Looks more like a literally lash together bang stick type effort - metal tubes etc. Doubt you would need 3D printing for that.
I was left wondering whether you just can’t buy shotguns in Japan? It seems a lot of effort to go for a weapon that’s in quite free circulation even in the U.K.
Have we discussed this? Lab 11 point lead with YouGov.
Yeah two this morning (also Techne) push Con into the 20s on 29. Probably best to see if this holds over a fortnight or is a knee jerk to the chaos if this week
Many voters are disgusted with the way the conservatives have behaved this week . Much support won't be coming back
The disgust is mostly directed at the hulking form of a soon-to-be ex-PM. The Conservatives have got rid. Some voters will mourn his passing (but are unlikely to go to Labour/LibDem to register their disgust).
Many, many more will give the new leader/PM a fair hearing they would not have extended to Boris.
Unless it's Truss. Or Braverman. Or Patel. Or *stifles laughter* Shapps.
Boris will not earn his much-needed money through sales of his personal memoir. He may get a mildly decent advance but the actual books won't sell. No one wants to read a serial liar's spin and self-justification these days. Biographies about this turbulent time might do better but non-fiction generally struggles these days. The internet is such a great, and terrible, resource for finding out information, as are endless tv shows, that there are very few rabbits left for a non-fiction author to pull out of the hat.
As I mentioned, I doubt he will fill halls for talks either. No one wants to listen to a failure and liar, and he's a poor public speaker. As chaotic as in everything else. His best hope will be after-dinner speeches when everyone is too drunk to mind incoherent ramblings about Peppa Pig world.
Leon got very personal with us all over this but, of course, the reason he's so irate is his own fear. Boris Johnson was a serial philanderer, a man approaching sixty whose attitude to sexual predation belonged to an era from which most of society has moved on. Boris Johnson got the top job for one reason and one reason only: to deliver Brexit. And that was on the back of the Remainer Parliament and an unelectable anti-Semitic Trotskyite Labour leader. As a person Boris was manifestly unsuited to the top job and the page on the chapter has already been turned. The flowers fade and the grass withers. It happens to all of us and some deserve it more than others.
The country is leaving Boris and his type of politics and personal behaviour behind. Whether that's under a reboot of the Conservative brand, or a completely new broom under Labour-LibDems, we will wait to see. But move on it has, and is.
You’re not the first PB-er to fall in love with me
Shhhh, secret, but I'm not into men. You may have noticed.
My partner is a gorgeous female.
Is she not worried that you’re clearly obsessed with me?
As for Bozza’s earnings, here’s the Independent:
“Mr Johnson, who is famously at home with deploying incendiary turns of phrase, would without doubt be in receipt of handsome offers from publishers for his Downing Street memoirs. Mr Blair received a reported £4.6m advance for his tome, with the sum being donated to charity.”
And here’s the Mail;
“Mr Johnson could become 'Billion Dollar Boris' if he plays his cards right with book deals, broadcast slots and speech circuits.
Experts say he will 'eclipse Tony Blair' and could net double the estimated £10million a year the former Labour leader made from speeches after office.
Mr Johnson, who once moaned his £250,000 Daily Telegraph column salary was 'chicken feed', is estimated to 'easily' earn £400,000 per speech while his memoirs could sell for 'at least' £1million
PR guru Mark Borkowski said: 'Boris is fairly wise and over the next 25 years if he can continue to grow it's going to be Billion Dollar Boris. He's a global brand, and with the right management, this is beyond speech-making.'“
Johnson certainly has a fanbase, but not one that pays £400 000 to hear of Peppa Pig.
In the UK no one wants or has a role for an ex-PM, they either sulk on the back benches (Heath, May) or lock themselves away, pretending that they still have significance (Blair, Brown, Thatcher), or completely disappear (Cameron). Major seems to be the only one enjoying himself.
I know you will claim that as a joke but you, of course, won't see that it's the kind of vindictive personal comment that drags this place and the people who post here, down.
When you don't like someone else's point of view you always resort to ad hominem. You sneer at a person for some trait you think you have a right to expose.
I hope everyone else on here has a nice day xx
You’ve done it again. You’ve started an argument with personal abuse, and then, when it is returned, you can’t cope and you cry foul
[...]
@Leon 'Leon' I was merely suggesting that the reason you are so upset and irate about Boris' decline is that it plays into your own fears. You wrote a book about sexual predation - we all know that - and you're now in your 60's and no longer the young stud you told the world about. Boris was in many ways your kind of man. You wrote an entire book about how to win women. You have frequently boasted about your sexual conquests with 'much' younger women, girls, teenagers.
You have spent a LOT of time attacking those who have campaigned for Boris to go. And you have totemised Boris. This after a Damascene conversion on the way to the ballot box.
I am suggesting that the reason for this may well be that when much of the country is turning its back on the kind of attitudes that you and Boris share, you are upset and irate about it. It's not rocket science. The market for your kind of male sexual predation has receded and the country has moved on from your book, just as it has now from Boris. Hence why you have had to reinvent yourself at least twice with pseudonymns as an author. Your particular brand under your real name (which I shall not mention) has had its day.
Instead of raging against the dying light, try to be kind to people and especially to yourself in your older guise. It will make the world, and here, a better place.
I find this a very inappropriate post. An unnecessarily personal attack, borderline defamatory.
As for the idea that the country has turned its back on male sexual predation, let's get real. Male sexual predators will still be operating and getting away with it and having their behaviour overlooked long after Boris has gone, in Westminster as elsewhere.
Few of us know other posters in real life and our online personas all have some level of invention, by omission if nothing else. But even if we do know people, to use that personal knowledge to attack others on a public forum seems to me to be wrong and a breach of confidence.
@Leon is a character: often interesting and insightful, at other times dull or tedious. As are we all, me and you included.
If you don't like @Leon, scroll past his posts. It's very easy to do.
So what was this book on sexual predation Leon wrote...i must admit he is by far the most interesting contributor to PB
You must be confusing Leon with an entirely different person called SeanT who wrote this book.
That remains wholly unsatisfactory as the now comprehensively discredited Johnson remains PM outside the scrutiny of the Hoc during recess. He can start the Third World War if he so desires that to be his legacy.
Whenever I dismissed a discredited employee, I escorted them out of the door as soon as was practical, normally moments after they had been terminated. If that meant they were paid off, so be it. They were nonetheless removed to minimise any immediate or future damage they could cause.
Exactly
Terminated employees are locked out of their email account
BoZo still has the nuclear codes...
The U.K. doesn’t have “Nuclear codes” - we have “Letters of Last Resort” - assuming Johnson actually wrote his….
On the Abe assassination, one possibility I have not seen mentionedhave just spotted mentioned about 10 minutes ago is that the weapon may be a 3d-printed-at-home gun.
Boris will not earn his much-needed money through sales of his personal memoir. He may get a mildly decent advance but the actual books won't sell. No one wants to read a serial liar's spin and self-justification these days. Biographies about this turbulent time might do better but non-fiction generally struggles these days. The internet is such a great, and terrible, resource for finding out information, as are endless tv shows, that there are very few rabbits left for a non-fiction author to pull out of the hat.
As I mentioned, I doubt he will fill halls for talks either. No one wants to listen to a failure and liar, and he's a poor public speaker. As chaotic as in everything else. His best hope will be after-dinner speeches when everyone is too drunk to mind incoherent ramblings about Peppa Pig world.
Leon got very personal with us all over this but, of course, the reason he's so irate is his own fear. Boris Johnson was a serial philanderer, a man approaching sixty whose attitude to sexual predation belonged to an era from which most of society has moved on. Boris Johnson got the top job for one reason and one reason only: to deliver Brexit. And that was on the back of the Remainer Parliament and an unelectable anti-Semitic Trotskyite Labour leader. As a person Boris was manifestly unsuited to the top job and the page on the chapter has already been turned. The flowers fade and the grass withers. It happens to all of us and some deserve it more than others.
The country is leaving Boris and his type of politics and personal behaviour behind. Whether that's under a reboot of the Conservative brand, or a completely new broom under Labour-LibDems, we will wait to see. But move on it has, and is.
You’re not the first PB-er to fall in love with me
Shhhh, secret, but I'm not into men. You may have noticed.
My partner is a gorgeous female.
Is she not worried that you’re clearly obsessed with me?
As for Bozza’s earnings, here’s the Independent:
“Mr Johnson, who is famously at home with deploying incendiary turns of phrase, would without doubt be in receipt of handsome offers from publishers for his Downing Street memoirs. Mr Blair received a reported £4.6m advance for his tome, with the sum being donated to charity.”
And here’s the Mail;
“Mr Johnson could become 'Billion Dollar Boris' if he plays his cards right with book deals, broadcast slots and speech circuits.
Experts say he will 'eclipse Tony Blair' and could net double the estimated £10million a year the former Labour leader made from speeches after office.
Mr Johnson, who once moaned his £250,000 Daily Telegraph column salary was 'chicken feed', is estimated to 'easily' earn £400,000 per speech while his memoirs could sell for 'at least' £1million
PR guru Mark Borkowski said: 'Boris is fairly wise and over the next 25 years if he can continue to grow it's going to be Billion Dollar Boris. He's a global brand, and with the right management, this is beyond speech-making.'“
Johnson certainly has a fanbase, but not one that pays £400 000 to hear of Peppa Pig.
In the UK no one wants or has a role for an ex-PM, they either sulk on the back benches (Heath, May) or lock themselves away, pretending that they still have significance (Blair, Brown, Thatcher), or completely disappear (Cameron). Major seems to be the only one enjoying himself.
I know you will claim that as a joke but you, of course, won't see that it's the kind of vindictive personal comment that drags this place and the people who post here, down.
When you don't like someone else's point of view you always resort to ad hominem. You sneer at a person for some trait you think you have a right to expose.
I hope everyone else on here has a nice day xx
You’ve done it again. You’ve started an argument with personal abuse, and then, when it is returned, you can’t cope and you cry foul
[...]
@Leon 'Leon' I was merely suggesting that the reason you are so upset and irate about Boris' decline is that it plays into your own fears. You wrote a book about sexual predation - we all know that - and you're now in your 60's and no longer the young stud you told the world about. Boris was in many ways your kind of man. You wrote an entire book about how to win women. You have frequently boasted about your sexual conquests with 'much' younger women, girls, teenagers.
You have spent a LOT of time attacking those who have campaigned for Boris to go. And you have totemised Boris. This after a Damascene conversion on the way to the ballot box.
I am suggesting that the reason for this may well be that when much of the country is turning its back on the kind of attitudes that you and Boris share, you are upset and irate about it. It's not rocket science. The market for your kind of male sexual predation has receded and the country has moved on from your book, just as it has now from Boris. Hence why you have had to reinvent yourself at least twice with pseudonymns as an author. Your particular brand under your real name (which I shall not mention) has had its day.
Instead of raging against the dying light, try to be kind to people and especially to yourself in your older guise. It will make the world, and here, a better place.
I find this a very inappropriate post. An unnecessarily personal attack, borderline defamatory.
As for the idea that the country has turned its back on male sexual predation, let's get real. Male sexual predators will still be operating and getting away with it and having their behaviour overlooked long after Boris has gone, in Westminster as elsewhere.
Few of us know other posters in real life and our online personas all have some level of invention, by omission if nothing else. But even if we do know people, to use that personal knowledge to attack others on a public forum seems to me to be wrong and a breach of confidence.
@Leon is a character: often interesting and insightful, at other times dull or tedious. As are we all, me and you included.
If you don't like @Leon, scroll past his posts. It's very easy to do.
So what was this book on sexual predation Leon wrote...i must admit he is by far the most interesting contributor to PB
Looks more like a literally lash together bang stick type effort - metal tubes etc. Doubt you would need 3D printing for that.
I was left wondering whether you just can’t buy shotguns in Japan? It seems a lot of effort to go for a weapon that’s in quite free circulation even in the U.K.
