Nothing to do?

If you watch nothing else on telly this week, do tune in to Kind Hearts and Coronets, available on the BBC i-player here.

This is the trailer:

Smoke and mirrors

Hmm, very convenient, suspiciously so.  Peston explains:

So how has George Osborne pulled off the magical trick of maintaining spending on the police, imposing smaller than anticipated departmental spending cuts in general, and performing an expensive u-turn on tax-credit reductions, while remaining seemingly on course to turn this year's £74bn deficit into a £10bn surplus in 2020.

Well, it is because the government's forecaster, the Office for Budget Responsibility, has increased its prognosis of how much the Treasury will raise from existing taxes (not new ones) and reduced what it thinks the chancellor will shell out in interest on its massive debts.

In total the OBR thinks the national debt, the aggregate of the annual deficits, will be £23bn lower over the four years to 2020, and just because it is more optimistic about tax revenues and assorted costs.

Or to put it another way, George Osborne is today £23bn better off than he thought in July, and without doing anything at all.

Now you don't see it; now you do ...

The Guardian comments:

Only a churl would point out that this is a plan built on thin air. That this is Enron economics, in which being told that you’ll get more money is the cue to start spending it right away. It’s not even as if the chancellor had found £27bn down the back of the sofa. He had found it down the back of a hypothetical, future sofa.

Quote of the day

The Governor of the Bank of England testifies to the Treasury Select Committee (here):

Carney could well be the first art installation to get the top job at the Bank of England. Ever since he took over more than two years ago he has managed to get almost every prediction wrong while doing as little as possible other than to say that, after careful reflection, he has concluded interest rates should stay exactly the same for another few months. Mogadon “Mañana” Mark is a miracle of economic and comic genius by always being right at the same time as always being wrong. A contradiction of creative nihilism.

Nothing fazes Mogadon “Mañana” Mark, for whom life is one long, unhurried green ski run just outside Calgary; not even the Conservative Steve Baker, enquiring why inflation was so much lower than he had anticipated.

“Therearepotentiallycontradictingtimehorizons,” Carney said, for a moment coming over all Captain Kirk. What you had to understand, man, was that the economy was, like, really heavy and operated on its own space-time continuum.

     

Stop bashing the NHS

The BBC suggests that medical consultants have a Monday to Friday attitude:

As the system is currently set up, consultant cover drops significantly at weekends. A recent Freedom of Information request by the Daily Telegraph found in general medicine it fell five-fold.

The result of this is that the consultants in work are stretched more thinly and junior doctors have to do more.

That means these vital tests and procedures sometimes cannot take place until Monday comes. The suspicion among experts is that this is one of the reasons why, as the study published by the British Medical Journal on Sunday suggests, patient care may be being hampered.

I can only go by my own experience with the NHS.  Earlier this year, I underwent an NHS hospital operation on a Friday; the consultant came to see me at 7am on the Saturday morning to explain how it went and then again at 9am on the Sunday morning to check on progress.  My second operation in September actually took place on a Sunday.

So no complaints from me about consultants.  Nor about the terrific nursing care I received on those weekends.

 

Now £31,000,000,000 plus £10,000,000,000 contingencies

Military boys and their toys

The main features of the newly announced defence spending plans are as follows:

Two 5,000-strong "strike brigades" sourced from existing Army numbers and equipped to deploy across the globe

New F-35 jets and maritime patrol aircraft

A reduction in the number of new Type 26 anti-submarine warfare frigates being built, from 13 to eight

More than 20 new Protector drones, more than doubling the number of Reaper aircraft they replace

It is said that the new strike brigades will be created by 2025.  Why this process should take 10 years is not explained.  Imagine if, in early 1939, the Ministry of Defence had advised the government that they would not be in a position to resist Nazi Germany until 1949.

Similarly, the F-35 jets for the new carriers will not be available until 2023, which means that the carriers will be sitting idle for years after they are commissioned in 2019 or 2020.

