- “Sleeping pills for children at record high after Covid lockdowns” – Lockdown led to a record number of children being prescribed sleeping pills as they struggled to cope with the disruption, the Mail reports.
- “Xi Jinping’s Zero Covid disaster” – President Xi Jinping has used his Zero Covid strategy to strengthen his iron grip on the country, but could it now be his undoing? Asks the Mail.
- “The Lancet has become a laughing stock” – Norman Fenton and Martin Neil lock at the Lancet’s shocking record on Covid, in Where are the numbers?
- “Everyone Should Shed the Mask” – Love, kindness, honesty, respect, creativity and freedom are necessary for human flourishing. Sadly, many still embrace the mask as if it is the only truth that exists, writes Serena Johnson in Brownstone.
- “The Twitter DM thread that started my career as one of the world’s top ‘misinformation spreaders’” – Now reinstated on Twitter, Steve Kirsch shares the DM thread that launched his career as one of the world’s top ’misinformation spreaders‘.
- “Electric car makers put the brakes on U.K. production because they are too expensive to sell” – Only a quarter of car output will be electric within the next two years, lower than prior forecasts of more than a third, according to Paul Homewood in WUWT.
- “The Left wants to ban our gas hobs and it doesn’t care about the consequences” – The initial impulse for U.S. bans was climate-related. Now the argument has expanded to include worries about indoor air pollution, writes Juliet Samuel in the Telegraph.
- “Energy Transition Farce Continues in Germany” – Fearing outages, regulators announce plans to ration power for environmentally friendly, state-promoted electric vehicles and heat pumps, writes Eugyppius.
- “Rishi Sunak to appoint an ‘anti-woke’ tsar to investigate universities” – Rishi Sunak is set to declare a new ‘war on woke’ by appointing a free speech watchdog and more closely vetting the appointment of Left-wing bishops, according to Glen Owen in The Mail on Sunday.
- “Government to crack down on trans athletes competing in female sports” – Culture Secretary Michelle Donelan has called senior executives from the major national sports governing bodies in for a meeting in Whitehall to discuss the issue, writes Camilla Turner in the Telegraph.
- “Rishi Sunak preparing to block Scottish gender reform bill” – Rishi Sunak is poised to block Sturgeon’s horrendous gender reform bill, according to the Times.
- “It’s idiotic to pretend Drake wasn’t a great Englishman” – Our heroes are all flawed. Yet, take them for all in all, writes Peter Hitchens for the Mail on Sunday.
- “An LGBTQ+ conversion therapy ban is bound to backfire” – If this amendment is passed, professionals simply trying to do their jobs could be accused of practising conversion therapy, because the amendment fails to define what it entails, writes Lottie Moore in the Spectator.
- “If the British Museum loses its marbles, nationalism triumphs over humanity’s common heritage” – The friezes were lawfully acquired by the U.K. Ignoring their rightful ownership for political expediency will set a dangerous precedent, says Daniel Hannan in the Telegraph.
- “The Loudoun County cover-up reveals the moral depravity of woke” – A schoolgirl was raped by a ‘genderfluid’ boy – and her school covered it up, writes Sean Collins in Spiked.
- “How we created a self-hating generation” – Children can’t be trusted to choose an identity, writes Lionel Shriver for UnHerd.
- “How universities entered Cloud Cuckoo Land” – Aristophanes anticipated the cult capture of our institutions, and the nihilistic cultural repudiation of the 2020s, writes Jacob Howland for UnHerd.
- “Reparations and the rectory” – The Archbishop of Canterbury has announced £100 million pounds has been found to make reparation for the Church’s alleged involvement in the transatlantic slave trade. Can the CofE buy its way into progressive paradise? asks Sebastian Milbank in the Critic.
- “Toby Young debunks Benjamin Butterworth’s mischaracterisation of cancel culture” – Butterworth gets both OWNED and DESTROYED by the Toadmeister.
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Good morning all.
A poem to start the day:
I know
And it’s easy to know.