You can, but you're extensively vetted - along with your relatives. They really don't like civilian guns in Japan.
Have we discussed this? Lab 11 point lead with YouGov.
Yeah two this morning (also Techne) push Con into the 20s on 29. Probably best to see if this holds over a fortnight or is a knee jerk to the chaos if this week
Many voters are disgusted with the way the conservatives have behaved this week . Much support won't be coming back
The disgust is mostly directed at the hulking form of a soon-to-be ex-PM. The Conservatives have got rid. Some voters will mourn his passing (but are unlikely to go to Labour/LibDem to register their disgust).
Many, many more will give the new leader/PM a fair hearing they would not have extended to Boris.
Unless it's Truss. Or Braverman. Or Patel. Or *stifles laughter* Shapps.
Truss is the only one remotely in touching distance.
The NRA are going to say this shows why any gun restrictions are pointless, aren't they? BBC summary
The death of Japan's former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe today, after he was shot while giving a campaign speech, has shocked a country known for its strict gun laws and where violence involving firearms is very rare.
It’s extremely hard to own a weapon in Japan legally.
Although there are some exceptions, including for hunting, those applying for a licence are subject to mental health and drug checks, as well as criminal record checks.
In addition, those wanting to own a gun need a full day’s training and have to undergo a written test and pass a shooting range evaluation.
Pretty withering assessment of Simon Case, the cabinet Secretary who will now have to contain Johnson for the next two months, as ex senior civil servant David Normington calls him ‘bystander at a car crash’ at times over recent months on R4Today https://twitter.com/gabyhinsliff/status/1545303034250534913
When Boris and his team got in in 2019 they made it clear they wanted to change the Civil Service to be like the US system where they can pick their own top civil servants not have them foistered on them by the civil service. Maybe the system works better not doing that?
Looks more like a literally lash together bang stick type effort - metal tubes etc. Doubt you would need 3D printing for that.
I was left wondering whether you just can’t buy shotguns in Japan? It seems a lot of effort to go for a weapon that’s in quite free circulation even in the U.K.
It's not trivial to get one legally, there's a whole licensing procedure involving a note from your doctor to confirm you're no madder than the average farmer and so forth.
Looks more like a literally lash together bang stick type effort - metal tubes etc. Doubt you would need 3D printing for that.
I was left wondering whether you just can’t buy shotguns in Japan? It seems a lot of effort to go for a weapon that’s in quite free circulation even in the U.K.
Looks more like a literally lash together bang stick type effort - metal tubes etc. Doubt you would need 3D printing for that.
I was left wondering whether you just can’t buy shotguns in Japan? It seems a lot of effort to go for a weapon that’s in quite free circulation even in the U.K.
You can, but you're extensively vetted - along with your relatives. They really don't like civilian guns in Japan.
Firearm control actually works. In the UK legally owned firearms very rarely turn up in crime. The problem, such as it is, is with smuggled guns.
Have we discussed this? Lab 11 point lead with YouGov.
Yeah two this morning (also Techne) push Con into the 20s on 29. Probably best to see if this holds over a fortnight or is a knee jerk to the chaos if this week
Many voters are disgusted with the way the conservatives have behaved this week . Much support won't be coming back
The polling shifts reflect the current views of several million voters. All politics however remains relative and relational. A shift in labour to the Jezzaite left would change everything. And of course while a change of leader is highly unlikely, it is possible.
FWIW if the Tories elect a centrist decent person as leader I will look at them again anyway. If Labour went extreme again I would look at the Tories unless their new leader is as unsuitable as Boris as become.
It's all to play for. For every Tory member who thinks Baker or Dorries or someone should be leader, Labour have several who would want Burgon, Abbott and Pidcock.
Must be a shock for Germany to have to consider this sort of thing. They haven't had any shortages of anything since the 1950s, whereas we did in the 1970s during the Winter of Discontent, etc.
The difference between if Putin was killed and some people on twitter cheering is that a) we won't have the BBC doing it and b) in China nothing gets on social media for more than a few minutes (and certainty not promoted by tik tok) without the state agreeing that it is something they agree with.
The other difference is that Putin has arranged for people to be poisoned horribly here, unleashed a completely unecessary barbaric war that’s cost tens of thousands of lives and is a kleptocrat. Understandable that people would cheer his demise.
I might not be up on my Japanese news but pretty certain Abe hasn’t done any of those things.
As mentioned Abe came from the nationalist, revisionist side of Japanese politics, including visits to the Yasukuni Shrine. I think that stuff has quite a bit of resonance in Chinese (& Korean) folk memory, no doubt ably stirred up by Xi & co.
Reading Wiki, 'According to Bannon, Abe was the first nationalist leader to win an election in an industrialized democracy and successfully govern as a nationalist." "Prime Minister Abe was Trump before Trump", Bannon declared, eliciting laughter from some LDP lawmakers' which suggests a certain vibe.
Interesting that his killer was ex JSDF, would have thought those guys would have problems with pols not being nationalist enough. Hadn't realise that there was quite such a history of politcal assasination in Japan.
Trump has said Abe's assassination is 'devastating' and called him 'a truly great friend.' Modi has declared a national day of mourning in India after the shooting, Abe having been a close ally of his
Pretty withering assessment of Simon Case, the cabinet Secretary who will now have to contain Johnson for the next two months, as ex senior civil servant David Normington calls him ‘bystander at a car crash’ at times over recent months on R4Today https://twitter.com/gabyhinsliff/status/1545303034250534913
When Boris and his team got in in 2019 they made it clear they wanted to change the Civil Service to be like the US system where they can pick their own top civil servants not have them foistered on them by the civil service. Maybe the system works better not doing that?
Surely that was a Cummings technoman hypercontrol initiative, not a Johnson priority.
Mr. eek, Merkel's decision to ditch nuclear after Fukushima was obviously stupid at the time. It's not exactly improved with age. Less a fine wine of a policy than a festering cesspit of a concept.
That remains wholly unsatisfactory as the now comprehensively discredited Johnson remains PM outside the scrutiny of the Hoc during recess. He can start the Third World War if he so desires that to be his legacy.
Whenever I dismissed a discredited employee, I escorted them out of the door as soon as was practical, normally moments after they had been terminated. If that meant they were paid off, so be it. They were nonetheless removed to minimise any immediate or future damage they could cause.
Exactly
Terminated employees are locked out of their email account
BoZo still has the nuclear codes...
The U.K. doesn’t have “Nuclear codes” - we have “Letters of Last Resort” - assuming Johnson actually wrote his….
I just hope the letter was clear. It could be 3 pages of rambling and diversionary paragraphs.
It could be as inpenetrable as some of my walls of text, but with a lengthy discussion about the Mytilenean Debate and the ethics of punitive action.
Since all that's required of our nuclear deterrent is uncertainty about whether we'd use it, it matters not how obscure his jottings are.
Btw are these letters handwritten ? Composing them on a computer might be highly insecure.
And if so, do we check that the PM's handwriting is actually legible ?
This has raised the possibility in my mind that we might have a legacy typewriter to be used by incoming PMs to compose their last-resort letters. I do hope that's true.
Boris will not earn his much-needed money through sales of his personal memoir. He may get a mildly decent advance but the actual books won't sell. No one wants to read a serial liar's spin and self-justification these days. Biographies about this turbulent time might do better but non-fiction generally struggles these days. The internet is such a great, and terrible, resource for finding out information, as are endless tv shows, that there are very few rabbits left for a non-fiction author to pull out of the hat.
As I mentioned, I doubt he will fill halls for talks either. No one wants to listen to a failure and liar, and he's a poor public speaker. As chaotic as in everything else. His best hope will be after-dinner speeches when everyone is too drunk to mind incoherent ramblings about Peppa Pig world.
Leon got very personal with us all over this but, of course, the reason he's so irate is his own fear. Boris Johnson was a serial philanderer, a man approaching sixty whose attitude to sexual predation belonged to an era from which most of society has moved on. Boris Johnson got the top job for one reason and one reason only: to deliver Brexit. And that was on the back of the Remainer Parliament and an unelectable anti-Semitic Trotskyite Labour leader. As a person Boris was manifestly unsuited to the top job and the page on the chapter has already been turned. The flowers fade and the grass withers. It happens to all of us and some deserve it more than others.
The country is leaving Boris and his type of politics and personal behaviour behind. Whether that's under a reboot of the Conservative brand, or a completely new broom under Labour-LibDems, we will wait to see. But move on it has, and is.
You’re not the first PB-er to fall in love with me
Shhhh, secret, but I'm not into men. You may have noticed.
My partner is a gorgeous female.
Is she not worried that you’re clearly obsessed with me?
As for Bozza’s earnings, here’s the Independent:
“Mr Johnson, who is famously at home with deploying incendiary turns of phrase, would without doubt be in receipt of handsome offers from publishers for his Downing Street memoirs. Mr Blair received a reported £4.6m advance for his tome, with the sum being donated to charity.”
And here’s the Mail;
“Mr Johnson could become 'Billion Dollar Boris' if he plays his cards right with book deals, broadcast slots and speech circuits.
Experts say he will 'eclipse Tony Blair' and could net double the estimated £10million a year the former Labour leader made from speeches after office.
Mr Johnson, who once moaned his £250,000 Daily Telegraph column salary was 'chicken feed', is estimated to 'easily' earn £400,000 per speech while his memoirs could sell for 'at least' £1million
PR guru Mark Borkowski said: 'Boris is fairly wise and over the next 25 years if he can continue to grow it's going to be Billion Dollar Boris. He's a global brand, and with the right management, this is beyond speech-making.'“
Johnson certainly has a fanbase, but not one that pays £400 000 to hear of Peppa Pig.
In the UK no one wants or has a role for an ex-PM, they either sulk on the back benches (Heath, May) or lock themselves away, pretending that they still have significance (Blair, Brown, Thatcher), or completely disappear (Cameron). Major seems to be the only one enjoying himself.
I know you will claim that as a joke but you, of course, won't see that it's the kind of vindictive personal comment that drags this place and the people who post here, down.
When you don't like someone else's point of view you always resort to ad hominem. You sneer at a person for some trait you think you have a right to expose.
I hope everyone else on here has a nice day xx
You’ve done it again. You’ve started an argument with personal abuse, and then, when it is returned, you can’t cope and you cry foul
[...]
@Leon 'Leon' I was merely suggesting that the reason you are so upset and irate about Boris' decline is that it plays into your own fears. You wrote a book about sexual predation - we all know that - and you're now in your 60's and no longer the young stud you told the world about. Boris was in many ways your kind of man. You wrote an entire book about how to win women. You have frequently boasted about your sexual conquests with 'much' younger women, girls, teenagers.
You have spent a LOT of time attacking those who have campaigned for Boris to go. And you have totemised Boris. This after a Damascene conversion on the way to the ballot box.
I am suggesting that the reason for this may well be that when much of the country is turning its back on the kind of attitudes that you and Boris share, you are upset and irate about it. It's not rocket science. The market for your kind of male sexual predation has receded and the country has moved on from your book, just as it has now from Boris. Hence why you have had to reinvent yourself at least twice with pseudonymns as an author. Your particular brand under your real name (which I shall not mention) has had its day.
Instead of raging against the dying light, try to be kind to people and especially to yourself in your older guise. It will make the world, and here, a better place.
I find this a very inappropriate post. An unnecessarily personal attack, borderline defamatory.
As for the idea that the country has turned its back on male sexual predation, let's get real. Male sexual predators will still be operating and getting away with it and having their behaviour overlooked long after Boris has gone, in Westminster as elsewhere.
Few of us know other posters in real life and our online personas all have some level of invention, by omission if nothing else. But even if we do know people, to use that personal knowledge to attack others on a public forum seems to me to be wrong and a breach of confidence.
@Leon is a character: often interesting and insightful, at other times dull or tedious. As are we all, me and you included.
If you don't like @Leon, scroll past his posts. It's very easy to do.
