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The unclued answers are all words inChambers, having their origin in Indonesia (clued by wordplay in the title). First prize Kailash Vernalls, Thame, OxonRunners-up Paul Davies, Reading, Berks; Mrs J.
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The government has released its official action plan to deal with the coronavirus epidemic, warning people that 'we are all susceptible to catching this disease'. During a press conference at Downing Street this morning, the Prime Minister told reporters that the government's plan involved four phases: 'contain, delay, research, mitigate'. Boris Johnson said: 'Let me be absolutely clear that for the overwhelming majority of people who contract the virus this will be a mild disease from which they will speedily and fully recover'. However, he added: 'It is highly likely that we will see a growing number of UK cases'. There are currently 51 known cases across the UK.
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A cornerstone of any -functioning democracy is the separation of police and the courts on one hand, and government and parliament on the other. Where the latter are charged with making the law, they should never, ever be allowed to interfere with the enforcement of that law. Politicians have no power to tell the police what to investigate. As Lord Denning once observed, no policeman is subject to orders of the Secretary of State: ‘No minister of the Crown can tell him that he must, or must not, keep observation on this place or that. Or that he must prosecute this man or that one… He is answerable to the law, and to the law alone.’ In Britain, for most of the time, that separation has been respected.
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Home The government told Britons returning from 11 quarantined towns in northern Italy to isolate themselves, for fear of spreading Covid-19, the contagious coronavirus fever. Random testing began at 11 hospitals. Thirty British and two Irish passengers from the cruise ship Diamond Princess quarantined at Yokohama had been flown to Britain and sent for another fortnight’s quarantine in the Wirral. The price of first-class stamps is to go up on 23 March from 70p to 76p. The EU disclosed its negotiating position on a trade agreement with the United Kingdom, saying in a strange sing-song formula that it ‘should uphold common high standards, and corresponding high standards over time with Union standards as a reference point’.
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Devolved or decentralised? Sir: Paul Collier (‘Northern lights’, 22 February) conflates what devolution has come to mean, in UK terms, with decentralisation of authority. Thus it is adrift to imply that Edinburgh has benefited from a conscious decentralising of powers from central government. It was simply that Scotland as a whole got devolution and Edinburgh is its capital city, whereby it administers the devolved responsibilities. Until such time as commentators and politicians distinguish properly between devolution and decentralisation, they will continue to prompt fears that England could be balkanised rather than treated as a national entity on a par with Scotland.
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What a hole The World Health Organisation added processed meats to its list of ‘known’ carcinogens. A few of the other things which have been claimed to be linked to cancer in the past fortnight: A hole built into the wall of a NatWest bank branch in Ilkeston, Derbyshire, became an unlikely tourist destination with five-star reviews on TripAdvisor. Some other surprising attractions: — The Bude tunnel is a 230-yard Perspex tunnel linking a supermarket to its car park in Bude, Cornwall. It started to gain five-star reviews when it was decorated with Christmas lights.
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Each unclued light is a genus name of a TREE (i.e. ‘middle of the road’ = (s)TREE(t)). Cornus was also allowed at 2 Down.First prize John Honey, SurbitonRunners-up Ben Stephenson, London SW12; D.
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After the vote for Brexit, it was often said that our departure from the EU was most likely to harm the very people who voted for it: the industrial workers of the Midlands and North. Didn’t they know that a vote for Brexit would, in itself, lead to 500,000 more job losses? Couldn’t they see that Nissan was bound to wind down its operations in Sunderland and move business to mainland Europe? Almost four years on, it’s safe to say that most of the economic doom-mongering was nonsense. This week’s figures on jobs and earnings show that, since the referendum, employment is up by one million — and it is rising still. Unemployment in the UK is at its lowest since 1974. Unemployment in Wales is at its lowest since records began.
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Home The Budget, still scheduled for 11 March, had to be rewritten after Rishi Sunak was made Chancellor of the Exchequer when Sajid Javid resigned rather than agree to his special advisers being sacked and provision being pooled between No. 10 and No. 11 Downing Street. Questions were asked about how far this was the work of Dominic Cummings, the chief adviser to Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister. In the cabinet shuffle, Julian Smith was replaced as Northern Ireland Secretary by Brandon Lewis. Suella Braverman replaced Geoffrey Cox as Attorney General; she had recently written an article regretting that ‘decisions of an executive, legislative and democratic nature have been assumed by our courts’.
From our UK edition
After the vote for Brexit, it was often said that our departure from the EU was most likely to harm the very people who voted for it: the industrial workers of the Midlands and North. Didn’t they know that a vote for Brexit would, in itself, lead to 500,000 more job losses? Couldn’t they see that Nissan was bound to wind down its operations in Sunderland and move business to mainland Europe? Almost four years on, it’s safe to say that most of the economic doom-mongering was nonsense. This week’s figures on jobs and earnings show that, since the referendum, employment is up by one million — and it is rising still. Unemployment in the UK is at its lowest since 1974. Unemployment in Wales is at its lowest since records began.
