News Round-Up

• “The Mask Mandates Did Nothing. Will Any Lessons Be Learned?” – “Do something” is not science, and it shouldn’t have been public policy, writes Bret Stephens in, er, the New York Times.
• “New York Times readers confront the manifest failure of masks to do anything, cope and seethe” – Eugyppius entertains himself and us by reviewing the most popular comments on Bret Stephens’ NYT mask article.
• “The four-day week experiment’s killer finding is borderline embarrassing” – At this rate, people will soon be objecting to the very concept of work itself, suggests Ben Marlow in the Telegraph.
• “Britain is barely working. Now it wants to work less” – The results from a four-day week trial should be taken with a fistful of salt, says Ross Clark in the Telegraph.
• “The Pfizer Clinical Trial in Argentina Was a Military Operation” – And Augusto Roux has the contracts to prove it, says Dr. Josh Guetzkow.
• “Will Tony Blair ever give up on ID cards?” – Is Blair ever going to give up hope of foisting ID cards on us, after being defeated over the issue as Prime Minister, asks Ross Clark in the Spectator.
• “What really caused the surge in Covid deaths in early 2020?” – Professor Norman Fenton defends one version of the iatrogenesis hypothesis – though I’m not convinced it’s the same as the extreme ‘ABC’ version that I was criticising, where excess deaths are attributed to Anything But Covid.
• “Perspectives on the pandemic from a children’s dance teacher” – “Many new starters struggled to fit in and focus, and would appear much younger in their development,” writes an anonymous children’s dance teacher for UsForThem.
• “Pfizer Knowingly Allowed Dangerous Components in its Vaccines” – The Epoch Times covers the contamination and cover-up story known on social media as ‘blotgate’.
• “Cambridge University students vote for completely vegan menus” – The union will hold talks with catering services about removing all animal products from cafes and canteens, reports the Guardian.
• “Nobody is buying heat pumps because they’re an awful product” – Is anyone surprised that the heat pump rollout is failing when they cost a ton and aren’t particularly efficient, says Matthew Lynn in the Telegraph.
• “Roald Dahl publisher says it has ‘significant responsibility’ to protect young readers” – Defiant Puffin defends its extensive story changes as “minimal” after the rewrite row, adding it is “not unusual for publishers to review and update language”, reports the Telegraph.
• “Meet the Woke Activists behind the Roald Dahl Book Purge” – The U.K.-based consultancy Inclusive Minds contracts with dozens of ‘inclusion ambassadors’ to shape the next generation of children’s books, reports National Review.
• “George Orwell’s chilling prediction has come true – it’s time to make a stand” – The censorship of books, statues and history is an attempt to eradicate the past and enforce a single point of view, says Simon Heffer in the Telegraph.
• “Being ‘Offensive’ is Irrelevant” – English teacher Paul Sutton says that “very few English teachers (especially the younger ones) have any interest in literature, other than as a grim but necessary dietary supplement needed to rid the world of ‘Tories’, ‘Climate change deniers’, ‘Racists’ and ‘Transphobes’”.
• “Fiddling while Ohio burns” – The Democratic elites aren’t even pretending to care about the East Palestine disaster, says Jenny Holland in Spiked.
• “The EU Files: What Elon Musk Is Not Telling You About Twitter Censorship” – Robert Kogon in Brownstone says the untold story of Twitter censorship is not what is happening in the U.S. but in the EU, where there is no First Amendment.
• “Lady Susan Hussey back performing duties on behalf of Princess Anne” – One senior member of the Royal Family has made a very public display of support for Lady Susan, the Daily Mail discloses.
• “Fury over new plans to fast-track 12,000 immigration applications” – Rishi Sunak faces renewed pressure on immigration after a new fast-track scheme for 12,000 asylum seekers – including Channel migrants – was dubbed an “amnesty in all but name”, the Mail reports.
• “The doctors failed me: Detransitioned woman – who had her breasts and uterus removed when she thought she was a man during mental health crisis – sues eight health care workers who helped her change” – Michelle Zacchinga was bullied at school and says she put her anxiety and depression down to being trans after reading about gender online, but now she will sue the doctors who helped her transition, reports the Mail.
• “The SNP leadership race has turned into the mother of all culture wars” – The race so far has been dominated by Twitter, which is why it appears to be solely about gender and same-sex marriage, says Iain Macwhirter in the Spectator.
• “The real reason to be scared of Kate Forbes” – Scotland has gone, in the space of just over 40 years, from a country where male homosexual acts were illegal to one where failure to believe personally in same-sex marriage (even as you support its legality) is a disqualifier for high public office, writes Stephen Daisley in the Spectator.
• “It’s okay for somebody who’s a Marxist to bring what they’ve learned from Das Kapital into the room, but not to take what you believe from the Bible. That’s nonsense, isn’t it?” – Tim Farron tells TimesRadio that being religious can be a bar to serving in high public office.

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