Some of her interest in the home had already been sold following her divorce to a court-instructed trust previously set up to help fund the care for her son, who has lifelong disabilities, she said.
The arrangement had been designed to give him "security of knowing the home is his, allowing him to continue to live in the home he feels safe in," she added, and was "a standard practice in circumstances like ours".
So Starmer sacks Rayner today and then is likely to be accused of being a total shxt .
Kemi and the rest of the Tories can do one . Rayner trying to support her son and ensure he’s looked after is now a crime apparently .
And Tice can also do one , supporting Farage the traitor.
Rayner should stress the good parent angle , she tried to do the right thing , was given bad advice and tell the right wing press to go fxck themselves .
So tax minimisation is actually OK providing you have a good enough reason to do it?
The trust was set up to look after her son , that’s it. Any good parent would do what they could to do that given he’s now disabled . The Tories who were happy to fellate Bozo and Tice who supports a traitor should STFU .
Rayner doesn’t need lectures from them .
In what way is it necessary to set up a trust to look after a child?
I feel like trusts only reason for existence is to dodge tax.
If the child lacks capacity to be an independent adult
I'm sure all of us could tell a story of why we need our money more than the taxman does. But most of us haven't made political speeches about the evils of those who think they need their own money more than the taxman.
Its a bit of a Would I Lie To You moment
*Bob Mortimer GIF*
'Once I avoided £40,000 tax on a property purchase when I was Secretary of State for Housing'
Settled in to the Convent at Narbonne. Prison next at Beziers.. Knackered. Several hundred km cycled so far on some dodgy paths. Found a boat you can hire for £36000 for a week. Will be giving that a miss.
Some of her interest in the home had already been sold following her divorce to a court-instructed trust previously set up to help fund the care for her son, who has lifelong disabilities, she said.
The arrangement had been designed to give him "security of knowing the home is his, allowing him to continue to live in the home he feels safe in," she added, and was "a standard practice in circumstances like ours".
So Starmer sacks Rayner today and then is likely to be accused of being a total shxt .
Am reminded of those who accused David Cameron of using his disabled son as a prop when discussing the NHS. I wonder what the Venn diagram of the two tendencies will be.
The question of what legal advice Rayner took when she bought the Hove property is crucial.
If it was simply a conveyancing lawyer with no tax expertise it is likely to be much harder for her to argue that she hasn't been negligent - and to avoid harsh penalties levied by the taxman.
"My suspicion in this case…is that she didn't give all the circumstances of the trust to the conveyancing lawyer," said James Quarmby, head of private wealth at Stephenson Harwood. "The conveyancing lawyer may have just asked the bland question 'do you own any other properties?' And she says 'no'".
He said property lawyers typically state in their contracts that they don't provide tax advice.
Quarmby said he believed there was a "high" risk of Rayner being fined and that tax officials would want to see the advice she relied on and details of the instructions she had given her lawyer. "Relying on advice is not a complete defence - it must be reasonable to do so in the circumstances and that advice cannot be 'obviously wrong'," he said.
"Someone in the Revenue now with the whole glare of the UK's media on them is going to make a decision as to whether Rayner was careless," he said.
"If she gets a penalty for carelessness she is politically screwed".
Another key question - if the legal advice sought was from a conveyancer - is whether Rayner even mentioned her son's trust and the role it played in the ownership of her family home.
A spokesman for Rayner declined to answer these questions.
"If you're buying property and you have complicated affairs involving a trust, you need to speak to a tax adviser and tell them about the trust," Neidle said.
"If she did that and they got it wrong, {it is} not her fault. But if she didn't go to a specialist or didn't tell them about the trust, I think it was her fault," he added.
"I think a normal person with any sophistication would realise they should mention the trust when getting advice about something else. And a deputy prime minister who's already got into a previous tax scrape involving properties, surely should have a go."
He said this would also affect how HMRC levied penalties on the underpaid tax.
Rayner now faces an inquiry by the standards watchdog.
She has previously been critical of tax avoidance and also called former Conservative chancellor Nadhim Zahawi's position "untenable" when details emerged that he was in dispute with HMRC over his tax affairs.
Zahawi, who was forced to resign as Tory party chairman for failing to declare that he paid a settlement to HMRC, ended up paying £5m to settle the dispute - a sum which included a 30 per cent penalty for being "careless".
A similar verdict on Rayner's conduct from Sir Laurie Magnus, the independent ethics adviser, or from the tax authorities may prove politically fatal.
Re Rayner: I do have a little sympathy for her if she's been badly advised but I think the politics means she will have to go:
1) It's a large sum of money - she'd probably get away with underpaying £200 but £40k is a huge amount by anyone's standards 2) Labour are about to put up taxes in the next budget. If she stays then the attack lines write themselves.
One thing I found interesting is Davey's stance on this. I wonder if the LDs are getting a bit too cosy with Labour. Certainly, Davey never seems to throw any hardball questions at Starmer during PMQs.
Is Sir Ed's argument that if you have a disabled child you can dodge tax?
Rayner's position could become untenable, says Davey - but we should reflect on her challenges Sir Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrat leader, is the latest political figure to weigh in on what has been a tumultuous day for deputy prime minister Angela Rayner.
"It's right this has gone to the independent ethics adviser," he says.
"Depending on what they say, Angela Rayner's position may become untenable."
But, Davey says "we should all reflect on the challenges that she has been through".
"We all worry about what's going to happen to our children when we have died," he says.
"And, I can see that in what Angela said today. I hope there's now a debate about that; about how we support children when their parents have died."
The 'challenges' being either that she tried to avoid - at best - tax she should have paid? The 'challenges' of being an utter hypocrite? Or the 'challenges' that just because she is an MP or DPM, she should pay just the same taxes as the rest of us?
Rayner should not go - at the moment. If she has not told 100% the truth, then Starmer should just throw her out ASAP. But there's also that she's made several mistakes now, and the "Oh, I'm only a working class woman who has done well for herself" excuses are growing cruddier by the day. When does she become more of a liability than a benefit to Labour?
Rayner's excuse is reminscent of one of the trougherati (Phillipson?) in the Alleygate furore who defended taking the Taylor Swift tickets on the grounds - and I paraphrase only slightly - that it was a really nice bribe.
Some of her interest in the home had already been sold following her divorce to a court-instructed trust previously set up to help fund the care for her son, who has lifelong disabilities, she said.
The arrangement had been designed to give him "security of knowing the home is his, allowing him to continue to live in the home he feels safe in," she added, and was "a standard practice in circumstances like ours".
So Starmer sacks Rayner today and then is likely to be accused of being a total shxt .
In which case the cloth eared fool is bound to sack her.
Re Rayner: I do have a little sympathy for her if she's been badly advised but I think the politics means she will have to go:
1) It's a large sum of money - she'd probably get away with underpaying £200 but £40k is a huge amount by anyone's standards 2) Labour are about to put up taxes in the next budget. If she stays then the attack lines write themselves.
One thing I found interesting is Davey's stance on this. I wonder if the LDs are getting a bit too cosy with Labour. Certainly, Davey never seems to throw any hardball questions at Starmer during PMQs.
The latter is reflective of Lib Dem members, take a look on here - the government's main defenders aren't Labour voters who are all in despair, it's Lib Dems who are really out there pushing the Labour narrative.
No, what we’re pushing is the non-Farage narrative. The fact that Starmer, Cooper and Co are all happily channelling the Reform leader leaves a gap.
Lib Dems aren’t suddenly going to stop being liberal internationalists or pro-Europeans just because the ruling party is - on paper if not in fact - also a liberal internationalist and pro-European party.
We can argue whether it's spineless toadying or a principled grown-up stand, but I am not sure that aligning the Lib Dems with a party less popular than a dose of the clap is sensible politically.
Ed Davey could have taken a more cautious line. He chose to ride in on his white charger, and if and when Rayner goes, that will make him look utterly ineffectual at best, complicit in wrongdoing at worst.
Some of her interest in the home had already been sold following her divorce to a court-instructed trust previously set up to help fund the care for her son, who has lifelong disabilities, she said.
The arrangement had been designed to give him "security of knowing the home is his, allowing him to continue to live in the home he feels safe in," she added, and was "a standard practice in circumstances like ours".
So Starmer sacks Rayner today and then is likely to be accused of being a total shxt .
In which case the cloth eared fool is bound to sack her.
My understanding - and please correct me if I'm wrong - is that he can't 'sack' her as such because she owes her position to the membership, rather than to him?
