IN CASE you missed any of our ten most-read blogs of last week, here they are for you again – and well worth the read.
James Delingpole: Trump v Biden: Yes, it’s a conspiracy
Andrew Cadman: Tipping point for the Tories
Kathy Gyngell: We need to speak about Sweden more than ever
Kathy Gyngell: Hancock must face the futility and irresponsibility of PCR testing
Andrew Mahon: Worshippers at the altar of pseudo-science
Richard Tice: Don’t bottle it now, Boris
Margaret Ashworth: Strange case of the Premier League booing cover-up
Lucy Wyatt: Technocracy and the Abolition of Man
Kathy Gyngell: The media ignores Trump’s fraud claims, but the story won’t die
Frederick Edward: If we stick with the Tories, things can only get worse
And so the Eton saga continues, proving — for those who still have any doubt — that even our most elite schools are succumbing to the modern, woke, anti-educationalist ethos which has snuffed out so much talent in the ordinary comps around the country for many decades. Dr Kevin Donnelly weighed into the debate this week with: ‘Eton’s playing fields are only fit for netball now‘.
Dr Donnelly makes his position clear from the beginning: ‘The Duke of Wellington is often said to have declared that the battle of Waterloo “was won on the playing fields of Eton”. If true, Wellington would be forced to recant now that Eton has gained the reputation as one of the most politically correct and woke institutions in England.’
Most interesting is his discussion of the way in which any positive spin on masculinity — among other notions linked to ‘pale, stale, male’ days gone by — is considered sacrilege by those who have wriggled their way to the top. Any attempt to alter the educational establishment for the better must begin by banishing this dangerous ideology.
Kathy’s pick outside TCW’s top ten blogs of the week is Grace Shelley’s ‘Shafted, shafted and shafted again – a pub manager’s story’.
No one but the most avid of Covid cultists could have remained blind to lockdown’s annihilation of the hospitality industry. Before the December 2 tiers edict more than half a million people in it had already lost their jobs. Kate Nicholls, chief executive of UK Hospitality, has warned that another national lockdown would devastate the sector completely, accelerating closures and reducing turnover from £130billion in 2019 to less than £65billion in 2020.
Sometimes an individual story can have more impact than pages of stats. This one does. Grace Shelley, in true Chaucerian fashion, provides the reader with her own step-by-step story of abiding by the government’s successively tin-eared edicts, of their irrationality and waste, of her frustration and discouragement at having to carry them out. This is a cameo of Soviet levels of government stupidity in action.
Margaret’s pick outside the top ten is ‘Our lockdown fight goes on’, Simon Dolan’s account of his continuing battle to hold the government to account over its imposition of ruinous and illogical lockdowns in an attempt to eradicate an illness which is very rarely fatal. On December 1 the Court of Appeal shamefully rejected his request for a judicial review.
Dolan writes: ‘Despite accepting there was public interest for the appeal to be heard on the ground that the Government acted “ultra vires” (beyond its powers) by using the Public Health Act 1984 to impose lockdown, ultimately, the court held against us.’
As he said in a later tweet, ‘When I started this case I believed in the independence of the judiciary, and in the basic fairness of English law. The “system” is however rotten to the core.’
Or as commenter ‘floody’ wrote: ‘In contrast when Gina Miller wanted Brexit stopped the case was presented approved, had their day in court, won and all in a few weeks. Sorted.’ ‘Della Cate’ replied: ‘Ah. Right sort of person bringing the right sort of case! That’s the difference.’
Equally shamefully, as far as I can see neither the BBC, the Times, the Telegraph, the Financial Times, the Independent nor the Guardian saw fit to cover the judgement, though it did make the Mail, ITV News and Sky News.
Simon Dolan has promised to seek permission to appeal on the ‘ultra vires’ point to the Supreme Court. He writes: ‘We find ourselves no longer living in a functioning democracy. If Parliament isn’t examining the lockdown restrictions and the courts will not review what the Government has done, then who is holding ministers to account? How is it that we have come to live in some kind of elective dictatorship, where our leaders are free to do whatever they want?’
