News Round-Up

• “Starmer admits taking another £16,000 for clothes from Lord Alli” – Sir Keir Starmer has admitted that Lord Alli gave him £32,000 to pay for clothing, double what he previously declared, reports the Telegraph.
• “Whatever happened to the ‘Office of Deputy PM’?” – The Spectator‘s Steerpike notes that Angela Rayner has failed to re-establish the powerful Office of the Deputy Prime Minister – the X feed of which still says: “This is not being updated as the current administration does not have a Deputy Prime Minister.”
• “Reeves urged to cut ‘extremely valuable’ public sector pensions” – Rachel Reeves should cut public sector workers’ “extremely valuable” pensions, the Institute for Fiscal Studies has said, amid continued pressure from unions over pay rises, reports the Telegraph. 
• “Defiant Netanyahu issues stark warning to Iran in UN speech” – Benjamin Netanyahu issued a stark warning to Iran in his UN speech, saying that Israel can strike anywhere inside the country if it is provoked, the Mail reports.
• “Why didn’t the BBC air this October 7th documentary earlier?” – In the Spectator, Jonathan Sacerdoti praises the BBC’s Surviving October 7th: We Will Dance Again documentary for showing the true horror of the Hamas massacre, but wonders why the corporation has been coy about showing any of the footage until now.
• “Why Lebanon can’t be saved” – A full-scale evacuation might be the only option, suggests Tom McTague in UnHerd.
• “The war is going badly. Ukraine and its allies must change course” – Time for credible war aims and NATO membership, says the Economist. (Wasn’t NATO membership a reason Putin said he invaded?)
• “U.S. ‘Unimpressed’ With Ukraine’s Victory Plan Ahead of Biden-Zelensky Meeting” – Kiev’s uninspiring proposal focuses on weapons and loosening restrictions on long-range missiles, Western officials say, according to the Wall Street Journal.
• “Does Chris Whitty regret scaring the public witless over Covid?” – The Chief Medical Officer may have indicated the Covid response might have been over the top, but he still fundamentally thinks lockdown was right and is now pushing for a growing list of authoritarian public-health interventions, says Fraser Myers in Spiked.
• “Boris’s dramatic plan for military raid on Holland to grab our jabs” – The Mail reports on Boris Johnson’s extraordinary claim that after two months negotiating with the EU for the release of five million doses of the AstraZeneca jab being held in a Leiden warehouse, the former PM summoned the Armed Forces to demand action as part of a plan for British forces to “invade”’ and seize the vaccine supplies.
• “How Covid nearly killed me” – The Mail carries an excerpt from Boris’s new memoir, in which he describes in detail his hospitalisation with Covid. In short: he received oxygen but nothing more invasive and there was one night in ICU where he was told he was experiencing a ‘cytokine storm’ that could go either way, but he recovered after that point (and was swimming a few days later).
• “If this was a party, it was the feeblest event” – “I saw no cake, I ate no cake”: Boris describes the fateful No. 10 birthday ‘party’ in another memoir excerpt in the Mail.
• “Lockdown hurt our children – its critics have been proven right” – The young were robbed of social interaction at crucial points in their development, causing irreversible harms, says Miriam Cates in the Telegraph.
• “How fluoride fears went mainstream” – A federal judge this week ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to further regulate fluoride levels in drinking water to minimise the risk posed to children’s health, marking a turning point in the fight over public water fluoridation, the potential harms of which have long been dismissed, says Laurel Duggan in UnHerd.
• “Quorn truly deserves to go bust” – Quorn is a hideous meat substitute that would work better as sandpaper, says Julie Bindel in the Spectator. “Depending on its form, it can be wet and slimy, or hard and grainy.” So, not a fan then.
• “French women are afraid. But the country’s politicians don’t seem to care” – In a country that has become accustomed to atrocities in the last decade, the brutal murder of a 19-year-old student has outraged France, says Gavin Mortimer in the Spectator.
• “Christian medical centre could be forced to prescribe sex-change drugs” – A Christian medical group has claimed it will be forced to provide sex-change drugs to patients under a Michigan law, the Telegraph reports.
• “Did Coke discriminate against Christians?” – Coke’s personalised can promo forbids “Jesus” but allows “Allah”, “Buddha” and “Satan”, prompting allegations of anti-Christian discrimination. But C.J. Strachan reckons it’s probably just a cock-up by a junior employee with very limited religious horizons.
• “Trans rapist referred to as ‘she’ by judge… but is sent to male prison” – A trans rapist sentenced to more than six years in a male prison was referred to as “she” throughout the trial by a judge and barristers, reports the Telegraph.
• “No, Baroness Warsi, it is not acceptable to call people ‘coconuts’” – The cant and hypocrisy of the identitarian elites really is out of control now, says Spiked‘s Brendan O’Neill as he blasts Baroness Warsi for endorsing a racial slur against two of her parliamentary colleagues.
• “Why did it take Baroness Warsi so long to quit the Tory party?” – In the Spectator, Ross Clark wonders if the not-so-Conservative Peer was holding out for what she hoped would be the most damaging moment to quit the party – not unlike when she renounced the Brexit Leave campaign a few days before the vote.

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