thehuffingtonpostuk--2020-07-14--Eating Disorder Charity Sees 70% Increase In Calls For Help During Lockdown

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The UK’s leading eating disorder charity has seen demand rocket by more than 70% through lockdown.
Beat, which helps thousands of people nationwide, said it had seen a 72% increase in contact across all Helpline channels in June this year compared to February.
Within the same time frame the organisation had also recorded a 96% increase in online support group attendance, and a staggering 229% increase in social media contact.
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For people with eating disorders, a sudden change in routine – such as those sparked by the coronavirus pandemic – can trigger devastating setbacks in their recovery, Beat says.
Among callers’ concerns are fears of not being not being able to carry out normal routines; being unable to access safe foods due to stockpiling and shopping restrictions; having to visit shops out of their comfort zone; worries about binge eating if they or someone they live with is stockpiling; and not being able to exercise if they need to self-isolate.
Katie Scott, 22, is in recovery from anorexia and was seven weeks into attending a daily clinic when lockdown came into effect.
Suddenly the 11 hours a day, five days a week she had spent at the centre were left empty, and the meal support and motivation sessions she had based almost two months around were replaced with a small booklet of advice.
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“We’ve gone from having almost constant support to really not a lot at all,” Katie explained. “It was very, very sudden – obviously we knew that coronavirus was around and we might have to go into lockdown but I think most of us thought that because it was a medical facility then the rules might be different.
“So it wasn’t until the 23rd [of March] when they suddenly said: ‘Oh my god, this is the last day – we have to close.’ And that was it, we got sent home with a short booklet on how to manage through lockdown. Even then we thought it might only be six weeks.
“It’s been really difficult – I do some online sessions for meal support and group meetings, but obviously they can’t see what you’re eating. It’s a real opportunity for it to creep back in in a lot of ways.”
Katie Scott Katie Scott
Scott continued: “In my case, and for a lot of other people at my clinic, it’s been a real setback. There’s no motivation.”
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“It’s like: everything is so uncertain, but one thing you can be certain of is that you can lose weight because you know you’re good at that kind of thing.”
While pubs have reopened and shops have welcomed customers back, eating disorder clinics such as Katie’s remain closed.
“No one has any idea when it’s going to reopen,” she said. “They’ve told us it could be weeks, it could be months, they don’t know. It’s made me feel really directionless.
“The whole uncertainty has made things really difficult in the first place, but the government definitely haven’t helped by not giving any clarification.
“It feels like there hasn’t really been any clear explanation as to why things have reopened, and why things would be different in a clinical setting. As clients those are the questions we are all asking but haven’t been answered.”
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An NHS spokesperson insisted the health service had continued to offer face-to-face appointments and inpatient care for people with eating disorders “when needed” during lockdown.
The NHS has also used phone and video consultations, as well as online support.
“Our message to anyone experiencing poor mental health is: the NHS is here for you, so please help us help you, and come forward for the care you need,” he said.
For many people like Scott, maintaining motivation is key to recovery. But with the future so uncertain and plans cancelled indefinitely, finding a distraction from food has proven much more difficult.
She explained: “It’s been very difficult in terms of motivation. With a lot of mental health problems, one of the main things you are told to do to help yourself is to get out and see friends, go shopping, just get out of the house.
“It’s all about being out and about and doing things to try and distance yourself from your eating disorder and remind yourself what life is normally like. Obviously a lot of those things we haven’t been able to do which has meant that my own motivation, and other people’s, has been quite low.
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“Because the future has been so uncertain it’s hard to have things to look forward to. You can’t fixate on a goal like going to university or on a family holiday.
“It’s been really hard to stay busy. You end up just focusing on the food because there’s nothing else to distract from it at all. Distracting myself and trying to put other things in my life that aren’t just sitting at home and eating has been a real, real challenge.”
As furlough schemes set in and plans were cancelled, many people began spending more time on social media. With gyms closed, we were inundated with “fitness” content focused on staying in shape during lockdown.
But what might be an innocent post about a new workout routine for some, Katie explained, could be a huge trigger for those with eating disorders.
She said: “It’s been really difficult to deal with because not only are you spending a lot more time on social media, you’re being bombarded with fitness and diet stuff. It’s prevalent a lot of the time, but it’s there to an even greater extent at the moment.
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“It’s kind of a double whammy, because you’re on it more, but also those kinds of posts are more visible too. Any eating disorder sufferer knows that if exercise is something they struggle with then they should really avoid it, and they will likely have been told that by their team.
“But if you’re being confronted with those posts all the time you can start to think: ‘Maybe I should be doing that. If everyone else is doing it then maybe it’s OK.’ It’s really difficult to challenge that all the time as well.”
Beat estimated that around 1.25m people in the UK are living with an eating disorder and, to deal with the huge increase in demand sparked by Covid-19, has set up dedicated support pages and a new online chat.
Beat’s director of services, Caroline Price, said: “It is more important than ever that those with eating disorders feel supported as they cope with changes in routines, living situations and care plans – all of which have the potential to be incredibly triggering.


thehuffingtonpostuk--2020-07-14--Brits Took A Huge Gamble In Lockdown – And Lost £228M In One Month

