Category: Business

“We need to back local business and local people,” she said. “We need the political courage to do the right thing.”

As we begin to take the first tentative steps out of the pandemic people’s thoughts are beginning to turn to the ideas of their first foreign getaway in over a year. After such a long and difficult winter, it is no surprise that holiday bookings have seen a 600% surge. However, when guests return to their favourite destinations, they may find their trips feel very different to how they did two years ago.

“We need to secure the future of our high streets and give local businesses and local communities a proper stake in our town centres,” said Jacobs.

During questioning of the witnesses by members of the Committee it was clear that many of the current difficulties were not just teething problems, and could get worse when waivers on import checks and rules of origin expire in about four months. Some current business models were now unsustainable and could not survive.

With the end of free movement, immediately; many people will lose their jobs. But far worse than that, is the fact young people in the future will not have the same chances opportunities I had to experience things which will open your mind to the rest of the world.

British citizens resident in the EU were protected by the various Citizens’ Rights Agreements (CRAs). They were all assured that they could continue their lives after Brexit in broadly the same way as before. The WA/CRAs did not make good on this promise, failing to protect major rights such as the full recognition of professional qualifications.

On Valentine’s day this month Britishvolt, the investor for the proposed ‘Gigaplant’ car battery manufacturing development for Blyth, professed its love for Northumberland in a Facebook post. The ‘post’ featured in a previous North East Bylines article highlighting the company’s changed affections from its earlier avowed intentions to locate the facility in Wales. The day after, on 15 February, Italvolt announced its plans in a press release for a new 4 billion Euro ‘Gigafactory’ to be built in an as yet undecided location in Italy.

I am fuming when seeing the way in which the government, the press, the authorities and other actors of public life treat Eastern European EU migrants. The issues related to the oversubscribed, under-resourced and woefully inadequate, digital-only EU Settlement Scheme (EUSS) are well known. The government has also promised that any EU citizen who registers […]

Boris Johnson’s government has fared badly in this pandemic, mostly because of delays in introducing restrictions and a dysfunctional privatised ‘test and trace’ system. This has resulted in one of the highest death rates.

Teesside University offers free digital skills courses

It is a really remarkable story for a company formed just over a year ago, on 31 December 2019, by one person living in Sweden with no experience of electric battery manufacture and with an initial 100 shares of £1 nominal value each. The company balance sheet to July 2020 … notes that “During the period from incorporation on 31 December 2019 to 6 July 2020 the Company has not traded and received no income….”

On the evening of Saturday 6th February, a chimney collapsed from a student flat over the Cradlewell shops on Jesmond Road, Newcastle. The bricks fell onto the road at the front and into the yard at the back. Thankfully no one was injured. The police were informed, and they immediately evacuated the premises around the […]

Historically, we’ve been here before. One variant of this can be seen with the rise of the charismatic town hall boss T. Dan Smith in Newcastle. Dismissed by many as a corrupt politician on the make, Smith is now the subject of an alternative perspective by writers ranging from former Wear Valley Lib-Dem leader Chris Foote Wood and Tyneside historian Nigel Todd.

Work has started on the business park at the airport. Could it turn the airport’s fortunes around? And who thinks it’s a good idea to encourage H.M. Treasury to set up home there?

I feel new words coming on to describe the carnage that hauliers and UK business will be facing this year and they’re not pretty words. It’s going to be one hell of an ‘Annus Horribilis’, and those much-promised sunny uplands were just empty promises.

The Northern Irish border, and how checks on products travelling between the UK and EU take place, was one of the most controversial issues during the Brexit negotiations.

We all know the history of Northern Ireland but on his last visit there Boris Johnson clearly said there would be no checks on goods imported into the province from the UK. General Election 2019: Johnson insists no NI-GB goods checks after Brexit – BBC News Could this political lie cause the peace process to unravel in Norther Ireland?

Scotland did not vote for Brexit, certainly not in the case of self -employed skipper Phil from Lochaber who works his eight-metre boat, Jaqueline, usually single-handedly. He works an eight-hour day usually six days a week, landing an average of 20 tons of mixed shellfish per year from around 300 creels.

Trump nationalised, legitimised, and became the standard bearer for a fringe movement…: “He’s gone – but they’re not.”

The old church fathers worried about transubstantiation, the trinity in one, the virgin birth and how many angels might dance on a pin. Easy-peasy compared to what the high priests of Brexit now get their faithful to swallow.

Nissan announced today that 160 jobs are now at risk. They confirmed that they are starting a consultation process with office-based staff. Although they say it will not affect production, this news is in stark contrast to their positive statements of last Friday which led Boris Johnson to boast of the “fantastic news for the brilliant Nissan workforce”. Not so amazing for the office staff though as it turns out.

“Our town centres are the beating heart of the Tees Valley’ local economy. They are our culture, leisure and retail hubs, and we should be doing all we can to promote increased footfall – especially as we look to recover from the Covid-19 pandemic.”

We all know that Scotland voted to remain in the EU and that the Scottish National Party (SNP) is determined to hold a referendum on Scottish Independence as soon as possible. But what of Northern Ireland which also voted to remain, could they also leave, and the UK really shrink in size?

The divided communities followed different paths after the Good Friday Agreement. The IRA opted for politics and disarmed, bar a rump of dissidents in remoter areas. Their communities always valued education and new opportunities were readily seized on. Loyalists were less fortunate as competition for ‘their’ state jobs increased and the automatic right to follow fathers into the shipyards vanished.

The reality remains, however, that although Nissan has the zero tariffs they wanted, there still remains other barriers to trade – namely custom checks which will raise costs, cause delays and ultimately make them less competitive. Every time the plant has to bid to make a new model there, this is when we will see the truth of how good the Brexit deal really is. Let us not forget the Sunderland Nissan plant did not win the bid to make their new electric car, the Ariya, there due to concerns about Brexit.

I’m guessing Amazon will be thinking hard about starting up an Irish website and sourcing products from places other than the UK. We heard rumours in late December that they have been searching for warehouse space in Dublin. In the meantime, we’ve been advised that the best thing to do is to open an account with Amazon.de, which has an English language option. There is of course no reason why a product made in China for a Dutch company should have to go anywhere near the UK, but like so many companies that have hitherto treated the UK and Ireland as a single entity for trade purposes, Amazon seems not to have thought this through – yet.

Fedotov is former head of a subsidiary of Lukoil, Russia’s largest oil company. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism recently reported on a 2008 review by Russian state pipeline enterprise Transneft, of huge commissions charged by contractors during construction of the US$4 billion Siberia-Pacific pipeline. Fedotov was Chair of two companies thought to have benefitted – VNIIST and IP Network, but his name was never mentioned in the inquiry and no charges were brought. The review was revealed by opposition figure and Novichok survivor Alexei Navalny.

I have been to see many Highlights shows in the past and I never fail to marvel at the creativity, the professionalism, the variety and the very warm welcome. The Covid-19 rules may make the experience a little different from before but the experience of sharing in the energy, warmth and sheer vitality of the performances will not go away.

In today’s state of the nation report, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation warns that ministers must make tackling poverty an economic priority in 2021 or they risk being defined by a record of worsening hardship.

“Their biggest concern is that we end up in some kind of position where we’re not aligned to the European Medical Agency, we’re not aligned to the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) in the US, in which case, there are significant barriers to selling their products in (both) those markets. And that that’s a scenario which is absolutely awful for business.”

The fact that countries tend to trade most with those geographically closest to them suggests to me that despite the UK’s new-found freedoms, in reality we will remain closely aligned to EU rules.