So this chap gets arrested and charged with a Section 5 Public Order offence for shouting 'Oi, you Chelsea rent boys'*. Where do people stand on this? Is this different from shouting ' 'Oi, you Chelsea wankers', 'Oi, you Chelsea twats' or any other of a range of not that offensive slurs?
Meanwhile the police have time to visit people who post bad words on social media, but not to investigate if your car is stolen. Priorities, hey.
And the MP who actually punched a voter to the ground gets a suspended sentence - as Facebook commenters get 3 years in jail
It is all so fucked up
Most abusive social media commentators also got suspended or community sentences but the Public Order Act was ironically introduced under Thatcher just the police and judges now expand interpretation of it
The right were fine with the Public Order Act until their own started falling foul of it. Hypocrits.
So this chap gets arrested and charged with a Section 5 Public Order offence for shouting 'Oi, you Chelsea rent boys'*. Where do people stand on this? Is this different from shouting ' 'Oi, you Chelsea wankers', 'Oi, you Chelsea twats' or any other of a range of not that offensive slurs?
Anneliese Dodds resigns as international development minister over aid cuts. Remarkably principled to do so, particularly so early into a government. She might have hoped for higher office in time.
Lest we forget she was Sir Keir’s first choice to be Chancellor until she proved herself utterly useless as Shadow Chancellor.
Anneliese Dodds resigns as international development minister over aid cuts. Remarkably principled to do so, particularly so early into a government. She might have hoped for higher office in time.
Starmer's day must be getting better. If only he had some decent talent somewhere to replace her with.
I thought getting rid of Gwynne might have given him an opportunity, but he replaced him with Ashley Dalton.
At least, that's one from the cabinet to be ticked off the prediction list (assume she counts as she attended cabinet).
Anneliese Dodds resigns as international development minister over aid cuts. Remarkably principled to do so, particularly so early into a government. She might have hoped for higher office in time.
Lest we forget she was Sir Keir’s first choice to be Chancellor until she proved herself utterly useless as Shadow Chancellor.
Hmm. Was she worse than Reeves?
Yes. At least as far as making a nanometer of impact whilst in Opposition.
Anneliese Dodds resigns as international development minister over aid cuts. Remarkably principled to do so, particularly so early into a government. She might have hoped for higher office in time.
President Trump will be the first US President to have 2 state visits to the UK after Starmer's decision to ask the King to invite him again yesterday.
Indeed apart from Trump only Bush and Obama have had even 1 formal state visit, other Presidents visited but not officially as state visits
President Trump will be the first US President to have 2 state visits to the UK after Starmer's decision to ask the King to invite him again yesterday.
Indeed apart from Trump only Bush and Obama have had even 1 formal state visit, other Presidents visited but not officially as state visits
It's like anything Royal, a bit of harmless frippery, but if it gains some favour then go for it.
After all there have been State visits for Xi, Putin, Ceauscesu and any number of other dictators.
Last few have been
Qatari Sheikh - dodgy human rights record Japanese Emperor - nothing comes up suggesting a wrong un S Korea - Yoon Suk-Yeol - Impeached S Africa - Ramaphosa - Full of dodgy scandals Trump - Impeached, dodgy
Equating a state visit with good moral standing makes no objective sense.
In the warm up for the actual ceremonies, the Welsh Guards band played the Imperial March from Star Wars, before the Saudi King's visit.
Playlist for Trump stattyvisit(sorry) II
Windmills Of Your Mind Stormy Weather I Love Little Pussy Something by The Dictators
Anneliese Dodds resigns as international development minister over aid cuts. Remarkably principled to do so, particularly so early into a government. She might have hoped for higher office in time.
I guess if your department budget is effectively cut in half overnight, it's a not unreasonable thing to do. Good for her.
Anneliese Dodds resigns as international development minister over aid cuts. Remarkably principled to do so, particularly so early into a government. She might have hoped for higher office in time.
She can go back to Craggy Island now and make tea.
Anneliese Dodds resigns as international development minister over aid cuts. Remarkably principled to do so, particularly so early into a government. She might have hoped for higher office in time.
This generation's David Davis.
Calling a by-election on the principle of maintaining foreign aid really would be bold.
President Trump will be the first US President to have 2 state visits to the UK after Starmer's decision to ask the King to invite him again yesterday.
Indeed apart from Trump only Bush and Obama have had even 1 formal state visit, other Presidents visited but not officially as state visits
Anneliese Dodds resigns as international development minister over aid cuts. Remarkably principled to do so, particularly so early into a government. She might have hoped for higher office in time.
Interesting that she waited until after Starmer's US visit.
So this chap gets arrested and charged with a Section 5 Public Order offence for shouting 'Oi, you Chelsea rent boys'*. Where do people stand on this? Is this different from shouting ' 'Oi, you Chelsea wankers', 'Oi, you Chelsea twats' or any other of a range of not that offensive slurs?
Anneliese Dodds resigns as international development minister over aid cuts. Remarkably principled to do so, particularly so early into a government. She might have hoped for higher office in time.
Lest we forget she was Sir Keir’s first choice to be Chancellor until she proved herself utterly useless as Shadow Chancellor.
Along with Gove the only alumnus of Robert Gordon's College to reach cabinet. A glittering twosome, though at least Dodds has some attachment to principle.
I'm no fan of Starmer, but I think realpolitik meant he had to take the tone he did yesterday, except on Canada, which was a disgrace. The American alliance is simply irreplaceable for us on so much, particularly security and intelligence.
But saying there isn't a divide on Canada is absurd - are we really going to put 25% tariffs on them next month?
I don't think it will have any effect long-term though on his popularity here though, because one swallow (even if that swallow is Trump's ... OK, I won't go there) doesn't make a summer, and voters don't tend to care much about foreign policy issues. It might discredit Starmer further with the Momentum (is that still a thing?) crowd, but they hated him anyway.
I'm not a Momentum whisperer, but I'd say the lobby has fractured decisively.
Previously it was Corbynite True Believers, people wanting to ride the bandwagon to power, fellow travellers, and supporters (passive believers + sheep).
That has turned into people who practically support or tolerate Putin because it is anti-West, people who have examined things and turned for various reasons (eg Paul Mason), bandwagoneers who have boarded other bandwagons which they hope may get further, and other bits and pieces. Passive supporters are probably now in the changed Labour mainstream.
Novara Media seem to have changed somewhat, especially afaics Aaron Bastani and Ash Sarkar.
Having inspected the polls Ash Sarkar has abandoned woke, embraced anti-woke, and in her languid search for an alternative seems to have alighted on class. Which is fine on a come-to-Jesus basis but FOR SOMEBODY WHO CLAIMS TO BE AN ACTUAL COMMUNIST is preternaturally dumb.
Note she was of the Luxury Communist stripe. By this I assume she believed that come the revolution she would be shopping in the one shop in the UK with luxury goods, while the rest of the plebs made do with mouldy potatoes and mud for dinner. Just like in the good ole USSR.
When he says "Gaza should grab hold of the opportunity...", who does he means as "Gaza". The plan Trump mooted and Bibi is embracing is to ethnically cleanse Gaza of its current population. So, who is "Gaza" in Mackenzie's tweet? It's not the current population of Gaza. Is it the land and rocks and sand of Gaza?
Judging by the shot of Trump pawing at that poor dancer in the film I think it’s clear what he means by “grab hold of the opportunity”
President Trump will be the first US President to have 2 state visits to the UK after Starmer's decision to ask the King to invite him again yesterday.
Indeed apart from Trump only Bush and Obama have had even 1 formal state visit, other Presidents visited but not officially as state visits
It's like anything Royal, a bit of harmless frippery, but if it gains some favour then go for it.
After all there have been State visits for Xi, Putin, Ceauscesu and any number of other dictators.
The protests are gonna be costly to police. But probably a lot less costly than 25% tariffs.
Hence the genius of hosting it in Balmoral. Playing to the Ayrshire Hoteliers Caledonian ancestry, and inaccessible to protesters.
That's a different visit. The one before the big visit.
I did think that was a rather effective tactic; slow down the whole state visit thing (Starmer must know how badly that will play domestically) and at the same time flatter Trump by meeting him near one of his golf courses.
If everyone drags their heels enough, there is a good chance the actual, toddler-blimp-inspiring state visit will occur a few weeks after the world ends.
ETA: Or at least, after facts on the ground (Trump's destruction of US democracy) dictate that Starmer can look appropriately strong by cancelling the state visit.
Anneliese Dodds resigns as international development minister over aid cuts. Remarkably principled to do so, particularly so early into a government. She might have hoped for higher office in time.
Interesting that she waited until after Starmer's US visit.
Seems consistent with resigning on a point of principle rather than to maximise damage to the government. Fair play.
I can't imagine people will be queueing up to replace her. The job will just involve cutting aid programmes. Even if you agree with the policy in principle, it's a pretty shitty job to carry out in practice.
Anneliese Dodds resigns as international development minister over aid cuts. Remarkably principled to do so, particularly so early into a government. She might have hoped for higher office in time.
This generation's David Davis.
Calling a by-election on the principle of maintaining foreign aid really would be bold.
I think viewcode meant she possesses some actual principles, but she's also a bit useless.
Anneliese Dodds resigns as international development minister over aid cuts. Remarkably principled to do so, particularly so early into a government. She might have hoped for higher office in time.
This generation's David Davis.
Calling a by-election on the principle of maintaining foreign aid really would be bold.
Anneliese Dodds resigns as international development minister over aid cuts. Remarkably principled to do so, particularly so early into a government. She might have hoped for higher office in time.
Lest we forget she was Sir Keir’s first choice to be Chancellor until she proved herself utterly useless as Shadow Chancellor.
