News Round-Up

• “Passport office staff say 500,000 application backlog will only get worse as summer holidays for millions are put at risk by ‘rock bottom morale’ and ‘creaking’ computer systems” – A series of leaked messages have revealed the 10-week target to approve passport applications is continually being breached, with staff accusing French consultancy firm Teleperformance of “misleading advice”.
• “Sweden’s Strategy Once Again Proven Correct” – Sweden followed the actual science and not The Science™, while elsewhere, panic, inaccurate modelling, political motivations and crisis obsession took over, writes Ian Miller at the Brownstone Institute.
• “The stock market crash has only just begun” – There is still a lot of pain ahead – and this bear market will be a big one, predicts Matthew Lynn in the Telegraph.
• “In defence of the partygate investigation” – The Met inquiry has highlighted the absurdity of our lockdown laws, writes Fraser Nelson in the Spectator.
• “Monkeypox is not the next COVID-19” – If the WHO has any sense left, it will douse the alarm surrounding this outbreak, says Toby Green in UnHerd.
• “Time to drop the masks in healthcare” – The combination of little evidence of effectiveness as a viral barrier, and the multiple harms associated with them, suggests that the persistence of masks in healthcare is a triumph of culture over rationality, writes Dr. Gary Sidley in TCW Defending Freedom.
• “Researcher: ‘We Made a Big Mistake’ on COVID-19 Vaccine” – Research demonstrates a huge problem with all COVID-19 vaccines, writes Dr. Joseph Mercola in the Epoch Times, with particular reference to the work of Byram Bridle.
• “Red Science, Blue Science, What Science, No Science” – Every attempt to silence debate is a betrayal of knowledge itself, writes Chris Bateman in AIER.
• “The Week in Review – Monkeypox, Musk and Mayhem” – Listen to the Bournbrook podcast with Michael Curzon, S.D. Wickett and Luke Perry, who discuss the WHO Treaty and monkeypox, backlash against Elon Musk and Peter Hitchens’s article on why England should secede from the U.K.
• “Can anyone explain why this wasn’t called surrender?” – Peter Hitchens in the Mail with a characteristically hard-headed take on the Ukraine war.
• “Australia Goes Deep Green: Federal Election 2022” – Although the dust hasn’t fully settled, its looking increasingly likely Australia will have one of the greenest governments in its history, writes Eric Worrall in Watts Up With That?
• “Disney Releases LGBTQ Pride-Themed Toys Marketed to Children” – Disney has launched a “Pride Collection” initiative, which includes an LGBT pride-themed line of plush toys marketed to young children, reports Breitbart News.
• “‘Ashamed’ police chiefs will apologise for racism and commit to being ‘institutionally anti-racist’ in future” – The plan will be published next week, the Mail reports – and includes the usual misleading claims about stop and search.
• “KPMG forces staff to take unconscious bias training” – A year ago the accountancy firm’s former boss was defenestrated after dismissing the idea as “complete crap”, the Telegraph reports.
• “Children as young as three months old may be racially biased, council claims” – Poster shared by Islington Council says that “by five, white children are strongly biased in favour of whiteness”, reports the Telegraph.
• “NUS president backs student who called Jewish academic ‘far-Right white supremacist’” – The Government last week cut all ties with the NUS, as the Universities Minister said it had “anti-Semitic rot at its heart”, the Telegraph reports.
• “Civil service trying to ‘erase women’ with gender neutral language in new laws, ministers warn” – Downing Street is preparing a crackdown on the spread of “militant wokery” in Whitehall, according to the Telegraph.
• “You almost have to respect the complete absurdity of wearing a mask to walk down the steps outside by yourself only to take it off when you approach other people” – Ian Miller on the irrationality of President Biden’s mask behaviour.

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