Monkeypox

Thursday

Lloyd Evans

What a slippery, hateful toad Fred Goodwin was

Make It Happen is a portrait of a bullying control freak, Fred Goodwin, who turned RBS into the largest bank in the world until it came crashing down in 2008. Fred the Shred’s character makes him a tough subject for a drama. His morning meetings were called ‘morning beatings’ by terrified staff. He ordered executives to pitch him an idea in the time it took him to eat a banana. Inciting arguments between staff amused him and he once sacked an employee for saying ‘I tried’ instead of ‘I succeeded’. He was obsessed with colours and fabrics and he personally oversaw the design of the carpets and even the handwash at the bank’s headquarters. But James Graham’s play offers us very few clues about the origins of his character flaws.

Wednesday

Chadwick Moore

Admit it: monkeypox is kind of funny

From our US edition

When monkeypox crept onto the scene last month, with a handful of confirmed cases in the US, it seemed too absurd to be taken seriously by anyone who’d been paying attention over the last two years. Americans wised up to media malfeasance and career scammers in our health bureaucracies, rolled their eyes and thought, here we go again. The name itself, monkeypox, couldn’t be scarier — like something from a doomsday novel, or cooked up in an editorial meeting to provoke maximum panic. White liberals — the inexhaustible, ever-dutiful and poised-for-action enforcers of tyranny — had a different issue: the name’s racist.

Cockburn

New York City wants to rename monkeypox because racism

From our US edition

Color Cockburn shocked that the medical establishment is once again enforcing political correctness. The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene recently issued a letter begging the World Health Organization to rename the highly contagious monkeypox virus. Why? They were concerned the word “monkeypox” was offensive to minorities. Cockburn — and Twitter for that matter — know this is a misalignment of priorities. Some names are purely innocent and playing PC police is not the job of the NYC Department of Health. Also why is it that New York authorities hear “monkeypox” and immediately think about black and brown people? Physician, heal thyself! And how far are we supposed to take this?

Thursday

Douglas Murray

Monkeypox, Covid and the trouble with our species

I hate to be one of those columnists who says ‘I told you so’. But I told you so. Looking back this week through the vast underground vaults at Spectator HQ I see that centuries ago in April 2020 I explained the problem with us humans as a species. As I said back then, someone always shags a monkey. There are almost eight billion of us on this planet today, and the likelihood that we’re all going to make judicious decisions all the time is vanishingly small. The mating decisions of the species alone are notoriously prone to trial and error. And the entire future of our species rides perpetually along this cliff edge. Last month I read in the Indian press of four men arrested by police in the western Indian state of Maharashtra. Their crime?

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Sue Gray reports, ScotRail slashes trains and monkeypox spreads

Home Sue Gray starched and ironed her report for publication after the Metropolitan Police wound up its own enquiries into breaches of coronavirus laws in and around Downing Street, with 126 fixed penalty notices being issued, only one to Boris Johnson. Meanwhile the nation contemplated photographs published by ITV News of the Prime Minister raising a glass at Downing Street on 13 November 2020. Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, said in an interview: ‘I would want to see Moldova equipped to Nato standard. This is a discussion we’re having with our allies.’ A ballot of 40,000 members prepared the Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers union for a national strike. ScotRail cut a third of trains from its timetable in a dispute with Aslef, the train-drivers’ union.