Hungary's last territorial gain that it still holds today was the city of Sopron in 1921, gained from what we today call Austria.
Sopron was part of the Hungarian territory of the Burgenland which was mostly transferred to Austria after the Great War.
Hungary no more gained Sopron than Britain gained Belfast.
But a gain nonetheless, recognised by the Allies post-WW1 and post-WW2.
How can Hungary gain what it already had ? Not losing something isn't a gain.
It lost the Burgenland territory, including Sopron, to Austria due to the Treaty of Trianon, 1920. An armed Hungarian Uprising in Sopron in 1921, followed by a plebiscite, restored it to Hungary.
And: Why compare with Belfast? Belfast was never lost. It was always part of the UK after 1801.
Hungary's last territorial gain that it still holds today was the city of Sopron in 1921, gained from what we today call Austria.
Sopron was part of the Hungarian territory of the Burgenland which was mostly transferred to Austria after the Great War.
Hungary no more gained Sopron than Britain gained Belfast.
But a gain nonetheless, recognised by the Allies post-WW1 and post-WW2.
How can Hungary gain what it already had ? Not losing something isn't a gain.
It lost the Burgenland territory, including Sopron, to Austria due to the Treaty of Trianon, 1920. An armed Hungarian Uprising in Sopron in 1921, followed by a plebiscite, restored it to Hungary.
And: Why compare with Belfast? Belfast was never lost. It was always part of the UK after 1801.
Ireland was British, Burgenland was Hungarian.
Now Belfast is British and Sopron is Hungarian.
But Britain lost most of Ireland and Hungary lost most of Burgenland.
Hungary's last territorial gain that it still holds today was the city of Sopron in 1921, gained from what we today call Austria.
Sopron was part of the Hungarian territory of the Burgenland which was mostly transferred to Austria after the Great War.
Hungary no more gained Sopron than Britain gained Belfast.
But a gain nonetheless, recognised by the Allies post-WW1 and post-WW2.
How can Hungary gain what it already had ? Not losing something isn't a gain.
It lost the Burgenland territory, including Sopron, to Austria due to the Treaty of Trianon, 1920. An armed Hungarian Uprising in Sopron in 1921, followed by a plebiscite, restored it to Hungary.
And: Why compare with Belfast? Belfast was never lost. It was always part of the UK after 1801.
Ireland was British, Burgenland was Hungarian.
Now Belfast is British and Sopron is Hungarian.
But Britain lost most of Ireland and Hungary lost most of Burgenland.
Hungary is perhaps the only country in Europe with territorial ambitions on its neighbours*. The idea that it was cheated of its territories in 1919 is still a very political issue there, the majority in these places being non Hungarian is not really considered an issue. It's why Hungary is backing Russia, so that Transcarpathia comes back to them.
Indeed it is the Hungarian diaspora vote in places like Romania, Serbia and Slovakia that keeps Orban in power.
Hungary's last territorial gain that it still holds today was the city of Sopron in 1921, gained from what we today call Austria.
Sopron was part of the Hungarian territory of the Burgenland which was mostly transferred to Austria after the Great War.
Hungary no more gained Sopron than Britain gained Belfast.
But a gain nonetheless, recognised by the Allies post-WW1 and post-WW2.
How can Hungary gain what it already had ? Not losing something isn't a gain.
It lost the Burgenland territory, including Sopron, to Austria due to the Treaty of Trianon, 1920. An armed Hungarian Uprising in Sopron in 1921, followed by a plebiscite, restored it to Hungary.
And: Why compare with Belfast? Belfast was never lost. It was always part of the UK after 1801.
Ireland was British, Burgenland was Hungarian.
Now Belfast is British and Sopron is Hungarian.
But Britain lost most of Ireland and Hungary lost most of Burgenland.
On pronunciation, i do enjoy monoglots trying to get to grips with Asian languages.
Here's my favourite Yankee-Doodle shipping Youtuber reporting on the five Chinese icebreakers which are skirting the USA's EEZ around Alaska. He makes a decent fist of it.
Victoria Derbyshire, "Do you think Yvette Cooper is lying?"
Sir Jonathan Porritt, former long term advisor to King Charles, who was one of 500 people arrested on Saturday,
"The Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre which is the government's own advisory body advised Yvette Cooper that there is no evidence whatsoever that Palestine Action has advocated violence against people"
"It has used violence against property"
"So when Yvette Cooper implies that Palestine Action has done violence to people, we know the Home Secretary is not revealing the whole truth"
Victoria Derbyshire, "Do you think Yvette Cooper is lying?"
Sir Jonathan Porritt, former long term advisor to King Charles, who was one of 500 people arrested on Saturday,
"The Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre which is the government's own advisory body advised Yvette Cooper that there is no evidence whatsoever that Palestine Action has advocated violence against people"
"It has used violence against property"
"So when Yvette Cooper implies that Palestine Action has done violence to people, we know the Home Secretary is not revealing the whole truth"
Victoria Derbyshire, "Do you think Yvette Cooper is lying?"
Sir Jonathan Porritt, former long term advisor to King Charles, who was one of 500 people arrested on Saturday,
"The Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre which is the government's own advisory body advised Yvette Cooper that there is no evidence whatsoever that Palestine Action has advocated violence against people"
"It has used violence against property"
"So when Yvette Cooper implies that Palestine Action has done violence to people, we know the Home Secretary is not revealing the whole truth"
Learn to read. "there is no evidence whatsoever that Palestine Action has advocated violence against people
They may have never publicly advocated it, but some of there members have carried it out.
It's obviously a carefully-worded non-denial denial
I can read. It was particularly disingenuous to try and portray the group as sweetness and light. I really don't know why all these people are dying on this hill where they are just twisting themselves in knots advocating for a really nasty bunch of people who were increasingly out of control. If the government were shutting down protests in support of the Palestine cause they might have a point, but they aren't.
Cooper said the decision followed “strong security advice” and an assessment from JTAC that the group “prepares for terrorism”. She cited “concerning information referencing plans and ideas for further attacks”, but said the details could not be revealed publicly because of ongoing legal proceedings. “Many people may not yet know the reality of this organisation,” the Home Secretary added.
The Prime Minister’s spokesman added that proscription followed an “assessment from the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre that concludes that Palestine Action has committed three separate acts of terrorism”.
“We’ve said that many people may not yet know the reality of this organisation, but the assessments are very clear: this is a violent organisation that has committed violence, significant injury and extensive criminal damage,” Sir Keir Starmer’s spokesman said.
Victoria Derbyshire, "Do you think Yvette Cooper is lying?"
Sir Jonathan Porritt, former long term advisor to King Charles, who was one of 500 people arrested on Saturday,
"The Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre which is the government's own advisory body advised Yvette Cooper that there is no evidence whatsoever that Palestine Action has advocated violence against people"
"It has used violence against property"
"So when Yvette Cooper implies that Palestine Action has done violence to people, we know the Home Secretary is not revealing the whole truth"
Learn to read. "there is no evidence whatsoever that Palestine Action has advocated violence against people
They may have never publicly advocated it, but some of there members have carried it out.
It's obviously a carefully-worded non-denial denial
I can read. It was particularly disingenuous to try and portray the group as sweetness and light. I really don't know why all these people are dying on this hill where they are just twisting themselves in knots advocating for a really nasty bunch of people who were increasingly out of control. If the government were shutting down protests in support of the Palestine cause they might have a point, but they aren't.
I do wonder what would have happened if the protesters had carried placards calling for PA to be unbanned. Technically they would still be supporting it, but surely criticising government policy is a freedom of speech issue.
I still think that verbally offering support to a terrorist organisation should be regarded as freedom of speech. On the other hand, offering g practical support to Isis is treason and should be prosecuted as such.
Terrorism is in the eye of the beholder. If a Ukrainian threw a bandera smoothie through the window of the Russian embassy I would applaud them. Trying to overthrow the Iranian government would be entirely reasonable in my view. Yet Israeli actions against Gaza can never be terrorism as they are a state actor.
An interesting story that we may not have mentioned.
The founder of The Entertainer toyshop chain is transferring the business with 1900 employees to 100% employee ownership. He founded it in one shop in 1981. His family will get some dividends back later.
It's interesting to me because he is motivated in his philosophy by his born-again evangelical faith, but he seems to have kept an appropriate distance. It's not the kind of direct "God told me to" management of the business, more taking principles and values, concern for employees and so on - quite Quaker style. I'm far more comfortable with that than with the approach we see far too often in the USA.
This is the first one of these known to me since Scott-Bader Ltd decades ago, which is now the Scott-Bader Commonwealth. There they consciously took inspiration from the Quaker tradition. I'm sure thee are others.
Gary Grant opened his first shop with his wife Catherine in 1981 when he was 23. He's now 66, and his multi-million pound empire spans 160 shops across the UK.
He is transferring 100% ownership of the family-owned business to an employee trust which means staff will get a share of the profits and a say in how the firm is run.
Not to be totally cynical, but doing this is a super tax efficient way of cashing out from your business. He isn't just giving away his business.
Quite possibly - I have not seen any detailed figures; I guess the taxefficiency would depend on the level of dividend. But I applaud transferring the ownership to employees - and presumably he us making less than compared to a straight sell off done tax efficiently.
Does anyone know how the two routes compare financially?
Friend of mine gave his employees his fairly substantial electrical contracting business when he wanted to retire, and somehow ended up paying a small fortune in tax (CGT I think) to do so, but I'm not quite sure how* - I suspect he was badly advised.
My general experience is that giving a business to the staff is a dumb idea - they usually crash the thing through the floor in under 5 years (My friends business went this way!). IMHO a MBO at a favorable price to a carefully selected rising star or two in the business has more hope of success.
*I suspect he managed to crystalise the gain in his share values before he gave the shares away and thus became liable for CGT on them.
Staff at the UK's national institute for artificial intelligence (AI) have warned the charity is at risk of collapse, after Technology Secretary Peter Kyle threatened to withdraw its funding.
Workers at the Alan Turing Institute raised a series of "serious and escalating concerns" in a whistleblowing complaint submitted to the Charity Commission.
The complaint, seen by the BBC, accuses the institute's leadership of misusing public funds, overseeing a "toxic internal culture", and failing to deliver on the charity's mission.
What a ghastly racist country Israel has become. The news footage on Ch4 is heart breaking. The five murdered journalists look as genuine as any you are likely to see. His viewing figures are huge. There are 140 million Arab speakers world wide who watch him.
But who would believe Netanyahu and his rabid racist country anyway.
The IDF knew exactly where they were based and murdered them for publicising the deliberate famine and associated ""Hunger Games" killings.
Yet our government can't understand why so many support Palestine Action.
Is there anything Hamas could say that you wouldn't believe?
Why have Israel banned journalists from entering Gaza? What have they got to hide?
They don't want to have to rescue more hostages
There's only one thing to be done.
Recognise the West Bank as a sovereign Palestinian State, withdraw all support for Israel to settle it, get the settlers out, evacuate the Gazans there, and just give Gaza to Israel.
I think that makes sense too.
Hostile artillery on the ridge above the Jordan would dominate the entire of the coastal plain of Israel
... is the sort of argument Russia uses for annexing chunks of Ukraine.
Yes. But Israel has occupied the territory in question for 50+ years. If you are going to get a negotiated settlement it needs to be acceptable to all
I see Morris Dancer has been giving Trump history lessons.
Trump said that during their conversation, Hungarian PM Orbán ruled out a Ukrainian victory over Russia, claiming that Russia “doesn’t surrender in wars” and historically emerges victorious.
Crimean war 1856 Russo-Japanese War 1905 WW1 1918 Polish-Soviet war 1921 The Cold fucking War 1989 The Afghan war 1989
Given that Hungary controls none of that land then no.
