I struggle to get the deification of Rayner. I don’t think Fishing’s characterisation is fair but she strikes me as quite ordinary as a politician. Labour has some quality on its front bench. She’s not up there. I’d love to know just why people rate her so highly and what she has done in terms of policy to achieve this level of devotion.
As she’s working class she seems to attract admiration, in parts, from middle class commentators, mostly male, and seemingly as a way of burnishing their pro working class credentials and all of this while labour increasingly selects fewer and fewer working class candidates and more and more white collar former SPAD/London Councillor/charity/Quangocrats/Lawyer types. The party is being purged of the working class.
It’s all a bit ‘how can I hate women, my mother was one’, ‘I’ve got black friends, I’m not racist’ from the commentariat who seem to think challenging her is picking in her.
It is fair to ask questions of her, her shiftiness and evasiveness over it the whole issue has dragged it out. Sure the Tories are bad but let’s not give the other parties a free pass.
Completely agree. Embarrassing to be using the fact she is working class (or was if you’re one of those people who thinks getting rich means you can no longer be working class) as some kind of card that can be played to avoid scrutiny
It's past 8.30am and Mark Rowley is still in office. No way will he still be there by the end of tomorrow.
The question is who he'll take with him. The push to ban anti-genocide demonstrations seems pretty damned serious.
Is there a market on
* next person to leave the cabinet? * Cleverly to leave the cabinet by [date]? * Sunak to leave office before the end of May?
I stopped reading the following piece from the Lebedev press when I reached the word "experts", but it seems effort is still being put into Susan Hall's campaign, even at this late stage:
I was left with the same question here - Mark Rowley who?
But I see he is the boss of the Met, which is disappointing.
I wanted him to be either the actor playing a libidinous Frenchman, or an actual libidinous Frenchman - which is at least all the recent Presidents, and probably all of them. Then I could apply some words for life, @TSE style, or following the actions of the Spectator elite in Paris, in their heads, with respect to girls with pearls.
A frog he would a-wooing go, Heigh ho! says Rowley, A frog he would a-wooing go, Whether his mother would let him or no. With a rowley, powley, gammon, and spinach, Heigh ho! says Anthony Rowley.
So off he set with his opera hat, Heigh ho! says Rowley, So off he set with his opera hat, And on the road he met with a rat, With a rowley, powley, gammon, and spinach, Heigh ho! says Anthony Rowley.... https://wordsforlife.org.uk/activities/frog-he-would-wooing-go/
Former chair of the GMP federation defends the met and the anti semitic policing compacting it to soccer rivalry.
In both cases I would expect the police to arrest those who kick off. A jew wearing a yarmulka should be able to walk through a crowd of Muslims, and a Man C supporter should be able to walk through a crowd of Man U fans
There are two or three parts. The "openly Jewish" bit was disgraceful and ignorant and it needs to be clear to every officer that is unnacceptable. The threatening arrest was unnecessary.
However not allowing him to walk directly through the march is a fairly standard part of policing. Happens every week at football matches, would happen today if protestors want to walk through the marathon course.
Broadly agree - irrespective of what you think is your "right" to walk the King's Highway unimpeded in all circumstances, the Police have a greater responsibility to maintain public order and if that inconveniences you, so be it. I do agree the opening comment was unacceptable but I wouldn't expect to be allowed to cross a road in the middle of a demonstration or a major event.
Rights are not absolute - they come with obligations and responsibilities. Sometimes those seeking to assert those rights forget the second bit. We need I think to re-orient the debate away from the rights of the individual to the societal obligations and responsibilities of the individual.
Surely people have an obligation not to be "provoked" into violence. If you twat someone because you think they are Jewish, an Arsenal fan, or even because they have called you a c**t, you have chosen to do so and should be held responsible for your actions.
Lib Dem’s turn to explain themselves : this appears to be a classic expenses scheme to funnel tax payer money back to political mates to provide MPs with “support services”
All within the rules but will it pass the “smell test”
Lib Dem MP paid £120,000 to firm run by party officials
Sarah Green, who represents Chesham & Amersham, claimed the money on expenses to cover services provided by Midas Training
It is not clear from the expenses claims exactly what services the company provides the MP, but records show the payments began three months after she was elected. Since then Midas has been paid every month bar one and often numerous times a month.....
...The Midas Training headquarters are registered in Aylesbury. They are behind the nondescript shopfront of a small tax advisory firm at the side of a roundabout on a busy street. The logo above the door reads Taxassist Accountants and are also the registered headquarters of at least 25 other businesses, including an HR company, an immigration advisory firm and a diamond drilling business.
Midas is a “brass plate” company — a firm lacking any meaningful connection with its place of incorporation and without any physical premises. While the opening hours on the door of Taxassist Accountants read 9am-5pm, nobody was at the premises and the lights were switched off at 10am last Friday.
The managing director of Midas Training is Candy Piercy, who runs the company with her husband Michael. She is the vice-chairwoman of the Chesham & Amersham Lib Dems executive committee, and on the Lib Dems’ national website she is described as a “founder member” of the party.
Can you provide (round to the nearest million £ is enough) the amount that Conservative MPs have spent on firms run by Conservative officials please mr Eagles?
It's past 8.30am and Mark Rowley is still in office. No way will he still be there by the end of tomorrow.
The question is who he'll take with him. The push to ban anti-genocide demonstrations seems pretty damned serious.
Is there a market on
* next person to leave the cabinet? * Cleverly to leave the cabinet by [date]? * Sunak to leave office before the end of May?
I stopped reading the following piece from the Lebedev press when I reached the word "experts", but it seems effort is still being put into Susan Hall's campaign, even at this late stage:
I was left with the same question here - Mark Rowley who?
But I see he is the boss of the Met, which is disappointing.
I wanted him to be either the actor playing a libidinous Frenchman, or an actual libidinous Frenchman - which is at least all the recent Presidents, and probably all of them. Then I could apply some words for life, @TSE style, or following the actions of the Spectator elite in Paris, in their heads, with respect to girls with pearls.
A frog he would a-wooing go, Heigh ho! says Rowley, A frog he would a-wooing go, Whether his mother would let him or no. With a rowley, powley, gammon, and spinach, Heigh ho! says Anthony Rowley.
So off he set with his opera hat, Heigh ho! says Rowley, So off he set with his opera hat, And on the road he met with a rat, With a rowley, powley, gammon, and spinach, Heigh ho! says Anthony Rowley.... https://wordsforlife.org.uk/activities/frog-he-would-wooing-go/
Former chair of the GMP federation defends the met and the anti semitic policing compacting it to soccer rivalry.
It's so often former rather than current politicians, judges, and diplomats who say things or sign letters that are undesirably off-message as far as supporters of Israel are concerned.
Poor old Roly-Poly. You have to remember that someone in his job will have cooperated for years with the Community Security Trust.
With a stepping up of the genocide in the offing, there is a powerful push to ban pro-Palestinian demonstrations in London. Rowley is certainly toast. While Matt W is having his deranged singsong we can ask who else will fall. Sunak is going to have to say something, probably by tomorrow.
There's an in depth article about Angela Rayner, the bits in bold are huge red flags for me and soon she could be a heartbeat away from being PM with her finger on the Trident button.
Beyond the brash exterior is a vulnerable and anxious woman. She is an insomniac — she endures the long, sleepless hours by listening to audiobooks about serial killers — and trusts very few people beyond her tight inner circle; she has panic buttons installed in her house and was convinced during the Corbyn years that she was being spied upon.
and
Like Boris Johnson, whom in some ways she resembles, Rayner is a source of endless fascination and speculation. There is no one quite like her at Westminster. She is gossiped about, condescended, traduced but never ignored. Like Johnson, she has undoubted star quality. She is both self-glamorising and self-mythologising.
You are not paranoid when people are really out to get you!
Rayner is a bright spot in a sea of Labour grey suits, not just her dress sense, but also her outspokeness.
Young made an interesting point about Meritocracy in this 2001 article about the phenomenon that he had named. One aspect of Meritocracy is that it denudes the working class of its brightest and best leaders. While such social mobility is good for those individuals, it leaves large sections of the population without leadership. He thinks this part of the reason for the decline of the truly working class politician. Rayner is an exception to this.
Rayner has the same position in Starmer's government as Prescott did in Blair's - a nasty, incompetent fool who should be kept as far away as possible from any important position, but is there as a sop to the Loony Left, and maybe so that Starmer can assuage the guilt he occasionally feels in betraying everything he once claimed to stand for.
Angela Rayner has a deep streak of unpleasantness in her, witness her comments of "Tory Scum" which is a disgusting dehumanisation of one's political opponents that can, and does, incite abuse and violence.
She's lost some weight, wears interesting clothes, has a difficult backstory and can dance well to Old Skool music but that doesn't give her a free pass for everything else, I'm afraid. Even if @Foxy does really fancy her.
The middle class guy fancying the bit of rough from the council estate ?
A personally offensive to a fellow poster, post that was better left unposted. Same goes for Casino's last statement in the post you were foolishly responding too.
I don't particularly like Rayner, but this whole saga strikes me as bullying. The most absurd moments have been James Daly being unable to explain what he was complaining to the police about.
Scrutiny is not bullying. She regularly makes those sort of demands from the Tories. Why shouldn’t she be subject to scrutiny.
Daly came over as a complete clown in that exchange. In 12 months time he’ll be an ex MP.
Criticism of Rayner seems to be deflected by her defenders on grounds of class/snobbery the same way Netanyahu deflects criticism of Israeli actions by accusing the critics of anti-Semitism.
Yes, that can sometimes be true, but it is far from always true and it's a very lazy and inflammatory way of dealing with argument.
I don't particularly like her, but couldn't give two hoots for her class.
I didn't really like Seamus Milne either. Who went to Winchester.
I struggle to get the deification of Rayner. I don’t think Fishing’s characterisation is fair but she strikes me as quite ordinary as a politician. Labour has some quality on its front bench. She’s not up there. I’d love to know just why people rate her so highly and what she has done in terms of policy to achieve this level of devotion.
As she’s working class she seems to attract admiration, in parts, from middle class commentators, mostly male, and seemingly as a way of burnishing their pro working class credentials and all of this while labour increasingly selects fewer and fewer working class candidates and more and more white collar former SPAD/London Councillor/charity/Quangocrats/Lawyer types. The party is being purged of the working class.
It’s all a bit ‘how can I hate women, my mother was one’, ‘I’ve got black friends, I’m not racist’ from the commentariat who seem to think challenging her is picking in her.
It is fair to ask questions of her, her shiftiness and evasiveness over it the whole issue has dragged it out. Sure the Tories are bad but let’s not give the other parties a free pass.
She is very like Two Jags, ham up the poor working class lass who lived in a cardboard box , while stuffing her bankbook. Yet to hear anything remotely useful or helpful from her. Just another one out for herself.
I am so relieved that after your flirtation with the SNP you are back in the Tory fold. Well done!
What's interesting about this post (quite aside from being incorrect, because Malcolm is not a Tory nor to my knowledge ever has been) is what it reveals about how just how sensitive Labour activists are about their support base.
Deep down: they know it's a mile wide and an inch deep, and built on sand, and it will be very interesting to see how quickly it corrodes once in office.
It's past 8.30am and Mark Rowley is still in office. No way will he still be there by the end of tomorrow.
The question is who he'll take with him. The push to ban anti-genocide demonstrations seems pretty damned serious.
Is there a market on
* next person to leave the cabinet? * Cleverly to leave the cabinet by [date]? * Sunak to leave office before the end of May?
I stopped reading the following piece from the Lebedev press when I reached the word "experts", but it seems effort is still being put into Susan Hall's campaign, even at this late stage:
I was left with the same question here - Mark Rowley who?
But I see he is the boss of the Met, which is disappointing.
I wanted him to be either the actor playing a libidinous Frenchman, or an actual libidinous Frenchman - which is at least all the recent Presidents, and probably all of them. Then I could apply some words for life, @TSE style, or following the actions of the Spectator elite in Paris, in their heads, with respect to girls with pearls.
A frog he would a-wooing go, Heigh ho! says Rowley, A frog he would a-wooing go, Whether his mother would let him or no. With a rowley, powley, gammon, and spinach, Heigh ho! says Anthony Rowley.
So off he set with his opera hat, Heigh ho! says Rowley, So off he set with his opera hat, And on the road he met with a rat, With a rowley, powley, gammon, and spinach, Heigh ho! says Anthony Rowley.... https://wordsforlife.org.uk/activities/frog-he-would-wooing-go/
Former chair of the GMP federation defends the met and the anti semitic policing compacting it to soccer rivalry.
In both cases I would expect the police to arrest those who kick off. A jew wearing a yarmulka should be able to walk through a crowd of Muslims, and a Man C supporter should be able to walk through a crowd of Man U fans
There are two or three parts. The "openly Jewish" bit was disgraceful and ignorant and it needs to be clear to every officer that is unnacceptable. The threatening arrest was unnecessary.
However not allowing him to walk directly through the march is a fairly standard part of policing. Happens every week at football matches, would happen today if protestors want to walk through the marathon course.
Broadly agree - irrespective of what you think is your "right" to walk the King's Highway unimpeded in all circumstances, the Police have a greater responsibility to maintain public order and if that inconveniences you, so be it. I do agree the opening comment was unacceptable but I wouldn't expect to be allowed to cross a road in the middle of a demonstration or a major event.
Rights are not absolute - they come with obligations and responsibilities. Sometimes those seeking to assert those rights forget the second bit. We need I think to re-orient the debate away from the rights of the individual to the societal obligations and responsibilities of the individual.
Surely people have an obligation not to be "provoked" into violence. If you twat someone because you think they are Jewish, an Arsenal fan, or even because they have called you a c**t, you have chosen to do so and should be held responsible for your actions.
he's an arsehole who was trying to provoke a riot, treat him the same as those anti abortion idiots who protest outside clinics
The 'openly Jewish' comment was clearly a disgrace, although there is a suspicion that the gentleman concerned (the CEO of the Campaign Against Antisemitism) was seeking a police reaction to him crossing the road through the middle of the marchers.
Meanwhile, young men in their droves continue to be stopped and searched by the Met for being 'openly black'.
The point for me is less about the police - who are doing a difficult job badly - but their probably correct assumption that being openly Jewish would be a dangerous thing to be in the presence of a pro-Palestine march in the same way that being openly Muslum might be a dangerous thing to be in the presence of an EDL march. I can the police getting into exactly the same pickle in that hypothetical situation. Because the pro-Palestine marches contain exactly the same violent mob elements whise intention is to intimidate as the EDL.
There's an in depth article about Angela Rayner, the bits in bold are huge red flags for me and soon she could be a heartbeat away from being PM with her finger on the Trident button.
Beyond the brash exterior is a vulnerable and anxious woman. She is an insomniac — she endures the long, sleepless hours by listening to audiobooks about serial killers — and trusts very few people beyond her tight inner circle; she has panic buttons installed in her house and was convinced during the Corbyn years that she was being spied upon.
and
Like Boris Johnson, whom in some ways she resembles, Rayner is a source of endless fascination and speculation. There is no one quite like her at Westminster. She is gossiped about, condescended, traduced but never ignored. Like Johnson, she has undoubted star quality. She is both self-glamorising and self-mythologising.
You are not paranoid when people are really out to get you!
Rayner is a bright spot in a sea of Labour grey suits, not just her dress sense, but also her outspokeness.
Young made an interesting point about Meritocracy in this 2001 article about the phenomenon that he had named. One aspect of Meritocracy is that it denudes the working class of its brightest and best leaders. While such social mobility is good for those individuals, it leaves large sections of the population without leadership. He thinks this part of the reason for the decline of the truly working class politician. Rayner is an exception to this.
Rayner has the same position in Starmer's government as Prescott did in Blair's - a nasty, incompetent fool who should be kept as far away as possible from any important position, but is there as a sop to the Loony Left, and maybe so that Starmer can assuage the guilt he occasionally feels in betraying everything he once claimed to stand for.
Angela Rayner has a deep streak of unpleasantness in her, witness her comments of "Tory Scum" which is a disgusting dehumanisation of one's political opponents that can, and does, incite abuse and violence.
She's lost some weight, wears interesting clothes, has a difficult backstory and can dance well to Old Skool music but that doesn't give her a free pass for everything else, I'm afraid. Even if @Foxy does really fancy her.
The middle class guy fancying the bit of rough from the council estate ?
A personally offensive to a fellow poster, post that was better left unposted. Same goes for Casino's last statement in the post you were foolishly responding too.
I don't particularly like Rayner, but this whole saga strikes me as bullying. The most absurd moments have been James Daly being unable to explain what he was complaining to the police about.
Scrutiny is not bullying. She regularly makes those sort of demands from the Tories. Why shouldn’t she be subject to scrutiny.
Daly came over as a complete clown in that exchange. In 12 months time he’ll be an ex MP.
Criticism of Rayner seems to be deflected by her defenders on grounds of class/snobbery the same way Netanyahu deflects criticism of Israeli actions by accusing the critics of anti-Semitism.
Yes, that can sometimes be true, but it is far from always true and it's a very lazy and inflammatory way of dealing with argument.
I don't particularly like her, but couldn't give two hoots for her class.
I didn't really like Seamus Milne either. Who went to Winchester.
For me, it’s just a drab story, rather than anything to do with class. What is she accused of? What crime is she supposed to have committed? Even the bloke who reported her to the cops doesn’t seem to know.
0.6C at the vineyard with 6 hours of cooling to come. Only a matter of time before it goes negative and wipes out this years harvest before it’s started.
I take it vines in England aren't valuable enough for covering with protective ice or lighting little stoves as they do in France?
On the contrary most of the larger vineyards here make substantial use of frost candles, fans and other equipment. But I’m a little mini vineyard of only a few thousand vines and don’t have the scale to afford that. Besides I live in London and the vines are in Kent. So I have to just let nature do its thing.
Its thing last night was -0.8C. Cold enough for some damage.
It's this a situation where freezing-degree-hours would be the relevant metric as to how much harm would be done?
Up to a point. The longer it freezes the worse. I had sub-zero for about 2 hours last night, which isn’t too bad.
