Nick Archer

@ColinSpenc4257 Hate custard

APPLE CRUMBLE AND CUSTARD. MY FAVOURITE. YES OR NO.

Wow ... !

So, you would just dump our most important ally?

Why isn't Khan in London fixing the potholes, housing, and other crises?

Right, also Ed Llewellyn had been a diplomat beforehand ...

Wow, first time you have ever done anything that I can support. Good on you.

Why do you say that? Robbins never saw the 'traffic light' conclusion ...

Here in Milano, if the service is top notch, you tip €20; if it is okay, €10. Otherwise you simply round up by a couple of Euros.

JetBlue?

Why? What he said is true ...

@Anna_Soubry So it is okay that he misled Parliament?

FWIW: sensible #Labour MPs may well be disappointed (given recent events) in #KeirStarmer but he’s fundamentally an honest & decent man. Opposition parties are playing politics ahead of elections. I hope Labour back benchers get behind Starmer & vote the motion down

@AphraBrandreth @PhilipRBarton @CommonsForeign I hope someone took @PhilipRBarton out for a decent lunch in Club Land afterwards; he deserved it ...

I asked @PhilipRBarton in @CommonsForeign if he would have raised concerns about the risks in Peter Mandelson’s appointment. He replied, “There was no space or avenue or mechanism for me to put that on the table. The decision had been taken, and it was a political decision.”

@London_W4 What a terrible story ...

I was woken this morning at 1:45am to the sound of breaking glass and then the sound of an outboard boat engine heading away. My youngest daughter lives in a narrowboat that is moored alongside mine here in London. As I got up to see what was going on, my phone went and it was her. She had woken to someone smashing her bedroom window with a hammer, two feet from her head as she slept. She was covered in glass. Her bed was covered in glass. I rushed around and her window was completely smashed. It will have taken them several attempts to smash the whole window out as they had. Everywhere was glass. On my daughter, on the bed. Everywhere. She called the police in tears and badly shaken and they told her they weren’t going to bother coming out as it had happened now and that was that. She got a crime reference number. A young woman in London has her bedroom window smashed in the middle of the night as she sleeps and the police aren’t interested. I need to tell you all; it is essential that you realise that we do not have a police service in this country. It is essential that you realise that and take measures as I am doing, to protect yourself and your family. You will not receive help from the police. I am not now going to rant about who I believe they are here to protect, but it certainly isn’t decent, working people like my daughter. I’m incredibly proud of my daughter who is of course, very, very shaken up. This was an horrendous incident but with a bloke smashing her bedroom window in as she slept, I don’t need to explain that it could have been far worse. I could not despise the police more. They’re not fit to wear a uniform. I shall ensure that anyone who harms my family will be far less healthy than they began the day. I’m really angry. I’ve spent the night emptying the millions of glass shards from my daughter’s duvet, sheets and pillowcases. Her head was within two feet of where someone with a hammer was smashing in her bedroom window. I’ve boarded up the window to make it secure. Take care out there people. You are alone when this happens. Ensure you can protect yourself. It’s all you have. There is no support and no backup. Please realise that and take action to defend yourself and your family.