So, we didn't win the Third Anglo-Burmese War given we control none of that land now?
Well you could say that the British Empire won that given that it gained the territory - I assume it did and cannot be bothered to look.
And that the Burmese (and all the other colonials) won from the dissolving of the British Empire after 1945.
Actually the dissolution of the Empire was a catastrophe for the Burmese and many other colonials, from Hong Kong to Jamaica to Zimbabwe to Sudan, which is why you sometimes see opinion polls (e.g. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-13952592) saying that things were better when we were in charge.
What we gained from being in charge of many of these places is of course more doubtful.
Victoria Derbyshire, "Do you think Yvette Cooper is lying?"
Sir Jonathan Porritt, former long term advisor to King Charles, who was one of 500 people arrested on Saturday,
"The Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre which is the government's own advisory body advised Yvette Cooper that there is no evidence whatsoever that Palestine Action has advocated violence against people"
"It has used violence against property"
"So when Yvette Cooper implies that Palestine Action has done violence to people, we know the Home Secretary is not revealing the whole truth"
Apart from the above and similar events which may not be public yet - sub judice, charges not brought etc - there could be a dual headed nature to this.
That is, some sort of basically violence-willing inner (or entryist) group, with a penumbra of 'peaceful activists', who may be perhaps be also termed "useful idiots". It's quite possible that public figures could form part of such a penumbra, or otherwise prioritising the cause so much that they are willing to turn a blind eye to the activities of their fellow campaigners. That could be explicit or varied version of vanguardism.
That's consistently been an SWP pattern, for example - where one orientation is to use a fluffy cause to attack the way society is organised. That's one reason I never trust Unite Against Fascism, Stop the War, or Stand Up to Racism without a careful look - they all have such a history.
Another contemporary example is our various (choose your word) "right", where the aim is to present "local families concerned about protecting our girls", but there's a hard line core of Tommy Robinson and similars willing to attack police, counter demonstrators etc, with an overlap formed by eg Homeland Party councillors. We have seen the same "concerned locals" in different places claiming the same thing.
Not commenting on causes there, but on organisation.
I think that this may in part be another Government Comms cockup.
Victoria Derbyshire, "Do you think Yvette Cooper is lying?"
Sir Jonathan Porritt, former long term advisor to King Charles, who was one of 500 people arrested on Saturday,
"The Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre which is the government's own advisory body advised Yvette Cooper that there is no evidence whatsoever that Palestine Action has advocated violence against people"
"It has used violence against property"
"So when Yvette Cooper implies that Palestine Action has done violence to people, we know the Home Secretary is not revealing the whole truth"
Apart from the above and similar events which may not be public yet - sub judice, charges not brought etc - there could be a dual headed nature to this.
That is, some sort of basically violence-willing inner (or entryist) group, with a penumbra of 'peaceful activists', who may be perhaps be also termed "useful idiots". It's quite possible that public figures could form part of such a penumbra, or otherwise prioritising the cause so much that they are willing to turn a blind eye to the activities of their fellow campaigners. That could be explicit or varied version of vanguardism.
That's consistently been an SWP pattern, for example - where one orientation is to use a fluffy cause to attack the way society is organised. That's one reason I never trust Unite Against Fascism, Stop the War, or Stand Up to Racism without a careful look - they all have such a history.
Another contemporary example is our various (choose your word) "right", where the aim is to present "local families concerned about protecting our girls", but there's a hard line core of Tommy Robinson and similars willing to attack police, counter demonstrators etc, with an overlap formed by eg Homeland Party councillors. We have seen the same "concerned locals" in different places claiming the same thing.
Not commenting on causes there, but on organisation.
I think that this may in part be another Government Comms cockup.
Reflecting a little further, the double headed approach could be deliberate strategy.
And one previous "peaceful" protest group which tipped over into terrorism was SHAC - Stop Huntingdon Life Science, and that was because (imo) at core the philosophy of animal equality to human beings, and the willingness to use violence to campaign for is deeply flawed. The centrist dad approach of being pragmatic in permitting but seeking to minimise animal experimentation is far more rational.
Victoria Derbyshire, "Do you think Yvette Cooper is lying?"
Sir Jonathan Porritt, former long term advisor to King Charles, who was one of 500 people arrested on Saturday,
"The Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre which is the government's own advisory body advised Yvette Cooper that there is no evidence whatsoever that Palestine Action has advocated violence against people"
"It has used violence against property"
"So when Yvette Cooper implies that Palestine Action has done violence to people, we know the Home Secretary is not revealing the whole truth"
Apart from the above and similar events which may not be public yet - sub judice, charges not brought etc - there could be a dual headed nature to this.
That is, some sort of basically violence-willing inner (or entryist) group, with a penumbra of 'peaceful activists', who may be perhaps be also termed "useful idiots". It's quite possible that public figures could form part of such a penumbra, or otherwise prioritising the cause so much that they are willing to turn a blind eye to the activities of their fellow campaigners. That could be explicit or varied version of vanguardism.
That's consistently been an SWP pattern, for example - where one orientation is to use a fluffy cause to attack the way society is organised. That's one reason I never trust Unite Against Fascism, Stop the War, or Stand Up to Racism without a careful look - they all have such a history.
Another contemporary example is our various (choose your word) "right", where the aim is to present "local families concerned about protecting our girls", but there's a hard line core of Tommy Robinson and similars willing to attack police, counter demonstrators etc, with an overlap formed by eg Homeland Party councillors. We have seen the same "concerned locals" in different places claiming the same thing.
Not commenting on causes there, but on organisation.
I think that this may in part be another Government Comms cockup.
Reflecting a little further, the double headed approach could be deliberate strategy.
And one previous "peaceful" protest group which tipped over into terrorism was SHAC - Stop Huntingdon Life Science, and that was because (imo) at core the philosophy of animal equality to human beings, and the willingness to use violence to campaign for is deeply flawed. The centrist dad approach of being pragmatic in permitting but seeking to minimise animal experimentation is far more rational.
It seems plain enough to me that Palestine Action is a terrorist organisation.
Victoria Derbyshire, "Do you think Yvette Cooper is lying?"
Sir Jonathan Porritt, former long term advisor to King Charles, who was one of 500 people arrested on Saturday,
"The Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre which is the government's own advisory body advised Yvette Cooper that there is no evidence whatsoever that Palestine Action has advocated violence against people"
"It has used violence against property"
"So when Yvette Cooper implies that Palestine Action has done violence to people, we know the Home Secretary is not revealing the whole truth"
Apart from the above and similar events which may not be public yet - sub judice, charges not brought etc - there could be a dual headed nature to this.
That is, some sort of basically violence-willing inner (or entryist) group, with a penumbra of 'peaceful activists', who may be perhaps be also termed "useful idiots". It's quite possible that public figures could form part of such a penumbra, or otherwise prioritising the cause so much that they are willing to turn a blind eye to the activities of their fellow campaigners. That could be explicit or varied version of vanguardism.
That's consistently been an SWP pattern, for example - where one orientation is to use a fluffy cause to attack the way society is organised. That's one reason I never trust Unite Against Fascism, Stop the War, or Stand Up to Racism without a careful look - they all have such a history.
Another contemporary example is our various (choose your word) "right", where the aim is to present "local families concerned about protecting our girls", but there's a hard line core of Tommy Robinson and similars willing to attack police, counter demonstrators etc, with an overlap formed by eg Homeland Party councillors. We have seen the same "concerned locals" in different places claiming the same thing.
Not commenting on causes there, but on organisation.
I think that this may in part be another Government Comms cockup.
Reflecting a little further, the double headed approach could be deliberate strategy.
And one previous "peaceful" protest group which tipped over into terrorism was SHAC - Stop Huntingdon Life Science, and that was because (imo) at core the philosophy of animal equality to human beings, and the willingness to use violence to campaign for is deeply flawed. The centrist dad approach of being pragmatic in permitting but seeking to minimise animal experimentation is far more rational.
In general, as soon as groups become violent or really OTT in their action, they lose wider public support in the UK pretty quickly. XR / JSO became the same 50 people being twats, all those 1000s who originally attended rallies went away.
I think it is why Tommy Robinson has tried his rebrand (until his incident as St Pancras) as the numbers of people who are willing to attend rallies that regularly get tasty is quite small. Not good for the sun lounger fund.
Hungary's last territorial gain that it still holds today was the city of Sopron in 1921, gained from what we today call Austria.
Sopron was part of the Hungarian territory of the Burgenland which was mostly transferred to Austria after the Great War.
Hungary no more gained Sopron than Britain gained Belfast.
But a gain nonetheless, recognised by the Allies post-WW1 and post-WW2.
How can Hungary gain what it already had ? Not losing something isn't a gain.
It lost the Burgenland territory, including Sopron, to Austria due to the Treaty of Trianon, 1920. An armed Hungarian Uprising in Sopron in 1921, followed by a plebiscite, restored it to Hungary.
And: Why compare with Belfast? Belfast was never lost. It was always part of the UK after 1801.
Ireland was British, Burgenland was Hungarian.
Now Belfast is British and Sopron is Hungarian.
But Britain lost most of Ireland and Hungary lost most of Burgenland.
But Britain never lost Belfast.
Under the Anglo-Irish treaty of 1922, the whole of Ireland was created a dominion, with six counties able to 'opt out' and rejoin the U.K. proper after one month if they so chose by suspending the powers of the Irish Parliament in that area.
So technically Britain did lose Belfast for a month.
An interesting story that we may not have mentioned.
The founder of The Entertainer toyshop chain is transferring the business with 1900 employees to 100% employee ownership. He founded it in one shop in 1981. His family will get some dividends back later.
It's interesting to me because he is motivated in his philosophy by his born-again evangelical faith, but he seems to have kept an appropriate distance. It's not the kind of direct "God told me to" management of the business, more taking principles and values, concern for employees and so on - quite Quaker style. I'm far more comfortable with that than with the approach we see far too often in the USA.
This is the first one of these known to me since Scott-Bader Ltd decades ago, which is now the Scott-Bader Commonwealth. There they consciously took inspiration from the Quaker tradition. I'm sure thee are others.
Gary Grant opened his first shop with his wife Catherine in 1981 when he was 23. He's now 66, and his multi-million pound empire spans 160 shops across the UK.
He is transferring 100% ownership of the family-owned business to an employee trust which means staff will get a share of the profits and a say in how the firm is run.
Not to be totally cynical, but doing this is a super tax efficient way of cashing out from your business. He isn't just giving away his business.
Quite possibly - I have not seen any detailed figures; I guess the taxefficiency would depend on the level of dividend. But I applaud transferring the ownership to employees - and presumably he us making less than compared to a straight sell off done tax efficiently.
Does anyone know how the two routes compare financially?
Friend of mine gave his employees his fairly substantial electrical contracting business when he wanted to retire, and somehow ended up paying a small fortune in tax (CGT I think) to do so, but I'm not quite sure how* - I suspect he was badly advised.
My general experience is that giving a business to the staff is a dumb idea - they usually crash the thing through the floor in under 5 years (My friends business went this way!). IMHO a MBO at a favorable price to a carefully selected rising star or two in the business has more hope of success.
*I suspect he managed to crystalise the gain in his share values before he gave the shares away and thus became liable for CGT on them.
I think the idea of an employee trust work in some (limited circumstances). But it only works for a family business which already has some other purpose as part of its philosophy which you can see in the example of Richer Sounds (a company still going while the entire rest of the market has completely disappeared), the Entertainer and say Timpsons
An interesting story that we may not have mentioned.
The founder of The Entertainer toyshop chain is transferring the business with 1900 employees to 100% employee ownership. He founded it in one shop in 1981. His family will get some dividends back later.
