- “‘A case study in groupthink’: were liberals wrong about the pandemic?” – Stephen Macedo and Frances Lee’s book argues that aggressive Covid policies such as mask mandates were in some cases misguided, reports the Guardian.
- “Globalism. Warmism. We fell for them both” – In the Mail, Peter Hitchens says that China must laugh at us: it runs a mighty industrial revolution on its huge coal stocks and builds two new coal-fired power stations almost weekly, while we blow ours up.
- “Total CfD Subsidies Hit £10 billion” – As the costs of CfDs hit near record highs in FY2024/25, the outlook is for even higher subsidies, according to David Turver in Eigen Values.
- “Virtual reality: The widely-quoted media experts who are not what they seem” – Press Gazette investigates the national media experts who either do not exist, or whose credentials have not been checked.
- “If ministers can’t get to grips with prisons like Frankland they must resign” – It’s clear there has been a catastrophic breakdown of security at HMP Frankland that cannot be be swept under the carpet, reports the Telegraph.
- “Farage is leading Labour’s policy” – Ross Clark of the Spectator claims that Nigel Farage’s call to nationalise British Steel never made much sense for Reform supporters drawn from the right of the Conservative party.
- “Keir Starmer steels himself for the real battle: Labour v Reform” – Industry is just one of the problems on which the Prime Minister must show his mettle if he is to see off Nigel Farage in the local elections, reports the Times.
- “Speaker accused of ‘acting outrageously’ over private school VAT hike” – The Government launched an “opportunistic” bid to rule out key evidence at the end of the recent landmark judicial review into the controversial tax on school fees, reports the Mail.
- “The foreign nationalities most likely to be arrested for sex offences” – Police made 8,500 arrests of foreign nationals for sexual offences including rape in 2024 and the start of 2025, according to the Mail.
- “Revealed: Secret spy dungeon plan for China’s London ‘super-embassy’” – Planning documents for the controversial embassy on the site of the Royal Mint buildings include “two suites of anonymous unlabelled basement rooms and a tunnel”, reports the Mail.
- “Marine wins libel case against police over false claims by ex-partner” – The West Yorkshire force contacted senior officers in the Royal Marines over allegations about Elliot Kebbie before charging or even speaking to him, reports the Times.
- “Labour is destroying London’s nightlife” – In the Spectator, Tom Bower recalls his adolescence back in the early 1960s and laments the destruction of Soho nightlife.
- “Car bursts into flames at Gatwick Airport” – The BBC reports that access to the North Terminal has now been resumed following a car fire. Another electric car self-combusting?
- “Rayner calls in Army to tackle Birmingham bin crisis” – Military personnel will take up office-based roles to help during strike, according to the Telegraph.
- “Let British Steel deliver the final blow to Red Ed” – Both economically and politically, the green agenda is now a millstone around Labour’s neck, reports the Telegraph.
- “Starmer has ‘lost control of borders’ after record small-boat crossings” – In the Telegraph, Daniel Martin reports that over 650 migrants reached the UK via the Channel on Saturday, taking this year’s total to more than 8,000.
- “Ukraine could be carved up ‘like Germany after World War Two’” – Trump’s envoy, General Keith Kellogg, suggests to the Mail that Western troops could adopt zones of control as part of a ‘reassurance force’, while the Russians could occupy the east of Ukraine.
- “How Sweden’s multi-cultural dream went fatally wrong” – Diamant Salihu tells the Telegraph about the child soldiers, gangs and murders for hire which are blighting the once-peaceful country.
- “Merz’s coalition treaty is an empty, promise-free shell” – The coalition treaty put together by the CDU and SPD parties is decidedly non-committal and unimaginative, writes Katja Hoyer in the Spectator.
- “Trump isn’t bonkers. There’s method in his madness” – Imposing global tariffs in order to level the playing field is an entirely justified intention, says Liam Halligan in the Telegraph.
- “Trump says there will be no tariff exemptions in dramatic move” – the Mail reports that President Donald Trump blasted China in a social media post on Sunday where he said there were no tariff exemptions after electronics were not included in a notice on Friday.
- “Mother banned from playground after complaining about trans identity lessons” – A mother has been told to stay away from her daughter’s school after protesting about lessons on transgender ideology, according to the Telegraph.
- “Court looms for nurses who refused to share changing room with ‘burly bloke’” – NHS nurses branded bigots launch a landmark legal case, reports the Mail.
- “GPs under pressure to give children illegal trans drugs” – according to the Telegraph, family doctors have been reminded that they must refuse requests for puberty blockers.