Furthermore, given the perennial and chronic inability of MoD to meet deadlines, it may be optimistic to assume that these arrangements will actually be in place by 2025.

And who knows what threats we will be facing in 2025?  None of the above is likely to provide direct prevention against terrorist attacks of the kind we have seen recently in Paris, in the Sinai or in Mali.

   

Quote of the day

The drums of war are beating their unholy tattoo.  But The Guardian holds back on jingoism:

There are enough countries already launching airstrikes – to the point where they risk acting at cross-purposes and endangering each other. What special extra element can the RAF add, other than trying to demonstrate Britain’s military prowess (to the UK itself, but primarily perhaps to the Americans)?  

Even if the forces of Isis are attacked even more intensively from the air, the military consensus appears to be that they cannot be defeated without ground troops. Will western forces, in the end, be able to resist the calls for such an escalation? And what would the longer-term effect be anyway? The appeal of Isis lies not only in its military power, but in religion and ideology. That appeal will not be countered by western arms; it is more likely to be bolstered.

After more than two years, the central purpose of military intervention in Syria has still not been clarified. Everyone now insists they are fighting Isis, but the US, Jordan and others intervened at the start in support of those opposing President Assad. Turkey eventually joined in, and chose primarily to attack Kurdish PKK forces. Russia’s airstrikes have been intended to boost Assad as much as to push back Isis. Where will any UK airstrikes fit in? Whose war will we actually be fighting?

 

The Neville Chamberlain de nos jours

Hesitant?  Prevaricating? Dithering?  Leading from behind?  It is anything but firm leadership:

After the Iraq conflict and British intervention in Afghanistan, it was never going to be easy. But slowly and surely, David Cameron appears to be building sufficient parliamentary support for what could be the biggest decision of his premiership: to take part in airstrikes against Islamic State targets inside Syria.

There is, as yet, no date for a parliamentary vote, and Cameron insists he will only set one if and when he is sure he will win it. The PM remains cautious as he tiptoes along the road to war. He was badly burned in 2013 when he failed to gain parliamentary approval for airstrikes against Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, and wants no repeat of that.

If Cameron wants to take the military option against ISIS in Syria, let him come out and say so, together with an honest statement of the added value which UK participation would deliver and of the objectives of any such action.

    

Music of the week

 

Winter is coming ...

The Times reports:

Britain is braced for up to four inches of snow this weekend as the country prepares for the coldest November temperatures in five years.

An Arctic blast is forecast to drive temperatures lower than Siberia, with 70mph gales coming in from the North Pole. Some 2,000 gritters will be on call as snow, ice and high winds threaten to cause travel chaos, with the RAC expecting 7,000 breakdowns a day this weekend.

Rail operators have prepared 34 “ghost” trains ready to clear the tracks, while snowploughs are on standby at airports in the north.

Treacherous driving conditions and possible travel disruptions ​were also expected — and the snow could fall as far south as London, although it is not expected to settle.

Yesterday snow had already begun to fall in Aberdeen, with the Met Office predicting “more than a dusting of snow” in the north of Scotland.

Here in sunny Spain, today's temperature is expected to reach a balmy 21 degrees (he wrote smugly).

 

A grumpy old man writes ...

Better than a kick in the teeth, I suppose:

The basic state pension is set for its biggest rise in real terms since 2001, the Treasury has said.

Chancellor George Osborne will confirm the increase to £119.30 a week from April 2016 in next week's Spending Review.

The 2.9% rise will be worth an extra £174.20 a year to someone on a full basic state pension.

...

A triple-lock pledge on pensions - a government promise for the next five years - means the state pension rises each April to match the highest of inflation, earnings, or 2.5%.

Ad blocking

Do you use an ad.blocker?  I do.  CityAM reports:

Increased use of consumers using ad-blocking software is posing a serious threat to brands and publishers and creative agencies.

Self-playing videos and pop-up ads have given the medium a bad name among consumers, and one in five (20 per cent) of us uses the software – up about five percentage points from earlier in the year. This figure increases to 40 per cent among 18-24 year olds.

