The government has now incorporated counter terrorism policing into the Defence and Security Media Advisory Committee notice system. A D-Notice instructs news outlets not to print details which are considered sensitive for national security reasons.
The system’s extension was “unanimously agreed” and effectively restricts newspapers or broadcasters from providing details to the public on matters of counter terror policing deemed sensitive by the government. An eyebrow-raising choice – D-Notices are usually for things like protecting the identity of intelligence officials or very specific ongoing military operations…
The old rockers in the Speaker’s Gallery got into the swing of a Lib Dem Winter Fuel Allowance question and started clapping along. They were shushed by the Speaker, and rather than hurl their angry guitars at him and fling themselves over the rail into what must have looked like a middle-aged mosh pit, Roger Daltrey and his backing band immediately shushed. Not a great end to the furious Who. Considering the question being asked, they could at least have started screaming My Generation into the Chamber.
Things they do look awful c-c-cold (talking ’bout my generation).
I hope I die before I get old.
Bit late for that, considering who their generation now includes. But we will certainly see a good number of the elderly unburdening the state in the c-coming c-cold. They will just f-f-fade away, and the sooner they do, the better for the public purse. 80-90-year-olds get expensive in their twilight years, around £100,000 per annum for a decade. You could almost see the calculations flicking behind the Chancellor’s dead face (which actually quite suits her).
Not that your sketch writer is expressing any form of hatred. The Prime Minister has made it clear on this Islamophobia Awareness Day he is cracking down on all forms of hatred. As a reformed hate criminal myself, I am wary of recidivism. I may be in the wrong job. Week by week, a kinder, gentler sketching, is ever-harder to to sustain.
The principals in PMQs seem both to be far, far out of their depth. The Prime Minister sounds like a platform announcer, and LOTO while looking lovely and sounding wonderful doesn’t seem to understand the rules of the game. Maybe neither of them think PMQs is worth preparing for.
She says: “He’s not fixing the foundations, he’s making everything worse.”
He says: “They haven’t a clue what they’re doing.”
She says: “Everything he’s done is to attack people. Everyone is unhappy.”
He says: “When it comes to growing the economy, we’re the ones growing the economy.”
It’s like a spat across a breakfast table between sit-com kids.
“The whole system is broken,” she said, delighting the Government front bench. It was as if she had vacated the goal mouth and was relying on the PM’s spastic right leg to miss the ball and boot himself in the head.
It’s hard to pull off ”everything is broken” when you’ve been in power for 14 years. In the old retail slogan,”You break it, you own it.”
How can she pull it off?
She could be hammering at the one slightly sensible thing the Tories did in their last year. Recognising that the Electric Vehicle Mandate will crush the UK car industry, Rishi deferred the cut-off date for petrol vehicles by five years. A small point of difference but one that will widen enough to engulf a good part of Keir’s climate credibility when he announces the adjustment.
To Kemi’s credit, she is steady under fire, she is attractive, she is pleasing to be with – but whether she has the muscle and the knuckle to bend her climate-crazed wing to a winning strategy is not yet known.
Is she deadly enough? Does she have deadliness?
Not yet, far from it. She quoted the man who runs McVitie’s – the one who has cast doubt on investing in a post-Budget Britain. She said of the PM’s G20 junket, “While he was HOBNOBBING in Brazil, business have been struggling to DIGEST his Budget” (some emphasis added). McVitie’s is a company that makes digestive biscuits and also a product called Hobnobs, so her word play would have pleased everyone round that breakfast table.
It may also have pleased Quentin Letts who can claim paternity of the joke, made as an aside sketching Monday’s event. Whether it’s suitable for the leader of a once-great party in the once-great forum of a once-great parliament is A Question to Which The Answer Is Probably No.
PS: I understand ‘spastic’ as in Keir’s “spastic right leg” is at best a Non Crime Hate Incident. I withdraw it. Kemi was relying on Keir inadequately “scoping out his attack”.
New figures have been produced by the Central Association of Agricultural Valuers on the Budget’s Farm Tax. Surprise surprise, the Treasury underestimated the number of farms affected by five times…
The CAAV says that BBC Verify and the Treasury are wrong and 2,500 farms will be affected every year: “What they got wrong is, they didn’t know what to ask and HMRC couldn’t answer them even if they had.” They say HMT has missed out a substantial number of farmers who only claim BPR – farmers who own the land but not the farmhouse, for example, along with tenanted businesses. As everyone has been saying for some time now…
The government’s rushed-out £3 million threshold defence also doesn’t hold water according to the CAAV because the £325,000 is used for personal assets – not farm ones – and tenanted farmers don’t have access to £175,000 of relief for their main residence. 2,500 farms a month means 75,000 over a generation…
Farmers are currently protesting in Dover against the IHT changes. Downing Street is insistent the government won’t budge. Someone is going to blink first…
BBC Verify is out defending itself after its pro-farm tax bias and poor reporting quality attracted ridicule. The main post on its website is a long justification for its reporting on the IHT changes. Funnily enough it’s not promoting this one on social media…
The article goes through various differing positions held by stakeholders – the government and farming groups. The very first think tank the Verify team consults for comment happens to be one CenTax. Co-conspirators will remember that one…
“The CenTax think tank has studied the impact of APR and BPR reliefs.
CenTax’s co-director Arun Advani argues that the government’s estimates of the number of agricultural estates likely to be affected by the capping of both reliefs at £1m combined – up to 520 estates a year – seems reasonable.”
Advani is then extensively quoted. What Verify makes no mention of is that his reports on APR and inheritance tax have formed the basis of Reeves’ policy. This has been admitted by the Treasury…
There is no mention of the fact that Advani has pushed for state expropriation of farmland that is sold as a result of APR’s removal. Readers are unaware from the article that Advani, along with CenTax co-director Andy Summers, is one of three “wealth tax commissioners” who consistently push for huge tax hikes. Using CenTax and think tanks like the IFS as vehicles to do so…
Advani is close to the government – he has boasted that Labour is “genuinely listening” to him and Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury James Murray was the keynote speaker at a parliamentary reception to officially launch CenTax. No mention of that from the BBC either…
Verify fronted an “independent” expert who is actually senior Labour activist to defend the Treasury in its previous coverage of the Farm Tax and quietly changed its article once under scrutiny. Seeing as their team confuses hectares for acres they probably aren’t the place to go to for reasoned coverage of this policy…
Press coverage to date has highlighted headline support for the concept of ‘assisted dying.’ More in Common released a poll, which lead to the The Times’ headline: “Two thirds of country back assisted dying”. Guido has been crunching the numbers of that survey. Nestled among the data tables, things aren’t quite what they seem. The devil is in the detail…
More in Common’s full report shows there’s only 40% support for the actual eligibility definition of the bill: “if two doctors independently confirm they have 6 months or fewer to live”. The survey also shows:
The Bill’s description doesn’t actually seem to be supported by the public…
Update: More in Common says: “More in Common takes no view on whether the Bill should ultimately become law – but, as our report finds, the public expects MPs to show that the issue has been debated seriously”.
Guido is doing some site maintenance which requires the comments to be turned off for a short period. They will return…
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.”