Absolutely Not The Daily Troll-o-Graph

 The Telegraph launches campaign to abolish the death duty Source - Daily Telegraph - 31/05/23 Link More than 50 Conservative MPs are demanding that Rishi Sunak scrap the “morally wrong” inheritance tax. The proportion of homes under threat from the levy has more than doubled since the Conservatives came to power, despite George Osborne, the former Chancellor, pledging to abandon the death tax for all but the most wealthy in the run up to the 2010 election. Instead, the threshold has been frozen since 2010 and almost 40 percent of homes sold in England and Wales last year were worth more than the basic allowance. The levy is regarded as profoundly unfair as it penalises people who have saved money throughout their lives after paying tax on their income – and is punishing middle class families who want to help children or grandchildren to own homes. The Telegraph is launching a campaign to scrap inheritance tax – a move which should be put at the heart of the Conservatives’ next ele...

 Today's landowners have considerably more resources than poor Edward Pilgrim   Labour's plan sounds simple, but will be hamstrung by endless legal challenges   Community Land Auctions already offer what Labour is aiming for with this policy Source - CAPX - 31/05/23 Link ‘Buy land, they’re not making it anymore’. Mark Twain may have been a great author, but he’d have made a lousy financial adviser.  There are two problems with Twain’s advice. First, ‘they’re not making it anymore’ isn’t exactly insider information. To use the market lingo, it is priced in. Second, land isn’t all that scarce. One acre of British agricultural land will set you back around £7,000, according to Savills. And that value fluctuates – a lot. What really is scarce is land with planning permission attached. That £7,000 acre of land can be worth more than a hundred times more if a council earmarks it for development in their local plan. This massive uplift in land values is known as ‘planning g...

 There is a pattern here, of trying to usher in the carbon-neutral Eden by fiat   Even after the 'green industrial revolution', we will still need oil   Actual planning for the Net Zero cliff edges is near non-existent Source - CAPX 30/05/23 Link Beyond their oft-hysterical tone and self-indulgent tactics, the biggest single problem with Just Stop Oil is that there is no just stopping oil. All right, if we’re talking purely about the bounds of the possible, we could just stop oil. Modern civilisation would more or less grind to a halt, of course, but we could do it. There are some deep Greens who truly believe in that deeply misanthropic objective. There is also the slightly more fashionable ‘degrowth’ movement, which could row in behind the idea so long as they didn’t think too hard about the consequences. But outside those circles, it’s rightly seen as nonsense. One doesn’t have to be a climate change denier, or even oppose huge investment in renewable energy generation...

 The ties that bind are fraying. The state must be more assertive in restoring our common identity source - Daily Telegraph - 29/05/23 Link You might have heard of a young man named Mizzy, a prankster whose videos are popular on social media. He has approached women late at night asking if they want to die, taken an elderly woman’s dog, torn up library books, leapt onto the shoulders of an unsuspecting Orthodox Jew, and refused to leave a man’s car after pretending to mistake it for a taxi. After entering a family’s home without permission, last week Mizzy (real name: Bacari-Bronze O’Garro) was arrested, fined and given a criminal behaviour order. Within hours of his release, however, he appeared on television, boasting that “UK laws are weak”. He was accused of breaching the terms of the order, and was re-arrested and remanded in custody. Mizzy is a case study in what is wrong with our unduly lenient criminal justice system. But more than that, he is a symptom and a catalyst, in h...

With a change in government looking likely next year, rejoiners will be in the ascendancy. So how might Sir Keir Starmer pursue “Reversit”? Source - Daily Telegraph 27/05/23 Link Amid the sheer relief of Getting Brexit Done in January 2020, most of us will have overlooked or ignored the fact that the UK’s hard-fought deal with the EU is up for review at the end of 2025. According to current polling, the strong likelihood is that Labour, having won power, will be the ones doing the negotiating with Brussels over any changes to the current agreement. Leavers fear a betrayal, Remainers sense an opportunity. Left-wing Europhiles are already strategising the means by which a Labour government might take Britain back into the EU. They talk of using a first term to blame all of Britain’s ills on Brexit, softening up the public for what is to come, then using a second term to begin the process of rejoining. Officially, Labour’s policy is that it would not try to reverse Brexit, nor would it se...

