News Round-Up
- “Hydrogen: U.K. government sees future in low-carbon fuel – but what’s the reality?” – The Government claims hydrogen could meet one-third of the country’s energy demand by 2050. But is that true, asks Tom Baxter in the Conversation.
- “The Sweden experiment: how no lockdowns led to better mental health, a healthier economy and happier schoolchildren” – While Sweden’s decision to stay open throughout the pandemic generated international debate, the controversy passed most people in Sweden by, writes the Telegraph.
- “Woke civil servants sneer at ‘uneducated voters and rise of fascism’” – At least 300 employees have joined the UKGovcamp event forum to discuss issues relating to central and local government – and it was a wokefest, according to the Mail on Sunday.
- “Larry Elder Promises to Repeal Vaccine and Mask Mandates if he Becomes California Governor” – Long time conservative talk radio host and current California gubernatorial candidate Larry Elder has vowed to repeal vaccine mandates if he ends up replacing current Governor Gavin Newsom.
- “Rescue dogs shot dead by NSW council due to COVID-19 restrictions” – Several impounded dogs have been shot by a rural council to prevent people coming to visit them and spreading the virus, reports the Sydney Morning Herald.
- “The Government is selling us a pup on heat pumps” – The Business Secretary’s admission that heat pumps are still worse than conventional boilers is a damning indictment of net zero targets, writes Ross Clark in the Telegraph.
- “Ten reasons why the jab must never be mandatory” – Abir Ballan in the Conservative Woman argues that the jab must never be mandatory.
- “Police pin hopes on ‘rainbow cars’ to drive out hate crime” – Forces across the U.K. have painted their cars with rainbow colours to encourage people to report racist, homophobic and transphobic posts on social media, reports the Telegraph. Shouldn’t they be policing our streets, not our tweets?
- “Biden’s woke presidency is a self-indulgent luxury the West can no longer afford” – The US President should have spent more time worrying about Afghanistan, and less competing to be the world’s wokest leader, writes Calvin Robinson in the Telegraph.
- “We must fight the normalisation of masks” – The zero Covid campaign’s bid to make masks political is no substitute for a proper understanding of their costs, says Colin Axon in the Telegraph.
- “Cambridge museum to explain ‘whiteness’ of its sculptures under anti-racism campaign” – “You might understand this coming from a student, but the idea that this has been approved by the Faculty is as terrifying as it is comical,” a Cambridge don tells the Telegraph.
- “How Jacinda Ardern’s ‘fortress New Zealand’ strategy risks crumbling” – The Prime Minister’s zero-Covid strategy is falling apart, argue critics, with controls and lockdown restrictions battering the country.
- “Trump booed at rally after telling supporters to ‘take the vaccine’” – Donald Trump was booed by supporters on Saturday at a rally in Cullman, Alabama after encouraging them to get vaccinated against COVID-19, reports the Daily Mail.
- “The latest lessons in Covid management from Israel” – Will no one rid us of our Covid-dementors? Gladys Berejiklian says restrictions could remain in place after 80% of the population of New South Wales have been double jabbed. Prof Ramesh Thakur, writing in the Spectator Australia, is unimpressed.
- “Mask-wearers and New Zealand languish in a Covid prison, but the rest of us are finally free” – Rod Liddle says in the Sunday Times that the British public won’t accept another lockdown.
- “Reinfection protection vs vaccine protection” – Gabriel Crouse in the Daily Friend scrutinises the claim by several prominent pro-vaxxers that being double jabbed offers better protection against infection than natural immunity and concludes it’s baloney.
- “Lockdowns can’t go on, admits Australian PM” – As lockdown protests escalate in New South Wales, Australia’s PM says they cannot continue, reports the Times.
- “The direction the school was heading in… if one person gets upset by an idea then debate was cancelled” – Sacked Eton teacher Will Knowland is interviewed by Andrew Doyle on GB News after being cleared of professional misconduct.
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“Police forces paint cars with rainbow colours”.
Isn’t that a political symbol? Surely our police should be politically neutral?
