“Serious cleavage behind Ed Miliband’s head. Anyone know who it belongs to?”
Toby Young and Boris Johnson
A storm amongst political commentators, particularly on social media, erupted after it was made known that Toby Young, a former Spectator journalist, and owner of the above quote (tweeted during PMQs) had been appointed to The Office For Students (Ofs). The Ofs is a government-created regulator designed to champion the interests of students in higher education, which came into effect on Monday.
Mr Young has come under fire in the past over tweets labelled sexist and classist; he has since deleted 8,500 of the 56,000 tweets sent since joining twitter. There are also concerns over whether those on the board – most with ties to universities – can be independently supportive of students when their own interests involve the universities rather than those attending.
“The objective is to keep everyone safe”
Storm Eleanor began to batter the UK and Ireland on Wednesday, with winds of up to 100 mph destroying trees and coastline walls. At the height of the storm, more than 25,000 customers in Northern Ireland lost their electricity supply.
The storm has gone on to devastate areas in Europe, with four people reported dead on Thursday night, with two deaths in France and two on Spain’s northern Basque coast. As the French Alps was put on maximum avalanche alert, nearly 400 firefighters fought back against blazes fanned by the wind on the French Mediterranean island of Corsica.
The storm hits Lahinch, County Clare, Ireland
“I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his”
After Kim Jong Un claimed in a statement on Monday that “a nuclear button is always on my desk”, Donald Trump hit back with the claim that he also possesses one, but that it is bigger and more powerful.
The tweet came alongside a barrage of tweets from the President to start off the new year; he called for a Hilary Clinton aide to be thrown in jail, threatened to cut off aid to Pakistan and the Palestinians, and claimed he would be announcing his own award, “The most dishonest and corrupt media award” to be given next Monday to various categories from “fake news media”.
As an A&E consultant @UHNM_NHS I personally apologise to the people of stoke for the 3rd world conditions of the dept due to #overcrowding pic.twitter.com/HW5JR8PSJ2
— Dr Richard Fawcett (@docfawcett) 2 January 2018
Dr Richard Fawcett, a consultant in emergency medicine at the Royal Stoke hospital, tweeted that there were “third world conditions” at his hospital due to overcrowding.
The NHS has seen a growing number of hospitals struggling with the winter crisis, with overcrowding in many hospitals despite planning measures such as extra beds for patients. Waiting times have been longer as a result, and there have been reports of patients waiting for half an hour in the back of an ambulance before being admitted to hospitals.
“I can’t see that this will become a footnote and be swept under the rug. It does feel like it will change.”
Christian Bale in Hostiles
Christian Bale’s snappy assessment of the landscape portrayed in his new film Hostiles was that it shows “everything is run by old white men”. Bale explained that the film ended up reflecting Trump-era themes, including widespread sexual misconduct. Speaking to The Guardian, Bale said he “didn’t think that when we started it, but it just started becoming clear as we saw what was happening in America – seeing how comfortable people were becoming in expressing contempt for the other.” He feels the recent Harvey Weinstein scandal and fallout had the potential to change Hollywood, saying that the widespread allegations wouldn’t “become a footnote and be swept under the rug.”
