Features

I am a litter picker. No, not one of those high-minded volunteers who have proliferated of late with litter-picking sticks and black bags, but a professional: I am paid to empty the bins and collect the debris left by the public in a small park in Middle England. And I’m angry, not with the great British public who leave the stuff but with the real litter louts who are the root cause of the problem. As summer approaches and people who have been stuck indoors crowd into the beauty spots and on to the beaches, litter becomes a hot topic and it is important to be clear where the blame lies. When I became a bin man, I thought I was contributing to a cleaner, healthier planet.

A couple of weeks ago Ally Ross, the longtime TV critic at the Sun, was summoned to the managing editor’s office. Such confrontations normally involve expenses. At the Daily Express in the 1950s one Middle East correspondent submitted his — one camel: £125. The narrow-eyed managing editor pointed out that if the camel was bought, it must have been sold, and they would be grateful if the claim was adjusted. Another form turned up 30 minutes later — burying a dead camel: £200. This conversation with Ally was not about money. It was much more serious. It was solemnly explained to him that he had used the word ‘woke’ in his column — and it had been decreed on high that ‘woke’ was synonymous with racial injustice.

Lockdowns cannot kill off a virus — they just delay the spread. There was always going to be a new wave of infections as Boris Johnson phased out restrictions. The question was how big it would be and how much protection the vaccines would provide. Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer, summed up the case for optimism a few months ago, saying that any ‘new surges will meet a wall of vaccinated people’. His theory is now being tested: the fast-spreading Indian (Delta) variant is making its way through the most vaccinated country in Europe. What to do? And how worried should we be? Since the pandemic began, I have been trying to answer such questions. I’m a professor of risk management at the University of Bristol, not an epidemiologist.

Last week there was a public toilet for sale on the coast of Cornwall. The Kent-based auctioneer called it ‘an exciting and rare opportunity’, although its video tour of the property did not even undo the padlock on the security door. It was on the market for £20,000, which was a bargain — the last exciting and rare toilet block to be auctioned in Cornwall went for five times its asking price, even though it didn’t have as nice a view. It did, however, have windows. It’s undeniable that the property market in Cornwall is overheating. The backlash to the toilet auction was such that it was withdrawn from sale, but house prices in parts of the county are increasing at double the national average.

When the late-night talk-show host James Corden asked Barack Obama about UFOs last month, there was as usual an air of nervous joviality surrounding the subject. Bandleader Reggie Watts pressed him as well and Obama, as if relenting, admitted two things. Firstly, that he could not divulge all that he knew on air; and secondly, that the slew of footage released by the Pentagon in the past two years showing UAP — ‘unidentified aerial phenomena’ — is in fact real.