Brexit
Mail
Boris Johnson tonight warned a No Deal Brexit was ‘very likely’ unless Brussels caves on its ‘unreasonable’ demands over fishing rights. In a 7pm crunch phone call with EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, the Prime Minister warned negotiations were in a ‘serious situation’. And he said that it now looked ‘very likely’ that an agreement would not be reached ‘unless the EU position changed substantially’. Fishing was the key area where the EU’s position ‘needed to shift significantly’, Mr Johnson said. He added that if a deal could not be struck the UK would leave the EU ‘as friends’, but trading on Australian-style terms. Meanwhile, Ms von der Leyen tonight said ‘substantial progress’ had been made on a Brexit deal. But the EU chief also warned ‘big differences’ which will be ‘very challenging to bridge’ still remain, with both sides now set to take negotiations down to the wire.
Express
BORIS JOHNSON is refusing to buckle to “unacceptable” EU demands as a final showdown in the Brexit trade negotiations looms. MEPs have declared a trade deal must be thrashed out by this Sunday to have any chance of being ratified by the end of the year. But ahead of the deadline, the Prime Minister’s aides have warned that “intractable” disagreements over key issues mean a “no deal” conclusion to the talks is increasingly likely. They said “unreasonable” demands for continuing access to British coastal waters from French President Emmanuel Macron are threatening to scupper the negotiations.
Evening Standard
Boris Johnson has warned that it is now “very likely” a Brexit deal would not be made unless the EU changes its stance. The Prime Minister told European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen during a phone call on Thursday evening that there was “little time” left for a trade agreement. A Downing Street spokesperson said the pair had agreed to “remain in close contact” following the call which happened at around 7pm tonight (Thursday).
Guardian
Boris Johnson claimed the Brexit talks were in a “serious situation” after a call with Ursula von der Leyen, even as the EU’s chief negotiator raised hopes of a weekend Brexit agreement by persuading the European parliament to delay its deal deadline to Sunday. In a statement released after a short stock-take telephone call on Thursday evening with the European commission president, the prime minister repeated his suggestion that it was “very likely” that an agreement would not be reached, with fisheries the standout issue. Downing Street said Johnson had told Von der Leyen that the UK “could not accept a situation where it was the only sovereign country in the world not to be able to control access to its own waters for an extended period and to be faced with fisheries quotas which hugely disadvantaged its own industry”.
Express
MICHEL Barnier today warned the Brexit trade talks have reached a “moment of truth” with both sides unable to find an agreement over access to Britain’s fishing grounds. The Brussels diplomat said the row over fisheries is the “main hurdle” to finding a free-trade agreement in the coming days. Speaking in the EU Parliament in Brussels, Mr Barnier added: “We have little time remaining – just a few hours – if we want this agreement to enter into force on January 1.” The Frenchman told MEPs it would be “unacceptable” to sign any pact that doesn’t guarantee European boats fishing opportunities in the UK’s coastal waters.
Times
There are only hours to find a Brexit deal, the European Union has warned this morning. “Moment of truth, we have very little time, only hours if we want this agreement to enter into force on Jan 1,” Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator, said this morning. “There is a chance of getting an agreement but the path is very narrow.” Mr Barnier spoke to MEPs as the deadline for European Parliament ratification approaches at the end of the weekend. He said that the main sticking point “in the few crucial hours that remain” was the EU’s demands for a sanctions clause hitting trade with tariffs if the UK cuts access to fishing grounds for European boats
Independent
Brexit talks have reached the “moment of truth”, EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier said in an address to MEPs ahead of the final hours of negotiations over a future trade deal with Britain. Boris Johnson said a no-deal Brexit was “very likely” unless the EU position changed “substantially” following a phone call with EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen on Thursday evening. The UK’s chief Brexit negotiator echoed the prime minister’s comments, stating that “progress seems blocked” as the clock ticks down to the Sunday deadline agreed by the European parliament.
Sky News
Just a few hours” remain for London and Brussels to strike a Brexit trade deal, the EU’s chief negotiator has said. Speaking to the European Parliament, Michel Barnier said it was the “moment of truth” for the two sides coming to a Brexit agreement by the end of the year. “We have very little time remaining, just a few hours to work through these negotiations in a useful fashion if we want this agreement to enter into force on the first of January,” he said. “There is a chance of getting an agreement but the path to such an agreement is very narrow.”
BBC News
There are “just a few hours left” for the UK and EU to agree a post-Brexit trade deal, says Michel Barnier. Speaking in the European Parliament on Friday, the EU’s chief negotiator said it was “the moment of truth” for the two sides to come to an agreement. He said there was still a “chance” of a deal, but the “path is very narrow”. The comments follow a warning from Boris Johnson that a no deal scenario was “very likely” unless the EU position changed “substantially”.
