Good piece as ever @Cyclefree, although one has to disagree with the word “enjoy” in the first line.
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.
Not going to happen under Trump.
It can't happen under Trump. As Jack Smith noted, there is a policy you don't prosecute the President while in office.
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.
They can't prosecute him in office, but they could impeach him
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.
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.
On current polls hard to see how they won't though it would need a huge Democrat majority in the Senate or mass Republican defections to convict
Off topic: is the Martin Lewis campaigning against the evils of Reeves' student loans related to that guy Martin Lewis who enthusiastically promoted the scheme in 2011/12? 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.
Yes, they are related. But to be fair, the situation has changed in some ways. The loans were intended to be payments which got paid off at a reasonable %, starting at a reasonable salary level for a reasonable length of time, with reasonable interest rate meaning that it would be paid off by many in due course.
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.
The student loan system is crazy for most people, at least those going straight from school at 18 or 19.
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.
Best to pay the fees upfront, even if it means taking out another loan.
That also means not having to deal with the Student Loan Company. They are not known as the Fucking Stupid Loan Company for no reason.
Good piece as ever @Cyclefree, although one has to disagree with the word “enjoy” in the first line.
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.
Not going to happen under Trump.
It can't happen under Trump. As Jack Smith noted, there is a policy you don't prosecute the President while in office.
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.
Didn't work for Bolsonaro and provided the next Democratic presidential candidate doesn't call for Trump to be jailed I doubt he will care much whether say Buttigieg or Vance wins provided he hasn't been impeached by Congress after the midterms anyway
He can still be impeached after leaving office, if that is what it takes.
Good piece as ever @Cyclefree, although one has to disagree with the word “enjoy” in the first line.
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.
Not going to happen under Trump.
It can't happen under Trump. As Jack Smith noted, there is a policy you don't prosecute the President while in office.
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.
They can't prosecute him in office, but they could impeach him
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.
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.
On current polls hard to see how they won't though it would need a huge Democrat majority in the Senate or mass Republican defections to convict
It is not at all hard to see how with Trump demanding he run elections rather than the states polls could become rather irrelevant.
Good piece as ever @Cyclefree, although one has to disagree with the word “enjoy” in the first line.
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.
Not going to happen under Trump.
It can't happen under Trump. As Jack Smith noted, there is a policy you don't prosecute the President while in office.
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.
They can't prosecute him in office, but they could impeach him
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.
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.
On current polls hard to see how they won't though it would need a huge Democrat majority in the Senate or mass Republican defections to convict
It is not at all hard to see how with Trump demanding he run elections rather than the states polls could become rather irrelevant.
The states run elections even for Federal Office not the Federal government
Good piece as ever @Cyclefree, although one has to disagree with the word “enjoy” in the first line.
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.
Not going to happen under Trump.
It can't happen under Trump. As Jack Smith noted, there is a policy you don't prosecute the President while in office.
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.
They can't prosecute him in office, but they could impeach him
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.
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.
On current polls hard to see how they won't though it would need a huge Democrat majority in the Senate or mass Republican defections to convict
It is not at all hard to see how with Trump demanding he run elections rather than the states polls could become rather irrelevant.
The states run elections even for Federal Office not the Federal government
Yes, at the moment.
If Trump, as he is threatening, uses ICE and the FBI to seize control of them, in defiance of the Constitution, who will stop him?
I am amazed* by the number of folk who are now saying they always thought Mandelson was a wrong un. In the unlikely event anyone can muster an iota of sympathy for him, one might think that Mandelson was labouring under the illusion that everyone thought he was great given that hardly anyone was raising concerns.
*not amazed
I guess there are levels of wrong'un. Leaking sensitive government info to most likely a foreign intelligence asset is a big step up get us a passport, there will be a few quid in it down the line.
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?
Until pretty recently, it was possible (and pretty good realpolitik) to say "Mandelson is a bit of a wrong'un, but talented and therefore useful. In fact, his willingness to flirt with the dark arts is a large part of his value. You can't make an omlette without breaking eggs and all that."
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.
“As short a time ago as February, the Ministry of Plenty had issued a promise (a "categorical pledge" were the official words) that there would be no reduction of the chocolate ration during 1984. Actually, as Winston was aware, the chocolate ration was to be reduced from thirty grammes to twenty at the end of the present week. All that was needed was to substitute for the original promise a warning that it would probably be necessary to reduce the ration at some time in April.”
Labour pays millions to make hospital stats more flattering: ministers accused of massaging NHS figures by paying £3m a month to take off waiting lists patients who no longer need treatment
In response to the header, where Frank Herbert was surely correct was in saying that power does not corrupt; rather it attracts pathological personalities, who are already corrupt.
Where he was dead wrong, was with his "beware heroes" message. Evil is not heroic or glamorous. It is seedy and banal.
I think CS Lewis' vision of evil is far more relevant to our times:
I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of "Admin." The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the offices of a thoroughly nasty business concern.
How can you not remember receiving 75,000 dollars ?
Does Mandelson seriously think anyone is going to believe this ?
Depends how common it is....
Well I’m sure an HMRC forensic audit of his finances going back two decades can reveal the answer.
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.
I often reflect with really really expensive clothes they should have the price printed on them in large letters or what's the point? People can probably tell a bad suit from a good suit but not a £1000 suit from a £10000 one, so printing the price is the only way people can be impressed, as just telling others is gauche.
With suits - a small number of people can tell the difference. The rest take their snobbery from authority. Just like wine.
There is also, both in clothing and wine a whole nonsense of “tells” which are supposed to clue in the semi-expert. The semantics of wine bottle label design…
In response to the header, where Frank Herbert was surely correct was in saying that power does not corrupt; rather it attracts pathological personalities, who are already corrupt.
Where he was dead wrong, was with his "beware heroes" message. Evil is not heroic or glamorous. It is seedy and banal.
I think CS Lewis' vision of evil is far more relevant to our times:
I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of "Admin." The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the offices of a thoroughly nasty business concern.
Screwtape Letters reference? Not read it, but it's been on my radar for an alarmingly long time.
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.
Which is worse? Not saying anything about the Iranian protests, or using who hasn't said anything about the Iranian protests as a stick to beat people with?
This is a good point. Despite being a flaming, chaotic train wreck, at least the USA has dribbled the Epstein files out even if there’s a dearth of Americans being held to account. If it was solely down to the unbribed British journalist, Mandy would probably be the Archbishop of Canterbury,
He probably wouldn’t be as he is gay. The Church of England has just about accepted a straight married female Archbishop for the first time but there is no way conservative evangelicals in it would have Mandy. Plus he is Jewish of course anyway
Never change HYUFD.
For some of us, he will always be in that tank on the roundabout at Raseiniai.
Off topic: is the Martin Lewis campaigning against the evils of Reeves' student loans related to that guy Martin Lewis who enthusiastically promoted the scheme in 2011/12? 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.
Yes, they are related. But to be fair, the situation has changed in some ways. The loans were intended to be payments which got paid off at a reasonable %, starting at a reasonable salary level for a reasonable length of time, with reasonable interest rate meaning that it would be paid off by many in due course.
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.
The student loan system is crazy for most people, at least those going straight from school at 18 or 19.
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.
Best to pay the fees upfront, even if it means taking out another loan.
That also means not having to deal with the Student Loan Company. They are not known as the Fucking Stupid Loan Company for no reason.
Hey the EE call centre pays more - which is why the SLC is filled with EE rejects who can’t get a better paid job
“As short a time ago as February, the Ministry of Plenty had issued a promise (a "categorical pledge" were the official words) that there would be no reduction of the chocolate ration during 1984. Actually, as Winston was aware, the chocolate ration was to be reduced from thirty grammes to twenty at the end of the present week. All that was needed was to substitute for the original promise a warning that it would probably be necessary to reduce the ration at some time in April.”
Labour pays millions to make hospital stats more flattering: ministers accused of massaging NHS figures by paying £3m a month to take off waiting lists patients who no longer need treatment
Sir Keir Starmer and the health secretary, Wes Streeting, have repeatedly highlighted Labour’s success in cutting the number of patients waiting for treatment — overall that has fallen by about 300,000 since Labour came to power.
Two weeks ago the prime minister claimed new figures showed NHS waiting lists were down by “more than 86,000”, which was the “largest fall in a month for over two years … These aren’t just numbers — it is thousands of people getting the care they need.”
But an analysis of official NHS statistics by The Times reveals that this drop was achieved only by removing thousands of patients from the waiting list through a process known as “validation”.
In November, the month that Starmer was referring to, 346,300 were removed from NHS waiting lists, 82,000 more than the month before, which accounted for almost the entire claimed drop in the waiting list.
At the same time, NHS data shows that in November hospitals actually carried out about 10 per cent fewer operations and appointments than they did in October, suggesting that fewer people were being treated.
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.
Which is worse? Not saying anything about the Iranian protests, or using who hasn't said anything about the Iranian protests as a stick to beat people with?
The question is why the large group of people who jump on the bandwagon of every fashionable cause going, are all seemingly ignoring what could be close to a hundred thousand deaths in January alone?