But once it hits really cold temperatures, say -3C and below, the duration of cold is less important. It just kills everything and the vine has to start again from secondary buds.
I appreciate your concern and glancing at the early morning weather models, we are in for a chilly few days with air frosts in rural and sheltered areas every night - Wednesday into Thursday looks perhaps the coldest. The models are showing air temperatures no worse than -1C but you and I both know if you are in a frost hollow under clear skies the dawn temperature could be much lower.
Air frost wll be limited, ground frost will be more widespread.
April is the cruellest month for several reasons; this is one
If you do get some sun on your face it’s actually hot and you regret your massive winter coat (here in Paris anyway). Because we are way past the equinox and the sun now has the strength of the sun in August. But if it clouds over or you step into shadow the wind sends it back to mid February
Purgatorial is, I think, the mot juste
April is a true transition month.
In the Central England Temperature record you can find days in every month November to March with a mean temperature below freezing, and in every month May to September a day with mean temperatures above 20C, but April and October are the transition months when neither of those things occur.
Merci
I love geeky weather chat. My inner nerd stirs. Also my outer nerd if the weather is REALLY mad
I struggle to get the deification of Rayner. I don’t think Fishing’s characterisation is fair but she strikes me as quite ordinary as a politician. Labour has some quality on its front bench. She’s not up there. I’d love to know just why people rate her so highly and what she has done in terms of policy to achieve this level of devotion.
As she’s working class she seems to attract admiration, in parts, from middle class commentators, mostly male, and seemingly as a way of burnishing their pro working class credentials and all of this while labour increasingly selects fewer and fewer working class candidates and more and more white collar former SPAD/London Councillor/charity/Quangocrats/Lawyer types. The party is being purged of the working class.
It’s all a bit ‘how can I hate women, my mother was one’, ‘I’ve got black friends, I’m not racist’ from the commentariat who seem to think challenging her is picking in her.
It is fair to ask questions of her, her shiftiness and evasiveness over it the whole issue has dragged it out. Sure the Tories are bad but let’s not give the other parties a free pass.
What I can never understand is why the Tories keep ignoring the fact that she has a family whose needs are likely to underlie this whole saga - adaptation of the second house, and so on. Which the media can't cover, for very good ethical reasons. Very, very conveniently for the Tories.
Tories always whine when their families become part of the story. Now they're exploiting the rule.
How convenient her defence is something she can’t disclose but we just have to trust her
I think (and I may be getting it muddled with Wareham) it was the back-of-beyond place where I went to a friend's baptism-by-immersion one summer whilst on placement from University. Remarkable experience in a traditional *very* hands-down gospel hall (roughly old-style Keswick Tradition for those who know such distinctions). It was like a 1950s church hall where your grandma would attend beetle drives, and when the chairs were moved there were a couple of trapdoors with a baptism pool underneath. I stayed with a lovely couple who had 3 year old triplets, who they transported around in a beat-up 15 year old Volvo Estate.
I recall it was a hell of a long way from Nottingham (never mind Bradford) in a Mk1 VW Polo, and felt isolated like a filming location for The Wicker Man, had it been set in England. Were chip shops and pubs frowned upon?
When was this?
Growing up nearby in the 1980s, there were bits of Fareham like that- surprisingly remote for somewhere midway between Portsmouth and Southampton, places where they grew strawberries and didn't like strangers.
A lot of those bits got executive homes built on them in the mid-to-late 80s. The sort of thing that Ken Masters from Howard's Way would have called aspirational.
Though it sounds a bit more like Wareham- once you get beyond Bournemouth, coastal Dorset really is remote.
I struggle to get the deification of Rayner. I don’t think Fishing’s characterisation is fair but she strikes me as quite ordinary as a politician. Labour has some quality on its front bench. She’s not up there. I’d love to know just why people rate her so highly and what she has done in terms of policy to achieve this level of devotion.
As she’s working class she seems to attract admiration, in parts, from middle class commentators, mostly male, and seemingly as a way of burnishing their pro working class credentials and all of this while labour increasingly selects fewer and fewer working class candidates and more and more white collar former SPAD/London Councillor/charity/Quangocrats/Lawyer types. The party is being purged of the working class.
It’s all a bit ‘how can I hate women, my mother was one’, ‘I’ve got black friends, I’m not racist’ from the commentariat who seem to think challenging her is picking in her.
It is fair to ask questions of her, her shiftiness and evasiveness over it the whole issue has dragged it out. Sure the Tories are bad but let’s not give the other parties a free pass.
The language used, for example "shiftiness" demonstrates Colville's agenda. If he didn't want to impress upon the reader that Rayner is a "wrong 'un" he would have used, maybe, obfuscation instead?
Shiftiness is my word and I have said it about her response to this more than once. Her response to scrutiny is she doesn’t like it. Yet she is happy to dish it out. She’s getting back some of what she’s dished out. She could close this down very quickly by publishing the advice she was given. So why not. Instead she makes stupid demands for the PM and Chancellor to publish 15 years of tax records
Colville is saying honesty matters and he’s right. He’s not saying she’s a wrong un or a right un.
At the level in question, any advice could well have been verbal. More than a decade ago. And HMRC regulations have clear rules on how long one need keep personal tax. Which is not that long.
You sound like those Home Office bureaucrats demanding to see a full run of bank accounts back to the 1980s before they will believe someone actually lived in the UK.
There's an in depth article about Angela Rayner, the bits in bold are huge red flags for me and soon she could be a heartbeat away from being PM with her finger on the Trident button.
Beyond the brash exterior is a vulnerable and anxious woman. She is an insomniac — she endures the long, sleepless hours by listening to audiobooks about serial killers — and trusts very few people beyond her tight inner circle; she has panic buttons installed in her house and was convinced during the Corbyn years that she was being spied upon.
and
Like Boris Johnson, whom in some ways she resembles, Rayner is a source of endless fascination and speculation. There is no one quite like her at Westminster. She is gossiped about, condescended, traduced but never ignored. Like Johnson, she has undoubted star quality. She is both self-glamorising and self-mythologising.
You are not paranoid when people are really out to get you!
Rayner is a bright spot in a sea of Labour grey suits, not just her dress sense, but also her outspokeness.
Young made an interesting point about Meritocracy in this 2001 article about the phenomenon that he had named. One aspect of Meritocracy is that it denudes the working class of its brightest and best leaders. While such social mobility is good for those individuals, it leaves large sections of the population without leadership. He thinks this part of the reason for the decline of the truly working class politician. Rayner is an exception to this.
Rayner has the same position in Starmer's government as Prescott did in Blair's - a nasty, incompetent fool who should be kept as far away as possible from any important position, but is there as a sop to the Loony Left, and maybe so that Starmer can assuage the guilt he occasionally feels in betraying everything he once claimed to stand for.
Angela Rayner has a deep streak of unpleasantness in her, witness her comments of "Tory Scum" which is a disgusting dehumanisation of one's political opponents that can, and does, incite abuse and violence.
She's lost some weight, wears interesting clothes, has a difficult backstory and can dance well to Old Skool music but that doesn't give her a free pass for everything else, I'm afraid. Even if @Foxy does really fancy her.
The middle class guy fancying the bit of rough from the council estate ?
A personally offensive to a fellow poster, post that was better left unposted. Same goes for Casino's last statement in the post you were foolishly responding too.
I don't particularly like Rayner, but this whole saga strikes me as bullying. The most absurd moments have been James Daly being unable to explain what he was complaining to the police about.
Scrutiny is not bullying. She regularly makes those sort of demands from the Tories. Why shouldn’t she be subject to scrutiny.
Daly came over as a complete clown in that exchange. In 12 months time he’ll be an ex MP.
Criticism of Rayner seems to be deflected by her defenders on grounds of class/snobbery the same way Netanyahu deflects criticism of Israeli actions by accusing the critics of anti-Semitism.
Yes, that can sometimes be true, but it is far from always true and it's a very lazy and inflammatory way of dealing with argument.
I don't particularly like her, but couldn't give two hoots for her class.
I didn't really like Seamus Milne either. Who went to Winchester.
I did think for a while that the poster “DJ41”and maybe “Donkeys”was Seamus.
0.6C at the vineyard with 6 hours of cooling to come. Only a matter of time before it goes negative and wipes out this years harvest before it’s started.
I take it vines in England aren't valuable enough for covering with protective ice or lighting little stoves as they do in France?
On the contrary most of the larger vineyards here make substantial use of frost candles, fans and other equipment. But I’m a little mini vineyard of only a few thousand vines and don’t have the scale to afford that. Besides I live in London and the vines are in Kent. So I have to just let nature do its thing.
Its thing last night was -0.8C. Cold enough for some damage.
It's this a situation where freezing-degree-hours would be the relevant metric as to how much harm would be done?
Up to a point. The longer it freezes the worse. I had sub-zero for about 2 hours last night, which isn’t too bad.
But once it hits really cold temperatures, say -3C and below, the duration of cold is less important. It just kills everything and the vine has to start again from secondary buds.
I appreciate your concern and glancing at the early morning weather models, we are in for a chilly few days with air frosts in rural and sheltered areas every night - Wednesday into Thursday looks perhaps the coldest. The models are showing air temperatures no worse than -1C but you and I both know if you are in a frost hollow under clear skies the dawn temperature could be much lower.
Air frost wll be limited, ground frost will be more widespread.
April is the cruellest month for several reasons; this is one
If you do get some sun on your face it’s actually hot and you regret your massive winter coat (here in Paris anyway). Because we are way past the equinox and the sun now has the strength of the sun in August. But if it clouds over or you step into shadow the wind sends it back to mid February
Purgatorial is, I think, the mot juste
April is a true transition month.
In the Central England Temperature record you can find days in every month November to March with a mean temperature below freezing, and in every month May to September a day with mean temperatures above 20C, but April and October are the transition months when neither of those things occur.
Merci
I love geeky weather chat. My inner nerd stirs. Also my outer nerd if the weather is REALLY mad
The Sun is warm, but the land and sea are still cold. (And the soddenness of the ground can't help from that point of view. It's an absolute bugger to turn cold water into warm water.)
I see the Heil have come up with some more "evidence" in Raynergate. By "sign the document" they mean "witness Rayner's signature" on her TR1. Which anyone can do. Mine last one was witnessed by the receptionist at my firm, the one before that by my parents' next door neighbour. So this "new evidence" is that Rayner asked a neighbour of her husband (who has already given a statement to the police) to witness a transfer deed. What the f**k does that prove? Why didn't she get someone nearer her main house, they ask? Because she was at her husband's house when she needed the TR1 witnessed, maybe?
In fact, paraphrase Ebert, this information doesn't scrape the bottom of the barrel. It isn't the bottom of the barrel. It isn't below the bottom of the barrel. It doesn't deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence with barrels."
They're so pathetically desperate to make this a story, and sensitive that it isn't, that they put a box in to rebut the "Labour supporting" Guardian's suggestion that it isn't.
All of the evidence is circumstantial.
But it all suggests that she was primarily living at her husband’s house (a shared primary residence would also be the normal state of affairs)
She’s not provided one piece of evidence to prove otherwise apart from her statement.
I’m increasingly suspecting that she lives with her husband and declared the other property as her primary residence to claim the benefit of the CGT relief.
I doubt there will be clear documentary evidence one way or the other, but it doesn’t look good for her.
I agree but as I have said previously if she’s a victim of anything it is probably our complex tax regime.
This one really isn’t that complicated
She (probably) claimed PPR on her house. May be saved £1,500. Certainly not a sacking offence.
The 'openly Jewish' comment was clearly a disgrace, although there is a suspicion that the gentleman concerned (the CEO of the Campaign Against Antisemitism) was seeking a police reaction to him crossing the road through the middle of the marchers.
Meanwhile, young men in their droves continue to be stopped and searched by the Met for being 'openly black'.
The point for me is less about the police - who are doing a difficult job badly - but their probably correct assumption that being openly Jewish would be a dangerous thing to be in the presence of a pro-Palestine march in the same way that being openly Muslum might be a dangerous thing to be in the presence of an EDL march. I can the police getting into exactly the same pickle in that hypothetical situation. Because the pro-Palestine marches contain exactly the same violent mob elements whise intention is to intimidate as the EDL.
Well, I must have missed the reports of all the violence stemming from the mob on the pro-Palestine marches. As far as I can ascertain, they have been overwhelmingly peaceful. There are also a fair number of 'openly Jewish' people on the marches who disapprove of Netanyahu's policies and want a ceasefire in Gaza.
There's an in depth article about Angela Rayner, the bits in bold are huge red flags for me and soon she could be a heartbeat away from being PM with her finger on the Trident button.
Beyond the brash exterior is a vulnerable and anxious woman. She is an insomniac — she endures the long, sleepless hours by listening to audiobooks about serial killers — and trusts very few people beyond her tight inner circle; she has panic buttons installed in her house and was convinced during the Corbyn years that she was being spied upon.
and
Like Boris Johnson, whom in some ways she resembles, Rayner is a source of endless fascination and speculation. There is no one quite like her at Westminster. She is gossiped about, condescended, traduced but never ignored. Like Johnson, she has undoubted star quality. She is both self-glamorising and self-mythologising.
You are not paranoid when people are really out to get you!
Rayner is a bright spot in a sea of Labour grey suits, not just her dress sense, but also her outspokeness.
Young made an interesting point about Meritocracy in this 2001 article about the phenomenon that he had named. One aspect of Meritocracy is that it denudes the working class of its brightest and best leaders. While such social mobility is good for those individuals, it leaves large sections of the population without leadership. He thinks this part of the reason for the decline of the truly working class politician. Rayner is an exception to this.
Rayner has the same position in Starmer's government as Prescott did in Blair's - a nasty, incompetent fool who should be kept as far away as possible from any important position, but is there as a sop to the Loony Left, and maybe so that Starmer can assuage the guilt he occasionally feels in betraying everything he once claimed to stand for.
Angela Rayner has a deep streak of unpleasantness in her, witness her comments of "Tory Scum" which is a disgusting dehumanisation of one's political opponents that can, and does, incite abuse and violence.
She's lost some weight, wears interesting clothes, has a difficult backstory and can dance well to Old Skool music but that doesn't give her a free pass for everything else, I'm afraid. Even if @Foxy does really fancy her.
The middle class guy fancying the bit of rough from the council estate ?
A personally offensive to a fellow poster, post that was better left unposted. Same goes for Casino's last statement in the post you were foolishly responding too.
I don't particularly like Rayner, but this whole saga strikes me as bullying. The most absurd moments have been James Daly being unable to explain what he was complaining to the police about.
Scrutiny is not bullying. She regularly makes those sort of demands from the Tories. Why shouldn’t she be subject to scrutiny.
Daly came over as a complete clown in that exchange. In 12 months time he’ll be an ex MP.
Criticism of Rayner seems to be deflected by her defenders on grounds of class/snobbery the same way Netanyahu deflects criticism of Israeli actions by accusing the critics of anti-Semitism.
Yes, that can sometimes be true, but it is far from always true and it's a very lazy and inflammatory way of dealing with argument.
I don't particularly like her, but couldn't give two hoots for her class.
I didn't really like Seamus Milne either. Who went to Winchester.
For me, it’s just a drab story, rather than anything to do with class. What is she accused of? What crime is she supposed to have committed? Even the bloke who reported her to the cops doesn’t seem to know.
Yes, with my Gazette journalist hat on, it fails the “career killing headline” test. If you plaster it all over the front of the Mail does it potentially end this career?
“Midlands MP has sex with screeching donkey in middle of pediatric cancer ward” - Yes, definitely
“London MP has cocktail reception during lockdown” - Yes, possibly
“Working class MP does something potentially dodgy with council tax or something” - No, not really
So far it doesn’t have any BITE. No emotional purchase. Rayner haters need to find that very soon or the story will dribble away
She needs to tell us what nomination she made when she got married about her house for tax purposes.
Easy peasy.
We don't even care what her husband said or pocketed upon sale of his house.
We just want to know what she said - or didn't say - to HMRC.
Is the issue.
If the police and HMRC request that information fair enough, but she has no requirement to furnish you, Laura Kuenssberg or the Daily Mail with that kind of detail.
No requirement but I think a duty.
She’s in public life. There has been a legitimate question asked. She has the proof one way or another - and is refusing to provide it
The joy of Raynergate is that the longer it goes on, the worse it gets for the Tories.
Don’t they get it? People think it looks awful - for them! All these massive scandals going on in their own team, and they are chasing Rayner for what practically everyone thinks is nothing.
Tories have broken the country. No getting away from that. Broke basic political morality with partygate. Yet for some insane reason they think the can moralise and gain credit for it. Look at the polls - this is damaging them still further.
I struggle to get the deification of Rayner. I don’t think Fishing’s characterisation is fair but she strikes me as quite ordinary as a politician. Labour has some quality on its front bench. She’s not up there. I’d love to know just why people rate her so highly and what she has done in terms of policy to achieve this level of devotion.
As she’s working class she seems to attract admiration, in parts, from middle class commentators, mostly male, and seemingly as a way of burnishing their pro working class credentials and all of this while labour increasingly selects fewer and fewer working class candidates and more and more white collar former SPAD/London Councillor/charity/Quangocrats/Lawyer types. The party is being purged of the working class.
It’s all a bit ‘how can I hate women, my mother was one’, ‘I’ve got black friends, I’m not racist’ from the commentariat who seem to think challenging her is picking in her.
It is fair to ask questions of her, her shiftiness and evasiveness over it the whole issue has dragged it out. Sure the Tories are bad but let’s not give the other parties a free pass.
Let's not pretended this is anything other than a smear campaign. How can you be shifty and evasive when no-one can state clearly what you are supposedly shifty and evasive about?
Smear campaigns are an unfortunate part of the political toolkit. I just think there's a lot of frustration here from people who want to see Rayner smeared that this one's not landing.
Fareham and Havant aren't normally political battlegrounds or bellweather areas but the plight of the Conservative Party has brought them into play.
What may save the Conservatives, however, in Havant, is the paucity of opposition candidates. The Conservatives have a full slate, the Greens and the LDs get halfway there so the anti-Conservative vote will have to be very efficient to inflict serious damage on the Tories.
