Brillo In Tears - Boo Sodding Hoo

Ultimately, he departed Gammon Broadcasting™ News (“Bacon’s News Channel”) with a payoff not unadjacent to stuff all. But for former Murdoch editor Andrew Neil, it wasn’t about the money, oh no. Even though his contract was allegedly worth a cool £4 million. No, walking away was an act of self-preservation, of maintaining his dignity.

This process is what has led him to tell all to the inmates of the Northcliffe House bunker, taking out a king-size onion in no style at all: “'GB News is just a disaster. I came close to a breakdown. It would've killed me to carry on. I HAD to quit': ANDREW NEIL breaks down in tears in his first interview since his exit from channel he helped create”.

DAHLINGS! It was GHASTLY!! Do go on: “it comes as a surprise when Andrew Neil starts to cry and confesses to me how he nearly succumbed to mental collapse, broken by his experience at GB News … ’I came close to a breakdown,’ he confesses, tears falling … His reputation was in the hands of, as he sees it, amateurs who could destroy his 48-year record of unrivalled success built on rigour and professionalism”. Bwahahahahaha!

“48-year record of unrivalled success built on rigour and professionalism”? As Billy Connolly once said, there’s going to be some swearing … FUCK OFF! AIDS denialism, hiring David Irving, and the libelling of Carmen Proetta that meant the Sunday Times having to stump up £150,000 in damages? That kind of success and professional rigour?

Had that libel award been made today, and not in the late 1980s, you could have added a zero to the payout. Worse, he seems to have forgotten that he’s still chairman of the increasingly alt-right Spectator magazine, which ploughs the same furrow of bigotry as GB News, but does it in an upmarket typeface, fronted by a faux-posh editor.

When he moans “I do feel angry though about what they’ve done to a beautiful dream. This was a vision that might have worked. But if you watch the constant themes that come through again and again from the shock jockeys on GB News, the perception is ‘we hate migrants, we hate the NHS, we hate lockdown and we hate Meghan Markle’”, you have to wonder if he ever reads the Speccy - before rocking up at their summer party.

There was little sympathy for Brillo, with Nels Abbey, who caused The Great Man such discomfort on BBC Question Time, noting “Every word I said about Andrew Neil & GB News on Question Time has now been confirmed -by Andrew Neil- to be true”. As for that walking away with no payoff, Alex Andreou had something to say about that.

“Andrew Neil took a business risk that stood to make him a very wealthy man, had it worked out. And had it worked out, he would still be crowing ‘go woke, get broke’, like he did when figures in the first few days looked good. He’s a mercenary distancing himself from his failure”. And Hussein Kesvani had something to say about all that rigour.

“Sorry but if Andrew Neil genuinely didn’t know what GB news was or where its audience came from, it’s more proof that he really isn’t a good journalist at all, and had the good fortune of being a media person in a book period and having the BBC support him unconditionally”. Basically, no-one cares about Brillo’s blubbering.

He’s not a media messiah. And no-one cares if he’s a very naughty boy. Sad, really.

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The Day Brexit Died

The warnings having been dismissed as Project Fear, and the General Election having been won, alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson and his coterie of rank ineptitude charged onward to the cliff edge. His Brexit negotiator “Lord” David Frost, hopelessly out of his depth against the EU’s Michel Barnier, was turned over and signed up to a deal which would hobble the UK for decades to come.

But Bozo, and his pals in our free and fearless press, were not listening. They knew better. And then came the fall: supermarket shortages, energy price hikes - and now, to cap it off, fuel shortages. Scenes of motorists queuing at the pumps, fuel stations running dry, and those same press cheerleaders in a blind panic. It was more or less exactly as predicted.

The winter of discontent had arrived early: all that would be needed now was for all those shortages to get worse, and for Covid-19 to come roaring back, helped on its way by Bozo and Co dispensing with common sense restrictions - like wearing face coverings on public transport and in enclosed spaces, like shops. 1978-9 would look like a picnic.

So what would our Government do to address the shortages, which were caused mainly by another shortage - not enough HGV drivers? Urged to ease visa restrictions for drivers from mainland Europe, Bozo and his Transport Secretary Grant “Spiv” Shapps initially resisted. Maybe they still held to the line pedalled by Michael “Oiky” Gove, and handed to Tim Shipman of the Murdoch Sunday Times, before the 2016 EU referendum.

