"Dear Director Ratcliffe, I write to alert you to a classified letter I sent you earlier today in which I express deep concerns about CIA activities. Thank you for your attention to this important matter."
It means absolutely zero to me. Good or bad or indifferent.
That... also doesn't mean anything. Imagine you were talking to someone who doesn't obsess about American twitter and the context they'd need to understand one sentence tweets that obliquely refer to things they don't know about.
More like he was reminded that he had approved of it already, so there was not really much advantage to doing more at this point.
I have the impression Trumps hard balling squeezed even more out of the UK. We’ve changed it to satisfy him. It doesn’t say anywhere exactly what.
If I had to guess, less environmental protection beefs up security aspects.
Eg. Protections to save the rare Sparklefin and Chagoun Plimsol from extinction removed so the sea bed can be dredged looking for precious and critical minerals.
I assume someone has posted this earlier but it does sum up the position SKS was in (mind you he did a deal with the devil (PM) and the result was inevitable).
David Frum @davidfrum • 6h The thing Keir Starmer cannot say: ... "Of course I knew the man had sinister secret ties to Jeffrey Epstein. That's why I chose him. The job was to protect Britain from the madness of President Caligula. Epstein connections are a bona fide job qualification for that mission."
Edit and equally
https://bsky.app/profile/hugorifkind.bsky.social/post/3me2r5gb62c22 Hugo Rifkind @hugorifkind.bsky.social Weird and almost universal revisionism today. Even at the time, it was pretty clear that Mandelson wasn't appointed *despite* his dodgy links but *because* of them. Trump's Washington is a dirty swamp. Mandelson was deemed a man able to swim in it. This wasn't a secret. Everybody said it out loud.
"Dear Director Ratcliffe, I write to alert you to a classified letter I sent you earlier today in which I express deep concerns about CIA activities. Thank you for your attention to this important matter."
It means absolutely zero to me. Good or bad or indifferent.
That... also doesn't mean anything. Imagine you were talking to someone who doesn't obsess about American twitter and the context they'd need to understand one sentence tweets that obliquely refer to things they don't know about.
I assume someone has posted this earlier but it does sum up the position SKS was in (mind you he did a deal with the devil (PM) and the result was inevitable).
David Frum @davidfrum • 6h The thing Keir Starmer cannot say: ... "Of course I knew the man had sinister secret ties to Jeffrey Epstein. That's why I chose him. The job was to protect Britain from the madness of President Caligula. Epstein connections are a bona fide job qualification for that mission."
Edit and equally
https://bsky.app/profile/hugorifkind.bsky.social/post/3me2r5gb62c22 Hugo Rifkind @hugorifkind.bsky.social Weird and almost universal revisionism today. Even at the time, it was pretty clear that Mandelson wasn't appointed *despite* his dodgy links but *because* of them. Trump's Washington is a dirty swamp. Mandelson was deemed a man able to swim in it. This wasn't a secret. Everybody said it out loud.
“He’s a perfect fit. Friends in common with the President I understand”
"Dear Director Ratcliffe, I write to alert you to a classified letter I sent you earlier today in which I express deep concerns about CIA activities. Thank you for your attention to this important matter."
It means absolutely zero to me. Good or bad or indifferent.
That... also doesn't mean anything. Imagine you were talking to someone who doesn't obsess about American twitter and the context they'd need to understand one sentence tweets that obliquely refer to things they don't know about.
OK. Don't worry about it
But you posted "This doesn't look good". That's almost precisely "This is something to worry about". "This doesn't look good for ABC because of their links to XYZ" would have let something think "Ok, whatever".
I do truly appreciate that you now include links in your posts sometimes - honestly, it's often a help.
I assume someone has posted this earlier but it does sum up the position SKS was in (mind you he did a deal with the devil (PM) and the result was inevitable).
David Frum @davidfrum • 6h The thing Keir Starmer cannot say: ... "Of course I knew the man had sinister secret ties to Jeffrey Epstein. That's why I chose him. The job was to protect Britain from the madness of President Caligula. Epstein connections are a bona fide job qualification for that mission."
Edit and equally
https://bsky.app/profile/hugorifkind.bsky.social/post/3me2r5gb62c22 Hugo Rifkind @hugorifkind.bsky.social Weird and almost universal revisionism today. Even at the time, it was pretty clear that Mandelson wasn't appointed *despite* his dodgy links but *because* of them. Trump's Washington is a dirty swamp. Mandelson was deemed a man able to swim in it. This wasn't a secret. Everybody said it out loud.
“He’s a perfect fit. Friends in common with the President I understand”
Said it time and time again
The reason why UK got best trade deal in the world
Remember the scene in white house orange man sought mandy out for specific praise
Mandy has all the epstein shit on trump
Thisands jobs at land rover, Scunthorpe Steel and others saved off the back of it.
Trump and Xi just spoke. Xi's readout is radically different from Trump's, in both tone and substance. --Xi said that Trump "values China's concerns over Taiwan." --Unlike Trump's readout, China's readout has no mention of soybeans, airplane engines, Iran, or Russia/Ukraine. --According to the Chinese readout, Xi spoke for about 70 percent of the time.
Both readouts feature Trump heaping praise on Xi Jinping.
I assume someone has posted this earlier but it does sum up the position SKS was in (mind you he did a deal with the devil (PM) and the result was inevitable).
David Frum @davidfrum • 6h The thing Keir Starmer cannot say: ... "Of course I knew the man had sinister secret ties to Jeffrey Epstein. That's why I chose him. The job was to protect Britain from the madness of President Caligula. Epstein connections are a bona fide job qualification for that mission."
Edit and equally
https://bsky.app/profile/hugorifkind.bsky.social/post/3me2r5gb62c22 Hugo Rifkind @hugorifkind.bsky.social Weird and almost universal revisionism today. Even at the time, it was pretty clear that Mandelson wasn't appointed *despite* his dodgy links but *because* of them. Trump's Washington is a dirty swamp. Mandelson was deemed a man able to swim in it. This wasn't a secret. Everybody said it out loud.
“He’s a perfect fit. Friends in common with the President I understand”
Said it time and time again
The reason why UK got best trade deal in the world
Remember the scene in white house orange man sought mandy out for specific praise
Mandy has all the epstein shit on trump
Thisands jobs at land rover, Scunthorpe Steel and others saved off the back of it.
This ignores that Karen Pierce seemed to be very good at the job, was already liked by Trump and with good contacts in Washington across the political spectrum - and all without being a close personal friend of Epstein. Why replace her at all? Would she really have done a worse job than Mandelson, who largely seemed to pick up where she left off anyway?
After all the deep dive and research I have done into this, you never even bothered to listen, have you.
It’s an India and US deal. Since UK done a Mandleson back in the sixties and sold our soul for US nuclear weaponry, UK has never been in control of this partnership with US, who call all the shots. That Mauritius is in pocket of China is massively bigged up - India is behind Mauritius ownership and the rent back.
Yes, really.
Your argument isn't coherent; it's a collection of tangential to irrelevant facts and suppositions. Of course the USA calls the shots in our relations with it. Of course India is a rising power and the UK is supine in its approach to it - our shitty Foreign Office would be supine to Liechtenstein. So what?
Cameron was still savvy enough as Foreign Sec to realise the deal was political poison and put it on ice, so clearly neither America nor India were making demands for an imminent handover in a way that couldn't be resisted.
You ignore the political element, that this particular deal is personal for Starmer, Hermer, Powell and Phillipe Sands. Starmer has an association with Mauritius that begins long before he was PM. His deal would allow Mauritius to abolish income tax - a deal negotiated on Mauritius' side by a Starmer's friend and former colleague. There seems to be little that Starmer won't do to protect the deal - including what we must now take to be a raft of new guarantees to Trump. If Starmer and his cabal leave office, why would a new PM, with nothing personal to gain, keep hold of a dud policy? His successor could tie it up in investigations and downgrade it to an aspiration before (in the unlikely event of a Labour election victory) dropping it.
Even America itself isn't a single minded block with one foreign policy agenda any more. There's the Biden/Obama-esque Democrats who enjoy the idea of Britain's colonial retreat. There's the deep state - who knows what they want? There's some Republican legislators who are seriously concerned about the security implications of the handover. And there's Trump, who is utterly unpredictable.
So there's every likelihood that this shithouse policy will collapse without Starmer - its key political sponsor there to get it over the line.
Trump and Xi just spoke. Xi's readout is radically different from Trump's, in both tone and substance. --Xi said that Trump "values China's concerns over Taiwan." --Unlike Trump's readout, China's readout has no mention of soybeans, airplane engines, Iran, or Russia/Ukraine. --According to the Chinese readout, Xi spoke for about 70 percent of the time.
Both readouts feature Trump heaping praise on Xi Jinping.
I can’t wait for the readout of the call with Starmer.
“Sir Keir STRONGLY agrees with me that we should forget about all the Epstein business and move on and he agreed to pay ten gazillion dollars to us for our beautiful base in Diego Garcia that they own.”
Michael Burry, the guy who bet against housing in 2008, says the fall of bitcoin could lead to cascading loss
Microstrategy is Michael Saylor.
They have over 72,000 Shitcoin. Oops.
The issue MicroStrategy has is that they borrowed money to buy Bitcoin.
Which was great when Bitcoin was going up, but is an absolute disaster on the downside.
It looks like their debt is a little more than $8bn, and they hold ~700,000 bitcoin, so as long as the bitcoin price doesn't threaten to fall below ~$12,000 they should be okay to ride it out.
That's because you're only looking at debt, and not at the preferred stock that pays an 11% dividend.
And also the fact that MicroStrategy is also spending erven more money (paid for with debt?) to try and prop up the Bitcoin price.
The company -for what it's worth- paid $76,000 per Bitcoin. That is, it's spent $54bn on Bitcoin over the years.
Remember too, that if they have to start selling Bitcoin to meet their obligations then... oh yes... the price of Bitcoin will fall.
A cynic might suggest that a large part of the reason Bitcoin went up so much was because Microstrategy spent $55bn on buying it.
I'm very grateful I had a dark web drug habit in 2012.
In that it meant you had a bitcoin or two just randomly lying around?
I assume someone has posted this earlier but it does sum up the position SKS was in (mind you he did a deal with the devil (PM) and the result was inevitable).
David Frum @davidfrum • 6h The thing Keir Starmer cannot say: ... "Of course I knew the man had sinister secret ties to Jeffrey Epstein. That's why I chose him. The job was to protect Britain from the madness of President Caligula. Epstein connections are a bona fide job qualification for that mission."