YouGov research shows that people want to shut out adverts for two broad reasons. First, they find online ads “annoying” (80 per cent). Second, because they often make using the device harder and that ad-blocking reduces visual clutter and speeds up browsing.

The advertising agencies have only themselves to blame - for going over the top with a plague of useless ads.

I use AdBlock which is free (google it if you're interested) and it has made an enormous difference to my browsing.

In memoriam

War aims

It is all very well declaring war on ISIS but what would victory look like?  Paul Mason in The Guardian sets out the difficulty:

... the biggest challenge comes if you imagine what victory would look like. Isis-held territory being reoccupied by armies that, this time, can withstand the suicide bombings, truck bombs and kidnappings that a defeated Isis would unleash. Mosques and madrassas across the region stripped of their jihadi preachers. A massive programme of economic development focused on human capital – education, healthcare and institution building – as well as physical reconstruction. Nonsectarian, democratic states in Iraq and Syria and an independent Kurdistan state spanning parts of both countries. To achieve this you would need to unleash surveillance, policing and military action on a scale that could only be acceptable to western electorates if carried out with a restraint and accountability not shown in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The alternative is to disengage, contain Isis, deal with the refugees and try to ignore the beheading videos.

Let us hope that the politicians and generals bear this in mind.

    

Not very patriotic

One might have expected the national football associations to be less communautaire.  The Guardian reports:

German discount chain Lidl has been appointed official supermarket of the England football team.

From Tuesday, the Neckarsulm-based grocer will be the official supplier of water, fish, fruit and vegetables for Roy Hodgson’s boys under a multimillion-pound three-year deal with the Football Association. It will also be official supplier of fish, fruit and vegetables for Scotland and Wales after signing similar deals with their equivalent footballing bodies.

Do you suppose that the German FA would even have considered getting into bed with Sainsbury's or Tesco?


   

Musique de la semaine

 

Vive la France!

I confess that, until now, I had never seen the point of Facebook; I was a "lurker", rarely if ever posting.

But it was through Facebook that I was quickly able to ascertain that the branch of my family domiciled in Paris were safe and well.

For which, much thanks.

 

Utter nonsense

For how long do we have to tolerate this kind of rubbish?

Corbyn is expected to be sworn in as a member of the privy council on Wednesday, enabling him to receive confidential security briefings. He has confirmed that he intends to join the body, but has not said whether he will kneel on a footstool or kiss the Queen’s hand as part of the process.

Labour declined to give more details about how Corbyn will conduct the swearing-in ceremony. His choices may never be made public, because meetings of the organisation take place in private.

According to the Royal Encyclopaedia, the protocol is that: “The new privy counsellor or minister will extend his or her right hand, palm upwards, and, taking the Queen’s hand lightly, will kiss it with no more than a touch of the lips.”

Is this a democracy, or what?

Is nothing sacred?

 

Supermarket queuing

How to choose the till that will get you out the door fastest?  The Sunday Times ponders:

... scientists have worked out an answer to perhaps the most crucial question of all: how do you choose the queue that will move fastest? Simple: choose the one with the most men in it.

This is because women are more patient than men, who are more likely to just give up if the queue is moving too slowly.

According to researchers at Surrey University: “Men were more likely to dislike waits than women and be less accepting of their inevitability.”

But then again, it does not pay to overcomplicate it. When Dan Meyer of Desmos, a US-based online maths business, analysed the till receipts at his local supermarket he discovered that each person in line adds at least 41 seconds to your waiting time, regardless of how many items they have, because of the time taken to unload, pack and pay. His advice: just choose the line with the fewest people in it.

My advice (which is both sexist and ageist)?  Avoid the queue populated by old women - it takes them so damn long to open their handbags, then find their purse, then count out the pennies ...

 

Music of the week

Who is for a little grunge?



   

It's that time of year again

This year, next year, sometime, never ...

Will he?  Won't he?  Does what he says mean anything?

