What Do You Think Today?

[I'm Murrin]

God, as much as we need the Tories out of power, it's gonna suck that this particular Labout leadership are the ones who benefit from the Tories fucking everything up. They're going to convince themselves they won on their own merits, and not by default.

[Hashi Lebwohl]

If I sent any of you a PM in the last week then you will now need to reach me by different means, given that this will be the last time I ever browse to, or log on to, this site.

You may take kevinswatch while the people I support take Congress. I leave it up to you figure out which one is actually important.

[peter]

Amen to that Murrin! But still - on the bright side we can still hope that, despite this, they will be able to overturn some of the worst policies of this extreme sect. They might even be able to do some good here and there, in say perhaps the area of wages that you highlighted above.

I keep hearing that the forthcoming coronation is going to be a scaled down affair, with none of the lavish ceremonial of his mothers back in 1953. Prince Charles (quite possibly on instruction from his Buckingham Palace advisors) is on board with this, and the general feeling seems to be that in the face of the economic suffering of millions of people it would be crass to hold a great bloated ceremony with Charles travelling in a gold coach past throngs of subjects, many of whom will be on their uppers as they try to struggle through to better times.

I am not of this view. I believe that we should do exactly the opposite. The ceremonial should be done to the height of our ability - which is world-beating in this area - and I do not think that the public would wish it otherwise. Charles has waited a long time for his day, and he deserves it. But this aside (and it is really not of any significance anyway) it is the people who deserve it. Certainly keep the parts of the ceremonial where Charles and Camilla must be actively involved to a minimum; this in respect of their ages and the need not to wear them out, but aside from this, I say go it large. The people deserve to see that dream carriage rolling down the Mall. They should see the Lords in their pomp and ceremony, the Bishops of the Church in full array, the roads bedecked with Union Jacks. Let there be parties and celebrations, let there be dancing in the streets. I think it would give a desperately needed uplift to people's spirits, not to forget bringing them together at a level above that of the divisive workaday politics that they absorb from morning to night.

This is what monarchy is all about - going it large. Not hiding its light under a bushel. If it needs to be scaled back, then frankly it needs to be got rid of. And to my surprise, following the Queen's death I find myself less inclined to this position than I have been for years.

-------------0-------------

Another day, another screeching U-turn from our Government (well - nearly anyway). This morning it is reported that the Truss administration intends to cap the profits of the renewable energy giants (as opposed to slapping a windfall tax on them, which would amount to the same thing) in opposition to what she sold as her position when on the leadership trail those short weeks ago.

This is of course red meat to her opponents in the Labour Party. Shadow Energy Secretary Ed Milliband has said that at last they have seen sense and adopted the position that Labour has been espousing since day one.

Meanwhile the Government's problems with the markets look set to continue. The Bank of England are resisting calls for them to continue their bond buying program beyond Friday when it is due to end, and given that what they have done to date seems barely to be holding up the value of government bonds, it is anyone's guess as to what is going to transpire when they cease their remedial actions. But the Governor of the Bank is insistent that the scheme will end on Friday, telling fund managers that they have three days to get their houses in order. Yesterday they (the Bank of England) had widened their bond buying program to include inflation linked bonds, and this has seemed to briefly stabilise the situation. Now it is time for the hedge fund managers themselves to shore up their portfolios with some mitigating precautions against further shocks. The fund managers themselves would of course prefer that the Bank did their work for them and continued with its buying scheme which yesterday alone cost them 3.3 billion pounds.

The IMF for their part are not making Truss's life any easier either. Yesterday they said that the Government should rethink it's fiscal policy and row back on its unfunded tax cuts in order to re-stabilize the markets. Since this would see the main plank of the Truss election campaign overturned, its not likely to be advice that will be heeded any time soon.

So all in all its a bit of a mess. To early to say what will happen in the short term - but a dead safe bet that the long term picture is slipping floorward as we speak. But it does get on my pip to read that the cabinet is split over the real term cuts to benefits as it prepares to cut back public spending in the days ahead. Given the 65 billion pound hole in the Government finances, these cuts will be coming like it or not, but some cabinet ministers are apparently resolute that they must not be made on the backs of the poorest members of our society.

