Best Of

In response to the header, where Frank Herbert was surely correct was in saying that power does not corrupt; rather it attracts pathological personalities, who are already corrupt.

Where he was dead wrong, was with his "beware heroes" message. Evil is not heroic or glamorous. It is seedy and banal.

I think CS Lewis' vision of evil is far more relevant to our times:

I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of "Admin." The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the offices of a thoroughly nasty business concern.

“As short a time ago as February, the Ministry of Plenty had issued a promise (a "categorical pledge" were the official words) that there would be no reduction of the chocolate ration during 1984. Actually, as Winston was aware, the chocolate ration was to be reduced from thirty grammes to twenty at the end of the present week. All that was needed was to substitute for the original promise a warning that it would probably be necessary to reduce the ration at some time in April.”

Labour pays millions to make hospital stats more flattering: ministers accused of massaging NHS figures by paying £3m a month to take off waiting lists patients who no longer need treatment

Interesting story from @oliver_wright


https://x.com/pippacrerar/status/2018594915027124225?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q

Off topic: is the Martin Lewis campaigning against the evils of Reeves' student loans related to that guy Martin Lewis who enthusiastically promoted the scheme in 2011/12?
I think he's wrong again and that most iniquitous aspect of the loans is the RPI+ interest rate.
I've always opposed student loans and ideally would clear the debt but that's clearly not going to be politically palatable and very expensive.

Yes, they are related. But to be fair, the situation has changed in some ways. The loans were intended to be payments which got paid off at a reasonable %, starting at a reasonable salary level for a reasonable length of time, with reasonable interest rate meaning that it would be paid off by many in due course.

The % of relevant salary has not, IIRC, changed. It is 9%. But 9% extra for ever on the squeezed middle starting at the minimum wage salary level with interest rates by which after lots of years you still owe more than you borrowed, paying off until you are over 60, and where the graduate premium is small for many, and from which the super rich are exempt because daddy seems onerous.

The student loan system is crazy for most people, at least those going straight from school at 18 or 19.

Start with the usury of the interest rates being well over the base rate, and the minimum repayment income now little more than minimum wage.

Parents are better off taking out a second mortgage if they have equity in property, and coming to some sort of agreement with their offspring.

Unless they wanted to study something for a specific profession such as medicine or engineering, I’d be advising my hypothetical 18-year-old to learn a trade and get on the housing ladder as quickly as possible, then look at further study if they want to.

Best to pay the fees upfront, even if it means taking out another loan.

Yes, better to find the money from somewhere, anywhere, rather than taking the loan.

Also, say it quietly but student loans are a significant driver of young graduates ending up in places like the sandpit. If they can disappear from HMRC’s radar for two or three years in their twenties, they can defer the repayments which allows them to save for a deposit. Or enjoy a couple of years of beach bars, fancy brunches, and expensive nightclubs, which is what many of them actually end up doing.

How can you not remember receiving 75,000 dollars ?

Does Mandelson seriously think anyone is going to believe this ?

I'm willing to be a guinea pig to find out if this is possible.

If somebody will give me $75,000 dollars and come back to me in 17 years we will see if I've remembered.

You’d need a control group who didn’t get $75k, and then we’d randomise you to one or other group.

How would that work? You can't not remember not receiving something.

No, it has to be give me $75,000 and see if I remember.

The misremembering could go either way. If Mandelson can’t remember receiving $75k, maybe other people think they did when they didn’t. I think we need to be careful about this.

But, hey, if you don’t want a 50% chance of being given $75k, you don’t have to take part.

I already don't remember anybody giving me $75,000. I think the experiment should be repeated.

Off topic: is the Martin Lewis campaigning against the evils of Reeves' student loans related to that guy Martin Lewis who enthusiastically promoted the scheme in 2011/12?
I think he's wrong again and that most iniquitous aspect of the loans is the RPI+ interest rate.
I've always opposed student loans and ideally would clear the debt but that's clearly not going to be politically palatable and very expensive.

Yes, they are related. But to be fair, the situation has changed in some ways. The loans were intended to be payments which got paid off at a reasonable %, starting at a reasonable salary level for a reasonable length of time, with reasonable interest rate meaning that it would be paid off by many in due course.

