Best Of

a

So the BBC is going to fight - fight like hell - and I'll be there with them. They should crowdfund the cost of the case. Allow people to contribute if they are so inclined. Put me down for £500. I'll give up nuts for a year. It's a no brainer.

There was some stuff from Newsmax on the BBC this morning saying both that the BBC couldn't afford to fight the case (£50m plus) versus settling (maybe £10-15m) .. and that they would be embarrassed by the discovery process.

I'm with you in saying bollocks to that.
The BBC's own right to discovery is likely to be very interesting in what it might turn up. And I'm happy to help pay to defend such a transparently nonsense lawsuit.

It's important, I think. People talk a lot about "British values" and if not giving in to extortion by malevolent foreigners isn't one of them it jolly well should be. I also like the calculus of it. IMO the potential damage to Donald Trump of having this litigated in open court in the US is greater than that to the BBC.

I'm on the side of freedom of speech here, and in that case that means I'm 100% behind the BBC in this case.

US law should be on their side here too - far more than if the case was going to be heard in the libel capital of the world, London...

They should not settle, Trump has an extraordinarily high bar to pass in the US court system. And any halfway competent attorney ought to be able to defend them quite honestly.

Newsmax guy agreed that it was a weak case, but seemed to think we'd just settle on pragmatic (ie monetary) grounds, since a successful defence might still cost £50m plus.
I guess someone working for Newmax places very little value on journalistic independence, so he might even have been commenting honestly.

BBC v Trump

Like Neil Hamilton v Al Fayed.

Can’t they both lose ?

However anything that undermines the license fee is all well and good.

Just for you.

https://x.com/EdwardJDavey/status/2000850649064546505
Keir Starmer needs to stand up for the BBC against Trump's outrageous $5bn lawsuit and protect licence fee payers from being hit in the pocket.

Trump wants to interfere in our democracy and undermine our national broadcaster. We cannot let him.

So Ed Davey has no comment to make on the actual merits of the case, he just reflexively says BBCGood and OrangeManBad.

What merits of the case could Trump possibly have? I mean Davey really doesn't have to go into analysis mode on this

He said to march to the Capitol “peacefully and patriotically”, but the BBC said that he said march to the Capitol “and fight like Hell”.

Given that there was actually a disturbance at the Capitol after the event at which he spoke, a reputable journalist might want to make sure that his words were accurately reported.

The actual quote is

I said something's wrong here, something is really wrong, can have happened.

And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore.

Trump used the word fight twenty times. Is it plausible he wasn't inciting the mob?

The problem is getting the two facts to be admitted

- Trump incited the Jan 6 riot and attempted to steal the Presidency by pushing the VP to not validate the result.
- The BBC fucked up in editing the speech

Bit like Alison Rose and Coutts losing a truth telling competition with Nigel Fucking Farage. As a result of which they had to make Farage rich enough to have a Coutts account again.

Wronging a Wong'un Doesn't Make A Right.

I think the BBC should fight the Trump suit, by the way.

I think the BBC has said as much itself.
Senior directors have resigned, and it has apologised.

That ought to be the end of the matter, since the edit was bad journalism, not libel.

Paying damages would be admitting something which is not true, and would be as bad if not worse than the original mistake.

a

Just had the interesting experience of being present for a rare political discussion among a couple of my older relatives, which gave me a different peception on things. Key details included:

• The government is deliberately trying to destroy the NHS (reasons unclear)
  
• Politicians don't care about old people (that's news to me)
  
• Older people should not have to pay tax (naturally)
  
• Colonel Gaddafi did a lot of good actually (ok, that was a surprising inclusion)
  
• Roads used to be better (might be true for all I know)
  

Interesting indeed. I'm old and I wouldn't agree with any of those (except to say I know little of Col. Gaddafi and for all I know he may have been a genial chap to his friends).

After Gaddafi rather a lot of Libyans migrated to the U.K…

Wasn't Stalin supposed to be a doting uncle or similar?

Stalin became Uncle Joe as soon as Hitler invaded and the USSR became our besties.

Ah, I'd forgotten the 'Uncle Joe' title, but I thought I'd read he was genuinely fond of children, or animals, or something very touchy-feely; which somehow made up for all the mass slaughter.

Stalin was ladykiller when young, and a complete party animal.

Calling a man who sexually assaulted 13 year old girls 'a ladykiller' is pushing it a bit.

He killed lots of ladies, so there's that.

@PippaCrerar

EXCL: An agreement to rejoin Erasmus – the EU’s student exchange programme – set to be announced on Wednesday as part of UK government’s drive towards closer relations with Brussels.

https://x.com/PippaCrerar/status/2000992877443231788?s=20

Is this where we give the EU what they want and they fuck us up the ass.

