Absolutely Not The Daily Troll-o-Graph

Source - Daily Telegraph - 30/06/23 Link Another day, another ministerial resignation. Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park quit today with a scathing rebuke of Rishi Sunak for being “uninterested” in the environment. The Tory peer claimed that the Government was going to break its promise to spend £11.6 billion of the aid budget on green issues by 2026 but was keeping quiet about it. He also criticised the Prime Minister for going to party with Rupert Murdoch rather than attending a Paris environment summit and accused him of walking back past agreements. That was not the half of it, though. In a letter, Sunak confirmed Goldsmith had quit after being asked to apologise for remarks about the privileges committee’s investigation into Boris Johnson. Sunak said Lord Goldsmith – a friend of Johnson whose family once lent him a holiday home in Marbella – was asked to apologise for his comments and had “decided to take a different course” by resigning. What was Goldsmith's crime that prompted...

Heat pumps, electric vehicles, smart meters, Ulez and now our cruises. There's no step too far for the eco-zealots Source - Daily Telegraph - 28/06/23 Link What misery is coming next? If you thought a cruise was a chance for a bit of well-earned luxury, away from real-world problems, think again. Because we now learn that “net zero cruising” could involve switching off the air-con in your cabin, fewer stops and sleeping in dirty sheets. Nothing is out of reach for the joyless climate change zealots. Yes, the average cruise ship will guzzle gas and emit emissions. They get through 250 tonnes of fuel per day, according to some figures. But isn’t the point of a cruise that it’s a once-in-a-lifetime treat? That’s why many on board will indulge in excess calories, before lounging in the on-board whirlpool. It’s not your average Wednesday. But dirtier sheets and less air-con are, we’re told, exactly the sort of bizarre sacrifices that have to be made to get a greener cruise industry. And...

  Young would-be homeowners are throwing too much money away on non-essentials Source - daily telegraph 26/06/23 Link Stepping foot on the property ladder can take years of sacrifice and commitment. Now, surging mortgage rates means buying a first home has become even more of a struggle. But young would-be homeowners are making things needlessly harder for themselves, according to brokers who comb through their bank statements. Russell Quirk, a property expert, says today’s first-time buyers, who now face interest rates north of 5pc on home loans, are throwing too much money away on non-essential spending. “When I bought my first property when I was eighteen years old the interest was 10.5pc,” he says. “I did that, albeit with lower house prices, without the distraction of a car on lease, Deliveroo, Amazon, Netflix and bubble tea. “Interest rates over the last ten years have been significantly lower than twenty or thirty years ago. In historical terms 5.9pc is what I would call nor...

 Despite 18 months of war, the country can’t bring itself to upset the Kremlin Source - Daily Telegraph 26/06/23 Link Last month, G7 leaders gathered in Hiroshima, Japan, to deliver what appeared to be a hugely important message to Vladimir Putin and the rest of the Russian regime. They wanted the Kremlin to know that the world’s seven wealthiest advanced nations stood together “against Russia’s illegal, unjustifiable, and unprovoked war of aggression against Ukraine”. More importantly, frozen Russian assets would “remain immobilized until Russia pays for the damage it has caused to Ukraine”, it said. The question is what to do with these assets. The G7 communique seemed like confirmation of a plan that has been long in the making to ensure that Moscow foots the bill for rebuilding a country that it has left in ruins. Special guest Volodymyr Zelensky had laid out in typically unflinching detail the devastation that Putin’s forces have inflicted on the eastern city of Bakhmut. “You ...

  Our political and media class are frightened to accept truths that run counter to their prejudices Source - Daily Telegraph - 25/06/23 Link Since the demise of Boris Johnson, the need for politicians to tell the truth has become en vogue among those who consider themselves of a nobler spirit. Alastair Campbell – who has seemingly forgotten about weapons of mass destruction, Iraq, Dr David Kelly, Bernie Ecclestone, cash for honours, tax rises, tuition fees and top-up fees – now says Johnson must be “accountable” for the “lies” he supposedly told to persuade people to vote for Brexit. But Campbell is far from alone. The lies, most recently, have come thickest and fastest about the single issue that has done most to destroy trust in the British political system: immigration. Every manifesto of every party to win an election in the past quarter century has promised immigration control, yet every government has failed to deliver it. We have had more immigration in this time than in th...

