Off on a cruise with Mrs BJ and 2 paid Carers later today.
My non league team @staveleymwfc are in the play offs at step 6 and should they make the final on 2.5.26 I will need to drive the WAV back from Southampton like Lewis Hamilton to make the game at either Coalville FC or Stapleford FC
Good morning
Have a wonderful cruise with your wife and carers. Our days of world travel and cruises are over but we have so many treasured memories of places visited
Interesting polling in the Texas Senate race. The Republicans have yet to decide - on May 26th - between Paxton and Cornyn (which is like a forced choice between cancer and dementia). TPR has the race 48% to Paxton, 40% to Cornyn.
However, so polarized are the two camps that if Paxton is the choice, then 25% of those who wanted Cornyn will vote for the Democrat, James Talarico. 10% of Paxton voters say they will vote for Talarico if Cornyn is the candidate. With Paxton the likely choice on this polling, that suggest that the Dems could get a big crossover from disgruntled Republicans. It is enough to move the contest firmly to the Democrats. Cornyn got 910k votes in the first round of primary voting. So this TPR polling suggests as many as 200k could be going to Talarico in protest. And the Democrats already polled more voters in the primary than the Republicans.
It is such a mess that Trump is currently not expected to endorse either Paxton or Cornyn. And James Talarico raised $27m in the first quarter, a huge and record amount.
Interesting polling in the Texas Senate race. The Republicans have yet to decide - on May 26th - between Paxton and Cornyn (which is like a forced choice between cancer and dementia). TPR has the race 48% to Paxton, 40% to Cornyn.
However, so polarized are the two camps that if Paxton is the choice, then 25% of those who wanted Cornyn will vote for the Democrat, James Talarico. 10% of Paxton voters say they will vote for Talarico if Cornyn is the candidate. With Paxton the likely choice on this polling, that suggest that the Dems could get a big crossover from disgruntled Republicans. It is enough to move the contest firmly to the Democrats. Cornyn got 910k votes in the first round of primary voting. So this TPR polling suggests as many as 200k could be going to Talarico in protest. And the Democrats already polled more voters in the primary than the Republicans.
It is such a mess that Trump is currently not expected to endorse either Paxton or Cornyn. And James Talarico raised $27m dollars in the first quarter, a huge and record amount.
Stone wall and lawn. And forsythia. Such a cheering sight. The raised beds will be in similar stonework on the other side of that wall - creating a parterre /potager view from the seats at the top of the crag.
I mean law and politics are all very well. But designing and making something creative and which outlives you is the real joy in life.
Nice
And I know whereof you speak. I can’t believe I am saying this, but I have really enjoyed creating two balconies full of herbs, succulents, and little trees this last year. I have two south facing balconies. They are basically too small for chairs so never really did much until a friend firmly suggested: put some fucking greenery out there
Now I have done that and they are full of life. Bees and spiders and ants too, but hey ho. It’s all life. They demand attention and I actually worry about them when I go away, which is unusual for me - to put it mildly - but the reward is significant. Somehow the greenery outside the flat makes the whole flat seem much bigger and nicer, and I am not sure why. It’s just a lot of pot plants. But it works
And yes I get a buzz out of curating and creating something pretty and alive
I saw this in one of your flat photos and was going to tease you about it. A little bit of greenery is so cheering even in the smallest space.Get an automatic sprinkler if you can.
I got v excited about my new lawnmower which has - don't laugh - assisted power because the entire garden (half a hectare) is on a hill and the salesman thought that it would be helpful for me. Anyway, the scent of newly mown grass is childhood. And lying on a lawn in sunshine is just pure happiness.
That wall is one of the most beautiful things I've seen. The detail of the work is wonderful. The guy who made it is both a craftsman and an artist. Working with him to build this - and much else - was a real highlight of last year.
Yeah, I’m a late developer when it comes to interior design and feng shui and home comforts. Mainly because I spent the first four decades of my adult life furiously exploring the world, and doing lots of risky shit, from dangerous drugs to dangerous war zones, almost none of which I regret, because it was fabulously exciting. But now I have accepted my age, and belatedly seen the great positives in things like…. Plants. Sometimes I just sit in my chair in my flat and stare at my plants, for half an hour. True story. It soothes me. I don’t know why. I can also do the same with a really exquisite antique - recently I bought an Art Nouveau C1900 Kralik Boemian Iridescent Hinged Metal Lidded Ewer Pitcher. 170 pounds for a glass jar!
But it explodes with pale violet light when turned in the hand. Amazing
BTW you know you can get robot mowers that do it all, now? By themselves? I was chatting about this, this very afternoon over tea in a cottage near Lisburn, by Strangford Lough, with my new friend Eileen, who makes sensational rhubarb and ginger jam
Rhubarb and ginger jam sounds like the basis for a really great cream tea...
It was genuinely delicious. Served with butter on “Sultana soda bannock cake” and a pot of good strong black tea. In a winsome little cottage in the lough-side wilds of County Down
Northern Ireland is seriously surprising me. On the upside
Lovely people. Great honest food. Magnificent scenery. Red squirrels
Hope you helping yourself to sleep with a few poems from Seamus Heaney?
Nothing will ever reconcile me to Heaney. He was a mediocre poet, competent at best and pathetic at worst
I have no idea why so many revere him. All he did was write about buckets
It’s paradoxical because I actually met the guy and talked with him and Yes, he was as amiable and charming and Oirish as everyone promised. But the poems? Nope
Plath was the last great English poet (as in: English was her language). The medium of poetry died with her in that kitchen in Primrose Hill, everything since has been footnotes and tweaks and nosegays on a coffin
Same way pop music died with the death of Amy Winehouse, not far away in Camden Town
If you want a great Irish poem -
An Irish Airman foresees his Death BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
I know that I shall meet my fate Somewhere among the clouds above; Those that I fight I do not hate, Those that I guard I do not love; My country is Kiltartan Cross, My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor, No likely end could bring them loss Or leave them happier than before. Nor law, nor duty bade me fight, Nor public men, nor cheering crowds, A lonely impulse of delight Drove to this tumult in the clouds; I balanced all, brought all to mind, The years to come seemed waste of breath, A waste of breath the years behind In balance with this life, this death.
Though for me the last lines of Marvell's To His Coy Mistress sum up the way to live -
Let us roll all our strength and all Our sweetness up into one ball, And tear our pleasures with rough strife Through the iron gates of life: Thus, though we cannot make our sun Stand still, yet we will make him run.
That process appears to have taken weeks, with as many as a dozen officials and lawyers aware of Mandelson’s vetting failure. Starmer’s statement would suggest he was not formally notified by any of them until a few days ago.
Why is my spidey sense tingling. I detect weasel words
As Cyclefree says, the word 'formally' is doing a lot of the heavy lifting here.
I suspect if someone has it in for Starmer, there will be more info leaked on who knew what and when. That may not appear until after the May elections
If we are to believe everything is fine, then some of the Prime Ministers advisors are withholding information from the PM which he really should have known about months ago
But imagine if that shoe falls a few days before voting in May...
That process appears to have taken weeks, with as many as a dozen officials and lawyers aware of Mandelson’s vetting failure. Starmer’s statement would suggest he was not formally notified by any of them until a few days ago.
Why is my spidey sense tingling. I detect weasel words
As Cyclefree says, the word 'formally' is doing a lot of the heavy lifting here.
I suspect if someone has it in for Starmer, there will be more info leaked on who knew what and when. That may not appear until after the May elections
If we are to believe everything is fine, then some of the Prime Ministers advisors are withholding information from the PM which he really should have known about months ago
But imagine if that shoe falls a few days before voting in May...
Then Mr Sarwar will be proved correct!
The timing of this info being made public is very convenient for potential leadership candidates
Interesting polling in the Texas Senate race. The Republicans have yet to decide - on May 26th - between Paxton and Cornyn (which is like a forced choice between cancer and dementia). TPR has the race 48% to Paxton, 40% to Cornyn.
However, so polarized are the two camps that if Paxton is the choice, then 25% of those who wanted Cornyn will vote for the Democrat, James Talarico. 10% of Paxton voters say they will vote for Talarico if Cornyn is the candidate. With Paxton the likely choice on this polling, that suggest that the Dems could get a big crossover from disgruntled Republicans. It is enough to move the contest firmly to the Democrats. Cornyn got 910k votes in the first round of primary voting. So this TPR polling suggests as many as 200k could be going to Talarico in protest. And the Democrats already polled more voters in the primary than the Republicans.
It is such a mess that Trump is currently not expected to endorse either Paxton or Cornyn. And James Talarico raised $27m dollars in the first quarter, a huge and record amount.
Main networks are all reporting that Justice Alito is now not expected to retire this year. Until now, it had been widely thought he would retire.
Nobody is expecting Thomas to retire so if correct the Supreme Court would go into the midterms unchanged.
If Democrats then gain the Senate they can prevent any new Conservative appointments.
I guess maybe Alito could retire immediately after midterms and the Republicans could force through a Trump nominee in the short period before the new Senate meets at the start of January. But not if Alito really does want to remain in place.
If neither does go, Thomas and Alito really would be opening up possibility of change in balance of the Court if Democrats win Senate at midterms and a Democrat President is elected in 2028.
Off on a cruise with Mrs BJ and 2 paid Carers later today.
My non league team @staveleymwfc are in the play offs at step 6 and should they make the final on 2.5.26 I will need to drive the WAV back from Southampton like Lewis Hamilton to make the game at either Coalville FC or Stapleford FC
Hope it is less eventful than other previous holidays...
Main networks are all reporting that Justice Alito is now not expected to retire this year. Until now, it had been widely thought he would retire.
Nobody is expecting Thomas to retire so if correct the Supreme Court would go into the midterms unchanged.
If Democrats then gain the Senate they can prevent any new Conservative appointments.
I guess maybe Alito could retire immediately after midterms and the Republicans could force through a Trump nominee in the short period before the new Senate meets at the start of January. But not if Alito really does want to remain in place.
If neither does go, Thomas and Alito really would be opening up possibility of change in balance of the Court if Democrats win Senate at midterms and a Democrat President is elected in 2028.
Could they not just increase the membership of the Court to 13 or more and flood Court with new Democratic nominees?
It would of course be a corruption of the system, but no worse than what has been done already.
Main networks are all reporting that Justice Alito is now not expected to retire this year. Until now, it had been widely thought he would retire.
Nobody is expecting Thomas to retire so if correct the Supreme Court would go into the midterms unchanged.
If Democrats then gain the Senate they can prevent any new Conservative appointments.
I guess maybe Alito could retire immediately after midterms and the Republicans could force through a Trump nominee in the short period before the new Senate meets at the start of January. But not if Alito really does want to remain in place.
If neither does go, Thomas and Alito really would be opening up possibility of change in balance of the Court if Democrats win Senate at midterms and a Democrat President is elected in 2028.
Thomas was always unlikely to retire whilst he could continue to grift.
Main networks are all reporting that Justice Alito is now not expected to retire this year. Until now, it had been widely thought he would retire.
Nobody is expecting Thomas to retire so if correct the Supreme Court would go into the midterms unchanged.
If Democrats then gain the Senate they can prevent any new Conservative appointments.
I guess maybe Alito could retire immediately after midterms and the Republicans could force through a Trump nominee in the short period before the new Senate meets at the start of January. But not if Alito really does want to remain in place.
If neither does go, Thomas and Alito really would be opening up possibility of change in balance of the Court if Democrats win Senate at midterms and a Democrat President is elected in 2028.
Could they not just increase the membership of the Court to 13 or more and flood Court with new Democratic nominees?
It would of course be a corruption of the system, but no worse than what has been done already.
They could, by changing the 1869 Act, but that would make it tit-for-tat when the Republicans did get the Senate/Presidency again and defeat the object.
More likely they would just block any replacement proposed by Trump and let the court shrink, then a new Dem president (if any) could appoint several en bloc.
Isn't one of the three Dems also reported to be in less than perfect health though?
That process appears to have taken weeks, with as many as a dozen officials and lawyers aware of Mandelson’s vetting failure. Starmer’s statement would suggest he was not formally notified by any of them until a few days ago.
Why is my spidey sense tingling. I detect weasel words
As Cyclefree says, the word 'formally' is doing a lot of the heavy lifting here.
I suspect if someone has it in for Starmer, there will be more info leaked on who knew what and when. That may not appear until after the May elections
If we are to believe everything is fine, then some of the Prime Ministers advisors are withholding information from the PM which he really should have known about months ago
But imagine if that shoe falls a few days before voting in May...
Then Mr Sarwar will be proved correct!
The timing of this info being made public is very convenient for potential leadership candidates
Cyclefree's comment is typically judicious. It is easy to imagine Starmer communicating to Robbins that if there were any doubts about Mandelson's vetting he could not be told formally. There would come a point however where Robbins simply could not sit on it precisely because the risk of it leaking out could be disastrous for the PM. It is still not entirely clear why he continued to do so even under Select Committee interrogation.
I've been stressing on here that there are two vital questions. Who fibbed, and why?
In answer to the first, we now know it wasn't Starmer but the second question remains murky. It looks like a Civil Service collaboration that has gone wrong, but we await details of who knew what and when, and why they thought it was right to withhold information from the PM, formally or otherwise.
