Diary: Boris sits five-year exam

~ Billy Mann

The new Labour Tories and a bullying TV cop

🔹Andrew Rawnsley’s column in the Observer is about UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson keeping the promises he made during the election campaign to the northern, die-hard Labour supporters he managed to convert to the Tories. 

It includes the following passage:

Rachel Wolf, co-author of the Tory manifesto, sets one test for this government: “In five years, people need to find it easier to get a GP appointment, think A&E and social care is better, not worse, and not believe that their schools are struggling with budgets.”

🔹The Harry & Meghan story isn’t going away anytime soon.

And even former Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger, now a grandee at Oxford University, has something to say about it.

🔹We bought these lamps at a vintage shop in Hackney today. £375, plus delivery.

Illuminating

🔹This family WhatsApp exchange during the Liverpool vs Man Utd game was funny.

My sister can be so dozy sometimes!

Liverpool won 2-0. The second goal in the closing seconds was a masterpiece of quick thinking and cool running.

🔹DCI Vera Stanhope, TV cop played by Brenda Blethyn in the series ‘Vera’, always treats journeyman DC Kenny Lockhart like a piece of shit. 

She orders him around endlessly and when the investigation hits a bad patch she gets really touchy and shouts at poor Kenny in front of everyone. She’s a bully.

Published by Billy Mann

I'm originally from Liverpool and worked as a national magazine journalist for more than 30 years before suffering a stroke at age 53. I started blogging as part of a neuro-rehabilitation programme and wrote the very first entries with one finger of my disabled left hand. Later, art became another therapy for me at Headway East London's Submit To Love studios. I blog regularly and volunteer as a teaching assistant, coaching schoolchildren in aspects of journalism.