EU-DIGEST: UK

Showing posts with label UK. Show all posts

4/17/23

Brasil - Russia relations: President Lula recomments negotiations with Ukraine instead of disasterous war

Lula is fresh off a trip to China and the United Arab Emirates, during which he raised eyebrows in the West by accusing the United States of "encouraging the war" in Ukraine.

He also said the United States and Europe "need to start talking about peace," and that Kyiv shares the blame for the conflict, which began in February 2022 when Russian forces poured into Ukraine in an attempt to overthrow the democratically elected government and annex swaths of the pro-Western country.

His remarks echoed a line frequently used by Moscow and Beijing, which blame the West for the war.

Sergei Lavrov, Russia's top diplomat, thanked Lula on Monday for his offer to mediate peace talks on the 14-month war.

10/20/22

UK: British PM Liz Truss quits after only 44 days as PM

Liz Truss – once compared to Margaret Thatcher – is now the shortest-serving prime minister in British history. Her downfall came swiftly after the markets rejected her sweeping tax cuts.

Read more at: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp-video/mmvo151187013825

12/14/21

UK: MPs vote for new COVID measures, amid rebellion against PM Boris Johnson

British MPs have voted for further measures to battle the coronavirus pandemic, despite a sizeable rebellion against the measures from within prime minister Boris Johnson's own Conservative party.

Johnson suffered by far the biggest rebellion of his time as PM, with the government relying on the support of the opposition Labour Party to get the measures passed.

Before the vote in Parliament it was expected that some 60 and 80 Conservative lawmakers would vote against the government's latest COVID measures.

Read more at: UK: MPs vote for new COVID measures, amid rebellion against PM Boris Johnson | Euronews

12/11/21

UK: Omicron could cause tens of thousands of deaths in England, study says

The Omicron variant could cause tens of thousands of deaths in England by the end of April if additional virus restrictions are not imposed, new modelling suggests.

Researchers said the new variant, which is expected to be more transmissible, could cause 24,000 deaths by 30 April 2022 in the most optimistic scenario and nearly 75,000 deaths in the most pessimistic scenario.

Read more at: Omicron could cause tens of thousands of deaths in England, study says | Euronews

12/10/21

Brexit: UK economy almost flatlined in October, adding to rate hike doubts - by William Schomberg and Andy Bruce

Gross domestic product edged up by just 0.1%, slowing sharply from September’s 0.6% growth and much weaker than a forecast of 0.4% in a Reuters poll of economists.

The world’s fifth-biggest economy remained 0.5% smaller than it was just before Britain was first hit by COVID-19 in early 2020, the Office for National Statistics said.

Read more at: UK economy almost flatlined in October, adding to rate hike doubts - Metro US

11/1/21

France-UK relations: Deadlock over fish as UK and France spar over Brexit deal - by Elizabeth Piper and Michel Rose

Britain and France clashed again in a post-Brexit fishing row on Sunday, with London denying it had shifted its position and Paris insisting it was now up to Britain to resolve a dispute that could ultimately hurt trade.

The two sides painted different pictures of a meeting between Prime Minister Boris Johnson and President Emmanuel Macron on the sidelines of a Group of 20 summit in Rome.

Read more at: Deadlock over fish as UK and France spar over Brexit deal | Reuters

3/30/21

UK protesters scuffle with police during rally over new law

Police in the English city of Bristol say they arrested 10 people during a third night of protest against a new policing law.

Hundreds of demonstrators against the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill staged a sit-down protest outside a police station in the southwest England city on Friday night, and some scuffled with officers in helmets and shields who tried to break up the gathering.

The Avon and Somerset Police force said Saturday that eggs, bottles and bricks were thrown at officers and a police horse was daubed with paint.

Read more at: UK protesters scuffle with police during rally over new law | PBS NewsHour Weekend

1/3/21

Britain alone: The new rules for British Citizens who want to visit the EU - by Miles Brignall, Patrick Collinson and Anna Tims

Before Brexit, UK citizens could travel, live, go on holiday and work anywhere in the EU without any special permits or visas. As of 1 January 2021 that is no longer the case.

Read more at: Brexit: how the new rules will change your visits to Europe | Politics | The Guardian

11/22/20

Scotland: UK PM Johnson reportedly brands powers for Scotland a ‘disaster’

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has inflamed Scottish discontent with his Conservative government by reportedly saying giving governing powers to Scotland had been a “disaster”.

British media reported Johnson made the remarks during a video meeting with Conservative Party legislators on Monday evening, in which he also said Scottish devolution had been former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s “biggest mistake"

Read more at: UK PM Johnson reportedly brands powers for Scotland a ‘disaster’ | United Kingdom | Al Jazeera

7/19/20

EU: COVID-19 situation update for the EU/EEA and the UK, as of 19 July 2020

Read all the details re Coronavirus EU/EEA Statistics
COVID-19 situation update for the EU/EEA and the UK, as of 19 July 2020

9/22/19

Spain - Malaga: Britons in Malaga hold anti-Brexit protests

'The UK has forgotten us': Britons hold anti-Brexit protest in Malaga

6/13/19

Family friendly countries: ,Switzerland and the UK ranked among the worst countries for families

Switzerland and the UK ranked among the worst countries for families

7/11/16

Britain: Theresa May Likely To Be U.K.'s Second Female Prime Minister After Only Rival Quits Race

U.K. Home Secretary Theresa May looks set to become Britain’s second female prime minister after Andrea Leadsom, the energy minister and rival for the Conservative leadership, dropped out of the race to succeed David Cameron.

