Putin again?

The price of diesel seems to be creeping up again. Is that more fall-out from Russia’s attack on Ukraine or just the oil companies shoring up their profits before they’re hit with a windfall tax?

Not impressed

Doesn’t it get dark quickly now? You’re tripping over things in the middle of the afternoon. The argument for permanent BST is looking very convincing. And if the Scots want to have their own time zone for their latitude, that’s their business.

Give it a rest

Why are we still getting TV adverts for Black History Month foisted off on us when it was ages ago and irrelevant to most of us?

Tell it like it is? Ha!

If the teams have been paying attention in a North American football match, they don’t need a 3 minute warning (Canada) or a 2 minute warning (USA). But there’s no danger of calling them what they really are – another excuse to bung some ads into the TV coverage.

Not even trying

The basic rule of lying is to come up with something that could just be true. The Russian claim that the Royal Navy zapped the Baltic Sea natural gas pipelines has to have come from someone who got outside a whole bottle of vodka.

Option B, definitely

Are the Royals really in fear & trembling over what’s in Prince Hairy’s latest ghosted ramblings? Or are the fiction factoryhands in the UK just trying to do a favour for their counterparts in California with some free pre-publicity?

An unequal universe

The Hitchhiker’s being guided round the galaxy got a restaurant at the end of the universe. All Daniel Jackson of SG-1 got was a routine diner.

How not to get a smart meter

One of my contacts got a letter about a smart meter with an 0808 number repeated half a dozen times among the bribes.
    One small problem: when he tries to use the phone number, no one ever answers!

Footling Objection

The weird Robert Hardperson of the Daily Wail claims he wouldn’t be at all reassured if some legislation had to be approved in the absence of King Chuck and Prince Andrew was one of the substitutes who signed a piece of paper to keep the lights on.
    Fine. Let him sit in the dark and mope while the rest of us don’t!

Labour-think

Sunak doesn’t count as an Asian-sourced prime minister because he’s rich and clever and he has a rich wife.
    Scum only at the top in the Labour party’s view?
    Brilliant.

Kettles & Pots

If Neatflicks are ghouls for staging Princess Di’s fatal car crash for a TV series, what does that make the news media here, which splashed photos of the event around and gave Neatflicks a load of free publicity?

Got me worried!

I read that the mob who vet people for honours are up to their necks with four lists of names; Boris, Lizzie, QE II and New Year’s; and really struggling.
    So that’s my OBE up the spout for another year?

World-beater

That’s a great talent! A female superbadgal with lethal bad breath that’s a yellow fog! I caught her in action on Supergirl when I switched on early for Stargate SG-1.

What do experts know anyway?

Chronopharmacology is another recipe for vexation. A contact who has had his flu jab thought about being annoyed because he got it in the afternoon and he’s just read that they work better if given in the morning.
    Then he realized that if really had been life-changingly important, his local health centre would have mentioned it.
    Maybe.
    And it’s not as if we’re short of things to be vexed about at the moment.

Wot a duffer!

America’s creaky president gives our latest PM a name check, and bogs up the name! Where do they get these characters?

Unrepeatable

My gardeners both used much the same words when confronted with the news that the RHA thinks everyone should make their garden a haven for slugs & snails to help save the planet from extinction.
    If we had transporter technology, the RHA would end up with more pests to re-home than you could shake a stick at.

Self-promoting trash

Netflicks must be laughing. They don’t have to spend any cash on publicity for their fiction about the Royals. All the knockers are doing it for them.

Not something we needed

Mr. Sunak’s appointment as prime minister was hailed as Britain’s Barak Obama Moment. Which is not good news for us, given that all Obama did was be the first person half of colour to be in the White House but did nothing useful.

Age gone bygone

Films made in the 1990s can contain shots of a 3½" floppy disk. How long will it be before modern people no longer know what these exotic pieces of technology are?
    1.44 MB? What could possibly fit on something with such a tiny storage capacity?

