Hello and welcome to The Midge, the e-bulletin that takes a bite out of politics in Scotland and elsewhere.
Front pages
In The Herald, political editor Tom Gordon reports on an assessment by spending watchdog the Accounts Commission that Scots councils face a £1 billion funding shortfall by 2019.
The National leads on the declared aim of Ukip’s new leader Paul Nuttall to ‘promote the English’.
The Mail says doctors are being told to give women pills, costing just 4p a day, that ‘halve the risk of breast cancer’.
The Evening Times reports that three years on from the Clutha helicopter disaster, families are still waiting to hear when a Fatal Accident Inquiry will be held.
The Times, Guardian, Mail, and the “i” lead on an aide’s notes about Brexit, glimpsed in Downing Street yesterday. See Five in Five Seconds, below.
The Telegraph says FM Nicola Sturgeon will tell a business audience in Dublin that the UK as a whole should stay in the single market.
The FT carries a computer-generated image of a new, 73-storey, skyscraper planned for the City of London.
The Sun pictures Harry Clarke, the driver of the bin lorry that crashed in Glasgow killing six people, in the street where it happened. He told the paper: “Queen Street doesn’t bother me. I blacked out, so I don’t remember anything.”
FFS: Five in five seconds
What’s the story? Oops, they’ve done it again.
What’s that? Someone has been carrying notes in Downing Street that have been photographed by the ever-watchful Political Pictures (@PoliticalPics). Read UK political editor Michael Settle’s story here.
is this the first insight into Brexit seen going into No10 from the Brexit/cabinet office women holding was with Mark Field MP ? pic.twitter.com/XXeFGFQIa0
— Political Pictures (@PoliticalPics) November 28, 2016
So? These notes, carried by Conservative councillor and aide Julia Dockerill from a meeting in 9 Downing Street (home to David Davis’s Department for Exiting the EU), were all about Brexit. They contain such tantalising snippets as “What’s the model? Have cake and eat it”; “Very French negotiating team”; “The UK is looking at Canada deal & add to it”.
Significance? Given the Government’s determination not to provide what it calls a “running commentary” on Brexit, the memo has been seized upon as providing a rare insight into official thinking. It is also not the first time someone has been caught without a covering folder in Downing Street. Previous sneak peeks include memos on creating new grammar schools and a discussion paper on the privatisation of Channel 4. The story was the cause of much amusement on Twitter last night.
@hugorifkind @ChrisJones_1 @PoliticalPics I don't know but I'm told this is them turning up for their first meeting. pic.twitter.com/9Zu2Pe096p
— Tom Peck (@tompeck) November 28, 2016
@PoliticalPics there's got to be a business in selling folders at the gates of Number 10 with you about....
— Laura Kuenssberg (@bbclaurak) November 28, 2016
What does Downing Street say? “These individual notes do not belong to a government official or a special adviser. They do not reflect the Government’s position in relation to Brexit negotiations.”
Camley’s cartoon
Camley ponders the changing of the guard at Ukip.
Afore Ye Go
"Will we occasionally tread on a landmine? Probably, everybody does, nothing to be ashamed of. You feel a bit remorseful for a moment or two but then you have to think what is done is done, move on.”
Jeremy Clarkson, host of The Grand Tour defends his right to be politically incorrect by being, er, politically incorrect. PA. Clive Brunskill/Getty Images.
@MrJohnNicolson Diddums
— Čhrīś (@RegionalBiasFM) November 28, 2016
Hard-working SNP MP John Nicolson here, but not getting much sympathy it seems.
150
The number of British troops from Catterick-based Light Dragoons who will be sent to north-east Poland from April 2017, Theresa May announced yesterday after meeting the country’s PM Beata Szydlo, above, left, in Downing Street. Kirsty O'Connor/PA Wire.
Well, you've heard it a lot. “Xenophobia” is https://t.co/RSxfphZcLz's word of the year https://t.co/Y4sKN0vdUw
— New York Post (@nypost) November 28, 2016
Jeremy Corbyn will not travel to Cuba to attend Fidel Castro's funeral on December 4, despite saying that "for all his flaws", the dictator (pictured in 1964) will be remembered as a "champion of social justice”. Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry will attend instead, while the British government will be represented by the minister for the Americas, Sir Alan Duncan. PA Wire
"Today is the day that we start to put the Ukip jigsaw back together. It's day zero, it's a new beginning.”
Ukip’s Paul Nuttall urges his members to "let bygones be bygones” as he is announced as the party’s new leader. Stefan Rousseau/PA Wire.
Great afternoon at @JimDOfficial's @CareAfterCombat charity event raising funds for our troops alongside Barbara Windsor & others. pic.twitter.com/Qfds28wECe
— Nigel Farage (@Nigel_Farage) November 28, 2016
But it's carry on with the high-profile lifestyle for former leader Nigel Farage, pictured with Barbara Windsor.
"The trouble with political jokes is that they have started to get elected.”
Still one for the zingers, it’s former Tory leader Lord (William) Hague. Who can he mean? Dan Kitwood/Getty Images
Timmy the Boxer unimpressed with our Christmas Tree on @SkyNews today #lifeatsky pic.twitter.com/fPwqxKWEZs
— Kay Burley (@KayBurley) November 28, 2016
Sky News's Kay Burley finds it is hard to get a hound interested in a story about rising demand for boxers in the wake of the John Lewis ad.
Thanks for reading. See you tomorrow. Twitter: @alisonmrowat
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