Today’s Update

BBC Includes Male ‘Trans Woman’ on 100 Women List

By Will Jones

The BBC has included a male ‘trans woman’ Colombian scientist in its annual list of 100 inspiring women, just days after sparking controversy over its choice for women’s footballer of the year. The Telegraph has the story.

Every year, the broadcaster compiles a list of women who have achieved great things in public life.

Its nominees include transgender biologist Brigitte Baptiste, described in the citation as a “trans woman” who “explores the common patterns between biodiversity and gender identity”.

The BBC says the scientist uses a “queer lens to analyse landscapes and species in a bid to expand the notion of ‘nature’ to better protect ecosystems”.

In a 2018 TED talk, Baptiste claimed scientists had discovered “transsexual” palm trees and stated that the “change of sex and gender has been reported regularly in science”.

On this basis, she argued that it was wise to do away with ideas of “naturalness” in nature, stating: “There is nothing more queer than nature.”

The broadcaster said: “BBC 100 Women acknowledges the toll this year has taken on women by celebrating those who – through their resilience – are pushing for change, as the world changes around them.” …

Zambian footballer Barbra Banda was honoured by the corporation despite being withdrawn from Women’s Africa Cup of Nations for high testosterone levels.

The BBC named Banda as its women’s footballer of the year for 2024.

Worth reading in full.

Has Tony Blair Forgotten That it Was His Labour Government That Blocked Nuclear Power?

By Ben Pile

From time-to-time, various architects of the mess we are in come to some kind of nuclear power epiphany. This diversion via some Atomic Road to Damascus occurs because the road to the Net Zero Utopia turns out to be much longer, much more winding, and far more littered with obstacles than green lobbyists and wonks had imagined. Indeed, as a number of greens including George Monbiot and Mark Lynas discovered way back in the 2000s, it is the green movement itself that has been the greatest barrier to zero-carbon power. To an observer and critic of green ideology, the sight of eco-comrades realising that they are each the fetter that prevents the realisation of the others’ dreams ought to be amusing. But this green-on-green violence affects us all, and no destination that they choose, including nuclear power, will take us to a better place.

The latest bunch to join this denomination of eco-protestants hail from no less a place than the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI). In a report published this week, authors described as “the experts” argue either that there should be a nuclear renaissance or that it is already happening – it’s not clear which.

Other people’s epiphanies are extremely dull. That is because in most cases they lack anything resembling reflection on the epiphany itself that could be shared, and instead merely state a new position. The TBI’s argument for a nuclear renaissance is no exception. It yields no examination of the role of the eponymous institute’s chief while in office. This is a failure, because whereas the report dwells on historic nuclear accidents and their influencing of policy debates, it sheds no light on how those policy debates influenced decisions at the former PM’s then address. The ‘Eureka!‘ moment does not require it to be a mea culpa, but green conversions from anti- to pro-nuclear ought at a minimum to be more than a doubling down on the ideology that informed their earlier stance.

Put simply, many green U-turns on nuclear power, though they recognise the self-defeating effect of the green movement, merely reformulate environmentalism’s superficial risk analysis. The argument made by newly pro-nuclear greens is merely that their erstwhile comrades have put ideology before the facts. Nuclear is safe, or at any rate ‘safer than climate change’, they argue to their new opponents’ counterclaims that they are ‘Chernobyl death deniers’. Now, everyone claims to have read ‘The Science’, everyone is called a denier, and everyone claims to have put the facts before ideology, unlike the others.

“This is a pivotal moment in the fight against climate change,” concludes the report, adding: “Accelerated action is needed in every country across the world, with more rapid deployment of all types of clean technologies and new solutions to deliver clean power for all.”