“As short a time ago as February, the Ministry of Plenty had issued a promise (a "categorical pledge" were the official words) that there would be no reduction of the chocolate ration during 1984. Actually, as Winston was aware, the chocolate ration was to be reduced from thirty grammes to twenty at the end of the present week. All that was needed was to substitute for the original promise a warning that it would probably be necessary to reduce the ration at some time in April.”
Labour pays millions to make hospital stats more flattering: ministers accused of massaging NHS figures by paying £3m a month to take off waiting lists patients who no longer need treatment
Removing someone from a waiting list who doesn't need treatment isn't massaging the figures it's a sensible thing to do to produce accurate figures and happened under the last govt too.
I am amazed* by the number of folk who are now saying they always thought Mandelson was a wrong un. In the unlikely event anyone can muster an iota of sympathy for him, one might think that Mandelson was labouring under the illusion that everyone thought he was great given that hardly anyone was raising concerns.
*not amazed
I guess there are levels of wrong'un. Leaking sensitive government info to most likely a foreign intelligence asset is a big step up get us a passport, there will be a few quid in it down the line.
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?
Until pretty recently, it was possible (and pretty good realpolitik) to say "Mandelson is a bit of a wrong'un, but talented and therefore useful. In fact, his willingness to flirt with the dark arts is a large part of his value. You can't make an omlette without breaking eggs and all that."
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.
The fall of communism unleashed the corporate greed of the executive oligarchy.
“As short a time ago as February, the Ministry of Plenty had issued a promise (a "categorical pledge" were the official words) that there would be no reduction of the chocolate ration during 1984. Actually, as Winston was aware, the chocolate ration was to be reduced from thirty grammes to twenty at the end of the present week. All that was needed was to substitute for the original promise a warning that it would probably be necessary to reduce the ration at some time in April.”
Labour pays millions to make hospital stats more flattering: ministers accused of massaging NHS figures by paying £3m a month to take off waiting lists patients who no longer need treatment
Sir Keir Starmer and the health secretary, Wes Streeting, have repeatedly highlighted Labour’s success in cutting the number of patients waiting for treatment — overall that has fallen by about 300,000 since Labour came to power.
Two weeks ago the prime minister claimed new figures showed NHS waiting lists were down by “more than 86,000”, which was the “largest fall in a month for over two years … These aren’t just numbers — it is thousands of people getting the care they need.”
But an analysis of official NHS statistics by The Times reveals that this drop was achieved only by removing thousands of patients from the waiting list through a process known as “validation”.
In November, the month that Starmer was referring to, 346,300 were removed from NHS waiting lists, 82,000 more than the month before, which accounted for almost the entire claimed drop in the waiting list.
At the same time, NHS data shows that in November hospitals actually carried out about 10 per cent fewer operations and appointments than they did in October, suggesting that fewer people were being treated.
Simplistic questions that arise for me over Mendelson etc.
With Windrush I wonder: Where were the MPs, where were the human rights lawyers.
With Mandelson I wonder: Where were MI5, MI6, GCHQ, Special Branch etc? Obvs they hide, rightly, behind secrecy and No Comment, but either they have all been a bit dim in their espionage or SKS etc have ignored a lot of advice.
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.
Which is worse? Not saying anything about the Iranian protests, or using who hasn't said anything about the Iranian protests as a stick to beat people with?
The question is why the large group of people who jump on the bandwagon of every fashionable cause going, are all seemingly ignoring what could be close to a hundred thousand deaths in January alone?
No, it's not. The question is what can we do to stop a hundred thousand deaths and overthrow a tyrannical govt in Iran? That's more important than your quest to criticise leftists. Stop using tragedy as an excuse to get on your hobby horse.
Simplistic questions that arise for me over Mendelson etc.
With Windrush I wonder: Where were the MPs, where were the human rights lawyers.
With Mandelson I wonder: Where were MI5, MI6, GCHQ, Special Branch etc? Obvs they hide, rightly, behind secrecy and No Comment, but either they have all been a bit dim in their espionage or SKS etc have ignored a lot of advice.
Especially if Epstein was a Mossad agent (alleged)
“As short a time ago as February, the Ministry of Plenty had issued a promise (a "categorical pledge" were the official words) that there would be no reduction of the chocolate ration during 1984. Actually, as Winston was aware, the chocolate ration was to be reduced from thirty grammes to twenty at the end of the present week. All that was needed was to substitute for the original promise a warning that it would probably be necessary to reduce the ration at some time in April.”
Labour pays millions to make hospital stats more flattering: ministers accused of massaging NHS figures by paying £3m a month to take off waiting lists patients who no longer need treatment
Removing someone from a waiting list who doesn't need treatment isn't massaging the figures it's a sensible thing to do to produce accurate figures and happened under the last govt too.
According to the article, Rishi Sunak refused to do so
However, one figure in the last government said Rishi Sunak had vetoed a plan by the NHS to conduct a similar exercise when he was prime minister because it involved paying the organisation for “doing something it should be doing anyway”.
They added that “artificially” reducing the waiting list also gave a misleading impression of the NHS’s performance.
David Lammy and Pat McFadden were Peter Mandelson’s deputies while he was, as Business Minister, forwarding confidential emails on secret Government policy to Jeffrey Epstein.
I’m glad that the Government has confirmed the Cabinet Secretary will be looking into whether they played any role in this scandal.
But he must also be allowed to investigate how Mandelson was appointed as Ambassador to Washington in the first place.
In response to the header, where Frank Herbert was surely correct was in saying that power does not corrupt; rather it attracts pathological personalities, who are already corrupt.
Where he was dead wrong, was with his "beware heroes" message. Evil is not heroic or glamorous. It is seedy and banal.
I think CS Lewis' vision of evil is far more relevant to our times:
I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of "Admin." The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the offices of a thoroughly nasty business concern.
Screwtape Letters reference? Not read it, but it's been on my radar for an alarmingly long time.
Well worth a read, though a bit dated now. As is Lewis's little known masterpiece, a lecture to students, 'The Inner Ring' which is bang up to date, and printed in 'Screwtape Proposes a Toast'. Text (I think complete) here:
Good piece as ever @Cyclefree, although one has to disagree with the word “enjoy” in the first line.
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.
Not going to happen under Trump.
It can't happen under Trump. As Jack Smith noted, there is a policy you don't prosecute the President while in office.
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.
They can't prosecute him in office, but they could impeach him
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.
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.
On current polls hard to see how they won't though it would need a huge Democrat majority in the Senate or mass Republican defections to convict
It is not at all hard to see how with Trump demanding he run elections rather than the states polls could become rather irrelevant.
The states run elections even for Federal Office not the Federal government
Over time, the Supreme Court has defined the limits of those powers, and set out the powers which devolve to the States, but as ever, the limits are subject to Supreme Court ruling...
I am amazed* by the number of folk who are now saying they always thought Mandelson was a wrong un. In the unlikely event anyone can muster an iota of sympathy for him, one might think that Mandelson was labouring under the illusion that everyone thought he was great given that hardly anyone was raising concerns.
*not amazed
I guess there are levels of wrong'un. Leaking sensitive government info to most likely a foreign intelligence asset is a big step up get us a passport, there will be a few quid in it down the line.
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?
Until pretty recently, it was possible (and pretty good realpolitik) to say "Mandelson is a bit of a wrong'un, but talented and therefore useful. In fact, his willingness to flirt with the dark arts is a large part of his value. You can't make an omlette without breaking eggs and all that."
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.
Agree with all of this. And it's not like we have been overwhelmed by competent people at the top of government so you can see why excuses are made for flawed but skilled people.
..In his recent Davos speech, Carney talked about taking the sign out of the window. He was referring to the international security based order of treaties and alliances. What he and his ilk perhaps don’t appreciate is that the non-Davos population view many of the establishment as those who treated the sign in the window as including a whole load of other things people did not much care for, who were happy with a system benefiting them and didn’t care about anyone else, no matter what voters said..
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.
Carney certainly exempted himself from public sector pay policies:
Incoming Bank of England governor Mark Carney will pocket an annual £250,000 housing allowance, taking his total pay package close to £1m a year when he takes the reins next summer, the central bank has revealed.
Carney will receive the allowance as part of a generous package put together by the chancellor, George Osborne, to lure him from his current job in Ottawa as boss of the Canadian central bank.
It was already known that Carney would be paid a salary of £480,000 and pension contributions worth £144,000. He will also receive free health and dental insurance and the use of a chauffeur-driven car.
The revelation that he will gain a further £250,000 to house his wife and four children is likely to shock MPs and campaign groups concerned at wage inflation for top executives when wage rises are limited to 1% across the public sector.
Good piece as ever @Cyclefree, although one has to disagree with the word “enjoy” in the first line.
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.
Not going to happen under Trump.
It can't happen under Trump. As Jack Smith noted, there is a policy you don't prosecute the President while in office.
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.
They can't prosecute him in office, but they could impeach him
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.
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.
On current polls hard to see how they won't though it would need a huge Democrat majority in the Senate or mass Republican defections to convict
It is not at all hard to see how with Trump demanding he run elections rather than the states polls could become rather irrelevant.
The states run elections even for Federal Office not the Federal government
Over time, the Supreme Court has defined the limits of those powers, and set out the powers which devolve to the States, but as ever, the limits are subject to Supreme Court ruling...
