EU
Express
THE EU is seeking to create an “all-Ireland economy” amid a row over the hated Brexit deal.
Liz Truss announced earlier May plans to introduce legislations overriding parts of the Northern Ireland Protocol, which keeps the country in the EU Single Market and erects customs borders with the UK. The EU and Dublin have pushed back on the UK’s attempts to change the protocol, with Brussels saying any act breaches international law.
Daniel Hannan, Adviser to the UK Board of Trade and former Conservative MEP, said on Twitter the EU’s “defence of the Protocol is based on a lie”.
He added the EU’s stated objectives, including “keeping sausages out of Donegal”, are “not its real objectives”, which are “creating an all-Ireland economy”.
Express
FRUIT and veg produced in the European Union are STILL riddled with dangerous chemicals, flying in the face of repeated pledges by member states to phase them out.
The startling revelation was contained in a report published by the Pesticide Action Network (PAN-Europe) this week revealing almost a third of apples and nearly half of all blackberries analysed had traces of chemicals used in the most toxic types of pesticides, linked to cancers, cardiovascular problems and diabetes. And former Brexit Party MEP Ben Habib said the concerning statistics proved why Britain’s decision to quit the bloc was the right one all along.
The analysis, based on almost 100,000 samples, highlights a 53 percent increase in contamination by the most hazardous pesticides found in fruit over the period 2011-2019. Toxic substances found in kiwi fruit rocketed from four percent over the eight year period, with more than half of the cherries likewise contaminated in 2019.
The European Union is committed to halving the use and risk from pesticides by 2030, in accordance with its Farm to Fork strategy.
Windfall tax
Mail
Rishi Sunak has said the inflationary impact of his cost-of-living spending spree will be ‘manageable’ as he unveiled a £21billion giveaway to help families amid the crisis.
Despite warnings of a sting in the tail of higher taxes and borrowing, the Chancellor said every household would get £400 off energy bills. The neediest will pocket as much as £1,500.
He also imposed a £5billion windfall tax on oil and gas giants, while the rest of the spending package will be paid for by borrowing.
Mr Sunak declared the Government would never ‘sit idly by while there is a risk that some in our country might be set so far back they might never recover’.
And he said the measures were more generous than those sought by Labour.
Mr Sunak acknowledged his spending spree could have an ‘inflationary impact’ but insisted it was ‘manageable’ because most of the cash was directed toward people who would otherwise struggle to pay their bills.
ITV News
Chancellor Rishi Sunak has performed a dramatic U-turn on a windfall tax in order to raise cash for a new package of support to help with the cost of living.
What support has the chancellor announced?
Eight million of the lowest income households – those on Universal Credit, Tax Credits, Pension Credit and legacy benefits – will be receive a one-off payment of £650. It will come in two payments; one in July and another in the autumn
Pensioners will get an extra £300 via winter fuel payments
There’ll be a one-off disability cost-of-living payment of £150 for those in receipt of Personal Independence Payments.
Mr Sunak also doubled a planned £200 energy support grant coming in the autumn to £400 and cancelled the planned repayments.
Morning Star
RISHI SUNAK was accused of offering little more than knee-jerk “quick fixes” today after he was shamed into pledging financial support for households suffering in the cost-of-living crisis and U-turning on a windfall tax of energy firms.
The Chancellor was forced to add emergency measures to a £15 billion package aimed at lessening the impact of soaring inflation, including offering millions a £400 discount grant off their energy bills and a £5bn levy on oil and gas giants.
As well as ringfencing £6bn for the universal payment from October — which does not have to be paid back and replaces his initial plan for a £200 loan — there was targeted support for the poorest, elderly and disabled, Mr Sunak told MPs.
Independent
Rishi Sunak has been accused of risking Britain’s reputation as a climate leader by announcing tax relief measures that will encourage energy firms to invest in fossil fuel extraction during a climate emergency.
Climate groups and opposition politicians rebuked the chancellor for incentivising oil and gas extraction when climate scientists, the United Nations and the International Energy Agency have made it clear that the world needs to stop new investment in fossil fuels.
“It’s bone-headedly stupid, even by this government’s low standards, not only to allow but in fact to incentivise the production of new climate-wrecking fossil fuels, rather than keeping them firmly in the ground where they belong,” Green MP Caroline Lucas told The Independent.
