Absolutely Not The Daily Troll-o-Graph

 Governments have treated the countryside like a museum rather than a productive part of the economy   Outdated planning laws and complicated taxes stop landowners building businesses and creating jobs   Leaving the EU is a chance to finally reform agriculture policy - let's not waste it Source CAPX _27/11/20 Link Even the most diehard eurosceptic accepts that leaving the EU is a risk. But a willingness to adapt to change is perhaps one of the most enduring qualities we have in this country. In the farming sector, it was difficult to see how meaningful change to the Common Agricultural Policy could ever be achieved. We, at the Country Land and Business Association, argued for decades that the financial support farmers receive should be based on the environmental good they deliver, not just the amount of land they own. It was an idea that was virtually impossible to execute from inside the EU. Now, as we prepare to leave, this is about to be implemented.  Transitionin...

Euan Blair wants to use his apprenticeships start-up Whitehat to dispel the belief that university degrees are needed to be successful. Source - Daily Telegraph  28/11/20 Link Euan Blair, graduate of Bristol and Yale, eldest son of you-know-who, is railing against rip-off university education and privileged social networks. There’s been “an explosion” of degree courses “and the ROI [Return on Investment] for a lot of them really isn’t very good,” he says – a point with which, this year in particular, many virtually-taught, fenced-off students may sympathise. The very fact he talks so casually about Return on Investment is a clue that this Blair is not a politician but a businessman – an entrepreneur in fact, co-founder of the apprenticeships start-up Whitehat. Of course, as he admits, university is about more than education. It’s also about making friends, contacts. “It is important for people to have networks and one of the things that’s not fair at the moment is an accident of bi...

 Signatories including Naomi Campbell and David Olusoga urge airlines not to carry the Jamaicans the Home Office wants to deport. Source - Daily telegraph 27/11/20 Link Priti Patel said she was 'unapologetic in my determination' to remove convicted foreign criminals Priti Patel on Friday night hit back at attempts by 82 black public figures to halt the deportation of up to 50 Jamaican criminals next week, saying she was "unapologetic" about removing people who posed a risk to the public. The 82, including Naomi Campbell, the historian David Olusoga and actors Naomie Harris and Thandie Newton, have written to airlines urging them not to carry the Jamaicans the Home Office wants to deport. They claimed that if next week's and other similar flights went ahead there was a risk of the unlawful removal of people who have the right to remain in the UK. However, Ms Patel's department issued a breakdown of the 50 Jamaicans' criminal records, which comprised a combi...

 Source - The Spectator 27/11/20 Link  There is still some debate about who came up with the adage that ‘if you owe the bank $100 that is your problem. If you owe the bank $1 million dollars that is their problem’. It is usually attributed to the oil tycoon J. Paul Getty, which may help explain how he became the richest man of his era. Occasionally, and in a slightly modified form, it is attributed to John Maynard Keynes in his advice to the British cabinet after world war two. And yet in truth, it should probably have been coined by an Italian. Why? Because the country now owes so much money to the rest of the eurozone it looks about to hijack the whole system. With Italian debt soaring as it pays for one of the worst outbreaks of Covid-19, on the back of one of the world’s weakest economies, calls are being made for that debt to be ‘forgiven’. Riccardo Fraccaro, the Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte’s closest aide, has started demanding the ‘cancelling of sovereign bonds bought ...

 China has politicised foreign aid - Britain shouldn't be afraid to fight back   Vaccines can be a powerful tool in our diplomatic armoury, showing the UK's commitment to global health   Let's put the Oxford vaccine to work and help billions of people abroad Source -CAPX 27/11/20 Link The decision to reduce the UK’s spending on foreign has caused an angry response from those who believe that Britain is abandoning the poorest in the world. The good news is that just this week there is a new tool in Britain’s overseas aid armoury that promises to make a startling impact on the world in a short space of time, and which can, if used correctly, boost the UK’s image abroad, create commercial opportunities, and push back on China’s growing international influence. It is the Oxford vaccine. China hasn’t been shy in using Covid to further its international influence. Early on in the pandemic Beijing dispatched millions of pieces of personal protective equipment [PPE] out to the wo...

 His national-security picks herald a return to the bloody interventionism of the pre-Trump years. Source Spiked 25/11/20 Link Much of the political and media class has taken a predictably soft-soap approach to president-elect Joe Biden’s national-security appointments. There’s none of the derangement that greeted Trump’s every keystroke. None of the animus that met his every appearance. And, above all, none of the scrutiny either. If Trump sent them mad, Biden sends them to sleep, smiling. In fact, given some of the lazy, gushing accounts of those expected to lead the world’s most powerful nation, you’d barely know Biden’s foreign-policy team were politicians. Antony Blinken, Biden’s nominee for secretary of state, we’re told, is ‘respectful and refined’, has a close group of friends and plays in a band. A swell guy all round. Then there’s Hillary Clinton favourite Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser-designate, who, at 43, will be the youngest ever to hold that positi...

