What a Mess

Terry Whitehead 29th September 2022 Europe must prepare for 'previously unimaginable' threats to its offshore and undersea infrastructure, Germany's interior minister has said today, after the Nord Stream pipe was blown up in a suspected Russian attack. Leaders have already begun scrambling to shore up their defences with NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg in Denmark today for talks which he said 'addressed the protection of critical infrastructure' while Norway said it was deploying the military to protect its oil and gas rigs. The Spanish government is planning to impose a temporary tax on the wealthiest 1% of the country’s population, starting from next year amid soaring inflation, Budget Minister María Jesús Montero said on Thursday. She acknowledged that she was negotiating with the PSOE socialists’ junior coalition partner, the left-wing Podemos group, who had the initiative in its electoral programme. Why has the pound dropped? The pound has plummeted in direct reaction to Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng's so-called mini-budget on Friday, which announced the biggest tax cuts in the past 50 years. Why has it got worse over the weekend? While there was an initial fall after the chancellor's announcement, sterling started to rally slightly. The Danish monarch has removed prince and princess as well as 'His/Her Highness' titles from Nikolai, 23, Felix, 20, Henrik, 13, and Athena, ten. A statement on Wednesday said Queen Margrethe hopes the move will allow the siblings to 'shape their own lives without being limited by the special considerations and duties' that a formal affiliation with the Danish Royal Family involves. The world’s second-largest fresh produce wholesale market in Rungin near Orly airport in the southern suburbs of Paris has been reportedly been totally destroyed today, Sunday, September 25, after a massive fire broke out. Italy Silvio Berlusconi has sparked fury by claiming Vladimir Putin was 'pushed' into invading Ukraine and only wants to put 'decent people' in charge of Kyiv. the nationalist Giorgia Meloni is swept into power on Sunday's vote. The Brothers of Italy leader has been dominating the polls despite a number of gaffes in her campaign, which saw her forced to suspend a party candidate for praising Hitler and a close associate accused of performing a Nazi salute. he Royal Air Force has admitted 'mistakes were made' following claims it pressured a recruitment boss to prioritise women and ethnic minorities over white men as part of a diversity drive.Claims first emerged last month that the RAF's head of recruitment had refused to follow an order to prioritise particular candidates because she believed it was 'unlawful' Peter Hitchens Like a man who has had his head severed but doesn’t realise it, much of Britain still has not grasped the significance of the huge constitutional changes brought in by Brown and Blair after 1997. Judges in an English court warned a few years ago in a case about Christian foster parents who couldn’t agree to the modern view of homosexuality: ‘Although historically this country is part of the Christian West, and although it has an established church which is Christian, there have been enormous changes in the social and religious life of our country over the last century… We sit as secular judges serving a multicultural community of many faiths............But can a ‘multicultural community of many faiths’ put up with a ceremony which requires the new monarch to assent to the demand made to his mother in 1953: ‘Will you to the utmost of your power maintain the Laws of God and the true profession of the Gospel? Will you to the utmost of your power maintain in the United Kingdom the Protestant Reformed Religion established by law?’ If so, the promise will be empty, as King Charles well knows. It is quite obvious that, in the 70-year gap between the two ceremonies, the entire country has been utterly changed, divorced or unwed rather than married, committed to personal autonomy rather than to self restraint, vaguely republican rather than vaguely monarchist, filled with competing cultures rather than sharing a single one...............