- “Our democracy is endangered when politicians give in to threats” – The Speaker ought to be a defender of our system, especially when the mob is seeking to subvert it, writes Fraser Nelson in the Telegraph.
- “Police stood by as ‘From the river to the sea’ projected onto Parliament, says MP” – A senior Jewish MP says police stood by as the slogan “From the river to the sea” was projected onto Parliament, reports the Telegraph. (See clip at foot of this round-up.)
- “‘Islamists are in charge of Britain now’” – Suella Braverman says the U.K. is “sleep-walking into a ghettoised society” that threatens free expression, according to the Telegraph.
- “Westminster and the mob” – We must be firm when influence turns to intimidation, writes Joxley on Substack.
- “The closer he gets to power, the more Starmer behaves like Corbyn” – Recent events in the Commons show how much Labour politics has been infested with sectarianism, remarks Fred de Fossard in the Telegraph.
- “Home Secretary confirms suspensions after ‘Israel’ crossed out on birth certificate” – James Cleverly says Home Office staff have been suspended after the word Israel was crossed out on a baby girl’s birth certificate, according to the Harrow Times.
- “We can’t allow extremists to make the truth taboo” – If accusations of Islamophobia can be used to silence criticism of Hamas, the U.K. is in a very dangerous place, argues Stephen Evans for the National Secular Society.
- “The trouble with defining genocide” – By every measure, what is happening in Gaza is not genocide. It’s not even regionally remarkable, says Douglas Murray in the Spectator.
- “Pro-lockdown MPs can’t deny the huge costs of their actions” – Rishi Sunak and the Tories are the only party, post-pandemic, taking responsibility and getting the economy and country back on track after the disastrous lockdowns, argues Esther McVey in the Telegraph.
- “Ninety-nine million patient records and they concluded that the benefits outweigh the risks!? We respectfully disagree” – A study of 99 million vaccinated individuals concludes that the benefits of Covid outweigh the risks. Bullshit, says Steve Kirsch on Substack.
- “Why did behavioural scientists crave mask mandates?” – The Covid pandemic exposed the nastiness of nudging, writes Gary Sidley in the Critic.
- “Child mask mandates” – While most countries have removed mask mandates, the U.S. remains an outlier, say Prof. Carl Heneghan and Dr. Tom Jefferson.
- “Fact-checker Science Feedback has generated disinformation about CERES-Science” – Climate Feedback’s ‘fact-check’ of a recent interview of CERES-Science’s Dr. Willie Soon is filled with false and misleading lies, say the CERES team.
- “Misinformation researcher Sander van der Linden caught lying and spreading misinformation” – On the Disinformation Chronicles, Paul D. Thacker recounts the Twitter spat between Sander van der Linden and Nate Silver in which the misinformation guru was thoroughly trounced by the stats nerd.
- “Post Office boss ‘should have faced questions’ over working for Church, says Justin Welby” – The Archbishop of Canterbury suggests that Paula Vennells should have been prevented from working for the Church of England in the wake of the Post Office scandal, reports the Mail.
- “George Galloway vows to ‘punish’ Labour in Rochdale by-election and banish liberalism” – George Galloway claims Labour has “brought misery and disgrace” to Rochdale, says the Telegraph.
- “Labour’s plans to bypass democracy” – Sue Gray’s ‘citizens’ assemblies’ would sideline democratic debate, warns Mick Hume in Spiked.
- “Why Britain stopped working” – In the Spectator, Kate Andrews drills into the data to discover why the U.K.’s workforce has failed to recover from the pandemic.
- “Dan Wootton’s lawyers send letter before action to Byline Times” – Dan Wootton’s lawyers have sent a letter to the Byline Times, its editor Peter Jukes and the journalists Dan Evans and Tom Latchem, informing them that Dan will be going after them for a ruinously large sum in damages and costs, reports Guido Fawkes.