Strange but true

There are people around who seem to be convinced that the little gadget that sits in their kitchen and drinks their power to tell them how much electricity they’re using is a smart meter containing a powerful computer.
    As opposed to the gadget in the meter cupboard or in the box outside the house that is connected to the mains supply and does the actual work. Weird.

Interesting thought

If a general election went the way of the current opinion polls, there would be just 28 Tory MPs in the new parliament and they’d be as irrelevant as the Liberals.

Better than last year

Despite some early clouds, we did actually get to see the whole of this month’s partial eclipse of the sun. Much to the amazement of the cynics, who were expecting it to be rained off, like last year’s.
    Those of us who knew about it, that is. It seems to have been a rather well-kept secret from most people.

Quality Deficit

You have to wonder about the mentality of some of these attention-seeking clowns who glue themselves to things. Especially the ones who glued themselves to the floor of a Volkswagen museum then moaned that they weren’t provided with a pot to pee and crap into.
    It was asking too much for them to bring one of their own, of course.

When you got politicians, you don’t need enemies

How friendly is it to their country for those clowns Starmer & Davey to talk us down and make our economic plight worse for their own personal advantage?

Another Whinger

There is no more revolting sight than a lawyer telling you something he knows isn’t true if there’s cash in it for him. Which is what I think every time Starmer demands a general election and ignores that they put a party in office but have no say in who’s the leader of it.
    Something Starmer knows but chooses to ignore.

Whingers

Trust the Liberals to complain about Liz Truss being entitled to £155K and police protection as part of the package for having been prime minister. Just jealous as it’s not something their leader is ever likely to enjoy.

What’s to go wrong with it?

My eclipse viewer, I noticed after viewing the course of this morning’s partial solar eclipse, carries a warning not to use it after August 12th 1999.
    Good job they didn’t make it instantly visible or I might have started panicking. And as it lives in a drawer when not in use, which is hardly ever, how am I going to wear it out?
    p.s. At least we got to see this one.

One way to do it

Anyone who thinks, or pretends to, that the Netflicks series called The Crown is actual history should have a large M for mug stamped on their forehead to warn the rest of us to keep clear of a nutter!
    On seconds thoughts, maybe that should be an N.

Dêjà Vü

When wondering how we’d get on with a lying hypocrite as prime minister, I’ve been reminded that we’ve already had a rehearsal. With Tony B. Liar. Remember how well that went?

Low to no expectations

Nobody is planning to go out tomorrow morning. Why? Because there’s a partial eclipse of the sun at the end of the morning and everyone expects it to be chucking it down with rain!

No hope

Will a clear-out of useless Tories from the House of Commons solve all our problems? Not if the most vexatious ones are in safe seats.
    And if we think things are bad now, just wait and see what an almighty shambles that lying hypocrite Starmer and his bunch will create.

Another bites the dust

Martin was on pole for 20 laps of MotoGP. He was well ahead of Bagnaia & Bastianini when he had a fast crash right across a gravel trap on lap 7!
    Bastianini took the lead with 10 to go. Bagnaia went ahead on lap 15 and stayed there. Quateraro was a distant third.

Pull the other one

“I am speechless,” one of the commentators claimed after the Moto2 race. And then proceeded to babble on and make a liar of himself. The bloke should be a politician.

Some Drama

Spots of rain before Moto2's 18 laps, 31 deg.C. There was a big crash right away then everyone got strung out. Arbolino was the early leader. Ogura went past him with 6 to go but ran wide on lap 14 and lost the lead.
    Dark clouds! Ogura fell off at turn 9 on the last lap!! Lopez & Dixon were a distant 2nd & 3rd. Fernandez was 4th and now leads the series.

Do it now!

Quick, if you have a smart meter, check if it was made in China. Apparently, they have a kill switch, which hackers can use to turn off you and everyone around you, and cause an overload of sub-stations in your area. Which will go phutt and leave you in the dark for a long time.

Early start? Not if there’s a recording!