So what was this book on sexual predation Leon wrote...i must admit he is by far the most interesting contributor to PB
You must be confusing Leon with an entirely different person called SeanT who wrote this book.
The humourless wokerati at the Guardian are surprisingly positive on this magnum opus. I will keep an eye out for it next time I am passing a second hand bookshop or a remainders bin.
Looks more like a literally lash together bang stick type effort - metal tubes etc. Doubt you would need 3D printing for that.
I was left wondering whether you just can’t buy shotguns in Japan? It seems a lot of effort to go for a weapon that’s in quite free circulation even in the U.K.
I'm always surprised the number is so high over here. Aside from my sister (who has three guns), I know no-one who owns one at the moment (or at least admits to it...)
But having said that, in that list E&W are #127 out of 230. Germany and France both in the 30s, so worldwide we're at a low number.
I guess it's all the farmers and the farmers' mums who's packin' round here ...
From a political convention perspective, it seems fairly clear that when Boris resigns as Conservative leader, he can stay in place until a replacement is nominated and then subsequently that the government's majority of 80 ish (or whatever it is) means that the replacement automatically would command the majority of the House. But is that ever actually formally tested?
It would be interesting to see what happened in the same circumstance if the Tory majority was, say, a bare 3 or 4, and they appointed a particularly controversial figure that even a lot of the Conservative parliamentary MPs weren't especially happy about. Would there be an automatic test of the House to formally install the new Tory leader as PM, or would it just be assumed up until such time as the Opposition decided to try a VONC?
Is there a historical precedent, or is the question just a stupid one?
Interestingly the YouGov was taken entirely before resignation and during 'the chaos'. Best PM ratings collapsed to 20 BJ to 37 SKS It suggests a relief rally in polling once BJ is gone Techne was also mostly 'mid chaos'
From a political convention perspective, it seems fairly clear that when Boris resigns as Conservative leader, he can stay in place until a replacement is nominated and then subsequently that the government's majority of 80 ish (or whatever it is) means that the replacement automatically would command the majority of the House. But is that ever actually formally tested?
It would be interesting to see what happened in the same circumstance if the Tory majority was, say, a bare 3 or 4, and they appointed a particularly controversial figure that even a lot of the Conservative parliamentary MPs weren't especially happy about. Would there be an automatic test of the House to formally install the new Tory leader as PM, or would it just be assumed up until such time as the Opposition decided to try a VONC?
Is there a historical precedent, or is the question just a stupid one?
From a political convention perspective, it seems fairly clear that when Boris resigns as Conservative leader, he can stay in place until a replacement is nominated and then subsequently that the government's majority of 80 ish (or whatever it is) means that the replacement automatically would command the majority of the House. But is that ever actually formally tested?
It would be interesting to see what happened in the same circumstance if the Tory majority was, say, a bare 3 or 4, and they appointed a particularly controversial figure that even a lot of the Conservative parliamentary MPs weren't especially happy about. Would there be an automatic test of the House to formally install the new Tory leader as PM, or would it just be assumed up until such time as the Opposition decided to try a VONC?
Is there a historical precedent, or is the question just a stupid one?
No precedent on this. Most likely, the smaller the Tory majority is the faster they would get on with the whole process just in case the opposition did try to hold a vote of confidence.
That remains wholly unsatisfactory as the now comprehensively discredited Johnson remains PM outside the scrutiny of the Hoc during recess. He can start the Third World War if he so desires that to be his legacy.
Whenever I dismissed a discredited employee, I escorted them out of the door as soon as was practical, normally moments after they had been terminated. If that meant they were paid off, so be it. They were nonetheless removed to minimise any immediate or future damage they could cause.
Exactly
Terminated employees are locked out of their email account
BoZo still has the nuclear codes...
The U.K. doesn’t have “Nuclear codes” - we have “Letters of Last Resort” - assuming Johnson actually wrote his….
You are overstating the case. Johnson didn't need to trim very much to survive and thrive.
A bit softer on net zero, a bit more attention to truth and the rules, a bit more aggressive on the culture wars, some definitive action on tax cuts, commitments to no more lockdowns etc.
But no. He would not trim one iota. He felt himself above it all and he would not compromise at all. That's why he is going.
Looks more like a literally lash together bang stick type effort - metal tubes etc. Doubt you would need 3D printing for that.
I was left wondering whether you just can’t buy shotguns in Japan? It seems a lot of effort to go for a weapon that’s in quite free circulation even in the U.K.
I'm always surprised the number is so high over here. Aside from my sister (who has three guns), I know no-one who owns one at the moment (or at least admits to it...)
But having said that, in that list E&W are #127 out of 230. Germany and France both in the 30s, so worldwide we're at a low number.
I guess it's all the farmers and the farmers' mums who's packin' round here ...
In this part of the world I think it is farmers. In Germany, more so hunters. ... Hmm, I factchecked myself and the German rates are due to sports shooting, not precisely hunting.
Must be a shock for Germany to have to consider this sort of thing. They haven't had any shortages of anything since the 1950s, whereas we did in the 1970s during the Winter of Discontent, etc.
They are talking about restricting heat during the 11p to 6am window.
Does German energy demand work the other way round to ours?
Must be a shock for Germany to have to consider this sort of thing. They haven't had any shortages of anything since the 1950s, whereas we did in the 1970s during the Winter of Discontent, etc.
They are talking about restricting heat during the 11p to 6am window.
Does German energy demand work the other way round to ours?
That's a bizarre time to restrict heat/power, most people prefer it a little cooler at night and only factories that HAVE to go 24-7 are operational at those times.
Boris will not earn his much-needed money through sales of his personal memoir. He may get a mildly decent advance but the actual books won't sell. No one wants to read a serial liar's spin and self-justification these days. Biographies about this turbulent time might do better but non-fiction generally struggles these days. The internet is such a great, and terrible, resource for finding out information, as are endless tv shows, that there are very few rabbits left for a non-fiction author to pull out of the hat.
As I mentioned, I doubt he will fill halls for talks either. No one wants to listen to a failure and liar, and he's a poor public speaker. As chaotic as in everything else. His best hope will be after-dinner speeches when everyone is too drunk to mind incoherent ramblings about Peppa Pig world.
Leon got very personal with us all over this but, of course, the reason he's so irate is his own fear. Boris Johnson was a serial philanderer, a man approaching sixty whose attitude to sexual predation belonged to an era from which most of society has moved on. Boris Johnson got the top job for one reason and one reason only: to deliver Brexit. And that was on the back of the Remainer Parliament and an unelectable anti-Semitic Trotskyite Labour leader. As a person Boris was manifestly unsuited to the top job and the page on the chapter has already been turned. The flowers fade and the grass withers. It happens to all of us and some deserve it more than others.
The country is leaving Boris and his type of politics and personal behaviour behind. Whether that's under a reboot of the Conservative brand, or a completely new broom under Labour-LibDems, we will wait to see. But move on it has, and is.
You’re not the first PB-er to fall in love with me
Shhhh, secret, but I'm not into men. You may have noticed.
My partner is a gorgeous female.
Is she not worried that you’re clearly obsessed with me?
As for Bozza’s earnings, here’s the Independent:
“Mr Johnson, who is famously at home with deploying incendiary turns of phrase, would without doubt be in receipt of handsome offers from publishers for his Downing Street memoirs. Mr Blair received a reported £4.6m advance for his tome, with the sum being donated to charity.”
And here’s the Mail;
“Mr Johnson could become 'Billion Dollar Boris' if he plays his cards right with book deals, broadcast slots and speech circuits.
Experts say he will 'eclipse Tony Blair' and could net double the estimated £10million a year the former Labour leader made from speeches after office.
Mr Johnson, who once moaned his £250,000 Daily Telegraph column salary was 'chicken feed', is estimated to 'easily' earn £400,000 per speech while his memoirs could sell for 'at least' £1million
PR guru Mark Borkowski said: 'Boris is fairly wise and over the next 25 years if he can continue to grow it's going to be Billion Dollar Boris. He's a global brand, and with the right management, this is beyond speech-making.'“
Johnson certainly has a fanbase, but not one that pays £400 000 to hear of Peppa Pig.
In the UK no one wants or has a role for an ex-PM, they either sulk on the back benches (Heath, May) or lock themselves away, pretending that they still have significance (Blair, Brown, Thatcher), or completely disappear (Cameron). Major seems to be the only one enjoying himself.
I know you will claim that as a joke but you, of course, won't see that it's the kind of vindictive personal comment that drags this place and the people who post here, down.
When you don't like someone else's point of view you always resort to ad hominem. You sneer at a person for some trait you think you have a right to expose.
I hope everyone else on here has a nice day xx
You’ve done it again. You’ve started an argument with personal abuse, and then, when it is returned, you can’t cope and you cry foul
[...]
@Leon 'Leon' I was merely suggesting that the reason you are so upset and irate about Boris' decline is that it plays into your own fears. You wrote a book about sexual predation - we all know that - and you're now in your 60's and no longer the young stud you told the world about. Boris was in many ways your kind of man. You wrote an entire book about how to win women. You have frequently boasted about your sexual conquests with 'much' younger women, girls, teenagers.
You have spent a LOT of time attacking those who have campaigned for Boris to go. And you have totemised Boris. This after a Damascene conversion on the way to the ballot box.
I am suggesting that the reason for this may well be that when much of the country is turning its back on the kind of attitudes that you and Boris share, you are upset and irate about it. It's not rocket science. The market for your kind of male sexual predation has receded and the country has moved on from your book, just as it has now from Boris. Hence why you have had to reinvent yourself at least twice with pseudonymns as an author. Your particular brand under your real name (which I shall not mention) has had its day.
Instead of raging against the dying light, try to be kind to people and especially to yourself in your older guise. It will make the world, and here, a better place.
I find this a very inappropriate post. An unnecessarily personal attack, borderline defamatory.
As for the idea that the country has turned its back on male sexual predation, let's get real. Male sexual predators will still be operating and getting away with it and having their behaviour overlooked long after Boris has gone, in Westminster as elsewhere.
Few of us know other posters in real life and our online personas all have some level of invention, by omission if nothing else. But even if we do know people, to use that personal knowledge to attack others on a public forum seems to me to be wrong and a breach of confidence.
@Leon is a character: often interesting and insightful, at other times dull or tedious. As are we all, me and you included.
If you don't like @Leon, scroll past his posts. It's very easy to do.
That's very kind of you, my dear fiancee (am I allowed to tell people yet?), but I really don't mind. I'm old enough and ugly enough to look after myself
What DOES irritate me is @Heathener's hypocrisy. She comes out with unprovoked personal attacks, naming and slurring me, at 7am! - and then she moans like one of TSE's French stepmums when I reply in kind. As if I have transgressed and only she is allowed to be abusive
And then she complains about being so scared of personal attacks she "shakes with fear". So why start them then? It is quite mystifying
Anyway I've pointed this out to her and hopefully she will see the light. I live to educate
You may. Though I think everyone is much too interested in this Boris character. And the seven dwarfs who are vying to replace him.
@OnlyLivingBoy - You've got me googling now. The Woke people at the Indy also reviewed this "Millions of Women" book. I apologise for the chunk of quotation, but their review is worth reading at length, so we can all grasp the true depravity of this man "@SeanT":
"On the cover of my proof copy of Sean Thomas's non-fiction account of his adventures on the internet-dating scene, Millions of Women Are Waiting to Meet You, there is a jokey warning that "this book reveals how men really think." This isn't true. Sean Thomas may believe himself to be a normal man, but in the course of this book he decides a woman named "Bongowoman" is an appealing person to go on a date with; describes how his first sexual experience (at 12 years old) involved him flashing at his parents' cleaning woman; reveals that he can only go out with women who are shorter than him (he describes such women as "sit-on-my-lap girls"); fakes suicide to impress a girl who's broken up with him; suffers from several bouts of serious impotence; catches crabs from an Australian woman; boasts about the TV celebrity he used to date, a relationship which began when he shoved his hand up her skirt; gets so addicted to internet porn (particularly "Bernie's Spanking Pages" and "extremely convoluted scenarios where submissive Danish actresses are intimately shaved by their dominant female doctors in the shower") that he masturbates himself into the hospital, where he ends up on a saline drip; goes into a 15-page explanation of why he doesn't want to sodomise a woman who's begged him to do so, before deciding that he will do it after all; explains how when he was 30 he made his 17-year old schoolgirl lover have an abortion; gets a blow-job from his best friend's girlfriend on Bayswater Road in full view of the public; performs oral sex on a woman moments after she has finished having sex with his friend in the other room; goes to a strip club in Thailand so often over a three-month period that one of the strippers writes messages to him with a pen clenched in her vagina; has an abortive threesome in Russia which ends with him prematurely ejaculating over the carpet, and in one of the book's most flabbergasting chapters, mistakenly believes he's impregnated a prostitute and considers throwing everything in and starting a family with her.