That process appears to have taken weeks, with as many as a dozen officials and lawyers aware of Mandelson’s vetting failure. Starmer’s statement would suggest he was not formally notified by any of them until a few days ago.
Why is my spidey sense tingling. I detect weasel words
As Cyclefree says, the word 'formally' is doing a lot of the heavy lifting here.
I suspect if someone has it in for Starmer, there will be more info leaked on who knew what and when. That may not appear until after the May elections
If we are to believe everything is fine, then some of the Prime Ministers advisors are withholding information from the PM which he really should have known about months ago
But imagine if that shoe falls a few days before voting in May...
Then Mr Sarwar will be proved correct!
The timing of this info being made public is very convenient for potential leadership candidates
Cyclefree's comment is typically judicious. It is easy to imagine Starmer communicating to Robbins that if there were any doubts about Mandelson's vetting he could not be told formally. There would come a point however where Robbins simply could not sit on it precisely because the risk of it leaking out could be disastrous for the PM. It is still not entirely clear why he continued to do so even under Select Committee interrogation.
I've been stressing on here that there are two vital questions. Who fibbed, and why?
In answer to the first, we now know it wasn't Starmer but the second question remains murky. It looks like a Civil Service collaboration that has gone wrong, but we await details of who knew what and when, and why they thought it was right to withhold information from the PM, formally or otherwise.
1) All of them 2) Because integrity is no longer even an optional extra in public life.
Main networks are all reporting that Justice Alito is now not expected to retire this year. Until now, it had been widely thought he would retire.
Nobody is expecting Thomas to retire so if correct the Supreme Court would go into the midterms unchanged.
If Democrats then gain the Senate they can prevent any new Conservative appointments.
I guess maybe Alito could retire immediately after midterms and the Republicans could force through a Trump nominee in the short period before the new Senate meets at the start of January. But not if Alito really does want to remain in place.
If neither does go, Thomas and Alito really would be opening up possibility of change in balance of the Court if Democrats win Senate at midterms and a Democrat President is elected in 2028.
Could they not just increase the membership of the Court to 13 or more and flood Court with new Democratic nominees?
It would of course be a corruption of the system, but no worse than what has been done already.
They could, by changing the 1869 Act, but that would make it tit-for-tat when the Republicans did get the Senate/Presidency again and defeat the object.
More likely they would just block any replacement proposed by Trump and let the court shrink, then a new Dem president (if any) could appoint several en bloc.
Isn't one of the three Dems also reported to be in less than perfect health though?
Personally I wouldn't worry about tit-for-tat, Doc. It's a rotten system which has failed the American people. Why not abuse it? It might help to change it to one where judges are appointed on merit rather than politics, and where plainly corrupt members like Thomas can be aimed out.
Watching the latest round of musical senior civil servants and prime ministerial advisors, I'm wondering how close Starmer is getting to being unable to fill the vacancies he keeps creating. When you're recruiting for your fourth chief of staff in slightly less than two years, who would take the role? The odds have to be that his next recruit goes under a bus in about 6 months time - who would want the job on that basis? Similarly with Cabinet Secretaries - if I was an eligible candidate, right now I'd be keeping my head down, and hoping to get the gig under Starmer's replacement - after all, he's virtually certainly to be gone at the next GE if not before, and that's a maximum of just over three years away now. Much better to get a decent run of it under Starmer's successor than have a six month stint before being made the fall guy for Starmer's political problems.
If the pool of candidates for roles like this (and other critical ones, eg communications director) dries up completely, what on earth happens next?
Watching the latest round of musical senior civil servants and prime ministerial advisors, I'm wondering how close Starmer is getting to being unable to fill the vacancies he keeps creating. When you're recruiting for your fourth chief of staff in slightly less than two years, who would take the role? The odds have to be that his next recruit goes under a bus in about 6 months time - who would want the job on that basis? Similarly with Cabinet Secretaries - if I was an eligible candidate, right now I'd be keeping my head down, and hoping to get the gig under Starmer's replacement - after all, he's virtually certainly to be gone at the next GE if not before, and that's probably only three years away now. Much better to get a decent run of it under Starmer's successor than have a six month stint before being made the fall guy for Starmer's political problems.
If the pool of candidates for roles like this (and other critical ones, eg communications director) dries up completely, what on earth happens next?
I think there will always be somebody ambitious enough to want to do it, while secretly knowing they are not up to it so need to take it against no opposition, who will take it anyway.
It will just make things worse because you get idiots like Case or Wormald under those circumstances, but I don't think he'll struggle to fill the posts.
Watching the latest round of musical senior civil servants and prime ministerial advisors, I'm wondering how close Starmer is getting to being unable to fill the vacancies he keeps creating. When you're recruiting for your fourth chief of staff in slightly less than two years, who would take the role? The odds have to be that his next recruit goes under a bus about 6 months time - who would want the job on that basis? Similarly with Cabinet Secretaries - if I was an eligible candidate, right now I'd be keeping my head down, and hoping to get the gig under Starmer's replacement - after all, he's virtually certainly to be gone at the next GE if not before, and that's probably only three years away now. Much better to get a decent run of it under Starmer's successor than have a six month stint before being made the fall guy for Starmer's political problems.
If the pool of candidates for roles like this (and other critical ones, eg communications director) dries up completely, what on earth happens next?
I doubt there will ever be a shortage of candidates for such a plum job. (I'm available, if need be.) More to the point is the effect all this has on the PM's working relationship with his CS advisers. If he really has thrown Sir Olly under the bus (as many think, and some hope) every Government Official is going to be wary about exposing themselves to risk on his behalf.
I just don’t buy any of this growing mountain of total bullshit. It’s gaslighting. You have to believe the entire British civil service conspired to keep the prime minister in the dark that his personally chosen and controversial appointee for our most important diplomatic job failed the fundamental vetting test. And all of this at the same time that the prime minister KNEW that the same controversial man remained friends with a known pedophile and child sex offender after the pedo was convicted
Meanwhile the PM’s aide’s phone containing all the most important messages was miraculously stolen at the best possible moment to hide that evidence
It’s utterly ridiculous. Now they’re trying to muddy the water with endless long confusing emails they’ve made up and ridiculous screeds of boring verbiage in the hope we all get bored and confused and somehow Skyr survives
It might even work. But every day Skyr survives as the least popular premier in history, getting even less popular by the hour, damages the Labour Party, hampers the government, makes their re-election even less likely and is a sad state of affairs for the UK
Andy Burnham stands ready to serve.
As I posted late last night after drinks someone I trust implacably to have their finger on the pulse of deepest Labour says he's on his way.
Burnham grates on me and he isn’t even an MP yet. I’d rather Rayner took over .
Burnham is a legend (in his own mind).
My view is that Burnham would make a better PM but in the cage fight that the next election is going to be between Farage, Polanski and Labour then she is a better choice.
Agreed. Rayner has a genuinely tough backstory, and she is pukka working class. I suspect she is properly bright, you don’t get as far as she has - with her background, in the misogynistic Labour Party - without native cunning and wit
I abhor most of her politics but I admire her grit and sass. I don’t give a fuck about her taxes, tho her hypocrisy does grate
I reckon she’d be a better prime minister than Starmer and she’d be better electioneer than Starmer, Burnham or any of them. She could retrieve some working class Reformers and women who are drifting to Green
She would leak middle class voters from Labour to the Tories and LDs even if she won back some working class voters from Reform and she wouldn't have any more appeal to the Greens than Burnham does either.
Rayner would basically be a female Neil Kinnock
Have you never thought of some rough? Maybe not a Manc, but someone who speaks in Estuary English, drops her "h"s and operates a parallel foreign policy.
When have the British ever voted for someone a bit rough? Middle England prefers their leaders to be a bit more refined, even Hague's thick Yorkshire vowels and Kinnock's Welsh windbagism was too much for them
1964, 1966, and 1974 (twice) - Harold Wilson
That would be the Oxford don, Harold Wilson, that bit of rough?
The nearest we came to proper rough as PM was probably Jim Callaghan. Or, if you want an election winner, John Major.
That probably tells us something uncomfortable about the country we live in.
Both better candidates than Harold, that's for sure. His pipe was an affectation. He was arguably the cleverest PM we have ever had.
Would any of them have made it to the top in contemporary politics? I fear not.
(In the case of Wilson, Callaghan and probably Heath, The War was surely a factor. Whatever its downsides, nothing like war for favouring ability over greasy-pole-climbing.)
More grammar schools, all 3 attended one and then two out of 3 Oxford
From 1964 to 1997 we had 5 PMs all of whom educated at state grammars.
From 1997 to 2026 by contrast we have had 8 PMs, 5 of whom educated at private schools (Starmer's a grammar before going private) and 2 of whom went to Eton and one Winchester and one Fettes. We have had only 2 PMs in that time educated solely for secondary level at a comprehensive, Gordon Brown and Liz Truss but Brown was in an academic hothouse experiment taught in separate classes at his High School so basically it was a grammar in all but name.
May was educated at a Roman Catholic private school, then a grammar school which converted to a comprehensive when she was in the sixth form
'Most comprehensive's set classes by ability, it's not unusual or experimental.
'Liz Truss’s claim to be the first prime minister to have gone to a comprehensive school inadvertently thrust Kirkcaldy High School into the limelight.
The crisis-hit Conservative PM made the remark on Wednesday in her speech to the party conference in Birmingham.
And commentators were quick to ask: “What about Gordon Brown?”
Many – including her rivals – pointed to the 71-year-old Fifer’s education at a state school as proof Ms Truss was wrong.
But broadcaster Andrew Neil wrote: “Labour is wrong. Kirkcaldy High was not a comprehensive when Brown went to it.”
He added: “Entrance exams for Kirkcaldy High did not end until 1970 by which time he was at Edinburgh University...All publicly-funded secondary schools in Scotland are comprehensives – however this was not always the case.
Former Kirkcaldy High School rector Derek Allan confirmed the school WAS selective when Gordon Brown was a pupil in the 1960s.'
So there we have it, the only UK PM to have been fully educated at a comprehensive school from 11 to 18 was Liz Truss. Though Truss went to Oxford, we have never had a comprehensive school educated PM who did not go to Oxbridge though we have had non Oxbridge educated private and grammar school PMs
Main networks are all reporting that Justice Alito is now not expected to retire this year. Until now, it had been widely thought he would retire.
Nobody is expecting Thomas to retire so if correct the Supreme Court would go into the midterms unchanged.
If Democrats then gain the Senate they can prevent any new Conservative appointments.
I guess maybe Alito could retire immediately after midterms and the Republicans could force through a Trump nominee in the short period before the new Senate meets at the start of January. But not if Alito really does want to remain in place.
If neither does go, Thomas and Alito really would be opening up possibility of change in balance of the Court if Democrats win Senate at midterms and a Democrat President is elected in 2028.
Could they not just increase the membership of the Court to 13 or more and flood Court with new Democratic nominees?
It would of course be a corruption of the system, but no worse than what has been done already.
They could, by changing the 1869 Act, but that would make it tit-for-tat when the Republicans did get the Senate/Presidency again and defeat the object.
More likely they would just block any replacement proposed by Trump and let the court shrink, then a new Dem president (if any) could appoint several en bloc.
Isn't one of the three Dems also reported to be in less than perfect health though?
Personally I wouldn't worry about tit-for-tat, Doc. It's a rotten system which has failed the American people. Why not abuse it? It might help to change it to one where judges are appointed on merit rather than politics, and where plainly corrupt members like Thomas can be aimed out.
Main networks are all reporting that Justice Alito is now not expected to retire this year. Until now, it had been widely thought he would retire.
Nobody is expecting Thomas to retire so if correct the Supreme Court would go into the midterms unchanged.
If Democrats then gain the Senate they can prevent any new Conservative appointments.
I guess maybe Alito could retire immediately after midterms and the Republicans could force through a Trump nominee in the short period before the new Senate meets at the start of January. But not if Alito really does want to remain in place.
If neither does go, Thomas and Alito really would be opening up possibility of change in balance of the Court if Democrats win Senate at midterms and a Democrat President is elected in 2028.
Could they not just increase the membership of the Court to 13 or more and flood Court with new Democratic nominees?
It would of course be a corruption of the system, but no worse than what has been done already.
They could, by changing the 1869 Act, but that would make it tit-for-tat when the Republicans did get the Senate/Presidency again and defeat the object.
More likely they would just block any replacement proposed by Trump and let the court shrink, then a new Dem president (if any) could appoint several en bloc.
Isn't one of the three Dems also reported to be in less than perfect health though?
Personally I wouldn't worry about tit-for-tat, Doc. It's a rotten system which has failed the American people. Why not abuse it? It might help to change it to one where judges are appointed on merit rather than politics, and where plainly corrupt members like Thomas can be aimed out.
That process appears to have taken weeks, with as many as a dozen officials and lawyers aware of Mandelson’s vetting failure. Starmer’s statement would suggest he was not formally notified by any of them until a few days ago.
Why is my spidey sense tingling. I detect weasel words
He stuck his head so far in official sand, there’s absolutely no way that he formally wasn’t an ostrich
It’s absurd and implausible to suggest that he didn’t really know
Implausible that Starmer did not really know what exactly?
Everyone knew Mandelson was iffy. He had previously been ousted twice for ethical failings of one sort of another.
