[The Weeping Angel]

This is beyond a joke. I wonder if they really are about to shift to "this is Ed Davey's moment". (Ed was a good minister, and I want him to wipe out the Tories, but given his new base, he's hardly going to be taxing Surrey to fund Grimsby).

Here's the headline they came up with today when you'd think the free school meals were enough of a story.

Free school meals extended but winter fuel changes could tax dead pensioners’ families

As one of the sane ones BTL points out, tax issues like this, with bad "optics", are nothing new. And can't we wait for the budget? I've seen even one of the better columnists say "the problem is it wasn't a clean U-turn". Well, it's certainly a problem if you keep going on about it all the time, yeah.

I mean, you think the Guardian might be happy about news like this. Maybe they're laying the groundwork for Labour's Austerity next week.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Fuck my old brown boots. The world is in chaos, there is genocide and rising fascism and the Guardian comes up with this:

You be the judge: should my husband stop slapping food on my plate so artlessly?
Lynsey likes to see a carefully prepared dinner but husband Jim just wants speed and efficiency. You get to dish the dirt on the guilty party

My husband of 25 years, Jim, doesn’t cook often, but when he does the presentation is shocking. It’s a running joke in our household. When I cook – which is most of the time, because I enjoy it – I take time to present things properly. Everything looks orderly and is nicely arranged. But with Jim, it’s a case of just throwing everything on the plate. My meal will look as if it’s just lost a bar fight. It’s a mess.

I am usually out working late when Jim cooks, so I do really appreciate coming home to a cooked dinner. But presentation is not his forte. The peas will be in the gravy, and the sausages will be precariously placed on top of the mash and the vegetables.

I like everything to be separate on the plate so you can see what you’re eating and really enjoy it.

A paper of record...
That sound you can hear isthe corpse of CP Scott rotating.

[Andy McDandy]

And anyway, you don't get to dish the dirt - that's what the wife (who absolutely does exist) is doing that to her husband.

You get to dump shit on them, perhaps.

[soulboy]

As my Dad would say 'You gonna eat it or paint it?"

[Youngian]

He serves up peas, what a bastard.

[kreuzberger]

Some weirdo with flowers at an airport, an AI piece about baseline kitchen hygiene which is frankly absurd, and then an interview with the towering intellect and smouldering beauty that is Fiona Hill.

They seem to have lost their journalistic marbles / compass / minds (delete as appropriate) today. Meanwhile, the BBC is in full sackcloth and ashes mode, after their Reflux heroes only managed third place amongst the Sash-singers of Larkhall.

The entire news landscape is royally fucked.

[Youngian]

Meanwhile, the BBC is in full sackcloth and ashes mode, after their Reflux heroes only managed third place amongst the Sash-singers of Larkhall.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Increasing taxes, spending, investment and borrowing is "austerity" apparently. Oppose cuts within that fiscal expansion, by all means, but "austerity" is complete bollocks.


https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... armer-cuts

[Tubby Isaacs]

Where might people have got the impression of austerity from?

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... -austerity

Does Labour’s spending review signal a return to austerity?

[Tubby Isaacs]

I don't get this attitude at all. Given the progress made with electric vehicles, what exactly is the opposition here based on now? We don't need any roads anywhere? We've built the perfect number of roads already, or perhaps too many? Are we allowed to improve/repair bits of road we've already got? There's a billion pounds in the budget that does exactly that for existing infrastructure around it. The habit of taking headline project costs and talking like it's just building a short section of road/track is pretty annoying and won't help George get the stuff he wants built. If the Lower Thames Crossing is just a new section of road, Crossrail (which I assume he supported) is just a couple of tunnels.

Obviously, you want to encourage public transport round towns and cities, but this is a strategic route that will serve lots of freight that we export to our biggest market, something most of us are keen to do more of. As ever, no sense there might be costs in freight being stuck by the Dartford Crossing. And (as is the way with these things) a lot of the cost will be raised by tolls. It's in the South East but calling it "spending for London", as he does BTL, is a bit misleading.

Talking of freight options, some people had the rather clever idea of moving a lot more of it by rail. This was to be done by building a dedicated line for fast passenger services, and creating loads more capacity on the existing lines. Monbiot didn't like this "transport option" either.

And this is capital investment. Transforming bus services mostly isn't. So the £9.2bn wouldn't be available for it.

[Andy McDandy]

Hell, if you're transporting a steady supply of non-perishable goods, why not use canals and barges?

Monbiot has very strong "no, not like that" energy.

[Tubby Isaacs]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... -der-leyen

Europe should be standing up to Trump and Putin – instead it is mirroring them

This is quite a strange article. 74% public support for EU membership is taken as a mandate for the policies the author supports. If the public wanted those policies, presumably they'd have elected some different people both to their national governments and the European Parliament. Hardly a mystery that the EU, with more right-wingers in member state governments, might become more rightwing. He seems to be suggesting that the EU is going against popular will but it's always worked this way, through the member state governments.

The idea that Europe is at all comparable with Trump on climate change is absolute nonsense anyway. And though I'm obviously no fan of the EPP, launching an inquiry into NGOs falls some way short of Trump too.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Hell, if you're transporting a steady supply of non-perishable goods, why not use canals and barges?

Monbiot has very strong "no, not like that" energy.

See also his attitude to house building. He's very strongly opposed to making it easier to build, but then moans about how much infrastructure costs.

Was it wrong to build the Dartford Crossing, one wonders? Or the M25? Or perhaps all these exporters could just move to Medway, save us the traffic.

[Tubby Isaacs]

This is quite funny.

16 June- "Labour cutting farming budget in England by £100m a year, figures shows
Nature and farmers’ groups cautiously welcome spending review as there were fears Treasury wanted bigger cuts"

Where might they have got that impression?

28 May- "Sources at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) confirmed the post-Brexit farming fund will be severely cut in the review on 11 June."

The Guardian seems to go out of its way to be unhelpful to the Government, but it's inadvertently done a cracking job on expectation management for them here.

By the way, farmers will also be able to apply for money from the wider Nature Restoration Fund. That's money that can't be spend again on something else, but the lack of support for nature on farms may have been somewhat exaggerated.