[Bones McCoy]

You can imagine the panic behind the scenes.

Bloody hell. Patel's shat it on the refugee issue, we can't send her out to smirk about hospitals being bombed.

Bring me a more compassionate face to represent modern conservatism

And a hapless SPAD was dispatched on this fool's errand.
* Ben Bradshaw - God no, the man's a grinning oaf and a cunt to boot and liable to expound on heir economic potential as sex workers.
* Sir Edward Leigh - Another cunt who's liable to go 1938 Daily Mail at any second.
* Jake the Snake - Too busy laundering roubles at his day job - also a fucking weirdo.

Feel free to ad your own.

[Andy McDandy]

Double Marina Hyde dosage today. Here's her on the Deripaska squatters and perhaps the most on the spot bit of policing since the Sarah Everard vigil.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... via-london

I can’t help feeling Monday’s ridiculous tableau in Belgrave Square is symbolic of a wider discombobulation, as Londongrad struggles with the pivot to this new era. A whole series of compromised institutions, from the legal profession to the police to the politicians, are going to require a significant reset if we truly do mean to stop enabling some of the worst individuals in the world at the expense of pretty much everyone else.

[Andy McDandy]

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... es-release

John Crace on Liz Truss's self serving handling of the Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe affair.

Liz was careful to reserve her greatest praise for herself. In her short six-minute statement, she managed to use the word I at least 15 times. A hymn to her.

It wasn’t entirely clear how Truss had managed to pull off this high-level diplomacy. Though the gist of it seemed to be that she had neither been quite so averse to repaying a legitimate £400m debt nor to having the repayment quite clearly linked to the return of hostages. Indeed she protested extremely loudly that the timing was entirely coincidental and that the Iranians had undertaken only to use the money for humanitarian purposes.

[Andy McDandy]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... -employees

Marina Hyde on P&O. Harsh.

Things we know about DP World? They have a £146m unpaid debt with the Merchant Navy Ratings pension fund, which is supposed to offer P&O Ferries staff security in their retirement. And they’ve also just spaffed £147m sponsoring golf’s European tour. Which seems a little on the nose, even by the debased standards of the age.

The boundaries of existing practice appear to have been not so much pushed as shat on. Dimly and belatedly realising that perhaps he ought to say something, P&O Ferries’ chief executive, Peter Hebblethwaite, wrote to staff on Friday morning, touching euphemistically on what he called “changes we’re making to our crewing model”. Why do people talk like this even in their employees’ hour of anguish? It’s not “changes to a crewing model” – it’s sacking them. I see he’s also claiming it is “essential” that staff “avoid posting any comments or views on social media”. So I’m happy to point out that Peter will be paid hundreds of thousands of pounds a year to be this much of a cowardly arse.

[Andy McDandy]

John Crace on Nazanin Zahari-Ratcliffe:

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2022/m ... conference

She wasn’t going to settle for anything cosy and heart-warming. It wasn’t her job to make the rest of the country feel better about itself.

So while she loved her husband to bits, she couldn’t go along with his expressions of thanks to the government. How many foreign secretaries had it taken to get her home? It had taken five when it should have been just the one. She should have been home six years ago. Her daughter had been two when she was detained. Now she was nearly eight. No one could give her back the years that had been lost.

But that was as much as Nazanin was prepared to let the media see of her true feelings. The rest was for her and her family alone. She wasn’t going to emote for the hell of it. She wasn’t a performing seal. She was a woman with her integrity and sanity to maintain.

Philip Barton, permanent secretary at the Foreign Office, was being questioned about the discrepancy between his testimony and that of a whistleblower who had said that the prime minister had prioritised the evacuation of Pen Farthing and His Pets from Afghanistan over Afghan interpreters. Nazanin might ruefully have concluded that she would have been better off being a cockapoo. That way she might have caught the Suspect’s attention and been home years ago.