Almost no-one knew Mandelson had failed vetting, not least because he was appointed first and vetted later, but also because from Number 10's standpoint, FO vetting cleared Mandelson by overriding UKSC.
So maybe Kemi and others are asking the wrong question. Rather than did the Prime Minister know Mandelson had been fingered by UKSC but whether Starmer, like everyone who had read a newspaper this millennium, already knew about the grounds that UKSC flagged up.
Main networks are all reporting that Justice Alito is now not expected to retire this year. Until now, it had been widely thought he would retire.
Nobody is expecting Thomas to retire so if correct the Supreme Court would go into the midterms unchanged.
If Democrats then gain the Senate they can prevent any new Conservative appointments.
I guess maybe Alito could retire immediately after midterms and the Republicans could force through a Trump nominee in the short period before the new Senate meets at the start of January. But not if Alito really does want to remain in place.
If neither does go, Thomas and Alito really would be opening up possibility of change in balance of the Court if Democrats win Senate at midterms and a Democrat President is elected in 2028.
Could they not just increase the membership of the Court to 13 or more and flood Court with new Democratic nominees?
It would of course be a corruption of the system, but no worse than what has been done already.
They could, by changing the 1869 Act, but that would make it tit-for-tat when the Republicans did get the Senate/Presidency again and defeat the object.
More likely they would just block any replacement proposed by Trump and let the court shrink, then a new Dem president (if any) could appoint several en bloc.
Isn't one of the three Dems also reported to be in less than perfect health though?
Personally I wouldn't worry about tit-for-tat, Doc. It's a rotten system which has failed the American people. Why not abuse it? It might help to change it to one where judges are appointed on merit rather than politics, and where plainly corrupt members like Thomas can be aimed out.
You'll give President Trump ideas! Why not expand the bench now so he can appoint the next generation of judges? Sure, in theory the Democrats could play the same game but in practice they won't, preferring a return to sanity and normal government.
Interesting polling in the Texas Senate race. The Republicans have yet to decide - on May 26th - between Paxton and Cornyn (which is like a forced choice between cancer and dementia). TPR has the race 48% to Paxton, 40% to Cornyn.
However, so polarized are the two camps that if Paxton is the choice, then 25% of those who wanted Cornyn will vote for the Democrat, James Talarico. 10% of Paxton voters say they will vote for Talarico if Cornyn is the candidate. With Paxton the likely choice on this polling, that suggest that the Dems could get a big crossover from disgruntled Republicans. It is enough to move the contest firmly to the Democrats. Cornyn got 910k votes in the first round of primary voting. So this TPR polling suggests as many as 200k could be going to Talarico in protest. And the Democrats already polled more voters in the primary than the Republicans.
It is such a mess that Trump is currently not expected to endorse either Paxton or Cornyn. And James Talarico raised $27m dollars in the first quarter, a huge and record amount.
That process appears to have taken weeks, with as many as a dozen officials and lawyers aware of Mandelson’s vetting failure. Starmer’s statement would suggest he was not formally notified by any of them until a few days ago.
Why is my spidey sense tingling. I detect weasel words
As Cyclefree says, the word 'formally' is doing a lot of the heavy lifting here.
I suspect if someone has it in for Starmer, there will be more info leaked on who knew what and when. That may not appear until after the May elections
If we are to believe everything is fine, then some of the Prime Ministers advisors are withholding information from the PM which he really should have known about months ago
But imagine if that shoe falls a few days before voting in May...
Then Mr Sarwar will be proved correct!
The timing of this info being made public is very convenient for potential leadership candidates
Cyclefree's comment is typically judicious. It is easy to imagine Starmer communicating to Robbins that if there were any doubts about Mandelson's vetting he could not be told formally. There would come a point however where Robbins simply could not sit on it precisely because the risk of it leaking out could be disastrous for the PM. It is still not entirely clear why he continued to do so even under Select Committee interrogation.
I've been stressing on here that there are two vital questions. Who fibbed, and why?
In answer to the first, we now know it wasn't Starmer but the second question remains murky. It looks like a Civil Service collaboration that has gone wrong, but we await details of who knew what and when, and why they thought it was right to withhold information from the PM, formally or otherwise.
1) All of them 2) Because integrity is no longer even an optional extra in public life.
Was there really some golden age of integrity? Jabez Balfour, Lloyd George, John Belcher, Thomas Dugdale, John Vassall, Robert Boothby…
Watching the latest round of musical senior civil servants and prime ministerial advisors, I'm wondering how close Starmer is getting to being unable to fill the vacancies he keeps creating. When you're recruiting for your fourth chief of staff in slightly less than two years, who would take the role? The odds have to be that his next recruit goes under a bus in about 6 months time - who would want the job on that basis? Similarly with Cabinet Secretaries - if I was an eligible candidate, right now I'd be keeping my head down, and hoping to get the gig under Starmer's replacement - after all, he's virtually certainly to be gone at the next GE if not before, and that's probably only three years away now. Much better to get a decent run of it under Starmer's successor than have a six month stint before being made the fall guy for Starmer's political problems.
If the pool of candidates for roles like this (and other critical ones, eg communications director) dries up completely, what on earth happens next?
I think there will always be somebody ambitious enough to want to do it, while secretly knowing they are not up to it so need to take it against no opposition, who will take it anyway.
It will just make things worse because you get idiots like Case or Wormald under those circumstances, but I don't think he'll struggle to fill the posts.
So ... We have Robbins alleged to have overruled UKSV and not mentioned that to ministers even after the shit hit the fan Romeo and Little who delayed telling Starmer that UKSV has been overruled Case an idiot Wormald taking can for Mandelson vetting Gray victim of conflict with McS (Mandelson acolyte)
Main networks are all reporting that Justice Alito is now not expected to retire this year. Until now, it had been widely thought he would retire.
Nobody is expecting Thomas to retire so if correct the Supreme Court would go into the midterms unchanged.
If Democrats then gain the Senate they can prevent any new Conservative appointments.
I guess maybe Alito could retire immediately after midterms and the Republicans could force through a Trump nominee in the short period before the new Senate meets at the start of January. But not if Alito really does want to remain in place.
If neither does go, Thomas and Alito really would be opening up possibility of change in balance of the Court if Democrats win Senate at midterms and a Democrat President is elected in 2028.
Could they not just increase the membership of the Court to 13 or more and flood Court with new Democratic nominees?
It would of course be a corruption of the system, but no worse than what has been done already.
They could, by changing the 1869 Act, but that would make it tit-for-tat when the Republicans did get the Senate/Presidency again and defeat the object.
More likely they would just block any replacement proposed by Trump and let the court shrink, then a new Dem president (if any) could appoint several en bloc.
Isn't one of the three Dems also reported to be in less than perfect health though?
Personally I wouldn't worry about tit-for-tat, Doc. It's a rotten system which has failed the American people. Why not abuse it? It might help to change it to one where judges are appointed on merit rather than politics, and where plainly corrupt members like Thomas can be aimed out.
You'll give President Trump ideas! Why not expand the bench now so he can appoint the next generation of judges? Sure, in theory the Democrats could play the same game but in practice they won't, preferring a return to sanity and normal government.
The Senate would refuse to endorse that . The GOP there tend to be more resilient to pressure from Trump and there are enough members who are traditionalists . We’ve seen that highlighted from the reluctance to change the filibuster rules to push through the SAVE Act .
Main networks are all reporting that Justice Alito is now not expected to retire this year. Until now, it had been widely thought he would retire.
Nobody is expecting Thomas to retire so if correct the Supreme Court would go into the midterms unchanged.
If Democrats then gain the Senate they can prevent any new Conservative appointments.
I guess maybe Alito could retire immediately after midterms and the Republicans could force through a Trump nominee in the short period before the new Senate meets at the start of January. But not if Alito really does want to remain in place.
If neither does go, Thomas and Alito really would be opening up possibility of change in balance of the Court if Democrats win Senate at midterms and a Democrat President is elected in 2028.
Could they not just increase the membership of the Court to 13 or more and flood Court with new Democratic nominees?
It would of course be a corruption of the system, but no worse than what has been done already.
They could, by changing the 1869 Act, but that would make it tit-for-tat when the Republicans did get the Senate/Presidency again and defeat the object.
More likely they would just block any replacement proposed by Trump and let the court shrink, then a new Dem president (if any) could appoint several en bloc.
Isn't one of the three Dems also reported to be in less than perfect health though?
Personally I wouldn't worry about tit-for-tat, Doc. It's a rotten system which has failed the American people. Why not abuse it? It might help to change it to one where judges are appointed on merit rather than politics, and where plainly corrupt members like Thomas can be aimed out.
You'll give President Trump ideas! Why not expand the bench now so he can appoint the next generation of judges? Sure, in theory the Democrats could play the same game but in practice they won't, preferring a return to sanity and normal government.
Are you sure? Take the Rucho v. Common Cause (2019) case. Partisan gerrymandering is constitutional. Basically the US has a it's on version of democracy based on an ancient document, much in the same way as Israeli democracy is based on another ancient document.
To hold that legislators cannot take their partisan interests into account when drawing district lines would essentially countermand the Framers’ decision to entrust districting to political entities.
You are defining 'sanity' and 'normal' in your own terms.
I see there has been a discussion as to whether Gordon Brown's school was a Comprehensive or not. I have a bit of an insight here. My wife and her sister were at school with Gordon. My wife 5 years behind, her sister actually in Gordon's class.. When Gordon left it was still selective. It became a Comprehensive while my wife was attending.
Watching the latest round of musical senior civil servants and prime ministerial advisors, I'm wondering how close Starmer is getting to being unable to fill the vacancies he keeps creating. When you're recruiting for your fourth chief of staff in slightly less than two years, who would take the role? The odds have to be that his next recruit goes under a bus in about 6 months time - who would want the job on that basis? Similarly with Cabinet Secretaries - if I was an eligible candidate, right now I'd be keeping my head down, and hoping to get the gig under Starmer's replacement - after all, he's virtually certainly to be gone at the next GE if not before, and that's probably only three years away now. Much better to get a decent run of it under Starmer's successor than have a six month stint before being made the fall guy for Starmer's political problems.
If the pool of candidates for roles like this (and other critical ones, eg communications director) dries up completely, what on earth happens next?
I think there will always be somebody ambitious enough to want to do it, while secretly knowing they are not up to it so need to take it against no opposition, who will take it anyway.
It will just make things worse because you get idiots like Case or Wormald under those circumstances, but I don't think he'll struggle to fill the posts.
So ... We have Robbins alleged to have overruled UKSV and not mentioned that to ministers even after the shit hit the fan Romeo and Little who delayed telling Starmer that UKSV has been overruled Case an idiot Wormald taking can for Mandelson vetting Gray victim of conflict with McS (Mandelson acolyte)
Remember when we all used to pine for a government system with the effectiveness and integrity of the Yes, Minister universe?
I'm beginning to wish that our rulers were up to the standards of The Thick of It.
That process appears to have taken weeks, with as many as a dozen officials and lawyers aware of Mandelson’s vetting failure. Starmer’s statement would suggest he was not formally notified by any of them until a few days ago.
Why is my spidey sense tingling. I detect weasel words
He stuck his head so far in official sand, there’s absolutely no way that he formally wasn’t an ostrich
It’s absurd and implausible to suggest that he didn’t really know
Implausible that Starmer did not really know what exactly?
Everyone knew Mandelson was iffy. He had previously been ousted twice for ethical failings of one sort of another.
Almost no-one knew Mandelson had failed vetting, not least because he was appointed first and vetted later, but also because from Number 10's standpoint, FO vetting cleared Mandelson by overriding UKSC.
So maybe Kemi and others are asking the wrong question. Rather than did the Prime Minister know Mandelson had been fingered by UKSC but whether Starmer, like everyone who had read a newspaper this millennium, already knew about the grounds that UKSC flagged up.
To discern the probabilities of what ministers knew, either by being told or working it out for themselves, you examine the sorts of language, formulaic uses and verbal evasions they were using in the House of Commons before last Tuesday. Is there a pattern? Is there something they try to imply but don't spell out?
I think we will find the pattern is that they don't want to say PeterM was in the clear vetting wise, and don't want to say he wasn't, and don't want to say it is not a matter for them (or us proles) to know anyway.
Watching the latest round of musical senior civil servants and prime ministerial advisors, I'm wondering how close Starmer is getting to being unable to fill the vacancies he keeps creating. When you're recruiting for your fourth chief of staff in slightly less than two years, who would take the role? The odds have to be that his next recruit goes under a bus in about 6 months time - who would want the job on that basis? Similarly with Cabinet Secretaries - if I was an eligible candidate, right now I'd be keeping my head down, and hoping to get the gig under Starmer's replacement - after all, he's virtually certainly to be gone at the next GE if not before, and that's probably only three years away now. Much better to get a decent run of it under Starmer's successor than have a six month stint before being made the fall guy for Starmer's political problems.
If the pool of candidates for roles like this (and other critical ones, eg communications director) dries up completely, what on earth happens next?
I think there will always be somebody ambitious enough to want to do it, while secretly knowing they are not up to it so need to take it against no opposition, who will take it anyway.
It will just make things worse because you get idiots like Case or Wormald under those circumstances, but I don't think he'll struggle to fill the posts.
