This is were the 'anti-woke' agenda has been heading for some time: not just against woke, but against women, and against anyone who dares to be different.
Thus ensuring you double-down against it, turn up the volume of your hyper-liberalism, further fuelling polarisation and, in your everything or nothing duel, risk losing everything. Including losing liberalism itself.
See where this ends? See how important it is to moderate it?
Of course you don't and won't. Not a bit of it.
How is not automatically blaming the women 'hyper-liberalism' ?
That's what I'm commenting on. The way when anything like this happens, certain people look for any woman to blame. It happens time and time again with incidents. Often followed by some guff about DEI.
Sometimes a woman might be to blame; but it's the automatic "Oh my God it's a woman's fault!" that is indefensible.
It's offensive, wrong, and dickish. But if you seek knobbish views out you will find them.
Which you will because, for you, this is about confirmation bias and finding any reason possible to dismiss the (very real and serious) concerns about Woke and its overreach.
This idiotic guy and you. You both need each other.
I don't usually agree with you Casino, but I'm with you on this. Why quote some random anonymous arsehole on twitter? it's stupid, annoying, counter-productive and just helps promote said random anonymous arsehole.
Because the 'random anonymous arsehole' is very much liked by the algorithm, and often retweeted by Musky Baby himself. The 'random anonymous arsehole' has a massive reach; perhaps more than a modest newspaper.
I'll take your word for it. How many followers do they have?
Of course you linking to the arsehole is helping their reach, so I would say counter-productive. I think most of us are already aware that the algorithm and Musk are promoting a lot of arseholes, if that's your point.
I would find a complaint about Musk retweeting it less stupid, if he did.
Sandpit left because he didn't like getting called out for his absurd position on Trump and Ukraine, not his support for Trump per se. It's weird because on other issues like energy, we come from entire different angles but can usually find a pragmatic accord on the virtues of battery storage or something.
bigjohnowls has similarly bonkers positions on Ukraine/Gaza, gets called out on it in vitriolic terms, but hasn't flounced.
Shame though. He has an apparent suspension of sense on Trump re Ukraine, but interesting on many other issues. Hopefully will return soon.
It's also worth having people like bjo and Sandpit on PB, because their bizarre positions are held by large chunks of the electorate. In this case, anti-Israel pro-Putin socialists, and anti-Putin pro-Trump Reform voters
It is self evident that the Business Secretary has committed a criminal offence by describing himself as a "Solicitor" when non-articled trainee clerk would have been the correct designation. That is straight forward.
However, as a member of the legal profession surely there is also a duty on Starmer to ensure those who work with him are properly described, in the same way as a doctor has a duty to report fellow "doctors" if it transpires they might not have elementary competence. Particularly now it has come to light is Starmer not in real jepardy if he does not remove the whip from Reynolds with all convenient haste ?
FPT
In true PB tradition this isn’t technically correct. A trainee solicitor can legitimately call themselves a “trainee solicitor”. I don’t know what this chap referred to himself as but “an articled clerk” hasn’t been a thing in England and Wales for over 30 years.
Section 21 of the Solicitors Act 1974 states:
“Any unqualified person who wilfully pretends to be, or takes or uses any name, title, addition or description implying that he is, qualified or recognised by law as qualified to act as a solicitor shall be guilty of an offence and liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding the fourth level on the standard scale.”
He told the Commons that he worked as a solicitor in Manchester before changing career.
Apparently there are also misleading linked in snaps on Guido but I haven’t checked that website.
Surely the offence is to practise as a solicitor when you are not qualified to be one, not to leave out the word "trainee" on a CV for a non-legal job.
It would be interesting to get a representative sample of CVs from a range of senior people and see how many have been embellished in some way, I would suspect all of them.
I assumed though but @Gallowgate ’s quote from the act suggests not.
In my view he’s broken the law (strict liability) and the punishment should be a conditional discharge.
I wish these lazy websites/journalists would actually quote or screenshot the website referenced rather than just “alleged” or “reported”.
https://www.jonathanreynolds.org.uk/about-me/ This bit seems acceptable - he did accept a training contract to be a solicitor and that isn’t in contravention of any laws as far as I understand them.
Looking at the same website on archive.org that quote hasn’t changed in 5 years.
Unless I am missing something, or it’s a different website or part of the website, this may be fake news.
To clarify, if the alleged issue is with the following, then he has done nothing wrong in my view.
“In 2007 I was finally able to enrol in law school, now as a mature student, and went on to achieve my Graduate Diploma in Law (GDL) and Legal Practice Course (LPC) at BPP Law School in Manchester. I was delighted to be offered a training contract to become a solicitor with Addleshaw Goddard LLP in Manchester. Addleshaw was a fantastic place to work.”
This is all very normal terminology within the legal industry. I guess he doesn’t make it entirely clear he didn’t complete his training contract but I doubt it is that deep. To suggest this is some sort of fraudulent “gotcha”? Talk about focusing on the big issues.
I’ve provided a link where he says he “worked as a solicitor” at AG.
It’s not big stuff, of course. Guido’s a muck-raker and scandal-monkey. But it is an offence with strict liability. I guess lawyers don’t like people pretending to be lawyers. Competition or something.
Aye @Foss already provided that link. My bad for missing it.
I’m at a loss as to the issue that pay says “ training contract to become a solicitor” which to me is very, very clear cut - your complaint appears to be if I ignore the “training contract to become” bit he’s claiming to be a solicitor
Linkedin, his own website - it's just weird, a fantasist that seems to have started to believe it himself.
Angels dancing on the head of a pin. My last solicitor was a trainee (under supervision). Was she "acting as a solicitor"? Probably. Would she have described herself as a solicitor? I don't know but have just noticed I already did.
Embarrassing perhaps but only fatal if Starmer is already looking to move Reynolds out, or unless there is a link to an actual scandal like ballsing up a contract.
If she's doing the work of a solicitor, charging for oine, and being responsible (together with her employer) for the results, then ...
A lot of jobs have a lengthy training period and one doesn't get full professional qualifications for several years. Often with various grades thereof. One thinks of doctors.
Medical doctors get to call themselves that after medical school despite the fact they have considerable further training ahead of them. Foundation year doctors can only work under supervision. I am not familiar with solicitors, but this seems to be a difference. Doctors can call themselves doctors sooner than solicitors can call themselves solicitors.
You can only call yourself a Solicitor in England and Wales if you have a practicing certificate from the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA). Trainees can call themselves "Trainee Solicitors" and undertake legal work under the supervision of a Solicitor because it is the supervisor who is signing off their work. A trainee will generally never sign something on behalf of their firm or their clients.
Remember most legal work that solicitors do is not "protected" in that you do not need to be a solicitor to do it. For example, the negotiation and advice in respect of commercial contracts. Trainee solicitors can do this work regardless of their practicing certificate but most policies of professional indemnity insurance held by law firms require adequate supervision for coverage.
There do seem to be a lot of right wing snowflakes around. Concerning.
Trump has betrayed Ukraine. He has defied the rule of law. He has sought to subvert democracy. He does not believe in free speech or free trade. His actions run directly contrary to vital UK economic, defence and security interests in a way that we have not seen from a US President in living memory. They know all this. But they cannot compute it. They cannot accept they got him totally wrong and they cannot admit that continuing to back him means taking sides against the UK. Their choice is to put "owning the libs" before their country. And so they lash out.
Can you define our interests in specific national terms as opposed to things like 'free trade' and 'the rules-based order'?
The rule of law, liberal democracy, free speech, free trade and not being part of a continent dominated by a murdering fascist thug are all in the UK's national interest.
well, only if you think that those are good things, so you'll have to come up with something else to convince William
When you inject anaesthetic into skin, the anaesthetic bubbles under the skin, which then whitens. This is referred to as "blanching" or "blanches". This is why Blanche gives me whiplash.
Reform UK voters are much more likely to have a positive view of Donald Trump than other voters, slightly more likely to have a positive view of Vladimir Putin, and less likely to have a positive view of Volodymyr Zelenskyy
Donald Trump - net favourability scores Lib Dem: -84 Labour: -82 Conservative: -40 Reform UK: +38
Thanks, HYUFD. This repeats what we have seen in other polling: the split is between Reform UK supporters and everyone else. It suggests that Badenoch should not be trying to out-Reform Reform, but should instead be emphasising the differences.
The next question is: why? Why are Reform UK supporters so different in their views? Do they just have different views about how to solve the problems in the world? And/or do they have different goals? Or are they victims of mass disinformation?
Sandpit left because he didn't like getting called out for his absurd position on Trump and Ukraine, not his support for Trump per se. It's weird because on other issues like energy, we come from entire different angles but can usually find a pragmatic accord on the virtues of battery storage or something.
bigjohnowls has similarly bonkers positions on Ukraine/Gaza, gets called out on it in vitriolic terms, but hasn't flounced.
Shame though. He has an apparent suspension of sense on Trump re Ukraine, but interesting on many other issues. Hopefully will return soon.
It's also worth having people like bjo and Sandpit on PB, because their bizarre positions are held by large chunks of the electorate. In this case, anti-Israel pro-Putin socialists, and anti-Putin pro-Trump Reform voters
I do hope we have one of those pro-Putin LDs on here. Would be fascinating to examine in more detail. Maybe one of our Saturday visitors?
If Ukraine has been betrayed by anyone, it's the likes of Germany with their utterly mad addiction to Russian energy over recent years.
I think there's some truth in that, but it's also the rest of us who made different mistakes since 1991. Much of it - Germany economic interest, France's desire to be the EU lynchpin and Brexit - can be seen as where national self-interest overtook the wider common good. Similarly for the overdone peace dividend.
I'm not sure how possible it would have been to pursue a different track.
The most notable success, and failure, has perhaps been in the transformation of Eastern European economies which entered the EU, and the lack of transformation in those which did not.
This is were the 'anti-woke' agenda has been heading for some time: not just against woke, but against women, and against anyone who dares to be different.
Thus ensuring you double-down against it, turn up the volume of your hyper-liberalism, further fuelling polarisation and, in your everything or nothing duel, risk losing everything. Including losing liberalism itself.
See where this ends? See how important it is to moderate it?
Of course you don't and won't. Not a bit of it.
How is not automatically blaming the women 'hyper-liberalism' ?
That's what I'm commenting on. The way when anything like this happens, certain people look for any woman to blame. It happens time and time again with incidents. Often followed by some guff about DEI.
Sometimes a woman might be to blame; but it's the automatic "Oh my God it's a woman's fault!" that is indefensible.
It's offensive, wrong, and dickish. But if you seek knobbish views out you will find them.
Which you will because, for you, this is about confirmation bias and finding any reason possible to dismiss the (very real and serious) concerns about Woke and its overreach.
This idiotic guy and you. You both need each other.
I don't usually agree with you Casino, but I'm with you on this. Why quote some random anonymous arsehole on twitter? it's stupid, annoying, counter-productive and just helps promote said random anonymous arsehole.
Because the 'random anonymous arsehole' is very much liked by the algorithm, and often retweeted by Musky Baby himself. The 'random anonymous arsehole' has a massive reach; perhaps more than a modest newspaper.
I'll take your word for it. How many followers do they have?
Of course you linking to the arsehole is helping their reach, so I would say counter-productive. I think most of us are already aware that the algorithm and Musk are promoting a lot of arseholes, if that's your point.
I would find a complaint about Musk retweeting it less stupid, if he did.
EndWokeness has 3.5 million followers. And Musk regularly retweets his stuff.
(incidentally, isn't the fact we still call them 'retweets' another indication of the stupidity of renaming the platform X)
Back to the information available to Trump through CIA / NSA etc. He will not be unaware of the public face of Putin in Russia and the need for an off-ramp if the SMO/war is to end.
