Absolutely Not The Daily Troll-o-Graph

 Gina Miller, Queen of the Remoaners, has become an unlikely victim of ‘debanking’. Source - Spiked - 31/07/23 Link The ‘debanking’ phenomenon has just claimed another victim. Just days after the Nigel Farage scandal brought down the heads of Coutts and NatWest, Gina Miller, the notorious anti-Brexit campaigner, has revealed that she too has been denied access to banking services. Miller claims that online bank Monzo is planning to close the business account for her upstart political party, True and Fair. She says she has also been refused a new account by numerous other banks. Miller’s party has even been denied access to other financial services, such as professional indemnity insurance. Monzo has told the BBC that it has rules against political parties having accounts and that it had made a mistake in opening one for True and Fair. But the fact that a bank can exclude political parties is itself deeply worrying. As Miller has rightly put it, this is an ‘extraordinary situation’....

A social worker has been told she cannot apply for anymore jobs within social services after she questioned whether transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney was the right person to model a sports bra for Nike Source - GB News - 30/07/23 Link A social worker has been told she cannot apply for anymore jobs within social services after she challenged whether transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney should model a sports bra for Nike. Louise Chivers, who has 25 years experience, cannot apply for a job while an investigation is carried out after a manager at Leicestershire County Council suggested there was a risk she “might misgender someone”. The mum-of-two described Mulvaney, a TikTok star who identifies as female, as “a skinny gay man with no t*ts” and also accused the TikTok influencer of being a “misogynist who mocks women” during a training day. Following her comments, she has now been referred to Social Work England which regulates social workers across the country. The mum-of-two describ...

 The Nigel Farage banking scandal has exposed the ‘progressive’ left as the stooges of the elite. Source - Spiked 28/07/23 Link One of the most revealing aspects of the Nigel Farage / Coutts ‘debanking’ scandal has been the divided reaction to it. It’s a reaction that has confirmed a profound reversal in British and Western politics in recent years. As the reaction on social media has suggested, and as polls have confirmed, those of a leftish disposition are far more supportive of Coutts’s decision to strip Farage of his bank account. In fact, some on the liberal left see no issue whatsoever with banks discriminating against customers for their political views. Journalists, comedians and even Labour politicians have downplayed, mocked or sought to justify this act of corporate censorship. Those of a right-wing and small-c conservative persuasion, on the other hand, have tended to be far more critical of the Coutts’s behaviour. What a curious state of affairs. Today, it is self-styl...

From his disastrous anti-car obsession to his would-be thought-policing, Londoners are sick and tired of their Mayor Source - Daily Telegraph - 27/07/23 Link Mayor of London Sadiq Khan When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life. So said Samuel Johnson in 1777. Now - nearly 250 years later - it is London that is tired of one man. And his name is Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of our capital city. Khan won the title in 2016 after Boris Johnson’s reign at City Hall - a triumphalist regime remembered for the 2012 Olympics and the introduction of Boris bikes. But while Boris was a popular Mayor despite his politics, his Labour successor appears to be growing ever more unpopular with every month that passes. Not content with harassing motorists with every 20 mph speed camera, low traffic neighborhoods, Ulez zones and miles of cycle lanes, the Mayor has moved into policing our behaviour as well. Every underground station is festooned with signs that bark out messages to worn out commuters, inc...

Farage’s ban is living proof of the deep divisions that continue to ripple through Britain Source - Daily Telegraph - 26/07/23 Link How could they have been so stupid? That’s the question on everyone’s lips in the City this morning. How could NatWest Group have so mismanaged things as to give Nigel Farage – yes, Nigel Farage of all people – such an open goal? For this is not just a story about woke capitalism gone mad, or even the chief executive’s failure to realise – until it was too late – the potential damage to reputation from the Farage ban. Nor is it solely about the subsequent chain of miscommunication that led Dame Alison Rose to break client confidentiality rules by naively – or perhaps disingenuously, we simply don’t know – dismissing the affair as an entirely commercial matter. It is also a story about the deep divisions that continue to ripple through the country over Brexit. For Mr Farage does not need merely to suspect that this was the primary reason for getting rid of ...

