Fisheries
Express
MICHEL Barnier has barged into France’s ongoing fishing dispute with the UK with a visit to Boulogne, whose Mayor pointedly described the former EU Brexit negotiator as a “staunch defender of the fishing industry”.
Fishermen operating out of the port are among those with the most at stake given Boulogne is arguably the centre of the French fishing industry. The strategic port has also been a key battleground as furious French fishermen protesting against the Brexit deal staged a blockade there earlier this month.
Pictures of Mr Barnier meeting fishing industry leaders were shared on Twitter yesterday by Daniel Fasquelle, Mayor of Le Touquet-Paris-Plage as well as a member of France’s National Assembly for The Republicans, the same party as Mr Barnier.
Mr Fasquelle yesterday posted a series of messages which were retweeted by Mr Barnier, who is widely believed to be ready to challenge French President Emmanuel Macron next year.
Mr Fasquelle said: “Michel Barnier met fishermen from the Etaples Maritime Cooperative in the heart of the port of Boulogne, France’s leading fishing port with a diversified fleet of nearly 150 boats.
Trade
Express
LIZ Truss’s incoming trade deal with New Zealand will be worth more than £2.3billion a year – and will slash tariffs on a range of UK exports including chocolate and gin.
The International Trade Secretary has revealed she and her team are currently working “round the clock” to finalise the agreement, which she described as a “win-win for both countries” as well as an important step towards accessing the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). As well as chocolate and gin, buses and clothes are among a list of British products on which tariffs of up to 10 percent could be dumped in a move that would encourage Kiwis to buy British.
In return, high-quality New Zealand products including wine, food and drink could be tariff-free in UK shops.
Total trade in goods and services between the UK and New Zealand was worth £2.3billion last year, with the figure likely to increase as a result of a wide-ranging trade deal between Wellington and London.
Ms Truss, Tory MP for South-West Norfolk, said: “We are working round the clock to get this deal done in the coming weeks.
A similar story can be read in GB News
Northern Ireland
Express
NORTHERN Ireland could use the post-Brexit protocol to turn it into an “economic powerhouse”, an expert has claimed.
Political commentator Emma DeSouza revealed that the province has had a £690million boost in additional sales to the Republic of Ireland since the measures were introduced in January. She claimed that Northern Ireland’s “unique status” of being in the EU’s Single Market while remaining part of the UK gave it a huge advantage.
And despite there being checks on goods travelling from the mainland UK to the province – much more of its trade came from the south, outweighing this loss, she added.
Writing in the Irish Times, she said: “With free access to twin markets, Northern Ireland could avail of potentially the largest combined purchasing power in the world, reimagining the region into an economic powerhouse, but only if we let it.”
She went on to claim that much of the fury surrounding renegotiating the protocol from all sides was simply “rhetoric” and they all knew it was here to stay.
Neither is this a bad thing, she claims, insisting that the province – which still lives under the shadow of The Troubles – could do well out of a protocol-induced economic boom.
Illegal immigrants
Mail
Traffickers are taking in as much as £700,000 per Channel crossing, it has been revealed, after up to 800 migrants landed in Kent in a ‘record’ day for crossings.
People smugglers are reportedly filling boats with 30 to 40 people, sometimes more, and charging near to £20,000 per head.
The journeys produce a great deal of profit with a payout of only £2,000 needed for a boat, and are ‘worth more than drug smuggling’, said a French police boss.
The comments follow eyewitness reports suggesting that the total number of people to have made the treacherous trip on Saturday is almost certainly over 600 – and could be as high as 800.
That would exceed the current daily record of 592 arrivals set on August 12.
The Home Office said small boat incidents were still being dealt with as late as 8.30pm, and would not confirm exact figures until the ‘situation has been resolved’.
In addition to groups of migrants being brought into Dover Marina, many boats are believed to have landed along the South East coastline.
There have been two reported landings in Folkestone, one in Broadstairs, another in Dungeness – all in Kent – and two more in Rye and Hastings, both in East Sussex.
More than 20 people jumped off a grey RHIB and ran along the sand at Stone Bay in Broadstairs while around 50 were seen sitting on the shingle at Dungeness Lifeboat Station after being brought to shore by an RNLI lifeboat.
