Isle of wight

Saturday

Max Jeffery

How Cowes found the secret of a successful seaside resort

These days, most English seaside towns are sites of national mourning. You pay your respects by walking up some deathtrap pier, dropping two pence in an arcade coin pusher and whispering, your flower now on the grave: ‘Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.’ But Cowes, on the Isle of Wight, has managed to stave off this sorry end. Its secret is Cowes Week. Cowes Week, which starts today, is an annual sailing regatta. It has earned its place as a respected event in Britain’s sporting calendar – always in August, between Glorious Goodwood and the Glorious Twelfth – but its beginnings were unambitious. On 10 August 1826, following an advertisement

Wednesday

Charlie Baker

The best thing about the Isle of Wight? There’s not a gastropub in sight

This summer promises to be the hottest on record, which is not great news for those of you anxious about the coming climate apocalypse, but better news for those planning a holiday at home – which has become my default position of late. In truth, I haven’t left the country since before the pandemic, and I’ve only been able to make a couple of extended trips to the Isle of Wight – and it’s a place that I’ve come to love deeply. Rather like Mansfield Park’s Fanny Brawne, I can only think of the island, and why it appeals to me so. Might it be the sparkling weather? Or the

Thursday

The Spectator

Track and trace should not be our only exit strategy

The concept of the state tracking our every movement is anathema to this magazine and, we assume, to its liberal former editor now resident in Downing Street. Nevertheless, such is the impasse over coronavirus that it is right the government should attempt to exit lockdown via the application of a voluntary ‘track and trace’ on mobile phones, trials of which began on the Isle of Wight this week. Track and trace appears to have worked for Asia so, given what’s at stake, it’s reasonable to try it here. South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam — the countries which employed tracking and tracing from an early date — appear to have dealt with

Sunday

Bob Seely MP

In defence of the Isle of Wight’s suitability for tracking and tracing

A reply by the Isle of Wight’s MP to Freddy Gray’s: Is the Isle of Wight really the best place to launch a tracing app? Dear Freddy, You have written disparagingly about the Isle of Wight, its tech and a little bit about its identity. You said the internet was ‘rubbish’ and that we live in the 1980s. I would like to challenge that. The internet really does work here. I am aware there’s black hole of sorts in Seaview, where you sometimes stay. However, that is atypical of the Island. I have had Sky’s Adam Boulton, no less, congratulate me on the quality of my connection and I live

Saturday

Freddy Gray

Is the Isle of Wight really the best place to launch a tracing app?

Technology can save the world — from South Korea to Singapore to, um, the Isle of Wight. Oh yes. Britain is catching up at super-fibre-optic-lightning speed with the superpowers of tech in its fight against Covid-19. We’ve developed a snazzy ‘track and trace’ app, that’s already been trialled at an RAF base in Yorkshire, and the government now intends to roll it out in a pilot scheme on the lovely Isle of Wight and the Scottish Isles, Health Secretary Matt Hancock will announce on Monday. Sod the threats to privacy and liberty — let’s get people-monitoring done! One small problem — the internet on the Isle of Wight doesn’t really