Journalist covering politics and public services. Not a tribalist No longer posting on this Nazi-led sex abuse site - on Bluesky now
London
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Just dropping back here to say that I've launched a substack/newsletter covering housing, welfare, health and care services, education, poverty and inequality - and the politics around them
it's free for the time being at least - sign up here! chamindajayanetti.substack.c…
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Boris fans really are far angrier at anyone criticising the government than they are at Britain having possibly the highest death toll in Europe.
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can't get over how thick you have to be to carry illegal drugs in a fucking airport
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Also - my main reaction to Tory MPs closing ranks to protect Owen Paterson over his financial conflicts of interest, is that numerous Tory MPs are balls-deep in similar financial conflicts of interest.
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Literally the only thing Time magazine does that anybody gives a shit about is the covers
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Extraordinary comments by Nigel Farage getting lost amid the noise: he is lobbying EU governments (possibly Italy) to *veto* any British govt request to extend A50 so as to force a No Deal Brexit on March 29.
That's Farage lobbying foreign govts to oppose Britain's parliament
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Imagine the sheer anti climax of being an American Taylor Swift fan and convincing yourself you’re about to meet actual Taylor Swift and then you discover it’s just some guy called Rishi Sunak who apparently is this month’s British prime minister
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This is an almost perfect metaphor for Brexit bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-he…
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The Tories are lost because every part of their ideology has failed.
Commentary on the leadership race has focused on the candidates, but their fundamental problem is that their entire worldview has collapsed
By me, for Bloomberg - £ but screengrabs: 🧵
bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…
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There is no computer powerful enough to measure my contempt for Suella Braverman. Not a single redeeming feature to her. Not one.
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OK now it's clear Sadiq Khan has won a third term, a few thoughts.
First, Susan Hall was a terrible candidate. She'd have made a terrible mayor, but in addition she too right wing, too implausible and too nuts to win in London. This election was winnable, but not by her.
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What Sunak has said about funding for poorer areas is what every single Tory MP knows happened and was happy to happen. It was never hidden and has been reported many times. Sunak just put it more crudely than Tories would like people to hear
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Got to respect Suella Braverman running for the leadership, thereby confirming there really are no exceptions to the rule that things can always get worse
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Just belatedly occurred to me, re Allsopp's bollocks yesterday, that if all young renters squeezed their non-essential spending in a quixotic attempt to save for an unachievable housing deposit, it would absolutely fuck whole sections of the economy
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Apsana Begum pays her own rent.
Neil O’Brien claims £2,500 a month in taxpayer funded expenses to pay his.
MPs earn a good salary and should not take up council housing
dailymail.co.uk/news/article…
Community note
Only MPs for non-London constituencies can claim expenses for housing costs, to allow them to attend Parliament. They are expected to pay for their accommodation in their own constituencies themselves. Begum represents a London constituency, O'Brien does not.
theipsa.org.uk/freedom-of-inf
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Fishermen are now discovering what the DUP discovered in 2019 and London cabbies discovered after 2012: Boris Johnson will always, always, always throw you under a bus the moment it suits him
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Kevin Hollinrake here, who once lived in a castle that he sold for millions of pounds, was one of the highest claimers of MPs’ rent expenses in 2020, part-owns five rental properties, and is a significant shareholder in a ‘lettings and estate agency franchising group’
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🚨 NON-PHILIP NEWS🚨
This might be one of the most insane stories I've ever covered
📢 Tory MPs are billing £20,000+ of their rent to the taxpayer
📢 while making money RENTING OUT properties they own
📢 AND cutting housing benefit for the poorest theguardian.com/politics/202…
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This, of course, is why Starmer didn't spend the last 18 months demanding the prime minister's resignation
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NEW: The DWP is rejecting a record high of 90% of PIP disability benefit appeals
Those who then take their appeal to tribunal have an 80% success rate
Campaigners say the DWP is ignoring legal rulings in order to reject appeals
By me, for @BigIssue bigissue.com/news/social-jus…
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Well that is a catastrophic misjudgement by Labour in Chingford. Absolute self-detonation by Labour HQ
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So basically the story of the local elections was people asking "who do I have to vote for here to get the Tories out?" and voting accordingly
I don't think the national story need be any more complicated than that
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damn, what happened in 2010
Some people have responded to that chart with "That can’t be right", or "We can’t be worse than America".
