EU
Telegraph
The European Union will force Britain to stick to the Northern Ireland Protocol and never abandon Dublin during tough talks over the Irish Sea border, Emmanuel Macron, the French president, warned on Thursday.
On a visit to Dublin, Mr Macron said the EU would stay united over the Northern Ireland Protocol, which the UK wants to renegotiate, as well as post-Brexit fishing rights, which have been a bone of contention between Paris and London.
“It is an existential issue for the solidarity and the unity of the European Union. So we will make sure that the agreements that are signed after very lengthy negotiations will be complied with when it comes to fisheries, or some well-known protocols,” Mr Macron said.
“For me, the European Union remains, first and foremost of political project, and we will stand by you,” he said after talks with Micheál Martin, the Irish Taoiseach.
Express
FORMER President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker said UK “deserters” would not be “welcomed with open arms”, an unearthed interview shows.
The UK officially withdrew from the European Union last year after 47 years as a member state. A majority of the British public voted to leave the bloc in the 2016 referendum, and Brexit finally became reality in January 2020. The Government has since signed a number of trade deals with non-EU nations, including a landmark free trade agreement with Australia.
Despite leaving the bloc at the beginning of last year, the UK entered a Transition Period which lasted until the end of year.
Trade, travel and freedom remained largely the same during this period.
Prior to the 2016 referendum, then-European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker warned: “I’m sure the deserters will not be welcomed with open arms.”
Brexit
Express
BREXIT has once again been overwhelmingly vindicated after it was revealed a record number of British citizenship applications from EU nationals has been reported, surging by a massive 83 percent on the previous year.
The latest figures from the Home Office for the year ending June 2021 show this has now almost doubled compared to the previous year, with a total of 74,384 applications made. This comes despite all the doom-mongering from around the EU about Brexit, with this being the highest number of applications from European Union nationals in a 12-month period since comparable records began 17 years ago.
EU nationals made up more than a third (37 percent) of citizenship applications in the latest year-long period, compared with just 12 percent in 2016 – the same year the historic Brexit referendum took place.
The Home Office confirmed Brexit played a large part in this, and said the jump in citizenship applications is likely reflected in more people looking to confirm their status in the UK following the EU referendum and Britain’s subsequent exit from the bloc.
Since March 2019, EU nationals and their family members who are residents in the UK have been able to apply to the EU Settlement Scheme to continue living in the country.
Switzerland, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein nationals and their families have also been able to apply to the scheme.
Barnier
Mail
The EU’s former chief negotiator on Brexit, Michel Barnier has announced he plans to stand as a right-wing candidate against centrist President Emmanuel Macron in next year’s presidential elections.
‘In these grave times, I have taken the decision and have the determination to stand… and be the president of a France that is reconciled, to respect the French and have France respected,’ he told the evening news show of TF1 television in a live interview on Thursday.
Barnier, who is entering an increasingly crowded field on the right, cited his long experience in politics as giving him an edge in the race including the ‘extraordinary’ negotiations to find a deal on Britain’s exit from the European Union.
He said during the years-long process he had to work ‘with heads of state and government to preserve the unity of all the European countries’.
Asked why he wanted to challenge Macron – with whom he had worked closely in the Brexit process – Barnier replied that he wanted to ‘change the country’.
Seeking to strike a more right-wing tone than the president, he spoke of needing to ‘restore the authority of the state’ as well as ‘limit and have control over immigration’, reaffirming a proposal for a moratorium on arrival.
Similar stories appear in Telegraph, Guardian, Times, Order-order
GDPR
Mail
Web users have today welcomed government plans to roll back on flagship EU data laws that will scrap online cookie requests in the first post-Brexit shakeup of the UK digital economy.
The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport announced plans to reshape the UK’s data legislation in an effort to boost growth and increase trade post-Brexit.
Speaking to The Telegraph, Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden said the Government intends to peel away from key parts of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, which came into force in 2018.
Mr Dowden explained the UK wanted to shape data laws that were based on ‘common sense, not box-ticking’ as they forged their own legislation after leaving the bloc.
He signalled that the reforms will cut down on ‘pointless’ cookie banners, which are used by organisations to secure consent for storing data when using their websites.
