See I always knew the royals making Meghan Markle feel bad was all to do with colour.
The late Queen thought that the Duchess of Sussex’s wedding dress was “too white” for a divorcee, a new book claims.
Ingrid Seward, the former editor-in-chief of Majesty magazine, said that Elizabeth II never voiced her opinion about the duchess to anyone except her closest confidantes, including Lady Elizabeth Anson, her cousin.
Anson is reported in an extract of Seward’s book, My Mother and I, to have claimed that the late Queen considered Meghan’s dress improper for a woman who had been married before.
“In the monarch’s view, it was not appropriate for a divorcee getting remarried in church to look quite so flamboyantly virginal,” Seward writes in an extract of the book, published in the Daily Mail.
"Among all these failings, two deserve very close scrutiny.
The approach to the technical (in this case, computer) evidence
"There is a tendency (not confined to the Post Office) to believe there is one technological system which will provide the answer to a problem; and believe only what that technology tells you. Both are foolish, dangerous impulses. (A lesson for us on the cusp of a new technological revolution.)"
I was right to point out the importance of this scandal months ago (and to keep pointing this out). I am right to point out the current conflicts of interest affecting the prosecuting authorities as they try to grapple with what's happened here. And I'm right to point out the folly of believing that technology is either always right or the answer to our problems. The belief in - the wish to believe in - one-stop shop Messiahs, whether human or technological, is a very human failing - and a dangerous one. What this scandal above all should teach us is that outsourcing our judgment and decisions to artificial, unknowable and powerful systems is very foolish indeed.
It’s totally bonkers that we’ve got to the point where computer systems are treated as infallible by the courts. Anyone who’s ever worked on computer systems will tell you that there’s always bugs in any piece of software. The Space Shuttle had four flight computers, three of which were the same and could vote out a faulty device; the fourth one was totally different, programmed by different people to the same written specification, and only existed because of the possibility that there was faulty software on all three of the main computers, despite the very extensive testing that went into them. When people can die and headline news gets made if software screws up, it gets reviewed in detail and has a backup system.
Computer Weekly have been brilliant on the Post Office scandal, precisely because their journalists have a tech background and understand software. Private Eye have also been very good, because they have old-fashioned investigative hacks on their team, who can sniff a massive scandal from a mile away. The rest of the mainstream media, on the other hand, not so much.
I know that it’s now seen as conspiracy theory that a Chinese-style social credit score system is arriving in the West, whereby you can quickly become a non-person for trivial reasons, yet “Computer Says No” was a comedy skit from two decades ago (yes, that was 2004), the move away from cash and the introduction of digital currencies only makes it more likely that innocent people will become totally cut off from the financial system, and be unable to do anything about it.
Wasn’t it because GATSO speed cameras had a MoE, so people were getting speeding tickets cancelled by challenging their accuracy?
Therefore, the Blair government passed a law that technological evidence could not be challenged in court.
If that is the case, it was a piece of lunacy that makes Iraq look sane. What sort of idiot says ‘People are getting away with things because the technology is shit, why don’t we just declare it isn’t rather than understanding its shortcomings and rethinking accordingly?’
But very New Labour…
Yes I think speed cameras had something to do with it.
A lawyer called Nick Freeman made a name for himself challenging speeding tickets by asking for the calibration certificates of speed cameras and speed guns used by police, who also needed to have a training record. It was pretty often the Crown would drop the charges rather than produce calibration certs and training records in court - which suggests they were somewhat less than perfect in keeping record of these things, and that many other motorists who just pleased guilty and took the points could have won if they’d gone to court.
This could be another 'miscarriage of justice' - lives destroyed by driving bans and prison sentences based on technically flawed speeding evidence that only the occasional lawyer would have dug into at the time. One of an endless range of dormant and buried injustices, ripe for unearthing.
Possible, but to get to a driving ban or prison sentence takes a great deal of speeding or other forms of dangerous driving. Police usually apply a margin for error to take account of calibration issues.
That's why the Post Office scandal is so concerning - there was no margin for error, no pattern of behaviour, no other evidence. Horizon = the truth.
Yeah but I think it is an example of a situation of which there are thousands. I'd guess the next thing is criminal convictions based on 'forensics' based on cultural myths such as 'DNA doesn't lie' and star witnesses saying 'its a one in a billion match', with the Criminal Cases Review Commission asleep at the wheel as the doubt creeps in over subsequent years due to technological change. The current situation with Malkinson is a taste of things to come on this front (although in his case the issue is that there was evidence that exonerated him that was being ignored). Whilst the people involved have gone through difficult times, the Post office situation isn't even that serious in the scheme of things.
Speeding fines = low impact, possibly millions of cases (depending on whether margin of error used by police) Post Office = high impact, thousands of cases Rape/murder DNA = extremely high impact, a few cases?
I think TV licensing is more likely to be the next scandal, particularly as I can imagine a conspiracy of silence across the BBC, government, magistrate courts (which process the cases in large batches).
TV licensing is horrific, the victims mostly single mothers existing on benefits, many of whom aren’t actually aware of the case going to court, and the evidence is their own statement to someone who knocked on their door unannounced.
Not even just the BBC but some commercial contractor the BBC uses. That sort of thing is about as sympatico with the public as [edit] the use of contractors by Dacorum council to spy on people having a pish in the countryside.
It’s long been my theory that if the Germans *had* got the Sealion to bark, the results of the invasion would have been -
1/3rd of the population fights them to the death 1/3rd of the population fails to notice anything. Unless the football is interrupted. 1/3rd of the population queues up to become a Block Führer
This is an incredible story. A woman expresses perfectly legal “gender critical” views on Twitter
She is also a fan of the Toon
She is then investigated by some creepy “agency” within the Premier League, they compile an entire dossier on her life and doings, right down to where she walks her dog, the file is passed to NUFC - who ban her from the ground for two seasons
I'm always suspicious of this kind of story. Woman says she was banned due to this one legal comment, it might turn out the club says she's been banned due to other reasons entirely. There's normally more to it.
Perhaps, yes
But the Free Speech Union is quite diligent - they take on and WIN big legal cases (unlike Jo “kimono” Maugham)
Indeed. The question is the cases they take on
* Lawrence Fox calls somebody a paedo: FSU is silent * Mad BBC lady rants on about Jews: FSU is silent * Toon lady says woman can't have penis: FSU IS GO! ALL FSU CRAFT LAUNCH * NOW!
#PBFreeSpeech
May be they recognize that there is a limit to free speech and that ranting about Jews or calling someone a paedo isn’t on?
Liz Truss is said to have given up on her own leadership ambitions but believes that she will have a significant role in the appointment of the next Tory leader. She has continued inviting candidates, including some in safe seats replacing outgoing MPs, to her favoured club of 5 Hertford Street in Mayfair for drinks.
Truss and other right-wing Tory MPs including Lee Anderson, the former deputy chairman of the Conservative Party, will next week launch a movement called “popular conservatism”. It aims to promote small state, economic liberalism with a socially conservative agenda.
Liz Truss is said to have given up on her own leadership ambitions but believes that she will have a significant role in the appointment of the next Tory leader. She has continued inviting candidates, including some in safe seats replacing outgoing MPs, to her favoured club of 5 Hertford Street in Mayfair for drinks.
Truss and other right-wing Tory MPs including Lee Anderson, the former deputy chairman of the Conservative Party, will next week launch a movement called “popular conservatism”. It aims to promote small state, economic liberalism with a socially conservative agenda.
Has she not quite understood that 'popular conservatism' is just, well, not very popular? Not to mention economically suicidal.
Is it economically suicidal? I don't think it's been tried very much lately? Let's at least wait and see how Javier Milei gets on.
Does Liz Truss have a history of social conservatism? Maybe I've not been paying much attention, but I thought she was full-fat libertarian, on social issues as well, at least up until the last few months.
And so, ironically, her adoption of social conservatism can only be achieved by, perhaps, the most blatant bit of naked positioning she has ever indulged in.
Naked positioning? Liz truss? Maybe a bit past it, but still……
If an old man can be allowed the occasional sexist remark……
Liz Truss is said to have given up on her own leadership ambitions but believes that she will have a significant role in the appointment of the next Tory leader. She has continued inviting candidates, including some in safe seats replacing outgoing MPs, to her favoured club of 5 Hertford Street in Mayfair for drinks.
Truss and other right-wing Tory MPs including Lee Anderson, the former deputy chairman of the Conservative Party, will next week launch a movement called “popular conservatism”. It aims to promote small state, economic liberalism with a socially conservative agenda.
Has she not quite understood that 'popular conservatism' is just, well, not very popular? Not to mention economically suicidal.
Is it economically suicidal? I don't think it's been tried very much lately? Let's at least wait and see how Javier Milei gets on.
Economically laissez faire and socially conservative politics is essentially poujadisme. The politics of the self-made small businessman down the golf club after a few drinks.
The trouble is the leaders of these sorts of movements tend not to be very likeable. Trump and Bolsonaro for example.
No, Poujade, Trump and Bolsanaro were not economically laissez-faire. They were/are interventionist, protectionist and economically nationalistic. For example Trump wants a 10% tariff on all imports.
In recent years there hasn't been much economic liberalism on the right. Milei is the exception, which is why a lot of the commentary mistakenly put him in the Trump box, since the Milei (and apparently Truss) box was too rare to even recognize when they saw it.
Liz Truss is said to have given up on her own leadership ambitions but believes that she will have a significant role in the appointment of the next Tory leader. She has continued inviting candidates, including some in safe seats replacing outgoing MPs, to her favoured club of 5 Hertford Street in Mayfair for drinks.
Truss and other right-wing Tory MPs including Lee Anderson, the former deputy chairman of the Conservative Party, will next week launch a movement called “popular conservatism”. It aims to promote small state, economic liberalism with a socially conservative agenda.
Has she not quite understood that 'popular conservatism' is just, well, not very popular? Not to mention economically suicidal.
Is it economically suicidal? I don't think it's been tried very much lately? Let's at least wait and see how Javier Milei gets on.
Does Liz Truss have a history of social conservatism? Maybe I've not been paying much attention, but I thought she was full-fat libertarian, on social issues as well, at least up until the last few months.
And so, ironically, her adoption of social conservatism can only be achieved by, perhaps, the most blatant bit of naked positioning she has ever indulged in.
Yes, she’s been on a journey. And depends on how widely we draw the term “social”. She’s definitely adopted right wing colours on climate and the environment, immigration, traditional teaching, crime and punishment and the relationship with Europe. But not as far as I’m aware on gender issues or topics like abortion.
If only somebody had written an article about the difficulty in political classification and about how it may be easier to define the group rather than its characteristics.
"Among all these failings, two deserve very close scrutiny.
The approach to the technical (in this case, computer) evidence
"There is a tendency (not confined to the Post Office) to believe there is one technological system which will provide the answer to a problem; and believe only what that technology tells you. Both are foolish, dangerous impulses. (A lesson for us on the cusp of a new technological revolution.)"
I was right to point out the importance of this scandal months ago (and to keep pointing this out). I am right to point out the current conflicts of interest affecting the prosecuting authorities as they try to grapple with what's happened here. And I'm right to point out the folly of believing that technology is either always right or the answer to our problems. The belief in - the wish to believe in - one-stop shop Messiahs, whether human or technological, is a very human failing - and a dangerous one. What this scandal above all should teach us is that outsourcing our judgment and decisions to artificial, unknowable and powerful systems is very foolish indeed.
It’s totally bonkers that we’ve got to the point where computer systems are treated as infallible by the courts. Anyone who’s ever worked on computer systems will tell you that there’s always bugs in any piece of software. The Space Shuttle had four flight computers, three of which were the same and could vote out a faulty device; the fourth one was totally different, programmed by different people to the same written specification, and only existed because of the possibility that there was faulty software on all three of the main computers, despite the very extensive testing that went into them. When people can die and headline news gets made if software screws up, it gets reviewed in detail and has a backup system.
Computer Weekly have been brilliant on the Post Office scandal, precisely because their journalists have a tech background and understand software. Private Eye have also been very good, because they have old-fashioned investigative hacks on their team, who can sniff a massive scandal from a mile away. The rest of the mainstream media, on the other hand, not so much.
I know that it’s now seen as conspiracy theory that a Chinese-style social credit score system is arriving in the West, whereby you can quickly become a non-person for trivial reasons, yet “Computer Says No” was a comedy skit from two decades ago (yes, that was 2004), the move away from cash and the introduction of digital currencies only makes it more likely that innocent people will become totally cut off from the financial system, and be unable to do anything about it.
Wasn’t it because GATSO speed cameras had a MoE, so people were getting speeding tickets cancelled by challenging their accuracy?
Therefore, the Blair government passed a law that technological evidence could not be challenged in court.
If that is the case, it was a piece of lunacy that makes Iraq look sane. What sort of idiot says ‘People are getting away with things because the technology is shit, why don’t we just declare it isn’t rather than understanding its shortcomings and rethinking accordingly?’
But very New Labour…
Yes I think speed cameras had something to do with it.
A lawyer called Nick Freeman made a name for himself challenging speeding tickets by asking for the calibration certificates of speed cameras and speed guns used by police, who also needed to have a training record. It was pretty often the Crown would drop the charges rather than produce calibration certs and training records in court - which suggests they were somewhat less than perfect in keeping record of these things, and that many other motorists who just pleased guilty and took the points could have won if they’d gone to court.
This could be another 'miscarriage of justice' - lives destroyed by driving bans and prison sentences based on technically flawed speeding evidence that only the occasional lawyer would have dug into at the time. One of an endless range of dormant and buried injustices, ripe for unearthing.
Possible, but to get to a driving ban or prison sentence takes a great deal of speeding or other forms of dangerous driving. Police usually apply a margin for error to take account of calibration issues.
