- “What really happened in Boris Johnson’s Covid bunker” – The Sunday Times has an extract from Anthony Seldon’s new biography of Boris Johnson revealing what really went on in Number 10 during the first lockdown.
- “Death of meritocracy in Britain” – Historian Dominic Sandbroook comes to the defence of meritocracy in the Mail.
- “Dominic Raab’s exit is a victory for the Blob” – John Oxley in UnHerd says Dominic Raab’s resignation is a victory for the Whitehall blob.
- “Dominic Raab’s treatment shows why we shouldn’t subject MPs to bogus enquiries” – A readiness to remove politicians by non-democratic means sets a dangerous precedent, argues Dan Hannan in the Telegraph.
- “Are excess deaths on the increase?” – Carl Heneghan and Tom Jefferson take a look at the latest excess death data in Trust the Evidence.
- “Britain suffers cancer crisis after pandemic prioritised Covid” – Cancer operations were cancelled by the NHS on a scale seen almost nowhere else in Western Europe, with deaths from some types of the disease tripling, according to a new report. In the Telegraph.
- “Moderna hid serious side effects suffered by its Covid vaccine recipients when it reported clinical trial results for the shot” – Moderna scientists said in a 2021 paper no mRNA jab recipients in the trial had suffered “serious adverse effects”. In fact, 14 ultimately did, including three miscarriages. No placebo recipients did, says Alex Berenson.
- “New Pfizer Document – Pregnancy and Lactation Cumulative Review” – The Naked Emperor looks at the latest tranche of documents released by the giant pharmaceutical company.
- “Doctor told wife Covid jab was safe. Days later he died” – When Charlotte Wright heard that her doctor husband would be among the first to receive the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine she was delighted. Days later he was dead, she tells the Times.
- “Labs experimenting with deadly viruses risk 1.6m deaths every year, experts warn” – After fears that COVID-19 originated in a lab, virologists and biosafety experts gather in Geneva to discuss how to prevent another pandemic, reports the Telegraph.
- “Bye bye, BuzzFeed News” – Ten reasons why the Spectator’s Stephen Miller won’t be shedding a tear over the demise of BuzzFeed News.
- “The Macpherson Report changed Britain – but not for the better” – Thirty years on from the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence, elite identity politics have completely captured the police, along with numerous other professions and institutions, argues Mick Hume in Spiked.
- “J.K. Rowling in trans row with Left-wing lawyer over ‘stinker’ book review” – Jolyon Maugham KC lashed out at at J.K. Rowling after she mocked him for having a hissy fit on Twitter when the Times gave his new book a bad review. No prizes for guessing who gets the better of who.
- “Britain’s arts scene is as woefully woke as ever” – Hysterical luvvies claim the hated Tories are trying to suppress dissent in the arts, but third-rate, woke rubbish is still being subsidised by the taxpayer on a massive scale, argues Zoe Strimpel in the Telegraph.
- “What will Elon Musk do next now he has torn up the rules of Twitter?” – A year on from taking over the social media site, the billionaire rocket man has vowed to save us from AI, according to this profile in the Sunday Times.
- “Who is Kemi Badenoch? ‘Rottweiler’ about to step out of the shadows” – A feature in the Sunday Times about Kemi Badenoch, touted by many as a future leader of the Conservative Party.
- “The U.N.’s conflation of words with violence is dangerous“ – Andrew Doyle takes aim at the U.N.’s anti-hate speech initiative on twitter.
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“Death of meritocracy in Britain”
Advancement in the UK is not too dissimilar to anywhere else. If the parents went to the right schools and universities, if they go to the right golf and tennis clubs. If they are well networked with the power and money, then the child a far greater chance of success. Once in the nice jobs, well, people promote people like them, don’t they.? Lets not kid ourselves that social and financial advancement has ever really come as the natural conclusion of competence and hard work. But even that pretence is hard to keep up when competence and hard work are wilfully ignored over choosing people solely for their immutable characteristics.
Grammar schools gave us proles a chance to advance when TPTB needed extra brain power . The fact that the kids from these excellent schools who went onto Oxbridge were known as “Stains” by the silver spoon brigade tells us all we need to know !
Went up to Oxford 1969; four of my peers studying Eng. Lit & Lang were working class Grammar School educated lads. Very smart. All went on to good jobs. Two as teachers. All agreed Grammar Schools a huge helop to them
Grammar schools provided a route to self improvement as did the proper technical colleges. Comprehensives do not.