The woman who sprayed activists with a hose at Chelsea is a heroine to an increasingly fed up silent majority Source - Daily Telegraph 26/05/23 Link Britain has found a new heroine in the lady who set a hose on the Just Stop Oil protesters who vandalised a garden at the Chelsea Flower Show. When several ecomaniacs started throwing orange powder paint across the plants of a display showcasing sustainability on Thursday, one middle-aged woman grabbed a hose and ever so casually soaked the intruders until she was stopped by a security guard. As this most irritating of scenes unfolded at one of the most civilised events on Earth, I’m sure you were thinking the same as me: if only she had been within arm’s reach of a water cannon. Yet her remarkably restrained response to the selfish outrages committed by radical activists sums up the dignity of ordinary, decent people in the face of this offensive bunch of over-privileged rabble rousers. The well-deserved drenching was emblematic of a Brit...

 As Wagner mercenaries grow increasingly furious with the regime, some are predicting a seismic upheaval Source - Daily Telegraph - 25/05/23 Link Yevgeny Prigozhin’s latest bombast against the Russian MOD and, by inference, the Kremlin itself, should not be seen as just another rant from a blowhard with a track record. His extraordinary threats of internal violence – “mobs with pitchforks” – and even revolution are a stark indicator of just how serious things are getting behind the scenes for Putin’s regime.  Prigozhin was predictably swift to claim credit for his Wagner forces in the capture of Bakhmut, but seemed to place greater emphasis on the cost. He claimed 20,000 of his own men had been killed, which is almost certainly a gross under-estimate, and to that we must add a very large number of Russian army troops. Given that possession of Bakhmut brings Russia no obvious strategic or even tactical gain, Prigozhin’s apocalyptic talk almost echoes the sentiments of King Pyrr...

 With Boris Johnson and Suella Braverman among high-profile MPs going through a tough spot, Brexiteers say there is a 'witch hunt' afoot Source - Daily Telegraph  24/0⁵/23 Link Right-wing Conservatives are being pursued in a Whitehall "witch hunt" led by a "blob" of civil servants, senior Tories have complained. “There is now an open witch hunt against Right-wingers in the Conservative Party. The leadership of the party must shut this down immediately," one top Conservative told me in an incendiary WhatsApp message. “Active conversations are underway among MPs about how to respond to this and nothing is off the table.” For many Brexiteer Conservatives, the news that Johnson faced two new police investigations into new alleged lockdown breaches was the last straw, after days of damaging stories which undermined Suella Braverman, the Home Secretary. The police complaints against Johnson had been made by civil servants at the Cabinet Office which is the on...

 The former PM's ministerial diary is alleged to have revealed visits by friends to Chequers Source - Daily Telegraph 23/05/23 Link Boris Johnson has been referred to police again over new claims he broke Covid lockdown rules. His ministerial diary is alleged to have revealed visits by friends to Chequers, the prime ministerial home, during the pandemic. The allegations also refer to potential breaches at Downing Street. The Cabinet Office has passed details of the meetings to the Metropolitan Police and Thames Valley Police, the force which covers Chequers. The Commons privileges committee, which is conducting an inquiry into Mr Johnson’s lockdown parties, has been informed. Mr Johnson’s allies called the referral a “clearly politically motivated attempt to manufacture something out of nothing”. A Scotland Yard spokesman said: "We are in receipt of information from the Cabinet Office passed to us on 19 May 2023, which we are currently assessing.   "It relates to potentia...