That may also impact on Borough-wide vote shares and perhaps inflate or exaggerate the Conservative numbers. Let's say you have a Ward with three Conservative Councillors - there are three Conservative candidates, an LD, a Labour and a Green.
The result could be as follows (though this never happens)
LD 500 Labour 500 Green 500 Con 1 475, Con 2 475, Con 3 475
Now that means 3 losses for the Conservatives in seat terms but in terms of votes the Conservatives have 1425, Labour 500, LDs 500 and Greens 500 thus in terms of votes cast, the Conservatives are well ahead.
Depending on how intentional it is, scenarios a bit like yours aren't uncommon. There were a couple in Gosport 2022 (though Labour didn't benefit), and didn't Councillor Palmer have a three-way arrangement with a satisfying conclusion?
The question in Havant is whether the missing candidates are a plan to channel tactical votes or a sign of party weakness. Anyone got the local gen?
The only nugget of info I can give is that in my ward at the last council election the Labour candidate didn't get his nomination papers in in time and apologised for not allowing people the opportunity to vote Labour.
Matt W's description sounds more like Wareham than Fareham. My late mother lived in Wareham and my brother lives there. Apart from the landed gentry and wealthy retirees, it is quite a poor area.
0.6C at the vineyard with 6 hours of cooling to come. Only a matter of time before it goes negative and wipes out this years harvest before it’s started.
I take it vines in England aren't valuable enough for covering with protective ice or lighting little stoves as they do in France?
On the contrary most of the larger vineyards here make substantial use of frost candles, fans and other equipment. But I’m a little mini vineyard of only a few thousand vines and don’t have the scale to afford that. Besides I live in London and the vines are in Kent. So I have to just let nature do its thing.
Its thing last night was -0.8C. Cold enough for some damage.
It's this a situation where freezing-degree-hours would be the relevant metric as to how much harm would be done?
Up to a point. The longer it freezes the worse. I had sub-zero for about 2 hours last night, which isn’t too bad.
But once it hits really cold temperatures, say -3C and below, the duration of cold is less important. It just kills everything and the vine has to start again from secondary buds.
I appreciate your concern and glancing at the early morning weather models, we are in for a chilly few days with air frosts in rural and sheltered areas every night - Wednesday into Thursday looks perhaps the coldest. The models are showing air temperatures no worse than -1C but you and I both know if you are in a frost hollow under clear skies the dawn temperature could be much lower.
Air frost wll be limited, ground frost will be more widespread.
April is the cruellest month for several reasons; this is one
If you do get some sun on your face it’s actually hot and you regret your massive winter coat (here in Paris anyway). Because we are way past the equinox and the sun now has the strength of the sun in August. But if it clouds over or you step into shadow the wind sends it back to mid February
Purgatorial is, I think, the mot juste
April is a true transition month.
In the Central England Temperature record you can find days in every month November to March with a mean temperature below freezing, and in every month May to September a day with mean temperatures above 20C, but April and October are the transition months when neither of those things occur.
Merci
I love geeky weather chat. My inner nerd stirs. Also my outer nerd if the weather is REALLY mad
The Sun is warm, but the land and sea are still cold. (And the soddenness of the ground can't help from that point of view. It's an absolute bugger to turn cold water into warm water.)
Doesn't excuse my tomato plants not coming up.
The plants know.
Actually that’s not entirely true, perhaps. The med is significantly warmer than it should be - or so I read on a weather site (I really do like weather chat). Which makes the anomalous cold - 10C in Bari, southern Italy right now - even stranger
She needs to tell us what nomination she made when she got married about her house for tax purposes.
Easy peasy.
We don't even care what her husband said or pocketed upon sale of his house.
We just want to know what she said - or didn't say - to HMRC.
Is the issue.
I think we know what she said and we know why she won't say what she said.
She would have made the PPR declaration to HMRC. A perfectly legal bit of tax avoidance. But if she says so, she's then guilty of the greatest crime in British politics... Hypocrisy.
Since what she did was legal, and not unusual in the circumstances, it's very hard to force her to go into the detail. So we're left to see whether a sustained campaign of innuendo will cause any damage.
The campaign of innuendo does look particularly ridiculous in the circumstances of regular stories about new transgressions by Tory MPs that are on a completely different scale. But since when was it news that the newspapers were partisan?
I find it astonishing that this story is still being persevered with. When it started it was an easy slur of hypocrisy, a supposedly working class, left wing candidate who stood for a party that opposed the sale of council houses had profited from it. Well, big deal.
All these extremely tedious attempts to make it something else, something illegal, are frankly just ridiculous and a waste of precious police time. These officers should be online pretending to be 14 year old girls, or whatever police do with their time these days. They should not be faffing about with a completely normal transaction that happened a long time ago.
The 'openly Jewish' comment was clearly a disgrace, although there is a suspicion that the gentleman concerned (the CEO of the Campaign Against Antisemitism) was seeking a police reaction to him crossing the road through the middle of the marchers.
Meanwhile, young men in their droves continue to be stopped and searched by the Met for being 'openly black'.
The point for me is less about the police - who are doing a difficult job badly - but their probably correct assumption that being openly Jewish would be a dangerous thing to be in the presence of a pro-Palestine march in the same way that being openly Muslum might be a dangerous thing to be in the presence of an EDL march. I can the police getting into exactly the same pickle in that hypothetical situation. Because the pro-Palestine marches contain exactly the same violent mob elements whise intention is to intimidate as the EDL.
Well, I must have missed the reports of all the violence stemming from the mob on the pro-Palestine marches. As far as I can ascertain, they have been overwhelmingly peaceful. There are also a fair number of 'openly Jewish' people on the marches who disapprove of Netanyahu's policies and want a ceasefire in Gaza.
Yes you have missed it, there have been lots of reports from Jews and others who have not felt safe or have been abused.
Some marchers no doubt are peaceful, but others are not.
The Police should not be telling Jews they're not welcome in London if there's a march on there, any more than they should be telling Muslims they're not welcome if there's an EDL march on.
The Police should be enforcing the law and ensuring that London (and anywhere else in the UK) is a safe space for everyone whether they be Jewish, Muslim, Christian, atheist, or anything else.
On the face of it some things don’t add up re Rayner . It does seem that she got tax advice only after the accusations were made and of course that advice is given on what you tell the adviser . Although there’s a time limit for electoral law issues the HMRC has a much longer time allowed for prosecution. Much depends on whether they class any possible offense as a genuine mistake or tax evasion. There’s also the issue of the council and single occupancy discount . What is quite strange though is the HMRC normally do investigations then hand that info to the CPS if they think there might be grounds for prosecution. And we’ve not heard of any HMRC investigation.
Having said all of this I do really like Angela Rayner and she’d be a huge loss to the Labour Party if she has to stand down . And this is of course why the Tories are going after her .
She needs to tell us what nomination she made when she got married about her house for tax purposes.
Easy peasy.
We don't even care what her husband said or pocketed upon sale of his house.
We just want to know what she said - or didn't say - to HMRC.
Is the issue.
I think we know what she said and we know why she won't say what she said.
She would have made the PPR declaration to HMRC. A perfectly legal bit of tax avoidance. But if she says so, she's then guilty of the greatest crime in British politics... Hypocrisy.
Since what she did was legal, and not unusual in the circumstances, it's very hard to force her to go into the detail. So we're left to see whether a sustained campaign of innuendo will cause any damage.
The campaign of innuendo does look particularly ridiculous in the circumstances of regular stories about new transgressions by Tory MPs that are on a completely different scale. But since when was it news that the newspapers were partisan?
I find it astonishing that this story is still being persevered with. When it started it was an easy slur of hypocrisy, a supposedly working class, left wing candidate who stood for a party that opposed the sale of council houses had profited from it. Well, big deal.
All these extremely tedious attempts to make it something else, something illegal, are frankly just ridiculous and a waste of precious police time. These officers should be online pretending to be 14 year old girls, or whatever police do with their time these days. They should not be faffing about with a completely normal transaction that happened a long time ago.
I mean, is this all the Tories have got?
Yes.
This is all they've got.
The party well deserves sorting itself out and renewing itself on the opposition benches.
I struggle to get the deification of Rayner. I don’t think Fishing’s characterisation is fair but she strikes me as quite ordinary as a politician. Labour has some quality on its front bench. She’s not up there. I’d love to know just why people rate her so highly and what she has done in terms of policy to achieve this level of devotion.
As she’s working class she seems to attract admiration, in parts, from middle class commentators, mostly male, and seemingly as a way of burnishing their pro working class credentials and all of this while labour increasingly selects fewer and fewer working class candidates and more and more white collar former SPAD/London Councillor/charity/Quangocrats/Lawyer types. The party is being purged of the working class.
It’s all a bit ‘how can I hate women, my mother was one’, ‘I’ve got black friends, I’m not racist’ from the commentariat who seem to think challenging her is picking in her.
It is fair to ask questions of her, her shiftiness and evasiveness over it the whole issue has dragged it out. Sure the Tories are bad but let’s not give the other parties a free pass.
The language used, for example "shiftiness" demonstrates Colville's agenda. If he didn't want to impress upon the reader that Rayner is a "wrong 'un" he would have used, maybe, obfuscation instead?
Shiftiness is my word and I have said it about her response to this more than once. Her response to scrutiny is she doesn’t like it. Yet she is happy to dish it out. She’s getting back some of what she’s dished out. She could close this down very quickly by publishing the advice she was given. So why not. Instead she makes stupid demands for the PM and Chancellor to publish 15 years of tax records
Colville is saying honesty matters and he’s right. He’s not saying she’s a wrong un or a right un.
Why is it a stupid demand? The Conservatives are making a huge fuss based on not much about what would, if true, be a small amount of tax unpaid. There have been questions raised about senior Conservatives’ taxes and they didn’t publish details. It seems hypocritical and Rayner is calling out the hypocrisy.
Of course she isn’t. It’s a stupid demand for two reasons. Firstly neither of them are under suspicion of anything and secondly it is totally disproportionate.
Actually there’s a third reason, it fails to draw a line under the matter it just helps perpetuate it.
Sunak’s wife is not Sunak. Attacking Sunak through his wife is pretty shitty. She’s not a politician and there is no hint of any wrong doing on the PMs part. His wife is just rich.
I have to fill in conflict of interest declarations in my work. If I know of a conflict of interest relating to a first degree relative, I declare that too, and am expected to do so. I don't have a wife, but if I had a wife, I would so declare any conflicts of interest pertaining to her.
Tax law connects spouses. Raynergate has seen critics pouring over documents related to her children and husband. It seems a bit hypocritical if Rayner's family is fair game, but Sunak's is off limits.
I note also that much of Raynergate has been around where she lived. Sunak had a US green card while Chancellor. There is reason to believe this broke US immigration rules. Sunak has never come clean with all the documentation and advice around that. He's not revealed his US tax returns. Again, you expect Rayner to publish everything, but don't expect Conservative politicians to do the same.
It's past 8.30am and Mark Rowley is still in office. No way will he still be there by the end of tomorrow.
The question is who he'll take with him. The push to ban anti-genocide demonstrations seems pretty damned serious.
Is there a market on
* next person to leave the cabinet? * Cleverly to leave the cabinet by [date]? * Sunak to leave office before the end of May?
I stopped reading the following piece from the Lebedev press when I reached the word "experts", but it seems effort is still being put into Susan Hall's campaign, even at this late stage:
I was left with the same question here - Mark Rowley who?
But I see he is the boss of the Met, which is disappointing.
I wanted him to be either the actor playing a libidinous Frenchman, or an actual libidinous Frenchman - which is at least all the recent Presidents, and probably all of them. Then I could apply some words for life, @TSE style, or following the actions of the Spectator elite in Paris, in their heads, with respect to girls with pearls.
A frog he would a-wooing go, Heigh ho! says Rowley, A frog he would a-wooing go, Whether his mother would let him or no. With a rowley, powley, gammon, and spinach, Heigh ho! says Anthony Rowley.
So off he set with his opera hat, Heigh ho! says Rowley, So off he set with his opera hat, And on the road he met with a rat, With a rowley, powley, gammon, and spinach, Heigh ho! says Anthony Rowley.... https://wordsforlife.org.uk/activities/frog-he-would-wooing-go/
Former chair of the GMP federation defends the met and the anti semitic policing compacting it to soccer rivalry.
In both cases I would expect the police to arrest those who kick off. A jew wearing a yarmulka should be able to walk through a crowd of Muslims, and a Man C supporter should be able to walk through a crowd of Man U fans
There are two or three parts. The "openly Jewish" bit was disgraceful and ignorant and it needs to be clear to every officer that is unnacceptable. The threatening arrest was unnecessary.
However not allowing him to walk directly through the march is a fairly standard part of policing. Happens every week at football matches, would happen today if protestors want to walk through the marathon course.
Broadly agree - irrespective of what you think is your "right" to walk the King's Highway unimpeded in all circumstances, the Police have a greater responsibility to maintain public order and if that inconveniences you, so be it. I do agree the opening comment was unacceptable but I wouldn't expect to be allowed to cross a road in the middle of a demonstration or a major event.
Rights are not absolute - they come with obligations and responsibilities. Sometimes those seeking to assert those rights forget the second bit. We need I think to re-orient the debate away from the rights of the individual to the societal obligations and responsibilities of the individual.
Surely people have an obligation not to be "provoked" into violence. If you twat someone because you think they are Jewish, an Arsenal fan, or even because they have called you a c**t, you have chosen to do so and should be held responsible for your actions.
he's an arsehole who was trying to provoke a riot, treat him the same as those anti abortion idiots who protest outside clinics
He's an arsehole for wanting to walk to his home?
Or an arsehole for being openly Jewish?
What a disgusting, racist thing for you to say.
The only thing that is arsehole behaviour is not thinking its OK for Jews to be about in London. The problem with the Met response is that they don't seem to think the attitude displayed was a problem, just the way the attitude was articulated. That they should act the same way next time, but just not verbalise what they're doing. Despicable.
There's an in depth article about Angela Rayner, the bits in bold are huge red flags for me and soon she could be a heartbeat away from being PM with her finger on the Trident button.
Beyond the brash exterior is a vulnerable and anxious woman. She is an insomniac — she endures the long, sleepless hours by listening to audiobooks about serial killers — and trusts very few people beyond her tight inner circle; she has panic buttons installed in her house and was convinced during the Corbyn years that she was being spied upon.
and
Like Boris Johnson, whom in some ways she resembles, Rayner is a source of endless fascination and speculation. There is no one quite like her at Westminster. She is gossiped about, condescended, traduced but never ignored. Like Johnson, she has undoubted star quality. She is both self-glamorising and self-mythologising.
You are not paranoid when people are really out to get you!
Rayner is a bright spot in a sea of Labour grey suits, not just her dress sense, but also her outspokeness.
Young made an interesting point about Meritocracy in this 2001 article about the phenomenon that he had named. One aspect of Meritocracy is that it denudes the working class of its brightest and best leaders. While such social mobility is good for those individuals, it leaves large sections of the population without leadership. He thinks this part of the reason for the decline of the truly working class politician. Rayner is an exception to this.
Rayner has the same position in Starmer's government as Prescott did in Blair's - a nasty, incompetent fool who should be kept as far away as possible from any important position, but is there as a sop to the Loony Left, and maybe so that Starmer can assuage the guilt he occasionally feels in betraying everything he once claimed to stand for.
I see you've woken bright and cheerful this morning.
The 'openly Jewish' comment was clearly a disgrace, although there is a suspicion that the gentleman concerned (the CEO of the Campaign Against Antisemitism) was seeking a police reaction to him crossing the road through the middle of the marchers.
Meanwhile, young men in their droves continue to be stopped and searched by the Met for being 'openly black'.
"His disguise was apparently so good that his fellow officers failed to recognise him when they mercilessly beat him on the street. On Monday, Mr Hall was awarded $23.5m for the attack, according to the St Louis American."
She needs to tell us what nomination she made when she got married about her house for tax purposes.
Easy peasy.
We don't even care what her husband said or pocketed upon sale of his house.
We just want to know what she said - or didn't say - to HMRC.
Is the issue.
If the police and HMRC request that information fair enough, but she has no requirement to furnish you, Laura Kuenssberg or the Daily Mail with that kind of detail.
No requirement but I think a duty.
She’s in public life. There has been a legitimate question asked. She has the proof one way or another - and is refusing to provide it
A legitimate question was asked about what did the Conservative Party know about the Menzies affair when. They have the proof one way or another - and are refusing to provide it.
A legitimate question was asked about Rishi Sunak's green card status while Chancellor. Sunak has the proof one way or another - and is refusing to provide it.
A legitimate question was asked about how Liz Truss included an anti-semitic comment in her book. She has the proof one way or another - and is refusing to provide it.
The 'openly Jewish' comment was clearly a disgrace, although there is a suspicion that the gentleman concerned (the CEO of the Campaign Against Antisemitism) was seeking a police reaction to him crossing the road through the middle of the marchers.
Meanwhile, young men in their droves continue to be stopped and searched by the Met for being 'openly black'.
The point for me is less about the police - who are doing a difficult job badly - but their probably correct assumption that being openly Jewish would be a dangerous thing to be in the presence of a pro-Palestine march in the same way that being openly Muslum might be a dangerous thing to be in the presence of an EDL march. I can the police getting into exactly the same pickle in that hypothetical situation. Because the pro-Palestine marches contain exactly the same violent mob elements whise intention is to intimidate as the EDL.
Just seen the footage again. The man was threatened with arrest if he remained where he was, standing on the pavement next to the March.
People,may find that acceptable. I don’t think it is.
It's past 8.30am and Mark Rowley is still in office. No way will he still be there by the end of tomorrow.
The question is who he'll take with him. The push to ban anti-genocide demonstrations seems pretty damned serious.
Is there a market on
* next person to leave the cabinet? * Cleverly to leave the cabinet by [date]? * Sunak to leave office before the end of May?
I stopped reading the following piece from the Lebedev press when I reached the word "experts", but it seems effort is still being put into Susan Hall's campaign, even at this late stage:
I was left with the same question here - Mark Rowley who?
