News Round-Up
- “Leading universities keep summer exams online because of Covid ‘dangers’” – Many exams are being taken at home with the aid of revision materials, despite Government campus coronavirus guidance being withdrawn in April, the Telegraph reports.
- “Jacinta Adern has tested positive to COVID-19” – The New Zealand Prime Minister announced she’d been struck down with the virus on Saturday, after her fiancé Clarke Gayford and daughter Neve both already tested positive, the Mail reports.
- “FDA: Americans Should Treat COVID-19 Like the Flu” – Several top Food and Drug Administration officials, including Commissioner Robert Califf, admitted that Americans will now have to accept COVID-19 as another respiratory virus, comparing it to influenza, the Epoch Times reports.
- “A WHO pandemic pact would leave the world at China’s mercy” – Lessons have still not been learned, so why should we trust the WHO in a future pandemic, asks Matt Ridley in the Telegraph.
- “Covid outbreak a ‘great disaster’ for North Korea, says Kim Jong-un” – Two days after confirming its first cases of Covid, the Government said 21 people had died, the Telegraph reports.
- “China’s leader Xi Jinping is suffering from brain aneurysm: reports” – Chinese leader Xi Jinping won’t have surgery to treat a rumoured brain aneurysm, reports in China have claimed. Social media posts alleging Xi’s poor health were removed, according to the Mail.
- “The Unspeakable Podcast: Is Public Health Messaging Designed For Dummies?” – Dr. Lucy McBride calls for an end to Covid catastrophising.
- “India bans wheat exports to deepen global food crisis” – The world’s second-largest producer of wheat has announced a ban amid shortage caused by war in Ukraine, the Telegraph reports.
- “Putin warns Finland ‘made mistake’, Lavrov says ‘total hybrid war’ on” – Vladimir Putin told the President of Finland he has “made a mistake” by joining NATO. Foreign Minister Lavrov slammed the West’s “total hybrid war” on Russia, the Mail reports.
- “University bans sonnets as ‘products of white western culture’” – The University of Salford’s attempt to “decolonise” its creative writing course has been branded “patronising” and “outrageous”, reports the Telegraph.
- “‘I questioned why children were being encouraged to transition – and it cost me my dream career’” – James Esses had volunteered at Childline for five years but that counted for nothing when he shared concerns over their gender ideology, writes Charlotte Lytton in the Telegraph.
- “Universities’ racial equality scheme branded ‘egregious wokery’” – Advance HE, which charges universities to take part in a racial equality scheme, is said to be responsible for cultural changes on campuses, the Telegraph reports.
- “Joe Biden’s new Ministry of Truth puts the U.S. on the fast track to an Orwellian nightmare” – Kneejerk state meddling could have a chilling impact on freedom of expression in the land of the free, writes Zoe Strimpel in the Telegraph.
- “Go organic and the poorest will suffer the consequences” – Dominic Lawson in the Times notes that Prince Charles, who opposes genetic modification of food, had to announce a bill permitting precisely that.
- “‘Progressives’ would wreck Tiger Head’s school” – Peter Hitchens in the Mail says next weekend millions of people will have the chance to see Katharine Burbalsingh’s remarkable school on television for themselves.
- “Council is accused of promoting ‘damaging trans ideology in schools’” – Council chiefs faced criticism over their trans policy last night amid concern about the number of referrals to the only NHS gender service for children, the Mail reports.
- “A key error during Covid was that two irrational extremes prevented us from having a sensible conversation about vaccinating the right people, based on good data” – Dr. Vinay Prasad traces a middle path on Twitter.
