- “The U.K. economy has returned to its pre-pandemic size” – Nearly two years after the U.K. experienced its biggest economic collapse in 300 years, the economy has returned to pre-pandemic levels, writes Kate Andrews in the Spectator.
- “Polish scientists find gene that doubles risk of serious Covid” – Polish scientists have found a gene that they say more than doubles the risk of becoming severely ill with COVID-19, a discovery they hope could help doctors identify people who are most at risk from the disease, reports Reuters.
- “‘We failed’: Denmark’s media is waking up to its flawed Covid coverage” – An editorial in Ekstra Bladet, Denmark’s leading tabloid, berates the Fourth Estate – including itself – for failing to hold ministers to account during the pandemic, writes James Lewisohn in the Spectator.
- “The Lab Leak: The Plots and Schemes of Jeremy Farrar, Anthony Fauci, and Francis Collins” – During the most critical weeks leading up to the obvious spread of the virus all over the Northeast of the U.S., leading to huge carnage in nursing homes, public health officials in the U.S. and U.K. were consumed not with a proper health response but with fear of dealing with the probability that this virus was man-made in China, writes Jeffrey A. Tucker on the Brownstone Institute.
- “The Covid cover-up: the biggest scandal of our times” – For almost two years much of the media has been ignoring one of the biggest stories in the world – the growing evidence that COVID-19 came from a lab, writes Frederick Edward in Bournbrook.
- “The lesson of Partygate is that lockdown laws are an ass” – As Boris Johnson sits lamely on political death row – literally cowering at the scene of the crime, No. 10 Downing Street – virtually everyone is missing the point, says Dan Wootton in the Daily Mail.
- “Welsh Government ‘overreacted to Omicron’, as costly Covid curbs had little impact on cases” – Mark Drakeford denies that scrapping the restrictions is a U-turn, despite data showing case rates remained practically equal to England, reports the Telegraph.
- “Florida Is Living With Covid – and Freedom” – The state’s Surgeon General, Joseph Ladapo, interviewed by James Taranto in the Wall Street Journal discussing his advice against tests for the asymptomatic, his opposition to vaccination mandates, and life in Los Angeles under lockdown.
- “Omicron 91% less likely to be fatal compared to Delta: CDC study” – The evaluation of more than 70,000 infected Californians saw those with Omicron less than half as likely to need hospitalisation as those with Delta, reports the New York Post.
- “China’s Zero Covid tyranny is backfiring badly” – President Xi’s inability to backdown on a failing strategy threatens the country’s growth miracle, reports the Telegraph.
- “Major Molnupiravir Study Led by University of Oxford Full Throttle While Ivermectin Study Languishes?” – A major antiviral study opens in Wales involving the delivery of antiviral tablets via mail to the study participants, but where are the results of the Ivermectin trials, asks TrialSite News.
- “U.K. Midwives Union: Stop COVID-19 Mandates Now!” – The Royal College of Midwives, a health care worker trade union and professional association, is opposing vaccine mandates for its members, TrialSite News reports.
- “Everyone in the court agreed there had been a statistically significant rise in deaths in males 15-19 since May. The ONS also agreed that this needed investigating. No one claims to know why. However, they spent hours on excuses about why they couldn’t release data” – Read Dr Clare Craig’s report from the disappointing court hearing on Twitter.
- “Omicron Death Rate in South Africa Peaked at 15% of Delta Wave” – Severe disease in the Omicron surge was about half that of the Delta-led wave, reports Bloomberg.
- “Why I spoke out against lockdown” – Carl Heneghan, Professor of Evidence-Based Medicine at the University of Oxford, joins Brendan O’Neill to discuss how lockdown failed to protect the vulnerable, the catastrophic errors of the Covid modelling, and the suppression of critical voices during the pandemic.
- “The Lost Country of the Pacific” – Can a couple of curious explorers reunite Australia with the rest of the world? Anything’s possible with the help of Lamb, according to Australia’s annual Lamb ad.
- “Extinction Rebellion priests who said faith forced them to break the law given ‘perverse’ acquittal” – Former ministers call for urgent review of judicial guidance as a another jury acquits defendants who do not deny they have committed the unlawful actions of which they are accused, the Telegraph reports.
- “Plan B restrictions to be scrapped as Boris Johnson plots fightback” – Prime Minister scrambles to secure political survival in the wake of Downing Street parties scandal, starting with return of social freedoms – though not completely ending the mask mandate, according to the Telegraph.
- ““How Bad is my Batch”” – Dr Robert W. Malone on his Substack page tells the story of his near-fatal vaccine injury and its connection with a ‘bad batch’ of Moderna vaccines.
- “Woman who ‘wrote Government Covid rules’ held ‘boozy’ party during Christmas restrictions” – The Telegraph reports that ‘dozens’ of officials from the Cabinet Office’s Covid taskforce attended the event to mark Kate Josephs’ departure.
