Best Of

The new Reeves allegations don't impress me much. It must be easy to make mistakes like this. A distraction from the things that are important atm.

It does play into the narrative that the majority who aren't trying to pull a fast one can all too easily fall into these minor indescretions and if you aren't a government frontbencher the punishments can be severe e.g. David Lammy not having a fishing licence for one photoshoot. The woman tipping a tiny amount of coffee down the drain. These is the story today about inconsistent parking rules in Liverpool.

£1000 for a license for the right to lease your own house seems very expensive.

Welcome to The Land Of The Fee.

It’s seems to be great when it imposed on Themuns. Not so much, when It’s Our Own.

Round my way, a lady who put her recycling boxes out a few hours more than 24 hours before collection, was given a multi-hundred pound fine. For “Fly Tipping”.

I suspect her sympathy for the CoE will be somewhat limited.

Kemi skewered Sir Keir on his tax pledges at PMQs, and it was quite beautifully done

At prime minister’s questions, Kemi Badenoch used her first question to ask precisely that. Does the manifesto commitment not to raise those three taxes still stand?

“I’m glad she wants to talk about the economy,” came the answer, followed by more than a minute of untranscribable waffle. It was a yes/no question. A yes or a no would have done.

Down on the opposition front benches, Badenoch did not try especially hard to conceal her delight. She grinned a grin of pure, malign pleasure. She looked, for a moment, like Tim Curry’s evil hotel concierge in Home Alone 2.

“Well, well, well,” came her reply, eventually. “A fascinating answer.” Not even the most assiduous PMQs nerd could have seen what was coming next. She had, she explained, asked the exact same question, word for word, three months ago. And what reply did she get then? “He said the word ‘yes’ and sat down again with his smug grin.”

As the late Richie Benaud liked to put it: “ash everywhere”. Starmer’s middle stump was doing cartwheels. It has been one of the prime minister’s preferred tactics, for a while, to give a one-word “yes” or “no” to a question that he considers beneath him, then sit down again and fail to conceal his self-satisfaction. It’s a tactic that would eventually come back to bite him, and it has.

https://www.thetimes.com/article/bd45d0ec-7049-402e-afa5-63d570f0e982?shareToken=e49618dcb47162a0830d519d41eac712

"Speak to any 14 year old girl, or woman who remembers being 14. Such creepy behaviour by older men is very common."

@Foxy on a previous thread.

Yes - as someone who endured this and worse at 14 and on numerous occasions since then it is creepy and criminal and very common.

And it is very common because men like you, I'm sorry to say, do not take it seriously, underplay it because it has happened "since time immemorial" (your words) so girls should just put up with it and it is far too much expense and bother to build the facilities to lock up the men who make women and girls' life a misery with this sort of behaviour.

What is needed instead is for us to clamp down hard on men who do this, the first time they do it to send a very clear message that this is intolerable and will not be tolerated. Instead of expecting women to endure it, letting such men carry on with their repellent behaviour for years then being all shocked when they carry out some appalling crime and we learn of all the previous occasions when we turned a blind eye or were far too lenient because .... Well why? Because men can never be expected to behave or accept the consequences of their actions, apparently.

Women are so fucking fed up and furious at being thought of as second class citizens whose interests don't matter, whose rights to basic decency must always come second to those of men. Every single fucking day in this country we see example after example of this contempt for women and girls, even from professionals such as @ Foxy who might be expected to know better.

I did not deny that it was an act that neded dealing with by the police, and that it is an offense. I stressed in my first post on this that it should not be tolerated at 0756 today.

All I called into question was whether a custodial sentence was appropriate.

Why would a custodial sentence be inappropriate?

And if a custodial sentence is not given in what way are we showing - not just saying - that such acts should not be tolerated?

See for instance the number of men convicted of having child porn images, some of the very worst kind, who are very often sent to prison. Listen to the excuses given: "stress" and "good character" and so on. Then we wonder at why it is so prevalent.

