Absolutely Not The Daily Troll-o-Graph

Meet the most influential adviser you’ve never heard of. Paul Gregg’s mission is to get Britain back to work. Source -Daily Telegraph Link With no connection to sausage rolls – it was John Gregg who wanted to deliver yeast and eggs to the people of Newcastle by pushbike – you could be forgiven for not knowing who Paul Gregg is. His title, chairman of the Labour Market Advisory Board, will not have you reaching for Who’s Who. Gregg is a superstar in one field – a very important one. A former adviser to Gordon Brown who turned up for his first day in his new Treasury job dressed “as a punk” according to Ed Balls, he has long been the go-to man for the answer to the knottiest of government questions. How to move people off unproductive benefits and into productive work. Labour has turned to him again. With little fanfare Liz Kendall, the Work and Pensions Secretary, announced that Gregg would be helping the Government formulate its policy on record levels of inactivity amongst the working...

 The irony of a defeat in a human rights case cannot be lost on the Prime Minister Source - Daily Telegraph Link Alexis Quinn is a single mother and former GB youth swimmer. Her daughter is autistic and struggled to cope at state primary school. With help from her family and a scholarship, Alexis just manages to keep her at an independent school, where there is more support and her daughter is doing well. She receives no assistance from the taxpayer: as a result, under the new Government’s plans, she will soon have to pay VAT on her school fees, which she cannot afford. Ms Quinn – soon to be joined by military families and representatives of religious faiths – plans to challenge Labour’s plans under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). Their blood is up and they have raised over £100,000 in legal crowdfunding online. Some are suspicious of the ECHR and Sir Tony Blair’s Human Rights Act. They argue that this legislation has created a new profession of troublesome lawyers....

 Sue Gray and Dominic Cummings must both be held to the same standards Source - Daily Telegraph Link Remember Dominic Cummings? The man who was the bête noir of the British Left after he led the victorious campaign to leave the European Union in 2016 was almost as hated as his boss Boris Johnson was, especially when he was hired as Johnson’s most senior adviser in number 10. But now the truth can be revealed: the public (and media) had no right to discuss Cummings, however controversial his behaviour might have been. That comes from the horse’s mouth, from Keir Starmer himself, during an interview during his visit to the United States this week: “I’m not going to discuss individual members of staff, whoever they are. I don’t believe that my staff should be the subject of public debate like this, and I’m not going to play any part in it.” Of course, the contexts of the controversies around Cummings and the recent criticism of Sue Gray, the Prime Minister’s chief of staff, are very d...

Stubborn Starmer isn’t listening to any warnings Source - Daily Telegraph  Link Every single one of Labour’s new policies comes with a dire health warning.  Whether it is the removal of winter fuel payments from the elderly or the tax raid on private schools, there are legitimate concerns that these ideologically driven moves will cause more harm than good. But Labour is not interested in hearing any of it. The latest in this unrelenting saga is the plot to shake up rights for renters, which is now proving to be the final straw for many fed-up landlords who provide good homes at fair rates. The landlord exodus is being fuelled further by fears that Chancellor Rachel Reeves is plotting a capital gains tax raid – spurring many property investors who were on the fence about exiting the sector to sell up before the Budget on Oct 30. Driving landlords out of the rental market can only mean bad news for tenants. It means fewer properties, higher rents and more misery. Meanwhile HM R...

Labour’s conference has displayed our country at its worst – censorious, priggish, envious and mean-spirited Source - Daily Telegraph 24/09/24 Link Well that didn’t work out as planned, did it. Britain voted for an end to Tory sleaze and chaos, only to be lumbered with a government that’s made so many missteps its shoelaces might as well have been tied together. One packed full of politicians who’ve been trousering freebies and rewarding their own client groups. But the hypocrisy, the double standards, the seeming disdain for the little people isn’t even the worst of it. Labour has already failed, not because of “donor-gate” or the unedifying squabbles between Starmer’s special advisers, but because it has no clue how to run a country.  It spent two months maniacally talking down Britain – with Reeves reportedly considering it a golden opportunity to “bury the Tories”, as though she were a far-Left social-justice activist rather than our Chancellor of the Exchequer – only to be pus...

Crackdown on drinking under consideration as ‘fun police’ Government sets out plan to improve health and tackle anti-social behaviour Source Daily Telegraph Link In a move to roll back the “Continental cafe-style of drinking culture” introduced by Sir Tony Blair, Andrew Gwynne, the public health minister, said the Government was considering “tightening up the hours of operation” of bars and pubs. Mr Gwynne said the idea was being examined by ministers as part of efforts to improve health and tackle anti-social behaviour. Prof Sir Chris Whitty, the Chief Medical Officer, has told ministers that if current trends continue, 60 per cent of the NHS budget will eventually be spent on diseases that could have been prevented. The current figure is 40 per cent. The crackdown on drinking is under consideration alongside measures to target obesity, including pushing the food industry to reduce the fat, sugar and salt content of everyday foods. Insisting Labour was “not the fun police” nor “supern...

Amid usual gaggle of weirdos, meanwhile, faithful at annual gathering are simultaneously completely mad and unbelievably dull Source - Daily Telegraph  Link Some people would say that after the last week of headlines, to begin Labour’s conference with a video about the evils of cronyism in the Tory party would suggest that they’re either shameless or stupid. As somebody who is there on the ground, I can absolutely assure you that close inspection suggests they are both. “Oink, oink, oink” went the Cabinet around the TV channels as the conference began in Liverpool. This little piggy went to New York, this little piggy got new glasses, this little piggy cried “change change change” all the way home. Alas, Sir Keir had weightier things to do than attend the customary BBC interview and risk an interrogation about his free gift addiction: another measurement of his ample bottom for some tailor-made trousers perhaps? Suits you, Sir Keir! Instead, we were treated to an agonising grilling...