- “Expect another Omicron wave in early summer, SAGE says” – You what?! More of the modelling that got the last wave completely wrong by the sounds of it, in the Guardian.
- “James Treadwell and the true meaning of ‘cancel culture’” – James Treadwell, a professor of criminology at Staffordshire University, says that he is “being investigated for transphobia” after his employer received “formal and official” complaints about his gender-critical views on Twitter, writes Patrick West in the Spectator.
- “‘My job is to help women give birth, but I was banned from using the word “mother”’” – With gender-neutral language becoming obligatory for midwives, RT speaks to one home birthing attendant who has had enough of the “Orwellian trans takeover” and believes it’s time to confront it.
- “How our universities became sheep factories” – Our great institutions are now instruments of political indoctrination, writes Arif Ahmed in UnHerd.
- “How the radical Left turned American cities into slums” – America’s drug addiction crisis is made worse by progressive politicians, argue Michael Shellenberger and Steven Edginton in the Telegraph.
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Conflicts around the world created by the US so countries have to buy expensive US LPG, LNG and weapons.
Cui bono.
Follow the money.
Apparently the UK could buy Iraq/Iran oil at 50 dollars a barrel – instead of the current 100 dollars a barrel bought from India who buy it from er, Russia.
USA gets some for free by looting Syria.
And massive profits by selling their LPG to the EU – (but just think of all the wonderful CO2 emitted).
If only Putin hadn’t blown up his own pipeline.
For the gormless out there the last sentence is sarcasm.
Your barking up the wrong tree. We get 50% of our gas from the North Sea and most of the rest from Norway, and the remainder from the USA. America has much lower energy prices than ours because of fracking. We have astronomically high prices because of The Climate Change Act and the pursuit of Net Zero. If you want to understand high prices you must look to our pandering to the UN and it’s Sustainable Development policies that seek to lower the standard of living of the prosperous west because they think our lifestyles are “unsustainable”. The USA mostly resists that but under the Democrats of Obama Biden and Harris if she wins in November, the USA will be drawn more into this Eco Socialism.
Conflicts around the world started by the US have pushed energy prices through the roof for many countries, I’m not just talking about the UK.
You are preaching to the converted when it comes to the bogus climate change debacle and the costs involved.
Please give examples? What conflicts, and were they necessary or not?———Since 2008 when Miliband gave us the Climate Change Act electricity prices have risen 300%. This is due to combination of massive subsidy to renewables paid for on consumers bills and also the link between gas prices and electricity prices since a lot of electricity is produced using gas.
——If I were you I would not give this current eco socialist Labour Government pandering to UN/WEF agenda’s around climate an easy ride by blaming America for the current state of affairs. Our absurd Energy Policies are what are mostly to blame for our current predicament.
List of U.S. attempts to overthrow governments (* indicates success) since 1949:
China 1949 to early 1960s
Albania 1949-53
East Germany 1950s
Iran 1953 *
Guatemala 1954 *
Costa Rica mid-1950s
Syria 1956-7
Egypt 1957
Indonesia 1957-8
British Guiana 1953-64 *
Iraq 1963 *
North Vietnam 1945-73
Cambodia 1955-70 *
Laos 1958 *, 1959 *, 1960 *
Ecuador 1960-63 *
Congo 1960 *
France 1965
Brazil 1962-64 *
Dominican Republic 1963 *
Cuba 1959 to present
Bolivia 1964 *
Indonesia 1965 *
Ghana 1966 *
Chile 1964-73 *
Greece 1967 *
Costa Rica 1970-71
Bolivia 1971 *
Australia 1973-75 *
Angola 1975, 1980s
Zaire 1975
Portugal 1974-76 *
Jamaica 1976-80 *
Seychelles 1979-81
Chad 1981-82 *
Grenada 1983 *
South Yemen 1982-84
Suriname 1982-84
Fiji 1987 *
Libya 1980s
Nicaragua 1981-90 *
Panama 1989 *
Bulgaria 1990 *
Albania 1991 *
Iraq 1991
Afghanistan 1980s *
Somalia 1993
Yugoslavia 1999-2000 *
Ecuador 2000 *
Afghanistan 2001 *
Venezuela 2002 *
Iraq 2003 *
Haiti 2004 *
Somalia 2007 to present
Honduras 2009
Libya 2011 *
Syria 2012
Ukraine 2014 *
https://davidswanson.org/warlist/
Yeah well what about British oil and gas (onshore and offshore) and British coal and British nuclear power? Yeah, let’s blame the Russians. Nothing to do with stupid/evil policy choices going back decades.
Upwards of 300 years of coal beneath our feet, plus shale gas, plus oil and gas and nuclear.
As a minimum we should be fuel independent.
It’s simply tragic
Weren’t you, me and tof just talking about this the other week? Ha! Never in a month of Sundays will the people of the North East adhere to such absolute codswallop. These Woketards can haddaway an’ shite! And I don’t know how they’re able to bring sexism into it as ”pet” is very much a unisex word. Honestly, do these people have anything between their lugs or just bubble and squeak?