So there is plenty of space for shenanigans.
The voter ID proposal, known as the SAFE Act, is expected to come up in the Senate in the next couple of days.
It will propose that elections to Federal offices are run in a similar way to Parliamentary election in the UK, with ID required, paper ballots, and same-day counting with limited postal ballots to arrive by polling day.
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.
Which is worse? Not saying anything about the Iranian protests, or using who hasn't said anything about the Iranian protests as a stick to beat people with?
The question is why the large group of people who jump on the bandwagon of every fashionable cause going, are all seemingly ignoring what could be close to a hundred thousand deaths in January alone?
Because the US/UK government isn't funding and arming the Ayatollah. Indeed if the various rumblings are true, we're about to do the opposite.
I guess there could be protests about us not bombing them yet, but it would probably be just me and Leon and a bunch of arms manufacturers. Fwiw I recently lobbied a RN officer (reserve) to sink the shadow fleet, but sadly all he does is go on free skiing trips.
Simplistic questions that arise for me over Mendelson etc.
With Windrush I wonder: Where were the MPs, where were the human rights lawyers.
With Mandelson I wonder: Where were MI5, MI6, GCHQ, Special Branch etc? Obvs they hide, rightly, behind secrecy and No Comment, but either they have all been a bit dim in their espionage or SKS etc have ignored a lot of advice.
The answer to your second question is that we do not know, but should keep asking. On the past record of MI5, MI6 etc you have to say that they have not been very good in the past so maybe they just didn't do their job properly, again, in this instance. Alternatively, Starmer was warned by those whose job it was to alert him to these things, including sources with the Labour Party, and he chose to ignore them.
“As short a time ago as February, the Ministry of Plenty had issued a promise (a "categorical pledge" were the official words) that there would be no reduction of the chocolate ration during 1984. Actually, as Winston was aware, the chocolate ration was to be reduced from thirty grammes to twenty at the end of the present week. All that was needed was to substitute for the original promise a warning that it would probably be necessary to reduce the ration at some time in April.”
Labour pays millions to make hospital stats more flattering: ministers accused of massaging NHS figures by paying £3m a month to take off waiting lists patients who no longer need treatment
Sir Keir Starmer and the health secretary, Wes Streeting, have repeatedly highlighted Labour’s success in cutting the number of patients waiting for treatment — overall that has fallen by about 300,000 since Labour came to power.
Two weeks ago the prime minister claimed new figures showed NHS waiting lists were down by “more than 86,000”, which was the “largest fall in a month for over two years … These aren’t just numbers — it is thousands of people getting the care they need.”
But an analysis of official NHS statistics by The Times reveals that this drop was achieved only by removing thousands of patients from the waiting list through a process known as “validation”.
In November, the month that Starmer was referring to, 346,300 were removed from NHS waiting lists, 82,000 more than the month before, which accounted for almost the entire claimed drop in the waiting list.
At the same time, NHS data shows that in November hospitals actually carried out about 10 per cent fewer operations and appointments than they did in October, suggesting that fewer people were being treated.
So the Times has a problem with people who do not need NHS treatment being removed from NHS waiting lists?
Why would anyone have a problem with that?
I call it that, as in any average week, they are on the hunt for anti-Starmer stories. If this is all they have got, then it is probably a positive for Mr Starmer.
The voter ID proposal, known as the SAFE Act, is expected to come up in the Senate in the next couple of days.
It will propose that elections to Federal offices are run in a similar way to Parliamentary election in the UK, with ID required, paper ballots, and same-day counting with limited postal ballots to arrive by polling day.
The purpose is to disenfranchise voters, including married women, but the Mad King has already said he doesn't want it attached to the spending bills
Off topic: is the Martin Lewis campaigning against the evils of Reeves' student loans related to that guy Martin Lewis who enthusiastically promoted the scheme in 2011/12? 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.
Yes, they are related. But to be fair, the situation has changed in some ways. The loans were intended to be payments which got paid off at a reasonable %, starting at a reasonable salary level for a reasonable length of time, with reasonable interest rate meaning that it would be paid off by many in due course.
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.
The student loan system is crazy for most people, at least those going straight from school at 18 or 19.
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.
I think the government should drastically increase funding for degrees which have the best career outcomes and take the fees cap off for those that don't. It doesn't seem right that someone who wants to become a doctor will end up with £100k in debt to do it, or a biotech engineer that will power the next generation of pharmaceutical processes will end up with £60k in debt. These careers need to be encouraged through the loan system and we need a method which helps people through it.
Maybe some kind of rebate on completion of the degree?
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.
Which is worse? Not saying anything about the Iranian protests, or using who hasn't said anything about the Iranian protests as a stick to beat people with?
The question is why the large group of people who jump on the bandwagon of every fashionable cause going, are all seemingly ignoring what could be close to a hundred thousand deaths in January alone?
Good piece as ever @Cyclefree, although one has to disagree with the word “enjoy” in the first line.
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.
Not going to happen under Trump.
It can't happen under Trump. As Jack Smith noted, there is a policy you don't prosecute the President while in office.
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.
They can't prosecute him in office, but they could impeach him
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.
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.
On current polls hard to see how they won't though it would need a huge Democrat majority in the Senate or mass Republican defections to convict
It is not at all hard to see how with Trump demanding he run elections rather than the states polls could become rather irrelevant.
The states run elections even for Federal Office not the Federal government
Over time, the Supreme Court has defined the limits of those powers, and set out the powers which devolve to the States, but as ever, the limits are subject to Supreme Court ruling...
So there is plenty of space for shenanigans.
The voter ID proposal, known as the SAFE Act, is expected to come up in the Senate in the next couple of days.
It will propose that elections to Federal offices are run in a similar way to Parliamentary election in the UK, with ID required, paper ballots, and same-day counting with limited postal ballots to arrive by polling day.
And it will rightly be thrown out. Colorado, for example, runs the most efficient and fraud free elections in the US. They have 100% voting by mail.
Just having a quick look at the Epstein files on the DOJ server. Quite impressive they can allow searches so quickly and easily though it may be the time difference.
Anyway search the term "CHECKS AND ACH REPORT" which appears to be a list of financial transactions. Deutsche Bank* seems to be all over this.
Cabinet Ministers have begun to scrub their X profiles of any mention of Peter Mandelson. It won’t be that easy to edit out their association Prince of Darkness…
Darren Jones – who was put up in the Commons yesterday afternoon to claim that primary legislation is not the route to strip Mandelson of his peerage – has overnight deleted a very old X post from 2009 in which he celebrates Mandelson’s performance on the Labour Party Conference stage:
The post was still live as of yesterday. Expect to find no mention of Mandelson on any minister’s X by close of business today. Harder to accomplish with Department of Justice releases, eh…
A Tory source tells Guido: “The PM’s Chief Secretary is trying to erase his professed love for the ‘best pal’ of a convicted paedo. With Pat McFadden and David Lammy junior ministers under Mandelson when he was taking Epstein’s dirty money and dishing out state secrets, this scandal goes right to the heart of Starmer’s government.” McSweeney and Starmer protected him for as long as they could…
I am amazed* by the number of folk who are now saying they always thought Mandelson was a wrong un. In the unlikely event anyone can muster an iota of sympathy for him, one might think that Mandelson was labouring under the illusion that everyone thought he was great given that hardly anyone was raising concerns.
*not amazed
I guess there are levels of wrong'un. Leaking sensitive government info to most likely a foreign intelligence asset is a big step up get us a passport, there will be a few quid in it down the line.
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?
Until pretty recently, it was possible (and pretty good realpolitik) to say "Mandelson is a bit of a wrong'un, but talented and therefore useful. In fact, his willingness to flirt with the dark arts is a large part of his value. You can't make an omlette without breaking eggs and all that."
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.
Agree with all of this. And it's not like we have been overwhelmed by competent people at the top of government so you can see why excuses are made for flawed but skilled people.
As the owner of the most notorious Mandelson nickname, which I still say is accurate as his life IS a fractal, I always had him down as a manipulator, and skated the edge of legality, and probably the type of individual who would throw any of his friends to the wolves if it was convenient for his own interests to do so.
Alistair Campbell tells an anecdote about how Mandelson moved himself to what he regards as "more important" circles.
Nonetheless I always viewed him as an effective Minister at "making things happen relatively harmlessly". As opposed to say a Cameroon who would try to make things happen like Walter from the Beano, but for the sake of simpering would destroy their policy objectives without noticing (see what happened to Cameron's investment plans with China when he indulged himself in a public moral lecture.)
The current stuff at issue - passing out details of Government financial plans to Wall Street investors ahead of release - is imo criminal.
“As short a time ago as February, the Ministry of Plenty had issued a promise (a "categorical pledge" were the official words) that there would be no reduction of the chocolate ration during 1984. Actually, as Winston was aware, the chocolate ration was to be reduced from thirty grammes to twenty at the end of the present week. All that was needed was to substitute for the original promise a warning that it would probably be necessary to reduce the ration at some time in April.”
Labour pays millions to make hospital stats more flattering: ministers accused of massaging NHS figures by paying £3m a month to take off waiting lists patients who no longer need treatment
Sir Keir Starmer and the health secretary, Wes Streeting, have repeatedly highlighted Labour’s success in cutting the number of patients waiting for treatment — overall that has fallen by about 300,000 since Labour came to power.