Hmm. Was she worse than Reeves?
She was facing Rishi Sunak at his apotheosis as Chancellor.
Rishi was rather popular for paying people to stay at home.
President Trump will be the first US President to have 2 state visits to the UK after Starmer's decision to ask the King to invite him again yesterday.
Indeed apart from Trump only Bush and Obama have had even 1 formal state visit, other Presidents visited but not officially as state visits
It's like anything Royal, a bit of harmless frippery, but if it gains some favour then go for it.
After all there have been State visits for Xi, Putin, Ceauscesu and any number of other dictators.
The protests are gonna be costly to police. But probably a lot less costly than 25% tariffs.
Hence the genius of hosting it in Balmoral. Playing to the Ayrshire Hoteliers Caledonian ancestry, and inaccessible to protesters.
That's a different visit. The one before the big visit.
I did think that was a rather effective tactic; slow down the whole state visit thing (Starmer must know how badly that will play domestically) and at the same time flatter Trump by meeting him near one of his golf courses.
If everyone drags their heels enough, there is a good chance the actual, toddler-blimp-inspiring state visit will occur a few weeks after the world ends.
Near two of the things. IIRC KC mentioned Dumfries House, which is where it sounds like and not a trillion km from Turnberry, as well as Balmoral, which is near Menie or whatver it is called. I just hope no [edit: unfortunate - not sure theyd be poor if they have a booking] couple gets their wedding scrubbed at short notice.
"Paris: theatre managers who invited 200 migrants to a free show will abandon the building and face bankruptcy as refugees still refuse to leave after three months and spark wave of sex-related violence"
Anneliese Dodds resigns as international development minister over aid cuts. Remarkably principled to do so, particularly so early into a government. She might have hoped for higher office in time.
Interesting that she waited until after Starmer's US visit.
Seems consistent with resigning on a point of principle rather than to maximise damage to the government. Fair play.
I can't imagine people will be queueing up to replace her. The job will just involve cutting aid programmes. Even if you agree with the policy in principle, it's a pretty shitty job to carry out in practice.
It will likely be a promotion. So, someone will put their hands up.
So this chap gets arrested and charged with a Section 5 Public Order offence for shouting 'Oi, you Chelsea rent boys'*. Where do people stand on this? Is this different from shouting ' 'Oi, you Chelsea wankers', 'Oi, you Chelsea twats' or any other of a range of not that offensive slurs?
Meanwhile the police have time to visit people who post bad words on social media, but not to investigate if your car is stolen. Priorities, hey.
And the MP who actually punched a voter to the ground gets a suspended sentence - as Facebook commenters get 3 years in jail
It is all so fucked up
Homophobia is a Bad Thing. My dad's petty pointless homophobia was a key driver in my bisexuality staying firmly in the closet. Should we be punishing people who are attacking people for their sexuality? Absolutely.
But. Is it homophobic abuse if he's shouting "rent boys" at straight people who aren't going to feel that their (hetrosexual) sexuality is being attacked...?
I don't think you can presume the Chelsea fans were straight.
Indeed! Or gay, bi, asexual or anything else.
I'm just floating the question - can you do hate speech against someone if they are not the thing you are saying to them?
So this chap gets arrested and charged with a Section 5 Public Order offence for shouting 'Oi, you Chelsea rent boys'*. Where do people stand on this? Is this different from shouting ' 'Oi, you Chelsea wankers', 'Oi, you Chelsea twats' or any other of a range of not that offensive slurs?
Meanwhile the police have time to visit people who post bad words on social media, but not to investigate if your car is stolen. Priorities, hey.
And the MP who actually punched a voter to the ground gets a suspended sentence - as Facebook commenters get 3 years in jail
It is all so fucked up
Homophobia is a Bad Thing. My dad's petty pointless homophobia was a key driver in my bisexuality staying firmly in the closet. Should we be punishing people who are attacking people for their sexuality? Absolutely.
But. Is it homophobic abuse if he's shouting "rent boys" at straight people who aren't going to feel that their (hetrosexual) sexuality is being attacked...?
I don't think you can presume the Chelsea fans were straight.
Indeed! Or gay, bi, asexual or anything else.
I'm just floating the question - can you do hate speech against someone if they are not the thing you are saying to them?
Anneliese Dodds resigns as international development minister over aid cuts. Remarkably principled to do so, particularly so early into a government. She might have hoped for higher office in time.
Lest we forget she was Sir Keir’s first choice to be Chancellor until she proved herself utterly useless as Shadow Chancellor.
Hmm. Was she worse than Reeves?
She was facing Rishi Sunak at his apotheosis as Chancellor.
Rishi was rather popular for paying people to stay at home.
It was certainly very difficult for the party of lockdown nutters and entitled welfare scoungers to attack Sunak over that. His apotheosis only cost the taxpayers £60 billion.
It was tragic for the country that we didn't have a real opposition who stood up against the hysteria during the pandemic.
So this chap gets arrested and charged with a Section 5 Public Order offence for shouting 'Oi, you Chelsea rent boys'*. Where do people stand on this? Is this different from shouting ' 'Oi, you Chelsea wankers', 'Oi, you Chelsea twats' or any other of a range of not that offensive slurs?
Meanwhile the police have time to visit people who post bad words on social media, but not to investigate if your car is stolen. Priorities, hey.
And the MP who actually punched a voter to the ground gets a suspended sentence - as Facebook commenters get 3 years in jail
It is all so fucked up
Homophobia is a Bad Thing. My dad's petty pointless homophobia was a key driver in my bisexuality staying firmly in the closet. Should we be punishing people who are attacking people for their sexuality? Absolutely.
But. Is it homophobic abuse if he's shouting "rent boys" at straight people who aren't going to feel that their (hetrosexual) sexuality is being attacked...?
I don't think you can presume the Chelsea fans were straight.
Indeed! Or gay, bi, asexual or anything else.
I'm just floating the question - can you do hate speech against someone if they are not the thing you are saying to them?
Without doubt if sexuality against a big group. Some in the group will be the target and it makes it harder for them to live as themselves.
Whether it needs to be criminal at this level of abuse is another matter.
This is quite a big deal for our air defence capability.
Meteor's first flight on an F-35B
https://www.raf.mod.uk/news/articles/meteors-first-flight-on-an-f-35b/ ..Meteor is the UK’s primary air-to-air missile and is carried on operations by Typhoon, with this step being progress towards enabling Meteor’s capability on F-35. While the UK is leading the integration campaign for F-35B, Italy is sponsoring integration onto the F-35A model, allowing both aircraft types to take advantage of Meteor’s inclusion...
Anneliese Dodds resigns as international development minister over aid cuts. Remarkably principled to do so, particularly so early into a government. She might have hoped for higher office in time.
Interesting that she waited until after Starmer's US visit.
Seems consistent with resigning on a point of principle rather than to maximise damage to the government. Fair play.
I can't imagine people will be queueing up to replace her. The job will just involve cutting aid programmes. Even if you agree with the policy in principle, it's a pretty shitty job to carry out in practice.
It will likely be a promotion. So, someone will put their hands up.
Is it still a promotion? A department with a budget of 0.7% of GDP, as it once was, was a significant one.
A department with a budget of 0.3% of GDP - with a large part of that already committed spending to the likes of WHO etc - is going to be pretty limited in scope.
So this chap gets arrested and charged with a Section 5 Public Order offence for shouting 'Oi, you Chelsea rent boys'*. Where do people stand on this? Is this different from shouting ' 'Oi, you Chelsea wankers', 'Oi, you Chelsea twats' or any other of a range of not that offensive slurs?
Meanwhile the police have time to visit people who post bad words on social media, but not to investigate if your car is stolen. Priorities, hey.
And the MP who actually punched a voter to the ground gets a suspended sentence - as Facebook commenters get 3 years in jail
It is all so fucked up
Homophobia is a Bad Thing. My dad's petty pointless homophobia was a key driver in my bisexuality staying firmly in the closet. Should we be punishing people who are attacking people for their sexuality? Absolutely.
But. Is it homophobic abuse if he's shouting "rent boys" at straight people who aren't going to feel that their (hetrosexual) sexuality is being attacked...?
I don't think you can presume the Chelsea fans were straight.
Indeed! Or gay, bi, asexual or anything else.
I'm just floating the question - can you do hate speech against someone if they are not the thing you are saying to them?
Yes you can, but you’ll find something else they hate about you.
President Trump will be the first US President to have 2 state visits to the UK after Starmer's decision to ask the King to invite him again yesterday.
Indeed apart from Trump only Bush and Obama have had even 1 formal state visit, other Presidents visited but not officially as state visits
It's like anything Royal, a bit of harmless frippery, but if it gains some favour then go for it.
After all there have been State visits for Xi, Putin, Ceauscesu and any number of other dictators.
Last few have been
Qatari Sheikh - dodgy human rights record Japanese Emperor - nothing comes up suggesting a wrong un S Korea - Yoon Suk-Yeol - Impeached S Africa - Ramaphosa - Full of dodgy scandals Trump - Impeached, dodgy
Equating a state visit with good moral standing makes no objective sense.
In the warm up for the actual ceremonies, the Welsh Guards band played the Imperial March from Star Wars, before the Saudi King's visit.
Playlist for Trump stattyvisit(sorry) II
Windmills Of Your Mind Stormy Weather I Love Little Pussy Something by The Dictators
Do you think the Guards Band could adapt this classic from the first Clash Albumn?
Anneliese Dodds resigns as international development minister over aid cuts. Remarkably principled to do so, particularly so early into a government. She might have hoped for higher office in time.
Lest we forget she was Sir Keir’s first choice to be Chancellor until she proved herself utterly useless as Shadow Chancellor.
