News Round-Up

• “Matt Hancock ‘fought to be face of vaccine rollout’, WhatsApps reveal” – Matt Hancock was told by advisors that the public would “forgive” him for being supportive of lockdowns if he could claim vaccines as his success, the Mail reports.
• “Matt Hancock rejected advice to cut Covid isolation as it would ‘imply we’ve been wrong’” – The former Health Secretary feared reducing 14-day quarantine period to just five days as it would ‘sound like a massive loosening’, the Telegraph reports.
• “How Matt Hancock plotted to have ‘useless loudmouth’ Covid scientist sacked” – Matt Hancock wanted Sir Jeremy Farrar removed from SAGE committee for publicly criticising the Government’s decisions, according to the Telegraph.
• “Matt Hancock brands vaccine tsar ‘wacky’ after she queried jab rollout” – Matt Hancock described Kate Bingham as “wacky” and “totally unreliable” after she questioned the need to give the entire population the jab, the Mail reports.
• “Matt Hancock and the politics of fear” – Fear messaging, like lockdown itself, was new. And like most new tools, it was badly misused with hardly any understanding about the side effects, says Fraser Nelson in the Spectator.
• “Hancock’s overzealous ‘pingdemic’ crippled Britain’s economy – and we’re still paying the price” – Cutting isolation rules much earlier could have saved the economy a huge amount of pain and avoided an ongoing crisis of absenteeism, says Matthew Lynn in the Telegraph.
• “Dominic Cummings mocks Rishi Sunak and Matt Hancock on WhatsApp leaks” – Dominic Cummings has added “nightmare psychotherapist” to his Twitter bio, the Mail reports.
• “The true Covid lab leak scandal is how easily our politicians and scientists dismissed it” – The blanket dismissal of the lab leak hypothesis as a dangerous conspiracy theory shows the dangers of partisanship in our divided age, says Ian Birrell in the i.
• “Covid jab manufacturer Moderna will build £150 million vaccine hub” – Moderna will build its Innovation and Technology Centre in Harwell “to provide the U.K. public with access to mRNA vaccines for a wide range of respiratory diseases”, the Mail reports.
• “Heart attacks and strokes after a Covid diagnosis” – Eric Topol is back with more misleading, anxiety-provoking analysis, says Vinay Prasad.
• “Eerily quiet and sad: how lockdown affected students – by their teachers” – School heads and a university professor describe their heartbreak over a lost generation with no social or learning skills, in the Sunday Times.
• “How did all of this Happen?” – In a nutshell, Project Fear worked, even if some people eventually realised some of the narratives may have been dubious or false, says Bill Rice in Brownstone.
• “Sadiq Khan plots ‘pay-as-you-drive’ scheme using ULEZ cameras” – Notwithstanding the backlash Sadiq Khan is facing over the expansion of ULEZ to Outer London, dragging millions more into the orbit of paying £12.50 a day, he’s now talking about a ‘pay-as-you-drive’ scheme, the Mail reports.
• “The Real Threat of 15-Minute Cities” – Ultra-modern, tech-saturated 15-minute cities will use hundreds of thousands of sensors to vacuum up copious amounts of personal data, according to Brownstone.
• “Now BBC renames wing dedicated to DJ John Peel at its London HQ” – The BBC has renamed the John Peel Wing at its Broadcasting House headquarters “to help staff and visitors navigate the building” after historical sexual abuse claim were made against the late DJ, the Mail reports.
• “USA Powerlifting loses lawsuit, will now allow transgender athletes” – USA Powerlifting will now be forced to allow transgender athletes to compete in the women’s division after losing a multi-year discrimination case brought by a trans lifter, the Mail reports.
• “What I saw inside the Tavistock” – The gender clinic put troubled children on a conveyor belt towards transition and snuffed out internal dissent, says Marcus Evans in Spiked.
• “There’s only one way to protect yourself from the censors” – Disentangling ourselves from digital dependence is now a radical but necessary step, says Zoe Strimpel in the Telegraph.
• “Why Progress isn’t feminist” – Digital Prometheanism is not liberation, says Mary Harrington in UnHerd.
• “Watch this uncannily accurate sketch” – This sketch is from 2013, but looks more like a documentary about corporate culture in 2023.

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