If, like me, you’ve found this year’s New Year Honours list depressing reading, cheer yourself up by looking at our readers’ alternative suggestions.
We had some excellent one-off nominations, such as this one for Peter Hitchens:
I’m nominating Peter Hitchens for services to journalism. For the last 50 years he has had buckets of slime poured over him for questioning the prevailing orthodoxies and group think of the establishment on issues of war, freedom, liberty, the rule of law and the response to COVID-19 to name but a few. I think it would be a fitting tribute for Toby Young to touch Peter gently on each shoulder with his knighting sword live on YouTube.
And this one:
I would like to nominate all the good men and women who work at Exxon Mobil’s Fawley oil refinery near my home.
Fawley represents 20% of the UK’s refining capacity and supplies much of the diesel, petrol and aviation fuel used in the southeast.
Remember folks, 85% of UK energy use is not in the form of electricity but heavy distillates of crude oil (mostly diesel).
These heroic people literally keep the economy moving.
And this one:
To the wonderful lady who maintains our park, has done for many years. It’s in Littleborough, Lancashire and her ministrations result in so much joy for so many local people. Cath she’s called. On OBE at least I feel.
Plenty for Substack newsletters and blogs, such as this one for El Gato Malo:
- One of the first commentators to recognise the insidious evil of lockdowns and the blatant lies and government propaganda disastrously used to enforce them on people.
- Truly being probably one of the first people in the world to recognise the horror of what was coming down the line with the disastrous oncoming train wreck of the covid vaccines.
- Critically – carrying out incredibly complex data analysis documenting the unfolding disaster.
- One of the first to recognise and provide critical analysis to support the terrible (and to be expected) harms of original antigenic sin, antigenic imprinting etc.
- Continuing this important role today, and covering other essential topics with the same cracking humour and grace that makes me and many others look forward to his wonderful long format reads.
- Kicked off twitter for nearly 3 years (finally restored on Christmas Day), but still managed to build a large and supportive community of people on substack.
- Simply, alongside the Daily Sceptic, the wonderful El Gato Malo provides hope (backed up with critical and very detailed analysis) to us in these terrible dark times.
- You can find his Substack newsletter here and his twitter account here.
Other journalists and bloggers also got one-off nominations:
I would like to nominate Gary Sidley founder of Smile Free, Lionel Shriver and Charles Eisenstein, especially for his book The Coronation and all his Covid writings.
Also, Beverley Turner:
Please give a Damehood to Beverley Turner – she was one of the first ‘celebrity journalists’ to speak out publicly against vaccine passports and especially campaigning for young people and against the bribes our Government tried to use to pressure them into having the Covid shots. She was vilified on TV by the likes of Jeremy Vine…
And Nick Dixon, host of the Weekly Sceptic:
Best podcast of the year.
GB News got a nomination for being funny (which Nick Dixon also deserves some credit for):
I would also like to nominate GB News for a comedy award. This could be misinterpreted! I don’t mean GB News is a joke! I mean GB News is consistently full of good humour which makes me laugh more than any current comedy programmes anywhere on BBC television.
These three got a nomination for going the extra mile to make people aware of ‘Focused Protection’ as an alternative to lockdown:
Simon Platt, Andrew Watt and Mark Kingsley – all brave souls who raised money to buy some leaflets about the Great Barrington Declaration for delivery in Preston. They were afraid of being physically attacked while delivering the leaflets… but pressed on regardless.
Several people nominated those who’ve been harmed by the mRNA vaccines:
I nominate all who were killed by the mRNA vaccine to be awarded the posthumous title ‘Hero of Soviet Britain’ and their relatives (maximum of two) to receive a small pasteboard medal which enables them to move to the front of any food or energy queue.
We also got some negative nominations, such as this one for King Charles:
For his appalling treatment of Lady Hussey, who I think should sell her story to Netflix for at least $10 million and blow the gaff on the entire artifice and on all the inter-palace rivalries.
