- “Bird flu has mutated to infect people: Fresh pandemic fears as scientists on ground zero in Cambodia find H5N1 strain that killed 11-year-old girl had evolved to infect human cells better” – Dr. Erik Karlsson, who led the team at the Pasteur Institute of Cambodia that isolated the girl’s virus, said there were “some indications” that it was already spreading among people, the Mail reports.
- “The Lockdown Files lift the curtain on Government by WhatsApp” –The messages show the astonishing extent to which ‘virtual’ snap decisions affecting millions of lives were taken on the hoof, writes Camilla Tominey in the Telegraph.
- “Untruth after untruth was peddled to justify the great lockdown disaster” – So much of what we were told during the pandemic was wrong – and nobody has been held accountable, says Allister Heath in the Telegraph.
- “The grim lesson of the Lockdown Files” – The Government sacrificed care home residents in favour of mass testing, writes Thomas Fazi in UnHerd.
- “Britain’s first child Covid death, 13, may have been contributed to by doctors as senior medic admits ‘horrendous oversight’ at inquest” – Doctors admitted they made ‘errors’ in not reading reports on X-rays of Ismail Mohamed Abdulwahab’s chest, which pointed out the high position of the tube, the Mail reports.
- “Government considered killing all Britain’s pet cats at the start of the Covid pandemic because they feared they were spreading virus, claims former health minister” – Lord Bethell said the concern about pets underlined how little was known about the disease at the outbreak of the pandemic in 2020, reports the Mail.
- “Bank of England Deputy Governor: digital pound is ‘likely’” – A central bank digital currency (CBDC) in the U.K. is “likely to be needed”, the Bank of England’s Deputy Governor for Financial Stability has claimed, according to James Billot in UnHerd.
- “Beijing warns Musk after comments on Wuhan lab theory tweet” – Elon Musk – whose company Tesla sells nearly half its cars in China – was warned by Chinese state media after engaging with theories Covid originated in a Chinese lab, the Mail reports.
- “Prepared Testimony – Pandemic Response” – Watch Dr. Robert Malone’s testimony to the Mexican Senate on the pandemic response.
- “All-cause deaths boosted by 8.9% in Japan in 2022” – The annual number of deaths in Japan was 8.9% higher in 2022 than 2021 and the Government has blamed the after-effects of the virus, reports Guy Gin.
- “A Bad Op-Ed Criticizes the Cochrane Mask Review” – Watch Dr. Vinay Prasad take apart the awful Guardian op-ed by Lucky Tran, which he calls “a new low for evidence-based medicine”. Drs Carl and Tom have responded here.
- “Stillbirths nearly doubled in Singapore, one of the world’s most mRNA vaccinated countries, in 2022” – Meanwhile, live births plunged – and the changes began in March 2022, exactly nine months after Singapore mass vaccinated people of childbearing age, writes Alex Berenson.
- “The UN Discusses Darkening The Skies to Combat Climate Change” – Will Bill Gates succeed with his new plan, asks Igor Chudov.
- “Humza Yousaf says trans rapist Isla Bryson should have right to self-identify as female” – The favourite to replace Nicola Sturgeon seems to have learned nothing from her fall as he argues it would be unfair to oppose her self-ID gender laws “because of one despicable individual”, the Telegraph reports.
- “Ethnic and LGBT people over-represented on TV, say almost half of U.K.” – Some 45% of people in the UK think ethnic minorities are over-represented, while just 26% say they are under-represented, according to a recent YouGov poll, reported in the Mail. Only 45%?
- “Free Speech in U.K. Universities” – Listen to Toby deliver the National Conference of University Professors Annual Lecture on Roger Watson’s podcast.
- “Jeremy Clarkson and ITV deny he has been sacked as Who Wants To Be a Millionaire host” – Jeremy Clarkson and ITV have denied he has been axed as the host of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? after ITV earlier said there “are no further commissioning commitments” to the presenter, reports the Mail.
- “BlackRock’s tyrannical ESG agenda” – Is Larry Fink a threat to democracy, asks John Masko in UnHerd.
- “Biden’s trans fanaticism is a menace to freedom” – The President’s conversion to the religion of gendered souls is hurting women, Christians and liberty, says Brendan O’Neill in Spiked.
