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
How certain should we be of the government’s claim that the new variant of SARS-CoV-2 is 70 per cent more transmissible than the previous common strain falls apart? I ask not because I have any information that would contradict the Prime Minister, but because it has become a repetitive feature of this crisis: that the piece
Has the influence of anti-vaxxers been hugely overstated? That is one interpretation of the Office for National Statistics’ latest survey on social attitudes towards Covid-19 and the government’s efforts to tackle it. While fears abound that people might refuse the vaccine, with their minds turned by lies disseminated on social media about Bill Gates wanting to
The government is yet again under fire for its handling of Covid-19, as cases rise across parts of the country. But what about the global context? Is it still possible to argue that Britain has done especially badly in handling the pandemic? Possibly, but it is becoming increasingly hard to do so, as many countries
So, Christmas, it seems, will not be cancelled after all. The government has decided instead to tackle fears of a January spike in cases with tougher messaging, telling people that just because they will have the legal right to mix for five days next week doesn’t necessarily mean they ought to avail themselves of that
Just how widely is the economic pain from Covid-19 being felt? Still surprisingly little, according to the latest employment figures from the Office of National Statistics (ONS). The absence of an explosion in unemployment goes some way to explaining why the lockdowns and restrictions have been accepted so meekly by the population at large. That
Should we worry about the emergence of a new variant of SARS-CoV-2, the virus which causes Covid-19? News of the new variant – which, it seems, might transmit more easily than previous versions – was the big surprise of Matt Hancock’s statement to the Commons this afternoon. The other big announcement – that London and
No, the Channel isn’t going to erupt into naval warfare, and neither is the Prime Minister engaging in ‘gunboat diplomacy’ by deploying Royal Naval vessels to keep French fishing boats out of UK waters in the event of Brexit transitional arrangements ending on 31 December with no trade deal. Yet that seems to be the
SAGE has already poured cold water on the NHS Test and Trace system in England, suggesting in September that it was making only a ‘marginal’ difference to Covid infection rates. Now the National Audit Office (NAO) has had its say, publishing its interim report into whether it has been value-for-money. It is not much more
While the Pfizer vaccine became the first to be used in a public vaccination programme on Tuesday, the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine team became the first to publish their results in a peer-reviewed journal, the Lancet. As the press release announcing the results explained, the overall efficacy rate of the Oxford vaccine was measured at 70 per
Ever since it was first published in May, the Office of National Statistics’ weekly infection survey has been looked upon as the gold standard of Covid data. It is based on swab testing of a large, randomised sample of the population who are tested repeatedly to see if they are infected with the virus –
Oh, do make your mind up. Is snow in Britain going to be eradicated for good due to climate change – or are we going to be plunged into arctic conditions as climate change breaks down North Atlantic currents and sets up blocking patterns which suck frost down from the North Pole for weeks on
In spite of the approval of one vaccine and the likely approval of at least two others, the government seems determined to push ahead with ‘operation moonshot’ — mass community testing along the lines of that being trialled in Liverpool. That is astonishing, not least because of the cost — put at £100 billion in
Much has been made of the speed at which UK regulators have approved the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for use in Britain. But will being first to approve the drug make much difference anyway, given the news this morning that Pfizer is having some difficulty rolling out the vaccine? This morning the business secretary Alok Sharma confirmed that the
As a case study of how assertion can end up sounding like fact, I thoroughly recommend the Lancet’s report this morning claiming that the number of heat-related deaths globally has more than doubled in the past 20 years — and in particular the reporting of the story on the Today programme this morning. The message
Britain, we learned this morning, has become the first country in the world to approve the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, which is likely to be deployed from Monday onwards. Is Britain being reckless, or are other countries dragging their heels? The first point to make is that, however tempting though it may be to think so, it
Fancy buying half a flat, paying 100 per cent of the maintenance and the cost of putting right a developer’s shoddy work? Therein lies the great scandal at the heart of shared ownership, the government scheme which BBC Panorama exposed last week but which I others were writing about over a decade ago. Shared ownership
Beware data that is released on the eve of a Commons vote on lockdown restrictions. That was the lesson of the graph presented by Sir Patrick Vallance at the Downing Street press briefing on 31 October, which included a scenario of 4,000 deaths a day by December unless drastic action was taken. The figure quickly fell apart when
I’ve never worked out why anyone would want to buy an outfit over the internet without first seeing it in the flesh and trying it on. I know my wife does it all the time — although the constant piles of parcels by the door, full of stuff waiting to be sent back whence it
Assessing the number of Covid deaths has been notoriously difficult throughout the pandemic. Over the summer, English figures were revised down by more than 5,000 after researchers at Oxford University discovered a flaw in the way Public Health England was registering deaths. Another route for assessing the mortality of Covid is to look at excess deaths — while