Breitbart
European Commission boss Ursula von der Leyen said that “there is a path to an agreement now”, revealing that UK negotiators had agreed to be bound by the EU in several key areas in perpetuity, but that finalising an arrangement on fishing remains. A Brexit deal may now be struck within days, even before the end of this week, after two major areas of contention of talks appear to have been resolved, if the EU’s account of events are to be believed. Speaking to the European Parliament on Wednesday morning, the European Commission’s president said there had been a “big step forward” on what Brussels euphemistically calls the “level playing field” requirement it insists upon in return to agreeing on a trade deal with Britain.
Telegraph
Boris Johnson has urged Ursula von der Leyen to help him clear two final hurdles to a Brexit trade deal amid hopes an agreement could come this weekend. The Prime Minister told the European Commission president that a deal can be done if Brussels gives ground on fish and state subsidies, as MEPs set a new deadline of this Sunday. However, he warned her that a deal was “drifting away from us” unless the EU “substantially” changes its position, and that talks were in a “serious situation”. Mrs von der Leyen said bridging the gap between the two sides would be “very challenging” but negotiations will continue on Friday, and sources in the European Parliament claimed the two sides were “close to an agreement”.
Express
BRUSSELS has just two days to secure a free trade agreement or the bloc will have no deal at all, EU officials have warned Michel Barnier. On Thursday, MEPs passed a resolution in Parliament calling for Mr Barnier to present them with the required text by Sunday at the latest. MEPs are concerned over the lack of time needed to ratify the deal before the end of the year and must have the agreement in 48 hours in order to have in place for the end of the transition period. Following Boris Johnson and Ursula von der Leyen’s call on Thursday, officials stated substantial progress had been made but two points of difference remain.
Restrictions
Mail
Matt Hancock faced fury today as he plunged another swathe of Tory home counties heartlands into draconian coronavirus restrictions and denied a downgrade to Manchester – leaving 38million people facing the toughest Tier 3. The Health Secretary was branded ‘ridiculous’ as he delivered the grim news for England amid growing fears over a surge in cases. Announcing the review of the tiers in the House of Commons, he said large parts of the South East will go into Tier 3, including Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Berkshire, Peterborough, the whole of Hertfordshire, Surrey with the exception of Waverley, Hastings and Rother on the Kent border of East Sussex, and Portsmouth, Gosport and Havant in Hampshire.
Sun
BRITS faced fresh Covid misery last night after millions more were placed under Tier 3 restrictions amid fears of a New Year lockdown grew. A further 5.2million people will be living under the toughest rules from midnight on Friday — including the Queen at Windsor Castle. They will bring the total number in Tier 3 areas to 38.4million people — two-thirds of the country. Fears of a third national lockdown next month soared after families in Northern Ireland were told they face a six-week clamp after Christmas.
Times
Coronavirus hotspots are facing further restrictions as fears mount that London commuters are driving a wave of infections in southern England. Matt Hancock, the health secretary, put the home counties into the toughest measures yesterday and urged people in Kent to “behave as if they have the virus”. Mr Hancock is understood to be considering additional curbs, including closing non-essential shops, for the worst affected areas if mass testing fails to check the wave’s momentum. The first two-week review of the tiering system resulted in a further 4.2 million people being placed in Tier 3, taking the proportion of England’s population living under the toughest regime to 68 per cent.
Telegraph
A third national lockdown will be considered if coronavirus infections continue to rise after Christmas, Downing Street has suggested. More than 38 million people in England – 68 per cent of the population – will be in Tier 3 from Saturday after large parts of the South East were plunged into the harshest level of restrictions by ministers. Tory MPs in some of the new Tier 3 areas branded the decision “ridiculous”, but Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, said he was left with no choice after infection rates surged by up to two thirds in some areas.
Mail
Ministers are mulling over a ‘Tier 4’ crackdown after Christmas, with commuting banned, non-essential shops shut and schools closed an extra week, as officials search for new plans to keep Covid case numbers under control. As Boris Johnson last night gave the green light to plunge large swathes of England’s Home Counties into Tier 3 – bringing the number of people living under the toughest restrictions to 38million – Government officials revealed even tougher measures could be on the way.
Covid
Guardian
Growing numbers of hospitals in England are running short of beds and having to divert patients elsewhere and cancel operations as the NHS struggles to cope with the resurgence of coronavirus, a Guardian analysis shows. According to the NHS figures, hospitals had to tell ambulance crews to divert patients elsewhere 44 times last week – the highest number for four years. With hospitals in London, Leicester and Northampton particularly hard hit, Chris Hopson, chief executive of NHS Providers, warned: “It already feels like we’re in the grips of a really bad winter, and there’s a very long way to go.”
