Fownhope’s Heart of Oak Society traces its roots to the age of friendly societies, when communities provided their own safety net. Its anniversary celebrations reveal a tradition still very much alive, says MARK SEDDON
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Tracking, tracing and adding up
Under the Tories' disastrous Covid-19 direction the Department for Health is desperate to show some good results — so desperate they're pushing bad maths. SOLOMON HUGHES does the sums
ANGUS REID explains the significance of Cuba’s egalitarian in letter and spirit Family Code and the pertinent lessons it holds for democracies anywhere in the world
Special report by PEOPLE’S WORLD
NICK WRIGHT considers how the isolation of Israel and a new film on the controversial Italian communist leader are creating new reference points for Italy’s left
CARLOS MARTINEZ says Cuba’s achievements in the face of a criminal blockade are startling, but the island’s future if the United States succeeds in crushing it looks bleak
AMNON BROWNFIELD STEIN reports that far-right MPs who mobbed the event organised by Hadash may have helped raise awareness of the brutality of the Israeli right
IF you won’t say what’s broken, you won’t be able to fix it. On that principle, the government is not going to get a better grip on the Covid-19 crisis.
Just before Matt Hancock announced his latest reorganisation of test-and-trace, his department put out a press release saying: “NHS Test and Trace service results in line with the recognised metric of success for contact-tracing services across the world.”
So the system to chase the virus is working well. The Department for Health liked this factlet so much they said it twice. The same press release added that the contact-tracing service “is reaching over 79 per cent of all those who test positive, and 83.4 per cent of their contacts where contact details were provided, which is in line with the recognised metric of success for contact-tracing services across the world.”
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