 'Coup attempt' came within 150 miles of Russian capital before its abrupt halt after president dropped plan to ban the group Source - Daily Telegraph - 24/06/23 Link Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Russian mercenary leader, turned his fighters back from a march on the Kremlin on Saturday after a truce was struck with Vladimir Putin. Mutinous Wagner mercenaries marched to within 150 miles of Moscow in what the Russian president described as a treasonous “stab in the back” before they abruptly halted. The stand-down came after Alexander Lukashenko, the dictator of Belarus, said he had brokered a last-minute truce to avoid a Russian civil war. The key plank of the deal appeared to be the Kremlin dropping plans to abolish the Wagner military company. “They were going to dismantle PMC Wagner. We came out on June 23 to the march of justice,” Prigozhin said in a voice message. “In a day, we walked to nearly 200 kilometres away from Moscow. In this time, we did not spill a single drop of blood...

Leaving the EU has given us back democratic control over our laws, money and borders. Yet too often we focus only on the failure to do more Source - Daily Telegraph - 23/06/23 Link “What has Brexit ever done for us?” to redirect the question originally asked about the Romans in a famous Monty Python sketch. On the seventh anniversary of the referendum, it is being asked by Brexit critics who, as in the original sketch, are reluctant to hear the answer. Which is: “quite a lot actually”. With more to come. Most fundamentally, Brexit has, as promised, given us back democratic control over our laws, money and borders. How those powers are used is up to Parliament and government. But if we don’t like their decisions, we can chuck the blighters out – which we could never do to EU commissioners. Dismissing democracy, Monty Python style critics ask, but how has it affected people’s lives? For a start, Brexit has saved hundreds, maybe thousands, of lives. Without Brexit, we would never have dev...

 Failure to control inflation leaves the Conservative Party staring into the electoral abyss Source - Daily Telegraph - 21/06/23 Link It’s getting to the stage where you almost feel sorry for Rishi Sunak. Number 10 insists it is far too early to judge his premiership against the five pledges he made in January, and with very good reason. The truth is, with a general election looming large in the rear-view mirror, it’s not looking at all good for this self-imposed yardstick. In fact – if we are to measure the Government on the quintet of promises by which the Prime Minister wants his stewardship to be judged – then as things stand today, there is a strong case to say it is falling short on every count. That’s how bad the current picture is, and just how much work ministers have to do to turn things around insofar as they are actually able to influence proceedings. And it threatens to get so much worse as the battle to tame inflation panics the Bank of England into raising rates even...

 Poll suggests a steady growth in support for hard-Right leader, with president’s own MP warning constituencies are falling ‘like dominoes’ Source - Daily Telegraph - 18/06/23 Link Emmanuel Macron is facing a “tsunami” of hard-Right populism, an ally in his party has warned, as polls revealed a surge in support for Marine Le Pen. According to a new survey conducted by Ifop-Fiducial for the Journal du Dimanche (JDD) and Sud Radio, 41 per cent of respondents said they want to see Ms Le Pen win the next election in 2027, a rise of seven percentage points from 2021. Likewise, a similar number of respondents, 42 per cent, said they’ve voted for a candidate from the National Rally (RN) in the past, a figure that also marks a rise of seven percentage points compared to 2021. The poll surveyed 3,000 respondents and was conducted from June 12 to 15. “I have the impression of a tsunami advancing,” Jacqueline Macquet, an MP in Mr Macron’s Renaissance party, told the JDD. Mr Macron’s unpopular...

  The situation does not look nearly as bleak as in the 1990s Source - Daily Telegraph 20/06/23 Link As on most things, we’ve been here before. Today’s “mortgage crisis” is in substance not unlike that of the late 1980s and early 1990s, when interest rates were raised sharply first to choke off an inflationary boom and then to protect Britain’s position within the European Exchange Rate Mechanism. Only despite the frenzy of catastrophising we see in the media today, it’s not as bad this time around. Doom-laden prediction and reflection has become very much part of our national psyche; the “mortgage timebomb” is only the latest outbreak of it. But are things quite as bad as portrayed? There is no disputing the pain of the early 1990s – a severe recession, steeply rising unemployment, and a crash in nominal house prices, with many households left deep in negative equity. People could genuinely not afford to pay their mortgages. Foreclosures, repossessions and forced selling became co...

