‘Bittersweet’ Bereaved families’ cool welcome for Covid report
The Guardian Weekly|July 26, 2024
Relatives relieved at inquiry's damning analysis ofa lack of preparedeness but believe many issues not addressed
Rachel Hall
‘Bittersweet’ Bereaved families’ cool welcome for Covid report

Petra Fleming will turn 54 next year. That is not usually considered a milestone birthday but for her it carries huge emotional significance: it's the age her brother was when he died of Covid during the pandemic.

"In terms of impact, it really threw us into family trauma. You can't hug each other, just FaceTime, it's very unnatural, very surreal. It's a very unique situation, which could have been completely avoided with more competent politicians. They failed spectacularly," she said.

Sharing her story at the publication of the first report from the UK Covid-19 inquiry, she underlined its importance: "I hope other people don't have to go through the same thing that myself and my family went through.

Whatever we can do in the future to ensure this doesn't happen again we will do." Fleming is a member of Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice UK and, like many others, she has mixed feelings about the report's content.

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FLERE HISTORIER FRA THE GUARDIAN WEEKLYSe alt
We're making a music video-but I can't play, or even act
The Guardian Weekly

We're making a music video-but I can't play, or even act

I am in a lifeboat station on the south coast, standing beneath the stern of a rescue vessel, wearing a borrowed fisherman's jumper and holding a banjo. There are lights on me, and I am very much at sea.

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3 mins  |
December 06, 2024
BOOKS OF THE MONTH
The Guardian Weekly

BOOKS OF THE MONTH

The best translated fiction

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2 mins  |
December 06, 2024
Village people A chilly tone of doom infects these unsettling folk tales, following a settlement from the deep past to near future
The Guardian Weekly

Village people A chilly tone of doom infects these unsettling folk tales, following a settlement from the deep past to near future

The quintessential \"bad place\" is one of the staples of horror fiction. For Stephen King, the bad place - think the Overlook Hotel in The Shining - usually acts as a repository for a long-forgotten evil or injustice to resurface.

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2 mins  |
December 06, 2024
A labour of love Haruki Murakami revisits a hypnotic city of dreams and a tale of teen sweethearts, in material he's worked on over four decades
The Guardian Weekly

A labour of love Haruki Murakami revisits a hypnotic city of dreams and a tale of teen sweethearts, in material he's worked on over four decades

The elegiac quality of Haruki Murakami's new novel, his first in six years, was perhaps inevitable considering its origins. The City and Its Uncertain Walls began as an attempt to rework a 1980 story of the same title, originally published in the Japanese magazine Bungakukai, which Murakami, unsatisfied, never allowed to be republished or translated.

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3 mins  |
December 06, 2024
Leading questions The former German chancellor slights her enemies by barely mentioning them-and is frustratingly opaque on her own big calls
The Guardian Weekly

Leading questions The former German chancellor slights her enemies by barely mentioning them-and is frustratingly opaque on her own big calls

Towards the end of her 16-year tenure, former German chancellor Angela Merkel was garlanded with superlative titles: the \"queen of Europe\", the \"most powerful woman in the world\".

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3 mins  |
December 06, 2024
Double vision
The Guardian Weekly

Double vision

Is the pay really that good? Do you get bored? We ask 'David Brent', 'Nessa' and 'Ali G' what it's like to make money as the lookalike of a comic creation

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5 mins  |
December 06, 2024
Robopop Teen star who does not exist
The Guardian Weekly

Robopop Teen star who does not exist

Miku is a 'Vocaloid' -a holographic avatar that represents a digital bank of vocal samples-performing sellout tours for thousands of very real mega-fans

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3 mins  |
December 06, 2024
The show must go wrong
The Guardian Weekly

The show must go wrong

How did a farce about a gaffe-filled amateur dramatic whodunnit become one of Britain's greatest ever exports, the toast of dozens of countries?

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6 mins  |
December 06, 2024
Europe's latest radical populist typifies a swing on the continent
The Guardian Weekly

Europe's latest radical populist typifies a swing on the continent

Politics in Romania can be a bloody business, especially on the right. The excesses of the Iron Guard, an insurrectionary, violently antisemitic, ultranationalist 1930s political-religious militia, stood out even at a time when fascist parties were wreaking havoc in Germany, Italy and Spain. Given what is happening in Europe today, the events of that period are instructive.

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3 mins  |
December 06, 2024
It's high time to tax cannabis and fix French finances
The Guardian Weekly

It's high time to tax cannabis and fix French finances

France might not be broke, but the state of its public finances is, well, definitely not good. Total debt stands at €3.2tn ($3.4tn) - 112% of GDP. Interest payments on that debt are the second largest public expenditure after education (which includes everything from crêche, or preschool, to universities) and are higher than the amount spent on defence. And this year's budget deficit is projected to be 6%, three points above the EU's 3% limit.

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3 mins  |
December 06, 2024