Two former City traders who were at the centre of one of the biggest scandals of the financial crisis have had their convictions quashed.
Tom Hayes and Carlo Palombo were jailed following trials for manipulating the interest rates used for loans between banks.
They were among 19 City traders convicted in the US and UK for manipulating those Libor and Euribor interest rates, which are used to set interest rates on mortgages and commercial loans.
After serving their time, the US courts threw out the convictions, but they remained convicted criminals in the UK.
The SC judgment raises an interesting issue relevant to the case, a case which has bobbed around the Court of Appeal/CCRC for ages. If the Court of Appeal (Criminal) don't certify a point of law to be worthy of going to the Supreme Court, there is no appeal from the Court of Appeal to the SC on that point. So even if the SC thinks the point of law is important they can't touch it. It's an interesting lacuna in the system. See paras 1-5 of the (83 page) judgment.
Well, that was interesting (and thank you for posting). I'm not a fan of Kemi, but that's because I don't like her policies. I didn't realise that a lot of the people in the Conservative Party don't like her as a person (anchor baby???). And I think we can all agree that in her first year she has not understood the problems nor conceived nor implemented a plan to fix them (shades of Starmer).
But I hadn't picked up on the author's other point: namely that Kemi's culture war obsessions (trans, abortion) have been overtaken by events and that the current right-wing obsessions of "migration, ethnicity, identity, belonging and economic failure" have overtaken those obsessions. She got the job because she tickled the Conservative Party's hopes and prejudices. But they have moved on and she no longer does so. And she hasn't got a plan B.
Or has she? I got the impression from the last couple of PMQs that maybe Kemi has a new strategy.
But now they're off with their buckets and spades so we shan't find out till autumn, when it might be too late.
Ummm so let me get this straight: Republicans have ground Congress to a halt and are considering adjourning the entire House for 6 weeks to avoid releasing the info they have on Epstein?
I saw this. It struck me as crazy. YouTube is a business and relies on ads. If it promotes drivel no one is interested in that won’t help it.
Why not also make this demand of Netflix and Disney+ and the others.
If people have little or no interest in PSB then that is that.
‘YouTube should give videos made by channels like the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 more promotion to help tackle a "serious threat" to the UK's public service broadcasting, according to media regulator Ofcom.
Children spend much more time watching YouTube than all of the public service broadcasters combined, but "the future of public service media is at risk" if young viewers don't start watching their output, Ofcom warned.
The watchdog suggested broadcasters should "work urgently with YouTube" to make sure their content is "prominent and easy to find" - and there's "a strong case" for the government to consider a law to make that happen.‘
This government keeps providing evidence it is utterly stuck in the past. They are fruitlessly passing laws to stop progress.
If people want to watch PSBs, they can. It's not hard to do so. Increasingly they don't because the BBC, ITV and C4 don't even understand what a PSB is any more. Ironically, YouTube does that so much better than the broadcasters now.
One of my neighbour's kids has developed an interest in the second world war and likes to chat about it knowing military history is one of my interests too. He's not watching the BBC to learn about this, he's on YouTube watching Drachinifel, Historigraph, the Tank Museum, Rex's Hangar, and a bunch of other channels that cover the subject in ways engaging enough for someone young.
The government would be better taking some of the licence fee money and giving it as grants to UK-based YT channels that produce good quality educational and informative content.
Yet another example of the absurd and sinister shutting down of debate over the Israeli genocide in Gaza stemming from the proscription of Palestine Action, who are not a terrorist organisation under any common sense understanding of that term. This is only going to escalate as there are millions of people who feel exactly as this man does and the police can't arrest all of us.
So the outcome is no charges. The fact that you don't think Palestine Action should be labelled as a terrorist organisation is irrelevant - it has been labelled as such by the government in power. I have some sympathy for the plod who are usually not that bright. He was holding a placard with 'Palestine Action' all over it.
I seem to recall rather a lot of debate on Gaza on PB in recent days - I do not see any sinister shutting down of debate. If you want to go and protest in support of Palestinians you are free to do so, as so may have.
Banning Palestine Action is foolhardy, but a fairly minor infringement in the grand scheme of things. Particularly if one applies the Conservatives's ( via Kit Malthouse) suggestion that Lammy and Starmer should be facing the war crimes tribunal in the Hague for their, at least tacit, support for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
Kit Malthouse was grandstanding. Neither Lammy nor Starmer is guilty of war crimes, and to suggest it is frankly juvenile.
No, Malthouse (and Leigh) have captured the zeitgeist. And this is a phenomenal opportunity for the Conservatives to pile on the pressure against Labour (and Reform). Will they take it? Most likely, not.
Government foreign policy has unraveled in the last week. First Healey's Afghan injunction outrage, which Cartlidge outed brilliantly, and now Malthouse's assertion of Labour complicity in ethnic cleansing of Gazans.
PB Tories would be better advised to follow these paths of Government outrage rather than their "ooh, has Starmer given the Isle of Wight away to the EU yet?"
The 'zeitgeist'? You think people's priority right now in the UK is a conflict going on 2000 miles away?
Gaza, Ukraine or both?
Given that the current (whipped-up) priority seems to be where are all these not Britishers flocking from, you’d hope people might be able to work out that many are flocking from conflicts 2000 miles and more away.
Conflicts in the plural you put it. So why one particular conflict in one country the size of Wales that gets all the attention? Notice how there was pretty much no interest in the massacre against the Druze until Israel got involved. Then suddenly it becomes relevant.
What massacre against the Druze before Israel got involved? Israeli forces moved into Syria (that is, beyond the area in the Golan Heights that they have long occupied) and undertook air strikes on 8 Dec 2024. The first clashes between the new Syrian administration and the Druze weren't until 28 Feb 2025.
There have been several clashes between the Druze and the new government (since Israeli intervention). Estimates suggest about 300 Druze civilians have been killed and maybe 600 Druze fighters. The Hamas/Israel conflict has seen about 2000 Israelis and about 80,000+ Palestinians killed. The events in Syria against the Druze minority are significant and the many deaths regrettable, but I think it is understandable that a conflict that has killed about 90 times as many people has attracted more attention.
Where are you getting the 80,000+ figures from. And yet again no attempt to distinguish between civilian and combatant casualties when it comes to Israel/Hamas - but you manage to when it comes to the Druze. Where do you get the estimates for the Druze casualties?
"Evenings are spent “doomscrolling” and making calls to editors and producers about trying to spike negative stories about her. Her husband, Hamish, absorbs the worst tweets, the ones she can’t face. She is “fragile” and “frightened”. At PMQs Badenoch’s hands shake as she reads her lines from a piece of paper."
I saw this. It struck me as crazy. YouTube is a business and relies on ads. If it promotes drivel no one is interested in that won’t help it.
Why not also make this demand of Netflix and Disney+ and the others.
If people have little or no interest in PSB then that is that.
‘YouTube should give videos made by channels like the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 more promotion to help tackle a "serious threat" to the UK's public service broadcasting, according to media regulator Ofcom.
Children spend much more time watching YouTube than all of the public service broadcasters combined, but "the future of public service media is at risk" if young viewers don't start watching their output, Ofcom warned.
The watchdog suggested broadcasters should "work urgently with YouTube" to make sure their content is "prominent and easy to find" - and there's "a strong case" for the government to consider a law to make that happen.‘
This government keeps providing evidence it is utterly stuck in the past. They are fruitlessly passing laws to stop progress.
If people want to watch PSBs, they can. It's not hard to do so. Increasingly they don't because the BBC, ITV and C4 don't even understand what a PSB is any more. Ironically, YouTube does that so much better than the broadcasters now.
One of my neighbour's kids has developed an interest in the second world war and likes to chat about it knowing military history is one of my interests too. He's not watching the BBC to learn about this, he's on YouTube watching Drachinifel, Historigraph, the Tank Museum, Rex's Hangar, and a bunch of other channels that cover the subject in ways engaging enough for someone young.
The government would be better taking some of the licence fee money and giving it as grants to UK-based YT channels that produce good quality educational and informative content.
Yes, although your neighbour's child should perhaps be guided towards relevant programmes on Britain's number one streaming platform, which is BBC iplayer.
Well, that was interesting (and thank you for posting). I'm not a fan of Kemi, but that's because I don't like her policies. I didn't realise that a lot of the people in the Conservative Party don't like her as a person (anchor baby???). And I think we can all agree that in her first year she has not understood the problems nor conceived nor implemented a plan to fix them (shades of Starmer).
But I hadn't picked up on the author's other point: namely that Kemi's culture war obsessions (trans, abortion) have been overtaken by events and that the current right-wing obsessions of "migration, ethnicity, identity, belonging and economic failure" have overtaken those obsessions. She got the job because she tickled the Conservative Party's hopes and prejudices. But they have moved on and she no longer does so. And she hasn't got a plan B.
Or has she? I got the impression from the last couple of PMQs that maybe Kemi has a new strategy.
But now they're off with their buckets and spades so we shan't find out till autumn, when it might be too late.
One thing's for sure, she's not being ousted this year. This is the last time I'll blow this trumpet for myself but I do hope some other PBers joined me in laying that at 2.7 back in early May. It was a gift.
So those numbers imply that around 40% of Republicans are MAGA. You can see why, god help us, they own the party. I'm hard pushed to think of a more simultaneously malign and successful insurgent movement in a mature western democracy.
Thatcherism?
(ducks)
IMO no - Thatcher was rational and had consistency and some ethics, even if you disagreed existentially.
In practice, Maga is imo nihilistic in its outcomes, and has a irrationalist narrative which cannot be countered by argument because it is anchored in a fantasy world. And I don't mean "religion", I mean "what Maga have made of religion".
Yup. I think we can now say that big chunks of the Thatcher model failed, and I suspect that her generation of Tories would have winced at the rentier's rights plughole that the party is now circling. But it was largely done in good faith- I don't recall the critiques of the time predicting that we risked ending up here. (And yes, big chunks did fail, which is why we have her son's world, not her father's).
But even if you think she was wrong and unkind, that's not the degree of evil that MAGA is showing.
The limitations currently being placed on peaceful protest are draconian, unreasonable and counter-productive. Yvette Cooper should issue an edict to all police forces that peaceful 'support for Palestine/Gaza' should not be automatically interpreted as support for, or membership of, a specific group called Palestine Action.
The guy waving the Private Eye cartoon could be said to be supporting PA. Presumably, once a group has been banned, expressing the view that it should not have been banned, or should be unbanned, is expressing support.
PA just about crosses the legal definition of a terrorist organisation. Damage to RAF aircraft probably counts as serious criminal damage, and I have heard stories of threats to companies exporting to Israel and their employees.
So to fix it, we have to repeal the law that says you can't express support for terrorist organisations. Of course, support for ISIS was always treason "adhering to the King's enemies, giving them aid and comfort, in the realm or elsewhere" but they seem unwilling to throw the book at people and instead make up laws.
As I've said before go after the organisers. Is that too expensive? Much cheaper to just ban the organisation. But then the people will just go elsewhere.
Conspiracy charges should stick. Incidentally I have always thought there was no need to ban forced marriages or FGM, they are conspiracy to rape and commit GBH respectively.
Yet another example of the absurd and sinister shutting down of debate over the Israeli genocide in Gaza stemming from the proscription of Palestine Action, who are not a terrorist organisation under any common sense understanding of that term. This is only going to escalate as there are millions of people who feel exactly as this man does and the police can't arrest all of us.
So the outcome is no charges. The fact that you don't think Palestine Action should be labelled as a terrorist organisation is irrelevant - it has been labelled as such by the government in power. I have some sympathy for the plod who are usually not that bright. He was holding a placard with 'Palestine Action' all over it.
I seem to recall rather a lot of debate on Gaza on PB in recent days - I do not see any sinister shutting down of debate. If you want to go and protest in support of Palestinians you are free to do so, as so may have.
Banning Palestine Action is foolhardy, but a fairly minor infringement in the grand scheme of things. Particularly if one applies the Conservatives's ( via Kit Malthouse) suggestion that Lammy and Starmer should be facing the war crimes tribunal in the Hague for their, at least tacit, support for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
Kit Malthouse was grandstanding. Neither Lammy nor Starmer is guilty of war crimes, and to suggest it is frankly juvenile.
No, Malthouse (and Leigh) have captured the zeitgeist. And this is a phenomenal opportunity for the Conservatives to pile on the pressure against Labour (and Reform). Will they take it? Most likely, not.
Government foreign policy has unraveled in the last week. First Healey's Afghan injunction outrage, which Cartlidge outed brilliantly, and now Malthouse's assertion of Labour complicity in ethnic cleansing of Gazans.
PB Tories would be better advised to follow these paths of Government outrage rather than their "ooh, has Starmer given the Isle of Wight away to the EU yet?"
The 'zeitgeist'? You think people's priority right now in the UK is a conflict going on 2000 miles away?
Gaza, Ukraine or both?
