Sir Ed Davey certainly made a splash today – politicalbetting.com

System · May 28

Sir Ed Davey certainly made a splash today – politicalbetting.com

.@EdwardJDavey gets off to a flying start in Windermere as the Lib Dems continue on the election campaign trail pic.twitter.com/D7CCFLUB6t

Read the full story here

BatteryCorrectHorse · May 28

Horsing around.

rottenborough · May 28

Shakespeare to Dr Who on the headers.

FrancisUrquhart · May 28

glw said:

FrancisUrquhart said:
It is quite funny caught out telling porkies.

However, it is more seriously yet another example that our politicians have zero idea about tech security. All these kind of profiles should be anonymous / hidden.

It has been highlighted in the recent past how hostile regimes are tracking people like apps like Strava etc. Now you could say, well Peleton is just indoor biking, but you are again adding to these regimes ability to work out your daily routine, and from that it has been shown then they are able to work out all sorts of other things about you e.g. famously they worked out who worked at various security services by looking at the routes taken on regular basis of a massive load of different phones.
It's really quite amazing that nobody in the security service or JIC has explained that he needs to delete or at least make such stuff private, and if he ignored them he's a fool.

I recall reading about similar issues with US cabinet members, the only person who followed all the procedures and security rules was Condoleezza Rice.

As we find from COVID inquiry, the liberal use of WhatsApp, where they mix person and work messages, I find quite amazing. I would hope at the very least that they have a phone they use solely for government business with a secure messaging system and then their personal phone where they bitch about one another and tell off colour jokes.....and really shouldn't be doing the later.

If I remember correctly Tony Blair famously never had a mobile phone of his own. Politically that is very savvy if the shit hits the fan, but also national security wise. Even the bloody pond life criminals know these days to use a bespoke secure messaging system.

turbotubbs · May 28

As Pertwee said ‘nasty, brutish and short’, which oddly the originals weren’t (the short part). Rectified in modern Who.

Scarpia · May 28

What is a Sontaran?

Are they orange?

What is their use of bar charts?

TheScreamingEagles · May 28

Scarpia said:
What is a Sontaran?

Are they orange?

What is their use of bar charts?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sontaran

DecrepiterJohnL · May 28

rottenborough said:
Shakespeare to Dr Who on the headers.

No Goons? He's fallen in the water.

Foxy · May 28

It got Davey on the news, and I don't think in a bad way.

You don't go paddleboarding and not expect to fall in.

Indeed compared to my efforts he did rather well.

turbotubbs · May 28

FrancisUrquhart said:

glw said:

FrancisUrquhart said:
It is quite funny caught out telling porkies.

However, it is more seriously yet another example that our politicians have zero idea about tech security. All these kind of profiles should be anonymous / hidden.

It has been highlighted in the recent past how hostile regimes are tracking people like apps like Strava etc. Now you could say, well Peleton is just indoor biking, but you are again adding to these regimes ability to work out your daily routine, and from that it has been shown then they are able to work out all sorts of other things about you e.g. famously they worked out who worked at various security services by looking at the routes taken on regular basis of a massive load of different phones.
It's really quite amazing that nobody in the security service or JIC has explained that he needs to delete or at least make such stuff private, and if he ignored them he's a fool.

I recall reading about similar issues with US cabinet members, the only person who followed all the procedures and security rules was Condoleezza Rice.
As we find from COVID inquiry, the liberal use of WhatsApp, where they mix person and work messages, I find quite amazing. I would hope at the very least that they have a phone they use solely for government business with a secure messaging system and then their personal phone where they bitch about one another and tell off colour jokes.....and really shouldn't be doing the later.

I feel a bit for those in power who fell into using WhatsApp during covid. In years gone by there would have been cosy chats in the tea room/bar. In Blair’s time it was sofa government. Neither leaves a digital trace. In 2020 and on they had those conversations electronically and then were horrified that the public got to see and judge them.
I’d hope it’s stopped, but with this government who knows…

Casino_Royale · May 28

Speaking of Moobs I just looked in the mirror.

Maybe I should cut back on those steak burgers

Carnyx · May 28

FrancisUrquhart said:

glw said:

FrancisUrquhart said:
It is quite funny caught out telling porkies.

However, it is more seriously yet another example that our politicians have zero idea about tech security. All these kind of profiles should be anonymous / hidden.

It has been highlighted in the recent past how hostile regimes are tracking people like apps like Strava etc. Now you could say, well Peleton is just indoor biking, but you are again adding to these regimes ability to work out your daily routine, and from that it has been shown then they are able to work out all sorts of other things about you e.g. famously they worked out who worked at various security services by looking at the routes taken on regular basis of a massive load of different phones.
It's really quite amazing that nobody in the security service or JIC has explained that he needs to delete or at least make such stuff private, and if he ignored them he's a fool.

I recall reading about similar issues with US cabinet members, the only person who followed all the procedures and security rules was Condoleezza Rice.
As we find from COVID inquiry, the liberal use of WhatsApp, where they mix person and work messages, I find quite amazing. I would hope at the very least that they have a phone they use solely for government business with a secure messaging system and then their personal phone where they bitch about one another and tell off colour jokes.....and really shouldn't be doing the later.

If I remember correctly Tony Blair famously never had a mobile phone of his own. Politically that is very savvy if the shit hits the fan, but also national security wise. Even the bloody pond life criminals know these days to use a bespoke secure messaging system.

PB isn't always much better. I was complaining some weeks ago I wouldn't use a certain website because it made too many demands for me to release my personal data, and at least one person on here was wondering while I was so fussy.

DecrepiterJohnL · May 28

My Moscow mole is over to see how a proper democracy conducts elections: games of bowls, watersports, bland photo-ops at empty, second tier football stadiums and stitching up candidate selection.

Leon · May 28

@fpt for @DougSeal

"I don’t want your sympathy. You asked why I thought the Tories hated me. I answered. In specifically said at the end of the post I was not a victim. I am flattered you think I am “wealthy”.

When I was on my year out in India I developed condom dermatitis. I think I had an allergy to whatever they treated the latex with. My penis itched 24/7. and I developed dermatitis down to my scrotum and inner thighs. It lasted weeks and I didn’t have sex, couldn’t even masturbate, for several months. You can imagine how fucking irritating it was. Nevertheless, the whole experience was still considerably less annoying, and (for me) far more amusing, than reading you."

++++++

I just had to repeat that because

1. It is quite well-written (especially for a lefty lawyer)

and

2. It is without question the greatest compliment I have ever received on PB

turbotubbs · May 28

Foxy said:
It got Davey on the news, and I don't think in a bad way.

You don't go paddleboarding and not expect to fall in.

Indeed compared to my efforts he did rather well.

I rather suspect the falling in was part of the plan.

FrancisUrquhart · May 28

turbotubbs said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

glw said:

FrancisUrquhart said:
It is quite funny caught out telling porkies.

However, it is more seriously yet another example that our politicians have zero idea about tech security. All these kind of profiles should be anonymous / hidden.

It has been highlighted in the recent past how hostile regimes are tracking people like apps like Strava etc. Now you could say, well Peleton is just indoor biking, but you are again adding to these regimes ability to work out your daily routine, and from that it has been shown then they are able to work out all sorts of other things about you e.g. famously they worked out who worked at various security services by looking at the routes taken on regular basis of a massive load of different phones.
It's really quite amazing that nobody in the security service or JIC has explained that he needs to delete or at least make such stuff private, and if he ignored them he's a fool.

I recall reading about similar issues with US cabinet members, the only person who followed all the procedures and security rules was Condoleezza Rice.
As we find from COVID inquiry, the liberal use of WhatsApp, where they mix person and work messages, I find quite amazing. I would hope at the very least that they have a phone they use solely for government business with a secure messaging system and then their personal phone where they bitch about one another and tell off colour jokes.....and really shouldn't be doing the later.
I feel a bit for those in power who fell into using WhatsApp during covid. In years gone by there would have been cosy chats in the tea room/bar. In Blair’s time it was sofa government. Neither leaves a digital trace. In 2020 and on they had those conversations electronically and then were horrified that the public got to see and judge them.
I’d hope it’s stopped, but with this government who knows…

However, a lot of the issues they ran into was they were using the same phones for official government business (which probably could still have looked bad), but all the gossipy / bitching stuff also got released and we know the media loves nothing more than that stuff.

ydoethur · May 28

Do I get a royalty for coming up with that pun?

TheScreamingEagles · May 28

Farooq said:
It's good to have a break from watching Labour crush the Tories into a tiny cube or seeing the SNP extravagantly soiling themselves in public.

Just when we needed Ed Davey, there he was. Thank you, Lib Dems! See you when you next do something. 2029?

Don't forget Willie Rennie.

😡 I’m still hunting for my invite.

https://x.com/willie_rennie/status/1795503189753483310

Foxy · May 28

TheScreamingEagles said:

Scarpia said:
What is a Sontaran?

Are they orange?

What is their use of bar charts?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sontaran

At least TSE didn't compare him to the Sea Devils.

Luckyguy1983 · May 28

ydoethur said:
Do I get a royalty for coming up with that pun?

Yes, you get Princess Michael of Kent.

SirNorfolkPassmore · May 28

For the Lib Dems, it's probably quite good politics. Not for Tories or Labour, as they get the space anyway, and it doesn't pay to look foolish. But for Davey the trade off is probably worth it.

FrancisUrquhart · May 28

Carnyx said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

glw said:

FrancisUrquhart said:
It is quite funny caught out telling porkies.

However, it is more seriously yet another example that our politicians have zero idea about tech security. All these kind of profiles should be anonymous / hidden.

It has been highlighted in the recent past how hostile regimes are tracking people like apps like Strava etc. Now you could say, well Peleton is just indoor biking, but you are again adding to these regimes ability to work out your daily routine, and from that it has been shown then they are able to work out all sorts of other things about you e.g. famously they worked out who worked at various security services by looking at the routes taken on regular basis of a massive load of different phones.
It's really quite amazing that nobody in the security service or JIC has explained that he needs to delete or at least make such stuff private, and if he ignored them he's a fool.

I recall reading about similar issues with US cabinet members, the only person who followed all the procedures and security rules was Condoleezza Rice.
As we find from COVID inquiry, the liberal use of WhatsApp, where they mix person and work messages, I find quite amazing. I would hope at the very least that they have a phone they use solely for government business with a secure messaging system and then their personal phone where they bitch about one another and tell off colour jokes.....and really shouldn't be doing the later.

If I remember correctly Tony Blair famously never had a mobile phone of his own. Politically that is very savvy if the shit hits the fan, but also national security wise. Even the bloody pond life criminals know these days to use a bespoke secure messaging system.
PB isn't always much better. I was complaining some weeks ago I wouldn't use a certain website because it made too many demands for me to release my personal data, and at least one person on here was wondering while I was so fussy.

One difference is we aren't head of a government (waves at Dave lurking). I am not overly concerned that the Russian FSB might be able to find my location from my Zwift rides.

Carnyx · May 28

turbotubbs said:

Foxy said:
It got Davey on the news, and I don't think in a bad way.

You don't go paddleboarding and not expect to fall in.

Indeed compared to my efforts he did rather well.
I rather suspect the falling in was part of the plan.

Makes a change from the SLDs, who used to organise for the photo opps of Tavish Scott, or someone did, anyway, the special treat of copulating farm animals.

kle4 · May 28

Casino_Royale said:
Speaking of Moobs I just looked in the mirror.

Maybe I should cut back on those steak burgers

Just see it as a sign of maturity and prosperity.

turbotubbs · May 28

kle4 said:

Casino_Royale said:
Speaking of Moobs I just looked in the mirror.

Maybe I should cut back on those steak burgers
Just see it as a sign of maturity and prosperity.

Crikey - that must mean I’m very mature and exceedingly prosperous!

TheScreamingEagles · May 28

rottenborough said:
Shakespeare to Dr Who on the headers.

I am talking about Sunak's todger in one of tomorrow's threads.

Morning thread may well be later than usual as I still sick and tired.

Theuniondivvie · May 28

Carnyx said:

turbotubbs said:

Foxy said:
It got Davey on the news, and I don't think in a bad way.

You don't go paddleboarding and not expect to fall in.

Indeed compared to my efforts he did rather well.
I rather suspect the falling in was part of the plan.
Makes a change from the SLDs, who used to organise for the photo opps of Tavish Scott, or someone did, anyway, the special treat of copulating farm animals.

We’re talking the SLDs.
Getting the brush off from farm animals.

DecrepiterJohnL · May 28

FrancisUrquhart said:

glw said:

FrancisUrquhart said:
It is quite funny caught out telling porkies.

However, it is more seriously yet another example that our politicians have zero idea about tech security. All these kind of profiles should be anonymous / hidden.

It has been highlighted in the recent past how hostile regimes are tracking people like apps like Strava etc. Now you could say, well Peleton is just indoor biking, but you are again adding to these regimes ability to work out your daily routine, and from that it has been shown then they are able to work out all sorts of other things about you e.g. famously they worked out who worked at various security services by looking at the routes taken on regular basis of a massive load of different phones.
It's really quite amazing that nobody in the security service or JIC has explained that he needs to delete or at least make such stuff private, and if he ignored them he's a fool.

I recall reading about similar issues with US cabinet members, the only person who followed all the procedures and security rules was Condoleezza Rice.
As we find from COVID inquiry, the liberal use of WhatsApp, where they mix person and work messages, I find quite amazing. I would hope at the very least that they have a phone they use solely for government business with a secure messaging system and then their personal phone where they bitch about one another and tell off colour jokes.....and really shouldn't be doing the later.