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Furloughed from work during the coronavirus lockdown, with time and money on her hands, Samantha found herself succumbing to a secret online gambling addiction.
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“I got quite a big bonus from work before the lockdown which was going to help pay some of my debts off, but I have gambled that away plus more trying to win it back,” she tells HuffPost UK.
“I’ve lost track of how much I’ve spent on gambling during lockdown but I think it may be £8,000 to £9,000.”
Samantha admits she is wracked with guilt at her gambling – and has kept it hidden from her family. “My husband has no idea and he is so careful with money and would be appalled.
“I tend to gamble during the night when everyone else is asleep and as I don’t have to be at work, being awake half the night isn’t so much of a problem now as it would be if I was back at work.”
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Sergey Nazarov via Getty Images
Samantha isn’t alone in being lured into online gambling during the lockdown enforced by the coronavirus pandemic.
With the absence of sports betting such as football and horse racing for a prolonged period, many regular gamblers turned to the more addictive online gambling products such as online slots, poker and casino.
Shocking figures from regulator the Gambling Commission reveal that betting on online slot machines has increased by 25% during lockdown.
This works out to around £228m lost in a month on online slot machines during lockdown compared to £183m lost in the same month last year – a staggering increase of £45m.
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The data from the Gambling Commission collected from gambling firms themselves also shows that the number of gambling sessions lasting more than an hour has increased by 23% year-on-year.
Campaigners say the temptation for online gambling has been far greater during the coronavirus pandemic and lockdown, with people spending greater amounts of time at home and on their computers who perhaps turn to online gambling for the thrill and excitement – or as a way of solving financial problems if their job has been affected.
The impact can be much more devastating than just financial for some who cannot see a way out of the debt they’ve fallen into.
Charles and Liz Ritchie run Gambling With Lives, a campaign and pressure group which supports families who have lost loved ones as a result of gambling. Their son Jack took his own life at the age of 24 after feeling that his gambling was out of control.
Jack Ritchie, who had a gambling addiction and took his own life at 24 Charles and Liz Ritchie
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Charles Ritchie told HuffPost UK they are now supporting a family who were bereaved by gambling suicide during the coronavirus lockdown.
“It was a young man who was working from home and at the start of May, he took out a substantial loan and gambled it away online within a very short period of time.” he said.
“He gambled £16,000 in two days and only had one e-mail from the betting company asking if he was OK.
“His death came within hours of finishing that gambling session.”
Charles and Liz Ritchie, who set up Gambling With Lives after their son Jack took his own life as a result of his gambling addiction Gambling With Lives
Charles says people with a gambling problem are even more unsafe during the coronavirus pandemic as they are essentially at home a lot more, may be facing additional pressures and may feel they have no one to turn to or any escape from gambling.
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“Even though there has been a huge drop in sports betting, there has been an increase in online forms of gambling.
“It is these people who are most at risk. Lockdown has all the characteristics to draw people into gambling more as they may have time on their hands, be bored and there are less things to do.”
Samantha, who has been gambling secretly during lockdown hiding it from her family, revealed how she began gambling online about five years ago and had a big win of £10,000 when she first started.
Ever since, she has been chasing another big win – but says it has never happened.
She says she usually played on a site with a safe play procedure in place, but when she reached her deposit limits with them, she looked for other gambling sites.
“Currently, I have three credit cards which total £30,000 and they are all up to the limit, mainly with gambling. But now you can’t use credit cards to gamble, this will get better. I’m also over my overdraft limit through gambling.”
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Samantha says the advertising of gambling sites, particularly on social media such as Facebook, seems to have been ramped up during lockdown. “Every other post on Facebook seemed to be about gambling sites.” she said. “I have since blocked these adverts, but whenever I was looking for a new site to try as I’ve played and closed my account on lots, it was very easy to find.”
One man who knows how devastating a gambling addiction can be is Neal Stewart.
Neal, 37, who lives in Burnley, Lancashire, told HuffPost UK how he was a store manager at a furniture superstore in Manchester and earning a good salary when his gambling habit became out of control.
He said he had always gambled “what I could afford to lose” but he suffered a few bereavements in the family including a stillbirth and the death of his grandfather who he was close to.
“I went off the rails and took £20,000 from work and used it to gamble. I narrowly escaped being locked up.”
Neal Stewart, who says gambling almost ruined his life Neal Stewart
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After getting help for his gambling addiction and attending weekly Gamblers Anonymous meetings which he describes as “the only reason I am still alive”, Neal managed two-and-a-half years without gambling.
However, he stopped going to Gamblers Anonymous meetings for six weeks – and suffered a huge relapse after being lured by online gambling.
“I got a message telling me I had won 20 free spins on a betting site.” he said. “I didn’t win anything so I deposited another £10.
“Within 25 minutes, I had lost £1,700 while sitting in my car outside Tesco on my phone.”
Neal describes how this left him with no money to pay his mortgage, bills or to buy food. He went to three different payday loan companies to get the £700 he needed to pay his bills.
“One of the payday lenders lent me £50 more than I needed. So I deposited that into my betting account to try and win back the £1,700.
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“I lost the £50 – and then I lost the £700 too and didn’t pay my bills.
“I was just gambling on anything online that I could. Sometimes, I would go on the slots on one betting site while waiting for the roulette wheel to spin on another.”
“I would struggle to hand over £100 in a betting shop. But when you are online, it is just a number and is just like adding another zero.” said Neal. “It doesn’t feel like real money."”
Neal, who has two children, says when he was in the grip of his gambling addiction, even knowing he could lose everything wasn’t enough to stop him.
“Even knowing I would lose everything didn’t stop me gambling. I knew my ex-partner would stop me seeing the children as I was not paying maintenance. My current partner said she would leave me if I carried on gambling.
Neal Stewart with his partner Neal Stewart
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Through the help of Gamblers Anonymous and counselling and being on anxiety medication, Neal has now managed 250 days without gambling.
“During lockdown, I joined Skype meetings and we are now doing socially distanced Gamblers Anonymous meetings at an outdoor venue.”
Neal, who is now a sales team leader for a call centre, says he was furloughed during lockdown, but his company made up the difference in pay. He has gambling software blocks on his phone and his boss put gambling blocks on his work laptop.
“To gamble, you need the time, the money and the opportunities. It is like a pyramid and you need all three. Lockdown and the pandemic has given this to a lot of gamblers.
“I would struggle to hand over £100 in a betting shop. But when you are online, it is just a number and is just like adding another zero.” said Neal. “It doesn’t feel like real money.
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“I could not tell you if I have lost £100,000 or £200,000 to gambling over the years. But it will definitely run into tens of thousands.”
““To gamble, you need the time, the money and the opportunities. It is like a pyramid and you need all three. Lockdown and the pandemic has given this to a lot of gamblers.”
While the Gambling Commission found that overall, gambling was down during lockdown due to the loss of things like football, it is the spike in online gambling on things like online slot machines and poker which is troubling gambling campaigners.
They are also disturbed by research which shows that paid ad impressions for casino and gambling brands almost tripled in the UK over a month in lockdown.
The study, by GoldenCasinoNews.com also found that the UK was among the top 10 countries for paid gambling ads online in April having recorded 112,818 between April 5 and May 4 – up 196% year-on-year.
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Matt Zarb-Cousin, director of Clean Up Gambling, a not-for-profit campaign which is pushing for a comprehensive review of the gambling regulations to make them fit for the digital age, told HuffPost UK that it is alarming as regular gamblers have migrated to more addictive gambling products such as online slots, casino and poker and consequently lost greater amounts of money.
“People have been spending a lot more time at home during the coronavirus pandemic,” he said.
“If you combine that with people’s economic circumstances becoming more precarious and then digital advertising spend increasing, it has created a toxic environment for gamblers.
“Online gambling may be perceived by some people as a solution to financial problems caused by the coronavirus crisis. But it is impossible to win long term playing slots."”
“People who were betting once or twice a week on football or horse-racing have been going to bet on online slot machines instead.
“These games are engaging and immersive and addictive by design and people can lose large amounts of money in a short space of time.
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“My concern is that as we emerge from lockdown, more people will be addicted to gambling and people who have engaged with these types of products will have lost more than they can afford to. This will make a bad economic situation even worse.”
Matt Zarb-Cousin, director of Clean Up Gambling Matt Zarb-Cousin
He added: “Online gambling may be perceived by some people as a solution to financial problems caused by the coronavirus crisis. But it is impossible to win long term playing slots.
The Gambling Commission has opened a consultation process on changes to make online slots safer for players in the UK.
The consultation period opened on July 9 and will close on September 3 with a fully industry-agreed code to be published at the end of that month.
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A spokesperson for the Betting and Gaming Council told HuffPost UK: “Our members are working hard to raise standards to help problem gamblers and those at risk, though we note that both the regulator and the government have made it clear that there is no evidence that problem gambling has increased.
“Despite a dramatic fall in total gambling during lockdown – revenue is down by 60% – we have introduced tough new safer gambling measures during the pandemic.
“At the start of lockdown, the BGC published a 10-pledge plan setting out the standards expected of our members during the Covid-19 crisis.
“We voluntarily introduced a ban on gaming product advertising for a period of six weeks and going forward a requirement that 20% of all advertising will be safer gambling messaging.
“We have also introduced a whistle to whistle ban on sports advertising, cooling off periods on gaming machines, tools to set spend and deposit limits, monitoring play and spend, restricting and closing hundreds of thousands of accounts with new ID and age verification checks and massively increasing funding for research, education and treatment.
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“We are committed to making more voluntary changes and driving up safer gambling standards. We will work with the Gambling Commission and the government to achieve this, particularly on the forthcoming Review of the Gambling Act.”
Useful websites and helplines
National Gambling Helpline. This provides confidential information, advice and support for anyone affected by gambling problems in England, Scotland and Wales. Run by GamCare, it has advisors available 24 hours a day on Freefone: 0808 8020 133 or via webchat at: www.gamcare.org.uk
Gamblers Anonymous. Call the national information line on: 0330 094 0322 or visit www.gamblersanonymous.org.uk to find out about a meeting near you
Gambling With Lives was set up by bereaved families and friends of young people who took their lives as a direct result of gambling. It supports families who have been bereaved by gambling related suicides and raises awareness of the dangerous effects of gambling on mental health and the high suicide risk. Contact: info@gamblingwithlives.org or visit: www.gamblingwithlives.org
Samaritans offers a listening service which is open 24 hours a day, on 116 123 UK and ROI (this number is FREE to call and will not appear on your phone bill)
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Mind, open Monday to Friday, 9am-6pm on 0300 123 3393
The Mix is a free advice service for people under 25. Call 0808 808 4994 or email: help@getconnected.org.uk
HopeLine runs a confidential advice helpline if you are a young person at risk of suicide or are worried about a young person at risk of suicide. Mon-Fri 10-5pm and 7pm-10pm. Weekends 2pm-5pm on 0800 068 41 41


thehuffingtonpostuk--2020-07-14--How To Stop Using Exercise As Punishment For What You Eat