CityAM reports:

Mark Carney’s Bank of England pushed sterling off a cliff yesterday by suggesting that interest rates could stay anchored to their historic low until 2017.

Having said earlier in the year that a rate hike could come towards the end of 2015 or start of 2016, the Bank’s governor appears to be diverging from the position of US Federal Reserve boss Janet Yellen.

The dollar jumped this week when Yellen and two of her Fed colleagues pointed to a “live possibility” of a US rate hike next month.

Many analysts have expected the Bank to follow the Fed’s lead and tighten monetary policy sooner rather than later, but yesterday’s trio of publications – dubbed Super Thursday – was surprisingly dovish.

“The path for Bank rate implied by market rates has fallen by around 40 basis points [since August], such that it only reaches 0.75 per cent in 2017 quarter two,” said the Bank’s inflation report.

It will no doubt be an entirely different story in January.

 

Stuck?

Don't know how you get 20,000 British holidaymakers back from Sharm el-Sheikh.  Even if flights were possible, you would need a large number of aeroplanes.  I suppose the alternative is buses to Cairo; but you would need an awful lot of buses ...

 

Photos of the day

Canadian dogs come off poorly after attacking porcupine:

More here.  But it doesn't tell us what happened to the porcupine ...

Do they know what they are doing?

The Guardian reports:

Theresa May is to propose a major extension of the surveillance state when she publishes legislation requiring internet companies to store details of every website visited by customers over the previous year.

I reckon that I must visit over 100 websites each day (including separate visits to the same website).  But, for the sake of argument, let us posit that the average UK user visits only 25 sites.  If there are 20 million users in the UK (and bear in mind that it is not just the visits of you and me that will be recorded but also those of all of the large and small businesses), that means about 500 million visits per day for the UK users as a whole.  Multiply that by 365, and you get the annual grand total of UK website visits of over 180 billion (or 180,000,000,000).

That amounts to an awful lot of data for the internet providers to store and organise in some kind of accessible format.  Even if the police or the security authorities were able to extract the date for one particular individual, they would still have to look through many thousands of website visits.

Is this at all practical?

 

How much food do you throw away?

Far too much in my case.



Splendidly entertaining programme from the BBC.  Despite being a bit of a posho, Shuggie manages to engage with real people without patronising them.

You can catch the programme on the BBC i-player or on you-tube.

"Old love, new love, every love but true love ..."

So, tell us, Jerry, what attracted you to Rupert?

 

Man of the people

Nothing wrong with enjoying the nice things in life.  After all. it's open to anyone (provided they have a spare £2000 annually and are prepared to wait for a couple of years - unless you are the PM).  The Times reports:

David Cameron has accepted free entry to one of London’s most exclusive private members’ clubs. which boasts that it is a “haven of exclusivity” and recently underwent a cull of its membership.

The prime minister’s latest entry in the register of members’ interests reveals that he has accepted honorary membership of Mark’s Club in Charles Street, Mayfair.The club, which is open to women as well as men, describes itself as an elegant and traditional private members’ club, situated in a “beautiful townhouse”, and has recently undergone an extensive refit.

...

Membership of Mark’s Club is believed to cost in the region of £2,000 a year, with a joining fee in the region of £1,000. There is a waiting list of two years. Zagat, the restaurant review guide, wrote: “Members sniff, ‘If you ask how much it costs, you can’t afford to eat here’.”

   

A modern hero

Mr Williams is a decent sort of a guy:

It was an unexpected and almost absurdly touching end to six weeks of crunching top-level sport: the hulking, tattooed figure of New Zealand rugby star Sonny Bill Williams almost tenderly placing his brand-new World Cup winners’ medal around the neck of a dumbstruck teenage fan who had rashly run on the pitch to congratulate him.

...

Williams said later he had been upset to see the slight teenager “smoked” by the security guard. “It was pretty sad,” he said. “He’s just a young fella obviously caught up in the moment.

Asked about the medal gesture, he said: “Why not try and make a young fella’s night? Hopefully, he’ll remember it for a while. I know he will appreciate it, and when he gets older he will be telling kids. That is more special than it just hanging on a wall.”