It's interesting to me because he is motivated in his philosophy by his born-again evangelical faith, but he seems to have kept an appropriate distance. It's not the kind of direct "God told me to" management of the business, more taking principles and values, concern for employees and so on - quite Quaker style. I'm far more comfortable with that than with the approach we see far too often in the USA.
This is the first one of these known to me since Scott-Bader Ltd decades ago, which is now the Scott-Bader Commonwealth. There they consciously took inspiration from the Quaker tradition. I'm sure thee are others.
Gary Grant opened his first shop with his wife Catherine in 1981 when he was 23. He's now 66, and his multi-million pound empire spans 160 shops across the UK.
He is transferring 100% ownership of the family-owned business to an employee trust which means staff will get a share of the profits and a say in how the firm is run.
Not to be totally cynical, but doing this is a super tax efficient way of cashing out from your business. He isn't just giving away his business.
Quite possibly - I have not seen any detailed figures; I guess the taxefficiency would depend on the level of dividend. But I applaud transferring the ownership to employees - and presumably he us making less than compared to a straight sell off done tax efficiently.
Does anyone know how the two routes compare financially?
Friend of mine gave his employees his fairly substantial electrical contracting business when he wanted to retire, and somehow ended up paying a small fortune in tax (CGT I think) to do so, but I'm not quite sure how* - I suspect he was badly advised.
My general experience is that giving a business to the staff is a dumb idea - they usually crash the thing through the floor in under 5 years (My friends business went this way!). IMHO a MBO at a favorable price to a carefully selected rising star or two in the business has more hope of success.
*I suspect he managed to crystalise the gain in his share values before he gave the shares away and thus became liable for CGT on them.
I agree that it's as tricky as succession management in a family business. If you check my link they put a lot of work and time into succession planning.
We have examples - John Lewis has existed since the 1920s, and the Scott Bader Commonwealth since 1951, and both are still going. There's space for many types of organisations. In my thinking I see them as historical witnesses showing that pure market capitalism not being the only sustainable option. So we have a whole zoo of different ways to incorporate. These also include charities, whatever Livery Companies are, "communities" and the rest. The Mondragon Corporation in Spain is employee-owned ,and about the same size as John Lewis.
OTOH even say Trades Unions can get a corporate feel - consider Unite under McCluskey, for example.
I've always been fascinated by how organisations and communities develop over time. And the spectrum between provisional communities and ones that become 'institutions' is of interest, and how they get beyond a single generation of leaders (or leader). The most important points seem to be around vision, values and self-understanding, and curating these over time as a group.
What a ghastly racist country Israel has become. The news footage on Ch4 is heart breaking. The five murdered journalists look as genuine as any you are likely to see. His viewing figures are huge. There are 140 million Arab speakers world wide who watch him.
But who would believe Netanyahu and his rabid racist country anyway.
The IDF knew exactly where they were based and murdered them for publicising the deliberate famine and associated ""Hunger Games" killings.
Yet our government can't understand why so many support Palestine Action.
Is there anything Hamas could say that you wouldn't believe?
Why have Israel banned journalists from entering Gaza? What have they got to hide?
They don't want to have to rescue more hostages
There's only one thing to be done.
Recognise the West Bank as a sovereign Palestinian State, withdraw all support for Israel to settle it, get the settlers out, evacuate the Gazans there, and just give Gaza to Israel.
Short of killing every Palestinian abroad as well as in Gaza and the West Bank Israel is just creating a diaspora wanting to return to their ancestral lands. Surely Jews should understand that? After all their own diaspora kept that desire for 20 centuries. Why should the Palestinians feel differently?
The Jewish diaspora longing for a homeland was partly political in the twentieth century (it wasn’t really mainstream before that) but also because of their exclusion from western society. I suspect Palestinians would be assimilated over time - at least into a broader Arab/Islamic group in the West
Yes, ethnic cleansing sometimes achieves its goals. The Armenians and the Circassians, the Cherokee and the Muscogee, aren't getting their land back. But you do get, don't you, that it's still wrong, a crime against humanity?
Of course it’s wrong. I just don’t see a two state solution working in practical terms.
I strongly believe in the heartland theory of geopolitics.
The problem in Israel/Palestine is that there are too many people fighting over too little territory and unwilling to compromise.
I’m not sure I see a stable solution for many years to come
What shall we call the teams? Name some of them after cities, some after regions and some after cricket grounds. Name one of them after a river AND the ground. Oh, and one after the people of a nation. With snazzy adjuncts that represent nothing.
I'd name them the way I'd name London terminals.
Waterloo, Agincourt, Trafalgar, Mers-el-Kébir, etc.
Id go for cultured names The Otters Pockets The Wizards Sleeves etc
The Otter's Pocket? You do know who invented this phrase?
"It was the late 1990s and FHM was peaking. At its best, the magazine sold nearly a million copies a month. We were carefully producing the first-ever list of The 100 Sexiest Women in the World (which became an annual standard). My job was to write the captions. One hundred pithy, smutty, funny lines beneath a hundred photos of impossibly attractive women.
Sounds easy? You try it – without using ChatGPT. Try writing a hundred unique ways of saying ‘she’s hot’ without repeating yourself or getting sacked. Around no. 34, I was delirious. Around no. 50, the editor physically locked me in his office and refused to let me out until the job was done.
Then, somewhere around no. 73, I hit a wall. I was staring at a Danish starlet with smoky eyes and a definite air of sexual availability, of ‘come hither’ and ‘I’m ready’. Falteringly, I typed: ‘You can tell she’s wetter than…’ And there I stopped. Wetter than what? Heavy rain? Dublin in December?
Then came the lightning bolt: ‘Wetter than an otter’s pocket.’ There it was: a perfect smutty phrase. Rude, but somehow innocent. Suggestive, but oddly poetic. It had internal rhyme and a ribald hint of biology. What does an otter keep in his pocket? His lunch. Work it out.
Then, years later, something odd happened. I started hearing my phrase. From a football pundit describing an Anfield pitch. Then a weather girl. Some bloke on local radio. Then it cropped up on pub signs, in band names, in poems. Even, to my alarm, in the title of a Penguin children’s book (er, guys).
Curious, I contacted the editors of Viz’s Profanisaurus, keepers of the English language’s smuttiest corners. Had I pinched it unconsciously? ‘We can find no earlier usage,’ they graciously replied. ‘Looks like it’s yours.’
It’s not much of a literary legacy, I’ll admit."
Someone has flagged this, presumably out of annoyance at me not naming the culprit. It's ex-PBer, @SeanT - he invented the phrase "wetter than an otter's pocket". This is from a recent column in the Spectator Magazine
"Spectator" - is it the house magazine of self-obsessed wankers?
Tell this fool SeanT that otters' fur is waterproof and their pockets are dry.
Probably too late for him to learn anything about women.
What shall we call the teams? Name some of them after cities, some after regions and some after cricket grounds. Name one of them after a river AND the ground. Oh, and one after the people of a nation. With snazzy adjuncts that represent nothing.
I'd name them the way I'd name London terminals.
Waterloo, Agincourt, Trafalgar, Mers-el-Kébir, etc.
Id go for cultured names The Otters Pockets The Wizards Sleeves etc
The Otter's Pocket? You do know who invented this phrase?
"It was the late 1990s and FHM was peaking. At its best, the magazine sold nearly a million copies a month. We were carefully producing the first-ever list of The 100 Sexiest Women in the World (which became an annual standard). My job was to write the captions. One hundred pithy, smutty, funny lines beneath a hundred photos of impossibly attractive women.
Sounds easy? You try it – without using ChatGPT. Try writing a hundred unique ways of saying ‘she’s hot’ without repeating yourself or getting sacked. Around no. 34, I was delirious. Around no. 50, the editor physically locked me in his office and refused to let me out until the job was done.
Then, somewhere around no. 73, I hit a wall. I was staring at a Danish starlet with smoky eyes and a definite air of sexual availability, of ‘come hither’ and ‘I’m ready’. Falteringly, I typed: ‘You can tell she’s wetter than…’ And there I stopped. Wetter than what? Heavy rain? Dublin in December?
Then came the lightning bolt: ‘Wetter than an otter’s pocket.’ There it was: a perfect smutty phrase. Rude, but somehow innocent. Suggestive, but oddly poetic. It had internal rhyme and a ribald hint of biology. What does an otter keep in his pocket? His lunch. Work it out.
Then, years later, something odd happened. I started hearing my phrase. From a football pundit describing an Anfield pitch. Then a weather girl. Some bloke on local radio. Then it cropped up on pub signs, in band names, in poems. Even, to my alarm, in the title of a Penguin children’s book (er, guys).
Curious, I contacted the editors of Viz’s Profanisaurus, keepers of the English language’s smuttiest corners. Had I pinched it unconsciously? ‘We can find no earlier usage,’ they graciously replied. ‘Looks like it’s yours.’
It’s not much of a literary legacy, I’ll admit."
Someone has flagged this, presumably out of annoyance at me not naming the culprit. It's ex-PBer, @SeanT - he invented the phrase "wetter than an otter's pocket". This is from a recent column in the Spectator Magazine
"Spectator" - is it the house magazine of self-obsessed wankers?
Tell this fool SeanT that otters' fur is waterproof and their pockets are dry.
Probably too late for him to learn anything about women.
I don't think you understand what the term "otter's pocket" refers to.
What shall we call the teams? Name some of them after cities, some after regions and some after cricket grounds. Name one of them after a river AND the ground. Oh, and one after the people of a nation. With snazzy adjuncts that represent nothing.
I'd name them the way I'd name London terminals.
Waterloo, Agincourt, Trafalgar, Mers-el-Kébir, etc.
Id go for cultured names The Otters Pockets The Wizards Sleeves etc
The Otter's Pocket? You do know who invented this phrase?
"It was the late 1990s and FHM was peaking. At its best, the magazine sold nearly a million copies a month. We were carefully producing the first-ever list of The 100 Sexiest Women in the World (which became an annual standard). My job was to write the captions. One hundred pithy, smutty, funny lines beneath a hundred photos of impossibly attractive women.
Sounds easy? You try it – without using ChatGPT. Try writing a hundred unique ways of saying ‘she’s hot’ without repeating yourself or getting sacked. Around no. 34, I was delirious. Around no. 50, the editor physically locked me in his office and refused to let me out until the job was done.
Then, somewhere around no. 73, I hit a wall. I was staring at a Danish starlet with smoky eyes and a definite air of sexual availability, of ‘come hither’ and ‘I’m ready’. Falteringly, I typed: ‘You can tell she’s wetter than…’ And there I stopped. Wetter than what? Heavy rain? Dublin in December?
Then came the lightning bolt: ‘Wetter than an otter’s pocket.’ There it was: a perfect smutty phrase. Rude, but somehow innocent. Suggestive, but oddly poetic. It had internal rhyme and a ribald hint of biology. What does an otter keep in his pocket? His lunch. Work it out.
Then, years later, something odd happened. I started hearing my phrase. From a football pundit describing an Anfield pitch. Then a weather girl. Some bloke on local radio. Then it cropped up on pub signs, in band names, in poems. Even, to my alarm, in the title of a Penguin children’s book (er, guys).
Curious, I contacted the editors of Viz’s Profanisaurus, keepers of the English language’s smuttiest corners. Had I pinched it unconsciously? ‘We can find no earlier usage,’ they graciously replied. ‘Looks like it’s yours.’
It’s not much of a literary legacy, I’ll admit."
Someone has flagged this, presumably out of annoyance at me not naming the culprit. It's ex-PBer, @SeanT - he invented the phrase "wetter than an otter's pocket". This is from a recent column in the Spectator Magazine
"Spectator" - is it the house magazine of self-obsessed wankers?