Illustration: HuffPost/Photo: Getty Images Unlinking exercise from food can have a profound effect on mental health, including helping to heal eating disorders.
You’re reading Move, the nudge we need to get active, however makes us happiest and healthiest.
For many people, exercise and weight loss are seen as intrinsically linked. Between fitness industry messaging and the pervasive diet culture, it’s no surprise that we’ve developed a harmful connection between what we eat and how much we need to work out.
According to a 2018 study reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly half of adults attempted to lose weight between 2013 and 2016. Almost 63% of those people chose exercise as a means to achieve that goal — along with consuming less food.
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The desire to lose weight begins at a startlingly young age: The National Eating Disorders Association reports that 40% to 60% of elementary school girls are concerned about their body and weight — a concern that might endure throughout life.
Meanwhile, the fitness industry has long connected working out and losing weight, spreading the harmful belief that exercise is intended to reshape one’s body. Together, these messages can lead to a myriad of unhealthy behaviours, including exercise addiction or compulsive exercise.
The eating disorders association notes there’s a strong link between compulsive exercise and various forms of eating disorders: Between 40% and 80% of anorexia nervosa patients are prone to excessive exercise, and an estimated 90% to 95% of college students with an eating disorder belong to a fitness facility.
Recovery from any eating disorder or even just unhealthy habits can be an ongoing process, and one that often isn’t linear. But if you’ve struggled with exercise in the past, that doesn’t mean you can’t have a healthy relationship with fitness in the future.
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This particular journey is one that Dani Tsukerman knows all too well. The fitness trainer and owner of Very Personal Training, a body-positive fitness centre in Brooklyn, New York, has struggled with eating disorders since childhood and now aims to help others reframe the way they view exercise and their bodies.
“It’s so important to remember that working out is not a punishment,” Tsukerman told HuffPost. “It is a celebration of what your body can do. It’s an opportunity to achieve, feel strong and grow.”
Carving out a new perspective can be challenging even if you’ve never dealt with an eating disorder. While there’s no universal approach, there are some concrete steps you can take to view fitness as a celebration of your body instead of a punishment.
HuffPost talked with a few experts about ways to reduce anxiety surrounding food and exercise, how to seek joy in movement, and why the fitness industry needs to become more body-positive.
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Choose a workout you’ll truly enjoy
Restructuring your mindset should begin before your actual workout. When developing a new exercise regimen, for instance, you might want to avoid types of movement you focused on in the past.
“It’s helpful to think about restructuring the environments that lend themselves to exercising compulsively,” said Jessi Haggerty, a Massachusetts-based registered dietitian, intuitive-eating counsellor and certified personal trainer. “For example, if running was your primary form of compulsive exercise, try taking a dance class or yoga class and limit running as you reintroduce exercise.”
In addition to avoiding exercises that might be triggering or simply not engaging, think about what you genuinely find fun. Milwaukee-based personal trainer Chrissy King emphasises the importance of joy within movement.
“We spend so much time absorbing information about how our bodies are ‘supposed’ to look or what we’re ‘supposed’ to eat, and we lose touch with what we actually want and what we desire.” - Chrissy King, personal trainer
“When it comes to movement and exercise, I encourage my clients to ask themselves, ‘What do I really like to do?’” King said. “Maybe you really love nature, so perhaps your form of movement is hiking or swimming. It’s important to question this because we spend so much time absorbing information about how our bodies are ‘supposed’ to look or what we’re ‘supposed’ to eat, and we lose touch with what we actually want and what we desire.”
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For folks who have struggled with an eating disorder in the past, reframing your mindset before exercise might also mean talking with a medical professional.
“For individuals with a history of an eating disorder that included unhealthy exercise behaviours, it’s important to work with a treatment team who can provide recommendations and guidelines for reincorporating exercise into your life,” said Elisha Contner Wilkins, executive director of Veritas Collaborative, a national eating disorder recovery centre for children, adolescents and adults. “Know your limits and set boundaries.”
Maintain a healthy mindset before, during and after your workout
To get into the right headspace prior to exercise, Tsukerman suggests beginning each workout with a mindfulness practice of deep breathing, which can help unite your body and mind.
“Sit in a comfortable position on the floor and relax your neck, shoulders, hips and anywhere else you hold tension,” she said. “Breathe in for a count of five, hold for seven, and then breathe out for five. Repeat as many times as you need. Once you feel more relaxed, set an intention for your workout.”
“Approach each workout by checking in with your body and see how you’re feeling that day.” - Dani Tsukerman, fitness trainer
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Tsukerman added that it’s helpful to know your triggers so you can be on the lookout for them during exercise.
“For some people, setting any kind of goals can be triggering, so if that makes you anxious, just focus on slowing down your breathing so you can be present for your workout,” she said.
“You can even keep a log to jot down what kind of workout you did and rate your feelings,” she said, adding that any such record should be about your emotions and not a workout log.
Wilkins noted that the Covid-19 pandemic has affected the way people exercise, leading to a heightened state of anxiety for some folks.
“Changes in movement and daily activities can cause an increase in anxiety around exercise in particular, and isolation, news and social media can fuel this anxiety as well,” she said. Wilkins recommends that you implement coping strategies such as journaling, creating art, using mindfulness apps and keeping the lines of communication open with loved ones.
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It’s also crucial to listen to your body. Pick a workout based on your body’s needs that day, rather than what you “planned” to do or feel like you “should” do.
“Approach each workout by checking in with your body and see how you’re feeling that day,” Tsukerman said. “Feeling energised and like you can conquer anything? Do some kickboxing or total body workouts. Feeling achey? Work on your flexibility and mobility. Feeling tired? Try a rebalancing yoga flow. It’s all about listening to your body and doing the workout that will make you feel fulfilled inside.”
Oscar Wong via Getty Images
Know that it might take time to fully untangle food and exercise
This connection has been burned into our minds for years; unlearning it will likely require some work.
“We need to reframe how eating and exercise are linked in our brains,” Haggerty said, noting that fitness trackers and weight loss apps make it seem as if our bodies are “like bank accounts.” The reality is quite different.
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“If we intend to gain strength, improve cardiovascular conditioning, and get those feel-good endorphins from exercise, we need to fuel our bodies adequately and consistently,” Haggerty said. “If we’re just exercising to ‘burn’ or ‘earn’ our food, we’re going to be left depleted, both physically and mentally. Think about it like this: We need to eat to move, not move to eat.”
Think about food as a source of energy, rather than something to be “rid of” after working out.
“We need to eat to exercise,” Wilkins said. “We need to provide fuel ... for the activity, just as we would provide fuel for a car.”
“If we’re just exercising to ‘burn’ or ‘earn’ our food, we’re going to be left depleted, both physically and mentally. Think about it like this: We need to eat to move, not move to eat.” - Jessi Haggerty, registered dietitian
For folks with an eating disorder history, Wilkins emphasised the importance of using recovery-focused techniques, such as journaling or talking with a friend, to cope with anxiety surrounding food and meals.
Of course, food can be much more than fuel. As King put it, “Food is community. Food has cultural meaning. Food reminds us of our families.”
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King said that thinking of food purely as energy might take the enjoyment out of it — and it’s okay to give ourselves permission to simply enjoy food. “Food helps us survive, but it can be enjoyable too because it means so much more than that. It’s how we have experiences, it’s how we share love,” she said.
The fitness industry has work to do, too
Ultimately, this isn’t something individuals must change alone. The fitness industry has continuously perpetuated the idea that exercise should lead to weight loss, when in reality, exercise is meant for all bodies.
“There is still a high percentage of exercise professionals with weight bias,” Wilkins said. “Many exercise-related activities are now beginning to include body-positive affirmations as a part of the routine, but there is still a long way to go.”
King agreed that the fitness industry has an important role to play in how people approach working out.
“A lot of people get into fitness with the idea that the goal of moving your body is to manipulate or shrink your body,” she said. “As people in the industry, we have to start detaching those things. Because in actuality, that doesn’t have to be the goal at all.”
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Move celebrates exercise in all its forms, with accessible features encouraging you to add movement into your day – because it’s not just good for the body, but the mind, too. We get it: workouts can be a bit of a slog, but there are ways you can move more without dreading it. Whether you love hikes, bike rides, YouTube workouts or hula hoop routines, exercise should be something to enjoy.


thehuffingtonpostuk--2020-07-14--What's In A Name? 12 Baby Names Inspired By Shakespeare

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There’s nothing more timeless than Shakespeare – his plays have been adapted on stage and on screen for centuries.
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So why not give your new baby a moniker inspired by some of history’s greatest characters – those who have been at the centre of tragic romances, gripping battles and exulting love stories.
We have a wealth of baby name inspiration on HuffPost UK Parents, but here are 12 special names straight from the quill of the Bard.
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Othello
Othello is about... Othello, a brave and competent soldier of the Venetian Republic. He elopes with Desdemona, but is later betrayed by his friend, Iago.
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Ophelia
A tragic, romantic character in Hamlet, Ophelia – a young noblewoman of Denmark – drowns herself in the name of love.
Juliet
Ever-popular since the tragic love story of Romeo and Juliet, this name is synonymous with romance.
Desdemona
A Venetian beauty who enrages her father when she elopes with Othello, in the play by the same name.
Romeo
Handsome, intelligent, and sensitive; Romeo circumvents the violent feud between his family and Juliet’s when he falls in love with her.
Paris
Count Paris is a suitor of Juliet’s. He is handsome and rich, yet ultimately cannot compete with Romeo.
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Ariel
Ariel is a spirit who works in Prospero’s service in The Tempest. Representing the power of creative imagination, Ariel is unerringly loyal to Prospero.
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Beatrice
In Much Ado About Nothing, Beatrice is “a pleasant-spirited lady”. Generous and loving, with a sharp tongue, she loves puns and wins wordy battles.
Adriana
The Comedy of Errors sees Adriana worrying that her husband loves another woman. She is observant and astute on a woman’s role in marriage.
Rosalind
The heroine and protagonist of As You Like It, Rosalind’s father, the exiled Duke Senior, is banished from the kingdom, breaking her heart.
Balthazar
The Merchant of Venice features Balthazar as one of Portia’s servants. She steals his name for her disguise as a boy.
Horatio
Hamlet’s confidante, Horatio finds himself called on by castle guards to try to communicate with the ghost of his departed friend.


thehuffingtonpostuk--2020-07-14--How A Rare Form Of Lung Cancer Changed Everything For Me And My Family