If I remember correctly Tony Blair famously never had a mobile phone of his own. Politically that is very savvy if the shit hits the fan, but also national security wise. Even the bloody pond life criminals know these days to use a bespoke secure messaging system.

Even burglars know to leave their phones at home. Seriously, you have to wonder what is the point of the National Cyber Security Centre if they can't keep the Prime Minister from spaffing his info load all over the web.
https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/

TheScreamingEagles · May 28

Farooq said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Farooq said:
It's good to have a break from watching Labour crush the Tories into a tiny cube or seeing the SNP extravagantly soiling themselves in public.

Just when we needed Ed Davey, there he was. Thank you, Lib Dems! See you when you next do something. 2029?
Don't forget Willie Rennie.

😡 I’m still hunting for my invite.

https://x.com/willie_rennie/status/1795503189753483310
Please, I've been trying my best to forget him for a number of years now.

Why would you want to forget the man who gave us one of the top 5 comedy moments in UK politics?

Ed Davey falling into the water is good, but Willie Rennie being interviewed while pigs have sex behind him remains the funniest moment of a Lib Dem campaign

https://x.com/AlexofBrown/status/1795446913195553189

Luckyguy1983 · May 28

Casino_Royale said:
Speaking of Moobs I just looked in the mirror.

Maybe I should cut back on those steak burgers

Steak burgers won't give you moobs. It's the carbs you're having with them.

TOPPING · May 28

fpt

Leon said:

Fairliered said:

Leon said:

viewcode said:

Leon said:

BatteryCorrectHorse said:

DougSeal said:
I’ve mentioned this before.

I am, as you know and love to mock, a lawyer. I mostly do employment law but had a bit of a sideline in business visas for my clients. Became a big earner post-Brexit. I ran a really anodyne, boring, Twitter account advertising myself as an “Employment and Business Immigration Lawyer” as the Marketing Dept got keen on social media. Nothing political, stupefyingly dull, updates on legal changes, I got to a measly 500 followers - mostly other lawyers. My big moment was being retweeted by Joshua Rosenberg. I tweeted really dull stuff the PR team suggested, avoiding politics.

However, starting in about 2014 or 2015, I started getting abuse. Snide comments at first, then over time they started to get more personal, and then, in 2022, I became of of these lawyers -

https://www.joe.co.uk/news/rwanda-death-threats-sent-to-lefty-lawyers-unacceptable-downing-street-says-342272

The worst actual DM a threat of comedy death, the guy had imagination, but it directly referenced Rwanda. Others referenced Patel’s speeches. Eventually I closed the account anyway - before Braverman. I don’t do any asylum work, the immigration practice I had was visas for complained and HNWI’s, the sort of people “Global Britain” was supposed to be attracting, but nevertheless I was clearly an enemy of the people.

Tories also hate me because I’m married to a foreigner. My specific foreigner is a white Irish-American New Englander but, nevertheless, the hoops we have had to jump through regarding her immigration status have grown increasingly tighter. Now she’s just taken dual nationality the issues will have stopped but we met when I was a student and we would not be allowed to get married now.

So, if not me, then the Tories don’t want “people like me” to vote for them. So I won’t.

I’m not really a “victim”. Others have it far worse than me. The list of people Tories hate is long. But you can see why I can’t see myself as the the sort of person they’re gunning for.
You are a good person Doug and I am glad to have you posting here. I am sorry for the way you have been treated.
Good for you. Until enough of us stand together and say "No more, this far and no more, there can be no more slightly mad and weird threats on social media against wealthy people" then these slightly mad and weird threats on social media against wealthy people will inexorably continue and possibly WORSEN until millionaire lawyers with their rich Boston born wives become slightly anxious before lunch. And the people in Ukraine think they have it bad?

This, this here. This is where we must finally stand, and turn, and FIGHT

DEFEND THE WEALTHY IMMIGRATION LAWYERS
IIRC it was you who pointed out that most people live their lives online these days. I don't like it but that's how it's gone. We used to believe that we lived in a country where most people thought like us, for any given definition of "us". But now we have access to social media and now we know that for any given definition of "us" there will be people who hate us and want us dead, and that there are people in other countries who think more like "us" than our compatriots. This leads to a loosening of the nation-state and a growth in anxiety, both of which I hate.
Well yes maybe whatever: but the last people I will feel sorry for, in this context, is very wealthy lefty immigration lawyers

I do not personally wish ill on @dougseal, of course, but I cannot find it in me to feel deep sinks of sympathy
In which case, why bother commenting? Unless, of course, you are a troublemaking arsehole. You should get a job with some right wing rag like the Spectator.
Sadly, writing for the world's most prestigious and longest running English language magazine - the Spectator - is very much out of my league. I leave that to its various famous contributors, like Graham Greene, George Orwell, @SeanT, Alexander Pope, Sylvia Plath, sundry Prime Ministers and Chancellors, and Lionel Shriver. And Taki. For me it is the humble Knapper's Gazette, but maybe one day. Who knows?

It's a shitty rag wherein 87.4% of its writers are pretty standard journeymen churning out pedestrian prose which panders to and stokes the prejudices of the red cord-wearing rural types you enjoy making fun of so much yet of whom for some unaccountable reason you are in awe.

12.6% of its writers get the joke and manage to turn out great prose which laughs at that demographic without it being obvious.

Despite your huge self-regard in particular when you come onto PB to parade your supposed sophistication to the yokels, you are comfortably in the former group.

FrancisUrquhart · May 28

DecrepiterJohnL said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

glw said:

FrancisUrquhart said:
It is quite funny caught out telling porkies.

However, it is more seriously yet another example that our politicians have zero idea about tech security. All these kind of profiles should be anonymous / hidden.

It has been highlighted in the recent past how hostile regimes are tracking people like apps like Strava etc. Now you could say, well Peleton is just indoor biking, but you are again adding to these regimes ability to work out your daily routine, and from that it has been shown then they are able to work out all sorts of other things about you e.g. famously they worked out who worked at various security services by looking at the routes taken on regular basis of a massive load of different phones.
It's really quite amazing that nobody in the security service or JIC has explained that he needs to delete or at least make such stuff private, and if he ignored them he's a fool.

I recall reading about similar issues with US cabinet members, the only person who followed all the procedures and security rules was Condoleezza Rice.
As we find from COVID inquiry, the liberal use of WhatsApp, where they mix person and work messages, I find quite amazing. I would hope at the very least that they have a phone they use solely for government business with a secure messaging system and then their personal phone where they bitch about one another and tell off colour jokes.....and really shouldn't be doing the later.

If I remember correctly Tony Blair famously never had a mobile phone of his own. Politically that is very savvy if the shit hits the fan, but also national security wise. Even the bloody pond life criminals know these days to use a bespoke secure messaging system.
Even burglars know to leave their phones at home. Seriously, you have to wonder what is the point of the National Cyber Security Centre if they can't keep the Prime Minister from spaffing his info load all over the web.
https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/

Didn't we discuss the other week that they pay peanuts for these jobs?

Carnyx · May 28

TheScreamingEagles said:

Farooq said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Farooq said:
It's good to have a break from watching Labour crush the Tories into a tiny cube or seeing the SNP extravagantly soiling themselves in public.

Just when we needed Ed Davey, there he was. Thank you, Lib Dems! See you when you next do something. 2029?
Don't forget Willie Rennie.

😡 I’m still hunting for my invite.

https://x.com/willie_rennie/status/1795503189753483310
Please, I've been trying my best to forget him for a number of years now.
Why would you want to forget the man who gave us one of the top 5 comedy moments in UK politics?

Ed Davey falling into the water is good, but Willie Rennie being interviewed while pigs have sex behind him remains the funniest moment of a Lib Dem campaign

https://x.com/AlexofBrown/status/1795446913195553189

Linky knackered. Perhaps as well.

dixiedean · May 28

FPT. But it took me a while to compose...
There are many in the Tory Party who are still fervently convinced they speak for the "silent majority". Brexit vote re-inforced that belief. The unfiltered common sense of Middle England. They think they are Centrists.
And that if it wasn't for lefty, liberal blobs and luvvies nowt they do could possibly go wrong.
Until they are firmly and finally disabused of that notion, then there can be no self-reflection.
They need to lose big time.
How insufferable and downright bizarre, corrupt, incompetent and brazen would they be with five more years?

kle4 · May 28

Carnyx said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Farooq said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Farooq said:
It's good to have a break from watching Labour crush the Tories into a tiny cube or seeing the SNP extravagantly soiling themselves in public.

Just when we needed Ed Davey, there he was. Thank you, Lib Dems! See you when you next do something. 2029?
Don't forget Willie Rennie.

😡 I’m still hunting for my invite.

https://x.com/willie_rennie/status/1795503189753483310
Please, I've been trying my best to forget him for a number of years now.
Why would you want to forget the man who gave us one of the top 5 comedy moments in UK politics?

Ed Davey falling into the water is good, but Willie Rennie being interviewed while pigs have sex behind him remains the funniest moment of a Lib Dem campaign

https://x.com/AlexofBrown/status/1795446913195553189
Linky knackered. Perhaps as well.

https://nitter.poast.org/AlexofBrown/status/1795446913195553189

ydoethur · May 28

FrancisUrquhart said:

DecrepiterJohnL said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

glw said:

FrancisUrquhart said:
It is quite funny caught out telling porkies.

However, it is more seriously yet another example that our politicians have zero idea about tech security. All these kind of profiles should be anonymous / hidden.

It has been highlighted in the recent past how hostile regimes are tracking people like apps like Strava etc. Now you could say, well Peleton is just indoor biking, but you are again adding to these regimes ability to work out your daily routine, and from that it has been shown then they are able to work out all sorts of other things about you e.g. famously they worked out who worked at various security services by looking at the routes taken on regular basis of a massive load of different phones.
It's really quite amazing that nobody in the security service or JIC has explained that he needs to delete or at least make such stuff private, and if he ignored them he's a fool.

I recall reading about similar issues with US cabinet members, the only person who followed all the procedures and security rules was Condoleezza Rice.
As we find from COVID inquiry, the liberal use of WhatsApp, where they mix person and work messages, I find quite amazing. I would hope at the very least that they have a phone they use solely for government business with a secure messaging system and then their personal phone where they bitch about one another and tell off colour jokes.....and really shouldn't be doing the later.

If I remember correctly Tony Blair famously never had a mobile phone of his own. Politically that is very savvy if the shit hits the fan, but also national security wise. Even the bloody pond life criminals know these days to use a bespoke secure messaging system.
Even burglars know to leave their phones at home. Seriously, you have to wonder what is the point of the National Cyber Security Centre if they can't keep the Prime Minister from spaffing his info load all over the web.
https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/
Didn't we discuss the other week that they pay peanuts for these jobs?

His next job could be in cyber.

But if it is we're fucked.

rcs1000 · May 28

LibDems will do anything to get a little publicity.

TheScreamingEagles · May 28

Carnyx said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Farooq said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Farooq said:
It's good to have a break from watching Labour crush the Tories into a tiny cube or seeing the SNP extravagantly soiling themselves in public.

Just when we needed Ed Davey, there he was. Thank you, Lib Dems! See you when you next do something. 2029?
9.48/
Don't forget Willie Rennie.

😡 I’m still hunting for my invite.

https://x.com/willie_rennie/status/1795503189753483310
Please, I've been trying my best to forget him for a number of years now.
Why would you want to forget the man who gave us one of the top 5 comedy moments in UK politics?

Ed Davey falling into the water is good, but Willie Rennie being interviewed while pigs have sex behind him remains the funniest moment of a Lib Dem campaign

https://x.com/AlexofBrown/status/1795446913195553189
Linky knackered. Perhaps as well.

See Farooq's post at 9.48.

stodge · May 28

Foxy said:
It got Davey on the news, and I don't think in a bad way.

You don't go paddleboarding and not expect to fall in.

Indeed compared to my efforts he did rather well.

Yes, God knows after 14 years of the Conservatives, we're all in need of a good laugh.

To be fair, I can imagine Boris doing something ridiculous - like getting stuck on a zipwire for example.....

Luckyguy1983 · May 28

rcs1000 said:
LibDems will do anything to get a little publicity.

From girly swots to clumsy clots.

rottenborough · May 28

Christopher Hope📝

@christopherhope
I am just back from interviewing Rachel Reeves for GB News. It is extraordinary how Labour is so cautious on its plans and the Tories are not.
Labour says there will be no increases in income tax, NICs or corporation tax, nor any wealth taxes.
Meanwhile Conservatives spray around cash on pensions and national service etc
It is like the roles played by the partes in the 2017/2019 campaigns (remember Jeremy Corbyn's 'magic money tree') are reversed.
I was struck too by Reeves - standing in front of a podium saying "change" - telling her audience of business leaders today: "Stability is change." #GE2024

https://x.com/christopherhope/status/1795540585471705343

SandyRentool · May 28

Davey has admitted that at least one of his falls was deliberate.

OldKingCole · May 28

TOPPING said:
fpt
Leon said:

Fairliered said:

Leon said:

viewcode said:

Leon said:

BatteryCorrectHorse said:

DougSeal said:
I’ve mentioned this before.

I am, as you know and love to mock, a lawyer. I mostly do employment law but had a bit of a sideline in business visas for my clients. Became a big earner post-Brexit. I ran a really anodyne, boring, Twitter account advertising myself as an “Employment and Business Immigration Lawyer” as the Marketing Dept got keen on social media. Nothing political, stupefyingly dull, updates on legal changes, I got to a measly 500 followers - mostly other lawyers. My big moment was being retweeted by Joshua Rosenberg. I tweeted really dull stuff the PR team suggested, avoiding politics.

