ANDREW PIERCE: Now Parliament needs us to pay for a £90m fence!
Only months after lavishing £10 million on a new security door for the House of Lords that failed to work, Parliament is back for more of our money.
I can disclose that Parliamentary clerks, who love spending public cash, are drafting plans for a giant security fence in the Thames outside the Palace of Westminster.
This would involve driving vast pillars into the river bed that would protrude above the waterline to stop terrorist attacks. As the proposed barrier would extend 50 yards from the bank, it would close most of the first arch of Westminster Bridge to river traffic.
Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle is not just aghast at the sheer scale of the project, but also the cost, which I hear is an eye-watering £90 million.
Hoyle knows the price will rocket (the security door was supposed to cost £6 million) and wants a cheaper option: round-the-clock patrols by police boats.
Talking turkey in Moscow
Diplomat Tim Barrow, making his maiden speech in the Lords last week, talked turkey.
On Christmas Day 1991 he was pulled out of a Moscow embassy party to watch Mikhail Gorbachev’s resignation speech. Hours later, Barrow realised he’d left his turkey in the oven.
He recalled: ‘Rather than seeking to digest the momentous events of the day, I was more preoccupied by the fact I could not digest the turkey.’
Since its local elections triumph last May, Reform UK has won 54 more seats in by-elections.
But Nigel Farage has also lost 36 councillors: 18 have quit, 11 have been expelled and six suspended, while one defected to his old home Ukip.
Kwasi Kwarteng was on the winning Cambridge team on University Challenge in 1995
When is it right to swear on the telly? Labour’s Jonathan Ashworth, who lost his seat at the last election, said on ITV’s Good Morning Britain: ‘I’ve never sworn on TV, certainly not.’
Kwasi Kwarteng, who was Liz Truss’s short-lived chancellor, confessed: ‘I did once, on University Challenge about 30 years ago.’ Presenter Ed Balls asked: ‘Was it [quizmaster] Bamber Gascoigne winding you up?’
Kwarteng: ‘It was Jeremy Paxman. Paxo could make a saint swear.’
On Radio 4’s Today programme on Saturday, Amol Rajan breezily announced: ‘Hello, it’s seven o’clock on Saturday the 17th of November…’
It took him a few minutes to correct himself: ‘It is in fact the eighth of November, not the 17th…’
Proof, if any were required, the BBC doesn’t know what day it is.
The Red, red whine…
Dead Ringers’ Jan Ravens, the voice behind Theresa May, Nigella Lawson and the late Queen
Jan Ravens, the voice behind Theresa May, Nigella Lawson and the late Queen on Radio 4’s comedy impressions show Dead Ringers, laments the absence of Labour top brass from the show.
Speaking to veteran impressionist Rory Bremner on stage at Worthing Assembly Hall, she said: ‘It’s extraordinary that Rachel Reeves has this adenoidal, miserable voice. And so does Keir Starmer.
And Ed Milliband. Angela Rayner is like the northern version of that. It’s so weird in the Labour Party, like a nursery school where there’s always a cold going round.’
