I’ve never been much of a planner. Organised, yes, (you should see my wardrobe and bathroom cabinet) but when it comes to life, I’ve found it has generally run more smoothly when I am carefree, open to surprises and to events taking a different turn.
I’ve spent a lot of time this past week feeling angry. Angry at Boris Johnson and the British government for the complete lack of leadership it has shown over its response to coronavirus; anger at the people panic buying toilet roll, baby formula and paracetemol “just in case”; anger at the people continuing to behave as normal, as though we are not in the middle of the biggest challenge for a generation.
When news of the coronavirus outbreak in China began appearing regularly across the media, my first reaction was to give it a wide berth.
I arrived home at the weekend after a few days holiday to discover there was no power in our house.
When I trained to be a journalist and in my early days on the job, the best piece of advice I was given was to find the personal, human element of a story to explain important issues. Very often it meant a lot of effort and determination to find people who would be courageous enough to put their name and face to a story about an topic or problem that impacted society, but was highly sensitive or indeed traumatic for them.
Horror writer Stephen King is the latest high profile star to take a stand against Facebook over concerns about both privacy and political advertising. King, whose account had almost six million followers, said he was “not comfortable” that the social network is allowing politicians to use it to spread lies and misinformation through political ads.