That's why the Post Office scandal is so concerning - there was no margin for error, no pattern of behaviour, no other evidence. Horizon = the truth.
Yeah but I think it is an example of a situation of which there are thousands. I'd guess the next thing is criminal convictions based on 'forensics' based on cultural myths such as 'DNA doesn't lie' and star witnesses saying 'its a one in a billion match', with the Criminal Cases Review Commission asleep at the wheel as the doubt creeps in over subsequent years due to technological change. The current situation with Malkinson is a taste of things to come on this front (although in his case the issue is that there was evidence that exonerated him that was being ignored). Whilst the people involved have gone through difficult times, the Post office situation isn't even that serious in the scheme of things.
Speeding fines = low impact, possibly millions of cases (depending on whether margin of error used by police) Post Office = high impact, thousands of cases Rape/murder DNA = extremely high impact, a few cases?
I think TV licensing is more likely to be the next scandal, particularly as I can imagine a conspiracy of silence across the BBC, government, magistrate courts (which process the cases in large batches).
TV licensing is horrific, the victims mostly single mothers existing on benefits, many of whom aren’t actually aware of the case going to court, and the evidence is their own statement to someone who knocked on their door unannounced.
Not even just the BBC but some commercial contractor the BBC uses. That sort of thing is about as sympatico with the public as [edit] the use of contractors by Dacorum council to spy on people having a pish in the countryside.
It’s long been my theory that if the Germans *had* got the Sealion to bark, the results of the invasion would have been -
1/3rd of the population fights them to the death 1/3rd of the population fails to notice anything. Unless the football is interrupted. 1/3rd of the population queues up to become a Block Führer
See I always knew the royals making Meghan Markle feel bad was all to do with colour.
The late Queen thought that the Duchess of Sussex’s wedding dress was “too white” for a divorcee, a new book claims.
Ingrid Seward, the former editor-in-chief of Majesty magazine, said that Elizabeth II never voiced her opinion about the duchess to anyone except her closest confidantes, including Lady Elizabeth Anson, her cousin.
Anson is reported in an extract of Seward’s book, My Mother and I, to have claimed that the late Queen considered Meghan’s dress improper for a woman who had been married before.
“In the monarch’s view, it was not appropriate for a divorcee getting remarried in church to look quite so flamboyantly virginal,” Seward writes in an extract of the book, published in the Daily Mail.
"Among all these failings, two deserve very close scrutiny.
The approach to the technical (in this case, computer) evidence
"There is a tendency (not confined to the Post Office) to believe there is one technological system which will provide the answer to a problem; and believe only what that technology tells you. Both are foolish, dangerous impulses. (A lesson for us on the cusp of a new technological revolution.)"
I was right to point out the importance of this scandal months ago (and to keep pointing this out). I am right to point out the current conflicts of interest affecting the prosecuting authorities as they try to grapple with what's happened here. And I'm right to point out the folly of believing that technology is either always right or the answer to our problems. The belief in - the wish to believe in - one-stop shop Messiahs, whether human or technological, is a very human failing - and a dangerous one. What this scandal above all should teach us is that outsourcing our judgment and decisions to artificial, unknowable and powerful systems is very foolish indeed.
It’s totally bonkers that we’ve got to the point where computer systems are treated as infallible by the courts. Anyone who’s ever worked on computer systems will tell you that there’s always bugs in any piece of software. The Space Shuttle had four flight computers, three of which were the same and could vote out a faulty device; the fourth one was totally different, programmed by different people to the same written specification, and only existed because of the possibility that there was faulty software on all three of the main computers, despite the very extensive testing that went into them. When people can die and headline news gets made if software screws up, it gets reviewed in detail and has a backup system.
Computer Weekly have been brilliant on the Post Office scandal, precisely because their journalists have a tech background and understand software. Private Eye have also been very good, because they have old-fashioned investigative hacks on their team, who can sniff a massive scandal from a mile away. The rest of the mainstream media, on the other hand, not so much.
I know that it’s now seen as conspiracy theory that a Chinese-style social credit score system is arriving in the West, whereby you can quickly become a non-person for trivial reasons, yet “Computer Says No” was a comedy skit from two decades ago (yes, that was 2004), the move away from cash and the introduction of digital currencies only makes it more likely that innocent people will become totally cut off from the financial system, and be unable to do anything about it.
Wasn’t it because GATSO speed cameras had a MoE, so people were getting speeding tickets cancelled by challenging their accuracy?
Therefore, the Blair government passed a law that technological evidence could not be challenged in court.
If that is the case, it was a piece of lunacy that makes Iraq look sane. What sort of idiot says ‘People are getting away with things because the technology is shit, why don’t we just declare it isn’t rather than understanding its shortcomings and rethinking accordingly?’
But very New Labour…
Yes I think speed cameras had something to do with it.
A lawyer called Nick Freeman made a name for himself challenging speeding tickets by asking for the calibration certificates of speed cameras and speed guns used by police, who also needed to have a training record. It was pretty often the Crown would drop the charges rather than produce calibration certs and training records in court - which suggests they were somewhat less than perfect in keeping record of these things, and that many other motorists who just pleased guilty and took the points could have won if they’d gone to court.
This could be another 'miscarriage of justice' - lives destroyed by driving bans and prison sentences based on technically flawed speeding evidence that only the occasional lawyer would have dug into at the time. One of an endless range of dormant and buried injustices, ripe for unearthing.
Possible, but to get to a driving ban or prison sentence takes a great deal of speeding or other forms of dangerous driving. Police usually apply a margin for error to take account of calibration issues.
That's why the Post Office scandal is so concerning - there was no margin for error, no pattern of behaviour, no other evidence. Horizon = the truth.
Yeah but I think it is an example of a situation of which there are thousands. I'd guess the next thing is criminal convictions based on 'forensics' based on cultural myths such as 'DNA doesn't lie' and star witnesses saying 'its a one in a billion match', with the Criminal Cases Review Commission asleep at the wheel as the doubt creeps in over subsequent years due to technological change. The current situation with Malkinson is a taste of things to come on this front (although in his case the issue is that there was evidence that exonerated him that was being ignored). Whilst the people involved have gone through difficult times, the Post office situation isn't even that serious in the scheme of things.
Speeding fines = low impact, possibly millions of cases (depending on whether margin of error used by police) Post Office = high impact, thousands of cases Rape/murder DNA = extremely high impact, a few cases?
I think TV licensing is more likely to be the next scandal, particularly as I can imagine a conspiracy of silence across the BBC, government, magistrate courts (which process the cases in large batches).
TV licensing is horrific, the victims mostly single mothers existing on benefits, many of whom aren’t actually aware of the case going to court, and the evidence is their own statement to someone who knocked on their door unannounced.
Not even just the BBC but some commercial contractor the BBC uses. That sort of thing is about as sympatico with the public as [edit] the use of contractors by Dacorum council to spy on people having a pish in the countryside.
It’s long been my theory that if the Germans *had* got the Sealion to bark, the results of the invasion would have been -
1/3rd of the population fights them to the death 1/3rd of the population fails to notice anything. Unless the football is interrupted. 1/3rd of the population queues up to become a Block Führer
See I always knew the royals making Meghan Markle feel bad was all to do with colour.
The late Queen thought that the Duchess of Sussex’s wedding dress was “too white” for a divorcee, a new book claims.
Ingrid Seward, the former editor-in-chief of Majesty magazine, said that Elizabeth II never voiced her opinion about the duchess to anyone except her closest confidantes, including Lady Elizabeth Anson, her cousin.
Anson is reported in an extract of Seward’s book, My Mother and I, to have claimed that the late Queen considered Meghan’s dress improper for a woman who had been married before.
“In the monarch’s view, it was not appropriate for a divorcee getting remarried in church to look quite so flamboyantly virginal,” Seward writes in an extract of the book, published in the Daily Mail.
This is an incredible story. A woman expresses perfectly legal “gender critical” views on Twitter
She is also a fan of the Toon
She is then investigated by some creepy “agency” within the Premier League, they compile an entire dossier on her life and doings, right down to where she walks her dog, the file is passed to NUFC - who ban her from the ground for two seasons
I'm always suspicious of this kind of story. Woman says she was banned due to this one legal comment, it might turn out the club says she's been banned due to other reasons entirely. There's normally more to it.
Perhaps, yes
But the Free Speech Union is quite diligent - they take on and WIN big legal cases (unlike Jo “kimono” Maugham)
Indeed. The question is the cases they take on
* Lawrence Fox calls somebody a paedo: FSU is silent * Mad BBC lady rants on about Jews: FSU is silent * Toon lady says woman can't have penis: FSU IS GO! ALL FSU CRAFT LAUNCH * NOW!
#PBFreeSpeech
May be they recognize that there is a limit to free speech and that ranting about Jews or calling someone a paedo isn’t on?
That was the point I was making. The United Kingdom does not have free speech, has never had free speech, does not want free speech, and will crawl for miles over broken glass to prevent free speech from existing. The only question is about where do you draw the line, and the line is not drawn by rationality nor logic but on a case-by-case basis according to the whims and fancies of the rich at any given moment. My disillusionment with the UK has many fathers, but one of them was when Toby Young said in the Express that some trans person should not say something because it was ideology. The prospect of a free speech defender repressing speech because he disdained it was one of those brain-snapping moments.
This is why I invented the #PBFreeSpeech tag: so I could keep track of it.
Liz Truss is said to have given up on her own leadership ambitions but believes that she will have a significant role in the appointment of the next Tory leader. She has continued inviting candidates, including some in safe seats replacing outgoing MPs, to her favoured club of 5 Hertford Street in Mayfair for drinks.
Truss and other right-wing Tory MPs including Lee Anderson, the former deputy chairman of the Conservative Party, will next week launch a movement called “popular conservatism”. It aims to promote small state, economic liberalism with a socially conservative agenda.
Has she not quite understood that 'popular conservatism' is just, well, not very popular? Not to mention economically suicidal.
Is it economically suicidal? I don't think it's been tried very much lately? Let's at least wait and see how Javier Milei gets on.
Truss tried it.
The results were not altogether to her advantage...
She didn't. She tried to cut taxes, without cutting spending or liberalizing anything. If she'd cut spending to pay for the tax cuts the markets would have been fine with it.
This is an incredible story. A woman expresses perfectly legal “gender critical” views on Twitter
She is also a fan of the Toon
She is then investigated by some creepy “agency” within the Premier League, they compile an entire dossier on her life and doings, right down to where she walks her dog, the file is passed to NUFC - who ban her from the ground for two seasons
I'm always suspicious of this kind of story. Woman says she was banned due to this one legal comment, it might turn out the club says she's been banned due to other reasons entirely. There's normally more to it.
Perhaps, yes
But the Free Speech Union is quite diligent - they take on and WIN big legal cases (unlike Jo “kimono” Maugham)
Indeed. The question is the cases they take on
* Lawrence Fox calls somebody a paedo: FSU is silent * Mad BBC lady rants on about Jews: FSU is silent * Toon lady says woman can't have penis: FSU IS GO! ALL FSU CRAFT LAUNCH * NOW!
#PBFreeSpeech
May be they recognize that there is a limit to free speech and that ranting about Jews or calling someone a paedo isn’t on?
Sorry but the FSU seem to always be on the non-woke side of the argument - you can see similar from the one person on this site I believe is a member....
See I always knew the royals making Meghan Markle feel bad was all to do with colour.
The late Queen thought that the Duchess of Sussex’s wedding dress was “too white” for a divorcee, a new book claims.
Ingrid Seward, the former editor-in-chief of Majesty magazine, said that Elizabeth II never voiced her opinion about the duchess to anyone except her closest confidantes, including Lady Elizabeth Anson, her cousin.
Anson is reported in an extract of Seward’s book, My Mother and I, to have claimed that the late Queen considered Meghan’s dress improper for a woman who had been married before.
“In the monarch’s view, it was not appropriate for a divorcee getting remarried in church to look quite so flamboyantly virginal,” Seward writes in an extract of the book, published in the Daily Mail.
Liz Truss is said to have given up on her own leadership ambitions but believes that she will have a significant role in the appointment of the next Tory leader. She has continued inviting candidates, including some in safe seats replacing outgoing MPs, to her favoured club of 5 Hertford Street in Mayfair for drinks.
Truss and other right-wing Tory MPs including Lee Anderson, the former deputy chairman of the Conservative Party, will next week launch a movement called “popular conservatism”. It aims to promote small state, economic liberalism with a socially conservative agenda.
Has she not quite understood that 'popular conservatism' is just, well, not very popular? Not to mention economically suicidal.
Is it economically suicidal? I don't think it's been tried very much lately? Let's at least wait and see how Javier Milei gets on.
Truss tried it.
The results were not altogether to her advantage...
Not true. Liz Truss tried large-state/low-tax. The results of which were altogether predictable.
Although 'popular conservatism' *is* economically suicidal because it means feathering the nests of the unproductive by screwing over workers.
I think the "popular" tag is largely a euphemism for being on the reactionary/antiwoke side of culture war issues. The self-image over there is that you're a plain-speaking type who is "telling it like it is". Rishi Sunak is trying to appeal to this constituency (which is all of the Reform support plus a big chunk of Tories) with his Minister for Commonsense.
See I always knew the royals making Meghan Markle feel bad was all to do with colour.
The late Queen thought that the Duchess of Sussex’s wedding dress was “too white” for a divorcee, a new book claims.
Ingrid Seward, the former editor-in-chief of Majesty magazine, said that Elizabeth II never voiced her opinion about the duchess to anyone except her closest confidantes, including Lady Elizabeth Anson, her cousin.
Anson is reported in an extract of Seward’s book, My Mother and I, to have claimed that the late Queen considered Meghan’s dress improper for a woman who had been married before.
