If it hadn’t been for CO-19 we would be just three weeks away from the local elections including the big one for Mayor or London. Those, of course, got postponed and there will be an even bigger range of elections taking place in May 2021. In previous years the London Mayoral race has been a big betting event and the incument, Sadiq Khan, was the tight odds on favourite. My guess is that it will be the same in a…
What are you doing more of? One thing is for sure that when all this is over there are going to be many books and studies of how people coped during this period of lockdown as they sought to avoid getting the Coronavirus. I am of an age which makes the threat of coronavirus quite dangerous and I’m being ultra cautious but then I assume most people are. When I go for my daily exercise ride on my bike just…
Being stuck in our homes for most of the day the Thursday evening clapping in the streets for the NHS comes as something of a relief. It is just nice to get out of the house and also to exchange a few words with neighbours. Where I live this has become even more of an occasion because at one of the houses someone sets of the series of fireworks timed at exactly 8pm. Mike Smithson
Nancy Pelosi has made public a letter she’s sent to her Congress colleagues in which she charged Trump with missteps in handling the coronavirus pandemic that “caused unnecessary death and economic disaster” in the US. That’s a big accusation given how close we are to WH2020. In detail the Pelosi letter said: The truth is that in January Donald Trump was warned about this pandemic, ignored those warnings, took insufficient action and caused unnecessary death and economic disaster. The truth…
The death toll continues to mount. To date, at least, the government is having a spectacularly good pandemic, in political terms. Its popularity has hit heights only seen in the heyday of the first Labour government under Tony Blair. The Prime Minister has emerged from his harrowing illness to widespread genuine public affection. This government is having its honeymoon in a plague pit. In one sense, this is very normal. Governments from Ireland to Italy have seen their poll ratings improve sharply as their…
One of the great things to come out of the lock down has been that many are becoming accomplished at using the excellent and easy to use video conferencing platform Zoom. It is so nice being able to have conversations with groups of friends who you can’t meet face to face at the moment. I’m doing at least one a day and it just adds to the feeling that you are not cut off. Anyway – have a good night…
A lot of questions have been raised about the daily death toll data that has been issued. A problem has been that it only included those who died in hospital. The above table, based on day of death data, certainly points to the peak being reached a week ago. If that is the case then just perhaps we might have an indication that the corner has been turned which would be a major milestone. This is one that we should…
The cost of fighting the coronavirus It has always been the case since the the scale of the crisis became clear that making saving lives the priority was going to come at a huge economic cost. The OBR report yesterday with all its projections starts to quantify the challenge ahead and in the meantime the new Chancellor has to find a way of balancing what appears to be the irreconcilable. Sunak starts with a lot of goodwill on his side…