- “Guardian criticised after Just Stop Oil article ‘calls for protests at Labour MPs’ homes’” – Stella Creasy has criticised the Guardian’s publication of a Just Stop Oil opinion piece “calling for Labour MPs to be targeted in their homes”, according to the Telegraph.
- “Starmer’s secret plan for energy prices is terrifying” – Labour is about to plunge Britain into a fresh energy price crisis in the name of Net Zero, warns Gordon Hughes in the Telegraph.
- “The Brexit revolt is spreading across Europe – and the Brussels elites are terrified” – The EU is falling apart under the pressure of the migrant crisis and stifling green regulations, writes Ross Clark in the Telegraph.
- “Menopausal women shouldn’t be treated differently” – Being a woman is not a disability, says Melanie McDonagh in the Spectator.
- “The NHS says trans women should breastfeed babies. This is unforgivable” – According to an NHS doctor, the milk a man can sometimes produce is just as good for babies as their biological mother’s breast milk. It appears neither the babies nor the truth matter anymore, writes Mary Wakefield in the Spectator.
- “If you think Britain is woke now, just you wait…” – A major survey of 13,534 voters, commissioned by the Conservative donor Lady McAlpine, found that the population at large is less woke than almost all MPs, says Dan Hannan in the Mail.
- “Civil service full of trans activists sabotaged my leadership, Liz Truss tells Republicans” – Liz Truss blames the “administrative state” for sabotaging her premiership, according to the Telegraph.
- “Turner, Thackeray and the guardians of morality ” – There is something especially egregious about long dead artists, such as Turner and Thackeray, being conscripted by today’s self-appointed morality police to fight their culture wars, says Neil Datson.
- “‘Absurdly woke’: Google’s AI chatbot spits out ‘diverse’ images of Founding Fathers, popes, Vikings” – Google’s AI chatbot Gemini was blasted as ‘woke’ after its image generator spat out factually inaccurate pictures, including a woman as Pope, black Vikings, female NHL players and ‘diverse’ versions of America’s Founding Fathers, according to the New York Post.
- “Why are Hispanics mobilising around Trump?” – People of hispanic origin in the USA are pissed off and scared, and they are turning to Trump, says Dr. Robert W. Malone on Substack.
- “Joe Biden dog Commander bit Secret Service agents at least 24 times” – New documents show that President Joe Biden’s dog Commander bit U.S. Secret Service agents on at least 24 occasions, reports the BBC.
- “X takes down accounts that media say are linked to India farmers protests” – X says it took down certain accounts and posts following an order by the Indian Government, which local media say are linked to ongoing protests by farmers demanding higher prices for crops.
- “It seems that British MPs are finally waking up” – On X, Douglas Murray finds hope in a powerful speech delivered by Jewish MP Andrew Percy in the Commons yesterday.
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The problem with organisations that are created to tackle a problem is that they don’t really have an incentive to solve the problem. If they solved the problem once and for all they’d be out of a job. And it isn’t in the nature of people to work against themselves.
A bit like the EU and other bureaucracies like all central and local government, and the NHS. On the contrary the motivation is to grow the bureaucracy, requiring and acquiring ever greater budgets and power.
Which might go some way to explain the apathetic culture that’s now deeply rooted within the NHS. I’ve never had an issue with the idea of a publicly funded health service, my issue has always been the superiority and patronising attitude of most of the NHS staff. They seem completely oblivious to the fact that they are providing a service to paying customers (well, many are paying customers). The customers (the tax paying public) also have this strange sense of gratitude towards them, which simply exaggerates NHS staff sense of superiority. It’s difficult to see how you resolve that in a publicly funded model. And once that deep rot has set in it’ll be almost impossible to remove without a complete replacement.
All bureaucracies* after a certain a point stop serving those who fund them and serve themselves. When you have a hyper-bureaucracy such as the NHS (now nearly 1,900,000 employees) is is by definition unmanageable, all the more so as the managerialism that the bastard Blair introduced into the public sector has in effect destroyed its purpose – of serving the public.
