Northern Ireland Protocol
Telegraph
Brussels will be making a “historic misjudgment” if it fails to make fresh concessions on the Northern Ireland Protocol, Lord Frost will warn on Tuesday.
In a speech in Lisbon, Portugal, the Brexit minister will urge the European Commission to bend its rules and accept that the European Court of Justice’s (ECJ) involvement in the province must end.
Urging the bloc to focus on the bigger picture, Lord Frost will add that if two sides can finally break the deadlock they will be able to unite and refocus on the shared challenges confronting the West, including China and Russia.
“We would have a chance to move forward to a new, and better, equilibrium,” he will go on to say.
His intervention will kick-start a pivotal week in discussions between Brussels and London over the future of Northern Ireland, during which the UK will present draft legal texts setting out its alternative to the protocol.
More details in the Express and Independent.
Covid
Mail
Many thousands of care home residents died needlessly in the pandemic, a damning probe from MPs concludes today.
The first major inquiry into the Covid crisis says tragic losses in care homes were among the highest in Europe – and could have been prevented. Instead, the elderly were an ‘afterthought’.
The devastating finding is among a catalogue of failings detailed in a joint report from the health and science committees of the House of Commons.
The MPs say ministers were blinded by ‘groupthink’ among scientific advisers, who wrongly wanted to manage the spread of the virus, rather than suppress it.
They also castigate the ‘chaotic’ performance of the £37billion test and trace system.
Early decisions on lockdowns and social distancing rank as ‘one of the most important public health failures the United Kingdom has ever experienced’.
The report blasts ‘light touch’ border controls when it was clear cases were coming from abroad.
The report is likely to anger families who lost loved ones and increase the pressure for the independent judge-led inquiry to begin as soon as possible.
Many of the other media run the story. See Times, Sun, Mirror, Guardian, BBC News, ITV News, iNews, Evening Standard, Sky News, Independent
Fisheries
Express
EMMANUEL MACRON has been snubbed by other European leaders after members of the Brussels bloc opted to defy French orders to enter a fishing war against Brexit Britain.
The French President, 43, suffered a major blow from his EU colleagues after they refused to enter his ‘cod war’ against the United Kingdom, the Sun has revealed. Monsieur Macron called on members of the Brussels bloc to heap the pressure on Britain after the French fisheries minister slammed the UK for a “clear failure to comply” with Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal.
According to the Sun, other member states in the European Union, including Ireland, agreed to sign a watered-down version of the statement and even removed any references to Britain breaching the fishing licence agreements signed in the Brexit accord.
The Times also covers the story.
Illegal migrants
Times
The UK will start releasing chunks of the £54 million deal promised to the French to combat Channel migrant crossings as part of efforts to repair relations with Paris.
Damian Hinds, the security and borders minister, responded to a fresh outburst by the French government at the weekend by insisting the money would start to be paid in the “coming weeks”.
It is the first time the UK government has publicly agreed to pay the money since Priti Patel, the home secretary, threatened to withhold every penny if the French failed to crack down on the record numbers of migrants crossing the Channel in small boats.
Breitbart and Yahoo News also cover the story.
EU
Mail
The European Union ‘will start collapsing’ unless it challenges a ruling by Poland’s top court that national legislation trumps European laws, a senior official with the bloc said on Monday.
Poland’s constitutional tribunal ruled against the central tenet of European integration last week, sharply escalating a row over fundamental values between eurosceptics ruling in Warsaw and most of the other 27 EU countries.
More than 100,000 people protested in Poland on Sunday in support of the EU, sounding the alarm about what they fear is a prospect of their country following Britain and leaving the bloc in a ‘Polexit.’
‘If we don’t uphold the principle in the EU that equal rules are respected the same everywhere in Europe, the whole Europe will start collapsing,’ said Vera Jourova, EU Commissioner from Poland’s neighbor, the Czech Republic.
‘That is why we will have to react to this new chapter which the Polish constitutional court started to draw,’ said Jourova, in charge of values and transparency at the executive European Commission.
One way or another, the tribunal ruling is likely to cost Warsaw.
See also Breitbart.
Cancer
Mail
A new cancer treatment can destroy tumours in patients who have been diagnosed as terminally ill, a study has found.
Researchers say a combination of immunotherapy drugs trigger the body’s immune system to attack cancer cells and result in a ‘positive trend in survival’.
During a trial on head and neck cancer patients, they discovered the medication led to a reduction in the size of tumours. In some cases, the tumours disappeared.