Marina Hyde is a little more blunt.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... speaks-out

Are you a man who’s got a massive view about how a hostage should behave after a lengthy incarceration? Are you 90% throbbing forehead vein? Do you like your prison victims pliant, and super-obsequious about having spent pretty much their young daughter’s entire life as the cell guest of a theocracy? If so, we really, really want to hear from you!

But one does sometimes wonder if this whole generational cohort is becoming coddled. Nobody tells them to shut up and buck up. Nobody tells them to get some perspective and ring off. It’s just possible we’re raising a generation of entitled middle-aged men who think their every needy opinion has to be listened to.

There it is. Gratitude. I’m never sure whether it means “being thankful” or “not being uppity”. However, I can tell you it heralds some important Venn diagram news: the people sticking it to Nazanin for not being “grateful” enough are the same people who boo footballers for taking the knee. Yup, just like the old knee-taking, it all comes down to gratitude – the UK’s sole remaining virtue after the others were sold off to oligarchs and Middle East sovereign wealth funds.

And you know, I hugely admire people who have whittled down their entire emotional range to a single, extremely compact sentiment: the idea that people should be grateful. Other people, obviously – not them. After all, how can they be grateful when there are ungrateful people out there? Stands to reason. They’re so ungrateful about a world that contains ingratitude that they have to ring a phone-in and lose their shit about it. Look what you made them do.

Amanda Platell – not born here, incidentally – spends the rest of her columns complaining strongly and occasionally erroneously and distastefully about people and events in the UK. Meanwhile, Stormzy – born here, incidentally – doesn’t seem to get to have similarly strong and occasionally erroneous and distasteful views about people and events in the UK. Why?

Just read it. Harsh and necessary.

[Cyclist]

He says he’s cutting taxes while raising them to the highest level since the 40s. Don’t tell us it’s raining, Rishi

@JohnJCrace

https://amp.theguardian.com/uk-news/202 ... illionaire

[Andy McDandy]

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... rse-he-did

John Crace sinks his teeth into Sunak.

Labour’s Angela Eagle observed that the government was presiding over the biggest fall in living standards since records began and that Sunak had chosen to put 1.3 million people into absolute poverty. Rishi immediately went on the attack. Well, what would she have done, he asked? Eagle drily observed that the committee hadn’t been convened to hear her choices.

Sunak then lapsed into fantasy. His was a tax-cutting budget even though the tax burden in the current parliament was increasing to its highest level since the 1940s. And no, he couldn’t do more to help people on benefits, as that would increase public borrowing. Look, it wasn’t his fault there had been a global pandemic and that energy and fuel prices were out of control. If some people had to go cold, then so be it.

Everyone had always known that a change in trading relationships with the EU would cause a hit to the UK economy. Really? That was odd. Because no one could remember seeing “Brexit will make you poorer” on the side of the bus. Maybe it had just been written in German.

Not that Sunak could bring himself to say the B word, even when committee chair Mel Stride followed this up. “Oh no, no, no …” Rishi stammered, suddenly aware he had disclosed the government’s worst-kept secret. The 18-year-old Treasury official sitting next to Sunak went white. The chancellor tried to cover it up by saying it was impossible to disaggregate Brexit from the pandemic, but Stride wasn’t having it. The truth was there in black and white. The OBR had a graph showing the UK worse off because of Brexit.

For the first time Sunak lapsed into near silence. Just waiting for the end. There were no photo ops to be had. No flags to pose behind. If his budget hadn’t been career-ending, then his Brexit indiscretion might be.

[Andy McDandy]

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... new-levels

Crace on Lebedev, and the woeful Tory attempts to defend his peerage. Mainly because they simply don't care any more. They're in power and fuck everyone else.

[Andy McDandy]

Marina Hyde is back. Today, it's the growing problem of a party in power that sees itself as above the law.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... mogg-covid

Are ordinary people allowed to go to a clinic for having to choose between heating and eating? Can they justify lawbreaking on the basis that laws are, as Rees-Mogg whined on behalf of the prime minister, “unkind and inhuman”? No. Or to put it another way, this high-status behaviour by a governing party is increasingly unrelatable. That’s a problem. People don’t accept being told what to do by hypocritical Hollywood stars. And unless politicians realise without exception that they are subject to the same rules, people eventually won’t accept being told what to do by them either.

