Absolutely Not The Daily Troll-o-Graph

 ‘Extremely doubtful’ SNP’s plans to bankroll Scotland with oil and gas production in the North Sea will be successful Source - Daily Telegraph - 30/10/22 Link Nicola Sturgeon's plan to kickstart the economy of an independent Scotland through North Sea oil and gas revenues has been rubbished by a world-leading economist behind Norway's £1 trillion oil fund. In her keynote speech at the SNP conference earlier this month, The First Minister said a £20 billion fund would be created within the first 10 years of independence to keep the country's economy afloat. The “Building a New Scotland Fund” would be bankrolled by North Sea revenues, Scottish Government borrowing and other “windfall income”, the SNP leader has said. However, Tony Mackay, an Inverness-based economist who first proposed establishing a wealth fund with Norway's oil and gas revenues alongside economist Terje Lind in the early seventies, told the Sunday Times it was “extremely doubtful” there would be enough...

 Company warns workers they will face a significant hit to wages unless industrial action is called off Source - Daily Telegraph - 30/10/22 Link Striking Royal Mail workers will lose up to £2,000 each if they press ahead with industrial action in the weeks ahead, the company has warned. Simon Thompson, Royal Mail's chief executive, said in a video to staff earlier this month that they would lose hundreds of pounds as strikes continue. The company estimates that each worker will be left £2,000 out of pocket if all walkouts are held as planned. The average member of staff earns £30,000 a year including overtime and allowances. The Communication Workers Union (CWU), which represents 115,000 Royal Mail employees, has vowed to fight plans to cut costs and change working practices. Royal Mail has responded by preparing to tear up a legal agreement with the union, and announcing plans for up to 10,000 job cuts. Eight days of strikes have taken place at Royal Mail already with a further 17...

 Not content with cosying up to the Kremlin, Berlin is still treating China as a close friend and partner Source - Daily Telegraph 28/10/22 Link Germany’s latest plan to legalise cannabis is being presented as a “model for Europe” by its health minister, Karl Lauterbach. Yet if the EU regulators have any sense, they will turn it down flat. Like so many terrible ideas that have emerged out of Berlin in recent years, from phasing out nuclear power in favour of Russian gas to making German troops use broomsticks as guns, the “liberalisation” of drugs is the worst kind of pious grandstanding, allowing the country to pose as a paragon of liberal virtue while behaving very badly indeed. The trouble for Germany is that, following its disgraceful appeasement of Vladimir Putin’s Russia, the act no longer works. In fact, the free world will soon see that the country’s combination of hypocrisy, irresponsibility and greed risks making Western civilisation hostage not just to the Kremlin, but t...

 Why even the hint of more liberty sends the woke set into meltdown. Source- Spiked Link 28th October 2022 So he’s done it. The richest man in the world and self-styled ‘free-speech absolutist’ has taken over Twitter. The bête noire of illiberal liberals has got his hands on social media. Cue meltdown. Listening to the woke set you’d be forgiven for thinking that the gates of hell had been flung open and every manner of evil and blasphemy will now pour forth. Twitter could become a ‘soap box for hate speech’, fretted one media outlet yesterday. It really is extraordinary how much some people fear freedom. Elon Musk hinted at his takeover of Twitter with a real-life pun. ‘Entering Twitter HQ – let that sink in!’, he tweeted on Wednesday, alongside a vid of him bringing a literal sink into the Twitter offices. But the Twitterati don’t need hammy rich-geek humour for Musk’s conquering of Twitter to ‘sink in’. The horrifying prospect of a Musk-run social media, of a tad more liberty on...

 The UK is stuck in a vicious cycle of stagnant growth and endless tax rises Source - Daily Telegraph 27/10/22 Link The mini-Budget has been consigned to history. The tax cuts have been reversed. The architects of the experiment have been packed off to the back benches, and a sensible “grown-up” government has been restored.  The UK’s brief experiment with turbo-charging growth, or at least dragging it back up towards “mediocre”, has been brought to a swift and early conclusion. By the time the new Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, and the new Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, deliver their hastily rescheduled fiscal statement in the middle of next month British economic policy will have been completely reset. It will be as if nothing had happened.  And yet that should not disguise one simple fact: Trussonomics may not have been the right answer, but at least it was addressing the right question.  If the country's political establishment can't recognise that, we are doomed to perman...

