Today, 1 June 2020, is a bittersweet day for teachers. It is the day that many Reception, Year One and Year Six pupils return to school and so too will they. Of course, some teachers have remained in schools throughout the pandemic for the children of key workers, but now they will be joined by […]
Come into the garden, Maud. (But book in advance and wash your hands). As the UK stumbles into the open air, organisations and attractions all over the country strive to create some sort of ‘new normal’ that works. Nowhere is this more true than with the many garden visitor attractions in our region. Normally, the week […]
Across the globe, society is beginning to wonder what the world might look like when Covid-19 is under control. One of the key questions is how to kick-start the economy once we come out of lockdown. Many companies are already looking at how to get thousands of people back into work; many people are also […]
And so it was announced that on 17 June football is coming home. Premier League football that is. Tentative steps taken to allow players to return to training last week, with club-wide testing in place, has allowed the next and biggest step of Project Restart to be taken. The news will come as welcome relief […]
Lockdown has forced many people to reassess their lives. Work and life look very different now to three months ago. Relieved of their city offices, people have turned to thinking about where they would really like to live. According to data released in May by property website Rightmove, searches by urbanites looking for a property […]
There’s so much we do not know about the response to Covid nationally and in Yorkshire itself. According to the FT, the UK’s excess death rate (no paywall) now tops the world, with over 59k more deaths than usual recorded since the week ending 20 March. Despite this, and despite the lack of effective testing […]
British Airways has announced it will terminate all of its flights between Leeds Bradford airport and Heathrow. The announcement deals a blow to the controversial expansion plans, recently submitted by Leeds Bradford airport’s owners, AMP Capital. A spokesperson for British Airways said, “We are sorry to suspend our flights to Leeds Bradford after many years. […]
Vegan fudge? Down to “my man, the biggest stirrer in Yorkshire, and the strong arm in the kitchen” says Mailene Fortune, explaining the role of sweet potato and coconut in one of Yorkshire’s artisan sweet makers’ newest fudges. A regular at farmers markets over the past few years, Por Favour started off as the twinkle […]
Global carbon dioxide emissions fell by 17 per cent thanks to coronavirus lockdown measures, according to a study published in the journal Nature Climate Change. Yorkshire Bylines can now report that air quality across the county has also improved. The World Air Quality Index project (AQICN) has installed sensors across the world – in Yorkshire, […]
Yorkshire and North East have highest rate of transmission of Covid-19 The total number of Covid-19 deaths in the UK currently stands at nearly 36,000; it is speculated that the real figure, accounting for Covid-19 deaths in care homes, may be much higher. Nick Stripe, the head of the health and analysis and life events […]
One thing in life is certain; we all need to eat. Not only to survive physically, but emotionally too, as the pleasure of food is a comfort even in the darkest of days. When boutique hoteliers John and Sue Rudden of Grassington House in the Yorkshire Dales first found themselves staring into the abyss of […]
“If you’ve got a glass in one hand a bottle of wine in the other, you won’t touch your face.” So say German vintners toasting the gradual end of lockdown as they survey the winding Mosel River from the top of the steepest vineyards in Europe. It’s an ideal place to think about the future. […]
On Monday 4 May, Australian company AMP Capital submitted their planning application to Leeds City Council which, if approved, would allow them to more than double the passenger capacity of the airport and reduce restrictions on the times of day planes are allowed to take off and land. In March 2019, Leeds City Council followed […]
“A perfect storm.” That’s how Laura Chalmers, Yorkshire regional director of the Trussell Trust, who run 29 foodbanks in the county, describes the situation in Yorkshire. According to a study carried out on the 28 March by the Food Foundation, 12 per cent of people nationally are feeding families by breaking the lockdown to go […]
A toddler from West Yorkshire was left in intensive after being diagnosed with Kawasaki disease. This followed her apparent recent recovery from Covid-19, which she contracted five weeks ago. Scarlett Roberts, from Wakefield, was admitted to Pinderfields hospital with a high temperature and nausea and then transferred to an intensive care unit at Leeds Children’s […]