However, starting in about 2014 or 2015, I started getting abuse. Snide comments at first, then over time they started to get more personal, and then, in 2022, I became of of these lawyers -

https://www.joe.co.uk/news/rwanda-death-threats-sent-to-lefty-lawyers-unacceptable-downing-street-says-342272

The worst actual DM a threat of comedy death, the guy had imagination, but it directly referenced Rwanda. Others referenced Patel’s speeches. Eventually I closed the account anyway - before Braverman. I don’t do any asylum work, the immigration practice I had was visas for complained and HNWI’s, the sort of people “Global Britain” was supposed to be attracting, but nevertheless I was clearly an enemy of the people.

Tories also hate me because I’m married to a foreigner. My specific foreigner is a white Irish-American New Englander but, nevertheless, the hoops we have had to jump through regarding her immigration status have grown increasingly tighter. Now she’s just taken dual nationality the issues will have stopped but we met when I was a student and we would not be allowed to get married now.

So, if not me, then the Tories don’t want “people like me” to vote for them. So I won’t.

I’m not really a “victim”. Others have it far worse than me. The list of people Tories hate is long. But you can see why I can’t see myself as the the sort of person they’re gunning for.
You are a good person Doug and I am glad to have you posting here. I am sorry for the way you have been treated.
Good for you. Until enough of us stand together and say "No more, this far and no more, there can be no more slightly mad and weird threats on social media against wealthy people" then these slightly mad and weird threats on social media against wealthy people will inexorably continue and possibly WORSEN until millionaire lawyers with their rich Boston born wives become slightly anxious before lunch. And the people in Ukraine think they have it bad?

This, this here. This is where we must finally stand, and turn, and FIGHT

DEFEND THE WEALTHY IMMIGRATION LAWYERS
IIRC it was you who pointed out that most people live their lives online these days. I don't like it but that's how it's gone. We used to believe that we lived in a country where most people thought like us, for any given definition of "us". But now we have access to social media and now we know that for any given definition of "us" there will be people who hate us and want us dead, and that there are people in other countries who think more like "us" than our compatriots. This leads to a loosening of the nation-state and a growth in anxiety, both of which I hate.
Well yes maybe whatever: but the last people I will feel sorry for, in this context, is very wealthy lefty immigration lawyers

I do not personally wish ill on @dougseal, of course, but I cannot find it in me to feel deep sinks of sympathy
In which case, why bother commenting? Unless, of course, you are a troublemaking arsehole. You should get a job with some right wing rag like the Spectator.
Sadly, writing for the world's most prestigious and longest running English language magazine - the Spectator - is very much out of my league. I leave that to its various famous contributors, like Graham Greene, George Orwell, @SeanT, Alexander Pope, Sylvia Plath, sundry Prime Ministers and Chancellors, and Lionel Shriver. And Taki. For me it is the humble Knapper's Gazette, but maybe one day. Who knows?
It's a shitty rag wherein 87.4% of its writers are pretty standard journeymen churning out pedestrian prose which panders to and stokes the prejudices of the red cord-wearing rural types you enjoy making fun of so much yet of whom for some unaccountable reason you are in awe.

12.6% of its writers get the joke and manage to turn out great prose which laughs at that demographic without it being obvious.

Despite your huge self-regard in particular when you come onto PB to parade your supposed sophistication to the yokels, you are comfortably in the former group.

I’ve remarked before that back in the mid 50’s the Headmaster of the (grammar) school I attended arranged for VIth formers to subscribe to the Spectator at half price.
I subscribed for a year then switched to the New Statesman.
The Head gave me up as a lost cause.

CarlottaVance · May 28

What's going on here then?

Diane Abbott has been readmitted as a Labour MP, the BBC understands, but it is unclear whether she will stand for the party at the general election.

The former shadow home secretary was suspended in April 2023 after saying Jewish, Irish and Traveller people do not face racism "all their lives".

Her suspension meant she would not be able to stand for Labour on 4 July.

Party officials had tried to broker a deal by which she would get the whip back in return for standing down.

It is not clear if the Hackney North and Stoke Newington MP has accepted that arrangement.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-69040616

But since Parliament has been prorogued, there aren't any MPs any more, are there?

kle4 · May 28

SandyRentool said:
Davey has admitted that at least one of his falls was deliberate.

I think he has an inquiry appearance already booked to answer questions about it.

geoffw · May 28

"Stability is change" sounds somewhat Orwellian, but clever in the circs

Casino_Royale · May 28

On topic, WTF is he doing?

Stuartinromford · May 28

ydoethur said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

DecrepiterJohnL said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

glw said:

FrancisUrquhart said:
It is quite funny caught out telling porkies.

However, it is more seriously yet another example that our politicians have zero idea about tech security. All these kind of profiles should be anonymous / hidden.

It has been highlighted in the recent past how hostile regimes are tracking people like apps like Strava etc. Now you could say, well Peleton is just indoor biking, but you are again adding to these regimes ability to work out your daily routine, and from that it has been shown then they are able to work out all sorts of other things about you e.g. famously they worked out who worked at various security services by looking at the routes taken on regular basis of a massive load of different phones.
It's really quite amazing that nobody in the security service or JIC has explained that he needs to delete or at least make such stuff private, and if he ignored them he's a fool.

I recall reading about similar issues with US cabinet members, the only person who followed all the procedures and security rules was Condoleezza Rice.
As we find from COVID inquiry, the liberal use of WhatsApp, where they mix person and work messages, I find quite amazing. I would hope at the very least that they have a phone they use solely for government business with a secure messaging system and then their personal phone where they bitch about one another and tell off colour jokes.....and really shouldn't be doing the later.

If I remember correctly Tony Blair famously never had a mobile phone of his own. Politically that is very savvy if the shit hits the fan, but also national security wise. Even the bloody pond life criminals know these days to use a bespoke secure messaging system.
Even burglars know to leave their phones at home. Seriously, you have to wonder what is the point of the National Cyber Security Centre if they can't keep the Prime Minister from spaffing his info load all over the web.
https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/
Didn't we discuss the other week that they pay peanuts for these jobs?
His next job could be in cyber.

But if it is we're fucked.

That rather goes without saying.

Isn't cybersecurity one of the roles Rishi wants the new wave of National Servicepeople to do?

Carnyx · May 28

OldKingCole said:

TOPPING said:
fpt
Leon said:

Fairliered said:

Leon said:

viewcode said:

Leon said:

BatteryCorrectHorse said:

DougSeal said:
I’ve mentioned this before.

I am, as you know and love to mock, a lawyer. I mostly do employment law but had a bit of a sideline in business visas for my clients. Became a big earner post-Brexit. I ran a really anodyne, boring, Twitter account advertising myself as an “Employment and Business Immigration Lawyer” as the Marketing Dept got keen on social media. Nothing political, stupefyingly dull, updates on legal changes, I got to a measly 500 followers - mostly other lawyers. My big moment was being retweeted by Joshua Rosenberg. I tweeted really dull stuff the PR team suggested, avoiding politics.

However, starting in about 2014 or 2015, I started getting abuse. Snide comments at first, then over time they started to get more personal, and then, in 2022, I became of of these lawyers -

https://www.joe.co.uk/news/rwanda-death-threats-sent-to-lefty-lawyers-unacceptable-downing-street-says-342272

The worst actual DM a threat of comedy death, the guy had imagination, but it directly referenced Rwanda. Others referenced Patel’s speeches. Eventually I closed the account anyway - before Braverman. I don’t do any asylum work, the immigration practice I had was visas for complained and HNWI’s, the sort of people “Global Britain” was supposed to be attracting, but nevertheless I was clearly an enemy of the people.

Tories also hate me because I’m married to a foreigner. My specific foreigner is a white Irish-American New Englander but, nevertheless, the hoops we have had to jump through regarding her immigration status have grown increasingly tighter. Now she’s just taken dual nationality the issues will have stopped but we met when I was a student and we would not be allowed to get married now.

So, if not me, then the Tories don’t want “people like me” to vote for them. So I won’t.

I’m not really a “victim”. Others have it far worse than me. The list of people Tories hate is long. But you can see why I can’t see myself as the the sort of person they’re gunning for.
You are a good person Doug and I am glad to have you posting here. I am sorry for the way you have been treated.
Good for you. Until enough of us stand together and say "No more, this far and no more, there can be no more slightly mad and weird threats on social media against wealthy people" then these slightly mad and weird threats on social media against wealthy people will inexorably continue and possibly WORSEN until millionaire lawyers with their rich Boston born wives become slightly anxious before lunch. And the people in Ukraine think they have it bad?

This, this here. This is where we must finally stand, and turn, and FIGHT

DEFEND THE WEALTHY IMMIGRATION LAWYERS
IIRC it was you who pointed out that most people live their lives online these days. I don't like it but that's how it's gone. We used to believe that we lived in a country where most people thought like us, for any given definition of "us". But now we have access to social media and now we know that for any given definition of "us" there will be people who hate us and want us dead, and that there are people in other countries who think more like "us" than our compatriots. This leads to a loosening of the nation-state and a growth in anxiety, both of which I hate.
Well yes maybe whatever: but the last people I will feel sorry for, in this context, is very wealthy lefty immigration lawyers

I do not personally wish ill on @dougseal, of course, but I cannot find it in me to feel deep sinks of sympathy
In which case, why bother commenting? Unless, of course, you are a troublemaking arsehole. You should get a job with some right wing rag like the Spectator.
Sadly, writing for the world's most prestigious and longest running English language magazine - the Spectator - is very much out of my league. I leave that to its various famous contributors, like Graham Greene, George Orwell, @SeanT, Alexander Pope, Sylvia Plath, sundry Prime Ministers and Chancellors, and Lionel Shriver. And Taki. For me it is the humble Knapper's Gazette, but maybe one day. Who knows?
It's a shitty rag wherein 87.4% of its writers are pretty standard journeymen churning out pedestrian prose which panders to and stokes the prejudices of the red cord-wearing rural types you enjoy making fun of so much yet of whom for some unaccountable reason you are in awe.

12.6% of its writers get the joke and manage to turn out great prose which laughs at that demographic without it being obvious.

Despite your huge self-regard in particular when you come onto PB to parade your supposed sophistication to the yokels, you are comfortably in the former group.

I’ve remarked before that back in the mid 50’s the Headmaster of the (grammar) school I attended arranged for VIth formers to subscribe to the Spectator at half price.
I subscribed for a year then switched to the New Statesman.
The Head gave me up as a lost cause.

I went for the Listener myself (albeit in the 1970s)!

SandyRentool · May 28

rcs1000 said:
LibDems will do anything to get a little publicity.

I await Daisy Cooper's photo op with interest...

wooliedyed · May 28

CarlottaVance said:
What's going on here then?

Diane Abbott has been readmitted as a Labour MP, the BBC understands, but it is unclear whether she will stand for the party at the general election.

The former shadow home secretary was suspended in April 2023 after saying Jewish, Irish and Traveller people do not face racism "all their lives".

Her suspension meant she would not be able to stand for Labour on 4 July.

Party officials had tried to broker a deal by which she would get the whip back in return for standing down.

It is not clear if the Hackney North and Stoke Newington MP has accepted that arrangement.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-69040616

But since Parliament has been prorogued, there aren't any MPs any more, are there?

Starmer panicking because hes been lying for months about this. Theyre trying to bounce her into 'retiring'

glw · May 28

FrancisUrquhart said:

DecrepiterJohnL said:
Even burglars know to leave their phones at home. Seriously, you have to wonder what is the point of the National Cyber Security Centre if they can't keep the Prime Minister from spaffing his info load all over the web.
https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/
Didn't we discuss the other week that they pay peanuts for these jobs?

It's not just the pay, there is also no respect for such jobs in the UK government and most businesses. Parliament is full of people who basically look down on technical jobs, skilled labour, and anything that's not an old-school "profession" even though many of those jobs might nowadays be more skilled, require more qualifications, and frankly simply need smarter people to do them.

kle4 · May 28

CarlottaVance said:
What's going on here then?

Diane Abbott has been readmitted as a Labour MP, the BBC understands, but it is unclear whether she will stand for the party at the general election.

The former shadow home secretary was suspended in April 2023 after saying Jewish, Irish and Traveller people do not face racism "all their lives".

Her suspension meant she would not be able to stand for Labour on 4 July.

Party officials had tried to broker a deal by which she would get the whip back in return for standing down.

It is not clear if the Hackney North and Stoke Newington MP has accepted that arrangement.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-69040616

But since Parliament has been prorogued, there aren't any MPs any more, are there?

I don't really follow why it works this way, but it has been prorogued but not dissolved yet, so she will be an MP for a few more days.

A general election will take place on Thursday 4 July. Before this, Parliament was prorogued on Friday 24 May and will be dissolved on Thursday 30 May
https://www.parliament.uk/business/news/2024/may/general-election-2024/

Leon · May 28

TOPPING said:
fpt
Leon said:

Fairliered said:

Leon said:

viewcode said:

Leon said:

BatteryCorrectHorse said:

DougSeal said:
I’ve mentioned this before.

I am, as you know and love to mock, a lawyer. I mostly do employment law but had a bit of a sideline in business visas for my clients. Became a big earner post-Brexit. I ran a really anodyne, boring, Twitter account advertising myself as an “Employment and Business Immigration Lawyer” as the Marketing Dept got keen on social media. Nothing political, stupefyingly dull, updates on legal changes, I got to a measly 500 followers - mostly other lawyers. My big moment was being retweeted by Joshua Rosenberg. I tweeted really dull stuff the PR team suggested, avoiding politics.

