Brexit
Telegraph
Boris Johnson is gearing up for a second explosive confrontation with Parliament and the courts over Brexit as he demands a new deal with the EU which would free Northern Ireland from the oversight of European judges.
Downing Street is preparing for a major clash with the House of Lords and Supreme Court as soon as next month, with senior officials drawing up plans to unilaterally suspend swathes of the Northern Ireland Protocol if Brussels refuses to make “significant changes” to the current deal.
The Telegraph understands that Lord Frost, the Cabinet Office minister, will make it clear to his EU counterpart that removing European Court of Justice (ECJ) oversight of the Protocol is a “red line” for Britain.
In a speech this week, he will warn that “no one should be in any doubt about the seriousness of the situation”, adding: “The commission have been too quick to dismiss governance as a side issue. The reality is the opposite.”
The Guardian also has the story.
Sausage wars
Mail
Brexit Minister Lord Frost will use a major speech to diplomats this week to call for an end to the ‘sausage war’ with the EU by making a ‘significant change’ to the Northern Ireland Protocol.
Lord Frost is expected to use the address in Lisbon on Tuesday to argue that an amended agreement is key to bringing relations with Brussels back on to a better footing.
It comes as the European Commission is preparing to table proposals on Wednesday allowing British ‘national identity goods’ to keep flowing across the Irish Sea into the province – effectively overturning the EU’s ban on chilled meats such as sausages from the UK.
The protocol keeps the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic open, but checks must be made on goods from Britain.
A source close to Lord Frost said last night that the Minister would study the EU proposals as positively as possible, but ‘endless negotiation is not an option’.
Express
The EUROPEAN UNION must cave to the UK and go further than scrapping its prohibition on British sausages in order to resolve a tense Brexit dispute, Lord Frost has said.
The UK Brexit minister will next week call for “significant” changes to the post-Brexit agreement he negotiated for Northern Ireland. Both the UK and EU have been at loggerheads over the Northern Ireland Protocol in recent weeks following trade disruption caused by the post-Brexit trading arrangements.
The EU is expected to produce plans to resolve issues with the Protocol on Wednesday as well as respond to Lord Frost’s command paper which calls for significant changes to be made to the Brexit deal for the region.
Commission chiefs are expected to propose that chilled meats can continue crossing the Irish Sea from Britain after the end of the current grace periods, in a move to alleviate the so-called sausage wars.
But Lord Frost will use the speech in Lisbon to warn that compromises must go far further than this to address issues such as the role of the European Court of Justice in Northern Ireland.
See also the Independent.
EU
Breitbart
Even Poland’s national-conservative government, the closest thing Poland has to mainstream Eurosceptics, has repeatedly stated they don’t want the country to leave the European Union. It could well be the sudden flurry of speculation around Poland leaving the bloc has more to do with Brussels than it does Warsaw.
The BBC, Financial Times, Guardian, Times of London, Politico, Euronews. It’s the word on everyone’s lips, it seems — ‘Polexit’, or rather Poland’s withdrawal from the European Union is being discussed intensely again. This comes after Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal ruled that where EU law conflicts with Polish law, Poland’s constitution has right of way. This is totally unacceptable to Brussels, which even claims supremacy over national constitutions, and has vowed to defeat Warsaw over the matter.
Yet the Polish government itself appears determined to find Poland’s own place within the European Union, not without.
There is no critical mass among Polish people to leave the Union as there was inside the United Kingdom. Even though support to leave has risen, it is still extremely low at just 17 per cent. A considerable outright majority support remaining inside the European Union. And why shouldn’t it? Just like Hungary, another pro-sovereignty nation Eurofederalists obsessed with submission fantasise about removing from the equation, Poland does very well inside the EU at very little cost.
The Evening Standard, City AM, Yahoo News are also running the story.
Fisheries
Telegraph
France on Saturday accused Britain of not paying the agreed money to prevent migrants and asylum-seekers from crossing the Channel.
On a visit to Calais to inspect the situation at the border, Gerald Darmanin, the French interior minister, said the British government must honour the more than £50 million pounds it promised to pay French authorities to strengthen controls along the coastline.
“The UK has not paid one penny to us… They promised and still haven’t actually paid,” Mr Darmanin told reporters.
He added: “We have spent money to protect this border and over the past three months we have increased the interceptions from 50 per cent to 65 per cent. This can reach 100 per cent if the UK continues to fund us. We are allies not adversaries. But they must fulfil their promise.”
The deal was struck in July to help increase police patrols of French beaches, deploy surveillance technology and improve security at key border crossings.
Media also running the story include the Express, Mail, Yahoo News.
Illegal migrants
Mail
French police have come under intense criticism for watching scores of migrants leave the shores of Calais ‘unchallenged’, after more people successfully made the perilous journey across the English channel on Saturday.
At least 40 migrants, including a baby who was less than a month old, were picked up off the coast after a small boat crossing off the coast of Dungeness, Kent today.
Eyewitnesses reported seeing increased activity from mid-morning, with the lifeboat arriving ashore at approximately 2pm.
Among those who survived the perilous journey was a 16-day-old girl from Iraq, who was pictured on the rocky beach cradled in white blankets in the arms of a Border Force official.
It comes as footage broadcasted on Sky News this week showed migrants leaving Calais unchallenged by armed police – in what is likely to be a fresh blow to Anglo-French relations.
Express
PRITI Patel’s threat to withhold the £54million Britain is scheduled to pay to France unless Emmanuel Macron’s government takes steps to curb the number of asylum seekers crossing the English Channel in flimsy dinghies appears to be bearing fruit, a pro-Brexit campaigner has said.
