Absolutely Not The Daily Troll-o-Graph

Guys, The following has been written by Richard. It's a long piece and I did consider splitting it but I thought by doing this it would lose some context. But well worthy of spending a bit longer than usual to read. Thanks Richard Source - Richard Jones - 13/03/2022 We have previously talked about EU’s imperial drive and how EU must make a huge lurch soon or be potentially reduced, diminished, ignored from within and without and rendered globally irrelevant. This conversation, apart from within the corridors of power in Brussels/Luxembourg/Frankfurt, has been rather set aside by the Covid, Ukraine, energy provision, net zero admixture. The EU drivers, individual and national, are now concluding that the period of mid-2023, through the EU MEP and other elections in the May 2024 to October 2024 timeframe and assurance of supply by January 2025 is a key period in which to gird their loins for a lurch. From feedback, EU individual drivers see an EU in multi-prong deep rifts. Some membe...

 The pundit’s remarks were crass, but have nothing to do with how he performs his job. We can’t pick and choose when to defend free speech Source - Daily Telegraph 11/03/23 Link DANIEL HANNAN Either cancel culture is a thing or it isn’t. If it is, and if we object to it, then we have no choice but to rally to Gary Lineker, suspended by the BBC over a series of anti-Tory Tweets. The phrase “cancel culture” is often used too vaguely. It doesn’t mean criticising a public figure for voicing an unfashionable opinion. It doesn’t mean organising a Twitter pile-on. It doesn’t mean unfriending someone on Facebook. Cancel culture, in its raw form, means trying to get people sacked for voicing views that have nothing to do with their line of work. For example, demanding that a publisher drop an author because of her views on trans rights, or petitioning against an exhibition by an artist – even a long-dead artist – who doesn’t conform to your version of anti-racism. Cancel culture revives the...

 PM could not help but smile as furious complaints from MPs on immigration show his ‘make the opposition look soft’ strategy is working Source - Daily Telegraph 08/03/23 Link Keir Starmer’s tactics at PMQs were quite simple – wrong-foot the Prime Minister by highlighting the shortcomings of the immigration system. Given recent events, this should have been an easy task. But somehow, Starmer spent the session flailing about - dispatching numerous heavy-handed jibes, yet rarely managing to land a blow. A total of 18,000 people were deemed ineligible for asylum last year, began the leader of the opposition. “How many of them have actually been returned?” he asked.  The PM dodged Starmer’s question with the ease of a lawyer grounding a flight to Rwanda. Sir Keir, he said, was “on the side of the people-smugglers … just another lefty lawyer standing in our way”. The correct answer was 21 out of 18,000.  “We all know the Honourable Gentleman’s plan,” crowed Sunak, buoyed by exc...

 Source - Daily Telegraph 09/03/23 Link If you watched the 1993 movie “Demolition Man”, you might recall a scene where Sylvester Stallone arrives in a future dystopian society and is handed an automatic fixed penalty for uttering a curse word in public. Welcome to the future. Or should that now be, “Welcome to Scotland”? A consultation by the SNP Government suggests that as a way of fighting misogyny, men who loudly and publicly discuss their sexual conquests could face jail terms of up to seven years. No one is suggesting that misogyny isn’t a social menace that harms and threatens women. But jail time? Really? Another suggestion is that a crime could be committed if a man “deliberately rubs up against a woman in a public place”. Having just returned home from a trip to a very crowded London where I frequently used rush-hour Underground trains, I wonder how practical such a law would be. Remember that prosecution could only follow a police investigation. Witness statements and oth...

 The Chancellor is hoisted on the petard of his own fiscal rules Source - Daily Telegraph 08/03/23 Link Don't expect fireworks from next week's spring Budget. Head turners are off the menu. We had quite enough in the way of pyrotechnics from Downing Street's last two occupants, Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng. Another burst of it is the last thing a still shell-shocked economy – and Conservative Party – needs right now. Rather, the priority must continue to be the hard yards of winning back the Government's reputation for economic competence. Tax cuts have to be earned, and sadly we are not yet there. With the general election little more than a year and half away, this fiscally hair-shirted approach would nevertheless seem to be quite a gamble as a political strategy. Financial markets may celebrate the pursuit of economic stability and sound money, but is a do-nothing Budget enough to win an election? Perhaps surprisingly, it might be. Internal Conservative Party polling...

 Source - Spike 07/03/23 Link There’s something strange about the response to Suella Braverman’s Illegal Migration Bill, announced today in the House of Commons.  Much of the commentary has focussed not on whether the bill is right or just or effective or necessary. No, much of it has focussed on whether or not it is ‘legal’. Whether the plans, for example, to deprive illegal migrants of the right to claim asylum in the UK will breach international human-rights law.  Those opposing the bill don’t just oppose this particular policy, they also struggle to see why the government is allowed to set immigration policy in the first place. These lawyers, campaigners and assorted pundits need to have a word with themselves. This attack on the ability of parliament to make laws undermines democracy.  It also undermines those of us who want a more liberal approach to migration. Because if we want to win an argument for a more generous border policy, it needs to be premised on o...

 The green shoots of recovery are here - now Jeremy Hunt must avoid trampling on them Source - Daily Telegraph 05/03/23 Link In the early 1990s, having claimed to have spotted “the green shoots of recovery”, Norman Lamont was widely derided. But it turned out he was right. Soon after the then chancellor’s much-mocked comments, the UK climbed out of recession. But almost no one remembers that – recalling only the criticism he endured. That’s one reason economists of a certain vintage so rarely point to signs the outlook is improving. Panglossian words are met with rolling eyes. So it’s with trepidation that I’m declaring – drum roll – I see multiple green shoots. The commentariat has been too gloomy for too long – it’s time to cheer up. In early February, the influential Chartered Institute of Procurement reported the sharpest monthly rise in business optimism since November 2020. Then, late last month, a survey from data company GfK showed an unexpected bounce back in consumer conf...