Shein and Temu tax-free parcels rule under review
Speaking to the BBC's Today programme, Mr Paphitis said retailers had been lobbying government "for a very, very long time", arguing the rule had had devasting impact "on our retail landscape and our high streets".He joined the bosses of Sainsbury's, Currys and the British Retail Consortium in welcoming the government's consultation on the rule.Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced on Wednesday that the government planned to review the customs treatment of low-value products entering the UK, after retailers complained they were being undercut by overseas rivals.UK businesses bringing in larger shipments have to pay taxes, and they also argue that cheaper goods might fail to meet the same environmental and ethical standards that they keep to.
The so called "de mimimis" rule has received renewed interest after US president Donald Trump scrapped a similar measure in America amid his escalating trade war with China. Goods worth less than $800 into the US will soon be subject to charges, where they were previously exempt. The move has already prompted Chinese retailers to raise their prices.In the UK, there are further concerns that China will dump goods here to avoid the tariffs which Trump has imposed on Chinese goods."It's right to be concerned about potential future dumping of goods, as escalating tariffs applied by bigger global blocs against each other may mean a surge in goods arriving in markets like our own," said the chair of the Federation of Small Businesses, Tina McKenzie.But she added that the government should proceed with caution in its de minimis consultation."With 16% of goods moved by small firms sitting below the £135 threshold, a decision to scrap it impacts on trading and inflation," she said.Measures such as de mimimis were good for small and medium businesses, she added, and scrapping it might "ultimately lead to higher prices for consumers."But Mr Paphitis told the BBC it was "absolute nonsense" that the measure keeps inflation and prices down, as it led to a loss of jobs and tax revenue for the UK, as businesses lost out from trying to compete with cheaper foreign rivals.
Helen Dickinson, the chief executive of the British Retail Consortium, welcomed the government consultation and said it showed Reeves was listening to retailers."A review of this policy, which was designed to reduce the burden on low volume, low value imports, was already needed. "With retailers seeing a rise in the number of potentially non-compliant products entering the UK market, it's even more critical now," she said.
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Spectator
a minute ago
- Spectator
Thought for the Day and the elite empathy problem
Like much of Radio 4's output, Thought for the Day is something of a curate's egg – sometimes enlightening and a source of inspiration or comfort. Often, however, it's sanctimonious; auricular masturbation for the comfortable. The BBC has been heavily criticised for its segment on Wednesday morning, featuring Dr Krish Kandiah, a theologian and author, discussing 'fear' in relation to the migrant crisis. His reflections amount to a series of boilerplate platitudes beloved by open borders advocates. He calls for 'empathy over suspicion', 'listening before judging', 'building bridges not walls'. While the Church's managerial class will have nodded sagely along to all this, I wonder how representative this sort of intellectually diluted, unexamined rehashing of comfortable tropes about 'nasty xenophobia' really is among the ordinary people in the pews. After all, plenty of churchgoers will know what the less rose-tinted practical realities of mass migration actually look like. Dr Kandiah speaks with total conviction, and a striking curiosity as to why so many British people feel as they do. 'Our fears are misplaced', he insists, citing 'xenophobia'. All this reflects a widely held belief on the liberal-left, that people only believe what has been fed to them (or, better yet, 'weaponised') by the tabloid press and social media algorithms. Accordingly, no fear can be rational or informed by actual experiences. This argument is becoming harder to maintain as we record more data on, for instance, migrant crime (something the government has been reluctant to do). Indeed, listening to Dr Kandiah yesterday, it already felt outmoded. As a sidenote, it's very apparent that people are only ever accused of 'disinformation' when expressing a 'low-status' viewpoint. Treasury Minister Darren Jones confidently told a Question Time audience recently that the 'majority of people' arriving in migrant boats were 'children, babies and women'. According to the Migration Observatory, around 76 per cent of those arriving in small boats in 2024 were men over the age of 18. Dr Kandiah likewise does his best to waft away such concerns. 