Opinions keep the mind well dressed.
Actions are where
the problems begin.
There’s always the mortgage,
a meeting, a reputation….
Truth could be
such a beautiful thing,
if only one had the time.
Steve Turner.
Good morning HP, and all sceptics…..
I will add one of my favourite quotes…
Man’s most valuable trait is judicious sense of what not to believe
….Euripides.
if only……..!!
Should have an a …’is a’…….!!
Thanks ebg.
And a ruddy Good Morning to you and all fellow Breakfast Clubbers!
Cheers Mogs.
Morning HP and fellow ninja wordsmiths!
And here’s my offering:
‘Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.’
Tennyson
Thanks Aethelred
And I’d like to add two of my favourite Mark Twain lines – which I feel are apposite at the current time.
“What gets us into trouble is not what we don’t know, it’s what we know for sure that just ain’t so”
“It’s easier to fool someone than to convince them that they have been fooled”
Thanks Michael.
Some disaster. Xi grew his economy 400% faster than the US, and suffered .01% of America’s Covid deaths.
After 3 years of Dynamic Covid Zero, China had 5,430 deaths caused by respiratory failure directly due to Covid. One month after lifting restrictions, it had 5,503 deaths caused by respiratory failure directly due to Covid and 54,435 deaths caused by underlying diseases combined with Covid. With 90% of fatalities aged over 65 years, the average age at death was 80, most of whom suffered from underlying conditions.
Zero covid has been a bit misguided, but Nett Zero has been nothing but good news for the Chinese.
Anyway, I don’t believe any of the numbers they are coming out with, but they do seem to be surprisingly similar to those in the UK and the rest of the Western world.
“Zero covid has been a bit misguided”
A bit? Folly and evil on a scale rarely seen.
Yeah, official Chinese stats definitely super reliable, they would never have lied.
…I also wonder do we ever really see anything they don’t want us to?
I read a few Twitters, some Chinese, some ex-pats, who are in China and their lives seem very ordinary, and there were lots of New Year celebration pictures showing massive crowds..many without masks, in big cities (our New Years,1st Jan..not theirs) It’s quite often at odds with what the media are saying….
I know I read about China relaxing Covid regs, way before it was on the news…..so, as usual, I’m not sure what to make of any of it.
I’m really aware that Western MSM can’t talk about China without it being one-sided propaganda, much like anything to do with Russia and Iran..
What I do know is that Asia, generally, escaped the worst of Covid until they started jabbing…so if China didn’t go down the mRNA route, I suspect they might truthfully have done well in relation to deaths…
Yes, between the CCP and Western Legacy Media and governments it’s hard to know what to trust.
Sorry Godfree, but you’d might as well pick numbers from the air when it comes to China! Its just been announced 60000 have died in a month of covid mainly old, infirm and co morbidities, ..in a country of 1.4billion that doesn’t sound unusual.
(I didn’t give a thumbs down because every and all opinions are important, I’d rather give my opinion than just ditch yours)
“Toby Young debunks Benjamin Butterworth’s mischaracterisation of cancel culture”
This is where the fragmentation and impoverishment of the truth stand out. If someone commits a murder, a cold blooded murder, then we can agree that person should be ostracised by society. Benjamin is talking about doing that for being a ‘bigot’ or a ‘racist’, determined by testing their views against a self determined and ever changing scale of ‘the unspeakable’. He has forgotten that we are individuals, not members of some group or a different group. Perhaps he has never been taught. Maybe he’ll get to that when he does his ‘A’ levels.
Anyone who uses the word “racist” as Butterworth does is the enemy. I don’t know or care what he was or was not taught or what he has forgotten – his side have power that they want to hold on to, and they will use any underhand tactic they can to do so, and they don’t care who they destroy in the process. It’s his side and his side only that determine “the unspeakable”, unless and until we demolish the whole industry that has been built around “racism” and other “isms”.