The Malaysian Moto3 race was 17 laps on a wide track with wet patches. Big crash for Nepa on lap 2; on the track but everyone avoided him. Lots of place swapping at the front.
    Another on-tracker with 14 to go. Foggia kept taking the lead and losing it. Rossi fell off @ the back of the lead group with 5 to go.
    Guevara took a trip across wet grass on the next lap and went down to 10th. Garcia went ahead of Foggia, but Scotland’s McPhee, who was 22nd on the grid, got past the lot of them for a win!! Sasaki & Garcia joined him on the podium.

Watsongate

I was amazed to read that Baroness Neville-Rolfe, the Cabinet Office Minister, actually thinks that putting people like the disgusting Tom Watson into the House of Lords will ‘keep its expertise and outlook fresh’.
    She sounds as detached from reality as Sir Starmer.

Wishywashful

Is it really reasonable to expect Boris Johnson to form an alliance with the back-stabbing Mr. Sunak to save the Tory party from extinction?
    The way a majority of them are acting, it would be better to let the nation wipe them out by masochistically putting Labour into office. If the population of the UK is prepared to be that stupid, or that desperate.

Brilliant Excuse

The Metropolitan Police force reckons that its policy of not sacking and not naming and shaming coppers with one or more criminal convictions is for their protection.
    How very thoughtful of them.

Justification

Cynical? Moi? Well, how could you be anything else if you’ve been paying attention?

What did she look like!

What sort of twit goes to a do in a frock that looks like a giant plastic bag got up to look like one containing a goldfish bowl? Some girl called Emma with zero taste.

Get Inventing, Chaps!

Anyone who can come up with a non-lethal way of preventing a cat from walking across a laptop’s keyboard the moment I look away from it deserves a Nobel Prize. The Mansion cat can walk across the keyboard and do no harm. She can also switch on a program I was planning to use anyway, which is a pretty neat trick. But she does come close to severe sanctions when she switches the thing off in the blink of an eye.

Somewhat off target

“Northumberland, England, 2020" said the caption in the daft creature feature Reign of Fire.
    Crumbs! That’s two years ago!
    But it’s just as well the bozos who made the film back in 2002 got it badly wrong when they predicted that the country would be overrun buy fire-breathing dragons.

We’re doomed

If the Tories aren’t up to the job of running the country, it’s a shame there isn’t a credible alternative on offer.

I wonder why?

What exactly did sometime Labour deputy leader Tom Watson get his peerage for?
    Services to smearing Tories with obvious lies whilst Starmer was DPP and not putting Jimmy Savile in gaol for doing what Watson was claiming the Tories were up to?
    Furthermore, what was Starmer up to, putting the once-rejected Watson forward again? And what was whoever vets applicants for peerages thinking off, giving one to Watson?

Someone’s happy

Who’s cheering PM Truss to the rafters? The I told you so brigade, who predicted that the Westminster Blob would have the wheels off her plans before she could blink.

It’s TV, not history

What sort of idiot thinks a show made by Netflicks is anything other than fiction peopled by actors wearing the names of real people?

Out of touch

The BBC news was getting very indignant yesterday about people having to live within their means. The myth of the Magic Money Tree lives!

What do they know anyway?

I can’t recall ever darkening the doors of the debating society when I was at university. Which makes the news that 50% of them don’t have one any more unimpactful on me.
    A bunch of kids not being able to pretend they know everything about everything and cancel anyone who doesn’t agree with the ones in charge is nothing to fret about.

Take no prisoners

City fans jeer Pep was the indignant headline. “Maybe they wouldn’t raz him up if he had a proper name,” was one of the unsympathetic responses.

Behavioural analysis

If a cat always goes round in circles anti-clockwise when she’s mithering to go out, does that mean she’s left-footed?

Life always imitates art

I’ve been reminded that my library contains a copy of Brief Candle by Robert Arion, which was published in 1996 and includes a bunch of street nuisances called the Air Liberation Front, whose mission is to liberate air trapped in vehicle tyres.
    Is that where the current breed of tedious Extinctionist deflators got their idea from?

