Absolutely Not The Daily Troll-o-Graph

Critics say Humza Yousaf’s new law is a state-sponsored assault on free speech with alleged incidents going on record even with no evidence Source - Daily Telegraph 30/03/23 ' We are looking at an army of local spies potentially taking anonymous reports from other local spies and passing them on to the police' Imagine living in a world where sitting in your own living room and saying “men can’t be women” could result in the police logging a “hate incident” against your name. Imagine, too, that your legally protected right to express such an opinion counted for nothing because all that mattered was whether the person who heard you perceived it to be offensive. If you live in Scotland, this is the world you will be living in as of Monday. And no, it’s not an April Fool’s prank by the Scottish Government, despite the date when it comes into force. The Hate and Public Order (Scotland) Act will, according to its critics, be a state-sponsored assault on free speech with sinister para...

 As Sir Keir Starmer plots a 20pc tax hike, recent history offers a valuable lesson Source - Daily Telegraph 30/03/24 Link Almost a decade ago, the Coalition of the Radical Left in Greece tried to topple a third of the country’s private schools with a new 23pc tax. The move by the party, also known as “Syriza”, was much like Sir Keir Starmer’s promise to add a 20pc VAT tax bill on private school fees if Labour wins the next general election. Syriza’s proposals were part of a series of relief packages designed to ease the pressures of Greece’s then catastrophic debt following the 2009 financial crash. Schools that refused to cough up were to be threatened with hefty fines. “It was one of the very few times all the unions worked together,” Dr George Christopoulos, president of the Federation of Private School Teachers of Greece – known by the abbreviation “Oiele”, recalls. It was 2015 and private schools were already on the brink. Thousands of parents had lost their jobs and countles...

There have been no promised flights to Rwanda. The Government rattles its sabre at illegal migrants – and then puts them up in lovely hotels Source - Daily Telegraph 29/03/25 I know it is up against some pretty strong competition from HS2 and the like, but has this or any government wasted so much money to so little effect as the millions Rishi Sunak has shelled out to the French supposedly to stop migrants crossing the Channel? The number of migrants arriving in Britain in small boats has hit a new record in the first three months of 2024. Over 4,600 have somehow managed to evade French patrols. When the weather warms up and calms down we can expect many thousands more.  Rishi Sunak’s government has achieved the very worst on illegal migration, by talking tough and then failing even slightly to deliver. If the Government had approached the issue of illegal migration by speaking like those mealy-mouthed charities who insist every single illegal migrant coming to Britain is “despera...

Why the next Labour government will be very unpopular, very quickly Source Matt Goodwin - 27/03/24 Labour is heading back to power. In the polls, this week, the party’s cruising at altitudes they’ve not enjoyed since the 1990s —with an average 19-point lead over the hapless Tories. At by-elections, too, Labour’s enjoyed upswings in support it’s not seen for decades. Both suggest the party is on course for its first big majority since the 2000s and, along the way, a complete redrawing of the political map. On these numbers, Labour will not just be swept back to power but reestablish itself as the dominant force across the Red Wall, Scotland, the big cities, university towns, and beyond. Coming off the back of 2019, Labour’s worst result since 1935, election night 2024 would feel like the start of yet another political revolution. But be careful what you wish for. Look closely at the economic, social, and political trends sweeping through Britain and you’ll find lots of reasons why the e...

Professor Mark Blyth rejects comparison with Nordic countries and says Scotland risks becoming a ‘mini Argentina’ Source - Daily Telegraph - 26/03/24 A former SNP government adviser has “demolished” the economic case for independence, it has been claimed after he scathingly dismissed a series of assertions made by senior nationalists. Prof Mark Blyth, who formerly sat on the Scottish Government’s advisory council for economic transformation, said: “You can’t really say that Brexit is the worst thing ever, and then commit the biggest Brexit of all time. Which is literally what this is.” The William R Rhodes ’57 Professor of International Economics at Brown University in the United States also lashed out at claims by the First Minister and others that a separate Scotland would emulate Nordic countries. Speaking at a nationalist economics festival in Dundee at the weekend, he also warned that Scotland needed a robust economy to back up a new currency or face becoming a “mini Argentina”. H...

