Ross Clark is a leader writer and columnist who has written for The Spectator for three decades. His books include Not Zero, The Road to Southend Pier, and Far From EUtopia: Why Europe is failing and Britain could do better
Last week it was ‘operation red meat’, designed to recapture wavering Tory voters. This week something very different: changes to the Highway Code are coming into effect, which threaten to upset the not-insignificant number of car owners. Sure enough, the Alliance of British Drivers, the trade union for Mr Toads, has complained bitterly. Responding to a
There must come a time when even Beth Rigby starts to ask whether she is too fixated on a small staff party which happened nearly two years ago and not quite enough on the highest inflation rate in 30 years and the prospect of a Russian invasion of Ukraine. But to be fair to Sky
Warning to the working classes: the government is coming after your pleasures again. It is you who are being blamed for environmental degradation and you who will be made to pay the price. The latest wheeze of environment secretary George Eustice is to ban plastic sachets of tomato ketchup, soy sauce and whatever else from
For once, yesterday’s Downing Street press conference included a worthwhile question, and not of the ‘why aren’t you locking us down?’ variety. In fact, it had nothing to do with Covid at all. Harry Cole of the Sun asked why, given that the Prime Minister had once cited the ability to remove VAT from fuel
‘A stain on our soul’. That was how Gordon Brown, in his latest missive on the subject, described the failure of the west to ensure that the whole world is vaccinated. In a previous attack on western policy — at the end of November, just as Omicron was emerging — he wrote of “hoarding” and ‘vaccine
Two weeks ago, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and Imperial College both published modelling showing frightening scenarios if the government did not react to the Omicron variant by imposing immediate restrictions on our day to day lives. The former suggested that hospitalisations could peak at 7,190 a day in January in
It’s climate panic again. This time, under headlines such as ‘Baked Alaska’, we are informed that the most northerly US state has experienced ‘absurd’ temperatures for December. ‘In December when temperatures would normally be well below zero,’ states the Independent, the town of Kodiak has registered a temperature of 67 degrees Fahrenheit (19.4 Celsius). ‘In
It’s post-Christmas, and there are already murmurs about supermarkets with empty shelves. Just as with the petrol shortage in September and shortages of loo paper at the beginning of the first lockdown, these things can rapidly develop into major crises, purely as a result of panic-buying. Tesco, whose store on the Isle of Wight is reportedly especially
Public health officials in Britain and South Africa were on different planets for about a fortnight. While those in South Africa kept presenting data suggesting that Omicron caused less severe disease than earlier variants, scientists in Britain continued to claim it was too early to say. Scenarios published by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical
There were two takeaways from last night’s press conference: firstly, the hard data showing that the number of recorded cases of Covid had surged by 19,000 – or 28 per cent – in a single day. Second was the assertion that, as a result, the NHS is in danger of being overwhelmed. What was lacking
It wasn’t long ago that we were fearing the end of the furlough scheme might be accompanied by a significant rise in unemployment. According to the latest labour market figures released by the Office of National Statistics (ONS) this morning, that doesn’t appear to have happened. What they do show, however, is that the pandemic
While the government’s policy on Omicron is being driven by modelling suggesting the possibility of a huge wave of hospitalisations in January, some more real-world data has come in from South Africa. A presentation by the South African Medical Research Council this morning has offered evidence that while Omicron does indeed appear to be more
If you haven’t yet been approached about having a Covid booster jab, your phone is about the spring into life – and it is unlikely to let you forget it until you agreed to have your third dose of the vaccine. The Prime Minister’s announcement on Sunday evening that every adult is to be offered
It is nine months since the World Health Organisation (WHO) dismissed the possibility that the Covid 19 pandemic could have originated in a laboratory leak, calling it ‘extremely unlikely’. Since then, much scientific opinion has been moving in the direction that it is at least a possibility – especially given that the Wuhan Institute of
Why is the government so scared of the Omicron variant? So far, most of the evidence we have for transmissibility and virulence of Omicron is based on very limited data from South Africa, but the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) has now published its own preliminary study of the variant — the results of which
There was nothing but gloom about the Omicron variant at yesterday’s No. 10 press conference. But with reporters preoccupied with last year’s Christmas parties, no one thought to bring up a statement by Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the head of the WHO, who earlier told reporters that there is ‘some evidence that Omicron causes milder disease than Delta, but again
London is the most congested city in the world and it’s the cycle lanes wot done it. That is the impression you will pick up from the headlines this morning. ‘Cycle Lanes Blamed as City Named Most Congested,’ reads a BBC headline, to take but one example. The story emerges, it turns out, from a
It is called managing expectations: the steady drip of forecasts and scenarios designed to prepare us for bad news, so that when that news does finally arrive it doesn’t seem nearly as bad as it would otherwise have done. So is that what the Bank of England is up to with its deputy governor, Ben
What is the purpose of vaccine passports: to keep down infection or to try to persuade more people to get vaccinated by making life for the unvaccinated inconvenient and restricted? Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen wasn’t trying to conceal her intentions when she announced in a press conference on 8 November that vaccine passports would
One of the unfortunate side effects of a steeply rising oil price this year is that it seems to have undermined the potential profitability of the Cambo oil field off the Shetlands. Announcing this morning that it was pulling out of the project, in which it had a 30 per cent share, Shell said it
