The actual nitty-gritty of whether it's implemented and if so how is irrelevant. The primary goals have been achieved - glowing headlines in the right wing press and contented murmurings from gammons all over England. :mad:

An announcement about Government action to cut the number of crossings around about the time the weather starts making crossings less likely to be undertaken is a far easier way to report a success in 4 months time than by actually doing something

Welcome to the UK where Parliament just voted by 335 to 243 to get a nurse who has to use a foodbank to pay for social care while a retired billionaire doesn’t have to. -
David Schneider

That's because the nurse has empathy and wants to help others. The retired billionaire doesn't. This is why it is all fair, according to the logic of the current government. If the nurses complain, they lack the right qualities for the job.

I see the DUP are out to prove their continuing relevance by causing trouble in Norn Iron.

Brendan Clarke-Smith Tory MP for Worksop tweets
@Bren4Bassetlaw
Well done @pritipatel. This is exactly the sort of tough action we all want to see. Forget what the do-gooders say

Winston Smith, first diary entry, 1984
April 4th, 1984. Last night to the flicks. All war films. One very good one of a ship of refugees being bombed somewhere in the Mediterranean.

Patel obviously hasn't read the 'Sandhurst treaty'
Agreed between Britain and France in 2018 on border control.

https://www.statewatch.org/news/2018...france-summit/

The Govt have created an exemption in the draft 'online hate' regulations for newspaper comment sections. We know comment sections host racism and vile personal abuse, but they have their heads so far up the billionaire tax-shy press barons’ arses they could wear them as hats to Ascot.

Is there any evidence that any Conservative minister has read any of the various treaties they've signed up to ?

Westminster voting intention:

LAB: 35% (+1)
CON: 33% (-5)
LDEM: 10% (+2)

via @YouGov
Chgs. w/ 03 Sep

Why would the Conservatives want to listen to people who want to do good?

It depends, has George 'Iain' Ian Smith claimed they've spent hundreds of hours scrutinising it? If so, definitely not.

'Scrutinise' = the Tory word for 'a hundred hours with the thing on my desk and then gave it a quick glance'.

OK, who had less than 3 months in the sweepstake ?
Bets on Simon McCoy jumping next
Channel gone by Xmas?

I think you missed a quote there:

Andrew Neil resigns from GB News three months after channel's launch

A friend of mine who works in a large NHS hospital (well over 1000 staff) has to take two lateral flow tests every week. In the past these were held in a secure stock room and until last week they simply signed them out a month at a time. That is no longer the case they now have to use the NHS site to order 7 tests at a time i.e. 3 1/2 weeks worth and they are delivered to their home address. The wrongness of this has overwhelmed me today! I wonder who has the contract to supply from the NHS England website?

Andrew Neil's journey from leaving the BBC to set up a new right-wing news channel, talking it up, launching it, fronting it, the crap ratings, the shoddy broadcasts, taking a break, not coming back for months then resigning. It's been like an episode of Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em or The Office, where everyone watching can see what's going to happen but the hero carries on digging.

Poor Brillo.

I had to do a facepalm, when he bemoaned the political direction of the channel. First off, he himself kicked the whole thing off with a spiel against "wokeness", and second, perhaps if he'd bothered to show up for work, he might have had an influence on the direction it took. When Nigel Farage is the one around every day calling the shots and grabbing the headlines, while you're off lounging it in Southern France for three months, it's kind of difficult to start stuffing the genie back in the bottle.

IMO the views of the channel are exactly as planned but Neil had hoped that it would have been a dogwhistle.

Nigel Farage has ensured that it's a foghorn instead.

Boris has some new quotes.

In addition to “**** business” and “Let the bodies pile high in their thousands”

We can add “the happy south stamps over the cruel, dirty, toothless face of the northerner”

and now “Priti Patel will make Britain the Saudi Arabia of penal policy”

Daniel Finkelstein in The Times

“Powerful people commiserating with each other about how powerless they are isn’t much of a basis for a political movement. Or even, as it turns out, a niche TV channel.”

Cabinet reshuffle this afternoon Boris says.

Gavin Williamson has informed staff at the Dept for Education that he’s leaving the department, he was offered Northern Ireland by Boris Johnson.

The most sensitive job in the most sensitive part of UK at its most sensitive time in its last 2 decades.

On the BBC "Boris Johnson is preparing to reshuffle his top team of government ministers"

A more truthful version
"Boris Johnson is preparing to reshuffle his team of incompetents, crooks and ne'er do wells"

How weak is Johnson? It, according to Tory Central's representative at the BBC Laura Kuenssberg, had not been the plan to give Raab Deputy PM, but Johnson caved in to Raab and gave him it...

