News Round-Up

• Covid inquiry documents deemed ‘extremely problematic’ to be labelled ‘boiling’, Govt lawyers told” – DHSC officials are understood to have already identified at least 22,500 ‘hot’ documents, the Telegraph says, many of which are expected to be handed to the official inquiry.
• “Minister refuses to back Hancock Covid claim of ‘protective ring’ for care homes” – Care Minister Helen Whately has declined to back Matt Hancock in his claim that the Government threw a ‘protective ring around care homes’, the Guardian reports.
• Watchdog to probe secretive unit which monitored social media posts criticising COVID-19 policies” – The Information Commissioner’s Office is set to question the Government over the work of the Counter-Disinformation Unit, according to the Telegraph.
• “Parliament is playing catch up on the WHO Treaty negotiations” – UsForThem gives parliamentarians a wake-up call on the WHO’s proposed new Pandemic Treaty.
• “Safe and effective” – Tom Jefferson and Carl Heneghan explain why the “safe and effective” mantra is “epidemiological drivel”.
• “International excess deaths” – Dr John Campbell looks at the latest stats on excess deaths, which remain high in multiple countries around the world.
• “Boris Johnson’s theatre of the absurd” – “Johnson was plainly imposing rules on others that he did not himself believe in,” says UnHerd’s Political Editor Tom McTague. “He saw their absurdity and could not bring himself to play along convincingly.”
• “Sinister forces stopped me reaching House of Lords ” – Nadine Dorries tells all on Boris Johnson’s honours list, in the Mail. “It is my belief that when Rishi Sunak told Boris Johnson he would sign off the list returned to him by HOLAC, he was using weasel words.”
• “Britain fires up coal plant as solar panels suffer in hot weather” – The National Grid has turned back to coal, the Telegraph says, after the heatwave made solar panels too hot to work efficiently.
• “Canada’s wildfires are a reminder climate warriors have it all wrong” – “There’s zero evidence climate change sparked any of the more than 400 fires raging across Canada’s forests,” says the New York Post. “Indeed, the main stage-setter (as in California’s 2020 wildfires) looks to be forest mismanagement in the name of environmentalism.”
• “Police reveal the true cost of Just Stop Oil protests” – Just Stop Oil protests in London over the past six weeks have cost police £4.5 million and the equivalent of 13,770 shifts, reports the Telegraph.
• “White House appears to have violated U.S. flag code by flying Progress Pride Flag in position of prominence” – The White House seems to have committed a major faux, Not The Bee reports, by flying the ‘Progress Pride’ flag in a place of prominence over the Presidential Seal while relegating the Stars and Stripes to the periphery.
• “Vegan foods maker Meatless Farm sacks almost entire workforce” – Plant-based meat manufacturer Meatless Farm is looking for a buyer, the Telegraph says, as most people prefer real burgers and sausages.
• “Greenwich Council plans to ban ice cream vans from 30 streets” – Ice cream vans cause “unacceptable levels of nuisance” and have a negative impact on air quality due to “engine idling”, Greenwich Council has said, and so, according to the Mail, it proposes to ban them.  
• “Australia are ‘woke’ – and their former players do not like it as culture wars divide tourists” – The Telegraph explains why Australia’s cricketers stand accused of being “too soft, too cosseted, too powerful” and “too woke”.
• “Ricky Gervais to increase tour security” – Ricky Gervais has had to ‘massively increase security ahead of his upcoming U.K. tour Armageddon, the Mail reports, due to death threats provoked by his anti-woke jokes.
• “Zuckerberg admits censoring true information for establishment undermined trust” – Reclaim the Net flags a recent Mark Zuckerberg appearance on the Lex Fridman Podcast where he expressed his concern about the establishment pushing platforms to censor information which “ended up being more debatable or true”.
• “The weaponisation of hate” – “The ill-defined concept of ‘hate’ is now deployed by the contemporary, culture-focused, Left in much the same way the charge of blasphemy was once used by authoritarian Christians,” writes Marc Glendening in the Critic. “Namely as a device for shutting down intellectual challenge.”
• “Cancelled. Again.” – Common Knowledge Edinburgh reports that it “is more cancelled than an Amazon Prime subscription once the free trial is over”.
• “LGBTQwerty Airlines” – Roger Watson, writing in the New Conservative, takes aim at the airline industry which now seems to prioritise inclusivity over taking off on time.
• “‘Why is Bridgerton’s race twisting acceptable?’ The real problem with the show’s Black fantasy” – “Bridgerton’s Queen Charlotte and its imitators have been praised for bringing diversity to the very white world of historical drama,” says the Guardian’s Steve Rose. ”But could these Black fantasies actually be dangerous?”
• “Inside Silvio Berlusconi’s astonishing life including sex parties” – A feature in the Mail on the colourful life of the late Silvio Berlusconi.
• “I am disappointed to learn that Marianna Spring is actively promoting disinformation about me on her podcast” – Carl Benjamin – aka Sargon of Akkad – objects to some points of disinformation published about him by Marianna Spring, the BBC’s Disinformation and Social Media Correspondent.

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