[The Weeping Angel]

Out Reforming Reform.

[Killer Whale]

Showtowt to Wales where all primary age pupils are already entitled to free school dinners thanks to Plaid bending Labour's arm when then were in a hurry to get a budget through.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Out Reforming Reform.

Also known as "tinkering at the edges".

There's some pretty hard rain heading for new sickness benefit claimants, but the policy towards children seems pretty good.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Latest "who can we find to slag of the Government article" from our friends here.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ ... osses-told

Palantir’s NHS England contract ‘opens door to government abuse of power’, health bosses told
Health justice charity Medact says data-sharing potential could be used for UK version of US immigration raids

What does a health justice charity look like? Pages on the various issues of health inequality in the UK? Pages on general world wide health issues, vaccination, access to drugs, that sort of thing?

https://www.medact.org/our-work/

First two items- nuclear weapons and Palestine. They also want divestment from the arms industry- who else do they think should supply Ukraine?

The fourth one is "Abolitionist Approach to Health", which is 'to challenge policing, criminalisation and securitisation practices within and beyond sites of healthcare'. A particular target is Prevent, and they talk of healthworkers themselves as being "enactors of violent practices". Or you know, the victims of violent practices from patients.

This is so obviously a bunch of Trots who've stuck "health" on to their pet subjects. What do you reckon they know about health IT? The logic seems to be "don't join anything up, continue wasting a load of money, because Nigel Farage".

But send a report into the Guardian, goes straight in.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Some of the BTL brains trust were gleefully putting together a conspiracy whereby the government was being directed by Maurice Glasman, who supports the EDL, via Labour Together and Shabana Mahmood. I didn't follow the links to Declassified, funnily enough. They seem to be very bad at this Machiavelli stuff, if that's the case.

New anti-Muslim hate definition announced by government
A special representative will also be appointed to help facilitate the understanding and implementation of the definition.

https://news.sky.com/story/government-a ... y-13517508

This is, in fairness, overdue. But clearly they've worked on this for a while, and credit for it arriving. I'm sure Kemi will rise to the issue.

This is the sort of stuff she'll be happy to reduce to the worst party politics.

Zubir Ahmed, a health minister, tries not to read the comments under his social media feeds, but sometimes curiosity gets the better of him.

After performing a transplant on Christmas Day, the vascular surgeon scanned a post about the operation.

He recalled: “It went viral on the internet, but I have also never seen anything like the abuse. There was one comment that stuck out for me that just said: ‘Thanks for the transplant, now go home.’”

Dr Zubir Ahmed is strongly supportive of the government on this issue, you may not be surprised to hear.

(I generally laugh at people who make up what politicians have said and then ridicule them, like I've done with Kemi there. I am though very confident she'll be appalling).

[Tubby Isaacs]

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... ay-sources

Starmer may face more resignations after release of Mandelson WhatsApp messages, say sources
PM has apologised for his handling of Peter Mandelson’s appointment as US ambassador, but next tranche of files could contain further damaging details

Resignations from embarrassing WhatsApp messages connected with the pandemic that killed 230,000= zero

Resignations from appointing Peter Mandelson= lots, apparently.

If this were a Tory Prime Minister, he'd have been allowed to apologize and "draw a line under it, and by the way it was a brilliant idea to appoint someone with a rapport with Trump because billions of pounds of trade were at stake, they just couldn't possibly have known, and you need to look for people with experience outside the narrow confines of the civil service etc"

It seems though that not everybody comes out badly from this. Jonathan Powell criticized the process. That becomes "Starmer was warned", and that's another load of shitty headlines. Hard to avoid the impression that the media who said Starmer was finished are not exactly being disinterested in this stuff.

Still a shit appointment, mind.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Showtowt to Wales where all primary age pupils are already entitled to free school dinners thanks to Plaid bending Labour's arm when then were in a hurry to get a budget through.

Given the overall level of funding of Wales, this is an impressive thing to have got in the budget.

[Tubby Isaacs]

One perhaps to file under "long term policy you'll get no thanks for". Actually that's an understatement. I can already hear a certain party leader rediscovering his interest in the environment, and taking a potshot.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... d-miliband

Miliband unveils plans to speed up nuclear power generation for UK
Ministers face accusations of carrying out ‘irresponsible deregulation’ as they push through ‘clean energy’ proposals

Who's accusing them?

