News Round-Up

• “Vaccine passports will make hesitant people ‘even more reluctant to get jabbed’” – New data comes as Number 10 vows to press on with its plan to make vaccination a condition of entry for nightclubs, reports the Guardian.
• “Passengers face huge queues during fourth day of chaos at Heathrow” – The Home Office has continued with its unapologetic stance, with a spokesman saying travellers will “need to accept” increased wait times due to high summer demand and the need to check Covid documents, reports MailOnline.
• “Britons with severely weak immune systems to be offered third Covid jab” – Health officials say the shots are not boosters but part of the vaccination schedule for half a million patients, reports the Guardian.
• “WHO designates ‘Mu’ a new variant of interest” – The U.N. agency says there are signs the variant, first detected in Colombia in January, is more resistant to vaccines, reports the Telegraph.
• “Covid’s most toxic scar could be a generational war across Europe” – With the young increasingly angry at having sacrificed their future, lockdown restrictions have left a deeply divided continent on the edge of a new age of conflict, writes Bruno Waterfield in the Times.
• “Boris wanted to be the next Churchill. He looks more like the heir to Merkel” – “Britain is crying out for sensible, conservative and free-market reforms. Reread some of your old columns, dust out [off] your biography of Churchill, and above all stop trying to imitate Angela Merkel,” Allister Heath tells Boris Johnson in the Telegraph.
• “Revealed, the vaccine safety alert that drugs watchdog is ignoring” – “With vaccine-associated deaths passing 1,600 in Britain, the MHRA should suspend the vaccination programme, like it did after 47 deaths caused by the Pandemrix swine flu jab,” writes Sally Beck in TCW Defending Freedom.
• “If we are serious about ‘living with Covid’, we must prepare for the worst” – This autumn, we must rebuild the Nightingale hospitals – and set up a Medical Reserve along the lines of the Territorial Army, writes Richard Tice in the Telegraph.
• “MPs may soon be asked to extend Covid emergency powers for another six months” – “Safeguards in the new Covid restrictions were much weaker. The Government had evaded the precautions of the CCA that would have limited the power of the Prime Minister and other members of the cabinet,” writes Jamie Walden in Bounrbrook Magazine.
• “Increasing Evidence that Lockdowns and Social Distancing are Harming Kids” – “It is very possible that in the decades to come the cost of treating obesity-related health issues, both in human health and monetary terms, will far outweigh the supposed benefits derived from the Covid mitigation methods that led to the weight gain in the first place,” writes Zachary Yost in AIER.
• “Zero-Covid, a once wildly popular ideology, quietly faces extinction” – “The zero-Covid ideology is now so rare and so unpopular that you have to travel to remote parts of Oceania or within the confines of an elite American liberal arts university in order to find it,” writes Jordan Schachtel in a recent Substack update.
• “Vaccine Shakeup at FDA as Key Leadership Resigns, Leaving A Potential Void Impacting U.S. Vaccination Program” – The senior Agency executives responsible for reviewing the recent Pfizer Covid vaccine submission are on their way out, reports Trial Site.
• “Canada’s slide towards corona authoritarianism” – Justin Trudeau used to say vaccine passports were divisive and damaging. Now he’s embraced them, writes Andrew Sansone in Spiked.
• “‘Treat the virus like a criminal’: Police Commissioner defends Covid enforcement” – NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller says the decision to escalate enforcement of Covid restrictions was not directly based on health advice but has suggested community transmissions of the Delta variant would be 10 times the current level if not for police intervention, reports the Sydney Morning Herald.
• “Concern grows for global coffee supply amid Vietnam lockdown” – Traders are struggling to get beans to ports for export after Covid curbs were imposed on Ho Chi Minh City, reports the Guardian.
• “Businesses in Lithuania can start operation with national Covid certificates” – Businesses in Lithuania will be able to bar unvaccinated people from next week. Those that choose not to will have to enforce all other restrictions, reports Delfi.
• “Labour has gone suspiciously quiet on the issue of illegal immigration” – Not for the first time, Starmer is ignoring the opportunity to make common cause with the majority of voters for fear of upsetting his party, writes Tom Harris in the Telegraph.
• “Ofcom’s vindication of me is a resounding victory for freedom” – “Make no mistake, this is a watershed moment in the battle for free speech,” writes Piers Morgan in MailOnline.
• “A new free speech body is standing up to the woke bullies” – “While people scream for the tearing down of statues to people like Churchill, they show no interest in standing up to China, which is ruthlessly destroying the culture, language, and sense of identity of the Uighur Muslims,” writes Ruth Dudley Edwards while discussing the Free Speech Union and History Reclaimed.
• “Goldsmiths considers removing ‘troubling’ Lord Nelson and Sir Francis Drake statues” – The university has opened up a consultation on whether to remove monuments of maritime heroes over alleged slave trade links, reports the Telegraph.
• “Trans activism has mummy issues” – “Nowhere is the battle over the nature (or, perhaps, the possibility) of a feminist legacy more evident than in contemporary arguments around trans identity,” writes Mary Harrington in UnHerd.
• “Why does the NHS need diversity managers?” – Our health service is already one of the most ethnically diverse institutions in Britain, writes Fraser Myers in Spiked.
• “Ofcom has cleared Good Morning Britain over Piers Morgan’s comments about Meghan Markle” – Toby says on talkRADIO: “The idea that anyone who criticises Meghan must be racist and that any criticism of her is racist is just ridiculous.”