- “We can’t let the race lobby hijack the Covid inquiry” – The Covid pandemic had nothing to do with ‘structural racism’, writes Rakib Ehsan in Spiked.
- “When did we gays become so intolerant?” – The demonisation of Kate Forbes shows that the bullied have become the bullies, writes Malcolm Clark in Spiked.
- “Boris Johnson deserves much credit for taking the brave and correct step to not lockdown for the Omicron variant” – Watch Jacob Rees Mogg deliver his ‘Moggologue’ on GB News, saying the U.K. Covid enquiry “must focus on the devastating, incalculable consequences of putting the country under house arrest”. I seem to recall Johnson was all set to impose his fourth lockdown, but for 11th hour interventions by data-savvy ministers.
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Incompetence. Yeah right.
That aside:
If they’re so incompetent, why are we expecting them to solve the problem of underfunded pensions with regulation?
The problem with pensions is that pensions were invented at a time when the retirement age was basically the same as life expectancy, and the population pyramid had lots of working people at the bottom and very few pensioners at the top.
`And now we have people living 20 years past retirement and a population pyramid with tonnes of pensioners and not enough working people to sustain them.
The problem isn’t a B of E regulation problem it’s an ostrich problem. When it comes to pensions our society, indulged by our politicians has been burying its head in the sand for decades.
Everyone knew full well this was coming but as a society we’re completely paralysed on this issue.
When private sector defined benefit pension schemes were launched the employer had much more flexibility. The pensionable age could be held down so the assets would meet the obligations, contributions holidays could be used and no accrual or catch-up payments had to be made. Regulations and therefore the operating costs of the schemes were far far lower – nowerdays even closed schemes cost a lot to keep in place.
HMG / politicians interferred without much understanding and very many good businesses have gone bust as a result. Note always that Parliamentarians, their staff and the civil service were never affected by all this.
I have no doubt that successive givernments have made things worse with their regulations, as they always do.
Not helped by Gordon Brown raiding private pensions so he could continue his spending incontinence.
Also not helped by Brown giving companies a pensions contribution holiday, because companies “were never going to need so much money in their pension schemes”.
Is it any wonder he sold the country’s gold at the bottom of the market?
.
Not helped by the Pensions Regulator pushing company pensions into government bonds for over a decade, when the financial crash left them even further underfunded, rather than letting them use equities to close the funding gap.
Just a coincidence that this “incompetence” came on suddenly to coincide with a new PM who had selected a Cabinet some of whom threatened to behave like conservatives, with a budget that departed from the current accepted norms.
When ‘mistakes’ all favour one outcome over any another, they are in fact ‘decisions’…
‘Coincidence’ and ‘incompetence’ becomingly increasingly popular I see. As they have done for hundreds of years, with the same outcomes, from the same people.
Another coup to insert a more favoured son.
The BoE was not just incompetent. They are complicit as well. What the BoE did not see coming as fast as it was – was the Pension LDI Derivatives. Where the complicit comes in is that these LDIs are all OTC (Over the Counter) and thus un-regulated.
How can the funding mechanisms for UK pension funds be OTC and have an exponential 3rd Party counter-risk?
BoE (and their independent shareholders) are driving the monetary policy (and it seems the fiscal policy) to a point-collapse at some juncture in time (of their choosing), so they can bring in CBDCs and UBI without resistance. The Pension LDI collapse was not convenient to their timing.
The BoE (and their Independent shareholders – who are the same shareholder over most international CBs i’d wager?) must, repeat must maintain control with the only solution when the resonance of multiple unknown Derivatives collapse at the same time.
The best game in town is to be the House, set the table rules and insist on being the monopoly solution (getting rich from chaos and THIER rules).
When it fails and it will fail shortly, we have to ensure the current people behind the scenes now are not selected to run a “new” and “improved” CBDC financial system. They have had multiple chances in the past and blown them all. We have to stop paying the price.
Oh, the regulator failed again……
As Beatty didn’t quite say at the Battle of Jutland:
‘There seems to be something wrong with our bloody regulators today!’
The detail may be of interest to future generations but all we need to know, and many have thought it since it happened, was that the various blobs contrived to get rid of Truss.
