Absolutely Not The Daily Troll-o-Graph

 It is the duty of Tories to be honest with the public: the government cannot solve every one of their problems Source - Daily Telegraph - 29/04/22 Link It is hard to believe, as we look around us, that this country was in the grip of an unprecedented pandemic for two years. Social distancing, vaccine certificates, the rule of six, Christmas presents being handed over in the car park: it is as if someone flicked a switch and we have all agreed to forget that any of it ever happened. The new normal seems remarkably like the old normal, at least in Britain. Only a few tell-tale signs of the disaster remain. The few remaining people clinging on to masks. The faded stickers on the pavement telling us to stay two metres apart, like the relics of some lost civilisation. The ever-growing backlogs at the DVLA and the Passport Office. On the surface, society seems almost back to what it was. But we should be worried by what Covid has done to us nevertheless. We saw two big trends during the...

This time, the Kremlin miscalculated how Europe would react to its oil and gas blackmail threats Source - Daily Telegraph - 29/04/22 Link It's usually a mistake to call a winner midway through a war; fortune can be a cruel taskmaster. Yet it is already clear that Vladimir Putin has made at least four catastrophic miscalculations in his murderous assault on Ukraine. First, he hugely underestimated the resolve and strength of the Ukrainian resistance. Secondly, he was seemingly unaware of the incompetence and ill-disciplined thuggishness of his own military. Their war crimes have so offended Western sensitivities that even Russlandversteher Germany has now swung fully behind the democratic alliance. Thirdly, he thought the war would divide a declining and morally bankrupt West; instead it has united and breathed new life into it. And lastly he overestimated the leverage of his hold over oil and gas supplies. In the event, Europe is adapting with previously unimaginable speed to the p...

 Assuming the deal goes through, the world’s richest man just bought himself a $44bn new toy   Owning Twitter may not prove enough to realise Musk’s dreams of creating a free speech utopia   Being an activist owner in an era of increasing online regulation will mean a mountain of compliance Source CApx 27/04/22 Link Elon Musk will, probably, in a few months’ time own Twitter. The deal might have been agreed between Musk and the social network’s board, but there are still numerous hoops through which both will have to jump before ownership transfers – but assuming it does, the world’s richest man just bought himself a $44bn new toy. Twitter’s board had quite the change of heart in recent weeks. At first, they tried to welcome their new shareholder onto the board – which would have prevented him increasing his stake above 15%.  Then, Musk decided not to join the board, which Twitter’s CEO said was ‘for the best’. The board then introduced a ‘poison pill’ to make a host...

 Sales into Europe remained strong, experts find Source - Daily Telegraph Link Sales into Europe remained strong, experts find By Louis Ashworth 26 April 2022 • 6:00am There is no evidence of a “sustained decline” in UK exports to the EU since the Brexit deal kicked in, a report has found. Experts said sales into Europe remained strong, despite a 25pc relative decline in imports from the bloc compared with the rest of the world. The research, published by the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics, is claimed by its authors to be the most full study into the effects of Brexit on UK and EU trade since the referendum in 2016. The report suggested the biggest impact may have been felt across smaller-scale trade links with the Continent. It found a “sharp drop” in the number of trade relationships between UK exporters and EU importers, "with lower value relationships hit particularly hard". Thomas Prayer, one of the authors, said: “It appears the UK sim...

She hasn’t a head for figures, she struggles to grasp policy detail and she lacks intellectual agility Source - Daily Telegraph - 25/04/22 Link Is Marine Le Pen an extremist or a fascist, the insults routinely hurled at the leader of France’s National Rally? Frankly, it is not even clear which side of the political sphere she belongs to, given her Left-wing economic manifesto.  Le Pen is unquestionably guilty of one thing, however, and that is of being a mediocre politician. Once more she has been soundly beaten by Emmanuel Macron in the presidential election, and while she wasn’t thrashed as she was in 2017, her share of the vote, 41 per cent, was less than the polls had predicted. It’s hard to emphasise the depth with which many millions of French loathe Macron, and yet still they couldn’t bring themselves to vote for the only person who could have stopped him occupying the Élysée for another five years.  What is about Le Pen that makes her a perennial loser? The family name...

