Yes, the very same.

A rail improvement programme will help transform services in the Midlands and northern England, the government has said ahead of the expected scrapping of part of the HS2 scheme.

Local service upgrades, bringing faster journeys, will happen up to 10 years earlier than planned, ministers say.
The plan will cost £96bn, but only half of that is thought to be new money.

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps will unveil the plans this morning.
Speaking to the BBC, Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab denied that the government was rowing back on promises to "level up" the country with HS2.
He called the new plan "good for the whole country", adding: "We are entirely delivering on the aspiration and ambition of the levelling up agenda."

Writing in the Yorkshire Post, Mr Johnson appears to confirm reports that a shorter high-speed route will be created from Birmingham to East Midlands Parkway, with the HS2 trains then running up as far as Sheffield on mainline tracks.
In his article Mr Johnson wrote: "HS2 will come to Sheffield, meaning a trip to or from London will take just one hour 27 minutes - precisely the same as under the old HS2 plans.
"We'll look at how to get HS2 to Leeds too, with a new study on the best way to make it happen.
"But high-speed rail is grindingly slow to build. Under the original blueprint, first drawn up more than a decade ago, Yorkshire would have not have seen the benefits of our investment until at least the 2040s. Levelling up can't wait that long."
Speaking ahead of Thursday's announcement, the prime minister said the IRP was the "biggest transport investment programme in a century, delivering meaningful transport connections for more passengers across the country, more quickly - with both high-speed journeys and better local services, it will ensure no town or city is left behind".

However, Henri Murison, director of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership, told the BBC's Today programme: "I think we've got a real risk of disappointment across the North.
"The budget that's been promised, £96bn, is about £30bn less than the previous plans and what we were being offered. That means real cuts on the eastern leg, real cuts to the new line across the Pennines through Bradford."
He said it was now vital to ensure better connectivity between Leeds and Sheffield, as the North was "going to lose on that connectivity to the West Midlands and London".

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-59320576

Boris says that the downgraded cheaper railway system he has announced for the north is better than HS2.

If that's the case why bother with the rest of HS2 for the south?

And why did he vote for the "more expensive but not as good option" in the past?

Think back to his time pretending to be Mayor of That There London: he always seemed to equate expesive with good. Hasn't changed much, has he?

Never trust a Tory. Ever.

Should be first lesson taught in schools.

Going to have to disagree, you can always trust the Tories… … to break their word.

Nadine Dorries tweeted
@NadineDorries

Left wing snowflakes are killing comedy, tearing down historic statues, removing books from universities, dumbing down panto, removing Christ from Christmas and suppressing free speech. Sadly, it must be true, history does repeat itself. It will be music next.

Culture secretary saying Panto is being dumbed down?

Oh no it isn't....

Will that be the same Nadine Dorries who recently rebuked Kuenssberg for reporting what a Tory MP said? Or the same Nadine Dorries who has advocated for homeopathy and got miffed when called out on it?

Or the one that ate Horse anus on I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here! and had to apologised to the Commons after being censured by the parliamentary standards watchdog for failing to declare her fee for appearing on the show?

Geez, bad enough Boris is a posh Trump, now we have the Tories copying direct from the GOP playbook.

No, this one did it with an ostrich anus.You must be thinking of one of the other Nadine Dorrieses.

I know an arse is involved somewhere

The one who gave her the job?

Someone tweeted a comment on the announcement today of an enquiry in to the deaths by Russian poison but I can't find the original.


Remember when Russia poisoned British citizens on British soil and the Tories did nothing about it?

Oh sorry, they did…

They tried to bury, then ignored, the Russian report

And they continued to take ‘philanthropic’ Russian donations

Lisa Nandy Labour MP for Wigan. Shadow Foreign Secretary tweets

He actually has the nerve to say ‘of course there are going to be people who want everything at once’. The Tories promised a Northern transport revolution SEVEN years ago. We’ve had sixty press releases since then and every single promise has been broken.

@Channel4News
“You’re talking total rubbish.”
Boris Johnson denies he is breaking his promise to “level up” the north of England after it was announced the government was scrapping its plans for a high-speed rail line between the East Midlands and Leeds.

Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries has said people have become afraid to say what they think for fear of being "cancelled", and that left-wing activists have "hijacked" social media.
She criticised online campaigners for frightening young people "who actually do want to engage" in serious debate.
She explained: "Sometimes I think we just need to tone down the condemnation and the judgement, and evaluate and engage a little bit more than we do. I think social media probably contributes a lot to this.
"People are afraid because of the amplification in the echo chambers of social media."

She also described negative reaction to her new role as "quite misogynistic".
After her appointment in September, comedian Dom Joly said it was "like the result of some drunk bet" while fellow comic Mark Thomas said Dorries, who is also a successful author, had "written more books" than she had read.
"People were making these comments for political attack and nothing else," she told BBC culture editor Katie Razzall. "I just found them thoroughly unpleasant."

Since this interview with Dorries took place, she has defended deleting a tweet in response to the BBC's Political Editor, Laura Kuenssberg, which the culture secretary later denied was a "rebuke" for reporting criticism of the prime minister from an unnamed Conservative MP.



https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-59305080

^ Another senior Tory who doesn't understand the word "misogynistic"...