 Threat comes as the Government's ‘fiscal statement’ is delayed to November 17 Source - Daily Telegraph 26/10/22 Link The state pension triple lock is under threat again after new Prime Minister Rishi Sunak refused to commit to the policy that protects millions of retirees from inflation. Under the triple lock, which the Conservative Party committed to in its 2019 manifesto and Liz Truss promised to maintain, the state pension is increased every April in line with the highest of either inflation, wage growth or 2.5pc. But when pressed on the issue today, the Prime Minister's spokesman said: “That is something that is going to be wrapped up into the fiscal statement, we wouldn't comment ahead of any fiscal statements or budgets. “What I can say is he has shown through his record as Chancellor that he will do what's right and compassionate for the most vulnerable.” It comes as the Government's “fiscal statement” was delayed from next Monday to November 17. If the Gove...

 Low prices on the continent could see electricity vacuumed up by export markets Source - Daily Telegraph - 25/10/22 Link Plans to cut EU energy bills have sparked anger in Brussels after it emerged the bloc may end up subsidising cheap power for Britain Low prices on the continent could see electricity vacuumed up by export markets, European Commission officials are warning. One solution would be to charge higher prices to export markets such as Britain but officials fear this could be in breach of the Brexit agreement. Soaring gas prices, triggered by shortages due to Russia’s war on Ukraine, have wreaked havoc across energy markets due to the core role of gas in both electricity generation and heating. Ministers across the EU and the UK are scrambling to find ways to bring prices down. In the EU, one measure on the table is to cap the amount that can be charged for electricity from gas-fired power generators. In return, the state would help to pay for fuel costs. It is hoped thi...

 Mr Sunak might struggle even to last as long as Liz Truss, warn some Conservative MPs Source - Daily Telegraph 24/10/22 Link Having being confirmed as prime minister on Monday, Rishi Sunak is the political equivalent of Henry VIII’s next wife: believing, despite all evidence to the contrary, that he will succeed where so many others have come a cropper. Ominously, some of his colleagues are already sharpening the axe in readiness for another execution. The Conservative Party has become so addicted to serial regicide that some of its MPs are predicting Mr Sunak might struggle even to last as long as Liz Truss, and will be forced out like his three predecessors, unable to marshal the considerable majority built in 2019. The Boris Johnson “ultras” in the party, like Sir Christopher Chope and Nadine Dorries, are muttering about rebellions, raising the prospect of an “ungovernable” Conservative Party giving the next leader no choice but to call an immediate general election, which Labo...

 Russia is in thrall to myths of military invincibility, just as Germany was in the 1930s Source - Daily Telegraph 23/10/22 Link Why do states start impossible wars? This question is prompted by Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. But it applies to Europe’s great tragedies over more than a century. Most obvious is a failure of intelligence; the common denominator of military disaster. Governments do not start wars they think they will lose. For Russia’s rulers to believe that a relatively small invading force could conquer Ukraine in a few days, and then hold down a hostile population supported from outside, is proof of a huge failure somewhere, whether in the intelligence agencies, the military staff or perhaps by Putin himself. How could a government machine composed of experienced, ruthless and intelligent men make such a gross error, disastrous for their victims and themselves? Similarly, how could the German government in 1914 think they could defeat an alliance of France and Russia,...

No longer would they be able to evade the kind of scrutiny that the gleeful sadism of glib opposition allows them to avoid Source - Daily Telegraph - 22/10/22 Link At the time of writing I have absolutely no idea who is going to be leader of the Conservative party so let’s just skip to what everybody assumes will be the next stage and discuss what Labour will do when it is in government.  There are two quite different scenarios here. The first applies if a general election is called immediately which is what Sir Keir Starmer claims to want but actually does not because at the moment he is in Opposition Heaven and would like to stay there until the present government drags the country through - and out of - the depths of this crisis.  The second comes into play if the election is called in maybe six months time when the worst may be over, especially if, as many are now daring to predict, things never got as bad as expected. (Global gas prices are already falling precipitately a...

 Business Secretary tells Chopper's Politics podcast that returning Boris Johnson to 10 Downing St next week would calm the financial markets Source - Daily Telegraph - 21/10/22 Link Conservative Party members should decide who is the next leader, rather than a stitch-up between MPs, Jacob Rees-Mogg has said. The Business Secretary said that returning Boris Johnson to 10 Downing Street next week would calm the financial markets because it would mean that a general election would not need to be held until late 2024.  In an interview with this weekend's edition of Chopper's Politics podcast, Mr Rees-Mogg said he was against some sort of deal between Mr Johnson and his rivals, Rishi Sunak and Penny Mordaunt, to stop party members having a say.  Mr Rees-Mogg said: "I'm always in favour of the members deciding the leadership - I think that's the right place for it to go. And I think the 1922 Committee and the Board of the Tory Party have done really well to get it t...

