Sometimes it takes some good old-fashioned downside news to deliver the upside, if that doesn’t sound oxymoronic. Which it does. But never mind.
Examples abound. My colleague Nils Pratley has been writing all year about the absurdity of booming supermarkets receiving huge dollops of government cash as part of Covid relief measures. Public pressure built, commonsense prevailed and the companies have returned almost £2bn to the public coffers. That’s an upside with nine zeroes on the end.
Journalism can inadvertently raise funds for good causes in other ways too. Libby Brooks wrote recently about the heartbreaking tale of a Scottish teenager who took his own life after struggling with the restrictions of lockdown. The article helped his parents raise thousands for charity.
In the same vein the Guardian has launched its Christmas charity appeal. We do this every year, choosing different beneficiaries each time. This year the hope is that a slew of pieces about the adversity of young people in the face of the pandemic will drum up funds for admirable charities working in this space. If you can help please do.
Sometimes, good downside/upside journalism even wins prizes. This week, several of my colleagues were rewarded at the British journalism awards for pieces that brought about real-world change. Matthew Weaver was instrumental in exposing Dominic Cummings’ springtime wanderlust, a story that hounded the Downing Street operative all the way to the exit.
And our investigative team was honoured for revealing allegations of prodigious misappropriation of funds by Africa’s richest woman, the Angolan Isabel dos Santos. She is now under criminal investigation in three countries and blocked from accessing many of her assets overseas.
None of these were Upside stories. But they have an upside effect. It’s often worth recalling this when reading gloomy news. It’s only when we learn that things are wrong that we can start to put them right.
Otherwise, this week we were mildly encouraged by:
• Day One of vaccination. Three-minute read
… And how we got here. Four-minute read
• Tesco cuts back on the Xmas plastic. 90-second read
• Lab-grown meat. Two-minute snack
Lucky numbers
The number of Americans willing to get a Covid 19 vaccine has risen from 50% in September to 63% now, according to a new Gallup poll. Meanwhile, a new Chinese vaccine was reported to have an efficacy of 86%after tests in the UAE.
Also global carbon emissions fell by a record amount in 2020 – around 7% – and aviation pollution is about 40% lower than it was this time last year.
What we liked
We’ve always very much loved night trains, so the prospect of many more in Europe is salivating. There’s nothing quite like falling asleep in one country and waking up in a completely different one (indeed, this is what Britons will be doing on 31 December).
We were intrigued by this study which links happiness to places teeming with birds.
We were cheered by this piece from the World Resources Institute which noted six broad areas of climate change progress since the Paris agreement was struck five years ago. And we admired the UK’s first electric car forecourt.
Oh, and this is fun if a bit pointless – the piano made from plants.
What we heard
We had some great responses to our request for the best things to have come out of 2020. We’ll be collating more into an article later in the year, so there’s still time to write to us with your silver linings.
In Victoria, Canada, Leanne Harrison welcomed the way the digital world opened up opportunities.
At age 75, one thing I hope carries forward as a result of pandemic is the large array of Zoom presentations I was able to access this year. International events I would not have been able to attend were at my iPad fingertips, newspaper journalists interviewed at length people I would not have seen, online exercise gurus led me through interesting routines, and courses and lectures came to my living room: such a bonanza of intellectual richness.
In Florida, Thomas Olsen was grateful for small things.
The best of this bad year is – having been forced off the world’s Merry-Go-Round. It has given me a chance to appreciate my surroundings – the young squirrels chasing each other in play on a large oak; the appreciation of a sunset and moon-rise; the return of direct and unhurried dialogue with my mate; the trend to phone calls rather than texting and an opportunity to plumb my spiritual depths. I am thankful.
And in Edinburgh, Susan Marr found some help from the other side of the world.
I have a cousin whose daughter lives in New Zealand. She decided that one way to keep her children happy was to have a daily theme and dress up accordingly. This was tremendous fun. I’ve been Cilla Black, worn stripes, or yellow, or any manner of colours, been a fortune teller in a circus, worn back-to-front outfits. All this first thing in the morning to catch their day on WhatsApp in NZ. I was so grateful for these challenges on the bleak days when I was upset about being unable to see my children/ grandchildren in Edinburgh, my mother in Manchester, and when a close friend died.
Where was the Upside?
The upside literally resided with starling murmurations, and this beautiful set of pictures.