So ... We have Robbins alleged to have overruled UKSV and not mentioned that to ministers even after the shit hit the fan Romeo and Little who delayed telling Starmer that UKSV has been overruled Case an idiot Wormald taking can for Mandelson vetting Gray victim of conflict with McS (Mandelson acolyte)
Premature post..
Gray victim of conflict with McS (Mandy acolyte) Sedwill reservations about Brexit
Clear that Mandelson is utterly toxic, could be 5 CS careers finished over his latest debacle. However is this also a Brexit bonus, with only CS without Brexit misgivings progressing up the ranks since. 2019 or earlier?
Kind of interesting, but it's the last line that caught my eye: ""Nobody wants to make the cuts," Kennedy responded, adding that they were necessary because of a $39 trillion deficit. "
Interesting polling in the Texas Senate race. The Republicans have yet to decide - on May 26th - between Paxton and Cornyn (which is like a forced choice between cancer and dementia). TPR has the race 48% to Paxton, 40% to Cornyn.
However, so polarized are the two camps that if Paxton is the choice, then 25% of those who wanted Cornyn will vote for the Democrat, James Talarico. 10% of Paxton voters say they will vote for Talarico if Cornyn is the candidate. With Paxton the likely choice on this polling, that suggest that the Dems could get a big crossover from disgruntled Republicans. It is enough to move the contest firmly to the Democrats. Cornyn got 910k votes in the first round of primary voting. So this TPR polling suggests as many as 200k could be going to Talarico in protest. And the Democrats already polled more voters in the primary than the Republicans.
It is such a mess that Trump is currently not expected to endorse either Paxton or Cornyn. And James Talarico raised $27m dollars in the first quarter, a huge and record amount.
Talarico is a seriously impressive candidate from what I've seen.
If he wins, then he gets catapulted into the VP role. Because if he could deliver Texas's 40 electoral votes...
No, he doesn't. If he wins, the Dems want him nailed to his Senate seat for the next decade.
No, he will be a proven vote-gatherer in those areas where the Republicans were thought safe. He will open the gates for a number of similar candidates who can in turn become Dem limpets in purple states.
Main networks are all reporting that Justice Alito is now not expected to retire this year. Until now, it had been widely thought he would retire.
Nobody is expecting Thomas to retire so if correct the Supreme Court would go into the midterms unchanged.
If Democrats then gain the Senate they can prevent any new Conservative appointments.
I guess maybe Alito could retire immediately after midterms and the Republicans could force through a Trump nominee in the short period before the new Senate meets at the start of January. But not if Alito really does want to remain in place.
If neither does go, Thomas and Alito really would be opening up possibility of change in balance of the Court if Democrats win Senate at midterms and a Democrat President is elected in 2028.
Could they not just increase the membership of the Court to 13 or more and flood Court with new Democratic nominees?
It would of course be a corruption of the system, but no worse than what has been done already.
They could, by changing the 1869 Act, but that would make it tit-for-tat when the Republicans did get the Senate/Presidency again and defeat the object.
More likely they would just block any replacement proposed by Trump and let the court shrink, then a new Dem president (if any) could appoint several en bloc.
Isn't one of the three Dems also reported to be in less than perfect health though?
Personally I wouldn't worry about tit-for-tat, Doc. It's a rotten system which has failed the American people. Why not abuse it? It might help to change it to one where judges are appointed on merit rather than politics, and where plainly corrupt members like Thomas can be aimed out.
You'll give President Trump ideas! Why not expand the bench now so he can appoint the next generation of judges? Sure, in theory the Democrats could play the same game but in practice they won't, preferring a return to sanity and normal government.
Are you sure? Take the Rucho v. Common Cause (2019) case. Partisan gerrymandering is constitutional. Basically the US has a it's on version of democracy based on an ancient document, much in the same way as Israeli democracy is based on another ancient document.
To hold that legislators cannot take their partisan interests into account when drawing district lines would essentially countermand the Framers’ decision to entrust districting to political entities.
You are defining 'sanity' and 'normal' in your own terms.
Look at the recent history of the American economy. Republican Presidents let debt bloom and "sound money" is restored by Democrats. Rinse and repeat. I expect it will be the same with the Supreme Court and everything else Trump will have done.
That process appears to have taken weeks, with as many as a dozen officials and lawyers aware of Mandelson’s vetting failure. Starmer’s statement would suggest he was not formally notified by any of them until a few days ago.
Why is my spidey sense tingling. I detect weasel words
He stuck his head so far in official sand, there’s absolutely no way that he formally wasn’t an ostrich
It’s absurd and implausible to suggest that he didn’t really know
Implausible that Starmer did not really know what exactly?
Everyone knew Mandelson was iffy. He had previously been ousted twice for ethical failings of one sort of another.
Almost no-one knew Mandelson had failed vetting, not least because he was appointed first and vetted later, but also because from Number 10's standpoint, FO vetting cleared Mandelson by overriding UKSC.
So maybe Kemi and others are asking the wrong question. Rather than did the Prime Minister know Mandelson had been fingered by UKSC but whether Starmer, like everyone who had read a newspaper this millennium, already knew about the grounds that UKSC flagged up.
The charge being that Starmer should have been astonished that Mandelson had passed vetting?
Extremely poor judgement to have let Mandelson back in, he's been a liability for every labour PM he's worked for.
I see there has been a discussion as to whether Gordon Brown's school was a Comprehensive or not. I have a bit of an insight here. My wife and her sister were at school with Gordon. My wife 5 years behind, her sister actually in Gordon's class.. When Gordon left it was still selective. It became a Comprehensive while my wife was attending.
So confirmed Liz Truss is the only UK PM to have attended a comprehensive school from 11 to 18
There are two things about this abomination that I object to: 1: Coldplay. I know it's a cliche to deride Coldplay, but it's a cliche for a reason. But it's not their fault: pop music is highly subjective: even the most likeable pop music is going to be disliked by more people than it is liked by. There is an asinine assumption made by people who don't really like music that because a band is successful, everyone likes them. I like the Fall, but I don't arrogantly assume everyone wants to listen to them. 2: But even if it was a band I liked: surely the World Cup Final (or any other sporting event) is exciting enough, if you like football? It's the biggest event in the football calendar. It doesn't need anything else. People watching it are watching it because they want to watch it: incorporating something they haven't asked for makes the whole experience, on average, less exciting.
There are two things about this abomination that I object to: 1: Coldplay. I know it's a cliche to deride Coldplay, but it's a cliche for a reason. But it's not their fault: pop music is highly subjective: even the most likeable pop music is going to be disliked by more people than it is liked by. There is an asinine assumption made by people who don't really like music that because a band is successful, everyone likes them. I like the Fall, but I don't arrogantly assume everyone wants to listen to them. 2: But even if it was a band I liked: surely the World Cup Final (or any other sporting event) is exciting enough, if you like football? It's the biggest event in the football calendar. It doesn't need anything else. People watching it are watching it because they want to watch it: incorporating something they haven't asked for makes the whole experience, on average, less exciting.
Football isn't my thing at all.
But if F1 had a halfway break for 15 minutes, and that got more or less doubled for some wanky American bullshit, I wouldn't be pleased.
That process appears to have taken weeks, with as many as a dozen officials and lawyers aware of Mandelson’s vetting failure. Starmer’s statement would suggest he was not formally notified by any of them until a few days ago.
Why is my spidey sense tingling. I detect weasel words
As Cyclefree says, the word 'formally' is doing a lot of the heavy lifting here.
I suspect if someone has it in for Starmer, there will be more info leaked on who knew what and when. That may not appear until after the May elections
If we are to believe everything is fine, then some of the Prime Ministers advisors are withholding information from the PM which he really should have known about months ago
But imagine if that shoe falls a few days before voting in May...
Then Mr Sarwar will be proved correct!
The timing of this info being made public is very convenient for potential leadership candidates
Cyclefree's comment is typically judicious. It is easy to imagine Starmer communicating to Robbins that if there were any doubts about Mandelson's vetting he could not be told formally. There would come a point however where Robbins simply could not sit on it precisely because the risk of it leaking out could be disastrous for the PM. It is still not entirely clear why he continued to do so even under Select Committee interrogation.
I've been stressing on here that there are two vital questions. Who fibbed, and why?
In answer to the first, we now know it wasn't Starmer but the second question remains murky. It looks like a Civil Service collaboration that has gone wrong, but we await details of who knew what and when, and why they thought it was right to withhold information from the PM, formally or otherwise.
1) All of them 2) Because integrity is no longer even an optional extra in public life.
Was there really some golden age of integrity? Jabez Balfour, Lloyd George, John Belcher, Thomas Dugdale, John Vassall, Robert Boothby…
With the exception of Lloyd George, all of the politicians and Civil Servants that you mention were fairly peripheral figures in terms of power. Some like Boothby had their corruption overlooked for too long because of their status as a character. Reginald Maudlin is probably the best recen5 historical example of corruption in government.
I see there has been a discussion as to whether Gordon Brown's school was a Comprehensive or not. I have a bit of an insight here. My wife and her sister were at school with Gordon. My wife 5 years behind, her sister actually in Gordon's class.. When Gordon left it was still selective. It became a Comprehensive while my wife was attending.
I've missed that discussion but who gives a damn anyway? What matters about Gordon Brown's time at school is he was given an accelerated education as part of an experimental programme, basically moved up two years. Arguments about governance or funding are beside the point.
It’s gone under the radar with little media attention but we have the Bulgarian elections tomorrow.
This will be their 8th election since 2021 !
Currently leading in the polls is Rumen Radev of Progressive Bulgaria which is seen as centre left , they are somewhat Eurosceptic and the leader is more pro Russian but nowhere near Orban and it’s likely that they’d need a coalition with a more pro EU and more anti Russian party .
It’s gone under the radar with little media attention but we have the Bulgarian elections tomorrow.
This will be their 8th election since 2021 !
Currently leading in the polls is Rumen Radev of Progressive Bulgaria which is seen as centre left , they are somewhat Eurosceptic and the leader is more pro Russian but nowhere near Orban and it’s likely that they’d need a coalition with a more pro EU and more anti Russian party .
Centre-left and por-Russia. An unusual intersection.
That process appears to have taken weeks, with as many as a dozen officials and lawyers aware of Mandelson’s vetting failure. Starmer’s statement would suggest he was not formally notified by any of them until a few days ago.
Why is my spidey sense tingling. I detect weasel words
As Cyclefree says, the word 'formally' is doing a lot of the heavy lifting here.
I suspect if someone has it in for Starmer, there will be more info leaked on who knew what and when. That may not appear until after the May elections
If we are to believe everything is fine, then some of the Prime Ministers advisors are withholding information from the PM which he really should have known about months ago
But imagine if that shoe falls a few days before voting in May...
Then Mr Sarwar will be proved correct!
The timing of this info being made public is very convenient for potential leadership candidates
Cyclefree's comment is typically judicious. It is easy to imagine Starmer communicating to Robbins that if there were any doubts about Mandelson's vetting he could not be told formally. There would come a point however where Robbins simply could not sit on it precisely because the risk of it leaking out could be disastrous for the PM. It is still not entirely clear why he continued to do so even under Select Committee interrogation.
I've been stressing on here that there are two vital questions. Who fibbed, and why?
In answer to the first, we now know it wasn't Starmer but the second question remains murky. It looks like a Civil Service collaboration that has gone wrong, but we await details of who knew what and when, and why they thought it was right to withhold information from the PM, formally or otherwise.
1) All of them 2) Because integrity is no longer even an optional extra in public life.
Worse than that, outsourced ruthless awfulness is the way to win big. Consider our three biggest election winners this century- Blair had Mandelson, Johnson had Cummings, Starmer had McSweeney. In each case a Jeeves who though themselves more important than their Wooster and who caused trouble for all around them.
At least Mandy had the decency to get his own mandate in Hartlepool.
There's something ironic that during the Long Brexit years we had a load of erroneous whining that civil servants were frustrating the government's will. It now seems that civil servants will be the scapegoat for trying to implement the government's decision too zealously.
Amidst all of the coming storm of who told who what and how, we need to remember that the original sin comes from the Prime Minister who wanted to appoint a morally bankrupt grifter in the first place. It wasn't like concerns about Peter Mandelson weren't known until vetting turned them up.
There are two things about this abomination that I object to: 1: Coldplay. I know it's a cliche to deride Coldplay, but it's a cliche for a reason. But it's not their fault: pop music is highly subjective: even the most likeable pop music is going to be disliked by more people than it is liked by. There is an asinine assumption made by people who don't really like music that because a band is successful, everyone likes them. I like the Fall, but I don't arrogantly assume everyone wants to listen to them. 2: But even if it was a band I liked: surely the World Cup Final (or any other sporting event) is exciting enough, if you like football? It's the biggest event in the football calendar. It doesn't need anything else. People watching it are watching it because they want to watch it: incorporating something they haven't asked for makes the whole experience, on average, less exciting.
Yep it's like for those people who choose to go to a Coldplay concert having an interlude where they get to watch a short 5-a-side football match.
That process appears to have taken weeks, with as many as a dozen officials and lawyers aware of Mandelson’s vetting failure. Starmer’s statement would suggest he was not formally notified by any of them until a few days ago.
Why is my spidey sense tingling. I detect weasel words
He stuck his head so far in official sand, there’s absolutely no way that he formally wasn’t an ostrich
It’s absurd and implausible to suggest that he didn’t really know
Implausible that Starmer did not really know what exactly?
