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In the Walled Garden at Kenwood:

lary Clinton, whose style of leadership they preferred over the brash businessman. Now, four years later, Sidick is backing Trump over his Democratic rival Joe Biden.

He says the Republican leader is the only candidate strong enough to pressure China to end its repression of Uyghurs in Xinjiang.

Sidick hasn't been back to Xinjiang, his homeland in western China, since 2009. He says in recent years his family and friends, as well as hundreds of students he recommended for overseas study, have vanished in mass detention centers.

Sidick said that, despite his initial misgivings over the US President, and suggestions that his commitment to the Uyghur cause is largely transactional, Trump's administration had taken strong action against China over alleged human rights abuses in Xinjiang, including imposing sanctions and banning goods potentially made with forced labor.

"To deal with China requires a very strong leader. Donald Trump is such a leader," he said. "Joe Biden is better diplomatically (at) making friends around the world but his softness will not work for China."

Yes, Trump is a disgraceful human being – and it's not over yet as the wretched man barricades himself in the Oval Office. But there's no point pretending that his presidency has been all bad. The world is more complicated than that.

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As ever, click to enlarge.

Over North London this morning:

. But the buck stops with the Prime Minister, as he's no doubt only too aware. So this has been a political decision, yes, but it's been guided by scientists to the extent that Johnson really had no choice. They convinced him that he had no choice. If it turns out that they were wrong, though, it'll be Johnson, not them, who pays the price.

o the job. The song is written from the standpoint of a teenager who hasn't lived long enough to realize that a breakup isn't the end of the world, and that's the way Steve Martin [the Left Banke vocalist] sang the song. Levi Stubbs was mature enough to know that far worse things happen in life, and so his version lacks that angst that borders on being suicidal. The song needed what it needed, and Levi was just too wise to deliver the goods.

My view: that's over-thinking it. Stubbs just takes it to another level because he's a great singer.

More interesting: why The Left Banke? Where does that extra "e" come from? To make it seem more French? – or just a bit of Sixties pretension?

ormer Labour candidate for the West Midland Mayoral post.

In her speech, Ms Yaqoob openly suggested that Israel had mounted an "international assault"  on "all progressive movements" with false smears of antisemitism.

The Labour activist  claimed there was an attempt to "break" Mr Corbyn "as a man" and added, "they are after us all, not just Labour members."

She described it as "shame" that both the former MP Chris Williamson and ex-Momentum vice-chair Jackie Walker had both been ousted from the Labour Party following antisemitism claims.

Continuing with her inflammatory claims, Ms Yaqoob said she was saying "nothing new" when she asked: “Who owns the media?  How much money they have … what their agenda is."

She said the suspension of the former Labour leader was "just another step in the war against Jeremy Corbyn that we did not begin".

Ms Yaqoob said he had been targeted, like others, because of the "anti-imperialist stance he has taken all his life."

Ooh Corbyn will have liked that – it chimes exactly with his own view! The man of purity, with not a racist bone in his body, smeared by the international lackeys of capitalism and imperialism because of the threat he represents to the established order. And, in particular, to Israel.

"The common thread in all of this any organisation who has dared to critique the Israeli government's oppression of Palestinians has been made open season."

The former Respect Party member said this was the reason there was now a "witch hunt" against  Labour activists.

Later in the meeting, Alison McGarry, the chair of Mr Corbyn's Islington North Labour Party, confirmed she had spoken to him that day.

She said: "I spoke to Jeremy this afternoon, and I know Laura Alvarez was in this meeting. I hope Laura Alvarez is still here – solidarity with Laura.

"Jeremy spoke to me today, he thanked everyone for the rallies – he feels it has made a significant difference.

"He passed on his greetings."

Starmer has a battle on his hands. The hard left aren't going away any time soon. And Corbyn seems to be making it clear that he still sees himself as their leader-in-exile.

ng-left: 40px”>It said there needed to be more transparency about data and how predictions were being made.

The projections were out of date and over-estimated deaths, it has emerged.

A forecast made by Public Health England and Cambridge University said the country could soon be seeing more than 4,000 deaths a day.

The projection was made weeks ago and had forecast there would be 1,000 deaths a day by the end of October when the average was actually four times less than that – a fact that was known at the time of Saturday's TV briefing.

What is more, the model had already been updated to predict a lower estimate, but this was not used in the briefing fronted by chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance and chief medical officer Prof Chris Whitty, alongside Prime Minister Boris Johnson….

Sir David Norgrove , chair of the UK Statistics Authority, said: "I recognise the pressures faced by all those working on decisions related to coronavirus.

"But full transparency of data used to inform decisions is vital to public understanding and public confidence."

The use of the data has also drawn criticism from former prime minister Theresa May, who abstained from the lockdown vote in parliament on Wednesday. The vote saw MPs agree to the four-week restrictions in England.

Sir David Spiegelhalter, one of the most respected statisticians in the country, said the whole saga had been "really unfortunate".

He said the situation with Covid was sufficient to warrant "radical action", but he did not believe the data made available was enough to fully support a lockdown, saying other wider factors needed to be taken into account as well.

Really unfortunate? Well, that's one way of putting it – if you're one of the most respected statisticians in the country and unlikely to be looking for work anytime soon. Others might phrase it a little more strongly.

The Thames at Putney this morning:

They've discovered the remains of a young woman in the Andes, from some 9000 years ago. Surprisingly, she was buried with hunting tools:

This woman, and others like her, suggest that we may have to change our view of the division of labour among our ancestors.

Rather than the women taking care of the gathering and the men doing the hunting, the find adds to evidence that in some hunter-gatherer societies there may have been a more equitable division of roles….

Archaeologists still generally assume that women and men would have had clearly defined roles in the past. This belief is strong enough that on occasion ambiguously sexed remains have been assumed to be male because of the grave goods buried alongside them.

There is a countervailing view that in tribes that relied on big-game hunting it would have made sense to use all the man or womanpower they had. “Communal hunting would have encouraged contributions from females, males, and children whether in driving or dispatching large animals,” the researchers write in Science Advances. “Moreover, the primary hunting technology of the time — the atlatl or spearthrower — would have encouraged broad participation in big-game hunting.”

But there may be another interpretation. From the National Geographic:

Importantly, the team cannot know the individual’s gender identity, but rather only biological sex (which like gender doesn’t always exist on a binary). In other words, they can’t say whether the individual lived their life 9,000 years ago in a way that would identify them within their society as a woman.

Of course! It must be….an early trans man!