News Round-Up

• “More than a third of U.K. music industry workers lost jobs in 2020” – U.K. Music’s annual report says 69,000 people lost work as the pandemic wiped billions off the value of the sector, reports the Guardian.
• “How Britain’s vaccine programme went from world-beater to laggard in less than a year” – From peak of 600,000 shots a day to about 200,000 recently, wheels have fallen off the vaccination juggernaut – and the blame game has begun.
• “Scottish teenagers may have to wear face masks in class until next year” – Guidelines forcing secondary school pupils to wear coverings will remain in force indefinitely after a Government U-turn, reports the Telegraph.
• “SNP’s vaccine passport scheme in chaos as it can be ‘outfoxed by a screenshot’” – A key security feature trumpeted by under-fire SNP Health Secretary in a radio interview does not exist, in further blow to scheme, reports the Telegraph.
• “Scottish Vaccine Passports and The Swedish Way” – As Scotland imposes vaccine passports, CAN Films look at the collateral damage of their Covid approach, while comparing it with Sweden’s.
• “Travel testing to stay until new year, says Grant Shapps” – Testing for fully-jabbed travellers will remain in place until at least the new year, the Government has said.
• “U.K.’s daily Covid deaths hit seven-month high of 223” – Department of Health bosses posted 223 fatalities today, up 23.2% on last Tuesday’s figure of 181.
• “Boris Johnson Predicts Difficult Winter as Covid Deaths Rise” – “We’re starting to see indications that hospitalisations and death rates are increasing,” says Johnson’s official spokesman. “Clearly we are keeping a very close eye on rising case rates.”
• “NPHET doesn’t rule out the requirement to reintroduce Covid restrictions in the future” – A return to more restrictive public health measures such as lockdowns has not been ruled out in the Republic of Ireland.
• “Mother, may I? Americans have lost their spines if they need Fauci’s blessing to gather for the holidays” – U.S. Chief Medical Adviser Anthony Fauci has declared American families may spend the holidays together – as long as they’re vaccinated. But who gave him the authority to decide, and why are people still listening to him anyway, asks Helen Buyniski in RT.
• “The Covid testimony of Dr Peter McCullough – Part Two: The vaccines are killing people” – Dr Peter McCullough says there is no system to protect the American people from vaccine damage in a lecture transcribed in TCW Defending Freedom.
• “Nebraska AG Says Doctors Can Legally Prescribe Ivermectin, HCQ for Covid” – At the request of the Nebraska Department of Health, Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson issued a legal opinion that Nebraska healthcare providers can legally prescribe ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine for the treatment of Covid, so long as they obtain informed consent from the patient.
• “France launches ‘anti-woke’ think tank to ‘protect French values’” – Cancel culture is becoming a hot button issue ahead of French presidential elections, reports the Telegraph.
• “Thailand inmates are taking green chiretta to fight mild Covid – here’s what we know about this herbal drug” – The Thai Government claims success at treating mild Covid in its prison population.
• “Latvia orders lockdown as PM decries low Covid vaccine uptake and far-right MP blames Russian ‘colonists’ reluctant to get jab” – Latvia has ordered its citizens to stay at home, and shuttered shops and businesses in the hope of slowing a spike in deaths, after warnings that the healthcare system is struggling to cope with the increase in coronavirus ‘cases’, reports RT.
• “Make your home greener to get a mortgage” – Home buyers face having to improve the energy efficiency of their new properties under the terms of their mortgage as part of Government plans to decarbonise Britain’s housing stock, reports the Times.
• “Getting to net zero will come at a price – no matter what Boris or Biden say” – Claims the transition to a carbon-neutral society is cost-free are demonstrably untrue, and unfair on a public already feeling the strain, writes Kate Andrews in the Telegraph.
• “This heat pump scheme is a bung to the rich” – “Green incentives have long been a racket, a machine designed to transfer wealth from the poor to the rich,” writes Ross Clark in the Spectator.
• “Boris is courting political disaster by trying to guilt us into going green” – We were the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, and now the Government wants us to pay the price, writes Philip Johnston in the Telegraph.
• “The alarming human rights ruling on freedom of speech” – “The ethical case for regulating what can be said about the dead is highly dodgy,” writes Andrew Tettenborn in the Spectator.
• “We need to talk about the killing of David Amess” – “To avoid the hard conversations about radical Islamism entirely is to abandon a community when it needs our help most,” writes Sam Ashworth-Hayes in the Spectator.
• “Wokeness is giving cover to bullies” – Children are using social justice rhetoric to pick on others, writes Katherine Dee in UnHerd.
• “Trans activists cannot hide their misogyny” – When did it become progressive to tell women to “suck my d***”, asks Jo Bartosch in Spiked.
• “The deranged campaign against Kathleen Stock” – “To Sussex University’s credit, they’ve so far stood by their woman, rather than throwing her under the bus to placate the black hoody-wearing mob,” writes Noah Carl in his latest Substack update.
• “Towards a reactionary Eisteddfod” – “Now that state (and increasingly local) venues are programmed along quota lines, with demographic characteristics of creators prioritised over merit, ambitious and talented artists find themselves marginalised as never before,” writes Alexander Adams in Bournbrook Magazine.
• “‘I want to know exactly which MPs support this and which don’t’” – “What kind of democracy do we live in when a 6 month extension to emergency powers to control every aspect of our lives can just be nodded through without any vote,” asks Julia Hartley-Brewer.