[Andy McDandy]

I liked it. To be fair, Charlie Brooker was knocking this sort of thing out 20 years ago, in pithier, ruder and funnier format. But it's unfair to compare it to Dickie's efforts. For one, some effort has gone in, and two, it's pretty good.

[Oblomov]

And contains references more recent than the 1980s.

[The Red Arrow]

Harshest on my favourites. More of a rainy wednesday night 1 - 0 win away at Darlington than the glorious 8 - 2 humping of Arsenal at home that she's capable of.

[The Red Arrow]

I'd better play nice - you never know who I'll bump into clambering over a T-34.

- and you'll never guess who my brother had in the back of his taxi yesterday...

[davidjay]

I liked it. To be fair, Charlie Brooker was knocking this sort of thing out 20 years ago, in pithier, ruder and funnier format. But it's unfair to compare it to Dickie's efforts. For one, some effort has gone in, and two, it's pretty good.

And three, it's close to the truth.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Marina is lava.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... do-harding

Yet again, the overriding impression is of a government run by men for whom the domestic sphere is a mystery they have no wish to get to the bottom of. One of them driving hundreds of miles to Durham – just in case he got ill and still had to do his own childcare – sounds, to the other guys, like a totally reasonable thing to have done. Meanwhile the big boss fails to be meaningfully involved in the lives of between 17% and 29% of his children (awaiting full data). If you can be persuaded it’s normal to drive a 60-mile round trip with a child in the car to test your eyesight, then naturally you believe parents should think it fine to stick a five-year-old in their own vehicle and travel 400 miles to obtain what’s necessary to get the child back to school and them back to work.

Either way, of course a government run by weirdo elitists didn’t reflexively foresee that September – back to school, back to offices – was going to mean a huge surge in testing demand. This is the trouble when “hardworking families” is merely a demographic you wish to appeal to, as opposed to who you are. Real-life “hardworking families” could have told you in a heartbeat that September was the main event. THEY could have predicted it. Because unless someone else does it all for you, huge amounts of parenting are about thinking ahead, planning, creating yet another routine that keeps the whole precarious show on the road – the endless foresight of it all.

Only this week Dominic Cummings was pictured slouching through the Downing Street gates carrying some archive letter written by US general Bernard Shriever, pushing for continued investment in ballistic weapons technology. Cummings should hang around the school gates instead, where any amount of mothers who’ve seen all this shit before and didn’t have time for it back then would be able to enlighten him in the simplest possible terms. Namely: Hey squidbrain, I’ve got some “data” for you! Mind if I “special advise” you with it, only I don’t have a window to put it in a 20,000-word blog? OK, here goes: I don’t WANT you to build me a fricking missile defence shield, I don’t CARE about the Manhattan Project, I think all your reading recommendations REEK of the business section of the airport bookshop, and I’m NOT going to be accused of “carping” by guys who’d have a nervo if they had to change a nappy.

You know what I want? A SWAB WITHIN A THIRTY-MILE RADIUS, YESTERDAY. Now spad THAT, genius.

[Andy McDandy]

I think I'm in love.

[Boiler]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... ries-covid

This does seem a puzzle, given that it is supposed to be a highly sophisticated, data-driven government, at least according to that chief incel to the prime minister, Dominic Cummings.

[Andy McDandy]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... Zcm9J_ACZw

Many highlights. Enjoy.

[The Red Arrow]

The hindsightedly obvious

Tiers of a clown.

will become part of my repertoire.

[Boiler]

Joyous.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... is-johnson

Alas, we have seen nor heard nothing for a month from test-and-trace mastermind Dido Harding, who is assumed to be living under this administration’s vast Shitness Protection Programme.

The effect is akin to that on a stricken crowd who have gathered in a town square, desperate to hear news of the great medical invention their overlord has promised them. This ruler trundles out to his balcony, flanked by heralds, and with much fanfare intones: “Behold … the leech!”

Cut to the faces in the crowd, all just going: wut?

[Malcolm Armsteen]

The leech. Apt metaphor.

[Andy McDandy]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... al-borders

Almost missed this one - another goodie.