Britain is starting to get its smile back again but if that smile is covered by a mask, what’s the point?

Chants meeting

THERE may have been only 8,000 spectators at yesterday’s League Cup final but how wonderful to hear cheers and chants echo around Wembley again.

The biggest crowd at a UK event since the pandemic began kicks off a great summer of sport, with London also the centre of the delayed Euros tournament.

How wonderful to hear cheers and chants echo around Wembley again – even if spectator numbers were limited to 8,000[/caption]

With Covid vaccines being rolled out to 44-year-olds from today, the rest of over-40s set to be offered their jab by Friday and thirtysomethings to follow as early as next week, a sense of normality is slowly creeping back.

One in three hospitals now reports not having a single Covid patient in intensive care.

New daily cases have halved in the past month.

And yet the threat of continuing social distancing measures, vaccine passports and mask rules is kept dangling over us, even beyond the Prime Minister’s glacially paced lockdown-easing schedule, which is set to conclude in June.

We salute the 22 scientists who penned an open letter to the Government that it is “more than time for citizens to take back control of their own lives”.

The nation is starting to get its smile back again but if that smile is still covered by a mask, what’s the point?

Film negative

WE doubt many of you stayed up late to watch last night’s Oscars — and not just because of the 1am start for UK viewers or Covid rules’ effects on the ceremony.

It is simply hard to care too much which films win awards when so few people have seen them in the first place.

It is simply hard to care too much which films win awards at this year’s Academy Awards when so few people have seen them in the first place[/caption]

The Best Picture nominees took a total of £28.3million at the global box office, a fifth of the previous record low.

Struggling in a pandemic is no fault of the films’ stars and creators, of course, but it can’t have failed to put a slight dampener on the many Brit nominees’ big night in the spotlight.

The subdued interest should act as a warning to the big studios rushing to cut cinemas out of the release schedule and prioritise streaming services.

You can’t beat the buzz of the big screen.

Cattle class

AFTER the bad old days of BSE and foot and mouth disease, it’s heartening to see British beef farmers catching a break.

Thanks partly to an appetite for high-quality meat from the ballooning middle classes of Asia, and partly to the effect of Brexit on tariffs, our exports are sizzling once again.