- “Mervyn King said the unsayable about Britain’s economy” – The former Bank of England Governor lays the blame squarely at the feet of the lockdowns and the associated loose monetary policy, writes Kate Andrews in the Spectator.
- “Jacinda Ardern feels the heat as frustrated voters punish her party at the ballot box” – Right-wing alternatives surge ahead in New Zealand local elections following growing social inequality and draconian Covid rules, the Telegraph reports.
- “Pandemics of the Vaccinated” – The Naked Emperor reports on the Moderna study showing negative vaccine efficacy.
- “How an illusion of efficacy can be established for any treatment” – Watch Professor Norman Fenton explain how miscategorisation of disease cases can create an illusion of drug efficacy.
- “New Evidence for SARS-CoV-2 Lab Origins” – Eugyppius with his write-up of the preprint that found “fingerprints” of tinkering in the Corona genome.
- “Debate on Covid vaccine safety tomorrow – let’s hope for some action at last” – Kathy Gyngell in TCW Defending Freedom flags up the Parliamentary debate taking place Monday.
- “Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word” – Jeffrey Tucker in Brownstone says the whole gang of coercive totalitarians in the U.S. and abroad are starting to receive their political comeuppance, as the new Premier of Alberta Canada Danielle Smith breaks with her predecessor by apologising to Albertans who were discriminated against because of their COVID-19 vaccination status.
- “A Closer Look at the Covid Mortality Rate” – Ian Miller in Brownstone compares Professor John Ioannidis’s rigorous IFR estimates to those of health authorities who stoked the fear.
- “Web and social media searches highlight menstrual irregularities as a global concern in COVID-19 vaccinations” – A study in Nature journal Scientific Reports finds striking rises in internet searches for menstrual issues during the vaccination programmes.
- “CDC: No Longer Compulsory to Wear Masks in Healthcare Settings” – Wearing a mask is no longer a must for healthcare personnel and individuals when in a healthcare setting, according to an updated CDC recommendation, reports TrialSite News.
- “Blackouts: another dark consequence of Net Zero” – James Woudhuysen writes in Spiked that energy rationing is an integral feature of the green agenda.
- “Cancelling air shows won’t save the planet” – Jonathan Miler in the Spectator asks why we are pointlessly “grounding the magnificent men in their flying machines”?
- “Talk on Climate Shifts for the Creative Society” – Andy May in WUWT explains in layman’s terms why carbon dioxide is not the climate control knob, because global temperature is primarily a result of the water-based global cooling processes.
- “‘Devastating consequences’: Sweden scraps its environment ministry” – EuroNews reports that it’s the first time in more than three decades the Ministry of Environment has not been a standalone department in the Nordic nation.
- “Most children who think they’re transgender are just going through a ‘phase’, says NHS” – New NHS guidance tells doctors not to encourage young people to change their names and pronouns, reports the Telegraph.
- “Salman Rushdie lost sight in one eye and use of a hand after stabbing” – The 75 year-old Satanic Verses author was stabbed multiple times in the neck and chest by a presumed Muslim terrorist as he took to the stage to give a talk on artistic freedom in August, the Mail reports.
- “Britain was the first nation in history to say slavery must end, not just among us – because we had been responsible – but it must end throughout the world” – Watch Historian Giles Udy discuss with GB News‘s Calvin Robinson whether black history should be taught year-round in schools.
- “Has Cambridge abandoned debate?” – Helen Joyce in the Spectator says that from the way one college has treated her, it certainly seems like it.
- “Pronoun choice is harmful, says tech billionaire Ben Chestnut” – The Times reports that the technology billionaire railed against his staff’s habit of introducing themselves on Zoom using their preferred pronouns, calling it completely unnecessary, illogical, the opposite of inclusion and doing more harm than good. He is no longer CEO.
- “Left-wing feminists are missing in action on Iran” – Zoe Strimpel writes in the Telegraph that they remain conspicuously quiet about some of the worst attacks on women’s rights, autonomy and dignity around the world.
- “Did slavery make Britain rich?” – Doug Stokes argues that the dominant ‘decolonial’ narrative we now have in the U.K., primarily due to the wholesale importation of America’s culture war psychodrama, seeks to attribute responsibility and guilt to the U.K. in the present day.
- “Sacheen Littlefeather revealed to be Mexican despite Native American claim” – The 75-year-old, who died earlier this month, refused an Oscar on Marlon Brando’s behalf in 1973 in protest of the ill-treatment of Native people, but the Telegraph reports that her sister now says she was Mexican and adopted a false Native American identity because it was “more prestigious”.
- “Boris Johnson quits leadership contest stressing need to ‘unite’ party” – Boris concedes that even if he can get onto the members’ ballot (he says he has enough supporters) and win that (the likely outcome) he would not be able to govern via a party where too many of the MPs cannot stand him, reports the Mail.
- “The Frank Report XLI” – Frank Haviland of the New Conservative gives a satirical roundup of the week’s political machinations in Westminster.
- “Sound of Silenced Science” – Watch the song Simon & Garfunkel didn’t write, but should have done.
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Ah, the report card:
Maths: Tries hard
English: Could do better
History: Imaginative
PSHE: Original thinker
Overall:
Requires ImprovementWhy do parents need Ofsted reports – can’t they see what their children are like.
In the 1950s and 1960s – my school days – patents knew which schools had a good reputation which didn’t.
That doesn’t work anymore. Besides the inspection shpould not just be for parents but also to check on teachers and school management, things may be going on or left undone which a parent outside the gates could not detect until too late.
I am always amazed when teachers get a fit of sweats because an Ofsted inspection has been announced, is under way or has just reported. In the private business sector annual audits are usual and HMRC visits not uncommon. Other regulators also call round.
Even qualified electricians can expect visits to look at their work on site.
Why should teachers be exempt from checks?
The shock is that head teachers are so often shocked at whet the Ofsted report reveals. They are meant to know!
I worked for a testing consultancy that had various accreditations that all carried out annual audits of our procedures and record keeping.
I witnessed the decline of education from the 1990s that seemed at least in part to be caused by the existence of Ofsted, a centralised organisation too remote from teachers and parents, and a typical example of the development of remote over-control from above that was instituted by politicians and bureaucrats. Ofsted should be scrapped and the old system of having school inspectors with more local ties should be re-instituted.
Education began declining in the 70s when the tosser Woy Jenkins brought in ‘comprehensive’ education and shunned education based on ability as well as giving us dumb-downed qualifications in CSEs. CSEs had a damaging effect on further education as courses were dumb-downed to accept those will CSEs as I saw in engineering.
“parents will see four grades across the existing sub-categories – quality of education, behaviour and attitudes, personal development and leadership and management. “
I’ve no idea what they mean by “personal development” nor how you could meaningfully measure it, nor whether it might be a good objective for a school. Regarding the other three, it’s hard to see how they would not be broadly aligned in almost every case.
Good idea. I know of schools rated ‘excellent’ – 7 years ago and still trade on it…..eg my son’s school, rated excellent top 10% in the UK etc etc…except…. in say A levels comp science none of its students in the past 3 years has received an A and 50% failed, and many other courses suffer from the same under performance basically due to inept teaching…..so yeah common sense to have some details against the schools to help tax payers.
I taught a a school which was supposed to be outstanding. Which it was in all categories EXCEPT teaching and learning. How we teacher laughed cynically. Always thought ofstead inspectors were failed teachers who couldn’t cope.
Ofsted, Ofcom, …, off with them all. I have never heard of any other country being so riddled with completely useless, supposedly independent, government controlled institutions.