Rats in a Sack: Fan crafts a poem for GB News’ Grimes

Lovely stuff! And let’s hope Grimes never googles the word “acrostic”.

The list of Conservative MPs signing up to an amendment to the Renters (Reform) Bill in the Commons yesterday which would significantly dilute the legislation looked like the Brexiteers getting the old band back together. Such delightful figures as Suella Braverman, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Desmond Swayne were all there.

All three were also among the 12 with an ‘R’ next to their name – indicating they had interests registered. Braverman lets out a flat in London. Rees-Mogg has rental properties in London and Somerset. Swayne lets out a house and a flat in London. The list goes on. Why on earth are they so keen to water down a bill increasing the rights of renters?

Much mockery of Darren Grimes’ fellow GB News presenter and occasional MP for Ashfield Lee Anderson this week for a post on Twitter/X warning a “Guardian reading, advacado [sic] eating, Palestinian flag waving, Eddie Izzard supporting Vegan” would not like the video he’d just posted. This showed 30p Lee talking about why he loves England, while apparently dressed as a waiter on an entry-level cruise.

But even when spelling it correctly, what is the issue successive Tory deputy chairmen have with the humble alligator pear?

Anderson’s successor, Jonathan Gullis, has used debates in the House of Commons on town centre safety to say he didn’t want “the chai latte and avocado brigade” in Stoke-on-Trent, on budget resolutions to attack people “in north Islington having chai latte and avocado on toast” and on nationality and borders to, er, attack people “in north Islington having chai latte and avocado on toast” again.

He’s also used a debate on education to mock “the avocado-eating, chai latte-drinking elites”. Was Gullis beaten up by an avocado at school?

“Come join @andrewpierce and moi @gbnews in Britain’s Newsroom today. Lots going on – come be part of it,” posted right-wing gob-for-hire Carole Malone on Twitter/X ahead of a GB News stint this week.

The responses, including “Nah, think I’ll go stick pins in my eyes”, “I see the cast for the new Nosferatu movie is taking shape” and “No can do – am bleaching my 4sshole unfortunately” must have baffled Andrew Pierce, an ice hockey player for US college side Keene State Owls. Pierce the presenter’s handle is the at least honest @toryboypierce.

Conservatives have been rounding on former MP Nick Boles since he wrote a letter to the Times defending Angela Rayner and predicting she was “going to wipe the floor with them”.

Among them was Nadine Dorries, who used her Daily Mail column to describe him as “eccentric” and “having only ever served on the lowest rung of the ministerial ladder for a short period of time”.

She continued: “Methinks this is more about Boles desperately attempting to ease his way into the House of Lords on the back of privileged friendships, rather than a record of achievement.”

Can Dorries think of any other former MPs who have attempted to ease their way into the House of Lords on the back of privileged friendships, rather than a record of achievement, albeit – in her case – humiliatingly unsuccessfully?

Special award for missing the point most spectacularly goes to ping-pong-playing Times columnist Matthew Syed, speaking to Times Radio this week about how Spectator theatre critic Lloyd Evans had written that a blonde lecturer’s appearance made him so aroused that he had to have sex with a prostitute.

Said Syed: “Would you agree with me that it would be ridiculous to say that he did something wrong by being attracted to her? He could perfectly well be attracted to her at the same time as admiring her mind.” Thank goodness that in his table tennis days, Syed didn’t miss the ball as much as he missed the point here!

The appearance of weird articles like Evans’ is said to be behind a bit of a freelance boycott of the Spectator. Insiders say some of the magazine’s semi-regular contributors aren’t pitching to the title at the moment given the amount of crackpottery slipping in while editor Fraser Nelson busies himself with fending off a sale to the United Arab Emirates.

Trouble, too, at the Spectator’s stablemate the Daily Telegraph, which last week ran the headline “Reading University denies responsibility for catastrophic Dubai floods”.

Science editor Sarah Knapton reported that the university had denied that its cloud-seeding technique was to blame for extreme flooding in the emirate after the worst rainfall since records began in 1949. “Meteorology experts at the university have been working with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) over the past few years on a project to electrically charge clouds, and produce raindrops,” she went on.

A good story – and only slightly ruined by the fact that a) Reading University hadn’t denied responsibility for the floods because b) it hadn’t been cloud-seeding in the UAE in the first place. As the university put it on Twitter/X in decidedly undonnish language: “Jog on.”

Next out of the door at the soon-to-be-online-only TalkTV is Vanessa Feltz, who is said to be leaving the channel along with her reported £700,000 salary.

A sad day for Feltz, but perhaps a slight insight into how the broadcaster lost so much money hand over fist – paying the thick end of three quarters of a million pounds to somebody most recently seen on noted current affairs heavyweight Celebs Go Dating!

Up on Merseyside, all talk is about Steve Rotheram, Liverpool’s salt-of-the-earth metro mayor, and in particular his curious dining habits.

Rotheram is said to have been spotted in an Indonesian restaurant where he was presented with a banquet of fresh steamed vegetables on a bed of rice. Which the mayor proceeded to scrape all the vegetables off before grabbing a slice of white bread from the kitchen and making himself a rice sandwich.

Jet-setting foreign secretary David Cameron has this week been visiting Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan and Mongolia.

Now your correspondent isn’t suggesting this whole gig isn’t some kind of wild bet on the part of the notoriously bored former prime minister, but the current world record for visiting every country on Earth in the fastest documented time is 543 days. If we last to the final possible day to legally hold the next general election – January 25 next year – Cameron will have been in office for 443 days…