Matthew Lesh
@matthewlesh
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Director of Public Policy and Communications, @iealondon . Columnist, @CityAM . Adjunct Fellow, @TheIPA . Fellow, @ASI & @theRSAorg . Author, .
London / Melbourne
Joined July 2008
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🚨📈📉 NEW GRAPH: Inflation has risen by 80% since 2000.
Highly regulated products like 💡 electricity, 🏘️ housing, and 👪 childcare have had rapid price increases.
But... competitive and innovative markets like 📷cameras,👗 clothing, 🐻 toys have had price decreases.
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An Insulate Britain roadblock has stopped a lorry carrying insulation
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The biggest untold story of 2020 is that Moderna took just 48 hours in Jan to develop a 95% effective vaccine.
It then took 11 months for vaccinations to begin — largely because of huge regulatory burdens. Millions have died as a result.
We cannot ever wait this long again.
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Jenny Harries has been put in charge of the organisation meant to prevent future pandemics and replace Public Health England.
Let’s take a quick look at her record during Covid-19
⬇️⬇️⬇️
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The United Kingdom is radically liberalising trade with Ukraine — removing tariffs on all imports and reducing regulatory barriers. A practical way to help Ukraine recover. Only possible because the UK left the European Union.
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“I am not able to arrange any divestment at short notice. But I can arrange for the gas central heating in college to be switched off,” St John’s College principal bursar Adrew Parker tells students demanding divestment from oil companies.
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Taxing 👏 the 👏 “rich” 👏 means 👏 entrepreneurs 👏 leave 👏 the 👏 country 👏 taking 👏 jobs 👏 and 👏opportunities 👏 with 👏 them 👏
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People need to stop posting images of empty shelves.
Most supermarkets continue to be stocked with most goods most of the time.
There aren’t food shortages, just people buying quicker than supermarkets can be restocked.
We’ve got 99 problems, but shortages ain’t one.
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Germany is phasing out nuclear power next year — but coal will not be phased out till 2038.
A stark reminder that anti-nuclear activism is almost inevitably pro-coal and pro-emissions.
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The Crown is an important reminder of how Thatcher took on the inept establishment, revolutionised the country from top to bottom, and delivered decades of subsequent prosperity. Quite refreshing.
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Jacinda Ardern’s resignation is smart but selfish — it deprives Kiwis the opportunity to turf her out, as polls suggest.
The fawning international chattering class will never understand her unpopularity.
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I miss the time when our lives weren’t ruled by daily hospital admission numbers
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This is the best Extinction Rebellion interview,
@afneil
asks the questions that need to be asked.
➡️ Billions of people are not about to die.
➡️ Scaring children with myths of the end of the universe is immoral.
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To stop media helicopters from covering protests, Australia’s civil aviation authority has approved a request from Victoria Police to instigate a no-fly zone above Melbourne’s inner-city.
This is dystopian. A disgraceful attack on freedom of expression.
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I still can’t get over the fact that New Zealand suspended vaccination and cancelled appointments when they entered lockdown last week.
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I take everything I said back.
Marcus Rashford is a tax minimising legend.
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The IMF spokesperson’s focus on the additional rate (45p) abolition and “inequality” is quite bizarre.
The additional rate is a tiny proportion (just 3%) of the additional expenditure. The energy price freeze is much bigger.
When did the IMF become so political?
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Australia isn’t a member of the EU, and yet somehow our supermarkets are filled with food.
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Just witnessed a woman repeatedly yelling “YOU F*ING SELFISH C*NT, STAY AT HOME” out of her car at a man walking with a baby.
He’s clearly on his daily exercise, safely metres away from anyone else.
This sort of abuse is the direct result of people like
@piersmorgan
’s edicts
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The UK consumes 1.14 million tonnes of beef and veal annually.
Australia exports 1,567 tonnes of beef to the UK.
Even if imports of Australian beef increases 10x after a trade deal it would make up 0.01% of total beef consumption.
It's not a threat to British producers.
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Not only did the United Kingdom ban slavery, but also became moral crusaders against the slave trade.
The most powerful navy of the era, the British Navy, was used to disrupt the slave trade.
Real lives were put on the line to end the barbaric practice.
Think it is important we don’t forget that the United Kingom was the first country in the world to permenantly ban slavery.
Until Wilberforce, almost every society known to man engaged in the barbaric inhuman unjustifiable practice of treating individuals as property.
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Pro and anti Venezuelan Govt protests in London: white British socialists versus actual Venezuelans. Maduro is a disgrace.