...

Williams said that had he seen one of his own younger relatives similarly bowled over, he “would have given the security guard a hiding”, an alarming thought for the unnamed steward, given the 6ft 3in Williams is a sufficiently skilled boxer to still be listed as one of the top 100 heavyweights in the world.

   

A tap on the shoulder

Sometimes the Aussies get it right:

Australia will no longer appoint knights and dames under the honours system, PM Malcolm Turnbull has said.

Mr Turnbull said the titles were "not appropriate" in modern Australia, and that Queen Elizabeth had accepted the cabinet's recommendation to drop them.

Could the UK not do the same?  After all, hack politicians, ageing actors, political donors and superannuated civil service permanent secretaries are already sufficiently well-rewarded.

 

Music of the week

Quote of the day

Methinks he protesteth too much:

"It’s sad,” said Mourinho. “Look at Brendan Rodgers’ situation. He was the manager of the season [with Liverpool in 2013-14] and, suddenly, people were really happy and working hard until he was sacked. It’s strange. I don’t belong to that world. I’m too emotional and hate people losing their jobs but I’m not worried about that at all. Not at all. I don’t spend one second of my day thinking about it. I’m worried about the results, about winning against Liverpool, about qualifying for the next round of the Champions League, about recovering our position in the table, about getting Chelsea back to where we normally have to be. I’m not worried about my job, my future, about anything other than that. I’m not worried. I’m not worried. It looks like people want to put a lot of pressure on me in relation to that but they can’t. They can’t do it. They can’t do it.” By the end, the constant references to a lack of concern actually suggested something very different.

   

Miles better?

As I am from the other side of the country, I'm biased, of course, but this strikes me as a step too far.  According to The Times:

It has a reputation as Britain’s most macho city, with a mean streak as wide as the Clyde (Marc Horne writes). But Glasgow has been given a makeover and will be marketed around the globe with a new pink colour scheme.

The livery is being used on taxis, billboards, banners, badges, visitor websites and on the high-visibility lanyards worn by security staff at Glasgow airport. It is also featuring heavily at the World Gymnastic Championships at the SSE Hydro Arena.

The man behind the pink push has revealed that it has been done to give Glasgow a softer, more friendly image.

Scott Taylor, the chief executive of Glasgow City Marketing Bureau, said: “Making a post-industrial city in the west of Scotland go pink demonstrates just how comfortable Glasgow is in its own skin. It’s an inclusive colour, it’s a caring colour, it demonstrates a softness that Glasgow has.”

...

The city is also preparing to market itself as a gay-friendly metropolis. “It is about making a statement,” Mr Taylor said. “Glasgow is a place where everybody and everyone can come and have fun and feel welcome.”

Aye, well.  Just don't go to Glasgow in the day of an Auld Firm match and expect to have fun and feel welcome.

Hubris

Even The Times is putting the boot in:

Osborne could have chosen to introduce the cuts only for new claimants, thus avoiding the horror of families opening letters just before Christmas that tell them they will lose around £1,300. He could have twigged that a sum this large would mean that the adulation he received for his clever summer budget wouldn’t last forever. He could have listened to worried backbenchers, rather than sending his henchmen to bellow down the phone at them when, exasperated, they voiced concern in the press.

He could have put the cuts into primary legislation, where they belong, rather than in a statutory instrument, a lesser form of legislation that the Hansard Society believes is being increasingly abused by governments keen to avoid proper scrutiny. And he could, at a number of stages in this long row, have shown some humility by saying he wants policies to work for the hardworking people that the Conservatives claim to represent, and that he would tweak his original design. Though he said on Monday that he was listening to those who were worried, he appeared to snarl into the camera as he said it, suggesting a man whose pride had been stung, not someone humbled.

