Best Of

"Middle-class white men banned from public sector internship
National Audit Office’s six-week paid programme only accepts female, black heritage or lower socio-economic applicants" (£)

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/06/06/middle-class-white-men-banned-from-public-sector-internship/

Are white, middle-class heterosexual men the most put upon cohort in UK society?

That's not the point. This is officially sanctioned discrimination by sex and race, and that will create injustice.

If you play this game, you create social division.

I don't agree with discrimination of any description, positive or negative. The narrative of white, heterosexual men being disadvantaged by positive discrimination remains largely untrue in my opinion. Doubtless you could find me one or two examples, but by and large I would rather take my chances with figures of authority as a white, heterosexual male than I would anyone else.

"Middle-class white men banned from public sector internship
National Audit Office’s six-week paid programme only accepts female, black heritage or lower socio-economic applicants" (£)

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/06/06/middle-class-white-men-banned-from-public-sector-internship/

Are white, middle-class heterosexual men the most put upon cohort in UK society?

That's not the point. This is officially sanctioned discrimination by sex and race, and that will create injustice.

If you play this game, you create social division.

If correct, that is illegal, but it's the Telegraph. I don't have access to the report so I can't see how the headline might have misrepresented it. You can 'welcome applications' from certain groups, but no more than that.

Here is the gift subscription (so no firewall) to the Telegraph article in question.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/4436f8fab1c1e368

Scotland was probably after London one of the better results for the Tories in May. Although the Scottish Tories still lost MSPs whereas London Tories made net gains of council seats, they held most of their Holyrood constituencies. Whereas in provincial England outside London lots of Tory councillors lost their seats particularly to Reform and Scottish Tories got a higher voteshare in the Holyrood vote than Welsh Tories did in the Senedd.

Kemi also still has a reasonable 20% favourable rating in Scotland. The Aberdeen Deeside and North Kincardine Holyrood seat which largely overlaps with the Aberdeen South Westminster seat was also one of a minority of constituencies in Scotland where the Tories beat Reform and were still in the top 2 against the SNP. Indeed the Tories were just 4% behind the SNP so if they squeeze the 17% who voted Reform then they could beat the SNP and win the seat.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aberdeen_Deeside_and_North_Kincardine

Arbroath is the type of seat Labour might win back if Burnham wins the Makerfield by election and replaces Starmer as Labour leader and PM but it won't while Starmer remains PM which he still will be when the by elections are held

Good analysis HYUFD, in fact my Scottish Conservative MSP increased his majority in the North East in the Holyrood election and speaking to activist friends during the campaign Kemi Badenoch's increasingly positive personal polling was starting to be picked up on the doorsteps. She was back campaigning in Aberdeen South yesterday.

And as I posted yesterday, Harriet Cross gained the new neighbouring Westminster seat of Gordon and Buchan for the Scottish Conservatives against the political tide in 2024 and the losing SNP incumbent MP is now standing for the SNP in the Aberdeen South by-election.

I've put a few pennies on the Tories at Aberdeen South at 3.0 based on this.

O/T with apologies for diverting a thread right away but the Guardian have now published their readers' list of 100 greatest novels and it looks a lot better to me than the authors' and critics' list from a few weeks ago:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/ng-interactive/2026/jun/06/readers-top-100-novels-of-all-time

Amazed to see Memoirs of Hadrian on there. And deservedly. I thought I was the only person that had read it.

Not at all. A stunningly good book and an incredibly moving one. I rate it even higher than I Claudius as the foremost example of the genre. Read it when I was in my late teens and never forgot it.

Oooohhhh... I love I, Claudius. I reread (for the third time) last year, and it was every bit as good as I remembered.

I must try Memoirs of Hadrian.

Livia was the absolute star, even more in the book than she was in the TV series. What a character.