“MIGRANTS POSE A DIRECT COST TO US ALL” was the headline. The reality is that not having migrants poses a rather greater cost - the country gradually seizing up. But while “Oiky” and Shippers join all the other Brexit Guilty Men And Women, Bozo and “Spiv” Shapps need to act. And so it came to pass: the U-Turn that signalled the end of Brexit.

The BBC reported “Ministers are working on plans for a temporary visa scheme to make it easier for foreign lorry drivers to come to the UK. Final details of exactly how the initiative will work are expected to be announced this weekend. Any changes to immigration rules will be temporary, with a cap on the number of workers allowed to enter the UK”.

But here a problem enters. As iNews has pointed out, those drivers may not want to return: “European lorry drivers are likely to shun the UK despite an expected relaxation of visa rules for truckers … the head of the European Road Haulers Association (UETR) has said drivers on the continent are likely to ignore the UK in favour of ‘higher pay and better working conditions’ across Europe”. UETR represents more than 70% of EU truckers.

Marco Digioia (for it was he) added “There are driver shortages right across Europe as well, but the EU has committed to improving driver facilities and haulage companies are committed to improving pay and conditions. Until the UK offers the same pay and working conditions as drivers have in the EU then many will stay away”. Well, well.

We could get drivers to return by paying them more and following the latest EU rules. Or we could remain proudly independent and munch on a little more of that sovereignty. But one thing is clear: Brexit is a disaster, and will need to be at least partially reversed.

Meanwhile, the UK is in the shit. What our media class won’t be telling you any time soon.

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UK Falls Apart - Labour Plays Games

Until this week, it had been difficult to compare post-Brexit Britain to those moments in the 1970s when the lights went out and cars had to queue for fuel. Sure, supermarkets have been short of some lines, but the real 70s moments, the ingredients of a real winter of discontent, had been missing. But a week, as Harold Wilson observed, is a long time in politics, and now the fuel shortages have arrived with a vengeance.

And the shortages have spooked the right-leaning part of our free and fearless press: from the increasingly desperate and downmarket Telegraph’s “Alarm as BP begins petrol rationing”, to the Murdoch Times’ “Don’t panic, urges No 10 after BP cuts fuel delivery”, and the rather more downmarket Sun shrieking “WE’RE RUNNING ON EMPTY”, the conclusion has to be that someone is panicking, and it’s the Tory cheerleaders.

Worse, the Tories and their hangers-on are so clearly out of touch with more or less anyone outside their comfort zone: they cannot conceive of how withdrawing the £20 uplift in Universal Credit could possible be a problem. For Tory cheerleaders, think-tankers, hacks and pundits, that’s around a quarter, or less, of their average per person restaurant bill. For the least well-off, it’s a week’s food, and maybe some heating.

So it might be thought that Labour would be capitalising on the Tory ineptitude and cluelessness, and taking an opinion poll lead into their Conference, which begins this weekend. But the Times and YouGov have brought bad news: despite the shambles over which alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson and his cabinet of talentless sycophants is presiding, the Tories have regained a lead over Labour.

Why that might be is not difficult to deduce: while some leading Labour figures are doing their best to take the fight to the Tories - Angela Rayner taking PMQs this week and giving the clueless Dominic Raab a suitably good going over, for instance - that part of the leadership that almost sacked her was apparently busying itself with infighting.

As it is with YouGov ...

Like the idea of abandoning One Member One Vote for electing the party leader, for instance. LabourList has reported that “Keir Starmer has confirmed to his shadow cabinet that he will bring rule changes to Labour conference for a return to an electoral college system in leadership elections, a new reselection process for MPs and reforms to the policy-making process”. OMOV was how Starmer himself was elected.

This has not received universal acclaim: “Unite the Union has already publicly opposed switching back to the electoral college system for leadership contests, which - unlike the current one-member-one-vote system - sees MPs, affiliates and members each given a third of the vote … Sharon Graham told Labour MPs in an email last night that the electoral college plan was ‘unfair, undemocratic and a backwards step for our party’”.

