Canada #90

UK COVID Inquiry Finds Lockdowns May Have Cost 1000s Of Lives

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news Saturday, Mar 21, 2026

The authoritarian COVID lockdowns and stay-at-home orders sold as life-saving measures have been unmasked once again as a deadly failure of big government overreach.

A new UK Covid-19 Inquiry report has concluded that the relentless “Stay Home, Protect the NHS, Save Lives” messaging likely cost thousands of lives by convincing people they could not get access to health services.

The inquiry, led by Baroness Hallett, slammed the slogan created by Cabinet Office officials without input from health leaders. It “led some people to feel they must avoid burdening the NHS” and “may have inadvertently sent the message that healthcare was closed,” contributing to a sharp decline in A&E attendances for life-threatening emergencies such as heart attacks.

The report states plainly: “It is clear that, during the pandemic, worsening delays in diagnosis and treatment led to increased ill-health and suffering and, in some cases, cost lives.” Some patients waited so long their conditions became “untreatable,” with permanent loss of mobility.

Baroness Hallett stressed: “It is important that government communication campaigns do not deter those in need from accessing healthcare.” She urged future governments to consult healthcare professionals on messaging “to avoid unintended consequences.”

Office for National Statistics data backs this up, recording more than 17,000 excess deaths from non-Covid conditions at the height of the pandemic. Cancer screenings were paused, diagnoses plummeted, and non-urgent care cancellations left patients suffering. Hospital visiting bans were branded too tough, with dying people left alone and families devastated.

The NHS itself “coped, but only just,” teetering on the brink of collapse under “intolerable strain,” per Hallett, who noted politicians like then-health secretary Matt Hancock were reluctant to admit the system was overwhelmed.

The findings come on the back of mountains of research indicating isolation policies inflicted generational damage on children’s development.

A recent University of East Anglia-led study, published in Child Development, concuded that lockdowns may have permanently damaged kids’ brain development through lost socialisation and routine.

The study tracked 139 children and found the greatest harm hit reception-year pupils aged four to five when the first lockdowns struck in March 2020 – a critical window for learning routines, friendships, and self-regulation.

Lead researcher Prof John Spencer said: “Children who were in reception when the country shut down showed much slower growth in key self-regulation and cognitive flexibility skills over the next few years than children who were still in preschool.”

He added: “Reception is a critical year for peer socialisation. It’s when children learn classroom norms and build early friendships that shape their confidence.”

Without those experiences, “children’s self-regulatory skills didn’t develop as quickly year-on-year after the lockdowns ended.” The study concluded: “Without these experiences, reception children had a challenging time developing self-regulation and cognitive flexibility in the years that followed the pandemic.”

That research adds to a cascade of older studies exposing the full horror.

More:

https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/uk-covid-inquiry-finds-lockdowns-may-have-cost-1000s-lives

Canada #90

Britain Once Led The World. What Happened?

Authored by Damian Pudner via the Foundation for Economic Education Saturday, Mar 21, 2026

An unsettling look at the economic settlement that the UK now seems willing to accept can be found in the latest fiscal forecast, published on March 3.

By the end of the forecast period, borrowing will have decreased from 5.2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2024–2025 to about 1.6 percent. Public debt stabilizes at roughly 95 percent of national income. At those levels, even small shifts in interest rates matter: The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) estimates that a sustained 1-percentage-point move in the Bank Rate changes government borrowing costs by about 15 billion pounds (about $20 billion).

In the later years of the forecast, economic growth limps along at about 1.5 percent, while unemployment is expected to peak at 5.33 percent. Meanwhile, the tax burden approaches an unprecedented 38 percent of GDP, the highest sustained level in the postwar era, as public spending remains significantly higher than its pre-COVID-19-pandemic share of the economy.

Taken together, these forecasts describe an economy settling into a comfortable equilibrium of high taxation, high debt, and chronically modest growth. Expectations are quietly lowered and economic underperformance is being normalized.

