𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

In a speech at the United Nations last week Andy Burnham announced the creation of the National Centre for Information Defence – a new surveillance unit – designed to ‘stem the poisonous tide’ of disinformation. Burnham identified Russia as the biggest threat.

I find myself agreeing with Nigel Farage when he says this will end up curbing free speech with the government using foreign bot accounts as a convenient excuse to clamp down on domestic political dissent and opinions they don’t agree with.

Is anything OFF the table?

Have you noticed that “can’t answer-a-question-can’t-make-a-decision Burnham” has resorted to saying everything is “on the table”. Apparently the Chagos deal is still ‘on the table’, and on Sunday when asked about him introducing a dementia tax to pay for his social care plan, that too remains ‘on that table’ as is rejoining the EU and increasing the defence budget. No wonder Burnham had to open an extra Number 10 in the North. He needed the desk space for all of these policies which are still “on the table”.

Another blow to the high street

You may need to ensure you are sitting down when you read this. A friend of mine has an acquaintance who has a shop to let in Dudley – a town once called the capital of the ‘Black Country’ because the soil was rich and black, a once prosperous town with a department store and shopping centre. Not far from it they built the Merry Hill Centre which was the largest shopping centre in Europe at one point.

The shop has been on the market for two years with no interest shown. The asking rent was £19,000 a year, despite the fact that rents were £50,000 a year some years ago. My friend took it off the market with the intent of re-advertising it at £10,000 a year.

Then a guy came along who had expressed interest 12 months ago – the agent thought he had gone away. He has offered the full asking price of £19,000 a year.

The shop is to be used as an advisory centre for migrants so that they can check their entitlements to benefits! The government is paying the rent and has apparently given the operator a trading subsidy. If this is the government’s strategy to regenerate high streets then I think we can well manage without it.

Recollections may vary

In Suella Braverman’s forthcoming book, she makes the claim that Rishi Sunak was “the man who owed his coronation as party leader largely to me”.

As someone who was in Parliament at that time, I have to say it isn’t a version of events I recognise. Boris or Graham Brady could take credit but not Suella. The former stood down from the leadership race and the latter as chair of the 1922 committee, set the required number of MPs backing at 100 to enter the leadership race.

As the late Queen astutely remarked,“recollections may vary”. Clearly.

A cruise down memory lane

Prince William and Kate were back on the red carpet with Tom Cruise last week for his new film Digger. Cruise’s relationship with the royals dates back to 1992, when he first met Princess Diana and invited her, William and Harry to visit him on the set of Mission: Impossible. Cruise even attended Diana’s funeral in 1997. It is good that William has maintained this friendship with Hollywood royalty after all those years.