Now, Sean, that ain't normal. It is, however, hilarious. I can't remember reading a book that's made me laugh out loud as much as this one. Thomas must be extraordinarily brave...."
MK be like 'dont come to us for big swings, we hated him anyway' 'but Davey can sod off too'
Can understand MK having an affection for SKS. Both objectively very pleasant. Both often considered (perhaps unfairly) to be lacking in soul or excitement.
Interestingly the YouGov was taken entirely before resignation and during 'the chaos'. Best PM ratings collapsed to 20 BJ to 37 SKS It suggests a relief rally in polling once BJ is gone Techne was also mostly 'mid chaos'
The Techne poll dated yesterday included the question: "How confident are you in the present Government's ability to deal with the country's priorities until the new Government takes office?" (82% less or not at all confident)
That question could only have been asked after Johnson's announcement. It suggests a snap poll conducted from late yesterday morning. So people should have known that Johnson had gone and it didn't stop them giving Labour and the LDs a combined 55% to the Conservatives 29%.
In other news, this week it was revealed that Elon Musk has had twins with a female executive at one of his companies.
Seeing the Musk fans try to spin this is quite hilarious.
Why do they have to spin it? He hasn’t done anything illegal. It might be a sackable offence in some companies (is it?) but then he’s not going to sack himself, he owns the company
That's the point. You don't shag around with the staff, even consensually: especially when you are the top boss.
It should be noted that Musk's companies are facing numerous race and sexual discrimination lawsuits.
A fish rots from its head.
What puritanical bullshit!
What consensual adults do in their own beds is between them and nobody else.
A significant proportion of the married people I know met their spouses through work, when you're spending all day at work and the only people you meet most of the time are at work, its entirely natural and normal for intimate relations to happen.
People need to grow up and stop puritanically staring at other people in judgement.
It isn't 'puritanical'; it's common sense. There have been too many cases of bosses abusing their positions in various ways. Just look at the movie industry for one example.
I met my wife through work, when I was project managing her. That was difficult enough, and I'd like to think we handled it well (and were both relatively junior).
But if you're one of the top bods, it really isn't rocket science to say that you don't shag the staff. And Musk has massive opportunities to meet people outside his various companies. Grimes, for example ...
You're right its not rocket science to say that, its puritanical bullshit to say it.
If Musk and the executive are attracted to each other and get intimate that's between them and there is nothing wrong with that any more than you and your then-future wife doing the same.
Abuse is wrong, consensual is not. So long as it is consensual, it is OK.
It really is not puritanical. It's safeguarding the company and its staff.
And there's a vast difference between our situation and theirs, in virtually every way. I can go into details if you want: but if you are one of the top guys or gals, you do not have a relationship with the staff. And if you must, make sure it's open, don't get them pregnant, and especially don't do it if you're having a surrogate child with your girlfriend at the same time.
Bollocks, bollocks and more bollocks.
Keeping your private life private is entirely appropriate, so long as its consensual.
Them having a child is between them, and his then-girlfriend perhaps, not anyone else or the firm.
What consensual adults do is between them. You're acting like people who object to gays having sex because men sleeping with men is immoral supposedly. So long as they're genuinely consenting, its between them, whether it be man with woman, man with man, or employer with employee.
It really is not bollocks. Look at the vast number of abuses that have turned up over the years in all areas.
And your comment about gays is wrong, laughable and crass.
The point is that the boss has massive power over the individual - in the same way a university lecturer has over an adult student (in fact, bosses often have more power). It's not about the relationship: it's about the potential for abuse of power.
(In our case, that did not really exist. We were essentially at the same level, and I was just project managing her on a couple of projects: she was just as likely to have pm'ed me if circs had been different. And as we told our bosses, and they ensured there could be no abuses.)
If power is abused, deal with the abuse.
If its consensual, there's no abuse, just puritanism.
Relationships end. All Musk's relationships have ended, some acrimoniously. When they end, often one party or both feel aggrieved, rightly or not. How the heck is a company to (fairly) work out if there has been abuse or not? Did the boss promise something? A promotion? Were company resources used during the relationship? etc, etc.
It's about power. The bigger the gap between the staff members, the greater the risk of abuse.
It was done your way for centuries, and lots of people were abused.
As I said, Musk has plenty of opportunities to dip his wick in people who do not work for his companies. Including his (apparently now-ex) gf.
Just because there's a potential for abuse doesn't mean that consensual adults can't consensually do what consensual adults want to do. 🤦♂️
Yes he has opportunities to "dip his wick" for people outside of his company. He also has opportunities to do so for people inside it to, if they consensually agree.
If sex isn't consensual, it should be for the Police to investigate more than the company.
You appear to be totally missing my point. Do you think university lecturers should be free to have relationships with students?
Anyway, I doubt we're going to agree on this...
So long as the university students are over 18 and consenting, yes of course I do.
I agree with what I believe the law is, that sex with children under 16 is not ok, and if you're in a position of authority over a 16 or 17 year old then that is not OK either.
I am completely liberal on matters of sex: What consenting adults do is up to them.
Not if its abusive. And abuse of power is an abuse.
If it's abusive it should be a matter for the Police.
If it's consenting, it should not be.
Either way, it's up to the adults involved.
Oh lordy, you're missing the point. What does 'consenting' mean if a boss promises an employee an advantage? Is that fair towards other employees? If such a promise is later made, how does the company work out if it is true? What happens if it is 'sleep with me or you won't get promotion'? How do you prove that? Disprove it?
And there are many other potential conflicts as well.
When there are power disparities, it's best all round if relationships are avoided. And if they cannot, they have to be open and visible, not hidden. Which is difficult if one or both of the parties are married...
And how are you going to promote openly visible relationships when you puritanically try to drive relationships underground by prohibiting them? Your own logic is self-contradictory.
If you want to encourage honesty and openness, then being puritanical or promoting a "don't ask, don't tell" attitude won't get it.
It really isn't self-contradictory. And it's about preventing and reducing the abuses that the approach you seem to prefer has caused so many times.
Abusers need to be punished and abuse taken seriously not brushed under the rug.
Taking away everyone else's liberties isn't a way to do that. Driving relationships underground as you've frowned upon them and made them socially unacceptable just plays into the abusers hands, as abusers have more opportunities for abuse when everything is underground.
Openness and honesty is the polar opposite of prohibition, not its friend. Your puritanical prohibitionism won't stop adults screwing each other, it will just make them do so in secret more, which will make the abusers job easier. 🤦♂️
Prohibition does not work.
You're forgetting two basic principles.
1. It's a huge problem for any employer. If they tell you, in induction, not to do it, then you can't complain when you do it in secret or openly, and they get you for it.
2. You just don't do things that conflict with your employer's interests (except in permitted areas such as TUS work). I work for Widgets PLC, I'm not allowed to post on here saying they are crap and Thingummies Ltd's products are superior. I'm not allowed to put laxative in the shop-floor manager's tea. And I'm not allowed to jump the manager's spouse, certainly if we're in the same line of management, because that tends to lead to equally messy results in the workplace.
Re the libertarian thing - if one doesn't like it, then one can piss off the moment the no-conflict rule comes up at induction. Even if one does not have the common sense to realise it a priori.
I am not forgetting either.
Companies can have policies, even bad policies, I agree with that. Doesn't make those policies universal, or correct.
However Josias is acting as if the bad policies he knows are universal and appropriate. They're not universal. They're not the law. Many, many employers do not have such policies as has already been confirmed by many here.
Just because other companies have bad policies, doesn't mean Musk or anyone else needs to adopt such bad policies in their own business.
If there is no conflict there is no issue. Two of my friends at work got married. No problem.
As has been indicated below, it's also about the company protecting itself from claims in the future. Or even the bad atmosphere that can occur if a relationship goes sour.
It's also about the 'potential' for conflict, not just whether conflict occurs. If someone at my grade is promoted ahead of me, and they've been having an affair with the CEO, it would be fair for me to wonder if there was a connection between the promotion and the affair. And it would be the devil's job to prove there was no connection.
Bart's way has been tried for centuries, and it has led to lots of problems and abuse of power. I'm not talking about new laws (I don't think I've mentioned the law at all); just that institutions need to protect themselves and their employees.
Musk's behaviour will be noted by others further down the organisational chain. If the boss can do it, so can they. And his companies are not exactly free from strife atm...
Men and women haven't only had sex for centuries, they've had sex for as long as humanity has existed.
You might want to try to regulate away people's sex drives, but you're as puritanical and as doomed to failure as those who wish to pray away the gay.
Firms have a legitimate interest in preventing abuse. They don't have a legitimate interest in preventing pregnancy.
Absolutely Musk's employees can have sex and get pregnant. That's kind of how humanity propagates itself you know?
Boris will not earn his much-needed money through sales of his personal memoir. He may get a mildly decent advance but the actual books won't sell. No one wants to read a serial liar's spin and self-justification these days. Biographies about this turbulent time might do better but non-fiction generally struggles these days. The internet is such a great, and terrible, resource for finding out information, as are endless tv shows, that there are very few rabbits left for a non-fiction author to pull out of the hat.
As I mentioned, I doubt he will fill halls for talks either. No one wants to listen to a failure and liar, and he's a poor public speaker. As chaotic as in everything else. His best hope will be after-dinner speeches when everyone is too drunk to mind incoherent ramblings about Peppa Pig world.
Leon got very personal with us all over this but, of course, the reason he's so irate is his own fear. Boris Johnson was a serial philanderer, a man approaching sixty whose attitude to sexual predation belonged to an era from which most of society has moved on. Boris Johnson got the top job for one reason and one reason only: to deliver Brexit. And that was on the back of the Remainer Parliament and an unelectable anti-Semitic Trotskyite Labour leader. As a person Boris was manifestly unsuited to the top job and the page on the chapter has already been turned. The flowers fade and the grass withers. It happens to all of us and some deserve it more than others.
The country is leaving Boris and his type of politics and personal behaviour behind. Whether that's under a reboot of the Conservative brand, or a completely new broom under Labour-LibDems, we will wait to see. But move on it has, and is.
You’re not the first PB-er to fall in love with me
Shhhh, secret, but I'm not into men. You may have noticed.
My partner is a gorgeous female.
Is she not worried that you’re clearly obsessed with me?
As for Bozza’s earnings, here’s the Independent:
“Mr Johnson, who is famously at home with deploying incendiary turns of phrase, would without doubt be in receipt of handsome offers from publishers for his Downing Street memoirs. Mr Blair received a reported £4.6m advance for his tome, with the sum being donated to charity.”
And here’s the Mail;
“Mr Johnson could become 'Billion Dollar Boris' if he plays his cards right with book deals, broadcast slots and speech circuits.
Experts say he will 'eclipse Tony Blair' and could net double the estimated £10million a year the former Labour leader made from speeches after office.
Mr Johnson, who once moaned his £250,000 Daily Telegraph column salary was 'chicken feed', is estimated to 'easily' earn £400,000 per speech while his memoirs could sell for 'at least' £1million
PR guru Mark Borkowski said: 'Boris is fairly wise and over the next 25 years if he can continue to grow it's going to be Billion Dollar Boris. He's a global brand, and with the right management, this is beyond speech-making.'“
Johnson certainly has a fanbase, but not one that pays £400 000 to hear of Peppa Pig.