... so also with Survation

Picking a scrap with the left, which is how the abandonment of OMOV will be portrayed, is, sadly, rather like how Lyndon Johnson described making a speech on economics: “Did y’ever think … that making a speech on economics is a lot like pissing down your leg? It seems hot to you, but it never does to anyone else”. The Labour leadership may enjoy putting one over on the Rotten Lefties™. But it will not address voters’ concerns.

And those voters won’t forget, or forgive, Labour playing games while they went hungry.

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GB News Forgives Racist Bigot

After the fallout between Gammon Broadcasting™ News (“Bacon’s News Channel”) and former Murdoch editor Andrew Neil resulted in a parting of the ways which has left the beleaguered broadcaster with one less means of propping up its piss-poor ratings, the desperate attention-seeking has been ramped up more than the odd notch.

Colin Brazier, part of the GB News talent paddling pool

This has resulted in appalling nonentity Colin Brazier, whose media career may well fall off the cliff without GB News to prop it up, scraping the barrel in no style at all as the suggestion is pitched that racism should be “forgiven”. More specifically, the concept of forgiveness is aimed, rather creatively, at disgraced historian David Starkey.

“The historian Dr David Starkey is my guest tonight on BRAZIER from 8pm. He was cancelled by publishers and colleges after ‘clumsy’ remarks about slavery last year, for which he later apologised. So my twitter question tonight: Can we forgive David Starkey?” told Brazier, telling his audience what course of action he had decreed they should take.

Maybe not giving Dazza another interview any time soon

His problem is that Starkey was not “Cancelled”, because his remarks were not in the least “Clumsy”. He had given an interview to the impenetrably stupid Darren Grimes, the floor crossing failed hairdresser who was on record as not possessing the intellectual capacity to fill in a form correctly, and had made a nailed-on racist comment.

Starkey had taken exception to the idea that slavery was akin to genocide. “Slavery was not genocide, otherwise there wouldn’t be so many damn blacks in Africa or in Britain, would there? An awful lot of them survived”. Previously, after the 2011 London riots, he had appeared on BBC Newsnight and proclaimed “A substantial amount of the chavs have become black. The whites have become black; a particular sort of violent destructive, nihilistic gangster culture has become the fashion”. He’s consistent. Consistently racist.

The Great Man attempted a little contrition in the aftermath of Grimes’ interview going live: his comments “were ‘a bad mistake’ for which he is ‘very sorry’ … He apologised ‘unreservedly’ for the offence his ‘deplorably inflammatory’ words had caused, saying he had spoken ‘with awful clumsiness’”. Awful racist bigotry, more like.

That is who Colin Brazier is trying to rehabilitate. At the same time, he’s doing his best to pretend that the real racists are elsewhere: in a clearly rehearsed - if not rehearsed very well - discussion with Andrew Doyle, out came the deflection. “Have you been called a gammon, a Karen, a remoaner, or a snowflake? These are words that have been added to a list of potentially offensive words by the broadcast regulator Ofcom”.

Then came the Look Over There. “Surely there’s a distinction to be drawn between ad hominem words like gammon, or Karen, where you are ascribing characteristics to an individual … remoaner … doesn’t feel quite as derogatory as gammon [which] feels loaded with obvious racial undertones”. Bullshit. Gammon is a state of mind, not a racial slur.

Thus the GB News agenda: rehabilitate a real racist, while calling racist on others. Sadly, the likes of Brazier are rank amateurs who wouldn’t last five minutes with the real exponents of the craft, such as Fox News Channel (fair and balanced my arse).

David Starkey remains unforgiven. And GB News ratings are still declining. Sad, really.

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Common Law Covidiots Go To School

The significant pool of rank stupidity, that manifested itself in the temporary “seizing” of Storyhouse Chester recently, resurfaced this week, as the priority changed to opposing the vaccination of 12-to-15-year-olds against Covid-19. To this end, the assembled idiocy rocked up at Blacon High School and demanded to see the head teacher.

An out-of-village idiot serves up a wad of waste paper

The head teacher, given her title, was busy doing actual work, which is more than can be said for the so-called Common Law mob. But they did manage a few minutes to harangue the deputy head, who must have wondered how the group presenting him with an alleged “liability notice” had supped so much strong stuff so early in the day. Perhaps they were on a particularly bad trip. He decided to humour them, and receive their wad of waste paper.

