- “The Covid Inquiry is a continuation of the Brexit drama” – In the Spectator, Oliver Johnson suggests a need for a more constructive examination of the pandemic response beyond political drama.
- “Boris Johnson was right to say the NHS was not overwhelmed” – Boris was right to point out that the NHS was not overwhelmed during Covid, and his advisers were wrong not to heed him, says Fraser Nelson in the Spectator.
- “Boris was right – older people should have been given a choice over lockdown” – It is difficult to recall now the shock of learning that it had become a crime for children to ‘hug’ their grandparents, writes Janet Daley in the Telegraph.
- “The Covid Inquiry: ‘Kafkaesque nightmare doesn’t begin to explain it’” – On Substack, UsForThem provides the next instalment of their Covid Inquiry coverage.
- “The Covid Inquiry is a liberal-elite whitewash” – The Covid Inquiry has exposed the shallowness and mendacity of the U.K. establishment, says Fraser Myers in Spiked.
- “Excess mortality: What does the ‘Place of Death’ tell us?” – On Substack, Prof. Carl Heneghan and Dr. Tom Jefferson continue their investigation into excess mortality since the pandemic.
- “Covid lockdowns were a giant experiment. It was a failure” – A key lesson of the pandemic was that ‘shutting things down’ didn’t stop the virus, and keeping schools closed didn’t save kids’ lives, write Joe Nocera and Bethany McLean in New York magazine.
- “As the German Health Ministry drowns in millions of unwanted vaccine doses” – Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach is begging Germans to please, please line up for their fifth jab, says Eugyppius on Substack. There aren’t many takers.
- “Does New York City 2020 make any sense?” – On Substack, the team at PANDA Uncut outline eight different reasons why they think the data surrounding the 2020 spring mortality wave in NYC might be incorrect.
- “Another doctor dares to challenge tyranny” – Physicians who dare to tell the truth about COVID-19 and the COVID-19 vaccines are up against some powerful money, says Colleen Huber in the Epoch Times.
- “The Wuhan cover-up: Scientists lied as people died” – Four years on, we know that Anthony Fauci conspired with virologists to deceive the public and label critics ‘conspiracy theorists’, writes Paul D. Thacker on Substack.
- “WHO ‘International Health Regulations’ amendments: Letters for Health Secretary and your local MP” – The team at Together has compiled some template letters you can send to the Health Secretary, Steve Barclay, and to your local MP to oppose the WHO’s proposed ‘International Health Regulations’.
- “Pro-Palestine vandals smash windows of a Starbucks in Yorkshire” – A gang of pro-Palestine vandals smashed the windows of a Starbucks in Yorkshire after calling for a boycott of businesses accused of supporting Israel, reports the Mail.
- “Police ‘got it wrong’ when officers tore down posters of Israeli hostages, forces say” – The GMP Chief Constable has admitted that police in Manchester “got it wrong” when they removed posters of Israeli hostages from parts of the city, reports the Telegraph.
- “The tragic death of Labour Zionism” – Labour’s historic Zionist instincts have faded, writes Richard Johnson in UnHerd.
- “How campus became a safe space for antisemitism” – Decades of demonising Israel have allowed the oldest hatred to flourish in British universities, says Joanna Williams in Spiked.
- “The genocidal logic of academic ideology” – A civilisational darkness has emerged from America’s higher education institutions, writes Jacob Howland in City Journal.
- “Nigel Farage’s Coutts and NatWest woes sees the term ‘debanking’ added to the English dictionary” – ‘Debanking’ has been added to the English dictionary following Nigel Farage’s high-profile row with Coutts and NatWest, reports the Mail.
- “Europe is in the grip of a birth rate crisis – and Britain is heading the same way” – The U.K.’s fertility rate is in decline, but a better childcare system and more affordable housing would enable more young people to become parents, writes Polly Dunbar in the Telegraph.
- “‘Tiredness on all sides’ over war in Ukraine, Italian PM tells prank caller” – The Italian PM Giorgia Meloni told a prank caller there was “a lot of tiredness” over the war in Ukraine and that she had some ideas on how to “find a way out”, reports the Guardian.