I think that was him trying to keep the left vaguely onside.
So this chap gets arrested and charged with a Section 5 Public Order offence for shouting 'Oi, you Chelsea rent boys'*. Where do people stand on this? Is this different from shouting ' 'Oi, you Chelsea wankers', 'Oi, you Chelsea twats' or any other of a range of not that offensive slurs?
Meanwhile the police have time to visit people who post bad words on social media, but not to investigate if your car is stolen. Priorities, hey.
And the MP who actually punched a voter to the ground gets a suspended sentence - as Facebook commenters get 3 years in jail
It is all so fucked up
Homophobia is a Bad Thing. My dad's petty pointless homophobia was a key driver in my bisexuality staying firmly in the closet. Should we be punishing people who are attacking people for their sexuality? Absolutely.
But. Is it homophobic abuse if he's shouting "rent boys" at straight people who aren't going to feel that their (hetrosexual) sexuality is being attacked...?
I don't think you can presume the Chelsea fans were straight.
Indeed! Or gay, bi, asexual or anything else.
I'm just floating the question - can you do hate speech against someone if they are not the thing you are saying to them?
If you believe them to be, you can.
No football fan calls someone a rent boy believing that to be the case. Its juvenile. playground nonsense. Should not be a matter for the police.
So this chap gets arrested and charged with a Section 5 Public Order offence for shouting 'Oi, you Chelsea rent boys'*. Where do people stand on this? Is this different from shouting ' 'Oi, you Chelsea wankers', 'Oi, you Chelsea twats' or any other of a range of not that offensive slurs?
Meanwhile the police have time to visit people who post bad words on social media, but not to investigate if your car is stolen. Priorities, hey.
And the MP who actually punched a voter to the ground gets a suspended sentence - as Facebook commenters get 3 years in jail
It is all so fucked up
Homophobia is a Bad Thing. My dad's petty pointless homophobia was a key driver in my bisexuality staying firmly in the closet. Should we be punishing people who are attacking people for their sexuality? Absolutely.
But. Is it homophobic abuse if he's shouting "rent boys" at straight people who aren't going to feel that their (hetrosexual) sexuality is being attacked...?
I don't think you can presume the Chelsea fans were straight.
Indeed! Or gay, bi, asexual or anything else.
I'm just floating the question - can you do hate speech against someone if they are not the thing you are saying to them?
If you believe them to be, you can.
No football fan calls someone a rent boy believing that to be the case. Its juvenile. playground nonsense. Should not be a matter for the police.
Have football fans considered that insulting (or attempting to insult) other fans does not show their "love of the game"?
Perhaps spending the energy in playing the game themselves might help.
Anneliese Dodds resigns as international development minister over aid cuts. Remarkably principled to do so, particularly so early into a government. She might have hoped for higher office in time.
Lest we forget she was Sir Keir’s first choice to be Chancellor until she proved herself utterly useless as Shadow Chancellor.
Hmm. Was she worse than Reeves?
She was facing Rishi Sunak at his apotheosis as Chancellor.
Rishi was rather popular for paying people to stay at home.
I know you really shouldn’t laugh at your rivals in business because one should always remain humble and magnanimous but this fuck up is epic, I hate to be the Head of Regulatory Affairs trying to explain this to the authorities.
Citigroup credited client’s account with $81tn before error spotted
US bank meant to send $280 but no funds were transferred despite ‘fat finger’ mistake
The US bank Citigroup credited a client’s account with $81tn when it meant to send $280 – before the “fat finger” error was caught.
The mistake was spotted only after two employees had missed it, and a third employee rectified it 90 minutes after it was posted, the Financial Times reported. No funds left the bank.
The bank disclosed the “near miss” to the US Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
A transaction of $81tn (£64tn) would be so huge that it would be unlikely to go through any bank’s systems. It would have certainly gone down as one of the biggest ever fat finger errors, in which the wrong number is entered in a computer system.
Interesting how this has dropped on PB. The usual template is thrown out because reaction depends on (i) feelings about SKS, (ii) feelings about Donald Trump, (iii) what you think the visit achieved, (iv) your tolerance for excruciating spectacle on tv. For me it's (i) I like him, (ii) I hate him, (iii) no idea, (iv) low. So basically I'd say it went well, from Starmer's pov, but it was my idea of a horror show.
It was horrific. I am not sure I could ever forgive Starmer. Anyway Kemi Badenoch has tweeted today that any success is down to her, which makes me hate the visit even more.
Felt wrong. I know the "love actually" moment is a fantasy but I would like to see an end to the public fawning. The short term gains (assuming there are any) will imo be outweighed over time by the fact it only encourages him.
Trump will have changed his mind by tomorrow, yet he still gets his State Visit. I have been paying my taxes for 40 years to the exchequer, I am not a hood, I am not a Putin shill, I am not an adjudicated rapist, I am not a convicted felon ( although I am on a speed awareness course in ten minutes) yet no one has offered me a State Visit. What am I doing wrong?
Anneliese Dodds resigns as international development minister over aid cuts. Remarkably principled to do so, particularly so early into a government. She might have hoped for higher office in time.
Interesting that she waited until after Starmer's US visit.
Seems consistent with resigning on a point of principle rather than to maximise damage to the government. Fair play.
I can't imagine people will be queueing up to replace her. The job will just involve cutting aid programmes. Even if you agree with the policy in principle, it's a pretty shitty job to carry out in practice.
It will likely be a promotion. So, someone will put their hands up.
Is it still a promotion? A department with a budget of 0.7% of GDP, as it once was, was a significant one.
A department with a budget of 0.3% of GDP - with a large part of that already committed spending to the likes of WHO etc - is going to be pretty limited in scope.
At the moment, a fairly shocking slice of the international development budget goes on asylum hotels. Free up that bit of spending (by stopping the last government's pretence that such people simply don't exist so they don't need to be processed and let out into society), and the cuts don't look quite so bad.
So this chap gets arrested and charged with a Section 5 Public Order offence for shouting 'Oi, you Chelsea rent boys'*. Where do people stand on this? Is this different from shouting ' 'Oi, you Chelsea wankers', 'Oi, you Chelsea twats' or any other of a range of not that offensive slurs?
Meanwhile the police have time to visit people who post bad words on social media, but not to investigate if your car is stolen. Priorities, hey.
And the MP who actually punched a voter to the ground gets a suspended sentence - as Facebook commenters get 3 years in jail
It is all so fucked up
Wait till nominal Vice President and acting free speech advocate JD Vance taunts Starmer over “hurty words”.
I don't think we need to worry about Vance (unless he becomes President); we know who he is. We need a new puppet of Musk and Vance, with Trump in the other pocket. My image quota.
I know you really shouldn’t laugh at your rivals in business because one should always remain humble and magnanimous but this fuck up is epic, I hate to be the Head of Regulatory Affairs trying to explain this to the authorities.
Citigroup credited client’s account with $81tn before error spotted
US bank meant to send $280 but no funds were transferred despite ‘fat finger’ mistake
The US bank Citigroup credited a client’s account with $81tn when it meant to send $280 – before the “fat finger” error was caught.
The mistake was spotted only after two employees had missed it, and a third employee rectified it 90 minutes after it was posted, the Financial Times reported. No funds left the bank.
The bank disclosed the “near miss” to the US Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
A transaction of $81tn (£64tn) would be so huge that it would be unlikely to go through any bank’s systems. It would have certainly gone down as one of the biggest ever fat finger errors, in which the wrong number is entered in a computer system.
So this chap gets arrested and charged with a Section 5 Public Order offence for shouting 'Oi, you Chelsea rent boys'*. Where do people stand on this? Is this different from shouting ' 'Oi, you Chelsea wankers', 'Oi, you Chelsea twats' or any other of a range of not that offensive slurs?
Meanwhile the police have time to visit people who post bad words on social media, but not to investigate if your car is stolen. Priorities, hey.
And the MP who actually punched a voter to the ground gets a suspended sentence - as Facebook commenters get 3 years in jail
It is all so fucked up
Homophobia is a Bad Thing. My dad's petty pointless homophobia was a key driver in my bisexuality staying firmly in the closet. Should we be punishing people who are attacking people for their sexuality? Absolutely.
But. Is it homophobic abuse if he's shouting "rent boys" at straight people who aren't going to feel that their (hetrosexual) sexuality is being attacked...?
I don't think you can presume the Chelsea fans were straight.
Indeed! Or gay, bi, asexual or anything else.
I'm just floating the question - can you do hate speech against someone if they are not the thing you are saying to them?
If you believe them to be, you can.
No football fan calls someone a rent boy believing that to be the case. Its juvenile. playground nonsense. Should not be a matter for the police.
Have football fans considered that insulting (or attempting to insult) other fans does not show their "love of the game"?
Perhaps spending the energy in playing the game themselves might help.
Playing the game involves plenty of insults both given and received too.
Starmer's getting close to Trump probably won't harm him much with redwall voters. However it might see Labour leak more votes to the Greens and LDs from the type of 'progressive' middle class voters who deserted them after Blair invaded Iraq until the Tory and LD coalition and Ed Miliband's apology for Iraq
I'm a progressive middle-class voter, but I'm not remotely tempted by the LibDems (all over the place without any uniting principles) or Greens (unrealistic). We're short of a serious left-wing alternative, partly due to the electoral system which makes it usually impractical.
@NickPalmer , I still need your Bluesky account name.
Starmer's getting close to Trump probably won't harm him much with redwall voters. However it might see Labour leak more votes to the Greens and LDs from the type of 'progressive' middle class voters who deserted them after Blair invaded Iraq until the Tory and LD coalition and Ed Miliband's apology for Iraq
I'm a progressive middle-class voter, but I'm not remotely tempted by the LibDems (all over the place without any uniting principles) or Greens (unrealistic). We're short of a serious left-wing alternative, partly due to the electoral system which makes it usually impractical.
