I wonder what proportion would agree that Andrew should be hanged,
Probably above 50%.
Royals were beheaded as a courtesy in the past, rather than hanging etc.
Of course AMW is no longer a Royal so perhaps has lost that perk.
Mainly Scottish monarchs who were beheaded, MQoS,Chaz 1
English monarchs generally suffered a more unusual demise, such as surfeit of lamphreys and meeting their maker via a red hot poker insertion
Could try a banishment, perhaps Rockall needs a new lighthouse keeper?
Rockall would need a new lighthouse first...
"Greenpeace placed a solar powered beacon over the frame of the existing navigation aid in 1997, and returned to upgrade this light in 1998. This was the only permanent mark of human occupation on Rockall until it too succumbed to the ravages of an Atlantic storm two years later."
Got its own twitter account mind. A touch repetitive though, weather shite again etc.
Mr Trump is now apparently determined to decline support for the transfer of the islands to Mauritius, arguing that the transter would reduce the utility of the Diego Garcia airbase. It is hard to disagree with his assessment. The result is that Sir Keir is in a bind of his own making.
* "International law" compels the Prime Minister to seek Mr Trump's approval to surrender the islands; "international law" compels him to surrender the islands; * "international law" compels him to block the use of the British bases, enraging the White House in the process.
This is government as farce.
It is hard to escape the notion that in Sir Keir's ideal world, the job of Prime Minister would be purely ceremonial. There would be little room for individual judgment or decision making. All acts of government would emerge fully formed from the duties and obligations of the legal system. As much as it may disappoint him, that is not the world we live in. It is high time Sir Keir realised as much.
Harsh, but brutally fair. He doesn't know how to fly the plane, or even that the plane needs flying. Political parties really should stop fielding innocents like this: believing that he is "fundamentally decent" is really not enough. He's the most unfit PM since May.
Omnisis normally do online polling but it would be more difficult to do that in this instance . If it was a phone poll then the Reform figure is likely to be an underestimate.
It could well underestimate the Green vote too, as youngsters are notoriously hard to get a representative poll from.
I wonder what proportion would agree that Andrew should be hanged,
Probably above 50%.
He might take the Epstein Checkout....
It's unlikely Epstein checked himself out. Would his assassins do the same for Andrew? He is probably less of a threat, as long as he doesn't start singing, and one imagines he'd be a little less easy to access.
So unless he's a DIY man, he's going to be around for a while.
The problem the rich and powerful have with AMW, of course, is that he's stupid. Very stupid. Very very very stupid. Like, dafter than a bag of spanners, but without the charm or from-within-a-paper-bag-navigational ability. So who knows what he'll do if left alone.
Andrew is what used to be described as “educationally sub-normal”.
I saw the photo of him when he was released from police custody. He seemed to be in total shock, close to breakdown. I almost felt sorry for him.
Omnisis normally do online polling but it would be more difficult to do that in this instance . If it was a phone poll then the Reform figure is likely to be an underestimate.
It could well underestimate the Green vote too, as youngsters are notoriously hard to get a representative poll from.
Labour need to stop chasing Reform voters.
Many of those will not be coming back to Labour or are new voters . If Reform win it will be down to a progressive split and should act as a wake up call .
Big question is how the engines will stack up once they start firing in anger.
It doesn’t matter if Ferrari engined cars are the only ones capable of starting on the grid line with others starting in the pit lane.
From what I’ve heard Ferrari know they can start the car quickly when on the start lane but the other engines can’t
Sorry for slow reply, was AFK.
Footage from a practice start (I think from yesterday) showed Ferrari starting very nicely, but also Haas (same engine). Worth bearing in mind for the lap 1 leader market, unless Ferrari end up on the front row.
It’s a funny one as Ferrari can start quickest, but soon get lapped by Mercedes and Red Bull engines who are half a second quicker this season due to having their things measured when cold, but they actually change shape when warmed up making the cars half a second quicker. I think it’s fair enough, it is as much advantage through clever engineering sport as it is racing sport. Even if it’s changed in September to penalise clever engineering, the season is just about the clever engines by then, Ferrari etc nowhere their season soon over this year.
Correct me where wrong.
Mercedes and Red Bull likely aren't half a second quicker.
Omnisis normally do online polling but it would be more difficult to do that in this instance . If it was a phone poll then the Reform figure is likely to be an underestimate.
It could well underestimate the Green vote too, as youngsters are notoriously hard to get a representative poll from.
Labour need to stop chasing Reform voters.
Many of those will not be coming back to Labour or are new voters . If Reform win it will be down to a progressive split and should act as a wake up call .
If this poll is accurate, the difference between first and third place will be about 1,800 votes.
I wonder what proportion would agree that Andrew should be hanged,
Probably above 50%.
He might take the Epstein Checkout....
It's unlikely Epstein checked himself out. Would his assassins do the same for Andrew? He is probably less of a threat, as long as he doesn't start singing, and one imagines he'd be a little less easy to access.
So unless he's a DIY man, he's going to be around for a while.
The problem the rich and powerful have with AMW, of course, is that he's stupid. Very stupid. Very very very stupid. Like, dafter than a bag of spanners, but without the charm or from-within-a-paper-bag-navigational ability. So who knows what he'll do if left alone.
Andrew is what used to be described as “educationally sub-normal”.
I saw the photo of him when he was released from police custody. He seemed to be in total shock, close to breakdown. I almost felt sorry for him.
There is a danger of that. I have little doubt that he has got up to things that he probably shouldn't have done. And yet it is striking that he is being hounded while others that have likely done as much or worse are not. He's reportedly not that bright. Now separated from his wife, kids grown up. Moved out of his home by his annoying brother. Not much left now. Its possible people will start to feel sorry for him.
If you do, stop yourself and remember how he got where he is today.
I see in the previous thread PB tories are now complaining about a budget surplus in self assessment month. Good grief.
It's the BIGGEST ACHILLES HEEL of having an argumentaive know all with no policy of her own as Leader. All she can do is complain about everything even good news.
This is welcome news Ms Badenoch!
-----
The government's finances had a record monthly surplus in January as it took in more tax receipts than it spent.
The surplus - the difference between public spending and the tax take - was £30.4bn in January, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
The ONS said it was the highest surplus in any month since records began in 1993, and nearly double last January's £15.4bn monthly surplus.
Analysts had expected the surplus to be £23.8bn. The government usually collects more tax than it spends in January compared with other months due to the collection of self-assessed taxes, but higher levels of capital gains tax payments to HMRC pushed the figure to a record.
Borrowing in the 10 months to January was £112.1bn - 11.5% lower than the same 10 month period a year ago - although the ONS noted that it was the fifth-highest borrowing for the period on record.
HM Treasury said borrowing for 2026 is forecast to be "the lowest since before the pandemic."
Chief Secretary to the Treasury, James Murray said: "We know there is more to do to stop one in every £10 the government spends going on debt interest, and we will more than halve borrowing by 2030-31 so that money can be spent on policing, schools and the NHS."
This is undoubtedly good news and it would be churlish to say otherwise but that sentence from the Chief Secretary. They are going to HALVE borrowing (so still borrowing quite a lot) "so that the money (what money? reduced debt at best) can be SPENT (thereby not reducing borrowing) on policing, schools and hospitals."
Murray is supposed to be one of the smarter ones. That is frighteningly illiterate for a Chief Secretary.
Better to halve borrowing than to double it. I don’t understand those people who suggest this means we’re paying too much tax. If anything it shows we’re not paying enough tax.
Oh I agree. We should be running a surplus right now and should continue to do so for many years until the excesses of the Covid and Gas bill madness are paid back. This is a modest step in the right direction and very welcome on that basis but our finances remain seriously out of kilter.
You don't reduce the interest rate bill by halving borrowing, in those circumstances it is still going up. You reduce debt interest by repaying debt.
By repaying existing debt and by increasing market confidence in your future ability to repay, thus securing lower rates for new borrowing...
But they are not repaying existing debt, they are still borrowing more (at half the rate they are just now).
This week the IFS (somehow a respected economic think tank) called Reeves useless and an idiot for her fiscal rule to use so much income to pay back and clear debt rather than spending it. This fiscal rule they said is keeping UK economy in a zombie state.
I’m with you David. We can’t keep paying out a £1T a year state spending bill financed by borrowed money - to respect the NHS etc and put it on sure footing can’t keep funding it on a maxed out credit card.
From what I've heard so far the IFS was not suggesting that at all.
What they basically said is that one of the problems with the fiscal rules is that polticans sail as close to the wind as they dare on them. So when the OBR changes the growth projections by 0.01% and it magically increases the headroom by £10bn, rather than use this to borrow less, they rush off and spend it. But then when, next time round, the OBR revise their forecast back to were it was, and remove £10bn of headroom again, the politicians panic and cut something random, or increase tax in an ill thought out way.
Leaving aside the question of if the government is spending or taxing an appropriate amount, it's fair to say knee jerk policy making like this is a pretty bad idea.
Incidentally, in all the excitement about the tax take for January, people seem not to have noticed that this is almost entirely because of a surge in Capital Gains recepts, because they put the rates up from next year. That merely tells you that incentives matter, and people are realising gains to ensure they only pay the old rate. This is bad news for the government, because it tell us 1) the people modeling this in the treasury aren't very good at it and 2) future recepts will be substantially lower than modeled.
I agree with you. All the chancellors have “magic rules” as is to demonstrate they are not just reacting willy nilly but decision making within scientific constraints. But the key word is “magic” as no chancellor actually has scientific constraints, it’s a facade to allow them to just fiddle around willy nilly doing whatever they want.
Yet the media headlines take it so seriously “based on Chancellor’s own iron rules there is now £40B black hole to fill in the budget.”
I don’t mind you saying I am wrong - I simply conveyed how every single media outlet reported it. That doesn’t necessarily make your interpretation wrong. Yet, at the bottom of everything, the IFS has certainly always been left leaning economics think tank. whereas my own Fiscal Conservative Thatcherite credentials are impeccable - We can’t keep paying out a £1T a year state spending bill financed by borrowed money - to respect the NHS etc and put it on sure footing can’t keep funding it on a maxed out credit card.
Big question is how the engines will stack up once they start firing in anger.
It doesn’t matter if Ferrari engined cars are the only ones capable of starting on the grid line with others starting in the pit lane.
From what I’ve heard Ferrari know they can start the car quickly when on the start lane but the other engines can’t
Sorry for slow reply, was AFK.
Footage from a practice start (I think from yesterday) showed Ferrari starting very nicely, but also Haas (same engine). Worth bearing in mind for the lap 1 leader market, unless Ferrari end up on the front row.
It’s a funny one as Ferrari can start quickest, but soon get lapped by Mercedes and Red Bull engines who are half a second quicker this season due to having their things measured when cold, but they actually change shape when warmed up making the cars half a second quicker. I think it’s fair enough, it is as much advantage through clever engineering sport as it is racing sport. Even if it’s changed in September to penalise clever engineering, the season is just about the clever engines by then, Ferrari etc nowhere their season soon over this year.
Correct me where wrong.
Mercedes and Red Bull likely aren't half a second quicker.
It looks like they might be, the gain made when they have their things changing when warmer.
Omnisis normally do online polling but it would be more difficult to do that in this instance . If it was a phone poll then the Reform figure is likely to be an underestimate.
It could well underestimate the Green vote too, as youngsters are notoriously hard to get a representative poll from.
Labour need to stop chasing Reform voters.
Many of those will not be coming back to Labour or are new voters . If Reform win it will be down to a progressive split and should act as a wake up call .
You'd have thought there'd be a market for a vaguely left-wing party which nevertheless addtessed voters' concerns on immigration and didn't embrace identity politics, without going full Rupert on either. I am convinced this is where the centre of British opinion is. I thought this would be where Reform would go, but they took an altogether stranger approach. It feels like Labour are attempting to court this vote, but it's hard for them to do because that's not where most of the party are comfortable.
I wonder what proportion would agree that Andrew should be hanged,
Probably above 50%.
He might take the Epstein Checkout....
It's unlikely Epstein checked himself out. Would his assassins do the same for Andrew? He is probably less of a threat, as long as he doesn't start singing, and one imagines he'd be a little less easy to access.
So unless he's a DIY man, he's going to be around for a while.
The problem the rich and powerful have with AMW, of course, is that he's stupid. Very stupid. Very very very stupid. Like, dafter than a bag of spanners, but without the charm or from-within-a-paper-bag-navigational ability. So who knows what he'll do if left alone.
Andrew is what used to be described as “educationally sub-normal”.
I saw the photo of him when he was released from police custody. He seemed to be in total shock, close to breakdown. I almost felt sorry for him.
There is a danger of that. I have little doubt that he has got up to things that he probably shouldn't have done. And yet it is striking that he is being hounded while others that have likely done as much or worse are not. He's reportedly not that bright. Now separated from his wife, kids grown up. Moved out of his home by his annoying brother. Not much left now. Its possible people will start to feel sorry for him.
If you do, stop yourself and remember how he got where he is today.
I think the world Cyclefree describes so well is likely to carry on in some form unless there is some remarkable transformation in the areas of human nature, sex, money, power, fame, and the imbalances of the law.
In particular Cyclefree's own point describes it. 'Not Brave Enough'. Drawing attention to certain truths requires courage, willingness to face loss, risk, the law's imbalances and sometimes other dangers.
I mention just one set of very particular imbalances. A lowly allegation maker will find it is open season on their character, prospects and person. The rich and powerful have the advantage of 'innocent until proved guilty', in criminal matters the advantage of 'beyond reasonable doubt', the advantage of being able to use the legal system to shut down little people and the advantage of a network of the powerful.
As long as 'telling truth to power' carries this degree of cost and imbalance, requiring that degree of courage, human nature tells us we have a problem.
