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Le Pen is not mightier than the sword of truth – politicalbetting.com
Le Pen is not mightier than the sword of truth – politicalbetting.com
Today’s events have upended expectations for France’s 2027 presidential election but I wonder if the value might be with Le Pen if the appellate process works in her favour.
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On topic, I don’t think the alternative far right parties benefit from this. If there’s a backlash then RN itself should benefit. Possibly with Bardella as the candidate.
First
Erreur d'écolière.
It is based on the true case of Hassan Sentamu who killed a girl under similar circumstances. The writers have since denied that but a very god friend of mine in the industry has said that it was the case they drew almost all of their inspiration from. Other than the race of the lead character, of course.
Thames Water names US private equity group KKR as preferred bidder
KKR expected to acquire stake worth £4bn as UK’s biggest water supplier tries to stave off nationalisation
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/mar/31/thames-water-names-us-private-equity-group-kkr-as-preferred-partner
"La plume" is dated. "Le stylo" is more common.
Is this an example - like the Trump Hush Money one - where most people will say "that's a ridiculous case that should never have gone to court"? Or is this one where there is a very evidence of wrongdoing?
Because I think the Trump Hush Money case helped him: many voters thought he was being persecuted for something that wasn't really a crime. (And, of course, this was made all the worse because to the average voter, it looked like the more serious cases weren't real, because otherwise they'd make it to court, right?)
So: what's the story here?
It's almost as though you have an agenda. Only simpletons would believe otherwise...
Haven’t watched it so I don’t know if that works or not but it was a fair point by them to try and have maximum effect - they are unapologetic about the series having an agenda - stopping young boys being radicalised/marginalised and turning to violence.
Her failure seems to have been taking the money directly rather than doing what is usually expected in Europe which is to funnel it via dodgy contacts to friends and associates. While it's clearly stupid and illegal, it's not particularly different to the rest of them who are just a bit smarter about their theft.
Although it probably works in her favour in that I’m assuming the appeal would be finalised this year, so the clock just starts earlier
I'm happy that this subject is being covered, I have a daughter and a son after all. I just want the truth to be unvarnished so that people can make their minds up for themselves, not have a bunch of Netflix writers do it for them.
Tomorrow has three very significant elections in the US. The most important one is probably the Wisconsin State Supreme Court, where Elon Musk has been paying $100 to voters to sign a petition (that basically agrees to vote for a candidate), *plus* he's giving away $1m to people who turn up to rallies. (Like one person a rally. He's given away $3m on this so far.)
He's also popping up in rallies across the state, and complaining that George Soros is interfering in the election. (Elon Musk will have spent $30-40m on the election. George Soros's PAC about $5m.)
The question to me is: will this work, or will it backfire?
Elon is not as popular as Trump, and the administration has lost popularity since the election. The Democrats also won the Wisconsin Senatorial election even as they lost the Presidential last year.
So, my gut is that the more liberal candidate will win this one: probably by 5+%.
And then there are the two Florida Special Elections to replace House members elevated to the Trump Cabinet. Apparently, polling for both of these is what caused the Republicans to pill Elise Stefanik's nomination for UN Ambassador. Neither seat is particularly competitive; I suspect that the Republicans will hold both, but by substantially reduced margins (say net 7% moves in both.)
AIUI it was not a documentary, nor was it meant to be one, or sold as one. These sorts of crimes are sadly committed by people from all sorts of backgrounds. Including yours, and from (what you refer to as) your 'community'.
The EU allocated money for X
The FN took the money and spent it on Y.
It’s the equivalent of spending your expense budget on dinner with your mates.
Society has rapidly gone from telling boys that they're great and can achieve anything to telling them that they're usless, that girls are better, that they're all hyperactive and need to be medicated. It's no surprise that internet personalities that tell them that they're not any of those things and that being masculine isn't bad are all getting lots of airtime with young boys and teenagers. We have feminised society to such an extend that boys are rebelling against that, even girls are beginning to do so (see Gen Z women coming out for Trump).
Maybe what we need to ask ourselves is why boys are finding solace in these parts of the internet and what we, as a society, have done to drive them into the arms of men who clearly hate women? I guess that's too much work and instead we'll try and ban Andrew Tate and play whack-a-mole with all of the people who pop up to replace him.