I watched Toby Young’s opening salvo on YouTube which was an excellent evisceration of the woke camp. The wokeists were appalling in their speeches since they really had no firm ground to stand on from which to launch a coherent argument and their whole raison d’être was exposed for the paper tiger that it is. Woke is fascism of thought. It doesn’t add to human progress or evolution but takes us down the path towards our own extinction.
“Woke is fascism of thought”
Love that line and will, if I may, keep it up my sleeve in all future discussions about woke culture.
I also liked Elon Musk’s take on wokeness:
“At its heart, wokeness is divisive, exclusionary and hateful. It basically gives mean people a shield to be mean and cruel, armored in false virtue.”
Of course, Michael, you’re welcome to it!
“The Left wants to ban our gas hobs and it doesn’t care about the consequences”
Indoor air pollution, what? In our super sealed and insulated houses warmed gently by heat pumps perhaps.? Apart from the total absence of joined up thinking, is this the biggest challenge our world faces today..?
The Telegraph journalist ought to note that the Tory party is also very committed to the net zero agenda. But then as we know, they too are of the Left.
Three gifts from Boris Johnson to the country make him, in my opinion, arguably the PM who most harmed people’s standard of living: net zero, Brexit and Covid strategy.
Brexit was voted for in a referendum.
The covid reaction and net zero are part of the leftist globalist agenda and were, would have been and are being implemented by any and all governments globally with very few exceptions. Johnson is a waste of space, but covid and net zero are not unique to him or his ideas.
I think your comment exculpating Johnson in connection with covid and net zero is largely fair, but I wonder what Margaret Thatcher would have done. If you truly love your country and are a strong leader, I think both “disasters” could have been avoided or largely mitigated.
I also agree (obviously) that Brexit was voted for in a referendum. This is not the same as saying that the Brexit we achieved would have won a majority in a referendum against Remain. I would suggest it wouldn’t have got more than 30-35%. Such was the democratic travesty that was Brexit.
I’ve no desire to “exculpate” Johnson – just pointing out he was one of many. But he’s guilty of many terrible failures of judgement and character and unfit for public office, ever again. Sadly most plausible alternatives would have been worse.
As far as Brexit goes, we can speculate as much as we want based on whatever short/medium term outcome we think has been achieved but IMO that’s not really the point. I approached it as a long term proposition about national sovereignty – I didn’t want us to be part of an “ever closer union”. Your describing it as a “travesty” just sounds like you’re disappointed because your side lost. Not having a referendum could also be argued to have been a “travesty”. I don’t think you can pretend to know what basis people voted on nor can you dictate what basis people should vote on.
“Your describing it as a “travesty” just sounds like you’re disappointed because your side lost”.
No, it’s a travesty because an outcome arose which would not have got anywhere near a majority in a head-to-head vs Remain, IMHO.
Let’s assume three broad outcomes – Hard Brexit (leave political institutions and single market), Soft Brexit (leave political institutions but stay in single market) and Remain. Remain got 48% in the referendum. So it only required a tiny proportion of those favouring Soft Brexit (and who therefore voted to Leave) to prefer Remain to Hard Brexit for the result to have been different. How many times did we hear the line “I like the common market but the EU has become too political”? And even Nigel Farage often referred to the Norway model.
But, anyway, it’s in the past now and in the past it must remain…
It would have been utterly impractical and misleading to offer different flavours of Brexit, not least because the EU deliberately refused to discuss options. One could equally argue that different flavours of Remain should have been on offer. A straight yes or no vote was the only feasible approach, or to carry on being part of an institution that the British people didn’t vote to be part of, and as it turns out a majority of which didn’t want to be part of when given the choice.
I agree with you that a majority wanted to leave the institutions of the EU – the debate is whether a majority wanted to leave the single market.
Possibly. Still think it would have been impractical and hard to honour. The Single Market comes with obligations that look quite a lot like being in the EU…
A true Brexit could have revitalised this country. The spongers, cheats and liars in Westminster have done everything to destroy Brexit.
https://off-guardian.org/2023/01/12/what-is-the-us-gas-stove-ban-really-about/
A cover for something far worse and more draconian.
