Absolutely Not The Daily Troll-o-Graph

 Is Labour any more than a grievance shop for metropolitan Wokeists?   Labour has shown it simply doesn't understand the benefits of our flexible labour market   Doubling the minimum wage for 16-17 year-olds will only dampen their job prospects Source - CAPX - 29/07/21 hi Link It’s extraordinary, after nearly a year and a half when thousands of businesses have been forced to close and many more subject to expensive restrictions, that the UK labour market has remained as strong as it has. Unemployment remains low, and while many have left the workforce or are still on furlough, total employment is not far off its pre-Covid level. Wages are bouncing back, and the number of job vacancies is higher than at any time in the last 15 years. Some of this buoyancy is the result of government policy which – albeit at huge cost – has sustained many businesses and their employees. But a lot is down to the inherent resilience of the UK’s flexible labour market, which has performed far better in

The company is weighing up whether it wants a future in vaccines as its jab remains marred by early criticism. Source - Daily Telegraph - 29/07/21 Link In the darkest days of the coronavirus crisis, Emmanuel Macron took to the media circuit with a scathing attack on the world’s cheapest Covid vaccine – and the only one to be produced at cost. Britain’s pioneering jab, developed by Oxford University and manufactured by AstraZeneca, was “quasi-ineffective” on older people, the French President said. “The real problem on AstraZeneca is that it doesn’t work the way we were expecting it to,” he added.  Weeks later, when a study suggested there was a tiny chance that patients could develop blood clots, the vaccine’s use was curtailed across Europe. In America, it was never approved at all. The damage caused by Europe’s assault on AstraZeneca is now becoming clear. The company’s decision to make its jab without taking a profit has squeezed margins. The company is now weighing up whether it wa

PHILIP THOMAS, the only expert to accurately predict deaths and cases, brings a heartening message. Source - Daily Mail  26/07/21 Link Has the beast been tamed? Could the end of Covid really be in sight? The numbers certainly look promising. Yesterday, it emerged that new daily infections had fallen in England for six days in a row. The numbers had plummeted 38 per cent week on week, with deaths happily down 24 per cent. Every English region saw a significant drop in new infections. The ever-gloomy modellers at the Government’s scientific advisory committee, Sage, had warned that new cases could reach 100,000 per day by the start of August, with ‘Professor Lockdown’ Neil Ferguson even suggesting this could surge to 200,000 per day. Yet, yesterday, fewer than 25,000 positive tests were reported: less than a quarter of Sage’s bleak prediction.  Even more reassuringly, unlike the first two waves, the new cases are not translating into a surge in hospitalisations or deaths — just 14 deaths

 Critical race theory has replaced critical thinking. Source - Spiked  Link A university should be a place where people can challenge received wisdom, test out theories and discuss differences of opinion without fear. But a worrying trend has developed: universities are telling academic staff how they should approach political and social issues. These are often the very issues that they are employed to examine critically. The most infamous example of this is Stonewall’s Diversity Champions scheme, which many universities are signed up to. The scheme promotes the silencing of gender-critical views, and that is happening on campuses up and down the country. In 2019, Essex University No Platformed two feminist speakers. Stonewall’s advice led the university to believe it had the legal right to exclude gender-critical views from campus. Universities have made similar commitments on race. In recent years, dozens of them have signed up to the Race Equality Charter. An organisation called Adv

 If the SNP has spent its referendum fund, what does that suggest about the prospects of another poll?   For once, it's the unionist side that is starting to set the legislative agenda over Scotland   After years of political dominance, the SNP have cast a long shadow over Scottish civil society Source ,- CAPX Link Prior to the Scottish elections, there was for a time good reason for even jaded pessimists to suspect that the scandal over the mishandling of allegations against Alex Salmond might fatally injure Nicola Sturgeon. The First Minister had a lucky escape (although given she missed out on a majority by just one seat, perhaps not lucky enough). But her party’s problems haven’t gone away. Yesterday the Sunday Times reported that the police had opened an investigation into the Scottish National Party over allegations of fraud. The central claim is that a £600,000 fund that was supposed to be ring-fenced to fight the next independence referendum has been spent on other things.

