On the day Russia denounced ‘the treacherous Albion and its elites’ as the world’s leading warmonger, what was the Commons discussing? Were MPs plotting to increase factory output of deadly drones?
Were they calling for defence spending to rise to five per cent? For the deployment of Naafi sausage-roll vans to the border of Ukraine in preparation for the big push?
No. Our ‘elites’ (if one can refer thus to the education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, and her ministers) were boasting about providing free low-fat breakfasts for primary-school children. The crazed sabre rattlers.
You can understand that the Kremlin might, at initial glance, mistake Ms Phillipson for a tough. ‘Scary Bridget’ does look and sound terrifying. Her upper lip curls like a piglet’s tail.
When she talks about Tories in her staccato voice her eyes glower. On resuming her seat she then licks the outside of her upper teeth and crosses her arms, blinking with suppressed violence.
A foreigner might turn to his neighbour and say ‘blimey, Ivan, you wouldn’t want to meet that one in a darkened trench’. Who is to say that footage of Ms Phillipson has not been shown to V. Putin and that it, rather than anything else, has been the cause of his sleepless nights and, if we can put it like this, a certain tetchiness.
And yet Ms Phillipson’s policies – to destroy private education, appease teaching unions and reduce the autonomy of academy schools – only weaken Britain.
At a time when Downing Street says we must focus on national self-defence, here is a minister whose efforts help only our enemies. Plus the shareholders of Ski Yoghurt.
‘Scary Bridget’ does look and sound terrifying. Her upper lip curls like a piglet’s tail, writes QUENTIN LETTS
At education questions in the Commons, the Education Secretary kept banging on about giving free breakfast for primary school children
At education questions in the Commons she kept banging on about giving free breakfasts to youngsters. This plan, she claimed, would save parents £450 a year (but cost taxpayers a fortune). No longer will they have to buy their own cornflakes. Under Labour it will be Rice Krispies for all!
Ms Phillipson’s deputy Catherine McKinnell – who, understandably, looks perpetually terrified – blurted that children needed ‘a full belly’ to prosper at school. ‘Too many children in Southall go to school hungry,’ cried a melodramatic Deirdre Costigan (Lab, Ealing Southall).
Scary Bridget herself approached the despatch box and frost particles formed in the air as she said: ‘Conservatives should swallow their pride and welcome these breakfast clubs.’
Trougher that I am, I had images of Southall’s Oliver Twists being met at school by steaming vats of braised kidneys and kedgeree.
Winston Churchill used to breakfast on partridge or grouse, grilled sole, maybe a cigar. If our nippers are to be raised on such fare, I thought, good on Scary Bridget.
Sadly the online advice is for school breakfast clubs to offer only cold collations of ‘plant-based spreads’, semi-skimmed milk, low-sugar jams and maybe a bagel with a spinach leaf. Ew. ‘Go low fat,’ states advice to teachers. It’s all granola and blueberry yoghurt. There isn’t a mention of kippers or marmalade.
In this day and age one can understand black sausage being considered infra dig, much though I relish it. But to deny children a breakfast snorker? There’s a word for such cruel behaviour. ‘Soviet.’
Scary Bridget herself approached the despatch box and frost particles formed in the air as she said that Conservatives should ‘swallow their pride’ and welcome the new breakfast clubs
Online advice recommends school breakfast clubs offer only cold collations of ‘plant-based spreads’, semi-skimmed milk, low-sugar jams and maybe a bagel with a spinach leaf (file photo)
The Kremlin, not for the first time, has got things in a muddle. The only thing Bridget Phillipson is any good at is class-warmongering.
The Commons also offered the melancholy sight of Richard Tice (Boston & Skegness) sitting quite alone in the Reform party’s area of the opposition benches. Reform is currently full of warmongers but unfortunately their forte turns out to be civil war.
A friend of mine in Herefordshire recently lost two of her three ducks. She fears they may have been taken by buzzards or kites. Her last duck is so lonely that it now sits in her kitchen, gazing at the world in plaintive puzzlement. Just like poor old Tice.
My friend is wondering if the kindest thing might be to kill and cook it. Duck pancakes. Now there’s an idea for brekker.