The problem with this is that it is not an argument for energy. It has lost sight of the most important thing: what is energy for? On the TBI’s view, energy policy is just a way of stopping climate change, not the means by which an irreplaceable commodity can be sustained, allowing society to prosper – energy being the means to almost all the ends that people can imagine for themselves. It is those green ideologues who have recently surrounded governments who have invented illiberal terms such as ‘unnecessary journey’, and who reinvented the concept of ‘efficiency’ to mean governments stepping in to prevent journeys using coercive means.

That may sound like an obscure objection. But a broad, long and deep view of the history of green ideas is required to understand the degenerative condition of our Government. In 1978, in an article called ‘An Ecologist’s Perspective on Nuclear Power’ in a Federation of American Scientists’ Public Issue Report, Paul Ehrlich wrote:

In fact, giving society cheap, abundant energy at this point would be the moral equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun. With cheap, abundant energy, the attempt clearly would be made to pave, develop, industrialise, and exploit every last bit of the planet — a trend that would inevitably lead to a collapse of the life-support systems upon which civilisation depends.

This was the era of the “Nuclear Power, No Thanks” emoji sticker, found on practically every Citroen 2CV in Europe. And it established, long before climate change and the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl accidents, a deep hostility to abundance.

Ehrlich was of course wrong. Wrong about everything. And wrong about energy in particular. Abundant and cheap energy reduces humanity’s footprint: coal saved the forests and oil saved the whales. Abundant and affordable energy in turn increases other available resources and maximises their efficient usage, especially in respect to capital and labour, reducing the extensiveness of agriculture, for example, by increasing its intensity, even ultimately replacing the sun as the source of agriculture’s energy in some circumstances. Hence, the footprint of the world’s agriculture has diminished since the 1990s, despite a growing population. Since the 1960s, the area of land required to produce a given quantity of crops has fallen by two thirds. The per capita requirement of land has fallen dramatically over the era of industrialisation. Ehrlich, who predicted that mass famines lay ahead, has issued no apologies for any of his errors.

Perceptions are opposite to the reality. Thanks to material abundance, we have more space. And we give much more space to ‘nature’, for better or worse. But the idea that the human footprint is exceeding its boundaries into ‘nature’ is now the dominant view, thanks to the likes of Ehrlich. The imperative of protecting ‘nature’ has risen up the global and national political agenda, despite the facts, urged on by stories of imminent doom. And that imperative has always emphasised green austerity – ascetism – as the only viable solution.

So how does this affect a reading of the TBI’s report?

Ehrlich’s errors, it should be noted, have the awkward unintended consequence (for greens) of having led to an increase in CO2 emissions. “The price of opposition” to nuclear power, says the report, is “what could have happened if the world had not turned away from nuclear power”. If nuclear power had continued its growth seen in the 1960s and 1970s, 29 billion metric tons of CO2 emissions would have been avoided since 1991, the report claims.

Perhaps, then, environmentalism isn’t really about the environment. Perhaps the virtue of ‘protecting the environment’ from the perspective of policymakers is that it is an emotionally-resonant cause, which licences politicians’ authoritarian impulses. Moreover, by making a virtue out of austerity, the production of resources becomes a zero-sum game that can be quickly dominated by the currently wealthy, who will be protected from new players by environmental regulations. Modern day ‘feudal’ interests resent nothing more than new money being mobilised by innovations. We only need to look at Ehrlich’s sponsors to see that there was indeed a desire to slam the door shut in the rest of the world’s face, just as it was emerging from poverty and hunger and the world stood on the brink of abundance.

The report’s finding of 29 billion metric tons may sound like a lot. But it’s not a strong argument for nuclear power. Global CO2 emissions reached 37.79 billion metric tons in 2023. Nuclear power would have only avoided the CO2 of just one year – 2006. This speaks to the lack of genuine ambition characterising Blair era ideologies and policymaking.

