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This week some Russian hackers launched a cyberattack on a major US oil pipeline, demanding millions of dollars in the process. I can imagine that the idea came about when the Kremlin asked if they had any new ideas in the pipeline and a light bulb clicked above their head, possibly followed by a click behind their head as the FSB operative held up a pistol and told them to get on with it. Either way, motorists in the US South East are paying the sort of eye-watering petrol prices that haven’t ......

This week I was going to take a look at the headlines in the various Sunday Papers but it's all the same corona stuff about how Boris is on the road to de-mask us (damascus)

So anyway let's look at some of the other front page things

The Telegraph has a story about how Prince Charles wants to save the planet by ditching scientific jargon. He would have done better making that suggestion 25 years ago so that words like 'velocity' 'underpass' and 'blood alcohol' weren't known. He's also behind the times though, scientists stopped using terms like 'global warming' years ago, when they realised that by calling it 'climate change' they could use hot and cold or dry and wet as "evidence"

The Mail has a tribute to Captain Tom who passed away which was sad because yes he was ill but many people thought he would walk it. One of my regrets is that he didn't get promoted to Major Tom, that would have been a good laugh, especially if David Bowie was still with us. But sad news nonetheless, although at 100 not exactly unexpected. I did read that a few weeks ago a man was arrested and charged with attempted murder outside Captain Tom's home after he was seen inflating an empty crisp packet. But yes, sad news for the family, especially after they realise he left his house and everything to the NHS

The Express, Mirror People, and Star are advertising £9 off at Iceland albeit on the condition that you spent £50. That's a heck of a lot to spend at Iceland though, when they're selling frozen turkeys for £3 where are you going to store £50 worth of produce? Any how are you supposed to get to Iceland now that all international flights are canceled?

The Observer has a lead article about how EU trade is down 68% duce to Brexit, then in the detail it's revealed that number is comparing this January to January last year. Hmm, I wonder if anything else happened last year to affect trade.

But it's ok, the People have an article "Margot Robbie as you've NEVER seen her before". Well the last thing I saw her in was Scuidice Squad so perhaps they're giving away a DVD where she acts in a film with a coherent screenplay, I don't think I've seen her in something like that before. And actually, while we're on the subject of the Sunday People, it now has a tagline next to the logo saying "Proud to be independent" Which it kinda weird because I thought that was already a tagline that applied to The Independent? Maybe given what happened they should switch it to "Proud to be: in circulation" or just replace it with a note telling you which page the Hagar cartoon is located on. I'm quite a fan of Hagar the Horrible and I always thought that one of the worst editorial decisions made by the Murdoch Press was when the discontinued the Funday Times cartoon supplement. Phone hacking was bad of course but as Maude Flanders once said, "won't someone think of the children?!"

And just looking at the BBC they have a story expressing profound concern about the LibDems new stance of possibly accepting the result of the Brexit referendum, apparently they want to be Pro-EU but not a party that's going to campaign to re-join it. But with 11 MPs I doubt many people really care at this stage, they have few enough MPs that more than half of the Westminster MPs could sit down in a room without breaking the rule of 6 social distancing rules and right now their prospects will remain about as dim as the energy saving bulbs they spent the last 20 years campaigning to force on people.

Boris Johnson has been re-elected and Jeremy Corbyn has resigned after being shown to be as popular on the doorstep as that childhood joke where you set fire to a paper bag with a dog poop in it. I thought this week I'd look at the online Labour reaction, using the 7 stages of grief framework.

1) Shock
When the BBC Exit poll first came out, people were astonished, to see something on the BBC saying something positive about the Conservative Party. It was surreal, like watching an episode of Through The Keyhole where Lloyd Grossman broke into the house before making off with the contents.
2) Denial
The denial part is where Corbyn Supporters saw the results and assumed that there must be several hundred Labour contituencies to declare. Even several days after all the counts are long done. Even putting Dianne Abbott in charge of the recount couldn't have fixed things though because the real denial though has been over the past 4 or years though, denying that Corbyn is unpopular outside of London. Denying that Brexit is happening, Denying the time of day to anyone that disagrees. That brings us to
3) Anger
Anger at traditional Labour voters who were apparently too brainless to do what they're told. The internet is a pretty dark place, just look at the anonymous comments underneath news stories about Prince Andrew, many of which are darker and more evil than the crimes being alleged. But the worst anger is reserved for the idiot, stupid, racist, bigoted, simpleminded scum that refused to vote for their local candidate who had cancelled a wine tasting and flown in all the way from Highgate to visit them.
4) Bargaining
This is where they think that it will be ok because the EU has the power to cancel Brexit, or the court system will intervene or maybe half the conservatives will still in principle be in favour of a 2nd referendum like that time Rory Stewart wanted to start a new parliament run from the upstairs room in a local pub. This sort of stuff is probably the most delusional part so far, more than that nonsense about putting Clive Lewis in charge of the nations broadband or banning airplanes or thinking that the British Army should spend the spring writing handwritten apology letters to Gerry Adams.
5) Depression.
Yes a lot of Labour students are depressed but the most depressed people surely are Theresa May who just witnessed Boris do what she couldn't, as well as Nick Clegg who knows that Boris is there for 5 years thanks to the rules that he put in place and the referendum that he spent years in opposition agitating for. There will be bearded man handing out presents this Christmas, but it won't be Jeremy Corbyn, although I suppose some Labour activists will take solace with the fact that St Nicolas was from the Middle East because everyone knows when a Turkish immigrant enters your home in the middle of the night it's because society is racist and the system (and you specifically) forced them to do it.
6) Testing.
This is where you finally "seek realistic solutions" which in political activism terms means the usual rubbish: Britain has changed for the worse and they're going to escape it and emigrate. Obviously they're not but it's important to suggest it so their friends know how liberal and left-wing they are. Actually, I will give Tony Blair some credit when it comes to this: fake mid-atlantic accent, 5-star hotel stays in Davos and a tan that makes him resemble the Cuprinol man, he's at leas made a decent go of staying as far away from the scene of his crimes as possible.
7) Acceptance.
This hasn't happened quite yet, the party isn't there, and be until a new leader takes control and does a full-scale review of what happened. As a shortcut guide though, 3 important questions to ask any Labour leadership candidates would be: "Was Bin Laden a goodie or a baddie?" "Do you think that Mossad controls editorial decisions on The One Show?" and "Do you know how to eat a bacon sandwich?"

