British businesses shrugged off Brexit uncertainty and refuse to be intimidated by the dismal griping of the Europhile elite
What gloom?
BRITAIN’S businesses are an inspiration. They simply refuse to be intimidated by the dismal griping of the Europhile elite.
Remainers still ceaselessly predict that Brexit will wreck the economy. The firms which actually create prosperity and jobs aren’t having it. Their confidence is back at pre-referendum levels.
Sixty per cent are optimistic or “very optimistic” about 2017, even with the EU apparently determined to “punish” us in the exit negotiations to shore up its own parlous state.
Those talks may be sticky, of course. But the Government must capitalise on bosses’ self-belief with a pro-business Budget in March and free trade deals with the EU and the major nations outside it at the top of its agenda. America must be at the front of that queue.
Today’s sales, meanwhile, will be the biggest shopping day in British history.
Businesses have shrugged off Brexit uncertainty. Shoppers are throwing caution to the wind too.
Benefits mad
WE hate to be scrooges — but the epic and shameless scrounging of mum-of-13 Joanne Sheppard and partner Gary Bateman could enrage the softest of hearts.
Many couples in low-paid jobs scrimped and saved to give their kids a decent Christmas. Career idlers Sheppard and Bateman didn’t need to.
The long-term jobless pair and their huge brood wanted for nothing thanks to the enforced generosity of the rest of us.
A blizzard of handouts gives them the equivalent income of a family on £40,000 a year. It even angers Sheppard’s eldest daughter now she has left home and started a business.
The Tories have been attacked for planning to limit child-related benefits to two kids from next year. Why? No one should deliberately have any child they cannot afford to raise, let alone 13.
The Government’s critics should read our story — and ask how limitless sponging can ever be justified.
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Six in jail hell
SPARE a thought, as we all recover from Christmas Day excess, for the jailed Chennai Six and the families they haven’t celebrated with for years.
The innocent Brits have been held in India since 2013. The ex-Paras, working to combat piracy, were accused of smuggling guns, though they were legal and covered by official UK paperwork.
There were no presents nor turkey for them in their hellish prison yesterday. Nor even a phone call home to the kids.
The Foreign Office says it is doing its best — and the verdict on the men’s appeal is due soon.
We hope Theresa May remembered them in her Christmas prayers.
If their prison terms are upheld, they will need all the help they can get.