-year affair she had with the retired vice premier Zhang Gaoli, 40 years her senior. During the good times, they would ‘talk for hours, play chess, play tennis no end… our personalities fitted

Julie Burchill Julie Burchill

When did Christmas adverts become so unbearable?

When I was young, I dated a man who wasn’t in advertising, but had lots of friends who were. Because I am witty, at some point during dinner — usually when dessert was being laid out with a platinum credit card — one of them would say: ‘Have you ever thought of working in advertising?’ I remember feeling real indignation, like someone had spat in my spritzer. I don’t care that Salman ‘Naughty, but nice’ Rushdie and Fay ‘Go to work on an egg’ Weldon started out that way; I had no intention of ending up in such a venal profession. So intense were my feelings that when, as a

Henry Eliot

Why today’s classic books may not be tomorrow’s

I used to think that you could spot a literary classic by identifying certain salient characteristics: the writing would need literary quality, for example; the book would have had some historical significance; it would have an enduring reputation among scholars and general readers. But each rule threw up exceptions. Darwin’s The Origin of Species is not an obviously ‘literary’ text. E.M. Forster’s Maurice was first published six decades after it was written. The Song of Kieu, the greatest work of Vietnamese literature, is virtually unknown outside Vietnam. And yet all of these books are classics. Over time I have come to agree with Ezra Pound’s warning at the start of

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Why you should be wary of buy now pay later

Are you logged on to Klarna, Clearpay, Laybuy or Zilch for your Black Friday shopping binge — or are you an old-timer like me who still uses traditional credit cards and even sometimes tries to pay for purchases in cash? If those four brand names meant nothing to you, you are yet to join the millions of UK shoppers who have discovered ‘buy now pay later’ (BNPL) apps that offer, with a couple of simple checkout clicks, payment for fashion and beauty purchases, and even groceries, in a series of interest-free instalments. ‘Shopping just levelled up’ is Klarna’s witty slogan for its three-instalment offer; at Laybuy, it’s six; at Zilch,

Mary Wakefield Mary Wakefield

Has Covid turned us into a nation of hermits?

If there’s one thing I misjudged completely, it’s how creepy and long-lasting the effects of lockdown on all of us would be. I’m not in this case talking about the catastrophic medical cost: the heart attacks and strokes, the missed diagnoses. If we’d let Covid rip, if we hadn’t locked down, I’m not sure there’d have been a functioning hospital to go to anyway. What’s troubling me is the effect on our national psyche. Some of us are out and about — anti-vaxxers for instance — enjoying sprightly get-togethers, but others of us have retreated, withdrawn from outside life. Successive lockdowns have knocked us into hibernation mode and it’s not