ml1dch

Stop it Stefan. Tories normally have to call a premium rate number to hear that sort of get-your-Tory-rocks-off chat, and there you are just giving it away for free.

Anyone interested in a £2,000 per day job working for test-and-trace? By the way, you need to have experience in "turning around failing call centres".

For example...

It's pretty unprecedented*, but broadly as per the post you quote. The House chooses the President, the Senate chooses the Vice-president. If both are tied and both vote along party lines then I think Speaker of the House takes it, but the Internet doesn't seem to know for sure. Gut feeling - if it did happen, you might find an anti-Trump Republican (Romney?) to vote the other way. *although not completely, see the election of 1800.

Would be hee-larious.

Sample menu from one of the subsidised MP's dining rooms in Parliament. Cost to the taxpayer - £4.4m annually. All in it together.

From Private Eye

You can see their point though. Start feeding kids, and before you know it they'll be dependent on food for the rest of their lives.

Of course. Why wouldn't I be?

That's a pretty spectacular misreading of the situation.

Gotcha. I just saw that it was Goodall complaining about it and didn't read it properly.

They've probably decided that the Venn diagram of brexity dickheads voting for them the first time and Newsnight viewers is effectively two seperate circles. They'd probably have more cut-through sending them to talk at the local illegal dog-fight or dogging hotspot.

The Posh have given Greater Manchester a beating all over the place today...

Did you manage to dig out that "husband / postal service" stuff that you said we all needed to know about?

Sure, it's not a massive climb down at all. But the earlier position had been that they wanted Heads of Terms on all points broadly agreed before drafting a treaty. So not massive, and not something that will change the overall result. But still doing something that they weren't prepared to do before.

A little bit, yeah. They've agreed this afternoon to draft a joint legal text. Which they hadn't before, and is a pretty big precursor to an agreement being reached.

A Saudi Arabia deal is broadly accurate I believe if you want a new label. Nope, also covered by the EBA initiative.

Ethiopia are covered by the EU's "Everything But Arms" initiative which means that all of their exports to the EU are tariff-free and quota-free, apart from weapons. It's miles ahead of what the UK's arrangements will be.

Westhambul

The biggest concern was always around turnout and enthusiasm, and that the more people who voted the better it was for Biden. So stuff like this bodes well: Some places are up to nearly 50% of their total 2016 vote already.

Weird fruit.

[a pedant writes] *Plenary session of the European Parliament. You're right that it's that actual deadline, but it's also important to remember what has to happen to get to that stage. The reason that the Council meeting just gone was important is that it was the last opportunity for Barnier's mandate to be changed. And it didn't, so there is no room for the EU side to move very far now. But for the Parliament to ratify any potential agreement, a draft treaty needs to emerge, go through translation, go through committee stage etc. And none of that is an overnight thing. So for a deal to happen, it needs to UK to (broadly) agree to the thing on the table at the moment. I'm still 51-49 on the side that this is UK theatre before capitulating like Johnson did last Autumn, but there is a long of embarrassing rowing-back that will have to happen from the UK side to get there. And it'll need to happen pretty quickly to get through the necessary parliamentary stages.

They don't mess around with their pizza names in The Netherlands

This one, or is there another one that we need to be aware of?