But I see he is the boss of the Met, which is disappointing.
I wanted him to be either the actor playing a libidinous Frenchman, or an actual libidinous Frenchman - which is at least all the recent Presidents, and probably all of them. Then I could apply some words for life, @TSE style, or following the actions of the Spectator elite in Paris, in their heads, with respect to girls with pearls.
A frog he would a-wooing go, Heigh ho! says Rowley, A frog he would a-wooing go, Whether his mother would let him or no. With a rowley, powley, gammon, and spinach, Heigh ho! says Anthony Rowley.
So off he set with his opera hat, Heigh ho! says Rowley, So off he set with his opera hat, And on the road he met with a rat, With a rowley, powley, gammon, and spinach, Heigh ho! says Anthony Rowley.... https://wordsforlife.org.uk/activities/frog-he-would-wooing-go/
Former chair of the GMP federation defends the met and the anti semitic policing compacting it to soccer rivalry.
In both cases I would expect the police to arrest those who kick off. A jew wearing a yarmulka should be able to walk through a crowd of Muslims, and a Man C supporter should be able to walk through a crowd of Man U fans
There are two or three parts. The "openly Jewish" bit was disgraceful and ignorant and it needs to be clear to every officer that is unnacceptable. The threatening arrest was unnecessary.
However not allowing him to walk directly through the march is a fairly standard part of policing. Happens every week at football matches, would happen today if protestors want to walk through the marathon course.
Broadly agree - irrespective of what you think is your "right" to walk the King's Highway unimpeded in all circumstances, the Police have a greater responsibility to maintain public order and if that inconveniences you, so be it. I do agree the opening comment was unacceptable but I wouldn't expect to be allowed to cross a road in the middle of a demonstration or a major event.
Rights are not absolute - they come with obligations and responsibilities. Sometimes those seeking to assert those rights forget the second bit. We need I think to re-orient the debate away from the rights of the individual to the societal obligations and responsibilities of the individual.
Surely people have an obligation not to be "provoked" into violence. If you twat someone because you think they are Jewish, an Arsenal fan, or even because they have called you a c**t, you have chosen to do so and should be held responsible for your actions.
he's an arsehole who was trying to provoke a riot, treat him the same as those anti abortion idiots who protest outside clinics
He's an arsehole for wanting to walk to his home?
Or an arsehole for being openly Jewish?
What a disgusting, racist thing for you to say.
The only thing that is arsehole behaviour is not thinking its OK for Jews to be about in London. The problem with the Met response is that they don't seem to think the attitude displayed was a problem, just the way the attitude was articulated. That they should act the same way next time, but just not verbalise what they're doing. Despicable.
The only arsehole I saw on the footage was the police officer who threatened to arrest him if he remained there standing on the pavement. No such threat appears to have been made to the other people standing there.
It's past 8.30am and Mark Rowley is still in office. No way will he still be there by the end of tomorrow.
The question is who he'll take with him. The push to ban anti-genocide demonstrations seems pretty damned serious.
Is there a market on
* next person to leave the cabinet? * Cleverly to leave the cabinet by [date]? * Sunak to leave office before the end of May?
I stopped reading the following piece from the Lebedev press when I reached the word "experts", but it seems effort is still being put into Susan Hall's campaign, even at this late stage:
I was left with the same question here - Mark Rowley who?
But I see he is the boss of the Met, which is disappointing.
I wanted him to be either the actor playing a libidinous Frenchman, or an actual libidinous Frenchman - which is at least all the recent Presidents, and probably all of them. Then I could apply some words for life, @TSE style, or following the actions of the Spectator elite in Paris, in their heads, with respect to girls with pearls.
A frog he would a-wooing go, Heigh ho! says Rowley, A frog he would a-wooing go, Whether his mother would let him or no. With a rowley, powley, gammon, and spinach, Heigh ho! says Anthony Rowley.
So off he set with his opera hat, Heigh ho! says Rowley, So off he set with his opera hat, And on the road he met with a rat, With a rowley, powley, gammon, and spinach, Heigh ho! says Anthony Rowley.... https://wordsforlife.org.uk/activities/frog-he-would-wooing-go/
Former chair of the GMP federation defends the met and the anti semitic policing compacting it to soccer rivalry.
In both cases I would expect the police to arrest those who kick off. A jew wearing a yarmulka should be able to walk through a crowd of Muslims, and a Man C supporter should be able to walk through a crowd of Man U fans
There are two or three parts. The "openly Jewish" bit was disgraceful and ignorant and it needs to be clear to every officer that is unnacceptable. The threatening arrest was unnecessary.
However not allowing him to walk directly through the march is a fairly standard part of policing. Happens every week at football matches, would happen today if protestors want to walk through the marathon course.
Broadly agree - irrespective of what you think is your "right" to walk the King's Highway unimpeded in all circumstances, the Police have a greater responsibility to maintain public order and if that inconveniences you, so be it. I do agree the opening comment was unacceptable but I wouldn't expect to be allowed to cross a road in the middle of a demonstration or a major event.
Rights are not absolute - they come with obligations and responsibilities. Sometimes those seeking to assert those rights forget the second bit. We need I think to re-orient the debate away from the rights of the individual to the societal obligations and responsibilities of the individual.
Surely people have an obligation not to be "provoked" into violence. If you twat someone because you think they are Jewish, an Arsenal fan, or even because they have called you a c**t, you have chosen to do so and should be held responsible for your actions.
he's an arsehole who was trying to provoke a riot, treat him the same as those anti abortion idiots who protest outside clinics
He's an arsehole for wanting to walk to his home?
Or an arsehole for being openly Jewish?
What a disgusting, racist thing for you to say.
The only thing that is arsehole behaviour is not thinking its OK for Jews to be about in London. The problem with the Met response is that they don't seem to think the attitude displayed was a problem, just the way the attitude was articulated. That they should act the same way next time, but just not verbalise what they're doing. Despicable.
So being the chief executive of an organisation that has been propagandising and smearing for the past six months against those who protest against the genocidal activities of an ethnic-supremacist regime doesn't make a person an arsehole?
And more's to come. The genocidalists are planning a big counter-demo against the anti-genocidalists in London on Saturday. It's obvious they want to provoke violence.
This man is front and centre of that. It's absolute bollocks to say he was just an innocent Jewish chap trying to walk home.
Why the terminological inexactitudes, Barty?
It was quite obvious that Tres was saying the man was acting like an arsehole by trying to provoke a riot, not by being Jewish or wanting to walk home.
I wonder whether it's too late to stop Sadiq Khan winning the mayor election?
He posted last night that his vineyard in Dorset was down to 0.9C or something like that, and that his entire annual harvest was likely to get wiped out, due to this insane Europe-wide cold
🙏 for @TimS and any other growers/farmers battling these conditions
Because the climate is getting fucked. And even though I think the UK will actually essentially fix its contribution by 2040-2045 that's still 20 years away and meanwhile you have psychopathic nationalist leaders like Modi crowing about hitting new heights of a billion tonnes a year of coal and lignite.
It's not great, but it could be worse. And realistically, the only way we'll persuade developing economies like India to do so without climate cost is develop the technology to make it economically inevitable.
Otherwise they just say "but you did it". A stupid argument, but not one that's easy to rebut.
Morning all. A first for me, been leafletted by the Communist party of GB, they're gunning for my ward it seems. Re Rayner, the accusation seems to be about whether tax has been avoided or indeed evaded via false information about who lived where. The wider aspect is Kier hitching his wagon to her and thus judgement if charges or admission of monies owed were to emerge. I'm not so sure about no cut through, that rather depends on the final outcome, I'm reserving judgement. As well as 'going after the poor little Working Class kitten' I've seen plenty of 'thinks she's above the rules' and 'Labour pretending their lot are above reproach' It's transparent what the Right/ Tories are up to, but still very possible she's a wrong 'un. There is a sense of 'only report on Tory sleaze please' about her staunch defenders. We will see! As for any monetary 'amount', the electorate are feral beasts, 15 years ago many were shitting out their spleens over light bulbs and plugs on expenses as well as the more grotesque fiddling.
I struggle to get the deification of Rayner. I don’t think Fishing’s characterisation is fair but she strikes me as quite ordinary as a politician. Labour has some quality on its front bench. She’s not up there. I’d love to know just why people rate her so highly and what she has done in terms of policy to achieve this level of devotion.
As she’s working class she seems to attract admiration, in parts, from middle class commentators, mostly male, and seemingly as a way of burnishing their pro working class credentials and all of this while labour increasingly selects fewer and fewer working class candidates and more and more white collar former SPAD/London Councillor/charity/Quangocrats/Lawyer types. The party is being purged of the working class.
It’s all a bit ‘how can I hate women, my mother was one’, ‘I’ve got black friends, I’m not racist’ from the commentariat who seem to think challenging her is picking in her.
It is fair to ask questions of her, her shiftiness and evasiveness over it the whole issue has dragged it out. Sure the Tories are bad but let’s not give the other parties a free pass.
She is very like Two Jags, ham up the poor working class lass who lived in a cardboard box , while stuffing her bankbook. Yet to hear anything remotely useful or helpful from her. Just another one out for herself.
I am so relieved that after your flirtation with the SNP you are back in the Tory fold. Well done!
What's interesting about this post (quite aside from being incorrect, because Malcolm is not a Tory nor to my knowledge ever has been) is what it reveals about how just how sensitive Labour activists are about their support base.
Deep down: they know it's a mile wide and an inch deep, and built on sand, and it will be very interesting to see how quickly it corrodes once in office.
I think Malcolm and a few others understood my little quip.
I have not been a Labour activist since I was foolish enough to vote for the wrong Miliband, the one who won, and then lost the 2015 election. So what is that? 2011.
I can't disagree with your mile wide, inch deep analysis, which is why I have forecast a surprise 1992-style Tory win.
You may be correct that should Labour win power they will be disastrous. I suspect that is what you said of Blair's Government too, and two elections later they were still winning. Not that I expect that this time around.
Either way my admiration for Labour is long gone, I just absolutely despise the current iteration of the Conservatives beyond comprehension. I liked Sunak, I thought he was a pint sized Hercules and would clean out the stables. But to no avail he just keeps defecating over all that steaming Johnson-Truss excrement, and the odour gets worse.
Anyway, it's a nice day. Go out and buy yourself a sense of humour.
I struggle to get the deification of Rayner. I don’t think Fishing’s characterisation is fair but she strikes me as quite ordinary as a politician. Labour has some quality on its front bench. She’s not up there. I’d love to know just why people rate her so highly and what she has done in terms of policy to achieve this level of devotion.
As she’s working class she seems to attract admiration, in parts, from middle class commentators, mostly male, and seemingly as a way of burnishing their pro working class credentials and all of this while labour increasingly selects fewer and fewer working class candidates and more and more white collar former SPAD/London Councillor/charity/Quangocrats/Lawyer types. The party is being purged of the working class.
It’s all a bit ‘how can I hate women, my mother was one’, ‘I’ve got black friends, I’m not racist’ from the commentariat who seem to think challenging her is picking in her.
It is fair to ask questions of her, her shiftiness and evasiveness over it the whole issue has dragged it out. Sure the Tories are bad but let’s not give the other parties a free pass.
The language used, for example "shiftiness" demonstrates Colville's agenda. If he didn't want to impress upon the reader that Rayner is a "wrong 'un" he would have used, maybe, obfuscation instead?
Shiftiness is my word and I have said it about her response to this more than once. Her response to scrutiny is she doesn’t like it. Yet she is happy to dish it out. She’s getting back some of what she’s dished out. She could close this down very quickly by publishing the advice she was given. So why not. Instead she makes stupid demands for the PM and Chancellor to publish 15 years of tax records
Colville is saying honesty matters and he’s right. He’s not saying she’s a wrong un or a right un.
Why is it a stupid demand? The Conservatives are making a huge fuss based on not much about what would, if true, be a small amount of tax unpaid. There have been questions raised about senior Conservatives’ taxes and they didn’t publish details. It seems hypocritical and Rayner is calling out the hypocrisy.
Of course she isn’t. It’s a stupid demand for two reasons. Firstly neither of them are under suspicion of anything and secondly it is totally disproportionate.
Actually there’s a third reason, it fails to draw a line under the matter it just helps perpetuate it.
Sunak’s wife is not Sunak. Attacking Sunak through his wife is pretty shitty. She’s not a politician and there is no hint of any wrong doing on the PMs part. His wife is just rich.
I have to fill in conflict of interest declarations in my work. If I know of a conflict of interest relating to a first degree relative, I declare that too, and am expected to do so. I don't have a wife, but if I had a wife, I would so declare any conflicts of interest pertaining to her.
Tax law connects spouses. Raynergate has seen critics pouring over documents related to her children and husband. It seems a bit hypocritical if Rayner's family is fair game, but Sunak's is off limits.
I note also that much of Raynergate has been around where she lived. Sunak had a US green card while Chancellor. There is reason to believe this broke US immigration rules. Sunak has never come clean with all the documentation and advice around that. He's not revealed his US tax returns. Again, you expect Rayner to publish everything, but don't expect Conservative politicians to do the same.
I don’t know where you get I expect Rayner to publish everything. I Only think she would be wise to publish advice relating to this matter and I think she should to close the matter out.
It's past 8.30am and Mark Rowley is still in office. No way will he still be there by the end of tomorrow.
The question is who he'll take with him. The push to ban anti-genocide demonstrations seems pretty damned serious.
Is there a market on
* next person to leave the cabinet? * Cleverly to leave the cabinet by [date]? * Sunak to leave office before the end of May?
I stopped reading the following piece from the Lebedev press when I reached the word "experts", but it seems effort is still being put into Susan Hall's campaign, even at this late stage:
I was left with the same question here - Mark Rowley who?
But I see he is the boss of the Met, which is disappointing.
I wanted him to be either the actor playing a libidinous Frenchman, or an actual libidinous Frenchman - which is at least all the recent Presidents, and probably all of them. Then I could apply some words for life, @TSE style, or following the actions of the Spectator elite in Paris, in their heads, with respect to girls with pearls.
A frog he would a-wooing go, Heigh ho! says Rowley, A frog he would a-wooing go, Whether his mother would let him or no. With a rowley, powley, gammon, and spinach, Heigh ho! says Anthony Rowley.
So off he set with his opera hat, Heigh ho! says Rowley, So off he set with his opera hat, And on the road he met with a rat, With a rowley, powley, gammon, and spinach, Heigh ho! says Anthony Rowley.... https://wordsforlife.org.uk/activities/frog-he-would-wooing-go/
Former chair of the GMP federation defends the met and the anti semitic policing compacting it to soccer rivalry.
In both cases I would expect the police to arrest those who kick off. A jew wearing a yarmulka should be able to walk through a crowd of Muslims, and a Man C supporter should be able to walk through a crowd of Man U fans
There are two or three parts. The "openly Jewish" bit was disgraceful and ignorant and it needs to be clear to every officer that is unnacceptable. The threatening arrest was unnecessary.
However not allowing him to walk directly through the march is a fairly standard part of policing. Happens every week at football matches, would happen today if protestors want to walk through the marathon course.
Broadly agree - irrespective of what you think is your "right" to walk the King's Highway unimpeded in all circumstances, the Police have a greater responsibility to maintain public order and if that inconveniences you, so be it. I do agree the opening comment was unacceptable but I wouldn't expect to be allowed to cross a road in the middle of a demonstration or a major event.
Rights are not absolute - they come with obligations and responsibilities. Sometimes those seeking to assert those rights forget the second bit. We need I think to re-orient the debate away from the rights of the individual to the societal obligations and responsibilities of the individual.
Surely people have an obligation not to be "provoked" into violence. If you twat someone because you think they are Jewish, an Arsenal fan, or even because they have called you a c**t, you have chosen to do so and should be held responsible for your actions.
he's an arsehole who was trying to provoke a riot, treat him the same as those anti abortion idiots who protest outside clinics
He's an arsehole for wanting to walk to his home?
Or an arsehole for being openly Jewish?
What a disgusting, racist thing for you to say.
The only thing that is arsehole behaviour is not thinking its OK for Jews to be about in London. The problem with the Met response is that they don't seem to think the attitude displayed was a problem, just the way the attitude was articulated. That they should act the same way next time, but just not verbalise what they're doing. Despicable.
He lives in Hendon not central London. All this guy is doing is trying to make a name for himself off the back of a load of dead Palestinian children.
Morning all. A first for me, been leafletted by the Communist party of GB, they're gunning for my ward it seems. Re Rayner, the accusation seems to be about whether tax has been avoided or indeed evaded via false information about who lived where. The wider aspect is Kier hitching his wagon to her and thus judgement if charges or admission of monies owed were to emerge. I'm not so sure about no cut through, that rather depends on the final outcome, I'm reserving judgement. As well as 'going after the poor little Working Class kitten' I've seen plenty of 'thinks she's above the rules' and 'Labour pretending their lot are above reproach' It's transparent what the Right/ Tories are up to, but still very possible she's a wrong 'un. There is a sense of 'only report on Tory sleaze please' about her staunch defenders. We will see! As for any monetary 'amount', the electorate are feral beasts, 15 years ago many were shitting out their spleens over light bulbs and plugs on expenses as well as the more grotesque fiddling.
Keir.
K-E-I-R.
Why can’t otherwise intelligent PBers manage to spell the names of senior politicians on a site devoted to… politics?
On the face of it some things don’t add up re Rayner . It does seem that she got tax advice only after the accusations were made and of course that advice is given on what you tell the adviser . Although there’s a time limit for electoral law issues the HMRC has a much longer time allowed for prosecution. Much depends on whether they class any possible offense as a genuine mistake or tax evasion. There’s also the issue of the council and single occupancy discount . What is quite strange though is the HMRC normally do investigations then hand that info to the CPS if they think there might be grounds for prosecution. And we’ve not heard of any HMRC investigation.
Having said all of this I do really like Angela Rayner and she’d be a huge loss to the Labour Party if she has to stand down . And this is of course why the Tories are going after her .