As well as these four (the last is particularly good):
Meghan Markle for services to altruism.
Ngozi Fulani – Stealth Recording.
The geezer who dresses as a woman and nicks people’s luggage.
Fred West, a posthumous Baronetcy for not killing as many people as those awarded covid knighthoods.
And on to the most popular nominees…
These are all people who received more than one nomination. Where appropriate, I’ve included a comment from one of the people who nominated them:
Ian Rons x 2
IT nerd of the year.
Bob Moran x 2
Lord Sumption x 2
Make him Head of the Supreme Court.
Prof. Martin Kulldorff x 2
Dr. Noah Carl x 2
Kept the wheel of intelligent and essential debate persistently turning.
Dan Wootton x 2
Julia Hartley-Brewer x 2
Anders Tegnell x 2
Maybe not the most original nomination, but I’m writing this from Sweden as I sit in my in-laws kitchen drinking tea and feeling just how different Sweden is to Britain when it comes to the pandemic.
I’ve visited a few time since it all started and every time it has struck me how much more sane it is here. Last year I asked my father in law what it was like at work, he said “you don’t go to work if you are sick”. And that was that. He grumbled good naturedly that he only got vaccinated so he could visit us in England, and then laughed when he got covid anyway.
You don’t see masks here. The only time I saw a significant number was when visiting the test center to get our papers to fly back to England last summer.
Sweden has its own share of problems, but covid was never one of them. Throughout the madness I found it heartening to hear back from Swedes about how so many Germans were coming to Sweden to get a haircut or a manicure and being charged double.
Allison Pearson x 3
For services to journalism and to the community.
Dr. Tess Lawrie x 3
Russell Brand x 3
The Duck and Weave Award for having somehow outfoxed the algorithm and become a master of the soft power of information and persuasion.
Laura Dodsworth x 3
For highlighting the propaganda and lies.
Chris Morrison x 3
A Dukedom for services to the truth about the debacle of Net Zero.
Dr. Will Jones x 3
He has displayed sheer bravery, unflagging persistence and the ability to write much needed info, despite no doubt attacks from various quarters. I have not heard Will speak much so don’t know how good humoured he is, but do know he is a flipping good bloke.
James Delingpole x 4
Knight of the Realm (although I’d expect him to reject it for obvious reasons!)
Kathy Gyngel x 4
A Damehood for keeping the faith with her website and plea for children not to be vaccinated.
Prof. Norman Fenton x 5
Dr. Ros Jones x 5
For unstinting effort over the last 2/3 years to encourage an open debate about how best to respond to the Covid pandemic and particularly for her efforts to protect children against damage from COVID-19 vaccines.
Sir Christopher Chope x 5
For bravery and honesty and persistence.
Alan Miller x 5
Neil Oliver x 5
For speaking truth to power. His weekly monologues are inspirational and form an important reminder for everyone that there are a few journalists on the fringes of mainstream media who still possess a backbone and have moral integrity.
Dr. Clare Craig x 6
Jay Bhattacharya x 6
Dr Steve James x 7
For being one of the first NHS doctors to courageously speak out about the Covid vaccines when he confronted the Health Secretary, Sajid Javid, visiting a hospital about a year ago in front of TV cameras.
Prof Carl Heneghan x 7
For speaking reason, in measured tones, from the very beginning.
John Campbell x 8
Vlogging on You Tube, discussing facts, but always decorated with a You Tube “Covid misinformation” tag. Over the past two years his videos have documented how the scales fell from his eyes as he realised it wasn’t appropriate to take on trust communication from the government and national health bodies on SARS-CoV2.
Dr Aseem Malhotra x 8
For being big enough to say, “I know more now, so I’m changing my mind.”
Prof Sunetra Gupta x 9
For being one of the original signatories of the very reasonable Great Barrington Declaration and then taking the ensuing flack.
Andrew Bridgen x 10
For services to the cause of properly researched public health information.