It's been a very busy time of year for letterboxes, between the Christmas Cards, the election pamphlets as well as the usual assortment of local takeaway menus. Those places are presumably hoping to cash in on people burning their Christmas dinner and order in pizza, chicken wings and lamb kofta.

Those pamphlets though, there's only a couple more of them to come as it's just the last final couple of days before the election and I imagine for MPs it must feel a bit like being back at school a few days before the big exam. I say exam singular because having seen them going up against the likes of Andrew Neil, or just random members of the public, I'm not sure how many of the current roster of MPs have more than one qualification. Then again, I guess you do have the couple of hundred who got unto university by relying on their father wearing the right tie to the open day and there's those who whose understanding of figures and numbers doesn't go any further than knowing what a treble 17 on a dartboard is in the Sports & Social bar. I guess maths is also useful when you need to calculate how many postal votes you need to run off on the photocopier in order to win a marginal seat in the west midlands.

At this stage people already know who they'll be voting for so really the whole campaigning thing is a charade because everything will come down to a few couple of key constituencies and what the turnout is which will largely be determined by the weather. I don't know who I trust less really, political forecasters or weather forecasters. My take on it is a 22 seat Conservative majority but Boris loses his seat, because polling in his London Uxbridge is a lot tighter than people have been led to believe, especially with Brexit on the table. I'm half toying with putting £20 on Michael Gove being in number 10, pretty sizeable odds for something that's not too outrageous a possibility.

But don't worry fans of elections because the juggernaut that is the US Presidential election is coming down the road with a scale and a cost and a four year regularity that puts Star Wars to shame. But I'm sure we can get round to talking about that in the next, 47 [!] weeks...

Carnage this week in London, at least that's what a lot of Arsenal fans will be saying down the pub, after the sacking of Unai Emery after 18 months of abysmal managerial malaise that made Leanne Wood look like Queen Victoria. David Cameron hasn't made a comment on that story, though it's probably because he can't remember if that's one of the teams he claims to support or not.

But the big story of course this week was of course a different kind of arsenal, the kind that armed police carry on them; this was of course the 2nd London Bridge Attack, in which two members of the public were killed, 3 more injured, the terrorist himself was shot dead and thousands of Southern Rail commuters heading to London Bridge had to suffer delays and inhumane conditions although that was later reported to be unconnected with the attack and a company spokesman said that commuters affected by delays to the service would be compensated with a price hike in the new year.

It's at this point that of course anyone near a television camera started making the usual platitudes and comments about community engagement and suchlike. The public can normally be relied upon to be a bit more blunt in their vox-pops, calling him a complete idiot which is frankly a relief in so much as for a while it looked like he had a suicide vest on and it's obviously far better that he's a complete idiot than one where some pieces of him are missing, floating down river towards the Thames Estuary.

As I said though, it will be interesting to see how the leaders make the issue about themselves over the last 2 weeks of the campaign. Boris will make nods to promised security funding, the Lib Dems will blame the islamic attack on the white working class, the SNP will complain that the Media's relentless focus on London is purposefully designed to draw attention away from Scotland and Jeremy Corbyn will likely spend the rest of the campaign refusing to confirm or deny whether he would lay a wreath at the site on the bridge where the peaceful terrorist ultimately lost his life.

I always have a bit of a laugh looking up the latest headlines and seeing what nonsense the BBCs website considers news. Example, "Could invisible barcode revolutionise recycling?" to which of course the answer is "could I care less?" Well the apparently the answer is yes I could care less about certain things, namely the ins and outs of the Labour Party manifesto because thanks to an week of political ineptitude, it has about as much chance of becoming reality as that dream I had where a Zebra won the grand national.

The Labour party had a dreadful week, with contradictory press releases, public heckling, a series of candidates facing legal challenges as well as prospective MPs suggesting more approaches to Brexit than there are stars on the EU flag. Although most online activists would rather concentrate on that other flag with a star on it, the blue six-sided one.

The week also saw Jeremy Corbyn asked which terrorist he'd like to invite to Downing Street if he won which I'll admit would at least make for an interesting episode of Come Dine With Me. There was a story put out suggesting that he'd suffered stroke earlier in the year and was now merely a figurehead for the machinations behind the scene, a bit like the old Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev in his last year, although presumably Corbyn would like to be seen as a bit more left wing than Leonid.

Two possibilities therefore exist: [1] the conspiracy one, in which the campaign is now being deliberately badly run so that he's forced to step down on grounds of 'ill health' before a new and fresh Labour frontrunner promises a government of national unity and they romp home with support from the SNP and the LibDems.

Possibility [2] the Daily Mail wants to sell newspapers, to make money [!], and the campaign is just really what you'd expect when its run by 20-something year old activists fresh from university, whose only experience with the public was when they read about them in a book, and who probably think the coal strike was something about trying to save the environment.

Looking over the news this week, I wondered if the climate protesters were up to their usual tricks in London but it turned out to just be the 50th anniversary of the Beatles Abbey Road album and a bunch of idiots commemorated it by blocking the zebra crossing, which happens to be on a major road, while observing motorists sat motionless, wishing that the fans would start recreating the latter minutes of John Lennon's life.

