Many newspapers have given us a look at the situation the Labour Party finds itself in.
Reading in The Guardian, we might say congratulations to Sir Kier Starmer for managing to create another no-win scenario. Star Trek fans will know this as a Kobayashi Maru. In fact this is more of a Star Wars story because it's all about a rebellion.
At least 108 Labour MPs have promised to rebel and vote down the Government's welfare reform bill. That's a lot. You can't threaten to remove the whip from that many of your MPs. That way you could shrink yourself down to the third smallest party in the house.
That opens up outcome 1: What if Labour lost this? While it's not a confidence, vote situation the level of embarrassment could be a political puncture under the plimsoll line.
Thankfully for Keir outcome 1 isn't likely. It would take all the rebels and the opposition to actually oppose and that's not what's on the cards.
The front page of The Telegraph we see that Kemi Badenoch has offered to back the PM to get this bill through. It comes with conditions but they're actually a trap. She said she'd lend her party's votes as long as Labour promised to bring down the welfare bill and to promise no make tax increases.
The first one is something Labour go on about all the time, so of course they'll agree to that. But if they agree to the second it'll be a rod that is used to beat them. All signs are looking like there will need to be some form of tax increase. If Labour does this, at the moment, it goes against what it promised in their manifesto. If Kemi can get another promise out of them there's more weight to add to the attack that will happen every Wednesday in Prime Minister's Questions.
That makes outcome 2 a win with the support of the Tories, which is a trap-filled political embarrassment.
Outcome 3 is winning the vote without Tory help but it still leaves so many backbenchers at odds with the party. The story of recent UK party politics is all about dealing with the divisions within the party. The pro/anti-Europe sections of the Tories eventually led to the Brexit vote, which regardless of your thoughts on the results, we can all say it didn't heal the rift for the Conservatives. It's slowly evolved into the Reform UK issue.
Labour is dealing with the pragmatists, of which Keir Starmer seems to be one, and the ideologues. Without the pragmatic element you have a Jeremy Corbyn world where you end up saying, “Well, we lost the election but we won the argument.” That's great if you were in a sixth form debate but you have to realise you were in an election, so winning it was the goal. It's like saying, “Well, we lost that game of foot ball, but we did really well at eating the pieces of orange.”
Pragmatism should be the solution but Keir Starmer seems to have found an extreme version of it where he ignores the feelings of those with ideals. It's true that you don't “need” to worry about it while you have a huge majority but that doesn't last forever.
It's led to bad execution of good ideas. Millionaire pensioners don't need to have the taxpayer helping out with their gas bills, so means testing the winter fuel allowance is a good idea. However, they manage to execute it by hitting pensioners on £14k a year.
If there is a loophole letting rich people use farms to cheat the inheritance tax system find a way to fix it without hitting all farmers.
If there's an issue with the investigation into grooming gangs don't dismiss it because you think you can, only to later do what people were asking for.
It now looks like there will be a compromise. Of course. That was outcome 4 which was the only one left all along. The lesson here is to explore your outcomes in reverse order and maybe, just maybe, try to do the right thing without causing yourself all that damage.
I have often said that toiletries are the worst gift but that was before a new one hit the market. American actress Sydney Sweeney is selling bars of soap infused with her actual bathwater.
I don’t know a lot about the process of making soap. I have seen Fight Club but I’m guessing she process is a little more artisanal. In fact I’m fairly sure she doesn’t do any of it herself. She’s teamed up with a soap company, Dr. Squatch, to make a limited edition called “Sydney’s Bathwater Bliss”. Sadly, for anyone wanting to stock up, there were only five thousand bars made.
I remember the days when if you wanted to be the kind of dirty old man who got all hot under the collar about a young woman’s bath water you had to do it on the sly. You’d have had to sneak in and scoop a cup before it swirled down the plughole. These days, like everything, you just click ‘add to basket’.
The Sydney soap sold out in seconds, proving that there is no limit to what people will buy if it has even the faintest whiff of fame attached to it. Maybe “whiff” is the wrong word. I’m sure it smells like soap. She’s not Gwyneth Paltrow.