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Covid modelling is unaccountable, pessimistic and predisposed towards the destruction of liberty.
We must not allow decisions to take away our most fundamental freedoms to be made the basis of sexed up evidence.
My latest in the
@Telegraph
:
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I will not be lectured by this man about how much I should eat, drink or exercise
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I’m isolating after catching Covid last week. My symptoms are annoying but mild — fatigue, headaches.
I’ve done everything I’m meant to. Got my vaccines, my booster (sadly not till day before symptoms) and will shortly have strong immunity.
Don’t lock me down.
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If the Conservatives actually delivered a proper Brexit and won back the Brexit and UKIP vote, they would be on 46%.
Westminster voting intention (ft. new parties):
LAB: 32% (+1)
CON: 28% (-4)
LDEM: 11% (-1)
BREX: 8% (+3)
UKIP: 6% (-1)
CHUK: 3% (+3)
GRN: 3% (-1)
via
@YouGov
, 10 - 11 Apr
Chgs. w/ 03 Apr
First Labour lead with YouGov since July 2018.
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Abolishing private schools does nothing for badly performing public schools.
But it does tell you how Labour thinks:
They don’t care about the poor, they just hate the rich.
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The underlying issue isn’t the videos. It’s that this kid is repeatedly doing criminal acts, including trespass, and not facing the legal system.
MPs warn vile TikTok ‘prankster’ that new law will force social media sites to delete his videos
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Maybe if Jamie Oliver spent less time telling us how to live our lives, and more time improving his crappy overpriced Italian food, his workers wouldn’t be in this mess.
EXCLUSIVE: Jamie Oliver's restaurant chain is on the brink of collapse, putting 1300 jobs at risk. KPMG will handle an administration process that is expected to be announced later today following a sale process for the company's 25 UK sites. More soon.
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Would it not be more fitting to dedicate time and effort to combat Islamist terrorism in the memory of David Amess?
Rather then online content that has nothing whatsoever to do with the tragic murder?
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Elon Musk purchasing Twitter could prove a victory for freedom — signalling the platform’s rebirth as a space for the free exchange of ideas.
But Elon’s vision to lean on the side of free speech is going to run into an immediate roadblock in the United Kingdom. 🧵
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Harries epitomises the public health establishment, she suffers from the typical groupthink disease.
She should not be leading a national organisation who is meant to prevent future pandemics.
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Why do public sector workers get a substantial pay increase — to be paid for by private sector taxpayers now and into the future — while private sector workers are losing their jobs by the hundreds of thousands?
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Fact check: Countries with more economic freedom have less racist attitudes, according to the World Values Survey.
Racism is a feature of capitalism.
It is used to divide our communities here at home and to justify imperialism abroad.
On UN Anti Racism Day, let’s recommit to building a
#WorldAgainstRacism
through anti-racism that is internationalist socialism. 🌹
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Antifa look exactly like you would think Antifa would look
Thanks to
@DHSgov
, they've been able to arrest rioters recorded committing serious crimes like assault, arson, property destruction & more. Some of the weapons found on the federal suspects here include a machete, pipe bomb, hammer & more.
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Amazon have sent a thank you note to the Welsh government.
Non-essential items being covered up in supermarkets in Wales. Has it really come to this?
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The UK's top income tax rate will go down to 40 per cent — identical to Ireland and comparable to New Zealand's rate of 39 per cent and 37 per cent in the US.
Why have these countries not been rebuked?
My debut in the
@DailyMailUK
on the IMF:
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Very exciting news: Freedom of movement to be part of U.K.-Australia free trade talks,
@trussliz
says in press conference during visit to Australia.
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Israel follows the Geneva Conventions by providing advanced warnings of strikes to limit civilian casualties while only targeting military assets.
Hamas are war criminals who target school children.
That fact alone says a lot about this conflict.
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The BBC’s Newscast podcast had an entire story on how terrible it is to that federal troops have been sent to Portland — without mentioning the rioting, violence and lawlessness.
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Every single time a society has attempted to be built on Marxist principles it has failed to respect human dignity and autonomy.
The “collectivisation” of decision making inevitably places power into the hands of a small, self-interested clique who undertake brutal activities…
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Moderna can develop and manufacture a vaccine within weeks of sequencing a new virus.
Now the method has been proven safe and effective, regulatory barriers must be removed and manufacturing prepared so there are never any delays in future.
We can prevent pandemics.
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Rory Stewart epitomises the smug superiority and spineless, meaningless centrism I explained in the
@Telegraph
.
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Extraordinary: the head of the SAGE modelling group admits that they only model worst-case scenarios as that’s what they’re being asked to do by policymakers.
