Ent

It's such a weird obsession. There are only 8k ish companies in the UK employing more than 250 people.

Very few employing 100k+.

Vast majority of companies in the UK are dwarfed by public sector orgs.

I agree with you that it's rare - but the wording of the humble address includes a whole bunch of those rare cases, whether realised by MPs or not.

Quite. Watching a slew of MPs (who have never been vetted) argue incessantly and so confidently about something they know nothing about, with the whole sordid debate commented on by journalists (who have never been vetted) was infuriatingly tiresome.

Yes and I agree your broad take on it all.

The point on 'whole documents' is particularly interesting, given that Jones - as an ex Defence Minister - will know full well they will absolutely seek to redact entire documents, and should do so, given the scope of what is asked for.

The Justice and Security Act 2013 says the ISC can only disclose information to Parliament having confirmed with the PM that it is ok to do so.

I can't see anything in the humble address that changes how the ISC can operate with info it is given, only the provision of info to it in this matter?

The Cab Sec hasn't resigned (yet).

Starmer has made mistakes but the media glee is palpable - Mason today: he's survived but it's not over yet!!

Approval ratings are driven by media reporting. Accurate or not.

'Whitehall Official' = Special Adviser not wanting to be quoted as such

And then when all this shiny new infrastructure needs upkeep, our not-at-all mad country will complain and say we can't afford it until it also crumbles. Repeat ad nauseum.

There are some 7k Parli staff. 95k CS in Whitehall. Plus military, police, contractors. Could easily mean relocating over 100k jobs from one city to another; you'd still have an enormous bill to deal with what's left of SW1A. And you'd move Gov miles away from other nations Embassies etc. Insanity

We do. Moving parliament (plus the rest of parliamentary estate) and at least main HQ elements of all Gov departments (Ministers need to be in both), with the accompanying national security apparatus, and a new Government Security Zone, is mad.

Interesting. Loads of classified info there, which can't simply be made public just because a motion says hand it over. And I'm struggling to find provision in Justice and Security Act 2013 for the ISC to make unilateral decisions on public release of classified info. Usually needs PM to agree....

But graduated in 2023 - so the loan building up from 2019/2020 with no repayments until 2023 at earliest?

Pippa can I congratulate you on typing that without resorting to the following emojis:

😂🤣🤪🤡🤭

Might wanna drop those kneepads off at Congress

This is because Starmer is standing with EU and NATO allies. Surely you know that. All politicians need to get their heads out of their arses and stop point scoring cos it's gonna get a lot worse before it gets better.

Badenoch also just claimed to quote the view of 'the SAS' when referencing the view of veterans. Absolute bollocks, and she should have to correct the record.

You can boost to 3% if GDP gets smaller too. Agree such a silly metric.

To pick just one - "Unwelcome stories of foreign espionage" which you frame as an attack on Farage. What the hell is wrong with you?

Most recent common ancestor for humans is estimated to have lived between 1400 BC and 55 AD. Genetic isopoint is 4-9 thousand years ago.

How long had that SPAD been in government. 5 mins? What a stupid thing to say.

If this is so terribly serious, surely the journalist who accessed the forecast then published it - rather than simply report they had been able to get it - should also lose their job?

We are an utterly ridiculous country. We cannot expect *anything* to work if every time a mistake is made somebody senior must resign.

When is the Reuters journalist going to resign for publishing market sensitive information?

If it is terrible to have this information in the public domain, Reuters should be facing as much flack as the OBR.

For the love of god stop adopting and using these meaningless political terms. Future gaps between uncertain forecasts and arbitrary targets are not the basis of sound policy.

I have maintained for years that those who could financially gain from UK leaving EU would eventually decide they could financially gain from UK rejoining

The Telegraph’s BBC hypocrisy A paper that knows a thing or two about editorial f*ck-ups...

It takes an obscene amount of hubris to lecture the BBC when you have The Telegraph’s record on truth-telling.

Some of the paper’s errors this year are so bad they’re almost laughable 👇🏻

Is he saluting or slapping himself in the face

The sixth generation ago is 64 individual people, out of 126 total ancestors (parents through to great-great-great-great grandparents). 7th gen adds 128, 8th adds 256 and so on (ignoring inevitable overlap at some point).

That was bond issue specifically for massive, immediate tax cuts with no OBR forecasts to set out even the anticipated impact