Everyone knew Mandelson was iffy. He had previously been ousted twice for ethical failings of one sort of another.
Almost no-one knew Mandelson had failed vetting, not least because he was appointed first and vetted later, but also because from Number 10's standpoint, FO vetting cleared Mandelson by overriding UKSC.
So maybe Kemi and others are asking the wrong question. Rather than did the Prime Minister know Mandelson had been fingered by UKSC but whether Starmer, like everyone who had read a newspaper this millennium, already knew about the grounds that UKSC flagged up.
To discern the probabilities of what ministers knew, either by being told or working it out for themselves, you examine the sorts of language, formulaic uses and verbal evasions they were using in the House of Commons before last Tuesday. Is there a pattern? Is there something they try to imply but don't spell out?
I think we will find the pattern is that they don't want to say PeterM was in the clear vetting wise, and don't want to say he wasn't, and don't want to say it is not a matter for them (or us proles) to know anyway.
To a point.
It is also worth bearing in mind that what (so far as has been leaked to the press) was not uncovered by UKSV was the real scandal, that Mandelson was systematically leaking market-sensitive Cabinet discussions to his rich mates, which became public from the Epstein disclosures in America.
It’s gone under the radar with little media attention but we have the Bulgarian elections tomorrow.
This will be their 8th election since 2021 !
Currently leading in the polls is Rumen Radev of Progressive Bulgaria which is seen as centre left , they are somewhat Eurosceptic and the leader is more pro Russian but nowhere near Orban and it’s likely that they’d need a coalition with a more pro EU and more anti Russian party .
That's some entrenched political chaos right there. Any new parties this time?
There are two things about this abomination that I object to: 1: Coldplay. I know it's a cliche to deride Coldplay, but it's a cliche for a reason. But it's not their fault: pop music is highly subjective: even the most likeable pop music is going to be disliked by more people than it is liked by. There is an asinine assumption made by people who don't really like music that because a band is successful, everyone likes them. I like the Fall, but I don't arrogantly assume everyone wants to listen to them. 2: But even if it was a band I liked: surely the World Cup Final (or any other sporting event) is exciting enough, if you like football? It's the biggest event in the football calendar. It doesn't need anything else. People watching it are watching it because they want to watch it: incorporating something they haven't asked for makes the whole experience, on average, less exciting.
Yep it's like for those people who choose to go to a Coldplay concert having an interlude where they get to watch a short 5-a-side football match.
That's a good way of putting it. Ok, there's already a break in football, but have fans been crying out for it to be filled?
It's more for the TV audience but what do they do at halftime? Watch clips of the first half.
Btw, probably not going to use it (might be different if it were commercially useable) but the new Scriptorium game looks pretty fun. Can see a lot of people taking the piss out of politics and other stuff with it (think medieval manuscript illustrations).
There are two things about this abomination that I object to: 1: Coldplay. I know it's a cliche to deride Coldplay, but it's a cliche for a reason. But it's not their fault: pop music is highly subjective: even the most likeable pop music is going to be disliked by more people than it is liked by. There is an asinine assumption made by people who don't really like music that because a band is successful, everyone likes them. I like the Fall, but I don't arrogantly assume everyone wants to listen to them. 2: But even if it was a band I liked: surely the World Cup Final (or any other sporting event) is exciting enough, if you like football? It's the biggest event in the football calendar. It doesn't need anything else. People watching it are watching it because they want to watch it: incorporating something they haven't asked for makes the whole experience, on average, less exciting.
Yep it's like for those people who choose to go to a Coldplay concert having an interlude where they get to watch a short 5-a-side football match.
That's a good way of putting it. Ok, there's already a break in football, but have fans been crying out for it to be filled?
Who cares about the fans? It's about creating more transitions to fill with ads on the tellybox.
That process appears to have taken weeks, with as many as a dozen officials and lawyers aware of Mandelson’s vetting failure. Starmer’s statement would suggest he was not formally notified by any of them until a few days ago.
Why is my spidey sense tingling. I detect weasel words
He stuck his head so far in official sand, there’s absolutely no way that he formally wasn’t an ostrich
It’s absurd and implausible to suggest that he didn’t really know
Apparently not only was he not told, its policy not to share the results of vetting... seems absurd.
What on earth is the point of it if you dont use it to inform the decision!?
For all yesterday's optinmism, it seems Hormuz is still closed due to the American naval blockade.
There were some on here who argued the naval blockade was the only real card (sorry, Lobanukes everywhere) Washington had left to play in terms of regime change in Iran. Perhaps but how long is it going to take for a naval blockade alone to incite an uprising?
Oil fell back sharply yesterday though still well above where it was before all this started and I remain convinced the real winners are those who have trousered the profits from those rises but trying to ascertain who "they" are seems quite difficult.
Anyhow, a glorious morning in this part of East London and with three weeks to go until the elections, I suspect the pace of political activity will continue to quicken. Will anyone be down East Ham High Street trying to "rally" (as it were) support or to accost me as I purchase the Racing Post (an extravagance but still cheaper than a pint). One thing you can say for East Ham - the choice of breakfast items is considerable from full English through Indian, Pakistani, Romanian and even Caribbean.
That process appears to have taken weeks, with as many as a dozen officials and lawyers aware of Mandelson’s vetting failure. Starmer’s statement would suggest he was not formally notified by any of them until a few days ago.
Why is my spidey sense tingling. I detect weasel words
He stuck his head so far in official sand, there’s absolutely no way that he formally wasn’t an ostrich
It’s absurd and implausible to suggest that he didn’t really know
Implausible that Starmer did not really know what exactly?
Everyone knew Mandelson was iffy. He had previously been ousted twice for ethical failings of one sort of another.
Almost no-one knew Mandelson had failed vetting, not least because he was appointed first and vetted later, but also because from Number 10's standpoint, FO vetting cleared Mandelson by overriding UKSC.
So maybe Kemi and others are asking the wrong question. Rather than did the Prime Minister know Mandelson had been fingered by UKSC but whether Starmer, like everyone who had read a newspaper this millennium, already knew about the grounds that UKSC flagged up.
To discern the probabilities of what ministers knew, either by being told or working it out for themselves, you examine the sorts of language, formulaic uses and verbal evasions they were using in the House of Commons before last Tuesday. Is there a pattern? Is there something they try to imply but don't spell out?
I think we will find the pattern is that they don't want to say PeterM was in the clear vetting wise, and don't want to say he wasn't, and don't want to say it is not a matter for them (or us proles) to know anyway.
I think its clear Starmer was not told. He says he wasn't and Robbins says he didn't tell him (because apparently that is civil service policy).
It’s gone under the radar with little media attention but we have the Bulgarian elections tomorrow.
This will be their 8th election since 2021 !
Currently leading in the polls is Rumen Radev of Progressive Bulgaria which is seen as centre left , they are somewhat Eurosceptic and the leader is more pro Russian but nowhere near Orban and it’s likely that they’d need a coalition with a more pro EU and more anti Russian party .
That's some entrenched political chaos right there. Any new parties this time?
I might need all day to explain the moving parts of this election ! It’s general chaos in Bulgaria and has been for many years .
Radev heads a new party Progressive Bulgaria formed from a coalition of older smaller parties .
They have a big lead but will still need a coalition to govern . Radevs more pro Russian sentiment will likely be watered down if he has to govern with We Continue the Change- Democratic Bulgaria .
The party in second place in the polling GERB-SDS are centre right and pro EU but there’s been a lot of acrimony between them and PB and it will take a lot of bridge building for them to join forces .
I just don’t buy any of this growing mountain of total bullshit. It’s gaslighting. You have to believe the entire British civil service conspired to keep the prime minister in the dark that his personally chosen and controversial appointee for our most important diplomatic job failed the fundamental vetting test. And all of this at the same time that the prime minister KNEW that the same controversial man remained friends with a known pedophile and child sex offender after the pedo was convicted
Meanwhile the PM’s aide’s phone containing all the most important messages was miraculously stolen at the best possible moment to hide that evidence
It’s utterly ridiculous. Now they’re trying to muddy the water with endless long confusing emails they’ve made up and ridiculous screeds of boring verbiage in the hope we all get bored and confused and somehow Skyr survives
It might even work. But every day Skyr survives as the least popular premier in history, getting even less popular by the hour, damages the Labour Party, hampers the government, makes their re-election even less likely and is a sad state of affairs for the UK
Andy Burnham stands ready to serve.
As I posted late last night after drinks someone I trust implacably to have their finger on the pulse of deepest Labour says he's on his way.
Burnham grates on me and he isn’t even an MP yet. I’d rather Rayner took over .
Burnham is a legend (in his own mind).
My view is that Burnham would make a better PM but in the cage fight that the next election is going to be between Farage, Polanski and Labour then she is a better choice.
Agreed. Rayner has a genuinely tough backstory, and she is pukka working class. I suspect she is properly bright, you don’t get as far as she has - with her background, in the misogynistic Labour Party - without native cunning and wit
I abhor most of her politics but I admire her grit and sass. I don’t give a fuck about her taxes, tho her hypocrisy does grate
I reckon she’d be a better prime minister than Starmer and she’d be better electioneer than Starmer, Burnham or any of them. She could retrieve some working class Reformers and women who are drifting to Green
She would leak middle class voters from Labour to the Tories and LDs even if she won back some working class voters from Reform and she wouldn't have any more appeal to the Greens than Burnham does either.
Rayner would basically be a female Neil Kinnock
Have you never thought of some rough? Maybe not a Manc, but someone who speaks in Estuary English, drops her "h"s and operates a parallel foreign policy.
When have the British ever voted for someone a bit rough? Middle England prefers their leaders to be a bit more refined, even Hague's thick Yorkshire vowels and Kinnock's Welsh windbagism was too much for them
1964, 1966, and 1974 (twice) - Harold Wilson
That would be the Oxford don, Harold Wilson, that bit of rough?
The nearest we came to proper rough as PM was probably Jim Callaghan. Or, if you want an election winner, John Major.
That probably tells us something uncomfortable about the country we live in.
Both better candidates than Harold, that's for sure. His pipe was an affectation. He was arguably the cleverest PM we have ever had.
Would any of them have made it to the top in contemporary politics? I fear not.
(In the case of Wilson, Callaghan and probably Heath, The War was surely a factor. Whatever its downsides, nothing like war for favouring ability over greasy-pole-climbing.)
More grammar schools, all 3 attended one and then two out of 3 Oxford
From 1964 to 1997 we had 5 PMs all of whom educated at state grammars.
From 1997 to 2026 by contrast we have had 8 PMs, 5 of whom educated at private schools (Starmer's a grammar before going private) and 2 of whom went to Eton and one Winchester and one Fettes. We have had only 2 PMs in that time educated solely for secondary level at a comprehensive, Gordon Brown and Liz Truss but Brown was in an academic hothouse experiment taught in separate classes at his High School so basically it was a grammar in all but name.
May was educated at a Roman Catholic private school, then a grammar school which converted to a comprehensive when she was in the sixth form
'Most comprehensive's set classes by ability, it's not unusual or experimental.
'Liz Truss’s claim to be the first prime minister to have gone to a comprehensive school inadvertently thrust Kirkcaldy High School into the limelight.
The crisis-hit Conservative PM made the remark on Wednesday in her speech to the party conference in Birmingham.
And commentators were quick to ask: “What about Gordon Brown?”
Many – including her rivals – pointed to the 71-year-old Fifer’s education at a state school as proof Ms Truss was wrong.
But broadcaster Andrew Neil wrote: “Labour is wrong. Kirkcaldy High was not a comprehensive when Brown went to it.”
He added: “Entrance exams for Kirkcaldy High did not end until 1970 by which time he was at Edinburgh University...All publicly-funded secondary schools in Scotland are comprehensives – however this was not always the case.
Former Kirkcaldy High School rector Derek Allan confirmed the school WAS selective when Gordon Brown was a pupil in the 1960s.'
So there we have it, the only UK PM to have been fully educated at a comprehensive school from 11 to 18 was Liz Truss. Though Truss went to Oxford, we have never had a comprehensive school educated PM who did not go to Oxbridge though we have had non Oxbridge educated private and grammar school PMs
Is that supposed to be a recommendation 🤔
On the other hand Eton gave us Boris Johnson, amongst others.
I'm still being bombarded by Youtube adverts telling me how @RochdalePioneers will be significantly upgrading the interior of "the car" by fitting the ultimate sexy rubber floor mats from a sponsor. If I don't turn it off, I am played the entire thing. It is very Kings Cross.
They apparently have angled spiked on the back to stop them moving the wrong way, just like one of those Brazilian candiru fish that allegedly swim up the gentleman sausages of unaware gentlemen who are peeing in the Amazon.
Off on a cruise with Mrs BJ and 2 paid Carers later today.
My non league team @staveleymwfc are in the play offs at step 6 and should they make the final on 2.5.26 I will need to drive the WAV back from Southampton like Lewis Hamilton to make the game at either Coalville FC or Stapleford FC
There are two things about this abomination that I object to: 1: Coldplay. I know it's a cliche to deride Coldplay, but it's a cliche for a reason. But it's not their fault: pop music is highly subjective: even the most likeable pop music is going to be disliked by more people than it is liked by. There is an asinine assumption made by people who don't really like music that because a band is successful, everyone likes them. I like the Fall, but I don't arrogantly assume everyone wants to listen to them. 2: But even if it was a band I liked: surely the World Cup Final (or any other sporting event) is exciting enough, if you like football? It's the biggest event in the football calendar. It doesn't need anything else. People watching it are watching it because they want to watch it: incorporating something they haven't asked for makes the whole experience, on average, less exciting.
