Has the Conservative Party lost all sense of competence

194,000+ signatures now. It should reach 200,000 tomorrow.

I like this.

Seems like May is disgusted at Toby Young's tweets.
Another u-turn?
A shame her advisers didn't consider it before he was offered the job.

'At first glance, nothing really appears to make sense. Most people wouldn’t trust the 50-something-going-on-12-year-old Toby Young to feed their pets, let alone appoint him to a quango. Likewise, the prime minister trying to explain to the country that there isn’t an ongoing crisis in the NHS because the NHS has implemented a crisis plan is the sort of excuse not even the dimmest child would bother with, especially when the health secretary inadvertently admitted the following day that there was a crisis after all. Then we had the transport secretary, Chris Grayling, making himself scarce in Qatar, on the day he was bound to be questioned about the increase in rail fares. Not to mention, international the trade secretary Liam Fox’s enthusiasm for leaving the EU only to join another trading bloc on the other side of the world. But if you think laterally, everything begins to fall into place. The government has decided to give up running the country for the first week of the new year and has chosen to troll it instead.'

Brilliant, from John Crace in the Guardian.

So May is standing by Toby Young until he's offensive again. How offensive does he have to be?
Masturbating when he sees film of children in Africa starving to death is quite offensive, isn't it?

twitter.com/docrussjackson/status/949552940443996160

198,000+ signatures now. I think there might be a few more after the Marr interview.

evolvepolitics.com/new-tory-university-tsar-toby-young-joked-about-masturbating-over-starving-comic-relief-kids/

So headmistress Theresa May says naughty boy, don't do it again or you're out!
(Marr this morning)

If that is true about Young and children, then he is a paedophile.

It's probably one of the 5000 tweets he has tried to get rid of, whitewave.
I wonder if he is going to interview potential students, and judge them on the size of their cleavage, another one of his offensive tweets that May seems to have forgiven him for.

But it's okay because he has done a lot for free schools, according to May.

Just as I thought, another thousand signatures since that interview.

I think Tories need lessons in numeracy, let alone giving 4 and 5 year olds lessons in literacy.

You can't take £2.7 billion in cuts and then claim that the extra money for literacy is a rise in the education budget.

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/investment-literacy-schools-justine-greening-angela-rayner-reading-writing-reverse-budget-cuts-a8145386.html

203,000+ signatures now.
I wonder if May will take notice.

44% drop in Tory membership since the referendum.

I've been a Liberal/ LibDem activist for umpteen years in an area where there are only two parties to speak of -us and the Tories.

Now, I'm quite old -been a GNetter for quite a long time- but in all the years I've been delivering leaflets, telling at the polling station etc, I don't think I've ever met a Tory activist who was younger than me. At the election last year, I don't think I came across any who were under eighty.

I was going to be cynical and say that the people three who died while waiting for ambulances to take them to hospital this last week, were all over sixty, so could have voted Tory Brexit.

However, I have just come across this, which makes me even more cynical, and appalled.

www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2018/01/07/open-letter-re-kpmg-and-the-grenfell-tower-inquiry/

How can a company with an obvious conflict of interest be given control over this.
Can't the government see how wrong it is?

208,000 signatures now. That's another 10 thousand since May stuck up for Young on Marr's programme this morning.

It really does just show the dross she has to choose from.

I was going to be cynical and say that the people three who died while waiting for ambulances to take them to hospital this last week, were all over sixty, so could have voted Tory Brexit
Not cynical, just thoroughly unpleasant.

More signs of Conservative incompetence. The party in the brewery is obviously off!

Tweet, delete tweet, move the deckchairs on the Titanic but keep heading for the iceberg.

One good thing - even the Tories can manage that - they have added Social Care to Health and 'Housing' has been added to Communities and Local Government. That will sort it out then

Hunt managed to totally trash the NHS now he can have a go at social care. Wonder how long it will take him

They will just take more money out whitewave. What else do Tories do?

News comment form pundits

“ the reshuffle that wasn’t”
“The reshuffle of the dead wood”
Apparently people have refused to move.

Who’s in charge? Certainly not Maybot

“

Yesterday it was said that there would be a dedicated housing minister, as housing was going to be so important.
Obviously nobody wanted that one either.