News Round-Up

• “The lazy, bloated civil service is dragging Britain down – and we are all paying for it” – Covid is still being used as an excuse by a zombie bureaucracy despite terrible service and an ever increasing cost to the public, writes Daniel Hannan in the Telegraph.
• “Britain is being overwhelmed by a rising tide of statism, entitlement and dependency” – On the surface, society seems almost back to what it was, but we should be worried by what Covid has done to us nevertheless, says David Frost in the Telegraph.
• “I’ve got Covid, and my wife seems set on ruining the experience” – “I catch the virus so late in the game that there are no restrictions left – not even against mowing the lawn,” writes Tim Dowling in the Guardian, in a sign that even the bastions of Zero Covid hysteria are starting to get some perspective.
• “Is this the last gasp of the Covid state?” – Those still calling for restrictions need to let it go, writes Christopher Snowdon in the Spectator.
• “Strike off the truth tellers? No, strike out Whitty & Co!” – The recent announcement from the GMC that doctors face being struck off for spreading fake news on vaccines and lockdowns is somewhat frightening, seemingly implying that fake news is anything not approved by the Government, writes Professor Angus Dalgleish in TCW Defending Freedom.
• “Michael Fabricant apologises for suggesting teachers and nurses enjoyed ‘quiet drinks’ during lockdown” – The Tory MP for Lichfield says it was not his intention to “cause offence” or to “demoralise”, reports the Telegraph – though he nonetheless repeats that he received numerous reports of it occurring.
• “Ukraine has path to victory, but prospect of defeat risks dangerous escalation from Russia” – Roland Oliphant writes for the Telegraph that as Russia raises the spectre of nuclear war, Kyiv faces the difficult challenge of how to reclaim territory Moscow considers its own; meanwhile, Liz Truss raises the stakes by stating that the Ukraine war is “our war”.
• “Vladimir Putin ‘poised to declare all-out war on Ukraine’” – The Telegraph reports that army chiefs want the President to drop the term ‘special operation’ and declare war which would enable mass mobilisation of Russians, in a further indication that Putin may be one of the more moderate figures in his administration.
• “I was an outcast just for wanting to keep my Girl Guides safe” – The reaction to speaking out about the new transgender rules was so cruelly disproportionate and unjust that Dr. Katie Alcock felt like a criminal, writes Frances Hardy in the Mail. She was interrogated as if by the “secret police” then expelled from Girlguiding.
• “The great American free-speech panic” – Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter has revealed how terrified the elites are of freedom of speech, writes Tom Slater in Spiked.
• “Ending WFH is ‘racist’! Apple staff tell CEO Tim Cook that forcing them back to the office will make tech firm ‘younger, whiter and more male-dominated’” – The employees petitioned the company on Friday in an open letter after CEO Tim Cook told staffers they would need to work from the office, according to the Mail.
• “Why is Canada euthanising the poor?” – Healthcare, particular for those suffering from chronic conditions, is expensive; but assisted suicide only costs the taxpayer $2,327 per ‘case’ – and, of course, those who have to rely wholly on Government-provided Medicare pose a far greater burden on the exchequer than those who have savings or private insurance, writes Yuan Yi Zhu in the Spectator.
• “Head of Tavistock clinic cuts ties with parents of trans children over their ‘transphobic’ views” – The Chief Executive and Chairman of the NHS Trust told parents they were “disappointed” by their gender-critical views, reports the Telegraph.
• “Nearly one in every 15 pupils at a leading secondary school identify as trans or non-binary – with majority declaring their gender change after lockdown last summer” – More than 60 youngsters at a school which has about 1,000 students on its roll have declared their gender to be different from their birth sex or do not identify as either male or female, most of them since the lockdown, reports the Mail.
• “Why are midwives being told that biological men can give birth?” –  It is surely beyond parody that a school of nursing and midwifery is teaching students that biological males can get pregnant and give birth, writes Debbie Hayton in the Spectator.
• “The truth about Biden’s new disinformation tsar” – The President’s new misinformation board is disturbingly Orwellian, writes Stephen L. Miller in the Spectator.
• “Tucker blasts creation of disinformation board as ‘dystopian future’” – Fox News‘s Tucker Carlson says the Biden administration’s newly minted “Disinformation Governance Board” is completely misguided, reports the Post Millennial.
• “Fractured: can the West fix itself?” – There are many ways to fracture a people, but one of the best is to destroy all the remaining ties that bind them – to persuade them that to the extent they have anything of their own, it is not very special, and in the final analysis, hardly worth preserving, writes Douglas Murray in the Spectator.
• “Half our MPs will be women, pledge Tories after Neil Parish porn scandal” – The Telegraph reports a bizarre intervention from Conservative Party chairman Oliver Dowden, who seems to think woke quotas are what Conservative voters are hankering after, and appears to endorse the lamentable notion that men are the problem.

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