However, starting in about 2014 or 2015, I started getting abuse. Snide comments at first, then over time they started to get more personal, and then, in 2022, I became of of these lawyers -

https://www.joe.co.uk/news/rwanda-death-threats-sent-to-lefty-lawyers-unacceptable-downing-street-says-342272

The worst actual DM a threat of comedy death, the guy had imagination, but it directly referenced Rwanda. Others referenced Patel’s speeches. Eventually I closed the account anyway - before Braverman. I don’t do any asylum work, the immigration practice I had was visas for complained and HNWI’s, the sort of people “Global Britain” was supposed to be attracting, but nevertheless I was clearly an enemy of the people.

Tories also hate me because I’m married to a foreigner. My specific foreigner is a white Irish-American New Englander but, nevertheless, the hoops we have had to jump through regarding her immigration status have grown increasingly tighter. Now she’s just taken dual nationality the issues will have stopped but we met when I was a student and we would not be allowed to get married now.

So, if not me, then the Tories don’t want “people like me” to vote for them. So I won’t.

I’m not really a “victim”. Others have it far worse than me. The list of people Tories hate is long. But you can see why I can’t see myself as the the sort of person they’re gunning for.
You are a good person Doug and I am glad to have you posting here. I am sorry for the way you have been treated.
Good for you. Until enough of us stand together and say "No more, this far and no more, there can be no more slightly mad and weird threats on social media against wealthy people" then these slightly mad and weird threats on social media against wealthy people will inexorably continue and possibly WORSEN until millionaire lawyers with their rich Boston born wives become slightly anxious before lunch. And the people in Ukraine think they have it bad?

This, this here. This is where we must finally stand, and turn, and FIGHT

DEFEND THE WEALTHY IMMIGRATION LAWYERS
IIRC it was you who pointed out that most people live their lives online these days. I don't like it but that's how it's gone. We used to believe that we lived in a country where most people thought like us, for any given definition of "us". But now we have access to social media and now we know that for any given definition of "us" there will be people who hate us and want us dead, and that there are people in other countries who think more like "us" than our compatriots. This leads to a loosening of the nation-state and a growth in anxiety, both of which I hate.
Well yes maybe whatever: but the last people I will feel sorry for, in this context, is very wealthy lefty immigration lawyers

I do not personally wish ill on @dougseal, of course, but I cannot find it in me to feel deep sinks of sympathy
In which case, why bother commenting? Unless, of course, you are a troublemaking arsehole. You should get a job with some right wing rag like the Spectator.
Sadly, writing for the world's most prestigious and longest running English language magazine - the Spectator - is very much out of my league. I leave that to its various famous contributors, like Graham Greene, George Orwell, @SeanT, Alexander Pope, Sylvia Plath, sundry Prime Ministers and Chancellors, and Lionel Shriver. And Taki. For me it is the humble Knapper's Gazette, but maybe one day. Who knows?
It's a shitty rag wherein 87.4% of its writers are pretty standard journeymen churning out pedestrian prose which panders to and stokes the prejudices of the red cord-wearing rural types you enjoy making fun of so much yet of whom for some unaccountable reason you are in awe.

12.6% of its writers get the joke and manage to turn out great prose which laughs at that demographic without it being obvious.

Despite your huge self-regard in particular when you come onto PB to parade your supposed sophistication to the yokels, you are comfortably in the former group.

You actually took the pains to redirect that to a new post, bless

If you're aiming for @SeanT he has I believed moved on, anyway, and now writes for Unherd

https://tinyurl.com/54baud5z

What care I? I write for the Knapper's Gazette and I do not aim for such heights, the Spectator was the favourite magazine of Ted Hughes, T S Eliot, e e Cummings, and Evelyn Waugh, I am but a knapper

Benpointer · May 28

geoffw said:
"Stability is change" sounds somewhat Orwellian, but clever in the circs

I think it's a bit too clever-clever tbh. Like 'property is theft' - needs to be thought about before making any kind of sense.

Scott_xP · May 28

@joepike

NEW: LBC’s @IainDale quits radio to run for Westminster.

The 61yo unsuccessfully contested North Norfolk for Conservatives in 2005.

He was chief of staff to David Davis in leadership campaign against David Cameron.

He’s been broadcasting on LBC since 2010.

Luckyguy1983 · May 28

Leon said:

TOPPING said:
fpt
Leon said:

Fairliered said:

Leon said:

viewcode said:

Leon said:

BatteryCorrectHorse said:

DougSeal said:
I’ve mentioned this before.

I am, as you know and love to mock, a lawyer. I mostly do employment law but had a bit of a sideline in business visas for my clients. Became a big earner post-Brexit. I ran a really anodyne, boring, Twitter account advertising myself as an “Employment and Business Immigration Lawyer” as the Marketing Dept got keen on social media. Nothing political, stupefyingly dull, updates on legal changes, I got to a measly 500 followers - mostly other lawyers. My big moment was being retweeted by Joshua Rosenberg. I tweeted really dull stuff the PR team suggested, avoiding politics.

However, starting in about 2014 or 2015, I started getting abuse. Snide comments at first, then over time they started to get more personal, and then, in 2022, I became of of these lawyers -

https://www.joe.co.uk/news/rwanda-death-threats-sent-to-lefty-lawyers-unacceptable-downing-street-says-342272

The worst actual DM a threat of comedy death, the guy had imagination, but it directly referenced Rwanda. Others referenced Patel’s speeches. Eventually I closed the account anyway - before Braverman. I don’t do any asylum work, the immigration practice I had was visas for complained and HNWI’s, the sort of people “Global Britain” was supposed to be attracting, but nevertheless I was clearly an enemy of the people.

Tories also hate me because I’m married to a foreigner. My specific foreigner is a white Irish-American New Englander but, nevertheless, the hoops we have had to jump through regarding her immigration status have grown increasingly tighter. Now she’s just taken dual nationality the issues will have stopped but we met when I was a student and we would not be allowed to get married now.

So, if not me, then the Tories don’t want “people like me” to vote for them. So I won’t.

I’m not really a “victim”. Others have it far worse than me. The list of people Tories hate is long. But you can see why I can’t see myself as the the sort of person they’re gunning for.
You are a good person Doug and I am glad to have you posting here. I am sorry for the way you have been treated.
Good for you. Until enough of us stand together and say "No more, this far and no more, there can be no more slightly mad and weird threats on social media against wealthy people" then these slightly mad and weird threats on social media against wealthy people will inexorably continue and possibly WORSEN until millionaire lawyers with their rich Boston born wives become slightly anxious before lunch. And the people in Ukraine think they have it bad?

This, this here. This is where we must finally stand, and turn, and FIGHT

DEFEND THE WEALTHY IMMIGRATION LAWYERS
IIRC it was you who pointed out that most people live their lives online these days. I don't like it but that's how it's gone. We used to believe that we lived in a country where most people thought like us, for any given definition of "us". But now we have access to social media and now we know that for any given definition of "us" there will be people who hate us and want us dead, and that there are people in other countries who think more like "us" than our compatriots. This leads to a loosening of the nation-state and a growth in anxiety, both of which I hate.
Well yes maybe whatever: but the last people I will feel sorry for, in this context, is very wealthy lefty immigration lawyers

I do not personally wish ill on @dougseal, of course, but I cannot find it in me to feel deep sinks of sympathy
In which case, why bother commenting? Unless, of course, you are a troublemaking arsehole. You should get a job with some right wing rag like the Spectator.
Sadly, writing for the world's most prestigious and longest running English language magazine - the Spectator - is very much out of my league. I leave that to its various famous contributors, like Graham Greene, George Orwell, @SeanT, Alexander Pope, Sylvia Plath, sundry Prime Ministers and Chancellors, and Lionel Shriver. And Taki. For me it is the humble Knapper's Gazette, but maybe one day. Who knows?
It's a shitty rag wherein 87.4% of its writers are pretty standard journeymen churning out pedestrian prose which panders to and stokes the prejudices of the red cord-wearing rural types you enjoy making fun of so much yet of whom for some unaccountable reason you are in awe.

12.6% of its writers get the joke and manage to turn out great prose which laughs at that demographic without it being obvious.

Despite your huge self-regard in particular when you come onto PB to parade your supposed sophistication to the yokels, you are comfortably in the former group.

You actually took the pains to redirect that to a new post, bless

If you're aiming for @SeanT he has I believed moved on, anyway, and now writes for Unherd

https://tinyurl.com/54baud5z

What care I? I write for the Knapper's Gazette and I do not aim for such heights, the Spectator was the favourite magazine of Ted Hughes, T S Eliot, e e Cummings, and Evelyn Waugh, I am but a knapper

It is an unusually vituperative post from Topping - a tone he usually reserves for when someone is insisting that the United Kingdom wasn't sovereign when it was in the EU. Hope he's OK.

MattW · May 28

turbotubbs said:

Foxy said:
It got Davey on the news, and I don't think in a bad way.

You don't go paddleboarding and not expect to fall in.

Indeed compared to my efforts he did rather well.
I rather suspect the falling in was part of the plan.

He admitted it was deliberate one hour after making his splash.
https://news.sky.com/story/lib-dem-leader-sir-ed-davey-admits-he-intentionally-fell-off-a-paddleboard-during-election-campaign-stunt-in-lake-district-13144391#:~:text=Sir Ed Davey has fallen,kept falling in" after that.

This is Sky News, not Sky News Australia - so perhaps we can believe it.

FrancisUrquhart · May 28

Scott_xP said:
@joepike

NEW: LBC’s @IainDale quits radio to run for Westminster.

The 61yo unsuccessfully contested North Norfolk for Conservatives in 2005.

He was chief of staff to David Davis in leadership campaign against David Cameron.

He’s been broadcasting on LBC since 2010.

Who for? In recent years, he hasn't been a big fan of the Tories at all.

If it the Tories. Why would you do that now. He has a comfortable job, he would be swapping it at best for a powerless position for his whole parliamentary career.

DougSeal · May 28

Deleted. Too harsh.

Leon · May 28

Luckyguy1983 said:

Leon said:

TOPPING said:
fpt
Leon said:

Fairliered said:

Leon said:

viewcode said:

Leon said:

BatteryCorrectHorse said:

DougSeal said:
I’ve mentioned this before.

I am, as you know and love to mock, a lawyer. I mostly do employment law but had a bit of a sideline in business visas for my clients. Became a big earner post-Brexit. I ran a really anodyne, boring, Twitter account advertising myself as an “Employment and Business Immigration Lawyer” as the Marketing Dept got keen on social media. Nothing political, stupefyingly dull, updates on legal changes, I got to a measly 500 followers - mostly other lawyers. My big moment was being retweeted by Joshua Rosenberg. I tweeted really dull stuff the PR team suggested, avoiding politics.

However, starting in about 2014 or 2015, I started getting abuse. Snide comments at first, then over time they started to get more personal, and then, in 2022, I became of of these lawyers -

https://www.joe.co.uk/news/rwanda-death-threats-sent-to-lefty-lawyers-unacceptable-downing-street-says-342272

The worst actual DM a threat of comedy death, the guy had imagination, but it directly referenced Rwanda. Others referenced Patel’s speeches. Eventually I closed the account anyway - before Braverman. I don’t do any asylum work, the immigration practice I had was visas for complained and HNWI’s, the sort of people “Global Britain” was supposed to be attracting, but nevertheless I was clearly an enemy of the people.

Tories also hate me because I’m married to a foreigner. My specific foreigner is a white Irish-American New Englander but, nevertheless, the hoops we have had to jump through regarding her immigration status have grown increasingly tighter. Now she’s just taken dual nationality the issues will have stopped but we met when I was a student and we would not be allowed to get married now.

So, if not me, then the Tories don’t want “people like me” to vote for them. So I won’t.

I’m not really a “victim”. Others have it far worse than me. The list of people Tories hate is long. But you can see why I can’t see myself as the the sort of person they’re gunning for.
You are a good person Doug and I am glad to have you posting here. I am sorry for the way you have been treated.
Good for you. Until enough of us stand together and say "No more, this far and no more, there can be no more slightly mad and weird threats on social media against wealthy people" then these slightly mad and weird threats on social media against wealthy people will inexorably continue and possibly WORSEN until millionaire lawyers with their rich Boston born wives become slightly anxious before lunch. And the people in Ukraine think they have it bad?

This, this here. This is where we must finally stand, and turn, and FIGHT

DEFEND THE WEALTHY IMMIGRATION LAWYERS
IIRC it was you who pointed out that most people live their lives online these days. I don't like it but that's how it's gone. We used to believe that we lived in a country where most people thought like us, for any given definition of "us". But now we have access to social media and now we know that for any given definition of "us" there will be people who hate us and want us dead, and that there are people in other countries who think more like "us" than our compatriots. This leads to a loosening of the nation-state and a growth in anxiety, both of which I hate.
Well yes maybe whatever: but the last people I will feel sorry for, in this context, is very wealthy lefty immigration lawyers

I do not personally wish ill on @dougseal, of course, but I cannot find it in me to feel deep sinks of sympathy
In which case, why bother commenting? Unless, of course, you are a troublemaking arsehole. You should get a job with some right wing rag like the Spectator.
Sadly, writing for the world's most prestigious and longest running English language magazine - the Spectator - is very much out of my league. I leave that to its various famous contributors, like Graham Greene, George Orwell, @SeanT, Alexander Pope, Sylvia Plath, sundry Prime Ministers and Chancellors, and Lionel Shriver. And Taki. For me it is the humble Knapper's Gazette, but maybe one day. Who knows?
It's a shitty rag wherein 87.4% of its writers are pretty standard journeymen churning out pedestrian prose which panders to and stokes the prejudices of the red cord-wearing rural types you enjoy making fun of so much yet of whom for some unaccountable reason you are in awe.