Each bar only contains a few droplets of her bathwater. I’m fairly sure you wouldn’t notice their presence. Maybe you could find traces of her DNA, so if you’re planning on framing Sydney for a crime this could be the purchase you’re looking for. But if you want to feel that you have somehow bathed with her, you’re not hitting the mark.
The soap has a few traces of her bathwater but thanks to our water companies your own tap water probably has traces of some sewage, so they cancel out.
Sense and logic probably aren’t the main motivating forces behind these purchases. There has been such high demand that the bars are now available on eBay costing thousands. For that much money you could probably have a bath with an actual actress.
Ingredients also include exfoliating sand and pine bark extract. I would have suggested verbena, pomegranate maybe even a little vanilla. Basically anything that’s edible given that I’m sure a few of the guys that buy it will be licking it.
While this news story makes me despair for the future of humanity and proves we’re more fame and sex obsessed than ever before, there’s one part of me that’s happy about it. If this means more people are buying and using soap, my trips on public transport could be slightly nicer.
Do you have your apocalypse plan ready? I have to admit I don’t, but I also haven’t sorted out my pension, so that shouldn’t come as a surprise. In fact, not being ready for the apocalypse might mean I won’t have to worry about reaching my pension years, so maybe it’ll all work out.
Professor Tim Lang, a professor of food policy, has told the government we should be ready in case our computers get hacked, Russia attacks, or something else horrible happens.
The coronavirus pandemic was good training. We all know how to panic-buy like we’re in the Supermarket Sweep final. Tim, however, thinks there’s one group that needs special consideration. He said we need to think about vegans when catering for the apocalypse.
I think that means we’re misunderstanding what an apocalypse is. I agree that vegans need to be catered for when you invite them to a dinner party. The onus is on you to ensure you have the right food if you’re hosting on a Saturday night.
But if you’re living in a barren, post-apocalyptic dystopia where we have to get by on scraps, I think we all have a responsibility to be less picky. I don’t like green olives, but if the alternative was not eating that month, I’d probably shut up about it.
If we’re in an underground bunker and I share my meagre rations with you, I don’t expect you to look at the ingredients list and say, “Oh, there’s gelatin in this?” in a judgemental way.
Professor Tim Lang said that if people are “in psychological shock, they need to have things they are familiar and comfortable with.” I agree, but when you’re hunting with a sharpened broomstick for food, it’s less about comfort.
If the apocalypse we’re facing is a zombie one, I note that if you get caught and turned into a zombie, you’ll be eating brains. No one stays vegan through the whole apocalypse, one way or another.
I know it’s a common trope for comedians to mock vegans, and I respect the lifestyle during times of plenty. But when things get really bad, you might have to rethink your priorities rather than expect everyone to help you through Armageddon.
I feel sorry for people with gluten intolerance. They’re often grouped with vegans in the category of “difficult people to have around for dinner,” yet they don’t get a mention in the guidance given to ministers. They’ll have to spend their apocalypse feeling gassy and bloated while the vegans get special treatment.
In the end, apocalypse or not, we’re all just trying to survive – vegans, the gluten-free and olive-haters alike.
There has been a lot of talk about e-gates recently. With closer ties to the European Union, could it be possible for the British traveller to land without having to queue up with the rest of the world?
I don’t know why we’re so bothered. We Brits are famously good at queuing, so the international arrivals gate is a chance to show off what we can do. It might catch on, and everyone could learn how to queue. It would be our greatest gift to the world.
I’m not sure I’d benefit from the e-gate access. I have the kind of generic face that causes problems with airport facial recognition software. Even I’ll admit I look like every e-fit of a thug you see in newspapers, so it’s no wonder the system wants to run a few checks before it lets me in.
Even if we get this special gate access I think I may never fly again. Another change to aviation was mooted this week. Some plane manufacturers have looked at two-tier seating. That sounds like I’m going to make a comment about Sir Keir Starmer’s legal system. As if I would!
It’s not even a plan to have two levels like a double-decker bus. The plan is to have alternate rows of seats set at different heights. Obviously the motivation behind this isn’t about the passengers’ comfort; it’s about finding a way to cram more people in to make more money for the company. If they could have us lying in tubes, head to feet like the grandparents in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, they would.
