He also thought Brexit would be sorted out in an afternoon and he also thought triggering a vanity by election was a good idea.
Colour me sceptical.
DD guested on the Rest is Politics recently and did not come over well. Rather brittle and defensive.
Do PBers listen to that prog btw? It's kind of a Centrist Dad heaven. You get the elegant (although slightly self-regarding and infused with class privilege) lilt of Rory Stewart interspersed with the pungent throb of Alastair Campbell, the both of them highly articulate, rational, animated by a deep dislike of populism. You listen to it for an hour or so and come away feeling calmer and more cheerful and grounded than when you started. Not many political podcasts do that but this one does.
A quibble though. There's a nice mix of centre left and centre right sentiment but this doesn’t map across to objective neutrality on the parties. Stewart is not a partisan tory. He finds it easy to criticise them and to say positive things about Labour. Campbell otoh is the definition of tribal. He can’t say anything good about the Conservatives or bad about Labour (now it’s his sort of Labour again under SKS as opposed to the Corbyn version) without choking. This (imo) rather unbalances the show.
I can't stand Campbell. He's a true, 100% shit who should be hiding his face away in anonymity somewhere. And Stewart should have remained in the party, rather than quitting.
But yes, I do occasionally listen to RiP...
Why so down on AC? I think he's a quality pundit if you adjust for the tribalism.
Terrible behaviour with Kelly, it cost a good man's life, but I don't rank him as the sort of unmitigated villain who should be forever cancelled.
Second day of autumn, and we've got very autumnal weather. Grey, damp, chilly.
We must have had under 10 days of actual summer weather this year.
I blame the Labour government.
I don't normally like to complain about the weather (or weather apps, as I know how they work). But back from another ghastly August week in Devon I've finally had enough. Last week was forecast to be largely sunny and dry. Yet in reality we had several days of grey skies and rain (and the apps were showing sunny skies at the time).
In the words of a recent survivor of a life threatening existence - enough. Time to move the UK south by 500 miles. We have enough engineers on PB - there must be away?
Or if not relocating the UK, lets roll back on our climate change mitigation. I keep being promised a warmer UK with a mediterranean climate - bring it on! Fire up the wood burners, tear down the wind farms and solar parks and burn that coal.
Enough.
I was just planning to go swimming in a lake this evening. The water temperature should be more than fine with my wetsuit (in fact, perhaps a tad too warm), but then it started raining.
"I'm not swimming in the rain!" I thought.
Then I realised how utterly stoopid that was...
I quite like swimming in the sea in the rain - fewer people around mocking my inability to surf...
I donned my wetsuit yesterday for a dunk in Manley Mere - they have a Total Wipeout-style assault course there. Great fun. But definitely more pleasant in the sun.
Do PBers listen to that prog btw? It's kind of a Centrist Dad heaven. You get the elegant (although slightly self-regarding and infused with class privilege) lilt of Rory Stewart interspersed with the pungent throb of Alastair Campbell, the both of them highly articulate, rational, animated by a deep dislike of populism.
You've noticed his self-hatred too?
Oh do stop it, William. NL weren't 'populist' in the sense of blaming elites and immigrants for everything. They were managerial smidgen left centrists.
Why do you lump in anyone who has concern about Palestinians as Hamas?
You’d lose your shit if I labelled every pro Israeli as pro genocide for Israeli’s actions in the occupied territories ?
Anyone who devotes 100% of their energy to what is happening in Gaza, and yet somehow manages to not mention the terrorist acts perpetrated by the resident terrorist organisation isn't motivated by humanitarianism.
I wouldn't go that far but certainly there were some witnesses for the defence who could have been called who weren't at the trial
Interesting. So far I have seen nothing to indicate the convictions are not safe.
You need to start with the 56 page court of appeal judgment, see if anything in that is properly open to precise criticism.
You then have to guess why the defence didn't call its experts (see para 5), using the obvious explanation unless you have a better one.
Then draft, in ordinary English, the precise (not vague or hand waving) ground or grounds which you argue render the convictions unsafe either because of fresh evidence (be precise), or that the evidence for the prosecution was in precise ways false, or failed to give scope for a jury to convict. Note there was corroboration of the evidence.
Then ask and explain why the defence didn't use your grounds in their appeal.
General and imprecise points about stats, rotas, other reasons for dying etc won't do.
The only explanation for why the defence didn’t call their own expert witness that I have seen that makes any sense is that they thought they had fatally undermined the credibility of the prosecution expert witness in court, so there was no need to call their own.
As I understand things the prosecution expert witness cold approached the police in the first place & was involved in the building of the prosecution case before appearing on the stand as an expert witness. He also had previous history in the courts where an appeal judge described him as “tendentious and partisan”. Unfortunately for Letby’s defence, it turns out that, even if you convince a jury that a witness might be biased, if you don’t give them any alternative explanation for the facts of the case the jury may well decide that the only story they have been given is most probably the correct one.
Having failed to call their expert witness in the original trial none of their expert evidence can be used at appeal, leaving any appeal dead in the water without any new evidence.
In this interpretation the legal strategy decided on by her defence completely undermined whatever case they might have had & made it impossible to appeal afterwards.
It does seem that, whatever else one might think of this case, the presentation to the jury of an “expert witness” as an independent third party bringing their neutral opinion to the court was completely at odds with reality & the wider context of the use of expert witnesses by the court in this fashion needs to be looked at.
Re the bit in bold, I have a bridge to sell you. Private Eye fell for that rubbish too.
They could of course have called any amount of expert evidence on the retrial (and didn't), and if that had been followed by an acquittal a number of interesting avenues would have risen up. You have to conclude that they didn't because they couldn't unless a better explanation emerges.
Second day of autumn, and we've got very autumnal weather. Grey, damp, chilly.
We must have had under 10 days of actual summer weather this year.
I blame the Labour government.
I don't normally like to complain about the weather (or weather apps, as I know how they work). But back from another ghastly August week in Devon I've finally had enough. Last week was forecast to be largely sunny and dry. Yet in reality we had several days of grey skies and rain (and the apps were showing sunny skies at the time).
In the words of a recent survivor of a life threatening existence - enough. Time to move the UK south by 500 miles. We have enough engineers on PB - there must be away?
Or if not relocating the UK, lets roll back on our climate change mitigation. I keep being promised a warmer UK with a mediterranean climate - bring it on! Fire up the wood burners, tear down the wind farms and solar parks and burn that coal.
Enough.
I keep telling you all. I genuinely believe our climate has significantly worsened in the last few years and we now having something closer to anchorage Alaska or the Aleutian Islands
Ie lots and lots of dreary cool greyness, all year, but the odd blasting week of hot hot hot. Except we won’t get the fun Alaskan snow
It helps that I am typing this in balmy 26C on the Montenegrin plateau with a cold Niksicko beer
It's been warm and dry in London for ages – too warm, too dry. Thankfully had a little bit of rain today.
(P.S. I drank my body weight in that stuff – €1 a pint widely... cheapest thing on the menu, including water!)
Second day of autumn, and we've got very autumnal weather. Grey, damp, chilly.
We must have had under 10 days of actual summer weather this year.
I blame the Labour government.
I don't normally like to complain about the weather (or weather apps, as I know how they work). But back from another ghastly August week in Devon I've finally had enough. Last week was forecast to be largely sunny and dry. Yet in reality we had several days of grey skies and rain (and the apps were showing sunny skies at the time).
In the words of a recent survivor of a life threatening existence - enough. Time to move the UK south by 500 miles. We have enough engineers on PB - there must be away?
Or if not relocating the UK, lets roll back on our climate change mitigation. I keep being promised a warmer UK with a mediterranean climate - bring it on! Fire up the wood burners, tear down the wind farms and solar parks and burn that coal.
Enough.
I keep telling you all. I genuinely believe our climate has significantly worsened in the last few years and we now having something closer to anchorage Alaska or the Aleutian Islands
Ie lots and lots of dreary cool greyness, all year, but the odd blasting week of hot hot hot. Except we won’t get the fun Alaskan snow
It helps that I am typing this in balmy 26C on the Montenegrin plateau with a cold Niksicko beer
I was mainly joking, but it does seem to have been a bit shit this year.
In general we have terrible recall of weather from the past. I've been going on holiday to North Devon since I was born. My childhood memories are of sunny days on the beach, every day for a week. And yet that cannot be true (and asking my parents confirms it as not true). There was also the notorious bank holiday weather of 1986 - the Birmingham Superprix was on. We sat in the car at the beach and watched the rain lash down for hours.
And yet this summer has been so dire that even I am downhearted...
It hasn’t been “a bit shit” - the UK has just experienced its wettest 18 months on record and now it is likely heading into another wet autumn
If you read weather geeks then quite a few are saying this is genuine climate change. Britain is shifting into a worse wetter greyer climate
Paradoxically it will be warmer - or appear to be warmer - but that will come from milder but greyer winters and from greater warmth overnight due to more cloud cover
We will get the worst of all worlds. Or, I should say, YOU will
Probably the best place to live in Britain will be northern Scotland which might gain from more clear skies
The bad news is this August was actually not that bad - warmer than average and drier than average (though I suspect not sunnier, I’ll await the stats). That’s how shit our average climate is.
It’s been best the further East you go. Like today. 24 degrees and sunny skies at my vineyard weather station in East Kent, 21 here in London.
17C and central heating in Airedale.
Thought you were a tougher bunch up north - stick another jumper on!
My wife always uses the excuse "I'm from a hot country" as justification for turning up the thermostat. The fact she left the hot country 59 years ago so ought to be used to the Yorkshire climate by now appears not to be relevant.
He also thought Brexit would be sorted out in an afternoon and he also thought triggering a vanity by election was a good idea.
Colour me sceptical.
DD guested on the Rest is Politics recently and did not come over well. Rather brittle and defensive.
Do PBers listen to that prog btw? It's kind of a Centrist Dad heaven. You get the elegant (although slightly self-regarding and infused with class privilege) lilt of Rory Stewart interspersed with the pungent throb of Alastair Campbell, the both of them highly articulate, rational, animated by a deep dislike of populism. You listen to it for an hour or so and come away feeling calmer and more cheerful and grounded than when you started. Not many political podcasts do that but this one does.
A quibble though. There's a nice mix of centre left and centre right sentiment but this doesn’t map across to objective neutrality on the parties. Stewart is not a partisan tory. He finds it easy to criticise them and to say positive things about Labour. Campbell otoh is the definition of tribal. He can’t say anything good about the Conservatives or bad about Labour (now it’s his sort of Labour again under SKS as opposed to the Corbyn version) without choking. This (imo) rather unbalances the show.
I can't stand Campbell. He's a true, 100% shit who should be hiding his face away in anonymity somewhere. And Stewart should have remained in the party, rather than quitting.
But yes, I do occasionally listen to RiP...
Why so down on AC? I think he's a quality pundit if you adjust for the tribalism.
Terrible behaviour with Kelly, it cost a good man's life, but I don't rank him as the sort of unmitigated villain who should be forever cancelled.
Absolutely. All those Iraqis were just NPCs - Campbell was the one who truly suffered.
Premeditated lying and faking information to start a war isn’t even a real crime.
Do PBers listen to that prog btw? It's kind of a Centrist Dad heaven. You get the elegant (although slightly self-regarding and infused with class privilege) lilt of Rory Stewart interspersed with the pungent throb of Alastair Campbell, the both of them highly articulate, rational, animated by a deep dislike of populism.
You've noticed his self-hatred too?
Oh do stop it, William. NL weren't 'populist' in the sense of blaming elites and immigrants for everything. They were managerial smidgen left centrists.
I wouldn't go that far but certainly there were some witnesses for the defence who could have been called who weren't at the trial
Interesting. So far I have seen nothing to indicate the convictions are not safe.
You need to start with the 56 page court of appeal judgment, see if anything in that is properly open to precise criticism.
You then have to guess why the defence didn't call its experts (see para 5), using the obvious explanation unless you have a better one.
Then draft, in ordinary English, the precise (not vague or hand waving) ground or grounds which you argue render the convictions unsafe either because of fresh evidence (be precise), or that the evidence for the prosecution was in precise ways false, or failed to give scope for a jury to convict. Note there was corroboration of the evidence.
Then ask and explain why the defence didn't use your grounds in their appeal.
General and imprecise points about stats, rotas, other reasons for dying etc won't do.
The only explanation for why the defence didn’t call their own expert witness that I have seen that makes any sense is that they thought they had fatally undermined the credibility of the prosecution expert witness in court, so there was no need to call their own.
As I understand things the prosecution expert witness cold approached the police in the first place & was involved in the building of the prosecution case before appearing on the stand as an expert witness. He also had previous history in the courts where an appeal judge described him as “tendentious and partisan”. Unfortunately for Letby’s defence, it turns out that, even if you convince a jury that a witness might be biased, if you don’t give them any alternative explanation for the facts of the case the jury may well decide that the only story they have been given is most probably the correct one.
Having failed to call their expert witness in the original trial none of their expert evidence can be used at appeal, leaving any appeal dead in the water without any new evidence.
In this interpretation the legal strategy decided on by her defence completely undermined whatever case they might have had & made it impossible to appeal afterwards.
It does seem that, whatever else one might think of this case, the presentation to the jury of an “expert witness” as an independent third party bringing their neutral opinion to the court was completely at odds with reality & the wider context of the use of expert witnesses by the court in this fashion needs to be looked at.
Re the bit in bold, I have a bridge to sell you. Private Eye fell for that rubbish too.
They could of course have called any amount of expert evidence on the retrial (and didn't), and if that had been followed by an acquittal a number of interesting avenues would have risen up. You have to conclude that they didn't because they couldn't unless a better explanation emerges.
He also thought Brexit would be sorted out in an afternoon and he also thought triggering a vanity by election was a good idea.
Colour me sceptical.
DD guested on the Rest is Politics recently and did not come over well. Rather brittle and defensive.
Do PBers listen to that prog btw? It's kind of a Centrist Dad heaven. You get the elegant (although slightly self-regarding and infused with class privilege) lilt of Rory Stewart interspersed with the pungent throb of Alastair Campbell, the both of them highly articulate, rational, animated by a deep dislike of populism. You listen to it for an hour or so and come away feeling calmer and more cheerful and grounded than when you started. Not many political podcasts do that but this one does.
A quibble though. There's a nice mix of centre left and centre right sentiment but this doesn’t map across to objective neutrality on the parties. Stewart is not a partisan tory. He finds it easy to criticise them and to say positive things about Labour. Campbell otoh is the definition of tribal. He can’t say anything good about the Conservatives or bad about Labour (now it’s his sort of Labour again under SKS as opposed to the Corbyn version) without choking. This (imo) rather unbalances the show.
I can't stand Campbell. He's a true, 100% shit who should be hiding his face away in anonymity somewhere. And Stewart should have remained in the party, rather than quitting.
But yes, I do occasionally listen to RiP...
Why so down on AC? I think he's a quality pundit if you adjust for the tribalism.
Terrible behaviour with Kelly, it cost a good man's life, but I don't rank him as the sort of unmitigated villain who should be forever cancelled.
Absolutely. All those Iraqis were just NPCs - Campbell was the one who truly suffered.
Premeditated lying and faking information to start a war isn’t even a real crime.
And your point is what? That you don't rate him as a pundit? Or that he shouldn't even be one?
He also thought Brexit would be sorted out in an afternoon and he also thought triggering a vanity by election was a good idea.
Colour me sceptical.
DD guested on the Rest is Politics recently and did not come over well. Rather brittle and defensive.
