Apple’s new HomeView smart hub won’t launch in the EU because of the company’s ongoing fight with the European Commission over the Digital Markets Act. An entire product category from one of the most powerful tech giants on Earth is delayed indefinitely for millions of people because of Brussels red tape. A total embarrassment…
Andy Burnham is refusing to take the usual pack of political journalists to the Commonwealth summit in Antigua later this month. This breaks precedent significantly…
The PM always takes a pack. Starmer and a large group of journalists travelled across the globe together for the last one. This time, only hacks with the Press Association will be going. The PM usually takes questions on the plane and so on…
The King happens to be going and is taking a gaggle of royal reporters, which means the unelected monarch will endure about ten times more scrutiny than the Prime Minister. The ‘comms genius’ strikes again…
The Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting – CHOGM – is a biennial summit which brings together representatives from all 56 Commonwealth nations. What’s wrong with reporting on that?
David Lammy has kept up his jet-setting habits (diligently reported on by Guido) while outside of government. All paid for, of course…
The latest Register of Members’ Financial Interests shows the sacked former Deputy Prime Minister flew to New York for Climate Week from 22 to 24 September, at the expense of the woke New York Climate Exchange non-profit. The total bill was £10,062…
The Energy Secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh was at the same event. Her tickets were funded by the taxpayer, though…
The flights alone came to £8,043 with a further £2,019 on the hotel. Not much change from economy…
Lammy’s parliamentary entry says he went to give remarks at a session on sustainable cities and attend roundtables. He was billed as a speaker at a ‘high-level’ dialogue on transition finance on 24 September. The stated aim was to work out how to move ‘transition finance’ “from billions to trillions.” And that starts with a five-figure flight ticket?
The Munich Security Conference also paid Lammy £870 for a two-day trip to Rome for its European Defence Roundtable and the Premier League handed him two tickets with hospitality for Spurs v Everton, worth £856. Keeping up appearances…
HMRC has admitted that it doesn’t routinely collect data on how many retailers are selling illegal tobacco. Would probably be easier to start recording the shops rather than sifting through sewage to guess how big the black market is…..
In response to a written parliamentary question asking whether HMRC holds data on investigations involving illicit tobacco with suspected links to drug or human trafficking, fraud and money laundering, Paymaster General James Murray said: “HMRC does not routinely collect or publish data on the number of retail premises suspected of selling illicit tobacco products. Although HMRC records information on illicit tobacco investigations, those investigations are not routinely categorised by linked criminality type”…
Less than two weeks ago, Labour imposed an additional £2.20 tobacco duty increase, despite HMRC’s own impact assessment warning that “some consumers might also engage in cross-border shopping and purchase from the illicit tobacco market” as a result. The Budget is looming…
Yesterday a man was arrested after Greater Manchester Police seized £400,000 worth of illegal cigarettes, while a Bristol shop selling illicit tobacco has finally been ordered to close for three months following repeated seizures and warnings. Meanwhile, Andy Burnham is still busy promising to clean up the high street. More focused on Man City than improving lives in Manchester…
Grand Central, one of Britain’s primary open access train operations, wants to run trains from Manchester down the Midland Main Line to St Pancras, where passengers can walk onto the Eurostar. Who wouldn’t take up that offer?
The bid goes to the Office of Rail and Road shortly. Industry experts are accusing the ORR of “running down the clock” until Great British Railways takes over its access decision-making next spring. It sat on a bid from Grand Central to go from Cleethorpes to London so long that the company cancelled an order for new trains from Hitachi in Newton Aycliffe. So much for jobs in the North East…
ORR’s own figures show open access operators cancel less than half as many trains as the state-backed lot and score higher with passengers. Yet the government is predisposed against them…
As Labour nationalises train operators one of the few private ones is offering to massively benefit the people of Manchester. Party interests or country’s interests?
Sir Ken McCallum, Director General of MI5, has said today:
“I’m a little bit worried that if we all stay in this debate for another few days that the Russian trolls who didn’t appear to do all that at various points over the years, they’ll be delighted.
They are front page news once again, despite the comparative un-impressiveness of much of what they do at all the points along the journey.
I am a little bit anxious that we don’t play into our adversaries’ hands by making these trolls look 10 feet tall. That’s not our experience of them.
There is a really important difference between interference attempted and outcome swayed. It’s quite important to focus on the difference between what may have been attempted and what actually resulted.”
He then said he agreed with what Burnham said in the Commons yesterday, including regarding Russian leaking in the 2019 General Election. Guido wonders who his substantive point is referring to…
Former Labour leader Neil Kinnock was asked if Burnham will take Britain back into the EU:
“Yes, sure – his commitment is authentic. He really does understand from the grassroots up why restoring what I think of as normality in our continent is vital for every party economically, politically, culturally, in terms of security, and he’s able to articulate it in language that people can understand. So yeah, he is definitely”.