As for @maxh's question - sentiments, even horrible ones, are not crimes. It is actions which are crimes and words which incite violence. Thoughts are not crimes. So if someone attacks an immigrant or a trans person etc of course they should be dealt with firmly. Equally if those groups commit crimes they should be dealt with firmly. I would only note that the police do not take an even handed approach on this. It is apparently ok to make all kinds of threats of violence or commit actual violence against women, often in public places, with the police doing nothing at all.

I think there are reasonable alternatives to prison for many offences, and that prison is an expensive way of making bad people worse.

While his circumstances are more unusual, in that there probably is significant flight risk so remand probably required, but if he was a British citizen then he probably would be better punished by being placed on the sexual offenders register and a suspended sentence.

If you really want to tackle the issue of preventing re-offending by paedophiles then systems like "circles of support" are probably the best system.

https://circles-uk.org.uk/about/#our_impact

"Speak to any 14 year old girl, or woman who remembers being 14. Such creepy behaviour by older men is very common."

@Foxy on a previous thread.

Yes - as someone who endured this and worse at 14 and on numerous occasions since then it is creepy and criminal and very common.

And it is very common because men like you, I'm sorry to say, do not take it seriously, underplay it because it has happened "since time immemorial" (your words) so girls should just put up with it and it is far too much expense and bother to build the facilities to lock up the men who make women and girls' life a misery with this sort of behaviour.

What is needed instead is for us to clamp down hard on men who do this, the first time they do it to send a very clear message that this is intolerable and will not be tolerated. Instead of expecting women to endure it, letting such men carry on with their repellent behaviour for years then being all shocked when they carry out some appalling crime and we learn of all the previous occasions when we turned a blind eye or were far too lenient because .... Well why? Because men can never be expected to behave or accept the consequences of their actions, apparently.

Women are so fucking fed up and furious at being thought of as second class citizens whose interests don't matter, whose rights to basic decency must always come second to those of men. Every single fucking day in this country we see example after example of this contempt for women and girls, even from professionals such as @ Foxy who might be expected to know better.

I did not deny that it was an act that neded dealing with by the police, and that it is an offense. I stressed in my first post on this that it should not be tolerated at 0756 today.

All I called into question was whether a custodial sentence was appropriate.

Why would a custodial sentence be inappropriate?

And if a custodial sentence is not given in what way are we showing - not just saying - that such acts should not be tolerated?

See for instance the number of men convicted of having child porn images, some of the very worst kind, who are very often sent to prison. Listen to the excuses given: "stress" and "good character" and so on. Then we wonder at why it is so prevalent.

As for @maxh's question - sentiments, even horrible ones, are not crimes. It is actions which are crimes and words which incite violence. Thoughts are not crimes. So if someone attacks an immigrant or a trans person etc of course they should be dealt with firmly. Equally if those groups commit crimes they should be dealt with firmly. I would only note that the police do not take an even handed approach on this. It is apparently ok to make all kinds of threats of violence or commit actual violence against women, often in public places, with the police doing nothing at all.

The mods won't allow me to discuss my experience of it here but they frequently ignore crimes against trans women, too.

I am in absolute agreement with you that male violence against women - in my view against both cis and trans women - is a problem.

Not trying to get into an argument with you - some of the attitudes on display from various posters in recent days on historical crimes like Polanski's and the Epping sex pest - are exemplars of men minimising and excusing violence against women.

Male sexual violence - whether against men or women (I am not getting into definitional issues as our respective views on this are well known and it is any way irrelevant to what we are both saying and agreeing on) or children - is simply not taken as seriously as it ought to be.

Until we do, it will continue to blight our society and its victims in ways we ought to find unconscionable.