I’m afraid the chart is right. 15 years ago the UK’s record on homelessness *was* not too dissimilar to other developed countries, but things have rapidly deteriorated.
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If Robbie Gibb thinks Jess Brammar is too political for the BBC (where she used to work), god knows how he'll react to finding out the BBC's head of political programming until 2017 was a massive Tory who left to become head of comms for a Tory PM.
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lmao Greenwich council has ordered the *complete demolition* of the two newly built - and occupied - Mast Quay Phase II tower blocks and "the restoration of the land to its former condition" because the developer deviated from the agreed planning permission *26 times*:
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The calmness in her voice is the calmness of someone whose sense of entitlement has been serviced throughout her life
“I would like a pardon from the President of the United States.”
Dallas area realtor Jenna Ryan is the 2nd D.C. riot participant to ask for one. She flew on a private jet to D.C. to “stop the steal.” FBI arrested her today. She says: I feel persecuted.
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BREAKING: The High Court has ruled the government's consultation into plans to slash billions of pounds from disability benefits claimants was unlawful
The case was brought by Ellen Clifford
Full report coming
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While I wait to fall asleep, some thoughts on the election results.
Labour achieving such a giant majority without increasing its vote share in England or Wales from its catastrophic 2019 defeat is extraordinary. It does not follow that this was mere accident or luck, however
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Basketball probably one of the most underwhelming spectator sports. Promises much but 99% of the time delivers absolutely nothing. Up one end, basket. Up the other end, basket. Rinse. Repeat.
American sports are truly dreadful.
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The Summer Olympics ought to be awarded to Tokyo again in the 2030s. They took many risks to make the games happen at doubtless great expense, and managed to make them go off with barely a hitch in the end - but the Japanese couldn’t attend. They deserve to get to do it properly.
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That alcohol restricted zone? You mean this one? Loads of them around the country. Imposed by councils to prevent 'anti-social behaviour'. Nothing to do with religion.
But you know that, of course. Because you're a journalist who does his research. towerhamlets.gov.uk/Document…
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What's playing out in the Commons is utter madness. We don't even know what the new scoring criteria will be when the new scoring system comes in.
There's not a single MP, including the secretary of state, including the prime minister, who knows what they're actually voting on
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The first one to go bust was Tory Northamptonshire, but why would facts matter when you wrote Boris Johnson’s manifesto
Those councils that have actually gone bust - Birmingham, Liverpool, Woking, Slough, Thurrock, Croydon, Nottingham etc - do tend to have been hideously mismanaged, or made very stupid bets. (And to have been run by Labour...)
Community note
At the time of their bankruptcies, Thurrock and Woking were run by the Conservatives.
amp.theguardian.com/society/2023/m…
amp.theguardian.com/politics/2023/…
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The police were in the restaurant!!
THE POLICE. WERE IN. THE RESTAURANT!!!
WHAT is the POINT of the Met Police.
The woman who was assaulted in @NandosUK Stratford speaks out
Cc ( zahra_etc )
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This is brain meltingly stupid. Delay it til when - til it takes us closer to the GE? Til it becomes an issue at the next mayoral election? The impact of ULEZ expansion will likely be less than feared, so surely the objective is get it done fast
New: Labour sources tell @nicholaswatt that a delegation of Labour MPs and candidates in Outer London and the wider region are to ask Sadiq Khan to pause the extension of ULEZ – the charges for polluting vehicles.
#Newsnight | bbc.in/44xVRIT
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It’s not surprising Farage is throwing a strop, because this might be the first time a right wing newspaper has properly gone after him in twenty years
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this idiotic Tory campaign graphic would actually have made sense if they'd made it about Farage
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I see it's another day where we pretend Dominic Cummings is some kind of 4D philosopher king rather than just another bog standard right wing sociopath whose hordes of physics PhDs magically settled on the following strategy for Vote Leave: bash immigrants
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If I was to take an early punt, I’d say at the next election Labour will win a bigger vote share but fewer seats
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The press coverage will brush over this for obvious reasons, but the constant thread through everything Harry said was that the tabloid press, is a mafia protection racket based on gangsterism and threats. That was the story of Diana and it’s the underlying story now.
