DEM not gonna CON dis NATION: Rolling UK politics in the short-lived post-Murdoch era

is £160 a special upgrade price for ppl who bought the wrong ticket or does that + standard price (has be £40/£50ish at least right?) = the actual price for a fucking train tikcet from cheshire to london?

yes special on-the-train-fuck-you price

his aide there looks more like a lib dem apparatchik than a proper foxblood and claret sodden tory imo

they seem to be having a fun time together anyway

double checked this but it's £70 off peak single, £140 anytime, £189 first class. not sure where the £160 comes from, mb he booked in advance

£49 to fly

Aaaaaaaaand Andrew Mitchell has resigned.

terrible management from dcam

the whole 'oh firing him straightaway would call his judgment in appointing him into question' was stupid, the police fed / tabs were going to make this run and run

a small amount of derision for appointing a slightly too unpleasant & obnoxious chief whip but a missed chance for the eton crowd to reaffirm symbolic fealty to the shire tory rank and file

felt-tip pen for sincerity

https://twitter.com/JohnRentoul/status/259346331263463424/photo/1/large

As he disembarked at London's Euston station and found himself greeted by a small posse of reporters and photographers, Osborne smiled grimly and declined to answer questions fired at him by journalists and Labour party and student activists.

Asked if reports suggesting he had bought a standard-class ticket but had sat in first class were correct, he replied: "I'm sure it will be, um … "

George Osborne and his aide on the train. Photograph: ITV/Granada
The chancellor appeared increasingly awkward as his minders and members of Network Rail staff ushered him through a security gate and in the direction of a government car.

Osborne found himself at the centre of a Twitter storm after his apparently innocuous arrival on the 15.11 from Wilmslow was spotted by an ITV journalist also on board. Rachel Townsend posted reports on Twitter that, despite having a standard ticket, the chancellor had gone directly to sit in a first-class carriage.

There is nothing I don't love about this.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/oct/19/george-osborne-inspector-train-ticket

"The guard went on gathering tickets and later told me Osborne had agreed to cough up the £160."

"cough up the £160" presumably = "add £160 to expenses claim"

Which begs the question, why he didn't pay up immediately without fuss?

something something entitlement something plebs something place something

I'm sure he had nothing at all to do with ticket purchasing and just went to where he'd expect to sit. I think there's every chance someone's taken a bollocking for buying pleb class in the first place.

daily mail laying hard into osborne, mitchell and some other loser today. did they ever shiv thatch like this BITD?

Don't think so. Her cabinet, maybe, but not her.

In 2010 Osborne issued new rules that any dept with staff travelling First would have their budgets docked unless they could show exceptional circumstances

innit marvelous

It's nice that Osborne's actions so perfectly encapsulate the way he treats the country as a whole.

Suppose the thing with this lot is blend of casual arrogance with incompetence which I don't really remember with Thatcher's lot in quite the same way. This sense that they don't really give a shit how it looks even to their own voters.

Oh hang on it's Tebbit himself sticking the knife in.

*michaeljacksonpopcorn.gif*

Suppose the thing with this lot is blend of casual arrogance with incompetence which I don't really remember with Thatcher's lot in quite the same way

Oh no, it's pretty much exactly the same it's just that, post-Falklands, Thatcher herself went into full Iron Lady/ She Who Must Be Obeyed mode and became less of a Prime Minister and more of a Generalissimo. Noticing the reactions here, from... uh... our younger contributors, on the Tory Party conference, along the lines of "Were they always this bad?", the answer is YES. Why do you think us old farts hate them so much?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/8583592/Disabled-should-work-for-less-than-minimum-wage-Tory-MP-suggests.html

Tom - we know they were always this bad, if not worse, but did they couple it with being this... inept?

They were always this inept - 'back to basics' springs to mind - but with 24/7 world communication it's easier to notice. Nice side-effect of being THAT self-centred. What, oh what, will be next?

They remain, (funda)mentally, the party of Kicking Michael Foot's Stick Away.

he was the chancellor without a ticket to ride. This week he hopes to be able to say that after a hard day's night fixing a hole in the budget deficit, things are finally getting better.

oh larry

^^^I guess the UK needed its own dennis perrin

he was the chancellor who said we can work it out but it seems that the economy is being run for the benefit of mr kite

If you ever want to hone your hatred to a stiletto sharp point, watch this

OH MY GOD

http://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/im-a-celebrity-2012-nadine-dorries-1419022

DYING OF LAUGHTER AND ANTICIPATION

i'm nadine dorries get me out of here

it's almost as if parliamentary democracy was a game show

No results found for "noncervative party"

Is this the late Cyril Smith or someone else? Cover-up allegations would be huge.

Cyril Smith was Liberal so unlikely to be him.

So he was!

Twitter claims to have the answer or at least a consensus.

Dorries is officially suspended. Wonder if she will come back as UKIP.

She's off to New York I thought

Sorry, that's Louise mensch who dorries criticized for not taking her duties as an MP seriously

who does twitter (and obv not ilx) say it was?

Twitter basically incredulous at how inquiry into Welsh care homes run by William Hague (current Defence Secretary, former party leader, famous Tory child prodigy) failed to return anything like answers for the victims of abuse there.

http://trekweb.com/images/stories/4c9b391ae5bf6-1.jpg

Is this the late Cyril Smith or someone else? Cover-up allegations would be huge.

― Go Narine, Go! (ShariVari), Tuesday, 6 November 2012 18:15 (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Cyril Smith was Liberal so unlikely to be him.

― fun loving and xtremely tolrant (Billy Dods), Tuesday, 6 November 2012 18:22 (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

So he was!

― Go Narine, Go! (ShariVari), Tuesday, 6 November 2012 18:25 (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Well, well http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/nov/13/cyril-smith-accused-abusing-boys

won't believe this until Newsnight runs it

on the other hand i find it quite a relief that every child abuser in the country appears to be dead

and can't sue for libel.

i don't understand the sequence of events with last week's newsnight story at all

Private Eye had been mentioning that recently. The allegations were made in the seventies and didn't lead to a conviction but also didn't lead to him taking legal action against those repeating them. Xp

oh okay --

But the profoundly embarrassing truth was that the story was false. Not only was it a fairly straightforward case of mistaken identity, but this fact had been known about by journalists for more than 15 years. Messham's claims, however well-intentioned, had been examined and rejected by the official Waterhouse inquiry in 1997. Simple checking would have revealed this.

McAlpine's cousin, Jimmie McAlpine, a prominent local businessman, was the one originally named by Wrexham inmates as the object of rumours. There was no evidence of actual sexual abuse in any event. These rather devastating facts are explicitly recorded in transcripts of the Waterhouse inquiry.

most of the versions i've seen haven't bothered explaining some of this background, just 'newsnight said that there was a tory mp who had abused children, and people were naming that tory mp on the internet, and that tory mp was obviously exempt from suspicion'

this is more than a bit annoyingly-self-congratulatory-grauniad, but

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/nov/10/newsnight-mcalpine-scoop-rumour