Pubs

Sunday

Tali Fraser

Has the abuse of ‘test and trace’ started already?

I was followed three times in five days by men I didn’t know. During a pandemic – at any time, really – you would think they would have something better to do. They made gestures, shouted, catcalled, but I managed to lose them each time, partially because they had none of my details. They didn’t know my name, my number or my address. But what if they did know that information? What if they had been working at a bar I had gone to with friends and given my contact details over, for test and trace. That was the experience of one young woman this week. Shortly after she went

Thursday

The Spectator

Leicester has a history of lockdowns

Leicester lockdowns Leicester was forced to impose the first local lockdown, in response to a reported surge in cases of coronavirus. — The city was last locked down from the rest of the country on 30 May 1645, when a 10,000-strong royalist force led by Prince Rupert and Charles I himself besieged the town and demanded it to surrender. The parliamentarians, who consisted of 480 garrisoned soldiers, 900 townsmen and 150 volunteers from the rest of Leicestershire, were heavily outnumbered. Moreover, the city’s medieval walls had mostly gone, and had to be hurriedly replaced by earth banks. Even so, the parliamentarians inflicted large losses on the royalists as they breached

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters: Our churches bring comfort – they must reopen

Is ‘the Science’ scientific? Sir: I hope that those in the highest places will have read and will act upon Dr John Lee’s excellent summary (‘The corona puzzle’, 28 March). His article cuts through the information overload and explains the surreal situation the country is now in. Draconian decisions have been made on the basis of ‘the Science’, apparently without realising that it is not science at all. The dangers of mere extrapolations, both mathematical and humanitarian, are widely understood. Modelling is, in this instance, a sophisticated form of extrapolation and even more dangerous. A specific model cannot be dignified with the term ‘science’ until it has withstood thorough testing.

Monday

Alex Wickham

The good, the bad and the ugly: a guided tour of Westminster’s pubs

My phone vibrates with a three-letter text message heralding another inevitable Westminster hangover: “MoG?”. The Marquis of Granby pub on Romney Street is an old-fashioned sort of boozer: mahogany-panelled bar with a chandeliered burgundy ceiling and a gents you have to wade through. There’s none of your poncey hipster food served on slabs of wood here; if you head to the upstairs dining room you’re having a pie and a pint. You can see why Nigel Farage loves this place for a photo opportunity. I’m meeting another journalist for an ale and a gossip, but this used to be a Tory haunt before Conservative Central Office moved from Smith Square.