The study by scientists at the Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) in London and the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust involved almost 1,000 patients.
Standard ‘extreme’ treatment involves an aggressive cocktail of two chemotherapy drugs and a targeted antibody treatment.
It comes with side-effects such as nausea, pain, appetite loss and breathing problems.
But prescribing a mixture of two immunotherapies instead helped patients live an average of three months longer. The combination of nivolumab and ipilimumab also sparked fewer side-effects.
Social care
Telegraph
Further tax rises will be necessary to tackle the health and social care crisis because the hikes announced by Boris Johnson are not enough to fund the NHS, experts have warned.
A report on Tuesday from the Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS) says that a £12bn annual tax rise announced by the Prime Minister last month is only sufficient to fix the immediate shortfall faced by the health service as it emerges from Covid.
The IFS said that Mr Johnson’s new health and social care levy – currently set at 1.25pc on top of national insurance, and due to take effect in April – could have to more than double to 3.15pc from as soon as 2025 to raise a further £19bn.
Calculations by The Telegraph suggest this would add £960 to the annual tax bill of a worker earning £40,000, compared to what they currently pay.
Experts also warned that inflation will rise to its highest level for a decade next year and the Bank of England will be forced to increase interest rates, blowing a further £15bn a year black hole in the public finances.
See also the Express.
Gas prices
Sun
TONE-DEAF ministers will next week announce plans to hike gas bills by £159, The Sun can reveal.
Despite soaring energy costs and factories preparing to shutter this winter, Boris Johnson will double down on his controversial Net Zero Strategy ahead of next month’s COP26 climate summit.
And central to it will be the controversial Heating and Boiler strategy that will seek to make electricity cheaper and gas more expensive over the next 15 years.
It will:
BAN new gas boilers being installed after 2035, with Brits handed subsidies of between £4,000 and £7,000 to install expensive electric heat pumps.
UNVEIL how firms and households will be encouraged or forced to switch to cleaner energy supplies – with green levies currently whacked on leccy bills switched to gas.
DELAY a decision on replacing the gas network with controversial hydrogen to heat homes has been delayed until at least 2026 amid safety concerns.
The PM will argue that electricity – which is the cleanest it has ever been – is kept artificially expensive, hitting efforts to get people to switch to electric cars and central heating.
But insiders say it will take years of listening exercises and legislation before the green levies currently slapped on electricity can be moved over to gas bills.
Covid tests
Telegraph
The amount of false positive coronavirus lateral flow tests has increased in secondary school children, official data show.
Anecdotal evidence of children receiving a positive lateral flow and then a negative follow-up PCR have circulated on social media and numbers from the UK Health Security Agency indicates the phenomenon is indeed on the rise.
Susan Hopkins, chief medical adviser at the newly-minted UKHSA, has said the body is aware of the trend and is “looking into the cause”.
Figures from Test and Trace, which used to be controlled by the Department of Health and now falls under the remit of the UKHSA, reveal that in the week ending September 22, almost 620,000 students took lateral flow tests at home as part of routine asymptomatic screening and almost 14,000 came back positive.
However, 1,112 (8 per cent) of these pupils returned a negative or void follow-up PCR, indicating the lateral test result was a false positive.
iNews also has the story.
GPs
Telegraph
Telephone consultations with GPs are being incorrectly classed as “face-to-face” appointments in official statistics, NHS chiefs have admitted, following an investigation by The Telegraph.
In recent weeks, ministers, including the Prime Minister, have intervened to promise patients access to face-to-face appointments, amid mounting concern about the difficulties some are facing.
Before the pandemic, about 80 per cent of consultations took place in a doctor’s surgery. However, the latest monthly figure is just 58 per cent, with little change since officials vowed in May to give all patients the right to a “face-to-face” appointment.
Now, The Telegraph can reveal that even this figure exaggerates the number of consultations which are actually taking place in person.
NHS officials said that because of the way some local systems were set up, some appointments were automatically being logged as face-to-face slots, regardless of how they were actually delivered.
See also the Mail.
Dementia
Mail
A blood test could detect dementia up to five years before tell-tale signs appear, scientists say.
By the time patients suffer memory loss and other hallmark signs of the disease, the brain has already suffered serious damage.
But scientists at the German Centre for Neurodegenerative Diseases say they have now identified three biomarkers that may act as a warning sign that someone is likely to suffer from the condition.