“In the monarch’s view, it was not appropriate for a divorcee getting remarried in church to look quite so flamboyantly virginal,” Seward writes in an extract of the book, published in the Daily Mail.
Liz Truss is said to have given up on her own leadership ambitions but believes that she will have a significant role in the appointment of the next Tory leader. She has continued inviting candidates, including some in safe seats replacing outgoing MPs, to her favoured club of 5 Hertford Street in Mayfair for drinks.
Truss and other right-wing Tory MPs including Lee Anderson, the former deputy chairman of the Conservative Party, will next week launch a movement called “popular conservatism”. It aims to promote small state, economic liberalism with a socially conservative agenda.
Has she not quite understood that 'popular conservatism' is just, well, not very popular? Not to mention economically suicidal.
Is it economically suicidal? I don't think it's been tried very much lately? Let's at least wait and see how Javier Milei gets on.
Truss tried it.
The results were not altogether to her advantage...
Not true. Liz Truss tried large-state/low-tax. The results of which were altogether predictable.
Although 'popular conservatism' *is* economically suicidal because it means feathering the nests of the unproductive by screwing over workers.
I think the "popular" tag is largely a euphemism for being on the reactionary/antiwoke side of culture war issues. The self-image over there is that you're a plain-speaking type who is "telling it like it is". Rishi Sunak is trying to appeal to this constituency (which is all of the Reform support plus a big chunk of Tories) with his Minister for Commonsense.
Sunak’s problem is that his words are to the right, but his government’s actions are to the left of Blair.
This is an incredible story. A woman expresses perfectly legal “gender critical” views on Twitter
She is also a fan of the Toon
She is then investigated by some creepy “agency” within the Premier League, they compile an entire dossier on her life and doings, right down to where she walks her dog, the file is passed to NUFC - who ban her from the ground for two seasons
I'm always suspicious of this kind of story. Woman says she was banned due to this one legal comment, it might turn out the club says she's been banned due to other reasons entirely. There's normally more to it.
Perhaps, yes
But the Free Speech Union is quite diligent - they take on and WIN big legal cases (unlike Jo “kimono” Maugham)
Indeed. The question is the cases they take on
* Lawrence Fox calls somebody a paedo: FSU is silent * Mad BBC lady rants on about Jews: FSU is silent * Toon lady says woman can't have penis: FSU IS GO! ALL FSU CRAFT LAUNCH * NOW!
#PBFreeSpeech
May be they recognize that there is a limit to free speech and that ranting about Jews or calling someone a paedo isn’t on?
That was the point I was making. The United Kingdom does not have free speech, has never had free speech, does not want free speech, and will crawl for miles over broken glass to prevent free speech from existing. The only question is about where do you draw the line, and the line is not drawn by rationality nor logic but on a case-by-case basis according to the whims and fancies of the rich at any given moment. My disillusionment with the UK has many fathers, but one of them was when Toby Young said in the Express that some trans person should not say something because it was ideology. The prospect of a free speech defender repressing speech because he disdained it was one of those brain-snapping moments.
This is why I invented the #PBFreeSpeech tag: so I could keep track of it.
There are limits to speech in every single society that there has ever been or will be.
Someone with a potty mouth can come up with something the most ardent free speech activist will want banned.
In the meantime, everyone should make sure that a photo of their car is unique, and distinguishable from a photo of the same make, model, colour car with your number plate on it. Use stickers or otherwise modify your car from the front and back, and take a photo of it the day you do. That photo maybe what gets you off when dragged into court.
My Dad bought a new car and drove it around for more than a year before anybody noticed the number plates front and rear didn't match
Im weighing up whether to follow the test on ESPNCricinfo or PB. Both have real time updates and incisive commentary. A few more stats on Cricinfo.
Cricinfo is much more reliable than PB if you're considering betting.
Did CricInfo tell you who would come second in the first round of the Finnish Presidential Election? No it did not! (puts on sunglasses, sting from "The Who" on the soundtrack, title sequence starts...) 😀
This is an incredible story. A woman expresses perfectly legal “gender critical” views on Twitter
She is also a fan of the Toon
She is then investigated by some creepy “agency” within the Premier League, they compile an entire dossier on her life and doings, right down to where she walks her dog, the file is passed to NUFC - who ban her from the ground for two seasons
I'm always suspicious of this kind of story. Woman says she was banned due to this one legal comment, it might turn out the club says she's been banned due to other reasons entirely. There's normally more to it.
Perhaps, yes
But the Free Speech Union is quite diligent - they take on and WIN big legal cases (unlike Jo “kimono” Maugham)
Indeed. The question is the cases they take on
* Lawrence Fox calls somebody a paedo: FSU is silent * Mad BBC lady rants on about Jews: FSU is silent * Toon lady says woman can't have penis: FSU IS GO! ALL FSU CRAFT LAUNCH NOW!
#PBFreeSpeech
Er, what? Are you criticising them for not helping Lozza Fox? If they did you’d criticise them for THAT
I presume they take each case on its merits, and pursue the ones which are most egregious, and therefore have the best chance of winning (Fox’s case was not that)
Prima facie this particular case looks quite outrageous - and def worth supporting. But there may be facts hidden from us
This is an incredible story. A woman expresses perfectly legal “gender critical” views on Twitter
She is also a fan of the Toon
She is then investigated by some creepy “agency” within the Premier League, they compile an entire dossier on her life and doings, right down to where she walks her dog, the file is passed to NUFC - who ban her from the ground for two seasons
I'm always suspicious of this kind of story. Woman says she was banned due to this one legal comment, it might turn out the club says she's been banned due to other reasons entirely. There's normally more to it.
Perhaps, yes
But the Free Speech Union is quite diligent - they take on and WIN big legal cases (unlike Jo “kimono” Maugham)
Indeed. The question is the cases they take on
* Lawrence Fox calls somebody a paedo: FSU is silent * Mad BBC lady rants on about Jews: FSU is silent * Toon lady says woman can't have penis: FSU IS GO! ALl FSU CRAFT LAUNCH NOW!
#PBFreeSpeech
FSU don’t really care about rich public figures who can afford to defend themselves, nor do they care about obvious libels, they’re primarily about standing up for the little person who gets their life ruined for an unpopular opinion - such as a football club deciding that saying a person with a penis is a man, is grounds for being banned from attending matches for two years.
Yes
Toby Young is a contentious figure, disliked by many, but the FSU is probably the best thing he’s ever done. I wish him well. I might actually donate
Liz Truss is said to have given up on her own leadership ambitions but believes that she will have a significant role in the appointment of the next Tory leader. She has continued inviting candidates, including some in safe seats replacing outgoing MPs, to her favoured club of 5 Hertford Street in Mayfair for drinks.
Truss and other right-wing Tory MPs including Lee Anderson, the former deputy chairman of the Conservative Party, will next week launch a movement called “popular conservatism”. It aims to promote small state, economic liberalism with a socially conservative agenda.
Has she not quite understood that 'popular conservatism' is just, well, not very popular? Not to mention economically suicidal.
Is it economically suicidal? I don't think it's been tried very much lately? Let's at least wait and see how Javier Milei gets on.
Truss tried it.
The results were not altogether to her advantage...
She didn't. She tried to cut taxes, without cutting spending or liberalizing anything. If she'd cut spending to pay for the tax cuts the markets would have been fine with it.
Or even if she hadn't rushed it out with no pitch-roll or forecasts, accompanied by nothing but hubris and stale rhetoric.
"Among all these failings, two deserve very close scrutiny.
The approach to the technical (in this case, computer) evidence
"There is a tendency (not confined to the Post Office) to believe there is one technological system which will provide the answer to a problem; and believe only what that technology tells you. Both are foolish, dangerous impulses. (A lesson for us on the cusp of a new technological revolution.)"
I was right to point out the importance of this scandal months ago (and to keep pointing this out). I am right to point out the current conflicts of interest affecting the prosecuting authorities as they try to grapple with what's happened here. And I'm right to point out the folly of believing that technology is either always right or the answer to our problems. The belief in - the wish to believe in - one-stop shop Messiahs, whether human or technological, is a very human failing - and a dangerous one. What this scandal above all should teach us is that outsourcing our judgment and decisions to artificial, unknowable and powerful systems is very foolish indeed.
It’s totally bonkers that we’ve got to the point where computer systems are treated as infallible by the courts. Anyone who’s ever worked on computer systems will tell you that there’s always bugs in any piece of software. The Space Shuttle had four flight computers, three of which were the same and could vote out a faulty device; the fourth one was totally different, programmed by different people to the same written specification, and only existed because of the possibility that there was faulty software on all three of the main computers, despite the very extensive testing that went into them. When people can die and headline news gets made if software screws up, it gets reviewed in detail and has a backup system.
Computer Weekly have been brilliant on the Post Office scandal, precisely because their journalists have a tech background and understand software. Private Eye have also been very good, because they have old-fashioned investigative hacks on their team, who can sniff a massive scandal from a mile away. The rest of the mainstream media, on the other hand, not so much.
I know that it’s now seen as conspiracy theory that a Chinese-style social credit score system is arriving in the West, whereby you can quickly become a non-person for trivial reasons, yet “Computer Says No” was a comedy skit from two decades ago (yes, that was 2004), the move away from cash and the introduction of digital currencies only makes it more likely that innocent people will become totally cut off from the financial system, and be unable to do anything about it.
Wasn’t it because GATSO speed cameras had a MoE, so people were getting speeding tickets cancelled by challenging their accuracy?
Therefore, the Blair government passed a law that technological evidence could not be challenged in court.
If that is the case, it was a piece of lunacy that makes Iraq look sane. What sort of idiot says ‘People are getting away with things because the technology is shit, why don’t we just declare it isn’t rather than understanding its shortcomings and rethinking accordingly?’
But very New Labour…
Yes I think speed cameras had something to do with it.
A lawyer called Nick Freeman made a name for himself challenging speeding tickets by asking for the calibration certificates of speed cameras and speed guns used by police, who also needed to have a training record. It was pretty often the Crown would drop the charges rather than produce calibration certs and training records in court - which suggests they were somewhat less than perfect in keeping record of these things, and that many other motorists who just pleased guilty and took the points could have won if they’d gone to court.
This could be another 'miscarriage of justice' - lives destroyed by driving bans and prison sentences based on technically flawed speeding evidence that only the occasional lawyer would have dug into at the time. One of an endless range of dormant and buried injustices, ripe for unearthing.
Possible, but to get to a driving ban or prison sentence takes a great deal of speeding or other forms of dangerous driving. Police usually apply a margin for error to take account of calibration issues.
That's why the Post Office scandal is so concerning - there was no margin for error, no pattern of behaviour, no other evidence. Horizon = the truth.
Worth repeating: Horizon invented crimes. It invented non-existent thefts. People were prosecuted for non-existent crimes. People lost savings, businesses, homes and, in some cases, their lives for non-existent crimes. To call this Kafkaesque does not do this justice.
This is an incredible story. A woman expresses perfectly legal “gender critical” views on Twitter
She is also a fan of the Toon
She is then investigated by some creepy “agency” within the Premier League, they compile an entire dossier on her life and doings, right down to where she walks her dog, the file is passed to NUFC - who ban her from the ground for two seasons
In the meantime, everyone should make sure that a photo of their car is unique, and distinguishable from a photo of the same make, model, colour car with your number plate on it. Use stickers or otherwise modify your car from the front and back, and take a photo of it the day you do. That photo maybe what gets you off when dragged into court.
My Dad bought a new car and drove it around for more than a year before anybody noticed the number plates front and rear didn't match
Whoops. Presumably the dealer sold another car that has the same problem but the other way around?
Liz Truss is said to have given up on her own leadership ambitions but believes that she will have a significant role in the appointment of the next Tory leader. She has continued inviting candidates, including some in safe seats replacing outgoing MPs, to her favoured club of 5 Hertford Street in Mayfair for drinks.
Truss and other right-wing Tory MPs including Lee Anderson, the former deputy chairman of the Conservative Party, will next week launch a movement called “popular conservatism”. It aims to promote small state, economic liberalism with a socially conservative agenda.
Has she not quite understood that 'popular conservatism' is just, well, not very popular? Not to mention economically suicidal.
Is it economically suicidal? I don't think it's been tried very much lately? Let's at least wait and see how Javier Milei gets on.
Economically laissez faire and socially conservative politics is essentially poujadisme. The politics of the self-made small businessman down the golf club after a few drinks.
The trouble is the leaders of these sorts of movements tend not to be very likeable. Trump and Bolsonaro for example.
No, Poujade, Trump and Bolsanaro were not economically laissez-faire. They were/are interventionist, protectionist and economically nationalistic. For example Trump wants a 10% tariff on all imports.
In recent years there hasn't been much economic liberalism on the right. Milei is the exception, which is why a lot of the commentary mistakenly put him in the Trump box, since the Milei (and apparently Truss) box was too rare to even recognize when they saw it.
Yes fair enough, I forgot poujade’s protectionist side, just remembering the tea party style tax protests.
Actually this fits quite nicely with where Truss (and other erstwhile free market right wingers like Redwood) have gone. Domestic deregulation and tax cutting, global zero-sum mercantilism and protectionism with a contempt for international law.
I think there are even fewer laissez faire globalists with socially conservative views, in fact the two are completely incompatible.
Liz Truss is said to have given up on her own leadership ambitions but believes that she will have a significant role in the appointment of the next Tory leader. She has continued inviting candidates, including some in safe seats replacing outgoing MPs, to her favoured club of 5 Hertford Street in Mayfair for drinks.
Truss and other right-wing Tory MPs including Lee Anderson, the former deputy chairman of the Conservative Party, will next week launch a movement called “popular conservatism”. It aims to promote small state, economic liberalism with a socially conservative agenda.
