Happy Friday!

We’re going into a Bank Holiday weekend here, which is good because my brain is mush! Links below…

To Fix the Catholic Church, Laypeople Need to Show Up. That’s a Church I could go back to…

Hilary Mantel’s The Mirror and the Light announced for 2020. I was beginning to think it would never happen. Very excited about this one but feeling that it might just break my heart a tiny bit. (Yes, I know the actual Thomas Cromwell wasn’t at all the same as the book one but I love Mantel’s Cromwell, and she’s done this to me before. I thoroughly recommend ‘A Place of Greater Safety’ if you want a book to send you on a reading binge about the French Revolution!)

Judith Kerr, beloved author of The Tiger Who Came to Tea, dies aged 95. The Tiger Who Came to Tea is one of the first books I bought for Oli. He and Joe loved it, Ben did once remark that he was really tired of both tea and tiger! But it’s just a lovely cozy book.

Cadent handed record £44m penalty after customers left without gas. Given my recent experience with them, I can’t say I’m surprised!

UN report compares Tory welfare policies to creation of workhouses

Pennies from heaven: what’s it like to suddenly become rich? What’s interesting is all of these are under a million pounds. We’re not talking Russian billionaire amounts and it’s interesting that everyone thinks about buying a house!

Should you ban your wedding guests from watching the Champions League final? No you should not. You shouldn’t get married in the football season either or during the World Cup or Euros either! But if you do and then your local team is in the finals, suck it up and don’t be whiny or precious about it.

Why is everyone suddenly using the C-word? I’d agree, my use of it has risen, often when I’m talking about politicians and especially Yaxley-Lennon and Farage

London is still the UK’s golden goose – and that needs to change. London is full of people who aren’t from London and to some extent that’s how cities work but as demonstrated by the gulf between rich and poor in the city and the city and the rest of the country, it’s not sustainable. We need a vision for regeneration before it’s too late and we could start by moving Parliament out of the city while they sort out the state of the building. Or they could properly federalise the UK and have an English Parliament in Birmingham or somewhere not London. You could properly subsidise business to set up in the Northern and Midland cities. You could properly regulate and subsidise the bus system and put some money into trains that start and go to places other than London. There is a host of things that could be done, if only our politicians had the imagination and will to do them.

The Tories have forgotten their pro-EU voters. And they’ll pay for it