Global Britain must pivot towards Asia but it must also ensure polluting countries take climate change seriously August 23, 2021 If the Government’s Global Britain vision is to be a success, the UK must strengthen ties with the most populous continent in the world: Asia. An agreement to boost cooperation with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) – ten member countries in the Indo-Pacific, home to nearly 10 percent of the world’s population – [...]
Action Fraud was fruitless agency – its downfall should teach us the perils of letting skulduggery go unpunished August 21, 2021 At the end of July, the Government announced it would scrap Action Fraud, the national gateway for triaging and allocating fraud complaints for police investigation. The decision is long overdue. Official reports criticising Action Fraud’s performance have been practically an annual event. The repeated criticism was that Action Fraud was a toothless crime-recording body – a [...]
Weekend Read: Ailing business investment will dampen the economy’s post-Covid prospects August 21, 2021 The good pandemic-related news continued to emerge last week. Latest figures from the Office for National Statistics shows output jumped 4.8 per cent in the second quarter of this year, driven by the lifting of Covid restrictions on sectors that rely on face-to-face and social contact to generate income. The services industry – which accounts [...]
Sadiq Khan’s £15 congestion charge is preventing London’s bounce back from the pandemic August 20, 2021 There is rarely such a thing as a temporary regulation or tax, even those instituted in response to an emergency. Politicians enjoy the power to regulate and even more the receipt of taxes. But regulation and taxes are the enemy of innovation and business, especially small businesses. The damage they do can take years to correct. [...]
The British Virgin Islands and the UK: A modern partnership is one of equals August 20, 2021 With a thriving financial services sector and a safe and reliable place to do business, the British Virgin Islands is important not only as one of the UK’s Overseas Territories but as a partner to Canada. Under the BVI constitution, responsibilities are shared between the elected Government, led by me as premier, [...]
Britain 2030: Writing off the high street is unambitious; its future is bespoke, local and community-driven August 20, 2021 After years of decline, the Covid-19 pandemic further hammered the high street, leading to boarded up shops and mass job losses, and some to declare the high street “dead”. But writing off the high street could prove to be unambitious, as, with the help of local government and private stakeholders, the post-pandemic high street could [...]
China’s cover up of Covid exposes a rotten regime built on deceit August 19, 2021 Too often, conspiracy theories rest on the erroneous assumption that our enemies are both highly evil and highly competent. Most of the time, the opposite is true. The description of Watergate in the peerless thriller All the President’s Men, offers us a more accurate picture: “Forget the myths you’ve read about the White House, these [...]
The World Health Organisation’s war on vaping is a lesson in terrible risk management August 19, 2021 Pfizer has been having problems with its stop-smoking drug varenicline, known as Chantix in the USA and as Champix in the UK. It has had to recall batches of the drug because it contains quantities of a carcinogen that exceed the Food and Drink Administration’s safe level. The FDA isn’t enforcing the recall, however. Instead, [...]
The prodigal son returns: The hunger for Bitcoin signals an appetite for hard money August 19, 2021 This week marks 50 years since President Richard Nixon announced the US would abandon the Gold Standard. Instead of redeeming the dollar in gold, the government allowed its value to float freely on the market. So began a sharp devaluation of the world’s reserve currency of choice under the US-led Bretton Woods system. Priced in [...]
Editorial: America First vs Global Britain August 18, 2021 On Tuesday night Joe Biden shirked the blame from the chaotic withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan. The speed of the Taliban’s takeover was unexpected, the President said – a sole admission of any miscalculation. Biden took the reins of a Trump-era decision and mangled it into a foreign policy catastrophe for the US and [...]