Edit and equally
https://bsky.app/profile/hugorifkind.bsky.social/post/3me2r5gb62c22 Hugo Rifkind @hugorifkind.bsky.social Weird and almost universal revisionism today. Even at the time, it was pretty clear that Mandelson wasn't appointed *despite* his dodgy links but *because* of them. Trump's Washington is a dirty swamp. Mandelson was deemed a man able to swim in it. This wasn't a secret. Everybody said it out loud.
“He’s a perfect fit. Friends in common with the President I understand”
Unfortunately, yes. It was and is undignified, but sucking up to a sleazy US President via an even sleazier individual was reasonable tactics. Possibly the only trade tactics available, having chosen to move away from nearer and more established partners. Beggars do not get to be choosers. Which is why desperate young women got trafficed in the first place.
The new information- that Mandy had been selling out the country for goodness knows what for fifteen years- surely that was new news to everyone. For the smartest people, that he did this and it seems that nobody knew is the big scandal.
But the politics of Mandy and King Perv are awful, even if you accept the governental logic of it. And you can't explain the logic, because that woud just annoy the Yanks, and we can't really afford to do that.
People paying good money to have a civilised meal at a smart restaurant should expect to be able to do so without screaming brats running around the place. If children can't behave their parents shouldn't bring them to the restaurant - take them to McDonalds ffs, you know they'd be happier there.
People paying good money to have a civilised meal at a smart restaurant should expect to be able to do so without screaming brats running around the place. If children can't behave their parents shouldn't bring them to the restaurant - take them to McDonalds ffs, you know they'd be happier there.
Standards in this country have gone down the pan.
The restaurant has a specific children's menu. I can see it on their website.
I'm not sure if you've ever had children but they have on occasion been known to cry against the wishes of their parents.
If you don't want young children at a restaurant you're going to then go out to dinner after 8pm.
Angela Rayner will never win a General Election as Labour leader
Kemi is literally praying for Rayner to become Labour leader, she is exactly the type of Labour leader who would turn off New Labour to Cameron and Tory until 2019 then Starmer in 2024 swing voters
Rayner will eat Kemi and spit her out.
Kemis scripts won't save her
Yougov favourables. Kemi -26%, Rayner -38%, Streeting -25% (Starmer is -54% and Farage -35%).
Not as simple as you make out. Look behind the averages.
Rayner's favourability ratings show that she is in the better position to consolidate support amongst voters who consider themselves to be left of centre, who are currently fracturing three ways between Lab, Green and LD, with an awful lot of DKs. None of the 2024 Conservative and 2024 Reform voters will vote either for a Streeting or Rayner-led Labour Party, so it matters diddly squat that Streeting's favourability is far less toxic than Rayner's is amongst that group.
To put it more starkly, Labour isn't concerned about what you and those who think like you feel about any Labour leader, because you'll still vote Tory or Reform regardless.
We are currently trialling AI summarisation of outpatient consultations in place of medical notes and letters in my Trust. All part of Mr Streetings grand plan, with costs repaid by making our receptionists and secretaries redundent.
Myself and colleagues have some concerns, not least that we are taking on admin duties formerly done by others at a quarter of our pay, as doing the AI stuff adds 5-10 minutes to consultations. Patients don't seem to object.
It does hallucinate though, including making false diagnoses and even made up pharmaceuticals, so needs a lot of proof-reading, and annoyingly keeps undeleting them when we delete them.
People paying good money to have a civilised meal at a smart restaurant should expect to be able to do so without screaming brats running around the place. If children can't behave their parents shouldn't bring them to the restaurant - take them to McDonalds ffs, you know they'd be happier there.
Standards in this country have gone down the pan.
The restaurant has a specific children's menu. I can see it on their website.
I'm not sure if you've ever had children but they have on occasion been known to cry against the wishes of their parents.
If you don't want young children at a restaurant you're going to then go out to dinner after 8pm.
I've just looked up Jan Leeming. She's been divorced five times. Interestingly, she never married Owen Leeming, with whom she had a brief relationship; she just fancied his name so changed hers by deed poll. She may or may not be a complete loose cannon.
Lee Harpin on X saying he hears whispers that Lucy P is quietly on manouveres to challenge
Oh dear.
While I accept the argument that anybody could be better that Skir, Lucy is the exception to that...
What about EdM?
Starmer is like democracy for Labour. He is the absolute worst for leader. Apart from all the others.
Burnham was a more electable alternative but Starmer blocked him becoming an MP and eligible to stand
Are you sure?
Any polling showing voters of UK want Burnham as PM? Lost two Labour Leadership elections, one to EdM, other to Jeremy Corbyn.
I looked upon the likes of Goofy Lucy pointing at satisfaction ratings saying how much more popular Burnham compared to Starmer as extremely embarrassing from her - everyone on PB can see that’s not comparing apples with apples. do we count being trusted as glorified car park attendant (a Mayor job) as serious trust by voters in something politically important?
No. It’s voodoo polling. Everyone responding to that poll are comparing a real thing, that taxes and hurts them, with a fantasy thing that currently doesn’t.
Did you hear about the psephologist from Warsaw who moved to Haiti?
I have written to the European Anti-Fraud Office asking them to investigate whether Peter Mandelson used his tenure as EU Trade Commissioner for personal financial gain.
Given they've already started an investigation, what was the point of doing that, Nige?
Wasn't Farage found guilty of various shenanigans by the European Parliament? Not as bad as the 10 years in jail for his mate who took the cash from the Russians, but bad enough...
Whistleblower Aid’s chief counsel formally put the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, on notice after eight months of stonewalling.
An intelligence community whistleblower tried to do this by the book since June 2025. Asked for secure instructions to brief Congress. Asked again in November. Silence. Meanwhile, Gabbard’s office quietly gave guidance to the Inspector General while giving the whistleblower’s lawyers nothing. That is not process. That is obstruction.
So the lawyers pulled the nuclear option. The February 3, 2026 letter sets a hard deadline. Provide security guidance by Friday, February 6, or they bypass the DNI entirely and brief Congress directly on Monday, February 9. Not about some abstract failure either. The letter explicitly says the briefing will cover Gabbard’s conduct and the underlying intelligence concerns. That language is deliberate. It means the complaint targets her actions, not a vague bureaucratic lapse, and it invokes 50 U.S.C. § 3033, the statute that guarantees intelligence whistleblowers the right to reach the House and Senate Intelligence Committees when leadership blocks them.
This matters because the allegation is political misuse of intelligence and withholding information from Congress. If true, that is not a policy disagreement. That is a constitutional problem. And Whistleblower Aid does not bluff. Andrew Bakaj has top secret eligibility, represents national security whistleblowers for a living, and put his name and license on the line in writing. You do not send a letter like this unless you are prepared to walk into the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and lay it out... https://x.com/splendid_pete/status/2019029765714268238
People paying good money to have a civilised meal at a smart restaurant should expect to be able to do so without screaming brats running around the place. If children can't behave their parents shouldn't bring them to the restaurant - take them to McDonalds ffs, you know they'd be happier there.
Standards in this country have gone down the pan.
The restaurant has a specific children's menu. I can see it on their website.
I'm not sure if you've ever had children but they have on occasion been known to cry against the wishes of their parents.
If you don't want young children at a restaurant you're going to then go out to dinner after 8pm.
I don't have any children and find their crying intensely irritating. Therefore I'd much rather they weren't in the same restaurant as me. That's not at all fair on the parents but I can't pretend otherwise. Of course whether children are allowed in is up to the restaurant and I'm free to choose whether to eat there or not (which I will if I like the restaurant). It's truly amazing that no one is paying me to express these views in public
People paying good money to have a civilised meal at a smart restaurant should expect to be able to do so without screaming brats running around the place. If children can't behave their parents shouldn't bring them to the restaurant - take them to McDonalds ffs, you know they'd be happier there.
Standards in this country have gone down the pan.
The restaurant has a specific children's menu. I can see it on their website.
I'm not sure if you've ever had children but they have on occasion been known to cry against the wishes of their parents.
If you don't want young children at a restaurant you're going to then go out to dinner after 8pm.
Is 8pm the specific time after which badly behaved children and their dysfunctional parents disappear?
People paying good money to have a civilised meal at a smart restaurant should expect to be able to do so without screaming brats running around the place. If children can't behave their parents shouldn't bring them to the restaurant - take them to McDonalds ffs, you know they'd be happier there.
Standards in this country have gone down the pan.
Me too. I have no problem with children in any restaurant as long as they behave. My boys came dining with us from birth and I cannot remember a time when it was an issue, even in posh places like Reids. What we did though was bring things to entertain them, such as books, drawing materials, or small plastic animals. We would sit Fox jr on one or other of our laps and eat in turn if nessecary, though usually would give him ear phones and stories on a walkman.
Whatt is not acceptable is letting young children roam around, annoy other diners and for the parents to ignore them.
Any restaurateur will tell you that, whatever kids do , adults have done worse.
So true. Some of the stories I can tell you are shocking.
When my brother opened some rooms for accommodation above his restaurant, the very first guest who stayed there removed every single light bulb from the room before he checked out.
People paying good money to have a civilised meal at a smart restaurant should expect to be able to do so without screaming brats running around the place. If children can't behave their parents shouldn't bring them to the restaurant - take them to McDonalds ffs, you know they'd be happier there.
Standards in this country have gone down the pan.
The restaurant has a specific children's menu. I can see it on their website.
I'm not sure if you've ever had children but they have on occasion been known to cry against the wishes of their parents.
If you don't want young children at a restaurant you're going to then go out to dinner after 8pm.
Is 8pm the specific time after which badly behaved children and their dysfunctional parents disappear?
No that's the time the ones with dysfunctional parents are still letting them be awake and out eating.
Frankly it's the old gits complaining about children existing or something other minor annoyance that I find most intolerable as company in restaurants.
On the basis some here want pretty inexpensive pub restaurants to be able to ban children at lunchtime I'd agree so long others can ban grumpy old men. It'd improve the atmosphere immensely.
We are currently trialling AI summarisation of outpatient consultations in place of medical notes and letters in my Trust. All part of Mr Streetings grand plan, with costs repaid by making our receptionists and secretaries redundent.
Myself and colleagues have some concerns, not least that we are taking on admin duties formerly done by others at a quarter of our pay, as doing the AI stuff adds 5-10 minutes to consultations. Patients don't seem to object.
It does hallucinate though, including making false diagnoses and even made up pharmaceuticals, so needs a lot of proof-reading, and annoyingly keeps undeleting them when we delete them.
Look out for my PhD student’s preprint on this topic soon. Lots of studies going on!
