Tom Peck Profile picture
Parliamentary Sketch Writer and TV columnist @thetimes
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Mar 6, 2023 6 tweets 2 min read
I clicked on this. It asked me to open an app I don’t have called adobe aero, and then it crashed. Not to be defeated merely by being unable to scan a QR code on my phone, with my phone, at the same time, afte much copy and pasting it now appears to be attempting to scan the room I am in, in search of Rishi Sunak’s announcement. Image
Feb 3, 2023 13 tweets 3 min read
Fucking hell this is terrible. TV presenting is an extremely, extremely hard job, as Nadine Dorries is making very very clear indeed.
Jun 13, 2022 8 tweets 2 min read
What an absolute thrill to start the week, finding out from an actual government
minister that a government with an 80 seat majority can’t do what it said it would because of the pundits. “I’m afraid it’s bad news again prime minister. We had the Northern Ireland border problem completely sorted but Peston’s gone and done another tweet thread and we’re back to square one I’m afraid.”
May 13, 2022 16 tweets 4 min read
Day Three Here. Day Four Coming… Morning! Just got so spooked by Coleen coming through the security scanners after me that I spilt a quid out my tray and through the conveyor belt rollers, and she ensured I got it back. Legend.
May 12, 2022 20 tweets 4 min read
Day Three of Wagatha Christie aka The Scousetrap (h/t @rowancope). More questions for Rebekah Vardy, this time on how it came to pass that she dragged a load of wags out of a restaurant where they encountered a pap who was meant to be hiding in the bushes. (This involves basically stitching up a load of the England players wives, and the damning whatsapps with her agent have all been read out. Once again, we repeat, this trial was *her* idea.)
May 11, 2022 10 tweets 2 min read
A very long trawl through Rebekah Vardy’s whatsapps going on now, and specifically the subject of Rooney’s unfollowing of Vardy on Instagram.

“Wow,” begins David Sherborne QC. “What a cunt.” Occurs to me the last time I was in this building it was to hear lengthy discussion on the “root of Mr Assange’s penis.” If oak panelled walls could talk..:
Jan 24, 2022 10 tweets 2 min read
Oh my god. Carrie literally organised him an entirely illegal surprise(!) birthday party in the actual cabinet room. Must admit, Carrie being behind the plot to destroy her own husband is not the twist I expected. Carrie Symonds, doing the lord’s work from the inside all this time. Absolutely incredible. What a finish.
Sep 22, 2020 5 tweets 2 min read
Are Italy and Germany be faring better because their test and trace systems actually work, Boris is asked.

No, it turns out British people have to die because we're better than them, and we love freedom more than they do.

Every bit as bad as Trump. Utterly execrable. The actual prime minister there, whose actual coronavirus response is not even a newspaper column but a C grade A Level essay.
Sep 17, 2020 4 tweets 1 min read
The last time I watched Dido Harding at a Commons Select Committee, it was to explain why all her Talk Talk customers' data had been stolen by two 15 year old boys.

Still, she's a Tory peer now, and will shortly explain how well everything's going with her Test and Trace app. This is horrific from the very first second. She has absolutely no idea how many people are trying to get a test. No way of measuring it.
Jul 22, 2020 5 tweets 2 min read
Robert Jenrick is now before the Housing Committee via video link. One imagines he must wish that Tory fundraiser had been done via video link, so Richard Desmond couldn't sit next to him and buy him off for twelve grand. Mr Jenrick has thanked his permanent secretary Simon Clark, who is "by his side, virtually." A pity for Simon Clark. Had he been buy his side non-virtually, he too could have tapped him up for £50 mil.
Jun 29, 2020 9 tweets 4 min read
Belatedly enjoying @michaelgove’s latest little undergraduate essay on the real reasons why everyone voted Brexit. Strangely, the reasons he personally gave them - ie the lies about the NHS and Turkey, don’t really get a mention. The whole thing is a joy. Just pure @michaelgove. Does it have to be pointed out that Gramsci wrote (**from prison**) about living in fucked up times from the position of *having been fucked up by them? He was not, like Gove, the guy doing the fucking up?
Jun 2, 2020 9 tweets 1 min read
Over on your BBC Parliaments they’re all wandering through the commons, stopping, saying their name followed by “no” or “aye.”

