Richard Woolley

[Matt Ridley @mattwridley]

I used to say things like this about science too. I still do about most science. But I was lied to so blatantly over Covid origins and climate alarmism that I now know science does change its line because it lied.

[Isabel Oakeshott @IsabelOakeshott]

Andy Burnham calls @Nigel_Farage by election a "gimmick" - apparently failing to see the irony that he himself just pulled an identical stunt.....embarrassing

[John Redwood @johnredwood]

Taxpayers are paying £21 bn annually to the largely nationalised railway for just 2% of people’s trips. 59% of trips are by car. Drivers pay fuel duty, VAT and VED. Train fares are VAT free and trains pay just 6.48 p instead of 52.95p duty on diesel. Big tax loss from trains.

[Guido Fawkes @GuidoFawkes]

Statement by Paul Dacre, Editor-in-Chief of Associated Newspapers Limited, following Harry's loss in court today:

"Prince Harry wrote a sad book which boasted about his killing of 25 Taliban, his drug-taking and, in cringe-making detail, how he lost his virginity. There isn't a laundry in the cosmos big enough to wash all the dirty linen he has aired about his own family. For him, to complain about HIS privacy being invaded takes, not just the biscuit, but the whole tin. Poor Harry. I feel sorry for the way a confused and angry young man has been drawn into this case. The bitter irony is that his mother, Diana, liked the Mail. We were her paper. We took her side in her acrimonious break up with Charles. She and I would speak and meet. The Mail's superb royal reporter was her friend and confidante. The truth is that this trumped-up action - which has cost well over £50 million and wasted a huge amount of valuable court time - should never have been brought to trial. That it did, raises profoundly disturbing questions about the conduct of elements of the legal profession. Today's verdict is not just a victory for Associated's magnificent journalists - several of whom have had a terrible toll imposed on their health and lives - but a free press generally. Make no mistake. This was a conspiracy, supported by Hacked Off, to destroy a paper. Financed by the orgy-loving, racist Max Mosley and involving the actor Hugh Grant, it was also a sinister bid to resuscitate Leveson Two and impose statutory regulation on the press which, even now, is rearing its ugly head in Labour's Media Green Paper."

[David Davis MP @DavidDavisMP]

There is growing speculation about the enforcement of Labour's social media ban for Under-16s involving restrictions or bans on VPNs.

Make no mistake, if this is introduced, it will mean an end to online privacy, and the state will know exactly who is looking at what at all times if they so choose.

The only other states with restrictions on VPNs are China, Russia, Iran, Oman, the UAE, Turkey and India.

This is a dark direction of policy even for the Labour Party.

https://t.co/hQ9cMrPwB8

[Claire Coutinho @ClaireCoutinho]

On 2nd June I raised concerns about the security of our electricity grid. I was told by Ed Miliband that I was scaremongering.

Since then I have been contacted by a whistleblower within our grid operator, the NESO.

They allege that operators are being instructed to hide information that shows the grid is not being operated securely.

Worse, they allege that Corporate Affairs interefered with operational decisions to stabilise the grid - risking blackouts to protect NESO's reputation.

Despite this coming from within the operator, the Minister doubled down on calling this ‘scaremongering’ rather than wanting to know the truth.

This Government is asleep at the wheel.

They must urgently investigate these allegations.

[Harriet Sergeant @HarrietSergeant]

I wrote a think tank report under Blunkett asking why Labour was turbo-boosting migration when it was so clearly hammering its own core voters - the white working class. Twenty-five years on, I’m still waiting for an answer.

[Burnside @BurnsideWasTosh]

We are not mugs: we voted consistently for parties to stop this shit. And yet here we are, the penalty for failure is speaking tours and book deals.

[Claire Fox @Fox_Claire]

"This is a gimmick" from a man who is only an MP cos he forced a by-elction when one not needed, all to force an internal LP coup to dump one prime minister & allow his own coronation. Now that is what I call a gimmick.

[David Davis MP @DavidDavisMP]

The Government has confirmed that its so called 'independent' Digital ID Advisory watchdog, will not have its minutes published.

We are expected to carry out parliamentary scrutiny on one of the most significant erosions of our civil liberties for decades, and yet we are not told the group budget, member selection process, or given the minutes from their meetings. Journalists have also been excluded from advisory panels.

The Government must give us answers on this sinister policy, and rethink its current course.

https://t.co/lFNq3lcyeV

[Kelvin MacKenzie @kelvmackenzie]

Read this racket.
257 Ghanaian health and care workers were granted visas last year but despite new govt restrictions brought in 2,131 dependents. 8 per visa.
12 Cameroon workers got visas and brought in 180 family. 15 per visa.
139 Bangladeshis, but 747 family. 6 per visa.
2,395 Indian workers, 10,504 family. 4 per visa.
We are such mugs.

[Kristian Niemietz @K_Niemietz]

The "best inequality economist in the world" has built his entire public profile on his insistence that wealth inequality is exploding when it's demonstrably not.
And he keeps getting away with it.

[Kevin Sorbo @ksorbs]

Definitely don’t share this video of them forcing the man into the car backwards and then becoming aggressive when he (obviously) doesn’t fit.

[Fred de Fossard @defossardf]

The call has gone out to the NGOs

[Christopher Snowdon @cjsnowdon]

I’d be interested to read an article about how Amnesty went from fighting for freedom and human rights to campaigning for censorship.