Guardian
Rishi Sunak bowed to months of pressure over the cost of living crisis with a £15bn package of support, part-funded by executing a remarkable U-turn to impose a windfall tax on energy companies.
Announcing the measures on Thursday, in a bruising week for the government, the chancellor said his “significant set of interventions” would help the poorest in society – with a one-off £650 payment for 8 million families on means-tested benefits, alongside an extra £200 for all energy bill payers that will not have to be repaid.
After months of rejecting Labour calls for a windfall tax on energy giants, Sunak announced what he called a “temporary targeted energy profits levy”, which is expected to raise £5bn.
Evening Standard
Rishi Sunak has insisted he did not time handing out £21 billion worth of cost-of-living support to deflect from the controversy over Downing Street lockdown parties.
The Chancellor bowed to demands for the UK Government to step in and help households to deal with ballooning energy bills and rising shop prices, which are being fuelled by 40-year-high inflation, by revealing an emergency package of extra cash for millions of people.
Every household will receive a £400 energy bill discount while extra support was also unveiled for the lowest paid, pensioners and those with disabilities.
Under the plans, almost all of the eight million most vulnerable households could receive at least £1,200 of support, including a previously-announced £150 council tax rebate.
NHS
Telegraph
Patients needing a GP should be able to see one on the same day, according to a major review that warns the current system is on the brink of collapse.
The report, commissioned by NHS chiefs, says the current model is “not fit for purpose” with patient satisfaction at an “all-time low”.
Dr Claire Fuller, who led the review, said too many patients are left “scrambling” for appointments, with “inadequate” access to urgent care.
She said the current system was far too “fragmented” with patients able to secure help far more easily if the model was streamlined.
Dr Fuller said every area should create “neighbourhood teams” to coordinate community care, and make sure urgent care takes priority.
Under the current system, those trying to secure such help can be unsure whether to try their Accident & Emergency department, urgent treatment unit, GP, 111, or local pharmacy, and can be sent from one to the other.
She called for “a single, system-wide approach” to managing urgent care, to “guarantee same-day care for patients”.
Times
Specialist doctors such as paediatricians and respiratory consultants are set to be moved out of hospitals to work alongside GPs in the heart of local communities, after a major NHS review.
Instead of going to hospital for care, patients will instead be looked after by “neighbourhood teams” in their local area where they can see specialist doctors as well as general practitioners.
Dr Claire Fuller, of the Surrey Heartlands Integrated Care System who was commissioned by the NHS to undertake a “stocktake” of non-hospital care, warned that without action, England’s GP system “will become unsustainable in a relatively short period of time”.
She reported “real signs of genuine and growing discontent with primary care.
Morning Star
A SOUTH London hospital faces “severe disruption” when outsourced staff go on strike next week over pay and working conditions, the GMB union warned today.
Cleaners and hostesses employed by contractor Mitie at St George’s Hospital in Tooting are to stage a 24-hour walkout on Monday, followed by a further strike on June 6 and 7.
The industrial action comes after the union accused the contractor of withholding workers’ wages for seven weeks during pay cycle restructuring.
Bosses are also threatening a permanent withdrawal of overtime opportunities for the strikers, who want St George’s NHS Trust to bring the services they provide back in-house, GMB said.
Boris
Telegraph
A former Conservative cabinet minister, Rory Stewart, has said that the entire Downing Street operation is now focused solely on trying to keep “monstrous ego” Boris Johnson in power.
He warned of the erosion of trust in British politics and compared the current leadership to that of convicted fraudster and former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.
Meanwhile, the security guards and cleaners who work in government offices are going to protest against Whitehall’s “culture of disrespect” towards cleaning and security staff outside of Downing Street on Friday.
According to the United Voices of the World (UVW) union, the protest is meant to put more pressure on Mr Johnson to resign.
Times
A defiant Boris Johnson claimed he had been “vindicated” by Sue Gray’s report even though she laid out “failures of leadership” at the heart of government for which the prime minister must take responsibility.
Gray’s report described 15 gatherings while Britain was under coronavirus restrictions, one of which stretched beyond four in the morning, and another that involved karaoke, vomit and a “minor altercation”.
