Happy Friday!

It is time to start wearing closed in shoes and we still don’t have a date for a general election…

Here are this week’s links….

Laura Kuenssberg’s Time as BBC Political Editor has been a Catastrophic, Systemic Failure. I don’t watch a lot of TV news, so most of my news comes from Radio Four, I have noticed that we get a lot less of Laura Kuenssberg on the radio than we did of Nick Robinson when he was the BBC’s Political Editor. Robinson has come under a lot of flak for his political leanings (he belonged to the young Tories when he was at Uni) but although I deplore the general middle classness of the BBC and the drift to the right, I don’t think that Robinson is an interviewer with an agenda. I do think that Chris Mason who is the current Political Editor is brilliant and considered and you can see that if you hear him talk about current affairs, I think there is generally a move in the BBC to self correct. The recent Gary Lineker nonsense has really shown up how slanted to the right the BCC news dept is.

Why do Tory MPs still turn up for the crushing disappointment of PMQs?

‘Sea is constantly dumping bodies’: fears Libya flood death toll may hit 20,000

‘I feel anger; it never needed to have happened’ – Wilko workers lament closures. I’m going to miss Wilko…

Morocco earthquake: Macron tries to soothe tensions after frosty response to offer of aid. I wonder how much help there will be now that Libya is flooded. The developed world has a bad habit of only being able to help one disaster at a time.

More than a fifth of UK shoppers’ favourite grocery items at climate breakdown risk. Bananas, avocado and tea fair enough but grapes can be grown here, but it’s hugely seasonal. Tea can also be grown here (I know it’s grown in Cornwall) but I accept not in the quantities that Britain drinks it. But peas? I grow peas, they don’t need to be grown abroad. This is about cost and availability, we can have these things but we’re not prepared to pay for them.

The perfect flush: eight essential toilet tips – from closed lids to cleaning. Things I find really difficult to understand, people who put sanitary towels down the toilet and people who put fat down sinks. Why? Who dragged you up? Even without the plumber for a parent, I wouldn’t have done that but with a plumber for a parent, those things were cardinal sins….