Do PBers listen to that prog btw? It's kind of a Centrist Dad heaven. You get the elegant (although slightly self-regarding and infused with class privilege) lilt of Rory Stewart interspersed with the pungent throb of Alastair Campbell, the both of them highly articulate, rational, animated by a deep dislike of populism. You listen to it for an hour or so and come away feeling calmer and more cheerful and grounded than when you started. Not many political podcasts do that but this one does.
A quibble though. There's a nice mix of centre left and centre right sentiment but this doesn’t map across to objective neutrality on the parties. Stewart is not a partisan tory. He finds it easy to criticise them and to say positive things about Labour. Campbell otoh is the definition of tribal. He can’t say anything good about the Conservatives or bad about Labour (now it’s his sort of Labour again under SKS as opposed to the Corbyn version) without choking. This (imo) rather unbalances the show.
I can't stand Campbell. He's a true, 100% shit who should be hiding his face away in anonymity somewhere. And Stewart should have remained in the party, rather than quitting.
But yes, I do occasionally listen to RiP...
Why so down on AC? I think he's a quality pundit if you adjust for the tribalism.
Terrible behaviour with Kelly, it cost a good man's life, but I don't rank him as the sort of unmitigated villain who should be forever cancelled.
He's someone who speaks very well about his struggles with his own mental health, yet was perfectly willing to destroy other people's for his own gain.
He's a nasty piece of work, whose only redeeming feature is being able to communicate well.
I wouldn't go that far but certainly there were some witnesses for the defence who could have been called who weren't at the trial
Interesting. So far I have seen nothing to indicate the convictions are not safe.
You need to start with the 56 page court of appeal judgment, see if anything in that is properly open to precise criticism.
You then have to guess why the defence didn't call its experts (see para 5), using the obvious explanation unless you have a better one.
Then draft, in ordinary English, the precise (not vague or hand waving) ground or grounds which you argue render the convictions unsafe either because of fresh evidence (be precise), or that the evidence for the prosecution was in precise ways false, or failed to give scope for a jury to convict. Note there was corroboration of the evidence.
Then ask and explain why the defence didn't use your grounds in their appeal.
General and imprecise points about stats, rotas, other reasons for dying etc won't do.
Have you ever worked at Womble Bond Dickinson by any chance?
No, and your exact point in relation to the Letby trials is?
Read the article. Then let's talk. I value your evidently informed view of it all.
Edit: I mean there wasn't any evidence that she killed anyone but that doesn't seem to have mattered. Is that ever a factor in such trials? That there needs to be evidence for the crime. Perhaps not. Read the article and get back to me.
I have had a look at the New Yorker article, though I will need to look closer.
Firstly, if there is no evidence that Letby killed someone, then she can't be convicted. I think you may mean there is no smoking gun or video of the events. There usually isn't. Evidence is often a series of threads of connecting evidence about time, place, opportunity, motive.
The article. It's journalism. Thus far I cannot piece together, from this article, enough fragments to draft a short paragraph to describe why there are grounds to think the conviction is unsafe.
Like Private Eye, it relies on an utterly desperate suggestion about the defence and why it called no expert evidence when it is known that they had expert reports:
"Perhaps it had seemed that the prosecution's case was so weak that defence experts weren't necessary".
I have a bridge to sell them if they believe any counsel, with a client who is going to get a whole life order on conviction, would fail to call scientific evidence that would help their case. (And do the same on the retrial).
One small further point. I am keeping an open mind. The strongest case were the insulin cases, which were not the subject of the appeal specifically, unlike the embolism ones. I have not yey noticed even generalised hand waving about those. IIRC correctly it is not disputed by the defence that these babies were murdered. Worth keeping an eye on that element of the case.
It was not disputed by the defence but it jolly well should have been according to everyone else because the test establishing the presence of insulin cannot tell endogenous from artificial. This is Googleable.
He also thought Brexit would be sorted out in an afternoon and he also thought triggering a vanity by election was a good idea.
Colour me sceptical.
DD guested on the Rest is Politics recently and did not come over well. Rather brittle and defensive.
Do PBers listen to that prog btw? It's kind of a Centrist Dad heaven. You get the elegant (although slightly self-regarding and infused with class privilege) lilt of Rory Stewart interspersed with the pungent throb of Alastair Campbell, the both of them highly articulate, rational, animated by a deep dislike of populism. You listen to it for an hour or so and come away feeling calmer and more cheerful and grounded than when you started. Not many political podcasts do that but this one does.
A quibble though. There's a nice mix of centre left and centre right sentiment but this doesn’t map across to objective neutrality on the parties. Stewart is not a partisan tory. He finds it easy to criticise them and to say positive things about Labour. Campbell otoh is the definition of tribal. He can’t say anything good about the Conservatives or bad about Labour (now it’s his sort of Labour again under SKS as opposed to the Corbyn version) without choking. This (imo) rather unbalances the show.
I can't stand Campbell. He's a true, 100% shit who should be hiding his face away in anonymity somewhere. And Stewart should have remained in the party, rather than quitting.
But yes, I do occasionally listen to RiP...
Why so down on AC? I think he's a quality pundit if you adjust for the tribalism.
Terrible behaviour with Kelly, it cost a good man's life, but I don't rank him as the sort of unmitigated villain who should be forever cancelled.
Yeah he's fine other than driving another person to suicide. Really great guy.
And my apologies for going back to a previous discussion. (The 8 hour time difference does make it harder for me to be current.)
Britain could, following the example of medieval Poland, elect kings, instead of presidents: "The Union of Lublin of 1569 established the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, a federal state more closely unified than the earlier political arrangement between Poland and Lithuania. The union was run largely by the nobility through the system of central parliament and local assemblies, but was headed by elected kings. The formal rule of the nobility, who were proportionally more numerous than in other European countries, constituted an early democratic system ("a sophisticated noble democracy"),[46] in contrast to the absolute monarchies prevalent at that time in the rest of Europe." (Links omitted.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Poland#Piast_period_(10th_century–1385)
As I understand it, other nations sometimes tried to interfere with the Polish elections, but, fortunately that would never happen today. /sarc
There must be a chance one or two Labour MPs will join this group at some point over the next few years.
"Jeremy Corbyn to form alliance with four independent pro-Gaza MPs Group calls for more MPs to join and vows to campaign on issues such as austerity and two-child benefit cap"
He also thought Brexit would be sorted out in an afternoon and he also thought triggering a vanity by election was a good idea.
Colour me sceptical.
DD guested on the Rest is Politics recently and did not come over well. Rather brittle and defensive.
Do PBers listen to that prog btw? It's kind of a Centrist Dad heaven. You get the elegant (although slightly self-regarding and infused with class privilege) lilt of Rory Stewart interspersed with the pungent throb of Alastair Campbell, the both of them highly articulate, rational, animated by a deep dislike of populism. You listen to it for an hour or so and come away feeling calmer and more cheerful and grounded than when you started. Not many political podcasts do that but this one does.
A quibble though. There's a nice mix of centre left and centre right sentiment but this doesn’t map across to objective neutrality on the parties. Stewart is not a partisan tory. He finds it easy to criticise them and to say positive things about Labour. Campbell otoh is the definition of tribal. He can’t say anything good about the Conservatives or bad about Labour (now it’s his sort of Labour again under SKS as opposed to the Corbyn version) without choking. This (imo) rather unbalances the show.
I can't stand Campbell. He's a true, 100% shit who should be hiding his face away in anonymity somewhere. And Stewart should have remained in the party, rather than quitting.
But yes, I do occasionally listen to RiP...
Why so down on AC? I think he's a quality pundit if you adjust for the tribalism.
Terrible behaviour with Kelly, it cost a good man's life, but I don't rank him as the sort of unmitigated villain who should be forever cancelled.
He's someone who speaks very well about his struggles with his own mental health, yet was perfectly willing to destroy other people's for his own gain.
He's a nasty piece of work, whose only redeeming feature is being able to communicate well.
Ok but do you mean specifically Kelly? Or some sort of pattern where he's gone about deliberately destroying people's lives?
Second day of autumn, and we've got very autumnal weather. Grey, damp, chilly.
We must have had under 10 days of actual summer weather this year.
I blame the Labour government.
I don't normally like to complain about the weather (or weather apps, as I know how they work). But back from another ghastly August week in Devon I've finally had enough. Last week was forecast to be largely sunny and dry. Yet in reality we had several days of grey skies and rain (and the apps were showing sunny skies at the time).
In the words of a recent survivor of a life threatening existence - enough. Time to move the UK south by 500 miles. We have enough engineers on PB - there must be away?
Or if not relocating the UK, lets roll back on our climate change mitigation. I keep being promised a warmer UK with a mediterranean climate - bring it on! Fire up the wood burners, tear down the wind farms and solar parks and burn that coal.
Enough.
I keep telling you all. I genuinely believe our climate has significantly worsened in the last few years and we now having something closer to anchorage Alaska or the Aleutian Islands
Ie lots and lots of dreary cool greyness, all year, but the odd blasting week of hot hot hot. Except we won’t get the fun Alaskan snow
It helps that I am typing this in balmy 26C on the Montenegrin plateau with a cold Niksicko beer
I was mainly joking, but it does seem to have been a bit shit this year.
In general we have terrible recall of weather from the past. I've been going on holiday to North Devon since I was born. My childhood memories are of sunny days on the beach, every day for a week. And yet that cannot be true (and asking my parents confirms it as not true). There was also the notorious bank holiday weather of 1986 - the Birmingham Superprix was on. We sat in the car at the beach and watched the rain lash down for hours.
And yet this summer has been so dire that even I am downhearted...
It hasn’t been “a bit shit” - the UK has just experienced its wettest 18 months on record and now it is likely heading into another wet autumn
If you read weather geeks then quite a few are saying this is genuine climate change. Britain is shifting into a worse wetter greyer climate
Paradoxically it will be warmer - or appear to be warmer - but that will come from milder but greyer winters and from greater warmth overnight due to more cloud cover
We will get the worst of all worlds. Or, I should say, YOU will
Probably the best place to live in Britain will be northern Scotland which might gain from more clear skies
The bad news is this August was actually not that bad - warmer than average and drier than average (though I suspect not sunnier, I’ll await the stats). That’s how shit our average climate is.
It’s been best the further East you go. Like today. 24 degrees and sunny skies at my vineyard weather station in East Kent, 21 here in London.
17C and central heating in Airedale.
Yes and August here on South West Scotland has been wettest ever and cold , lucky if 2 good days. Been worst summer I can remember.
Do PBers listen to that prog btw? It's kind of a Centrist Dad heaven. You get the elegant (although slightly self-regarding and infused with class privilege) lilt of Rory Stewart interspersed with the pungent throb of Alastair Campbell, the both of them highly articulate, rational, animated by a deep dislike of populism.
You've noticed his self-hatred too?
Oh do stop it, William. NL weren't 'populist' in the sense of blaming elites and immigrants for everything. They were managerial smidgen left centrists.
Remember when Alastair Campbell orchestrated a racist anti-asylum seeker campaign with The Sun newspaper.
And there'll no doubt be other less than savoury episodes from a career as a spin doctor in big ticket politics. But were NL a populist movement? No. Or if they were we need a new definition of the term.
Do PBers listen to that prog btw? It's kind of a Centrist Dad heaven. You get the elegant (although slightly self-regarding and infused with class privilege) lilt of Rory Stewart interspersed with the pungent throb of Alastair Campbell, the both of them highly articulate, rational, animated by a deep dislike of populism.
You've noticed his self-hatred too?
Oh do stop it, William. NL weren't 'populist' in the sense of blaming elites and immigrants for everything. They were managerial smidgen left centrists.
Remember when Alastair Campbell orchestrated a racist anti-asylum seeker campaign with The Sun newspaper.
And there'll no doubt be other less than savoury episodes from a career as a spin doctor in big ticket politics. But were NL a populist movement? No. Or if they were we need a new definition of the term.
They literally did blame elites and "forces of conservatism" for all the problems, pose as the true voice of the people - their "political wing" - and made liberal use of scapegoats. The term fits them fairly well.
Second day of autumn, and we've got very autumnal weather. Grey, damp, chilly.
We must have had under 10 days of actual summer weather this year.
I blame the Labour government.
I don't normally like to complain about the weather (or weather apps, as I know how they work). But back from another ghastly August week in Devon I've finally had enough. Last week was forecast to be largely sunny and dry. Yet in reality we had several days of grey skies and rain (and the apps were showing sunny skies at the time).
In the words of a recent survivor of a life threatening existence - enough. Time to move the UK south by 500 miles. We have enough engineers on PB - there must be away?
Or if not relocating the UK, lets roll back on our climate change mitigation. I keep being promised a warmer UK with a mediterranean climate - bring it on! Fire up the wood burners, tear down the wind farms and solar parks and burn that coal.
Enough.
I keep telling you all. I genuinely believe our climate has significantly worsened in the last few years and we now having something closer to anchorage Alaska or the Aleutian Islands
Ie lots and lots of dreary cool greyness, all year, but the odd blasting week of hot hot hot. Except we won’t get the fun Alaskan snow
It helps that I am typing this in balmy 26C on the Montenegrin plateau with a cold Niksicko beer
I was mainly joking, but it does seem to have been a bit shit this year.
In general we have terrible recall of weather from the past. I've been going on holiday to North Devon since I was born. My childhood memories are of sunny days on the beach, every day for a week. And yet that cannot be true (and asking my parents confirms it as not true). There was also the notorious bank holiday weather of 1986 - the Birmingham Superprix was on. We sat in the car at the beach and watched the rain lash down for hours.
And yet this summer has been so dire that even I am downhearted...
It hasn’t been “a bit shit” - the UK has just experienced its wettest 18 months on record and now it is likely heading into another wet autumn
If you read weather geeks then quite a few are saying this is genuine climate change. Britain is shifting into a worse wetter greyer climate
Paradoxically it will be warmer - or appear to be warmer - but that will come from milder but greyer winters and from greater warmth overnight due to more cloud cover
We will get the worst of all worlds. Or, I should say, YOU will
Probably the best place to live in Britain will be northern Scotland which might gain from more clear skies
The bad news is this August was actually not that bad - warmer than average and drier than average (though I suspect not sunnier, I’ll await the stats). That’s how shit our average climate is.
It’s been best the further East you go. Like today. 24 degrees and sunny skies at my vineyard weather station in East Kent, 21 here in London.
17C and central heating in Airedale.
Thought you were a tougher bunch up north - stick another jumper on!
My wife always uses the excuse "I'm from a hot country" as justification for turning up the thermostat. The fact she left the hot country 59 years ago so ought to be used to the Yorkshire climate by now appears not to be relevant.
Hmm, mine is from the Tropical South (Portsmouth) so maybe that's why she is always cold too...
He also thought Brexit would be sorted out in an afternoon and he also thought triggering a vanity by election was a good idea.
Colour me sceptical.
DD guested on the Rest is Politics recently and did not come over well. Rather brittle and defensive.
Do PBers listen to that prog btw? It's kind of a Centrist Dad heaven. You get the elegant (although slightly self-regarding and infused with class privilege) lilt of Rory Stewart interspersed with the pungent throb of Alastair Campbell, the both of them highly articulate, rational, animated by a deep dislike of populism. You listen to it for an hour or so and come away feeling calmer and more cheerful and grounded than when you started. Not many political podcasts do that but this one does.
A quibble though. There's a nice mix of centre left and centre right sentiment but this doesn’t map across to objective neutrality on the parties. Stewart is not a partisan tory. He finds it easy to criticise them and to say positive things about Labour. Campbell otoh is the definition of tribal. He can’t say anything good about the Conservatives or bad about Labour (now it’s his sort of Labour again under SKS as opposed to the Corbyn version) without choking. This (imo) rather unbalances the show.
I can't stand Campbell. He's a true, 100% shit who should be hiding his face away in anonymity somewhere. And Stewart should have remained in the party, rather than quitting.
