Normally when Angela Rayner is asking questions on behalf of the opposition she is devastating. In fact, I was looking forwards to today and when Dominic Raab referred himself to be investigated for bullying I thought that she had an open goal. But faced with it, she did not make the easy kill and Dominic Raab managed to hold her off.
The SNP fared better, but I did not get to listen to the rest of PMQs today as my daughter had friends round. I may get time to listen to the rest of it tomorrow.
Both my mother and mother-in-law rang me to get the children to talk to them, both on my way back to the house. I cannot force the children to talk to them and I can only imagine how painful it is for them. We did have a bit of an idea when last week, one gave us the silent treatment, my wife for most of it and me for a bit. We did try to talk about it today, but other than being told that we were over half the reason for the stress that child faced, we were not told how. We both hope to find out later this week.
The family splits appear to be healing. It is too early to say this for certain, but things appear to be improving. We are not where we want to be, but we are in a better place than this time last week when the silence was upon us.
In fact, we watched Holidate as a family. My wife and I had forgotten that we watched this last year but quickly realised that we had. And we still enjoyed it. Both children watched most of it this time. I guess, when it comes to a RomCom, the plot, most of the time is similar, and here, the core of the plot was. But while the destination was predictable, the journey there was fun to watch. Not sure that I would go out of my way to watch it for a third time, but I would be happy to watch it again if it was on TV.
First of all, family. It has been a hard week and a harder weekend, but I am hoping things are changing. Really hard, but as my wife pointed out, things could be worse. Hopefully things are getting better, at least they did for about half of the day.
On another positive note, Arsenal won. I did not realise that we were playing on Saturday as I assumed that we would be playing on Sunday. I also did not realise, until watching Match of the Day, that Arsenal have one of the better defensive records in the league. Watching how we gave chances away to Wolves, I find that hard to believe, but it is true. I just hope that we do not collapse after the World Cup though. But we go into it top of the league!
I did think he should resign over the allegations over how he treated civil servants, and he did. Watching The Thick Of It with my daughter, again for me, I get the impression that bullying is, or was common in the past, and many of us remember how Priti Patel got away with allegations of bullying herself. I myself had engaged in bullying behaviour when I worked in our local hospital about twenty years ago, behaviour which I now accept was wrong. Well some of it. However I do not recall telling someone to jump out of a window, or to slit their throat and while I did promise to hit someone, that was when they refused to listen to me when I had explained why I had done something and instead decided to berate me without accepting what I did was right.
PMQs was interesting with a question about people who received a fix penalty notice due to Partygate being made Lords. Starmer won again, his first question being about bullying and while Sunak gave a nice response, he did not answer the first question. Sunak was honest stating that he regretted the appointment of Williamson into his role, but then was silly saying his government is in favour of accountability while sitting next to Suella Braverman! Sunak did not answer the third question about thanking Williamson for his service. The next question about the Windfall tax which Labour had called for (though Labour wanted a better one) was not answered, Starmer answering it for him in the preamble to he fifth question on how the Windfall tax should be changed. The final question mentioned how the Conservatives crashed the economy in its build up, but was wasted as it asked what chance the Prime Minister had of running the country. Sunak answered referring to Jeremy Corbyn who would have been a much better Prime Minister than any of the three we have had in this Parliament.
I was to go to bed before watching the SNP’s Ian Blackford answer his questions. Normally he asks the best questions of the session, he fell far short today.
I was listening to the radio at lunch today and the issue of Qatar hosting the World Cup and its human rights record came up. I do think that it is right to raise these issues, and while some were mentioned four years ago when Russia hosted the World Cup, I do not remember this level of outrage back then.
This was a return to Terminator films being good again. Obviously the best film in the series is either the original, or Terminator 2. This comes third and is a vast improvement on the other sequels. To be fair, this franchise has not been ruined in the way that the Alien films have been so things could be worse.
On more positive news, we are top of the league again. It is unusual for Match of the Day to show the league leaders far down the running order, but there were more exciting games yesterday. I honestly had expected to lose and was hoping for a draw. Facing Aubameyang against us, I felt that he would score, but he did not and I hope his poor form continues.
First of all, allegations that I was found asleep on the floor last night were unfounded. One member of he family was a bit worse for wear though as a result of alcohol, that obviously not being me. We collected Leia and had breakfast at The Red Dog before returning home. Fortunately today was a day where we did not do much but recharged our batteries. We all started to watch See How They Run at the suggestion of my son, but my wife had to leave to rest as she felt unwell and my son frustratingly left later as well.
Overall, it was an enjoyable film, though I do want to watch The Mousetrap, well part of me does. My daughter enjoyed it as well, though it appears that I was the only one who did not use the internet to find out who the murderer was!