  Chancellor Rishi Sunak concluded on Wednesday that Britain's economic emergency "has only just begun” Source - Daily Telegraph - 25/11/20 Link It was a sobering statement from Chancellor Rishi Sunak in the House of Commons on Wednesday as he announced that Britain's “economic emergency has only just begun” following projections that suggest that the country's economy will contract by 11.3 per cent. Included in the Chancellor’s Spending Review statement were a number of pledges to rebuild the economy and to help the unemployed find work. But there were also cuts that will be needed to fund spending, such as a partial public sector pay freeze and a foreign aid spending cut.  Telegraph readers have had their say on the Chancellor’s Spending Review, with many supporting Mr Sunak’s plan to cut the overseas aid budget.   Read on to see what your fellow readers have had to say and then share your thoughts in the comments section at the bottom of this article. ‘ There isn’...

 Brussels reportedly considering asking for a 10 to 15-year review clause in trade deal and fishing agreement Source - Daily Telegraph 23/11/20 Link British and EU negotiators may be on the cusp of a trade deal – but Brexit never ends.  Talks with Brussels have been dragging on for years. They will be a regular part of British life, continuing long into the future after the trade agreement is struck.  Britain has escaped the EU but it can never escape negotiating with it. Even a no-deal Brexit wouldn’t prevent the unavoidable future of talks with the EU, and talks about talks with the EU. Brussels, which is always comfortable playing the long game, is reportedly considering asking for a 10- to 15-year review clause in the trade deal and fishing agreement.  If presented with this demand, David Frost, the UK’s chief negotiator, would be well within his rights to channel Al Pacino in The Godfather Part III and bellow: “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in...

Mandarins are using the language of the playground to try to wound the elected government. Source Spiked 23/11/20 Link Just when you thought the civil service could not debase itself any further, here comes the Priti Patel bullying scandal. The competition is tough in 2020, but watching seasoned, supposedly hard-nosed functionaries at the Home Office bleat about being bullied might just be the most tragic-cum-hilarious political sight of the year. These people are in charge of securing our nation? And they can’t even handle being told to fuck off every now and then without taking time off to tend to their emotional wounds? God help us. The Patel bullying scandal – the real scandal is that fiftysomething adults are using the word ‘bullying’ to describe being put under pressure in the workplace – is back in the news because Sir Alex Allan, Boris Johnson’s adviser on ministerial standards, has concluded his investigation into Patel’s allegedly tyrannical reign at the Home Office. He found...

 Source - John Redwood's diary - 22/11/20 Link As always the mainstream UK media ignore the gripping power struggles going on in Germany and the EU. You would have thought the media’s enthusiasm for all things EU and the geographical proximity of these countries to us would merit some news and analysis to balance the intensive coverage they give to the USA across the vast Atlantic. Three years ago Mrs Merkel announced she was standing down as Leader of the CDU, the largest German party in the government coalition which had supplied her as Chancellor of Germany since 2005. She implied her successor would become the CDU’s candidate for Chancellor in the 2021 general election, though Mrs Merkel intended to remain in the all powerful number one job for the time being. The party duly elected AKK in 2018 who presided over poor election results and then decided she would resign in February 2020 before ever fighting a general election to try to become Chancellor. The CDU agreed to hold a n...

Huge commitment to fire starting gun on a string of major projects intended to level up the UK. Source Daily Telegraph 21/11/20 Link Rishi Sunak will spend billions of pounds levelling up post-Brexit Britain, including more than £1 billion to strengthen the UK border.  The Chancellor will next week announce a major funding bonanza to insulate the UK from the double economic shock of coronavirus and the Brexit transition period coming to an end on December 31.  Despite the spiralling cost of the pandemic, the self-styled "Northern Chancellor" will commit tens of billions of pounds to major infrastructure projects to finally remedy the North-South divide. Swathes of the civil service will be relocated to the Midlands and North, while the rules for Treasury investment will be overhauled to ensure that they are no longer biased towards the South-East and London. Mr Sunak will also set aside £2 billion for Brexit as part of his Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) on Wednesday, inc...