- “In defence of the office romance” – In the wake of Philip Schofield’s ‘unwise but not illegal’ relationship with a much younger employee, ITV has issued a new policy. And it’s bad, says Esther Watson in the Spectator.
- “Britain’s largest steelworks to cut 3,000 jobs in Net Zero push” – Three quarters of roles at Tata Steel’s Port Talbot mill face the axe in a switch to electric furnaces, reports the Telegraph.
- “Edenbridge Guy: Effigy of Sadiq Khan to go up in flames” – A giant effigy of Sadiq Khan is set to be burnt at a Kent town’s bonfire over anger at the Ulez expansion, says the BBC.
- “Why wind power won’t cut our energy bills” – Ignore the misinformation from the green lobby; Net Zero is a financial catastrophe, writes James Woudhuysen in Spiked.
- “Ding-DONG! Another wake-up call for wind enthusiasts” – In the Argonautica Blog, Barry Norris discusses Orsted’s (formerly DONG) recent $4 billion impairment of its U.S. offshore wind assets.
- “Documentary: A Climate Conversation” – The Heartland Institute presents A Climate Conversation, a new documentary that rejects the climate of extremism in favour of a constructive debate on climate change.
- “Scottish feminists lose appeal on definition of ’woman’” – A Scottish court has issued its verdict in an appeal hearing on the meaning of “sex” in the Equality Act – and it‘s not good, according to UnHerd.
- “Waleshe/he” – The Welsh Assembly has decided that ‘a woman is a woman’, even if she is not a woman, says Prof. Roger Watson in the New Conservative.
- “When did we change our minds about Little Britain?” – In the Spectator, Gareth Roberts is troubled by the condemnation of the previously popular show, Little Britain.
- “The Academy’s ‘inclusion standards’ are a disaster for cinema” – The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences forcing filmmakers to meet diversity quotas will stifle artistic freedom, argues Maren Thom in Spiked.
- “Bud Light brewer to make $1 billion payout in wake of trans backlash” – The owner of Budweiser and Corona is to hand investors $1 billion in a bid to restore confidence after its catastrophic wrong turn with Dylan Mulvaney, reports the Telegraph.
- “BLM activist jailed after spending money she raised for youth group on herself” – An organiser of a Black Lives Matter protest has been jailed for two and a half years for using her profile to raise money for a charity and then spending it on herself, reports the Telegraph.
- “Fraudulent BLM activists hoodwinked the British establishment” – Lessons must be learnt from the era of BLM-mania, and attempts to frame Britain as irredeemably racist should never be tolerated again, says Rakib Ehsan in the Telegraph.
- “Grievance training” – Academia’s narrative about ‘land appropriation’ and ‘cultural genocide’ is not only dubious factually, it also offers a justification for revenge against certain groups, argue Dorian S. Abbot and Casey B. Mulligan in City Journal.
- “Extraordinarily powerful images showing the failure of modelling” – On X, Matt Ridley has reproduced startling evidence of the failure of modelling to accurately predict outcomes during the Covid pandemic.
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“Sweden did particularly well on public debt, limiting its rise as a share of GDP to only 6.2 percentage points – compared to 19 in the U.S. and 22 in Britain.”
Why do you think Swedes having fewer savings or more loans, than people in the US or UK is a good thing?
For every unit of public debt, there is a private financial asset. In fact the private financial asset is what causes the public debt. If that financial asset was spent instead, the public debt would automatically disappear as the spending flow passed tax points.
And given that in all those nations – Sweden, the UK and the US – paying interest on public debt is a policy choice, why does it matter how big savings are. Are savings not a positive thing to hold now?
Public debt is essentially government debt, not individuals’ savings or assets. Government debt is definitely not a desired thing, look at Greece etc. It’s public only in so much as the taxpayers will have to pay it off but it’s the government that causes it with their magic money trees. Having a GDP to debt ratio of over or around 100% like many countries now do is not a healthy position to be in.
How do I go about locating my share of the private financial assets that match my share of the public debt?
Warning MMT idiocy above.
The fundamental problem is that the government issues debt mainly to consume, not to invest. We’ll have to pay for it someway, whether it’s through higher taxes, inflation eroding the value of the nominal portion of government debt, or a default.
