Bournbrook Live
Our commentary on the news as it comes in.
If you would like to contribute to Live, please email us at live@bournbrookmag.com
What will it take for us to get down to level one?
Posted at 2pm.
Posted at 2pm UK time
Given that there have been about four people reportedly die of Covid in the last week, one must wonder what degree of sterility the country must reach to move to alert level one.
The head butler putting on white gloves and running his fingers under the windowsill to check for dust, perhaps?
The UK’s Covid alert level should have been lowered weeks ago
Posted at 1.55pm.
Posted at 1.55pm UK time
The UK’s four Chief Medical Officers have agreed that the Covid alert level should be lowered from level four to level three. This suggests that the ‘epidemic is in general circulation’ and that there should be a ‘gradual relaxing of restrictions and social distancing measures’.
This should have been done weeks ago – the delay was totally nonsensical.
When rates were higher than they are now they had us at alert level three. Now they have only just managed to bring us down to the same level when the virus has been decreasing rapidly.
The knives are out for Starmer at The Guardian
Posted at 2.25pm.
Posted at 1.25pm UK time
The Guardian is now publishing unflattering pictures of Sir Kier Starmer.
This might seem insignificant, but leading with a photo that shows a double chin and generally makes him look puffy around the face is probably a sign that the knives are out for the Labour leader.
Labour in name only
Posted at 11.50am.
Posted at 11.50am UK time
Following Labour’s defeat at the local elections, Diane Abbott has called for the party to embrace free movement.
I do wonder sometimes what planet these morons are on.
How can you honestly call yourself a LABOUR party – with the aim of helping the working class – when you want to flood the labour market and lower their wages?
Not to mention what mass migration does to communities.
Government to ‘allow’ us to hug again
Posted at 10.55am.
Posted at 10.55am UK time
The Prime Minister will declare today that friends and relatives can – from next Monday – hug for the first time in a year. He is not likely to question why the Government was ever allowed to tell people they weren’t ‘permitted’ to cuddle others in the first place. Nor will he ask why the media still rarely raises this question and, instead, heralds Boris’ kind allowance as a ‘return to freedom’.
Read this and more in my Daily News Digest for The Conservative Woman here.
Covid deaths continue to fall – so why do we continue to lock down?
Posted at 4.45pm.
Posted at 4.45pm UK time
Just two Covid deaths reported in the last 24 hours. Why do we allow this madness to continue?
I report on this for Lockdown Sceptics here.
James Bembridge on Our Current Predicament
Posted at 3.50pm.
Posted at 3.50pm UK time
Listen to the latest episode of Our Current Predicament on YouTube here.
Most young people will take Covid vaccines – so what IS the point of vaccine passports?
Posted at 12pm.
Posted at 12pm UK time
In March, Government insiders said that vaccine passports could be used to ‘nudge’ young people into taking Covid vaccines. But a new survey of almost 17,000 Brits suggests that almost all young people will take the vaccine anyway – and that acceptance rates barely change across different age groups. So what IS the point of introducing domestic passes?
I report on this for Lockdown Sceptics here.
The Labour Party is out of touch
Posted at 10am.
Posted at 10am UK time
ALL Westminster politicians would do well to listen to Khalid Mahmood’s message after he resigned from the Labour front bench.
Whether left or right, the vast vast majority of people care about their livelihoods, their community, and their patriotic nationhood.
NOT the woke gender and green politics of an out of touch metropolitan elite.
Boris Johnson eyes a decade in power
Posted at 8.10am.
Posted at 8.10am UK time
Read my Weekend News Review for The Conservative Woman here.
This week I lead on the rather terrifying headline published by The Times on Saturday: ‘Boris Johnson eyes decade in power.’ It seems the lockdowns have changed nothing (in an electoral sense, that is).
The first victim of lockdown?
Posted at 10.20am.
Posted at 10.20am UK time
Was a CrossCountry passenger train the first U.K. victim of lockdown?
Read my report on the somewhat amusing (since nobody was injured) collision of a passenger train into a derailed freight vehicle for Lockdown Sceptics here.
The harm principle
Posted at 1.30pm.
Posted at 1.30pm UK time
Liberalism is by far the most elitist political ideology. Its adherents assume that the entire population subscribes to their superior and enlightened worldview, which is why it creates the perfect conditions for cancel culture: the unenlightened brutes who don’t hold progressive views deserve to be cast aside from the public conversation.