[Fraser Nelson @FraserNelson]

Andy Burnham should have a one-hour Ask Me Anything: with Andrew Neil.

A Times Radio interview with him would be a pretty robust test for a would-be PM.

[Tim Worstall @worstall]

This is, well, simply untrue? "Wind and solar ... are also the cheapest forms of energy, period".

I mean, they're just not. Not even close in fact.

Sure, they could still be desirable, still be useful and all that. But cheapest? They're just not.

[Agent P @AgentP22]

Nicola Sturgeon having a glass of wine in the sun with her pal Claire Mitchell KC.

Wait a minute, isn't that the same Claire Mitchell KC who "cross-examined" Nicola Sturgeon at the Covid Inquiry?

[James Dreyfus @DreyfusJames]

Yo, Bath, Cambridge, Malvern, Richmond, Cheltenham, York, Poole, Liverpool & Chichester… you lucky people…

From 27th Aug to 28th Nov.

Do come… 😁

[Willis Eschenbach @WEschenbach]

Happy 96th birthday to Professor Thomas Sowell, one of the greatest thinkers of our time and the undisputed king of the epigram! In his honor, here are twenty of his most famous quotes:

1. “Nearly a hundred years of the supposed ‘legacy of slavery’ found most black children being raised in two-parent families in 1960. But thirty years after the liberal welfare state found the great majority of black children being raised by a single parent. The murder rate among blacks in 1960 was one-half of what it became 20 years later, after a legacy of liberals’ law enforcement policies.” (A Legacy of Liberalism)

2. “Public housing projects in the first half of the 20th century were clean, safe places, where people slept outside on hot summer nights, when they were too poor to afford air conditioning. That was before admissions standards for public housing projects were lowered or abandoned, in the euphoria of liberal non-judgmental notions. And it was before the toxic message of victimhood was spread by liberals. We all know what hell holes public housing has become in our times.” (A Legacy of Liberalism)

3. “The blacks in the West Indies had all sorts of experiences growing their food, selling the surplus in the market, and being responsible for budgeting what they had. Black slaves in the United States were deliberately kept from having that. Dependence was seen as the key to holding the slaves down. Ironically, that same principle comes up in the welfare state 100 years later.”

4. “If we wanted to be serious about evidence, we might compare where blacks stood a hundred years after the end of slavery with where they stood after 30 years of the liberal welfare state. Despite the grand myth that black economic progress began or accelerated with the passage of the civil rights laws and ‘war on poverty’ programs of the 1960s, the cold fact is that the poverty rate among blacks fell from 87 percent in 1940 to 47 percent by 1960. This was before any of those programs began.” (A Legacy of Liberalism)

5. “What the welfare system and other kinds of governmental programs are doing is paying people to fail. Insofar as they fail, they receive the money. In so far as they succeed, even to a moderate extent, the money is taken away.” (Free to Choose, 1980)

6. “The way the [welfare] programs are organized, poor people are only paid to do things that are counter-productive, such as breaking up their families, such as not earning above a certain level of income.”

7. “The welfare state is the oldest con game in the world. First you take people’s money away quietly, and then you give some of it back to them flamboyantly.”

8. “Not since the days of slavery have there been so many people who feel entitled to what other people have produced as there are in the modern welfare state, whether in Western Europe or on this side of the Atlantic.”

9. “The more people who are dependent on government handouts, the more votes the left can depend on for an ever-expanding welfare state. Although the big word on the left is ‘compassion,’ the big agenda on the left is dependency.”

10. “Much of the social history of the Western world, over the past three decades, has been a history of replacing what worked with what sounded good. In area after area, crime, education, housing, race relations, the situation has gotten worse after the bright new theories were put into operation. The amazing thing is that this history of failure and disaster has neither discouraged the social engineers nor discredited them.” (Is Reality Optional?)

11. “The most fundamental fact about the ideas of the political left is that they do not work. Therefore, we should not be surprised to find the left concentrated in institutions where ideas do not have to work in order to survive.”

12. “Socialism is a wonderful idea. It is only as a reality that it has been disastrous. Among people of every race, color, and creed, all around the world, socialism has led to hunger in countries that used to have surplus food to export.”

13. “As long as human beings are imperfect, there will always be arguments for extending the power of government to deal with these imperfections. The only logical stopping place is totalitarianism, unless we realize that tolerating imperfections is the price of freedom.” (Ever Wonder Why?)

14. “The fact that so many successful politicians are such shameless liars is not only a reflection on them, it is also a reflection on us. When the people want the impossible, only liars can satisfy.”

15. “It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.”

16. “Life in general has never been even close to fair, so the pretense that the government can make it fair is a valuable and inexhaustible asset to politicians who want to expand government.”

17. “It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and medication somehow think that we can afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, medication, and a government bureaucracy to administer it.” (Knowledge and Decisions)

18. “I have never understood why it is ‘greed’ to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take somebody else’s money.”

19. “Racism is not dead, but it is on life support, kept alive by politicians, race hustlers and people who get a sense of superiority by denouncing others as ‘racists.’”

20. “The old adage about giving a man a fish versus teaching him how to fish has been updated by a reader: Give a man a fish, and he will ask for tartar sauce and French fries! Moreover, some politician who wants his vote will declare all these things to be among his ‘basic rights.’”