Chairman Anneliese Dodds accused the party of a ‘cavalier approach’ and its proposed safeguards for women and girls were ‘not up to scratch’ Source - Daily Telegraph 24 July 2023 Link   Labour has backed down on gender self-identification as the party confirmed it will not follow Nicola Sturgeon’s ill-fated trans law. Party chairman Anneliese Dodds insisted “sex and gender are different” and that a formal diagnosis would still be needed for transgender people to receive treatment on the NHS. Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, previously pledged to change the law to allow trans people to self-declare their gender – echoing plans by Ms Sturgeon, which were vetoed in Westminster, to allow anyone over the age of 16 to self-identify without consulting a doctor. Ms Dodds admitted in an article for the Guardian that Labour’s new position, which is expected to be taken forward into the general election, would “not please everyone” amid a backlash from her party. “The requirement to obtai...

 Politicians have adopted a tactic of the banking world, and developed ways to avoid speaking to the public Source - Daily Telegraph - 21/07/23 Link This column’s law is that all British general election results are, whatever one’s own political views, deserved. The Conservatives deserved to win in 1979, Labour in 1997. In 2010, Labour deserved to lose but the Tories didn’t deserve to win outright. In a sense, the electorate is always right. This rule applies less to by-elections, because they let voters exaggerate. Nevertheless, all three by-election results on Thursday were deserved. In Somerton and Frome and in Selby and Ainsty, natural Conservatives rightly felt deeply disappointed by this Conservative Government. They therefore backed the likeliest local opponent – Liberal Democrat in the first, Labour in the second. In what felt like tactical voting, Labour lost its deposit where the Lib Dems won, and vice versa. As for Uxbridge and South Ruislip, Tory disappointment was a fa...

 Scottish homeowners looking to sell may have to pay up to £10,000 for a heat pump Source - Daily Telegraph - 23/07/23 Link Homeowners in Scotland face being banned from selling their properties unless they swap gas boilers for heat pumps, under plans being considered by Humza Yousaf’s government. From 2025, properties will need to meet Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) rating of C or above at certain trigger points, including a sale. But the EPC ratings system will first be overhauled and more stringent green standards introduced, meaning some homes that currently achieve a C rating will be downgraded. It is understood that this could include giving a lower score to homes heated by gas boilers, forcing some owners to install a low carbon source of heating such as a heat pump before they could sell. Currently, EPC ratings take into account how costly it is to heat a home, but the Herald on Sunday warned reforms mean they could also include the type of heating. Patrick Harvie, th...

 Uxbridge voters have given a two-fingered salute to the punishing green agenda. Source - Spiked 21/07/23 Link Rishi Sunak can take a crumb of comfort from last night’s punishing by-election results. Though the Tories were crushed by Labour in Selby and Ainsty, and routed by the Lib Dems in Somerton and Frome, they managed to avoid the humiliation of a 3-0 defeat, by narrowly holding on to Uxbridge and South Ruislip. It turns out there is one thing even more unpopular than Sunak’s Tory government – and that is the green agenda. Make no mistake, it was the ULEZ wot won it for the Conservatives in Uxbridge. This was an eminently winnable seat for Labour. It had a thin Tory majority of just 7,000 at the last election, which Labour had been steadily eroding over the past decade. What’s more, the former MP – ex-PM Boris Johnson – left parliament under a cloud of scandal, having been found by MPs to have lied to the Commons about those lockdown-breaking parties in Downing Street. Meanwhi...

 Mayor of London says he is ‘determined’ to press ahead after Sir Keir Starmer says it was ‘the reason we didn’t win’ Source - Daily Telegraph - 21/07/23 Link Sadiq Khan has insisted that the Ulez expansion will go ahead despite Sir Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner voicing concerns after Labour’s loss in the Uxbridge and South Ruislip by-election. Mr Khan, the Mayor of London, said he was “determined” to press ahead with the tax, which will see around 10 per cent of drivers in outer London pay £12.50 per day to take their cars on the roads from from Aug 29. The Ulez expansion has come under fresh scrutiny after being blamed for Labour’s failure to take Uxbridge and South Ruislip on Thursday, despite polling that showed the Conservatives were likely to lose it. Sir Keir, the Labour leader, said on Friday there was “no denying that Ulez was the reason we didn’t win in Uxbridge”, and said both he and Mr Khan “need to reflect on that” after the Conservatives held the seat by a margin of ...