 Corbyn's latest comments on Ukraine should remind us just how absurd it was for any Labour MP to back him Source _ Daily Telegraph 21/04/22 Link Back in the early days of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, Labour MPs needed a Plan B after their attempt to depose him had failed. Having resigned en masse from his front bench, held a vote of no confidence (which Corbyn ignored), then mounted a challenge against him, they had no choice but to take a different approach.  The conclusion they reached was simple: they would campaign to make him prime minister. Twice. Those same Labour MPs would now prefer it if we regarded all this as ancient history, pointing out that Corbyn has been without the party whip for 18 months and is unlikely to be selected as a Labour candidate again. His leadership, we are invited to believe, was a mere blip, a bizarre but short-lived episode in which the party lost its way. But it’s not quite as straightforward as that. On Wednesday we were treated to another ...

 The Russo-Japanese war marked the beginning of the end of the Tsar – Ukraine may do the same for today's Russian leader Source - Daily telegraph - 20/04/22 Link The sinking of the flag ship of Russia’s Black Sea fleet provoked a sense of deja vu among military historians. Prior to the demise of the Moskva, the last time the Russian Navy suffered a comparable blow was at the battle of Tsushima, in the final stages of the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-5. Across the two days of the battle, two thirds of the Russian fleet was sunk and a number of surviving ships captured. It was a disastrous defeat, and it is not the only striking parallel between then and now. The Russo-Japanese war, admittedly, was started by Japan after years of tensions over the two empires’ desire to expand. But the result was a calamity for the Russian regime: it was the first time in the modern era that a European power was defeated by an Asian nation, and not just any Asian nation but one that had been an isolati...

 Olaf Scholz under pressure over refusal to hand over tanks Source- Daily Telegraph 21/04/22 Link Germany pointed the finger at Britain on Wednesday as it sought to deflect a growing international row over its refusal to send heavy weapons to Ukraine. A senior German diplomat demanded to know why London was not under the same pressure as Berlin to supply light tanks to Kyiv. “Everybody is focussed on Marder but what about the British Warrior or French AMX?” asked Brigadier General Michael Oberneyer, the German defence attaché in the UK. Germany is facing demands from Ukraine and Western allies to hand over 100 Marder infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs) from its military stocks. The UK has hundreds of equivalent Warrior IFVs in storage which it plans to retire by 2025. But Ukrainian demands have focused on the German Marders, which Olaf Scholz’s government claims it cannot spare. Britain has already delivered £350 million of weapons, including Starstreak air defence systems and Javeli...

 Having failed in battle, Russia is resorting to war crimes and hostage-taking   Russia has form when it comes to using Western prisoners as tools of diplomacy   It is not even in Britain's gift to arrange the transfer of Viktor Medvedchuk Source CAPX 20/04/22 Link The sight of two British nationals being paraded on Russian state TV marks a new front in the propaganda war the Kremlin has long waged against the West. Shaun Pinner and Aiden Aslin, both of whom were serving in the Ukrainian army when they were captured by Russian forces, appeared on the Rossiya 24 channel earlier this week, pleading with Boris Johnson to exchange them for the pro-Russian Ukrainian politician Viktor Medvedchuk, who has himself been detained by Ukraine’s security services. Relations between the UK and Russia could hardly get any worse. Johnson and other senior British politicians have been banned from Russia for their ‘hostile’ stance, and the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has accused th...

 Anyone buying German goods right now is effectively funding Putin’s war Source - daily telegraph 19/04/22 Link The gas is still flowing through the pipelines across Europe. The oil is still being unloaded at the refineries. And €800m a day is being sent straight to Moscow.  Germany and to a lesser extent Italy are effectively funding Vladimir Putin's brutal assault on Ukraine. Shelling of innocent civilians, mass rapes, and the destruction of whole cities is being financed by European consumers and industry.  True, Germany is debating cutting off the gas. It is setting targets for winding up the payments to Russia and exploring alternative supplies that would keep the lights switched on.  And yet for now it has decided the cost to German industry would be too high. That is completely unacceptable. If the Germans don't want to make that sacrifice, it is up to them. Yet there is no reason why the rest of the world should tolerate that. The moment is surely close for s...

In most other countries, Partygate wouldn’t even bubble to the surface Source - Daily telegraph 17/04/22 Link In the cultured, metropolitan circles of contemporary Britain you are just as likely to find yourself in the midst of a stimulating conversation about a new opera or play as you are a dreary sneer-fest about how dreadful this nation is. About what a laughing stock we have become in the world, what utter, pathetic fools government ministers are, and what a mess we are in since leaving the EU. Everything we do, according to these people, can only ever be unethical, craven, stupid, corrupt. If only this endless, haranguing anti-Britain perspective was just tiresome. But it is mad as well as bad, a pathology so tenacious and distorting that it seeks to turn the best things about us into further evidence of our rottenness. It is a fatal attraction to making enormous toxic mountains out of molehills. There is more than a shred of Remainiac venom in the relentless condemnation of Brit...

