News Round-Up
- “Starmer must explain why he didn’t intervene in Horizon scandal, says Farage” – Sir Keir Starmer is facing questions over why he failed to intervene in the prosecution of innocent sub-postmasters when he was the Director of Public Prosecutions, reports the Telegraph.
- “Ed Davey must be held to account for ‘wicked’ ministerial decisions about Post Office, says victim” – A victim of the Post Office scandal says Sir Ed Davey must be held to account for “wicked” decisions, according to the Telegraph.
- “Ministers call for former Post Office Chief Exec to lose CBE” – Rishi Sunak is under pressure to intervene in the Post Office honours row, as a petition calling for the former Chief Executive to lose her CBE surpassed one million signatures, reports the Telegraph.
- “U.K. borough led by controversial mayor accused of ‘criminal offences’ over Palestinian flags” – Tower Hamlets, led by controversial Mayor Lutfur Rahman, is accused by lawyers of failing to remove Palestinian flags, stickers and posters, according to GB News.
- “Is this the sickest start to a year ever?” – Virus rates across the U.K. have doubled in a fortnight following the sudden arrival of new Covid variant ‘Juno’, says the Mail.
- “Canary Islands officials reintroduce Covid-mask rules” – The Canary Islands have become the latest Spanish holiday destination to enforce new mask rules, according to the Mail.
- “Lockdown has given us a truancy epidemic” – Polling has found that more than a quarter of parents believe the pandemic showed it was not essential for children to attend school daily, says the Telegraph in a leading article.
- “Lockdown broke the social contract between schools, parents and teachers” – The only way to end the truancy epidemic is to concede that shutting children out of the classroom was a terrible mistake, writes Miriam Cates in the Telegraph.
- “Vaccines could impact mortality and risks of other diseases” – A recent review found non-live vaccines tend to increase a person’s risks of all-cause mortality, reports the Epoch Times.
- “Did Covid vaccine advocates commit plagiarism?” – On Substack, Igor Chudov proposes investigating the individuals who promoted harmful Covid vaccines for plagiarism.
- “Epstein kept secret sex tapes of Prince Andrew, Richard Branson and Bill Clinton, unsealed docs claim” – According to the latest batch of unsealed court docs, Prince Andrew, Richard Branson and Bill Clinton were all secretly filmed having sex by Jeffrey Epstein, reports the Sun.
- “Chris Skidmore was everything wrong with the Tories” – Cameron’s disastrous reforms packed the party with MPs who, deep down, aren’t conservative at all, says Tim Stanley in the Telegraph.
- “Why young Londoners are killing each other” – A culture of victimhood is fuelling the surge in teenage knife crime, writes Luke Gittos in Spiked.
- “Immigration is tearing Sinn Féin apart” – Ordinary nationalist voters are a million miles away from Sinn Féin’s liberal-elite leadership, says Ian O’Doherty in Spiked.
- “Viktor Orbán could be EU Council Pres. after unexpected announcement from current leader” – Hungarian President Viktor Orbán could become the President of the EU Council after the current president announced his intention to run as a member of the European Parliament, according to Gript.
- “Europe 2024: new year, new war-zone” – In the New Conservative, Frank Haviland fondly remembers Christmases past, contrasting them with current celebrations marred by riots and violence.
- “Khan bows to unions over TfL strikes in ‘foretaste’ of Labour government” – Sadiq Khan bowed to rail unions by offering a bumper pay deal to avoid London Underground strikes, a move that Boris Johnson says provided a “foretaste” of life under a Labour government, reports the Telegraph.
- “Tube drivers now demand 12% pay rise after Sadiq Khan finds £30 million” – London Underground drivers have demanded a 12% pay rise after Sadiq Khan used £30 million of taxpayers’ money to avoid a week-long Tube strike, says the Mail.
- “BT Group to turn old street cabinets into electric vehicle charging points” – Sixty thousand BT broadband street cabinets could be turned into electric vehicle charging points, reports the BBC.
- “New rules to protect women from trans predators in prison ‘are even worse than before’” – MSPs have been warned that new Scottish transgender prison rules are ‘sexist’ and will lead to vulnerable women being traumatised, according to the Telegraph.
- “Giving a green light to male violence against women” – USA Boxing’s new rules will allow men to batter women in the boxing ring, says Brendan O’Neill in Spiked.
- “Stop calling Ricky Gervais anti-woke” – In UnHerd, Andrew Doyle uses Ricky Gervais’s recent stand-up as a lens to explore the clash between ‘woke’ and ‘anti-woke’ comedy.
- “2024: the year we regain our sanity?” – For better or worse, 2024 will be a year of consequence, says Somewhere, Anywhere on Substack.
- “Will Quality Street lead to a communist revolution?” – A much-derided online rant hints at a broader truth about degradation in society, writes Peter Franklin in UnHerd.
