Absolutely Not The Daily Troll-o-Graph

 The self-styled premier statesman is desperate to distract attention from his political troubles at home and abroad Source - Daily Telegraph - 31/01/20 Link Why has Emmanuel Macron gone full Trump on the Oxford vaccine? Back in 2017, when this largely unknown technocrat managed to win the greatest accumulator bet in the history of modern French politics to become the 8th president of the Fifth Republic, he started referring to himself as “Jupiter”. Persuaded that he could win over anyone to his side by his signature mix of relentless charm and cold intelligence, he set out to become Europe’s premier statesman. The UK was leaving, so would, soon, chancellor Merkel; Macron, who had campaigned under the blue-and-gold EU flag alongside the French tricolour, saw an opening. Four years later and Europe’s self-styled leading light now sounds more like some weird anti-vaxxer spouting off in a sinister Facebook group. Speaking to the European Medicines Agency this week, Macron slated the A...

As the UK built its vaccine triumph, Tory-hating politicians and activists denounced it as an anti-EU plot... GUY ADAMS lays bare the vicious campaign. Source - Daily Mail - 29/01/20 Link Back in July, Boris Johnson turned down an invitation for Britain to join the EU's Covid vaccine scheme, taking the view that we'd be better off sourcing our own Cue the most almighty stink, with Opposition politicians falling over one another to score cheap points. Catherine West, Labour's shadow minister for Europe, dubbed the decision 'dumb and dumber'. Her colleague, Bell Ribeiro-Addy, accused the Government of 'yet again putting ideology before saving lives'. The Lib Dems' then leadership contender Layla Moran claimed the wicked Tories were favouring 'Brexit over vaccines', while the party's Health spokesperson Munira Wilson declared this 'stubborn unwillingness to work with the EU' was 'unforgivable'. The Guardian promptly rose to the b...

  In a display worthy of 1960s Nasserite dictators, over the last 72 hours Eurocrats have broken every norm of civilised behaviour. Source _ Daily Telegraph 30/01/21 Link Remainers were right. Brexit has indeed led to an outbreak of populism, protectionism and chauvinism. But not on the side of the Channel they expected.  The EU’s behaviour over the past 72 hours has been so demented, so self-wounding, that it is hard to know where criticism should begin.  Let’s start with the bare facts. Brussels is in dispute with AstraZeneca, the British-Swedish pharmaceutical company, over the late delivery of some Covid vaccines. For what it’s worth, the EU seems to have a staggeringly weak case. It published its contract with the firm but, far from being any kind of “gotcha”, that contract showed that AstraZeneca had simply promised to use its “reasonable best efforts” to fulfil the order, the same form of words it used with the UK, which also saw some late deliveries. The rights an...

Invoking powers that would allow the European Council to seize intellectual property and data from pharmaceutical companies would be madness Source Daily Telegraph 29/01/20 Link The EU sledgehammer is coming down. The European Council is preparing to invoke emergency powers of Article 122 against AstraZeneca and Big Pharma within days. This nuclear option paves the way for the seizure of intellectual property and data, and arguably direct control over the production process – tantamount to war-time occupation of private companies. This is Europe First pushed to another level. It takes the EU into the territory of 1930s methods and an authoritarian command economy. Charles Michel, President of the European Council, is being badgered by member states to take action before the escalating vaccine crisis mutates into a political crisis as well and starts to topple governments. He is offering them the most extreme option available in the Lisbon Treaty. Article 122 allows the EU to take emerg...

 Source - The Spectator 28/01/21 Link The EU rejects 'the logic of first-come first-serve,' said the EU's health commissioner Stella Kyriakides. 'That may work at the neighbourhood butcher's but not in contracts, and not in our advanced purchase agreements'. Contract law is an area of law I know well. And it is not a political comment to say the commissioner is wrong. We don't know precisely what the contract between AstraZeneca and EU member states says. But the EU did publish another vaccine supply contract here. In any would-be-case involving this contract, the EU has two massive hurdles to jump. Firstly, contractors undertake to use their 'reasonable best efforts' to manufacture enough supply. On Page 10, we see that is further limited, because it is defined as: 'a reasonable degree of best effort to accomplish a given task, acknowledging … the timely availability of raw materials, inventories and liquid funds; yield of process; the … contrac...

 The botched vaccination rollout has been a reputational disaster, proving the European Union to be a petty and dysfunctional bloc. Source - Daily telegraph 26/01/21 Link The EU’s Covid vaccination programme is a fiasco. So badly has the bloc bungled its vaccine rollout that an escalating row between Brussels and the 27 member states, to say nothing of voter outrage, is damaging “project Europe” itself. At the start of the pandemic, the European Commission decided that it would take responsibility for sourcing the vaccines, despite its limited competence in the area. It reasoned that its size and the “efficiency” of its bureaucracy would enable it to seize a lead on its rivals in the vaccine race, and show the tangible benefits of European unity. Instead the experiment has turned into a catastrophe. The UK has administered 10.3 doses per 100 of our population, including four-fifths of the over-80s. No EU nation comes close. Germany has managed just 2.1 doses per 100, the EU average...

