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Burnham’s brilliant way to ‘massage’ youth unemployment

  The PM praises unpaid placements from a supermarket that has cut 3,000 jobs Daily Telegraph 28/08/26 A million young people in this country have no job , nor are they undergoing any training or education to help secure one. This fact has become so well-worn of late you may as well put it on the side of a bus, yet successive governments have proved capable only of worsening the issue – and the latest seems intent on rubbing salt in the wound. In a remarkably tone-deaf bit of comms, our new prime minister Andy Burnham has demanded we praise a Potemkin employer in a depressing portent of how this Government will meet its goals. Just a year after it culled 3,000 jobs – a move it quietly blamed on the rise in employer National Insurance contributions – Sainsbury’s has announced 10,000 unpaid work experience placements, and Burnham has praised this as an example to follow. The move comes shortly after the Prime Minister asked employers simply to fix youth unemployment, and now we’re b...
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Britain must ban ‘Anglophobia’

  If progressives can criminalise Islamophobia, surely promoting child marriage in a Western country should be against the law Daily Telegraph 27/08/26 As his many followers on social media will be well aware, John Cleese has become a rather outspoken figure these days, on any number of contentious subjects. I certainly can’t say I agree with everything he posts. But I was very much intrigued by a little thought that he put forward on Tuesday morning. “I’d like to suggest,” he wrote, “that promoting child marriage, stoning, halal animal torture, wife beating, sharia courts, and other behaviour contrary to British values, should now be referred to as Anglophobia.” What an interesting idea. I wonder whether Labour MPs will take Cleese up on it. After all, they were extremely keen to draw up an official definition of Islamophobia . So why not do the same for “Anglophobia”? Admittedly, I suppose there’s a risk that some Labour MPs might think Cleese’s definition of “Anglophobia” consti...

Will the ‘refugees welcome’ crowd finally learn their lesson?

  Dispersing asylum seekers into Britain’s poorest areas has been a recipe for disaster. Spiked 25/08/26 The British state’s decision to disperse asylum seekers to the poorest parts of the country has long been causing serious problems. Mainly accommodated in so-called migrant hotels and increasingly houses in multiple occupation (HMOs), asylum seekers’ presence has been the source of many issues, from rises in anti-social behaviour to pressure on already stretched public services. It has also fuelled higher rents as landlords remove family homes from the market to create bedsits. It seems that Britain’s new prime minister, Andy Burnham, has recognised that locating so many asylum seekers in already deprived areas can’t go on. In his by-election victory speech in Makerfield in June, Burnham acknowledged that ‘HMO Britain’, particularly where it is connected to the refugee industry, is deeply unfair. Since then, the government has acted on its promise to close asylum hotels in place...

Burnham: Britain must be bolder about moving closer to EU

  Prime Minister’s comments raise fears of climbdown on European students’ fees at British universities Daily Telegraph 24/08/26 Britain must be bolder to get closer to the EU, Andy Burnham has said. The Prime Minister, who has previously said he would like to rejoin the EU, told António Costa, the president of the European Council, that the country “had to be bolder in terms of getting closer to the bloc”. He also promised during discussions with senior EU figures to forge deeper relations on education, culture, defence and security. Mr Burnham’s comments will raise fears that, to achieve a broader “Brexit reset” deal with the bloc, he may agree to reduce tuition fees for EU students at British universities. Advertisement The Telegraph reported in June that Sir Keir Starmer had agreed to the concession to secure closer economic ties. However, his plans were shelved after he announced his resignation as prime minister. A Downing Street spokesman said that, in a discussion with L...