Society

Professor Neil Ferguson has been a little elusive of late – ever since he was forced to resign after he was revealed to have entertained his married lover at his home, thus breaking lockdown rules. But he did emerge from the woodwork this morning to give evidence to the House of Lords select committee on science and technology. In doing so he succeeded in walking into a fresh controversy. One of the first questions he was asked was by Conservative peer Viscount Ridley, who brought up (10:40) the subject of a Swedish study which sought to apply to Sweden Ferguson’s infamous mathematical model which forecast 250,000 deaths in Britain if the

So now we know. All the things said about Dominic Cummings – that he shattered the lockdown, that he thinks it’s one rule for him and another for everyone else – are far truer of those protesting at the big Black Lives Matter demo in Trafalgar Square on Sunday, than they are of Cummings. The demo’s message was clear. It shouted to the nation that the virtuous and right-thinking are more important than the rest of us. Their views and their rights count for more than ours. So while people will be shamed for sitting on a beach or taking part in VE Day celebrations, those who have the right

In common with thousands of companies up and down the country, The Spectator magazine group availed itself of government funds to furlough some of its staff during the Covid crisis. We feared the impact of Covid on our finances, especially on our cash flow, as parts of our business slowed or ground to a halt, leaving some staff without work to do. We were grateful for government help, which allowed us to conserve cash and still see our people paid 80 per cent of their salaries. Though some parts of our business – especially the revenue lines from events, newsstand sales and advertising – have been hit badly by the crisis

Sweden has received quite a kicking for its decision to avoid a lockdown: look at its death rate, critics say, which at 435 per million is several times that of neighbouring Denmark (99) and Norway (44). But there is another country that has taken the Swedish route which is rather harder to criticise.  In Japan, restaurants, shops, hair salons have remained open throughout and there have been no restrictions on personal movement. Moreover, in contrast to South Korea and Taiwan, there has been little testing – Japan has performed 2,300 tests per million residents, compared with 920,000 per million in South Korea (Britain, by the way, has performed 63,000 tests

One of the many gems in the vast archives of the Post Office is a six-volume collection of letters from a Colonel Whitley in Head Office to the men (and not a few women) working across the country as postmasters. A former private secretary to King Charles II, Whitley effectively ran the nascent General Post Office for five years with conspicuous success. Those under his charge found him, as we might say, firm but fair. In a letter of November 1672, Whitley sternly advised one Mr Watts to crack down hard on a slipshod junior whom he had been foolish to employ on the mails. As the Colonel pointed out,