- “Police force accused of anti-white bias teaches officers about slavery” – West Yorkshire Police has been criticised for spending taxpayers’ money on ‘cultural awareness’ training, says Charles Hymas in the Telegraph.
- “Royal Ballet School chief: plus-sized dancers are the future” – The focus is moving away from the ‘slim’ female fixture of the classical repertoire, says Iain Mackay in the Times.
- “These officers are no better than the Gestapo” – Nick Buckley on X is horrified by footage of police officers telling a man that asking someone to ‘speak English’ is a ‘hate crime’.
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Devastating Covid Jab Harms – latest leaflet to print at home, deliver to neighbours, forward to your bad MP & friends online. Start a local campaign. Deliver 100 leaflets a week (5200 a year). Over 300 leaflet ideas on the link on the leaflet.
Ukraine could be carved up ‘like Germany after World War Two
‘The Times article misrepresents what I said. I was speaking of a post-cease fire resiliency force in support of Ukraine’s sovereignty.
In discussions of partitioning, I was referencing areas or zones of responsibility for an allied force (without US troops).
I was NOT referring to a partitioning of Ukraine.’
General Keith Kellogg
‘I think Ukraine-Russia might be going OK, and you’re going to be finding out pretty soon’
President Trump 13 April
Why?
‘Mr. Trump’s trade measures could inadvertently do more to damage Russia’s ability to fund its war against Ukraine than the West’s systematic imposition of the most comprehensive package of sanctions in modern history…….The price of oil, the lifeline of Russia’s economy and war machine, has fallen nearly 15 percent since Mr. Trump announced the tariffs on April 2′
‘The global markets are “extremely turbulent, tense and emotionally overloaded’
Dmitri S. Peskov
Head of Russia’s central bank, Elvira Nabiullina……the main effect on Russia from Mr. Trump’s policies would be falling oil prices. “There are risks here,”
Why is the outstanding Ukrainian army not yet on the offensive?
“Hardly any large German equipment [provided to Ukraine] was fully suitable for war.”
‘Mars II rocket launchers….were….not compatible with US supplied cluster munitions………modified to only allow missiles fitted with unitary warheads to be fired after Germany joined the cluster munition ban in 2010…….German Leopard 2A6s…….impossible to maintain in the field……Pzh-2000 self-propelled howitzer…….technically so “vulnerable” difficult to maintain that they questioned its suitability for combat.’
Hmmm……..
‘If Ukraine receives $100 billion more this year, Ukraine could probably win the war.’
“You are aware Madame that telling me to go and solve a real crime is a hate crime”
“‘A case study in groupthink’: were liberals wrong about the pandemic?”
Even The Guardian now into wishy-washy recanting. “Covid is an amazing case study in groupthink and the effects of partisan bias” – specialist subject the b. obvious.
“Globalism. Warmism. We fell for them both” – In the Mail, Peter Hitchens says that China must laugh at us…
…Peter Hitchens spells out more of the b. obvious, albeit in a newspaper which wishy-washys don’t read.
“Total CfD Subsidies Hit £10 billion”
Another £10 billion wishy-washied away on the medieval solution to 21st-century energy supply.
Suffer little billpayers and ye shall appease the wind gods.
“Royal Ballet School chief: plus-sized dancers are the future” – The focus is moving away from the ‘slim’ female fixture of the classical repertoire…
…Stand by for a revival of Tchaikovsky’s long-lost “Dance of the Sugar-Pig Fairies.”
Woops – posted mine without reading yours. Great minds… There’s a whole hidden repertoire out there.
The Stagecracker?
The Stage-breaker?!
With a supporting company of fairy elephants. Jumbo in a tutu will be a sight for sore eyes.
A case study in groupthink’: were liberals wrong about the pandemic?
Correct…..because, as the new Head of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, Jay Bhattacharya, points out:
‘When I saw the World Health Organization in 2020 say that we have a 3% mortality rate…..They meant that three out of 100 people that had been identified with COVID died from it…….(but) It spreads very, very easily, obviously. It seems likely that many more people have had it than had been identified. Our testing resources weren’t all that good at the time……(in fact) we don’t know the (correct) mortality rate ’cause we don’t know how many people actually had been infected.’