False panic

There seems to be a distinct impression going around that the recent talk about power blackouts was just a wheeze by the candle trade to rack up sales.

Just lazy journalism

Calling the small aircraft that are attacking bits of Ukraine kamikaze drones is cute but off target. The whole point of the kamikazes was that there was a pilot aboard to guide the load of explosives to a target. Not so when a drone pilot is miles away with a cup to tea and a sandwich available if needed.

Someone benefits

If 50% of our universities no longer have a debating society because of the cancel culture, that has to be good news for the local pubs.

No virtue flagged

If everyone in India hates all the benefits the British wished on them in the colonial period; railways, a civil service, an end to princely despots, widow-burning, etc.; they should turn their backs on all of it to demonstrate their sincerity.
    Otherwise, they’re just another gang of grabbing hypocrites.

Wrong!

“Speaks in his own language” the subtitles told us during an episode of the old Maigret. Actually, it was a priest doing Latin at a funeral!

More Mayhem

Martin and Marc Marquez were the early leaders of the 27 lap MotoGP race. Tyres a problem? Quateraro kept making a bog of things and crashed eventually. Miller was crashed out of his home race by a dumb move by Marquez Jr., who would need a police escort out of the country, the comms reckoned!
    Rins made 2nd, and took the lead with 14 to go. Then Bagnaia moved ahead. But it was Rins, Marquez then Bagnaia at the finish.

Didn’t work, though

How do you nick the plot of Macbeth for an episode of Murder, She Wrote? Give it a title trawled from another W. Shakespeare play to throw the viewers off the scent.

Sorted

Lopez had 25 laps of Moto2 all worked out. He had to do a long lap loop as a penalty, so he build up enough of a lead to keep it after looping. A crash on lap 5 needed a stretcher party. No Red Flag, as the comms were going on about.
    Arbolino had a fast crash with 18 to go. Acosta vs Fernandez for 2nd ahead of a series of crashes. Then series leader Fernandez fell off with 10 to go, awarding Dixon a distant 3rd place.

One reason

Why won’t the Nobel Committee give a Peace Prize to Putin? They gave one to Barack Obama even though he hadn’t actually brought peace to anywhere.

Time to be tough

Throwing red soup at a Vincent Van Gogh painting, even safely encased, should be worth an automatic 10-year gaol sentence for the stooopid exhibitionists with no time off and no parole. That’s the only way to stop them.
    And 5 years inside for idiots who obstruct traffic. Maybe with the option of being run over a bit by a steamroller as an alternative to the gaol time.

Not working

The answer to Umbrella (7) can’t be Parasol because that’s just for sun whereas an umbrella is for both rain and sun. Shoot that crossword compiler.

In a mysterious way

In Wednesday’s paper, the Parliamentary sketch writer reckoned Kwasi Kwarteng wished he could have been anywhere else than on the government front bench. Surprise! If he was wishing that, it worked!
    And that was his reward for exposing what the spivs running pension schemes into the ground with their update of the sub-prime mortgage termination campaign are doing.

Any excuse

With all the crises and emergencies they’ve created, you’d expect MPs to be focussed on stuff that matters. But no. The wonks are busy arguing over whether the May Bank Holiday should be moved up to the Coronation Weekend or there should be an extra one after King Charles is Crowned.
    And another extra one on the Friday to make it a proper four-day long weekend?

One way of doing it

Russian troops have abandoned so much stuff in their rush to get away from the Ukrainians in liberated areas that Russia is now the major supplier of weapons to the Ukrainian army!

Wot Next?

The compilers of the NHS website have been banned from using the world illness because it contains an assumption that the patient might recover.
    Presumably, someone was worried that a cowboy lawyer would find an excuse to leap into action whether or not the patient survived.