That is the long and short of it. Outrageous behavious by the blobs which they were conbfident of because they are used to determining who can be UK PM.
Or some might say (as at least one observer on GBN yesterday said) that the BoE won, and got rid of someone they didn’t like.
When she emerged as our new PM, I thought – bleedin’ ‘ell is that the best we can do?
Clearly it was. Can we have her back please?
When Peston is on the side of ‘Incompetence’ it is an absolute certainty that Incompetence is not the reason for Ms Truss’s ousting.
The post I made on this matter on the 5th
does not therefore stand to be revised and with apologies to those who have already seen this:
Well, there’s no denying Toby’s eternal optimism given that he is falling for cock-up rather than conspiracy. Again.
This story reminds me of the inimitable Mrs Merton and the point in her talk show where she announces – “let’s all have a heated debate.” In other words a cover story has been put out to create yet another diversion. Is something afoot again?
To deny the fact that Liz Truss was deliberately ousted is simply ridiculous and it had nothing to do with the markets, that is complete BS.
Liz Truss, on being selected by the Conservative membership and immediately on taking office as PM acted to bring some economic stability to the country. Possibly her proposals would have helped but what is fundamentally assured is that her measures were completely contrary to the requirements of the WEFfers and the Davos Deviants. She was definitely not with the script and so had to go. Whatever shenanigans took place orders went out firstly to install Chunt – a man despised by his fellow MP’s, and reviled by the party membership – and once he had his feet under the table Truss was indeed to be forced “into a dark room with a glass of whisky and a revolver.”
In a pantomime version of an election all the ‘aspiring’ candidates somehow managed to fall by the wayside until only Fishy and Bozo were left – do me a bloody favour! Bozo of course graciously conceded and the Davos plant, still politically wet behind the ears, was installed. Very much in keeping with all the rest of the lies and deceit now infecting the country like, oh I don’t know – a virus.
There will need to be a much stronger body of evidence to persuade me that Liz Truss wasn’t ousted in the most blatant and grotesque example of a coup that I have ever seen in this country. To suggest she was removed as a result of ‘the markets’ is beyond farcical.
“It’s not always about what they say it’s about.”
Nailed it. Cognitive dissonance obviously doesn’t apply as long as you mention ‘incompetence’, ‘markets’ and as much gobbledygook as possible.
Most on here getting it though – apart from Tobes of course.
Truss was half unlucky – half daft
The UK doesn’t set its interest rates anymore
It follows the USA
We are reduced to the status of a poor European country
Crippled by social security costs
Funding day to day expenses by money printing
International lenders won’t lend to us as we are such a basket case
So when the USA raised it rates we had to also
or the £ would have collapsed further
This was compounded by the Pension Fund over borrowing
She was daft thinking she could spaff £65,000,000,000 on energy relief
The Tories are an irreconcilable blob
From Conservatives, Liberal Democrats + Progressives
But they have no balls (are so average)
So they stay secure in the Tory nest
Its not a good prognosis
Toby, it’s nothing to do with ineptitude, it was entirely purposeful on the BoE’s part. How can you believe that the BoE would be inept?!! And you’ll put up with it or trust them to run things?
From an earlier Moynihan piece in the Critic
One part of, but not all of, the case against the Bank has been cogently made by Narayana Kocherlakota, a well-respected economist and former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, in a Washington Post piece entitled “Markets didn’t oust Truss — the Bank of England did”.
The question might be asked – Why? Could be the green finance rentier class did not like Truss freeing up fracking, which would have undermined their wind and solar investments. Was Mark Carney Bailey’s former boss? Have a look at Brookfield Asset Management, chaired by Mr Carney. $68bn in renewables https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/12/26/mark-carneys-investment-company-closing-major-octopus-energy/ And the Glasgow Financial Alliance For Net Zero.
Interesting. So the bottom line (for Liz Truss) was a bunch of economically clueless MPs panicking when the ‘markets’ hiccupped. Fundamentally, lowering tax rates was the correct move to stimulate the economy, which is the govt’s priority, not the markets.
It just strikes me that we’ve allowed the relationship between the economy and the markets to be reversed, i.e. let the markets control the economy. My gut feeling is that was a serious mistake, and the UK govt needs to reassert economic control.