Combine with the ad breaks in the middle of each half, and it makes one not regret at all the decision to boycott the thing in protest at Trump.
I will watch cricket instead. Or enjoy the outdoors in ludicrously great Irish summer weather.
It’s gone under the radar with little media attention but we have the Bulgarian elections tomorrow.
This will be their 8th election since 2021 !
Currently leading in the polls is Rumen Radev of Progressive Bulgaria which is seen as centre left , they are somewhat Eurosceptic and the leader is more pro Russian but nowhere near Orban and it’s likely that they’d need a coalition with a more pro EU and more anti Russian party .
That's some entrenched political chaos right there. Any new parties this time?
I might need all day to explain the moving parts of this election ! It’s general chaos in Bulgaria and has been for many years .
Radev heads a new party Progressive Bulgaria formed from a coalition of older smaller parties .
They have a big lead but will still need a coalition to govern . Radevs more pro Russian sentiment will likely be watered down if he has to govern with We Continue the Change- Democratic Bulgaria .
The party in second place in the polling GERB-SDS are centre right and pro EU but there’s been a lot of acrimony between them and PB and it will take a lot of bridge building for them to join forces .
PB might be running Bulgaria? We are getting a bit above ourselves aren't we?
That process appears to have taken weeks, with as many as a dozen officials and lawyers aware of Mandelson’s vetting failure. Starmer’s statement would suggest he was not formally notified by any of them until a few days ago.
Why is my spidey sense tingling. I detect weasel words
He stuck his head so far in official sand, there’s absolutely no way that he formally wasn’t an ostrich
It’s absurd and implausible to suggest that he didn’t really know
Apparently not only was he not told, its policy not to share the results of vetting... seems absurd.
What on earth is the point of it if you dont use it to inform the decision!?
It's sort of absurd but there are important details. Firstly vetting isn't a pass or fail type of thing. It will flag up any concerns and give an opinion on whether they are relevant to the appointment. I'm not clear why Robbins didn't tell the PM that significant concerns had been flagged by vetting. I can understand the logic of having a policy of not going into the details with ministers. If you applied for a job involving background checks which flagged that you had a criminal conviction for publicly urinating in Trafalgar Square then you might expect not to get the job. You wouldn't expect the company CEO to be told the gory details.
Again though we need to go back to the fact that Starmer made a political decision to circumvent normal appointment procedures. What should happen is that the FCDO would look for suitable candidates within the diplomatic service, give the PM a range of options privately and then do the checks. We haven't historically operated a US style system of giving diplomatic jobs to politically useful outsiders (with some exceptions in times of crisis) and the PM made things a hundred times worse by announcing the appointment before the checks had been done.
That process appears to have taken weeks, with as many as a dozen officials and lawyers aware of Mandelson’s vetting failure. Starmer’s statement would suggest he was not formally notified by any of them until a few days ago.
Why is my spidey sense tingling. I detect weasel words
He stuck his head so far in official sand, there’s absolutely no way that he formally wasn’t an ostrich
It’s absurd and implausible to suggest that he didn’t really know
Apparently not only was he not told, its policy not to share the results of vetting... seems absurd.
What on earth is the point of it if you dont use it to inform the decision!?
Again, it reminds me of the Shells Committee, that after the Battle of Jutland investigated why British naval shells didn’t work.
One of the committee members realised that the elaborate testing methodology was functionally equivalent to testing shells in a batch, until one worked. Then passing the batch. So 12 failures and then 1 success = pass for the whole batch.
In the current case, we are told that if you pass vetting, you get the job. If you fail vetting, you have to get the job became it would be embarrassing. For you and the PM
This is functionally equivalent to not having vetting.
There are two things about this abomination that I object to: 1: Coldplay. I know it's a cliche to deride Coldplay, but it's a cliche for a reason. But it's not their fault: pop music is highly subjective: even the most likeable pop music is going to be disliked by more people than it is liked by. There is an asinine assumption made by people who don't really like music that because a band is successful, everyone likes them. I like the Fall, but I don't arrogantly assume everyone wants to listen to them. 2: But even if it was a band I liked: surely the World Cup Final (or any other sporting event) is exciting enough, if you like football? It's the biggest event in the football calendar. It doesn't need anything else. People watching it are watching it because they want to watch it: incorporating something they haven't asked for makes the whole experience, on average, less exciting.
Yep it's like for those people who choose to go to a Coldplay concert having an interlude where they get to watch a short 5-a-side football match.
That's a good way of putting it. Ok, there's already a break in football, but have fans been crying out for it to be filled?
It's more for the TV audience but what do they do at halftime? Watch clips of the first half.
The Irish state broadcaster, RTÉ, is so skint that they have three ad breaks during half-time of a football match.
I imagine that they'll be fuming at having a music band absorb valuable advertising time, and, worse, a British music band.
That process appears to have taken weeks, with as many as a dozen officials and lawyers aware of Mandelson’s vetting failure. Starmer’s statement would suggest he was not formally notified by any of them until a few days ago.
Why is my spidey sense tingling. I detect weasel words
He stuck his head so far in official sand, there’s absolutely no way that he formally wasn’t an ostrich
It’s absurd and implausible to suggest that he didn’t really know
Apparently not only was he not told, its policy not to share the results of vetting... seems absurd.
What on earth is the point of it if you dont use it to inform the decision!?
It is clear that Mandeslson underwent the Schrodinger's Vetting Process. As long as you don't look into it, Mandelson's career was still alive or dead.
Lord McDonald, who was permanent secretary between 2015 and 2020, said details from the "confidential" vetting process would "never be shared with No 10 or the prime minister". An outright failure of the vetting process "would have to be conveyed to the political level", Lord McDonald added - and the fact it appears not to have been indicates "the picture was more complicated than Number 10 wished to present".
That process appears to have taken weeks, with as many as a dozen officials and lawyers aware of Mandelson’s vetting failure. Starmer’s statement would suggest he was not formally notified by any of them until a few days ago.
Why is my spidey sense tingling. I detect weasel words
He stuck his head so far in official sand, there’s absolutely no way that he formally wasn’t an ostrich
It’s absurd and implausible to suggest that he didn’t really know
Apparently not only was he not told, its policy not to share the results of vetting... seems absurd.
What on earth is the point of it if you dont use it to inform the decision!?
It's sort of absurd but there are important details. Firstly vetting isn't a pass or fail type of thing. It will flag up any concerns and give an opinion on whether they are relevant to the appointment. I'm not clear why Robbins didn't tell the PM that significant concerns had been flagged by vetting. I can understand the logic of having a policy of not going into the details with ministers. If you applied for a job involving background checks which flagged that you had a criminal conviction for publicly urinating in Trafalgar Square then you might expect not to get the job. You wouldn't expect the company CEO to be told the gory details.
Again though we need to go back to the fact that Starmer made a political decision to circumvent normal appointment procedures. What should happen is that the FCDO would look for suitable candidates within the diplomatic service, give the PM a range of options privately and then do the checks. We haven't historically operated a US style system of giving diplomatic jobs to politically useful outsiders (with some exceptions in times of crisis) and the PM made things a hundred times worse by announcing the appointment before the checks had been done.
"Firstly vetting isn't a pass or fail type of thing. " <- Apparently it literally is under the current system, one of 3 options. Pass, Pass with concerns (nobody is allowed to know what they were), Failed.
There are two things about this abomination that I object to: 1: Coldplay. I know it's a cliche to deride Coldplay, but it's a cliche for a reason. But it's not their fault: pop music is highly subjective: even the most likeable pop music is going to be disliked by more people than it is liked by. There is an asinine assumption made by people who don't really like music that because a band is successful, everyone likes them. I like the Fall, but I don't arrogantly assume everyone wants to listen to them. 2: But even if it was a band I liked: surely the World Cup Final (or any other sporting event) is exciting enough, if you like football? It's the biggest event in the football calendar. It doesn't need anything else. People watching it are watching it because they want to watch it: incorporating something they haven't asked for makes the whole experience, on average, less exciting.
Football isn't my thing at all.
But if F1 had a halfway break for 15 minutes, and that got more or less doubled for some wanky American bullshit, I wouldn't be pleased.
When I was a lad on the Stratton Bank at Swindon the half time was 10 mins. No added time in the first half, so it came at 3.45, restart at 3.55, game over with 1 or 2 minutes of injury time before 4.45. In the car for sports report at 5. Now you are lucky if the game is over by 5…
I'm still being bombarded by Youtube adverts telling me how @RochdalePioneers will be significantly upgrading the interior of "the car" by fitting the ultimate sexy rubber floor mats from a sponsor. If I don't turn it off, I am played the entire thing. It is very Kings Cross.
They apparently have angled spiked on the back to stop them moving the wrong way, just like one of those Brazilian candiru fish that allegedly swim up the gentleman sausages of unaware gentlemen who are peeing in the Amazon.
An ex-soldier who'd served in the jungle said they all had two condoms: one to stop nasties from entering their willies and the other served a similar purpose for their rifles.
Lord McDonald, who was permanent secretary between 2015 and 2020, said details from the "confidential" vetting process would "never be shared with No 10 or the prime minister". An outright failure of the vetting process "would have to be conveyed to the political level", Lord McDonald added - and the fact it appears not to have been indicates "the picture was more complicated than Number 10 wished to present".
I just don’t buy any of this growing mountain of total bullshit. It’s gaslighting. You have to believe the entire British civil service conspired to keep the prime minister in the dark that his personally chosen and controversial appointee for our most important diplomatic job failed the fundamental vetting test. And all of this at the same time that the prime minister KNEW that the same controversial man remained friends with a known pedophile and child sex offender after the pedo was convicted
Meanwhile the PM’s aide’s phone containing all the most important messages was miraculously stolen at the best possible moment to hide that evidence
It’s utterly ridiculous. Now they’re trying to muddy the water with endless long confusing emails they’ve made up and ridiculous screeds of boring verbiage in the hope we all get bored and confused and somehow Skyr survives
It might even work. But every day Skyr survives as the least popular premier in history, getting even less popular by the hour, damages the Labour Party, hampers the government, makes their re-election even less likely and is a sad state of affairs for the UK
Andy Burnham stands ready to serve.
As I posted late last night after drinks someone I trust implacably to have their finger on the pulse of deepest Labour says he's on his way.
Burnham grates on me and he isn’t even an MP yet. I’d rather Rayner took over .
Burnham is a legend (in his own mind).
My view is that Burnham would make a better PM but in the cage fight that the next election is going to be between Farage, Polanski and Labour then she is a better choice.
Agreed. Rayner has a genuinely tough backstory, and she is pukka working class. I suspect she is properly bright, you don’t get as far as she has - with her background, in the misogynistic Labour Party - without native cunning and wit
I abhor most of her politics but I admire her grit and sass. I don’t give a fuck about her taxes, tho her hypocrisy does grate
I reckon she’d be a better prime minister than Starmer and she’d be better electioneer than Starmer, Burnham or any of them. She could retrieve some working class Reformers and women who are drifting to Green
She would leak middle class voters from Labour to the Tories and LDs even if she won back some working class voters from Reform and she wouldn't have any more appeal to the Greens than Burnham does either.
Rayner would basically be a female Neil Kinnock
Have you never thought of some rough? Maybe not a Manc, but someone who speaks in Estuary English, drops her "h"s and operates a parallel foreign policy.
When have the British ever voted for someone a bit rough? Middle England prefers their leaders to be a bit more refined, even Hague's thick Yorkshire vowels and Kinnock's Welsh windbagism was too much for them
1964, 1966, and 1974 (twice) - Harold Wilson
That would be the Oxford don, Harold Wilson, that bit of rough?
The nearest we came to proper rough as PM was probably Jim Callaghan. Or, if you want an election winner, John Major.
That probably tells us something uncomfortable about the country we live in.
Both better candidates than Harold, that's for sure. His pipe was an affectation. He was arguably the cleverest PM we have ever had.
Would any of them have made it to the top in contemporary politics? I fear not.
(In the case of Wilson, Callaghan and probably Heath, The War was surely a factor. Whatever its downsides, nothing like war for favouring ability over greasy-pole-climbing.)
More grammar schools, all 3 attended one and then two out of 3 Oxford
From 1964 to 1997 we had 5 PMs all of whom educated at state grammars.
From 1997 to 2026 by contrast we have had 8 PMs, 5 of whom educated at private schools (Starmer's a grammar before going private) and 2 of whom went to Eton and one Winchester and one Fettes. We have had only 2 PMs in that time educated solely for secondary level at a comprehensive, Gordon Brown and Liz Truss but Brown was in an academic hothouse experiment taught in separate classes at his High School so basically it was a grammar in all but name.
May was educated at a Roman Catholic private school, then a grammar school which converted to a comprehensive when she was in the sixth form
'Most comprehensive's set classes by ability, it's not unusual or experimental.
'Liz Truss’s claim to be the first prime minister to have gone to a comprehensive school inadvertently thrust Kirkcaldy High School into the limelight.