She also recounted “multiple examples of a lack of respect and poor treatment of security and cleaning staff,” which she said was “unacceptable”.
The prime minister insisted that he took “full responsibility for everything that took place on my watch”, telling MPs: “I am humbled and I have learnt a lesson”.
Evening Standard
There is no “clear evidence” that Boris Johnson breached lockdown regulations more than once, according to the Metropolitan Police.
Acting Met Commissioner Sir Stephen House was grilled by members of the London Assembly on Thursday afternoon following the conclusion of Scotland Yard’s investigation into “partygate”.
The Met has come under increasing pressure to justify why the Prime Minister was not fined for attending a party during lockdown after pictures emerged this week that showed him at a booze-filled gathering which was supposedly a leaving do for aide Lee Caine.
Russia
Independent
A Russian news outlet has claimed the rising cost of living in the UK may soon force people to resort to cannibalism.
Citing an article by Jeremy Clarkson in which the ex-Top Gear presenter joked about Britons eating their neighbours, TsargradTV said “journalists begin to say terrible things aloud, reminding them of the risk of cannibalism”.
“Things are not going well in the UK. While politicians are playing into the Ukrainian crisis, their own population is preparing for starvation,” the Russian media report said.
UK foreign secretary Liz Truss has accused Russian president Vladimir Putin of holding the world to ransom over food and that he is “weaponising hunger”.
Metro
Russians are now being told that Brits are resorting to cannibalism to get through the cost of living crisis.
Pro-Kremlin outlet TsargradTV has blamed – and dramatically exaggerated – the UK’s economic issues on sanctions against Russia.
Britain’s support for Ukraine has supposedly backfired so badly that the population has been left with no choice but to eat each other, the station suggested.
TsargradTV claimed that the UK had fallen victim to the ‘risk of cannibalism’, as Europe faces ‘starvation’.
The outlet, owned by Putin-supporting businessman Konstantin Malofeev, published a story this week called ‘Cold, Hunger, Cannibalism: London fell into its own Ukrainian pit.’
It read: ‘Things are not going well in the UK. While politicians are playing into the Ukrainian crisis, their own population is preparing for starvation.
‘And journalists begin to say terrible things aloud, reminding them of the risk of cannibalism.
Mail
President Putin’s protégé Ramzan Kadyrov, the leader of the Chechen Republic, has threatened to launch a military attack on Poland in retaliation for its steadfast support for Ukraine.
Warsaw has been one of President Zelensky’s strongest allies throughout the three-month invasion by Russian forces.
Poland has acted as a gateway for thousands of Ukrainian refugees fleeing to the west, and it has also stood up to Russia in the European Parliament by urging a ban on Russian gas and oil imports, The Telegraph reports.
Telegraph
Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian President, has accused Moscow of pursuing an “obvious policy of genocide” in the Donbas, after failing to take the capital Kyiv
In his nightly televised address, Mr Zelensky said Russian bombardments could leave the entire region of Donbas “uninhabited”.
Ukraine has been losing patience with what it views as the West’s failure to quickly arm the country and impose a ban on Russian oil exports on top of punishing economic sanctions already in place.
Sun
UKRAINIAN President, Volodymyr Zelensky, has accused Moscow of pursuing an “obvious policy of genocide” in the Donbas, after failing to take the capital Kyiv.
In his nightly televised address, Mr Zelensky said Russian bombardments could leave the entire region of Donbas “uninhabited”.
“All this, including the deportation of our people and the mass killings of civilians, is an obvious policy of genocide pursued by Russia,” he said.
Mirror
Russian forces have allegedly used catastrophic thermobaric warheads to blast Ukrainian positions – and the defending military is now calling for NATO to urgently supply it with similar weapons.
The Ukrainian Ministry of Defence (MoD) said the Russians used a TOS-1 multiple rocket launcher to strike at Ukrainian targets near Novomykhailivka in the eastern region of Donetsk Oblast.
The horrendous 30-barrel or 24-barrel multiple rocket launcher is capable of firing thermobaric warheads, a type of explosive that uses oxygen in the surrounding area to generate a high-temperature blast.
Ukraine has described Moscow’s invasion the “largest and most horrific war of the 21st century” and appealed to NATO to supply its forces with similar Multiple Launch Rocket Systems as a matter of urgency.
