January The first day of the year reached 16.3°C in St James’s Park, London. In France, 874 cars were set alight for the new year. Southern Railway suspended services because of staff absence through Covid. The legal obligation to wear face coverings in England ended. Sue Gray delivered her report into Downing Street parties. Together
This year, for the first time, millions of Ukrainians will celebrate Christmas on 25 December. The Orthodox Church had used the Julian calendar and marked the nativity on 7 January – but parishes are moving to a new ecclesiastical hierarchy, dropping ties with Moscow. The invasion has accelerated the forging of a distinct Ukrainian identity:
The unclued Across lights are British place-names beginning with P, L, A, C and E and the unclued Down lights are anagrams (i.e. they are ‘out of place’) of these place-names. First prize John Bartlett, Shirley, Solihull, West Midlands Runners-up Sue Topham, Elston, Newark; Nicholas Grogan, Purley, Surrey
Divided we stand Sir: I was pleased to see that Jenny McCartney picked up on the recent poll from the Irish Times which took a lot of air out of the Irish Unity hot air balloon (‘A bridge too far’, 10 December). British citizens in Northern Ireland have been told for years that a united Ireland
Bank on it One event in 2023 which the government and Bank of England will not want to draw attention to is the 100th anniversary of the peak of the Weimar inflation. – The value of the German mark had already been plummeting in the early 1920s as the German government printed money to pay
Verbals 1. Boris Johnson, on resigning as leader of the Conservative party 2. Liz Truss, on being elected leader of the Conservative party 3. King Charles, greeting Liz Truss for her first audience as prime minister with him 4. Sue Gray in her report on ‘Alleged gatherings on government premises during Covid restrictions’ 5. President
Volodymyr Zelensky I am inspired by the Ukrainian people – a courageous, creative and strong people who united in one moment against the brutal and unjust Russian aggression. All Ukrainians today are warriors – those on the front line, volunteers, journalists, IT specialists, doctors, teachers, absolutely everyone. These are strong and courageous people who are
It is easy to see why Labour leader Keir Starmer should find himself tempted into the idea of greater devolution. Electoral geometry indicates that he might end up having to negotiate with the SNP after the next election. It is harder to see why Gordon Brown’s advice should be sought, given how badly his own
Home The RMT union decided to add a couple of rail strikes just before and after Christmas to those planned. Nurses, ambulance workers, driving test examiners, baggage handlers at Heathrow and bus drivers joined in. Postmen hoped to fit in another six strikes before the end of the month; Currys stopped using Royal Mail parcel
The numbered unclued lights reveal that ‘Lester Piggott won the Epsom Derby nine times’. Empery (10) and Nijinsky (21) were two of his winning horses. First prize Stephen Smith, Messing, Colchester, Essex Runners-up Andrew Dymond, London SE24; Belinda Bridgen, London NW8
Final countdown Could fewer people watch the 2022 World Cup final in the flesh than watched the inaugural 1930 contest? The first World Cup final, won 4-2 by Uruguay, was held in the Estadio Centario in Montevideo on 30 July 1930. The stadium officially held 93,000 people. That is more than the present Wembley stadium
When the wind blows Sir: Matt Ridley’s article ‘Blown apart’ (3 December) highlighting the wind-farm delusion touches only lightly on the planning process. Where he does focus on planning in England, he states that there is no ‘ban’ on onshore wind farms, only the standard planning requirements that they are confined to areas designated for
When asked about their religion in a census, many British people have the same response: that it’s none of the government’s business. For a while, as a joke, tens of thousands stated their faith as ‘Jedi’, a fictional order of knights from Star Wars. Nevertheless, this year’s figure marks an important trend: just 46 per
Home Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, proposed in his speech at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet to treat China with ‘robust pragmatism’. The Chinese ambassador to Britain was summoned to the Foreign Office following the arrest and beating of a BBC journalist, Ed Lawrence, in Shanghai. Net migration reached 504,000 in the year to June –
The theme word is scales: 1D, 14 and 40 are creatures with scales; 5, 9 and 17 are musical scales; 13, 34 and 39 all gave their names of scientific scales. 33 was to be highlighted. First prize Mrs D. Selvidge, Vale, Guernsey Runners-up G. Snailham, Windsor; H.A. Hyman, London W1
Not Wellcome The Wellcome Collection closed its own Medicine Man exhibition on the history of medicine, complaining that it was racist. Some of the treasures it displayed: – Wax and cloth head of Elizabeth I, half of which shows a face and the other half a decomposing skull being consumed by insects. – Pair of bellows used
In bulb-beds in the public park, daffodils lie headlong, scythed by Spring storms. The rate of attrition is high: one in ten felled beyond saving, fodder for slugs. I triage the casualties, their snapped stems, bruised blooms spattered with mud. These I bring home, and a vase of water will be their hospice: a tattered
Write and wrong Sir: As a former member of the Society of Authors I read with interest Julie Bindel’s article about its failure to defend J.K. Rowling when she received death threats (‘Write-off’, 26 November). I asked on the society’s ‘Children’s Writers and Illustrators’ Facebook page why they had not spoken out in support of
The five perimeter solutions and 4/30, 17/33, 21/37 and 28/12 are all businesses in Coronation Street. First prize Brian Taylor, Horwich, Bolton Runners-up Sean Smith, Southport; Grizil Hettiarachchi, Moratuwa, Sri Lanka
Opponents of Brexit have been given plenty of ammunition in recent weeks. Trade with the European Union has taken a big knock. Many British exporters say that owing to the excessive bureaucracy they can no longer sell to the Continent. The United Kingdom’s new trade deals have promised a lot but delivered little. There is