I look at my industry as an example, we have about a dozen "women in tech" programmes that I've been to which is great for women but there's loads of men who graduate and have relevant skills that are struggling too. Women now achieve higher levels of education, have higher employment in their early 20s and have higher overall wages in the early years of their careers. We've done well to help women into the workplace but at the same time we're still pushing on that accelerator despite all of the evidence that women have now caught up and over taken men in the workplace for the younger generations. We're creating a new issue and it's going to have horrible consequences 10 years from now.
Westminster City Council has failed to tackle noise nuisance from buskers in Leicester Square"
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/busking-leicester-square-judge-torture-global-westminster-council-court-b1219805.html
At your level/grade, what percentage of women are there? Have they 'caught up', or are they still behind in terms of numbers?
But then I think Trump's hush money case wasn't ridiculous. It was a much lesser case than the others he faced, but he broke the law to hide his wrongdoing.
The problem is also multi-factorial and multi-generational. But IMV one of those major factors is absent fathers, and that is pretty much a male problem. Too many men sleep around, pretending they are studs, and abandon their kids once the relationship with the mothers gets too problematic. And then, naturally enough, blame the mothers. Marriage is not necessarily a 'solution' either, as marriages where two people who no longer love each other are forced to stay together are often utterly toxic for the kids.
Amazingly enough, David Lammy actually talked a lot of sense about this in the black community. I just don't see enough focus on it now Labour are in government.
I guess it's another problem that's put on the 'too difficult' pile.
(Incidentally, I was a fan of the 'Troubled Families' program (now 'Supporting Families'), which was somewhat controversial, but (to me at least) seemed to be targeting the right groups: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troubled_Families )
This is where we’re told this will be great for the RN and it should be left to voters . This of course worked so well in the USA !
This brings up a question as to what line a politician can’t cross before voters shouldn’t have them as a choice . Say a politician killed someone and was found guilty . If they’re barred from running is this an affront to democracy ?
It's not my grade that matters for men in the late teens and early 20s, no one is becoming a VP of Data or CDO at that age. I'm talking about all of the graduate programmes and job fairs that specifically help women into the workplace, they've been hugely successful. I literally opened a programme for it at one of my previous workplaces when I was in investment management so we could increase the number of female grads in our intake we went from 90/10 to around 70/30 by the time I left. Though as I did so I recommended that the company freeze or close the programme because any further than that and they really would be taking substandard female candidates over vastly better qualified male ones. Even at 70/30 there was a lot of favouritism towards the women in the process, they got to skip a panel interview and got a 1 on 1 interview instead, they got a much lower pressure home task rather than the live case study the male candidates had to do and we had a lower entry bar on the aptitude test all candidates had to sit to enter into the process.
I've literally been there and done it, I've walked the walk on helping women into male dominated work places. I'm suggesting that it's probably time to take stock and look at where we are and maybe not push down on the accelerator for it. I don't see how it's controversial.
The other big issue for men/women in the workplace and women overtaking men is maternity leave.
I’ve mentioned on here before how senior doctor friends, male and female, are very concerned about there being more female medics but a good chunk will be lost each year to maternity leave and many won’t go back after.
It’s not something my friends feel they can mention where it really matters but question whether medical schools need to try and re-weight in favour of men.
Above all it is a brilliant piece of TV drama. The single shot format works incredibly well and is a technical triumph, the acting is powerful - episodes 3 and 1 in particular - and it definitely does make you think.
What it isn’t is a clunky polemic or a piece of worthy writing weighed down by its need to make a point. You don’t come away feeling you’ve been lectured to, or that there are any answers being offered. This isn’t bowling for columbine.
"Computing at Higher Education is increasingly seen as a good choice by students - particularly by women - according to data from university admissions service, UCAS released today. This year, 2,940 UK-domiciled 18-year-old women have accepted a place to study the subject, up 8% from 2023/24 (out of 15,530 18-year-old UK-domiciled acceptances for Computing).
"The male to female ratio in this area is also continuing to close slowly - with an ongoing trend towards increased participation by female students (below 4:1). However, the difference remains wide and there is still a long way to go in terms of closing the gender gap - according to BCS analysis.
