The Briefing Room

What are variants? Where do they come from? Why do they develop and how do they take over? Currently Delta is the dominant variant in the UK and across much of the world; but now Omicron, first identified in South Africa, looks like it could take over. How does that happen? And what can we do about variants? Joining David Aaronovitch in the Briefing Room are: Emma Thomson, Professor of infectious...

As parts of Europe struggle to contain Covid cases we ask what that means for them and us. The World Health Organisation has warned that another 500,000 people in Europe could die of Covid by March next year unless countries take urgent action to control the spread of the virus. Austria – the country with the lowest vaccination rate in western Europe - has become the first country to legally requi...

For years China has been perhaps the most important economic engine driving growth around the world. Earlier this year it bounced back from the Covid shutdowns with double-digit growth. Global demand for Chinese-made products has been booming. But this week growth figures have dropped dramatically. The country has been experiencing an energy and property crisis. So, is the bubble bursting? And sho...

For decades the difficult problem of social care - how to fund it, how to provide it - has been kicked into the long grass by government after government. But last month the Prime Minister announced a policy which he said meant no-one would have to sell their house to fund their social care. He also promised more money for social care - though not immediately. A "health and social care levy" is to...

According to campaigners, Britain has some of the dirtiest rivers in Europe. Sewage, slurry from farms and chemicals are all a problem, too often ending up in our rivers. The parliamentary Environmental Audit Committee estimates that the discharge of raw sewage accounts for 55% of rivers in England and Wales failing to reach good ecological status. Not one river has good chemical status. So what's...

When a collage of digital images was sold in New York earlier this year for £50 million, the art world was convulsed. The reason? The picture couldn't be hung on a wall and was only visible online. What had been bought and sold was the non-fungible token - or NFT - relating to the collage. David Aaronovitch and his guests discover how NFTs work for those who sell and those who buy them and also co...

The Business Secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, has said there is 'no question of the lights going out' this winter as a result of a huge rise in gas prices. But many smaller energy companies are struggling to stay afloat as they are unable to pass on the higher wholesale costs of gas to their customers because of the energy price cap. Labour has accused the government of complacency when it comes to ener...

Government ministers have been blowing hot and cold about vaccine passports. Now the Westminster government says it is not planning to introduce them to England, though they're being kept as an option should things change. The Welsh government is thinking about them, while Northern Ireland has rejected them for now. In Scotland vaccine passports are coming in on October 1st for nightclubs and larg...

At the start of the first pandemic lockdown the government announced a £20 uplift for those receiving Universal Credit, the benefit designed to help those of working age with their living costs. It made clear at the time that the extra money was temporary and, in the coming weeks, payments will start to be reduced. But is a cliff-edge drop in the income of more than two-and-a-half million families...

The Taliban takeover over of Afghanistan has left millions of people internally displaced and hundreds of thousands more hoping to leave the country soon. Where will these Afghan refugees try to go and how will they be received by different countries? Joining David Aaronovitch in The Briefing Room are: Camille Le Coz, Policy Analyst with Migration Policy Institute. Michael Semple, Professor at the...

HS2, a high-speed railway linking up London, the Midlands and the North of England has been in development for more than a decade. It was described by Boris Johnson as the ‘spine’ of a new network to deal with the ‘great musculoskeletal problem of UK transport’. The ‘spine’ is costing an arm and a leg. In 2012 the project was priced at £32.7bn. That was revised to £55bn in 2015. Last year a review...

‘The likelihood there’s going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely,’ said President Joe Biden six weeks ago. This prediction has not aged well. One harrowing scene this week saw some Afghans trying to escape their new reality by clinging to the wheels of a US Air Force plane as it took off from Kabul airport. Some of them fell to their deaths. Am...

The Taliban’s relentless march across Afghanistan continues – taking control of provincial capitals, rural districts and the financially lucrative border crossings. As the world watches on with increasing concern US President Biden has told Afghan leaders that it’s their battle to win and that they need to come together and fight for their nation. The female Afghan politician and diplomat Shukria...