I can remember when children were de facto banned from most pubs and restaurants unless it was a weekend afternoon because I was one of the kids who always wondered what the inside of a pub looked like and was never allowed to go inside.
“As far as I'm concerned, Starmer is done. What matters is what's next. If it's Angela, the honeymoon lasts a week. If it's Wes, a month. If it's Al, 6 months. Hard to see how it turns around beyond that.”
“Al” refers to Al Carns… an outside chance but interesting to see him included. He is popular among the new intake of MPs, I am told.
Whoever it is, eyes are darting around for Starmer’s replacement.
People paying good money to have a civilised meal at a smart restaurant should expect to be able to do so without screaming brats running around the place. If children can't behave their parents shouldn't bring them to the restaurant - take them to McDonalds ffs, you know they'd be happier there.
Standards in this country have gone down the pan.
The restaurant has a specific children's menu. I can see it on their website.
I'm not sure if you've ever had children but they have on occasion been known to cry against the wishes of their parents.
If you don't want young children at a restaurant you're going to then go out to dinner after 8pm.
I've just looked up Jan Leeming. She's been divorced five times. Interestingly, she never married Owen Leeming, with whom she had a brief relationship; she just fancied his name so changed hers by deed poll. She may or may not be a complete loose cannon.
I really hope this isn't true, but...
Are we getting to the point that it's simpler to defualt to assuming that everyone, especially everyone in the public eye, is a terrible human being?
People paying good money to have a civilised meal at a smart restaurant should expect to be able to do so without screaming brats running around the place. If children can't behave their parents shouldn't bring them to the restaurant - take them to McDonalds ffs, you know they'd be happier there.
Standards in this country have gone down the pan.
The restaurant has a specific children's menu. I can see it on their website.
I'm not sure if you've ever had children but they have on occasion been known to cry against the wishes of their parents.
If you don't want young children at a restaurant you're going to then go out to dinner after 8pm.
Is 8pm the specific time after which badly behaved children and their dysfunctional parents disappear?
No that's the time the ones with dysfunctional parents are still letting them be awake and out eating.
Frankly it's the old gits complaining about children existing or something other minor annoyance that I find most intolerable as company in restaurants.
On the basis some here want pretty inexpensive pub restaurants to be able to ban children at lunchtime I'd agree so long others can ban grumpy old men. It'd improve the atmosphere immensely.
Forgive me then, your advice for me to eat after 8pm seems a bit spurious.
After all the deep dive and research I have done into this, you never even bothered to listen, have you.
It’s an India and US deal. Since UK done a Mandleson back in the sixties and sold our soul for US nuclear weaponry, UK has never been in control of this partnership with US, who call all the shots. That Mauritius is in pocket of China is massively bigged up - India is behind Mauritius ownership and the rent back.
Yes, really.
Your argument isn't coherent; it's a collection of tangential to irrelevant facts and suppositions. Of course the USA calls the shots in our relations with it. Of course India is a rising power and the UK is supine in its approach to it - our shitty Foreign Office would be supine to Liechtenstein. So what?
Cameron was still savvy enough as Foreign Sec to realise the deal was political poison and put it on ice, so clearly neither America nor India were making demands for an imminent handover in a way that couldn't be resisted.
You ignore the political element, that this particular deal is personal for Starmer, Hermer, Powell and Phillipe Sands. Starmer has an association with Mauritius that begins long before he was PM. His deal would allow Mauritius to abolish income tax - a deal negotiated on Mauritius' side by a Starmer's friend and former colleague. There seems to be little that Starmer won't do to protect the deal - including what we must now take to be a raft of new guarantees to Trump. If Starmer and his cabal leave office, why would a new PM, with nothing personal to gain, keep hold of a dud policy? His successor could tie it up in investigations and downgrade it to an aspiration before (in the unlikely event of a Labour election victory) dropping it.
Even America itself isn't a single minded block with one foreign policy agenda any more. There's the Biden/Obama-esque Democrats who enjoy the idea of Britain's colonial retreat. There's the deep state - who knows what they want? There's some Republican legislators who are seriously concerned about the security implications of the handover. And there's Trump, who is utterly unpredictable.
So there's every likelihood that this shithouse policy will collapse without Starmer - its key political sponsor there to get it over the line.
Any restaurateur will tell you that, whatever kids do , adults have done worse.
So true. Some of the stories I can tell you are shocking.
When my brother opened some rooms for accommodation above his restaurant, the very first guest who stayed there removed every single light bulb from the room before he checked out.
When I first started out in hospitality (many moons ago) I worked in a small restaurant in St Andrews. The then General Manager was as camp as Catterick and a genuine star. He advised that the worst table of guests to have was one made up of women on a “night out”. A quick retort - said loudly enough for other guests to hear - was always the best response, especially if their behaviour was unladylike.
I remember serving a group of women who worked together at Boots (I think). Their behaviour was obnoxious (and some were regulars to the restaurant). Some made pretty objectionable comments towards some of the male guests dining that night. One of them manhandled both a fellow member of staff and myself. I looked her up and down, paused in judgement of the way she was dressed, and said loudly enough for the entire downstairs to hear “I’m sorry. I prefer lamb to mutton”. The ensuing silence was exquisite.
We are currently trialling AI summarisation of outpatient consultations in place of medical notes and letters in my Trust. All part of Mr Streetings grand plan, with costs repaid by making our receptionists and secretaries redundent.
Myself and colleagues have some concerns, not least that we are taking on admin duties formerly done by others at a quarter of our pay, as doing the AI stuff adds 5-10 minutes to consultations. Patients don't seem to object.
It does hallucinate though, including making false diagnoses and even made up pharmaceuticals, so needs a lot of proof-reading, and annoyingly keeps undeleting them when we delete them.
So from what I understand, it's goodbye to patient confidentiality.
Michael Burry, the guy who bet against housing in 2008, says the fall of bitcoin could lead to cascading loss
Microstrategy is Michael Saylor.
They have over 72,000 Shitcoin. Oops.
The issue MicroStrategy has is that they borrowed money to buy Bitcoin.
Which was great when Bitcoin was going up, but is an absolute disaster on the downside.
It looks like their debt is a little more than $8bn, and they hold ~700,000 bitcoin, so as long as the bitcoin price doesn't threaten to fall below ~$12,000 they should be okay to ride it out.
That's because you're only looking at debt, and not at the preferred stock that pays an 11% dividend.
And also the fact that MicroStrategy is also spending erven more money (paid for with debt?) to try and prop up the Bitcoin price.
The company -for what it's worth- paid $76,000 per Bitcoin. That is, it's spent $54bn on Bitcoin over the years.
Remember too, that if they have to start selling Bitcoin to meet their obligations then... oh yes... the price of Bitcoin will fall.
A cynic might suggest that a large part of the reason Bitcoin went up so much was because Microstrategy spent $55bn on buying it.
Do you know the story of Rudy Kurniawan?
Showed up in the California wine scene with a boatload of money.
It was actually money that his fraudster family had stolen from Malaysian banks.
His job was the launder it. So he would buy absolutely all of a rare Burgundy at auction. The price would accelerate the stars. Especially since Rudy was the fashion setter. Then he would ease his supply onto the market. Your classic ramp - pump & dump.
He was sending multiple million dollars a month back home at one point.
His downfall was because he used his undoubted genius with wine tasting to fake stuff. He was far less good at the details of faking - so produced vintages/bottlings that never existed…
Went to prison in the end.
If he had stuck to pump & dump, he would be a celebrity yet.
People paying good money to have a civilised meal at a smart restaurant should expect to be able to do so without screaming brats running around the place. If children can't behave their parents shouldn't bring them to the restaurant - take them to McDonalds ffs, you know they'd be happier there.
Standards in this country have gone down the pan.
The restaurant has a specific children's menu. I can see it on their website.
I'm not sure if you've ever had children but they have on occasion been known to cry against the wishes of their parents.
If you don't want young children at a restaurant you're going to then go out to dinner after 8pm.
I've just looked up Jan Leeming. She's been divorced five times. Interestingly, she never married Owen Leeming, with whom she had a brief relationship; she just fancied his name so changed hers by deed poll. She may or may not be a complete loose cannon.
She was the best news presenter ever in my opinion. Surprised you haven't heard of her.
We are currently trialling AI summarisation of outpatient consultations in place of medical notes and letters in my Trust. All part of Mr Streetings grand plan, with costs repaid by making our receptionists and secretaries redundent.
Myself and colleagues have some concerns, not least that we are taking on admin duties formerly done by others at a quarter of our pay, as doing the AI stuff adds 5-10 minutes to consultations. Patients don't seem to object.
It does hallucinate though, including making false diagnoses and even made up pharmaceuticals, so needs a lot of proof-reading, and annoyingly keeps undeleting them when we delete them.
So from what I understand, it's goodbye to patient confidentiality.
There are good technical solutions to ensuring confidentiality with AI scribes. The data isn’t generally kept on their servers after processing. All your health records are already electronic. But that’s not to say we shouldn’t be careful: new tech always mean new risks.
We are currently trialling AI summarisation of outpatient consultations in place of medical notes and letters in my Trust. All part of Mr Streetings grand plan, with costs repaid by making our receptionists and secretaries redundent.
Myself and colleagues have some concerns, not least that we are taking on admin duties formerly done by others at a quarter of our pay, as doing the AI stuff adds 5-10 minutes to consultations. Patients don't seem to object.
It does hallucinate though, including making false diagnoses and even made up pharmaceuticals, so needs a lot of proof-reading, and annoyingly keeps undeleting them when we delete them.
So from what I understand, it's goodbye to patient confidentiality.
Yes, one of our many concerns as the AI is a learning model, and the data goes out of Trust control. Patients do not seem to mind surprisingly, perhaps ignorance, or perhaps because phones are spying on us anyway.
People paying good money to have a civilised meal at a smart restaurant should expect to be able to do so without screaming brats running around the place. If children can't behave their parents shouldn't bring them to the restaurant - take them to McDonalds ffs, you know they'd be happier there.
Standards in this country have gone down the pan.
The restaurant has a specific children's menu. I can see it on their website.
I'm not sure if you've ever had children but they have on occasion been known to cry against the wishes of their parents.
If you don't want young children at a restaurant you're going to then go out to dinner after 8pm.
Is 8pm the specific time after which badly behaved children and their dysfunctional parents disappear?
No that's the time the ones with dysfunctional parents are still letting them be awake and out eating.
Frankly it's the old gits complaining about children existing or something other minor annoyance that I find most intolerable as company in restaurants.
