Apparently 93 Tory constituencies are outraged that a "snap election" has been called leaving them with their (short) trousers around their ankles, not yet having selected their prospective parliamentary candidate.
Boo hoo. Poor them...
Unless they were expecting our Second-Past-The-Post Prime Minister Mr Tetchy to cancel all future general elections, we all knew that one would have to be called by January 2025.
Ideally, any parliamentary constituency association will have selected its prospective parliamentary candidate one or two years before the next scheduled general election date.
Obviously, this may fall foul of a snap general election when a government has a tiny majority but that is not the case this time.
It is disrespectful to both their PPC and their constituents to fail to plan a long introduction of the candidate to the voters and vice versa.
The Heir "flies" helicopter after taking over the family business from his papa (whereas the Spare actually flew them in combat).
William sat in the front seat of the Army Air Corp Apache Longbow attack helicopter. As any fule kno the front seat is where the gunner sits; the actual pilot sits behind the gunner in the rear seat...
Either #BBCNews doesn't know, or doesn't care, or #BBC is worried about losing its Royal Charter?
Israel makes it through to the final of the Eurovision Song Contest (although the booing will be dubbed out).
Have always wondered, why does the Middle Eastern country Israel take part in the Eurovision Song Contest anyway?
Now I'm guessing that, as Hitler & Nazism and Mussolini & Fascism were European innovations, Netanyahu and Likud and their brutal ideology (Zionism?) fit right in?
P.S. I've news for Netanyahu (and for Putin too), Europe has moved on since the Bad Old Days and the European Union, born from the trauma of the Second World War is a much more preferable role-model for states' best practice nowadays.
The Nastiz' Foreign Secretary David Cameron (that's Baron Cameron of Huggahoodie to plebs like me and you) has just said that Israel does not have the "unconditional" support of H.M.'s Government.
What's surprising is that Lord Cameron of Greensill needed to make this explicit.
Israel is a sovereign country, just as is (and was before Brexit) the Untied Kingdom. No country deserves our "unconditional" support.
But Baron Cameron sounds rational in comparison to some other #Nastiz
For instance, Sue-Ellen Braverman (remember the former Home Secretary and Attorney General Cruella Suella?) has stated she is "certain" that in prosecuting its deadly campaign against civilians in Gaza Israel has not broken international law nor committed war crimes.
Many others, including the International Court of Justice can not be quite so "certain."
Only three humans have ever witnessed an eclipse of the Sun by the Earth. It happened while the Apollo 12 crew was returning home from the Moon, on November 21, 1969.
Fortunately, the astronauts filmed the moment so you can share in the experience.
Earth eclipsing the Sun happens many times a day for astronauts when the #ISS flies into Earth's shadow during part of its Low Earth Orbit.
Strictly you cannot even compare a solar eclipse by the Moon and one by the Earth as equivalent as, by happenstance, the angular diameter of the Moon and the Sun at lunar distance is almost exactly the same meaning that phenomena such as Bailey's Beads are not visible when the Earth, with its much larger angular diameter, eclipses the Sun.
My apologies to you all. While I was being sarcastic about PM Netanyahu being "so apologetic", listening to his soundbite again I twigged that Netanyahu's words were not even a pseudo-apology.
It was an excuse.
It was 'It's war; shit happens; get over it.'
Even 'friend of Israel', #LBC's Nick Ferrari today distanced himself, saying he's a 'friend of Jewish people', now painting himself a 'critical friend' of the Israeli govt.
While I laud Nick Ferrari for admitting his pro-Israel stance over the last six months of conflict in Gaza, it was news to me he's a member of a pro-Jewish organisation and that he regularly declared such on-air. It's the first time I've heard Ferrari admit it explicitly at 7am when his diatribe starts.
A Damascene conversion is welcome (tho one has to be careful of being "unintentionally" targeted on the Road to Damascus) but why did it take the deaths of three Brits not 30,000 Gazans?
Benjamin Netanyahu is so apologetic about the Israeli air-strike that killed seven international aid workers for World Central Kitchen: "they were unintentionally targeted."
Thee vehicles were unintentionally struck by PGMs at three separate locations over a notified route 2km in length.
As Churchill said 'once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is 'unintentional'.'
And yet Putin welcomes with open arms (and small arms) Tajiks and others into the ranks of the RF army fighting his war, sorry, Special Military Operation against Ukraine. Many of whom will join the 300,000 casualties already suffered by Putin's military in fruitless meat-grinder operations designed to attrit Ukrainians' stoic defenders.
As today our Second-Past-The-Post Prime Minister Rishi Sunak acts out the next scene in his performative tragi-comic melodrama entitled 'Stop The Boats', I am still seething at last night's #C4News report.
Our Home Office is currently granting asylum to Rwandan nationals fleeing President Kagame's repressive regime while Sunak is legislating to assert, ipse dixit, Rwanda is a 'safe country' to which we should transport our own asylum seekers.
On #LBC Nick Ferrari is wringing his hands (after washing his hands) at the number of 'illegal immigrants' who are drowning in the English Channel as he supports Second-Past-The-Post PM Sunak's 'Stop The Boats' performance.
Poor Nick has quaffed the #Nastiz' Kool-Aid: they're only 'illegal' cos the #Tories have defined them so. And the traffickers' business would be undercut and the boats stopped if HMG chose to process asylum claims before claimants cross the water.
Nick Ferrari has just admitted on #LBC that he knows nothing about the people crossing the Channel in small boats.
But that doesn't stop him pontificating on the fate of other human beings after admitting, even flaunting, his own ignorance.
I think I know why people prefer their own 'echo chamber' to opening their minds to the viewpoints of the Right-wingers. It's because the Right spout evil nonsense...
The one person right now who you might have expect to be called to speak in a debate of racism in the House of Commons would be Diane Abbott who, subject of a high profile incidence of racist language from a Tory donor... yet the Speaker said that despite Abbott rising over 40 times to speak during the debate, he ran out of time to call her.
If you wanted to confirm to the average voter that the political system is racist, this would be a good way to do it.
According to my less-than-well-thumbed copy of Erskine May, there is a strict order of questions to the Prime Minister laid out in the Order Paper for the day and Mr Speaker was simply following the protocol and calling those listed on that Order Paper.
It was not a Commons debate as such - it was Questions to the Prime Minister and most back-bench MPs have to wait weeks for a chance to ask a PMQ. Unfair to pre-empt!
Having had his wrist slapped for selecting a Labour amendment to an SNP opposition day motion, I'm guessing Hoyle chose to play it safe in not breaking convention by calling Ms Abbott.
After all, a Speaker serves at the whim of MPs and pissing off at least 20 scheduled to ask #PMQs would've have been, as YES MINISTER put it, "courageous."
DA presently doesn't hold the Labour whip so Starmer's intervention was likely calculated more to attack the Nastiz than to defend DA.
James O'Brien is incensed that Hoyle called Mark Francois instead of giving Diane Abbott a sort of 'Right of Reply' so I rechecked the Order Paper for 13/03: