Today marks the 60th anniversary of the assassination of US President John F. Kennedy.50% of Americans believe multiple people were involved in a conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy.28% believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.https://t.co/5ZIUcRwyeM pic.twitter.com/9pnX4D9gXD
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Jonathan Van-Tam’s family ‘threatened with having throats cut’, Covid inquiry hears
Former deputy chief medical officer said police advised they move out of their home at one point in pandemic
...
In other evidence given on Wednesday it emerged that Prof Sir Chris Whitty, England’s chief medical officer, said that the scale of threats against him meant he had close police protection for nine months.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/nov/22/jonathan-van-tams-family-threatened-with-having-throats-cut-covid-inquiry-hears
And from her profile in Vogue:-
Last year, [Angela] Rayner received death threats that resulted in seven arrests and three convictions. She has panic buttons installed in her house and her sons have security escorts to and from school after threats on their own lives.
https://www.vogue.co.uk/article/angela-rayner-interview
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UGuPvrsG3E
* (That's a real ellipsis)
Evening, all
Like judges, politicians and elected officials, regardless of party / belief, any threats or violence towards them should be punished severely. That goes for people smashing eggs on Corbyn's head or "milkshaking" Farage, neither are people I have any time for politically, but that is irrelevant to the issue at hand.
Which, bigger picture, isn’t a bad thing to be doing, but explains why the overall tax take is projected to keep on rising despite the apparent ‘cuts’ announced today. And also why Hunt has managed to get the OBR to say that, overall, the package isn’t inflationary - since, overall, we’ll still (on average) all be worse off.
If and when people come to understand this, today’s announcements lose some of their lustre.
But my guess is that Hunt intends to announce a ‘surprise’ increase in the basic allowance when the real budget comes around in March.
People like Stewart Lee or Peter Kay are far better comedians. Even Michael Macintyre is a far better comedian than Jimmy Carr. Jack Whitehall is probably the only comedian worse than Jimmy Carr.
"I think Labour believe there are corruption charges to go after because the Tories are corrupt. £107m contracts awarded without tender to a Tory with no PPE experience to a company incorporated days earlier. Hundreds of millions paid out for PPE that was either out of spec unusable or not delivered at all. Companies being awarded further £millions contracts to store the unusable PPE which they had already been paid £hundredsofmillions for.
It’s corruption. Had they inserted a basic boiler plate performance clause in these contracts that would have been better. Instead they just hand billions of our money over to themselves for nothing."
This all shows appallingly badly drafted / badly negotiated contracts. What it doesn't necessarily prove is an offence contrary to the 2010 Bribery Act. Labour have said they will appoint some sort of corruption tsar to go after all this but quite what skills, experience or team this - as yet unnamed - person will bring is unclear. Nor is it clear how they will fit in with the SFO or the CPS or indeed the police. So my guess is that the square root of sod all will happen.
If you take the autopsy and medical records of the wound tracks, and the film of exactly where everyone was... then build a computer 3D model of the moment the bullet was fired.
They all line up. Pointing at the Book Repository.
This wasn't fakeable with the technology at the time.
So ironically, the "Magic Bullet" proves that the shooting happened from the Book repository - even, which corner, on which floor.
When Jongleurs was going strong, the guys and girls doing that circuit were battle tested. They would do the same venue at first one a month, so sure they might have some of the same gags, but they weren't going to get away with the same 30 min bit show after show after show. Then once they graduated from that a) they had super tight material, b) great crowd management and c) could do new gags fast, often on the spot.
Its not surprising most of the people we think are good still to this day, did Jongleurs and Comedy Store regularly in late 90s, early 2000s.
https://www.grunge.com/1100365/the-bizarre-connection-between-john-hinckley-jr-and-the-bush-family/
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-60117513
But, if you remember the pasty tax wasn't a tax on pasties, it was due to a weird anomaly at the boundary around VAT on hot food and had actually been subject to all sorts of legal challenges. It was in reality about simplification and removal of edge cases.
It was like the whole biscuit or cake for Jaffa cakes.
Compare it to someone like Jerry Sadowitz - whose offensiveness has a black heart and soul. Or even Ricky Gervais, who irritating as he can be, has something sparky to say with his humour about the world and comedy. It's just streets ahead of the likes of Carr or Frankie Boyle, who do it by numbers, even if they mechanically say something dreadful about the disabled or the Queen that's designed to shock a bit to go through those numbers.
BREAKING: New York's governor says there has been an incident on the Rainbow Bridge in Niagara Falls - and authorities are closely monitoring the situation
https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/1727392331194888665
"Er, the PO scandal was more about there *not* being graft in the PO itself, despite the airy claims [edit] and assumptions. Sure, it's down to crap performance in the system, but I'm not aware that anyone has actually suggested corruption as an explanation for the dodgy computers?"
No corruption suggestions (yet). But:-
1. A hell of a lot of pressure from the Japanese government on Blair to proceed with Horizon - jobs lost / no investment in Britain / Japanese government upset etc;
2. An appalling contract signed with Fujitsu whereby PO did not have access to fundamental details about Horizon and how it worked & Fujitsu had no obligation to tell it - even when asked. Thus making pretty much everything the PO and Ministers said about it so much make believe.
3. Possible offences contrary to the Fraud Act in relation to the recent accounts and the award of bonuses.
What then are we to make of today's "Please vote Conservative" offering. It's back to the old day of bribing people with their own money to re-elect the Government but will it convince anyone?