Given that the current (whipped-up) priority seems to be where are all these not Britishers flocking from, you’d hope people might be able to work out that many are flocking from conflicts 2000 miles and more away.
Conflicts in the plural you put it. So why one particular conflict in one country the size of Wales that gets all the attention? Notice how there was pretty much no interest in the massacre against the Druze until Israel got involved. Then suddenly it becomes relevant.
What massacre against the Druze before Israel got involved? Israeli forces moved into Syria (that is, beyond the area in the Golan Heights that they have long occupied) and undertook air strikes on 8 Dec 2024. The first clashes between the new Syrian administration and the Druze weren't until 28 Feb 2025.
There have been several clashes between the Druze and the new government (since Israeli intervention). Estimates suggest about 300 Druze civilians have been killed and maybe 600 Druze fighters. The Hamas/Israel conflict has seen about 2000 Israelis and about 80,000+ Palestinians killed. The events in Syria against the Druze minority are significant and the many deaths regrettable, but I think it is understandable that a conflict that has killed about 90 times as many people has attracted more attention.
Where are you getting the 80,000+ figures from. And yet again no attempt to distinguish between civilian and combatant casualties when it comes to Israel/Hamas - but you manage to when it comes to the Druze. Where do you get the estimates for the Druze casualties?
Those are widely reported figures. Wikipedia has citations. It's hard to be certain with any of these figures, but I think we can be confident that, in ballpark terms, the numbers killed in the Druze/govt conflict in Syria are much, much lower than in Gaza. Whether we're talking combatant or non-combatant or in total doesn't change that.
So, I'm left with the impression that you are quibbling details while overlooking the important points:
(A) Israel was involved before any Druze massacres.
(B) The death toll in the Gaza conflict is far, far greater.
Yet another example of the absurd and sinister shutting down of debate over the Israeli genocide in Gaza stemming from the proscription of Palestine Action, who are not a terrorist organisation under any common sense understanding of that term. This is only going to escalate as there are millions of people who feel exactly as this man does and the police can't arrest all of us.
So the outcome is no charges. The fact that you don't think Palestine Action should be labelled as a terrorist organisation is irrelevant - it has been labelled as such by the government in power. I have some sympathy for the plod who are usually not that bright. He was holding a placard with 'Palestine Action' all over it.
I seem to recall rather a lot of debate on Gaza on PB in recent days - I do not see any sinister shutting down of debate. If you want to go and protest in support of Palestinians you are free to do so, as so may have.
Banning Palestine Action is foolhardy, but a fairly minor infringement in the grand scheme of things. Particularly if one applies the Conservatives's ( via Kit Malthouse) suggestion that Lammy and Starmer should be facing the war crimes tribunal in the Hague for their, at least tacit, support for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
Kit Malthouse was grandstanding. Neither Lammy nor Starmer is guilty of war crimes, and to suggest it is frankly juvenile.
No, Malthouse (and Leigh) have captured the zeitgeist. And this is a phenomenal opportunity for the Conservatives to pile on the pressure against Labour (and Reform). Will they take it? Most likely, not.
Government foreign policy has unraveled in the last week. First Healey's Afghan injunction outrage, which Cartlidge outed brilliantly, and now Malthouse's assertion of Labour complicity in ethnic cleansing of Gazans.
PB Tories would be better advised to follow these paths of Government outrage rather than their "ooh, has Starmer given the Isle of Wight away to the EU yet?"
The 'zeitgeist'? You think people's priority right now in the UK is a conflict going on 2000 miles away?
Gaza, Ukraine or both?
Given that the current (whipped-up) priority seems to be where are all these not Britishers flocking from, you’d hope people might be able to work out that many are flocking from conflicts 2000 miles and more away.
Conflicts in the plural you put it. So why one particular conflict in one country the size of Wales that gets all the attention? Notice how there was pretty much no interest in the massacre against the Druze until Israel got involved. Then suddenly it becomes relevant.
What massacre against the Druze before Israel got involved? Israeli forces moved into Syria (that is, beyond the area in the Golan Heights that they have long occupied) and undertook air strikes on 8 Dec 2024. The first clashes between the new Syrian administration and the Druze weren't until 28 Feb 2025.
There have been several clashes between the Druze and the new government (since Israeli intervention). Estimates suggest about 300 Druze civilians have been killed and maybe 600 Druze fighters. The Hamas/Israel conflict has seen about 2000 Israelis and about 80,000+ Palestinians killed. The events in Syria against the Druze minority are significant and the many deaths regrettable, but I think it is understandable that a conflict that has killed about 90 times as many people has attracted more attention.
Where are you getting the 80,000+ figures from. And yet again no attempt to distinguish between civilian and combatant casualties when it comes to Israel/Hamas - but you manage to when it comes to the Druze. Where do you get the estimates for the Druze casualties?
Those are widely reported figures. Wikipedia has citations. It's hard to be certain with any of these figures, but I think we can be confident that, in ballpark terms, the numbers killed in the Druze/govt conflict in Syria are much, much lower than in Gaza. Whether we're talking combatant or non-combatant or in total doesn't change that.
So, I'm left with the impression that you are quibbling details while overlooking the important points:
(A) Israel was involved before any Druze massacres.
(B) The death toll in the Gaza conflict is far, far greater.
'Widely reported' figures. Given the amount of propaganda involved in this conflict I'd have thought someone as assiduous as yourself would be a bit more rigourous than that. Really I should have pointed out that it isn't just the Druze but Christians and other minorities facing slaughter in Syria. Where do you stand on the new government there? Brutally persecuting people or just trying to bring order?
I am still of the opinion that is there was something really big against Trump it would have been used by now. The media have had 12 years to use it. Instead it will be drip drip of rather embarrassing here is Trump at an event and so is Epstein. But of course we know so was all the rich and famous.
I don't follow this stuff closely, but it's weird how it's flipped. Epstein has been a cause célèbre for nutters on the right who think there's been a big cover up.
I don't follow it closely either, but there is a common sense position for those who are old enough to have seen lots of scandals before and have an awareness of male nature in its sub optimal forms.
It is extremely likely that a substantial number of men with a place in the elite pantheon have done things because of being in Epstein's circle which they prefer to be forgotten for legal and reputational reasons. Who these people are will have no regard to political party or for what reasons they are rich/powerful/influential - politics, business, celeb, media etc.
In every case it will be overwhelmingly in their interests not only for their own actions to be forgotten, but the actions of all others in the Epstein circle to be forgotten. On the whole they shall stand together or risk falling together.
So that people with no other common interest (eg political, media or business enemies) will have a specific reason for sticking together.
OTOH there will be quite a lot of people with a financial interest in making something of their history as victims of all this - a matter which achieved a lot of publicity in the UK.
Conclusion: it is very likely there is a good deal of extremely expensive furious paddling under the smooth still waters of expensive law firms, perhaps some interesting injunctions, a good number of NDAs, and some fear. Legal privilege is a remarkable phenomenon.
I don't go in for conspiracy theories but I suspect that as far as this goes it's a reasonable bet.
People need to get a grip. You can support Palestine and be against Israeli actions without supporting the absolute whoppers who caused millions of pounds of damage to public military equipment.
Palestine Action are a poor hill to die upon.
Terrorism doesn't even begin to describe their actions. They were involved in a protest at Edinburgh Sheriff Court yesterday and proceeded to eat the canteen out of vegetable lasagne before my daughter got her lunch. Outrageous!
Yes, although your neighbour's child should perhaps be guided towards relevant programmes on Britain's number one streaming platform, which is BBC iplayer.
I haven't looked at iPlayer in a long time, but I get the impression the amount of history programming it has is utterly dwarfed by YouTube in both quantity and depth.
Yet another example of the absurd and sinister shutting down of debate over the Israeli genocide in Gaza stemming from the proscription of Palestine Action, who are not a terrorist organisation under any common sense understanding of that term. This is only going to escalate as there are millions of people who feel exactly as this man does and the police can't arrest all of us.
So the outcome is no charges. The fact that you don't think Palestine Action should be labelled as a terrorist organisation is irrelevant - it has been labelled as such by the government in power. I have some sympathy for the plod who are usually not that bright. He was holding a placard with 'Palestine Action' all over it.
I seem to recall rather a lot of debate on Gaza on PB in recent days - I do not see any sinister shutting down of debate. If you want to go and protest in support of Palestinians you are free to do so, as so may have.
Banning Palestine Action is foolhardy, but a fairly minor infringement in the grand scheme of things. Particularly if one applies the Conservatives's ( via Kit Malthouse) suggestion that Lammy and Starmer should be facing the war crimes tribunal in the Hague for their, at least tacit, support for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
Kit Malthouse was grandstanding. Neither Lammy nor Starmer is guilty of war crimes, and to suggest it is frankly juvenile.
No, Malthouse (and Leigh) have captured the zeitgeist. And this is a phenomenal opportunity for the Conservatives to pile on the pressure against Labour (and Reform). Will they take it? Most likely, not.
Government foreign policy has unraveled in the last week. First Healey's Afghan injunction outrage, which Cartlidge outed brilliantly, and now Malthouse's assertion of Labour complicity in ethnic cleansing of Gazans.
PB Tories would be better advised to follow these paths of Government outrage rather than their "ooh, has Starmer given the Isle of Wight away to the EU yet?"
The 'zeitgeist'? You think people's priority right now in the UK is a conflict going on 2000 miles away?
The small boats would top the list. However do I believe ethnic cleansing in Gaza is rising in national concern? Yes.
Hmmm. In the sense that both Everest and Ben Nevis are both hills.
Yet another example of the absurd and sinister shutting down of debate over the Israeli genocide in Gaza stemming from the proscription of Palestine Action, who are not a terrorist organisation under any common sense understanding of that term. This is only going to escalate as there are millions of people who feel exactly as this man does and the police can't arrest all of us.
So the outcome is no charges. The fact that you don't think Palestine Action should be labelled as a terrorist organisation is irrelevant - it has been labelled as such by the government in power. I have some sympathy for the plod who are usually not that bright. He was holding a placard with 'Palestine Action' all over it.
I seem to recall rather a lot of debate on Gaza on PB in recent days - I do not see any sinister shutting down of debate. If you want to go and protest in support of Palestinians you are free to do so, as so may have.
Banning Palestine Action is foolhardy, but a fairly minor infringement in the grand scheme of things. Particularly if one applies the Conservatives's ( via Kit Malthouse) suggestion that Lammy and Starmer should be facing the war crimes tribunal in the Hague for their, at least tacit, support for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
Kit Malthouse was grandstanding. Neither Lammy nor Starmer is guilty of war crimes, and to suggest it is frankly juvenile.
No, Malthouse (and Leigh) have captured the zeitgeist. And this is a phenomenal opportunity for the Conservatives to pile on the pressure against Labour (and Reform). Will they take it? Most likely, not.
Government foreign policy has unraveled in the last week. First Healey's Afghan injunction outrage, which Cartlidge outed brilliantly, and now Malthouse's assertion of Labour complicity in ethnic cleansing of Gazans.
PB Tories would be better advised to follow these paths of Government outrage rather than their "ooh, has Starmer given the Isle of Wight away to the EU yet?"
The 'zeitgeist'? You think people's priority right now in the UK is a conflict going on 2000 miles away?
Gaza, Ukraine or both?
Given that the current (whipped-up) priority seems to be where are all these not Britishers flocking from, you’d hope people might be able to work out that many are flocking from conflicts 2000 miles and more away.
Conflicts in the plural you put it. So why one particular conflict in one country the size of Wales that gets all the attention? Notice how there was pretty much no interest in the massacre against the Druze until Israel got involved. Then suddenly it becomes relevant.
What massacre against the Druze before Israel got involved? Israeli forces moved into Syria (that is, beyond the area in the Golan Heights that they have long occupied) and undertook air strikes on 8 Dec 2024. The first clashes between the new Syrian administration and the Druze weren't until 28 Feb 2025.
There have been several clashes between the Druze and the new government (since Israeli intervention). Estimates suggest about 300 Druze civilians have been killed and maybe 600 Druze fighters. The Hamas/Israel conflict has seen about 2000 Israelis and about 80,000+ Palestinians killed. The events in Syria against the Druze minority are significant and the many deaths regrettable, but I think it is understandable that a conflict that has killed about 90 times as many people has attracted more attention.
Where are you getting the 80,000+ figures from. And yet again no attempt to distinguish between civilian and combatant casualties when it comes to Israel/Hamas - but you manage to when it comes to the Druze. Where do you get the estimates for the Druze casualties?
Those are widely reported figures. Wikipedia has citations. It's hard to be certain with any of these figures, but I think we can be confident that, in ballpark terms, the numbers killed in the Druze/govt conflict in Syria are much, much lower than in Gaza. Whether we're talking combatant or non-combatant or in total doesn't change that.
So, I'm left with the impression that you are quibbling details while overlooking the important points:
(A) Israel was involved before any Druze massacres.
