Guido is in favour of this and would like to see more of it. Chris Mason should do his News at Six hit while skydiving and Beth Rigby needs to hop on a pogo stick outside Downing Street. It might save the legacy broadcasters…
Pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca today announced it will invest £11 billion into China. Just months after giving Britain the cold shoulder over a comparatively modest investment at home…
In September the firm binned plans for a £200 million expansion of its Cambridge research hub and shelved a £450 million overhaul of its Liverpool vaccine plant over how much the NHS pays for medicines. The deal would have created 1,000 jobs in the UK. Instead, the cash is now heading east, increasing AstraZeneca’s China workforce to more than 20,000. Keir Starmer said:
“AstraZeneca’s expansion and leadership in China will help the British manufacturer continue to grow – supporting thousands of UK jobs.”
So far Starmer’s Beijing jolly has delivered visa-free travel for Britons staying under 30 days. What has he given up in return…
UPDATE: Shadow Business Secretary Andrew Griffith said:
“Astra’s a great British company but under this government it’s investing everywhere in the world other than its UK home. When we are losing investment to communist China, alarm bells should be ringing in No 10 Downing Street.”
This week the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport accidentally published a consultation proposing to hike Gambling Commission licence fees for companies by 30%. An embarrassing gaffe that instantly sent the industry into meltdown…
While the quango plots a chunky fee rise for an already-battered sector (fresh from Reeves’ November tax raid – including increasing the tax rate for remote gaming from 21% to 40%), co-conspirators might ask where all that extra cash would actually go. The Commission’s latest accounts show that in just one year:
- Total spending is up £20 million – a 50% jump
- Legal fees up £13 million
- Total remuneration is now £300,000 for the CEO; Deputy CEO £340,000. To do what…
- Total staff costs up nearly £4 million
- Headcount ballooned from 373 to 416
- Travel and subsistence: £246,000
- £10.5 million spent on “professional fees”, up from £9.5 million and £1.2 million on agency staff, more than double last year’s £564,000. Despite the staffing spree…
Meanwhile the leaked consultation admits the Commission still needs to find £3.2 million in efficiency savings even after slapping on a 30% fee rise. They might want to start by looking in the mirror…
Andy Burnham has told BBC Radio Manchester this morning that his blockage was “really disappointing.” He said:
“It’s hard when something like that happens, it’s really disappointing. What I was offering the party, I think, was an alternative path to the one that the party is now on. What I was saying to them was that I think, without being arrogant about it, because of what I’ve contributed to building in Greater Manchester, I was in a strong position to fight back this different type of politics that is trying to come in and trying to win our council seats and come into Greater Manchester in a big way. I believed I was probably in a better position than anybody to fight back against that.”
Burnham complained again about the No10 briefing that claimed he was warned he would be blocked prior to applying, saying he had spoken to Starmer and “anybody paid by the public purse does not get licence to lie.” Technically they do until the ill-fated Hillsborough Law comes in…
He said he wouldn’t be “bitter“:
“In the aftermath of all of this, I’m not going to be sort of bitter and I’m going to be out there campaigning in the by-election but I am going to call that one thing out. I have been 30 years in the Labour Party, it is a hard decision for me to take as I agonised over it but I believed I was making it in the best interests of Greater Manchester.”
Burnham can enjoy campaigning in the by-election he said Labour will now lose…
Guido touched on this at the beginning of the month when gold hit $4,600 per ounce. It is now sitting at $5,513. Gordon Brown sold off all Britain’s 12,712,000 ounces of gold for revenue of $3,500,588,920 when he had settled into the Treasury…
Were that to be sold today it would now net $70.9 billion or £50.7 billion. That is more than double the size of the ‘black hole the Tories left behind’ which justified tax rises in Reeves’ first Budget. Brown’s bottom will end up as big as the sun at this rate…
The Telegraph has gone very big on Starmer’s contribution to a book by disgraced lawyer Phil Shiner in which he carps about the ECHR’s uses in prosecuting British troops. Their ‘exclusive’ investigation may sound familiar to co-conspirators…
Guido revealed that Starmer had contributed an entire chapter to Shiner’s book. In December 2024…
Starmer’s chapter was titled “Responsibility for Troops Abroad: UN-Mandated Forces and Issues of Human Rights Accountability.” Using one example Starmer explicitly argued that the ECHR’s jurisdiction should extend such that troops in action could be prosecuted more readily. Shiner – prior to being struck off – provided glowing praise for Starmer in the foreword of his book. Why won’t sharks attack human rights lawyers? Out of professional courtesy…
Shadow national security minister Alicia Kearns told Times Radio she would have put a precondition on a China trip if she were PM:
“I would have put a precondition that I was not going to go if I was prime minister, unless Jimmy Lai was coming home with me. I would also put a precondition in the six months leading up to the visit that I wanted a reduction in hostile acts against our country. But that’s not what we saw. And actually, in contrast, what we saw was clearly the Chinese Communist Party did put a precondition, which was that the new embassy in London had to be signed off. So why is it okay for China to set preconditions and to make very clear red lines about what they require for a visit, but we go without having put any ourselves?”