Similar stories can be read in Sun, Breitbart, Telegraph
Scotland
Order-order
Sturgeon welcomed Scottish Green Party co-Leaders Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater to Bute House this afternoon to announce the full details of their new power-sharing agreement. A copy of the agreement is also now available on the Scottish Government’s website. Two Green MSPs will become ministers, whilst the Greens have committed to supporting the SNP on confidence votes and annual budgets provided there is “appropriate funding for the shared policy programme“.
Sturgeon said: “The Agreement also sets out the processes of co-operation and consultation that will enable a stable parliamentary majority for the delivery of the Scottish Government’s legislative and policy programme…It recognises that business as usual is not good enough in the times we are living through. It grasps that – out of great challenge – a better world and a better Scotland is capable of being born…it understands that achieving it will take boldness, courage and a will to do things differently. That is what we offer.”
Two minority parties propping each other up
Energy
Telegraph
Boris Johnson’s proposed green alternative to gas heating is inferior to traditional boilers, the Business and Energy Secretary has admitted, as he insisted that heat pumps were not “much worse” than the technology they are designed to replace.
In an interview with The Telegraph, Kwasi Kwarteng conceded that, while gas boilers had been “refined over many years … heat pumps are still in their infancy”.
Fears that the new technology provides significantly less heat in homes than traditional boilers were being “exaggerated”, Mr Kwarteng insisted.
He added: “I don’t think actually heat pumps are that much worse than boilers. All I’m saying is that they could be improved if there was more investment.”
Mr Kwarteng says that providing incentives to firms to invest in the UK production of heat pumps and hydrogen will help the Government meet its target of reducing net greenhouse gas emissions to zero, as well as help to “drive economic growth”, create new jobs, and bring down the costs of the technology.
Education
Guardian
Classrooms in England are to be fitted with air quality monitors when state schools and colleges reopen after the summer holidays, in an effort improve ventilation and combat the spread of Covid.
The decision announced by the education secretary, Gavin Williamson, comes after a vociferous campaign by school staff unions for better ventilation, with research suggesting that the Covid virus mainly transmits via airborne particles, making enclosed spaces likely breeding grounds for infection.
Starting in September, the Department for Education (DfE) will spend £25m on providing 300,000 CO2 monitors to alert staff and students if CO2 levels rise, meaning that fresh air is failing to circulate.
The DfE said the monitors “will enable staff to act quickly where ventilation is poor and provide reassurance that existing ventilation measures are working”.
Williamson said: “Providing all schools with CO2 monitors will help them make sure they have the right balance of measures in place, minimising any potential disruption to education and allowing them to focus on world-class lessons and catch up for the children who need it.”
Similar stories can be read in Times, Sun, ITV News, Times
Coal mine
Independent
Controversial plans for the UK’s first deep coal mine in 30 years face losing financial backing as uncertainty over the project drags on, The Independent has learned.
Proponents of the proposal for a new coal mine in Whitehaven, Cumbria claim it will create 500 new jobs in a region facing economic decline. However, leading academics and activists say the project is incompatible with climate targets and that green investment in the region could create many more jobs than a new coal mine.
In March, The Independent revealed that the government is to hold a public inquiry into the planned mine – a decision one campaigner described as a “startling U-turn” given that ministers had previously refused calls to intervene in the project.
Financial documents seen by The Independent show that “uncertainty” caused by the public inquiry has put the project at risk of losing the support of its principal backer.
Recent records filed by West Cumbria Mining, the firm behind the project, state that the principal shareholder, the Singapore-based EMR Capital Investment, may drop its support of the project “due to the uncertainty of both the length and outcome of the public inquiry”.
Woke conference
Mail
Sneering civil servants and public sector workers at a woke conference claimed middle-aged people ‘jump on clickbait’ news stories and lack the education to ‘unpick fascist ideas’, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.
At least 300 employees have joined the UKGovcamp event forum to discuss issues relating to central and local government.
Civil servants are supposed to be impartial and steer away from party politics.
But in typed conference discussion notes, uncovered by the MoS, Left-wing staffers openly moaned about the Government, the ‘uneducated’ British public and apparent ‘rising fascism’ across the country.
The forum members included staff from 16 Government departments, among them the Home Office, Cabinet Office and Foreign Office, alongside spy agency GCHQ, the BBC, Public Health England and almost 40 local councils.The three-day virtual event was led by civil servants, including Sarah Baskerville of the Department for Transport, who has previously sparked anger after she posted tweets criticising Government policy and MPs.