Many people were making pro-nuclear arguments in the 2000s. But the Blair and Brown Governments merely vacillated on the issue. As James Woudhuysen and Joe Kaplinsky – authors of a definitive book on the necessity of energy innovation, Energise!argued in 2009, the Government’s “arguments for nuclear – that it contributes to energy security, enhances generation diversity, is proven technology, etc. – are subordinate to ‘the urgent need to decarbonise the economy’”. “In well over 500 pages of National Policy Statements,” they pointed out, “Energy Secretary Ed Miliband has spent more than 300 trying to streamline the planning of new nuclear reactors.” But none came.

The idea that the Labour Government was ‘pro-nuclear’ was a myth, argued Woudhuysen and Kaplinsky in an earlier piece. By then in power for 12 years, no nuclear plants had been commissioned. “Green posturing and very modest green investment come way before genuine support for new nuclear power.” The Government’s preoccupuation with “safety, risk, physical security, costs, waste and decommissioning” mean that “nuclear power cannot win”. “Only if society’s need for more energy is put in the foreground can nuclear power’s supporters expect to win the arguments for it.”

The new TBI report shows that nothing has changed since Woudhuysen and Kaplinsky’s observations. There are no reports from Government or Government-aligned, nor even opposition-aligned think tanks, headed by ex-PMs and ex-Ministers, that are capable of shedding any light on what has held Britain back, much less challenging the green ideological precepts driving our regression. Climate change is the only idea that animates any action whatsoever. And that action is almost entirely expensive and regressive.

I am for nuclear power. But we face far deeper problems than ones that can be solved by technologies. We know how to produce energy. Much of that knowledge was produced in the U.K. and mastered here decades ago. We know how to exploit the resources that exist in great abundance beneath our feet. Whatever the technical virtues of nuclear power, the problems besetting nuclear energy’s progress in the U.K. are not going to be resolved in any near- to mid-term scenario. Meanwhile, the influence of green ideology will continue to destabilise and restrict existing supply and increase costs.

Many who are cheering on this new, YIMBY-ish pro-nuclear tendency are naïve to the fact that this superficial transformation is the opposite of what it appears to be. It is not a counter to green ideology and the desire for ecological austerity. It is merely being pitched as a solution to the problem of the lights going off, regardless of cost. And it is being sought as a way to sustain the U.K.’s international prestige (in their own eyes) as a “global leader” in the “race to Net Zero”. It is not an argument for abundance at affordable prices or for the freedoms that energy can create.

“The history of nuclear power provides a stark example of how the politics around key solutions to progress can become warped, ultimately resulting in less good outcomes,” states the report’s summary. Well, that was obvious to anyone watching as far back as the 1990s. Yet the £145 million year TBI has only just realised, or only just got round to telling us. Moreover, if the “politics around key solutions to progress” are to be investigated, it is the role of green ideology itself that needs to be exposed, not concerns about the safety of nuclear power in isolation. It’s nearly 30 years since Blair created these problems – and many more besides – by committing to renewable energy. The 2000 Energy Act, for example, requires energy retailers to provide an increasing supply of power from renewables, which are defined as “sources of energy other than fossil fuel or nuclear fuel”. In other words, legislation drafted less than three years into Blair’s first term in office was intended to drive away nuclear energy just as much as it was intended to destroy coal power.

It worked. A quarter of a century later, the effects are obvious. Since the Energy Act, 11 nuclear power stations with a combined capacity of 6.6 GW have shut down. Over the next three years, a further four stations with a capacity of 5.3GW will shut down, leaving just one plant, Sizewell B, operating until Hinkley Point C, commissioned in 2014 and whose opening has been delayed from 2023 to 2030, is operational. Sizewell B will be closed in 2035. And if the development of Hinkley Point C is instructive, even if a fleet of new nuclear plants is commissioned today, they will not come online until the 2040s. Many are proposing that Small Modular Reactors may be the solution. But they face the same regulatory hurdles that will have soon shut down 12 GW of nuclear capacity. And that regulatory process will face an even ‘greener’ Parliament, dominated by Labour MPs, nearly all of whom have outsourced their thinking to the Green Blob.

