Sometimes the simplest protests are the best, and you cannot get much simpler than following the health secretary Jeremy Hunt around Manchester whilst playing a tuba:
Need we say more?
Image Credit – Jeremy Hunt, Center for Total Health, June 2013 by Ted Eytan
Poor discipline within the Labour ranks spilled over into the media on Tuesday as a dispute over the party’s approach to the government’s fiscal charter saw several MPs breaking ranks to criticise the leadership.
Emily Thornberry, shadow employment secretary, had told MPs not to text journalists and to keep their voices down at a Parliamentary Labour Party meeting on Monday evening in Parliament, journalists being stood outside the committee room where it took place.
Yet John Mann, MP for Bassetlaw and a member of the Treasury Committee, gave an interview to the BBC and wrote a piece for Politics Home in which he argued that shadow chancellor John McDonnell had been ensnared in a trap by chancellor George Osborne.
The aim of this trap was to weaken Labour’s economic credibility by making its leadership chose between looking profligate if they did not agree to balance the books, or accept spending cuts detested by the party’s core supporters.
Whilst McDonnell had said he would back Osborne’s fiscal charter to balance the books, on Monday he reversed this decision, leading many MPs to criticise the leadership within earshot of journalists.
Writing on Politics Home, Mann said:
“The reality is that to have voted with Osborne would have led to political meltdown in Scotland and McDonnell’s political judgement faces some big questions. New [Jeremy] Corbyn supporters would have been bemused and demoralised. It would have been a political disaster with huge consequences.”
https://youtu.be/49laliNKfgQ
Mann complained that this reversal had occurred without consulting MPs, even though he jokingly praised McDonnell for getting it “right in the end.” But he said the shadow chancellor “looks a bit of a fool” because of his behaviour.
Corbyn, leader of Labour, has been forced to operate a more consensual approach to cabinet management than his predecessors owing to weak support from Labour MPs for his leadership.
Earlier today Diane Abbott gave an interview to BBC Radio 4 in which she attempted to defend her leader to a bemused John Humphrys, adding that “some people are only slowly coming to terms” with the result of the party’s leadership election, in which Blairites were sidelined in favour of hard leftists.
Image Credit – Treasury, Westminster, April 2012 by Kurt Bauschardt
Hackney MP Diane Abbott went on Radio 4 on Tuesday morning in a bid to rectify the damage caused by news that a civil war had broken out among Labour MPs after the leadership reversed its position on the government’s fiscal charter.
A bemused John Humphrys provoked laughter from Abbott as she attempted to dispel the view that Labour’s chancellor John McDonnell believes “the deficit can go hang”, after it emerged he does not support the government’s plans to balance the budget after investment spending is taken into account.
Since opening a Twitter account and mocking the NSA, the whistleblower Edward Snowden has been tweeting out his thoughts on a regular basis, much to the delight of his supporters.
In a series of messages yesterday he began by criticising a recent case in Iran in which Washington Post journalist Jason Rezaian was convicted in a secret court.
In the age of the smartphone telling friends and family about the tedious shit that happened in your day is easier and cheaper than ever, whilst also allowing Silicon Valley to scoop up all your data and sell it to the NSA.
Despite this one entrepreneur has put together a service for sending messages via the medium of potato – and these spuds are 100 percent British rather than those despicable foreign taters stealing the livelihoods of our countryveg.
Speaking in a YouTube video, Adrian Nantchev said he started PotatoInThePost.com as a means of allowing people to stand out from the crowd.
It’s not entirely clear if he’s trolling.
Prices range from £5 to £6, with the spuds arriving within 3 days at all British addresses. Nantchev will have to compete with the Americans at Potatoparcel.com, who also run a service in Blighty.
Image Credit – Potatoes, June 2011 by 16:9 Clue