The workers’ party don’t trust the proletariat to make their own decisions about what to eat, drink or smoke – or how to vote Source - Daily Telegraph 22/03/24 The Labour Party just can’t help itself, can it? In 1990 the socialist film maker Ken Loach made an ad for McDonalds. Now Sheffield's Labour council has banned fast food ads from its hoardings Sheffield City Council has decided that certain products will no longer be able to be advertised on hoardings which it owns or controls. Some of the targeted products will raise no eyebrows, except where the question “Why was this allowed to be advertised in the first place?” is raised: lethal weapons and illegal drugs are apparently on the verboten list. But there are other items that are simply playing to the tiny minority of activists who care deeply but represent no one: fossil fuels-related brands, airlines and airports, petrol, diesel and even hybrid and electric plug-in vehicles, food and drink that are high in fat, salt and/or ...

Record number of landlords selling up as Michael Gove ploughs on with rent reforms Source Daily Telegraph 20/03/24 Link Rents rose at a record pace in the year to February as Michael Gove’s crackdown on landlords backfired on the market. The average private rent in Britain stood at £1,238 last month – £102 higher than a year earlier, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). The ONS said the 9pc increase marked the highest rise since UK records started in 2015. The highest increases were seen in Kensington and Chelsea, at £3,248. Excluding London, the local area with the highest average private rent in February was the city of Bristol, at £1,734. One in ten landlords are expected to sell up as a result of Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove’s end to so-called no-fault evictions, a survey by the National Residential Landlords Association (NRLA) trade body found. The Renters Reform Bill could also see all assured fixed tenancies replaced with rolling contracts, and landlords...

Lee Anderson and Nigel Farage among those to criticise Nike’s ‘playful update’ to the England flag Source - Daily Telegraph 21/03/24 Link England’s new football kit for Euro 2024 has provoked outrage among traditionalists over its inclusion of a multi-coloured St George’s Cross on the back of the shirt collar. Manufacturer Nike has replaced the conventional all-red cross with one featuring purple and blue stripes in what it called a “playful update” to the national flag. The new strip, which England will wear for the first time in their friendly against Brazil on Saturday, was launched on Monday with a promise to “celebrate football heroes of the past with a modern twist”. Highlighting the “new” flag, Nike wrote on X, formerly Twitter: “A playful update to the St. George appears on the collar to unite and inspire.” Nike said the colour choices for the kit – for which there were no plans to issue a recall – were partly a nod to England’s 1966 triumph. “The England 2024 Home kit disrupts...

The woke revolutionaries reject real equality in favour of a permanent revolution against fairness and merit Source - Daily Telegraph 20/03/24 If you still believe that not everything should be about race and gender, I have bad news. Our side has been routed. While the Tories were asleep at the wheel, a new generation of woke activists seized control of most of our institutions, fomenting grievance, division and discord, undermining our economy, trashing our culture and costing the taxpayer millions.  The “diversity, equity, inclusion” (DEI) movement is the wokerati’s provisional wing, the vehicle by which critical race theory, trans extremism and other post-modern garbage is taking over our lives. Many companies, as well as the public sector, have embraced DEI, wrongly believing that it demonstrates their anti-racism, and have tasked HR departments with indoctrinating employees in its precepts. Their efforts were condemned by Kemi Badenoch in an excellent article this week. DEI ha...