Courtesy of Sarah McClung The author with her two children in July 2020.
Four years ago I coughed up blood.
I saw an ear, nose and throat specialist and an oncologist in Corpus Christi, Texas, who suggested that perhaps I avoid tortilla chips, as I’d probably just cut my trachea eating. No big deal. A year later I got knocked up in a flurry of Hurricane Harvey tragedy excitement, which was pretty great, until I developed a cough so violent I vomited constantly and could hardly eat, drink or gain weight.
The same ENT told me that there was nothing he could do ― after all, this was “what we sign up for when we become parents” and I’d probably be fine once I had the baby.
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I wasn’t.
I never stopped coughing. All day, all night. Fast forward nine months and I developed a pneumonia I couldn’t shake while my son struggled with the knock-on effects of what turned out to be a misdiagnosed lung cancer. I must have missed the cancer sign-up sheet.
Last May, a plucky pulmonologist diagnosed me with neuroendocrine cancer of the lung ― a rare disease that he insisted was the jackpot of malignant lung cancers.
“It’s hardly cancer!” he told me. “It grows so slow, it’s Cancer Lite. Definitely the lung cancer you want to get. Definitely.”
Was it really? I wondered, squirming in my 1990s nausea-patterned chair. Wasn’t not getting cancer the jackpot you wanted to hit? No matter. The doctor went on.
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“This is nothing. You cut out the lung. Bam, you’re back to your regular life.”
I couldn’t quite integrate this knowledge with the facts of my regular life: I had a 10-month-old son, a 5-year-old daughter. I was 36, a nonsmoker, an obnoxious consumer of organic green peppers who religiously held her breath when driving past the local oil refineries three miles from our home. “What are you doing, Mama?” my daughter had asked years ago with fear and disgust. “Saving the life of your unborn half-fish, half-foetus brother!” I gasped after we careened past Refinery Row.
But now, there it was, a tumour the size of a small city wedged smugly in my left bronchus. Mein Klein Corpus Christi.
After my diagnosis came the referral to MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, a steady drip of doctors’ appointments, blood and breathing tests. Then surgery, then recovery. For me, these three years were 8% of my life. For my daughter they were 60% of her life. For my son, 100%.
Between my diagnosis and my lung surgery, I had one month to recover from pneumonia, prepare myself, and prepare my children. I thought I’d have years to give my children all my stories, all my experiences. Suddenly I had 720 hours ― there was no time for the comprehensive Western canon, or the compendium of my personal misadventures. Instead, I recorded myself reading Matilda and Pippi Longstocking. I played 99 Luftballoons on repeat while my daughter and I danced in the kitchen, again and again and again. I filmed myself singing my son to sleep in our ugly brown armchair ― to market, to market to buy a fat pig ― smiling at him snuggled in his carrier while we walked up and down the street and he laughed at the wind on his cheeks ― home again, home again, jiggity jig. All this would remain if I did not.
My husband said I needed to get stronger, so I started running again. Down the street from my house, past the big Baptist church and over Ocean Drive. It hurt. I’d cough, my tumour pressing too hard into my bronchus, and my lungs would spasm. I’d keep going. At the top of the hill leading down to the hotels, I’d see myself scooping up my son in one arm and my daughter in the other. I would look out over our few skyscrapers and feel myself sprinting over their rooftops, my children warm and safe in my arms as we left this city, this sickness behind us. I will save you. I will carry you as far as I can go, and then a little farther.
“Between my diagnosis and lung surgery, I had one month to recover from pneumonia, prepare myself, and prepare my children. I thought I’d have years to give my children all my stories, all my experiences. Suddenly I had 720 hours ― there was no time for the comprehensive Western canon, or the compendium of my personal misadventures.”
On the morning of my lung surgery I was at my parents’ sprawling one-story house in the suburbs of Houston. It was 5am. I’d slept maybe two hours. The house was dark and seemed uninhabited, framed somehow. The blue and brown tile floors, the beige walls: here was a house where people lived, and now I was leaving it to go, well, elsewhere. My body would be on a table at MD Anderson, my lungs in the hands of my surgeon, but my mind, my soul that had, up until this point, been solely the province of my husband and my children ― where was that going? I felt tentative, apart, as if wires had been stuck through my arms and legs. I didn’t know whether this was fear or something different, something prior or adjacent to life.
I gently opened my sister’s door to kiss her goodbye. My daughter was snoring next to her, her body small under the pea green cover, her bangs crooked and perfect in a way I couldn’t focus on if I was going to be able to leave her. She looked so unprotected, so alone. Was she hot or cold? Did she need another cover, or should I take this one off?
I kissed my sister’s sweaty forehead and she stirred to hug me. I kept looking at my daughter. Her body, not mine; her body, not mine. She would stay here. I would go away. The wires in my arms started to sting and I walked out of the room. I hadn’t kissed my daughter. I hadn’t touched her ― I couldn’t.
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My son slept in the guest room next to my sister’s. The door was shut. I paused in the dark hallway, scrunched my toes on the faded maroon rug. Again my arms ached, and again I walked away.
When they wheeled me off to surgery the last thing I said to my husband was to kiss the kids for me, every day, please. People started pushing me away from my husband, away from my children. “Please,” I whispered, “I didn’t kiss them goodbye.”
If I didn’t make it out of surgery, who could ever love my children as I had? The world that I had found so strange, so beautiful — who would guide them through it? Who would hold their hands?
I don’t remember waking up, but I do remember a figure next to me gently laughing and patting my hand, “She’s fine. She’s on her way here.” My daughter — I was asking if my daughter was okay. My logic was frantic, groping, inverted: if my daughter was okay, then I must be alive. I must have survived.
Things got grim after surgery. Breathing, walking, sleeping ― it all hurt, like knives in my lungs, like a rusted birdcage in my chest, like a hunter inside me I could not escape. For two months I couldn’t lift more than 10 pounds; I couldn’t hold my son. I became completely separate from my children. Were they fed? Clothed? Loved? I didn’t know; I didn’t consider these things.
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My daughter wouldn’t sleep, she put gum in her cousin’s hair, emptied out all the toothpaste. My son stopped eating. He would cry and he would whimper but he wouldn’t eat. At one point I stumbled out of my bedroom into the kitchen where my mom was holding my son, trying anything to get him to take one bite of food. I walked over and put the spoon of watery baby oatmeal in his mouth. He ate it, then another, then another. I fumed at my mother for doing it wrong. Couldn’t any of these people just feed a baby? Couldn’t they do it just like me?
My son twisted his torso toward me, reached out his arms. I can’t take you, I can’t hold you. I closed my eyes and walked back into my bedroom.
My body had been their home, and now even I could hardly live there.
Courtesy of Sarah McClung The author with her son in March 2019, in between pneumonias and before her surgery.
Two weeks after my surgery, a tender-hearted friend dropped my son. I was sitting nearby and managed to catch him just before his head hit the floor. I sobbed so hard after that I was sure my chest tube wound would split. It didn’t.
As long as I was sick, my children couldn’t be healthy ― it was that simple. My son learned not to reach for me, my daughter learned how to make her own toast ― these things, these small things, were my kids getting ready for a world without me? That little girl snoring under the pea green comforter, could I go back to her? Cut all this out, fold the olive ribbon of time back together and go home to the little girl who had been good, the little girl who had been mine?
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I found a video on my phone from a month after my surgery. My daughter and I are at the beach, and it’s an ugly beach ― grimy sand, murky water, oil rigs dotting the distant sandbars. My daughter is skipping around the camera, around me. She’s wearing a bright blue shirt with a picture of a cherry red schoolhouse, and her hair is braided. Two little French plaits tightly wound at the top of her head and then frizzing out marvellously below. The waves crash around her small bare feet. A crane stands still on a cement wall just past us. My daughter darts a few feet ahead and shouts, “Wind and seashells ... today!” She jumps briefly into the waves, then out, then cocks her head to a horizon I’m not looking at and smiles. Just barely. A smile only a mother would see.
She was going to be okay. I was going to be her mother again. In fits and starts and slowly now, I could come back to her as I came back to my own life.
Two months later I could hold my son again. He learned to turn back my way when he was hungry or tired or scared. He would crawl and then walk toward me, his mother.
Precedent tells me I’m now supposed to say we found joy. We found meaning. We found a sublime sort of redemption in the ugliness and pain of it all. But that isn’t at all what happened, or what continues to happen. We just made it, that’s all. We plodded through time, or time plodded through us. One day followed another, soon those days stacked up to weeks, and those weeks to months.
Now my son runs, now my daughter poorly attempts to do basic math that is staggeringly boring. Life. It goes on whether or not I rejoice, whether or not I can rediscover the facile pleasure of complaining without sensing the distant heavy thud of a scythe or whatever it is death now wields (Reopening orders? A ventilator?).
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It’s been a year since my surgery. While there are treatments for neuroendocrine cancer, there’s still no cure for it. Should the cancer cells that spread to my lymphovascular system decide to organise elsewhere, I’ll undergo another surgery, shedding bits of myself like little unwanted Horcruxes. For now, the doctors watch my lungs, and I reassemble the pick-up sticks of my life.
“As long as I was sick, my children couldn’t be healthy ― it was that simple.”
When I came back from Houston after my last CT scan in January, I took my kids to the mall, my daughter’s favorite place. I used to find trips to the mall synonymous with existential dread, and they certainly still are, but this time, somewhere between the Sbarro pizza and the bathrooms, the dread was mixed with a bewildering ecstasy.
I picked my son up out of his stroller and held my daughter’s hand. I squeezed them both. None of us made a sound as we stood together amid the ebb and flow of the pizza line that we, a small band of survivors, could watch from a new distance, a further orbit. We had brushed an edge, an unholy terror, and now we were somehow apart from the people all around us who didn’t know how lucky we were just to touch each other.
I wanted to say all this to my son and daughter, to tell them that I am still your mother, and even though we carry this cancer with us, and even though I know you’re scarred where no one else can see, I’m still yours. I’m still here. I have carried you over the rooftops, I have folded up the ribbon of time, and now we are back together.
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But I didn’t say anything. I picked my daughter up, balancing her on the hip opposite my son. A bird squeaked above us. “Buh, buh,” my son babbled. “Bird!” my daughter shouted. “Bird!” We all tilted our heads upward and watched as a sparrow flitted across the steel beams of the Sbarro. I squeezed them both, held their small bodies close to mine.
“Yes, that’s a bird,” I said. I closed my eyes and breathed in as deeply as I could.
The grassy smell of my children’s hair, the doughy warmth of their arms and legs, the stench of cheese, a bird chirping in the mall rafters: jackpot. On the far shore of sickness, home.
Courtesy of Sarah McClung The author's son and daughter at the beach in April 2020.
Sarah McClung is a writer recovering from cancer while raising her two small children. This article first appeared on HuffPost Personal.
Have a compelling personal story you want to tell? Find out what we’re looking for here, and pitch us on ukpersonal@huffpost.com


thehuffingtonpostuk--2020-07-14--Mum Of Two Reveals Anguish At Her Sons' Crippling Coronavirus Fears

