“Who knew that children go to school in September? Who guessed that hundreds of thousands of students head to universities where they – and easily shocked readers should look away – strive with every fibre of their being to mingle with each other as vigorously as they can?”
“What clairvoyant might have predicted that, when the government offered the public cut-price restaurant meals at the taxpayers’ expense, the public would gobble them up?”
“Or that, when the prime minister urged workers to go back to their offices & save Pret a Manger, a few brave souls would have returned to their desks & risked having “dulce et decorum est pro Pretia mori” carved on their gravestones?”
Deliciously sharp verbal blade in the ribs
....”The Johnson administration lives to prove the truth of his words. It is abolishing meritocracy not to create a fairer society but a public administration that rewards courtiers who never speak truth to power.”
And to uplift it further this is a corker of a thread by @redhistorian and Cummings’ belief he IS promoting meritocracy.
“The problem with this government is not that it rejects meritocracy, but that it puts too much faith in its own ability to assess merit & bypasses any institution that challenges it. And its view of merit underpins a defence of inequality, as a reward for the deserving rich.”
It felt as if @redhistorian had been eavesdropping a lunchtime conversation I’d been having.
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We’re just pausing over tea to discuss the location of the DC solar panel isolation switches as the loft is not a good location for me up a wobbly loft ladder and very awkward loft hatch
They are going in the spare bedroom cupboard so easy for me to get to
The team is absolutely lovely.
Tomorrow the roofing panel team will arrive: James and Rhys who have both been doing this for 4 years.
James is ex military
Rob and Andy (electricians and survey team)
Geoff (sales consultant) has been in solar for years.
Just thinking about my young Ukrainian Refugee today.
Two years ago today she was awoken by her brother in law, a customs official, telling her to get out of Kyiv straight away. Forget her home and job there. The Russians were invading.
She left to go to her parents
So did her sister and her two young children. To a tiny village in the Poltava Region. All living together in their parents house.
What must it have been like for her? Realising that the war was not going to be over quickly and her lost home and lost job were now her reality
Meanwhile her cousins were fighting at the front. The loss of life and destruction of property all too real and the grim stories of torture, rape and deportation of children growing louder.
Suddenly having to take off to a foreign country she had never visited to survive
Extraordinary: “On 11 June 2020 a Supplemental Deed was signed by (HOUCHEN) & (Corney & Musgrave). “The innocuous title & diminutive page count contrasts with the practical impact of this legal document, which amends the…agreements signed in March 2020”
The March 2020 deal which granted options to TWL over the entire Teesworks site,” comments the review (16.31).
“The amendments added wording which provided express permission for TWL to enter any of the option land & to remove all minerals, aggregates, metals & equipment”
“ & title to such items passes to TWL on removal from the property. The effect of this was to transfer to the JV Partners 50% of the value of the recyclable materials”
TWL = Tees Works Ltd which WAS owned 50/50 by South Tees Development Corp (public) and Corney & Musgrave (JV)
Ladies & gentlemen : I give you Steve Gibson, Houchen’s then vice chair at South Tees Development Corp. “You’ll be fucking shaking your head very soon. I’ll be fucking shaking it…you are going to get a fight like you have never fucking experienced…and I want your walls…”
“..and I want your eyes out of your head; I want the fucking roof off your house; I want your kids out of private school; I want no shoes on your fucking feet”
That’s his idea of a professional negotiation with PD ports.
He went on to say that he didn’t pay over any money to the PO but he did have a conversation with Geoff Hoon who was Defence Minister in Blair’s Gov at the time
He advised this postmaster, who had 3 post offices at the time and oversaw or provided relief for 20, to get out of PO
Now what did Geoff Hoon know back in the early 2000s to make him say that?
In any event this clip seems particularly important as he says the remote alteration they all saw together disappeared a couple of days later…also done remotely.