There's also headlines about a power outage, although on further inspection that's something to do with the electricity and not the remainer powers that be losing control of the situation as it dawns on them what I've been saying for months which is that if nothing happens and Boris doesn't actively sacrifice his reputation for the sake of the EU, then the status quo is a no-deal Brexit no matter what they say or do, the timeline of events in already enshrined in law with a approaching sense of optimistic inevitability. It must feel like when you get one of those cards from a delivery company and the depot isn't open until after the weekend but you need that stuff tomorrow. In that analogy, maybe it's FedEx or UPS but Jeremy Corbyn claims to be a mix of the two: "FedUP" or at least he claims to be, on the off chance that he could call an election and get back to making spurious promises and soundbites. Honestly, I think if I had to listen to him stand in Trafalgar square giving a speech I'd rather lie down and cover myself in birdseed, it would be more fun being pecked to death.

Nonetheless there are now legitimate commentators talking about a 3 or 4 Labour front-benchers giving up their vitriolic anti-monarchy work online to visit the Queen and ask her nicely to sack her new PM and appoint them so they can beg the EU for an extension to article 50. It's at this stage you realise that Corbyn is less like Tito the authoritarian Dictator of Yugoslavia and more like Tito out the Jackson 5, a figure of fun, of entertainment value and yet a sideshow while the main act is going on.

The craziest part of all is the idea that a Corbyn government would either have support of the Labour Party, many of whom despise him, or indeed want to stop Brexit in the first place, given how most hard-left policies are now illegal under EU law anyway. All as part of the EUs policy of eventually making all nation state laws illegal I guess.

If scientists ever develop a beer that comes in capsule form, then you could say that it was a "bitter pill to swallow" Apologies, that was dreadful, but something that is going to be a bitter pill to swallow for establishment politicians is that there's some elections coming down the line. In the past you'd normally get 2 parties, both of whom were variations on the same, like having to choose between water and molten ice. However, in both Europe and the US the last year or so has seen the emergence of parties and candidates that look set to do well, even if in past year's they'd have received fewer votes than if Botswana offered to host the Winter Olympics.

All across Europe there has been a resurgence in smaller nationalist parties and the first demonstration of this will be this weekend where Spain will have it's 3rd election in 4 years. Possibly a preview of what Theresa May's upcoming future of never-ending leadership challenges will look like. In truth however, it's more a preview of next month's European elections when traditionally a low turnout combined with a solid vote from the main parties' bases has guaranteed a stitch up and a return to business as usual. This was how Nick Clegg became a member of the European Parliament back in the 90s, when he won a seat after a few dozen Liberal Democrat activists and a stray dog turned up to vote that evening.

This week however saw not only the emergence of Nigel Farage's Brexit party, it also saw it go straight to the top in the opinion polls with many local Conservative Party activists switching allegiance faster than a sports commentator who, having realised that the previously "British" athlete is going to lose, reverts back to describing them as "Scottish" The Scotland connection really is the most amazing part in all of this really: The rise of the SNP in Scotland following the Independence referendum saw the utter collapse of the Labour Party in areas where votes used to be weighed rather than counted, and yet now the Conservative Party is surprised to see the rise of a mainstream Brexit party challenging it, somehow also geared around a singular issue. No concept of cause and affect, no learning from history. The only thing that comes close in political short-sightedness is the SNPs new apparent policy that referendums don't have to be binding, that's one that they may live to regret in another decade or so when Scotland one day votes in favour of independence and Tony Blair once more comes out of the woodwork to lecture BBC listeners about how people earning less than 100k/year are too racist and ill-informed to know what's best for them.

Of course Theresa could kill the Brexit party dead in the water by actually just leaving the EU without a deal, but that would be like when you promise to give up wine on December the 31st - easier said than done. And Theresa May might not like wine quite as much as Jean Claude Juncker does but she does like the EU just as much.

I was once told by a motivational speaker to stand up for what I believe in, and I wondered, "what if it's comfy chairs?" Well this week Theresa May continued to stand for nothing and show no shame as she decided to invite Jeremy Corbyn in for talks, in a similar but different manner to that in which the Ulster police used to regularly invite in Mr Corbyn's friends in for questioning. This has of course gotten nowhere because Jeremy Corbyn is ideologically opposed to both aspects of what she's asking for: [1] helping the UK remain part of an emerging federal state which has strict laws preventing everything the hard left stands for from happening [2] helping Mrs May remain prime minister, he doesn't like that at all! I imagine Jeremy Corbyn has the same desire to help the PM out as he does to go fox hunting. In the mean time, Labour have no doubt promised to back changes to the deal under the condition of reopening coal mines or renationalising the phone industry or introducing a new bank holiday to commemorate Hammas.

The whole pathetic exercise in duplicity and constitutional vandalism is largely futile because any negotiations, especially those involving Europe and trade, take years to conclude and so Theresa May trying to clobber something together in the last week or two before riding off into the sunset is like someone eating all the after eight mints before leaving half past seven, just as the guests arrive. If there was ever any chance of a good deal being struck, which there wasn't, then the government had 2 years to prepare it in and it wasted half of it by calling an election and gambling on the assumption that they'd win more seats and bribe those new MPs with ministerial salaries if they helped legislate for a brexit deal that was nothing more than a rebranding exercise. That kind of idiocy is the reason why the gene pool needs a life guard.

