Postpone parties for a few more months | Clean air is overdue | Shop for Britain

Postpone parties for a few more months

Her lyric “I will never let you down” was always a hostage to fortune. While the rest of us were watching Netflix or baking industrial levels of cinnamon buns, Rita Ora was allegedly breaking lockdown rules by hosting a birthday party at a west London restaurant.

If true, this was an incredibly unwise act when she is seen as a role model for so many. We don’t need other Londoners to follow suit.

We have tremendous sympathy for young people during this pandemic, who have been the worst hit by furlough and job losses. And old or young, we all want to celebrate milestones with friends and family.

But the grim reality is if we do, we will be back in lockdown with all of its disastrous consequences. Even moving London up tiers would have enormous implications for jobs.

Treasury minister John Glen reportedly noted that putting London in Tier 3 would risk 550,000 jobs, rather than 50,000 in Tier 2. With vaccines on the way, we are perhaps only months from a return to something akin to normality.

Celebrating birthdays at home and by Zoom has been a 2020 rite of passage for millions of people. With a bit of patience, we can soon return to drunken nights out and family suppers in.

Clean air is overdue

Did nine-year-old Ella Kissi-Debrah die of air pollution? A new inquest into her death in February 2013, which opens today, may determine the answer to that question.

Ella, who lived yards from London’s busy South Circular road, suffered from asthma attacks and seizures. Her mother, Rosamund, has fought for years to place air pollution as a cause of her death.

This would be a first not just in Britain, but possibly in the world.

Dirty air is a silent killer. Public Health England has called it “the biggest environmental threat to health in the UK”, and links it to 36,000 deaths a year. It is associated with heart disease, strokes and lung cancer.

The Evening Standard has long campaigned for clean air. We launched the Clean Air Project in 2018 to help make London go faster with bold thinking on electric vehicles and plans to get our charging point infrastructure up to speed.

Air pollution has fallen in London in recent years. There has been a 97 per cent reduction in the number of schools located in areas exceeding legal pollution limits between 2016 and 2019.

But, virtually all of the capital still exceeds World Health Organisation recommended limits.

The Government talks a good game on a transition to cleaner transport. It must now deliver on these ambitions, working with local authorities and industry to ensure that all Londoners can exercise their right to clean air.

Shop for Britain

It used to be that patriotism required sacrifice. Think trench warfare or watching the Royal Variety Show. From Wednesday, all you need to do is go shopping.

Retail has been hammered by the pandemic. Approximately 125,000 jobs were lost in retail during the first eight months of the year, even before the second lockdown.

The Government’s announcement of a relaxation in shop opening hours throughout December and January is welcome, but is only half the job.

So a message to our readers. If you can, show your high street some love. For Queen and country: go shopping.