Evening Standard
Vladimir Putin is sending previously mothballed 50-year-old T-62 tanks into Ukraine after losing nearly 1,000 of the heavily armoured vehicles, say western defence chiefs.
They stressed that the T-62 tanks had been taken out of “deep storage” to be deployed into southern Ukraine where Russian troops are seeking to occupy seized territory.
But the ageing vehicles are expected to be “particularly vulnerable” to anti-tank weapons.
The decision to deploy them was said to highlight “Russia’s shortage of modern, combat-ready equipment”.
Guardian
A group of Russian hackers is believed to be behind the release of a cache of emails obtained from a former director of MI6 and other Brexiters unhappy with Theresa May’s failure to negotiate a “clean” EU exit deal.
Google said the “clumsy campaign” bore the hallmarks of a Russian group it called Coldriver – and the hackers published the correspondence under the title “Very English Coop d’Etat”, claiming it revealed the existence of shadowy group of pro-Brexit plotters.
But the principal cluster of emails – dated from August 2018 to July 2019 – instead appears to show a group of Brexiters frustrated with May’s willingness to seek compromises with the EU and their attempts to campaign against it.
Press freedom
Mail
Press freedom will remain under threat unless ministers honour a vow to protect legitimate journalism from censorship, MPs were told yesterday.
The Government has promised to strengthen the Online Safety Bill so that social media platforms have to notify recognised news publishers if they intend to block or take down news content.
The amendment, which will also ensure such content remains online until an appeal, was announced in March but has yet to be revealed in detail.
The News Media Association, which represents local, regional, and national publishers, yesterday said it believed the Government was trying to protect free speech but would fail to do so unless extra protections were added.
Fish & chips
Telegraph
Ministers are preparing to hit Russian seafood imports with punitive trade tariffs in a move that could cripple Britain’s fish and chips shops.
Government sources said there is a “clear intention” to include Russian whitefish exports, including cod and haddock, in an upcoming wave of sanctions against Moscow.
“It is included on a list of Russian products we’ve said we intend to introduce tariffs on,” a government source told The Telegraph on Thursday.
“There are no timescales on when we intend to introduce the tariffs but we’ve made it very clear we intend to introduce them.”
Whitefish was originally amongst the Russian exports earmarked to be slapped with a 35 per cent tariff by the UK in March in response to Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, but was eventually left out.
Mail
Fish and chip shops say government sanctions on Russian cod and haddock could drive many of them to bankruptcy.
Ministers are planning to impose punitive trade tariffs on whitefish exports from the country in response to Vladimir Putin‘s invasion of Ukraine.
Government sources said: ‘It is included on a list of Russian products we’ve said we intend to introduce tariffs on.’
They told The Daily Telegraph: ‘There are no timescales on when we intend to introduce the tariffs but we’ve made it very clear we intend to introduce them.’
Monkeypox
Mirror
Monkeypox patients should give their pets a wide berth, according to the latest guidance released by European health authorities.
They have even gone so far as to recommending that household rodents – as these are the most susceptible to the disease – such as mice, guinea pigs, hamsters and gerbils should be isolated in government laboratories or even culled.
Culling has been deemed a last-resort measure, where monitored isolation and regular testing is impractical, although it has been mooted as a way of halting the disease’s progress in regions affected.
“Rodent pets should ideally be isolated in monitored facilities, complying with respiratory isolation (eg. a laboratory) and animal welfare conditions (e.g. government facilities, kennels or animal welfare organisations), and tested (by PCR) for exposure before quarantine ends,” said the European Centre for Disease Control.
“Euthanasia should only be a last resort reserved to situations where testing and/or isolation are not feasible.”
Nigel Farage was right last to announce on his GB News programme (Farage at Large) from Aylesbury that the Home Office had released the numbers of legal immigration into Britain, which numbers a huge 830,000 people during the past year, and that doesn’t include the numbers of people coming into the country illegally via boats across the English Channel and in the back of lorries etc. This figure drew gasps of anger from the assembled audience, and of course Farage was right to say that these figures were bigger than those which came into the country under Tony Blair and the Labour government, and that the number of immigrants coming into the country would change our way of life, and more importantly that Boris Johnson doesn’t care, and that this was the biggest betrayal of Brexit. Farage has released a video today to expand upon all of this, but from my perspective this problem and the many other problems being ignored by Johnson and his unconservative and shambolic crew, highlight the reason why we need an alternative right of centre political party to vote for, and one which should be led by Nigel Farage himself. I live in hope but hopes are fading. Its too easy to snipe away at the sidelines, and we the electorate need more than this. We need someone to provide proper leadership, which we are being starved of. Come on Nigel, step up to the plate………….