C'mon! At what point was it ever going to be different? You sit in the cabinet of a government whose very raison-d'etra is that of the shrinkage of the (welfare) state and enablement of the plundering of government resources by the private sector.....at what point are the poorest not going to be the ones most affected by this? Spare us your disingenuous concern - it won't wash!

[peter]

Hey - just seen Hashi's post above and have seen the odd changes over at the Tank. (Hile Troy's Love Bug? Zero posts and zero access? WTF?)

Is something happening here? Have I missed something?

There was some stuff in the Tank I'd like to have been able to access (brexit and UK general election stuff in particular). I'd intended to do some serious downloading at some point; is this now not going to be possible?

Any info greatly appreciated.

[kevinswatch]

The Tank is gone. That's that.

-jay

[peter]

[sgt.null]

The Tank is gone. That's that.

-jay

We need a tee shirt with that.

[peter]

On a scale of 1 to 10 the news that scientists at Stanford University have succeeded in integrating neurones from human brain into that of rats - and in a manner that enables functionality that can be described as 'human' - is perhaps not the most important thing reported in the last 24 hours....... but there is something about it that (I don't know) - strikes me.

I find the idea repellent.

The scientists are selling it on the basis of its being part of ongoing investigations into the study of psychiatric disorders and the treatment thereof, but there is something undeniably unpleasant about the idea. It has a sort of 'Frankenstein' taint about it, that, while illogical, you just can't quite shake off. I mean, who would want to be involved in this? What would the person who cooks up this kind of research be like if you were staring across the breakfast table at them; cold and inhuman.....or just like you and me - loving and caring and full of ordinary human compassion.

Then off to work to create chimeras and monsters, hybrids between species that you just know are not going to stop with a few neurones stuck into a rat's brain.

Not for nothing did Shelly write her famous novel; it isn't just a good tale to make into a great horror movie featuring a guy with a flat head and a fucked up brain - it's a warning. We all know this. A warning against unwarranted pride and hubris. Against stepping into the realm that the Gods have jealousy guarded as their own. And I have a scientific background - an education that has prepared me for this kind of stuff. If I can feel the disquiet - the inate wrongness of this kind of research - then how are others, people with much deeper religious or spiritual beliefs than I, supposed to feel.

And of course, this is why the story has been reported. Because of its sensational value. Because there is a whiff of the macabre about it that is in the background, but exciting and repelling in equal measure. If this were not so, you wouldn't be hearing about this particular piece of research on the six o clock news, it wouldn't be on the front page of the FT today. It would be invisible and unreported, like a million bits of equally important research that have passed unnoticed on the same day.

And again - try as I might to view this story from the coldly rational part of my brain, I find I cannot do so. Something in me (and this is surely ridiculous) cares for the rats! (Oddly, I don't think much about the origins of the human tissue used in this experiment - that must say something about me - but the rats I care about.) The poor little buggers that find themselves staring across the table at that person who this morning, sat opposite their family - now they are in trouble! Tell me that they didn't draw the short straw in life?

And I can't help thinking that, do them down as vermin, as below thinking about as we do, that when it comes to mixing up a rat with a human, it is the rat that is the looser in the deal - that he is the one that is lessened in the process - and not the other way around as it might seem at first glance.

[kevinswatch]

The Tank is gone. That's that.

-jay

We need a tee shirt with that.

Haha!

-jay

[peter]

Oh fuck, I can't avoid it. Like it or not, in order to satisfy the demands of my own Frankenstein's monster I must turn to Truss and the Government, to recount the proceedings of the last 24 hours in this recurring nightmare of slow motion collapse.

Truss yesterday took to the PM's podium for only the second time, and was roasted by Stamer and the opposition benches (with no small disquiet from her own side as well) for her performance and policies to date. She almost immediately boxed herself into a corner by giving a cast iron assurance that balancing the books in the near future would not involve cuts to public services.