What shall we call the teams? Name some of them after cities, some after regions and some after cricket grounds. Name one of them after a river AND the ground. Oh, and one after the people of a nation. With snazzy adjuncts that represent nothing.
I'd name them the way I'd name London terminals.
Waterloo, Agincourt, Trafalgar, Mers-el-Kébir, etc.
Id go for cultured names The Otters Pockets The Wizards Sleeves etc
The Otter's Pocket? You do know who invented this phrase?
"It was the late 1990s and FHM was peaking. At its best, the magazine sold nearly a million copies a month. We were carefully producing the first-ever list of The 100 Sexiest Women in the World (which became an annual standard). My job was to write the captions. One hundred pithy, smutty, funny lines beneath a hundred photos of impossibly attractive women.
Sounds easy? You try it – without using ChatGPT. Try writing a hundred unique ways of saying ‘she’s hot’ without repeating yourself or getting sacked. Around no. 34, I was delirious. Around no. 50, the editor physically locked me in his office and refused to let me out until the job was done.
Then, somewhere around no. 73, I hit a wall. I was staring at a Danish starlet with smoky eyes and a definite air of sexual availability, of ‘come hither’ and ‘I’m ready’. Falteringly, I typed: ‘You can tell she’s wetter than…’ And there I stopped. Wetter than what? Heavy rain? Dublin in December?
Then came the lightning bolt: ‘Wetter than an otter’s pocket.’ There it was: a perfect smutty phrase. Rude, but somehow innocent. Suggestive, but oddly poetic. It had internal rhyme and a ribald hint of biology. What does an otter keep in his pocket? His lunch. Work it out.
Then, years later, something odd happened. I started hearing my phrase. From a football pundit describing an Anfield pitch. Then a weather girl. Some bloke on local radio. Then it cropped up on pub signs, in band names, in poems. Even, to my alarm, in the title of a Penguin children’s book (er, guys).
Curious, I contacted the editors of Viz’s Profanisaurus, keepers of the English language’s smuttiest corners. Had I pinched it unconsciously? ‘We can find no earlier usage,’ they graciously replied. ‘Looks like it’s yours.’
It’s not much of a literary legacy, I’ll admit."
Someone has flagged this, presumably out of annoyance at me not naming the culprit. It's ex-PBer, @SeanT - he invented the phrase "wetter than an otter's pocket". This is from a recent column in the Spectator Magazine
"Spectator" - is it the house magazine of self-obsessed wankers?
Tell this fool SeanT that otters' fur is waterproof and their pockets are dry.
Probably too late for him to learn anything about women.
I don't think you understand what the term "otter's pocket" refers to.
What shall we call the teams? Name some of them after cities, some after regions and some after cricket grounds. Name one of them after a river AND the ground. Oh, and one after the people of a nation. With snazzy adjuncts that represent nothing.
I'd name them the way I'd name London terminals.
Waterloo, Agincourt, Trafalgar, Mers-el-Kébir, etc.
Id go for cultured names The Otters Pockets The Wizards Sleeves etc
The Otter's Pocket? You do know who invented this phrase?
"It was the late 1990s and FHM was peaking. At its best, the magazine sold nearly a million copies a month. We were carefully producing the first-ever list of The 100 Sexiest Women in the World (which became an annual standard). My job was to write the captions. One hundred pithy, smutty, funny lines beneath a hundred photos of impossibly attractive women.
Sounds easy? You try it – without using ChatGPT. Try writing a hundred unique ways of saying ‘she’s hot’ without repeating yourself or getting sacked. Around no. 34, I was delirious. Around no. 50, the editor physically locked me in his office and refused to let me out until the job was done.
Then, somewhere around no. 73, I hit a wall. I was staring at a Danish starlet with smoky eyes and a definite air of sexual availability, of ‘come hither’ and ‘I’m ready’. Falteringly, I typed: ‘You can tell she’s wetter than…’ And there I stopped. Wetter than what? Heavy rain? Dublin in December?
Then came the lightning bolt: ‘Wetter than an otter’s pocket.’ There it was: a perfect smutty phrase. Rude, but somehow innocent. Suggestive, but oddly poetic. It had internal rhyme and a ribald hint of biology. What does an otter keep in his pocket? His lunch. Work it out.
Then, years later, something odd happened. I started hearing my phrase. From a football pundit describing an Anfield pitch. Then a weather girl. Some bloke on local radio. Then it cropped up on pub signs, in band names, in poems. Even, to my alarm, in the title of a Penguin children’s book (er, guys).
Curious, I contacted the editors of Viz’s Profanisaurus, keepers of the English language’s smuttiest corners. Had I pinched it unconsciously? ‘We can find no earlier usage,’ they graciously replied. ‘Looks like it’s yours.’
It’s not much of a literary legacy, I’ll admit."
Someone has flagged this, presumably out of annoyance at me not naming the culprit. It's ex-PBer, @SeanT - he invented the phrase "wetter than an otter's pocket". This is from a recent column in the Spectator Magazine
"Spectator" - is it the house magazine of self-obsessed wankers?
Tell this fool SeanT that otters' fur is waterproof and their pockets are dry.
Probably too late for him to learn anything about women.
I don't think you understand what the term "otter's pocket" refers to.
Ok please educate me on how this simile works.
This is family friendly forum, especially with the OSA.
What shall we call the teams? Name some of them after cities, some after regions and some after cricket grounds. Name one of them after a river AND the ground. Oh, and one after the people of a nation. With snazzy adjuncts that represent nothing.
I'd name them the way I'd name London terminals.
Waterloo, Agincourt, Trafalgar, Mers-el-Kébir, etc.
Id go for cultured names The Otters Pockets The Wizards Sleeves etc
The Otter's Pocket? You do know who invented this phrase?
"It was the late 1990s and FHM was peaking. At its best, the magazine sold nearly a million copies a month. We were carefully producing the first-ever list of The 100 Sexiest Women in the World (which became an annual standard). My job was to write the captions. One hundred pithy, smutty, funny lines beneath a hundred photos of impossibly attractive women.
Sounds easy? You try it – without using ChatGPT. Try writing a hundred unique ways of saying ‘she’s hot’ without repeating yourself or getting sacked. Around no. 34, I was delirious. Around no. 50, the editor physically locked me in his office and refused to let me out until the job was done.
Then, somewhere around no. 73, I hit a wall. I was staring at a Danish starlet with smoky eyes and a definite air of sexual availability, of ‘come hither’ and ‘I’m ready’. Falteringly, I typed: ‘You can tell she’s wetter than…’ And there I stopped. Wetter than what? Heavy rain? Dublin in December?
Then came the lightning bolt: ‘Wetter than an otter’s pocket.’ There it was: a perfect smutty phrase. Rude, but somehow innocent. Suggestive, but oddly poetic. It had internal rhyme and a ribald hint of biology. What does an otter keep in his pocket? His lunch. Work it out.
Then, years later, something odd happened. I started hearing my phrase. From a football pundit describing an Anfield pitch. Then a weather girl. Some bloke on local radio. Then it cropped up on pub signs, in band names, in poems. Even, to my alarm, in the title of a Penguin children’s book (er, guys).
Curious, I contacted the editors of Viz’s Profanisaurus, keepers of the English language’s smuttiest corners. Had I pinched it unconsciously? ‘We can find no earlier usage,’ they graciously replied. ‘Looks like it’s yours.’
It’s not much of a literary legacy, I’ll admit."
Someone has flagged this, presumably out of annoyance at me not naming the culprit. It's ex-PBer, @SeanT - he invented the phrase "wetter than an otter's pocket". This is from a recent column in the Spectator Magazine
"Spectator" - is it the house magazine of self-obsessed wankers?
Tell this fool SeanT that otters' fur is waterproof and their pockets are dry.
Probably too late for him to learn anything about women.
I don't think you understand what the term "otter's pocket" refers to.
Ok please educate me on how this simile works.
This is family friendly forum, especially with the OSA.
The phrase in question is "You can tell she’s wetter than an otter's pocket"
Victoria Derbyshire, "Do you think Yvette Cooper is lying?"
Sir Jonathan Porritt, former long term advisor to King Charles, who was one of 500 people arrested on Saturday,
"The Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre which is the government's own advisory body advised Yvette Cooper that there is no evidence whatsoever that Palestine Action has advocated violence against people"
"It has used violence against property"
"So when Yvette Cooper implies that Palestine Action has done violence to people, we know the Home Secretary is not revealing the whole truth"
Bit of a sh1t stirring description of Jonathan though.
He’s the founder (I think) of Friends of the Earth, and a high profile radical lefty (as well as one of those f*****g nutters from the Population Council.
Yes he’s a friend, adviser and cousin of King Charles, but that’s not his primary role and it’s misleading to highlight that
An interesting story that we may not have mentioned.
The founder of The Entertainer toyshop chain is transferring the business with 1900 employees to 100% employee ownership. He founded it in one shop in 1981. His family will get some dividends back later.
It's interesting to me because he is motivated in his philosophy by his born-again evangelical faith, but he seems to have kept an appropriate distance. It's not the kind of direct "God told me to" management of the business, more taking principles and values, concern for employees and so on - quite Quaker style. I'm far more comfortable with that than with the approach we see far too often in the USA.
This is the first one of these known to me since Scott-Bader Ltd decades ago, which is now the Scott-Bader Commonwealth. There they consciously took inspiration from the Quaker tradition. I'm sure thee are others.
Gary Grant opened his first shop with his wife Catherine in 1981 when he was 23. He's now 66, and his multi-million pound empire spans 160 shops across the UK.
He is transferring 100% ownership of the family-owned business to an employee trust which means staff will get a share of the profits and a say in how the firm is run.
Not to be totally cynical, but doing this is a super tax efficient way of cashing out from your business. He isn't just giving away his business.
Quite possibly - I have not seen any detailed figures; I guess the taxefficiency would depend on the level of dividend. But I applaud transferring the ownership to employees - and presumably he us making less than compared to a straight sell off done tax efficiently.
Does anyone know how the two routes compare financially?
Friend of mine gave his employees his fairly substantial electrical contracting business when he wanted to retire, and somehow ended up paying a small fortune in tax (CGT I think) to do so, but I'm not quite sure how* - I suspect he was badly advised.
My general experience is that giving a business to the staff is a dumb idea - they usually crash the thing through the floor in under 5 years (My friends business went this way!). IMHO a MBO at a favorable price to a carefully selected rising star or two in the business has more hope of success.
*I suspect he managed to crystalise the gain in his share values before he gave the shares away and thus became liable for CGT on them.
I think the idea of an employee trust work in some (limited circumstances). But it only works for a family business which already has some other purpose as part of its philosophy which you can see in the example of Richer Sounds (a company still going while the entire rest of the market has completely disappeared), the Entertainer and say Timpsons
What is definitely requires is vision and self-awareness. One could argue that those characteristics in spades are also good for a corporate.
We also see values-beyond-financial in things such as pro-bono work by professionals, and charity programmes - even eg Goldman's have a big one of those in sponsoring local schools, or more personally employees being given time off.
Much of that approach can be seen (iirc in the detail) in work such as the Tomorrow's Company project by the RSA back in 1993. I've met much thinking in a network of "world, not church" focused ministers called Industrial Chaplains, which goes back to the 1920s. Boots in Nottingham used to have a full time industrial chaplain (may still have - I am not in touch), and parts of his role were to challenge management around ethics, and to be a channel of feedback and a sounding board. Some of that role is now picked up by whistle blower services and employee counselling.
One of the reasons I'm quite interested in Miriam Cates is that she is from a background where I would expect her (imo) to see through the USA National Conservative set of values.
