Kick it to curb
THE way some in Westminster have framed the Covid debate, it’s as if we should all be pathetically grateful just to have been allowed to celebrate Christmas without even stricter crackdowns.
That’s rubbish. The data on Omicron until this point simply has not supported any further restriction of our liberties.
The variant is up to 70 per cent less likely to cause hospitalisation, and the bulk of Covid cases in intensive care are the unjabbed.
Meanwhile, Omicron hotspot South Africa is now rolling back virus measures, and more doctors here predict the NHS will not be overwhelmed.
So if any Cabinet hawks are thinking it will be much easier to follow Wales and Scotland and slap new curbs on England as soon as the last of the turkey leftovers has been eaten, we suspect they are in for a rude awakening.
With one eyebrow-raising poll putting Labour on course for a majority (ironically despite it being even more lockdown-hungry), Boris hardly needs to stir the hornets’ nest any further.
Some of the PM’s advisers seem addicted to Covid curbs. They need to go cold turkey.
Give VAT back
OF all the cost-of-living pressures starting to nip at households’ heels, perhaps the most worrying is rising energy costs.
When those bills start thudding on to doormats, with price caps tipped to rise by as much as £1,000 by October, it will no longer be possible for many families to ignore the hit to their budgets.
So a study predicting those bills will include an extra £3.1billion in VAT takings for the Treasury sticks in the craw.
Tempted as he may be to pocket the cash, with overall VAT receipts having taken a pandemic pummelling, Chancellor Rishi Sunak needs to see that the right thing to do is to funnel it back into cutting bills, or waive it altogether.
Especially in the Covid era, with people cooped up at home more than ever, a warm house should be a basic essential, not a target for Government revenue-raising.
Hero’s farewell
DESMOND Tutu was no stereotypical Archbishop, no purveyor of mealy-mouthed, hand-wringing homilies.
The Nobel Peace Prize winner, who has died aged 90, was a firebrand who showed great personal courage in opposing the evils of apartheid in South Africa from the 1970s until his ally Nelson Mandela became president in 1994.
He helped to bind his nation’s wounds without fear or favour, and in his twilight years was a twinkly eyed (and occasionally twinkle-toed) elder statesman.
Appropriately for a man who helped to found a “Rainbow Nation”, he brought sunshine where once there was only rain.
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