So
1. Is there something so earth shattering on Russia's side that the US has to fold (note it's the US folding and not everyone else)
2. He so distrusts the information available to him, he's disappeared down various rabbit holes.
3. Or he knows exactly what is happening and he sees an opening to squeeze cash out of every side including Russia. (For personal gain or for the US economy)
4. He's gaga.
Whatever your worldview, his positioning needs some analysis which is presumably what the bods in Whitehall are working on.
It is self evident that the Business Secretary has committed a criminal offence by describing himself as a "Solicitor" when non-articled trainee clerk would have been the correct designation. That is straight forward.
However, as a member of the legal profession surely there is also a duty on Starmer to ensure those who work with him are properly described, in the same way as a doctor has a duty to report fellow "doctors" if it transpires they might not have elementary competence. Particularly now it has come to light is Starmer not in real jepardy if he does not remove the whip from Reynolds with all convenient haste ?
FPT
In true PB tradition this isn’t technically correct. A trainee solicitor can legitimately call themselves a “trainee solicitor”. I don’t know what this chap referred to himself as but “an articled clerk” hasn’t been a thing in England and Wales for over 30 years.
Section 21 of the Solicitors Act 1974 states:
“Any unqualified person who wilfully pretends to be, or takes or uses any name, title, addition or description implying that he is, qualified or recognised by law as qualified to act as a solicitor shall be guilty of an offence and liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding the fourth level on the standard scale.”
He told the Commons that he worked as a solicitor in Manchester before changing career.
Apparently there are also misleading linked in snaps on Guido but I haven’t checked that website.
Surely the offence is to practise as a solicitor when you are not qualified to be one, not to leave out the word "trainee" on a CV for a non-legal job.
It would be interesting to get a representative sample of CVs from a range of senior people and see how many have been embellished in some way, I would suspect all of them.
I assumed though but @Gallowgate ’s quote from the act suggests not.
In my view he’s broken the law (strict liability) and the punishment should be a conditional discharge.
I wish these lazy websites/journalists would actually quote or screenshot the website referenced rather than just “alleged” or “reported”.
https://www.jonathanreynolds.org.uk/about-me/ This bit seems acceptable - he did accept a training contract to be a solicitor and that isn’t in contravention of any laws as far as I understand them.
Looking at the same website on archive.org that quote hasn’t changed in 5 years.
Unless I am missing something, or it’s a different website or part of the website, this may be fake news.
To clarify, if the alleged issue is with the following, then he has done nothing wrong in my view.
“In 2007 I was finally able to enrol in law school, now as a mature student, and went on to achieve my Graduate Diploma in Law (GDL) and Legal Practice Course (LPC) at BPP Law School in Manchester. I was delighted to be offered a training contract to become a solicitor with Addleshaw Goddard LLP in Manchester. Addleshaw was a fantastic place to work.”
This is all very normal terminology within the legal industry. I guess he doesn’t make it entirely clear he didn’t complete his training contract but I doubt it is that deep. To suggest this is some sort of fraudulent “gotcha”? Talk about focusing on the big issues.
I’ve provided a link where he says he “worked as a solicitor” at AG.
It’s not big stuff, of course. Guido’s a muck-raker and scandal-monkey. But it is an offence with strict liability. I guess lawyers don’t like people pretending to be lawyers. Competition or something.
Aye @Foss already provided that link. My bad for missing it.
I’m at a loss as to the issue that pay says “ training contract to become a solicitor” which to me is very, very clear cut - your complaint appears to be if I ignore the “training contract to become” bit he’s claiming to be a solicitor
Linkedin, his own website - it's just weird, a fantasist that seems to have started to believe it himself.
Angels dancing on the head of a pin. My last solicitor was a trainee (under supervision). Was she "acting as a solicitor"? Probably. Would she have described herself as a solicitor? I don't know but have just noticed I already did.
Embarrassing perhaps but only fatal if Starmer is already looking to move Reynolds out, or unless there is a link to an actual scandal like ballsing up a contract.
If she's doing the work of a solicitor, charging for oine, and being responsible (together with her employer) for the results, then ...
A lot of jobs have a lengthy training period and one doesn't get full professional qualifications for several years. Often with various grades thereof. One thinks of doctors.
Medical doctors get to call themselves that after medical school despite the fact they have considerable further training ahead of them. Foundation year doctors can only work under supervision. I am not familiar with solicitors, but this seems to be a difference. Doctors can call themselves doctors sooner than solicitors can call themselves solicitors.
What are you referring to?
Anybody can call themselves a doctor. Unfortunately it's not a protected term. There are many thousands of wallies who have never come anywhere near getting a doctorate [*] who call themselves "doctors". Unfortunately far from causing them to be held in contempt (or thrown in jail), their pretensions win them fawning respect among the uneducated herd.
* A qualification that is not based on "training" but requires a person to have made a substantial contribution to knowledge.
There do seem to be a lot of right wing snowflakes around. Concerning.
Trump has betrayed Ukraine. He has defied the rule of law. He has sought to subvert democracy. He does not believe in free speech or free trade. His actions run directly contrary to vital UK economic, defence and security interests in a way that we have not seen from a US President in living memory. They know all this. But they cannot compute it. They cannot accept they got him totally wrong and they cannot admit that continuing to back him means taking sides against the UK. Their choice is to put "owning the libs" before their country. And so they lash out.
How is it a betrayal? DJT doesn’t owe Ukraine shit. He never said he was going to save them or continue funding them.
You can construct an argument that his policy is morally, politically or strategically flawed but it's not a betrayal.
That is a very fair point. Some of us understood that Trump was always going to take Putin's side over Ukraine. His right-wing cheerleaders on here and more widely in the UK always denied it. In fact, they claimed the opposite. Now they are confronted with the reality. And, it turns out, what matters most is "owning the libs".
I'm anti Trump but if "the Libs" weren't so fucking pompous and arrogant and self-serving - and quite prepared to ignore or override democratic opinion when it suited them - maybe we wouldn't care quite so much about owning them?
You wankers are going to turn PB into fucking Bluesky
Having looked at this mornings posts I can see why @Sandpit left - @JosiasJessop was being an annoying prat on a topic Sandpit cares about
A nonsense take. Sorry.
Disagree. I usually like @JosiasJessop but he does have a predilection for making it personal when it's something he really cares about that stirs his emotions.
Which is uncalled for.
When called out for it, he then doubles down, rather than apologising or letting it slide, which shows a real weakness in character, not a strength.
I fundamentally disagree with you on that, obviously. If someone has views, they can be questioned on those views. I can. You can. Any other poster can. If you express a view, you can be challenged on it. It's called robust debate.
As for "making it personal": I fear you are as good at doing that as anyone.
I agree with Casino, actually (a rare thing). Josiah, more than anyone else here, turns disagreement on the issues into personal criticism, as though the act of disagreeing with him on any detail was a bad sign personally. I tend not to engage with him as life's too short, although I suspect he interprets a lack of response as agreement. It's a pity, because he's often interesting and indeed (in my opinion) largely right.
This is were the 'anti-woke' agenda has been heading for some time: not just against woke, but against women, and against anyone who dares to be different.
Thus ensuring you double-down against it, turn up the volume of your hyper-liberalism, further fuelling polarisation and, in your everything or nothing duel, risk losing everything. Including losing liberalism itself.
See where this ends? See how important it is to moderate it?
Of course you don't and won't. Not a bit of it.
How is not automatically blaming the women 'hyper-liberalism' ?
That's what I'm commenting on. The way when anything like this happens, certain people look for any woman to blame. It happens time and time again with incidents. Often followed by some guff about DEI.
Sometimes a woman might be to blame; but it's the automatic "Oh my God it's a woman's fault!" that is indefensible.
It's offensive, wrong, and dickish. But if you seek knobbish views out you will find them.
Which you will because, for you, this is about confirmation bias and finding any reason possible to dismiss the (very real and serious) concerns about Woke and its overreach.
This idiotic guy and you. You both need each other.
I don't usually agree with you Casino, but I'm with you on this. Why quote some random anonymous arsehole on twitter? it's stupid, annoying, counter-productive and just helps promote said random anonymous arsehole.
Because the 'random anonymous arsehole' is very much liked by the algorithm, and often retweeted by Musky Baby himself. The 'random anonymous arsehole' has a massive reach; perhaps more than a modest newspaper.
I'll take your word for it. How many followers do they have?
Of course you linking to the arsehole is helping their reach, so I would say counter-productive. I think most of us are already aware that the algorithm and Musk are promoting a lot of arseholes, if that's your point.
I would find a complaint about Musk retweeting it less stupid, if he did.
EndWokeness has 3.5 million followers. And Musk regularly retweets his stuff.
(incidentally, isn't the fact we still call them 'retweets' another indication of the stupidity of renaming the platform X)
Speak for yourself, I 'rex' frequently! On Twitter
You wankers are going to turn PB into fucking Bluesky
Having looked at this mornings posts I can see why @Sandpit left - @JosiasJessop was being an annoying prat on a topic Sandpit cares about
A nonsense take. Sorry.
Disagree. I usually like @JosiasJessop but he does have a predilection for making it personal when it's something he really cares about that stirs his emotions.
Which is uncalled for.
When called out for it, he then doubles down, rather than apologising or letting it slide, which shows a real weakness in character, not a strength.
I fundamentally disagree with you on that, obviously. If someone has views, they can be questioned on those views. I can. You can. Any other poster can. If you express a view, you can be challenged on it. It's called robust debate.
As for "making it personal": I fear you are as good at doing that as anyone.
A canard. You make things deeply personal.
Entirely uncalled for and unnecessary and you should be man enough to apologise.
Kemi was perhaps pushing it a bit when she said the whole of western civilisation would be under threat if the Tories don't continue to be a significant political force.
NEW: Boris Johnson says Donald Trump’s comments overnight are wrong, calls for Russian assets to be seized to arm Ukraine
“Of course Ukraine didn’t start the war. You might as well say that America attacked Japan at Pearl Harbor.
Of course a country undergoing a violent invasion should not be staging elections. There was no general election in the UK from 1935 to 1945.
Of course Zelenskyy’s ratings are not 4%. They are actually about the same as Trump’s.
Trump’s statements are not intended to be historically accurate but to shock Europeans into action.
In particular the US can see $300bn of frozen Russian assets - mainly in Belgium. That is cash that could and should be used to pay Ukraine and compensate the US for its support.
Why is Europe preventing the unfreezing of Putin’s cash?
The US believes Belgium, France and other countries are blocking. It’s absurd. We need to get serious and fast.”
There do seem to be a lot of right wing snowflakes around. Concerning.
Trump has betrayed Ukraine. He has defied the rule of law. He has sought to subvert democracy. He does not believe in free speech or free trade. His actions run directly contrary to vital UK economic, defence and security interests in a way that we have not seen from a US President in living memory. They know all this. But they cannot compute it. They cannot accept they got him totally wrong and they cannot admit that continuing to back him means taking sides against the UK. Their choice is to put "owning the libs" before their country. And so they lash out.
Can you define our interests in specific national terms as opposed to things like 'free trade' and 'the rules-based order'?
Free trade and the rules-based order are specific things that are in the UK's national interests. But one can expand on that list: Putin has sought to undermine the UK and sent agents to use chemical weapons on our soil; Trump enables Putin's actions. As a country, we believe in and benefit from democracy and the rule of law. Trump seeks to subvert both. We benefit from international cooperation, including the NATO alliance. Trump eschews international cooperation and undermines NATO.
EDIT: It is in our national interest to do something about climate change. Trump denies climate change is even happening.