On the basis some here want pretty inexpensive pub restaurants to be able to ban children at lunchtime I'd agree so long others can ban grumpy old men. It'd improve the atmosphere immensely.
Forgive me then, your advice for me to eat after 8pm seems a bit spurious.
It was a joke....
I don't think I've ever seen a child under the age of 10 at a restaurant that late in the evening, perhaps save a holiday resort catered to such things.
If you hate children that much then find a place or time they are unlikely to be around. Not at lunchtime in a family friendly restaurant with a specific children's menu like the idiot from the original article.
"Dear Director Ratcliffe, I write to alert you to a classified letter I sent you earlier today in which I express deep concerns about CIA activities. Thank you for your attention to this important matter."
It means absolutely zero to me. Good or bad or indifferent.
There's been much talk of Tulsi Gabbard being a Russian asset.
And not just a useful idiot. Actually on their side. So 'tis said by commentators who certainly have an inside track.
The extraordinary thing about the Trump Administration is that all the grift and corruption is done in plain sight. No-one even bothers to try to cover it up.
We are currently trialling AI summarisation of outpatient consultations in place of medical notes and letters in my Trust. All part of Mr Streetings grand plan, with costs repaid by making our receptionists and secretaries redundent.
Myself and colleagues have some concerns, not least that we are taking on admin duties formerly done by others at a quarter of our pay, as doing the AI stuff adds 5-10 minutes to consultations. Patients don't seem to object.
It does hallucinate though, including making false diagnoses and even made up pharmaceuticals, so needs a lot of proof-reading, and annoyingly keeps undeleting them when we delete them.
So from what I understand, it's goodbye to patient confidentiality.
There are good technical solutions to ensuring confidentiality with AI scribes. The data isn’t generally kept on their servers after processing. All your health records are already electronic. But that’s not to say we shouldn’t be careful: new tech always mean new risks.
The false diagnoses and made up drugs seem like the bigger issue.
People paying good money to have a civilised meal at a smart restaurant should expect to be able to do so without screaming brats running around the place. If children can't behave their parents shouldn't bring them to the restaurant - take them to McDonalds ffs, you know they'd be happier there.
Standards in this country have gone down the pan.
The restaurant has a specific children's menu. I can see it on their website.
I'm not sure if you've ever had children but they have on occasion been known to cry against the wishes of their parents.
If you don't want young children at a restaurant you're going to then go out to dinner after 8pm.
I've just looked up Jan Leeming. She's been divorced five times. Interestingly, she never married Owen Leeming, with whom she had a brief relationship; she just fancied his name so changed hers by deed poll. She may or may not be a complete loose cannon.
She was the best news presenter ever in my opinion. Surprised you haven't heard of her.
I do remember the name from my childhood. I just looked her up to see when she was active.
“As far as I'm concerned, Starmer is done. What matters is what's next. If it's Angela, the honeymoon lasts a week. If it's Wes, a month. If it's Al, 6 months. Hard to see how it turns around beyond that.”
“Al” refers to Al Carns… an outside chance but interesting to see him included. He is popular among the new intake of MPs, I am told.
Whoever it is, eyes are darting around for Starmer’s replacement.
Carns has a good back story and could tell Farage where to go with his plastic patriotism. I don’t think you need huge experience to become PM , some common sense and a shred of political nous would be a start!
I think Rayner would be favourite and it is time that Labour had a female leader. I know she’s very marmite but it would be a refreshing change to see someone with her life story become PM .
I like her and would happily vote for her if I was a Labour member .
We are currently trialling AI summarisation of outpatient consultations in place of medical notes and letters in my Trust. All part of Mr Streetings grand plan, with costs repaid by making our receptionists and secretaries redundent.
Myself and colleagues have some concerns, not least that we are taking on admin duties formerly done by others at a quarter of our pay, as doing the AI stuff adds 5-10 minutes to consultations. Patients don't seem to object.
It does hallucinate though, including making false diagnoses and even made up pharmaceuticals, so needs a lot of proof-reading, and annoyingly keeps undeleting them when we delete them.
So from what I understand, it's goodbye to patient confidentiality.
There are good technical solutions to ensuring confidentiality with AI scribes. The data isn’t generally kept on their servers after processing. All your health records are already electronic. But that’s not to say we shouldn’t be careful: new tech always mean new risks.
The false diagnoses and made up drugs seem like the bigger issue.
Yes, definitely! It makes mistakes. The idea is that the doctor reviews the summary and corrects those, but that’s obviously not going to happen sometimes. However, on the other hand, regular human doctors also make mistakes, so the question is not does the AI scribe make mistakes, but do they make worse mistakes than humans.
“As far as I'm concerned, Starmer is done. What matters is what's next. If it's Angela, the honeymoon lasts a week. If it's Wes, a month. If it's Al, 6 months. Hard to see how it turns around beyond that.”
“Al” refers to Al Carns… an outside chance but interesting to see him included. He is popular among the new intake of MPs, I am told.
Whoever it is, eyes are darting around for Starmer’s replacement.
Nobody seems to be making the case to keep him on a bit.
Nobody.
Mind you, some of us did say the best they were getting was Gordon Brittas.
Michael Burry, the guy who bet against housing in 2008, says the fall of bitcoin could lead to cascading loss
Microstrategy is Michael Saylor.
They have over 72,000 Shitcoin. Oops.
The issue MicroStrategy has is that they borrowed money to buy Bitcoin.
Which was great when Bitcoin was going up, but is an absolute disaster on the downside.
It looks like their debt is a little more than $8bn, and they hold ~700,000 bitcoin, so as long as the bitcoin price doesn't threaten to fall below ~$12,000 they should be okay to ride it out.
That's because you're only looking at debt, and not at the preferred stock that pays an 11% dividend.
And also the fact that MicroStrategy is also spending erven more money (paid for with debt?) to try and prop up the Bitcoin price.
The company -for what it's worth- paid $76,000 per Bitcoin. That is, it's spent $54bn on Bitcoin over the years.
Remember too, that if they have to start selling Bitcoin to meet their obligations then... oh yes... the price of Bitcoin will fall.
A cynic might suggest that a large part of the reason Bitcoin went up so much was because Microstrategy spent $55bn on buying it.
I'm very grateful I had a dark web drug habit in 2012.
In that it meant you had a bitcoin or two just randomly lying around?
Yup. And the most fortunate ones were on MtGox so were sold more or less at the top (well roughly 1/6th of them were cause the rest were nicked).
Happened more or less the same time our startup was bought out, same tax return, so I kinda thing of it as same windfall (despite being completely unrelated, just happening in same tax year) but I'd have no mortgage just from the coins...
(Had I held on to all the ones in my offline wallet from back then I'd be even richer than you )
People paying good money to have a civilised meal at a smart restaurant should expect to be able to do so without screaming brats running around the place. If children can't behave their parents shouldn't bring them to the restaurant - take them to McDonalds ffs, you know they'd be happier there.
Standards in this country have gone down the pan.
The restaurant has a specific children's menu. I can see it on their website.
I'm not sure if you've ever had children but they have on occasion been known to cry against the wishes of their parents.
If you don't want young children at a restaurant you're going to then go out to dinner after 8pm.
I've just looked up Jan Leeming. She's been divorced five times. Interestingly, she never married Owen Leeming, with whom she had a brief relationship; she just fancied his name so changed hers by deed poll. She may or may not be a complete loose cannon.
She was the best news presenter ever in my opinion. Surprised you haven't heard of her.
I do remember the name from my childhood. I just looked her up to see when she was active.
She's been divorced five times, so I'd say she's been active a while.
After all the deep dive and research I have done into this, you never even bothered to listen, have you.
It’s an India and US deal. Since UK done a Mandleson back in the sixties and sold our soul for US nuclear weaponry, UK has never been in control of this partnership with US, who call all the shots. That Mauritius is in pocket of China is massively bigged up - India is behind Mauritius ownership and the rent back.
Yes, really.
Your argument isn't coherent; it's a collection of tangential to irrelevant facts and suppositions. Of course the USA calls the shots in our relations with it. Of course India is a rising power and the UK is supine in its approach to it - our shitty Foreign Office would be supine to Liechtenstein. So what?
Cameron was still savvy enough as Foreign Sec to realise the deal was political poison and put it on ice, so clearly neither America nor India were making demands for an imminent handover in a way that couldn't be resisted.
You ignore the political element, that this particular deal is personal for Starmer, Hermer, Powell and Phillipe Sands. Starmer has an association with Mauritius that begins long before he was PM. His deal would allow Mauritius to abolish income tax - a deal negotiated on Mauritius' side by a Starmer's friend and former colleague. There seems to be little that Starmer won't do to protect the deal - including what we must now take to be a raft of new guarantees to Trump. If Starmer and his cabal leave office, why would a new PM, with nothing personal to gain, keep hold of a dud policy? His successor could tie it up in investigations and downgrade it to an aspiration before (in the unlikely event of a Labour election victory) dropping it.
Even America itself isn't a single minded block with one foreign policy agenda any more. There's the Biden/Obama-esque Democrats who enjoy the idea of Britain's colonial retreat. There's the deep state - who knows what they want? There's some Republican legislators who are seriously concerned about the security implications of the handover. And there's Trump, who is utterly unpredictable.
So there's every likelihood that this shithouse policy will collapse without Starmer - its key political sponsor there to get it over the line.
This deal only exists because of Starmer and friends lifelong passion for this deal?
No.
That’s just your head getting stuck in an echo chamber, where truth is written up by so called “Truth Warriors”. That whole paragraph from you is pure gibberish, because, simply put, for these claims to have any shred of credence at all, Starmer and his government would have to have negotiated and agreed all the details in this current Chagos Island deal.
This is the kicker you need to get your head round. Starmer and his government did not negotiate and agree this Chagos island deal, the thing was already negotiated and agreed when they came to power.
This has been my key point all along. We come to the crux of this, the mythical pause Cameron put on negotiations, leading to the weak and bizarre position of Badenoch’s front bench today. And the myth Labour and Starmer negotiated and agreed the framework of the deal.
The deal, just as it is right now, was instigated by the Conservatives on basis British resistance to handing over the Chagos Islands was hampering the UK’s ability to build alliances in the region, including Africa.
Talks were not frozen, but actually continued and refined during Lord Cameron’s tenure as Foreign Secretary - officials conducted ELEVEN ROUNDS of high-level negotiations between London and Port Louis, the FINAL ROUND that completed the agreements TOOK PLACE JUST WEEKS BRFORE THE GENERAL ELECTION in 2024.
Now can you see the crux of my argument being more coherent than you have so far appreciated, and that paragraph in your post so important to you is proved, by these facts, to be pure fantasy?