I am a senior coordinating producer for the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner. I have worked eleven of these. I was backstage at the Washington Hilton when the shots were fired. The first thing I heard was not the gunfire. It was glass. A champagne flute hit the floor of the International Ballroom at approximately 9:47 PM. Then a second. Then the sound that I have since been told was a 12-gauge shotgun, which from inside the ballroom sounded like a heavy door slamming in a parking garage. Then the Secret Service moved. They moved the President, the Vice President, the First Lady through the east corridor in under ninety seconds, which is protocol, which is practiced, which is the one part of the evening that worked exactly as it was designed. Everything else was improvised. I know this because I ordered the wine. 94 tables. Two bottles per table. 188 bottles of a Willamette Valley pinot noir that the Association selected in February after a tasting committee spent three meetings debating between Oregon and Burgundy. Oregon won. The budget was $14,200. I signed the invoice. I can tell you the vintage. I can tell you the distributor. I can tell you the per-bottle cost because I negotiated it down from $89 to $76. What I cannot tell you is how 147 of those bottles left the building during an active shooter evacuation. I can tell you what I saw. A correspondent from a network I will not name picked up two bottles on her way to the east exit. Full bottles. One in each hand. She was wearing heels and she did not spill. A man in a tuxedo tucked one inside his jacket the way you'd shoplift a paperback at an airport bookstore. A woman picked up a bottle, looked at the label, put it back, and took a different one. She checked the vintage. During an evacuation. That's editorial judgment under pressure. The theme of the dinner was "A Free Press for a Free People." The banners were still hanging when the evacuation began. I know because I hung them. Twenty-three banners, navy blue, gold serif lettering, $11,400 for the set. They were still hanging when 2,600 guests were directed to the exits by Secret Service agents, one of whom had just taken a shotgun round in his ballistic vest and walked to the ambulance on his own feet. The agent's vest costs approximately $800. The wine that left the building was worth $11,172 at Association cost. At restaurant markup, roughly $29,000. The guests saved more in wine than the vest that saved the agent. That's priority. The video went viral by 10:15 PM. Not the video of the evacuation. Not the Secret Service response. The wine. Three guests in formalwear grabbing bottles off white tablecloths while being told to move toward the exits, while a man with a shotgun stood in the same motor entrance where John Hinckley shot Ronald Reagan 45 years ago. A woman near the service entrance was crying. She said "I just wanna go home." She was not holding wine. She was holding her phone. She was the only person I saw that night who looked afraid rather than inconvenienced. That's the distinction. The rest of the ballroom did not look afraid. They looked interrupted. An active shooter at the WHCD is a logistical problem. The dinner was disrupted. The timeline was off. The after-party at the French Ambassador's residence would need to be rescheduled. These are contingency matters. Contingency matters have solutions. Fear is for people who attend events without security details. I have produced eleven of these dinners. I have managed seating charts that require diplomatic-grade negotiations. I have handled comedians, cabinet secretaries, network anchors, and the editor of a major newspaper who once threatened to leave because his table was behind a column. I have never, in eleven years, seen a guest leave a $76 bottle on the table during an evacuation. I have also never seen a guest check the label first. Both observations are consistent. The bottle is worth taking. The evacuation is worth surviving. The instinct is to do both simultaneously. 188 bottles placed. 41 recovered. 147 unaccounted for. One agent shot. Zero guests injured. Zero bottles broken. A free press for a free people. The press is free. The wine was $76 a bottle. They took it anyway.

Breaking: The former head of security at the foreign office has said that he felt under pressure to deliver a 'rapid outcome' on Lord Mandelson's security vetting Ian Collard says that as a result he and his team asked UK Security Vetting to conduct a 'priority process' in vetting Lord Mandelson He also supports the claim by Sir Olly Robbins, the former perm sec at the foreign office, that Mandelson's vetting case was 'borderline' Collard says he did not see the box from UK Security Vetting explicitly recommending against Mandelson's appointment

This is my hearing bundle from the Al Sweady inquiry. It brought an end to my military career after 17 years of exemplary service. The stress, pain, and heartache were overwhelming—driven in large part by Shiner & Hermer. A medal glitters but it also casts a shadow - Churchill

Your idea of impartiality is for the Left to dominate BBC News output. The organised Labour/left-wing mauling of @ChrisMasonBBC is a disgrace. He is the embodiment of BBC impartiality, of which there is not nearly enough. At least your gang’s attacks on him have made him unsackable. @BBCNews

The Hermer revelations disgust me probably more than the Mandelson mess. I don’t want to be unfair to him, but there’s just something about actively *choosing* to represent the wrong uns and waging this campaign against our country’s bravest. I really struggle to understand how someone can be motivated by these sorts of cases. And the political naivety by Starmer just seems extraordinary - how could he possibly think that appointing someone with a legal career like Hermer’s to the heart of government was going to be seen as anything but appalling? There is nothing about Hermer’s career which suggests he even likes this country

There are many reasons to want to become a lawyer. To want to bring claims against UK armed forces is an unusual one. Especially for an Attorney General. 9/9

@LeeDavidEvansUK A wonderful man!

Wonderful news that Lord Hennessy has been made a Knight of the Order of the Garter. If you haven't done so already, take this as a prompt to listen to his utterly charming appearance of Desert Island Discs in 2023.