The above sticker has popped up over at the Ministry of Housing. Guido had to check if it was a joke…
PCS, the civil service union, is taking a break from campaigning for Jeremy Corbyn to ramp up its efforts to have Fridays off for exactly the same pay. Its new petition touts:
“A five day week was introduced 100 years ago – but it’s not fit for our modern working world. Technology has overhauled the way we work, but our working hours remain the same…. A four day week would give us an additional day to spend how we like. For parents or those with caring responsibilities, care costs can be reduced massively, creating a fairer workplace. More time away from work to do the things we enjoy means less burnout, better health, and a better quality of life.”
Surveys of public sector pen-pushers indicate they want a four-day week. Will Rayner be able to resist demands from her own staff to spend more time “running errands”?
Rachel Reeves makes a lot of her time working as an economist. After serving in a trio of junior positions at the Bank of England, Rachel says that in 2006 she moved to the Bank of Scotland to work as an “economist,” before leaving in 2009 to serve as MP. Guido spoke to colleagues of Reeves’ from her Bank of England days – one described her as having a reputation for being “f***ing useless”…
Reeves’ boilerplate biography, given to event organisers for her speaking events, says: “Previously, she worked as an economist at the Bank of England, the British Embassy in Washington DC and latterly at Halifax Bank of Scotland.” She is constantly praised for having an “economist brain.” She speaks of her time at HBOS in the midst of the financial crisis: “When economies tumble, it is those on the lowest incomes who suffer most. Some people lost their jobs but also their sense of pride.“ Guido probed these claims after numerous former colleagues of Reeves got in touch to raise questions over her CV…
The Chancellor states on her LinkedIn that she was working as an “economist” at HBOS. This is not true. Guido can reveal that Reeves worked in a mundane support department at the bank, according to multiple former colleagues. Within the Halifax/HBOS Complaints team there was a small support unit which managed administration processes, IT matters, and small projects and planning. It was a team of three people far from the Economics Department. Reeves held a mid-level position. HBOS was acquired by Lloyds in 2009 and the Chancellor left in December of that year to pursue a career in politics…
Reeves has a tendency to be selective about the truth when it comes to her CV – Guido exposed her “chess champion” myth as a falsehood according to records last week. Guido reached out to Reeves’ team – they did not deny she did not work as an “economist” for the bank, but instead said she “covered various areas using her economist background.” As she prepares to drop a huge tax bombshell on Britain, her self-styled claim to be an economic technocrat is unravelling…
Starmer and his team touched down in Samoa this morning after flying for a ridiculous 27 hours (not including refuelling stops). Accompanied by the usual gaggle of lobby journalists looking forward to putting out all the same lines about the PM, just from a different location…
Broadcasters and print hacks paid about £4,750 to fly with Keir, or an eye-watering £10,000 if they were lucky enough to score business class. What do they get for their cash?
- Thunder and showers disrupting the official itinerary.
- A short CHOGM event being hijacked by campaigners demanding the UK pay reparations for slavery…while Starmer tries to talk about trade instead.
- Official snubs from Commonwealth leaders, including Modi and Ramaphosa who are at Putin’s BRICS summit in Russia. Hilariously even Trudeau didn’t bother to come, sending his high commissioner to London in his place. The Canadian PM did however send doughnuts when the plane stopped for fuel in Winnipeg, which were promptly eaten by the lobby, a big news moment…
Lobby hacks who stayed home are feeling smug as more interesting news ploughs on in dry London. One says: “You literally couldn’t have paid me to go on this one.” And they’ve got to fly all the way back…
Nigel Farage has written to every one of the 1,352 Conservative county councillors up for re-election next May, urging them to abandon the sinking Tory ship and join Reform UK. With Reform currently boasting just 29 councillors, Farage is keen to bolster his ranks. Poaching disillusioned Tories is certainly one way to beef up the numbers. And save time on any vetting process…
Farage is offering them a political “lifeline,” warning that sticking with the Tories could cost them their seats. Once again, he’s stepping on Conservative toes – this time not just by stealing votes, but by siphoning off their grassroots foot soldiers. Farage wrote:
“The Conservative Party is a busted flush – these 1,352 councillors are watching their time in office tick away, while they bicker over whether to choose a Leader with a sudden political conversion, or someone who refuses to leave the ECHR. I urge any Conservative councillors who believe in their country and share our values to join Reform UK as we build on the extraordinary inroads we made at the General Election.”
Meanwhile, Labour clearly fears Reform’s rise, with officials warning that Reform could overtake them in the polls by May, as Reform is already more popular. A Reform source told Guido:
“The message is very simple – join us now or lose your seats in May.”
Tory councillors have their chance…
New RAJAR figures have dropped for the third quarter of this year. It’s more happy reading for GB News…
GB News Radio, which is just a simulcast of GB News TV, has now managed to overtake Talk Radio with a weekly audience of 611,000. It overtook Times Radio last quarter and has just clinched the spot for fastest growing radio brand..
GB’s audience is up a whopping 54% in the last twelve months – 18% higher than August. Listeners are staying tuned for 30% more hours – in particular to Good Afternoon Britain with Emily Carver and Guido alumnus Tom Harwood, which is up 95%. LBC still rules the non-BBC roost while the weekly reach of the BBC’s regional and local stations is down 14% year-on-year and 6% compared with last quarter. People are voting with their ears…
Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy confirmed on Sky News that all disposable vapes will be banned from 1st June 2025. Thank Sunak for that idea…
Nandy said that the ban was being pursued to prevent the take-up of vaping in children. It’s already illegal for kids to buy vapes, the same goes for cigarettes…
She then went on about how they weren’t “pleasant“:
“Single use vapes in particular are causing a lot of problems for the environment. You know I walk through my local park and the council is very good job of dealing with it but you see them discarded all over the place and, um, it’s not pleasant at all for people to have to deal with. So for those reasons we’ve taken the decision to ban single use vapes from next year.”
Guido didn’t realise pleasantness was the metric by which the government decides if something should be outlawed or not. Even the British public isn’t behind Starmer on some of his extreme nannying policies…
