News Round-Up

• “Police seize on COVID-19 tech to expand global surveillance” – From Beijing to Jerusalem to Hyderabad, India, and Perth, Australia, the Associated Press has found that authorities used pandemic technologies and data to halt travel for activists and ordinary people, harass marginalised communities and link people’s health information to other surveillance and law enforcement tools. Are we really surprised?
• “So where does that £150 billion-a-year go? Pie chart breaks down annual NHS expenditure as critics say it could find cash for striking nurses if ailing service stopped wasting billions on tinkering email systems, diversity roles and prescribing paracetamol” – The NHS could stump up cash to pay striking staff better wages if it cut down on “unacceptable levels of waste and mismanagement”, campaigners claimed, reports the Mail.
• “Mayor Eric Adams urges New Yorkers to mask up amid surge in Covid, flu and RSV” – The Mayor is urging New Yorkers to wear masks indoors again amid a spike in coronavirus, flu and RSV infections, the New York Post reports.
• “Magistrate sacked for public campaigning over Covid response” – A magistrate has been removed from office for using her judicial platform to campaign against the Government’s COVID-19 policies, the Law Gazette reports.
• “Confessions of a conspiracy theorist” – What is the polite thing to say or do at a dinner party when faced with a pro-vaxxer who is furious because he believes his vaccine has not worked and he is holding you personally responsible, for some reason, asks Melissa Kite in the Spectator.
• “U.K. Doctors Call For Government Investigation Of mRNA Vaccines” – Watch the video of doctors speaking out about the vaccines and the side-effects they are seeing in their clinical practice.
• “Andrew Bridgen MP” – Listen to the latest Delingpod, where James speaks to MP Andrew Bridgen, who recently raised issues of vaccine safety in Parliament.
• “My interview with U.K. cardiologist Aseem Malhotra, survey results, and more” – “Did you know that none of the U.K. cardiologists are getting any more jabs? The narrative is falling apart,” suggests Steve Kirsch.
• “Cleveland study conducted to demonstrate the clinical effectiveness of the bivalent vaccines accidentally finds that the risk of COVID-19 infection increases with each prior vaccination” – Eugyppius on the striking new pre-print from Ohio.
• “Jeremy Clarkson will not face criminal investigation over Duchess of Sussex comments” – Scotland Yard says it received several complaints about the newspaper article, but did not identify any criminal offences, according to the Telegraph.
• “Now not even woke queen Jacinda Ardern wants anything to do with Harry and Meghan” – After being stitched up in the Netflix series, New Zealand’s PM has been quick to dissociate herself – and it’s a sign of things to come, says Ross Clark in the Telegraph.
• “A Deep Dive into Disinformation, Censorship, and Information Warfare in the 21st Century” – “It’s morally, legally, and intellectually repugnant that officials have clandestinely created a vast apparatus for censoring citizens’ legal speech on the pretext of combating foreign disinformation,” writes Michael Senger.
• “SNP not ignoring women after voting down gender reform bill amendments, insists MSP” – Karen Adam says there is “no evidence” male sexual predators will self-declare as female in order to access women’s spaces, according to the Telegraph. Except of course for all the evidence that is wilfully being ignored.
• “Scotland’s gender reform is a vote against reality” –New legislation will have catastrophic effects on women’s rights, says Joan Smith in UnHerd.
• “Is Eric Zemmour’s court defeat something to celebrate?” – Andrew Tettenborn writes in the Spectator that the European Court of Human Rights has declined to intervene, meaning that any imperative to protect unfettered political discussion does not apply to comments about Muslims which might cause people to mistrust them or think they hold values inconsistent with French republicanism.
• “Western civilisation is surrendering to the woke totalitarian onslaught” – This year has given little reason to hope that the push to rewrite our history might soon be defeated, says Robert Tombs in the Telegraph.
• “Universities are at risk from woke academics think-tank finds” – Instead of mastering their subjects many now “aim for the unholy trinity of equality, diversity and inclusiveness”, writes Daily Sceptic contributor Professor John Marenbon in a new report for Politeia, according to the Telegraph.

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