Grammar school boy here, work for an SME. We’re an eclectic bunch, AFAIK no-one from an especially deprived background, but no-one from an especially privileged one either. I think we’re broadly here, earning decent money, on brainpower and hard work, and the bosses are generally the smartest and most productive. I guess most of us had stable families. Perhaps we’re an outlier.
“Britain’s arts scene is as woefully woke as ever”
Woke is supposed to be about equity, which can only guarantee that we all end up at the lowest common denominator.
Absolutely spot on, Neil. You end up with rubbish art. Emperor’s New Clothes art. Equity is a nonsense word in this regard. The woke community have taken a few words such as equity, inclusivity and diversity and basically weaponised them so that these three words, so redolent of the French Revolution’s ‘Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité’ now play a massive part in business, arts, sport, and politics….to your peril if you do not play along. You dilute the talent to please the less talented because that’s ‘fair’ rather than deal with the education and skills transfer aspects so that the less talented can earn their place. You include everyone to provide an entirely skewed perspective on reality because it’s ‘fair’. I have no problems with anyone of any race, colour, religion, sexual orientation etc of taking their place but only if or when they are worthy of that place due to their own efforts and abilities like all fo us, not because of some unwritten rules. And when they reach their goals, they act as inspiration to the others who follow, because they want to be better and more talented not because it’s ‘fair’.
“The Sunday Times has an extract from Anthony Seldon’s new biography of Boris Johnson revealing what really went on in Number during the first lockdown.”
Yes, of course this will be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
“Net zero fuel failure triggers train chaos across South West”
So, will this effect E10 petrol for cars?
Maybe why it was released in the winter months? because they know the algae will become a problem when the temperature picks up?
Curious!
Curious couple of lines in the report:
…it is understood that engines were blocked by algae, which forms “organic growths” in train fuel tanks. The algae forms if biofuel sits unused for a period of time and is not treated with chemical additives…. Engineers are racing to flush fuel tanks and potentially fill them with standard diesel instead.’
1) I bet the additives are fossil fuel based (!) and 2) wot, not replacing with more ‘clean’ ecofuel then??
I was under the impression that the E10 just has a greater percentage of Ethanol. But as Ethanol is usually derived from Corn, we are growing food, then processing it and using it to power cars.
Feel free to correct me as I’m a bit sketchy on this.
What it’s derived from depends where you are. Corn (Maize) mostly used in the USA, Sugar in Brazil, Wheat (animal grade) in the UK. But the source is not the problem. When moist air comes into contact with the fuel, some of the ethanol mixes with the water, whereas the rest of the mix doesn’t, so it’s possible to end up with water/ethanol junk in the system, at the bottom of a container. If that gets sucked into the system, you’ve had it. Apparently the “shelf life” of E10 is only about 90 days.
The fuel which includes plant based material also rusts in internal components of engines. Small engines which are not used regularly are particularly at risk of rapid wear, such as mowers, chain saws etc.
One solution is to only use new petrol but that raises the question what to do with the remaining old stock. Also an inhibiter can be used but it too has an expiry date. 2-D oil additive is also recommended to be used when fresh.
What all this leads to is worn out engines and/or discarded fuel. Green, eh?
“The U.N.’s conflation of words with violence is dangerous“ The image above of the handgun hidden within the loudhailer and the words ‘It’s not just a comment’ has to be one of the most Orwellian images I have seen so far. It’s basically saying ‘Speech is not free’. Large unaccountable international organisations full of unelected bureaucrats many of whom are probably still ambitious ex-politicians or thwarted politicians, wanting to impose their ideas, making grandstanding virtuous pronouncements which then get filtered down to the country level and aimed at the masses…What could go wrong? The true violence is the way in which we are being silenced. And slowly herded into our future, no, THEIR future. We must resist, not comply, and be free – I won’t use the words ‘civil disobedience’ here as they imply that we are somehow being naughty and have transgressed. We haven’t. They have.
Instead of civil disobedience how about we civilly frustrate their dystopian plan?