But yes, I do occasionally listen to RiP...
Why so down on AC? I think he's a quality pundit if you adjust for the tribalism.
Terrible behaviour with Kelly, it cost a good man's life, but I don't rank him as the sort of unmitigated villain who should be forever cancelled.
He's someone who speaks very well about his struggles with his own mental health, yet was perfectly willing to destroy other people's for his own gain.
He's a nasty piece of work, whose only redeeming feature is being able to communicate well.
Ok but do you mean specifically Kelly? Or some sort of pattern where he's gone about deliberately destroying people's lives?
How many Iraqis died? Hundreds of thousands wasn't it? And we went to war on lies cooked up (partly) by AC to make the case look more damning. And the man who knew it had been sexed up was hounded to take his own life.
We have had a range of problems with polling in this country, not least at the last election where polling consistently showing the Labour party over 40% completely dominated the narrative and proved to be complete rubbish. But jeez, polling the US is something else.
I have raised my concerns with RCP a number of times. In brief an aggregator who ignores polling that they don't like and allows their averages to be influenced by the likes of Rasmussen and Trafalgar is not worth the pixels.
I mentioned this morning that the very large increases in registration for women in general and young black and Hispanic women in particular suggests that the modelling used on the samples may well be out of date.
It is not clear to what extent, if at all, the genuine pollsters adjusted their figures after the result in 2016 and, to a lesser extent, 2020 when polling underestimated Trump. A lot is being made of the fact that Harris is somewhere between Hilary's lead and Biden's lead but are we actually comparing like with like?
Money plays an exceptionally large part in US elections. Harris has a lot more of it and Trump has a tendency to funnel a lot of his money, over $500m the last time, through a company that he has a substantial interest in. There are some suggestions that on actual advertising, especially digital advertising Trump may be getting outspent by a reasonable multiple, possibly even 10x.
The polling also seems to have no regard to the other things going on in the relevant states either. In Arizona, for example, the Senate race has a Democratic lead of 14-15% with the truly appalling Lake cratering. Will that drag out more Democrats? In that state, and in many others, there are a lot of other things on the ballot, particularly resolutions in relation to abortion. This may pull out supporters from both sides but the suggestion seems to be that the Evangelicals have overreached themselves.
None of this suggests that I have any great insight. In fact it is much more a list of things I don't know. What I would say is that we cannot yet be confident that Trump is going to be thrashed and, until we are, we should all be paying attention.
He also thought Brexit would be sorted out in an afternoon and he also thought triggering a vanity by election was a good idea.
Colour me sceptical.
DD guested on the Rest is Politics recently and did not come over well. Rather brittle and defensive.
Do PBers listen to that prog btw? It's kind of a Centrist Dad heaven. You get the elegant (although slightly self-regarding and infused with class privilege) lilt of Rory Stewart interspersed with the pungent throb of Alastair Campbell, the both of them highly articulate, rational, animated by a deep dislike of populism. You listen to it for an hour or so and come away feeling calmer and more cheerful and grounded than when you started. Not many political podcasts do that but this one does.
A quibble though. There's a nice mix of centre left and centre right sentiment but this doesn’t map across to objective neutrality on the parties. Stewart is not a partisan tory. He finds it easy to criticise them and to say positive things about Labour. Campbell otoh is the definition of tribal. He can’t say anything good about the Conservatives or bad about Labour (now it’s his sort of Labour again under SKS as opposed to the Corbyn version) without choking. This (imo) rather unbalances the show.
I can't stand Campbell. He's a true, 100% shit who should be hiding his face away in anonymity somewhere. And Stewart should have remained in the party, rather than quitting.
But yes, I do occasionally listen to RiP...
Why so down on AC? I think he's a quality pundit if you adjust for the tribalism.
Terrible behaviour with Kelly, it cost a good man's life, but I don't rank him as the sort of unmitigated villain who should be forever cancelled.
Yeah he's fine other than driving another person to suicide. Really great guy.
I have merely proffered the following 3 things. AC is a good pundit if you adjust for the tribalism. AC behaved terribly on Kelly. AC is not an unmitigated villain who should be denied a platform.
This seems to have triggered people to drip sanctimonious sarcasm onto me. And here's me with impeccable anti-Iraq War credentials too. Not fair!
He also thought Brexit would be sorted out in an afternoon and he also thought triggering a vanity by election was a good idea.
Colour me sceptical.
DD guested on the Rest is Politics recently and did not come over well. Rather brittle and defensive.
Do PBers listen to that prog btw? It's kind of a Centrist Dad heaven. You get the elegant (although slightly self-regarding and infused with class privilege) lilt of Rory Stewart interspersed with the pungent throb of Alastair Campbell, the both of them highly articulate, rational, animated by a deep dislike of populism. You listen to it for an hour or so and come away feeling calmer and more cheerful and grounded than when you started. Not many political podcasts do that but this one does.
A quibble though. There's a nice mix of centre left and centre right sentiment but this doesn’t map across to objective neutrality on the parties. Stewart is not a partisan tory. He finds it easy to criticise them and to say positive things about Labour. Campbell otoh is the definition of tribal. He can’t say anything good about the Conservatives or bad about Labour (now it’s his sort of Labour again under SKS as opposed to the Corbyn version) without choking. This (imo) rather unbalances the show.
I can't stand Campbell. He's a true, 100% shit who should be hiding his face away in anonymity somewhere. And Stewart should have remained in the party, rather than quitting.
But yes, I do occasionally listen to RiP...
Why so down on AC? I think he's a quality pundit if you adjust for the tribalism.
Terrible behaviour with Kelly, it cost a good man's life, but I don't rank him as the sort of unmitigated villain who should be forever cancelled.
Yeah he's fine other than driving another person to suicide. Really great guy.
I have merely proffered the following 3 things. AC is a good pundit if you adjust for the tribalism. AC behaved terribly on Kelly. AC is not an unmitigated villain who should be denied a platform.
This seems to have triggered people to drip sanctimonious sarcasm onto me. And here's me with impeccable anti-Iraq War credentials too. Not fair!
I have serious issues about this statement "AC is not an unmitigated villain who should be denied a platform". I think he is. If we can cancel Danny Baker for a tweet that some deliberately over-interpreted, then faking a case for a war where hundreds of thousands died is definitely up there. But hey, he's a good pundit.
I hear Jimmy Saville was really good at raising money for charity.
He also thought Brexit would be sorted out in an afternoon and he also thought triggering a vanity by election was a good idea.
Colour me sceptical.
DD guested on the Rest is Politics recently and did not come over well. Rather brittle and defensive.
Do PBers listen to that prog btw? It's kind of a Centrist Dad heaven. You get the elegant (although slightly self-regarding and infused with class privilege) lilt of Rory Stewart interspersed with the pungent throb of Alastair Campbell, the both of them highly articulate, rational, animated by a deep dislike of populism. You listen to it for an hour or so and come away feeling calmer and more cheerful and grounded than when you started. Not many political podcasts do that but this one does.
A quibble though. There's a nice mix of centre left and centre right sentiment but this doesn’t map across to objective neutrality on the parties. Stewart is not a partisan tory. He finds it easy to criticise them and to say positive things about Labour. Campbell otoh is the definition of tribal. He can’t say anything good about the Conservatives or bad about Labour (now it’s his sort of Labour again under SKS as opposed to the Corbyn version) without choking. This (imo) rather unbalances the show.
I can't stand Campbell. He's a true, 100% shit who should be hiding his face away in anonymity somewhere. And Stewart should have remained in the party, rather than quitting.
But yes, I do occasionally listen to RiP...
Why so down on AC? I think he's a quality pundit if you adjust for the tribalism.
Terrible behaviour with Kelly, it cost a good man's life, but I don't rank him as the sort of unmitigated villain who should be forever cancelled.
He's someone who speaks very well about his struggles with his own mental health, yet was perfectly willing to destroy other people's for his own gain.
He's a nasty piece of work, whose only redeeming feature is being able to communicate well.
Ok but do you mean specifically Kelly? Or some sort of pattern where he's gone about deliberately destroying people's lives?
How many Iraqis died? Hundreds of thousands wasn't it? And we went to war on lies cooked up (partly) by AC to make the case look more damning. And the man who knew it had been sexed up was hounded to take his own life.
I see you have a lot to learn about which brown people it is ok to kill and which ones it is genocide to kill. At least Corbs was against killing all brown people but plenty of leftists, why some on this very board, make a keen distinction.
I don't think we've really got to grips with the near term implications of the developments in drone use (and their mass production) during the war. They will not be confined to Ukraine, and I doubt they will be entirely confined to use within the confines of war, either.
I wouldn't go that far but certainly there were some witnesses for the defence who could have been called who weren't at the trial
Interesting. So far I have seen nothing to indicate the convictions are not safe.
You need to start with the 56 page court of appeal judgment, see if anything in that is properly open to precise criticism.
You then have to guess why the defence didn't call its experts (see para 5), using the obvious explanation unless you have a better one.
Then draft, in ordinary English, the precise (not vague or hand waving) ground or grounds which you argue render the convictions unsafe either because of fresh evidence (be precise), or that the evidence for the prosecution was in precise ways false, or failed to give scope for a jury to convict. Note there was corroboration of the evidence.
Then ask and explain why the defence didn't use your grounds in their appeal.
General and imprecise points about stats, rotas, other reasons for dying etc won't do.
The only explanation for why the defence didn’t call their own expert witness that I have seen that makes any sense is that they thought they had fatally undermined the credibility of the prosecution expert witness in court, so there was no need to call their own.
As I understand things the prosecution expert witness cold approached the police in the first place & was involved in the building of the prosecution case before appearing on the stand as an expert witness. He also had previous history in the courts where an appeal judge described him as “tendentious and partisan”. Unfortunately for Letby’s defence, it turns out that, even if you convince a jury that a witness might be biased, if you don’t give them any alternative explanation for the facts of the case the jury may well decide that the only story they have been given is most probably the correct one.
Having failed to call their expert witness in the original trial none of their expert evidence can be used at appeal, leaving any appeal dead in the water without any new evidence.
In this interpretation the legal strategy decided on by her defence completely undermined whatever case they might have had & made it impossible to appeal afterwards.
It does seem that, whatever else one might think of this case, the presentation to the jury of an “expert witness” as an independent third party bringing their neutral opinion to the court was completely at odds with reality & the wider context of the use of expert witnesses by the court in this fashion needs to be looked at.
Re the bit in bold, I have a bridge to sell you. Private Eye fell for that rubbish too.
They could of course have called any amount of expert evidence on the retrial (and didn't), and if that had been followed by an acquittal a number of interesting avenues would have risen up. You have to conclude that they didn't because they couldn't unless a better explanation emerges.
I didn’t say that I agreed or 100% believed that explanation - just that it’s the only one I’ve seen that makes any sense, given the very strong opinion of the expert witness they did retain (who sat through the entire case IIRC) that they should have been called & they do not understand why that didn’t happen.
NB A legal question to which I don’t know the answer: Letby was convicted of 7 murders, with one hung jury which went for later retrial. In between the first case & the retrial, she appealed the convictions in the first case & her appeal was denied. An attempt by her lawyers to introduce their own expert evidence in the appeal was denied by the appeal judge on the grounds that they could have introduced that evidence at the original trial & could not therefore introduce it now.
Given that background, was it actually legally possible for her lawyers to introduce fresh expert evidence at the retrial that they failed to use in the original trial? Would the trial judge have permitted it, or would it be seen as trying to re-litigate the original trial by the backdoor, which had already been denied to them in the court of appeal?
He also thought Brexit would be sorted out in an afternoon and he also thought triggering a vanity by election was a good idea.
Colour me sceptical.
DD guested on the Rest is Politics recently and did not come over well. Rather brittle and defensive.
Do PBers listen to that prog btw? It's kind of a Centrist Dad heaven. You get the elegant (although slightly self-regarding and infused with class privilege) lilt of Rory Stewart interspersed with the pungent throb of Alastair Campbell, the both of them highly articulate, rational, animated by a deep dislike of populism. You listen to it for an hour or so and come away feeling calmer and more cheerful and grounded than when you started. Not many political podcasts do that but this one does.
A quibble though. There's a nice mix of centre left and centre right sentiment but this doesn’t map across to objective neutrality on the parties. Stewart is not a partisan tory. He finds it easy to criticise them and to say positive things about Labour. Campbell otoh is the definition of tribal. He can’t say anything good about the Conservatives or bad about Labour (now it’s his sort of Labour again under SKS as opposed to the Corbyn version) without choking. This (imo) rather unbalances the show.
I can't stand Campbell. He's a true, 100% shit who should be hiding his face away in anonymity somewhere. And Stewart should have remained in the party, rather than quitting.
But yes, I do occasionally listen to RiP...
Why so down on AC? I think he's a quality pundit if you adjust for the tribalism.
Terrible behaviour with Kelly, it cost a good man's life, but I don't rank him as the sort of unmitigated villain who should be forever cancelled.
Yeah he's fine other than driving another person to suicide. Really great guy.
I have merely proffered the following 3 things. AC is a good pundit if you adjust for the tribalism. AC behaved terribly on Kelly. AC is not an unmitigated villain who should be denied a platform.
This seems to have triggered people to drip sanctimonious sarcasm onto me. And here's me with impeccable anti-Iraq War credentials too. Not fair!
I wouldn't argue he should be 'denied a platform'. But I do prefer my pundits not to have had a long history of dissembling to the public. Which also rules out characters like Boris.
I wouldn't go that far but certainly there were some witnesses for the defence who could have been called who weren't at the trial
Interesting. So far I have seen nothing to indicate the convictions are not safe.
You need to start with the 56 page court of appeal judgment, see if anything in that is properly open to precise criticism.
You then have to guess why the defence didn't call its experts (see para 5), using the obvious explanation unless you have a better one.
Then draft, in ordinary English, the precise (not vague or hand waving) ground or grounds which you argue render the convictions unsafe either because of fresh evidence (be precise), or that the evidence for the prosecution was in precise ways false, or failed to give scope for a jury to convict. Note there was corroboration of the evidence.
Then ask and explain why the defence didn't use your grounds in their appeal.
General and imprecise points about stats, rotas, other reasons for dying etc won't do.
Have you ever worked at Womble Bond Dickinson by any chance?
No, and your exact point in relation to the Letby trials is?
Read the article. Then let's talk. I value your evidently informed view of it all.
Edit: I mean there wasn't any evidence that she killed anyone but that doesn't seem to have mattered. Is that ever a factor in such trials? That there needs to be evidence for the crime. Perhaps not. Read the article and get back to me.
I have had a look at the New Yorker article, though I will need to look closer.
Firstly, if there is no evidence that Letby killed someone, then she can't be convicted. I think you may mean there is no smoking gun or video of the events. There usually isn't. Evidence is often a series of threads of connecting evidence about time, place, opportunity, motive.
The article. It's journalism. Thus far I cannot piece together, from this article, enough fragments to draft a short paragraph to describe why there are grounds to think the conviction is unsafe.
Like Private Eye, it relies on an utterly desperate suggestion about the defence and why it called no expert evidence when it is known that they had expert reports:
"Perhaps it had seemed that the prosecution's case was so weak that defence experts weren't necessary".
I have a bridge to sell them if they believe any counsel, with a client who is going to get a whole life order on conviction, would fail to call scientific evidence that would help their case. (And do the same on the retrial).
One small further point. I am keeping an open mind. The strongest case were the insulin cases, which were not the subject of the appeal specifically, unlike the embolism ones. I have not yey noticed even generalised hand waving about those. IIRC correctly it is not disputed by the defence that these babies were murdered. Worth keeping an eye on that element of the case.
