Five Hopefuls in Fairyland

 If you watched last Friday’s performance of Channel 4's prog ‘Britain’s Next PM: The Conservative Leadership Debate’, you may have thought you'd tuned into an episode of 'Whose Line is it Anyway'. The best the Tory Party could muster (heaven help us) were lined up in front of a studio audience – as against an audience of normal people I assume – to be asked a series of relatively simple questions, unless you are an MP.

This hapless group we were exposed to were: Kemi Badenoch (advertising the Lib Dems in a bright yellow dress), Penny ‘I'm made of solid wood' Mordaunt, Rishi Sunak – allowed to stay up late by nanny, the ever vacant Liz ‘Cheddar' Truss and Tom Tugendhat – the latter being the only one that appeared to have made an effort getting dressed for a public appearance.

For some reason the questions about integrity, honesty, social care and support for the NHS seemed to fox them all. It's almost impossible to summarise their collective answer, aside for Liz Truss who styles herself as the next Queen of the World. We already know what happened to the ‘King of the World’ - he's currently stripping the expensive wallpaper off the wall of his Downing Street flat.

When it came to asking if 'The Convict' (thanks to John Crace of the Guardian for that one), was honest, only Tom Tugendhat gave the required one word answer and got  a round of lukewarm applause for it.

Sunday 17 July sees a second go by the infamous five to convince us – though we don’t have a say in the matter – that they can replace Boris Johnson. Let’s face it; the bar is so low even the Downing Street cat is in with a chance.

So poor old Ed Balls is out of Strictly despite his undeniable popularity with the viewers. Sooner or later this support was going to desert him. Of course, his supporters are demanding a recount - a fruitless attempt to get him reinstated. Craig RH made it clear from the outset that he didn't like Ed and wasn't going to give him any encouragement - much like Len's dislike for Robert Rinder.
Darcy has gone on record as saying she wanted him off, but while Tess D keeps encouraging viewers to 'vote for your favourite' rather than 'vote for the best dancers' anyone in Ed's position with viewer support ain't going to go quickly.
Read the Strictly blog comments sometime and you pretty soon feel like throwing up. Fragapane is always 'undermarked' Kevin, Joanne and Karen Clifton are vilified for being good dancers, and of course, the judging is fixed. I'd say heavily biased. rather than fixed (though last year's final with stalwart Anton in the running smelt of collusion).
The judges certainly pick their favourites early on and then sulk when the public vote them out. When Len leaves he should take Bruno with him and probably Darcey - sorry but you've become too indoctrinated. IMO Craig's the only one who judges the dancing.

This is going to be interesting

Reading the reports I'm fascinated as to how Dr Jill Stein of the US Green Party is going to get anything other than a biased outcome from her request for recounts in Michigan and Pennsylvania. The Republicans are hardly likely to do anything to aid her request other than hamper her legitimate efforts to have the voting confirmed one way or the other.
We've already seen the FBI interfering in the election process by throwing Hilary Clinton's emails into the fire just before polling and Donald Trump will be mustering all the firepower he can bring down on Dr Stein just in case. Having said, before 8 November, that the election was rigged it now seems he's probably right. Though now it appears to be all fair and above board.
Over to Brexit in the UK. Any suggestion that there might be a second referendum is met with gallons of vitriol by those who backed Brexit. Perhaps they don't want to find out that there were 'statistical anomalies' here as well. Mr Farage, who claims credit for screwing up the country along with the former Prime Minister, seems to think everything was fair.
Nothing changes like opinions. Everything is unfair, biased, rigged etc unless you're on the winning side.