Well the US Supreme Court decision has delayed for a week. That's almost as long a delay as a Southern Rail train! So in the meantime let's talk about the Labour Party Conference which was held this last week in Liverpool. They were in Brighton last year which frankly always came as a surprise to me as there's not too many Bright'uns in the leadership right now

Anyway, there was much of what you'd expect, everyone out-doing each other with speeches about how much they hate money and why they should therefore be given more of it. There were also some student speakers who must have been studying theoretical physics and time travel because, in spite of having been born in the mid to late 90s, had vivid memories of growing up during the Thatcher era and subsequently drew comparisons to Theresa May. Frankly those comparisons probably play better with Conservative Party members right now who are watching Boris Johnson's every move with excitement and anticipation. There were also the comedy warmup acts like Diana Abbott who bizarrely forgot the phone number for the 999 emergency service and following a breach of rules, an EU flag was removed from the floor because if you're flying a flag with yellow stars they have to be on top of a red background like Uncle Joe Stalin would have liked it.

The main highlight of the Labour getogether was probably the much publicised motion that Labour would commit to a People's Vote on Brexit, a second referendum! But then John McDonnell clarified that it would simply ask deal or no deal – there would be no option to remain in the EU. And shadow Brexit secretary Keir Stammer added that “no one is ruling out the option to remain” So it's a 2 way vote with three options, similar in some ways to how Corbyn himself regularly polls not just behind Theresa May but also behind the Don't Know option and is therefore 3rd place in a 2-horse race.

So therefore we once again we pivot to the competing Conservative party conference in the next couple of days and ponder for yet another year whether Theresa May will make it out as party leader and whether people will focus on letters dropping off the wall this time or simply on Boris dropping letters into the Daily Telegraph. I personally don't know who to feel sorry for, the poor journalists who have to attend weeks of there, or the voters who have to live with the consequences.

Ok, Frank Field and possibly others are finally quitting the Labour Party so it's time to get round to talking about anti-semitism and Jeremy Corbyn's purposeful woeful attempt to eradicate it. Until a couple of years ago the Labour Party was run by Ed Miliband, someone who claimed to be not just jewish but a modern sort of jewish where you get to eat bacon sandwiches and have your own set of ten commandments carved up except instead of Judaeo-Christian laws they're actually vague promises about the NHS and Len McClusky's paying for it.

Anyway, that was a long time ago now and we now live in an age where Jeremy Corbyn is in charge of the party. This is also an age where Twitter and Facebook have to be taken sort of seriously because they influence everything from policy to which tv newsreader to harass online with anonymous threats riddled with spelling mistakes. Social media is there so that President Trump can tell us what's on his mind just as much as it's there so that John McDonnell's friends can discuss tax ideas in the comments section under a youtube video about how Israel were responsible for everything from rise of ISIS to the rise in the cost of a pint of milk.

It also leads to a class of negligent, purposely ignorant people who have their opinions and education shaped and fed to them entirely by a self-feeding algorithm, they don't read books, know next to nothing about 20th century history and likely didn't live through that era when it was just as ok for the government to own a car company as it was for it to give Jimmy Savile a show on children's television.

There are a lot of people who believe that a complex situation like the middle east is actually a pretty simple and black and white issue, if only the folks in charge would listen to what they have to say on the matter. These are also the sort of people who believe you can fix everything with asset seizure, capital controls and massive consequence-free tax rises. Most importantly, these are also the sort of people who elect Jeremy Corbyn and to give the man some credit, at least he's aware of that one fact. If you expel the people who'll believe any video as long as it's under 10 minutes and accompanied by an ominous soundtrack, you lose your base.

On the other hand, perhaps Jeremy Corbyn's a conspiracy theory beyond all of us and genuinely believes it's all fiction, a plot devised up by Nathaniel Rothschild and George Osbourne sitting with a laptop around a pentagram in a cave.

For a while the party has been keen to ignore the problem, treating it somewhat like a credit card debt that nobody knows about, it will probably certainly likely maybe take care of itself. No, this is now more like a debt with a local gangster, you really should get it paid off sharpish, and you probably shouldn't pass the time sharing racist cartoons on twitter about jewish money lenders and how Garry the Loanshark is working for Mossad.

The world cup has kicked off, or at least the ball has been kicked, the cup itself remains safely in the cabinet, much like David Davis in spite of his threats to the contrary. The football tournament though, that's being held in Russia over the next couple of weeks. If you're an England fan it's not long to wait until that moment when they fail to win and Gareth Southgate is forced to inevitably resign over his sole responsibility for England failing to be the best team in the entire world, no doubt accompanies by tabloid headlines about the team being Putin their place. Mind you, I keep saying world but the USA aren't in the tournament, nor are the Italians, the Dutch or Chile, China, India. Scotland haven't even qualified for the tournament since France 98, although I guess that at least shows a strong level of consistency, something that many teams, notably England, lack.

Anyway, if football's your thing then all your top footballing stars are there on the telly for you to gaze at. But back to the world of politics, it's not just Luis Suarez who's biting off more than he can chew. Today saw the news that the US is going ahead and imposing tariffs of 25% on Chinese exports accusing Beijing of intellectual copyright theft. In retaliation the Chinese said they'd do likewise with anti-US rate increases of 25%.

For something going down in price though, compare and contrast to the Labour Party's Jezfest music+politics festival this weekend where ticket prices have been slashed by around 70% after people discovered you could apply for free ones if you asked nicely. For once I actually agree with some of the socialists on this one: they're complaining and saying that it's not right for some people to just get given things for free when others have had to work to pay for them.

Anyway, for now I've got some money down on Germany to win the world cup and no money down for the north London socialism festival if either of those things are of interest then enjoy the weekend.

The US has spent the week watching the President Trump/James Comey/Stormy Daniels stories continuing to move along with the sort of pace normally more associated with a snail, or a car in London ever since they closed half the roads for bicycle use only. I think the plan is that if Robert Mueller's evidence doesn't turn out to be conclusive enough, Trump will have already been in office for 8 years so he'll have to legally vacate the White House anyway.

