News Round-Up

• “The Covid extremists can’t bear that nobody is listening to them” – The usual suspects are obsessing over the latest coronavirus data, but the good news is that few seem to care, says the Telegraph‘s Camilla Tominey.
• “Do facemasks work and should we put them back on again?” – A Mail explainer that is actually quite critical of masks, though still manages to suggest they would help a bit and misrepresents the Cochrane review.
• “College Vaccine Mandates: Here to Stay?” – It is January 2024, and Covid vaccine mandates persist at 70 of the top 800 colleges in the U.S., and who knows if they will ever let them go, writes Lucia Sinatra for Brownstone.
• “New Year, Same Birth Rates” – Catch up with the latest from Nick Dixon, including interviews with Dr. Paul Morland on rock-bottom birth rates and Ed Dutton on declining intelligence.
• “Maternal Mortality Rate Due to Blood Clots Jumps by 36% in 2022” – The maternal death rate has jumped so high, it has reached a level last seen almost 20 years ago, says the ‘Naked Emperor’ on Substack.
• “Tories’ London mayoral candidate vows to end ‘war on motorists’” – Susan Hall promises she will reverse the Ulez expansion and ditch floating bus stops if she wins the election, according to the Telegraph.
• “A Short Guide to ESG: Philosophical Problems” – “At the end of the day, much of the Environmental, Social, and Governance movement rests on a pretence of knowledge. What’s worse, it puts the interest of the ‘collective’ over the wellbeing of individuals,” argues Paul Mueller in AIER.
• “Pro-Palestinian demonstrator blames U.S. and Israel for October 7th Hamas attacks” – A man on a London march held a placard claiming the massacre was an attempt by the West to steal Iranian oil, the Telegraph reports.
• “Protesters chant ‘Yemen Yemen, make us proud, turn another ship around’ as 200,000 march through London and Met Police move in to make arrests – and Just Stop Oil is there too” – Some 1,700 police officers from the Met and other U.K. forces have been mobilised amid fears the escalating tension in Yemen will bring more activists to the streets of the capital, reports the Mail.
• “The delusion of the Houthi pacifists” – Yemen’s Houthi’s are a bunch of reckless, illiberal, Jew-hating pirates. Why is anyone in Britain and the West speaking up for them, asks Brendan O’Neill in the Spectator.
• “The radicalisation of counter terror” – Laura Dodsworth on the “devastating exposé of a counter terror course [that] reveals the indoctrination that has invaded our institutions”.
• “Hollywood’s moronic new plan to enforce ‘diversity’ has already backfired” – The new rules for the Oscars were meant to ensure bigger roles for minorities, but can you guess which minority was overlooked, asks Michael Deacon in the Telegraph.
• “Pronouns aren’t enough you must think of trans colleagues as women now” – Civil servants have been told to “think” of transgender colleagues as women in woke new staff guidance, reports the Mail.
• “The Online Safety Act is already stifling free speech” – The Online Safety Act only came into law in October and already a Government Minister is calling for it to be used to censor a controversial sports pundit. This can’t be right, says the Spectator in a leading article.
• “It’s Keir Starmer and the contemptuous governing class who don’t get Britain” – The Telegraph‘s Janet Daley notes a remark by Keir Starmer at PMQs this week that, on the face of it, was plainly racist.
• “Cut immigration levels, say voters in nine out of 10 constituencies” – A striking new poll, reported in the Telegraph, finds that in nine out of 10 constituencies a majority of voters want to cut immigration levels – but on average they think immigration is running at 70,000 a year rather than a more accurate 700,000. Eighty percent of voters say they want it to be under 100,000 a year, but most of them already think it is!
• “‘Chaos, dysfunction and woke initiatives’: inside the Home Office struggle to curb migration” – The Telegraph speaks to department insiders as a new survey shows nine in 10 constituencies want more curbs on migration.
• “The seat where Nigel Farage could beat Tories if he stood as Reform candidate” – A survey’s results will fuel calls among supporters of the former UKIP and Brexit Party leader to make a political comeback at the next election, says the Telegraph.
• “New poll suggests Nigel Farage would comfortably beat Tory incumbent in Clacton at a General Election as his Reform U.K. party draws up hit list of 10 Conservative MPs who may defect this year” – Nigel Farage’s Reform U.K. party has drawn up a hit list of Conservative MPs who may defect to join its ranks, according to the Mail.
• “The War On Trump Backfired Due To Elite Arrogance, Tribalism, And Disgust” – From immigration and border control to Russia and Ukraine, the elites have misled the American people, literally and figuratively, says Michael Shellenberger in Public.
• “Blair told scrapping Horizon would damage relations with Japan” – The former PM ordered officials to go ahead with new Post Office IT system despite being told it had been “plagued with problems”, the Telegraph reports.
• “Paula Vennells: May Government pushed through CBE despite Horizon concerns” – The committees that oversee the awarding of honours ignored concerns about the Post Office IT scandal and the persecution of sub-postmasters that had already surfaced, the Times reports.
• “‘Sir’ Ed Davey’s Lib Dems are the real nasty party” – The third party talks an awful lot about being nice, but the truth, according to Julie Burchill in the Spectator, is that “they’re such wrong ‘uns that neither Labour or the Tories – who harbour many wrong ‘uns in their ranks – want to be in the same room as them”.
• “The 2,000-tractor protest and Germany’s winter of discontent” – Olaf Scholz faces unrest among farmers, train drivers, pilots and fishermen as many turn to AfD, reports the Times.
• “Is this really an offensive advert? Banning FKA twigs’ classy Calvin Klein ad – while salivating over a male actor posing in his pants – exposes the woke brigade’s pathetic double standards” – The Mail‘s Janet Street-Porter skewers the pearl-clutching hypocrisy of banning an ad with a half-dressed woman because it “objectifies” her while dribbling over a hunky half-dressed man with his flies undone.

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