Has she not quite understood that 'popular conservatism' is just, well, not very popular? Not to mention economically suicidal.
Is it economically suicidal? I don't think it's been tried very much lately? Let's at least wait and see how Javier Milei gets on.
Truss tried it.
The results were not altogether to her advantage...
Not true. Liz Truss tried large-state/low-tax. The results of which were altogether predictable.
Although 'popular conservatism' *is* economically suicidal because it means feathering the nests of the unproductive by screwing over workers.
I think the "popular" tag is largely a euphemism for being on the reactionary/antiwoke side of culture war issues. The self-image over there is that you're a plain-speaking type who is "telling it like it is". Rishi Sunak is trying to appeal to this constituency (which is all of the Reform support plus a big chunk of Tories) with his Minister for Commonsense.
To me popular in this context means simplified, tabloid, “no nonsense”, avoiding nuance. In other words populist.
"Among all these failings, two deserve very close scrutiny.
The approach to the technical (in this case, computer) evidence
"There is a tendency (not confined to the Post Office) to believe there is one technological system which will provide the answer to a problem; and believe only what that technology tells you. Both are foolish, dangerous impulses. (A lesson for us on the cusp of a new technological revolution.)"
I was right to point out the importance of this scandal months ago (and to keep pointing this out). I am right to point out the current conflicts of interest affecting the prosecuting authorities as they try to grapple with what's happened here. And I'm right to point out the folly of believing that technology is either always right or the answer to our problems. The belief in - the wish to believe in - one-stop shop Messiahs, whether human or technological, is a very human failing - and a dangerous one. What this scandal above all should teach us is that outsourcing our judgment and decisions to artificial, unknowable and powerful systems is very foolish indeed.
It’s totally bonkers that we’ve got to the point where computer systems are treated as infallible by the courts. Anyone who’s ever worked on computer systems will tell you that there’s always bugs in any piece of software. The Space Shuttle had four flight computers, three of which were the same and could vote out a faulty device; the fourth one was totally different, programmed by different people to the same written specification, and only existed because of the possibility that there was faulty software on all three of the main computers, despite the very extensive testing that went into them. When people can die and headline news gets made if software screws up, it gets reviewed in detail and has a backup system.
Computer Weekly have been brilliant on the Post Office scandal, precisely because their journalists have a tech background and understand software. Private Eye have also been very good, because they have old-fashioned investigative hacks on their team, who can sniff a massive scandal from a mile away. The rest of the mainstream media, on the other hand, not so much.
I know that it’s now seen as conspiracy theory that a Chinese-style social credit score system is arriving in the West, whereby you can quickly become a non-person for trivial reasons, yet “Computer Says No” was a comedy skit from two decades ago (yes, that was 2004), the move away from cash and the introduction of digital currencies only makes it more likely that innocent people will become totally cut off from the financial system, and be unable to do anything about it.
Wasn’t it because GATSO speed cameras had a MoE, so people were getting speeding tickets cancelled by challenging their accuracy?
Therefore, the Blair government passed a law that technological evidence could not be challenged in court.
If that is the case, it was a piece of lunacy that makes Iraq look sane. What sort of idiot says ‘People are getting away with things because the technology is shit, why don’t we just declare it isn’t rather than understanding its shortcomings and rethinking accordingly?’
But very New Labour…
Yes I think speed cameras had something to do with it.
A lawyer called Nick Freeman made a name for himself challenging speeding tickets by asking for the calibration certificates of speed cameras and speed guns used by police, who also needed to have a training record. It was pretty often the Crown would drop the charges rather than produce calibration certs and training records in court - which suggests they were somewhat less than perfect in keeping record of these things, and that many other motorists who just pleased guilty and took the points could have won if they’d gone to court.
This could be another 'miscarriage of justice' - lives destroyed by driving bans and prison sentences based on technically flawed speeding evidence that only the occasional lawyer would have dug into at the time. One of an endless range of dormant and buried injustices, ripe for unearthing.
Possible, but to get to a driving ban or prison sentence takes a great deal of speeding or other forms of dangerous driving. Police usually apply a margin for error to take account of calibration issues.
That's why the Post Office scandal is so concerning - there was no margin for error, no pattern of behaviour, no other evidence. Horizon = the truth.
Worth repeating: Horizon invented crimes. It invented non-existent thefts. People were prosecuted for non-existent crimes. People lost savings, businesses, homes and, in some cases, their lives for non-existent crimes. To call this Kafkaesque does not do this justice.
This is an incredible story. A woman expresses perfectly legal “gender critical” views on Twitter
She is also a fan of the Toon
She is then investigated by some creepy “agency” within the Premier League, they compile an entire dossier on her life and doings, right down to where she walks her dog, the file is passed to NUFC - who ban her from the ground for two seasons
If true, unlawful. Discrimination in the provision of services on the grounds of belief is unlawful - see the Equality Act.
IF this all true it’s not just illegal, it’s mindboggling. Surveillance of all her social media - by…. The Premier League?! A dossier on her lifestyle?
What?
Maybe it isn’t true or it’s not the whole picture, but as I said before the FSU is usually quite careful in its choice of cases
In the meantime, everyone should make sure that a photo of their car is unique, and distinguishable from a photo of the same make, model, colour car with your number plate on it. Use stickers or otherwise modify your car from the front and back, and take a photo of it the day you do. That photo maybe what gets you off when dragged into court.
My Dad bought a new car and drove it around for more than a year before anybody noticed the number plates front and rear didn't match
Whoops. Presumably the dealer sold another car that has the same problem but the other way around?
Serious point here - road policing has been halved since 2010. No one can be surprised at the increase in clones, banned drivers on the road, insurance, drink driving etc. All of this costs us through insurance premiums, court challenges etc
This is an incredible story. A woman expresses perfectly legal “gender critical” views on Twitter
She is also a fan of the Toon
She is then investigated by some creepy “agency” within the Premier League, they compile an entire dossier on her life and doings, right down to where she walks her dog, the file is passed to NUFC - who ban her from the ground for two seasons
I'm always suspicious of this kind of story. Woman says she was banned due to this one legal comment, it might turn out the club says she's been banned due to other reasons entirely. There's normally more to it.
Perhaps, yes
But the Free Speech Union is quite diligent - they take on and WIN big legal cases (unlike Jo “kimono” Maugham)
Indeed. The question is the cases they take on
* Lawrence Fox calls somebody a paedo: FSU is silent * Mad BBC lady rants on about Jews: FSU is silent * Toon lady says woman can't have penis: FSU IS GO! ALL FSU CRAFT LAUNCH * NOW!
#PBFreeSpeech
May be they recognize that there is a limit to free speech and that ranting about Jews or calling someone a paedo isn’t on?
That was the point I was making. The United Kingdom does not have free speech, has never had free speech, does not want free speech, and will crawl for miles over broken glass to prevent free speech from existing. The only question is about where do you draw the line, and the line is not drawn by rationality nor logic but on a case-by-case basis according to the whims and fancies of the rich at any given moment. My disillusionment with the UK has many fathers, but one of them was when Toby Young said in the Express that some trans person should not say something because it was ideology. The prospect of a free speech defender repressing speech because he disdained it was one of those brain-snapping moments.
This is why I invented the #PBFreeSpeech tag: so I could keep track of it.
There are limits to speech in every single society that there has ever been or will be.
Someone with a potty mouth can come up with something the most ardent free speech activist will want banned.
So why do we continually pretend it exists and laud ourselves for it? Why does the FSU call itself the "Free Speech Union" instead of the "Rich People Preferred Speech Enforcement Division" (RPPSED). Remember how people used to quote the phrase "I disagree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it". Have you noticed how they don't do that now and haven't for some time?
PB has developed a side-hustle: everybody somebody says something it convenes an emergency Committee Of Public Safety, discusses the matter in the most shallow terms (John Stuart Mill! Hate Speech! Free Speech! Kimono!), pronounces and moves on.
Liz Truss is said to have given up on her own leadership ambitions but believes that she will have a significant role in the appointment of the next Tory leader. She has continued inviting candidates, including some in safe seats replacing outgoing MPs, to her favoured club of 5 Hertford Street in Mayfair for drinks.
Truss and other right-wing Tory MPs including Lee Anderson, the former deputy chairman of the Conservative Party, will next week launch a movement called “popular conservatism”. It aims to promote small state, economic liberalism with a socially conservative agenda.
Has she not quite understood that 'popular conservatism' is just, well, not very popular? Not to mention economically suicidal.
Is it economically suicidal? I don't think it's been tried very much lately? Let's at least wait and see how Javier Milei gets on.
Truss tried it.
The results were not altogether to her advantage...
Not true. Liz Truss tried large-state/low-tax. The results of which were altogether predictable.
Although 'popular conservatism' *is* economically suicidal because it means feathering the nests of the unproductive by screwing over workers.
I think the "popular" tag is largely a euphemism for being on the reactionary/antiwoke side of culture war issues. The self-image over there is that you're a plain-speaking type who is "telling it like it is". Rishi Sunak is trying to appeal to this constituency (which is all of the Reform support plus a big chunk of Tories) with his Minister for Commonsense.
Sunak’s problem is that his words are to the right, but his government’s actions are to the left of Blair.
What serious stuff is he doing that's to the left of New Labour? Usual answer is Big State High Tax but this is down to the pandemic. What else?
Liz Truss is said to have given up on her own leadership ambitions but believes that she will have a significant role in the appointment of the next Tory leader. She has continued inviting candidates, including some in safe seats replacing outgoing MPs, to her favoured club of 5 Hertford Street in Mayfair for drinks.
Truss and other right-wing Tory MPs including Lee Anderson, the former deputy chairman of the Conservative Party, will next week launch a movement called “popular conservatism”. It aims to promote small state, economic liberalism with a socially conservative agenda.
Has she not quite understood that 'popular conservatism' is just, well, not very popular? Not to mention economically suicidal.
Is it economically suicidal? I don't think it's been tried very much lately? Let's at least wait and see how Javier Milei gets on.
Truss tried it.
The results were not altogether to her advantage...
She didn't. She tried to cut taxes, without cutting spending or liberalizing anything. If she'd cut spending to pay for the tax cuts the markets would have been fine with it.
Or even if she hadn't rushed it out with no pitch-roll or forecasts, accompanied by nothing but hubris and stale rhetoric.
But cutting spending, really cutting spending, is blooming hard.
What we all want is tax cuts, but we'll tolerate tax rises for other people.
Very few people actually want government spending to rise, but we all defend our bits of territory- the sectors we use or are interested in- ferociously. It's why scapegoating, whether it's spending on Diversity Officers or International Aid, or Foreigners jumping the queue, is popular even when it's irrelevant.
We all tend to be very keen on our own liberty, but resent it when other people's liberty offends us. (Matthew Parris has a good controlled fury in the Times today, on the mess the Conservative right has got into on this.)
We're human, which means we have a tendency to selfishness and hypocrisy. Question is, what do we do with that insight?
This is an incredible story. A woman expresses perfectly legal “gender critical” views on Twitter
She is also a fan of the Toon
She is then investigated by some creepy “agency” within the Premier League, they compile an entire dossier on her life and doings, right down to where she walks her dog, the file is passed to NUFC - who ban her from the ground for two seasons
I'm always suspicious of this kind of story. Woman says she was banned due to this one legal comment, it might turn out the club says she's been banned due to other reasons entirely. There's normally more to it.
Perhaps, yes
But the Free Speech Union is quite diligent - they take on and WIN big legal cases (unlike Jo “kimono” Maugham)
Indeed. The question is the cases they take on
* Lawrence Fox calls somebody a paedo: FSU is silent * Mad BBC lady rants on about Jews: FSU is silent * Toon lady says woman can't have penis: FSU IS GO! ALL FSU CRAFT LAUNCH * NOW!
#PBFreeSpeech
May be they recognize that there is a limit to free speech and that ranting about Jews or calling someone a paedo isn’t on?
That was the point I was making. The United Kingdom does not have free speech, has never had free speech, does not want free speech, and will crawl for miles over broken glass to prevent free speech from existing. The only question is about where do you draw the line, and the line is not drawn by rationality nor logic but on a case-by-case basis according to the whims and fancies of the rich at any given moment. My disillusionment with the UK has many fathers, but one of them was when Toby Young said in the Express that some trans person should not say something because it was ideology. The prospect of a free speech defender repressing speech because he disdained it was one of those brain-snapping moments.
This is why I invented the #PBFreeSpeech tag: so I could keep track of it.
There are limits to speech in every single society that there has ever been or will be.
Someone with a potty mouth can come up with something the most ardent free speech activist will want banned.
So why do we continually pretend it exists and laud ourselves for it? Why does the FSU call itself the "Free Speech Union" instead of the "Rich People Preferred Speech Enforcement Division" (RPPSED). Remember how people used to quote the phrase "I disagree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it". Have you noticed how they don't do that now and haven't for some time?
PB has developed a side-hustle: everybody somebody says something it convenes an emergency Committee Of Public Safety, discusses the matter in the most shallow terms (John Stuart Mill! Hate Speech! Free Speech! Kimono!), pronounces and moves on.
#PBFreeSpeech
This is devolving into an incoherent rant. But maybe that’s your aim
Liz Truss is said to have given up on her own leadership ambitions but believes that she will have a significant role in the appointment of the next Tory leader. She has continued inviting candidates, including some in safe seats replacing outgoing MPs, to her favoured club of 5 Hertford Street in Mayfair for drinks.
Truss and other right-wing Tory MPs including Lee Anderson, the former deputy chairman of the Conservative Party, will next week launch a movement called “popular conservatism”. It aims to promote small state, economic liberalism with a socially conservative agenda.
Has she not quite understood that 'popular conservatism' is just, well, not very popular? Not to mention economically suicidal.