You wankers are going to turn PB into fucking Bluesky
Having looked at this mornings posts I can see why @Sandpit left - @JosiasJessop was being an annoying prat on a topic Sandpit cares about
Sandpit supports Trump, Musk and the GOP, and also supports Ukraine.
For some time I've seen these two positions as mutually incompatible. Your 'being an annoying prat' was just asking him how he could reconcile those views. I never get a straight answer.
My own *guess* is that he cannot reconcile them, and it might be that he's annoyed that the inherent contradiction in his position is now glaringly obvious.
How can you care about Ukraine *and* support what Musk, Trump and the GOP are doing?
The thing was he said he didn’t want to think about it and then you doubled down on the question (which is where the Prat bit came in).
And we probably all have opinions that when combined don’t make any sense and require a lot of further thought
You may want to look at how the conversation started, and his reference to 'TDS'.
He seems to believe that anyone who is against what Trump is doing is deranged. I just commented that you have to be deranged to support what Trump is doing, and gave his contradictory positions as evidence.
Kemi was perhaps pushing it a bit when she said the whole of western civilisation would be under threat if the Tories don't continue to be a significant political force.
Something to the effect that lawyers don’t like ambiguity in the law?
Is this a generational thing? It seems to me that there are a number of lawyers who delight in using the law as a playground to create new rights and (effectively) new law.
I ask, because I am concerned by any drift to legislating courts. I think that a large chunk of the problems in the US is down to the Supreme Court becoming the third and most powerful chamber of the legislature.
It's all true. Most lawyers most of the time want certainty. But most lawyers are not litigators or deeply into contentious work. No-one notices them until something goes pop. They are like the workforce who ensure that trains don't go off the tracks or the wheels fall off. Non ambiguity is their stock in trade. They have run, and continue to run, in my family tree for several hundred years.
Without there being multiple possibilities you can't really have litigation or any sort of contentious legal work. So ambiguity is the lifeblood of such stuff. Think about the Lucy Letby case for a moment. Or the 19 barristers and several not cheap law firms in the Thames ruling this week (6 days in court).
Right at the top of the legal profession are those who seek new ground and the development of legal principles, both advocates and judges. Start with reading SC judgments; but they are not easy.
Reform UK voters are much more likely to have a positive view of Donald Trump than other voters, slightly more likely to have a positive view of Vladimir Putin, and less likely to have a positive view of Volodymyr Zelenskyy
Donald Trump - net favourability scores Lib Dem: -84 Labour: -82 Conservative: -40 Reform UK: +38
The tiny minorities always amuse me. Who are the LibDems for Putin? The Labour number will be Corbyn types, and the Tory number fans of Trump; but the LibDems?
People are a diverse lot and have all sorts of idiosyncratic views. It can be about having different priorities. I knew someone who switched from Revolutionary Communist Party to LibDem. Another was deciding between Green or BNP.
There do seem to be a lot of right wing snowflakes around. Concerning.
Trump has betrayed Ukraine. He has defied the rule of law. He has sought to subvert democracy. He does not believe in free speech or free trade. His actions run directly contrary to vital UK economic, defence and security interests in a way that we have not seen from a US President in living memory. They know all this. But they cannot compute it. They cannot accept they got him totally wrong and they cannot admit that continuing to back him means taking sides against the UK. Their choice is to put "owning the libs" before their country. And so they lash out.
How is it a betrayal? DJT doesn’t owe Ukraine shit. He never said he was going to save them or continue funding them.
You can construct an argument that his policy is morally, politically or strategically flawed but it's not a betrayal.
That is a very fair point. Some of us understood that Trump was always going to take Putin's side over Ukraine. His right-wing cheerleaders on here and more widely in the UK always denied it. In fact, they claimed the opposite. Now they are confronted with the reality. And, it turns out, what matters most is "owning the libs".
I'm anti Trump but if "the Libs" weren't so fucking pompous and arrogant and self-serving - and quite prepared to ignore or override democratic opinion when it suited them - maybe we wouldn't care quite so much about owning them?
Just a thought.
I think you hit the nail on the head: people who disagree with you are pompous, arrogant and anti-democratic, so deserve to be owned.
I'm guessing either OSA or libel, for those are very easy to breach in this country if you're not careful.. Tbh if/when people are banned a bold note from @PBModerator on the reason for the ban would be handy..
Blanche ran foul of the ban on discussion of grooming, which we've been warned about several dozen times. No idea about felix.
Sandpit will, I hope, be back soon. Ukraine is quite personal for him, so ad homs and/or amateur psychoanalysis are uncalled for.
It is self evident that the Business Secretary has committed a criminal offence by describing himself as a "Solicitor" when non-articled trainee clerk would have been the correct designation. That is straight forward.
However, as a member of the legal profession surely there is also a duty on Starmer to ensure those who work with him are properly described, in the same way as a doctor has a duty to report fellow "doctors" if it transpires they might not have elementary competence. Particularly now it has come to light is Starmer not in real jepardy if he does not remove the whip from Reynolds with all convenient haste ?
FPT
In true PB tradition this isn’t technically correct. A trainee solicitor can legitimately call themselves a “trainee solicitor”. I don’t know what this chap referred to himself as but “an articled clerk” hasn’t been a thing in England and Wales for over 30 years.
Section 21 of the Solicitors Act 1974 states:
“Any unqualified person who wilfully pretends to be, or takes or uses any name, title, addition or description implying that he is, qualified or recognised by law as qualified to act as a solicitor shall be guilty of an offence and liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding the fourth level on the standard scale.”
He told the Commons that he worked as a solicitor in Manchester before changing career.
Apparently there are also misleading linked in snaps on Guido but I haven’t checked that website.
Surely the offence is to practise as a solicitor when you are not qualified to be one, not to leave out the word "trainee" on a CV for a non-legal job.
It would be interesting to get a representative sample of CVs from a range of senior people and see how many have been embellished in some way, I would suspect all of them.
I assumed though but @Gallowgate ’s quote from the act suggests not.
In my view he’s broken the law (strict liability) and the punishment should be a conditional discharge.
I wish these lazy websites/journalists would actually quote or screenshot the website referenced rather than just “alleged” or “reported”.
https://www.jonathanreynolds.org.uk/about-me/ This bit seems acceptable - he did accept a training contract to be a solicitor and that isn’t in contravention of any laws as far as I understand them.
Looking at the same website on archive.org that quote hasn’t changed in 5 years.
Unless I am missing something, or it’s a different website or part of the website, this may be fake news.
To clarify, if the alleged issue is with the following, then he has done nothing wrong in my view.
“In 2007 I was finally able to enrol in law school, now as a mature student, and went on to achieve my Graduate Diploma in Law (GDL) and Legal Practice Course (LPC) at BPP Law School in Manchester. I was delighted to be offered a training contract to become a solicitor with Addleshaw Goddard LLP in Manchester. Addleshaw was a fantastic place to work.”
This is all very normal terminology within the legal industry. I guess he doesn’t make it entirely clear he didn’t complete his training contract but I doubt it is that deep. To suggest this is some sort of fraudulent “gotcha”? Talk about focusing on the big issues.
I’ve provided a link where he says he “worked as a solicitor” at AG.
It’s not big stuff, of course. Guido’s a muck-raker and scandal-monkey. But it is an offence with strict liability. I guess lawyers don’t like people pretending to be lawyers. Competition or something.
Aye @Foss already provided that link. My bad for missing it.
I’m at a loss as to the issue that pay says “ training contract to become a solicitor” which to me is very, very clear cut - your complaint appears to be if I ignore the “training contract to become” bit he’s claiming to be a solicitor
Linkedin, his own website - it's just weird, a fantasist that seems to have started to believe it himself.
Angels dancing on the head of a pin. My last solicitor was a trainee (under supervision). Was she "acting as a solicitor"? Probably. Would she have described herself as a solicitor? I don't know but have just noticed I already did.
Embarrassing perhaps but only fatal if Starmer is already looking to move Reynolds out, or unless there is a link to an actual scandal like ballsing up a contract.
If she's doing the work of a solicitor, charging for oine, and being responsible (together with her employer) for the results, then ...
A lot of jobs have a lengthy training period and one doesn't get full professional qualifications for several years. Often with various grades thereof. One thinks of doctors.
Medical doctors get to call themselves that after medical school despite the fact they have considerable further training ahead of them. Foundation year doctors can only work under supervision. I am not familiar with solicitors, but this seems to be a difference. Doctors can call themselves doctors sooner than solicitors can call themselves solicitors.
What are you referring to?
Anybody can call themselves a doctor. Unfortunately it's not a protected term. There are many thousands of wallies who have never come anywhere near getting a doctorate [*] who call themselves "doctors". Unfortunately far from causing them to be held in contempt (or thrown in jail), their pretensions win them fawning respect among the uneducated herd.
* A qualification that is not based on "training" but requires a person to have made a substantial contribution to knowledge.
Most doctors aren't doctors of course. The standard qualification is a Bachelor of Medicine and a Bachelor of Surgery. Higher qualifications are normally members of professional bodies. If you look at the staff list at your GP surgery you will find that very few, if any of them, are doctors. Dr Foxy quite likely doesn't have a doctorate. It is purely a courtesy term.
You wankers are going to turn PB into fucking Bluesky
Having looked at this mornings posts I can see why @Sandpit left - @JosiasJessop was being an annoying prat on a topic Sandpit cares about
A nonsense take. Sorry.
Disagree. I usually like @JosiasJessop but he does have a predilection for making it personal when it's something he really cares about that stirs his emotions.
Which is uncalled for.
When called out for it, he then doubles down, rather than apologising or letting it slide, which shows a real weakness in character, not a strength.
I fundamentally disagree with you on that, obviously. If someone has views, they can be questioned on those views. I can. You can. Any other poster can. If you express a view, you can be challenged on it. It's called robust debate.
As for "making it personal": I fear you are as good at doing that as anyone.
A canard. You make things deeply personal.
Entirely uncalled for and unnecessary and you should be man enough to apologise.
Are you really saying that you do not make things deeply personal?
I'd love Sandpit to come back and explain his position fully. As I said to him the other day, I must be must be missing something in his position. But he doesn't seem to want to defend that position.
A Kemi speech at the weekend to the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC).
ARC is the Paul Marshall / Jordan Peterson setup, supported by Legatum Ventures. Paul Marshall is the hedgie who owns GB News, The Spectator and Unherd.
Marshall's journey is interesting - he coedited the Orange Book, and supported Lib Dems. Then did a fairly sharp turn to support Brexit, and is where he is now.
"The problem isn't liberalism, the problem is weakness"
Paul Marshall is a neighbour of mine. He lives in Mortlake. I met him when he was a Lib Dem
Paul is driven by his Christian faith. He is an evangelical. An active member of Holy Trinity Brompton. He wants to redeem society.
HTB's services fizz with electronic music, bright lights and Holy Spirit enthusiasm. There is an ambition to grow in numbers but also in influence, by inspiring, mentoring and equipping charismatic Christians to occupy high office, not just in the Church but in business, politics, the arts and the media. Few have fulfilled this vision more than Paul Marshall.
NEW: Boris Johnson says Donald Trump’s comments overnight are wrong, calls for Russian assets to be seized to arm Ukraine
“Of course Ukraine didn’t start the war. You might as well say that America attacked Japan at Pearl Harbor.
Of course a country undergoing a violent invasion should not be staging elections. There was no general election in the UK from 1935 to 1945.
Of course Zelenskyy’s ratings are not 4%. They are actually about the same as Trump’s.
Trump’s statements are not intended to be historically accurate but to shock Europeans into action.