Thanks Debbie. Some of it – well you have to laugh, don’t you.
Very noticeable how Sunak has been misreported in most MSM.
His ‘windfall tax’ is in fact designed to redirect company profits towards the dreaded fossil fuels. Good for him, slipping that past carbon neutral mad Boris!
Of course Climate Groups (?) and opposition politicians (?) noticed.
The Express has published 2 very good reports. First that the EU is trying to get an ‘All Ireland economy’. Though it says that our proposed changes to the protocol would break international law, when in fact they wouldn’t.
Second that EU food is loaded with dangerous chemicals which they promised to reduce.
Sorry folks. Much as I would like to boycott any goods from the EU, I really do have to buy from my one and only nearby shop and from Amazon.
“Rishi Sunak has been accused of risking Britain’s reputation as a climate leader”!
Time to bin the whole business of lies and manipulated “data”; we neither need nor want to be a “climate leader” i.e. a government supporting the globalists’ policies which are clearly designed to destroy life as we know it whilst they wallow in extravagance to their heart’s content.
Hear hear Jack Thomas at 2.19pm.
I second that Pauline re Jack Thomas’ comment.
Jermany is shutting down its nasty carbon free nuclear industry.
Meanwhile it plans to buy up large amounts of horribly expensive BidenLand liquefied natural gas (LNG).
And small problem. It doesn’t yet have import terminals of its own. And probably not the facilities to handle it.
The LNG will be landed at Milford Haven and sent through our N. Sea pipelines to Euroland all through the Summer to top up their storage.
Simple.
Italy’s Corriere della Sera newspaper ran a report on Thursday claiming UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has reportedly suggested that Ukraine join a new alliance, which London is supposedly seeking to establish as a structure parallel to the EU.
Includes the Ukraine, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania.
Servitude / common market by the backdoor anyone?
Did you vote for this or did we miss the Commons vote?
One off payments to offset energy costs are pointless. Borrowed money has to be paid back. Only the brain dead can’t understand this. We have a parasite class in our society that are too idle to pay their way. Various governments shower them with money to buy their votes. Maybe non-workers shouldn’t have a vote?
The price of fossil fuels will continue to rise, we need to get off our dependence on them as soon as possible. We should have been doing this long before we actually started.
It’s not a case of “eat or heat”. It’s a case of getting rid of non-essential luxuries. And making sure there’s a man in your life to support your children. If there’s not, it’s entirely your own fault, why should the taxpayer foot the bill for your stupidity?
Harryagain………..maybe you’re right some things you say for instance buying votes, but don’t all parties do that when they are in power. However as I understand it these one off payments will come from the windfall tax imposed on energy companies and oil companies and not directly from the exchequer. Also I think I read somewhere that these payments will not be paid this year but next year, or perhaps never, who knows. So far I haven’t seen head or tail of the supposed £150.00 rebate on Council Tax yet. Was that just another promise which will never be fulfilled courtesy of the bumbling clown in Downing Street. He thinks he is off the hook, but he and his party will be cast aside by the electorate at the next general election, so only have less than two years to try and turn things around, but the only thing clowns are good for is throwing custard pies in faces, and in his case ours, the electorate who he treats with utter contempt.
CH- I agree with much of what you say.
However, “he and his party will be cast aside by the electorate at the next general election”.
One week after the local elections, I posted the ‘money where your mouth is’ (betting figures) compared to the day before the locals.
It was to be the defining moment, to blow the PM to bits electorally; Tory meltdown; PM cast aside, thousands of council losses; and on and on.
There was hardly a hap’orth of difference, before and after. And yes a (very) few councils were turned over.
Our Churchillian PM walks on water and with partygate done and dusted, covid a nasty dream, right or wrong, I dont see anything changing.
Now if there was a more credible alternative PM in the wings . . . but there is not.