We did one (serial prevalence study) in Los Angeles County and we did one in Santa Clara County…..the numbers we got were that it was 0.2%. So two out of 1,000 mortality rate……’
The key point…….Up to that point, the strategy, the idea was that if we could find all of the cases of it, test enough, isolate the people that have it so they don’t pass the disease on, then we’ll suppress the disease down to zero. That worked, I think, with SARS one, it worked with Ebola……The problem is that if you have a situation in mid April, 2020, where 3, 4% of large Metro centers had evidence of the disease already, you know the disease is very, very infectious, that’s a strategy that cannot work.
At that point what folks should have realized, including folks like Fauci and the CDC should have realized, is that a strategy to stop the disease from spreading down to zero was not possible.’
‘There’s now a whole bunch of these seroprevalence studies have been done that replicate from around the world what we found. The typical finding……is that for people that are under the age of 70, there’s…..99.95% survival after infection.
Jay Bhattacharya Oct 2021
So:
‘Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor of Florida, moved to re-open physical schools quickly, which progressives characterized as irresponsible……Yet in the end there was “no meaningful difference” in Covid mortality rates between Democratic and Republican states in the pre-vaccine period, according to CDC data cited in the book, despite Republican states’ more lenient policies.
Macedo and Lee also favorably compare Sweden, which controversially avoided mass lockdowns but ultimately had a lower mortality rate than many other European countries.’
‘We need to make sure these institutions are in the best possible working order to face the challenges ahead. And we think that’s by being honest, not by covering over mistakes or being unwilling to face up to hard questions’
“Our testing resources weren’t all that good at the time…”
There is still no effective test for the C1984 so Bhattacharya needs to update his knowledge. In reality the C1984 was just re-badged ‘flu.
‘….we’d had a lot of independent labs that checked the validity of the test kit, and we found… I think it was a small error, 0.5%, in the false-positive rate, but we have these statistical methods to adjust for this, right? It’s an interesting statistical question, but it’s not something that was gonna invalidate the results of our study, which were published, by the way, in the “International Journal of Epidemiology.”
We have 3,000 people that we sampled in Santa Clara County. 50 of them were positive. Now, we had to do some waiting because there were too many people coming from richer parts than the poorer parts. That’s how we got the 2.8% prevalence. But anyways, we had 50 out of 3,000 positive. Okay, Stanford made us bring those 50 people back into the lab, even though that was part of our original protocol, and test them; that means draw blood from them; and have them tested using the pathologist test kit rather than the test kit we used, on the premise that the pathologist test kit was completely accurate and ours was crap. He found that, of those 50, 35 out of those 50 were positive on his test kit. Now, let’s say his test kit is 100% accurate. Well, what that means is that we have 15 people that we identified as positive that he identified as negative. False positives, right?…..Which is a 0.5% error rate…….’
Jay Bhattacharya May 2023
‘The SARS‑CoV‑2 & Flu A/B Rapid Antigen Test is a rapid chromatographic immunoassay for the simultaneous qualitative detection and differentiation of the nucleocapsid protein antigens of SARS‑CoV‑2, Influenza virus A, and Influenza virus B in human nasopharyngeal swab samples. This test is intended as an aid in the differential diagnosis of SARS‑CoV‑2, Influenza virus A, and Influenza virus B infections in individuals suspected of respiratory viral infections consistent with COVID‑19 or Influenza by their healthcare provider within the first 6 days of symptom onset. This product is intended for professional use in laboratory and near‑patient testing environments.’
‘Methods: The performance of the InstaView COVID-19/Flu Ag Combo Test, which was designed to simultaneously detect the SARS-CoV-2, influenza A, and influenza B viruses, was analytically and clinically evaluated. Results: The InstaView COVID-19/Flu Ag Combo Test exhibited robust detection capabilities, accurately identifying SARS-CoV-2, influenza A, and influenza B viruses over a wide concentration range (1.41 × 103 to 7.05 × 104 TCID50/mL). Extensive testing against potential cross-reactants and interferences yielded no false-positive results, indicating the high specificity of the test. Clinical evaluation further confirmed the kit’s reliability, with sensitivity ranging from 95.1% to 98.2% for SARS-CoV-2, 88.9%-95.2% for influenza A, and 91.7%-100% for influenza B depending on the sample type. The specificity was consistently 100% for all of the targeted viruses.’
Performance evaluation of a SARS-CoV-2 and influenza A/B combo rapid antigen test May 2024
“These officers are no better than the Gestapo” – Nick Buckley on X is horrified by footage of police officers telling a man that asking someone to ‘speak English’ is a ‘hate crime’.
Monty Python alive and ill down the nick.
Are plods given any training these days or just simply stuffed into a uniform? The principal character was a scruffy, over weight, uneducated idiot. Britain’s finest

.
