Singing Happy Birthday to the Experts

Of course, the Daily Telegraph’s front page scoop that crack epidemic modeller Neil Ferguson broke lockdown rules to visit his paramour is a dead cat story designed to deflect attention from the UK having the worst COVID19 death toll in Europe. The Telegraph has form in trying to destroy Ferguson’s credibility, but that doesn’t mean this wasn’t a real front page news story, and it doesn’t mean that Ferguson shouldn’t have resigned; in fact, it’s greatly to his credit that …

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UK Media Must Up Its Game

Here’s a question for future historians: will the UK media be blamed as much as its politicians, should Brexit really hit the skids in just a few weeks’ time? If not, it really should. Take one story as an example from the weekend: Jacob Rees-Mogg’s fanciful suggestion that a £13.8m shipping contract awarded by the UK Government as part of its emergency No Deal preparations may have collapsed from political pressure from notoriously anti-business Leo Varadkar. The premise? Arklow Shipping Limited, the …

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