PM is reportedly convinced of the need to trigger Article 16 should Brussels fail to agree to a formal renegotiation of the NI Protocol. Source - Daily Telegraph - 14/07/21 Link Boris Johnson was ready to overhaul the Northern Ireland Protocol this week but was talked down by his Brexit minister Lord Frost, The Telegraph has learnt. With the UK now demanding a formal renegotiation of the post-Brexit arrangements for Northern Ireland, The Telegraph has been told Mr Johnson is now convinced of the need to use the so-called “nuclear option” if Brussels refuses. It is understood that the warning was issued to Dublin this week, with UK officials making clear that it is Mr Johnson, rather than Lord Frost, who is most in favour of triggering Article 16 should the EU fail to change course. Brandon Lewis, the Northern Ireland Secretary, is also known to have relayed similar messages to Simon Coveney, Ireland’s foreign affairs minister, during recent discussions over post-Brexit arrangements in

 Madrid's stance on Gibraltar is nothing less than an obsession   What's happened with Frontex and Gibraltar is undoubtedly a breach of faith from the EU   Is it a coincidence that these issues are arising at the same time as those over Northern Ireland? Source - CAPX - 23/07/21 Link The Government in Madrid still does not like the fact that it does not own Gibraltar. I can understand the sentiment. It took this country 350 years to sign a treaty accepting that France won the Hundred Years War. But Madrid’s political stance today is an obsession.  Forget the hypocrisy of the Spanish exclaves in North Africa. Forget that Portugal is still waiting today for Spain to hand back the town of Olivenza after an agreement 200 years ago. Forget that Gibraltar has flown the British flag longer than it ever flew the Spanish one. Forget that the Gibraltarians voted in 2002 to reject joint sovereignty. Forget too the critical role that the town played in British hands in the fight against fa

Sir Howard Davies says era of thousands of workers walking into its Bishopsgate office at 8.30am and out at 6pm are over. Source - Daily Telegraph - 21/07/21 Link The number of people working in central London will never return to pre-pandemic levels because employees will not come back to the office five days a week, the chairman of one of Britain's biggest banks has warned.  In stark contrast to Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak's hope that city centres will roar back to life, Sir Howard Davies has argued that the era of daily commuting is over for good.  "The days when 2,500 people walked in through our office door at Bishopsgate at 8.30am and then walked out again at 6pm, I think that is gone," the NatWest chairman told Bloomberg.  Unlike Wall Street banks that have forced staff back in and maintained that home working would never be permanent, British banks are calling time on office life and some have already begun slashing office space.   "We are looking at ha

European Commission ignores the Government’s proposals to renegotiate agreement just hours after they were announced. Source - Daily Telegraph - 21/07/21 Link The European Commission has rejected the UK Government’s call to renegotiate the Northern Ireland Protocol just hours after it was proposed. UK government ministers published proposed changes to the current arrangement, designed to keep trade flowing in Northern Ireland after Brexit, and called for new talks.  However, Maros Sefcovic, the European Commission vice-president who leads on post-Brexit issue talks with the UK, issued a statement saying the terms of the deal will not be renegotiated.  Mr Sefcovic said: “We will continue to engage with the UK, also on the suggestions made today. We are ready to continue to seek creative solutions, within the framework of the protocol, in the interest of all communities in Northern Ireland. However, we will not agree to a renegotiation of the protocol.” The statement was issued just hour

 A controversial ECJ ruling has exposed the French elite to the difficulties of ever-closer union. Source - Daily Telegraph - 20/07/21 Link You would be forgiven for thinking that the irate French politician thundering in the pages of Le Figaro against an “unacceptable” and “irresponsible” ruling of the European Court of Justice (ECJ), “an unbelievable and unbearable mistake” guilty of “disregarding the national sovereignty of France” from a court that “arrogates to itself a power that never was its own” was one of a rare breed of Frexiteers. (Jean-Frédéric Poisson, perhaps, or François Asselineau, who strive to poll one per cent each time the presidential election comes around then vanish for five years.) But Jean-Louis Borloo, a former finance minister under Nicolas Sarkozy who also held cabinet positions under Jacques Chirac, is about the furthest you can find from the political fringe. Several times rated France’s favourite political personality, he was also an active environment m

Liberal Western states need to learn to live with their neighbours. Heavy-handed intervention from Brussels is not the answer. Source - Daily Telegraph - 18/07/21 Douglas Murray Link The European Union has always had a number of hard to reconcile differences. In the 2000s the clearest was that between the north and the south, specifically the question of how to reconcile Mediterranean fiscal habits with more Germanic ones. In recent years another divide has kept asserting itself: that between East and West. This has erupted again in recent days over the question of how to adapt Western European social attitudes with Central and Eastern European ones, most crucially those of Hungary, Poland and the other “Visegrad” countries. The latest spat between Brussels and its partners to the East has centred on a new schools policy in Hungary. The government of Viktor Orban has passed a new law similar to Britain’s now-defunct Section 28, forbidding the portrayal or promotion of LGBT people to t

