One day to go.

This thread on the @Conservatives’ record in government got nearly a million views in 72 hours. It obviously touched a nerve.

You also sent many suggestions of what I’d left out.
So here’s an update, with an important correction at the end. Here we go:

https://twitter.com/exitthelemming/status/1795425589647856102

Water companies paying record dividends despite record fines. Between them, eight English water companies paid out more than £1.35bn to shareholders last year. They discharged sewage for a total of 3.6m hours: that's £377 dividend for every hour of polluting rivers and seas

Fifteen years. Five prime ministers, seven chancellors, eight foreign secretaries, twelve culture secretaries and sixteen housing ministers.

A thread, for #RantyTuesday. One third of all children in poverty. Triple the NHS waiting list (6.4m). Energy bills up a quarter in the last two years. Food prices up a fifth. Huge mortgage increases. Four million hours of sewage poured into our rivers and seas in 2023, more than twice as much as in 2022

I'd take Sunak's crusade against teenage 'loitering' more seriously if his party since 2010 hadn't closed more than 800 libraries, sold off hundreds of playing fields, cut arts funding by a third and local authority grants by 40%.
Young people need cheap, interesting things to do (Mind you, the sale of playing fields has slowed down. Between 1979 and 1997 the @Conservatives approved the sale of around 10 000 of them)

“Humans can’t", said T.S.E.,
“bear very much reality.”
At times like these, when all at sea,
We need a televisual cup of tea. And so here’s #ACGAS; I forsee
delights autumnal and carefree
To add to Thursday night TV
As downward falls the mercury.

Katharine Birbalsingh says that fewer girls chose physics because “physics isn’t something that girls tend to fancy… There’s a lot of hard maths in there that I think they would rather not do… The research generally … just says that’s a natural thing." Katharine Birbalsingh is the government’s social mobility commissioner.

So that's you told, girls. Get back in the kitchen and don't bother your head with hard sums. It's not natural.
theguardian.com/education/2022…

Oh Oliver. Know your #Shakespeare, especially on his birthday.

The speech continues: “this England… is now leased out …bound in with shame,
With inky blots and rotten parchment bonds:

That England, that was wont to conquer others,
Hath made a shameful conquest of itself.”

https://twitter.com/oliverdowden/status/1517770600923774976

This from a former Culture Secretary. Honestly. It’s government by fridge magnet

The way much of the world has handled COVID is pretty depressing.

In large so-called democracies like the US and UK, short-termism and the patchy adoption and early abandonment of easy stuff like masks proved we were governed by clowns who would rather be popular than right Meanwhile we hoarded vaccines and their patents, ignoring the fact that no-one is safe till all are safe and leaving us open to long COVID and more dangerous variants.

Even now only 15.2% of people in low-income countries have received at least one dose (ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinat…)

Horrific news. Our orchestras, theatre and dance companies are some of the finest in the world. Now the Government tells us “music, dance, drama and performing arts, art and design ... are not among our strategic priorities.”

Funding for those courses is to be cut by 50%

https://twitter.com/wearethemu/status/1388124434071003138

Presumably the government feel that arts cuts will play well to their base before the elections. A new front opens in the culture war.

But we don’t train artists or musicians based on where they live or how much their parents earn. Because talent is no respecter of postcodes.

A very happy Christmas, and good morning from the Millennium Bridge at sunrise, 8:04am. All that mighty heart is lying still! The first sun caught St Paul’s a few minutes later

The ability to get lost.

In the 90s, with the aid of a map (a MAP!), you looked at the landscape and tried to find yourself within it. Now you know exactly where you are and the world is arranged around you. Big difference (and not necessarily an improvement)

https://twitter.com/profmusgrave/status/1341936113032822787

After all, if we never get lost, if we never go down the wrong path, how will we ever know the right one?

This, by my godson @idvck, describes the pleasures of being lost (and Georgian cheese on toast) beautifully

newstatesman.com/international/…

Now that the Director General of the BBC has explicitly adopted an alt-right trope by saying employees must avoid “virtue-signalling”, can we at least stop parroting the idea that the state broadcaster is institutionally left-wing? It’s worse than that, though. The things regularly called “virtue-signalling” by the right (feeding children, stopping people drowning, believing in equality, taking the side of the marginalised, the powerless and the dispossessed) were traditionally covered by the word “virtue”.

I heard it was an emergency, so I emerged.

As an actor, I can’t do much without face to face contact. But I can read verse. If me reading a particular poem would make you happy, let me know and I’ll post it on @SoundCloud. I’ll try and do at least one a day x Thanks for your myriad brilliant suggestions. I’ll post the first ones tomorrow.

Meanwhile, if anyone needs a bedtime story, this might be useful for dealing with extra tantrums. You know what adults are like.

Samuel West - Angry Arthur: bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episod… via @BBCiPlayer

O'Brien held up his left hand, its back towards Winston.

'What colour passport am I holding up, Winston?'

'Black.'

'And if the party says that it is not black but blue - then what colour?'

'Black.'

The word ended in a gasp of pain. ‘What colour passport, Winston?'

'Black.'

The needle went up to sixty.

'What colour passport, Winston?'

'Black! Black! What else can I say? Black!’