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Sky, which suffered a £575m revenue fall during the pandemic, with sports such as Premier League football suspended, slashed its budget by 60% from £47m to £19m. Even the online retail juggernaut Amazon, which last week reported stellar results during the pandemic, cut UK ad spend on traditional media by more than three-quarters to £6.5m. … [Read more...] about UK advertisers pulled more than £1.1bn spend during Covid lockdown

“Much of England is owned by a very small number of landowners, who have a responsibility to better use their land in a way that helps address the climate and nature crises facing us all,” said Guy Shrubsole, a trees campaigner at Friends of the Earth. “A big part of [tackling these crises] means growing more trees, which would remove planet-wrecking carbon from the air and provide homes for wildlife.” … [Read more...] about England’s biggest landowners not growing enough trees – report

“Test & trace fiasco is timebomb” – the Mirror really ought to have chosen one derogative or the other. “Having virus may earn right to roam” – the i is reviving the immunity passport idea (maybe we’ll call it the “travel bug”). The Express says “Painkillers do more harm than good” and the Times has “Don’t give paracetamol to patients, doctors told” – that’s about treatment of chronic pain, and the warning also covers ibuprofen, aspirin and opioids. The Times’s picture slot goes to Spain’s runaway king-emeritus. The FT has “HSBC profits plummet 96% amid pandemic crisis and US-China spat” – here’s Larry Elliott on that one. … [Read more...] about Tuesday briefing: Britons flee Brexit by the thousands

The closure of schools to most pupils during lockdown and only partial reopening has raised concern among experts about the impact on children’s mental health as well as their education. But the planned reopening of all schools in England in September has also been questioned, amid fears it may not be safe for the move to go ahead. … [Read more...] about Boost test and trace before English schools reopen ‘or risk second wave’

Among the key figures to emerge during the April rebellion was Farhana Yamin. Her experience – as a former UN lawyer who had helped draft the Paris agreement and worked on many of the key climate treaties of the past three decades – enhanced XR’s credibility, and she became one of the group’s most convincing public advocates. Over lunch at a north London cafe a few months later, she told me she had joined XR after becoming disillusioned with her world of diplomacy, thinktanks and policymakers. “I had been working with people who were not telling the truth about where we are, and are in a state of euphoric, egocentric denial,” she told me. When she was asked to join XR, she agreed immediately. “I saw [coverage of] the October rebellion, when people laid down and got arrested and Greta was there, and I thought: yes, that is what we need, that is what I want to do. It looked beautiful.” … [Read more...] about The evolution of Extinction Rebellion