In particular the US can see $300bn of frozen Russian assets - mainly in Belgium. That is cash that could and should be used to pay Ukraine and compensate the US for its support.
Why is Europe preventing the unfreezing of Putin’s cash?
The US believes Belgium, France and other countries are blocking. It’s absurd. We need to get serious and fast.”
The same Boris Johnson who wanted Trump to win last November .
He does though make some good points which I agree with .
If Ukraine has been betrayed by anyone, it's the likes of Germany with their utterly mad addiction to Russian energy over recent years.
Da Libz won't call out their friends.
Only their enemies.
You can’t just blame Germany . The west as a whole should have done more when Russia took Crimea.
Europe's abject failure to prepare for the return of Trump - which some of us have been calling out for years - encompasses governments of all political persuasions, including the last UK one.
Back to the information available to Trump through CIA / NSA etc. He will not be unaware of the public face of Putin in Russia and the need for an off-ramp if the SMO/war is to end.
So
1. Is there something so earth shattering on Russia's side that the US has to fold (note it's the US folding and not everyone else)
2. He so distrusts the information available to him, he's disappeared down various rabbit holes.
3. Or he knows exactly what is happening and he sees an opening to squeeze cash out of every side including Russia. (For personal gain or for the US economy)
4. He's gaga.
Whatever your worldview, his positioning needs some analysis which is presumably what the bods in Whitehall are working on.
It's a bit of 2, a bit of 3, a bit of 4, plus some 5 and 6.
5. he's got the attention span of a toddler, doesn't read any info from agencies, and believes that his own uninformed genius and will-power are more than enough to deal with anything.
6. He likes expansionist dictators and aspires to be one himself.
This is were the 'anti-woke' agenda has been heading for some time: not just against woke, but against women, and against anyone who dares to be different.
Thus ensuring you double-down against it, turn up the volume of your hyper-liberalism, further fuelling polarisation and, in your everything or nothing duel, risk losing everything. Including losing liberalism itself.
See where this ends? See how important it is to moderate it?
Of course you don't and won't. Not a bit of it.
How is not automatically blaming the women 'hyper-liberalism' ?
That's what I'm commenting on. The way when anything like this happens, certain people look for any woman to blame. It happens time and time again with incidents. Often followed by some guff about DEI.
Sometimes a woman might be to blame; but it's the automatic "Oh my God it's a woman's fault!" that is indefensible.
It's offensive, wrong, and dickish. But if you seek knobbish views out you will find them.
Which you will because, for you, this is about confirmation bias and finding any reason possible to dismiss the (very real and serious) concerns about Woke and its overreach.
This idiotic guy and you. You both need each other.
I don't usually agree with you Casino, but I'm with you on this. Why quote some random anonymous arsehole on twitter? it's stupid, annoying, counter-productive and just helps promote said random anonymous arsehole.
Because the 'random anonymous arsehole' is very much liked by the algorithm, and often retweeted by Musky Baby himself. The 'random anonymous arsehole' has a massive reach; perhaps more than a modest newspaper.
I'll take your word for it. How many followers do they have?
Of course you linking to the arsehole is helping their reach, so I would say counter-productive. I think most of us are already aware that the algorithm and Musk are promoting a lot of arseholes, if that's your point.
I would find a complaint about Musk retweeting it less stupid, if he did.
EndWokeness has 3.5 million followers. And Musk regularly retweets his stuff.
(incidentally, isn't the fact we still call them 'retweets' another indication of the stupidity of renaming the platform X)
Are they seriously blaming "woman drivers" for the Toronto crash?
I'm guessing either OSA or libel, for those are very easy to breach in this country if you're not careful.. Tbh if/when people are banned a bold note from @PBModerator on the reason for the ban would be handy..
Blanche ran foul of the ban on discussion of grooming, which we've been warned about several dozen times. No idea about felix.
Sandpit will, I hope, be back soon. Ukraine is quite personal for him, so ad homs and/or amateur psychoanalysis are uncalled for.
Ukraine matters to many of us. And most of us are on Ukraine's side - enough to robustly decry what Trump, Vance, Musk et al are doing.
As for "amateur psychoanalysis"; his use of TDS is exactly that, is it not? "You don't like Trump, so you become deranged whenever he is mentioned".
People aren't stupid. They know that cheap talk about being poor will, all else equal, scare the government into giving out more stuff. Governments also aren't stupid and don't get goaded. So it's just cheap talk. Real terms consumer spending talks.
I’m afraid I have to disagree on this one minor point
People ARE stupid
There's a difference between ignorance and stupidity. People tend to be ignorant, but not stupid, in my experience.
Average iq is 100. Anyone with an iq under that is dumb as a daffodil. Thats half of humans right there
Anyone with an iq under 115 is not exactly bright
So yeah the majority of humans are fucking idiots. Hence the failure of democracy
UK average IQ is 100, global average IQ is closer to 90.
However representative, as opposed to direct, democracy is still better than dictatorship or absolute monarchy and means fewer revolutions
IQ is a touchy subject. It is difficult to define or measure. Tests can clearly be biased. However, should we choose to wade in to the topic, we can note that IQ is designed to have a typical score of 100. But IQ appears to be increasing over time: e.g.https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0261117 describes longitudinal data from Danish conscription. The causes of that are not entirely clear, but seem to include better education (which IQ isn't meant to be affected by, but is) and better childhood nutrition. That means that the UK average is probably higher than 100 (unless you choose to re-standardise your test).
IQ typically shows a slightly asymmetric distribution, with a heavier tail on the lower end (more with very low IQs than very high IQs), which means the arithmetic mean and the median will not coincide. Differences in mean IQ may just come down to differences in the very low IQ bulge, which typically relate to obstetric and health problems, rather than differences to most of the distribution.
If they are measuring IQ from Danish conscripts, maybe it's just all the thick ones got conscripted - and shot - first?
This is from the testing before you are conscripted, so it's nearly all men of the relevant age. (Actual conscription is then by lottery. Everyone has to turn up for the tests, but most aren't conscripted.) They happen to have used the same IQ test in the same way for many decades, which allows for longitudinal comparisons that are not usually possible.
Ah, the Danish Heavy Balls scandal. Only now can we tell how the bright sons of the rich and famous managed for decades to evade conscription through buying lead balls that never rose to the top in the consciption lottery...
Right up until the end of that, I was reading it as some wheeze to fail the medical or something, with lead balls located in underpants!
Me too, was wondering how you attached or disguised having 4 balls
Two sources said those invited were Norway, Canada, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, the Czech Republic, Greece, Finland, Romania, Sweden and Belgium.
why do you even bother with your pointless comments? you may as well say 'Vatican not invited'.
More significant that the more Putin-friendly NATO countries Hungary, Slovakia and Bulgaria are staying away. Plus of course Turkey.
I suspect Hungary, Slovakia and Bulgaria have intentionally not been invited. Turkey is a side story here and one where the conversations is best off record for everyone's benefit..
I'm pretty much with Rochdale on this. Even without the malevolence, Trump is headed right back to a series of golden ages that mainly exist in his head, such as to the oil era economically via "Drill Baby Drill", and cannot be recreated now.
But his grass roots supporters won't get off the helter-skelter until they crash because they have fallen for the stuff themselves. I mark the oligarch supporters down as operating in their self-interest with a few variations.
In the process he is burning down most of the things the USA actually needs to move forward, internally and externally, at incalculable cost for the USA and the rest of the world.
The main beneficiary of all this craziness won't even be Russia but China, who are getting a good few decades worth of growth, power, influence, might handed to them on a plate by Trump.
There do seem to be a lot of right wing snowflakes around. Concerning.
Trump has betrayed Ukraine. He has defied the rule of law. He has sought to subvert democracy. He does not believe in free speech or free trade. His actions run directly contrary to vital UK economic, defence and security interests in a way that we have not seen from a US President in living memory. They know all this. But they cannot compute it. They cannot accept they got him totally wrong and they cannot admit that continuing to back him means taking sides against the UK. Their choice is to put "owning the libs" before their country. And so they lash out.
How is it a betrayal? DJT doesn’t owe Ukraine shit. He never said he was going to save them or continue funding them.
You can construct an argument that his policy is morally, politically or strategically flawed but it's not a betrayal.
That is a very fair point. Some of us understood that Trump was always going to take Putin's side over Ukraine. His right-wing cheerleaders on here and more widely in the UK always denied it. In fact, they claimed the opposite. Now they are confronted with the reality. And, it turns out, what matters most is "owning the libs".
I'm anti Trump but if "the Libs" weren't so fucking pompous and arrogant and self-serving - and quite prepared to ignore or override democratic opinion when it suited them - maybe we wouldn't care quite so much about owning them?
Just a thought.
I think you hit the nail on the head: people who disagree with you are pompous, arrogant and anti-democratic, so deserve to be owned.
You have zero nuance or self-awareness (for example, you've ignored the fact I'm anti-Trump and have been consistently staunch on Ukraine) so I simply ignore what you say.
You are a pound-shop Damian McBride who's been deeply corrupted by social media and Twitter, as I've said before, and deep down, you know it.
If you invite getting "owned", you bring it entirely on yourself.
You wankers are going to turn PB into fucking Bluesky
Having looked at this mornings posts I can see why @Sandpit left - @JosiasJessop was being an annoying prat on a topic Sandpit cares about
A nonsense take. Sorry.
Disagree. I usually like @JosiasJessop but he does have a predilection for making it personal when it's something he really cares about that stirs his emotions.
Which is uncalled for.
When called out for it, he then doubles down, rather than apologising or letting it slide, which shows a real weakness in character, not a strength.
I fundamentally disagree with you on that, obviously. If someone has views, they can be questioned on those views. I can. You can. Any other poster can. If you express a view, you can be challenged on it. It's called robust debate.
As for "making it personal": I fear you are as good at doing that as anyone.
A canard. You make things deeply personal.
Entirely uncalled for and unnecessary and you should be man enough to apologise.
Are you really saying that you do not make things deeply personal?
I'd love Sandpit to come back and explain his position fully. As I said to him the other day, I must be must be missing something in his position. But he doesn't seem to want to defend that position.
I'm pretty much with Rochdale on this. Even without the malevolence, Trump is headed right back to a series of golden ages that mainly exist in his head, such as to the oil era economically via "Drill Baby Drill", and cannot be recreated now.
But his grass roots supporters won't get off the helter-skelter until they crash because they have fallen for the stuff themselves. I mark the oligarch supporters down as operating in their self-interest with a few variations.
In the process he is burning down most of the things the USA actually needs to move forward, internally and externally, at incalculable cost for the USA and the rest of the world.
The main beneficiary of all this craziness won't even be Russia but China, who are getting a good few decades worth of growth, power, influence, might handed to them on a plate by Trump.
We should hitch our wagon to China . I mean given the US is run by a morally bankrupt corrupt administration we shouldn’t get too moral now.
You wankers are going to turn PB into fucking Bluesky
Having looked at this mornings posts I can see why @Sandpit left - @JosiasJessop was being an annoying prat on a topic Sandpit cares about
A nonsense take. Sorry.
Disagree. I usually like @JosiasJessop but he does have a predilection for making it personal when it's something he really cares about that stirs his emotions.
Which is uncalled for.
When called out for it, he then doubles down, rather than apologising or letting it slide, which shows a real weakness in character, not a strength.
I fundamentally disagree with you on that, obviously. If someone has views, they can be questioned on those views. I can. You can. Any other poster can. If you express a view, you can be challenged on it. It's called robust debate.
As for "making it personal": I fear you are as good at doing that as anyone.
A canard. You make things deeply personal.
Entirely uncalled for and unnecessary and you should be man enough to apologise.
Are you really saying that you do not make things deeply personal?