Tell ’em anything

Yodel’s tracking system doesn’t. Blame it on the Chinese plague?
    For the last week, their website has been assuring me that an order I was expecting was still at the supplier, not their depot, even though the supplier assured me Yodel had it.
    Yesterday, there was a big box parked in the porch.
    No danger of the open door photo that website claimed was essential as the porch doesn’t have one.

Talk big, achieve nothing

It’s all very well for a jury to award a billion bucks to people who sued a conspiracy theorist for upsetting them, but if he’s bankrupt and the state doesn’t allow payout of the size they’re awarding, it all ends up as rather pointless and only the lawyers and the court staff get paid.

Obfuscate, Obfuscate, Obfuscate!

What do you do if you’re the Scottish government and someone is inquiring into one of your blunders, such as the Chinese plague handling?
    Stock the inquiry with people who don’t get on and watch them throw wobblies and quit and throw the whole thing into confusion.

Totally Bogus

“Relax, you’re covered for another 12 months” was the subject line of an email from the TV Licensing mob. As if I had any bloody choice in the matter.

Not needed

Apparently, there’s no need to panic about power blackouts this coming winter. We still have plenty of coal-fuelled power stations still in good working order to bridge any gaps that arise from gas shortages.
    Which means that all the panic-mongering is just that. The can’t-do mob at it again.

Another one

Scotland’s SNP leader, Wee Burney Sturgeon, is another target. All she’s about is making herself president of an independent Scotland. And it doesn’t seem to matter that nothing works there, trams, trains, ferries, the NHS, schools. You name it, the SNP is neglecting it.

Dead Giveaway

Question: How can you tell you’re having a bad day?
Answer: When you find you’ve used up your daily quota of that word before lunch.

F-target

Quite a lot of F-words have to be directed at the clownish leader of the Labour party, Sir Starmer, if he’s nominated the appalling Tom Watson, the bloke who tried to confect a whole gang of Establishment paedophiles on the word of a serial lair, into the House of Lords.

Relatively!

It’s only live once? Not if you have faster than light travel.

Weirder things have happened!

Michael Gove in the House of Lords as a bribe to make him stop making a nuisance of himself? Like that’s going to work. It would just encourage him to keep on with his back-stabbing activities if they did him some personal good.

Not at the wheel

The Bank of England has known since 2018 that the mortgage industry was getting itself into the same sort of tangle as the one that made the banks go bust when Gordon Brown was PM. But did nothing because it’s not the regulator.
    Not so much asleep at the wheel as having a kip in the back seat as the car heads for a cliff.

Maybe not

People over 50 are supposed to be feeling an urge to have a gap year somewhere exotic. How strange when we’re supposed to be in a cost of living crisis and the airline & airport industries are in a state of shambles and airlines are shoving their prices up shamelessly.
    Maybe there’s a lot more dosh sloshing around than the Labour party and its ilk would like us to believe.

Obsolete Saying

“The clock is ticking” a slogan during the London NFL match kept telling us. In the same room as the battery-powered clock with replacement Chinese works, which make the hands glide silently.
    No tick.

All been said

I’m currently reading Frank Herbert’s Children of Dune, which is number 3 of a series of 6 novels.
    A lot of what he says about Alia Atreides’ reign applies to Putin and the state of Russia today. Confirming that knowing that something is wrong doesn’t prevent it from happening again and again.

How are you spelling that?

The world’s oldest supermodel is 91 and called Carmen Dell’ Orefice. Which leaves me wondering how many smirks Ms Orifice’s name has spawned since she started working at 16.

Monster, Monster!

A real hoot from the Legend Channel’s Vintage Vault – The Deadly Mantis (1957), a daft creature feature from the golden age of black & white sci-fi.
    President Creaky Joe would have been just 13 years old when the Mantis attacked Washington.

Man with a plan?

Just what is Michael Gove up to? Is he hoping that if he makes enough trouble, someone will buy him off with a peerage?

Long term strategy

When the subject of panic buying candles came up, one of the group admitted having a whole stack of them; left over from the 1970s and inherited from his parents.
    Wealth cascading down the generations!

