Fisheries

Telegraph
French fishermen could block the Channel tunnel after being denied access to UK’s waters as Jersey on Wednesday announced it would also grant fewer than half of the fishing licences demanded by Paris.
The threat of militant action was a furious response to the UK decision to grant licences to fish in its territorial waters to only 12 small French boats out of 47 applications.
“Be warned,” said Jean-Pierre Pont, who is a member of parliament for President Emmanuel Macron’s ruling LREM party, representing the coastal town of Boulogne-sur-Mer.
“Since the British are refusing to honour what they signed, as with other Anglo-Saxons in another area, the French fishermen of Boulogne-sur-Mer may be obliged, after nine months of useless patience, to envisage ways to retaliate against the UK – for example by blocking ports or the entry of lorries towards the UK through the tunnel,” he said.

The Mail, Express, Sun, City AM all run this story.

Labour Party conference

Express
ANGELA Rayner gave a half-hearted apology for calling Tories “scum” after a four day backlash over the attack.
Labour’s deputy leader said she was sorry if her comments offended people before launching a fresh attack on Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Ms Rayner had repeatedly refused to back down after causing outrage with the comments at the start of Labour’s conference.
But she was given a dressing down by Sir Keir Starmer on Tuesday for the tirade and yesterday the frontbencher said she understood why people were upset.
Ms Rayner told the BBC: “I was at a post-watershed event in the evening and the point being, and this is really crucial for me, I understand people are upset by that language, I do understand that.
“That’s me, I’m bombastic, and I apologise if it offended the public in the way in which I expressed it.

Several other media run this story including the Mirror, Guardian, BBC News, ITV News, Huffington Post, Sun, Guardian, Independent

Education

Mail
GCSE and A-level exams will return next summer, but it will be harder than last year to get an A or A* grade, officials have confirmed.
They have also drawn up ‘contingency plans’ for teacher-assessed grading should exams be cancelled again due to the Covid pandemic.
As part of the plans, schools will have to start gathering evidence for the assessed grades this term.
This should include getting students to take mock exams, closely resembling the real exams they would take in the summer.
If the exams go ahead next year, a smaller proportion of students will get top grades at both A-level and GCSE, meaning fewer will qualify for places at top universities.
Ministers are trying to end the grade bonanza caused by the pandemic which saw record numbers of students getting high grades.
A-level top grades will likely reduce by around ten percentage points while at GCSE they will lower by roughly four points.
However, the marking will still be more lenient than before the pandemic, in recognition of the disruption caused by lockdowns.
The move is intended to restore faith in the system, as many universities were unable to tell who were the top students last year and also over-recruited.

Furlough

BBC News
The UK’s furlough scheme closes on Thursday, but some badly-hit sectors are saying support should continue.
Furlough was introduced in March 2020 and helped pay the wages of 11.6 million workers after Covid-19 forced large parts of the economy to close.
At the end of July it was still supporting the incomes of around 1.6m workers, the latest HMRC figures show.
The chancellor said he was “immensely proud” of the near £70bn scheme, but now was the right time to close it.
The policy, officially known as the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, or CJRS, accounts for around one-fifth of the money the government has spent on the response to the pandemic.
While it has been widely praised for protecting millions of jobs, firms in sectors where business has still not returned to normal say they need further support.
Mark Andrew, the director of Animal Aircare, which helps pets travel overseas via Gatwick Airport, said some of his staff may be made redundant if business does not improve.
The firm has not yet had to lay off staff, which Mr Andrew said was “purely down to furlough”.

Sky News also reports the end of furlough.

Illegal migrants

Mail
The French commander in charge of stopping migrants in the Channel has threatened to pull out his men if Priti Patel withholds UK funds.
In an explosive intervention, General Frantz Tavart said that if the Home Secretary goes through with her pledge to cut UK-taxpayer support he will call off nightly patrols.
The gendarmerie is currently mounting night-time operations to intercept migrants on the French coast, with 130 regulars and reservists working in the Calais area, General Tavart told the BBC.
He said: ‘We know the British have threatened to cut their financial support. I’m very clear.
‘If they stop paying for their reservists I will pull my men. For us, it is a real form of ingratitude.’
Miss Patel said last month she would withhold an extra £54million unless France stopped more migrant boats.
General Tavart added: ‘The proof of our efficiency is that smugglers are now trying to go from the Belgian coast, even the Somme.
‘But that dilutes our resources across the territory. It’s like a game of chess where the smugglers always make the first move.’
In July Miss Patel agreed to give France another £54million.
But weeks later she was reported to have told Tory MPs privately: ‘We’ve not given them a penny of the money so far and France is going to have to get its act together if it wants to see the cash.

There’s also a report in the Morning Star

EU

Express
BRUSSELS has demanded Volkswagen to dish out compensation to all of its customers caught up in the Dieselgate scandal.
The European Commission has urged the German car giant to ensure payments are guaranteed to consumers across the bloc and not just in Germany. The carmaker has admitted wrongdoing after misleading customers over the emissions of the vehicles they bought in the 2015 scandal. The admission has triggered a series of legal cases, some of which have since come before the European Court of Justice.
EU justice commissioner Didier Reynders said: “There have been court rulings exposing Volkswagen’s unfair treatment of consumers, and yet the car maker is not willing to work with consumer organisations to find appropriate solutions for consumers.
“As I wrote to the company last year, not only consumers residing in Germany, but all consumers need to be compensated.”
Volkswagen pleaded for eurocrats to drop the demands, saying voluntary payments to European customers outside Germany were not justified.
The carmaker said affected vehicles have now been modified to meet legal requirements.

