News Round-Up

• “Vaccine injury scheme ramps up staff as claims over Covid jabs keep growing” – Increasing demand for Covid vaccine injury payments has seen the number of staff processing claims increase 20-fold, figures show, according to the Telegraph.
• “Primary school closes over ‘Covid outbreak’ amongst staff” – The Telegraph reports that parents of pupils at Coomb Briggs Primary Academy are furious about being forced to pay for childcare for most of the week.
• “India’s lost lockdown generation” – The world’s largest democracy has sacrificed its future, writes Kunal Purohit in UnHerd.
• “Eleven charts that show the continuing impact of lockdown” – Three years on from the moment Boris Johnson told Britain to stay indoors, the Telegraph counts the lasting effects of the restrictions.
• “Covid cases jump by 14% in a week” – Office for National Statistics analysts estimate almost 1.7m Brits were carrying the virus on any given day in the week to March 13th, a jump of almost 14% on the week before, the Mail reports.
• “Appeals court blocks Biden’s vaccine mandate for federal employees” – President Joe Biden’s order that federal employees get vaccinated against COVID-19 was blocked Thursday by a federal appeals court, reports the Washington Times.
• “High risk, low benefit of Covid boosters to healthy young people finally acknowledged by Australia’s vaccine advisory body” – Meanwhile, AstraZeneca has been withdrawn completely, reports Rebekah Barnett.
• “Are raccoon dogs really to blame for Covid?” – The latest origin theory for the virus doesn’t hold much water, writes Peter Franklin in UnHerd.
• “Lockdowns made people support lockdowns” – And made them think Covid was worse than it is, writes the Naked Emperor.
• “Deutsche Bank’s collapse would be a threat to the whole eurozone” – Friday’s collapse in the share price of Deutsche Bank, and the huge rise in the cost of insuring its debt against default, means it is probably only a matter of time before there’s an intervention, says Matthew Lynn in the Spectator.
• “U.K. planning to launch watered down Net Zero strategy in oil capital Aberdeen” – The Government is planning to launch its revamped Net Zero strategy from the U.K.’s oil and gas capital, Aberdeen, in a clear signal of its intention to boost the fossil fuel industry while cutting key green measures, the Guardian has learned.
• “Green Dictatorship? Netherlands Politicians Answering to the EU instead of Voters” – The EU sees no reason to allow the Netherlands to change course, despite a resounding rejection of EU agriculture policies during recent elections, notes Eric Worrall in WUWT.
• “Opposing wind turbines is immoral, claims climate change adviser” – Government advisor Lord Deben says it’s not an “acceptable moral position” to oppose the building of wind farms in your area, according to the Telegraph.
• “The Twitter Files reveal an elite at war with the truth” – Even established facts can be branded as ‘misinformation’ if they upset the official narrative, says Jenny Holland in Spiked.
• “Why so many Canadians pretend to be indigenous” – Identity politics and affirmative action are encouraging public figures to lie about their ancestry, says Kevin Yuill in Spiked. Who could’ve seen that coming? Odd, though, given how oppressed and colonised minorities are…
• “Madness in the Law Schools” – Conformity to the socially fashionable beliefs provides cultural and professional immunity that has given rise to entitlement amongst progressives, writes William Spruance for Brownstone.
• “Don’t blame conservatives for the culture wars” – It’s not the conservatives spoiling for a rumble: activists have been quietly pushing ‘progressive’ issues for decades, says Eric Kaufmann in UnHerd.
• “The New Roundheads. Politics and the Misuse of History” – Read Jonathan Sumption’s excellent lecture for History Reclaimed on the worrying ideological takeover of institutions by activists armed with a skewed interpretation of history, delivered at the Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford on February 27th 2023.
• “A Shoutdown at Stanford” – Alex Morey in Persausion on why free speech is ‘worth the squeeze’.
• “The previous four Australian ABS Provisional Mortality Statistics data releases reveal 15.1%, 16.0%, 17.0%, and 17.3% increases in excess deaths above the baseline average” – Aussie Senator Alex Antic tweets his worries about alarming mortality stats Down Under.

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