News Round-Up

• “Nadine Dorries: Did Halifax penalise me for being a Tory MP?” – The banks have taken it upon themselves to interpret the Money Laundering Regulations wider than necessary. It’s time they woke up and stopped hurting law-abiding citizens, says Nadine Dorries in the Mail.
• “Ukraine-Russia war: Kyiv claims to have recaptured 169 sq km since counteroffensive began” – Ukraine claims to have recaptured 169 sq km on the southern front and 24 sq km around Bakhmut since the counteroffensive began last month, reports the Telegraph.
• “Our campaign against Covid vaccines was a success, data show” – An obscure study from 2022 shows that the work of Covid vaccine sceptics, writing and sharing truth online, changed minds, says Igor Chudov.
• “Quadruple vaccinated Queensland woman claims to be on her 10th Covid infection, hopes more vaccine doses will save her” – Meet Marion Carrett, a fully-vaccinated Gold Coast resident who, according to Eugyppius, claims to have had 10 documented Covid infections since 2022.
• “This summer holidays, let kids be kids” – Children are playing less and less outside. The pandemic might have accelerated this trend, but it didn’t create it, says John Mac Ghlionn in Spiked.
• “More than half of drivers are under siege from schemes like Ulez” – 61% of respondents to a poll feel they are under attack by congestion and Ulez charges, reports the Mail.
• “Ministers and police chiefs urge judges to jail Just Stop Oil protesters” – Police chiefs argue that “tougher sentences”, such as jail time, are the strongest deterrent against disruptive behaviour by Just Stop Oil protesters, says the Mail.
• “Environmentalism is austerity on steroids” – The Left claims to hate austerity and yet its eco-dystopia would plunge millions into poverty, says Brendan O’Neill in Spiked.
• “German Health Minister accused of making up ‘tens of thousands of heat deaths’” – Germany’s Federal Health Minister has been accused of spreading fear by making up 300,000 fictional summer heat deaths, says WUWT.
• “Supporters of British and American healthcare have convinced themselves that the other is the only alternative” – Britain clings to the belief, despite all the evidence, that the NHS is the best system available. “If that isn’t religious dogma,” says Daniel Hannan in the Washington Examiner, “I don’t know what is.”
• “Why the AfD is on the rise again” – The AfD’s recent wins in Sonneberg and Raguhn-Jeßnitz shouldn’t surprise anyone, given the German establishment’s failure to address voters’ concerns, says Sabine Beppler-Spahl in Spiked.
• “Sentimentality or menace” – British police now veer between the grossest sentimentality on the one hand, and ineffectual menace on the other, says Theodore Dalrymple in City Journal.
• “Time to abolish student loans and replace them with ISAs” – If we want to get our universities back on a sustainable financial footing, argues Oliver Ind in CapX, we should seriously consider Milton Friedman’s idea of an ‘income share agreement’.
• “GB News investigated… again” – Another day, another investigation into GB News. This time, however, it’s not Ofcom but rather the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards examining claims that host Lee Anderson breached the MPs’ code of conduct, says the Spectator.
• “YouTube censors Jordan Peterson for ‘hate speech’” – YouTube’s censorship of renowned psychologist Jordan Peterson’s account has sparked outrage, not least from Dr. Peterson himself, reports Reclaim The Net.
• “Zuckerberg’s Threads app censors people questioning gender ideology” – Mark Zuckerberg’s Threads app has already taken measures to censor its users by creating hurdles to follow certain people and outright deleting some ‘threads’, says the Mail.
• “Why are Government social media takedown requests secret? Make them public” – “If the public were informed when Government officials ask social media companies to suppress constitutionally protected speech,” says Michael W. McConnell in the Washington Post, “they might exercise more restraint.”
• “Tech giant Meta to ‘safeguard’ Australian referendum integrity, arbitrate truth” – Meta will provide an undisclosed amount of funding to ‘fact-checkers’ and will block fake accounts as it gets involved in Australia’s upcoming referendum on an Indigenous Voice to Parliament, says Rebekah Barnett.
• “Australians have no truck with this racial identity politics” – The Aboriginal ‘Voice to Parliament’ initiative is ugly and divisive. Aussies see right through it, says Nick Cater in Spiked.
• “Male sex offenders ‘faking trans identities’ to move to women’s prisons” – Evidence unearthed by Inside Time, a newspaper run by prisoners, reveals that some inmates are pretending to change their gender in order to gain access to women-only prisons, reports the Telegraph.
• “Transgender woman is crowned Miss Netherlands for the first time” – A transgender woman has been crowned Miss Netherlands for the first time in the beauty pageant’s history and is now set to compete for the Miss Universe title, reports the Mail.
• “How did Trans Pride allow itself to become a front for misogyny?” – “A former prisoner in women’s clothes encouraging protestors to punch women in the face is not ‘activism’,” says Brendan O’Neil in the Spectator, “it’s misogyny in drag.”
• “Trans activists don’t help themselves” – With a convicted criminal advocating violence from the stage, the trans rights movement should find better allies, says Sam Leith in the Spectator.
• “‘Punch a TERF’: the violent misogyny of the trans movement” – Woke identitarians have become apologists for violence against women, says Tom Slater in Spiked.
• “Taylor Swift is misogynistic, but calling a vagina a ‘bonus hole’ isn’t?” – Whilst Taylor Swift’s ‘Better Than Revenge’ was seen as feisty and authentic in 2009, today it’s problematic – and I’m tired of the double standard, says Celia Walden in the Telegraph.
• “MoD civil servant sues over ‘attack on white people’ in diversity course” – A Ministry of Defence civil servant has launched a discrimination claim after a diversity training course featured an academic paper that he alleges attacked white people, says the Telegraph.
• “Britain’s Alabama? Not according to York’s ethnic minority locals” – A damning report claiming York is a city mired in bigotry and racism is at odds with the experiences of its residents, says Robert Hardman in the Mail.
• “What it means to lose trust” – Competing truths may be difficult and devastating to accept but the pain and cognitive dissonance are most certainly survivable, says Christine Black in the Brownstone Institute.
• “The Frank Report: It’s been one hell of a week!” – From euthanasia suggestions for the NHS to the BBC’s Disney makeover of French riots, Frank Haviland covers it all with his trademark wit.

If you have any tips for inclusion in the round-up, email us here.