News Round-Up

• “Canada cops arrest Freedom Convoy organiser in Ottawa” – Chris Barber, a truck driver who led the protest convoy from Saskatchewan, was arrested in Ottawa on Thursday evening as police began forcibly ending the three-week demonstration, reports the Mail.
• “UK’s daily Covid cases plunge by another 22% to 51,899” – Official daily data shows another 51,899 people across the U.K.’s four nations tested positive, a drop of more than a fifth in a week, reports the Mail.
• “The elite unmasked” – Of course celebs don’t wear masks – Covid rules are only for the little people, writes Brendan O’Neill in Spiked.
• “Former Harvard Prof. Martin Kulldorff: ‘Science and Public Health Are Broken’” – Read the new interview with leading lockdown sceptic Dr. Martin Kulldorff in the Epoch Times, covering the Great Barrington Declaration, his smearing by Government health advisers, and more.
• “The Price of a Permanent Emergency” – For the sake of constitutional order and legitimacy, government claims for extraordinary powers must cease, writes Graham Shearer in First Things.
• “Warning Aussies will need FIVE doses of Covid vaccine” – Australia’s immunisation regulator cannot rule out four or even five doses of COVID-19 vaccine being required to be considered ‘up to date’, reports the Mail.
• “A Quarter of U.S. Sevicemembers and 75% of Defense Contractors Defy Covid Vaccine Mandate” – Nearly a quarter of United States military personnel and 71% of Department of Defence contractors are defying President Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate, reports TrialSite News.
• “Have face masks reduced Covid cases?” – Comparing school-age cases in England and Scotland during autumn 2021 shows that mask mandates correlate with worse cases rates, writes Dr. Stephen Hammer for HART.
• “Ep 39. Vlad The Procrastinator – The Real Normal” – Join the guys for the latest podcast episode, discussing what’s going on in Ukraine, Jimmy Carr’s jokes, Mark Drakeford getting Covid and more.
• “Society vs State: Canada Reveals the Core Conflict of Our Age” – Justin Trudeau’s contempt for the truckers is genuine and profound – he sees in them not an obstacle to Covid policy or a potential threat to public health, but a barrier to an ever-increasing scope and scale for his Government’s authority, writes David McGrogan for the Brownstone Institute.
• “How the CDC Abandoned Science” – Mass youth hospitalisations, Covid-induced diabetes, and other myths from the brave new world of science as political propaganda, as told by Dr. Vinay Prasad in the Tablet.
• “Conversation with Dr Bruce Paix” – Watch the interview Dr. Bruce Paix gives to the Australian Free Independent Press Network.
• “Dear EU leaders, Africa has bigger problems than Covid” – The relentless push to vaccinate the continent won’t help Africans, says Samuel Adu-Gyamfi in UnHerd.
• “The truckers’ revolt has exposed the left’s class hatred” – Every time working-class people rebel today they are instantly smeared as fascists, writes Tom Slater in Spiked.
• “From Wuhan to Ottawa” – The latest medical and political coronavirus developments from SPR, including new information on the origin of the virus.
• “Ireland, Sweden Show No January Warming Since 1988. Antarctic Sea Ice Extent Now More Than 40 Years Stable!” – The six stations plotted going back to 1988 taken together show no significant warming taking place, with some stations in fact showing a modest cooling trend for January, writes Pierre Gosselin on Watts Up With That?
• “Just ELEVEN under-15s in England and Wales died of Covid in 2020” – A report by the Office for National Statistics found Covid was on the death certificates of 13 children in England and Wales in 2020 – and the main cause of 11 fatalities, reports the Mail.
• “Labour’s Emily Thornberry blasts ‘selfish’ people who refuse Covid jab” – Labour frontbencher Emily Thornberry has said she would not date someone who has not had a coronavirus jab as she labelled the unvaccinated as “selfish”, according to the Mail. Is she trying to put people off vaccination?
• “‘A Recurring Fountain Of Revenue’: FDA Exec Admits Biden Planning Annual Shots, Including Toddlers” – FDA Executive Officer Christopher Cole was caught on undercover camera revealing that his agency plans to announce that annual COVID-19 vaccinations for all will become official policy, reports ZeroHedge.
• “Britain needs shale gas now” – Read the new paper from Tim Worstall at Net Zero Watch which reviews the arguments for and against shale gas drilling in the U.K., and attempts to correct disinformation about the possible effect that it would have on energy prices in the U.K.
• “Do the Conservatives really care about free speech?” – The Conservative Party Chair Oliver Dowden made headlines this week with a speech lambasting woke ideology, berating cancel culture and even arguing these concepts constitute a new brand of modern Maoism – but what is the Government actually doing to protect speech, asks Mark Johnson in the Spectator.
• “Society can’t afford the dangerous decadence of the woke movement” – The Tory party chairman’s hard-hitting truths about the threat we face must be translated into action, writes Andrew Roberts in the Telegraph.
• “The human rights clampdown on free speech” – Andrew Tettenborn in the Spectator criticises the U.K. Supreme Court decision this week that a businessman’s right to a private life means, unless there is a positive reason to expose, he must be given the right to use the law to suppress press coverage.
• “Another court threat to free expression” – Too few politicians have been willing to engage with the question of free speech, instead leaving it to judges, says the Telegraph in a leading article.
• “The Tate’s grubby cancellation of Rex Whistler” – Tate Britain’s Rex Whistler restaurant will never reopen due to the apparent offensiveness of the mural on its walls, making it the latest victim of the woke purge, writes Michael Mosbacher in the Spectator.
• “How sensitivity readers corrupt literature” – “They sullied my memoir to suit their agenda,” writes Kate Clanchy in UnHerd.
• “Boris is about to make Nick Clegg one of the most powerful men in Britain” – The Government’s Online Harms Bill gives Big Tech too much power to censor opinions it does not like, says Fraser Nelson in the Telegraph.
• “Blue plaque criteria will not be lowered to boost diversity, insists English Heritage boss” – English Heritage pledges to retain high standards, despite calls to speed up the push for diversity, the Telegraph reports. Expect a woke backlash, grovelling apology and reverse ferret any day now (or maybe they don’t read Twitter).
• “The EU’s neo-colonial assault on Hungary” – The EU is using economic blackmail via a politicised court to influence the Hungarian elections in order to shift the country in a woke and compliant direction, writes Frank Furedi in Spiked.
• “I think Canada has stepped across a line” – Conservative MP Marcus Fysh criticises Justin Trudeau for freezing the bank accounts of the ‘Freedom Convoy’ truckers who are protesting.

If you have any tips for inclusion in the round-up, email us here.