I’ll be polite and say, just get your story straight by facts, not your fantasies.
After all the deep dive and research I have done into this, you never even bothered to listen, have you.
It’s an India and US deal. Since UK done a Mandleson back in the sixties and sold our soul for US nuclear weaponry, UK has never been in control of this partnership with US, who call all the shots. That Mauritius is in pocket of China is massively bigged up - India is behind Mauritius ownership and the rent back.
Yes, really.
Your argument isn't coherent; it's a collection of tangential to irrelevant facts and suppositions. Of course the USA calls the shots in our relations with it. Of course India is a rising power and the UK is supine in its approach to it - our shitty Foreign Office would be supine to Liechtenstein. So what?
Cameron was still savvy enough as Foreign Sec to realise the deal was political poison and put it on ice, so clearly neither America nor India were making demands for an imminent handover in a way that couldn't be resisted.
You ignore the political element, that this particular deal is personal for Starmer, Hermer, Powell and Phillipe Sands. Starmer has an association with Mauritius that begins long before he was PM. His deal would allow Mauritius to abolish income tax - a deal negotiated on Mauritius' side by a Starmer's friend and former colleague. There seems to be little that Starmer won't do to protect the deal - including what we must now take to be a raft of new guarantees to Trump. If Starmer and his cabal leave office, why would a new PM, with nothing personal to gain, keep hold of a dud policy? His successor could tie it up in investigations and downgrade it to an aspiration before (in the unlikely event of a Labour election victory) dropping it.
Even America itself isn't a single minded block with one foreign policy agenda any more. There's the Biden/Obama-esque Democrats who enjoy the idea of Britain's colonial retreat. There's the deep state - who knows what they want? There's some Republican legislators who are seriously concerned about the security implications of the handover. And there's Trump, who is utterly unpredictable.
So there's every likelihood that this shithouse policy will collapse without Starmer - its key political sponsor there to get it over the line.
This deal only exists because of Starmer and friends lifelong passion for this deal?
No.
That’s just your head getting stuck in an echo chamber, where truth is written up by so called “Truth Warriors”. That whole paragraph from you is pure gibberish, because, simply put, for these claims to have any shred of credence at all, Starmer and his government would have to have negotiated and agreed all the details in this current Chagos Island deal.
This is the kicker you need to get your head round. Starmer and his government did not negotiate and agree this Chagos island deal, the thing was already negotiated and agreed when they came to power.
This has been my key point all along. We come to the crux of this, the mythical pause Cameron put on negotiations, leading to the weak and bizarre position of Badenoch’s front bench today. And the myth Labour and Starmer negotiated and agreed the framework of the deal.
The deal, just as it is right now, was instigated by the Conservatives on basis British resistance to handing over the Chagos Islands was hampering the UK’s ability to build alliances in the region, including Africa.
Talks were not frozen, but actually continued and refined during Lord Cameron’s tenure as Foreign Secretary - officials conducted ELEVEN ROUNDS of high-level negotiations between London and Port Louis, the FINAL ROUND that completed the agreements TOOK PLACE JUST WEEKS BRFORE THE GENERAL ELECTION in 2024.
Now can you see the crux of my argument being more coherent than you have so far appreciated, and that paragraph in your post so important to you is proved, by these facts, to be pure fantasy?
I’ll be polite and say, just get your story straight by facts, not your fantasies.
So all the the bluster about excluding actual Chagouns from discussions we now hear from the Conservatives, at no point when Conservative governments were negotiating these 12 rounds into the summer of 2024 did they include Chagouns. 🙈
Michael Burry, the guy who bet against housing in 2008, says the fall of bitcoin could lead to cascading loss
Microstrategy is Michael Saylor.
They have over 72,000 Shitcoin. Oops.
The issue MicroStrategy has is that they borrowed money to buy Bitcoin.
Which was great when Bitcoin was going up, but is an absolute disaster on the downside.
It looks like their debt is a little more than $8bn, and they hold ~700,000 bitcoin, so as long as the bitcoin price doesn't threaten to fall below ~$12,000 they should be okay to ride it out.
That's because you're only looking at debt, and not at the preferred stock that pays an 11% dividend.
And also the fact that MicroStrategy is also spending erven more money (paid for with debt?) to try and prop up the Bitcoin price.
The company -for what it's worth- paid $76,000 per Bitcoin. That is, it's spent $54bn on Bitcoin over the years.
Remember too, that if they have to start selling Bitcoin to meet their obligations then... oh yes... the price of Bitcoin will fall.
A cynic might suggest that a large part of the reason Bitcoin went up so much was because Microstrategy spent $55bn on buying it.
Do you know the story of Rudy Kurniawan?
Showed up in the California wine scene with a boatload of money.
It was actually money that his fraudster family had stolen from Malaysian banks.
His job was the launder it. So he would buy absolutely all of a rare Burgundy at auction. The price would accelerate the stars. Especially since Rudy was the fashion setter. Then he would ease his supply onto the market. Your classic ramp - pump & dump.
He was sending multiple million dollars a month back home at one point.
His downfall was because he used his undoubted genius with wine tasting to fake stuff. He was far less good at the details of faking - so produced vintages/bottlings that never existed…
Went to prison in the end.
If he had stuck to pump & dump, he would be a celebrity yet.
You know: I always think of Madoff, and what an idiot he was.
If he'd just stuck the whole lot in an S&P tracker, and then faked the numbers, he'd have been fine. Because what people loved about his fund was the lack of volatility. He'd just have hidden it from investors.
After all the deep dive and research I have done into this, you never even bothered to listen, have you.
It’s an India and US deal. Since UK done a Mandleson back in the sixties and sold our soul for US nuclear weaponry, UK has never been in control of this partnership with US, who call all the shots. That Mauritius is in pocket of China is massively bigged up - India is behind Mauritius ownership and the rent back.
Yes, really.
Your argument isn't coherent; it's a collection of tangential to irrelevant facts and suppositions. Of course the USA calls the shots in our relations with it. Of course India is a rising power and the UK is supine in its approach to it - our shitty Foreign Office would be supine to Liechtenstein. So what?
Cameron was still savvy enough as Foreign Sec to realise the deal was political poison and put it on ice, so clearly neither America nor India were making demands for an imminent handover in a way that couldn't be resisted.
You ignore the political element, that this particular deal is personal for Starmer, Hermer, Powell and Phillipe Sands. Starmer has an association with Mauritius that begins long before he was PM. His deal would allow Mauritius to abolish income tax - a deal negotiated on Mauritius' side by a Starmer's friend and former colleague. There seems to be little that Starmer won't do to protect the deal - including what we must now take to be a raft of new guarantees to Trump. If Starmer and his cabal leave office, why would a new PM, with nothing personal to gain, keep hold of a dud policy? His successor could tie it up in investigations and downgrade it to an aspiration before (in the unlikely event of a Labour election victory) dropping it.
Even America itself isn't a single minded block with one foreign policy agenda any more. There's the Biden/Obama-esque Democrats who enjoy the idea of Britain's colonial retreat. There's the deep state - who knows what they want? There's some Republican legislators who are seriously concerned about the security implications of the handover. And there's Trump, who is utterly unpredictable.
So there's every likelihood that this shithouse policy will collapse without Starmer - its key political sponsor there to get it over the line.
don’t accept your understanding America itself isn't a single minded block on foreign policy, because satisfaction from Britain's colonial retreat is still motivation which unites them all.
Some Republican legislators concerned about the security implications of the handover. It’s not many though is it. This deal will fly through any Senate vote, and with Trump promising wet sig, through any House vote as well. So that very much crushes whatever point you were making there. However, I have more to say on this, and why your handful of senators are wrong. China are using every means to spy on what we - US UK and Ind are all up to, using equipment on fishing junks carry flags of all nations. Outside of that it’s pure whataboutery without any substantive evidence you can bring forward to prove your point of Chinese threat, interference and a security issue for the base. It’s not the South China Sea, which China claims ownership, India is the Super Power rising in the Indian Ocean. Yet again the Conservative government who negotiated this Chagos deal, were right to call out that thinking:
Weaker UK relations with African countries and around the Indian Ocean, from our standing within the international justice system, have actually been creating opportunities China and Russia have seized upon. That’s the real world realpolitik here. When UK, and US, fails to convince nations we are a trusted partner, that respects agreements, it helps Russia and China to be able to do so. This is the dumbass consequence of your glib, ill informed approach to foreign policy.
So we now agree on at least one thing, there's every likelihood that this policy gets over the line?
After all the deep dive and research I have done into this, you never even bothered to listen, have you.
It’s an India and US deal. Since UK done a Mandleson back in the sixties and sold our soul for US nuclear weaponry, UK has never been in control of this partnership with US, who call all the shots. That Mauritius is in pocket of China is massively bigged up - India is behind Mauritius ownership and the rent back.
Probably true.
I am completely sure future history books with write this Chagos deal up as rise of India as influential Superpower in the region, along with US policy of the last 100 years screwing UK overseas territorial possessions and influence.
I posted - “what about India’s influence in the Chagos Deal” into a thread on this on ConHome, and all I got was a forest of bewildered question marks. ConHome completely embarrassed itself. 😕
You are a cut above the Faragists as a listener and thinker, Casino.
The real harm the Chagos deal will cause is to marine life. Coral, fish, sharks etc. Doubt they will be protected in the future. Allowing "small scale fishing" will quickly become longline fishing which will eventually become industrial scale fishing and then there will be nothing left.
The marine reserve covering the Chagos Archipelago’s 250,000 square miles, an area more than twice the size of the UK, was created by UK government in 2010.
Given their recent travails with 'undress this underage female' - it's amusing me that the link just gives me a "Naughty, naughty! Adult content!" and a signup link.
Ugh, this is a terrible decision, I hope he appeals.
Banker who splashed joint account cash on mistress loses £4m prenup case
Ardal Loh-Gronager has his divorce settlement slashed after a judge finds he spent lavishly on another relationship from a joint marital account
A City banker who drained thousands of pounds from a joint marital account to lavish on his mistress has lost £4 million in a battle over a prenuptial agreement.
In a judgment demonstrating that judges will take behaviour into account when determining whether prenuptial agreements are enforceable, Ardal Loh-Gronager was even said to have allowed his mistress to use a Bentley that his wealthy wife had given him before they married.
Loh-Gronager, 35, had worked at Goldman Sachs before marrying Wei-Lyn Loh, 43, described as an “enormously wealthy” businesswoman and heiress, in 2019. After the couple married, he left the bank to oversee the refurbishment of their home in Primrose Hill, north London.