Mike Yeadon x 12
A brave, honourable and determined soul who has had his good name and reputation deliberately trashed by the powers that be in what will in time be exposed as the biggest health and economic scandal to befall not only this country but worldwide.
The team at the Daily Sceptic x 20
For services to my mental health, for keeping me, and no doubt many others, sane during crazy times.
And the person who got the most nominations was…
Mark Steyn x 22
I nominate Mark Steyn to receive the Order of Merit, for his fearless contribution to public service broadcasting in furtherance of enlightening the public’s consciousness.
Happy New Year everybody!
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Sounds like a load of commercial tosh and gibberish to me! Go to an interview, take your cv, most suitable person gets the job!
Simples
Recruiting only on the basis of ability to do the job? The world needs to be PURGED of people like you!
And how are you going to appoint people able to do the job of purging?
Only Black and Asian purgers need apply
Or indeed how will you appoint the appointers? It’s a vicious circle…
That system worked so well, didn’t it, Dings?
Too right it did
Uber globalist McKinsey could not be expected to come up with anything else. They know its findings don’t hold water but they are the key researchers, facilitators and propagandists of corporations and governments globalist agenda. Their fingerprints are everywhere!
“Is diversity our strength? Our leaders certainly seem to think so. ”
I strongly doubt that they really think that. Hard to know what all of their reasons are, but I expect it’s partly political.
When it comes to politicians their beliefs are always amenable to the contents of a brown envelope or its equivalent.
Indeed. As Frank Herbert (author of Dune) put it:
“All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible. Such people have a tendency to become drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly addicted.”
Does Herbert have experience with any other form of government than those based on periodic politalker popularity contests?
Not sure what those are but he was from the US, think he lived there all his life, died a few years ago.
“Diversity” would help companies if the companies were actively discriminating against certain types of people, rather than trying to get the best people for each job.
But as it happens, they weren’t. They were recruiting by talent.
But now they are discriminating, against white men and so not getting the best person for the job.
That’s what DEI has achieved.
Diversity is just another name for racism.
There is “no business case for diversity” because diversity is not “business” it is politics. Just as there is “no business case for Net Zero” because that is politics as well. —–So nonsense like “Diversity is our strength” is a political statement which implies that if you don’t have diversity you cannot have strength. Which is patently absurd. Companies in 1950 1960 and 1970 never had much “diversity” so did they not have any “strength? How about companies in Japan where there isn’t much in the way of “diversity”? Do they have no strength? ——But notice how diversity only works in one direction —–Less white people.
Yes, quite. And as I’ve said before, would you rather fly in a plane with a pilot* who was chosen because of their ability, or have a surgeon perform your operation because you trust them to be sufficiently skilled, than have your life put in the hands of people who were basically a tick box exercise, a sub-standard ‘DEI plant’, because TPTB had targets to meet? It’s insane really that such basic things even need pointed out.
*Even more so if planes are going to start flying with only one pilot. I don’t want some crappy, sub-par ‘woman of colour’ flying my plane just because she’s got a penis!
Yep——I always used the example of “Your 3 year old child is in a burning building. Who do you want to climb the ladder and rescue her? The 6′ 4 14 stone guy or the 5′ 1 8 stone woman?
Diversity is our strength is obviously just an purposely constructed anti-version of Unity is our strength, ie, our ability to cooperate as team against our external opponents, as opposed to loads of infighting among different groups each seeking to outmanoeuver the others wrt access to positions of influence and income. The latter is only the strength of diversity-enablers like UNWEF which absolutely don’t want some kind of united front against their evil agenda.
Good article.
Re: causality. Correlation is a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for causality, is it not? So no correlation implies no causality. Or am I missing something?
Yes, another good, datacentric thread here which illustrates the con nicely;
”This plot presents a sad truth:
Media has failed it’s duty to inform the public
Instead, a business model of selling fear, stoking conflict, pandering, and pushing advertisers propaganda.
McKinsey-ification and it’s consequences has been a disaster for the human species.