As drab and dull and seemingly pointless as this story is, she has said she will resign if found guilty of any crime. I’m not really sure what more she is supposed to do?
Morning all. A first for me, been leafletted by the Communist party of GB, they're gunning for my ward it seems. Re Rayner, the accusation seems to be about whether tax has been avoided or indeed evaded via false information about who lived where. The wider aspect is Kier hitching his wagon to her and thus judgement if charges or admission of monies owed were to emerge. I'm not so sure about no cut through, that rather depends on the final outcome, I'm reserving judgement. As well as 'going after the poor little Working Class kitten' I've seen plenty of 'thinks she's above the rules' and 'Labour pretending their lot are above reproach' It's transparent what the Right/ Tories are up to, but still very possible she's a wrong 'un. There is a sense of 'only report on Tory sleaze please' about her staunch defenders. We will see! As for any monetary 'amount', the electorate are feral beasts, 15 years ago many were shitting out their spleens over light bulbs and plugs on expenses as well as the more grotesque fiddling.
Keir.
K-E-I-R.
Why can’t otherwise intelligent PBers manage to spell the names of senior politicians on a site devoted to… politics?
Because I didn't proof read it. I make a lot of spelling errors. I think you'll find I normally spell it correctly.
She needs to tell us what nomination she made when she got married about her house for tax purposes.
Easy peasy.
We don't even care what her husband said or pocketed upon sale of his house.
We just want to know what she said - or didn't say - to HMRC.
Is the issue.
If the police and HMRC request that information fair enough, but she has no requirement to furnish you, Laura Kuenssberg or the Daily Mail with that kind of detail.
No requirement but I think a duty.
She’s in public life. There has been a legitimate question asked. She has the proof one way or another - and is refusing to provide it
In that case I demand to see details of Mr Sunak and Mr Hunt's tax affairs. And while we are at it, let's have a look at Johnson's and Zahawi's tax returns.
She needs to tell us what nomination she made when she got married about her house for tax purposes.
Easy peasy.
We don't even care what her husband said or pocketed upon sale of his house.
We just want to know what she said - or didn't say - to HMRC.
Is the issue.
I think we know what she said and we know why she won't say what she said.
She would have made the PPR declaration to HMRC. A perfectly legal bit of tax avoidance. But if she says so, she's then guilty of the greatest crime in British politics... Hypocrisy.
Since what she did was legal, and not unusual in the circumstances, it's very hard to force her to go into the detail. So we're left to see whether a sustained campaign of innuendo will cause any damage.
The campaign of innuendo does look particularly ridiculous in the circumstances of regular stories about new transgressions by Tory MPs that are on a completely different scale. But since when was it news that the newspapers were partisan?
I find it astonishing that this story is still being persevered with. When it started it was an easy slur of hypocrisy, a supposedly working class, left wing candidate who stood for a party that opposed the sale of council houses had profited from it. Well, big deal.
All these extremely tedious attempts to make it something else, something illegal, are frankly just ridiculous and a waste of precious police time. These officers should be online pretending to be 14 year old girls, or whatever police do with their time these days. They should not be faffing about with a completely normal transaction that happened a long time ago.
I mean, is this all the Tories have got?
Angela Rayner is not leftwing. She's pro-Israeli; she has vehemently denounced the campaign for Boycotts, Divestment, and Sanctions against Israel; she speaks at meetings from which anti-genocidalist protestors are physically dragged out; and she deputises for a monster who says Israel has the right to turn off the water supply to the civilian population of Gaza. She's one of many leading Labour figures who are funded by the Labour Friends of Israel.
On the face of it some things don’t add up re Rayner . It does seem that she got tax advice only after the accusations were made and of course that advice is given on what you tell the adviser . Although there’s a time limit for electoral law issues the HMRC has a much longer time allowed for prosecution. Much depends on whether they class any possible offense as a genuine mistake or tax evasion. There’s also the issue of the council and single occupancy discount . What is quite strange though is the HMRC normally do investigations then hand that info to the CPS if they think there might be grounds for prosecution. And we’ve not heard of any HMRC investigation.
Having said all of this I do really like Angela Rayner and she’d be a huge loss to the Labour Party if she has to stand down . And this is of course why the Tories are going after her .
Okay, you like her. That’s nice.
However why is she such an asset to labour. What does she bring ?
I don’t see it, or get it. She seems to be more a political personality with a backstory that some people fawn over than a political colossus. You look at other labour front benchers and they are developing policy platforms. What does she offer apart from some rhetoric about workers rights.
Plenty of middle class people think she’s a link to working class communities. Yeah, right. I live in one. I doubt most people here would even know who she is, or for that matter most politicians are.
I struggle to get the deification of Rayner. I don’t think Fishing’s characterisation is fair but she strikes me as quite ordinary as a politician. Labour has some quality on its front bench. She’s not up there. I’d love to know just why people rate her so highly and what she has done in terms of policy to achieve this level of devotion.
As she’s working class she seems to attract admiration, in parts, from middle class commentators, mostly male, and seemingly as a way of burnishing their pro working class credentials and all of this while labour increasingly selects fewer and fewer working class candidates and more and more white collar former SPAD/London Councillor/charity/Quangocrats/Lawyer types. The party is being purged of the working class.
It’s all a bit ‘how can I hate women, my mother was one’, ‘I’ve got black friends, I’m not racist’ from the commentariat who seem to think challenging her is picking in her.
It is fair to ask questions of her, her shiftiness and evasiveness over it the whole issue has dragged it out. Sure the Tories are bad but let’s not give the other parties a free pass.
The language used, for example "shiftiness" demonstrates Colville's agenda. If he didn't want to impress upon the reader that Rayner is a "wrong 'un" he would have used, maybe, obfuscation instead?
Shiftiness is my word and I have said it about her response to this more than once. Her response to scrutiny is she doesn’t like it. Yet she is happy to dish it out. She’s getting back some of what she’s dished out. She could close this down very quickly by publishing the advice she was given. So why not. Instead she makes stupid demands for the PM and Chancellor to publish 15 years of tax records
Colville is saying honesty matters and he’s right. He’s not saying she’s a wrong un or a right un.
Why is it a stupid demand? The Conservatives are making a huge fuss based on not much about what would, if true, be a small amount of tax unpaid. There have been questions raised about senior Conservatives’ taxes and they didn’t publish details. It seems hypocritical and Rayner is calling out the hypocrisy.
Of course she isn’t. It’s a stupid demand for two reasons. Firstly neither of them are under suspicion of anything and secondly it is totally disproportionate.
Actually there’s a third reason, it fails to draw a line under the matter it just helps perpetuate it.
Sunak’s wife is not Sunak. Attacking Sunak through his wife is pretty shitty. She’s not a politician and there is no hint of any wrong doing on the PMs part. His wife is just rich.
I have to fill in conflict of interest declarations in my work. If I know of a conflict of interest relating to a first degree relative, I declare that too, and am expected to do so. I don't have a wife, but if I had a wife, I would so declare any conflicts of interest pertaining to her.
Tax law connects spouses. Raynergate has seen critics pouring over documents related to her children and husband. It seems a bit hypocritical if Rayner's family is fair game, but Sunak's is off limits.
I note also that much of Raynergate has been around where she lived. Sunak had a US green card while Chancellor. There is reason to believe this broke US immigration rules. Sunak has never come clean with all the documentation and advice around that. He's not revealed his US tax returns. Again, you expect Rayner to publish everything, but don't expect Conservative politicians to do the same.
I don’t know where you get I expect Rayner to publish everything. I Only think she would be wise to publish advice relating to this matter and I think she should to close the matter out.
It's possible she would do if she weren't enjoying the spectacle the Tories are making of themselves ?
It's past 8.30am and Mark Rowley is still in office. No way will he still be there by the end of tomorrow.
The question is who he'll take with him. The push to ban anti-genocide demonstrations seems pretty damned serious.
Is there a market on
* next person to leave the cabinet? * Cleverly to leave the cabinet by [date]? * Sunak to leave office before the end of May?
I stopped reading the following piece from the Lebedev press when I reached the word "experts", but it seems effort is still being put into Susan Hall's campaign, even at this late stage:
I was left with the same question here - Mark Rowley who?
But I see he is the boss of the Met, which is disappointing.
I wanted him to be either the actor playing a libidinous Frenchman, or an actual libidinous Frenchman - which is at least all the recent Presidents, and probably all of them. Then I could apply some words for life, @TSE style, or following the actions of the Spectator elite in Paris, in their heads, with respect to girls with pearls.
A frog he would a-wooing go, Heigh ho! says Rowley, A frog he would a-wooing go, Whether his mother would let him or no. With a rowley, powley, gammon, and spinach, Heigh ho! says Anthony Rowley.
So off he set with his opera hat, Heigh ho! says Rowley, So off he set with his opera hat, And on the road he met with a rat, With a rowley, powley, gammon, and spinach, Heigh ho! says Anthony Rowley.... https://wordsforlife.org.uk/activities/frog-he-would-wooing-go/
Former chair of the GMP federation defends the met and the anti semitic policing compacting it to soccer rivalry.
In both cases I would expect the police to arrest those who kick off. A jew wearing a yarmulka should be able to walk through a crowd of Muslims, and a Man C supporter should be able to walk through a crowd of Man U fans
It's past 8.30am and Mark Rowley is still in office. No way will he still be there by the end of tomorrow.
The question is who he'll take with him. The push to ban anti-genocide demonstrations seems pretty damned serious.
Is there a market on
* next person to leave the cabinet? * Cleverly to leave the cabinet by [date]? * Sunak to leave office before the end of May?
I stopped reading the following piece from the Lebedev press when I reached the word "experts", but it seems effort is still being put into Susan Hall's campaign, even at this late stage:
I was left with the same question here - Mark Rowley who?
But I see he is the boss of the Met, which is disappointing.
I wanted him to be either the actor playing a libidinous Frenchman, or an actual libidinous Frenchman - which is at least all the recent Presidents, and probably all of them. Then I could apply some words for life, @TSE style, or following the actions of the Spectator elite in Paris, in their heads, with respect to girls with pearls.
A frog he would a-wooing go, Heigh ho! says Rowley, A frog he would a-wooing go, Whether his mother would let him or no. With a rowley, powley, gammon, and spinach, Heigh ho! says Anthony Rowley.
So off he set with his opera hat, Heigh ho! says Rowley, So off he set with his opera hat, And on the road he met with a rat, With a rowley, powley, gammon, and spinach, Heigh ho! says Anthony Rowley.... https://wordsforlife.org.uk/activities/frog-he-would-wooing-go/
Former chair of the GMP federation defends the met and the anti semitic policing compacting it to soccer rivalry.
In both cases I would expect the police to arrest those who kick off. A jew wearing a yarmulka should be able to walk through a crowd of Muslims, and a Man C supporter should be able to walk through a crowd of Man U fans
I’d agree but you can see the mindset of the police here. The initial reply of the met. This tweet. The arrest of an Iranian man holding a sign saying ‘Hamas are terrorists’.
That arrest was later ruled by a court to be unlawful.
I can’t help but notice that it was right after the Southern Baptist Conference called on Congress to pass the Ukraine aid bill that Johnson finally agreed to bring it to the floor. https://twitter.com/DanaHoule/status/1781900532623212736
Morning all. A first for me, been leafletted by the Communist party of GB, they're gunning for my ward it seems. Re Rayner, the accusation seems to be about whether tax has been avoided or indeed evaded via false information about who lived where. The wider aspect is Kier hitching his wagon to her and thus judgement if charges or admission of monies owed were to emerge. I'm not so sure about no cut through, that rather depends on the final outcome, I'm reserving judgement. As well as 'going after the poor little Working Class kitten' I've seen plenty of 'thinks she's above the rules' and 'Labour pretending their lot are above reproach' It's transparent what the Right/ Tories are up to, but still very possible she's a wrong 'un. There is a sense of 'only report on Tory sleaze please' about her staunch defenders. We will see! As for any monetary 'amount', the electorate are feral beasts, 15 years ago many were shitting out their spleens over light bulbs and plugs on expenses as well as the more grotesque fiddling.
But the argument is the mainstream media aren't reporting Tory sleaze* any more than they are obliged to, only Beergate and Raynergate it seems demand pages and pages over weeks and weeks.
She needs to tell us what nomination she made when she got married about her house for tax purposes.
Easy peasy.
We don't even care what her husband said or pocketed upon sale of his house.
We just want to know what she said - or didn't say - to HMRC.
Is the issue.
If the police and HMRC request that information fair enough, but she has no requirement to furnish you, Laura Kuenssberg or the Daily Mail with that kind of detail.
No requirement but I think a duty.
She’s in public life. There has been a legitimate question asked. She has the proof one way or another - and is refusing to provide it
In that case I demand to see details of Mr Sunak and Mr Hunt's tax affairs. And while we are at it, let's have a look at Johnson's and Zahawi's tax returns.
It's past 8.30am and Mark Rowley is still in office. No way will he still be there by the end of tomorrow.
The question is who he'll take with him. The push to ban anti-genocide demonstrations seems pretty damned serious.
Is there a market on
* next person to leave the cabinet? * Cleverly to leave the cabinet by [date]? * Sunak to leave office before the end of May?
I stopped reading the following piece from the Lebedev press when I reached the word "experts", but it seems effort is still being put into Susan Hall's campaign, even at this late stage:
I was left with the same question here - Mark Rowley who?
But I see he is the boss of the Met, which is disappointing.
I wanted him to be either the actor playing a libidinous Frenchman, or an actual libidinous Frenchman - which is at least all the recent Presidents, and probably all of them. Then I could apply some words for life, @TSE style, or following the actions of the Spectator elite in Paris, in their heads, with respect to girls with pearls.
A frog he would a-wooing go, Heigh ho! says Rowley, A frog he would a-wooing go, Whether his mother would let him or no. With a rowley, powley, gammon, and spinach, Heigh ho! says Anthony Rowley.
So off he set with his opera hat, Heigh ho! says Rowley, So off he set with his opera hat, And on the road he met with a rat, With a rowley, powley, gammon, and spinach, Heigh ho! says Anthony Rowley.... https://wordsforlife.org.uk/activities/frog-he-would-wooing-go/
Former chair of the GMP federation defends the met and the anti semitic policing compacting it to soccer rivalry.
In both cases I would expect the police to arrest those who kick off. A jew wearing a yarmulka should be able to walk through a crowd of Muslims, and a Man C supporter should be able to walk through a crowd of Man U fans
It's past 8.30am and Mark Rowley is still in office. No way will he still be there by the end of tomorrow.
The question is who he'll take with him. The push to ban anti-genocide demonstrations seems pretty damned serious.
Is there a market on
* next person to leave the cabinet? * Cleverly to leave the cabinet by [date]? * Sunak to leave office before the end of May?
I stopped reading the following piece from the Lebedev press when I reached the word "experts", but it seems effort is still being put into Susan Hall's campaign, even at this late stage:
I was left with the same question here - Mark Rowley who?
But I see he is the boss of the Met, which is disappointing.
I wanted him to be either the actor playing a libidinous Frenchman, or an actual libidinous Frenchman - which is at least all the recent Presidents, and probably all of them. Then I could apply some words for life, @TSE style, or following the actions of the Spectator elite in Paris, in their heads, with respect to girls with pearls.
A frog he would a-wooing go, Heigh ho! says Rowley, A frog he would a-wooing go, Whether his mother would let him or no. With a rowley, powley, gammon, and spinach, Heigh ho! says Anthony Rowley.
So off he set with his opera hat, Heigh ho! says Rowley, So off he set with his opera hat, And on the road he met with a rat, With a rowley, powley, gammon, and spinach, Heigh ho! says Anthony Rowley.... https://wordsforlife.org.uk/activities/frog-he-would-wooing-go/
Former chair of the GMP federation defends the met and the anti semitic policing compacting it to soccer rivalry.
In both cases I would expect the police to arrest those who kick off. A jew wearing a yarmulka should be able to walk through a crowd of Muslims, and a Man C supporter should be able to walk through a crowd of Man U fans
I’d agree but you can see the mindset of the police here. The initial reply of the met. This tweet. The arrest of an Iranian man holding a sign saying ‘Hamas are terrorists’.
That arrest was later ruled by a court to be unlawful.
Interesting. Not something that was as widely reported.
I wonder what the consequences will be for the officer who made the arrest. Presumably some form of retraining or disciplinary action ?
This is a good article in the Guardian about the impending closure of Britain's last coal-fired power station. Mostly the article simply lets the people they talk to speak for themselves.
She needs to tell us what nomination she made when she got married about her house for tax purposes.
Easy peasy.
We don't even care what her husband said or pocketed upon sale of his house.
We just want to know what she said - or didn't say - to HMRC.
Is the issue.
If the police and HMRC request that information fair enough, but she has no requirement to furnish you, Laura Kuenssberg or the Daily Mail with that kind of detail.
No requirement but I think a duty.
She’s in public life. There has been a legitimate question asked. She has the proof one way or another - and is refusing to provide it
In that case I demand to see details of Mr Sunak and Mr Hunt's tax affairs. And while we are at it, let's have a look at Johnson's and Zahawi's tax returns.
AHRefs summary: He argues that the fundamental problem in the British and global economy is not a lack of productivity or economic growth, but rather a growing inequality in wealth distribution. He disagrees with the common narrative that low productivity is the root cause of falling living standards and points out that living standards are declining worldwide, not just in the UK. He highlights the disconnect between the rapid increase in wealth among the richest individuals and the stagnation or decline in living standards for ordinary people. He then goes on to criticize economists and politicians, who often come from wealthy backgrounds, for attributing economic woes to productivity issues without addressing the underlying problem of inequality. He finishes by emphasizing the need to address the growing wealth gap and calls for a shift in focus from economic growth to tackling inequality as a solution to improving living standards for all.
She needs to tell us what nomination she made when she got married about her house for tax purposes.
Easy peasy.
We don't even care what her husband said or pocketed upon sale of his house.
We just want to know what she said - or didn't say - to HMRC.
Is the issue.
I think we know what she said and we know why she won't say what she said.
She would have made the PPR declaration to HMRC. A perfectly legal bit of tax avoidance. But if she says so, she's then guilty of the greatest crime in British politics... Hypocrisy.