I mean, this is akin to Boris Johnson's promise to get us out of the single market and customs union without there being a border down the Irish Sea or on the island of Ireland. It can't be done. It's a circle that cannot be squared.

Truss has a sixty odd billion pound hole in the finances. She has to find the money from somewhere, but won't do it from taxation and won't do it via cuts to public services? Then from whence will this money come? Have we assets to sell? Where pray, does the balancing of the books come from?

Such were the questions that were thrown at the PM in her meeting yesterday evening with the 1922 committee of backbench Tory MPs. The atmosphere was by accounts, dire. Worse, by far, than anything that Theresa May had to endure, reported one attendee, and this morning the papers report of a party in open revolt. Bond markets tanked again yesterday and so did the pound - and that despite the Bank of England having bought near five billion pounds worth of 20 year bonds in an attempt to stabilise the market. Everybody and his mother are screaming out for Truss and Kwarteng to reverse their tax cutting agenda and get back to economics as usual, but they are having none of it.

And neither can they. For them, this has to be shit or bust. Kier Stamer described it as a kamikaze budget yesterday and that is exactly what it is - but with less chance of the pilot walking away from the crash.

We keep saying the same old stuff day after day, and in truth no-one has the faintest idea where this is going to end. As one commentator said, Truss can't have imagined in her worst nightmare that it would be this bad. Making all of those populist promises just to win the leadership probably doesn't seem like such a good idea right now. At least with Johnson, he had a plan to get him out of the corner he was by appearances painting himself into. He simply went ahead and did exactly what he had promised not to do and denied he was doing it as he did. Truss has not got either the hutzpah or the plan to get herself out of this. Or if she has, she's hiding it pretty well. It's all going to be down to Kwarteng to sort out in his statement of a couple of weeks time. If he fails, Truss will toss him out like yesterday's rubbish and turn tail on her tax policies with a new Chancellor in tow. That (as far as I can see) will be about her only option, but even this would leave her fatally wounded.

Perhaps her left-wing leaning father need not have worried. Perhaps his (no doubt) dearly beloved daughter will, in her brutal sacrifice of her own party and inept handling of the economy, lend more service to the Labour cause than any politician could have achieved from the opposition benches in a month of Sundays. Dangerous to ever write off the Tories, but this must be as deep a shit-pile as they have ever found themselves in, and unless Truss is a political player par exelance, hiding her talents under a veil of mediocrity, then the party is screwed - and possibly for good.

[TheFallen]

#RishiWasRight

In fact he was spot-on - take a look.

Of course he was. Because he'd already shown himself over the last two years to have a competent grasp of macro-economics. And as per the YouTube clip linked to above, literally every single thing that he predicted would be the result of the Trussbot's crushingly stupid and utterly unjustifiable economic policies has come pretty much exactly to pass.

For many decades, the pattern in UK politics has been that the Tories were a very safe pair of competent hands for the British economy. It's always been their core strength, their primary raison d'etre... and when Labour gets in every so often and promptly overspends, depleting everything accrued in the carefully managed warchests and crashing the economy, then the country votes the Tories back in to put things back on track for a term or two. The clueless Truss and the equally gormless Kwarteng have within a matter of just a couple of weeks utterly destroyed the key reason for there being a Conservative party in the first place. I cannot tell you how farcical, cack-handed, incompetent and very seriously damaging to the UK as a nation that is.

The parliamentary Conservative party was deeply concerned about Truss from the very get-go. As the voting figures clearly showed, had it been down to them, Rishi would have got the job much sooner and by a mile.

And this is where I am reminded of something pithily said to me thirty years ago by a very well-known British entrepreneur, whom I had the real fun of working directly for, for more than 8 years back in the day. He said to me (and this is a direct quote, though censored for obvious reasons):-

"Remember - don't just blame the c***. Also blame the c***s that put them there."

