Oversight oversight over sight

Generally speaking this government’s approach to disabled people has left a bit to be desired: forcing them to pay extra for spare bedrooms, declaring that people with terminal cancer and one leg are able to hold down a full-time job as a bicycle courier*, and bungling the introduction of Universal Credit to a truly amazing extent.

But you could argue the DWP reached a new low when it repeatedly stopped the benefits of a disabled man because he didn’t respond to the letters they’d sent him. Fair enough, you might say. Except those overseeing his case had missed one small flaw in their approach. Robert is blind.

The RNIB, rather reasonably, is threatening legal action.

*Society Diary may not have remembered that bit entirely accurately

Let’s not get catty…

More accusations of wrongdoing plagued Battersea Dogs and Cats Home last week, after its Purr Minister contest to find Westminster’s best cat was hit by accusations of vote-rigging.

Andrew Gwynne, Labour MP for Denton and Reddish, got a bit reddish in the face – and put a bit of a dent in the competition’s credibility – by pulling his cat Jude out of the competition after Sheryll Murray, Tory MP for South East Cornwall, racked up 30,000 votes for her cat Bosun in a single night – 50 votes a second.

Gwynne remains in high dudgeon. “Mugabe would be proud of this move,” he chuntered.

And you thought a bath of baked beans was tough

But the MPs aren’t the only ones taking things a bit far. Her Majesty’s Royal Marines have announced their version of a fundraising fun run: a 6,656km trek by ski, sail, cycle, canoe and foot, taking in great swathes of the world north of the Arctic circle, and finishing by running an average of 18 miles a day for 58 days.

The whole thing is in aid of the Royal Marines Charities, so it’s hard to complain too much. But it certainly puts that 10k you did last year in a bit of perspective.