Is it economically suicidal? I don't think it's been tried very much lately? Let's at least wait and see how Javier Milei gets on.
Truss tried it.
The results were not altogether to her advantage...
Not true. Liz Truss tried large-state/low-tax. The results of which were altogether predictable.
Although 'popular conservatism' *is* economically suicidal because it means feathering the nests of the unproductive by screwing over workers.
I think the "popular" tag is largely a euphemism for being on the reactionary/antiwoke side of culture war issues. The self-image over there is that you're a plain-speaking type who is "telling it like it is". Rishi Sunak is trying to appeal to this constituency (which is all of the Reform support plus a big chunk of Tories) with his Minister for Commonsense.
To me popular in this context means simplified, tabloid, “no nonsense”, avoiding nuance. In other words populist.
Liz Truss is said to have given up on her own leadership ambitions but believes that she will have a significant role in the appointment of the next Tory leader. She has continued inviting candidates, including some in safe seats replacing outgoing MPs, to her favoured club of 5 Hertford Street in Mayfair for drinks.
Truss and other right-wing Tory MPs including Lee Anderson, the former deputy chairman of the Conservative Party, will next week launch a movement called “popular conservatism”. It aims to promote small state, economic liberalism with a socially conservative agenda.
Has she not quite understood that 'popular conservatism' is just, well, not very popular? Not to mention economically suicidal.
Is it economically suicidal? I don't think it's been tried very much lately? Let's at least wait and see how Javier Milei gets on.
Truss tried it.
The results were not altogether to her advantage...
Not true. Liz Truss tried large-state/low-tax. The results of which were altogether predictable.
Although 'popular conservatism' *is* economically suicidal because it means feathering the nests of the unproductive by screwing over workers.
I think the "popular" tag is largely a euphemism for being on the reactionary/antiwoke side of culture war issues. The self-image over there is that you're a plain-speaking type who is "telling it like it is". Rishi Sunak is trying to appeal to this constituency (which is all of the Reform support plus a big chunk of Tories) with his Minister for Commonsense.
Sunak’s problem is that his words are to the right, but his government’s actions are to the left of Blair.
What serious stuff is he doing that's to the left of New Labour? Usual answer is Big State High Tax but this is down to the pandemic. What else?
1.3m net migrants in 2 years. Blair could only dream of that (and I’m sure he did)
“The FSU has processed 2,250 cases since forming three years ago, and our success rate stands at nearly 75%, proving that it's possible to resist cancel culture and win. Take a look at some of our biggest recent victories on our website — link is below!
Liz Truss is said to have given up on her own leadership ambitions but believes that she will have a significant role in the appointment of the next Tory leader. She has continued inviting candidates, including some in safe seats replacing outgoing MPs, to her favoured club of 5 Hertford Street in Mayfair for drinks.
Truss and other right-wing Tory MPs including Lee Anderson, the former deputy chairman of the Conservative Party, will next week launch a movement called “popular conservatism”. It aims to promote small state, economic liberalism with a socially conservative agenda.
Has she not quite understood that 'popular conservatism' is just, well, not very popular? Not to mention economically suicidal.
Is it economically suicidal? I don't think it's been tried very much lately? Let's at least wait and see how Javier Milei gets on.
Truss tried it.
The results were not altogether to her advantage...
She didn't. She tried to cut taxes, without cutting spending or liberalizing anything. If she'd cut spending to pay for the tax cuts the markets would have been fine with it.
Or even if she hadn't rushed it out with no pitch-roll or forecasts, accompanied by nothing but hubris and stale rhetoric.
But cutting spending, really cutting spending, is blooming hard.
What we all want is tax cuts, but we'll tolerate tax rises for other people.
Very few people actually want government spending to rise, but we all defend our bits of territory- the sectors we use or are interested in- ferociously. It's why scapegoating, whether it's spending on Diversity Officers or International Aid, or Foreigners jumping the queue, is popular even when it's irrelevant.
We all tend to be very keen on our own liberty, but resent it when other people's liberty offends us. (Matthew Parris has a good controlled fury in the Times today, on the mess the Conservative right has got into on this.)
We're human, which means we have a tendency to selfishness and hypocrisy. Question is, what do we do with that insight?
Parris is a very good columnist imo. Probably my favourite non-left-wing one.
Liz Truss is said to have given up on her own leadership ambitions but believes that she will have a significant role in the appointment of the next Tory leader. She has continued inviting candidates, including some in safe seats replacing outgoing MPs, to her favoured club of 5 Hertford Street in Mayfair for drinks.
Truss and other right-wing Tory MPs including Lee Anderson, the former deputy chairman of the Conservative Party, will next week launch a movement called “popular conservatism”. It aims to promote small state, economic liberalism with a socially conservative agenda.
Has she not quite understood that 'popular conservatism' is just, well, not very popular? Not to mention economically suicidal.
Is it economically suicidal? I don't think it's been tried very much lately? Let's at least wait and see how Javier Milei gets on.
Truss tried it.
The results were not altogether to her advantage...
She didn't. She tried to cut taxes, without cutting spending or liberalizing anything. If she'd cut spending to pay for the tax cuts the markets would have been fine with it.
Or even if she hadn't rushed it out with no pitch-roll or forecasts, accompanied by nothing but hubris and stale rhetoric.
But cutting spending, really cutting spending, is blooming hard.
What we all want is tax cuts, but we'll tolerate tax rises for other people.
Very few people actually want government spending to rise, but we all defend our bits of territory- the sectors we use or are interested in- ferociously. It's why scapegoating, whether it's spending on Diversity Officers or International Aid, or Foreigners jumping the queue, is popular even when it's irrelevant.
We all tend to be very keen on our own liberty, but resent it when other people's liberty offends us. (Matthew Parris has a good controlled fury in the Times today, on the mess the Conservative right has got into on this.)
We're human, which means we have a tendency to selfishness and hypocrisy. Question is, what do we do with that insight?
Parris is a very good columnist imo. Probably my favourite non-left-wing one.
He’s better now he’s over Brexit
Like many, he went quite mad for a while. Positively anti-democratic. Overturn the vote! Revoke it! Quite bonkers
Last night two teenagers were sentenced to life imprisonment for murdering someone simply because she was a woman with a penis.
Thought I would mention it because those most enthusiastically posting about women with penises on this board, haven't got round to mentioning it themselves.
Liz Truss is said to have given up on her own leadership ambitions but believes that she will have a significant role in the appointment of the next Tory leader. She has continued inviting candidates, including some in safe seats replacing outgoing MPs, to her favoured club of 5 Hertford Street in Mayfair for drinks.
Truss and other right-wing Tory MPs including Lee Anderson, the former deputy chairman of the Conservative Party, will next week launch a movement called “popular conservatism”. It aims to promote small state, economic liberalism with a socially conservative agenda.
Has she not quite understood that 'popular conservatism' is just, well, not very popular? Not to mention economically suicidal.
Is it economically suicidal? I don't think it's been tried very much lately? Let's at least wait and see how Javier Milei gets on.
Truss tried it.
The results were not altogether to her advantage...
Not true. Liz Truss tried large-state/low-tax. The results of which were altogether predictable.
Although 'popular conservatism' *is* economically suicidal because it means feathering the nests of the unproductive by screwing over workers.
I think the "popular" tag is largely a euphemism for being on the reactionary/antiwoke side of culture war issues. The self-image over there is that you're a plain-speaking type who is "telling it like it is". Rishi Sunak is trying to appeal to this constituency (which is all of the Reform support plus a big chunk of Tories) with his Minister for Commonsense.
Sunak’s problem is that his words are to the right, but his government’s actions are to the left of Blair.
What serious stuff is he doing that's to the left of New Labour? Usual answer is Big State High Tax but this is down to the pandemic. What else?
1.3m net migrants in 2 years. Blair could only dream of that (and I’m sure he did)
“Only 13,000 Poles will come”
He's "acting left" by losing control of immigration? Rather odd way of looking at it imo.
Liz Truss is said to have given up on her own leadership ambitions but believes that she will have a significant role in the appointment of the next Tory leader. She has continued inviting candidates, including some in safe seats replacing outgoing MPs, to her favoured club of 5 Hertford Street in Mayfair for drinks.
Truss and other right-wing Tory MPs including Lee Anderson, the former deputy chairman of the Conservative Party, will next week launch a movement called “popular conservatism”. It aims to promote small state, economic liberalism with a socially conservative agenda.
Has she not quite understood that 'popular conservatism' is just, well, not very popular? Not to mention economically suicidal.
Is it economically suicidal? I don't think it's been tried very much lately? Let's at least wait and see how Javier Milei gets on.
Does Liz Truss have a history of social conservatism? Maybe I've not been paying much attention, but I thought she was full-fat libertarian, on social issues as well, at least up until the last few months.
And so, ironically, her adoption of social conservatism can only be achieved by, perhaps, the most blatant bit of naked positioning she has ever indulged in.
Naked positioning? Liz truss? Maybe a bit past it, but still……
If an old man can be allowed the occasional sexist remark……
Sexist? A level of ribald double entendre below that I'd happily deploy for Boris Johnson when the circumstance fitted. I do hope not.
This is an incredible story. A woman expresses perfectly legal “gender critical” views on Twitter
She is also a fan of the Toon
She is then investigated by some creepy “agency” within the Premier League, they compile an entire dossier on her life and doings, right down to where she walks her dog, the file is passed to NUFC - who ban her from the ground for two seasons
I'm always suspicious of this kind of story. Woman says she was banned due to this one legal comment, it might turn out the club says she's been banned due to other reasons entirely. There's normally more to it.
Perhaps, yes
But the Free Speech Union is quite diligent - they take on and WIN big legal cases (unlike Jo “kimono” Maugham)
Indeed. The question is the cases they take on
* Lawrence Fox calls somebody a paedo: FSU is silent * Mad BBC lady rants on about Jews: FSU is silent * Toon lady says woman can't have penis: FSU IS GO! ALL FSU CRAFT LAUNCH NOW!
#PBFreeSpeech
Er, what? Are you criticising them for not helping Lozza Fox?...
I wasn't directly. But now you bring it up I am. Why didn't they? If they truly value free speech so highly, why didn't they do so? Even if the cause was lost it would provide a valuable marker: we will defend you a l'outrance even when we disagree.
But they didn't
Which reinforces my point, which is that the FSU defends the speech they like and not that which they don't. Which is why it is really the Rich People's Preferred Speech Enforcement Division. #RPPSED.
Last night two teenagers were sentenced to life imprisonment for murdering someone simply because she was a woman with a penis.
Thought I would mention it because those most enthusiastically posting about women with penises on this board, haven't got round to mentioning it themselves.
Probably because it goes without saying??
I doubt there is a single person on here not appalled by this murder, and its motivation
We’ve also not talked about the Israeli strikes on Gaza, despite mentioning anti Semitism
We’ve not mentioned the ongoing hunt for the still dangerous acid attacking asylum seeker, despite discussing migration
And we’ve also not mentioned the possible terror attack in Paris, the US strikes on Iran, the scarcity of public loos, and the deadly storm in Norway, and instead we’ve discussed the cricket
Last night two teenagers were sentenced to life imprisonment for murdering someone simply because she was a woman with a penis.
Thought I would mention it because those most enthusiastically posting about women with penises on this board, haven't got round to mentioning it themselves.
And, remarkably, the murderers weren't asylum seekers. Maybe that's why it's not been mentioned.
Last night two teenagers were sentenced to life imprisonment for murdering someone simply because she was a woman with a penis.
Thought I would mention it because those most enthusiastically posting about women with penises on this board, haven't got round to mentioning it themselves.
Well the culprits weren't asylum-seekers. Disappointing.
This is an incredible story. A woman expresses perfectly legal “gender critical” views on Twitter
She is also a fan of the Toon
She is then investigated by some creepy “agency” within the Premier League, they compile an entire dossier on her life and doings, right down to where she walks her dog, the file is passed to NUFC - who ban her from the ground for two seasons
I'm always suspicious of this kind of story. Woman says she was banned due to this one legal comment, it might turn out the club says she's been banned due to other reasons entirely. There's normally more to it.
Perhaps, yes
But the Free Speech Union is quite diligent - they take on and WIN big legal cases (unlike Jo “kimono” Maugham)
Indeed. The question is the cases they take on
* Lawrence Fox calls somebody a paedo: FSU is silent * Mad BBC lady rants on about Jews: FSU is silent * Toon lady says woman can't have penis: FSU IS GO! ALL FSU CRAFT LAUNCH NOW!
#PBFreeSpeech
Er, what? Are you criticising them for not helping Lozza Fox?...
I wasn't directly. But now you bring it up I am. Why didn't they? If they truly value free speech so highly, why didn't they do so? Even if the cause was lost it would provide a valuable marker: we will defend you a l'outrance even when we disagree.
But they didn't
Which reinforces my point, which is that the FSU defends the speech they like and not that which they don't. Which is why it is really the Rich People's Preferred Speech Enforcement Division. #RPPSED.
#PBFreeSpeech
Have you considered not saying anything more about this? Might be best
Last night two teenagers were sentenced to life imprisonment for murdering someone simply because she was a woman with a penis.
Thought I would mention it because those most enthusiastically posting about women with penises on this board, haven't got round to mentioning it themselves.
Well the culprits weren't asylum-seekers. Disappointing.
This is an incredible story. A woman expresses perfectly legal “gender critical” views on Twitter
She is also a fan of the Toon
She is then investigated by some creepy “agency” within the Premier League, they compile an entire dossier on her life and doings, right down to where she walks her dog, the file is passed to NUFC - who ban her from the ground for two seasons
I'm always suspicious of this kind of story. Woman says she was banned due to this one legal comment, it might turn out the club says she's been banned due to other reasons entirely. There's normally more to it.
