News Round-Up

• “Sleeping pills for children at record high after Covid lockdowns” – Lockdown led to a record number of children being prescribed sleeping pills as they struggled to cope with the disruption, the Mail reports.
• “Xi Jinping’s Zero Covid disaster” – President Xi Jinping has used his Zero Covid strategy to strengthen his iron grip on the country, but could it now be his undoing? Asks the Mail.
• “The Lancet has become a laughing stock” – Norman Fenton and Martin Neil lock at the Lancet’s shocking record on Covid, in Where are the numbers?
• “Everyone Should Shed the Mask” – Love, kindness, honesty, respect, creativity and freedom are necessary for human flourishing. Sadly, many still embrace the mask as if it is the only truth that exists, writes Serena Johnson in Brownstone.
• “The Twitter DM thread that started my career as one of the world’s top ‘misinformation spreaders’” – Now reinstated on Twitter, Steve Kirsch shares the DM thread that launched his career as one of the world’s top ’misinformation spreaders‘.
• “Electric car makers put the brakes on U.K. production because they are too expensive to sell” – Only a quarter of car output will be electric within the next two years, lower than prior forecasts of more than a third, according to Paul Homewood in WUWT.
• “The Left wants to ban our gas hobs and it doesn’t care about the consequences” – The initial impulse for U.S. bans was climate-related. Now the argument has expanded to include worries about indoor air pollution, writes Juliet Samuel in the Telegraph.
• “Energy Transition Farce Continues in Germany” – Fearing outages, regulators announce plans to ration power for environmentally friendly, state-promoted electric vehicles and heat pumps, writes Eugyppius.
• “Rishi Sunak to appoint an ‘anti-woke’ tsar to investigate universities” – Rishi Sunak is set to declare a new ‘war on woke’ by appointing a free speech watchdog and more closely vetting the appointment of Left-wing bishops, according to Glen Owen in The Mail on Sunday.
• “Government to crack down on trans athletes competing in female sports” – Culture Secretary Michelle Donelan has called senior executives from the major national sports governing bodies in for a meeting in Whitehall to discuss the issue, writes Camilla Turner in the Telegraph. 
• “Rishi Sunak preparing to block Scottish gender reform bill” – Rishi Sunak is poised to block Sturgeon’s horrendous gender reform bill, according to the Times.
• “It’s idiotic to pretend Drake wasn’t a great Englishman” – Our heroes are all flawed. Yet, take them for all in all, writes Peter Hitchens for the Mail on Sunday.
• “An LGBTQ+ conversion therapy ban is bound to backfire” – If this amendment is passed, professionals simply trying to do their jobs could be accused of practising conversion therapy, because the amendment fails to define what it entails, writes Lottie Moore in the Spectator.
• “If the British Museum loses its marbles, nationalism triumphs over humanity’s common heritage” – The friezes were lawfully acquired by the U.K. Ignoring their rightful ownership for political expediency will set a dangerous precedent, says Daniel Hannan in the Telegraph.
• “The Loudoun County cover-up reveals the moral depravity of woke” – A schoolgirl was raped by a ‘genderfluid’ boy – and her school covered it up, writes Sean Collins in Spiked.
• “How we created a self-hating generation” – Children can’t be trusted to choose an identity, writes Lionel Shriver for UnHerd.
• “How universities entered Cloud Cuckoo Land” – Aristophanes anticipated the cult capture of our institutions, and the nihilistic cultural repudiation of the 2020s, writes Jacob Howland for UnHerd.
• “Reparations and the rectory” – The Archbishop of Canterbury has announced £100 million pounds has been found to make reparation for the Church’s alleged involvement in the transatlantic slave trade. Can the CofE buy its way into progressive paradise? asks Sebastian Milbank in the Critic.
• “Toby Young debunks Benjamin Butterworth’s mischaracterisation of cancel culture” – Butterworth gets both OWNED and DESTROYED by the Toadmeister.

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