Tory mayor candidate Shaun Bailey calls Sadiq Khan a ‘con man’ August 5, 2020 Tory mayoral candidate Shaun Bailey has accused Sadiq Khan of being a “con man” and of “betraying” black working class communities as he tries to reposition his campaign. Bailey told City A.M. after a speech that Khan had pulled a “confidence trick” on Londoners and had been an habitual liar as mayor. The mayoral candidate [...]
Amazon to pass on UK digital tax to sellers in fees hike August 5, 2020 Amazon is to increase seller fees next month, saying it will no longer absorb the UK’s digital services tax after talks with the government failed to progress. The e-commerce giant said it had taken on the impact of the digital services tax — a two per cent levy on the firm’s annual revenues — since [...]
Coronavirus: MPs slam ‘serious mistake’ over UK border policy August 5, 2020 The spread of coronavirus in the UK could have been curbed if the government had not made the “serious mistake” of failing to impose quarantine restrictions on international arrivals, a group of MPs has said. The Home Affairs committee said ministers had underestimated the threat of importing the virus from Europe, as opposed to Asia, [...]
UK and Valneva agree to set up coronavirus vaccine facility in Scotland August 5, 2020 The UK government has struck a deal with biotech company Valneva to build facilities in Scotland to potentially develop a coronavirus vaccine. The deal would see a manufacturing facility built in Livingston, West Lothian, with the potential to produce 60m units of a vaccine. The government and the French biotech company struck an agreement last [...]
The costs of lockdown can no longer be justified August 5, 2020 In an otherwise depressing week, two pieces of very good news emerged from India. In Mumbai, blood tests conducted by the city authorities on 6,936 randomly selected people found that some 40 per cent had coronavirus antibodies. Just 6,000 deaths have been reported so far in a city of 20 million. A similar exercise in [...]
UK green lights £1.3bn of housing and infrastructure spending August 4, 2020 Proposals to build more than 70,000 new homes and start a raft of commercial infrastructure projects were given the green light today in a £1.3bn funding announcement from the UK government. More than 300 projects in England – including a £23m commercial development in Manchester and a £14.88m investment in building residential homes on Brownfield [...]
Johnson gives Tiktok the green light for London headquarters August 4, 2020 Boris Johnson has given the green light to allow video sharing app Titkok to move its global headquarters to London, in a move that will likely spark fury from across the Atlantic. Downing Street today said it had no objection to Tiktok’s shift to the UK, despite growing national security concerns over its close links [...]
WHO warns UK about need to implement coronavirus test and trace ‘properly’ August 4, 2020 The UK is at risk of a having significant surges of coronavirus cases if the NHS Test and Trace programme is not up to scratch, according to the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) Covid envoy. Dr David Nabarro said today that if “testing and tracing and isolation just is not done properly” then it would lead [...]
Donald Trump questions accuracy of South Korean coronavirus stats August 4, 2020 Donald Trump has questioned the validity of South Korea’s coronavirus statistics during a heated clash with a US TV station. The President was questioned by Axios on why the US had such high rates of Covid-19 deaths, which are currently at around 1,000 per day, and why they were rising. The interviewer said this was [...]
UK coronavirus: Second wave could be double the size of first August 4, 2020 Reopening schools in September without an effective test, track and isolating system could result in a second wave of coronavirus more than double the size of the UK’s first, according to a new modelling study. Researchers from UCL and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) examined the potential effects of reopening schools [...]