I'd love Sandpit to come back and explain his position fully. As I said to him the other day, I must be must be missing something in his position. But he doesn't seem to want to defend that position.
I have my own failings, which I own.
You own yours.
I don't see quite what you think my failing is. You have made an accusation, but I'm not quite sure what you mean by it. Especially compared to what other people say and do on this site.
NEW: Boris Johnson says Donald Trump’s comments overnight are wrong, calls for Russian assets to be seized to arm Ukraine
“Of course Ukraine didn’t start the war. You might as well say that America attacked Japan at Pearl Harbor.
Of course a country undergoing a violent invasion should not be staging elections. There was no general election in the UK from 1935 to 1945.
Of course Zelenskyy’s ratings are not 4%. They are actually about the same as Trump’s.
Trump’s statements are not intended to be historically accurate but to shock Europeans into action.
In particular the US can see $300bn of frozen Russian assets - mainly in Belgium. That is cash that could and should be used to pay Ukraine and compensate the US for its support.
Why is Europe preventing the unfreezing of Putin’s cash?
The US believes Belgium, France and other countries are blocking. It’s absurd. We need to get serious and fast.”
Epic levels of cope from a man who cannot bear to admit he was wrong.
It is self evident that the Business Secretary has committed a criminal offence by describing himself as a "Solicitor" when non-articled trainee clerk would have been the correct designation. That is straight forward.
However, as a member of the legal profession surely there is also a duty on Starmer to ensure those who work with him are properly described, in the same way as a doctor has a duty to report fellow "doctors" if it transpires they might not have elementary competence. Particularly now it has come to light is Starmer not in real jepardy if he does not remove the whip from Reynolds with all convenient haste ?
FPT
In true PB tradition this isn’t technically correct. A trainee solicitor can legitimately call themselves a “trainee solicitor”. I don’t know what this chap referred to himself as but “an articled clerk” hasn’t been a thing in England and Wales for over 30 years.
Section 21 of the Solicitors Act 1974 states:
“Any unqualified person who wilfully pretends to be, or takes or uses any name, title, addition or description implying that he is, qualified or recognised by law as qualified to act as a solicitor shall be guilty of an offence and liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding the fourth level on the standard scale.”
He told the Commons that he worked as a solicitor in Manchester before changing career.
Apparently there are also misleading linked in snaps on Guido but I haven’t checked that website.
Surely the offence is to practise as a solicitor when you are not qualified to be one, not to leave out the word "trainee" on a CV for a non-legal job.
It would be interesting to get a representative sample of CVs from a range of senior people and see how many have been embellished in some way, I would suspect all of them.
I assumed though but @Gallowgate ’s quote from the act suggests not.
In my view he’s broken the law (strict liability) and the punishment should be a conditional discharge.
I wish these lazy websites/journalists would actually quote or screenshot the website referenced rather than just “alleged” or “reported”.
https://www.jonathanreynolds.org.uk/about-me/ This bit seems acceptable - he did accept a training contract to be a solicitor and that isn’t in contravention of any laws as far as I understand them.
Looking at the same website on archive.org that quote hasn’t changed in 5 years.
Unless I am missing something, or it’s a different website or part of the website, this may be fake news.
To clarify, if the alleged issue is with the following, then he has done nothing wrong in my view.
“In 2007 I was finally able to enrol in law school, now as a mature student, and went on to achieve my Graduate Diploma in Law (GDL) and Legal Practice Course (LPC) at BPP Law School in Manchester. I was delighted to be offered a training contract to become a solicitor with Addleshaw Goddard LLP in Manchester. Addleshaw was a fantastic place to work.”
This is all very normal terminology within the legal industry. I guess he doesn’t make it entirely clear he didn’t complete his training contract but I doubt it is that deep. To suggest this is some sort of fraudulent “gotcha”? Talk about focusing on the big issues.
I’ve provided a link where he says he “worked as a solicitor” at AG.
It’s not big stuff, of course. Guido’s a muck-raker and scandal-monkey. But it is an offence with strict liability. I guess lawyers don’t like people pretending to be lawyers. Competition or something.
Aye @Foss already provided that link. My bad for missing it.
I’m at a loss as to the issue that pay says “ training contract to become a solicitor” which to me is very, very clear cut - your complaint appears to be if I ignore the “training contract to become” bit he’s claiming to be a solicitor
Linkedin, his own website - it's just weird, a fantasist that seems to have started to believe it himself.
Angels dancing on the head of a pin. My last solicitor was a trainee (under supervision). Was she "acting as a solicitor"? Probably. Would she have described herself as a solicitor? I don't know but have just noticed I already did.
Embarrassing perhaps but only fatal if Starmer is already looking to move Reynolds out, or unless there is a link to an actual scandal like ballsing up a contract.
If she's doing the work of a solicitor, charging for oine, and being responsible (together with her employer) for the results, then ...
A lot of jobs have a lengthy training period and one doesn't get full professional qualifications for several years. Often with various grades thereof. One thinks of doctors.
Medical doctors get to call themselves that after medical school despite the fact they have considerable further training ahead of them. Foundation year doctors can only work under supervision. I am not familiar with solicitors, but this seems to be a difference. Doctors can call themselves doctors sooner than solicitors can call themselves solicitors.
What are you referring to?
Anybody can call themselves a doctor. Unfortunately it's not a protected term. There are many thousands of wallies who have never come anywhere near getting a doctorate [*] who call themselves "doctors". Unfortunately far from causing them to be held in contempt (or thrown in jail), their pretensions win them fawning respect among the uneducated herd.
* A qualification that is not based on "training" but requires a person to have made a substantial contribution to knowledge.
Most doctors aren't doctors of course. The standard qualification is a Bachelor of Medicine and a Bachelor of Surgery. Higher qualifications are normally members of professional bodies. If you look at the staff list at your GP surgery you will find that very few, if any of them, are doctors. Dr Foxy quite likely doesn't have a doctorate. It is purely a courtesy term.
Yes, I am MBBS. No PhD.
It is an offense though to falsely pretend to be on the Medical Register.
There used to be 3 ways to Medical registration: pass MBBS, via the conjoint boards (LRCP MRCS) or be a licencing of the Society of Apothocaries (LMSSA). When I qualified in the Eighties it wasn't unusual to do one or both of these as an alternative to taking med school finals, particularly if re-sitting. One friend of mine never resat, and worked via the conjoined boards until recently. His only problem was that he couldn't work in Australia as they didn't recognise his qualification.
NEW: Boris Johnson says Donald Trump’s comments overnight are wrong, calls for Russian assets to be seized to arm Ukraine
“Of course Ukraine didn’t start the war. You might as well say that America attacked Japan at Pearl Harbor.
Of course a country undergoing a violent invasion should not be staging elections. There was no general election in the UK from 1935 to 1945.
Of course Zelenskyy’s ratings are not 4%. They are actually about the same as Trump’s.
Trump’s statements are not intended to be historically accurate but to shock Europeans into action.
In particular the US can see $300bn of frozen Russian assets - mainly in Belgium. That is cash that could and should be used to pay Ukraine and compensate the US for its support.
Why is Europe preventing the unfreezing of Putin’s cash?
The US believes Belgium, France and other countries are blocking. It’s absurd. We need to get serious and fast.”
Still trying to put lipstick on the pig (ignorant).
Putin has compromised by not requiring its return!
Perhaps it was the threat of SKS boots
If you belive Kyiv was the capital of Russia you have drunk the kool aid. Russia is the successor state to Muscovy, I believe Ivan the Terrible was the first to claim to be Tsar of all Russia. Muscovy was a relocation of the Grand Duchy of Vladimir and Suzdal, which was a tributory state of what is now known as Kyivan Rus. It broke up quite quickly into successor states of which Vladimir-Suzdal was originally fairly minor, there were plenty of other including in Ukraine such as Galicia-Volhynia and Chernihiv. At that time "Rus" meant the whole East Slavic people, who later diverged into Ukrainians, Belarusians and Russians. Ukraine had quite different genesis from current Russia - it was formed from the "Ruthene" parts of Poland-Lithuania plus cossack hosts, and a southern littoral that was Ottoman. Later parts of Western Ukraine became Austrian. There was also a substantial Polish population that Stalin ethnically cleansed - a lot of Wrocław Poles are descended from deportees from Lviv (Lwów)
NEW: Boris Johnson says Donald Trump’s comments overnight are wrong, calls for Russian assets to be seized to arm Ukraine
“Of course Ukraine didn’t start the war. You might as well say that America attacked Japan at Pearl Harbor.
Of course a country undergoing a violent invasion should not be staging elections. There was no general election in the UK from 1935 to 1945.
Of course Zelenskyy’s ratings are not 4%. They are actually about the same as Trump’s.
Trump’s statements are not intended to be historically accurate but to shock Europeans into action.
In particular the US can see $300bn of frozen Russian assets - mainly in Belgium. That is cash that could and should be used to pay Ukraine and compensate the US for its support.
Why is Europe preventing the unfreezing of Putin’s cash?
The US believes Belgium, France and other countries are blocking. It’s absurd. We need to get serious and fast.”
Epic levels of cope from a man who cannot bear to admit he was wrong.
Johnson, for all his faults, was 100% in supporting Ukraine and is consistent today
NEW: Boris Johnson says Donald Trump’s comments overnight are wrong, calls for Russian assets to be seized to arm Ukraine
“Of course Ukraine didn’t start the war. You might as well say that America attacked Japan at Pearl Harbor.
Of course a country undergoing a violent invasion should not be staging elections. There was no general election in the UK from 1935 to 1945.
Of course Zelenskyy’s ratings are not 4%. They are actually about the same as Trump’s.
Trump’s statements are not intended to be historically accurate but to shock Europeans into action.
In particular the US can see $300bn of frozen Russian assets - mainly in Belgium. That is cash that could and should be used to pay Ukraine and compensate the US for its support.
Why is Europe preventing the unfreezing of Putin’s cash?
The US believes Belgium, France and other countries are blocking. It’s absurd. We need to get serious and fast.”
The same Boris Johnson who wanted Trump to win last November .
He does though make some good points which I agree with .
"Trump’s statements are not intended to be historically accurate"
Is that a joke or is it supposed to be a subtle defence of Johnson's own lies, too?
You wankers are going to turn PB into fucking Bluesky
Sandpit is obviously a Big Baby who cannot stand up for himself, if he wanted to butt lick Trump he should have had the courage of his convictions and took it like a man instead of wimping off with his panties in a twist.
This is were the 'anti-woke' agenda has been heading for some time: not just against woke, but against women, and against anyone who dares to be different.
Thus ensuring you double-down against it, turn up the volume of your hyper-liberalism, further fuelling polarisation and, in your everything or nothing duel, risk losing everything. Including losing liberalism itself.
See where this ends? See how important it is to moderate it?
Of course you don't and won't. Not a bit of it.
How is not automatically blaming the women 'hyper-liberalism' ?
That's what I'm commenting on. The way when anything like this happens, certain people look for any woman to blame. It happens time and time again with incidents. Often followed by some guff about DEI.
Sometimes a woman might be to blame; but it's the automatic "Oh my God it's a woman's fault!" that is indefensible.
It's offensive, wrong, and dickish. But if you seek knobbish views out you will find them.
Which you will because, for you, this is about confirmation bias and finding any reason possible to dismiss the (very real and serious) concerns about Woke and its overreach.
This idiotic guy and you. You both need each other.
I don't usually agree with you Casino, but I'm with you on this. Why quote some random anonymous arsehole on twitter? it's stupid, annoying, counter-productive and just helps promote said random anonymous arsehole.
