One of those ‘consultants’. Writer @con_soc. Formerly MP, Cabinet PPS, BBC, politics & media in 🇬🇧 & 🇦🇺. “One of the Parliament’s worst jokes”: Private Eye.
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Joined February 2013
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“Employers are not working people”. Maybe she was trying to differentiate between employers & employees & just chose clumsy wording. Or she let slip Labour’s anti-aspirational, ideologically-tainted bias. You decide. But feels like a kick in the teeth for small business owners.
Peter Heaton-Jones retweeted
#Strictly need to be careful pre-recording (some) links because the sudden cut from Johannes to Emma and Josh is enough to give you whiplash.
These two items are currently on the @BBCNews website. Neither are news, by any stretch of the definition. One’s a fairy story and one’s a thinly-disguised programme trail. Can we please stick to news on the news website?
Peter Heaton-Jones retweeted
Badenoch: 'The Prime Minister came in promising that he would "reverse 40 years of neoliberalism". Instead we got 4p off gherkins'
Moments after the Chancellor announces a £100 rebate on energy bills for households in Council Tax bands A to D, the government’s website for checking council tax bands seems to have crashed.
‘Exceptional’. Very clever wording. Yes, it is exceptional to score so few points in so many years.
🎤 The search for the United Kingdom’s act and song for Eurovision 2027 is underway!
With 200 days to go until the Eurovision Song Contest Grand Final, the BBC and BBC Studios have confirmed the search for exceptional artists and songs
Details ➡️ bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/2026/b…
ALT UK logo for the Eurovision Song Contest, featuring a heart in place of the 'v' in Eurovision. The heart shape is decorated with a Union flag.
Peter Heaton-Jones retweeted
Best anecdote in Carol Thatcher's book about her father is when Sir Denis boarded a train at Paddington in which the only empty compartment was reserved for Rosewood Psychiatric Hospital.
Denis travelled alone and in comfort as far as Reading when "all these chaps piled in", accompanied by a male nurse, who counted them before the train moved off.
'One, two, three, four ... who are you?"
"I'm the Prime Minister's husband."
"Six, seven, eight, nine..."
This is top stuff. Sums up every way the BBC has failed Local Radio.
As BBC local radio proposes yet more change despite ample budget in decent hands - is the game all over? How has it come to this? Who's responsible? I've tried to pull it together
davidlloydradio.com/post/why…
Today would have been my Dad’s 100th birthday.
He was born on 24 October 1926. His parents were both born in the 1890s. He died in 2004. So in just two generations, our family spanned the Victorians to the new millennium.
Time’s a weird thing. ❤️
#FBPEs salivating at news that 4m Leave voters have died & 7m kids grown up since 2016, so re-run the Brexit referendum!!
That’s not how democracy works.
It’s who votes at the time that matters.
What else shall we re-run? The 1975 EEC referendum? The Corn Laws election of 1841?
And yet these channels are relatively cheap to provide. Cutting them doesn’t save that much money. It’s almost like the BBC is deliberately making high profile cuts in order to make a point….
CONFIRMED: BBC Three’s TV channel is being shut for a second time, as first reported by Deadline last month. BBC Scotland and Radio 4 Extra are also closing as linear services. The switch-off happens in spring 2027. BBC staff were told this morning. deadline.com/2026/10/bbc-tv-…
Peter Heaton-Jones retweeted
Did the @RoyalParksHalf on Sunday and made it round in 2:22 which was a PB. A gorgeous day and some great sights of the capital as I plodded around to raise funds in memory of my late mum for Macmillan Cancer Support - link is here: justgiving.com/fundraising/r…
And the lesson here - as I was taught the first day I walked into a radio station in prehistoric times - is NEVER swear in a studio, even if it’s not live.
Problems piling up for the PM:
* Russian Brexit interference: desperately back-tracking after scolding from security chief;
* More ? about his relationship with Man City (that one’s not going away);
* Potentially prejudicing a murder trial at PMQs.
And that’s before the Budget…