The only thing to have been more successfully completely demolished by Blair than British nuclear power was Iraq. To witness his pro-nuclear epiphany – produced on his behalf by ignorant wonks – as though he played no part in the destruction of a technology pioneered by Brits is too much humbug to describe. The world’s first commercial nuclear power station was built in Calder Hall in Sellafield in 1956 – when we really could claim to have led the world to something that is not destructive, even if the plant produced plutonium for nuclear weapons. It lasted until 2003, when Blair’s interpretation of Ehrlich’s vision was in full swing.

How Far Down Does the Slippery Slope Go?

By Dr David McGrogan

Sometimes, an event can be important both in terms of its immediate consequences and as a harbinger of what is to come. The passage to the committee stage of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill here in the U.K. last Friday is one such event.

The Bill, if it becomes law – which now seems likely – will legalise ‘assisted dying’ along the lines of Canada, the Netherlands, and so forth in the U.K., and thereby bring us to liberalism’s very zenith. Here, the final promise of the liberal polity – that the state exists to liberate all individuals equally and totally, even in respect of the manner in which they die and the timing of their deaths – will be realised. The Bill is therefore naturally going to have radical consequences for people who fall under its application, but it is also indicative of something truly epochal – the final unmooring of liberalism from religious constraint, such that its true nature will be revealed as it floats untethered into the heavens.

It is important to be clear about the import of this. So-called ‘slippery slope’ arguments are familiar in respect of debates about assisted dying, and plenty of them were made in the House of Commons in the debate last week. Typically, we imagine said slope ending somewhere undesirable, but recognisable – the scenario most often depicted by those opposed to assisted dying is that of the elderly or terminally ill person feeling pressurised into taking his or her own life so as not to be a ‘burden’ on loved ones (or the health service).

But we will learn in the coming decades that the slope extends much more steeply downwards beyond that point. If we accept the basic premise of modern liberalism – that the state exists for the total and equal liberation of all human beings – then we have to recognise that assisted dying for the terminally ill is really just the first step towards a final outcome in which the ‘right to die’ is absolute. It is inevitable, given liberalism’s imperatives, that sooner or later the distinction between the terminally ill and the merely ill will break down; and it is inevitable after that that the distinction between the merely ill and the healthy-but-depressed will likewise collapse. And from there matters will descend to darker places yet. Good liberals, gesturing always towards equality of opportunity, will come to insist on the equality of opportunity to die. This may take years or decades. But it will happen. And from there, all bets are off – the slippery slope will be shown to be like the side of a great mountain.

In Jack Vance’s most disturbing novel, Wyst: Alastor 1716 – the inspiration, incidentally, for News from Uncibal’s title – we find a bleakly humorous forewarning of what is in store. The first half of the story is set in the city of Uncibal, a place in the grip of a “novel philosophical energy” known as “egalism”, which aims to achieve “human fulfilment, in a condition of leisure and amplitude” through the doctrine of “mutualism”.

Central to this project is “a drastic revision of traditional priorities” so that the conditions of genuine “mutualism” can be assured; the result is the complete emancipation of every individual from familial, sexual, romantic or societal bonds, in order that they be made both equal and free. Nobody may own property and all must share everything with whomever asks. Equal access to sex must be enjoyed, so that ‘copulation’ is to be performed on demand even while nobody is permitted to try to make themselves more sexually appealing than anybody else. Children are brought up separately from parents. Almost nobody bothers to work; anywhere one finds something productive being done it is being performed by an immigrant.

Naturally enough, the results are anything but ‘human fulfilment’. Indeed, one of the favourite pastimes of the populace is the performance and observation of suicide. This takes place at the so-called “Pavilions of Rest”, of which we are told there are currently five, lying within a grand bazaar known as Disjerferact.