 Source - Daily Telegraph -  Link Dame Alison Rose, the chief executive of NatWest, has apologised to Nigel Farage over the mishandling of his account closure.  In a letter to the former Ukip leader, she said she was sorry for the “deeply inappropriate comments” made about him in internal emails, and said they did not reflect the view of the bank.   She added that she believed “very strongly” in freedom of expression and insisted it was not her bank’s policy to close an account on the basis of “legally-held political and personal views”. Dame Alison promised a full review of Coutts processes for how these decisions are made. But her letter contained no invitation to rejoin Coutts, and simply told Mr Farage that he could have another account at NatWest.  It came as pressure mounted on the bank to hold an inquiry into who leaked the claims to the BBC that Mr Farage’s account had been closed because he did not have enough money. Dame Alison’s letter made no me...

Putin's war exposed our Achilles' heel and the real, enduring deadweight on the UK economy Source - Daily Telegraph - 19/07/23 Link Inflation is stuck at 9.3pc. The currency is in free-fall, probing all-time lows against the euro. The economy has been in stagflation for five quarters. Household debt exploded to an all-time high of 98pc of GDP in the madness of the Covid credit boom. The property bubble has since burst. House prices have fallen by 16pc. The central bank is raising interest rates into the teeth of the storm but markets suspect that rate-setters – succumbing to ‘mortgage dominance’ – are holding back because they dare not inflict more pain on debtors. The financial regulator said households had “never been under so much pressure”.  Such is the messy state of affairs of Sweden. It is a formidable AAA country with deep economic strengths, well-positioned to reap the immense gains of clean-tech Sweden is going through one of its boom-bust cycles, akin to the banking ...

  Sir Keir Starmer faces the unenviable task of convincing his colleagues that they cannot again be the party of benefits Britain Source - Daily Telegraph - 18/07/23 Link In every conversation I have with politically-minded friends, including MPs from various parties, the same assumptions are made about Sir Keir Starmer. He’s reassuringly dull, on course to win the next election if not a majority, and he doesn’t intend to blow his one shot at Number 10 by letting the left of his party run riot. For what it’s worth, I think these things are true. The question is just how far Starmer can push his loyal troops. How much of the “business as usual” message can they tolerate when central pillars of this Conservative government’s philosophy look set to be retained by an incoming Labour administration?  Starmer’s insistence that he will maintain the two child benefits cap needs to be differentiated from, for example, Gordon Brown’s decision to respect the last Tory government’s spendi...

 Sunak is right to want to tackle this problem, for both moral and economic reasons   The forecasts are very clear: our current model of higher education is not sustainable   The best thing for universities would be the 'Henry VIII' option... Source - CAPX 17/07/23 Link What is the point of University? The Victorians saw it either as a way of transmitting the knowledge of the best that mankind had written or done down the generations, or as a way of keeping up with the scientific powerhouse of a newly united Germany. The idealists and meritocrats of the post-war era saw it as the last word in social mobility. An element of all those mentalities persists amongst today’s students, lecturers, and educationalists. But any fair-minded assessment of the modern undergraduate must admit that a significant chunk of today’s students see it as an excuse to spend three years getting pissed, making friends, and earning a solid 2:1 that will help them glide into an identikit job in rec...

 Business and Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch has formally signed the treaty to accede to CPTPP trade group in New Zealand this morning Press release 16/07/23 Link Business and Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch formally signed the treaty confirming the UK’s accession to CPTPP – the Indo-Pacific trade bloc now worth £12 trillion in GDP – in New Zealand today [Sunday 16th] To celebrate this huge moment, the Government released new figures showing CPTPP-owned businesses employed one in 100 UK workers, with membership expected to turbocharge investment in the UK even further British whisky and cars amongst 99% of current UK goods exports to CPTPP set to be eligible for zero tariffs as UK businesses given unparalleled access to market of over 500 million people Business and Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch has formally signed the treaty to accede to CPTPP trade group in New Zealand this morning [Sunday], kickstarting the UK’s membership of a modern and ambitious trade deal spanning 12 economies ...

 No 10 has 'live' discussions about abolishing inheritance tax next year Source - Daily Telegraph 15/07/23 Link Inheritance tax could be scrapped under Conservative plans at the next election as part of an effort to defend blue wall seats in the South of England. There are “live” discussions in No 10 about abolishing the levy next year, The Times reported. It had been thought that the Conservatives would cut income tax instead, but the move to abolish the inheritance levy would be cheaper, at a cost to the Treasury of around £7 billion a year rather than £13.7 billion. It comes as the Tories identified 32 “true blue” seats that they said must be fought by Thatcherite candidates at the next election, to avoid an “existential crisis” for the party. Neither Downing Street nor the Treasury denied that “live” discussions were taking place over inheritance tax when approached by The Telegraph on Friday night. A government source said that “cutting inflation is very much the priority ...