Since what she did was legal, and not unusual in the circumstances, it's very hard to force her to go into the detail. So we're left to see whether a sustained campaign of innuendo will cause any damage.
The campaign of innuendo does look particularly ridiculous in the circumstances of regular stories about new transgressions by Tory MPs that are on a completely different scale. But since when was it news that the newspapers were partisan?
I find it astonishing that this story is still being persevered with. When it started it was an easy slur of hypocrisy, a supposedly working class, left wing candidate who stood for a party that opposed the sale of council houses had profited from it. Well, big deal.
All these extremely tedious attempts to make it something else, something illegal, are frankly just ridiculous and a waste of precious police time. These officers should be online pretending to be 14 year old girls, or whatever police do with their time these days. They should not be faffing about with a completely normal transaction that happened a long time ago.
I mean, is this all the Tories have got?
Angela Rayner is not leftwing. She's pro-Israeli; she has vehemently denounced the campaign for Boycotts, Divestment, and Sanctions against Israel; she speaks at meetings from which anti-genocidalist protestors are physically dragged out; and she deputises for a monster who says Israel has the right to turn off the water supply to the civilian population of Gaza. She's one of many leading Labour figures who are funded by the Labour Friends of Israel.
Curiously, I judge whether people are left wing or not by how they propose to govern the people of this country should they attain office here. Being pro Palestinian or anti Palestinian simply isn't a rational measure of someone's position on the political spectrum. It is a weird obsession about which we can do nothing practical.
My understanding is that Rayner has been pushing the workers rights passage which seems to be one of very few policy commitments, possibly because it doesn't cost the government very much money. The additional rights she is proposing is the first real change in the Thatcher settlement of employment rights that we have seen (Blair just quietly let it be). There are arguments for and against this package but the key point is that it will affect the people of this country directly, whether they lose their jobs as a result or have a better standard of living and more stability. That, to me, makes her left wing.
She needs to tell us what nomination she made when she got married about her house for tax purposes.
Easy peasy.
We don't even care what her husband said or pocketed upon sale of his house.
We just want to know what she said - or didn't say - to HMRC.
Is the issue.
If the police and HMRC request that information fair enough, but she has no requirement to furnish you, Laura Kuenssberg or the Daily Mail with that kind of detail.
No requirement but I think a duty.
She’s in public life. There has been a legitimate question asked. She has the proof one way or another - and is refusing to provide it
In that case I demand to see details of Mr Sunak and Mr Hunt's tax affairs. And while we are at it, let's have a look at Johnson's and Zahawi's tax returns.
We don't even know how many children Johnson has.
I forgot Cameron. How many Rayners make a Greensill?
On the face of it some things don’t add up re Rayner . It does seem that she got tax advice only after the accusations were made and of course that advice is given on what you tell the adviser . Although there’s a time limit for electoral law issues the HMRC has a much longer time allowed for prosecution. Much depends on whether they class any possible offense as a genuine mistake or tax evasion. There’s also the issue of the council and single occupancy discount . What is quite strange though is the HMRC normally do investigations then hand that info to the CPS if they think there might be grounds for prosecution. And we’ve not heard of any HMRC investigation.
Having said all of this I do really like Angela Rayner and she’d be a huge loss to the Labour Party if she has to stand down . And this is of course why the Tories are going after her .
Plenty of middle class people think she’s a link to working class communities. Yeah, right. I live in one. I doubt most people here would even know who she is, or for that matter most politicians are.
Her back story is as dull as the rest of them but of course is touted as some sort of gritty authenticity. A bit like tool maker's son done good Keir or Grocers daughter Mags or circus acrobat product Major or 'my mum taught me sums at the kitchen table' Reeves She got preggers at school and wasn't rich. Meh.
I struggle to get the deification of Rayner. I don’t think Fishing’s characterisation is fair but she strikes me as quite ordinary as a politician. Labour has some quality on its front bench. She’s not up there. I’d love to know just why people rate her so highly and what she has done in terms of policy to achieve this level of devotion.
As she’s working class she seems to attract admiration, in parts, from middle class commentators, mostly male, and seemingly as a way of burnishing their pro working class credentials and all of this while labour increasingly selects fewer and fewer working class candidates and more and more white collar former SPAD/London Councillor/charity/Quangocrats/Lawyer types. The party is being purged of the working class.
It’s all a bit ‘how can I hate women, my mother was one’, ‘I’ve got black friends, I’m not racist’ from the commentariat who seem to think challenging her is picking in her.
It is fair to ask questions of her, her shiftiness and evasiveness over it the whole issue has dragged it out. Sure the Tories are bad but let’s not give the other parties a free pass.
The language used, for example "shiftiness" demonstrates Colville's agenda. If he didn't want to impress upon the reader that Rayner is a "wrong 'un" he would have used, maybe, obfuscation instead?
Shiftiness is my word and I have said it about her response to this more than once. Her response to scrutiny is she doesn’t like it. Yet she is happy to dish it out. She’s getting back some of what she’s dished out. She could close this down very quickly by publishing the advice she was given. So why not. Instead she makes stupid demands for the PM and Chancellor to publish 15 years of tax records
Colville is saying honesty matters and he’s right. He’s not saying she’s a wrong un or a right un.
Why is it a stupid demand? The Conservatives are making a huge fuss based on not much about what would, if true, be a small amount of tax unpaid. There have been questions raised about senior Conservatives’ taxes and they didn’t publish details. It seems hypocritical and Rayner is calling out the hypocrisy.
Of course she isn’t. It’s a stupid demand for two reasons. Firstly neither of them are under suspicion of anything and secondly it is totally disproportionate.
Actually there’s a third reason, it fails to draw a line under the matter it just helps perpetuate it.
Sunak’s wife is not Sunak. Attacking Sunak through his wife is pretty shitty. She’s not a politician and there is no hint of any wrong doing on the PMs part. His wife is just rich.
I have to fill in conflict of interest declarations in my work. If I know of a conflict of interest relating to a first degree relative, I declare that too, and am expected to do so. I don't have a wife, but if I had a wife, I would so declare any conflicts of interest pertaining to her.
Tax law connects spouses. Raynergate has seen critics pouring over documents related to her children and husband. It seems a bit hypocritical if Rayner's family is fair game, but Sunak's is off limits.
I note also that much of Raynergate has been around where she lived. Sunak had a US green card while Chancellor. There is reason to believe this broke US immigration rules. Sunak has never come clean with all the documentation and advice around that. He's not revealed his US tax returns. Again, you expect Rayner to publish everything, but don't expect Conservative politicians to do the same.
I don’t know where you get I expect Rayner to publish everything. I Only think she would be wise to publish advice relating to this matter and I think she should to close the matter out.
It's possible she would do if she weren't enjoying the spectacle the Tories are making of themselves ?
Yet for labour politicians doing the daily rounds they have to waste time talking about this rather than their local govt election plans or whatever other policy stuff they want to get out there.
Is she really enjoying the scrutiny ? Find that hard to believe.
Does anyone here watch the Youtube channel the Bad Movie Bible? Very funny and informative, great dry delivery. I've been enjoying a great episode about Bond rip-offs: https://youtu.be/p9ELJS9emDg?si=EHcx08b9yFUOxFAV
That lead me to discover the 1960's Bulldog Drummond fim 'Deadlier than the male', which is pretty good!
She needs to tell us what nomination she made when she got married about her house for tax purposes.
Easy peasy.
We don't even care what her husband said or pocketed upon sale of his house.
We just want to know what she said - or didn't say - to HMRC.
Is the issue.
I think we know what she said and we know why she won't say what she said.
She would have made the PPR declaration to HMRC. A perfectly legal bit of tax avoidance. But if she says so, she's then guilty of the greatest crime in British politics... Hypocrisy.
Since what she did was legal, and not unusual in the circumstances, it's very hard to force her to go into the detail. So we're left to see whether a sustained campaign of innuendo will cause any damage.
The campaign of innuendo does look particularly ridiculous in the circumstances of regular stories about new transgressions by Tory MPs that are on a completely different scale. But since when was it news that the newspapers were partisan?
I find it astonishing that this story is still being persevered with. When it started it was an easy slur of hypocrisy, a supposedly working class, left wing candidate who stood for a party that opposed the sale of council houses had profited from it. Well, big deal.
All these extremely tedious attempts to make it something else, something illegal, are frankly just ridiculous and a waste of precious police time. These officers should be online pretending to be 14 year old girls, or whatever police do with their time these days. They should not be faffing about with a completely normal transaction that happened a long time ago.
I mean, is this all the Tories have got?
Angela Rayner is not leftwing. She's pro-Israeli; she has vehemently denounced the campaign for Boycotts, Divestment, and Sanctions against Israel; she speaks at meetings from which anti-genocidalist protestors are physically dragged out; and she deputises for a monster who says Israel has the right to turn off the water supply to the civilian population of Gaza. She's one of many leading Labour figures who are funded by the Labour Friends of Israel.
On the face of it some things don’t add up re Rayner . It does seem that she got tax advice only after the accusations were made and of course that advice is given on what you tell the adviser . Although there’s a time limit for electoral law issues the HMRC has a much longer time allowed for prosecution. Much depends on whether they class any possible offense as a genuine mistake or tax evasion. There’s also the issue of the council and single occupancy discount . What is quite strange though is the HMRC normally do investigations then hand that info to the CPS if they think there might be grounds for prosecution. And we’ve not heard of any HMRC investigation.
Having said all of this I do really like Angela Rayner and she’d be a huge loss to the Labour Party if she has to stand down . And this is of course why the Tories are going after her .
Okay, you like her. That’s nice.
However why is she such an asset to labour. What does she bring ?
I don’t see it, or get it. She seems to be more a political personality with a backstory that some people fawn over than a political colossus. You look at other labour front benchers and they are developing policy platforms. What does she offer apart from some rhetoric about workers rights.
Plenty of middle class people think she’s a link to working class communities. Yeah, right. I live in one. I doubt most people here would even know who she is, or for that matter most politicians are.
Of course you need front benchers developing policy platforms but that’s not her job . She is there precisely because of what you touched on “ a political personality with a backstory “.
Her back story also allows the “ working class women who against all odds “ narrative.
The Tories wouldn’t be going after her if they thought she was a drag on Labour.
She needs to tell us what nomination she made when she got married about her house for tax purposes.
Easy peasy.
We don't even care what her husband said or pocketed upon sale of his house.
We just want to know what she said - or didn't say - to HMRC.
Is the issue.
I think we know what she said and we know why she won't say what she said.
She would have made the PPR declaration to HMRC. A perfectly legal bit of tax avoidance. But if she says so, she's then guilty of the greatest crime in British politics... Hypocrisy.
Since what she did was legal, and not unusual in the circumstances, it's very hard to force her to go into the detail. So we're left to see whether a sustained campaign of innuendo will cause any damage.
The campaign of innuendo does look particularly ridiculous in the circumstances of regular stories about new transgressions by Tory MPs that are on a completely different scale. But since when was it news that the newspapers were partisan?
I find it astonishing that this story is still being persevered with. When it started it was an easy slur of hypocrisy, a supposedly working class, left wing candidate who stood for a party that opposed the sale of council houses had profited from it. Well, big deal.
All these extremely tedious attempts to make it something else, something illegal, are frankly just ridiculous and a waste of precious police time. These officers should be online pretending to be 14 year old girls, or whatever police do with their time these days. They should not be faffing about with a completely normal transaction that happened a long time ago.
I mean, is this all the Tories have got?
Angela Rayner is not leftwing. She's pro-Israeli; she has vehemently denounced the campaign for Boycotts, Divestment, and Sanctions against Israel; she speaks at meetings from which anti-genocidalist protestors are physically dragged out; and she deputises for a monster who says Israel has the right to turn off the water supply to the civilian population of Gaza. She's one of many leading Labour figures who are funded by the Labour Friends of Israel.
Curiously, I judge whether people are left wing or not by how they propose to govern the people of this country should they attain office here. Being pro Palestinian or anti Palestinian simply isn't a rational measure of someone's position on the political spectrum. It is a weird obsession about which we can do nothing practical.
My understanding is that Rayner has been pushing the workers rights passage which seems to be one of very few policy commitments, possibly because it doesn't cost the government very much money. The additional rights she is proposing is the first real change in the Thatcher settlement of employment rights that we have seen (Blair just quietly let it be). There are arguments for and against this package but the key point is that it will affect the people of this country directly, whether they lose their jobs as a result or have a better standard of living and more stability. That, to me, makes her left wing.
And hence worthy of support. I suspect that ‘practical’ rights …… fair wages, pensions, Union membership and so on …. have been whittled away in the last forty years.
He posted last night that his vineyard in Dorset was down to 0.9C or something like that, and that his entire annual harvest was likely to get wiped out, due to this insane Europe-wide cold
🙏 for @TimS and any other growers/farmers battling these conditions
Because the climate is getting fucked. And even though I think the UK will actually essentially fix its contribution by 2040-2045 that's still 20 years away and meanwhile you have psychopathic nationalist leaders like Modi crowing about hitting new heights of a billion tonnes a year of coal and lignite.
The man will kill us all.
Unfortunately, he'll probably be re-elected quite easily. We won't know until early June, despite the first set of Indian states going to the polls on Friday.
On the face of it some things don’t add up re Rayner . It does seem that she got tax advice only after the accusations were made and of course that advice is given on what you tell the adviser . Although there’s a time limit for electoral law issues the HMRC has a much longer time allowed for prosecution. Much depends on whether they class any possible offense as a genuine mistake or tax evasion. There’s also the issue of the council and single occupancy discount . What is quite strange though is the HMRC normally do investigations then hand that info to the CPS if they think there might be grounds for prosecution. And we’ve not heard of any HMRC investigation.
Having said all of this I do really like Angela Rayner and she’d be a huge loss to the Labour Party if she has to stand down . And this is of course why the Tories are going after her .
Plenty of middle class people think she’s a link to working class communities. Yeah, right. I live in one. I doubt most people here would even know who she is, or for that matter most politicians are.
Her back story is as dull as the rest of them but of course is touted as some sort of gritty authenticity. A bit like tool maker's son done good Keir or Grocers daughter Mags or circus acrobat product Major or 'my mum taught me sums at the kitchen table' Reeves She got preggers at school and wasn't rich. Meh.
The "she's a ssslllaaag" defence for this bullying is really quite vile.
Johnson on the other hand is a player, a lothario, a swordsman, a hero.
Morning all. A first for me, been leafletted by the Communist party of GB, they're gunning for my ward it seems. Re Rayner, the accusation seems to be about whether tax has been avoided or indeed evaded via false information about who lived where. The wider aspect is Kier hitching his wagon to her and thus judgement if charges or admission of monies owed were to emerge. I'm not so sure about no cut through, that rather depends on the final outcome, I'm reserving judgement. As well as 'going after the poor little Working Class kitten' I've seen plenty of 'thinks she's above the rules' and 'Labour pretending their lot are above reproach' It's transparent what the Right/ Tories are up to, but still very possible she's a wrong 'un. There is a sense of 'only report on Tory sleaze please' about her staunch defenders. We will see! As for any monetary 'amount', the electorate are feral beasts, 15 years ago many were shitting out their spleens over light bulbs and plugs on expenses as well as the more grotesque fiddling.
But the argument is the mainstream media aren't reporting Tory sleaze* any more than they are obliged to, only Beergate and Raynergate it seems demand pages and pages over weeks and weeks.
Does anyone here watch the Youtube channel the Bad Movie Bible? Very funny and informative, great dry delivery. I've been enjoying a great episode about Bond rip-offs: https://youtu.be/p9ELJS9emDg?si=EHcx08b9yFUOxFAV
That lead me to discover the 1960's Bulldog Drummond fim 'Deadlier than the male', which is pretty good!
Does anyone here watch the Youtube channel the Bad Movie Bible? Very funny and informative, great dry delivery. I've been enjoying a great episode about Bond rip-offs: https://youtu.be/p9ELJS9emDg?si=EHcx08b9yFUOxFAV
That lead me to discover the 1960's Bulldog Drummond fim 'Deadlier than the male', which is pretty good!
Does anyone here watch the Youtube channel the Bad Movie Bible? Very funny and informative, great dry delivery. I've been enjoying a great episode about Bond rip-offs: https://youtu.be/p9ELJS9emDg?si=EHcx08b9yFUOxFAV
That lead me to discover the 1960's Bulldog Drummond fim 'Deadlier than the male', which is pretty good!
This scandal is even worse, if possible, than the Post Office one and it is long past the time for those affected to receive compensation, even though because of the delays - which now seem to me to be deliberate on the part of the state as they happen in every such case - 3/4 of those who were infected have died.
Good to see the ST campaigning on this. I wonder if this a side effect of the PO matter.
She needs to tell us what nomination she made when she got married about her house for tax purposes.
Easy peasy.
We don't even care what her husband said or pocketed upon sale of his house.
We just want to know what she said - or didn't say - to HMRC.
Is the issue.
I think we know what she said and we know why she won't say what she said.
She would have made the PPR declaration to HMRC. A perfectly legal bit of tax avoidance. But if she says so, she's then guilty of the greatest crime in British politics... Hypocrisy.
Since what she did was legal, and not unusual in the circumstances, it's very hard to force her to go into the detail. So we're left to see whether a sustained campaign of innuendo will cause any damage.
The campaign of innuendo does look particularly ridiculous in the circumstances of regular stories about new transgressions by Tory MPs that are on a completely different scale. But since when was it news that the newspapers were partisan?
I find it astonishing that this story is still being persevered with. When it started it was an easy slur of hypocrisy, a supposedly working class, left wing candidate who stood for a party that opposed the sale of council houses had profited from it. Well, big deal.
All these extremely tedious attempts to make it something else, something illegal, are frankly just ridiculous and a waste of precious police time. These officers should be online pretending to be 14 year old girls, or whatever police do with their time these days. They should not be faffing about with a completely normal transaction that happened a long time ago.
I mean, is this all the Tories have got?