So let's talk about London though. There were local elections this week and Jeremy Corbyn had spent weeks planning his next moves and what to do after Labour managed to seize councils like Barnet and Wandsworth as well as all those towns and cities that the metropolitan types only hear about when they're watching Match Of The Day. Unfortunately, things didn't really go according to plan and it was a surprisingly good night for Theresa May, that's an expression you rarely hear about these days.

The Conservatives took control of Barnet council along with Plymouth and other decentish wins all over the place. Although the big story of the night was really the revival of the Lib Dems, Vince Cable was even sighted on television without his trademark hat on. It says a lot that if you've see a LibDem politician on television in the past 6 months, it was probably a BBC4 documentary about the Iraq War. Nonetheless, they made good gains in London and you can't fault them, at least they're honest about what they stand for. Compare and contrast with UKIP who depending on the time of day are either a protest vote, a Brexit lobbying group, a tax write-off for donors, a way for Henry Bolton to meet young ladies or in some cases actual politicians with local policies they want to pursue. Unfortunately UKIP is a lot like many other acronyms, in that you have to look it up on the internet to find out what they stand for. The problem with ideological parties generally is that for the most part they don't get enough numbers at the ballot box to win power, but the problem for parties with no ideology is that they end up with Theresa May, the political equivalent of that DVD player you keep meaning to stick in the spare room on give to charity.

This week the UK saw an assault of royal commemorative plates being launched with Kate giving birth to another child and Prince Charles cracking open a tincture of homeopathic champagne to celebrate. The baby weighed just over 8 pounds making it just slightly heavier than the special commemorative supplement you'll be removing from this week's Sunday paper; I guess it's up to you whether you use it for lighting the barbecue or stash it away in a cupboard as an investment, it could potentially triple in value and be worth more than a fiver in years to come.

Prince William was very excited to announce the new heir, although later a palace official sat down with him and explained that the doctor had sad new "heir" - not hair "hair" - and that he should just embrace the bald look. Come on William, it doesn't matter how much you try to look like Bobby Charlton, it's still not going to help England get past the World Cup's group stages.

Talking about crazy haircuts though, this week has saw President Trump busy as always. He arranged a visit to the UK scheduled for July, he phoned into Fox & Friends and invited his french pen-pal Emmanual Macron over to play. Those letters presumably go along the line of J'habite dans le White House, chest terrific. Macron actually has pretty respectable hair so Trump made a point of supposedly brushing alleged dandruff from his shoulder during a press conference. Later Melania was sporting a eye-raising white chapeau hat and Kanye West managed to anger 10 million twitter followers after posting a picture of his Make America Great Again Trump baseball cap, It was all rather strange. In the middle of it all, Emmanual Macron made a speech about globalism and Iran although given France's recent track record with the middle east and islamic extremists, he would perhaps be better trying to focus his efforts on gastronomy and convincing President Trump to not add Ketchup to a New York strip steak.

This week I thought we'd talk about the Jeremy Corbyn spy story. Yes I know that the US school shooting thing is possibly a bigger news story but I try to keep these things funny and the gun control debate is about as light hearted as a poem by Wilfred Owen.

So to quote the security services "let's talk about Jeremy Corbyn." Was he a spy? Or did he think that novel "The Spy Who Came In From The Cold" was something about winter fuel costs and an excuse to re-nationalise the gas industry?

The basic story is that Corbyn allegedly met with a Czech spy called Jan Dymic 3 times in the late 1980s, including twice in the House of Commons. At that rate the Czech spy probably had a better attendance record than some of the lazier MPs. Amidst a lack of supporting evidence, Corbyn also points out that one of these supposed meetings, in October 1987, occurred when he couldn't possibly have been in the House of Commons because he was up in Chesterfield meeting with British socialists. Best kind of socialists they say, the home grown artisanal British socialists, none of that foreign muck. I jest of course, Corbyn is of course an internationalist.

There were apparently other meetings in 1986 and I'm frankly surprised he would be able to find the time to be an paid Soviet informant, there was his arch-nemesis Thatcher to attack and it was the year his mother died and he was also arrested that year along with 15 other demonstrators while protesting against the trial of a group of IRA members including Patrick Magee who was of course the Brighton Bomber. It was also the year that Timothy Dalton started filming The Living Daylights which features a pre-title sequence set on the Rock of Gibraltar and Corbyn and his friends have of course expressed questionable views on the Gibraltar sovereignty issue in the past.

The thing is, and this may come as a shock to some, but James Bond isn't real, he's a fictional construct along with the Labour position on Brexit and to an extent the Conservative Party's position on Brexit. Until someone shows some proper evidence to settle the issue, it's frankly just background noise and in all honesty if you're a facebook journalist or website editor it would probably be much more productive keeping the public aware of all the other things that Jeremy has actually been on the record doing. #JustSaying

This week I'd initially planned to talk about Theresa May's cabinet reshuffle except that frankly the most visible change was that the various cabinet ministers changed their shirts and ties between day one and day two. The main news this week (of course) was from Washington DC where the president decided to draw attention to himself. Sure presidents love to steal the show, Bill Clinton famously carried a saxophone with him in order to outshine George Bush or Ross Perot should the situation arise, and there was rumours that he brought the saxophone to the Northern Ireland peace process after someone said that he was going there to support the Corrs. Geddit, support the Corrs? (That Irish band)

Ok, so back to President Trump. The Washington Post this week reported that he'd supposedly referred to the 3rd world using a word beginning with 'S' that was (to use the letter S) a synonym for stool, more severe than the word 'suspicious' and a simply silly suggestion to spout to the scribes. As with many of Trump's proclamations though, even if you do agree with his America First policy, he comes across as a hypocrite as quite lot of his staff at Mar A Lago in Florida happen to be migrants from impoverished parts of Latin America; perhaps he'd have had more success if he'd accompanied the gaffe with an announcement that the Trump organization would cease employing migrant labour and start paying $15/hour for long-term US residents. On the other hand, he did suggest that he wanted people from Norway, a fairly left wing place, to move to the US so that's perhaps as close an olive branch towards centrist politics as we're going to get.