Because the 'random anonymous arsehole' is very much liked by the algorithm, and often retweeted by Musky Baby himself. The 'random anonymous arsehole' has a massive reach; perhaps more than a modest newspaper.
I'll take your word for it. How many followers do they have?
Of course you linking to the arsehole is helping their reach, so I would say counter-productive. I think most of us are already aware that the algorithm and Musk are promoting a lot of arseholes, if that's your point.
I would find a complaint about Musk retweeting it less stupid, if he did.
EndWokeness has 3.5 million followers. And Musk regularly retweets his stuff.
(incidentally, isn't the fact we still call them 'retweets' another indication of the stupidity of renaming the platform X)
Are they seriously blaming "woman drivers" for the Toronto crash?
I though Bernard Manning was dead.
I don't think we have fully internalised just how retro the anti-woke American techbro right really are. It's not quite "women know your place" but it is "women are different and should be making babies", hence the emphasis on getting the birth rate up. They are perfectly capable of mocking women pilots and are minded to.
The US has paused immigration applications from Ukrainians . Next step Trump will be sticking them in Guantanamo!
Actions speak louder than words .
More like handing them over to Russia.
US is effectively in process of switching sides.
Dark times.
Time for all of us in Europe to step up now.
I suspect Starmer’s triangulation tactic between the US and Europe will be doomed to fail. I see why he’s doing it. I get it. But events this week have shown it won’t work, IMHO. The US is retreating from Europe, and it is highly unlikely that they’ll make an exception, in the end, for the UK.
Our politicians need to reinvent Europe for a new age.
Sandpit left because he didn't like getting called out for his absurd position on Trump and Ukraine, not his support for Trump per se. It's weird because on other issues like energy, we come from entire different angles but can usually find a pragmatic accord on the virtues of battery storage or something.
bigjohnowls has similarly bonkers positions on Ukraine/Gaza, gets called out on it in vitriolic terms, but hasn't flounced.
Shame though. He has an apparent suspension of sense on Trump re Ukraine, but interesting on many other issues. Hopefully will return soon.
It's also worth having people like bjo and Sandpit on PB, because their bizarre positions are held by large chunks of the electorate. In this case, anti-Israel pro-Putin socialists, and anti-Putin pro-Trump Reform voters
I do hope we have one of those pro-Putin LDs on here. Would be fascinating to examine in more detail. Maybe one of our Saturday visitors?
Zelenskyy is illegitimate due to his poor record on potholes and insufficient PR?
There do seem to be a lot of right wing snowflakes around. Concerning.
Trump has betrayed Ukraine. He has defied the rule of law. He has sought to subvert democracy. He does not believe in free speech or free trade. His actions run directly contrary to vital UK economic, defence and security interests in a way that we have not seen from a US President in living memory. They know all this. But they cannot compute it. They cannot accept they got him totally wrong and they cannot admit that continuing to back him means taking sides against the UK. Their choice is to put "owning the libs" before their country. And so they lash out.
How is it a betrayal? DJT doesn’t owe Ukraine shit. He never said he was going to save them or continue funding them.
You can construct an argument that his policy is morally, politically or strategically flawed but it's not a betrayal.
That is a very fair point. Some of us understood that Trump was always going to take Putin's side over Ukraine. His right-wing cheerleaders on here and more widely in the UK always denied it. In fact, they claimed the opposite. Now they are confronted with the reality. And, it turns out, what matters most is "owning the libs".
I'm anti Trump but if "the Libs" weren't so fucking pompous and arrogant and self-serving - and quite prepared to ignore or override democratic opinion when it suited them - maybe we wouldn't care quite so much about owning them?
Just a thought.
I think you hit the nail on the head: people who disagree with you are pompous, arrogant and anti-democratic, so deserve to be owned.
You have zero nuance or self-awareness (for example, you've ignored the fact I'm anti-Trump and have been consistently staunch on Ukraine) so I simply ignore what you say.
You are a pound-shop Damian McBride who's been deeply corrupted by social media and Twitter, as I've said before, and deep down, you know it.
If you invite getting "owned", you bring it entirely on yourself.
Delicious hypocrisy from the man who does not do personal! And the best bit is that you will not understand. Wonderful stuff!
You wankers are going to turn PB into fucking Bluesky
Having looked at this mornings posts I can see why @Sandpit left - @JosiasJessop was being an annoying prat on a topic Sandpit cares about
Sandpit supports Trump, Musk and the GOP, and also supports Ukraine.
For some time I've seen these two positions as mutually incompatible. Your 'being an annoying prat' was just asking him how he could reconcile those views. I never get a straight answer.
My own *guess* is that he cannot reconcile them, and it might be that he's annoyed that the inherent contradiction in his position is now glaringly obvious.
How can you care about Ukraine *and* support what Musk, Trump and the GOP are doing?
The thing was he said he didn’t want to think about it and then you doubled down on the question (which is where the Prat bit came in).
And we probably all have opinions that when combined don’t make any sense and require a lot of further thought
Josias was being very polite , if you come out with crap or even something wonderful then you should expect to be questioned on it. If he cannot take a difference of opinion then he should not post his opinions.
NEW: Boris Johnson says Donald Trump’s comments overnight are wrong, calls for Russian assets to be seized to arm Ukraine
“Of course Ukraine didn’t start the war. You might as well say that America attacked Japan at Pearl Harbor.
Of course a country undergoing a violent invasion should not be staging elections. There was no general election in the UK from 1935 to 1945.
Of course Zelenskyy’s ratings are not 4%. They are actually about the same as Trump’s.
Trump’s statements are not intended to be historically accurate but to shock Europeans into action.
In particular the US can see $300bn of frozen Russian assets - mainly in Belgium. That is cash that could and should be used to pay Ukraine and compensate the US for its support.
Why is Europe preventing the unfreezing of Putin’s cash?
The US believes Belgium, France and other countries are blocking. It’s absurd. We need to get serious and fast.”
Epic levels of cope from a man who cannot bear to admit he was wrong.
Johnson, for all his faults, was 100% in supporting Ukraine and is consistent today
There is no consistency in backing Trump and backing Ukraine. It is either or.
Sandpit left because he didn't like getting called out for his absurd position on Trump and Ukraine, not his support for Trump per se. It's weird because on other issues like energy, we come from entire different angles but can usually find a pragmatic accord on the virtues of battery storage or something.
bigjohnowls has similarly bonkers positions on Ukraine/Gaza, gets called out on it in vitriolic terms, but hasn't flounced.
Shame though. He has an apparent suspension of sense on Trump re Ukraine, but interesting on many other issues. Hopefully will return soon.
He will be like Leon , back as soon as his petted lip heals up
NEW: Boris Johnson says Donald Trump’s comments overnight are wrong, calls for Russian assets to be seized to arm Ukraine
“Of course Ukraine didn’t start the war. You might as well say that America attacked Japan at Pearl Harbor.
Of course a country undergoing a violent invasion should not be staging elections. There was no general election in the UK from 1935 to 1945.
Of course Zelenskyy’s ratings are not 4%. They are actually about the same as Trump’s.
Trump’s statements are not intended to be historically accurate but to shock Europeans into action.
In particular the US can see $300bn of frozen Russian assets - mainly in Belgium. That is cash that could and should be used to pay Ukraine and compensate the US for its support.
Why is Europe preventing the unfreezing of Putin’s cash?
The US believes Belgium, France and other countries are blocking. It’s absurd. We need to get serious and fast.”
Epic levels of cope from a man who cannot bear to admit he was wrong.
Johnson, for all his faults, was 100% in supporting Ukraine and is consistent today
I don't follow Farage or Reform minute by minute, but do I get the impression that they are being a bit quiet so far about the Trump/Putin/Ukraine events and comments over the last 24 hours or so?
Reform have quite a lot to lose; I can't see how they can credibly not take sides over some tricky things at the moment.
NEW: Boris Johnson says Donald Trump’s comments overnight are wrong, calls for Russian assets to be seized to arm Ukraine
“Of course Ukraine didn’t start the war. You might as well say that America attacked Japan at Pearl Harbor.
Of course a country undergoing a violent invasion should not be staging elections. There was no general election in the UK from 1935 to 1945.
Of course Zelenskyy’s ratings are not 4%. They are actually about the same as Trump’s.
Trump’s statements are not intended to be historically accurate but to shock Europeans into action.
In particular the US can see $300bn of frozen Russian assets - mainly in Belgium. That is cash that could and should be used to pay Ukraine and compensate the US for its support.
Why is Europe preventing the unfreezing of Putin’s cash?
The US believes Belgium, France and other countries are blocking. It’s absurd. We need to get serious and fast.”
The same Boris Johnson who wanted Trump to win last November .
He does though make some good points which I agree with .
"Trump’s statements are not intended to be historically accurate"
Is that a joke or is it supposed to be a subtle defence of Johnson's own lies, too?
Yet more sane washing. Johnson (like so many now) obviously didn't feel he could just criticize Trump and leave it at that. There has to be a sop in there.
Sandpit left because he didn't like getting called out for his absurd position on Trump and Ukraine, not his support for Trump per se. It's weird because on other issues like energy, we come from entire different angles but can usually find a pragmatic accord on the virtues of battery storage or something.
bigjohnowls has similarly bonkers positions on Ukraine/Gaza, gets called out on it in vitriolic terms, but hasn't flounced.
Shame though. He has an apparent suspension of sense on Trump re Ukraine, but interesting on many other issues. Hopefully will return soon.
It's also worth having people like bjo and Sandpit on PB, because their bizarre positions are held by large chunks of the electorate. In this case, anti-Israel pro-Putin socialists, and anti-Putin pro-Trump Reform voters
It’s nice that PB has a range of views. However, I don’t think it’s nice having people posting disinformation. Sandpit posts endless MAGA propaganda and then tried to claim he’s just a neutral observer.
NEW: Boris Johnson says Donald Trump’s comments overnight are wrong, calls for Russian assets to be seized to arm Ukraine
“Of course Ukraine didn’t start the war. You might as well say that America attacked Japan at Pearl Harbor.
Of course a country undergoing a violent invasion should not be staging elections. There was no general election in the UK from 1935 to 1945.
Of course Zelenskyy’s ratings are not 4%. They are actually about the same as Trump’s.
Trump’s statements are not intended to be historically accurate but to shock Europeans into action.
In particular the US can see $300bn of frozen Russian assets - mainly in Belgium. That is cash that could and should be used to pay Ukraine and compensate the US for its support.
Why is Europe preventing the unfreezing of Putin’s cash?
The US believes Belgium, France and other countries are blocking. It’s absurd. We need to get serious and fast.”
Epic levels of cope from a man who cannot bear to admit he was wrong.
Johnson, for all his faults, was 100% in supporting Ukraine and is consistent today
I don't follow Farage or Reform minute by minute, but do I get the impression that they are being a bit quiet so far about the Trump/Putin/Ukraine events and comments over the last 24 hours or so?
Reform have quite a lot to lose; I can't see how they can credibly not take sides over some tricky things at the moment.
They are in a precarious position all of their own making
NEW: Boris Johnson says Donald Trump’s comments overnight are wrong, calls for Russian assets to be seized to arm Ukraine
“Of course Ukraine didn’t start the war. You might as well say that America attacked Japan at Pearl Harbor.
Of course a country undergoing a violent invasion should not be staging elections. There was no general election in the UK from 1935 to 1945.
Of course Zelenskyy’s ratings are not 4%. They are actually about the same as Trump’s.
Trump’s statements are not intended to be historically accurate but to shock Europeans into action.
In particular the US can see $300bn of frozen Russian assets - mainly in Belgium. That is cash that could and should be used to pay Ukraine and compensate the US for its support.
