The Shadow Farming and Rural Affairs minister has apologised after saying wearing fur is “the same as wearing a swastika”. David Drew said in the Commons:
“I do not understand not only why we cannot lean on the retail trade, but why people wear fur. To me it is the same as wearing a swastika.”
He later said sorry:
“I am sorry for drawing this comparison. I am passionate about animal welfare but this comparison was inappropriate and I apologise.”
Well worthy of the Order of the OTT…
The level of outlandish hyperbole flying around during the referendum campaign has inspired Guido to institute a new EU subdivision of the Order of the OTT. The first recipient is Anna ‘super’ Soubry for her brilliantly bonkers claim that trade with the EU will reduce to “absolutely zero” post-Brexit:
Jonathan Dimbleby: “Can you both agree on a matter of fact, what proportion of this market is in Europe and what proportion is outside?”
Anna Soubry: “44% of our exports which is £290 billion goes into the EU.”
Kate Hoey: “That has gone down by 10% in the last 8 years.”
Anna Soubry: “But Kate it will go down to almost absolutely zero if we come out of the EU.”
According to Soubs there will be a virtual trade embargo with the EU following Brexit, despite the fact that the UK’s trade deficit with the EU has just hit an all time high. Righto.
The Guardian is coming in for a lot of criticism – not least from its own staff – for this piece by Jonathan Jones today describing the Tower of London poppies as a “fake… UKIP-style memorial”. It’s the most read article on the Guardian website today, seemingly because of the numbers queuing up to pan it. A quick look at readers’ responses suggest this sort of metropolitan Guardianista sneering is why UKIP are on the rise. It’s their equivalent of MailOnline clickbait, only less classy…
Earlier this year loony Labour MP Yasmin Qureshi was forced to apologise, albeit very begrudgingly, for comparing Israeli policy to the Holocaust. Today Qureshi has shown just how much she learned her lesson by again comparing Israeli actions with a genocide. She says in a blog on her website:
“It is ironic that on the very day we are reflecting on lessons from Srebrenica we are overwhelmed by scenes of carnage in Gaza as the Humanitarian crisis continues to deepen.”
On the 19th anniversary of the massacre of 8,000 people at Srebrenica, that’s a pretty offensive comparison even by Qureshi’s standards…
Alex Salmond’s favourite columnist Joan McAlpine is getting very excited about today’s white paper published by the SNP. Here she is getting more than a little carried away in her piece for the Daily Record this morning:
“It makes America’s historic Declaration of Independence look like a Post-it note.”
No greater enemy to freedom for Scotland than the SNP themselves.
Mark Ferguson of LabourList well and truly earned his union keep with his response to today’s Spending Round. Choking back the tears as he whined about Osborne’s “nasty, vicious, small politics”, Ferguson launched into a tour de force of hyperbolic, hand-wringing rhetoric well worthy of the Order of the OTT:
But if I did I’d be lying. Because I couldn’t stop thinking about those people. And that hunger. And those lost jobs. And those presentless Christmases. And those queues growing outside payday lenders and food banks. And I just felt f***ing sick.”
Imagine what he’d be like if spending was actually going down…
