Fisheries
Express
FRENCH fishermen staged a blockade as an increasing number of Dutch vessels started fishing in the English Channel in the wake of Britain’s departure from the European Union.
Dutch fishermen were prevented from unloading their goods at Boulogne-sur-Mer after their French counterparts launched a blockade on Thursday. In the latest incident in a long row over post-Brexit fishing rights, local fishermen also blocked access to the local fishing auction in the French port.
Dutch vessels were spotted as recently as August 5 and said they were “exploiting” vital fishing stocks in the channel.
Regional fishing chiefs claim the Dutch vessels are becoming more regular in the eastern Channel and are a threat to French vessels who see them as serious competition.
Dutch vessels regularly use a method that can threaten fish stocks, French fishermen argue, and are unsustainable.
This method is known as fly-shooting or pulse fishing involves using multiple nets to encircle and capture shoals of fish.
Northern Ireland
Express
A MAJOR Brexit battle is at risk of breaking out over Northern Ireland if the EU fails to reach an agreement with the UK over the Protocol.
DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson said a resolution over changing the post-Brexit trading arrangements in the region was urgently needed within weeks rather than months. If this did not happen, he hinted that DUP ministers at Stormont would also not collaborate in implementing the EU’s rules if no progress was made on the Protocol.
The Protocol, part of the Brexit divorce deal agreed by the UK and Brussels, effectively keeps Northern Ireland in the EU’s single market for goods.
This means checks on goods being sent from Great Britain into the single market in some cases could result in prohibitions on certain products that do not comply with EU rules.
Brexit minister Lord Frost has put forward plans to renegotiate the Protocol, which he set out in a Command Paper last month.
Mr Donaldson, who is leading Unionist concern against the trading arrangements argued they “must go” as it creates an Irish Sea border which “contravenes Article 6 of the Act of Union [of the UK]”.
Migrants
Telegraph
Housing migrants in hotels is set to cost the taxpayer up to £70 million this year, Priti Patel has admitted.
The Home Secretary has told the home affairs select committee that the Home Office expects to spend at least £40 million and up to £70 million on hotels for migrants in the current financial year.
Some hotels have been block booked until January next year, despite a pledge earlier this year to end the practice.
It comes amid a surge in the number of migrants crossing the Channel. In just two days last week, a record total of nearly 1,000 reached Britain in small boats, taking the year’s total past 10,500. In the whole of last year, 8,417 people arrived.
Alp Mehmet, chairman of Migration Watch UK, said: “Four star hotels for asylum seekers, including those crossing the Channel illegally, is a five-star absurdity.
“Meanwhile, the poor taxpayer goes on paying through the nose for this as well as the ballooning costs of our overwhelmed and abused asylum system, as our Government repeatedly fails to deal with the problem.”
A similar story can be read in Breitbart
Education
Telegraph
Gavin Williamson, the Education Secretary, has defended this year’s A-level results despite concerns over record levels of grade inflation, saying students “deserve to be rewarded” after a year of disruption.
On Tuesday, thousands of teenagers will receive their marks, which will be based on teachers’ predictions after exams were cancelled for a second year because of the Covid pandemic.
Experts believe the number of school leavers handed top grades could be even higher than last year, when a record 38 per cent of A-levels were awarded A or A* – a sharp increase on the 25 per cent awarded in 2019 – after the Government ditched a controversial algorithm meant to standardise grades in favour of teachers’ predictions.
Around 19 per cent of qualifications are expected to be graded A* this year with a further 30 per cent likely to be A grades, it was reported on Monday night.
University admissions tutors are understood to be panicking about the number of students with top grades, especially for courses on which the number of places is limited.
In an attempt to see off criticism about grade inflation, Mr Williamson insisted that debate about how this year’s grades have been awarded should not “undermine or question the value” of students’ results.
Similar stories can be read in the Mail, BBC News, Independent, Times, ITV News.