“I either need to serve this to the head teacher, or the deputy head”, announced the group spokesperson. “I have to let you know that we are recording this for the high courts [there’s more than one of them now?] as evidence that I am serving you with a liability notice. The liability notice is served, signed, sealed to Blacon High School”. There was more.

“This is a liability notice [again] so that if you decide that you are going to have the children injected with this lethal vaccine within your school, you and the head teacher will be held personally liable. This, I advise you to read through this paperwork, it’s full of evidence, liability notice [once more] is in there, and that’s it, we’ve served you”. So was that it?

Sadly not. Off camera came the voice of another out-of-village idiot. “It is against the law to vaccinate children under the age of 18 [courts full of MMR recipients, then? No, thought not] using trial vaccine”. The server of the notice concurred: “any trial drug or vaccine, it is against the law, anyone under the age of 18”. So what sanction did they propose?

“And even under Gillick’s Competence” interjected another off-camera wacko. This momentarily put the notice server off her train of thought, but she soon rallied and began to rant about, you guessed it, Common Law. “Under Common Law, if you have the children injected within your school, and any damage is done to these children, you will be held personally liable”. How? Do they have an equally gaga legal team ready to go?

No matter, the notice server continued “that comes with full asset stripping and life in prison, and that’s under Common Law. Thank you, we’ve served you today, thank you very much”. This “liability notice” is of course meaningless, although the Police may find the threatening behaviour and recording on school premises interesting.

As one observer put it, “All those lawyers will be kicking themselves after wasting years at university getting qualified when apparently all you need to do is read a few posts on Facebook and suddenly you're an expert”. Why our free and fearless press wants to have the full force of the law rain down upon Insulate Britain, while ignoring the disruptive and increasingly creepy activities of the anti-vax wackos, is something to ponder.

Vanishing down the nearest rabbit hole is something anyone is free to do, should they be so inclined. But threatening others is out of order. And the longer the cops do nothing, the closer it gets to someone taking the law into their own hands to remove the idiots.

These are not harmless eccentrics. Stop playing nice with them. That is all.

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Woke, Propaganda, And Misinformation

Over at the Guardian, political correspondent Peter Walker has registered mild irritation this morning: “The seemingly unstoppable rise of ‘woke’ as a lazy shorthand for, 'Anything I disagree with which is vaguely to the left of my newspaper's views' really is one of the more dispiriting developments in UK journalism of recent years”.

Speak to the forehead

He gives four headline examples of what cannot really be called a craft, such is the crude way the word is used as a pejorative. One is the all-too-predictable ranting of the deeply unpleasant Dan Wootton at Mail Online, there are two steamers from Tim Stanley at the increasingly desperate and downmarket Telegraph, and remaining at the Tel, another from the worryingly wayward Sherelle Jacobs. That last is a significant intervention.

Why so? Because the word Woke has a very straightforward definition: “alert to injustice in society, especially racism”. Someone who is not white railing at people who are alert to societal injustice, and especially racism, eh? That, in a nutshell, is why so much use of the term Woke is, as Walker puts it, “lazy shorthand”. From an all-too-predictable culprit.

“Wokeness: once you know it, you’ll hate it … Most people don’t understand what woke means. But those who do are dead against it”. Guess who? Yes, the beings from the planet Spiked, telling “Of the 41 per cent of people who say they understand the word ‘woke’, most think it’s a bad thing - just 29 per cent of them see themselves as woke, while 56 per cent do not”. But one thing is missing: the actual definition of the term.

Thus another of those circular arguments: the assembled contrarianism of Spiked throws out the word Woke, associating it with Very Bad Things Indeed, and when those who claim to know what it means, but probably do not (and no check is carried out, natch), confirm the successful deployment of the Spiked propaganda, the Spiked crew tells the world that this proves the point made, and off round the circle we go once more.

That Spiked merely uses Woke as a pejorative to frighten the unwary can be seen in this artfully confected drivel from Brendan O’Neill: “Woke book-burning”. Cranking up the quote generator to the max, Bren gives us “woke lexicon … book-burning. Woke book-burning … self-selected guardians of correct thought, the neo-priestly elites of political correctness”.

