Best Of

On reading the header, my first thought was rather than lawyers, we should look at sons and daughters of the manse, but other than May, Thatcher and Brown, I could not find any.

One advantage lawyers do have as MPs is understanding the legalese in which bills are written. The drawback might be they are too keen to ban things of which they disapprove; to legislate rather than persuade.

Over-legislation has been one of the things that has gotten us into such a mess, in that the state bureaucracy (and business) always has to adapt and find new ways of coping with the myriad additions to the statute book.

Politicians in general, but legally trained politicians in particular, are prone to the delusion that attitudes and behaviour can be changed by legislating on it. This, of course, very rarely works so they double down, legislating on it again and again until even lawyers struggle to work out what the law actually is.

Legislation, like speeches, is no substitute for policies, resources and a determination to persuade and change underlying attitudes. It is a poor way to show how much they "care".

I think the King's "dear oh dear" comment summed up Liz Truss' brief premiership succinctly.

HMQ on Boris's resignation – at least I won't have that idiot organising my funeral.

Doesn't everyone arrange there own funeral I know I have

I might change my mind on this in twenty years time, but personally I think funerals are for the living, so I'd only do something if it was a "make life easier for whoever it is that has to deal with it" action.

I'd quite like "funeral pyre on a windswept hillside" but since some Hindus injudiciously brought a court case trying to force their council to provide one, it has been ruled illegal.

You can get an open air pyre if you know the right people I have one booked with a hog roast for people to munch while I burn

Hope they make it clear which pyre is which.

Piers Moron is on the case...

In Britain, we now jail the likes of Lucy Connolly for dumb, incendiary social media posts (that she deleted), but 1000s chant about killing people at a major music festival, live on our publicly funded broadcaster, and nobody seems to care. Outrageous double standard.

https://x.com/piersmorgan/status/1939037803406598577

If you support one side in a war then you ipso facto support the death of enemy soldiers. I for one would like more Russian soldiers to die and do not see why I should not be able to express that opinion in public.

"Death to the IDF" to me falls under freedom of speech.

In any case, have we forgotten that pop singers are supposed to be provocative?

So the people at Glastonbury support Hamas?

Good to know.

Maybe they just don't support the way in which the IDF is waging the war.

Hamas is the only game in town, how else are Gazans supposed to defend themselves?

If you'd been paying attention you'd know that Hamas started the war and took a load of hostages.

Indeed they did. But when opposing an unjustified attack you are not supposed to commit war crimes yourself. The actions of Hamas on 6 Oct are not justifications for the excessive actions of the IDF today.

Hello again pb.
Thanks for the comments on my rat photo earlier - very interesting.
An update on my adventure: following Greenhead, I cycled the Stanegate in a dense cloud and drizzle - saw the Sycamore Gap, where there was much rejoicing about something; on a drier day I'd have investigated - then descended to the Tyne Valley which is beautiful but much longer than I remember. Sadly @taz I overshot Wylam by about 2 miles, but found my way to the tidal Tyne at about 1705, therefore coast to coast in 5h53, including a 45 min lunch stop. Onwards to Newcastle in the pissing rain and arrived at Wetherspoons on the quayside where I was met by complete strangers like a conquering hero, and they insisted on buying me drinks for 2 hours and giving me money for whatever charity I'm raising for (fortunately me daughter is on a fundraising campaign).
It really is a wonderful city. I'd forgotten how ridiculously celebratory Novocastrians are on a Saturday night.
Reckon I've ridden about 76 miles today, which other pbers possibly do without blinking but is the longest bike ride I've ever had. Now waiting for the train home.

I was very heavily involved in what remains the UK's biggest fraud trial in 2012. It was brought by the CPS while Starmer was DPP.

The actual CPS lawyer dealing with it was appalling. At one point, the CPS tried repeatedly to break the law on disclosure and after I had firmly told them to bugger off, they made the City of London detective in charge of the investigation apologise to me for something which was entirely the CPS's fault. The CPS's lawyer's contribution to the trial was to sleep through most of it.

Doubtless Starmer was dealing with other stuff but my view of the CPS's competence and integrity was that it was a shambles. Still, at least they did something. The SFO declined to get involved in what was a serious fraud for reasons which remain inexplicable and my subsequent experience of them showed them to be even more incompetent than the CPS. The City of London police were, by contrast, pretty effective.

Wrapping up any money with 3 years is rarely if ever a good move unless you have infinite money. Even betting on winners of next seasons EPL isn't an attractive prospect, when you could make a lot more bets inbetween now and then.

What you can bet on is Starmer being awful. Surely the worst prime minister of our times

As I posted on the last thread, I’ve given up on Starmer.
However he is better than his three predecessors, which tells you how bad those predecessors were.

Right now I have him below May in my list of post 1979 PMs.

1. Thatcher
2. Blair
3. Major
4. Cameron
5. Brown
6. May
7. Starmer (new entry)
8. Sunak
9. Johnson
10. Truss

Not unreasonable. Tho I would put Starmer equal last with Truss. And I’d have May next last - she was a catastrophe with her needless red lines

Needless red lines?

They were the red lines Vote Leave campaigned on.