The crisis-hit Conservative PM made the remark on Wednesday in her speech to the party conference in Birmingham.
And commentators were quick to ask: “What about Gordon Brown?”
Many – including her rivals – pointed to the 71-year-old Fifer’s education at a state school as proof Ms Truss was wrong.
But broadcaster Andrew Neil wrote: “Labour is wrong. Kirkcaldy High was not a comprehensive when Brown went to it.”
He added: “Entrance exams for Kirkcaldy High did not end until 1970 by which time he was at Edinburgh University...All publicly-funded secondary schools in Scotland are comprehensives – however this was not always the case.
Former Kirkcaldy High School rector Derek Allan confirmed the school WAS selective when Gordon Brown was a pupil in the 1960s.'
So there we have it, the only UK PM to have been fully educated at a comprehensive school from 11 to 18 was Liz Truss. Though Truss went to Oxford, we have never had a comprehensive school educated PM who did not go to Oxbridge though we have had non Oxbridge educated private and grammar school PMs
Is that supposed to be a recommendation 🤔
On the other hand Eton gave us Boris Johnson, amongst others.
Eton also gave us Walpole, Pitt the Elder, the Duke of Wellington, Earl Grey, Gladstone, Salisbury, Macmillan and Cameron.
In fact there have been more UK PMs educated at Eton than all the state educated UK PMs put together, though most Etonian PMs were in the 18th and 19th century and while Eton has produced Tory and Conservative, Whig and Liberal PMs it has yet to produce a Labour PM (even if Fettes was the Eton of the North). Farage went to Dulwich, Tice Uppingham and Jenrick Wolverhampton Grammar School so Eton is unlikely to produce a Reform PM either nor a Green PM anytime soon as Polanski went to Stockport Grammar School
Lord McDonald, who was permanent secretary between 2015 and 2020, said details from the "confidential" vetting process would "never be shared with No 10 or the prime minister". An outright failure of the vetting process "would have to be conveyed to the political level", Lord McDonald added - and the fact it appears not to have been indicates "the picture was more complicated than Number 10 wished to present".
“I had a patient who was a smoker,” recalled Cork-based GP Dr Mohamed Elbadri, “and I just asked the first question: ‘Are you willing to quit smoking?’ He said: ‘I will, yeah’.
“So I was happy he was really determined to quit smoking and I didn’t offer any nicotine replacement or psychological therapy because he didn‘t need it.
“But when he came back three months later for a follow-up, I asked him: ‘How was your journey with smoking cessation?’ And he said: ‘I told you I would never stop smoking.’ ‘But,’ I said, ‘you were very enthusiastic’. He explained to me then what ‘I will, yeah’ means in Ireland.”
I see there has been a discussion as to whether Gordon Brown's school was a Comprehensive or not. I have a bit of an insight here. My wife and her sister were at school with Gordon. My wife 5 years behind, her sister actually in Gordon's class.. When Gordon left it was still selective. It became a Comprehensive while my wife was attending.
So confirmed Liz Truss is the only UK PM to have attended a comprehensive school from 11 to 18
I see there has been a discussion as to whether Gordon Brown's school was a Comprehensive or not. I have a bit of an insight here. My wife and her sister were at school with Gordon. My wife 5 years behind, her sister actually in Gordon's class.. When Gordon left it was still selective. It became a Comprehensive while my wife was attending.
I've missed that discussion but who gives a damn anyway? What matters about Gordon Brown's time at school is he was given an accelerated education as part of an experimental programme, basically moved up two years. Arguments about governance or funding are beside the point.
Same here. Just thought it interesting factoid. They have little memory of him. I was in the same year at school as Kazuo Ishiguro and I have no memory of him at all. Pointless fact that I enjoy quoting. He wasn't obviously a star in the making then.
Lord McDonald, who was permanent secretary between 2015 and 2020, said details from the "confidential" vetting process would "never be shared with No 10 or the prime minister". An outright failure of the vetting process "would have to be conveyed to the political level", Lord McDonald added - and the fact it appears not to have been indicates "the picture was more complicated than Number 10 wished to present".
Do you go to a special Mandarin finishing school to come up with 99 different ways to say things like I think they are f##king lying?
It's just a knack. All spheres - government, political, or business - have their euphemistic terminology.
My goto is changing "That's an insane idea" to "It doesn't withstand reasonable analysis".
I believe my PhD supervisor was an early pionerr of radical candor, but missed out the caring bit....ideas were shit, utter shit, are you an absolute fucking moron, fuck me why did i pick you are you are definitely a moron, ok that will do write it up.
That process appears to have taken weeks, with as many as a dozen officials and lawyers aware of Mandelson’s vetting failure. Starmer’s statement would suggest he was not formally notified by any of them until a few days ago.
Why is my spidey sense tingling. I detect weasel words
He stuck his head so far in official sand, there’s absolutely no way that he formally wasn’t an ostrich
It’s absurd and implausible to suggest that he didn’t really know
Implausible that Starmer did not really know what exactly?
Everyone knew Mandelson was iffy. He had previously been ousted twice for ethical failings of one sort of another.
Almost no-one knew Mandelson had failed vetting, not least because he was appointed first and vetted later, but also because from Number 10's standpoint, FO vetting cleared Mandelson by overriding UKSC.
So maybe Kemi and others are asking the wrong question. Rather than did the Prime Minister know Mandelson had been fingered by UKSC but whether Starmer, like everyone who had read a newspaper this millennium, already knew about the grounds that UKSC flagged up.
To discern the probabilities of what ministers knew, either by being told or working it out for themselves, you examine the sorts of language, formulaic uses and verbal evasions they were using in the House of Commons before last Tuesday. Is there a pattern? Is there something they try to imply but don't spell out?
I think we will find the pattern is that they don't want to say PeterM was in the clear vetting wise, and don't want to say he wasn't, and don't want to say it is not a matter for them (or us proles) to know anyway.
I think its clear Starmer was not told. He says he wasn't and Robbins says he didn't tell him (because apparently that is civil service policy).
Officially and deliberately perhaps not but he knew and thought he would get away with it due to all the secrecy but someone blew the whistle. Obviously all done without written evidence or even worse Starmer is a useless twat who has no clue what is going on in government. Either way it should be out on his arse.
I'm still being bombarded by Youtube adverts telling me how @RochdalePioneers will be significantly upgrading the interior of "the car" by fitting the ultimate sexy rubber floor mats from a sponsor. If I don't turn it off, I am played the entire thing. It is very Kings Cross.
They apparently have angled spiked on the back to stop them moving the wrong way, just like one of those Brazilian candiru fish that allegedly swim up the gentleman sausages of unaware gentlemen who are peeing in the Amazon.
An ex-soldier who'd served in the jungle said they all had two condoms: one to stop nasties from entering their willies and the other served a similar purpose for their rifles.
Only on PB could I read a post that apparently tells me that soldiers used a condom to stop rifles from entering their willies.
I see there has been a discussion as to whether Gordon Brown's school was a Comprehensive or not. I have a bit of an insight here. My wife and her sister were at school with Gordon. My wife 5 years behind, her sister actually in Gordon's class.. When Gordon left it was still selective. It became a Comprehensive while my wife was attending.
So confirmed Liz Truss is the only UK PM to have attended a comprehensive school from 11 to 18
There are two things about this abomination that I object to: 1: Coldplay. I know it's a cliche to deride Coldplay, but it's a cliche for a reason. But it's not their fault: pop music is highly subjective: even the most likeable pop music is going to be disliked by more people than it is liked by. There is an asinine assumption made by people who don't really like music that because a band is successful, everyone likes them. I like the Fall, but I don't arrogantly assume everyone wants to listen to them. 2: But even if it was a band I liked: surely the World Cup Final (or any other sporting event) is exciting enough, if you like football? It's the biggest event in the football calendar. It doesn't need anything else. People watching it are watching it because they want to watch it: incorporating something they haven't asked for makes the whole experience, on average, less exciting.
Yep it's like for those people who choose to go to a Coldplay concert having an interlude where they get to watch a short 5-a-side football match.
That's a good way of putting it. Ok, there's already a break in football, but have fans been crying out for it to be filled?
It's more for the TV audience but what do they do at halftime? Watch clips of the first half.
The Irish state broadcaster, RTÉ, is so skint that they have three ad breaks during half-time of a football match.
I imagine that they'll be fuming at having a music band absorb valuable advertising time, and, worse, a British music band.
The FT has at least five articles all giving versions of “Starmer is dreadful and he must go”
The conclusion is that Starmer must go even if he is technically telling the truth (tho in fact he’s probably lying)
Because if you absolutely insist on appointing a twice sacked friend of a convicted pedo to Britain’s most important diplomatic job, you must - at the very least - ensure he is vetted and passed. That’s due diligence. As PM
That process appears to have taken weeks, with as many as a dozen officials and lawyers aware of Mandelson’s vetting failure. Starmer’s statement would suggest he was not formally notified by any of them until a few days ago.
Why is my spidey sense tingling. I detect weasel words
He stuck his head so far in official sand, there’s absolutely no way that he formally wasn’t an ostrich
It’s absurd and implausible to suggest that he didn’t really know
Implausible that Starmer did not really know what exactly?
Everyone knew Mandelson was iffy. He had previously been ousted twice for ethical failings of one sort of another.
Almost no-one knew Mandelson had failed vetting, not least because he was appointed first and vetted later, but also because from Number 10's standpoint, FO vetting cleared Mandelson by overriding UKSC.
So maybe Kemi and others are asking the wrong question. Rather than did the Prime Minister know Mandelson had been fingered by UKSC but whether Starmer, like everyone who had read a newspaper this millennium, already knew about the grounds that UKSC flagged up.
To discern the probabilities of what ministers knew, either by being told or working it out for themselves, you examine the sorts of language, formulaic uses and verbal evasions they were using in the House of Commons before last Tuesday. Is there a pattern? Is there something they try to imply but don't spell out?
I think we will find the pattern is that they don't want to say PeterM was in the clear vetting wise, and don't want to say he wasn't, and don't want to say it is not a matter for them (or us proles) to know anyway.
To a point.
It is also worth bearing in mind that what (so far as has been leaked to the press) was not uncovered by UKSV was the real scandal, that Mandelson was systematically leaking market-sensitive Cabinet discussions to his rich mates, which became public from the Epstein disclosures in America.
There are two things about this abomination that I object to: 1: Coldplay. I know it's a cliche to deride Coldplay, but it's a cliche for a reason. But it's not their fault: pop music is highly subjective: even the most likeable pop music is going to be disliked by more people than it is liked by. There is an asinine assumption made by people who don't really like music that because a band is successful, everyone likes them. I like the Fall, but I don't arrogantly assume everyone wants to listen to them. 2: But even if it was a band I liked: surely the World Cup Final (or any other sporting event) is exciting enough, if you like football? It's the biggest event in the football calendar. It doesn't need anything else. People watching it are watching it because they want to watch it: incorporating something they haven't asked for makes the whole experience, on average, less exciting.
Yep it's like for those people who choose to go to a Coldplay concert having an interlude where they get to watch a short 5-a-side football match.
That's a good way of putting it. Ok, there's already a break in football, but have fans been crying out for it to be filled?
It's more for the TV audience but what do they do at halftime? Watch clips of the first half.
The Irish state broadcaster, RTÉ, is so skint that they have three ad breaks during half-time of a football match.
I imagine that they'll be fuming at having a music band absorb valuable advertising time, and, worse, a British music band.
heavy lifting for "music" there
I refer the honourable gentleman to the parallel discussion about euphemistic terminology.
I see there has been a discussion as to whether Gordon Brown's school was a Comprehensive or not. I have a bit of an insight here. My wife and her sister were at school with Gordon. My wife 5 years behind, her sister actually in Gordon's class.. When Gordon left it was still selective. It became a Comprehensive while my wife was attending.
So confirmed Liz Truss is the only UK PM to have attended a comprehensive school from 11 to 18
The FT has at least five articles all giving versions of “Starmer is dreadful and he must go”
The conclusion is that Starmer must go even if he is technically telling the truth (tho in fact he’s probably lying)
Because if you absolutely insist on appointing a twice sacked friend of a convicted pedo to Britain’s most important diplomatic job, you must - at the very least - ensure he is vetted and passed. That’s due diligence. As PM
Skyr didn’t do that.
As Patrick Maguire said yesterday (and he is a big Labour man), Starmer government is a combination of high levels of incompontence and dishonesty, but you are never 100% sure which it is or what combination of the two, but it is a constant feature. In this case, it could be one or the other, or probably both. He was saying doesn't matter, you can't carry on like this.
I see there has been a discussion as to whether Gordon Brown's school was a Comprehensive or not. I have a bit of an insight here. My wife and her sister were at school with Gordon. My wife 5 years behind, her sister actually in Gordon's class.. When Gordon left it was still selective. It became a Comprehensive while my wife was attending.
So confirmed Liz Truss is the only UK PM to have attended a comprehensive school from 11 to 18
Not quite - she had a year in Canada.
At a state high school
which is not a comprehensive school
Still a non selective state school so in terms of this discussion the same thing
Iran announced control of the strait of Hormuz has “reverted to its previous state” over the continuing row with the US over its naval blockade of Iranian ports.
