*Covid risks making [UK] society more unequal than since early Victorian times.*

Tory cuts to the NHS and other programs that give poor people a decent life began the process.

It appears Chairman Xi has decided to cease allowing foreign reporters in China. Concealing dirty secrets that the reporters might get wind of is more important than the benefit of cooperating with foreign press.

It might be interesting to set up a treaty imposing tariffs on the exports the countries that repress the foreign press.

Queensland, Australia, has passed a law requiring Catholic priests to testify about what they learn in confessions about sexual abuse of minors by priests.

The aim is laudable, but I doubt this law will actually produce much evidence.

This reminds me of the US court ruling that seized the recordings made by an American project that had interviewed former IRA terrorists and promised to keep the recordings secret for a long time. Until after their death, I think. Without that promise, they would not have made recordings.

The effect of this ruling was to set aside the premise and obtain the evidence from that one set of terrorists, but also to bar any similar future projects about other violent disputes. Instead of learning what happened, at some future time, we won't learn it ever. In the long term, I think we are worse off.

China accuses Australia of interrogating Chinese journalists and telling them to hush it up.

China is hardly hesitant to lie or distort, but this could be true. Australia does things like that, such as the secret prosecution of a whistleblower and the law that threatens every free software developer in the world.

The Federal Reserve is the wrong tool to help America out of a recession.