- “Leaked Pentagon report forensically dismantled Fauci-led natural origin study” – Researchers at the Department of Defense wrote a devastating takedown of the Proximal Origin study, which was used by Dr. Anthony Fauci as proof that the COVID-19 virus had come from nature, says Hans Mahncke in the Epoch Times.
- “Pfizer’s new woke face” – Pfizer has weighed in on the upcoming referendum in Australian, urging people to vote ‘Yes’ to the creation of a new advisory body that will speak to Parliament on behalf of the First Peoples, writes Rebekah Barnett in Brownstone.
- “Natures vaccine” – The value of herd immunity in fighting Covid is indisputable, says Joel Zinberg in City Journal.
- “The Woke Health Organisation?” – Authoritarian WHO is now the globalists’ nanny, says Ramesh Thakur in the Spectator Australia.
- “The Covid Royal Commission is nowhere to be seen” – Australia’s Prime Minister is known for emoting and for pursuing nothingburger public policy issues, says Paul Collits in the Spectator Australia.
- “Europe is beginning to turn against the prophets of climate alarmism” – Fraser Nelson in the Telegraph says there are plenty of reasons to be optimistic about the future of the planet. But a generation has been brought up being told to expect environmental disaster and it’s taking a toll on their mental health.
- “The truth about ‘green’ mortgages, the Net Zero product for energy efficient homes” – Big names such as Halifax and Nationwide offer them, but are they a good deal, asks Esther Shaw in the Telegraph.
- “I’ll protect green space from housebuilding, insists Rishi Sunak” – The PM opposes Keir Starmer’s plans for more housebuilding, reports the Times.
- “Britain should get out of the electric vehicle business” – We are not going to be big players in EVs, and there is no point in trying to become one now, says Matthew Lynn in the Spectator.
- “Net Zero’s artificial food crisis paves the way for ‘future foods’” – Net Zero rules employed by the United Nations, the European Union and domestic political parties across the world are expected to cause the imminent shutdown of high-production farmland, or at least significantly reduce its capacity, says Flat White in the Spectator Australia.
- “Montana becomes first state to completely ban TikTok After national security, privacy concerns” – Montana has become the first state to completely ban TikTok, reports the Daily Wire.
- “Aussie comedian faces Human Rights Commission over jokes” – YouTube star Isaac Butterfield has been ordered to appear before the Queensland Human Rights Commission after a single complaint was made about his comedy routine, reports Rebel News.
- “The Left’s disinformation industrial complex” – An editorial from the Washington Examiner takes on disinformation in the wake of the Dunham report, which concluded the story about Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential election was a fabrication.
- “LinkedIn Bans Journalist After Durham Report Posts” – Journalist Ben Sellers has been banned from LinkedIn after he posted a piece saying the New York Times should return its Pulitzer Prize for its reporting on Russian collusion with the Trump campaign in the wake of the Durham report, says Reclaim The Net.
- “BuzzFeed tells investors they plan to launch identity-based AI-generated content” – BuzzFeed says that using AI will allow the company to “rapidly expand content output and increase audience engagement without adding fixed cost”, reports the Post Millennial.
- “It’s not about whiteness, it’s about wealth” – Remi Adekoya and Brendan O’Neill discuss the real roots of racial inequality on the Brendan O’Neill Show.
- “Watching Queen Cleopatra felt like witnessing the death of scholarship” – One of the few things that seems certain about Cleopatra’s early life is that she was a Macedonian Greek, says James Walton in the Spectator. Why then is she being played by a black actress?
- “The war for your child’s soul” – Why do the woke hate Ron DeSantis? Because he’s making it harder for them to control your kids, writes Brendan O’Neill in Spiked.
- “Gender ideology can harm trans people, too” – Doctors are misdiagnosing and mistreating patients by ignoring their biological sex, says Charlotte Blease in Spiked.
- “Bud Light sales crash ‘getting much worse’ in latest week since Dylan Mulvaney fiasco” – The latest industry figures show that Bud Light’s sales slump deepened into May as the fallout from the brand’s engagement with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney continues to hammer Bud Light’s bottom line, says Tyler Durden in Zero Hedge.