 The Truss premiership was a new low for our democracy. Source - Spiked 20/10/22 Link So Liz Truss is out. After just 44 days her premiership is no more. ‘I’m a fighter, not a quitter’, she said in parliament yesterday, and now she’s quit. Her premiership deserves to live in ignominy. Not necessarily because her blunders were so spectacular – though many of them were – but because of what this strangled-at-birth stint in Downing Street tells us about British politics more broadly. Which is that it’s a wasteland. An ideological void. A dustbowl of ideas. The lack of even the faintest glimmer of leadership material anywhere in the Westminster circus is horrifying to me. Trussism is but a symptom of a wider malady afflicting our political class. First, her mistakes. Where to start? Probably with the observation, harsh as it may be, that the very fact she became prime minister is an indictment of Westminster. How serious must the want of leaders be for someone like Ms Truss to ascend t...

 The darling of Tory right was forced to resign after ‘fiery’ showdown with the PM and new Chancellor over watering down immigration targets Source - Daily Telegraph - 19/10/22 Link The fuse for Suella Braverman’s resignation was lit on Tuesday night when she had a heated face-to-face row with Liz Truss and Jeremy Hunt, her new Chancellor, over their demands to soften her stance on bringing down immigration. Friends said the Home Secretary was appalled that they wanted her to announce a liberalisation of immigration to make it easier for the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) to say the Government would hit its growth targets - a key plank in Mr Hunt’s strategy to restore market confidence. “Suella said, this is insane, why are we trying to appease the OBR? Is everything getting thrown out the window?” said one of her allies. Just two weeks earlier, Ms Braverman had told the Conservative conference she was committed to the party’s 2019 manifesto pledge to bring down migration, ...

In reality, interest rates are just getting back to normal Link MATTHEW LYNN - Daily Telegraph  17 October 2022 • 6:00am We are about to be engulfed by a mortgage crisis. People will lose their homes, and the rest of us will be trapped by negative equity. Companies will go broke on an epic scale, and Conservative Party backbenchers are already contemplating new careers as they face the fury of voters. Amid the fall-out from the mini-Budget, it is assumed that the higher gilt yields, and the rise in interest rates that will follow, are a catastrophe for the UK – and one the Government will pay a high price for.  But that is not really true. Sure, there are some losers. Anyone with a two-year fixed rate expiring in the next few months may face real difficulties. And some buy-to-let landlords may find the sums don’t add up anymore. And yet there are lots of winners from higher rates as well. Annuity rates are soaring, making pensions far healthier. House prices will fall in real ...

 Jeremy Hunt has today overturned the Prime Minister's entire leadership programme. It is a complete and career ending U-turn Source - Daily Telegraph - 17/10/22 Link Her chancellor is gone. Her programme for government was just shredded. And as her credibility, well, the last shred of that was dispensed with by bond markets. Of the £45 billion in tax cuts announced by ex-chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng last month, just £7 billion remain: the reversal of Rishi Sunak’s rise in national insurance and the cut in stamp duty. All the rest – the 1p cut in the basic rate of income tax, the corporation tax freeze, the £2 billion for the self-employed, the Vat-free shopping regime for tourists, the freeze on alcohol duty – is gone. And although the new chancellor Jeremy Hunt largely used the collective “we” in his statement, he slipped into the first person when discussing the measures: “I have decided.” Let there be no doubt about the new hierarchy. This wasn’t just a bumper package of tax rises...

 The Thin Blue Line is in crisis, with a huge drop in public confidence. We ask former officers how policing lost its way – and how to fix it Source - Daily Telegraph - 29/09/22 Link He’s just two weeks into the job – one of the biggest operations in policing history – but new Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley already knows he faces a force in crisis. Despite the success of securing the Queen’s funeral, he is contending with corruption, misogyny and racism within his ranks, and beyond them, slumping public confidence.  There are more than 500 unsolved burglaries every day. Barely more than one per cent of recorded rapes make it to court. A sense of lawlessness and impunity is stalking the land and a sense of crisis is gripping policing. The Met has been placed in special measures. The boys and girls in blue are facing universal condemnation. On theft and burglary, the Chief Inspector of Constabulary recently reported that “the current charge rates are unacceptab...