NBG

Also on the Post’s front page is an intro to a lengthy piece on the total failure of the SNP regime to do anything for the women who had botched mesh implants. So much for Burney and her gang as saviours.

Who’s to know till it’s too late?

“50% off Domino’s piazza”, the TV ad claimed. But is that 50% off the price? It could equally well be 50% off the topping and/or the taste.

Fluff

There’s a typical bit of political confection on the front page of today’s Sunday Post: a pretence that the SNP is saving Ukraine from the Russian invaders.
    Okay for the wonks at the party conference. Nothing to do with the real world.

And on and on

The same BREAKING: in dramatic red on and on for hours. This is what I have to pay good licence money for? Not good enough by a long chalk.
    BBC = Bloody Bad Crowd

Today’s Mystery

A bloke out jogging along the pavements in a cycling helmet. Was he worried about ecoterrorists beating him about the bonce as a protest against his increased carbon dioxide output?

BBC fail

The bottom-of-the-screen caption bar on the BBC News Channel is a total waste of time at times. BREAKING: Liverpool gets Eurovision. Over and over and over and over.
    So bleedin’ what? What about the real news? Useless BBC buggers.

Political fail

We all know that Labour doesn’t have anyone who can be credible in government in any capacity. Sadly, the Tories seem to be proving they’re in the same boat right now.

Well, why not?

American attention-seeker wears White Lives Matter top at a fashion show and upsets all the racist usual suspects? Well, keeps him out of mischief, I suppose.

Brains in neutral?

What is the London Assembly playing at, taking a pop at the useless Mayor for how he got rid of Dame Whatsit, the useless boss of the Met? She was a disaster area, everyone knows it and London is well rid of her.
    Don’t the Assembly clowns have anything useful to do? On reflection, probably not.

So good they showed it twice

Comedy Central’s customers must really have loved The Meg (giant shark film) last Sunday if they’re having to show it again tonight!

Not paying attention?

“Blockbusters are back this summer” yelled the Sky TV ad. Excuse me, blokes, but the summer is over now.

Nice Earner

Just how much did the legal profession extract from the tax-payer during the prosecution and appeals after those vandals chucked a statue into Bristol Harbour?
    It was obvious at the outset that they were criminals. But no, a ton of flesh for the lawyers and courts. Kerching!

Not sold

Richard Branson might think it’s a brilliant idea but I doubt that the prospect of being waited on by blokes in red frocks will encourage me to fly Virgin.

Just following orders

A big groan for the Kremlin stooges who had to complain to the UN Security Council about the damage to the gas pipelines that was done at Putin’s behest.
    “We just say the words, we don’t necessarily believe them,” is the creed of the diplomat.

Still Munching

Despite all the horror stories about how terrible life is, the latest weigh-ins of primary school kids have shown that one-fifth of those who arrive at a normal weight leave obese.
    Maybe they should be sending the parents there instead.

Empty Spaces

Is there anyone left in Russia after the exodus following Putin’s mock mobilization? The big surprise is that he didn’t have his thugs at the border open fire with machine guns to discourage the escapers.
    Or maybe drive a couple of tanks up and down a queue of cars to really drive the point home.

Highly flexible!

We’re still marvelling at how the gaoled killer Norris managed to go through his normal routine with a mobile phone up his bum. Still, no doubt the screws at Dartmoor has a good laugh when they saw the X-ray. All except whoever passed the phone on to Norris.

Only in America

Chavarious? Where on Earth do parents get a first name like that for their offspring?

Alternatively . . .

Oh, no! We’re being assured that now is the perfect time to cut the cost of Xmas. Maybe we just won’t do it this year to save a lot of dosh and spare ourselves a lot of hassle.

Fair point

Why aren’t the Greenhouse Grotters going bang in all directions about all the methane that’s leaking out into the atmosphere from the Russian gas pipelines to Europe with holes in them?

Is there time to do it?

