The Independent has somehow managed to conjure up a sexism row around Storm Eunice by claiming Brits aren’t as scared of the winds as they should be because the storm has a feminine name:
“there’s a bank of fascinating psychological research to back up the fact that overall, female-titled storms and hurricanes are in fact far more deadly.
Why? Because people don’t take them as seriously; so don’t take as many precautions to protect themselves, and there are consequently more deaths. That’s right: storms are sexist.”
The author, Victoria Richards, goes on to claim that Storm Eunice gives us “an opportunity: both to look at ourselves, to do some rigorous self-analysis – and, most importantly, to stay indoors.” There’s just one problem with Victoria’s culture war-stoking claim: it’s nonsense…
Richards cites a 2014 paper, “Female hurricanes are deadlier than male hurricanes”, which has since been debunked. In 2015 a review of the paper – “Hurricane names: A bunch of hot air?” – fact-checked the claims of sexism, concluding that the “reported relationship is not robust in that it is not confirmed by a straightforward analysis of more inclusive data or different data.”:
“The assertion that female-named storms are deadlier than male-named storms is not robust, evidently because it relied on the questionable statistical analysis of a narrowly defined set of data.”
Another reminder that it’s the liberal left who claim right-wingers are the ones stoking a culture war…
Since Allegra Stratton’s resignation on Tuesday night, Guido’s video of Jacob Rees-Mogg’s IEA speech has racked up well over 7 million views, with pick-up from almost all the big hitters including the Sun and the Mail. For an appropriate fee and accreditation, Guido has happily licensed the footage to any publication that’s asked to use it. Most outlets have gladly obliged and paid up. Not all.
Sky News, the Independent, the Daily Express, UniLad, Metro, and BristolPost all took our content without paying for it. At the time of going to pixel, all still have Guido’s footage embedded on their websites without permission. Reach (on behalf of the Express and the Mirror) and BristolLive asked for licensing details before publishing, which we provided, only for them to upload the video without paying anyway. This isn’t the first time Reach has done this…
Unfortunately for these outlets, they lazily embedded link to our original YouTube video in their text, meaning any changes made to the clip’s thumbnail are reflected in their stories:
Our ferocious lawyers will be – or have already been – in touch.
In surprising news the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) has announced that Abimbola Johnson, is to be the newly appointed Chair of the Independent Scrutiny & Oversight Board, which is overseeing the Police Action Plan on Inclusion and Race. Hyper-political Abimbola happily tweets about; how racist the UK is, how much she despises the police and her deep-rooted hatred of the Tories. Guido has dug out some of her tweets so you don’t have to…
On several occasions Abimbola accuses the government of being racist, despite the fact that it has the most ethnically diverse cabinet in history.
Abimbola has also tweeted several times about wanting to abolish the police. Given her rhetoric, Guido wonders if she’s the best person to fairly and independently scrutinise police…
Abimbola was unsurprisingly a big fan of HuffPost under the former editor-in-chief, Jess Brammar
Are the police chiefs being clever making a poacher gamekeeper, or did they fail to investigate her views? In any event Guido looks forward to Abimbola’s ‘independent’ advice…
This weekend the Guardian and Independent both published a whopper of a story sure to set social media and MP’s casework inboxes alight; with claims Boris was to use Brexit to authorise the use of a “bee-killing pesticide banned in the EU” – neonicotinoid thiamethoxam – to treat sugar beet seed this year in an effort to protect the crop from a virus. Greta immediately leapt on the story:
UK government has announced "a bee-killing pesticide so poisonous that it is banned by the EU" may be used in England.
— Greta Thunberg (@GretaThunberg) January 9, 2021
New coal mines and pesticides... the UK's so called "green industrial revolution" is off to a great start.
Very credible indeed.https://t.co/R4o54ZEyvD
There was just one problem with the screeching Remainer environmental outrage: the pesticide is not banned in the EU and the UK was always entitled to use it pre-Brexit – with 10 EU countries also having issued emergency authorisations for the pesticide since 2018 including Belgium, Denmark and Spain. DEFRA makes it very clear: “The UK’s approach to the use of emergency authorisations has not changed as a result of the UK’s exit from the EU.”
British sugar beet yield in 2020 is expected to be down by 20-25% on previous years due to predation by aphids which have been spreading beet yellow virus:
“The temporary use of this product is strictly limited to a non-flowering crop and will be tightly controlled to minimise any potential risk to pollinators.”
Don’t expect blind, unverifiable Remainer anger to die down just because Brexit’s finally done and dusted…
UPDATE: Reported today in French press France approves three-year use of controversial pesticide
Lefties led by Twitter rent-a-gob David Lammy are have all gone clucking mad at the news the Home Office are using takeaway chicken shop boxes to advertise anti-knife crime messages. The insinuation is that the Department is somehow making a offensive connection between knife crime, black people and the racist trope of liking fried chicken. Of course a brief look at the actual hard facts behind the move completes undermines the hysteria…
Inevitably both the Guardian and Independent have jumped on the bandwagon, which is funny because just three days ago both publications covered a report uncovering how children are being “lured into crime by ‘chicken shop gangs’ offering free food“. Funny how Lammy didn’t accuse them of being racist then.
Either the Guardian and Indy editors have very short memories, or they’re just cynically stirring up outrage…
A host of papers have latched on to a fake meme that hordes of Brits are travelling to Iceland in order to trophy hunt puffins, in a call to ban the practice. The only problem is there’s no evidence that such trophy hunting is actually taking place…
- The Telegraph alleged that “Puffins are being hunted 100 at a time by trophy collectors who are allowed to bring the carcasses back to the UK”
- The Mirror said that “British trophy hunters are flocking to Iceland to shoot up to 100 puffins at a time – before bringing the carcasses back home.”
- The Independent went with “British trophy hunters are killing up to 100 puffins at a time during hunting trips to Iceland”
But Iceland only hands out 100 hunting licences to foreigners each year, mostly for reindeer or goose hunting. The Icelandic Hunting Association was bemused by the stories, explaining “foreigners can only hunt less than 250 meters from the shore and the puffin is beyond that.”
The articles cite the figure of Brits paying £3,000 to hunt, but that turns out to be just a crude conversion from a $3450 price listed on an American website based in Montana and aimed at American tourists. Not to do with ‘British trophy hunters’ at all…
More bizarrely still, each article is accompanied by photos that have nothing to do with Britain. Áki Ármann Jónsson, President of the Icelandic Hunting Association and the former head of Iceland’s Environment Agency said “The picture with the news story is from 2010 from the Icelandic company The Icelandic Hunting Club, they hunt about 200 puffins yearly” out of a population of 5-6 million. That didn’t stop the stories racking up thousands of outrage-shares…
UPDATE: Following Guido’s fact-based research into this story, the Independent, the Mirror and the Metro have removed all references to British trophy hunters from their articles. The Telegraph are yet to back down…
