News Round-Up

• “Army scraps live-fire drills to save money” – Hundreds of troops have been told exercises are halted until at least April to save money, says the Telegraph.
• “Badenoch vows to use benefit clampdown to get Britain ready for war” – Kemi Badenoch has warned that “conflict is coming” and said Britain needed to act now, as she set out Tory plans to divert billions from welfare into rebuilding the UK’s defences, reports the Mail.
• “Putin warns Russians they must be ‘prepared for anything’” – President Putin has hinted at escalating his war against Ukraine, telling Russians they must be ready for any eventuality, reports the Mail.
• “Andy Burnham’s premiership is already dead in the water” – A financial tsunami is heading for Britain, threatening to sweep away Andy Burnham’s premiership before it even gets started, warns Allister Heath in the Telegraph.
• “Burnham will soon be in a worse position than when Liz Truss and I were in office” – At least we had a growth strategy when the bond markets were tumultuous in 2022, says Kwasi Kwarteng in the Telegraph. This Prime Minister doesn’t.
• “Reform will save £100 billion in first 100 days in office” – Reform’s Treasury Spokesman Robert Jenrick has pledged to slash £50 billion from welfare, cut a further £20–30 billion from other departments and reduce debt interest as part of a sweeping fiscal plan, reports the Telegraph.
• “Reform promises tax-free buy-to-let homes” – Reform has pledged to deliver tax-free new homes in a bid to revive the buy-to-let market and boost housebuilding, says the Telegraph.
• “Child rapists could be among thousands of offenders to be freed early” – Analysis has found that buggery convictions were not among the offences excluded from early release under Labour’s prison release scheme, reports the Mail.
• “Dangerous knife criminals are being let loose on streets” – Sir Mark Rowley claims that courts are not sending repeat offenders to jail because prisons are overcrowded, according to the Telegraph.
• “Middlesbrough schools to close over fears of disorder at joyrider funeral” – Schools in Middlesbrough are shutting their doors ahead of the funeral of one of the A66 joyriders amid serious concerns about violent disorder, says the Telegraph.
• “Swinney refuses to rule out early release for thugs who attack women” – John Swinney has refused to say whether violent thugs who attack women should be kept off the streets by being denied bail or early release, reports the Mail.
• “Sarwar enters House of Lords despite calling for it to be abolished” – Former Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar has taken his seat in the House of Lords despite having previously called for the institution to be scrapped, says the Mail.
• “Miliband is proving even more dangerous as our Foreign Secretary” – The revolutionary zeal that drove the Net Zero crusade has been redirected towards dismantling Britain’s relationship with the Jewish state, warns Jake Wallis Simons in the Telegraph.
• “Harriet Harman has just revealed why Labour women don’t reach the top” – Meritocracy is the best way for ladies and ethnic minorities to succeed, not ‘wokeness’, says Lara Brown in the Telegraph.
• “BBC crew attacked by people smuggler near Calais” – A BBC cameraman required stitches after being struck above the eye with a rock by a people smuggler at a camp near Calais, reports the Telegraph.
• “Burnham says work with France to stop Channel boats ‘clearly working’” – Andy Burnham claims that Anglo-French efforts to cut Channel crossings are “clearly working”, according to the Mail.
• “France isn’t Britain’s friend” – Behind the diplomatic courtesy, France has always viewed Britain as just one neighbour among many – and often not the most important, writes David Frost in the Telegraph.
• “Marine Le Pen’s Muslim headscarf ban is popular, not populist” – In the Spectator, Gavin Mortimer argues that Le Pen’s controversial pledge to ban women from wearing Muslim headscarves if she wins the French presidency reflects genuine public opinion rather than political opportunism.
• “UEFA accused of Infantino ‘smear campaign’ by FIFA” – FIFA has accused UEFA of a “smear campaign” against it in a further escalation of the sport’s civil war, reports the Telegraph.
• “Caribbean envoys to present slavery reparation demands to King” – Envoys from Jamaica and other former British colonies are set to petition the King next week to support their campaign for compensation for the slave trade, says the Telegraph.
• “The historical facts the slave reparation lobby doesn’t want you to hear” – In the Telegraph, Robert Tombs details the inconvenient history of African rulers as willing participants in the slave trade – and what it means for the modern reparations debate.
• “The unsaid truth about suicide” – To suggest that suicide is wrong makes some campaigners shudder in horror, writes Cosmo Landesman in the Spectator.
• “Caught pushing an apocalyptic scenario they knew couldn’t occur, climate scientists are now claiming their policies prevented it” – A clique of stealth activists, including a former head of the National Academies of Science, kept pushing high-emissions scenarios long after they had been debunked – and are now taking credit for averting the very disaster they knew was unlikely, says Michael Shellenberger on the Public Substack.
• “Why Net Zero policies risk human catastrophe and carbon dioxide doesn’t” – In the Daily Wire, Angela Wheeler argues that extreme climate scenarios have exaggerated the case for Net Zero, while ignoring CO₂’s benefits and the risks of costly energy policies.
• “How dare you – Doom Pixie and your political pals!?!” – Who gave climate activists and their political allies the right to strip ordinary people of their living standards, aspirations and loved ones, asks Paul Driessen in Watts Up With That?
• “Don’t blame climate change for the Himalayan flash flood” – In the Spectator, Matt Ridley argues that the tragic Himalayan flash flood was caused by a chunk of mountain collapsing into a narrow gorge rather than by climate change, cautioning against rushing to assign blame before the full facts are clear.
• “Antarctic ice melt has contributed less than 1cm to sea level rise in the last 30 years” – A new study reports Antarctic Ice Sheet glacier melt has added a grand total of 0.74 cm to sea levels from 1992-2020, writes David Russell at NoTricksZone. The authors apparently consider this amount − +0.26 mm/yr of meltwater equivalent − deeply alarming.
• “El Niño is being supersized before our eyes, scientists warn” – El Niño is “firmly established” and set to intensify into a very strong event in the coming months, according to the Mail.
• “Greens face legal fight after trans activist elected as female rep” – The Green Party is facing a fresh legal challenge after a biologically male trans activist was elected to a position designed to boost female representation on one of its most powerful internal bodies, reports the Times.
• “The harms from lockdowns we’re still seeing to this day” – On the Leaders on the Frontier podcast, Dr Jay Bhattacharya says the US and Canadian lockdowns were a disaster, while Sweden’s no-lockdown approach led to negative excess deaths, no learning loss and far fewer long-term harms.

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