It is difficult even for those who support the chancellor’s ideal of a “lower welfare, higher wage” economy to feel much sympathy for where he has ended up. He thought he was being wise, which is always the sign he is being a fool. This latest row confirms that the “omnishambles” budget of 2012 was not just one dropped stitch, but part of a pattern: a complacent chancellor assumes that everything is fine with a controversial policy until its flaws are so obvious that even Geoffrey Boycott’s mother could have pinpointed them with a stick of rhubarb.

Couldn't have happened to a nicer fellow ...

Oh dear ...

The Guardian reports:

Bacon, ham and sausages rank alongside cigarettes as a major cause of cancer, theWorld Health Organisation has said, placing cured and processed meats in the same category as asbestos, alcohol, arsenic and tobacco.

The report from the WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer said there was enough evidence to rank processed meats as group 1 carcinogens because of a causal link with bowel cancer.

It places red meat in group 2A, as “probably carcinogenic to humans”. Eating red meat is also linked to pancreatic and prostate cancer, the IARC says.

Looking on the bright side, there are apparently no suspicions about fried bread and tattie scones.

 

Quote of the day

Lady Stowell, Tory leader in the Lords, defending the indefensible during the debate on tax credits:

“Let me be clear,” Stowell said. The only clarity thereafter was that she would rather be anywhere but where she was. Even though David Cameron had specifically ruled out cutting tax credits before the election, Stowell assured the Lords everyone had assumed they would, so it was perfectly reasonable to sneak them through on a statutory instrument – and even if they hadn’t it would be a constitutional crisis if the Lords were to vote for a fatal amendment, even it wasn’t actually fatal. As long as everyone was reasonably nice to the Conservatives and didn’t do anything worse than express regret about her party’s incompetence, she could give her word that the chancellor had promised he would have a rethink and come up with something a bit better in the next few days.

   

Decision day for the Lords

Will the House of Lords sabotage Osborne's proposed cuts in tax credits?  The Guardian reports:

In an attempt to persuade peers not to block the measures, the government warned the non-party crossbench group of peers, who hold the balance of power in the upper house, that rejecting such a large financial measure would provoke a constitutional crisis.

There were suggestions that Downing Street could flood the lords with new Tory peers or limit its powers if the cuts are blocked. If peers vote for a non-binding “regret motion” then the chancellor is expected to indicate that he would act to soften the impact of the cuts in his autumn statement on 25 November.

Bluffing?  Maybe.  After all, what would the voting public think about the prospect of creating hundreds of new Tory peers?  (Just think of  all those Tory donors wearing ermine.)  At what cost?   Would an expanded House of Lords have a future?  And all this in order to shaft the poorer sections of the working classes.

The Tories might want to think about holes and stopping digging ...

 
   

What? No spring roll?

The menu for the state banquet:

We wiz robbed

It's official.  The BBC reports:

Referee Craig Joubert was wrong to award a crucial 78th-minute penalty against Scotland in Sunday's World Cup quarter-final defeat by Australia, says World Rugby.

Scotland led 34-32 at Twickenham when Jon Welsh was ruled deliberately offside for playing the ball after a knock-on by a team-mate.

The governing body said that, because Australia's Nick Phipps touched the ball, "the appropriate decision should have been a scrum to Australia for the original knock-on".

 

Dunking

All rather messy.  The Guardian reports:

It was a mouthful of miniature sponge-cake dipped in tea that became one of French literature’s most powerful metaphors.

But the madeleine cakes that Marcel Proust made famous as the trigger for nostalgia in his book might have actually started out as toasted bread, according to draft manuscripts to be published in France this week.

A first draft of Proust’s monumental novel dating from 1907 had the author reminiscing not about madeleines as the sensory trigger for a childhood memory about his aunt, but instead about toasted bread mixed with honey. 

A second draft, the manuscripts showed, had the evocative mouthful as a biscotto, a hard biscuit.

It was only in the third draft that Proust wrote that he had bitten into a soft little madeleine.

Any dunker will tell you that plain digestives are the most appropriate, with hobnobs possibly in second place.