It could help doctors spot the disease early, potentially slowing down the onslaught of the condition and delaying its symptoms.
There are around 850,000 people with dementia in the UK, and 6.2million suffering from the condition in the US.
Researchers handed cognitive tests to 132 people aged from 18 to 77 years old.
They also took blood samples to analyse levels of microRNAs, small proteins which are involved in regulating cells.
Results showed more than 90 per cent of patients who went on to develop dementia in the next two years had elevated levels of three microRNAs — miR-181a-5p, miR-148a-3p and miR-146a-5p.
These are involved in regulating inflammation in the brain, and help control how brain cells connect with each other.
See also the Times.
Solar storm
Express
A SOLAR STORM is “heading to Earth,” according to experts – and they have predicted the time A SOLAR STORM forecast to strike the planet today with a “direct hit” is running “fashionably late”, scientists have announced.
Space weather forecasters have adjusted their solar storm predictions after a coronal mass ejection (CME) detected on the weekend failed to materialise. Scientists warned the stream of charged particles and magnetic field from the Sun was due to hit on Monday evening, triggering the outbreak of a “moderate” solar storm. The US Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC), which issued the original solar storm alert, has now said the space weather event will likely hit on Tuesday.
The SWPC said in its update: “The G2 (Moderate) geomagnetic storm watch continues for the remainder of October 11, 2021, and is now in effect for October 12, 2021.”
The CME was associated with an intense solar flare observed on the Sun early on Saturday.
According to the website SpaceWeather.com, the burst was a “halo” CME as it appeared to form a 360-degree disc around the Sun.
The CME was forecast to hit the planet head-on, leading to fears of imminent tech blackouts and power disruptions.
I get the feeling that the MSM has piled into the scandal about the elderly in Care Homes being neglected and killed off because they can sense that the mood is turning against the government so they think that they had better get involved in case they end up on the wrong side of history! What a load of shysters!
Now I see that government is going to give loans to firms disadvantaged by rising energy bills. What about the poor old people who cannot suddenly increase their monthly income to pay the bills! Oh silly me I forgot, the old are ‘useless eaters’ aren’t they!! What a disgusting, heartless Country we have become!
Here is an excellent synopsis of the whole shameful charade of the last eighteen months as out in a “letter” to Johnson.
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/we-both-know-this-has-never-been-about-saving-lives-boris/
Solar Storm; what’s the betting that TPTB will use a story like this to excuse to bring on an internet outage, which would suit their agenda in a numberof ways.
They won’t be able to resist it Mary!
South West Airlines cancelled 2,100 flights last weekend in the USA blaming adverse weather conditions and air traffic control problems. Some news sources reported that other airlines were flying from those airports and the Federal Aviation Admin said there had been no air traffic control problems and that the reason for the cancellations was that aircrew were not turning up for work due to the covid jab mandate. It’s not just that airline that has been having issues. This is an alarming report on Red Voice media about a vaxxed Delta pilot dying in flight.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/I7krCzHkIJlC/
Energy costs rocketing, and we’re constantly preached at that aircraft are supposed to be polluting the atmosphere. So why in my area is this helicopter flying round and round and round all day, wasting money, fuel etc . Shouldnt think its for anything useful.
One definitely was snooping, on me, during the first lockdown. I was dealing with a fish merchant and it hovered over us until he had gone. Words fail.
EU collapsing? What’s not to like? Bring it on and the sooner the better.
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2021/10/12/parliamentary-report-concludes-boris-govt-waited-too-long-to-lock-down/
Have I got this right?
A joint report by two select(ed) committees of THE UNIPARTY criiticises the leadership of The UNIPARTY for waiting too long to come to grips with Covid-19. (I don’t remember any of them raising the subject last year.)
“There was a desire to avoid a lockdown because of the immense harm it would entail to the economy, normal health services and society,”… We still do not have a meaningful test-and-trace operation, and robust border controls.
Quite right too. We are now realising the extent of that harm and will be paying for it for the next two generations. The testing, notoriously inaccurate, was and is callously used to show “cases”,rather than actual infections.
They talk about thousands of lives lost to Covid-19, but do NOT differetiate between “died from”, “died with” and “died as part of the collateral damage” caused by the Uniparty’s policies.
The Uniparty claims to follow “The Science”, so they embrace the vaccinations with fanatical fervour, yet deny the evidence that says there are other less expensive treatments that are proven to work.
For those of you who are not old enough to remember the 1968 “Hong Kong Flu… it killed more people than Covid, but we did not trash the Nation’s Economy. We just “carried on”.