What shall we call the teams? Name some of them after cities, some after regions and some after cricket grounds. Name one of them after a river AND the ground. Oh, and one after the people of a nation. With snazzy adjuncts that represent nothing.
I'd name them the way I'd name London terminals.
Waterloo, Agincourt, Trafalgar, Mers-el-Kébir, etc.
Id go for cultured names The Otters Pockets The Wizards Sleeves etc
The Otter's Pocket? You do know who invented this phrase?
"It was the late 1990s and FHM was peaking. At its best, the magazine sold nearly a million copies a month. We were carefully producing the first-ever list of The 100 Sexiest Women in the World (which became an annual standard). My job was to write the captions. One hundred pithy, smutty, funny lines beneath a hundred photos of impossibly attractive women.
Sounds easy? You try it – without using ChatGPT. Try writing a hundred unique ways of saying ‘she’s hot’ without repeating yourself or getting sacked. Around no. 34, I was delirious. Around no. 50, the editor physically locked me in his office and refused to let me out until the job was done.
Then, somewhere around no. 73, I hit a wall. I was staring at a Danish starlet with smoky eyes and a definite air of sexual availability, of ‘come hither’ and ‘I’m ready’. Falteringly, I typed: ‘You can tell she’s wetter than…’ And there I stopped. Wetter than what? Heavy rain? Dublin in December?
Then came the lightning bolt: ‘Wetter than an otter’s pocket.’ There it was: a perfect smutty phrase. Rude, but somehow innocent. Suggestive, but oddly poetic. It had internal rhyme and a ribald hint of biology. What does an otter keep in his pocket? His lunch. Work it out.
Then, years later, something odd happened. I started hearing my phrase. From a football pundit describing an Anfield pitch. Then a weather girl. Some bloke on local radio. Then it cropped up on pub signs, in band names, in poems. Even, to my alarm, in the title of a Penguin children’s book (er, guys).
Curious, I contacted the editors of Viz’s Profanisaurus, keepers of the English language’s smuttiest corners. Had I pinched it unconsciously? ‘We can find no earlier usage,’ they graciously replied. ‘Looks like it’s yours.’
It’s not much of a literary legacy, I’ll admit."
Someone has flagged this, presumably out of annoyance at me not naming the culprit. It's ex-PBer, @SeanT - he invented the phrase "wetter than an otter's pocket". This is from a recent column in the Spectator Magazine
"Spectator" - is it the house magazine of self-obsessed wankers?
Tell this fool SeanT that otters' fur is waterproof and their pockets are dry.
Probably too late for him to learn anything about women.
I don't think you understand what the term "otter's pocket" refers to.
Ok please educate me on how this simile works.
This is family friendly forum, especially with the OSA.
The phrase in question is "You can tell she’s wetter than an otter's pocket"
Which is in fact a very dry thing? Wouldn’t be surprised if this was in fact accurate in respect of several PBers and their effect on women.
Victoria Derbyshire, "Do you think Yvette Cooper is lying?"
Sir Jonathan Porritt, former long term advisor to King Charles, who was one of 500 people arrested on Saturday,
"The Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre which is the government's own advisory body advised Yvette Cooper that there is no evidence whatsoever that Palestine Action has advocated violence against people"
"It has used violence against property"
"So when Yvette Cooper implies that Palestine Action has done violence to people, we know the Home Secretary is not revealing the whole truth"
Bit of a sh1t stirring description of Jonathan though.
He’s the founder (I think) of Friends of the Earth, and a high profile radical lefty (as well as one of those f*****g nutters from the Population Council.
Yes he’s a friend, adviser and cousin of King Charles, but that’s not his primary role and it’s misleading to highlight that
Edit : old Etonian as well i think
Not quite a founder of FoE, but prominent in the Ecology Party before it became the Green Party in the 1970s. He was one of their 4 "Speakers" when they tried a semi-collective leadership (remember Sara Parkin?). He also tried to bridge to the corporate / business / government world via a setup called Forum for the Future.
What shall we call the teams? Name some of them after cities, some after regions and some after cricket grounds. Name one of them after a river AND the ground. Oh, and one after the people of a nation. With snazzy adjuncts that represent nothing.
I'd name them the way I'd name London terminals.
Waterloo, Agincourt, Trafalgar, Mers-el-Kébir, etc.
Id go for cultured names The Otters Pockets The Wizards Sleeves etc
The Otter's Pocket? You do know who invented this phrase?
"It was the late 1990s and FHM was peaking. At its best, the magazine sold nearly a million copies a month. We were carefully producing the first-ever list of The 100 Sexiest Women in the World (which became an annual standard). My job was to write the captions. One hundred pithy, smutty, funny lines beneath a hundred photos of impossibly attractive women.
Sounds easy? You try it – without using ChatGPT. Try writing a hundred unique ways of saying ‘she’s hot’ without repeating yourself or getting sacked. Around no. 34, I was delirious. Around no. 50, the editor physically locked me in his office and refused to let me out until the job was done.
Then, somewhere around no. 73, I hit a wall. I was staring at a Danish starlet with smoky eyes and a definite air of sexual availability, of ‘come hither’ and ‘I’m ready’. Falteringly, I typed: ‘You can tell she’s wetter than…’ And there I stopped. Wetter than what? Heavy rain? Dublin in December?
Then came the lightning bolt: ‘Wetter than an otter’s pocket.’ There it was: a perfect smutty phrase. Rude, but somehow innocent. Suggestive, but oddly poetic. It had internal rhyme and a ribald hint of biology. What does an otter keep in his pocket? His lunch. Work it out.
Then, years later, something odd happened. I started hearing my phrase. From a football pundit describing an Anfield pitch. Then a weather girl. Some bloke on local radio. Then it cropped up on pub signs, in band names, in poems. Even, to my alarm, in the title of a Penguin children’s book (er, guys).
Curious, I contacted the editors of Viz’s Profanisaurus, keepers of the English language’s smuttiest corners. Had I pinched it unconsciously? ‘We can find no earlier usage,’ they graciously replied. ‘Looks like it’s yours.’
It’s not much of a literary legacy, I’ll admit."
Someone has flagged this, presumably out of annoyance at me not naming the culprit. It's ex-PBer, @SeanT - he invented the phrase "wetter than an otter's pocket". This is from a recent column in the Spectator Magazine
"Spectator" - is it the house magazine of self-obsessed wankers?
Tell this fool SeanT that otters' fur is waterproof and their pockets are dry.
Probably too late for him to learn anything about women.
I don't think you understand what the term "otter's pocket" refers to.
Ok please educate me on how this simile works.
This is family friendly forum, especially with the OSA.
The phrase in question is "You can tell she’s wetter than an otter's pocket"
Which is in fact a very dry thing? Wouldn’t be surprised if this was in fact accurate in respect of several PBers and their effect on women.
What shall we call the teams? Name some of them after cities, some after regions and some after cricket grounds. Name one of them after a river AND the ground. Oh, and one after the people of a nation. With snazzy adjuncts that represent nothing.
I'd name them the way I'd name London terminals.
Waterloo, Agincourt, Trafalgar, Mers-el-Kébir, etc.
Id go for cultured names The Otters Pockets The Wizards Sleeves etc
The Otter's Pocket? You do know who invented this phrase?
"It was the late 1990s and FHM was peaking. At its best, the magazine sold nearly a million copies a month. We were carefully producing the first-ever list of The 100 Sexiest Women in the World (which became an annual standard). My job was to write the captions. One hundred pithy, smutty, funny lines beneath a hundred photos of impossibly attractive women.
Sounds easy? You try it – without using ChatGPT. Try writing a hundred unique ways of saying ‘she’s hot’ without repeating yourself or getting sacked. Around no. 34, I was delirious. Around no. 50, the editor physically locked me in his office and refused to let me out until the job was done.
Then, somewhere around no. 73, I hit a wall. I was staring at a Danish starlet with smoky eyes and a definite air of sexual availability, of ‘come hither’ and ‘I’m ready’. Falteringly, I typed: ‘You can tell she’s wetter than…’ And there I stopped. Wetter than what? Heavy rain? Dublin in December?
Then came the lightning bolt: ‘Wetter than an otter’s pocket.’ There it was: a perfect smutty phrase. Rude, but somehow innocent. Suggestive, but oddly poetic. It had internal rhyme and a ribald hint of biology. What does an otter keep in his pocket? His lunch. Work it out.
Then, years later, something odd happened. I started hearing my phrase. From a football pundit describing an Anfield pitch. Then a weather girl. Some bloke on local radio. Then it cropped up on pub signs, in band names, in poems. Even, to my alarm, in the title of a Penguin children’s book (er, guys).
Curious, I contacted the editors of Viz’s Profanisaurus, keepers of the English language’s smuttiest corners. Had I pinched it unconsciously? ‘We can find no earlier usage,’ they graciously replied. ‘Looks like it’s yours.’
It’s not much of a literary legacy, I’ll admit."
Someone has flagged this, presumably out of annoyance at me not naming the culprit. It's ex-PBer, @SeanT - he invented the phrase "wetter than an otter's pocket". This is from a recent column in the Spectator Magazine
"Spectator" - is it the house magazine of self-obsessed wankers?
Tell this fool SeanT that otters' fur is waterproof and their pockets are dry.
Probably too late for him to learn anything about women.
Sounds good but isn't actually true?
Plenty of columnists have built careers out of that.
Victoria Derbyshire, "Do you think Yvette Cooper is lying?"
Sir Jonathan Porritt, former long term advisor to King Charles, who was one of 500 people arrested on Saturday,
"The Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre which is the government's own advisory body advised Yvette Cooper that there is no evidence whatsoever that Palestine Action has advocated violence against people"
"It has used violence against property"
"So when Yvette Cooper implies that Palestine Action has done violence to people, we know the Home Secretary is not revealing the whole truth"
Apart from the above and similar events which may not be public yet - sub judice, charges not brought etc - there could be a dual headed nature to this.
That is, some sort of basically violence-willing inner (or entryist) group, with a penumbra of 'peaceful activists', who may be perhaps be also termed "useful idiots". It's quite possible that public figures could form part of such a penumbra, or otherwise prioritising the cause so much that they are willing to turn a blind eye to the activities of their fellow campaigners. That could be explicit or varied version of vanguardism.
That's consistently been an SWP pattern, for example - where one orientation is to use a fluffy cause to attack the way society is organised. That's one reason I never trust Unite Against Fascism, Stop the War, or Stand Up to Racism without a careful look - they all have such a history.
Another contemporary example is our various (choose your word) "right", where the aim is to present "local families concerned about protecting our girls", but there's a hard line core of Tommy Robinson and similars willing to attack police, counter demonstrators etc, with an overlap formed by eg Homeland Party councillors. We have seen the same "concerned locals" in different places claiming the same thing.
Not commenting on causes there, but on organisation.
I think that this may in part be another Government Comms cockup.
Reflecting a little further, the double headed approach could be deliberate strategy.
And one previous "peaceful" protest group which tipped over into terrorism was SHAC - Stop Huntingdon Life Science, and that was because (imo) at core the philosophy of animal equality to human beings, and the willingness to use violence to campaign for is deeply flawed. The centrist dad approach of being pragmatic in permitting but seeking to minimise animal experimentation is far more rational.
It seems plain enough to me that Palestine Action is a terrorist organisation.
Victoria Derbyshire, "Do you think Yvette Cooper is lying?"
Sir Jonathan Porritt, former long term advisor to King Charles, who was one of 500 people arrested on Saturday,
"The Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre which is the government's own advisory body advised Yvette Cooper that there is no evidence whatsoever that Palestine Action has advocated violence against people"
"It has used violence against property"
"So when Yvette Cooper implies that Palestine Action has done violence to people, we know the Home Secretary is not revealing the whole truth"
Apart from the above and similar events which may not be public yet - sub judice, charges not brought etc - there could be a dual headed nature to this.