And we can stop right there. It’s not just the projection - O’Neill, who gets regular commissions from the Murdoch Sun, and the increasingly alt-right Spectator magazine, calling “elite” on his targets - but the dead giveaway that he is deliberately using the term Woke to mean something it does not - “Correct thought … political correctness”.

Sherelle Jacobs

If you want to talk about something being PC, then call it that. There is no reason to appropriate a word which means something else - unless, of course, the intention is to discredit the activity to which the appropriated word means. In the case of the term Woke, that would be concern about societal injustice - and about racism.

That is what Brendan O’Neill and his pals have worked so long and hard to achieve: to demonise anti-racism, equate it with mere political correctness. Indeed, they characterise those they call “woke” as bigoted and intolerant. So effective has their campaign been that they now have at least one black woman doing their bidding. That’s where misinformation backed by our free and fearless press can lead. No Orwell quote required this time.

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Gas Price Hike - Another Brexit Bonus

In yet another exhibition of unintended consequences, the UK - but maybe not Northern Ireland - is facing hikes in the price of gas, with smaller energy suppliers either seeking bail-outs, or even going to the wall. And once more, the exposure of the UK to the full force of the free market shows every sign of being not unconnected to Brexit.

The promise ...

Not that the BBC is yet prepared to mention that particular B-Word, as it tells “The government is considering offering emergency state-backed loans to energy companies as firms battle to stay afloat amid surging gas prices. Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng will hold crisis talks with industry bosses including Centrica and E.On on Monday”.

There was more. “High demand for gas and reduced supply are behind a surge in wholesale prices”. There is, though, reassuring news: “Consumers are protected from sudden hikes through the government's energy price cap, a maximum price they can be charged on a default tariff”. After that, however, is a but. “But that also means energy firms are unable to pass on higher wholesale costs to their customers”.

... versus the reality

And so “Four small energy companies have ceased trading in recent weeks, including Edinburgh-based People's Energy, which supplied gas and electricity to about 350,000 homes and 1,000 businesses, and Dorset-based Utility Point which had 220,000 customers”. In addition, “The UK's sixth largest energy company, Bulb, is seeking a bailout, while four smaller firms are expected to go bust this week, as a result”.

So how big is that surge? “Industry group Oil & Gas UK said wholesale prices for gas had increased by 250% since January - with a 70% rise since August”. What might have been driving such an increase? This from the EU gives a hint: “On 1 January 2021, the UK left the EU's internal energy market. Energy trading through electricity interconnectors between the EU and Great Britain is no longer managed through existing single market tools, such as EU market coupling, as these are reserved for EU countries”.

In case anyone thinks the two are not connected, consider what energy prices look like for EU member states, and those countries that are part of the Energy Community (Norway has observer status). Ian Fraser has had a look: “Once again, Britain has the most energy in Europe, at €207.15 / MWhr (day ahead price). That’s more than twice what electricity costs in Norway (€95.8 / MWhr) #energycrisis Source: LCP Energy”.

Moreover, the day-ahead spread for EU member states has a maximum upper bound of €209.40 per MWh. That for the UK has an eye-watering upper bound of €1083.78, or more than five times as much. Contrast that with the Murdoch Sun telling readers before the 2016 referendum “Boris promises cheaper household gas bills if Brits back Brexit”.

Once again, alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, who lies more or less as he draws breath, and his pals in our free and fearless press, can be seen to have lied to get the referendum result they wanted. None of them will be among those having to choose between more expensive food and far more expensive energy this winter.

The only unknown now is how long the electorate will tolerate the attempts to claim that the dastardly EU is behind all the misery before they realise they’ve been had. Brexit was a con job and is, as predicted, proving a disaster for the UK. No surprise there, then.

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AUKUS - Goodbye NATO, Hello EUDF

Those pretending that the move to European monetary union, which led to the single currency, was some kind of aberration, an unnecessary act, maybe even grandstanding and overreach, ignore that it was the USA that - inadvertently - began the process, when the Vietnam war needed lots of money, as well as bodies, throwing at it.

What was then West Germany, probably with encouragement from the French, suggested to Washington DC that the US Dollar should be devalued. As the response was not unlike that given by the defenders in the Bastogne Pocket, the authorities in Bonn reluctantly decided to revalue their currency upwards. Not even the mighty Deutschmark could hold a candle to the US Dollar. But a Europe-wide currency might just. And it now has.