Loh-Gronager and his wife split up in 2023 after it emerged that the former banker had conducted “an expensively financed relationship … parallel to his marriage”.
A High Court judge was told that the husband paid cash to his mistress from a joint account with his wife, frequently disguising the payments as expenditure on “flowers”.
A relationship 'parallel to [a] marriage' is a legal term of art I assume.
So ex-Goldman's toy boy loots the mutual fund, then gets comeuppance. Work always transfers home .
She's interesting - as far as I can see a kind of Muslim culture (Malaysian version) neo-pagan who's dad made a lot of money recently (starting 2006 in the current incarnation backed by sovereign wealth and 3i), and is UK-based.
She's the kind of brown UK resident Nigel Farage logically wants to deport, were his political positions consistent.
We are currently trialling AI summarisation of outpatient consultations in place of medical notes and letters in my Trust. All part of Mr Streetings grand plan, with costs repaid by making our receptionists and secretaries redundent.
Myself and colleagues have some concerns, not least that we are taking on admin duties formerly done by others at a quarter of our pay, as doing the AI stuff adds 5-10 minutes to consultations. Patients don't seem to object.
It does hallucinate though, including making false diagnoses and even made up pharmaceuticals, so needs a lot of proof-reading, and annoyingly keeps undeleting them when we delete them.
One of the first useful things I thought of for this was 'Quick summary of patient record' that a GP could see before their next appointment. Even better if the patient - and hold with me for the sci-fi reveal - could book an appointment online and give a short description of what it was they wanted to talk about.
The summary might not be 100% perfect - which is always what a busy GP achieves between patients, of course - but might be a help. And cost about £0.00001 per appointment.
After all the deep dive and research I have done into this, you never even bothered to listen, have you.
It’s an India and US deal. Since UK done a Mandleson back in the sixties and sold our soul for US nuclear weaponry, UK has never been in control of this partnership with US, who call all the shots. That Mauritius is in pocket of China is massively bigged up - India is behind Mauritius ownership and the rent back.
Yes, really.
Your argument isn't coherent; it's a collection of tangential to irrelevant facts and suppositions. Of course the USA calls the shots in our relations with it. Of course India is a rising power and the UK is supine in its approach to it - our shitty Foreign Office would be supine to Liechtenstein. So what?
Cameron was still savvy enough as Foreign Sec to realise the deal was political poison and put it on ice, so clearly neither America nor India were making demands for an imminent handover in a way that couldn't be resisted.
You ignore the political element, that this particular deal is personal for Starmer, Hermer, Powell and Phillipe Sands. Starmer has an association with Mauritius that begins long before he was PM. His deal would allow Mauritius to abolish income tax - a deal negotiated on Mauritius' side by a Starmer's friend and former colleague. There seems to be little that Starmer won't do to protect the deal - including what we must now take to be a raft of new guarantees to Trump. If Starmer and his cabal leave office, why would a new PM, with nothing personal to gain, keep hold of a dud policy? His successor could tie it up in investigations and downgrade it to an aspiration before (in the unlikely event of a Labour election victory) dropping it.
Even America itself isn't a single minded block with one foreign policy agenda any more. There's the Biden/Obama-esque Democrats who enjoy the idea of Britain's colonial retreat. There's the deep state - who knows what they want? There's some Republican legislators who are seriously concerned about the security implications of the handover. And there's Trump, who is utterly unpredictable.
So there's every likelihood that this shithouse policy will collapse without Starmer - its key political sponsor there to get it over the line.
don’t accept your understanding America itself isn't a single minded block on foreign policy, because satisfaction from Britain's colonial retreat is still motivation which unites them all.
Some Republican legislators concerned about the security implications of the handover. It’s not many though is it. This deal will fly through any Senate vote, and with Trump promising wet sig, through any House vote as well. So that very much crushes whatever point you were making there. However, I have more to say on this, and why your handful of senators are wrong. China are using every means to spy on what we - US UK and Ind are all up to, using equipment on fishing junks carry flags of all nations. Outside of that it’s pure whataboutery without any substantive evidence you can bring forward to prove your point of Chinese threat, interference and a security issue for the base. It’s not the South China Sea, which China claims ownership, India is the Super Power rising in the Indian Ocean. Yet again the Conservative government who negotiated this Chagos deal, were right to call out that thinking:
Weaker UK relations with African countries and around the Indian Ocean, from our standing within the international justice system, have actually been creating opportunities China and Russia have seized upon. That’s the real world realpolitik here. When UK, and US, fails to convince nations we are a trusted partner, that respects agreements, it helps Russia and China to be able to do so. This is the dumbass consequence of your glib, ill informed approach to foreign policy.
So we now agree on at least one thing, there's every likelihood that this policy gets over the line?
It's a bit of a push branding Barack Obama as some kind of colonial-phile.
See for example his attitudes to former colonies, and also his eagerness to brand "BP" as "British Petroleum" during the Deepwater Horizon issue.
Ugh, this is a terrible decision, I hope he appeals.
Banker who splashed joint account cash on mistress loses £4m prenup case
Ardal Loh-Gronager has his divorce settlement slashed after a judge finds he spent lavishly on another relationship from a joint marital account
A City banker who drained thousands of pounds from a joint marital account to lavish on his mistress has lost £4 million in a battle over a prenuptial agreement.
In a judgment demonstrating that judges will take behaviour into account when determining whether prenuptial agreements are enforceable, Ardal Loh-Gronager was even said to have allowed his mistress to use a Bentley that his wealthy wife had given him before they married.
Loh-Gronager, 35, had worked at Goldman Sachs before marrying Wei-Lyn Loh, 43, described as an “enormously wealthy” businesswoman and heiress, in 2019. After the couple married, he left the bank to oversee the refurbishment of their home in Primrose Hill, north London.
Loh-Gronager and his wife split up in 2023 after it emerged that the former banker had conducted “an expensively financed relationship … parallel to his marriage”.
A High Court judge was told that the husband paid cash to his mistress from a joint account with his wife, frequently disguising the payments as expenditure on “flowers”.
A relationship 'parallel to [a] marriage' is a legal term of art I assume.
So ex-Goldman's toy boy loots the mutual fund, then gets comeuppance. Work always transfers home .
She's interesting - as far as I can see a kind of Muslim culture (Malaysian version) neo-pagan who's dad made a lot of money recently (starting 2006 in the current incarnation backed by sovereign wealth and 3i), and is UK-based.
She's the kind of brown UK resident Nigel Farage logically wants to deport, were his political positions consistent.
Leon's neighbours? Is mistress paid in cash a euphemism for rented companionship?
After all the deep dive and research I have done into this, you never even bothered to listen, have you.
It’s an India and US deal. Since UK done a Mandleson back in the sixties and sold our soul for US nuclear weaponry, UK has never been in control of this partnership with US, who call all the shots. That Mauritius is in pocket of China is massively bigged up - India is behind Mauritius ownership and the rent back.
Yes, really.
Your argument isn't coherent; it's a collection of tangential to irrelevant facts and suppositions. Of course the USA calls the shots in our relations with it. Of course India is a rising power and the UK is supine in its approach to it - our shitty Foreign Office would be supine to Liechtenstein. So what?
Cameron was still savvy enough as Foreign Sec to realise the deal was political poison and put it on ice, so clearly neither America nor India were making demands for an imminent handover in a way that couldn't be resisted.
You ignore the political element, that this particular deal is personal for Starmer, Hermer, Powell and Phillipe Sands. Starmer has an association with Mauritius that begins long before he was PM. His deal would allow Mauritius to abolish income tax - a deal negotiated on Mauritius' side by a Starmer's friend and former colleague. There seems to be little that Starmer won't do to protect the deal - including what we must now take to be a raft of new guarantees to Trump. If Starmer and his cabal leave office, why would a new PM, with nothing personal to gain, keep hold of a dud policy? His successor could tie it up in investigations and downgrade it to an aspiration before (in the unlikely event of a Labour election victory) dropping it.
Even America itself isn't a single minded block with one foreign policy agenda any more. There's the Biden/Obama-esque Democrats who enjoy the idea of Britain's colonial retreat. There's the deep state - who knows what they want? There's some Republican legislators who are seriously concerned about the security implications of the handover. And there's Trump, who is utterly unpredictable.
So there's every likelihood that this shithouse policy will collapse without Starmer - its key political sponsor there to get it over the line.
don’t accept your understanding America itself isn't a single minded block on foreign policy, because satisfaction from Britain's colonial retreat is still motivation which unites them all.
Some Republican legislators concerned about the security implications of the handover. It’s not many though is it. This deal will fly through any Senate vote, and with Trump promising wet sig, through any House vote as well. So that very much crushes whatever point you were making there. However, I have more to say on this, and why your handful of senators are wrong. China are using every means to spy on what we - US UK and Ind are all up to, using equipment on fishing junks carry flags of all nations. Outside of that it’s pure whataboutery without any substantive evidence you can bring forward to prove your point of Chinese threat, interference and a security issue for the base. It’s not the South China Sea, which China claims ownership, India is the Super Power rising in the Indian Ocean. Yet again the Conservative government who negotiated this Chagos deal, were right to call out that thinking:
Weaker UK relations with African countries and around the Indian Ocean, from our standing within the international justice system, have actually been creating opportunities China and Russia have seized upon. That’s the real world realpolitik here. When UK, and US, fails to convince nations we are a trusted partner, that respects agreements, it helps Russia and China to be able to do so. This is the dumbass consequence of your glib, ill informed approach to foreign policy.
So we now agree on at least one thing, there's every likelihood that this policy gets over the line?
It's a bit of a push branding Barack Obama as some kind of colonial-phile.
See for example his attitudes to former colonies, and also his eagerness to brand "BP" as "British Petroleum" during the Deepwater Horizon issue.
Yes. US foreign policy being colonial-phile against UK for the last 100 years, and still very much today, I very much believe if our foreign office don’t see it like this, we should be concerned.
“ also his eagerness to brand "BP" as "British Petroleum" during the Deepwater Horizon issue” more likely supports my argument, doesn’t it?
Most of the time when Trump is getting his way on things it's because those systems aren't really designed adversarially, he just pushes at various doors that you're not supposed to push and they swing open and he goes through them and pushes on the next one. But US election systems generally are designed adversarially. They have previously thought about, and confronted, the fact that someone could try to send armed thugs to intimidate people near polling stations.
I'm not saying Trump won't try anything and he may even achieve localized success in a couple of places, but overall it's a difficult system to rig at scale.
After all the deep dive and research I have done into this, you never even bothered to listen, have you.