 Whatever you think of Braverman's politics, this supposed 'scandal' is utterly trivial   The Ministerial Code should not be used as an excuse to avoid political decisions   The Code is being used as a scaffold for confected outrage about the most minor infractions In Suella Braverman, Rishi Sunak made a rod for his own back. It is almost certain that, had he actually won a leadership contest and assembled a Cabinet on his own initiative, she would not have featured in it. But to a Prime Minister who inherited his Chancellor, the most important person in his government save perhaps himself, using the Home Office to buy off the right must have seemed like small beer at the time. It was never likely to end well, though. On a policy level Sunak, as a creature of the Treasury, was unlikely ever to be sincere about reducing immigration.  More prosaically, given the circumstances under which she had only recently resigned the post of Home Secretary, his claim on the steps ...

 The age of the combustion engine is coming to a close – but be careful to stay on track Source - Daily Telegraph - 21/05/23 Link As Britain edges towards its “net zero” future, the way we drive is being slowly but surely electrified. According to current timelines, 2030 will mark a milestone for petrol-powered vehicles, with car manufacturers facing a ban on selling traditional combustion engines.  However, the road to widespread electric adoption is paved with scepticism, as many drivers remain hesitant to embrace battery-powered vehicles. According to a recent survey by Forbes Advisor, two in five drivers are calling for the 2030 target to be abandoned altogether, expressing limited enthusiasm for electric vehicles (EVs).  Additionally, an overwhelming two-thirds of respondents believe that Britain is not yet prepared for such a ban. The main obstacle cited by the majority of participants was the steep price tag associated with EVs, which acts as a barrier preventing t...

 A theatre in east London says that one-off performance of race satire Tambo & Bones will be ‘free from the white gaze’ Source - Daily Telegraph - 20/05/23 Link The Theatre Royal Stratford East, in east London, said that white visitors should not come and watch a performance of Tambo & Bones on July 5. Organisers said they are hosting the one-off “Black Out” event to create a “safe, private” space for an “all-black-identifying audience” to explore race-related issues. While the theatre’s website stated that “no one is excluded”, promotional material made it clear that white theatregoers are not welcome. A description for the show read: “A Black Out night is the purposeful creation of an environment in which an all-black-identifying audience can experience and discuss an event in the performing arts, film, and cultural spaces – free from the white gaze.” The UK’s first black police and crime commissioner (PCC) condemned the event, warning that it set a “poor and dangerous pr...

 All signs show Starmer expected to lose in 2024. Victory is coming as an unwelcome surprise – the party simply isn't ready to govern Source - Daily Telegraph 19/05/23 Link One has to feel for Sir Keir Starmer. There he was, slowly laying the groundwork for a nine-year campaign to get back into Downing Street after the 2019 rout – and then the cunning Tories outflanked him by imploding before their first healthy majority since 1987 had even run its course. If you had conducted a survey in Westminster the morning after the last election, you could probably have counted the people who seriously thought Labour could be back in Downing Street in 2024 on the fingers of your third hand. And yet, here we are. On the television, talking heads sagely report that of course Labour is keeping its powder dry and keeping back the detailed announcements until closer to the election; precisely the sort of thing you’d also say if you were guarding the door of an empty powder store and hoping nobody...

Government is in danger of losing much-needed rental stock in their attempt to punish bad landlords Source - Daily Telegraph 17/05/23 Link Frost Michael Gove’s renting reforms are “dangerous and counterproductive”, Lord Frost has said in a broadside at the Government’s crackdown on landlords. The Tory peer used his speech at the National Conservatism Conference to attack the Housing Secretary’s package of reforms, which will remove the right to evict tenants without having to prove any fault. Lord Frost, who last weekend launched his bid to become an MP as he was placed on the Conservative candidate list, said it reflected a trend of growing state interference in “every activity and every choice”. “Let’s not forget what that means. The endless hectoring, the constant suggestion that the Government has the right to dictate how you behave when it has socialised the costs. The dangerous and counterproductive intrusion into private property – as Michael Gove’s renters’ Bill will do this mo...