(B) The death toll in the Gaza conflict is far, far greater.
'Widely reported' figures. Given the amount of propaganda involved in this conflict I'd have thought someone as assiduous as yourself would be a bit more rigourous than that. Really I should have pointed out that it isn't just the Druze but Christians and other minorities facing slaughter in Syria. Where do you stand on the new government there? Brutally persecuting people or just trying to bring order?
I remain with the impression that you are quibbling details while overlooking the important flaws in your prior argument.
Syria has been through a brutal and devastating civil war, which rightly attracted considerable concern among the UK public at the time. The situation appears to have improved since Assad was toppled and it is understandable that there is greater public focus in the UK now on events in Gaza. However, there is ongoing conflict in Syria between multiple groups. I hope that the new government can bring peace and justice, but that is a hope, not a prediction. I don't think Israeli intervention is helping. Israel's landgrab in the south of the country should be condemned.
That's an excellent piece on Kemi Badenoch in the Staggers
She's done
It is, and she ought to be, except for one thing.
Bad as she is, replacing her doesn't necessarily solve much, and on balance probably makes things worse. Jimmy C the Catford Kid isn't acceptable, because he doesn't bellyfeel the direction the British right is going. And Bobby J is just too tarnished by his tawdriness. Fine for social media attack doggery, but is there any sign he can cope with a forum where people ask him questions?
The Conservative Party is in a kind of zugzwang, where every possible move loses. They probably have been for a while. I wonder when the decisive mistake was? The obvious one was elevating BoJo, but even that seemed unavoidable in 2019. So how did they force themselves into that corner?
Always quite interesting when a leader gets a lot of press criticism as Badenoch has been doing. Clearly the first thought is that the leader concerned is doing a bad job, but then you start to wonder if the criticism is levelled because they fear that she might be doing, or start to be doing a good job.
(Hard really to judge with KB in my view, but I do think she may be improving - with a small chance of actually becoming good, and is far better than most of her potential replacements)
So those numbers imply that around 40% of Republicans are MAGA. You can see why, god help us, they own the party. I'm hard pushed to think of a more simultaneously malign and successful insurgent movement in a mature western democracy.
Thatcherism?
(ducks)
IMO no - Thatcher was rational and had consistency and some ethics, even if you disagreed existentially.
In practice, Maga is imo nihilistic in its outcomes, and has a irrationalist narrative which cannot be countered by argument because it is anchored in a fantasy world. And I don't mean "religion", I mean "what Maga have made of religion".
Yup. I think we can now say that big chunks of the Thatcher model failed, and I suspect that her generation of Tories would have winced at the rentier's rights plughole that the party is now circling. But it was largely done in good faith- I don't recall the critiques of the time predicting that we risked ending up here. (And yes, big chunks did fail, which is why we have her son's world, not her father's).
But even if you think she was wrong and unkind, that's not the degree of evil that MAGA is showing.
I half agree with that - I voted Conservative in '83 - but there were critiques at the time (eg centralisation of government/slow strangle of local government; privatisation of monopoly utilities which would never encounter market competition; financing of current spending from asset sales) which were absolutely correct.
And they were among the easier of her policies for succeeding governments to continue with, as they generally involved short term expediency at the cost of long term pain.
Picking up @Leon 's post about the "764" network from last night , I think his summary is valid in many respects.
Islamist threats being 1st at present, with Far Right coming up on the rails, iirc roughly matches Prevent statistics over the last few years. Far left are quiescent by comparison; Antifa does not extensively exist in an organised form in the UK; it did in the 1990s in one form to oppose Far Right violence with violence (I have a book about it), and could return at the edges. Leon's post:
My counter-terror friend told me that about 20% of his work, and rising, is now dedicated to this. Something of which I have never heard. It's called The Com
Another 10% is pure Neo Nazis, the grave majority is Islamism, still, and it hasn't got better, it's likely getting worse
What are impure Nazis? Ones who occasionally do sick stuff just for a laugh rather than out of rancid hatred for everyone not like themselves?
Basically, yes
That Sky story tallies entirely with what my friend told me about “the com”. And I’d never heard of it or them until tonight
Some of the stuff he told me was truly mind scrambling. And also ominous
The government is close to losing control on several fronts. Put it that way
I think Sky are hanging it on the "neo-Nazi" headline hook, because a complicated account around motiveless (ie nihilistic imo, borrowing my word from earlier) abuse would be more difficult in the popular media. Hope Not Hate covered this, following up the same conviction, in their "State of Hate 2025" report, and date it's origins back to 2021. Their assessment positions 764 as:
764 is likely the most extreme and organised example of a disturbing trend of children and young people being radicalised online through an obsession with gruesome material and death rather than a well defined political ideology.
There is also a label "“No Lives Matter” (NLM)". There are examples other than Cameron Finnigan, eg " Vincent Charlton, 17, was jailed for terrorism offences and having videos of a girl cutting his name into her body in 2023.". 2yrs 4 mths - juvenile so a light sentence, I assume.
I'd say there could perhaps be a "self-adopted franchise of the brand" nature to it, as happened with iirc Al-Qaeda as they expanded. People do things and call themselves 764. So it has a centre, but also replicates locally.
I think I also see an echo of Andrew Tate in the target group, in that young and vulnerable people online are targeted, as they are easier to groom. Tate has repeatedly stated that he likes younger women aged 18-19 because he can "imprint" on them. *
Yes, although your neighbour's child should perhaps be guided towards relevant programmes on Britain's number one streaming platform, which is BBC iplayer.
I haven't looked at iPlayer in a long time, but I get the impression the amount of history programming it has is utterly dwarfed by YouTube in both quantity and depth.
Go to iplayer and click the Categories button. Here is what it currently has on the wars:-
The World Wars Remembering the First and Second World Wars.
I saw this. It struck me as crazy. YouTube is a business and relies on ads. If it promotes drivel no one is interested in that won’t help it.
Why not also make this demand of Netflix and Disney+ and the others.
If people have little or no interest in PSB then that is that.
‘YouTube should give videos made by channels like the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 more promotion to help tackle a "serious threat" to the UK's public service broadcasting, according to media regulator Ofcom.
Children spend much more time watching YouTube than all of the public service broadcasters combined, but "the future of public service media is at risk" if young viewers don't start watching their output, Ofcom warned.
The watchdog suggested broadcasters should "work urgently with YouTube" to make sure their content is "prominent and easy to find" - and there's "a strong case" for the government to consider a law to make that happen.‘
This government keeps providing evidence it is utterly stuck in the past. They are fruitlessly passing laws to stop progress.
If people want to watch PSBs, they can. It's not hard to do so. Increasingly they don't because the BBC, ITV and C4 don't even understand what a PSB is any more. Ironically, YouTube does that so much better than the broadcasters now.
One of my neighbour's kids has developed an interest in the second world war and likes to chat about it knowing military history is one of my interests too. He's not watching the BBC to learn about this, he's on YouTube watching Drachinifel, Historigraph, the Tank Museum, Rex's Hangar, and a bunch of other channels that cover the subject in ways engaging enough for someone young.
The government would be better taking some of the licence fee money and giving it as grants to UK-based YT channels that produce good quality educational and informative content.
Excellent - Drach and Rex will ensure that slightly overdone irony about "Americans with lots and lots and lots of guns" will ensure that British humour persists, at least in your locale.
I see that Drach has started publishing books. Given that he has perhaps 1000 highly topic focused succinct scripts. he is going to end up like DG Hessayon.
That's an excellent piece on Kemi Badenoch in the Staggers
She's done
It is, and she ought to be, except for one thing.
Bad as she is, replacing her doesn't necessarily solve much, and on balance probably makes things worse. Jimmy C the Catford Kid isn't acceptable, because he doesn't bellyfeel the direction the British right is going. And Bobby J is just too tarnished by his tawdriness. Fine for social media attack doggery, but is there any sign he can cope with a forum where people ask him questions?
The Conservative Party is in a kind of zugzwang, where every possible move loses. They probably have been for a while. I wonder when the decisive mistake was? The obvious one was elevating BoJo, but even that seemed unavoidable in 2019. So how did they force themselves into that corner?
It was the gradual replacement of pragmatic, non-ideological conservativism, such that 'what works' began to take second place to Tory political obsession. Brexit is the obvious, massive, case in point, and the seed was sown when later Thatcher departed from her early pragmatism and flexibility (often retrospectively misremembered) and turned against the European project. With, quite possibly, early senility playing a role.
Yet another example of the absurd and sinister shutting down of debate over the Israeli genocide in Gaza stemming from the proscription of Palestine Action, who are not a terrorist organisation under any common sense understanding of that term. This is only going to escalate as there are millions of people who feel exactly as this man does and the police can't arrest all of us.
So the outcome is no charges. The fact that you don't think Palestine Action should be labelled as a terrorist organisation is irrelevant - it has been labelled as such by the government in power. I have some sympathy for the plod who are usually not that bright. He was holding a placard with 'Palestine Action' all over it.
I seem to recall rather a lot of debate on Gaza on PB in recent days - I do not see any sinister shutting down of debate. If you want to go and protest in support of Palestinians you are free to do so, as so may have.
Banning Palestine Action is foolhardy, but a fairly minor infringement in the grand scheme of things. Particularly if one applies the Conservatives's ( via Kit Malthouse) suggestion that Lammy and Starmer should be facing the war crimes tribunal in the Hague for their, at least tacit, support for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
Kit Malthouse was grandstanding. Neither Lammy nor Starmer is guilty of war crimes, and to suggest it is frankly juvenile.
No, Malthouse (and Leigh) have captured the zeitgeist. And this is a phenomenal opportunity for the Conservatives to pile on the pressure against Labour (and Reform). Will they take it? Most likely, not.
Government foreign policy has unraveled in the last week. First Healey's Afghan injunction outrage, which Cartlidge outed brilliantly, and now Malthouse's assertion of Labour complicity in ethnic cleansing of Gazans.
PB Tories would be better advised to follow these paths of Government outrage rather than their "ooh, has Starmer given the Isle of Wight away to the EU yet?"
The 'zeitgeist'? You think people's priority right now in the UK is a conflict going on 2000 miles away?
Gaza, Ukraine or both?
Given that the current (whipped-up) priority seems to be where are all these not Britishers flocking from, you’d hope people might be able to work out that many are flocking from conflicts 2000 miles and more away.
Conflicts in the plural you put it. So why one particular conflict in one country the size of Wales that gets all the attention? Notice how there was pretty much no interest in the massacre against the Druze until Israel got involved. Then suddenly it becomes relevant.
What massacre against the Druze before Israel got involved? Israeli forces moved into Syria (that is, beyond the area in the Golan Heights that they have long occupied) and undertook air strikes on 8 Dec 2024. The first clashes between the new Syrian administration and the Druze weren't until 28 Feb 2025.
There have been several clashes between the Druze and the new government (since Israeli intervention). Estimates suggest about 300 Druze civilians have been killed and maybe 600 Druze fighters. The Hamas/Israel conflict has seen about 2000 Israelis and about 80,000+ Palestinians killed. The events in Syria against the Druze minority are significant and the many deaths regrettable, but I think it is understandable that a conflict that has killed about 90 times as many people has attracted more attention.
Where are you getting the 80,000+ figures from. And yet again no attempt to distinguish between civilian and combatant casualties when it comes to Israel/Hamas - but you manage to when it comes to the Druze. Where do you get the estimates for the Druze casualties?
Those are widely reported figures. Wikipedia has citations. It's hard to be certain with any of these figures, but I think we can be confident that, in ballpark terms, the numbers killed in the Druze/govt conflict in Syria are much, much lower than in Gaza. Whether we're talking combatant or non-combatant or in total doesn't change that.
So, I'm left with the impression that you are quibbling details while overlooking the important points:
(A) Israel was involved before any Druze massacres.
(B) The death toll in the Gaza conflict is far, far greater.
I would be interested to see the figures produced by the experts at the Frank Booth Foundation.
"Arrived Old Trafford 09:45. Still way back in huge queue moving slower than a snail's pace. Have paid over £100 for ticket. Several breweries in and around Stretford and Salford nearby. Hopefully whoever has orchestrated this hasn't also organised drinks there later."
"The organisation at Old Trafford today is really not helping the arguments against its exclusion from the 2027 Ashes series."
"Hearing about the queues to get into Old Trafford does justify my dad’s decision for us all to meet at the tram station just after 8am with a 6am wake up."
"Been queuing for an hour to get into Old Trafford - let us in so we can cheer England on!"
"Terrible crowd management at the Test match at Old Trafford. Still thousands queueing outside to get in."
"Old Trafford's organisation was also shocking last summer and the one before that. Had to queue at least 15 minutes to go to the loo in the middle of play each time, end up missing about an hour's play across the day because of the shoddy facilities."
That's an excellent piece on Kemi Badenoch in the Staggers
She's done
It is, and she ought to be, except for one thing.