Too true. It was the wider signed-up members of the Conservative party (just 172,000 of them in the entire UK) who put Truss in number 10. It was so abundantly clear up-front that Truss was by far the worst of a binary choice when compared to Rishi that I actually suspect (though without proof) that a subliminal innate racism probably came into play. In general and on average, those bothering to become signed-up members of the Tory party will be what we over here call "tweedy" - so, late middle-aged, living in the south, financially very comfortable, determinedly reactionary and utterly out of touch. I think that, whether they were aware of this or not, they won't have wanted a non-white British PM and that will have coloured (pun intended) their decision. Shame on them and clearly, you reap what you sow. Anyhow...

Truss's many flaws are glaringly obvious. In no particular order, they include:-

A total absence of fiscal responsibility, engendered by an utter lack of economic and indeed political understanding (just look at what she's entirely unintentionally wrought already...).
A staggering ignorance of optics (being genuinely proud of the farcical and very short-lived cutting of the highest tax rate (and at this particular time???)
A complete absence of charisma (hence TrussBot).
A stubbornly held delusion against all the evidence that she is the second coming of Margaret Thatcher (nothing could be further from the truth).

With the clueless Liz (completely bizarrely) at the helm, we're in serious trouble over here. She's set to preside in ignorance and bewilderment over disaster after disaster over the next two years max - after which we will without doubt get a very understandable Labour landslide, which will put that bunch of muppets in power with a massive majority for at least four years. Looking at Truss, depressingly the inevitability of all this now comes as no surprise at all.

The Bank of England warned yesterday that it would have to cease its emergency policy of shoring up the pound and the British economy by buying UK government bonds this Friday... oh shit. So, unless the parliamentary Conservative party manages to find a way to remove Truss in a matter of just a month or two (and that in itself would cause massive credibility problems - but IMV it would be by a million miles the lesser of two evils), as a nation we're fucked for the foreseeable. Big time.

[Avatar]

It was so abundantly clear up-front that Truss was by far the worst of a binary choice when compared to Rishi that I actually suspect (though without proof) that a subliminal innate racism probably came into play.

Wanna say Peter and I predicted that effect 8 pages ago.

--A

[Wosbald]

+JMJ+

[T]his will be the last time I ever browse to, or log on to, this site.

[…]

[peter]

Well, it's collapsing around them as we speak.

Kwarteng is racing back early from his meeting with the IMF in Washington in order to try to shore up the remaining support that he and Truss still nominally have from their parliamentary MPs. Word has it that a full scale ditching of the so called mini-budget is being considered in an attempt to save what is becoming a rapidly worsening position for the PM and her Chancellor. It has to be doubtful if Truss herself could survive the total and wholesale abandonment of the policies she has staked her premiership on - Kwarteng is a gonner for sure.

More worryingly for the pair, it looks as if an alternative leadership is emerging with a possible 'coronation' of a Sunak-Mordaunt double ticket being touted by a collective of former Ministers and other senior Conservatives. The party is well aware that it could not stand another bruising leadership battle and the prospect of changing the leadership with a minimal delay and fuss must today be looking like an enticing one. And the membership? Screw the membership! They're the ones who put us in this position in the first place!

In yet another example of the Truss King-Midas-Anti-Effect - that being, everything she touches turns to shit - her attempt to politicise the new King and capitalise on his novel 'glory' (in the hope that some would rub off on herself) backfired. When, in an unusual breaking of protocol, the cameras were present for the early part of the formal meeting of the monarch and the PM (instigated it is thought by Downing Street), the King was heard to say to Truss, "Back again?" (it was there second meeting), to which she replied in the affirmative. "Oh dear, oh dear," the King was heard to say before the sound cut out, leading to all kinds of speculation as to what his off the cuff comment meant. Was he referring to the cluster-fuck that is the Truss premiership? There can be little doubt that it was a reference in some manner to the trouble that Truss finds herself in. Either way, I bet she is regretting having pushed that bit of protocol aside. Those meetings are private for a reason and it was unwise in the extreme to attempt to gain political capital from it.