Speaking outside her home on Monday, Leadsom said: “The referendum result demonstrated a clear desire for change. Strong leadership is needed urgently to begin the work of withdrawing from the European Union.”

She said that the nine-week leadership campaign ahead was not in the best interests of the country, and that “we now need a new prime minister in place as soon as possible.”

And Leadsom added that her support among Conservative MPs was not high enough “to lead a strong and stable government should I win the leadership election.”

Leadsom had secured the support of 84 MPs in a secret ballot, which put her in second place behind May, who had the backing of 199. The pair had been set to battle it out for the top job in a nine-week campaign before a vote among the party membership.

Whether May now automatically takes the leadership, and thus takes over from Cameron as prime minister, is expected to be formally confirmed this afternoon. Britain's only female prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, was in office from 1979 until 1990.

Graham Brady, the chairman of the party’s 1922 committee that runs the leadership election, told reporters on Monday that May was the “only remaining candidate” but that he needed agreement from the party’s board before he would be able to “formally confirm” if she had won as a result of Leadsom’s decision.

Leadsom was the only remaining candidate who had backed a “Brexit” vote in Britain’s EU referendum, and many on the Euroskeptic right of the Conservative party and in the anti-EU U.K. Independence Party (UKIP) had hoped she would win, amid delays on the formal implementation of the U.K.’s departure from the EU.

Read more: Theresa May Likely To Be U.K.'s Second Female Prime Minister After Only Rival Quits Race

3/1/16

Nigeria: Environmental Concerns: Dutch Royal Shell proves test case for oil majors’ -- by William Wallis and Anjli Raval

Royal Dutch Shell’s environmental record will come under renewed fire on Wednesday in two cases that will test the ability of aggrieved communities in Nigeria to use UK courts to hold the company to account.

Shell’s Nigeria subsidiary, the Shell Petroleum Development Corporation (SPDC), is the largest onshore producer in the Niger Delta, where millions of barrels have been spilled — in accidents and as a result of criminal interference — since oil was first discovered in 1956.

In many instances — including in the two cases being brought to the high court in London by solicitors Leigh Day on behalf of the affected communities of Ogale and Bille — the spills have yet to be properly cleaned up. Shell says that in both cases sabotage and oil theft was a likely cause.

Lawyers at Leigh Day said their action would contribute to establishing whether oil spill litigation “goes international”. They would also seek to compel the company to clean up the affected areas immediately and compensate villagers for the impact on their lives in the wake of last year’s £55m payout by Shell for a similar Nigerian case brought by the Bodo community, also handled by Leigh Day.

Wednesday’s hearing is a procedural one in which Leigh Day will begin to make the case for why a UK court should have jurisdiction over Shell’s Nigeria subsidiary. Similar cases brought against SPDC and other oil companies in Nigeria have tended to languish for years, even decades.

“No one is going to mess around in the Nigerian courts if they can get remedy in the UK,” said Daniel Leader, lead solicitor in one of the cases.

In the past, the World Wildlife Fund has said that amount of oil spilled in Nigeria over the decades has been equivalent to an Exxon Valdez disaster every year for half a century. It claims the Niger Delta is one of the top five polluted places on earth.

Read more Shell proves test case for oil majors’ environmental records - FT.com

2/3/16

Middle East: Top IS commanders 'taking refuge' in Libya - by Gabriel Gatehouse

Several senior commanders from the so-called Islamic State have moved to Libya from Iraq and Syria in recent months, according to a top Libyan intelligence official.

The official told BBC Newsnight that increasing numbers of foreign fighters had arrived in the city of Sirte.

Representatives from 23 countries, including the US and UK, met in Rome on Tuesday to discuss the growing threat from Islamic State (IS) in Libya.

IS took control of Sirte last year.
Disagreements between rival administrations in the country have hampered efforts to fight IS.

Read more: Top IS commanders 'taking refuge' in Libya - BBC News

12/4/15

UK call for ‘multicurrency’ EU triggers ECB alarm - FT.com

David Cameron’s push to rebrand the EU as a “multicurrency union” has triggered high-level concerns at the European Central Bank, which fears it could give countries such as Poland an excuse to stay out of the euro.

The UK prime minister wants to rewrite the EU treaty to clarify that some countries will never join the single currency, in an attempt to ensure they do not face discrimination by countries inside the eurozone..

Mario Draghi, president of the ECB, is worried the move could weaken the commitment of some countries to join the euro.

Beata Szydlo, the new Polish premier, has previously described the euro as a “bad idea” that would make Poland “a second Greece”.

Mr Draghi shares concerns in Brussels that the EU single market could be permanently divided across two regulatory spheres, with eurozone countries facing unfair competition if there were a lighter-touch regime on the outside.

