Knitters!

Look at this that my friend made! Isn’t it gorgeous?

Right, my loves: I’m off away for the weekend. Behave yourselves and message or @ me if there’s a problem or something you particularly want me to see.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2026/11/05/the-billion-pound-railway-that-no-one-can-use/

The problem for the people of Winslow, Oxford, Milton Keynes and every other town and village along the line is that not a single passenger train has run a service yet. Operations were halted by a union dispute with Chiltern Railways over who should be responsible for opening the train doors. That same dispute now exists between the union and the government. Until recently, the government was content to blame Chiltern for the lack of a resolution, but, in September, it took Chiltern into public ownership. This means the responsibility to open this rail connection, which has already cost us over a billion pounds (and is still climbing), sits with it.

When even the civil servants have realised it’s a bad idea….

https://order-order.com/2026/11/05/exc-home-office-staff-privately-criticise-labour-ministers-over-asylum-centre-plans/

Home Office staff have criticised ministers on an all-staff call over Labour plans to house 1,200 adult male asylum seekers in a North Yorkshire village with a population of 600. Why would the villagers be upset? They must be racist…

The call was held yesterday. It was hosted by Home Office Permanent Secretaries and was open to all departmental staff. In a Q&A section, the following popular comment was posted anonymously by a staff member:

For everyone saying “but why are the freezers connected to the internet in the first place?”:

https://spectator.com/article/can-britain-afford-to-take-its-supermarket-fridges-offline/

The big advantage of having your supermarket fridges connected to the internet is that it allows engineers to deal with some issues remotely. Technicians do not need to turn up in person to trigger a defrost, for example. The connections also allow companies to monitor what is happening in their fridges around the clock. If they break down when there are no staff in store, an alert can be raised, and it is easier to detect refrigerant leaks. IoT fridges can also cut bills as they can lower their energy use when grid demand is highest, and power more expensive, and raise it when demand is lower, and energy is cheaper, over the course of a day, while keeping inside temperatures within the safe range.

I have just spent eight minutes and thirty-four seconds on the phone to my mum explaining to her how to type an @.

(Admittedly not helped by my not being able to remember which number Windows keyboards have it on.)

https://www.spiked-online.com/2026/11/04/labours-conversion-practices-bill-is-an-orwellian-nightmare/

Again, suppose parents want to tell their slightly foolish 10-year-old that they don’t believe he is a girl, and that he should stop being silly. They may not face an immediate police visit, but if that child mentions his parent’s views at school, it is possible the matter will end up with a teacher’s report, and the parents in the clutches of the child protection authorities. Will other parents still want to speak their minds after that?

This is a bad bill, presented largely to keep a collection of pressure groups happy. It is unnecessary, authoritarian and a serious threat to our liberty. It needs to be decisively thrown out.

Went for winter coat and one jumper today, rather than the usual autumn coat and two, and my only regret was skipping the second jumper.

I can well believe the mutterings about a touch of snow next week.

Maddie on PMQs.

https://spectator.com/article/louise-haigh-was-just-as-bad-as-youd-expect-at-dpmqs/

On the subject of the Prime Minister, I suspect this will be the last time he allows his First Secretary of State to stand in for a while. Haigh was exactly as bad as anyone could have expected: a tetchy, screeching delivery was married to a miserably poor grasp of the facts. It was like watching a hungry seagull try to lecture on metaphysics.

https://spectator.com/article/abdul-el-sayed-and-the-dawn-of-american-sectarianism/

The United States has had its first taste of the blight that has been eating at European democracies for five decades: Muslim immigration without integration or assimilation, leading to the election of sectarian candidates whose values conflict with those of the host nation. This, in essence, is democracy’s fatal flaw. Universal suffrage, plus immigration, minus integration, equals the election of illiberal candidates. Nothing about El-Sayed’s election is undemocratic. Nor was there anything undemocratic about Iqbal Mohamed, the independent MP for Dewsbury and Batley, rising in the Commons to defend first-cousin marriage because it ‘helps build family bonds’; or Mothin Ali, who dedicated his Leeds council seat to ‘the people of Gaza’ with a cry of ‘Allahu Akbar’; or Rima Hassan, the La France Insoumise MEP who called Hamas’s action on 7 October ‘legitimate’. They are democracy made manifest. But given enough time, they may destroy it.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8vgxyvz6y9ro

French authorities say that fridges used in medical facilities to store blood for donations were impacted by recent cyber-attacks by unknown hackers.

The French Blood Establishment (EFS) said cold rooms storing blood were impacted by hackers, with temperatures set to rise - but staff intervened to protect blood supplies. 

"No health impact has been identified and no loss of blood products is to be reported," the EFS said.

Up until now, only supermarkets were known to have been impacted by the hacks.