Bad as she is, replacing her doesn't necessarily solve much, and on balance probably makes things worse. Jimmy C the Catford Kid isn't acceptable, because he doesn't bellyfeel the direction the British right is going. And Bobby J is just too tarnished by his tawdriness. Fine for social media attack doggery, but is there any sign he can cope with a forum where people ask him questions?
The Conservative Party is in a kind of zugzwang, where every possible move loses. They probably have been for a while. I wonder when the decisive mistake was? The obvious one was elevating BoJo, but even that seemed unavoidable in 2019. So how did they force themselves into that corner?
The Tories have never recovered their ground since half of them lost and the other half of them won the 2016 Referendum, Cameron revealed there wasn't a plan and bottled out.
The point at which they lost it follows from that. It is the period in which with the UK Tory government's backing the EU became an organisation we could neither remain in nor leave. That is down to the lack of foresight of both Mrs T and Major's governments.
Always quite interesting when a leader gets a lot of press criticism as Badenoch has been doing. Clearly the first thought is that the leader concerned is doing a bad job, but then you start to wonder if the criticism is levelled because they fear that she might be doing, or start to be doing a good job.
(Hard really to judge with KB in my view, but I do think she may be improving - with a small chance of actually becoming good, and is far better than most of her potential replacements)
Being at 17% in the polls is difficult to spin as a "good job".
A new series of MasterChef, which was recorded before presenters Gregg Wallace and John Torode were sacked, will still be shown on BBC One and iPlayer, the corporation has announced.
A new series of MasterChef, which was recorded before presenters Gregg Wallace and John Torode were sacked, will still be shown on BBC One and iPlayer, the corporation has announced.
Picking up @Leon 's post about the "764" network from last night , I think his summary is valid in many respects.
Islamist threats being 1st at present, with Far Right coming up on the rails, iirc roughly matches Prevent statistics over the last few years. Far left are quiescent by comparison; Antifa does not extensively exist in an organised form in the UK; it did in the 1990s in one form to oppose Far Right violence with violence (I have a book about it), and could return at the edges. Leon's post:
My counter-terror friend told me that about 20% of his work, and rising, is now dedicated to this. Something of which I have never heard. It's called The Com
Another 10% is pure Neo Nazis, the grave majority is Islamism, still, and it hasn't got better, it's likely getting worse
What are impure Nazis? Ones who occasionally do sick stuff just for a laugh rather than out of rancid hatred for everyone not like themselves?
Basically, yes
That Sky story tallies entirely with what my friend told me about “the com”. And I’d never heard of it or them until tonight
Some of the stuff he told me was truly mind scrambling. And also ominous
The government is close to losing control on several fronts. Put it that way
I think Sky are hanging it on the "neo-Nazi" headline hook, because a complicated account around motiveless (ie nihilistic imo, borrowing my word from earlier) abuse would be more difficult in the popular media. Hope Not Hate covered this, following up the same conviction, in their "State of Hate 2025" report, and date it's origins back to 2021. Their assessment positions 764 as:
764 is likely the most extreme and organised example of a disturbing trend of children and young people being radicalised online through an obsession with gruesome material and death rather than a well defined political ideology.
There is also a label "“No Lives Matter” (NLM)". There are examples other than Cameron Finnigan, eg " Vincent Charlton, 17, was jailed for terrorism offences and having videos of a girl cutting his name into her body in 2023.". 2yrs 4 mths - juvenile so a light sentence, I assume.
I'd say there could perhaps be a "self-adopted franchise of the brand" nature to it, as happened with iirc Al-Qaeda as they expanded. People do things and call themselves 764. So it has a centre, but also replicates locally.
I think I also see an echo of Andrew Tate in the target group, in that young and vulnerable people online are targeted, as they are easier to groom. Tate has repeatedly stated that he likes younger women aged 18-19 because he can "imprint" on them. *
Well I'm grateful you're not flat out calling me a liar, like @Roger and @Mexicanpete or a "racist" blah blah - simply for reporting what this guy told me over rose wine in The Groucho. He is very senior in counter terror - and I mean as senior as you can get without actually being way up in MI5/6 or in the Cabinet. He is summoned to all the major crises
He was really interesting just on the details of how it works that high up, the super-max levels of clearance in this weird hi tech building in W London
And he did not expressly say "the government is panicked" but he did say "clueless" and "helpless" and very scared of the risk of public unrest over migration/asylum. This is hardly news, or me editorialising, it is all over the media these last weeks. It also tallies with what I've heard from other people in politics/media this last week
The Com stuff was, however, entirely new to me. Some of the stories are profoundly disturbing. Nihilistic violence simply for the sake of it. Grotesque
My friend and I are probably embarking on a long term project together in September, so I may have more reports which frightened idiots can dismiss as lies
It’s actually an interesting issue for deliveroo et al. They need to allow substitution to avoid everyone becoming a worker (big tax and other issues there) but know that opens up this type of problem
There are 7 local by-elections tomorrow, mostly in Tory territory. We have Con defences in Dorset and Hertsmere, Ind elected as Con in Bromley and Lichfield, a Lab defence in Cardiff, a LD defence in Dacorum, and a non-defence for Green in Rutland.
That's an excellent piece on Kemi Badenoch in the Staggers
She's done
It is, and she ought to be, except for one thing.
Bad as she is, replacing her doesn't necessarily solve much, and on balance probably makes things worse. Jimmy C the Catford Kid isn't acceptable, because he doesn't bellyfeel the direction the British right is going. And Bobby J is just too tarnished by his tawdriness. Fine for social media attack doggery, but is there any sign he can cope with a forum where people ask him questions?
The Conservative Party is in a kind of zugzwang, where every possible move loses. They probably have been for a while. I wonder when the decisive mistake was? The obvious one was elevating BoJo, but even that seemed unavoidable in 2019. So how did they force themselves into that corner?
Boris exiled the Remainer talent, and the Leaver talent was ignored in favour of nonentities that would not challenge him.
That's an excellent piece on Kemi Badenoch in the Staggers
She's done
It is, and she ought to be, except for one thing.
Bad as she is, replacing her doesn't necessarily solve much, and on balance probably makes things worse. Jimmy C the Catford Kid isn't acceptable, because he doesn't bellyfeel the direction the British right is going. And Bobby J is just too tarnished by his tawdriness. Fine for social media attack doggery, but is there any sign he can cope with a forum where people ask him questions?
The Conservative Party is in a kind of zugzwang, where every possible move loses. They probably have been for a while. I wonder when the decisive mistake was? The obvious one was elevating BoJo, but even that seemed unavoidable in 2019. So how did they force themselves into that corner?
The Tories are not entirely screwed - because they have one obvious option. Do a deal with Reform, either informal or more structured. This may of course mean they are doomed long term, but then if they carry on as they are now, they are CERTAINLY doomed long term
They have to choose the leader best equipped to make that deal. Jenrick is a shape shifting careerist weasel, so he seems ideal. Also he is genuinely good at social media and has some presence and charisma, unlike anyone else
I cannot see any other option. Cleverly is a throwback and would do nothing, Stride is totally anonymous and would send them down to 20 seats. It has to be Jenrick - if only for lack of alternatives
It’s actually an interesting issue for deliveroo et al. They need to allow substitution to avoid everyone becoming a worker (big tax and other issues there) but know that opens up this type of problem
I think a hefty hot food delivery tax is needed to put these firms out of business.
He has 1400 videos on naval history alone. And that's *one* channel among hundreds that cover history on YT. I'm not sure you're grasping the huge and widening gulf between YouTube and the legacy broadcasters.
Yet another example of the absurd and sinister shutting down of debate over the Israeli genocide in Gaza stemming from the proscription of Palestine Action, who are not a terrorist organisation under any common sense understanding of that term. This is only going to escalate as there are millions of people who feel exactly as this man does and the police can't arrest all of us.
So the outcome is no charges. The fact that you don't think Palestine Action should be labelled as a terrorist organisation is irrelevant - it has been labelled as such by the government in power. I have some sympathy for the plod who are usually not that bright. He was holding a placard with 'Palestine Action' all over it.
I seem to recall rather a lot of debate on Gaza on PB in recent days - I do not see any sinister shutting down of debate. If you want to go and protest in support of Palestinians you are free to do so, as so may have.
Banning Palestine Action is foolhardy, but a fairly minor infringement in the grand scheme of things. Particularly if one applies the Conservatives's ( via Kit Malthouse) suggestion that Lammy and Starmer should be facing the war crimes tribunal in the Hague for their, at least tacit, support for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
Kit Malthouse was grandstanding. Neither Lammy nor Starmer is guilty of war crimes, and to suggest it is frankly juvenile.
No, Malthouse (and Leigh) have captured the zeitgeist. And this is a phenomenal opportunity for the Conservatives to pile on the pressure against Labour (and Reform). Will they take it? Most likely, not.
Government foreign policy has unraveled in the last week. First Healey's Afghan injunction outrage, which Cartlidge outed brilliantly, and now Malthouse's assertion of Labour complicity in ethnic cleansing of Gazans.
PB Tories would be better advised to follow these paths of Government outrage rather than their "ooh, has Starmer given the Isle of Wight away to the EU yet?"
The 'zeitgeist'? You think people's priority right now in the UK is a conflict going on 2000 miles away?
Gaza, Ukraine or both?
Given that the current (whipped-up) priority seems to be where are all these not Britishers flocking from, you’d hope people might be able to work out that many are flocking from conflicts 2000 miles and more away.
Conflicts in the plural you put it. So why one particular conflict in one country the size of Wales that gets all the attention? Notice how there was pretty much no interest in the massacre against the Druze until Israel got involved. Then suddenly it becomes relevant.
What massacre against the Druze before Israel got involved? Israeli forces moved into Syria (that is, beyond the area in the Golan Heights that they have long occupied) and undertook air strikes on 8 Dec 2024. The first clashes between the new Syrian administration and the Druze weren't until 28 Feb 2025.
There have been several clashes between the Druze and the new government (since Israeli intervention). Estimates suggest about 300 Druze civilians have been killed and maybe 600 Druze fighters. The Hamas/Israel conflict has seen about 2000 Israelis and about 80,000+ Palestinians killed. The events in Syria against the Druze minority are significant and the many deaths regrettable, but I think it is understandable that a conflict that has killed about 90 times as many people has attracted more attention.
Where are you getting the 80,000+ figures from. And yet again no attempt to distinguish between civilian and combatant casualties when it comes to Israel/Hamas - but you manage to when it comes to the Druze. Where do you get the estimates for the Druze casualties?
Those are widely reported figures. Wikipedia has citations. It's hard to be certain with any of these figures, but I think we can be confident that, in ballpark terms, the numbers killed in the Druze/govt conflict in Syria are much, much lower than in Gaza. Whether we're talking combatant or non-combatant or in total doesn't change that.
So, I'm left with the impression that you are quibbling details while overlooking the important points:
(A) Israel was involved before any Druze massacres.
(B) The death toll in the Gaza conflict is far, far greater.
I would be interested to see the figures produced by the experts at the Frank Booth Foundation.
We had this the other day. I believe these are Hamas' own figures.
A new series of MasterChef, which was recorded before presenters Gregg Wallace and John Torode were sacked, will still be shown on BBC One and iPlayer, the corporation has announced.
That's the right choice. It is profoundly wrong those contestants should suffer - after months of striving and sweat - because one presenter was a longterm knobhead and one other once sang a rap song ten years ago with the N word
That's an excellent piece on Kemi Badenoch in the Staggers
She's done
It is, and she ought to be, except for one thing.
Bad as she is, replacing her doesn't necessarily solve much, and on balance probably makes things worse. Jimmy C the Catford Kid isn't acceptable, because he doesn't bellyfeel the direction the British right is going. And Bobby J is just too tarnished by his tawdriness. Fine for social media attack doggery, but is there any sign he can cope with a forum where people ask him questions?
The Conservative Party is in a kind of zugzwang, where every possible move loses. They probably have been for a while. I wonder when the decisive mistake was? The obvious one was elevating BoJo, but even that seemed unavoidable in 2019. So how did they force themselves into that corner?
The Tories are enot ntirely screwed - because they have one obvious option. Do a deal with Reform, eithe rinformal or more structured. This may of course mean they are doomed long term, but then if they carry on as they are now, they are CERTAINLY doomd long term
They have to choose the leader best equipped to make that deal. Jenrick is a shape shifting careerist weasel, so he seems ideal. Also he is genuinely good at social media and has some presence and charisma, unlike anyone else
I cannot see any other option. Cleverly is a throw back and would do nothing, Stride is anonymous and would send them down to 20 seats. It has to be Jenrick - if only for lack of alternatives
I think there's the start of a case that RefUK are starting to nibble at the edges eg Tory MLA Laura Anne Jones yesterday in the Senedd.
2026 devolved elections are going to be worth watching in some detail.
RefUK have other tensions pulling in different directions, too, as we know.
