Brexit
Express
MICHEL Barnier issued a warning to Boris Johnson about the “severe” risks the UK could face should the British Government fail to respect the Brexit trade agreement.
Michel Barnier issues his warning at a time of brittle relations between the UK and the European Union over the constitutional implications of the Northern Ireland protocol included in the Brexit deal. The former EU chief negotiator warned the British Government will have to tread carefully not to undermine “trust “between the UK and the bloc. Speaking to Euronews, Mr Barnier said: “I am confident that this great country will respect their signature, even if there are intentions that I struggle to understand.
“Because if you look at things in perspective, the most important thing for the British is to maintain a market of 450 million consumers with a big neighbor.
“If they question their signature, it would be serious for the trust we need.”
Brussels earlier last week agreed to a three-month extension to the grace period limiting the number of checks on goods travelling between Northern Ireland and the rest of Great Britain.
Northern Ireland effectively remained in the customs union and the single ma
EU
Express
FOUR EU member states are teaming up to veto a potential new mandatory rule on the distribution of migrants across the bloc.
The leaders of Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Poland have teamed up to rebel against new potential mandatory quotas on redistribution of migrants. The four countries are ready to veto the decision likely to be put on the table at the next EU summit.
The alliance was announced by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Oban after a meeting of the Visegrad Four (V4) leaders.
Mr Orban said the meeting unfolded new ideas in order to “become a winner in a world transformed by the coronavirus pandemic”.
According to the four rebels, the Brussels bloc needs new investments in order to succeed.
Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš said that V4 participants discussed the strategy on migration in detail, as according to him, this topic is part of the future of Europe
Freedom Day
Mail
Boris Johnson is to declare an end to most lockdown restrictions today, with social distancing rules, the work from home order, and mask mandates to be ditched from July 19 as he will argue that we must learn to live with coronavirus as we do with the flu.
The Prime Minister will use a press conference this afternoon to confirm a bonfire of virus rules and restrictions from the so-called Freedom Day later this month, in which he will say that individuals will again be able to judge the risks of coronavirus for themselves.
The one-metre plus decree and the work from home order will be dropped, with mask wearing no longer mandatory – while pubs and other venues will not have to collect customer details and will again be able to serve drinks at the bar in a boon for the economy.
Speaking before his announcement, the Prime Minister said people would have to ‘exercise judgment’ to protect themselves from coronavirus, in a sign the Government will shift from legally enforced restrictions to affording people personal choice.
‘Thanks to the successful rollout of our vaccination programme, we are progressing cautiously through our road map,’ Mr Johnson said. ‘Today we will set out how we can restore people’s freedoms when we reach Step 4.
‘But I must stress that the pandemic is not over and that cases will continue to rise over the coming weeks. As we begin to learn to live with this virus, we must all continue to carefully manage the risks from Covid and exercise judgment when going about our lives.’
Telegraph
Boris Johnson will tell the public on Monday that they will no longer be bound by Covid laws on face masks and social distancing but should instead exercise their own “judgment” when restrictions are lifted on July 19.
However, despite scrapping compulsory face masks, The Telegraph understands people will still be told in government guidance they should consider wearing a covering in crowded enclosed places.
Ministers will also warn that some shops and public transport may still enforce the wearing of masks even though it would no longer be a legal requirement to do so.
The Prime Minister will tell the public they need to “carefully manage” the risks of Covid as he sets out plans for the final steps of his roadmap at a Downing Street press conference on Monday afternoon. He will give the final go-ahead next Monday to lift the restrictions after reviewing the data.
“Thanks to the successful rollout of our vaccination programme, we are progressing cautiously through our roadmap. Today we will set out how we can restore people’s freedoms when we reach step 4,” he will say.
“But I must stress that the pandemic is not over and that cases will continue to rise over the coming weeks. As we begin to learn to live with this virus, we must all continue to carefully manage the risks from Covid and exercise judgment when going about our lives.”
Ministers said it marked the moment the control of the pandemic has been handed from the state telling people “what to do” to the citizen “taking responsibility”.