And John Crace on Michael Grade:

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2022/ ... before-mps

Grade might not be the culture warrior she had hoped. Rather he appeared as, at worst, slightly out of touch with a few opinions, lightly held. If the committee wanted some other opinions, he had them too. He could be whatever anyone wanted him to be. He wasn’t that bothered. His role at Ofcom was to be independent and he could do that. And, in any case, look on the bright side: he wasn’t Paul Dacre.

[davidjay]

Trouble is, from what I've seen, people not liking to do what they're told by politicians who think themselves above the law is restricted to not wearing a mask or bothering to obey laws they don't like, while still thinking Boris is a ledge because he gets the big stuff right.

[Andy McDandy]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... r-wife-tax

In which Marina Hyde casts her acerbic eye over our hapless chancellor.

Hard to pick a low point, but I’ll go with the time he turned down the request from the hugely respected educational recovery tsar Kevan Collins for £15bn in pandemic catch-up funding for children. Sunak would only fork out £1.4bn, which isn’t even twice what he spent buying people free burgers with “eat out to help out”. Collins resigned in despair. It emerged that an internal presentation had shown Sunak and others in Downing Street how failure to invest £15bn now in this failed generation of children would result in the state paying upwards of £160bn down the line in welfare and criminal justice. And still Sunak said no, presumably on the basis that that would all be someone else’s problem in the future. As David Cameron reportedly said to his aides before his post-referendum resignation: “Why should I do all the hard shit?”

And why should Rishi Sunak do it either? Why shouldn’t his wife tick the box and keep paying her 30 grand a year to stay out of things? Why shouldn’t statements of fact be denounced as smears? All sorts of things are optional if ordinary people would only realise it. Let them eat different breads.

[Samanfur]

Marina Hyde is possibly wishing that she could've filed her copy a bit later:

Sexual assault: regrettable, but no impediment to a parliamentary career

[Andy McDandy]

I remember the first series of HIGNFY ended about a week before Thatcher resigned, and my dad saying that Hislop and co must have been kicking themselves. Similar feels here.

[Samanfur]

Very, very much so. You can see that she had to tag the Johnson and Sunak news on as an afterthought - probably late enough to have to rewrite the last few paragraphs.

[kreuzberger]

That final para and a masterclass in not becoming humiliated by a premature hot-take. She's far too smart for that.

Alas, here we are at the last paragraph, and I note Crispin Blunt still hasn’t been relieved of the whip. But the Metropolitan police has just confirmed it has now made more than 50 – FIFTY! – referrals for fixed-term penalty notices for lawbreaking Downing Street parties during lockdown. And No 10 confirms that two of those are for the actual prime minister and the actual chancellor. Just so endlessly, endlessly impressive. Then again, “most homes” and “most businesses” broke the law in the pandemic. We know this, because it was recently stated as fact by a hugely versatile authority figure. His name? Crispin Blunt. What a dazzling run of public service it continues to be.

[Boiler]

Stewart Lee: Why Brexit Britain is turning purple with shame

To summarise, at the start of last week the Conservative party included a child molester, a serial adulterer and compulsive liar, a handsome but morally bankrupt financial whiz-kid and a bully who sends immigrants to Rwanda. That’s less like a government and more like a special team of convicted criminals given their freedom in exchange for accepting an impossible mission behind enemy lines in a 1970s Italian-funded war film. Telly Savalas! Klaus Kinski!! Lewis Collins!!! Helga Liné!!!! Operation Dynamite Bastards!!!!!

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... with-shame

[Andy McDandy]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... aking-laws

Marina Hyde on the PM and breaking the law.

The prime minister’s defenders have still failed to grasp one of the most essential truths of Johnson’s lifelong practice of behaving badly then lying about it: that there is always, always more to come. Being dismissive about cake in the cabinet room is very obviously going to leave you hostage to fortune if it turns out that Johnson is fined for more serious lawbreaking down the line.