It’s actually an interesting issue for deliveroo et al. They need to allow substitution to avoid everyone becoming a worker (big tax and other issues there) but know that opens up this type of problem
I think a hefty hot food delivery tax is needed to put these firms out of business.
Hmm. If George Osborne's Pasty Tax got a bad press then I can't wait to see the reaction to Rachel unveiling that one.
It’s actually an interesting issue for deliveroo et al. They need to allow substitution to avoid everyone becoming a worker (big tax and other issues there) but know that opens up this type of problem
tbh I'm not sure that moving people out of the grey economy into the black economy or even straight-up crime is a good idea. The aim is presumably to remove one of President Macron's pull factors, but it is at best indirect. If HMG wants to deal with asylum seekers then it should do so directly and quickly, not mess around at the edges.
This part seems to misunderstand how delivery riders work:- The agreement with Deliveroo, Just East and Uber Eats enables the firms to identify behaviour which indicates illegal working, such as an account spending a lot of time near one of the hotels. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy4yjpv87v0o
Riders spend time wherever is most convenient for incoming jobs, say near a cluster of takeaways. They don't lie in bed waiting for orders.
That's an excellent piece on Kemi Badenoch in the Staggers
She's done
It is, and she ought to be, except for one thing.
Bad as she is, replacing her doesn't necessarily solve much, and on balance probably makes things worse. Jimmy C the Catford Kid isn't acceptable, because he doesn't bellyfeel the direction the British right is going. And Bobby J is just too tarnished by his tawdriness. Fine for social media attack doggery, but is there any sign he can cope with a forum where people ask him questions?
The Conservative Party is in a kind of zugzwang, where every possible move loses. They probably have been for a while. I wonder when the decisive mistake was? The obvious one was elevating BoJo, but even that seemed unavoidable in 2019. So how did they force themselves into that corner?
It was Cameron holding a referendum where he had to resign if he lost. You should not hold a referendum if you're not able to implement the result.
During the negotiations before the referendum I often wondered whether the point of the negotiations was to provide fodder for Cameron's reluctant decision to recommend Leave in the referendum. It seemed the only logical way ahead.
The Tories destroyed themselves because, when Leave won, there was a vacuum where a strategy should have been.
It’s actually an interesting issue for deliveroo et al. They need to allow substitution to avoid everyone becoming a worker (big tax and other issues there) but know that opens up this type of problem
tbh I'm not sure that moving people out of the grey economy into the black economy or even straight-up crime is a good idea. The aim is presumably to remove one of President Macron's pull factors, but it is at best indirect. If HMG wants to deal with asylum seekers then it should do so directly and quickly, not mess around at the edges.
This part seems to misunderstand how delivery riders work:- The agreement with Deliveroo, Just East and Uber Eats enables the firms to identify behaviour which indicates illegal working, such as an account spending a lot of time near one of the hotels. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy4yjpv87v0o
Riders spend time wherever is most convenient for incoming jobs, say near a cluster of takeaways. They don't lie in bed waiting for orders.
I suspect both HMG and the delivery firms know that - so the question becomes is this performance art until single worker status gets discussed in October (date accidentally confirmed by leak last month)
That's an excellent piece on Kemi Badenoch in the Staggers
She's done
It is, and she ought to be, except for one thing.
Bad as she is, replacing her doesn't necessarily solve much, and on balance probably makes things worse. Jimmy C the Catford Kid isn't acceptable, because he doesn't bellyfeel the direction the British right is going. And Bobby J is just too tarnished by his tawdriness. Fine for social media attack doggery, but is there any sign he can cope with a forum where people ask him questions?
The Conservative Party is in a kind of zugzwang, where every possible move loses. They probably have been for a while. I wonder when the decisive mistake was? The obvious one was elevating BoJo, but even that seemed unavoidable in 2019. So how did they force themselves into that corner?
It was Cameron holding a referendum where he had to resign if he lost. You should not hold a referendum if you're not able to implement the result.
During the negotiations before the referendum I often wondered whether the point of the negotiations was to provide fodder for Cameron's reluctant decision to recommend Leave in the referendum. It seemed the only logical way ahead.
The Tories destroyed themselves because, when Leave won, there was a vacuum where a strategy should have been.
It was Mrs Thatcher's term as Education Secretary in Edward Heath's government. She closed more grammar schools than Shirley Williams but unaccountably left open the one near Slough.
A new series of MasterChef, which was recorded before presenters Gregg Wallace and John Torode were sacked, will still be shown on BBC One and iPlayer, the corporation has announced.
That's the right choice. It is profoundly wrong those contestants should suffer - after months of striving and sweat - because one presenter was a longterm knobhead and one other once sang a rap song ten years ago with the N word
Can't we use AI to edit them into... Oh I dunno, the Swedish Chef from the Muppets and the Remy the Rat from Ratatouille? Or failing that Graham Kerr and Fanny Craddock.
I am still of the opinion that is there was something really big against Trump it would have been used by now. The media have had 12 years to use it. Instead it will be drip drip of rather embarrassing here is Trump at an event and so is Epstein. But of course we know so was all the rich and famous.
Trump and Epstein were much closer friends than a casual meet up on the NY social scene.
One thing we see in a lot of these scandals, similar to the UK ones in TV entertainment, are some of the changing ideas about sex with young, often underage girls. In the Seventies and Eighties it wasn't considered a big deal. Just men being men, and sexual liberation, even in mainstream films such as Pretty Woman, or Rita, Sue and Bob Too.
One thing people forget with Eighties nostalgia is how dark things could be at the time.
But it hasn't changed that much since Me Too. If they had something really bad it surely would have been deployed to stop him ever being president again. And the Democrats (who will have been at a lot of the events) paid for research on him, law officials have dug into his affairs* and the media go over everything in minute detail for 12 years.
* I mean the criminal conviction they got him on was overstating the value of property to get a loan which he paid back. I mean that seems pretty small beer if they had Epstein material to connect him.
Me Too was a load of horse manure
Says an older man...
The exposures of what went on with Al-Fayad, and also in my own profession* shows that predatory sexual behaviour of older men on younger women (and men) is not unusual at all. Indeed it has probably been so throughout history and across many societies.
The question is, should we tolerate it for the future?
There are currently 2 NHS trusts and at least one medical union which supports doctors who want to watch a female colleague undress or undress in front of her against her consent and are spending taxpayers' money arguing this. Voyeurism and indecent exposure are of course criminal offences. Women who have complained about this have been punished.
So the answer to your question is that we are already tolerating it and, in some cases, encouraging and enabling it.
Ummm so let me get this straight: Republicans have ground Congress to a halt and are considering adjourning the entire House for 6 weeks to avoid releasing the info they have on Epstein?
That's an excellent piece on Kemi Badenoch in the Staggers
She's done
It is, and she ought to be, except for one thing.
Bad as she is, replacing her doesn't necessarily solve much, and on balance probably makes things worse. Jimmy C the Catford Kid isn't acceptable, because he doesn't bellyfeel the direction the British right is going. And Bobby J is just too tarnished by his tawdriness. Fine for social media attack doggery, but is there any sign he can cope with a forum where people ask him questions?
The Conservative Party is in a kind of zugzwang, where every possible move loses. They probably have been for a while. I wonder when the decisive mistake was? The obvious one was elevating BoJo, but even that seemed unavoidable in 2019. So how did they force themselves into that corner?
The Tories are not entirely screwed - because they have one obvious option. Do a deal with Reform, either informal or more structured. This may of course mean they are doomed long term, but then if they carry on as they are now, they are CERTAINLY doomed long term
They have to choose the leader best equipped to make that deal. Jenrick is a shape shifting careerist weasel, so he seems ideal. Also he is genuinely good at social media and has some presence and charisma, unlike anyone else
I cannot see any other option. Cleverly is a throwback and would do nothing, Stride is totally anonymous and would send them down to 20 seats. It has to be Jenrick - if only for lack of alternatives
It’s actually an interesting issue for deliveroo et al. They need to allow substitution to avoid everyone becoming a worker (big tax and other issues there) but know that opens up this type of problem
I think a hefty hot food delivery tax is needed to put these firms out of business.
Hmm. If George Osborne's Pasty Tax got a bad press then I can't wait to see the reaction to Rachel unveiling that one.
It could be sold as part of the fight against obesity.
He has 1400 videos on naval history alone. And that's *one* channel among hundreds that cover history on YT. I'm not sure you're grasping the huge and widening gulf between YouTube and the legacy broadcasters.
I'm pretty sure I'm top of the PB YouTube link-posting league (two already today). I've also pointed out that YouTube is the biggest rival to Netflix, the other streamers and broadcasters. Heck, I do not even own a telly.
Always quite interesting when a leader gets a lot of press criticism as Badenoch has been doing. Clearly the first thought is that the leader concerned is doing a bad job, but then you start to wonder if the criticism is levelled because they fear that she might be doing, or start to be doing a good job.
(Hard really to judge with KB in my view, but I do think she may be improving - with a small chance of actually becoming good, and is far better than most of her potential replacements)
Being at 17% in the polls is difficult to spin as a "good job".
Kemmi isn't great, but I can't see how anyone else does better. They were booted out of office for the cumulative sins of the preceding 14 years (during which time they didn't exactly cover themselves in glory). Thus every PMQs Starmer can stand there chanting "14 years" to bat away almost all her attacks.
Meanwhile, because they let immigration run riot in a country that's deeply sceptical about immigration, Farage has wandered in, eaten their lunch and is halfway through their dinner too.
What are their options? Claim the last 14 years was nothing to do with them? Most of her were ministers, so that doesn't work. Claim it was all a terrible mistake, and they've learned from it?
No - their goose is cooked. They aren't pining for the fjords, they are dead, they have ceased to be, they have gone to join the choir invisible. The only thing is not all of them seem to have realised it yet.
I am still of the opinion that is there was something really big against Trump it would have been used by now. The media have had 12 years to use it. Instead it will be drip drip of rather embarrassing here is Trump at an event and so is Epstein. But of course we know so was all the rich and famous.
Trump and Epstein were much closer friends than a casual meet up on the NY social scene.
One thing we see in a lot of these scandals, similar to the UK ones in TV entertainment, are some of the changing ideas about sex with young, often underage girls. In the Seventies and Eighties it wasn't considered a big deal. Just men being men, and sexual liberation, even in mainstream films such as Pretty Woman, or Rita, Sue and Bob Too.
One thing people forget with Eighties nostalgia is how dark things could be at the time.
But it hasn't changed that much since Me Too. If they had something really bad it surely would have been deployed to stop him ever being president again. And the Democrats (who will have been at a lot of the events) paid for research on him, law officials have dug into his affairs* and the media go over everything in minute detail for 12 years.
* I mean the criminal conviction they got him on was overstating the value of property to get a loan which he paid back. I mean that seems pretty small beer if they had Epstein material to connect him.
Me Too was a load of horse manure
Says an older man...
The exposures of what went on with Al-Fayad, and also in my own profession* shows that predatory sexual behaviour of older men on younger women (and men) is not unusual at all. Indeed it has probably been so throughout history and across many societies.
The question is, should we tolerate it for the future?
There are currently 2 NHS trusts and at least one medical union which supports doctors who want to watch a female colleague undress or undress in front of her against her consent and are spending taxpayers' money arguing this. Voyeurism and indecent exposure are of course criminal offences. Women who have complained about this have been punished.
So the answer to your question is that we are already tolerating it and, in some cases, encouraging and enabling it.
Picking up @Leon 's post about the "764" network from last night , I think his summary is valid in many respects.
Islamist threats being 1st at present, with Far Right coming up on the rails, iirc roughly matches Prevent statistics over the last few years. Far left are quiescent by comparison; Antifa does not extensively exist in an organised form in the UK; it did in the 1990s in one form to oppose Far Right violence with violence (I have a book about it), and could return at the edges. Leon's post:
My counter-terror friend told me that about 20% of his work, and rising, is now dedicated to this. Something of which I have never heard. It's called The Com
Another 10% is pure Neo Nazis, the grave majority is Islamism, still, and it hasn't got better, it's likely getting worse
What are impure Nazis? Ones who occasionally do sick stuff just for a laugh rather than out of rancid hatred for everyone not like themselves?
Basically, yes
That Sky story tallies entirely with what my friend told me about “the com”. And I’d never heard of it or them until tonight
Some of the stuff he told me was truly mind scrambling. And also ominous
The government is close to losing control on several fronts. Put it that way
I think Sky are hanging it on the "neo-Nazi" headline hook, because a complicated account around motiveless (ie nihilistic imo, borrowing my word from earlier) abuse would be more difficult in the popular media. Hope Not Hate covered this, following up the same conviction, in their "State of Hate 2025" report, and date it's origins back to 2021. Their assessment positions 764 as:
764 is likely the most extreme and organised example of a disturbing trend of children and young people being radicalised online through an obsession with gruesome material and death rather than a well defined political ideology.