A similar story appears in Guardian
Vaccine
Mail
Scientists were at war over vaccinating children against Covid today after it was revealed the NHS has put plans in place to jab secondary school pupils without their parent’s consent.
Health service bosses have told trusts to be ready to roll out jabs to all 12 to 15-year-olds in two weeks, in a sign the country is edging closer towards routinely jabbing youngsters.
Experts pushing back against the move today argued it may be better for children to catch Covid and recover to develop natural immunity than to be reliant on protection from vaccines, which studies suggest wanes in months.
Professor David Livermore, a medical microbiologist at the University of East Anglia, said the world will need to live with Covid for years if not decades — so having a generation of children with natural immunity would help prevent cases spiralling later down the line.
He said natural infection could be a ‘a better first step in the lifelong co-existence’ with the virus than rolling out the jabs.
Blood clots
Mail
The risk of blood clots is ‘much higher’ in people who catch Covid compared to those who get a Covid jab, a major UK study has found.
Britain, like several other countries in Europe, currently does not give the AstraZeneca vaccine to people under 40 after it was linked to clotting disorders in the spring.
But the latest Oxford University study suggests the risk from clots is higher from the virus itself than the British-made vaccine.
In the biggest study of its kind, researchers looked at the medical records of 29million people in England who had either tested positive or had a vaccine by April.
Among those who caught Covid, 12,614 per 10million suffered blood clots in a vein who would not have otherwise developed the condition.
Whereas the risk among those given the AstraZeneca vaccine was significantly lower at 66 per 10million.
A similar story appears in Guardian
GPs
Telegraph
GPs will receive pay boosts for carrying out online consultations under an NHS deal, as new data show the number of face-to-face consultations is falling.
On Thursday night, campaigners for the elderly urged the Government to “get a grip” on the situation, saying the system was preventing the most vulnerable from getting the care they need.
In May, health officials promised to abandon a system of “total triage”, introduced during the Covid pandemic, which meant patients seeking appointments had to first undergo an online or phone assessment.
New guidance promised patients the right to see a GP in person, with doctors told to respect their preferences.
Last week The Telegraph revealed that since then – despite the easing of lockdown restrictions – access to practices has remained unchanged. Now new monthly figures show the situation has deteriorated, with 420,000 fewer face to face appointments in July.
Petrol
Express
E10 PETROL will be hitting forecourts in the coming weeks as drivers look to swap to the new standard of unleaded petrol, but does the future of renewable petrol lie elsewhere?
The new petrol changes will be coming in September and will replace E5 fuel, which will be reclassified in the form of super-unleaded. Around 600,000 cars will not be compatible with the new fuel, with some drivers fearing they could be left with higher costs.
With the Government pushing for a more sustainable future and the development of E10, some are wondering what the next few years holds and how renewable petrol can get.
Other countries have been using higher petrol with higher grade bioethanol in for many years, with some of Europe having used E10 for years and a small handful using E85 fuel, like Sweden and France.
Afghanistan
Mail
US President Joe Biden promised on Thursday to hunt down and destroy the ISIS-K terrorists who killed 13 American service personnel and dozens of Afghans in a double suicide attack on Kabul airport.
He made the retaliation threat last night as he joined Boris Johnson in vowing to continue the evacuation efforts despite a ‘continued’ risk of further bombings by the terrorist group which is an enemy of the Taliban who are in control of the country.
The jihadist group, an off-shoot of the terrorist organisation Islamic State (IS), last night claimed responsibility for double bombing, which is believed to have killed at least 90 people and injured more than 150 others.
Biden paid tribute to the ‘selfless heroes’ who died helping vulnerable people to safety, but delivered a stern warning to the Islamic state offshoot behind the blasts that killed 11 U.S. Marines, a Navy medic and another service member screening evacuees at the airport gates.
A similar story appears in Guardian
Express
SURVIVORS of the bomb blasts at Kabul airport have described apocalyptical scenes of destruction and human suffering.
One man witnessed horrifying scenes of body parts flying in the air “like a tornado taking plastic bags”. On Thursday, two suicide bombers and gunmen attacked crowds of people attempting to reach Kabul’s international airport. The devastating attacks killed at least 60 Afghans and 12 US troops, according to officials.
Many others have been injured and left traumatised by the horrific events.
An IS affiliate, known as The Islamic State-Khorasan Province, later claimed responsibility for the terror strike.