'Most crimes against children are committed, not by strangers, but by people they know' he insists; a truism which crucially ignores the important point about likelihood of offending. According to data from the MoJ, foreign nationals make up around 9 per cent of the UK population but are responsible for between 15 and 23 per cent of sexual offences. Certain nationalities are dramatically over-represented in the available statistics. Even expressing these points remains controversial; Sky News recently attempted to 'fact-check' Nigel Farage for citing data on nationality and sexual violence, curiously arguing that he should have compared statistics from two separate metrics rather than using like-for-like data. People like Dr Kandiah seem to possess an apparently boundless empathy for migrants, less when it comes to their fellow citizens. There are echoes of the 'telescopic philanthropy' of Mrs Jellyby from Bleak House, so busy directing her good works towards Tockahoopo Indians and tribes of Borrioboola-Gha in Africa that she doesn't notice or care that her own children are suffering. Comfortable England has an empathy problem; it is willing to contort itself into paroxysms of emotion for migrants yet remains incapable of listening to concerns of the communities affected by mass migration. Yesterday's Thought for the Day epitomised this; by throwing out a slur of 'xenophobia' the speaker thought he could shut down these concerns and proceed to moralise on his terms. That simply isn't going to cut it anymore. Meanwhile, there are obvious theological counterpoints to express. Yes, Christ tells us to love our neighbours, to welcome the stranger. But he doesn't say to do so when they are putting others at risk and undermining the rule of law, nor when the poor, the vulnerable, the un-listened-to are begging you to do otherwise. He also tells sinners to repent, to 'go your way and sin no more', he encourages adults to 'suffer the little children' (i.e. nurture and protect them). He also speaks of sorting 'sheep from the goats', that 'by their fruits shall ye know them' and – in an intensely patriarchal society – he calls for the prayers and worries of women to be heeded. All these would be quite convincing starting points for rebuttals to Mr Kandiah's sanctimony. It is time the Church starts expressing them if it wants to be taken seriously, if and when its appeals for calm become necessary. Frankly, theologians owe the public a better explanation than endlessly rehashing #BeKind platitudes. To dismiss the genuine concerns of a not-inconsiderable number of people as simply wicked and stupid, as Dr Kandiah did, not only shows an arrogance which undermines his cause, but a lack of curiosity about the many potential counterarguments to his view. That these don't appear to him to be worth engaging with suggests that his theological nous is not quite as sharp as he thinks it is. Appealing for calm and seeking to avoid violence is obviously a key part of the Church's mission in the wider context of society, but to be able to do that it must have some credibility – it needs to have listened in the first place. Dismissing public concern with cant will not work, indeed it will almost certainly make people angrier.
The Independent
a minute ago
- The Independent
What a cheek! The US is in no position to lecture us about free speech
In the spirit of free speech, I suppose we have to allow other countries to express their concerns about life in Britain, even though it's none of their business and is diplomatic bad manners. However, it is impudent of the Trump administration, currently engaged in dismantling the constitution of the United States, to issue a patronising school report on the state of human rights in the United Kingdom. Every so often, the Americans, whose system of laws owes much to the British, like to tell us we're no longer a free people. 'Sod off' is the instinctive and succinct British reaction to such treatment, but I shall endeavour to elaborate. In the document, produced by the US State Department, Britain is chastised for a human rights scene that has apparently 'worsened' over the past year. From the lofty moral heights occupied by Donald Trump, 'specific areas of concern" are raised, including restrictions on political speech deemed "hateful" or "offensive". The Americans are especially censorious about the way the government responded to the horrendous murder of three children in Southport last year, and the subsequent violence. This constituted, or so we are lectured, an "especially grievous example of government censorship". The UK is thus ticked off: 'Censorship of ordinary Britons was increasingly routine, often targeted at political speech". Bloomin' cheek! What the Americans don't like is that we have laws against inciting racial, religious and certain other types of hatred. Well, first, tough. That's how we prefer to run things to promote a civilised multicultural society. Second, they might do well to consider our way, which is not to pretend that there is ever any such thing as 'absolute' free speech. Encouraging people to burn down a hotel of refugees is not, in Britain, a price worth paying for 'liberty'. Although never stated explicitly, it seems that the State Department is upset about the now totemic case of Lucy Connolly, colloquially