It’s Not About You – politicalbetting.com
It’s Not About You – politicalbetting.com
There is much unintentional black humour in the latest imbroglio involving the writer of Black Books.
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There is much unintentional black humour in the latest imbroglio involving the writer of Black Books.
Comments
Q: On the Venezuela vessel strike, what legal authority were you guys working under?
JD VANCE: The legal authority is there are people who are bringing -- literal terrorists -- who are bringing deadly drugs into our country
https://x.com/atrupar/status/1963333620732477862
Of course the current administration's criteria for "literal terrorists" is an ever broadening one.
https://x.com/gunsnrosesgirl3/status/1963305693714276597
(Fortunately everyone got off safely)
https://x.com/icanseeforever1/status/1956246712273789167?s=61
Certainly, given his previous activities, there might be more to it. Someone posted this yesterday:
https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/10tqlp8/whats_going_on_with_graham_linehan/
…by adopting the pretence his ministers regularly return home to living rooms bedecked in Union Jack bunting, the Prime Minister is taking the British people for fools.
It is also reinforcing the impression of Sir Keir as a man with no meaningful belief structure. In 2020, when the Black Lives Matter movement was all the rage, Starmer dropped to his knees in his parliamentary office to show solidarity 'with all those opposing anti-black racism'.
Now it's Operation Raise The Colours that's capturing the headlines. So suddenly Sir Keir is expressing his allegiance to those shimmying up flag lamp posts to express how they are 'a group of proud English men with a common goal to show the rest of the country of how proud we are of our history, freedoms and achievements'. Who does the Prime Minister think he's kidding?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-15063369/Starmers-Union-Jack-cringe-pathetic-Gordon-Brown-Arctic-Monkeys-DAN-HODGES.html
I've no idea on whether Linehan has done what he is alleged to have done, or even the detail of the enquiry. But threats and abuse are well within the pattern of some activists in trans causes.
* There was the peculiar case of the two armed response coppers who were chucked out of Scottish Armed Response allegedly for posing for a selfie with a bodacious female pop personality, who were then moved, and then received £50k compo.
https://www.glasgowtimes.co.uk/news/25432892.police-scotland-ordered-pay-two-male-officers-50k-sexism-case/
I wonder whether Trump did this?
AIUI he’s now living in the US, which might complicate things somewhat. Especially if the posts in question were sent from there, giving jurisdictional issues. Can an Irishman writing online from America even be subject to English law in the first place?
The one thing I will give the cops a pass on is ‘armed officers’, at a port of entry most of them are armed routinely.
I (probably) agree with every word - and 'probably' because I only took time so far to read it quickly - so three cheers. Just so sad it will only meet the standard response.
Good morning, everybody.
Isn’t it obvious that the Police are victims in this? They have no agency.
Apart from NFAing* endless reports of assaults etc on women. For decades, they managed to NFA thousands of reports on The Subject We Can’t Discuss.
Apart from NFAing crimes they don’t think important - report the location of a stolen phone or computer and you’ll get a rather aggressive warning about not trying to recover it. Plus NFA.
So they have no discretion. Except when they do.
*NFA No Further Action
FWIW the crucial passage in the Rayner statement is this:
I have now been advised that although I did not own any other property at the time of the purchase, the application of complex deeming provisions which relate to my son’s trust gives rise to additional stamp duty liabilities. I acknowledge that due to my reliance on advice from lawyers which did not properly take account of these provisions, I did not pay the appropriate stamp duty at the time of the purchase.
Make of it what you will, but is has a slight incompleteness/ambiguity about it.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/sep/03/angela-rayners-full-statement-on-her-stamp-duty-underpayment
etc
Was it real or one of those AI things?
But this is a polemic, not an argument. Today I am starting another trial about domestic violence. The accused, a man of course, has been in custody since March 2024 for this awaiting trial. It is simply false to say that violence against women is not taken seriously. I am taking it seriously. Today.
Numbers of the RAF Typhoon fleet have been published at last. TLDR: Nearly all of the oldest batch have been scrapped, so we are - it is claimed - down to 110, which are supposed keep us going until Tempest arrives.
I don't see it, and I think that we will need another batch, as even if Tempest is in service 2035 as Japan needs (maybe optimistic but it will be there or thereabouts), it will still take a long time to build up slowly, or we will lose "continuous build" later on and therefore skills.
So I say we will need another 25 of *something* land-based fast jet over current arrangements in the 2030s.
https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/mod-sets-out-retirement-and-fleet-numbers-for-typhoon/
An inquiry launched by Sir Laurie Magnus, the Prime Minister’s independent adviser on ministerial ethics, may finish in the coming hours.
A decision today by Sir Laurie would be significantly quicker than the usual process and would suggest the process has been expedited as far as possible.
Anna Mikhailova, the political editor of Times Radio, told listeners this morning: “I’m hearing that the investigation by Sir Laurie Magnus into Angela Rayner can conclude as quickly as today.