Two weeks ago the prime minister claimed new figures showed NHS waiting lists were down by “more than 86,000”, which was the “largest fall in a month for over two years … These aren’t just numbers — it is thousands of people getting the care they need.”
But an analysis of official NHS statistics by The Times reveals that this drop was achieved only by removing thousands of patients from the waiting list through a process known as “validation”.
In November, the month that Starmer was referring to, 346,300 were removed from NHS waiting lists, 82,000 more than the month before, which accounted for almost the entire claimed drop in the waiting list.
At the same time, NHS data shows that in November hospitals actually carried out about 10 per cent fewer operations and appointments than they did in October, suggesting that fewer people were being treated.
So the Times has a problem with people who do not need NHS treatment being removed from NHS waiting lists?
Why would anyone have a problem with that?
I call it that, as in any average week, they are on the hunt for anti-Starmer stories. If this is all they have got, then it is probably a positive for Mr Starmer.
The issue is NHS trusts being paid and incentivised to do it. They should be doing it as a matter of course. If there’s a cash incentive that opens it to maladministration
“As short a time ago as February, the Ministry of Plenty had issued a promise (a "categorical pledge" were the official words) that there would be no reduction of the chocolate ration during 1984. Actually, as Winston was aware, the chocolate ration was to be reduced from thirty grammes to twenty at the end of the present week. All that was needed was to substitute for the original promise a warning that it would probably be necessary to reduce the ration at some time in April.”
Labour pays millions to make hospital stats more flattering: ministers accused of massaging NHS figures by paying £3m a month to take off waiting lists patients who no longer need treatment
Sir Keir Starmer and the health secretary, Wes Streeting, have repeatedly highlighted Labour’s success in cutting the number of patients waiting for treatment — overall that has fallen by about 300,000 since Labour came to power.
Two weeks ago the prime minister claimed new figures showed NHS waiting lists were down by “more than 86,000”, which was the “largest fall in a month for over two years … These aren’t just numbers — it is thousands of people getting the care they need.”
But an analysis of official NHS statistics by The Times reveals that this drop was achieved only by removing thousands of patients from the waiting list through a process known as “validation”.
In November, the month that Starmer was referring to, 346,300 were removed from NHS waiting lists, 82,000 more than the month before, which accounted for almost the entire claimed drop in the waiting list.
At the same time, NHS data shows that in November hospitals actually carried out about 10 per cent fewer operations and appointments than they did in October, suggesting that fewer people were being treated.
So the Times has a problem with people who do not need NHS treatment being removed from NHS waiting lists?
Why would anyone have a problem with that?
I call it that, as in any average week, they are on the hunt for anti-Starmer stories. If this is all they have got, then it is probably a positive for Mr Starmer.
The problem seems to be Starmer and Streeting using those figures to pretend more patients are being treated, when in fact fewer are
The voter ID proposal, known as the SAFE Act, is expected to come up in the Senate in the next couple of days.
It will propose that elections to Federal offices are run in a similar way to Parliamentary election in the UK, with ID required, paper ballots, and same-day counting with limited postal ballots to arrive by polling day.
The purpose is to disenfranchise voters, including married women, but the Mad King has already said he doesn't want it attached to the spending bills
Yes that’s what the Democrats are saying, which is total baloney.
You can register to vote with a passport, driving licence, or your birth certificate and legal name change such as a marriage certificate or gender whatever certificate.
In response to the header, where Frank Herbert was surely correct was in saying that power does not corrupt; rather it attracts pathological personalities, who are already corrupt.
Where he was dead wrong, was with his "beware heroes" message. Evil is not heroic or glamorous. It is seedy and banal.
I think CS Lewis' vision of evil is far more relevant to our times:
I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of "Admin." The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the offices of a thoroughly nasty business concern.
Screwtape Letters reference? Not read it, but it's been on my radar for an alarmingly long time.
Well worth a read, though a bit dated now. As is Lewis's little known masterpiece, a lecture to students, 'The Inner Ring' which is bang up to date, and printed in 'Screwtape Proposes a Toast'. Text (I think complete) here:
Off topic: is the Martin Lewis campaigning against the evils of Reeves' student loans related to that guy Martin Lewis who enthusiastically promoted the scheme in 2011/12? 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.
Yes, they are related. But to be fair, the situation has changed in some ways. The loans were intended to be payments which got paid off at a reasonable %, starting at a reasonable salary level for a reasonable length of time, with reasonable interest rate meaning that it would be paid off by many in due course.
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.
The student loan system is crazy for most people, at least those going straight from school at 18 or 19.
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.
I think the government should drastically increase funding for degrees which have the best career outcomes and take the fees cap off for those that don't. It doesn't seem right that someone who wants to become a doctor will end up with £100k in debt to do it, or a biotech engineer that will power the next generation of pharmaceutical processes will end up with £60k in debt. These careers need to be encouraged through the loan system and we need a method which helps people through it.
Maybe some kind of rebate on completion of the degree?
No as university is for academic research not just getting a job. Most doctors earn six figures anyway
Just having a quick look at the Epstein files on the DOJ server. Quite impressive they can allow searches so quickly and easily though it may be the time difference.
Anyway search the term "CHECKS AND ACH REPORT" which appears to be a list of financial transactions. Deutsche Bank* seems to be all over this.
Using a proprietary search tool, The NYT identified more than 5,300 files containing more than 38,000 references to Trump, his wife, his Mar-a-Lago and other related words and phrases in the latest batch of Epstein file released by the Justice Department
BBC trailers for 'big' events are as always shite, but at least they've stopped using cod furrin accents for them. Just imagine a Joe Dolce style voiceover for the Winter Olympics.
What's-a matter UK? Hey! Gotta no respect? You overestimated your medal haul yet again? It's-a not so bad, it's-a nice-a place Ah shaddap-a you face!
“As short a time ago as February, the Ministry of Plenty had issued a promise (a "categorical pledge" were the official words) that there would be no reduction of the chocolate ration during 1984. Actually, as Winston was aware, the chocolate ration was to be reduced from thirty grammes to twenty at the end of the present week. All that was needed was to substitute for the original promise a warning that it would probably be necessary to reduce the ration at some time in April.”
Labour pays millions to make hospital stats more flattering: ministers accused of massaging NHS figures by paying £3m a month to take off waiting lists patients who no longer need treatment
Sir Keir Starmer and the health secretary, Wes Streeting, have repeatedly highlighted Labour’s success in cutting the number of patients waiting for treatment — overall that has fallen by about 300,000 since Labour came to power.
Two weeks ago the prime minister claimed new figures showed NHS waiting lists were down by “more than 86,000”, which was the “largest fall in a month for over two years … These aren’t just numbers — it is thousands of people getting the care they need.”
But an analysis of official NHS statistics by The Times reveals that this drop was achieved only by removing thousands of patients from the waiting list through a process known as “validation”.
In November, the month that Starmer was referring to, 346,300 were removed from NHS waiting lists, 82,000 more than the month before, which accounted for almost the entire claimed drop in the waiting list.
At the same time, NHS data shows that in November hospitals actually carried out about 10 per cent fewer operations and appointments than they did in October, suggesting that fewer people were being treated.
So the Times has a problem with people who do not need NHS treatment being removed from NHS waiting lists?
Why would anyone have a problem with that?
I call it that, as in any average week, they are on the hunt for anti-Starmer stories. If this is all they have got, then it is probably a positive for Mr Starmer.
Presumably what happens naturally is that when someone floats to the top of the waiting list, and they are contacted and no longer require treatment (or are dead), you move on to the next person.
So the need to "validate" the whole waiting list periodically could be due to a) wanting to get an accurate idea of the waiting list size (but this could be done by estimation - the rate of drop-offs can be fairly well predicted statistically) or b) wanting to juice the stats.
The question to ask is does, and if so, how does this £3m a month improve clinical outcomes?
The main question in Cyclefree's outstanding piece is what are our chances of a happy outcome? Her answer is 'not good' to put it mildly and I have to concur.
One thing that astonishes me about these scandals is how rare it is for one of the guilty to break ranks and start telling it like it is. There were a couple such honest Johns in the Post Office Scandal but they were hugely outnumbered by those sticking to the Party line. You'd think a few more might have come forward if only to lessen their risk of punishment.
The same has applied to the Epstein scandal. Andrew, for example, could have made himself a hero by telling us all he knew. You'd think his stock could hardly have got any lower, so why not try it? And of course a conspiracy like Epsteins requires hundreds of co-conspirators to stay quiet. It only takes one or two, but so far honest Johns are exceeding rare.
I suppose Epstein himself may well have gone rogue had he not been murdered. (Is there anybody at all out there who still thinks it was suicide?) Even so there would have been many close associates who are within a whisker of being whisked off to jail, or worse, if they maintain their silence. Interesting that so few have broken ranks.
Maybe this affair will break the mould and the lid will be lifted in a way that is rare with other scandals. Again, I wouldn't bet on it though.
NASA’s Artemis II launch postponed after dress rehearsal. They were targeting this weekend but are now looking at March window for their manned trip around the moon.