Who is asking? And why aren’t they requesting all scenarios — good and bad?
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Tony Abbott is not a misogynist or homophobe.
The Government should not capitulate to the woke mob.
My column for the
@Telegraph
:
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Extolling the benefits of free market capitalism, because that is the way to help the poorest and the neediest in society:
@BorisJohnson
off to a strong start.
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A review of 46 scientific papers, including various meta-analyses, found that masks can be effective in reducing virus transmission. Not a single paper suggests the opposite.
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Strolled straight past the
@RMTunion
picket line for my train.
A pretty pathetic effort from the strikers. Barely anyone bothered to show up, no screams of “scab”.
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The Office for National Statistics lost 90% of its London-based staff when it was relocated to Newport in Wales. Performance also suffered for several years.
Shuffling bureaucrats to other parts of the country is expensive and risky. It is unlikely to fix Britain’s problems.
One of many cheap, but transformative policies I support for the U.K: move the administrative capital out of London. Put it in Derby or Stoke. Legislators could no longer pretend that the country is far more affluent than it actually is.
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A customs union would mean giving up control of trade policy - benefiting EU producers' protectionist demands, hurting British consumers, and destroying the possibility of a Global Britain unilaterally liberalising trade or making comprehensive trade agreements.
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France still has an ambassador in Beijing — the country undertaking a genocide.
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Ministers have claimed that Germany has testing advantages, such as Roche.
Firstly, Roche is Swiss. Secondly, the UK has world-leading diagnostics firms like Randox, a 73k pharma industry inc. GlaxoSmithKline and AstraZeneca, and 100s of scientific labs.
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Tesco made a 3.4% profit last year and 1.4% the year before.
These are both low-profit margins, with the average UK private company's profit around 9.8%.
It's a sign the UK grocery sector is highly competitive, keeping prices low for consumers at a time of global shocks.
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There is nothing wrong with retailers increasing prices. It ensures products can be bought by those who value them the most and helps prevent shortages.
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"Pfizer and BioNTech said the case split between vaccinated individuals and those who received a placebo indicated a vaccine efficacy rate of above 90% at seven days after the second dose."
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the year is 2050
the health and social care levy has just been increased to 100%
the NHS chair runs the entire country
every economic and social activity is directed to protect our precious NHS
you live for and die for the nhs
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The Independent’s race reporter’s original tweet is a blatant lie. Prince William said this war is alien to see in Europe. He did not say bloodshed is normal in Africa and Asia. But she’s “standing by everything”
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Groceries are one of the most competitive markets in the UK; I literally cannot understand this incoherent babbling about, heaven forbid, a company that serves tens of millions of people every single day making a profit. That's their reward for a huge effort.
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This is entirely unnecessary.
Plant-based alternatives proudly advertise to attract customers; there is absolutely no attempt at deceptive behaviour.
This strikes as obvious rent seeking by the diary industry.
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There's a time and a place for activism, it's not during the school day.
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Australia set to be the first country to strike a comprehensive post-Brexit trade deal with the UK, with
@ScottMorrisonMP
meeting
@BorisJohnson
for the first time at the G7.
@trussliz
in Australia next month.
Frontpage of tomorrow's Weekend
@Australian
:
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The storm-in-tea-cup response to Truss’ regional pay proposal neatly demonstrates the challenge of undertaking reform.
Policies are intentionally misrepresented and then attacked for pure political points scoring.
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🚨🇦🇺🇬🇧 | BREAKING: Tim Tam maker Arnott’s announces plans to bring iconic biscuit to UK after trade deal signed.
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12 March 2020: Harries says wearing masks "not a good idea" and says that "people can adversely put themselves at more risk" by wearing masks.
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Absolutely shocking. Nobody whatsoever could have foreseen that a 10.00pm curfew would have unintended consequences...
Day three of a 10pm curfew: people in Liverpool have gone to the off license to pick up more drinks and continue to party in the street.
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This election is on a knife edge. Your vote matters. A Tory majority cannot be taken for granted.
Westminster voting intention:
CON: 42% (-)
LAB: 36% (+1)
LDEM: 12% (-1)
BREX: 3% (-)
via
@ICMResearch
, 06 - 09 Dec
Chgs. w/ 02 Dec
See more polls:
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Spending on healthcare % of GDP / Covid-19 deaths per million
Singapore 🇸🇬: 4.5% / 4.62
Taiwan 🇹🇼: 6.1% / 0.29
Hong Kong 🇭🇰: 6.2% / 11.74
South Korea: 7.3% / 6.30
United Kingdom 🇬🇧: 9.8% / 611.29
United States 🇺🇸: 17.1% / 552.20
Bigger is not the same as better.