” ‘Transphobic’ ” – does that mean the police are going anti-women as well now?
Incidentally, I saw a rainbow colour police car years ago, so this is not exactly new.
Clown cars will make it all better.
Surely it is well past time for Bozo’s car to get this treatment!
Hey, there are much more important things for our ruling elite than some racist nonsense about foreign terrorists. Let’s not have them take their eyes off the real ball for too long, eh?
“…today Joe Biden said “terrorism has metastasized around the world”, but … not even a month ago what was the number one threat was “domestic white supremacy terror groups” … you had General Millie “wanting to get at the root of white rage” … so what we were told by our military head and the President of the United States is that Americans were a bigger threat than Islamic terror – they used those words. They said it was bigger than Al Qaeda, bigger than ISIS”
New report sheds more light on US equipment now in hands of Taliban
ITEM: “Lockdowns can’t go on, admits Australian PM” – As lockdown protests escalate in New South Wales, Australia’s PM says they cannot continue, reports the Times. But don’t expect him to do anything about it. Two-bob-each-way Scomo has been saying this for months, as indeed has Gladys (NSW state Premier), Lockdown-Crazy Dan (Victoria’s Premier) and every other state Premier, yet lockdowns keep happening regardless (in South Australia, we even have them as a prophylactic against ‘potential’ ‘outbreaks’ even when the official ‘case’ count is zero). I knew we were in for trouble when Australia’s sheer seasonal dumb luck in getting the original virus during the southern hemipshere’s virus-unfriendly spring/summer of 2019-2020 saw the entire scientifically-illiterate Australian political class (always a few watts short of full brightness) take the big stage to claim credit for their wise choice to crush the economy through lockdowns as the reason for our relatively low Covid stats, and then go on to say that ‘why don’t we lick this thing altogether through more of the same’. Hence the Zero Covid addiction which they haven’t been able to shake off. The surprisingly large and hearteningly angry nationwide protest rallies last Saturday were a real shot in the arm… Read more »
“Australia’s sheer seasonal dumb luck in getting the original virus during the southern hemipshere’s virus-unfriendly spring/summer of 2019-2020″ What do you make of the suggestion (made here I think by somebody but I can’t recall who) that Australia had a particularly bad preceding flu season, and that covid probably went through then, without anybody noticing because it was just written off as flu? We have seen a number of reports that SARS-CoV-2 virus was present around the world during 2019, based on checking old samples. “The ‘vaccination’ gambit looks like being Scomo’s and the state Premiers’ Hail Mary pass that will help them to detox without losing face by having to admit that they made a disastrous error with lockdown in the beginning. The costs of the ‘vaccine’ will of course, be paid by those dumb enough or pressured enough, to roll up their sleeves. But if it saves just one politician’s skin, then it is worth it, I suppose.” This was always my problem with vaccination, even back when many still hoped that they would reduce infections enough to count as “sterilising”. They are absolutely toxic in political terms, allowing lockdowners to claim that it “saved us until the vaccines came… Read more »
We have seen a number of reports that SARS-CoV-2 virus was present around the world during 2019, based on checking old samples. Mark, we had suspected this from pretty much the start and were intrigued when the story came out a while back about samples of the virus being found in water samples in Barcelona around Sring 2019, (please correct me if I have that wrong). We were in Salou, an hours train journey from Barcelona, for 2 weeks middle of May 2019…….ourselves and numerous people we knew were unwell with flu like sypmptoms, the most consistent being a persistent, continuous cough. It was resort wide, my sister and her family joined us for the 2nd week in a hotel a good 15 minute walk away, and they had the symptoms within days of arriving. Lasted 5-7 days for the people we knew; everyone recovered as you would expect as the age range was say 40 ish-70ish, so no extremes of age and no one so frail they would choose to fly to a busy resort. As soon as the reports came in from China and the symptoms were explained, we all immediately thought, “that sounds exactly like what we… Read more »
“in water samples in Barcelona around Sring 2019, (please correct me if I have that wrong).”
Sounds about right from my own recollection. I think similar old 2019 samples of blood or of water/sewage had SARS-CoV-2 in them from Italy, South America, and possibly Finland, iirc.