Angela Rayner is not leftwing. She's pro-Israeli; she has vehemently denounced the campaign for Boycotts, Divestment, and Sanctions against Israel; she speaks at meetings from which anti-genocidalist protestors are physically dragged out; and she deputises for a monster who says Israel has the right to turn off the water supply to the civilian population of Gaza. She's one of many leading Labour figures who are funded by the Labour Friends of Israel.
Curiously, I judge whether people are left wing or not by how they propose to govern the people of this country should they attain office here. Being pro Palestinian or anti Palestinian simply isn't a rational measure of someone's position on the political spectrum. It is a weird obsession about which we can do nothing practical.
My understanding is that Rayner has been pushing the workers rights passage which seems to be one of very few policy commitments, possibly because it doesn't cost the government very much money. The additional rights she is proposing is the first real change in the Thatcher settlement of employment rights that we have seen (Blair just quietly let it be). There are arguments for and against this package but the key point is that it will affect the people of this country directly, whether they lose their jobs as a result or have a better standard of living and more stability. That, to me, makes her left wing.
She's quietly helpful on environmental and animal welfare issues too.
On Taz's point, the "funding" seems to have been subsidised trips to Israel to to politicians there, which is very much SOP for the all-party national groups (there's one for each of scores of countries) - after I was PPS for energy, I remember I had a trip to Denmark to talk to energy politicians and study wind farms. One can debate how useful/one-sided the trips are and whether MPs should accept them, but they aren't "funding" in the sense of giving politicians £££s.
You misunderstand the fundamental nature of British society. Things arrange around a three-level structure and stabilize when the social forces acting upon them balance (i'll need to put that in a better phrase). The point of the Spectator is to present and advocate for the fads and fancies of the upper level, the British moneyed classes, and if that includes employing commentators who use prostitutes, than it will do that. It doesn't have an underlying theory of the world other than that, as shown by its continued employment of sweaty bean-bag Rod Liddle, a man whose only other occupation would be ballast.
On the face of it some things don’t add up re Rayner . It does seem that she got tax advice only after the accusations were made and of course that advice is given on what you tell the adviser . Although there’s a time limit for electoral law issues the HMRC has a much longer time allowed for prosecution. Much depends on whether they class any possible offense as a genuine mistake or tax evasion. There’s also the issue of the council and single occupancy discount . What is quite strange though is the HMRC normally do investigations then hand that info to the CPS if they think there might be grounds for prosecution. And we’ve not heard of any HMRC investigation.
Having said all of this I do really like Angela Rayner and she’d be a huge loss to the Labour Party if she has to stand down . And this is of course why the Tories are going after her .
Plenty of middle class people think she’s a link to working class communities. Yeah, right. I live in one. I doubt most people here would even know who she is, or for that matter most politicians are.
Her back story is as dull as the rest of them but of course is touted as some sort of gritty authenticity. A bit like tool maker's son done good Keir or Grocers daughter Mags or circus acrobat product Major or 'my mum taught me sums at the kitchen table' Reeves She got preggers at school and wasn't rich. Meh.
The "she's a ssslllaaag" defence for this bullying is really quite vile.
Johnson on the other hand is a player, a lothario, a swordsman, a hero.
Scrutiny is now bullying !
I don’t know of anyone who sees Johnson in such terms either 😂
She needs to tell us what nomination she made when she got married about her house for tax purposes.
Easy peasy.
We don't even care what her husband said or pocketed upon sale of his house.
We just want to know what she said - or didn't say - to HMRC.
Is the issue.
I think we know what she said and we know why she won't say what she said.
She would have made the PPR declaration to HMRC. A perfectly legal bit of tax avoidance. But if she says so, she's then guilty of the greatest crime in British politics... Hypocrisy.
Since what she did was legal, and not unusual in the circumstances, it's very hard to force her to go into the detail. So we're left to see whether a sustained campaign of innuendo will cause any damage.
The campaign of innuendo does look particularly ridiculous in the circumstances of regular stories about new transgressions by Tory MPs that are on a completely different scale. But since when was it news that the newspapers were partisan?
I find it astonishing that this story is still being persevered with. When it started it was an easy slur of hypocrisy, a supposedly working class, left wing candidate who stood for a party that opposed the sale of council houses had profited from it. Well, big deal.
All these extremely tedious attempts to make it something else, something illegal, are frankly just ridiculous and a waste of precious police time. These officers should be online pretending to be 14 year old girls, or whatever police do with their time these days. They should not be faffing about with a completely normal transaction that happened a long time ago.
I mean, is this all the Tories have got?
Angela Rayner is not leftwing. She's pro-Israeli; she has vehemently denounced the campaign for Boycotts, Divestment, and Sanctions against Israel; she speaks at meetings from which anti-genocidalist protestors are physically dragged out; and she deputises for a monster who says Israel has the right to turn off the water supply to the civilian population of Gaza. She's one of many leading Labour figures who are funded by the Labour Friends of Israel.
Curiously, I judge whether people are left wing or not by how they propose to govern the people of this country should they attain office here. Being pro Palestinian or anti Palestinian simply isn't a rational measure of someone's position on the political spectrum. It is a weird obsession about which we can do nothing practical.
My understanding is that Rayner has been pushing the workers rights passage which seems to be one of very few policy commitments, possibly because it doesn't cost the government very much money. The additional rights she is proposing is the first real change in the Thatcher settlement of employment rights that we have seen (Blair just quietly let it be). There are arguments for and against this package but the key point is that it will affect the people of this country directly, whether they lose their jobs as a result or have a better standard of living and more stability. That, to me, makes her left wing.
She's quietly helpful on environmental and animal welfare issues too.
On Taz's point, the "funding" seems to have been subsidised trips to Israel to to politicians there, which is very much SOP for the all-party national groups (there's one for each of scores of countries) - after I was PPS for energy, I remember I had a trip to Denmark to talk to energy politicians and study wind farms. One can debate how useful/one-sided the trips are and whether MPs should accept them, but they aren't "funding" in the sense of giving politicians £££s.
Hi Nick, it was Donkeys who made the funding comment.
She needs to tell us what nomination she made when she got married about her house for tax purposes.
Easy peasy.
We don't even care what her husband said or pocketed upon sale of his house.
We just want to know what she said - or didn't say - to HMRC.
Is the issue.
If the police and HMRC request that information fair enough, but she has no requirement to furnish you, Laura Kuenssberg or the Daily Mail with that kind of detail.
Yeah I mean it's not the standard that anyone holds politicians to is it.
Who cares about transparency in the housing tax affairs of the shadow SoS for housing.
It's past 8.30am and Mark Rowley is still in office. No way will he still be there by the end of tomorrow.
The question is who he'll take with him. The push to ban anti-genocide demonstrations seems pretty damned serious.
Is there a market on
* next person to leave the cabinet? * Cleverly to leave the cabinet by [date]? * Sunak to leave office before the end of May?
I stopped reading the following piece from the Lebedev press when I reached the word "experts", but it seems effort is still being put into Susan Hall's campaign, even at this late stage:
I was left with the same question here - Mark Rowley who?
But I see he is the boss of the Met, which is disappointing.
I wanted him to be either the actor playing a libidinous Frenchman, or an actual libidinous Frenchman - which is at least all the recent Presidents, and probably all of them. Then I could apply some words for life, @TSE style, or following the actions of the Spectator elite in Paris, in their heads, with respect to girls with pearls.
A frog he would a-wooing go, Heigh ho! says Rowley, A frog he would a-wooing go, Whether his mother would let him or no. With a rowley, powley, gammon, and spinach, Heigh ho! says Anthony Rowley.
So off he set with his opera hat, Heigh ho! says Rowley, So off he set with his opera hat, And on the road he met with a rat, With a rowley, powley, gammon, and spinach, Heigh ho! says Anthony Rowley.... https://wordsforlife.org.uk/activities/frog-he-would-wooing-go/
Former chair of the GMP federation defends the met and the anti semitic policing compacting it to soccer rivalry.
In both cases I would expect the police to arrest those who kick off. A jew wearing a yarmulka should be able to walk through a crowd of Muslims, and a Man C supporter should be able to walk through a crowd of Man U fans
There are two or three parts. The "openly Jewish" bit was disgraceful and ignorant and it needs to be clear to every officer that is unnacceptable. The threatening arrest was unnecessary.
However not allowing him to walk directly through the march is a fairly standard part of policing. Happens every week at football matches, would happen today if protestors want to walk through the marathon course.
Why do we tolerate football if that is the level of innate violence?
In this case, I don't think the Jewish gentleman was proposing to disrupt the demo, just walk past it.
I suspect he knew precisely what he was doing which was to embarrass the police into taking action against the demonstrators who were not playing ball by smashing the place up.
As we are discussing Leon's holiday in Paris, among my friends are two Jewish families currently on holiday in Muslim countries, one an Arab country. They even managed to make it to Heathrow Airport without being hacked limb from limb. The idea that Jews are under any great threat as a result of the Gaza SMO or pro-Palestine marches is for the birds. They're not cowering at home, they're getting on with their lives just as they were before October.
I haven't commented on the Rayner story for quite some time and leave it to others and eventually the police to decide
On the face of it it is a non story other than maybe 2 issues
My son and his partner lived together having 2 children and then married and had a third
My son had his own home and when he sold it he paid capital gains tax on it, and I assume part of this story is over her or her husband liability for CGT
The second issue is that Rayner has demanded resignation of other politicians in the past under police investigation, but also she is no ordinary mp, she will be deputy PM in the next few months and is obviously going to attract attention from her political opponents
Personally I do not see it affecting the poll ratings no matter how it is resolved, as it is a minor issue when compared with far more important problems that the country is facing
I read this morning of the serious problems Macron and France are facing as they spend far too much on pensions and welfare benefits and the French will not accept any increase in the retirement age beyond 64
The UK and France have very similar problems and until their governments are forced to reduce the spending on pensions and benefits then crisis will follow upon crisis
This scandal is even worse, if possible, than the Post Office one and it is long past the time for those affected to receive compensation, even though because of the delays - which now seem to me to be deliberate on the part of the state as they happen in every such case - 3/4 of those who were infected have died.
Good to see the ST campaigning on this. I wonder if this a side effect of the PO matter.
No, I think it's been building for years, and the recently released evidence that they were conducting clinical trials with what they knew was a potentially lethal product - without any kind of consent, informed or not - on children, to see how many it might infect, would have put it on the front pages anyway.
That they then spent decades covering up the full story certainly has shades of the PO. And in this case, the clock has been ticking even faster for many of the victims.
She needs to tell us what nomination she made when she got married about her house for tax purposes.
Easy peasy.
We don't even care what her husband said or pocketed upon sale of his house.
We just want to know what she said - or didn't say - to HMRC.
Is the issue.
I think we know what she said and we know why she won't say what she said.
She would have made the PPR declaration to HMRC. A perfectly legal bit of tax avoidance. But if she says so, she's then guilty of the greatest crime in British politics... Hypocrisy.
Since what she did was legal, and not unusual in the circumstances, it's very hard to force her to go into the detail. So we're left to see whether a sustained campaign of innuendo will cause any damage.
The campaign of innuendo does look particularly ridiculous in the circumstances of regular stories about new transgressions by Tory MPs that are on a completely different scale. But since when was it news that the newspapers were partisan?
I find it astonishing that this story is still being persevered with. When it started it was an easy slur of hypocrisy, a supposedly working class, left wing candidate who stood for a party that opposed the sale of council houses had profited from it. Well, big deal.
All these extremely tedious attempts to make it something else, something illegal, are frankly just ridiculous and a waste of precious police time. These officers should be online pretending to be 14 year old girls, or whatever police do with their time these days. They should not be faffing about with a completely normal transaction that happened a long time ago.
I mean, is this all the Tories have got?
Angela Rayner is not leftwing. She's pro-Israeli; she has vehemently denounced the campaign for Boycotts, Divestment, and Sanctions against Israel; she speaks at meetings from which anti-genocidalist protestors are physically dragged out; and she deputises for a monster who says Israel has the right to turn off the water supply to the civilian population of Gaza. She's one of many leading Labour figures who are funded by the Labour Friends of Israel.
Curiously, I judge whether people are left wing or not by how they propose to govern the people of this country should they attain office here. Being pro Palestinian or anti Palestinian simply isn't a rational measure of someone's position on the political spectrum. It is a weird obsession about which we can do nothing practical.
My understanding is that Rayner has been pushing the workers rights passage which seems to be one of very few policy commitments, possibly because it doesn't cost the government very much money. The additional rights she is proposing is the first real change in the Thatcher settlement of employment rights that we have seen (Blair just quietly let it be). There are arguments for and against this package but the key point is that it will affect the people of this country directly, whether they lose their jobs as a result or have a better standard of living and more stability. That, to me, makes her left wing.
And hence worthy of support. I suspect that ‘practical’ rights …… fair wages, pensions, Union membership and so on …. have been whittled away in the last forty years.
If Labour gets rid of fire and re-hire scams and especially the despicable zero hours contracts, then that would be a significant improvement to be celebrated. Though the biggest prize - and one which, sadly, isn't likely to be on the table - would be the end of pretend self-employment, the mechanism by which all these shyster takeaway food delivery firms get away with treating the poor sods doing the donkey work as independent contractors on piecework, with the consequent total lack of any employment protections including the minimum wage.
If we're going to wean our underperforming economy off the crack cocaine of exploitative shit jobs then outlawing this kind of business model would be a solid place to start.
I think I have told the story already of a prostitute who had allegedly been raped by her "client" who was giving evidence on commission. Defence counsel suggested that during this episode the complainer had expressed enthusiasm for rough sex, hence some of her bruising. She looked utterly bewildered and then politely explained that when she was having sex with a client she was not having fun or enjoying herself, she was thinking about how much money she was making and how long it was going to take.
The episode brought home to me once again how tawdry, selfish and delusional men who use such services are. That article does much of the same. This prostitute needed money to feed her drug habit. It would have been a tragic tale all round under any circumstance, the violence with which anal sex was taken will hopefully means that the perpetrator will spend several years in prison making women marginally safer.
I'm delighted to say the same is true of the Speccie article it likely references.
She reveals some aspects of the article which were not mentioned when it was extensively discussed on here.
Other than not really acknowledging that prostitution isn't currently illegal, she's quite right.
Quite. Also this is a matter of personal liberty. If you want to sell your body for sex that should be your choice, just as you might want to sell it to be a dancer, footballer, factory worker, bin man, fighting in the army, dropping bombs by drone, or coal miner. Equally you should be allowed to sell your mind for whatever you like: banking, writing, lawyering, campaigning for nigel Farage or Jeremy Corbyn, creating ad copy that persuades people to buy rubbish. We may disapprove of some choices, but that’s the point of freedom. People will do stuff you don’t like. Cope
Besides, with the advent of AI, whoring might be the only job left. Lawyering is bound to go. @Cyclefree should not rule out career choices so casually
Does anyone here watch the Youtube channel the Bad Movie Bible? Very funny and informative, great dry delivery. I've been enjoying a great episode about Bond rip-offs: https://youtu.be/p9ELJS9emDg?si=EHcx08b9yFUOxFAV
That lead me to discover the 1960's Bulldog Drummond fim 'Deadlier than the male', which is pretty good!
Camply comic Bond-esque caper - slightly lower stakes, but very high production values. A Sunday treat for you.
I think that I am going to watch the ongoing farce of obscenely overpaid footballers showing us what it would be like if they played with 10 other men that they had not actually met before and had no idea of how they might anticipate each others' efforts. Come on United!
An historic ship: built in 1915, and the world's oldest commissioned naval vessel. "Kommuna has served in the Russian Imperial, Soviet, and Russian Federation navies through the Russian Revolution and two World Wars."
On the face of it some things don’t add up re Rayner . It does seem that she got tax advice only after the accusations were made and of course that advice is given on what you tell the adviser . Although there’s a time limit for electoral law issues the HMRC has a much longer time allowed for prosecution. Much depends on whether they class any possible offense as a genuine mistake or tax evasion. There’s also the issue of the council and single occupancy discount . What is quite strange though is the HMRC normally do investigations then hand that info to the CPS if they think there might be grounds for prosecution. And we’ve not heard of any HMRC investigation.
Having said all of this I do really like Angela Rayner and she’d be a huge loss to the Labour Party if she has to stand down . And this is of course why the Tories are going after her .
Plenty of middle class people think she’s a link to working class communities. Yeah, right. I live in one. I doubt most people here would even know who she is, or for that matter most politicians are.
Her back story is as dull as the rest of them but of course is touted as some sort of gritty authenticity. A bit like tool maker's son done good Keir or Grocers daughter Mags or circus acrobat product Major or 'my mum taught me sums at the kitchen table' Reeves She got preggers at school and wasn't rich. Meh.
The "she's a ssslllaaag" defence for this bullying is really quite vile.
Johnson on the other hand is a player, a lothario, a swordsman, a hero.
Scrutiny is now bullying !
I don’t know of anyone who sees Johnson in such terms either 😂
It's not scrutiny, it's a smear campaign, witch hunt.
Maybe it gets you a result. I don't really care, but perlease don't condescend to tell me what Ashcroft and Daly have set off is scrutiny. It's a political stunt, and a particularly crass one at that.
I'm delighted to say the same is true of the Speccie article it likely references.
She reveals some aspects of the article which were not mentioned when it was extensively discussed on here.
Other than not really acknowledging that prostitution isn't currently illegal, she's quite right.
Quite. Also this is a matter of personal liberty. If you want to sell your body for sex that should be your choice, just as you might want to sell it to be a dancer, footballer, factory worker, bin man, fighting in the army, dropping bombs by drone, or coal miner. Equally you should be allowed to sell your mind for whatever you like: banking, writing, lawyering, campaigning for nigel Farage or Jeremy Corbyn, creating ad copy that persuades people to buy rubbish. We may disapprove of some choices, but that’s the point of freedom. People will do stuff you don’t like. Cope
Besides, with the advent of AI, whoring might be the only job left. Lawyering is bound to go. @Cyclefree should not rule out career choices so casually
I ought to have made more clear that I have more sympathy for her view than yours.
It's past 8.30am and Mark Rowley is still in office. No way will he still be there by the end of tomorrow.