It was not disputed by the defence but it jolly well should have been according to everyone else because the test establishing the presence of insulin cannot tell endogenous from artificial. This is Googleable.
The phrase "this is Googleable" sets off huge warning lights for me. You can find internet sources for every type of bullshit.
Is it possible an incompetent defence wrongly concedes a point they should not? It is, but it's very possible it was considered carefully and the circumstances of the case made it not a credible position.
He also thought Brexit would be sorted out in an afternoon and he also thought triggering a vanity by election was a good idea.
Colour me sceptical.
DD guested on the Rest is Politics recently and did not come over well. Rather brittle and defensive.
Do PBers listen to that prog btw? It's kind of a Centrist Dad heaven. You get the elegant (although slightly self-regarding and infused with class privilege) lilt of Rory Stewart interspersed with the pungent throb of Alastair Campbell, the both of them highly articulate, rational, animated by a deep dislike of populism. You listen to it for an hour or so and come away feeling calmer and more cheerful and grounded than when you started. Not many political podcasts do that but this one does.
A quibble though. There's a nice mix of centre left and centre right sentiment but this doesn’t map across to objective neutrality on the parties. Stewart is not a partisan tory. He finds it easy to criticise them and to say positive things about Labour. Campbell otoh is the definition of tribal. He can’t say anything good about the Conservatives or bad about Labour (now it’s his sort of Labour again under SKS as opposed to the Corbyn version) without choking. This (imo) rather unbalances the show.
I can't stand Campbell. He's a true, 100% shit who should be hiding his face away in anonymity somewhere. And Stewart should have remained in the party, rather than quitting.
But yes, I do occasionally listen to RiP...
Why so down on AC? I think he's a quality pundit if you adjust for the tribalism.
Terrible behaviour with Kelly, it cost a good man's life, but I don't rank him as the sort of unmitigated villain who should be forever cancelled.
Absolutely. All those Iraqis were just NPCs - Campbell was the one who truly suffered.
Premeditated lying and faking information to start a war isn’t even a real crime.
And your point is what? That you don't rate him as a pundit? Or that he shouldn't even be one?
That he is, to use technical terminology, a deliberately lying cunt, with a great deal of blood on his hands. Which got there from his considered and intended actions over a period of time.
If you want to hit at his feet... well, that says things about you.
He also thought Brexit would be sorted out in an afternoon and he also thought triggering a vanity by election was a good idea.
Colour me sceptical.
DD guested on the Rest is Politics recently and did not come over well. Rather brittle and defensive.
Do PBers listen to that prog btw? It's kind of a Centrist Dad heaven. You get the elegant (although slightly self-regarding and infused with class privilege) lilt of Rory Stewart interspersed with the pungent throb of Alastair Campbell, the both of them highly articulate, rational, animated by a deep dislike of populism. You listen to it for an hour or so and come away feeling calmer and more cheerful and grounded than when you started. Not many political podcasts do that but this one does.
A quibble though. There's a nice mix of centre left and centre right sentiment but this doesn’t map across to objective neutrality on the parties. Stewart is not a partisan tory. He finds it easy to criticise them and to say positive things about Labour. Campbell otoh is the definition of tribal. He can’t say anything good about the Conservatives or bad about Labour (now it’s his sort of Labour again under SKS as opposed to the Corbyn version) without choking. This (imo) rather unbalances the show.
I can't stand Campbell. He's a true, 100% shit who should be hiding his face away in anonymity somewhere. And Stewart should have remained in the party, rather than quitting.
But yes, I do occasionally listen to RiP...
Why so down on AC? I think he's a quality pundit if you adjust for the tribalism.
Terrible behaviour with Kelly, it cost a good man's life, but I don't rank him as the sort of unmitigated villain who should be forever cancelled.
He's someone who speaks very well about his struggles with his own mental health, yet was perfectly willing to destroy other people's for his own gain.
He's a nasty piece of work, whose only redeeming feature is being able to communicate well.
Ok but do you mean specifically Kelly? Or some sort of pattern where he's gone about deliberately destroying people's lives?
Kelly was just one example. He set about ruining the reputation and lives of anyone he saw as the 'enemy', using the full power of the government, and not caring what effect it would have on the 'enemy'.
And then he has the nerve to talk about his struggles with *his* mental health.
He also thought Brexit would be sorted out in an afternoon and he also thought triggering a vanity by election was a good idea.
Colour me sceptical.
DD guested on the Rest is Politics recently and did not come over well. Rather brittle and defensive.
Do PBers listen to that prog btw? It's kind of a Centrist Dad heaven. You get the elegant (although slightly self-regarding and infused with class privilege) lilt of Rory Stewart interspersed with the pungent throb of Alastair Campbell, the both of them highly articulate, rational, animated by a deep dislike of populism. You listen to it for an hour or so and come away feeling calmer and more cheerful and grounded than when you started. Not many political podcasts do that but this one does.
A quibble though. There's a nice mix of centre left and centre right sentiment but this doesn’t map across to objective neutrality on the parties. Stewart is not a partisan tory. He finds it easy to criticise them and to say positive things about Labour. Campbell otoh is the definition of tribal. He can’t say anything good about the Conservatives or bad about Labour (now it’s his sort of Labour again under SKS as opposed to the Corbyn version) without choking. This (imo) rather unbalances the show.
I can't stand Campbell. He's a true, 100% shit who should be hiding his face away in anonymity somewhere. And Stewart should have remained in the party, rather than quitting.
But yes, I do occasionally listen to RiP...
Why so down on AC? I think he's a quality pundit if you adjust for the tribalism.
Terrible behaviour with Kelly, it cost a good man's life, but I don't rank him as the sort of unmitigated villain who should be forever cancelled.
He's someone who speaks very well about his struggles with his own mental health, yet was perfectly willing to destroy other people's for his own gain.
He's a nasty piece of work, whose only redeeming feature is being able to communicate well.
Ok but do you mean specifically Kelly? Or some sort of pattern where he's gone about deliberately destroying people's lives?
How many Iraqis died? Hundreds of thousands wasn't it? And we went to war on lies cooked up (partly) by AC to make the case look more damning. And the man who knew it had been sexed up was hounded to take his own life.
I see you have a lot to learn about which brown people it is ok to kill and which ones it is genocide to kill. At least Corbs was against killing all brown people but plenty of leftists, why some on this very board, make a keen distinction.
Mind you, the Tankie types that Corbyn hangs out with seemed to think that rum blossoms like Arkan were the *victims* in the Yugoslav wars.....
He also thought Brexit would be sorted out in an afternoon and he also thought triggering a vanity by election was a good idea.
Colour me sceptical.
DD guested on the Rest is Politics recently and did not come over well. Rather brittle and defensive.
Do PBers listen to that prog btw? It's kind of a Centrist Dad heaven. You get the elegant (although slightly self-regarding and infused with class privilege) lilt of Rory Stewart interspersed with the pungent throb of Alastair Campbell, the both of them highly articulate, rational, animated by a deep dislike of populism. You listen to it for an hour or so and come away feeling calmer and more cheerful and grounded than when you started. Not many political podcasts do that but this one does.
A quibble though. There's a nice mix of centre left and centre right sentiment but this doesn’t map across to objective neutrality on the parties. Stewart is not a partisan tory. He finds it easy to criticise them and to say positive things about Labour. Campbell otoh is the definition of tribal. He can’t say anything good about the Conservatives or bad about Labour (now it’s his sort of Labour again under SKS as opposed to the Corbyn version) without choking. This (imo) rather unbalances the show.
I can't stand Campbell. He's a true, 100% shit who should be hiding his face away in anonymity somewhere. And Stewart should have remained in the party, rather than quitting.
But yes, I do occasionally listen to RiP...
Why so down on AC? I think he's a quality pundit if you adjust for the tribalism.
Terrible behaviour with Kelly, it cost a good man's life, but I don't rank him as the sort of unmitigated villain who should be forever cancelled.
He's someone who speaks very well about his struggles with his own mental health, yet was perfectly willing to destroy other people's for his own gain.
He's a nasty piece of work, whose only redeeming feature is being able to communicate well.
Ok but do you mean specifically Kelly? Or some sort of pattern where he's gone about deliberately destroying people's lives?
How many Iraqis died? Hundreds of thousands wasn't it? And we went to war on lies cooked up (partly) by AC to make the case look more damning. And the man who knew it had been sexed up was hounded to take his own life.
You won't find me defending Blair/Campbell on Iraq. We should not have got involved. It was terrible decision driven by a peculiar mix of hubris and servility.
However let's not start assigning blame for all the casualties of that war - or its toxic aftermath - on them. That would be a nonsense. The US were doing it regardless.
He also thought Brexit would be sorted out in an afternoon and he also thought triggering a vanity by election was a good idea.
Colour me sceptical.
DD guested on the Rest is Politics recently and did not come over well. Rather brittle and defensive.
Do PBers listen to that prog btw? It's kind of a Centrist Dad heaven. You get the elegant (although slightly self-regarding and infused with class privilege) lilt of Rory Stewart interspersed with the pungent throb of Alastair Campbell, the both of them highly articulate, rational, animated by a deep dislike of populism. You listen to it for an hour or so and come away feeling calmer and more cheerful and grounded than when you started. Not many political podcasts do that but this one does.
A quibble though. There's a nice mix of centre left and centre right sentiment but this doesn’t map across to objective neutrality on the parties. Stewart is not a partisan tory. He finds it easy to criticise them and to say positive things about Labour. Campbell otoh is the definition of tribal. He can’t say anything good about the Conservatives or bad about Labour (now it’s his sort of Labour again under SKS as opposed to the Corbyn version) without choking. This (imo) rather unbalances the show.
I can't stand Campbell. He's a true, 100% shit who should be hiding his face away in anonymity somewhere. And Stewart should have remained in the party, rather than quitting.
But yes, I do occasionally listen to RiP...
Why so down on AC? I think he's a quality pundit if you adjust for the tribalism.
Terrible behaviour with Kelly, it cost a good man's life, but I don't rank him as the sort of unmitigated villain who should be forever cancelled.
Yeah he's fine other than driving another person to suicide. Really great guy.
I have merely proffered the following 3 things. AC is a good pundit if you adjust for the tribalism. AC behaved terribly on Kelly. AC is not an unmitigated villain who should be denied a platform.
This seems to have triggered people to drip sanctimonious sarcasm onto me. And here's me with impeccable anti-Iraq War credentials too. Not fair!
"impeccable anti-Iraq War credentials"
Let me explain something about morality. It isn't like merit badges. Or maybe it actually is. You can lose merit badges in the Scouts for bad behaviour.
If you want to make excuses for AC - fine. But then your "impeccable anti-Iraq War credentials" merit badge will get torn off at the next jamboree.
He also thought Brexit would be sorted out in an afternoon and he also thought triggering a vanity by election was a good idea.
Colour me sceptical.
DD guested on the Rest is Politics recently and did not come over well. Rather brittle and defensive.
Do PBers listen to that prog btw? It's kind of a Centrist Dad heaven. You get the elegant (although slightly self-regarding and infused with class privilege) lilt of Rory Stewart interspersed with the pungent throb of Alastair Campbell, the both of them highly articulate, rational, animated by a deep dislike of populism. You listen to it for an hour or so and come away feeling calmer and more cheerful and grounded than when you started. Not many political podcasts do that but this one does.
A quibble though. There's a nice mix of centre left and centre right sentiment but this doesn’t map across to objective neutrality on the parties. Stewart is not a partisan tory. He finds it easy to criticise them and to say positive things about Labour. Campbell otoh is the definition of tribal. He can’t say anything good about the Conservatives or bad about Labour (now it’s his sort of Labour again under SKS as opposed to the Corbyn version) without choking. This (imo) rather unbalances the show.
I can't stand Campbell. He's a true, 100% shit who should be hiding his face away in anonymity somewhere. And Stewart should have remained in the party, rather than quitting.
But yes, I do occasionally listen to RiP...
Why so down on AC? I think he's a quality pundit if you adjust for the tribalism.
Terrible behaviour with Kelly, it cost a good man's life, but I don't rank him as the sort of unmitigated villain who should be forever cancelled.
He's someone who speaks very well about his struggles with his own mental health, yet was perfectly willing to destroy other people's for his own gain.
He's a nasty piece of work, whose only redeeming feature is being able to communicate well.
Ok but do you mean specifically Kelly? Or some sort of pattern where he's gone about deliberately destroying people's lives?
Kelly was just one example. He set about ruining the reputation and lives of anyone he saw as the 'enemy', using the full power of the government, and not caring what effect it would have on the 'enemy'.
And then he has the nerve to talk about his struggles with *his* mental health.
He also thought Brexit would be sorted out in an afternoon and he also thought triggering a vanity by election was a good idea.
Colour me sceptical.
DD guested on the Rest is Politics recently and did not come over well. Rather brittle and defensive.
Do PBers listen to that prog btw? It's kind of a Centrist Dad heaven. You get the elegant (although slightly self-regarding and infused with class privilege) lilt of Rory Stewart interspersed with the pungent throb of Alastair Campbell, the both of them highly articulate, rational, animated by a deep dislike of populism. You listen to it for an hour or so and come away feeling calmer and more cheerful and grounded than when you started. Not many political podcasts do that but this one does.
A quibble though. There's a nice mix of centre left and centre right sentiment but this doesn’t map across to objective neutrality on the parties. Stewart is not a partisan tory. He finds it easy to criticise them and to say positive things about Labour. Campbell otoh is the definition of tribal. He can’t say anything good about the Conservatives or bad about Labour (now it’s his sort of Labour again under SKS as opposed to the Corbyn version) without choking. This (imo) rather unbalances the show.
I can't stand Campbell. He's a true, 100% shit who should be hiding his face away in anonymity somewhere. And Stewart should have remained in the party, rather than quitting.
But yes, I do occasionally listen to RiP...
Why so down on AC? I think he's a quality pundit if you adjust for the tribalism.
Terrible behaviour with Kelly, it cost a good man's life, but I don't rank him as the sort of unmitigated villain who should be forever cancelled.
He's someone who speaks very well about his struggles with his own mental health, yet was perfectly willing to destroy other people's for his own gain.
He's a nasty piece of work, whose only redeeming feature is being able to communicate well.
Ok but do you mean specifically Kelly? Or some sort of pattern where he's gone about deliberately destroying people's lives?
Kelly was just one example. He set about ruining the reputation and lives of anyone he saw as the 'enemy', using the full power of the government, and not caring what effect it would have on the 'enemy'.
And then he has the nerve to talk about his struggles with *his* mental health.
Could you give me an example to chew on maybe?
Never seen "Apart from that, Mrs Lincoln..." play out in real life like this before.
He also thought Brexit would be sorted out in an afternoon and he also thought triggering a vanity by election was a good idea.
Colour me sceptical.
DD guested on the Rest is Politics recently and did not come over well. Rather brittle and defensive.
Do PBers listen to that prog btw? It's kind of a Centrist Dad heaven. You get the elegant (although slightly self-regarding and infused with class privilege) lilt of Rory Stewart interspersed with the pungent throb of Alastair Campbell, the both of them highly articulate, rational, animated by a deep dislike of populism. You listen to it for an hour or so and come away feeling calmer and more cheerful and grounded than when you started. Not many political podcasts do that but this one does.
A quibble though. There's a nice mix of centre left and centre right sentiment but this doesn’t map across to objective neutrality on the parties. Stewart is not a partisan tory. He finds it easy to criticise them and to say positive things about Labour. Campbell otoh is the definition of tribal. He can’t say anything good about the Conservatives or bad about Labour (now it’s his sort of Labour again under SKS as opposed to the Corbyn version) without choking. This (imo) rather unbalances the show.
I can't stand Campbell. He's a true, 100% shit who should be hiding his face away in anonymity somewhere. And Stewart should have remained in the party, rather than quitting.
