Best Of

As for sentencing, thanks @williamglenn for the link - it was calculated as follows, and includes aggravating and mitigating circumstances:

"24. The minimum sentence after a trial would have been three and a half
years imprisonment.
25. You pleaded guilty at the Plea and Case Management hearing and you
are therefore entitled to a reduction in that sentence of twenty five
percent.
26. The sentence on count 1 therefore is one of 31 months imprisonment.
You will serve forty percent of that sentence."

I think the sentence seems a bit steep, but as David Allen Green points out, the sentence is the result of past governments passing legislation with stiff sentencing guidelines.

I also wonder if she was convinced to plead guilty as she would get a more lenient outcome (automatic reduction in senstence etc) without it being made explicit how long the sentence would be.

Nice review - thanks for the header.
One opportunity Labour have I think is to say they will recognise Palestine as a state. Popular in the country and may go some way to repairing their very damaged relations with Muslim and Green voters.

Will David Lammy be the Arthur Balfour of the 21st Century?

Not auspicious, though I’m sure bumbling, Ill-considered incompetence sowing the seeds of future chaos are well within the powers of Lammy.

To be fair to Balfour he acknowledged it wouldn't work without a proper Palestine.

No Hitler/holocaust, no Israel, so we can blame Herr Hitler for the current mess.

Eh? the Balfour Declaration arose from the First World War so Israel would still be here. There is, however, a school of thought that much of the current animosity comes from years of Nazi propaganda in the Middle East where they were trying to stir up native revolutions against the British, so to that extent, it is Hitler's fault.

The Balfour Declaration also exists within a context of European antisemitism and fears over immigration. The first two major pieces of UK legislation to keep immigrants out, the Aliens Act 1905 and Aliens Act 1920, are basically created to keep out Jewish immigrants fleeing eastern and then central Europe. The UK, like much of the West, was full of a discourse about being (supposedly) swamped by these aliens who (supposedly) don't share our culture and are less intelligent/civilised: basically, everything certain Islamophobic posters here say, but replace "Muslim" with "Jew".

https://x.com/costellowilliam/status/1928957288217464842?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw

Really short men have fewer lifetime sexual partners than taller men. Well I never

The amazing thing is the low number. The median for everyone is 7 in a lifetime.

7.

SEVEN


Not a typo

😶

I wonder what the breakdown by age is? I would naively presume oldies lower than that, children of the 80s probably a fair bit higher than the median.

In the noughties, there were seemingly limitless opportunities to get out and about with people looking to get their end away with the chain nightclubs and 18-30 holidays if that is what you wanted.

It certainly wasn't like that in the (late) 50's. Main reason was the fear/threat of pregnancy.
People who weren't around then can have no idea of the liberating effect of easy and freely available contraception.

That was my point. Both attitudes and opportunities changed.

Sexual intercourse began
In nineteen sixty-three
(which was rather late for me) -
Between the end of the Chatterley ban
And the Beatles' first LP.

Up to then there'd only been
A sort of bargaining,
A wrangle for the ring,
A shame that started at sixteen
And spread to everything.

The current £26m annual spending on DEI will be removed by Reform giving a £7b saving.

Explain the maths please.

In a similar vein



Although as the thread I stole that from points out if Reform explicit calls out the fact that the Government orders councils to provide xyz services but doesn’t then given the money in full to provide the service thst problem should be explicitly called out and shouldn’t be hidden away in the way it currently is

A very long time ago, I asked a former minister under Thatcher if they had considered letting the "Loony Councils" to tax and spend as they liked. He was horrified at the idea of leaving the rate payers at the mercies of such, just for political advantage.

But it is an interesting what-if. Because it began a process of ending the independence of local government.