“The most economical operation is conducted upon a cylindrical podium 10 feet high,” the main character, Jantiff, writes home to his family:

The customer mounts the podium and there delivers a valedictory declamation, sometimes spontaneous, sometimes rehearsed over a period of months. These declamations are of great interest and there is always an attentive audience, cheering, applauding or uttering groans of sympathy. Sometimes the sentiments are unpopular, and the speech is greeted with cat-calls. Meanwhile a snuff of black fur descends from above. Eventually it drops over the postulant and his explanations are heard no more.

The next is known as Halcyon House:

The person intent upon surcease, after paying his fee, enters a maze of prisms. He wanders here and there in a golden shimmer, while friends watch from the outside. His form becomes indistinct among the reflections and then is seen no more.

Then there is the Perfumed Boat:

The boat floats in a channel. The voyager embarks and reclines upon a couch. A profusion of paper flowers is arranged over his body; he is tendered a goblet of cordial and sent floating away into a tunnel from which issue strains of ethereal music. The boat eventually floats back to the dock clean and empty. What occurs in the tunnel is not made clear.

This is followed by the “convivial” Happy Way-Station:

The wayfarer arrives with all his boon companions. In a luxurious wood-panelled hall they are served whatever delicacies and tipple the wayfarer’s purse can afford. All eat, drink, reminisce; exchange pleasantries, until the lights begin to dim, whereupon the friends take their leave and the room goes dark. Sometimes the wayfarer changes his mind at the last minute and departs with his friends. On other occasions (so I am told) the party becomes outrageously jolly and mistakes may be made. The wayfarer manages to crawl away on his hands and knees, his friends remaining in a drunken daze around the table while the room goes dark.

The last is “a popular place of entertainment, and is conducted like a game of chance”:

Five participants each wager a stipulated sum and are seated in iron chairs numbered one through five. Spectators also pay an admission fee and are allowed to make wagers. An index spins into motion, slows and stops upon a number. The person in the chair so designated wins five times his stake. The other four drop through trap doors and are seen no more.

This is all of course played for sardonic humour, and sure enough it is shortly revealed that the corpses of those who kill themselves in the Pavilions are “macerated and flushed into a drain, along with all other wastes and slops” and then made into a slurry which is “processed, renewed and replenished” at a central plant and turned into food for the city’s inhabitants. But the point is deeply serious: taken to its extreme, if people are to be equal, then why ought the matter of death be an exception? And since the only way to achieve equality in death is to give everybody the right to die when they choose, then why place any restriction on the time of the choosing, or the manner of dying that is chosen?

From those predicates, of course, it is only a very short step to a market in the provision of death, and indeed its transformation into a form of entertainment. And from there it is only a short step to commercial operations relying on the liberalisation of suicide, and promoting its deployment. From there, suicide as spectacle – suicide as pleasure – naturally follows.

Michel Foucault, in many ways the harbinger of the liberal end-state, showed that this is all far from a joke. In an interview he laid the reasoning out very plainly. Since, he argued, suicide is unique to humanity – we are the only animal that does it – we ought to celebrate it, and indeed make it an art:

We should consider ourselves lucky to have at hand (with suicide) an extremely unique experience: it’s the one which above all the rest deserves the greatest attention – but rather so that you can make of it a fathomless pleasure whose patient and relentless preparation will enlighten all of your life. Suicide festivals or orgies are just two of the possible methods. There are others more intricate and learned.

And he extended the thought with a lurid fantasy:

In my opinion a person should have the right not to be rushed, which is very bothersome.

Indeed, a great deal of attention and competence are required. You should have the chance to discuss at length the various qualities of each weapon and its potential. It would be nice if the salesperson were experienced in these things, with a big smile, encouraging but a little bit reserved (not too chatty), and sophisticated enough to understand that he is dealing with a person who’s basically good-hearted, but somewhat clumsy, never having had the idea before of employing a machine that shoots people. It would also be convenient if the salesperson’s enthusiasm didn’t stop him from advising you about the existence of alternative ways, ways that were more chic, more your style.

