Happy Friday!
Charged for water that isn’t safe to drink. Wow.
Irish beach washed away 33 years ago reappears overnight after freak tide.
The scandal of the Bank of Mum and Dad. I’m going to say it again, why wasn’t it a scandal when it only effected working class kids?
Joanna Lumley is right: Idris Elba shouldn’t play Bond – in fact, no one should. Bond is fiction and is remade everytime they cast a new actor, it’s acting, I’m sure if Idris Elba was cast, he’d be great. But this is lovely, James Bond is actually Prince Philip!
In this Joanna Lumley is correct, although perhaps unintentionally so. What would Bond look like, if he had actually existed and been allowed to age? Bond scholars have it that the character would have been born in 1920 or 1921, educated at Eton and Fettes College, later doing a stint in the navy, famously racist, sexist and homophobic, and given to emitting embarrassing quips at the most inopportune moments. Which means that Bond, if he were alive today, would be 96 and look exactly like Prince Philip. The similarities between the two men are astonishing when you pause to look at them: same year of birth, public schooling and international education, military background, and a lifetime spent in unquestioning service to the queen. The two men’s best one-liners are routinely anthologised by tabloids and lads’ mags. The only significant difference between the two men is that Prince Philip has had the decency finally to retire.
Why are the British so reluctant to recognise our migration history? I didn’t think we were. My paternal grandparents were economic migrants and the country was invaded again and again. There have been plays and books written about it. It’s there if you want to find it. I think the question is more, why don’t people look?
We’ve been playing politics with housing for too long. I’ve been saying this for the last 20 or so years…
The Conservatives’ energy price cap is not long term strong and stable policy. This has everyone at work stratching their heads. Either you’re for competition or you’re not, I’m not that keen on private utilities and as benign dictator of the country would re-nationalise, energy, water and trains but if you support competition as the way to make services better, and May says she does, then this has no internal logic. The Competitions and Market Authority doesn’t believe it will help and they’ve just finished an 18 month investigation, the results of which are still working their way through the industry. Like with grammar schools and immigration, May won’t listen to the experts, she’ll fuck it up all by herself….
Nic Dempsey 