- “Bud Light, Budweiser release camo, Harley Davidson limited edition cans as sales continue to plummet” – Anheuser-Busch will launch camouflage and motorcycle-themed beer can redesigns for Bud Light and Budweiser as the multinational conglomerate reels from the Dylan Mulvaney fiasco, according to the Daily Wire.
- “Queer Trans Project sends sex change kits to kids without parental consent” – The ‘build-a-queer-kits’ created by the Queer Trans Project included breast binders, artificial male genitalia, tucking tape, condoms, tampons, and more, reports the Post Millennial.
- “Riley Gaines says liberals are supporting her activism to protect women’s sports: ‘Sick of their own party’” – Riley Gaines tells Fox News about the surprising reaction from liberal women over her advocacy for keeping biological men out of women’s sports.
- “Adidas ‘Pride 2023’ women’s swimsuits appear to be modelled by a man” – Adidas this week launched its ‘Pride 2023’ swimwear collection, advertising bathing suits on its web site in the ‘women’s’ section with the help of a model that appeared to be male, reports the New York Post.
- “Cambridge Footlights launch ‘sensitivity reading’ service” – The Cambridge Footlights – whose alumni include Peter Cook, Clive James and David Mitchell – is now recruiting for a new “sensitivity reading” service to ensure that “all student comedy” is as “inclusive and welcoming as possible”, says Steerpike in the Spectator. Is this satire? Hard to tell.
- “A taste of life under the LibDem woke warriors” – As Sir Keir Starmer waits in the wings to tighten the WEF/UN/WHO garrote throttling the British people, it is likely that he will be aided and abetted through a coalition with the Liberal Democrats, says John Ellwood in TCW.
- “Academia has no future without free speech” – Strong leader in the Telegraph condemning attempts to no-platform Kathleen Stock at the Oxford Union and urging university administrators to show a bit more backbone.
- “Is NATO really an LGBT Ally?” – Noah Carl in UnHerd takes issue with the NATO General Secretary’s speech on International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia claiming NATO is proud to call itself an ‘ally’ of the LGBTQ+ community. Try telling that to Turkey, says Noah, pointing out that in a recent survey 75% of Turks said they wouldn’t want a homosexual neighbour.
- “Gatekeeping the safeguarders” – Josephine Bartosch in the Critic laments the disdainful attitude of progressive MPs towards the Safe Schools Alliance when it gave evidence to the Women and Equalities Select Committee about inappropriate material being taught to children in schools.
- “Covid contracts: messages reveal extent of Tory donor access to Matt Hancock” – Hancock’s WhatsApp messages reveal two Tory donors used their access to ministers (including Hancock) to promote companies they were involved in that were bidding for Covid testing contracts, according to the Guardian.
- “Matt Hancock loses his temper with LBC presenter and tells him to stop asking him about his affair” – Matt Hancock was trending on Twitter last night after losing his rag with Lewis Goodall and telling to “stop, stop, stop” harping on about the scandal that brought him down.
— Politics UK (@PolitlcsUK) May 18, 2023
| NEW: Matt Hancock gets FURIOUS with @Lewis_Goodall and tells him to "stop" talking about his affair
Hancock: "Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Lewis, STOP! I'm a human being, right?"
Goodall: "…yeah, and you were also a Secretary of State"
Hancock: "Don't interrupt me!" pic.twitter.com/2qMTsLaKz8
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Expurgated version of the headline
“Labour Hasn’t Done its Homework”
The policy may well be “crackers” but it plays well to the audience Labour plays to. But I don’t much care whether it is crackers or not, I just think it’s wrong because it is a politically motivated attack on people exercising their free choice to opt out of the state indoctrination camps.
Well said – this is the heart of the matter. Not only do private schools enable people to escape indoctrination, they supply employment to a tranche of the educated class – like the author – who in one way, shape or form object to overweening state power. The left longs to impoverish such heretics. Finally, as bastions of high standards and free thought (now somewhat compromised), private institutions doubly expose the abysmal failure of the comprehensive dump. With Stalinist tenacity and no care at all for real world fallout, the malignant, oppressive goons of the left want to stamp them out. The darkness, in matters of schooling, policing, health, banking, foreign policy (the long kow-tow to red Beijing), the church, the media, the arts, journalism, has never been more Stygian in my lifetime.