But yes, I do occasionally listen to RiP...
Why so down on AC? I think he's a quality pundit if you adjust for the tribalism.
Terrible behaviour with Kelly, it cost a good man's life, but I don't rank him as the sort of unmitigated villain who should be forever cancelled.
He's someone who speaks very well about his struggles with his own mental health, yet was perfectly willing to destroy other people's for his own gain.
He's a nasty piece of work, whose only redeeming feature is being able to communicate well.
Ok but do you mean specifically Kelly? Or some sort of pattern where he's gone about deliberately destroying people's lives?
Kelly was just one example. He set about ruining the reputation and lives of anyone he saw as the 'enemy', using the full power of the government, and not caring what effect it would have on the 'enemy'.
And then he has the nerve to talk about his struggles with *his* mental health.
He also thought Brexit would be sorted out in an afternoon and he also thought triggering a vanity by election was a good idea.
Colour me sceptical.
DD guested on the Rest is Politics recently and did not come over well. Rather brittle and defensive.
Do PBers listen to that prog btw? It's kind of a Centrist Dad heaven. You get the elegant (although slightly self-regarding and infused with class privilege) lilt of Rory Stewart interspersed with the pungent throb of Alastair Campbell, the both of them highly articulate, rational, animated by a deep dislike of populism. You listen to it for an hour or so and come away feeling calmer and more cheerful and grounded than when you started. Not many political podcasts do that but this one does.
A quibble though. There's a nice mix of centre left and centre right sentiment but this doesn’t map across to objective neutrality on the parties. Stewart is not a partisan tory. He finds it easy to criticise them and to say positive things about Labour. Campbell otoh is the definition of tribal. He can’t say anything good about the Conservatives or bad about Labour (now it’s his sort of Labour again under SKS as opposed to the Corbyn version) without choking. This (imo) rather unbalances the show.
I can't stand Campbell. He's a true, 100% shit who should be hiding his face away in anonymity somewhere. And Stewart should have remained in the party, rather than quitting.
But yes, I do occasionally listen to RiP...
Why so down on AC? I think he's a quality pundit if you adjust for the tribalism.
Terrible behaviour with Kelly, it cost a good man's life, but I don't rank him as the sort of unmitigated villain who should be forever cancelled.
He's someone who speaks very well about his struggles with his own mental health, yet was perfectly willing to destroy other people's for his own gain.
He's a nasty piece of work, whose only redeeming feature is being able to communicate well.
Ok but do you mean specifically Kelly? Or some sort of pattern where he's gone about deliberately destroying people's lives?
Kelly was just one example. He set about ruining the reputation and lives of anyone he saw as the 'enemy', using the full power of the government, and not caring what effect it would have on the 'enemy'.
And then he has the nerve to talk about his struggles with *his* mental health.
Could you give me an example to chew on maybe?
You are unaware that In The Thick of It was based on him and his behaviour?
I wouldn't go that far but certainly there were some witnesses for the defence who could have been called who weren't at the trial
Interesting. So far I have seen nothing to indicate the convictions are not safe.
You need to start with the 56 page court of appeal judgment, see if anything in that is properly open to precise criticism.
You then have to guess why the defence didn't call its experts (see para 5), using the obvious explanation unless you have a better one.
Then draft, in ordinary English, the precise (not vague or hand waving) ground or grounds which you argue render the convictions unsafe either because of fresh evidence (be precise), or that the evidence for the prosecution was in precise ways false, or failed to give scope for a jury to convict. Note there was corroboration of the evidence.
Then ask and explain why the defence didn't use your grounds in their appeal.
General and imprecise points about stats, rotas, other reasons for dying etc won't do.
Have you ever worked at Womble Bond Dickinson by any chance?
No, and your exact point in relation to the Letby trials is?
Read the article. Then let's talk. I value your evidently informed view of it all.
Edit: I mean there wasn't any evidence that she killed anyone but that doesn't seem to have mattered. Is that ever a factor in such trials? That there needs to be evidence for the crime. Perhaps not. Read the article and get back to me.
I have had a look at the New Yorker article, though I will need to look closer.
Firstly, if there is no evidence that Letby killed someone, then she can't be convicted. I think you may mean there is no smoking gun or video of the events. There usually isn't. Evidence is often a series of threads of connecting evidence about time, place, opportunity, motive.
The article. It's journalism. Thus far I cannot piece together, from this article, enough fragments to draft a short paragraph to describe why there are grounds to think the conviction is unsafe.
Like Private Eye, it relies on an utterly desperate suggestion about the defence and why it called no expert evidence when it is known that they had expert reports:
"Perhaps it had seemed that the prosecution's case was so weak that defence experts weren't necessary".
I have a bridge to sell them if they believe any counsel, with a client who is going to get a whole life order on conviction, would fail to call scientific evidence that would help their case. (And do the same on the retrial).
One small further point. I am keeping an open mind. The strongest case were the insulin cases, which were not the subject of the appeal specifically, unlike the embolism ones. I have not yey noticed even generalised hand waving about those. IIRC correctly it is not disputed by the defence that these babies were murdered. Worth keeping an eye on that element of the case.
It was not disputed by the defence but it jolly well should have been according to everyone else because the test establishing the presence of insulin cannot tell endogenous from artificial. This is Googleable.
The phrase "this is Googleable" sets off huge warning lights for me. You can find internet sources for every type of bullshit.
Is it possible an incompetent defence wrongly concedes a point they should not? It is, but it's very possible it was considered carefully and the circumstances of the case made it not a credible position.
"The testing lab’s own website states that if synthetic insulin is suspected, the results should be verified externally by a specialist centre."
He also thought Brexit would be sorted out in an afternoon and he also thought triggering a vanity by election was a good idea.
Colour me sceptical.
DD guested on the Rest is Politics recently and did not come over well. Rather brittle and defensive.
Do PBers listen to that prog btw? It's kind of a Centrist Dad heaven. You get the elegant (although slightly self-regarding and infused with class privilege) lilt of Rory Stewart interspersed with the pungent throb of Alastair Campbell, the both of them highly articulate, rational, animated by a deep dislike of populism. You listen to it for an hour or so and come away feeling calmer and more cheerful and grounded than when you started. Not many political podcasts do that but this one does.
A quibble though. There's a nice mix of centre left and centre right sentiment but this doesn’t map across to objective neutrality on the parties. Stewart is not a partisan tory. He finds it easy to criticise them and to say positive things about Labour. Campbell otoh is the definition of tribal. He can’t say anything good about the Conservatives or bad about Labour (now it’s his sort of Labour again under SKS as opposed to the Corbyn version) without choking. This (imo) rather unbalances the show.
I can't stand Campbell. He's a true, 100% shit who should be hiding his face away in anonymity somewhere. And Stewart should have remained in the party, rather than quitting.
But yes, I do occasionally listen to RiP...
Why so down on AC? I think he's a quality pundit if you adjust for the tribalism.
Terrible behaviour with Kelly, it cost a good man's life, but I don't rank him as the sort of unmitigated villain who should be forever cancelled.
He's someone who speaks very well about his struggles with his own mental health, yet was perfectly willing to destroy other people's for his own gain.
He's a nasty piece of work, whose only redeeming feature is being able to communicate well.
Ok but do you mean specifically Kelly? Or some sort of pattern where he's gone about deliberately destroying people's lives?
How many Iraqis died? Hundreds of thousands wasn't it? And we went to war on lies cooked up (partly) by AC to make the case look more damning. And the man who knew it had been sexed up was hounded to take his own life.
You won't find me defending Blair/Campbell on Iraq. We should not have got involved. It was terrible decision driven by a peculiar mix of hubris and servility.
However let's not start assigning blame for all the casualties of that war - or its toxic aftermath - on them. That would be a nonsense. The US were doing it regardless.
If the US were doing it anyway, it is even more despicable that we went along and soaked our hands in Iraqi blood.
There was a historical precedent. Wilson didn't sign up to Vietnam.
He also thought Brexit would be sorted out in an afternoon and he also thought triggering a vanity by election was a good idea.
Colour me sceptical.
DD guested on the Rest is Politics recently and did not come over well. Rather brittle and defensive.
Do PBers listen to that prog btw? It's kind of a Centrist Dad heaven. You get the elegant (although slightly self-regarding and infused with class privilege) lilt of Rory Stewart interspersed with the pungent throb of Alastair Campbell, the both of them highly articulate, rational, animated by a deep dislike of populism. You listen to it for an hour or so and come away feeling calmer and more cheerful and grounded than when you started. Not many political podcasts do that but this one does.
A quibble though. There's a nice mix of centre left and centre right sentiment but this doesn’t map across to objective neutrality on the parties. Stewart is not a partisan tory. He finds it easy to criticise them and to say positive things about Labour. Campbell otoh is the definition of tribal. He can’t say anything good about the Conservatives or bad about Labour (now it’s his sort of Labour again under SKS as opposed to the Corbyn version) without choking. This (imo) rather unbalances the show.
I can't stand Campbell. He's a true, 100% shit who should be hiding his face away in anonymity somewhere. And Stewart should have remained in the party, rather than quitting.
But yes, I do occasionally listen to RiP...
Why so down on AC? I think he's a quality pundit if you adjust for the tribalism.
Terrible behaviour with Kelly, it cost a good man's life, but I don't rank him as the sort of unmitigated villain who should be forever cancelled.
He's someone who speaks very well about his struggles with his own mental health, yet was perfectly willing to destroy other people's for his own gain.
He's a nasty piece of work, whose only redeeming feature is being able to communicate well.
Ok but do you mean specifically Kelly? Or some sort of pattern where he's gone about deliberately destroying people's lives?
How many Iraqis died? Hundreds of thousands wasn't it? And we went to war on lies cooked up (partly) by AC to make the case look more damning. And the man who knew it had been sexed up was hounded to take his own life.
You won't find me defending Blair/Campbell on Iraq. We should not have got involved. It was terrible decision driven by a peculiar mix of hubris and servility.
However let's not start assigning blame for all the casualties of that war - or its toxic aftermath - on them. That would be a nonsense. The US were doing it regardless.
If the US were doing it anyway, it is even more despicable that we went along and soaked our hands in Iraqi blood.
There was a historical precedent. Wilson didn't sign up to Vietnam.
There is also the point, that without the UK, the US wouldn't have had had a major ally on side for the invasion. Which might well have tipped the balance - GWB was pressing Blair pretty hard for backing. Because GWB needed it in the US, to get Congress fully on side.
Which is why Alastair Campbell organised the faking of the dossier. And the rubbishing of Kelly.
He also thought Brexit would be sorted out in an afternoon and he also thought triggering a vanity by election was a good idea.
Colour me sceptical.
DD guested on the Rest is Politics recently and did not come over well. Rather brittle and defensive.
Do PBers listen to that prog btw? It's kind of a Centrist Dad heaven. You get the elegant (although slightly self-regarding and infused with class privilege) lilt of Rory Stewart interspersed with the pungent throb of Alastair Campbell, the both of them highly articulate, rational, animated by a deep dislike of populism. You listen to it for an hour or so and come away feeling calmer and more cheerful and grounded than when you started. Not many political podcasts do that but this one does.
A quibble though. There's a nice mix of centre left and centre right sentiment but this doesn’t map across to objective neutrality on the parties. Stewart is not a partisan tory. He finds it easy to criticise them and to say positive things about Labour. Campbell otoh is the definition of tribal. He can’t say anything good about the Conservatives or bad about Labour (now it’s his sort of Labour again under SKS as opposed to the Corbyn version) without choking. This (imo) rather unbalances the show.
I can't stand Campbell. He's a true, 100% shit who should be hiding his face away in anonymity somewhere. And Stewart should have remained in the party, rather than quitting.
But yes, I do occasionally listen to RiP...
Why so down on AC? I think he's a quality pundit if you adjust for the tribalism.
Terrible behaviour with Kelly, it cost a good man's life, but I don't rank him as the sort of unmitigated villain who should be forever cancelled.
Absolutely. All those Iraqis were just NPCs - Campbell was the one who truly suffered.
Premeditated lying and faking information to start a war isn’t even a real crime.
And your point is what? That you don't rate him as a pundit? Or that he shouldn't even be one?
That he is, to use technical terminology, a deliberately lying cunt, with a great deal of blood on his hands. Which got there from his considered and intended actions over a period of time.
If you want to hit at his feet... well, that says things about you.
That's a bit better but I'm still not 100% clear what you're driving at.
It sounds like you're saying that to quite like Alastair Campbell as a podcaster is to be indifferent to the suffering caused by the US/UK invasion of Iraq.
Yeah apart from contributing to the deaths of thousands of Iraqis in general and one government whistleblower in particular can someone please explain to me what exactly Alistair Campbell is supposed to have done wrong.
He also thought Brexit would be sorted out in an afternoon and he also thought triggering a vanity by election was a good idea.
Colour me sceptical.
DD guested on the Rest is Politics recently and did not come over well. Rather brittle and defensive.
Do PBers listen to that prog btw? It's kind of a Centrist Dad heaven. You get the elegant (although slightly self-regarding and infused with class privilege) lilt of Rory Stewart interspersed with the pungent throb of Alastair Campbell, the both of them highly articulate, rational, animated by a deep dislike of populism. You listen to it for an hour or so and come away feeling calmer and more cheerful and grounded than when you started. Not many political podcasts do that but this one does.
A quibble though. There's a nice mix of centre left and centre right sentiment but this doesn’t map across to objective neutrality on the parties. Stewart is not a partisan tory. He finds it easy to criticise them and to say positive things about Labour. Campbell otoh is the definition of tribal. He can’t say anything good about the Conservatives or bad about Labour (now it’s his sort of Labour again under SKS as opposed to the Corbyn version) without choking. This (imo) rather unbalances the show.
I can't stand Campbell. He's a true, 100% shit who should be hiding his face away in anonymity somewhere. And Stewart should have remained in the party, rather than quitting.
But yes, I do occasionally listen to RiP...
Why so down on AC? I think he's a quality pundit if you adjust for the tribalism.
Terrible behaviour with Kelly, it cost a good man's life, but I don't rank him as the sort of unmitigated villain who should be forever cancelled.
He's someone who speaks very well about his struggles with his own mental health, yet was perfectly willing to destroy other people's for his own gain.
He's a nasty piece of work, whose only redeeming feature is being able to communicate well.
Ok but do you mean specifically Kelly? Or some sort of pattern where he's gone about deliberately destroying people's lives?
How many Iraqis died? Hundreds of thousands wasn't it? And we went to war on lies cooked up (partly) by AC to make the case look more damning. And the man who knew it had been sexed up was hounded to take his own life.
You won't find me defending Blair/Campbell on Iraq. We should not have got involved. It was terrible decision driven by a peculiar mix of hubris and servility.
However let's not start assigning blame for all the casualties of that war - or its toxic aftermath - on them. That would be a nonsense. The US were doing it regardless.
If the US were doing it anyway, it is even more despicable that we went along and soaked our hands in Iraqi blood.
There was a historical precedent. Wilson didn't sign up to Vietnam.
There is also the point, that without the UK, the US wouldn't have had had a major ally on side for the invasion. Which might well have tipped the balance - GWB was pressing Blair pretty hard for backing. Because GWB needed it in the US, to get Congress fully on side.
Which is why Alastair Campbell organised the faking of the dossier. And the rubbishing of Kelly.
He also thought Brexit would be sorted out in an afternoon and he also thought triggering a vanity by election was a good idea.
Colour me sceptical.
DD guested on the Rest is Politics recently and did not come over well. Rather brittle and defensive.
