Absolutely Not The Daily Troll-o-Graph

Most agree we must move from fossil fuels to renewable sources, but without proper planning Britain risks having to import more oil and gas Source - Daily Telegraph - 08/12/21 Link There is a geeky debate raging in the world of commodities trading about how the Brent benchmark price for crude oil is calculated. I won’t go into the full details here, partly because I don’t really understand them and partly because I suspect they might be quite boring.  But suffice to say that various interested parties are suggesting that oil extracted in different parts of the world should be added into the mix when setting the benchmark for that which is produced in the Atlantic basin. This week BP waded into proceedings by arguing the best alternative was supplies of West Texas Intermediate crude. The discussions are somewhat contentious because oil contains different amounts of impurities like sulphur, which affect how easy it is to turn into fuel, depending on where in the world it has been ext...

 Eurosceptic voices in Brussels are being drowned out by those bent on closer integration   Treating euroscepticism as a purely domestic ill is a dangerous game to play   Integrationist arguments crumble on issues where countries have varying interests, like migration Source CAPX - 07/12/21 Link The European right remains divided. A meeting in Warsaw this weekend between the leaders of some of the EU’s largest conservative parties failed to produce a much-anticipated new grouping in the European Parliament, meaning eurosceptic voices in Brussels will continue to be drowned out by those bent on closer EU integration. With ideological rifts opening up this year between the EU’s progressive and conservative members, the lack of a strong platform for eurosceptic voices in the European Parliament has become a major issue. The departure of Hungarian leader Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party from the European People’s Party in March confirmed a growing sense of homelessness for those w...

They put us all at risk of more restrictions, says ANDREW NEIL. So why shouldn't we curb some of their freedoms?  - Daily mail - 10/12/21 Link Last night I took a friend out to dinner near my home in the South of France. At the restaurant door we were politely asked for our vaccine passports, the QR codes on our smartphones were scanned and we were ushered to our table. The check had taken seconds — a very minor inconvenience when a new wave of the coronavirus pandemic is sweeping across the Continent. There was a sense of safety in knowing that all the other diners had proved themselves to be fully vaccinated, or had very recently tested negative, or had contracted the virus and recovered. If smartphones are a bit recherché for you, you can print out a paper version of your vaccine passport. It works just as well.  One friend who won't give up his ancient, very unsmart, mobile, has pasted his paper passport onto the back of his phone. That's probably even more efficient th...

Financial sector moves focus away from EU while Americans eye British bargains Source - Daily Telegraph 08/12/21 Link 8 December 2021 • 6:00am British financial services exports to the US outstripped those to the European Union in 2020 for the first time since the Brexit vote as the City shifts its focus away from the Continent. Around 34pc of exports by banks and finance companies went to America in 2020, according to research by the banking lobby group TheCityUK, compared to 30pc to the EU. The US was in pole position for the first time since it started collecting data in 2016. Experts said the shift is evidence of growing American interest in Britain as companies eye new opportunities. Trystan Tether, a lawyer at Bird & Bird, said he had also noticed a great deal of inward investment from the US into the UK, particularly in the financial technology industry where he said that "the UK continues to represent an attractive market".  Britain's overall trade surplus in ...

US drugmaker Pfizer, the world’s dominant Covid vaccine maker, has been accused of funding educational presentations that said its UK rival AstraZeneca was ineffective and even dangerous for some members of the population. Source City AM 05/12/21 Link A Channel 4 Dispatches investigation due to be broadcast this week says it has “uncovered evidence” that Pfizer funded a number of educational presentations that were delivered to health professionals across Canada about its mRNA vaccine. Included in these presentations were slides that listed several disadvantages of the “viral vector” technology that is the basis for the AstraZeneca vaccine, the broadcaster said. Delivered by speakers who had received funds from Pfizer, the slides said there is a risk of “chromosomal integration and oncogenesis” with such vaccines, which suggests they might turn a healthy cell into a cancerous cell. They also claimed that the AstraZeneca vaccine cannot be used in immunocompromised people. The claims mad...

Ireland’s intransigence on the Protocol today mimics the behaviour of Unionist politicians a century ago. Source - Daily Telegraph - 05/12/21 Link War and war within three days”. So Lloyd George threatened Irish leaders on 5 December 1921 if they would not accept a partitioned, independent Ireland as a dominion within the British Empire. The Irish did not want to be a dominion and stay within the British orbit. They had had enough of Britain. But in the early hours of 6 December, one hundred years ago, they acquiesced and the Anglo-Irish Treaty was signed, leading to the creation of the Irish Free State a year later. Given the row over the Northern Ireland Protocol, the lessons are still relevant. The Anglo-Irish Treaty was meant to end centuries of enmity, but misunderstandings were inherent from the start. Dominion status was said to be voluntary, yet the Irish were coerced into accepting it. Many in Britain also wanted Ireland outside the British orbit. They had had enough of Irelan...

French politicians use the sort of language that one might expect from a tinpot dictatorship Source - Daily Telegraph 05/12/21 Link As someone who has spent most of his adult life studying and writing about France, who has a partly French family, who speaks French and could reasonably be described as a Francophile, I admit that I find it difficult to understand the stream of bile aimed at Britain that now issues almost daily from the French political elite. Now, I understand the anger, the disappointment, the frustration, the humiliation. Brexit threw a giant spanner into the works of France’s greatest project, European integration – something the French state has worked at for nearly a century. Its politicians and pundits proclaimed that Britain after Brexit was heading for economic disaster and political isolation. Despite the best efforts of the Remainer die-hards to talk up every problem, and even labelling every success as ‘despite Brexit’, we have been outpacing Europe over Covid...