Liam Shaw

The UK health secretary, Thérèse Coffey, has announced her intention to make it easier for people in England to get antibiotics. The plans are still vague, but involve patients being able to get some antibiotics directly from pharmacists without a GP prescription. Pharmacists in Scotland have for several years now been able to prescribe antibiotics for uncomplicated urinary tract infections (UTIs). Based on this data, the Department of Health and Social Care believe that such a move in England could save 400,000 GP appointments a year.

In Hogarth’s An Election Entertainment, depicting the 1754 Oxfordshire by-election, a placard lies on the floor: ‘Give us our Eleven Days’. The slogan refers to the adoption of the Calendar (New Style) Act, which caused eleven days in September 1752 to be removed from the calendar. The idea that there were actual riots over the erasure bobs up like a historical beachball no matter how often it is punctured. It’s all too easy to imagine people taking to the streets in outrage at the bureaucratic theft of time. UK universities were invited to begin their submissions to REF2021 in February 2020. 

We have an eyewitness account of the 1646 eruption in the form of a letter from the governor of Tenerife, Alonso de Yclan y Valdès, to the king of Spain. I consulted the copy in the British Library; it was almost like reading the news.