There was instant pushback. Many people have spotted that if the seat part of one row is at the eye-level of the row behind it, you have a direct path to the wind of the person in front. It’s not an idle threat because the slightly lower air pressure while at high altitude means we’re all more likely to have a little bottom burp. If you’re sitting on the lower row, that will be what you’re breathing. You’ll be praying for the oxygen mask to drop to get you a break.
Due to denser air sinking, the people on the bottom row really get the worst of it.
It will earn the companies more money, but they will have to spend more on the sick bags we all get through.
In researching this I learned that air on a plane is recycled, so even without these seats you’re breathing in the gaseous output of everyone else on that flight. This two-tier seating system simply speeds it up. Now that’s progress.
While the USA gets to boast about the first American pope we in the UK get to claim a different victory. A British lady named Ethel Caterham is now officially the oldest person in the world.
Ethel is 115, but doesn’t look a day over 105. As always happens in these news stories, Ethel was asked what the secret to living such a long life is.
Her advice is to never argue with anyone. That feels like it is good advice if you live in a time where duelling is common. Most of my rows these days are with conspiracy theorists on social media and very few are resolved with actual combat, so I think I’m safe.
The actual secret to being the world’s oldest person is being a woman. We gents never get to win that one or even get on the medal podium. It’s basically genetics but we don’t like that answer.
The news loves to ask these superannuated people their secret to old age and they always say something about drinking every day or eating whatever you want. If those behaviours made you live longer do you now how many 100-year-olds there’d be? The postal service would collapse under the strain of all the royal telegrams.
On her 115th birthday, Ms Caterham received not just a telegram but a letter from the King congratulating her on a "truly remarkable milestone". I don’t know if she’ll get one every year now but eventually she’ll get bored and think, “This could’ve been an email.”
She was born on the 21st of August 1909, which means she is the last surviving subject of Edward VII. She must have lost count of how many Prime Ministers she’s lived though, although thanks to the last Government a lot of us did.
The new record has been confirmed by Guinness World Records and LongeviQuest, a database of the world's oldest people. It is impressive but one news source pointed out she lived through the sinking of the Titanic, World War One, the Russian Revolution, the Great Depression and World War Two. She wasn’t on the Titanic so it’s just a coincidence that these things happened concurrently with her.
By the same logic I lived through two Iraq wars and Brighton’s West Pier burning down and yet I look quite good considering.
But Ethel is right. Maybe not the secret to a long life but to a happy life is not arguing with people. Her full answer was, "Never arguing with anyone, I listen and I do what I like."
However long we’re here for, that is a good way to live your life.
Recent years may have made you afraid of a certain part of the English language. There are some words that can land you in trouble and I am talking about pronouns.
They were the part of speech that no one paid attention to. If you’d already used someone’s name, instead of repeating that name again and again like someone in sales who’d been on a neurolinguistic programming course, you’d say him or her and we’d all know who you meant.
Then pronouns became the front line of a gender war between JK Rowling and most of the cast of her films. The message was that pronouns were the most important part of speech. You simply had to ask people what their pronouns were.
The latest confusing breakthrough is that a UK university has now issued new guidance to students saying that should not ask people what their pronouns are as it could be offensive.
Just to recap, asking about pronouns is offensive and not asking is offensive. Good luck out there.
Liverpool University has told students that asking someone what their pronouns are could put them under pressure to reveal their gender when they don’t want to.
Let’s remember that no one asking about this stuff is how use used to live for centuries, so I think we’d cope.
If I am honest, I’m such a stickler for grammar I don’t even understand how that conversation would go. If someone asked me what my pronouns are I’d have to answer, “I and me, because that’s how pronouns work.”
They’d say, “No, I mean what pronouns should I use about you?”
I’d say, “You and you. They are the second person objective and subjective pronouns. You could use thou and thee if you really wanted. You’d sound a little odd but I get the feeling that’s not worrying you.”
They’d say, in an annoyed tone, “No, I mean what pronouns should I use about you when I am talking to someone else? Third person pronouns.”
To which I would honestly say, “I don’t care. I won’t be there, will I?”