Yesterday, the Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said in interview that he thought it would be disastrous both politically and economically to replace Truss and Kwarteng. What he didn't seem to get was that it would be disastrous for the foreign secretary to come out talking in terms of his leader being replaced. His own remarks have simply drawn attention as to the absolute weakness of Truss's position and fueled speculation as to what is going on behind the scenes (if it needs to be called speculation anymore). Not clever Cleverly.

But this all has the feeling of an endgame situation to me. Common sense tells you that Truss has to be kept in office for a while more.....but I think common sense has gone out for lunch. I have a feeling that she is going to fall, and fall soon. No leader can continue if her whole raison d'etra is pulled away from her, and I don't think that it will be more than days before the so called 'council of elders' will be taking her aside with the customary glass of whiskey and revolver in hand.

I'm probably wrong, but I think she's done.

--------------------0-------------------

The news broadcasts yesterday made a big thing about the so called 'covid-backlog' of individuals awaiting treatment by the NHS which has now, for the first time ever, exceeded seven million people. It is estimated that as high as one in eight of the British population is waiting for some kind of treatment or another, as our embattled health service struggles to recover from the battering it received during the pandemic, when its normal operating services were curtailed at the expense of dealing with the expected wave of covid admissions that (in truth) never materialised.

To those of us that watched in horror as this imprudent and ill-advised policy was enacted, it was obvious that this situation would be - could be - the only one that would result. You cannot stop an organisation the size of the NHS in it's tracks, and then attempt to start it back up overnight without there being a residual knock-on effect, and this is it.

But what I noticed about the report on the BBC news last night was that, contrary to what was the case when it came to reporting Covid figures, no attention was given to the effects of this backlog on excess deaths at all. Not one mention of how much this additional waiting was translating into people actually dying was made, either in terms of statistics or simply speculatively.

Well let me give you some anecdotal evidence. My wife works in a hospital and one of her co-workers has a husband who works in a local crematorium. This woman told her that the crematorium is working at peak capacity trying to fit in all the excess cremations resulting from people who died as a result of missing cancer treatments during the pandemic. As I say, it's anecdotal, it doesn't mean much - but it's an anecdote that you will never hear on the BBC or across the floor of the House of Commons. These are not statistics that those who orchestrated our pandemic response will ever put out for public consumption, nor will they be highlighted in the whitewash that will constitute the current inquiry into that response.

But those of us who saw this coming, who shouted from the rafters at the folly of what we were doing, yet remained un-listened to, even vilified for pointing out as much - well, we know. We do not forget.

[Avatar]

Well, that went bad quickly huh? Kwarteng sacked, in the 2nd-shortest lived chancellorship ever. (And the guy with the shortest one died 30 days after being appointed, so...fastest sacking ever?)

Jeremy Hunt replacing him apparently, (don't remember much about him apart from the hilarious mispronunciation of his name by some newscaster or something. )

And a group of senior Tories allegedly planning on requesting Truss' resignation...

This has been a spectacular implosion, hasn't it?

[Edit: Oooh, oooh, now she's raising corporate taxes. You couldn't make this stuff up. )

--A

[I'm Murrin]

Truss announcing a raise in corporation tax at the same time she appoints a Chancellor who ran against her on a promise to reduce corporation tax. Hmm.

Well, that went bad quickly huh? Kwarteng sacked, in the 2nd-shortest lived chancellorship ever. (And the guy with the shortest one died 30 days after being appointed, so...fastest sacking ever?)

Does the guy who resigned the same day he was appointed by Boris Johnson not count?

[peter]

Fair comment Murrin.

What gets me is the meaninglessness of it all.

I mean,Truss says that she and Hunt both stand for growth and low taxes - well who doesn't? That's so basic a desire as to be akin to saying you stand for world peace and freedom.

But predictably she is being roasted in today's papers.

The markets did not settle [bond's up over four percent, the pound down], her backbenchers are just as mutinous as they were before her sacking of her chancellor, her U-turn, her statement, her party is no further forward and she cannot govern. What has been achieved?

She must surely see that the game is up and that she has run out of road?