Also, one take away is that if you find yourself living in an economically depressed post-industrial part of the UK, or France, Germany or well anywhere north of the Mediterranean then congratulations, according to president Trump, you're not living in a cesspool after all. It turns out that even if your shopping precinct was recently filmed as part of a video montage for a news report about urban decay, just be glad that you're lucky enough to not be beset by the sort of problems they have in Southern Asia with it's sun and its cheap lifestyle and it's 7% annual growth rates.

Anyway, a day later as part of an encore there was an announcement that the president will no longer be visiting London when the new US Embassy opens up in Battersea. In all honesty though and speaking as someone who used to live near Kings Cross, a lot of Londoners would probably agree with his decision to not venture south of the river.

So a few days ago saw the end of the Labour party conference and a fun time was had by all, just as long as you weren’t Laura Kuenssberg, or wanting to play ‘Things Can Only Get Better’ on the jukebox. Party conferences are always curious state managed affairs these days. Originally they were for the grass roots members and MPs to meet and discuss what direction the party should go in, in the case of the Labour party the centre ground, to the left, the far left or extreme left. But no need for discussion this year, you’re either 100% with Jeremy Corbyn or you’re a traitor in need of deselection. Mr Corbyn’s speech had platitudes towards the NHS, about Labour being ready for government but essentially nothing about Brexit or detailed figures or mention of Uber being banned from London; it was a bit like an candidate making an under—prepared pitch on The Apprentice and after a week in front of the media spotlight a lot people still don’t know specifically what the shadow cabinet stand for, apart from the Red Flag, sung with gusto.

Moving from Brighton to Manchester, in the next few days we have the Conservative party conference. Pending a shock result Theresa will be giving the main speech: a speech that I imagine that will either see her gone by November or see her position secured for quite a few years to come. I was quite confused listening to one of her detractors on the radio who said he wanted her gone as soon as Brexit was dealt with, yet at the same time saying he wanted a transition period that would see Brexit (and therefore Theresa May’s premiership) last a nearly a decade. All I know for sure is that her main conference speech will be be shorter than the hour and a half that Mr Corbyn’s went on for. And that the events set to play out in the next few days in dimly lit hotel bars will eventually give way to hundreds of pages of bitter writing when Phillip Hammond eventually publishes his memoirs in a decade or two’s time.

Not content with the damage it’s already done to the ExxonMobil share price, the Caribbean has another three storms moving in; the latest one (Hurricane Irma) has pretty much wiped out Barbuda and Hurricanes Jose and Katia are forming out at sea. I suppose hurricanes come in 3 or 4s like busses, although if I was a cyclist I’d frankly rather take my chances with hurricane Irma than take on a Bendy Bus.

The names of these storms by the way are preassigned and go up alphabetically, earlier in July we already had a tropical storm called Don which most people didn’t hear about, what with the fact that there’s another Don hogging the headlines in Washington. If we get as far as ‘V’ then we’re apparently scheduled to get Hurricane Vince which I thought was what the LibDem leader calls himself down the snooker hall when me meets up with Nick Clegg for a drink.

Unfortunately for the Labour Party though, there’s not Hurricane Theresa or Hurricane Jacob Reese-Mogg so Jeremy Corbyn will have to rely on rhetoric, policy debate, persuasion and rational arguments to attack the government. Unfortunately for the Labour Party members, Jeremy instead decided to spend the weekend thinking about whether or not to go vegan. I always think “show me a bloke who’s a vegan and I’ll show a bloke wanting to sleep with a vegan” but maybe I’m overly cynical and Puy Lentils are indeed what it takes to give him some inspiration about a Brexit strategy. Perhaps he’ll try acupuncture next and get the idea for a needle exchange to help heroin addicts

In the UK, Parliament it still on recess and across the pond, it’s been nearly a week since Donald Trump sacked anyone. Indeed, the main story for quite a few days was the furore about silencing Big Ben for a few years so they can repair some of the stonework. It was getting pretty tense until the clock finally struck 11 o’clock and the pubs opened so journalists and MPs alike had someone else to go

Luckily enough for the news starved newspapers, exams results came out this week. One great thing with school results is that if they’ve gone down you can fill copy by criticising teaching standards but if they go up then you can spend days complaining about exams becoming easier. But the best thing, for newspapers (and websites alike) is that they can fill acres of space with photographs of people opening their results. Teenage girls opening up their results, ethnic minority students celebrating, lots of attractive young women hugging each other, attractive ethnic minority girls leaping in their air, possibly cuddling each other. All sorts of photos just as long as they’re vaguely suggestive and there aren’t any boys or unattractive people in shot.

Of course, in the real world the only result that’ll count for much soon is your credit score, what with University costing more than one of Charles Kennedy’s old bar tabs. And in the real world successful GCSE results don’t necessarily transfer to success in life. I can’t find anywhere saying what the Prime Minister got when she was at school but Jeremy Corbyn got 2 A-Levels, both Es, but Ed Miliband got 4 A-Levels and see how that worked out for him in the real world.

Anyway, see you next with news of whatever madness has gone on in Washington while I was away.

