Covid’s shocking impact on the NHS: Routine care halved as 4.6m patients languish on waiting lists

Covid’s shocking impact on the NHS: Routine care is halved and cancer surgery is at a 10-year low as 4.6m patients languish on waiting lists Cancer surgery plummeted to its lowest level in ten years – with operations to remove tumours down 23 per cent compared to the same time in 2020  Just 139,378 patients … Read more

Covid’s lost generation: Devastating report lays bare the £350bn toll on children

Two new schools will challenge the practise of pupils sitting exams at age 16.   Former Downing Street aide to Tony Blair, Peter Hyman, along with brothers Ben and Tobyn Thomas, who own Thomas’s Battersea where Prince George and Princess Charlotte are pupils, are backing a campaign to scrap GCSE exams. They will be opening secondary … Read more

Massive tax shortfall shows Covid’s devastating economic impact

‘Our health emergency is not yet over,’ the Chancellor of the Exchequer said yesterday. ‘And our economic emergency has only just begun.’ Facing the steepest downturn since the Great Frost of 1709 – a slump in output of 11.3 per cent – Rishi Sunak said he was ready to spend, spend, spend to drag the … Read more

Barack Obama rips into Trump as ‘jealous of COVID’s media coverage’

Former President Barack Obama ripped into President Donald Trump over the Republican’s recent complains about the media’s constant focus on the coronavirus crisis.  ‘He’s jealous of COVID’s media coverage!’ Obama remarked to a crowd of 273 cars at a drive-in style event in Orlando, Florida Tuesday.   Trump made is clear he was watching Obama hammer him, … Read more

JOHN HUMPHRYS: Why the public is rising up against the response to Covid’s second wave

Eagle-eyed viewers of Mastermind may just have spotted something unusual when it returned to BBC2 last week. They would have noticed that there was no audience in the studio. That was blindingly obvious. Only the really sharp-eyed might have spotted that the presenter (yours truly) might — just possibly — have occasionally had a delicate … Read more

ALEX BRUMMER: Covid’s bitter toll on jobs

After the long economic and medical darkness of spring, midsummer offers some shards of hope. There is a big recovery in the forward-looking purchasing managers’ index (PMI), with both manufacturing and services output higher. The easing of lockdown for the hospitality industry – with the two-metre rules relaxed – is a boost, allowing pubs and … Read more

Covid’s classroom divide: Survey reveals 700,000 state pupils get NO home lessons at all

The startling inequalities in lockdown learning are laid bare today after it was revealed that an estimated 700,000 state school pupils are not being set any work by their teachers. Some schools have simply decided against online lessons because they say many children have only limited internet access.  Astonishingly, one head teacher said teachers might … Read more