It’s quite amazing how little discussion there has been about this mission, which will be the furthest humans have ever been from Earth.
Hydrogen loves to leak. Guessed it was that before even reading the release.
The classic is that you torque bolts on a connection at STP. Then the liquid hydrogen flows, at a tiny bit above absolute zero. And leaks. So you drain, and while it’s still cold, torque the bolts… then it leaks again.
Off topic: is the Martin Lewis campaigning against the evils of Reeves' student loans related to that guy Martin Lewis who enthusiastically promoted the scheme in 2011/12? 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.
Yes, they are related. But to be fair, the situation has changed in some ways. The loans were intended to be payments which got paid off at a reasonable %, starting at a reasonable salary level for a reasonable length of time, with reasonable interest rate meaning that it would be paid off by many in due course.
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.
The student loan system is crazy for most people, at least those going straight from school at 18 or 19.
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.
Best to pay the fees upfront, even if it means taking out another loan.
That also means not having to deal with the Student Loan Company. They are not known as the Fucking Stupid Loan Company for no reason.
Subsidiary of this lot?
The interest rate was always RPI +3% for those student loans, so it's always been a poor deal, and the threshold lagging inflation was also obvious from the outset. Also obvious from the outset were the levels of bad debt and that people would opt out of repayment by emigrating or choosing to stay below the repayment threshold. Apparently underwriting bad debt now makes up 90% of govt spending on undergraduate higher education.
Good piece as ever @Cyclefree, although one has to disagree with the word “enjoy” in the first line.
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.
Not going to happen under Trump.
It can't happen under Trump. As Jack Smith noted, there is a policy you don't prosecute the President while in office.
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.
They can't prosecute him in office, but they could impeach him
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.
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.
On current polls hard to see how they won't though it would need a huge Democrat majority in the Senate or mass Republican defections to convict
It is not at all hard to see how with Trump demanding he run elections rather than the states polls could become rather irrelevant.
The states run elections even for Federal Office not the Federal government
Yes, at the moment.
If Trump, as he is threatening, uses ICE and the FBI to seize control of them, in defiance of the Constitution, who will stop him?
The State National Guard but by then the US will be heading for its second civil war anyway
“As short a time ago as February, the Ministry of Plenty had issued a promise (a "categorical pledge" were the official words) that there would be no reduction of the chocolate ration during 1984. Actually, as Winston was aware, the chocolate ration was to be reduced from thirty grammes to twenty at the end of the present week. All that was needed was to substitute for the original promise a warning that it would probably be necessary to reduce the ration at some time in April.”
Labour pays millions to make hospital stats more flattering: ministers accused of massaging NHS figures by paying £3m a month to take off waiting lists patients who no longer need treatment
Sir Keir Starmer and the health secretary, Wes Streeting, have repeatedly highlighted Labour’s success in cutting the number of patients waiting for treatment — overall that has fallen by about 300,000 since Labour came to power.
Two weeks ago the prime minister claimed new figures showed NHS waiting lists were down by “more than 86,000”, which was the “largest fall in a month for over two years … These aren’t just numbers — it is thousands of people getting the care they need.”
But an analysis of official NHS statistics by The Times reveals that this drop was achieved only by removing thousands of patients from the waiting list through a process known as “validation”.
In November, the month that Starmer was referring to, 346,300 were removed from NHS waiting lists, 82,000 more than the month before, which accounted for almost the entire claimed drop in the waiting list.
At the same time, NHS data shows that in November hospitals actually carried out about 10 per cent fewer operations and appointments than they did in October, suggesting that fewer people were being treated.
So the Times has a problem with people who do not need NHS treatment being removed from NHS waiting lists?
Why would anyone have a problem with that?
I call it that, as in any average week, they are on the hunt for anti-Starmer stories. If this is all they have got, then it is probably a positive for Mr Starmer.
The way I read it is that SKS claimed the fall in queue numbers meant that many more people had been treated, rather than just got better without treatment or died.
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.
Which is worse? Not saying anything about the Iranian protests, or using who hasn't said anything about the Iranian protests as a stick to beat people with?
Ignoring it, clearly.
It’s far more critical to the world and the global economy than what ICE are up to in Minnesota and what the Iranian regime is doing is appalling and they’re getting away with it.
BBC trailers for 'big' events are as always shite, but at least they've stopped using cod furrin accents for them. Just imagine a Joe Dolce style voiceover for the Winter Olympics.
What's-a matter UK? Hey! Gotta no respect? You overestimated your medal haul yet again? It's-a not so bad, it's-a nice-a place Ah shaddap-a you face!
“As short a time ago as February, the Ministry of Plenty had issued a promise (a "categorical pledge" were the official words) that there would be no reduction of the chocolate ration during 1984. Actually, as Winston was aware, the chocolate ration was to be reduced from thirty grammes to twenty at the end of the present week. All that was needed was to substitute for the original promise a warning that it would probably be necessary to reduce the ration at some time in April.”
Labour pays millions to make hospital stats more flattering: ministers accused of massaging NHS figures by paying £3m a month to take off waiting lists patients who no longer need treatment
Sir Keir Starmer and the health secretary, Wes Streeting, have repeatedly highlighted Labour’s success in cutting the number of patients waiting for treatment — overall that has fallen by about 300,000 since Labour came to power.
Two weeks ago the prime minister claimed new figures showed NHS waiting lists were down by “more than 86,000”, which was the “largest fall in a month for over two years … These aren’t just numbers — it is thousands of people getting the care they need.”
But an analysis of official NHS statistics by The Times reveals that this drop was achieved only by removing thousands of patients from the waiting list through a process known as “validation”.
In November, the month that Starmer was referring to, 346,300 were removed from NHS waiting lists, 82,000 more than the month before, which accounted for almost the entire claimed drop in the waiting list.
At the same time, NHS data shows that in November hospitals actually carried out about 10 per cent fewer operations and appointments than they did in October, suggesting that fewer people were being treated.
So the Times has a problem with people who do not need NHS treatment being removed from NHS waiting lists?
Why would anyone have a problem with that?
I call it that, as in any average week, they are on the hunt for anti-Starmer stories. If this is all they have got, then it is probably a positive for Mr Starmer.
The way I read it is that SKS claimed the fall in queue numbers meant that many more people had been treated, rather than just got better without treatment or died.
Off topic: is the Martin Lewis campaigning against the evils of Reeves' student loans related to that guy Martin Lewis who enthusiastically promoted the scheme in 2011/12? 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.
Yes, they are related. But to be fair, the situation has changed in some ways. The loans were intended to be payments which got paid off at a reasonable %, starting at a reasonable salary level for a reasonable length of time, with reasonable interest rate meaning that it would be paid off by many in due course.
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.
Fees should be at market rate, so economics or law at Cambridge say is far more expensive to study and literature or art at say Manchester Met is fat cheaper
So degrees like Classics at Oxford - do we rate that according to the quality of the degree, or to the quality of networking they provide?
Off topic: is the Martin Lewis campaigning against the evils of Reeves' student loans related to that guy Martin Lewis who enthusiastically promoted the scheme in 2011/12? 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.
Yes, they are related. But to be fair, the situation has changed in some ways. The loans were intended to be payments which got paid off at a reasonable %, starting at a reasonable salary level for a reasonable length of time, with reasonable interest rate meaning that it would be paid off by many in due course.
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.
Fees should be at market rate, so economics or law at Cambridge say is far more expensive to study and literature or art at say Manchester Met is fat cheaper
So degrees like Classics at Oxford - do we rate that according to the quality of the degree, or to the quality of networking they provide?
Off topic: is the Martin Lewis campaigning against the evils of Reeves' student loans related to that guy Martin Lewis who enthusiastically promoted the scheme in 2011/12? 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.
Yes, they are related. But to be fair, the situation has changed in some ways. The loans were intended to be payments which got paid off at a reasonable %, starting at a reasonable salary level for a reasonable length of time, with reasonable interest rate meaning that it would be paid off by many in due course.
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.
Fees should be at market rate, so economics or law at Cambridge say is far more expensive to study and literature or art at say Manchester Met is fat cheaper
So degrees like Classics at Oxford - do we rate that according to the quality of the degree, or to the quality of networking they provide?
If the former, they should be negative fees.
If the latter, off the scale.
Classics at Oxford should certainly be cheaper than law at Oxford
Simplistic questions that arise for me over Mendelson etc.
With Windrush I wonder: Where were the MPs, where were the human rights lawyers.
With Mandelson I wonder: Where were MI5, MI6, GCHQ, Special Branch etc? Obvs they hide, rightly, behind secrecy and No Comment, but either they have all been a bit dim in their espionage or SKS etc have ignored a lot of advice.
Especially if Epstein was a Mossad agent (alleged)
As Epstein is dead and can't sue, no need for the "allegedly". Unless you are worried Mossad might be being libelled?
An author selling out his own neighbourhood for ££."
+++
Yes, quite disgraceful, and such hackneyed prose
"When a man is tired of London, he is tired of having his mobile phone stolen"
Is this meant to be wit?