Spot on Aethelred
Happy St George’s Day! I celebrate my ‘Englishness’ because there is much to celebrate about it. I consider myself more English than any other even though I have a lot of Scottish, some Irish and Welsh, and no doubt other, bloods in me too. I love this country for the humour, the pubs, the quirky eccentrics it has produced, the folk music, rock music, the landscape, the old architecture, the politeness, the coastlines, the fact that it was this country that set the ball rolling in the anti-slavery movement, our common law and so much more and our ability to not give up but to continue our fight when the odds are against us. It is not because of a perverse sense of superiority over others, a nationalist stance. It is not easy to pinpoint what it is to be English but I feel there is something in the ability for self-deprecation, modesty and tolerance – maybe it’s that last one that could be our undoing, I don’t know, but it’s a good attribute to have. And yes, there are some who don’t have these qualities but they are relatively few. If you travel about the country, you will more likely meet good, kind people. And I know I could probably go into a pub with many of you and have a pint, a laugh and a chinwag and that we can agree or disagree with humour and courtesy and part friends. Anyway, just some Sunday morning musings….Gawd bless yer all!
..cheers Aethelred…I was thinking about having a ‘dry’ day…ah well, the best laid plans….LOL!
Thanks Aethelred. Lovely words and much appreciated.
Most welcome, HP, and Gums. Actually, I have subsequently learned that our patron saint should be St Edmund and the original flag of ancient England was a white dragon on a red background. This was the dragon slain by St George!
Well this is interesting….
https://www.emerald.tv/p/did-the-fda-just-admit-that-it-overdosed?utm_source=direct&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Two days ago, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) made some monumental changes in the COVID vaccine schedule in the proverbial dead of night that should concern everyone.
The FDA essentially revoked the authorization for all previously licensed COVID vaccines. It’s the end of the old “monovalent” doses. The FDA also cut the dosage for all the new “bivalent” vaccinations by 75%.
So what ‘new’ data is informing this decision? Worth a read….
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/the-mob-fear-and-the-new-totalitarianism/
How the Davis Deviants are winding up and using mob tactics to destroy societies.
I think this is a double read.
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/the-guardian-goes-from-badge-to-worse-with-its-slavery-slurs/
The Groan is going after football club badges in its campaign against slavery but not realising that it’s own masthead uses Guardian Egyptian type.
Firkin marvellous.
Both clubs founded long after slavery was ended by the UK. 1894 for City, early 20th C for United. City founded originally by a Vicar’s daughter, to provide sport for working people. Obvs all HUGE supporters of slavery. As were the railway workers of Newton Heath FC, who were to morph into United a while after they went bust.
If British citizens are enjoying time off for good behaviour in Spain will they receive UK emergency alerts today?
It seems like nearly nobody received the emergency alerts even on UK territory. Massive incompetence or?
They just changed the headline from ‘fails to go off on all phones’ to ‘on some (most…?!?) phones’. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/04/23/emergency-alert-phones-live-updates-london-marathon/
As Mrs B. just said, the really worrisome thing is that this massive failure and display of incompetence doesn’t surprise us at all.
World beating my a*se.
But luckily for Brits, it’s currently going downhill in all other countries as well.
Saw earlier that the bill for todays test was, wait for it…£22 million…
Worth every penny if it saves lives from tornado’s and avalanches…
£22 million?
That’s BS. What that figure tells us is that another £22 million was stolen from British taxpayers and went in to the pockets of our so-called elites. For accounting purposes it will be logged as ‘Emergency Alerts,’ but that us simply cover for stealing.
Seriously?
The test was successful for me because I did not receive the alert.
JC wrapping up on the SARS-Cov-2 topic, apparently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpdTQbiflYU
YOU WILL GO NOWHERE AND BE HAPPY
The age of “cheap flights” is over, Bloomberg reported this week. They go on to say that the cost of flying to Europe from the UK has already increased by over 30%, and that’s not just a temporary bounce thanks to the “pandemic”.
Tellingly, the article does not in any way consider this a bad thing – indeed, it goes out of its way to celebrate the passing of the age of “absurdly cheap” air travel.
This is all due to climate change, apparently, since airlines have to “decarbonise” they are being “forced” to increase their prices. Under European rules, airlines have to pay for their carbon emissions, and the price per unit is set to increase a lot over the next couple of years. Meaning air travel in Europe – and potentially the rest of the world – is going to keep getting more and more expensive.
This is all part of the Great Reset, clearly. The thinking behind lockdowns, and the Covid narrative in general, was about making our world smaller – physically AND conceptually – boxing people in and keeping them separate. Lowering people’s expectations of freedom and standard of living, whilst at the same time telling them it’s all for the greater good.
Oddly, the cost of flying in the US is also increasing rapidly, but for (allegedly) totally different reasons. It’s weird how much that happens recently.
From, “Our Week in the New Normal” at Off-G.
Thanks, HP. We must fight these barstewards and get our world back because they are lesser people and do not deserve it!