The question is who he'll take with him. The push to ban anti-genocide demonstrations seems pretty damned serious.
Is there a market on
* next person to leave the cabinet? * Cleverly to leave the cabinet by [date]? * Sunak to leave office before the end of May?
I stopped reading the following piece from the Lebedev press when I reached the word "experts", but it seems effort is still being put into Susan Hall's campaign, even at this late stage:
I was left with the same question here - Mark Rowley who?
But I see he is the boss of the Met, which is disappointing.
I wanted him to be either the actor playing a libidinous Frenchman, or an actual libidinous Frenchman - which is at least all the recent Presidents, and probably all of them. Then I could apply some words for life, @TSE style, or following the actions of the Spectator elite in Paris, in their heads, with respect to girls with pearls.
A frog he would a-wooing go, Heigh ho! says Rowley, A frog he would a-wooing go, Whether his mother would let him or no. With a rowley, powley, gammon, and spinach, Heigh ho! says Anthony Rowley.
So off he set with his opera hat, Heigh ho! says Rowley, So off he set with his opera hat, And on the road he met with a rat, With a rowley, powley, gammon, and spinach, Heigh ho! says Anthony Rowley.... https://wordsforlife.org.uk/activities/frog-he-would-wooing-go/
Former chair of the GMP federation defends the met and the anti semitic policing compacting it to soccer rivalry.
In both cases I would expect the police to arrest those who kick off. A jew wearing a yarmulka should be able to walk through a crowd of Muslims, and a Man C supporter should be able to walk through a crowd of Man U fans
There are two or three parts. The "openly Jewish" bit was disgraceful and ignorant and it needs to be clear to every officer that is unnacceptable. The threatening arrest was unnecessary.
However not allowing him to walk directly through the march is a fairly standard part of policing. Happens every week at football matches, would happen today if protestors want to walk through the marathon course.
Why do we tolerate football if that is the level of innate violence?
In this case, I don't think the Jewish gentleman was proposing to disrupt the demo, just walk past it.
I suspect he knew precisely what he was doing which was to embarrass the police into taking action against the demonstrators who were not playing ball by smashing the place up.
As we are discussing Leon's holiday in Paris, among my friends are two Jewish families currently on holiday in Muslim countries, one an Arab country. They even managed to make it to Heathrow Airport without being hacked limb from limb. The idea that Jews are under any great threat as a result of the Gaza SMO or pro-Palestine marches is for the birds. They're not cowering at home, they're getting on with their lives just as they were before October.
I’m not on holiday! I’m here on the French taxpayers’ ecu, to tell everyone how beautiful France is. Think I’m doing quite well so far
This scandal is even worse, if possible, than the Post Office one and it is long past the time for those affected to receive compensation, even though because of the delays - which now seem to me to be deliberate on the part of the state as they happen in every such case - 3/4 of those who were infected have died.
Good to see the ST campaigning on this. I wonder if this a side effect of the PO matter.
Yes, it’s been festering away for ages, and no politician or senior civil servant who has served in whatever the Health Department has from time been called has really clean hands. From 1975 or so onwards, anyway. The time is long past for the Inquiry to make a report, for proper compensation to be paid, and for anyone ‘responsible’ to be at the very least named and shamed.
I'm delighted to say the same is true of the Speccie article it likely references.
She reveals some aspects of the article which were not mentioned when it was extensively discussed on here.
Other than not really acknowledging that prostitution isn't currently illegal, she's quite right.
Quite. Also this is a matter of personal liberty. If you want to sell your body for sex that should be your choice, just as you might want to sell it to be a dancer, footballer, factory worker, bin man, fighting in the army, dropping bombs by drone, or coal miner. Equally you should be allowed to sell your mind for whatever you like: banking, writing, lawyering, campaigning for nigel Farage or Jeremy Corbyn, creating ad copy that persuades people to buy rubbish. We may disapprove of some choices, but that’s the point of freedom. People will do stuff you don’t like. Cope
Besides, with the advent of AI, whoring might be the only job left. Lawyering is bound to go. @Cyclefree should not rule out career choices so casually
Half the population will be too old, sick or both to do anything, and the other half will be feeding them and wiping their bottoms. Not exactly the bright, shiny future we were promised by post-war popular culture, but hey-ho.
Comments
Yes, that can sometimes be true, but it is far from always true and it's a very lazy and inflammatory way of dealing with argument.
I don't particularly like her, but couldn't give two hoots for her class.
I didn't really like Seamus Milne either. Who went to Winchester.
Deep down: they know it's a mile wide and an inch deep, and built on sand, and it will be very interesting to see how quickly it corrodes once in office.
Because the pro-Palestine marches contain exactly the same violent mob elements whise intention is to intimidate as the EDL.
I love geeky weather chat. My inner nerd stirs. Also my outer nerd if the weather is REALLY mad
Growing up nearby in the 1980s, there were bits of Fareham like that- surprisingly remote for somewhere midway between Portsmouth and Southampton, places where they grew strawberries and didn't like strangers.
A lot of those bits got executive homes built on them in the mid-to-late 80s. The sort of thing that Ken Masters from Howard's Way would have called aspirational.
Though it sounds a bit more like Wareham- once you get beyond Bournemouth, coastal Dorset really is remote.
Doesn't excuse my tomato plants not coming up.
The plants know.
She (probably) claimed PPR on her house. May be saved £1,500. Certainly not a sacking offence.
“Midlands MP has sex with screeching donkey in middle of pediatric cancer ward” - Yes, definitely
“London MP has cocktail reception during lockdown” - Yes, possibly
“Working class MP does something potentially dodgy with council tax or something” - No, not really
So far it doesn’t have any BITE. No emotional purchase. Rayner haters need to find that very soon or the story will dribble away
She’s in public life. There has been a legitimate question asked. She has the proof one way or another - and is refusing to provide it
Don’t they get it? People think it looks awful - for them! All these massive scandals going on in their own team, and they are chasing Rayner for what practically everyone thinks is nothing.
Tories have broken the country. No getting away from that. Broke basic political morality with partygate. Yet for some insane reason they think the can moralise and gain credit for it. Look at the polls - this is damaging them still further.
Smear campaigns are an unfortunate part of the political toolkit. I just think there's a lot of frustration here from people who want to see Rayner smeared that this one's not landing.
Matt W's description sounds more like Wareham than Fareham. My late mother lived in Wareham and my brother lives there. Apart from the landed gentry and wealthy retirees, it is quite a poor area.
All these extremely tedious attempts to make it something else, something illegal, are frankly just ridiculous and a waste of precious police time. These officers should be online pretending to be 14 year old girls, or whatever police do with their time these days. They should not be faffing about with a completely normal transaction that happened a long time ago.
I mean, is this all the Tories have got?
Some marchers no doubt are peaceful, but others are not.
The Police should not be telling Jews they're not welcome in London if there's a march on there, any more than they should be telling Muslims they're not welcome if there's an EDL march on.
The Police should be enforcing the law and ensuring that London (and anywhere else in the UK) is a safe space for everyone whether they be Jewish, Muslim, Christian, atheist, or anything else.
Having said all of this I do really like Angela Rayner and she’d be a huge loss to the Labour Party if she has to stand down . And this is of course why the Tories are going after her .
This is all they've got.
The party well deserves sorting itself out and renewing itself on the opposition benches.
Tax law connects spouses. Raynergate has seen critics pouring over documents related to her children and husband. It seems a bit hypocritical if Rayner's family is fair game, but Sunak's is off limits.
I note also that much of Raynergate has been around where she lived. Sunak had a US green card while Chancellor. There is reason to believe this broke US immigration rules. Sunak has never come clean with all the documentation and advice around that. He's not revealed his US tax returns. Again, you expect Rayner to publish everything, but don't expect Conservative politicians to do the same.
Or an arsehole for being openly Jewish?
What a disgusting, racist thing for you to say.
The only thing that is arsehole behaviour is not thinking its OK for Jews to be about in London. The problem with the Met response is that they don't seem to think the attitude displayed was a problem, just the way the attitude was articulated. That they should act the same way next time, but just not verbalise what they're doing. Despicable.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/crime/black-undercover-officer-beaten-st-louis-b2531716.html
A legitimate question was asked about Rishi Sunak's green card status while Chancellor. Sunak has the proof one way or another - and is refusing to provide it.
A legitimate question was asked about how Liz Truss included an anti-semitic comment in her book. She has the proof one way or another - and is refusing to provide it.
Etc. etc.
People,may find that acceptable. I don’t think it is.
And more's to come. The genocidalists are planning a big counter-demo against the anti-genocidalists in London on Saturday. It's obvious they want to provoke violence.
This man is front and centre of that. It's absolute bollocks to say he was just an innocent Jewish chap trying to walk home.
Why the terminological inexactitudes, Barty?
It was quite obvious that Tres was saying the man was acting like an arsehole by trying to provoke a riot, not by being Jewish or wanting to walk home.
I wonder whether it's too late to stop Sadiq Khan winning the mayor election?
Renewables are growing far faster:
https://www.investindia.gov.in/sector/renewable-energy
It's not great, but it could be worse.
And realistically, the only way we'll persuade developing economies like India to do so without climate cost is develop the technology to make it economically inevitable.
Otherwise they just say "but you did it". A stupid argument, but not one that's easy to rebut.
Re Rayner, the accusation seems to be about whether tax has been avoided or indeed evaded via false information about who lived where. The wider aspect is Kier hitching his wagon to her and thus judgement if charges or admission of monies owed were to emerge. I'm not so sure about no cut through, that rather depends on the final outcome, I'm reserving judgement. As well as 'going after the poor little Working Class kitten' I've seen plenty of 'thinks she's above the rules' and 'Labour pretending their lot are above reproach'
It's transparent what the Right/ Tories are up to, but still very possible she's a wrong 'un. There is a sense of 'only report on Tory sleaze please' about her staunch defenders. We will see! As for any monetary 'amount', the electorate are feral beasts, 15 years ago many were shitting out their spleens over light bulbs and plugs on expenses as well as the more grotesque fiddling.
I have not been a Labour activist since I was foolish enough to vote for the wrong Miliband, the one who won, and then lost the 2015 election. So what is that? 2011.
I can't disagree with your mile wide, inch deep analysis, which is why I have forecast a surprise 1992-style Tory win.
You may be correct that should Labour win power they will be disastrous. I suspect that is what you said of Blair's Government too, and two elections later they were still winning. Not that I expect that this time around.
Either way my admiration for Labour is long gone, I just absolutely despise the current iteration of the Conservatives beyond comprehension. I liked Sunak, I thought he was a pint sized Hercules and would clean out the stables. But to no avail he just keeps defecating over all that steaming Johnson-Truss excrement, and the odour gets worse.
Anyway, it's a nice day. Go out and buy yourself a sense of humour.
K-E-I-R.
Why can’t otherwise intelligent PBers manage to spell the names of senior politicians on a site devoted to… politics?
https://www.declassifieduk.org/two-fifths-of-keir-starmers-cabinet-have-been-funded-by-pro-israel-lobbyists/
However why is she such an asset to labour. What does she bring ?
I don’t see it, or get it. She seems to be more a political personality with a backstory that some people fawn over than a political colossus. You look at other labour front benchers and they are developing policy platforms. What does she offer apart from some rhetoric about workers rights.
Plenty of middle class people think she’s a link to working class communities. Yeah, right. I live in one. I doubt most people here would even know who she is, or for that matter most politicians are.
I can’t help but notice that it was right after the Southern Baptist Conference called on Congress to pass the Ukraine aid bill that Johnson finally agreed to bring it to the floor.
https://twitter.com/DanaHoule/status/1781900532623212736
*Hat tip to the Times.
I wonder what the consequences will be for the officer who made the arrest. Presumably some form of retraining or disciplinary action ?
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/apr/21/end-times-for-the-uks-final-coal-fired-power-station
- YouTube: "Why Growth Is Stupid", Garys Economics, Apr 21, 2024
- Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMXWUeH5Y48
- AHRefs summary: He argues that the fundamental problem in the British and global economy is not a lack of productivity or economic growth, but rather a growing inequality in wealth distribution. He disagrees with the common narrative that low productivity is the root cause of falling living standards and points out that living standards are declining worldwide, not just in the UK. He highlights the disconnect between the rapid increase in wealth among the richest individuals and the stagnation or decline in living standards for ordinary people. He then goes on to criticize economists and politicians, who often come from wealthy backgrounds, for attributing economic woes to productivity issues without addressing the underlying problem of inequality. He finishes by emphasizing the need to address the growing wealth gap and calls for a shift in focus from economic growth to tackling inequality as a solution to improving living standards for all.
(summarizer available from https://ahrefs.com/writing-tools/summarizer)My understanding is that Rayner has been pushing the workers rights passage which seems to be one of very few policy commitments, possibly because it doesn't cost the government very much money. The additional rights she is proposing is the first real change in the Thatcher settlement of employment rights that we have seen (Blair just quietly let it be). There are arguments for and against this package but the key point is that it will affect the people of this country directly, whether they lose their jobs as a result or have a better standard of living and more stability. That, to me, makes her left wing.
A bit like tool maker's son done good Keir or Grocers daughter Mags or circus acrobat product Major or 'my mum taught me sums at the kitchen table' Reeves
She got preggers at school and wasn't rich. Meh.
Is she really enjoying the scrutiny ? Find that hard to believe.
That lead me to discover the 1960's Bulldog Drummond fim 'Deadlier than the male', which is pretty good!
https://youtu.be/ViY7CR2TSO8?si=refRi4acPOSCRJ8-
Camply comic Bond-esque caper - slightly lower stakes, but very high production values. A Sunday treat for you.
Her back story also allows the “ working class women who against all odds “ narrative.
The Tories wouldn’t be going after her if they thought she was a drag on Labour.
https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1781816330313945230
Trump announces that his rally in North Carolina canceled due to the weather
I expect him to be especially grumpy in court tomorrow.
Johnson on the other hand is a player, a lothario, a swordsman, a hero.
Sensational cast, a real sixties Who’s who. it’s great fun to watch. Never a classic.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/infected-blood-scandal-children-parents-compensation-inquiry-svksntsmx
This scandal is even worse, if possible, than the Post Office one and it is long past the time for those affected to receive compensation, even though because of the delays - which now seem to me to be deliberate on the part of the state as they happen in every such case - 3/4 of those who were infected have died.
Good to see the ST campaigning on this. I wonder if this a side effect of the PO matter.
On Taz's point, the "funding" seems to have been subsidised trips to Israel to to politicians there, which is very much SOP for the all-party national groups (there's one for each of scores of countries) - after I was PPS for energy, I remember I had a trip to Denmark to talk to energy politicians and study wind farms. One can debate how useful/one-sided the trips are and whether MPs should accept them, but they aren't "funding" in the sense of giving politicians £££s.
You misunderstand the fundamental nature of British society. Things arrange around a three-level structure and stabilize when the social forces acting upon them balance (i'll need to put that in a better phrase). The point of the Spectator is to present and advocate for the fads and fancies of the upper level, the British moneyed classes, and if that includes employing commentators who use prostitutes, than it will do that. It doesn't have an underlying theory of the world other than that, as shown by its continued employment of sweaty bean-bag Rod Liddle, a man whose only other occupation would be ballast.
I don’t know of anyone who sees Johnson in such terms either 😂
Who cares about transparency in the housing tax affairs of the shadow SoS for housing.
As we are discussing Leon's holiday in Paris, among my friends are two Jewish families currently on holiday in Muslim countries, one an Arab country. They even managed to make it to Heathrow Airport without being hacked limb from limb. The idea that Jews are under any great threat as a result of the Gaza SMO or pro-Palestine marches is for the birds. They're not cowering at home, they're getting on with their lives just as they were before October.
I haven't commented on the Rayner story for quite some time and leave it to others and eventually the police to decide
On the face of it it is a non story other than maybe 2 issues
My son and his partner lived together having 2 children and then married and had a third
My son had his own home and when he sold it he paid capital gains tax on it, and I assume part of this story is over her or her husband liability for CGT
The second issue is that Rayner has demanded resignation of other politicians in the past under police investigation, but also she is no ordinary mp, she will be deputy PM in the next few months and is obviously going to attract attention from her political opponents
Personally I do not see it affecting the poll ratings no matter how it is resolved, as it is a minor issue when compared with far more important problems that the country is facing
I read this morning of the serious problems Macron and France are facing as they spend far too much on pensions and welfare benefits and the French will not accept any increase in the retirement age beyond 64
The UK and France have very similar problems and until their governments are forced to reduce the spending on pensions and benefits then crisis will follow upon crisis
I can't remember if that quote came from JSMill or Ayn Rand - apologies if the latter.
That they then spent decades covering up the full story certainly has shades of the PO. And in this case, the clock has been ticking even faster for many of the victims.
If we're going to wean our underperforming economy off the crack cocaine of exploitative shit jobs then outlawing this kind of business model would be a solid place to start.
The episode brought home to me once again how tawdry, selfish and delusional men who use such services are. That article does much of the same. This prostitute needed money to feed her drug habit. It would have been a tragic tale all round under any circumstance, the violence with which anal sex was taken will hopefully means that the perpetrator will spend several years in prison making women marginally safer.
Besides, with the advent of AI, whoring might be the only job left. Lawyering is bound to go. @Cyclefree should not rule out career choices so casually
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_salvage_ship_Kommuna
An historic ship: built in 1915, and the world's oldest commissioned naval vessel. "Kommuna has served in the Russian Imperial, Soviet, and Russian Federation navies through the Russian Revolution and two World Wars."
Maybe it gets you a result. I don't really care, but perlease don't condescend to tell me what Ashcroft and Daly have set off is scrutiny. It's a political stunt, and a particularly crass one at that.
The time is long past for the Inquiry to make a report, for proper compensation to be paid, and for anyone ‘responsible’ to be at the very least named and shamed.
A head in Notting Hill says children’s ‘100 per cent’ obsession is creating an apathetic generation that cannot hold conversation or make eye contact"
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/school-to-extend-day-to-12-hours-to-break-pupils-phone-addiction-f5cjdhqrz