News Round-Up

• “‘Keir Starmer has golden opportunity but instead he’s screwing up on tariffs’” – The Prime Minister has a range of economic options but he must reverse Labour’s course to achieve them, says John Longworth in the Express.
• “Britain suffers ‘unprecedented’ fall in productivity” – Britain has suffered an “almost unprecedented” plunge in productivity in a fresh setback for the Chancellor’s growth ambitions, reports the Telegraph.
• “The 14-mile Thames crossing delayed by 66 miles of paperwork” – Decades of dithering and bureaucracy within Britain’s broken infrastructure system has left vital projects stuck in purgatory, says Ben East in the Telegraph.
• “High-tax London losing millionaires at the same rate as Moscow” – London is losing its millionaire residents at a similar rate to Moscow, with 30,000 gone in the last decade, reports the Telegraph.
• “Tech company sorry for ad targeted to ‘immigrants from India’ only” – A UK-based tech company has apologised after placing a job advert where it said only Indian immigrants would be considered, says the Mail.
• “Britain doesn’t need yet another equalities quango” – Labour’s obsession with DEI is both anti-business and anti-cohesion, writes Rakib Ehsan in the Spectator, following the news that the Government is creating yet another equalities quango.
• “Labour’s ‘bonfire of quangos’ lasts three days as new ‘Race and Disability’ body created” – Guido Fawkes paints Labour’s much-trumpeted bonfire of quangos as a damp squib, noting that instead of setting fire to them, the party has quietly created 28 new ones.
• “The punishment of Lucy Connolly” – Lucy Connolly remains in prison for a tweet – her 12 year-old daughter without a mother, her sick husband without a carer, says our own Laurie Wastell in the Spectator. Two-tier Keir should not be allowed to forget it.
• “Musk hits out at treatment of mother jailed for Southport post” – Elon Musk has blasted prison chiefs for denying a mother jailed over last summer’s riots the right to spend temporary leave with her daughter and sick husband, reports the Telegraph.
• “CPS ‘bringing back blasphemy’ by prosecuting man for burning Koran” – Prosecutors have been accused of resurrecting the offence of blasphemy through “the back door” after charging a man for burning a copy of the Koran, says the Times.
• “Sir Philip Green loses ECHR battle to limit free speech in Parliament” – There are calls for Sir Philip Green to be stripped of his knighthood after his “shameless” attempt to use the European courts to fetter Parliamentary privilege, reports the Telegraph. 
• “The new Ludendorff” – Dominic Cummings is not the new Bismarck – he is the new General Erich Ludendorff: supreme war lord of Germany from 1916-18 and consummate political dabbler, says J’accuse on Substack.
• “Kirkham prison governor guilty of relationship with inmate” – A prison governor who began a relationship with a drug-dealing gang boss in the jail she ran has been found guilty of two counts of misconduct in public office, reports the BBC.
• “Council rejects VE Day anniversary parade because it’s ‘too elitist’” – A military parade marking the 80th anniversary of VE Day has been rejected by councillors because it is “too elitist”, says the Express.
• “Miliband’s Net Zero sprint at risk because green tech ‘too expensive’” – PwC warns that Ed Miliband risks falling short of Net Zero targets because the green technology required is too expensive, according to the Telegraph.
• “German journalist convicted for free speech meme” – In a despicable attack on the freedom of speech, a German Right-wing journalist has been sentenced to seven months’ probation for mocking Left-wing Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, writes Zoltán Kottász in the European Conservative.
• “German journalist sentenced to seven months of probation for a Twitter meme poking fun at the Interior Minister’s lack of commitment to free speech” – On Substack, Eugyppius writes about David Bendels getting seven months’ probation for mocking Germany’s Interior Minister with a meme mocking for not believing in free speech – proving that he was write to mock her for not believing in free speech.
• “Hamas has a history of using ambulances for war” – Until the media holds Israel’s enemies to the same moral standards it demands of Israel, it won’t be a guardian of truth – only a willing accomplice in the very violence it decries, writes Jonathan Sacerdoti in the Spectator.
• “Johnny Rotten is right: Hamas is a gang of ‘Jew exterminators’” – Never mind the bollocks – John Lydon knows the truth about Israel and Hamas, says Brendan O’Neill in Spiked.
• “Canada is more conservative than politicians think” – In the Spectator, Jane Stannus argues that Pierre Poilievre’s path to victory lies not in mimicking Liberal centrism, but in embracing the socially conservative values quietly held by Canada’s “normal majority”.
• “Elon Musk tears into Trump’s ‘moron’ trade adviser” – Elon Musk has savaged President Trump’s trade adviser Peter Navarro as a “moron” after he criticised Tesla, reports the Mail.
• “People who received a flu shot this winter were more likely to get the flu, a major new study shows” – Flu shots don’t work and we need to stop pretending they do, says Alex Berenson on his Substack.
• “Biden administration concealed congressionally mandated report on earliest suspected American Covid cases” – Seven Americans may have caught COVID-19 in Wuhan as early as October 2019 – months before the pandemic’s official start – claims a bombshell military report the Biden administration allegedly hid, reports the Washington Free Beacon.
• “Study reveals potentially deadly risk of drinks like Diet Coke” – Scientists have found that aspartame, a common artificial sweetener found in products like Extra chewing gum, contributed to a worrying rise in diabetes risk, reports the Mail.
• “People ‘weaponise’ ADHD to make excuses, suggests Sue Perkins” – Comedian Sue Perkins claims that, unlike others. she does not “weaponise” her ADHD, according to the Standard.
• “Transgender pool player Harriet Haynes suing governing body over ban” – The transgender pool champion at the centre of angry protests over his playing in women’s events is suing one of the sport’s governing bodies for banning him from female-only competitions, reports GB News.
• “The cringeworthiness of showing Adolescence in schools” – For Starmer and most of the rest of the political class, ‘vital conversations’ with ‘experts’ are how you deal with teenage problems, writes Gareth Roberts in the Spectator.
• “The dangers of ‘sensitivity reading’” – In Café Américain, Frederick Attenborough argues that sensitivity readers are gutting literature by swapping literary nuance for identity politics.
• “The reviews for Meghan Markle’s latest podcast are in” – The Telegraph, Standard and Guardian all gave Meghan’s new podcast Confessions of a Female Founder two stars, while there were also withering write-ups in the Times, Express and i Paper, reports the Mail. Almost makes you feel sorry for her.
• “‘Lockdowns were catastrophic for the pub trade’” – On the Last Orders podcast, entrepreneur Luke Johnson discusses the tragedy of pub closures during lockdown.

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