Do PBers listen to that prog btw? It's kind of a Centrist Dad heaven. You get the elegant (although slightly self-regarding and infused with class privilege) lilt of Rory Stewart interspersed with the pungent throb of Alastair Campbell, the both of them highly articulate, rational, animated by a deep dislike of populism. You listen to it for an hour or so and come away feeling calmer and more cheerful and grounded than when you started. Not many political podcasts do that but this one does.
A quibble though. There's a nice mix of centre left and centre right sentiment but this doesn’t map across to objective neutrality on the parties. Stewart is not a partisan tory. He finds it easy to criticise them and to say positive things about Labour. Campbell otoh is the definition of tribal. He can’t say anything good about the Conservatives or bad about Labour (now it’s his sort of Labour again under SKS as opposed to the Corbyn version) without choking. This (imo) rather unbalances the show.
I can't stand Campbell. He's a true, 100% shit who should be hiding his face away in anonymity somewhere. And Stewart should have remained in the party, rather than quitting.
But yes, I do occasionally listen to RiP...
Why so down on AC? I think he's a quality pundit if you adjust for the tribalism.
Terrible behaviour with Kelly, it cost a good man's life, but I don't rank him as the sort of unmitigated villain who should be forever cancelled.
He's someone who speaks very well about his struggles with his own mental health, yet was perfectly willing to destroy other people's for his own gain.
He's a nasty piece of work, whose only redeeming feature is being able to communicate well.
Ok but do you mean specifically Kelly? Or some sort of pattern where he's gone about deliberately destroying people's lives?
Kelly was just one example. He set about ruining the reputation and lives of anyone he saw as the 'enemy', using the full power of the government, and not caring what effect it would have on the 'enemy'.
And then he has the nerve to talk about his struggles with *his* mental health.
Could you give me an example to chew on maybe?
Never seen "Apart from that, Mrs Lincoln..." play out in real life like this before.
It's fantastic. Because I bet Fred West could knock up a mean upside down cake.
Why don't we just dispense with criminal trials in this country and let publications in New York pronounce on a British citizen's guilt or innocence? They clearly know more about this stuff than any of us, and it would save a fortune in court costs.
Absolutely.
Any idea of letting the Guilford 4, The Birmingham 7, Sally Clark etc out of prison is disgusting. In fact, let's hang them.
All suspects are guilty. Otherwise they wouldn't be suspect.
There was a very good BBC reporter who sat through all 8 months of the trial. He said (from memory) there were 55 coincidences which would have had not to happen for her to be not guilty. He was totally convinced which is rare for anyone at the BBC to admit to and unlike Davis and you he actually listened to ALL the evidence for the full 8 months.
It's worth listening to if you can find it. He recited about 8 of the coincidences and with just those it was incontrovertable.
NB. Though I find the sentence to be inappropriate as she was/is clearly not of sound mind
Traditionally prez campaigns "get real" starting on Labor Day.
On Labor Day, 47 years ago, I was with Jimmy Carter at Warm Springs GA—FDR's polio-rehab haven, in Carter's home state. Fascinating to see the things unimaginably different — many in the crowd had living memories of FDR's New Deal, nearly all remembered JFK — and surprisingly unchanged.
I don't think we've really got to grips with the near term implications of the developments in drone use (and their mass production) during the war. They will not be confined to Ukraine, and I doubt they will be entirely confined to use within the confines of war, either.
I think it is only a matter of time before wars are fought almost entirely using autonomous weapons. Soldiers of the traditional kind will likely be rendered pretty much obsolete. Their job will be primarily to accept surrender and pick up the pieces.
He also thought Brexit would be sorted out in an afternoon and he also thought triggering a vanity by election was a good idea.
Colour me sceptical.
DD guested on the Rest is Politics recently and did not come over well. Rather brittle and defensive.
Do PBers listen to that prog btw? It's kind of a Centrist Dad heaven. You get the elegant (although slightly self-regarding and infused with class privilege) lilt of Rory Stewart interspersed with the pungent throb of Alastair Campbell, the both of them highly articulate, rational, animated by a deep dislike of populism. You listen to it for an hour or so and come away feeling calmer and more cheerful and grounded than when you started. Not many political podcasts do that but this one does.
A quibble though. There's a nice mix of centre left and centre right sentiment but this doesn’t map across to objective neutrality on the parties. Stewart is not a partisan tory. He finds it easy to criticise them and to say positive things about Labour. Campbell otoh is the definition of tribal. He can’t say anything good about the Conservatives or bad about Labour (now it’s his sort of Labour again under SKS as opposed to the Corbyn version) without choking. This (imo) rather unbalances the show.
I can't stand Campbell. He's a true, 100% shit who should be hiding his face away in anonymity somewhere. And Stewart should have remained in the party, rather than quitting.
But yes, I do occasionally listen to RiP...
Why so down on AC? I think he's a quality pundit if you adjust for the tribalism.
Terrible behaviour with Kelly, it cost a good man's life, but I don't rank him as the sort of unmitigated villain who should be forever cancelled.
He's someone who speaks very well about his struggles with his own mental health, yet was perfectly willing to destroy other people's for his own gain.
He's a nasty piece of work, whose only redeeming feature is being able to communicate well.
Ok but do you mean specifically Kelly? Or some sort of pattern where he's gone about deliberately destroying people's lives?
How many Iraqis died? Hundreds of thousands wasn't it? And we went to war on lies cooked up (partly) by AC to make the case look more damning. And the man who knew it had been sexed up was hounded to take his own life.
You won't find me defending Blair/Campbell on Iraq. We should not have got involved. It was terrible decision driven by a peculiar mix of hubris and servility.
However let's not start assigning blame for all the casualties of that war - or its toxic aftermath - on them. That would be a nonsense. The US were doing it regardless.
If the US were doing it anyway, it is even more despicable that we went along and soaked our hands in Iraqi blood.
There was a historical precedent. Wilson didn't sign up to Vietnam.
I'd have had no problem going into Syria, Iran or Iraq - as well as Afghanistan - and getting rid of horrible repressive and ugly regimes *provided it worked*.
He also thought Brexit would be sorted out in an afternoon and he also thought triggering a vanity by election was a good idea.
Colour me sceptical.
DD guested on the Rest is Politics recently and did not come over well. Rather brittle and defensive.
Do PBers listen to that prog btw? It's kind of a Centrist Dad heaven. You get the elegant (although slightly self-regarding and infused with class privilege) lilt of Rory Stewart interspersed with the pungent throb of Alastair Campbell, the both of them highly articulate, rational, animated by a deep dislike of populism. You listen to it for an hour or so and come away feeling calmer and more cheerful and grounded than when you started. Not many political podcasts do that but this one does.
A quibble though. There's a nice mix of centre left and centre right sentiment but this doesn’t map across to objective neutrality on the parties. Stewart is not a partisan tory. He finds it easy to criticise them and to say positive things about Labour. Campbell otoh is the definition of tribal. He can’t say anything good about the Conservatives or bad about Labour (now it’s his sort of Labour again under SKS as opposed to the Corbyn version) without choking. This (imo) rather unbalances the show.
I can't stand Campbell. He's a true, 100% shit who should be hiding his face away in anonymity somewhere. And Stewart should have remained in the party, rather than quitting.
But yes, I do occasionally listen to RiP...
Why so down on AC? I think he's a quality pundit if you adjust for the tribalism.
Terrible behaviour with Kelly, it cost a good man's life, but I don't rank him as the sort of unmitigated villain who should be forever cancelled.
He's someone who speaks very well about his struggles with his own mental health, yet was perfectly willing to destroy other people's for his own gain.
He's a nasty piece of work, whose only redeeming feature is being able to communicate well.
Ok but do you mean specifically Kelly? Or some sort of pattern where he's gone about deliberately destroying people's lives?
How many Iraqis died? Hundreds of thousands wasn't it? And we went to war on lies cooked up (partly) by AC to make the case look more damning. And the man who knew it had been sexed up was hounded to take his own life.
You won't find me defending Blair/Campbell on Iraq. We should not have got involved. It was terrible decision driven by a peculiar mix of hubris and servility.
However let's not start assigning blame for all the casualties of that war - or its toxic aftermath - on them. That would be a nonsense. The US were doing it regardless.
If the US were doing it anyway, it is even more despicable that we went along and soaked our hands in Iraqi blood.
There was a historical precedent. Wilson didn't sign up to Vietnam.
There is also the point, that without the UK, the US wouldn't have had had a major ally on side for the invasion. Which might well have tipped the balance - GWB was pressing Blair pretty hard for backing. Because GWB needed it in the US, to get Congress fully on side.
Which is why Alastair Campbell organised the faking of the dossier. And the rubbishing of Kelly.
No chance. America would have invaded without us.
The Americans would have found the resources to occupy Basra and the far south had we withdrawn. What we don't know is whether the American occupation of Basra would have been like the British occupation or more like their occupation of, for example, Fallujah.
He also thought Brexit would be sorted out in an afternoon and he also thought triggering a vanity by election was a good idea.
Colour me sceptical.
DD guested on the Rest is Politics recently and did not come over well. Rather brittle and defensive.
Do PBers listen to that prog btw? It's kind of a Centrist Dad heaven. You get the elegant (although slightly self-regarding and infused with class privilege) lilt of Rory Stewart interspersed with the pungent throb of Alastair Campbell, the both of them highly articulate, rational, animated by a deep dislike of populism. You listen to it for an hour or so and come away feeling calmer and more cheerful and grounded than when you started. Not many political podcasts do that but this one does.
A quibble though. There's a nice mix of centre left and centre right sentiment but this doesn’t map across to objective neutrality on the parties. Stewart is not a partisan tory. He finds it easy to criticise them and to say positive things about Labour. Campbell otoh is the definition of tribal. He can’t say anything good about the Conservatives or bad about Labour (now it’s his sort of Labour again under SKS as opposed to the Corbyn version) without choking. This (imo) rather unbalances the show.
I can't stand Campbell. He's a true, 100% shit who should be hiding his face away in anonymity somewhere. And Stewart should have remained in the party, rather than quitting.
But yes, I do occasionally listen to RiP...
Why so down on AC? I think he's a quality pundit if you adjust for the tribalism.
Terrible behaviour with Kelly, it cost a good man's life, but I don't rank him as the sort of unmitigated villain who should be forever cancelled.
Absolutely. All those Iraqis were just NPCs - Campbell was the one who truly suffered.
Premeditated lying and faking information to start a war isn’t even a real crime.
And your point is what? That you don't rate him as a pundit? Or that he shouldn't even be one?
That he is, to use technical terminology, a deliberately lying cunt, with a great deal of blood on his hands. Which got there from his considered and intended actions over a period of time.
If you want to hit at his feet... well, that says things about you.
That's a bit better but I'm still not 100% clear what you're driving at.
It sounds like you're saying that to quite like Alastair Campbell as a podcaster is to be indifferent to the suffering caused by the US/UK invasion of Iraq.
But that can't be right surely?
What's your view on the poetry of Radovan Karadžić?
I don't think we've really got to grips with the near term implications of the developments in drone use (and their mass production) during the war. They will not be confined to Ukraine, and I doubt they will be entirely confined to use within the confines of war, either.
I think it is only a matter of time before wars are fought almost entirely using autonomous weapons. Soldiers of the traditional kind will likely be rendered pretty much obsolete. Their job will be primarily to accept surrender and pick up the pieces.
They won't because at the end of the day that's not what it all boils down to.
I don't think we've really got to grips with the near term implications of the developments in drone use (and their mass production) during the war. They will not be confined to Ukraine, and I doubt they will be entirely confined to use within the confines of war, either.
I think it is only a matter of time before wars are fought almost entirely using autonomous weapons. Soldiers of the traditional kind will likely be rendered pretty much obsolete. Their job will be primarily to accept surrender and pick up the pieces.
Yeah apart from contributing to the deaths of thousands of Iraqis in general and one government whistleblower in particular can someone please explain to me what exactly Alistair Campbell is supposed to have done wrong.
To be fair to @kinabalu, supporting one genocide is probably at the edge of decent left-wing behaviour, but supporting two would be beyond the pale.
You're more the genocide apologist round here.
So we are both genocide apologists but I'm more of one. That it? What comparative metric are you using here, for general reference. Is it numbers of people killed. Or political party in charge when it was being carried out.
He also thought Brexit would be sorted out in an afternoon and he also thought triggering a vanity by election was a good idea.
Colour me sceptical.
DD guested on the Rest is Politics recently and did not come over well. Rather brittle and defensive.
Do PBers listen to that prog btw? It's kind of a Centrist Dad heaven. You get the elegant (although slightly self-regarding and infused with class privilege) lilt of Rory Stewart interspersed with the pungent throb of Alastair Campbell, the both of them highly articulate, rational, animated by a deep dislike of populism. You listen to it for an hour or so and come away feeling calmer and more cheerful and grounded than when you started. Not many political podcasts do that but this one does.
A quibble though. There's a nice mix of centre left and centre right sentiment but this doesn’t map across to objective neutrality on the parties. Stewart is not a partisan tory. He finds it easy to criticise them and to say positive things about Labour. Campbell otoh is the definition of tribal. He can’t say anything good about the Conservatives or bad about Labour (now it’s his sort of Labour again under SKS as opposed to the Corbyn version) without choking. This (imo) rather unbalances the show.
I can't stand Campbell. He's a true, 100% shit who should be hiding his face away in anonymity somewhere. And Stewart should have remained in the party, rather than quitting.
But yes, I do occasionally listen to RiP...
Why so down on AC? I think he's a quality pundit if you adjust for the tribalism.
Terrible behaviour with Kelly, it cost a good man's life, but I don't rank him as the sort of unmitigated villain who should be forever cancelled.
Absolutely. All those Iraqis were just NPCs - Campbell was the one who truly suffered.
Premeditated lying and faking information to start a war isn’t even a real crime.
And your point is what? That you don't rate him as a pundit? Or that he shouldn't even be one?
That he is, to use technical terminology, a deliberately lying cunt, with a great deal of blood on his hands. Which got there from his considered and intended actions over a period of time.
If you want to hit at his feet... well, that says things about you.
That's a bit better but I'm still not 100% clear what you're driving at.
It sounds like you're saying that to quite like Alastair Campbell as a podcaster is to be indifferent to the suffering caused by the US/UK invasion of Iraq.
But that can't be right surely?
What's your view on the poetry of Radovan Karadžić?
Badenoch is very good at articulating a traditional Tory message. Whether the electorate are really after that right now, and whether she is effective enough to deliver it, I have some significant doubts.
No doubt she is a good communicator. But she still seems very hung up on weird things like Doctor Who being nasty about her (which he was, but as a campaign beat? Hmmm).
I don't think we've really got to grips with the near term implications of the developments in drone use (and their mass production) during the war. They will not be confined to Ukraine, and I doubt they will be entirely confined to use within the confines of war, either.
I think it is only a matter of time before wars are fought almost entirely using autonomous weapons. Soldiers of the traditional kind will likely be rendered pretty much obsolete. Their job will be primarily to accept surrender and pick up the pieces.
They won't because at the end of the day that's not what it all boils down to.
Very true. For many generations to come it will continue to be about taking and holding ground. I don't think drones are at that level quite yet.
He also thought Brexit would be sorted out in an afternoon and he also thought triggering a vanity by election was a good idea.
Colour me sceptical.
DD guested on the Rest is Politics recently and did not come over well. Rather brittle and defensive.
Do PBers listen to that prog btw? It's kind of a Centrist Dad heaven. You get the elegant (although slightly self-regarding and infused with class privilege) lilt of Rory Stewart interspersed with the pungent throb of Alastair Campbell, the both of them highly articulate, rational, animated by a deep dislike of populism. You listen to it for an hour or so and come away feeling calmer and more cheerful and grounded than when you started. Not many political podcasts do that but this one does.