Aye means yes, by the way. Which doesn’t make it to the Top 100 Most Utterly Ridiculous Things About All This Agonising inefficiencies already clear to see. There is one queue, which then divides at the front for “no” and for “aye.”

But far far more “no” votes than “aye” so one line remains almost empty.

Split votes would be quickest. Theresa May’s Brexit deal would have taken years.
May 26, 2020 4 tweets 1 min read
I am surprised there isn’t more focus on Cummings driving the virus from London (20,000 cases) to Durham (100 cases), and then his family exposing hospital workers to it.

Did he break the *spirit* or the *letter* of lockdown? It doesn’t matter. He broke the *entire point* of it. By this point, and even now still, PPE was being sent to the point of most need - ie London, where Cummings left, in favour of the NHS services of Durham.

People have died in hospitals, so have doctors, because of this kind of behaviour. But Cummings carries on.
May 6, 2020 6 tweets 2 min read
An estimated 55,000 people have died in the UK and former Real Housewives of Cheshire star @leanne_e_brown, who recently denied her children the HP vaccine, has this morning posted a 15 minute coronavirus video on Instagram, which I have transcribed. A few highlights: 1/ The average number of UK deaths is currently down on the last five years. That is very obviously complete garbage.

If a coronavirus vaccine comes out, Ms Brown will refuse it.
May 1, 2020 4 tweets 1 min read
Today I can announce I have absolutely smashed my target of getting 100,000 girlfriends a day. I have achieved this by posting a very large number of letters to girls. Excellent
Mar 5, 2020 8 tweets 1 min read
As the Chief Medical Officer says the words “It is a respiratory droplet infection, usually transmitted by someone coughing within two metres” right on cue two members of the Health Select Committee let out loud coughs.

And now a third. Fourth. Fifth.
Feb 5, 2020 5 tweets 2 min read
Oh lovely stuff. The telegraph's @AVMikhailova clean bowls Nicky Morgan, by asking her how, given she thinks the BBC has to "stay relevant, a consistent theme in your speech", should the government be boycotting the today programme, even after a terror attack. @AVMikhailova The verbatim answer, I think: “Umm, err, umm, everyone who has wanted to come here today has been welcome to come. Individual decisions taken on particular programmes and err umm err it’s not like we’re not being questioned um.”
Feb 4, 2020 4 tweets 2 min read
If you saw, and enjoyed Chloe Smith MP die on her arse with Paxman a few years ago, round two is happening at the despatch box right now. And now @NorwichChloe launches her ultimate defence for journalist banning. “This government has just been elected with a big majority and has the support of the people of this country.”

Oh right. It can do whatever it likes then. Pure Trump.
Feb 3, 2020 5 tweets 3 min read
“I am here to warn you that free trade is being choked,” says @BorisJohnson, who has taken his country out of the world’s biggest free trade zone, and put up non tariff barriers for all businesses

I honestly don’t get how we are meant to cope with this utterly luminous filth. @BorisJohnson “We will engage with Japan!” says @BorisJohnson, who has just cancelled his country’s trade deal with Japan.
Jan 31, 2020 14 tweets 2 min read
Here at the “Brexit celebration” they are warming up the crowd with an old Michael Cockerell documentary.

Responding to some general Black Wednesday exposition, someone has just shouted “Fuck off John Major you cunt.” And now, regarding Blair: “You should be hanging by a noose you fucking cunt.”

I’m inclined to doubt that was their view in 2003. Wonder what they’ll all think of Nigel Farage in the years to come.
Jan 17, 2020 9 tweets 2 min read
Rebecca Long Bailey/Long-Bailey there, launching her leadership campaign with new MP Zarah Sultana, who once said she’d celebrate the death of Tony Blair. So the party’s learned its lessons then. Image “I am the first in the Long Bailey dynasty. I am a Long, I married a Bailey. I don’t mind if there’s a hyphen or not, as long as there’s a Long and a Bailey. So if you get it wrong, I won’t kill you.”

So she's still not actually said how to spell her own name. She doesn't know.