That memory should be borne in mind today as the repercussions from the AUKUS deal, struck between the USA, UK and Australia, are examined. Sadly, it does not appear to be on the radar of new Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, who has instead declared “Read my [Telegraph] piece on how we are putting at the heart of a network of economic, diplomatic and security partnerships. This will drive growth and jobs in the UK and across the world and help make us safer”. She ends with the sad and meaningless #GlobalBritain hashtag.

Maybe we should consider the reality here. John Lichfield, writing for The Local France, certainly has, and has concluded “The nasty row which has broken out between Paris, Washington, Canberra and (to an extent) London, is about more than a €60bn French contract to build 12 submarines for the Australian navy”. There is more.

“It is about France as a Pacific and Indian ocean nation; it is about France’s desire to play an important role in Indian-Pacific affairs, containing China without antagonising China; it is about America’s willingness to treat allies as allies, not vassals; it is about honesty and openness in international affairs”. And he offers an ominous coda.

“The AUKUS affair, coming so soon after the debacle of America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, proves that [Emmanuel] Macron is right. Nato is brain dead. Washington doesn’t have allies, only junior partners. Britain has willingly accepted that role. It is time that for the European Union to consider how (to coin a phrase) it can take back control of its own security and prosperity”. There are other issues in play, too.

As Mutjaba Rahman has noted, “Macron's decision to escalate IS partly an electoral calculation. He remembers Chirac gained popularity not just by refusing to invade Iraq, but by taking initiative & publicly disputing US strategy”. But France, the UK and US are part of NATO, aren’t they? Founder members, too. But Mike Galsworthy has that one covered.

Another fine mess, son of Stanley

“Lord Ricketts, a former UK ambassador to France said: ‘French diplomats have told me that America lied about what they were doing and they will be releasing documents to show that America lied.’ Well that's NATO royally screwed then”. What became NATO originated in the UK, and more importantly, mainland Europe. What may supplant NATO in the face of US indifference could also originate there.

It could simply be called the EU Defence Force. It would provide a countervailing power to the US, enable the EU and its pals to look after themselves, work constructively with the likes of China - and would leave “Global Britain” out in the cold. Another Brexit triumph.

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Brillo GB News Departure WASN’T

After his appearance on last Thursday’s edition of BBC Question Time, viewers may have got the impression that former Murdoch editor Andrew Neil and Gammon Broadcasting™ News (“Bacon’s News Channel”) had gone their separate ways, never to be reconciled. The reality is that nothing could be further from the truth.

Here’s what he told the audience. “I had always made it clear it wouldn’t be a British Fox News, and I think you can do something different without going anywhere near Fox. Fox deals in untruths, it deals in conspiracy theories, and it deals in fake news. That’s not my kind of journalism, and I would never have set out to do that”. There was more.

Was that why he left, asked Fiona Bruce. “I’ll let you draw your own conclusions as to why I’m here tonight, and not with GB News”. She then restated the assumption of his leaving, asking “Why have you quit?” Had Brillo not quit, he could quite easily have corrected Ms Bruce, but he did not. Instead, there was more rambling self-justification.

“In the run-up to the launch, through the launch, and in the aftermath of the launch … you couldn’t file the launch under ‘startling success’ … more and more differences emerged between myself and the other senior managers … and rather than these differences narrowing, they got wider and wider, and I felt that it was best that if that’s the route they wanted to take, that’s up to them, it’s their money … it wasn’t for me”.

And on three counts, I call bullshit. One, Brillo’s past track record - AIDS denialism when he was editor of the Sunday Times, climate change denialism disseminated using his platform at the BBC, and his continuing chairmanship of the alt-right Spectator magazine, shows he apparently has little problem with untruths and fake news.

Two, he was one of those senior managers at GB News who hired the deeply unpleasant Dan Wootton, Neil Oliver, and Mr Angry Autocue reader himself, Colin Brazier. He did not, it seems, find the hiring of former Brexit Party Oberscheissenführer Nigel “Thirsty” Farage a resigning matter - and Farage’s show is the epitome of untruths and fake news.

