- “The Covid inquiry is whitewashing the lockdown” – Why is no one challenging the biggest disaster of the pandemic, asks Dr. David Livermore in Spiked.
- “The BBC is falling short on its climate protest coverage” – According to a YouGov poll this week, 64% have an unfavourable view of Just Stop Oil (only 17% have a positive view and the rest aren’t sure). Unfortunately, however, none of these people appear to feature in the contacts books of BBC producers, says Ross Clark in the Spectator.
- “Covid Censorship Proved to Be Deadly” – Government and social-media companies colluded to stifle dissenters who turned out to be right, writes Bret Swanson in the Wall Street Journal.
- “Why Net Zero is on a collision course with falling house prices” – Eco targets will affect millions of properties and accelerate a house price crash, says the Telegraph.
- “Why I’ll be buying petrol car just before 2030 ban” – Matt Ridley in the Mail points out that to wean ourselves off China over the next seven years would require 100 times as much battery capacity as we have now, which is neither affordable nor feasible, nor would it achieve anything for ‘the planet’.
- “White pupils excluded from extra Saturday literacy lessons” – Parents at a Haringey primary school have been told that schools will fund the lessons for children from black families, according to the Telegraph. Breach of the Equality Act, surely.
- “Bud Light not ranked in top 10 beers after Mulvaney disaster ” – In a new YouGov survey, which polled a sample size of 1,468, the public approval of the beer slumped and it fell out of the top 10, while the popularity of other rival beers surged, the Mail reports.
- “School trans guidance may be amended to make it harder for pupils to socially transition” – The long-awaited draft document due to be published this week has been delayed while possible revisions are made, reports the Telegraph, after it was reported that schools will be told to let pupils wear the uniform of their choice as long as parents are supportive.
- “Britain’s greatest institutions have turned themselves into national laughing stocks” – From the Bank of England to the Church, august bodies are acting as if they’re run by their worst enemies, says Camilla Tominey in the Telegraph.
- “Adults have ceded absolute power to the faux-righteous, doctrinaire young” – Grown-ups have given up across British life, allowing an ideological younger generation to call all the shots, says Janet Daley in the Telegraph.
- “Now health professionals are urged to call vaginas ‘bonus holes’” – Women have condemned a charity after it suggested the vagina could instead be referred to as “the bonus hole” to avoid upsetting non-binary or trans men, according to the Mail. I actually had to double check it wasn’t April 1st for this one. File under ‘couldn’t make it up’.
- “The Captured Prosecution Service” – Read Fair Cop’s excellent letter to the CPS explaining why its new ‘trans inclusive’ guidance on domestic abuse is so wrong.
- “Dutch Government collapses following migration row” – The growing continent-wide crisis caused by mass immigration into Europe has claimed another country with the collapse of the Dutch coalition Government led by centrist politician Mark Rutte, says Nigel Jones in the Spectator.
- “Has the time come for the Dutch farmers’ party?” – Senay Boztas in the Spectator says that with 45,000 requests for asylum expected this year and barges, tents and sports halls full of people waiting for their claim to be processed, plus a housing crisis in full swing, the Netherlands’ newest political force BBB’s time has come.
- “Banks Go Woke” – Jack Watson in the New Conservative says the last time we bailed out the banks “I don’t recall them having a problem with the colour of our money”.
- “Gender-critical barrister wins top payout as judge issues stinging criticism of chambers” – A chambers which unlawfully victimised a barrister for standing up to Stonewall has been ordered to pay her £20,000 in costs for “unreasonable conduct”, reports the Telegraph.
- “Jeremy Hunt denied bank account by Monzo” – The Chancellor is among multiple politicians to have accounts denied and cards cancelled because of “disproportionate” money laundering rules, the Telegraph reports.
- “Hollywood suffers ‘diversity fatigue’ as inclusivity chiefs step down” – Four recently departing executives are black women amid what critics call a “mass exodus”, says the Telegraph.
- “Threads: Mark Zuckerberg’s safe space” – Meta’s ‘kinder’, ‘friendlier’ Twitter rival might be the most censorious platform yet, writes Fraser Myers in Spiked.
- “Christian job offer rescinded after free speech case victory” – Felix Ngole was allowed to return to Sheffield University after winning his free speech case in 2019, but his would-be-employer has now rescinded a job offer because his views do not align with their values, according to the Mail.
- “The EU’s Mass Censorship Regime Is Almost Fully Operational. Will It Go Global?” – Nick Corbishley in ZeroHedge looks ahead to the coming into full operation next month of the EU Digital Services Act, which will require large online platforms to remove ‘hate speech’ and ‘disinformation’.
- “There is nothing progressive about identity politics” – When did supporting colour-blindness, gay rights and women’s liberation become a Right-wing position, asks Tom Slater in Spiked.
- “Imagine deciding to disrupt someone’s wedding. You’d have to think that it would help your cause, you were entitled to disrupt, and you were good and they were evil” – Grandiosity, entitlement and ‘black and white’ thinking define pathological narcissism, tweets Michael Shellenberger as he comments on George Osborne being targeted by Just Stop Oil.
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A salient observation. Perhaps they should declare their interests in related branches of the trade, if it results in more use of legal processes!
The other (perhaps trivial) coincidence is that it is Guy Fawkes day in England on the same day as polling day across the pond.
I guess we all suffer to some extent when there is sloppy redefinition of anything, or using a word for more than one function rather than inventing a new, more precise, one. Consider the difference between Official Standards, Guidelines, Legal Requirements, optional compliance. When does it become a legal requirement to comply with this or that etc? Sometimes it depends on the practical outcome of an event, if it’s examined in an Inquiry of some kind.
