News Round-Up

• “Children forced to keep wearing masks in school as councils defy Government Covid guidance” – Hundreds of thousands of pupils are affected by the decision of 13 councils, with parents ‘furious at postcode lottery’, reports the Telegraph.
• “Never mind lifting mask mandates, ban them!” – Professor Roger Watson in TCW Defending Freedom offers 10 reason why legislation should be introduced to ban the wearing of face masks at any time and in any place under all circumstances.
• “Hey, you in the mask, who are you staring at?” – After two years of having to breathe inside germy fabric, I’ll be damned if I’m going to cover up as a ‘courtesy to others’, writes Giles Coren in the Times.
• “There are three reasons why I believe masks are the most insidious of all the restrictions that have been involved” – Former NHS Consultant Clinical Psychologist Dr. Gary Sidley gives his view on coronavirus restrictions on GB News.
• “Sexy in that Face Mask” – Watch a funny mocking of pandemic measures set to a catchy tune.
• “Kid Rock Cancelling Concerts on His Tour over Vaccine, Mask Mandates: ‘I Won’t Be Showing Up’” – Detroit rocker Kid Rock says if venues implement vaccine or mask mandates for concerts on his upcoming Bad Reputation Tour, fans will “be getting your money back, because I won’t be showing up”, reports Breitbart News.
• “Millions of Brits are happy to ‘live with’ Covid and continue to wear face masks” – Nearly three-quarters are ‘fed up’ with the constantly-changing rules and restrictions, and are ready to accept the virus as part of everyday life, reports the Mirror.
• “The Left-wing case against vaccine mandates” – The shared Covid risk is being outsourced to Africa, write Thomas Fazi and Toby Green in UnHerd.
• “Nursing students’ dreams crushed under Covid jackboot” – The abuses of human rights and the right to decide what medical treatment you wish to have are about to be compounded by the dismissal of another group about which little has been said: nursing students, writes Professor Roger Watson in Politcalite.
• “White House: Children Aged Two to Four Probably Will Need Three Doses of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine” – Dr. Anthony Fauci, the Chief Medical Advisor for the White House, has indicated that children two to four years of age will need three vaccine doses as two have no effect, reports TrialSite News.
• “Princess Anne to miss Beijing Winter Olympics” – Buckingham Palace says the decision is “due to the flight and Covid travel restriction difficulties”, reports the Telegraph.
• “How Scotland played politics with the pandemic – and lost” – Nicola Sturgeon has spent two years at odds with Westminster over the U.K.’s Covid response – now, the true cost can be counted, writes Alan Cochrane in the Telegraph.
• “Saint Jacinda has made controlling Covid a myopic moral mission, with no end in sight” – Ardern has blinded the world with her virtue, and robbed New Zealand of all that makes life worth living, writes Zoe Strimpel in the Telegraph.
• “Women are too often given reasons not to have children” – Career pressure, the cost of childcare and environmental concerns are discouraging a generation of women from pregnancy, writes Camilla Tominey in the Telegraph.
• “The Center for Countering Digital Hate is Dumb” – A closer look at the propaganda outfit at the centre of the pressure campaign against Substack from Eugyppius.
• “Tackling racism in U.K. health research” – Richard A. Powell and colleagues in the BMJ see racism everywhere and set out to eliminate it: “Racism is currently present throughout U.K. health research, including commissioning and implementation…, assessment, and dissemination, and we propose actions to produce systemic change. We use an equity approach that moves beyond creating an ‘equal, level playing field’ and instead treats the unequal unequally.” Oh dear.
• “Police seize ‘anti-trans’ book from activist Jennifer Swayne in raid on home” – Police have arrested a women’s rights campaigner for an alleged hate crime and seized an academic book from her home after she put up posters “directed towards the trans community”, reports the Times.
• “In the cruel world of cancel culture, for once a sinner has actually been forgiven” – The UUP leader Doug Beattie has apologised for old Tweets. It holds lessons for the rest of us, writes Juliet Samuel in the Telegraph.
• “J.K. Rowling’s second-rate critics should be thanking her, not trying to cancel her” – Far from being hailed for her vast contribution to public life, our pathetic cultural elite desperately hope she will disappear, writes Joanna Williams in the Telegraph.
• “The EHRC is right about the trans conversion therapy ban” – Criminalising therapy for kids who believe they are trapped in the wrong body, as opposed to giving them support to live happily as they are, would be an abhorrence, writes Julie Bindel in the Spectator.
• “The power of black conservatives” – Black conservatives would say of themselves that they are Americans first, patriots, proud of being and glad to be so, dismissive of the radical critique of their country, and harsh on black personalities and protestors who they believe parade a status of subjugation which they have not earned, writes John Lloyd in the Spectator.
• “France has recorded over 550,000 Covid cases in one day, despite having some of the harshest restrictions in the world” – Tweet from Politics U.K.

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