Latest news with #Brexit
Time of India
2 hours ago
- Business
- Time of India
Spain gets new powers over visas, residence permits in Gibraltar
The European Union and UK agreed to give Spain new powers over the issuance of residency permits, visas and asylum in Gibraltar , as part of an accord to settle the post-Brexit border arrangements for the British overseas territory. A special role is foreseen for Spain in Gibraltar, a European Commission spokesperson told Bloomberg. The new system will allow Madrid to ensure the EU's visa-free Schengen area will be fully preserved once border protections are removed between the territory and the South of Spain. A political agreement reached in early June, if ratified, will eliminate all physical barriers, checks and controls on people and goods moving between Gibraltar and Spain, while establishing dual border controls at the port and airport of the territory. The authorities in Gibraltar will be able to issue a limited number of visas on humanitarian grounds with validity limited to its territory, an EU official said. (Join our ETNRI WhatsApp channel for all the latest updates) Both Schengen authorities and Gibraltar will play a role in asylum cases, said the official who was granted anonymity to share private discussions. The territory's government told Bloomberg that they would get the final decision on asylum cases and that while Spain will carry out residency checks, they will decide to grant a permit or not. Live Events Negotiating teams are finalizing the details of the agreement and will then begin the adoption and ratification process. Gibraltar is a self-governing British overseas territory that's reliant on the free movement of people traveling to and from Spain, which Brexit was meant to limit. Around 15,000 Spanish workers cross daily to work in the territory of 34,000 where both sides have been trying to avoid a hard border torpedoing the free flow of people and goods. The agreement 'does not compromise sovereignty in any respect and provides huge opportunities for traders in Gibraltar while, simultaneously, protecting the fluidity of people necessary for the continued success and expansion of our services industries, especially the online gaming, insurance and financial services sectors,' a spokesperson with the Gibraltar government said. The accord also foresees strong police and law enforcement cooperation, people familiar with the matter said. The new powers for Spain come against the backdrop of the difficult discussions both sides had over the status of Gibraltar airport and who controls it, with the UK insisting it won't agree to anything that compromises Gibraltar's sovereignty. The post-Brexit status of Gibraltar, a territory that the Spanish crown ceded to the UK in 1713, has been dragging on since the UK left the EU more than five years ago. The breakthrough achieved earlier this month came against the backdrop of the warmer ties between Brussels and the Labour government led by Keir Starmer. Both sides concluded in May a bilateral defense agreement and deals to ease the regulatory burden for UK firms exporting to the EU or EU fishermen access to the UK waters.
Irish Times
4 hours ago
- Business
- Irish Times
The Central Bank's hard-landing scenario: corporate tax crashes, budget deficit balloons to €18bn
For obvious reasons, officials in Ireland can't use the term 'soft landing'. It was trotted out so regularly, so erroneously in the late 2000s when the economy was hurtling towards the hardest of hard landings that it has become synonymous with the opposite. If the Central Bank told us the Irish economy was in for a 'soft landing' from the current US tariff debacle, people would panic. Perhaps in reaction to the misplaced optimism of the Celtic Tiger era, we now seem to have an inherent bias towards highlighting negative scenarios. READ MORE [ US tariffs could punch €18bn hole in public finances, Central Bank warns Opens in new window ] We were certainly prepared for a bigger assault from Brexit than the one we actually got. Some call it 'catastrophising', but regulators should take a sober view on things. In an article published alongside its latest quarterly bulletin, the Central Bank lays out three possible scenarios for how US tariffs and greater US protectionism might impact the economy here. In its baseline scenario, which involves 20 per cent tariffs on European Union goods going into the US from the third quarter of this year, with pharmaceuticals and semiconductors exempt, the economy grows by 2 per cent this year, in terms of modified domestic demand, and 2.1 per cent on average in 2026 and 2027, while the State continues to run a budget surplus out to 2030. Even if it won't say it, this is the regulator's 'soft landing' scenario. In a more adverse scenario with pharmaceuticals and semiconductors getting hit by 20 per cent tariffs and with the EU retaliating with 20 per cent tariffs of its own, growth is slower and the budget surplus shrinks to less than 1 per cent. But what grabbed the headlines was the Central Bank 'extreme scenario' which involves the State losing the entire windfall element of its corporate tax base, which is due to peak at €17 billion in 2026, alongside a 20 per cent reduction in multinational investment 'and a corresponding loss of export market share'. [ Rent pressure zone changes will be 'painful' for tenants, Central Bank warns Opens in new window ] This scenario would see the Government's healthy budget surplus – it was €8.9 billion last year – flip to a budget deficit of more than 4 per cent of national income by 2030, equivalent to €17.7 billion. While there are lots of caveats – the scenario assumes the Government takes no corrective action and continues to make contributions to the two long-term savings funds – such an outcome would pitch us back into another period of austerity. It also highlights how much the State's coffers have become intertwined with the financial fortunes of a small number of US multinationals. 