12.6% of its writers get the joke and manage to turn out great prose which laughs at that demographic without it being obvious.

Despite your huge self-regard in particular when you come onto PB to parade your supposed sophistication to the yokels, you are comfortably in the former group.

You actually took the pains to redirect that to a new post, bless

If you're aiming for @SeanT he has I believed moved on, anyway, and now writes for Unherd

https://tinyurl.com/54baud5z

What care I? I write for the Knapper's Gazette and I do not aim for such heights, the Spectator was the favourite magazine of Ted Hughes, T S Eliot, e e Cummings, and Evelyn Waugh, I am but a knapper
It is an unusually vituperative post from Topping - a tone he usually reserves for when someone is insisting that the United Kingdom wasn't sovereign when it was in the EU. Hope he's OK.

lol. Yes, I noticed the same revealing tone

Carnyx · May 28

Stuartinromford said:

ydoethur said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

DecrepiterJohnL said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

glw said:

FrancisUrquhart said:
It is quite funny caught out telling porkies.

However, it is more seriously yet another example that our politicians have zero idea about tech security. All these kind of profiles should be anonymous / hidden.

It has been highlighted in the recent past how hostile regimes are tracking people like apps like Strava etc. Now you could say, well Peleton is just indoor biking, but you are again adding to these regimes ability to work out your daily routine, and from that it has been shown then they are able to work out all sorts of other things about you e.g. famously they worked out who worked at various security services by looking at the routes taken on regular basis of a massive load of different phones.
It's really quite amazing that nobody in the security service or JIC has explained that he needs to delete or at least make such stuff private, and if he ignored them he's a fool.

I recall reading about similar issues with US cabinet members, the only person who followed all the procedures and security rules was Condoleezza Rice.
As we find from COVID inquiry, the liberal use of WhatsApp, where they mix person and work messages, I find quite amazing. I would hope at the very least that they have a phone they use solely for government business with a secure messaging system and then their personal phone where they bitch about one another and tell off colour jokes.....and really shouldn't be doing the later.

If I remember correctly Tony Blair famously never had a mobile phone of his own. Politically that is very savvy if the shit hits the fan, but also national security wise. Even the bloody pond life criminals know these days to use a bespoke secure messaging system.
Even burglars know to leave their phones at home. Seriously, you have to wonder what is the point of the National Cyber Security Centre if they can't keep the Prime Minister from spaffing his info load all over the web.
https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/
Didn't we discuss the other week that they pay peanuts for these jobs?
His next job could be in cyber.

But if it is we're fucked.
That rather goes without saying.

Isn't cybersecurity one of the roles Rishi wants the new wave of National Servicepeople to do?

Was just thinking about his claim that you could get a post in search and rescue. Excepting the RNLI (as they were separately referenced) then running a Fermi Piano Tuner analysis, there are maybe 150 mountain, river, coast etc. groups in the UK max. Each might absorb say 2-4 18yos without too much agony; but say 20% might not be interested. And the teenagers are supposed to put in two years. So that's about 180 18yos per annum. Out of 650K.
Only about another 99.97% to go ...

Alphabet_Soup · May 28

Scott_xP said:
@joepike

NEW: LBC’s @IainDale quits radio to run for Westminster.

The 61yo unsuccessfully contested North Norfolk for Conservatives in 2005.

He was chief of staff to David Davis in leadership campaign against David Cameron.

He’s been broadcasting on LBC since 2010.

Before that he used to front a niche internet TV station called Doughty Street. Very watchable in its day.

ydoethur · May 28

Scott_xP said:
@joepike

NEW: LBC’s @IainDale quits radio to run for Westminster.

The 61yo unsuccessfully contested North Norfolk for Conservatives in 2005.

He was chief of staff to David Davis in leadership campaign against David Cameron.

He’s been broadcasting on LBC since 2010.

That's interesting, because I remember in around 2010 he said he'd no more ambition to be an MP.

I wonder what changed his mind? Maybe he just thought 'now or never' or maybe his arm has been twisted.

TOPPING · May 28

Leon said:

TOPPING said:
fpt
Leon said:

Fairliered said:

Leon said:

viewcode said:

Leon said:

BatteryCorrectHorse said:

DougSeal said:
I’ve mentioned this before.

I am, as you know and love to mock, a lawyer. I mostly do employment law but had a bit of a sideline in business visas for my clients. Became a big earner post-Brexit. I ran a really anodyne, boring, Twitter account advertising myself as an “Employment and Business Immigration Lawyer” as the Marketing Dept got keen on social media. Nothing political, stupefyingly dull, updates on legal changes, I got to a measly 500 followers - mostly other lawyers. My big moment was being retweeted by Joshua Rosenberg. I tweeted really dull stuff the PR team suggested, avoiding politics.

However, starting in about 2014 or 2015, I started getting abuse. Snide comments at first, then over time they started to get more personal, and then, in 2022, I became of of these lawyers -

https://www.joe.co.uk/news/rwanda-death-threats-sent-to-lefty-lawyers-unacceptable-downing-street-says-342272

The worst actual DM a threat of comedy death, the guy had imagination, but it directly referenced Rwanda. Others referenced Patel’s speeches. Eventually I closed the account anyway - before Braverman. I don’t do any asylum work, the immigration practice I had was visas for complained and HNWI’s, the sort of people “Global Britain” was supposed to be attracting, but nevertheless I was clearly an enemy of the people.

Tories also hate me because I’m married to a foreigner. My specific foreigner is a white Irish-American New Englander but, nevertheless, the hoops we have had to jump through regarding her immigration status have grown increasingly tighter. Now she’s just taken dual nationality the issues will have stopped but we met when I was a student and we would not be allowed to get married now.

So, if not me, then the Tories don’t want “people like me” to vote for them. So I won’t.

I’m not really a “victim”. Others have it far worse than me. The list of people Tories hate is long. But you can see why I can’t see myself as the the sort of person they’re gunning for.
You are a good person Doug and I am glad to have you posting here. I am sorry for the way you have been treated.
Good for you. Until enough of us stand together and say "No more, this far and no more, there can be no more slightly mad and weird threats on social media against wealthy people" then these slightly mad and weird threats on social media against wealthy people will inexorably continue and possibly WORSEN until millionaire lawyers with their rich Boston born wives become slightly anxious before lunch. And the people in Ukraine think they have it bad?

This, this here. This is where we must finally stand, and turn, and FIGHT

DEFEND THE WEALTHY IMMIGRATION LAWYERS
IIRC it was you who pointed out that most people live their lives online these days. I don't like it but that's how it's gone. We used to believe that we lived in a country where most people thought like us, for any given definition of "us". But now we have access to social media and now we know that for any given definition of "us" there will be people who hate us and want us dead, and that there are people in other countries who think more like "us" than our compatriots. This leads to a loosening of the nation-state and a growth in anxiety, both of which I hate.
Well yes maybe whatever: but the last people I will feel sorry for, in this context, is very wealthy lefty immigration lawyers

I do not personally wish ill on @dougseal, of course, but I cannot find it in me to feel deep sinks of sympathy
In which case, why bother commenting? Unless, of course, you are a troublemaking arsehole. You should get a job with some right wing rag like the Spectator.
Sadly, writing for the world's most prestigious and longest running English language magazine - the Spectator - is very much out of my league. I leave that to its various famous contributors, like Graham Greene, George Orwell, @SeanT, Alexander Pope, Sylvia Plath, sundry Prime Ministers and Chancellors, and Lionel Shriver. And Taki. For me it is the humble Knapper's Gazette, but maybe one day. Who knows?
It's a shitty rag wherein 87.4% of its writers are pretty standard journeymen churning out pedestrian prose which panders to and stokes the prejudices of the red cord-wearing rural types you enjoy making fun of so much yet of whom for some unaccountable reason you are in awe.

12.6% of its writers get the joke and manage to turn out great prose which laughs at that demographic without it being obvious.

Despite your huge self-regard in particular when you come onto PB to parade your supposed sophistication to the yokels, you are comfortably in the former group.

You actually took the pains to redirect that to a new post, bless

If you're aiming for @SeanT he has I believed moved on, anyway, and now writes for Unherd

https://tinyurl.com/54baud5z

What care I? I write for the Knapper's Gazette and I do not aim for such heights, the Spectator was the favourite magazine of Ted Hughes, T S Eliot, e e Cummings, and Evelyn Waugh, I am but a knapper

You are an insecure knapper with a lot to be insecure about.

DM_Andy · May 28

Scott_xP said:
@joepike

NEW: LBC’s @IainDale quits radio to run for Westminster.

The 61yo unsuccessfully contested North Norfolk for Conservatives in 2005.

He was chief of staff to David Davis in leadership campaign against David Cameron.

He’s been broadcasting on LBC since 2010.

Surely bollocks? He's been distancing from the Tories for years, he's too sane for Reform, too conservative for the Lib Dems and not got the factional backing to stand for Labour.

TOPPING · May 28

Luckyguy1983 said:

Leon said:

TOPPING said:
fpt
Leon said:

Fairliered said:

Leon said:

viewcode said:

Leon said:

BatteryCorrectHorse said:

DougSeal said:
I’ve mentioned this before.

I am, as you know and love to mock, a lawyer. I mostly do employment law but had a bit of a sideline in business visas for my clients. Became a big earner post-Brexit. I ran a really anodyne, boring, Twitter account advertising myself as an “Employment and Business Immigration Lawyer” as the Marketing Dept got keen on social media. Nothing political, stupefyingly dull, updates on legal changes, I got to a measly 500 followers - mostly other lawyers. My big moment was being retweeted by Joshua Rosenberg. I tweeted really dull stuff the PR team suggested, avoiding politics.

However, starting in about 2014 or 2015, I started getting abuse. Snide comments at first, then over time they started to get more personal, and then, in 2022, I became of of these lawyers -

https://www.joe.co.uk/news/rwanda-death-threats-sent-to-lefty-lawyers-unacceptable-downing-street-says-342272

The worst actual DM a threat of comedy death, the guy had imagination, but it directly referenced Rwanda. Others referenced Patel’s speeches. Eventually I closed the account anyway - before Braverman. I don’t do any asylum work, the immigration practice I had was visas for complained and HNWI’s, the sort of people “Global Britain” was supposed to be attracting, but nevertheless I was clearly an enemy of the people.

Tories also hate me because I’m married to a foreigner. My specific foreigner is a white Irish-American New Englander but, nevertheless, the hoops we have had to jump through regarding her immigration status have grown increasingly tighter. Now she’s just taken dual nationality the issues will have stopped but we met when I was a student and we would not be allowed to get married now.

So, if not me, then the Tories don’t want “people like me” to vote for them. So I won’t.

I’m not really a “victim”. Others have it far worse than me. The list of people Tories hate is long. But you can see why I can’t see myself as the the sort of person they’re gunning for.
You are a good person Doug and I am glad to have you posting here. I am sorry for the way you have been treated.
Good for you. Until enough of us stand together and say "No more, this far and no more, there can be no more slightly mad and weird threats on social media against wealthy people" then these slightly mad and weird threats on social media against wealthy people will inexorably continue and possibly WORSEN until millionaire lawyers with their rich Boston born wives become slightly anxious before lunch. And the people in Ukraine think they have it bad?

This, this here. This is where we must finally stand, and turn, and FIGHT

DEFEND THE WEALTHY IMMIGRATION LAWYERS
IIRC it was you who pointed out that most people live their lives online these days. I don't like it but that's how it's gone. We used to believe that we lived in a country where most people thought like us, for any given definition of "us". But now we have access to social media and now we know that for any given definition of "us" there will be people who hate us and want us dead, and that there are people in other countries who think more like "us" than our compatriots. This leads to a loosening of the nation-state and a growth in anxiety, both of which I hate.
Well yes maybe whatever: but the last people I will feel sorry for, in this context, is very wealthy lefty immigration lawyers

I do not personally wish ill on @dougseal, of course, but I cannot find it in me to feel deep sinks of sympathy
In which case, why bother commenting? Unless, of course, you are a troublemaking arsehole. You should get a job with some right wing rag like the Spectator.
Sadly, writing for the world's most prestigious and longest running English language magazine - the Spectator - is very much out of my league. I leave that to its various famous contributors, like Graham Greene, George Orwell, @SeanT, Alexander Pope, Sylvia Plath, sundry Prime Ministers and Chancellors, and Lionel Shriver. And Taki. For me it is the humble Knapper's Gazette, but maybe one day. Who knows?
It's a shitty rag wherein 87.4% of its writers are pretty standard journeymen churning out pedestrian prose which panders to and stokes the prejudices of the red cord-wearing rural types you enjoy making fun of so much yet of whom for some unaccountable reason you are in awe.

12.6% of its writers get the joke and manage to turn out great prose which laughs at that demographic without it being obvious.

Despite your huge self-regard in particular when you come onto PB to parade your supposed sophistication to the yokels, you are comfortably in the former group.

You actually took the pains to redirect that to a new post, bless

If you're aiming for @SeanT he has I believed moved on, anyway, and now writes for Unherd

https://tinyurl.com/54baud5z

What care I? I write for the Knapper's Gazette and I do not aim for such heights, the Spectator was the favourite magazine of Ted Hughes, T S Eliot, e e Cummings, and Evelyn Waugh, I am but a knapper
It is an unusually vituperative post from Topping - a tone he usually reserves for when someone is insisting that the United Kingdom wasn't sovereign when it was in the EU. Hope he's OK.