Labour risks pushing the current rental crisis beyond repair, a lender claims. Source - Landlord Today 12/09/24 Link With Chancellor Rachel Reeves reportedly planning a capital gains tax raid on landlords in the October Budget, Octane Capital commissioned a survey of UK landlords to gauge current sentiment within the sector. The survey found that 66% of landlords have already reduced the size of their investment portfolio in the past year, with reduced profitability due to previous legislative changes cited as the primary reason for these reductions.  The proposed rental market reform which includes the ban to Section 21 notices also placed highly along with the inevitable increase in age, as many approach retirement. Half of those surveyed also stated that when it came to their investment into the rental market, they feel less confident under the new Labour government and as many as 75% said that they are concerned that the current Government may equalise capital gains tax in line...

 Why are vile child-abuse images treated more leniently than ‘grossly offensive’ speech? Source - Spiked 17/07/24 Link   If you want to gain an insight into the warped priorities of England’s criminal-justice system, just look at how it treats the possession of child-abuse images compared with expressing offensive views online. Disgraced BBC presenter Huw Edwards was handed a suspended sentence yesterday, meaning he has been spared jail. He pleaded guilty in July to three sexual offences, related to making (the legal term for possessing or accessing) 41 pornographic images of children. Seven were Category A images – the most serious form of child-abuse images, which depict ‘penetrative sexual activity’. One of the images in this category was a video featuring a nine-year-old boy. These sickening images were sent to Edwards between 16 December 2020 and August 2021, when he was still the BBC’s top news anchor. Strikingly, Edwards’s sentence is not unusual in child-pornography ca...

It’s not just millionaires fleeing – middle-class families have been priced out of this country Source - Daily Telegraph - 14/09/24 Link Have you heard of a business called Henley & Partners? I hadn’t until a few days ago. It’s a “migration consultancy”, according to its website, but I don’t think they worry much about small boats crossing the Channel. Instead, they help millionaires and billionaires work out where they want to move when the tax regime becomes too onerous at home. “Having an alternative citizenship or residency is the best insurance policy,” croons its website. Which is presumably what the human traffickers say, too. Let’s not get bogged down in grubby detail. The reason I came across the firm is because they’ve declared that 5,300 millionaires will leave the UK before the year is out. We’ve already lost 4,200 this year, apparently (where have they gone? They can’t all be down the back of the sofa), but another flotilla will glide away over the next few months afte...

From children to pensioners, Britons of all ages will struggle over the next five year Source - Daily Telegraph 14/09/24 Link Tax rises are a “dead cert” in next month’s Budget and those with the broadest shoulders are due to bear the brunt, it has been warned. However, forecasts show people of all ages are poised to struggle over the next five years of a Labour government. A surge in poverty numbers and stagnating wage growth are on the cards – along with expected tax rises to plug the “£22bn black hole” in public finances. It comes after pensioners were dealt a blow this week, when Labour voted to strip 10 million of them from the winter fuel allowance worth up to £300. Child poverty on the rise Projections now show 1.5 million people, including 400,000 children, will fall into poverty over the next five years. The Resolution Foundation think tank forecasts 23pc of the population will be in poverty – the highest rate since 2000-01 – if the Government does not address slow income grow...

Far from benefiting the country, too many unskilled migrants are a net cost to other taxpayers Source - Daily Telegraph - 13/09/24 Link   In a recent interview to promote his latest book, Sir Tony Blair was good enough to admit that the influx of migrants under his premiership placed “strain” on communities.  Net immigration increased fivefold under the last Labour government and his decade in power is widely regarded as having fired the starting gun on modern mass migration as we now know it.  Defending his record in Downing Street, he accepted that opening up Britain’s borders did not come without cost, acknowledging: “This is true in certain communities, there was a big influx of people, it was causing real strains in some of those communities.” But in the way only a prime minister who oversaw an unprecedented increase in migrant numbers (unprecedented, that is, until the last Tory government), he trotted out the tried and tested immigration “helped our economy” line, ...

Starmer and Reeves are incompetently pushing fake, sado-austerity that appeals to no voter group Source - Daily Telegraph 11/09/24 Link Like the gold-headed colossus of King Nebuchadnezzar’s dreams, Sir Keir Starmer is a giant with feet of clay. His gargantuan parliamentary majority was obtained on a third of the vote with a depressed turnout, and he is already engendering much buyers’ remorse. He has squandered his honeymoon, and is proving so inept at politics that, a mere two months after his historic triumph, there is now reason to doubt that he will last more than one term in office.  His lacklustre communication skills mean that he is failing to persuade his own side, let alone anybody else; he sounds too Left-wing to the Right, and too Right-wing to the Left. A grey, pseudo-managerialist figure, an accidental prime minister in the mould of Theresa May, there is no trap Starmer doesn’t plunge into headfirst. Rather than providing inspirational, optimistic leadership, he has c...

 ‘Dangerous’ market controls will backfire, warn landlords and letting agencies Source - Daily Telegraph 11/09/24 Link The Government has said it will end fixed-term tenancies, get rid of no-fault evictions and ban bidding wars in a Renters’ Rights Bill presented to Westminster today. But landlords and letting agents said the legislation could backfire, pushing up rents even faster than they would otherwise rise. Chris Norris, policy director at the National Landlord Association [NRLA] property body, said landlords will have less financial security under the new bill. Rolling contracts raises the risk of tenants immediately serving notice to leave at the start of a tenancy. He said this risk, paired with the prospect of long delays to secure an eviction through the courts if problem tenants refuse to leave, “could be worth 5pc to 10pc on rents”. Rents across the UK have grown faster than earnings for the past three years. In the past 12 months, prices have risen 6.1pc on average, a...