'This could be considered a somewhat extreme scenario as it incorporates a loss of all excess CT [corporate tax] by 2030 along with weaker economic activity, but it is illustrative of a key vulnerability for Ireland relating to the future path of the foreign-owned capital stock,' it said. Central Bank director of economics and statistics Robert Kelly denied he was painting too bleak a picture, saying the bank's worst-case scenario did not envisage the possibility of a big multinational firm leaving the jurisdiction because of tariffs or changes to US tax law, which has been the fear since the corporate tax boom started more than a decade ago. The nightmare scenario for Ireland would be for an Apple or an Intel to up sticks and leave. Despite the threat hanging over Ireland's economic model, there are several reasons to believe that corporate tax receipts, which hit a record €28 billion last year (excluding the Apple tax money), will continue to increase in the medium term. For one, the biggest corporate taxpayers here are in the tech and pharmaceutical sectors, both at present exempt from US tariffs. The Irish Fiscal Advisory Council (IFAC) also expects receipts from the business tax to rise by about €5 billion from 2026 onwards as additional revenue from the new minimum tax rate of 15 per cent over and above the State's headline rate of 12.5 per cent flows into the Exchequer. Big multinationals with a turnover above €750 million have been liable to pay the higher rate since 2024, but are not due to make their initial payments under the new rate until the middle of next year. This is expected to boost tax receipts here by an additional €3 billion next year and €2 billion in 2027. Despite the US signalling its intention to withdraw from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) -brokered deal to establish a minimum global rate, tax authorities here and elsewhere are pushing ahead with it. Several big taxpayers here have been availing of generous tax-cutting capital allowances which are due to run out, meaning they will be liable to pay more tax – another factor likely to drive receipts. Some of the frothier predictions suggest corporate tax receipts here could grow to €40 billion and say we should be saving a lot more than the current allocations to the State's savings funds. The windfall has also coincided with a worrying increase in Government spending, over and above what IFAC deems sustainable. It might be that the bigger threats facing the Irish economy are coming from within – housing, government spending, energy security, the high cost of doing business – rather than those emanating from abroad.
The Guardian
5 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘You'd never make Slumdog today': Danny Boyle on risks, regrets and returning to the undead
The UK is a wasteland in Danny Boyle's new film. Towns lie in ruins, trains rot on the rails and the EU has severed all ties with the place. Some residents are stuck in the past and congregate under the tattered flag of St George. The others flail shirtless through the open countryside, raging about nothing, occasionally stopping to eat worms. You wouldn't want to live in the land that Boyle and the writer Alex Garland show us. Teasingly, on some level, the film suggests that we do. Boyle and Garland first prowled zombie Britain with their 2002 hit 28 Days Later. It was an electrifying piece of speculative fiction, a guerilla-style thriller about an unimaginable world. Since then we've had Brexit and Covid, and the looming threat of martial law in the US … The story's extravagant flights of fancy don't feel so far-fetched any more. 'Yes, of course real world events were a big influence this time around,' Boyle says, sipping tea in the calm of a central London hotel. 'Brexit is a transparency that passes over this film, without a doubt. But the big resonance of the original film was the way it showed how British cities could suddenly empty out overnight. And after Covid, those scenes now feel like a proving ground.' Where Cillian Murphy first walked, the rest of us would soon follow. Tense and gory, 28 Years Later is a fabulous horror epic. I would hesitate to call it a sequel, exactly: it's more a reboot or a renovation; a fresh build over an existing property. Newcomer Alfie Williams plays 12-year-old Spike, who defies his parents (Jodie Comer and Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and flees the sanctuary of Holy Island for an adventure on the infected mainland. Along the way, he tangles with berserker zombies and smirking psycho-killers, and encounters Ralph Fiennes's enigmatic, orange-skinned Dr Kelson, reputedly a former GP from Whitley Bay. All of which makes for a jolting, engrossing journey; a film that freewheels through a gone-to-seed northern England before crashing headlong into the closing credits with many of its key questions still unanswered. The hanging ending is the point, Boyle explains, because the film is actually the first part of a proposed trilogy. Sony Pictures has put up two-thirds of the budget. The second movie – The Bone Temple, directed by the American film-maker Nia DaCosta – is already in the can. Boyle has plans to shoot the final instalment, except that the future is unwritten and the industry is on a knife edge 'Sony has taken a massive risk,' the director tells me happily. 