I think we saw this in the Peggie vs NHS Fife tribunal. Its entirely irrelevant to whether woman should have a single sex changing room that she once shared some sub-Jim Davidson 'jokes' on WhatsApp. Yet now, on X, all the pro-trans posters portray Peggie, a nurse with 30 years on unblemished service, as a latter day Enoch Powell or Bernard Manning.
The NHS is notorious for going after every whistle-blower or internal complainant in this fashion. Occasionally some poor soul puts their head above the parapet & has their life destroyed by NHS management “pour encourager les autres”.
It’s all very well for Cyclefree to argue that people should simply be braver, but when you are part of a system that will cheerfully destroy your ability to work in your chosen career ever again, it (unsurprisingly) turns out that few people are willing to call out bad behaviour when the price of doing so is so very, very high.
You are quite right about the NHS.
But to answer your interesting point, I have spent much of my career establishing whistleblowing functions and investigating whistleblowing complaints. By the end a good half of my work related to such investigations. And it is precisely because we cannot rely on individual brave heroes that we need to establish really effective ways of allowing those complaints or issues to be raised and investigated in a way which does not require suicidal bravery by one individual.
It is not a matter of having a well written procedure. What you need above all is an effective investigations team stuffed by people with integrity and guts but above all people who are trustworthy and visible. I did investigations so I had a licence to ask questions others didn't. But the best thing I did by talking endlessly to everyone in the firm about my team's work and why it mattered was to give people a route to raise concerns without needing to put themselves in the firing line. They knew they could trust my team - to keep their confidences, to be professional, to protect them and, in the words of one "not to be afraid of anyone". Every time I did a talk I would get people coming to me or my team to raise issues. They knew the existence of my team gave them permission to speak up, to be a little bit brave but it also took the burden off them. We were a sort of lightning rod.
That is what the NHS and many other organisations need.
And then if you encourage people to raise issues early they are not crises to be managed but small problems which can be sorted, usually relatively easily without too much pain and without forcing people into horrible moral dilemmas.
I diagree about whistleblowing in the NHS.
As a junior doctor 3 decades ago, I blew the whistle on a senior Consultant who I discovered had done some serious malpractice. I did this after taking advice from my medical indemnity advisors. The Consultant in question left the Trust after the investigation, with compensation going to the patient involved. It was completely confidential. After the dust settled the Medical Director personally phoned me to thank me for my actions.
As a senior Consultant myself I have done a fair bit of work for the Medical Director's* "Secret Police" investigating a varied number of concerns about senior clinicians with accusations of financial fraud, clinical incompetence, bullying, sexual harrassement etc etc. Some of these were inconclusive, with insufficient evidence for disciplinary action/sacking/prosecution, but I cannot remember one where the whistleblower raising the concerns was ostracised in any way.
Perhaps my Trust is exceptional, but I do not think so. We only hear about whistleblowers being torn to shreds when it goes wrong. It simply isn't news when the system works.
* Different Trust and different Medical Director.
Your Trust might not be exceptional, but from your regular posts about it, is certainly seems to be one of the better ones. But there are obviously examples where things have gone very badly wrong, and it can take decades to resolve (the blood transfusion scandal being one of the more egregious examples).
I wonder what proportion would agree that Andrew should be hanged,
Probably above 50%.
He might take the Epstein Checkout....
It's unlikely Epstein checked himself out. Would his assassins do the same for Andrew? He is probably less of a threat, as long as he doesn't start singing, and one imagines he'd be a little less easy to access.
So unless he's a DIY man, he's going to be around for a while.
The problem the rich and powerful have with AMW, of course, is that he's stupid. Very stupid. Very very very stupid. Like, dafter than a bag of spanners, but without the charm or from-within-a-paper-bag-navigational ability. So who knows what he'll do if left alone.
Andrew is what used to be described as “educationally sub-normal”.
I saw the photo of him when he was released from police custody. He seemed to be in total shock, close to breakdown. I almost felt sorry for him.
There is a danger of that. I have little doubt that he has got up to things that he probably shouldn't have done. And yet it is striking that he is being hounded while others that have likely done as much or worse are not. He's reportedly not that bright. Now separated from his wife, kids grown up. Moved out of his home by his annoying brother. Not much left now. Its possible people will start to feel sorry for him.
If you do, stop yourself and remember how he got where he is today.
There is nothing wrong with feeling sorry for him as long as feel more sorry for his victims and ensuring he is accountable for his actions.
I certainly wouldn't have wanted his childhood and life.
Makerfield is just about the worst place I could think of for a Labour by election. Absolute nailed on Reform gain. Even Burnham wouldn't want it.
Yep. Reform 50% plus. The question is, is there any other party that could pose the 'stop reform' option? It doesnt seem Green or Galloway adjacent, not trad LD and the Con vote was chunky but has gone Ref. So Lab lose but their vote holds up a little bit by default?
It's where I grew up and where my family still live. All of those points are correct. It's also by most measures the longest continuously held Labour seat in the UK. The only possibility is a genuinely local soft Left Indy running against the government. But not one who bangs on about Palestine. Even then.
I think Rupert Lowe's setup will do significant damage to Reform, perhaps by peeling off quit a number of their grass roots leaders.
There's chatter this morning about the possibility of Jeremy Clarkson perhaps coming on board.
(Rupes says that Clarkson's sidekick Caleb dumps Clarkson's shit on the Lowe doorstep.)
Makerfield is just about the worst place I could think of for a Labour by election. Absolute nailed on Reform gain. Even Burnham wouldn't want it.
Yep. Reform 50% plus. The question is, is there any other party that could pose the 'stop reform' option? It doesnt seem Green or Galloway adjacent, not trad LD and the Con vote was chunky but has gone Ref. So Lab lose but their vote holds up a little bit by default?
It's where I grew up and where my family still live. All of those points are correct. It's also by most measures the longest continuously held Labour seat in the UK. The only possibility is a genuinely local soft Left Indy running against the government. But not one who bangs on about Palestine. Even then.
I think Rupert Lowe's setup will do significant damage to Reform, perhaps by peeling off quit a number of their grass roots leaders.
There's chatter this morning about the possibility of Jeremy Clarkson perhaps coming on board.
(Rupes says that Clarkson's sidekick Caleb dumps Clarkson's shit on the Lowe doorstep.)
Makerfield is just about the worst place I could think of for a Labour by election. Absolute nailed on Reform gain. Even Burnham wouldn't want it.
Yep. Reform 50% plus. The question is, is there any other party that could pose the 'stop reform' option? It doesnt seem Green or Galloway adjacent, not trad LD and the Con vote was chunky but has gone Ref. So Lab lose but their vote holds up a little bit by default?
It's where I grew up and where my family still live. All of those points are correct. It's also by most measures the longest continuously held Labour seat in the UK. The only possibility is a genuinely local soft Left Indy running against the government. But not one who bangs on about Palestine. Even then.
I think Rupert Lowe's setup will do significant damage to Reform, perhaps by peeling off quit a number of their grass roots leaders.
There's chatter this morning about the possibility of Jeremy Clarkson perhaps coming on board.
(Rupes says that Clarkson's sidekick Caleb dumps Clarkson's shit on the Lowe doorstep.)
Makerfield is just about the worst place I could think of for a Labour by election. Absolute nailed on Reform gain. Even Burnham wouldn't want it.
Yep. Reform 50% plus. The question is, is there any other party that could pose the 'stop reform' option? It doesnt seem Green or Galloway adjacent, not trad LD and the Con vote was chunky but has gone Ref. So Lab lose but their vote holds up a little bit by default?
It's where I grew up and where my family still live. All of those points are correct. It's also by most measures the longest continuously held Labour seat in the UK. The only possibility is a genuinely local soft Left Indy running against the government. But not one who bangs on about Palestine. Even then.
I think Rupert Lowe's setup will do significant damage to Reform, perhaps by peeling off quit a number of their grass roots leaders.
There's chatter this morning about the possibility of Jeremy Clarkson perhaps coming on board.
(Rupes says that Clarkson's sidekick Caleb dumps Clarkson's shit on the Lowe doorstep.)
Hi folks, @viewcode here. Some days ago, somebody on PB mentioned an aphorism about research required to rebut a point on the internet took ten times more time than it took to put it there in the first place. They called it "B___"s Law, where "B___" was a longish word beginning with "B". The AIs are unhelpful so can somebody recall it for me?
(and no, I'm not thinking of Cunningham's Law)
I'm sorry, but disproving this would take 10-times as much work as your rushed comment, so I can't be bothered.
Did we do this already ? (I haven't been keeping up.)
Entire leadership of Reform UK’s Ossett & Denby Dale and Dewsbury & Batley branch resigns en masse.
All five elected local officers of the Reform UK branch covering Ossett & Denby Dale and Dewsbury & Batley have resigned with immediate effect today, 19 February 2026.
The mass resignation follows serious allegations of candidate interference at regional level. Branch sources claim that Regional Directors instructed the removal of already-selected local candidates in order to make way for high-profile defectors from the Conservative Party.
The departing officers — who together comprised the entire elected leadership of the combined branch — stated that they could no longer continue under what they describe as unacceptable top-down interference in local democratic processes.
The branch had been actively preparing its campaign infrastructure and candidate slate ahead of the upcoming Kirklees local elections. The sudden departure of the full leadership team is expected to cause significant disruption to those preparations. https://x.com/CharlieSimpsonA/status/2024583560938868863
Did we do this already ? (I haven't been keeping up.)
Entire leadership of Reform UK’s Ossett & Denby Dale and Dewsbury & Batley branch resigns en masse.
All five elected local officers of the Reform UK branch covering Ossett & Denby Dale and Dewsbury & Batley have resigned with immediate effect today, 19 February 2026.
Given Farage's control of the Reform party, if he wins the next GE, a leadership challenge would have to take the form of mass defections.
I wonder what proportion would agree that Andrew should be hanged,
Probably above 50%.
He might take the Epstein Checkout....
It's unlikely Epstein checked himself out. Would his assassins do the same for Andrew? He is probably less of a threat, as long as he doesn't start singing, and one imagines he'd be a little less easy to access.
So unless he's a DIY man, he's going to be around for a while.
The problem the rich and powerful have with AMW, of course, is that he's stupid. Very stupid. Very very very stupid. Like, dafter than a bag of spanners, but without the charm or from-within-a-paper-bag-navigational ability. So who knows what he'll do if left alone.
Andrew is what used to be described as “educationally sub-normal”.
How do you know? I imagine there are criteria for being educationally sub-normal? I have worked with two of his ex's and both were bright and attractive. That doesn't say he isn't educationally sub-normal but I can't see why such attractive and sparky girls would have wanted to spend time with someone stupid. There is something quite judgemental about this thread. As DJ pointed out girls or boys who choose to sell their services for sex might well have done so by choice.
For someone who considers themselves the most moral person on the planet you are prertty good at throwing unfounded accusations around like confetti. I am surprised PB gives you this pulpit.
I was waiting for the standard @Roger objection. Vague, but “I don’t like it”.
What unfounded accusations, @Roger? There’s oceans of court cases, tribunal, researched stories that illustrate every single point @Cyclefree is making.
Or is it that you feel we should owe a certain deference to The Right People?
Well I'm glad I didn't keep you waiting too long. You now have the rest of the day to do someting productive. If it gives you a warm feeling to read reams of 'holier-than-thou' scribbles I'm sure you can apply for a back catalogue. In my experience not everyone's motives are suspect nor is everyone malign.
So NO examples then.
One feature of Cyclefree's complaints about sex is that she denies women agency. Sex workers are sluts but women are chaste so they must have been trafficked and forced into degrading themselves. Some have, of course, but for many women, sex for money is a perfectly rational trade. More subtly, though, sometimes the trade is not sex for money but sex for access to power or fame, including the most talented, richest, or most powerful men on the planet. I don't suppose Monica Lewinski was paid in luncheon vouchers but she did get to rub shoulders (!) with the leader of the free world.
This is why we need to be careful about the age of consent, of course, and why in recent years we have added further limits where there are power imbalances.
Then we have medical scandals like the Bristol heart cases, and more recently Lucy Letby. If we closed every unit with a below-par survival rate in a month, we'd have no hospitals left. Look at the peaks and troughs in economic statistics, for instance, even in today's news. On the other hand, if we wait for certainty, many will die or be maimed who could and should have been saved.
But I'm not sure acting on rumour, even when (especially when) that rumour coincides with one's own prejudice, is the answer.
I have never ever said that some women are sluts and others are chaste or denied women agency. And I don't believe that. But a woman who is coerced - for a variety of reasons - does not really have agency in any meaningful sense. It is worth reading what many ex-prostitutes write about the reality of what they do and how they are treated. What happens to them is not consensual sex in any sense of the term. It is abuse - often violent. I feel sympathy for them. They are my sisters not some underclass and I would like to see them much better treated and spoken about than they are and not treated in the appalling way they are by men.
Your point about the inequality of the law is a decent one, too. Either prostitution should be legal for both (consenting) parties, or illegal for both.
I would argue that (a) it will happen anyway, and (b) it is better done in a regulated way that avoids the issues @Cyclefree has identified. In this, it accompanies drugs and abortion (and possibly gambling too). Sins that we would be better off without, but where harms are minimized via legalisation and regulation.
Australia, I believe, has highly regulated brothels. That is probably the best option.
Did we do this already ? (I haven't been keeping up.)
Entire leadership of Reform UK’s Ossett & Denby Dale and Dewsbury & Batley branch resigns en masse.
All five elected local officers of the Reform UK branch covering Ossett & Denby Dale and Dewsbury & Batley have resigned with immediate effect today, 19 February 2026.
The mass resignation follows serious allegations of candidate interference at regional level. Branch sources claim that Regional Directors instructed the removal of already-selected local candidates in order to make way for high-profile defectors from the Conservative Party.