Some of her interest in the home had already been sold following her divorce to a court-instructed trust previously set up to help fund the care for her son, who has lifelong disabilities, she said.
The arrangement had been designed to give him "security of knowing the home is his, allowing him to continue to live in the home he feels safe in," she added, and was "a standard practice in circumstances like ours".
So Starmer sacks Rayner today and then is likely to be accused of being a total shxt .
In which case the cloth eared fool is bound to sack her.
My understanding - and please correct me if I'm wrong - is that he can't 'sack' her as such because she owes her position to the membership, rather than to him?
He can boot her from cabinet and then she should resign as Deputy leader or split the party
Some of her interest in the home had already been sold following her divorce to a court-instructed trust previously set up to help fund the care for her son, who has lifelong disabilities, she said.
The arrangement had been designed to give him "security of knowing the home is his, allowing him to continue to live in the home he feels safe in," she added, and was "a standard practice in circumstances like ours".
So Starmer sacks Rayner today and then is likely to be accused of being a total shxt .
In which case the cloth eared fool is bound to sack her.
My understanding - and please correct me if I'm wrong - is that he can't 'sack' her as such because she owes her position to the membership, rather than to him?
He can sack her from the government. He can’t sack her as deputy leader.
In all practical and political reality though, I am not sure she’d want one role without the other.
Obviously that then causes a headache for Starmer as there’d be an election, and who knows who would fill that position. McDonnell or Burgon or RLB or whoever could conceivably fill it, then it becomes a question of how he handles that.
… Still will be interesting if anyone asks whether she informed the lender that this was not her primary residence or declared on a form that this was her primary residence. If the tax authorities, and indeed herself, are saying this isn’t her primary residence and she has given false info to the lender it’s not great legally as she will likely have benefitted from a cheaper mortgage if she said it was her primary.
Some of her interest in the home had already been sold following her divorce to a court-instructed trust previously set up to help fund the care for her son, who has lifelong disabilities, she said.
The arrangement had been designed to give him "security of knowing the home is his, allowing him to continue to live in the home he feels safe in," she added, and was "a standard practice in circumstances like ours".
So Starmer sacks Rayner today and then is likely to be accused of being a total shxt .
In which case the cloth eared fool is bound to sack her.
My understanding - and please correct me if I'm wrong - is that he can't 'sack' her as such because she owes her position to the membership, rather than to him?
He can boot her from cabinet and then she should resign as Deputy leader or split the party
If she’s booted from cabinet that might make the mortgage repayments tricky…
Some of her interest in the home had already been sold following her divorce to a court-instructed trust previously set up to help fund the care for her son, who has lifelong disabilities, she said.
The arrangement had been designed to give him "security of knowing the home is his, allowing him to continue to live in the home he feels safe in," she added, and was "a standard practice in circumstances like ours".
So Starmer sacks Rayner today and then is likely to be accused of being a total shxt .
In which case the cloth eared fool is bound to sack her.
My understanding - and please correct me if I'm wrong - is that he can't 'sack' her as such because she owes her position to the membership, rather than to him?
She can be sacked as a government minister, Secretary of State, because that position is in the gift of the PM.
She can’t be sacked by SKS as Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, because she’s directly elected to that position.
Some of her interest in the home had already been sold following her divorce to a court-instructed trust previously set up to help fund the care for her son, who has lifelong disabilities, she said.
The arrangement had been designed to give him "security of knowing the home is his, allowing him to continue to live in the home he feels safe in," she added, and was "a standard practice in circumstances like ours".
So Starmer sacks Rayner today and then is likely to be accused of being a total shxt .
In which case the cloth eared fool is bound to sack her.
My understanding - and please correct me if I'm wrong - is that he can't 'sack' her as such because she owes her position to the membership, rather than to him?
He can boot her from cabinet and then she should resign as Deputy leader or split the party
If she’s booted from cabinet that might make the mortgage repayments tricky…
'Piss off quietly Angie and we will sort that out'
Some of her interest in the home had already been sold following her divorce to a court-instructed trust previously set up to help fund the care for her son, who has lifelong disabilities, she said.
The arrangement had been designed to give him "security of knowing the home is his, allowing him to continue to live in the home he feels safe in," she added, and was "a standard practice in circumstances like ours".
So Starmer sacks Rayner today and then is likely to be accused of being a total shxt .
In which case the cloth eared fool is bound to sack her.
My understanding - and please correct me if I'm wrong - is that he can't 'sack' her as such because she owes her position to the membership, rather than to him?
He can boot her from cabinet and then she should resign as Deputy leader or split the party
If she’s booted from cabinet that might make the mortgage repayments tricky…
'Piss off quietly Angie and we will sort that out'
Some of her interest in the home had already been sold following her divorce to a court-instructed trust previously set up to help fund the care for her son, who has lifelong disabilities, she said.
The arrangement had been designed to give him "security of knowing the home is his, allowing him to continue to live in the home he feels safe in," she added, and was "a standard practice in circumstances like ours".
So Starmer sacks Rayner today and then is likely to be accused of being a total shxt .
In which case the cloth eared fool is bound to sack her.
My understanding - and please correct me if I'm wrong - is that he can't 'sack' her as such because she owes her position to the membership, rather than to him?
He can boot her from cabinet and then she should resign as Deputy leader or split the party
If she’s booted from cabinet that might make the mortgage repayments tricky…
'Piss off quietly Angie and we will sort that out'
Someone switch on the Lord Alli signal.
You might say that Boulay, you might very well say that, I could not possibly comment
This I why I would be sacking, or reshuffling Raynor I really don't give a crap either way about this tax thing; let the Revenue sort it out.
Over the last three years, housebuilding in London has collapsed. Molior recorded just 2,158 private starts in the first half of 2025, around 5% of London’s (low) targets, and still falling.
What is going on? I have posed this question to numerous specialists, most of whom cannot comment publicly for professional reasons. This thread is a summary of what I have gleaned. https://x.com/SCP_Hughes/status/1963196403913494704
Whether or not she made a mistake or accidentally-on-purpose misstated her tax position is of minimal interest to me. The fact that this government is proving as feeble as the last one in sorting out the planning morass, actually matters to millions of people's lives.
I've been told by a property developer the cost of building in London is prohibitively expensive and, especially in areas like Newham, good sites are hard to find.
There's a site near me which adjoins the A406 and has an old gas holder, electricity pylons and a high pressure gas line all on it. To develop this brownfield site will require a fortune to be spent in decontamination (as required by regulation). On top of that you have ther Section 106 payments, the Carbon Off-Set Tax and the Community Infrastructure Levy.
Not unreasonably, bringing more people into a community creates pressure on infrastructure, not just the physical but things like health as well.
That's not to say development isn't happening - the Twelvetrees development at West Ham is massive (the site includes one of the best preserved collections of original gas holders (1879)). The flats in the first 32-storey block are now on sale for between £970k and £1 million and the second 34 storet block are on offer from £640k. I'm not sure how much "local" interest there will be at those prices and it will be fascinating to see the rate of sale given the economic headwinds.
These factors, combined with the regulatory issues Samuel Hughes identifies, are the crux of the failure to resolve the housing crisis more than political sniping about NIMBY-ism and planning.
Where's the contamination that needs decontaminating if the site is an old gas storage holder and some pylons? Does gas sweep into the subsoil and leave it poisoned for decades?
Making/storing town gas has often left a legacy of heavy hydrocarbons (funky stuff), ammonia, cyanides, arsenic and lead.
Another fun one on really old industrial sites are underground tanks. Often filled with a mix of waste and then asphalt poured in to solidify it before being abandoned.
"Tim Stanley Badenoch was so bad, she might need to go before Rayner Leader of the Opposition made a fleeting reference to Deputy PM’s tax evasion but failed to dig in – like everyone else at PMQs"
Some of her interest in the home had already been sold following her divorce to a court-instructed trust previously set up to help fund the care for her son, who has lifelong disabilities, she said.
The arrangement had been designed to give him "security of knowing the home is his, allowing him to continue to live in the home he feels safe in," she added, and was "a standard practice in circumstances like ours".
So Starmer sacks Rayner today and then is likely to be accused of being a total shxt .
In which case the cloth eared fool is bound to sack her.
My understanding - and please correct me if I'm wrong - is that he can't 'sack' her as such because she owes her position to the membership, rather than to him?
He can boot her from cabinet and then she should resign as Deputy leader or split the party
If she’s booted from cabinet that might make the mortgage repayments tricky…
'Piss off quietly Angie and we will sort that out'
In splitting the right news, Ben Habib claims Advance UK has passed 29,000 paid up members. He's pledged 100 grand of his own money and registration at the EC once 30,000 reached and the party is formally launching on 27 September.
