Impeaching Trump would be disastrous for the Democrats November 9, 2018 It took the President mere hours after holding his post-midterms press conference to drop the inevitable bombshell. After months of lambasting Jeff Sessions, the attorney general was being fired, replaced with the more amenable Matthew Whitaker. Why such ire towards Sessions, when he had been one of Donald Trump’s fiercest supporters on the campaign trail? [...]
DEBATE: Should we be concerned that the Brexit secretary didn’t realise the extent to which we rely on Dover-Calais trade? November 9, 2018 Should we be concerned that the Brexit secretary didn’t realise the extent to which we rely on Dover-Calais trade? Richard Angell, director of the think tank Progress, says YES. The admission by Brexit secretary Dominic Raab that he “hadn’t quite understood” how “reliant on the Dover-Calais crossing” the UK is would be funny if it [...]
Women, beware the narrative of victimhood this Equal Pay Day November 9, 2018 Ah, it’s that time of year again. Tomorrow, the Equal Pay Day campaign will tell women that they are now “working for free” until the end of the year. We’ll be told that our male colleagues will receive a full salary, while women are being undervalued and discriminated against in the workplace, and that the fight [...]
London Assembly accuses Sadiq Khan of ‘incompetence’ over Crossrail delay November 9, 2018 London mayor Sadiq Khan has been accused of showing "incompetence" in his handling of the delay to the £15.4bn Elizabeth Line. The London Assembly's transport committee branded Khan's response to a letter it wrote in October – in which it accused the mayor of misleading the public about the delay – as "wholly unsatisfactory". On 31 August Crossrail announced [...]
China’s Xi issues warning to Trump as he prepares to meet with Putin at G20 November 8, 2018 Chinese President Xi Jinping has warned US President Donald Trump to respect its choices, ahead of the two world leaders meeting at the G20 summit in Argentina later this month. China and the US have been embroiled in a trade war for several months, placing tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars worth of goods on both [...]
International trade secretary Liam Fox says UK must be able to withdraw from Irish backstop November 8, 2018 International trade secretary Liam Fox has said the UK must have the ability to leave the backstop arrangement that is taking centre stage in the Brexit negotiations. Fox rejected the idea that the backstop could be ended by mutual agreement with the EU, telling reporters that Britain could not "sub contract" the decision to the [...]
Foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt says UK-France bond ‘bigger than Brexit’ November 8, 2018 Foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt has said Britain and France will continue to enjoy "the bond of friendship" for decades after the UK leaves the European next March. Speaking in Paris, Hunt, who was made foreign secretary after a long stint as the health secretary, praised the relationship between the UK and France as "one of [...]
Fintech startup Monese crashes a ‘Brexit meteorite’ in front of London’s King’s Cross station November 8, 2018 London-based digital banking fintech startup Monese today unveiled its Brexit warning to UK consumers, as its Meteorite sculpture smashes into the ground in front of King's Cross station. The installation is designed to pique the interest of passersby on what life could be like post-Brexit. It was claimed in September that the UK will be the last [...]
Be wary of taking the golden goose of London for granted November 8, 2018 Last week’s Budget saw two infrastructure spending announcements for London. The first was a cool £291m to buy more DLR trains and convert a depot into housing. This will facilitate 18,000 homes – in reality, about four months’ worth of London’s annual need for housing. The second was £5m for a Westminster Ceremonial Streetscape project. [...]
The tech revolution could be a catastrophic setback for civilisation November 8, 2018 Social earthquakes are looming fast from the emerging wave of automation and the tech revolution. We’ve all seen the headlines about artificial intelligence (AI), the rise of the robots, self-driving cars, and leaps forward in machine learning. But does society realise what is coming? Will it prepare itself? Can the scale and speed of change [...]