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Private Eye has found that that 281,000 PIP claimants *already in paid work* stand to lose out under the proposed cuts (i.e the four-point rule)
That's 55% of all PIP claimants in paid work, according to the article
(not my article but I want to flag it)
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Just try and comprehend how utterly addled with Spectator brainworms you have to be to seriously consider the prospect of the England football manager being a propagator of something called 'deep Woke'
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'Boris is a social liberal if you ignore all his policies' is the school of social liberalism that amounts to 'I did some weed at Oxford but black kids should be jailed if I think they look dodge'
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“Residents want their hotel back” is the kind of thing MPs come out with when they’re focused on clipping soundbites for social media. This has aged atrociously.
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Roflmao at another country worried about 'unskilled' immigration *from* Britain.
What goes around...
(image h/t @dijdowell; snark is my own)
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If you think the people running the education department from 2010-2014 - Michael Gove and Dominic Cummings - didn't properly invest in schools in 'white working class' areas because they were worried about white privilege and critical race theory.... you are lying.
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Up to half of all children and teenagers referred to mental health services in the runup to the pandemic were left without proper support, with years-long waiting lists and children denied support unless they're suicidal.
By me, for the Observer
theguardian.com/society/2021…
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So much political commentary in Britain actually boils down to using outright obfuscation to pretend racists are not racists, liars are not liars, and cunts are not cunts.
EU migrants have been able to “treat the UK as if it’s part of their own country” for too long, Boris Johnson said yesterday as he reprised the core message of Vote Leave’s 2016 EU referendum campaign. thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/…
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A 75-year-old cancer patient had her treatment wrongly delayed for months because the NHS demanded £150,000 from her first.
Her doctor wrote to Matt Hancock asking him to step in - but to no avail.
By me, for the Observer theguardian.com/society/2019…
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If only he'd spent the last year pretending Covid isnt real, the Spectator would have given him his own column
Just heard @spectator are planning to run a story on me tomorrow about how I have benefitted commercially in the last 18 months…To clarify, I don’t need to partner with brands. I partner because I want to progress the work I do off the pitch and…(1)
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if Labour can't win a seat cos of Count Binface then I don't think it was onto a winner there
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it's utterly incredible that this bunch of useless overpaid clowns with philosophy degrees from Poshdick University are using Angela Rayner listing a bunch of broadly popular policies as an *attack advert*
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She used to be part of Brendan O'Neill's gang, in case you're wondering what stage of outright abusive fuckery we're onto now. theguardian.com/world/2020/j…
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NEW: The DWP is rejecting more than 40% of applications for PIP disability benefit from people with multiple sclerosis, cerebral palsy and arthritis – and one in four applications from amputees
By me, for the Observer 👇theguardian.com/society/arti…
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NEW: The DWP has admitted it launched a consultation on disability benefit cuts – that it framed as helping disabled people into work – despite having made no estimate of how many disabled people would actually find work as a result
By me, for @BigIssue: bigissue.com/news/social-jus…
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I've found 42 cases where Tory MPs are billing their own rent to the taxpayer while at the same time renting out housing for at least £10,000 a year
Sixteen of them are renting out housing in London itself theguardian.com/politics/202…
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I mean obviously this is the worst show on TV, but the Lib Dems now have 72 MPs and don't have an invite, while blowhard narcissist Konstantin Kisin does.
This Thursday on Question Time, Fiona will be joined in Rotherham by Douglas Alexander, Damian Green, Steve Rigby, Ash Sarkar, and Konstantin Kisin
Would you like to be in this week's audience? Apply here: bit.ly/3PKVLIP
#bbcqt
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First, the rap sheet. This is the legacy of 14 years of Tory rule. Nothing works, because nothing they did worked, because none of it could ever work because they were fundamentally wrong, or at best incoherent:
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Sue Gray realised late that her report has to be submitted both by email and in a bound hard copy, and while in the queue at Rymans she double checked the instructions and discovered the reference to double-spacing
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Another *big* loss to the BBC, which is looking distinctly unable to hold on to key journalists
*Bit of news of my own today*
I’m delighted to say in September I’ll be joining Global, as co-host of @maitlis and @jonsopel’s new daily news podcast and Analysis and Investigations Editor for the whole network. My brief will be to supercharge the organisation’s video output.
