From Monday, you will be required by law to wear a face covering on public transport. Paradoxically, this is a sign that the government wants life to return to being as normal as possible. Ever since the start of the pandemic, there has been debate about whether the government should tell people to wear masks
The Eastern Orthodox Church has decided that yoga is incompatible with Christianity. This is an enormous problem for me, as I am a regular practitioner of this interesting meditative calisthenic technique, but also someone who judges the sagacity of a person by the length of his beard and the mournful extravagance of his hat. So
I couldn’t disagree more with Sir Keir Starmer (it was ‘completely wrong,’ ‘it shouldn’t have been done in that way’) or with Boris Johnson (‘if people wanted the removal of the statue there are democratic routes which can be followed’). No, there was something magnificent about the sight of the Bristol mob throwing into the
When I first saw the footage of George Floyd being asphyxiated by a policeman’s knee on his throat, my reaction was pretty standard. My eyes bugged. I stood up. I exclaimed something like: ‘Bloody hell!’ We’ve all seen the video dozens of times now, but it’s worth clinging to that initial shock, the better to
A nurse friend recently finished six weeks in a Covid intensive care unit where she witnessed many deaths and always ensured that nobody died alone. She sat holding a hand, listening, reassuring. Now on leave, she is writing down some of her experiences with the dying. A wise priest I knew said that no matter
The government’s promised ‘pathway to citizenship’ to Hong Kong people is wonderful, but has the Foreign Office arranged a get-out clause? Last week, Dominic Raab told parliament that ‘if China enacts the [proposed new security] law, we will change the arrangements for British National (Overseas) passport holders in Hong Kong’. He added, however, that ‘We
All logic suggests that the 14-day quarantine for arrivals from abroad really is, as Michael O’Leary of Ryanair put it, ‘a political stunt’. The best explanation is that it was conceived in Downing Street — with minimal consultation, unless someone rang Armando Iannucci, writer of The Thick of It — as a sop to focus-group