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“A constant round of fear and anger, blood and death”. No, not a description of the lockdowns and various other human rights abuses of the past two years, but a quote from the 1981 film, “Breaker Morant”, referring to the Boer war, and why soldiers might have done things they shouldn’t have done (the film is about a trial for the killing of Boer prisoners). I suggest that we have seen all of these things over the past two years of horrendous human rights abuses in supposedly civilised, liberal democratic countries. Now recently, it was reported that there is to be an enquiry into the effects of these abuses on mental health (of children, if I recall). Have these abuses affected mental health? Of course they have. They have done untold damage to people which will affect us for years to come. Now some politicians have described these measures as a war on a virus. It has been a war, but a war against the people. There is another film, “Till The End Of Time”, about WWII civilians with pent up anger from their war experiences. Whilst that war may have been justified, it was clear (from Sweden, among other… Read more »
Hardly any politician of note spoke out against the Boer War, just as with the war against the virus.
One who did, and who was demonised for it, was the Liberal leader Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman.
“When is a war not a war?” he asked rhetorically during an after dinner speech. To which eh answered, “when it is carried on by methods of barbarism in South Africa.”
The Tories and the newspapers were outraged and his own party prepared to ditch him, but he survived went on to become prime minister a few years later.
Hmm, they don’t make them like that any more!
A war on a virus in an impossibility and trying to have one can only result in destruction for the sake of destruction, just as Lyndon Johnson’s ‘war on poverty’ did.
Jacinda’s got Tha Dreaded C? How the hell did it ever get past those teeth?
If only she had got the “D” and stuffed her stuffing lockdowns…
For Norway with its oily fish has proved that them lot are clowns!
DM comment:
“I wish Covid19 a speedy recovery after catching the Ardern Virus.”
I thought she’d had it already. Didn’t she postpone her wedding a few months ago because of a “positive test”? And now she’s had it again. AND surely she’s triple or quadruple jabbed as well?
Gosh, she’s soooo unlucky!
If this is true, my sympathy is all with the virus.
Hopefully her immune system is now so completely shagged due to her taking her own advice and a mere cold that her kid brings back from school will finish her off. Poetic justice is needed, Karma, if you’re listening.
I won’t be happy until she gets an “extremely rare” illness or just conks out completely. Wonder if she’s had her kiddo jabbed already…
Correction: the FDA that is in bed with big pharma. “Will now have to accept”? Dear oh dear, as if more people will die in the long term. If every new respiratory and other illness increased mortality permanently, there’d be nobody left by now. Surely it should read “should now stop worrying about”. In any case, didn’t Sweden have below average mortality from January 2020 to June 2021?
I suppose the UK government didn’t do a cost-benefit analysis for making us self-sufficient for food either? I mean, the tensions in the Ukraine have only been going on for eight years (and arguably longer). What did our government do to prepare for a possible escalation, and to avoid inflaming the situation? Anyone? Some four million plus of us “wasted” our vote in 2015. I tend to think it’s a pity it wasn’t rather more…
”making us self-sufficient for food either? ”
I am unable to open the Times article on organic farming but it is the case that modern food production is heavily dependent on diesel fuel and chemical fertiliser. Whilst pure organic farming may be a purists dream nonetheless some of the principles of organic farming can be incorporated into the sort of regenerative farming methods that I feel will be needed if we are to reduce our dependence on imported chemical fertiliser and restore our ‘dirt’ fields to fertile living soils.
For sustainable regenerative farming to be able to head towards self sufficiency we need to keep farmland being farmed by people who care for the land. Instead we see land lost to big intensive agri-business, solar farms and schemes to plant trees to offset the elite’s carbon footprint.
The asset price rise caused by quantitative easing etc. has lead to high land prices, £15,000 an acre for good arable land. This is leading to ‘the true sons of the soil’ being pushed out of land ownership, in my view this is to the detriment of our soils and any hope of developing good regenerative farming.
The problem for the poorer countries is that most contracts for providing seeds means that no seed saving, cleaning & then sowing for the following year is permitted. Only when that can be used again will true regenerative farming be possible.
But I completely agree about crop rotation, using animal waste as fertiliser & soil improver to improve crop yields.
The other major issue we have is with harvesting as our indigenous labour force has migrated to towns & cities & think themselves above manual labour. Plus the level of fitness required to harvest just isn’t present anymore in the population.