Re Rayner: I do have a little sympathy for her if she's been badly advised but I think the politics means she will have to go:
1) It's a large sum of money - she'd probably get away with underpaying £200 but £40k is a huge amount by anyone's standards 2) Labour are about to put up taxes in the next budget. If she stays then the attack lines write themselves.
One thing I found interesting is Davey's stance on this. I wonder if the LDs are getting a bit too cosy with Labour. Certainly, Davey never seems to throw any hardball questions at Starmer during PMQs.
The latter is reflective of Lib Dem members, take a look on here - the government's main defenders aren't Labour voters who are all in despair, it's Lib Dems who are really out there pushing the Labour narrative.
No, what we’re pushing is the non-Farage narrative. The fact that Starmer, Cooper and Co are all happily channelling the Reform leader leaves a gap.
Lib Dems aren’t suddenly going to stop being liberal internationalists or pro-Europeans just because the ruling party is - on paper if not in fact - also a liberal internationalist and pro-European party.
We can argue whether it's spineless toadying or a principled grown-up stand, but I am not sure that aligning the Lib Dems with a party less popular than a dose of the clap is sensible politically.
Ed Davey could have taken a more cautious line. He chose to ride in on his white charger, and if and when Rayner goes, that will make him look utterly ineffectual at best, complicit in wrongdoing at worst.
Cautious line would probably have been best. You never know what’s going to come out next. To be fair his full comments, rather than the excerpts, are not an endorsement of the tax error/dodging and he does say her role may become untenable. But it would have been politically risky for him to go in with both feet given the relevance in the story of her son’s disability and his campaigning to support carers. Would have opened him up to accusations of insincerity.
… Still will be interesting if anyone asks whether she informed the lender that this was not her primary residence or declared on a form that this was her primary residence. If the tax authorities, and indeed herself, are saying this isn’t her primary residence and she has given false info to the lender it’s not great legally as she will likely have benefitted from a cheaper mortgage if she said it was her primary.
What, if anything does Sam Tarry do for a (well paid) living?
I don't blame Rayner for taking advice and doing the best for her disabled child...I would in the same situation.
The issue is they hypocrisy of her previous statements... and the useless advice she was given. She must have known it had to be watertight and her judgement wasn't sound.
The Country would be better served if she resigned.
Has anyone been tracking Farage's appearance at the House of Congress?
I did not listen, but at a quick skim he seems (in my opinion) to be shovelling out his usual talking points, starting with 'Lucy Connolly is Keir Starmer's political prisoner'.
He quoted the "12000 arrests for posts in 2023" talking point, which is very flawed:
The analysis by the FSU says it is arrests under "section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 and section 1 of the Malicious Communications Act 1988". The latter was aiui used for catching things such as revenge porn and unauthorised disclosure of intimate images - both now updated into later law. https://freespeechunion.org/police-make-30-arrests-a-day-for-offensive-online-messages/
Presumably even Farage does not think that revenge porn is free speech, but he also does not give a fig for whether his stuff is true or not.
… Still will be interesting if anyone asks whether she informed the lender that this was not her primary residence or declared on a form that this was her primary residence. If the tax authorities, and indeed herself, are saying this isn’t her primary residence and she has given false info to the lender it’s not great legally as she will likely have benefitted from a cheaper mortgage if she said it was her primary.
What, if anything does Sam Tarry do for a (well paid) living?
He was an MP from 2019 to 24 but can’t see his current job.
Funnily enough the whole “which home do you live in” issue has happened to him:
“ Tarry was criticised for allegedly living in his home in Brighton, which is 70 miles away from his then council seat in Barking and Dagenham.[8][9][10] He was investigated by police for electoral fraud in relation to this matter, and was cleared by the police investigation, as he was found to own a second home in Barking and Dagenham, and therefore was legally resident in Barking and Dagenham at the time of his election.”
Sam Stein @samstein · 1h How does Florida's most famous resident, who, i believe, has grandchildren in the state, feel about officials there getting rid of childhood vaccination mandates? @realDonaldTrump
Re Rayner: I do have a little sympathy for her if she's been badly advised but I think the politics means she will have to go:
1) It's a large sum of money - she'd probably get away with underpaying £200 but £40k is a huge amount by anyone's standards 2) Labour are about to put up taxes in the next budget. If she stays then the attack lines write themselves.
One thing I found interesting is Davey's stance on this. I wonder if the LDs are getting a bit too cosy with Labour. Certainly, Davey never seems to throw any hardball questions at Starmer during PMQs.
The latter is reflective of Lib Dem members, take a look on here - the government's main defenders aren't Labour voters who are all in despair, it's Lib Dems who are really out there pushing the Labour narrative.
No, what we’re pushing is the non-Farage narrative. The fact that Starmer, Cooper and Co are all happily channelling the Reform leader leaves a gap.
Lib Dems aren’t suddenly going to stop being liberal internationalists or pro-Europeans just because the ruling party is - on paper if not in fact - also a liberal internationalist and pro-European party.
We can argue whether it's spineless toadying or a principled grown-up stand, but I am not sure that aligning the Lib Dems with a party less popular than a dose of the clap is sensible politically.
Ed Davey could have taken a more cautious line. He chose to ride in on his white charger, and if and when Rayner goes, that will make him look utterly ineffectual at best, complicit in wrongdoing at worst.
Cautious line would probably have been best. You never know what’s going to come out next. To be fair his full comments, rather than the excerpts, are not an endorsement of the tax error/dodging and he does say her role may become untenable. But it would have been politically risky for him to go in with both feet given the relevance in the story of her son’s disability and his campaigning to support carers. Would have opened him up to accusations of insincerity.
Well perhaps in a curious piece of topsy turveydom, the Lib Dems are being too sincere! You can see their discomfort in Rochdale Pioneers little stump speech practises here in the morning. They can see the Government is a raging bin fire, and they know they should oppose, but they actually agree with every disastrous policy and ideology that is killing the country and the Government with it. They need to find some dividing lines, and fast.
Has anyone been tracking Farage's appearance at the House of Congress?
I did not listen, but at a quick skim he seems (in my opinion) to be shovelling out his usual talking points, starting with 'Lucy Connolly is Keir Starmer's political prisoner'.
He quoted the "12000 arrests for posts in 2023" talking point, which is very flawed:
The analysis by the FSU says it is arrests under "section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 and section 1 of the Malicious Communications Act 1988". The latter was aiui used for catching things such as revenge porn and unauthorised disclosure of intimate images - both now updated into later law. https://freespeechunion.org/police-make-30-arrests-a-day-for-offensive-online-messages/
Presumably even Farage does not think that revenge porn is free speech, but he also does not give a fig for whether his stuff is true or not.
Of course he doesn't care if his stuff is true or not. His entire power comes form making people very irate.
He can be very good but he does phone it in a bit often for a guy on a reported salary of £650k!
Even the greatest of artists, in any medium, cannot churn out masterworks consisitently forever. Plenty of great directors who made shitty movies, or great authors who wrote shitty novels. Especially when they've been at it for decades.
I went round the Picasso museum in Paris a couple of weeks ago. Generally very interesting, but you realise halfway through that he stopped doing anything new or innovative after the 1930s. He was churning out the same cubist stuff until his death decades later.
That's not entirely true. He produced some great art near his death
Has anyone been tracking Farage's appearance at the House of Congress?
I did not listen, but at a quick skim he seems (in my opinion) to be shovelling out his usual talking points, starting with 'Lucy Connolly is Keir Starmer's political prisoner'.
He quoted the "12000 arrests for posts in 2023" talking point, which is very flawed:
The analysis by the FSU says it is arrests under "section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 and section 1 of the Malicious Communications Act 1988". The latter was aiui used for catching things such as revenge porn and unauthorised disclosure of intimate images - both now updated into later law. https://freespeechunion.org/police-make-30-arrests-a-day-for-offensive-online-messages/
Presumably even Farage does not think that revenge porn is free speech, but he also does not give a fig for whether his stuff is true or not.
I should say that this is a fairly quick top slice, and I'm open to corrections - especially from anyone who has gone into the makeup of those 12000 arrrests.
Sam Stein @samstein · 1h How does Florida's most famous resident, who, i believe, has grandchildren in the state, feel about officials there getting rid of childhood vaccination mandates? @realDonaldTrump
Well I suppose it’s one way of reducing the amount of GOP voters . The vast majority of those not vaccinating their kids will be the brain dead Maga crowd so what’s not to like !