 The real, positive news on unemployment is that the slump is now levelling off   A persistent, unjustified bias towards misery can itself undermine consumer and business confidence   We should be grateful that UK unemployment is not at the rates seen on the continent Source CAPX - 26/01/21 Link What’s happening in the labour market is arguably the most important economic news every month. Despite that, the quality of the commentary is often poor, with many sources apparently too keen to focus on the negatives. The reactions to the latest release from the ONS is a case in point. The early headlines were dominated by the fact that unemployment ticked up (‘soared’, according to some) to 5% in the three months to November, which is the highest rate since 2016. However, this was still lower than most analysts had expected, mainly because the single-month data for November itself actually reported a small fall. What’s more, the first estimates from HMRC PAYE data for December ...

 The extinction of reason, justice and freedom on campus is now to be institutionalised as American government policy Melanie Phillips Jan 24 2021 Has there ever been such a profound and jarring disconnect between a new American president’s words and actions on his very first day in office? In his inauguration speech, President Joe Biden hymned unity. America, he said, must “stop the shouting, and lower the temperature”. It must put behind it “anger, resentment, hatred, extremism, lawlessness, violence, disease, joblessness and hopelessness” and reaffirm “history, faith and reason”. Yet within hours of that speech, Biden signed a slew of executive orders to set America on a path of anger, resentment, hatred, division, lawlessness and joblessness and which undermine history, faith and reason. And — excuse me — executive orders? When President Donald Trump used them, the Democrats howled that this showed he was a proto-fascist hell-bent on circumventing constitutional procedures an...

 The plan states any attempt by the UK Government to challenge the legality of the referendum in the courts will be "vigorously opposed" Source - Daily Telegraph 24/01/20 Link The SNP has revealed a "roadmap to a referendum" on Scottish independence, with the latest poll showing a majority want a fresh vote.  Mike Russell, the Scottish Government's Constitution Secretary, will present the 11-point document to the party's policy forum on Sunday. It says a "legal referendum" will be held after the pandemic if there is a pro-independence majority following May's election. The roadmap states any attempt by the UK Government to challenge the legality of the referendum in the courts will be "vigorously opposed". A Section 30 order - part of the Scotland Act 1998 which allows Holyrood to pass laws normally reserved to Westminster - was granted by the UK Government ahead of the 2014 independence referendum. Mike Russell MSP said any challenge...

 The die was cast for the failure of the Welsh NHS well before the pandemic struck   Considering the money spent on Wales, its absence from our national debate is striking   The failure to hold Cardiff Bay to account has never been more apparent than this year Source-CAPX 20/01/21 Link Mark Drakeford is not having a good war. After a relatively strong start to his pandemic response last year, Wales’ favourite cheese enthusiast has stumbled into pitfall after pitfall in recent months, from the ludicrous sight of “non-essential” aisles including female sanitary products being roped off in supermarkets, to the downright dangerous idea that vaccinations should be slowed down in case supply runs out and vaccinators have nothing to do. Welsh politics flies criminally under the national radar. It is poorly understood in Whitehall outside of the Wales Office, it is ignored by the national headquarters of all the major parties, and it is rarely if ever covered by the national pres...

  Eurocrats are complaining like Renaissance clergy at the loss of unjustified privileges The EU's diplomatic status is an expanding sludge of ambiguity The EU's dangerous diplomatic ambiguity is its own problem, not Britain's Source -CAPX - 22/01/20 link Our Foreign Office has touched a very raw nerve. The UK is reportedly refusing to grant full diplomatic standing to the emissaries of Brussels, on the basis that officials from its External Action Service and Commission are not representatives of a sovereign state.  This has quickly triggered an angry protest from the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs. The claim is that this will hinder the activity of staff posted here, and that it sets a bad precedent that other states will exploit. Countries around the world will apparently be throwing Eurocrats into jail as soon as their diplomatic immunity is stripped. Both suggestions are laughable, and Eurocrats are complaining like Renaissance clergy at the loss of unjus...

  Leave the country, launch a news channel or plan a 2024 run? Donald Trump's future will likely be a choice between business and politics. Source Daily Telegraph 20/01/20 Link What will Donald Trump do next? That is the question being mulled over in Washington DC now. His final days in office have been marred by his unprecedented second impeachment by the House of Representatives in the wake of violence at the US Capitol on January 6. In light of those events, Trump has finally committed to a peaceful transfer of power, though he will break with tradition and not attend Joe Biden's inauguration. So what path could the man who upended the norms of the Oval Office take in the months and years ahead? There are many possibilities. In his final speech in office, Trump vowed that his movement was "only just beginning" indicating he intends to remain a prominent political figure. Mr Trump said that "together with millions of hardworking patriots" he had built the ...