News Round-Up

• “What’s to blame for the surge in excess deaths” – Ross Clark reminds Spectator readers that the Government was aware of the possibility that lockdown could cause excess deaths as far back as July 2020
• “Only now are the crippling costs of lockdown becoming fully apparent” – “The economic harm these policies have caused may be even worse than the financial crisis,” says the Telegraph’s Jeremy Warner
• “New Covid variant can reinfect you every month and it’s outpacing other strains” – According to the Mirror, a new Covid strain is capable of reinfecting patients within weeks of their recovering from the virus and is dominant in the U.S. and elsewhere
• “Bay Area school calls police in dispute over whether four year-old must wear a mask. Parents might sue” – A four year-old was barred from his classroom for refusing to wear a mask, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. His father is considering suing
• “Social contagion: is ‘Long Covid’ often just ‘long parent’?” – El Gato Malo presents further evidence that, as he puts it, “thinking you had Covid is more predictive of long Covid than actually having had Covid”
• “Crisis Government; Excess Deaths in England; Christina Berndt’s 11 Ideas” – “I want to cut against the grain a bit,” says Eugyppius. “And suggest that that Telegraph article blaming excess U.K. mortality on lockdowns is more than just an attempt to exonerate the vaccines”
• “Forget Covid and monkeypox – new ‘tomato flu’ can ‘change colour of your limbs’” – More than 82 children aged five and under have contracted tomato flu, according to the Daily Star, a virus that causes red blisters to appear on the skin
• “Energy prices could rocket past £6,000 a year this Spring” – MailOnline reports on the latest energy price forecasts. The number has gone up again
• “Firewood: the premodern solution to Britain’s energy crisis” – Writing for UnHerd, Aris Roussinos point out that “despite all the attention given to wind and wave power, biomass is Britain’s greatest source of renewable energy”
• “Sash windows under threat in latest Net Zero plans for landlords” – Strict conservation rules could make it difficult for landlords to upgrade their properties in line with proposed new Net Zero regulations, reports the Telegraph
• “You Newton Denier, you!!” – A broadside from Matt Canavan in Spectator Australia against the modern scientists who are not really scientists but “glorified bureaucrats skilled at the art of protecting one’s backside by having a worldview so flexible that it can fit any possible outcome”
• “Green Elitism Behind Farmer Crackdowns” – Michael Shellenberger investigates the role of the World Economic Forum in the war on farming
• “Free Speech May Benefit Mental Health: The importance of open dialogue” – Psychologist  Dr. Chloe Carmichael explains why she believes “open dialogue is ultimately better than top-down censorship for those seeking wellness, authenticity, and individual as well as relational growth”
• ‘Report microaggressions through QR codes on campus, Lamda students told” – Lamda seems to be under the impression that students would feel safer if they were living in East Germany at the height of the Cold War
• “We are all ‘culture warriors’” – “Here is a funny thing about Britain’s ‘culture war’,” observes Ian Leslie in the Critic. “The people who decry it the most are those who are most invested in it”
• “Paul Gambaccini: ‘I’d be happy to see the BBC go’” – The Telegraph interviews broadcaster Paul Gambaccini, who is furious that the BBC did not stand by him when he was falsely accused of sexual abuse
• “Salman Rushdie and the racism of shielding Muslims from offence” – When we give in to the idea that we must censor works that are blasphemous against Islam “we throw many Muslims around the world, suffering under Islamist extremism and intimidation, under the bus”, writes Tom Slater in Spiked
• “NatWest to pay for hormone treatment for transgender staff” – NatWest is adding trans healthcare services to its private healthcare plan, the Telegraph says, as part of a policy overhaul aimed at making the bank more inclusive
• “Britain is in the grip of a new dogma that prizes diversity above talent” – If we give up on meritocracy “we will  undermine our hard-won prosperity and condemn ourselves to second-class status as the 21st century progresses”, says Andrew Neil in the Daily Mail
• “When even the stairs are bossing us about, it‘s time we rebelled ” – In his Mail On Sunday column this week, Peter Hitchens takes aim at a ridiculously bossy staircase in Paddington station
• “World Economic Forum suggests there are ‘rational’ reasons to microchip your child” – The World Economic Forum is promoting the potential of chip implants, Reclaim the Net reports
• “Students accuse each other of white supremacy at Berkeley POC house” – A student at the People of Colour themed house says its ideals of racial ‘intersectionality’ have caused trouble instead of creating harmony, according to the Daily Mail
• “Race is a delusion” – David Mamet recommends Kingsblood Royal by Sinclair Lewis as a good summer book in UnHerd
• “Train worker slams striking rail staff for being ‘unfair’ to public” – MailOnline reports on the comments of an Avanti West Coast worker who has criticised the strikes, saying that the “pay is good and the work is good”
• “Truth is Leaking Out” – “Here and abroad,” says Neil Oliver on GB News, “the absolute balls-up of the official responses to Covid is finally being acknowledged”
• “Greta Thunberg sings” – A reminder from Cop 26 in Glasgow last year that Greta Thunberg knows what she should do with the climate crisis

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