The departing officers — who together comprised the entire elected leadership of the combined branch — stated that they could no longer continue under what they describe as unacceptable top-down interference in local democratic processes.
The branch had been actively preparing its campaign infrastructure and candidate slate ahead of the upcoming Kirklees local elections. The sudden departure of the full leadership team is expected to cause significant disruption to those preparations. https://x.com/CharlieSimpsonA/status/2024583560938868863
Looks like there's a full-on Tory takeover of Reform coming from the very top. Why is Nigel allowing this? I suspect the hand of Jenrick (and in turn the hand of Osborne). What have they got on Nigel?
Did we do this already ? (I haven't been keeping up.)
Entire leadership of Reform UK’s Ossett & Denby Dale and Dewsbury & Batley branch resigns en masse.
All five elected local officers of the Reform UK branch covering Ossett & Denby Dale and Dewsbury & Batley have resigned with immediate effect today, 19 February 2026.
The mass resignation follows serious allegations of candidate interference at regional level. Branch sources claim that Regional Directors instructed the removal of already-selected local candidates in order to make way for high-profile defectors from the Conservative Party.
The departing officers — who together comprised the entire elected leadership of the combined branch — stated that they could no longer continue under what they describe as unacceptable top-down interference in local democratic processes.
The branch had been actively preparing its campaign infrastructure and candidate slate ahead of the upcoming Kirklees local elections. The sudden departure of the full leadership team is expected to cause significant disruption to those preparations. https://x.com/CharlieSimpsonA/status/2024583560938868863
I think this sounds more dramatic than it is. Constituency branch officers are not particularly significant figures in a party and might only have been in post because no-one else wanted to do the job.
Omnisis normally do online polling but it would be more difficult to do that in this instance . If it was a phone poll then the Reform figure is likely to be an underestimate.
It could well underestimate the Green vote too, as youngsters are notoriously hard to get a representative poll from.
Labour need to stop chasing Reform voters.
Many of those will not be coming back to Labour or are new voters . If Reform win it will be down to a progressive split and should act as a wake up call .
If this poll is accurate, the difference between first and third place will be about 1,800 votes.
The 31% DK must include a chunk who don't vote in by-elections (or at all), but it's reasonable to assume that a third are anti-Reform and unsure how to stop them. That probably makes Greens favourites as they'll certainly do that poll to death , but more certainly it looks as though Reform will fall short.
I wonder what proportion would agree that Andrew should be hanged,
Probably above 50%.
He might take the Epstein Checkout....
It's unlikely Epstein checked himself out. Would his assassins do the same for Andrew? He is probably less of a threat, as long as he doesn't start singing, and one imagines he'd be a little less easy to access.
So unless he's a DIY man, he's going to be around for a while.
The problem the rich and powerful have with AMW, of course, is that he's stupid. Very stupid. Very very very stupid. Like, dafter than a bag of spanners, but without the charm or from-within-a-paper-bag-navigational ability. So who knows what he'll do if left alone.
Andrew is what used to be described as “educationally sub-normal”.
Did he not fly helicopters in the Falklands? He cannot be that stupid, surely? Or do those things basically fly themselves?
Generally, streaming works like this...
Good pilot, thick = rotary wing Bad pilot, not thick = multi engine Good pilot, not thick = fast jet Bad pilot, thick = chopped
None of that applies to AMW or any other shitstain royal because they will get posted to whatever they want and will get as many hours as it takes from the most senior instructors to qualify them (eg Baldy Basketcase on Sea King).
I wonder what proportion would agree that Andrew should be hanged,
Probably above 50%.
He might take the Epstein Checkout....
It's unlikely Epstein checked himself out. Would his assassins do the same for Andrew? He is probably less of a threat, as long as he doesn't start singing, and one imagines he'd be a little less easy to access.
So unless he's a DIY man, he's going to be around for a while.
The problem the rich and powerful have with AMW, of course, is that he's stupid. Very stupid. Very very very stupid. Like, dafter than a bag of spanners, but without the charm or from-within-a-paper-bag-navigational ability. So who knows what he'll do if left alone.
Andrew is what used to be described as “educationally sub-normal”.
How do you know? I imagine there are criteria for being educationally sub-normal? I have worked with two of his ex's and both were bright and attractive. That doesn't say he isn't educationally sub-normal but I can't see why such attractive and sparky girls would have wanted to spend time with someone stupid. There is something quite judgemental about this thread. As DJ pointed out girls or boys who choose to sell their services for sex might well have done so by choice.
“What was it that first attracted you to the multi-millionaire son of the Queen?”
I wonder what proportion would agree that Andrew should be hanged,
Probably above 50%.
He might take the Epstein Checkout....
It's unlikely Epstein checked himself out. Would his assassins do the same for Andrew? He is probably less of a threat, as long as he doesn't start singing, and one imagines he'd be a little less easy to access.
So unless he's a DIY man, he's going to be around for a while.
The problem the rich and powerful have with AMW, of course, is that he's stupid. Very stupid. Very very very stupid. Like, dafter than a bag of spanners, but without the charm or from-within-a-paper-bag-navigational ability. So who knows what he'll do if left alone.
Andrew is what used to be described as “educationally sub-normal”.
How do you know? I imagine there are criteria for being educationally sub-normal? I have worked with two of his ex's and both were bright and attractive. That doesn't say he isn't educationally sub-normal but I can't see why such attractive and sparky girls would have wanted to spend time with someone stupid. There is something quite judgemental about this thread. As DJ pointed out girls or boys who choose to sell their services for sex might well have done so by choice.
"but I can't see why such attractive and sparky girls would have wanted to spend time with someone stupid"
Hmm, I wonder. The response of ex footballer Peter Crouch when asked what he would have been if he hadn't been a footballer springs to mind.*
Can you really not imagine why attractive and sparky women might want to hang around the 2nd in line to the throne, a man who would give you the ticket to a lifetime of luxury and privilege? Really?
For someone who considers themselves the most moral person on the planet you are prertty good at throwing unfounded accusations around like confetti. I am surprised PB gives you this pulpit.
I was waiting for the standard @Roger objection. Vague, but “I don’t like it”.
What unfounded accusations, @Roger? There’s oceans of court cases, tribunal, researched stories that illustrate every single point @Cyclefree is making.
Or is it that you feel we should owe a certain deference to The Right People?
Well I'm glad I didn't keep you waiting too long. You now have the rest of the day to do someting productive. If it gives you a warm feeling to read reams of 'holier-than-thou' scribbles I'm sure you can apply for a back catalogue. In my experience not everyone's motives are suspect nor is everyone malign.
So NO examples then.
One feature of Cyclefree's complaints about sex is that she denies women agency. Sex workers are sluts but women are chaste so they must have been trafficked and forced into degrading themselves. Some have, of course, but for many women, sex for money is a perfectly rational trade. More subtly, though, sometimes the trade is not sex for money but sex for access to power or fame, including the most talented, richest, or most powerful men on the planet. I don't suppose Monica Lewinski was paid in luncheon vouchers but she did get to rub shoulders (!) with the leader of the free world.
This is why we need to be careful about the age of consent, of course, and why in recent years we have added further limits where there are power imbalances.
Then we have medical scandals like the Bristol heart cases, and more recently Lucy Letby. If we closed every unit with a below-par survival rate in a month, we'd have no hospitals left. Look at the peaks and troughs in economic statistics, for instance, even in today's news. On the other hand, if we wait for certainty, many will die or be maimed who could and should have been saved.
But I'm not sure acting on rumour, even when (especially when) that rumour coincides with one's own prejudice, is the answer.
I have never ever said that some women are sluts and others are chaste or denied women agency. And I don't believe that. But a woman who is coerced - for a variety of reasons - does not really have agency in any meaningful sense. It is worth reading what many ex-prostitutes write about the reality of what they do and how they are treated. What happens to them is not consensual sex in any sense of the term. It is abuse - often violent. I feel sympathy for them. They are my sisters not some underclass and I would like to see them much better treated and spoken about than they are and not treated in the appalling way they are by men.
Your point about the inequality of the law is a decent one, too. Either prostitution should be legal for both (consenting) parties, or illegal for both.
I would argue that (a) it will happen anyway, and (b) it is better done in a regulated way that avoids the issues @Cyclefree has identified. In this, it accompanies drugs and abortion (and possibly gambling too). Sins that we would be better off without, but where harms are minimized via legalisation and regulation.
Australia, I believe, has highly regulated brothels. That is probably the best option.
There is no perfect solution, but I'd tend to agree that legalisation is the least imperfect one.
Omnisis normally do online polling but it would be more difficult to do that in this instance . If it was a phone poll then the Reform figure is likely to be an underestimate.
It could well underestimate the Green vote too, as youngsters are notoriously hard to get a representative poll from.
Labour need to stop chasing Reform voters.
Many of those will not be coming back to Labour or are new voters . If Reform win it will be down to a progressive split and should act as a wake up call .
If this poll is accurate, the difference between first and third place will be about 1,800 votes.
The 31% DK must include a chunk who don't vote in by-elections (or at all), but it's reasonable to assume that a third are anti-Reform and unsure how to stop them. That probably makes Greens favourites as they'll certainly do that poll to death , but more certainly it looks as though Reform will fall short.
I think the world Cyclefree describes so well is likely to carry on in some form unless there is some remarkable transformation in the areas of human nature, sex, money, power, fame, and the imbalances of the law.
In particular Cyclefree's own point describes it. 'Not Brave Enough'. Drawing attention to certain truths requires courage, willingness to face loss, risk, the law's imbalances and sometimes other dangers.
I mention just one set of very particular imbalances. A lowly allegation maker will find it is open season on their character, prospects and person. The rich and powerful have the advantage of 'innocent until proved guilty', in criminal matters the advantage of 'beyond reasonable doubt', the advantage of being able to use the legal system to shut down little people and the advantage of a network of the powerful.
As long as 'telling truth to power' carries this degree of cost and imbalance, requiring that degree of courage, human nature tells us we have a problem.
I think we saw this in the Peggie vs NHS Fife tribunal. Its entirely irrelevant to whether woman should have a single sex changing room that she once shared some sub-Jim Davidson 'jokes' on WhatsApp. Yet now, on X, all the pro-trans posters portray Peggie, a nurse with 30 years on unblemished service, as a latter day Enoch Powell or Bernard Manning.
The NHS is notorious for going after every whistle-blower or internal complainant in this fashion. Occasionally some poor soul puts their head above the parapet & has their life destroyed by NHS management “pour encourager les autres”.
It’s all very well for Cyclefree to argue that people should simply be braver, but when you are part of a system that will cheerfully destroy your ability to work in your chosen career ever again, it (unsurprisingly) turns out that few people are willing to call out bad behaviour when the price of doing so is so very, very high.
You are quite right about the NHS.
But to answer your interesting point, I have spent much of my career establishing whistleblowing functions and investigating whistleblowing complaints. By the end a good half of my work related to such investigations. And it is precisely because we cannot rely on individual brave heroes that we need to establish really effective ways of allowing those complaints or issues to be raised and investigated in a way which does not require suicidal bravery by one individual.
It is not a matter of having a well written procedure. What you need above all is an effective investigations team stuffed by people with integrity and guts but above all people who are trustworthy and visible. I did investigations so I had a licence to ask questions others didn't. But the best thing I did by talking endlessly to everyone in the firm about my team's work and why it mattered was to give people a route to raise concerns without needing to put themselves in the firing line. They knew they could trust my team - to keep their confidences, to be professional, to protect them and, in the words of one "not to be afraid of anyone". Every time I did a talk I would get people coming to me or my team to raise issues. They knew the existence of my team gave them permission to speak up, to be a little bit brave but it also took the burden off them. We were a sort of lightning rod.
That is what the NHS and many other organisations need.
And then if you encourage people to raise issues early they are not crises to be managed but small problems which can be sorted, usually relatively easily without too much pain and without forcing people into horrible moral dilemmas.
I diagree about whistleblowing in the NHS.
As a junior doctor 3 decades ago, I blew the whistle on a senior Consultant who I discovered had done some serious malpractice. I did this after taking advice from my medical indemnity advisors. The Consultant in question left the Trust after the investigation, with compensation going to the patient involved. It was completely confidential. After the dust settled the Medical Director personally phoned me to thank me for my actions.
As a senior Consultant myself I have done a fair bit of work for the Medical Director's* "Secret Police" investigating a varied number of concerns about senior clinicians with accusations of financial fraud, clinical incompetence, bullying, sexual harrassement etc etc. Some of these were inconclusive, with insufficient evidence for disciplinary action/sacking/prosecution, but I cannot remember one where the whistleblower raising the concerns was ostracised in any way.
Perhaps my Trust is exceptional, but I do not think so. We only hear about whistleblowers being torn to shreds when it goes wrong. It simply isn't news when the system works.
* Different Trust and different Medical Director.
Your Trust might not be exceptional, but from your regular posts about it, is certainly seems to be one of the better ones. But there are obviously examples where things have gone very badly wrong, and it can take decades to resolve (the blood transfusion scandal being one of the more egregious examples).
I have confidence in the SMT at my Trust. They work under difficult conditions and targets but in the main are good people trying to do the right things.
The Blood Products scandal had many wrinkles to it, but I don't think there was any element of demonising whistleblowers in it, so may not be a good example. The Bristol Childrens Heart scandal is a different kettle of fish.
I wonder what proportion would agree that Andrew should be hanged,
Probably above 50%.
He might take the Epstein Checkout....
It's unlikely Epstein checked himself out. Would his assassins do the same for Andrew? He is probably less of a threat, as long as he doesn't start singing, and one imagines he'd be a little less easy to access.
So unless he's a DIY man, he's going to be around for a while.