It’s an India and US deal. Since UK done a Mandleson back in the sixties and sold our soul for US nuclear weaponry, UK has never been in control of this partnership with US, who call all the shots. That Mauritius is in pocket of China is massively bigged up - India is behind Mauritius ownership and the rent back.
Probably true.
I am completely sure future history books with write this Chagos deal up as rise of India as influential Superpower in the region, along with US policy of the last 100 years screwing UK overseas territorial possessions and influence.
I posted - “what about India’s influence in the Chagos Deal” into a thread on this on ConHome, and all I got was a forest of bewildered question marks. ConHome completely embarrassed itself. 😕
You are a cut above the Faragists as a listener and thinker, Casino.
The real harm the Chagos deal will cause is to marine life. Coral, fish, sharks etc. Doubt they will be protected in the future. Allowing "small scale fishing" will quickly become longline fishing which will eventually become industrial scale fishing and then there will be nothing left.
The marine reserve covering the Chagos Archipelago’s 250,000 square miles, an area more than twice the size of the UK, was created by UK government in 2010.
Yep. It's not something I blather on about here as most people don't really care for sharks and sea turtles, but the Chagos marine protected area is a rare win for the ocean and everything that lives in it, which humanity will have probably stripped bare in a few generations from now.
I have zero faith that Mauritius will stick to the "gentleman's agreement" to not fish it to death, nor that they won't let China in to do similar. People see it as giving away a military base (and paying for the privilege) which is bad enough, what we're actually doing is giving away one of the world's most important nature reserves to people who will destroy it. Future generations will not look kindly on our cowardice.
After all the deep dive and research I have done into this, you never even bothered to listen, have you.
It’s an India and US deal. Since UK done a Mandleson back in the sixties and sold our soul for US nuclear weaponry, UK has never been in control of this partnership with US, who call all the shots. That Mauritius is in pocket of China is massively bigged up - India is behind Mauritius ownership and the rent back.
Probably true.
I am completely sure future history books with write this Chagos deal up as rise of India as influential Superpower in the region, along with US policy of the last 100 years screwing UK overseas territorial possessions and influence.
I posted - “what about India’s influence in the Chagos Deal” into a thread on this on ConHome, and all I got was a forest of bewildered question marks. ConHome completely embarrassed itself. 😕
You are a cut above the Faragists as a listener and thinker, Casino.
The real harm the Chagos deal will cause is to marine life. Coral, fish, sharks etc. Doubt they will be protected in the future. Allowing "small scale fishing" will quickly become longline fishing which will eventually become industrial scale fishing and then there will be nothing left.
The marine reserve covering the Chagos Archipelago’s 250,000 square miles, an area more than twice the size of the UK, was created by UK government in 2010.
Yep. It's not something I blather on about here as most people don't really care for sharks and sea turtles, but the Chagos marine protected area is a rare win for the ocean and everything that lives in it, which humanity will have probably stripped bare in a few generations from now.
I have zero faith that Mauritius will stick to the "gentleman's agreement" to not fish it to death, nor that they won't let China in to do similar. People see it as giving away a military base (and paying for the privilege) which is bad enough, what we're actually doing is giving away one of the world's most important nature reserves to people who will destroy it. Future generations will not look kindly on our cowardice.
Presumably Zack Polanski and the Greens are up in arms against it?
"Bagehot Britain’s worst political scandal of this century The Mandelson affair threatens Sir Keir Starmer’s premiership
In retrospect, the signs were there. In February 2025 Peter Mandelson was asked by the Financial Times about his relationship with the deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The soon-to-be British ambassador to America offered a forthright response. “I’m not going to go into this. It’s an FT obsession and frankly you can all fuck off. OK?” (£)
On calming a fussy child (not your own): In recent years I have had some success speaking to a fussy child as if they were an adult: For example: "You might have a point, but I need some more details to be sure. Could you fill them in for me?"
That usually ends the fussing, though I am not sure why. Though I can say the child usually looks puzzled.
After all the deep dive and research I have done into this, you never even bothered to listen, have you.
It’s an India and US deal. Since UK done a Mandleson back in the sixties and sold our soul for US nuclear weaponry, UK has never been in control of this partnership with US, who call all the shots. That Mauritius is in pocket of China is massively bigged up - India is behind Mauritius ownership and the rent back.
Probably true.
I am completely sure future history books with write this Chagos deal up as rise of India as influential Superpower in the region, along with US policy of the last 100 years screwing UK overseas territorial possessions and influence.
I posted - “what about India’s influence in the Chagos Deal” into a thread on this on ConHome, and all I got was a forest of bewildered question marks. ConHome completely embarrassed itself. 😕
You are a cut above the Faragists as a listener and thinker, Casino.
The real harm the Chagos deal will cause is to marine life. Coral, fish, sharks etc. Doubt they will be protected in the future. Allowing "small scale fishing" will quickly become longline fishing which will eventually become industrial scale fishing and then there will be nothing left.
The marine reserve covering the Chagos Archipelago’s 250,000 square miles, an area more than twice the size of the UK, was created by UK government in 2010.
Yep. It's not something I blather on about here as most people don't really care for sharks and sea turtles, but the Chagos marine protected area is a rare win for the ocean and everything that lives in it, which humanity will have probably stripped bare in a few generations from now.
I have zero faith that Mauritius will stick to the "gentleman's agreement" to not fish it to death, nor that they won't let China in to do similar. People see it as giving away a military base (and paying for the privilege) which is bad enough, what we're actually doing is giving away one of the world's most important nature reserves to people who will destroy it. Future generations will not look kindly on our cowardice.
What’s the rising sea level situation with the Chagos Archipelago, it’s sort of close to the Maldives.
Comments
If I had to guess, less environmental protection beefs up security aspects.
Eg. Protections to save the rare Sparklefin and Chagoun Plimsol from extinction removed so the sea bed can be dredged looking for precious and critical minerals.
David Frum
@davidfrum • 6h
The thing Keir Starmer cannot say:
...
"Of course I knew the man had sinister secret
ties to Jeffrey Epstein. That's why I chose him.
The job was to protect Britain from the madness
of President Caligula. Epstein connections are a
bona fide job qualification for that mission."
Edit and equally
https://bsky.app/profile/hugorifkind.bsky.social/post/3me2r5gb62c22
Hugo Rifkind
@hugorifkind.bsky.social
Weird and almost universal revisionism today. Even at the time, it was pretty clear that Mandelson wasn't appointed *despite* his dodgy links but *because* of them. Trump's Washington is a dirty swamp. Mandelson was deemed a man able to swim in it. This wasn't a secret. Everybody said it out loud.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/feb/04/labour-mps-say-starmer-days-as-pm-are-numbered-amid-fury-over-mandelson?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
I do truly appreciate that you now include links in your posts sometimes - honestly, it's often a help.
The reason why UK got best trade deal in the world
Remember the scene in white house orange man sought mandy out for specific praise
Mandy has all the epstein shit on trump
Thisands jobs at land rover, Scunthorpe Steel and others saved off the back of it.
Trump and Xi just spoke. Xi's readout is radically different from Trump's, in both tone and substance.
--Xi said that Trump "values China's concerns over Taiwan."
--Unlike Trump's readout, China's readout has no mention of soybeans, airplane engines, Iran, or Russia/Ukraine.
--According to the Chinese readout, Xi spoke for about 70 percent of the time.
Both readouts feature Trump heaping praise on Xi Jinping.
https://x.com/isaacstonefish/status/2019106461977039307?s=20
Your argument isn't coherent; it's a collection of tangential to irrelevant facts and suppositions. Of course the USA calls the shots in our relations with it. Of course India is a rising power and the UK is supine in its approach to it - our shitty Foreign Office would be supine to Liechtenstein. So what?
Cameron was still savvy enough as Foreign Sec to realise the deal was political poison and put it on ice, so clearly neither America nor India were making demands for an imminent handover in a way that couldn't be resisted.
You ignore the political element, that this particular deal is personal for Starmer, Hermer, Powell and Phillipe Sands. Starmer has an association with Mauritius that begins long before he was PM. His deal would allow Mauritius to abolish income tax - a deal negotiated on Mauritius' side by a Starmer's friend and former colleague. There seems to be little that Starmer won't do to protect the deal - including what we must now take to be a raft of new guarantees to Trump. If Starmer and his cabal leave office, why would a new PM, with nothing personal to gain, keep hold of a dud policy? His successor could tie it up in investigations and downgrade it to an aspiration before (in the unlikely event of a Labour election victory) dropping it.
Even America itself isn't a single minded block with one foreign policy agenda any more. There's the Biden/Obama-esque Democrats who enjoy the idea of Britain's colonial retreat. There's the deep state - who knows what they want? There's some Republican legislators who are seriously concerned about the security implications of the handover. And there's Trump, who is utterly unpredictable.
So there's every likelihood that this shithouse policy will collapse without Starmer - its key political sponsor there to get it over the line.
“Sir Keir STRONGLY agrees with me that we should forget about all the Epstein business and move on and he agreed to pay ten gazillion dollars to us for our beautiful base in Diego Garcia that they own.”
The new information- that Mandy had been selling out the country for goodness knows what for fifteen years- surely that was new news to everyone. For the smartest people, that he did this and it seems that nobody knew is the big scandal.
But the politics of Mandy and King Perv are awful, even if you accept the governental logic of it. And you can't explain the logic, because that woud just annoy the Yanks, and we can't really afford to do that.
There, that's got you.
People paying good money to have a civilised meal at a smart restaurant should expect to be able to do so without screaming brats running around the place. If children can't behave their parents shouldn't bring them to the restaurant - take them to McDonalds ffs, you know they'd be happier there.
Standards in this country have gone down the pan.
https://x.com/profrobanderson/status/2019078989348774129
I'm not sure if you've ever had children but they have on occasion been known to cry against the wishes of their parents.
If you don't want young children at a restaurant you're going to then go out to dinner after 8pm.
Rayner's favourability ratings show that she is in the better position to consolidate support amongst voters who consider themselves to be left of centre, who are currently fracturing three ways between Lab, Green and LD, with an awful lot of DKs. None of the 2024 Conservative and 2024 Reform voters will vote either for a Streeting or Rayner-led Labour Party, so it matters diddly squat that Streeting's favourability is far less toxic than Rayner's is amongst that group.
To put it more starkly, Labour isn't concerned about what you and those who think like you feel about any Labour leader, because you'll still vote Tory or Reform regardless.
We are currently trialling AI summarisation of outpatient consultations in place of medical notes and letters in my Trust. All part of Mr Streetings grand plan, with costs repaid by making our receptionists and secretaries redundent.
