‘OBSCENE’ pandemic profits, a mised miscarriage in lockdown and the promise of better days were the topics raised by columnists and contributors in the newspapers.

The Daily Mail

Ruth Sutherland said the Chancellor’s plans to tax the obscene profits made by Amazon and fellow online retailers couldn’t come soon enough.

“Ministers have stood by as the heart has been torn out of our high streets and online operators have become more bloated,” she said. “An online sales levy, coupled with reform of discredited business rates, must be part of any blueprint to save Britain’s shopping centres. Not only would it help repair battered public finances, it would give bricks-and-mortar shops a fairer crack of the whip.”

She said the sheer size of Amazon’s sales - £91bn during the first three months of last year - was breathtaking.

“The cost to consumers and society of letting Amazon and its peers become ever more rich and powerful is too high. The Chancellor has the tax levers in his hands. He should not hesitate to use them.”

The Independent

Hannah Clark was told of the loss of her baby as she lay alone in hospital last November, following a rippling pain in her abdomen.

“Under the latest Covid-19 restrictions, my partner, Gary, had been asked to wait in the corridor and while one of the nurses went to get him,” she said. “I dressed myself, put my face into my hands, and howled.”

She said the pandemic had impacted severely on expectant mothers.

“During my pregnancy, I never actually met my assigned midwife,” she said.

She turned to the online community to talk abut their shared experience of losing a baby, she said.

“The solidarity and support of strangers sharing their stories reminded me that the world was still turning, and that I was still a part of it,” she said.

“Only now I was part of a conversation about loss and survival that has existed between women since the beginning of time – and there is no need for any of us to be silent,” she said.

The Guardian

Imogen West-Knights said she was becoming irritated with the incessant doom mongering that was going on on Twitter and other social media.

“A significant number of people, including but not limited to influential voices on Twitter, have decided that there will be no “post-Covid” and that thinking we will ever return to a social life that looks like the one we left in March last year is laughable,” she said.

The hopefulness that was evident in the first lockdown was there not longer, she said, and asked why so many people were being so negative.

“Pandemics do end,” she promised.

“Whatever some people have taken to saying lately, better days are on the horizon. Joy is coming.”