My parents were on disability benefits - my father had osteoarthritis. By feeding me, the state saved itself more money than by treating me for malnutrition in hospital. And now, I pay back more in tax than we ever got in benefits. Food for children is quite a small investment.
Given that, depressingly, the hashtag "sendherback" is trending, I'm very happy to start a
#welcomehomenazanin
thing, if anyone wants to join in with being pleasant and cheerful.
Being a woman: my "outside" day finishes at sundown. If I haven't taken the dog for a walk/jogged by then, I can't. In the winter, it often means the choice between exercise and work. Today, I had to stop work at 4 to exercise. My husband worked until 6, and is now off for a run.
That the latest "decision" is that you can have your cleaner or your nanny visit your house, but not your parents, is so parodically the call of posh men who were sent away to boarding school, it's actually made me hysterical.
He is the worst Prime Minister we've ever had this century, isn't he? I mean the last few years have given us a dazzling choice, but - he is the worst.
Harry interview in a nutshell: the royal family are so scared of the media they regularly chucked Harry & Meghan under the bus, so they would look good by comparison. And now - given that quitting & moving to the US didn't stop it - he feels he has nothing to lose by revealing it
Why don't we knock Xmas 2020 on the head - then have a mahoosive, week-long Bank Holiday in summer, when we've got the vaccine? Just, for one year only, have a summer Christmas?
Women, remember this man's name - Danny Kruger. He doesn't believe women should have an absolute right to bodily autonomy. He would prefer politicians make these decisions for you. He wants it "debated." This is how it started in the States.
Shitty £30 food hampers with a fiver's-worth of food inside; £96m for 230,00 homeschooling laptops; £22b on Track & Trace - is there anything this government have outsourced that HASN'T ended up looking like a parasitical piss-take?
If anyone says "Given the last few years, are there any things that still make you proud to be British?" I have to reply, "It's a dwindling list, but Nigella Lawson calmly choosing Bitter Orange Tart on the day Trump leaves office would be one of them."
Well, yes, Bitter Orange Tart just happens to be
#RecipeOfTheDay
. Apart from anything else, there are more things to make with Seville oranges than marmalade! This is not complicated: the base is bashed ginger nuts
I am 45 and it is 2021 and I am essentially under a curfew. Like all women. And there are absolutely no exit plans for this. It's just presumed women will stay home when it's dark ... forever.
I love these little episodes where people really leave their arses hanging out. This week: every old male columnist having a pop at a 16-year-old Nobel Prize winner with Aspergers trying to literally save the world.
I would imagine there's a lot of A Level students today who, once they've tried to deal with this catastrophic shambles, will then, coldly and furiously, register to vote. It will have politicised an entire generation. This will have a long tail.
Sinead: and she was the first to talk about abuse in the Catholic church - tearing up the picture of the Pope on TV - but 99% of the music industry hung her out to dry. She was decades before her time, and fearless. Rest in power, queen.
I used think politics was more nuanced, but these days, when the government announce they're selling Channel 4, you just think, "Which one of their rich mates has said they want to buy it?" Is this their only idea? Selling all our stuff?
I'm fifty pages into "Spare" and it's so desperately sad: the tone is very different to how all the out-of-context quotes make it seem. Although he keeps making jokes - mainly self-deprecating - it just ACHES.
Here how
@MattHancock
responds to
@DrRosena
, an ACTUAL front-line NHS worker, telling him many colleagues feel let down by the gov't testing strategy.
He tells her it's not true and to watch her tone.
It's easy to forget, because of how useless he is, just how nasty he can get.
I've been watching CNN since 4pm and I still haven't seen ANYONE being arrested, cuffed, taken away. The rioters are now just starting to ... walk away. No consequences. What the fuck?
Cab ride across London during extra time - pubs exploding, horns sounding. For an England team who took the knee, wear rainbow armbands, campaign against child poverty. It feels like a cultural game-changer on the same scale as The Beatles.
It is beneath the dignity of this country to have two main parties so utterly without talent, intellect, agreement or vision debating something as mind-bogglingly complex and dangerous as Brexit.
Oh, the continuing madness of Theresa May trying to take Britain out of the EU when we know, demographically, the generations below her are wildly pro-EU and will have to spend years trying to rejoin. What a mad, stubborn, spiteful waste of time by the older generation.
Marcus Rashford has written a powerful column for The Times: calling on MPs to U-turn, and reinstate free food vouchers for kids who will just not eat this summer without them. He sounds more statesmanlike than our statesmen:
Fact box: the Little Mermaid lives on a TROPICAL CORAL REEF with a calypso-singing lobster with a strong Jamaican accent. When you think about it, it's bizarre she was white the first time around.
Jamie Oliver on the Today programme, talking about child poverty - God he's on his shit. He's just ... a good person. Weird how unfamiliar that phrase feels.
what an unbelievably thrilling alternate way of doing politics. We know infinite economic growth is impossible, and fucking hell what an exciting idea.