Wow that is early.
In Suffolk we had an outbreak of a weird virus with a bad cough between October 2019 and February 2020. One incident was a family whose son returned from a skiing trip in France with a hacking cough which everyone else in the family caught but with widely varying levels of distress.
I’ve heard of similar outbreaks elsewhere in the UK Europe and the US but none so early, but it backs up the tales of the virus being found in sewage and blood samples in spring 2019, I think in Italy and Spain.
Just to add, here and in parts of the West Country the high levels of “early covid” were followed by low levels of “official covid”.
I know parts of Spain were badly hit but how did Barcelona do?
Hi Chris; sorry no idea really as we opted out of the MSM “reporting” of all of this very early.
I know May 2019 sound unfeasably early; but the virus samples in water were found just up the coast a month or 2 prior to this so who knows?
Despite Mrs FB and myself being healthy, we have had colds and the flu previously…..but this was different, in respect of the severe constant coughing.
In fact, so many people in the resort had these symptoms all at the same time I’m surprised I haven’t come across anyone else venturing the opinion that they had a Covid 19 style illness in Salou May 2019.
Bit like a lot of some suspiscious looking possible vaccine injuries in people I know…..the “victims” simply don’t seem to be able to join the dots.
Sweden wasn’t an experiment. It was the control. Virtually everyone else (barring South Dakota, Belarus and Tanzania, from memory) was the experiment. Never let the covidians forget that what they did was unorthodox and went directly against all the planning from the WHO and every rich country in the world.
Correct, Sweden said they weren’t experimenting, everyone else was. They were right.
Can anyone provide a transcript of the pay-walled Rod Liddle article in the ST please?
The Sweden experiment was nothing of the sort – in the event of a major pandemic the UK had more or less the same plans as Sweden except the only difference was that our government panicked and decided to jettison those plans in favour of the tyrannical lockdown methods as seen in communist China.
Sweden chose to stick with hundreds of years western enlightenment – Britain dumped enlightenment in favour of eastern tyranny instead..
The comments on the MoS article on UKGovCamp are a joy to behold. The supporters have been mobilised to flood them with squealing responses designed to insult everyone who disagrees with them. And these people represent those that are “serving” the public and who are happy to accept the wages the rest of us contribute to them.
The Masked Mob must be removed from positions of power in our institutions. They are fit only to sweep the streets, and probably not that.
“Reinfection protection vs vaccine protection” – Gabriel Crouse in the Daily Friend scrutinises the claim by several prominent pro-vaxxers that being double jabbed offers better protection against infection than natural immunity and concludes it’s baloney. Interesting piece, clearly written by a pro-vaxer who nevertheless is forced to concede that the opposite of the Official Truth line is what is supported by the evidence. But he concludes that: “The simple thing to say is that in order of ascendance the least protection is from a vaccine, then comes natural protection, and the best is to combine both. The other simple thing to say is that vaccine protection costs a hell of a lot less than the risks involved in getting natural protection. ” This seems to be based upon some pure speculation by the “experts” that he has already convicted of misrepresentation of reality by pretending vaccine immunity is better that natural immunity, and by others, about possible extra protection from vaccination against variants – extreme scepticism about that kind of stuff seems the only possible response. And further, he establishes pretty well that natural protection is fine, and really very good. So why would anyone even consider adding the risks of the vaccines… Read more »
The simple thing to say is that in order of ascendance the least protection is from a vaccine, then comes natural protection, and the best is to combine both……
This seems to be based upon some pure speculation by the “experts”
I think it is a bit more than pure speculation:
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2782139
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03696-9
Nature…….bwaaahahhahahaaaaa
Muppet tr0ll
And is more than pure speculation by ‘experts’ that injections that are not sterilising and are designed to combat symptoms of the wuhan virus are the very last thing someone with natural immunity should have.
No vaccines are intended to sterilise. They prime your immune system which is completely different.
So all the collocation of R numbers and talk of the jab was pure spin from the government?