Liz Truss? Nadine Dorries? Oh, FFS. Proof positive that no discenible talent is required in politics. Talking of which, my own local Tory Girl has got Truss' old job, so she'll pay even less attention to her constituency than she has so far.

Nadine Dorries is the new culture secretary.

Truss is foreign secretary

Raab to Justice and made Deputy PM

Gove gets housing, communities, and local government

vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi is the new education secretary

Satire is dead.

Truss

Looks like Williamson didn't have the stomach for Northern Ireland. Turning it down is the first sensible thing he's done in government.

To be fair, that is his top team of government ministers!

We just had a discussion about this here (Liz Truss? FFS! Liz Truss?) and we reckon that several folk, especially Liz FFS Truss and Dominic Who Needs Geography? Raaaaaaaaab, have a lot of incriminating information, pics, tapes, whatever with details which would embarrass even Johnson.

As for Trevelyan...Words failed me long ago.

The only talent required in this piss poor excuse for a government is the ability to not show up Johnson with any display of competence, decency or attention to the job that might make him look bad by comparison. Admittedly, that's a hurdle that few could limbo under.

^ You didn't meet some managers that I had, not to mention some that Carrot Flower Queen survived...Some of them make Liz FFS Truss look like a towering genius.

Oh I think I might have met some similar ones, but their sole qualification was "Being the Boss's Son"

Shuffling deckchairs on the Titanic comes to mind...

Reshuffling a deck of 52 knaves.

Ministers plan legal requirement for broadcasters to make ‘clearly British’ shows like Only Fools and Horses
The UK’s public service broadcasters will have a legal requirement to produce “distinctively British” programmes under plans drawn up by ministers.

Fleabag, Derry Girls and Only Fools and Horses were cited as the kind of “distinctively British” programmes that would meet the obligation. Ofcom will be asked to draw up a workable definition of the concept.

Media minister John Whittingdale told a Royal Television Society conference that shows such as Dr Who, Downton Abbey, Great British Bake Off and Bodyguard had been huge international hits but also reflect Britain and British values.
By contrast many of the shows on streaming platforms appear “generic” because they are designed by algorithm to appeal to a global audience.
Mr Whittingdale said: “So in our upcoming White Paper, I intend to include proposals that will expand the remit of public service broadcasters, so that it includes a requirement for them to produce ‘distinctively British’ content.”

A subjective requirement to showcase “Britishness” in every programme is likely to prove difficult to write into law.
The minister admitted that Britishness was a “difficult concept to measure. We will talk to Ofcom about how to make the obligation of Britishness work.”

Channel 4 comedy Derry Girls “very clearly” passed the test because it is “very clearly set in Northern Ireland at a particularly challenging time.” Britishness meant “reflecting all parts of the UK”.
Broadcasters should make programmes for British audiences primarily rather than for global sales, Mr Whittingdale said.

The initiative was announced in a speech due to be given by Oliver Dowden before he was replaced as Culture Secretary by Nadine Dorries.
The speech, delivered by Mr Whittingdale, cited the Carry On films of the 1970s as an example of “Britishness.”
The “restraint” of the final episode of Blackadder Goes Forth, the “sarcasm” of Fleabag and the “bonkers” concept behind Gogglebox were all values that indicated “programmes that could only have been made in the UK,” the speech said.

https://inews.co.uk/news/john-whitti...leabag-1201634

‘We will talk to Ofcom about how to make the obligation of Britishness work.’ - John Whittingdale, Minister for Media and Data.

I suspect he really means Englishness and a former Englishness that nationalists hanker back to. They want Dad’s Army

Except they'll probably still win the next election because the British public are generally idiots who find politics boring or (and I have actually heard this) 'They are all crooks so let's have the ones who are the most successful crooks'!

'Boris? Oh yeah, he's a funny old duffer. Shags around right? What a legend!'

'Keir Starmer? Never heard of him. Who's he then? What, a lawyer? Toffee nosed twat, don't want him in charge...What, human rights lawyer? They're the ones that get terrorists off for free or let foreigners sponge off us aren't they?'

That's what we're dealing with...:(

I had someone tell me the other day that the government were taking £20 a week off of universal credit to pay for Afghan refugees, I kid you not.

Andrew Neil is being coy about his reasons for leaving GB News:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-58591909

Why let people make up their own minds ? Why not be explicit about his reasons for leaving ?

Meanwhile Priti Patel is proposing treating climate change activists like Islamic extremists.

And the new Trade Secretary, Anne-Marie Trevelyan, was (is?) a climate change denier. From her old tweets:

“Clear evidence that the ice caps aren’t melting after all, to counter those doom-mongers and global warming fanatics,” read one.

Another, sent in support of a campaign against windfarms, said: “We aren’t getting hotter, global warming isn’t actually happening.”

article

Truly terrifying.