Perhaps the country is finally about to see through Boris Johnson. Everyone does in the end.
Boris Johnson is the prime minister of a country that is a genuine world leader on carbon reduction. And here he was, covering the arses of the countries that deliberately sabotaged Cop26, for no reason beyond his own juvenile boosterism.
Leave Boris Johnson alone – this exotic creature is Labour’s greatest asset | The Independent
Starmer suggests PM is using Brexit fights to distract from other areas.
“There’s a little bit of me, Andrew, I am afraid that can’t help think that the prime minister is constantly trying to pick a fight on things like this so he hopes people don’t look elsewhere in the forest, which are things like the Owen Paterson affair.”
What happened in the House of Commons yesterday was so foul, the stench might never clear.
What happened on Wednesday afternoon in the House of Commons was absolutely not a politician making the rules then failing to abide by them himself. It was a politician, having been found utterly in breach of them, entirely and unequivocally bang to rights, and responding by having his mates, and the government itself, just rip the rules up altogether.
*From The Independent*
“Not our fault!” Spitting Image nailed it.
This is a disgrace.
Tory MPs have been defending themselves from accusations they have given the go-ahead to water companies to dump raw sewage in rivers.
A proposal from the Lords to the Environment Bill that would have placed legal duties on the companies to reduce discharges was defeated by 265 MPs' votes to 202 last week.
Source: Tory MPs defend votes after uproar over sewage proposals - BBC News
CBI chief policy director Matthew Fell on UK’s Net Zero plan.
“To truly transform the UK economy based on sustainable and green growth, we need to push further and faster and make key decisions on how to finance the transition to net zero. An honest conversation needs to happen here in the UK about how we pay to go green”.
Labour shadow business and energy secretary Ed Miliband on Kwarteng.
“This is a new low for government energy policy. Reduced to crossing his fingers for a mild winter, Kwasi Kwarteng is showing just how much a decade of inaction from the government has left us vulnerable. Kwasi Kwarteng is the business secretary, not a weatherman. It is cold comfort for businesses and families that this is all he has to offer.”
Matthew Lesh of the Adam Smith Institute gives a glowing(?) review of PM’s speech at the Tory conference.
“Boris’s rhetoric was bombastic but vacuous and economically illiterate. This was an agenda for levelling down to a centrally-planned, high-tax, low-productivity economy. He is hamstringing the labour market, raising taxes on a fragile recovery and shying away from meaningful planning reform. Shortages and rising prices simply cannot be blustered away with rhetoric about migrants. There is no evidence that immigration lowers living standards for native workers. This dog whistle shows this government doesn’t care about pursuing evidence-based policies.”
Interesting article by Tom McTague on The Atlantic website today.
According to his onetime rival for the Conservative leadership, Rory Stewart, Johnson is “the most accomplished liar in public life—perhaps the best liar ever to serve as prime minister.”
Micro.blog October 2021 Photoblogging Challenge #3 majority 📷
You get this when the majority put their cross in the wrong box.
London petrol station charging nearly double the average price for fuel sells out - The Independent
Disgusted that this petrol station is charging twice the usual price
Boris Johnson condemned for saying ‘never mind’ about cancer outcomes
Boris Johnson has sparked outrage on the eve of the Conservative Party conference after saying “never mind” about cancer death rates and the recent fall in life expectancy.
Grilled about his plans for Britain’s recovery from the Covid crisis, the prime minister chose to emphasis economic growth over health measures.
Pointing to the recent growth in wages, Mr Johnson told the BBC: “I’ve given you the most important metric – never mind life expectancy, never mind cancer outcomes – look at wage growth.”
Opposition parties pounced the prime minister’s remarks, with Labour accusing him of showing an “outrageous” disregard for the health of British citizens. Shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth told The Independent: “Boris Johnson starts his conference with the most chilling words ever spoken from a prime minister dismissing the importance of cancer outcomes.”
One of the best lines in Kier Starmer’s speech at the Labour Party Conference yesterday.
“It’s easy to comfort yourself that your opponents are bad people. But I don’t think Boris Johnson is a bad man. I think he is a trivial man. I think he’s a showman with nothing left to show. I think he’s a trickster who has performed his one trick.”
This article from The New Statesman website is a sobering read for those of us lucky enough not to worry too much about the odd £20,
Whitehall’s own analysis finds the cut will have a “catastrophic” impact, warning “homelessness and poverty are likely to rise, and food banks usage will soar”. More than half a million people face being pulled below the poverty line, including 200,000 children, as a result of this change, according to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, an anti-poverty organisation.