Thanks for the link, interesting (albeit rather worrisome) article. Indoor air quality has been batting around the ‘green’ press for a number of years along with no-gas cooking. Always wondered where it was leading especially as the suggested alternatives – especially induction hobs – also have their own health issues re EMF fields. Compulsory indoor air filtering systems for yet more data harvesting? Why not just open a f***ing window?
…also have you noticed the lock step with this story……? It’s in the media in the USA..UK…EU?
Why? How? Why now?
It certainly puts paid to the ‘cock-up’ theory …… doesn’t it?
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/01/14/electric-car-makers-put-the-brakes-on-uk-production-because-they-are-too-expensive-to-sell/
This article seems to imply as is thought by many people I speak to that all this means the ban on the sale of Petrol/diesel (ICE) cars cannot happen as modern life cannot manage without large numbers of cars on the road. However, I fear that, oh yes it can happen and the result will be a huge social change, the end of cheap motoring and easy travel for the people and the people pushing for the end of ICE cars do not care about this at all.
The current motoring scene depends on a steady supply of cheap secondhand ICE vehicles coming down the line to enable much of the population to be able to buy and run a reasonable car. The introduction of EV’s will see the end of this system, Ford seem to have realised this as they are ceasing the production of Fiesta and Focus models and concentrating on the productions of smaller numbers of up-market EVs. Fiesta and Focus have been the epitome of ICE vehicles providing cheap motoring for the people if Ford are ceasing production of these it is a clear sign that a huge social change is coming with much less travel freedom for most people.
Which may leave you asking what about out of town housing estates and out of town shopping centres???????????? but that question is not allowed, the message of the day is ban everything ‘they’ do not like; ICE cars, gas stoves, gas and oil boilers, meat and dairy products. How will we manage people will ask? Come and live in an eco-hutch in our 15 minute city and eat grass burghers will be the answer, welcome to the new stone age!
Let’s hope this is true and they do it….every little helps!!?
https://www.euractiv.com/section/health-consumers/news/pfizer-officials-could-be-excluded-from-the-european-parliament/
The European Parliament’s COVI committee on Wednesday (11 January) approved a proposal to ban Pfizer officials from the European Parliament, following the company’s lack of transparency in vaccine purchase contracts during the pandemic.
Representatives of the American pharmaceutical company Pfizer and its CEO Albert Bourla could soon be denied access to the European Parliament, following a request from the Green group to ban Pfizer’s representatives.
Led by French MEP Michèle Rivasi, the proposal was put to the Parliament’s committee on COVID (COVI) on Wednesday.
All political groups voted in favour of the ban, with the exception of the European People’s Party (EPP) and Renew Europe, which voted against it. The majority was enough to pass the vote.
Officials from and private business or company should NEVER be allowed anywhere near any parliaments or corridors of power and never should have been!
Just make products and keep the hell out of running a country
Good old Tesco and their ‘every little helps’.
I knew life was getting better when they reintroduced the ‘pick ‘n’ mix’ stands. Pandemic – what pandemic?!
…LOL! Parma Violets…mmmm!
“Sleeping pills for children at record high after Covid lockdowns”
This might be more to do with weak parenting rather than sleepless kids!
Children are very resilient and will have got over lockdowns quite a while ago. Not sure if this can be blamed on lockdowns
I hadn’t even heard of sleeping pills for kids!
It was warm milk and counting sheep when I was a child. What sort of doctor prescribes this class of drug for children? Totally inappropriate and bad medical practice.
Exactly, Mogs. It was books for me or being read to. This ongoing drugging of our children is clearly a way for Big Pharma to carry on selling drugs. They’re medicating them for being kids – excited, hyperactive (prob due to the sugar that’s in everything), depressed or sad, now sleep. The assault on kids is relentless, Big Pharma and Big Food together and the internet and all the screens and wifi are a toxic mixture that we didn’t really have to deal with when we were kids what with homecooking, being OK with sniffles, being allowed to be sad or over-excited but also told to ‘simmer down’ if we went over the top or even being sent to bed! There were boundaries that we learned not to cross. Modern kids don’t seem to have any boundaries – well, some of them anyway – and that’s a problem. Some modern parents seem to think that it’s helping their kids development to allow them to do anything and everything. I find it bloody annoying! Bah humbug!