That is, some sort of basically violence-willing inner (or entryist) group, with a penumbra of 'peaceful activists', who may be perhaps be also termed "useful idiots". It's quite possible that public figures could form part of such a penumbra, or otherwise prioritising the cause so much that they are willing to turn a blind eye to the activities of their fellow campaigners. That could be explicit or varied version of vanguardism.
That's consistently been an SWP pattern, for example - where one orientation is to use a fluffy cause to attack the way society is organised. That's one reason I never trust Unite Against Fascism, Stop the War, or Stand Up to Racism without a careful look - they all have such a history.
Another contemporary example is our various (choose your word) "right", where the aim is to present "local families concerned about protecting our girls", but there's a hard line core of Tommy Robinson and similars willing to attack police, counter demonstrators etc, with an overlap formed by eg Homeland Party councillors. We have seen the same "concerned locals" in different places claiming the same thing.
Not commenting on causes there, but on organisation.
I think that this may in part be another Government Comms cockup.
Reflecting a little further, the double headed approach could be deliberate strategy.
And one previous "peaceful" protest group which tipped over into terrorism was SHAC - Stop Huntingdon Life Science, and that was because (imo) at core the philosophy of animal equality to human beings, and the willingness to use violence to campaign for is deeply flawed. The centrist dad approach of being pragmatic in permitting but seeking to minimise animal experimentation is far more rational.
It seems plain enough to me that Palestine Action is a terrorist organisation.
It’s proscription is justified.
It's CND: The Next Generation
Is that boldly going where no mushroom has gone before?
What a ghastly racist country Israel has become. The news footage on Ch4 is heart breaking. The five murdered journalists look as genuine as any you are likely to see. His viewing figures are huge. There are 140 million Arab speakers world wide who watch him.
But who would believe Netanyahu and his rabid racist country anyway.
The IDF knew exactly where they were based and murdered them for publicising the deliberate famine and associated ""Hunger Games" killings.
Yet our government can't understand why so many support Palestine Action.
Is there anything Hamas could say that you wouldn't believe?
Why have Israel banned journalists from entering Gaza? What have they got to hide?
They don't want to have to rescue more hostages
There's only one thing to be done.
Recognise the West Bank as a sovereign Palestinian State, withdraw all support for Israel to settle it, get the settlers out, evacuate the Gazans there, and just give Gaza to Israel.
Short of killing every Palestinian abroad as well as in Gaza and the West Bank Israel is just creating a diaspora wanting to return to their ancestral lands. Surely Jews should understand that? After all their own diaspora kept that desire for 20 centuries. Why should the Palestinians feel differently?
The Jewish diaspora longing for a homeland was partly political in the twentieth century (it wasn’t really mainstream before that) but also because of their exclusion from western society. I suspect Palestinians would be assimilated over time - at least into a broader Arab/Islamic group in the West
Yes, ethnic cleansing sometimes achieves its goals. The Armenians and the Circassians, the Cherokee and the Muscogee, aren't getting their land back. But you do get, don't you, that it's still wrong, a crime against humanity?
Of course it’s wrong. I just don’t see a two state solution working in practical terms.
I strongly believe in the heartland theory of geopolitics.
The problem in Israel/Palestine is that there are too many people fighting over too little territory and unwilling to compromise.
I’m not sure I see a stable solution for many years to come
A two state solution is like a soft Brexit: neither side want it, they both want to win outright.
Victoria Derbyshire, "Do you think Yvette Cooper is lying?"
Sir Jonathan Porritt, former long term advisor to King Charles, who was one of 500 people arrested on Saturday,
"The Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre which is the government's own advisory body advised Yvette Cooper that there is no evidence whatsoever that Palestine Action has advocated violence against people"
"It has used violence against property"
"So when Yvette Cooper implies that Palestine Action has done violence to people, we know the Home Secretary is not revealing the whole truth"
Apart from the above and similar events which may not be public yet - sub judice, charges not brought etc - there could be a dual headed nature to this.
That is, some sort of basically violence-willing inner (or entryist) group, with a penumbra of 'peaceful activists', who may be perhaps be also termed "useful idiots". It's quite possible that public figures could form part of such a penumbra, or otherwise prioritising the cause so much that they are willing to turn a blind eye to the activities of their fellow campaigners. That could be explicit or varied version of vanguardism.
That's consistently been an SWP pattern, for example - where one orientation is to use a fluffy cause to attack the way society is organised. That's one reason I never trust Unite Against Fascism, Stop the War, or Stand Up to Racism without a careful look - they all have such a history.
Another contemporary example is our various (choose your word) "right", where the aim is to present "local families concerned about protecting our girls", but there's a hard line core of Tommy Robinson and similars willing to attack police, counter demonstrators etc, with an overlap formed by eg Homeland Party councillors. We have seen the same "concerned locals" in different places claiming the same thing.
Not commenting on causes there, but on organisation.
I think that this may in part be another Government Comms cockup.
Reflecting a little further, the double headed approach could be deliberate strategy.
And one previous "peaceful" protest group which tipped over into terrorism was SHAC - Stop Huntingdon Life Science, and that was because (imo) at core the philosophy of animal equality to human beings, and the willingness to use violence to campaign for is deeply flawed. The centrist dad approach of being pragmatic in permitting but seeking to minimise animal experimentation is far more rational.
It seems plain enough to me that Palestine Action is a terrorist organisation.
It’s proscription is justified.
It's CND: The Next Generation
Given the age of loads of those involved in JSO, PA, etc....just as much CND: The Past It Generation....
Victoria Derbyshire, "Do you think Yvette Cooper is lying?"
Sir Jonathan Porritt, former long term advisor to King Charles, who was one of 500 people arrested on Saturday,
"The Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre which is the government's own advisory body advised Yvette Cooper that there is no evidence whatsoever that Palestine Action has advocated violence against people"
"It has used violence against property"
"So when Yvette Cooper implies that Palestine Action has done violence to people, we know the Home Secretary is not revealing the whole truth"
Apart from the above and similar events which may not be public yet - sub judice, charges not brought etc - there could be a dual headed nature to this.
That is, some sort of basically violence-willing inner (or entryist) group, with a penumbra of 'peaceful activists', who may be perhaps be also termed "useful idiots". It's quite possible that public figures could form part of such a penumbra, or otherwise prioritising the cause so much that they are willing to turn a blind eye to the activities of their fellow campaigners. That could be explicit or varied version of vanguardism.
That's consistently been an SWP pattern, for example - where one orientation is to use a fluffy cause to attack the way society is organised. That's one reason I never trust Unite Against Fascism, Stop the War, or Stand Up to Racism without a careful look - they all have such a history.
Another contemporary example is our various (choose your word) "right", where the aim is to present "local families concerned about protecting our girls", but there's a hard line core of Tommy Robinson and similars willing to attack police, counter demonstrators etc, with an overlap formed by eg Homeland Party councillors. We have seen the same "concerned locals" in different places claiming the same thing.
Not commenting on causes there, but on organisation.
I think that this may in part be another Government Comms cockup.
Reflecting a little further, the double headed approach could be deliberate strategy.
And one previous "peaceful" protest group which tipped over into terrorism was SHAC - Stop Huntingdon Life Science, and that was because (imo) at core the philosophy of animal equality to human beings, and the willingness to use violence to campaign for is deeply flawed. The centrist dad approach of being pragmatic in permitting but seeking to minimise animal experimentation is far more rational.
It seems plain enough to me that Palestine Action is a terrorist organisation.
It’s proscription is justified.
It's CND: The Next Generation
Which led to this interesting letter in the Times from the retired base commander at Greenham Common back then.
Victoria Derbyshire, "Do you think Yvette Cooper is lying?"
Sir Jonathan Porritt, former long term advisor to King Charles, who was one of 500 people arrested on Saturday,
"The Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre which is the government's own advisory body advised Yvette Cooper that there is no evidence whatsoever that Palestine Action has advocated violence against people"
"It has used violence against property"
"So when Yvette Cooper implies that Palestine Action has done violence to people, we know the Home Secretary is not revealing the whole truth"
Apart from the above and similar events which may not be public yet - sub judice, charges not brought etc - there could be a dual headed nature to this.
That is, some sort of basically violence-willing inner (or entryist) group, with a penumbra of 'peaceful activists', who may be perhaps be also termed "useful idiots". It's quite possible that public figures could form part of such a penumbra, or otherwise prioritising the cause so much that they are willing to turn a blind eye to the activities of their fellow campaigners. That could be explicit or varied version of vanguardism.
That's consistently been an SWP pattern, for example - where one orientation is to use a fluffy cause to attack the way society is organised. That's one reason I never trust Unite Against Fascism, Stop the War, or Stand Up to Racism without a careful look - they all have such a history.
Another contemporary example is our various (choose your word) "right", where the aim is to present "local families concerned about protecting our girls", but there's a hard line core of Tommy Robinson and similars willing to attack police, counter demonstrators etc, with an overlap formed by eg Homeland Party councillors. We have seen the same "concerned locals" in different places claiming the same thing.
Not commenting on causes there, but on organisation.
I think that this may in part be another Government Comms cockup.
Reflecting a little further, the double headed approach could be deliberate strategy.
And one previous "peaceful" protest group which tipped over into terrorism was SHAC - Stop Huntingdon Life Science, and that was because (imo) at core the philosophy of animal equality to human beings, and the willingness to use violence to campaign for is deeply flawed. The centrist dad approach of being pragmatic in permitting but seeking to minimise animal experimentation is far more rational.
It seems plain enough to me that Palestine Action is a terrorist organisation.
It’s proscription is justified.
It's CND: The Next Generation
Does that mean that with today's laws wearing a CND badge could get you 14 years in prison?
The US and China have extended their trade truce until 10 November, just hours before the world's two biggest economies were set to hike tariffs on each other. The higher tariffs will be suspended for another 90 days, Beijing and Washington said in a joint statement.
The US and China have extended their trade truce until 10 November, just hours before the world's two biggest economies were set to hike tariffs on each other. The higher tariffs will be suspended for another 90 days, Beijing and Washington said in a joint statement.
The US and China have extended their trade truce until 10 November, just hours before the world's two biggest economies were set to hike tariffs on each other. The higher tariffs will be suspended for another 90 days, Beijing and Washington said in a joint statement.
The US and China have extended their trade truce until 10 November, just hours before the world's two biggest economies were set to hike tariffs on each other. The higher tariffs will be suspended for another 90 days, Beijing and Washington said in a joint statement.
F1: it's the moment that some of you have been moderately interested in, the summer break podcast, looking at the standings, and how my (many) predictions are stacking up.
The US and China have extended their trade truce until 10 November, just hours before the world's two biggest economies were set to hike tariffs on each other. The higher tariffs will be suspended for another 90 days, Beijing and Washington said in a joint statement.
The US and China have extended their trade truce until 10 November, just hours before the world's two biggest economies were set to hike tariffs on each other. The higher tariffs will be suspended for another 90 days, Beijing and Washington said in a joint statement.
The US and China have extended their trade truce until 10 November, just hours before the world's two biggest economies were set to hike tariffs on each other. The higher tariffs will be suspended for another 90 days, Beijing and Washington said in a joint statement.
The US and China have extended their trade truce until 10 November, just hours before the world's two biggest economies were set to hike tariffs on each other. The higher tariffs will be suspended for another 90 days, Beijing and Washington said in a joint statement.
Trump's nominee for BLS commissioner, EJ Antoni, is disastrously terrible. He's a 1200%, 1300% maybe 1400% in-the-tank Trumper, with few credentials beyond a long history of misrepresenting or misunderstanding basic economic statistics. He has demonstrated no commitment to truth. https://x.com/JustinWolfers/status/1955046310098153808
An interesting story that we may not have mentioned.