The problem the rich and powerful have with AMW, of course, is that he's stupid. Very stupid. Very very very stupid. Like, dafter than a bag of spanners, but without the charm or from-within-a-paper-bag-navigational ability. So who knows what he'll do if left alone.
Andrew is what used to be described as “educationally sub-normal”.
How do you know? I imagine there are criteria for being educationally sub-normal? I have worked with two of his ex's and both were bright and attractive. That doesn't say he isn't educationally sub-normal but I can't see why such attractive and sparky girls would have wanted to spend time with someone stupid. There is something quite judgemental about this thread. As DJ pointed out girls or boys who choose to sell their services for sex might well have done so by choice.
“What was it that first attracted you to the multi-millionaire son of the Queen?”
A more concise answer than mine on the same lines!
Omnisis normally do online polling but it would be more difficult to do that in this instance . If it was a phone poll then the Reform figure is likely to be an underestimate.
It could well underestimate the Green vote too, as youngsters are notoriously hard to get a representative poll from.
Labour need to stop chasing Reform voters.
Many of those will not be coming back to Labour or are new voters . If Reform win it will be down to a progressive split and should act as a wake up call .
If this poll is accurate, the difference between first and third place will be about 1,800 votes.
I wonder what proportion would agree that Andrew should be hanged,
Probably above 50%.
He might take the Epstein Checkout....
It's unlikely Epstein checked himself out. Would his assassins do the same for Andrew? He is probably less of a threat, as long as he doesn't start singing, and one imagines he'd be a little less easy to access.
So unless he's a DIY man, he's going to be around for a while.
The problem the rich and powerful have with AMW, of course, is that he's stupid. Very stupid. Very very very stupid. Like, dafter than a bag of spanners, but without the charm or from-within-a-paper-bag-navigational ability. So who knows what he'll do if left alone.
Andrew is what used to be described as “educationally sub-normal”.
This upsets me. Are we saying he's a sick c*** because he's what? Autistic. That is often the PB go to in a situation like this.
On the other hand it could be that he's both lazy and entitled because he was spoilt and smothered by his mum.
I wonder what proportion would agree that Andrew should be hanged,
Probably above 50%.
He might take the Epstein Checkout....
It's unlikely Epstein checked himself out. Would his assassins do the same for Andrew? He is probably less of a threat, as long as he doesn't start singing, and one imagines he'd be a little less easy to access.
So unless he's a DIY man, he's going to be around for a while.
The problem the rich and powerful have with AMW, of course, is that he's stupid. Very stupid. Very very very stupid. Like, dafter than a bag of spanners, but without the charm or from-within-a-paper-bag-navigational ability. So who knows what he'll do if left alone.
Andrew is what used to be described as “educationally sub-normal”.
This upsets me. Are we saying he's a sick c*** because he's what? Autistic. That is often the PB go to in a situation like this.
On the other hand it could be that he's both lazy and entitled because he was spoilt and smothered by his mum.
I wonder what proportion would agree that Andrew should be hanged,
Probably above 50%.
He might take the Epstein Checkout....
It's unlikely Epstein checked himself out. Would his assassins do the same for Andrew? He is probably less of a threat, as long as he doesn't start singing, and one imagines he'd be a little less easy to access.
So unless he's a DIY man, he's going to be around for a while.
The problem the rich and powerful have with AMW, of course, is that he's stupid. Very stupid. Very very very stupid. Like, dafter than a bag of spanners, but without the charm or from-within-a-paper-bag-navigational ability. So who knows what he'll do if left alone.
Andrew is what used to be described as “educationally sub-normal”.
This upsets me. Are we saying he's a sick c*** because he's what? Autistic. That is often the PB go to in a situation like this.
On the other hand it could be that he's both lazy and entitled because he was spoilt and smothered by his mum.
It might be the assumption that he is somewhat limited and thus has no interesting hobbies or pursuits to keep him occupied. But then the royals always used to be about the shagging. The current king is a good example.
Omnisis normally do online polling but it would be more difficult to do that in this instance . If it was a phone poll then the Reform figure is likely to be an underestimate.
It could well underestimate the Green vote too, as youngsters are notoriously hard to get a representative poll from.
Labour need to stop chasing Reform voters.
Many of those will not be coming back to Labour or are new voters . If Reform win it will be down to a progressive split and should act as a wake up call .
If this poll is accurate, the difference between first and third place will be about 1,800 votes.
Now McSweeney gone Labour will focus a lot more on Polanski
Labour are actually a lot Greener than Polanski.
If they attack on that basis, the critical difference between core Green policy and corbyn heavy Polanski the cult figure, they can make significant inroads in time.
I wonder what proportion would agree that Andrew should be hanged,
Probably above 50%.
He might take the Epstein Checkout....
It's unlikely Epstein checked himself out. Would his assassins do the same for Andrew? He is probably less of a threat, as long as he doesn't start singing, and one imagines he'd be a little less easy to access.
So unless he's a DIY man, he's going to be around for a while.
The problem the rich and powerful have with AMW, of course, is that he's stupid. Very stupid. Very very very stupid. Like, dafter than a bag of spanners, but without the charm or from-within-a-paper-bag-navigational ability. So who knows what he'll do if left alone.
Well yes, he gave that interview against all professional advice, so we know he is toilet seat thick, so I suppose there is just a chance that against all advice, or even threats, he may go public.
Or he may genuinely leap unassisted from a window.....assuming he knows how to open one and it's not on the ground floor.
I wonder what proportion would agree that Andrew should be hanged,
Probably above 50%.
He might take the Epstein Checkout....
It's unlikely Epstein checked himself out. Would his assassins do the same for Andrew? He is probably less of a threat, as long as he doesn't start singing, and one imagines he'd be a little less easy to access.
So unless he's a DIY man, he's going to be around for a while.
The problem the rich and powerful have with AMW, of course, is that he's stupid. Very stupid. Very very very stupid. Like, dafter than a bag of spanners, but without the charm or from-within-a-paper-bag-navigational ability. So who knows what he'll do if left alone.
Andrew is what used to be described as “educationally sub-normal”.
This upsets me. Are we saying he's a sick c*** because he's what? Autistic. That is often the PB go to in a situation like this.
On the other hand it could be that he's both lazy and entitled because he was spoilt and smothered by his mum.
Taken to a brothel to lose his virginity at 11 more likely to be an impact than being spoilt.
I wonder what proportion would agree that Andrew should be hanged,
Probably above 50%.
He might take the Epstein Checkout....
It's unlikely Epstein checked himself out. Would his assassins do the same for Andrew? He is probably less of a threat, as long as he doesn't start singing, and one imagines he'd be a little less easy to access.
So unless he's a DIY man, he's going to be around for a while.
The problem the rich and powerful have with AMW, of course, is that he's stupid. Very stupid. Very very very stupid. Like, dafter than a bag of spanners, but without the charm or from-within-a-paper-bag-navigational ability. So who knows what he'll do if left alone.
Andrew is what used to be described as “educationally sub-normal”.
This upsets me. Are we saying he's a sick c*** because he's what? Autistic. That is often the PB go to in a situation like this.
On the other hand it could be that he's both lazy and entitled because he was spoilt and smothered by his mum.
It might be the assumption that he is somewhat limited and thus has no interesting hobbies or pursuits to keep him occupied. But then the royals always used to be about the shagging. The current king is a good example.
The D of Edinburgh was notorious, but smart enough to keep it discreet.
Omnisis normally do online polling but it would be more difficult to do that in this instance . If it was a phone poll then the Reform figure is likely to be an underestimate.
It could well underestimate the Green vote too, as youngsters are notoriously hard to get a representative poll from.
Labour need to stop chasing Reform voters.
Many of those will not be coming back to Labour or are new voters . If Reform win it will be down to a progressive split and should act as a wake up call .
If this poll is accurate, the difference between first and third place will be about 1,800 votes.
Now McSweeney gone Labour will focus a lot more on Polanski
Labour are actually a lot Greener than Polanski.
If they attack on that basis, the critical difference between core Green policy and corbyn heavy Polanski the cult figure, they can make significant inroads in time.
But Polanski is more socialist than Labour.
A bit of raw communism would be a welcome change from almost 80 years of capitalist/ mixed economy failure.
Omnisis normally do online polling but it would be more difficult to do that in this instance . If it was a phone poll then the Reform figure is likely to be an underestimate.
It could well underestimate the Green vote too, as youngsters are notoriously hard to get a representative poll from.
Labour need to stop chasing Reform voters.
Many of those will not be coming back to Labour or are new voters . If Reform win it will be down to a progressive split and should act as a wake up call .
If this poll is accurate, the difference between first and third place will be about 1,800 votes.
Fieldwork was online and phone.
Samples was 452
Once DK and WNV are excluded it is a sample of 271.
I think the world Cyclefree describes so well is likely to carry on in some form unless there is some remarkable transformation in the areas of human nature, sex, money, power, fame, and the imbalances of the law.
In particular Cyclefree's own point describes it. 'Not Brave Enough'. Drawing attention to certain truths requires courage, willingness to face loss, risk, the law's imbalances and sometimes other dangers.
I mention just one set of very particular imbalances. A lowly allegation maker will find it is open season on their character, prospects and person. The rich and powerful have the advantage of 'innocent until proved guilty', in criminal matters the advantage of 'beyond reasonable doubt', the advantage of being able to use the legal system to shut down little people and the advantage of a network of the powerful.
As long as 'telling truth to power' carries this degree of cost and imbalance, requiring that degree of courage, human nature tells us we have a problem.
I think we saw this in the Peggie vs NHS Fife tribunal. Its entirely irrelevant to whether woman should have a single sex changing room that she once shared some sub-Jim Davidson 'jokes' on WhatsApp. Yet now, on X, all the pro-trans posters portray Peggie, a nurse with 30 years on unblemished service, as a latter day Enoch Powell or Bernard Manning.
The NHS is notorious for going after every whistle-blower or internal complainant in this fashion. Occasionally some poor soul puts their head above the parapet & has their life destroyed by NHS management “pour encourager les autres”.
It’s all very well for Cyclefree to argue that people should simply be braver, but when you are part of a system that will cheerfully destroy your ability to work in your chosen career ever again, it (unsurprisingly) turns out that few people are willing to call out bad behaviour when the price of doing so is so very, very high.
You are quite right about the NHS.
But to answer your interesting point, I have spent much of my career establishing whistleblowing functions and investigating whistleblowing complaints. By the end a good half of my work related to such investigations. And it is precisely because we cannot rely on individual brave heroes that we need to establish really effective ways of allowing those complaints or issues to be raised and investigated in a way which does not require suicidal bravery by one individual.
It is not a matter of having a well written procedure. What you need above all is an effective investigations team stuffed by people with integrity and guts but above all people who are trustworthy and visible. I did investigations so I had a licence to ask questions others didn't. But the best thing I did by talking endlessly to everyone in the firm about my team's work and why it mattered was to give people a route to raise concerns without needing to put themselves in the firing line. They knew they could trust my team - to keep their confidences, to be professional, to protect them and, in the words of one "not to be afraid of anyone". Every time I did a talk I would get people coming to me or my team to raise issues. They knew the existence of my team gave them permission to speak up, to be a little bit brave but it also took the burden off them. We were a sort of lightning rod.
That is what the NHS and many other organisations need.
And then if you encourage people to raise issues early they are not crises to be managed but small problems which can be sorted, usually relatively easily without too much pain and without forcing people into horrible moral dilemmas.
I diagree about whistleblowing in the NHS.
As a junior doctor 3 decades ago, I blew the whistle on a senior Consultant who I discovered had done some serious malpractice. I did this after taking advice from my medical indemnity advisors. The Consultant in question left the Trust after the investigation, with compensation going to the patient involved. It was completely confidential. After the dust settled the Medical Director personally phoned me to thank me for my actions.
As a senior Consultant myself I have done a fair bit of work for the Medical Director's* "Secret Police" investigating a varied number of concerns about senior clinicians with accusations of financial fraud, clinical incompetence, bullying, sexual harrassement etc etc. Some of these were inconclusive, with insufficient evidence for disciplinary action/sacking/prosecution, but I cannot remember one where the whistleblower raising the concerns was ostracised in any way.
Perhaps my Trust is exceptional, but I do not think so. We only hear about whistleblowers being torn to shreds when it goes wrong. It simply isn't news when the system works.
* Different Trust and different Medical Director.
Your Trust might not be exceptional, but from your regular posts about it, is certainly seems to be one of the better ones. But there are obviously examples where things have gone very badly wrong, and it can take decades to resolve (the blood transfusion scandal being one of the more egregious examples).
I have confidence in the SMT at my Trust. They work under difficult conditions and targets but in the main are good people trying to do the right things.
The Blood Products scandal had many wrinkles to it, but I don't think there was any element of demonising whistleblowers in it, so may not be a good example. The Bristol Childrens Heart scandal is a different kettle of fish.
No, but it was a good example of deferring to doctors simply because they were doctors, and then hiding a problem because it had become too big to deal with. There were very likely multiple opportunities along the way (within government as much as the health system) where whistleblowing might have prevented what was effectively a decades long coverup.
I wonder what proportion would agree that Andrew should be hanged,
Probably above 50%.
He might take the Epstein Checkout....
It's unlikely Epstein checked himself out. Would his assassins do the same for Andrew? He is probably less of a threat, as long as he doesn't start singing, and one imagines he'd be a little less easy to access.
So unless he's a DIY man, he's going to be around for a while.
The problem the rich and powerful have with AMW, of course, is that he's stupid. Very stupid. Very very very stupid. Like, dafter than a bag of spanners, but without the charm or from-within-a-paper-bag-navigational ability. So who knows what he'll do if left alone.
Andrew is what used to be described as “educationally sub-normal”.
This upsets me. Are we saying he's a sick c*** because he's what? Autistic. That is often the PB go to in a situation like this.