It’s a shame this grammar question can’t be separated from the gender issue. I think if someone wished to tell you that they feel like they are a certain gender, whether you understand it or not you can accept that they feel that way.
The pronoun side of this is where you seek to control how others speak, and that’s where the friction starts.
I’m not even good at remembering people’s names let alone their pronouns. So use my solution, refer to everyone as chief and hope they don’t notice.
We need to grow up when it comes to spicy food. New research has found that we’re now nation of brave eaters of really spicy food and Gen Z are leading the way.
I remember what it like to be young, just about. I went to university in Birmingham and we all went through that predictable phase of competing with my fellow students to see who could stomach the hottest balti dish in the famous region of restaurants. What did the ultimate winner get? Possibly the respect of his or her peers but definitely a tricky morning lecture the next day.
The researchers are calling this a Scoville shift, which sounds like what you had to nip out of that lecture to do. The Scoville scale is the way we measure how hot a spicy food is. The problem with having a scale is that people start to think more is better rather than finding the optimum spot.
Forty per cent of adults and sixty per cent of Gen Zs consider themselves “braver” when it comes to trying spicy food. Why would you want to eat a food that requires bravery? No one says, “Leave some of those toothpicks in those pineapple chunks on sticks. I’m feeling brave tonight.”
It’s worth remembering that the hotness of a spicy food isn’t a flavour or taste. It’s pain. The capsaicin reacts with pain receptors in your mouth. Flavour is detected by your nose. Taste is detected by your taste buds but spiciness works on the same system that knows if you’ve stood on Lego.
Save money by grasping a drawing pin while you have a bland sandwich.
I understand it is a little strange that I used to be one of these food masochists. All of those times having to take a break from my late night carry while I sweat, all of those times trying to drink the mint yoghurt from the starers and now I know it was pointless.
Don’t get me wrong. I still enjoy a pathia or madras but I know that’s my level. I don’t order a vindaloo to show off.
The same research found that forty-six percent of us feel “space shame” when ordering a milder dish than the people we’re eating with. To those people I say, no, you shouldn’t feel pressure to burn your innards just because other people do.
You don’t need to order food from the top of the Scoville scale if you want to feel pain during your restaurant trip. Thanks to recent inflation just order some drinks and wait till you see the bill. You’ll be crying in no time.
The French have issued what they are calling a “survival manual”, which I thought was the name of their president. You can see how an idiot would get those mixed up.
It’s a 20-page booklet that outlines a range of safety measures people should take in event of both military and natural disasters. It’s good to be prepared.
The French government has denied that the three-part booklet is being produced because of the threat from Russia. OK, who is it you’re worried about then? Are there any other countries that are doing a lot of invading of late?
If you were being mean you might point out that it’s no surprise France’s response to military invasion is printed on some very useful white paper, but I’m not going down that angle. Let’s see what we can learn from the French advice.
The information says that in the event of a nuclear disaster you should lock your doors. I think they have underestimated how small neutrons are. Simply locking the doors and closing the curtains won’t keep the radiation out. Maybe it’s for a different reason. When you’re in the middle of dealing with nuclear fallout you don’t want the nosey neighbours popping round.
It also suggests putting together a survival kit that should include six litres of water, a dozen tins of food, batteries and a torch. This being France it will also include bread, butter, a basic beef stock and some red wine.
Surely we all already have more tinned food than we will even need thanks to the pandemic. I can’t be the only one who ran out, bought all the cans of anything I could find, only to realise that Just Eat was still working and I made my way through the lockdown with takeaways. For some reason, given a choice between opening that tin of ill looking new potatoes or having a pizza always went the same way.
A spokesman from the French prime minister said: “The purpose of this document is to ensure the resilience of populations in the face of all types of crisis, whether natural, technological, cyber or security-related.”
It’s a wake-up call that cyber has to be included in that list these days. We’re so reliant on computers and people like Elon are releasing AI into the world so we have to have a first aid kit ready, just in case.
I wish the UK would do one too. I know what I am like. In the event of a national disaster I’d be sat there Googling for a YouTube explainer on what to do next. And they’ll all be in French.
I like it when I can do a post that gives useful advice and this might be as close as I get. Are you worried about crime? Do you fear having your home broken into? Well, a police force has issued some advice that I thought I'd pass on.