If so then recording it on internal passports is purely a social credit scheme and nothing to do with health.
Jabs reduce R numbers by reducing the probability of infection. This has nothing to do with sterilisation which is the removal of microorganisms from something (surgical instrument, wound etc) that are already there.
The COVID-jabs reduce the probability of symptoms while infected, not infection, in fact the viral load was often higher in the jabbed according to that leaked CDC doc.
Spread oddly seems to be a thing that does not correlate with viral load
But basically without symptoms but able to spread is the highest risk. The greatest chance of this will be in the jabbed and lowest in the recovered.
The viral load was very similar if you are infected. However, all of the vaccines have some efficacy against getting infected in the first place, although it appears this is lower against the Delta variant also declines with time since vaccination. Even Will Jones analysis of the PHE figures agrees with this.
You are spouting absolute bloody nonsense.
When does he not?
The “pure speculation” was in reference to the stuff in the original article about variants and “polymutants”. As I said, pure speculation (and from clearly biased sources).
The links you provided add nothing to the existing conclusion, that protection from natural immunity is extremely good and you’d have to be pretty daft to try to increase it still further by taking the vaccines – an experimental new treatment with known risks and basically unknown long term effects.
If the vaccine program is driving dangerous mutation (it is), wouldn’t getting vaxxed after recovery be ‘selfish’ and ‘deplorable’? 😉
The “pure speculation” was in reference to the stuff in the original article about variants and “polymutants”. As I said, pure speculation (and from clearly biased sources).
I am sorry I misunderstood you. Your comment seemed to be about the order of ascendance of protection, not variants or polymutants.
The links provide evidence that vaccination on top of infection gives you even better protection than infection alone. Whether it is daft to take advantage of that additional protection will surely depend on your personal situation?
But of course the single worst option risk wise would be mass jabbing without testing for prior SARS/covid infection
MTF agrees with the authorities that they are entitled to run the risks of enhancing the threat from the virus on behalf of the rest of us, because they are so scared, or so greedy for power or profit.
Yes, you did misunderstand, and that bit of my comment was about the bit I quoted just previously, concerning hypothetical additional protection from getting the experimental treatment on top of having had the disease.
“The links provide evidence that vaccination on top of infection gives you even better protection than infection alone. Whether it is daft to take advantage of that additional protection will surely depend on your personal situation?“
For the vast, vast majority, no, it’s just daft
“The zero Covid campaign’s bid to make masks political”
Actually it is really useful. If you continue to wear a mask, then that marks you out as a Cultural Communist, a member of the Masked Mob, and you should be removed from any position of power or influence in society.
It’s time to stop messing about, pretending that this is anything to do with logic and rationality and realise that this is a political movement along the same lines as the Moonies.
Then deal with it in the same way.
Gullible people shouldn’t be in charge of anything. We need rational people in charge who are able to ask the tough questions and call out the charlatans.
I agree it’s political, but I don’t think the gullible are in charge. I’m pretty convinced SAGE and most of the Cabinet know exactly what they are doing, and I think the same probably goes for people in senior positions in public health, Big Pharma, the media and other institutions. Simply a political power grab. Backbench MPs are along for the ride, and many may well be covidian true believers.
DOMINIC LAWSON: It’s a sad irony that every anti-vaxxer who dies of Covid might just save lives Never forget, and never forgive, those in positions of media influence, who push this authoritarian coronapanic propaganda. It’s not even that Lawson is necessarily technically incorrect in any of the factual things he writes (though any authoritarian writing anything that pushes the Official Truth line should always be presumed to be lying, or unknowingly pushing lies, until they are proven correct, and all his assertions should be diligently “fact checked” by anybody thinking of taking them seriously). The problem is that he is pushing the line that there is some kind of emergency, that this disease is something to fear, that justifies taking risks and incurring costs to defend against it. By and large, it isn’t, on a societal level, and we would have been far, far better off if we had just treated it as an ordinary “flu pandemic” from the beginning Recognising that people die, that we all die, and getting on with life is far more important than desperately paying any price to try to reduce the effects of this disease. Never forget that Lawson was one of those pushing… Read more »
Fortunately, judging by the best rated comments, DM readers are giving this short shrift!