Similar stories appear in the Guardian, Sun, Independent, Evening Standard, BBC News
NHS
Mail
The Queen has awarded the George Cross to the NHS for seven decades of public service including battling coronavirus as she praised the ‘courage, compassion and dedication’ shown by staff and said the organisation had the ‘enduring thanks’ of a ‘grateful nation’.
In a personal handwritten message on Windsor Castle-headed paper, Her Majesty highlighted the bravery exhibited by frontline workers during the pandemic and said Britain’s highest civilian gallantry medal would recognise ‘all NHS staff, past and present’.
She wrote: ‘It is with great pleasure, on behalf of a grateful nation, that I award the George Cross to the National Health Services of the United Kingdom. This award recognises all NHS staff, past and present, across all disciplines and all four nations.
‘Over more than seven decades, and especially in recent times, you have supported the people of our country with courage, compassion and dedication, demonstrating the highest standards of public service. You have our enduring thanks and heartfelt appreciation.’
The award of the George Cross by The Queen is made on the advice of the George Cross Committee and the Prime Minister. Details of the presentation of the award will be confirmed at a later date.
NHS staff will not get to use ‘GC’ after their names, because the award is to the NHS as an organisation, not individuals.
Similar stories appear in the Sun, Guardian, Express, Telegraph, Mirror, Independent.
Guardian
Boris Johnson is set to spark a political row this week by announcing plans to seize greater control of the NHS, despite warnings that the “power grab” will see ministers blamed for delays in treatment and closure of local hospital units.
The prime minister has told the new health secretary, Sajid Javid, to put the long-awaited health and care bill before parliament despite Javid’s own misgivings and concerns among hospital bosses and doctors’ leaders.
Conservative MPs are becoming increasingly anxious that the bill, which involves the biggest shake-up of the NHS in England in a decade, could become a damaging political drama, make people question Tory handling of the NHS and prove a gift to Labour, which last week called for the bill to be scrapped.
Javid is expected to lay the bill before parliament on Tuesday after the prime minister overruled his plea to delay its introduction until the autumn. Johnson has told Matt Hancock’s successor to press ahead with the legislation despite Javid’s concern that it will prove “controversial” and involves “significant areas of contention” which have yet to be resolved.
The health secretary’s new powers would enable him to abolish NHS arm’s-length bodies and intervene much earlier in deciding if an A&E or maternity unit deemed unsafe, over staffing problems for example, had to shut.
Child sexual abuse
Independent
Child sexual abuse is an “epidemic” affecting millions of people in the UK, survivors have said.
Patrick Sandford, who was abused by a schoolteacher at the age of nine, said society needed to “get real and wise up” about the scale of the issue.
“It’s an epidemic,” he told The Independent. “We are talking of millions of people walking around and trying to live with this.”
Another survivor, Ruby Joseph, said authorities needed to stop “burying their heads in the sand and pretending it’s not happening”.
“I don’t know how we can call ourselves civilised when so many of our children are being raped and we look the other way,” she added. “It’s going on all the time and it has got to stop.”
They are among the survivors giving evidence to the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA).
Its Truth Project has been gathering anonymous accounts from victims for six years, and is appealing for more people to come forward before it closes later this year.
The evidence will be used in a report looking at the patterns of abuse, and failures by public institutions to protect children.
The Crime Survey for England and Wales estimates that 7.5 per cent of adults aged 18 to 74 years experienced sexual abuse before the age of 16 years, representing 3.1 million people.
Dr Rebekah Eglinton, IICSA’s chief psychologist, believes the figures are the “tip of the iceberg”.
“I think the problem is horrendously larger than we let ourselves admit,” she added. “Our hope is that by giving a voice to survivors, amplifying their experiences and having these conversations, the less space perpetrators have to hide.”
Dr Eglinton said the accounts of more than 5,000 victims who have come forward so far had been “horrific”.
Illegal Immigration
ITV News
UK Authorities dealt with more than 200 migrants attempting to cross the channel on Sunday, the Home Office has said.
Border Force officials intervened in six incidents involving 212 people, whilst French authorities reported seven interceptions and prevented 238 people from reaching the UK.
The announcement comes after record numbers of people have made the journey across the English channel in small boats so far this year.