'The original film worked well in America to everyone's surprise, but there's no guarantee that this one will. It's all because of this guy, [Sony Pictures' CEO] Tom Rothman. He's a bit of a handful, a fantastic guy, runs the studio in a crazy way. He's paid for two films, but he hasn't paid for the third one yet and so his neck's on the line. If this film doesn't work, he's now got a second film that he has to release. But after that, yeah, we might not get to complete the story.' Good directors reflect the times they work in, but they're at the mercy of them, too, hot-wired to the twists and turns of history; up one year and down the next. And so it is with Boyle, who's travelled from the sunny Cool Britannia uplands of Shallow Grave and Trainspotting through the imperial age of Slumdog Millionaire and the London Olympics, right down to the shonky doldrums of today, when a cherished project might collapse under him like an exhausted horse. He's 68 now, and battling to get his films across the line. I don't know why he's so cheerful. Hasn't everything gone to hell? 'Well, I'm an optimist,' he says. 'So I don't despair about things the way I know that a lot of people do. Also I'm slightly more outside the media than you. That allows me a slightly different view on things. And increasingly, as I age, I become more wary of the obsessions of the media. That constant catastrophising and sense of perceived decline.' It's particularly noticeable in the US, he thinks. 'Much of Trump's dominance is undoubtedly down to his appeal to the media. He is so media friendly. His soundbites, everything about him, fit hand in glove with news and entertainment to the point where it's damaging. Whereas in this country, we're quite fortunate. We've dodged the far-right bullet for the moment and we elected Keir Starmer against the tide of what's been happening elsewhere.' He reaches for his tea. 'It could be a lot worse.' In 2012, Boyle devised and directed Isles of Wonder, the opening ceremony of the London Olympics. The show was a triumph: a bumper celebration of British culture that made room for James Bond and the queen, Windrush migrants and the NHS, Shakespeare and the Sex Pistols. 'But my biggest regret was that we didn't feature the BBC more. I was stopped from doing it because it was the host broadcaster. Every other objection, I told them to go fuck themselves. But that one I accepted and I regret that now, especially given the way that technology is moving. The idea that we have a broadcaster that is part of our national identity but is also trusted around the world and that can't be bought, can't be subsumed into Meta or whatever, feels really precious. So yeah, if I was doing it again I'd big up the BBC big time.' He laughs. 'Everything else I'd do exactly the same.' Isles of Wonder has safely passed into legend. These days it's up there with James Bond and the queen. I wonder, though, how history will judge Slumdog Millionaire, his Oscar-winning 2008 spectacular about a ghetto kid who hits the jackpot. Boyle shot the film in Mumbai, partly in Hindi, and with a local crew. But it was a film of its time and the world has moved on. 'Yeah, we wouldn't be able to make that now,' he says. 'And that's how it should be. It's time to reflect on all that. We have to look at the cultural baggage we carry and the mark that we've left on the world.' Is he saying that the production itself amounted to a form of colonialism? 'No, no,' he says. 'Well, only in the sense that everything is. At the time it felt radical. We made the decision that only a handful of us would go to Mumbai. We'd work with a big Indian crew and try to make a film within the culture. But you're still an outsider. It's still a flawed method. That kind of cultural appropriation might be sanctioned at certain times. But at other times it cannot be. I mean, I'm proud of the film, but you wouldn't even contemplate doing something like that today. It wouldn't even get financed. Even if I was involved, I'd be looking for a young Indian film-maker to shoot it.' A waiter sidles in with a second cup of tea. Boyle, though, is still mulling the parlous state of the world. He knows that times are tough and that people are hurting. Nonetheless, he insists that there are reasons to be cheerful. 'Have you got any kids?' he asks suddenly. Boyle has three: technically they're all adults now. 'And I think that's progress. I look at the younger generation and they're an improvement. They're an upgrade.' The director was weaned on a diet of new wave music and arthouse cinema, Ziggy Stardust and Play for Today. He began his career as a chippy outsider and winces at the notion that he's now an establishment fixture. 