Perhaps, yes
But the Free Speech Union is quite diligent - they take on and WIN big legal cases (unlike Jo “kimono” Maugham)
Indeed. The question is the cases they take on
* Lawrence Fox calls somebody a paedo: FSU is silent * Mad BBC lady rants on about Jews: FSU is silent * Toon lady says woman can't have penis: FSU IS GO! ALL FSU CRAFT LAUNCH NOW!
#PBFreeSpeech
Er, what? Are you criticising them for not helping Lozza Fox?...
I wasn't directly. But now you bring it up I am. Why didn't they? If they truly value free speech so highly, why didn't they do so? Even if the cause was lost it would provide a valuable marker: we will defend you a l'outrance even when we disagree.
But they didn't
Which reinforces my point, which is that the FSU defends the speech they like and not that which they don't. Which is why it is really the Rich People's Preferred Speech Enforcement Division. #RPPSED.
#PBFreeSpeech
First question, did Mr Fox ever approach the FSU?
Even then, the laws of libel still exist, the FSU aren’t interested in illegal speech, they’re interested in people being discriminated against for legal speech.
Liz Truss is said to have given up on her own leadership ambitions but believes that she will have a significant role in the appointment of the next Tory leader. She has continued inviting candidates, including some in safe seats replacing outgoing MPs, to her favoured club of 5 Hertford Street in Mayfair for drinks.
Truss and other right-wing Tory MPs including Lee Anderson, the former deputy chairman of the Conservative Party, will next week launch a movement called “popular conservatism”. It aims to promote small state, economic liberalism with a socially conservative agenda.
Has she not quite understood that 'popular conservatism' is just, well, not very popular? Not to mention economically suicidal.
Is it economically suicidal? I don't think it's been tried very much lately? Let's at least wait and see how Javier Milei gets on.
Truss tried it.
The results were not altogether to her advantage...
She didn't. She tried to cut taxes, without cutting spending or liberalizing anything. If she'd cut spending to pay for the tax cuts the markets would have been fine with it.
Or even if she hadn't rushed it out with no pitch-roll or forecasts, accompanied by nothing but hubris and stale rhetoric.
But cutting spending, really cutting spending, is blooming hard.
What we all want is tax cuts, but we'll tolerate tax rises for other people.
Very few people actually want government spending to rise, but we all defend our bits of territory- the sectors we use or are interested in- ferociously. It's why scapegoating, whether it's spending on Diversity Officers or International Aid, or Foreigners jumping the queue, is popular even when it's irrelevant.
We all tend to be very keen on our own liberty, but resent it when other people's liberty offends us. (Matthew Parris has a good controlled fury in the Times today, on the mess the Conservative right has got into on this.)
We're human, which means we have a tendency to selfishness and hypocrisy. Question is, what do we do with that insight?
Parris is a very good columnist imo. Probably my favourite non-left-wing one.
He’s better now he’s over Brexit
Like many, he went quite mad for a while. Positively anti-democratic. Overturn the vote! Revoke it! Quite bonkers
He is once again readable and insightful
He did go a bit OTT with Brexit. I actually agree with that.
Last night two teenagers were sentenced to life imprisonment for murdering someone simply because she was a woman with a penis.
Thought I would mention it because those most enthusiastically posting about women with penises on this board, haven't got round to mentioning it themselves.
They didn’t murder her “simply because she was a woman with a penis”. Her death was a horrific act by two disgusting people who wanted to kill someone, anyone and their tragic victim’s transgender identity was an additional - secondary according to the judge who actually sat through all the evidence - factor.
This is an incredible story. A woman expresses perfectly legal “gender critical” views on Twitter
She is also a fan of the Toon
She is then investigated by some creepy “agency” within the Premier League, they compile an entire dossier on her life and doings, right down to where she walks her dog, the file is passed to NUFC - who ban her from the ground for two seasons
I'm always suspicious of this kind of story. Woman says she was banned due to this one legal comment, it might turn out the club says she's been banned due to other reasons entirely. There's normally more to it.
Perhaps, yes
But the Free Speech Union is quite diligent - they take on and WIN big legal cases (unlike Jo “kimono” Maugham)
Indeed. The question is the cases they take on
* Lawrence Fox calls somebody a paedo: FSU is silent * Mad BBC lady rants on about Jews: FSU is silent * Toon lady says woman can't have penis: FSU IS GO! ALL FSU CRAFT LAUNCH NOW!
#PBFreeSpeech
Er, what? Are you criticising them for not helping Lozza Fox?...
I wasn't directly. But now you bring it up I am. Why didn't they? If they truly value free speech so highly, why didn't they do so? Even if the cause was lost it would provide a valuable marker: we will defend you a l'outrance even when we disagree.
But they didn't
Which reinforces my point, which is that the FSU defends the speech they like and not that which they don't. Which is why it is really the Rich People's Preferred Speech Enforcement Division. #RPPSED.
#PBFreeSpeech
First question, did Mr Fox ever approach the FSU?
Even then, the laws of libel still exist, the FSU aren’t interested in illegal speech, they’re interested in people being discriminated against for legal spech.
And, as you rightly pointed out, the FSU generally aims to help “the little people”
Lozza Fox has a very high profile, a whole lot of followers, and donors who give him £250k a year IIRC
Last night two teenagers were sentenced to life imprisonment for murdering someone simply because she was a woman with a penis.
Thought I would mention it because those most enthusiastically posting about women with penises on this board, haven't got round to mentioning it themselves.
Well the culprits weren't asylum-seekers. Disappointing.
Too slow.
Yes, my heart sank there. And you're multitasking too, with the cricket.
"Among all these failings, two deserve very close scrutiny.
The approach to the technical (in this case, computer) evidence
"There is a tendency (not confined to the Post Office) to believe there is one technological system which will provide the answer to a problem; and believe only what that technology tells you. Both are foolish, dangerous impulses. (A lesson for us on the cusp of a new technological revolution.)"
I was right to point out the importance of this scandal months ago (and to keep pointing this out). I am right to point out the current conflicts of interest affecting the prosecuting authorities as they try to grapple with what's happened here. And I'm right to point out the folly of believing that technology is either always right or the answer to our problems. The belief in - the wish to believe in - one-stop shop Messiahs, whether human or technological, is a very human failing - and a dangerous one. What this scandal above all should teach us is that outsourcing our judgment and decisions to artificial, unknowable and powerful systems is very foolish indeed.
It’s totally bonkers that we’ve got to the point where computer systems are treated as infallible by the courts. Anyone who’s ever worked on computer systems will tell you that there’s always bugs in any piece of software. The Space Shuttle had four flight computers, three of which were the same and could vote out a faulty device; the fourth one was totally different, programmed by different people to the same written specification, and only existed because of the possibility that there was faulty software on all three of the main computers, despite the very extensive testing that went into them. When people can die and headline news gets made if software screws up, it gets reviewed in detail and has a backup system.
Computer Weekly have been brilliant on the Post Office scandal, precisely because their journalists have a tech background and understand software. Private Eye have also been very good, because they have old-fashioned investigative hacks on their team, who can sniff a massive scandal from a mile away. The rest of the mainstream media, on the other hand, not so much.
I know that it’s now seen as conspiracy theory that a Chinese-style social credit score system is arriving in the West, whereby you can quickly become a non-person for trivial reasons, yet “Computer Says No” was a comedy skit from two decades ago (yes, that was 2004), the move away from cash and the introduction of digital currencies only makes it more likely that innocent people will become totally cut off from the financial system, and be unable to do anything about it.
Wasn’t it because GATSO speed cameras had a MoE, so people were getting speeding tickets cancelled by challenging their accuracy?
Therefore, the Blair government passed a law that technological evidence could not be challenged in court.
If that is the case, it was a piece of lunacy that makes Iraq look sane. What sort of idiot says ‘People are getting away with things because the technology is shit, why don’t we just declare it isn’t rather than understanding its shortcomings and rethinking accordingly?’
But very New Labour…
Yes I think speed cameras had something to do with it.
A lawyer called Nick Freeman made a name for himself challenging speeding tickets by asking for the calibration certificates of speed cameras and speed guns used by police, who also needed to have a training record. It was pretty often the Crown would drop the charges rather than produce calibration certs and training records in court - which suggests they were somewhat less than perfect in keeping record of these things, and that many other motorists who just pleased guilty and took the points could have won if they’d gone to court.
This could be another 'miscarriage of justice' - lives destroyed by driving bans and prison sentences based on technically flawed speeding evidence that only the occasional lawyer would have dug into at the time. One of an endless range of dormant and buried injustices, ripe for unearthing.
Possible, but to get to a driving ban or prison sentence takes a great deal of speeding or other forms of dangerous driving. Police usually apply a margin for error to take account of calibration issues.
That's why the Post Office scandal is so concerning - there was no margin for error, no pattern of behaviour, no other evidence. Horizon = the truth.
Worth repeating: Horizon invented crimes. It invented non-existent thefts. People were prosecuted for non-existent crimes. People lost savings, businesses, homes and, in some cases, their lives for non-existent crimes. To call this Kafkaesque does not do this justice.
This is an incredible story. A woman expresses perfectly legal “gender critical” views on Twitter
She is also a fan of the Toon
She is then investigated by some creepy “agency” within the Premier League, they compile an entire dossier on her life and doings, right down to where she walks her dog, the file is passed to NUFC - who ban her from the ground for two seasons
If true, unlawful. Discrimination in the provision of services on the grounds of belief is unlawful - see the Equality Act.
IF this all true it’s not just illegal, it’s mindboggling. Surveillance of all her social media - by…. The Premier League?! A dossier on her lifestyle?
What?
Maybe it isn’t true or it’s not the whole picture, but as I said before the FSU is usually quite careful in its choice of cases
The FCA - the financial regulator - is currently asking firms to tell it how they deal with non-financial misconduct by their employees. I have seen plenty of such misconduct ie abusive language / bullying / harassment etc and, in the past, firms often turned a blind eye to it because it can be hard to investigate and especially if the alleged perpetrator made money for the firm. That has changed. But sometimes what you become aware of when monitoring employees' work emails is stuff they do in their private lives.
How far you should police that is a tricky question. While employers have a right to expect professional behaviour in the workplace and, possibly and to a certain extent, for employees outside the workplace not to behave in a way which brings the employer into disrepute, trying to enforce some sort of morality code on employees in their private life is worrying. Employees are just that - not slaves. They do not belong to the employer. And they are entitled to have a private life which is none of the employer's business.
Where the boundaries are is difficult and there is a risk that we get some sort of social media-inspired and inconsistent enforced behaviour code imposed on people in a way which blurs important boundaries. I am not, for instance, a huge fan of the "Bring Your Whole Self to Work" movement. Bring Your Professional Self - yes. But for the sake of your own sanity you need to have a life and space and a Self outside work which is none of the employer's business and which they cannot - and must not - insist you share with them or bring to work. Just as it is important to keep a private/home/social life into which work does not intrude.
Years ago my then boss wanted to do a team building exercise (the very phrase makes my skin crawl) in which we brought in photos of us as young children and we had to match them up with the adult. I refused. Because this was private to me - a part of my life which had absolutely nothing to do with work and which I did not want co-opted for work purposes. Nor did I want to share personal photos with people who were simply colleagues. I'm not sure I'd share such photos with anyone other than my family or very close friends. I was informally told off but I didn't care. It felt to me that the boss was overstepping a boundary.
We are in danger these days of forgetting that boundaries matter, that they are necessary for our sense of ourselves.
Last night two teenagers were sentenced to life imprisonment for murdering someone simply because she was a woman with a penis.
Thought I would mention it because those most enthusiastically posting about women with penises on this board, haven't got round to mentioning it themselves.
They just wanted to kill someone. Who exactly they killed was almost irrelevant.
This is an incredible story. A woman expresses perfectly legal “gender critical” views on Twitter
She is also a fan of the Toon
She is then investigated by some creepy “agency” within the Premier League, they compile an entire dossier on her life and doings, right down to where she walks her dog, the file is passed to NUFC - who ban her from the ground for two seasons
I'm always suspicious of this kind of story. Woman says she was banned due to this one legal comment, it might turn out the club says she's been banned due to other reasons entirely. There's normally more to it.
Perhaps, yes
But the Free Speech Union is quite diligent - they take on and WIN big legal cases (unlike Jo “kimono” Maugham)
Indeed. The question is the cases they take on
* Lawrence Fox calls somebody a paedo: FSU is silent * Mad BBC lady rants on about Jews: FSU is silent * Toon lady says woman can't have penis: FSU IS GO! ALL FSU CRAFT LAUNCH * NOW!
#PBFreeSpeech
May be they recognize that there is a limit to free speech and that ranting about Jews or calling someone a paedo isn’t on?
That was the point I was making. The United Kingdom does not have free speech, has never had free speech, does not want free speech, and will crawl for miles over broken glass to prevent free speech from existing. The only question is about where do you draw the line, and the line is not drawn by rationality nor logic but on a case-by-case basis according to the whims and fancies of the rich at any given moment. My disillusionment with the UK has many fathers, but one of them was when Toby Young said in the Express that some trans person should not say something because it was ideology. The prospect of a free speech defender repressing speech because he disdained it was one of those brain-snapping moments.
This is why I invented the #PBFreeSpeech tag: so I could keep track of it.
There are limits to speech in every single society that there has ever been or will be.
Someone with a potty mouth can come up with something the most ardent free speech activist will want banned.
So why do we continually pretend it exists and laud ourselves for it? Why does the FSU call itself the "Free Speech Union" instead of the "Rich People Preferred Speech Enforcement Division" (RPPSED). Remember how people used to quote the phrase "I disagree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it". Have you noticed how they don't do that now and haven't for some time?
