The ONS released their annual survey of baby names this morning, and Guido can report that while the number of Borises being born is holding steady, the number of Keirs has plummeted. 15 Keirs were born in 2019, yet by 2020, this number plummeted by 40% to just 9. As a result, Sir Keir’s name has fallen from 1587th most popular to 2228th. The PM will be happy that the number of baby Borises remains constant at 745th, with 43 born in 2020…
Carrie may also join in despair with Sir Keir. Despite 18 Carries born in 2018, and 14 in 2019, 2020 saw just seven – a ranking fall from 1940th most popular to 3117th. Labour’s deputy leader is proving less of a turn-off for parents than her leader, with 54 Angelas born in 2020 – a very popular baby name at 683th…
According to a press release sent to Guido, based on an analysis of Hansard, Boris Johnson is the most active PM in the Commons of the modern era. Despite his reputation for disliking parliament, Boris has been making an average of 12.8 contributions in parliament per week. James Callaghan and Theresa May come second and third, with an average of 11.3 and 6 contributions per week respectively. Tony Blair only made one contribution per week on average, making him the Prime Minister least present in parliament in the modern era.
Tyler Woodward, CEO of the cannabis products distributor Eden’s Gate, which commissioned the research, says:
“It comes as no surprise to me that Boris Johnson has been named hardest working PM in terms of parliamentary contributions. After all, he has been in office throughout Brexit and a worldwide health crisis! I’d suggest he makes sure to make time for himself and ensure he’s sleeping and eating well to avoid burnout.”
Guido has many so far unanswered questions about the methodology of this analysis. Have they been smoking the product?
Methodology: Cannabinoid oils distributor Eden’s Gate used Hansard to find the number of spoken parliamentary contributions each prime minister made whilst in office. They then divided this by how many weeks each prime minister spent in office to get the average number of contributions each PM made per week. They then ranked these in order to find the most hard working prime ministers of the modern age. Data collected and analysed 26/08/2021
US pollster Redfield & Wilton Strategies’ latest voting intention poll in Great Britain finds the Tories back to a 10 point lead — the same result as last week’s poll. CCHQ will take heart from the knowledge that the fieldwork was completed yesterday, after a weekend of Cummings headlines…
UPDATE: If it is “the economy stupid” that matters, the Tories will be encouraged by economic optimism climbing faster than Ipsos MORI have ever measured before:
New FoI data shows Sadiq Khan has ploughed £100,000 of taxpayers money into a group that laid siege to a police station during last year’s Black Lives Matter protests. The 4Front Project, based in Barnet, was set up in 2012 to tackle “serious youth violence”, however the arrest of a 14-year-old carrying 13 bags of suspected cannabis led to a major protest led by the group, during which young men “obstructed a police vehicle from leaving the scene”. Numerous officers were injured in skirmishes led by 30-40 protestors…
According to FoI data, the Mayor’s “Violence Reduction Unit Community Seed Fund” dished out £50,000 to 4Front in 2019/20, and £46,042 in 2018/19 in the hope of delivering ” a youth-led intervention project for 100 young people involved in and affected by serious youth violence” on a local estate.
During the blockade, 4Front director Temi Mwale used a megaphone to berate officers:
“We tried to de-escalate the situation, I actually think it was going well,” she said. “But at some point, someone… decided it would be appropriate to send four, five huge vans full of hundreds of you, to start dragging community workers across the floor.”
Sadiq’s now hiring a man who yelled at the Queen to judicate on statues, and giving money to an organisation behind an anti-police demonstration to reduce youth violence…
Strictly speaking the cohorts specified by Labour for its new queue jumping policy of priority vaccinations for key workers, included; MPs, civil servants and journalists. Labour’s post-PMQs press release stated that “approximately 6.2 million key workers would benefit from being moved up the priority list”. Labour used the ONS analysis – that there are 10.6 million key workers, 4.4 million of whom are already vaccine priorities due to working in healthcare or having underlying health conditions. Digging deeper however…
The ONS’ 10.6 million comes from the government’s list of key workers whose children are currently entitled to go to school and those entitled to priority testing. As well as the aforementioned MPs, journalists and civil servants this definition also includes local councillors and investment bankers.
A Whitehall source confirmed to Guido that it had always been understood that MPs were critical workers, and therefore they do fall under the “6.2 million key workers” as per Labour’s briefing. When Guido put this to a Labour Party spokesperson she quickly clarified to Guido that they weren’t so stupid as to call for MPs to be prioritised over ordinary workers, and do not consider MPs and journalists to be priorities.
We didn’t bother to ask about the investment bankers. Labour’s definition of priority key-workers is, it seems, restricted to unionised key workers…
Hard political times over the last few years clearly left tired and stressed Downing Street staffers reaching for the tissues at times, though not to console an emotional Theresa May. New Freedom of Information request data seen by Guido reveals devices logged into No. 10’s wifi attempted to access hardcore porn websites 2,300 times in the three years between November 2016 and November 2019. For some reason the data stops after Boris moved in…
While the vast majority of attempted r-rated visits came from “guest” devices – what No. 10 attributes to “non-civil servants who are present in the building for various events, such as training.”, 94 of the 2,300 attempts came from full-time employees. The FoI request specified visits to sites including Pornhub, Redtube, Xhamster, Youporn, extremetube and literotica – the last of which proved most popular with 637 successful viewings during the three years…
Given the data covers almost all of Theresa May’s time in office, it’s ironic that a ministry attempting to introduce an internet porn ban completely failed to keep its own affairs in order: despite the Cabinet Office claiming there are filters in place to ban access to adult sites, Guido’s sums show 63% of the requests slipped through the net. Guido guesses Philip had to keep himself occupied somehow…