1. Covid has shown us that we need a bigger, better, state. 2. Taxes will eventually have to rise to pay for that.
3. Many other economies with high GDP/head function well with higher taxes, larger states, so 'high tax damages business', is, to a point, a canard.
But...
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Big hint here that the forthcoming Australia 🇦🇺 - United Kingdom 🇬🇧 free trade deal will include provisions for freer movement.
Australia and the UK have stood together throughout the trials of 2020, and as the year comes to an end, we are ready to come back stronger together.
From our
@AusHouseLondon
family to yours — we wish a happy Christmas and join together in looking forward to a brighter 2021.
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10 March 2020: Harries resists calls to cancel large events, saying she was "following the science" and downplay the severity of the virus by saying most will just feel "a bit rough".
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Not building a Holocaust memorial because of the terrorism risk would literally be letting the terrorists win.
If anything, this is a case for doubling its size.
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5 March 2020: Harries tells Parliament that there will soon come a point when testing is no longer necessary, foreshadowing the plan to give up on preventing Covid from spreading (and allowing the population to get herd immunity through natural infection)
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10 March 2020: Harries admits that the Government's strategy will allow "significant numbers" to die.
She focuses on handwashing, not ventilation, misinforming the public about how the virus spreads.
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26 March 2020: Harries says that testing is "not an appropriate mechanism as we go forward"
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HSBC spend big money self-promoting their brand at prides in the United Kingdom.
But when push comes to shove, they’ll throw Hong Kong’s human rights under the bus for the oppressive Chinese Communist Party.
There’s no pride in the CCP.
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Michael Gove: Spends years tirelessly standing up for Holocaust education & strongly supports the single Jewish state.
Jeremy Corbyn: Writes foreword endorsing antisemitic book, stands with terrorists who kill Jews.
I know which one we should be worried about.
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Tories planning a huge corporate hike.
Labour opposing because it’ll inevitably damage the economic recovery.
Are we living in opposites world?
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Why are there zero UK or EU companies on the list of the world's top technology companies?
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After many years, I have now been unfollowed by
@TurnbullMalcolm
on Twitter. He has cleared his followers entirely and has chosen to follow just 17 accounts. A few family members, left or centre news sites, world leaders and ABC and Fairfax journos. This says so much about him.
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“Leaked emails seen by Sky News show how the government and Public Health England rejected offers of additional testing from other laboratories in favour of a strategy it described as ‘command and control’”.
😳😳😳
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20 April 2020: Harries still claims that Britain was still an "international exemplar in preparedness" for pandemics.
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This simply isn’t true — I’m in the United Kingdom, under 40, and had the AZ vaccine.
The guidelines we’re following from the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI) and the Australian Medical Association are clear.
Even the UK Government won’t allow their under 40s to get the AstraZeneca vaccine.
Please follow the health advice.
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No amount of positive global press coverage can disguise the lacklustre economic situation in New Zealand, the growing list of broken promises and mounting unpopularity at home
My latest for the
@Telegraph
:
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Why won’t the Electoral Commission apologise to
@darrengrimes_
?
They went after him in the courts and then referred him to the police. Both times they were severely rebuffed.
Take some damn responsibility for your use of state power and taxpayer money.
Our statement on the decision from the Met Police to close its investigation into Vote Leave and Darren Grimes:
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25 March 2020: Harries is dismissive of the approaches taken by the likes of Singapore (370 times fewer deaths per capita then UK) and South Korea (57 times fewer) when giving evidence before Parliament.
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Tony Abbott isn’t a gay alley — and people are right to point out some less than shinning remarks he has made in the past.
But let’s step back: is he really this unashamed homophobe? And, in any case, does that mean he should be “cancelled”?
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The U.K. needs to stop turning back the clocks — early sunsets are miserable and undermining our health.
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We used to think vaccines had to take years, now we know it can take 11 months.
Why shouldn’t we try to make the process go even faster?
Prepared and pre-tested technology, manufacturing and logistics investment, challenge trials, and less red tape. It’s all possible.
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20 March 2020: Harries says that the country has a "perfectly adequate supply of PPE"
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This is the most painful cancellation I have had yet. From someone I spent 10 years working with, many lovely family dinners and lots of laughs. Someone I thought was a friend.
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BREAKING: A source just sent me this extraordinary image of Cummings receiving his knighthood. Absolutely extraordinary timing.
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