In the UK no one wants or has a role for an ex-PM, they either sulk on the back benches (Heath, May) or lock themselves away, pretending that they still have significance (Blair, Brown, Thatcher), or completely disappear (Cameron). Major seems to be the only one enjoying himself.
I know you will claim that as a joke but you, of course, won't see that it's the kind of vindictive personal comment that drags this place and the people who post here, down.
When you don't like someone else's point of view you always resort to ad hominem. You sneer at a person for some trait you think you have a right to expose.
I hope everyone else on here has a nice day xx
You’ve done it again. You’ve started an argument with personal abuse, and then, when it is returned, you can’t cope and you cry foul
[...]
@Leon 'Leon' I was merely suggesting that the reason you are so upset and irate about Boris' decline is that it plays into your own fears. You wrote a book about sexual predation - we all know that - and you're now in your 60's and no longer the young stud you told the world about. Boris was in many ways your kind of man. You wrote an entire book about how to win women. You have frequently boasted about your sexual conquests with 'much' younger women, girls, teenagers.
You have spent a LOT of time attacking those who have campaigned for Boris to go. And you have totemised Boris. This after a Damascene conversion on the way to the ballot box.
I am suggesting that the reason for this may well be that when much of the country is turning its back on the kind of attitudes that you and Boris share, you are upset and irate about it. It's not rocket science. The market for your kind of male sexual predation has receded and the country has moved on from your book, just as it has now from Boris. Hence why you have had to reinvent yourself at least twice with pseudonymns as an author. Your particular brand under your real name (which I shall not mention) has had its day.
Instead of raging against the dying light, try to be kind to people and especially to yourself in your older guise. It will make the world, and here, a better place.
I find this a very inappropriate post. An unnecessarily personal attack, borderline defamatory.
As for the idea that the country has turned its back on male sexual predation, let's get real. Male sexual predators will still be operating and getting away with it and having their behaviour overlooked long after Boris has gone, in Westminster as elsewhere.
Few of us know other posters in real life and our online personas all have some level of invention, by omission if nothing else. But even if we do know people, to use that personal knowledge to attack others on a public forum seems to me to be wrong and a breach of confidence.
@Leon is a character: often interesting and insightful, at other times dull or tedious. As are we all, me and you included.
If you don't like @Leon, scroll past his posts. It's very easy to do.
That's very kind of you, my dear fiancee (am I allowed to tell people yet?), but I really don't mind. I'm old enough and ugly enough to look after myself
What DOES irritate me is @Heathener's hypocrisy. She comes out with unprovoked personal attacks, naming and slurring me, at 7am! - and then she moans like one of TSE's French stepmums when I reply in kind. As if I have transgressed and only she is allowed to be abusive
And then she complains about being so scared of personal attacks she "shakes with fear". So why start them then? It is quite mystifying
Anyway I've pointed this out to her and hopefully she will see the light. I live to educate
You may. Though I think everyone is much too interested in this Boris character. And the seven dwarfs who are vying to replace him.
If only it were only seven... Wiki is up to 14 "declared" or "publicly expressed interest", the latest addition being John Baron!
Must be a shock for Germany to have to consider this sort of thing. They haven't had any shortages of anything since the 1950s, whereas we did in the 1970s during the Winter of Discontent, etc.
They are talking about restricting heat during the 11p to 6am window.
Does German energy demand work the other way round to ours?
Well there is a stereotype of Germans overheating their homes, including at night. I don't know how much truth there is in it. When British people stay in their homes they can't stand how hot it is when trying to sleep. I've read about it several times.
Interestingly the YouGov was taken entirely before resignation and during 'the chaos'. Best PM ratings collapsed to 20 BJ to 37 SKS It suggests a relief rally in polling once BJ is gone Techne was also mostly 'mid chaos'
The Techne poll dated yesterday included the question: "How confident are you in the present Government's ability to deal with the country's priorities until the new Government takes office?" (82% less or not at all confident)
That question could only have been asked after Johnson's announcement. It suggests a snap poll conducted from late yesterday morning. So people should have known that Johnson had gone and it didn't stop them giving Labour and the LDs a combined 55% to the Conservatives 29%.
Ah missed that, i thought it was the usual weds/thurs fieldwork
Boris will not earn his much-needed money through sales of his personal memoir. He may get a mildly decent advance but the actual books won't sell. No one wants to read a serial liar's spin and self-justification these days. Biographies about this turbulent time might do better but non-fiction generally struggles these days. The internet is such a great, and terrible, resource for finding out information, as are endless tv shows, that there are very few rabbits left for a non-fiction author to pull out of the hat.
As I mentioned, I doubt he will fill halls for talks either. No one wants to listen to a failure and liar, and he's a poor public speaker. As chaotic as in everything else. His best hope will be after-dinner speeches when everyone is too drunk to mind incoherent ramblings about Peppa Pig world.
Leon got very personal with us all over this but, of course, the reason he's so irate is his own fear. Boris Johnson was a serial philanderer, a man approaching sixty whose attitude to sexual predation belonged to an era from which most of society has moved on. Boris Johnson got the top job for one reason and one reason only: to deliver Brexit. And that was on the back of the Remainer Parliament and an unelectable anti-Semitic Trotskyite Labour leader. As a person Boris was manifestly unsuited to the top job and the page on the chapter has already been turned. The flowers fade and the grass withers. It happens to all of us and some deserve it more than others.
The country is leaving Boris and his type of politics and personal behaviour behind. Whether that's under a reboot of the Conservative brand, or a completely new broom under Labour-LibDems, we will wait to see. But move on it has, and is.
You’re not the first PB-er to fall in love with me
Shhhh, secret, but I'm not into men. You may have noticed.
My partner is a gorgeous female.
Is she not worried that you’re clearly obsessed with me?
As for Bozza’s earnings, here’s the Independent:
“Mr Johnson, who is famously at home with deploying incendiary turns of phrase, would without doubt be in receipt of handsome offers from publishers for his Downing Street memoirs. Mr Blair received a reported £4.6m advance for his tome, with the sum being donated to charity.”
And here’s the Mail;
“Mr Johnson could become 'Billion Dollar Boris' if he plays his cards right with book deals, broadcast slots and speech circuits.
Experts say he will 'eclipse Tony Blair' and could net double the estimated £10million a year the former Labour leader made from speeches after office.
Mr Johnson, who once moaned his £250,000 Daily Telegraph column salary was 'chicken feed', is estimated to 'easily' earn £400,000 per speech while his memoirs could sell for 'at least' £1million
PR guru Mark Borkowski said: 'Boris is fairly wise and over the next 25 years if he can continue to grow it's going to be Billion Dollar Boris. He's a global brand, and with the right management, this is beyond speech-making.'“
Johnson certainly has a fanbase, but not one that pays £400 000 to hear of Peppa Pig.
In the UK no one wants or has a role for an ex-PM, they either sulk on the back benches (Heath, May) or lock themselves away, pretending that they still have significance (Blair, Brown, Thatcher), or completely disappear (Cameron). Major seems to be the only one enjoying himself.
I know you will claim that as a joke but you, of course, won't see that it's the kind of vindictive personal comment that drags this place and the people who post here, down.
When you don't like someone else's point of view you always resort to ad hominem. You sneer at a person for some trait you think you have a right to expose.
I hope everyone else on here has a nice day xx
You’ve done it again. You’ve started an argument with personal abuse, and then, when it is returned, you can’t cope and you cry foul
[...]
@Leon 'Leon' I was merely suggesting that the reason you are so upset and irate about Boris' decline is that it plays into your own fears. You wrote a book about sexual predation - we all know that - and you're now in your 60's and no longer the young stud you told the world about. Boris was in many ways your kind of man. You wrote an entire book about how to win women. You have frequently boasted about your sexual conquests with 'much' younger women, girls, teenagers.
You have spent a LOT of time attacking those who have campaigned for Boris to go. And you have totemised Boris. This after a Damascene conversion on the way to the ballot box.
I am suggesting that the reason for this may well be that when much of the country is turning its back on the kind of attitudes that you and Boris share, you are upset and irate about it. It's not rocket science. The market for your kind of male sexual predation has receded and the country has moved on from your book, just as it has now from Boris. Hence why you have had to reinvent yourself at least twice with pseudonymns as an author. Your particular brand under your real name (which I shall not mention) has had its day.
Instead of raging against the dying light, try to be kind to people and especially to yourself in your older guise. It will make the world, and here, a better place.
I find this a very inappropriate post. An unnecessarily personal attack, borderline defamatory.
As for the idea that the country has turned its back on male sexual predation, let's get real. Male sexual predators will still be operating and getting away with it and having their behaviour overlooked long after Boris has gone, in Westminster as elsewhere.
Few of us know other posters in real life and our online personas all have some level of invention, by omission if nothing else. But even if we do know people, to use that personal knowledge to attack others on a public forum seems to me to be wrong and a breach of confidence.
@Leon is a character: often interesting and insightful, at other times dull or tedious. As are we all, me and you included.
If you don't like @Leon, scroll past his posts. It's very easy to do.
So what was this book on sexual predation Leon wrote...i must admit he is by far the most interesting contributor to PB
You must be confusing Leon with an entirely different person called SeanT who wrote this book.
The humourless wokerati at the Guardian are surprisingly positive on this magnum opus. I will keep an eye out for it next time I am passing a second hand bookshop or a remainders bin.
Wendy_F on amazon reviews says:
"Thought that this might be an entertaining insight into internet dating, with funny stories of how people do and don't hit it off...but it was a boring, self-centered look in to the shallow world of an egotistical callous bloke's sex life. I wish that I hadn't wasted my time on this, would not recommend it unless you like reading lads mags."
Jenny_Jen says:
"Got bored half way to three quarters of the way through. It's enough to put any woman off men for life. Can men really be so shallow....."
Bla_bla says:
"Put it this way. I just finished the part where he goes to Thailand (he's in his thirties) and sleeps with lots of 17 year old Thai prostitutes (by the way, he 'prefers girls who are small, submissive, large-breasted, and non-Caucasian'). He has a two-week unpaid affair with one and doesn't use a condom. She falls pregnant and emails him after he's left, claiming the baby is his. He goes to Thailand and has the baby DNA tested, then leaves without a word when it turns out not to be his baby, although she's crying. This is supposed to be an insight into the mind of the 'average guy'."
---------
There are times when it is good to be humourless and woke.
Are the ousting of Johnson, the farmers protests all over Europe and the awful assassination of poor Mr Abe part of a pattern?
I would say yes
The governments of the developed economies have stopped offering their voters paths to prosperity and progress.
Their offer now is 'help' with the sacrifices they are asking people to make. The point is, however, that general trajectory is downwards and not upwards and nobody seems to have noticed.
Well the voters are noticing. In democracies, this a recipe for growing instability. It will go on until someone cuts and runs and ditches the green agenda completely in their country.