He even imagined the existence of places like Japanese ‘love hotels’ where couples rent a room for a few hours to have sex, but which were dedicated to suicide: “places without maps or calendars where you can enter into the most absurd decors with anonymous partners to look for an opportunity to die free of all stereotypes”. He continued, “There you’d have an indeterminate amount of time – seconds, weeks, and months perhaps – until the moment presents itself with compelling clearness. You’d recognise it immediately. You couldn’t miss it. It would have the shapeless shape of utterly simple pleasure.”

If this all would have sounded far-fetched a month ago, inhabitants of London were in the days leading up to the ‘assisted dying’ vote treated to a series of adverts on the Tube extolling the virtues of “choice”. Each depicted somebody looking forward to their own death and the alleviation of their suffering. These were funded not by a business but a charity (strictly a not-for-profit company) called Dignity in Dying. But they gave us a foretaste of a life to come, wherein public billboards – let’s, in the interests of time, not concern ourselves with targeted ads on social media or TikTok – extol the virtues of dying in particular ways, and at the hands of particular operators for an attractive fee.

The ad at the top of this post has garnered the most interest because it is the one which most nakedly and brazenly gestures towards the future that I have here laid out, but the one which I found most interesting and indicative is this one:

Notice the tagline: “When I cannot stay, let me choose how I go.” Obviously this is supposed to emphasise that ‘assisted dying’ is going to take place in the context of terminal illness. But it also gives the game away, I am sure entirely unconsciously: the point about life is that none of us can stay. We are all in this sense terminal cases. Given this is so, the logic becomes clear – we must all be free to choose how we go. And this is the direction in which matters will inevitably flow. Since it is fair for Jenny, the bass guitarist and mum with terminal cancer, then it will sooner or later become fair for Johnny, the unemployed man who sees no point in going on; fair for Sarah, the lonely old lady living in poverty; fair for Ben, the extrovert attention-seeker with an undiagnosed personality disorder; fair for Geoff, who wants to make a grand political statement; fair for Bethany, who has low self-esteem. Once permitted, there is no principled limit on the scope of assisted dying’s purview, and no principled limit on who will in the end obtain the ‘right’ to it.

This of course foregrounds the importance of the relationship between liberalism and Christianity. Classical liberalism emerged within the context and rubric of a religious society with firmly entrenched moral norms – one of which being that, since life was a sacred gift, suicide was wrong. Over time teaching softened, such that suicide became seen as a desperate consequence of depression or pain, but the central legal prohibition on ‘assisting’ suicide was retained. This was partly because of practical concerns about identifying the circumstances in which ‘assistance’ should be made lawful, but it was mostly because people were squeamish about the idea of the state sanctioning the practice. And that squeamishness derived from a basically religious impulse: the idea that life itself has intrinsic moral value.

Despite declining church attendance and declining importance of religion in public life, this squeamishness has largely endured, even while most people have no real answer for the moral values they take for granted. But we are now (certainly here in the U.K., anyway) far into the process of secularisation and particularly de-Christianisation, such that we can begin to see emerging what our culture will look like in a post-religious age. What we are glimpsing is a society that is thoroughgoingly liberal – liberal to the Nth degree, being unconstrained by the moral norms which classical liberalism took for granted. This will be a society deluded into thinking it is governed by reason and the intellect. But what it will really be is a society in which each and every individual seeks from the state what is in his or her self-interest – a true sibling society characterised by an insistent demand for the combination of freedom and equality which every atomised individual necessarily desires as his or her ideal.

There will be absolutely nothing preventing death itself becoming the subject of this remorseless and unfettered liberal drive, and nothing therefore preventing the right to die from becoming universalised, lionised and ultimately commercialised (though undoubtedly, in the interests of true equality, there will be state-run operations ‘free at the point of use’). The slippery slope will go steeply down and our passage down it will be rapid. Without a basic commitment to the sanctity of life, with the emphasis on sanctity in the strict sense, Foucault’s fantasy – Vance’s parody – is the position to which liberalism will take us. We will live in a world in which the fantasy of equality and freedom in death is a guarantee, and in which the “simple pleasure” of suicide is not merely made available, but marketed and encouraged. This future lies ahead of us; the slope is slippery.