Yet his allies are currently sticking to variations of a defence that basically amounts to, “Hey – that birthday party was the least criminal thing he did!” By the time we get to the fallout over who did or didn’t pour the first vat of wine at Caino’s leaving do, Johnson will be forced into some truly batshit contortions. Are you familiar with sovereign citizens? A new breed of conspiracy wingnut who argue that, actually, they can opt out of laws they don’t think should apply to them? No? Then do make sure to bone up on them, because you’re governed by one.

In the meantime, consider the sheer amount of time that an entire government and parliamentary party appears willing to spend clearing up after one man. Did they really get into politics to do this? Are they really waiting until the public tells them to stop? It certainly looks like it.

[Andy McDandy]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... izabeth-ii

Marina Hyde on the paradox at the heart of all royal reporting.

Not only did Harry later reveal that he and his grandmother had had a good-humoured tea – decried as oversharing by the sort of former aides who lucratively betrayed all his mother’s secrets – but he explained he’d been “making sure that she’s protected and got the right people around her”. Can’t be sure what he’s on about.

“How CAN he do this to the Queen?” they always demand, apparently unwilling to realise that anyone who really cared about the Queen’s supposed feelings would simply avoid making it worse by ranting about the situation on every available airwave. That would surely be the most civilised course of action.

I’m not sure how much longer we can keep taking lectures in duty and service from people too emotionally incontinent to prevent themselves being exercised by a Dan Wootton article.

If they can’t commit to ignoring Prince Harry’s supposedly incendiary pronouncements, it’s past time for every single one of them to admit to themselves the truth: that they love the drama of the royal soap opera, and relish every new half-baked opportunity to re-enter the outrage cycle.

[Andy McDandy]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... weet-angry

More Marina Hyde, this time looking at social media, and Elon Musk buying Twitter.

It doesn’t feel like a complete coincidence that all social media platforms are owned by men you’d run a mile from, socially.

Musk is one of them – a brilliant, horrid, ridiculous and very occasionally endearing grotesque. A sort of intergalactically successful Dominic Cummings.

The Musk takeover at least makes it easier to see whose pocket you’re putting money into as you delude yourself you’re winning arguments. I’m certainly not saying I follow this rule, but in general I think arguing on the internet is like playing real tennis: even if you win, you’re still a twat.

[Andy McDandy]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... e-pro-life

Marina Hyde on the potential reversal of Roe vs Wade. No quotes, just read the thing.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... t-cronyism

From Friday, her more usual fare of ripping the piss out of the government.

I’ll tell you a phrase you never hear any more: “cut-through”. Whatever happened to people honking dismissively about “cut-through”? A year ago, you couldn’t move for know-it-all allies of this administration waving around a glass of brosé while explaining that this or that would never cut though to ordinary voters – that any amount of substandard behaviour is “priced in” to the public’s support for Boris Johnson and his administration. Voters didn’t care about this or that standard in public life, we kept hearing. Industrial levels of lying in government, raging incompetence, unfitness for high office alleged by his own lieutenants, cronyism, contempt for elderly and vulnerable people, getting donors to pay for luxury holidays and interior design schemes – these moral failings didn’t matter, we were told time and again, because voters didn’t think they mattered. A form of high-concept severance had taken place, where all sorts of individuals who should have known better were quite happy to effectively assert that morality had been successfully divorced from politics.

Yet this has not in fact happened. Far from forgetting that standards in public life matter, and feeling their absence only as the occasional twinge of a phantom limb, much of the public has spent much of this year absolutely furious about what they perceive as outrageous misbehaviour in politics, which they know only too well would not be tolerated in their own workplaces or their own homes during lockdown. And this was before we got the latest explosion of sexual misconduct that could and should blow up into a proper scandal. The risk of knowing the price of everything is that you can end up forgetting about its value. Ordinary people are turning out to have longer memories.