There is also a label "“No Lives Matter” (NLM)". There are examples other than Cameron Finnigan, eg " Vincent Charlton, 17, was jailed for terrorism offences and having videos of a girl cutting his name into her body in 2023.". 2yrs 4 mths - juvenile so a light sentence, I assume.
I'd say there could perhaps be a "self-adopted franchise of the brand" nature to it, as happened with iirc Al-Qaeda as they expanded. People do things and call themselves 764. So it has a centre, but also replicates locally.
I think I also see an echo of Andrew Tate in the target group, in that young and vulnerable people online are targeted, as they are easier to groom. Tate has repeatedly stated that he likes younger women aged 18-19 because he can "imprint" on them. *
Well I'm grateful you're not flat out calling me a liar, like @Roger and @Mexicanpete or a "racist" blah blah - simply for reporting what this guy told me over rose wine in The Groucho. He is very senior in counter terror - and I mean as senior as you can get without actually being way up in MI5/6 or in the Cabinet. He is summoned to all the major crises
He was really interesting just on the details of how it works that high up, the super-max levels of clearance in this weird hi tech building in W London
And he did not expressly say "the government is panicked" but he did say "clueless" and "helpless" and very scared of the risk of public unrest over migration/asylum. This is hardly news, or me editorialising, it is all over the media these last weeks. It also tallies with what I've heard from other people in politics/media this last week
The Com stuff was, however, entirely new to me. Some of the stories are profoundly disturbing. Nihilistic violence simply for the sake of it. Grotesque
My friend and I are probably embarking on a long term project together in September, so I may have more reports which frightened idiots can dismiss as lies
I haven't heard of "The Com". But it's likely you get access to insiders whom some many of us do not. Though I think you can sometimes alight on something and build too much on one aspect. On the "government under threat" narrative, perhaps a parallel tell tale will be if Tommy & Co manage to generate a firestorm of street protest this summer.
I don't think a nihilistic view of violence is new, and there are plenty of politically driven views that attempt to generate "chaos" in the belief that weakening the existing order will create an opportunity for them to provide an alternative. But we also get theories that opponents are doing that.
If you look up some of the theories on the American Christian Right there are ideas about "Marxists" "promoting pornography" in the 1960s "permissive society" in order to sow chaos and undermine the way America should be. Some of it reached the mad end of popular evangelical literature in the 1970s and 1980s. One of the pop-theories (from a book called "When your money fails: The "666 System" is here." *) was about a huge EU run computer called "The Beast" that could process the details of the whole population of Europe, which then feeds into various bits and pieces from Revelation, Ezekiel Daniel etc. The book had graphics of "666" appearing on credit card numbers and in other places, and gave it eschatological significance. Just as there are conspiracy theories about the Proctor & Gamble logo.
It's completely bonkers, but it's also the sort of thing that is in the head of some Trumpvangelicals - including perhaps some Government high ups.
A new series of MasterChef, which was recorded before presenters Gregg Wallace and John Torode were sacked, will still be shown on BBC One and iPlayer, the corporation has announced.
Quite right too. Hundreds of people worked on those programmes and the contestants have a right to their time in the limelight. We really are rather pathetic with our stupid cancel culture. Can we not consider the performance in isolation from the performer?
I am still of the opinion that is there was something really big against Trump it would have been used by now. The media have had 12 years to use it. Instead it will be drip drip of rather embarrassing here is Trump at an event and so is Epstein. But of course we know so was all the rich and famous.
Trump and Epstein were much closer friends than a casual meet up on the NY social scene.
One thing we see in a lot of these scandals, similar to the UK ones in TV entertainment, are some of the changing ideas about sex with young, often underage girls. In the Seventies and Eighties it wasn't considered a big deal. Just men being men, and sexual liberation, even in mainstream films such as Pretty Woman, or Rita, Sue and Bob Too.
One thing people forget with Eighties nostalgia is how dark things could be at the time.
But it hasn't changed that much since Me Too. If they had something really bad it surely would have been deployed to stop him ever being president again. And the Democrats (who will have been at a lot of the events) paid for research on him, law officials have dug into his affairs* and the media go over everything in minute detail for 12 years.
* I mean the criminal conviction they got him on was overstating the value of property to get a loan which he paid back. I mean that seems pretty small beer if they had Epstein material to connect him.
Me Too was a load of horse manure
Says an older man...
The exposures of what went on with Al-Fayad, and also in my own profession* shows that predatory sexual behaviour of older men on younger women (and men) is not unusual at all. Indeed it has probably been so throughout history and across many societies.
The question is, should we tolerate it for the future?
There are currently 2 NHS trusts and at least one medical union which supports doctors who want to watch a female colleague undress or undress in front of her against her consent and are spending taxpayers' money arguing this. Voyeurism and indecent exposure are of course criminal offences. Women who have complained about this have been punished.
So the answer to your question is that we are already tolerating it and, in some cases, encouraging and enabling it.
I am still of the opinion that is there was something really big against Trump it would have been used by now. The media have had 12 years to use it. Instead it will be drip drip of rather embarrassing here is Trump at an event and so is Epstein. But of course we know so was all the rich and famous.
Trump and Epstein were much closer friends than a casual meet up on the NY social scene.
One thing we see in a lot of these scandals, similar to the UK ones in TV entertainment, are some of the changing ideas about sex with young, often underage girls. In the Seventies and Eighties it wasn't considered a big deal. Just men being men, and sexual liberation, even in mainstream films such as Pretty Woman, or Rita, Sue and Bob Too.
One thing people forget with Eighties nostalgia is how dark things could be at the time.
But it hasn't changed that much since Me Too. If they had something really bad it surely would have been deployed to stop him ever being president again. And the Democrats (who will have been at a lot of the events) paid for research on him, law officials have dug into his affairs* and the media go over everything in minute detail for 12 years.
* I mean the criminal conviction they got him on was overstating the value of property to get a loan which he paid back. I mean that seems pretty small beer if they had Epstein material to connect him.
Me Too was a load of horse manure
Says an older man...
The exposures of what went on with Al-Fayad, and also in my own profession* shows that predatory sexual behaviour of older men on younger women (and men) is not unusual at all. Indeed it has probably been so throughout history and across many societies.
The question is, should we tolerate it for the future?
There are currently 2 NHS trusts and at least one medical union which supports doctors who want to watch a female colleague undress or undress in front of her against her consent and are spending taxpayers' money arguing this. Voyeurism and indecent exposure are of course criminal offences. Women who have complained about this have been punished.
So the answer to your question is that we are already tolerating it and, in some cases, encouraging and enabling it.
I think this is a big improvement on the Ian Levine stuff some of which I watched on holiday.
Also an improvement on the telesnaps and the cartoons.
Agreed. If they were able to redo the whole of the Troughton missing episodes with that they would be eminently watchable. There are imperfections but then that's true of the original recordings given their age.
I’d be very happy with the missing Troughtons and Hartnells to this standard.
It’s amazing how the tech has improved in a few years. I suspect in a couple of years the Beeb may, given their policy of old wine in new bottles when it comes to Dr Who, release AI versions on DVD especially where there are full telesnaps
Quite how they’d do Massacre or Space Pirates, for example, I’m not sure.
They're a bit parsimonious when it comes to animations. Weren't some of the later ones done using CGI a bit rubbish? And then they stopped. So I assume if there are AI animations they'll be done by fans until the concept is proved, then the Beeb will step in and do it on the cheap.
When it became obvious Trump University was a scam, four state attorneys general considered opening investigations.
Florida attorney general, Republican Pam Bondi, received a campaign contributions from Trump, and did not open an investigation.
California attorney general, Democrat Kamala Harris, also received campaign contributions, and did not open an investigation.
Texas attorney general, Republican Greg Abbott, opened an investigation but dropped it after Trump pulled out of the state. Trump later gave Abbott a substantial donation for his gubernatorial campaign.
New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman opened an investigation, and eventually filed suit against Trump. Trump accused him of trying to extort campaign contributions. source: Maggie Haberman's Confidence Man, pp. 193-194 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_University
Always quite interesting when a leader gets a lot of press criticism as Badenoch has been doing. Clearly the first thought is that the leader concerned is doing a bad job, but then you start to wonder if the criticism is levelled because they fear that she might be doing, or start to be doing a good job.
(Hard really to judge with KB in my view, but I do think she may be improving - with a small chance of actually becoming good, and is far better than most of her potential replacements)
Being at 17% in the polls is difficult to spin as a "good job".
Kemmi isn't great, but I can't see how anyone else does better. They were booted out of office for the cumulative sins of the preceding 14 years (during which time they didn't exactly cover themselves in glory). Thus every PMQs Starmer can stand there chanting "14 years" to bat away almost all her attacks.
Meanwhile, because they let immigration run riot in a country that's deeply sceptical about immigration, Farage has wandered in, eaten their lunch and is halfway through their dinner too.
What are their options? Claim the last 14 years was nothing to do with them? Most of her were ministers, so that doesn't work. Claim it was all a terrible mistake, and they've learned from it?
No - their goose is cooked. They aren't pining for the fjords, they are dead, they have ceased to be, they have gone to join the choir invisible. The only thing is not all of them seem to have realised it yet.
Jenrick would probably get a 5% swing from Reform if he took over as leader.
That's an excellent piece on Kemi Badenoch in the Staggers
She's done
It is, and she ought to be, except for one thing.
Bad as she is, replacing her doesn't necessarily solve much, and on balance probably makes things worse. Jimmy C the Catford Kid isn't acceptable, because he doesn't bellyfeel the direction the British right is going. And Bobby J is just too tarnished by his tawdriness. Fine for social media attack doggery, but is there any sign he can cope with a forum where people ask him questions?
The Conservative Party is in a kind of zugzwang, where every possible move loses. They probably have been for a while. I wonder when the decisive mistake was? The obvious one was elevating BoJo, but even that seemed unavoidable in 2019. So how did they force themselves into that corner?
The Tories have never recovered their ground since half of them lost and the other half of them won the 2016 Referendum, Cameron revealed there wasn't a plan and bottled out.
The point at which they lost it follows from that. It is the period in which with the UK Tory government's backing the EU became an organisation we could neither remain in nor leave. That is down to the lack of foresight of both Mrs T and Major's governments.
The strategic error was Cameron’s decision to back one side. He should have remained aloof and promised to implement whatever the country voted for.
I am still of the opinion that is there was something really big against Trump it would have been used by now. The media have had 12 years to use it. Instead it will be drip drip of rather embarrassing here is Trump at an event and so is Epstein. But of course we know so was all the rich and famous.
Trump and Epstein were much closer friends than a casual meet up on the NY social scene.
One thing we see in a lot of these scandals, similar to the UK ones in TV entertainment, are some of the changing ideas about sex with young, often underage girls. In the Seventies and Eighties it wasn't considered a big deal. Just men being men, and sexual liberation, even in mainstream films such as Pretty Woman, or Rita, Sue and Bob Too.
One thing people forget with Eighties nostalgia is how dark things could be at the time.
But it hasn't changed that much since Me Too. If they had something really bad it surely would have been deployed to stop him ever being president again. And the Democrats (who will have been at a lot of the events) paid for research on him, law officials have dug into his affairs* and the media go over everything in minute detail for 12 years.
* I mean the criminal conviction they got him on was overstating the value of property to get a loan which he paid back. I mean that seems pretty small beer if they had Epstein material to connect him.
Me Too was a load of horse manure
Says an older man...
The exposures of what went on with Al-Fayad, and also in my own profession* shows that predatory sexual behaviour of older men on younger women (and men) is not unusual at all. Indeed it has probably been so throughout history and across many societies.
The question is, should we tolerate it for the future?
There are currently 2 NHS trusts and at least one medical union which supports doctors who want to watch a female colleague undress or undress in front of her against her consent and are spending taxpayers' money arguing this. Voyeurism and indecent exposure are of course criminal offences. Women who have complained about this have been punished.
So the answer to your question is that we are already tolerating it and, in some cases, encouraging and enabling it.
Given that Dr Beth Upton has been compared on here to Brian Blessed and Mrs Brown's Boys, and that - IIUC - @Cyclefree implied that she was in the changing room to ogle the staff (instead of, y'know, change), it would appear that the dirty is being flung in both directions.
"She also mentions the Sex Pistols' Anarchy in the U.K. as hard evidence Satan is taking over, specifically the opening line "I am the Antichrist" which she misquotes anyway (as well as the name of the band which she calls "Sex Pistol."
That's an excellent piece on Kemi Badenoch in the Staggers
She's done
It is, and she ought to be, except for one thing.
Bad as she is, replacing her doesn't necessarily solve much, and on balance probably makes things worse. Jimmy C the Catford Kid isn't acceptable, because he doesn't bellyfeel the direction the British right is going. And Bobby J is just too tarnished by his tawdriness. Fine for social media attack doggery, but is there any sign he can cope with a forum where people ask him questions?