  It now wants to withhold funds from member states deemed to be violating its values. source _ Spiked 19/11/20 Link Back in July, Charles Michel, the president of the European Council, was pretty chuffed with himself. And no wonder. Not only had the European Union come to a provisional agreement on a €1.8 trillion EU budget and coronavirus recovery package. It had also created another means through which the dominant players in the EU could dictate policy and legislation to their usually Eastern subordinates, Poland and, above all, Hungary. Or, as a beaming Michel put it at the time, this will be ‘the first time that the respect for rule of law is a decisive criteria for budget spending’. Michel was right: this is unprecedented. According to the proposal, if a qualified majority of 15 member states agree that another member state is violating or posing a ‘potential risk’ not just to some nebulous ‘rule of law’ but also to the EU’s ‘fundamental values, such as freedom, democracy, e...

 I thought it would be interesting to look at a letter written in 1975 from Tony Benn which was published by the Spectator.  Link In 1975 you will each have the responsibility of deciding by vote whether the United Kingdom should remain a member of the European Common Market: or whether we should withdraw completely, and remain an independent self-governing nation. That decision, once taken will almost certainly be irreversible. In both the 1974 general elections I fully supported our manifesto commitment on the handling of the Common Market question. The present Government is now engaged in renegotiating the terms of entry along the lines set out in those Manifestos and is solemnly pledged, whatever the Outcome of those negotiations, to see to it that the final decision will be taken by the British people. But we must recognise that the European Community has now set itself the objectives of developing a common foreign policy, a form of common nationality expressed through a ...

 Starmer should rediscover his ruthlessness and remove the whip from MPs who follow Corbyn's lead   Voters will be baffled that a leader elected with a thumping majority can't control his own party   How should Starmer achieve unity? By appeasing the hard left, or driving them out? Sourrce CAPX - 18/11/20 It was all going so well for Keir Starmer. Just three weeks ago he gave an impassioned response to the EHRC’s damning report, promising “zero tolerance” of anti-Semitism. Just a few hours later, Jeremy Corbyn himself had been suspended from the party for downplaying the findings of that report. The leader looked decisive, the message was clear: here was a party under new management. Fast-forward to today and Corbyn is, to the bafflement of many, back in the fold. That he has been readmitted to the party without a proper apology for the original infraction – or, indeed, for what happened to the party under his leadership – beggars belief. Starmer has at least done the rig...

 Devoscepticism now has sanction from the very top   For all the outrage at Johnson, few can credibly claim devolution has been a roaring success   Johnson and Brexit are convenient scapegoats for a devolution dam that was always bound to burst Source CAPX 17/11/20 Link Boris Johnson has already started rowing back from his extraordinary criticism of devolution of yesterday. But it probably doesn’t matter. By speaking aloud the heresy that it has been “a disaster north of the border” and “Tony Blair’s biggest mistake”, the Prime Minister has broken a spell more than two decades in the weaving. Devoscepticism now has sanction from the very top. To understand why this has happened, one need look no further than the objections. For all the outrage at Johnson, vanishingly few of his critics rest their complaints on the idea that devolution has actually worked. For the true believers, the preferred option seems to be doubling down yet again. Now the break-up of the Union is no...

 Applications to become a free port are open until February; resident firms will benefit from tax breaks including on the purchase of land. Source - Daily Telegraph 16/11/20 Link Companies which hire staff at new free ports will be offered a tax break of £2,240 per worker as part of a bid to turbocharge growth. Opening applications for towns and cities to become one of up to seven free ports in England, the Treasury said that perks on offer in the special economic zones will include relief from national insurance contributions for up to three years for employees earning a salary of up to £25,000. James Heywood of the Centre for Policy Studies think-tank, which worked with Chancellor Rishi Sunak on a 2016 paper calling for free trade zones, said the move will help create new jobs as the country looks to a post-Brexit future. The free port model creates hubs where goods can enter the UK with zero tariffs, before being manufactured to add value. Goods then leave for export or enter th...

 We must defend British democracy against the American Empire. Source - Spiked  09/11/20 Link Joe Biden isn’t even in the White House and he’s already throwing his imperial weight around. He and his transition team have their eye on a disobedient little country, a rebellious, uppity nation that must be firmly put back in its place. Only it isn’t a failing state in the Middle East or a conflict-ridden country in the Horn of Africa – the usual tragic targets of the American Empire – that Biden and Co want to reprimand. No, it’s us; it’s Britain. Biden is on the warpath with Brexit Britain. Not literal war, of course (well, not yet). He has long made plain his opposition to Brexit and his view that we the dimwitted masses of Blighty only voted for it because we are so ‘susceptible to demagogues and charlatans’. And now, as he makes moves to take over the White House, he plans to do something about it. He plans to use America’s economic and political clout to weaken Brexit and str...