News Round-Up

• “Should banks be able to refuse customers based on their politics?” – Two experts, with opposing views on whether commercial firms should be able to choose their clients, put their arguments forward in the Times.
• “How the Left learned to love the banks” – The Nigel Farage banking scandal has exposed the ‘progressive’ Left as the stooges of the elite, says Patrick West in Spiked.
• “Hardcore bosses can save the West” – The virtue-signalling sloganeering that dominates corporate leadership must end, according to Matthew Lynn in the Telegraph.
• “Complacent, unelected bureaucrats are the ultimate enemies of economic growth” – The whole point of Brexit was to get rid of meddling Brussels officials, but we have just replaced them with faceless Whitehall ones instead, writes Liz Truss in the Telegraph.
• “Covid test sales up by a third as expert warns virus ‘still lurking’” – Sales of Covid test kits have jumped by a third as people experience more coughs, sore throats and headaches, reports the Mail.
• “How often do USC basketball players get cardiac arrests?” – On average, only one University of South Carolina basketball player has a heart attack every 100 years. So how can there be two in the last year, asks Steve Kirsch.
• “The Office for Shambolic National Statistics on Covid” – TCW has a new summary of the statistical analysis done by Norman Fenton and his team on mortality by vaccination status.
• “The true and the false vision: Towards a general theory of political stupidity” – The stupidity of the Covid response was in no way unique; a lot of what modern states do is mind-numbingly idiotic, says Eugyppius.
• “Rhodes residents say wildfires spread because they cannot cut down trees” – Rhodes residents, who cannot cut trees on their own land without a permit, have said for years that the island’s forests have been poorly maintained, which experts said added fuel to the wildfires, reports the Telegraph.
• “Labour council hits diesel drivers with higher parking fees” – A Labour-run council is charging motorists extra to park polluting cars in a double blow for those about to be hit by the expansion of London’s Ulez scheme, says the Mail.
• “Why cars could hold the key to a Conservative victory” – Swerving anti-motorist measures could be a way for the Tories to win back voters angry at Ulez expansion, low traffic neighbourhoods and blanket 20mph zones, reckons Nick Gutteridge in the Telegraph.
• “The political battle for Net Zero is only just beginning” – Any party which wants to win the next election is going to have to convince the public that green policies are not going to make them poorer, argues the Spectator in a leading article.
• “Electric cars not up to the job for armed response units, police force says” – Essex Police has warned electric cars are not fast enough to respond to emergencies, reports the Mail.
• “Labour council using diesel generators to charge electric bin lorries” – Cardiff Council has been using diesel generators to charge its new electric bin lorry fleet, reports the Telegraph.
• “Ban on gas boilers in new homes may halt housebuilding” – Home building leaders have warned that a ban on gas boilers in new homes, and a switch to heat pumps, could stall housebuilding without urgent upgrades to the electricity grid, says the Telegraph.
• “Sunak strikes back against anti-car zealots” – It is right to seek to lower emissions, but not through coercion and a war on motorists, according to the Telegraph in a leading article.
• “The risks and limitations of computer models” – Models are good for homes, aeroplanes, cars and trains. Not so good for setting policy in complex systems, says Harley Smedlapp.
• “Climate hysteria is a serious threat to mankind’s survival” – Wild claims about climate change will only serve to depress and alienate. The way forward has to be rational argument and human ingenuity, argues Janet Daley in the Telegraph.
• “Parents’ concerns over trans pool official using women’s changing room” – British Swimming has revised its changing room policy due to concerns from parents about a transgender pool official using the women’s facilities alongside young girls during a teenage swimming competition, says the Mail.
• “Police Scotland stands by as gender-critical feminist is attacked” – What happens to men who attack women in Scotland? Not very much, according to Joan Smith in UnHerd.
• “Tennyson classed as ‘queer’ despite lack of evidence he was gay” – Alfred, Lord Tennyson has been named as an LGBT historical figure, despite a lack of evidence that the poet had any homosexual relationships, says the Telegraph.
• “Gender-critical social worker ‘blacklisted’ for trans views” – Louise Chivers has been told she can’t apply for social services jobs, pending an investigation by Social Work England after her comments on trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney, according to the Telegraph.
• “Now NHS staff will tell patients their preferred pronouns” – An NHS diversity training module for medics tells them to inform patients of their pronouns to create a ‘safe space’, reports the Mail.
• “Is it safe for women to trust Labour again?” – The Labour Party’s self-destructive stance on gender has been shelved but there will be no apology for the damage done to many, laments Janice Turner in the Times.
• “The culture war will be an election issue, and the Tories can’t allow the woke to win” – The Conservative Party is hamstrung by its own role in promoting an ideology that threatens the Western way of life, says Charles Moore in the Telegraph.
• “The Equality and Human Rights Commission is the latest battleground in the Left’s assault on our institutions” – The EHRC has been subjected to multiple attacks by the identitarian Left, according to Andrew Tettenborn in CapX.
• “Call for The Old Bulldog pub to change name branded ‘woke overreach’” – Animal rights group Peta penned a letter to The Old Bulldog pub, asking the owner to rebrand to The Old Mutt to raise awareness of the health issues facing flat-faced dogs, says the Telegraph.
• “Who killed comedy?” – Far from needing guts, comedy is now the tamest trade in town, argues Julie Burchill in the Spectator.
• “Leave men alone” – The woke elites might soon regret their culture war on masculinity, warns Brendan O’Neill in Spiked.
• “Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe gets trigger warning from publisher” – The 1939 novel, The Big Sleep, considered among the greatest works of crime fiction ever written, has been given a trigger warning by its publisher over “outdated language”, reports the Telegraph.
• “Boris Johnson: Barbie is a rallying cry for humans to have more babies” – Boris, writing in the Mail, expands on his takeaway from the hit movie Barbie, namely that it’s “a great Mussolini-esque rallying cry for human fecundity”.
• “Postcard from Montenegro” – Russell David pauses his much-needed break from the toxic identity politics of home to send us a postcard from Montenegro.
• “Majority of college students favour reporting professors for ‘offensive’ opinions: poll” – According to a new survey, 74% of all U.S. students believe professors should be reported for saying something they think is offensive, reports the Hill.
• “Illinois college to pay Christian arts student $80K for ‘silencing’ conservative views” – In a rare culture war victory for the Right, the New York Post reports that an Illinois college will pay a Christian arts student $80,000 after she hit them with a lawsuit, claiming they’d silenced her conservative political views.
• “Trudeau Liberals studied ways to ban federal funding of groups ‘unaccepting’ of LGBTQ” – Justin Trudeau is requiring organisations wanting to access federal funding to swear an attestation to the Liberal Party’s view on LGBTQ rights, abortion access and gender theory, reports Rebel News.
• “Hunter Biden scandal so grave even U.S. Left-wing media can’t ignore it” – Joe Biden’s rotten House Of Cards is teetering on the brink of collapse, and the web of lies around alleged corruption in the Biden family is unravelling, says Richard Littlejohn, mixing his metaphors in the Mail.
• “Meta files patent to scan users’ voices to make a ‘voiceprint’” – Social media giant Meta intends to patent a system that leverages voiceprints for user identification, says Reclaim The Net.
• “Sadiq Khan’s anti-misogyny campaign that’s based on birds” – The Headliners team at GB News react to the Times story that Sadiq Khan’s anti-misogyny “maaate” campaign is based on research about how birds communicate with each other.

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