Professional attention seeker and amateur sex therapist Flora Gill has forced her way back onto politics Twitter’s timeline this afternoon, after misguidedly believing “porn for children” was something worth pitching. A classic Thursday afternoon thought for the daughter of a former Home Secretary…

Following criticism, Gill doubled down and specified her definition of “children” as “14/15/16 year olds”. A clarification that puts all ethical doubts in the mind at bay…

Digging herself into an even deeper hole she began joking about potential Dragons Den pitches.

The target audience of CBeebies being 0–6-year-olds…

Following backlash, Gill came to relative senses and deleted the tweet, writing “absolutely not getting swept up into another Twitter cesspool so deleted tweet before it picks up steam!” The slowest u-turn since the Titanic…

This week Lambeth Council was “strongly criticised” for allowing the abuse of up to 700 children in five of their care homes from the 1960s to 1990s. The report pulls no punches, and points the finger of blame squarely at the council’s hard left leadership, especially leader Ted Knight:

“The failure to set a council tax rate in 1986 must have constituted a huge distraction and required energies and resources that ought to have been focussed on frontline services. Mr Stephen Whaley was another who first became a councillor in 1986. He considered… “the pursuit of an ideological opposition to the government” (during the previous leadership of councillor Ted Knight) meant more energy had been spent by his predecessors on confronting the government than dealing with the issues within Lambeth Council”

You can’t play politics with people’s jobs and with people’s services…

The report continues:

“In the 1980s, politicised behaviour and turmoil dominated Lambeth Council. The desire to take on the government and to avoid setting a council tax rate became their primary purpose rather than the provision of quality services, including children’s social care. During that time, children in care became pawns in a toxic power game within Lambeth Council and between the council and central government. This turmoil and failure to act to improve children’s social care continued into the 1990s and beyond.”

Ted Knight died in April 2020. John McDonnell spoke at his funeral, claiming “He devoted his life to the greatest cause there is, humanity.” This child abuse report sets out in black and white just how wrong that eulogy was…

The report also examined the role of the unions. In 1999 UNISON’s branch secretary Jon Rogers decided the union would now advise its members “to play no further part in the investigation”, accusing him of scapegoating a member who worked in the council’s children’s department. The report published this week claims Rogers should have considered how “defending particular sectional interests can result in the failure to fully recognise the wider interests of children.” Rogers is now a senior official in the Brighton Labour party…

This week, India failed to appear at Alok Sharma’s two-day conference intended to outline plans for the upcoming COP26 summit. It follows an earlier meeting of the G20, in which they also refused to commit to the agreed language of net-zero emissions. India was the only country out of 51 invitees not to attend Sharma’s conference…

Having refused to appear in-person on the grounds that they’d already made their position clear at the G20 meeting, they then blamed “various technical issues” for failing to take part virtually. Guido doesn’t buy it: India is the third-biggest emitter in the world, and have long resisted pressure to phase out fossil fuels. 75% of India’s energy supply comes from coal, and even generous projections suggest it’ll still be around 50% by 2030.

Skipping the COP26 meeting was a deliberate snub. Net-zero targets are beyond pointless if India (and China) aren’t playing ball. It makes Allegra’s ‘don’t wash dishes before putting them in the dishwasher’ plan look even more ridiculous…

Families will have to fork out £400 more a year on bills to cover the cost of net zero, according to the government infrastructure advisor. The recommendation will likely intensify opposition to Boris Johnson’s net-zero pledge from backbenchers…

Analysis suggests this cost will be not be distributed evenly and by 2050 it is expected that the poorest tenth of households will pay an extra £80 a year, and the richest tenth will pay an additional £400 a year. These figures are a conservative estimate…

The Taxpayers’ Alliance’s John O’Connell has slammed the policy arguing that:

“The net zero target must not see working taxpayers landed with the bill. With the highest tax levels in 70 years, family finances are already strained and they cannot be expected to pay more for food, goods and travel. Ministers must promise to protect Brits from any green cost hikes.”

Net Zero and levelling up seem incompatible if it just translates into higher taxes….

Ex-Tory Minister (and notorious cad) Tim Yeo is once again on the wrong end of a judge’s wrath, after being found guilty of deliberately misusing his “fiduciary powers” as chair of TMO Renewables and repeatedly offering misleading evidence in court. As if being called “dishonest” by one judge wasn’t enough…

Yeo, along with several other company directors, was accused of “a dishonest strategy for maintaining control of the Board” after a majority shareholder moved to replace the board’s membership; a strategy which included “mislead[ing] existing shareholders” into thinking the company had just received a substantial cash investment, when in reality the new friendly shareholders had not invested a penny. Looks like another costly mistake for Yeo; representing yourself in court because you can’t afford a lawyer never bodes well…

As you’d expect, the full judgement pulls no punches. Highlights from the judge’s conclusions include:

“I reject Mr Yeo’s evidence, which seemed to me to protest too much.

He frequently resorted to very long recitations of his case which avoided giving a straightforward answer to the question he had been asked and appeared designed to take the discussion in a different direction […] this propensity on the part of Mr Yeo to “speechify” tended to give his evidence a contrived, evasive and rather self-serving quality.

In all the circumstances I find that the issue of shares to VSA was in breach of the Director Defendants’ fiduciary powers in that it was made for an improper purpose; I also find that each of the Director Defendants was motivated by this improper purpose.”

Yeo also issued a counterclaim to refute the judgements – no luck. The claim was dismissed.

There is widespread speculation that Tim Yeo faces bankruptcy, which would see him disqualified from being a director. This follows his costly and unsuccessful claim for defamation against The Times. Looks like the chancer’s spivvy dealings will, at the age of 76, finally finish him off…

Hat-tip:  ShareProphets

Last night, Nigel Farage defended calling the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) a “taxi service for illegal trafficking gangs”, during a passionate monologue on GBNews. Farage is amongst a number of people to criticise the RNLI for helping Border Force pick up migrants in the English Channel amid surging numbers of asylum seekers on lifeboats crossing the channel…

Following Farage’s tweet, the RNLI tweeted “we’re proud of the lifesaving work our volunteers do in the Channel – we make no apology for it”, accompanied with a harrowing video of a real migrant rescue in action.

We're proud of the lifesaving work our volunteers do in the Channel – we make no apology for it. Those we rescue are vulnerable people in danger & distress. Each of them is someone’s father, mother, son or daughter - every life is precious. This is why we launch: pic.twitter.com/lORd9NRpdP

— RNLI (@RNLI) July 28, 2021

Last night Farage responded to this video by claiming that the RNLI have clearly

“… employed a PR company, and what PR companies try to do is find some victims or find a victim and find somebody who is the baddie (…) The victims are people working on the lifeboats and we’re told they’re having abuse shouted at them by members of the public.”

 “I feel sorry for them and their predicament. But the baddie of course is me (…) for daring to say that the lifeboats are being used for a different purpose and have become an arm of the border force.”

Farage also claimed last night that:

“People who give money to the RNLI are asking themselves, do we really want to give money for this.”

The RNLI has experienced a surge in online donations in spite of, or perhaps because of, the criticisms…