A government spokesperson said: “Diego Garcia is a key strategic military asset for both the UK and the US. Ensuring its long-term operational security is, and will continue to be, our priority – it is the entire reason for the deal.
We ensure the security of a military base by giving it away to a foreign govt largely controlled by one of our enemies/rivals.
Only someone who did PPE could believe that.
It’s a big problem for the National Trust, which rents out 2,500 properties – a large number of which are thatched and built with cob and timber. The charity must upgrade them under the net zero rules at significant cost, and many of the properties are listed or else impossible to upgrade to the required standard.
All must, etc etc. But that’s the problem – some cannot. So, what do we then do with old properties – like listed ones – that cannot be brought up to standard?
Bureaucracies simply don;t do nuance, nor do dictats from the centre. Sigh.
Since then, the US has pushed countries across the region to terminate these agreements, branding them “forced labour” and even “human trafficking” because the Cuban state retains a share of salaries. Conveniently ignoring that these doctors were trained free of charge by the Cuban government, unlike their heavily indebted counterparts in countries such as the UK where medical graduates have the onerous burden of student debt for decades.
So, if you get trained by the State – say, we go back to grants for uni – then the State gets to allocate your labour forever? You become, in fact, helots of the State?
Well, there’s an argument in favour of student loans then, eh?
The Greek prime minister has vowed to tackle what he has called a “deep state” he says is plaguing the country, as he sought to address a growing political crisis over a farm fraud scandal that has forced the resignation of multiple government ministers.
Not which govt scandal, not which Greek govt scandal, but which Greek govt farm subsidies from the EU scandal? This the one where payments were being made for olive groves 5 miles out in the Gulf of Corinth, that Greek govt scandal about EU farm subsidies?
False claims allegedly involved banana plantations on Mount Olympus, olive groves on military air force installations and archaeological sites being cited as grazing land for livestock.
Could actually be that one, yes.
The Fair Work Agency (FWA), which is being launched on Tuesday, is a cornerstone of Labour’s Employment Rights Act. It will bring together several existing labour enforcement bodies and its responsibilities will include policing the minimum wage, holiday pay and modern slavery.
At a recent meeting with civil society groups, Matthew Taylor, its incoming chair, listed the five priorities the Department of Business and Trade had laid out for the FWA in its first year. These included “thought leadership” and “reducing regulatory burdens”.
Brand new bureaucracy, massive efficiency gain by combining several pre-extant. Then one of the major goals is “thought leadership”.
These morons actually believe all the TED talks shite, don’t they?
You have to tell the system what you’re going to plant in hte garden in order to gain planning permission?
Kill the system with fire. Take off and dust it from orbit, it’s the only way.
Up to 12,000 of Britain’s most prolific shoplifters will avoid jail under Labour laws scrapping most prison sentences of under one year.
Judges and magistrates should only impose jail sentences of less than one year in “exceptional circumstances” as part of the Sentencing Act passed last year.
Ministry of Justice data show that 98 per cent of shoplifters currently in jail would qualify for alternative “community punishments” under the new law, which took effect last month.
Yes, this does mean that disincentives also matter.
The base idea of having government is that we gain public goods from government. Defence of the real magainst the Frenchies, public order through a criminal law system and so on. These are the prime duties, the purpose, of the system.
So, we’ve not an RN any more, we’ve not public order as we’ve not a criminal law system worthy of the name – why in buggery do we bother feeding all the lanyards therefore?
She said: “The council continually denied it but the figures here, that the Guardian have exposed, show the truth. The facts are clear. The council needs to stop wasting Birmingham residents’ money trying to break the strike and instead resolve the strike.”
The Equality Act says that binmen must be paid the same as workers of equal value – teaching assistants and school dinner ladies. Pay sufficient to get binmen to turn up must be offered to all those many, many others when they’re already happily enough turning up for work.
Brum is not allowed to vary pay so that they get enough binmen without paying all those many, many, others more.
Rewscind the Equality Act at the strike would be over 30 minutes later.
Torsten Bell, the pensions minister, is expected to update the House of Commons on the saga on Thursday. He is understood to be furious at how chronic failings have been able to reach this level.
The State is not good at doing things:
National Savings and Investments is set to pay out £400m to customers following a missing savings scandal first revealed by The Telegraph.
The savings bank is in discussions with the Treasury to repay some 37,000 savers whose money is understood to have been misplaced, after failings dating back years.
And yet Torsten will continue to insist the State should do many things. Badly.
Campaign groups rail against Palantir, but the UK contracts keep coming
I’ve never quite grasped why this hated of Palantir. I think it’s the necessity for some of finding a bugbear, an omnicause that all can be blamed upon. Depending upon time and place that can be the capitalists, The Joos, Palantir etc. Can’t really think of any other reason here…..
The wealth tax, which Frederiksen announced in the Danish parliament, the Folketinget, as she called the election, is a 0.5% tax on assets held by an individual worth more than 25m kroner (about £2m) that will, among other things, lower class sizes for six- to nine-year-olds from about 26 to 14.
Money is fungible so of course no tax specifically pays for something. But the claim will always be that a new tax is to pay for something fluffy bunny. Rather than what should be happening, taking the last fluffy bunny that didn’t work out to be shot.
