- “£3k a day: that’s what health officials are paying thousands of management consultants” – The soaring cost of outside help during the pandemic is uncovered by the Public Accounts Committee, which calls it “a miserable episode for the department”, the Telegraph reports.
- “Inflation soars again to 9% – the highest since 1982” – The headline CPI rate rose to 9% in April, up from 7% in March and the highest level since 1982, the Mail reports.
- “So that’s why the Bank of England is helpless! Staff only have to go to office one day a week amid backlash over Governor’s claim he’s unable to stem inflation” – The revelation caused outrage because Governor Andrew Bailey has warned he feels “helpless” in the face of surging inflation and “apocalyptic” food price rises, the Mail reports.
- “Labour chiefs fear 20 staff could be questioned over Starmer’s curry” – Labour insiders fear that up to 20 police questionnaires could be issued starting from next week, reports the Mail.
- “Sir JVT could not attend his investiture… because he had Covid!” – England’s former Deputy Chief Medical Officer Professor Sir Jonathan Van-Tam missed his knighthood yesterday because he was infected with Covid, the Mail reports.
- “Pivot into COVID-19 research eases as publishing surge starts to level off” – The rush to publish on COVID-19 is subsiding, according to a new study reported in Science.
- “China’s Zero-Covid industrial complex” – The biggest corporate winners from the country’s draconian pandemic strategy, according to the Economist.
- “Argentina’s society outraged as President ‘buys his way out of lockdown‘” – Argentina’s society was outraged Tuesday after it was announced that President Alberto Fernández and First Lady Fabiola Yáñez were let off the hook for violating the lockdown he had himself decreed during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, reports MercoPress.
- “End mask ‘requirement’ in healthcare settings” – Sign Smile Free’s open letter to the NHS Chief Executives to end the mask ‘requirement’ in healthcare settings.
- “Half of new nurses trained overseas, latest figures show” – Some 48% of the 48,436 people who joined the nursing and midwifery workforce came from abroad, with the vast majority hailing from India and the Philippines, the Mail reports.
- “Covid drama This England won’t cover ‘partygate’ scandal” – A new series on the handling of the pandemic, starring Sir Kenneth Branagh as Boris Johnson, will not dramatise the gatherings that nearly toppled the PM, according to the Telegraph.
- “Elite groupthink is driving Britain into a nightmare of inflation, idleness and rage” – We face a calamity even worse than the financial crisis thanks to the hubris of our failed ruling class, thunders Allister Heath in the Telegraph.
- “Open Letter from the U.K. Medical Freedom Alliance to Professor Asma Khalil” – The UKMFA raises serious concerns with the conclusions presented in Prof Khalil’s recent publication in Nature Medicine, entitled “Systematic review and meta-analysis of the effectiveness and perinatal outcomes of COVID-19 vaccination in pregnancy”.
- “Back to the Office? Almost Nine in 10 UK Professionals Say No Thanks” – More than 85% of U.K. finance workers no longer view the office as their main place of work, highlighting the challenge the industry faces if it tries to persuade bankers to return to pre-pandemic norms, reports Bloomberg.
- “Finland and Sweden submit applications to join NATO” – Finland and Sweden have submitted formal letters of application to join NATO, which must now been reviewed and approved by all 30 members of the alliance before they are accepted, the Mail reports.
- “Just how long can Russia sustain the war in Ukraine?” – Charles Lipson in the Spectator cuts through the complexity and focuses on where the combatants now stand, how they got there and what is likely to happen next.
- “Vladimir Putin ‘weaponising’ world’s food supplies” – Western officials say the Kremlin is deliberately destroying farming equipment and grain stores in Ukraine, the Telegraph reports.
- “‘Smart people don’t get offended’: Ricky Gervais defends joking about AIDS, cancer and Hitler in Netflix special SuperNature – and tells Colbert he wants to get cancelled” – The 60-year-old English comedian doesn’t hold back in SuperNature, but insisted that “smart” people won’t get offended as they will understand the “irony”, the Mail reports.
- “How to stop children being indoctrinated” – Woke textbooks should be laughed at, not censored, says Andrew Doyle in UnHerd.
- “Buffalo and the myth of racist America” – Democrats want to create another George Floyd moment, says Ayaan Hirsi Ali in UnHerd.
- “The performative outrage over Tucker Carlson” – He’s being blamed for the Buffalo shooting despite never being mentioned by the killer, writes Stephen L. Miller in Spectator World.
- “There’s no case for Britain to pay reparations” – Large cheques aren’t going to alter the past, which is always more contentious than activists like to think, writes David Abulafia in the Telegraph.
- “It’s lovely out … so be sure to stay inside, says nannying Met Office” – Critics pour cold water on forecaster’s drive to inform people how they can keep themselves safe from the heat, reports the Telegraph.
- “The twilight of identity politics” – Progressive groupthink is falling to pieces, writes Park MacDougald in UnHerd.
- “The National Woke Service” – Why are NHS leaders being sent on microaggression courses, asks Frank Furedi in Spiked.
- “How the Biden administration let right-wing attacks derail its disinformation efforts” – The Washington Post is not happy the Biden administration’s Ministry of Truth has been “paused” indefinitely.
- “Elon Musk confirms he will switch to vote Republican” – Elon Musk is registered in the U.S. as an independent voter, and has described himself in the past as a moderate – but has hinted recently he is shifting further towards the right, the Mail reports.
