And a bus-proof jacket for when they throw him under one.

Gove is probably already sharpening his knife. Dominic Cummings already laid the groundwork in his testimony when he blamed everyone in Boris's orbit, except Gove.

As the PM has made very clear - proven bullying in the workplace is no hindrance to your career.

That's not the worst he's done.

A video of Boris hosting a ‘Christmas Quiz’ at number 10 is doing the rounds.

“I was also furious to see that clip”, says man who we now know hosted a big quiz party against his own rules.

The Daily Mail knows who to blame, the BBC for engaging in in a partisan witch hunt against Boris Johnson instead of focusing on the most important thing, the booster rollout. :rolleyes:

Funny, I could have sworn that there were several stories on th news homepage about it.

Most Tory voters probably think "Good on you Boris" because they don't follow the rules either.:mad:

To pick at this a little more, now that I'm on my PC rather than my phone....

Boris Johnson is facing a significant rebellion from his backbenchers:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-59624809

• Not because government bungling of the Covid response squandered tens of billions of pounds
• Not because tens of thousands of people have died needlessly in the UK from Covid
• Not because they're mad at him and his colleagues flouting the lockdown restrictions
• Not because the "Plan B" restrictions are a sticking plaster over a gaping wound and are literally the least they could do
  
• ....But because these minimal restrictions are too much for them and they'd like to sacrifice tens of thousands of more lives needlessly :mad:

The study I linked upthread is forecasting somewhere between 25,000 and 75,000 Omicron Covid deaths between January and April 2022 depending on how effective Plan B measures are and how likely people are to follow them. If the "Tory Rebels" are successful and "Plan B" isn't enacted, that 75,000 number would instead represent a best case scenario and we could find ourselves in the bizarre situation of more people dying in the first 4 months of 2022 than the same period in 2021 despite the vaccination programme. :mad:

I just wish that the media would call out these politicians for the monstrous ghouls that they are and that the public was a little more engaged and understood what the implications of their MPs' actions are likely to be.

That local Tory party chairman who resigned live on air did it because the new restrictions are 'tyrannical' and the party has moved away from what it should be.
He wasn't worried about the corruption or law breaking.

Doing my shopping yesterday it would seem to be true. last week about 30% of shoppers didn't bother with masks this week it must have been 50% at least.

I see the government has very quietly folded in the fishing dispute with the French and issued all the disputed licenses.
This is Brexit in a nutshell, Make a big noise, then reality kicks in and a complete cave in happens, over and over again.

Only in the sense that their reality is “headlines” in some of the media. If the media drop the headlines the government isn’t at all concerned about what they have to do.

Look how we have not got a process in place to help people who worked with us in Afghanistan who are in literal mortal danger. That was announced in August, but the headlines in the likes of the Daily Mail have stopped so the government doesn’t need to do anything.

Oddly I'm seeing the reverse in this part of Sheffield. A couple of weeks back mask wearers were in the minority - maybe 30% - now it's not quite flipped but definitely way more wearing masks than not. It's usually younger people not.

We are back up to about 80-90% wearing masks again. But no hand cleaner or wipes in evidence.

In shops? :eek:
We were out today and here it's effectively 0%, as people simply won't be admitted unmasked. In the busier streets more than half wear masks.
A 66 year old was jailed on Friday for refusing to wear a mask in shops.

Again, here it's universal. Cleanser is any shop, materials for cleaning baskets/trollies.
I think I'll be staying away from the UK.

Went to a gig the other night, and while it started out a little uncetain, with quite a few people not wearing masks - largely becasue they'd been to the bar and didn't want to keep taking off the mask to have a drink - by the end, it looked like about 75% of people were unmasked. Not great.

Just mutter 'exemption' on the way in and you are good to go.

Sainsbury is better than Morrisons but it is out on a retail estate where the old foundry was redeveloped whereas Morrisons is right on the market place and gets different customers, plus, it's used as a shortcut from the main car park through to the market place.

Neither shop has any staff at the door, both have a token pump bottle of disinfectant by the door.

Not here. You require an actual medical certificate.