Blackbelt Barrister:
https://youtu.be/rrH1_Q3VUHU?si=jQKpVZh5OLJdTsEG
The man probably did say “speak English” but had to lie about it like a little boy not to get into trouble.
i’ve never actually heard police speak in this way, referring to “hate crimes” – I’ve read about it, but never actually seen it with my own eyes – but it’s really chilling. We’ve entered Orwell’s dystopia and there is no exaggeration in that.
A hate crime is nothing but a totalitarian thought control device.
“Royal Ballet School chief: plus-sized dancers are the future”
At last! A performance of Tchaikovsky’s forgotten ballet Dumbocella!
“Rayner calls in Army to tackle Birmingham bin crisis” – Military personnel will take up office-based roles to help during strike”
Shift a lot off bin bags from behind a desk do they? Ffs get the army clearing up the mess!
No, don’t get the Army doing it. Why should the troops come in and sort out this shit show? Why not use the pension pots of senior council officials to pay waste contractors instead?
An eminently sensible suggestion.
I wouldn’t be at all surprised if 2TK and his deputy are currently looking at emulating Turdeau when he froze the bank accounts of the ‘dissident’ truckers and supporters, saying they were disrupting vital services.
Keir Starmer steels himself for the real battle: Labour v Reform
The voters made up their minds about the PM when he cut winter fuel payments while electricity prices were (still are) through the roof.
Voters probably made their minds up about Mr Farage during the UKIP years.
‘Farage’s income from media appearances, especially Russia Today, increased massively in the period from 2012 to 2018. He set up a limited company “Thorn in the Side” which had an income recorded at £9,737 in 2012. By May 2018, its income had increased to £548,573.’
‘Crypto’ Cotters isn’t helping…….
‘public documents suggest the 31-year-old resides in Montenegro, where he has been accused of laundering cryptocurrency to fund a political party – allegations his lawyers have strongly denied. But he remains active in British politics. Cottrell is seemingly still an unpaid aide to the Reform leader, whose side he is regularly seen at during party events….’
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/dark-money-investigations/george-cottrell-nigel-farage-reform-geostrategy-international-unlimited-company-donations/
“The coalition treaty put together by the CDU and SPD parties is decidedly non-committal and unimaginative, writes Katja Hoyer in the Spectator.”
As with almost every article linked to in DS, I can’t read it so can only go by the headline. What did she expect? Isn’t the main point of the coalition to keep the “far right” out of power and continue the Uniparty policies of Nut Zero, the Great Replacement etc?
Look on the bright side, think of all the time you save by only reading headlines.
Very true! Probably most of the time the content is what one would expect, but I am a bit wary of commenting on things without having read the whole thing. Perhaps I should subscribe to some legacy media but I prefer to give my money to places like DS. Perhaps DS should link more often to the BBC and The Guardian
The good thing about reading such as BBC and Grauniad articles is that we know they are either lies or outright propoganda. Not that my opinion of these outlets is predetermined you understand. Definitely not.
Yes. The News Round-up is hardly a Round-up more a “here are some links to other subscription sites,” which is pointless.
You can usually read it by using the ‘show reader’ function in your browser, or there are other archives available. Not sure how quickly they are updated though, prob 24 hours
Thanks
I totally agree with Aimee Lou Wood here, just because something is supposed to be funny doesn’t mean it is funny, doesn’t mean it isn’t mean.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5yr7yy40j3o
Mean, funny, punching up, punching down all very much in the eye of the beholder. She sounds like one of the professionally offended. “Punching down” is a concept based on some idea that there is a fixed order of things it’s OK to take the piss out of. I don’t subscribe to that idea, because it leads to censorship and the definition of specific “victim” categories that cannot be made fun of.
Some things are objectively mean, by any decent standards, it’s not always merely in the eye of the beholder. For example, there definitely exists clear incidences of bullying, verbal bullying, which are not merely in the eye of the beholder. Nobody is saying SNL should be censored. It should be possible to condemn nasty and unintelligent ‘comedy’ without having to deal with suggestions that your condemnation leads to censorship. Nasty is nasty.
I think it’s pretty easy to slide from your position to cancelling people. You won’t slide, but others will. I simply do not have the energy to worry about what other people think or say about me – at least not this kind of stuff. If I think I have behaved badly I will try to reflect and be better, but I think I should try to refuse to be “offended” – and so should everybody else. Words are words.
A bit like Eddie Izzard – boring is the most complimentary accolade I can offer.