Society

It was easy to criticise Westminster for caving into Extinction Rebellion’s demands for a ‘citizen’s assembly’ on climate change when it agreed to convene just such a body at the end of last year. By appeasing the group’s law-breaking, so the argument went, parliament was emboldening XR and other direct action groups to block streets, spraypaint buildings, smash windows and so on.  But the exercise, which has just concluded in a handful of recommendations to government, has served one purpose: it has proved that the public’s views on climate change and what to do about it are nowhere near that of Extinction Rebellion.  That seems to have come as a shock to the group,

Some bright spark at the National Institute for Healthcare Excellence wants all alcohol intake by expectant mothers to be recorded, regardless of whether they consent. This would reveal whether a mother had consumed a single drink during the first week of pregnancy – a time when they may not even have realised they were expecting. There is no consistent system in place to monitor drinking among pregnant women which, according to NICE, is a problem. Midwives ask about alcohol but it is not mandatory to record the information; NICE wants women at antenatal appointments to be grilled on the pattern and frequency of their drinking and the numbers and type of beverage. This

Imagine a world where Covid-19 has been eliminated. To be certain this is true, the government conducts regular tests at random. The number of positive results should be zero, right? Wrong. There will always be a proportion of cases tested that come back with a false positive test result. Thankfully, for Covid-19, the false positive rate is less than one per cent of tests done. But it is not zero. It will be impossible for us to ever reach zero. Why? Because Covid-19 cannot be eliminated, even if it is likely to evolve to be more benign and become a seasonal problem like influenza.  Coronaviruses are, after all, seasonal, and

Why does the BBC do it? Needlessly antagonise that rapidly diminishing section of the population which still has a vaguely nice memory of the organisation? The latest move in their ‘stuff the elderly’ campaign is to drop Sue Barker from A Question of Sport – an enormously admired presenter and easily the best host the programme has had. Why? ‘The BBC want to take the show in a new direction,’ according to Barker. I bet they do. As far away from their audience as possible. The new presenter will tick at least one diversity box, and people will assume, perhaps rightly, that that is why they were hired. Barker should sue on

Much hope is being pinned to a vaccine as our route out of this Covid nightmare. But even if one is developed, would enough of the population be willing to take it? Amidst a growing movement of ‘vaccine scepticism’ online, there are signs that many people would take a lot of convincing to get themselves inoculated. In New Zealand, one in ten people would refuse a Covid-19 vaccine. In Belgium, 30 per cent of people are either sceptical about a vaccine or would refuse one; and in the USA, fewer than half would get the jab. In a worldwide survey carried out by the World Economic Forum, 29 per cent