BLOGS | Sam Beatson, Ph.D.

Even Andrew Neil seemed close to embarrassment at the launch of his own channel, the TV equivalent of the RMS Titantic. The launch of GB News, where the likes of Allison Pearson and Tim Martin of Wetherspoons are doubtless set to make themselves fully at home for as long as it lasts, brought with it a powerful […]

Can GB News really compete with the BBC? June 14, 2021

Creating a stir may be easy, but as the small group of 120 journalists will discover, building a genuine alternative is a different matter. “We will sometimes court controversy,” announced Andrew Neil three minutes into the debut of GB News on Sunday night. That could easily be the new channel’s slogan. Indeed, minds were made up […]

How NHS waiting times were at a record high even before Covid-19 June 14, 2021

Austerity left the health service struggling to cope with patient demand long before the pandemic. The NHS has faced an unprecedented challenge over the past 15 months, with 468,000 Covid-19 patients admitted to UK hospitals since the start of the pandemic. Record NHS waiting times are the result of both austerity and Covid-19 Total population […]

Tinderbox Britain: Four years after the Grenfell Tower fire, the cladding crisis rages on June 14, 2021

On the fourth anniversary of the Grenfell Tower fire, over a million people across the country are still trapped in dangerous tower blocks. It was 8.51am on 7 May 2021, a Friday morning like any other for Nadim Ahmad, a 43-year-old chief financial officer living in east London. Absorbed in a work call, he had just held the front […]

Why is Boris Johnson delaying England’s 21 June "freedom day" unlocking? June 14, 2021

It looks like “freedom day” on 21 June will be pushed back. But what’s driving this decision, and what restrictions will remain? Boris Johnson is set to announce an extension to the current coronavirus restrictions this evening (14 June) in an attempt to mitigate a rise in cases of the Delta variant (formerly know as the Indian variant) […]

Google settles with French trustbusters June 12, 2021

Competition authorities flex their muscles. Big tech isn’t trembling

Does the Medline mega-deal herald the return of giant buyouts? June 12, 2021

Private-equity firms are neck-deep in dry powder

Covid-19 has given South Korea’s biotech firms a shot in the arm June 12, 2021

For a booster, they must look to themselves

Will commercial jets break the sound barrier once again? June 12, 2021

Maybe. But not for a few years yet

The bottlenecks which could constrain emission cuts June 12, 2021

The green revolution risks running short of minerals, money and places to build