ITV News
Relaxing coronavirus restrictions over Christmas could lead to an “unrelenting tsunami” of cases, a nursing chief has warned, as swathes of southern and eastern England prepare to enter the top tier of Covid-19 restrictions. More than two-thirds of the population will be living under Tier 3 measures from Saturday as the Government tries to stem rising infections which have led to fresh concerns about households mixing over the festive period. Dame Donna Kinnair, chief executive and general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing, said ministers should give “fresh and more detailed” advice to the public with a week to go until Christmas.
Yahoo News
Growing numbers of hospitals in England are running short of beds and having to divert patients elsewhere and cancel operations as the NHS struggles to cope with the resurgence of coronavirus, a Guardian analysis shows. According to the NHS figures, hospitals had to tell ambulance crews to divert patients elsewhere 44 times last week – the highest number for four years. With hospitals in London, Leicester and Northampton particularly hard hit, Chris Hopson, chief executive of NHS Providers, warned: “It already feels like we’re in the grips of a really bad winter, and there’s a very long way to go.”
Education
Express
CORONAVIRUS restrictions could be tightened even further after Christmas with ministers considering travel bans, school closures and the shutting down of non-essential shops to contain any fresh COVID-19 surges. Large areas of southeastern England will move into Tier 3 tomorrow, taking the number of people living under England’s toughest restrictions up to 38 million. London and Hertfordshire joined most of northern England and the Midlands in Tier 3 earlier in the week. But the Government may be left with no choice but to introduce a “Tier 4” if the existing measures fail to contain the spread of the virus as the number of infections continues to soar.
Sun
MILLIONS of children in England will spend an extra week at home after the Christmas holidays — while schools roll out Covid testing. In effect the Christmas holidays will continue for millions of children, with older students told to study at home and online instead. The Army is being drafted in to lend a hand to teachers, who will help carry out the swabbing of teenagers in secondary schools and colleges. Primary school kids, key workers’ children, or key exam year kids will go back as usual on their first day back, The Sun understands.
Mail
Millions of secondary school pupils in England will have their return to school delayed by up to a week after the Christmas holidays amid a Covid crisis in the classroom. Downing Street confirmed that the planned January 4 and 5 restart would now be ‘staggered’ with the use of online lessons, with full face-to-face learning beginning on January 11. It came as figures showed more than half of schools in England had coronavirus cases during the first two weeks of November’s lockdown and those aged 12-18 have the highest infection rate of any age group.
Immigrants
Telegraph
A high-speed drone boat with state-of-the-art surveillance technology is being trialled by Border Force as part of a hi-tech strategy to combat Channel migrants. The 41-foot unmanned boat with radar and camera and capable of speeds of more than 40 knots was tested on Thursday in the straits of Dover as a new technique to help detect and intercept migrant boats and catch smugglers. The boat (below), known as MADFOX and controlled from a master vessel, comes alongside plans to deploy jet skis to help Border Force agents patrol the channel after migrant crossings this year topped 8,500 – seven times the rate of 2019.
Russia
Telegraph
Russia is “flexing its muscles in Britain’s back yard” after ten warships arrived off the UK coast, the Chief of the Defence Staff has warned. Two weeks ago nearly a dozen warships and combat aircraft from Russia’s Northern, Baltic and Black Sea fleets gave a “show of force in the waters off the British and Irish coasts” General Sir Nick Carter has said. Giving his annual speech to the Royal United Services Institute, the Defence chief said: “They are flexing their muscles in our own back yard with an ostentation they have not displayed since the Cold War.
Big Ben
Telegraph
Big Ben will bong as the Brexit transition period ends at 11pm on December 31, House of Commons authorities have said. The primary reason the iconic bell is being reconnected is to fulfil its traditional role of sounding 12 times at midnight to ring in the new year. However, it will also sound an hour earlier, which is midnight in Brussels, in a historic moment likely to be seized upon by jubilant Brexiteers. The Prime Minister has pledged that whether or not he clinches a trade, security and fishing deal with the EU within the next fortnight, Britain will leave the Single Market on December 31.
Free speech
Telegraph
Two judges have struck a blow to enemies of free speech after ruling people should have the right to offend and even abuse each other without facing a police investigation. Presiding over a Court of Appeal case concerning the misgendering of a trans woman on Twitter, Lord Justice Bean and Mr Justice Warby ruled that “free speech encompasses the right to offend, and indeed to abuse another”, adding: “Freedom only to speak inoffensively is not worth having”. They said it would be a “serious interference” with the right of free speech if “those wishing to express their own views could be silenced by, or threatened with, proceedings for harassment based on subjective claims by individuals that felt offended or insulted”.
