POLITICS CORNER

[Stanley]

THIS earth-shattering news is my hot political news for this morning....
2 hours ago
Marmalade has long been a quintessential British condiment, with some recipes handed down between multiple generations. But jars of the fruity spread could look a little different on shop shelves under the UK government's planned EU food deal, it has emerged. The breakfast favourite will have to be sold as "citrus marmalade" if the agreement goes ahead, when Britain will readopt new EU food regulations in a bid to boost trade and reduce red tape for British exporters. The name change is required because Brussels is relaxing its labelling rules, widening the legal definition of marmalade across Europe for the first time.

[Stanley]

See THISintersting revelation....
"Our system is not fit for purpose." And with this description of parts of the Home Office in 2006, the then-Home Secretary John Reid minted a phrase that has lodged in the lexicon of British politics. He was speaking a few months after thousands of foreign-born prisoners had been released from British jails without first being considered for deportation. Lord Reid has previously attributed the four-word phrase to an unnamed senior civil servant. Now in a three-part series about the Home Office, the Newscast podcast can reveal the identity of its author. It was the permanent secretary in the department at the time, Sir David Normington. "It is my phrase, but it was written in a private memo to the Home Secretary, John Reid, just after he had arrived. [It was] me saying, 'This is what the Home Office is like,'" he told us. Sir David accompanied Lord Reid as he uttered the now infamous form of words to a House of Commons committee two decades ago. "With me sat beside him, to rearrange my face as he described all 70,000 civil servants in the Home Office as not fit for purpose," he recalled. "That was a difficult moment and the civil service said to me: 'Well, why don't you stand up and tell him it's not true?' "The trouble was… it was my phrase."