All the data shows beyond doubt that the lockdown sceptics were right. The mainstream narrative hasn’t caught up yet but in time it will. Right now there are too many who have staked their reputations on one of the greatest follies in modern history. It will take some time before they will admit to their mistake, quite possibly years, but it is nonetheless inevitable. The truth always comes out in the end. You cannot suppress it forever.
The truth always comes out in the end. Totalitarianism only lasts as long as the lies can be maintained. Once the truth is out, totalitarianism becomes unsustainable.
We must continue to shine light into dark places.
That’s a lovely thought, but does truth always come out in the end? In my experience, no one ever admits they were wrong and the other person was right. Just doesn’t happen. People would rather twist themselves into a pretzel to avoid having to admit that they were ill informed, logically bereft, driven by fear and emboldened by how clever they thought they were. But, hey, I’m ready and willing to be proved wrong. Those ready to apologise for calling us all wrong and worse, please form a neat orderly queue to submit your mea culpas. You’ll excuse me if I doubt any one will turn up.
To quote Charlie Brown, “gee that would be neat”
There is, as yet, no ‘truth’ about the 911 bombings in New York of the World Trade Centre, despite there being more holes in the official narrative than in my aertex underpants, and if that is too recent for you then what about US banks supporting the Nazi war production, the foreknowledge of the Japanese fleet approaching Pearl Harbor, and Truman’s insistence on bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki despite the Japanese desperately trying to surrender.
It is not in the interest of those culpable for some of the worst crimes in human history to admit the truth unless they were the losers, hence the Nuremberg War Trials.
And when the truth is in danger of coming out there is always the out of court settlement á la Pfizer (other criminal enterprises are also available) with suppression of the details so as not to frighten the horses, so to speak. After all, would anyone in their right mind buy drugs from a convicted criminal who lives beyond the law has a track record of flouting regulations and bribing politicians and regulatory bodies [it is call lobbying but if you or I was to try it we would be convicted of bribery and corruption – and don’t forget the power of the ‘revolving door’ between Big Pharma and the FDA.]
‘The Big Lie’ – Joseph Goebbels 1897 – 1945
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
“It’s now clear that the Covid doomsayers got Sweden completely wrong. “
It was clear from the start. And they didn’t get it wrong, they lied about it because it made them look bad. It was politics – very dirty, dark politics.
WT*
Please repeat after me
‘THERE WAS NO PANDEMIC’
Pretty obvious I’d say – using the good old fashioned common sense that seems to be as easy to find as rocking horse shit these days.
“since it’s not even clear that lockdowns are a net positive for public health.”. Confused by the lack of certainty in this statement; how can locking people in their homes, depriving them of exercise, depriving them of social interaction, increasing dependencies on alcohol, increasing weight gain, increasing stress, destroying relationships, depriving children of education, forcing millions into poverty, creating an NHS backlog so big it’ll take a decade to recover from etc, ever be seen as anything other than a 100% net negative for public health? You’d have to be unhinged to even consider this.
Sweden has always been the beacon for others to follow suit which they didn’t.
It’s a shame Sweden changed their Prime Minister recently who brought in unnecessary stricter controls.
Unfortunately that probably means that Swedish millionaires were less enriched than UK.
Ireland saw a 78 point drop in Investment, whatever that means. However in comparison to other countries, its pretty stark.
What is going on there then?
Global agreement on Corporation Tax.
I am saying this since the start, that the rise in public debt has to be subtracted from the headline GDP and growth numbers to assess the true economic damage in a country.
And I didn’t need an economics professorship to come at that not-at-all -perhaps conclusion.
The conspiracy theorist in me thinks that they were allowed more leeway and freedom and less economic and societal damage, because they were already so communitarian and on board of the no cash/digital ID agenda.
They probably got a Greta bonus as well.
They’ve probably been too successful though, hence the more recent, totally pointless, restrictions etc..
It’s certainly an interesting question. On paper, at the start of the pandemic Sweden likely wouldn’t have been among the top picks if you had to guess which EU country would buck the trend of authoritarian lockdowns.
