Day: 1 March 2021

by Ashton Warhurst By the Government’s own definition, the people of Britain have been trapped in an abusive relationship with its own Government for almost a year, and the only end in sight is the vague suggestion of a maybe. I think I am in an abusive relationship, and I don’t know how to escape. My abuser is too powerful and is intent on turning everyone I know against me, relentlessly trying to convince me that it’s all my fault, that somehow I’m to blame. It seems they’re the ‘good guy’ and I’m just a naïve nobody who doesn’t understand what’s best for me. The realisation that I might be in an abusive relationship dawned on me when I read the Government’s statutory guidance framework for Controlling or Coercive Behaviour in an Intimate or Family Relationship. This framework, introduced in 2015, presents a list of control behaviours that help lawmakers recognise when a person, such as myself, is in an abusive relationship. As I read through the list, it’s obvious that my own abuser ticks a disquietingly large majority of these boxes. Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised. After all, it is my own abuser who wrote the framework. Isolating a person from their friends and familyFor almost a year now, my abuser has kept me away from my friends or ...

by Alastair Cavendish In times of stress, which occur with increasing frequency these days, I find myself turning to Lockdown Sceptics almost as a guilty pleasure. One ought, of course, to challenge oneself with news sources that do not simply reflect one’s own views. The echo chamber and the hall of mirrors have become characteristic metaphors to describe the news media, which produce sounds and images as distorted as they are familiar. On Lockdown Sceptics, however, I can at least be certain of finding sanity, courtesy, and commitment to evidence, qualities which are in short supply elsewhere. The alternatives are to retreat even further from human society, or to listen to a smug voice on the BBC wondering out loud how people like Toby Young can sleep at night with all the blood on their hands. All the same, I am not a lockdown sceptic myself, any more than I am a racism sceptic or a rape sceptic. Lockdown, like racism and rape, is an evil thing, and I am unequivocally against it. If this seems like an extremist position, consider the question as a variant of the trolley problem, which has been a staple of philosophy classrooms since Judith Jarvis Thompson and Philippa Foot wrote about it in the 1970s. The student is asked to imagine that s/he is ...

Arrival of the Brazilian Variant Cristo Redentor, Rio de Janeiro Despite newly toughened entry requirements to the UK, a 'variant of concern' first detected in Brazil has made its way onto our shores, as the BBC reports. Three cases have been detected in England and separately three in Scotland.In England, officials are still trying to track down one of those who tested positive for the new variant.The three Scottish residents had flown to north-east Scotland from Brazil via Paris and London, the Scottish government said.Experts believe this variant (P1) – first detected in travellers to Japan from Manaus in northern Brazil in January – could be more contagious. There are also concerns vaccines may not be as effective against it – but NHS England's Prof Stephen Powis said vaccines could be "rapidly adapted".Dr Susan Hopkins, from Public Health England (PHE), said the UK was more advanced than many other countries in identifying the variants and mutations and therefore able to act quickly. On-again, off-again sceptic Alistair Haimes greeted the news with a tongue-in-cheek Tweet: https://twitter.com/AlistairHaimes/status/1366084335472963584 Advocates of Zero Covid have been having a tricky week too, as the supposedly Covid-free island fortresses of New Zealand and the Isle of Man have hurtled back into various shutdowns and restrictions after, inevitably, finding cases again. The BBC reports on the Manx situation: Nine ...