English councils face £2bn black hole from coroanvrius August 19, 2020 English councils are facing a £2bn black hole over the coming months if the government does not provide emergency funding, according to a leading think tank. The Institute for Fiscal Studies’ (IFS) new report said Covid-19 has depleted local government revenues and many “face a difficult choice between depleting their reserves to low and potentially [...]
Brexit free trade talks stalled over UK truckers’ access to EU August 19, 2020 The EU has reportedly denied the UK’s request for British truckers to maintain full access to mainland Europe as post-Brexit trade talks resume today. The UK wants its truckers to be able to make pick ups and drop offs inside and between EU member states after the Brexit transition period ends on 31 December, according [...]
Government working with Heathrow on coronavirus testing August 19, 2020 Health secretary Matt Hancock said the government is working with Heathrow Airport on its plan to roll out testing of passengers to help end the two week quarantine for international travellers. The airport is reportedly planning to test passengers to help allow them avoid the 14-day quarantine for travellers arriving in the UK from countries [...]
Matt Hancock: There’s one big reason it’s safe to return to the office August 19, 2020 UK workers have no reason to avoid returning to their offices this autumn, as there is little chance of catching coronavirus in the workplace, health secretary Matt Hancock said today. Instead Brits are largely transmitting coronavirus when households meet one another in their homes, Hancock told the BBC. When asked if Britain would follow France [...]
Democrats nominate Joe Biden for president, vowing to end Trump ‘chaos’ August 19, 2020 Democrats formally nominated Joe Biden for president last night, vowing his election would repair a pandemic-battered America and put an end to the chaos that has defined Republican President Donald Trump’s administration. The second night of the party’s four-night national convention, under the theme “Leadership Matters,” featured elder statesmen like former presidents Bill Clinton and [...]
So what if Sajid Javid has a new job? Outside interests can make for better MPs August 19, 2020 A former Deutsche Bank board member has joined JP Morgan as part of the US bank’s EMEA advisory council. Hardly front-page news, you would imagine — notices in brief in a financial publication, at best. Except that the DB alumnus is Sajid Javid, former chancellor of the exchequer and currently MP for Bromsgrove. The reaction [...]
Gavin Williamson smirks on — proving that this government values loyalty over competence August 19, 2020 If a picture is worth a thousand words, then there is one image that sums up the whole sorry mess of the A-level results fiasco. No, not one of the photos of tearful students, quivering with outrage and despair that their university places had been snatched away by a heartless algorithm. Rather, it is a [...]
Busting the myth of the selfless bureaucrat August 19, 2020 There seems to be a fundamental problem with quangos. Hardly a day seems to go by without some new story of incompetence and mismanagement emerging. Public Health England (PHE) is at least going to be put out of its misery by health secretary Matt Hancock, and replaced with a new agency specifically focused on pandemics. [...]
Be eco-rational: The world’s environmental problems are too serious for petty political dogma August 19, 2020 On 14 February 1990, a photograph was taken by the Voyager 1 spacecraft from the fringes of the solar system. As it sped further away, engineers spun it around to capture an image of the planet Earth, suspended in space roughly four billion miles away. Taking up only 0.12 of a pixel in the image, [...]
Ireland to tighten coronavirus rules after spike in cases August 18, 2020 Ireland will “significantly” tighten Covid-19 rules following a spike in confirmed coronavirus cases over the past two weeks. It comes after the country’s health minister Stephen Donnelly confirmed there had been 190 new cases today. Ireland previously held one of the lowest infection rates in Europe, but its 14-day rolling average has risen from four [...]