“Remember, remember, the 5th of November….” – V
Underlying and overriding everything is, of course, Common Law, which is conveniently omitted by the article’s author (and most writers and lawyers).
Nice piece of reporting on the rotten to the core corruption of the vacuous, cackling puppet lady, complete with video explainer;
”KAMALA SOROS CORRUPTION: Kamala Harris as Attorney General refused to prosecute the George Soros owned OneWest Bank for over 1,000 violations of federal law. A one year investigation had uncovered evidence of widespread misconduct, but she refused to prosecute Soros and Mnuchin.
On March 19, 2009, a seven member investor group, IMB Holdco, led by Steven Mnuchin, which included billionaire George Soros, Christopher Flowers, John Paulson and Michael Dell purchased Independent National Mortgage Corporation (IndyMac Bank) of Pasadena, California for $13.65 billion from the FDIC and created OneWest from the remains of IndyMac.
In an internal memo published on Tuesday by The Intercept, prosecutors at the California attorney general’s office said they had found over a thousand violations of foreclosure laws by OneWest bank during that time, and predicted that further investigation would uncover many thousands more.
But the investigation into what the memo called “widespread misconduct” was closed after Harris’s office declined to file a civil enforcement action against the bank.
The previously undisclosed 2013 memo from top prosecutors in the state attorney general’s office alleges that OneWest rushed delinquent homeowners out of their homes by violating notice and waiting period statutes, illegally backdated key documents, and effectively gamed foreclosure auctions.
George and Alex Soros continue to support Kamala Harris with millions of dollars. Alex Soros recently shared an image with Kamala Harris and wrote: “It’s time for us all to unite around Kamala Harris and beat Donald Trump. She is the best and most qualified candidate we have. Long live the American Dream!”
Elon Musk posted on September 17, 2023 “The Soros Organization appears to want nothing less than the destruction of Western Civilization.” and posted on May 15, 2023 regarding George Soros “You assume they are good intentions. They are not. He wants to erode the very fabric of civilization. Soros hates humanity.” Elon Musk is correct and that is why he joined President Trump in the fight for America and humanity.”
https://x.com/SpartaJustice/status/1833215615450194364
I’m sure we’re all aware of these desperate and obvious tactics already, with regards to the rushed mass immigration in the U.S, courtesy of the Biden-Harris government. They need the votes so the more illegal migrants they can legalize speedily the merrier;
”The publicly-stated goal by almost all leaders of the Democratic Party is to legalize the ~15 million illegal migrants as soon as possible, as well as bring in tens of millions more.
That would immediately make all swing states deep blue, just like happened in California with the 1986 amnesty, turning America into a permanent one-party state.
This is the last real election if Trump loses.”
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1833349210818920783
So easy for illegals to vote in the upcoming election;
”Here is how easy it is for illegal aliens to vote in U.S. elections.
This is an intentional flaw in the system. It is a loophole created to defeat election integrity.
That is why Arizona is being *SUED* to ensure that illegal aliens don’t register to vote in our elections.
The fact that nearly ALL Democrats oppose the SAVE Act to ensure illegal aliens don’t vote in our elections is the HUGE RED FLAG that this is an intentional design flaw that facilitates voter fra*d.”
https://x.com/kylenabecker/status/1833501427630497955
The quarter council (Bezirksverordnetenversammlung) of Berlin-Pankow has recently changed the bylaws for sports facilities to exclude members of the far right from the group of people being allowed to use them. That’s obviously based on a positivist interpretation of the nature of law, namely, law is whatever the people who can vote to create laws chose to make one and their power to create whichever laws they desire is only limited by their desire to legislate on something (Starmer’s proposed outdoor smoking ban would be another example of this category).
Under such a regime, individuals are in the fairly poor position of only being allowed to do what nobody has chosen to declare illegal so far and nobody can tell what will be declared illegal tomorrow. This could also be called slow motion totalitarianism: While the totality of everything is within the power of the law makers to regulate as they see fit, they haven’t yet gotten around to regulate a lot of things and individuals are thus still relatively free to do a lot of things (to wit: A ban on people speaking to other people they happen to meet in the streets was nominally in place during COVID).
Something like this can obviously not be called a free society. In a free society, the power of legislators to issue decrees must be limited according to some set of rules which respect Fuller’s inner morality of law and that’s how our political systems were supposed to work and did actually operate for a fairly long time. This only changed after Ferguson’s law (as in law of nature) “We will get away with it if we really want to!” was discovered in 2020.
The problem we’re facing is thus how to put the Ferguson positivists back into the place they were occupying prior to the Anything goes with COVID! outbreak. For this to be possible, we’ll need to neutralize their attempts to divide is into ever more splintered groups of factions warring for minor political advantages while being overseen by them.
It shall be interesting to see what caterpillars and beetles crawl out of the Kackler’s word-salad tonight.
I tend to find David’s essays too long to hold my interest but this one has been his best. It helped that I have a philosophy masters (mostly forgotten these days!), but I found it got to the essence of what’s been happening since “the madness” in a way that was genuinely enlightening. I’m sure this movement towards technocrat authoritarian rule has been building since the 90s, but it’s shown it’s hand in the last four years in a brazen, almost mocking way (think Khan) – for our own good, of course!
Have forwarded to my children
Perhaps David could write something on the difference between something being illegal and something being unlawful. It seems you can get away with acting unlawfully until you are dragged (expensively) to court. I think of unlawful arrest for example!
All these coincidences! I’m not sure I believe in coincidence any more!
If law is law only because it is possessed by an authority that can wield it, and that authority says it is law, has law become like fiat currency?
A piece of cotton paper or a piece of polymer has no intrinsic value. But if government says it has a value and everyone acts as if it does, it becomes money. What are the consequences if ‘law’ is thought of and used as such?