The founder of The Entertainer toyshop chain is transferring the business with 1900 employees to 100% employee ownership. He founded it in one shop in 1981. His family will get some dividends back later.
It's interesting to me because he is motivated in his philosophy by his born-again evangelical faith, but he seems to have kept an appropriate distance. It's not the kind of direct "God told me to" management of the business, more taking principles and values, concern for employees and so on - quite Quaker style. I'm far more comfortable with that than with the approach we see far too often in the USA.
This is the first one of these known to me since Scott-Bader Ltd decades ago, which is now the Scott-Bader Commonwealth. There they consciously took inspiration from the Quaker tradition. I'm sure thee are others.
Gary Grant opened his first shop with his wife Catherine in 1981 when he was 23. He's now 66, and his multi-million pound empire spans 160 shops across the UK.
He is transferring 100% ownership of the family-owned business to an employee trust which means staff will get a share of the profits and a say in how the firm is run.
Not to be totally cynical, but doing this is a super tax efficient way of cashing out from your business. He isn't just giving away his business.
Quite possibly - I have not seen any detailed figures; I guess the taxefficiency would depend on the level of dividend. But I applaud transferring the ownership to employees - and presumably he us making less than compared to a straight sell off done tax efficiently.
Does anyone know how the two routes compare financially?
Friend of mine gave his employees his fairly substantial electrical contracting business when he wanted to retire, and somehow ended up paying a small fortune in tax (CGT I think) to do so, but I'm not quite sure how* - I suspect he was badly advised.
My general experience is that giving a business to the staff is a dumb idea - they usually crash the thing through the floor in under 5 years (My friends business went this way!). IMHO a MBO at a favorable price to a carefully selected rising star or two in the business has more hope of success.
*I suspect he managed to crystalise the gain in his share values before he gave the shares away and thus became liable for CGT on them.
I think the idea of an employee trust work in some (limited circumstances). But it only works for a family business which already has some other purpose as part of its philosophy which you can see in the example of Richer Sounds (a company still going while the entire rest of the market has completely disappeared), the Entertainer and say Timpsons
What is definitely requires is vision and self-awareness. One could argue that those characteristics in spades are also good for a corporate.
We also see values-beyond-financial in things such as pro-bono work by professionals, and charity programmes - even eg Goldman's have a big one of those in sponsoring local schools, or more personally employees being given time off.
Much of that approach can be seen (iirc in the detail) in work such as the Tomorrow's Company project by the RSA back in 1993. I've met much thinking in a network of "world, not church" focused ministers called Industrial Chaplains, which goes back to the 1920s. Boots in Nottingham used to have a full time industrial chaplain (may still have - I am not in touch), and parts of his role were to challenge management around ethics, and to be a channel of feedback and a sounding board. Some of that role is now picked up by whistle blower services and employee counselling.
One of the reasons I'm quite interested in Miriam Cates is that she is from a background where I would expect her (imo) to see through the USA National Conservative set of values.
On the owner falling foul of CGT issue, that sounded odd, and indeed:
"In order to encourage companies to transition to employee ownership (using an employee ownership trust), favourable tax reliefs were introduced in 2014.
These reliefs allow individuals who dispose of shares in a trading company (or the parent company of a trading group) to the trustee(s) of an employee ownership trust to benefit from 100% capital gains tax relief on the disposal."
But there are rules to follow so perhaps he was indeed badly advised ...
Trump's nominee for BLS commissioner, EJ Antoni, is disastrously terrible. He's a 1200%, 1300% maybe 1400% in-the-tank Trumper, with few credentials beyond a long history of misrepresenting or misunderstanding basic economic statistics. He has demonstrated no commitment to truth. https://x.com/JustinWolfers/status/1955046310098153808
He can say what he wants but people will believe what they want:
Nearly three in five Americans wrongly believe the US is in an economic recession, and the majority blame the Biden administration, according to a Harris poll conducted exclusively for the Guardian. The survey found persistent pessimism about the economy as election day draws closer.
The poll highlighted many misconceptions people have about the economy, including:
55% believe the economy is shrinking, and 56% think the US is experiencing a recession, though the broadest measure of the economy, gross domestic product (GDP), has been growing.
49% believe the S&P 500 stock market index is down for the year, though the index went up about 24% in 2023 and is up more than 12% this year.
49% believe that unemployment is at a 50-year high, though the unemployment rate has been under 4%, a near 50-year low.
The US and China have extended their trade truce until 10 November, just hours before the world's two biggest economies were set to hike tariffs on each other. The higher tariffs will be suspended for another 90 days, Beijing and Washington said in a joint statement.
Trump's nominee for BLS commissioner, EJ Antoni, is disastrously terrible. He's a 1200%, 1300% maybe 1400% in-the-tank Trumper, with few credentials beyond a long history of misrepresenting or misunderstanding basic economic statistics. He has demonstrated no commitment to truth. https://x.com/JustinWolfers/status/1955046310098153808
If Trump doesn't hire him, his willingness to misrepresent economic statistics and gaslight generally mean that Reeves or Starmer would probably be interested.
The US and China have extended their trade truce until 10 November, just hours before the world's two biggest economies were set to hike tariffs on each other. The higher tariffs will be suspended for another 90 days, Beijing and Washington said in a joint statement.
(I still say he should be served lemon chicken when he comes for that state visit. He may not get the reference but everyone else will.)
Trump always chickens out AGAINST THE STRONG.
Trump didn't chicken out against the EU.
Perhaps European countries need to consider how they've got themselves into the current predicament.
He has chickened out against Russia as well though.
Trump thinks Russia is strong - he has a 1980s mentality.
But he doesn't think Europe is strong.
And he's right - Europe isn't strong.
What, you mean despite the demented screeching of Brexiteers the EU hasn’t turned itself into a repressive unitary super state?
No, it means that the EU has to crawl to Trump because of its economic and defence position.
If Europe was stronger economically, if Europe was stronger militarily then it could tell Trump to get fcked and laugh at him.
Instead Europe chose to laugh at Trump without the strength to back itself up.
And has now been humiliated.
Great to see a convert to the EU army NOW! cause.
European countries can each strengthen their own militaries by their own choice.
An EU military would be a job creation scheme for generals and bureaucrats and its use dependent upon the agreement of Ireland, of Austria, of Hungary, of Slovakia.
Victoria Derbyshire, "Do you think Yvette Cooper is lying?"
Sir Jonathan Porritt, former long term advisor to King Charles, who was one of 500 people arrested on Saturday,
"The Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre which is the government's own advisory body advised Yvette Cooper that there is no evidence whatsoever that Palestine Action has advocated violence against people"
"It has used violence against property"
"So when Yvette Cooper implies that Palestine Action has done violence to people, we know the Home Secretary is not revealing the whole truth"
Apart from the above and similar events which may not be public yet - sub judice, charges not brought etc - there could be a dual headed nature to this.
That is, some sort of basically violence-willing inner (or entryist) group, with a penumbra of 'peaceful activists', who may be perhaps be also termed "useful idiots". It's quite possible that public figures could form part of such a penumbra, or otherwise prioritising the cause so much that they are willing to turn a blind eye to the activities of their fellow campaigners. That could be explicit or varied version of vanguardism.
That's consistently been an SWP pattern, for example - where one orientation is to use a fluffy cause to attack the way society is organised. That's one reason I never trust Unite Against Fascism, Stop the War, or Stand Up to Racism without a careful look - they all have such a history.
Another contemporary example is our various (choose your word) "right", where the aim is to present "local families concerned about protecting our girls", but there's a hard line core of Tommy Robinson and similars willing to attack police, counter demonstrators etc, with an overlap formed by eg Homeland Party councillors. We have seen the same "concerned locals" in different places claiming the same thing.
Not commenting on causes there, but on organisation.
I think that this may in part be another Government Comms cockup.
Reflecting a little further, the double headed approach could be deliberate strategy.
And one previous "peaceful" protest group which tipped over into terrorism was SHAC - Stop Huntingdon Life Science, and that was because (imo) at core the philosophy of animal equality to human beings, and the willingness to use violence to campaign for is deeply flawed. The centrist dad approach of being pragmatic in permitting but seeking to minimise animal experimentation is far more rational.
It seems plain enough to me that Palestine Action is a terrorist organisation.
It’s proscription is justified.
It's CND: The Next Generation
Which led to this interesting letter in the Times from the retired base commander at Greenham Common back then.
On the letter itself. It is interesting that it portrays a robust but layered attitude to security. Along other things, the protestors were aware that the actual aircraft and weapons at Greenham would have been defended with deadly force.
What we are seeing is an intersection of legalism and accession to the words of “Human Rights” with a very authoritarian attitude.
To such people the idea of threatening deadly force to protect a military installation would be a “Human Rights” violation. But proscribing an organisation as terrorist is to say that The Forms Must Be Obeyed*. And therefore isn’t a “Human Rights” violation.
At the very beginning of New Labour, they used obscure Royal Parks laws from medieval times to arrest people politely holding up signs saying “Remember Tibet”, on the occasion of the Chinese President visiting.
Later, people wearing T-Shirts saying “Bollocks to Blair” were threatened with arrest.
A range of utterly peaceful protest organisation were heavily infiltrated by the police. At the same time the Death To The West crowd were escalating toward 7/7 unhindered. These infiltrations were carried out illegally and resulted in the police themselves committing various offences. The subsequent court cases are still working through the courts.
An example - Fathers For Justice. Due to the pendulum in family courts swing too far, courts were refusing to enforce judgements on the mothers in such cases, but were enforcing them on the men. The theory being that the women were now Single Mothers and deserved protection. So divorced men saw a situation where they were paying child support etc to the point of literally having no money left - and then being denied the court proscribed visitation to their children.
FFJ was about demanding that court orders be enforced. Their protests consisted of people dressing up in silly costumes and climbing up on things. Not even damage. In the end, a police infiltrator tried to turn the organisation violent - the actual protestors disbanded in horror at the idea.
I think we have a confluence of a kind of morally bankrupt legalism and an ingrained belief that all protest against a “left wing” government is illegitimate.
At the time of the Tibet/Royal Parks thing I coined the term The Lawyers Syllogism
1) the laws says that something is legal 2) therefore it must be done 3) any opposition to doing it is an attack on the law and immoral.
(Apologies to the writers of Yes Minister)
I came up with that, after speaking to some lawyers on the edges of that decision. They offered a justification for the governments actions that was nearly exactly the above.
*in the series Dune, the phrase The Forms Must Be Obeyed is placed at the front of each law. Which laws are a system of deliberate feudalism - the people are literally serfs. For their own good, apparently
Comments
And: Why compare with Belfast? Belfast was never lost. It was always part of the UK after 1801.
Now Belfast is British and Sopron is Hungarian.
But Britain lost most of Ireland and Hungary lost most of Burgenland.
Indeed it is the Hungarian diaspora vote in places like Romania, Serbia and Slovakia that keeps Orban in power.
*apart from Russia obviously!
Here's my favourite Yankee-Doodle shipping Youtuber reporting on the five Chinese icebreakers which are skirting the USA's EEZ around Alaska. He makes a decent fist of it.
https://youtu.be/PA8qADVWIC0?t=210
Sir Jonathan Porritt, former long term advisor to King Charles, who was one of 500 people arrested on Saturday,
"The Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre which is the government's own advisory body advised Yvette Cooper that there is no evidence whatsoever that Palestine Action has advocated violence against people"
"It has used violence against property"
"So when Yvette Cooper implies that Palestine Action has done violence to people, we know the Home Secretary is not revealing the whole truth"
https://x.com/implausibleblog/status/1955029443946123537
Do police officers who were attacked with sledge hammers not count?