 Source - John Redwoods diary - 18/07/21 Link Incisive and topical campaigns and commentary on today's issues and tomorrow's prob What Parliament agreed concerning the EU and Northern Ireland JULY 18, 2021  This week the Commons passed unanimously an important motion to sort out the issues with the EU concerning Northern Ireland. Noting that this got very little attention in the media, I need to set out here what was agreed. I assume the BBC ignored it because it did not offer them the usual opportunity to interview a lot of Remain MPs willing to slag off the UK and put the EU case. To the BBC many pro Brexit MPs speaking for the majority view are non persons unless they can be damaged by a story. The motion stated: “That this House supports the primary aims of the Northern Ireland Protocol of the EU Withdrawal Agreement, which are to uphold the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement in all its dimensions and to respect the integrity of the EU and UK internal markets; recognises that

Fingers crossed once restrictions are removed and international travel returns, the economy ought to emerge from Covid relatively unscathed. Source - Daily Telegraph   Link JEREMY WARNER 17 July 2021 • 4:00pm It’s time to take a more positive view. Let’s for the moment look through fast emerging inflationary pressures, their potentially devastating consequences for the public finances, the negative impact on trade of Brexit, rising third-wave Covid infections and the disruptions of the amusingly labelled “pingdemic” … OK, granted; that’s quite a list of things to ignore. But while these threats cannot lightly be dismissed, there is beneath the surface growing cause for relative optimism. The pandemic has plainly been a terrible shock to the economy and the public finances, much worse in many respects than the global financial crisis of 2008-11. The contraction was far deeper and the mitigating deficit spending much bigger. But it has also substantially been a self-induced shock, turboc

"When did you ever have to stand in a queue like this for food, for nappies, for baby formula" Telegraph Video - 16/07/21 Link After the looting and rioting, some South African residents are struggling to buy food, and are forming huge queues to get basic supplies such as bread or nappies. A woman filmed her shock at seeing the swathes of people queuing in what seemed like an endless line to be able to go into a supermarket near Durban.  "People could be attacked, but this is what hunger does. This is what people do when they need to eat," the woman says in the video above. "It's heartbreaking." The jailing of former South African President Jacob Zuma last week triggered riots and violence in some areas, with shops being ransacked. Residents have also been expressing fears of fuel shortages and unconvinced that the violence had abated for good. In Durban itself, petrol tankers with armed escorts were seen distributing fuel across the city. It comes as

  Teesside mayor eyes £1bn bid for Britain's biggest freeport Source Daily Telegraph -  11/07/21 Link Ben Houchen is understood to be in discussions with Abu Dhabi fund Mubadala, among others, to line up funding for a bid Teesside mayor Ben Houchen is in talks with three potential backers over a £1bn takeover tilt which could significantly bolster the UK’s biggest freeport. Canadian fund manager Brookfield has formally restarted the sale of PD Ports, owner of the vast Teesport container gateway, after the process was delayed by the pandemic. Brookfield is expected to close a sale by the end of the year, but one source said that Mr Houchen and his South Tees Development Corporation (STDC) were likely favourites to strike a deal. It is understood that the mayor and STDC are in discussions with Abu Dhabi fund Mubadala, another international investor and a potential domestic backer to line up funding for a bid. Middlesbrough-based PD Ports, which employs more than 1,300 people and trac

Guys, I was going to feature BA's blog here today. I'm still doing that. Here is a link to his blog.  Link Then I saw this article in the Telegraph which I think confirms BA's thoughts on sport being ruined by woke identity politics. Report, which follows abuse directed at black football players after Euro 2020 final, says Government risks breaking human rights laws. Source - Daily Telegraph - 14/07/21 Link England is “systemically racist”, according to a report submitted to the UN by a prominent government critic and think tank chief executive who called Boris Johnson a “brat”. The findings come in the wake of racist abuse directed at black football players following England's defeat in the Euro 2020 final against Italy. A coalition of more than 100 civil society organisations and NGOs – coordinated by the race equality think-tank, The Runnymede Trust – have warned that the Government’s approach to tackling racism risks breaking international human rights laws.  The re