An Afghan man told Reuters that he had seen “doomsday”, as he gave a graphic description of the carnage unleashed by the deadly blasts.
The man, who wants to remain anonymous, is a former employee of an international development group and has a US immigrant visa.
Similar stories appear in Telegraph, Sun, Independent, Morning Star, Times, BBC News, Breitbart
Refugees
Express
SADIQ KHAN has sparked a backlash on social media over his plans to resettle Afghan refugees in London during a housing crisis in the capital.
The London Mayor has today confirmed plans to help councils and housing associations support the arrival of refugees from Afghanistan. Mr Khan said he will expand his new Right to Buy-back fund to help councils purchase homes which could be used to resettle families fleeing the Taliban.
London councils can submit bids via the scheme which allows authorities to buy former council homes back from the private sector.
In a letter, Mr Khan described the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan as “devastating” and says London has a “proud history of providing sanctuary”.
The Government announced it will resettle 5,000 of the most vulnerable Afghan refugees this year and 20,000 in the long-term.
A similar story appears in Evening Standard
Telegraph
Pontins holiday parks are being considered as temporary housing for Afghan evacuees arriving in Britain, it has emerged.
Government sources told The Telegraph on Thursday that Pontins had expressed interest in offering some of its sites in a bid to help accommodate hundreds of families fleeing the Taliban.
Two specific sites are thought to have been looked at by Home Office officials, with ministers yet to make a final decision. The holiday resort firm has six locations in England and Wales.
James Heappey, the defence minister, said on Thursday that eight RAF flights had managed to lift 1,988 people from Kabul within the past 24 hours, taking the total since the Taliban took power to 12,279.
Border Force officials have reported numerous large families arriving in Britain, including a family with 20 members landing at Heathrow this week.
Councils are preparing to rent private homes and buy or even build additional properties due to a shortage of big enough houses for some of the fleeing families, The Telegraph revealed at the weekend.
A similar story appears in Times
Chinese weapons
Mail
The attacks have long been as puzzling as they are disturbing — strange, high-pitched sounds that victims have sometimes described as a loud ringing or scraping and, at other times, as electronic or even like the chirping of a particularly insistent cricket.
They can be ear-splittingly loud or barely audible, just as the symptoms have been in some cases minor and in others, devastating.
But there is rather more clarity over who is being targeted — U.S. government spies, diplomats and their families. More than 130 of them across the world have succumbed to what has been dubbed ‘Havana Syndrome’, after the place where it began five years ago. About 100 CIA agents and their loved ones are reportedly among the victims.
And if the mystery assault — which has been attributed to a microwave or a sonic weapon — really is, as Washington believes, an attack by a hostile power, it has finally scored a top-level ‘hit’.
Mail
An advanced Chinese weapon has taken down an unmanned aircraft with a powerful electromagnetic pulse in the first known field test of the Beijing technology.
The electromagnetic pulse (EMP) weapon was fired at the aircraft while it was flying 1,500 metres (4,920ft) above sea level before crashing down.
The experiment, conducted by Chinese defence contractor China Electronics Technology Group (CETC), is thought to be China’s first openly reported field test of an electromagnetic pulse weapon in the race to catch up with the US.
The EMP weapon used in the test operated within a narrow band, meaning the microwave beam it produced was designed to have a longer firing range.
EMP weapons research has been around since the 1950s when the EMP from nuclear weapons was first experienced. So the Chinese are just cribbing again.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_pulse
GDPR. Yes it’s a pain in the wotsit but I always say no to everything I can. It’s not that I care what adverts are beamed at me. I learned as a child to ignore them.
It’s more that I consider it an intrusion of my privacy for anyone to find out where I live, or where I am at the moment.
If that is/was an EU ‘data law’ I’m surprised something sensible came from there!
Why does our government, apparently, want to scrap it?
Undoubtedly it is to strengthen their present Dictatorship regime.
And a linked topic. I’ve just been trying to find out whether our Land Line telephones will continue to work if/when the electricity goes off.
Nearest I can get to ‘fact’ is that at present they would but in 2025 the land line telephone network is to go digital and then they need mains electricity to work!
Derr . . . What if your telephone socket is many yards away from any electricity socket?
In my case of course, I had to sort this when I installed a home hub for this computer. Up to then the phone plugged into the phone socket, full stop.