On the other hand it could be that he's both lazy and entitled because he was spoilt and smothered by his mum.
Taken to a brothel to lose his virginity at 11 more likely to be an impact than being spoilt.
Are we suggesting Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor is the victim here?
I wonder what proportion would agree that Andrew should be hanged,
Probably above 50%.
He might take the Epstein Checkout....
It's unlikely Epstein checked himself out. Would his assassins do the same for Andrew? He is probably less of a threat, as long as he doesn't start singing, and one imagines he'd be a little less easy to access.
So unless he's a DIY man, he's going to be around for a while.
The problem the rich and powerful have with AMW, of course, is that he's stupid. Very stupid. Very very very stupid. Like, dafter than a bag of spanners, but without the charm or from-within-a-paper-bag-navigational ability. So who knows what he'll do if left alone.
Andrew is what used to be described as “educationally sub-normal”.
Did he not fly helicopters in the Falklands? He cannot be that stupid, surely? Or do those things basically fly themselves?
Generally, streaming works like this...
Good pilot, thick = rotary wing Bad pilot, not thick = multi engine Good pilot, not thick = fast jet Bad pilot, thick = chopped
None of that applies to AMW or any other shitstain royal because they will get posted to whatever they want and will get as many hours as it takes from the most senior instructors to qualify them (eg Baldy Basketcase on Sea King).
Cos you have to be thick to want to fly a helicopter? I'd have thought mad but spose the mad ones don’t make it in.
I wonder what proportion would agree that Andrew should be hanged,
Probably above 50%.
He might take the Epstein Checkout....
It's unlikely Epstein checked himself out. Would his assassins do the same for Andrew? He is probably less of a threat, as long as he doesn't start singing, and one imagines he'd be a little less easy to access.
So unless he's a DIY man, he's going to be around for a while.
The problem the rich and powerful have with AMW, of course, is that he's stupid. Very stupid. Very very very stupid. Like, dafter than a bag of spanners, but without the charm or from-within-a-paper-bag-navigational ability. So who knows what he'll do if left alone.
Andrew is what used to be described as “educationally sub-normal”.
Did he not fly helicopters in the Falklands? He cannot be that stupid, surely? Or do those things basically fly themselves?
Exactly, he got 3 A levels in English, Economics and History and most people don't even have A levels.
Andrew is not educationally sub normal even if not very high IQ either, he just showed poor judgement. Though then so did self made billionaires like Gates and 2 Presidents of the USA , Trump and Clinton and Cabinet Ministers and Ambassadors like Mandelson, many of whom had Ivy League and Oxbridge degrees and high IQs but still socialised with Epstein and even went to his dodgy island in some cases
Did we do this already ? (I haven't been keeping up.)
Entire leadership of Reform UK’s Ossett & Denby Dale and Dewsbury & Batley branch resigns en masse.
All five elected local officers of the Reform UK branch covering Ossett & Denby Dale and Dewsbury & Batley have resigned with immediate effect today, 19 February 2026.
The mass resignation follows serious allegations of candidate interference at regional level. Branch sources claim that Regional Directors instructed the removal of already-selected local candidates in order to make way for high-profile defectors from the Conservative Party.
The departing officers — who together comprised the entire elected leadership of the combined branch — stated that they could no longer continue under what they describe as unacceptable top-down interference in local democratic processes.
The branch had been actively preparing its campaign infrastructure and candidate slate ahead of the upcoming Kirklees local elections. The sudden departure of the full leadership team is expected to cause significant disruption to those preparations. https://x.com/CharlieSimpsonA/status/2024583560938868863
Looks like there's a full-on Tory takeover of Reform coming from the very top. Why is Nigel allowing this? I suspect the hand of Jenrick (and in turn the hand of Osborne). What have they got on Nigel?
Wasn't it the plan (of at least some) all along? Reform the wet woke Tories into something more muscular, as happened in Canada?
Hi folks, @viewcode here. Some days ago, somebody on PB mentioned an aphorism about research required to rebut a point on the internet took ten times more time than it took to put it there in the first place. They called it "B___"s Law, where "B___" was a longish word beginning with "B". The AIs are unhelpful so can somebody recall it for me?
(and no, I'm not thinking of Cunningham's Law)
It's literally the first result if you google "research required to rebut a point on the internet took ten times more time than it took to put it there in the first place"
People still use “ye olde ygoogle”?
Aww. Bless. That’s like looking up a number in the Yellow Pages
I wonder what proportion would agree that Andrew should be hanged,
Probably above 50%.
He might take the Epstein Checkout....
It's unlikely Epstein checked himself out. Would his assassins do the same for Andrew? He is probably less of a threat, as long as he doesn't start singing, and one imagines he'd be a little less easy to access.
So unless he's a DIY man, he's going to be around for a while.
The problem the rich and powerful have with AMW, of course, is that he's stupid. Very stupid. Very very very stupid. Like, dafter than a bag of spanners, but without the charm or from-within-a-paper-bag-navigational ability. So who knows what he'll do if left alone.
Andrew is what used to be described as “educationally sub-normal”.
This upsets me. Are we saying he's a sick c*** because he's what? Autistic. That is often the PB go to in a situation like this.
On the other hand it could be that he's both lazy and entitled because he was spoilt and smothered by his mum.
Taken to a brothel to lose his virginity at 11 more likely to be an impact than being spoilt.
Are we suggesting Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor is the victim here?
I think the world Cyclefree describes so well is likely to carry on in some form unless there is some remarkable transformation in the areas of human nature, sex, money, power, fame, and the imbalances of the law.
In particular Cyclefree's own point describes it. 'Not Brave Enough'. Drawing attention to certain truths requires courage, willingness to face loss, risk, the law's imbalances and sometimes other dangers.
I mention just one set of very particular imbalances. A lowly allegation maker will find it is open season on their character, prospects and person. The rich and powerful have the advantage of 'innocent until proved guilty', in criminal matters the advantage of 'beyond reasonable doubt', the advantage of being able to use the legal system to shut down little people and the advantage of a network of the powerful.
As long as 'telling truth to power' carries this degree of cost and imbalance, requiring that degree of courage, human nature tells us we have a problem.
I think we saw this in the Peggie vs NHS Fife tribunal. Its entirely irrelevant to whether woman should have a single sex changing room that she once shared some sub-Jim Davidson 'jokes' on WhatsApp. Yet now, on X, all the pro-trans posters portray Peggie, a nurse with 30 years on unblemished service, as a latter day Enoch Powell or Bernard Manning.
The NHS is notorious for going after every whistle-blower or internal complainant in this fashion. Occasionally some poor soul puts their head above the parapet & has their life destroyed by NHS management “pour encourager les autres”.
It’s all very well for Cyclefree to argue that people should simply be braver, but when you are part of a system that will cheerfully destroy your ability to work in your chosen career ever again, it (unsurprisingly) turns out that few people are willing to call out bad behaviour when the price of doing so is so very, very high.
You are quite right about the NHS.
But to answer your interesting point, I have spent much of my career establishing whistleblowing functions and investigating whistleblowing complaints. By the end a good half of my work related to such investigations. And it is precisely because we cannot rely on individual brave heroes that we need to establish really effective ways of allowing those complaints or issues to be raised and investigated in a way which does not require suicidal bravery by one individual.
It is not a matter of having a well written procedure. What you need above all is an effective investigations team stuffed by people with integrity and guts but above all people who are trustworthy and visible. I did investigations so I had a licence to ask questions others didn't. But the best thing I did by talking endlessly to everyone in the firm about my team's work and why it mattered was to give people a route to raise concerns without needing to put themselves in the firing line. They knew they could trust my team - to keep their confidences, to be professional, to protect them and, in the words of one "not to be afraid of anyone". Every time I did a talk I would get people coming to me or my team to raise issues. They knew the existence of my team gave them permission to speak up, to be a little bit brave but it also took the burden off them. We were a sort of lightning rod.
That is what the NHS and many other organisations need.
And then if you encourage people to raise issues early they are not crises to be managed but small problems which can be sorted, usually relatively easily without too much pain and without forcing people into horrible moral dilemmas.
I diagree about whistleblowing in the NHS.
As a junior doctor 3 decades ago, I blew the whistle on a senior Consultant who I discovered had done some serious malpractice. I did this after taking advice from my medical indemnity advisors. The Consultant in question left the Trust after the investigation, with compensation going to the patient involved. It was completely confidential. After the dust settled the Medical Director personally phoned me to thank me for my actions.
As a senior Consultant myself I have done a fair bit of work for the Medical Director's* "Secret Police" investigating a varied number of concerns about senior clinicians with accusations of financial fraud, clinical incompetence, bullying, sexual harrassement etc etc. Some of these were inconclusive, with insufficient evidence for disciplinary action/sacking/prosecution, but I cannot remember one where the whistleblower raising the concerns was ostracised in any way.
Perhaps my Trust is exceptional, but I do not think so. We only hear about whistleblowers being torn to shreds when it goes wrong. It simply isn't news when the system works.
* Different Trust and different Medical Director.
Your Trust might not be exceptional, but from your regular posts about it, is certainly seems to be one of the better ones. But there are obviously examples where things have gone very badly wrong, and it can take decades to resolve (the blood transfusion scandal being one of the more egregious examples).
I have confidence in the SMT at my Trust. They work under difficult conditions and targets but in the main are good people trying to do the right things.
The Blood Products scandal had many wrinkles to it, but I don't think there was any element of demonising whistleblowers in it, so may not be a good example. The Bristol Childrens Heart scandal is a different kettle of fish.
No, but it was a good example of deferring to doctors simply because they were doctors, and then hiding a problem because it had become too big to deal with. There were very likely multiple opportunities along the way (within government as much as the health system) where whistleblowing might have prevented what was effectively a decades long coverup.
By and large the Blood Products scandal had little to do with doctors (I was taught as an undergraduate in the eighties that pooled blood products carries an infection risk including Non A Non B hepatitis and HIV). The errors and cover up were almost entirely at senior management level and governmental level rather than clinician level.
I wonder what proportion would agree that Andrew should be hanged,
Probably above 50%.
He might take the Epstein Checkout....
It's unlikely Epstein checked himself out. Would his assassins do the same for Andrew? He is probably less of a threat, as long as he doesn't start singing, and one imagines he'd be a little less easy to access.
So unless he's a DIY man, he's going to be around for a while.
The problem the rich and powerful have with AMW, of course, is that he's stupid. Very stupid. Very very very stupid. Like, dafter than a bag of spanners, but without the charm or from-within-a-paper-bag-navigational ability. So who knows what he'll do if left alone.
Andrew is what used to be described as “educationally sub-normal”.
This upsets me. Are we saying he's a sick c*** because he's what? Autistic. That is often the PB go to in a situation like this.
On the other hand it could be that he's both lazy and entitled because he was spoilt and smothered by his mum.
Taken to a brothel to lose his virginity at 11 more likely to be an impact than being spoilt.
Are we suggesting Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor is the victim here?
That would certainly be considered child abuse nowadays. He is a victim but that doesn't absolve him of his crimes or change the fact that he has created many more victims and should be accountable for that.
Mr Trump is now apparently determined to decline support for the transfer of the islands to Mauritius, arguing that the transter would reduce the utility of the Diego Garcia airbase. It is hard to disagree with his assessment. The result is that Sir Keir is in a bind of his own making.
"International law" compels the Prime Minister to seek Mr Trump's approval to surrender the islands; "international law" compels him to surrender the islands; "international law" compels him to block the use of the British bases, enraging the White House in the process. This is government as farce.
It is hard to escape the notion that in Sir Keir's ideal world, the job of Prime Minister would be purely ceremonial. There would be little room for individual judgment or decision making. All acts of government would emerge fully formed from the duties and obligations of the legal system. As much as it may disappoint him, that is not the world we live in. It is high time Sir Keir realised as much.
Oh dear. Bless. The bone head “ignore law and international order - respect might is always right” pirates are flapping about these days. Sad little things they are.
Sitting around and expecting "International Law" to do your morals and thinking for you is equally stupid.
At its finest, International Law is a framework against which actions can be judged. Not a policy document.
Indeed. just as the Conservative Party apparently done in 2012 when they refused to support USA identical bombing mission on Iran as this one, and Starmer copied exactly the same thing for identical reasons today.
'A Labour source tells us "we're very confident the undecideds are breaking for us"
They say this poll was commissioned by a firm that donated £10,000 to the Greens and argue the Greens’ own polling had them at 35% - meaning a 15% drop
I wonder what proportion would agree that Andrew should be hanged,
Probably above 50%.
He might take the Epstein Checkout....
It's unlikely Epstein checked himself out. Would his assassins do the same for Andrew? He is probably less of a threat, as long as he doesn't start singing, and one imagines he'd be a little less easy to access.
So unless he's a DIY man, he's going to be around for a while.
The problem the rich and powerful have with AMW, of course, is that he's stupid. Very stupid. Very very very stupid. Like, dafter than a bag of spanners, but without the charm or from-within-a-paper-bag-navigational ability. So who knows what he'll do if left alone.
Andrew is what used to be described as “educationally sub-normal”.
Did he not fly helicopters in the Falklands? He cannot be that stupid, surely? Or do those things basically fly themselves?
Exactly, he got 3 A levels in English, Economics and History and most people don't even have A levels.
Andrew is not educationally sub normal even if not very high IQ either, he just showed poor judgement. Though then so did self made billionaires like Gates and 2 Presidents of the USA , Trump and Clinton and Cabinet Ministers and Ambassadors like Mandelson, many of whom had Ivy League and Oxbridge degrees and high IQs but still socialised with Epstein and even went to his dodgy island in some cases
Omnisis normally do online polling but it would be more difficult to do that in this instance . If it was a phone poll then the Reform figure is likely to be an underestimate.