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Breeding controversy A Downing Street aide, believed to have been recruited as a result of Dominic Cummings’s advert for ‘weirdos and misfits’, resigned after it was revealed he had spoken favourably of eugenics in the past. Where did eugenics come from?— The term was coined in 1883 by Francis Galton, a half-cousin of Charles Darwin. As well as studying meteorology and introducing the first weather map to the Times, he proposed experiments to test the heredity of intelligence — including the somewhat unethical proposal of separating twins at birth. The weak, he proposed, should be prohibited from breeding. Galton himself failed to have any effect on the gene pool because, in spite of 43 years of marriage, he never fathered a child. Right as rain?
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ROTAVATOR (4A), NAURUAN (12), DEED (25), DEIFIED (36), MALAYALAM (39), REIFIER (4D), TERRET (15D), and REPAPER (18) are palindromes as is 2442, the NUMBER (3) of the PUZZLE (30), and its title.
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No defence Sir: Jon Stone (Letters, 15 February) recalls the horrors and miseries of being subjected to bombing from the air. How right he is to do so. The deliberate burning and crushing of civilians in their homes is a revolting and indefensible form of warfare. It is no surprise that Hitler used it. What is surprising is that people in this country continue to make excuses for our own use of this method, which was actually far more extensive and deadly than the German bombing of the United Kingdom. There are no such excuses. Those who fall back on utilitarian justifications will also find that these do not work. The bombing of Germany failed on its own terms.
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Boris Johnson's top Brexit negotiator David Frost gave a major speech at ULB Brussels University on Monday evening where he set out the British government's plans for a UK-EU trade deal. This is an edited transcript of his speech: Thank you much everyone for that very kind introduction. It is a really huge pleasure to be here at your university. I would like to say thank you also to the Institute for hosting me, and your distinguished President, Ramona Coman, for being kind enough to host me here tonight. Your institute here has really made a huge contribution to the study of European politics and European integration – and long may that continue.
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Home The Department of Health classified the novel coronavirus (named by the World Health Organization Covid-19) as a ‘serious and imminent threat’ to public health so that, under the 1984 Public Health (Control of Disease) Act, quarantine could be made compulsory. There were 93 British citizens in quarantine at Arrowe Park Hospital in the Wirral and 105 from a later evacuation flight in a conference centre in Milton Keynes. Steve Walsh, a gas salesman from Hove in East Sussex, was found to have picked up the virus in Singapore and unwittingly infected 11 people at a French ski resort. One of them was a locum GP at the County Oak medical centre in Brighton, which was temporarily closed. British Airways cancelled flights to and from Beijing and Shanghai until 31 March.
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A green and poor land? Sir: Your editorial (8 February) is a timely warning about what the government’s headlong drive to carbon zero really means. We seem to be intent on wrecking our economy in order to further reduce our 1 per cent portion of the world’s greenhouse gases. But while we are scrapping our petrol and diesel cars along with our gas heating and cooking, Asian countries are building coal-fired power stations because the 21st-century world needs electricity and that is the cheapest and quickest way to provide it. Their emissions are already many times higher than the UK’s. This problem is surely what the UN’s climate change conference in Glasgow in November should be dealing with.
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The nature of the Johnson government is still not clear, but has become more so with the announcement this week that HS2 is to go ahead in its entirety. Until recently, it had seemed that the project would be, if not dropped altogether, cut back in order to rein in its ever-accelerating budget. This is what most Tory MPs,cabinet members and even the Chancellor had wanted. But instead, the Prime Minister has decided that it will be built in its full £106 billion form. Not only that, he threw in £5 billion for buses and cycleways, as well as the promise of a £39 billion high-speed line from Manchester to Leeds. And, perhaps, a £20 billion road bridge connecting Dumfriesshire with Northern Ireland. The ability to think big is generally a positive trait.
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Going viral A few of the businesses which chose ‘Corona’ as a brand name and now have a bit of an image problem: — Corona beer — brand of lager owned by Anheuser Busch InBev. — Corona Energy — gas and electricity supplier to businesses and the public sector. — Corona Pine Furniture — range from Mercers Furniture of Rotherham. — Corona ‘the 2D game engine’ — software for designing video games. — Corona, the ‘lemon capital of the world’, a city of 160,000 people 45 miles from LA. — And one which changed its name in time: Corona lemonade — South Wales manufacturer taken over by Britvic in 1987 and rebranded.
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FRANCIS THOMPSON, born in PRESTON, wrote THE HOUND OF HEAVEN and a poem, AT LORD’S, remembering the run-stealers that flicker to and fro, and his HORNBY and his BARLOW LONG AGO. First prize D.
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Boris Johnson's much-lauded Cabinet reshuffle has arrived. The sackings are now finished and the new hirings are underway. The biggest news by far is the loss of Sajid Javid.
