- “Rishi Sunak faces another by-election as Chris Skidmore quits over new oil and gas licences” – Chris Skidmore, a Net Zero zealot, is the latest Tory MP to resign, thereby giving the Prime Minister another by-election headache, reports the Telegraph. Skidmore’s reason? Legislation that will allow new oil and gas licences in North Sea.
- “Labour prepares to scale back flagship £28 billion green pledge” – Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves fear billions of pounds’ worth of cuts in the Spring budget will leave them with no room for meanoeuvre, reports the Times.
- “This catastrophic flooding reminds us there is nothing natural about rewilding” – Right now what we need is to intervene in nature to protect homes and livelihoods – not pursue some romantic notion of rewilding, says William Sitwell in the Telegraph.
- “The tyrannical cult of Greta Thunberg” – The political elite cannot continue to exploit Greta’s moral immaturity to impose its punishing eco-agenda, argues Kathleen Stock in UnHerd.
- “Horizon scandal: Police investigate Post Office ‘potential fraud’” – More than 700 sub-postmasters across the country were prosecuted in what has been branded the biggest miscarriage of justice in British legal history. Now, the Met has opened an investigation into Post Office grandees, reports the Times.
- “Post Office scandal enrages nation… what till you read what happened” – The villains behind the scandalous persecution of hundreds of innocent sub-postmasters which has been brought to life in a hit ITV drama have not been brought to justice, says Guy Adams in the Mail.
- “The threads that tie the rich and famous to Jeffrey Epstein” – The identities revealed by a New York judge in Wednesday’s documents paint a complex picture of intricate social and professional ties, according to the Telegraph.
- “From presidents to a prince: what we’ve learnt about names on Epstein court files” – Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew, Donald Trump and Stephen Hawking feature in depositions made in a defamation case brought by one of the paedophile financier’s alleged victims, reports the Times.
- “Stephen Hawking: how the ‘flawed genius’ wound up in the Epstein scandal” – The celebrated cosmologist had “human weaknesses” as well as his “more obvious almost supernatural gifts”, says Rosa Silverman in the Telegraph.
- “Keir Starmer ups pressure on police to launch probe into Prince Andrew” – The Metropolitan Police has no plans to open an investigation into Prince Andrew, much to the Labour leader’s consternation, according to the Mail.
- “In praise of Israeli women” – In the Spectator, Julie Burchill says Israeli women know the cost of freedom and what it means to fight, literally, against misogyny.
- “Commons Speaker denies planning to fly Palestinian flag at Parliament” – Sir Lindsay Hoyle, who has been accused of “baffling behaviour”, says he doesn’t have any plans to meet Palestinian officials and fly the Palestinian flag above the Commons in spite of earlier reports, according to the Telegraph.
- “NHS spends £30m a year on health and wellbeing coaches” – Patients’ groups question proliferation of such roles and suggest money would be better spent on recruiting more GPs, says the Telegraph.
- “Flu and Covid pile pressure on hospitals” – NHS England data shows there were nearly 4,000 Covid patients taking up beds in the week to December 31st, up by more than two-thirds since the start of December, reports the Mail. Don’t panic, Mr Mainwaring!
- “Spanish holiday regions reintroduce Covid-mask rules” – The Covid and flu epidemic in Spain has prompted a number of holiday regions to reintroduce obligatory mask-wearing, says the Mail.
- “Smokescreens – Part 4” – Prof. Carl Heneghan and Dr. Tom Jefferson continue their series on influenza in Trust the Evidence.
- “Buying a house not that difficult, says NatWest boss” – Sir Howard Davies, the NatWest Chair, has been accused of being out of touch after his impolitic remarks on the Today programme yesterday, reports the Times.
- “NatWest Chairman Defends Decision to Back Alison Rose in Debanking Scandal” – The NatWest chairman Howard Davies failed to defend his decision to back Alison Rose in his Today interview, according to Guido Fawkes.
- “Sturgeon finally urged to ‘come clean’ over whether she deleted WhatsApp messages” – The former First Minister set to be the star witness at the Covid inquiry in Edinburgh, says the Telegraph.
- “‘Wokeism is destroying the industry’: why modern TV ads are so bad” – Netflix, Amazon and Disney+ are forcing us to watch more and more ads just as ads have become completely unwatchable. What went wrong, asks Stephen Armstrong in the Telegraph.
- “Censors are trying to trick you into thinking Substack has a ‘Nazi problem’” – The “Weimar Fallacy” shows censoring Nazi views can backfire, say Zaid Jilani and Alex Gutentag on Public.
- “Royal Navy forced to advertise for rear-admiral on LinkedIn” – Advert for director of submarines exposes ‘shameful’ recruitment gaps, according to the Times.
- “Firefighters taught biological sex is ‘just a label’ and may ‘run along a spectrum’” – West Sussex Fire and Rescue is training staff on trans and non-binary inclusion and how “white Western cultures” see gender as an either/or choice when, in fact, it’s a spectrum, says Craig Simpson in the Telegraph.
- “Carole Hooven On Harvard’s Existential Crisis” – A Harvard lecturer who lost her job because she told the truth about biology tells Andrew Sullivan her alma mater is suffering an existential crisis.
- “Russia revives Smersh, Stalin’s anti-spy unit made famous by James Bond” – The feared counterintelligence organisation has made a comeback, according to the Times.
- “Biden’s bogus memorialisation of January 6th” – Today, the U.S. President will travel to Pennsylvania to mark the third anniversary of the
minor disturbanceriot on Capitol Hill on January 6th 2021. According to the Spectator’s Freddy Gray, it’s a cynical ploy. - “I’m thankful assisted suicide wasn’t an option when my mother was dying” – Camilla Tominey in the Telegraph says if assisted dying had been available when her mother was on her way out she would have insisted on being flown to a clinic in Switzerland and she’d have missed a special moment at the end of her life.
- “I don’t care who you are, or what your politics are, join this organisation, because they are doing some amazing things!” – In an interview with yours truly, Carl Borg-Neal, who was unfairly dismissed and discriminated against by Lloyds Bank, urges people to join the Free Speech Union, who helped him get justice.
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