I guess my stalker will be satisfied, seeing as the column has generated 500+ comments, was on the front page all day, and is one of the most read articles of the week, despite being but 600 words long, but frankly I'd be ashamed of churning out this bilge
When I wrote that there was much to "enjoy" I meant it in a blackly humorous way. I was doing leak investigations, some of them involving government deals, and it was well known that if government was involved it would be the likeliest source of the leaks. We assumed Spads or similar not Senior Ministers. Fury would be the right response but I try to limit this these days.
I'm not on here much because I need more joy and there has been little of it around lately. I am off to Dublin today for a funeral of a much loved cousin. It is the 4th death of a loved one in little over a month. My wish for the Angel of Death to bugger off and leave the Cyclefree family alone has been ignored. At least the 800 or so spring bulbs I planted last autumn, each of them individually by hand on a newly created bed, are coming up and I am around to see them. So there is that.
I take @IanB2's point. Will this matter lead to a general unraveling or not? In some ways there ought to be such an unraveling because things really ought not to go on as they are. But the trouble with such unraveling is that this tends to make things very much worse - not better. Starmer's squandering of the opportunity he had and still has is unforgivable.
Simplistic questions that arise for me over Mendelson etc.
With Windrush I wonder: Where were the MPs, where were the human rights lawyers.
With Mandelson I wonder: Where were MI5, MI6, GCHQ, Special Branch etc? Obvs they hide, rightly, behind secrecy and No Comment, but either they have all been a bit dim in their espionage or SKS etc have ignored a lot of advice.
Especially if Epstein was a Mossad agent (alleged)
As Epstein is dead and can't sue, no need for the "allegedly". Unless you are worried Mossad might be being libelled?
He was almost certainly working as an agent for a state actor, and possibly more than one state at that.
“As short a time ago as February, the Ministry of Plenty had issued a promise (a "categorical pledge" were the official words) that there would be no reduction of the chocolate ration during 1984. Actually, as Winston was aware, the chocolate ration was to be reduced from thirty grammes to twenty at the end of the present week. All that was needed was to substitute for the original promise a warning that it would probably be necessary to reduce the ration at some time in April.”
Labour pays millions to make hospital stats more flattering: ministers accused of massaging NHS figures by paying £3m a month to take off waiting lists patients who no longer need treatment
Sir Keir Starmer and the health secretary, Wes Streeting, have repeatedly highlighted Labour’s success in cutting the number of patients waiting for treatment — overall that has fallen by about 300,000 since Labour came to power.
Two weeks ago the prime minister claimed new figures showed NHS waiting lists were down by “more than 86,000”, which was the “largest fall in a month for over two years … These aren’t just numbers — it is thousands of people getting the care they need.”
But an analysis of official NHS statistics by The Times reveals that this drop was achieved only by removing thousands of patients from the waiting list through a process known as “validation”.
In November, the month that Starmer was referring to, 346,300 were removed from NHS waiting lists, 82,000 more than the month before, which accounted for almost the entire claimed drop in the waiting list.
At the same time, NHS data shows that in November hospitals actually carried out about 10 per cent fewer operations and appointments than they did in October, suggesting that fewer people were being treated.
So the Times has a problem with people who do not need NHS treatment being removed from NHS waiting lists?
Why would anyone have a problem with that?
I call it that, as in any average week, they are on the hunt for anti-Starmer stories. If this is all they have got, then it is probably a positive for Mr Starmer.
Presumably what happens naturally is that when someone floats to the top of the waiting list, and they are contacted and no longer require treatment (or are dead), you move on to the next person.
So the need to "validate" the whole waiting list periodically could be due to a) wanting to get an accurate idea of the waiting list size (but this could be done by estimation - the rate of drop-offs can be fairly well predicted statistically) or b) wanting to juice the stats.
The question to ask is does, and if so, how does this £3m a month improve clinical outcomes?
It allows missed appointments to be caught in advance so that the slot can be reused.
I'd be interested in detail on the £33 per appointment, but the Times are not clear about their numbers.
For example, the NHS sometimes run a practice of a text message reminder, to reduce numbers of missed appointments. These will also catch people who no longer need appointments (I've responded to those myself if I am satisfied I have recovered).
Where is this type of programme in the Times data? They do not specify their terms. For this to be a story they need to be precise, which they are not. For me that's just lazy practice in our amateurish media. This is all they say afaics:
An NHS source defended the scheme saying that it often involved paying consultants to assess whether patients needed the treatment for which they were waiting, or whether other options such as physiotherapy might be more beneficial. This would allow other patients to get treated faster.
Simplistic questions that arise for me over Mendelson etc.
With Windrush I wonder: Where were the MPs, where were the human rights lawyers.
With Mandelson I wonder: Where were MI5, MI6, GCHQ, Special Branch etc? Obvs they hide, rightly, behind secrecy and No Comment, but either they have all been a bit dim in their espionage or SKS etc have ignored a lot of advice.
My assumption on this is that a big fat file landed on Starmer's desk, advising against appointment but not quite in absolute terms so the final decision was his, and he ignored it.
Given the quality of his recent recruits, got to be Mandelson, surely?
If it is to be Mandelson he'll have to play his best 12D chess. A good Reform/MAGA approach might be to spin himself as the victim of some Deep State conspiracy with Sir Keir as the hapless puppet of dark forces. How about that he and Epstein were heroic sex-abuse hunters who were framed by the establishment just as Epstein was about to unveil some massive revelation, which would have shaken the World Order to its core?
NASA’s Artemis II launch postponed after dress rehearsal. They were targeting this weekend but are now looking at March window for their manned trip around the moon.
It’s quite amazing how little discussion there has been about this mission, which will be the furthest humans have ever been from Earth.
Hydrogen loves to leak. Guessed it was that before even reading the release.
The classic is that you torque bolts on a connection at STP. Then the liquid hydrogen flows, at a tiny bit above absolute zero. And leaks. So you drain, and while it’s still cold, torque the bolts… then it leaks again.
Hydrogen is fine - as long as you remember at all times that it is insanely dangerous.
The word's tiniest molecule is just desiged to be able to leak.
An author selling out his own neighbourhood for ££."
+++
Yes, quite disgraceful, and such hackneyed prose
"When a man is tired of London, he is tired of having his mobile phone stolen"
Is this meant to be wit?
I guess my stalker will be satisfied, seeing as the column has generated 500+ comments, was on the front page all day, and is one of the most read articles of the week, despite being but 600 words long, but frankly I'd be ashamed of churning out this bilge
Go to London and you’ll either be mugged or disappointed
Simplistic questions that arise for me over Mendelson etc.
With Windrush I wonder: Where were the MPs, where were the human rights lawyers.
With Mandelson I wonder: Where were MI5, MI6, GCHQ, Special Branch etc? Obvs they hide, rightly, behind secrecy and No Comment, but either they have all been a bit dim in their espionage or SKS etc have ignored a lot of advice.
Especially if Epstein was a Mossad agent (alleged)
As Epstein is dead and can't sue, no need for the "allegedly". Unless you are worried Mossad might be being libelled?
He was almost certainly working as an agent for a state actor, and possibly more than one state at that.
Russia is far more likely than Mossad. The risk reward ration was dreadful for Mossad but very good for Russia. See Trump.
Off topic: is the Martin Lewis campaigning against the evils of Reeves' student loans related to that guy Martin Lewis who enthusiastically promoted the scheme in 2011/12? 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.
Yes, they are related. But to be fair, the situation has changed in some ways. The loans were intended to be payments which got paid off at a reasonable %, starting at a reasonable salary level for a reasonable length of time, with reasonable interest rate meaning that it would be paid off by many in due course.
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.
The student loan system is crazy for most people, at least those going straight from school at 18 or 19.
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.
Best to pay the fees upfront, even if it means taking out another loan.
That also means not having to deal with the Student Loan Company. They are not known as the Fucking Stupid Loan Company for no reason.
Subsidiary of this lot?
The interest rate was always RPI +3% for those student loans, so it's always been a poor deal, and the threshold lagging inflation was also obvious from the outset. Also obvious from the outset were the levels of bad debt and that people would opt out of repayment by emigrating or choosing to stay below the repayment threshold. Apparently underwriting bad debt now makes up 90% of govt spending on undergraduate higher education.
I have two daughters, one at Uni and one now working. If they are like my (ex) wife, they will work for a few years before they get above the threshold, pay a minimal amount back for a year or two, get married, have children and thereafter work part time ensuring they never earn enough to pay anything else back. (I could cynically add, screw their ex-husband so they have enough money never to need to work full-time again, but I trust they are both better than that) Of course if they never have children it won't matter, they can afford the repayments.
If I had had a son I would have advised him to get a job and only go to Uni later if it was absolutely necessary, and if he'd saved up enough to be able to afford the fees up front. Or never have children.
Sadly there still doesn't seem to be much gender equality in terms of career/home balance in most of the younger couples I know (the girls all seem to pick a slightly older man,a couple of years more advanced in his career, so naturally the higher earner, who just happens to be male, continues working full time...).
