News Round-Up

• “Boris Johnson refuses to rule out Christmas Covid disruption” – The Prime Minister declines to guarantee there will be no restrictions but says he does not expect anything like last year, reports the Guardian.
• “Pfizer says its Covid vaccine is safe for children aged five” – Pfizer will push for its Covid vaccine to be approved for children as young as five, as Britain began injecting healthy 12 to 15 year-olds with the jab for the first time, reports MailOnline.
• “PM welcomes U.S. decision to ease travel rules on double-jabbed Brits” – Bookings surged by more than 90% within an hour of the U.S. President’s announcement and airlines’ share prices rocketed, reports MailOnline.
• “Tony Blair calls for vaccine passports to prevent another lockdown” – The former Prime Minister says Covid passports have boosted vaccine uptake and helped control the virus in Europe, reports the Telegraph.
• “First ‘variant-proof’ Covid vaccine starts trials in Manchester” – Retired couple Andrew Clarke, 63, and his wife Helen, 64, from Bolton, became the first to receive the mRNA vaccine on Monday, reports the Telegraph.
• “In Seventies-style Britain, the customer is no longer king” – Covid has been used as a catch-all for all sorts of inconveniences; from unanswered helplines to glacially slow service, writes Judith Woods in the Telegraph.
• “We are de-platformed by Google Ads for ‘harmful’ Covid posts” – Google ‘ad serving’ has been removed from TCW Defending Freedom after 199 ‘Google Ad Violation’ notices – pretty much one a day over the last few months.
• “The U.S. public moved on from Covid months ago… but no one told the media or self-worshiping health officials” – Despite the efforts of progressives spreading Covid alarmism and medics who love their own voices, millions of Americans have decided that getting back to normal is the best way of dealing with the virus. More power to them, writes John Scott Lewinski in Russia Today.
• “Why Totalitarians Promote Hate” – “As human cooperation decreases and hatred increases, you too, not just the people the mandates are directed against, will suffer. The oxygen of capitalism is cooperation. The oxygen of totalitarians is hatred for differences,” writes Barry Brownstein in AIER.
• “From Diseases to Recessions, Government Failure Is Endemic” – Massive government intervention in the aftermath of the global financial crisis has not prevented the Great Recession, but has actually deepened and prolonged it until the Covid pandemic and government lockdowns sent the economy into a tailspin in 2020, writes Mihai Macovei in Mises Institute.
• “Arizona Woman ‘Mistakenly’ Injected With Covid Vaccine” – An Arizona woman has been vaccinated against Covid without her knowledge or consent, thinking that she was being given a flu shot, reports the Epoch Times.
• “Boris Johnson tells Brazil’s President to get AstraZeneca” – Boris Johnson urges Brazil’s ‘anti-vaxxer’ President Jair Bolsonaro to get the AstraZeneca vaccine but is given a disapproving finger-shake in response.
• “For want of a bonnet cable, the West was lost” – “If you can strangle the supply of key components, you can suffocate a country in manifold ways. No bonnet cables? No cars. No medicines? No healthcare. No semiconductors? No nothin’,” writes Ferderick Edward in Bournbrook Magazine.
• “IPCC Model Scenarios Compared To Actual Measured Temperatures” – In an effort to hold the IPCC accountable, Bob Irvine compares actual measured temperatures with two of their scenarios from the AR4 report in 2007 in Watts Up With That.
• “Suicidal energy policy is empowering Britain’s enemies” – Authoritarian regimes are exploiting the fact that the West does not have realistic carbon policies, writes David Green in the Telegraph.
• “Are low wind speeds to blame for Britain’s energy crisis?” – Global wind speeds have been trending downwards for several decades – is this to blame for Britain’s energy crisis, asks Ross Clark in the Spectator.
• “Farewell to Cambridge’s disastrous Vice-Chancellor” – In the Spectator, Douglas Murray bids farewell to Stephen Toopee: “The undistinguished Canadian lawyer who has spent recent years trying to run Cambridge University into the ground.”
• “The Tories’ half-hearted culture war dooms Britain to woke domination” – Boris Johnson has done fatally little to counter the rise of a new corporate grievance industry, writes Sherelle Jacobs in the Telegraph.
• “Does the NHS care more about wokeness than healthcare?” – Its diversity and inclusion executive is paid more than the head of NHS England, writes Spiked.
• “This is called ‘narrative collapse’” – Asked why previously infected Americans should still get vaccinated if shown to have stronger natural immunity, Biden’s White House medical advisor Dr. Fauci says: “I don’t have a really firm answer for you on that.”