Truss is manning the barricades now - "I refused to confine our great country to decline". Unfortunately, she looks and sounds like a militaristic bag of Cheesy Wotsits. And then Greenpeace, who presumably were allowed into the room to make up the numbers, raise their banner.

Upkeep and repairs to the homes of soldiers and their families have proved to be a disgrace under contracts awarded to moneygrubbing private contractors.

Yet again, MoD under a Tory government have proved unable (or unwilling) to negotiate a professional contract - where are the timetables and schedules? Where are the success and failure criteria? Where are the penalty clauses?

Risk your life for your country while your spouse and children live in a house with holes in the exterior walls.

theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/o…

My thoughts on Owen Paterson:

1) I sympathise with anyone close to a suicide, regardless of his acts and thoughts before the event - recriminations can come later, if ever

2) I do not sympathise with an MP who, for several years, took large amounts of money in recompense for acting selfishly, unwisely and, most importantly, illegally.

Mr Paterson is making much of the charity he has founded in his wife's name. Perhaps he could donate to that charity the hundreds of thousands of pounds he has been paid (and is still being paid) by companies

Does Boris Johnson think he sounds noble and wise when he says says that when the pandemic is over “we will make sure we learn the lessons and reflect and prepare"?

Does he think that the gross inequalities in society, the impoverishment of people and public services, weren't known and understood well before the pandemic brought them into focus? Illness and mortality rates amongst the poor were already soaring after a decade of misgovernment, cruel half-baked ideology, arrogance and exceptionalism.

Good to hear that the ERG star chamber has approved the Brexit trade deal (or Deal--- as I think it should be called). It "preserves the UK's sovereignty as a matter of law" they say. I wonder what they'd have said if they'd actually read it. Boris Johnson: "we have pressed ahead with this task, resisting all calls for delay, precisely because creating certainty about our future provides the best chance of beating Covid"

Eh?

I think I understand Tory economic policy now. Cinemas close, thousands of redundant ppl retrain under the "new" JEST* scheme as care workers to replace those who've died, while property developers get gov't subsidies to convert cinema buildings into tiny flats.

* not a typo Meanwhile, the money train to nowhere, aka HS2, cuts a swathe through ancient woodlands and villages to cater for business travellers who don't have businesses to go to, charging fares that can't be afforded even by those lucky enough to get a serf's job in a care home.

#KARMA19 Funny how Trump's reported coronavirus infection is being blamed on Hope Hicks - couldn't possibly have been one of the thousands of unshielded mouth-breathers he's been rubbing against in defiance of rules and commonsense.

Google translate:

Boris Johnson: The government will adopt a creative approach to ensuring business support continues

English: Tory party donors will be filling their boots Re making the £20 increase to universal credit permanent

Johnson: The government will continue to support people

English: No

Waiting with bated breath for Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance to do their double act.

I see they're not going to take questions. Probably wise. They have slides!

Virus spreads, more people go to hospital, more people die, says Pat.

Spot on so far.

Boris Johnson is now opening the debate on the internal market bill.

You are now leaving reality. Please turn off all critical faculties.

Non sequitur: I'm not big on possessions but I lust after this guitar: Johnson says in recent months the EU has suggested it is willing to go to extreme and unreasonable lengths in interpreting the withdrawal agreement.

[Er, by following the actual words in it]

How the other half lives: Jockey Club chief executive Delia Bushell resigns after inquiry upholds allegations of bullying, racist comments and the circulation of offensive material.

I'm surprised prominent board member Dido Harding didn't spot this and put a stop to it. Checking some facts,. I looked at Dido's father's wiki entry: "By his wife, Harriet, daughter of Major General Francis Hare (whom he married in 1966)". Very liberal for the times 😀

This is Karen Rampton, Bournemouth Council. Karen wants to fine homeless people £100 for sleeping in doorways or leaving their belongings on the street. Bournemouth W Tories' site says she has "a passion for supporting the vulnerable in our community."

Pls don't be like Karen. theguardian.com/society/2020/a…

Tory timelines:

April '16: Tory MP Charlie Elphicke sexually assaults parliamentary worker in Westminster

Dec '16: Victim tells Tory whips

Nov '17: Elphicke suspended by party

Dec '18: Elphicke has whip restored for confidence vote in Theresa May July '19: Elphicke charged with sexual assaults and suspended again

July '20: Elphicke guilty of three charges of sexual assault

Elphicke had told the jury he was "besotted" with the younger woman and desired a sexual relationship with her. So that's alright then?

Tommy Robinson is saying he's migrating to Spain because he fears for his life in England. "There’s something I haven’t told everyone, I had an incident quite a few weeks ago with an arson."

Don't play with matches when you're out of your gourd, Tommy. Nazi twunt. To all the the #IAmStevenYaxleyLennon idiots who like to pile in when they think someone's attacking their gofundme guru, don't bother, I just sneer at you and block you.

Gov't's own figures: Brexit will cause a 5% drop in GDP. The best possible trade deal we can do is with the US and that will give a GDP "boost" of 0.16% - a tiny fraction of what we're losing and for that we will have to give our NHS to the sharks of American private healthcare. Never mind the acceptance of appalling animal husbandry that will drive many UK farmers into bankruptcy and leave the rump to supply high cost meat to Harrods.

But our borders and our fish, cry the Brexiteers, we can keep out the hordes of crop pickers and care home workers, and

"Got a message from a friend who said they wore a mask for 10 mins yesterday & nearly passed out."

Things that didn't happen #94

https://twitter.com/NeilClark66/status/1284379826334441472

"I have a friend who is a nurse and she told me that she and all her colleagues wore masks for ten hours straight yesterday and they all died of carbon dioxide poisoning fifteen minutes into their shift and the hospital morgue is full of dead masked doctors and ..."

Tony Sewell as chair of its new commission looking into race disparity in the UK.

Tony: "I have spent my entire career in education striving to help all students achieve their full potential. "I know however that inequality exists, and I am committed to working with my fellow commissioners to understand why."

I'd probably have more confidence in Mr Sewell if he already knew.

Interesting to see the breakdown of the money that Sunak has found to save UK culture.

(Figures in £m, some rounding artefacts)

Devolved administrations:

33NI
97Scotland (doubles all round in Edinburgh)
59Wales England:

880Grants
270Loans

No announcement of when or how this will work, who'll allocate grants, on what criteria.

Reading the gov't's instructions to schools on reopening in September, I could understand teachers marching on Parliament with sharpened pitchforks. It is laughably ill-thought out, it is incomplete, it is downright impossible.

theguardian.com/education/2020… Just one little gem, on getting to school, the DoE compares travel changes for the Olympics:

a) London - games lanes on roads, E London Line expanded, TfL also built a £25 million cable car across the Thames. Get digging, Wolverhampton

b) Olympics - money, billions of pounds

Gavin Williamson is to deliver the government's daily #Coronavirus update. They're not even pretending now, are they? Gavin is now five minutes late for the 4pm briefing. Changing his trousers, I expect.

Boris Johnson on Sophy Ridge show. 40 new hospitals (gently corrected by Ms Ridge but he now has a plausible-sounding response). Immigration: we want highly-skilled workers like "first violinists, nuclear physicists, prima ballerinas". But "We want to bear down on migration, particularly of unskilled workers who have no job to come to."

No coloured, no Poles, no Irish signs will be selling well in Toryland this Christmas.