Er, looking arounf the UK countryside most of these things are taking place already.
The aroma of manure and muckspreaders os a giveaway.
Fields visibly have grass. Potatoes, beans and a wheat/barley crop.
Given the public expectation of freshness and the much lower levels of food spoilage & wastage seen in modern agriculture compared to the medieval hand methods we need to encourage the mechanised methods of tilling & harvesting to maximise domestic food production.
No, they were a product of culture. Honestly, what sort of muppets do they employ at some of these universities (and no offence to the many decent, sensible people in the great Lancashire city of Salford)?
Thank goodness they still have some decent stuff on at the Lowry…
How long can a society survive with highly paid idiots like this running the institutions of higher education?
No wonder graduates of these same universities think that cutting off the gas and freezing to death is a way to get back at Putin.
Well, they can’t use haikus or African tribal chants or Aboriginal fertility dances or anything like that, if they’re white, ’cause that’s cultural appropriation, innit?
Imagine a Japanese University banning haiku because it represented yellow, eastern culture.
Just a reminder, Starbucks were reported as being sponsored by Mermaids, who are into this sort of thing. I also seem to remember that a Christian working for Trafford housing trust was demoted for writing in a private internet post outside of work that so-called same sex marriage was a right too far. Seriously, this madness has to stop. Whatever happened to Voltaire’s famous quote (“I Disapprove of What You Say, But I Will Defend to the Death Your Right to Say It”)?
The head guy at the Babylon Bee recently tweeted out a sort of quotation from CS Lewis in his book, “The Abolition of Man.”
Lewis’s subject in that book is how relatively unvarying is the idea of good and evil across cultures and across time. Lewis wrote that in all cultures and traditions, righteousness is linked to correspondence with reality. If that is the case, what can we say about our own culture except that it is wicked beyond the point of no return in thinking such absurd things as that men can become pregnant and deliver babies through the end of their penis.
As a teen I read Lewis’s Space Trilogy, and in his fictional universe the planets each have a guiding spiritual figure called the Oyarsa, an angelic figure (as I remember it), but Earth has become the Silent Planet; its Oyarsa corrupted and evil.
A metaphor for our times perhaps.
Lewis once warned that without vigilance we would all labour under the tyranny of:
the disciplined cruelty of some ideological oligarchy.
“Go organic and the poorest will suffer the consequences” – Dominic Lawson in the Times notes that Prince Charles, who opposes genetic modification of food, had to announce a bill permitting precisely that. Nonetheless I would like people to have choice in what they eat so far as possible, and if they can pay for it, as there is evidence (to which some of us give .credence.org/new2/ ) that pesticides and GM can have negative health effects (same as experimental medication). Obviously mandating organic farming like in Sri Lanka (was it?) without properly teaching alternative farming practices is a stupid idea. Still, if a minority of farmers choosing to engage in commercially viable organic farming in the UK is going to starve people, I think we should know some things including but not limited to: Why has UK farming been run down (or at least not “ramped” up? Why have bio-fuels, blamed for increased food prices in Mexico, been encouraged? Why has the EU suppressed businesses in Africa whilst dumping cheap food and clothes on those countries, rather than helping to grow their own businesses and farming? Why has the EU engaged n criminal practices with regard to the fishing industry? Why… Read more »
Rationing meat and dairy? Why, I’d starve to death.
Which is, of course, just what they want!
”Obviously mandating organic farming like in Sri Lanka (was it?) without properly teaching alternative farming practices”
Indeed, Humankind does seem to like to jump from black to white and whilst organic farming has much to teach us we need to move slowly and thoughtfully in changing farming systems. The present problems have shown how much the world is reliant on big agri-business ‘dirt’ farming, growing crops on sterile infertile soils by the application of chemical fertilisers. We need to move to regenerative farming techniques that build up and maintain soil life and fertility and reduce our dependence on chemical fertilisers. One way to improve soils is to run animals on them for a while, otherwise most of the techniques to revive our soils will involve diesel fuel to spread and incorporate organic matter. Improving and maintaining soil fertility was always a key aim of small and medium sized farms but such farms and the true ‘sons of the soil’ who run them are being priced off the land.