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“You’re only staying inside because of me. If I threw myself headfirst out of a window, this would all be over wouldn’t it?” As a mother, Jenny Hobbs felt her heart plummet when she heard her older son Stanley’s words. She desperately tried to reassure him and calm him down – knowing how hard he has found the coronavirus pandemic and all the ways it has changed his life.
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The 36-year-old mum from Bristol has two sons – Stanley, 15, who has a heart condition and asthma and Nathan, 12, who has ADHD and autism. Both have been struggling to cope mentally and emotionally over the past few months. Nathan has been too frightened to go outside, even to the garden, while Stanley has had the opposite worry that his family have been isolating only for him.
Hobbs tells HuffPost UK she has tried to remain strong and upbeat in front of her boys – but secretly cries in the shower as “no one can hear you in there.”
However, while she has felt desperately alone, Hobbs sadly isn’t. New research from Action for Children reveals one in three parents feel out of their depth as their children struggle to cope with the fallout of the coronavirus pandemic.
Jenny Hobbs Jenny Hobbs, 36, with her sons Stanley, 15 and Nathan, 12
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The charity carried out a YouGov survey of more than 2,000 parents, laying bare the devastating impact the crisis has had on millions of families across the UK. Children have felt isolated and lonely, many struggling to sleep or suffering night terrors when they do, and some children are displaying unusually aggressive behaviour during lockdown, parents revealed.
Families also shared their experiences of children bedwetting, becoming debilitatingly clingy, and not wanting to go outside. These behaviours have left parents reeling in turn – with four in 10 feeling more anxious than usual.
These findings ring for Jenny Hobbs. Stanley, 15, was among the first children to be sent home from his school, before lockdown was introduced, as he has a condition which leads to an abnormal increase in his heart rate and requires a heart monitor in his chest. He also has asthma and his teacher told Hobbs that she did not feel it was safe for him to be at school with his respiratory issues.
Shortly afterwards, Nathan’s school said the same of his situation – Hobbs’ younger son has Neuro Developmental Delay, Hobbs explains, so even though he is 12, he has significant emotional and behavioural immaturity.
“Nathan heard one of his teachers say that each and every one of us would be affected by this pandemic and lose someone we love or know someone who is going to be affected,” says his mum. “He cried all the way home and when he got home, he grabbed hold of Stanley and said: ‘I don’t want you to die.’
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Jenny Hobbs Jenny Hobbs' son Nathan, 12
Hobbs says watching her boys struggle with their mental health has been the most painful thing she has ever witnessed and suspects thousands of parents will be feeling the same way as her, as they recognise the long-lasting impact of the pandemic on the “Covid children” whose lives have been upturned.
“In the beginning of lockdown, Nathan was having terrible night terrors and in his head, he convinced himself we were all going to die,” says Hobbs. “Every time anyone coughed or spluttered or if there was the slightest thing, he would say: ‘You’ve got it.’
“It is heartbreaking to see in their eyes they are so scared by all this. But you hold your own emotions in as you don’t want to break down in front of them.”
The situation was complicated by the practical challenges of lockdown. Even though Hobbs had foodbank vouchers, she couldn’t leave the house – or her boys – to pick up supplies. “I was muddling through like a robot, too frightened to leave the house in case I brought something back and made the kids ill,” she says. “I’d never forgive myself if something happened to them.”
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Hobbs has received help from Action for Children’s emergency coronavirus appeal fund – and the charity also supplied a trampoline for Nathan, who gradually began going outside into the garden, if only for short bursts.
Jenny Hobbs Stanley and Nathan playing on the trampoline provided by Action for Children
As a Year 10 pupil, Stanley was in the first year of his GCSEs when the crisis began, while his younger brother is in Year 6, preparing to begin secondary school in September (at a year’s delay). With both sons at major milestones in their education, Hobbs has been concerned about the impact that missing months of school will have on them.
“Their normal lives have been disrupted and all their routines have changed,” she says. “It is hard to watch them struggle and I worry about how all this is going to affect their emotional and physical health and their mental wellbeing.
“There is also the concern about how these poor children and thousands like them might have to live with this for the rest of their lives and might not be able to sit their GCSEs and struggle to get employment after leaving school.”
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Stanley was already facing the pressures of catching up on his studies when he started showing the strain of staying inside and shielding against the virus.
“It was very frightening when Stanley had his meltdown and threatened to throw himself out of the window,” Hobbs says. “Normally, 15-year-olds have lots of things to look forward to but he felt uncertain about not knowing what was going to happen. Stan is a very intelligent lad and I want the best for him. Before all this happened, we were talking about colleges. But now he can’t get the headspace to think beyond what is going to happen tomorrow.”
Since lockdown has eased, he has returned to school for just two hours, one day a week, but Nathan has been back in school four days a week. However, it hasn’t been easy for either of the boys – or their mother.
““He keeps asking me: ‘Has Covid gone away yet?’ I have to tell him the truth and say it hasn’t.”
“Nathan’s first day back at school was horrific,” says Hobbs. “He is coping better with it now but he is massively obsessed with washing his hands and is getting through four large family sized bottles of hand soap a week.”
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His anxiety shows whenever they leave the house. “Even now, when we are out walking, if Nathan feels I am getting too close to anyone, he pulls me back. He has convinced himself he is going to die of it. He also has the uncertainty of starting a new school soon amid all this.”
Even as restrictions ease, parents remain fearful of weeks and months of uncertainty ahead. More than one in three (37%) surveyed by Action for Children say they are worried their children will struggle to socialise and will want to remain at home. And the charity is warning that things are likely to get worse as the long-term impacts of the pandemic become clearer.
It has experienced a surge in demand of 415% for parenting advice in the first three months of lockdown compared with the same time last year. As a result, it has launched Parent Talk, a new national online service which connects mums, dads and carers with trained parenting coaches. The confidential one-to-one online service offers parents free, practical advice and emotional support.
Lynn Giles, Parent Talk manager at Action for Children, says: “The pandemic has triggered a crisis for mums, dads and children on an unprecedented scale with parents feeling overwhelmed without their usual support from friends and family or any certainty for the future.”
With parents desperate for guidance, services like Parent Talk are needed more than ever, she says. “Our parent coaches are there for any questions parents have – big or small. Anyone who needs a bit of support in these tough times can access it.”
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The charity is also urging the government to prioritise children’s mental health in its Covid-19 recovery planning and provide adequate funding to meet the surge in need feared in the months ahead.
“Huge numbers of children will need extra support over the coming months and parents are telling us they don’t know where to turn,” Giles says.
“As the immediate health crisis passes, we now need to turn our attention to the scars coronavirus has left on families struggling with a whole new reality – with many grieving from having lost loved ones and others worrying about their jobs and futures.”
For her part, Hobbs tells HuffPost UK she puts on a brave face for her sons but that seeing them struggle with their mental health makes her feel like a failure.
“As a parent, you feel hopeless as what can you do apart from support them.” she says. “I feel I have to hide how I’m feeling as my boys have already gone through so much change in their lives and don’t need to see their mum who is supposed to be strong breaking down in front of them,” she says.
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thehuffingtonpostuk--2020-07-14--How To Cut Down On Alcohol If The Quarantinis Got Out Of Hand

“The range of craft beers, spirits and wines are amazing and you can pick them up directly from the producers or from online stores like Wisebartender, as well as the supermarkets,” she says. “Now is a great time to try out what’s on offer and find a new favourite tipple to help you moderate for the long-term.”
Plenty of pubs and bars now stock low alcohol or alcohol-free options too, so don’t be afraid to ask what’s available.
3. Set some boundaries. If you’ve got alcohol in the house, find a new home for it, such as the garage or on top of the wardrobe, so it’s less visible and accessible in your daily routine.
“Have some clear rules about when you’re allowed to drink – like no drinking when stressed or sad, or only drink with evening meals – and lengthen your drinks, keeping to single serves with lots of tonic or spritzers to dial down the strength,” adds Willoughby.
“It’s easy to slip into new bad habits so having firm boundaries will keep alcohol in its place.”
4. Talk about it. If you feel like you’ve slipped into bad habits, speak to your partner, friend or family member about it. They might be able to offer advice, or share how they’ve cut down on drinking now lockdown is easing.


thehuffingtonpostuk--2020-07-14--What Intensive Care Looks Like In A Crisis, Captured By A Doctor

Dr Matthew Jones
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A doctor has photographed his colleagues working in an intensive care unit during the coronavirus pandemic, highlighting the “stresses and pressure” on the ward, as well as the “immense humanity” on display.
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Teaching fellow Dr Matthew Jones took the intimate photos of staff during their shifts at The James Cook University Hospital. The doctors and nurses have been busy treating patients from Middlesbrough, North Yorkshire, and the surrounding areas – some of the hardest-hit areas in the UK.
Dr Jones was inspired to capture the series, titled Care in a Crisis, after previously documenting a ward in South Sudan, where he worked as a doctor in 2018.
“I found that photography was a powerful way to help me understand the experience as it unfolded at such speed,” he said. “It gave a means to pause and reflect and find answers, and continues to do so even now.
“I wanted to offer that simple resource to staff in intensive care at James Cook, so they could process events and move forward with a sense of what they had achieved.”
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Dr Matthew Jones
Jones described the atmosphere in the intensive care unit as “amazing”.
“You sensed the strong bonds that existed between them all, a real spirit of care for each other’s welfare,” he said.
“I think the photos do a little justice to the stresses and pressure of the environment, but also the immense humanity on display as staff made such an effort to build bonds with the patients despite the obstacles they faced.”
Dr Matthew Jones
Intensive care consultant Alex Scott worked with Dr Jones to launch a website featuring some of the striking images. Some of their favourites are also on display in the hospital’s main atrium.
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“This project stands in honour to all those staff who have committed their lives to caring, and had the courage to do so at personal risk in the worst crisis of modern times, and also in tribute to our patients,” said Scott.
View a selection of photos from the series below or visit Care in a Crisis to see the full collection.
Dr Matthew Jones
Dr Matthew Jones
Dr Matthew Jones
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Dr Matthew Jones
Dr Matthew Jones
Dr Matthew Jones
Dr Matthew Jones
Dr Matthew Jones
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Dr Matthew Jones
Dr Matthew Jones
Dr Matthew Jones
Dr Matthew Jones
Dr Matthew Jones


thehuffingtonpostuk--2020-07-14--Hong Kong No Longer Feels Free. But I’m Not Leaving