”Geordies have slammed Newcastle University for urging researchers to bid ‘Auf Wiedersehen, Pet’ after bosses deemed the slang term sexist.
Diversity chiefs labelled the Tyneside lingo ‘patronising’ in an equality and inclusion toolkit issued to researchers.
Their seven-page guide instructs readers to ‘avoid… terms, such as girls, pet, or ladies’ and asks that groups are referred to as ‘friends or colleagues’ instead.
The advice appears in a section named ‘Talking about Gender‘ which says: ‘Sexism can often be subtle in conversations, and we can all be guilty of it without realising.’
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13761925/Fury-Newcastle-University-urges-staff-drop-Geordie-nickname-pet-word-bossy-theyre-sexist-locals-slamming-call-totally-stupid.html
“And I don’t know how they’re able to bring sexism into it as ”pet” is very much a unisex word.”
I lived in Sunderland for four years. Most of my friends at the time were Mackems, lads and lasses and yes “pet” was unisex. What the numpties fail to understand was that the use of the term “pet” also carried connotations of warmth and friedliness which is and always will be way beyond the cold formalities of friend / colleague. In the North West the equivalent to “pet” would be “love” but it is not quite as warm as “pet.”
“These Woketards can haddaway an’ shite!”
Exactly Mogs. Destroy the language and the culture goes with it.
I cannot compete with the poetry of “haddaway an’ shite!” so firk off will have to do.
And the relevance of this to energy pricing is? Maybe in the wrong thread here…
Thanks Hardliner. And in which thread should the topic go?
Yes …. but then the Globalists/Americans/EU wouldn’t be able to control us.
I hear on TV news dumb socialists supporting Net Zero absurdity saying “we must do this as we have to avert the climate crisis” and other such utter garbage. We must not do this at all as long as the rest of the world is mostly not doing it, and we certainly should not be doing it at brake neck speed by 2030, which apart from being utterly stupid is absolutely IMPOSSIBE. ——For a start there are about 25 million gas boilers in the UK. In 5 and a quarte years from now anyone who thinks we can replace all of those with heat pumps needs certified, and the first person in the mental ward should be Miliband.
Aren’t they guessing? After all, the oil prices seem to be lower than the recent peak values. https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/brent-crude-oil
But we do not get our gas from Russia. That only accounted for 3% of our gas. 50% comes from our own reserves in the North Sea, which our silly governments want to stop, and the majority of the rest comes from Norway and then the USA.
——I suspect that what will happen with this Labour Eco Fundamentalist Government is that all of the renewable subsidies that have been in the past added to our electric bills will now be added to gas bills instead so as to encourage us away from gas and coerce us into getting heat pumps. This is going to make gas prices very high and people very cold, especially the poorest and pensioners stripped of their winter fuel allowance. ——It is a bare face lie that Labour tell when they say they will make energy prices lower, and another bare faced lie when they say renewables are now cheaper than fossil fuels.
Money talks. Here are the tariff rates at my place now in p/kWh units:
Night rate electric: 20.70
Day rate electric: 30.29
Gas: 6.95
The net effect of that is that gas is a lot less expensive for heating (even using things that are less efficient), notwithstanding the marketing text that the firm issues, in favour of environmentally friendly sources. Years ago, night rate electric was roughly 1/3 of the day rate, so it’s that one that has been jacked up so far.
Add to that the fact that we do not have enough generating capacity to meet our current needs let alone an increase in electricity demand. And MiliTwat will not be delivering any additional unreliable energy generation beyond what is already in progress because the lead times will see out the next 5 years.
Watch out for “variable pricing” via your smart meter if you have one, which will seek to charge more based on demand and if the wind isn’t blowing. It won’t be just day or night time rates. It will be rates depending on availability of electricity as we move away from reliable sources like coal and gas. Or as the head of the National Grid (Steve Holiday) said a few years ago “We are going to have to get used to using electricity as and when it is available”——-He meant if it happens to be windy.
I think we get a large percentage of LNG from the USA. If Trump fails then Harris/Biden plan to ban all fracking which is where most or all of our gas is coming from.
We need to be less NIMBY and get on with our own fracking.
Why? Net Zero.
We are not paying for energy being produced and consumed, we are paying for intermittency. That means we are paying for energy that is not being produced or cannot be used.
Plenty of errors. As pointed out below, the UK uses very little Russian gas. Also omitted is the fact that gas prices were on the rise months before the special operation to liberate the 4 eastern oblasts began. As countries awoke from Covid, demand for gas shot up as it was desperately needed to keep the grids going in the face of a couple of years more unreliable generation added, reliable generation retired and the industry having slowed down production in the face of reduced demand and anti-industry ecofascism. It is of course true that prices will keep slowly edging up because the more unreliable generation you add to your grid the more expensive it becomes, as well as closing your own reliable generation and relying on other countries to supply at times of high demand when unit prices are high. This will continue for at least a decade.