 All elections have lies and exaggerations – but Remainers were the worst offenders   Dodgy forecasts were dressed up as impartial advice and sent to every household   Labour should have run a mile from the Tories' scaremongering tactics Source - CAPX 19/06/23 Link This week marks the anniversary of the Brexit vote, so you can expect to see lots of articles about the scandalous way that British voters were misled. How a group of manipulative and well-funded political charlatans played on the emotions and fears of credulous older voters less well educated than themselves. I’m talking, of course, about the Remain campaign. In the seven years since the referendum, we’ve had Carole Cadwalladr’s investigations and subsequent libel case, and award-winning documentaries about the funding and tactics of the Leave campaign. But far less attention has been paid to the systematic exaggeration and outrageous scaremongering of Remainers, and none more so that former Chancellor George ...

 We are proposing to amend UK law, to give ministers an emergency brake on new global tax rules Source - Daily Telegraph - 18/06/23 Link When more than 140 countries signed-up to the OECD’s 2021 agreement to impose a worldwide minimum corporation tax rate, the move was presented as a victory for “progressives”. They greeted it as a landmark agreement that would prevent a “race to the bottom” in which countries tried to out-do one another with tax cuts for multinationals. What few highlighted at the time was the imbalance in the OECD plan. Sovereign nations were to be banned from taxing larger international firms at a rate of less than 15 per cent – but no such restraint was proposed when it came to subsidies. The approach could be summarised as “tax-cuts bad, taxpayer-funded subsidies good.” This combination is dangerous for Britain. While this country can engineer competitive tax rates, the UK’s size relative to China and America means we can never hope to match them in a subsidy ...

Damning official Cabinet Office inquiry finds senior civil servant breached regulations and could have been sacked had she not quit Source - Daily Telegraph - 17/06/23 Link   Sue Gray, the senior civil servant poached by Sir Keir Starmer, breached Whitehall impartiality rules and could have been suspended or sacked had she not quit, according to the damning findings of an official Cabinet Office inquiry. An assessment signed off by Simon Case, the Cabinet Secretary, and the Government’s most senior lawyer concluded that Ms Gray “fell short” of the requirements of both the Civil Service Code and her employment contract when she quietly took part in talks about joining Labour as Sir Keir’s chief of staff. The findings, seen by The Telegraph, will embarrass Ms Gray, who was formerly in charge of government propriety and ethics. It will also prompt fresh questions about the judgment of Sir Keir, who has repeatedly railed against “Tory sleaze”.  The Conservatives had previously que...

Rejoiners accuse Brexiteers of lying, while spreading their own mistruths. But slowly and quietly, Britain is turning towards the future Source - Daily Telegraph - 16/06/23 Link Seven years after we voted Leave, Remainers finally got rid of the man they and their EU allies blame personally for Brexit. There rises a great cry … Of what? Of triumph? No, more a vindictive gloat. Whatever Boris Johnson’s manifold faults – and I find it hard to forgive his waste of a historic political opportunity – the language of his opponents tells us much about what has been going on over those seven years and these last weeks. The arguments some of them are coming up with are more revealing than they perhaps intend. Matthew Syed in The Sunday Times diagnosed “the psychological state of the UK” as “doublethink” (“to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies”) – then, with a comical lack of self-awareness, blames a whole list of things on Brexit which he must know hav...

 Source - Chopper - Daily Telegraph 15/06/23 Link Afternoon, Well, no one expected that. Boris Johnson faces having his parliamentary pass removed after being found to have “deliberately” misled MPs over partygate. The House of Commons privileges committee also said in its long-awaited 30,000 word report that a 90-day Commons suspension would have been proposed if Johnson were still an MP. Johnson hit back, accusing the committee of being a “kangaroo court” in a 1,700 word response, with its seven MPs accused of delivering the “final knife-thrust in a protracted political assassination”. Read the full blow-by-blow account of another extraordinary morning in Westminster at our live blog. The reaction from moderate Tories, who are certainly no friends of Johnson, has been one of shock. One said the 90-day ban was "a bit over the top". Another said it was "vindictive". But a third waved the report and said to me: "Slam dunk." It is the second-longest ban in m...