One of the problems with making promises is that you tend to be held to account, so this week we saw a promise about getting rid of petrol and diesel cars by the tear 2040. That’s 23 years from now when a lot of the politicians will be retired, deceased, rotting in a club in St James’ or simply arguing about how many more leadership elections it will take to oust Jeremy Corbyn. Given how electric cars have been coming along though it’s all fairly silly really, there’s an expression that the stone age didn’t end because we ran out stone. Volvo’s already planning a complete switch without needing arbitrary legislation to make them do it and BMW just announced plans for the new electric Mini, which will be build in the UK, #DespiteBrexit

And that brings us onto the other news story of the week, the Labour Party’s Europe policy, or lack thereof. Either way it’s a viewpoint with about as much coherence as bad Game of Thrones fan fiction. They say they want to leave the Customs Union, but still keep it on the table and Corbyn has ruled in and ruled out Single Market membership while Dianne Abbott and John McDonald went on record saying it will still definitely possibly probably maybe be an option. As far as this Schrodinger’s Cat of a manifesto debate goes, it’s probably also questionable who out of the shadow front bench could even define the actual difference between the Customs Union and Single Market.

But for now it’s the weekend people so go out and enjoy the sun! According to a report just out this week, drinking cuts your diabetes risk, so why not open a case of red wine, or possibly some scotch just to be on the safe side. I just my local loan shark walking down the street with a blood stained cricket bat so I guess even he’s off to enjoy some time in the park.

The last week or so has shambles of bad press management from the government. Not reallya good time to be a spin doctor at Downing Street: it must feel like you’ve taken controls of a burning plane and successfully landed it on an aircraft carrier that’s just been struck by a torpedo.

The Grenfell Tower fire was a genuine tragedy but in the days since Theresa May managed to come across as detached and unemotional, she was probably depicted worse in the press than the owner of the company that had illegally installed the highly flammable cladding in the first place. It’s a bit like if you watched a James Bond film where Bloefeld had come across as an entrepreneur and 007 was just a jerk who shot people and forgot to pay his bar tab

Jeremy Corbyn of course doesn’t have to follow through with anything he says now that the election’s over so he’s been suggesting all sorts of policy ideas on inequality and social housing and told everyone that under his watch we’d build a gazillion new council homes all made out of gold and everyone affected by the fire would get a free unicorn. And actually now I think about it gold has quite a low melting point so maybe make the houses out of gingerbread [?] because at this point it’s all academic anyway.

Then flash forward a few days and a nutter decided to drive a van into a crowd of muslims leaving the Finsbury Park Mosque as part of some insane revenge for the London Bridge attacks a few weeks ago. One of those attackers was wearing an arsenal shirt so perhaps when the trial starts he’ll claim that he’s not a racist, just a Tottenham supporter.

For now, if you see Theresa May’s eyes turning orange, don’t worry. Just give her a tap on the shoulder, then those eyes will turn to a flashing orange, then a flashing green, then solid green, and [boom!] the government will have restarted and gone back to normal.

So it's the morning after the night before and we got a shock result. Theresa May thought it would be a rubber stamping exercise, like getting your passport renewed except it was more like one of those awful bank applications where you have to supply 2 utility bills and then you're declined because due to a typo

Hats off to Jeremy Corbyn though, he didn't actually win a majority but he sure as heck managed to defeat the Blairites in the Labour party and that might mean we've finally seen the last of Tony Blair, until he eventually ends up on trial at the Hague. Corbyn got the youth vote out against the odds and especially in spite of Dianne Abbott who spent the last 6 weeks making Corbyn and Abbott look more like Abbott and Costello. Noticeably, Labour's uptick in the last few days directly coincided with her putting an end to her endless series of car crash tv appearances. I saw a programme the other night and I wasn't sure whether it was an interview with her or a documentary about Ayrton Senna.

The Lib Dems having lost most of their target new voters to Labour are pretty much exactly where they started but with Vince Cable back, the political equivalent of firing up that old computer in the spare room and upgrading it from Windows 95 to Windows 98. In Scotland, the SNP also got bumped back to reality with Angus Robertson and the big fish himself Alex Salmon losing their supposedly safe seats.

UKIP and the Greens as usual got hundreds of thousands of votes but next to nothing to show for it, yet more proof that we need proportional representation: it's about the one thing that Caroline Lucas and her greens actually agree with Paul Nuttall on asides from not shaving. We'd probably have proportional representation already were it not for Nick Clegg backing it a few years ago, fulfilling his roll as Harbinger of political disaster.

And so that just leaves us with the madness of a minority administration in Downing Street. I'm posting this on Friday morning and four questions remain that I suppose may be answered by the time you're watching this. 1) Will Theresa Resign? 2) What happens with Brexit now? 3) Will Boris finally make a proper grab for the leadership? 4) Will anyone ever be able to afford a holiday abroad now that the pound is falling faster than the odds of a 2nd election in the next 12 months.

Another attack, this time in Manchester, and as usual the only good news is that there’s now one less terrorist in the world. Seems that once again it was a lone nut-job, although ISIS have since claimed responsibility which shows that they’ve got the same ‘management claiming all the credit’ problems that other organisations have, we’ve all had jobs like that I suppose.

Manchester is a great place though, in spite of George Osbourne trying his hardest to dilute its ‘Madchester’ edginess with his unique brand of oddness. I always half imagined Gideon George looking out of his car and seeing people going to a rave in high-vis clothing and assuming that they were folk on their way to a conference about the Northern Powerhouse. It’s also fantastic to see that Manchester has already erected a huge sign on one of their buildings to tell the world that they remain as one, Manchester united. In the mean time islamic extremist remains a deeply complicated geopolitical issue but let’s all post some British flags on Facebook and see if it fixes the problem this time round.