The idea of rebranding the EU as a “multicurrency union” was raised during a recent meeting in London between George Osborne, the UK chancellor, and Mr Draghi. Mr Osborne said last month that Britain wanted the treaty to recognise “that the EU has more than one currency”.

6/9/15

Africa: Corporate Tax Dodging Cheats Africa Out of 6 Billion Dollars, Says Oxfam - by Sean Buchanan

G7-based companies and investors cheated Africa out of an estimated six billion dollars in a year through just one form of tax dodging, according to a new Oxfam report 'Money talks: Africa at the G7', released Jun. 2.

This is equivalent to three times the amount needed to plug the healthcare funding gap in the Ebola-affected countries of Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea and at-risk Guinea Bissau.

According to an Oxfam briefing paper release in April this year, an estimated 1.7 billion dollars is required to close the healthcare funding gap to improve dangerously inadequate health systems in these countries. This figure is based on raising spending to the recommendation of the World Health Organisation (WHO) that 86 dollars per capita is required to achieve the minimum package of essential services.

"Multinational companies, many with headquarters in the US United Kingdom and other G7 countries, are cheating African countries out of billions of dollars in vital tax revenues that could help vulnerable people get decent healthcare and send their children to school", saysNick Brye, Oxfam's Head of U.K. Campaigns

Read more: allAfrica.com: Africa: Corporate Tax Dodging Cheats Africa Out of 6 Billion Dollars, Says Oxfam

2/6/15

Corporate Fraud: Accountancy firm PwC accused of promoting tax avoidance

The UK Government has been called on to take urgent action after MPs accused one of the UK's largest accountancy firms of promoting "tax avoidance on an industrial scale" to several multinational companies.

In a damning report, the Commons' influential Public Accounts Committee censured

PriceWaterhouseCoopers(PwC), whose promotion of tax arrangements, it said, "based on artificially diverting profits to Luxembourg through intra-company loans, bear all the characteristics of a mass-marketed tax avoidance scheme".

A political row over tax avoidance broke out between the Conservatives and Labour this week over hedge funds and donors but one Labour backbencher also hinted that Smythson, the luxury stationers for which Samantha Cameron, the Prime Minister's wife, acts as an adviser, had shifted its headquarters to Luxembourg to lessen its tax burden.

In a speech, Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, touched on the subject, calling on firms to pay more tax in the countries where they made their profits.

Read more: Accountancy firm PwC accused of promoting tax avoidance | Herald Scotland

1/25/15

Goldman Sachs boss: 'imperative' that UK stays in EU - by Szu Ping Chan

Britain must stay in the European Union if it wants to retain its status as the one of world's main financial hubs, the president of Goldman Sachs has warned.

Gary Cohn said London was the only financial capital to rival New York. He added that the US investment bank wanted to keep its European headquarters in the city.

"I think for the UK it's imperative to keep the financial services industry in London," he told the BBC. "We all want to stay in London.

Read more: Goldman Sachs boss: 'imperative' that UK stays in EU - Telegraph

11/18/14

Britain: David Cameron has now passed the point of no return on Europe - by Polly Toynbee

David Cameron has crossed the Rubicon. There is no going back. By proposing to limit free movement of labour from the EU he has planted himself on the side of the outs, as José Manuel Barroso made crystal clear in his Chatham House speech on Monday. The other 27 nations will never agree: if limiting national insurance numbers for EU workers is Cameron’s new red line then he has joined the Ukip wing of his party, who won’t let him renege.

“I will go to Brussels, I will not take no for an answer … when it comes to free movement,” he told his conference, and now that’s confirmed. In a riposte to Barroso’s plain statement of the facts on EU law, No 10 rudely warned him that he “should be under no illusion that the status quo is not acceptable to the UK”. Cameron went one worse and told him “who is the boss” on immigration.

There is no effective difference between Ukip and the Conservatives, both heading for the exit – except, as Nigel Farage says, Cameron “is deceiving the British public” with nonexistent options, breeding more political cynicism.

Cameron is no Caesar. He has been dragged backwards across this Rubicon by his enemies, in the long lurch away from Europe that began when he used an anti-EU ploy to secure the Tory leadership. Leadership? Not really, he’s been trailing after the Europhobes ever since, trying to keep up. Every step since then he has conceded British interests to appease the unappeasables. He won with a promise to withdraw the Tories from the European People’s party, outraging natural conservative allies such as Angela Merkel.

That bartering of British influence was the telling moment: Cameron would put his political interest ahead of his country’s in ways that would surely shock previous Tory prime ministers. Would any of them deliberately risk the nation’s pivotal international relationship just to swing an embarrassing byelection in Rochester? Cameron’s stated view is that Britain is better off inside the EU – but not, it seems, if it puts him to much inconvenience.

Note EU-Digest: maybe the best thing for Britain will be to hold the referendum on opting out of the EU because it would provide sensible British citizens together with recent immigrants, minorities and business groups, who realize that getting out of the EU would be suicide for Britain, to defeat the Conservative grouping who are against being part of Europe for once and for all

Read more: David Cameron has now passed the point of no return on Europe | Polly Toynbee | Comment is free | The Guardian

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