Dominic Lawson is why I stopped reading the Sunday Times, he compared lockdown opponents to Harold Shipman.
How ironic looking at the vaccine deaths and injuries and the lockdown harms
Civil service is an awful place to work if you don’t subscribe to hard-left politics and happen to be a white heterosexual male with no visible disabilities.
They run so-called apprenticeships that are nothing more than socialist brainwashing, warning of the threat of the nasty white guy in the office, how he is most guilty of ‘micro-aggressions’, ‘racism,’ ‘transphobia’ etc, ad infinitum.
The civil service show no signs of what the Mail on Sunday describe as ‘fascism’ – fascists oppose gay rights and race-mixing. They promoted eugenics of the national race – in our case that would be a strong white race. The civil service discriminate against old whitey. Truth is, they’re the other brand of socialists, they’re of the communist strain.
Fascism according to it’s architect Mussolini was
“Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.”
The people complaining about Fascism are much more fascist than the people they are complaining about.
Yes, there is a poor understanding of ‘fascism’ these days. It does not necessarily include what people associate with ‘national socialism’ which definitely majored on race purity. Its more to do with the fusion of corporatism and the state to the exclusion of individual and independant existence. I think it perfectly describes the current moves in many western nations.
Especially now that ‘the state’ does not mean ‘the nation state’.
and that’s possibly the most worrying thing.
I truly hope that 5eyes has not metastasized in the way I think it has.
Eugenics (i.e. the state picking winning Genes/punishing losing genes) has a long history of support from the (especially Fabian) Left it’s a analogous to the thinking the state can “pick” economic winners better than customers.
I don’t know where you work in the Civil Service but where I am it’s nothing like that at all. IME it’s largely representative of the local population. The higher up the hierarchy you get the more likely you are to be pale, male and stale so I don’t think it’s working out too badly for them.
‘Pale, male and stale’ – yep, you definitely sound like a civil servant with a preference to anyone who isn’t white and male.
Could not make this up.
Issues with the supply of Flu vaccinations.Thus it could be less effective than normal. Reasons. Covid.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9918327/Flu-jabs-weak-protect-people-winter-labs-focused-Covid-pandemic.html
At first, I thought the Australians were killing puppies because of some inkling that they were spreading the virus. The real reason is way worse.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/greed-and-good-the-rise-of-wokenomics-2tdgq5zlt
For the Times, to publish this is shocking.
It looks like this site has now lost a lot of its focus, with Round Up now proportionately citing fewer ‘meaty’ articles (see the Swiss Doctor article for an example of what that means), and more MSM regurgitation – particularly from the Mail and Telegraph.
There is also a conflation of Covid issues with ‘wokeness’ and climate – both of which are debates in their own right. Even if there are connections, this just distracts towards ‘grand conspiracy’ theories and simplistic hobby-horse riding, making it easier to dismiss the site.
It’s very obvious from your comments in general that your concern is not “hobby horse riding” per se, but riding the wrong hobby horse. If the site focussed on blaming everything on “Tories” and “rich right-wingers” you’d be perfectly happy to see those hobby horses ridden into the ground.
But this is the Daily Sceptic, not Lockdown Sceptics (which you were perfectly happy to see extended to “Vaccine Sceptics” wherever possible).
The parallels between the covid panic and other elite obsessions are very obvious. Climate alarmism is most similar, because of its similar grounding in modelling pseudo-science and fear-mongering, but wokeness generally shares a lot of the political issues, and enriches and empowers elites over society in similar ways.
These are the correct targets for scepticism in our modern societies imo, because these are the areas where elites are trying to foist bullshit upon us with massive propaganda, and with demonisation, censorship and exclusion of dissent and of dissenters.
Though in the end, it’s neither your opinion nor mine on this that matters, but that of the site owners.
As usual, you have this amazing ability to mind-read and impute imaginary intentions. I’m sorry to disillusion you, but I don’t have parallel obsessions about ‘the right’ as you have about an imaginary consolidated ‘left’ that is a mental box where you put all your antagonisms.