- “Twitter employee tells undercover Project Veritas journalist that the company isn’t profitable because of their woke ideology” – He explains how Twitter puts the “correct” views in front of people and ridicules Elon Musk.
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Wow. 90% + links to Telegraph and Daily Mail.
Not sure how skeptical this is.
Plenty of meat for the neocon rightists to bite, not much on the power centres war against us.
You are free to send in your ideas if you see anything interesting
yep, and I often do.
Increasingly the Overton window of what skepticism is adhered to has been kept pretty tight. Off Guardian seems to be offering good thoughtful original material lately.
Like this:https://off-guardian.org/2024/01/18/understanding-power-dynamics-moving-beyond-divisions-covid19-ukraine-israel-palestine/
Understanding Power Dynamics & Moving Beyond Divisions: Covid19, Ukraine & Israel/PalestineDr Piers Robinson & Vanessa Beeley
Yes, I am a keen supporter of Off-G. There is always something interesting and with a different perspective.
For some contrast here is a link with regard to the effect of off-shore wind turbines on the marine ecology and commercial fishing;
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/01/28/offshore-wind-and-the-stress-on-commercial-fishermen/
I assume it’s part of the funding model.
There is so much Telegraph material every day, I’ll be really shocked if the DS doesn’t have some funding agreement with them.
I’m not sure the Telegraph would want to risk funding the DS.
I think it’s kept going by people working for nothing/not very much and the largesse of some wealthy backers.
A nice little informative 5min video, explaining how UNRWA are ensuring that Palestinians remain refugees ( and consequently become jihadis, in many cases ) forever;
”Instead of resettling its refugees, UNRWA forces them and all their descendants to be refugees forever. It indoctrinates kids to believe they must destroy Israel to ever have a home. This perpetual refugee status is unprecedented and different than how all other refugees are treated – including the 100 million aided by UNHCR, the UN’s main refugee agency.
In the past century, there were 1,000,000+ Jewish refugees from Arab countries. None are now seen as “refugees” or to have a “right to return”. They’ve all resettled in Israel or other countries. Israel grants all Jews a “Law of Return” to their indigenous homeland.
Most Arabs in Israeli territories came from Egypt or Jordan, which should offer them similar rights. Funding UNRWA destroys the lives of Arab children who become indoctrinated with hate and violence for life. It destroys the societies where it operates, and brings forever conflicts to the region.”
https://twitter.com/QuantumFlux36/status/1751797921035719129
Interesting to see the contrast between what constituted a ”refugee camp” in Gaza compared to refugee camps in Syria and Jordan;
”According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), as of 2023, the Gaza Strip includes eight refugee camps, the largest of which is Jabalia in the northern part of the Strip, where 116,000 Palestinians are registered as refugees.
Palestinian statistics show that prior to the current war, virtually nobody in any mukhayam – “refugee camp,” from kheyma, “tent” – in the Gaza Strip was actually living in a tent. Prior to October 7, the average housing density in Gaza was 1.7 persons per room; 21.2% of the population lived in a house or a villa while the rest (77.8%) lived in apartments. Most residents (78%) owned their homes or apartments.
In 2021, 100% of Gaza’s residents had access to electricity. Daily per capita consumption of water in Gaza was 86.6 liters per day – four liters more than average daily consumption in the West Bank, and in Jordan the average person has access to only 61 liters of water daily.”
https://www.memri.org/reports/palestinian-refugee-camps-gaza-strip-prior-october-7-%E2%80%93-part-i
“It destroys the societies where it operates, and brings forever conflicts to the region”
That explains why the US and Europe fund the UNRWA.
A bit misleading. She regrets using the word “elimination” but still thinks “maximum suppression” until the jab was available was the right approach. According to the article, anyway.
These people, btw, aren’t advisers. The idea that this sociology graduate was somehow shaping policy in Scotland is beyond comical.
Sturgeon like every national leader is a policy salesperson. She sells pre-determined policies to the public. And these little minions like Devi Sridhar who go out to the media as “advisers” are just part of the sales team.
The extent to which restrictions in Scotland were tighter than in England is simply that Sturgeon fancied she could flog the same policy being sold everywhere else that much harder to the obedient Scottish plebs. Double rations for the Scots because it seems they’ll take it. She used their national self identity against them. As did Drakeford in Wales.
Sturgeon must have screwed up on something else though because it doesn’t look like she’s getting her payoff, her nice position in the bureaucracy. At least not for now.
“Sturgeon must have screwed up on something else though because it doesn’t look like she’s getting her payoff”
She faltered on the question of whether a convicted rapist was a man or woman. Not able to follow-through on that agenda might not have helped.
So-called hate crime law ‘could be used to stop the display of the Union flag’ in Northern Ireland–
Northern Ireland must sometimes feel abandoned by the rest of the UK, so
“Well done” to founder Toby Young and his team for organising the meeting there, where they are threatened with the same outrageous “hate speech” laws as Scotland was under Justice Minister Humza.
“Hate speech” does not exist in the West. It is an entirely alien concept called “Lashon Hara”, being forced upon the West by a certain desert tribe, who originally used it to silence the parents of children abused by their “clergy”. It is similar to the codes of silence imposed by foreign criminal gangs upon their members, as well as within certain itinerant communities traditionally hostile to the sedentary inhabitants. We must reject the entire idea of “hate speech” and “hate crime” as an alien concept, and remove all references to it from our laws. We do not consent to it being forced upon our democratic societies.
Seconded
Substack by Prof Jo Phoenix on her court case with the OU
https://jophoenix.substack.com/p/what-a-week