Jeremy Corbyn’s Christmas card, deconstructed

Jeremy Corbyn’s Christmas card has provoked more interest than the self-serving images many politicians inflict on recipients. David Cameron’s card features a photograph of himself, looking very important, with Samantha, outside No 10 in weather that suggests the photograph was taken in spring or summer. Corbyn’s card, in stark contrast, depicts a row of bicycles outside a phone box, chained up to frustrate thieves, covered in snow. The picture is in red and white. The image is endearingly old-fashioned. A little research showed that the photograph was taken years ago: London has seen snow that thick only once in 22 years. Phone boxes were something the public relied on when Corbyn was young. In the background there is a traffic light on red. There are no people in the picture but if there were, they would be going nowhere. Very symbolic.

An empty threat

Lucy Allan’s attempts to explain why she doctored a message sent to her – posting it on Facebook with an added death threat – get ever more convoluted. In the Tory MP’s Telford constituency there is a campaign calling on her to resign for inserting the words “unless you die” on the end of a message she had received from “Rusty from Dawley”, to make it appear that “Rusty” had threatened her when he had done nothing worse than call her “an empty shell of a human being”. He was quick to identify himself as Adam Watling, a councillor’s son, and to deny he made the threat. She then claimed that the words “unless you die” were from another message sent by someone else.

Having offered that flimsy excuse, she took herself off social media for a week, returning at the weekend. On Saturday, she posted a message on her website “emphatically” denying that she had invented a death threat. In evidence, she quoted an anonymous threatening phone call to her office, which West Mercia police are investigating. What she did not say was that this very nasty – and genuine – threat was made after the furore blew up over her posting a phoney threat.

Next, she posted a video on Facebook, in which she said, “I should not have engaged with these people on social media” – which again missed the point. That video was removed yesterday, but not before the Shropshire Star had published a full version. There is a saying about what not to do when in a hole.

The name’s ‘Chooker’

Alan Johnson, the former Home Secretary, was a guest speaker at a fund raiser for the Streatham Labour Party, in south London, and delivered a paean to Chuka Umunna, the local MP. Afterwards, Chuka thanked him but pointed out that his name is pronounced ‘Chooker’ not ‘Chucker’. Johnson replied: “You mean as in fooker, not fucker?”

A blitz on bikes

What is the worst thing to have happened to London since the war? Was it the terrorist bombings of 7 July 2005; the sinking of the Marchioness in the Thames in 1989, in which 51 people drowned; the murder of three policemen in Shepherd’s Bush in 1966; or the great smog of 1952?

No, none of the above – it was the introduction of cycle lanes, according to former chancellor Nigel Lawson, our leading climate change denier. Attacking Boris Johnson’s “addiction” to the bicycle, Lord Lawson told fellow peers that cycle lanes discriminate against the elderly, and cause traffic jams. He added: “What is happening now has done more damage, and is doing more damage, to London than almost anything since the Blitz.”

There are no people on the card but if there were, they would be going nowhere. Very symbolic