I feel fine. I thought one of those Ed Davey headers into the water was a bit pleased with itself and playing to the gallery.

And we were sovereign before during and after our time in the EU.

Scott_xP · May 28

@NatashaC
Iain Dale bids us farewell after 14 years as he announces he'll be standing to be an MP

"Now I am putting my hat in the ring again... Whatever the result I feel I can play a role in restoring trust and honesty in politics. I would forever kick myself if I didn't have a go."

Alphabet_Soup · May 28

Foxy said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Scarpia said:
What is a Sontaran?

Are they orange?

What is their use of bar charts?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sontaran

At least TSE didn't compare him to the Sea Devils.

Demonising Brown people with a physical disability is so 1950s. In the foreseeable future such roles will be reserved for Laurence Fox.

Scott_xP · May 28

@ayeshahazarika

Very emotional moving sign off from @IainDale who has just announced he is stepping back from LBC to try to get selected as a Tory MP.

FrancisUrquhart · May 28

If true, LBC are rapidly running out of non-lefties presenting. Nick Ferrari is the only one that comes to mind. About as balanced in their line-up as GB News.

Benpointer · May 28

Leon said:

TOPPING said:
fpt
Leon said:

Fairliered said:

Leon said:

viewcode said:

Leon said:

BatteryCorrectHorse said:

DougSeal said:
I’ve mentioned this before.

I am, as you know and love to mock, a lawyer. I mostly do employment law but had a bit of a sideline in business visas for my clients. Became a big earner post-Brexit. I ran a really anodyne, boring, Twitter account advertising myself as an “Employment and Business Immigration Lawyer” as the Marketing Dept got keen on social media. Nothing political, stupefyingly dull, updates on legal changes, I got to a measly 500 followers - mostly other lawyers. My big moment was being retweeted by Joshua Rosenberg. I tweeted really dull stuff the PR team suggested, avoiding politics.

However, starting in about 2014 or 2015, I started getting abuse. Snide comments at first, then over time they started to get more personal, and then, in 2022, I became of of these lawyers -

https://www.joe.co.uk/news/rwanda-death-threats-sent-to-lefty-lawyers-unacceptable-downing-street-says-342272

The worst actual DM a threat of comedy death, the guy had imagination, but it directly referenced Rwanda. Others referenced Patel’s speeches. Eventually I closed the account anyway - before Braverman. I don’t do any asylum work, the immigration practice I had was visas for complained and HNWI’s, the sort of people “Global Britain” was supposed to be attracting, but nevertheless I was clearly an enemy of the people.

Tories also hate me because I’m married to a foreigner. My specific foreigner is a white Irish-American New Englander but, nevertheless, the hoops we have had to jump through regarding her immigration status have grown increasingly tighter. Now she’s just taken dual nationality the issues will have stopped but we met when I was a student and we would not be allowed to get married now.

So, if not me, then the Tories don’t want “people like me” to vote for them. So I won’t.

I’m not really a “victim”. Others have it far worse than me. The list of people Tories hate is long. But you can see why I can’t see myself as the the sort of person they’re gunning for.
You are a good person Doug and I am glad to have you posting here. I am sorry for the way you have been treated.
Good for you. Until enough of us stand together and say "No more, this far and no more, there can be no more slightly mad and weird threats on social media against wealthy people" then these slightly mad and weird threats on social media against wealthy people will inexorably continue and possibly WORSEN until millionaire lawyers with their rich Boston born wives become slightly anxious before lunch. And the people in Ukraine think they have it bad?

This, this here. This is where we must finally stand, and turn, and FIGHT

DEFEND THE WEALTHY IMMIGRATION LAWYERS
IIRC it was you who pointed out that most people live their lives online these days. I don't like it but that's how it's gone. We used to believe that we lived in a country where most people thought like us, for any given definition of "us". But now we have access to social media and now we know that for any given definition of "us" there will be people who hate us and want us dead, and that there are people in other countries who think more like "us" than our compatriots. This leads to a loosening of the nation-state and a growth in anxiety, both of which I hate.
Well yes maybe whatever: but the last people I will feel sorry for, in this context, is very wealthy lefty immigration lawyers

I do not personally wish ill on @dougseal, of course, but I cannot find it in me to feel deep sinks of sympathy
In which case, why bother commenting? Unless, of course, you are a troublemaking arsehole. You should get a job with some right wing rag like the Spectator.
Sadly, writing for the world's most prestigious and longest running English language magazine - the Spectator - is very much out of my league. I leave that to its various famous contributors, like Graham Greene, George Orwell, @SeanT, Alexander Pope, Sylvia Plath, sundry Prime Ministers and Chancellors, and Lionel Shriver. And Taki. For me it is the humble Knapper's Gazette, but maybe one day. Who knows?
It's a shitty rag wherein 87.4% of its writers are pretty standard journeymen churning out pedestrian prose which panders to and stokes the prejudices of the red cord-wearing rural types you enjoy making fun of so much yet of whom for some unaccountable reason you are in awe.

12.6% of its writers get the joke and manage to turn out great prose which laughs at that demographic without it being obvious.

Despite your huge self-regard in particular when you come onto PB to parade your supposed sophistication to the yokels, you are comfortably in the former group.

You actually took the pains to redirect that to a new post, bless

If you're aiming for @SeanT he has I believed moved on, anyway, and now writes for Unherd

https://tinyurl.com/54baud5z

What care I? I write for the Knapper's Gazette and I do not aim for such heights, the Spectator was the favourite magazine of Ted Hughes, T S Eliot, e e Cummings, and Evelyn Waugh, I am but a knapper

FFS why do you persist with this inane charade?

I understand you need to distance yourself from some of your more extreme drunken comments on here to avoid becoming persona non grata with your publishers but really, you can do that without maintaining this fairytale.

kle4 · May 28

DM_Andy said:

Scott_xP said:
@joepike

NEW: LBC’s @IainDale quits radio to run for Westminster.

The 61yo unsuccessfully contested North Norfolk for Conservatives in 2005.

He was chief of staff to David Davis in leadership campaign against David Cameron.

He’s been broadcasting on LBC since 2010.
Surely bollocks? He's been distancing from the Tories for years, he's too sane for Reform, too conservative for the Lib Dems and not got the factional backing to stand for Labour.

He did write a book called 'Why can't we all get along...', maybe he wanted to test that out by particapting in an exercise where we deliberately try not to get along, by choosing sides at an election.

rottenborough · May 28

God, Sunak is awful at this. That clip of him speaking to pottery peeps on BBC News 10.

Jeez.

kle4 · May 28

Benpointer said:

Leon said:

TOPPING said:
fpt
Leon said:

Fairliered said:

Leon said:

viewcode said:

Leon said:

BatteryCorrectHorse said:

DougSeal said:
I’ve mentioned this before.

I am, as you know and love to mock, a lawyer. I mostly do employment law but had a bit of a sideline in business visas for my clients. Became a big earner post-Brexit. I ran a really anodyne, boring, Twitter account advertising myself as an “Employment and Business Immigration Lawyer” as the Marketing Dept got keen on social media. Nothing political, stupefyingly dull, updates on legal changes, I got to a measly 500 followers - mostly other lawyers. My big moment was being retweeted by Joshua Rosenberg. I tweeted really dull stuff the PR team suggested, avoiding politics.

However, starting in about 2014 or 2015, I started getting abuse. Snide comments at first, then over time they started to get more personal, and then, in 2022, I became of of these lawyers -

https://www.joe.co.uk/news/rwanda-death-threats-sent-to-lefty-lawyers-unacceptable-downing-street-says-342272

The worst actual DM a threat of comedy death, the guy had imagination, but it directly referenced Rwanda. Others referenced Patel’s speeches. Eventually I closed the account anyway - before Braverman. I don’t do any asylum work, the immigration practice I had was visas for complained and HNWI’s, the sort of people “Global Britain” was supposed to be attracting, but nevertheless I was clearly an enemy of the people.

Tories also hate me because I’m married to a foreigner. My specific foreigner is a white Irish-American New Englander but, nevertheless, the hoops we have had to jump through regarding her immigration status have grown increasingly tighter. Now she’s just taken dual nationality the issues will have stopped but we met when I was a student and we would not be allowed to get married now.

So, if not me, then the Tories don’t want “people like me” to vote for them. So I won’t.

I’m not really a “victim”. Others have it far worse than me. The list of people Tories hate is long. But you can see why I can’t see myself as the the sort of person they’re gunning for.
You are a good person Doug and I am glad to have you posting here. I am sorry for the way you have been treated.
Good for you. Until enough of us stand together and say "No more, this far and no more, there can be no more slightly mad and weird threats on social media against wealthy people" then these slightly mad and weird threats on social media against wealthy people will inexorably continue and possibly WORSEN until millionaire lawyers with their rich Boston born wives become slightly anxious before lunch. And the people in Ukraine think they have it bad?

This, this here. This is where we must finally stand, and turn, and FIGHT

DEFEND THE WEALTHY IMMIGRATION LAWYERS
IIRC it was you who pointed out that most people live their lives online these days. I don't like it but that's how it's gone. We used to believe that we lived in a country where most people thought like us, for any given definition of "us". But now we have access to social media and now we know that for any given definition of "us" there will be people who hate us and want us dead, and that there are people in other countries who think more like "us" than our compatriots. This leads to a loosening of the nation-state and a growth in anxiety, both of which I hate.
Well yes maybe whatever: but the last people I will feel sorry for, in this context, is very wealthy lefty immigration lawyers

I do not personally wish ill on @dougseal, of course, but I cannot find it in me to feel deep sinks of sympathy
In which case, why bother commenting? Unless, of course, you are a troublemaking arsehole. You should get a job with some right wing rag like the Spectator.
Sadly, writing for the world's most prestigious and longest running English language magazine - the Spectator - is very much out of my league. I leave that to its various famous contributors, like Graham Greene, George Orwell, @SeanT, Alexander Pope, Sylvia Plath, sundry Prime Ministers and Chancellors, and Lionel Shriver. And Taki. For me it is the humble Knapper's Gazette, but maybe one day. Who knows?
It's a shitty rag wherein 87.4% of its writers are pretty standard journeymen churning out pedestrian prose which panders to and stokes the prejudices of the red cord-wearing rural types you enjoy making fun of so much yet of whom for some unaccountable reason you are in awe.

12.6% of its writers get the joke and manage to turn out great prose which laughs at that demographic without it being obvious.

Despite your huge self-regard in particular when you come onto PB to parade your supposed sophistication to the yokels, you are comfortably in the former group.

You actually took the pains to redirect that to a new post, bless

If you're aiming for @SeanT he has I believed moved on, anyway, and now writes for Unherd

https://tinyurl.com/54baud5z

What care I? I write for the Knapper's Gazette and I do not aim for such heights, the Spectator was the favourite magazine of Ted Hughes, T S Eliot, e e Cummings, and Evelyn Waugh, I am but a knapper
FFS why do you persist with this inane charade?

I understand you need to distance yourself from some of your more extreme drunken comments on here to avoid becoming persona non grata with your publishers but really, you can do that without maintaining this fairytale.

I think the comments like cause it to happen in future.

TheScreamingEagles · May 28

DM_Andy said:

Scott_xP said:
@joepike

NEW: LBC’s @IainDale quits radio to run for Westminster.

The 61yo unsuccessfully contested North Norfolk for Conservatives in 2005.

He was chief of staff to David Davis in leadership campaign against David Cameron.

He’s been broadcasting on LBC since 2010.
Surely bollocks? He's been distancing from the Tories for years, he's too sane for Reform, too conservative for the Lib Dems and not got the factional backing to stand for Labour.

He’s going to attempt to become the Tory MP for Royal Tunbridge Wells.

turbotubbs · May 28

Scott_xP said:
@NatashaC
Iain Dale bids us farewell after 14 years as he announces he'll be standing to be an MP

"Now I am putting my hat in the ring again... Whatever the result I feel I can play a role in restoring trust and honesty in politics. I would forever kick myself if I didn't have a go."

White suit candidate? Against who, though? Many, many sleazy wankers out there.

FrancisUrquhart · May 28

Iain Dale's take down of Nick Griffin was one of the greatest interviews (and gets zero credit). He managed to do without ever going near "your a racist, aren't you". He literally said ok, how does your world view / policies work, lets follow this through to logical conclusion. Griffin was absolutely stumped as he is so used to getting the usual racist line of questioning and has well warn answered.

Scott_xP · May 28

One in eight university degree places would be scrapped under a future Conservative government and the funding diverted into apprenticeships, Rishi Sunak will pledge on Wednesday.

In a crackdown on so-called Mickey Mouse courses, Sunak will accuse universities of “ripping young people off” by offering degree places that do not increase their long-term earnings potential.

Instead Sunak will say the money should be spent creating an extra 100,000 apprenticeships by the end of the next parliament.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/tories-university-degrees-end-value-money-2tw2mjgkj

turbotubbs · May 28

Benpointer said:

Leon said:

TOPPING said:
fpt
Leon said:

Fairliered said:

Leon said:

viewcode said:

Leon said:

BatteryCorrectHorse said:

DougSeal said:
I’ve mentioned this before.