@NickPalmer , I still need your Bluesky account name.
Anneliese Dodds resigns as international development minister over aid cuts. Remarkably principled to do so, particularly so early into a government. She might have hoped for higher office in time.
Lest we forget she was Sir Keir’s first choice to be Chancellor until she proved herself utterly useless as Shadow Chancellor.
Hmm. Was she worse than Reeves?
She was facing Rishi Sunak at his apotheosis as Chancellor.
Rishi was rather popular for paying people to stay at home.
Dodd's letter is devastating. It's factual, logical and clearly correct in its conclusions. Everyone who thinks seriously about these matters will understand that, including probably Keir Starmer.
I know you really shouldn’t laugh at your rivals in business because one should always remain humble and magnanimous but this fuck up is epic, I hate to be the Head of Regulatory Affairs trying to explain this to the authorities.
Citigroup credited client’s account with $81tn before error spotted
US bank meant to send $280 but no funds were transferred despite ‘fat finger’ mistake
The US bank Citigroup credited a client’s account with $81tn when it meant to send $280 – before the “fat finger” error was caught.
The mistake was spotted only after two employees had missed it, and a third employee rectified it 90 minutes after it was posted, the Financial Times reported. No funds left the bank.
The bank disclosed the “near miss” to the US Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
A transaction of $81tn (£64tn) would be so huge that it would be unlikely to go through any bank’s systems. It would have certainly gone down as one of the biggest ever fat finger errors, in which the wrong number is entered in a computer system.
Dodds's resignation has simply advertised the slashing of foreign aid to all those precious Reform voters. Another piece of good fortune falls into Sir Keir's lap.
I’ve been busy for the last few days so just catching up.
Starmer, Mandelson, Powell. Smashed it out of the park. Forget party politics at times like this, we need our elected leader and their team to deliver for Britain. And they did.
Trump likes tough negotiators - they negotiated hard. Trump likes people on his agenda - and we’d already announced the (inevitable so why not get kudos for it) step up in spending. And we blew smoke up the narcissistic old bastard’s chuff with a second state visit.
I can't go along fully with this. Of course we rolled out the red carpet with the second State visit - it would have been a profoundly foolish thing not too. And of course we didn't embarrass Trump by disagreeing with him publicly (though a far better form of words could and should have been found for poor old Canada).
What concerns me more is what we may have agreed to, at least in principle, all for the perverse purpose of getting Chagos over the line. Trump is a fool if he didn't know that the policy was controversial - Farage has been campaigning against it, and he would also know that Starmer was beholden to the policy to a peculiar degree. Though Trump did not offer a ringing endorsement of Chagos, clearly his failure to block it was a cornerstone of the visit from Labour's perspective - otherwise Lammy wouldn't have trailed the fact that the policy would be scrapped if Trump didn't agree. What we may have given Trump in exchange for not humiliating Starmer over Chagos, we could have given in exchange for a genuine policy gain. What we may have instead is a setback to pay for a setback.
I am also not clear, if this is a 'success', what would a failure look like? It seems that we have agreed that we will take part in securing what are now US mineral interests in Ukraine. The US has not said it will offer any component of this force. Is this a great outcome? Yes we didn't get bawled out and slapped with 25% tariffs, which is a blessing, but I am not sure what we actually gained.
The Chagos deal isn't a Labour Party bugbear where Starmer has squeezed support out of the US. Rather, it has always been driven by what the US wants and Labour continued negotiations started under the Tories.
No.
Are you are still in the “surrendering Chagos just cause UN told us too, and that it wasn’t even binding, AND paying £18B in reparations for WTF? to make lefty lawyers rich” fantasy land?
I sussed Chagos Deal, so you can too if I can. It took a while to bottom it out, by reading a lot of foreign media coverage, India’s, alongside RUSI and Chatham House. UK mainstream press have been a disgrace covering Chagos Deal properly, have really let their readers down.
Its not UN resolutions UK surrendered to, it’s UN system gamed by Mauritius sponsors like India, helps them tar UK as the bad seed, this was shredding our soft power throughout the region, its this damage to UK interest and business that applied the pressure. At same time US became happy to placate India with the lease idea. The lease money not just for Chagos base but environmental sanctuary around it that keeps snoopers at distance, is something moneybags US clearly happy to pay.
Yes we technically pay it as “owner”, but we definitely get reimbursed by US just like we always have been, since the sixties and original Chagos arrangement.
I’ll explain it like this: this deal and the disgraceful British Chagos deal of 1960s, like this new one I would never have signed - weapons discount to ethnically cleanse the islands - certainly has common element how UK defence takes US weaponry and intelligence - it’s no different to a UK druggy, in thrall to US dealer IMO. It may seem we get mates-rates in pricing, but we are under thumb of the supplier and what they supply, it means we buy expensive kit to interlock with American kit. As an economy underwritten by the dollar, something of a military industrial complex, US is very different to us on defence spending, they have far more cash and ability to borrow, this UK drug and supplier relationship drains UK defence piggybank quicker than we may like.
But so many UK governments over 60 years not that dumb to sign both Chagos deals on idea we are financially quids in, they did it because they like to think UK is top table player. That’s the psychology that’s driven this from day one to present deal.
Both Chagos deals tie UK with US on defence procurement, intelligence and working together - and that in a nutshell is the straightforward answer why both deals happened. That’s key truths of both Chagos Deals UK media, the opposition parties like Farage and Kemi, all have been “overcooking opposition mode” and failing to honestly acknowledge.
I know you really shouldn’t laugh at your rivals in business because one should always remain humble and magnanimous but this fuck up is epic, I hate to be the Head of Regulatory Affairs trying to explain this to the authorities.
Citigroup credited client’s account with $81tn before error spotted
US bank meant to send $280 but no funds were transferred despite ‘fat finger’ mistake
The US bank Citigroup credited a client’s account with $81tn when it meant to send $280 – before the “fat finger” error was caught.
The mistake was spotted only after two employees had missed it, and a third employee rectified it 90 minutes after it was posted, the Financial Times reported. No funds left the bank.
The bank disclosed the “near miss” to the US Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
A transaction of $81tn (£64tn) would be so huge that it would be unlikely to go through any bank’s systems. It would have certainly gone down as one of the biggest ever fat finger errors, in which the wrong number is entered in a computer system.
How precisely is 81 trillion a fat-fingered 280 dollars? You'd need to drop your prosthetic leg, never mind a fat finger, on the keyboard to get the wrong digits in the wrong order with a bunch of trailing zeros.
Anneliese Dodds resigns as international development minister over aid cuts. Remarkably principled to do so, particularly so early into a government. She might have hoped for higher office in time.
Lest we forget she was Sir Keir’s first choice to be Chancellor until she proved herself utterly useless as Shadow Chancellor.
Hmm. Was she worse than Reeves?
She was facing Rishi Sunak at his apotheosis as Chancellor.
Rishi was rather popular for paying people to stay at home.
Dodd's letter is devastating. It's factual, logical and clearly correct in its conclusions. Everyone who thinks seriously about these matters will understand that, including probably Keir Starmer.
And it lacks a counter solution to the problem of needing to find money, fast, to ensure the defence of the realm. As always politicians and ministers need to remember that the money they spend is tax payers, not theirs. Yes its nice to spend tax payers money all round the world, and I am sure it does some good, but there are places where it can be cut. India has a space program yet we still use our overseas aid budget to give money to India. Tough times need tough calls. Why not fight within to do the best you can with 0.3% of GNI. Its not exactly peanuts, is it.
Starmer's getting close to Trump probably won't harm him much with redwall voters. However it might see Labour leak more votes to the Greens and LDs from the type of 'progressive' middle class voters who deserted them after Blair invaded Iraq until the Tory and LD coalition and Ed Miliband's apology for Iraq
I'm a progressive middle-class voter, but I'm not remotely tempted by the LibDems (all over the place without any uniting principles) or Greens (unrealistic). We're short of a serious left-wing alternative, partly due to the electoral system which makes it usually impractical.
@NickPalmer , I still need your Bluesky account name.
Anneliese Dodds resigns as international development minister over aid cuts. Remarkably principled to do so, particularly so early into a government. She might have hoped for higher office in time.
Lest we forget she was Sir Keir’s first choice to be Chancellor until she proved herself utterly useless as Shadow Chancellor.
Hmm. Was she worse than Reeves?
She was facing Rishi Sunak at his apotheosis as Chancellor.
Rishi was rather popular for paying people to stay at home.
Dodd's letter is devastating. It's factual, logical and clearly correct in its conclusions. Everyone who thinks seriously about these matters will understand that, including probably Keir Starmer.
A third of overseas aid is actually spent in the UK!
I know you really shouldn’t laugh at your rivals in business because one should always remain humble and magnanimous but this fuck up is epic, I hate to be the Head of Regulatory Affairs trying to explain this to the authorities.
Citigroup credited client’s account with $81tn before error spotted
US bank meant to send $280 but no funds were transferred despite ‘fat finger’ mistake
The US bank Citigroup credited a client’s account with $81tn when it meant to send $280 – before the “fat finger” error was caught.
The mistake was spotted only after two employees had missed it, and a third employee rectified it 90 minutes after it was posted, the Financial Times reported. No funds left the bank.
The bank disclosed the “near miss” to the US Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
A transaction of $81tn (£64tn) would be so huge that it would be unlikely to go through any bank’s systems. It would have certainly gone down as one of the biggest ever fat finger errors, in which the wrong number is entered in a computer system.
