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
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
Anyone who doubts that the fiscal response to the pandemic has stoked inflation needs to look at the latest figures from the Nationwide on the housing market. Yet again they confirm that the deepest recession in modern history has been accompanied by a boom in house prices. Moreover, the inflation does not seem to have
Ministers accused of overreacting to the Omicron variant will feel vindicated by the comments of Moderna chief executive Stéphane Bancel. In an interview with the FT, Bancel said he expects his company’s vaccine to suffer a ‘material drop’ in efficacy against Omicron – on the grounds that the new variant has 32 mutations to its
Given the enthusiasm for tax cuts usually shown by Conservative MPs it is remarkable how few of them have, in public, raised objections to the government’s loose fiscal policy. True, the Prime Minister’s announcement of a hike in National Insurance ostensibly to pay for social care, elicited squeals from the back benches, yet last month’s
Will the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2, the virus which causes Covid-19, be the black swan that pulls the world back — just when the pandemic seemed to be fading? Global markets certainly seem to think so, with sharp falls on Asian and European trading this morning. But what do we know about the new variant? The
Should homebuyers have to pay a higher rate of stamp duty if the property they are buying has a low energy rating? After all, motorists already pay a higher rate of road tax if they are buying a new car with high fuel consumption. The stamp duty idea has been advanced by a trade body
Given the ability of Covid-19 to make fools out of everyone, it is not entirely fair to single out an opinion piece penned by Christina Pagel and Martin McKee, members of the self-appointed ‘Independent Sage’ committee on 7 October. But it sums up an attitude which was common just seven weeks ago. ‘England, not for
How quickly things change. Just a month ago many EU countries were being praised for keeping some Covid restrictions in place, in many cases operating vaccine passport systems. By contrast, Britain was being attacked for removing most Covid restrictions in July. The UK suffering elevated infection rates ever since, leading to predictions that we could be
So, Austria’s experiment to persuade more people to get vaccinated by placing the unvaccinated in lockdown didn’t last long. A week, to be precise. From Monday, the entire country will be placed under stay at home orders and other restrictions — this, after it seemed that the era of lockdowns was over. But perhaps more
Which public health interventions help to cut the spread of Covid-19 — and which do not? Except for vaccinations, where we have extensive trial data, this is a question on which the government has had little information to help it. But this morning’s headlines appear to offer an answer: wearing masks may help slash Covid
Throughout the Insulate Britain protests there was a suspicion that the group was deliberately trying to get its members behind bars during the COP26 conference — a suspicion that was enhanced when a spokesperson for the group told the Guardian on 24 October: It’s fair to say that there is absolute disbelief and surprise that the
October’s employment figures, according to the Chancellor Rishi Sunak are ‘testament to the success of the furlough scheme’. The other way of looking at the figures, released this morning, is that they show why the furlough scheme should have been wound up months ago, rather than at the end of September. The number of people
The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation has recommended that Covid booster jabs be offered to people in their forties, after they became available to the over-fifties earlier this year. But, as recently as August, the World Health Organisation opposed booster jabs. It said in a statement: ‘In the context of ongoing global vaccine supply constraints,
Like a football tournament with an official beer, COP26 had an official energy provider: the Griffin wind farm in Perthshire, operated by SSE. Trouble is that for much of the conference it was not paid to generate electricity. Instead, it received £500,000 in ‘constraint payments’, which are given to owners of wind farms when they
