Thursday 24th November 2022

[refitman]

Morning all.

[refitman]

Kieth, hitting all the right demographics

[frog222]

Kieth, hitting all the right demographics

Morning refit, noticed last night that I'm not seeing any tweets, is it the site or me ?

I thought , shurely it's a spoof, it's nor bloody April already ?

Maybe the address ?

[PaulfromYorkshire]

Hello mice men! Deranged Baroness scams £29 million of PPE profits (8,4).

[frog222]

Experimenting with 'image'

[PaulfromYorkshire]

‘Michael Gove reduced to a blubbering wreck by Nick Robinson with the deadly question “what are the benefits of Brexit?” 🫠 #r4today’

[PaulfromYorkshire]

That was a Tweet from someone called Dave that I loved. Frog I thought your ? was bafflement at my anagram

[frog222]

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1594 ... 28033.html

[gilsey]

Hello mice men!

Nice one.

[gilsey]

Helen Pidd on transport in the North.

Just how bad do Britain’s trains have to get before the Tories act?

I know numerous people learning to drive or buying a second car so that they do not have to rely on trains to get to work or college – a disastrous development given the climate crisis. There are already 3.1m more private cars registered in Britain than there were 10 years ago, an increase of 11%, with cities outside London seeing the largest growth in car ownership.

Is that levelling up? I’d have liked to ask Dehenna Davison, the levelling up minister, who was also supposed to be speaking at the Great Northern Conference. But she didn’t turn up either.

from btl:

Protesters get prison sentences for causing disruption and delays. Train company executives get large salaries, bonuses and continued contracts for similar disruption and genuine misery.

[RogerOThornhill]

Good morning.

Net migration for the year to June was an estimated 504,000.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulation ... ngjune2022

Remember the days when Cameron was trying to get it to the tens of thousands?

That is an incredible number although partly explained by Ukraine, Afghanistan & HK.

Makes the 35k in small boats look insignificant by comparison.

[PaulfromYorkshire]

Thanks Gilsey

[PaulfromYorkshire]

@roger some good interpretation of those immigration stats from Jonathan Portes

[AnatolyKasparov]

Corbyn won that prize at the Spectator awards after the 2017 GE, didn't he? Turned up to collect it as well.

[refitman]

Corbyn won that prize at the Spectator awards after the 2017 GE, didn't he? Turned up to collect it as well.

He won it (https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/spe ... e-winners/), can't find any evidence he collected in person.

[refitman]

It's not been a great week of optics, for Starmer. Proudly declaring Labour as the party of business and attending awards held by the Sun and Spectator.

[AnatolyKasparov]

Corbyn won that prize at the Spectator awards after the 2017 GE, didn't he? Turned up to collect it as well.

He won it (https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/spe ... e-winners/), can't find any evidence he collected in person.

Even so, he didn't turn the award down.

And spare me from the line offered by some of his supporters - basically "the Spectator was good then, actually".

[refitman]

[AnatolyKasparov]

Helen Pidd on transport in the North.

Just how bad do Britain’s trains have to get before the Tories act?

I know numerous people learning to drive or buying a second car so that they do not have to rely on trains to get to work or college – a disastrous development given the climate crisis. There are already 3.1m more private cars registered in Britain than there were 10 years ago, an increase of 11%, with cities outside London seeing the largest growth in car ownership.

Is that levelling up? I’d have liked to ask Dehenna Davison, the levelling up minister, who was also supposed to be speaking at the Great Northern Conference. But she didn’t turn up either.

from btl:

Protesters get prison sentences for causing disruption and delays. Train company executives get large salaries, bonuses and continued contracts for similar disruption and genuine misery.

Its all the fault of "Mick Grinch" though.

(btw there aren't any strikes from 17th December until after the New Year holiday - how is that "ruining Christmas" exactly?)

[frog222]

Lovely gel --

[AnatolyKasparov]

And the Spectator also made Corbyn "Campaigner Of The Year" in 2015.

No he definitely didn't turn up for that one - Diane Abbott accepted the award on his behalf instead.

[frog222]

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Aren't Charlotte Ivers and Richard Holden a couple?

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Hmm...who to support. Serbia, a country full of Putin supporting fascists? Or Brazil, a team full of Bolsonaro supporting fascists?

Decisions, decisions.

[AnatolyKasparov]

Aren't Charlotte Ivers and Richard Holden a couple?

Hmmm, maybe the mere fact they are both on this programme suggests not?

It would certainly be a strange decision otherwise, or maybe a level of negligence surprising even for the BBC recently.

[PorFavor]

Good morfternoon.

Charlotte Ivers and Richard Holden are a couple. Or at least they were at the time (ie about 5 minutes ago) of my looking them up on Wikipedia.

