Tom Lees is a theoretical physicist and managing director of consultancy firm Bradshaw Advisory. He worked for Michael Gove when he was education secretary
28 min listen
On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Petroc Trelawny reads his diary for the week (1:14); Gareth Roberts wants us to make book jackets nasty again (6:22); Tom Lee writes in defence of benzodiazepines (13:44); Leyla Sanai reflects on unethical practices within psychiatry, as she reviews Jon Stock’s The Sleep Room (19:41); and, Iram Ramzan provides her notes on
Can the Conservatives do it again? The Tories have won four elections in a row but face a struggle to emulate that success next year. The Budget yesterday offered a taste of the Tories’ election pitch. But the government cannot escape some difficult numbers: Labour has led the Conservatives in the polls for more than
As Matt Hancock was doing his media round this morning, it was refreshing to hear him finally being questioned about the challenge of false positives. But his response made me worry whether the Health Secretary really knows what a false positive is – or the potential extent of the problem when it comes to detecting
We have been told by the Government that an effective test, track and trace programme is the key to ‘controlling’ Covid-19, allowing us to further unlock the country and take the economy out of its induced coma. The effectiveness of contact tracing depends on wide ranging factors including how many people have the virus but
For anyone who watches the daily Covid-19 briefings, it is quite clear that too many of our politicians and journalists have little to no understanding of science and mathematics. Out of the 26 ministers attending cabinet, only three have higher-level STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) backgrounds. In parliament, only around 100 MPs have science