Express
GERMANY will receive a whopping €647million (£560million) in EU funds to counteract the consequences of Brexit.
Germany is expected to receive compensation of around £560million to mitigate the economic damage suffered because of Brexit. As the Council of the European Union announced in Brussels, the so-called Brexit Fund and the provisional distribution of funds were finally decided on Tuesday.
It could now support public and private companies facing additional costs, losses or other adverse economic and social effects following the UK’s exit from the EU.
Additional costs could arise, for example, for customs controls and new administrative procedures.
In Germany, among other things, the money will benefit fishermen who are dependent on fishing in British waters.
Short-time work benefits, as well as retraining or training, can be financed with it. “Our goal is to help those most affected in a difficult time to adapt to the consequences of Brexit,” commented Zvonko Černač for the current Slovenian Presidency.

Fuel

BBC News
The government’s reserve tanker fleet was being deployed on Wednesday afternoon to boost fuel deliveries, the business secretary said.
Civilians were driving the trucks from their depots in Cambridgeshire and West Yorkshire, Kwasi Kwarteng said.
He has also said soldiers would be delivering fuel in the coming days.
The fuel industry said the situation at the pumps “has begun to improve” and it was working with the government to maintain regular deliveries of fuel.
The joint statement, from 14 companies including Shell UK, BP and Esso, comes after days of long queues at petrol stations.
It said: “We remain confident that the situation will stabilise further in the coming days and encourage everyone to fill up as they normally would to help forecourts return to normal.”
The industry statement also said there had “always been plenty of fuel at our refineries and terminals” and welcomed the deployment of the reserve tanker fleet.
Mr Kwarteng admitted the situation had been “difficult” but denied there was a crisis in UK fuel supplies.
Ministers have decided to deploy troops to drive tankers in “the next couple of days”, he said, in addition to the civilians driving them from Wednesday.
Some 150 military drivers are ready to drive the fuel tankers, with another 150 Army personnel ready to support them.

Other media covering the story include ITV News, City AM, Evening Standard, Sky News, Independent, Telegraph, Times, City AM, Yahoo News, Huffington Post

Electric cars

City AM
Electric car sales in the UK have jumped by 186 per cent to 108,000 in 2020, up from just 38,000 in 2019, according to a new study, shared exclusively with City A.M. this morning.
This growth is six times higher than the average sales growth of electric cars globally at 31 per cent in 2020, putting the UK in fourth place out of 26 countries in the study by accountancy firm UHY.
Worldwide growth in sales of electric cars has outpaced global car sales – including petrol and diesel – which fell by approximately 15 per cent to 64m in 2020, down from 75m in 2019.
Less than a fifth (19 per cent) of countries in UHY’s study saw sales of electric cars fall during the first year of lockdown, including Japan which fell 31 per cent and Canada, down 20 per cent in 2020.
The UK was marginally behind Germany which also had a considerable increase in electric car sales, rising 207 per cent from 63,000 to 194,000 in 2020.
The UK Government has set goals of banning the sales of new petrol and diesel cars by 2030 and hybrids from 2035.

Eco activists

Sun
ECO-WARRIORS blocked the M25 for the second time in a DAY causing traffic chaos by invading the high speed motorway.
It comes after the protestors stopped traffic at the A20 junction this morning, defying an injunction which bans them from campaigning on the road.
Insulate Britain‘s activists had been cleared by cops after blocking Junction 3 of the M25 in Kent, where the M25, A20 and M20 all meet together.
But now they have returned to the junction at Swanley for the second time today, causing chaos.
Around 20 activists in high-vis jackets blocked the roundabout while one man superglued himself to a police car.
The activists parted at one point to allow an ambulance through that was carrying a child to Lewisham Hospital.

More road chaos is reported in the Guardian, Sky News, Breitbart, Times

Vaccine patch

Express
CORONAVIRUS researchers have developed a painless “vaccine patch” that was found to be more effective than a traditional needle shot during a study.
The 3D printed microneedle patch was developed by researchers from Stanford University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Made of polymer, their creation is one square centimetre in size and contains 100 tiny needles. The needles are 700 micrometres long, just barely long enough to penetrate the skin and deliver the vaccine.
When tested on mice, the researchers say they found that the vaccine patch generated an antibody response that was 20 times higher than a traditional needle shot after three weeks and 50 times higher after a month.
Their paper reads: “Using model vaccine components, we demonstrated that 3D-printed microneedle delivery resulted in enhanced cargo retention in the skin, activation of immune cells, and more potent humoral and cellular immune responses as compared with traditional vaccination routes.”
The technology has been available for years, but has proven difficult difficult to successfully manufacture at scale.
The new research, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, overcomes those problems with an advanced 3D-printing technique called continuous liquid interface production or CLIP.

Parking

Express
DRIVERS are being warned to watch out for a legal loophole which could allow strangers to park on other people’s driveways.
A number of UK households have been stuck with the issue of coming home to see someone else parked on their private property. Although it might be assumed a quick call to the authorities would solve the issue, homeowners are often faced with the unfortunate news that a legal loophole means the act can go unpunished.
When a motorist parks on someone else’s driveway, there is very little chance of the law getting involved.
Generally, councils have no authority over private property and cannot dictate or control access.
If a car is parked on a public road and blocking a driveway, the driver is committing a parking offence.
If this is the case, local authorities have the power to get involved and issue a fine to the motorist.

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