PB has developed a side-hustle: everybody somebody says something it convenes an emergency Committee Of Public Safety, discusses the matter in the most shallow terms (John Stuart Mill! Hate Speech! Free Speech! Kimono!), pronounces and moves on.
#PBFreeSpeech
This is devolving into an incoherent rant. But maybe that’s your aim
It is an extraordinarily coherent rant, thank you. It has a point (free speech does not exist and has been replaced by the enforcement of polite speech by the rich), I have illustrated it with examples, outlined the methodology by which it is imposed, and used a hashtag #PBFreeSpeech for future reference.
Frankly you were lucky I didn't use bullet points.
And yet you bang on and on about the bloody cricket. Why?? Why one and not the other?
The only conclusion is that you want to keep cricket popular SO YOU CAN GO AND POO ALL OVER CRICKET GROUNDS - then blame it on the lack of public conveniences. How “convenient” for you
Admit it. First chance you get you’ll be doing jobbies at Headingley. You disgust me
This is an incredible story. A woman expresses perfectly legal “gender critical” views on Twitter
She is also a fan of the Toon
She is then investigated by some creepy “agency” within the Premier League, they compile an entire dossier on her life and doings, right down to where she walks her dog, the file is passed to NUFC - who ban her from the ground for two seasons
I'm always suspicious of this kind of story. Woman says she was banned due to this one legal comment, it might turn out the club says she's been banned due to other reasons entirely. There's normally more to it.
Perhaps, yes
But the Free Speech Union is quite diligent - they take on and WIN big legal cases (unlike Jo “kimono” Maugham)
Indeed. The question is the cases they take on
* Lawrence Fox calls somebody a paedo: FSU is silent * Mad BBC lady rants on about Jews: FSU is silent * Toon lady says woman can't have penis: FSU IS GO! ALL FSU CRAFT LAUNCH NOW!
#PBFreeSpeech
Er, what? Are you criticising them for not helping Lozza Fox?...
I wasn't directly. But now you bring it up I am. Why didn't they? If they truly value free speech so highly, why didn't they do so? Even if the cause was lost it would provide a valuable marker: we will defend you a l'outrance even when we disagree.
But they didn't
Which reinforces my point, which is that the FSU defends the speech they like and not that which they don't. Which is why it is really the Rich People's Preferred Speech Enforcement Division. #RPPSED.
#PBFreeSpeech
First question, did Mr Fox ever approach the FSU?
Even then, the laws of libel still exist, the FSU aren’t interested in illegal speech, they’re interested in people being discriminated against for legal speech.
Fair point, although you do bring up another boundary, namely "illegal speech". Who gets to decide this? How can we pretend "free speech" exists when "illegal speech" exists? Shouldn't the FSU/RPPSED rename itself the LSU if it's only interested in "legal speech"?
(although Leon is wrong when he describes my stance as "incoherent" - it genuinely isnt - it is a bit ranty, so apols for that. I hope my meaning is plain at this point, even if not agreed with)
This is an incredible story. A woman expresses perfectly legal “gender critical” views on Twitter
She is also a fan of the Toon
She is then investigated by some creepy “agency” within the Premier League, they compile an entire dossier on her life and doings, right down to where she walks her dog, the file is passed to NUFC - who ban her from the ground for two seasons
I'm always suspicious of this kind of story. Woman says she was banned due to this one legal comment, it might turn out the club says she's been banned due to other reasons entirely. There's normally more to it.
Perhaps, yes
But the Free Speech Union is quite diligent - they take on and WIN big legal cases (unlike Jo “kimono” Maugham)
Indeed. The question is the cases they take on
* Lawrence Fox calls somebody a paedo: FSU is silent * Mad BBC lady rants on about Jews: FSU is silent * Toon lady says woman can't have penis: FSU IS GO! ALL FSU CRAFT LAUNCH * NOW!
#PBFreeSpeech
May be they recognize that there is a limit to free speech and that ranting about Jews or calling someone a paedo isn’t on?
That was the point I was making. The United Kingdom does not have free speech, has never had free speech, does not want free speech, and will crawl for miles over broken glass to prevent free speech from existing. The only question is about where do you draw the line, and the line is not drawn by rationality nor logic but on a case-by-case basis according to the whims and fancies of the rich at any given moment. My disillusionment with the UK has many fathers, but one of them was when Toby Young said in the Express that some trans person should not say something because it was ideology. The prospect of a free speech defender repressing speech because he disdained it was one of those brain-snapping moments.
This is why I invented the #PBFreeSpeech tag: so I could keep track of it.
There are limits to speech in every single society that there has ever been or will be.
Someone with a potty mouth can come up with something the most ardent free speech activist will want banned.
So why do we continually pretend it exists and laud ourselves for it? Why does the FSU call itself the "Free Speech Union" instead of the "Rich People Preferred Speech Enforcement Division" (RPPSED). Remember how people used to quote the phrase "I disagree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it". Have you noticed how they don't do that now and haven't for some time?
PB has developed a side-hustle: everybody somebody says something it convenes an emergency Committee Of Public Safety, discusses the matter in the most shallow terms (John Stuart Mill! Hate Speech! Free Speech! Kimono!), pronounces and moves on.
#PBFreeSpeech
Everyone ever has limits to speech.
Free Speech (TM) always meant “Relatively free speech, with penalties and prohibitions for only the most egregious statements”
There is a definite uptick in “it offends me therefore it is hate speech”
There is an uptick the other way - “I am a nice person. Therefore {insert crap about the Jews that Edward I would have said was Fucked In The Head} isn’t racism”
It’s almost as if the real world needs balance, moderate policies and lots of exceptions judged on a case by case basis.
Last night two teenagers were sentenced to life imprisonment for murdering someone simply because she was a woman with a penis.
Thought I would mention it because those most enthusiastically posting about women with penises on this board, haven't got round to mentioning it themselves.
They didn’t murder her “simply because she was a woman with a penis”. Her death was a horrific act by two disgusting people who wanted to kill someone, anyone and their tragic victim’s transgender identity was an additional - secondary according to the judge who actually sat through all the evidence - factor.
It’s pretty grim of you to use this as some sort of point scoring post. Hope you feel virtuous now.
It is a pretty horrific case and absolute tragedy for all three families involved. It raises all sorts of difficult issues: the role of porn and violent videos which seems to have played a crucial role and safeguarding - by the schools for all 3 children. There seems to have been an important failure there - not least in relation to Brianna who was a vulnerable boy with gender dysphoria in the process of social transitioning and who was also shy and withdrawn and anxious, kept out of school and with inconsistent attendance and so vulnerable to being preyed on by the killers, especially if one of them hated trans people as one of them did. Those were red flags which should have raised a safeguarding concern with the school but which appear not to have been. Or not properly acted on. It is also troubling that the school permitted Brianna to wear a school uniform which, according to the photos, is not like any school uniform I've ever seen a school girl wear. A skirt which barely covered the child's bottom is simply not standard uniform. Any child in school with gender issues should be properly safeguarded precisely in order to stop them being attacked in any way. Any child indulging in violent fantasies in the way the killers did should also be properly safeguarded. I hope that some lessons are being learnt about how the school did or did not fulfill its duties to children in its care.
The professionals who have been dealing with the killers were - reportedly - very against their names being released. A tricky issue - because we are dealing with children and one would like to hope that they might in time learn the error of their ways.
A truly horrible case in any case. I hope Brianna's family can start the process of finding some comfort, eventually.
This is an incredible story. A woman expresses perfectly legal “gender critical” views on Twitter
She is also a fan of the Toon
She is then investigated by some creepy “agency” within the Premier League, they compile an entire dossier on her life and doings, right down to where she walks her dog, the file is passed to NUFC - who ban her from the ground for two seasons
I'm always suspicious of this kind of story. Woman says she was banned due to this one legal comment, it might turn out the club says she's been banned due to other reasons entirely. There's normally more to it.
Perhaps, yes
But the Free Speech Union is quite diligent - they take on and WIN big legal cases (unlike Jo “kimono” Maugham)
Indeed. The question is the cases they take on
* Lawrence Fox calls somebody a paedo: FSU is silent * Mad BBC lady rants on about Jews: FSU is silent * Toon lady says woman can't have penis: FSU IS GO! ALL FSU CRAFT LAUNCH NOW!
#PBFreeSpeech
Er, what? Are you criticising them for not helping Lozza Fox?...
I wasn't directly. But now you bring it up I am. Why didn't they? If they truly value free speech so highly, why didn't they do so? Even if the cause was lost it would provide a valuable marker: we will defend you a l'outrance even when we disagree.
But they didn't
Which reinforces my point, which is that the FSU defends the speech they like and not that which they don't. Which is why it is really the Rich People's Preferred Speech Enforcement Division. #RPPSED.
#PBFreeSpeech
First question, did Mr Fox ever approach the FSU?
Even then, the laws of libel still exist, the FSU aren’t interested in illegal speech, they’re interested in people being discriminated against for legal speech.
Fair point, although you do bring up another boundary, namely "illegal speech". Who gets to decide this? How can we pretend "free speech" exists when "illegal speech" exists? Shouldn't the FSU/RPPSED rename itself the LSU if it's only interested in "legal speech"?
(although Leon is wrong when he describes my stance as "incoherent" - it genuinely isnt - it is a bit ranty, so apols for that. I hope my meaning is plain at this point, even if not agreed with)
The law what is is, and the FSU aren’t interested in stupid libel actions. They’re a genuine movement that seeks to defend freedom of speech, putting lawyers up to support people who face ostracism for their views.
Last night two teenagers were sentenced to life imprisonment for murdering someone simply because she was a woman with a penis.
Thought I would mention it because those most enthusiastically posting about women with penises on this board, haven't got round to mentioning it themselves.
Despite it being one of the most heinous murders ever and most tragic I have ever heard of , your opinion is erroneous. No side of that argument exclude violence in a small minority of the idiots involved on either side. People ought to get on with their lives.
Last night two teenagers were sentenced to life imprisonment for murdering someone simply because she was a woman with a penis.
Thought I would mention it because those most enthusiastically posting about women with penises on this board, haven't got round to mentioning it themselves.
They didn’t murder her “simply because she was a woman with a penis”. Her death was a horrific act by two disgusting people who wanted to kill someone, anyone and their tragic victim’s transgender identity was an additional - secondary according to the judge who actually sat through all the evidence - factor.
It’s pretty grim of you to use this as some sort of point scoring post. Hope you feel virtuous now.
It is a pretty horrific case and absolute tragedy for all three families involved. It raises all sorts of difficult issues: the role of porn and violent videos which seems to have played a crucial role and safeguarding - by the schools for all 3 children. There seems to have been an important failure there - not least in relation to Brianna who was a vulnerable boy with gender dysphoria in the process of social transitioning and who was also shy and withdrawn and anxious, kept out of school and with inconsistent attendance and so vulnerable to being preyed on by the killers, especially if one of them hated trans people as one of them did. Those were red flags which should have raised a safeguarding concern with the school but which appear not to have been. Or not properly acted on. It is also troubling that the school permitted Brianna to wear a school uniform which, according to the photos, is not like any school uniform I've ever seen a school girl wear. A skirt which barely covered the child's bottom is simply not standard uniform. Any child in school with gender issues should be properly safeguarded precisely in order to stop them being attacked in any way. Any child indulging in violent fantasies in the way the killers did should also be properly safeguarded. I hope that some lessons are being learnt about how the school did or did not fulfill its duties to children in its care.
The professionals who have been dealing with the killers were - reportedly - very against their names being released. A tricky issue - because we are dealing with children and one would like to hope that they might in time learn the error of their ways.
A truly horrible case in any case. I hope Brianna's family can start the process of finding some comfort, eventually.
As ever all the public services involved have failed miserably. Truly horrific case and all we will see in the end is "lessons will be learned".
And yet you bang on and on about the bloody cricket. Why?? Why one and not the other?
The only conclusion is that you want to keep cricket popular SO YOU CAN GO AND POO ALL OVER CRICKET GROUNDS - then blame it on the lack of public conveniences. How “convenient” for you
Admit it. First chance you get you’ll be doing jobbies at Headingley. You disgust me
I did. Yesterday.
I don't know why I bother, what with people ducking out.
Following up on my flagging up a report of Dacorum Council engaging contractors to spy on people having a widdle in the countryside cause no public khazis, and giving the contractors mostd of the proceeds.
This is an incredible story. A woman expresses perfectly legal “gender critical” views on Twitter
She is also a fan of the Toon
She is then investigated by some creepy “agency” within the Premier League, they compile an entire dossier on her life and doings, right down to where she walks her dog, the file is passed to NUFC - who ban her from the ground for two seasons
I'm always suspicious of this kind of story. Woman says she was banned due to this one legal comment, it might turn out the club says she's been banned due to other reasons entirely. There's normally more to it.
Perhaps, yes
But the Free Speech Union is quite diligent - they take on and WIN big legal cases (unlike Jo “kimono” Maugham)
Indeed. The question is the cases they take on
* Lawrence Fox calls somebody a paedo: FSU is silent * Mad BBC lady rants on about Jews: FSU is silent * Toon lady says woman can't have penis: FSU IS GO! ALL FSU CRAFT LAUNCH * NOW!
#PBFreeSpeech
May be they recognize that there is a limit to free speech and that ranting about Jews or calling someone a paedo isn’t on?
Sorry but the FSU seem to always be on the non-woke side of the argument - you can see similar from the one person on this site I believe is a member....
But isn’t that to be expected
“Woke” is a much abused term and not especially helpful.
But I think it is fair to say that it’s more characteristic of the left (although the right is learning fast) to try and define certain types of speech as not acceptable.
So assuming that the FSU is standing up for the ability to say thinks that are disapproved of by the prevailing culture wouldn’t that tend to be almost always “non woke”?
