Vote for competent leaders, not entertainers – that’s what I wish the Covid report could say | Devi Sridhar

The autumn budget will mop up some damage, but the true source of the economic crisis is clear. The government should now fix it – don’t hold your breath Imagine a family stuck in a house that constantly floods. The carpets are soaked, the walls damp. It’s always cold, no matter how much they turn up the heating. The family try everything. They promise to replace the sodden carpets and find new, innovative ways to warm the house. Someone with a laptop wonders if AI might be the answer. But no one ever looks upwards and says: maybe we…

Chancellor is expected to increase duties bookies and casinos pay, ending months of speculation and lobbying Gambling companies don’t lose very often but nor are they usually playing a game of poker against the chancellor of the exchequer. At next week’s budget, Rachel Reeves is widely expected to announce an increase in the duties that bookies and casinos pay to the Treasury, ending months of speculation and frenzied lobbying designed to sway the government. Continue reading… Source link

Voters need to know if a party leader said racist things at school. Interviewers have a duty to keep pressing for fuller facts For one contemporary, it is the hectoring tone of today that evokes what it was like to be at school with Nigel Farage. “He would sidle up to me and growl: ‘Hitler was right’ or ‘Gas them’,” Peter Ettedgui recalls when asked about life at fee-paying Dulwich College in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Later, he adds: “I’d hear him calling other students ‘Paki’ or ‘Wog’ and urging them to ‘go home’.” For others, including some in the college’s…