With growth forecasts downgraded and billions required every month just to service the existing debt it's clear all Hunt could do was tinker at the edges. I'm sure an 8.4% rise will go down well with the core constituency but how is such largesse to be funded? Spending cuts anyone?
Will it move the polls? Seems unlikely at this time but we'll know more in a week or so.
He's right - chunks of Stockton-on-Tees is a shithole. Not all of it, but the town centre ward now has the lowest female life expectancy in the country.
Of course, Mr Cleverley may want to consider *why* that is and who has been the government for the last 13 years...
A few have fairly significant regional HQs here. And they pay decent amounts of CT on those HQs.
That's not to say some of these companies haven't engaged in pretty gamey tax planning in the past. It's just that if anyone should be cross about that it's the IRS, not European tax authorities. The US is where the value is created.
IF the Mirza supported independent wins the by election, Mirza becomes leader of the opposition with three Councillors in front of the Greens.
80 year old pre-fabs left in unlivable condition by far away landlord. Council can't buy them or force the landlord to do anything.
https://theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/nov/22/residents-rise-up-against-damp-homes-in-little-london-rotherham
Here's the real giveaway with his comments after the Oswald killing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyoyNF2MbIY
'Two rights don't make a wrong.'
I don't generally go for conspiracy theories at all. But one single fact about the JFK thing is persuasive: It just isn't credible that the establishment would put LHO in the way of being shot by a randomer unless someone significant wanted this to be the case.
All things being equal the single most important issue on the planet at that point was being able to question LHO, in which case it would be made 100% certain he could neither commit suicide nor be attacked.
It is therefore probable that someone/s who had the power to achieve his death achieved it and had reasons to. That there was a conspiracy inescapably follows.
Cock up is, in this case, the only alternative. That is not credible.
https://x.com/sentdefender/status/1727390438510723094?s=20
Jeremy Bowen will be claiming this is very common in the Middle East to go to such places to get an MRI done.
He's less interesting for who he was than for what people thought he represented. Would he have averted Vietnam? In 1960 Nixon was the past and he was the future. And then in 1968, of all years, back comes Nixon and the culture wars were born.
2 people in the car died, 1 border official injured. Apparently was driving out of US to Canada.
Isn't today a busy day on US roads?
Camelot seems a lost age from at least a hundred years ago.
Here's the link:
https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/work-capability-assessment-activities-and-descriptors
Stockton South is quite nice.
Stockton is one of a troika of unfashionable east coast towns in which I have bought really good trousers, along with Hartlepool and Boston. Black pin striped jeans, in this case. *brief lament for the long-gone 21-year-old Cookie who could carry off pin striped jeans.
https://youtube.com/shorts/wQAOhMOq9Bc?si=7BtHMpIVclBwE_fY
Peerless Bob.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxEkRTCT0hE
StocktonGate latest. Understand the actual comment was “it’s because you’re a shit MP”.
https://x.com/dpjhodges/status/1727394001396121602?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/non-fiction/mary-haverstick-jerrie-cobb-cia-jfk-kennedy-assassination/
Middlesbrough has the slightly depressing air of any town which sprang to existence out of nothing in the Victorian era. (c.f. Crewe). Stockton feels more like the old market town it is, even if it is largely a product of the industrial revolution and not desperately well off.
But the reason Stockton North is so poor is that it is largely Billingham. And you'd be working very hard at looking on the bright side to say that Billingham isn't a shithole.
https://www.tumblr.com/damianpmcbride/19717319716/at-half-time-in-last-nights-arsenal-game-i-was
The thing that stood out to me is that they would push the rubbish ideas out but sometimes bring them back, if they need to balance the budget distributionally.
I find it annoying, how all the analysis is around which groups are winners and which are losers, rather than what is best for the country overall
I think it's crazy how we effectively now have 2 budgets a year - if it is up to me, I would limit to one every other year.
I don’t think people are looking at the issues the country faces right now and thinking “if only my taxes were lower”, rightly or wrongly.
The fact is that the Tories have lost the argument on tax for the time being, if not from an economic perspective then certainly with the public. In time, they might start winning that argument again, but not in 2024.
https://x.com/pippacrerar/status/1727368634891403603?s=46
Long term decisions in the national interest.
Sophy Ridge
@SophyRidgeSky
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45m
Number of people David Cameron’s Coalition Gvt took out of paying income tax: 3.2m (Treasury, 2015)
Number of people the current Gvt brought back into paying income tax: 4 million (OBR, today)
🙃
Via
@Morkins
The DVLA proposed it every year for sound administrative reasons; DEFRA backed them up for sound environmental reasons. Gordon rejected it every year for the equally sound reasons that it was unfair and political madness to impose a retrospective tax hike on millions of family cars.
Alistair put the measure through in his first Budget, and promptly had to reverse it in the face of a media and public outcry, led by the Telegraph. What was telling was the reaction from Alistair’s ‘people’: “the officials didn’t tell us”, “we didn’t realise”. Clearly, the Scorecard process was no longer working.
If he'd had ten bucks (which he didn't) he might have got away with it.
And if he'd been a hired assassin, he would have been paid at least partly in advance.
Tomorrow, this all gets driven off the news agenda by the immigration stats.
That said, the income tax/NI split is such a ridiculous fudge that this is all ratger academic.
*yes, whatever they call it it's a fucking budget.
https://twitter.com/PolitlcsUK/status/1727312268122276198