Kemi and the rest of the Tories can do one . Rayner trying to support her son and ensure he’s looked after is now a crime apparently .
And Tice can also do one , supporting Farage the traitor.
Rayner should stress the good parent angle , she tried to do the right thing , was given bad advice and tell the right wing press to go fxck themselves .
So tax minimisation is actually OK providing you have a good enough reason to do it?
The trust was set up to look after her son , that’s it. Any good parent would do what they could to do that given he’s now disabled . The Tories who were happy to fellate Bozo and Tice who supports a traitor should STFU .
Rayner doesn’t need lectures from them .
In what way is it necessary to set up a trust to look after a child?
I feel like trusts only reason for existence is to dodge tax.
If the child lacks capacity to be an independent adult
I'm sure all of us could tell a story of why we need our money more than the taxman does. But most of us haven't made political speeches about the evils of those who think they need their own money more than the taxman.
I don't have an issue holding politicians to a higher standard that we might hold the average person. They sought and hold tremendous power over us, they should be better than the average person, including in matters of probity and integrity.
I've honestly not yet looked deeply enough into the Rayner story to know if she deserves a pillorying about it, but if it's on the borderline of acceptability she can have no complaints if those who dislike her make use of it.
Has anyone been tracking Farage's appearance at the House of Congress?
I did not listen, but at a quick skim he seems (in my opinion) to be shovelling out his usual talking points, starting with 'Lucy Connolly is Keir Starmer's political prisoner'.
He quoted the "12000 arrests for posts in 2023" talking point, which is very flawed:
The analysis by the FSU says it is arrests under "section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 and section 1 of the Malicious Communications Act 1988". The latter was aiui used for catching things such as revenge porn and unauthorised disclosure of intimate images - both now updated into later law. https://freespeechunion.org/police-make-30-arrests-a-day-for-offensive-online-messages/
Presumably even Farage does not think that revenge porn is free speech, but he also does not give a fig for whether his stuff is true or not.
Re Rayner: I do have a little sympathy for her if she's been badly advised but I think the politics means she will have to go:
1) It's a large sum of money - she'd probably get away with underpaying £200 but £40k is a huge amount by anyone's standards 2) Labour are about to put up taxes in the next budget. If she stays then the attack lines write themselves.
One thing I found interesting is Davey's stance on this. I wonder if the LDs are getting a bit too cosy with Labour. Certainly, Davey never seems to throw any hardball questions at Starmer during PMQs.
The latter is reflective of Lib Dem members, take a look on here - the government's main defenders aren't Labour voters who are all in despair, it's Lib Dems who are really out there pushing the Labour narrative.
No, what we’re pushing is the non-Farage narrative. The fact that Starmer, Cooper and Co are all happily channelling the Reform leader leaves a gap.
Lib Dems aren’t suddenly going to stop being liberal internationalists or pro-Europeans just because the ruling party is - on paper if not in fact - also a liberal internationalist and pro-European party.
We can argue whether it's spineless toadying or a principled grown-up stand, but I am not sure that aligning the Lib Dems with a party less popular than a dose of the clap is sensible politically.
Ed Davey could have taken a more cautious line. He chose to ride in on his white charger, and if and when Rayner goes, that will make him look utterly ineffectual at best, complicit in wrongdoing at worst.
Cautious line would probably have been best. You never know what’s going to come out next. To be fair his full comments, rather than the excerpts, are not an endorsement of the tax error/dodging and he does say her role may become untenable. But it would have been politically risky for him to go in with both feet given the relevance in the story of her son’s disability and his campaigning to support carers. Would have opened him up to accusations of insincerity.
Well perhaps in a curious piece of topsy turveydom, the Lib Dems are being too sincere! You can see their discomfort in Rochdale Pioneers little stump speech practises here in the morning. They can see the Government is a raging bin fire, and they know they should oppose, but they actually agree with every disastrous policy and ideology that is killing the country and the Government with it. They need to find some dividing lines, and fast.
Yup, it's always funny watching a "Lib Dem" like RP takeover the party despite his long and storied history with Labour and those louder voices have got the upper hand now. The Lib Dems are now Alec Guinness building the bridge, enabling this shitshow and when it all comes crashing down maybe they'll realise what they've been supporting all this time but I doubt it.
Has anyone been tracking Farage's appearance at the House of Congress?
I did not listen, but at a quick skim he seems (in my opinion) to be shovelling out his usual talking points, starting with 'Lucy Connolly is Keir Starmer's political prisoner'.
He quoted the "12000 arrests for posts in 2023" talking point, which is very flawed:
The analysis by the FSU says it is arrests under "section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 and section 1 of the Malicious Communications Act 1988". The latter was aiui used for catching things such as revenge porn and unauthorised disclosure of intimate images - both now updated into later law. https://freespeechunion.org/police-make-30-arrests-a-day-for-offensive-online-messages/
Presumably even Farage does not think that revenge porn is free speech, but he also does not give a fig for whether his stuff is true or not.
Politics is mostly about vibes, not details.
Vibes like saying 'shovelling out his usual talking points' rather than 'expressing his opinions'.
I suppose we should be grateful we were spared 'kremlin talking points', though I am sure Matt's finger weighed very heavily over the 'k' before moving on.
Has anyone been tracking Farage's appearance at the House of Congress?
I did not listen, but at a quick skim he seems (in my opinion) to be shovelling out his usual talking points, starting with 'Lucy Connolly is Keir Starmer's political prisoner'.
He quoted the "12000 arrests for posts in 2023" talking point, which is very flawed:
The analysis by the FSU says it is arrests under "section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 and section 1 of the Malicious Communications Act 1988". The latter was aiui used for catching things such as revenge porn and unauthorised disclosure of intimate images - both now updated into later law. https://freespeechunion.org/police-make-30-arrests-a-day-for-offensive-online-messages/
Presumably even Farage does not think that revenge porn is free speech, but he also does not give a fig for whether his stuff is true or not.
I doubt if what Farage is doing is good politics from his own point of view.
To win in 2029 he needs two things at the same time: he needs the votes, perhaps 34% or so is enough. But he also needs those who are against Reform and Farage not to have enough reason to gang up against him tactically in such a way as to be fatal. 66% of the voters not wanting Farage is a big number. Farage obviously being pro Trump, pro current kleptocracy in the USA etc is just the sort of ground that unites his enemies.
Has anyone been tracking Farage's appearance at the House of Congress?
I did not listen, but at a quick skim he seems (in my opinion) to be shovelling out his usual talking points, starting with 'Lucy Connolly is Keir Starmer's political prisoner'.
He quoted the "12000 arrests for posts in 2023" talking point, which is very flawed:
The analysis by the FSU says it is arrests under "section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 and section 1 of the Malicious Communications Act 1988". The latter was aiui used for catching things such as revenge porn and unauthorised disclosure of intimate images - both now updated into later law. https://freespeechunion.org/police-make-30-arrests-a-day-for-offensive-online-messages/
Presumably even Farage does not think that revenge porn is free speech, but he also does not give a fig for whether his stuff is true or not.
Politics is mostly about vibes, not details.
Vibes like saying 'shovelling out his usual talking points' rather than 'expressing his opinions'.
I don't think she had the time in fairness - that she couldn't survive politically was evidence enough of unsuitability. "One of the more dangerous lies in recent years is the claim that Liz Truss crashed the economy."
Has anyone been tracking Farage's appearance at the House of Congress?
I did not listen, but at a quick skim he seems (in my opinion) to be shovelling out his usual talking points, starting with 'Lucy Connolly is Keir Starmer's political prisoner'.
He quoted the "12000 arrests for posts in 2023" talking point, which is very flawed:
The analysis by the FSU says it is arrests under "section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 and section 1 of the Malicious Communications Act 1988". The latter was aiui used for catching things such as revenge porn and unauthorised disclosure of intimate images - both now updated into later law. https://freespeechunion.org/police-make-30-arrests-a-day-for-offensive-online-messages/
Presumably even Farage does not think that revenge porn is free speech, but he also does not give a fig for whether his stuff is true or not.
I doubt if what Farage is doing is good politics from his own point of view.
To win in 2029 he needs two things at the same time: he needs the votes, perhaps 34% or so is enough. But he also needs those who are against Reform and Farage not to have enough reason to gang up against him tactically in such a way as to be fatal. 66% of the voters not wanting Farage is a big number. Farage obviously being pro Trump, pro current kleptocracy in the USA etc is just the sort of ground that unites his enemies.