SKS would pay full price for a Dominos pizza

Brexit was just a spiteful destruction of opportunity voted for by people who'd had their time and had no plan for the aftermath.
It's been left to the people who voted against it to make the best of the mess left behind, turns out that means trying to recover the benefits at greater cost as was said at the time.
Suck it up.

Standard drivel.

Brexit opened doors. Doors can allow you to leave the house, have fun, get a job, or meet the love of your life. Or you can stand at the threshold in the stiff breeze rooted to the spot, reminiscing about how great it was when the door was closed.

I thought it was like having a baby? Certainly it seems to lend itself to fanciful analogy in lieu of any mundane workaday benefits.

Fanciful or otherwise, you do seem to have had difficulty understanding it. Let me be more prosaic. With some obvious 'workaday', exceptions like the absence of membership fees (not exactly chump change when Reeves' hasn't got two pennies to bless herself with), Brexit restored a fairly large arsenal of competencies to the UK Government. Competencies only become benefits if one decides to use them. And deciding not to use them at all was not an outcome that anyone, from the most ardent Brexit supporter to the most passionate remainer, predicted.

Ah I see. So we're just waiting for the right government to come along and it's lift off. Right you are. That's good. It has the benefit of being repeatable forever more.

Anyway, the Ashes. I know this goes against PB etiquette but I'm feeling moderately bullish. I was right about Crawley getting runs at Brisbane remember. You all laughed and chuckled and smirked and guffawed but I was right. So now to Adelaide and I'm expecting a win or at the very worst a dominating draw. The boys have had a nice rest. They'll be raring to go.

A strangulated and painful draw is the best I hope for. The problem is the batting, bowling, and fielding.

By the end of 5 tests some of the batsmen might be used to the kookaburra ball and conditions.
An absolute utter failure to prepare as organised by the ECB yet again. Lessons won't be learnt but bonus targets will be met.

Yes. There just isn't much pressure for the places either. The Hundred has produced some really adequate bowlers - but that's all they'll ever be.

(Take my cricket thoughts with a heavy dose of salt though. I really don't know what I'm talking about compared to a very great many of my friends)

Test match bowlers come from the County Championship, still a decent level of cricket, despite what the ECB have tried to do to it. The bowling isn’t the issue, it’s the lack of runs and time at the crease.

@PippaCrerar

EXCL: An agreement to rejoin Erasmus – the EU’s student exchange programme – set to be announced on Wednesday as part of UK government’s drive towards closer relations with Brussels.

https://x.com/PippaCrerar/status/2000992877443231788?s=20

Is this where we give the EU what they want and they fuck us up the ass.

SKS would pay full price for a Dominos pizza

Brexit was just a spiteful destruction of opportunity voted for by people who'd had their time and had no plan for the aftermath.
It's been left to the people who voted against it to make the best of the mess left behind, turns out that means trying to recover the benefits at greater cost as was said at the time.
Suck it up.

Standard drivel.

Brexit opened doors. Doors can allow you to leave the house, have fun, get a job, or meet the love of your life. Or you can stand at the threshold in the stiff breeze rooted to the spot, reminiscing about how great it was when the door was closed.

I'm not sure what you are on, but it needs to be illegal!!!

Back to his lawyerly brilliance:

“Every time I go to pull a lever, there are a whole bunch of regulations, consultations, arms-length bodies that mean the action from pulling the lever to delivery is longer than I think it ought to be"

https://x.com/politlcsuk/status/2000594550599864781

If only he was the PM with a large majority, who might be in a position to actually do something about the regulatory and bureaucratic overload?

Having a large majority doesn't free you from public law obligations around due process, consultation, taking full account of objections and so on.

Now, you could loosen some of those constraints - but that in itself is a project that detracts from your main agenda. Further, rather like the filibuster in the US, a sensible politician realises majorities come and go, and reducing friction for yourself today does so for your opponent tomorrow.

So it’s AOK for it took take multiple months to get permission to replace one (1) window and require £10,000+ to be spent on consultants to file the complex application?

Don’t expect any actual housing to be built, then.

That's a rather illogical inference. The opposite equivalent would be something like, "oh so you'd be totally fine with abolishing the civil service in favour of rule by PM diktat then, would you?"

If you are resisting change to the planning and regulation, then you are in favour of the £16,000, multi-year, window replacement.

That’s what is happening right now.

Well you'll be pleased to know I'm not. It's clearly an area in the spotlights for a shake up and rightly so. Long overdue.

Bet Norfolk agrees too but I mustn't presume.

How about we aim for just doubling the cost of the window, so around £10K and 6 months to get it done?

Or is that too much anarchism?

Just put that window in, end of. It's not rocket science. It's just basic glaziership.

So you want to install a window without a study to consider its effect on post colonial equality?

Heartless fascist.

I most certainly do want to cover the post colonial equality ramifications but let's get that off the critical path of installing the actual window. We'll be here until 2050 with this gaping hole otherwise.

That's a Bingo!

But think of the employment of the people compiling the reports.