THE amber list, Zoom therapy and Jeremy Clarkson’s anti-vax comments were the issues raised by columnists and contributors in the newspapers.

The Daily Mail

Stephen Glover said Rishi Sunak’s letter to the Prime Minister about the UK’s ‘obstructive travel policy being out of step with our international competitors’ showed the Chancellor was exasperated with Boris Johnson.

“ It would be hard to find two more dissimilar politicians,” he said. “Mr Sunak is a details man averse to splashing taxpayers’ money on grand projects. Mr Johnson is a non-details man who is seldom happier than when spending other people’s cash.”

He said France must be taken off the amber plus list when ministers meet on Thursday.

“ The decision to put the country on it was wrong-headed on every count, creating muddle and anxiety for thousands, if not millions, of hardworking families,” he said. “Following Mr Sunak’s timely letter, as well as pressure from the travel industry, Boris Johnson strongly hinted at the abandonment of the pernicious ‘amber watch list’, which was almost introduced last week. Yet another U-turn.”

The Guardian

Hannah Zeavin, author of The Distance Cure: A History of Teletherapy, said teletherapy is often proffered as a catch-all salve for our current mental healthcare crises.

“Remote treatment is touted as an efficient way to reach more patients in a time of extreme difficulty, an intimate intervention that can scale,” she said. “During the on-and-off mandated social distancing that has marked the past 18 months of the pandemic, teletherapy has shed its status as a minor form of care to become, at times, the only thing on offer.”

She said the broad notion that technology and distanced processes will solve our woes is nothing new.

“But, in the middle of what has been called the “Uberisation of mental health”, making mental healthcare remote, Zoomed or clicked does not instantly open it up to everyone. If it did, we would have had therapy for all a long time ago.”

The Independent

Victoria Richards said if there’s one voice we did not need weighing in on the pandemic, ‘then by god it’s Jeremy Clarkson’s’ after the tv personality said “Well, if it’s going to be forever, let’s open it up – and if you die, you die.”

“When I heard what Clarkson had said, I rolled my eyes and groaned a little,” she said. “Clarkson (and those like him) might feel macho saying something like this. They’re probably proud that it comes drenched in braggadocio swagger, but what they perhaps don’t realise is how petty it sounds. How selfish. How childish. No different to my four-year-old son, stamping his foot, bottom lip stuck out because he doesn’t care if it’s dangerous to jump from the top of the stairs to the bottom.”