18 -year-old Axel Rudakubana has had not guilty pleas entered after failing to to reply when arraigned at Liverpool Crown Court on three counts of murder and ten counts of attempted murder. This follows the deaths of three young girls at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport.
As is to be expected from him, a somewhat crazed intervention overnight from former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who called editors at The Times a “legitimate military target.” The Russians are upset over a Times leader which said the assassination of Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov was a ‘legitimate act of defence by a threatened nation’…
The deranged Russian threat-mongering was slammed at Number 10’s lobby briefing and by Foreign Secretary David Lammy, who called it a “gangster threat”. Lammy posted that he “stands with The Times”. Robust from Labour…
Medvedev called The Times’s ‘entire management team… lousy jackals’. Bit harsh, some of them are alright…
Badenoch seized the final PMQs of the year to launch a stinging attack on Starmer’s Brexit betrayals. Reports have been swirling that Labour is mulling a major climbdown on Brexit: reopening free movement and potentially aligning with EU laws on agriculture and food – both of which Downing Street has pointedly refused to rule out. Meanwhile, as Guido first revealed, Labour have assembled a major EU ‘Surrender Unit’ within the Cabinet Office tasked with unpicking Brexit…
Badenoch blasted:
“We learn he’s about to give away our hard-won Brexit freedoms. The truth is they are punching the British people in the face.”
A squirming Starmer dodged the accusation, instead retreating to his well-worn lines about Tory “black holes” and NHS waiting lists. Someone must be reading Guido in CCHQ…
The new Bangladeshi government is continuing hardcore recriminations against ousted dictator Sheikh Hasina and her network, after they were turfed out of office in July this year. Hasina herself is still in hiding in India…
The government has briefed that the renewed Anti-Corruption Commission has started investigations into “embezzlement” by Hasina “and other members of her family.” Labour City Minister Tulip Siddiq, Hasina’s niece, is confirmed to be under investigation and is named in the Bangladeshi media:
“The Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) has started an inquiry into allegations of Tk80,000 crore embezzlement by ousted prime minister Sheikh Hasina, her sister Sheikh Rehana, and other members of their families from different development projects initiated during the Awami League regime.
Of the amount, Tk59,000 crore has been reportedly embezzled from the Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant project.
The other family members include Hasina’s son Sajeeb Wazed Joy and Rehana’s daughter Tulip Siddiq.
ACC Director General MD Akhtar Hossain disclosed the matter while talking to reporters this afternoon (17 December).
Hasina, Rehana, Joy, Tulip, and others have been accused of embezzling Tk59,000 crore from the RNPP project.
Besides, Hasina is also accused of embezzling Tk21,000 crore from eight development projects of Ashrayan, BEZA and BEPZA through abuse of power, fraud, irregularities, and corruption.
Hasina resigned and fled to India with Rehana on 5 August in the face of a mass uprising led by students, which toppled the autocratic Awami League government led by her after 15 years of ruling.”
Siddiq hailed dictator Hasina as her “role model.“ Guido has contacted Tulip to ask whether she will cooperate with the Bangladeshi government’s probe…
UPDATE: Labour sources say the claims are “spurious” and that Siddiq has not been contacted.
Latest quarterly civil service headcount figures reveal that there are now 515,000 pen-pushers – as high as it was under arch blob-lover Tony Blair in 2006. And 2,000 more since Labour came into power…
The Ministry of Justice added another 595 staff to its ranks, the Department for Work and Pensions rose by 355, and the Treasury brought in 315 more mandarins. William Yarwood at the TaxPayers’ Alliance said:
“Taxpayers are sick to the back teeth of coughing up for evermore useless civil servants. Despite there being more civil servants than since the Blair era, the British state is more dysfunctional and decrepit than ever before. The government needs to take an axe to our sprawling civil service and scrap all functions and jobs that aren’t necessary.”
Despite Starmer’s calls to reform the civil service, briefings that up to 10,000 jobs across the civil service could face the chop and the now infamous “tepid bath of decline” comments, the now no longer “world-leading” civil service continues to balloon for the eighth year in a row. As Guido revealed no fewer than 100 are employed by the EU surrender Unit…
Speaking at his speech on how to achieve “progressive capitalism” Wes Streeting fired a dig and Andy Burnham:
“Bond markets are not bond villains and fiscal rules matter.”