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It's as if the health and care systems have been turned into 'just in time', skin-of-their-teeth production models by a bunch of privileged idiots advised by bullshit merchants for ten years, and now they're about to be hit by something that never appeared in a Lynton Crosby grid
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tbf it's very thoughtful of them to give housing ministers the same security of tenure as the average privately-renting tenant
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And, for all I criticise Sadiq for mediocrity and lack of impact, he took a political gamble with ULEZ expansion and faced down attacks from both Tories and - after the Uxbridge by-election - from Labour briefings by apparatchiks who should have known better. That is leadership.
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The Daily Mail dumped the sentencing of Jo Cox's murderer on page 30.
Next to an article on how the murderer thought his council house might be taken by immigrants.
The then-editor of that newspaper is now the government's reported first choice to run the broadcast regulator.
If you had told me a decade ago that a Labour MP would be murdered by a fascist and it would change almost nothing about the way our politics is conducted, or the ends it deems legitimate, I would have struggled to believe you. But here we are.
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the funniest thing would be if the Tories have so many resignations, so few willing candidates and so little time to pick them that they can't even stand candidates in every seat - but they still don't pick Seb Payne
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Labour's support is broad but shallow - that means its coming victory will be unusually big, but its eventual defeat could be unusually bad.
By me, for Bloomberg (paywalled, but thread below)
bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…
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One other thing re Cummings - there's one big transformational policy I can think of where the department in charge was taken over by data geeks and agile chatterboxes and 'test and learn' evangelists.
It's Universal Credit and it's a crock of shit.
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Waiting for the London result has comprehensively won the argument for counting and declaring general election results overnight
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The DWP has admitted it expects 70,000 more people to lose disability benefits under its planned cuts than previously disclosed
In total, the DWP predicts 440,000 disabled people will lose their existing PIP daily living benefit
By me, for Big Issue
bigissue.com/news/social-jus…
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Fully 70% of appeals against government decisions regarding the PIP disability benefit are upheld at tribunal...
...underlining just how badly those disability benefit assessments are carried out.
By me, for @BylineTimes
bylinetimes.com/2022/02/03/h…
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oh thank you very much for noticing 13 years too late, nick
🚨 Austerity update 🚨
"With hindsight we probably should have taken advantage [of low interest rates] and borrowed more when times were more stable...and invested more."
Former HMT permanent secretary (05-16) Nicholas Macpherson on Radio 4 Analysis ... bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001r7…
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Labour seats they would have lost if they'd backed Brexit this time: Putney, Canterbury, Portsmouth S, Bristol NW, Weaver Vale, Battersea, Enfield Southgate, Bermondsey, Leeds NW, Cardiff N, Bedford, Coventry S, Warwick, Plymouth Sutton, Sheffield Hallam, Newport W, Reading E...
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Penny Mordaunt will blatantly let the coronation go to her head, make it her 'brand', make naff riffs on it in parliament, run again for the leadership with "crown Penny as your Queen" or "slaying our enemies with the sword of truth" or something similarly terrible, lose again...
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In highly sensitive moments, public figures, and political figures in particular, are under some kind of obligation not to go completely batshit insane
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They always find the most expensive way possible to achieve the least amount imaginable
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This is the level of knowledge you need to be a media talking head.
He was talking about Neymar moving from Barcelona to PSG. Thicker than constipated pigshit.
Media 'debates' are an idiocracy of sociopaths.
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Labour has spent over two years freaking out about how to win the support of "working people"
Now there's a cost of living crisis caused by external factors and the Tories are telling "working people" to take the hit in their pay packets and Labour... doesn't know what to say
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lol
when Americans laugh at Britain for having a monarchy, you have the constitutional right to punch them in the face
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I just want to see a dark timeline where post-election the Lib Dems somehow end up in coalition and massively betray everyone again just to see how these campaign stunts get remembered afterwards
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