This is huge. Jacinda Ardern's New Zealand is about to become the first major country to abandon growth as political priority in favour of well-being.
#postgrowth
This report from the Sunday Times reads like the obituary of Boris Johnson's government. An absolutely extraordinary catalogue of complacency, error and long weekend holidays even as departments were sounding the alarm.
Boris Johnson skipped five Cobra meetings on the virus, calls to order protective gear were ignored and scientists’ warnings fell on deaf ears
Failings in February may have cost thousands of lives
My timeline is absolutely split between those who've read the press coverage of "Spare" and think Harry's a twat, and those who have actually read the book, or are reading it, and are going "Fair enough - I get him now."
There's something quite heartbreaking about watching MPs asking sensible, specific questions about literal life-or-death matters, and Johnson just releasing a bunch of posh noises whilst looking lost and knackered.
Can't help but note this unstable, cyclical man-rota of repetitive failure does seem to lead to the suggestion "Maybe let the women take over for a bit."
Fucking hell, Richard E Grant's Desert Island Discs is so, so devastating. Almost a minute of silence after his last song, then just the sound of him gasping. Really moving, intimate, beautiful.
Still boggling over Matt Hancock reprimanding Dr Rosena Allin-Kahn over her "tone." If he thinks that is an extreme tone, he's clearly NEVER had a woman - 52% of the population - actually shout at him. And you have to wonder how you'd get a life like that. It's creepy.
Women Being Trump is my favourite thing of 2020. We will know feminism has finally succeeded when women who are genuinely this stupid and deranged are the President. That's the final objective.
Cannot believe 21st century Britain has just had an election where there are accounts of "thousands" of people not being allowed to vote, because they didn't have the right ID. Voter fraud was never a problem before. Why have we solved a non-problem by inventing a new one?
Is anyone NOT watching Fleabag? Because I've just done the first four episodes in a row, and I'm levitating with how astonishing it is. YOU MUST WATCH IT. Phoebe Waller-Bridge has ... invented something truly new. It's a comedy news-flash.
I've never seen a response to a Tweet like this - my timeline going nuts with people who are complaining to the BBC about their treatment of Emily Maitlis.
If you're in tears about your A Level results - here's where you register to vote. The one thing you've got on your side is time. You'll be alive for decades after the people who presided over this mess:
If you feel that introduction by
@maitlis
on last night's Newsnight was simply an accurate summation of the situation, as I do, you can complain about her caution and removal here:
Fucking hell - imagine wanting to be Prime Minister, but also thinking it was a hard burn to slag off someone for going to a posh school you consider inferior to your posh school. GROW UP YOU BELL-ENDS.
Jacob Rees-Mogg tears into Nick Boles: "My honourable friend makes a characteristically Wykehamist point - highly intelligent, but fundamentally wrong."
#savage
here's a bold and daring idea - why don't we ask Germany how they do it, and then copy them? Instead of some mad balls about getting to the fucking moon.
Today's
#IWD2022
amusement - watching companies scramble to delete their fluffy IWD Tweets after
@PayGapApp
re-tweets them - but with their gender pay-gap stats attached. I deeply salute whoever thought of this. It's deadly genius.
It is below the dignity of this country to have public servants who just can't be bothered to read Agreements on which lives and peace depend. How have we ended up with such appalling, dangerous blitheness?
Poor fucking Sue Grey. With Johnson still refusing to admit that he knew it was a party, her job is, essentially, to look in Boris’s pants, and work out if he knows he’s shat himself - or if he genuinely thinks his own trousers are a toilet.
This is such a great picture. A woman at work, trying to change things for the betterment of millions of other women, whilst handling childcare at the same time. I wish there were more politicians like Stella.
I enjoy the barely repressed fury, channelled into totally being on her fucking shit, that Jacinda displays here - after what is, quite possibly, the stupidest question ever asked.
Watch NZ Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern pick apart this reporter's question during a joint press conference with Finnish PM Sanna Marin. He asked the pair 'are you two meeting because you're similar in age and got a lot of common stuff there?'
Read more:
It's simply a political decision to let rivers die. There's no reason why we can't have waterways as clean as this. A combination of this government, Ofwat, & the vastly profitable, mainly foreign-owned water companies are turning us, once again, into the Dirty Old Man of Europe
While we learn that *every single river* in England is polluted, here is the River Limmat in Switzerland. It runs through the centre of the largest city, Zürich (population: 436,000).
Water Quality: Excellent
Public Swimming Baths: 11
We have been mugged.
#WildIsles
I don't know if the government know they appear to have recently created a "Hopes & Dreams Crushing Department", but for a country already depressed and anxious, I would suggest it's a bit of a "Not now, dudes" moment?