How precisely is 81 trillion a fat-fingered 280 dollars? You'd need to drop your prosthetic leg, never mind a fat finger, on the keyboard to get the wrong digits in the wrong order with a bunch of trailing zeros.
Maybe they asked Claude or GPT to process the transaction to save time.
Interesting how this has dropped on PB. The usual template is thrown out because reaction depends on (i) feelings about SKS, (ii) feelings about Donald Trump, (iii) what you think the visit achieved, (iv) your tolerance for excruciating spectacle on tv. For me it's (i) I like him, (ii) I hate him, (iii) no idea, (iv) low. So basically I'd say it went well, from Starmer's pov, but it was my idea of a horror show.
It was horrific. I am not sure I could ever forgive Starmer. Anyway Kemi Badenoch has tweeted today that any success is down to her, which makes me hate the visit even more.
Felt wrong. I know the "love actually" moment is a fantasy but I would like to see an end to the public fawning. The short term gains (assuming there are any) will imo be outweighed over time by the fact it only encourages him.
Doing a "Love Actually" would be the same idea as Mike Amesbury punching that chap. Probably felt good to do at the time but the after effects are rather undesirable...
I know. Still, if Keir had walked over during the presser and kneed him in the balls I'd have tripled my Labour party subs with immediate effect.
I rarely disagree with you, but I do on this. I share your contempt for Trump, and I suspect Starmer does as well. But strategically, both in terms of international relations and winning the next GE (a secondary factor), I think that Starmer had little choice but to do what he did, and he did it rather well. "All the world's a stage......." etc.
It's head heart really. Head feels that, heart doesn't. But a bit of my head doesn't too in that although, yes, Starmer did "it" well, the it in question, stroking Trump, I think only cements the gangster dynamic. Ideally other leaders would together decide to not play the game but I realize that's a big ask. Esp with today's instalment where you have somebody with his country's very existence at stake. It's a sicker world courtesy of Nov 5th.
So this chap gets arrested and charged with a Section 5 Public Order offence for shouting 'Oi, you Chelsea rent boys'*. Where do people stand on this? Is this different from shouting ' 'Oi, you Chelsea wankers', 'Oi, you Chelsea twats' or any other of a range of not that offensive slurs?
Meanwhile the police have time to visit people who post bad words on social media, but not to investigate if your car is stolen. Priorities, hey.
And the MP who actually punched a voter to the ground gets a suspended sentence - as Facebook commenters get 3 years in jail
It is all so fucked up
Wait till nominal Vice President and acting free speech advocate JD Vance taunts Starmer over “hurty words”.
I don't think we need to worry about Vance (unless he becomes President); we know who he is. We need a new puppet of Musk and Vance, with Trump in the other pocket. My image quota.
Can any of our AI gurus do one of these with Musk and JD Vance, preferably with Trump as well?
I've tried a couple of places, but they seem either not to be able to do it, or intelligent enough to say "that's against our terms". Bloody techbros .
Starmer's getting close to Trump probably won't harm him much with redwall voters. However it might see Labour leak more votes to the Greens and LDs from the type of 'progressive' middle class voters who deserted them after Blair invaded Iraq until the Tory and LD coalition and Ed Miliband's apology for Iraq
I'm a progressive middle-class voter, but I'm not remotely tempted by the LibDems (all over the place without any uniting principles) or Greens (unrealistic). We're short of a serious left-wing alternative, partly due to the electoral system which makes it usually impractical.
@NickPalmer , I still need your Bluesky account name.
And that means that muting and blocking are actually functional, which helps you curate the timeline you actually want.
(ETA: Some may use this to create a personal echo chamber, but it doesn't have to be that way. You just get to allow in the people you want to disagree with, rather than have randos turn up on your sofa.)
I know you really shouldn’t laugh at your rivals in business because one should always remain humble and magnanimous but this fuck up is epic, I hate to be the Head of Regulatory Affairs trying to explain this to the authorities.
Citigroup credited client’s account with $81tn before error spotted
US bank meant to send $280 but no funds were transferred despite ‘fat finger’ mistake
The US bank Citigroup credited a client’s account with $81tn when it meant to send $280 – before the “fat finger” error was caught.
The mistake was spotted only after two employees had missed it, and a third employee rectified it 90 minutes after it was posted, the Financial Times reported. No funds left the bank.
The bank disclosed the “near miss” to the US Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
A transaction of $81tn (£64tn) would be so huge that it would be unlikely to go through any bank’s systems. It would have certainly gone down as one of the biggest ever fat finger errors, in which the wrong number is entered in a computer system.
How precisely is 81 trillion a fat-fingered 280 dollars? You'd need to drop your prosthetic leg, never mind a fat finger, on the keyboard to get the wrong digits in the wrong order with a bunch of trailing zeros.
One that I am familiar with is when the employee meant to pay somebody in Indian rupees but paid them in pounds with the rupees amount.
At the time I think it was 100 rupees to 1 pound.
To compound the error they put the numbers after the decimal point.
Fortunately this bank has excellent controls in place to stop a near quarter of a billion pound fuck up.
Anneliese Dodds resigns as international development minister over aid cuts. Remarkably principled to do so, particularly so early into a government. She might have hoped for higher office in time.
I guess if your department budget is effectively cut in half overnight, it's a not unreasonable thing to do. Good for her.
She was not treated too well from what I gather. No consultation or heads up.
I know you really shouldn’t laugh at your rivals in business because one should always remain humble and magnanimous but this fuck up is epic, I hate to be the Head of Regulatory Affairs trying to explain this to the authorities.
Citigroup credited client’s account with $81tn before error spotted
US bank meant to send $280 but no funds were transferred despite ‘fat finger’ mistake
The US bank Citigroup credited a client’s account with $81tn when it meant to send $280 – before the “fat finger” error was caught.
The mistake was spotted only after two employees had missed it, and a third employee rectified it 90 minutes after it was posted, the Financial Times reported. No funds left the bank.
The bank disclosed the “near miss” to the US Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
A transaction of $81tn (£64tn) would be so huge that it would be unlikely to go through any bank’s systems. It would have certainly gone down as one of the biggest ever fat finger errors, in which the wrong number is entered in a computer system.
How precisely is 81 trillion a fat-fingered 280 dollars? You'd need to drop your prosthetic leg, never mind a fat finger, on the keyboard to get the wrong digits in the wrong order with a bunch of trailing zeros.
That feels much more like an employee going "What's the biggest number I can type into this field? Oh, OK. Surely it won't process the transaction though? *beep* Oh shit."
Maybe outsourcing operations to the lowest bidder has problems.
Да
I was doing contract work at Douche Bank in 2013-2014.
I told several people that having development done in St Petersburg meant that they were exposing operations to Russian organised crime via the Russian State.
They were laughing on the other side of their mouths when the first Ukraine comedy kicked off. And the QA team in Ukraine said that they would never pass the code from Russia. They were running around in the bank, trying to find out if the *source code* was in Russia - and if the Americans pulled the plug...
I know you really shouldn’t laugh at your rivals in business because one should always remain humble and magnanimous but this fuck up is epic, I hate to be the Head of Regulatory Affairs trying to explain this to the authorities.
Citigroup credited client’s account with $81tn before error spotted
US bank meant to send $280 but no funds were transferred despite ‘fat finger’ mistake
The US bank Citigroup credited a client’s account with $81tn when it meant to send $280 – before the “fat finger” error was caught.
The mistake was spotted only after two employees had missed it, and a third employee rectified it 90 minutes after it was posted, the Financial Times reported. No funds left the bank.
The bank disclosed the “near miss” to the US Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
A transaction of $81tn (£64tn) would be so huge that it would be unlikely to go through any bank’s systems. It would have certainly gone down as one of the biggest ever fat finger errors, in which the wrong number is entered in a computer system.
How precisely is 81 trillion a fat-fingered 280 dollars? You'd need to drop your prosthetic leg, never mind a fat finger, on the keyboard to get the wrong digits in the wrong order with a bunch of trailing zeros.
One that I am familiar with is when the employee meant to pay somebody in Indian rupees but paid them in pounds with the rupees amount.
At the time I think it was 100 rupees to 1 pound.
To compound the error they put the numbers after the decimal point.
Fortunately this bank has excellent controls in place to stop a near quarter of a billion pound fuck up.
We had a "large UK bank" client that accidentally processed an FX trade of several 10s of millions of dollars, because someone had failed to wire up the "test only" checkbox. The tester checked it correctly, but it did nothing. Their boss panicked and executed the reverse trade and it made a small amount of money so everyone was "happy". Narrator: This was not the correct way to handle this issue.
That one really happened, but there's also a (probably) apocryphal story of a similar checkbox issue on a metals trading desk where the "virtual trade" checkbox was ignored and a shipment of the actual metal was despatched to some port in London.
I know you really shouldn’t laugh at your rivals in business because one should always remain humble and magnanimous but this fuck up is epic, I hate to be the Head of Regulatory Affairs trying to explain this to the authorities.
Citigroup credited client’s account with $81tn before error spotted
US bank meant to send $280 but no funds were transferred despite ‘fat finger’ mistake
The US bank Citigroup credited a client’s account with $81tn when it meant to send $280 – before the “fat finger” error was caught.
The mistake was spotted only after two employees had missed it, and a third employee rectified it 90 minutes after it was posted, the Financial Times reported. No funds left the bank.
The bank disclosed the “near miss” to the US Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
A transaction of $81tn (£64tn) would be so huge that it would be unlikely to go through any bank’s systems. It would have certainly gone down as one of the biggest ever fat finger errors, in which the wrong number is entered in a computer system.
How precisely is 81 trillion a fat-fingered 280 dollars? You'd need to drop your prosthetic leg, never mind a fat finger, on the keyboard to get the wrong digits in the wrong order with a bunch of trailing zeros.