My Dad:
“Right you lot – simmer down.”
Memories…
If a business owner is lucky enough to own an enterprise generating £100k in profits, instead of handing the cash over to HMRC, He/She/it/whatever can instead buy a £100k electric vehicle and hand over nothing. The government, in effect, are giving away free cars. Meanwhile there are plenty of poors sods out there, who can only afford an old car, with it’s high VED, high fuel duties and potentially high ULEZ charges. Part of that person’s tax will go to fund the business owners EV. Without this 100% tax break, EV sales would be massively reduced. The demand is largely generated by government incentive.
“It’s idiotic to pretend Drake wasn’t a great Englishman” Peter Hitchens argues against the cancelling of Sir Francis Drake and the woke renaming of a primary school bearing his name. I’m with him. Our history is slowly being erased because it’s values – the history’s values – don’t fit with a modern inclusive, diverse, society. So what? Must we erase everything? History is the story of how we got here not some inconvenient series of embarrassing yarns. Have the Italians or Greeks erased their ancient histories of how they got to where they are? No, of course not. Naming schools, roads, buildings, hospitals with the names of our past is a way of ensuring we don’t forget where we came from. They are waymarkers and milestones. I’m a bit fed up, if you haven’t noticed, with this relentless attack on our country and its history. I’m English – with large bits of Scot, Irish and Welsh thrown in admittedly – but essentially English in outlook. I love our rich culture and heritage. I love this land of contrasts, its regional accents, its stories, its weather (yes, even that!), its cosy pubs and I worry that many do not get it. They’re content to see it all whittled away as if it doesn’t matter. They don’t value this sense of Englishness nor see how unique and precious it is. This is nothing to do with some sort of nationalistic fervour posing as patriotism, this is about having a sense of belonging to these few isles and of comradeship, shared humour and eccentricity, kindness, politeness and so on. I remember in the 1970s taking a Routemaster bus to college in London. Usually I’d sit up top and smoke a roly and read a book or paper. There was a conductor in those days and one day the conductor was this chirpy chap who gave rhyme for every single destination when asking customers where they were going. It was sheer bloody brilliance and I have never forgotten it. This was Englishness at its most sublime.
Anyway, I’ve prattled on for too long now but let’s not let this slip away but celebrate it at every opportunity.
Fantastic comment – and I say that as a Scotsman. Sadly, I think the pass has largely been sold as regards the preservation of that English culture.
That is a damn fine post Aethelred and I share your thoughts. FWIW, I have Union Jack pin badges on all my coats and jackets. A small thing I know but it is my statement of belief in England
and the British Isles. We should believe in this nation and all we have given to the world. I have absolutely no time for heretics like Fishy, Krankie and the rapists dad, these people are traitors and nothing more.
I am an Englishman, yes with Scots and Irish too but first and foremost an Englishman.
What the current crop of cowardly leeches in Westminster are doing to this country saddens me greatly but I will not give up on England and the British Isles.
To my dying day I will be grateful to have been born in the greatest country in the world. I am English and proud.
Well said, HP, and thanks for your kind comment. We need to rediscover our Englishness ands celebrate it. Loudly!
And on that note, I feel a song coming on! LOL…Ah man, I miss it. Anyone got a T.A.R.D.I.S?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=va6nPu-1auE&ab_channel=LightningSeedsVEVO
Hahaha! Classic!