The % of relevant salary has not, IIRC, changed. It is 9%. But 9% extra for ever on the squeezed middle starting at the minimum wage salary level with interest rates by which after lots of years you still owe more than you borrowed, paying off until you are over 60, and where the graduate premium is small for many, and from which the super rich are exempt because daddy seems onerous.

The student loan system is crazy for most people, at least those going straight from school at 18 or 19.

Start with the usury of the interest rates being well over the base rate, and the minimum repayment income now little more than minimum wage.

Parents are better off taking out a second mortgage if they have equity in property, and coming to some sort of agreement with their offspring.

Unless they wanted to study something for a specific profession such as medicine or engineering, I’d be advising my hypothetical 18-year-old to learn a trade and get on the housing ladder as quickly as possible, then look at further study if they want to.

This is so grim.

Jeffrey Epstein ‘had secret child who was taken from mother at birth’

The paedophile may have fathered a number of children, new files suggest, with Sarah Ferguson appearing to congratulate him on the birth of a son in 2011

Jeffrey Epstein may have had a number of secret children, according to files released by the US justice department.

Buried in the three million documents are references to Epstein having fathered children, including one by a teenager who alleges her daughter was taken from her minutes after birth.

In a diary entry, an Epstein victim claims to have given birth to a baby girl in about 2002 when she would have been 16 or 17 years old. Included in her diary is a copy of a pregnancy scan dated to 20 weeks’ gestation.

The child appears to have been taken from her mother ten minutes after birth, which the woman alleges was supervised by Epstein’s former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell. “She was born, I heard her cries!” the victim wrote. “I saw this tiny head and body in between the doctor’s hands. Ghislaine said she was beautiful. Where is she?”

The woman wrote: “I do not want to be tied to Jeffrey for the rest of my life! playing the piano well is not a good reason to think someone has good genes or should have a baby! I am too young and he is too old!

“The piano and music comments are made to convince me this is right and will create perfect offspring he [Epstein] calls them ‘superior gene pool?’ Why me?? My eye color, my eye color? I miss the person I was before I was made into what feels like a human incubator.”

The diary was shared by the woman’s lawyers, Wigdor LLP, with federal prosecutors investigating Epstein and Maxwell. The woman later filed a lawsuit against the Epstein associate Leon Black, the former chief executive of Apollo Global Management, under the pseudonym Jane Doe in 2023.

The victim alleges Black raped her at Epstein’s house in an assault that caused her to bleed. Black denied the allegations. The case is continuing.

https://www.thetimes.com/us/news-today/article/epstein-secret-children-files-island-kp9lgl2v0

That is utterly disgusting.

Off topic: is the Martin Lewis campaigning against the evils of Reeves' student loans related to that guy Martin Lewis who enthusiastically promoted the scheme in 2011/12?
I think he's wrong again and that most iniquitous aspect of the loans is the RPI+ interest rate.
I've always opposed student loans and ideally would clear the debt but that's clearly not going to be politically palatable and very expensive.

Yes, they are related. But to be fair, the situation has changed in some ways. The loans were intended to be payments which got paid off at a reasonable %, starting at a reasonable salary level for a reasonable length of time, with reasonable interest rate meaning that it would be paid off by many in due course.

The % of relevant salary has not, IIRC, changed. It is 9%. But 9% extra for ever on the squeezed middle starting at the minimum wage salary level with interest rates by which after lots of years you still owe more than you borrowed, paying off until you are over 60, and where the graduate premium is small for many, and from which the super rich are exempt because daddy seems onerous.

The original plan was that quite a lot of graduates wouldn't ever pay off the loan before writeoff, the key word being "plan". If a graduate went into a well-paid career, they would pay back the cost of their studies with interest- but not the unlimited amount implied by a graduate tax. If they went into something that paid less money (and no, that's not a waste, there are lots of bits of society that depend on educated people not charging full whack for their talents and education), they would contribute, but not to the full cost of their degree.

Unfortunately, the spin about "poor graduates, never paying back their debt" took root, and the Conservative majority governents dragged the repayment threshold down and we ended up with the current mess, which doesn't work for anyone.