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I tell you who comes out worse than Mandy and Andy in these latest emails, Sarah Ferguson, what sort of parent takes your kids to see a convicted nonce?

Sarah Ferguson ‘took daughters to visit newly free Jeffrey Epstein’

The former Duchess of York travelled with Eugenie, 19, and Beatrice, 20, five days after financier was released for child sex crimes

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/royal-family/article/sarah-ferguson-epstein-files-latest-9kn2g6n6j

Sarah Ferguson asked Epstein to find ‘pretty’ goddaughter a job

Former Duchess of York also pointed out that her goddaughter was 22 years old in email exchange

Sarah Ferguson tried to persuade Jeffrey Epstein to give her goddaughter a job in his office, describing her as a “pretty girl”, newly released emails show.

The former Duchess of York pointed out that Laura McGowan was 22 years old in the email sent in 2010 to Epstein, who had recently been released from prison for child sex crimes.

Ms Ferguson asked Epstein, a registered sex offender by that point, to find a place for Ms McGowan to stay.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/2026/02/03/sarah-ferguson-epstein-files-goddaughter/?recomm_id=6e7f6bc4-7320-4231-bff3-a617e92a5e96

It reminds me of the mother who takes her daughter to Jack Woltz, in the Godfather novel.

In the Real - what about the rich and powerful people who wanted their daughters to intern for Weinstein?

(There were quite a few)

In the scandal with that celebrity photographer, a while back, there was a pattern. The top stars he photographed said he was a perfect gentleman etc. He preyed on the up-and-coming.

I have pals in the thespy side of employment, the phrase ‘pop your top off, luv’ is a running joke about auditions with aspiring young women in the past. Things have changed of course but the folk memory remains.

When the Polanski thing first happened, a leading film director commented that the criminal case against Polanski had "ruined the atmosphere at Hollywood parties, because everyone's behaviour changed".

Said those words outloud and everything.

Plenty of eminent people still think Polanski did nothing wrong.

And we all know one of them....

Gives me the creeps..

It's like finger nails on the blackboard for me, but myself and yourself are fighting a losing battle on this one I'm afraid.

It's been going on for decades sadly. Doesn't always leak into private life though.

One which does, and drives me mad, is "i'm based in..." and "Where are you based?".

Oh, and chefs adding "off" to everything. "Bake it off" "Fry them off" et al.

There is a new horror creeping in here and elsewhere; “hard agree”. I’m guessing this abomination is an Americanism but it’s becoming the grey squirrel of comments driving out our native “I totally agree”. Needs culling.

"To be fair"......

New article in the Telegraph.

"Sean Thomas
There are no nice areas left for Londoners to live in
A pervasive sense of decline and disorder lingers over the capital" (£)

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/02/02/there-are-no-nice-areas-left-for-londoners-to-live-in/

Regrettably, he's wrong. My pleasant market town is presently suffering a large influx of Londoners who have finally worked out that it's way nicer a couple of hundred miles further north. This is doing lots of bad things, including pushing up house prices, and encouraging the building of loads of nasty Barratt wonders on the edge of town (the London types think they are amazing, a four bed house for the price of a ropey London flat! I don't know of a single local living in one).

We should probably build a wall between Gloucester and Kings Lynn, and make the Southerners pay for it (feels a bit harsh to keep the Brummies out by drawing a line much further north).

We've got that too. And the next Local Plan is slated to increase it.

There also seems to be a pitch for a lot (35%-40%) affordable which is pre-sold to Social Landlords who are housing the London overspill of those in temporary accommodation. Saves London Councils a lot by sending their mixed milieu off to the coast.

Kings Cross was gentrified by expelling most of the existing population - poor people who rented.

The process by which it was done was quite brutal and grotesque.

Of note is that it was quite a black area - the current population is diverse but noticeably… paler.

Under T. Blair, as well.

Makes one wonder what the effect of subcontracting poor-people-storage out of London will be.

The nice parts of the country shouldn’t be stuck with London’s waste.

Simon Sebag Montefiore is one of the good guys. He just tweeted this. I make no apologies for its length. Everyone in the world should read it


The images emerging now from Iran of young people, older people, boys and girls, who were murdered in the last few weeks by the Iranian Islamic dictator, the Islamic Corps of Revolutionary Guards, Basij militia and imported killers from Iraq, are heartbreaking but also enraging.

