Following in Robert Smithson’s footsteps, it’s time to nail my colours to the mast again. At the end of each year, I like to set out my expectations for the year ahead, not because I’m particularly accurate (I’m not) but because it is useful to see where my expectations went wrong at a later date. My starting point for the year ahead is always the finishing point for the previous year. Where do we start? The whole world has been hit by the…
The virus will continue to do its worst. It may well mutate further. There will be another outbreak (possibly even a serious one) in China but the Chinese government will say far less about it. Foreign journalists reporting on it will be expelled. Chinese journalists won’t report on it for fear of facing the same fate as Zhang Zhan. The government’s vaccination programme will not reach the level of daily vaccinations needed to stop its spread. By early summer the…
In 8 days time in the state of Georgia there are critical elections which will have a huge impact on how the US is governed at the start of the Biden administration. For on November 3rd the Democrats failed to win control of the Senate but there are two seats outstanding in the state of Georgia. One was a regular election that comes round for every 6 years and the other was a special election for a seat that had…
The government’s gamble looks set to pay off On a personal note I am a 74 year old male with a pre-existing respiratory condition and ever since the COVID crisis began last March my overwhelming objective each day has been not to catch it. My recurring nightmare has been dying alone in hospital without my loved ones around me. The most pleasurable moment of my life was being given oxygen at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford in September 2003…
I think it takes a bit of temerity to make forecasts for the year ahead after the year we have just had. Looking back at my forecasts for 2020 there is a notable missing black swan from the list. However, and in the spirit of things: Covid: Although things will be better by the end of the year, at least in the developed world, the ravages of the virus will go on for longer than we hope with severe restrictions…
(This is the first of several posts this week in which prominent PBers give their predictions for the New Year – if you would like to join them please get in touch – MS) I think sometimes one needs to take a step back and make some reasonably wild predictions. Now, I doubt all, most, or perhaps any of these will come true. But that’s not necessarily the point. These are to stimulate debate, and hopefully I’ll get bragging rights…
The UK-EU trade agreement has now been put up on the government website, all 1,246 pages of it. That is 486,549 words. It is marginally longer than Lord of the Rings. Its prose is still more turgid and some of it might as well be written in Elvish. The government is giving the agreement one day’s debate on 30 December. That means that an MP who did nothing other than read the agreement from cover to cover would be able to give well…
The qualifying phrase that Johnson put in response to the PMQ question in the top Tweet might just be enough to deal with any difficulty in relation to a commitment made to the Commons over the Erasmus programme. But his wording and response was sloppy and ill thought out. You don’t say that something will continue, as in the first part of his response unless it will continue. This is just another reflection of his lack of attention to detail….