Indeed – I would not want to work in any school (and few schools would have me, as I am Literally Hitler) but if I had to then an independent school could be an option, if it had the right leadership.
I went to a local boys’ private school as a day pupil back in the 1980s on an assisted place. My parents were both working and, with a lot of sacrifices, were able to send my brother and me to the school. When my Mum lost her job at our local TV station as a result of the 1990s’ ITV franchise war closing many TV stations around the country, I left the school because I wasn’t happy there and restarted my A Levels at a further education college. My brother left when he finished his GCSEs.
Now, there’d be no possibility of people like my brother and me ever going there in the first place. A VAT increase would wipe out even more pupils and close many. I can imagine all the schools are looking to the super-rich from abroad, the same as the universities.
From what I understand, my old school is a co-educational school now – I haven’t been involved with old boys’ clubs or anything. It’s likely woke as hell, doing everything the leftists want.
My conclusion is that the wealthy leftists who now run much of the left in this country want these schools for their children and no one else’s. We’re in the odd situation here – one that’s happened with Democrats in the USA – where the left are run by the super-rich and the right of centre, usually self-made, are less rich.
I live in an area of north London where the private schools have been taking unfair advantage of their privileged tax status in engaging in extremely expensive luxurious development projects to the detriment of their resident neighbours. These projects are driven by the headmater wanting to create a legacy but primarily in trying to cater nowadays for an extremely wealthy international clientele rather than as used to be local children. Private schools and universities too need to go back to looking after the locals not foreigners, otherwise privately educated people like me, will also question why they should be having these tax advantages.
Well that may be the case for the schools you have in mind and possibly others, but it’s surely not the case for all of them. You could also argue that people sending their kids to those schools are saving taxpayer’s money so why not reward that in part?
I think universities are a different case as they are effectively subsidised by the taxpayer because student “loans” are not loans and are underwritten by the government. You could also argue that charging foreign students/pupils lots of money subsidises it for the locals.
Why are they not loans? Interest is charged and they are repayable (unless you can’t afford to repay them) – you can’t just walk away from them if you earn sufficient income over many years.
It’s a graduate tax, not a loan. What other “loan” products are simply forgiven if you “don’t have enough money” to pay them back? When you take out a loan, both parties risk something – the lender risks not getting their money back, the lendee risks a CCJ and ruined credit score, or bankrupty. Students loans are risk-free for students and universities. The effect has been to subsidise a huge increase in people going to university partly from those who graduate and earn decent money, which I don’t think completely unreasonable, and partly from general taxation because such a high % of “loans” are likely to be defaulted on.
I could equally ask what tax are you aware of that is calculated by reference to a principal advanced and and annual interest rate. It feels like a blend of the two, possibly.
None that I am aware of but calling it a loan was political theatre so they had to dress it up, though to be fair it’s capped in terms of the total amount paid which is unusual for a tax
I’ve always found the charitable status odd. Are the ‘fees’ in effect a donation to a charity? The private school I went to had a lot of rundown areas, substandard desks and the lockers were rusty, battered and falling to bits. When I was at the end of my first year there, loads of posh new lockers got put in the entry hall, covered in plastic wrapping. Great! I thought. We’ll have those next year. I forgot about them over the summer holiday.
In the sixth form, the school’s fortunes had turned somewhat. The yearly intake had dropped by 25 per cent and half my year group quit after GCSEs to do A Levels elsewhere, which was a shock to the school. I left at the end of the first year sixth form. One time, I was in the school basement in the only year I did in the sixth form, helping a porter with move some tables. Those hundreds of ‘new’ lockers were all down there, still wrapped in plastic. They’d used the money from the likes of my parents and the state to buy new gear to keep for future generations, long after I was gone. I felt somewhat aggrieved about that, given the state of the lockers being used the whole time I was there. The school went fully co-ed a couple of years after I left. When I was there the sixth form, the school had quite a few girls, but they managed a paltry eight when I was in the sixth form.
