Absolutely Not The Daily Troll-o-Graph

Several European nations have halted rollouts over concerns the coronavirus vaccine is causing blood clots Source - Daily Telegraph  - 15/03/21 Link The Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine has not had an easy few months. First, trial results suggested it was not as effective as other jabs. Then several European countries ruled it was unsuitable for over-65s.  In the latest twist, Ireland, the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Iceland, Bulgaria, France, Italy and Norway have all halted their AstraZeneca rollouts over fears that the jab is causing blood clots. So should people be worried if they have been immunised with the British vaccine? The numbers suggest not. According to the charity Thrombosis UK, up to one in 1,000 people each year will experience a dangerous blood clot in a vein, known as a venous thrombosis. That means about 66,000 people in Britain might be expected to suffer a blood clot annually – or 1,269 a week. According to AstraZeneca, there have been 15 events of deep vein...

 European politicians are painfully aware that Britain's vaccine success means it will recover from the pandemic before the ailing EU bloc. Source - Daily Telegraph  Link PATRICK O'FLYNN 10 March 2021 • 12:00pm Patrick O'Flynn A malignant seed of jealousy towards the United Kingdom is growing in continental Europe and it isn’t hard to understand why. Britain is on course to outperform the EU in the immediate post-Brexit period and the contrast in our fortunes is going to become more and more obvious in the second half of this year. Boris Johnson may be getting berated for refusing to increase the pace of his tortoise-like trudge out of lockdown, but compared to the EU club that the UK has left behind we are strapped to rocket boosters and sporting go-faster stripes. Don’t just take my word for it, it is also the verdict of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which has just upgraded our growth forecast for this year by almost a full percentage p...

Pessimists and Brexiteers alike are making silly arguments about January's figures January's trade figures are next to useless as a guide to the future EU-UK trade relationship If David Frost is feeling 'belligerent', he has every right to Source - CAPX - 12/03/21 Link Brexit pessimists are having a field day following official confirmation that UK exports to the EU slumped in January – and they have a point. Anything that increases the cost of doing business across borders was always likely to reduce trade. Nonetheless, the first month’s trade figures after the end of the transition period are next to useless as a guide to the longer-term economic impacts of Brexit. Let’s deal first with the January data. The value of UK exports to the EU fell by 40.7% compared to December and by 38.6% compared to January 2020. These figures need to be taken with a bucketful of salt, given the distortions due to Covid, precautionary stockpiling ahead of Brexit, and changes in the way t...

 In a free state, every man may think what he likes and say what he thinks – Spinoza Source - The Conservative Woman - 12/03/21 Link JUST when you think things cannot get much worse in Scotland, they do. With the backing of their perpetual supplicants, the ‘Greens’, the SNP government pushed their Hate Crime Bill through the Scottish parliament last night.  This is a dark event for the country of the Enlightenment among whose thinkers we count Adam Smith, David Hume, and Thomas Reid, founder of the Scottish School of Common Sense (!) All of them, to use the vernacular, will be birling in their graves. Scotland, of course, is also the place where George Orwell chose to complete his masterpiece 1984, in which he foresaw the tyranny of the ‘Thought Police’, dark forces who monitor every citizen for wrong thought, speech, or action. Arguably, even Orwell might be shocked to see just how far along the road to oppression we have been led. Scotland will, because of this legislation, ...

We should give Europe our surplus jabs, but it would be naive to think Brussels will ever accept Brexit Source - Daily telegraph - 11/03/21 Link For flailing demagogues across the centuries, the answer has long been clear: blame Perfidious Albion and our supposed propensity for betrayal. Ottonis de Sancto Blasio, the Benedictine chronicler, coined the phrase when he described a row between Austria and England after the fall of Acre in 1191, and there are myriad instances in European literature, history and eventually newspapers across the centuries. By the 19th century, the French had become obsessed with la perfide Angleterre, and our alleged inability to keep our word, blaming this supposed cultural defect for everything from Joan of Arc to Napoleon. The Germans, the Portuguese, the Iranians and others eventually bought into this pathetic, self-pitying narrative. Of course, Britain too used to caricature other European countries in similarly prejudiced and unpleasant fashion, but we ...

 By treating the pharmaceutical company as a political football, the EU only doubles down on the damage it is doing to itself. Source - Daily Telegraph - 09/03/21 Link How quickly the tables turn. Once routinely demonised by all the usual suspects as price gouging profiteers and monopolists, Big Pharma unexpectedly found itself the hero of the moment as the pandemic spread, developing effective vaccine solutions in double-quick time. But now the industry is back in the dog house again, at least on the Continent. Don’t blame the European Commission for the slow pace of vaccine rollout, an Italian MP insisted on Radio 4 at the weekend. Blame the drug companies instead. They are the ones that have let us down. Ursula von der Leyen, President of the Commission, is similarly keen to deflect the blame onto the Anglo-Swedish pharma giant AstraZeneca, telling a group of journalists this week that she is “tired of being the scapegoat”. So please don’t call it “vaccine nationalism” when Ital...

It is understood ITV bosses asked the 55-year-old host to apologise after saying he 'didn't believe a word' the Duchess said, but he refused. Source - Daily Telegraph - 10/03/21 Link Piers Morgan has stood by his comments on the Duchess of Sussex, saying he still does not believe what Meghan said in her interview as Good Morning Britain went on air for the first time since his abrupt departure from the show. Morgan left following a backlash against his incendiary comments about the Duchess of Sussex and her headline-making interview with Oprah Winfrey. ITV announced that the presenter and journalist was leaving the news programme on Tuesday with a brief statement. Morgan has since said he stands by his comments and does not believe what Meghan told Winfrey, after she discussed her issues with mental health and suicidal thoughts. On Tuesday morning, while his spot was filled by Ranvir Singh, Morgan posted a picture of Sir Winston Churchill on Twitter and said: "On Monda...