Why is Europe preventing the unfreezing of Putin’s cash?
The US believes Belgium, France and other countries are blocking. It’s absurd. We need to get serious and fast.”
Epic levels of cope from a man who cannot bear to admit he was wrong.
Johnson, for all his faults, was 100% in supporting Ukraine and is consistent today
I don't follow Farage or Reform minute by minute, but do I get the impression that they are being a bit quiet so far about the Trump/Putin/Ukraine events and comments over the last 24 hours or so?
Reform have quite a lot to lose; I can't see how they can credibly not take sides over some tricky things at the moment.
Putin has compromised by not requiring its return!
Perhaps it was the threat of SKS boots
If you belive Kyiv was the capital of Russia you have drunk the kool aid. Russia is the successor state to Muscovy, I believe Ivan the Terrible was the first to claim to be Tsar of all Russia. Muscovy was a relocation of the Grand Duchy of Vladimir and Suzdal, which was a tributory state of what is now known as Kyivan Rus. It broke up quite quickly into successor states of which Vladimir-Suzdal was originally fairly minor, there were plenty of other including in Ukraine such as Galicia-Volhynia and Chernihiv. At that time "Rus" meant the whole East Slavic people, who later diverged into Ukrainians, Belarusians and Russians. Ukraine had quite different genesis from current Russia - it was formed from the "Ruthene" parts of Poland-Lithuania plus cossack hosts, and a southern littoral that was Ottoman. Later parts of Western Ukraine became Austrian. There was also a substantial Polish population that Stalin ethnically cleansed - a lot of Wrocław Poles are descended from deportees from Lviv (Lwów)
Have you been to Kyiv? I suspect you might - you’re very well travelled
If you have like me (I went during the war last summer) then you’ll know that Russia’s connection to Kyiv is not imaginary or overdone. There really is a deep intertwining between Kyivan rus and the later Russian nation. Kyiv is the cradle of Russian orthodoxy for starters
This is not true of a city like Lviv and western Ukraine in general - they are much more western, European, Catholic, Teutonic-Slavic
And Odessa only exists because of Russia
It’s hard to find an analogy for the UK re Ukraine but imagine if Scotland went independent taking with it Canterbury, Oxford, Bath and Glastonbury
The English would find that emotionally very difficult
The US has paused immigration applications from Ukrainians . Next step Trump will be sticking them in Guantanamo!
Actions speak louder than words .
More like handing them over to Russia.
US is effectively in process of switching sides.
Dark times.
Time for all of us in Europe to step up now.
I suspect Starmer’s triangulation tactic between the US and Europe will be doomed to fail. I see why he’s doing it. I get it. But events this week have shown it won’t work, IMHO. The US is retreating from Europe, and it is highly unlikely that they’ll make an exception, in the end, for the UK.
Our politicians need to reinvent Europe for a new age.
An exception might well be made for the UK, but the strings attached might be fairly unpalatable. Starmer's job is to find ways to postpone having to make a call on that, and hope that the US government changes in 4 years.
Sandpit left because he didn't like getting called out for his absurd position on Trump and Ukraine, not his support for Trump per se. It's weird because on other issues like energy, we come from entire different angles but can usually find a pragmatic accord on the virtues of battery storage or something.
bigjohnowls has similarly bonkers positions on Ukraine/Gaza, gets called out on it in vitriolic terms, but hasn't flounced.
Shame though. He has an apparent suspension of sense on Trump re Ukraine, but interesting on many other issues. Hopefully will return soon.
It's also worth having people like bjo and Sandpit on PB, because their bizarre positions are held by large chunks of the electorate. In this case, anti-Israel pro-Putin socialists, and anti-Putin pro-Trump Reform voters
It’s nice that PB has a range of views. However, I don’t think it’s nice having people posting disinformation. Sandpit posts endless MAGA propaganda and then tried to claim he’s just a neutral observer.
Yes, he seemed to be immune to factchecking and would repeat the same misinformation repeatedly, even after being corrected. That is not putting a different opinion, it is pure propaganda.
NEW: Boris Johnson says Donald Trump’s comments overnight are wrong, calls for Russian assets to be seized to arm Ukraine
“Of course Ukraine didn’t start the war. You might as well say that America attacked Japan at Pearl Harbor.
Of course a country undergoing a violent invasion should not be staging elections. There was no general election in the UK from 1935 to 1945.
Of course Zelenskyy’s ratings are not 4%. They are actually about the same as Trump’s.
Trump’s statements are not intended to be historically accurate but to shock Europeans into action.
In particular the US can see $300bn of frozen Russian assets - mainly in Belgium. That is cash that could and should be used to pay Ukraine and compensate the US for its support.
Why is Europe preventing the unfreezing of Putin’s cash?
The US believes Belgium, France and other countries are blocking. It’s absurd. We need to get serious and fast.”
Epic levels of cope from a man who cannot bear to admit he was wrong.
Johnson, for all his faults, was 100% in supporting Ukraine and is consistent today
I don't follow Farage or Reform minute by minute, but do I get the impression that they are being a bit quiet so far about the Trump/Putin/Ukraine events and comments over the last 24 hours or so?
Reform have quite a lot to lose; I can't see how they can credibly not take sides over some tricky things at the moment.
Reform have taken an isolationist view on how to deal with the Ukraine, which is fine until Russia decides to take over Poland or similar at which point we would probably have preferred to have done something sooner
It is self evident that the Business Secretary has committed a criminal offence by describing himself as a "Solicitor" when non-articled trainee clerk would have been the correct designation. That is straight forward.
However, as a member of the legal profession surely there is also a duty on Starmer to ensure those who work with him are properly described, in the same way as a doctor has a duty to report fellow "doctors" if it transpires they might not have elementary competence. Particularly now it has come to light is Starmer not in real jepardy if he does not remove the whip from Reynolds with all convenient haste ?
FPT
In true PB tradition this isn’t technically correct. A trainee solicitor can legitimately call themselves a “trainee solicitor”. I don’t know what this chap referred to himself as but “an articled clerk” hasn’t been a thing in England and Wales for over 30 years.
Section 21 of the Solicitors Act 1974 states:
“Any unqualified person who wilfully pretends to be, or takes or uses any name, title, addition or description implying that he is, qualified or recognised by law as qualified to act as a solicitor shall be guilty of an offence and liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding the fourth level on the standard scale.”
He told the Commons that he worked as a solicitor in Manchester before changing career.
Apparently there are also misleading linked in snaps on Guido but I haven’t checked that website.
Surely the offence is to practise as a solicitor when you are not qualified to be one, not to leave out the word "trainee" on a CV for a non-legal job.
It would be interesting to get a representative sample of CVs from a range of senior people and see how many have been embellished in some way, I would suspect all of them.
I assumed though but @Gallowgate ’s quote from the act suggests not.
In my view he’s broken the law (strict liability) and the punishment should be a conditional discharge.
I wish these lazy websites/journalists would actually quote or screenshot the website referenced rather than just “alleged” or “reported”.
https://www.jonathanreynolds.org.uk/about-me/ This bit seems acceptable - he did accept a training contract to be a solicitor and that isn’t in contravention of any laws as far as I understand them.
Looking at the same website on archive.org that quote hasn’t changed in 5 years.
Unless I am missing something, or it’s a different website or part of the website, this may be fake news.
To clarify, if the alleged issue is with the following, then he has done nothing wrong in my view.
“In 2007 I was finally able to enrol in law school, now as a mature student, and went on to achieve my Graduate Diploma in Law (GDL) and Legal Practice Course (LPC) at BPP Law School in Manchester. I was delighted to be offered a training contract to become a solicitor with Addleshaw Goddard LLP in Manchester. Addleshaw was a fantastic place to work.”
This is all very normal terminology within the legal industry. I guess he doesn’t make it entirely clear he didn’t complete his training contract but I doubt it is that deep. To suggest this is some sort of fraudulent “gotcha”? Talk about focusing on the big issues.
I’ve provided a link where he says he “worked as a solicitor” at AG.
It’s not big stuff, of course. Guido’s a muck-raker and scandal-monkey. But it is an offence with strict liability. I guess lawyers don’t like people pretending to be lawyers. Competition or something.
Aye @Foss already provided that link. My bad for missing it.
I’m at a loss as to the issue that pay says “ training contract to become a solicitor” which to me is very, very clear cut - your complaint appears to be if I ignore the “training contract to become” bit he’s claiming to be a solicitor
Linkedin, his own website - it's just weird, a fantasist that seems to have started to believe it himself.
Angels dancing on the head of a pin. My last solicitor was a trainee (under supervision). Was she "acting as a solicitor"? Probably. Would she have described herself as a solicitor? I don't know but have just noticed I already did.
Embarrassing perhaps but only fatal if Starmer is already looking to move Reynolds out, or unless there is a link to an actual scandal like ballsing up a contract.
If she's doing the work of a solicitor, charging for oine, and being responsible (together with her employer) for the results, then ...
A lot of jobs have a lengthy training period and one doesn't get full professional qualifications for several years. Often with various grades thereof. One thinks of doctors.
Medical doctors get to call themselves that after medical school despite the fact they have considerable further training ahead of them. Foundation year doctors can only work under supervision. I am not familiar with solicitors, but this seems to be a difference. Doctors can call themselves doctors sooner than solicitors can call themselves solicitors.
What are you referring to?
Anybody can call themselves a doctor. Unfortunately it's not a protected term. There are many thousands of wallies who have never come anywhere near getting a doctorate [*] who call themselves "doctors". Unfortunately far from causing them to be held in contempt (or thrown in jail), their pretensions win them fawning respect among the uneducated herd.
* A qualification that is not based on "training" but requires a person to have made a substantial contribution to knowledge.
Anyone can call themselves a doctor, but there are some legal limits on how you use the term: see https://www.themdu.com/for-students/dilemmas/when-am-i-officially-a-doctor “While the term 'doctor' on its own is not a protected title, the Medical Act 1983 prohibits falsely giving the impression that you’re registered with the GMC with a license to practise.”
Sandpit left because he didn't like getting called out for his absurd position on Trump and Ukraine, not his support for Trump per se. It's weird because on other issues like energy, we come from entire different angles but can usually find a pragmatic accord on the virtues of battery storage or something.
bigjohnowls has similarly bonkers positions on Ukraine/Gaza, gets called out on it in vitriolic terms, but hasn't flounced.
Shame though. He has an apparent suspension of sense on Trump re Ukraine, but interesting on many other issues. Hopefully will return soon.
It's also worth having people like bjo and Sandpit on PB, because their bizarre positions are held by large chunks of the electorate. In this case, anti-Israel pro-Putin socialists, and anti-Putin pro-Trump Reform voters
I do hope we have one of those pro-Putin LDs on here. Would be fascinating to examine in more detail. Maybe one of our Saturday visitors?
Zelenskyy is illegitimate due to his poor record on potholes and insufficient PR?
He's done little for active travel and his approach to cycle paths leaves a lot to be desired.
Faggots are a genuinely nice British dish - hearty, tasty, peppery. They’ve been ruined by the invasion of the American connotation of the name
To really confuse the Americans we should rename faggots “gaylords”, or maybe even “homos”
Faggots. pork scratchings and mild - the Black Country's three great contributions to lobal cuisine.
When I lived in Wolverhampton I used to love Banks's Mild. It's a really good pint.
Mild isn't good marketing though. I suggested they rename it something like Pitbull in order to increase sales.
Is Banks' still around? I think mild is dying out now - probably for the reason you imply. They used to do a really good pint of it at Molineux in the 1980s. The pub in the Black Country Museum also has a great choice.
There do seem to be a lot of right wing snowflakes around. Concerning.