This reminds me Steve of an interesting documentary I watched a while ago about rejuvenating areas of desertificated land (hope I’ve got the term right but areas of land that have become barren over time “due to global warming” among other things, allegedly) and it involved animals grazing on the land for two reasons, one as you say is for fertilising directly and the other was because their hooves break up the top soil meaning that when it rains, water penetrates quickly through the outer crust and is conserved whereas without the animals breaking up the top soil, the rainwater quickly evaporates. It was a fascinating documentary. Here it is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7pI7IYaJLI
University of Salford bans sonnets as “products of white, western culture.”
Gotta give them credit for getting that right!
But then, shouldn’t the University of S ban the University itself?
I get it! Logic is also rejected as a “product of white, western culture.”
Show me how many human achievements are products of white, western culture, as opposed to those that are products of – say – black African culture, or ‘native American’ culture, or Australian aboriginal culture.
I don’t know enough about “black African culture” or “native American culture” to be useful, but Australian aboriginal culture has provided us with wonderful stories (collectively referred to as “Dreamtime” stories), compelling music (the greatest contemporary exponent of the didgeridoo, William Barton, has performed with the London Philharmonic amongst many other orchestras), and paintings (both past and contemporary) which are greatly sought after and admired.
There is a genuine attempt to blend this culture with “white, western culture”, which of course has used borrowings and blending to magnificent creative effect.
A few years ago I saw the superb Hecate – a production of Macbeth in the Noongar language of Western Australia. It was an adaptation with strong dance elements, and a great success before a predominantly “white” audience.
Incas you don’t know about this
Do not sign any WHO Pandemic Treaty unless it is approved via public referendum
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/614335
We want the Government to commit to not signing any international treaty on pandemic prevention and preparedness established by the World Health Organization (WHO), unless this is approved through a public referendum.
Stand for freedom with our Yellow Boards By The Road next events
Tuesday May 17th 5.30pm to 6.30pm
Yellow Boards
A322 Bagshot Rd
(by Bracknell Leisure Centre)
Bracknell RG12 9SE
Stand in the Park Sundays from 10am – make friends & keep sane
Wokingham
Howard Palmer Gardens
Sturges Rd RG40 2HD
Bracknell
South Hill Park, Rear Lawn, RG12 7PA
Telegram http://t.me/astandintheparkbracknell
Couple of questions.
By injecting mRNA gene therapy drugs into our bodies, have we effectively now become part one of a depopulation program?
Are the spike proteins in the vaccinated now manufacturing fresh mutated viruses, as suggested by some?
“Jacinta Adern has tested positive to COVID-19”
OK, now I’m willing to concede that she probably did get the vaccine and not a saline solution.
Jacinda ought to investigate her husband’s inner circle. Where did he get it from?
fnar
Had to look that one up. Oh dear, how the years do mount up!
Woke, going green etc, etc, are these merely distractions?
No one has been able to answer my question about blood donations yet i.e is it all now contaminated?
Good question. That’s why no-one has been able to answer it. Another ticking timebomb…
Yes, something I’ve wondered too. I hope somebody will be along with more knowledge but I would expect the likes of Drs McCullough or Malone, for instance, to know if blood ( and organs ) are safe to use if the person had the mRNA jabs. Presumably it’d have all cleared the system but are they actively checking such things?
Probably only in extremely rare cases.
Has my time here on earth, working, raising a family etc, all been for this? Am I/are we, no more than impotent narrators cataloguing the effects of power and greed?
I must say, it is a real worry what kind of society our kids/grandkids are going to inherit and what kind of future they will have. These past two years have seen societies morphing into something deeply unpleasant and nothing like how I grew up just a few decades ago. There’s ‘change’, which is to be expected, and then there’s the complete restructuring of a society into something completely alien and abhorrent, and it would seem we’re currently just at the ‘work in progress’ stage. Is it naivety to still think things might go back to how they were in 2019?
