You Rub My Back …. – politicalbetting.com
You Rub My Back …. – politicalbetting.com
Good old Mandy! There is so much to unpick and enjoy in the Epstein revelations – from the state of Mandy’s underwear to potential criminality:
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Good old Mandy! There is so much to unpick and enjoy in the Epstein revelations – from the state of Mandy’s underwear to potential criminality:
Comments
Genuinely strange thing. Reform are usually first out of the blocks on any major scandal involving the British political establishment. But on Epstein it's tumbleweed.
And however many redaction 'they' managed, 'they' still published personal information about the victims.
Good morning, everybody.
We'll see if the silver/gold prices crash whether/how much the decline is.
Jeffrey Epstein ‘had secret child who was taken from mother at birth’
The paedophile may have fathered a number of children, new files suggest, with Sarah Ferguson appearing to congratulate him on the birth of a son in 2011
Jeffrey Epstein may have had a number of secret children, according to files released by the US justice department.
Buried in the three million documents are references to Epstein having fathered children, including one by a teenager who alleges her daughter was taken from her minutes after birth.
In a diary entry, an Epstein victim claims to have given birth to a baby girl in about 2002 when she would have been 16 or 17 years old. Included in her diary is a copy of a pregnancy scan dated to 20 weeks’ gestation.
The child appears to have been taken from her mother ten minutes after birth, which the woman alleges was supervised by Epstein’s former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell. “She was born, I heard her cries!” the victim wrote. “I saw this tiny head and body in between the doctor’s hands. Ghislaine said she was beautiful. Where is she?”
The woman wrote: “I do not want to be tied to Jeffrey for the rest of my life! playing the piano well is not a good reason to think someone has good genes or should have a baby! I am too young and he is too old!
“The piano and music comments are made to convince me this is right and will create perfect offspring he [Epstein] calls them ‘superior gene pool?’ Why me?? My eye color, my eye color? I miss the person I was before I was made into what feels like a human incubator.”
The diary was shared by the woman’s lawyers, Wigdor LLP, with federal prosecutors investigating Epstein and Maxwell. The woman later filed a lawsuit against the Epstein associate Leon Black, the former chief executive of Apollo Global Management, under the pseudonym Jane Doe in 2023.
The victim alleges Black raped her at Epstein’s house in an assault that caused her to bleed. Black denied the allegations. The case is continuing.
https://www.thetimes.com/us/news-today/article/epstein-secret-children-files-island-kp9lgl2v0
https://x.com/nasaadmin/status/2018578937115271660
It’s quite amazing how little discussion there has been about this mission, which will be the furthest humans have ever been from Earth.
*not amazed
Its interesting that has long been questions about how Mandelson appeaers to be so rich, we now getting a better idea when you dont even remember a $100k in bank transfers to you and your partner. Who else has been paying for his hubbies college courses and Brazilian beach homes?
I made the point at the time that when Carney said "..We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false that the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient.." that the same could be said of every system of law.
It's a continuum, with authoritarian states at one end, international law somewhere in the middle, - and liberal democracies at the other end. But even for the latter, it's still a partial fiction.
(I'm fairly sure that the same thought will have occurred to Carney when he drew the comparison.)
Liberal democracies don't do often see it as a a fiction since the rules based order has served them so well.
But it's also a strength of democracies that they tend to react to reassert the rules when the mask drops. It's also a test for the strength of those democracies.
His book on The Romanovs is on my to-read pile (after Michael Wood's The Story of China).
I would say 'just to lower the tone' but somehow I don't think it will this morning.
A great header from @Cyclefree and great to see her around as well.
There really isn’t much enjoyable about stories of abuse of power, of women, and of children, as I’m sure you would agree.
Everyone involved should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
Britain, of course, likes to see itself as the opposite edge case, where, at least compared to elsewhere, laws and authority are respected and followed, stability and conformity are prized and eccentricity admired only if it is harmless, and we wait in an orderly queue to receive what we are due. Hence why we Brits are so fascinated with Italy, as our supposed antithesis.
As CycleFree says, during a remarkable series of events during the early 1990s, the era when the Christian democrats governed and the left (usually communists) opposed, tied together by a network of favours within the political system, was swept away, and most of the longstanding political parties disappeared. In 1994 Italians turned to a businessman untainted by political corruption, remarkably overlooking that the Italian business world operated in precisely the same way as the Italian political world, and who turned out to be a corrupt snake-oil salesman and - arguably - a role model for a style of politics that has subsequently spread across the world (odd how these new ideas so often seem to start in Italy).