One that I am familiar with is when the employee meant to pay somebody in Indian rupees but paid them in pounds with the rupees amount.
At the time I think it was 100 rupees to 1 pound.
To compound the error they put the numbers after the decimal point.
Fortunately this bank has excellent controls in place to stop a near quarter of a billion pound fuck up.
I had an occasion where somebody did a conversion from Indian rupees instead of Nepali, which are much smaller (or were at the time). Much smaller amounts of money were involved, but it resulted in a Gurkha widow's benefits being stopped because they incorrectly thought her widow's pension was much bigger than it actually was - I think the real value was under the disregard level for whatever benefit she was on
I know you really shouldn’t laugh at your rivals in business because one should always remain humble and magnanimous but this fuck up is epic, I hate to be the Head of Regulatory Affairs trying to explain this to the authorities.
Citigroup credited client’s account with $81tn before error spotted
US bank meant to send $280 but no funds were transferred despite ‘fat finger’ mistake
The US bank Citigroup credited a client’s account with $81tn when it meant to send $280 – before the “fat finger” error was caught.
The mistake was spotted only after two employees had missed it, and a third employee rectified it 90 minutes after it was posted, the Financial Times reported. No funds left the bank.
The bank disclosed the “near miss” to the US Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
A transaction of $81tn (£64tn) would be so huge that it would be unlikely to go through any bank’s systems. It would have certainly gone down as one of the biggest ever fat finger errors, in which the wrong number is entered in a computer system.
How precisely is 81 trillion a fat-fingered 280 dollars? You'd need to drop your prosthetic leg, never mind a fat finger, on the keyboard to get the wrong digits in the wrong order with a bunch of trailing zeros.
One that I am familiar with is when the employee meant to pay somebody in Indian rupees but paid them in pounds with the rupees amount.
At the time I think it was 100 rupees to 1 pound.
To compound the error they put the numbers after the decimal point.
Fortunately this bank has excellent controls in place to stop a near quarter of a billion pound fuck up.
My entire wardrobe from 1999 to about 2004 came from Boo.com where I was working on internal systems but found a bug on the purchase path regarding changing currency.
The bug was you put things into the basket in sterling (say £500 worth) and then switched to French Francs during the purchase process at which point the currency changed but the prices were not updated so the basket converted to 500 francs (or so £45).
So I found the issue and reported it but because I wasn't a tester nowt was done about it. 2 weeks later the problem still existed so I made a large order for delivery to the office, again reported the issue (now with £2000 worth of clothing to demonstrate the issue and an invoice that I think came to £1.27 as we had just5 enabled Italian Lira) and again nothing was done. So 4 weeks later I decided to order every piece of clothing I wanted AND all my Christmas presents.
And that is why I ended up with a 5 year supply of Helly Hanson and North Face clothing and multiple pairs of Timberland books.
At roughly the same time some Saudi investment fund invested in the company - and for reasons I don't know the purchase was in cash resulting in 2 west end branches of LLoyds bank closing as the money was counted
That shows you how strange the dotcom boom years were.
Anneliese Dodds resigns as international development minister over aid cuts. Remarkably principled to do so, particularly so early into a government. She might have hoped for higher office in time.
Lest we forget she was Sir Keir’s first choice to be Chancellor until she proved herself utterly useless as Shadow Chancellor.
Hmm. Was she worse than Reeves?
She was facing Rishi Sunak at his apotheosis as Chancellor.
Rishi was rather popular for paying people to stay at home.
Dodd's letter is devastating. It's factual, logical and clearly correct in its conclusions. Everyone who thinks seriously about these matters will understand that, including probably Keir Starmer.
And it lacks a counter solution to the problem of needing to find money, fast, to ensure the defence of the realm. As always politicians and ministers need to remember that the money they spend is tax payers, not theirs. Yes its nice to spend tax payers money all round the world, and I am sure it does some good, but there are places where it can be cut. India has a space program yet we still use our overseas aid budget to give money to India. Tough times need tough calls. Why not fight within to do the best you can with 0.3% of GNI. Its not exactly peanuts, is it.
Because there is no sensible trade off between aid and defence where a pound less spent on aid and a pound more on defence will deliver the same result. You might think aid is a complete waste of money but even then it has nothing to do with the defence budget.
Starmer wants to increase defence spending, which requires tax rises that the public have a limited appetite for, so sacrifices the aid budget to provide political cover even though it's a fiscal nonsense and is actually counterproductive to his governments policies. He may not mind too much if Dodd's resignation feeds his narrative of difficult choices being made.
But Dodds' evisceration of the bankruptcy of his decision is on the money and I suspect he knows it
I know you really shouldn’t laugh at your rivals in business because one should always remain humble and magnanimous but this fuck up is epic, I hate to be the Head of Regulatory Affairs trying to explain this to the authorities.
Citigroup credited client’s account with $81tn before error spotted
US bank meant to send $280 but no funds were transferred despite ‘fat finger’ mistake
The US bank Citigroup credited a client’s account with $81tn when it meant to send $280 – before the “fat finger” error was caught.
The mistake was spotted only after two employees had missed it, and a third employee rectified it 90 minutes after it was posted, the Financial Times reported. No funds left the bank.
The bank disclosed the “near miss” to the US Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
A transaction of $81tn (£64tn) would be so huge that it would be unlikely to go through any bank’s systems. It would have certainly gone down as one of the biggest ever fat finger errors, in which the wrong number is entered in a computer system.
How precisely is 81 trillion a fat-fingered 280 dollars? You'd need to drop your prosthetic leg, never mind a fat finger, on the keyboard to get the wrong digits in the wrong order with a bunch of trailing zeros.
One that I am familiar with is when the employee meant to pay somebody in Indian rupees but paid them in pounds with the rupees amount.
At the time I think it was 100 rupees to 1 pound.
To compound the error they put the numbers after the decimal point.
Fortunately this bank has excellent controls in place to stop a near quarter of a billion pound fuck up.
We had a "large UK bank" client that accidentally processed an FX trade of several 10s of millions of dollars, because someone had failed to wire up the "test only" checkbox. The tester checked it correctly, but it did nothing. Their boss panicked and executed the reverse trade and it made a small amount of money so everyone was "happy". Narrator: This was not the correct way to handle this issue.
That one really happened, but there's also a (probably) apocryphal story of a similar checkbox issue on a metals trading desk where the "virtual trade" checkbox was ignored and a shipment of the actual metal was despatched to some port in London.
The number of people who claim to know a guy, who knows a guy, who once accidentally ended up seeing a contract out and having something like cocoa delivered to the office is truly incredible.
Anneliese Dodds resigns as international development minister over aid cuts. Remarkably principled to do so, particularly so early into a government. She might have hoped for higher office in time.
Lest we forget she was Sir Keir’s first choice to be Chancellor until she proved herself utterly useless as Shadow Chancellor.
Hmm. Was she worse than Reeves?
She was facing Rishi Sunak at his apotheosis as Chancellor.
Rishi was rather popular for paying people to stay at home.
Dodd's letter is devastating. It's factual, logical and clearly correct in its conclusions. Everyone who thinks seriously about these matters will understand that, including probably Keir Starmer.
And it lacks a counter solution to the problem of needing to find money, fast, to ensure the defence of the realm. As always politicians and ministers need to remember that the money they spend is tax payers, not theirs. Yes its nice to spend tax payers money all round the world, and I am sure it does some good, but there are places where it can be cut. India has a space program yet we still use our overseas aid budget to give money to India. Tough times need tough calls. Why not fight within to do the best you can with 0.3% of GNI. Its not exactly peanuts, is it.
Because there is no sensible trade off between aid and defence where a pound less spent on aid and a pound more on defence will deliver the same result. You might think aid is a complete waste of money but even then it has nothing to do with the defence budget.
Starmer wants to increase defence spending, which requires tax rises that the public have a limited appetite for, so sacrifices the aid budget to provide political cover even though it's a fiscal nonsense and is actually counterproductive to his governments policies. He may not mind too much if Dodd's resignation feeds his narrative of difficult choices being made.
But Dodds' evisceration of the bankruptcy of his decision is on the money and I suspect he knows it
This has just been delivered. 25 year old replica of the 1960s classic. Mechanicals stripped and replaced where necessary, resprayed and reupholstered. Same as driven by Matt Damon in Le Mans 66 and as destroyed with a golf club by Taylor Swift in the Blank Spaces video (I suspect @DuraAce would heartily approve of her actions).
It makes a fantastic noise and was bought almost entirely for posing purposes, although I will take it on the track for a spin (hopefully not literally) at least once.
Anneliese Dodds resigns as international development minister over aid cuts. Remarkably principled to do so, particularly so early into a government. She might have hoped for higher office in time.
Lest we forget she was Sir Keir’s first choice to be Chancellor until she proved herself utterly useless as Shadow Chancellor.
Hmm. Was she worse than Reeves?
She was facing Rishi Sunak at his apotheosis as Chancellor.
Rishi was rather popular for paying people to stay at home.
Dodd's letter is devastating. It's factual, logical and clearly correct in its conclusions. Everyone who thinks seriously about these matters will understand that, including probably Keir Starmer.
And it lacks a counter solution to the problem of needing to find money, fast, to ensure the defence of the realm. As always politicians and ministers need to remember that the money they spend is tax payers, not theirs. Yes its nice to spend tax payers money all round the world, and I am sure it does some good, but there are places where it can be cut. India has a space program yet we still use our overseas aid budget to give money to India. Tough times need tough calls. Why not fight within to do the best you can with 0.3% of GNI. Its not exactly peanuts, is it.