Clandestine Channel Threat Commander Dan O’Mahoney said:
“We are seeing an unacceptable rise in dangerous and unnecessary small boat crossings because illegal migration across Europe has led to a significant increase of migrants in northern France seeking to enter the UK illegally.
“The Government continues to target the criminal gangs who are responsible for these illegal crossings at every level with intelligence and surveillance, and the joint work with France means we have doubled the number of police officers on the ground in France who are intercepting the crossings and arresting the gangs behind this trade.”
Earlier on Sunday the Home Office announced stricter enforcements for migrants and people smugglers as part of the Nationality and Borders Bill.
The proposed legislation intends to make it a criminal offence to knowingly arrive in the UK without permission, with the maximum sentence for those entering the country unlawfully rising from six months’ imprisonment to four years.
Education
Telegraph
A generation of children cannot be allowed to be “damned” by Covid for the rest of their lives, the head of the NSPCC has warned.
If children’s trauma is left unaddressed, it can “fester” and stay with them “potentially for a lifetime”, according to Peter Wanless.
On June 28, The Telegraph launched a campaign calling on ministers to put children first as the country recovers from its repeated Covid lockdowns, with action to bring an end to the disruption in schools.
Backing the campaign, Mr Wanless said that children have neither been listened to nor involved in decisions made over the past year, adding that ministers have shown little understanding about the damage their policies have wreaked on youngsters’ lives.
He explained how children can experience trauma from emotional abuse and calls to Childline, the children’s helpline run by the NSPCC, about this have risen dramatically over the past year.
“It is where people have felt isolated, disconnected and unable to work through emotional issues, either things happening to them or their families,” he said.
His remarks come as local council chiefs join headteachers in the fight back against bubbles, with one director of children’s services saying that schools are “bleeding out”.
Breitbart
Britain’s largest teachers’ union has called for “activist training” on issues such as “whiteness” in order to make “white privilege and colonialism visible” in schools.
Guidance for teachers from the National Education Union (NEU) said that there is an “urgent” need to “decolonise” all phases of education in the United Kingdom in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement, which spread across the Atlantic Ocean from America last year.
The over 450,000-member union suggested that specialists could “train teachers and schools on whiteness, anti-racism, creating tools for critical self-reflection and understanding the system”, and “make white privilege and colonialism visible” in schools, according to a document seen by The Telegraph.
The document said that all aspects of the education system including how classrooms are laid out, the curriculum, and the daily routines of pupils have all “been shaped by colonisation and neo-liberalism”.
The Critical Race Theory-style report went on to claim that there is a “silence around British imperialism and racism” in British schools and that British culture itself is “saturated with a longing for return to Empire without any understanding into what Empire is/was”.
Despite a parliamentary committee finding that working-class white students have been falling behind many of their counterparts, the NEU instructed teachers that the view that “white pupils, in general, are doing worse overall is not accurate” as more black pupils per capita are living in poverty.
The union said that the discussions around problems facing the working-class white communities served as “barriers and myths” about racism.
Foreign aid
Express
BORIS JOHNSON has been urged to stand firm in the face of a mounting Tory rebellion over the Government’s controversial foreign aid cuts.
The Prime Minister is poised to cave to pressure from Tory backbenchers and allow a vote on the upcoming foreign aid cuts. The planned £4billion cuts to the foreign aid budget have been highly controversial, with 50 Tory rebels, including former Prime Minister Theresa May condemning the proposals. But several MPs and commentators have urged Mr Johnson to stand firm and not u-turn on the spending cuts.
Former Brexit Party MEP Ben Habib urged the Prime Minister to concentrate spending on the UK, to help with the pandemic recovery.
He told Express.co.uk: “He must not u turn.
“The pandemic has blown a hole in public finances.
“It has devastated many businesses. Taxes are due to go up.
“It makes no sense for Rishi Sunak to insist on increasing corporation tax to raise around £5 billion a year, only to give it away to foreign governments.
“Charity starts at home.
“If we wish to help developing countries we should trade with them on an equal footing.
“Charity never creates wealth. Trade does.”
