Welp. 😳 Schools in Scotland have been open ~3-5 school days (depending on council) and we are back in vertical case growth territory (with 5th highest daily case total today). Hopefully not an ongoing trend....

TIMES: Whitehall chiefs holiday despite Afghan debacle #TomorrowsPapersToday

Planes are leaving full, are they? What is this then? Cc Henry Zeffman Carole Cadwalladr James O'Brien Ian Dunt

This is one of the clearest and most detail accounts of how Biden got this so wrong - and what the alternative’s were from CIA’s Former Counterterrorism Chief for the Region: Afghanistan was not an intelligence failure, it was something much worse - justsecurity.org/77801/cias-for…

Britain's moral compass: 'computer says no' theguardian.com/world/2021/aug…

Armed forces minister may be a bit confused about reports of an evacuation of Afghan national guards from the UK embassy Expat Gardaworld staff are being evacuated today, but the situation for the Afghan staff appears not to have changed theguardian.com/world/2021/aug…

This entirely unnecessary withdrawal has not only provoked a shameful humanitarian catastrophe, it has also given a significant victory and encouragement to Jihadist groups, right through to the Sahel

Am gonna try this on my next murder trial. I’ll naff off to Crete when we reach my closing speech, and take the verdict from my sun lounger. “You were convicted, were you? Well I don’t think one speech would have made a difference.”

Wow, are we really at the stage of throwing intelligence under the bus for political failures? justsecurity.org/77801/cias-for…

Vital eye-witness reporting by @ramsaysky @skynews of the evacuation effort at Kabul airport. “This is the worst day by far… It is boiling hot, people are queuing in their thousands… People at the front are being absolutely crushed. We believe people have died this morning”

1/ IMPORTANT #AFGHANISTAN UPDATE I managed to get through to the Afghan Citizens’ Resettlement Scheme helpline (+44) 24 7538 9980, after 4.5 hours! They are simply taking details of individuals requiring protection, namely the following details:

BREAKING: The Conservative Party's 2020 accounts, released today, disclose that Boris Johnson received a £52,802 "bridging loan" from Tory party funds in summer 2020, reimbursed by Tory donor Lord Brownlow in October 2020, & repaid by Johnson in March 2021 when details had leaked

There are global problems with producing enough of certain things (like semiconductors), and separately with moving goods BETWEEN countries. In the UK this is exacerbated by an accute shortage of, among other things, the staff required to move goods around WITHIN the country.

You won't be getting updates from me at Conservative Party Conference this week, because my press pass was "revoked". Just what are the Tories afraid of? I've been going to conferences of all parties for 20+ years. The roof didn't fall in last time I went to a Tory conference.

Honestly, if you're a trillion dollar global company and you think this is an appropriate response to a major new story coming down the wire, your problems are a whole lot bigger than you realise. x.com/fbnewsroom/sta…

I honestly don't know what to say. So Immensa was not accredited, and Jenny Harries, UKHSA and DHSC have both publicly said it was 'fully accredited'? What's going on here? Lives have almost certainly been lost because of this & govt officials are misleading the public.

The Immensa scandal continues to astound me. Details not yet in the public domain will doubtless come out eventually. It’s by some distance the worst ****-up this year, and that’s against some stiff competition.

Picking/Packing - A Thread. We've all seen the The Telegraph and the £30 an hour claim. This is bollocks! So here is a thread to give the reality a little bit of airing. This applies as much to packing eggs as picking fruit/veg. So as you all know, I have plenty of experience here

BRUSSELS (AP) -- Imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny wins the European Union's top human rights prize.

At least 15 MPs letting homes and renting another on expenses bbc.in/3qvKwrx