Apparently lots of ex-pupils still hang out together at the school’s old boys’ club. I couldn’t imagine doing that. I got the hell out of there and never went back. Never really saw anyone from there again unless I bumped into them by chance. Lots went to the further education college. I had nothing in common with them anyway, being an assisted place pupil.
That said, parents who use private health and send their kids to private school should be able to get significant tax relief for taking the burden off the state system.
I think the schools qualify as “charities” if they meet certain criteria, such as offering x assisted places or having their pupils doing local community work (helping old folks, teaching reading in schools, etc) or allowing local residents access to sports facilities.
Hello, Chips here, there are not “tax advantages”. There would be “tax advantages” if other people were paying for Education and it was taxed. But they aren’t. 93pc of the market is provided via a state-run, state-funded near monopoly. The VAT-free status of top schools is not far off equivalent, per pupil, to the tax-paid expense in the state sector.
Nobody pays VAT on education. Some people get their education for “free”. Those that pay handsomely are not using the “free” education they are entitled to, they are instead paying quantities of income tax etc to buy education a second time.
I’m pretty convinced that nobody in Labour cares about arcane stuff like second- and third-order effects. They simply need money. And hence, they’re looking for a way to raise indirect taxes people cannot avoid by clever tax evasion schemes. They’re going to raise whatever can be raised and find then out what the outcome will be.
Indeed – and if they can do that by taxing the “rich” then so much the better.
And ‘rich’, in the left’s view, means ‘middle class’. ‘Super rich’ don’t count as they’re the Labour donor class.
Indeed. Most people I know are middle class but are well off enough to live in areas with reasonable state schools, so they will be happy to continue voting Labour, as most of them already do.
There is the conundrum in Labour. From their ivory towers, their six figure salaries and plush lives, I doubt if any Labour politician even knows any poor people anymore (Maybe a cleaner or their gardener). They have no connection with the granite of our nation and cannot grasp the obvious truth that the ONLY people who are taxed in our country are the rich. The only way to make more taxes is to MAKE MORE PEOPLE RICH.
Its the age old story of the guy driving past the bus queue in his Rolls Royce. The Free marketeer will say. ‘Gosh, If I work hard, I might have one of those one day’, and the Socialist will say ‘Look at him, Why doesn’t he catch the bus like us.?’. C’est la vie comrade.
They have no connection with the granite of our nation and cannot grasp the obvious truth that the ONLY people who are taxed in our country are the rich.
That’s obviously wrong because there are plenty of indirect taxes on all kinds of things (and probably second-order indirect taxes, too, eg, assuming someone buys a beer, that someone pays alcohol duty on the price of the beer and VAT on the price of the beer plus alcohol duty — at least, that’s how it works in Germany) and these not only affect everyone, they also affect poorer people disproportionally because these have to spend a higher part of their income which is thus subject to such taxation.
I’m also pretty certain that I’m being taxed and while I earn enough to make savings, I’m far from rich. Rich people own property and can thus make handy amounts of money without working (I’m meanwhile paying £1000 per month as rent for a pretty run-down and chronically mould-infested flat which cannot really be heated in winter, at least not to temperatures people apparently take for granted, ie, something in excess of 15 degrees centigrade [probably less — occasional chattering of teeth on colder days is a regular occurence]).
Fair comment. I had income taxes in my mind when I was typing
.
Hello, Chips here. If Labour don’t care about the effects, which are not “arcane” they are the reality of people’s lives, they must not form a government.
I wonder what is your point….do you agree with me they won’t raise any tax, and will probably cost more, therefore it’s a terrible policy? Or do you instead believe it will raise £1.5bn or whatever, in which case please explain why my reasoning is wrong? Or do you think it’s OK for Labour to wage class war and never mind the cost….that harming posh people is a pleasure not a chore, even if poor people suffer in the process?
As I have done my best to explain in the article, it’s not a particularly “clever” tax evasion, to withdraw kids from private school, then quit work (or go part-time, or retire early); and it certainly isn’t “clever” if schools are forced to cut costs and in the process of destroying taxable activity, less tax is raised.
