Will the British FTA push for greater leniency on investment rules? stuff.co.nz - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from stuff.co.nz Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
SHARING OPTIONS:
Australian sheepmeat prices are currently half of EU prices and the UK market will be an attractive proposition with neither tariffs nor volume limits.
Reports in the
Financial Times that the UK government will grant tariff and quota-free access to Australia for agricultural produce entering the UK market is as big an issue for Irish farmers as their UK counterparts.
This is reinforced by the Northern Irish agriculture Minister Edwin Poots who sent a strongly worded letter to the UK minister responsible for agriculture, George Eustace.
The letter draws heavily on the impact assessment released by the UK government last June, which shows that UK agriculture would lose out.
Bill Ralston: Cold comfort in the Cook Islands travel bubble
13 May, 2021 08:00 PM
3 minutes to read
As appealing as the Cook Islands may be, most of us will sit tight, writes Bill Ralston. Photo / 123RF
As appealing as the Cook Islands may be, most of us will sit tight, writes Bill Ralston. Photo / 123RF
By: Bill Ralston The Cook Islands travel bubble is now opening up. An ice-cold beer at Trader Jacks in Rarotonga, a swim at Muri Beach and lounging by the pool on Aitutaki. Ah, no thanks. Not at the moment. I might wait a few months.
The pandemic has made most of us much more conservative about overseas travel than we were 18 months ago. As appealing as Queensland or the Cooks may be as temperatures here drop overnight and winter looms, most of us will sit tight. We are nervous about what may happen next. Better to stay home and get that vaccination before making a move.
I spent the weekend in Dunedin at a hui on the Otago University campus. Even though I never studied there, it resonates with history for me.
It was the early 1990s and the Alliance was the only political party opposing the imposition of tertiary fees. Students were up in arms at the burden that had been imposed on them by the Labour Government and then by the National Government.
Lockwood Smith as Minister had promised in the 1990 election that National would abolish the new tertiary fee. And he did, but then required the universities to charge instead.
This was a disaster and was the beginning of the clever trick of devolving responsibilities to institutions while underfunding them. We have all paid the price for that.
Dickson vowed to fight for justice for the rest of his life. Just over 10 years ago, he was led to believe he was closing in on compensation for the $5.9 million he sought for the destruction of his business. A report from the Ombudsman said an ex-gratia payment should be considered but that was refused by then-Commerce Minister Simon Power. Now Dickson has discovered government ministers more recently discussed offering him an ex-gratia payment of just $500,000. In letters released to Dickson under the Official Information Act, minister Andrew Little wrote to Finance Minister Grant Robertson and Commerce Minister David Clark, recommending offering him the money, saying the farmer’s plight epitomised the type of injustice MPs went into politics to fix.