But it isn't just her is it? Her party, and almost by extension the country behind it, is also staring into oblivion. And it isn't Truss's fault. She just continued down a path set for her by British politics way back, I don't know, back in the last half decade ago, of 'win by any means, foul or fair'. There is no heart in our politics, no honour. The gaining of power for power's sake has become the raison d'etra of our polity. Get power; get rich. End off. There is nothing in it about actually doing what is best for the country, no background ethos of service, no one-nation feeling left in it. Whatever principles a new entrant into the Commons has are snuffed out within weeks as they suddenly find themselves cast into an arena where if they don't join the race to the bottom, hack their way onto the greasy pole and then start the simple one-rule power game that is Westminster [ie. get it!], then they are done. Power within your party, then power over the nation. That's it in a nutshell.

And where does that leave us? Effectively like Liz Truss; up shit-creek without a paddle.

The parliamentary Tory party has become separated from its membership, creating fertile ground for the emergence of any newer and more extreme forms of nationalistic groupings [thank God Nigel Farage hasn't decided to throw in with the BNP or something - he could probably pull it off in these circumstances], the Labour Party, nominally better on the face of it, has no real vision under Stamer capable of getting us out of the mess we have created for ourselves. What, in seriousness, could he do to turn this all around. He has neither the vision nor the courage to grasp the nettle and do what would need to be done [getting us back into the single-market and the customs union would be a start].

And so we will now be forced to watch the Truss tragi-comedy unfold as she clings to power, limpet like until her broken fingernails are eventually ripped from the doorposts of Number 10, and another broken, power-obsessed clown is installed in her place.

Face it Britain, you blew it, and now you are reaping the rewards of forty years of fuckwits holding the reins of power. Fiscal responsibility, economic competence? Give me a break! Look where we are!

Charles needs to pull all of the key leaders in to one sitting and tell them to fuck off, lock themselves in a room together and get this sorted out. It's been done before and our constitution allows for it. We are so far in the clag that politics as usual ain't gonna cut it. We are into National Unity Government territory here and the sooner these clowns realise it the better.

Nutshell; We are a nation that achieved its power by going out and raping the world and the last thing we did of any value was the creation of the welfare state by the post-war Atlee government. Since that time we have been like a wayward duffer who, falling into an inheritance he was so far from competent from capitalising on, has squandered his riches until there is nothing left. That we have sat on the 'top table' at all has been no more than a residue of our past 'glories', a nod to the 'great estate' of which we were inheritors. Now we are sliding into the oblivion that is the inevitable end point of our decline as an empire - we just haven't realised it yet. Until we get our heads around this central fact, we can never reform ourselves into something solid and worthy enough to build a future upon.

Singapore on Thames? Don't make me laugh. More like shit alley on Scunthorpe.

[Avatar]

Well, that went bad quickly huh? Kwarteng sacked, in the 2nd-shortest lived chancellorship ever. (And the guy with the shortest one died 30 days after being appointed, so...fastest sacking ever?)

Does the guy who resigned the same day he was appointed by Boris Johnson not count?

Think I missed him. But if it's sackings, he wouldn't count I guess.

(Then again, technically this one also resigned? So...was that a resignation by choice or by instruction? )

--A

[I'm Murrin]

Ah, yeah, it wouldn't count for fastest sacking.

This made me go take a look on wikipedia because I was struggling to remember the name. We had a number of interim chancellors for a month or less, and two who died after a month in office. It turns out I had misremembered; the guy I was thinking of did not resign, he accepted the job from Johnson then almost immediately turned on him and called for Johnson to resign.

Kwarteng might not be the shortest serving Chancellor, but Truss still has a decent shot at shortest serving Prime Minister - the standing record is 103 days.

[peter]

Ouch!

Jeremy Hunt, the new chancellor has wasted no time in tearing up the Truss mini-budget and doing complete U-turns on - well - everything.

Touted as the now real leader of the Government (what Government you ask) he is rapidly pushing PM Truss into the background and effective obscurity within here own administration.