It wasn’t always like this.
In the past newspapers made money by selling newspapers, and they competed on quality of research, clarity of insight, and reliability of sources.
Then newspapers started raking in massive sums in advertising revenue and things went sideways.
The issue is that the advertising revenue model fundamentally drives a race to the bottom in hacking dopamine, while favoring content that can be digestible to the largest number of people.
Clickbait for the lowest common denominator.
How’d we get here?
We unleashed an army of “Managerial Executives” on the economy who brought an industry-agnostic mindset of driving shareholder value by any means necessary.
Boeing used to be run by engineers. Newspapers by journalists. Hospitals by doctors.
Now’s its MBAs.
The net effect beyond destroying our institutions, democratic process, ability to innovate and govern effectively is this:
It drives a casino economy where returns concentrate to capital over labor.
It disincentivizes hard work.
And the media capitalizes on this collapse of civic society by selling more fear, more hysteria, inventing more wedge issues and clickbait outrage every day.
Gaslighting a generation into not having kids, opposing economic growths, and hating their own country..”
https://twitter.com/Andercot/status/1774175317294473539
If there was a compelling business case for diversity, why would would businesses need to be bullied or coerced into adopting it?
I think the argument goes like this.
People from minority groups (and women, who arent a minority, but anyway) are just as capable as those from majority groups (I.e. white.men, who don’t constitute a majority anymore, but anyway) but are held back by a lack of opportunities, which don’t come their way because of the prejudice and bigotry of, essentially, white men.
In all occupations. No nuance. No exceptions. Everyone can do everything equally well. (Actually, minorities and women can do things even better in some instances, but that can be put aside for now.)
And because the people making this argument are really good people, they are willing to concede that this prejudice isn’t conscious but subconscious.
Luckily, the proponents of this idea are here to set white men straight (and white women when it comes to matters of race) and by forcing them to hire “minorities” they will discover that minorities are just as capable as anyone else. And for reasons that are not entirely evident, a workforce that perfectly represents society in all the right proportions creates some sort of goldilocks conditions that unleashes potential and companies will prosper even more for it.
And white men are too bigoted and blinded by their own self interest (subconsciously, let’s be kind) to see this so they need to be forced to hire “diversely”.. For their own good. And the good of society. Mostly the good of society. After all who wants to fight against what is good for society, right? Only white male monsters (acting sunconsciously).
It seems like a lot of people are uncomfortable with the fact that success in life* is not evenly distributed among whatever grouping lines are in vogue (race, sex etc). Significantly, this includes a lot of successful people. I am not sure why, but it seems quite common.
* measured by what seems to be important to people – money, power, status, skills – not saying these are the most important or that they are the only things that make up “success in life”
On the one hand impostor syndrome,.on the other envy?
I mean, life is very complex and random and so equal efforts and abilities don’t produce similar results.
I think most people are able to accept and live with that, but there are enough who don’t who use it as a pretext to try to re engineer society
I think most are able to accept that on an individual level, life is chancy and unfair. But more than a few are unable to accept that this unfairness (or its opposite) can apply unevenly along the lines of race, sex etc.
Over time I would expect companies recruiting for diversity rather than ability will perform worse. In some industries the result could be fatal…
Can anyone point me to a charity that works to achieve gender diversity among construction workers?
I’d.like to contribute.
If you’re talking about well-paid white collar construction workers, there probably is one
I’d stump up a few quid for the group that is campaigning for gender diversity in the night-time office building security guard sector, and of course the one pushing for racial diversity in the NBA.
Since John Lewis went all woke and diverse their profits, takings and quality has taken a nose dive. They have a black woman chairman, an Asian CEO, more women and ethnics in senior positions than you can shake a stick at, and a smattering of gay and trans types to make up the DIE numbers.
They invest heavily in black history month, all the trans nonsense, ESG and DIE and the company is a dead man standing. All the woke DIE nonsense did them no good at all and the staff are suffering as a result.