News Round-Up

• “Why the clock is ticking to a cashless U.K.” – The long-term survival of paper notes and coins is more precarious than ever, warn Simon Foy and Madeleine Ross in the Telegraph.
• “Can we be sure Putin won’t press the red button?” – Almost every week since Vladimir Putin launched his invasion, his army of TV propagandists has threatened the use of nuclear weapons, warns Dominic Sandbrook in the Mail.
• “Keir Starmer clashes with Sadiq Khan over Ulez as he insists there are ‘other ways’ to cut pollution” – Keir Starmer stressed there are “other ways” of cutting pollution as he was grilled about the controversial Ulez policy on a visit to Scotland, says LBC.
• “Roger Hallam slams ‘urban middle-class neo-liberal Left’ behind Ulez” – The founder of Extinction Rebellion has taken aim at the “urban middle-class neo-liberal Left” supporters of the much-hated Ulez scheme, reports the Mail.
• “Writers’ boycott of Edinburgh book festival is self-harm” – No one, least of all writers, benefits from advocating boycotts that could silence book festivals for good, argues Jawad Iqbal in the Times.
• “Hating fossil fuels is such a luxury belief” – The eco-aristocracy has no idea of the horrors that would be unleashed by phasing out oil and coal, writes Brendan O’Neill in Spiked.
• “‘Climate change’ is turning our planet into hell on earth” – The minute the Government starts talking about a state of emergency, is the minute we can expect to start losing more of our freedoms, writes Karen Hunt in OffGuardian.
• “The WEF’s plan for a personal carbon allowance, connected to digital ID” – Wide Awake Media features a Dutch political commentator talking about the WEF’s plans to impose a personal carbon allowance, connected to digital ID, under the pretext of tackling the ‘global boiling crisis’.
• “Toilet politics needn’t be difficult” – The British sense of fair play has been tested by images of men self-identifying their way into women’s toilets, says Debbie Hayton in the Spectator. 
• “‘Gender-neutral’ lavatories are an invasion of women’s privacy” – In the Telegraph, Kemi Badenoch makes the case for single-sex public lavatories.
• “Do the police think ‘lesbian’ is a term of abuse?” – Wokeness, far from being ‘kind’, is often just a shiny new way to bully people, writes Julie Burchill in the Spectator.
• “Men don’t belong at lesbian speed dating events” – There isn’t a person on the planet that truly believes it’s possible for a lesbian to have a penis, says Julie Bindel in the Spectator.
• “See no harm” – For a new transgender study, the devil is in the lack of details, writes Ian Kingsbury in City Journal.
• “Edit children’s books but leave the classics alone, says Jacqueline Wilson” – Author Jacqueline Wilson says editing children’s books to remove outdated language can sometimes be justified because young people do not have “a sense of history”, reports the Times.
• “Scottish MP calls for a U.K. ‘truth tsar’ that cracks down on social media platforms” – Scottish MP Owen Thompson is leading the charge for a U.K. ‘truth tsar’ to combat ‘disinformation’. What could possibly go wrong, asks Didi Rankovic in Reclaim The Net.
• “A new blasphemy battle is coming” – It seems almost certain that more blood will be spilled in the West over blasphemy, writes Liam Duffy in UnHerd.
• “Banning the AfD would be a brutal assault on democracy” – The clamour for a ban of the Right-wing populist AfD reveals the authoritarianism of the German elites, says Fraser Myers in Spiked.
• “The not-so-strange death of Europe: Cultural sacrifice at the altar of Gaia” – In our ‘age of science’, the modern climate priesthood is figuratively offering the still-beating heart of Europe’s once-mighty civilisation to appease Mother Gaia, writes Tilak Doshi in Forbes.
• “The deadly consequences of cancel culture” – Rupa Subramanya speaks to Spiked’s Brendan O’Neil about the tragic case of highly respected Canadian school headteacher Richard Bilkszto, who committed suicide after being falsely accused of racism during a diversity, equity and inclusion course.
• “Julian Assange could get plea deal, hints U.S. Ambassador to Australia” – The American Ambassador to Australia has indicated that the U.S. may be open to a deal with Julian Assange whereby if he pleaded guilty he would be allowed to serve out the remainder of his prison term in Australian, reports the Times.
• “If we give indigenous Australians special rights, how about indigenous Germans?” – Does being the first to reach a piece of land give you special rights? And are those rights collective and inherited? That is the question Australians are gearing up to answer in a referendum, writes Dan Hannan in the Washington Examiner.
• “Progressive profit: How identity politics captured capitalism” – In a Conservative Reader Substack post, Henry George argues that conservatives must use political power to push back against the networks, institutions and structures of woke capital.
• “Sam Harris has dumped the ‘intellectual dark web’” – Sam Harris’s shift from being a supporter of the ‘intellectual dark web’ to a critic highlights how intellectual stances can evolve and how public opinion can change, writes Oliver Bateman in UnHerd.
• “Klaus Schwab: You must get used to a total erosion of privacy” – Wide Awake Media has an alarming video of the head of the WEF, Klaus Schwab, saying people will just “have to get used to” a total erosion of privacy.
• “Sometimes, only satire does the job” – Busting Anti-Vax Myths! Seriously Expert Arguments for the Covid-Deniers in Your Life is a slim, wickedly funny satire, says Ramesh Thakur in Brownstone Institute.
• “‘Time to move on’: Zuckerberg says Musk ‘isn’t serious’ about cage fight” – Mark Zuckerberg is questioning Elon Musk’s commitment to a promised cage match, saying it appears the Tesla CEO isn’t taking it seriously, according to the Epoch Times.
• “Member of the LGBTQ+ community tries to corner Vivek Ramaswamy” – Vivek Ramaswamy expertly counters a ‘gotcha’ question from a member of the LGBTQ+ community at the Iowa State Fair, warning against foisting ideologies onto children and the “tyranny of the minority”.

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