In normal circumstances, no one would care if staff in No. 10 held a Christmas party. But last year, Boris Johnson made parties illegal. Throughout most of December, London was under Tier 3 or 4 restrictions. Social gatherings were strictly forbidden and anyone who broke the rules was at risk of a £10,000 fine. The
Home Sajid Javid, the Health Secretary, said that the Omicron variant of coronavirus was spreading by community transmission in ‘multiple regions of England’. He gave the number of cases detected as 336 by 6 December, and the next day another 101 were found. Anyone coming from a foreign country would have to pass a coronavirus
I was born and raised in Sheffield, a proud steel-making city which drew much of its energy from a sense of under-appreciation. Manchester had the airport, York and Leeds the fast mainline to London. Film stars went to Birmingham for premières. But we were part of Yorkshire, the greatest of English counties, with more acres
Time to settle the Great Omicron Question. First, there is no word omikron (and no c) in ancient Greek. Second, the classical Greek (5th-4th centuries BC) name for omicron was an accented ou. In the 2nd century AD it was replaced by the name o mikron (‘little/short o’), when Greece was under Roman rule. So
Flood relief Sir: In my lifetime there have been at least two major flood emergencies when the armed forces have played a key role: the 1947 floods, and the East Coast storm surge in 1953 (Leading article, 4 December). Both of these major catastrophes required large inputs of manpower and machinery. We should remember that