Mail
Judges have insisted that freedom of speech includes the ‘right to offend’ in a landmark ruling which could help to turn the tide on ‘woke’ intolerance after a feminist who called a transgender woman a ‘pig in a wig’ and a ‘man’ was cleared. Presiding over a case in the Court of Appeal, Lord Justice Bean and Mr Justice Warby said: ‘Freedom only to speak inoffensively is not worth having.’ They added that ‘free speech encompasses the right to offend, and indeed to abuse another’.
Christmas star
Telegraph
It is one of the central and most enduring elements of the Christmas story – the sighting of a bright star in the skies guiding the Wise Men to Bethlehem and heralding the birth of Jesus Christ. The Vatican now believes one explanation for the Star of Bethlehem may have been what is known as a ‘Great Conjunction’ of planets, in this case bringing Venus and Jupiter in close alignment and creating an unusually bright light in the sky above the Holy Land. And the cosmic phenomenon, which could have caused such awe and wonder more than 2,000 years ago, is set to take place once again – just four days before Christmas as it happens.
Well it looks a bit better than yesterday I suppose re brexit.
Surely something bad MUST happen to Hancock soon.
It would be awful if a grand piano fell off Big Ben and squashed him flat. Ruin my Christmas that would. That poor Steinway.
MWT…….I cannot believe that there is a grand piano at the top of Big Ben, a Steinway or otherwise. Now if you had said that there was a Wurlitzer organ that might have been a bit more believable. In comedy palaces of old, they built a Wurlitzer organ under the stage which rose to the top when top acts were on. Yeah I can definitely picture that when Johnson rises to speak in the House of Commons (I mean House of Laughs). Up comes the Wurlitzer organ from under the Speakers chair full blazing with that other clown Bercow tickling the keys…….
I haven’t had it carried up yet. I am thinking off hiring the Laurel and Hardy Transfer Company for the job.
L.O.L.
I doff my hat to two great men. Lord Justice Bean and Mr Justice Warby have ruled that free speech encompasses the right to criticise and offend, indeed and to abuse another. That puts the woke police into the bin and does away with their hate speech crap
Yes Mike. GOOD NEWS.
Free Speech
Is it confined to the spoken word or can it be written or even painted or portrayed.
I just wondered how it applied to say Facebook or Twitter or whether there was a differentiation between insulting or hateful
And I would like to know how one can offend or insult without penalty or censorship and what and if are the remedies against wrongful censorshipi.
I wondered about the phrase ” individuals” that felt offended or insulted, would that also include a collection of people.
How wide ranging is this judgement, does it open the possibility of an unlimited free for all I.e. We all, well many of us see it as our business to “establish” our re-found freedom, that so many cases call for investigation by the police that they just cannot cope
Kent one of the largest counties in England was was lumped into Tier 3 of Covid 19 restriction by clueless Hancock last time round on the strength that the virus was growing in Swale and Thanet. Now, he imposes Tier 3 restrictions upon Hastings and Rother Valley, but the rest of East Sussex remains in Tier 2. Where the hell is the consistency in all this. Answer, there isn’t any. Could it be that a Conservative MP has a home, or holiday home in the rest of East Sussex, or indeed is planning to stay with relatives who live in East Sussex, and don’t want their Christmas break ruined. I suggest this is nearer the truth. A notice to the Conservative Party and this ruddy awful government, I hope you are busy preparing for your nemesis this coming May. Lots of councilors will lose their seats………..
Good of Hangdog to cancel the family Boxing Day lunch out we had planned. Whatever builds the hate and breaks the zombified masses out of their compliance loop. More the merrier.
“Big Ben will bong as the Brexit transition period ends at 11pm on December 31, House of Commons authorities have said”
If Johnson fudges Brexit he deserves to be strung up by his ganglia from Big Ben at the stroke of 12.
why is the eu demanding access to our waters ,its international law its ours , why shoulld we not claim parts of the eu with all the money making companies ? Grow up we will let you buy the fish
“The Vatican now believes one explanation for the Star of Bethlehem may have been what is known as a ‘Great Conjunction’ of planets,”
Isn’t that the equivalent of shooting down your own belief system? As in: ‘We believe in miracles, except when we don’t believe in miracles’.
Even an astronomy/planetarium app. you can get for your phone or tablet etc can show the placement of the planets going back thousands of years. It’s all been looked at before, no planet conjunctions, supernova, returning comet etc.
Must have been turning over the relics of the saints to come up with that theory, still anything to distance yourself from Christianity.