The point about “zerocarbon” is that it is only demanded of Western capitalist countries, that is of countries with open markets where consumers can rule. So Zerocarbon (zero CO2) doesn’t like western capitalism. And without Carbon Dioxide, grass and other plants will die. So without Carbon Dioxide, where will be?
zerocarbon. A good summary that Ralph! I’d just add – grass stays green, photosynthesising away all the Co2, throughout Winter. Deciduous trees don’t!
BREXIT
Barnier: “Because if you look at things in perspective, the most important thing for the British is to maintain a market of 450 million consumers with a big neighbour.”….. So Barnier thinks we are so stupid that we haven’t noticed that we’ve always bought more from them, than they have from us.
Just to let everyone know, there is a large body of evidence that suggests Pharaoh is planning a *fake* ALIEN INVASION, as a means to further imprison humanity.
This was written about in the 1967 “Report from Iron Mountain on the Possibility & Desirability of Peace”
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Report-Iron-Mountain-Leonard-Lewin/dp/143912311X
Raising the maximum prison sentence for knowingly to enter the UK illegally from six months to 4 years is not good enough. How many illegal entrants have been prosecuted under the existing laws I wonder. Not many is probably the answer, so raising the prison sentence is not going to make any difference at all, especially since the prisons are already overcrowded as it is. How about immediate deportation back to their country of origin, that would be more like it. Defence lawyers representing these illegal entrants would most likely instruct them to say in court that they did not know entering the UK was illegal, in which case they would probably be released on bail for a trial at a later date and be required to sign at a police station on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. More to the point they will in all likelihood disappear altogether. What an utterly haphazard way of running the country this is. I think Domonic Cummings is probably right in his belief Johnson doesn’t know what he is doing, and don’t we all know it. He is more suited to life in the Big Top at Billy Smarts, than being prime minister.
NHS
How on earth can a respected medal be awarded to other than an individual? The NHS, whilst good, even excellent in parts, is grossly inefficient and costs the taxpayer far too much. Such implied praise only delays any necessary reform and does nothing to improve the (intending) patients lot. They used to have an application called “Ask my GP” which, in my experience, was excellent but has now been binned with no satisfactory explanation.
It needs reform and soon.
Jack Thomas………….its been done before but in a much bigger way. The island of Malta was awarded the George Cross for what it endured during the second world war.
But the NHS….
“the British Government will have to tread carefully not to undermine “trust “between the UK and the bloc”
Would anyone in their right mind trust the EUrocrats? I doubt it. We need to clean Brexit that we voted for, not the present mess.
Ah yes Jack Thomas. Monsewer Barnier’s words. Definitely good for a larf.
It must be really irritating to the French, All these immigrants desperate to get out of France and into GB.. Has anybdy yet worked out how many are UK lovers, how many are terrorists, and how many freeloaders, and how many are merely unbalanced religious of any faith.
T G Spokes. They’ll have to set up another committee to work out the figures on that one.
What’s the betting, I’m the only one that thinks that is ALMOST ALL good news. Especially MonSewer Barnier worried about us losing his huge market. AND it’s falling apart over immigration!
The teachers are having another go at wrecking what’s left of our education system of course, as they do.
“But I met stress the Pandemic is not over” sez Boris.
They are just relaxing certain rules.
To me, that means the crisis enabling legislation is still in force, I believe until the end of the year.
That means we are still ruled by ” Government by Decree” will “”Freedom Day”, actually be the day that all the laws which prevent our freedom will be rescinded?
Or am I naive enough to believe that the end of this year will enable us to revert to proper normal, that’s the usual parliamentary mismanagement and ignoring and stitching up their gullible electorate?
You are quite right Roger the crisis enabling legislation is in force till the end of this year. The whole Dictator Regime can be re-imposed at will.
Meanwhile the experimental jabs are continuing, including by mandate on some sectors and including children in some cases. None of the restrictions have gone entirely, they are at various little Hitler’s discretion, etc. etc.
And test and trace will continue to find more false results/figures/excuses for re-imposing the full dictatorship.
But the good news is that at the moment B.J. and co are moving away from most of that.