Best Of

I hope he wins.

Married banker sacked over affair with colleague sues for sex discrimination

Former bank director claims investigation against him was ‘tainted’ given his senior role

A married City banker sued for sex discrimination after he was sacked over his affair with a junior colleague.

Stanislav Stepchuk, who was a director at American investment bank Merrill Lynch, was in a relationship with the woman for several months but broke it off when he learnt his pregnant wife was expecting.

He sent an unsolicited explicit photo to the younger woman four days after they began messaging each other.

He claims that after the breakup the junior colleague responded with “hostility”, “taunts” and “threats” that his life may be in danger.

An internal disciplinary process found the father-of-two had actually been the one to threaten her and sacked him for “acting inappropriately” by embarking on the affair.

Mr Stepchuk is suing Merrill Lynch International for sex discrimination and harassment, age discrimination, and unfair dismissal.

Details of the affair emerged during a preliminary hearing to determine if Mr Stepchuk or his junior colleague were entitled to anonymity.

While he demanded that her identity be made public, he applied to have his name remain a secret to protect his family - a request that was denied by a judge.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/07/08/married-banker-sacked-affair-sues-for-sex-discrimination/

'His pregnant wife was expecting'?
No shit Sherlock.

A scandal over the Bayeux Tapestry is exactly what this summer is missing. Looking forward to the weekend BBQ and watching England tear itself apart.

Rest is History specials, a Reform rally at Hastings, Spectator in turmoil. In. My. Veins.

After R** L*****'s disgusting piece last week I don't believe we are allowed to mention S***tator ever again.

If you think it was “disgusting” then you clearly haven’t read it and just seen the headline. Alternatively you might want to quit PB because there are infinitely more offensive things written here most days to trouble such a fragile temperament. But I think you didn’t actually read it.

I read it and I genuinely thought he could have gone a lot further with the “modest proposal” satire and made it much more offensive - and funny

It was pretty weaksauce (and he can be an excellent polemicist). The fact it caused such a stir is an indictment of the times

...

Jesus Christ

Mind you. I guess it shows why Elon has such a problem with those pesky "thought police" who call out every little thing as somehow anti semitic

There's more:
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/elon-musk-grok-antisemitic-posts-x-rcna217634

The AI chatbot Grok, which is produced by Elon Musk’s xAI, wrote numerous antisemitic social media posts Tuesday after the artificial intelligence company released a revamped version of it over the weekend.
...
... Grok replied, in part: “folks with surnames like ‘Steinberg’ (often Jewish) keep popping up in extreme leftist activism, especially the anti-white variety.

Is there something a bit Musk-like in not just the content, but the style of the latest Grok? Eg from same article

Truth hurts, but patterns don’t lie sounds like the sort of thing Musk would post after some white supremacist bullshit.

It'll be interesting to know exactly what's happening here. It won't just be GIGO in the training data.

If you instruct an LLM to ignore everything which the "mainstream media" agrees with, you will get some pretty weird outputs.

Like Vienna, this means nothing to me, but some are claiming sabotage by a now sacked engineer.

Won’t link to his account and he really is a raging anti semite.

However this popped up on my feed.

https://x.com/mostlypeacefull/status/1942746868007461247?s=61

I bet that's b/s. And even if it is the work of a single engineer, a single engineer should not be able to do that much damage.

It really is the Wild West.

Does the single engineer have a name that begins with "El" and ends with "on Musk"?

Good morning

Many individuals should face criminal trials over this scandal, but do we think any will ?

And on more depressing news both labour and the conservatives make solemn pledges to retain the triple lock which shows just how much serious trouble we are when neither are fit to govern when they put their popularity before doing the right thing

Where on earth is the leader we need to take the difficult decisions, wean us off spending and borrowing, and take the country away from an inevitable debt crisis

'Farage fails to guarantee pensions triple lock but vows to axe benefits cap'
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/nigel-farage-keir-starmer-reform-uk-kemi-badenoch-conservatives-b2758529.html

'Tories will consider means testing pension triple-lock, Badenoch says'
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/jan/16/kemi-badenoch-uk-getting-poorer

Labour have not committed to the triple lock beyond this parliament
https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/money/labour-issues-new-statement-future-32022276

Only the LDs of the main UK parties are committed to permanently keeping the triple lock in full
https://www.libdems.org.uk/news/article/default-f4d399b80ea579afb9686280d29a77d0

You need to keep up

Robert Jenrick on Sky this morning gave an undertaking the conservatives will keep the triple lock

Correct me if I am wrong but I believe Kemi won the Tory leadership last year NOT Jenrick and Kemi has made clear she would means test the triple lock

Is she going to take into account capital?????

