Absolutely Not The Daily Troll-o-Graph

Fierce social divides are emerging between the ‘winners’ of lockdown and those who are losing out SOURCE - Daily Telegraph 16/05/20 https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/16/bitter-class-war-raging-haves-have-nots-lockdown/?WT.mc_id=e_DM1247173&WT.tsrc=email&etype=Edi_FAM_New_ES_Sun&utmsource=email&utm_medium=Edi_FAM_New_ES_Sun20200517&utm_campaign=DM1247173 The season of good will is definitely over. Now that the monolithic shutdown is being replaced in an experimental, higgledy-piggledy way, there is plenty of scope for contentious division, particularly when the problem is one to which nobody can have definitive answers. And division is what makes it possible for opposition forces - both official and unofficial - to get back into the game. Which is fine: free societies need open disagreement. Enforced unanimity is for totalitarian governments, not democracies. So what war correspondents would call “the uneasy truce” is breaking down. The regions and...

Prime Minister tells members of 1922 committee Government is looking at spending heavily on infrastructure as Britain exits lockdown. SOURCE - Daily Telegraph - 15/05/20 https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/05/15/boris-johnson-no-public-sector-pay-freeze-no-austerity-uk-emerges/?li_source=LI&li_medium=liftigniter-rhr Boris Johnson on Friday made it clear there was "no question" of freezing public sector workers' pay, and said he would "double down" on funding new transport projects in the north of England. The Prime Minister reportedly told around 125 MPs on a conference call that there would be no return to austerity to cover the £300 billion cost of the coronavirus crisis. In the call with the 1922 committee of backbench Conservative MPs, Mr Johnson disclosed that he had been in talks with the Archbishop of Canterbury about reopening churches as soon as possible, and also hinted at longer-term reform of how Public Health England (PHE) is ...

Well what  surprise. The EU still insist on the UK becoming an EU colony ! Barnier is still banging out the same tired old rhetoric. SOURCE - Daily Telegraph 15/05/20   https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/05/15/lockdown-uk-coronavirus-boris-johnson-1922-committee-london/ The EU's "ideological" refusal to drop its demand for a level-playing field has resulted in "very little progress" in trade talks this week, the Prime Minister's sherpa David Frost has said. Michel Barnier is giving a press conference from 12:30pm today, following the latest round of remote Brexit trade talks between him and Mr Frost. But in a statement issued just now, the UK's negotiator blasted the EU for sticking to its "set of novel and unbalanced proposals", which would "bind" the UK to the bloc "in a way that is unprecedented in Free Trade Agreements and not envisaged in the Political Declaration". Source close to negotiations sa...

We haven't heard much about Russia. SOURCE =- The Spectator - 02/05/20 https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/can-putin-survive-the-coronavirus-stress-test His regime is facing its greatest challenge yet ladimir Putin knows that a poor state is a weak state. As a middling KGB apparatchik in Dresden in 1989 he saw the USSR’s authority over its empire collapse along with its economy. Two years later, the Soviet state itself imploded, unable to feed its citizens or command the loyalty of its own security forces. Rebuilding Russia’s security apparatus back to Soviet levels and securing it against another systemic collapse has been the touchstone of Putin’s two decades in power. With the coronavirus crisis, the Putin system faces a stress test every bit as radical as that which brought down Mikhail Gorbachev. The proximate cause of the USSR’s collapse was a 1985 decision by the Saudis — with American encouragement — to crash the price of oil. Without a steady supply of oil profit t...

Just what will it take for the Electoral Commision to be taken to task and replaced by people who can be trusted to be impartial ? Source – Daily Telegraph- 01/05/20 https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/05/01/leaveeu-founder-arron-banks-did-not-break-electoral-law/ Leave.EU founder Arron Banks did not break electoral law The Brexit campaigner reached a settlement with the Electoral Commission after his campaign was fined for breaking electoral law Arron Banks, the Brexit campaigner, has said he has been "completely vindicated" after reaching a settlement with the Electoral Commission. The watchdog referred the Leave.EU co-founder to the National Crime Agency (NCA) after his campaign was fined for breaking electoral law. But the agency found "no evidence" of criminal offences and Mr Banks threatened to sue the commission over £8 million in referendum campaign funding. The watchdog said all parties had "agreed amicable terms of settlement", but s...

How predictable and tiresome. I wonder if the SNP would've been able to offer the financial assistance Scotland has received of they were not part of the UK ? SOURCE-CAPX - 11/05/20 https://capx.co/the-snp-is-exploiting-covid-to-push-its-nationalist-agenda/?omhide=true&utm_source=CapX+briefing&utm_campaign=a479d3a4f8-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_07_17_COPY_02&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b5017135a0-a479d3a4f8-241907801 Like many other political actors around the world, the SNP are looking to make electoral hay from the ongoing pandemic, and, they hope, bring a second independence referendum closer to reality. And from their point of view, it seems the sooner the better. Since the Westminster election of 2019, a  slight majority  of Scots now favour leaving the Union. The nationalists know that may not last, so want to seize the moment while they can.  But in service of their aims, the SNP have employed a number of distortions and outright fabricati...

This hasn't had much coverage from the likes of the BBC. I wonder why ? SOURCE Daily Telegraph 09/05/20 https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2020/05/09/germany-flexing-muscles-leave-euro-jeopardy/ An easy-to-miss court ruling this week in Germany could have profound implications for the future of the eurozone The Bank of England predicted a V-shaped “bounce back”, US-China trade relations marginally improved and Rory Stewart dropped out of the London Mayoral race. Plus, of course, we celebrated (albeit in lockdown) the 75th anniversary of VE day. Future historians of last week may focus instead, though, on a seemingly obscure decision made in Karlsruhe, Baden-Württemberg. Germany’s top court, quietly but with resolve, finally squared up to the European Union’s Brussels-based technocracy . The constitutional court ruled that, by purchasing more than €2.2 trillion (£1.8 trillion) of government bonds since 2015, the European Central Bank has “manifestly” flouted EU t...