Myself and colleagues have some concerns, not least that we are taking on admin duties formerly done by others at a quarter of our pay, as doing the AI stuff adds 5-10 minutes to consultations. Patients don't seem to object.
It does hallucinate though, including making false diagnoses and even made up pharmaceuticals, so needs a lot of proof-reading, and annoyingly keeps undeleting them when we delete them.
She may or may not be a complete loose cannon.
Whistleblower Aid’s chief counsel formally put the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, on notice after eight months of stonewalling.
An intelligence community whistleblower tried to do this by the book since June 2025. Asked for secure instructions to brief Congress. Asked again in November. Silence. Meanwhile, Gabbard’s office quietly gave guidance to the Inspector General while giving the whistleblower’s lawyers nothing. That is not process. That is obstruction.
So the lawyers pulled the nuclear option. The February 3, 2026 letter sets a hard deadline. Provide security guidance by Friday, February 6, or they bypass the DNI entirely and brief Congress directly on Monday, February 9. Not about some abstract failure either. The letter explicitly says the briefing will cover Gabbard’s conduct and the underlying intelligence concerns. That language is deliberate. It means the complaint targets her actions, not a vague bureaucratic lapse, and it invokes 50 U.S.C. § 3033, the statute that guarantees intelligence whistleblowers the right to reach the House and Senate Intelligence Committees when leadership blocks them.
This matters because the allegation is political misuse of intelligence and withholding information from Congress. If true, that is not a policy disagreement. That is a constitutional problem. And Whistleblower Aid does not bluff. Andrew Bakaj has top secret eligibility, represents national security whistleblowers for a living, and put his name and license on the line in writing. You do not send a letter like this unless you are prepared to walk into the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and lay it out...
https://x.com/splendid_pete/status/2019029765714268238
Whatt is not acceptable is letting young children roam around, annoy other diners and for the parents to ignore them.
Frankly it's the old gits complaining about children existing or something other minor annoyance that I find most intolerable as company in restaurants.
On the basis some here want pretty inexpensive pub restaurants to be able to ban children at lunchtime I'd agree so long others can ban grumpy old men. It'd improve the atmosphere immensely.
Talk has turned to who replaces Starmer (again).
Labour MP tonight:
“As far as I'm concerned, Starmer is done. What matters is what's next. If it's Angela, the honeymoon lasts a week. If it's Wes, a month. If it's Al, 6 months. Hard to see how it turns around beyond that.”
“Al” refers to Al Carns… an outside chance but interesting to see him included. He is popular among the new intake of MPs, I am told.
Whoever it is, eyes are darting around for Starmer’s replacement.
Are we getting to the point that it's simpler to defualt to assuming that everyone, especially everyone in the public eye, is a terrible human being?
Present company excepted, of course.
https://x.com/Marmel/status/2019149809652019665?s=20
I remember serving a group of women who worked together at Boots (I think). Their behaviour was obnoxious (and some were regulars to the restaurant). Some made pretty objectionable comments towards some of the male guests dining that night. One of them manhandled both a fellow member of staff and myself. I looked her up and down, paused in judgement of the way she was dressed, and said loudly enough for the entire downstairs to hear “I’m sorry. I prefer lamb to mutton”. The ensuing silence was exquisite.
Showed up in the California wine scene with a boatload of money.
It was actually money that his fraudster family had stolen from Malaysian banks.
His job was the launder it. So he would buy absolutely all of a rare Burgundy at auction. The price would accelerate the stars. Especially since Rudy was the fashion setter. Then he would ease his supply onto the market. Your classic ramp - pump & dump.
He was sending multiple million dollars a month back home at one point.
His downfall was because he used his undoubted genius with wine tasting to fake stuff. He was far less good at the details of faking - so produced vintages/bottlings that never existed…
Went to prison in the end.
If he had stuck to pump & dump, he would be a celebrity yet.
Various reasons, but in the end there was no saving him.
I feel it’s different with Starmer.
On the whole it does a pretty good summary.
I don't think I've ever seen a child under the age of 10 at a restaurant that late in the evening, perhaps save a holiday resort catered to such things.
If you hate children that much then find a place or time they are unlikely to be around. Not at lunchtime in a family friendly restaurant with a specific children's menu like the idiot from the original article.
The extraordinary thing about the Trump Administration is that all the grift and corruption is done in plain sight. No-one even bothers to try to cover it up.
I think Rayner would be favourite and it is time that Labour had a female leader. I know she’s very marmite but it would be a refreshing change to see someone with her life story become PM .
I like her and would happily vote for her if I was a Labour member .
The last U.K. Prime Minister to complete a full term was David Cameron in 2015.
PBUH
Nobody.
Mind you, some of us did say the best they were getting was Gordon Brittas.
With a side order of Arnold Rimmer.
Happened more or less the same time our startup was bought out, same tax return, so I kinda thing of it as same windfall (despite being completely unrelated, just happening in same tax year) but I'd have no mortgage just from the coins...
(Had I held on to all the ones in my offline wallet from back then I'd be even richer than you
(Admittedly I stole idea from a whatsapp group of very switched on people but that is what it is)
Steve Bannon calls for immigration agents at polling sites during midterms
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/04/steve-bannon-ice-immigration-agents-polling-sites-midterm-elections
No.
That’s just your head getting stuck in an echo chamber, where truth is written up by so called “Truth Warriors”. That whole paragraph from you is pure gibberish, because, simply put, for these claims to have any shred of credence at all, Starmer and his government would have to have negotiated and agreed all the details in this current Chagos Island deal.
This is the kicker you need to get your head round. Starmer and his government did not negotiate and agree this Chagos island deal, the thing was already negotiated and agreed when they came to power.
This has been my key point all along. We come to the crux of this, the mythical pause Cameron put on negotiations, leading to the weak and bizarre position of Badenoch’s front bench today. And the myth Labour and Starmer negotiated and agreed the framework of the deal.
The deal, just as it is right now, was instigated by the Conservatives on basis British resistance to handing over the Chagos Islands was hampering the UK’s ability to build alliances in the region, including Africa.
Talks were not frozen, but actually continued and refined during Lord Cameron’s tenure as Foreign Secretary - officials conducted ELEVEN ROUNDS of high-level negotiations between London and Port Louis, the FINAL ROUND that completed the agreements TOOK PLACE JUST WEEKS BRFORE THE GENERAL ELECTION in 2024.
Now can you see the crux of my argument being more coherent than you have so far appreciated, and that paragraph in your post so important to you is proved, by these facts, to be pure fantasy?
I’ll be polite and say, just get your story straight by facts, not your fantasies.
If he'd just stuck the whole lot in an S&P tracker, and then faked the numbers, he'd have been fine. Because what people loved about his fund was the lack of volatility. He'd just have hidden it from investors.
https://x.com/Marmel/status/2019149809652019665
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=0seXyQIV44c&pp=0gcJCZEKAYcqIYzv&themeRefresh=1
Other than he tweets a lot, and is a junior defence minister, what's his USP ?
Some Republican legislators concerned about the security implications of the handover. It’s not many though is it. This deal will fly through any Senate vote, and with Trump promising wet sig, through any House vote as well. So that very much crushes whatever point you were making there.
However, I have more to say on this, and why your handful of senators are wrong. China are using every means to spy on what we - US UK and Ind are all up to, using equipment on fishing junks carry flags of all nations. Outside of that it’s pure whataboutery without any substantive evidence you can bring forward to prove your point of Chinese threat, interference and a security issue for the base.
It’s not the South China Sea, which China claims ownership, India is the Super Power rising in the Indian Ocean. Yet again the Conservative government who negotiated this Chagos deal, were right to call out that thinking:
Weaker UK relations with African countries and around the Indian Ocean, from our standing within the international justice system, have actually been creating opportunities China and Russia have seized upon. That’s the real world realpolitik here. When UK, and US, fails to convince nations we are a trusted partner, that respects agreements, it helps Russia and China to be able to do so. This is the dumbass consequence of your glib, ill informed approach to foreign policy.
So we now agree on at least one thing, there's every likelihood that this policy gets over the line?
She's interesting - as far as I can see a kind of Muslim culture (Malaysian version) neo-pagan who's dad made a lot of money recently (starting 2006 in the current incarnation backed by sovereign wealth and 3i), and is UK-based.
She's the kind of brown UK resident Nigel Farage logically wants to deport, were his political positions consistent.
The summary might not be 100% perfect - which is always what a busy GP achieves between patients, of course - but might be a help. And cost about £0.00001 per appointment.
See for example his attitudes to former colonies, and also his eagerness to brand "BP" as "British Petroleum" during the Deepwater Horizon issue.
Is mistress paid in cash a euphemism for rented companionship?
Did anything happen?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcx0JcuF9vE
“ also his eagerness to brand "BP" as "British Petroleum" during the Deepwater Horizon issue” more likely supports my argument, doesn’t it?
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/federal-and-state-election-laws-ban-federal-forces-polling-places
Most of the time when Trump is getting his way on things it's because those systems aren't really designed adversarially, he just pushes at various doors that you're not supposed to push and they swing open and he goes through them and pushes on the next one. But US election systems generally are designed adversarially. They have previously thought about, and confronted, the fact that someone could try to send armed thugs to intimidate people near polling stations.
I'm not saying Trump won't try anything and he may even achieve localized success in a couple of places, but overall it's a difficult system to rig at scale.
I have zero faith that Mauritius will stick to the "gentleman's agreement" to not fish it to death, nor that they won't let China in to do similar. People see it as giving away a military base (and paying for the privilege) which is bad enough, what we're actually doing is giving away one of the world's most important nature reserves to people who will destroy it. Future generations will not look kindly on our cowardice.
https://propstoreauction.com/auctions/info/id/494
https://propstoreauction.com/auctions/catalog/id/494
Britain’s worst political scandal of this century
The Mandelson affair threatens Sir Keir Starmer’s premiership
In retrospect, the signs were there. In February 2025 Peter Mandelson was asked by the Financial Times about his relationship with the deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The soon-to-be British ambassador to America offered a forthright response. “I’m not going to go into this. It’s an FT obsession and frankly you can all fuck off. OK?” (£)
https://www.economist.com/britain/2026/02/04/britains-worst-political-scandal-of-this-century
That usually ends the fussing, though I am not sure why. Though I can say the child usually looks puzzled.
https://x.com/KamalaHQ/status/2019197348178788725
I note that my Lammy 103 is now in to 34.
Even Labour, who put up with Brown and Corbyn can't put up with this disaster much ;onger?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkYA7eAgJXQ