Some depict beautiful people at play, at the gym, dancing, on motorbikes; some makeshift morgues full of bodies; some streetscenes where killers shoot down unarmed protesters; and many show families opening bodybags to find their dead children shot in the head; others discover bodies of protesters wounded then executed in hospital beds and particularly women with uteruses removed or other horrors to conceal brutal rapes... Many are not young but it looks like the slaughter of the best and brightest of Iran Gen Z. Ive tried to repost these here.

I have been contacted by people in Iran (who weirdly read my books in pirated Farsi editions) who manage to come online in various ways and they beg me to keep posting these images and faces and keep talking about them. Embarrassingly they thank me just for doing this! That is why i am writing this now. We must keep going and keep doing so.

The numbers killed are astonishing: based on sources within the murderous dictatorship, it may be as many as 36000 were murdered just in the first days of the terror 8/9 January and more later - making it likely that 40,000 is a horribly plausible estimate.

This makes this event the most greatest massacre in modern Iranian history by far, the greatest single event slaughter in modern MIddle Eastern history since 1900 - along with the Assad's liquidation of an entire town, site of Islamist insurgents, Hama, in 1982 when around 30,000 were killed. Both of them not taking place in wars but in cold blood - and this Iranian atrocity being far more terrible since none of the protesters were armed.

We live in a time of egregious comparisons to the Holocaust when the Holocaust is repellently abused and minimized by cynical cretins - radiohosts, podders, politicians- to criticize anything from vaccination to ICE raids. But here is a comparison that stands in its scale and horror: in size and horror this does resemble the two days of Babi Yar near Kiev in Sept 1941 where 33,000 Jews were killed. It is also worth pointing out that an entire progressive movement arose against the autocracy of the Shah.

And his was an autocracy. But in his forty year one reign, only around 3000 people were killed, mainly in the last year before his downfall.

It is very striking that the UN has barely commented on thiis…

https://x.com/simonmontefiore/status/2018630202482397222?s=46

He goes on in that vein. Excoriating the “progressives”

It's astonishing how everything can be shoehorned into "owning the libs" if that is one's monomania of choice. It shouldn't need pointing out, but the IRGC are not centrist dads.

OT. Interesting interview with a very angry HEALTH SECRETARY about Mandelson.

He's lovin' it!

Not sure the line of “shock” that the Prince of Darkness / purveyor of dark arts did dark arts things holds…

https://x.com/DamianSurvation/status/2018961574611018027

There's "shock", and shock.
Gordon Brown, for instance, seems genuinely shocked and angered by the cabinet leaks revelations.

He will be. PM with TB/GB/AC - these four were the beating heart and driving force of the New Labour project. It defined their working lives and this taints it badly. A massive personal betrayal.

I have no great regard for any of the characters involved, so it doesn't really affect me, but Brown's reaction seems 100% genuine.

Starmer must play his ace card today at PMQ

Whilst the inglorious Mandelson passed inside information to an individual, sitting on the Tory Front Benches will be toe highly dishonourable Member for Witham who commited a far greater Treason.

Passing State Secrets in an unathorised trip to Tel Aviv to a mass murderer. Found guilty of breaking the Ministerial Code, should have been criminally charged yet still sat in position.

Guarded by Boris and Truss and left there because neither the gutless Sunak or Badenoch have the backbone to remove her!

Starmer has to do exactly the opposite. This isn't the Tories fault and the MP for Witham operating an illegal shadow foreign policy has nothing to do with this. Two wrongs don't make a right.

Starmer has to explain why he thought it a risk worth taking to employ someone with a record of dismissals for corruption and known links to Epstein. He did it because he thought Mandelson was the best option to handle the corruption of Trump. It probably was worth the risk on the information known at the time. It was a risk laden judgement call, and it blew up in his face.

That is a line he won't have the guts to use, though it's likely true, and he would get some credit from the public for the admission.

Though probably not from the US administration...

Do we know what the EU is doing about Mandelson? He was their Trade Commissioner for several years - was he peddling their confidential information as well?

An investigation has started: https://www.euractiv.com/news/eu-to-assess-whether-mandelson-broke-rules-over-epstein-links/

The biggest issue will be making sure the enquiry is in a safe pair of hands and doesn't accidentally catch a whole raft of other people. Mandelson networked intensively - there will be a lot of deleting of data today, both in the UK, EU and around the round

Mandelson can now be thrown to the wolves, and perhaps a couple of small fry, as well.

But, eminent people must not be embarrassed.

Sort of like the trial of Gaius Verres. His behaviour was so blatant, he had to be cut loose, but the rest of the establishment were spared.