Month: January 2021

Stick ’em up. Or don’t. Are London’s pharmacies being held up — at needlepoint — in a duel to vaccinate? They say an unfair and counterproductive advantage is being conferred on doctors’ hubs.

29 January 2021 By Paul Martin

Hundreds of doses of vaccine line the shelves of a fridge in a London pharmacy after a very frustrating week. It’s the majority of the doses the NHS sent the pharmacy. The problem is not a lack of supplies. It’s a lack of patients. ‘The National Health Service is texting patients to offer three places they can go to for their first vaccination — but have […]

Corona and Covid Insight

Holidays first for the older generation? Why not?

27 January 2021 By Paul Martin

I can hardly wait to wave and say ‘Hasta la vista’ to the envious younger generation, as my wife and I swan off on a holiday outside Britain. Let them envy us if they are so inclined.

Corona and Covid Latest News

English patients in this Covid era are getting infected inside ambulances. Switch on your ventilation as you wait, the ambulance drivers are urged.

25 January 2021 By Paul Martin

Ambulance crews have been ordered not to switch off the ventilation as they wait outside hospitals with their patients still lying inside. Generally that means not switching off their engines.

Uncategorised

BBC ‘From Our Own Correspondent’. A partial list.

24 January 2021 By Paul Martin

Paul Martin has covered conflicts in the Middle East, Africa and Eastern Europe on the BBC‘s flagship programme “From Our Own Correspondent” .

Analysis Corona and Covid

A solution to the world’s Covid-19 transport problem: shrink-wrap in sand.

21 January 2021 By Paul Martin

Wrapping vaccine particles in a substance that sand is made off may be the key to transporting the Covid-19 vaccine around the world and to help end the worst pandemic in over a century.

Analysis Corona and Covid Latest News

Deaths. Big surprises are revealed.

19 January 2021 By Paul Martin

At last we know the true death toll of the pandemic that ravaged England through one very turbulent year. And there are some big surprises. One is that the proportion of excess deaths in the BAME ethnic groups (Black, Asian, Middle Eastern and Other) appears to be not significantly different to the proportional excess among […]

Media Blunders or Brilliance

Did a jailed terrorist beg to come home? Newspapers rush to the wrong — though headline-grabbing — conclusion.

18 January 2021 By Paul Martin

‘It’s the Sun wot won it.’ That was a famous headline when the Conservatives unexpectedly won a British general election. Now, more than a quarter of a century later, that popular tabloid newspaper could very well rewrite its deliberately ungrammatical headline and declare: ‘It’s the Sun wot faked it.’ Let’s start by quoting the offending […]

Media Blunders or Brilliance Strange as It Seems

A retired British colonel reads some ‘sad news’: he is dead.

18 January 2021 By Paul Martin

Like Lazarus, he has returned from the grave. Or so said Colonel Ron Black’s friends when they heard he was alive and well.

Corona and Covid

A sniff that may save the world from Covid.

16 January 2021 By Paul Martin

Exclusive. In a British National Health Service hospital, fifty British ‘guinea-pigs’ last week sniffed a revolutionary new mixture that fights Covid-19 before it gets into our lungs — using a substance that, by coincidence, is connected with the explosive, nitro-glycerine. It’s being hailed as a huge potential life-saver: a product that attacks the Covid virus, […]

The son of convicted Lockerbie murderer still believes he can clear his father’s name.

16 January 2021 By Paul Martin

Ali Megrahi has expressed ‘deep disappointment and shock’ at the Scottish appeals court ruling, which refused to overturn his father’s conviction for the Lockerbie bombing. He told Correspondent.World through his lawyer that he is to launch an appeal to the UK Supreme Court within the next two weeks. He still believes he can clear his dead […]