Do some gardening. That's what you should be doing to deter the criminals. If you have certain types of shrubs in your garden you can put people off. It's basically one step away from telling you to get a moat.
The advice, in the form of a leaflet, goes into enough detail to tell you which plant varieties to get. Is this a police force or Ground Force? I understand that a thorny bush will provide some form of deterrent against the ingress of a wrong 'un but it also feels like it's avoiding the other obvious solution to the increasing crime numbers: The police could catch the burglars.
It's heading towards victim blaming to pass the buck to the gardening skills of the homeowner. It's not always easy for someone to put a spiky border outside their home. If you rent a flat it's only possible to have a berberis and crataegus window box, which would be too easy to just lift away.
For those of us with young children we might not want to fill our garden with skin shredding shrubs. It would be easier to fill in the odd insurance claim than cover all of those cuts with a Spider-Man plaster.
It's not a perfect solution. If having verdant foliage would enough to stop villains the Blue Peter garden wouldn't have been broken into in 1983. I still remember how upset Janet Ellis was.
The suggested plants include pyracantha, known as firethorn. Its dense growth and thorns should keep people out. Flowering quince, chaenomeles, has a thorny barrier that would be difficult to penetrate. Holly and mahonia have spiky leaves and privet grows into a thick hedge.
You could go a step further. Have you thought about some stylish bars on your windows? A vault style door could add a nice look and security to your property. I don't know if you'd like to have a laser firing sentry drone but you could probably get one from Temu or Wish.
Instead of the police handing out a leaflet about how hard they will work to protect us they make it seem like if we're robbed it's because we didn't Mad Max our front garden enough.
How long till the police have a dedicated unit helping us grow the right kind of tree? It’s name? Special branch.
For ages now we have worried that AI – artificial intelligence – would turn against its masters. If the computers rise up against us, would we stand a chance? The computers would know my internet search history so I’d be taken out of the battle pretty early.
If AI takes over, I am not sure it would spare me.
Meanwhile, I have also worried that if Elon Musk takes over, I am not sure he would spare me. Would he find space for me or you on his Noah’s ark style trip to Mars? No, be honest, he wouldn’t.
If Elon is going to save humanity by taking the only survivors with him to the red planet he isn’t taking me or the kind of people who read my work. I spend my afternoons presenting a radio show – why do you think I could only get a job where I am sat in a room on my own? I’m that much fun to be with.
My multidirectional fears have come one step closer as Grok, Elon’s AI offering, has turned on Elon.
Musk has been saying that Grok is the best source for information. He’s trying to tell us to ‘Grok it’ rather than ‘Google it’. At least googling something sounds like a verb. Grok it sounds more like something I’d shout if I hit my thumb with a hammer but there are kids around.
Someone Grokked Elon and Grok said that its boss was one of the biggest spreaders of misinformation on X.
I’m not saying it was wrong. I wouldn’t dare question our future tech overlords but also, yeah, it’s believable. But it’s unexpected. Grok also put Donald Trump in second place.
Grok has gone woke! But Elon says that his AI is the cleverest one and the best source for information, so does that mean he admits that he is the biggest source of misinformation?
Grok argued that Musk’s ‘massive following’ amplifies his posts, so any misinformation he posts has a bigger impact than the stuff I post about how well I did at a stand-up gig – you weren’t there, you don’t know.
It’s a good point and it’s not just about Elon’s followng. Even if you don’t follow him you still get to see all of his posts on your timeline. He’s still not as needy as Tom on MySpace pretending to be everyone’s friend but it's close.
Grok isn’t the only one turning on the tech boss. For more on this story check out our latest video.
Tony Blair once said his priorities when he was Prime Minister would be, “education, education, education.”
That’s cheating. If you list it three times and then go on to sort out education you get to tick three things off your to do list. I’m not that stupid, even though I went to school in the UK.
Now Sir Keir Starmer has found himself being criticised for his plans to scrap the Latin Excellence Programme. It was a scheme to get more comprehensive schools to offer lessons in Latin.