@OnlyLivingBoy - You've got me googling now. The Woke people at the Indy also reviewed this "Millions of Women" book. I apologise for the chunk of quotation, but their review is worth reading at length, so we can all grasp the true depravity of this man "@SeanT":
"On the cover of my proof copy of Sean Thomas's non-fiction account of his adventures on the internet-dating scene, Millions of Women Are Waiting to Meet You, there is a jokey warning that "this book reveals how men really think." This isn't true. Sean Thomas may believe himself to be a normal man, but in the course of this book he decides a woman named "Bongowoman" is an appealing person to go on a date with; describes how his first sexual experience (at 12 years old) involved him flashing at his parents' cleaning woman; reveals that he can only go out with women who are shorter than him (he describes such women as "sit-on-my-lap girls"); fakes suicide to impress a girl who's broken up with him; suffers from several bouts of serious impotence; catches crabs from an Australian woman; boasts about the TV celebrity he used to date, a relationship which began when he shoved his hand up her skirt; gets so addicted to internet porn (particularly "Bernie's Spanking Pages" and "extremely convoluted scenarios where submissive Danish actresses are intimately shaved by their dominant female doctors in the shower") that he masturbates himself into the hospital, where he ends up on a saline drip; goes into a 15-page explanation of why he doesn't want to sodomise a woman who's begged him to do so, before deciding that he will do it after all; explains how when he was 30 he made his 17-year old schoolgirl lover have an abortion; gets a blow-job from his best friend's girlfriend on Bayswater Road in full view of the public; performs oral sex on a woman moments after she has finished having sex with his friend in the other room; goes to a strip club in Thailand so often over a three-month period that one of the strippers writes messages to him with a pen clenched in her vagina; has an abortive threesome in Russia which ends with him prematurely ejaculating over the carpet, and in one of the book's most flabbergasting chapters, mistakenly believes he's impregnated a prostitute and considers throwing everything in and starting a family with her.
Now, Sean, that ain't normal. It is, however, hilarious. I can't remember reading a book that's made me laugh out loud as much as this one. Thomas must be extraordinarily brave...."
@OnlyLivingBoy - You've got me googling now. The Woke people at the Indy also reviewed this "Millions of Women" book. I apologise for the chunk of quotation, but their review is worth reading at length, so we can all grasp the true depravity of this man "@SeanT":
"On the cover of my proof copy of Sean Thomas's non-fiction account of his adventures on the internet-dating scene, Millions of Women Are Waiting to Meet You, there is a jokey warning that "this book reveals how men really think." This isn't true. Sean Thomas may believe himself to be a normal man, but in the course of this book he decides a woman named "Bongowoman" is an appealing person to go on a date with; describes how his first sexual experience (at 12 years old) involved him flashing at his parents' cleaning woman; reveals that he can only go out with women who are shorter than him (he describes such women as "sit-on-my-lap girls"); fakes suicide to impress a girl who's broken up with him; suffers from several bouts of serious impotence; catches crabs from an Australian woman; boasts about the TV celebrity he used to date, a relationship which began when he shoved his hand up her skirt; gets so addicted to internet porn (particularly "Bernie's Spanking Pages" and "extremely convoluted scenarios where submissive Danish actresses are intimately shaved by their dominant female doctors in the shower") that he masturbates himself into the hospital, where he ends up on a saline drip; goes into a 15-page explanation of why he doesn't want to sodomise a woman who's begged him to do so, before deciding that he will do it after all; explains how when he was 30 he made his 17-year old schoolgirl lover have an abortion; gets a blow-job from his best friend's girlfriend on Bayswater Road in full view of the public; performs oral sex on a woman moments after she has finished having sex with his friend in the other room; goes to a strip club in Thailand so often over a three-month period that one of the strippers writes messages to him with a pen clenched in her vagina; has an abortive threesome in Russia which ends with him prematurely ejaculating over the carpet, and in one of the book's most flabbergasting chapters, mistakenly believes he's impregnated a prostitute and considers throwing everything in and starting a family with her.
Now, Sean, that ain't normal. It is, however, hilarious. I can't remember reading a book that's made me laugh out loud as much as this one. Thomas must be extraordinarily brave...."
MK be like 'dont come to us for big swings, we hated him anyway' 'but Davey can sod off too'
Can understand MK having an affection for SKS. Both objectively very pleasant. Both often considered (perhaps unfairly) to be lacking in soul or excitement.
The most exciting fact about Milton Keynes is that the video for Cliff Richard's 1981 hit "Wired For Sound" was filmed in the then new shopping centre next to the train station.
In other news, this week it was revealed that Elon Musk has had twins with a female executive at one of his companies.
Seeing the Musk fans try to spin this is quite hilarious.
Why do they have to spin it? He hasn’t done anything illegal. It might be a sackable offence in some companies (is it?) but then he’s not going to sack himself, he owns the company
That's the point. You don't shag around with the staff, even consensually: especially when you are the top boss.
It should be noted that Musk's companies are facing numerous race and sexual discrimination lawsuits.
A fish rots from its head.
What puritanical bullshit!
What consensual adults do in their own beds is between them and nobody else.
A significant proportion of the married people I know met their spouses through work, when you're spending all day at work and the only people you meet most of the time are at work, its entirely natural and normal for intimate relations to happen.
People need to grow up and stop puritanically staring at other people in judgement.
It isn't 'puritanical'; it's common sense. There have been too many cases of bosses abusing their positions in various ways. Just look at the movie industry for one example.
I met my wife through work, when I was project managing her. That was difficult enough, and I'd like to think we handled it well (and were both relatively junior).
But if you're one of the top bods, it really isn't rocket science to say that you don't shag the staff. And Musk has massive opportunities to meet people outside his various companies. Grimes, for example ...
You're right its not rocket science to say that, its puritanical bullshit to say it.
If Musk and the executive are attracted to each other and get intimate that's between them and there is nothing wrong with that any more than you and your then-future wife doing the same.
Abuse is wrong, consensual is not. So long as it is consensual, it is OK.
It really is not puritanical. It's safeguarding the company and its staff.
And there's a vast difference between our situation and theirs, in virtually every way. I can go into details if you want: but if you are one of the top guys or gals, you do not have a relationship with the staff. And if you must, make sure it's open, don't get them pregnant, and especially don't do it if you're having a surrogate child with your girlfriend at the same time.
Bollocks, bollocks and more bollocks.
Keeping your private life private is entirely appropriate, so long as its consensual.
Them having a child is between them, and his then-girlfriend perhaps, not anyone else or the firm.
What consensual adults do is between them. You're acting like people who object to gays having sex because men sleeping with men is immoral supposedly. So long as they're genuinely consenting, its between them, whether it be man with woman, man with man, or employer with employee.
It really is not bollocks. Look at the vast number of abuses that have turned up over the years in all areas.
And your comment about gays is wrong, laughable and crass.
The point is that the boss has massive power over the individual - in the same way a university lecturer has over an adult student (in fact, bosses often have more power). It's not about the relationship: it's about the potential for abuse of power.
(In our case, that did not really exist. We were essentially at the same level, and I was just project managing her on a couple of projects: she was just as likely to have pm'ed me if circs had been different. And as we told our bosses, and they ensured there could be no abuses.)
If power is abused, deal with the abuse.
If its consensual, there's no abuse, just puritanism.
Relationships end. All Musk's relationships have ended, some acrimoniously. When they end, often one party or both feel aggrieved, rightly or not. How the heck is a company to (fairly) work out if there has been abuse or not? Did the boss promise something? A promotion? Were company resources used during the relationship? etc, etc.
It's about power. The bigger the gap between the staff members, the greater the risk of abuse.
It was done your way for centuries, and lots of people were abused.
As I said, Musk has plenty of opportunities to dip his wick in people who do not work for his companies. Including his (apparently now-ex) gf.
Just because there's a potential for abuse doesn't mean that consensual adults can't consensually do what consensual adults want to do. 🤦♂️
Yes he has opportunities to "dip his wick" for people outside of his company. He also has opportunities to do so for people inside it to, if they consensually agree.
If sex isn't consensual, it should be for the Police to investigate more than the company.
You appear to be totally missing my point. Do you think university lecturers should be free to have relationships with students?
Anyway, I doubt we're going to agree on this...
So long as the university students are over 18 and consenting, yes of course I do.
I agree with what I believe the law is, that sex with children under 16 is not ok, and if you're in a position of authority over a 16 or 17 year old then that is not OK either.
I am completely liberal on matters of sex: What consenting adults do is up to them.
Not if its abusive. And abuse of power is an abuse.
If it's abusive it should be a matter for the Police.
If it's consenting, it should not be.
Either way, it's up to the adults involved.
Oh lordy, you're missing the point. What does 'consenting' mean if a boss promises an employee an advantage? Is that fair towards other employees? If such a promise is later made, how does the company work out if it is true? What happens if it is 'sleep with me or you won't get promotion'? How do you prove that? Disprove it?
And there are many other potential conflicts as well.
When there are power disparities, it's best all round if relationships are avoided. And if they cannot, they have to be open and visible, not hidden. Which is difficult if one or both of the parties are married...
And how are you going to promote openly visible relationships when you puritanically try to drive relationships underground by prohibiting them? Your own logic is self-contradictory.
If you want to encourage honesty and openness, then being puritanical or promoting a "don't ask, don't tell" attitude won't get it.
It really isn't self-contradictory. And it's about preventing and reducing the abuses that the approach you seem to prefer has caused so many times.
Abusers need to be punished and abuse taken seriously not brushed under the rug.
Taking away everyone else's liberties isn't a way to do that. Driving relationships underground as you've frowned upon them and made them socially unacceptable just plays into the abusers hands, as abusers have more opportunities for abuse when everything is underground.
Openness and honesty is the polar opposite of prohibition, not its friend. Your puritanical prohibitionism won't stop adults screwing each other, it will just make them do so in secret more, which will make the abusers job easier. 🤦♂️
Prohibition does not work.
You're forgetting two basic principles.
1. It's a huge problem for any employer. If they tell you, in induction, not to do it, then you can't complain when you do it in secret or openly, and they get you for it.
2. You just don't do things that conflict with your employer's interests (except in permitted areas such as TUS work). I work for Widgets PLC, I'm not allowed to post on here saying they are crap and Thingummies Ltd's products are superior. I'm not allowed to put laxative in the shop-floor manager's tea. And I'm not allowed to jump the manager's spouse, certainly if we're in the same line of management, because that tends to lead to equally messy results in the workplace.
Re the libertarian thing - if one doesn't like it, then one can piss off the moment the no-conflict rule comes up at induction. Even if one does not have the common sense to realise it a priori.
I am not forgetting either.
Companies can have policies, even bad policies, I agree with that. Doesn't make those policies universal, or correct.
However Josias is acting as if the bad policies he knows are universal and appropriate. They're not universal. They're not the law. Many, many employers do not have such policies as has already been confirmed by many here.
Just because other companies have bad policies, doesn't mean Musk or anyone else needs to adopt such bad policies in their own business.
If there is no conflict there is no issue. Two of my friends at work got married. No problem.
As has been indicated below, it's also about the company protecting itself from claims in the future. Or even the bad atmosphere that can occur if a relationship goes sour.
It's also about the 'potential' for conflict, not just whether conflict occurs. If someone at my grade is promoted ahead of me, and they've been having an affair with the CEO, it would be fair for me to wonder if there was a connection between the promotion and the affair. And it would be the devil's job to prove there was no connection.
Bart's way has been tried for centuries, and it has led to lots of problems and abuse of power. I'm not talking about new laws (I don't think I've mentioned the law at all); just that institutions need to protect themselves and their employees.
Musk's behaviour will be noted by others further down the organisational chain. If the boss can do it, so can they. And his companies are not exactly free from strife atm...
Men and women haven't only had sex for centuries, they've had sex for as long as humanity has existed.
You might want to try to regulate away people's sex drives, but you're as puritanical and as doomed to failure as those who wish to pray away the gay.
Absolutely Musk's employees can have sex and get pregnant. That's kind of how humanity propagates itself you know?
"Men and women haven't only had sex for centuries, they've had sex for as long as humanity has existed."
Wow. I never knew that. Thanks for enlightening me! (/sarcasm)
I don't want to regulate away people's sex drives. Far from. And neither am I being puritanical, however many times you say it.
But if we're going to take such a tone: you're shouting for sexual and other abuses. Because the system you're promoting has been done, and abuse has occurred because of it. And you evidently don't care.
I am sure it will be an anti-climax....minor inadvertent breach of the rules, if had reported at the time, would have reminded individuals of the rules and as long as they complied would have been end of the matter...no further action.
