News Round-Up

• “Excess deaths in 2022 among worst in 50 years” – New figures show more than 650,000 people died in the U.K. last year, which is 9% more than 2019 – but the vaccines definitely have absolutely nothing to do with it, according to the BBC.
• “WHO implies European countries should force American passengers to test negative for Covid as U.S. becomes hotspot for XBB.1.5 variant” – At a news conference in Copenhagen, the WHO’s senior emergency officer for the Europe region suggested that negative test requirements should be brought back for American travellers, reports the Mail.
• “How working from home puts Disney’s hit factory under threat” – Chief Executive Bob Iger tells employees “nothing can replace being physically together” as he asks them to return to the office Monday to Thursday, the Telegraph reports.
• “Another pandemic is coming – and the only answer Westminster has is lockdown” – Andrew Lilico in the Telegraph suggests it would be better to create a long-term surge capacity to accommodate pandemics than to return to restrictions.
• “German mask mandates are quietly withdrawn one after the other, as it finally dawns on the broader public and politicians that they’re stupid and pointless” – On December 8th, Sachsen-Anhalt ended mask mandates on public transit, and on December 10th, Bavaria did the same – and what proceeded to happen to rates of infection, hospitalisation and death in these two federal states was precisely nothing, writes Eugyppius.
• “We Have a Tripledemic. Not of Disease, But of Fear” – Getting sick sometimes is the price of returning to normal, but it’s more than worth it, writes Dr. Vinay Prasad in the Free Press.
• “The NHS is an anachronism – and Britain is waking up to the need for change” – It’s surely obvious to all but the most dogmatic that the NHS as a system is not working, says Stephen Pollard in CapX.
• “Letting the mask slip” – An unelected, unaccountable bureaucrat used ‘nudging’ to influence national policy, writes Laura Dodsworth in the Critic.
• “Central banks must not lead fight on climate change, says Fed chief” – In a rare display of common sense, Jerome Powell says institutions should not wade into “social issues” beyond their remit, reports the Telegraph.
• “One dead and two in hospital after blaze sparked by charging e-bike” – Crews from Merseyside Fire & Rescue Service in four fire engines were called to a house in Litherland at 3am on Sunday, where they found the ground floor ablaze, reports the Mail, in the latest deadly incident caused by an EV bursting into flames.
• “White Narrators Stop Minorities Viewing Nature Docs: Government-Funded Study” – Ethnic minorities could be put off watching nature documentaries if they are narrated by white men, a report funded by the U.K. Government claims, reports Breitbart.
• “Paul Ehrlich and the madness of climate alarmists” – His prophecies of eco-doom have been proven wrong time and again, so why is he still taken seriously, asks James Woudhuysen.
• “Labour pays black and minority staff 9% less than white people” – Shocking evidence of ‘institutional racism’ in the party of wokery, reports the Telegraph.
• “The U.K. can’t ignore Scotland’s gender recognition Bill” – The U.K. Government says it won’t recognise Scottish Gender Recognition Certificates (GRC), but this is missing the point, says Debbie Hayton in the Spectator: people with a GRC get a new birth certificate that is indistinguishable from any other, and England can’t refuse to recognise those.
• “My first Lords speech of 2023 on the Financial Services and Markets Bill” – Watch Claire Fox argue against Big Tech payment processing companies like PayPal being allowed to suspend accounts to regulate speech and punish ‘wrong think’, as happened to the Free Speech Union and UsForThem.

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