A Lib Dem parliamentarian's bill to legalise race-based candidate lists is undemocratic, patronising & will undo the decades of progress Britain has made.

I was so irked by an elected public servant's recent declaration, that paraphrasing a great man's quotation was the only response I felt could touch my exasperation.

My comments will not attract much attention in the crowded Twitterverse, but I felt that if there was even half a chance that a few might notice, then I should use the opportunity to do so.

An Italian governor has promised to impose a regional curfew on 31 October to slow the spread of coronavirus, branding Halloween a "huge stupid Americanism".

Vicenzo De Luca, centre-left leader of the Campania region, which includes Naples, said the shutdown would begin at 10pm that night, amid a sharp rise in Covid-19 cases there this month.

"Halloween is this huge piece of nonsense, this huge stupid Americanism that has also been imported into our country," Mr De Luca said in a Friday briefing broadcast on Facebook.

Thousands of people took to the streets of Minsk again on Sunday, as mass anti-government protests continued across the country. Sporadic scuffles erupted between demonstrators and police, with dozens reportedly detained.

The Belarusian capital has played host to weekly protests against the government of President Alexander Lukashenko, since a disputed presidential election in August. This Sunday, the procession was dubbed 'The Partisan March' by its organizers.

Tens of thousands marched through the city's center, where they repeatedly ran into cordons erected by riot police and were forced to change course several times during the rally.

A care home in Russia's Ural region has come under fire after a shocking video surfaced on social media accusing the facility of coercing disabled women into surgical sterilization. Now, local authorities have launched an inquiry.

The disturbing images were published by Telegram channel Baza. They showed a resident of the care home in the Sverdlovsk territory saying she was forcibly sterilized on the orders of the facility's administration.

"I did not want that! I did not even understand what it was all about," the woman - identified as Lyudmila Guseva - said as she recalled her story. No one explained anything to her, she said, adding that she only discovered the truth from other care home residents. When Guseva sought to opt out of the operation, the medics and the administration of the care home threatened her with a transfer to a mental health institution with a stricter regime, she says.

Allegations of corruption against ex-Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter have apparently been "debunked" and are merely a "conspiracy theory" according to Wikipedia, where editors are battling over the terms.

Hunter Biden was the subject of an explosive report last week as the New York Post published emails alleging that he involved his father in dodgy business dealings in Ukraine and China.

While the story is still unfolding, the Wikipedia page for Hunter Biden simply states that "he and his father have been the subjects of debunked right-wing conspiracy theories pushed by [President] Donald Trump and his allies." The curious framing was highlighted by conservative commentator Ian Miles Cheong on Twitter on Tuesday.


Eight sources are listed for this one sentence, intending to support the view that any accusations of corruption against the Democratic presidential candidate and his son have already been proven false. In recent days, Wikipedia editors have been engaged in regular spats about the inclusion of the word "debunked."

The appearance of SARS CoV-2 has been deemed worthy of extraordinary measures to contain or suppress its spread. With a rise in infections across Europe, politicians are once again scrambling to reintroduce a series of policies that amount to lockdown in all but name. France has introduced a curfew. Italy has made the wearing of masks mandatory outdoors. And London's nine million residents have been banned from meeting people they don't live with indoors. Such extraordinary measures imply that the epidemic of SARS-CoV2 has features that are out of the ordinary when compared to previous pandemics. But is this right? Or are we setting a precedent for the way we deal with infectious diseases?

We are, of course, all familiar with acute respiratory infections and their effects. They are a seasonal nuisance; occasionally they can put us into hospital, or even worse, speed our departure. A host of known pathogens circulate across different parts of the year and some - 40 per cent - cannot be identified. Each infectious pathogen, generally, has its seasonal window. In the northern hemisphere, influenza occurs each winter; chickenpox tends to peak in spring; and in the past, polio occurred in late summer and autumn. The four human coronaviruses that already circulate are also seasonal. A US study that followed over a thousand individuals for eight years found they are most common between December and May, with only 2.5 per cent of infections occurring between June and September. Why would it be assumed that Covid-19 be any different?

Historically, seasonal pathogens have been dealt with by either monitoring them or by vaccination of those most vulnerable. Licensed vaccines are, however, only available against one of the many agents: influenza. The last pandemic was swine flu in 2009. It was not as severe as initially thought, in part, because older people were found to have population immunity. Today the swine flu virus is seasonal and is often included in the annual influenza vaccine to mitigate its effects.

As the insatiable woke beast runs rampant across our culture, the category of things deemed offensive becomes ever more bloated, meaning an increasing number of classics are now in danger.

If you are anything like me, you'll have been losing copious amounts of sleep worrying that the content warning for racism that Disney runs before some of its classic animated films, like Lady and the Tramp, Peter Pan, Dumbo, The Jungle Book, and The Aristocats, wasn't long-winded enough.

Well, thanks to the geniuses at everybody's favorite frozen ant-Semite's entertainment mega-corporation, we can all rest easy, because it has attached a new disclaimer to these allegedly offensive films.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) vetoed legislation that would have made it a felony to attempt to apply for multiple absentee ballots or fill out an application for other individuals without their consent.

The Associated Press reports:

The Democratic governor said voter fraud — such as trying to vote more than once — already is a crime, and the Republican-sponsored legislation would "muddy the waters" and "likely confuse voters" about what conduct is criminal. In a letter to lawmakers Friday, she said it is impossible to get a second ballot without spoiling the first one and cautioned that people might submit multiple applications because of memory or error.

[...]

The main bill was passed by the GOP-controlled House and Senate on bipartisan 77-26 and 32-6 votes, with some Democrats opposed.

When it comes to Covid-19, bureaucrats and politicians keep moving the goalposts, changing the rules, and engaging in bait-and-switch tactics, so they can maintain the "new normal" dictatorship.

Those who object, we're told, "just want people to die." It's now becoming clear that "you can't have your life back in some states unless you take it back."

From the 2020 Supporters Summit, presented at the historic Jekyll Island Club Resort on Jekyll Island, Georgia, on 9 October 2020.

Melbourne to resume real estate auctions and reopen hairdressers and outdoor sporting facilities as state records two new cases

Melbourne's 5km travel radius will expand to 25km from midnight under eased restrictions announced by the state's premier Daniel Andrews.

From 11.59pm on Sunday, residents of the city who have been under lockdown for more than 100 days will be able to travel up to 25km for either exercise or shopping.

The city's two-hour time limit for exercise and socialising will also be scrapped and groups of up to 10 people from two households will be permitted to gather outdoors.