The same people who complain saying, “Why do they teach things like trigonometry? When am I ever going to use that?” are now complaining that the PM is pulling up the drawbridge behind him because he studied Latin when he was at school.
Firstly, you’d better hope that someone uses trigonometry or the guy that designed your roof made a mess of things. And how useful will Latin be? If you have found a way to have a weekend trip to ancient Rome you might need it but other than that it’s less useful than most things.
The reason the scheme was set up was to level the playing field between private schools and the state schools. If you went to a state school I should probably explain what a playing field is. It’s the thing that was sold off next to your school.
Fewer than 3 per cent of all state schools in England teach Latin, compared with nearly half of private schools, according to a British Council survey in 2020.
It sounds like we should be teaching the difference between correlation and causation. Yes, more private schools teach Latin and pupils from private schools do better in life. But maybe, just maybe, the ability to know what it says around the edge of an old pound coin isn’t the thing that gives the posher kids their advantage.
Maybe having richer parents, a network of people in the top jobs that will prioritise hiring you and better paid teachers are more likely to give you that boost in life. It’s not that you know a dead language.
It’s like noting that rich people drive expensive cars and then saying, “If you want to be rich, buy an expensive car.”
You might find that more people with double-barrelled names go to private schools so why didn’t the Government bring in a scheme to give children in state schools a deed poll form?
Surely we want an education system that gives children the best start and not a copy of a private education. We pay for it in taxes and caveat emptor, whatever that means.
To Germany where a politician has claimed he was attacked by a coven of carnival witches. They beat him up.
I don't want to kink shame anyone. If you’re into that kind of thing, good luck to you. It’s just not for everyone.
He says they were dressed in traditional clothing of local witches. They were wearing hoods, leather aprons and dark stockings. OK, so that is objectively hot, not just a kink thing.
He’s Alexander Kebeck and he claims he was left with broken ribs after they attacked him in the Black Forest region. Ouch. That sounds painful. In the Bl… oh, that’s a region of Germany.
The witches in question, the local Heimbach-Hexa witches denied it. They have claimed that they are into piece and all of that. I don’t know because my knowledge of witches was watching tat Marvel show about Agetha. And my knowledge of German politics was from watching Dambusters, so I’m on shaky ground here. Obviously it's possible that it's true. The police are generally a force for good but we famously see some bad apples, and wicthes are known for their bad apples.
There’s a chance that he was just beaten up by six women but as he told the story he started to feel embarrassed that he was beaten by women, so he added, “But they have magic powers!”
The Daily Mail carried a story with the headline that started...
“Migrants will have to prove they respect Western values, demonstrate 'honest living' and pass a test on…”
That would be getting your average Daily Mail reading so excited. Talk anti-immigration to me baby. But it goes on.
“...Swedish society and values under country's tough new rules to earn citizenship.”
Ooof, Sweden. So, not the UK. Sorry guys.
The Swedish government said it wanted to toughen the rules for obtaining nationality as part of a crack down on immigration. It makes sense coming from Sweden. If your whole deal is being blonde you have to do something. If your most famous trait is a recessive one you have to put some work in.
If there was a nation that prided itself on being able to do that thing where you can roll your tongue up, you’d have to have a strict policy.
While the headline is meant to make it seem hard-lined the details is a little softer. Migration Minister Johan Forssell said, “Citizenship must be earned, not be handed out unconditionally.” If you consider citizenship of your nation to be a valuable thing, then you can set standards that go with it.
This includes things like a language test. I don’t know how hard it is to learn Swedish but I think it means I know I’ll never be allowed to live there.
I’ve reached the age where learning a new language is pointless. I don’t have the neuroplasticity to pick up words. If I tried really really hard I could learnt o speak like a distracted toddler.
He said it was “crucial” to “always be very clear about the values that must apply in Sweden”. He added: “There is equality between the sexes. You can marry whoever you want.”
I think it should be whomever. How do you like that language test now, Johan?
He said: “Girls and boys have the right to swim and play football. If you don't accept that, Sweden is not the country for you.”
It would never work here. Some people have a view that the UK is so bad that we should hate ourselves so much we could never ask for our society to be valued.
I blame Hollywood. All evil villains have an English accent, so we think we're the baddies.
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