Last Wednesday an amendment to the Agriculture Bill came before MPs. It would have prevented the government agreeing any free trade deal that allowed the import of lower-quality agricultural and food products into this country. Amazingly, the amendment was defeated by 328 to 277. Some 19 MPs from the Yorkshire and the Humber region, all […]
“Graffiti is one of the few tools you have if you have almost nothing. It’s the voice of people who aren’t listened to,” said street artist Banksy in 2001. In his book Banging Your Head Against a Brik Wall Banksy encapsulates what it means to empower people through street art. Now, almost two decades on […]
Wednesday 13th May 2020; it was my mum’s funeral today. Nine people were allowed to attend. She died of Covid-19 one month ago in her care home in Wakefield; she was 93 years old. Don’t tell me “she’s done well”; don’t say “she’s had a good innings”. I do not want to hear that! Two […]
With the Covid-19 virus leading universities to shut their doors and move teaching online, many students worry about the impact on their grades of not having face-to-face contact with their lecturers. The week the government announced lockdown, the universities of Liverpool and Sheffield announced a ‘safety net’. The University of Leeds followed one month later […]
The prime minister does not speak for ordinary Conservatives 12 September Dear editor, I am deeply concerned by the government’s plan to break promises made in the Withdrawal Agreement; an international treaty signed less than a year ago. The Northern Ireland secretary admitted this would break international law. The internal markets bill would renege on […]
Do you get those ‘Rediscover your day’ photo alerts on your phone? The other week I had one for an event I’d attended just over a year ago in Pontefract, in those ‘carefree’ days of March 2019, where a cookery book was awarded a blue plaque. It was unveiled by local MP, Yvette Cooper. ‘English […]
Covid-19 doesn’t have to infect you to affect you. As the side effects of the Covid-19 pandemic begin to manifest themselves in the form of anxiety and stress, recognition is growing of the toll this is taking, particularly on key workers. Organisations in the NHS, public health and the third sector – that reeled like […]
Improvisation has replaced ritual for those whose job is to help us at times of grief. Locked down, we are robbed of our perspective. Some things become invisible. A few days ago outside a funeral directors in Wakefield, there was a sparse gathering, mainly dressed in black. They loitered: maintaining social distance, but unsure; their awkward body language […]
Charlie McCarthy argues a citizens’ assembly for Yorkshire would help revitalise and level up the region as we emerge from the coronavirus lockdown. Brexit has already cost the UK economy £130 billion, shrinking three per cent since the referendum. Putting this into figures we can more easily relate to: EU membership cost 34p per person […]
How Seacroft’s Shopping Forecast is helping locals get their daily bread. Tesco Extra has plenty of everything today. Except flour. How do we know this? Because every day, Elliott Moon from East Leeds FM’s Keeping a Distance, Staying Close programme asks locals to text and phone in while they’re shopping. In fact, the other day, […]
Universal Basic Income. At last year’s G8 summit, those three words were the big story. They came from UBI proponent Rutger Bregman, whose Taxes! Taxes! Taxes! speech was all over social media. UBI is a simple idea. You address inequality and poverty by giving every adult free money, with no conditions. That’s it. Coronavirus has brought UBI […]
Lockdown. 2020’s word of the year. The word that sent us into a toilet-roll stockpiling frenzy. The word which has brought the entire world to a standstill (apart, it would seem, from football in Belarus). Lockdown, which began the week before the first national organising training of Green New Deal UK. One might expect a […]
“Individually we are one drop, together we are an ocean!” Ryunosuke Satoro (Japanese poet) What a strange Easter weekend we’ve all had. With everything that’s happening in the world today, it would be all too easy to focus on the constant stream of tragic stories, negativity and division. We could spend each day reporting our […]
It is difficult, at this stage, to get a handle on how much the COVID-19 pandemic might actually cost us. We face, what could possibly morph into, the worst recession since the Second World War. The lockdown is leading to a fall in the UK’s economic output of approximately 31 per cent according to the […]
Yorkshire faces up to three winters in a row I always enjoyed history lessons at school. One of the lessons that made the greatest impression on me was the struggle farmers faced throughout history to gather enough harvest and make it last through to have enough to start again the following spring. Winters were lean […]