A would-be burglar in Rome was caught last month when he became absorbed in a book he found in the house he was attempting to rob. Most likely in different circumstances, 77% of Britons say they too have been so engrossed in a book that they lost of time…Many times: 45%Once… pic.twitter.com/fpjGFpWPmt
Comments
(depending on which order vanilla decides to implement, today)
Edit: Third!
Edit 2: 4th!
Edit 3: 7th!
People get so pissed after a certain time each evening they start posting baseless speculation about how she might be innocent.
Either engage with the underlying facts or don't, but just saying therjurysedinnit makes you look like the Milgram experiment. Or like the Life of Brian: OK but apart from {identifiable cases number 1 ... 9999 and that's before we get on to the post office} when has there ever been a miscarriage of justice? NEVER! Oh and Evans and the Birmingham six and ...
Do you support or oppose the UK suspending some arms exports to Israel?
Strongly support: 27%
Tend to support: 22%
Tend to oppose: 13%
Strongly oppose: 13%
https://x.com/YouGov/status/1831007747648721305
or
Do you support or oppose Ofsted one or two-word ratings being removed and replaced with a more detailed report?
Strongly support: 34%
Tend to support: 34%
Tend to oppose: 7%
Strongly oppose: 3%
https://x.com/YouGov/status/1830660536826241496
Who was that melt accusing of Starmer pandering to the unions over OFSTED?
If you have a piece of paper on which the defendant has written “I am evil” it seems as if you should move heaven & earth to convince the jury otherwise. Why didn’t her defence call any witnesses to support her claim?
Still, for me, the convincing evidence is the insulin - I know that the test was supposedly ”not of forensic quality” but if you want to void the prosecution story you need some explanation for how those babies ended up with so much insulin in their bloodstream. Either it was someone else, or an error, or else the test was flawed in some fundamental way that could be fooled by other drugs or infant metabolism, but you do, I think, need to provide plausible evidence for at least one of those options, otherwise the jury is going to (reasonably) conclude that Letby did it.
For those still in doubt the judge's sentencing remarks are available to read here which, whilst harrowing, are instructive:
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/LETBY-Sentencing-Remarks.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwiojsKux6eIAxWdT0EAHaTOHNoQFnoECBEQAQ&usg=AOvVaw2cWjtxELv8K5JsFc6PURS-
I suddenly have doubts about the conviction too...
https://www.techdirt.com/2024/09/03/cops-are-starting-to-tow-away-teslas-to-secure-recordings-captured-by-the-cars-cameras/
Starmer seems quite keen on digital surveillance soon so I expect it here in a while
Given he told May, Johnson and Truss their time was up and had to deal with the sudden resignation of Cameron, it's been a busy time since he was elected as, I believe, the youngest Conservative in the 1997 intake.
Oh sorry, you said a good book...
(It still hasn't seen the light of day, has it?)
That's the problem when there's a miscarriage of justice, the sentencing remarks follow through on the miscarriage.
Which is not to say that this must be a miscarriage, but to deny it could be based on sentencing remarks is absurd - if we took all sentencing remarks as gospel then no convictions would ever be overturned.
All such cliff edges should be abolished, including the 100k one but the 100k one is the least important of the cliff edges to address.
Some people act as if only the 100k one matters. It does matter, but others do too.
Equalising the tax on earned and unearned income would have much more benefit.
And as Pagan pointed out, reducing the 55% marginal UC 'tax' would impact a a lot more people.
It was wrong though.
Its bad news that someone was killed, but its good news that justice has been served.
However if its a miscarriage of justice then its doubly bad news as it means an innocent person was sentenced and potentially the real culprit (unless there was none) has not been.
On topic: Yes I've sometimes got 'lost' in a book. Two examples. Keith Richards autobiography essentially obliterated one Easter weekend. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, a longish novel by Murakami, I once read in one massive go lying in a hotel room in Malaysia, could hardly bear to break off to go to the bathroom.
This no longer happens. My capacity for sustained intense focus is not what it was.
I'm sorry you can't afford schools for your children though. I can.
How many miscarriages of justice do we need before people are naturally cautious about disputed verdicts. Especially when there is a possible alternative set of events and no actual evidence.
No one was lining up to say are you sure Fred West did it.
Agree that sinking into a good book is one of life’s great pleasures. I make no comment on that particular title though!
I hope the authors, Cliff Stott and Steve Reicher, do the same thing for the Stockport riots.
So taxing rental income will not see rents rise.
1) Reflective notes written by defendents have been used in trials before, for example the Bawa-Garba case of manslaughter.
https://web.archive.org/web/20180205184552/http://www.pulsetoday.co.uk/your-practice/practice-topics/legal/revealed-how-reflections-were-used-in-the-bawa-garba-case/20036090.article
2) if Letby was so severely depressed as to be unfit to plead or direct her case that would have been obvious during such a long trial, and psychological evaluation is a fairly routine assessment of suspected serial killers.
Those publishers know what they are about...
If there were enough houses then would-be landlords should face a choice of letting out a home for a lower rent, or having no tenant and paying all bills on the home themselves with no income coming in.
In a free market rents should be considerably cheaper than a mortgage. If a tenant can afford to pay the landlord's mortgage they should be able to pay their own and cut out the middle man.
However since there is already not a free market and the supply of houses is tightly constrained by our broken planning system, that argument is moot.
Its not rocket science, its fundamental economics. Constrain supply and prices go up.
Me? Yes I think my ability/desire to crunch quickly through books is gone for good. But that's ok. I still do it, it just takes me longer. Same with most things actually. Managed decline. It's underrated in life as well as in modern British politics.
Now, you may argue that the solution to that is for the country to choose to allow building anywhere, but let me introduce my guaranteed way to end all wars: everyone stop fighting.
If you want a systemic NHS scandal, that is where you should look.
Even if Letby gets cleared on appeal, the treatment of staff raising concerns was not appropriate.
In countries where it is easy to build properties as you don't need to beg permission to do so, renting is typically cheaper than buying, as those who can afford to buy do so instead.
See Japan as an example. It is cheaper in Japan to let a property than to buy one, the advantage of buying one* is that in the future after paying off a mortgage you end up not needing to rent anymore, not because its profitable as an investment.
* That used to be considered the reason to buy in this country too, before the market became insane and the idea that property must be a get rich quick escalator of ever higher prices.
A Ghost in The Throat by Doireann Ni Ghriofa
Prophet Song by Paul Lynch
The Once and Future Witches by Alix E Harrow
Dogs of War by Adrian Tchaikovsky
A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik
Obviously the actual lifetime costs of paying for a mortgage should end up lower, because once you've paid off your mortgage that's it, but then you're effectively ignoring the opportunity cost of tying up all your capital in property ownership, as opposed to investing it elsewhere and generating a return. So I guess the cost is still there, but you don't see it.
Again in Japan it is cheaper to rent than pay a mortgage in the short run. In the long run if you don't plan on moving it becomes cheaper to buy as after decades of mortgage your payments stop while renting goes on forever, but the idea of paying rent that costs more than a mortgage? That doesn't happen because its utterly mad and is symptomatic of our broken housing system.
Like gazumping used to be a problem in buying a home it is now a problem faced by renters too