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As I sat down to write this, news came of a Hong Kong government official’s warning that the pro-democracy primaries, intended to select and send the most popular candidates the the Legislative Council in September, might violate the new National Security Law.
I want to scream.
Perhaps I should have gotten used to it by now. After all, the Chinese and Hong Kong governments have shown they will use any means to clamp down on all dissenting voices.
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I still remember the elation when a fresh-faced pro-democracy candidate won in my constituency during the District Council elections last September. As I watched one constituency after another flip from pro-government blue to pro-democracy yellow that night, I cried tears of joy. I’d voted in other elections, in Hong Kong and elsewhere, before – but I have never felt that so much was at stake.
We had already been protesting for six months by that point, and yet the demands of millions were repeatedly ignored, police brutality remained unaccounted for, large swathes of protestors had been arrested, and a prominent activist was banned from running one month prior to the elections. Voting seemed to be the only way to make our voices heard. Yet, there was also the fear it might be the last election we were allowed to vote in. That night was a rare moment of victory for the millions who have marched and held sit-downs to demand for greater accountability and freedoms.
“I have stopped reading dystopian novels. No fiction could match the mix of anger, disgust and gloom I’m experiencing right now.”
Demonstrators holding placards and a banner while chanting slogans demanding the end of one party rule in China during the demonstration.Around 30 people gathered and attempted to march to the flag raising ceremony ground to protest against the newly implemented Nation Security Law imposed by the Beijing government. The demonstrators also demand the end of one party rule in China. (Photo by Geovien So / SOPA Images/Sipa USA) SIPA USA/PA Images
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Hong Kong is still in a very different place than nine months ago. Press freedom is getting worse by the day, protests are banned, a rising number of pro-democracy legislators are arrested, restaurant owners are ordered to remove ‘Lennon walls’ – likely the most peaceful acts of resistance one can think of – from their own properties. I have stopped reading dystopian novels. No fiction could match the mix of anger, disgust and gloom I’m experiencing right now.
Hong Kong protestors have been touted for their creativity and agility in the past year. At the same time, I’m not sure what else we could do. When the one-million and two-million peaceful marches in early June didn’t work, Hongkongers kept marching in almost every district of the city. When the government used the coronavirus pandemic as an excuse to ban the 4 June vigil (while doing little to prevent people from gathering in the city’s bar district), participants flooded into Victoria Park anyway – but made sure to sit 1.5metres apart. When the government absurdly declared that an eight-word protest slogan might violate the National Security Law earlier this month, graphic designs displaying the eight characters in abstracted form started to circulate on the internet.
Hong Kong is, as 60% of people say in the latest PORI poll, no longer free. I’m surprised that number is not higher. I’ve never felt less free. Sometimes, I find myself wondering if a word I utter in public, or a phrase I write, will get me arrested. I appreciate the lifeboat policies extended by western democracies, including the one by Britain, which grants the three million Hong Kongers who hold a BNO passport or are eligible for one the right to work in the UK and an eventual path to full citizenship.
The reality is, our parents and grandparents came to Hong Kong with the expressed intention of escaping from Chinese Communist rule. The current ruling party of China loves to claim the city as part of China, but the reality is much more complicated than that. For the descendants of those who ran away from CCP rule decades ago, is it time to run again? This intergenerational trauma is now being played out in different corners of the city.
“For the millions living in the city, Hong Kong isn’t simply a ‘window’ into China, a low-tax zone or a place caught between two superpowers. It is home.”
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Yet, among those I talked to, nobody is ready to leave. I admit I’m one of the privileged ones but I count myself among those who don’t want to leave. I’ve lived in Hong Kong for most of my life, I built my career here, my family and friends are here. Everywhere I go, I’m reminded of what we went through in the past year: flattened cardboard boxes lying on the sidewalk, a lone umbrella hanging on a barbed wire, the absence of steel barricades on the streets. The cry for freedom is inked deep into our urban landscape, our lives, our nightmares and dreams. There is no ‘switching off’. When it is the air you breathe, when it is something so essential to life, is it worth fighting for? Most days, I oscillate between a determination to do more and a wrecking guilt at not doing enough.
Nobody knows what the ‘right strategy’ is; but those who are staying are doing their best to hold onto hope. The hope that more will join our ranks. The hope that international companies will take a stronger stance and say ‘we won’t sacrifice the basic rights of Hongkongers for our bottom lines’. The hope that we’d get to freely express our opinion – on the internet, in the streets – again.
It is as humble as that. For the millions living in the city, Hong Kong isn’t simply a ‘window’ into China, a low-tax zone or a place caught between two superpowers. It is home. And it is where we want to, one day, have the freedom to envision our own future.
Moira Kong is a journalist in Hong Kong, writing under a pseudonym
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thehuffingtonpostuk--2020-07-14--Is Boris Johnson Playing Fast And Loose Again With The British Constitution?

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Today’s UK government U-turn on Huawei was well trailed, but is nonetheless hugely significant. Just six months after Boris Johnson defied American pressure - and trusted his intelligence officials - to grant a limited role for the Chinese company in our 5G network, Donald Trump has got what he wanted. No wonder US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo praised “our British friends” in a statement this evening.
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But the key factor was not really American friendliness, it was the raw power and reach of US sanctions. When the Trump administration tweaked their ‘Foreign-Produced Direct Product Rule’ on May 15, the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (an offshoot of GCHQ) instantly spotted the implications and ordered the review that drove today’s decision.
The US change was sweeping, banning Huawei from using any American technology, design or manufacture processes, and at a stroke throwing into doubt the company’s future microchips and kit. Our spooks, who have spent years closely monitoring Huawei’s US-reliant tech, decided today they could no longer view its activities as a manageable risk.
Although the NCSC report was driven by a hard-headed assessment of the facts, it still got the PM out of a political hole with both Trump and his own backbenches. Culture secretary Oliver Dowden said the shift to stripping Huawei out of UK networks entirely by 2027 would be written into law in the new Telecoms Security Bill.
The very fact that the bill was coming (it goes way beyond Huawei to protect the UK against state cyber actors like Russia, China and Iran) gave Tory rebels a chance to flex their muscles. With Keir Starmer’s Labour newly hawkish on China, and the SNP already so, the government majority of 80 was looking ropey. Even today, Dowden refused to say when the bill - due before summer recess - would be published, beyond “autumn”. He would only say that “autumn falls in the months of September, October and November”.
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The independence and rigour of NCSC’s advice has never been questioned. The latest blog by its technical director Ian Levy sets out the Huawei ban’s long-term benefit to UK security but also the downsides in terms of “significant risks” in relying on a small number of other companies, even friendly Western ones like Nokia. The cost to telecoms firms will be hundreds of millions of pounds too.
So, it is perhaps bitterly ironic that the independence of those who watch over our intelligence agencies - the Intelligence and Security Committee - is being called into question on the same day as the Huawei decision. With the House of Lords confirming its final member - Labour peer Lord West of Spithead - this afternoon, the ISC is now formally constituted and ready to go.
But West is one of just four Opposition members on the committee (along with MPs Kevan Jones, Diana Johnson and Stewart Hosie), compared to five Tory MPs (Chris Grayling, John Hayes, Julian Lewis, Theresa Villiers and Mark Pritchard). For the first time in years, there will be a government majority on the committee. Part of the reason for that is the little-noticed move by the PM to remove a crossbencher from its membership.
Former cabinet secretary Lord Butler served on the ISC from 2010 to 2015, and was replaced by the equally independent minded Lord Janvrin - the Queen’s former private secretary - from 2015. Until today, that is. Janvrin’s departure from the committee is much lamented by some in parliament.
Janvrin today gave me his reaction to his removal. “I would only make the obvious point that the inclusion of a crossbencher in recent years has reinforced the non-partisan, cross-party nature of the Committee and this has in my view added to its authority in holding the intelligence community to account – a crucial constitutional role in a democracy,” he said. Diplomatically put, but the message was pretty clear.
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The fact is that while Boris Johnson can be constrained by backbench rebellions, he also knows the power of patronage. Several MPs (Tories among them) felt that the whipping through of Bernard Jenkin as chairman of the Liaison Committee was proof that the PM doesn’t care for meaningful checks and balances in our constitution. The impending vote for Grayling as chair of the ISC, thanks to its new Tory majority, is another example.
Even when he won a landslide in 1997, Tony Blair kept on Tory Tom King as chair of the ISC to maintain its non-partisan nature. Between 2015 and 2020, the nine-strong committee had four Tories and four Opposition members, with a crossbencher in addition. Yet in 2020, it seems that the PM has decided (rather than the Committee itself) that Grayling should be its chair, despite his only passing acquaintance with security experience. “Intelligence is not the word you think of when you think of Grayling,” says one MP with an arched eyebrow.
Some MPs remain baffled why Grayling is the PM’s pick, other than the fact that he is a committed Brexiteer (Grayling don’t forget was the first cabinet minister under Cameron to publicly back Brexit). They are particularly baffled as to why Johnson appeared to be ready to support Sir Mike Penning - a former serviceman and armed forces minister - for the committee, only to see that prospect disappear.
Penning’s independence of mind is said by some to be the real stumbling block to his appointment. Which if true would only serve to underline how fleeting Johnson’s personal relations can be in his party. Penning helped the Johnson leadership campaign hugely last year by giving up his perfectly-sited Portcullis House office to allow the PM-to-be to schmooze backbenchers in person.
Grayling will want to prove his own credentials as soon as the committee meets, possibly as early as Wednesday. The publication of the long-awaited ‘Russia report’ could take place before summer recess, as could the delayed ‘annual report’ on the intelligence services. The Russia report may not contain the mythical political dynamite some have assumed, though any sniff of Kremlin links to Tory donors would be sure to be pounced on. The Huawei decision today underlines the growing importance of intelligence, and independent oversight of that intelligence, more than ever.
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But some Conservative MPs are more uneasy about the way Johnson disregards norms of the UK’s unwritten constitution. The prorogation of parliament and ruthless expulsion of figures like David Gauke last year may not have been momentary lapses, but proof of the naked opportunism, raw power and patronage that many suspect drives the PM’s politics. If so, maybe he’s more like Trump than he likes to admit.
Quote Of The Day
“Britain’s decision to protect its national security by banning Huawei from its 5G network is also a win for fair trade and human rights.”
Woody Johnson, US ambassador to the UK, lets slip this is as much about trade wars as security fears
Tuesday Cheat Sheet
Health secretary Matt Hancock confirmed that face coverings are to be mandatory in shops and supermarkets in England from 24 July.
The Leicester lockdown will be reviewed this week, Hancock said. Another hotspot for the virus, Blackburn with Darwen, has introduced stricter measures to try to avoid following Leicester.
Postcode-level coronavirus testing data is being withheld from publication due to councils’ fears it could lead to certain communities being stigmatised and a breakdown of community cohesion, HuffPost revealed.
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There was a double helping of bad news on the economy. The Office for National Statistics said the UK grew by just 1.8 per cent in May, after the collapse of more than 25 per cent over March and April.
The Office for Budget Responsibility had a central forecast that growth would not return to trend until the middle of 2022, with more than a million extra unemployed.
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thehuffingtonpostuk--2020-07-14--Ghislaine Maxwell Denied Bail After Pleading Not Guilty To Sex Abuse Charges

