David Gillon

Pretty much all the senior members of Trump's cabinet created a chat group to discuss attacking the Houthis, and didn't notice they'd accidentally included the editor of The Atlantic.

Posted this earlier in the comments to the Guardian's live politics feed, pointing out the massive gap in the logic of Labour's disability benefit cuts:

Completely missing from Labour's whining about the difficulty of getting disabled people into work is any discussion of the far cat in the room - the widespread experience by disabled workers of discrimination in the workplace from management (and colleagues, but mostly management). A gag clause means I can't name the national flagship company where a very senior manager engaged in a multi-year campaign to drive me out of the company, to quote him 'your disability is a threat to my schedules' (it wasn't), and where the rest of management closed ranks around him when I challenged him on it through the grievance procedure.

The DWP's Disability Confident campaign asserts it isn't disability discrimination, managers are just 'embarrassed', which goes down about as well with disabled people as you might imagine.

Unless Labour sets about a serious campaign to drive disability discrimination out of the workplace, then the only logical conclusion is that they don't care about getting disabled people into the workplace, just off the benefits bill. And that's disability discrimination as government, as Labour Party, policy

Deeply, deeply furious with Starmer over this.

Phone conversation with my sister today during which it transpired that I've been thinking the current day is tomorrow since at least Thursday, so thought today was Monday - in my defence I've spent most of the week in bed (or on the bed reading) with a heavy cold - mostly over it - and not really keeping track of what was when. I did read at least one newspaper article on the Guardian site that should have clued me in on Saturday - second day of the Barclays IT outage that started on Friday, but decided they'd made a really awkward job of describing it lasting into it's third day instead.

What? Me be wrong? Inconceivable!

I managed a whole 24 hours at home before getting to "I may need to throw everything in a bag and head back to my mother's." Which didn't make for a restful night's sleep.

Fortunately it looks like that infection is responding to antibiotics, it's just a pain in the backside that we can tell by her mental state that she has something starting about four days quicker than the medical system can confirm it and start treating it.

But that's yesterday's problem, today's problem where it would be useful to be there is drains/sewers backing up. Not to the point of getting in anywhere they shouldn't, but definitely to the point of knowing there's a problem. Next-door's 80+yo ex-husband (and more to the point ex-clerk of works) has stepped in to help try and pinpoint where the problem is, but half the downstream neighbours are out and the one next door to my sister's house is still furious with him and claiming he broke his drains the last time this was a problem, 30 years ago. Fortunately they decided to call off the fisticuffs and call out the waterboard.

Funniest line reported by my sister from the cantankerous 80yos: "You used to be married to that girl up the street" - J's just short of 80 herself, not sure she gets called 'girl' very much anymore! 

 We took a ride up the dale yesterday as my mother hadn't been anywhere since before Christmas. Lots of bits of snow still lying in sheltered spots up around Tow Law, a good week after it had melted at lower altitudes - some of the really protected spots out on the moors may well retain pockets of snow into summer.

Our putative destination was a garden centre, though at this point of the year everyone seemed much more interested in having something to eat at its attached restaurant than in buying plants - in fact the restaurant was popular enough we had to park in the overflow carpark and  they were handing out pagers to summon you when a table became available.

"I had the all day breakfast, it was beautiful" someone told us coming out as we were going in.
"Order something nice" my sister ordered as we were seated, "We haven't had the chance to take you anywhere since you got here."
"I'll have the all-day breakfast, then."
"Mam and I are having scones, order something that won't mean we're sitting around waiting for yours to be cooked!"

That's me told, then.

Waitress appears, "I'll have the tiramisu"
"Sorry, that's sold out."

*headdesk*

"Uhh, <rapid flick through menu> I'll have the cheesecake."
 

Service wasn't especially fast, but the cheesecake was pretty as a picture when it appeared - a round serving, topped with some thin stripes of chocolate, half a strawberry, a raspberry and a blueberry.

My initial thought was it was a bit on the small size, but it was so rich it was actually the perfect serving. The cake melted in the mouth and if the blueberry was a bit blah, the raspberry was superbly tart and the strawberry so sweet it was like biting into crystallized sugar.

I'd ordered a mocha with it, which was also really nice, but possibly not the ideal companion - black coffee might have made a better match to counterpoint the richness of the cheesecake.

So the moral of the story is sometimes you have to forget what you think you want and let the universe order the nice things for you.

Toddler opposite is watching cartoons

<Cartoon singing voice>

"Down, Down, Down, Down, Down, Down, 

Ah, not the Agatha All Along version ;)

 I stayed up until 4AM, then the programme I was doing some work in while listening to the BBC election show crashed, and given it would take a while to restart, plus the Beeb were running Suella Braverman's victory speech (bah!), I said 'bugger it' and went to bed. I'd probably have stayed up longer if I hadn't ended up with less sleep than planned on Wednesday night.

It says something that the exit poll for a massive Labour majority actually seemed disappointing, I was hoping for less than a hundred Tories surviving. OTOH it did predict all three Medway constitituencies (Chatham, where I live, Rochester and Strood, and Gillingham) going Labour, which turned out to be the case. It's just a pity I think my new MP, Tris Osbourne, is completely wet. Vince Maple, the former Labour candidate would have been far better, but he's now running Medway Council instead.

I did get to see Grant Shapps (Defence Minister) lose his seat, his reference to the armed forces in his concession speech was the first time I've ever thought he sounded sincere in his entire 20 year parliamentary career. Unfortunately IDS retained his, even with an exit poll forecast of a less than 1% chance of him surviving, as the vote to unseat him, while easily large enough, split between the current Labour candidate and the former Labour candidate running as an independent - not the only time Keir's party discipline ended up shooting Labour in the foot.

I'm worried about where the Tories will turn for a new leader, hard right is probably the answer given Penny Mordaunt, the leading moderate, lost her seat. On the plus side so did arch-brexiteer and ultra-libertarian Steve Baker. Unfortunately that probably reduces the choices to Suella Braverman (dangerous) and Kemi Badenoch (even more dangerous).

And even more worried about the Reform vote (a substantial part of which is undoubtedly the racism/far right vote), Farage in parliament is going to be thoroughly unpleasant.

I just hope we can have a solid Labour government for the next five years that convinces the floating voters that Labour can do the job. Ideally while the Tories and Reform tear each over to shreds.

Just had a frightfully posh Tory volunteer on the phone trying to convince me to vote Tory. I'd say I gave him short shrift, but he didn't get off that easily, it was definitely long shrift!

He seemed to make a definite effort to avoid discussing national issues, but I started with the disabled people killed by DWP sanctions, the increasingly corrupt nature of disability assessments, and then segued into their deliberate attempt to court the Reform vote by returning to their Nasty Party roots, throwing up first immigrants, then trans people, and then disabled people (again) as objects for hate. Told him they were deliberately indulging in bigotry to court the racist vote. 

Poor guy barely got a word in edgeways.

Honestly, you'd think they'd have a note against my number saying 'Lost Cause', or possibly 'Flee, you fools!'.

 Hammering? At 5AM on a Sunday morning?

(No, that's not a mistake, 5AM)

I stook my head out of the open window, decided I couldn't tell which way it was coming from, so slammed it, stuck in a set of earplugs and managed to get back to sleep.

I was disgruntled enough about Saturday's 9AM knock on the door for someone's breakfast being delivered, when my door number is 41, not 4, they don't even have the same number of digits!

But 5AM?!?

5AM!!!