DAILY MAIL COMMENT: Eco-mob’s shameful attack on the Press
Why on earth would the selfish eco-zealots who wreak havoc on ordinary people’s lives ever stop their disruption when they are so indulged by the authorities?
At times the police seemed more interested in making sure the Just Stop Oil extremists blockading a fuel depot were comfy, rather than ensuring law-abiding citizens could go about their business.
True, some protesters were arrested at the Essex refinery. But why did officers vacillate as the poundshop anarchists tunnelled under two roads leading to the site, causing mayhem and risking lives?
Why on earth would the selfish eco-zealots who wreak havoc on ordinary people’s lives ever stop their disruption when they are so indulged by the authorities?
Yes, the right to protest is enshrined in law. But aggravated trespass and obstructing highways are not. They are crimes. The police should start treating them as such.
The authorities also face searching questions after the delivery of newspapers from a major printworks was blocked. While fuel and grocery consignments left, shipments of the Daily Mail were not deemed a priority. The result was gratuitous disruption to one of the fundamentals of a free country: A free Press.
And where does Labour stand on this furore? Surprise, surprise, it opposes Home Secretary Priti Patel’s crack down on protests bringing large parts of the country to a grinding halt.
Sir Keir Starmer says his party can be trusted on law and order. By siding with eco-wreckers over ordinary people, he’s proved that is complete nonsense.
Prescription for GPs
Barely a day goes by without another crisis involving the NHS. Yesterday we told of record bed-blocking fuelling the emergency care crisis. Today, fresh concerns about the demise of the family doctor.
In the past decade alone, almost 500 surgeries have closed, affecting millions of patients and massively increasing GP workloads. It’s little surprise the system is teetering on the precipice, with many people waiting weeks for an appointment and tragic stories of some dying because they couldn’t see a doctor in time.
So why is the GP service, once the lifeblood of the NHS, now in such a sick state? Many doctors are retiring or working part-time, while Labour’s bungled contracts let them shun evening and weekend duties.
But we simply must train more doctors. The Government’s refusal to expand the number of places available to young people at medical school is scandalous.
Lifting that self-defeating cap is surely the prescription for improving GP care.
Dangerous precedent
The malicious hounding of Boris Johnson over Partygate by a Commons committee might thrill his enemies. But this witch-hunt could do great damage to democracy.
To make it easier to punish the outgoing premier – including potentially suspending him from Parliament – the kangaroo court changed the rules.
It can now find Mr Johnson guilty of unintentionally misleading MPs, rather than having to prove deliberate deception.
This sets a dangerous precedent. Who would want to become a minister if they feared serious censure for inadvertently making a mistake when answering Commons questions? In future, it would make functioning government difficult, if not impossible. And that would benefit no one.
- Whenever it’s suggested the bloated foreign aid budget would be better spent helping Britain’s disadvantaged, rather than subsidising Chinese rice production or despotic regimes in Africa, the liberal elite goes into a funk of moral outrage. Yet if even their standard bearer, ex-international development secretary Rory Stewart, admits much UK aid is a ‘waste’, doesn’t that prove development spending needs radical reform?