Farage generally seems smart enough to know when to go quiet on Trumpian stuff, without disavowing any of his previous comments. The free speech stuff I'd guess is fertile enough to make a return to some american action worth it.
I think Davey is taking an interesting angle with Rayner's woes.
If she didn't have a disabled son, she'd presumably have a constituency home and would therefore have been due to pay the extra stamp duty on Hove.
It seems to me that she thought she could use her disabled son to get away with not paying the extra stamp duty.
especially given she sold her house to her son technically , asked some numpty if all right and then tries to pretend it was an error. Either way she has to go if she is stupid enough to make such an error as the housing minister etc. Guaranteed it will be a whitewash and jsut an honest error blah blah. They do it every time they get caught out.
Has anyone been tracking Farage's appearance at the House of Congress?
I did not listen, but at a quick skim he seems (in my opinion) to be shovelling out his usual talking points, starting with 'Lucy Connolly is Keir Starmer's political prisoner'.
He quoted the "12000 arrests for posts in 2023" talking point, which is very flawed:
The analysis by the FSU says it is arrests under "section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 and section 1 of the Malicious Communications Act 1988". The latter was aiui used for catching things such as revenge porn and unauthorised disclosure of intimate images - both now updated into later law. https://freespeechunion.org/police-make-30-arrests-a-day-for-offensive-online-messages/
Presumably even Farage does not think that revenge porn is free speech, but he also does not give a fig for whether his stuff is true or not.
I doubt if what Farage is doing is good politics from his own point of view.
To win in 2029 he needs two things at the same time: he needs the votes, perhaps 34% or so is enough. But he also needs those who are against Reform and Farage not to have enough reason to gang up against him tactically in such a way as to be fatal. 66% of the voters not wanting Farage is a big number. Farage obviously being pro Trump, pro current kleptocracy in the USA etc is just the sort of ground that unites his enemies.
Farage generally seems smart enough to know when to go quiet on Trumpian stuff, without disavowing any of his previous comments. The free speech stuff I'd guess is fertile enough to make a return to some american action worth it.
Frankly couldn't have been timed better with the Linehan arrest. Farage is jammier than a doughnut factory.
Has anyone been tracking Farage's appearance at the House of Congress?
I did not listen, but at a quick skim he seems (in my opinion) to be shovelling out his usual talking points, starting with 'Lucy Connolly is Keir Starmer's political prisoner'.
He quoted the "12000 arrests for posts in 2023" talking point, which is very flawed:
The analysis by the FSU says it is arrests under "section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 and section 1 of the Malicious Communications Act 1988". The latter was aiui used for catching things such as revenge porn and unauthorised disclosure of intimate images - both now updated into later law. https://freespeechunion.org/police-make-30-arrests-a-day-for-offensive-online-messages/
Presumably even Farage does not think that revenge porn is free speech, but he also does not give a fig for whether his stuff is true or not.
Funny how neither he nor his audience seem to be troubled by people getting banged up at US immigration for social media posts...
Some of her interest in the home had already been sold following her divorce to a court-instructed trust previously set up to help fund the care for her son, who has lifelong disabilities, she said.
The arrangement had been designed to give him "security of knowing the home is his, allowing him to continue to live in the home he feels safe in," she added, and was "a standard practice in circumstances like ours".
So Starmer sacks Rayner today and then is likely to be accused of being a total shxt .
Am reminded of those who accused David Cameron of using his disabled son as a prop when discussing the NHS. I wonder what the Venn diagram of the two tendencies will be.
Has anyone been tracking Farage's appearance at the House of Congress?
I did not listen, but at a quick skim he seems (in my opinion) to be shovelling out his usual talking points, starting with 'Lucy Connolly is Keir Starmer's political prisoner'.
He quoted the "12000 arrests for posts in 2023" talking point, which is very flawed:
The analysis by the FSU says it is arrests under "section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 and section 1 of the Malicious Communications Act 1988". The latter was aiui used for catching things such as revenge porn and unauthorised disclosure of intimate images - both now updated into later law. https://freespeechunion.org/police-make-30-arrests-a-day-for-offensive-online-messages/
Presumably even Farage does not think that revenge porn is free speech, but he also does not give a fig for whether his stuff is true or not.
Politics is mostly about vibes, not details.
Vibes like saying 'shovelling out his usual talking points' rather than 'expressing his opinions'.
I suppose we should be grateful we were spared 'kremlin talking points', though I am sure Matt's finger weighed very heavily over the 'k' before moving on.
Given Farage's economical nature with the actualité, I'd say it's quite a kind description.
He can be very good but he does phone it in a bit often for a guy on a reported salary of £650k!
Even the greatest of artists, in any medium, cannot churn out masterworks consisitently forever. Plenty of great directors who made shitty movies, or great authors who wrote shitty novels. Especially when they've been at it for decades.
I went round the Picasso museum in Paris a couple of weeks ago. Generally very interesting, but you realise halfway through that he stopped doing anything new or innovative after the 1930s. He was churning out the same cubist stuff until his death decades later.
I agree with the view of Picasso being a bit incontinently samey in his latter years but I don’t think it could be described as Cubism. As befits modern art’s first superstar he kinda defies categorisation. I suppose despite there being tons of it one can almost always recognise it as a Picasso.
A Gazette editor just texted me to say he's run into a TV personality in NYC, in a studio
She's not very well known now, but she was once really quite famous. Older PB-ers, ie 87% of us, will definitely know her
Anyway the subject moved on to ME, because she said she'd read my stuff, and did the editor know that she and me went on a date? The editor said No, so she explained how the date went (not very well, I seemed "troubled"). She told my editor how she'd researched me before, so she knew what to expect, but still found me "unexpected"
Here is the kicker. I don't remember this date. It clearly happened (why would she make this up??) but I do not remember a date. With a fairly famous TV presenter. I must have been so off my tits on drugs it goet erased in the mess
Re Rayner: I do have a little sympathy for her if she's been badly advised but I think the politics means she will have to go:
1) It's a large sum of money - she'd probably get away with underpaying £200 but £40k is a huge amount by anyone's standards 2) Labour are about to put up taxes in the next budget. If she stays then the attack lines write themselves.
One thing I found interesting is Davey's stance on this. I wonder if the LDs are getting a bit too cosy with Labour. Certainly, Davey never seems to throw any hardball questions at Starmer during PMQs.
The latter is reflective of Lib Dem members, take a look on here - the government's main defenders aren't Labour voters who are all in despair, it's Lib Dems who are really out there pushing the Labour narrative.
No, what we’re pushing is the non-Farage narrative. The fact that Starmer, Cooper and Co are all happily channelling the Reform leader leaves a gap.
Lib Dems aren’t suddenly going to stop being liberal internationalists or pro-Europeans just because the ruling party is - on paper if not in fact - also a liberal internationalist and pro-European party.
We can argue whether it's spineless toadying or a principled grown-up stand, but I am not sure that aligning the Lib Dems with a party less popular than a dose of the clap is sensible politically.
Ed Davey could have taken a more cautious line. He chose to ride in on his white charger, and if and when Rayner goes, that will make him look utterly ineffectual at best, complicit in wrongdoing at worst.
After the shoeing he took over the sub-postmasters, I think Ed Davey is reining in the "the minister must resign" shtick.
Has anyone been tracking Farage's appearance at the House of Congress?
I did not listen, but at a quick skim he seems (in my opinion) to be shovelling out his usual talking points, starting with 'Lucy Connolly is Keir Starmer's political prisoner'.
He quoted the "12000 arrests for posts in 2023" talking point, which is very flawed:
The analysis by the FSU says it is arrests under "section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 and section 1 of the Malicious Communications Act 1988". The latter was aiui used for catching things such as revenge porn and unauthorised disclosure of intimate images - both now updated into later law. https://freespeechunion.org/police-make-30-arrests-a-day-for-offensive-online-messages/
Presumably even Farage does not think that revenge porn is free speech, but he also does not give a fig for whether his stuff is true or not.
I doubt if what Farage is doing is good politics from his own point of view.
To win in 2029 he needs two things at the same time: he needs the votes, perhaps 34% or so is enough. But he also needs those who are against Reform and Farage not to have enough reason to gang up against him tactically in such a way as to be fatal. 66% of the voters not wanting Farage is a big number. Farage obviously being pro Trump, pro current kleptocracy in the USA etc is just the sort of ground that unites his enemies.
