News Round-Up

• “Sturgeon making children wear masks was political, Sir Patrick Vallance wrote in Covid diary” – The U.K. Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser during the pandemic said Scotland’s PPE policy for schools was not based on medical advice but rather because they wanted to go “their own way”, reports the Telegraph.
• “Covid Inquiry: Boris Johnson was ‘absent manager of football team’” – Mark Drakeford says Boris Johnson was like an “absent” manager of a football team during the pandemic and that Michael Gove more influential, according to the Times.
• “Lockdown impacts spread ‘far and wide’, admits Covid Inquiry Chairman” – The Chairman of the Covid Inquiry says the impacts of lockdown spread “far and wide” after she was accused of failing to investigate the harm caused by the restrictions, reports the Telegraph.
• “A new court ruling shows the insane overreach of the PREP Act, which effectively bars all lawsuits over the Covid jabs (not just against Pfizer/Moderna)” – The U.S. Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act should be called the Goodfellas Act, because its guiding principle comes straight from the mob: F— you, can’t sue, says Alex Berenson on Substack.
• “February 27th, 2020: the lockdown plan goes public” – As the ‘novel coronavirus’ spread throughout the world in the early months of 2020, two diametrically opposed responses were in play, writes Debbie Lerman on Substack.
• “Four years ago this week, freedom was torched” – The prevailing attitude is just to forget lockdown ever happened. And yet America now is a very different country from the one it was five years ago, says Jeffrey A. Tucker for the Brownstone Institute.
• “Scientific American and masks” – Dr. Tom Jefferson and Prof. Carl Heneghan provide a further update on the politicisation of the Cochrane Mask Review.
• “Toddlers testing Covid shots” – On Substack, Thomas Buckley discusses parents in America allowing their children to be Covid shot test subjects.
• “What is The Zone of Interest about?” – Jonathan Glazer’s disturbing Holocaust film The Zone of Interest reveals striking parallels between the Nazis’ treatment of the Jews and what happened during Covid, says Andrew Barr on Substack.
• ““They can have Rogan or Young. Not both”” – On Substack, Dr. Robert W. Malone discusses Neil Young’s sheepish return to Spotify.
• “Shattered” – There is no word in the psychological lexicon for what happened on October 7th, or the new world in which Israelis now live. But ‘shattered’ comes closer than ‘trauma’, says Pamela Paresky in the Jewish Journal.
• “Michael Gove writing list of extremist groups to be banned from Government” – The new official definition of extremism aims to ban those with a “violent or intolerant” ideology, reports the Times.
• “Lee Anderson was right: we want our country back” – The U.K. has become prey to a parasitic shadow culture that accuses us of bigotry simply for holding core British beliefs, says Allison Pearson in the Telegraph.
• “Nigel Farage’s return would be an extinction-level event for the Tories” – A Farage re-entry would guarantee a Tory implosion, multiple defections to Reform and an apocalyptic loss of scores more Tory seats, predicts Allister Heath in the Telegraph.
• “Is the BBC preparing to be official wing of Labour Party?” – The Mail’s Stephen Glover remarks on the BBC’s silence regarding allegations of tax avoidance, electoral law ignorance and flouting mortgage rules made against Angela Rayner.
• “British haulage boss slams officials for fining him £66,000” – A British haulage boss has slammed Home Office officials for fining him £66,000 after six migrants “snuck into the back” of one of his lorries to enter the U.K., reports the Mail.
• “Keir Starmer promises Dame Esther Rantzen a vote on assisted dying if he wins election” – Keir Starmer has promised to give MPs a vote on legalising assisted dying if Labour wins the next General Election, according to Sky News.
• “Labour has become the pro-abortion, pro-assisted dying party” – Many Labour MPs will feel they cannot go against the party’s liberalising zeitgeist despite their personal misgivings, says Tom Harris in the Telegraph.
• “Humza Yousaf’s Hate Crime Act will make Scotland ‘most hateful place on Earth’” – Critics warn that the SNP’s Hate Crime Act could pave the way for more stringent curbs on freedom of speech, reports the Scottish Express.
• “Police Scotland to use Glasgow sex shop as hate crime reporting centre” – Police Scotland has listed a sex shop in Glasgow as one of its “third party reporting centres” for Scotland’s new hate crime laws, according to the Herald.
• “Workshy Gen Z is stalling the economy” – According to new figures released by the ONS, nearly three million people under 25 are “economically inactive” – the highest since records began, reports the Mail.