The state is fairly large in Sweden and flexes its muscles more often than in other countries, as anyone who has navigated buying alcohol through Systembolaget would have experienced. Digital ID through “Bank ID” (no attempt to even try and disassociate it from the banking system) has been ubiquitous here for a while now.
I have tried to pinpoint how it happened that Sweden was the one sane country and I think there is a bit of luck mixed in with a sensible government structure and a couple of additional factors.
Luck in that Tegnell was the right man in charge as State Epidemiologist at the right time. There are certainly other prominent scientists here who would have gleefully taken the country down a completely different route and would have had the authority to do so.
Structure in that early on, the coupling of health and politics was largely avoided (less so in recent times unfortunately) and this allowed Tegnell to stick to known epidemiological principles without the interference of ministers political point scoring or ass covering.
Additional factors would perhaps be a sense of Swedish exceptionalism that allowed the public to be proud that they were flying the anti-lockdown flag alone and thus broadly supported the light touch measures. Perhaps also, of all the EU countries, Sweden has historically had a frosty diplomatic relationship with China and possibly within government key people didn’t buy the initial Wuhan narrative. Who knows for sure though.
I see the temptation to view the situation through the conspiracy lens regarding the existing digital framework but I think that is hopefully incorrect.
Italian Teacher In CRITICAL CONDITION After Setting Himself on Fire In Protest Of The Country’s Vaccine Mandate
https://thecovidworld.com/italian-teacher-in-critical-condition-after-setting-himself-on-fire-in-protest-of-the-countrys-vaccine-mandate/
Could this be the start of the European Spring
Shame China figures were not included by The Economist.
No one knows what they are.
Why are people still talking about Sweden as not locking down? Other than the Spring of 2020, it hasn’t been much better than it’s neighbors in terms of restrictions.
Huge price of pandemic is laid bare as taxpayer faces £10BILLION hit on PPE deals – including £115m for ports storage because we had too much – while £50m of ‘unsuitable’ medical kit and £350k of fruit and veg for schools was just thrown away
All together now:NEVER LET THE TRUTH SPOIL A GOOD STORY!!!
This is a very bizarre list. Slovenia and Chile – really?
& the Economist criteria are odd. Not unemployment or inflation? The GDP scores are presumably 2020 & 2021. The IMF predictions for 2022 are for the UK to be the fastest growing economy in the G7 – due to our opening up.
The very latest figs show Germany 2% below pre pandemic level and UK 1.5% above.
Worth bearing in mind that despite showering money during the pandemic the UK still quite a low level of debt-GDP in the G7. Much lower than: Japan, Italy, France & the US.
But higher than Germany and I think Canada.
GDP is one of the bigger nonsense stats there is.
As with Florida, it was not incumbent for Sweden to prove their approach was better but simply that it was not significantly worse. They have proved this in spades.
Remember that those who smeared Anders Tegnell as ‘far right’ are the same fools who fulsomely support Trudeau.
Sweden failed because there were a few countries that had a lower death count. That’s how success is determined these days isn’t it?
If you’re looking for hope from Scandinavia then I suggest you look elsewhere. I lived there and they are fine people with fine countries. Solzhenitsyn said that there is good and bad in all people but he never met a bad Estonian. This is how I feel about the Nordic folk. On an intellectual level they look to us for guidance, the best of them. Anglophiles who thought that we kept alive a nobler tradition. The best hope does lie in the English language. Never allow the fine old English art of taking the piss to disappear.
If science can’t be questioned it’s not science anymore. It’s propaganda. They want to rip on people for taking Ivermectin. I researched and saw the evidence on the internet. Research papers are on the internet for those who wants to see. Top respected world doctors are being under defamation by MSM and vaccine manufacturers. I won’t back down recommeding IVM. You can get yours by visiting https://ivmpharmacy.com
Ooops pressed the wrong button sorry
Can we please sack every member of SAGE and PHE and recruit Anders Tegnell.
I find it absolutely astonishing that we’re not looking into how mortality can somehow drop by 8%. That’s a phenomenal figure, that can’t just be handwaved away as a blip.
I’d really appreciate seeing an analysis of who didn’t die, and why. Is this something that we can bottle, or learn from?
Thanks to Sweden for being a reference point for sanity in the insane asylum that was most of the western world. A reference point for future histories.