Amazing that you are of a pessimistic opinion re the chances of Reform. Normally you are so positive, "they're bound to win", "Labour don't have a chance", etc
A Gazette editor just texted me to say he's run into a TV personality in NYC, in a studio
She's not very well known now, but she was once really quite famous. Older PB-ers, ie 87% of us, will definitely know her
Anyway the subject moved on to ME, because she said she'd read my stuff, and did the editor know that she and me went on a date? The editor said No, so she explained how the date went (not very well, I seemed "troubled"). She told my editor how she'd researched me before, so she knew what to expect, but still found me "unexpected"
Here is the kicker. I don't remember this date. It clearly happened (why would she make this up??) but I do not remember a date. With a fairly famous TV presenter. I must have been so off my tits on drugs it goet erased in the mess
Or you're off your tits on drugs now, and you've invented all this shite.
Please tell us again how one of you your books inspired Anders Breivik.
A Gazette editor just texted me to say he's run into a TV personality in NYC, in a studio
She's not very well known now, but she was once really quite famous. Older PB-ers, ie 87% of us, will definitely know her
Anyway the subject moved on to ME, because she said she'd read my stuff, and did the editor know that she and me went on a date? The editor said No, so she explained how the date went (not very well, I seemed "troubled"). She told my editor how she'd researched me before, so she knew what to expect, but still found me "unexpected"
Here is the kicker. I don't remember this date. It clearly happened (why would she make this up??) but I do not remember a date. With a fairly famous TV presenter. I must have been so off my tits on drugs it goet erased in the mess
We all dated Bella Emberg mate, it was a PB rite of passage back in the day
A Gazette editor just texted me to say he's run into a TV personality in NYC, in a studio
She's not very well known now, but she was once really quite famous. Older PB-ers, ie 87% of us, will definitely know her
Anyway the subject moved on to ME, because she said she'd read my stuff, and did the editor know that she and me went on a date? The editor said No, so she explained how the date went (not very well, I seemed "troubled"). She told my editor how she'd researched me before, so she knew what to expect, but still found me "unexpected"
Here is the kicker. I don't remember this date. It clearly happened (why would she make this up??) but I do not remember a date. With a fairly famous TV presenter. I must have been so off my tits on drugs it goet erased in the mess
A Gazette editor just texted me to say he's run into a TV personality in NYC, in a studio
She's not very well known now, but she was once really quite famous. Older PB-ers, ie 87% of us, will definitely know her
Anyway the subject moved on to ME, because she said she'd read my stuff, and did the editor know that she and me went on a date? The editor said No, so she explained how the date went (not very well, I seemed "troubled"). She told my editor how she'd researched me before, so she knew what to expect, but still found me "unexpected"
Here is the kicker. I don't remember this date. It clearly happened (why would she make this up??) but I do not remember a date. With a fairly famous TV presenter. I must have been so off my tits on drugs it goet erased in the mess
A Gazette editor just texted me to say he's run into a TV personality in NYC, in a studio
She's not very well known now, but she was once really quite famous. Older PB-ers, ie 87% of us, will definitely know her
Anyway the subject moved on to ME, because she said she'd read my stuff, and did the editor know that she and me went on a date? The editor said No, so she explained how the date went (not very well, I seemed "troubled"). She told my editor how she'd researched me before, so she knew what to expect, but still found me "unexpected"
Here is the kicker. I don't remember this date. It clearly happened (why would she make this up??) but I do not remember a date. With a fairly famous TV presenter. I must have been so off my tits on drugs it goet erased in the mess
Was it Judith Chalmers?
I was infatuated with Anna Ford (in a fairly pure way) when an adolescent. It sort of intensified when I learned she was the wife/widow of Mark Boxer.
A Gazette editor just texted me to say he's run into a TV personality in NYC, in a studio
She's not very well known now, but she was once really quite famous. Older PB-ers, ie 87% of us, will definitely know her
Anyway the subject moved on to ME, because she said she'd read my stuff, and did the editor know that she and me went on a date? The editor said No, so she explained how the date went (not very well, I seemed "troubled"). She told my editor how she'd researched me before, so she knew what to expect, but still found me "unexpected"
Here is the kicker. I don't remember this date. It clearly happened (why would she make this up??) but I do not remember a date. With a fairly famous TV presenter. I must have been so off my tits on drugs it goet erased in the mess
Or you're off your tits on drugs now, and you've invented all this shite.
Please tell us again how one of you your books inspired Anders Breivik.
A Gazette editor just texted me to say he's run into a TV personality in NYC, in a studio
She's not very well known now, but she was once really quite famous. Older PB-ers, ie 87% of us, will definitely know her
Anyway the subject moved on to ME, because she said she'd read my stuff, and did the editor know that she and me went on a date? The editor said No, so she explained how the date went (not very well, I seemed "troubled"). She told my editor how she'd researched me before, so she knew what to expect, but still found me "unexpected"
Here is the kicker. I don't remember this date. It clearly happened (why would she make this up??) but I do not remember a date. With a fairly famous TV presenter. I must have been so off my tits on drugs it goet erased in the mess
Was it Judith Chalmers?
I was infatuated with Anna Ford (in a fairly pure way) when an adolescent. It sort of intensified when I learned she was the wife/widow of Mark Boxer.
It was Janet Street-Porter, his brain has activated a defence mechanism by erasing the horror of the event from his memory.
Who, despite his rather odd views, developed something that is still (AIUI) on the International Space Station to this day.
I wonder how big a Transhab you could stuff in a Starship?
Hoop stress would be a big issue: the greater the diameter of a pressurised cylinder, the greater the stresses in the cylinder walls. which is why you generally don't get pressurised cylinders with very large diameters. And when you do, they have very thick (and hence heavy) walls.
A Gazette editor just texted me to say he's run into a TV personality in NYC, in a studio
She's not very well known now, but she was once really quite famous. Older PB-ers, ie 87% of us, will definitely know her
Anyway the subject moved on to ME, because she said she'd read my stuff, and did the editor know that she and me went on a date? The editor said No, so she explained how the date went (not very well, I seemed "troubled"). She told my editor how she'd researched me before, so she knew what to expect, but still found me "unexpected"
Here is the kicker. I don't remember this date. It clearly happened (why would she make this up??) but I do not remember a date. With a fairly famous TV presenter. I must have been so off my tits on drugs it goet erased in the mess
Or you're off your tits on drugs now, and you've invented all this shite.
Please tell us again how one of you your books inspired Anders Breivik.
Who, despite his rather odd views, developed something that is still (AIUI) on the International Space Station to this day.
I wonder how big a Transhab you could stuff in a Starship?
Hoop stress would be a big issue: the greater the diameter of a pressurised cylinder, the greater the stresses in the cylinder walls. which is why you generally don't get pressurised cylinders with very large diameters. And when you do, they have very thick (and hence heavy) walls.
Watching the 2010 election on VHS at the moment. Hung parliament.
Good election to lose.
Can't begin to explain the relief when the awfulness of Brown was no more. Cutting the PMs salary was the sort of petty shitty thing to that typifed Brown.. nasty piece of work. Thank god he is neutered politically speaking.
He can be very good but he does phone it in a bit often for a guy on a reported salary of £650k!
Even the greatest of artists, in any medium, cannot churn out masterworks consisitently forever. Plenty of great directors who made shitty movies, or great authors who wrote shitty novels. Especially when they've been at it for decades.
I went round the Picasso museum in Paris a couple of weeks ago. Generally very interesting, but you realise halfway through that he stopped doing anything new or innovative after the 1930s. He was churning out the same cubist stuff until his death decades later.
I agree with the view of Picasso being a bit incontinently samey in his latter years but I don’t think it could be described as Cubism. As befits modern art’s first superstar he kinda defies categorisation. I suppose despite there being tons of it one can almost always recognise it as a Picasso.
I seem to remember that de Chirico was accused in later life of painting in his earlier style on the quiet, then selling them to people who liked that era of his work claiming them to be originals from 20-30 years before.