It could well underestimate the Green vote too, as youngsters are notoriously hard to get a representative poll from.
Labour need to stop chasing Reform voters.
Many of those will not be coming back to Labour or are new voters . If Reform win it will be down to a progressive split and should act as a wake up call .
If this poll is accurate, the difference between first and third place will be about 1,800 votes.
Now McSweeney gone Labour will focus a lot more on Polanski
Labour are actually a lot Greener than Polanski.
If they attack on that basis, the critical difference between core Green policy and corbyn heavy Polanski the cult figure, they can make significant inroads in time.
But Polanski is more socialist than Labour.
A bit of raw communism would be a welcome change from almost 80 years of capitalist/ mixed economy failure.
If Labour play their cards right particularly with regard to Gaza and Trump in most places where the election is close enough most Greens will vote Labour. Most people I know are saying they'll vote Green including me but faced with a possible fascist or quasi-fascist like Kemi I'm sure we'd all weaken
OT - I understand the desire to smash a certain ex-royal. He strikes me as a weak and stupid man - very willing to swim in very murky waters. That is probably way too generous but he was certainly not a leading figure in all this. He was a hanger-on. However, he was there. He can provide, I have no doubt, very useful information on the true nature and scale of these events.
He sadly won't talk - because he is a weak and stupid and venal man. For that he deserves the book thrown at him. I suspect it won't happen. The pressure on the Police / CPS is no doubt already being applied.
I wonder what proportion would agree that Andrew should be hanged,
Probably above 50%.
He might take the Epstein Checkout....
It's unlikely Epstein checked himself out. Would his assassins do the same for Andrew? He is probably less of a threat, as long as he doesn't start singing, and one imagines he'd be a little less easy to access.
So unless he's a DIY man, he's going to be around for a while.
The problem the rich and powerful have with AMW, of course, is that he's stupid. Very stupid. Very very very stupid. Like, dafter than a bag of spanners, but without the charm or from-within-a-paper-bag-navigational ability. So who knows what he'll do if left alone.
Andrew is what used to be described as “educationally sub-normal”.
This upsets me. Are we saying he's a sick c*** because he's what? Autistic. That is often the PB go to in a situation like this.
On the other hand it could be that he's both lazy and entitled because he was spoilt and smothered by his mum.
Taken to a brothel to lose his virginity at 11 more likely to be an impact than being spoilt.
Are we suggesting Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor is the victim here?
The only outcome I can see now is, with his access to weapons, he takes his own life.
Omnisis normally do online polling but it would be more difficult to do that in this instance . If it was a phone poll then the Reform figure is likely to be an underestimate.
It could well underestimate the Green vote too, as youngsters are notoriously hard to get a representative poll from.
Labour need to stop chasing Reform voters.
Many of those will not be coming back to Labour or are new voters . If Reform win it will be down to a progressive split and should act as a wake up call .
If this poll is accurate, the difference between first and third place will be about 1,800 votes.
Now McSweeney gone Labour will focus a lot more on Polanski
Labour are actually a lot Greener than Polanski.
If they attack on that basis, the critical difference between core Green policy and corbyn heavy Polanski the cult figure, they can make significant inroads in time.
But Polanski is more socialist than Labour.
A bit of raw communism would be a welcome change from almost 80 years of capitalist/ mixed economy failure.
If Labour play their cards right particularly with regard to Gaza and Trump in most places where the election is close enough most Greens will vote Labour. Most people I know are saying they'll vote Green including me but faced with a possible fascist or quasi-fascist like Kemi I'm sure we'd all weaken
For the next GE the two biggest factors are not what Labour do but:
1 - How prominent is the Israel-Palestine issue 2 - Have we had peace in Ukraine and the resulting economic peace dividend that will benefit household finances
Not appointing Mandelson, extra £20bns, £20bns black holes, Chagos, et al or even who their leader is.
I wonder what proportion would agree that Andrew should be hanged,
Probably above 50%.
He might take the Epstein Checkout....
It's unlikely Epstein checked himself out. Would his assassins do the same for Andrew? He is probably less of a threat, as long as he doesn't start singing, and one imagines he'd be a little less easy to access.
So unless he's a DIY man, he's going to be around for a while.
The problem the rich and powerful have with AMW, of course, is that he's stupid. Very stupid. Very very very stupid. Like, dafter than a bag of spanners, but without the charm or from-within-a-paper-bag-navigational ability. So who knows what he'll do if left alone.
Andrew is what used to be described as “educationally sub-normal”.
This upsets me. Are we saying he's a sick c*** because he's what? Autistic. That is often the PB go to in a situation like this.
On the other hand it could be that he's both lazy and entitled because he was spoilt and smothered by his mum.
Taken to a brothel to lose his virginity at 11 more likely to be an impact than being spoilt.
Are we suggesting Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor is the victim here?
The only outcome I can see now is, with his access to weapons, he takes his own life.
And that isn’t good.
I thought his guns/gun licences had been taken away?
Mind I expect there are enough one the Sandringham estate for something to be lying around. (Cough)
Did we do this already ? (I haven't been keeping up.)
Entire leadership of Reform UK’s Ossett & Denby Dale and Dewsbury & Batley branch resigns en masse.
All five elected local officers of the Reform UK branch covering Ossett & Denby Dale and Dewsbury & Batley have resigned with immediate effect today, 19 February 2026.
The mass resignation follows serious allegations of candidate interference at regional level. Branch sources claim that Regional Directors instructed the removal of already-selected local candidates in order to make way for high-profile defectors from the Conservative Party.
The departing officers — who together comprised the entire elected leadership of the combined branch — stated that they could no longer continue under what they describe as unacceptable top-down interference in local democratic processes.
The branch had been actively preparing its campaign infrastructure and candidate slate ahead of the upcoming Kirklees local elections. The sudden departure of the full leadership team is expected to cause significant disruption to those preparations. https://x.com/CharlieSimpsonA/status/2024583560938868863
This is an issue in other areas, too - such as Romford - and reminds me of some of the significant disagreements that arose during the early years of the Alliance during the early 1980s.
A lot of previously non-political people will have signed up with Reform, seeing it as a way to overthrow the political status quo, as did the SDP attract many such folk in the 1980s, subsequently allied with local Liberals who back then were firmly outside the status quo.
So put yourself in the shoes of the guy in Romford who appears to have been a driving force in founding the local Reform branch, pounding the streets and manning the stalls to sign up new people to their anti-politics movement, only to find that now he’s expected to campaign to re-elect precisely the same guy who they’ve been campaigning against as an exemplar of the corrupt establishment. He simply couldn’t do it, which is why he’s walked away. Those Liberals and fresh-faced SDP recruits found themselves in the same position back in the 1980s, when their Labour MP suddenly jumped to the SDP and expected those folks wanting to overthrow the system to campaign instead for his (I believe they were all men) re-election. No surprise that many of these carpet-baggers faced independent Liberal opponents and almost all of them failed to secure re-election.
Hopefully the same fate awaits carpet-baggers like Rosindell and his ilk.
I wonder what proportion would agree that Andrew should be hanged,
Probably above 50%.
He might take the Epstein Checkout....
It's unlikely Epstein checked himself out. Would his assassins do the same for Andrew? He is probably less of a threat, as long as he doesn't start singing, and one imagines he'd be a little less easy to access.
So unless he's a DIY man, he's going to be around for a while.
The problem the rich and powerful have with AMW, of course, is that he's stupid. Very stupid. Very very very stupid. Like, dafter than a bag of spanners, but without the charm or from-within-a-paper-bag-navigational ability. So who knows what he'll do if left alone.
Andrew is what used to be described as “educationally sub-normal”.
This upsets me. Are we saying he's a sick c*** because he's what? Autistic. That is often the PB go to in a situation like this.
On the other hand it could be that he's both lazy and entitled because he was spoilt and smothered by his mum.
Taken to a brothel to lose his virginity at 11 more likely to be an impact than being spoilt.
Are we suggesting Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor is the victim here?
The only outcome I can see now is, with his access to weapons, he takes his own life.
And that isn’t good.
I thought his guns/gun licences had been taken away?
Mind I expect there are enough one the Sandringham estate for something to be lying around. (Cough)
Are we allowing him the proverbial tumbler of whisky as well?
Mr Trump is now apparently determined to decline support for the transfer of the islands to Mauritius, arguing that the transter would reduce the utility of the Diego Garcia airbase. It is hard to disagree with his assessment. The result is that Sir Keir is in a bind of his own making.
* "International law" compels the Prime Minister to seek Mr Trump's approval to surrender the islands; "international law" compels him to surrender the islands; * "international law" compels him to block the use of the British bases, enraging the White House in the process.
This is government as farce.
It is hard to escape the notion that in Sir Keir's ideal world, the job of Prime Minister would be purely ceremonial. There would be little room for individual judgment or decision making. All acts of government would emerge fully formed from the duties and obligations of the legal system. As much as it may disappoint him, that is not the world we live in. It is high time Sir Keir realised as much.
Harsh, but brutally fair. He doesn't know how to fly the plane, or even that the plane needs flying. Political parties really should stop fielding innocents like this: believing that he is "fundamentally decent" is really not enough. He's the most unfit PM since May.
Is that May 1781?
According to google, Uranus was discovered in 1781. So yes, Starmer is worse than Uranus.
Russia Orders Google to Pay $1.2 Quintillion—A Fine One Million Times Bigger Than the World Economy — UNITED24 Media https://share.google/RyuiyuPJdNqBQVw8O
Omnisis normally do online polling but it would be more difficult to do that in this instance . If it was a phone poll then the Reform figure is likely to be an underestimate.
It could well underestimate the Green vote too, as youngsters are notoriously hard to get a representative poll from.
Labour need to stop chasing Reform voters.
Many of those will not be coming back to Labour or are new voters . If Reform win it will be down to a progressive split and should act as a wake up call .
If this poll is accurate, the difference between first and third place will be about 1,800 votes.
Now McSweeney gone Labour will focus a lot more on Polanski
Labour are actually a lot Greener than Polanski.
If they attack on that basis, the critical difference between core Green policy and corbyn heavy Polanski the cult figure, they can make significant inroads in time.
But Polanski is more socialist than Labour.
A bit of raw communism would be a welcome change from almost 80 years of capitalist/ mixed economy failure.
The "Greens" seem to have learnt from the traditional big three that the key to success in British politics is to promote policies that are in opposition to the party's founding raison d'etre. "Reform" are edging towards status quoism as well.
'A Labour source tells us "we're very confident the undecideds are breaking for us"
They say this poll was commissioned by a firm that donated £10,000 to the Greens and argue the Greens’ own polling had them at 35% - meaning a 15% drop
The Labour source is comparing a figure with undecided/won't vote to a figure without. If you adjust to be like for like its within the margin of error.
Hi folks, @viewcode here. Some days ago, somebody on PB mentioned an aphorism about research required to rebut a point on the internet took ten times more time than it took to put it there in the first place. They called it "B___"s Law, where "B___" was a longish word beginning with "B". The AIs are unhelpful so can somebody recall it for me?
(and no, I'm not thinking of Cunningham's Law)
It's literally the first result if you google "research required to rebut a point on the internet took ten times more time than it took to put it there in the first place"
People still use “ye olde ygoogle”?
Aww. Bless. That’s like looking up a number in the Yellow Pages
I used "Ye olde Google" only this morning to answer a question that Copilot said had no answer
Omnisis normally do online polling but it would be more difficult to do that in this instance . If it was a phone poll then the Reform figure is likely to be an underestimate.
It could well underestimate the Green vote too, as youngsters are notoriously hard to get a representative poll from.
Labour need to stop chasing Reform voters.
Many of those will not be coming back to Labour or are new voters . If Reform win it will be down to a progressive split and should act as a wake up call .
If this poll is accurate, the difference between first and third place will be about 1,800 votes.
Now McSweeney gone Labour will focus a lot more on Polanski
Labour are actually a lot Greener than Polanski.
If they attack on that basis, the critical difference between core Green policy and corbyn heavy Polanski the cult figure, they can make significant inroads in time.
But Polanski is more socialist than Labour.
A bit of raw communism would be a welcome change from almost 80 years of capitalist/ mixed economy failure.
Yes, but the Greens never talk ecology, never trumpet their policies on climate action, or spell out what the green economy is, and green foreign policy actually is - or defend the cost of it. They are acting simply as a mid term protest party, every day now they are making shrinking of their vote to virtually zero come tight contested General Election perfectly predictable.
The Green Parties weakness is their lack of green credentials, something that can sway Green votes back to the Labour Party.
The poor Green strategists probably think they only need to talk Green policies in the 4 weeks of the 2029 General Election, blissfully unaware of the damage they are doing to themselves today.
I wonder what proportion would agree that Andrew should be hanged,
Probably above 50%.
He might take the Epstein Checkout....
It's unlikely Epstein checked himself out. Would his assassins do the same for Andrew? He is probably less of a threat, as long as he doesn't start singing, and one imagines he'd be a little less easy to access.
So unless he's a DIY man, he's going to be around for a while.
The problem the rich and powerful have with AMW, of course, is that he's stupid. Very stupid. Very very very stupid. Like, dafter than a bag of spanners, but without the charm or from-within-a-paper-bag-navigational ability. So who knows what he'll do if left alone.
Andrew is what used to be described as “educationally sub-normal”.
This upsets me. Are we saying he's a sick c*** because he's what? Autistic. That is often the PB go to in a situation like this.
On the other hand it could be that he's both lazy and entitled because he was spoilt and smothered by his mum.
Taken to a brothel to lose his virginity at 11 more likely to be an impact than being spoilt.
Are we suggesting Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor is the victim here?
The only outcome I can see now is, with his access to weapons, he takes his own life.
And that isn’t good.
