Turn Left

In fairness, Theresa May never said what would happen if she lost 13 seats.

But here we are.

The Conservative Party has 317 seats in the House of Commons: even allowing for the 7 Sinn Féin MPs who never take their seats, the Tories are five seats short of a majority.

Labour, the SNP, the Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cymru, and the Green Party, have between them got 314 seats.

Did the Mail tip off Cameron?

When the story broke that David Cameron had refused to wear a t-shirt that said “This is what a feminist looks like”, ELLE professed itself surprised:

When ELLE asked him, along with Ed Miliband, the leader of the Labour Party and Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister and leader of the Liberal Democrats (and other influential men including Benedict Cumberbatch, Joseph Gordon Levitt and Tom Hiddleston) to wear the Fawcett Society’s iconic ‘This is What a Feminist Looks Like’ t-shirts for ELLE’s inaugural feminism issue (on sale October 30), he refused.

Not once, but five times.

It’s possible, of course, that Cameron refused because he knows he isn’t a feminist. Not only is he known for telling the Shadow Chief Secretary of the Treasury in the House of Commons to “calm down, dear” (six times), his government has since 2010 imposed austerity cuts that place a disproportionate burden on women.

The regeneration episode

Today, I watched Doctor Who and I was amused, moved, and enthralled. I was watching An Adventure In Space And Time. (Available on BBC iPlayer til New Year’s Day.)

And then I watched the Doctor Who Christmas Day episode.

The basic story was simple:

The Hobbit: Unexpectedly Three Movies

It’s just possible there’s someone reading this blog who, in 75 years, has never read The Hobbit. I know they exist, because that group of people includes my dad, though he has an excuse: he was 10 when it was published, and already not-interested in fantasy.

So, if you are among those people, this blogpost will spoiler you like anything for The Hobbit, or There and Back Again. (The fiftieth anniversary edition, with the lovely illustrations by Michael Hague, is at my elbow as I type.) This may also spoiler you for the movie, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, in which Peter Jackson takes full advantage of the fact that he did a pretty good take on Lord of the Rings and any number of fans trusted him to do a pretty good take on The Hobbit, even though he is blatantly milking it for everything it’s worth and no one should let him even think about the Silmarillion, okay?

According to Forbes, The Hobbit is well on its way to being one of the year’s biggest films: it has already grossed $434 million at the global box office.

Art by food

If you ever wanted your lunch to look too good to eat, bento.

Olympic mockery

This Eldritch Abomination, this Stygian horror, this creature from the depths of hell itself. How can I truly rate the horrors that this abominable creature has brought upon me and my household? Pretend that my star rating was actually ”” ”””” ””

In September 2010 PZ Myers asked So, now mockery is not allowed in the UK?

Dear LibDems, climb out of the window now

I woke up yesterday to a Tory on Twitter accusing all of us who have protested the NHS Reform of being “hysterical”. A Lib Dem suggested that we really shouldn’t call it privatisation because that’s just a dystopic fantasy. She and another LibDem were telling me that I shouldn’t blame the Liberal Democrats or the Tories because this was all Labour’s fault really, I ought to be complaining about what the Labour government were doing back when they were in power, not about what the Tories and LibDems are doing now.

[And by Friday, Lord Ashcroft had published a concern troll at ConHome: update below.]