Thanks @Cyclefree again and what a depressing header and thread
The story goes deeper into the sewer with unimaginable behaviour and depravity
I agree with Ed Davey that this must be investigated by a Public Enquiry
You and Ed Davey want an inquiry that will drag on for years, not report till almost everyone is dead, and those who aren't have forgotten the question? You can see why Ed Davey might have wanted that for the Post Office scandal where he was peripherally involved as a minister who forgot to ask any questions, but surely you, a distinguished PBer, are not tied up with Epstein! The Covid inquiry rumbles on too. Still, even that is an improvement over what used to happen, as when the Franks inquiry whitewashed the Falklands, or the inquiry into why the Dickens dossier on paedophiles in high places (surely not!) was lost inside the Home Office, set up by Theresa May, concluded it could find no evidence because it had all been lost inside the Home Office.
Good piece as ever @Cyclefree, although one has to disagree with the word “enjoy” in the first line.
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.
Not going to happen under Trump.
It can't happen under Trump. As Jack Smith noted, there is a policy you don't prosecute the President while in office.
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.
They can't prosecute him in office, but they could impeach him
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.
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.
On current polls hard to see how they won't though it would need a huge Democrat majority in the Senate or mass Republican defections to convict
It is not at all hard to see how with Trump demanding he run elections rather than the states polls could become rather irrelevant.
The states run elections even for Federal Office not the Federal government
Over time, the Supreme Court has defined the limits of those powers, and set out the powers which devolve to the States, but as ever, the limits are subject to Supreme Court ruling...
So there is plenty of space for shenanigans.
The voter ID proposal, known as the SAFE Act, is expected to come up in the Senate in the next couple of days.
It will propose that elections to Federal offices are run in a similar way to Parliamentary election in the UK, with ID required, paper ballots, and same-day counting with limited postal ballots to arrive by polling day.
I think that would reduce GOP turnout more than the Democrats. GOP voters, in general, are dimmer.
Simplistic questions that arise for me over Mendelson etc.
With Windrush I wonder: Where were the MPs, where were the human rights lawyers.
With Mandelson I wonder: Where were MI5, MI6, GCHQ, Special Branch etc? Obvs they hide, rightly, behind secrecy and No Comment, but either they have all been a bit dim in their espionage or SKS etc have ignored a lot of advice.
My assumption on this is that a big fat file landed on Starmer's desk, advising against appointment but not quite in absolute terms so the final decision was his, and he ignored it.
If you close your eyes you can imagine Sir Humphrey explaining to Starmer that such an appointment would be a courageous decision and Starmer being too thick to appreciate what he was being told. Oh for the days when Jim Hacker was Prime Minister !
Off topic: is the Martin Lewis campaigning against the evils of Reeves' student loans related to that guy Martin Lewis who enthusiastically promoted the scheme in 2011/12? 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.
Yes, they are related. But to be fair, the situation has changed in some ways. The loans were intended to be payments which got paid off at a reasonable %, starting at a reasonable salary level for a reasonable length of time, with reasonable interest rate meaning that it would be paid off by many in due course.
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.
The student loan system is crazy for most people, at least those going straight from school at 18 or 19.
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.
Best to pay the fees upfront, even if it means taking out another loan.
That's what my lad did, using money from the profits from his lockdown crypto trading.
When I wrote that there was much to "enjoy" I meant it in a blackly humorous way. I was doing leak investigations, some of them involving government deals, and it was well known that if government was involved it would be the likeliest source of the leaks. We assumed Spads or similar not Senior Ministers. Fury would be the right response but I try to limit this these days.
I'm not on here much because I need more joy and there has been little of it around lately. I am off to Dublin today for a funeral of a much loved cousin. It is the 4th death of a loved one in little over a month. My wish for the Angel of Death to bugger off and leave the Cyclefree family alone has been ignored. At least the 800 or so spring bulbs I planted last autumn, each of them individually by hand on a newly created bed, are coming up and I am around to see them. So there is that.
I take @IanB2's point. Will this matter lead to a general unraveling or not? In some ways there ought to be such an unraveling because things really ought not to go on as they are. But the trouble with such unraveling is that this tends to make things very much worse - not better. Starmer's squandering of the opportunity he had and still has is unforgivable.
And - in comparison with the US, for example - it is to the significant credit of the UK's institutional culture that both a member of our Royal Family and a senior politician with solid connections into the current government have both been exposed, shamed, and banished. In most countries, people of such power, wealth and influence would be as good as untouchable.
Simplistic questions that arise for me over Mendelson etc.
With Windrush I wonder: Where were the MPs, where were the human rights lawyers.
With Mandelson I wonder: Where were MI5, MI6, GCHQ, Special Branch etc? Obvs they hide, rightly, behind secrecy and No Comment, but either they have all been a bit dim in their espionage or SKS etc have ignored a lot of advice.
My assumption on this is that a big fat file landed on Starmer's desk, advising against appointment but not quite in absolute terms so the final decision was his, and he ignored it.
It would be nice to think they were that efficient but the history of these organisations suggests the opposite.
Comments
I don't share her pessimism though. Mandelson certainly seems to have been corrupt and perhaps worse.
But the UK is not Italy. Of our recent former prime ministers (and there are a fair few), only Boris Johnson seems corrupt to me.
Sunak, Starmer, May - all hardworking, flawed individuals who did their best.
If Trump, as he is threatening, uses ICE and the FBI to seize control of them, in defiance of the Constitution, who will stop him?
Labour pays millions to make hospital stats more flattering: ministers accused of massaging NHS figures by paying £3m a month to take off waiting lists patients who no longer need treatment
Interesting story from @oliver_wright
https://x.com/pippacrerar/status/2018594915027124225?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q
Where he was dead wrong, was with his "beware heroes" message. Evil is not heroic or glamorous. It is seedy and banal.
I think CS Lewis' vision of evil is far more relevant to our times:
I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of "Admin." The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the offices of a thoroughly nasty business concern.
‼️SPAIN'S PM SANCHEZ: SPAIN WILL BAN ACCESS TO SOCIAL MEDIA FOR MINORS UNDER 16
‼️SPAIN'S PM SANCHEZ: WE WILL CHANGE SPANISH LAW TO HOLD SOCIAL MEDIA EXECUTIVES ACCOUNTABLE FOR ILLEGAL, HATEFUL CONTENT
There is also, both in clothing and wine a whole nonsense of “tells” which are supposed to clue in the semi-expert. The semantics of wine bottle label design…
Hey the EE call centre pays more - which is why the SLC is filled with EE rejects who can’t get a better paid job
Two weeks ago the prime minister claimed new figures showed NHS waiting lists were down by “more than 86,000”, which was the “largest fall in a month for over two years … These aren’t just numbers — it is thousands of people getting the care they need.”
But an analysis of official NHS statistics by The Times reveals that this drop was achieved only by removing thousands of patients from the waiting list through a process known as “validation”.
In November, the month that Starmer was referring to, 346,300 were removed from NHS waiting lists, 82,000 more than the month before, which accounted for almost the entire claimed drop in the waiting list.
At the same time, NHS data shows that in November hospitals actually carried out about 10 per cent fewer operations and appointments than they did in October, suggesting that fewer people were being treated.
https://www.thetimes.com/article/d3187f19-637e-436b-9409-6e4cdf973dcd?shareToken=ae079aa64bfbb9c687f51938c0656ffb
Win/win for Starmer and Streeting, and the NHS budget, but not so much for the patient.
Now wait and see what happens if this “Assisted Dying” bill becomes law…
With Windrush I wonder: Where were the MPs, where were the human rights lawyers.
With Mandelson I wonder: Where were MI5, MI6, GCHQ, Special Branch etc? Obvs they hide, rightly, behind secrecy and No Comment, but either they have all been a bit dim in their espionage or SKS etc have ignored a lot of advice.
Nigel Farage press conference this afternoon, a fortnight on from when he was supposed to unveil a Labour defector to Reform.
https://x.com/kevinaschofield/status/2018602563202122088?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q
So, profound question of the day, which profile needs to be renamed a Mandy?
However, one figure in the last government said Rishi Sunak had vetoed a plan by the NHS to conduct a similar exercise when he was prime minister because it involved paying the organisation for “doing something it should be doing anyway”.
They added that “artificially” reducing the waiting list also gave a misleading impression of the NHS’s performance.
I’m glad that the Government has confirmed the Cabinet Secretary will be looking into whether they played any role in this scandal.
But he must also be allowed to investigate how Mandelson was appointed as Ambassador to Washington in the first place.
https://x.com/kemibadenoch/status/2018620063817834787?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Y8rEA4e4DxafmeAbW/the-inner-ring-by-c-s-lewis
The constitution gives to Congress, not the States, the power to regulate elections.
https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/articles/article-i/clauses/750#elections-clause-morley-tolson
Over time, the Supreme Court has defined the limits of those powers, and set out the powers which devolve to the States, but as ever, the limits are subject to Supreme Court ruling...
So there is plenty of space for shenanigans.
Incoming Bank of England governor Mark Carney will pocket an annual £250,000 housing allowance, taking his total pay package close to £1m a year when he takes the reins next summer, the central bank has revealed.
Carney will receive the allowance as part of a generous package put together by the chancellor, George Osborne, to lure him from his current job in Ottawa as boss of the Canadian central bank.
It was already known that Carney would be paid a salary of £480,000 and pension contributions worth £144,000. He will also receive free health and dental insurance and the use of a chauffeur-driven car.