Anne-Marie Trevelyan, then Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office), Jan 2024:
The British Government stopped providing traditional development aid to India in 2015. Most UK funding to India is in the form of investments in priority areas like climate change. These investments have the dual aims of supporting development and backing private enterprises with the potential to be commercially viable, creating new partners, markets and jobs for the UK as well as India. They also generate returns which the British Government can reinvest in India or elsewhere. To date we have invested £330 million and over £100 million has been returned. We expect to get all our investments back over time.
This has just been delivered. 25 year old replica of the 1960s classic. Mechanicals stripped and replaced where necessary, resprayed and reupholstered. Same as driven by Matt Damon in Le Mans 66 and as destroyed with a golf club by Taylor Swift in the Blank Spaces video (I suspect @DuraAce would heartily approve of her actions).
It makes a fantastic noise and was bought almost entirely for posing purposes, although I will take it on the track for a spin (hopefully not literally) at least once.
I'm going to borrow the last image quota I didn't use, because I just ran across a piccie of Ian Hislop in his - alleged - prime. He's like one of the 13 year olds from the Great Egg Race 10 years later.
Seeing Annalise Dodds step down caused me to wonder quite why. I'm sure she feels a little undermined by the cuts to her budget, and perhaps it's a bit of a point of principle, but quite what took her over the line?
She's a bit left, but not screamingly madly so.
I don't particularly care about her, but it strikes me that the only really plausible reason for her resignation is that she knew the writing was on the wall anyway. If that's true then I wonder where Starmer is heading with Labour politics?
One of my best mates had one of those replicas. He was driving it from Bristol Uni to get the ferry home and felt a shudder and the car lose control and then watched one of tue rear wheels race past him down the motorway. So make sure it’s bolted together properly.
I know you really shouldn’t laugh at your rivals in business because one should always remain humble and magnanimous but this fuck up is epic, I hate to be the Head of Regulatory Affairs trying to explain this to the authorities.
Citigroup credited client’s account with $81tn before error spotted
US bank meant to send $280 but no funds were transferred despite ‘fat finger’ mistake
The US bank Citigroup credited a client’s account with $81tn when it meant to send $280 – before the “fat finger” error was caught.
The mistake was spotted only after two employees had missed it, and a third employee rectified it 90 minutes after it was posted, the Financial Times reported. No funds left the bank.
The bank disclosed the “near miss” to the US Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
A transaction of $81tn (£64tn) would be so huge that it would be unlikely to go through any bank’s systems. It would have certainly gone down as one of the biggest ever fat finger errors, in which the wrong number is entered in a computer system.
How precisely is 81 trillion a fat-fingered 280 dollars? You'd need to drop your prosthetic leg, never mind a fat finger, on the keyboard to get the wrong digits in the wrong order with a bunch of trailing zeros.
One that I am familiar with is when the employee meant to pay somebody in Indian rupees but paid them in pounds with the rupees amount.
At the time I think it was 100 rupees to 1 pound.
To compound the error they put the numbers after the decimal point.
Fortunately this bank has excellent controls in place to stop a near quarter of a billion pound fuck up.
We had a "large UK bank" client that accidentally processed an FX trade of several 10s of millions of dollars, because someone had failed to wire up the "test only" checkbox. The tester checked it correctly, but it did nothing. Their boss panicked and executed the reverse trade and it made a small amount of money so everyone was "happy". Narrator: This was not the correct way to handle this issue.
That one really happened, but there's also a (probably) apocryphal story of a similar checkbox issue on a metals trading desk where the "virtual trade" checkbox was ignored and a shipment of the actual metal was despatched to some port in London.
The number of people who claim to know a guy, who knows a guy, who once accidentally ended up seeing a contract out and having something like cocoa delivered to the office is truly incredible.
After 2008 some guys in banking thought they would try new pastures. Including trading in oil and gas. They got what they thought were good deals. Except that physical delivery was to locations where the people they had bought from controlled storage.
Seeing Annalise Dodds step down caused me to wonder quite why. I'm sure she feels a little undermined by the cuts to her budget, and perhaps it's a bit of a point of principle, but quite what took her over the line?
She's a bit left, but not screamingly madly so.
I don't particularly care about her, but it strikes me that the only really plausible reason for her resignation is that she knew the writing was on the wall anyway. If that's true then I wonder where Starmer is heading with Labour politics?
You'd have to agree pretty strongly with your department's budget being cut in half not to resign. It's almost the default.
I know you really shouldn’t laugh at your rivals in business because one should always remain humble and magnanimous but this fuck up is epic, I hate to be the Head of Regulatory Affairs trying to explain this to the authorities.
Citigroup credited client’s account with $81tn before error spotted
US bank meant to send $280 but no funds were transferred despite ‘fat finger’ mistake
The US bank Citigroup credited a client’s account with $81tn when it meant to send $280 – before the “fat finger” error was caught.
The mistake was spotted only after two employees had missed it, and a third employee rectified it 90 minutes after it was posted, the Financial Times reported. No funds left the bank.
The bank disclosed the “near miss” to the US Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
A transaction of $81tn (£64tn) would be so huge that it would be unlikely to go through any bank’s systems. It would have certainly gone down as one of the biggest ever fat finger errors, in which the wrong number is entered in a computer system.
How precisely is 81 trillion a fat-fingered 280 dollars? You'd need to drop your prosthetic leg, never mind a fat finger, on the keyboard to get the wrong digits in the wrong order with a bunch of trailing zeros.
One that I am familiar with is when the employee meant to pay somebody in Indian rupees but paid them in pounds with the rupees amount.
At the time I think it was 100 rupees to 1 pound.
To compound the error they put the numbers after the decimal point.
Fortunately this bank has excellent controls in place to stop a near quarter of a billion pound fuck up.
We had a "large UK bank" client that accidentally processed an FX trade of several 10s of millions of dollars, because someone had failed to wire up the "test only" checkbox. The tester checked it correctly, but it did nothing. Their boss panicked and executed the reverse trade and it made a small amount of money so everyone was "happy". Narrator: This was not the correct way to handle this issue.
That one really happened, but there's also a (probably) apocryphal story of a similar checkbox issue on a metals trading desk where the "virtual trade" checkbox was ignored and a shipment of the actual metal was despatched to some port in London.
Why wasn't it the correct way, please? Asking out of curiosity ...
This has just been delivered. 25 year old replica of the 1960s classic. Mechanicals stripped and replaced where necessary, resprayed and reupholstered. Same as driven by Matt Damon in Le Mans 66 and as destroyed with a golf club by Taylor Swift in the Blank Spaces video (I suspect @DuraAce would heartily approve of her actions).
It makes a fantastic noise and was bought almost entirely for posing purposes, although I will take it on the track for a spin (hopefully not literally) at least once.
That looks amazing
Thank you. I'm not going to be around for a week so sadly it will sit in the garage until the following week. Can't even take it out today as not taxed.
I know you really shouldn’t laugh at your rivals in business because one should always remain humble and magnanimous but this fuck up is epic, I hate to be the Head of Regulatory Affairs trying to explain this to the authorities.
Citigroup credited client’s account with $81tn before error spotted
US bank meant to send $280 but no funds were transferred despite ‘fat finger’ mistake
The US bank Citigroup credited a client’s account with $81tn when it meant to send $280 – before the “fat finger” error was caught.
The mistake was spotted only after two employees had missed it, and a third employee rectified it 90 minutes after it was posted, the Financial Times reported. No funds left the bank.
The bank disclosed the “near miss” to the US Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
A transaction of $81tn (£64tn) would be so huge that it would be unlikely to go through any bank’s systems. It would have certainly gone down as one of the biggest ever fat finger errors, in which the wrong number is entered in a computer system.
How precisely is 81 trillion a fat-fingered 280 dollars? You'd need to drop your prosthetic leg, never mind a fat finger, on the keyboard to get the wrong digits in the wrong order with a bunch of trailing zeros.
One that I am familiar with is when the employee meant to pay somebody in Indian rupees but paid them in pounds with the rupees amount.
At the time I think it was 100 rupees to 1 pound.
To compound the error they put the numbers after the decimal point.
Fortunately this bank has excellent controls in place to stop a near quarter of a billion pound fuck up.
To my eternal embarrassment , I once transferred £3,000 of clients’ money to a scammer, which I had to make good.
Anneliese Dodds resigns as international development minister over aid cuts. Remarkably principled to do so, particularly so early into a government. She might have hoped for higher office in time.
Lest we forget she was Sir Keir’s first choice to be Chancellor until she proved herself utterly useless as Shadow Chancellor.
Hmm. Was she worse than Reeves?
She was facing Rishi Sunak at his apotheosis as Chancellor.
Rishi was rather popular for paying people to stay at home.
Dodd's letter is devastating. It's factual, logical and clearly correct in its conclusions. Everyone who thinks seriously about these matters will understand that, including probably Keir Starmer.
And it lacks a counter solution to the problem of needing to find money, fast, to ensure the defence of the realm. As always politicians and ministers need to remember that the money they spend is tax payers, not theirs. Yes its nice to spend tax payers money all round the world, and I am sure it does some good, but there are places where it can be cut. India has a space program yet we still use our overseas aid budget to give money to India. Tough times need tough calls. Why not fight within to do the best you can with 0.3% of GNI. Its not exactly peanuts, is it.
Because there is no sensible trade off between aid and defence where a pound less spent on aid and a pound more on defence will deliver the same result. You might think aid is a complete waste of money but even then it has nothing to do with the defence budget.
Starmer wants to increase defence spending, which requires tax rises that the public have a limited appetite for, so sacrifices the aid budget to provide political cover even though it's a fiscal nonsense and is actually counterproductive to his governments policies. He may not mind too much if Dodd's resignation feeds his narrative of difficult choices being made.