No, Nadine, you're being criticised because you are just not that bright and say ridiculous things and then do even more ridiculous things and try to deny all of it and blame others. None of this has anything to do with your gender - see criticisms of Raab and Hancock for similar things, not to mention pretty much anything posted on here about BlowJob.

The health secretary, Sajid Javid, is facing questions over share options he continues to hold in the hi-tech US company he worked for until rejoining the cabinet in June – and which operates in the healthcare sector.
Javid was paid the equivalent of £150,000 a year by C3.ai, a California firm specialising in artificial intelligence (AI), from October last year until he was given the job of health secretary.

As part of his remuneration package, he was also given “an option for 666.7 shares per month”.
According to the health secretary’s current entry in the register of MPs’ interests, he continues to hold these options, which he reports have a market value of approximately £45,000.

The deputy Labour leader, Angela Rayner, has written to the prime minister’s ethics adviser, Lord Geidt, to ask him whether this represents a conflict of interest.
“In September, the secretary of state’s department announced that the use of AI would shorten waiting lists in our NHS,” she wrote, suggesting the idea the Department of Health could spend taxpayers’ money on AI “could clearly be perceived as beneficial to an AI company”.

The ministerial code states that “ministers must scrupulously avoid any danger of an actual or perceived conflict of interest between their ministerial position and their private financial interest”.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics...alth-tech-firm

Angela Rayner MP for Ashton under Lyne tweets

@AngelaRayner
The Health Secretary has shares in an AI firm. The Health Secretary uses his position to promote the benefits of AI and sets out plans to invest in AI, which will benefit people with shares in AI firms.

This is a clear conflict of interest and breach of the Ministerial Code.

So what?

I know she isn't terribly bright, but does she know who's been running the ******* country for more than a decade?

Labour of course, remember the problems in the NHS are because Labour hasn’t put the money in that it needed for the last 12 years!

Bere Ferrers (West Devon) by-election result:

CON: 32.5% (+2.4)
LAB: 32.4% (+12.1)
LDEM: 19.4% (-11.8)
GRN: 15.8% (+15.8)

Conservative GAIN from Liberal Democrat.

One vote majority!

Boris has removed funding and powers from the umbrella transport authority Transport for the North. They criticised his new funding and transport plan cutting back Northern Powerhouse Rail.

It's the kind of petty behaviour a dictator losing his grip on power would display … oh!

Downing Street has been forced to deny that the Prime Minister is launching a defamation lawsuit against the New European.

They want us to know he's not suing over marriage trouble claims, which definitely aren't true.

https://www.newstatesman.com/politic...trouble-claims

So we now know for certain that Boris has got buyer's remorse about Carrie,

He's going to run out of dead cats if he keeps chucking them about at this rate.

Sounds like we all need to buy a copy of New European.

Of course the entire point of HS2 is to get the fast trains off the mainlines onto new track. Not to shave a couple of minutes off their journey times but to allow a huge increase (six-fold, I read) in local train capacity on the current lines.

But when it suits them, it's about fast train times.

As Jeremy Kyle always said: "Then put something on the end of it!"

https://www.theguardian.com/politics...iversal-credit

He'll be fine then, as the Tories are forever telling us that UC is more than adequate for anyone to live on...

Paul Dacre has pulled out of the process to become the head of Ofcom.

What a shame.

Bit of a kick in the teeth for the government who re-ran the entire recruitment process just becuase they wanted him and he was rejected by the pane first time round.

"You could hear the almond milk latte cups hitting the floor at the BBC when my appointment was announced"
sneers Nadine Dorries just seconds after insisting that it's not true she wants to start a culture war with left-wing, woke snowflakes.

Families forced out of HS2 homes in South Yorkshire, still undemolished can't have their houses back.

The same MPs who introduced the Innocence Tax,removing legal aid for people accused of crimes and then refusing to reimburse them their private legal fees when they’re acquitted, would now like some taxpayer-funded legal representation, thank you very much.

In perhaps the least surprising news of the year, Boris has shelved his dream for a bridge or tunnel connecting Northern Ireland with Scotland, after a review concluded it would be too technically challenging and expensive.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/202...ult-expensive/

Fresh prospect of criminal inquiry for Boris Johnson after Jennifer Arcuri agrees to assist ethics watchdog

A fresh inquiry has opened into Boris Johnson’s relationship with Jennifer Arcuri after the US businesswoman dramatically agreed to assist officials, paving the way for the prime minister to face possible criminal investigation.
Arcuri has formally offered to help the Greater London Authority (GLA) ethics watchdog by allowing it to inspect extracts of her diary entries chronicling her affair with Johnson and agreeing to be questioned for the first time by investigators over the relationship.

The contemporaneous diary excerpts, disclosed in the Observer last week by the journalist John Ware, reveal how Johnson allegedly overruled the advice of staff to promote the business interests of Arcuri and win her affections.
Arcuri’s decision to cooperate with the GLA monitoring officer reopens the prospect of Johnson facing an investigation for a potential criminal offence of misconduct in public office.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics...thics-watchdog

I wonder how much money was spent figuring that it was a ******* stupid idea.

There was also the thing with the blog: https://www.theguardian.com/politics...log-70-fiction

^ Good one ! I'd forgotten that.