In fact the whole of the Palace of Westminster is. Here's Rowan Moore writing in The Observer yesterday: In every direction stretch uncountable kilometres of wires and pipes, fronds of high-voltage cables, a Terry Gilliam cosmos of whistling and buzzing devices, vapour, puddles, stifling heat, gaffer tape, silver foil, warning signs, conduits, refrigerating units and extractor fans, long lengths of tubing that are - literally - rat runs. There are old paint tins to catch more drips, plastic bins full of used coffee cups, cardboard boxes, discarded cable trays, retired office chairs. There is a Victorian, steam-powered sewage ejector. There ...
So, there we have it. Starmer gives up on Europe to follow the Tory line that we need to make Brexit work. Well, the evidence is that you cannot make it work because it is an inherently bad idea. He ... Continue reading →
The Ludlow & Tenbury Wells Advertiser wins our Headline of the Day Award for this tale of longevity and turophilia. Our congratulations also go to non-identical twins Edith Dumbleton and Dorcas Tobin. Particular congratulations go to Dorcas for being called Dorcas.
Readers of the Daily Mail are still being told that the UK economy is in good shape, that there is room for tax cuts for the better off, and that the opportunities Brexit offers are beginning to benefit the country. Readers of the Financial Times, and of the business pages of the Times, are now being told a very different story: that we are in an economic emergency, with a collapse in exports to our largest - European - market, a continuing decline in the external value of the pound (which pushes up domestic inflation and makes UK companies cheaper ...
A is for anti abortion. B is for Brexit. C is for chaos. The anti abortion movement in the States and Brexit here in Britain are the same thing, wedge issues chosen by people with right wing authoritarian tendencies with a long term plan for asserting control over an entire body politic. They are on the surface utterly different issues, but they each performed the same function. In each case it took their proponents forty years starting in the 1970s to get their way. Each was chosen because of the characteristics of the country concerned. In the States anti abortion ...
Trump and Johnson are both narcissists, but in very different forms. It is true to say that neither cares for anything other than themselves. But their relationships to other people are very different. Trump cares deeply about other people - not "for" them, "about" them. In his world there have to be winners and losers. He has to be a winner and you can only be a winner if somebody else loses. (There is no such thing as win-win in Trump's world.) So his activities are based very largely around making other people lose; he gets into intense relationships with ...
Money is like water on a carpet. It gets everywhere, as long as people let it. For a long time money, in the form of profit seeking, was kept out of systems that were hard or impossible to run competitively. But since the 1980s, when monetary policy began to win the battle for top people's hearts and minds, money has sneaked - or been openly invited in - to almost every sphere of public life. They would privatise the air you breathe, if they could (it has been suggested). For a while I've been watching one of the more recent ...
@tomorrowsmps from Michael Crick is documenting Parliamentary selection news from across the political parties. As he rightly says, these selections are a hidden but crucial part of our democratic systems. For many politicians in parties with safe seats, a selection contest is the most important election they face, and for all parties it's the outcome of their selections that shape the future Parliamentary Party, they quality of their frontbench teams and the pool from whom future leaders come. You can follow the account here. For Liberal Democrat Parliamentary selections, you can also take a look at my listing here. Sign ...
Sun, 12:56: The Rise of the Climate-Conscious European - APCO Worldwide https://t.co/GVjHTVHz68 Sun, 17:54: Daily Octordle #160 4️⃣5️⃣ 6️⃣🕐 🔟7️⃣ 🕚8️⃣ Score: 64 https://t.co/j7MjyMDtNS Sun, 17:56: Daily Quordle 160 7️⃣8️⃣ 4️⃣6️⃣ https://t.co/Cm9zc2fDBW https://t.co/C4DeW6Q7It Sun, 18:48: No-Nonsense Guide to Global Media, by Peter�Steven https://t.co/p0VHIH7fen Mon, 10:45: RT @pmdfoster: This is a fascinating essay by @ThomasAubreyCCA on liberal underpinning of single market (as opposed to currency) and why le... </ul
Writer and rebel Cathy Kirby celebrates the essays and reviews of Angela Carter. Angela Carter is seldom talked about these days yet at the time of her death in 1992, at the age of 51, she was on the cusp of stardom. Her writing had huge influence. She wrote about a diverse range of subjects as a novelist, essayist, and critic. She first drew me into her world when I was 18 years old, with her book of short stories: The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories. The stories are retellings of fairy tales, with a subversive, feminist twist. Her retellings ...
Just how bad the Metropolitan Police has become is starkly apparent by this report in The Times, which alleges that the force has been substantially under-recording crimes including rape, stalking and violence compared with other big police forces, raising concerns about the potential manipulation of statistics. The paper says that the Met is recording nearly half as many rapes, one third the number of stalking offences and hundreds fewer violent incidents than West Midlands police, one of its closest counterparts, raising serious concerns about its performance, including its ability to prevent and tackle crime. The force is also recording far ...
Good morning, gentle readers, as another lively week begins, albeit curiously similar to many recently. A Government mired in sleaze, now reduced to being teased by the Chinese diplomatic corps, caught between multiple political rocks. You can entirely understand why the Prime Minister would have initially backed his mate when accusations of sexual misconduct emerged. After all, when your own personal record is so poor, you're hardly in a position to take the moral high ground. But the notion that the Deputy Chief Whip of the governing party requires a minder to keep them out of trouble does make you ...
From the City Council : Dundee City Council proposes to make an Order under Section 14(1) of the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 for the purpose of facilitating crane lifting works for a house development. The Order is expected to be in force for one month from 5 July 2022. Its maximum duration in terms of the Act is eighteen months. The effect of the Order is to prohibit temporarily all vehicular traffic in Hillcrest Road at the full frontage of house number 23 and extending beyond that frontage for a distance of 15 metres or thereby in both an ...