Jayne Adye, director of Get Britain Out, is a regular critic of the Government on the issue, with well over 17,000 people having crossed so far this year – more than double last year’s total with almost three months to go. The UK has agreed to pay the money, which will cover the cost of measures aimed at preventing people from attempting hazardous crossings. Ms Adye said: “It seems the French – aside from trying to effectively declare war on the UK over fishing vessels – may occasionally be starting to get tough on migrant Channel crossings.”
Last weekend officials had used rubber bullets to stop dinghies from getting into the water, and made a number of arrests, she explained.
Education
ITV News
Pupils could have to wear masks in classrooms again under contingency plans to reduce disruption to schools caused by Covid after a recent spike in cases among children.
Education unions urged the government to consider reintroducing extra safety measures in schools amid concerns about the level of coronavirus circulating among secondary pupils.
The latest figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show that around one in 15 children in school years 7 to 11 in England are estimated to have had Covid-19 in the week to October 2 – the highest positivity rate for any age group.
Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi said although attendance rates are currently high, he was concerned about the impact of coronavirus this winter.
There are two more stories on this subject in iNews, iNews.
Child abuse
Telegraph
Former detectives in the Metropolitan Police’s child abuse investigation team have alleged that they were ordered to caution innocent people to meet targets as one claims his boss told him to tamper with evidence.
A number of police officers who have since left the force have broken ranks to reveal to The Telegraph that one of Scotland Yard’s most sensitive units is “broken” and therefore children could be at risk.
The allegations include orders to arrest and caution innocent people over abuse offences that would have a long-term impact on their lives and officers “ticking boxes” to falsely claim work had been done, the whistleblowers claim.
Some made complaints about the actions of the superiors which they say were “covered up” or brushed under the carpet while some in the force acted as if it was an “old boys’ network”.
Police
Sun
PRITI Patel has launched a nationwide hunt for a high-flying officer to become the next head of Scotland Yard.
The Home Secretary wants senior officers to identify and nurture fresh talent working in a force outside London.
She hopes promising candidates will be promoted to roles where they can shine and prove they are fit to take on the challenging role.
Ms Patel has given Dame Cressida Dick a two-year extension to her contract as Metropolitan Police Commissioner to give time to find a suitable replacement.
But her team of headhunters have been ordered to get cracking.
Maggots
Telegraph
The use of live maggots to clean wounds is undergoing a renaissance in the NHS amid mounting concerns about the threat of antibiotic resistance.
The treatment – which involves applying sterilised fly larvae to wounds to eat away dead tissue – was common in the first half of the 20th century, but the use of live maggots faded with the advent of the “antibiotic era” in the 1940s.
But now, with antibiotic resistance making some wounds much harder to treat, maggots are again being used in the NHS and overseas. Already, superbugs kill roughly 700,000 people a year – a figure predicted to hit 10 million by 2050 if AMR continues at its current rate.
BioMonde, a wound care company based in Bridgend, South Wales, rears maggots from Greenbottle Blowflies and sells some 25,000 “biobags” containing the insects across Europe annually – including 9,000 to the NHS.
The bags, each containing between 50 and 400 live maggots, are placed on wounds that won’t heal with antibiotics. The maggots eat away the rotten flesh, containing and killing off the infection.
Special forces
Mail
They’re our elite fighting force but it seems even the world-beating SAS can be outwitted by a simple pen-pusher’s error.
Secret plans for a suite of enhanced weapons, potentially for use by Britain’s Special Forces, have been revealed in an astonishing new security blunder by defence officials.
Details of research into the next generation of munitions appeared to have been safely redacted in a document marked ‘Official Sensitive’ and posted on a Government website.
But The Mail on Sunday can reveal that simply by copying and pasting the text, every blanked-out detail can be read.
It is true that live maggots are sterile. That is why fishermen sometimes hold them in their mouth when their hands are full.
The maggots probably would eat rotten flesh round wounds.
Somehow though I do not believe that story!
What are we being distracted from or nudged into?
The maggots thing is perfectly true.
https://www.webmd.com/diabetes/news/20040920/healing-wounds-with-maggots
A country that does not control its own borders and laws is no country.
We need to address the issues of ECJ, ECHR, and EAW and other legal foolishness like their Supreme Court, stealthily and treacherously introduced here,cunningly Imposed by the EU and by which they attempt to spread French influence. French influence is never ever good. And French influence in the House of Lords , a shot in the Kneecap ..
Agreed T G Spokes at 2.49pm.
Express
well over 17,000 people having crossed so far this year – more than double last year’s total with almost three months to go.
That’s quite an army, isn’t it?
Not ‘arf mate – Michael D, 2.26pm.
Subsidising fuel costs, now being contemplated can’t go on forever.
We’re already up to our necks in debt, where’s the money coming from?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10077237/Factories-days-away-stopping-production-energy-crisis-warn-industry-figures.html
The problem has been caused by failure to construct more renewable energy sources. Especially tidal devices.
HArm- where’s the money coming from?
23 pct green energy tax maybe?
Tell you what Harryagain. Perhaps we could kill 2 birds with 1 stone. Construct tidal devices in the English Channel in such a way they stopped the dinghies getting through.
The Poles think that being in the EUSSR will protect them from Russian invasion.
Instead they get invaded by Middle East Migrants.
HArm- Better them than us.
If the British Government stopped shipping billions of pounds to the EU THIS week….we may see some cooperation from the EU around the Northern Ireland Protocol. Fat chance. More likely they will rejoin and keep it secret. This government is corrupt from toe to top.
Harryagain, why would Russia WANT to invade Poland?, it needs more people, NOT more land.
It’s a traditional Russian thing.
They want to recover the land won by Catherine/Peter the Great.
Think Ukraine, North Ossetia.
Don’t think the migrants stay long in Poland. Maybe the Poles like the French wave them through and who can blame them – they do perfectly right.