Dr. David McGrogan is an Associate Professor of Law at Northumbria Law School. You can subscribe to his Substack – News From Uncibal – here.

Trump Threatens to Unleash “Hell” if Hamas Doesn’t Release Hostages by January 20th

By Will Jones

President-elect Donald Trump has threatened to unleash “hell” in the Middle East if hostages held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip are not released before his inauguration on January 20th. The Hill has more.  

In a post on his social media site, Truth Social, Trump demanded the hostages be released before his inauguration or that there will be “ALL HELL TO PAY in the Middle East” against the perpetrators. 

“Those responsible will be hit harder than anybody has been hit in the long and storied History of the United States of America. RELEASE THE HOSTAGES NOW!” he wrote in the post.

The President-elect’s statement follows confirmation Monday that American Israeli Omer Neutra, who was believed to be alive and held hostage in Gaza, was killed during Hamas’s October 7th attack but that his body has been held captive by the U.S.-designated terrorist organisation. 

“Everybody is talking about the hostages who are being held so violently, inhumanely and against the will of the entire World, in the Middle East – but it’s all talk, and no action!” Trump wrote.

Biden has committed to renewing diplomatic efforts to secure a ceasefire and hostage release deal with Hamas before leaving office. The administration has said Hamas is the main obstacle to achieving a ceasefire deal, but critics of Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blame him for rejecting proposals to draw down Israel’s military presence in the Gaza Strip. 

In September, Biden said Netanyahu was not doing enough to achieve a deal to bring the hostages home.

Worth reading in full.

How Lockdown Broke the Will to Work

By Sallust

The former boss of Waitrose, Lord Price, has blamed lockdowns for annihilating the will of many Britons to go to work. Not surprising really, because lockdowns effectively gave workers a taste of what it’s like to be retired. But for those of working age the favoured option is to go on a permanent sickie, with the main concern being to maximise sick pay. The Telegraph has the story.

Many workers are now more worried about sick pay than other in-work benefits, Lord Price said, as he highlighted research from his think tank WorkL showing that almost a fifth of people who said health was a major issue in their workplace were most concerned about sick pay.

“It’s a reflection of attitudes,” he said. “We picked up lots of comments about ‘we want sick pay to be increased’ or ‘we want sick pay time to be extended’. And so there is something about ‘I want to be paid better for being off sick’.

Lord Price, who also served as Trade Minister, said lockdowns during the pandemic had “undoubtedly played a part” in the rise in economic inactivity since 2020, with close to 2.8 million people now neither in work nor looking for a job due to long-term illness.

He added that lockdown, which saw millions of people receive Government-funded furlough payments, had paved the way for a sick-note culture.

Lord Price told the Telegraph: “I just think that those Covid years found people being paid to be at home. And as a consequence of that and not working, I think there is a mindset switch about: well, the state will pay for us to be at home or not to work.

Not only is this chronic problem helping to prevent economic growth, but it’s also a reflection of unhappiness at work.

The study also found that British workers were among the unhappiest in the world. Just 74% of Britons believed their job meant they were doing something “worthwhile”, which was the joint lowest score with Ireland.

No surprises there for readers of this website. Back in 2020 it was already obvious that lockdowns were going to leave a devastating and long-lasting legacy far worse than the problem they were supposed to solve.

Worth reading in full.

“I Love Jesus” Rainbow Armband Earns Marc Guehi Formal Reprimand from FA

By Will Jones

Marc Guehi and Crystal Palace will be formally reprimanded by the FA after the player wrote “I love Jesus” on his rainbow captain’s armband because of a ban on “religious and political images”. The Mail has more.

