News Round-Up

• “Sajid Javid phones hospitals to ask: why are you defying my Covid rules?” – The Health Secretary will personally call chiefs of NHS trusts demanding to know why they are flouting latest guidance, according to the Telegraph.
• “China’s never-ending lockdown shows the perils of Zero Covid” – The knock-on impact, both socially and economically, is growing and the ramifications for global trade and prosperity are immense, says the Telegraph in a leading article.
• “The flu season in the U.K.” – John Dee with a “mini-study employing ONS registered weekly death data” that shows how unremarkable the ‘pandemic’ was in the scheme of things.
• “More than a third of GPs refused to offer routine appointments in the last year” – Pressures in primary care led family doctors to stop taking bookings for such appointments in the last 12 months, the Telegraph reports.
• “Shanghai morgue workers open body bag to discover patient is alive” – A video showing the bumbling workers in full Covid PPE went viral on Chinese social media, sparking outrage among a populace already raging at the heavy-handed actions of Shanghai authorities, the Mail reports. Didn’t Monty Python do a sketch about this?
• “A Covid retrospective” – “We contrarians warned of the harm lockdowns would do – and have done,” says Michael Jackson in Spectator Australia.
• “Starmer’s partygate hypocrisy” – He is holding himself to a different standard, says Patrick O’Flynn in the Spectator.
• “London is battered by the rise of work from home” – The Telegraph reports that the capital lags behind other cities as commuters shun the office.
• “The Relentless Banality of Bill Gates’s Mind” – Like its author, How to Prevent the Next Pandemic breaks new ground in being terrifying, tedious and obtuse all at the same time, says Eugyppius.
• “Ex-publican sent Covid loans to Isis, court told” – The Times reports that Government bounce-back loans intended as Covid support were used to fund Isis, it has been alleged at the Old Bailey.
• “There was no need for school closures, and they knew it all along” – The foundations of the policy were wrong from the start, and were known to be wrong almost immediately, but the policy was pursued nonetheless, and the damage to children was immense and potentially long-lasting, writes Hugh McCarthy for TCW Defending Freedom.
• “Europe’s obesity crisis is being fuelled by Deliveroo apps, WHO warns” – The U.K. ranks third in Europe for having the most obese adults, behind only Turkey and Malta, reports the Mail. Apps like Deliveroo, increased social media use and sedentary gaming “are driving the crisis”, according to the WHO, with pandemic measures making it worse.
• “Pfizer accused of Covid profiteering as first-quarter sales hit $26bn” – The pharma firm is being criticised over pricing and for keeping monopoly control over its vaccine and the new Paxlovid pill, the Guardian reports.
• “No, BP’s latest results don’t justify a windfall tax” – Arbitrary and retrospective tax changes are likely to add to business uncertainty – and BP actually posted a loss of over £16bn in the first quarter of this year, writes Julian Jessop for CapX.
• “The war on cars is a war on ordinary people” – Greens seem blissfully unaware that cars are a necessity for most Brits, writes Guy Birchall in Spiked.
• “Is this the beginning of the end for the U.S. dollar?” – China is threatening to dump dollar reserves to protect them from seizure, writes Philip Pilkington in UnHerd.
• “Never apologise to an SJW” – Wilfred Reilly in Spiked on the lessons from his brush with cancel culture.
• “The false euphoria of dysphoria” – Laura Dodsworth writes for the Critic that Pink News presents breast removal as “pure trans joy” in a new video.
• “Why do fewer girls study physics?” – While cultural factors may contribute to the gender gap in who studies physics at A-Level, innate sex differences in interests probably account for most of it, says Noah Carl.
• “Down with Biden’s Ministry of Truth” – The Disinformation Governance Board should horrify everyone who believes in freedom, says Brendan O’Neill in Spiked.
• “Dan Wootton asks Lionel Shriver, Has it become trendy to be trans?” – Watch the GB News interview on Twitter.

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