The recent Queen’s Speech saw Her Majesty announce the arrival of the government’s Online Safety Bill, which has now been published in draft form. The much-anticipated bill has been in the pipeline since 2019 when Theresa May’s government brought forward a white paper as a response to the death of Molly Russell. Russell, a 14 […]
Today sees the launch of step three of the government’s roadmap to get us out of lockdown. Today, I can go to a sauna (yeah..no), have a meal inside a pub (blessèd relief, it was snowing here last week) or stay overnight with my in-laws (I’m more likely to go for that sauna, to be honest). It all sounds wonderful. Our region has been in one sort of lockdown or another almost continually since November last year, bar a brief and lethal giddy spell over Christmas. It’s been hard but it’s worked – by the end of April, new cases, hospital numbers and deaths were all down, down, down.
Just days before a raft of Covid restrictions are due to be eased, a Derbyshire town has become England’s Covid hotspot.
Anaesthetists, on the whole, have a chip on their shoulder. We are the single largest hospital specialty in the NHS and, in our own view, we pretty much run the place. Try having surgery without an anaesthetist, or a baby or a critical illness or a chronic pain issue or an intravenous dialysis line or.. I could go on, but you get the point. In essence, we (yes we, I worked as an NHS anaesthetist for ten years) provide the physiological bedrock upon which all other specialties have to stand to perform their work.
Last year in Minneapolis, a black man was killed by a white US police officer. Two weeks ago, officer Derek Chauvin was convicted of the murder of George Floyd in a landmark court case that was reported around the world and hailed by the US president himself as a “giant step forward” against systemic racism […]
Today is 4th May, we are deep into spring. This year’s county cricket season is three weeks’ old and Derbyshire is already languishing at the bottom of their group. Despite Covid-19, despite the Big Bash League, despite the razzamatazz of the Indian Premier League*, cricket remains the quintessential game of the English summer. The gentle […]
On Monday, Shirley Williams, the ‘undisputed godmother of the Liberal Democrats’, died at the age of ninety.
Purdah – a term previously used to describe the period leading up to an election, commencing on the date the Notice of Election is published and ending at the close of the poll on election day. Was ever anyone more aptly-named than Edwina Currie (yes, yes. I know she calls herself Currie Jones these days […]
Lamport Hall in Northamptonshire is a pretty typical, privately run stately home. It’s got painted ceilings and Neapolitan cabinets. It’s got extensive gardens and a classical frontage. It’s even got a baronet credited with introducing the garden gnome into Britain. What’s not to love? What it also seems to have is huge amounts of chutzpah. […]
Today, the Chinese government has announced sanctions against a number of UK individuals and organisations – including MP for Harbrough, Neil O’Brien who leads the China Research Group and advises the Prime Minister on policy. These sanctions are a tit-for-tat response to similar sanctions brought against a number of Chinese officials four days ago by […]
We will have no recourse when the police silence us. No-one will have to resign or explain.
11 days ago, Sarah Everard disappeared in Clapham at about 9.30 pm. She was walking home from a friend’s house.
In this week’s furore over NHS pay, Nadine Dorries is front and centre again. Whenever the government needs someone to loudly defend the indefensible (in that tricky two day gap between announcement and U-turn), they invariably send Nadine over the top.
Building healthcare resilience against future pandemics Yesterday, shadow health secretary and Labour MP for Leicester South, Jonathan Ashworth gave the keynote address at the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) webinar on building healthcare resilience. Central Bylines was on hand to take notes and put together this summary. Unprecedented not unpredictedThe Covid-19 pandemic may be […]
To celebrate this international women’s day, we wanted to identify an eminent woman from the Midlands. Given the current Covid-19 pandemic, we could pick none better than Dr Janet Lane-Claypon, a pioneer of epidemiology. She was born in Boston, Lincolnshire in 1877 and studied at the London School of Medicine for Women. She was the […]
Mansfield today is waking up to the stunning news that their headline-hunting MP, Ben Bradley, has been appointed to the Women and Equalities Committee in the House of Commons.
In Derby, a property that houses asylum seekers and run by Serco – yes, that Serco – is in such appalling condition that the city council is arranging an urgent inspection. According to the Guardian, photos show missing ceilings, an unusable shower full of rubble and with cracked or missing tiles, rusted pipes and walls […]
In my East Midlands, progressively-inclined corner of the internet, I come across daily complaints by members of the public that their Tory MP has blocked them on social media.
Some of you may already know of Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians. More, I suspect, will not. She wasn’t somebody we learnt about at school, unlike Boudicca or Joan of Arc. I confess that I know of her mainly through ‘The Last Kingdom’ – the BBC/Netflix adaptation of Bernard Cornwell’s novels. But Æthelflæd should be […]
Last autumn, Jake Berry (MP for Rossendale and Darwen, good mate of East Midlands’ very own Robert Jenrick) and fifty other Conservative MPs sent a letter to Boris Johnson. The NRG was born.
Executive chairman Peter Cowgill did not mince his words when he spoke to Radio 4’s World at One on Tuesday. The company is reeling from the effects of increased costs and administration. Cowgill believes that none of this was adequately explained to businesses prior to our departure seven weeks ago.
Levels in Rutland have doubled over the past week whilst Corby currently has the highest number of cases of any area in England. Of the 15 areas in England where cases are currently rising, 7 of them are in our region – Corby, Kettering, Boston, Rutland, East Lindsey, North Lincolnshire and North East Lincolnshire.