Budget 💷 Labour has failed to deliver fairer taxes. Big banks, digital service companies and online gambling firms should pay their fair share. Instead, hundreds of thousands of lower wage earners and retirees with modest occupational pensions will be dragged into income tax by Labour’s stealth tax.

📖 We've gone from chocolate, to cosmetics and now books. This year's Advent calendar is complete and ready! Not the cheapest to assemble, but it should keep her occupied for the next 12 months. Mainly fiction, and includes a box-set, a Bible (requested) and a (surprise) Highway Code. 📖

Sometimes she's so grown-up, and other times she's a horrid, grumpy teenager, and then she leaves me messages like this before school and I'd forgive pretty much anything..

We used to have a BBC we could be proud of. No longer. It can't even speak the truth any more. How can we trust it?

And cats. And a dog.

Farage wants to introduce a British DOGE if he wins the 2029 election. Remember this when you cast your vote. As if there is anything left to cut in the UK after the last 15 years.

Russia's ambassador to the UK, Yakovenko, boasted about Brexit to another diplomat: “We have crushed the British to the ground. They are on their knees and will not rise for a very long time” Today, Farage’s close ally, leader of Reform in Wales, was sentenced to 10yrs for taking bribes from Russia.

Please sign. This is long overdue.

Your reminder that the EU offered to freeze Brexit talks in 2020 so we could focus on Covid but Johnson said no. He then fucked up both: partying while 23,000 needlessly died & did a Brexit so shit the economic impact (-8% GDP) is worse than predictions he described as “the work of gloomsters”

If Belgium is doing this, why can’t we?

I mean, why would you stay?

It's January 31st, 2020, and Nathan Gill is celebrating our imminent departure from the EU.... and that terrible idea of a European Army. Hmm, now I wonder who else would have been delighted about that.

In the past few days I've deleted more than 10,000 emails from gmail, including Googledocs, and it's still telling me I am up to my limit and need to pay to hang on to the address. Anyone else getting this?

It is indisputable that Brexit has been an economic disaster, and notable that none of its political architects have paid any price.

Liberal Democrats vs Reform UK Ltd: who’s really the underdog? The Liberal Democrats hold 72 parliamentary seats, yet the media have sidelined Ed Davey while Reform UK Ltd hogs column inches and airtime @politicalsatirical.bsky.social @centralbylines.co.uk

When your jumper falls off the back of the chair...

Farage et al really mustn't be allowed to walk away from this scandal, and its wider implications: www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Meanwhile, those who brought it about are free to walk about with complete impunity, threatening to cause even more damage, while being applauded by their hard-of-thinking fanbase. The absolute state of this country...

Michael Gove on claims of a bad culture in No. 10 during the pandemic: "The business of govt can't be carried on in the manner of a Jane Austen novel". As so often, this assumes that the macho, hyper-aggressive style of Cummings & co produces better decisions. All the evidence suggests the reverse

Where are the colleagues to speak up? Where are the male reporters to remind him this is out of order? Wtf is wrong with you all?

Oh Scotland...that was amazing! ⚽️💪

For Shabana Mahmood to attack some of the most cruelly treated people in the world as having won a "golden ticket" because they manage to get to and claim asylum in Britain is unforgiveable. A new, far right, low for which I can think of no precedent, by any UK Government.

This is the sort of story mainstream media no longer breaks. Independent media is where it's at.

I will never be able to understand how some people can love their country *soooo* much that they actually want the rest of the world to believe it is a total shite-hole full of absolute bastards who’ll mistreat them appallingly, abuse them, and forcibly deport them if they come there.

It's been almost a decade. Has anybody actually bought a higher powered vacuum cleaner yet? #Brexit

Good grief!

Those hexagonal boxes of Quality Street in Tesco are literally half-empty. RRP £6 but selling for £3.95 to clubcard holders and billed as a third off. Yeah, cos there's (at least) a third less chocolates in them than last year! Did you think we wouldn't notice?

Yet another idea from the DfE, based on zero inquiry or understanding as to why so many children are absent from school. Just more pressure for schools, for parents and children. Disappointing and awful in equal measure. schoolsweek.co.uk/ai-to-set-mi...

Keep seeing 'Asian pilates' being advertised. Anyone tried this? Any good?

@ihealthvisiting.bsky.social Hi, I'm keen to speak to someone who deals with communications for your organisation regarding an article. Can you let me know who to contact please? Thanks so much!

Anyone watched the German series "Dsrk" on Netflix? Anyone know what the heck was going on beyond season one? I've lost the plot. But after being invested for so long I have to see it through...

And there you have it. Reform MPs have almost an entire BBC high-up each.

We're in our 3rd hour of firework hell in our nice neighbourhood. There's s special place in hades for the morons terrorising kids and animals, and the shops that supply and sell them. Sorry for the langusge but seriously, f*** you all.

Sight seeing this morning

Bodmin Jail. Well worth a visit if you're in these parts.

If you're driving (and reading this - naughty!) on the M40 southbound and stuck in traffic because of an earlier accident, what Google Maps doesn't seem to tell you (or it didn't me) is to come off at Gaydon, head for Southam, and eventually you'll end up in Banbury where you can rejoin the M40.

If Labour agree that the Tories' botched Brexit deal is hurting our country, they should stop complaining and start fixing it. Starting with a new UK-EU customs union.

"Fans need to treat this World Cup as a high-risk travel event — not a holiday you can book last minute.” Meanwhile, absolute crickets from FIFA

On a happier note, was heading to south Oxfordshire to do some parkrun tourism today but doing a detour as found an inaugural event. See you at Kilkenny Lane Country park in a bit, then.

My lovely Dad would have been 95 today. I miss him so much. Here we are on my first birthday.

So, anyway, happy 19th anniversary to my super hubster, @baseofthepyramid.bsky.social 🎉

19 years ago this evening I was enjoying my last night as a single woman, in a bar with three people who had seven former marriages between them.

'Nigel Farage could never be trusted to run Britain after getting Brexit so wrong' www.mirror.co.uk/news/politic...

Reminds me of my daughter's fifth birthday and we hosted a big party for all the kids in her class. One of the boys just missed out on winning a prize in a game. We felt terrible when he started crying and invented another game so that he could win a prize too. (True story).

Clearly, it has.

Taylor Swift has released a new album, so the incels are out in force. As predictable as night following day.

So, Sunday Times runs with latest poll showing Farage winning if there was an election now. But makes NO mention of Reform’s collusion with Russia. And this is how democracy gets beaten to death in the dark. Voters are not being told the truth. Reform is given the stage but is NEVER held to account.

*sniggers*

As if our health services aren't already stretched and didn't have enough to do, the NHS has to waste time creating stuff like this to counter false and malicious information. Ffs.

Huge congrats and shout-out to my bro, who is about to publish his latest book.