This shameful abuse of political language is wrong and dangerous. Source - Spiked - 20/03/24 Link Talk of the ‘far right’ used to conjure up images of thugs with swastika tattoos, blackshirted paramilitaries and unhinged displays of rank racial hatred. Yet now, according to the BBC at least, the new face of the far right is actually Reform UK party leader Richard Tice. This week, the BBC was forced to apologise to Reform, the successor to the Brexit Party, after branding it ‘far right’. In a piece on the Liberal Democrats’ conference last year, the Beeb noted in passing that the Lib Dems are being beaten in the polls by this supposedly far-right outfit. You do not have to be a fan of Tice, Reform or its honorary president, Nigel Farage, to see this as an outrageous smear. The BBC’s use of the ‘far right’ slur was clearly an attempt by our supposedly impartial broadcaster to demonise Reform and its populist politics. It was trying to cast Reform’s opposition to elite groupthink – on mig...

 Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves speech tonight will acknowledge that her party can’t carry on within its comfort zone Source - Daily Telegraph 19/03/23 Rachel Reeves is quite possibly the bravest woman in politics. How many of her colleagues – or even her forebears – would so fearlessly invite a comparison between today’s Labour Party and Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative Party of 1979? Extraordinary though that sounds, it’s exactly what the shadow chancellor will do in her speech to the City of London tonight. Her pre-briefed comments include this passage: “As we did at the end of the 1970s, we stand at an inflection point, and as in earlier decades, the solution lies in wide-ranging supply-side reform to drive investment, remove the blockages constraining our productive capacity, and fashion a new economic settlement, drawing on evolutions in economic thought.” Well, yes, quite. What’s particularly eye-catching about this rhetoric is that Reeves has deliberately chosen to draw a ...

Trying to jump straight to electric cars has condemned the whole effort to decarbonise road transport to failure Source - Daily Telegraph - 12/03/24 It is all beginning to look a bit like the Volkswagen scandal: you remember, when regulators caught out the German car company for installing software which detected when diesel engines were in test mode and adjusted performance so that it flattered emissions figures.  A test by What Car magazine has revealed that the official figures for the range of electric cars over-estimates their real-life range by around a third. Vehicles were driven around a test track in Bedfordshire until they ran out of juice.  The result? A Lexus UX 300e (official range 273 miles) managed just 170 miles before slowing to a halt – 37.9 per cent less than advertised. A Volkswagen ID7 Pro (official range 383 miles) managed 254 and a Volvo XC40 Recharge (official range 331 miles) managed 252. Moreover, these are all supposedly long-range vehicles which ret...

Handing judges the ability to put people under house arrest because they might commit a hate crime isn’t progressive, it’s North Korean Source - Daily Telegraph 13/03/24 Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is threatening his most tyrannical attack on freedom yet through his government’s proposed Online Harms Act (currently Bill C-63). Brought to you by the same farcically-named “Liberal” party who froze the bank accounts of the truckers who protested vaccine-mandates, the OHA is the government’s overzealous attempt to promote online safety.  The proposed legislation supposedly achieves this by requiring operators of social media services to adequately mitigate the risk that their users will be exposed to harmful content through measures such as publishing standards of online conduct, providing blocking tools and ways to flag and label harmful content. The OHA would create a Digital Safety Commission to administer and enforce its rules along with a Digital Safety Office to suppor...

Why I think he's heading back to the White House Source - Matt Goodwin 15/03/24 Eight years ago I was one of only a few analysts who put their neck out by predicting not only would Britain vote to leave the European Union but that also, a few months later, America would elect President Donald Trump. This flew in the face of much that was written at the time. In fact, I vividly recall giving talks in Berlin, Frankfurt and Paris, during the spring of 2016, and literally being laughed out of the room. People thought I was insane. I predicted these things not because they reflected my preferences—contrary to popular misconception I did not campaign for Brexit, though I did accept the result and argued we should see it through—but because I thought an insular ruling class and commentariat were losing touch with the mood outside their own class. As I wrote between the Brexit and Trump revolts in Politico Magazine: “The Brexit vote is a powerful reminder not only of how identity can trump...