[youngian]

Shirley Williams was the last female MP I can think who got away with cultivated scruffiness like Clarke, Corbyn and Johnson. In an interview she said her blue stocking clever clogs image worked for her and saved a lot of time and hassle having makeovers.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Tom Baker tells a good story about being collared by a couple one day.

"Just to say, we always liked you!"
"Thanks very much!"
"But there's one thing we didn't like. Grammar schools"
"The what?"
"We didn't like what you did with the grammar schools".

They'd thought he was Shirley Williams.

[oboogie]

It would have been handy if Shirley Williams was a Timelord.

[Kreuzberger]

Dodds really is banging in corners for the opposition strikers. A handful of conditioner wouldn't go a miss and it has the added bonus of needing to be combed through.

In a new era where purity and dogma are relegated to the bench, this ought not be a problem.

[youngian]

I had nearly had an encounter with Shirley Williams canvassing at a day festival for the Cambridge seat for the SDP. It was the person she was with that I really wanted to talk to; Richard Attenborough but was too opened mouthed to say anything due to being shit faced not star struck. My friend fared little better later when he spotted TV presenter Chris Kelly and said; ‘Clive James I’m a big fan.’ Don’t do drugs kids.

[The Red Arrow]

Ah, Dickie Attenborough. Or "That bloke from Jurassic Park!" as my then partner screamed when we spotted him at a motorway services.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

I met Shirley Williams as a Young Socialist. She was rude and dismissive, completely up herself.
Later, worfking at Education, I talked to people she had worked with there, and they said much the same. A Secretary of State who popped out and did her shopping during the working day...

[Tubby Isaacs]

The shadow chancellor, Anneliese Dodds, said there were serious questions about a potential multibillion-pound black hole in the Treasury’s finances that needed urgent clarification.

Her intervention comes after a report suggested ministers were preparing to ditch Britain’s digital services tax – a levy of 2% on the revenues tech companies derive from UK users – because it could jeopardise a post-Brexit trade deal with the US.

In a letter to the chancellor, Dodds said the future of £465m in revenue from the digital services tax had been thrown up into the air, warning this was equivalent to the cost of employing 13,000 nurses, 8,700 teachers or 8,600 police officers

.https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... ishi-sunak

Nifty move by Dodds here.

Long-Bailey and Jez left her with a tax to raise £6-14bn a year which the US would have not let stand. She's moved on to backing Big Phil Hammond's much more modest tax (which the US probably wouldn't have bothered much about). And everybody knows the Tories have scrapped it because of their Brexit.

She's probably overestimating Johnson in thinking he cares about black holes in finances. He's seen Trump in action.

[youngian]

Bozo’s found an extra £16bn to spaff on showing Johnny Foreigner who’s boss with Dreadnougt space rockets

[Bones McCoy]

"Space Force" was frikken laughable under Trump.
"Space poodle force" is going to be tragic.

As for the rest, the cynic in me sees a lot of "outsourced services" getting the bulk of the new defence spend.
"Fire up the Gravy train Rishi"...

[Malcolm Armsteen]

They are seeking artificial intelligence because they don't have any of the normal kind?

[youngian]

"Space Force" was frikken laughable under Trump.
"Space poodle force" is going to be tragic.

As for the rest, the cynic in me sees a lot of "outsourced services" getting the bulk of the new defence spend.
"Fire up the Gravy train Rishi"...

The French and NASA do rockets while the UK does satellite technology very successfully and often on a shoestring. Like Concorde its recognition that France and Britain no longer have the economy of scale of a global superpower since the decline of empire. But found a realistic model of co-operation that would work. But here we are back in the 1950s run by the League of Empire Loyalists resurrecting Blue Streak rockets.

[Boiler]

It has to be said that the UK does satellites very, very well indeed, along with imaging devices - see E2V's record on this matter.

(Although I remember as E2V as English Electric Valves, who provided camera tubes to the BBC)