A Gazette editor just texted me to say he's run into a TV personality in NYC, in a studio
She's not very well known now, but she was once really quite famous. Older PB-ers, ie 87% of us, will definitely know her
Anyway the subject moved on to ME, because she said she'd read my stuff, and did the editor know that she and me went on a date? The editor said No, so she explained how the date went (not very well, I seemed "troubled"). She told my editor how she'd researched me before, so she knew what to expect, but still found me "unexpected"
Here is the kicker. I don't remember this date. It clearly happened (why would she make this up??) but I do not remember a date. With a fairly famous TV presenter. I must have been so off my tits on drugs it goet erased in the mess
A Gazette editor just texted me to say he's run into a TV personality in NYC, in a studio
She's not very well known now, but she was once really quite famous. Older PB-ers, ie 87% of us, will definitely know her
Anyway the subject moved on to ME, because she said she'd read my stuff, and did the editor know that she and me went on a date? The editor said No, so she explained how the date went (not very well, I seemed "troubled"). She told my editor how she'd researched me before, so she knew what to expect, but still found me "unexpected"
Here is the kicker. I don't remember this date. It clearly happened (why would she make this up??) but I do not remember a date. With a fairly famous TV presenter. I must have been so off my tits on drugs it goet erased in the mess
Or you're off your tits on drugs now, and you've invented all this shite.
Please tell us again how one of you your books inspired Anders Breivik.
I’m afraid it’s true
Oh, that's spoilt it. I thought you had no recollection of ever meeting her.
A Gazette editor just texted me to say he's run into a TV personality in NYC, in a studio
She's not very well known now, but she was once really quite famous. Older PB-ers, ie 87% of us, will definitely know her
Anyway the subject moved on to ME, because she said she'd read my stuff, and did the editor know that she and me went on a date? The editor said No, so she explained how the date went (not very well, I seemed "troubled"). She told my editor how she'd researched me before, so she knew what to expect, but still found me "unexpected"
Here is the kicker. I don't remember this date. It clearly happened (why would she make this up??) but I do not remember a date. With a fairly famous TV presenter. I must have been so off my tits on drugs it goet erased in the mess
Was it Judith Chalmers?
I was infatuated with Anna Ford (in a fairly pure way) when an adolescent. It sort of intensified when I learned she was the wife/widow of Mark Boxer.
Yeah, but did you go on a date with Anna Ford, when you were so fucked up on heroin you didn't even realise it was a date, and then you forgot it anyway?
I remember the good old days when deputy PMs resigned for hoofing a tomato and being cross. Proper wrong uns, none of your namby pamby 40 grand tax avoidance
Watching the 2010 election on VHS at the moment. Hung parliament.
It wasn't that long ago the old VHS I had from 1990 of Vic Reeves Big Night Out finally gave up the ghost. At the end the Channel 4 presenter quietly explained that Margaret Thatcher had resigned as prime minister and there would be a change of programming. Which was the first I'd heard of it - having been out all day and pre-internet/mobile/blah.
This I why I would be sacking, or reshuffling Raynor I really don't give a crap either way about this tax thing; let the Revenue sort it out.
Over the last three years, housebuilding in London has collapsed. Molior recorded just 2,158 private starts in the first half of 2025, around 5% of London’s (low) targets, and still falling.
What is going on? I have posed this question to numerous specialists, most of whom cannot comment publicly for professional reasons. This thread is a summary of what I have gleaned. https://x.com/SCP_Hughes/status/1963196403913494704
Whether or not she made a mistake or accidentally-on-purpose misstated her tax position is of minimal interest to me. The fact that this government is proving as feeble as the last one in sorting out the planning morass, actually matters to millions of people's lives.
I've been told by a property developer the cost of building in London is prohibitively expensive and, especially in areas like Newham, good sites are hard to find.
There's a site near me which adjoins the A406 and has an old gas holder, electricity pylons and a high pressure gas line all on it. To develop this brownfield site will require a fortune to be spent in decontamination (as required by regulation). On top of that you have ther Section 106 payments, the Carbon Off-Set Tax and the Community Infrastructure Levy.
Not unreasonably, bringing more people into a community creates pressure on infrastructure, not just the physical but things like health as well.
That's not to say development isn't happening - the Twelvetrees development at West Ham is massive (the site includes one of the best preserved collections of original gas holders (1879)). The flats in the first 32-storey block are now on sale for between £970k and £1 million and the second 34 storet block are on offer from £640k. I'm not sure how much "local" interest there will be at those prices and it will be fascinating to see the rate of sale given the economic headwinds.
These factors, combined with the regulatory issues Samuel Hughes identifies, are the crux of the failure to resolve the housing crisis more than political sniping about NIMBY-ism and planning.
Where's the contamination that needs decontaminating if the site is an old gas storage holder and some pylons? Does gas sweep into the subsoil and leave it poisoned for decades?
Making/storing town gas has often left a legacy of heavy hydrocarbons (funky stuff), ammonia, cyanides, arsenic and lead.
Another fun one on really old industrial sites are underground tanks. Often filled with a mix of waste and then asphalt poured in to solidify it before being abandoned.
Thanks. I had forgotten this was about town gas.
I used to visit a friend who lived near to the old Oxford gasworks - next the railway and Thames, a little south of the station and main river channel. In the 1980s it had been demolished and capped with a thick layer of Oxford Clay, the Jurassic geological stratum - a weird moonlike landscape with the odd ragwort, and belemnites andf other fossils well out of their place in the geological map (despite the name: it should have been river terrace gravels).
I see it's built over now. I wonder, are the houses on concrete rafts floating over the Cthulhu-like monsters in the depth?
Watching the 2010 election on VHS at the moment. Hung parliament.
It wasn't that long ago the old VHS I had from 1990 of Vic Reeves Big Night Out finally gave up the ghost. At the end the Channel 4 presenter quietly explained that Margaret Thatcher had resigned as prime minister and there would be a change of programming. Which was the first I'd heard of it - having been out all day and pre-internet/mobile/blah.
Ive still got a VHS of the network premiere of The Poseiden Adventure
A Gazette editor just texted me to say he's run into a TV personality in NYC, in a studio
She's not very well known now, but she was once really quite famous. Older PB-ers, ie 87% of us, will definitely know her
Anyway the subject moved on to ME, because she said she'd read my stuff, and did the editor know that she and me went on a date? The editor said No, so she explained how the date went (not very well, I seemed "troubled"). She told my editor how she'd researched me before, so she knew what to expect, but still found me "unexpected"
Here is the kicker. I don't remember this date. It clearly happened (why would she make this up??) but I do not remember a date. With a fairly famous TV presenter. I must have been so off my tits on drugs it goet erased in the mess
Or you're off your tits on drugs now, and you've invented all this shite.
Please tell us again how one of you your books inspired Anders Breivik.
I’m afraid it’s true
Oh, that's spoilt it. I thought you had no recollection of ever meeting her.
No, it makes it weirder. Because she must have fancied me, and me her, for this to become a date AFTER my relationship with X ended, so that explains how it came about...?
Who, despite his rather odd views, developed something that is still (AIUI) on the International Space Station to this day.
Never heard of him but Bam Bam was a fine wrestler and a very athletic one for a big man, his passing saddened me
RIP.
Robert Bigelow is an absolute weirdo who made a fortune in real estate (I wonder if there's a more prominent American weirdo who made his fortune in real estate?) He founded an aerospace company as he wanted to develop space hotels - and because of his fascination with UFOlogy and the paranormal.
Unlike most absolute weirdos who found aerospace companies, his actually developed something relatively novel and useful, got it into space, and then his mismanagement/loss of interest led to the closure of the company.
I can only hope the tech his company developed proves at least marginally useful in the future, as it is very space-tested.
Who, despite his rather odd views, developed something that is still (AIUI) on the International Space Station to this day.
I wonder how big a Transhab you could stuff in a Starship?
Hoop stress would be a big issue: the greater the diameter of a pressurised cylinder, the greater the stresses in the cylinder walls. which is why you generally don't get pressurised cylinders with very large diameters. And when you do, they have very thick (and hence heavy) walls.
Oof, hoop stress sounds uncomfortable.
Very easy to calculate. Take any longitudinal slice passing through the longitudinal axis of the cylinder. Then compute the loading within each slice of wall, which is the internal pressure times the cross-sectional area, which is of course the diameter x the length, divided by two for the two sides of the cylinder. Divide by the wall thickness to get the stress.
It's why aortic aneurysms happen - and why balloons blow up with the blown up bit rather than the still narrow bit expanding. The stress for the same internal pressure is greater on the wider bits, progressively so.
Comments
Some of her interest in the home had already been sold following her divorce to a court-instructed trust previously set up to help fund the care for her son, who has lifelong disabilities, she said.
The arrangement had been designed to give him "security of knowing the home is his, allowing him to continue to live in the home he feels safe in," she added, and was "a standard practice in circumstances like ours".
So Starmer sacks Rayner today and then is likely to be accused of being a total shxt .