 

Music of the week

Getting sentimental in my old age:

Walking on water

From The Guardian (here):

While half the Conservative party doesn’t really care one way or the other if David Cameron stays or goes, half the Labour party actively want to remove Jeremy Corbyn and half the Lib Dems don’t even know what Tim Farron looks like, Sturgeon is received with an adoration bordering on a holy rapture.

She only has to smile and her audience is already entranced.

   

Going nowhere?

The state of the negotiations prior to the UK's in/out referendum?  What does Cameron want?  Not clear.  When does he want it?  Also not clear.  When will it become clear?  Later, perhaps.

The Guardian reports:

David Cameron bowed to pressure from other EU governments on Thursday and pledged to put his shopping list of demands for his in/out EU referendum on paper within weeks after previously declining to do so.

The prime minister is to write a letter to Donald Tusk, the president of the European council who chairs EU summits, detailing the changes he hopes to obtain in the EU, before putting the outcome to a referendum by the end of 2017 on whether the UK should remain in the EU.

Cameron has previously refused to be pinned down on his demands, triggering a chorus of complaints over the past fortnight from EU capitals that the negotiations were going nowhere and that there would be no meaningful talks until Downing Street put something on paper.

Do you get the impression that Cameron has a cunning plan for the negotiations?  

No, neither do I.    

   

Jezza puts the boot in

The Guardian wittily summarises Prime Minister's Questions:

When Corbyn opened with a question on tax credits from Kelly, Cameron’s eyes glazed over in chillaxed bliss. “National living wage, everyone better off, yadda yadda, yadda,” said Dave, before a little voice in his head reminded him to mention Kelly by name. “Kelly, Kelly, Kelly will be better, better, better off.” Yay, job done. Bring on the next moaner from Radio Somewhere Up North. Only this time Corbyn had a follow-up question. “Actually Kelly will be £1,800 worse off.” Would the prime minister like to have another go at answering the question?

Not in the slightest, it seemed, as Dave scrabbled for a folder that might give him a more detailed answer than was generally required for Radio Somewhere Up North. “All these people benefit,” Dave said. Kelly had by now been long forgotten, to be lumped in the catch-all “these people”. These people being people not like him.

Corbyn now adopted the air of a long-serving academic, reluctantly forced into explaining something very simple to an irritatingly dim student. “The prime minister is doing his best and I admire that,” he said, failing to disguise his ennui. But could he try just a little harder to explain why Kelly would be broke? A puce Cameron snapped. “I don’t really give a toss about Kelly,” he said. Or words to that effect. “If she can somehow struggle by for another four years she will be just fine.”

 

Cameron cynical?

Well, I suppose that this is one way of describing something of a debacle.  The Guardian reports:

Not so much a U-turn as a 360-degree spin. From hug-a-hoodie to hug-a-flogger and back again. Changing policy doesn’t seem to present nearly so many problems for the prime minister as it does for Jeremy Corbyn – probably because no one really believes David Cameron has any principles he wouldn’t be willing to sacrifice for short-term personal gain.

Up till Monday night, David Cameron was standing full square alongside foreign secretary Philip Hammond in support of the rights of the Saudi government to do whatever it likes to its own citizens in exchange for sharing security titbits and any number of lucrative contracts.

Come Tuesday morning, when the details of both a Ministry of Justice contract to train the Saudi police – “you don’t want to bother with a sword, mate, just turn this Taser up to max” – and a threatened flogging for an elderly, ill UK citizen prompted an urgent question in the Commons, Dave suddenly remembered he had a conscience. The only public execution now on offer was the hanging of Hammond. Out to dry.

 
   

Geordie haka

h/t Dan

Music of the week

Stream of consciousness

Mrs Cameron's diary:

Dave has these super progressive thoughts when we are chillaxing in front of Bake Off, like, what if prisoners did the Bake Off washing up as a punishment #winwin, Govey’s like, awesome, noted :) Nancy’s like but Dad, doesn’t BonkersWhittingdale hate Bake Off? Dave’s like not that I heard darling, she’s like plus Dad, do they watch it in China you know what Hunty said, he’s like, I have literally no idea, she’s like, & what about tax credits?