Netherlands

Polls close 8pm GMT

https://nos.nl/collectie/14006/livestream/2588409-kijk-hier-live-nos-nederland-kiest-de-uitslagen

https://app.nos.nl/nieuws/tk2025/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Dutch_general_election

Ok so we are nearing the end of the 2025 election season - Tuesday will see a raft of state and local elections in the US, including the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorials and the New York city mayoral.

If you love pure PR, a multi-party system, drawn-out coalition negotiations, and governments that often collapse early, the Dutch political scene is the one for you.

I'll post further links if I find any better live maps etc - one of Schiermonnikoog, Rozendaal, or Renswoude is likely to be the first result declared, although this may take a while with the beach towel-sized ballot papers.

Many thanks,

DC

"Speak to any 14 year old girl, or woman who remembers being 14. Such creepy behaviour by older men is very common."

@Foxy on a previous thread.

Yes - as someone who endured this and worse at 14 and on numerous occasions since then it is creepy and criminal and very common.

And it is very common because men like you, I'm sorry to say, do not take it seriously, underplay it because it has happened "since time immemorial" (your words) so girls should just put up with it and it is far too much expense and bother to build the facilities to lock up the men who make women and girls' life a misery with this sort of behaviour.

What is needed instead is for us to clamp down hard on men who do this, the first time they do it to send a very clear message that this is intolerable and will not be tolerated. Instead of expecting women to endure it, letting such men carry on with their repellent behaviour for years then being all shocked when they carry out some appalling crime and we learn of all the previous occasions when we turned a blind eye or were far too lenient because .... Well why? Because men can never be expected to behave or accept the consequences of their actions, apparently.

Women are so fucking fed up and furious at being thought of as second class citizens whose interests don't matter, whose rights to basic decency must always come second to those of men. Every single fucking day in this country we see example after example of this contempt for women and girls, even from professionals such as @ Foxy who might be expected to know better.

Women can be victims of unwanted male behaviour in any culture. But it is the reality of cultural differences in male/female relations that mean blind ideologues like Foxy won't take it seriously because it doesn't suit their politics.

For entirely practical reasons many British Jews are concerned about large numbers of migrants coming to the UK from cultures where Jew hatred (and I do mean hatred) is widespread. That's a perfectly reasonable concern.

On Topic. The New York Mayoral elections are next week and there are notable parallels between Mamdani and Zack. They are both of the left both super articulate and both prepared to say what others are afraid to.

People have been talking to me about Mamdani for months. The new Great (off) White Hope. If he makes as big a splash in the US as many hope this could spell even better things for Zack. He's everything that Sultana and Corbyn aren't so if he's looking for advice when they come knocking have nothing to do with them

Is Zack also a raging anti-Semite who makes up stories about his own family?

The next mayor of New York:

"We have to make clear that when the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it's been laced by the IDF."

https://x.com/mazemoore/status/1982974662175752646

The day after he admited that the story he told last week about his aunt being afraid to travel on the subway in her hijab after 9/11 was untrue.

As you like to defend Charlie Kirk by saying his comments are taken out of context you seem not to acknowledge he was talking about the NYPD like a lot of US police forces are trained by the IDF.

From 2016

https://www.amnestyusa.org/blog/with-whom-are-many-u-s-police-departments-training-with-a-chronic-human-rights-violator-israel/

From 2023

US police agencies took intelligence directly from IDF, leaked files show

Analysis of BlueLeaks trove also shows police received training on domestic ‘Muslim extremists’ from pro-Israel groups

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/dec/08/us-police-agencies-idf-files-blueleaks

From 2020

How the US and Israel exchange tactics in violence and control

Two decades of Israeli-US police cooperation includes training in racial profiling and violent suppression of protests.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/6/12/how-the-us-and-israel-exchange-tactics-in-violence-and-control

And I think the story about the hijab is untrue only in that the lady in question is his parents' cousin and someone he refers to as his "aunt". This is I believe a cultural thing, but back when I was a kid, we referred to family friends of my grandparents' generation as "aunt" and "uncle". So not so strange.