• “‘I’m not that easily cancelled! The MSM can try, but they haven’t realised yet it’s them that are finished – and I’m now finally free to speak the truth without fear of the Ofcommunist censors’” – After being sacked by GB News in a free speech row, Dan Wootton is launching a brand new daily show in 2024.
• “Freedom Party’s Geert Wilders will not be Dutch Prime Minister” – Following a second round of coalition negotiations with three other conservative and Right-wing parties, Geert Wilders has renounced any ambitions to lead a new government, reports the Times.
• “Nuclear fusion for the grid is coming much sooner than you think” – Britain is on the brink of striking gold in the race for limitless energy, writes Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in the Telegraph.
• “Net Zero is dead. Only the fanatics haven’t realised it” – If building new gas plants is inconsistent with Net Zero, then Net Zero is inconsistent with a functioning power grid, remarks Gordon Hughes in the Telegraph.
• “Net Zero nuts” – In the New Conservative, Dr. Roger Watson questions the environmental benefits of carbon footprint-reducing initiatives.
• “The great electric car scandal is only just beginning” – Trying to jump straight to electric cars has condemned the whole effort to decarbonise road transport to failure, says Ross Clark in the Telegraph.
• “PETA wants us to stop saying ‘cheese!’ as cheese causes cows to suffer” – Animal rights group PETA is being mocked for its latest campaign aimed at reminding everyone what ‘Say cheese’ means for cows who suffer and die in the abusive dairy industry, according to the Mail.
• “The NHS puberty blocker ban for children is long overdue” – Children in England will no longer be prescribed puberty blockers at NHS gender identity clinics. This is good news, says Debbie Hayton in the Spectator.
• “NHS puberty-blocker ruling will save lives” – Anyone who lies to children about their own bodies will have no difficulty lying about the part they played in this scandal, writes Victoria Smith in UnHerd.
• “One day, we’ll look back on era of puberty blockers with horror” – In years to come, chemically freezing the sexual development of troubled children will become a topic of gruesome fascination, predicts Janice Turner in the Times.
• “Will NHS Scotland follow suit and ban puberty blockers?” – The Scottish Greens’ fanatical commitment to gender identity ideology rivals that of Stonewall, says Stephen Daisley in the Spectator.
• “Trans neighbour from hell is jailed for terrorising couple” – A trans neighbour from hell who terrorised the couple next door by yelling and threatening to “punch women’s face in” has been jailed for 41 weeks, according to the Mail.
• “Fix the Equality Act to restore sanity to the trans debate” – J .K. Rowling has heroically stood up for women. The Government must find the courage to reform the Equality Act to protect women’s spaces, says Suella Braverman in the Telegraph.
• “The end of the transgender craze is near” – The backlash against ‘gender-affirming care’ and trans-identified males in women’s sports and prisons is accelerating, say Michael Shellenberger and Alex Gutentag on the Public Substack.
• “Tyranny in drag” – It is high time we dismantled the phoney progressive rhetoric of the woke agenda, writes Brendan O’Neill in Spiked.
• “‘I chaired the Human Rights Tribunal. It has no business policing ‘hate speech’’” – Canada’s Online Harms Act will put an end to robust political discourse, warns David L. Thomas in the National Post.
• “Canada’s descent into tyranny is almost complete” – Handing judges the ability to put people under house arrest because they might commit a hate crime isn’t progressive, it’s North Korean, says David Collins in the Telegraph.
• “Interview: Ryszard Legutko” – On Substack, N.S. Lyons interviews Polish philosopher Ryszard Legutko about liberal democracy, the descent into totalitarianism in the West and the horrors of Donald Tusk’s assault on the Law and Justice Party.
• “TikTok ban in U.S. moves one step closer after vote in the U.S. Congress” – The U.S. House of Representatives has passed a Bill that would lead to a nationwide ban on TikTok if its Chinese owner refuses to sell it, reports the Mail.
• “The case for banning smartphones in schools” – For a little over a decade, we have been raising children in an environment that is hostile to human development. We need to change that now, says Jonathan Haidt in the Atlantic.
• “Come and see the Weekly Sceptic live at the Hippodrome on April 8th” – Nick Dixon and Toby Young are recording an episode of the Weekly Sceptic at Lola’s, the downstairs bar of the Hippodrome in April. Tickets are only £25.

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