Trump has betrayed Ukraine. He has defied the rule of law. He has sought to subvert democracy. He does not believe in free speech or free trade. His actions run directly contrary to vital UK economic, defence and security interests in a way that we have not seen from a US President in living memory. They know all this. But they cannot compute it. They cannot accept they got him totally wrong and they cannot admit that continuing to back him means taking sides against the UK. Their choice is to put "owning the libs" before their country. And so they lash out.
How is it a betrayal? DJT doesn’t owe Ukraine shit. He never said he was going to save them or continue funding them.
You can construct an argument that his policy is morally, politically or strategically flawed but it's not a betrayal.
He could just F*** off and leave them alone but conspiring with that other megolamanic shit to try and rob the country of all it's land , minerals, etc just shows what an absolute piece of sh*t he really is. Wait till the Chinese start flexing in the Pacific etc, we will see if the spacehopper is such a bigshot then.
Putin has compromised by not requiring its return!
Perhaps it was the threat of SKS boots
If you belive Kyiv was the capital of Russia you have drunk the kool aid. Russia is the successor state to Muscovy, I believe Ivan the Terrible was the first to claim to be Tsar of all Russia. Muscovy was a relocation of the Grand Duchy of Vladimir and Suzdal, which was a tributory state of what is now known as Kyivan Rus. It broke up quite quickly into successor states of which Vladimir-Suzdal was originally fairly minor, there were plenty of other including in Ukraine such as Galicia-Volhynia and Chernihiv. At that time "Rus" meant the whole East Slavic people, who later diverged into Ukrainians, Belarusians and Russians. Ukraine had quite different genesis from current Russia - it was formed from the "Ruthene" parts of Poland-Lithuania plus cossack hosts, and a southern littoral that was Ottoman. Later parts of Western Ukraine became Austrian. There was also a substantial Polish population that Stalin ethnically cleansed - a lot of Wrocław Poles are descended from deportees from Lviv (Lwów)
Have you been to Kyiv? I suspect you might - you’re very well travelled
If you have like me (I went during the war last summer) then you’ll know that Russia’s connection to Kyiv is not imaginary or overdone. There really is a deep intertwining between Kyivan rus and the later Russian nation. Kyiv is the cradle of Russian orthodoxy for starters
This is not true of a city like Lviv and western Ukraine in general - they are much more western, European, Catholic, Teutonic-Slavic
And Odessa only exists because of Russia
It’s hard to find an analogy for the UK re Ukraine but imagine if Scotland went independent taking with it Canterbury, Oxford, Bath and Glastonbury
The English would find that emotionally very difficult
You analogy there is wrong - it would be the equivalent of Scotland going independent and not taking Corby with it. Then using Corby’s history of relocated Scottish steel workers to justify invading England
Boris Johnson should accept his political career is over imo.
For me, as a lifelong Tory voter (general elections) until July 2024, they seem a lost cause. But it seems to me that Boris back as leader would be the last throw of the dice to regain enough Tories (but not me) and enough Reform to have a credible chance.
The other future possibility involves looking at at the Reform dilemma which is emerging. Which is basically this:
Reform has been at Trump's coat tails for ages. But Reform is pro NATO and anti Europe, ant NATO fascism lite looks a real possibility for Trumpism, detaching us from 80 years of boring reliance.
A remarkable number of Reform voters like Trump and Putin and strong mannery generally. Out of this a real dilemma emerges for Reform. They are thinking about it and waiting right now; and saying not much.
Comments
Of course you linking to the arsehole is helping their reach, so I would say counter-productive. I think most of us are already aware that the algorithm and Musk are promoting a lot of arseholes, if that's your point.
I would find a complaint about Musk retweeting it less stupid, if he did.
Remember most legal work that solicitors do is not "protected" in that you do not need to be a solicitor to do it. For example, the negotiation and advice in respect of commercial contracts. Trainee solicitors can do this work regardless of their practicing certificate but most policies of professional indemnity insurance held by law firms require adequate supervision for coverage.
Wasn't there a memorable ad for the faggots though, with Timothy Dalton?
Actions speak louder than words .
The next question is: why? Why are Reform UK supporters so different in their views? Do they just have different views about how to solve the problems in the world? And/or do they have different goals? Or are they victims of mass disinformation?
I'm not sure how possible it would have been to pursue a different track.
The most notable success, and failure, has perhaps been in the transformation of Eastern European economies which entered the EU, and the lack of transformation in those which did not.
As ever, we start from here.
(incidentally, isn't the fact we still call them 'retweets' another indication of the stupidity of renaming the platform X)
I'd be interested to see you try and justify it. Perhaps you saw something there that I missed.
So
1. Is there something so earth shattering on Russia's side that the US has to fold (note it's the US folding and not everyone else)
2. He so distrusts the information available to him, he's disappeared down various rabbit holes.
3. Or he knows exactly what is happening and he sees an opening to squeeze cash out of every side including Russia. (For personal gain or for the US economy)
4. He's gaga.
Whatever your worldview, his positioning needs some analysis which is presumably what the bods in Whitehall are working on.
Anybody can call themselves a doctor. Unfortunately it's not a protected term. There are many thousands of wallies who have never come anywhere near getting a doctorate [*] who call themselves "doctors". Unfortunately far from causing them to be held in contempt (or thrown in jail), their pretensions win them fawning respect among the uneducated herd.
* A qualification that is not based on "training" but requires a person to have made a substantial contribution to knowledge.
Just a thought.
Entirely uncalled for and unnecessary and you should be man enough to apologise.
Putin has compromised by not requiring its return!
Perhaps it was the threat of SKS boots
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/feb/17/kemi-badenoch-western-civilisation-will-be-lost-tory-party-fails
Only their enemies.
NEW: Boris Johnson says Donald Trump’s comments overnight are wrong, calls for Russian assets to be seized to arm Ukraine
“Of course Ukraine didn’t start the war. You might as well say that America attacked Japan at Pearl Harbor.
Of course a country undergoing a violent invasion should not be staging elections. There was no general election in the UK from 1935 to 1945.
Of course Zelenskyy’s ratings are not 4%. They are actually about the same as Trump’s.
Trump’s statements are not intended to be historically accurate but to shock Europeans into action.
In particular the US can see $300bn of frozen Russian assets - mainly in Belgium. That is cash that could and should be used to pay Ukraine and compensate the US for its support.
Why is Europe preventing the unfreezing of Putin’s cash?
The US believes Belgium, France and other countries are blocking. It’s absurd. We need to get serious and fast.”
EDIT: It is in our national interest to do something about climate change. Trump denies climate change is even happening.
I am also sorry to see @BlancheLivermore receive a ban but he did breach the rules but notwithstanding I hope he returns soon
I very much disagree with @williamglenn but he has a view that he is entitled to and contributes to the debates
I do fear for Ukraine and hope that Trump sees sense and backs them but the early signs are not good
I couldn't cycle back up the hill. And that was just after two pints.
Oh, the shame. The shame.
US is effectively in process of switching sides.
Dark times.
He seems to believe that anyone who is against what Trump is doing is deranged. I just commented that you have to be deranged to support what Trump is doing, and gave his contradictory positions as evidence.
More significant that the more Putin-friendly NATO countries Hungary, Slovakia and Bulgaria are staying away. Plus of course Turkey.
People like it, good for them.
Ref 26% (+1)
Lab 25% (nc)
Con 23% (nc)
LD 12% (nc)
Grn 7% (-1)
seats:
Ref 187
Lab 162
Con 145
LD 72
SNP 44
Grn 4
PC 4
Oth 32
https://x.com/LeftieStats/status/1892134233361031628
LDs winning the same share of the vote and number of seats as last time.
Without there being multiple possibilities you can't really have litigation or any sort of contentious legal work. So ambiguity is the lifeblood of such stuff. Think about the Lucy Letby case for a moment. Or the 19 barristers and several not cheap law firms in the Thames ruling this week (6 days in court).
Right at the top of the legal profession are those who seek new ground and the development of legal principles, both advocates and judges. Start with reading SC judgments; but they are not easy.
Sandpit will, I hope, be back soon.
Ukraine is quite personal for him, so ad homs and/or amateur psychoanalysis are uncalled for.
I'd love Sandpit to come back and explain his position fully. As I said to him the other day, I must be must be missing something in his position. But he doesn't seem to want to defend that position.
Paul is driven by his Christian faith. He is an evangelical. An active member of Holy Trinity Brompton. He wants to redeem society.
HTB's services fizz with electronic music, bright lights and Holy Spirit enthusiasm. There is an ambition to grow in numbers but also in influence, by inspiring, mentoring and equipping charismatic Christians to occupy high office, not just in the Church but in business, politics, the arts and the media. Few have fulfilled this vision more than Paul Marshall.
https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/ideas/media/65415/the-marshall-plan-paul-marshall-gb-news
Worth keeping an eye on him.
He does though make some good points which I agree with .
5. he's got the attention span of a toddler, doesn't read any info from agencies, and believes that his own uninformed genius and will-power are more than enough to deal with anything.
6. He likes expansionist dictators and aspires to be one himself.
I though Bernard Manning was dead.
As for "amateur psychoanalysis"; his use of TDS is exactly that, is it not? "You don't like Trump, so you become deranged whenever he is mentioned".
You are a pound-shop Damian McBride who's been deeply corrupted by social media and Twitter, as I've said before, and deep down, you know it.
If you invite getting "owned", you bring it entirely on yourself.
You own yours.
To really confuse the Americans we should rename faggots “gaylords”, or maybe even “homos”
It is an offense though to falsely pretend to be on the Medical Register.
There used to be 3 ways to Medical registration: pass MBBS, via the conjoint boards (LRCP MRCS) or be a licencing of the Society of Apothocaries (LMSSA). When I qualified in the Eighties it wasn't unusual to do one or both of these as an alternative to taking med school finals, particularly if re-sitting. One friend of mine never resat, and worked via the conjoined boards until recently. His only problem was that he couldn't work in Australia as they didn't recognise his qualification.
Is that a joke or is it supposed to be a subtle defence of Johnson's own lies, too?
I suspect Starmer’s triangulation tactic between the US and Europe will be doomed to fail. I see why he’s doing it. I get it. But events this week have shown it won’t work, IMHO. The US is retreating from Europe, and it is highly unlikely that they’ll make an exception, in the end, for the UK.
Our politicians need to reinvent Europe for a new age.
Reform have quite a lot to lose; I can't see how they can credibly not take sides over some tricky things at the moment.
Mild isn't good marketing though. I suggested they rename it something like Pitbull in order to increase sales.
If you have like me (I went during the war last summer) then you’ll know that Russia’s connection to Kyiv is not imaginary or overdone. There really is a deep intertwining between Kyivan rus and the later Russian nation. Kyiv is the cradle of Russian orthodoxy for starters
This is not true of a city like Lviv and western Ukraine in general - they are much more western, European, Catholic, Teutonic-Slavic
And Odessa only exists because of Russia
It’s hard to find an analogy for the UK re Ukraine but imagine if Scotland went independent taking with it Canterbury, Oxford, Bath and Glastonbury
The English would find that emotionally very difficult
Best to just avoid the discussion
Wait till the Chinese start flexing in the Pacific etc, we will see if the spacehopper is such a bigshot then.
The other future possibility involves looking at at the Reform dilemma which is emerging. Which is basically this:
Reform has been at Trump's coat tails for ages. But Reform is pro NATO and anti Europe, ant NATO fascism lite looks a real possibility for Trumpism, detaching us from 80 years of boring reliance.
A remarkable number of Reform voters like Trump and Putin and strong mannery generally. Out of this a real dilemma emerges for Reform. They are thinking about it and waiting right now; and saying not much.