*Nurse of over 20 years experience, RUH in Bristol, when I asked her about management said this. Or rather, spat it out
“Management? Dickheads with clipboards who stop me working”.
Yup.
They also act in silos. They do not think through the consequences of their, no doubt, honourable intentions.
The populations of African countries has exploded because improved health, especially at childbirth and in early years has not taken away as many of the multiple births women there were / are used to having. I read some statistic about the projected population of Nigeria, and their growth was not due to immigration like ours.
Work should have been done and now should be put in hand to teach them how to reform their economies so they can support themselves. It is not a solution to allow continued mass migration to Europe where the people involved are too often un able to earn enough. Very often they miss “home” so much they visit relatives often and for extended stays and send what little cash they have to family so further reducing their ability to pay their way in Europe.
A good analysis. The development of WHO into a supranational structure is not desirable, and undemocratic. However, it does create a lot of opportunism and financial benefit to some corporations, masquerading as a provider of public health benefit. Recently I posted this public display by a local authority and it’s mates; worth plonking it here as well.
All very well but what the author does not tell us is that donors to the WHO get to decide how their money is spent. So what should be the very welcome money from the philanthropath Gates, which could be spent on clean water, sanitation and hygiene, MUST be spent on jab, jab, jab.
As with the UN, the original motivation for the formation of the institution was excellent. Not both have been captured, and we should not be giving them a penny.
https://digitalcommons.law.ggu.edu/annlsurvey/vol22/iss1/6/
The above paper points the finger at the Gates Foundation for human rights breaches in Africa and India
I must agree and also recommend reading Robert F. Kennedy’s “The Real Anthony Fauci”.
RFK Jr is a bit of an Environutter but the section of his book concerning WHO / BMGF/ BigPharma’s activities in Africa, very well researched and referenced, is absolutely jawdropping.
Those implicated should spend the rest of their worthless lives improving clean water and education projects, on ‘the ground’ in Africa.
And, I must add, how many mosquito nets could be purchased and distributed for the cost of an armour plated Mercedes Maybach?
Have read it. Fauci is evil, and I mean that in the biblical sense. Kennedy has been excellent all through Covid. Climate nutter, yes, but the rest of his work has been uplifting.
“Those implicated should spend the rest of their worthless lives improving clean water and education projects, on ‘the ground’ in Africa.” rather than jabbing them…
Even in a high trust society a bureaucracy will experience mission creep and start putting its fingers into pies where they don’t belong.
A better system is for polluting corporations and their ilk to be dealt with through the tort system, but with criminal penalties attached.
For example, I’d consider it reasonable for Purdue pharma executives to face the death penalty for their role in the Oxycontin scandal. With a high evidence burden of course.
Well-said. Let’s not throw the proverbial baby out with the bathwater. Public health, properly understood, is indeed a very good thing. And it is a legitimate function of government, insofar as it respects and doesn’t trample individual rights. What we have seen in recent years is not really genuine public health, but a perversion of such used to justify tyranny and evil.
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/arrest-them-a-bold-attack-on-genevas-covid-cabal/
Hopefully this can appear in tomorrow’s News Roundup. Powerful stuff from a Davos insider.
A very interesting article.
Just a few comments.
PHE also lost sight of QALYs (quality life years) during this Covid debacle.
Each and every one of us lost QALYs to some extend. Some more than others.
As well as the funding, the goals should be looked at (like the UN SDGs). Having a focus on one achievable goal makes much more sense both in terms of cost and result than trying to pump money into multiple complex and unsolvable problems.
If all the pandemic money had been spent on improved sanitation and nutrition, the outcome on human mortality would have been so much better.
The problem is not so much the WHO but how and who controls the WHO.
Currently there is too little outside control of WHO and it seems to be a power unto itself.
It should be controlled by democratic forces, subject to the control of the people.
The government/authorities should be the servant of the people, not its master.