*Bob Mortimer GIF*
'Once I avoided £40,000 tax on a property purchase when I was Secretary of State for Housing'
Unanswered questions
The question of what legal advice Rayner took when she bought the Hove property is crucial.
If it was simply a conveyancing lawyer with no tax expertise it is likely to be much harder for her to argue that she hasn't been negligent - and to avoid harsh penalties levied by the taxman.
"My suspicion in this case…is that she didn't give all the circumstances of the trust to the conveyancing lawyer," said James Quarmby, head of private wealth at Stephenson Harwood. "The conveyancing lawyer may have just asked the bland question 'do you own any other properties?' And she says 'no'".
He said property lawyers typically state in their contracts that they don't provide tax advice.
Quarmby said he believed there was a "high" risk of Rayner being fined and that tax officials would want to see the advice she relied on and details of the instructions she had given her lawyer. "Relying on advice is not a complete defence - it must be reasonable to do so in the circumstances and that advice cannot be 'obviously wrong'," he said.
"Someone in the Revenue now with the whole glare of the UK's media on them is going to make a decision as to whether Rayner was careless," he said.
"If she gets a penalty for carelessness she is politically screwed".
Another key question - if the legal advice sought was from a conveyancer - is whether Rayner even mentioned her son's trust and the role it played in the ownership of her family home.
A spokesman for Rayner declined to answer these questions.
"If you're buying property and you have complicated affairs involving a trust, you need to speak to a tax adviser and tell them about the trust," Neidle said.
"If she did that and they got it wrong, {it is} not her fault. But if she didn't go to a specialist or didn't tell them about the trust, I think it was her fault," he added.
"I think a normal person with any sophistication would realise they should mention the trust when getting advice about something else. And a deputy prime minister who's already got into a previous tax scrape involving properties, surely should have a go."
He said this would also affect how HMRC levied penalties on the underpaid tax.
Rayner now faces an inquiry by the standards watchdog.
She has previously been critical of tax avoidance and also called former Conservative chancellor Nadhim Zahawi's position "untenable" when details emerged that he was in dispute with HMRC over his tax affairs.
Zahawi, who was forced to resign as Tory party chairman for failing to declare that he paid a settlement to HMRC, ended up paying £5m to settle the dispute - a sum which included a 30 per cent penalty for being "careless".
A similar verdict on Rayner's conduct from Sir Laurie Magnus, the independent ethics adviser, or from the tax authorities may prove politically fatal.
Ed Davey could have taken a more cautious line. He chose to ride in on his white charger, and if and when Rayner goes, that will make him look utterly ineffectual at best, complicit in wrongdoing at worst.
In all practical and political reality though, I am not sure she’d want one role without the other.
Obviously that then causes a headache for Starmer as there’d be an election, and who knows who would fill that position. McDonnell or Burgon or RLB or whoever could conceivably fill it, then it becomes a question of how he handles that.
https://bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cedvddjnd08o
Still will be interesting if anyone asks whether she informed the lender that this was not her primary residence or declared on a form that this was her primary residence. If the tax authorities, and indeed herself, are saying this isn’t her primary residence and she has given false info to the lender it’s not great legally as she will likely have benefitted from a cheaper mortgage if she said it was her primary.
She can’t be sacked by SKS as Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, because she’s directly elected to that position.
as the self appointed poster girl) of the Labour Party.
How's that relaunch going Keir? Labour’s new Communications bod has therir work cut out tonight. Couldn't nt happen to a nice bunch.
Badenoch was so bad, she might need to go before Rayner
Leader of the Opposition made a fleeting reference to Deputy PM’s tax evasion but failed to dig in – like everyone else at PMQs"
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/09/03/badenoch-was-so-bad-she-might-need-to-go-before-rayner
Advance UK GAIN Wellingborough and Rushden 😉
https://www.nottinghampost.com/news/local-news/reform-leader-nigel-farage-grilled-10473551
On thread
I don't blame Rayner for taking advice and doing the best for her disabled child...I would in the same situation.
The issue is they hypocrisy of her previous statements... and the useless advice she was given. She must have known it had to be watertight and her judgement wasn't sound.
The Country would be better served if she resigned.
I did not listen, but at a quick skim he seems (in my opinion) to be shovelling out his usual talking points, starting with 'Lucy Connolly is Keir Starmer's political prisoner'.
He quoted the "12000 arrests for posts in 2023" talking point, which is very flawed:
Nigel Farage said that arrests for so-called “hate speech” are “massive statistics”
Asked by committee chair about the12,000 arrests made in 2023 for offensive posts, he said: “These are massive statistics.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/politics/2025/09/03/farage-us-congress-speech-free-speech-britain/
The analysis by the FSU says it is arrests under "section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 and section 1 of the Malicious Communications Act 1988". The latter was aiui used for catching things such as revenge porn and unauthorised disclosure of intimate images - both now updated into later law.
https://freespeechunion.org/police-make-30-arrests-a-day-for-offensive-online-messages/
Presumably even Farage does not think that revenge porn is free speech, but he also does not give a fig for whether his stuff is true or not.
Funnily enough the whole “which home do you live in” issue has happened to him:
“ Tarry was criticised for allegedly living in his home in Brighton, which is 70 miles away from his then council seat in Barking and Dagenham.[8][9][10] He was investigated by police for electoral fraud in relation to this matter, and was cleared by the police investigation, as he was found to own a second home in Barking and Dagenham, and therefore was legally resident in Barking and Dagenham at the time of his election.”
Sam Stein
@samstein
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1h
How does Florida's most famous resident, who, i believe, has grandchildren in the state, feel about officials there getting rid of childhood vaccination mandates?
@realDonaldTrump
I've honestly not yet looked deeply enough into the Rayner story to know if she deserves a pillorying about it, but if it's on the borderline of acceptability she can have no complaints if those who dislike her make use of it.
It seems to me that she thought she could use her disabled son to get away with not paying the extra stamp duty.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0w6wUqWU3yU
I suppose we should be grateful we were spared 'kremlin talking points', though I am sure Matt's finger weighed very heavily over the 'k' before moving on.
To win in 2029 he needs two things at the same time: he needs the votes, perhaps 34% or so is enough. But he also needs those who are against Reform and Farage not to have enough reason to gang up against him tactically in such a way as to be fatal. 66% of the voters not wanting Farage is a big number. Farage obviously being pro Trump, pro current kleptocracy in the USA etc is just the sort of ground that unites his enemies.
"One of the more dangerous lies in recent years is the claim that Liz Truss crashed the economy."
Spot on from the Business Editor of *checks notes* the New Statesman...
https://nitter.poast.org/julianHjessop/status/1963299203892809734#m
Guaranteed it will be a whitewash and jsut an honest error blah blah. They do it every time they get caught out.
A Gazette editor just texted me to say he's run into a TV personality in NYC, in a studio
She's not very well known now, but she was once really quite famous. Older PB-ers, ie 87% of us, will definitely know her
Anyway the subject moved on to ME, because she said she'd read my stuff, and did the editor know that she and me went on a date? The editor said No, so she explained how the date went (not very well, I seemed "troubled"). She told my editor how she'd researched me before, so she knew what to expect, but still found me "unexpected"
Here is the kicker. I don't remember this date. It clearly happened (why would she make this up??) but I do not remember a date. With a fairly famous TV presenter. I must have been so off my tits on drugs it goet erased in the mess
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bigelow_Aerospace
Who, despite his rather odd views, developed something that is still (AIUI) on the International Space Station to this day.
Please tell us again how one of you your books inspired Anders Breivik.
I was infatuated with Anna Ford (in a fairly pure way) when an adolescent. It sort of intensified when I learned she was the wife/widow of Mark Boxer.
I see it's built over now. I wonder, are the houses on concrete rafts floating over the Cthulhu-like monsters in the depth?
And yet, not a jot of memory remains
Robert Bigelow is an absolute weirdo who made a fortune in real estate (I wonder if there's a more prominent American weirdo who made his fortune in real estate?) He founded an aerospace company as he wanted to develop space hotels - and because of his fascination with UFOlogy and the paranormal.
Unlike most absolute weirdos who found aerospace companies, his actually developed something relatively novel and useful, got it into space, and then his mismanagement/loss of interest led to the closure of the company.
I can only hope the tech his company developed proves at least marginally useful in the future, as it is very space-tested.
It's why aortic aneurysms happen - and why balloons blow up with the blown up bit rather than the still narrow bit expanding. The stress for the same internal pressure is greater on the wider bits, progressively so.