“So it could move very, very quickly. This is from senior well-placed sources.”
----
She isn't going anywhere.
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-10259/
As for Linehan, I don't give a flying fuck about him. Another male narcissist who thinks his feelings matter more than anything else. He has been pretty unpleasant to women if they don't treat him with the respect he claims to deserve and goes into a bloody great sulk. The great baby. If he's been mistreated he should get a remedy but the hero worship is unwarranted.
Worth reading the article I reference and the Northumbria judgment (as well as the Newman v Met judgment - currently being appealed) for the utter shitshow the police have got themselves into, aided and abetted by the craven authorities.
So if the harm is caused to someone in the UK that’s where the crime is committed?
Were these three pieces of written advice to which she provided all pertinent information and were the lawyers formally engaged to advise on the situation?
I don’t know, obviously, but it’s a very different situation to say, asking someone incidentally or in passing to asking for formal written advice setting out all the facts. Any lawyer worth their salt will have adequately caveated any incidental advice or ensured tax matters are outside their engagement, I’d have thought.
Won't have long to wait and see.
The SC changed none of that. It only declared what an act of Parliament meant WRT a particular group of people and what their sex was, and therefore which facility they use if there are alternatives required.
IMHO this leaves anomalies, as did the prior understanding of the law, but I am not clear what change is required from organisations?
Enforcement of course is another issue, but not a new one.
If a hacker in St Petersburg causes a power station to go down in Britain, can they be arrested if they enter the country?
There have been many many examples of trans activists threatening women with violence and the police have done fuck all about them. It is the contrast with how they have behaved in this case, which is striking, something utterly ignored by the Met Commissioner.
The Met promised after the Everard murder to take incidents of indecent exposure more seriously. Instead police action on this has gone down. Read the Femicide Census for the women murdered in 2022 - out a few days ago. The perpetrators have been caught and convicted. But in so many of the cases, there were lots of warnings which were ignored. If they hadn't been women would still be alive. The same lessons are ignored over and over again. The number of women killed stays the same year after year - one every 3 days on average, every year.
This does not speak to me of a society taking this seriously, frankly.
Mr Tump still being extant may be relevant - once he's gone we can wind in the fluffing and promises a little
This is the kind of shit that makes us a laughing stock around the world.
If people start going around punching feminine looking men in the balls, then it’s incitement to violence. If they don’t, it was a joke (or the poster doesn’t have the influence they think they have).
Take the bishop Brennan incident. Ted was told to kick him in the arse. He did so. That’s successful incitement. If he’d chickened out there’d have been no case to answer.
I don't understand why all of the focus goes onto a handful of edge cases so that little light is shone onto the vast majority of cases where the person abusing / raping / killing a woman is a cis man. Usually a white cis man. Same thing with this nonsense about wanting to persecute men with brown skin because they are all potential threats to women. With 40% of the organisers of one protest carrying convictions for assaulting women.
I am bored of the trans issue simply because extremists on both sides shriek abuse at each other. We all want to protect women - my wife is pretty strident on the topic. But the threat to her or to my 14 year old daughter isn't a trans woman, it's a man.
A small reverse ferret by the Scottish Government on their policy of refusal to support defence projects (but it's more nuanced than that), which nearly stopped a project for a submarine welding something something something, and UK Gov had to step in.
They now support them, except for "Israel linked", of which there is very little.
Is there n election coming ?
https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/scottish-government-lifts-weapons-industry-support-ban/
But there was a threat to arrest Pinochet at one point if he visited.
And wasn't the threat to arrest Pinochet die to an ICJ warrant, not because of some perceived harm caused to a UK citizen?
I think it's worse for Rayner if the investigation concludes after six minutes. It won't exactly feel exhaustive and detailed, and (unless it finds her to have done wrong and be worthy of a penalty) it'll be seen as a blatant whitewash and add to the momentum of negative stories about her.
Starmer may not mind. He's less likely to face a leadership threat from the Minister for Housing now.
'Is it coz I got balls?'
Evil foreigners foisting evil substances on an innocent population who have no agency whatsoever in the matter.
It's a policy which has been tried for decades and hasn't yet shown any sign of working. Indeed has loads of unwanted side effects.
Why Americans, the wealthiest nation on the planet, are so unhappy that the want to consume so many mind altering substances to salve the sadness and lack of satisfaction in their miserable lives is too painful a concept to consider.
And as for the fact they might enjoy the product?
Well. Heaven forfend!
FWIW shoplifting has cratered in the shop I used to work in. Along with the adjacent shops, all of which tend to sell high value or specialist goods, they've got face recognition technology set up and the manager gets a ping on her phone when someone is within 500m of the shop, and another if they enter. It's very much a supermarket phenomenon in her opinion. Arcteryx jackets remain an issue though.
The solution to EVERYTHING that is wrong today is independence at some point in the future.
