Day: 21 December 2021

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.

Pubs, restaurants and leisure businesses hit by omicron will be eligible for one-off grants of ​£6,000 in a Christmas aid package announced by Rishi Sunak earlier today. Hospitality bosses say it's too little, too late.

Is Boris's refusal to impose Plan C restrictions a turning point? Will the PM base his Covid decisions on real-world data from now on rather than apocalyptic modelling?

Despite being in the epicentre of Omicron, South Africa's 'SAGE' committee has told the Government to end all contact tracing and self-isolation of contacts for Covid because it is unnecessary and ineffective.

U.S. journalist Alex Berenson has sued Twitter, accusing the company of violating his first amendment right by suspending his account in response to a post where he questioned the efficacy of the vaccine.

Western countries, which claim to stand for civil liberties, have introduced vaccine passports. By contrast, the Japanese government has explicitly told citizens: "do not discriminate" against the unvaccinated.

The WHO has called on members of the public to consider cancelling their original Christmas plans in order to slow the spread of the Omicron variant, mentioning that “an event cancelled is better than a life cancelled”.

Read this complaint to Ofcom about a sinister collaboration between Sky and the government's 'Nudge Unit' to promote the 'Net Zero' policy.

Is it really true that Omicron is surging and warrants the Prime Minister breaking his promise that the lifting of restrictions in the summer was "irreversible"? Not according to the latest data.

by Laura Dodsworth and Toby Young Dear Melanie Dawes, We are writing to alert you to a broadcast license complaint we have made about Sky U.K. Our complaint concerns a partnership between Sky and Behavioural Insights U.K., Known as the Behavioural Insights Team (BIT), a limited company that was partly owned by the Government at the time the report was published. We believe this partnership – and, in particular, Sky’s adoption of BIT’s recommendations about how to help the Conservative Government successfully implement one of its most political contentious policy, namely, Net Zero – contravenes the Broadcasting Code. The partnership we’re referring to resulted in the publication of "The Power of TV: Nudging Viewers to Decarbonise their Lifestyles" and the launch of Sky’s ‘Sky Zero’ campaign, which recommended that broadcasters make use of “behavioural science principles”, including subliminal messaging (“nudging” in the parlance of BIT, which is colloquially known as the Nudge Unit), to encourage viewers to endorse and comply with Conservative Government policy. Alarmingly, the report recommends broadcasters utilise sophisticated psychological techniques to change the behaviour of children “because of the important influence they have on the attitude and behaviours of their parents”. Summary We are concerned that this partnership and Sky’s adoption of BIT’s recommendations: Will affect the political impartiality of news and wider programming on Sky’s channels; ...