regarded in both the UK and the US as 'locking someone up for a tweet'. Connolly was sentenced to 31 months' incarceration under laws consistent with international human rights obligations, which obviously include the protection of free speech. It was more than one message on social media that landed Connolly in the dock, the most famous of which went as follows: 'Mass deportation now. Set fire to all the f***ing hotels full of the bastards for all I care. While you're at it, take the treacherous government and politicians with them. I feel physically sick knowing what these families will now have to endure. If that makes me racist, so be it.' It was up for three hours and read 310,000 times so not trivial. But there's more. According to the recent court of appeal review of her case, and before the Southport attacks, Connolly posted a response to a video which had been shared online by the far-right activist Tommy Robinson, real name Stephen Laxley-Lennon, showing a black male being tackled to the ground for allegedly masturbating in public. She wrote: 'Somalian, I guess. Loads of them', with a vomiting emoji. On 3 August 2024, five days after the attacks, Connolly posted a further message in response to an anti-racism protest in Manchester: 'Oh good. I take it they will all be in line to sign up to house an illegal boat invader then. Oh sorry, refugee. Maybe sign a waiver to say they don't mind if it's one of their family that gets attacked, butchered, raped etc, by unvetted criminals. Not all heroes wear capes.' Two days later, Connolly sent a WhatsApp message to a friend saying: 'The raging tweet about burning down hotels has bit me on the arse lol.' She went on to say later that, if she got arrested, she would 'play the mental health card'. So that is some extra background on the case of Lucy Connolly, and nor should we forget that she was sending inflammatory messages during the worst civil disorder in years. Of course, the great irony about the 2024 riots is that they were caused by what you might call 'too much free speech'. The entirely false rumour promoted on social media was that the killer, Axel Rudakubana, was a Muslim asylum seeker who had virtually just got off a boat before setting off to commit a terrorist offence. None of that was true, but it was stated near enough as fact by people 'just asking questions' with no official interference or 'censorship' whatsoever in free speech Britain. There was no 'cover-up' of the perpetrator's status because Rudakubana was born in Britain. At his trial, it was established that his massacre was not motivated by any political, religious or racial motive but by an obsession with sadistic violence. Had this propaganda about Rudakubana been banned, a great deal of needless anger, distress, and damage would have been avoided. And what of America? Where you can be refused entry or deported for your political views, and without due process, violations of the ancient rule of habeas corpus. Where the president rules by decree and can attempt to strike out the birthright clause in the Constitution by executive order? Where the Supreme Court is packed with sympathetic judges who give him immunity from prosecution, and the president ignores court orders in any case. A land where there is no human rights legislation, no international commitments to the rights of man, where the media is cowed and the universities intimidated? Where the president dictates what is shown in museums, how history is taught and where the historic struggles of people of colour are disparaged as woke nonsense. A country where gerrymandering is a national sport. Where science is being abolished and statisticians sacked for reporting bad news. America is in a state of incipient authoritarian rule and is in no position to criticise anyone about freedom and liberty. The British should tell them all that, but we're too polite.
BBC News
2 minutes ago
- BBC News
Argyle in transfer 'no man's land'
Plymouth Argyle head coach Tom Cleverley says the club are no closer to bringing in a new striker or central who took over as Argyle boss in the summer, has identified the two positions as key areas for have been chasing an experienced central striker all summer, while a new central defender has become more of a priority after Julio Pleguezuelo had knee surgery."Everyone's working as hard as they possibly can," Cleverley told BBC Radio Devon."The hard work is going on behind the scenes."We're in that no man's land of the window - the majority on the business gets done really early or in the last week and we're in that no man's land where itl;s a bit of a stalemate between clubs."On the club's search for a central defender Cleverley added:"It's really tough. A lot of things need to align, if you've not got the money to blow everyone in the league out of the water, so it is how it is."I don't want to go into too much detail because I'd be revealing other clubs' issues or players', but there's more than just geographical and financial issues when trying to do these deals and we're suffering a couple of those challenges at the minute."