“The Left wants to ban our gas hobs and it doesn’t care about the consequences”
So, do they wish to eradicate camping stoves as well? Honestly, this net zero nonsense is going too far and it’s as if all the people who should be doing the critical thinking i.e. our so called leaders, have lost that crucial ability and have become addicts to an idea. They can’t think differently. They’re completely hypnotised and brainwashed. It’s pointless showing them the evidence (like another great brainwashing experiment recently) because they won’t see it, don’t want to see it because huge influences and power plays and money are at work. How do we push back against this nonsense? I don’t know. Get rid of current leaders but new ones like the old ones – meet the new boss, same as the old boss – will come in. They must make them in a factory in China ‘cos they seem to fall off an assembly line in identical grey suits and ‘serious’ faces. Somehow, somewhere there must be a way to stop this but I’m stumped as to how right now.
https://off-guardian.org/2023/01/12/what-is-the-us-gas-stove-ban-really-about/
Thanks for the link. There’s always an ulterior motive isn’t there?
Thanks, JB, an interesting piece. The barstewards!
I don’t think democracy works any more, in the sense of delivering what the people (or a majority of the people) want. The system is fixed and TPTB just do what they want regardless of the wishes of the people.
The representative democracy that we have been conditioned to believe works for us and is the best form of government is nothing but a sham. What we do to replace it I don’t know but change will not come unless we force it and that will probably require a revolution and all it entails.
Agree. I hear that regardless of the people of Oxford overwhelmingly rejecting the traffic controls, the council is going to do it anyway. That is not only not democratic, it is authoritarianism.
Funnily enough, I saw this sarcastic tweet earlier today about gas stoves.
https://twitter.com/JebraFaushay/status/1614404557404246019
Love it.
Fabulous, Ellie!
And I’d like to add two of my favourite Mark Twain lines – which I feel are apposite at the current time.
“What gets us into trouble is not what we don’t know, it’s what we know for sure that just ain’t so”
“It’s easier to fool someone than to convince them that they have been fooled”
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/press-release/breaking-chd-defeats-ny-state-healthcare-workers-covid-mandate/
In a groundbreaking decision filed today, NY State (NYS) Supreme Court Judge Gerard Neri held that the COVID-19 vaccine mandate for healthcare workers is now “null, void, and of no effect.” The court held that the NYS Dept. of Health lacked the authority to impose such a mandate as this power is reserved to the state legislature. Furthermore, the court found that the mandate was “arbitrary and capricious” as COVID-19 vaccines do not stop transmission, vitiating any rational basis for a mandate.
Children’s Health Defense (CHD) financed this lawsuit on behalf of Medical Professionals for Informed Consent and several individual healthcare workers. Sujata Gibson, lead attorney, said, “This is a huge win for New York healthcare workers, who have been deprived of their livelihoods for more than a year. This is also a huge win for all New Yorkers, who are facing dangerous and unprecedented healthcare worker shortages throughout New York State
Another little victory for common sense….
Just noticed the ONLY downticks today are under a comment about China and mine about Parma Violets!
So we possibly have an anorexic Sinophobe stalking us!!!
LOL!!!
Good one, Gums!
Don’t know if anyone caught this yesterday…OMG, beside the fact that he looks about 190, is this really what doctors think? Are they really this ignorant? God help us!
Neil Oliver, GB News…from @26 mins in….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecwqyvhy_jo
Another little bit of good news..I will watch for an update…
From Maajid Nawaz …
@MaajidNawaz
Really pleased to have been authorised to be able to confirm that the first legal case involving Midazolam has been successful. Awaiting finalisation of further legal paperwork before making public further details. Really proud to have been involved in a personal capacity….more details to come in further weeks…
From…..
Dr Aseem Malhotra
@DrAseemMalhotra
BREAKING:
World eminent Cardiologist Prof.Abdullah Alabdulgader calls for suspension of mRNA jab because of cardiac harm concerns
*President of The international congress for advanced cardiac sciences
*Founder of Prince Sultan Cardiac Center/Saudi Arabia
This is huge……
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/a-silent-prayer-for-common-sense/
Isabel Vaghan-Spruce story. This good lady is being taken to court next month for the crime of…
Praying silently.
1984?
FFS!