Buy Truss's problems do not end there, or rather the Tory Party problems I should say. Because the party has descended into open warfare with the right wing claiming that they are about to be purged and that the ousting of Truss is a deliberately contrived affair with the intention of this exacting maximum damage in revenge for their man (Sunak) not having won the day. Sunak for his part is staying quiet, but has let it be known via today's Sunday Times that, if asked, he is ready to take up the mantle of being Prime Minister. Truss's opponents within the parliamentary party are preparing the ground for her dismissal and it is unlikely that she can survive the week. If she were Johnson, you might give her a thirty percent chance; being Truss it's pretty much zilch.

The question realm has to be whether the Conservative Party can survive this wrenching internecine war. If Truss goes and Sunak or another moderate takes power, the right wing of the parliamentary party is going to erupt. It's a given. They have had the running from the moment that Boris Johnson was elected - before that really - and they are not going to relinquish control back to the centre without a fight. It's really difficult to see how they can survive in their current form and one has to at least consider a complete split down the middle as a real possibility. (Personally, I don't think that this would be too bad a thing. There was much to commend the old 'one nation' Toryism and I think that they could do much worse than to rediscover who they really are, what proper conservatism is all about. I actually see hope for their future in the shedding of a lot of right wing wood.)

But it's early days to see what is going to pan out from all that has happened. Hell, Truss might even survive. Again, these are my thoughts, but I suspect that we have never seen the real Truss anyway. She has been so caught up in the 'power at any price' politics of Westminster that she has submerged what I think, could actually be a pretty nice character in deference to what was required in order to snatch the top job. I think we saw just a hint of who she really is when that interviewer collapsed on set during the leadership contest. Truss's face showed her concern. It was written all over her as she started forward to help the stricken woman. (She is also the only incumbent of Downing Street who I have ever seen bend down to stroke Larry the Downing Street cat - who one wag described this week as about the only sign of continuity in the whole building - and as a cat lover, that goes a long way with me.) Truth is that Truss was (I speak about her in the past tense by accident here, but will leave it) out of her depth here and simply not up to the job.

Hammond for his part, in a round of interviews yesterday, not only effectively binned the entire mini-budget, but also went back on the Truss pledges not to raise taxes or cut public spending. It couldn't have been a more complete reversal of everything she has said if it tried. Despite Sunak having let it be known he's ready for the PM's job, word has it that in some quaters defence secretary Ben Wallace is the favoured man to replace Truss. (This is possibly why the Sunak camp have come out in the Times today.)

We'll have to wait to see what the day/week ahead brings, but I'd be ready to bet that by this time next week she'll be gone. Will Sunak, Wallace or a moderate candidate be able to pull the party back together - I have my doubts. There will be a general election at some point, no matter how much the parliamentary party MPs (Tory that is) don't want one, and it is really only via this means that any new government can achieve a mandate. We will be what, four chancellors and three prime minister's away from the last time anything was put to the electorate and this is not a tenable situation in a democracy. Labour are at least correct in calling for an election on this basis, never mind that the incumbent Government have lost the plot, lost control of the economy, and lost control of their parliamentary MPs.

On the lighter side, I loved the coverage of the Daily Star who two days ago, put a picture of a romaine lettuce (a wet lettuce, they called it) on the front page and told the readers that they were putting it n the fridge and taking bets as to which would outlast the other - Truss or the lettuce. As of yesterday, they told us, the odds on the lettuce being the winner were lengthening. Today it looks like a dead cert.

As for Kwarteng, he is now putting the blame for the mini-budget squarely on Truss's shoulders. I was talking last night to a workmate about what happens to him now and he suggested that he'd likely be on the next flight to Rwanda.

-------------------0--------------

I was in the vet's one day and was seeing out a customer who had just purchased some flea spray for his cat and was complaining that it upset the cat to be sprayed with it.

"Why don't you try some of the new 'spot-on' products that you just put on the back of their necks?", I said. " Much easier." (It was a long time ago.)

He said that this sounded like a good idea and that next time he might try some, but I could see that he looked a bit doubtful.

As he was walking through the door, he turned to me and asked, "Have fleas got necks?".