'It all comes back to punk, really,' he says. 'The last time Lou Reed spoke in public, he said: 'I want to blow it all up,' because he was still a punk at heart. And if you can embrace that spirit, it keeps you in a fluid, changeable state that's more important than having some fixed place where you belong. So, I do try to carry those values and keep that kind of faith.' He gulps and backtracks, suddenly embarrassed at his own presumption. 'Not that my work is truly revolutionary or radical,' he adds. 'I mean, I'm not smashing things to pieces. I value the popular audience. I believe in popular entertainment. I want to push the boat out, but take the popular audience with me.' I suggest that this might be a contradiction. 'Yeah, of course it is,' Boyle says, snorting. 'But I've found a way to resolve it – in my own mind, at least.' If 12-year-old Spike played it safe he'd have stayed on Holy Island beside the reassuring flag of St George. Instead, the kid takes a gamble and charts his own course to the mainland. He's educating himself and embracing a fraught, messy future. He's mixing with monsters and slowly coming into his strength. That's what kids tend to do, Boyle explains. That's why they give us hope. 'Maybe hope is a weird thing to ask for in a horror movie,' he says. 'But we all need something to cling to, whether that's in films or in life.' 28 Years Later is in UK cinemas now
CBC
9 hours ago
- Entertainment
- CBC
Watching 28 Years Later in a post-COVID world
Social Sharing It's been over two decades since the release of 28 Days Later, the horror film that reimagined what a zombie thriller could be. Now, the franchise is back with a third installment, 28 Years Later. But in a post-Brexit, post-COVID world, are fans ready to return to a survival story about a rage virus spreading across the U.K.? Today on Commotion, host Elamin Abdelmahmoud speaks with Vulture film critic Alison Willmore about the franchise's new film and how it lands in this current cultural moment.
Wales Online
13 hours ago
- Business
- Wales Online
First Minister criticised by Labour Senedd members over 'scattergun' Welsh Government policy
First Minister criticised by Labour Senedd members over 'scattergun' Welsh Government policy Eluned Morgan faced tough questions over her government's international strategy First Minister Eluned Morgan (Image: PA Media ) Wales' First Minister Eluned Morgan was criticised over the Welsh Government's international strategy, including by some of her own party's Senedd members. She appeared at the Senedd's culture committee and was asked about international strategy and plans for an investment summit in December at the Celtic Manor in Newport. Labour's Llanelli MS, Lee Waters, asked what a planned summit would actually achieve. "You've created a summit. Well, having organised lots of conferences – conferences can take a lot of energy and deliver very little, so [it's] interesting how you measure that." The First Minister responded there were three priorities – to raise the nation's profile, grow the economy and establish Wales as a globally responsible country. For our free daily briefing on the biggest issues facing the nation, sign up to the Wales Matters newsletter here When she was further questioned, she said: "We've got a lot of ambitions and we're doing a lot of work on it and we're expecting it to deliver quite a bit.' Asked again what December's summit at Celtic Manor will deliver, she said: "Well, you'll have to wait and see because we don't know until it's actually happened." The First Minister who was previously accused of undermining scrutiny by earlier declining to give evidence, said she would not give "chapter and verse" on expectations for the summit. Article continues below Plaid Cymru's Heledd Fychan then said: "I have to say I'm really unclear about what the answer was to Lee Waters' question there. "It seems very scattergun rather than strategic – that's my impression from the evidence I've just heard – how are you able to reassure me, that's not the case?" Mrs Morgan deferred to Welsh Government officials: Andrew Gwatkin and David Warren. Mr Gwatkin said: "It's not a case of us being headless, jumping from one thing to another. "There is a constant and core to what we do…. but, of course, we're a small team – we can't adapt to everything… we can't do everything and our budgets, similarly, are what they are." The questioning then turned to the international strategy, which in a previous role, Mrs Morgan was responsible for. It contains 270 actions. During the meeting on June 18, she pointed to the impact of the pandemic, Brexit, war in Ukraine and US president Trump on that. However, another Labour MS then had his say. Blaenau Gwent MS Alun Davies, said: "What we want is to understand how the government is spending public money… to hold [the] government to account for that and that's a fair and reasonable request to make." She responded that "over the summer" the 270 actions would be looked at "so it's clear and more transparent". "There will be some things in there we haven't been able to achieve because the world has changed." She then added: "Just to manage your expectations, we've got one person working on this,' with Mr Davies earlier joking: 'I've been a member here for 20 years, first minister, my expectations are well managed." Article continues below
