News Round-Up

• “Lockdown effects feared to be killing more people than Covid” – Office for National Statistics figures show that around 1,000 more people than usual are dying each week, the Telegraph reports, due, it is thought, to delays in treatment for cancer, diabetes and heart disease
• “Edinburgh Festival Ode to Joy performance cancelled after Covid face masks row” – The Telegraph reports that a performance of Ode to Joy has been axed from an Edinburgh Festival concert after a Scottish choir rejected the Philadelphia Orchestra’s call to wear face coverings
• “MP Margaret Ferrier pleads guilty to breaching Covid rules” – The charge stated that Margaret Farrier MP wilfully exposed people to “the risk of infection, illness and death”, according to the Guardian
• “British travellers left struggling to board flights after NHS Covid pass down” – The NHS Covid Pass system went down for several hours on Thursday night, the Guardian reports, leaving travellers unable to access proof of their vaccination status
• “Covid Policies – Harms to Children” – A preprint article by Zenobia Storah and Rosamond Jones of the Health Advisory and Recovery Team, examining the effects of lockdowns, school closures, mask mandates and social distancing on children’s wellbeing
• “Covid wasn’t a catastrophe for young people’s education. Lockdown was” – “Lockdowns proved how easily education is taken away, and how difficult the damage is to repair,” writes Fraser Nelson in his Telegraph column
• “The CDC Failed, So Spin It Off and Make It More Powerful?” – The CDC admits it made mistakes, but the Brownstone Institute’s Jeffrey A. Tucker sees “no evidence of any serious rethinking of the crazed and cockamamie lockdown orders it issued from March 2020 onward”
• “Rochelle Walensky gets an intervention” – “Professor Walensky has been kneecapped,” writes Dr. Robert Malone, as he responds to the announcement of an overhaul at the CDC
• “Silent crisis of soaring excess deaths gripping Britain is only tip of the iceberg” – Lockdown rules that scared patients away from hospitals may be taking their toll, the Telegraph says, as more appear to suffer from untreated health problems. No shit!
• “Dr David Cartland” – On the Delingpod, James Delingpole is joined by Dr. David Cartland, a GP who resigned over how the pandemic was mishandled
• “An absurd and disturbing cancel campaign in public health” – Writing for the Boston Globe,  David Zweig laments the attempt to de-platform CNN Medical analyst Dr. Leana Wen from her speaker slot at the November conference of the American Public Health Association. Her sin? Daring to suggest we should return to normal
• “Shock news! The Telegraph publishes Jordan Peterson’s rallying cry on globalist doomsters” – The Conservative Woman’s Kathy Gyngell celebrates the Telegraph’s publication of Dr. Jordan Peterson’s recent essay
• “The green threat to the First Amendment” – “Freedom of speech must include the freedom to question climate-change policy,” says Brendan O’Neill in Spiked  
• “Why won’t trade unions stand up for free speech?” – “The trade-union movement has been effectively complicit in the normalisation of the censorship, thought-control and cancel culture that have taken hold in so many of our workplaces,” writes Paul Embery in Spiked
• “The grubby truth about freedom of speech” – “An honest defence of free speech acknowledges that it inflicts pain on vulnerable people, disperses power unequally and has no scientifically identifiable principles,” says James Marriott in the Times. But it’s “precious nonetheless”
• “Free Speech Can’t Survive As an Abstraction” – “Free speech needs some ground to stand on,” says the Atlantic’s George Packer. “It needs a people willing to defend the right – the life – of someone who says things that they don’t want to hear”
• “Online Safety Bill ‘not fit for purpose’, say Tech experts” – In a poll of tech professionals carried out by BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT, 74% felt that the bill would do “nothing to stop the spread of disinformation and fake news”
• “The Week in 60 Minutes” – Lord Jonathan Sumption is among the guests in the latest episode of The Week in 60 Minutes by Spectator TV, joining Fraser Nelson to discuss the problems with the Online Safety Bill
• “Combat ready? Pentagon to host ‘transgender and non-binary’ gender inclusion and pronoun usage workshop” – Jordan Schachtel reports that the U.S.  Army’s Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility office will be hosting a “Gender Inclusion Workshop” on August 30
• “Discovery offloads GB News stake as channel builds £60m war chest” – GB News has secured £60 million of fresh investment, the Telegraph reports, and is taking on new presenters including Camilla Tominey and Andrew Pierce
• “Fury over ‘sexist’ NHS job ad for ‘‘someone who identifies as a woman’” – Barts Health NHS Trust in London is hiring a director of operations, and according to MailOnline they are “particularly interested in receiving applications from candidates who identify as female”
• “Britain’s funeral backlog: ‘Dad’s body was left in the freezer like a piece of meat’” – Budgets cuts, staff shortages and excess deaths mean funerals are being delayed for weeks, the Telegraph reports
• “The Online Harms Bill is a censtors’ charter” – Toby tells Mark Steyn that although Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss have both said that they’ll review the ‘Legal but harmful’ content clause, he reckons there’ll still be some things which are perfectly legal to say offline but will be prohibited online

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