Boris will not earn his much-needed money through sales of his personal memoir. He may get a mildly decent advance but the actual books won't sell. No one wants to read a serial liar's spin and self-justification these days. Biographies about this turbulent time might do better but non-fiction generally struggles these days. The internet is such a great, and terrible, resource for finding out information, as are endless tv shows, that there are very few rabbits left for a non-fiction author to pull out of the hat.
As I mentioned, I doubt he will fill halls for talks either. No one wants to listen to a failure and liar, and he's a poor public speaker. As chaotic as in everything else. His best hope will be after-dinner speeches when everyone is too drunk to mind incoherent ramblings about Peppa Pig world.
Leon got very personal with us all over this but, of course, the reason he's so irate is his own fear. Boris Johnson was a serial philanderer, a man approaching sixty whose attitude to sexual predation belonged to an era from which most of society has moved on. Boris Johnson got the top job for one reason and one reason only: to deliver Brexit. And that was on the back of the Remainer Parliament and an unelectable anti-Semitic Trotskyite Labour leader. As a person Boris was manifestly unsuited to the top job and the page on the chapter has already been turned. The flowers fade and the grass withers. It happens to all of us and some deserve it more than others.
The country is leaving Boris and his type of politics and personal behaviour behind. Whether that's under a reboot of the Conservative brand, or a completely new broom under Labour-LibDems, we will wait to see. But move on it has, and is.
You’re not the first PB-er to fall in love with me
Shhhh, secret, but I'm not into men. You may have noticed.
My partner is a gorgeous female.
Is she not worried that you’re clearly obsessed with me?
As for Bozza’s earnings, here’s the Independent:
“Mr Johnson, who is famously at home with deploying incendiary turns of phrase, would without doubt be in receipt of handsome offers from publishers for his Downing Street memoirs. Mr Blair received a reported £4.6m advance for his tome, with the sum being donated to charity.”
And here’s the Mail;
“Mr Johnson could become 'Billion Dollar Boris' if he plays his cards right with book deals, broadcast slots and speech circuits.
Experts say he will 'eclipse Tony Blair' and could net double the estimated £10million a year the former Labour leader made from speeches after office.
Mr Johnson, who once moaned his £250,000 Daily Telegraph column salary was 'chicken feed', is estimated to 'easily' earn £400,000 per speech while his memoirs could sell for 'at least' £1million
PR guru Mark Borkowski said: 'Boris is fairly wise and over the next 25 years if he can continue to grow it's going to be Billion Dollar Boris. He's a global brand, and with the right management, this is beyond speech-making.'“
Johnson certainly has a fanbase, but not one that pays £400 000 to hear of Peppa Pig.
In the UK no one wants or has a role for an ex-PM, they either sulk on the back benches (Heath, May) or lock themselves away, pretending that they still have significance (Blair, Brown, Thatcher), or completely disappear (Cameron). Major seems to be the only one enjoying himself.
I know you will claim that as a joke but you, of course, won't see that it's the kind of vindictive personal comment that drags this place and the people who post here, down.
When you don't like someone else's point of view you always resort to ad hominem. You sneer at a person for some trait you think you have a right to expose.
I hope everyone else on here has a nice day xx
You’ve done it again. You’ve started an argument with personal abuse, and then, when it is returned, you can’t cope and you cry foul
[...]
@Leon 'Leon' I was merely suggesting that the reason you are so upset and irate about Boris' decline is that it plays into your own fears. You wrote a book about sexual predation - we all know that - and you're now in your 60's and no longer the young stud you told the world about. Boris was in many ways your kind of man. You wrote an entire book about how to win women. You have frequently boasted about your sexual conquests with 'much' younger women, girls, teenagers.
You have spent a LOT of time attacking those who have campaigned for Boris to go. And you have totemised Boris. This after a Damascene conversion on the way to the ballot box.
I am suggesting that the reason for this may well be that when much of the country is turning its back on the kind of attitudes that you and Boris share, you are upset and irate about it. It's not rocket science. The market for your kind of male sexual predation has receded and the country has moved on from your book, just as it has now from Boris. Hence why you have had to reinvent yourself at least twice with pseudonymns as an author. Your particular brand under your real name (which I shall not mention) has had its day.
Instead of raging against the dying light, try to be kind to people and especially to yourself in your older guise. It will make the world, and here, a better place.
I find this a very inappropriate post. An unnecessarily personal attack, borderline defamatory.
As for the idea that the country has turned its back on male sexual predation, let's get real. Male sexual predators will still be operating and getting away with it and having their behaviour overlooked long after Boris has gone, in Westminster as elsewhere.
Few of us know other posters in real life and our online personas all have some level of invention, by omission if nothing else. But even if we do know people, to use that personal knowledge to attack others on a public forum seems to me to be wrong and a breach of confidence.
@Leon is a character: often interesting and insightful, at other times dull or tedious. As are we all, me and you included.
If you don't like @Leon, scroll past his posts. It's very easy to do.
So what was this book on sexual predation Leon wrote...i must admit he is by far the most interesting contributor to PB
You must be confusing Leon with an entirely different person called SeanT who wrote this book.
The humourless wokerati at the Guardian are surprisingly positive on this magnum opus. I will keep an eye out for it next time I am passing a second hand bookshop or a remainders bin.
Boris will not earn his much-needed money through sales of his personal memoir. He may get a mildly decent advance but the actual books won't sell. No one wants to read a serial liar's spin and self-justification these days. Biographies about this turbulent time might do better but non-fiction generally struggles these days. The internet is such a great, and terrible, resource for finding out information, as are endless tv shows, that there are very few rabbits left for a non-fiction author to pull out of the hat.
As I mentioned, I doubt he will fill halls for talks either. No one wants to listen to a failure and liar, and he's a poor public speaker. As chaotic as in everything else. His best hope will be after-dinner speeches when everyone is too drunk to mind incoherent ramblings about Peppa Pig world.
Leon got very personal with us all over this but, of course, the reason he's so irate is his own fear. Boris Johnson was a serial philanderer, a man approaching sixty whose attitude to sexual predation belonged to an era from which most of society has moved on. Boris Johnson got the top job for one reason and one reason only: to deliver Brexit. And that was on the back of the Remainer Parliament and an unelectable anti-Semitic Trotskyite Labour leader. As a person Boris was manifestly unsuited to the top job and the page on the chapter has already been turned. The flowers fade and the grass withers. It happens to all of us and some deserve it more than others.
The country is leaving Boris and his type of politics and personal behaviour behind. Whether that's under a reboot of the Conservative brand, or a completely new broom under Labour-LibDems, we will wait to see. But move on it has, and is.
You’re not the first PB-er to fall in love with me
Shhhh, secret, but I'm not into men. You may have noticed.
My partner is a gorgeous female.
Is she not worried that you’re clearly obsessed with me?
As for Bozza’s earnings, here’s the Independent:
“Mr Johnson, who is famously at home with deploying incendiary turns of phrase, would without doubt be in receipt of handsome offers from publishers for his Downing Street memoirs. Mr Blair received a reported £4.6m advance for his tome, with the sum being donated to charity.”
And here’s the Mail;
“Mr Johnson could become 'Billion Dollar Boris' if he plays his cards right with book deals, broadcast slots and speech circuits.
Experts say he will 'eclipse Tony Blair' and could net double the estimated £10million a year the former Labour leader made from speeches after office.
Mr Johnson, who once moaned his £250,000 Daily Telegraph column salary was 'chicken feed', is estimated to 'easily' earn £400,000 per speech while his memoirs could sell for 'at least' £1million
PR guru Mark Borkowski said: 'Boris is fairly wise and over the next 25 years if he can continue to grow it's going to be Billion Dollar Boris. He's a global brand, and with the right management, this is beyond speech-making.'“
Johnson certainly has a fanbase, but not one that pays £400 000 to hear of Peppa Pig.
In the UK no one wants or has a role for an ex-PM, they either sulk on the back benches (Heath, May) or lock themselves away, pretending that they still have significance (Blair, Brown, Thatcher), or completely disappear (Cameron). Major seems to be the only one enjoying himself.
I know you will claim that as a joke but you, of course, won't see that it's the kind of vindictive personal comment that drags this place and the people who post here, down.
When you don't like someone else's point of view you always resort to ad hominem. You sneer at a person for some trait you think you have a right to expose.
I hope everyone else on here has a nice day xx
You’ve done it again. You’ve started an argument with personal abuse, and then, when it is returned, you can’t cope and you cry foul
[...]
@Leon 'Leon' I was merely suggesting that the reason you are so upset and irate about Boris' decline is that it plays into your own fears. You wrote a book about sexual predation - we all know that - and you're now in your 60's and no longer the young stud you told the world about. Boris was in many ways your kind of man. You wrote an entire book about how to win women. You have frequently boasted about your sexual conquests with 'much' younger women, girls, teenagers.
You have spent a LOT of time attacking those who have campaigned for Boris to go. And you have totemised Boris. This after a Damascene conversion on the way to the ballot box.
I am suggesting that the reason for this may well be that when much of the country is turning its back on the kind of attitudes that you and Boris share, you are upset and irate about it. It's not rocket science. The market for your kind of male sexual predation has receded and the country has moved on from your book, just as it has now from Boris. Hence why you have had to reinvent yourself at least twice with pseudonymns as an author. Your particular brand under your real name (which I shall not mention) has had its day.
Instead of raging against the dying light, try to be kind to people and especially to yourself in your older guise. It will make the world, and here, a better place.
I find this a very inappropriate post. An unnecessarily personal attack, borderline defamatory.
As for the idea that the country has turned its back on male sexual predation, let's get real. Male sexual predators will still be operating and getting away with it and having their behaviour overlooked long after Boris has gone, in Westminster as elsewhere.
Few of us know other posters in real life and our online personas all have some level of invention, by omission if nothing else. But even if we do know people, to use that personal knowledge to attack others on a public forum seems to me to be wrong and a breach of confidence.
@Leon is a character: often interesting and insightful, at other times dull or tedious. As are we all, me and you included.
If you don't like @Leon, scroll past his posts. It's very easy to do.
So what was this book on sexual predation Leon wrote...i must admit he is by far the most interesting contributor to PB
You must be confusing Leon with an entirely different person called SeanT who wrote this book.
The humourless wokerati at the Guardian are surprisingly positive on this magnum opus. I will keep an eye out for it next time I am passing a second hand bookshop or a remainders bin.
Wendy_F on amazon reviews says:
"Thought that this might be an entertaining insight into internet dating, with funny stories of how people do and don't hit it off...but it was a boring, self-centered look in to the shallow world of an egotistical callous bloke's sex life. I wish that I hadn't wasted my time on this, would not recommend it unless you like reading lads mags."
Jenny_Jen says:
"Got bored half way to three quarters of the way through. It's enough to put any woman off men for life. Can men really be so shallow....."
Bla_bla says:
"Put it this way. I just finished the part where he goes to Thailand (he's in his thirties) and sleeps with lots of 17 year old Thai prostitutes (by the way, he 'prefers girls who are small, submissive, large-breasted, and non-Caucasian'). He has a two-week unpaid affair with one and doesn't use a condom. She falls pregnant and emails him after he's left, claiming the baby is his. He goes to Thailand and has the baby DNA tested, then leaves without a word when it turns out not to be his baby, although she's crying. This is supposed to be an insight into the mind of the 'average guy'."
---------
There are times when it is good to be humourless and woke.
Yes, a quite appalling fellow, as I said. Thank the Lord he is no longer with us
`Hilarious. I can't remember reading a book that's made me laugh out loud as much as this one' -- Matt Thorne Independent on Sunday
`There's a degree of self-awareness and honesty which means that, rather scarily, he's written something that's revealing about all men' -- Laurence Phelan, Independent on Sunday
`This book is not only very easy to read, but a bloke's book to boot ... made me laugh, quite often' -- Nicholas Lezard's Paperback Choice, Guardian
`Thomas has done his generation of men a service by telling it like it is' -- Sunday Times
STARMER AND RAYNER CLEARED They have NOT been issued with fixed penalty notices for alleged lockdown regulation breaches while campaigning in April 2021, Durham Police has said.