Covid
Mail
During our phone interview, Professor Brendan Delaney, chair in medical informatics at Imperial College London, suddenly apologises: ‘Sorry about the pauses,’ he says, ‘but I’m still learning to concentrate on both what I am saying and on my breathing’.
Professor Delaney was one of the early victims of long Covid after catching Covid-19 in March 2020.
Previously a very fit cyclist, two weeks after he’d ‘recovered’ from Covid, he was struck with intense fatigue.
Even a brief phone call could exhaust him. He also had difficulty breathing, muscle pains, brain fog and a recurring fever.
Three months later he’d recovered sufficiently to return to work part-time but still had brain fog.
‘I couldn’t function at my normal level,’ he says. ‘I wasn’t seeing the connection between things.’
Testing
Telegraph
Anger at ‘chaotic’ system as images show overflowing drop boxes for Randox, a leading provider, with completed test kits perched on top
One of Britain’s biggest private test firms has been hit by an angry backlash from travellers after pictures emerged of dozens of its swabs piled up in plain view on streets.
The images of its overfull metal drop boxes with completed test kits balanced on top of them and awaiting collection were branded a “symbol of the absolute mess that PCR testing has become”.
Randox, which is said to have made £120 million from processing 15 million tests since the start of the pandemic, recommends customers should use its free drop boxes to return their test samples.
However, there are only around 200 of the drop boxes around the UK, which has left some customers angry at having to make lengthy drives only to arrive and find them already overflowing.
One customer, Gavin Marshall, tweeted: “Forced to pay @RandoxOfficial over the odds for Day 2 PCR test, drive 30 mins to drop off sample because so few collection points only to find it over-flowing and insecure. Covid travel rip off.”
Similar stories can be read in the Mirror, BBC News
WFH
Mail
Businesses crippled by the pandemic last night demanded clarity from the Government on its stance on workers returning to the office.
Working from home has had a devastating impact on town centres, where cafes and shops rely on office staff to keep them afloat.
The Government yesterday said it backed a ‘gradual and cautious’ return to the workplace – despite calls from senior ministers for civil servants to get back to their desks as soon as possible.
Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng yesterday suggested people in the office were more likely to be promoted – although he also said it would be wrong to issue a ‘diktat’ telling people how long to spend in the office.
He told Sky News: ‘I think that if you’re trying to make a career it probably makes sense to actually meet colleagues and actually build a network, and learn from other people, and I think that’s probably best done in the workplace.’
The comments prompted calls for clear guidance from the Government.
Kate Nicholls, of UK Hospitality, said ministers needed to provide ‘greater clarity’ and pushed for a return to the office next month.
‘It’s not too late to save those businesses provided we get that move back in the office in September,’ she said. ‘We need greater clarity on government messaging.
Similar stories can be read in the Telegraph, Guardian, iNews, Independent
Climate change
Independent
Time is running out to avoid failure at the crucial climate summit the UK will host in November after a UN report found the world stands at “code red”, Boris Johnson has been told.
A senior Conservative warned the prime minister had yet to make his “promises a reality”, while a respected think tank told Mr Johnson he must make the landmark gathering a personal priority to deliver success.
As Tory MPs launched a group to fight climate action they claim will cost too much, the environment minister, Zac Goldsmith, appeared to reveal fears of an active campaign to sabotage Cop26 in Glasgow.
But, despite calls for Mr Johnson to “do the heavy lifting” – by using his clout to pressurise other world leaders into stronger commitments – there are no plans for him to meet any before November, The Independent was told.
Talks have been left to Alok Sharma, the little-known Cop26 president who was handed the role after the prime minister tried and failed to recruit a big-hitter.
No 10 instead claimed the UK is “well ahead” of other countries in slashing carbon emissions – and defended plans for a new North Sea oilfield as necessary “in the short term”.