The revelation that he will gain a further £250,000 to house his wife and four children is likely to shock MPs and campaign groups concerned at wage inflation for top executives when wage rises are limited to 1% across the public sector.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2012/dec/19/new-bank-england-boss-mark-carney-pay
It will propose that elections to Federal offices are run in a similar way to Parliamentary election in the UK, with ID required, paper ballots, and same-day counting with limited postal ballots to arrive by polling day.
I guess there could be protests about us not bombing them yet, but it would probably be just me and Leon and a bunch of arms manufacturers. Fwiw I recently lobbied a RN officer (reserve) to sink the shadow fleet, but sadly all he does is go on free skiing trips.
Perhap Sir Keith ought to make a statement.
So the Times has a problem with people who do not need NHS treatment being removed from NHS waiting lists?
Why would anyone have a problem with that?
I call it that, as in any average week, they are on the hunt for anti-Starmer stories. If this is all they have got, then it is probably a positive for Mr Starmer.
Maybe some kind of rebate on completion of the degree?
Colorado, for example, runs the most efficient and fraud free elections in the US. They have 100% voting by mail.
Just having a quick look at the Epstein files on the DOJ server. Quite impressive they can allow searches so quickly and easily though it may be the time difference.
Anyway search the term "CHECKS AND ACH REPORT" which appears to be a list of financial transactions. Deutsche Bank* seems to be all over this.
$96mn in this one
https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet 10/EFTA01299708.pdf
*Bankers to Mr D J Trump
Cabinet Ministers have begun to scrub their X profiles of any mention of Peter Mandelson. It won’t be that easy to edit out their association Prince of Darkness…
Darren Jones – who was put up in the Commons yesterday afternoon to claim that primary legislation is not the route to strip Mandelson of his peerage – has overnight deleted a very old X post from 2009 in which he celebrates Mandelson’s performance on the Labour Party Conference stage:
The post was still live as of yesterday. Expect to find no mention of Mandelson on any minister’s X by close of business today. Harder to accomplish with Department of Justice releases, eh…
A Tory source tells Guido: “The PM’s Chief Secretary is trying to erase his professed love for the ‘best pal’ of a convicted paedo. With Pat McFadden and David Lammy junior ministers under Mandelson when he was taking Epstein’s dirty money and dishing out state secrets, this scandal goes right to the heart of Starmer’s government.” McSweeney and Starmer protected him for as long as they could…
UPDATE: Wes Streeting is now doing the same.
https://order-order.com/2026/02/03/cabinet-ministers-delete-pro-mandelson-tweets/
Alistair Campbell tells an anecdote about how Mandelson moved himself to what he regards as "more important" circles.
Nonetheless I always viewed him as an effective Minister at "making things happen relatively harmlessly". As opposed to say a Cameroon who would try to make things happen like Walter from the Beano, but for the sake of simpering would destroy their policy objectives without noticing (see what happened to Cameron's investment plans with China when he indulged himself in a public moral lecture.)
The current stuff at issue - passing out details of Government financial plans to Wall Street investors ahead of release - is imo criminal.
Paris prosecutors raid the offices of Elon Musk's X.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/paris-prosecutors-cybercrime-unit-searches-french-office-musks-x-2026-02-03/
You can register to vote with a passport, driving licence, or your birth certificate and legal name change such as a marriage certificate or gender whatever certificate.
Using a proprietary search tool, The NYT identified more than 5,300 files containing more than 38,000 references to Trump, his wife, his Mar-a-Lago and other related words and phrases in the latest batch of Epstein file released by the Justice Department
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/01/us/trump-epstein-files.html?unlocked_article_code=1.JFA.dKKz.5XMMX_qyLM1W&smid=url-share
Thanks @Cyclefree again and what a depressing header and thread
The story goes deeper into the sewer with unimaginable behaviour and depravity
I agree with Ed Davey that this must be investigated by a Public Enquiry
What's-a matter UK? Hey! Gotta no respect?
You overestimated your medal haul yet again?
It's-a not so bad, it's-a nice-a place
Ah shaddap-a you face!
So the need to "validate" the whole waiting list periodically could be due to a) wanting to get an accurate idea of the waiting list size (but this could be done by estimation - the rate of drop-offs can be fairly well predicted statistically) or b) wanting to juice the stats.
The question to ask is does, and if so, how does this £3m a month improve clinical outcomes?
One thing that astonishes me about these scandals is how rare it is for one of the guilty to break ranks and start telling it like it is. There were a couple such honest Johns in the Post Office Scandal but they were hugely outnumbered by those sticking to the Party line. You'd think a few more might have come forward if only to lessen their risk of punishment.
The same has applied to the Epstein scandal. Andrew, for example, could have made himself a hero by telling us all he knew. You'd think his stock could hardly have got any lower, so why not try it? And of course a conspiracy like Epsteins requires hundreds of co-conspirators to stay quiet. It only takes one or two, but so far honest Johns are exceeding rare.
I suppose Epstein himself may well have gone rogue had he not been murdered. (Is there anybody at all out there who still thinks it was suicide?) Even so there would have been many close associates who are within a whisker of being whisked off to jail, or worse, if they maintain their silence. Interesting that so few have broken ranks.
Maybe this affair will break the mould and the lid will be lifted in a way that is rare with other scandals. Again, I wouldn't bet on it though.
The classic is that you torque bolts on a connection at STP. Then the liquid hydrogen flows, at a tiny bit above absolute zero. And leaks. So you drain, and while it’s still cold, torque the bolts… then it leaks again.
The interest rate was always RPI +3% for those student loans, so it's always been a poor deal, and the threshold lagging inflation was also obvious from the outset.
Also obvious from the outset were the levels of bad debt and that people would opt out of repayment by emigrating or choosing to stay below the repayment threshold. Apparently underwriting bad debt now makes up 90% of govt spending on undergraduate higher education.
Interesting article here, which in my view ignores the elephant in the room https://www.hepi.ac.uk/2026/02/02/there-are-three-ways-to-tackle-the-student-loan-crisis-one-is-unwise-one-is-unaffordable-and-one-is-unpalatable-all-are-unfair/
We might need to assign a POTUS profile too.
It’s far more critical to the world and the global economy than what ICE are up to in Minnesota and what the Iranian regime is doing is appalling and they’re getting away with it.
They've stolen Scottish water by pumping it south. Now they are stealing the wind power (as it won't be sunshine)
https://www.nationalgrid.com/next-step-eastern-green-link-4-preferred-cable-bidder-announced
One of my previous employers and the contract will be highly profitable so good for the employee pension fund.
https://x.com/pippacrerar/status/2018594915027124225?s=61
"Andy_JS said:
New article in the Telegraph.
"Sean Thomas
There are no nice areas left for Londoners to live in
A pervasive sense of decline and disorder lingers over the capital" (£)
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/02/02/there-are-no-nice-areas-left-for-londoners-to-live-in/
@bondegezou
An author selling out his own neighbourhood for ££."
+++
Yes, quite disgraceful, and such hackneyed prose
"When a man is tired of London, he is tired of having his mobile phone stolen"
Is this meant to be wit?
I guess my stalker will be satisfied, seeing as the column has generated 500+ comments, was on the front page all day, and is one of the most read articles of the week, despite being but 600 words long, but frankly I'd be ashamed of churning out this bilge
Can't really blame the old reprobate for pandering to the gullible.
I'm not on here much because I need more joy and there has been little of it around lately. I am off to Dublin today for a funeral of a much loved cousin. It is the 4th death of a loved one in little over a month. My wish for the Angel of Death to bugger off and leave the Cyclefree family alone has been ignored. At least the 800 or so spring bulbs I planted last autumn, each of them individually by hand on a newly created bed, are coming up and I am around to see them. So there is that.
I take @IanB2's point. Will this matter lead to a general unraveling or not? In some ways there ought to be such an unraveling because things really ought not to go on as they are. But the trouble with such unraveling is that this tends to make things very much worse - not better. Starmer's squandering of the opportunity he had and still has is unforgivable.
I'd be interested in detail on the £33 per appointment, but the Times are not clear about their numbers.
For example, the NHS sometimes run a practice of a text message reminder, to reduce numbers of missed appointments. These will also catch people who no longer need appointments (I've responded to those myself if I am satisfied I have recovered).
Where is this type of programme in the Times data? They do not specify their terms. For this to be a story they need to be precise, which they are not. For me that's just lazy practice in our amateurish media. This is all they say afaics:
An NHS source defended the scheme saying that it often involved paying consultants to assess whether patients needed the treatment for which they were waiting, or whether other options such as physiotherapy might be more beneficial. This would allow other patients to get treated faster.
The word's tiniest molecule is just desiged to be able to leak.
If I had had a son I would have advised him to get a job and only go to Uni later if it was absolutely necessary, and if he'd saved up enough to be able to afford the fees up front. Or never have children.
Sadly there still doesn't seem to be much gender equality in terms of career/home balance in most of the younger couples I know (the girls all seem to pick a slightly older man,a couple of years more advanced in his career, so naturally the higher earner, who just happens to be male, continues working full time...).
So no.
GOP voters, in general, are dimmer.
Green 2.06
Reform 2.7
Labour 6.8
Advance UK has been added to the market.