Bournbrook Live
Our commentary on the news as it comes in.
If you would like to contribute to Live, please email us at live@bournbrookmag.com
Advisable mask-wearing won’t be afforded to everyone
Posted at 10.20am.
Posted at 10.20am UK time
On the 19th of July, the mask mandate enforcing the wearing of face coverings by law will be dropped in favour of a policy of recommendation. The public will not have to wear them but be expected to wear them. However, this new regulation will not be universal, as many remain under the sway of the second command structure in society.
Businesses can still set their own rules over whether their employees or customers must wear masks. Whilst many businesses will drop the rule, as the repetitive purchasing of single-use face masks bites into the profit line – particularly for small businesses who’ve been the worst affected by lockdown restrictions, some will not.
Firms who can afford it and wish to virtual signal their duty of care towards a heavily vaccinated population and a not-at-risk youth demographic (who have a two in a million chance of succumbing to the virus) will continue to enforce the wearing of face coverings. This is also despite the fact that employees may accept the (low) risk posed by Covid, and are perhaps more wary of carbon dioxide poisoning (symptoms include fatigue, drowsiness, and shortness of breath) caused by wearing a face covering for the entire shift.
We must stop thinking of foreign policy in moral terms
Posted at 3pm.
Posted at 3pm UK time
We imagine that the US supports Taiwan because it is a democracy threatened by a more powerful neighbour run by an expansionist dictatorship. Wrong. The US supports Taiwan because it is the key to the US strategic position in the Western Pacific. Lose Taiwan, and the South China Sea really becomes a Chinese lake. China can much more easily project naval power toward the Second Island Chain, blockading China becomes harder, and Japan becomes difficult to defend. CCP China is unpleasant, but we must stop thinking of foreign policy in moral terms.
Hundreds of thousands of young workers could lose their jobs as furlough comes to an end
Posted at 10am.
Posted at 10am UK time
Up to 350,000 young people aged 19 to 24 face losing their jobs and ‘being scarred by recession for years to come’ as furlough is wound down in coming months, the Institute of Fiscal Studies warns.
Read my Daily News Digest for The Conservative Woman here.
Quote of the Day: Simon Heffer
Posted at 4.20pm.
Posted at 4.20pm UK time
Our Quote of the Day goes to Simon Heffer of The Daily Telegraph. Commenting on the newly unveiled statue of Princess Diana, he writes: ‘One must go back to before the Second World War to detect a public piece of art that was well-executed, dignified and inspiring, and generally accepted by those who had to encounter it in their everyday lives.'
Keir Starmer clinging on is bad news for Labour in the long-term
Posted at 4pm.
Posted at 4pm UK time
The Conservatives have been handed their second by-election defeat. Those I know who were on the ground credit this to a lack of actual engagement and visibility with voters and a general organisational mess by CCHQ to turn out their supporters to vote. However, the narrative so far is that Labour’s victory means the party ‘is back’, according to their leader, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. Starmer’s ratings are still rock bottom with the public and he has failed to make the sort of gains in the polls you would expect after the shambolic Hancock affair. From where I’m standing, Keir Starmer clinging on is bad news for Labour into the long-term and the overly-confident words from the leader of the opposition are not yet justified.
Another by-election surprise
Posted at 2.30pm.
Posted at 2.30pm UK time
Well, well, well. Another big by-election surprise! Happy to see that our tip for Labour’s vote percentage to be between 35-40% has landed at a very nice 3/1 odds. One would have thought that this swing would have been enough for the Tories…
‘Extra precautions’ needed even when lockdown ‘ends’
Posted at 2pm.
Posted at 2pm UK time
Boris Johnson has given his firmest statement that all restrictions will be lifted on July 19 but warned people to take ‘extra precautions’ in what is expected to be a big summer wave of infections.
Read my Daily News Digest for The Conservative Woman here.
Cannabis trade remains a criminal enterprise
Posted at 11am.
Posted at 11am UK time
Last month it was California, now it is Michigan. Another state, which legalised cannabis in 2018, is losing millions to criminal gangs. ‘Legalise weed and get rid of the crime associated with the drug gangs’ is a demonstrable lie, pure and simple.
Pregnant women in England denied mental health help because of lockdown
Posted at 10am.
Posted at 10am UK time
In 2020-21, 47,000 pregnant women were expected to access perinatal mental health services to help with conditions such as anxiety and depression during or after giving birth, but only 31,261 managed to get help in the most recent data for the 2020 calendar year only, according to analysis from the Royal College of Psychiatrists.