I am, as you know and love to mock, a lawyer. I mostly do employment law but had a bit of a sideline in business visas for my clients. Became a big earner post-Brexit. I ran a really anodyne, boring, Twitter account advertising myself as an “Employment and Business Immigration Lawyer” as the Marketing Dept got keen on social media. Nothing political, stupefyingly dull, updates on legal changes, I got to a measly 500 followers - mostly other lawyers. My big moment was being retweeted by Joshua Rosenberg. I tweeted really dull stuff the PR team suggested, avoiding politics.

However, starting in about 2014 or 2015, I started getting abuse. Snide comments at first, then over time they started to get more personal, and then, in 2022, I became of of these lawyers -

https://www.joe.co.uk/news/rwanda-death-threats-sent-to-lefty-lawyers-unacceptable-downing-street-says-342272

The worst actual DM a threat of comedy death, the guy had imagination, but it directly referenced Rwanda. Others referenced Patel’s speeches. Eventually I closed the account anyway - before Braverman. I don’t do any asylum work, the immigration practice I had was visas for complained and HNWI’s, the sort of people “Global Britain” was supposed to be attracting, but nevertheless I was clearly an enemy of the people.

Tories also hate me because I’m married to a foreigner. My specific foreigner is a white Irish-American New Englander but, nevertheless, the hoops we have had to jump through regarding her immigration status have grown increasingly tighter. Now she’s just taken dual nationality the issues will have stopped but we met when I was a student and we would not be allowed to get married now.

So, if not me, then the Tories don’t want “people like me” to vote for them. So I won’t.

I’m not really a “victim”. Others have it far worse than me. The list of people Tories hate is long. But you can see why I can’t see myself as the the sort of person they’re gunning for.
You are a good person Doug and I am glad to have you posting here. I am sorry for the way you have been treated.
Good for you. Until enough of us stand together and say "No more, this far and no more, there can be no more slightly mad and weird threats on social media against wealthy people" then these slightly mad and weird threats on social media against wealthy people will inexorably continue and possibly WORSEN until millionaire lawyers with their rich Boston born wives become slightly anxious before lunch. And the people in Ukraine think they have it bad?

This, this here. This is where we must finally stand, and turn, and FIGHT

DEFEND THE WEALTHY IMMIGRATION LAWYERS
IIRC it was you who pointed out that most people live their lives online these days. I don't like it but that's how it's gone. We used to believe that we lived in a country where most people thought like us, for any given definition of "us". But now we have access to social media and now we know that for any given definition of "us" there will be people who hate us and want us dead, and that there are people in other countries who think more like "us" than our compatriots. This leads to a loosening of the nation-state and a growth in anxiety, both of which I hate.
Well yes maybe whatever: but the last people I will feel sorry for, in this context, is very wealthy lefty immigration lawyers

I do not personally wish ill on @dougseal, of course, but I cannot find it in me to feel deep sinks of sympathy
In which case, why bother commenting? Unless, of course, you are a troublemaking arsehole. You should get a job with some right wing rag like the Spectator.
Sadly, writing for the world's most prestigious and longest running English language magazine - the Spectator - is very much out of my league. I leave that to its various famous contributors, like Graham Greene, George Orwell, @SeanT, Alexander Pope, Sylvia Plath, sundry Prime Ministers and Chancellors, and Lionel Shriver. And Taki. For me it is the humble Knapper's Gazette, but maybe one day. Who knows?
It's a shitty rag wherein 87.4% of its writers are pretty standard journeymen churning out pedestrian prose which panders to and stokes the prejudices of the red cord-wearing rural types you enjoy making fun of so much yet of whom for some unaccountable reason you are in awe.

12.6% of its writers get the joke and manage to turn out great prose which laughs at that demographic without it being obvious.

Despite your huge self-regard in particular when you come onto PB to parade your supposed sophistication to the yokels, you are comfortably in the former group.

You actually took the pains to redirect that to a new post, bless

If you're aiming for @SeanT he has I believed moved on, anyway, and now writes for Unherd

https://tinyurl.com/54baud5z

What care I? I write for the Knapper's Gazette and I do not aim for such heights, the Spectator was the favourite magazine of Ted Hughes, T S Eliot, e e Cummings, and Evelyn Waugh, I am but a knapper
FFS why do you persist with this inane charade?

I understand you need to distance yourself from some of your more extreme drunken comments on here to avoid becoming persona non grata with your publishers but really, you can do that without maintaining this fairytale.

Unless, unless Leon really is being stalked by a weirdo who posts on twitter…
I’m afraid the worst thing is CHB now thinks it’s a ‘cool’ thing to do too. It isn’t.

FrancisUrquhart · May 28

Scott_xP said:
One in eight university degree places would be scrapped under a future Conservative government and the funding diverted into apprenticeships, Rishi Sunak will pledge on Wednesday.

In a crackdown on so-called Mickey Mouse courses, Sunak will accuse universities of “ripping young people off” by offering degree places that do not increase their long-term earnings potential.

Instead Sunak will say the money should be spent creating an extra 100,000 apprenticeships by the end of the next parliament.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/tories-university-degrees-end-value-money-2tw2mjgkj

The death penalty policy is coming isn't it.

CarlottaVance · May 28

U-turn if you want to, Honest John's, er, ok, well, em, wait a minute....

SNP amendment to the Standards Committee motion on Michael Matheson is up. Looks like the SNP *WILL* vote for Matheson to be suspended for 27 days and have his wages stopped for 54 https://parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/votes-and-motions/S6M-13368-1

https://x.com/andrewlearmonth/status/1795513689728323611

imagine blowing your scraps of capital on defending Matheson before doing him in anyway. such pisspoor politics.

https://x.com/euanmccolm/status/1795542004648014181

Leon · May 28

TOPPING said:

Leon said:

TOPPING said:
fpt
Leon said:

Fairliered said:

Leon said:

viewcode said:

Leon said:

BatteryCorrectHorse said:

DougSeal said:
I’ve mentioned this before.

I am, as you know and love to mock, a lawyer. I mostly do employment law but had a bit of a sideline in business visas for my clients. Became a big earner post-Brexit. I ran a really anodyne, boring, Twitter account advertising myself as an “Employment and Business Immigration Lawyer” as the Marketing Dept got keen on social media. Nothing political, stupefyingly dull, updates on legal changes, I got to a measly 500 followers - mostly other lawyers. My big moment was being retweeted by Joshua Rosenberg. I tweeted really dull stuff the PR team suggested, avoiding politics.

However, starting in about 2014 or 2015, I started getting abuse. Snide comments at first, then over time they started to get more personal, and then, in 2022, I became of of these lawyers -

https://www.joe.co.uk/news/rwanda-death-threats-sent-to-lefty-lawyers-unacceptable-downing-street-says-342272

The worst actual DM a threat of comedy death, the guy had imagination, but it directly referenced Rwanda. Others referenced Patel’s speeches. Eventually I closed the account anyway - before Braverman. I don’t do any asylum work, the immigration practice I had was visas for complained and HNWI’s, the sort of people “Global Britain” was supposed to be attracting, but nevertheless I was clearly an enemy of the people.

Tories also hate me because I’m married to a foreigner. My specific foreigner is a white Irish-American New Englander but, nevertheless, the hoops we have had to jump through regarding her immigration status have grown increasingly tighter. Now she’s just taken dual nationality the issues will have stopped but we met when I was a student and we would not be allowed to get married now.

So, if not me, then the Tories don’t want “people like me” to vote for them. So I won’t.

I’m not really a “victim”. Others have it far worse than me. The list of people Tories hate is long. But you can see why I can’t see myself as the the sort of person they’re gunning for.
You are a good person Doug and I am glad to have you posting here. I am sorry for the way you have been treated.
Good for you. Until enough of us stand together and say "No more, this far and no more, there can be no more slightly mad and weird threats on social media against wealthy people" then these slightly mad and weird threats on social media against wealthy people will inexorably continue and possibly WORSEN until millionaire lawyers with their rich Boston born wives become slightly anxious before lunch. And the people in Ukraine think they have it bad?

This, this here. This is where we must finally stand, and turn, and FIGHT

DEFEND THE WEALTHY IMMIGRATION LAWYERS
IIRC it was you who pointed out that most people live their lives online these days. I don't like it but that's how it's gone. We used to believe that we lived in a country where most people thought like us, for any given definition of "us". But now we have access to social media and now we know that for any given definition of "us" there will be people who hate us and want us dead, and that there are people in other countries who think more like "us" than our compatriots. This leads to a loosening of the nation-state and a growth in anxiety, both of which I hate.
Well yes maybe whatever: but the last people I will feel sorry for, in this context, is very wealthy lefty immigration lawyers

I do not personally wish ill on @dougseal, of course, but I cannot find it in me to feel deep sinks of sympathy
In which case, why bother commenting? Unless, of course, you are a troublemaking arsehole. You should get a job with some right wing rag like the Spectator.
Sadly, writing for the world's most prestigious and longest running English language magazine - the Spectator - is very much out of my league. I leave that to its various famous contributors, like Graham Greene, George Orwell, @SeanT, Alexander Pope, Sylvia Plath, sundry Prime Ministers and Chancellors, and Lionel Shriver. And Taki. For me it is the humble Knapper's Gazette, but maybe one day. Who knows?
It's a shitty rag wherein 87.4% of its writers are pretty standard journeymen churning out pedestrian prose which panders to and stokes the prejudices of the red cord-wearing rural types you enjoy making fun of so much yet of whom for some unaccountable reason you are in awe.

12.6% of its writers get the joke and manage to turn out great prose which laughs at that demographic without it being obvious.

Despite your huge self-regard in particular when you come onto PB to parade your supposed sophistication to the yokels, you are comfortably in the former group.

You actually took the pains to redirect that to a new post, bless

If you're aiming for @SeanT he has I believed moved on, anyway, and now writes for Unherd

https://tinyurl.com/54baud5z

What care I? I write for the Knapper's Gazette and I do not aim for such heights, the Spectator was the favourite magazine of Ted Hughes, T S Eliot, e e Cummings, and Evelyn Waugh, I am but a knapper
You are an insecure knapper with a lot to be insecure about.

I shall strive to non-repine

FrancisUrquhart · May 28

Did Team Sunak literally just do focus groups with GB News viewers to come up with these policies?

kle4 · May 28

TheScreamingEagles said:

DM_Andy said:

Scott_xP said:
@joepike

NEW: LBC’s @IainDale quits radio to run for Westminster.

The 61yo unsuccessfully contested North Norfolk for Conservatives in 2005.

He was chief of staff to David Davis in leadership campaign against David Cameron.

He’s been broadcasting on LBC since 2010.
Surely bollocks? He's been distancing from the Tories for years, he's too sane for Reform, too conservative for the Lib Dems and not got the factional backing to stand for Labour.

He’s going to attempt to become the Tory MP for Royal Tunbridge Wells.

14.6k majority, winnable certainly, but LDs should do better than even 1997 in that seat, given they had about the same share in 2019 as 1997.

(In fairness Labour were easy second in 2017)

valleyboy · May 28

FrancisUrquhart said:
If true, LBC are rapidly running out of non-lefties presenting. Nick Ferrari is the only one that comes to mind. About as balanced in their line-up as GB News.

Boris Johnson's sister?

kle4 · May 28

CarlottaVance said:
U-turn if you want to, Honest John's, er, ok, well, em, wait a minute....

SNP amendment to the Standards Committee motion on Michael Matheson is up. Looks like the SNP *WILL* vote for Matheson to be suspended for 27 days and have his wages stopped for 54 https://parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/votes-and-motions/S6M-13368-1

https://x.com/andrewlearmonth/status/1795513689728323611

imagine blowing your scraps of capital on defending Matheson before doing him in anyway. such pisspoor politics.

https://x.com/euanmccolm/status/1795542004648014181

It's called doing a Paterson.

rottenborough · May 28

FrancisUrquhart said:

Scott_xP said:
One in eight university degree places would be scrapped under a future Conservative government and the funding diverted into apprenticeships, Rishi Sunak will pledge on Wednesday.

In a crackdown on so-called Mickey Mouse courses, Sunak will accuse universities of “ripping young people off” by offering degree places that do not increase their long-term earnings potential.

Instead Sunak will say the money should be spent creating an extra 100,000 apprenticeships by the end of the next parliament.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/tories-university-degrees-end-value-money-2tw2mjgkj
The death penalty policy is coming isn't it.

For university lecturers probably.

turbotubbs · May 28

FrancisUrquhart said:

Scott_xP said:
One in eight university degree places would be scrapped under a future Conservative government and the funding diverted into apprenticeships, Rishi Sunak will pledge on Wednesday.

In a crackdown on so-called Mickey Mouse courses, Sunak will accuse universities of “ripping young people off” by offering degree places that do not increase their long-term earnings potential.

Instead Sunak will say the money should be spent creating an extra 100,000 apprenticeships by the end of the next parliament.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/tories-university-degrees-end-value-money-2tw2mjgkj
The death penalty policy is coming isn't it.

That sounds like already here for certain Unis.

DougSeal · May 28

Scott_xP said:
One in eight university degree places would be scrapped under a future Conservative government and the funding diverted into apprenticeships, Rishi Sunak will pledge on Wednesday.

In a crackdown on so-called Mickey Mouse courses, Sunak will accuse universities of “ripping young people off” by offering degree places that do not increase their long-term earnings potential.

Instead Sunak will say the money should be spent creating an extra 100,000 apprenticeships by the end of the next parliament.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/tories-university-degrees-end-value-money-2tw2mjgkj

Lawyers, civil servants, universities…the catalogue of people Tories don’t like is a thick one. As thick as an Eighties Argos catalogue at least.

eek · May 28

Scott_xP said:
One in eight university degree places would be scrapped under a future Conservative government and the funding diverted into apprenticeships, Rishi Sunak will pledge on Wednesday.