Moreover, Three, Andrew Neil - with the assistance of Fiona Bruce - gave Question Time viewers the impression that he had parted company with GB News. He hasn’t. Last week, he was a “contributor” to Farage’s show; later in the week, he was wheeled out to bump up the otherwise dire ratings of former Brexiteer politician Alex Phillips.

And he’s back contributing next Monday. Perhaps he needs the money, as he allegedly received no payoff from GB News following his resignation as Chairman, one of many nuggets of information served up this morning by the Guardian’s Jim Waterson, his article noting the sense of fear at GB News at the imminent launch of Murdoch’s TalkTV.

Indeed, when he tells “While Neil ultimately agreed to remain as a twice-a-week pundit as part of his exit package, this is a temporary measure for the next few months and was designed to limit the public relations damage caused by his departure”, what he does not say is that in a few months’ time, TalkTV will be here. And GB News may not.

Meanwhile, observers will see the BBC wiping Brillo’s arse for him. No change there.

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Imperial Dead Cat BUSTED

The first rule of dead cat hurling is that the story being pitched needs a little basic credibility: the last thing the hurler needs is to elicit the response “Oh fuck off, that’s the most obvious and lamest dead cat ever”. But that is what Christopher “No” Hope from the increasingly desperate and downmarket Telegraph has delivered to his readers.

Christopher Hope: sycophantic client journalist

“Brexit triumph as Crown Stamp returns to pint glasses and pounds and ounces could return to shops as Boris Johnson plans to rip up EU rules” he announced triumphantly. This was followed by the Murdoch Times: “Boris Johnson is to announce the return of imperial weights and measures, making it legal for market stalls, shops and supermarkets to sell their goods using only Britain’s traditional weighing system post-Brexit”.

Will beer now taste different? Will it buggery. Nor will fruit and veg be any different if it is weighed out using Imperial measurements. That did not stop the Daily Brexit, still called the Express, going full Chicken Paté News over the event: “Frost's Brexit bonfire of EU rules - pounds & ounces BACK in shops and Crown Stamp returns … BREXIT Britain will ditch the EU's CE mark and bring back the Crown Stamp on UK pint glasses while imperial measurements may also return”. Just in time for the shelves to empty this Christmas.

Nige tries to work out how many pints make a session

But for those inhabiting the real world, a problem enters: very few people under the age of around 60 are familiar with Imperial measurements, having learned the rather more simple and straightforward metric system. Take fluid measurements: this requires working in Base 5, then Base 4, then Base 2, then Base 4 (fluid ounces, gills, pints, quarts, gallons).

And, to no surprise at all, dry weight is different again. While there are 20 fluid ounces to the pint, there are just 16 ounces to the pound. Having kicked off in Base 16, you then have to switch to Base 14, Base 2, Base 4 and finally Base 20 (ounce, pound, stone, quarter, hundredweight, ton). Got that? Good-oh - now it’s on to distance measurements.

Lee Anderson. And another self-interested clown

Because they’re yet more different. Here, you have to work in Base 12, then Base 3, then Base 22, then Base 10, then Base 8 (inch, foot, yard, chain, furlong, mile). And you can forget missing out chains, because until relatively recently, every railway line in the UK was measured in miles and chains. Imperial measures were superseded by metric ones for a very good reason: working in Base 10 works. But ardent Brexiteers don’t like it.

Cue former Brexit Party Oberscheissenführer Nigel “Thirsty” Farage to pontificate “Great news. The Metric Martyrs case took 20 years but now we can buy goods in pounds and ounces again, not just Napoleonic measurements. We even get the crown back on pint glasses. Brexit is making us more British”. More laughed at by the rest of Europe, maybe.

Tory MP Lee Anderson, he of the private Facebook group with the sewer of bigotry running through it, declared “This is one of the many benefits of Brexit. The first pint I have with the crown on will taste much better”. Which is complete bullshit: I have recently enjoyed the spread of the craft beer revolution to Bratislava, Genoa, Barcelona, Madrid and Lisbon, and can confirm that a stamp on the glass has sod all to do with what’s inside it.

This dead cat will not deflect from food shortages, or rising prices. And Messrs Farage and Anderson won’t be rocking up at Chinaski Lavapiés or Cerveteca Lisboa any time soon to tell them having crown stamps on their glasses will make their beer taste better. Idiots.

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