There is no ambition here. Nothing is reset. Nothing is reimagined. Nothing really changes.

There is something unmistakably Starmerite about the entire outlook. Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s political persona is built on reassurance and managerial competence. The chaos will stop. The adults are back. Nothing dramatic will happen on his watch. Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves is no different.

But countries do not restore economic dynamism through managerial composure alone.

The UK was once the workshop of the world. Later it became one of the most open and dynamic economies in Europe. When the postwar economic model began to falter in the 1970s, the country eventually recognized that incremental tweaks would not suffice. Structural reform became unavoidable.

What followed was neither cautious nor gradual. The reforms of the 1980s dismantled large parts of the existing economic model and replaced them with something far more competitive. Nowhere was that clearer than in the financial sector. The Big Bang of 1986 swept away restrictive practices, opened London’s markets, and helped turn the city into one of the world’s dominant financial centers.

Whether one applauds or criticizes those reforms, their ambition is undeniable. That sense of ambition is strikingly absent from the UK’s economic debate today.

Instead, the state is not being structurally rethought. It is simply being financed more heavily. The clearest example is the continued freeze in income tax thresholds. According to earlier OBR analysis, this policy alone will be raising roughly 67 billion pounds (about $89 billion) per year by the end of the decade.

By 2030–2031, about 1 million more people will be brought into paying income tax, and roughly 1.6 million people will pay the 45 percent rate, a level originally introduced to target the “super-rich.” At the same time, another 1 million pensioners will be drawn into paying income tax. This is both unsustainable and politically corrosive.

As Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher reminded us, “You cannot tax a country into prosperity.”

The broader economic outlook is equally modest. Productivity growth is expected to recover only slowly, reaching roughly 1 percent annually in the medium term. That supports GDP growth of about 1.6 percent. Such growth may just about stabilize the debt ratio, but it is nowhere near the pace required to transform living standards or expand the country’s economic capacity.

Even the recent improvement in government revenues owes something to favorable financial conditions rather than deep structural change. Stronger equity markets have lifted receipts from capital gains and corporation taxes. Yet the same fiscal projections warn how vulnerable this is to reversal. A sharp fall in equity prices would quickly worsen the public finances. The OBR warns that a 35 percent correction in UK and global equity markets could widen the current budget deficit by about 26 billion pounds (about $34 billion) in 2027–2028. Even a more limited scenario—in which UK equities fall by 15 percent—still adds about 15 billion pounds (about $20 billion) to borrowing.

In other words, the strategy works provided growth improves modestly and financial markets remain cooperative. That is not a robust foundation for long-term prosperity.

Downing Street’s rhetoric is “growth, growth, growth.” The figures point to something more akin to steady, steady, steady or, perhaps more accurately, dull, dull, dull.

More:

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/britain-once-led-world-what-happened

Canada #90

You Won't Believe What The UK Green Party Wants To Teach Children…

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news Saturday, Mar 21, 2026

Radical leftists want a new Department of Migration to push open borders propaganda in schools and fast-track voting rights, free housing and citizenship for illegals.

A leaked Green Party dossier has blown the lid off plans to brainwash British schoolchildren into believing they have a ‘moral duty’ to embrace endless immigration.

The document, hidden behind a password-locked policy archive normally only accessible to party members, calls for a new Department of Migration to work hand in glove with education chiefs. Its stated goal is to “disseminate knowledge” about immigrants directly into classrooms.

🚨 A LEAKED Green Party dossier reveals radical plans to teach children they have a 'MORAL OBLIGATION' to accept immigrants pic.twitter.com/Vzjt0qG89R

— WeGotitBack 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🇬🇧🇺🇸 (@NotFarLeftAtAll) March 19, 2026

Children would be taught they have a “moral obligation” to accept immigrants under these radical plans.

The exact wording from the leaked dossier states the new department would educate pupils on “the situations from which those seeking asylum and resettling refugees are fleeing, and the need for and moral obligation of asylum and humanitarian protection.”