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Jeffrey Epstein’s former girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, will remain behind bars until trial next year after she was denied bail as a risk to flee rather than face charges she recruited girls for the financier to sexually abuse more than two decades ago.
Two Epstein accusers implored the judge to keep the British socialite detained after she pleaded not guilty to the charges during a video court hearing in Manhattan.
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US district judge Alison Nathan said even the most restrictive form of release would be insufficient to ensure Maxwell would not flee, particularly now that she has seen the strength of the evidence and realises that she could face up to 35 years in prison if she is convicted.
As the judge explained her reasoning for denying bail, Maxwell dropped her head repeatedly, appearing dejected.
At one point, she appeared to wipe a tear from underneath one eye.
Maxwell, 58, has been held without bail since her July 2 arrest at her million-dollar New Hampshire estate, where prosecutors say she refused to open the door for FBI agents, who broke through to find that she had retreated to an interior room.
Her lawyer, Mark S Cohen, told the judge that Maxwell was in her pyjamas and had been told that security protocol called for her to retreat to her room if there was any disturbance outside her doors.
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The judge rejected Cohen’s claim that Maxwell was hiding from the public and the media rather than investigators when she purchased a one million US dollars mansion late last year.
Assistant US attorney Alison Moe said Maxwell posed as a journalist, Jen Marshall, under another name when she bought the New Hampshire estate.
Maxwell was charged with recruiting at least three girls, one as young as 14, for Epstein to abuse between 1994 and 1997.
As part of the government’s presentation, Moe read aloud a statement by one female accuser while another, Annie Farmer, gave a very short statement by phone asking the court to detain Maxwell.
Farmer said Maxwell was a “sexual predator who groomed and abused me”.
She said Maxwell “lied under oath and tormented her survivors.”
An indictment alleged that she helped groom the victims to endure sexual abuse and was sometimes there when Epstein abused them.
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It also alleged that she lied during a 2016 deposition in a civil case stemming from Epstein’s abuse of girls and women.
Ghislaine Maxwell in 2000. PA
Epstein killed himself in August 2019, several weeks after he was also confronted by two accusers at a bail hearing who insisted that he should remain in jail while awaiting sex trafficking charges that alleged he abused girls at his Manhattan and Florida mansions in the early 2000s.
In court papers, Maxwell’s lawyers argued that Epstein’s death left the media “wrongly trying to substitute her for Epstein — even though she’d had no contact with Epstein for more than a decade, had never been charged with a crime or been found liable in any civil litigation, and has always denied any allegations of claimed misconduct”.
Prosecutors said in court that Maxwell was a flight risk because of her “undisclosed wealth” and “extensive international ties” that could put her out of the reach of extradition.
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“She has the ability to live off the grid indefinitely,” Moe said, citing Maxwell’s access to millions of dollars and the scant information about her finances provided by her lawyers.
Maxwell’s lawyers pushed to have her released on $5 million bail. They said she “vigorously denies the charges, intends to fight them, and is entitled to the presumption of innocence.”
The judge set a trial date for July 2021.
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Epstein had a wide circle of friends including Prince Andrew, Donald Trump and former US president Bill Clinton.
Andrew, who denies any wrongdoing, has since been urged to provide information to the investigation by a US attorney.
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Afterwards, some accusers praised the decision to keep Maxwell detained.
In a statement, Virginia Roberts Giuffre said she was “thrilled”.
“Without Ghislaine, Jeffrey Epstein would not have been able to fulfil his sick desires,” Giuffre said.
“Ghislaine preyed on me when I was a child.
“As with every other of her and Jeffrey Epstein’s victims, I will have to live with what she did to me for the rest of my life.


thehuffingtonpostuk--2020-07-14--Exclusive: Covid Test Data Held Back From Publication Over Community Cohesion Concerns

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Postcode-level coronavirus testing data is being withheld from publication due to councils’ fears it could lead to certain communities being stigmatised.
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HuffPost UK understands some local authorities have raised concerns about the government’s plan to make public detailed testing data, first revealed on this website.
Health secretary Matt Hancock has raised the issue at cabinet.
Councils are worried that releasing the data could lead to people in certain areas becoming stigmatised – for example if those in particular neighbourhoods test positive in larger numbers than others.
They are also concerned this could damage community cohesion, and that giving out data in too much detail could lead to individuals or families being identified.
The issue of detailed coronavirus testing data has come under the spotlight after Leicester was placed into a local lockdown following an outbreak.
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Following a row over a “lost week” in the city, when the status of a local outbreak was not clear to council and public health leaders due to a lack of information, all councils began to get access to granular postcode data late last month.
Government officials wanted to make the data public, with the first tranche slated for release two weeks ago, but the information has been held back after councils raised their concerns, a Whitehall source said.
A medical worker takes a swab at a drive-in coronavirus testing facility at the Chessington World of Adventures resort in south west London PA
It came as Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham called on the government to share more data privately with local authorities so they could better manage infections in their areas.
He said ministers were “at risk of not observing their own law” by failing to provide daily data, which identifies patients, to councils.
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The Labour former health secretary also called for clarity on the threshold for government intervention if there was an outbreak.
The metro-mayor said a high number of cases in Rochdale may be linked to a warehousing operation that had been the “focus of some extra work with regard to testing”.
He said: “I think what we have seen through this is some of the lowest paid jobs have some working conditions which are, I’m afraid, leaving people exposed to picking up the virus.
“That seems to be the common theme in some of the communities.”
Burnham said testing data that included a person’s work postcode as well as their home postcode would help to get to the “root cause” of any outbreak.
He added: “Working conditions remain a big concern. Many people who work in these places simply cannot afford to self isolate.”
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Appearing alongside Burnham at a joint press conference, Liverpool city region mayor Steve Rotheram said a rise in cases in the south of the city involved people aged between 15 and 24 and work was going on to establish links between them.
He said: “The only way we can do this, or the way we can be helped in doing this, is for the government to work collaboratively with us.”
Burnham said: “We want to be in a position to take every possible measure we can to avoid a local lockdown.
“It’s in everyone’s interest that councils have all the information they need to identify potential outbreaks then if they identify them, to respond quickly and effectively to them.”
Hancock has previously said Manchester did have access to data, after Burnham called for more “track and tracing” information to be shared.
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Ian Hudspeth, chair of the Local Government Association’s community wellbeing board, said: “More information is being shared with councils but we also need to see improvements to the individual case data, including making the data available daily, adding UPRNs [property reference numbers], and providing more information about workplaces.


thehuffingtonpostuk--2020-07-14--Exclusive: Former Staff Call Out 'Culture Of Racism' At Top US African Art Museum