And one last thing, on the subject of the intelligence services was that today saw the passing of James Bond actor Roger Moore and I raised an eyebrow so to speak when I remembered the old joke that Viagra might not make you James Bond, but it will make you Roger Moore.

We’re halfway through the election campaign so I thought we’d take a look at what the various parties stand for, seeing as how we’ve not had have Ed Milliband chiseling anything onto a demented novelty gravestone this year.

The Conservatives are frankly miles in the lead following Theresa May’s media strategy of keeping Boris and all other the Gaffe prone MPs away from a microphone. She’s also promising to deliver on Brexit in order to finally put and end to Nick Clegg who increasingly resembles one of those Japanese soldiers that were still up in the mountains decades after the war had ended.

Labour wants to pile money into schools and hospitals but the biggest spending commitment is probably the suggestion of bringing both the post office and the railways back into public ownership, although that might actually be doable seeing as how Corbyn winning would trigger the mother of all stock market crashes and all those Royal Mail shares would then be very cheap for the government to buy, and I doubt Corbyn could do worse than Southern Rail

The Green Party manifesto is mostly made up of all the things that Jeremy Corbyn thought were a bit too left wing for Labour but say what you will I suppose the Greens do have an honest view on where they stand with regards to Europe. It seems a bit inconsistent though, seeing as all the European stuff people enjoy like sports cars, chorizo and cheap flights to Spain are the same things the green party wants to ban.

Also in the pro-EU court are the Liberal Democrats who don’t like Theresa May’s decision to trigger Article 50 and think that the public should keep getting a say in it at every opportunity until they get it right. Not to be outdone, the SNP also want a second Brexit referendum and a second Independence referendum too. Both of them also promise more money for schools, presumably because with all that extra voting, local primary schools will need to spend money upgrading their parking facilities.

That just leaves UKIP who want to make sure the Conservatives don’t go soft on Brussels. And for those like me in a boring safe seat looking to waste your vote, the Monster Raving Looney Party have quite a good manifesto this year; they think that the UK should exit Europe but go further and join the Duchy of Cornwall to benefit from tax exemptions.

So it’s 5 week to go until the next general election after Theresa May decided take everyone by surprise, very much like a school teacher posting a surprise test on the first day back. If it was a surprise maths test, it really wouldn’t be looking good for a lot of people in the Labour Party although the they do know a lot about “Division” and Dianne Abbott knows about “pi” and, oh dear, Ken Livingston just read the word “Axis” and he’s off on another rant about the war…

Back to the election, it’s likely to be a scene of unmitigated disaster in some constituencies. For a good metaphor, look at those very same Labour constituencies on a Friday night when Weatherspoons closes. The kebab shop represents Labour’s manifesto, in so much as nobody knows what’s in it. That the bloke peeing into a phone box represents most people’s reaction to the establishment. The guy not being let into a nightclub is Tim Farron because neither the bouncer nor the electorate recognise him. The girl getting undressed in a back alley is actually not part of the metaphor, she’s just someone that Boris Johnson bumped into when he was up north campaigning.

Long story short though, we can all look forward to June the 8th as election day, unless you’re the SNP in which case the replay is scheduled for August, November and possibly next January if they can get the high court to back their demands for a rerun.

In amongst all the poverty and despair and general horribleness endemic in today’s torrid world, the Hollywood elite in their ivory tower were rocked to the core last weekend when a competition for best movie went briefly and mildly astray and it was even suggested that Vladimir Putin, not content with supposedly rigging the US election also had firm views on cinema and in particular the hit musical La-La-Land. I guess that the KGB must have a lot of time on their hands these days if that’s the case. The film itself isn’t my cup of tea, but for a feared intelligence operation, hacking the Oscars is little more than a glorified form of posting anonymous comments on the Daily Mail’s website.

And talking of La-La-Land, Jeremy Corbyn has been dancing around the issue of whether last week’s bi election results are a sign for him to go. And the same is largely true in the UKIP camp following their loss in Stoke as well as comments made about the Hillsborough disaster. Of course Nigel Farage and Douglas Carswell, not content to sit back, have also been very keen to make sure that their disagreements are as visible and publicly embarrassing as possible. Still, there’s an old expression about “the tyranny of the status quo” and I imagine that nobody will resign, at least until the next inevitable bi-election happens and it’s all too late. On the other hand, there’s also that other old expression that “a week is a long time in politics” so perhaps this is the penultimate time I’ll be sketching Jeremy Corbyn which would be a shame. Oh yeah, and in America there’s been some more news about Jeff Sessions and Russia and yada-yada, it’s not really “news” now is it, so much as an ongoing damage limitation exercise…

A lot of people in America think that President Trump is some sort of Manchurian candidate, groomed by the KGB to have a buffoon in Washington so that the world turns to Vladimir Putin for relatively sensible world leadership. You’d think it would be easier for Putin to just buy a new shirt+tie and leave the horses alone? If there’s a grain of truth in it I certainly hope it’s not a grain of Polonium 210, that’s how they do things over there…

Contrast that to the UK where some people think that the Soviet Union loving fanboy Jeremy Corbyn is some kind of secret Conservative plant, groomed in order to keep the Labour party out of power. Certainly as a free market libertarian, I for one was very happy to see the leavers of power handed to his close circle of unelectable overgrown students with their social justice warrior, virtue tilting, privilege checking idiocy.

But that brings us to this week’s bi-election results in Stoke and Copeland, which show that while a stopped clock is right twice per day, Jezz will have to settle for once. It seems that the proletariat in the north of England have looked revolutionary politics in the eye and decided that the National Health Service is ok but that the complete overthrow of capitalism is taking it a bit too far. Still, at least Jeremy Corbyn has his own hair and that’s saying something these days…