When Berlusconi was finally overcome by his own hubris and corruption - and after various attempts at rebirth somewhat more successful than our home-grown buffoon Johnson ever managed - Italy was run for a while by a technocrat government tied to the EU, which Italians came to hate, then by a bunch of comedians in the anti-political-party Five Star, which Italians also came to hate, and then turned to the reinvented far right. Which, one has to say, and despite my own personal politics, has so far managed to surprise on the upside.
If we’re looking for parallels, the first question is whether Mandleson will prove to be an exceptional case, or the first loose thread that leads to the unravelling of an entire system - which, today at least, looks unlikely - and the second question is whether what follows in our politics turns out to be anti-politics as a disguise for what in reality is merely a more extreme version of what went before - which, today at least, looks rather more likely. The more favourable alternative parallel is that we’ve already had, in Johnson, our Berlusconi and await our Meloni in Farage.
https://x.com/joecguinan/status/2018064479016087725?s=61&t=LYVEHh2mqFy1oUJAdCfe-Q
Does Mandelson seriously think anyone is going to believe this ?
Thank God! - the British journalist.
But seeing what the scum won't do
Unbribed, there's no occasion to.
If somebody will give me $75,000 dollars and come back to me in 17 years we will see if I've remembered.
Now that would be fun, for everyone except Mr Mandelson.
Even Mr Eagles would notice $75k in one go, that’s a lot of shoes.
The U19 World Cup is not happy hunting at the moment for those who hope we might beat the Aussies when Cummins, Smith and Starc call time.
I think he's wrong again and that most iniquitous aspect of the loans is the RPI+ interest rate.
I've always opposed student loans and ideally would clear the debt but that's clearly not going to be politically palatable and very expensive.
Whether it's because he's getting older, was never as bright as he seemed, lacks any self awareness, or because he's backed himself into a corner, his excuses are getting worse.
Whereas Andrew seems to have realised he's completely thick after his notorious interview and just goes as silent as possible.
No, it has to be give me $75,000 and see if I remember.
And to think people were getting bent out of shape by Mandy being nicknamed Lord Mandelbrot
Manufacturing PMI is at a 17month high
https://x.com/julianhjessop/status/2018266739801272475?s=61
But, hey, if you don’t want a 50% chance of being given $75k, you don’t have to take part.
Along with PFI they are an accident looking for somewhere to happen, and it looks as though Starmer and Reeves will have the unenviable job of cleaning up the mess.
This incidentally might help Starmer survive in the short term - a lot of people with any sense are going to be anxious for him to soak up the blame for the mess they can see coming.
The outlook for silver remains bullish despite recent huge price rises, says ByteTree’s Charlie Morris
https://moneyweek.com/investments/silver-and-other-precious-metals/silver-record-price-rise-continue
This was in the pre-digital age and only noticed when I got the statement through the post.
I had four different bank accounts* in those days and the payee used an account I didn't use.
*I have more now.
YouGov / Sky / Times voting intention
CON 18%(+1),
LAB 19%(-2),
LDEM 14%(nc),
RefUK 26%(+1),
GRN 17%(+1)
On the other hand, it allowed Ukraine to take out 53 artillery pieces. That total will soon hit 37,000.
https://ebay.us/m/rdEgMZ
But - for good or ill - genuinely brilliant. Far more so than his competitors. Which means rather too many people found it expedient, or necessary, to overlook his flaws.
*Lloyd George, was, of course, anything but gay.
Harman is a longstanding critic of Mandelson; on Today this morning, even she expressed shock at his leaking of cabinet information.
Compare and contrast:
In his biography Mandelson lavished praise on Gordon Brown for the manner of his departure, he says he was ‘determined not to be an obstacle to a deal’ and left with ‘dignity, statesmanship and class’
His email to Jeffrey Epstein on May 10, 2010 tells a different story.
‘Finally got him to go today,’ he said hours before Brown’s departure became public knowledge
Epstein said it would increase the value of his book…..
https://x.com/Steven_Swinford/status/2018400496814268882?s=20
That argument got a lot harder (but not quite entirely impossible) to make when the Epstein emails came out. And it looks like basically impossible after yesterday's revelations. The only questions that remain are "who knew what and when?" and "why the hell didn't everyone know much sooner?"