However, top environmental planning lawyer Alexa Culver of RSK Wilding said: “No ecologists or environmental specialists were invited to shape these proposals into anything that resembles a ‘win’ for nature.

“Recently popularised and devastating environmental scandals – like within the water industry – prove that high-stakes regulation is complex and easily manipulated when ‘simplified’ without checks and balances. This was a chance for the government to design resilience into our industrial strategy and the government didn’t take it.”

Lawyer objects to the law being cheaper, more as we get it.

And I've no idea what "design resilience into out industrial strategy" is supposed to mean. The best way presumably to get the industrial strategy going is to reduce the overheads on the actual industrial work. And water company regulation, whatever else has been wrong with it, hasn't exactly oversupplied us with questionable infrastructure- or indeed infrastructure of any kind. That's an odd point to make. The win for nature is that this should mean that climate change policy becomes more affordable (as of course it is anyway, but it's not easy to "just raise income tax" or whatever).

I'm sure there are people who don't have vested interests, academics etc, who will oppose the new regulation. Could the paper maybe phone some of them up, perhaps give them a column, and we might be informed about the issue rather than the political controversy.

[The Weeping Angel]

That was as inflammatory as a wet sponge.

[Tubby Isaacs]

That's "straight talking" when somebody on the right does it.

[Youngian]

Hannah Spencer is being crticised for dressing like shite and having messy hair. That's prime minister material if you're right wing. 'Authentic' and 'a character.'

[Tubby Isaacs]

Remember this massive rebellion on the Courts Bill that was coming? Well, the vote happened- 10 votes against, all by Campaign Group or adjacent people. But remember, it's going to be really massive on the later readings. It'll need to be. Majority of 101 this time.

[Samanfur]

Hannah Spencer is being crticised for dressing like shite and having messy hair. That's prime minister material if you're right wing. 'Authentic' and 'a character.'

The man leading the charge:

[Bones McCoy]

Hannah Spencer is being crticised for dressing like shite and having messy hair. That's prime minister material if you're right wing. 'Authentic' and 'a character.'

The infamous Johnson / Fabricant "Barnet formula".

[The Weeping Angel]

Out Reforming Reform.

Also known as "tinkering at the edges".

There's some pretty hard rain heading for new sickness benefit claimants, but the policy towards children seems pretty good.

Phillipson has written about the child poverty strategy in the Big Issue.

https://www.bigissue.com/uncategorised/ ... 1773484552

Every child deserves to understand their world – and know we’re fighting for them.

When I was growing up, there were things I didn’t have words for. I knew that life felt harder for some children than others. I noticed the gaps – who had what, who went without – but I didn’t always understand why. Nobody sat down with me and explained it. 

Child poverty is a stain on our country. Almost one in three children in the UK is growing up in relative poverty today. In a typical classroom of 30, that’s around 10 children. Ten children whose ability to learn, to thrive, to simply feel secure is being chipped away – not because of anything they or their families have done wrong, but because the system has failed them. 

We know what that failure costs. Children who grow up in poverty are more likely to fall behind at school, less likely to go on to good jobs, and more likely to carry the weight of that hardship into adulthood. In England, by the time children reach the end of secondary school, those growing up in disadvantage are on average nearly 20 months behind in their learning. That is not inevitable. It is a choice - and this government is choosing differently. 

In December, we published our child poverty strategy – the most ambitious plan to tackle child poverty in a generation. It will aim to lift 550,000 children out of poverty by the final year of the parliament, the largest expected reduction in a single parliament since records began in the 1990s.

It removes the cruel two-child limit, expands free school meals to every family on universal credit, rolls out free breakfast clubs and Best Start Family Hubs, and puts more support where families need it most. 

[Bones McCoy]

This should be shared more regularly.

* You’re on a fixed tariff, which means your rates are protected against any market volatility until the end of your contract on 28 June 2026
* Your prices are actually dropping from April 1st because of the changes the government announced in the November 2025 Budget. You can find your April rates at the bottom of the email

[The Weeping Angel]

I'm not sure, just blame everything on the war and Trump, and tell people to use less petrol is going to be a vote winner as some on Bluesky suggest.