Best Of

A good day to bury bad news, so no-one is talking about the crappy deals Starmer got in China.

He got any deals, news to me? £3 off a bottle of whiskey doesn't count.

I believe the Scots are quite pleased.

I doubt it will honestly make any difference. As I explained the other day, Scottish Whiskey in China is £50-60 a bottle for run of the mill stuff, the equivalent of about £250 in our equivalent buying power. If you just want to drink alcohol its dirt cheap, a beer is $1 in a big city i.e. nobody in China is buying Scot Whiskey on price, they are totally elastic to price, £3-4 off for the sort of people in China who have the equivalent of £250 to spend on a bottle of booze, they ain't asking price.

I went to a supermarket that stocked Scot Whiskey in Schenzhen, it made Waitrose look like Asda both appearance and price.

FPT...

Starmer refuses to answer a question from the SNP about whether Mandelson should face a police investigation.

Whether someone should face a police investigation should be for the police to decide, not the government, no?

So any easy one for Mr Forensic to have swatted away then.

The question to ask is not should there be a police investigation into Mandy, it's will you hold a govt investigation into his vetting when you made him ambassador?

Yep. Starmer has no Epstein links and no responsibility for what Mandelson was doing back in Blair/Brown times. What Starmer did was appoint him UK ambassador to Washington. The rationale/process around that (bad) call is where his vulnerability lies.

FPT...

Starmer refuses to answer a question from the SNP about whether Mandelson should face a police investigation.

Whether someone should face a police investigation should be for the police to decide, not the government, no?

So any easy one for Mr Forensic to have swatted away then.

The question to ask is not should there be a police investigation into Mandy, it's will you hold a govt investigation into his vetting when you made him ambassador?

Yep. Starmer has no Epstein links and no responsibility for what Mandelson was doing back in Blair/Brown times. What Starmer did was appoint him UK ambassador to Washington. The rationale/process around that (bad) call is where his vulnerability lies.

Notable, as someone pointed out on the previous thread that Ed Miliband was, shall we say, unenthusiastic about having Mandelson in the Labour Shadow Cabinet.

Mandelson was in the habit of forwarding emails from people like Jeremy Heywood to Epstein.

https://x.com/danneidle/status/2018250218655851006

A good principle of sending any email is that it will get back to the people you'd least like to see it, and thus should be phrased accordingly.

Earlier today we saw the damning email but couldn’t 100% confirm who it came from (albeit it was obvious).

The reply gave the game away and I think confirms the Official Secrets Act was broken

Alarmingly, broken by a Top Minister fifteen years ago, and we're only finding out now.

What other Bad Shit is happening without anyone noticing?

I suspect this type of abuse by the rich and powerful goes on now and always has done. The Epstein emails were uncovered because in the 2000's and 2010's the rich and powerful unguardedly emailed to each other, not realising the email server was capturing every communication. It was a point in time weakness. In the 1990's they would have phoned; post 2015 they would have Whatsapp'ed. And no-one would be any the wiser.

Consider the Reformation.

Consider the savage hatred of the existing church by a number of Protestants. And the accounts of what was going on in the monasteries in England - that were destroyed on the orders of Queen Mary. Add in the fact that a major reason for the Reformation was the extra-judicial privileges of the clergy. They were legally untouchable by the civil courts. Add in the modern scandals. Add in the fact that human nature has not changed.

What do you get?

Queen Mary destroyed the monasteries?????

I think the implication is that she destroyed the evidence gathered by Wolsey and Cromwell of all the terrible practices and behaviour in the Catholic monasteries. The abolition of the monasteries wasn't all about making money for Henry 8th (and incidentally creating some amazingly atmospheric ruins for 21st century visitors who like that kind of thing...)