Michael Simmons

Michael Simmons

Michael Simmons is The Spectator's Data Editor

Kate Andrews, Anthony Whitehead and Michael Simmons

16 min listen

This week: Kate Andrews laments how Truss is hurting the free-market cause (00:51), Anthony Whitehead explains the ‘arrogance’ of the latest environmental activist movement the Tyre Extinguishers (06:42) and Michael Simmons reads his notes on barcodes (12:54). Produced and presented by Oscar Edmondson.

How likely are the lights to go out this winter?

Britain will make it through the winter without the lights going out. That’s the view of the National Grid, which is responsible for Britain’s energy system. You’d be forgiven for thinking otherwise based on the BBC’s headline: ‘Homes face winter power cuts in worst-case scenario, says National Grid’. But Fintan Slye, executive director of the grid, offered

The barcode revolution

Beep-bop. The sound of the supermarket checkout – a noise Morrisons felt the need to mute after the Queen’s death – is made possible by an invention which turns 70 this week: the barcode. On 7 October 1952, a patent was granted to American inventors Bernard Silver and Norman Woodland. Four years earlier, a shopkeeper

How will Sturgeon respond to Kwarteng’s budget?

Kwarteng’s £45 billion tax cuts will have given Nicola Sturgeon a headache. She has power over income tax and has indicated that she won’t replicate his cuts (especially for the best paid). Which means that Scots could end up paying hundreds of pounds more in income tax next year. Already, there is talk about Scottish

Is Truss in trouble?

The history of political popularity shows things go in one direction: down. John Major entered office with a net satisfaction of +15 and left it having lost 42 points. Blair moved into Downing Street a whopping 60 points in the positive. When he left he’d fallen to -27. And so the story goes – even

Michael Simmons

Why life expectancy is going down in Scotland

Life expectancy is perhaps the surest sign of a country’s welfare, which makes it all the more worrying that Scotland’s is going down. Figures out today show that when it comes to life expectancy, Scotland is no longer near the bottom range of western European countries and has instead joined the ranks of the post-Soviet states.

Is long Covid all in the mind?

What’s the link between long Covid and mental health? A study just published in the Journal of the American Medical Association suggests it’s a significant one. The paper looked at more than 3,000 people who tested positive for Covid in the US. Of those who went on to develop ‘long Covid’, it found many of

US lockdowns wipe out decades of maths and reading progress

In Britain, the damage of lockdown was easily covered up by grade inflation: with 45 per cent of A Level students being given A or A*. In the United States, there are large-scale independent studies published today. It’s pretty devastating. Educational performance scores for nine-year-olds have fallen to levels last seen in 1999: so two

The NHS is collapsing. These figures prove it

Twelve-hour A&E waits are at a record high. Doctors fear that tens of thousands will die because of delays in treatment. Already some 10,000 people have waited more than three months for urgent cancer treatment, a consequence of turning the NHS into the national Covid-but-nothing-else-service during lockdown.  Excess deaths at home, the number of people dying above the

Are masks bad for you?

Could masks be making us sick? That’s the suggestion in a Japanese study, published this week in Nature’s Scientific Report’s journal, which looked at bacterial and fungal growth on face masks worn during the pandemic. The results may put you off your tea. The study looked at the masks of 109 people and shows that

Fact check: Is Sadiq Khan right about fires?

Will global warming condemn Britain to more fires? Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London, has been widely quoted this morning comparing recent fires around the capital to the Blitz. ‘Yesterday was the busiest day for the fire service in London since the second world war,’ he said – climate change caused the heatwave which ‘led to

As the NHS shut down, the wealthy chose to die at home

Since January, some 22,000 more Brits have died at home than would be expected in a normal year. These so-called excess deaths at home had stumped doctors and left GPs calling for an investigation. The causes remain unclear but a study published today offers the first clues to what’s going on. The study, funded by

Boris’s premiership in seven graphs

Boris Johnson has just quit – forced out by the sheer number of resignations, leaving him without a government. He came into office promising to deliver Brexit. He pledged taxes would be frozen and the size of government would shrink. Everything was of course overtaken by Covid. Here’s a look at his premiership in charts

Datawatch: Falling attainment in primary school leavers

Last month, concerning data revealed the damage lockdown had done to children. Data released today further illuminates the consequences of Covid restrictions. Figures released this morning by the Department for Education paint a worrying picture: attainment in children aged eight to 11 in five key areas – reading, maths, grammar, writing and science – have

The mystery of Britain’s surging at-home deaths

Britain may look like it’s back to normal after the lockdowns but one alarming trend that emerged in 2020 is very much still with us: people dying at home, who would once have been seen in hospital. This is called ‘excess’ at-home deaths; a number very energetically reported when deaths related to Covid — but

Lockdown’s impact on young children: a look at the data

How much damage did lockdown inflict on children’s development? This could be one of the least-explored scandals in public life given that neither Tory nor Labour (who both backed lockdown) are keen to look at the aftermath. But the Institute for Fiscal Studies is branching out from its normal financial remit and has published a