We went into a restaurant today, within another store. Masks checked at door (and people were refused entry), sanitiser in one of the free-standing dispensers, certs checked before being allowed into restaurant, with photo ID, name and contact number taken.

Where is here ? ;)

Johnson making a 8pm statement, now don’t want you to panic and think the poor man was having to work a Sunday, it is pre-recorded.

Not in the UK then. There is no requirement other than self declaring. It doesn't even have to be a medical issue 'causing anxiety' when wearing o9ne is enough for you to exempt yourself.

8pm tonight Boris will deliver a televised address to the nation 'to provide an update on the booster vaccine program', Downing Street have said.

It will be a pre-recorded statement, not a press conference.

Presumably pre-recorded because he'll be ********* by 8pm and not a press conference because he's a coward.

It’ll be on Zoom, and if you could all check you’ve got pen and paper ready for the lightning round.

Pre-recorded, but they couldn't take the time to re-take afer a stumble over the word 'varient', find a comb, or clean his suit, properly. Very reassuring.

Dublin, the one in Ireland.

The gigs I've been to in the last few weeks have had x% masked, where I'm the x%. Tonight was an exception, with possibly 50% or higher masked for at least some of the time.

Jacob Rees-Mogg tweeted
@Jacob_Rees_Mogg
· 5h
England has a marvellous history of saints. At the most recent Business Questions I was delighted to be able to mark the feast of St Æthelgifu, the daughter of Alfred the Great.

If there's one thing you can be sure of, it's that Jacob Rees-Mogg has his finger on the pulse and understands the concerns of the person in the street during a pandemic. :rolleyes:

It also seems to be a bit off.

Æthelgifu, Abbess of Shaftesbury, was the daughter of King Alfred, but was never elevated to sainthood as far as I can tell.

St Æthelgifu was the daughter of a woman called Wynnflæd, but her father is unknown. She became Queen Consort when she married King Edmund (a grandson of Alfred). Her feast day is 18 May.

Æthelred, Edmund's grandson, also married a woman called Æthelgifu (of York). (much like everyone in my family seems to have married someone called Mary). Also not a saint.

ETA: ah, might have found her. Catholic sources seem to refer to her as St. Ethelgiva - daughter of Alfred. Though I can't find much actual detail.

So both Alfred's daughter, and his granddaughter-in-law were saints? Cash for sainthood?

Seems his scholarship was up to his usual standards.

I, for one, am happy that Ress-Mogg getting something right would be a miracle which justifies her being beatified

I want a typewriter that types "Æ".

The government is launching what it says will be "common sense" reforms to the Human Rights Act that will "restore confidence" in the legal system.
The proposals commit to staying within the European Convention on Human Rights, despite pressure from some Conservatives to leave the treaty.
Justice Secretary Dominic Raab says the plans will prevent a right to family life being abused by foreign criminals.
And he wants to make it easier for judges to ignore European counterparts.

Mr Raab said: "Our plans will strengthen typically British rights like freedom of speech and trial by jury, while preventing abuses of the system and adding a healthy dose of common sense."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-59646684

Common sense, another of those phrases with a declension.....

I have common sense
You have strongly held opinions
He is a bigoted bastage....

I notice that now that people can be fined for not wearing a face covering on public transport, almost all of the 25-30% of people who were previously too ill to wear a mask have miraculously got better.

Heard on “BBC Breakfast” this morning:

If this happens I'm going to sigh with relief as it is going to be like the "reforms" to self-defence legislation which the Tories campaigned on and made such a song and dance about and when in power didn't change a thing because those rights already existed for hundreds of years in the English and Welsh legal systems.

I would like to say how astonishing it is that one lie by one home secretary has cemented in the idea of "foreign folk have a cat and we can't deport them because of their right to a family life", but I'm no longer astonished I am despondent.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-15160326
https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/th...gg-warns-70581

The trouble is that alongside banning bendy bananas, classifying British sausages as "offal sticks" and banning sport fishing, it's the kind of thing that people want to believe is true because it aligns with their own misconceptions of the EU (gained from decades of misinformation from government and the media :()