This is terribly good. Really terribly good.

#Ridge: How much has tax gone up, under the Tories, since 2019? Bim Afolami(Tory): It's difficult to calculate... SR: It's gone by £13,000 per household.... £2,000 sounds like a bit of a bargain. #politicshub

Finally someone says in a debate that Brexit has damaged the economy … 40bn out of tax receipts … abso-bloody-lutely

OK. Who did this? 🤣🤣

Reform UK plan tax cuts which they say will cost £70bn; however our analysis shows the actual cost will be at least £93bn. And their funding figures are out by £15bn+ All this means Reform UK have a total unfunded cost of at least £38bn - about two Liz Trusses.

An underrated point by Starmer and one which strikes me as authentic: There are debates that are genuinely difficult to tread. Politicians will not always get it right but their motives matter. Whether mistakes flow from a wish to be kind or from performative cruelty matters. ~AA

And for those who despite it all are still voting Tory I leave this nugget from Iain Banks

Reform has five MPs. Three used to work in the City of London (including one for Lehman Brothers). One is a property magnate. One is paid £100k a year as a GB News presenter. This is apparently a “party of the people”

Not one of Enid Blyton’s best…

Spider sees itself in a mirror for the first time x.com/visualfeastwan…

Race is a social construct, as the author Ta-Nehisi Coates says, “It’s an idea and not a fact.”

Me, learning that an old friend of the Prime Minister offered him a quiet space so that his 16 year old son could revise for his GCSEs away from the bustle of an entire media circus camped outside his window.

If Badenoch gets elected as Tory leader every Labour MP is going to have to register it as a gift

Broadcast journalists have always prized ‘follow-ups’ in print media. Given that most newspapers are now pretending that everything from *declared* gifts to Taylor Swift’s security arrangements is ‘news’ because they hope to hurt the government, we should probably have a rethink.

Richard Burgon, "In the last few days alone, Israel has burned people alive by bombing a tent camp at a hospital, killed children after bombing a school, and fired on UN peacekeepers" "Britain knows what to do, it rightly did it to Russia after its illegal invasion of Ukraine:

Why didn't you marry an English wife? Sometimes, only someone from outside the country will take on the impossible jobs....

One view: ‘The partygate scandal was overblown’ - Kemi Badenoch Another view:

I have never once, in my 45 years of living, been harassed in a bathroom by a trans female. However, I have been harassed by a man walking down the street minding my own business many, many, many, many times. Gender neutral bathrooms aren't the problem.

Trump and Vance act as if the problem is that Ukraine is resisting an ongoing Russian invasion. The problem is the ongoing Russian invasion. If they want to use American power to stop the war, apply it to the aggressor. Abusing the victim is not going to end a war of aggression.

As parent who can relate? 😅