I know you love having a vehicle for general and simplistic pontificating, but my point is exactly as I said : the noticeable loss of focus, which remark was occasioned by the first item being on hydrogen as a fuel.
Climate/anthropogenic environmental change, for instance, is a whole other issue, with a different history, that may be used by those promoting Covid – but it isn’t the same, and it simply distracts.
Of course, those who own this site can do what they like with it. That fact has nothing to do with the price of fish.
“As usual, you have this amazing ability to mind-read and impute imaginary intentions. I’m sorry to disillusion you, but I don’t have parallel obsessions about ‘the right’ as you have about an imaginary consolidated ‘left’ that is a mental box where you put all your antagonisms.” Nope, you have made numerous comments here about this coronapanic being “driven by the hard right”, despite that stance being so absurdly unsupported by any real world evidence. As for “mind reading” and “imputing”, I have said little that isn’t directly supported by your own comments here, but where I have speculated (not unduly extensively) it has been necessary because you contribute so little of substance on these topics, but instead a lot of playground abuse. That’s your prerogative, but you can’t then complain if people make reasonable presumptions about what you conceal. “Climate/anthropogenic environmental change, for instance, is a whole other issue, with a different history, that may be used by those promoting Covid – but it isn’t the same, and it simply distracts.” Of course it isn’t “the same”, but as I pointed out it shares striking and fundamental similarities which make it a wholly legitimate target of scepticism. “Of course, those… Read more »
George Christensen.
We do have a few politicians with guts down here.
https://rumble.com/vlk4li-george-christensen-stands-up-for-innocent-protesters-who-were-assaulted….html
“Australia will have to live with Covid-19 rather than in constant fear of it. We the people want our freedom back.
We demand that there be no more lockdowns.
We demand that there be no more curfews.
We demand that there be no more mask mandates.
We demand that there be no more state border closures.
We demand that there be no more privacy invasion with mandatory QR code check-ins.
We demand that there be no more discrimination between vaccinated and unvaccinated Australians.
We demand that our freedoms be restored, and I demand that peaceful protesters, patriotic, freedom-loving men and women never, ever be fired upon in this country, ever again.”
Good stuff!
I see the good man has already made the right enemies after a previous speech:
Facebook removes George Christensen’s anti-lockdown speech for breaching Covid misinformation policy
The Eureka flag seems to be something of an Australian equivalent of the Gadsden flag in the US.
The Eureka flag is our one-flag-fits-all symbol of rebellion. It belongs to every Australian now; created by gold miners ie small business operators, co-opted by the unions during the 70s.
George Christensen has been courageous voice in Canberra against covid, and before that against climate change. As you saw in the Guardian article, his own side are quite happy to join with the Labor opposition in quashing him.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/feb/07/the-crackdown-on-the-eureka-flag-is-another-bid-to-destroy-our-unions
They’ll be memory holing this from the Grauniad soon. Perhaps archive it.
Another well organised protest today at ITN:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCRuW2dw7Ew
DM giving it the full Jan 6th Capitol protests exaggeration. Not “mostly peaceful”, apparently:
ANTI-VAXXERS STORM ITN
Chaos as up to 200 anti-vaxxers storm London HQ of ITV News and Channel 4 News: Angry mob chases Jon Snow and hurls abuse at him – then orders terrified staff to ‘get me Peston’
“Shocking footage shows dozens of police officers forming a barrier against the activists – who are protesting against vaccine passports, amid widespread shouting and desperate cries for the group to ‘calm down’ (left). Officers, many wearing face coverings, are seen pushing back members of the crowd as tensions clearly begin to boil over. Multiple police vehicles are on standby at the scene on Grays Inn Road in Camden, and helping to stop the protesters disrupting the traffic. Abuse was also shouted at veteran broadcaster Jon Snow (right), with the activists accusing him of not ‘speaking up for the children’ over the vaccine rollout. The shocking scenes comes just two weeks after anti-vax protesters attempted to storm a studio at the BBC Television Centre in west London.”