Every so often, the experts come up with something you just have to do if you want to live forever. But is it much of a life if you’re forever swigging cups to tea and coffee and munching vegetables non-stop?
    The latest fad is eating 5 or more eggs per week. But life just ain’t long enough for all this stuff.

Dunnit

All this hoo-haa about the mortgage industry is just the spivs at it again.
    Substitute Sub-Prime Mortgages for Leveraged Liability-Driven Investments and we’re back in 2008.

Is it worth it?

To be average, you have to have at least 84 bad days per year. How totally wonderful.

Just pointless

Also in the Sunday Post was a story about women breeding & raising children at the arse end of Kenya. Which begs the question: “Why?” Especially if they know they aren’t going to give the kids much of a life. Even if global warming is getting the blame for making somewhere uninhabitable more so.

Also wonky

‘Peerless Guardian columnist?’ Oh, dear, has Scotland’s favourite newspaper joined the Ludicrous Left? How sad?
    Or was it just taking a break yesterday from exposing the endless failings of the SNP government by taking a pop at the mob south of the border?

Somewhat off target

The Meg, a film about a giant shark, on the Comedy Central channel? Not many laughs in that!

Persistence pays off

MotoGP fans need to be (a) keen and (b) waterproof. Will there be any? Yes, an hour late. 25 laps on a soggy track, lots of running wide onto the blue. Bezzecchi had to shed the lead for doing it and Miller took over.
    There were soon 3 red bikes and Marc Marquez ahead of Bezzecchi. Olivera got past Miller with 11 laps to go. Zarco carved through the field and went past Marquez for 4th with 5 laps to go. Loud thunder with 2 to go. Bagnaia stayed 3rd and he’s now just 2 points behind the series leader, Quateraro, who was 17th.

Monster soggy

Rain came bucketing down at the start of the Moto2 race, which had been cut to just 16 laps. Crash and the bike slides for miles! And the rider. It was like a lake @ turn 1 going into lap 2. Chantra crashed out of the lead of his home race. Lopez & Canet swapped the lead; then they were caught.
    Red flag on lap 9 with Arbolino leading from Canet. They were supposed to restart but there was another red flag and the guys got half points for doing half a race.

Bad influence

Digital assistants are not good for children, is the latest news from the experts. They respond without requiring ‘please’ and ‘thank you’, and kids who have access to them are shaping up to become rude adults. But only by our present standards, which are bound to change when the rude kids take over.

Early Bird Fodder

Garcia & Fernandez crashed at the end of lap 1/22 in the Moto3 race in Thailand. Foggia was leading with the action going on behind him. Turn 9 here is also popular for crashes.
    Foggia’s lead evaporated but he never lost it. There were lots of track limits warnings dished out. Sasaki was doggedly 2nd but Rossi got past him. But couldn’t stay there on the last lap.

Times will get hard

What’s the advantage of having a 33 points lead in the polls when you know you’re going to watch it evaporate and have kind people reminding you of how big it used to be?

Not really

Are we going to miss not having a special relationship with the United States while the present incumbent is lurking in the White House? Probably not. Especially as Creaking Joe seems to be pals with lots of people who aren’t friends of ours.

Times not hard for some

Despite all the price matching, Aldi is gobbling up a bigger share of the supermarket trade. They’re obviously doing something particularly right that the bigger ones don’t get.

Not a hand-out

The state pension is not a benefit, someone pointed out when benefit cuts were being discussed. It’s a paid right.
    For which he made 48 years National Insurance contributions, he reminded us.
    Not that any politicians either get that or want to admit it at the moment.

Pull the other one

Labour claiming to be the party of fiscal responsibility will be met with derision as long as people remember that note by Liam Byrne, then chief secretary of the Treasury in 2010.
    That’s the one to his successor that said: “Dear chief secretary, I'm afraid there is no money. Kind regards – and good luck! Liam.” It was claimed to be a joke but after 13 years of Labour misrule, it was actually accurate.