I beg I live to see the day when Tory MPs screaming about how Gary Lineker needs to be "impartial" actually read the BBC impartiality guidelines, and realise they only apply to broadcasters working in news. Football guy can say whatever he thinks and feels.
Been on air with the one show. I wasn’t down to be doing match of the day tomorrow, but if I was I would of said no and stood with my fellow pundits and
@GaryLineker
Providing a new start to those who‘ve fled their homes represents the best of Britain's values. As we know refugees have always helped to keep our communities safe and make our society stronger. They even brought us fish & chips. Im standing with
@RESCUE_UK
to
#StandWithRefugees
Sarah, they're wearing "Trump" hats, marching on the Capitol because Trump told them to, shouting "TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP!" I mean call me Poirot, but I see a link.
Media: quit labeling DC protestors “Conservatives, Republicans, Tea Partiers, Trump Supporters, etc” LOOK IN TO WHO THESE PEOPLE ARE who’d choose an apparent leaderless insane swarm to create a perception of condoned violence. KNOCK IT OFF. (1/2)
"None of us were able to predict" coronavirus would mutate or variants would emerge - Dido Harding, head of the National Institute for Health Protection
Before you get all worried and self-loathing about your lockdown weight making your summer clothes too tight, try this before going on a mad diet: just buying a bigger pair of trousers. Once your clothes are comfy again, you might not actually care. Signed, a 32-inch waist x
John Cleese is in the process of moving to Nevis, in the Caribbean. I hope there's a old Nevisian comedian ready to moan about how Charlestown won't "really be a Nevisian town any more." Goddamn immigrants.
Some years ago I opined that London was not really an English city any more
Since then, virtually all my friends from abroad have confirmed my observation
So there must be some truth in it...
I note also that London was the UK city that voted most strongly to remain in the EU
Does anyone know why Swan is the first journalist who's been able to interview Trump like this? How did someone actually willing and able to intelligently challenge Trump finally get access to him? I'm fascinated.
.
@jonathanvswan
: “Oh, you’re doing death as a proportion of cases. I’m talking about death as a proportion of population. That’s where the U.S. is really bad. Much worse than South Korea, Germany, etc.”
@realdonaldtrump
: “You can’t do that.”
Swan: “Why can’t I do that?”
My teenage daughters, on being told that Rege-Jean Page, aka The Duke of Sexington, won't be returning for series 2 of Bridgerton: "Well, what's the fucking point of making it, then? I mean seriously, what's the point?"
Why are women not offered pain relief for removal and insertion of IUDs? It can be AGONY. If it involves the prostate or the colon, you get sedatives, or gas and air. My column on how brutally the cervix is treated:
How lovely that Bob Mortimer is trending simply because everyone just chose today to talk about how unbelievably excellent he is. He's a scientifically observable percentage of the world's sum total of joy.
Imagine having to cos-play being normal - and the result being you end up putting petrol in someone else's car before getting into your Bentley that's hidden round the corner NORMAL SO NORMAL
Confirmed by Treasury sources that this Kia is not Rishi Sunak’s car but is actually owned by a Sainsbury’s employee. The Chancellor apparently paid for the petrol.
TBH, if ballerina Fatima DOES end up crushing all her dreams to work in Cyber, I hope she's the one who notices they're using a version of Excel from 2003 and that it will fuck up the whole trace-and-trace campaign
#getintherefatima
Person having the worst day today: outside my house, the driver of the W5 has accidentally pressed the "THIS BUS IS UNDER ATTACK - PLEASE DIAL 999" announcement button, and doesn't know how to cancel it. It broadcasts from a speaker on the roof.
Amazing that Penny Mordaunt is the only person in the Cabinet willing to vote on this latest Boris Johnson shit-show. If the Prime Minister doesn't have the balls to discipline someone in his own party over, well, a party, how can he stand up to Putin? Or even fight off a wasp?
There needs to be a word for when you're comforting your sobbing teenage daughter's sorrow over Harry Styles seeming to be into older women, whilst also putting on lipstick and mouthing "I am coming for you, Harry" in the mirror.
I've just found some "lady scientists" who reckon the best advice is to go down on your wife for half an hour, then find somewhere other than the hallway to store your bike.
Simple joy: last year, I put a nesting box on the side of the house, in the wisteria above the patio. This morning, I can hear the baby blue-tits have hatched, and are cheeping. Best £25 ever.
I've now re-read Marina's column three times, and I genuinely don't think there will be a better one in 2021. It's kind of depressing, but everyone else should just pack up and have the year off:
Good that Boris Johnson is kicking off an inquiry that ultimately asks if he was trustworthy, competent and intelligent enough for the job of being Prime Minister by claiming he can't remember the passcode to his phone. I feel like we might already have the inquiry's conclusion?
Don't want to big-up my sex too much - women don't do that - but can't help but note the big thing about the Oxford vaccine is that you can "store it in a normal fridge." Of course it took women to invent a vaccine you can store in a normal fridge.