In a forum chat about the event, seen by the MoS, she said she was trying to conceal the controversial conference notes by keeping ‘the page hidden from search engines’.
But this newspaper has obtained the notes from sessions including one called ‘Government is political. We need to be more ready to talk about that’, in which workers outlined a swathe of woke gripes and complaints.
Masks
Mail
Most blue surgical face masks used by many during the pandemic are not enough to avoid people from being infected with COVID-19, an alarming new study has found.
The study from the University of Waterloo in Canada showed N95 or KN95 masks did the best job in containing aerosol droplets from the wearer’s mouth.
The blue, cloth surgical masks that have become popular during the pandemic were found be only 10 percent effective as it does not cover the face properly.
‘There is no question it is beneficial to wear any face covering, both for protection in close proximity and at a distance in a room,’ study leader Serhiy Yarusevych, a professor of mechanical and mechatronics engineering, said in a statement.
‘However, there is a very serious difference in the effectiveness of different masks when it comes to controlling aerosols.’
Yarusevych and team said that many people wear masks that don’t fit their faces properly, unlike the N95, which straps itself tightly around the wearer.
This causes aerosol droplets to escape through multiple openings between a person’s face and the cloth mask, which could spread COVID-19 in populous areas.
The N95 was conversely able to filter over 50% of aerosol droplets while the other half is dispersed above the wearer’s head.
Covid
Mail
Free Covid antibody tests will be given to thousands of people every day in a first-ever UK-wide ‘surveillance programme’ in the latest weapon against the virus.
Up to 8,000 adults who test positive will be offered the tests each day to reveal how their immune systems respond.
The massive programme begins this week and will help estimate the proportion of people who got Covid despite developing antibodies from a vaccine or a previous infection.
It will also provide doctors with an insight into any groups who do not develop an immune response in the first place.
But sources said the data would also feed into the debate about autumn booster jabs amid continuing doubts over who will get them.
The announcement came as Covid infections continued to rise yesterday, sparking fresh appeals for people to get vaccinated. The UK recorded 32,058 new cases – a rise of just over ten per cent in the last seven days.
In a joint announcement yesterday, Ministers announced that from Tuesday anyone over 18 will be able to opt into the antibody surveillance programme to boost understanding of immunity against Covid from vaccination and prior infection.
Similar stories can be read in Sun, ITV News, Mirror, BBC News, iNews
Coal mine: The opposers / greens need to burn in hell for trashing our future and, more importantly, that of those who will come after us.
Agreed Jack Thomas.
“…Department for Education (DfE) will spend £25m on providing 300,000 CO2 monitors to alert staff and students if CO2 levels rise, meaning that fresh air is failing to circulate…”
In my long distant schooldays they opened the windows. That cost nothing
Williamson said: “Providing all schools with CO2 monitors will help them make sure they have the right balance of measures in place, minimising any potential disruption to education and allowing them to focus on world-class lessons
Seems it’s the teachers themselves who are the greatset disrupters and as for “world-class lessons”, he must be joking. World class indoctrination perhaps
————-
Proponents of the proposal for a new coal mine in Whitehaven, Cumbria claim it will create 500 new jobs in a region facing economic decline. TRUE. There are EX-miners queuing up for jobs there. It’s not just any old coal. It is top quality coking coal. Some of which would go to what is left of our own Steel Industry and the bulk of it EXPORTED…We need the money that will bring in.
However, “leading academics and activists” say the project is incompatible with climate targets and that green investment in the region could create many more jobs than a new coal mine…That translates into,”Princess Nut-Nut has stamped her silly little foot and her “good friend” Zak Goldsmith has agreed with her, so Boris is out-voted.
Whitehaven is an architectural gem. Once England’s third largest port. NOW, morale is at rock bottom, Fishing fleet gone, harbour a marina, paint peeling on the houses, the poverty is visible… But the Greenies care not a jot.
As often happens, Liz Truss is the only one of TPTB that provides any good news!
Are the Home Secretary and her mandarins on holiday too as 800 migrants land in one day? Or, are they busily being lobbied by the red wall Tory MPs in their desperate bid to keep their seats by ensuring that the Tory shire MPs get their share of the floods of migrants not only arriving now but the hundreds of thousands leaving Africa too? On top of that their darling Mrs May signed the global compact on migration signalling masses more of legal migrants too!