The Conservative Party is in a kind of zugzwang, where every possible move loses. They probably have been for a while. I wonder when the decisive mistake was? The obvious one was elevating BoJo, but even that seemed unavoidable in 2019. So how did they force themselves into that corner?
Boris exiled the Remainer talent, and the Leaver talent was ignored in favour of nonentities that would not challenge him.
The state of Kemi is a triviality. Leaders will come and go until a real change occurs. The questions lie elsewhere, unless Kemi is ready and equipped to make the hard choices.
At the moment the Tories are unimportant as on Reform or Labour can lead the next government. The LDs are quite important as the party helping Labour in under or so seats Labour can't win and the LDs can.
And we have had a long period of inadequate government, mostly Tory.
Parties need some sort of distinctive USP or a few of them. Labour is losing theirs, but have a few years to sort it out. Reform have the USP of being the party of protest and fantasy economics, but their best friends don't pretend they are adequate to governing the UK and for want of better they may slide into a power they will have no idea how to exercise.
The Tories could try a rather old fashioned route of declaring their long term aims and principles, and setting out a fairly detailed outline of how they plan to get there in the next 10 years and do so without ducking the hard questions about spending, (TME), debt, tax, and deficit, migration, housing, EU relations, foreign policy and so on. This would make such a change that it would be a kind of USP all l of its own: clarity, transparency, honesty, principle, plan, aim.
There may be other more conventional, populist and lying ways of recovery, but it seems to me they have tried them all.
I am still of the opinion that is there was something really big against Trump it would have been used by now. The media have had 12 years to use it. Instead it will be drip drip of rather embarrassing here is Trump at an event and so is Epstein. But of course we know so was all the rich and famous.
Trump and Epstein were much closer friends than a casual meet up on the NY social scene.
One thing we see in a lot of these scandals, similar to the UK ones in TV entertainment, are some of the changing ideas about sex with young, often underage girls. In the Seventies and Eighties it wasn't considered a big deal. Just men being men, and sexual liberation, even in mainstream films such as Pretty Woman, or Rita, Sue and Bob Too.
One thing people forget with Eighties nostalgia is how dark things could be at the time.
But it hasn't changed that much since Me Too. If they had something really bad it surely would have been deployed to stop him ever being president again. And the Democrats (who will have been at a lot of the events) paid for research on him, law officials have dug into his affairs* and the media go over everything in minute detail for 12 years.
* I mean the criminal conviction they got him on was overstating the value of property to get a loan which he paid back. I mean that seems pretty small beer if they had Epstein material to connect him.
Me Too was a load of horse manure
Says an older man...
The exposures of what went on with Al-Fayad, and also in my own profession* shows that predatory sexual behaviour of older men on younger women (and men) is not unusual at all. Indeed it has probably been so throughout history and across many societies.
The question is, should we tolerate it for the future?
There are currently 2 NHS trusts and at least one medical union which supports doctors who want to watch a female colleague undress or undress in front of her against her consent and are spending taxpayers' money arguing this. Voyeurism and indecent exposure are of course criminal offences. Women who have complained about this have been punished.
So the answer to your question is that we are already tolerating it and, in some cases, encouraging and enabling it.
Given that Dr Beth Upton has been compared on here to Brian Blessed and Mrs Brown's Boys, and that - IIUC - @Cyclefree implied that she was in the changing room to ogle the staff (instead of, y'know, change), it would appear that the dirty is being flung in both directions.
By people on PB, not by witnesses giving testimony under oath. A tiny difference, you might agree.
Ask yourself why Upton didn't change in the doctors changing rooms?
Ask yourself if Upton still has his penis and testicles (rumoured to be trying for a child with his wife)?
Ask yourself if removing yourself from a situation is 'escalation' and 'misbehaviour'?
I am very GC and I am loving the sophistry and frankly bullshit from some of these highly qualified medical professionals. Do they really not know how chromosomes etc work? Do they really believe that being a male or female is somehow 'assigned' after delivery?
The Court of Appeal is livestreaming its proceedings in case anyone has trouble sleeping.
I've been to the Rolls Building (Upper) to listen into one on VAT. I gave up after 20 minutes as the QC (then) loved the sound of his own voice. He lost.
I'll be amazed if the appeal succeeds. Too much loot at stake.
I am still of the opinion that is there was something really big against Trump it would have been used by now. The media have had 12 years to use it. Instead it will be drip drip of rather embarrassing here is Trump at an event and so is Epstein. But of course we know so was all the rich and famous.
Trump and Epstein were much closer friends than a casual meet up on the NY social scene.
One thing we see in a lot of these scandals, similar to the UK ones in TV entertainment, are some of the changing ideas about sex with young, often underage girls. In the Seventies and Eighties it wasn't considered a big deal. Just men being men, and sexual liberation, even in mainstream films such as Pretty Woman, or Rita, Sue and Bob Too.
One thing people forget with Eighties nostalgia is how dark things could be at the time.
But it hasn't changed that much since Me Too. If they had something really bad it surely would have been deployed to stop him ever being president again. And the Democrats (who will have been at a lot of the events) paid for research on him, law officials have dug into his affairs* and the media go over everything in minute detail for 12 years.
* I mean the criminal conviction they got him on was overstating the value of property to get a loan which he paid back. I mean that seems pretty small beer if they had Epstein material to connect him.
Me Too was a load of horse manure
Says an older man...
The exposures of what went on with Al-Fayad, and also in my own profession* shows that predatory sexual behaviour of older men on younger women (and men) is not unusual at all. Indeed it has probably been so throughout history and across many societies.
The question is, should we tolerate it for the future?
There are currently 2 NHS trusts and at least one medical union which supports doctors who want to watch a female colleague undress or undress in front of her against her consent and are spending taxpayers' money arguing this. Voyeurism and indecent exposure are of course criminal offences. Women who have complained about this have been punished.
So the answer to your question is that we are already tolerating it and, in some cases, encouraging and enabling it.
Naive civilian question- have we really not got as far as having individual cubicles for medical staff?
Strangely that’s a question I haven’t had the answer for and given that one of those trusts is my local one it’s concerning
As a patient, I've had to undress in the patient's toilet, in a shared area behind a curtain, and have had my privates on display to medical and nursing staff of both sexes, whether cis or trans. I do not think the NHS has any great overriding principle here and nor can I get excited about these tribunals, whichever way they might decide.
Always quite interesting when a leader gets a lot of press criticism as Badenoch has been doing. Clearly the first thought is that the leader concerned is doing a bad job, but then you start to wonder if the criticism is levelled because they fear that she might be doing, or start to be doing a good job.
(Hard really to judge with KB in my view, but I do think she may be improving - with a small chance of actually becoming good, and is far better than most of her potential replacements)
Being at 17% in the polls is difficult to spin as a "good job".
Kemmi isn't great, but I can't see how anyone else does better. They were booted out of office for the cumulative sins of the preceding 14 years (during which time they didn't exactly cover themselves in glory). Thus every PMQs Starmer can stand there chanting "14 years" to bat away almost all her attacks.
Meanwhile, because they let immigration run riot in a country that's deeply sceptical about immigration, Farage has wandered in, eaten their lunch and is halfway through their dinner too.
What are their options? Claim the last 14 years was nothing to do with them? Most of her were ministers, so that doesn't work. Claim it was all a terrible mistake, and they've learned from it?
No - their goose is cooked. They aren't pining for the fjords, they are dead, they have ceased to be, they have gone to join the choir invisible. The only thing is not all of them seem to have realised it yet.
Jenrick would probably get a 5% swing from Reform if he took over as leader.
Blimey! Tories are smashing it out of the park- in the minds of PB Tories.
Reminder! Your party remains even more despised than the current party of Government. That may change, but when Farage goes to town on the Boriswave and the Afghan super injunction, I doubt the resurgence will last too long.
I am still of the opinion that is there was something really big against Trump it would have been used by now. The media have had 12 years to use it. Instead it will be drip drip of rather embarrassing here is Trump at an event and so is Epstein. But of course we know so was all the rich and famous.
Trump and Epstein were much closer friends than a casual meet up on the NY social scene.
One thing we see in a lot of these scandals, similar to the UK ones in TV entertainment, are some of the changing ideas about sex with young, often underage girls. In the Seventies and Eighties it wasn't considered a big deal. Just men being men, and sexual liberation, even in mainstream films such as Pretty Woman, or Rita, Sue and Bob Too.
One thing people forget with Eighties nostalgia is how dark things could be at the time.
But it hasn't changed that much since Me Too. If they had something really bad it surely would have been deployed to stop him ever being president again. And the Democrats (who will have been at a lot of the events) paid for research on him, law officials have dug into his affairs* and the media go over everything in minute detail for 12 years.
* I mean the criminal conviction they got him on was overstating the value of property to get a loan which he paid back. I mean that seems pretty small beer if they had Epstein material to connect him.
Me Too was a load of horse manure
Says an older man...
The exposures of what went on with Al-Fayad, and also in my own profession* shows that predatory sexual behaviour of older men on younger women (and men) is not unusual at all. Indeed it has probably been so throughout history and across many societies.
The question is, should we tolerate it for the future?
There are currently 2 NHS trusts and at least one medical union which supports doctors who want to watch a female colleague undress or undress in front of her against her consent and are spending taxpayers' money arguing this. Voyeurism and indecent exposure are of course criminal offences. Women who have complained about this have been punished.
So the answer to your question is that we are already tolerating it and, in some cases, encouraging and enabling it.
Given that Dr Beth Upton has been compared on here to Brian Blessed and Mrs Brown's Boys, and that - IIUC - @Cyclefree implied that she was in the changing room to ogle the staff (instead of, y'know, change), it would appear that the dirty is being flung in both directions.
By people on PB, not by witnesses giving testimony under oath. A tiny difference, you might agree.
Ask yourself why Upton didn't change in the doctors changing rooms?
Ask yourself if Upton still has his penis and testicles (rumoured to be trying for a child with his wife)?
Ask yourself if removing yourself from a situation is 'escalation' and 'misbehaviour'?
I am very GC and I am loving the sophistry and frankly bullshit from some of these highly qualified medical professionals. Do they really not know how chromosomes etc work? Do they really believe that being a male or female is somehow 'assigned' after delivery?
Its extraordinary.
If you think that having a penis and testicles disqualifies one from being a woman then I would be tempted to agree with you, and I think GRCs should be made contingent on that. But IIUC you would not agree with her presence in a woman-only space regardless of whether she had lopped them off or not.
Comments
https://supremecourt.uk/uploads/uksc_2024_0087_0088_judgment_f9b6ff1bb1.pdf
But now they're off with their buckets and spades so we shan't find out till autumn, when it might be too late.
What is going on here?
https://x.com/AOC/status/1947470316936302609
They need to give the sex trafficker's former friend "space", according to the Speaker.
If people want to watch PSBs, they can. It's not hard to do so. Increasingly they don't because the BBC, ITV and C4 don't even understand what a PSB is any more. Ironically, YouTube does that so much better than the broadcasters now.
One of my neighbour's kids has developed an interest in the second world war and likes to chat about it knowing military history is one of my interests too. He's not watching the BBC to learn about this, he's on YouTube watching Drachinifel, Historigraph, the Tank Museum, Rex's Hangar, and a bunch of other channels that cover the subject in ways engaging enough for someone young.
The government would be better taking some of the licence fee money and giving it as grants to UK-based YT channels that produce good quality educational and informative content.
"Evenings are spent “doomscrolling” and making calls to editors and producers about trying to spike negative stories about her. Her husband, Hamish, absorbs the worst tweets, the ones she can’t face. She is “fragile” and “frightened”. At PMQs Badenoch’s hands shake as she reads her lines from a piece of paper."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/live/c1me134prvnt#LiveReporting
But even if you think she was wrong and unkind, that's not the degree of evil that MAGA is showing.
So, I'm left with the impression that you are quibbling details while overlooking the important points:
(A) Israel was involved before any Druze massacres.
(B) The death toll in the Gaza conflict is far, far greater.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_LNNL_tyIY
The Court of Appeal is livestreaming its proceedings in case anyone has trouble sleeping.
It is extremely likely that a substantial number of men with a place in the elite pantheon have done things because of being in Epstein's circle which they prefer to be forgotten for legal and reputational reasons. Who these people are will have no regard to political party or for what reasons they are rich/powerful/influential - politics, business, celeb, media etc.
In every case it will be overwhelmingly in their interests not only for their own actions to be forgotten, but the actions of all others in the Epstein circle to be forgotten. On the whole they shall stand together or risk falling together.
So that people with no other common interest (eg political, media or business enemies) will have a specific reason for sticking together.
OTOH there will be quite a lot of people with a financial interest in making something of their history as victims of all this - a matter which achieved a lot of publicity in the UK.
Conclusion: it is very likely there is a good deal of extremely expensive furious paddling under the smooth still waters of expensive law firms, perhaps some interesting injunctions, a good number of NDAs, and some fear. Legal privilege is a remarkable phenomenon.