Maybe Epstein's assassin can help him out.
I don't believe Andrew, like Epstein has it in him to do the dirty deed himself. A one way first class ticket to Abu Dhabi or Tel Aviv is more his way.
I wonder what proportion would agree that Andrew should be hanged,
Probably above 50%.
He might take the Epstein Checkout....
It's unlikely Epstein checked himself out. Would his assassins do the same for Andrew? He is probably less of a threat, as long as he doesn't start singing, and one imagines he'd be a little less easy to access.
So unless he's a DIY man, he's going to be around for a while.
The problem the rich and powerful have with AMW, of course, is that he's stupid. Very stupid. Very very very stupid. Like, dafter than a bag of spanners, but without the charm or from-within-a-paper-bag-navigational ability. So who knows what he'll do if left alone.
Andrew is what used to be described as “educationally sub-normal”.
Did he not fly helicopters in the Falklands? He cannot be that stupid, surely? Or do those things basically fly themselves?
Exactly, he got 3 A levels in English, Economics and History and most people don't even have A levels.
Andrew is not educationally sub normal even if not very high IQ either, he just showed poor judgement. Though then so did self made billionaires like Gates and 2 Presidents of the USA , Trump and Clinton and Cabinet Ministers and Ambassadors like Mandelson, many of whom had Ivy League and Oxbridge degrees and high IQs but still socialised with Epstein and even went to his dodgy island in some cases
The bottom line - and the summary of Cyclefree’s lead in dramatically fewer words - is that none of them expected ever to be found out, and in the unlikely event that they ever were, most of them expected to be able to pull on their connections to ensure they didn’t suffer any significant penalty.
The sad truth is that if ever the prior establishment is overthrown as a result of their misbehaviour, another bunch of crooks will be poised ready to take their place. Remember that Italians originally supported Berlusconi out of disgust at the corruption and grift of the establishment politicians exposed during Tangentopoli, only to suffer even more corruption and grift thereafter.
I wonder what proportion would agree that Andrew should be hanged,
Probably above 50%.
He might take the Epstein Checkout....
It's unlikely Epstein checked himself out. Would his assassins do the same for Andrew? He is probably less of a threat, as long as he doesn't start singing, and one imagines he'd be a little less easy to access.
So unless he's a DIY man, he's going to be around for a while.
The problem the rich and powerful have with AMW, of course, is that he's stupid. Very stupid. Very very very stupid. Like, dafter than a bag of spanners, but without the charm or from-within-a-paper-bag-navigational ability. So who knows what he'll do if left alone.
Andrew is what used to be described as “educationally sub-normal”.
This upsets me. Are we saying he's a sick c*** because he's what? Autistic. That is often the PB go to in a situation like this.
On the other hand it could be that he's both lazy and entitled because he was spoilt and smothered by his mum.
Taken to a brothel to lose his virginity at 11 more likely to be an impact than being spoilt.
Are we suggesting Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor is the victim here?
The only outcome I can see now is, with his access to weapons, he takes his own life.
And that isn’t good.
Maybe Epstein's assassin can help him out.
I don't believe Andrew, like Epstein has it in him to do the dirty deed himself. A one way first class ticket to Abu Dhabi or Tel Aviv is more his way.
No. It’s the only news flash as outcome to this I can foresee. And it’s very sad and sobering, actually.
It should have been an easy decision on tariffs but with that court you never know. But will the decision mean handing back the tariffs collected or have they figured a way to justify holding onto them?
It should have been an easy decision on tariffs but with that court you never know. But will the decision mean handing back the tariffs collected or have they figured a way to justify holding onto them?
I think the world Cyclefree describes so well is likely to carry on in some form unless there is some remarkable transformation in the areas of human nature, sex, money, power, fame, and the imbalances of the law.
In particular Cyclefree's own point describes it. 'Not Brave Enough'. Drawing attention to certain truths requires courage, willingness to face loss, risk, the law's imbalances and sometimes other dangers.
I mention just one set of very particular imbalances. A lowly allegation maker will find it is open season on their character, prospects and person. The rich and powerful have the advantage of 'innocent until proved guilty', in criminal matters the advantage of 'beyond reasonable doubt', the advantage of being able to use the legal system to shut down little people and the advantage of a network of the powerful.
As long as 'telling truth to power' carries this degree of cost and imbalance, requiring that degree of courage, human nature tells us we have a problem.
I think we saw this in the Peggie vs NHS Fife tribunal. Its entirely irrelevant to whether woman should have a single sex changing room that she once shared some sub-Jim Davidson 'jokes' on WhatsApp. Yet now, on X, all the pro-trans posters portray Peggie, a nurse with 30 years on unblemished service, as a latter day Enoch Powell or Bernard Manning.
The NHS is notorious for going after every whistle-blower or internal complainant in this fashion. Occasionally some poor soul puts their head above the parapet & has their life destroyed by NHS management “pour encourager les autres”.
It’s all very well for Cyclefree to argue that people should simply be braver, but when you are part of a system that will cheerfully destroy your ability to work in your chosen career ever again, it (unsurprisingly) turns out that few people are willing to call out bad behaviour when the price of doing so is so very, very high.
You are quite right about the NHS.
But to answer your interesting point, I have spent much of my career establishing whistleblowing functions and investigating whistleblowing complaints. By the end a good half of my work related to such investigations. And it is precisely because we cannot rely on individual brave heroes that we need to establish really effective ways of allowing those complaints or issues to be raised and investigated in a way which does not require suicidal bravery by one individual.
It is not a matter of having a well written procedure. What you need above all is an effective investigations team stuffed by people with integrity and guts but above all people who are trustworthy and visible. I did investigations so I had a licence to ask questions others didn't. But the best thing I did by talking endlessly to everyone in the firm about my team's work and why it mattered was to give people a route to raise concerns without needing to put themselves in the firing line. They knew they could trust my team - to keep their confidences, to be professional, to protect them and, in the words of one "not to be afraid of anyone". Every time I did a talk I would get people coming to me or my team to raise issues. They knew the existence of my team gave them permission to speak up, to be a little bit brave but it also took the burden off them. We were a sort of lightning rod.
That is what the NHS and many other organisations need.
And then if you encourage people to raise issues early they are not crises to be managed but small problems which can be sorted, usually relatively easily without too much pain and without forcing people into horrible moral dilemmas.
I diagree about whistleblowing in the NHS.
As a junior doctor 3 decades ago, I blew the whistle on a senior Consultant who I discovered had done some serious malpractice. I did this after taking advice from my medical indemnity advisors. The Consultant in question left the Trust after the investigation, with compensation going to the patient involved. It was completely confidential. After the dust settled the Medical Director personally phoned me to thank me for my actions.
As a senior Consultant myself I have done a fair bit of work for the Medical Director's* "Secret Police" investigating a varied number of concerns about senior clinicians with accusations of financial fraud, clinical incompetence, bullying, sexual harrassement etc etc. Some of these were inconclusive, with insufficient evidence for disciplinary action/sacking/prosecution, but I cannot remember one where the whistleblower raising the concerns was ostracised in any way.
Perhaps my Trust is exceptional, but I do not think so. We only hear about whistleblowers being torn to shreds when it goes wrong. It simply isn't news when the system works.
* Different Trust and different Medical Director.
Your Trust might not be exceptional, but from your regular posts about it, is certainly seems to be one of the better ones. But there are obviously examples where things have gone very badly wrong, and it can take decades to resolve (the blood transfusion scandal being one of the more egregious examples).
I have confidence in the SMT at my Trust. They work under difficult conditions and targets but in the main are good people trying to do the right things.
The Blood Products scandal had many wrinkles to it, but I don't think there was any element of demonising whistleblowers in it, so may not be a good example. The Bristol Childrens Heart scandal is a different kettle of fish.
No, but it was a good example of deferring to doctors simply because they were doctors, and then hiding a problem because it had become too big to deal with. There were very likely multiple opportunities along the way (within government as much as the health system) where whistleblowing might have prevented what was effectively a decades long coverup.
By and large the Blood Products scandal had little to do with doctors (I was taught as an undergraduate in the eighties that pooled blood products carries an infection risk including Non A Non B hepatitis and HIV). The errors and cover up were almost entirely at senior management level and governmental level rather than clinician level.
I'd agree that government was principally to blame (along with senior NHS management), but the enquiry report does not exonerate clinicians.
https://www.infectedbloodinquiry.org.uk/sites/default/files/Volume_5.pdf ..despite the knowledge of the risks of viral infection arising from blood transfusion, in the UK in the 1970s and 1980s blood was often administered by clinicians without a detailed consideration of the risk to patients of transfusion-transmitted infections. The evidence of patients, clinicians and academics, as well as contemporaneous documents demonstrates that from the 1970s to 1990s in Northern Ireland, Wales, Scotland and England blood was given to some patients unnecessarily. Either a transfusion was not strictly medically required, or patients were given more blood than was necessary. Although textbooks, medical education, articles and clinical guidelines emphasised the need for caution, this was not generally the reality on the ground. Some specialisms were (wrongly) particularly enthusiastic about giving blood to patients – the practice of “topping up” women after labour with one or two units of blood was not only contrary to the relevant guidelines but was also ineffective. A similar practice was deployed by some surgeons...
And, of course there's the appalling case of the Treloar children, who were, entirely without informed consent, treated as medical guinea pigs, and of whom the majority died of blood borne diseases, some after decades of suffering.
Omnisis normally do online polling but it would be more difficult to do that in this instance . If it was a phone poll then the Reform figure is likely to be an underestimate.
It could well underestimate the Green vote too, as youngsters are notoriously hard to get a representative poll from.
Labour need to stop chasing Reform voters.
Many of those will not be coming back to Labour or are new voters . If Reform win it will be down to a progressive split and should act as a wake up call .
If this poll is accurate, the difference between first and third place will be about 1,800 votes.
Now McSweeney gone Labour will focus a lot more on Polanski
Labour are actually a lot Greener than Polanski.
If they attack on that basis, the critical difference between core Green policy and corbyn heavy Polanski the cult figure, they can make significant inroads in time.
But Polanski is more socialist than Labour.
A bit of raw communism would be a welcome change from almost 80 years of capitalist/ mixed economy failure.
If Labour play their cards right particularly with regard to Gaza and Trump in most places where the election is close enough most Greens will vote Labour. Most people I know are saying they'll vote Green including me but faced with a possible fascist or quasi-fascist like Kemi I'm sure we'd all weaken
As we speak Lammy is in Washington to explain/capitulate on why we don't fancy carpet bombing Tehran.
Omnisis normally do online polling but it would be more difficult to do that in this instance . If it was a phone poll then the Reform figure is likely to be an underestimate.
It could well underestimate the Green vote too, as youngsters are notoriously hard to get a representative poll from.
Labour need to stop chasing Reform voters.
Many of those will not be coming back to Labour or are new voters . If Reform win it will be down to a progressive split and should act as a wake up call .
If this poll is accurate, the difference between first and third place will be about 1,800 votes.
Now McSweeney gone Labour will focus a lot more on Polanski
Labour are actually a lot Greener than Polanski.
If they attack on that basis, the critical difference between core Green policy and corbyn heavy Polanski the cult figure, they can make significant inroads in time.
But Polanski is more socialist than Labour.
A bit of raw communism would be a welcome change from almost 80 years of capitalist/ mixed economy failure.
The "Greens" seem to have learnt from the traditional big three that the key to success in British politics is to promote policies that are in opposition to the party's founding raison d'etre. "Reform" are edging towards status quoism as well.
Ideology is for a very broad vision to unify internal factions, and for the style of narrative employed for and against you.
Inbetween that every policy on earth can probably fit.
Omnisis normally do online polling but it would be more difficult to do that in this instance . If it was a phone poll then the Reform figure is likely to be an underestimate.
It could well underestimate the Green vote too, as youngsters are notoriously hard to get a representative poll from.
Labour need to stop chasing Reform voters.
Many of those will not be coming back to Labour or are new voters . If Reform win it will be down to a progressive split and should act as a wake up call .
If this poll is accurate, the difference between first and third place will be about 1,800 votes.
Now McSweeney gone Labour will focus a lot more on Polanski
Labour are actually a lot Greener than Polanski.
If they attack on that basis, the critical difference between core Green policy and corbyn heavy Polanski the cult figure, they can make significant inroads in time.
But Polanski is more socialist than Labour.
A bit of raw communism would be a welcome change from almost 80 years of capitalist/ mixed economy failure.
If Labour play their cards right particularly with regard to Gaza and Trump in most places where the election is close enough most Greens will vote Labour. Most people I know are saying they'll vote Green including me but faced with a possible fascist or quasi-fascist like Kemi I'm sure we'd all weaken
As we speak Lammy is in Washington to explain/capitulate on why we don't fancy carpet bombing Tehran.
"Wouldn't Turkey be an easier target for carpet bombing?"
If I know President Trump like I think I do, he'll be sanguine about this reversal, won't take it personally, and will carefully read and consider the legal judgment before commenting further.
Omnisis normally do online polling but it would be more difficult to do that in this instance . If it was a phone poll then the Reform figure is likely to be an underestimate.
It could well underestimate the Green vote too, as youngsters are notoriously hard to get a representative poll from.
Labour need to stop chasing Reform voters.
Many of those will not be coming back to Labour or are new voters . If Reform win it will be down to a progressive split and should act as a wake up call .
If this poll is accurate, the difference between first and third place will be about 1,800 votes.
Now McSweeney gone Labour will focus a lot more on Polanski
Labour are actually a lot Greener than Polanski.
If they attack on that basis, the critical difference between core Green policy and corbyn heavy Polanski the cult figure, they can make significant inroads in time.
But Polanski is more socialist than Labour.
A bit of raw communism would be a welcome change from almost 80 years of capitalist/ mixed economy failure.