Read my Daily News Digest for The Conservative Woman here.
No unlocking on July 5th
Posted at 10am.
Posted at 10am UK time
Those close to Sajid Javid say that his approach to Covid will be radically different to Matt Hancock’s because he is much less ‘nanny state-ish’. But the new Health Secretary, seemingly pushed by Sage officials, has already ruled out lifting lockdown restrictions ‘early’ on July 5th.
Read my Daily News Digest for The Conservative Woman here.
100,000 pupils failed to return to full-time education when schools reopened after lockdown closures
Posted at 10am.
Posted at 10am UK time
A leading think-tank has uncovered the huge number of youngsters who have failed to return to education full-time after schools reopened their doors.
Read my Daily News Digest for The Conservative Woman here.
Hancock out, Javid in
Posted at 10am.
Posted at 10am UK time
Matt Hancock quit as Health Secretary on Saturday night after Tory MPs began breaking ranks to publicly call for him to quit over his ‘toxic’ breach of social distancing guidance to have an affair with his aide.
Read my Weekend News Review for The Conservative Woman here.
New travel ‘Green List’ does not go far enough
Posted at 10am.
Posted at 10am UK time
Furious travel bosses today insisted the government’s changes to the ‘Green List’ don’t go far enough, and that dozens more countries with low infection rates should have been added.
Read my Daily News Digest for The Conservative Woman here.
80 years since Hitler’s doomed invasion of the Soviet Union
Posted at 11:30am.
Posted at 11:30am UK time
On the 22nd June 1941, nearly two years into the Second World War, the German Army launched Operation Barbarossa: the invasion of the Soviet Union. Hitler saw Eastern Europe as a natural area of expansion for the German people – the ‘lebensraum’ for his Aryan Empire. In preparation, the Germans had assembled over three million troops, making it the largest land invasion in military history.
Between June and December of 1941, the German Army Group North had surrounded Leningrad, starving its inhabitants of basic resources, such as food; Army Group Centre had sliced through the heart of the Soviet Union, swallowing the key Soviet cities of Minsk and Smolensk; Army Group South had blitzed through resource-rich Ukraine, taking roughly 700,000 prisoners of war near Kiev.
The Wehrmacht’s mystifying march towards Moscow was halted with the onset of winter, as the divisions approaching the city’s limits had to abandon their vulnerable positions, leaving much of their heavy equipment behind. This would happen again in Operation Bagration, which was not the simple withdrawal of forces from the area, but a catastrophic defeat which the Wehrmacht would never recover from.
Read the rest of Luke Perry’s article here.
Curbs on protests in policing bill breach human rights laws, say MPs and peers
Posted at 10am.
Posted at 10am UK time
Restrictions on protests in the police, crime, sentencing and courts (PCSC) bill breach human rights laws and will increase the risk of peaceful demonstrators in England and Wales being criminalised, MPs and peers have warned.
Read my Daily News Digest for The Conservative Woman here.
Pensions raid to pay for lockdowns
Posted at 11.45am.
Posted at 11.45am UK time
Read my Daily News Digest for The Conservative Woman here.
Government considering making working from home ‘default’ option
Posted at 8pm.
Posted at 8pm UK time
Further proof that the end of lockdown will not mean the return to normality. I report on this for Lockdown Sceptics here.
Conservatives need to pick their battles
Posted at 6.45pm.
Posted at 6.45pm UK time
Conservatives need to pick their battles carefully. Not everything needs our reaction. Short-term wins will not defeat identity politics. Focus on bread-and-butter issues. Push back when necessary. We need to think long-term and systemically.
Delay was meant to be prevented with a surge of vaccinations, what happened?
Posted at 11am UK time
The UK’s vaccination programme continues to be successful, however, the latest figures are completely at odds with what the Government promised. Today’s figure, 420,699 doses, is in line with the performance of the past few weeks. It is a worthy figure, but not even close to a surge of vaccination that the Government pledged to keep the now broken promise of June 21st on track. Instead of beating the ‘Delta’ variant in a race with mass vaccinations, the Government have given up altogether by prolonging restrictions once again in the latest disappointment of this never-ending lockdown saga.
Only 60 MPs vote against Government’s lockdown extension
Posted at 10am.
Posted at 10am UK time
Our plastic parliament voted by 461 to 60 in support of the Government’s four-week-long extension of lockdown. Support from Labour and other nominal opposition parties ensured the Prime Ministers delay to our unlocking was bound to succeed…
Read my Daily News Digest for The Conservative Woman here.