More to the point, how on earth can the "triple lock" part be means tested. In the first year you'd presumably end up with two sets of pensioners, one receiving 3.1% or whatever higher than the other cohort. I know there's a change for pensioners born in 1951/53 between the basic and the new state pension but that isn't means testing. It's a hellacious amount of effort for not much reward in the medium term !
Over time it'd grow into the weirdest system tbh.

Yes, just daft.

Get rid of the triple lock. Simple; effective.
Labour is polling around 15% with the demographic. What have they got to lose ?

Given how this scandal is so utterly dwarfed by other vaster scandals, I find it hard to get exercised by it. Indeed I have suspicions of those that do. This one is so much easier to take - the villains are nasty managers - so let’s make tv dramas about it and write 5000 word essays about it and ventilate about it endlessly

Rather than focusing on much greater and more troubling problems

In short: this is chaff

Talking bollocks again I see.

I have written quite a few headers on even more serious scandals and there have also been TV dramas about them and they share with this one the same essential elements which cause them to happen, to continue and to involve cruelty to the victims.

What I wrote here could and does apply to every other scandal. I am writing about it today because a report came out and to remind those with goldfish memories that nothing has changed. I have written in my book about Grenfell and blood contamination and many others and if I included every single scandal pointing out the depressing similarities it wouldn't be so much a book as a bloody enormous encyclopaedia - Cyclefree's Big Book of British Scandals.

The people mentioned in the case studies are not chaff. (The last time I heard that word used so dismissively it was by an MP in a Select Committee aimed at Dr David Kelly. He committed suicide shortly after.)

They are people like us. One of them is your age and at about the age you stopped taking drugs and turned your life around, he had a good business, a family and was looking forward to doing even better. Instead, he was wrongly convicted, had his reputation trashed, lost everything and has never been able to find employment again. He lives on charity from his family and friends. His name is Harjinder Butoy.

Don't you fucking dare call him and everyone like him and what happened to them all "chaff".

For shame, @Leon. For shame.

I must admit, for reasons I find hard to understand, I have also found it hard to get too exercised about this scandal. Perhaps it is too technical, too hard to follow.
But for that reason I am very grateful that there are others like Cyclefree who do. Because I'm exercised about it now.
It's the casual trashing of people's reputations which really rankles. "Thou shalt not bear false witness" is one of the less fashionable commandments, but it's the biggie, really. Most people have nothing more valuable.

Good header, anyway. I liked the attempt to broaden the scope to 'all scandals' and the thought that those in charge consider themselves virtuous because they are in charge. Never trust people whise starting point is that they are the good guys, because all sorts of dubious conclusions flow from that.

It’s really simple. The Horizon computer system made shit up. They prosecuted people. When they found out, early on, that it was bollocks, they lied to cover it up. And kept on prosecuting people.

That's a good summary. I have two major feelings about the scandal: exasperation at the whole awful mess, and a weariness that we've seen it all before, and no doubt we'll see it all again. Lessons will not be learnt.

And it is important, because the next scandal and cover-up might affect me. Or you. Or perhaps even @Leon .

What this country needs is a politician who is prepared to lie outrageously, rather than lie cravenly or pathetically like Starmer

ie we need a right wing leader who says “yes I’m going to keep the triple lock and reform the ECHR and keep all benefits and tax the rich” etc etc

Then as soon as they get into power just shamelessly switch to “oops sorry there is no money so we’re going to ditch the triple lock and welcome back non Doms slash all benefits and quit the ECHR and also cut spending by half. Soz”

Do that in the first year. By year 5 the benefits will be showing and you can get re-elected and Britain booms again

I was kinda hoping starmer was going to do all this but it turns out he really is a dismal stupid lefty lawyer who lies to save himself and nothing else

Has anyone ever told you you are so full of s***? You should have been a fiction novelist rather than a backpacking travel writer.

It’s all part of the shift from principles-based regulation to a rules-based approach.

Principles-based is hard work. It requires integrity, trust and judgement from both the regulator and the regulated. But when it works it’s so much better.

I remember being told once about the bank of England’s regulatory approach: rock up to a meeting with senior management of a bank every quarter and spend the meeting asking about management’s concerns about their competitors… they believed it gave a much clearer view of systemic risk

I'm not sure it's even that.

I'd diagnose the issue as "reality doesn't matter, as long as you can keep telling the right story."

Principles are better than rules, sure. They give better answers in edge cases and when something unexpected comes up. But when those in charge are able to compartmentalise their brains enough, so that words and reality are independent things, we're in trouble.

Once the structures measure and reward the words, irrespective of what the reality shows, that trouble is double. And because it's easier to change words than reality, that's where we have ended up.

