Punching down as usual 😒

Mel Stride on #r4Today saying the proposed Tory welfare cuts are “considered and principled” - good to know they’ve really thought about how to focus on the poorest people to make them poorer and that’s a conservative principle! Nice to see them doubling down on the horror of the last 14 years!

A Chip in the wild:

Cancles in history….

Well that escalated quickly…

Well, that’s not at all creepy….

The roofs of Beaune and the little men that crawl down them…

Well done Nick Robinson, sinking entirely to Farqge’s level, by using his opening question to a Labour spokesman to quote his “cab driver”… 🙄 #r4Today

Not wrong

The most heartbreakingly powerful piece I’ve ever read on Substack. Please, please read and share. And look after your family, friends, neighbours and colleagues for whom England is becoming frightening. @sturdyalex.bsky.social 👇 open.substack.com/pub/bestforb...

So the DFS sale really has been going on as long as we thought

Bryan Lanza on #r4Today just now saying in the UK we throw people in jail for speaking up on pseudo- science - and this was not disputed in any way by Justin Webb.WTAF? Are we just accepting Trump’s rubbish as gospel now?

Hmmm who should I listen to? The research professor who says there is no evidence that screens are damaging children or the pressure group mother who has no evidence and wants her child to grow up in the 1970s? Tricky 🤔 #r4Today

Just been severely menaced by a squirrel while trying to eat a sarnie in Lincoln’s Inn Fields - now for the first time fully behind the rat with a fluffy tail narrative - genuinely afeard.

Reform need to be v careful about accusing people of dodgy tax dealings I would say… it’s a fair bet there will be all sorts of things that could be dug up if people focused on them as much as Raynor…

Unbelievably exhausting listening to Richard Tice squirm, obfuscate and fail to answer any question in #r4Today followed by blatant lies eg the facts of the Linehan case, which go entirely unchallenged… sigh.

Now that is a cocktail! Edible picture and all…

Breaks his heart, IT REALLY DOES. Zahawi, who claimed thousands from the public purse to heat his stables, attended men-only events where female staff were groped, was fined seven-figure sum for tax irregularities and breaches the ministerial code by failing to disclose it, suggests EQUIVALENCE.

Any fool blithely saying they’ve now had a bit of a think about the ECHR and we should leave - is part of why we’re now stuck in the mess of Brexit, being told by the far right to hand our human rights over to them to administer. FFS people. Have you learned nothing from the last decade of failure?

So acc to a very agitated Malcolm Rifkind on Today we are in a national crisis re Immigration and the only solution is to leave the EHCR. - This won’t solve anything. It’s just Brexit 2.0. The absolute hysteria that has engulfed some politicians and the U.K. media is astonishing. To put it mildly.

Leaving the ECHR is the latest iteration of the "one weird trick" politics that has served us so well in recent years. It appeals because it's simple and it won't work because it's simple.

Philippe Sands making Malcolm Rifkind look like a blathering lunatic on #r4Today right now…

41% of Tommy Robinson and Nigel Farage's followers who got arrested at the Riots last year had previous for Domestic Abuse. But apparently it is immigrants who are the problem and not your friendly patriotic wife beater.

This is one of the most beautiful things I have witnessed, the craft here is impeccable.

For once, Thought for the Day on #r4Today made a really good point. In summary that was: Robert Jenrick is a poisonous xenophobic toad. Well done, both accurate and needed to be said.

Got charged £155 by @airbnbhelp.bsky.social for a tap we never broke - my advice to everyone is take pictures of everything and I mean EVERYTHING the moment you walk into an Airbnb - this was a totally broken tap and so obviously a scam by the hosts but the money just gets taken from my account…🤷‍♀️

Listening to @newsagents.bsky.social from yesterday - can’t stop laughing at the brilliant line: “Kemi, the Fritzl-hating snitch”…

I mean, with the best will in the world, & tbh I don't harbor good will towards Badenoch, I think she may have fundamentally misunderstood what a Christian is: But she added: "I rejected God, not Christianity. So I would still define myself as a cultural Christian." www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Of course this is a story the BBC has to cover, but #wato should be thinking very carefully whether it's right to give so much airtime to extensive quotes from more than one motivated, cynical rabble rouser. And it should conclude that it is not

Hey #Jenrick , the only people who's lives are being wrecked, are those of the #AsylumSeekers trapped in these terrible conditions, thanks to 14 years of #Tories mismanagement. #wato

I hope this email never finds you. I hope a single shaft of light pierces the broken ceiling, giving life to saplings and ferns. I hope the old computer went dark years ago, and the office smells of moss and wild spores. I hope that you are free.

Hammer on nail... this man is going viral.

Just the garden looking great this morning - a vine climbing over the Japanese maple…

Wow, Anna Foster talking to David Lammy as though he is the foreign secretary of Israel right now. “Why haven’t you stopped the war, Mr Lammy?” - could it possibly be because he’s not in control of the Israeli army?? #r4Today

Grant Shapps on #r4Today gamely arguing that the whole super injunction and decisions not to tell the intelligence and security committee are all the fault of the judges. And that it’s the current government who are really to blame for the length of the injunction… wow, the nerve of these people!

Mermaids… from hell

When you attempt to go to a fun children’s experience but you’ve been watching too much The Last of Us and everything has a sinister edge… #itsintheair

Noooooo! Whhyyyy?? The cleaning company, in its infinite wisdom, has sent me the same cleaner who last time could not make a bed (she left the existing sheets on) and left muddy foot prints up my hall. Did not start well when she couldn’t find my house, despite being here 2 weeks ago! Sigh!

Emma Barnett is such a shit interviewer - so openly hostile while achieving very little - I think it’s cos she always attempts to catch the interviewer out with a “gotcha” moment rather than actually asking useful follow ups- e.g. both UNICEF & Heidi Alexander. I really miss Mishal Husain. #r4Today

I see Honest Bob Jenrick has a new little video attacking barristers for representing unpopular clients. Once again for those at the back: Lawyers are not their clients. Which is how, when Jenrick broke the law in government, he had lawyers to defend him.

Am crying with frustrating - for the 2nd time in two weeks, I have waited in for a dpd parcel delivery only to be told they are “sorry they missed” me when they didn’t even ring the bloody bell. They are so shit it’s excruciating, and I cannot stop the company I am buying from using them…

apparently Musk was on loads of drugs when he gave that Nazi salute but, funny story, do you know who else was on lots of drugs when they were giving Nazi salutes

“Murals, mate - I can hold two thoughts in my head at same time but that he [Robert Jenrick] might actually be a really decent bloke is not one of them” @mrjamesob.bsky.social sometimes lands on the perfect turn of phrase which makes his show absolutely worth listening to!

You've not really appreciated Caravaggio's The Calling of St Matthew until you've seen it with sheep 🐑

I really don’t want to be THAT person, but I have just had to hear Johnny Diamond say “”the eagles are coming, the eagles are coming” so said Bilbo Baggins” and I feel compelled to point out Bilbo said nothing of the kind and it’s in a totally different book ffs. Journalism101 #r4Today

Oh just that thing where you deliberately work from home so you can be in when DPD deliver a parcel and they message you as you wait to tell you no one was in. Sigh. Oh really? What am I? Chopped liver??

We are in a house of disapproving animals:

“She collected porcelain” you say. Not well though, right? Not well…

oh good it’s “chimney across street casting shadow that wants to kill me” o’clock

I will never be able to unsee this now, and my life is all the richer for it