A police officer was taken to hospital after being hit with a sledgehammer while responding to reports of criminal damage.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0mnnje4wlro
They may have never publicly advocated it, but some of there members have carried it out.
It's obviously a carefully-worded non-denial denial
Cooper said the decision followed “strong security advice” and an assessment from JTAC that the group “prepares for terrorism”. She cited “concerning information referencing plans and ideas for further attacks”, but said the details could not be revealed publicly because of ongoing legal proceedings. “Many people may not yet know the reality of this organisation,” the Home Secretary added.
The Prime Minister’s spokesman added that proscription followed an “assessment from the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre that concludes that Palestine Action has committed three separate acts of terrorism”.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/08/11/why-palestine-action-was-proscribed-as-a-terror-group/
“We’ve said that many people may not yet know the reality of this organisation, but the assessments are very clear: this is a violent organisation that has committed violence, significant injury and extensive criminal damage,” Sir Keir Starmer’s spokesman said.
https://www.westerntelegraph.co.uk/news/national/25381119.palestine-action-committed-violence-significant-injury-no-10-says/
I still think that verbally offering support to a terrorist organisation should be regarded as freedom of speech. On the other hand, offering g practical support to Isis is treason and should be prosecuted as such.
Terrorism is in the eye of the beholder. If a Ukrainian threw a bandera smoothie through the window of the Russian embassy I would applaud them. Trying to overthrow the Iranian government would be entirely reasonable in my view. Yet Israeli actions against Gaza can never be terrorism as they are a state actor.
Wikipedia loses High Court challenge against UK Government: https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/society-equity/wikipedia-operator-loses-court-challenge-uk-online-safety-act-regulations-2025-08-11/
My general experience is that giving a business to the staff is a dumb idea - they usually crash the thing through the floor in under 5 years (My friends business went this way!). IMHO a MBO at a favorable price to a carefully selected rising star or two in the business has more hope of success.
*I suspect he managed to crystalise the gain in his share values before he gave the shares away and thus became liable for CGT on them.
Staff at the UK's national institute for artificial intelligence (AI) have warned the charity is at risk of collapse, after Technology Secretary Peter Kyle threatened to withdraw its funding.
Workers at the Alan Turing Institute raised a series of "serious and escalating concerns" in a whistleblowing complaint submitted to the Charity Commission.
The complaint, seen by the BBC, accuses the institute's leadership of misusing public funds, overseeing a "toxic internal culture", and failing to deliver on the charity's mission.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c24zz2vdv51o
What we gained from being in charge of many of these places is of course more doubtful.
That is, some sort of basically violence-willing inner (or entryist) group, with a penumbra of 'peaceful activists', who may be perhaps be also termed "useful idiots". It's quite possible that public figures could form part of such a penumbra, or otherwise prioritising the cause so much that they are willing to turn a blind eye to the activities of their fellow campaigners. That could be explicit or varied version of vanguardism.
That's consistently been an SWP pattern, for example - where one orientation is to use a fluffy cause to attack the way society is organised. That's one reason I never trust Unite Against Fascism, Stop the War, or Stand Up to Racism without a careful look - they all have such a history.
Another contemporary example is our various (choose your word) "right", where the aim is to present "local families concerned about protecting our girls", but there's a hard line core of Tommy Robinson and similars willing to attack police, counter demonstrators etc, with an overlap formed by eg Homeland Party councillors. We have seen the same "concerned locals" in different places claiming the same thing.
Not commenting on causes there, but on organisation.
I think that this may in part be another Government Comms cockup.
And one previous "peaceful" protest group which tipped over into terrorism was SHAC - Stop Huntingdon Life Science, and that was because (imo) at core the philosophy of animal equality to human beings, and the willingness to use violence to campaign for is deeply flawed. The centrist dad approach of being pragmatic in permitting but seeking to minimise animal experimentation is far more rational.
It’s proscription is justified.
I think it is why Tommy Robinson has tried his rebrand (until his incident as St Pancras) as the numbers of people who are willing to attend rallies that regularly get tasty is quite small. Not good for the sun lounger fund.
So technically Britain did lose Belfast for a month.
We have examples - John Lewis has existed since the 1920s, and the Scott Bader Commonwealth since 1951, and both are still going. There's space for many types of organisations. In my thinking I see them as historical witnesses showing that pure market capitalism not being the only sustainable option. So we have a whole zoo of different ways to incorporate. These also include charities, whatever Livery Companies are, "communities" and the rest. The Mondragon Corporation in Spain is employee-owned ,and about the same size as John Lewis.
OTOH even say Trades Unions can get a corporate feel - consider Unite under McCluskey, for example.
I've always been fascinated by how organisations and communities develop over time. And the spectrum between provisional communities and ones that become 'institutions' is of interest, and how they get beyond a single generation of leaders (or leader). The most important points seem to be around vision, values and self-understanding, and curating these over time as a group.
I strongly believe in the heartland theory of geopolitics.
The problem in Israel/Palestine is that there are too many people fighting over too little territory and unwilling to compromise.
I’m not sure I see a stable solution for many years to come
Tell this fool SeanT that otters' fur is waterproof and their pockets are dry.
Probably too late for him to learn anything about women.
The King is dead! Long live the King!
He’s the founder (I think) of Friends of the Earth, and a high profile radical lefty (as well as one of those f*****g nutters from the Population Council.
Yes he’s a friend, adviser and cousin of King Charles, but that’s not his primary role and it’s misleading to highlight that
Edit : old Etonian as well i think
We also see values-beyond-financial in things such as pro-bono work by professionals, and charity programmes - even eg Goldman's have a big one of those in sponsoring local schools, or more personally employees being given time off.
Much of that approach can be seen (iirc in the detail) in work such as the Tomorrow's Company project by the RSA back in 1993. I've met much thinking in a network of "world, not church" focused ministers called Industrial Chaplains, which goes back to the 1920s. Boots in Nottingham used to have a full time industrial chaplain (may still have - I am not in touch), and parts of his role were to challenge management around ethics, and to be a channel of feedback and a sounding board. Some of that role is now picked up by whistle blower services and employee counselling.
One of the reasons I'm quite interested in Miriam Cates is that she is from a background where I would expect her (imo) to see through the USA National Conservative set of values.
Plenty of columnists have built careers out of that.
Or is that Donald Trump?
https://bsky.app/profile/arusbridger.bsky.social/post/3lw4ddh6qfs26
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cg7jjkvzmkxo
I hope this is the last little heatwave we have. I loathe them. Its going to feel like 24C at 10pm tonight, apparently.
(I still say he should be served lemon chicken when he comes for that state visit. He may not get the reference but everyone else will.)
Trump didn't chicken out against the EU.
Perhaps European countries need to consider how they've got themselves into the current predicament.
Pretty mixed bag, as you might expect.
Podbean: https://undercutters.podbean.com/e/summer-break-standings-and-season-predictions-so-far/
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/summer-break-standings-and-season-predictions-so-far/id1786574257?i=1000721615084
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6Y5N3fZHmlTc2oL0rcM8MQ
Amazon: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/bcfe213b-55fb-408a-a823-dc6693ee9f78/episodes/d41277cc-9814-4ec8-9a08-e44fa6394e1f/undercutters---f1-podcast-summer-break-standings-and-season-predictions-so-far
Transcript: https://morrisf1.blogspot.com/2025/08/summer-break-standings-and-season.html
But he doesn't think Europe is strong.
And he's right - Europe isn't strong.
"UK job vacancies tumble across the board - BBC News" https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cpdjjp681p7o
If Europe was stronger economically, if Europe was stronger militarily then it could tell Trump to get fcked and laugh at him.
Instead Europe chose to laugh at Trump without the strength to back itself up.
And has now been humiliated.
Trump's nominee for BLS commissioner, EJ Antoni, is disastrously terrible. He's a 1200%, 1300% maybe 1400% in-the-tank Trumper, with few credentials beyond a long history of misrepresenting or misunderstanding basic economic statistics. He has demonstrated no commitment to truth.
https://x.com/JustinWolfers/status/1955046310098153808
https://www.taxadvisermagazine.com/article/employee-ownership-trusts-key-benefits-and-conditions
"In order to encourage companies to transition to employee ownership (using an employee ownership trust), favourable tax reliefs were introduced in 2014.
These reliefs allow individuals who dispose of shares in a trading company (or the parent company of a trading group) to the trustee(s) of an employee ownership trust to benefit from 100% capital gains tax relief on the disposal."
But there are rules to follow so perhaps he was indeed badly advised ...
Nearly three in five Americans wrongly believe the US is in an economic recession, and the majority blame the Biden administration, according to a Harris poll conducted exclusively for the Guardian. The survey found persistent pessimism about the economy as election day draws closer.
The poll highlighted many misconceptions people have about the economy, including:
55% believe the economy is shrinking, and 56% think the US is experiencing a recession, though the broadest measure of the economy, gross domestic product (GDP), has been growing.
49% believe the S&P 500 stock market index is down for the year, though the index went up about 24% in 2023 and is up more than 12% this year.
49% believe that unemployment is at a 50-year high, though the unemployment rate has been under 4%, a near 50-year low.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/22/poll-economy-recession-biden
The same pattern will happen with Trump - Trump will claim everything is great and most people will think that everything is terrible.
NEW THREAD
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2025/aug/11/emma-raducanu-proud-of-pushing-aryna-sabalenka-to-limit-in-cincinnati-open
An EU military would be a job creation scheme for generals and bureaucrats and its use dependent upon the agreement of Ireland, of Austria, of Hungary, of Slovakia.
So would be useless.
What we are seeing is an intersection of legalism and accession to the words of “Human Rights” with a very authoritarian attitude.
To such people the idea of threatening deadly force to protect a military installation would be a “Human Rights” violation. But proscribing an organisation as terrorist is to say that The Forms Must Be Obeyed*. And therefore isn’t a “Human Rights” violation.
At the very beginning of New Labour, they used obscure Royal Parks laws from medieval times to arrest people politely holding up signs saying “Remember Tibet”, on the occasion of the Chinese President visiting.
Later, people wearing T-Shirts saying “Bollocks to Blair” were threatened with arrest.
A range of utterly peaceful protest organisation were heavily infiltrated by the police. At the same time the Death To The West crowd were escalating toward 7/7 unhindered. These infiltrations were carried out illegally and resulted in the police themselves committing various offences. The subsequent court cases are still working through the courts.
An example - Fathers For Justice. Due to the pendulum in family courts swing too far, courts were refusing to enforce judgements on the mothers in such cases, but were enforcing them on the men. The theory being that the women were now Single Mothers and deserved protection. So divorced men saw a situation where they were paying child support etc to the point of literally having no money left - and then being denied the court proscribed visitation to their children.
FFJ was about demanding that court orders be enforced. Their protests consisted of people dressing up in silly costumes and climbing up on things. Not even damage. In the end, a police infiltrator tried to turn the organisation violent - the actual protestors disbanded in horror at the idea.
I think we have a confluence of a kind of morally bankrupt legalism and an ingrained belief that all protest against a “left wing” government is illegitimate.
At the time of the Tibet/Royal Parks thing I coined the term The Lawyers Syllogism
1) the laws says that something is legal
2) therefore it must be done
3) any opposition to doing it is an attack on the law and immoral.
(Apologies to the writers of Yes Minister)
I came up with that, after speaking to some lawyers on the edges of that decision. They offered a justification for the governments actions that was nearly exactly the above.
*in the series Dune, the phrase The Forms Must Be Obeyed is placed at the front of each law. Which laws are a system of deliberate feudalism - the people are literally serfs. For their own good, apparently