A quibble though. There's a nice mix of centre left and centre right sentiment but this doesn’t map across to objective neutrality on the parties. Stewart is not a partisan tory. He finds it easy to criticise them and to say positive things about Labour. Campbell otoh is the definition of tribal. He can’t say anything good about the Conservatives or bad about Labour (now it’s his sort of Labour again under SKS as opposed to the Corbyn version) without choking. This (imo) rather unbalances the show.
I can't stand Campbell. He's a true, 100% shit who should be hiding his face away in anonymity somewhere. And Stewart should have remained in the party, rather than quitting.
But yes, I do occasionally listen to RiP...
Why so down on AC? I think he's a quality pundit if you adjust for the tribalism.
Terrible behaviour with Kelly, it cost a good man's life, but I don't rank him as the sort of unmitigated villain who should be forever cancelled.
Absolutely. All those Iraqis were just NPCs - Campbell was the one who truly suffered.
Premeditated lying and faking information to start a war isn’t even a real crime.
And your point is what? That you don't rate him as a pundit? Or that he shouldn't even be one?
That he is, to use technical terminology, a deliberately lying cunt, with a great deal of blood on his hands. Which got there from his considered and intended actions over a period of time.
If you want to hit at his feet... well, that says things about you.
That's a bit better but I'm still not 100% clear what you're driving at.
It sounds like you're saying that to quite like Alastair Campbell as a podcaster is to be indifferent to the suffering caused by the US/UK invasion of Iraq.
But that can't be right surely?
What's your view on the poetry of Radovan Karadžić?
Or Ezra Pound?
Have you considered the cinema of the Ukraine?
Now you've given me PTSD.
Every fucking time - I've got the plutonium buy all setup and Tom Fucking Cruise jumps in his size 4.5 boots....
Badenoch is very good at articulating a traditional Tory message. Whether the electorate are really after that right now, and whether she is effective enough to deliver it, I have some significant doubts.
No doubt she is a good communicator. But she still seems very hung up on weird things like Doctor Who being nasty about her (which he was, but as a campaign beat? Hmmm).
It was a super bad look from David Tennant and I am prepared to believe he was too bound up with his luvviedom to realise what he said as he was saying it. He realised as soon as he had said it tbf but that's how wars start...
To be fair to @kinabalu, supporting one genocide is probably at the edge of decent left-wing behaviour, but supporting two would be beyond the pale.
You're more the genocide apologist round here.
So we are both genocide apologists but I'm more of one. That it? What comparative metric are you using here, for general reference. Is it numbers of people killed. Or political party in charge when it was being carried out.
How many government scientists have you hounded into suicide? I haven't managed even one, yet.... {sobs}
Badenoch is very good at articulating a traditional Tory message. Whether the electorate are really after that right now, and whether she is effective enough to deliver it, I have some significant doubts.
No doubt she is a good communicator. But she still seems very hung up on weird things like Doctor Who being nasty about her (which he was, but as a campaign beat? Hmmm).
It was a super bad look from David Tennant and I am prepared to believe he was too bound up with his luvviedom to realise what he said as he was saying it. He realised as soon as he had said it tbf but that's how wars start...
He also thought Brexit would be sorted out in an afternoon and he also thought triggering a vanity by election was a good idea.
Colour me sceptical.
DD guested on the Rest is Politics recently and did not come over well. Rather brittle and defensive.
Do PBers listen to that prog btw? It's kind of a Centrist Dad heaven. You get the elegant (although slightly self-regarding and infused with class privilege) lilt of Rory Stewart interspersed with the pungent throb of Alastair Campbell, the both of them highly articulate, rational, animated by a deep dislike of populism. You listen to it for an hour or so and come away feeling calmer and more cheerful and grounded than when you started. Not many political podcasts do that but this one does.
A quibble though. There's a nice mix of centre left and centre right sentiment but this doesn’t map across to objective neutrality on the parties. Stewart is not a partisan tory. He finds it easy to criticise them and to say positive things about Labour. Campbell otoh is the definition of tribal. He can’t say anything good about the Conservatives or bad about Labour (now it’s his sort of Labour again under SKS as opposed to the Corbyn version) without choking. This (imo) rather unbalances the show.
I can't stand Campbell. He's a true, 100% shit who should be hiding his face away in anonymity somewhere. And Stewart should have remained in the party, rather than quitting.
But yes, I do occasionally listen to RiP...
Why so down on AC? I think he's a quality pundit if you adjust for the tribalism.
Terrible behaviour with Kelly, it cost a good man's life, but I don't rank him as the sort of unmitigated villain who should be forever cancelled.
He's someone who speaks very well about his struggles with his own mental health, yet was perfectly willing to destroy other people's for his own gain.
He's a nasty piece of work, whose only redeeming feature is being able to communicate well.
Ok but do you mean specifically Kelly? Or some sort of pattern where he's gone about deliberately destroying people's lives?
How many Iraqis died? Hundreds of thousands wasn't it? And we went to war on lies cooked up (partly) by AC to make the case look more damning. And the man who knew it had been sexed up was hounded to take his own life.
You won't find me defending Blair/Campbell on Iraq. We should not have got involved. It was terrible decision driven by a peculiar mix of hubris and servility.
However let's not start assigning blame for all the casualties of that war - or its toxic aftermath - on them. That would be a nonsense. The US were doing it regardless.
If the US were doing it anyway, it is even more despicable that we went along and soaked our hands in Iraqi blood.
There was a historical precedent. Wilson didn't sign up to Vietnam.
It was a terrible error, no question, but was it worse on account of it making little practical difference? I don't see that. Surely if us joining had meant the invasion happened rather than didn't happen *that* would have been worse. Because in that case our involvement would have been key to the whole episode.
Badenoch is very good at articulating a traditional Tory message. Whether the electorate are really after that right now, and whether she is effective enough to deliver it, I have some significant doubts.
No doubt she is a good communicator. But she still seems very hung up on weird things like Doctor Who being nasty about her (which he was, but as a campaign beat? Hmmm).
It was a super bad look from David Tennant and I am prepared to believe he was too bound up with his luvviedom to realise what he said as he was saying it. He realised as soon as he had said it tbf but that's how wars start...
{innocent face}
Turf wars?
{ducks}
As mentioned earlier, it would be hugely amusing if JKRowling were to offer to do a six-part series fully self-funded for the BBC about her life and work.
He also thought Brexit would be sorted out in an afternoon and he also thought triggering a vanity by election was a good idea.
Colour me sceptical.
DD guested on the Rest is Politics recently and did not come over well. Rather brittle and defensive.
Do PBers listen to that prog btw? It's kind of a Centrist Dad heaven. You get the elegant (although slightly self-regarding and infused with class privilege) lilt of Rory Stewart interspersed with the pungent throb of Alastair Campbell, the both of them highly articulate, rational, animated by a deep dislike of populism. You listen to it for an hour or so and come away feeling calmer and more cheerful and grounded than when you started. Not many political podcasts do that but this one does.
A quibble though. There's a nice mix of centre left and centre right sentiment but this doesn’t map across to objective neutrality on the parties. Stewart is not a partisan tory. He finds it easy to criticise them and to say positive things about Labour. Campbell otoh is the definition of tribal. He can’t say anything good about the Conservatives or bad about Labour (now it’s his sort of Labour again under SKS as opposed to the Corbyn version) without choking. This (imo) rather unbalances the show.
I can't stand Campbell. He's a true, 100% shit who should be hiding his face away in anonymity somewhere. And Stewart should have remained in the party, rather than quitting.
But yes, I do occasionally listen to RiP...
Why so down on AC? I think he's a quality pundit if you adjust for the tribalism.
Terrible behaviour with Kelly, it cost a good man's life, but I don't rank him as the sort of unmitigated villain who should be forever cancelled.
He's someone who speaks very well about his struggles with his own mental health, yet was perfectly willing to destroy other people's for his own gain.
He's a nasty piece of work, whose only redeeming feature is being able to communicate well.
Ok but do you mean specifically Kelly? Or some sort of pattern where he's gone about deliberately destroying people's lives?
How many Iraqis died? Hundreds of thousands wasn't it? And we went to war on lies cooked up (partly) by AC to make the case look more damning. And the man who knew it had been sexed up was hounded to take his own life.
You won't find me defending Blair/Campbell on Iraq. We should not have got involved. It was terrible decision driven by a peculiar mix of hubris and servility.
However let's not start assigning blame for all the casualties of that war - or its toxic aftermath - on them. That would be a nonsense. The US were doing it regardless.
If the US were doing it anyway, it is even more despicable that we went along and soaked our hands in Iraqi blood.
There was a historical precedent. Wilson didn't sign up to Vietnam.
It was a terrible error, no question, but was it worse on account of it making little practical difference? I don't see that. Surely if us joining had meant the invasion happened rather than didn't happen *that* would have been worse. Because in that case our involvement would have been key to the whole episode.
Bernard Woolley : About ends and means. I mean, will I end up as a moral vacuum too? Sir Humphrey Appleby : Oh, I hope so, Bernard. If you work hard enough.
Kemi making the case for an engineer as PM. Coming from an engineering family I can say there is a danger of appearing a bit aloof and asking why everyone can't see what is so obvious to the engineer.
My experience of a retired civil engineer suggests they are very good at making simple problems into highly complicated ones simply to give themselves something to do.
He also thought Brexit would be sorted out in an afternoon and he also thought triggering a vanity by election was a good idea.
Colour me sceptical.
DD guested on the Rest is Politics recently and did not come over well. Rather brittle and defensive.
Do PBers listen to that prog btw? It's kind of a Centrist Dad heaven. You get the elegant (although slightly self-regarding and infused with class privilege) lilt of Rory Stewart interspersed with the pungent throb of Alastair Campbell, the both of them highly articulate, rational, animated by a deep dislike of populism. You listen to it for an hour or so and come away feeling calmer and more cheerful and grounded than when you started. Not many political podcasts do that but this one does.
A quibble though. There's a nice mix of centre left and centre right sentiment but this doesn’t map across to objective neutrality on the parties. Stewart is not a partisan tory. He finds it easy to criticise them and to say positive things about Labour. Campbell otoh is the definition of tribal. He can’t say anything good about the Conservatives or bad about Labour (now it’s his sort of Labour again under SKS as opposed to the Corbyn version) without choking. This (imo) rather unbalances the show.
I can't stand Campbell. He's a true, 100% shit who should be hiding his face away in anonymity somewhere. And Stewart should have remained in the party, rather than quitting.
But yes, I do occasionally listen to RiP...
Why so down on AC? I think he's a quality pundit if you adjust for the tribalism.
Terrible behaviour with Kelly, it cost a good man's life, but I don't rank him as the sort of unmitigated villain who should be forever cancelled.
He's someone who speaks very well about his struggles with his own mental health, yet was perfectly willing to destroy other people's for his own gain.
He's a nasty piece of work, whose only redeeming feature is being able to communicate well.
Ok but do you mean specifically Kelly? Or some sort of pattern where he's gone about deliberately destroying people's lives?
How many Iraqis died? Hundreds of thousands wasn't it? And we went to war on lies cooked up (partly) by AC to make the case look more damning. And the man who knew it had been sexed up was hounded to take his own life.
You won't find me defending Blair/Campbell on Iraq. We should not have got involved. It was terrible decision driven by a peculiar mix of hubris and servility.
However let's not start assigning blame for all the casualties of that war - or its toxic aftermath - on them. That would be a nonsense. The US were doing it regardless.
If the US were doing it anyway, it is even more despicable that we went along and soaked our hands in Iraqi blood.
There was a historical precedent. Wilson didn't sign up to Vietnam.
It was a terrible error, no question, but was it worse on account of it making little practical difference? I don't see that. Surely if us joining had meant the invasion happened rather than didn't happen *that* would have been worse. Because in that case our involvement would have been key to the whole episode.
Good point and if us joining had meant that the squadrons of highly trained killer bees had _not_ been unleashed on Falujah would that then have been good for the bee population or the population of Falujah or would Strawberry jam have risen in price as a result.
I don't think we've really got to grips with the near term implications of the developments in drone use (and their mass production) during the war. They will not be confined to Ukraine, and I doubt they will be entirely confined to use within the confines of war, either.
I think it is only a matter of time before wars are fought almost entirely using autonomous weapons. Soldiers of the traditional kind will likely be rendered pretty much obsolete. Their job will be primarily to accept surrender and pick up the pieces.
To be fair to @kinabalu, supporting one genocide is probably at the edge of decent left-wing behaviour, but supporting two would be beyond the pale.
You're more the genocide apologist round here.
So we are both genocide apologists but I'm more of one. That it? What comparative metric are you using here, for general reference. Is it numbers of people killed. Or political party in charge when it was being carried out.
Let's do it this way. It'll be easier.
US/UK in Iraq Israel in Gaza
I support neither. You supported the first at the time and support the second now.
He also thought Brexit would be sorted out in an afternoon and he also thought triggering a vanity by election was a good idea.
Colour me sceptical.
DD guested on the Rest is Politics recently and did not come over well. Rather brittle and defensive.
Do PBers listen to that prog btw? It's kind of a Centrist Dad heaven. You get the elegant (although slightly self-regarding and infused with class privilege) lilt of Rory Stewart interspersed with the pungent throb of Alastair Campbell, the both of them highly articulate, rational, animated by a deep dislike of populism. You listen to it for an hour or so and come away feeling calmer and more cheerful and grounded than when you started. Not many political podcasts do that but this one does.
A quibble though. There's a nice mix of centre left and centre right sentiment but this doesn’t map across to objective neutrality on the parties. Stewart is not a partisan tory. He finds it easy to criticise them and to say positive things about Labour. Campbell otoh is the definition of tribal. He can’t say anything good about the Conservatives or bad about Labour (now it’s his sort of Labour again under SKS as opposed to the Corbyn version) without choking. This (imo) rather unbalances the show.
I can't stand Campbell. He's a true, 100% shit who should be hiding his face away in anonymity somewhere. And Stewart should have remained in the party, rather than quitting.
But yes, I do occasionally listen to RiP...
Why so down on AC? I think he's a quality pundit if you adjust for the tribalism.
Terrible behaviour with Kelly, it cost a good man's life, but I don't rank him as the sort of unmitigated villain who should be forever cancelled.
He's someone who speaks very well about his struggles with his own mental health, yet was perfectly willing to destroy other people's for his own gain.
He's a nasty piece of work, whose only redeeming feature is being able to communicate well.
Ok but do you mean specifically Kelly? Or some sort of pattern where he's gone about deliberately destroying people's lives?
How many Iraqis died? Hundreds of thousands wasn't it? And we went to war on lies cooked up (partly) by AC to make the case look more damning. And the man who knew it had been sexed up was hounded to take his own life.
You won't find me defending Blair/Campbell on Iraq. We should not have got involved. It was terrible decision driven by a peculiar mix of hubris and servility.
However let's not start assigning blame for all the casualties of that war - or its toxic aftermath - on them. That would be a nonsense. The US were doing it regardless.
If the US were doing it anyway, it is even more despicable that we went along and soaked our hands in Iraqi blood.
There was a historical precedent. Wilson didn't sign up to Vietnam.
There is also the point, that without the UK, the US wouldn't have had had a major ally on side for the invasion. Which might well have tipped the balance - GWB was pressing Blair pretty hard for backing. Because GWB needed it in the US, to get Congress fully on side.
Which is why Alastair Campbell organised the faking of the dossier. And the rubbishing of Kelly.
No chance. America would have invaded without us.
No chance that America would have had ‘us’ without the warmongering enthusiasm of IDS and the Tory party.