 I have seen for myself that the UK asylum system is broken. Turning a blind eye is no longer an option Source - Daily Telegraph - 16/04/22 Link I have long advocated the need to stop human smuggling across the English Channel. What began as a trickle three years ago is in danger of becoming an armada this year: already, more than 5,000 people have made the journey across Channel in small boats since January. Ideally, this would be achieved by coming to a “safe third country” agreement between the UK and France – or better still with the wider EU. Indeed, the EU has already implemented its own internal agreement that any asylum claim should be processed in one Member State only to prevent “asylum shopping” (the Dublin Regulation); and it has negotiated its own “safe third country” agreement with Turkey, to reduce irregular migration into the EU via the Eastern Mediterranean. But despite the best efforts of the Home Secretary – including generous offers of financial support – neithe...

 In a world of highly mobile companies and people, high taxes are easier than ever to avoid   The case for bold tax cuts and simplification has never been clearer   Three global megatrends are shifting the Laffer Curve towards lower rates Source - CAPX 14/04/22 Link In 1974, the economist Art Laffer famously sketched out his theory of taxation on the back of a napkin. It would later be called the The Laffer Curve. Laffer’s point was that tax rises are subject to diminishing returns and eventually negative returns. As tax rates rise, taxpayers will increasingly avoid or evade those taxes; or if they cannot do that, leave the country entirely. A corollary of that argument was that by discouraging profitable activity, high taxes actively shrink economic activity. Excessive taxes, therefore, mean you end up collecting a smaller proportion of a shrunken GDP.   Though there’s plenty of debate about what optimal tax rates actually are, the basic concept underpinning th...

Military to take charge of tackling illegal crossings as Priti Patel unveils ‘offshore processing’ plan Source - Daily Telegraph - 13/04/22 Link Channel migrants will be flown more than 5,000 miles to Rwanda to have their asylum claims processed in an “offshore” facility, the Home Secretary will announce. Priti Patel will set out the details of a landmark immigration deal that will mean thousands of asylum seekers are relocated to the landlocked east African nation. It comes as Boris Johnson prepares to warn that "vile" people-smugglers are “turning the Channel into a watery graveyard”, with migrants “drowning in unseaworthy boats and suffocating in refrigerated lorries”.  In a major speech on Thursday, the Prime Minister will unveil a series of measures aimed at tackling illegal immigration, including putting the military in charge of operations in the Channel. He will also signal moves to end housing asylum seekers in expensive hotel accommodation and unveil plans for the f...

 Source - Daily Telegraph  Link AMBROSE EVANS-PRITCHARD 12 April 2022 • 2:00pm Ambrose Evans-Pritchard The war in Ukraine and the interlinked energy shock have revealed the deep strategic strengths of France. Geopolitics has lifted the weight of Paris in European affairs, and diminished Berlin in equal measure. The French have a credible energy system, however imperfect. They have an agro-industrial core that acquires strategic value in the impending global food crisis. They have armed forces worth the name, and a nuclear deterrent capable of striking at every level.  The Germans lack all of this. It is becoming ever clearer that 16 years of depressed public investment and clammy mercantilist reliance on Russia and China under Angela Merkel have degraded the country, leaving it floundering as the world reverts to its eternal Hobbesian character. This reshuffling of fortunes has little to do with Emmanuel Macron. The same structural strengths would come through under a Pre...

As tensions rise between Brussels and Eastern Europe Britain has become a major ally in the region Source - Daily Telegraph - 11/04/22 Link If Boris Johnson’s visit to Kyiv at the weekend was a surprise for most of us, it came as a monumental shock to those who said Brexit would doom the UK to diplomatic irrelevance. Since the 2016 vote, breathless Remainers have pounced on every perceived diplomatic slight, from Emmanuel Macron's regular anti-British tirades to Joe Biden's ill-informed repetition of Irish talking points on the Protocol. Yet in Eastern Europe, far from damaging relations, Britain’s exit from Brussels seems to have only made them stronger. Poland’s Deputy Prime Minister Piotr Glinski, interviewed for my video above, says that without the shackles of the EU, his country and the UK successfully formed a trilateral agreement with Ukraine. The Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has also offered warm words toward Britain in recent weeks, praising the “historic” l...