Only a handful of small states officially recognise Taiwan as an independent country, though in many ways this democratic territory has the trappings of an independent nation. But Taiwan's giant neighbour, China, argues that the island is a renegade province that will one day reunify with the mainland - and Beijing reserves the right to use force to accomplish that if need be. In recent years the...

A supermarket chain is offering £1000 welcoming handshakes to new truck drivers - just one indication of the shortages in the haulage industry. The Road Haulage Association says that there is now a shortfall of 100,000 lorry drivers across the UK and other sectors of the economy are also finding it difficult to find workers, including in hospitality, construction and IT. The pandemic has shaken th...

Right across the world unpredictable and extreme weather has led to devastating consequences: homes washed away by floods in Europe and China with hundreds dead; extreme heat and giant wildfires in North America and in Siberia, and we now hear that the Amazon rainforest is emitting more carbon dioxide than it is soaking up. Scientists are clear that man-made climate change is playing a significant...

Some are calling it Freedom Day. Others are much more circumspect. The lifting of Covid restrictions on 19th July in England is, to a certain extent, an experiment. The UK has one of the best vaccination rates in the world and far fewer people are now dying from coronavirus. But it also has one of the fastest rising infection rates. The development of the vaccines so quickly was, undoubtedly, an e...

European Union and European Economic Area citizens living in the UK should have applied for so-called settled status in Britain before July 1st. Over five million people have applied - a significantly higher figure than the British government originally estimated would be eligible. But there are fears that, for various reasons, tens of thousands of people failed to meet the deadline. In theory, th...

You might receive an innocuous looking email – it might even look like it’s from your boss – asking you to click on a link. Watch out! It could be the start of a ransomware attack. Over the last year cybersecurity experts say that the number of ransomware attacks has grown exponentially. During the pandemic lockdowns criminal hackers have been able to exploit the vulnerabilities inherent in the in...

Gaza is one of the most crowded places on earth. Most of its two million residents live in refugee camps and around half are unemployed. Gaza is governed by Hamas, an organisation that many governments regard as a terrorist group. Hamas extended its control over the whole of Gaza in 2007, after it ousted Fatah, which is now based in the West Bank. Since then Hamas has been involved in a number of...

Hong Kong has long been at the centre of a tussle between mainland China and the outside world - certainly since the British took it as a colony in 1842. That heralded more than a century of "shame" for the Chinese - but in 1997 the British handed Hong Kong back to China with internationally agreed conditions. The so-called "one country, two systems" principle was meant to last until 2047, but in...

In February India's governing party, the BJP, congratulated itself and its “visionary” leader, the prime minister, Narendra Modi,, for “defeating Covid.” Two months on India is in the midst of what one historian has termed “the gravest crisis the nation has faced since Partition” in 1947. Hundreds of thousands of new infections are reported every day and thousands of deaths. The peak may come in a...

The German Chancellor Angela Merkel bows out of politics later this year after 16 years at the head of the German government. She seems likely to be replaced by one of two people; the man Merkel’s party, the CDU, has designated as her successor, Armin Laschet; or the relative political novice, Annalena Baerbock, from the Greens, a party with its origins in the environmental movement. Most commenta...

There’s been violence on the streets of Northern Ireland in recent days, most of it in Protestant areas. On occasion it spilled over the sectarian divide. The proximate cause appears to be twofold: the refusal of the Northern Ireland prosecution service to bring charges against Sinn Fein members who apparently broke lockdown rules to attend a funeral last summer; and the Northern Ireland Protocol,...

When the 400 metre long Ultra Large Container Vessel, Ever Given, got wedged diagonally across the Suez Canal at the end of March, it brought one of the world’s most important trade routes to a standstill for six days. Around ten per cent of global shipping passes through the canal. Shipping itself is responsible for some 90 per cent of global trade. The blockage served to revive worries that glob...