If Boris Johnson had been in any other reputable job, occupation or profession he would have failed his probationary period and dismissed long ago, or given at least two written warnings about his behaviour and conduct, or taken aside and given strong words of advice in his shell like. His governments handling of the English Channel migrant crisis which is presently going from bad to worse on a daily basis is absolutely shocking, woeful, inadequate and far below the standard of which we the electorate expect. To him it doesn’t even register on the Richter Scale as anything remotely seriousness. When will this utter clown realise that he is quite patently not up to the job of prime minister or a manager of people. As a politician however it seems one can take a ministerial position without any previous experience, qualifications or practical know how, and when things go wrong continually blames others for their shortcomings. Insofar as Johnson is concerned he seems to be asleep on the job and oblivious to what is going on around him. It would be beneficial for all concerned if he resigned his position and went away on a permanent basis to play with his young son and dog.
I’ve just heard a good quote” As a chef, you have your own football club “.
That’s me commenting on politics…………But.
The only horror about Covid is the fear itself AND
Socialistical & Bureaucratic Horror that their child and invention ( NHS ) could escape or get a bad name. The same as all their other bureaucratic inventions British Gas, British Bearings, British Motor Corporation, Electricity , Water, British Transport, British Shipbuilders, British Education ( Comprehensives , San Quentin High ), Zimbabwe, etc etc
The British home of socialism ( Unions )grew out of a valid but sad exploitation of desperation. and total ignorance and political and venal exploitation of all Socialism has trashed everthing it touched, and most damaging of all, our bureaucracy is infected by its consideration through its tentacles . Therefore:– Test and Trace ! ( Simple , obvious, makes sense, can be repeated with an air of knowledge and wisdom )It doesn’t work, it never has worked and it never will work . IT IS IMPRACTICAL. And wasting our totally valuable Armed Forces on it is a distraction.
It may come as a shock to many but logical, and reasonable or any others of these words, are not tha same.
TG Spokes, no idea whatsoever what you are driving at here, but at least no mention of UKIP or committees have been mentioned. Well done and keep it up!!
It’s interesting to watch the cohort of “next PM but one” thin out as they fall at this or that hurdle. The “don’t grope the hired help” hurdle is not insurmountable, but the “don’t give public money to your mates” one may well have tripped Call Me Matt. Dominic ‘Who gave you my number? I’m on holiday” Raab is face down in the sticky stuff.
Mz Truss is still there, beloved by the MSM, but her downfall may well be her urge to concrete over East Anglia, a process that benefits wealthy Tory backers. but her voters not so much.
I’m not sure who is now the bookies favourite.
JF
Here is an eight minute video that you need to watch, it contains some great and frightening footage of the anti-lockdown protests in Melbourne, Australia.
Melbourne has suffered nineteen months of restrictions an until now two hundred days of total lockdown; people have had enough. These are brave people the police have been using rubber bullets, BB guns, pepper spray, tear gas and much else. Take note, I have a horrible feeling that we’re all going to have to do this if we want our freedom back.
Please share this around, governments just don’t want you to see this.
“Australia has fallen.”
https://youtu.be/z-hThCBi8GQ
Excellent. I was beginning to despair of Australia. I have given up on New Zealand altogether.
In France alone, and this was pre- covid at the time of the yellow vests, at least 25 people lost an eye at the hands of thugs aka “police” with their rubber cluster bullets, plus many more injuries besides. I am particularly haunted by photos before and after, of a pretty and un-threatening 20-ish year old girl who lost an eye. Out of sheet evil and spite by the French police thugs. Let us never forgive or forget these incidents in France and elsewhere. Hopefully the thugs too will stand in the dock some day in the not too distant future for their crimes against humanity. I get to feel that I now advocate an eye for an eye, literally…..
Someone emailed me today a shocking footage of kids being dragged from their parents into a marquee where they were forcibly I think, jabbed. In my judgement it was probably authentic as these evil scum police and medics in Australia and elsewhere, would stop at nothing now..
It was authentic, some of those children died of the jab too. I’ve posted similar stuff here myself.
I don’t always watch them as sometimes I can’t always bear to watch.