What about all the many mainly elderly people who do not have inter net or even mobile phones.
Any way, why should phones going digital make a difference?
Pauline….GDPR was foisted upon us by the European Union when were part of that dire and undemocratic organisation. This piece of legislation needs to be got rid of as it is an administrative nightmare for any organisation whether it be commercial company, political party or a tiddly winks club. When I was chairman of a UKIP local constituency association we produced a quarterly newsletter which was hand delivered to members addresses. One of our supposed members who never lifted a finger to help out came to the door and told me that if I ever came delivering the newsletter again I would be reported for breaching GDPR as he he never gave permission for anyone to deliver anything to the door. I reworded a GDPR form requesting permission to email, post or deliver in person and sent this member one in the post whereas the others were hand delivered to members , and received an email stating he did want anything sent by post either. So we more or less struck him off the branch membership list which Head Office agreed with. The daft thing is that this chap sill continued to pay his annual subscription
O.k. Colin. I’ll give way on that one. You raised a chuckle!
I’ve no intention of carrying my computer around or owning a smart phone so maybe I can evade the dictatorship for the rest of my time on planet Earth anyway.
Jack Thomas, you are certainly right there. Our government run by an utterly naive clown are a bloody disgrace. Everything that my forefathers fought and died for in both WW1 and WW2 has been undone and trashed. They have no conscience and no shame….
The Afghan Prime Minister, Is a role lodel.
A ‘role lodel’…………is this a timelord phrase?
A lodel is a thin pale semi idiot left wing wind up Zombie. Kept for display purposes to be trotted out When nobody else is brave enough to attract odium.
TG Stokes……I have just googled ‘lodel’ and funnily enough it does exist, but not the explanation you gave which sounds like something out of the Tardis. It is however a web publishing system and the name of a 900w heater, so there you have it……..
I think my lodel is more fun. Better than a boring old bit o hot wire + a few bits of brightly shiney other bits to sell it. ( consumerism ) but just waste money.900 W is a very suspicious number. Where went the 100W amount ( Backhander to electricity exploiters.and invoice distributors ? )
Well here goes, Inflation has now started . Shortages will be next, Tax changes next.( rises will come later) . The mixture of Benefits and taxes and spending and corruption will be juggled but nothing will help. A few corruptions will come to light simply because there won’t be the money…But the corruption will be the very last thing to collapse I think ( Possibly ). But it’ll all take a longish time. Localism is the thing to survive on…… But there’s lots of competition for the positions of horseman. My money is on currencies !!!! But coming up hard on the rails is pestilence, ridden by NHS
Incidentally, Politicians win in the good times. Armies and fighters win in the bad times. It’s time to get rid of politics. Just nobody realises yet.. but it’s time to increase the Armed Forces. But every well born little p***k wil become an officer if we aren’t careful. Sending young officers over the top first, weeded out the unlucky, incompetent, and foolish.. So that was lucky.
I absolutely agree with restoring our armed forces. Perhaps they could be our salvation being of the people, for the most part, rather than of the “elite”. I’ve experienced a few coups elsewhere, the most recent getting rid of a seriously corrupt government and going on to expose a good deal of corruption in general. They did a good job and the general who assumed the role of PM was on TV every evening explaining his policies and plans.
However, for a country of broadly similar population (at the time) that military were over twice the strength. No wonder Blair cut their numbers. Increasing their strength might be a good way to deal with unemployment after the Covid fiasco.
The vast majority of those who went over the top first in WW1 trenches were Privates and NCO’s, not officers. Come on TG Spokes get a grip…….
TG Spokes is correct. The officers were expected to lead, so they were first over the top. The life expectancy of a 2nd Lieutenant at the front was brutally brief.
We owe them and the others that fought for our country. We should have a government that respects and preserves what they fought for, not one intent on trashing everything in subservience to the evil globalists.
Richard Mawdsley, the same could be said of anybody serving in the trenches including my grandfather who was an Army regular before WW1 with 1st Battalion Royal West Kent Regiment and one one of the Old Contemptibles having fought in the first battles in 1914. He was gassed twice, received bullet wounds several times, taken prisoner of the Germans in 1918, suffered lung problems for the rest of his life as a result of gassing, and died with a bullet lodged in his leg and another in the back.