This leads to an inadvertent sneering at the working class.
Liberalism is also more likely to cede authority to the technocrats who were moulded in its Universities (see liberals’ childish adoration of Doctor Fauci).
The era in which liberalism is the default moral position must end. It is far from harmless. Its endgame is far more elitist and tyrannical than most people care to admit.
Once upon a time…
Posted at 11am.
Posted at 11am UK time
Once upon a time, you were a racist if you were deliberately prejudiced against people with different skin colour.
Now, you're racist if you happen to disagree with self appointed anti-racists.
Media companies must be held to account for their treatment of free speech
Posted at 10am.
Posted at 10am UK time
Donald Trump’s long-term ban from major social media sites continues as Facebook’s Oversight Board has decided to uphold his ban from both Instagram and Facebook.
The US Democrats have called for the former president to be banned permanently.
This development feeds into the ongoing debate surrounding the tension between freedom of speech and the freedom of private companies to conduct business on their terms.
Companies holding this level of power are yet to be held to account over this issue, and it is high time that something happened...
Companies turn to ‘hybrid working’ after lockdown
Posted at 7.35am.
Posted at 7.35am UK time
Read my Daily News Digest for The Conservative Woman here.
I lead today with the topic of companies turning to ‘hybrid working’ post lockdowns – an example of the establishment using Covid to their advantage, and forcing through change they’ve been gunning for for years. The latest companies to announce that their staff will have to work from home (for at least some of the time) are Google and the accounting firm KPMG. The damage caused by this isn’t just reflected in the lack of socialisation, but also productivity, which companies say dropped during lockdown when staff worked from home.
We discussed this trend a little while back on the Week in Review, here.
Diplomatie de la Russie
Posted at 2pm.
Posted at 2pm UK time
In 2006, Russia cut off its natural gas supply to Ukraine due to a dispute about gas prices and payments – and, no doubt, informed by geostrategic matters.
Russia was condemned for this action by the West, including by the European Union and its member states. This morning, The Daily Telegraph reports that France has threatened to cut off electricity supplies to Jersey if the UK does not give French boats the fishing access to Jersey waters France wants.
At least when Vladimir Putin sought to bend Ukraine to his will through threats to remove one of the cornerstone resources of modern civilisation, he did so on a related matter – the price of gas. There is no such connection to France's threat.
It takes two to tango
Posted at 1 pm UK time
The identitarian left accuse the right of ‘starting culture wars’. But they conveniently forget that it takes two to tango and they are just as responsible for these culture wars. They need to understand that there is a reaction for every action.
It's absolutely right to state that culture wars are terrible and bring out the worst in people, but the majority have nothing to apologise for. A loud vocal minority is fomenting the culture war for their own political gain.
Culture warriors from both the left and the right have a symbiotic relationship. They need each other. It's how they sustain their platform and grift.
Terrible figures on Britain’s mental health
Posted at 12.15pm.
Posted at 12.15pm UK time
New data from the Office for National Statistics provides an insight into the extent of the damage done to the nation’s mental health by a year of lockdowns. Most notably, the percentage of British adults who experienced some form of depression in the first months of 2021 was more than double that recorded before the first lockdown began.
I report on this for Lockdown Sceptics here.
The crying shame
Posted at 10 am.
A court has acquitted two former British soldiers of murdering Joe McCann, an IRA leader, in Northern Ireland in 1972. In fact, the judge said he found it ‘remarkable’ that they had been prosecuted at all, given the evidence. What is remarkable about the prosecution, and scores like it, is not so much the evidence, but that they are allowed at all.
Clearly, British servicemen must be held accountable for their actions. We cannot allow ill-discipline to turn them into a vengeful, savage murderers like, for instance, the IRA. However, the instant Tony Blair and his cronies gave numerous IRA figures get-out-of-jail-free cards, the British Armed Forces should have been afforded the same protections.
It is unacceptable for only one side’s alleged crimes to be investigated. Either they both are, or neither are.
Would it not be simpler, and more conducive to the continuing peace, if some kind of statute of limitations were quietly introduced?
Third Covid vaccine for over-50s before winter
Posted at 8.14 am.
Posted at 8.15 am UK time
Read my Daily News Digest for The Conservative Woman here.