I don't go in for conspiracy theories but I suspect that as far as this goes it's a reasonable bet.
She's done
Syria has been through a brutal and devastating civil war, which rightly attracted considerable concern among the UK public at the time. The situation appears to have improved since Assad was toppled and it is understandable that there is greater public focus in the UK now on events in Gaza. However, there is ongoing conflict in Syria between multiple groups. I hope that the new government can bring peace and justice, but that is a hope, not a prediction. I don't think Israeli intervention is helping. Israel's landgrab in the south of the country should be condemned.
US president brands pictures ‘fake news’ as he seeks to distance himself from financier
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2025/07/23/epstein-attended-trump-1993-wedding-new-photos-reveal/
Bad as she is, replacing her doesn't necessarily solve much, and on balance probably makes things worse. Jimmy C the Catford Kid isn't acceptable, because he doesn't bellyfeel the direction the British right is going. And Bobby J is just too tarnished by his tawdriness. Fine for social media attack doggery, but is there any sign he can cope with a forum where people ask him questions?
The Conservative Party is in a kind of zugzwang, where every possible move loses. They probably have been for a while. I wonder when the decisive mistake was? The obvious one was elevating BoJo, but even that seemed unavoidable in 2019. So how did they force themselves into that corner?
(Hard really to judge with KB in my view, but I do think she may be improving - with a small chance of actually becoming good, and is far better than most of her potential replacements)
And they were among the easier of her policies for succeeding governments to continue with, as they generally involved short term expediency at the cost of long term pain.
Islamist threats being 1st at present, with Far Right coming up on the rails, iirc roughly matches Prevent statistics over the last few years. Far left are quiescent by comparison; Antifa does not extensively exist in an organised form in the UK; it did in the 1990s in one form to oppose Far Right violence with violence (I have a book about it), and could return at the edges. Leon's post: I think Sky are hanging it on the "neo-Nazi" headline hook, because a complicated account around motiveless (ie nihilistic imo, borrowing my word from earlier) abuse would be more difficult in the popular media. Hope Not Hate covered this, following up the same conviction, in their "State of Hate 2025" report, and date it's origins back to 2021. Their assessment positions 764 as:
764 is likely the most extreme and organised example of a disturbing trend of children and young people being radicalised online through an obsession with gruesome material and death rather than a well defined political ideology.
There is also a label "“No Lives Matter” (NLM)". There are examples other than Cameron Finnigan, eg " Vincent Charlton, 17, was jailed for terrorism offences and having videos of a girl cutting his name into her body in 2023.". 2yrs 4 mths - juvenile so a light sentence, I assume.
I'd say there could perhaps be a "self-adopted franchise of the brand" nature to it, as happened with iirc Al-Qaeda as they expanded. People do things and call themselves 764. So it has a centre, but also replicates locally.
I think I also see an echo of Andrew Tate in the target group, in that young and vulnerable people online are targeted, as they are easier to groom. Tate has repeatedly stated that he likes younger women aged 18-19 because he can "imprint" on them. *
This is Hope Not Hate's article about 764 is here:
https://hopenothate.org.uk/state-of-hate-2025-764/
I think that Leon's final "Government close to losing control" comment is perhaps OTT.
* https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/aug/06/andrew-tate-violent-misogynistic-world-of-tiktok-new-star
Oh no, sorry, that wasn't Melania it was one of the others.
The World Wars
Remembering the First and Second World Wars.
Our World War
Simon Schama: The Road to Auschwitz
Bletchley Park: Codebreaking's Forgotten Genius
Rise of the Nazis
Belsen: What They Found
D-Day: The Unheard Tapes
Berlin 1945
Atomic People
How the Holocaust Began
Morning in the Streets
The Great War Interviews
Survivors: Portraits of the Holocaust
Nazis, U-boats and the Battle for the Atlantic
A House Through Time: Two Cities at War
Berlin 1933
I Was There: The Great War Interviews
D-Day 80: We Were There
Blitz Spirit with Lucy Worsley
After the Battle
What Happened at Auschwitz
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/group/p063w768
'Shortly there will be an election, in which Labour will increase its majority'
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2007/09/labour-majority-increase
Let me guess the data will be leaked and we will be forced to keep all those seeking asylum whether they have a legit claim or not?
I see that Drach has started publishing books. Given that he has perhaps 1000 highly topic focused succinct scripts. he is going to end up like DG Hessayon.
I genuinely believe as the Epstein saga unfolds the greater the diversionary subterfuge, and the greater the jeopardy for Trump's political foes.
"Arrived Old Trafford 09:45. Still way back in huge queue moving slower than a snail's pace. Have paid over £100 for ticket. Several breweries in and around Stretford and Salford nearby. Hopefully whoever has orchestrated this hasn't also organised drinks there later."
"The organisation at Old Trafford today is really not helping the arguments against its exclusion from the 2027 Ashes series."
"Hearing about the queues to get into Old Trafford does justify my dad’s decision for us all to meet at the tram station just after 8am with a 6am wake up."
"Been queuing for an hour to get into Old Trafford - let us in so we can cheer England on!"
"Terrible crowd management at the Test match at Old Trafford. Still thousands queueing outside to get in."
"Old Trafford's organisation was also shocking last summer and the one before that. Had to queue at least 15 minutes to go to the loo in the middle of play each time, end up missing about an hour's play across the day because of the shoddy facilities."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/live/c1me134prvnt?page=2
The point at which they lost it follows from that. It is the period in which with the UK Tory government's backing the EU became an organisation we could neither remain in nor leave. That is down to the lack of foresight of both Mrs T and Major's governments.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvg8dn9ddqzo
He was really interesting just on the details of how it works that high up, the super-max levels of clearance in this weird hi tech building in W London
And he did not expressly say "the government is panicked" but he did say "clueless" and "helpless" and very scared of the risk of public unrest over migration/asylum. This is hardly news, or me editorialising, it is all over the media these last weeks. It also tallies with what I've heard from other people in politics/media this last week
The Com stuff was, however, entirely new to me. Some of the stories are profoundly disturbing. Nihilistic violence simply for the sake of it. Grotesque
My friend and I are probably embarking on a long term project together in September, so I may have more reports which frightened idiots can dismiss as lies
https://www.lbc.co.uk/politics/uk-politics/food-delivery-asylum-seekers-latest/
It’s actually an interesting issue for deliveroo et al. They need to allow substitution to avoid everyone becoming a worker (big tax and other issues there) but know that opens up this type of problem
>Needs translator
Many of our universities are just visa mills for the third-world.
https://x.com/CompositeGuy_/status/1947953043107922262
Defund every single ex polytechnic
They have to choose the leader best equipped to make that deal. Jenrick is a shape shifting careerist weasel, so he seems ideal. Also he is genuinely good at social media and has some presence and charisma, unlike anyone else
I cannot see any other option. Cleverly is a throwback and would do nothing, Stride is totally anonymous and would send them down to 20 seats. It has to be Jenrick - if only for lack of alternatives
He has 1400 videos on naval history alone. And that's *one* channel among hundreds that cover history on YT. I'm not sure you're grasping the huge and widening gulf between YouTube and the legacy broadcasters.
https://x.com/Aizenberg55/status/1947289007420755988
Suggest total deaths just over 50,000. Ratio something like 1:2 combatant to civilian.
bondegezou's figures were much higher and made no distinction between military/civilian though he made sure to do that when it came to the Druze.
2026 devolved elections are going to be worth watching in some detail.
RefUK have other tensions pulling in different directions, too, as we know.
This part seems to misunderstand how delivery riders work:-
The agreement with Deliveroo, Just East and Uber Eats enables the firms to identify behaviour which indicates illegal working, such as an account spending a lot of time near one of the hotels.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy4yjpv87v0o
Riders spend time wherever is most convenient for incoming jobs, say near a cluster of takeaways. They don't lie in bed waiting for orders.
During the negotiations before the referendum I often wondered whether the point of the negotiations was to provide fodder for Cameron's reluctant decision to recommend Leave in the referendum. It seemed the only logical way ahead.
The Tories destroyed themselves because, when Leave won, there was a vacuum where a strategy should have been.
So the answer to your question is that we are already tolerating it and, in some cases, encouraging and enabling it.
Meanwhile, because they let immigration run riot in a country that's deeply sceptical about immigration, Farage has wandered in, eaten their lunch and is halfway through their dinner too.
What are their options? Claim the last 14 years was nothing to do with them? Most of her were ministers, so that doesn't work. Claim it was all a terrible mistake, and they've learned from it?
No - their goose is cooked. They aren't pining for the fjords, they are dead, they have ceased to be, they have gone to join the choir invisible. The only thing is not all of them seem to have realised it yet.
And this is Fife where it appears to be throw all dirty possible at the nurse complaining https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c307ez5l4gqo.amp
I don't think a nihilistic view of violence is new, and there are plenty of politically driven views that attempt to generate "chaos" in the belief that weakening the existing order will create an opportunity for them to provide an alternative. But we also get theories that opponents are doing that.
If you look up some of the theories on the American Christian Right there are ideas about "Marxists" "promoting pornography" in the 1960s "permissive society" in order to sow chaos and undermine the way America should be. Some of it reached the mad end of popular evangelical literature in the 1970s and 1980s. One of the pop-theories (from a book called "When your money fails: The "666 System" is here." *) was about a huge EU run computer called "The Beast" that could process the details of the whole population of Europe, which then feeds into various bits and pieces from Revelation, Ezekiel Daniel etc. The book had graphics of "666" appearing on credit card numbers and in other places, and gave it eschatological significance. Just as there are conspiracy theories about the Proctor & Gamble logo.
It's completely bonkers, but it's also the sort of thing that is in the head of some Trumpvangelicals - including perhaps some Government high ups.
* Checking, available here on Scribd. You need to click past ads every page or two: https://www.scribd.com/document/671845240/When-Your-Money-Fails-by-Mary-Stewart-Relfe-z-lib-org
Incidentally, if we are talking DW animations, I assume we all remember this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCQS6WTKoiE
When it became obvious Trump University was a scam, four state attorneys general considered opening investigations.
Florida attorney general, Republican Pam Bondi, received a campaign contributions from Trump, and did not open an investigation.
California attorney general, Democrat Kamala Harris, also received campaign contributions, and did not open an investigation.
Texas attorney general, Republican Greg Abbott, opened an investigation but dropped it after Trump pulled out of the state. Trump later gave Abbott a substantial donation for his gubernatorial campaign.
New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman opened an investigation, and eventually filed suit against Trump. Trump accused him of trying to extort campaign contributions.
source: Maggie Haberman's Confidence Man, pp. 193-194
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_University
Watching MSBN they suggest the use of the language of treason could set off individual MAGA whack jobs.
Some of the tributes to her after her death in 2011 are very ... American.
https://www.dignitymemorial.com/obituaries/montgomery-al/mary-relfe-4770277
Rationalwiki:
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Mary_Stewart_Relfe
"She also mentions the Sex Pistols' Anarchy in the U.K. as hard evidence Satan is taking over, specifically the opening line "I am the Antichrist" which she misquotes anyway (as well as the name of the band which she calls "Sex Pistol."
At the moment the Tories are unimportant as on Reform or Labour can lead the next government. The LDs are quite important as the party helping Labour in under or so seats Labour can't win and the LDs can.
And we have had a long period of inadequate government, mostly Tory.
Parties need some sort of distinctive USP or a few of them. Labour is losing theirs, but have a few years to sort it out. Reform have the USP of being the party of protest and fantasy economics, but their best friends don't pretend they are adequate to governing the UK and for want of better they may slide into a power they will have no idea how to exercise.
The Tories could try a rather old fashioned route of declaring their long term aims and principles, and setting out a fairly detailed outline of how they plan to get there in the next 10 years and do so without ducking the hard questions about spending, (TME), debt, tax, and deficit, migration, housing, EU relations, foreign policy and so on. This would make such a change that it would be a kind of USP all l of its own: clarity, transparency, honesty, principle, plan, aim.
There may be other more conventional, populist and lying ways of recovery, but it seems to me they have tried them all.
Roy Black, an 80 year old defence lawyer who represented Epstein has suddenly died.
Ask yourself why Upton didn't change in the doctors changing rooms?
Ask yourself if Upton still has his penis and testicles (rumoured to be trying for a child with his wife)?
Ask yourself if removing yourself from a situation is 'escalation' and 'misbehaviour'?
I am very GC and I am loving the sophistry and frankly bullshit from some of these highly qualified medical professionals. Do they really not know how chromosomes etc work? Do they really believe that being a male or female is somehow 'assigned' after delivery?
Its extraordinary.
I'll be amazed if the appeal succeeds. Too much loot at stake.
Reminder! Your party remains even more despised than the current party of Government. That may change, but when Farage goes to town on the Boriswave and the Afghan super injunction, I doubt the resurgence will last too long.