A late happy new year to everyone - coming up on a packed @BBCNewsnight …
* cost of living crisis - what can be done via Ben Chu
With the Oxford Professor Dieter Helm who says Govt ignored his solutions…
* Geidt report with Nick Watt
* Kazakhstan
* Don’t Look Up NASA scientist
Dieter HElm - rise in prices is not just about global markets - partly down to way British market works, decommissioning of storage of gas at Rough,
Likens Govt response here to like N Rock… says its not “rocket science” if UK Govt had got on with his advise, wouldn’t be crisis
NEW Govt “Cost of Energy” adviser @Dieter_Helm tells me on @BBCNewsnight Government “shelved” his 2017 report addressing intermittency of renewables etc says
- its not “rocket science”…
- “if we’d just got on with that, the cost of energy would not be the crisis it is today”
Asked @DamianGreen if Theresa May would have left “a bit of a tip” for her successor… “every room Theresa has been in has been tidier when she left it then when she joined it” - told me it wasn’t a question of whether he buys the account, Lord Geidt says the code wasn’t broken
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
President Biden’s official White House proclamation lifting the “national security” 25% tariffs against, specifically, steel produced by current EU members (10% for aluminium), that came in to force on Saturday, whilst being left in place for now vs UK… whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/…
… language in the Biden proclamation says the US and EU have addressed the “threatened impairment of national security posed by steel imports from the EU”… then goes on to say he considered on natsec grounds whether to lift the tariffs on other countries, eg incl UK, but no.
“I have considered whether it is necessary and appropriate in light of our national security interests to make any corresponding adjustments to such tariff as it applies to other countries. I have determined it is necessary and appropriate, at this time, to maintain…” eg for UK
simply superb colleague, fearless & relentless interrogator of truth, infectious enthusiasm for news in every corner of the world & for the development of younger colleagues. Honour to have worked with & learnt from you. gutted not to be able send you off..
Watching #JonSnow on C4N was compulsory in my household as we had our dinner in 90s Manchester…so when I met him at Granada TV conf of young people, and he wrote back to a letter asking for a job encouragingly but politely saying it wasnt “in his gift”…I pinned it by my desk…
When I joined C4N team in 2004, astonishing to find that #JonSnow was in fact entirely & exactly the same person off screen as he appeared on… like a buzzing energy ball, infecting everybody with enthusiasm to go that little bit further, & endlessly interested in all around him
So a week ago FCDO officials briefed foreign journalists on record, correctly, that Govt was parking the ECJ red line on NI (there was another briefing to foreign journalists on this in Brussels) … it was then denied in a Cabinet Office statement and a tweet from Lord Frost.
found the notion one set of officials would on record brief foreign journalists with material change in policy, and then domestic journalists had that denied by a different set of officials, v v strange. Not cited in Mail as reason but this is what was happening at time last week
“The short doubling times seen with Omicron reinforce the value of going even harder, earlier and wider with any interventions than for Delta.” - Sage advice to Govt - generally grim prognosis in here assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/upl…
All this aimed at Christmas family gatherings, work parties that are still going on - NB this is Sage advice to Govt, not policy, yet.
Testing just before all gatherings, whole group/ family not attending if one tests positive etc
Headline rate of inflation for UK soars to 5.1% in November up from 4.2% the month before, highest rate for over a decade. It’s over two and. Half times above the Bank of England’s target of 2%.
Driven by record petrol prices, used cars, clothes and food
13 year high on the ONS’ preferred CPIH measure which includes some account of prices for owner occupied housing..
Used car prices - pandemic effect from microprocessor shortages reducing supply of new cars, deflecting demand to used cars, at the same time facing a pool of forces saving from buyers….
This should turnaround at some point, when fields full of chip less cars are chipped
Trade minister tours US states, amid little to no progress on US-UK trade deal, & UK-US steel tariffs dispute unsettled even after US-EU deal, implores US to “awaken” a “paradigm shift” in US response to UK leaving orbit of EU “to be closer to you [US]”..
“[Brexit is] major geo-political event and it calls for an US response that recognises this moment and the opportunity..
We have made ourselves a player on the global chessboard..
Let future generations of Americans not say.. you failed to grasp that opportunity”
Speech underlines a rather important strategic paradox - that part of the rationale behind pursuing a clean/ hard break Brexit from the EU was to pursue closer relationship with US… but at best not a priority for US, at worst, contributing to currently worse outcome on steel…