Most people don’t listen to the news, hence the reason the propaganda about covid had to be so in your face. Most people I know let it all go over their heads, and still live the lives they have always lived, the schools aren’t overly PC, for them nothing much has changed, covid has gone, they don’t spend a lot of time thinking about politic’s or what politicians are up to or even what is happening in the world
A return to 2019 would be a return to a world where these abuses of power are possible. We need to re-build a new society with love, kindness, community based upon the small & taking responsibility is beautiful model rather than enabling power & wealth to accumulate in the hands of the corrupt & few.
Once you are awake to the corrupt nature of world politics nothing can make you sleep again.
‘A key error during COVID was that TWO irrational extremes prevented us from having a sensible conversation about vaccinating the right people, based on good data. ‘
Those people being every single politician, all the pharma higher ups and Bill Gates.
Leading universities keep summer exams online because of Covid ‘dangers’” How many students have died from covid, where is the ‘danger’. Why is anyone signing up for a Uni course now?
Zoe Strimpel’s article in the Telegraph (linked to in the News roundup), is grade A sanctimony.
The taxi driver from Devon who she characterises as an ‘intelligent mother of two’ who has, tragically, fallen victim to disinformation.
I mean, imagine actually believing that face masks might be bad for your health!
What could this woman possibly be thinking! How could she be so misinformed?
Zoe Strimpel has the answer; this ‘intelligent mother of two’ has been suckling thirstily from the internet’s many poisoned udders.
I suspect Zoe would consider Lockdown Sceptics a veritable milking shed of misinformation.
The NZ Prime Minister announced she’d been struck down with the virus on Saturday
“Struck down”? It’s not polio, FFS.
Yes, but still, such a modern-day heroine – surely it can’t be long before the pope declares her sainthood.
Highly disingenuous tweet from Vinay Presad. There were plenty of people rationally opposed to mass vaccination and the efforts to squash them could in no way be described as ‘well-intentioned’. The fact that he is even talking about which brand of vaccine to use on under 40s shows he is operating in bad faith – no healthy person in that age ground ever needed a vaccine. Sounds like controlled opposition to me.
Well there are countries you would not get into without shots for the like of Typhoid, Cholera and Yellow Fever.
However fit you are.
Yep, you know, real life-threatening conditions!
We could have a discussion about their effectiveness which is probably over estimated.
Yes Jeremy obviously I meant covid vaccine – and ‘age group’ not age ground! And of course I was talking about mass vaccination for covid not mass vaccination in general. The biggest irony of all this is surely that so many of the people expressing concerns were broadly supportive of vaccination as a health measure and worried that this misuse of vaccines (and even of the term vaccine itself) would shatter public trust in vaccination and other health measures.
Princess Margriet of the Netherlands at Beechwood Cemetery, Canada with Trudeau Look up the images. The Princess is 79 and not wearing a mask. All the other attendees are not wearing masks. Trudeau does in every single image. When you go to the man’s FarceBook page he has a lot of images. Nearly all he is wearing a mask. except on his visit to The recent visit to the Ukraine. Wonder why that was? The man is a total waste of space.
Universities still doing online exams?
I posted here February 2021 about this:
Another side effect of lockdown: Many universities now have open-book “take home” examinations which might allow students 2-48 hours to do the examination, depending upon the university. (In summer some universities had 14 day examinations for students!) The extra time is to allow for different time zones, disabilities, timetable clashes, etc.. What is the result? In one department at one university a third of the examinations are compromised by some students submitting questions to online web-sites and downloading answers; there are lots and lots of such web-sites and most do not provide details about the students submitting questions to those staff trying to enforce academic integrity. Many cheating students will escape detection; and of those who are caught, many will not be punished as they might be because the numbers involved are too great to be manageable. What a mess!