- “The new Right activism” – On IM1776, Christopher Rufo presents a manifesto for the counterrevolution.
- “When did it become okay for the WSJ to accuse Elon Musk of using LSD and cocaine without evidence?” – The Wall Street Journal – the second-most important newspaper in the U.S. – has accused Musk of using cocaine and LSD without evidence. Welcome to journalism in 2024, says Alex Berenson on Substack.
- “Is Bill Gates the most dangerous man in the world?” – You may love Bill Gates or hate him, but after reading Daniel Jupp’s Gates of Hell, you will struggle to love him any more or to hate him any less, writes Prof. Roger Watson in the European Conservative.
- “’Voice recognition technology? In a lift?’” – On BBC Scotland’s Burnistoun, Iain Connell and Robert Florence star in a sketch about a lift that doesn’t speak Scottish…
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That sketch in the lift would be a lot better without the laughter that sounds fake.
So the penalty for the chief executive of the post office responsible for wrecking the lives of hundreds of people as a result of false accusations and prosecutions is going to be… taking away her little medal from the Queen?
That is how completely f**ked up the system is.
That said, the more I see how our world is evolving, the more I reckon the dystopian hell that awaits us is neither Orwell’s 1984 nor Huxley’s Brave New World nor even Wells’ The Time Machine but E M Forster’s The Machine Stops.
Perhaps a terrifying combination of all four..
I was saying the same to Mrs Lemming just last night. Surely the catalogue of incompetent/malevolent (delete as appropriate) actions, the ruination of people’s lives, the theft of money and property from these people, the misuse of the legal system, the lies, lies, and more lies etc warrants a custodial sentence? There must be many criminal offences that have been committed. What will the establishment possibly consider? Taking away a shiny medal.
They’re openly laughing at us. Rubbing our noses in it. They know it, we know it, they know that we know it, and they know that we know that they know it. There is one way only to take the smug smile off their faces, and it’s not the damn ballot box. Let’s put it this way: I no longer celebrate the 5th November, I mourn the failure.
Guy Fawkes, the only man ever to enter parliament with honest intent….
Climate Scam Erasing Past Weather Data
latest leaflet to print at home and deliver to neighbours or forward to politicians, media, friends online.
Canada continuing their communist shutdown of dissenting voices – https://youtu.be/UnUfUoFODRg. This is deeply worrying and a sign of things to come – they’re just ahead of the global game.
What is really going on? ‘“Once they told me to raise my legs with my heels up. I refused. They put a machine gun to my genitals and gave me a choice. I, of course, chose the legs. They took two rubber sticks and beat them on my heels for a very long time. If I lowered my legs, they forced me to raise them again. If they went down, they hit me on the head and back,” says Anton. Russia continues to claim that prisoners are being held in accordance with the requirements of the Geneva Convention prohibiting torture. The BBC asked the Russian Ministry of Defense to comment on Ukrainian evidence of inhumane treatment and torture and is awaiting a response. Together with Anton, there were seven other men in the cell: one was a former Ukrainian policeman, the other lived in the center of Kherson near the building where the Russian military was stationed. Both were accused of being agents of the SBU. Some cellmates could not explain the reasons for their detention. Before the liberation of Kherson, Anton Lomakin was transported to Golaya Pristan, where the Russian occupation authorities reopened the local temporary detention center – it had previously been closed by the Ukrainian authorities… Read more »
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/sunak-and-starmer-neck-and-neck-in-the-westminster-steeplechase/
A lively pi#s take of our (potentially) 2024 election.
It was not just Tower Hamlets. There were flags on lamp posts along Church Road Manor Park in Newham, yards from a madrasah. Who will do anything about it.
Week 52 death figures for England and Wales out today from ONS. So we can now look at excess mortality for 2023. I’ve produced this chart for 5 year age groups of the percentage excess mortality which also shows these percentages for 2022, 2021 and 2020. The 2015-2019 average is the only period for which we have comparable pre 2020 5 year age group figures; the weekly five year age grouped death figures came in from 2020. Hence why the excess mortality is measured against that baseline. I’ve adjusted for population in the 5 year age groups based on ONS 5 year banded population figures. I’ve also allowed for projected mortality improvements from 2015-2019 based on the ONS long term assumption of 1.2% mortality improvement for all banded age groups. This assumption does accurately reflect actual improvements that were happening before 2020. I’ve excluded the 90+ age group as it is an unbanded age group and so the 1.2% pa figure doesn’t apply there. So this should be a fair compare as it adjusts for population, it is based on narrow banded age groups, and allows for the mortality improvements that were happening. As you can see there is excess… Read more »
For completeness here is the chart with the percentages not allowing for expected mortality improvements from 2015-2019.
The excess mortality in the middle age groups is still shocking.
In the older ages it’s more a case that mortality improvements haven’t happened, but deaths have in 2023 occurred at around the 2015-2019 level instead.