It goes further, declaring the party “seeks not only to provide asylum to those forced from their homes but to work towards a world in which no one has to flee their home.”

Additional proposals include free legal advice and support to illegal immigrants to “regularise their status without penalty for being undocumented,” granting settled status to those who have been in the UK for at least five years — complete with welfare benefits, voting rights and a pathway to citizenship — and opening borders wider for those from countries with “seriously disturbing public order” or claiming persecution under equality laws.

In short, the Greens want to hand illegals free housing, votes and passports while telling British kids it’s their moral duty to cheer it on.

They also want to be SOFTER on terrorist suspects.

This all comes at a time when the UK is already buckling under the weight of mass migration, with migrants set to swallow 40% of new homes by 2030.

This fits a disturbing pattern. The same political class has already turned schools into surveillance hubs, urging them to snitch on “anti-Muslim hostility.”

Counter-terror police run ads warning teens that sharing funny content could be terrorism, and a government video game literally teaches kids they’re terrorists for questioning mass migration.

More:

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/you-wont-believe-what-uk-green-party-wants-teach-children

Canada #90

Qatar Dethroned As 'LNG King' As U.S. Seizes Throne, Reshaping Future Of Gas

Submitted by Criterion Research President, James Bevan Friday, Mar 20, 2026

The geopolitical calculus underpinning global LNG supply through the early 2030s has shifted materially. Iranian drone strikes on Qatari LNG trains, delays to key expansion projects, and the indefinite closure of the Strait of Hormuz have created a compounding threat to Qatar's LNG position that goes well beyond a construction delay. What had been framed as a two-horse race for global LNG market share now looks considerably more one-sided. The beneficiary is clear: U.S. Gulf Coast LNG.

At Criterion Research, our outlook is for US LNG exports to nearly double by 2030, with further upside in the coming decade

While Qatar’s loss of 12.8 MTPA for 3 to 5 years due to Iranian strikes is a serious blow to Qatar’s 77 MTPA export capacity, it is not a global catastrophe on its own. What is worrying is that Iran has demonstrated the potential for further strikes, which means that even restored capacity cannot be treated as a stable floor. Even if onshore facilities are repaired and the Strait is nominally reopened, LNG tanker operators and their insurers are unlikely to resume normal transits until they have, over time, earned confidence that vessels are not exposed to strikes or mines. That confidence cannot be declared by a government. It has to be proven through sustained safety in a conflict environment with no clear resolution, a process that could take months or years, regardless of the physical state of Qatar's terminals. Molecules that cannot move to market are effectively stranded, and the Strait of Hormuz shipping constraint is the piece that is hardest to resolve through engineering or diplomacy alone.

Beyond current Qatari volumes being impacted, Qatar's three-phase North Field expansion program, encompassing NFE, NFS, and North Field West, was designed to lift total liquefaction capacity from 77 MTPA to 142 MTPA by 2030. Global LNG demand was counting on these volumes. All three phases now face indefinite delays, with no official revised timeline and no near-term path to resuming offshore construction. NFE’s first train had already slipped to a 3Q26 start before the suspension, and rumors say it was pushed to 2027 before strikes began.

Taken together, disruption to the existing base and delay of the full expansion program represent a potential swing of well over 100 MTPA relative to what the market had been counting on through the early 2030s. No other supply source can replace that on a compressed timeline.

The U.S. project queue was already moving aggressively before Qatar's situation deteriorated. According to our data at Criterion Research, Golden Pass LNG is in active commissioning, CP2 Phase 1, Port Arthur, and Rio Grande LNG are all on track for first production in 2027, following, and CP2 Phase 2 reached FID. Post-FID US projects alone are expected to reach 39 Bcf/d by 2033. While the US cannot make up for the lost Qatari volumes before 2030, there is a strong pipeline of pre-FID projects for early 2030 and beyond that may now be pushed over the edge by new customer demand replacing Qatari volumes.

More:

https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/qatar-dethroned-lng-king-us-seizes-throne-reshaping-future-gas