That’s genrally the route that the ‘politics of envy’ follow. My only concern would be that those hypocritical members of the Labour party, who decry private education but ensure their childen get the benefot from it, will have to get the same crap state education as us proles get.
The kind of people affected by this policy are not stupid.
There are many options open to them.
Many of their older offspring already now avoid swingeing university fees by studying overseas for a great deal less.
It is no surprise that the private tutor market is booming. By the way, what is the difference between private tutors and private education?
It is also no surprise that property prices continue to boom in the vicinity of the many outstanding state schools that do exist.
But the continued obsession of the labour party to reduce choice, diversity, in this country is a reaffirmation of their commitment to totalitarian socialism.
Therein lies the Conservative route back to power if only they were not so hopelessly dim……
Absolutely. There are burgeoning “British private schools” in Portugal at half the price. South Africa is an option too. As is home school.
Which is all part of why there is no money in this policy.
Many parents scarpe by to fund private education. If the cost increases they may send their children to state schools or they may reduce their expenditure on other things. The latter would reduce the tax take from (eg) home improvements, meals out and holiday spending.
Just as with private medical choice, this would make private choices more elitist which would no doubt be welcomed by Pimlico Plumbers, Blair and others who have managed to geta great deal of money for doing not much.
That’s a good point. In the UK private schools tend to be thought of as something for rich families but in low-income countries even very poor parents send their children to private schools, run on a shoestring budget, just to get better tuition. In the UK there may be at least some private schools that are not targeted at wealthy families – out of hours supplementary schools for cultural minorities come to mind.
These days, going to an elite private school makes it very difficult to get into Oxford or Cambridge, not that one would want to.
Labour fail to do their due diligence once again
it is not because we have money we send our children to independent schools but because the safeguarding failures and harmful curriculum within the state system.
Remove the VAT relief and those that are able to will sacrifice even more than they already have to keep their precious children from the State sponsored bricks and mortar schools. For those that would be unable to meet the cost increase we’ll not roll over and send them back to the cesspits but would find an alternative way be that online schooling, home-ed etc.
Thank you, I agree
Ironically, all that Labour’s policy will achieve is the closure of a large number of “lower grade” and therefore lower priced private schools ….. leaving a small number of extremely expensive, elitist institutions – stuffed with the children of the mega-wealthy.
That smaller number of extremely expensive, elitist institutions will continue to dominate the governmental (in the widest sense) Old Boy’s Club which is destroying this country …. with an even more concentrated Group-Think of individuals completely detached from the lives/life experiences of the vast majority of the population.
And State schools, which will have to cope with an influx of pupils forced out of the private sector, won’t have their standards raised; they’ll be lowered as the former private pupils will be a small minority. It is quite likely that the lefty teachers will actively discriminate against them.
State Education – already pretty bad – will sink to the levels of the Socialist NHS.
Thank you, yes I also doubt that State Schools are capable of absorbing an influx. Many have physical constraints. They don’t have the organisation in place. And the inflx won’t be evenly spread, it will be some schools with dozens or hundreds of ex-private school children at the gates.
Even if there was extra money (which there won’t be) the expansion programme will need to be driven by LEAs, and there’s no way they can deliver anything without swallowing half the expense in their own bureaucracy
There are at least two unintended tax consequence here.
My own observation over many years is that a significant subsidy to school fees is made by grandparents. If, in order to meet increased fees, grandparents increase that subsidy then the likelihood is that Inheritance Tax down the line will be reduced – assuming IHT still exists of course.
In addition, I’d like to see the exact calculations on an example school. VAT is a complex tax and having done some work in the past on VAT exemption for education, the outcomes of the application of VAT on fees and the consequential ability to reclaim VAT on purchases will create some unexpected consequences and anomalies, with no two schools being the same.
At the very least I would expect a blanket application of VAT on school fees to trigger a large raft of complex, expensive and time-consuming tax tribunal cases as each school makes a case for its own VAT treatment.
As always, Labour is looking through the wrong end of the telescope. Outside of the super rich, us ordinary folks choose a private education for our kids because the state system is genrally poor. If the state system was improved, the demand for private education would fall away.But that will never happen as the Labour supporting teaching unions don’t believe in excellenc, or even improving people.