The much harder question is what is to be done. Power is attractive to bad people, and bad people will tend to beat similarly-talented good people, because they are more willing to cheat. Furthermore, the Berlusconi story (and the Trump story) shows that, if someone comes along as an outsider promising to sweep away the political establisment, it's time to count the spoons and lock up your daughters. (Yes Nigel, I am looking at you. Don't worry about being left out Zack, I'm looking at you as well.)
And it's not just politics. There is a similar phenomenon in business, media, charities and so on. People who make it to the top do so in large part by wanting to make it to the top. And wanting that much power is often a sign that someone shouldn't be given that much power. And whilst more openness, higher standards and clearer justice are clearly what is needed, that needs the right people at the top, and they're not going to get there. Part of the evil genius of the Epstein business was to make all those involved complicit, so that whistles were not blown.
Perhaps there was a little window of something better when the wartime generation were running things. After all, war imposes reality on nations- leadership is no longer a game, because national survival depends on it. You have to put the best people in charge, whoever they are. Now we consider ourselves at peace, nothing really matters, so we can go back to treating it all as a game. Having said that, wishing another total war so that we can be better led feels like overkill.
So we can all guess which side waited one day and then bombed the Hell out of Kyiv last night.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/131055.stm
The latest allegation - that Mr Mandelson's office sent documents several times a week to Derek Draper, the lobbyist at the centre of the row, have been denied by Mr Mandelson.
The Observer also claims that Mr Draper boasted of having prior knowledge of government decisions about the National Lottery, which enabled him to pitch for business with the American firm, GTech, which had been involved in running it.
The % of relevant salary has not, IIRC, changed. It is 9%. But 9% extra for ever on the squeezed middle starting at the minimum wage salary level with interest rates by which after lots of years you still owe more than you borrowed, paying off until you are over 60, and where the graduate premium is small for many, and from which the super rich are exempt because daddy seems onerous.
There is another Government loan book - Support for Mortgage Interest - which will be fine as long as house prices don't drop.
In the round, the system has shifted a stack of real debt off into a column in the accounts that supposes its going to covered by future repayments when, as our yd says above, in reality it will at some stage collapse, then revealing the deep hole beneath.
I doubt he keeps records going back anything like that far back, and there's only a very limited obligation to do so.
Another good reason (apart from Trump's increasingly hysterical demands to control all voting) to doubt how fair the next elections will be. Like Netanyahu or Erdogan* the moment he's out, he's inside.
*I nearly added, 'or Putin,' but I suspect a literal window of escape will be found for him when he finally leaves office.
#jcflannel
Start with the usury of the interest rates being well over the base rate, and the minimum repayment income now little more than minimum wage.
Parents are better off taking out a second mortgage if they have equity in property, and coming to some sort of agreement with their offspring.
Unless they wanted to study something for a specific profession such as medicine or engineering, I’d be advising my hypothetical 18-year-old to learn a trade and get on the housing ladder as quickly as possible, then look at further study if they want to.
@juliusgoat.bsky.social
They should be impeaching him every single day. New crime, new impeachment. They should keep impeaching him once he’s out of office. They should keep impeaching him after he’s dead.
https://bsky.app/profile/juliusgoat.bsky.social/post/3mdwddcan6c2w
So as it is clearly nothing can it do the country a favour and cease to exist except as an incompetent, entitled, unpleasant and staggeringly hypocritical memory?
Unfortunately, the spin about "poor graduates, never paying back their debt" took root, and the Conservative majority governents dragged the repayment threshold down and we ended up with the current mess, which doesn't work for anyone.
In the same way 'they' could also actually stand up for the Constitution rather than passively waving through funds for a murderous private army being deployed illegally.
Unless the Dems take the House in November, there will be no impeachment.
And that is another reason to suspect the Dems will struggle to take the House in November.
But as I assume he is somewhat litigious, for the safety of the site I shall say nowt.
https://x.com/omid9/status/2018401500213494268
Also, how come most of the news we are getting from Iran is coming from a comedian?
Very little mainstream reporting, no-one at the Grammys making impassioned speeches about Iranians, and don’t start on the London demonstration *in favour* of the murderers at the weekend.
Applause.
If the former, they should be negative fees.
If the latter, off the scale.
Also, say it quietly but student loans are a significant driver of young graduates ending up in places like the sandpit. If they can disappear from HMRC’s radar for two or three years in their twenties, they can defer the repayments which allows them to save for a deposit. Or enjoy a couple of years of beach bars, fancy brunches, and expensive nightclubs, which is what many of them actually end up doing.