I’m like Nancy did you not HEAR where Daddy said in Greater Britain nothing is written? As in literally? So nothing that Oik & Bonkers & Theresa & Hunty say stops Daddy being totes progressive? Nancy’s like, u wot m8, aren’t we Conservative? I’m like, well Oik & Theresa are very sweetly & kindly doing that so Daddy doesn’t have to, I just wish someone would tell Mrs Merkel :( Because we told her it was Dave’s birthday as in *hint* banging on about Syria is NOT his idea of a treat #downer? She was like, Und? Dave’s like, Angela, my dream is a Greater Britain where nobody will EVER have to do boring stuff on his actual birthday, she’s like, she’s like, Ja, right, in your dreams :(((

   

Looking like a prat

No, not Beyoncé; the other one 

   

Idiot

The Times reports:

Alex Salmond was barred from boarding a British Airways plane because he booked his seat under the name of James T Kirk, the captain of Star Trek’s starship Enterprise.

An extraordinary stand-off took place this summer, when check-in staff at Heathrow refused to let the former first minister on to a flight to Scotland because his passport did not match the name on his ticket.

Mr Salmond, 60, revealed that he often travelled under a false name for security reasons and he liked to use Captain Kirk’s name because he is an avid fan of the television series.

  

Music of the week

The Hair

Vanity, vanity, vanity.  The Times reports:

Enter Donald Trump. The tycoon’s marmalade-coloured, candyfloss-textured, gravity-defying, super-luxury comb-over has entranced much of America — including Ms Stephens, who re-creates hairstyles from antiquity. “I tried to figure out how long that top hair has to be. It’s probably pushing a foot long,” she told me.

“He combs it diagonally forward to the right, pulls half of it back, and drags it to the left — kind of a big overlapping U shape that’s sprayed down with aerosol cement.”

Political hair, of course, is an irresistible springboard for pop psychology. A flamboyant do such as Mr Trump’s can connote self-esteem, Ms Stephens suggests. 

No, it connotes the fact that he is going bald.

 

Extract from the Corbyn diary

From The Times (here):

Thursday

Today I’m heading up north to meet what remains of the Labour party in Scotland. Kezia Dugdale, who is in charge up there, meets me at the station and says they’re in the car.

“Who is?” I say.

“The remains of the Labour party in Scotland,” she says.

I tell Kezia I thought our membership up here had doubled since I took over, and she says it has, and that’s why they’re not on the moped.

“I’m here to listen,” I tell her.

Kezia says that’s great, because normally Westminster politicians who come up on flying visits never really get beyond the crass Scottish stereotypes.

“Although not to bagpipes,” I add.

   

The best they could do?

According to The Times, a geriatric has-been will lead the Brexit mob:

The former Conservative chancellor Lord Lawson has put himself at the head of a Tory campaign to leave the EU and warned that David Cameron’s reforms would be “wafer-thin”.

Lord Lawson of Blaby has said that it was time for the prime minister to spell out red lines in his Brussels renegotiation, including limits on migration, or risk allowing “xenophobic voices” to lead calls for a British exit.

Writing in The Times before the Tory party conference next week, the peer announces that he is to become president of Conservatives for Britain as it gears up to join a cross-party campaign for a “Brexit” in the EU referendum expected to be held next year.

He's older than I am ...

  

Quote of the day

He coulda been a contender.  The Guardian contemplates the survival of Andy:

Having gone from clear favourite for the Labour leadership to distant runner-up, Burnham has had to rethink his political ambitions even more radically than he had to rethink his political positions during his campaign. Right a bit, left a bit, right again, bit more right, no left, left, left. Fire. Missed. Bugger it.

But Burnham is a natural survivor; not to mention amnesiac. Having been one of the few former shadow cabinet ministers not to throw a strop and refuse a position in Corbyn’s team, the new shadow home secretary then promised a fresh style of doing politics where “principle would always come before presentation”. Coming from him, this took some nerve.