The Smithsonian National Museum of African Art on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Carol M. Highsmith/Buyenlarge/Getty Images
Ten former staff and board members of the world’s largest museum complex have urged executives to address an alleged long-standing “culture of racism” at its museum of African art in Washington, DC.
A group of former staff members at the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art (NMAfA) have accused their leadership of turning a blind eye to concerns of bigotry in a two-page letter seen by HuffPost.
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The letter’s signatories are calling for the resignation of the NMAfA’s deputy director and chief curator Christine Mullen Kreamer to “enable real, systemic changes in the museum’s practices and policy implementation”.
The letter was addressed to Smithsonian secretary Lonnie G Bunch III, who last year became the first Black person to serve as the institution’s head and now oversees 19 Smithsonian museums.
The letter alleges that more than 10 former or current Black employees have “reported or experienced incidents of racial bias, hostile verbal attacks, retaliation, terminations, microaggressions and degrading comments,” all of which have been ignored by management when raised formally.
On several occasions, managers at the museum have attempted to promote white employees into vacant roles while disregarding the institutional policy requiring a competitive application process, former staffers said.
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“Persistent racial disparities at NMAfA are apparent in the application of institutional policies,” the letter reads.
“Recent events have brought deeper attention to systemic racism within museums across our country. In this spirit, we write to you to express our outrage about the current state of the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art.
“Our goal is to collectively express our concerns and to engage in building an equitable and inclusive museum for our community.”
The letter was addressed to Smithsonian secretary Lonnie G Bunch III, who last year became the first Black person to serve as the institution’s head. Bunch is pictured at the construction of the National Museum of African Art in 2014 SIPA USA/PA Images
One former staffer claims just five full-time Black employees worked at the museum at the time they left – out of more than 40 staff members – which is solely dedicated to the arts and culture of Africa.
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They also say there were no Black curators at the museum and, for more than 10 years, its entire curatorial team had been exclusively white despite what the letter’s authors describe as a “demonstrated interest amongst Black arts professionals and scholars in joining the institution”.
The Smithsonian Institute did not comment on claims about the diversity of the museum’s staff.
Kreamer, deputy director and chief curator at NMAfA, has allegedly had “multiple complaints” filed against her by employees concerning racism, aggression and mismanagement, according to the former staff members.
These complaints include alleged abuse of her hiring and promotion authority in favour of white employees and “consistent bullying and hostility” directed toward Black colleagues who raised concerns about her behaviour, the letter claims.
Kreamer, who joined the curatorial staff at the National Museum of African Art in 2000 before being promoted to her current role in 2009, did not respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.
The letter’s signatories are calling for a replacement to be selected from a diverse pool of candidates – and the position of deputy director and chief curator “to be separated to ensure effective management of the museum”.
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From 2019 to 2020, two senior Black employees in key roles were suddenly dismissed without any evidence of underperformance or unethical behaviour, former employees have said.
By contrast, the letter claims, white colleagues who exhibited “sub-par performance” were offered special counselling, expanded job responsibilities or redeployment to new positions.
LOGAN CYRUS via Getty Images
Black staffers claimed NMAfA managers created obstacles to their ability to do their jobs, but gave white employees chances to develop such as speaking engagements and conference work, the letter says.
The former employees claim the “toxic” culture of racism at NMAfA did not improve under former director Gus Casely-Hayford’s tenure between 2018 and his departure in 2020.
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“This situation became particularly distressing under Gus Casely-Hayford, resulting in negative impacts on Black staff, as well as NMAfA’s reputation within the broader community,” they wrote about the Black British curator in the letter.
Casely-Hayford did not respond to a request for comment.
One letter signatory, who asked not to be named, told HuffPost: “Unfortunately these incidents and concerns about systemic racism only grew during Gus’ tenure. He did nothing to address them. [...]
“It’s so important that there’s self examination within the Black community and there’s a discussion about internal racism.”
The letter’s signatories say the police killing of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement that followed have presented the opportunity to raise their concerns with fresh optimism about being heard.
“I think about George Floyd’s life and this would not be happening right now if it wasn’t for what happened,” one told HuffPost.
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“Six months ago, if we had tried to speak out in this way, talking to journalists or galvanising in this way, I think there would be a reluctance to address this issue, and it’s even harder to do this when there’s a Black person in leadership.”
“Six months ago, if we had tried to speak out in this way, [...] there would be a reluctance to address this issue, and it’s even harder to do this when there’s a Black person in leadership.”
Another signatory, who also didn’t want to be named for fear of repercussions, echoed these sentiments.
“It is a pivotal moment for people of colour to be able to speak their truth and, where people of colour have had bias affect them, be able to talk about it with the mindset that there is a platform now that supports the ability to do that,” the signatory said.
“The Black Lives Matter movement focuses specifically on police brutality and the vulnerability of people of colour — but if you look at many different industries, organisations are now self-reflecting and, at the same time, people of colour are looking at this as a time to speak up,” they said.
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It is not the first time a letter has been sent to the Smithsonian outlining these concerns, according to the former employees.
In early 2020, nine members of the NMAfA’s 13-person advisory board wrote of their concerns about the treatment of Black staff members following the dismissal of a Black employee on the museum’s senior leadership team by Casely-Hayford. The worker had just one week left of her one-year probationary period, and there were no grounded complaints about her performance or behaviour, it is alleged.
Washington, D.C., USA - November 13, 2017: The National Museum of African American History and Culture, opened in 2016, is located on the National Mall. maximbg via Getty Images
Casely-Hayford, a successful Black man who was in a powerful position at the Smithsonian, stands accused of not doing enough to help Black people subjected to racism within an organisation that champions Black art.
“As a person of colour in a titular position, I think there’s a responsibility to make sure that diversity and inclusion – particularly inclusion – are at the front and centre of the organisation,” the first signatory said. “It’s not just about hiring people of colour to make up the numbers. It’s about making sure there is fair and equitable opportunity in that particular organisation for people to be seen, heard and able to progress.”
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They added: “There’s often a tendency to open the door for yourself and do well in your career — but the mark of your legacy is that you open the door behind you and bring more people forward.”
Seven recommendations for improvements have been suggested to the Smithsonian’s leadership in the letter, including a pay equity plan for Black employees; a review of all firings, alleged racially driven incidents and complaints during the past five years; and a public commitment from the museum to improve representation and career advancement of Black employees.
Editor’s note: Following the publication of this article, a Smithsonian spokesperson sent the following statement to HuffPost on Tuesday.
“At the National Museum of African Art, we are committed to increasing diversity across the museum and all disciplines; equally essential, we are cognisant of the need to recruit, employ and empower more curators and artists that represent diverse fields and backgrounds.
“While our collections and exhibits represent a rich diversity of thought, artists and scholarship, we recognise that we must continue to increase diversity within the museum, and drive inclusive behaviour among all Smithsonian staff.
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thehuffingtonpostuk--2020-07-14--5 Times The Government Snoozed On Fighting Coronavirus

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When this will take place has not yet been announced, which makes sense given the crisis is far from over. But one of the highest death tolls in the world and a series of missteps by the government mean it will have plenty to examine.
Here are five things so far that it may want to consider...
The original lockdown
The UK announced a national lockdown on March 23, the same date as Germany but more than a week after many other European countries.
Where the UK lagged even farther behind was in the introduction of even basic restrictions – it was the second-to-last country in Europe to do so when on March 16 it advised against “non-essential” travel and contact with others, and asked people to avoid pubs, clubs and bars.
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What was the cost of this delay? It’s impossible to say for certain what would have happened if lockdown was introduced earlier as no two countries are exactly alike – but the fact the UK has the highest death toll in Europe and the third highest in the world suggests the effects were pretty devastating.
Last month a scientific adviser to the government said the lack of speed “cost a lot of lives” and the government should have taken action earlier.
"We should have gone into lockdown earlier… I think that has cost a lot of lives unfortunately," says SAGE member Professor John Edmunds#Marr #Covid_19 https://t.co/Uug1h8EmWX pic.twitter.com/nhHj56z5V5 — BBC Politics (@BBCPolitics) June 7, 2020
Even more damning was when professor John Edmunds, who sits on the government’s scientific advisory group for emergencies (Sage), said it would have been “hard” to lock down earlier as the government’s data and awareness of coronavirus was “really quite poor”.
But health secretary Matt Hancock insisted in response the government made the “right decisions at the right time”.
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Face masks
The government’s decision on Tuesday to make face masks mandatory in supermarkets has been met with dismay as the new rules, which some already see as long overdue, will not come into effect until July 24.
In an interview with Sky News on Tuesday, London mayor Sadiq Khan said the “U-turn from the government is welcome news”, but added: “Time and time again slow action has put the public’s health at risk. Why wait two weeks? Why not do it from today?”
Or as one person put it:
There are scorpions all over my floor. So I must make sure I wear shoes in the house from July 24th. — Mark Steel (@mrmarksteel) July 14, 2020
Contact tracing
Public Health England abandoned contact tracing way back on March 12 when the system was already overwhelmed. It was later revealed each contact tracer could only handle five cases per week.
But right from the get go, contact tracing was acknowledged as an essential tool for overcoming the pandemic – countries that persisted and introduced sufficient capacity such as South Korea have fared much better than the UK.
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A nationwide “test, track and trace” system with a dedicated app was touted for a mid-May launch, but mid-May came and went with neither materialising.
On May 20, Boris Johnson announced the NHS Test and Trace system would be up and running by June 1 and the app would swiftly follow.
It is now July and although Test and Trace is up and running, its effectiveness is still up for debate. Last week just 70% of “close contacts” of people with Covid-19 were being reached and asked to self isolate, on top of which the government doesn’t actually know whether anyone is following the instructions.
As for the app, on June 18 the government abandoned the plans, instead allowing Apple and Google to take over the project.
Leicester
As the rest of England geared up for the partial reopening of pubs and restaurants at the beginning of July, the city of Leicester was told it would have to endure restrictions for at least three further weeks after a spike in coronavirus cases.
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As well as the inconvenience, the move caused a political storm after the PM was accused of lying when it emerged Leicester had to wait days for the numbers before being locked down.
Labour leader Keir Starmer said there was a “lost week” while the virus spread in the East Midlands city – after Matt Hancock warned of an outbreak during a press conference on June 18, but before Leicester City Council was able to access the data that actually showed it happening.
Keir Starmer says Leicester's local authority had half the testing data until last week, so there was "a lost week while the virus was spreading"
Boris Johnson says Starmer is "mistaken" and "effective whack-a-mole strategies have been put in place"#PMQs https://t.co/wdMJe7evO2 pic.twitter.com/vM61HLK6Cf — BBC Politics (@BBCPolitics) July 1, 2020
Johnson disputed this and insisted local authorities had been sent both types of data, but was accused of lying by a number of MPs and health professionals who said that other places had also had difficulty obtaining the data.
The long-term effects of the delay are yet to be seen but while the city’s rate of new Covid-19 cases has fallen from its recent peak, it is not declining steadily, the latest data suggest.
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Quarantine
Given that coronavirus arrived in the UK via an infected aeroplane passenger sometime in January, it is remarkable the UK government didn’t announce a quarantine for people coming into the country from abroad until May 22.
And it didn’t come into force until June 8.