The pasting of Nick Clegg’s Liberal Democrats back in the May general election, reducing the party from 56 seats to eight in the Commons, was both widely predicted and widely underestimated.
Since the vote many put down the destruction of the party to contamination from their Conservative coalition partners, with the party themselves complaining that they were often blamed for the bad decisions in government and snubbed for the good ones.
Launching bureaucratic stationary is becoming an increasingly vexed proposition for any Whitehall wonk, and so it’s no surprise that feminists have had a bitch fit over the preponderance of men in the redesign of the British passport.
By the Guardian’s count a mere two women appear in the redesign, though Queen Victoria’s image can also be seen on the Penny Black stamp, and two other nameless women appear elsewhere.
Earlier this year prime minister David Cameron was accused of sticking his penis into the mouth of a dead pig in a university society ritual from his Oxford days.
Now some folks have decided to make a tribute to the Tory leader with this impressive effigy for Lewes Bonfire Night.
When Charlie Rose read out Vanity Fair’s description of John Oliver as “perhaps the most disruptive journalist on television”, the British comedian replied with one syllable.
“Ergh.”
“I’m not a journalist at all,” Oliver said. “Obviously, I’m a comedian.”
Some of you may still remember Tony Abbott, the Australian prime minister who was turfed out by his old buddy Malcolm Turnbull in a brutal political coup back in September.
At the end of October, and presumably with a lighter schedule, Abbott spoke at the Second Annual Margaret Thatcher Lecture at the Guildhall in the City of London, the seat of the shady body that runs the capital’s financial borough.