In a crackdown on so-called Mickey Mouse courses, Sunak will accuse universities of “ripping young people off” by offering degree places that do not increase their long-term earnings potential.

Instead Sunak will say the money should be spent creating an extra 100,000 apprenticeships by the end of the next parliament.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/tories-university-degrees-end-value-money-2tw2mjgkj

Well that’s the university sector destroyed - and those apprenticeships will be crap. You need buy in from employers not a few extra quid…

rottenborough · May 28

Glen O'Hara
@gsoh31
·
7m
Oh just get out of here with your stupid ideas. You're really going to shut down one in eight degrees - in part based on what graduates earn? No you're not, stop talking nonsense. 💩

MattW · May 28

OldKingCole said:

TOPPING said:
fpt
Leon said:

Fairliered said:

Leon said:

viewcode said:

Leon said:

BatteryCorrectHorse said:

DougSeal said:
I’ve mentioned this before.

I am, as you know and love to mock, a lawyer. I mostly do employment law but had a bit of a sideline in business visas for my clients. Became a big earner post-Brexit. I ran a really anodyne, boring, Twitter account advertising myself as an “Employment and Business Immigration Lawyer” as the Marketing Dept got keen on social media. Nothing political, stupefyingly dull, updates on legal changes, I got to a measly 500 followers - mostly other lawyers. My big moment was being retweeted by Joshua Rosenberg. I tweeted really dull stuff the PR team suggested, avoiding politics.

However, starting in about 2014 or 2015, I started getting abuse. Snide comments at first, then over time they started to get more personal, and then, in 2022, I became of of these lawyers -

https://www.joe.co.uk/news/rwanda-death-threats-sent-to-lefty-lawyers-unacceptable-downing-street-says-342272

The worst actual DM a threat of comedy death, the guy had imagination, but it directly referenced Rwanda. Others referenced Patel’s speeches. Eventually I closed the account anyway - before Braverman. I don’t do any asylum work, the immigration practice I had was visas for complained and HNWI’s, the sort of people “Global Britain” was supposed to be attracting, but nevertheless I was clearly an enemy of the people.

Tories also hate me because I’m married to a foreigner. My specific foreigner is a white Irish-American New Englander but, nevertheless, the hoops we have had to jump through regarding her immigration status have grown increasingly tighter. Now she’s just taken dual nationality the issues will have stopped but we met when I was a student and we would not be allowed to get married now.

So, if not me, then the Tories don’t want “people like me” to vote for them. So I won’t.

I’m not really a “victim”. Others have it far worse than me. The list of people Tories hate is long. But you can see why I can’t see myself as the the sort of person they’re gunning for.
You are a good person Doug and I am glad to have you posting here. I am sorry for the way you have been treated.
Good for you. Until enough of us stand together and say "No more, this far and no more, there can be no more slightly mad and weird threats on social media against wealthy people" then these slightly mad and weird threats on social media against wealthy people will inexorably continue and possibly WORSEN until millionaire lawyers with their rich Boston born wives become slightly anxious before lunch. And the people in Ukraine think they have it bad?

This, this here. This is where we must finally stand, and turn, and FIGHT

DEFEND THE WEALTHY IMMIGRATION LAWYERS
IIRC it was you who pointed out that most people live their lives online these days. I don't like it but that's how it's gone. We used to believe that we lived in a country where most people thought like us, for any given definition of "us". But now we have access to social media and now we know that for any given definition of "us" there will be people who hate us and want us dead, and that there are people in other countries who think more like "us" than our compatriots. This leads to a loosening of the nation-state and a growth in anxiety, both of which I hate.
Well yes maybe whatever: but the last people I will feel sorry for, in this context, is very wealthy lefty immigration lawyers

I do not personally wish ill on @dougseal, of course, but I cannot find it in me to feel deep sinks of sympathy
In which case, why bother commenting? Unless, of course, you are a troublemaking arsehole. You should get a job with some right wing rag like the Spectator.
Sadly, writing for the world's most prestigious and longest running English language magazine - the Spectator - is very much out of my league. I leave that to its various famous contributors, like Graham Greene, George Orwell, @SeanT, Alexander Pope, Sylvia Plath, sundry Prime Ministers and Chancellors, and Lionel Shriver. And Taki. For me it is the humble Knapper's Gazette, but maybe one day. Who knows?
It's a shitty rag wherein 87.4% of its writers are pretty standard journeymen churning out pedestrian prose which panders to and stokes the prejudices of the red cord-wearing rural types you enjoy making fun of so much yet of whom for some unaccountable reason you are in awe.

12.6% of its writers get the joke and manage to turn out great prose which laughs at that demographic without it being obvious.

Despite your huge self-regard in particular when you come onto PB to parade your supposed sophistication to the yokels, you are comfortably in the former group.

I’ve remarked before that back in the mid 50’s the Headmaster of the (grammar) school I attended arranged for VIth formers to subscribe to the Spectator at half price.
I subscribed for a year then switched to the New Statesman.
The Head gave me up as a lost cause.

The Knobbers' Gazette is now £1 a month to anyone with the Internet.

And is currently demanding that Diane Abbott is banned from standing for Labour, so it must be true.

FrancisUrquhart · May 28

valleyboy said:

FrancisUrquhart said:
If true, LBC are rapidly running out of non-lefties presenting. Nick Ferrari is the only one that comes to mind. About as balanced in their line-up as GB News.
Boris Johnson's sister?

In recent years hasn't been Lib Dem / Change member. That isn't leftie as such, but very anti-Brexity / anti-Tory.

pigeon · May 28

Scott_xP said:
One in eight university degree places would be scrapped under a future Conservative government and the funding diverted into apprenticeships, Rishi Sunak will pledge on Wednesday.

In a crackdown on so-called Mickey Mouse courses, Sunak will accuse universities of “ripping young people off” by offering degree places that do not increase their long-term earnings potential.

Instead Sunak will say the money should be spent creating an extra 100,000 apprenticeships by the end of the next parliament.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/tories-university-degrees-end-value-money-2tw2mjgkj

I suppose that one solution to the desperate university funding crisis is to start closing them down. Another policy that will appeal to the elderly core vote who nearly all left school when they were 14.

FrancisUrquhart said:

Scott_xP said:
One in eight university degree places would be scrapped under a future Conservative government and the funding diverted into apprenticeships, Rishi Sunak will pledge on Wednesday.

In a crackdown on so-called Mickey Mouse courses, Sunak will accuse universities of “ripping young people off” by offering degree places that do not increase their long-term earnings potential.

Instead Sunak will say the money should be spent creating an extra 100,000 apprenticeships by the end of the next parliament.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/tories-university-degrees-end-value-money-2tw2mjgkj
The death penalty policy is coming isn't it.

Little would surprise me at this stage.

TOPPING · May 28

Leon said:

TOPPING said:

Leon said:

TOPPING said:
fpt
Leon said:

Fairliered said:

Leon said:

viewcode said:

Leon said:

BatteryCorrectHorse said:

DougSeal said:
I’ve mentioned this before.

I am, as you know and love to mock, a lawyer. I mostly do employment law but had a bit of a sideline in business visas for my clients. Became a big earner post-Brexit. I ran a really anodyne, boring, Twitter account advertising myself as an “Employment and Business Immigration Lawyer” as the Marketing Dept got keen on social media. Nothing political, stupefyingly dull, updates on legal changes, I got to a measly 500 followers - mostly other lawyers. My big moment was being retweeted by Joshua Rosenberg. I tweeted really dull stuff the PR team suggested, avoiding politics.

However, starting in about 2014 or 2015, I started getting abuse. Snide comments at first, then over time they started to get more personal, and then, in 2022, I became of of these lawyers -

https://www.joe.co.uk/news/rwanda-death-threats-sent-to-lefty-lawyers-unacceptable-downing-street-says-342272

The worst actual DM a threat of comedy death, the guy had imagination, but it directly referenced Rwanda. Others referenced Patel’s speeches. Eventually I closed the account anyway - before Braverman. I don’t do any asylum work, the immigration practice I had was visas for complained and HNWI’s, the sort of people “Global Britain” was supposed to be attracting, but nevertheless I was clearly an enemy of the people.

Tories also hate me because I’m married to a foreigner. My specific foreigner is a white Irish-American New Englander but, nevertheless, the hoops we have had to jump through regarding her immigration status have grown increasingly tighter. Now she’s just taken dual nationality the issues will have stopped but we met when I was a student and we would not be allowed to get married now.

So, if not me, then the Tories don’t want “people like me” to vote for them. So I won’t.

I’m not really a “victim”. Others have it far worse than me. The list of people Tories hate is long. But you can see why I can’t see myself as the the sort of person they’re gunning for.
You are a good person Doug and I am glad to have you posting here. I am sorry for the way you have been treated.
Good for you. Until enough of us stand together and say "No more, this far and no more, there can be no more slightly mad and weird threats on social media against wealthy people" then these slightly mad and weird threats on social media against wealthy people will inexorably continue and possibly WORSEN until millionaire lawyers with their rich Boston born wives become slightly anxious before lunch. And the people in Ukraine think they have it bad?

This, this here. This is where we must finally stand, and turn, and FIGHT

DEFEND THE WEALTHY IMMIGRATION LAWYERS
IIRC it was you who pointed out that most people live their lives online these days. I don't like it but that's how it's gone. We used to believe that we lived in a country where most people thought like us, for any given definition of "us". But now we have access to social media and now we know that for any given definition of "us" there will be people who hate us and want us dead, and that there are people in other countries who think more like "us" than our compatriots. This leads to a loosening of the nation-state and a growth in anxiety, both of which I hate.
Well yes maybe whatever: but the last people I will feel sorry for, in this context, is very wealthy lefty immigration lawyers

I do not personally wish ill on @dougseal, of course, but I cannot find it in me to feel deep sinks of sympathy
In which case, why bother commenting? Unless, of course, you are a troublemaking arsehole. You should get a job with some right wing rag like the Spectator.
Sadly, writing for the world's most prestigious and longest running English language magazine - the Spectator - is very much out of my league. I leave that to its various famous contributors, like Graham Greene, George Orwell, @SeanT, Alexander Pope, Sylvia Plath, sundry Prime Ministers and Chancellors, and Lionel Shriver. And Taki. For me it is the humble Knapper's Gazette, but maybe one day. Who knows?
It's a shitty rag wherein 87.4% of its writers are pretty standard journeymen churning out pedestrian prose which panders to and stokes the prejudices of the red cord-wearing rural types you enjoy making fun of so much yet of whom for some unaccountable reason you are in awe.

12.6% of its writers get the joke and manage to turn out great prose which laughs at that demographic without it being obvious.

Despite your huge self-regard in particular when you come onto PB to parade your supposed sophistication to the yokels, you are comfortably in the former group.

You actually took the pains to redirect that to a new post, bless

If you're aiming for @SeanT he has I believed moved on, anyway, and now writes for Unherd

https://tinyurl.com/54baud5z

What care I? I write for the Knapper's Gazette and I do not aim for such heights, the Spectator was the favourite magazine of Ted Hughes, T S Eliot, e e Cummings, and Evelyn Waugh, I am but a knapper
You are an insecure knapper with a lot to be insecure about.
I shall strive to non-repine

QED

Scott_xP · May 28

Ooft

@PigsAndPolling

Iain would make a great MP but will need to persuade his Party that at age 61 he (like Starmer) is not too old for the job!

kle4 · May 28

Scott_xP said:
One in eight university degree places would be scrapped under a future Conservative government and the funding diverted into apprenticeships, Rishi Sunak will pledge on Wednesday.

In a crackdown on so-called Mickey Mouse courses, Sunak will accuse universities of “ripping young people off” by offering degree places that do not increase their long-term earnings potential.

Instead Sunak will say the money should be spent creating an extra 100,000 apprenticeships by the end of the next parliament.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/tories-university-degrees-end-value-money-2tw2mjgkj

This is the 'we did well without university so so should the youth' policy.

Actually I think a lot of people on ehre have criticised some courses that get offered and spoken positively of apprenticeships as a concept, but the devil is in the details - which courses, what apprenticeships, for how long etc?

CarlottaVance · May 28

My friend @IainDale off to fight Tunbridge Wells for the Tories

https://x.com/adamboultonTABB/status/1795563986949120122

Iain would make a great MP but will need to persuade his Party that at age 61 he (like Starmer) is not too old for the job!

https://x.com/PigsAndPolling/status/1795564675796435433

FrancisUrquhart · May 28

We talked about this the other day. The solution is the opposite you put your thumb on the scale to incentivise the likes of STEM. The problem at the moment is every degree is the essentially priced the same, so why run very expensive Chemistry degree when you can run some bollock for 1/3 of the price.

If I remember correctly, Chemistry is a particular degree that is not available at a large number of universities, even some higher ranked ones. It because it is super expensive to run. But of course the UK needs chemists, what they do is highly valuable.

geoffw · May 28

Scott_xP said:
One in eight university degree places would be scrapped under a future Conservative government and the funding diverted into apprenticeships, Rishi Sunak will pledge on Wednesday.

In a crackdown on so-called Mickey Mouse courses, Sunak will accuse universities of “ripping young people off” by offering degree places that do not increase their long-term earnings potential.

Instead Sunak will say the money should be spent creating an extra 100,000 apprenticeships by the end of the next parliament.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/tories-university-degrees-end-value-money-2tw2mjgkj

They're certainly coming out with policies - outrageous, hare-brained, but policies all the same. Prepare now for strong takes on identity politics and wokeism.

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