[Tubby Isaacs]

Not all that many very senior ones resigning so far. Probably a few of those will try and get safer seats, as happened in 1995 (Linley, Mawhinney, Dorrell). But ought to be plenty around for Portillo moments if the Labour lead holds.

[Youngian]

Raab is on the chopping block as is Rees Mogg but he’ll try and slime his way into a more rural seat. Steve Baker is resigned to losing and walks around looking shell shocked.

[Yug]

One of those who switched to a safe seat in 1997 decides being a Tory is no longer a guarantee of income from the public purse.

Sir Paul Beresford will not stand again as an MP, citing "midnight sittings" and "a diary built around the whims of the whips' office" as reasons for retiring.

Sir Paul, 76 has been Conservative MP for Mole Valley since 1997.

He said in an email he would not stand again in the new constituency of Dorking and Horley.

He was previously MP for Croydon Central from 1992 before moving to Surrey ahead of the 1997 election...

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-surrey-64648726.amp

Though at 76 he's ripe for retirement anyway.

How many is that now? I've lost count.

[Andy McDandy]

Perhaps that's the plan. Entirely new slate, and "nothing to do with us, guv".

[Yug]

One of our laptop chargers has died, and as "Authorised Requestor" is one of my many hats, it fell to me to order a new one. After much faffing about I finally found what I was looking for in the Defence Digital catalogue. Just out of interest I looked for these things on the internet. Ignoring the official Hewlett Packard store, I found they are available for between £29.50 and £29.99 + postage. Defence Digital are charging a few pence over £76! Two and a half times the going rate.

What does this have to do with the Tories? The company behind Defence Digital got the contract after being approved by senior members of the CONservative Party. If they were confronted with this (and countless other examples) they'd blame the Civil Servants who are supposed to be monitoring these contracts, while conveniently forgetting to mention those particular CS have had their numbers drastically reduced since 2015 at least.

Hmmm. Someone's having a good cost of living crisis, and it ain't the taxpayers who have to foot this inflated bill.

[davidjay]

Yet there's enough NHS funding; it's just wasted on over-paid management.

[Crabcakes]

Very similar things happen in the NHS. My offshoot bit of it is loathed by some drug companies because of a double whammy effect: not only do we successfully negotiate huge discounts, we also actively prevent the *insane* markup that the same companies could get for the same drug under the US system where negotiations are per hospital and so buying power is drastically reduced.

The Covid contracts were not run via us, and given the eye-watering sums that are now powering the luxury yachts of the friends and relatives of those who got day-old companies into the VIP lane ahead of established firms, you can probably work out why…

[Bones McCoy]

Be like Simon

[Tubby Isaacs]

One of those who switched to a safe seat in 1997 decides being a Tory is no longer a guarantee of income from the public purse.

Yeah, he was in Croydon before. Wiki says Croydon lost a seat in 1997, but a seat with the same name as his survived the chop and the former MP for another Croydon seat fought it.

Sounds like he didn't fancy it. Given the extra 27 years he'll have got out of that decision, hard to say he was wrong.

I make it 21 retirements.

[Tubby Isaacs]

I know regional mayors are supposed to be more local than Westminster politicians, but hasn't Andy Street got something better to do than this?

No doubt the brownfield spaces will have roads that are already too busy, or whatever.

[Bones McCoy]

Hardly Village Green Preservation Society stuff, is it.

[davidjay]

Andy Street might be a useless waste of mayoral space but he's right in a way. There are a lot of brownfield sites round there that could be used for housing - there's stretches of boarded up and derelict shops for a start.

[Youngian]

Everything the Tories are in charge of helps the Labour Party. Penny has the charm of concrete and just as dense

[Malcolm Armsteen]

The Turnip Taliban seem to be flexing their muscles on behalf of Johnson.

Damien Green, relatively centrist and a Johnson critic, has been effectively deselected by his local headbangers, presumably because he didn't suck Johnson's cock hard enough.

https://news.sky.com/story/senior-tory- ... n-12815320

This is how the Tories are going, and it's how Labour would have gone if Starmer hadn't put Corbyn out with the rubbish. They are confusing their members with the electorate. I predict it won't end well with them.

[Spoonman]

For those interested in the info - both Ladbrokes & William Hill have Alex as the favourite to succeed Sunak as the next leader of the Tories.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

[davidjay]

Anything 30p Lee can do:

[mattomac]

Everything the Tories are in charge of helps the Labour Party. Penny has the charm of concrete and just as dense

Remember that performance where she denied that Truss was hiding under a table and was a bit sarcastic.

And twitter went yeah make her leader.

[Youngian]

Anything 30p Lee can do:

I like the sound of culture war wrath descending on fly tippers who are indeed scumbags.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Totally normal.