Hindsight is a jolly fine thing.
The whole purpose of the lockdowns was to ruin economies everywhere.To smash everything up then create Hell on Earth.
PS This seems a good take on the real situation.
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/the-master-plan-behind-the-covid-crisis/
These committees are just a waste of space creating smoke and mirrors and cover up Govt’s frauds and lies.
… we can, no longer longer of course, consult the discredited Lancet on any covid, covid lab, covid vaccination etcetera topic …
dickatbarn. 1968? Oh yes that was the year that I lived in – – – – – – . I was busy working at – – – – – – – . Everything seemed to be working as normal all around me. There and ‘at home’.
Hong Kong Flu?
Never heard of it.
And Harryagain the figures dickatbarn quoted are NOT hindsight either.
Are there no hydraulics engineers out there. ?
I Keep repeating. If you have enough pressure to run water out of your taps, then you have enough pressure to drive a ( Foolishly named ) heat pump. or refridgerator. Or any number of smaller dohiccies presently unthinkingly using electricity. Why they say they’re noisy beats me.
What are dohiccies?
I think its an Americanism denoting some small mechanical or technical adjunct. Last time I heard the word used was in the film Driving Miss Daisy when Hoke the chauffeur hired to drive Miss Daisy was telling one of Mr Werthan’s employees how to sort out the problem with the switch on the elevator!
The things I learn on this site!
Oxford English Dictionary
doohickey colloq. (orig. and chiefly U.S.).
(ˈduːhɪkɪ)
Also dohickey, doohicky.
[f. doo(dad + hickey.]
Any small object, esp. mechanical; a ‘thingummy’ (see also quot. 1928).
Pauline……I did think when I read ‘dohiccies’ in TG Spokes comment that it was a word in the Gallifreyan language (Gallifrey being the home of the Timelords etc) but I looked the word up nevertheless and found a similar word but spelt slightly differently from TGS’ variation, and that word is ‘doohickey’….. No, I haven’t a clue either, but it relates to a small object or gadget especially one whose precise name the speaker cannot recall. So there you have it, the large amount of typo errors in TGS posts would seem to sum it up. Still it provides a titter or two in Johnson brave new world….
Spelling erros are not confimed to TG.
Oxford English Disctionary
galliform, a. Ornith.
(ˈgælɪfɔːm)
[ad. mod.L. galliform-is, f. L. gall-us cock + forma form.]
Belonging to the Galliformes, an order of birds, including ostriches, gallinaceous birds, rails, cuckoos, and parrots. (In recent Dicts.)
Don’t forget tap water is neither free nor an unlimited resource.
When one considers the lockstep of the Covid-19 response across the world, the sinister agendas of the UN and the effective colonialism of corporations, it is easy to assume that there is a global umbrella of elites transcending national sovereignties.
Where does that leave the UK government’s tangle over the Northern Ireland Protocol? This fracas seems strange to me when the same government signed up to that very protocol.
Perhaps the diplomatic finesses and negotiations are lost on the plebs and we are ignorant of ‘the game’. Surely it is time these games to stop, especially as we find resistances to trade for small businesses between the UK and the EU is as much the fault of British politicians and civil serpents as it is the EU bureaucrats. A charade that is orchestrated to support vested interests, job creation and pompous puppets.
When the public of the UK voted to leave the EU that is what it should have meant everything since is nothing more than theatre when we see the continuing entanglement of institutions, the ‘justice’ industry, defence and corporate interests. Stop, leave meant leave!
“One way or another, the tribunal ruling is likely to cost Warsaw.” Biased reporting again. But it will be well worth it if the ruling holds not just for the Polish but for all those who have had enough of the EU bullying.
Just check out UN Agenda 21 for the reason behind all this; i.e. Johnson’s full compliance with, even enthusiasm for, it. Vernon Coleman has a very readable summary of it all in his book “Endgame”. We need to stop all contributions to the UN, financial or other.
” Ask the EU to bend their rules” ?? What idiocy is this. What have EU rules got anything to do with UK. . I have to repeat
No EAW
No ECJ
No ECHR
And the sooner we get rid of any whiff of EU law,, the better .
And Frost must know what nationality he is., and that he works for Her Majesty.. And that we do not need to take seriously .
people who are merely ” Chancing their arm “. I suggest he asks thatTenerife ( Which will probably explode shortly anyway,) become a British Protectorate.
Indeed TG.