This is an incredible story. A woman expresses perfectly legal “gender critical” views on Twitter
She is also a fan of the Toon
She is then investigated by some creepy “agency” within the Premier League, they compile an entire dossier on her life and doings, right down to where she walks her dog, the file is passed to NUFC - who ban her from the ground for two seasons
I'm always suspicious of this kind of story. Woman says she was banned due to this one legal comment, it might turn out the club says she's been banned due to other reasons entirely. There's normally more to it.
Perhaps, yes
But the Free Speech Union is quite diligent - they take on and WIN big legal cases (unlike Jo “kimono” Maugham)
Indeed. The question is the cases they take on
* Lawrence Fox calls somebody a paedo: FSU is silent * Mad BBC lady rants on about Jews: FSU is silent * Toon lady says woman can't have penis: FSU IS GO! ALL FSU CRAFT LAUNCH * NOW!
#PBFreeSpeech
May be they recognize that there is a limit to free speech and that ranting about Jews or calling someone a paedo isn’t on?
Sorry but the FSU seem to always be on the non-woke side of the argument - you can see similar from the one person on this site I believe is a member....
But isn’t that to be expected
“Woke” is a much abused term and not especially helpful.
But I think it is fair to say that it’s more characteristic of the left (although the right is learning fast) to try and define certain types of speech as not acceptable.
So assuming that the FSU is standing up for the ability to say thinks that are disapproved of by the prevailing culture wouldn’t that tend to be almost always “non woke”?
A good point (a very good one thinking about it) but we run into boundary issues and survivorship bias. If the right are more successful than the left at defining "illegal speech" (cf @Sandpit's post) then the FSU actions define the battleground, not the boundary.
Both the Right and Left define speech as unsayable, but we do not notice the area the Right dictates as unsayable because it is not contested. This is not down to virtue or principle, but more a function of who can afford lawyers.
Liz Truss is said to have given up on her own leadership ambitions but believes that she will have a significant role in the appointment of the next Tory leader. She has continued inviting candidates, including some in safe seats replacing outgoing MPs, to her favoured club of 5 Hertford Street in Mayfair for drinks.
Truss and other right-wing Tory MPs including Lee Anderson, the former deputy chairman of the Conservative Party, will next week launch a movement called “popular conservatism”. It aims to promote small state, economic liberalism with a socially conservative agenda.
Has she not quite understood that 'popular conservatism' is just, well, not very popular? Not to mention economically suicidal.
Is it economically suicidal? I don't think it's been tried very much lately? Let's at least wait and see how Javier Milei gets on.
Truss tried it.
The results were not altogether to her advantage...
Not true. Liz Truss tried large-state/low-tax. The results of which were altogether predictable.
Although 'popular conservatism' *is* economically suicidal because it means feathering the nests of the unproductive by screwing over workers.
Isn’t there an argument, a PM is barely in 50 days how can we have such knowledge and opinion about what it was really all about, and indeed will have blended and balanced with real politik in following months and years?
The Truss budget wasn’t so dramatic economically, just a £13B giveaway once a week later all the fiscal drag had been understood by economists - but for that first week it was mistakenly reported by the media as economic drama, largely because the Truss Premiership was being vociferously spun against by opponents outside the Conservative Party - rightly as it was new - but also from inside the Conservative Party - which was wrong in hindsight how poor Sunak had proved, and throughout the media was little support and patience.
Truss was attempt at a political repositioning of UK politics and economics that was attacked in a largely dishonest way - the vast majority of her budget has been kept in place by Sunak, the vast majority of her budget not opposed by Labour - indeed a lot of the expenditure that spooked the markets - billions of borrowing to splurge as energy support payouts, was a Starmer wheeze Truss copied - because of course polls said voters love the idea but voters are not thinking of the bigger longer picture of paying the colossal borrowing in years and decades of high taxes. Even attacking a cut in top level rate we should see as non controversial - it wasn’t novel as Osborne has already cut it for the same reason, and Brown only invented it in 2010 to slyly soil the earth for his opponents.
Indeed, the way we should see the Truss agenda is it’s not right left ideology - Starmer spent the first years of his leadership saying growth growth growth, has gone clearly quiet on that catchphrase after Truss, yet Starmer still spent last conference season saying liberalise (weapon of choice a bulldozer) the planning laws holding this country back, and build houses everywhere. The Labour Party of the last few weeks is echoing Truss, Labours message is like a stick of rock with Truss written through the middle, because Labour thinks this message is popular with the people. And indeed it is.
And indeed it is. I suggest laughing at Truss idea’s for change is so last week, the political reality is the Tories might have missed the boat here.
Comments
1/3rd of the population fights them to the death
1/3rd of the population fails to notice anything. Unless the football is interrupted.
1/3rd of the population queues up to become a Block Führer
If an old man can be allowed the occasional sexist remark……
In recent years there hasn't been much economic liberalism on the right. Milei is the exception, which is why a lot of the commentary mistakenly put him in the Trump box, since the Milei (and apparently Truss) box was too rare to even recognize when they saw it.
https://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2024/01/07/classification/
This is why I invented the #PBFreeSpeech tag: so I could keep track of it.
Please, its the 21st century.
Someone with a potty mouth can come up with something the most ardent free speech activist will want banned.
I presume they take each case on its merits, and pursue the ones which are most egregious, and therefore have the best chance of winning (Fox’s case was not that)
Prima facie this particular case looks quite outrageous - and def worth supporting. But there may be facts hidden from us
Toby Young is a contentious figure, disliked by many, but the FSU is probably the best thing he’s ever done. I wish him well. I might actually donate
Great catch.
Actually this fits quite nicely with where Truss (and other erstwhile free market right wingers like Redwood) have gone. Domestic deregulation and tax cutting, global zero-sum mercantilism and protectionism with a contempt for international law.
I think there are even fewer laissez faire globalists with socially conservative views, in fact the two are completely incompatible.
What?
Maybe it isn’t true or it’s not the whole picture, but as I said before the FSU is usually quite careful in its choice of cases
PB has developed a side-hustle: everybody somebody says something it convenes an emergency Committee Of Public Safety, discusses the matter in the most shallow terms (John Stuart Mill! Hate Speech! Free Speech! Kimono!), pronounces and moves on.
#PBFreeSpeech
Whether by very much remains to be seen.
What we all want is tax cuts, but we'll tolerate tax rises for other people.
Very few people actually want government spending to rise, but we all defend our bits of territory- the sectors we use or are interested in- ferociously. It's why scapegoating, whether it's spending on Diversity Officers or International Aid, or Foreigners jumping the queue, is popular even when it's irrelevant.
We all tend to be very keen on our own liberty, but resent it when other people's liberty offends us. (Matthew Parris has a good controlled fury in the Times today, on the mess the Conservative right has got into on this.)
We're human, which means we have a tendency to selfishness and hypocrisy. Question is, what do we do with that insight?
I’m watching with the Indian English commentary, they’re probably happier than the UK broadcaster commentary.
“Only 13,000 Poles will come”
“The FSU has processed 2,250 cases since forming three years ago, and our success rate stands at nearly 75%, proving that it's possible to resist cancel culture and win. Take a look at some of our biggest recent victories on our website — link is below!
freespeechunion.org”
https://x.com/speechunion/status/1753463296718422036?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw
If true, that’s definitely better than Jolyon
Like many, he went quite mad for a while. Positively anti-democratic. Overturn the vote! Revoke it! Quite bonkers
He is once again readable and insightful
Thought I would mention it because those most enthusiastically posting about women with penises on this board, haven't got round to mentioning it themselves.
But they didn't
Which reinforces my point, which is that the FSU defends the speech they like and not that which they don't. Which is why it is really the Rich People's Preferred Speech Enforcement Division. #RPPSED.
#PBFreeSpeech
I doubt there is a single person on here not appalled by this murder, and its motivation
We’ve also not talked about the Israeli strikes on Gaza, despite mentioning anti Semitism
We’ve not mentioned the ongoing hunt for the still dangerous acid attacking asylum seeker, despite discussing migration
And we’ve also not mentioned the possible terror attack in Paris, the US strikes on Iran, the scarcity of public loos, and the deadly storm in Norway, and instead we’ve discussed the cricket
Maybe that's why it's not been mentioned.
Even then, the laws of libel still exist, the FSU aren’t interested in illegal speech, they’re interested in people being discriminated against for legal speech.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/feb/02/brianna-ghey-murderers-named-sentenced-to-life-in-prison
It’s pretty grim of you to use this as some sort of point scoring post. Hope you feel virtuous now.
Lozza Fox has a very high profile, a whole lot of followers, and donors who give him £250k a year IIRC
How far you should police that is a tricky question. While employers have a right to expect professional behaviour in the workplace and, possibly and to a certain extent, for employees outside the workplace not to behave in a way which brings the employer into disrepute, trying to enforce some sort of morality code on employees in their private life is worrying. Employees are just that - not slaves. They do not belong to the employer. And they are entitled to have a private life which is none of the employer's business.
Where the boundaries are is difficult and there is a risk that we get some sort of social media-inspired and inconsistent enforced behaviour code imposed on people in a way which blurs important boundaries. I am not, for instance, a huge fan of the "Bring Your Whole Self to Work" movement. Bring Your Professional Self - yes. But for the sake of your own sanity you need to have a life and space and a Self outside work which is none of the employer's business and which they cannot - and must not - insist you share with them or bring to work. Just as it is important to keep a private/home/social life into which work does not intrude.
Years ago my then boss wanted to do a team building exercise (the very phrase makes my skin crawl) in which we brought in photos of us as young children and we had to match them up with the adult. I refused. Because this was private to me - a part of my life which had absolutely nothing to do with work and which I did not want co-opted for work purposes. Nor did I want to share personal photos with people who were simply colleagues. I'm not sure I'd share such photos with anyone other than my family or very close friends. I was informally told off but I didn't care. It felt to me that the boss was overstepping a boundary.
We are in danger these days of forgetting that boundaries matter, that they are necessary for our sense of ourselves.
Frankly you were lucky I didn't use bullet points.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/feb/02/britons-on-the-scarcity-of-public-toilets
And yet you bang on and on about the bloody cricket. Why?? Why one and not the other?
The only conclusion is that you want to keep cricket popular SO YOU CAN GO AND POO ALL OVER CRICKET GROUNDS - then blame it on the lack of public conveniences. How “convenient” for you
Admit it. First chance you get you’ll be doing jobbies at Headingley. You disgust me
This thread has lost all it's seats in Wales.
(although Leon is wrong when he describes my stance as "incoherent" - it genuinely isnt - it is a bit ranty, so apols for that. I hope my meaning is plain at this point, even if not agreed with)
RIP.
Free Speech (TM) always meant “Relatively free speech, with penalties and prohibitions for only the most egregious statements”
There is a definite uptick in “it offends me therefore it is hate speech”
There is an uptick the other way - “I am a nice person. Therefore {insert crap about the Jews that Edward I would have said was Fucked In The Head} isn’t racism”
It’s almost as if the real world needs balance, moderate policies and lots of exceptions judged on a case by case basis.
The professionals who have been dealing with the killers were - reportedly - very against their names being released. A tricky issue - because we are dealing with children and one would like to hope that they might in time learn the error of their ways.
A truly horrible case in any case. I hope Brianna's family can start the process of finding some comfort, eventually.
I don't know why I bother, what with people ducking out.
Following up on my flagging up a report of Dacorum Council engaging contractors to spy on people having a widdle in the countryside cause no public khazis, and giving the contractors mostd of the proceeds.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/jan/29/english-council-littering-fines-peeing-in-countryside-dacorum-hertfordshire
As Wiki says, "Not to be confused with Decorum."
BTW Dacorum was Tory for 20 years until last year. Now LD.
“Woke” is a much abused term and not especially helpful.
But I think it is fair to say that it’s more characteristic of the left (although the right is learning fast) to try and define certain types of speech as not acceptable.
So assuming that the FSU is standing up for the ability to say thinks that are disapproved of by the prevailing culture wouldn’t that tend to be almost always “non woke”?
Both the Right and Left define speech as unsayable, but we do not notice the area the Right dictates as unsayable because it is not contested. This is not down to virtue or principle, but more a function of who can afford lawyers.
The Truss budget wasn’t so dramatic economically, just a £13B giveaway once a week later all the fiscal drag had been understood by economists - but for that first week it was mistakenly reported by the media as economic drama, largely because the Truss Premiership was being vociferously spun against by opponents outside the Conservative Party - rightly as it was new - but also from inside the Conservative Party - which was wrong in hindsight how poor Sunak had proved, and throughout the media was little support and patience.
Truss was attempt at a political repositioning of UK politics and economics that was attacked in a largely dishonest way - the vast majority of her budget has been kept in place by Sunak, the vast majority of her budget not opposed by Labour - indeed a lot of the expenditure that spooked the markets - billions of borrowing to splurge as energy support payouts, was a Starmer wheeze Truss copied - because of course polls said voters love the idea but voters are not thinking of the bigger longer picture of paying the colossal borrowing in years and decades of high taxes. Even attacking a cut in top level rate we should see as non controversial - it wasn’t novel as Osborne has already cut it for the same reason, and Brown only invented it in 2010 to slyly soil the earth for his opponents.
Indeed, the way we should see the Truss agenda is it’s not right left ideology - Starmer spent the first years of his leadership saying growth growth growth, has gone clearly quiet on that catchphrase after Truss, yet Starmer still spent last conference season saying liberalise (weapon of choice a bulldozer) the planning laws holding this country back, and build houses everywhere. The Labour Party of the last few weeks is echoing Truss, Labours message is like a stick of rock with Truss written through the middle, because Labour thinks this message is popular with the people. And indeed it is.
And indeed it is. I suggest laughing at Truss idea’s for change is so last week, the political reality is the Tories might have missed the boat here.