If Labour play their cards right particularly with regard to Gaza and Trump in most places where the election is close enough most Greens will vote Labour. Most people I know are saying they'll vote Green including me but faced with a possible fascist or quasi-fascist like Kemi I'm sure we'd all weaken
As we speak Lammy is in Washington to explain/capitulate on why we don't fancy carpet bombing Tehran.
I reckon Labour will relent and give the go ahead. I’m 100% sure of it.
It’s true though, with Cooper and Lammy Stateside, there’s a lot of serious top level discussions about what the mission statement given out at the start of it is going to be.
I wonder what proportion would agree that Andrew should be hanged,
Probably above 50%.
He might take the Epstein Checkout....
It's unlikely Epstein checked himself out. Would his assassins do the same for Andrew? He is probably less of a threat, as long as he doesn't start singing, and one imagines he'd be a little less easy to access.
So unless he's a DIY man, he's going to be around for a while.
The problem the rich and powerful have with AMW, of course, is that he's stupid. Very stupid. Very very very stupid. Like, dafter than a bag of spanners, but without the charm or from-within-a-paper-bag-navigational ability. So who knows what he'll do if left alone.
Andrew is what used to be described as “educationally sub-normal”.
How do you know? I imagine there are criteria for being educationally sub-normal? I have worked with two of his ex's and both were bright and attractive. That doesn't say he isn't educationally sub-normal but I can't see why such attractive and sparky girls would have wanted to spend time with someone stupid. There is something quite judgemental about this thread. As DJ pointed out girls or boys who choose to sell their services for sex might well have done so by choice.
"but I can't see why such attractive and sparky girls would have wanted to spend time with someone stupid"
Hmm, I wonder. The response of ex footballer Peter Crouch when asked what he would have been if he hadn't been a footballer springs to mind.*
Can you really not imagine why attractive and sparky women might want to hang around the 2nd in line to the throne, a man who would give you the ticket to a lifetime of luxury and privilege? Really?
*"A virgin"
I think you missed the memo. Women who sell themselves have no choice. They have been trafficked or coerced. They don't make decisions for themselves
Omnisis normally do online polling but it would be more difficult to do that in this instance . If it was a phone poll then the Reform figure is likely to be an underestimate.
It could well underestimate the Green vote too, as youngsters are notoriously hard to get a representative poll from.
Labour need to stop chasing Reform voters.
Many of those will not be coming back to Labour or are new voters . If Reform win it will be down to a progressive split and should act as a wake up call .
If this poll is accurate, the difference between first and third place will be about 1,800 votes.
Now McSweeney gone Labour will focus a lot more on Polanski
Labour are actually a lot Greener than Polanski.
If they attack on that basis, the critical difference between core Green policy and corbyn heavy Polanski the cult figure, they can make significant inroads in time.
But Polanski is more socialist than Labour.
A bit of raw communism would be a welcome change from almost 80 years of capitalist/ mixed economy failure.
Yes, but the Greens never talk ecology, never trumpet their policies on climate action, or spell out what the green economy is, and green foreign policy actually is - or defend the cost of it. They are acting simply as a mid term protest party, every day now they are making shrinking of their vote to virtually zero come tight contested General Election perfectly predictable.
The Green Parties weakness is their lack of green credentials, something that can sway Green votes back to the Labour Party.
The poor Green strategists probably think they only need to talk Green policies in the 4 weeks of the 2029 General Election, blissfully unaware of the damage they are doing to themselves today.
There’s a significant body of younger voters who see the injustice of the current economic settlement and are looking to someone to champion their cause, against the established status quo of the boomer generation, enjoying their triple lock and almost complete protection from austerity. Clegg captured some of this during the brief ‘Cleggmania’ in 2010, only to sacrifice it on the altar of higher tuition fees. Next up was that Corbyn, celebrity from Glasto, during his 2017 campaign. The Greens are simply the latest manifestation of the younger generation’s desire to take control of our politics. Whether they’ll succeed at this latest attempt, I don’t know, but the brutal reality of ageing is that, sooner or later, the boomer generation will have to cede control of our politics, earlier in the UK and Europe than in the US, given our understandable reluctance to elect people to rule us who are already suffering from pre-dementia.
Russia Orders Google to Pay $1.2 Quintillion—A Fine One Million Times Bigger Than the World Economy — UNITED24 Media https://share.google/RyuiyuPJdNqBQVw8O
Perhaps Putin can take the judgment to a pawn broker to bail out the Russian economy?
No, me neither.
Although after a lot of expensive lawyers, Google will get it reduced to a mere $100 trillion.
Comments
https://x.com/rockallisland?s=21&t=LYVEHh2mqFy1oUJAdCfe-Q
He seemed to be in total shock, close to breakdown.
I almost felt sorry for him.
Many of those will not be coming back to Labour or are new voters . If Reform win it will be down to a progressive split and should act as a wake up call .
If you do, stop yourself and remember how he got where he is today.
Yet the media headlines take it so seriously “based on Chancellor’s own iron rules there is now £40B black hole to fill in the budget.”
I don’t mind you saying I am wrong - I simply conveyed how every single media outlet reported it. That doesn’t necessarily make your interpretation wrong. Yet, at the bottom of everything, the IFS has certainly always been left leaning economics think tank. whereas my own Fiscal Conservative Thatcherite credentials are impeccable - We can’t keep paying out a £1T a year state spending bill financed by borrowed money - to respect the NHS etc and put it on sure footing can’t keep funding it on a maxed out credit card.
‘ A cafe owner is "sick to death" of being abused because she will not let people use her loo unless they are customers’
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4g7r01xqzlo
They trademarked the name before the announcement
But there are obviously examples where things have gone very badly wrong, and it can take decades to resolve (the blood transfusion scandal being one of the more egregious examples).
I certainly wouldn't have wanted his childhood and life.
*innocent face*
(I haven't been keeping up.)
Entire leadership of Reform UK’s Ossett & Denby Dale and Dewsbury & Batley branch resigns en masse.
All five elected local officers of the Reform UK branch covering Ossett & Denby Dale and Dewsbury & Batley have resigned with immediate effect today, 19 February 2026.
The mass resignation follows serious allegations of candidate interference at regional level. Branch sources claim that Regional Directors instructed the removal of already-selected local candidates in order to make way for high-profile defectors from the Conservative Party.
The departing officers — who together comprised the entire elected leadership of the combined branch — stated that they could no longer continue under what they describe as unacceptable top-down interference in local democratic processes.
The branch had been actively preparing its campaign infrastructure and candidate slate ahead of the upcoming Kirklees local elections. The sudden departure of the full leadership team is expected to cause significant disruption to those preparations.
https://x.com/CharlieSimpsonA/status/2024583560938868863
Australia, I believe, has highly regulated brothels. That is probably the best option.
Good pilot, thick = rotary wing
Bad pilot, not thick = multi engine
Good pilot, not thick = fast jet
Bad pilot, thick = chopped
None of that applies to AMW or any other shitstain royal because they will get posted to whatever they want and will get as many hours as it takes from the most senior instructors to qualify them (eg Baldy Basketcase on Sea King).
Hmm, I wonder. The response of ex footballer Peter Crouch when asked what he would have been if he hadn't been a footballer springs to mind.*
Can you really not imagine why attractive and sparky women might want to hang around the 2nd in line to the throne, a man who would give you the ticket to a lifetime of luxury and privilege? Really?
*"A virgin"
The Blood Products scandal had many wrinkles to it, but I don't think there was any element of demonising whistleblowers in it, so may not be a good example. The Bristol Childrens Heart scandal is a different kettle of fish.
Samples was 452
On the other hand it could be that he's both lazy and entitled because he was spoilt and smothered by his mum.
Labour are actually a lot Greener than Polanski.
If they attack on that basis, the critical difference between core Green policy and corbyn heavy Polanski the cult figure, they can make significant inroads in time.
Or he may genuinely leap unassisted from a window.....assuming he knows how to open one and it's not on the ground floor.
A bit of raw communism would be a welcome change from almost 80 years of capitalist/ mixed economy failure.
Some odd results in the breakdown too.
There were very likely multiple opportunities along the way (within government as much as the health system) where whistleblowing might have prevented what was effectively a decades long coverup.
Andrew is not educationally sub normal even if not very high IQ either, he just showed poor judgement. Though then so did self made billionaires like Gates and 2 Presidents of the USA , Trump and Clinton and Cabinet Ministers and Ambassadors like Mandelson, many of whom had Ivy League and Oxbridge degrees and high IQs but still socialised with Epstein and even went to his dodgy island in some cases
Aww. Bless. That’s like looking up a number in the Yellow Pages
https://findoutnow.co.uk/blog/gorton-and-denton-by-election-poll/
'A Labour source tells us "we're very confident the undecideds are breaking for us"
They say this poll was commissioned by a firm that donated £10,000 to the Greens and argue the Greens’ own polling had them at 35% - meaning a 15% drop
"The Greens are not credible"
https://x.com/PolitlcsUK/status/2024854011879227846?s=20
"More than half the population of England and Wales now has at least two A-levels or a higher qualification"
Although that's because of younger cohorts than Andrew's.
He sadly won't talk - because he is a weak and stupid and venal man. For that he deserves the book thrown at him. I suspect it won't happen. The pressure on the Police / CPS is no doubt already being applied.
And that isn’t good.
1 - How prominent is the Israel-Palestine issue
2 - Have we had peace in Ukraine and the resulting economic peace dividend that will benefit household finances
Not appointing Mandelson, extra £20bns, £20bns black holes, Chagos, et al or even who their leader is.
Mind I expect there are enough one the Sandringham estate for something to be lying around. (Cough)
A lot of previously non-political people will have signed up with Reform, seeing it as a way to overthrow the political status quo, as did the SDP attract many such folk in the 1980s, subsequently allied with local Liberals who back then were firmly outside the status quo.
So put yourself in the shoes of the guy in Romford who appears to have been a driving force in founding the local Reform branch, pounding the streets and manning the stalls to sign up new people to their anti-politics movement, only to find that now he’s expected to campaign to re-elect precisely the same guy who they’ve been campaigning against as an exemplar of the corrupt establishment. He simply couldn’t do it, which is why he’s walked away. Those Liberals and fresh-faced SDP recruits found themselves in the same position back in the 1980s, when their Labour MP suddenly jumped to the SDP and expected those folks wanting to overthrow the system to campaign instead for his (I believe they were all men) re-election. No surprise that many of these carpet-baggers faced independent Liberal opponents and almost all of them failed to secure re-election.
Hopefully the same fate awaits carpet-baggers like Rosindell and his ilk.
SCOTUS just now:
"IEEPA does not authorize the President to impose tariffs."
It appears to be a 6-3 decision authored by Roberts.
https://x.com/Taniel/status/2024862265212555528?s=20
Russia Orders Google to Pay $1.2 Quintillion—A Fine One Million Times Bigger Than the World Economy — UNITED24 Media https://share.google/RyuiyuPJdNqBQVw8O
The Green Parties weakness is their lack of green credentials, something that can sway Green votes back to the Labour Party.
The poor Green strategists probably think they only need to talk Green policies in the 4 weeks of the 2029 General Election, blissfully unaware of the damage they are doing to themselves today.
I don't believe Andrew, like Epstein has it in him to do the dirty deed himself. A one way first class ticket to Abu Dhabi or Tel Aviv is more his way.
The sad truth is that if ever the prior establishment is overthrown as a result of their misbehaviour, another bunch of crooks will be poised ready to take their place. Remember that Italians originally supported Berlusconi out of disgust at the corruption and grift of the establishment politicians exposed during Tangentopoli, only to suffer even more corruption and grift thereafter.
https://x.com/megatron_ron/status/2024811380386263510?s=61&t=LYVEHh2mqFy1oUJAdCfe-Q
Funny, he looks a complete wrong un too but in a totally different way to our royal beast.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/feb/02/marius-borg-hoiby-son-of-norway-crown-princess-arrested-new-charges-before-rape-trial
https://www.infectedbloodinquiry.org.uk/sites/default/files/Volume_5.pdf
..despite the knowledge of the risks of viral infection arising from blood transfusion, in the
UK in the 1970s and 1980s blood was often administered by clinicians without a detailed
consideration of the risk to patients of transfusion-transmitted infections. The evidence of
patients, clinicians and academics, as well as contemporaneous documents demonstrates
that from the 1970s to 1990s in Northern Ireland, Wales, Scotland and England blood was
given to some patients unnecessarily. Either a transfusion was not strictly medically required,
or patients were given more blood than was necessary.
Although textbooks, medical education, articles and clinical guidelines emphasised the
need for caution, this was not generally the reality on the ground. Some specialisms were
(wrongly) particularly enthusiastic about giving blood to patients – the practice of “topping
up” women after labour with one or two units of blood was not only contrary to the relevant
guidelines but was also ineffective. A similar practice was deployed by some surgeons...
And, of course there's the appalling case of the Treloar children, who were, entirely without informed consent, treated as medical guinea pigs, and of whom the majority died of blood borne diseases, some after decades of suffering.
A quite bizarre career story in a way.
So a bright day for the world economy and American consumers.
Inbetween that every policy on earth can probably fit.
Also a non zero chance he bombs Iran or invades Canada or whatever, we're into the real syphilitic emperor territory here
That laughter you hear is Mark Carney.
It’s true though, with Cooper and Lammy Stateside, there’s a lot of serious top level discussions about what the mission statement given out at the start of it is going to be.
I bet you are relieved that your boy Trump has been totally exonerated by the last Epstein evidence drop.
Trump's sweeping global tariffs struck down by US Supreme Court ruling - follow live - BBC News
No, me neither.
Although after a lot of expensive lawyers, Google will get it reduced to a mere $100 trillion.
(No i'm not saying the liberal justices are not very political)