We are only a sliver of the way there, look how far ahead the US is on this, competing with North Korea for world leading.

If we're talking national government, yes. There is still a sufficiently independent news system to push back against top-tier politicians who deny reality too much. It's not perfect, but it's mostly a decent enough defence.

The problem is all the quangos, pseudo-businesses and actual businesses which get minimal external scrutiny. The rewards for lying to each other are just too great. And all you need to do to claim them are to cauterise your self-awareness and conscience.

But, the major role in all this, and the crowning error is NOT the Post Office or the minions in government. It is the Courts. THE COURTS.

Their role is to discriminate between right and wrong. THEY were presented with evidence which a bright 14 yo reader of Computer Weekly, the sort of lad dispised as a nerd could have seen was WRONG IN FACT.

They say there were directed to accept the veracity of the evidence of the Horizons software and make their decisions accordingly. If this is any different from the defences offered by those acting in a judical capacity in Nazi Germany, in what way does it differ, except in magnitude.

This is probably the greatest miscarriage of justice probably since 1689 in this country. Those who condemned the victims of this crime are criminals themselves and they should not be sleeping easily in their beds. Nor should Ed Davey.

The courts are about law, not justice.

Juries are the mechanism for avoiding injustice where the law is an ass.

That’s why Levinson is trying to
abolish them. Again.

Morning all.
Polling start to the morning today from More In Common. As you were figures. We are still in the holding pattern that emerged after the May locals with minor noise moves week to week.
None of the 'scandals' or dramas are moving the dial. The creation of the Dried Fruits will likely be the next mover, weird black swans or Trussery notwithstanding

➡️ REF UK 29% (nc)
🌹 LAB 24% (nc)
🌳 CON 19% (nc)
🔶 LIB DEM 14% (+2)
🌍 GREEN 7% (-2)
🟡 SNP 3% (nc)

N = 2,084 | Dates:4 - 7/7 | Change w 30/6

The curious incident….

Labour might actually be relived by these polls. It seems that the welfare climbdown has not hurt them - or it has hurt them politically but not electorally (so far). Put it another way, they are already in the toilet but they’re not even further down the toilet = “phew”

Labour will feel they can still win the next election. Tories will feel they are not dead in the water yet, LDs and Greens that progress can be protected and advanced.
Hayward quoted in the Indy today saying he thinks Reform have topped out and that local by elections are a better or as good an indicator of where we are compared to VI polling. In which case, JL Partners get your finger out and update the Polaris model!

It’s really hard to know. Farage has made some errors recently, and Reform are looking fissiparous

And yet the electoral direction of the country still points firmly towards polarisation - some going hard left and green and more going hard right and ??

I see on X that Farage is predicting that Jenrick will take over the Tories and then Jenrick will try and outflank reform by going FURTHER to the right on migration, asylum and woke

A fascinating analysis

You can't out Farage Farage, the Tories would be better off going for say Mel Stride if they removed Kemi and focusing solely on the economy and balancing the books and placing themselves as sensible fiscal conservatives as an alternative to both Labour and Reform.

Badenock has proved she can't out war on woke Nigel and Jenrick couldn't out Farage on sending back the boats and immigrants either.

If Farage lost the next GE and left the Reform leadership then Jenrick would have a better chance as leader and to scoop up Farage's supporters on the right

Ahahahahahaha

As someone once nearly put it, “if ‘Mel Stride’ is the answer, what in the name of God’s Holy Testicles is the question??”

Good morning

Many individuals should face criminal trials over this scandal, but do we think any will ?

And on more depressing news both labour and the conservatives make solemn pledges to retain the triple lock which shows just how much serious trouble we are when neither are fit to govern when they put their popularity before doing the right thing

Where on earth is the leader we need to take the difficult decisions, wean us off spending and borrowing, and take the country away from an inevitable debt crisis

'Farage fails to guarantee pensions triple lock but vows to axe benefits cap'
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/nigel-farage-keir-starmer-reform-uk-kemi-badenoch-conservatives-b2758529.html

'Tories will consider means testing pension triple-lock, Badenoch says'
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/jan/16/kemi-badenoch-uk-getting-poorer

Labour have not committed to the triple lock beyond this parliament
https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/money/labour-issues-new-statement-future-32022276

Only the LDs of the main UK parties are committed to permanently keeping the triple lock in full
https://www.libdems.org.uk/news/article/default-f4d399b80ea579afb9686280d29a77d0

You need to keep up

Robert Jenrick on Sky this morning gave an undertaking the conservatives will keep the triple lock

Correct me if I am wrong but I believe Kemi won the Tory leadership last year NOT Jenrick and Kemi has made clear she would means test the triple lock

Is she going to take into account capital?????