Month: January 2021

Stick ’em up. Or don’t. Are London’s pharmacies being held up — at needlepoint — in a duel to vaccinate? They say an unfair and counterproductive advantage is being conferred on doctors’ hubs.

29 January 2021 By Paul Martin

Hundreds of doses of vaccine line the shelves of a fridge in a London pharmacy after a very frustrating week. It’s the majority of the doses the NHS sent the pharmacy.  The problem is not a lack of supplies. It’s a lack of patients. ‘The National Health Service is texting patients to offer three places they can go to for their first vaccination — but have […]

Deaths. Big surprises are revealed.

19 January 2021 By Paul Martin

At last we know the true death toll of the pandemic that ravaged England through one very turbulent year. And there are some big surprises. One is that the proportion of excess deaths in the BAME ethnic groups (Black, Asian, Middle Eastern and Other) appears to be not significantly different to the proportional excess among […]

Did a jailed terrorist beg to come home? Newspapers rush to the wrong — though headline-grabbing — conclusion.

18 January 2021 By Paul Martin

‘It’s the Sun wot won it.’ That was a famous headline when the Conservatives unexpectedly won a British general election. Now, more than a quarter of a century later, that popular tabloid newspaper could very well rewrite its deliberately ungrammatical headline and declare: ‘It’s the Sun wot faked it.’ Let’s start by quoting the offending […]

A sniff that may save the world from Covid.

16 January 2021 By Paul Martin

Exclusive. In a British National Health Service hospital, fifty British ‘guinea-pigs’ last week sniffed a revolutionary new mixture that fights Covid-19 before it gets into our lungs — using a substance that, by coincidence, is connected with the explosive, nitro-glycerine. It’s being hailed as a huge potential life-saver: a product that attacks the Covid virus, […]

Scotland’s top court declares a Libyan is guilty of murdering his daughter. But Dr Jim Swire says he will fight on to find the ‘real culprits’.

15 January 2021 By Paul Martin

As Abdelbaset Megrahi lay on his deathbed in the Libyan capital Tripoli eight years ago, he agreed to see a British visitor — Dr Jim Swire. Megrahi had been convicted of murdering Swire’s daughter Flora in the skies above Lockerbie a day before her 24th birthday. ‘I owed it to my daughter, and to the […]

The Lockerbie bombing killed 270 people. At last, the Scottish Supreme Court gives its final ruling.

15 January 2021 By Paul Martin

Five Scottish appeal court judges have rejected an appeal launched by the son of the only person convicted of the PanAm jetliner bomb explosion that killed 270 people over and in Lockerbie thirty-two years ago. The five judges were only able to overturn the original conviction of Abdel Basset al-Megrahi if convinced that no reasonable court could have […]

Teachers of primary school classes not at greater risk of Covid than other workers, says top European survey.

14 January 2021 By Paul Martin

NOTE: In the UK, an Office of National Statistics survey showed that British primary, secondary and tertiary teachers are not at greater risk of dying from Covid-19… just as we reported in regard to primary school teachers eleven days earlier. Nevertheless, this month, January 2021, teachers unions were threatening to take the government to court […]

Iran’s top general stunningly rebuffs Europe and the USA. He declares that his country does not want to resume compliance with the 2015 nuclear treaty.

13 January 2021 By Paul Martin

Iran’s top military commander has rejected the prospect of Tehran resuming cooperation with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — the 2015 nuclear agreement between Iran and six world powers led by the US. In remarks to Iranian official media Gen. Hossein Salami — the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) — […]