Kit Knightly Yesterday, Members of the Scottish Parliament (MSPs) voted to make some the emergency measures – initially instated to “combat the pandemic” – permanent features of Scottish law....

Our successor to This Week in the Guardian, This Week in the New Normal is our weekly chart of the progress of autocracy, authoritarianism and economic restructuring around the...

A few days ago the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) edited their Monkeypox page to alter the narrative in a few key ways. Firstly, they removed a paragraph from...

Paul Cudenec via Winter Oak In the middle of the 19th century, the British Empire ran into what what would today be termed a “public relations crisis”. Influential domestic...

Joanna Sharp So what do we do on a weekend evening of the New Normal? ‘To Vac or Novak. That is the Question.’ The exhausting two years under the...

Kit Knightly The special “Future of the EU” Conference came to a conclusion a few days ago. There may have been a familiar veneer of “public consultation”, but the...

Iain Davis The word “democracy” (demokratia) derives from “demos” (people) and “kratos” (power).  Literally translated it means “people power.” It is the best model of governance ever devised. So...

Kit Knightly The first tweet I saw when I checked my timeline this morning was from foreign policy analyst Clint Ehlirch, pointing out that the Russian ruble has already...

Margaret Anna Alice “This is the story of a duel. It is a duel between two very unequal adversaries: an exceedingly powerful, formidable, and ruthless state and an insignificant,...

Kit Knightly Some of the UK’s “temporary” measures intended to help “deal with the pandemic” are going to be added to future legislation and made permament laws by the...

Kit Knightly The UK government is planning to re-work its human rights law to put an increased emphasis on “personal responsibility” and “duties to the wider society”, as well...

Kit Knightly A hospital in Germany has denied care to a toddler because his parents are not vaccinated. The young Cypriot has a heart condition that requires specialist surgery...

All mask mandates lifted Vaccines certificates no longer required work from home orders rescinded UK Prime Minister has announced the end of all restrictions allegedly brought in to combat...

Gavin O’Reilly Over the past several days, the news story that has dominated British news headlines, and consequently, the news headlines of the rest of the Western world, is...

New plans, announced before Christmas, will require every secondary school pupil in the UK to take an on-site Covid test when school resumes after the Christmas break. The government...

Two days ago Sky News reported that, in the week from December 20th to Boxing Day (December 26th, for our non-UK readers), over 500 British children had been admitted...

Iain Davis There is no moral, legal or logical argument for mandatory vaccination. The only logical argument, from a public health perspective, would be either to reduce the spread...

Vanessa Beeley sits down with researcher, economic reform activist, free speech advocate & soul singer Ian Jenkins, to discuss the worst of the impact of Covid-19 lockdown on the...

Kit Knightly They are determined to make the “Omicron Variant” appear as frightening as possible, that means getting as many cases as possible, which means flipping all the way...

Last night the UK Parliament voted through a bill forcing NHS workers to either get vaccinated or lose their jobs, as well bringing in “vaccine passports” for some events...