I love how annoyed the Tories seem to be at having one of their own elected speaker. What do they want?

My top story of the day is this in which Giles Tremlett sees the “snow-capped foothills of the Pyrenees”, surprising those of us who actually live by the foothills of the Pyrenees and haven’t seen any snow on ‘em for weeks. (Also note “tiny Huesca” – the town has a population of more than fifty thousand.)

Sometimes non-time-sensitive feature pieces (on, dare I say, less than turbo-exciting subjects – and I’m a fan of both Spain and HS rail) can be put on hold for months until someone drops out… possibly that’s what happened here?

Possibly. I have emailed the man to ask. However, there’s nothing in the context to suggest it. He might arguably be thinking of the pre-Pyrnenes in Catalonia but the trouble still is that if they’ve got snow on them at this time of year they ain’t really foothills.

Is Geert Wilders in the new Tory alliance?

I can’t believe these fuckers are going to be in government in the UK in a year’s time! We on the left have really screwed up when we let one right wing government in after another.