Following the emergence of significant new information, an investigation was launched by Durham Constabulary into a gathering at the Miners’ Hall, in Redhills, Durham on 30th April 2021. That investigation has now concluded. A substantial amount of documentary and witness evidence was obtained which identified the 17 participants and their activities during that gathering. Following the application of the evidential Full Code Test, it has been concluded that there is no case to answer for a contravention of the regulations, due to the application of an exception, namely reasonably necessary work. Accordingly, Durham Constabulary will not be issuing any fixed penalty notices in respect of the gathering and no further action will be taken. The investigation has been thorough, detailed and proportionate. The final evidence supplied by participants from the local constituency was returned to Durham Police on 5th July and analysed by investigators against all the evidence before the investigation was concluded on 8th July 2022. In line with established national policing guidelines, we will not name or otherwise identify any of those present at the gathering, all of whom have been informed of the investigation outcome by their legal representatives.
I am sure it will be an anti-climax....minor inadvertent breach of the rules, if had reported at the time, would have reminded individuals of the rules and as long as they complied would have been end of the matter...no further action.
Must be a shock for Germany to have to consider this sort of thing. They haven't had any shortages of anything since the 1950s, whereas we did in the 1970s during the Winter of Discontent, etc.
They are talking about restricting heat during the 11p to 6am window.
Does German energy demand work the other way round to ours?
That's a bizarre time to restrict heat/power, most people prefer it a little cooler at night and only factories that HAVE to go 24-7 are operational at those times.
Unfortunately I have no data on the energy efficiency the Germany's housing stock - though rentals do tend to be more austere than here and the T normally supplies the fitted or unfitted kitchen.
Energy Certificates tend not to be published, unless it has changed.
And utilities - especially in cities - are .. er .. fun.
Comments
Or Braverman.
Or Patel.
Or *stifles laughter* Shapps.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2007/may/05/featuresreviews.guardianreview24
They really don't like civilian guns in Japan.
But won't get it.
The death of Japan's former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe today, after he was shot while giving a campaign speech, has shocked a country known for its strict gun laws and where violence involving firearms is very rare.
It’s extremely hard to own a weapon in Japan legally.
Although there are some exceptions, including for hunting, those applying for a licence are subject to mental health and drug checks, as well as criminal record checks.
In addition, those wanting to own a gun need a full day’s training and have to undergo a written test and pass a shooting range evaluation.
https://www.thelocal.de/20220707/germanys-largest-landlord-to-restrict-heating-at-night/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_civilian_guns_per_capita_by_country
Gun deaths are 8 times lower.
FWIW if the Tories elect a centrist decent person as leader I will look at them again anyway. If Labour went extreme again I would look at the Tories unless their new leader is as unsuitable as Boris as become.
It's all to play for. For every Tory member who thinks Baker or Dorries or someone should be leader, Labour have several who would want Burgon, Abbott and Pidcock.
https://twitter.com/BBCNews/status/1545360413663059969
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/shinzo-abe-trump-truth-social-b2118753.html
https://twitter.com/narendramodi/status/1545336004411678720?t=WNzVawhEKXCuPdCFsYYnbQ&s=19
https://twitter.com/CatharineHoey/status/1545334146507198464?s=20&t=ucP2Ei8Vp5zHlfnoQC5maw
But having said that, in that list E&W are #127 out of 230. Germany and France both in the 30s, so worldwide we're at a low number.
I guess it's all the farmers and the farmers' mums who's packin' round here ...
It would be interesting to see what happened in the same circumstance if the Tory majority was, say, a bare 3 or 4, and they appointed a particularly controversial figure that even a lot of the Conservative parliamentary MPs weren't especially happy about. Would there be an automatic test of the House to formally install the new Tory leader as PM, or would it just be assumed up until such time as the Opposition decided to try a VONC?
Is there a historical precedent, or is the question just a stupid one?
Best PM ratings collapsed to 20 BJ to 37 SKS
It suggests a relief rally in polling once BJ is gone
Techne was also mostly 'mid chaos'
Yes.
https://twitter.com/TelBabe/status/1545175842690678784?s=20&t=3B266D6CFT87I7jdTgW5mw
She was in the year below me at school!
he is dead wrong, too. johnson has not had one tenth of the kicking he deserves.
LAB: 73.3% (+3.4)
CON: 18.4% (-1.8)
LDM: 8.3% (-1.6)
Labour HOLD.
Changes w/ 2022.
MK be like 'dont come to us for big swings, we hated him anyway' 'but Davey can sod off too'
Media eh, so woke......
A bit softer on net zero, a bit more attention to truth and the rules, a bit more aggressive on the culture wars, some definitive action on tax cuts, commitments to no more lockdowns etc.
But no. He would not trim one iota. He felt himself above it all and he would not compromise at all. That's why he is going.
https://www.flightradar24.com/AWC646/2c8f0e81
Just under 6 hours to STN…
Hmm, I factchecked myself and the German rates are due to sports shooting, not precisely hunting.
Does German energy demand work the other way round to ours?
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/millions-of-women-are-waiting-to-meet-you-by-sean-thomas-480121.html
"On the cover of my proof copy of Sean Thomas's non-fiction account of his adventures on the internet-dating scene, Millions of Women Are Waiting to Meet You, there is a jokey warning that "this book reveals how men really think." This isn't true. Sean Thomas may believe himself to be a normal man, but in the course of this book he decides a woman named "Bongowoman" is an appealing person to go on a date with; describes how his first sexual experience (at 12 years old) involved him flashing at his parents' cleaning woman; reveals that he can only go out with women who are shorter than him (he describes such women as "sit-on-my-lap girls"); fakes suicide to impress a girl who's broken up with him; suffers from several bouts of serious impotence; catches crabs from an Australian woman; boasts about the TV celebrity he used to date, a relationship which began when he shoved his hand up her skirt; gets so addicted to internet porn (particularly "Bernie's Spanking Pages" and "extremely convoluted scenarios where submissive Danish actresses are intimately shaved by their dominant female doctors in the shower") that he masturbates himself into the hospital, where he ends up on a saline drip; goes into a 15-page explanation of why he doesn't want to sodomise a woman who's begged him to do so, before deciding that he will do it after all; explains how when he was 30 he made his 17-year old schoolgirl lover have an abortion; gets a blow-job from his best friend's girlfriend on Bayswater Road in full view of the public; performs oral sex on a woman moments after she has finished having sex with his friend in the other room; goes to a strip club in Thailand so often over a three-month period that one of the strippers writes messages to him with a pen clenched in her vagina; has an abortive threesome in Russia which ends with him prematurely ejaculating over the carpet, and in one of the book's most flabbergasting chapters, mistakenly believes he's impregnated a prostitute and considers throwing everything in and starting a family with her.
Now, Sean, that ain't normal. It is, however, hilarious. I can't remember reading a book that's made me laugh out loud as much as this one. Thomas must be extraordinarily brave...."
There's more, but you get the appalling picture
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/millions-of-women-are-waiting-to-meet-you-by-sean-thomas-480121.html
Thank God he's gone
"How confident are you in the present Government's ability to deal with the country's priorities until the new
Government takes office?" (82% less or not at all confident)
That question could only have been asked after Johnson's announcement. It suggests a snap poll conducted from late yesterday morning. So people should have known that Johnson had gone and it didn't stop them giving Labour and the LDs a combined 55% to the Conservatives 29%.
You might want to try to regulate away people's sex drives, but you're as puritanical and as doomed to failure as those who wish to pray away the gay.
Firms have a legitimate interest in preventing abuse. They don't have a legitimate interest in preventing pregnancy.
Absolutely Musk's employees can have sex and get pregnant. That's kind of how humanity propagates itself you know?
https://europeanspaceflight.com/european-rocket-index/
A sad decline
"Thought that this might be an entertaining insight into internet dating, with funny stories of how people do and don't hit it off...but it was a boring, self-centered look in to the shallow world of an egotistical callous bloke's sex life. I wish that I hadn't wasted my time on this, would not recommend it unless you like reading lads mags."
Jenny_Jen says:
"Got bored half way to three quarters of the way through. It's enough to put any woman off men for life. Can men really be so shallow....."
Bla_bla says:
"Put it this way. I just finished the part where he goes to Thailand (he's in his thirties) and sleeps with lots of 17 year old Thai prostitutes (by the way, he 'prefers girls who are small, submissive, large-breasted, and non-Caucasian'). He has a two-week unpaid affair with one and doesn't use a condom. She falls pregnant and emails him after he's left, claiming the baby is his. He goes to Thailand and has the baby DNA tested, then leaves without a word when it turns out not to be his baby, although she's crying. This is supposed to be an insight into the mind of the 'average guy'."
---------
There are times when it is good to be humourless and woke.
I would say yes
The governments of the developed economies have stopped offering their voters paths to prosperity and progress.
Their offer now is 'help' with the sacrifices they are asking people to make. The point is, however, that general trajectory is downwards and not upwards and nobody seems to have noticed.
Well the voters are noticing. In democracies, this a recipe for growing instability. It will go on until someone cuts and runs and ditches the green agenda completely in their country.
Still in print and on Kindle. I am putting it on my Shoplift From Charity Shop list.
https://twitter.com/BBCPolitics/status/1545365697550770182
https://twitter.com/centremk/status/1267033328911294467
https://twitter.com/paulwaugh/status/1545369528435200000
Wow. I never knew that. Thanks for enlightening me! (/sarcasm)
I don't want to regulate away people's sex drives. Far from. And neither am I being puritanical, however many times you say it.
But if we're going to take such a tone: you're shouting for sexual and other abuses. Because the system you're promoting has been done, and abuse has occurred because of it. And you evidently don't care.
https://twitter.com/benrileysmith/status/1545370059815649280
Enough excitement for one week….
Just 90 seconds of yvette in hoC on Lebedev. Rivetting.
https://twitter.com/USA_Polling/status/1545110156156993538
Dem leading GOP by 49-40 for Sentate seat!
I do not believe it.
Tho on amazon I do also find these reviews:
Absolutely terrific ... brilliant'
-- Susannah Herbert, Sunday Telegraph
`Hilarious. I can't remember reading a book that's made me laugh
out loud as much as this one' -- Matt Thorne Independent on Sunday
`There's a degree of self-awareness and honesty which means that,
rather scarily, he's written something that's revealing about all men' -- Laurence Phelan, Independent on Sunday
`This book is not only very easy to read, but a bloke's book to
boot ... made me laugh, quite often' -- Nicholas Lezard's Paperback Choice, Guardian
`Thomas has done his generation of men a service by telling it
like it is' -- Sunday Times
They have NOT been issued with fixed penalty notices for alleged lockdown regulation breaches while campaigning in April 2021, Durham Police has said.
https://twitter.com/paulwaugh/status/1545370586750373889
A substantial amount of documentary and witness evidence was obtained which identified the 17 participants and their activities during that gathering. Following the application of the evidential Full Code Test, it has been concluded that there is no case to answer for a contravention of the regulations, due to the application of an exception, namely reasonably necessary work.
Accordingly, Durham Constabulary will not be issuing any fixed penalty notices in respect of the gathering and no further action will be taken. The investigation has been thorough, detailed and proportionate.
The final evidence supplied by participants from the local constituency was returned to Durham Police on 5th July and analysed by investigators against all the evidence before the investigation was concluded on 8th July 2022.
In line with established national policing guidelines, we will not name or otherwise identify any of those present at the gathering, all of whom have been informed of the investigation outcome by their legal representatives.
So there you go.
Durham Police took their time.
@benrileysmith
·
4m
Breaking: Durham police decide NO FINES over beergate. Keir and Rayner in the clear.
Full statement:
https://twitter.com/joepike/status/1545370722612264960?
Energy Certificates tend not to be published, unless it has changed.
And utilities - especially in cities - are .. er .. fun.
It's boring Sir Beer Korma to the GE now. He is not great. Find an interesting charismatic leader and you can still win