They will have no answers as to how Scotland would separate from the UK, how the economy would function, how much money there would be to "remove the VAT cliff edge" as just suggested etc etc. Nor a timeframe. Nor how any of that helps to fix the SNP failing to deliver its own targets on NHS waiting lists.
Awaiting an operation like my mum? In pain and discomfort like my mum? Need the government to sort the NHS today? What is the answer? INDEPENDENCE!!!
Wankers. They have literally no clue.
Should plod have had a word? Quite possibly. Should five armed officers have arrested him at Heathrow? Probably not.
I don't believe this is so much a trans rights issue as another operational and PR fiasco from the Met. Rowley suggesting hands were tied is arrant nonsense. In terms of operational failure the buck stops with him.
from https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/media-centre/interim-update-practical-implications-uk-supreme-court-judgment So a service provider that does not have room for both mens, womens & mixed sex provision is placed in an apparently impossible position where they cannot legally provide toilet facilities without compromising their legal obligations to one protected characteristic or another. Helpfuily the EHRC doesn’t even bother to define when it might not be permission to let a trans person use either gendered toilet.
Note that the EHRC believes that only offering mixed sex provision is also “potentially” discriminatory, so employers & services providers can’t even take the option of making sure that all the provision has individual lockable external doors & making them mixed sex. They offer no legal justification for this position, but any employer is going to be unhappy at the prospect of going against EHRC advice.
This is the mess that employers & service providers are talking about when they complain that existing guidance is unclear: They have legal obligations under the Equality Act to both trans & non-trans individuals, but many of them have been put in the invidious position of being unable to satisfy both under the current EHRC guidance.
The issue might be not so much what she was told if it was wrong but what she told them . So did she withhold relevant details or simply assume that she no longer owned a share of the property and told lawyers that. It still seems strange that if she mentioned the trust this didn’t raise a red flag . Or of course any correspondence from lawyers might simply state according to your circumstances which you explained in our meeting you’re liable for the standard stamp duty . It might not clearly state what she told them .
I like Angela Rayner and hope she’s cleared . I expect we won’t have long to wait .
The Angela Rayner tax-dodging rap song.
https://x.com/hoodedclaw1974/status/1963483803986337810
Great. So what's the plan man?
Oh, there isn't one.
My forthcoming best-selling and very unprolix indeed book will be called "How To Lose Weight With Absolutely No Effort At All: Get Cancer".
My compost won second prize (£1.50 and a commendation for the millipede living in it) at the Agricultural Show and a tree I've planted has been given a Tree Preservation Order - pages of legal flummery wrapped around a positively Keatsian ode to the tree's loveliness. That solves the headstone issue anyway - "She planted a tree."
Note that the EHRC believes that only offering mixed sex provision is also “potentially” discriminatory, so employers & services providers can’t even take the option of making sure that all the provision has individual lockable external doors & making them mixed sex. They offer no legal justification for this position, but any employer is going to be unhappy at the prospect of going against EHRC advice.
This is the mess that employers & service providers are talking about when they complain that existing guidance is unclear: They have legal obligations under the Equality Act to both trans & non-trans individuals, but many of them have been put in the invidious position of being unable to satisfy both under the current EHRC guidance.
Single user washrooms
However, it seems to me that, especially for people prominent in the public political realm, the thing to do about any extraordinary transactions which may have tax implications is to get yourself on the record early and often with HMRC with the relevant facts and questions. Do this, in addition to consulting accountants and lawyers, and if you don't like what the HMRC conclude (which is unlikely to favour you) use the accountants and lawyers to argue with them.
His name would have pinged up as flying in and so it would have been arranged to arrest him on arrival.
Many years ago I was falsely accused of something and not arrested or informed of charges (yet alone being given the opportunity to provide evidence that would absolutely clear me) by the police and it went to court in the UK, which I knew nothing about, and then miraculously the police managed to contact me, having been unable to do so for six months before, to tell me there was a warrant out for me and I would be arrested on arrival in the UK so someone would be waiting for me when I landed or docked.
Obviously I avoided the UK until I managed to show the CPS that it was a load of bollocks with irrefutable evidence and they sent me a letter apologising, clearing me of any accusation and dropping the warrant. I made sure I carried that letter (physically and digital copies and lodged with my lawyer on top) for quite a few trips after as I didn’t trust that there wouldn’t be some glitch in the system.
The obligation is to comply with the law and loads of organisations have for some considerable time before the FWS judgment and since it deliberately chosen to ignore the law. Not because they are confused and the law is unclear but because they don't want to comply. They are acting in bad faith. The Scottish government has even said that it may wait until after the 2026 Holyrood elections before complying. It has not yet paid FWS the costs they are owed and so they are, once again, having to raise money from ordinary women to take the government to court again to get it to comply with the law. This is despite ScotGov saying that of course it respected the SC judgment and Swinney blethering on about how important the rule of law is, how much he respects it blah blah. Well his government's actions show this to be a complete lie.
It is intolerable.
She'll survive.