Not only did I nearly DIE this morning after being hurled from my canoe into the notoriously lethal class 834 “borovi” rapids of the world’s third deepest river canyon I have just this minute found THESE
The Accursed Mountains are behind me and the stupefying Piva Gorge opens ahead, but right in front of me are these. The “stecci”, mysterious 13-15th century warrior tombs that no one quite understands, often engraved with pagan and pre-Christian symbols (swastikas, wheels, running deer) and placed in awesome noomy spots - like this - all of which says to some scholars the tradition of the stecci might actually stretch back to Eurasia’s megalithic past, to Stonehenge, Ggantija and even Gobekli Tepe
Now, a beer
There's a bar there as well?
Actually - yes. A really nice kind of skiing lodge bar. And perfectly positioned. I’d show you a photo but I’ve run out of photo rations
To be fair to @kinabalu, supporting one genocide is probably at the edge of decent left-wing behaviour, but supporting two would be beyond the pale.
You're more the genocide apologist round here.
So we are both genocide apologists but I'm more of one. That it? What comparative metric are you using here, for general reference. Is it numbers of people killed. Or political party in charge when it was being carried out.
Let's do it this way. It'll be easier.
US/UK in Iraq Israel in Gaza
I support neither. You supported the first at the time and support the second now.
Correct?
Whatabouterry was the town sport, where I was born.
He also thought Brexit would be sorted out in an afternoon and he also thought triggering a vanity by election was a good idea.
Colour me sceptical.
DD guested on the Rest is Politics recently and did not come over well. Rather brittle and defensive.
Do PBers listen to that prog btw? It's kind of a Centrist Dad heaven. You get the elegant (although slightly self-regarding and infused with class privilege) lilt of Rory Stewart interspersed with the pungent throb of Alastair Campbell, the both of them highly articulate, rational, animated by a deep dislike of populism. You listen to it for an hour or so and come away feeling calmer and more cheerful and grounded than when you started. Not many political podcasts do that but this one does.
A quibble though. There's a nice mix of centre left and centre right sentiment but this doesn’t map across to objective neutrality on the parties. Stewart is not a partisan tory. He finds it easy to criticise them and to say positive things about Labour. Campbell otoh is the definition of tribal. He can’t say anything good about the Conservatives or bad about Labour (now it’s his sort of Labour again under SKS as opposed to the Corbyn version) without choking. This (imo) rather unbalances the show.
I can't stand Campbell. He's a true, 100% shit who should be hiding his face away in anonymity somewhere. And Stewart should have remained in the party, rather than quitting.
But yes, I do occasionally listen to RiP...
Why so down on AC? I think he's a quality pundit if you adjust for the tribalism.
Terrible behaviour with Kelly, it cost a good man's life, but I don't rank him as the sort of unmitigated villain who should be forever cancelled.
He's someone who speaks very well about his struggles with his own mental health, yet was perfectly willing to destroy other people's for his own gain.
He's a nasty piece of work, whose only redeeming feature is being able to communicate well.
Ok but do you mean specifically Kelly? Or some sort of pattern where he's gone about deliberately destroying people's lives?
How many Iraqis died? Hundreds of thousands wasn't it? And we went to war on lies cooked up (partly) by AC to make the case look more damning. And the man who knew it had been sexed up was hounded to take his own life.
You won't find me defending Blair/Campbell on Iraq. We should not have got involved. It was terrible decision driven by a peculiar mix of hubris and servility.
However let's not start assigning blame for all the casualties of that war - or its toxic aftermath - on them. That would be a nonsense. The US were doing it regardless.
If the US were doing it anyway, it is even more despicable that we went along and soaked our hands in Iraqi blood.
There was a historical precedent. Wilson didn't sign up to Vietnam.
It was a terrible error, no question, but was it worse on account of it making little practical difference? I don't see that. Surely if us joining had meant the invasion happened rather than didn't happen *that* would have been worse. Because in that case our involvement would have been key to the whole episode.
I think that the argument that it didn't matter what Britain did in relation to Iraq, because the US would have gone ahead regardless, is a reprehensible moral cowardice.
Badenoch is very good at articulating a traditional Tory message. Whether the electorate are really after that right now, and whether she is effective enough to deliver it, I have some significant doubts.
No doubt she is a good communicator. But she still seems very hung up on weird things like Doctor Who being nasty about her (which he was, but as a campaign beat? Hmmm).
It was a super bad look from David Tennant and I am prepared to believe he was too bound up with his luvviedom to realise what he said as he was saying it. He realised as soon as he had said it tbf but that's how wars start...
{innocent face}
Turf wars?
{ducks}
As mentioned earlier, it would be hugely amusing if JKRowling were to offer to do a six-part series fully self-funded for the BBC about her life and work.
Self-funded broadcasts?
They're called adverts, aren't they? And as such, pretty easy for the Beeb to refuse.
To be fair to @kinabalu, supporting one genocide is probably at the edge of decent left-wing behaviour, but supporting two would be beyond the pale.
You're more the genocide apologist round here.
So we are both genocide apologists but I'm more of one. That it? What comparative metric are you using here, for general reference. Is it numbers of people killed. Or political party in charge when it was being carried out.
Let's do it this way. It'll be easier.
US/UK in Iraq Israel in Gaza
I support neither. You supported the first at the time and support the second now.
Correct?
You support neither but think the person who was the architect of the UK's contribution to the former is a bloody entertaining broadcaster and shouldn't be criticised for past deeds and you can't understand why everyone is laughing at you.
Badenoch is very good at articulating a traditional Tory message. Whether the electorate are really after that right now, and whether she is effective enough to deliver it, I have some significant doubts.
No doubt she is a good communicator. But she still seems very hung up on weird things like Doctor Who being nasty about her (which he was, but as a campaign beat? Hmmm).
It was a super bad look from David Tennant and I am prepared to believe he was too bound up with his luvviedom to realise what he said as he was saying it. He realised as soon as he had said it tbf but that's how wars start...
{innocent face}
Turf wars?
{ducks}
As mentioned earlier, it would be hugely amusing if JKRowling were to offer to do a six-part series fully self-funded for the BBC about her life and work.
Self-funded broadcasts?
They're called adverts, aren't they? And as such, pretty easy for the Beeb to refuse.
Or don't offer to fund it. Offer to make with them a programme about her life and work, unparalleled access, etc and watch the Beeb squirm.
Not only did I nearly DIE this morning after being hurled from my canoe into the notoriously lethal class 834 “borovi” rapids of the world’s third deepest river canyon I have just this minute found THESE
The Accursed Mountains are behind me and the stupefying Piva Gorge opens ahead, but right in front of me are these. The “stecci”, mysterious 13-15th century warrior tombs that no one quite understands, often engraved with pagan and pre-Christian symbols (swastikas, wheels, running deer) and placed in awesome noomy spots - like this - all of which says to some scholars the tradition of the stecci might actually stretch back to Eurasia’s megalithic past, to Stonehenge, Ggantija and even Gobekli Tepe
Now, a beer
There's a bar there as well?
Actually - yes. A really nice kind of skiing lodge bar. And perfectly positioned. I’d show you a photo but I’ve run out of photo rations
I don't think we've really got to grips with the near term implications of the developments in drone use (and their mass production) during the war. They will not be confined to Ukraine, and I doubt they will be entirely confined to use within the confines of war, either.
The implications are terrifying, without question. It now takes comparatively tiny amounts of money and resources to cause massive damage to a nation's infrastructure, so much so that a mid-level terrorist group could do so. A couple of hundred drones launched from a small ship in the North Sea could utterly devastate the UK's oil, gas and electric infrastructure. Flying as low as they do we'd have pretty much zero chance of even detecting them before loud and fatal things started happening.
I don't think we've really got to grips with the near term implications of the developments in drone use (and their mass production) during the war. They will not be confined to Ukraine, and I doubt they will be entirely confined to use within the confines of war, either.
I think it is only a matter of time before wars are fought almost entirely using autonomous weapons. Soldiers of the traditional kind will likely be rendered pretty much obsolete. Their job will be primarily to accept surrender and pick up the pieces.
...to service and maintain those robots...
We can already see the beginnings of this with Russia/Ukraine. Ultimately, wars will be won by whichever side has the economic power and the skills to build and maintain the largest and smartest fleet of increasingly autonomous, mainly aerial weapons (and weapon destroyers). Once one side's fleet has gained total superiority, there is be no point whatsoever in the other side continuing to fight. To do so would be suicide.
Comments
Terrible behaviour with Kelly, it cost a good man's life, but I don't rank him as the sort of unmitigated villain who should be forever cancelled.
They could of course have called any amount of expert evidence on the retrial (and didn't), and if that had been followed by an acquittal a number of interesting avenues would have risen up. You have to conclude that they didn't because they couldn't unless a better explanation emerges.
(P.S. I drank my body weight in that stuff – €1 a pint widely... cheapest thing on the menu, including water!)
Premeditated lying and faking information to start a war isn’t even a real crime.
Remember when Alastair Campbell orchestrated a racist anti-asylum seeker campaign with The Sun newspaper.
He's a nasty piece of work, whose only redeeming feature is being able to communicate well.
And my apologies for going back to a previous discussion. (The 8 hour time difference does make it harder for me to be current.)
Britain could, following the example of medieval Poland, elect kings, instead of presidents: "The Union of Lublin of 1569 established the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, a federal state more closely unified than the earlier political arrangement between Poland and Lithuania. The union was run largely by the nobility through the system of central parliament and local assemblies, but was headed by elected kings. The formal rule of the nobility, who were proportionally more numerous than in other European countries, constituted an early democratic system ("a sophisticated noble democracy"),[46] in contrast to the absolute monarchies prevalent at that time in the rest of Europe."
(Links omitted.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Poland#Piast_period_(10th_century–1385)
As I understand it, other nations sometimes tried to interfere with the Polish elections, but, fortunately that would never happen today. /sarc
"Jeremy Corbyn to form alliance with four independent pro-Gaza MPs
Group calls for more MPs to join and vows to campaign on issues such as austerity and two-child benefit cap"
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/sep/02/jeremy-corbyn-alliance-independent-pro-gaza-mps
https://x.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1830600025891811398
I have raised my concerns with RCP a number of times. In brief an aggregator who ignores polling that they don't like and allows their averages to be influenced by the likes of Rasmussen and Trafalgar is not worth the pixels.
I mentioned this morning that the very large increases in registration for women in general and young black and Hispanic women in particular suggests that the modelling used on the samples may well be out of date.
It is not clear to what extent, if at all, the genuine pollsters adjusted their figures after the result in 2016 and, to a lesser extent, 2020 when polling underestimated Trump. A lot is being made of the fact that Harris is somewhere between Hilary's lead and Biden's lead but are we actually comparing like with like?
Money plays an exceptionally large part in US elections. Harris has a lot more of it and Trump has a tendency to funnel a lot of his money, over $500m the last time, through a company that he has a substantial interest in. There are some suggestions that on actual advertising, especially digital advertising Trump may be getting outspent by a reasonable multiple, possibly even 10x.
The polling also seems to have no regard to the other things going on in the relevant states either. In Arizona, for example, the Senate race has a Democratic lead of 14-15% with the truly appalling Lake cratering. Will that drag out more Democrats? In that state, and in many others, there are a lot of other things on the ballot, particularly resolutions in relation to abortion. This may pull out supporters from both sides but the suggestion seems to be that the Evangelicals have overreached themselves.
None of this suggests that I have any great insight. In fact it is much more a list of things I don't know. What I would say is that we cannot yet be confident that Trump is going to be thrashed and, until we are, we should all be paying attention.
This seems to have triggered people to drip sanctimonious sarcasm onto me. And here's me with impeccable anti-Iraq War credentials too. Not fair!
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/09/02/drunk-cyclist-crash-women-cheshire-spared-jail/
I hear Jimmy Saville was really good at raising money for charity.
They will not be confined to Ukraine, and I doubt they will be entirely confined to use within the confines of war, either.
NB A legal question to which I don’t know the answer: Letby was convicted of 7 murders, with one hung jury which went for later retrial. In between the first case & the retrial, she appealed the convictions in the first case & her appeal was denied. An attempt by her lawyers to introduce their own expert evidence in the appeal was denied by the appeal judge on the grounds that they could have introduced that evidence at the original trial & could not therefore introduce it now.
Given that background, was it actually legally possible for her lawyers to introduce fresh expert evidence at the retrial that they failed to use in the original trial? Would the trial judge have permitted it, or would it be seen as trying to re-litigate the original trial by the backdoor, which had already been denied to them in the court of appeal?
But I do prefer my pundits not to have had a long history of dissembling to the public. Which also rules out characters like Boris.
Is it possible an incompetent defence wrongly concedes a point they should not? It is, but it's very possible it was considered carefully and the circumstances of the case made it not a credible position.
If you want to hit at his feet... well, that says things about you.
And then he has the nerve to talk about his struggles with *his* mental health.
https://x.com/michaelharriot/status/1830404168299000103
US culture is quite difficult to comprehend from a purely British perspective.
However let's not start assigning blame for all the casualties of that war - or its toxic aftermath - on them. That would be a nonsense. The US were doing it regardless.
Let me explain something about morality. It isn't like merit badges. Or maybe it actually is. You can lose merit badges in the Scouts for bad behaviour.
If you want to make excuses for AC - fine. But then your "impeccable anti-Iraq War credentials" merit badge will get torn off at the next jamboree.
Sorry about that....
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c39k44n8j1mo
There was a historical precedent. Wilson didn't sign up to Vietnam.
Which is why Alastair Campbell organised the faking of the dossier. And the rubbishing of Kelly.
Not sure what that says about me.
It sounds like you're saying that to quite like Alastair Campbell as a podcaster is to be indifferent to the suffering caused by the US/UK invasion of Iraq.
But that can't be right surely?
It's worth listening to if you can find it. He recited about 8 of the coincidences and with just those it was incontrovertable.
NB. Though I find the sentence to be inappropriate as she was/is clearly not of sound mind
On Labor Day, 47 years ago, I was with Jimmy Carter at Warm Springs GA—FDR's polio-rehab haven, in Carter's home state. Fascinating to see the things unimaginably different — many in the crowd had living memories of FDR's New Deal, nearly all remembered JFK — and surprisingly unchanged.
Carter's 100th birthday is 29 days from now.
https://x.com/JamesFallows/status/1830601103764759008
The issue with Iraq is that it didn't work.
Or Ezra Pound?
The film made from it was kind of interesting in a C-Movie kind of way - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screamers_(1995_film)
Badenoch is very good at articulating a traditional Tory message. Whether the electorate are really after that right now, and whether she is effective enough to deliver it, I have some significant doubts.
No doubt she is a good communicator. But she still seems very hung up on weird things like Doctor Who being nasty about her (which he was, but as a campaign beat? Hmmm).
Every fucking time - I've got the plutonium buy all setup and Tom Fucking Cruise jumps in his size 4.5 boots....
Turf wars?
{ducks}
Strikes me that if one of them had relentlessly gone after Starmer on one particular issue over the summer, they'd probably be a shoe in.....
Bernard Woolley : About ends and means. I mean, will I end up as a moral vacuum too?
Sir Humphrey Appleby : Oh, I hope so, Bernard. If you work hard enough.
Great pondering - keep it coming.
Kamala Harris leads Donald Trump by 2% nationally.
🇺🇸 Presidential Election Voting Intention (29 August):
Kamala Harris: 44% (-3)
Donald Trump: 42% (-2)
Other: 4% (+4)
Don't Know: 8% (+4)
Changes +/- 21 August
https://x.com/RedfieldWilton/status/1830636804590227738
US/UK in Iraq
Israel in Gaza
I support neither. You supported the first at the time and support the second now.
Correct?
I’ve run out of photo rations
You need to up your game.
They're called adverts, aren't they? And as such, pretty easy for the Beeb to refuse.
You'll never leave.