[RogerOThornhill]

Well, the good news from here is that 'er indoors is now back indoors...takes a flippin' long time to get discharge paperwork and drugs sorted though.

Ben Habib?

Wonder if they will mention that he was a Brexit Party MEP and is now talking about coming back into politics?

[AnatolyKasparov]

Good morfternoon.

Charlotte Ivers and Richard Holden are a couple. Or at least they were at the time (ie about 5 minutes ago) of my looking them up on Wikipedia.

Well, that's a distinctly strange choice, then. Certainly can't recall it happening before (though if course it may have done, there have been *lots* of QT episodes)

[Sky'sGoneOut]

QT review tonight from Skipton. My Mum and Dad came to visit me a few years back and I was busy for the afternoon so they drove off to explore Yorkshire. When they got back I asked if they'd had a good time and my dad said no. When I enquired where they'd gone he explained they'd been to Skipton and it was crap and all there was was a big Tesco. Skipton actually has an awesome castle and a canal with really nice walks so I've no idea what he was on about.

Anyway...coming out fighting for the Tories was Richard Holden. Richard was clearly not in the best of moods this evening. He was almost immediately triggered into a shouting match with Andy Burnham then spent most of the rest of the programme contorting his face in various ways expressing his disdain for everything everyone else was saying. In fairness to him he reached peak gurning while Ben Habib was going on about there being too many people living on benefits. Richard countered that by saying his dad had been on benefits with mental and physical health problems and defended the role of the state in helping people which was quite refreshing coming from a Tory. Once he calmed down and stopped being triggered by Burnham every 5 minutes he actually put in the best performance we've seen from a Conservative for quite a while.

For Labour (sort of) we had Andy Burnham. Unshackled from the vapid timidity of Starmer's parliamentary party Burnham can say what he likes and what a difference it makes. He was free to stand up for the rail unions and all public sector workers. He pointed out the discrepancy in public and private sector pay rises. He advocated for a more humane approach to benefit claimants that they've apparently been trialling in Manchester with good results. In short he sounded like a proper Labour politician. Which is not to say he didn't make a couple of mistakes. First he bigged up Manchester in Yorkshire which is never wise, and second he claimed if the trains in the South East were as bad as they were up here there'd be a Tory outcry. Well Andy, from my experience visiting PorFavor the trains in the South East are by far and away the worst in the entire country so on that score you were wrong.

For brexit nutters we had Ben Habib. Listening to Ben is like being on a roller coaster that dips in an out of sanity at breakneck speed. In one single answer he went from defending public sector workers striking for pay rises to defending Liz Truss's economic vision. One minute the audience were clapping then the next they were laughing at him. He's a curious fellow, that's for sure. He tried the old 'work doesn't pay because a single mother on benefits in London with three kids gets a million pounds a week' bollocks but got short shrift and even Fiona Bruce pulled him up on it.

For Darren McGarvey we had...Darren McGarvey. It was my afformentioned Dad who gave me Darren's book 'Poverty Safari' and I'd recommend it to anybody in the mood to be really pissed off. It was written a few years ago and he really doesn't mince words, it's us versus them, and the them is more often middle class lefties than the right. He was on QT around that time and was excellent whereas tonight it was as if he'd been to too many middle class anti-poverty symposiums and soaked up too much of the jargon. I fear after his success he's becoming exactly the kind of well meaning well off lefty he previously despised.

For the Times and New Statesman we had Charlotte Ivers. Charlotte was great. She supported striking workers, explaining that a junior barrister friend had been on strike with the rest of his colleagues and got a settlement from the government so why not nurses or train drivers? She mocked Ben Habib for defending Truss and defended the NHS being free at the point of care.

Now we come to the important gossipy speculation bit.

So for some inexplicable reason Charlotte lowered herself into accepting Richard Holden as a partner, apparently while they were both working for Theresa May. Quite what she saw in him is her own business, an older man, balding and evidently thin skinned, maybe he has a massive schlong.

Tonight however it seemed pretty clear to me at least that they were no longer an item. He gurned and winced as she spoke and a couple of times she was clearly relishing his misfortune.

Mind you that would sound like a healthy relationship compared to most of mine so you never know.

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Good morfternoon.

Charlotte Ivers and Richard Holden are a couple. Or at least they were at the time (ie about 5 minutes ago) of my looking them up on Wikipedia.

I can't find her on Wikipedia and Holden's makes no mention.

There's a bunch of weird articles that have Wikipedia in their title about her but the one I just read says she accused him of rape. Now I've seen a lot of QT but despite their faults as far as I'm aware they've never put a rapist on with the victim.

I assume some Google bot has got confused because she was his girlfriend when he was accused of sexual assault by someone else.