"Overall entries at A level are up 12% with 29% growth in the number of females in England taking Computer Science at A level and a 9% increase in the number of males studying the subject. The gender ratio continues to move in right direction (now below 5:1) in this area too - BCS added. Meanwhile, females are outperforming males at all grades for A levels - this is similar across all nations."
In other words, women are still massively underrepresented in computer science.
A true story might have given the writer his inspiration but there's no way he set out to tell it as a real happening..
Instead he does stuff like TrumpCoin.
Mrs J is involved with groups at Cambridge University helping women into engineering. Help is still needed: at Cambridge, female admissions into engineering courses are *well* below male:
"In 2021, the most recent year for which data is available, there were 2143 applications from men and 616 from women, whereas in 2001 the numbers were 691 vs 179." (1).
And the number of women in engineering and tech in the UK is actually decreasing:
"The number of women working in engineering and tech has dropped by 38,000 – from 16.5% of the 2022 workforce to 15.7% of the 2023 workforce" (2)
So unless you have better figures, your situation seems very unusual.
(1); https://magazine.cues.org.uk/iwd-women-and-undergraduate-admissions/
(2): https://www.engineeringuk.com/research-and-insights/our-research-reports/women-in-engineering-and-technology/
I have someone who reports to me. She has a job specification. She is meant to do what she is employed to do. If she did something different, that would be a problem. Her salary comes from an outside source. That source would be displeased and expect their money back if she did something different.
More begging from Starmer for some scraps from the tariff buffet table .
Representation shouldn't be about getting to some idiotic idea of 50/50 in a given industry, it should be about making sure that anyone who has the capability to do it isn't locked out of doing so because of their sex (or race etc...) which sadly has been the case in both finance and tech for a very long time, though it's nowhere near as bad as it was in the 00s when I started working in tech.
The challenges raised by Adolescence aren't something we can simply legislate for — if I could pull a lever to solve it, I would.
It's only by listening and learning from the experiences of young people and charities that we can tackle this.
That's what I've been doing today.
Again, I'm not suggesting it's a bad show, it isn't, but if they'd used an actor who was a bit older and matched the case better it would have told a different (and equally valid) story, but maybe wouldn't have grabbed the nation's attention in the same way. Netflix made changes that helped the show gain an audience but it also doesn't tell a story that is necessarily true so it's quite cynical.
Primary school teachers are overwhelmingly women. Is this evidence of a bias against men? Or does it show differing preferences of men and women?
Buying shares at a time of maximum pessimism can be a profitable strategy.
Buying shares at a time of maximum pessimism can be a profitable strategy.
But the 2 or 3 times I’ve ever tried to time the market I lost money, so what do I know.
It would have been fascinating to see any discussions around the lack of female doctors 80 years ago and whether there was a similar assumption that there were innate differences that explained and justified that.
The lack of male primary teachers - as recently posted - is of course an interesting counter-example, particularly given the difference with secondary school. Possibly also largely cultural - as young kids we don't see many male teachers which probably has an effect - or maybe innate. Hard to tell definitively.
ETA: There's also an important difference between barriers (based on sex/ethnic group/sexuality) etc to those who want to pursue a career and softer cultural barriers that reduce the number in particular groups that wish to pursue a particular career.
@carlquintanilla.bsky.social
* CHINESE STATE MEDIA: CHINA, JAPAN, SOUTH KOREA REACH A CONSENSUS THAT THREE SIDES WILL JOINTLY RESPOND TO THE U.S. TARIFFS
@reuters.com
*Me and obviously said plod
Conversely, when my mother qualified as a pharmacist in the 1920's women represented about 10% of the profession. It's almost the other way round now.
BTW - the Niall Ferguson piece on China and Trump should concern everyone (and will particularly concern @MaxPB) - https://niallferguson.substack.com/p/does-donald-trump-know-what-hes-doing
Complete rubbish, when I was a councillor and someone emailed me about a political matter on my council email address I always transferred it over to my private one. This was seen as really odd, and the officers didn't like it because I didn't copy them into my response.
Those on the hard left like Ed Davey who criticise Trump and wonder where he got his strange ideas should spend a little more time in front of a mirror.
Well, at least TSE credited me with the pun
https://vf.politicalbetting.com/discussion/comment/5164601/#Comment_5164601
(Thanks, TSE!)
The typical reaction would be to call you a Tate sympathiser and to say this explains why we need even more allyship and action.