The Spectator

People power Boris Johnson said that the reaction to the coronavirus crisis showed ‘There really is such a thing as society’ — an apparent reference to an interview Mrs Thatcher gave to Woman’s Own in 1987. A reminder of what she actually said: ‘I think we have gone through a period when too many people have been given to understand “I have a problem, it is the government’s job to cope with it!”… and so they are casting their problems on society, and who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except through people, and people look to themselves first.

Corona mysteries Sir: John Lee highlights the issue of dying of seasonal flu vs dying of coronavirus when assessing attributable deaths (‘The corona puzzle’, 28 March). The obvious solution would be a high autopsy rate. However, autopsies on known or suspected coronavirus deaths are not being done in case they lead to mortuary technologists and pathologists becoming infected. (Tuberculosis, HIV and even rabies infections are easier to prevent in mortuary work than coronavirus.) This contributes to a lack of information about how coronavirus affects people. In the long term, it also seems unlikely that anatomical examination of the dead will revert to its pre-coronavirus autopsy rate of 17 per cent of all deaths (in England and Wales).

The novels are A Modern Utopia (anagram of AORTAE IMPOUND 17/5), The Time Machine (HEATHEN/MIMETIC 22/27), Tono-Bungay (BATON/YOUNG 29/31) and Men Like Gods (SMOG/LIKENED 8/26) by H.G. WELLS (33). First prize Joanne Aston, Norby, Thirsk Runners-up David Morgan, Gilesgate, Durham City; R.R.

Time out When did British workers start being ‘furloughed’? The word furlough is first recorded in the English language in 1625, believed to be derived from the Dutch verloffe, meaning a leave of absence of a sailor from the navy. It seems to have come back into parlance in Britain thanks to it being used in the US prison system to describe temporary leave for an inmate. It was the title of a 2018 American film in which a female prisoner is allowed out of jail for the weekend to visit her dying mother. The film was later renamed Time Out, perhaps because not everyone knew what ‘furlough’ meant. But to no avail — the film, which is reported to have cost $3 million to make, grossed just $8,472 at the US box office.

Taking off Who came up with the concept of ‘helicopter money’? — The term is derived from an essay in 1969 by the economist Milton Friedman, who suggested a theoretical experiment where a helicopter flew over a community suffering from low growth and dropped $1,000 of banknotes which were then eagerly collected by the residents and spent. — The idea was revived in a speech by the then chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, in 2002. — Come the banking crisis, however, central banks opted for an indirect way of pumping extra money into the financial system, via quantitative easing.

British science Sir: Dr Fink is right that the UK bats well above its weight through curiosity-driven research (‘Back to basics’, 14 March). This forms the bedrock of scientific progress, but it is misleading to imply that ‘blue skies’ thinking and practical application are mutually incompatible. Should we not nurture both? In this way the UK will lead in discovery and exploitation for societal benefit through the earliest application of new ideas, preventing us from dropping the ball as we have in the past. He is right that we should let scientists focus on delivering new science, but is it too much to spend a few weeks outlining forward plans every five years?