Gerard Lyons
Dubai rescue scramble shows we need to consider a citizenship tax
Passport taxation makes you a helot of the State by accident of borth.
It will also increase taxes upon everyone. For it will be more difficult to escape high taxation, this shifts the Laffer Peak to the right, therefore taxes will rise to that level.
The Companies House website was wholly open. Get into your own account with authorisation code and so on. Then, with a bit of wibbling about (I understand it was “press back 4 times”) you can get into any- and every- ones’.
Change the address of Shell, close down BP, etc etc…..
Brought to you by the people about to enforce Digital ID. And who gave you the Post Office thing about counting incomplete transactions as valid.
There are urban areas of England where no one lives within a 15-minute walk of nature, government data shows, as ministers scramble to meet their access to nature targets.
While the data shows 80% of people live within walking distance of green or blue spaces such as a river, park or woodland, it also reveals a disparity between rural and poorer urban areas.
Everyone will have to have access to green or blue space under the government’s environmental improvement plan, published at the end of last year.
Seriously, who let the gurning morons impose a target like that?
We’ve near no army nor navy left, The Musselmans are invading the beaches and government is measuring how many feet you live from a riverside walk? And then, get this, promising to make more?
The access minister, Sue Hayman, said: “Spending time in nature is so important for our mental and physical wellbeing, and this government is committed to delivering better access to nature for people across the country, no matter where they live.
“Access to nature still varies hugely between areas and we are working to make sure that this is a guarantee, not a postcode lottery. We have already taken action to improve access to nature by announcing the first of nine national river walks, the Mersey Valley Way and two new national forests.”
Fuck’s Sake. Hang the Lanyard Class
A spokesperson from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office said: “Our primary concern at this point is to ensure the safe departure of a group of individuals from an island that is not fit for human habitation, and on which any health emergencies or extreme weather could pose a serious threat to life.”
What annoys is that they think we out here are stupid enough to believe such tosh.
Four people have been arrested as part of an investigation into a gang that stole at least £3m in benefits.
The suspects were detained following dawn raids at four addresses across south London and Berkshire, according to the Department for Work & Pensions (DWP).
The raids were carried out as part of Operation Mellow, an investigation into an organised crime group alleged to have used hundreds of hijacked identities to claim, falsely, Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payments worth at least £3m.
Police seized an estimated £150,000 worth of items and cash at one of the addresses.
The suspects were taken into custody and interviewed under caution by DWP investigators. They have been released on bail pending further investigations.
D’ye think some local Somalis have been calling cousins in Minneapolis?
Labour will introduce new rules to revoke public servants’ pensions if it cannot stop Wayne Couzens from receiving a £7,000-a-year payout, The Telegraph can reveal.
Government lawyers are currently locked in a legal battle to prevent Couzens, the killer of Sarah Everard, from claiming his pension from the Civil Nuclear Constabulary (CNC).
However, two years into the dispute, no ruling has been handed down and Couzens, 53, could receive his first payment as early as next year.
The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) said it was “absolutely determined” to stop the payout and confirmed it would introduce legislation if the court challenge failed.
Officials declined to rule out whether the new powers would apply to all public servants, raising the prospect of wider pension forfeitures.
Hard cases make bad law etc. Your pension is deferred pay. If they can’t come after you for what they’ve paid you before your conviction then why should they be able to come after your pension?
Yes, yes, I too an excited by the idea of stripping all the lanyard class of all their pensions. But – perhaps precisely because I am excited by it – I think it ends up being a bad idea. It’s not impossible to imagine it developing into the idea that people should be stripped for opposing the rainbow flag or summat.
The British countryside will be made into a less “white environment” under nationwide diversity plans.
Officials in rural areas, including the Chilterns and the Cotswolds, have pledged to attract more minorities under plans drawn up by the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra).
The plans follow Defra-commissioned reports that claimed the countryside would become “irrelevant” in a multicultural society, as it was a “white environment” principally enjoyed by the “white middle class”.
National Landscapes – previously called areas of outstanding natural beauty (AONB) – and their local councils have since committed to a number of diversity targets.
The Chilterns National Landscape team has set out proposals that include community outreach schemes to attract more Muslims to the area, particularly from nearby Luton.
More diverse staff will be recruited, marketing material will be produced featuring people visibly from ethnic minorities, and written in “community languages”.
Research has also been commissioned to support this work, some of which suggests that dogs should be kept under tighter control, as some groups are scared of them.
The government’s short of money these days, right?
So, something that works well enough must be changed:
Child sponsorship schemes that allow donors to handpick children to support in poor countries can carry racialised, paternalistic undertones and need to be transformed, the newly appointed co-chief executives of ActionAid UK said as they set out to “decolonise” the organisation’s work.
My word, eh? Paternalistic!
the goal of shifting narratives around aid from sympathy towards solidarity and partnership with global movements.
We must move from changing a life, one by one, to changing all of society in the Glorious Revolution! This also means no cash leakage out to actually aiding any individual at all. All casn be spent on the nomenklatura! Many meetings to be had!
ActionAid’s future is about solidarity, justice ……Better education, state welfare systems and healthcare should be the model – all responsibilities of a nation state.
Just think of the grift!