But Dodds' evisceration of the bankruptcy of his decision is on the money and I suspect he knows it
At no point do I suggest that its a trade of for money outcomes - the foreign aid budget is made up of tax payers money and right now there is a need for defence spending. Its not about getting the same result from the money, its doing different things with the money. I also don't believe that aid is a complete waste of money but I do question aid to some countries, notably India. At some point a country and its citizens needs to stand on its own and look after its own. You want a space programme? Fine, but Britain shouldn't then have to pick up the burden of heathcare that the Indian tax payer isn't supporting.
Comments
Efficient generation of collimated multi-GeV gamma-rays along solid surfaces
https://opg.optica.org/optica/fulltext.cfm?uri=optica-10-1-118&id=525371
I thought getting rid of Gwynne might have given him an opportunity, but he replaced him with Ashley Dalton.
At least, that's one from the cabinet to be ticked off the prediction list (assume she counts as she attended cabinet).
Windmills Of Your Mind
Stormy Weather
I Love Little Pussy
Something by The Dictators
A glittering twosome, though at least Dodds has some attachment to principle.
If everyone drags their heels enough, there is a good chance the actual, toddler-blimp-inspiring state visit will occur a few weeks after the world ends.
ETA: Or at least, after facts on the ground (Trump's destruction of US democracy) dictate that Starmer can look appropriately strong by cancelling the state visit.
I can't imagine people will be queueing up to replace her. The job will just involve cutting aid programmes. Even if you agree with the policy in principle, it's a pretty shitty job to carry out in practice.
Rishi was rather popular for paying people to stay at home.
What could possibly go wrong?
https://dumfries-house.org.uk/
https://x.com/michaeldweiss/status/1895282957633626218
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14444165/Left-wing-theatre-managers-invited-200-migrants-free-abandon-building-face-bankruptcy-refugees-refuse-leave-three-months-spark-wave-sex-related-violence.html
I'm just floating the question - can you do hate speech against someone if they are not the thing you are saying to them?
It was tragic for the country that we didn't have a real opposition who stood up against the hysteria during the pandemic.
Whether it needs to be criminal at this level of abuse is another matter.
Meteor's first flight on an F-35B
https://www.raf.mod.uk/news/articles/meteors-first-flight-on-an-f-35b/
..Meteor is the UK’s primary air-to-air missile and is carried on operations by Typhoon, with this step being progress towards enabling Meteor’s capability on F-35. While the UK is leading the integration campaign for F-35B, Italy is sponsoring integration onto the F-35A model, allowing both aircraft types to take advantage of Meteor’s inclusion...
A department with a budget of 0.3% of GDP - with a large part of that already committed spending to the likes of WHO etc - is going to be pretty limited in scope.
https://youtu.be/qmP3srBL90g?feature=shared
You hire them as ‘professional condom sellers’ and they provide you with lessons on how to use said prophylactic.
Perhaps spending the energy in playing the game themselves might help.
https://bsky.app/profile/stephenkb.bsky.social/post/3ljafyej24k2x
Citigroup credited client’s account with $81tn before error spotted
US bank meant to send $280 but no funds were transferred despite ‘fat finger’ mistake
The US bank Citigroup credited a client’s account with $81tn when it meant to send $280 – before the “fat finger” error was caught.
The mistake was spotted only after two employees had missed it, and a third employee rectified it 90 minutes after it was posted, the Financial Times reported. No funds left the bank.
The bank disclosed the “near miss” to the US Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
A transaction of $81tn (£64tn) would be so huge that it would be unlikely to go through any bank’s systems. It would have certainly gone down as one of the biggest ever fat finger errors, in which the wrong number is entered in a computer system.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/feb/28/citigroup-credited-client-account-with-81tn-before-error-spotted
(Balmoral’s overrated anyway)
I sussed Chagos Deal, so you can too if I can. It took a while to bottom it out, by reading a lot of foreign media coverage, India’s, alongside RUSI and Chatham House. UK mainstream press have been a disgrace covering Chagos Deal properly, have really let their readers down.
Its not UN resolutions UK surrendered to, it’s UN system gamed by Mauritius sponsors like India, helps them tar UK as the bad seed, this was shredding our soft power throughout the region, its this damage to UK interest and business that applied the pressure. At same time US became happy to placate India with the lease idea. The lease money not just for Chagos base but environmental sanctuary around it that keeps snoopers at distance, is something moneybags US clearly happy to pay.
Yes we technically pay it as “owner”, but we definitely get reimbursed by US just like we always have been, since the sixties and original Chagos arrangement.
I’ll explain it like this: this deal and the disgraceful British Chagos deal of 1960s, like this new one I would never have signed - weapons discount to ethnically cleanse the islands - certainly has common element how UK defence takes US weaponry and intelligence - it’s no different to a UK druggy, in thrall to US dealer IMO. It may seem we get mates-rates in pricing, but we are under thumb of the supplier and what they supply, it means we buy expensive kit to interlock with American kit. As an economy underwritten by the dollar, something of a military industrial complex, US is very different to us on defence spending, they have far more cash and ability to borrow, this UK drug and supplier relationship drains UK defence piggybank quicker than we may like.
But so many UK governments over 60 years not that dumb to sign both Chagos deals on idea we are financially quids in, they did it because they like to think UK is top table player. That’s the psychology that’s driven this from day one to present deal.
Both Chagos deals tie UK with US on defence procurement, intelligence and working together - and that in a nutshell is the straightforward answer why both deals happened. That’s key truths of both Chagos Deals UK media, the opposition parties like Farage and Kemi, all have been “overcooking opposition mode” and failing to honestly acknowledge.
There should be a Create Account button.
Here's a Starter Page. The main difference with twitter is that you don't get things pushed at you ... so need to be a bit more on the front foot.
https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/ready-to-join-bluesky-heres-how-to-get-started/
I've tried a couple of places, but they seem either not to be able to do it, or intelligent enough to say "that's against our terms". Bloody techbros
(ETA: Some may use this to create a personal echo chamber, but it doesn't have to be that way. You just get to allow in the people you want to disagree with, rather than have randos turn up on your sofa.)
At the time I think it was 100 rupees to 1 pound.
To compound the error they put the numbers after the decimal point.
Fortunately this bank has excellent controls in place to stop a near quarter of a billion pound fuck up.
Alexander Nazaryan"
https://unherd.com/2025/01/how-lawfare-destroyed-liberalism
That one really happened, but there's also a (probably) apocryphal story of a similar checkbox issue on a metals trading desk where the "virtual trade" checkbox was ignored and a shipment of the actual metal was despatched to some port in London.
The bug was you put things into the basket in sterling (say £500 worth) and then switched to French Francs during the purchase process at which point the currency changed but the prices were not updated so the basket converted to 500 francs (or so £45).
So I found the issue and reported it but because I wasn't a tester nowt was done about it.
2 weeks later the problem still existed so I made a large order for delivery to the office, again reported the issue (now with £2000 worth of clothing to demonstrate the issue and an invoice that I think came to £1.27 as we had just5 enabled Italian Lira) and again nothing was done.
So 4 weeks later I decided to order every piece of clothing I wanted AND all my Christmas presents.
And that is why I ended up with a 5 year supply of Helly Hanson and North Face clothing and multiple pairs of Timberland books.
At roughly the same time some Saudi investment fund invested in the company - and for reasons I don't know the purchase was in cash resulting in 2 west end branches of LLoyds bank closing as the money was counted
That shows you how strange the dotcom boom years were.
Starmer wants to increase defence spending, which requires tax rises that the public have a limited appetite for, so sacrifices the aid budget to provide political cover even though it's a fiscal nonsense and is actually counterproductive to his governments policies. He may not mind too much if Dodd's resignation feeds his narrative of difficult choices being made.
But Dodds' evisceration of the bankruptcy of his decision is on the money and I suspect he knows it
This has just been delivered. 25 year old replica of the 1960s classic. Mechanicals stripped and replaced where necessary, resprayed and reupholstered. Same as driven by Matt Damon in Le Mans 66 and as destroyed with a golf club by Taylor Swift in the Blank Spaces video (I suspect @DuraAce would heartily approve of her actions).
It makes a fantastic noise and was bought almost entirely for posing purposes, although I will take it on the track for a spin (hopefully not literally) at least once.
The British Government stopped providing traditional development aid to India in 2015. Most UK funding to India is in the form of investments in priority areas like climate change. These investments have the dual aims of supporting development and backing private enterprises with the potential to be commercially viable, creating new partners, markets and jobs for the UK as well as India. They also generate returns which the British Government can reinvest in India or elsewhere. To date we have invested £330 million and over £100 million has been returned. We expect to get all our investments back over time.
He's like one of the 13 year olds from the Great Egg Race 10 years later.
It is from here:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/entertainment-arts-26348848
Not sure that's really a winning argument.
Vodafone is in the driving seat with a large network rationalisation programme starting over the next months.
She's a bit left, but not screamingly madly so.
I don't particularly care about her, but it strikes me that the only really plausible reason for her resignation is that she knew the writing was on the wall anyway. If that's true then I wonder where Starmer is heading with Labour politics?
Some traders at STASCO made nice bonuses.
Absolutely OOZING contempt for Starmer (and he was unaware of the aid decision and the Trump fawning)
“What does he believe in? Does anyone know? He is like a very boring Blair, he is a void, he believes in nothing but his own career”
Hard to argue (OK I didn’t exactly try hard); nonetheless this illustrates a grave danger for Starmer. He is alienating lefty voters
I also don't believe that aid is a complete waste of money but I do question aid to some countries, notably India. At some point a country and its citizens needs to stand on its own and look after its own. You want a space programme? Fine, but Britain shouldn't then have to pick up the burden of heathcare that the Indian tax payer isn't supporting.