Day: 17 August 2021

In this week's London Calling, Toby and James ask how Dan Andrew’s became such an authoritarian zealot, whether Afghanistan is the worst US foreign policy disaster since 1975 and wonder if Ted Lasso has jumped the shark.

The SNP has unveiled sinister plans to make its emergency Covid powers permanent. Deputy First Minister John Swinney says it's an opportunity to maintain the brilliant 'innovations' the SNP has made in the last 15 months.

A summary of all the most interesting stories that have appeared about politicians’ efforts to control the virus — and other acts of hubris and folly – not just in Britain, but around the world.

The U.K. medicines regulator says it is safe for children aged 12-17 years to be given the Moderna Covid vaccine, leaving it to the JCVI to decide whether to advise the Government to extend the roll-out of this jab.

Daily Sceptic contributor Dr Noah Carl has written a must-read piece for UnHerd about the decline and fall of Nature, once the world's most prestigious scientific journal but now a wholly owned subsidiary of the woke cult.

New figures show that the most alcohol-specific deaths were recorded in Scotland in more than a decade in the past year of lockdowns. There were 1,190 in 2020, excluding deaths only partially attributed to alcohol.

There is ample evidence that school closures have hurt student achievement. And the World Bank estimates that “a school shutdown of 5 months could generate learning losses that have a present value of $10 trillion”.

We're publishing an original piece on the Daily Sceptic today by Freddie Attenborough, a former academic, in which he imagines a near future in which vaccine refuseniks are targeted by vigilante mobs of pro-vaxxers.

“Hello, Liz speaking? Oh hello, Sandra. Yes, I’m well, thank you; and how are y… what?!? … when?! … Sandra! … oh, dear… oh, no… oh, Sandra… I don't know what to... mm-hmm… yes? … mm-hmm… no! … oh, Sandra… the police?! … mm-hmm… terrible shock; well of course, yes, it must’ve been… oh dear… and you say they’re sure it was… you’re calling from the morgue, are you? … oh dear, Sandra, I am sorry… your youngest, too… such a lovely boy… at least, until… well, no… no, it's just that... ahem, you know … wasn’t he… er, didn’t he... didn't he become one of those… what do the BBC call them now, “anti-vaxxers,” isn’t it? Well, no… no… no, no… no, Sandra, all I meant by it was… well alright, “libertarian” then, if you must insist on splitting hairs like that… Still, despite the shameful behaviour of that “libertarian” death cult he'd thrown his lot in with recently - and they’re not the sort of reprobates I’d have let my sons associate with, Sandra, though I don't want to cast aspersions on your parenting skills, certainly not at this difficult time - at least you’ll be able to remember him proudly as a lad who did the right thing by the NHS when it really mattered and went ...

The whole of New Zealand is being plunged into another lockdown because of a single positive Covid test result. All schools, offices and 'non-essential' businesses will be closed for between three and seven days.