Biscotte……I don’t believe it, you agreeing with much of what I wrote. I called Boris Johnson a bumbling clown yet again, so almost but not quite a daily tirade of venom against him. However, it is a very poor excuse for anybody to state that there isn’t an alternative leader or prime minister waiting in the wings. Nobody can tell me that a party with 380 MP’s in the House of Commons not one of the them has the required calibre and ability to become even a half decent leader and prime minister of this country. And even if this was the case, then it it is a pretty poor show to be honest, and that is how dictatorships come about. The problem is that Johnson is not even a half decent leader of his party or prime minister, and that has now been laid bare for all to see. In truth he is just about the most incompetent prime minister to ever stepped over the threshold of 10, Downing Street and taken hold of the keys. Its almost as if he has never left behind his old Bullingdon Club days. There must be someone in that party who is being groomed to take on the role, and if there is isn’t there should be. I can think of a few likely candidates who are capable of taking on the role, and I am not even a member of the Conservative Party. In fact at the moment, a member of no party at all
Colin Then it is time you did set an example and join a political party!
Colin at 9.26 am. (and Biscotte).
I do not think there is any point in answering Harry Again’s twaddle. It seems to be getting worse and worse.
At one time I suspected that he was being financed by some ‘pressure group’. I suppose it could be XReb. They have always seemed a bit mad.
But H.A. now seems to be totally mad. (Oops, I suppose that is ad hominem.) I’ll rephrase it. His comments are totally mad.
Pauline………well, some of what Harryagain/Harold Armitage writes is twaddle, but I don’t think he is being financed by any pressure group, because politically he seems to be a Boris Johnson supporter and thereby a Conservative supporter. It stands out like a sore thumb. However I also think he says things deliberately to gain a response. Just like me when I embark upon a daily anti Johnson tirade when either Biscotte or Phil O’Sophical replies and bites my head off. Its all part of life’s rich tapestry, and in politics of course one has to have a thick skin…..
Jake……..at the present time there isn’t a party worth joining. UKIP are going nowhere. At the local elections this year they made no impact whatsoever in the handful of seats that they contested. In fact they lost one existing seat. Reform are not going anywhere either, and will not do so under the present bland and uninspiring leadership. I did intend to re-join the Heritage Party but they have re-affirmed that one of their major planks of policy is pro-life. In an ideal world it would be great, but mistakes happen and this issue is very contentious and what’s more a vote loser and was one of the reasons I allowed my membership to lapse. However, I was quite impressed with what William Clouston had to say on Dewbs and Co on GB News earlier this week. He is the leader of the SDP, but apart from his appearance on that programme I’ve never seen head or tail from them anywhere. A political party in my opinion has to be pro-active and they seem the opposite. So Jake, I have no idea where to go politically, but live in hope that Farage will eventually see the light and realise what needs to be done and forms a new right of centre party. Only he has the capacity to do this..
The windfall tax will cover only about 20% of the fuel subsidy. The rest will be more borrowed money. As if we weren’t enough in debt.
Conspiracy theory:-
The government will let inflation rip to get rid of this debt. Tough if you have any savings. Buy a second house now if you can. Or gold sovereigns and keep them under thebed.
So-called renewable, more aptly ruinable, energy is not reliable, is not viable without huge subsidies and without permanent back up from fossil fuels, and destabilises grid supply. Not to mention despoiling vast areas of landscaped and seascape and turning farmland into silicon deserts, just when we need every viable acre for food. What’s not to like? We need to get off our drive to dependence on them as soon as possible.
But I do agree that the government borrowing even more money to give us back a few pennies is an insult. Pointless gesture politics. Throwing sprats to sea lions; we’ll all be told to clap Rishi next, and many will. And a windfall tax is economically illiterate; every time it has been tried it has led to less tax being taken and industrial stagnation. But that seems to be the globalist aim, so we shouldn’t be surprised. Klaus Schwab is the future, or so he tells us.
Fossil fuels are running out. Burning them is killing us all.
There Is No Alternative.
The last countries to have any will be able to charge what they like. (EG the Russians).
We need to be completely independent.
Phil O’S. You are right in what you say about the so called renewables.
Bojo and/or Carrie think they have their place secure in the globalist’s new world order.
I wonder whether Harry Again has!