Similar stories can be read in the Mirror, Morning Star, Order-order, Times, ITV News
Olympics
Express
UK ministers will team up with London Mayor Sadiq Khan to explore a bid for a nationwide Olympics centred on London in 2036 or 2040 following Team GB’s success at Tokyo 2020, Express.co.uk can reveal.
Ministers will engage with the London Mayor to develop a pathway to “bringing the games back to London”. The move comes as Team GBs 65-medal haul in Japan matched the number earned during the Olympics in London in 2012, and is only two short of the record Rio total in 2016.
There were 22 gold medals won – the fourth-best performance by a British team.
While in very early stages, Express.co.uk understands ministers are keen to capitalise on a potential Olympic bid to enhance the UK’s global reputation, especially since Brexit.
Mr Khan will now be working closely with the British Olympic Association, the UK Government and other stakeholders to identify the next steps towards bringing a bid forward within the next 12 months.
Well Debbie, there is only one reaction possible to today’s review – what a chaotic shambles TPTB have led us to.
Any chance ‘the people’ will see it and rise up?
why are we paying for access to a market that is closed for business.. Surely force major must apply
Our MPs rushed though a vote after just a 90 minute debate to make it compulsory for all care home workers to have the jabs. There was no impact assessment for them to peruse before they cast their vote. None of us want to put our nearest and dearest into a care home. In our case we pulled together to try to keep my mum, who was blind and had onset dementia, at home in her flat for as long as we could. After a stroke she lost her speech and became doubly incontinent. We couldn’t cope any longer. The care home workers were the most amazing and kind folk that one could ever hope for. Take a look at this short video of a young woman who clearly loves being a carer but is now having to leave her calling as she doesn’t want to take the jab which she knows is in experimental stage until Spring 2013. What will become of care home residents when wonderful people like this leave in their droves.
https://twitter.com/maccheeky1/status/1424811775992737792
“Our” MPs; masters of the unintended consequence when it disadvantages people, whether care homes, climate nonsense or whatever else is in fashion for them. Of course there are some exceptions but they need to make their voices heard.
In above sorry about the typo. It should read 2023.
https://www.covid19assembly.org/
On this link is a letter for care workers to send to their employers re no jab no job. They must not roll over and just comply.
Also on this link are crowdfund appeals re legal challenge to child vaccination and for Dr Sam White.
Mary. Thank you for that link. I’d not come across that one. I overheard the receptionists being harangued by a patient at my local dental surgery when she asked if they were jabbed and if all the clients must be. They put up a polite but spirited response that no jab no jab is coercion.
Good for them. I’m really fed up with members of the public who are helping to drive this obscene agenda. when we should all down to the last man be fighting it.
I got really fed up with a neighbour yesterday who says even now she avoids our local corner shop because they don’t enforce muzzles and social distancing. People like her are driving us full tilt into hell, into aa police state.
Now is the last and only chance to grab our freedom back.
What a great girl! She is right though….it is all about ‘the money’. the care home operators and the care provision companies do not care about the customers or the staff. They care about ‘revenue’ and ‘the bottom line’ pure and simple. As soon as a facility is ‘privatised’ nothing else matters but ‘show me the money’!
They can’t be that dedicated if they’re willing to put the lives of their patients in jeopardy.
We’ve already had a run of deaths through care homes due tolack of vaccination.
Where is your information Harry?
Jack, his mate Boris told him. He always tells the truth doesn’t he?
“No 10 instead claimed the UK is “well ahead” of other countries in slashing carbon emissions”. Translated as “the UK is well ahead in trashing our economy and financial ruination”.
Thanks Jack Thomas. I raised a questioning eyebrow at that bit. You’ve interpreted it right for me.
First three stories here are all down to BRINO. The way to tackle each is proper Brexit. This is why all three issues will run and run and create further difficulties.
Indeed Matt. Bojo lied about his deal and deserves to be sacked without any compensation or pension. The only solution is to bin his WA in its entirety and refuse to pay any more money to the EU.
Ah Jack! If only! If only!
Agreed!