The player and club had faced a charge, with FIFA and FA rules banning “any political, religious or personal slogans, statements or images” on players’ equipment, which includes armbands.

However, bosses at the FA have instead decided to remind Guehi and Palace of those regulations, rather than take further action.

Mail Sport also understands that Ipswich captain Sam Morsy will not be punished after refusing to wear the armband, part of a campaign supporting the LGBTQ+ community, because of his religious beliefs.

As his refusal was not a rule breach – unlike Guehi’s message – the matter is deemed to be one for the club, rather than governing bodies.

Morsy, 33, is a British-born midfielder who plays for Egypt and is a practising Muslim. He was the only one of 20 captains in the Premier League not to wear the armband.

A spokesperson for national LGBTQ+ charity Stonewall did not condemn the actions of either player.

He said: “It has been incredible to see so many football teams at all levels support our Rainbow Laces campaign to make sport safer and more inclusive for all. When we see clubs show their support for LGBTQ+ inclusion, it helps people feel safe and welcome both on and off the pitch.

“It is up to individuals to choose if and how they show their support for LGBTQ+ inclusion in sport.”

Guehi is a devout Christian and previously spoke about how his faith plays a major role in his career. 

Speaking to the Athletic, he said: “I’ve grown up loving God and when I have had the chance I still go to church with my family, and my faith is definitely a big part of my life.

“Faith is everything that I’m involved with, really; even in football, where I’m trying to be a role model and show God’s graciousness and God’s glory through my life.”

Guehi comes from a religious household, with his father, John, being a church minister. In fact, his role with the church caused a scheduling drama during the Euros, after he took a service at a church in Lewisham on the day of England’s clash against Serbia. 

Guehi admitted that “God comes first” and that he expected his father to be at the service rather than his match.

Guehi admitted: “Usually God comes first. I’d expect him to be at church but he could turn up, I don’t know. I’ll have to message him later to ask.”

First launched in 2013, the Rainbow Laces campaign sees clubs use rainbow corner flags, while captains wear rainbow armbands as well as laces. The occasion was almost universally observed, save for the Ipswich skipper. 

Worth reading in full.

Stop Press: Guehi risks a ban after doubling down by writing the words “Jesus loves You” on his armband for Tuesday’s match against Ipswich Town. His church minister father has accused the FA of double standards, telling the Mail:

The FA is happy for the crowd to sing God Save The King when England plays, which mentions God and religion. And it is happy to have the religious hymn Abide With Me during the cup final. And yet it has a go at my son for expressing his beliefs. Where is the sense in that? What exactly has he done wrong?

This country is a Christian country, and we are reminded of that when we go into public buildings that have the royal coat of arms which has the words Dieu et mon droit [God and my right]. I back my son for what he did. He’s my son and, of course, I stand with him. I don’t see anything wrong in the message that was on his armband, do you? I haven’t had a chance to speak with him yet about it.

I am a church minister and a devout Christian, and so is Marc. He didn’t refuse to wear the rainbow armband, so where is the problem? Morsy refused to wear the armband, but my son didn’t, he wore it.

He added that his son had been trying to convey a message of: “You gave me the armband. As a Christian, I don’t believe in your cause, but I will put it on.”

Stop Press 2: In the Times, Martin Samuel points out that the Rainbow Laces campaign likes to think it’s all about ‘inclusion’. Why, then, are its supporters so intend on singling out and ostracising those who disagree with it?

Has Donald Trump Ended Woke?

By Richard Eldred

Donald Trump thumped ‘brat’ Kamala Harris in the U.S. election and that mad Jaguar ad flopped embarrassingly. The age of woke is over, says Nick Dixon. The time of MAGA has come! But will the British political class wake up and smell the coffee? Don’t count on it.

This is a clip from the latest episode of the Sceptic podcast. Watch the full episode here.

News Round-Up

By Richard Eldred

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