In a statement carried by Iranian media, the Iranian military’s operational command, Khatam Al-Anbiya, described the ongoing US blockade as “piracy”, saying: “For this reason, control of the strait of Hormuz has reverted to its previous state, and this strategic waterway is under the strict management and control of the armed forces.
I just don’t buy any of this growing mountain of total bullshit. It’s gaslighting. You have to believe the entire British civil service conspired to keep the prime minister in the dark that his personally chosen and controversial appointee for our most important diplomatic job failed the fundamental vetting test. And all of this at the same time that the prime minister KNEW that the same controversial man remained friends with a known pedophile and child sex offender after the pedo was convicted
Meanwhile the PM’s aide’s phone containing all the most important messages was miraculously stolen at the best possible moment to hide that evidence
It’s utterly ridiculous. Now they’re trying to muddy the water with endless long confusing emails they’ve made up and ridiculous screeds of boring verbiage in the hope we all get bored and confused and somehow Skyr survives
It might even work. But every day Skyr survives as the least popular premier in history, getting even less popular by the hour, damages the Labour Party, hampers the government, makes their re-election even less likely and is a sad state of affairs for the UK
Andy Burnham stands ready to serve.
As I posted late last night after drinks someone I trust implacably to have their finger on the pulse of deepest Labour says he's on his way.
Burnham grates on me and he isn’t even an MP yet. I’d rather Rayner took over .
Burnham is a legend (in his own mind).
My view is that Burnham would make a better PM but in the cage fight that the next election is going to be between Farage, Polanski and Labour then she is a better choice.
Agreed. Rayner has a genuinely tough backstory, and she is pukka working class. I suspect she is properly bright, you don’t get as far as she has - with her background, in the misogynistic Labour Party - without native cunning and wit
I abhor most of her politics but I admire her grit and sass. I don’t give a fuck about her taxes, tho her hypocrisy does grate
I reckon she’d be a better prime minister than Starmer and she’d be better electioneer than Starmer, Burnham or any of them. She could retrieve some working class Reformers and women who are drifting to Green
She would leak middle class voters from Labour to the Tories and LDs even if she won back some working class voters from Reform and she wouldn't have any more appeal to the Greens than Burnham does either.
Rayner would basically be a female Neil Kinnock
Have you never thought of some rough? Maybe not a Manc, but someone who speaks in Estuary English, drops her "h"s and operates a parallel foreign policy.
When have the British ever voted for someone a bit rough? Middle England prefers their leaders to be a bit more refined, even Hague's thick Yorkshire vowels and Kinnock's Welsh windbagism was too much for them
1964, 1966, and 1974 (twice) - Harold Wilson
That would be the Oxford don, Harold Wilson, that bit of rough?
The nearest we came to proper rough as PM was probably Jim Callaghan. Or, if you want an election winner, John Major.
That probably tells us something uncomfortable about the country we live in.
Both better candidates than Harold, that's for sure. His pipe was an affectation. He was arguably the cleverest PM we have ever had.
Would any of them have made it to the top in contemporary politics? I fear not.
(In the case of Wilson, Callaghan and probably Heath, The War was surely a factor. Whatever its downsides, nothing like war for favouring ability over greasy-pole-climbing.)
More grammar schools, all 3 attended one and then two out of 3 Oxford
From 1964 to 1997 we had 5 PMs all of whom educated at state grammars.
From 1997 to 2026 by contrast we have had 8 PMs, 5 of whom educated at private schools (Starmer's a grammar before going private) and 2 of whom went to Eton and one Winchester and one Fettes. We have had only 2 PMs in that time educated solely for secondary level at a comprehensive, Gordon Brown and Liz Truss but Brown was in an academic hothouse experiment taught in separate classes at his High School so basically it was a grammar in all but name.
May was educated at a Roman Catholic private school, then a grammar school which converted to a comprehensive when she was in the sixth form
'Most comprehensive's set classes by ability, it's not unusual or experimental.
'Liz Truss’s claim to be the first prime minister to have gone to a comprehensive school inadvertently thrust Kirkcaldy High School into the limelight.
The crisis-hit Conservative PM made the remark on Wednesday in her speech to the party conference in Birmingham.
And commentators were quick to ask: “What about Gordon Brown?”
Many – including her rivals – pointed to the 71-year-old Fifer’s education at a state school as proof Ms Truss was wrong.
But broadcaster Andrew Neil wrote: “Labour is wrong. Kirkcaldy High was not a comprehensive when Brown went to it.”
He added: “Entrance exams for Kirkcaldy High did not end until 1970 by which time he was at Edinburgh University...All publicly-funded secondary schools in Scotland are comprehensives – however this was not always the case.
Former Kirkcaldy High School rector Derek Allan confirmed the school WAS selective when Gordon Brown was a pupil in the 1960s.'
So there we have it, the only UK PM to have been fully educated at a comprehensive school from 11 to 18 was Liz Truss. Though Truss went to Oxford, we have never had a comprehensive school educated PM who did not go to Oxbridge though we have had non Oxbridge educated private and grammar school PMs
Is that supposed to be a recommendation 🤔
On the other hand Eton gave us Boris Johnson, amongst others.
Eton also gave us Walpole, Pitt the Elder, the Duke of Wellington, Earl Grey, Gladstone, Salisbury, Macmillan and Cameron.
In fact there have been more UK PMs educated at Eton than all the state educated UK PMs put together, though most Etonian PMs were in the 18th and 19th century and while Eton has produced Tory and Conservative, Whig and Liberal PMs it has yet to produce a Labour PM (even if Fettes was the Eton of the North). Farage went to Dulwich, Tice Uppingham and Jenrick Wolverhampton Grammar School so Eton is unlikely to produce a Reform PM either nor a Green PM anytime soon as Polanski went to Stockport Grammar School
Hopefully Badenoch will now do the decent thing. Anyone who heard her interview on Ch4 News calling the Prime Minister a liar in the terms she did must know she's less suitable for high office than even an ignoramus like Trump
I see there has been a discussion as to whether Gordon Brown's school was a Comprehensive or not. I have a bit of an insight here. My wife and her sister were at school with Gordon. My wife 5 years behind, her sister actually in Gordon's class.. When Gordon left it was still selective. It became a Comprehensive while my wife was attending.
So confirmed Liz Truss is the only UK PM to have attended a comprehensive school from 11 to 18
Not quite - she had a year in Canada.
At a state high school
which is not a comprehensive school
Still a non selective state school so in terms of this discussion the same thing
you can never admit to an error, no matter how minor, can you?
I see there has been a discussion as to whether Gordon Brown's school was a Comprehensive or not. I have a bit of an insight here. My wife and her sister were at school with Gordon. My wife 5 years behind, her sister actually in Gordon's class.. When Gordon left it was still selective. It became a Comprehensive while my wife was attending.
So confirmed Liz Truss is the only UK PM to have attended a comprehensive school from 11 to 18
Not quite - she had a year in Canada.
At a state high school
which is not a comprehensive school
Still a non selective state school so in terms of this discussion the same thing
you can never admit to an error, no matter how minor, can you?
I see there has been a discussion as to whether Gordon Brown's school was a Comprehensive or not. I have a bit of an insight here. My wife and her sister were at school with Gordon. My wife 5 years behind, her sister actually in Gordon's class.. When Gordon left it was still selective. It became a Comprehensive while my wife was attending.
So confirmed Liz Truss is the only UK PM to have attended a comprehensive school from 11 to 18
Not quite - she had a year in Canada.
At a state high school
which is not a comprehensive school
Still a non selective state school so in terms of this discussion the same thing
you can never admit to an error, no matter how minor, can you?
There was no error, this discussion is purely private school educated PMs compared to selective grammar school educated PMs or non selective comprehensive school educated PMs.
So in terms of this discussion your point was completely and utterly irrelevant, had Truss attended a private school in Canada you might have had a point but she didn't (there were a few Canadian grammar schools but they are now largely independent)
Stone wall and lawn. And forsythia. Such a cheering sight. The raised beds will be in similar stonework on the other side of that wall - creating a parterre /potager view from the seats at the top of the crag.
I mean law and politics are all very well. But designing and making something creative and which outlives you is the real joy in life.
Nice
And I know whereof you speak. I can’t believe I am saying this, but I have really enjoyed creating two balconies full of herbs, succulents, and little trees this last year. I have two south facing balconies. They are basically too small for chairs so never really did much until a friend firmly suggested: put some fucking greenery out there
Now I have done that and they are full of life. Bees and spiders and ants too, but hey ho. It’s all life. They demand attention and I actually worry about them when I go away, which is unusual for me - to put it mildly - but the reward is significant. Somehow the greenery outside the flat makes the whole flat seem much bigger and nicer, and I am not sure why. It’s just a lot of pot plants. But it works
And yes I get a buzz out of curating and creating something pretty and alive
I saw this in one of your flat photos and was going to tease you about it. A little bit of greenery is so cheering even in the smallest space.Get an automatic sprinkler if you can.
I got v excited about my new lawnmower which has - don't laugh - assisted power because the entire garden (half a hectare) is on a hill and the salesman thought that it would be helpful for me. Anyway, the scent of newly mown grass is childhood. And lying on a lawn in sunshine is just pure happiness.
That wall is one of the most beautiful things I've seen. The detail of the work is wonderful. The guy who made it is both a craftsman and an artist. Working with him to build this - and much else - was a real highlight of last year.
Yeah, I’m a late developer when it comes to interior design and feng shui and home comforts. Mainly because I spent the first four decades of my adult life furiously exploring the world, and doing lots of risky shit, from dangerous drugs to dangerous war zones, almost none of which I regret, because it was fabulously exciting. But now I have accepted my age, and belatedly seen the great positives in things like…. Plants. Sometimes I just sit in my chair in my flat and stare at my plants, for half an hour. True story. It soothes me. I don’t know why. I can also do the same with a really exquisite antique - recently I bought an Art Nouveau C1900 Kralik Boemian Iridescent Hinged Metal Lidded Ewer Pitcher. 170 pounds for a glass jar!
But it explodes with pale violet light when turned in the hand. Amazing
BTW you know you can get robot mowers that do it all, now? By themselves? I was chatting about this, this very afternoon over tea in a cottage near Lisburn, by Strangford Lough, with my new friend Eileen, who makes sensational rhubarb and ginger jam
Chiming in late on this.
@Cyclefree I'm glad to see that you are enjoying your garden. Half a hectare is a LOT - we received double that when the parents bought an unfashionable small manor house in 1976, where they then lived for 40 years in a garden laid out in perhaps 1860-1880.
I love the wall - I have a section of my mid-Victorian stone wall (actually neighbours but they won't do it) waiting for repair, and it seems to be about £500-600 per metre run for a 2m high 9" stone wall, just for labour.
@Leon Keep pursuing it. I can confirm that automatic watering systems are good - I even have one running from a rainwater butt. They will happily run on solar, and if you have a timer a couple of batteries will last a year or more.
Comments
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c9wq2jvqqxvo
What is the Scots term for Sheffield rally?
Have a wonderful cruise with your wife and carers. Our days of world travel and cruises are over but we have so many treasured memories of places visited
Hope you team does well
However, so polarized are the two camps that if Paxton is the choice, then 25% of those who wanted Cornyn will vote for the Democrat, James Talarico. 10% of Paxton voters say they will vote for Talarico if Cornyn is the candidate. With Paxton the likely choice on this polling, that suggest that the Dems could get a big crossover from disgruntled Republicans. It is enough to move the contest firmly to the Democrats. Cornyn got 910k votes in the first round of primary voting. So this TPR polling suggests as many as 200k could be going to Talarico in protest. And the Democrats already polled more voters in the primary than the Republicans.
It is such a mess that Trump is currently not expected to endorse either Paxton or Cornyn. And James Talarico raised $27m in the first quarter, a huge and record amount.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gi4iGaML7I
The timing of this info being made public is very convenient for potential leadership candidates
Main networks are all reporting that Justice Alito is now not expected to retire this year. Until now, it had been widely thought he would retire.
Nobody is expecting Thomas to retire so if correct the Supreme Court would go into the midterms unchanged.
If Democrats then gain the Senate they can prevent any new Conservative appointments.
I guess maybe Alito could retire immediately after midterms and the Republicans could force through a Trump nominee in the short period before the new Senate meets at the start of January. But not if Alito really does want to remain in place.
If neither does go, Thomas and Alito really would be opening up possibility of change in balance of the Court if Democrats win Senate at midterms and a Democrat President is elected in 2028.
It would of course be a corruption of the system, but no worse than what has been done already.
More likely they would just block any replacement proposed by Trump and let the court shrink, then a new Dem president (if any) could appoint several en bloc.
Isn't one of the three Dems also reported to be in less than perfect health though?
I've been stressing on here that there are two vital questions. Who fibbed, and why?
In answer to the first, we now know it wasn't Starmer but the second question remains murky. It looks like a Civil Service collaboration that has gone wrong, but we await details of who knew what and when, and why they thought it was right to withhold information from the PM, formally or otherwise.
2) Because integrity is no longer even an optional extra in public life.
When you're recruiting for your fourth chief of staff in slightly less than two years, who would take the role? The odds have to be that his next recruit goes under a bus in about 6 months time - who would want the job on that basis?
Similarly with Cabinet Secretaries - if I was an eligible candidate, right now I'd be keeping my head down, and hoping to get the gig under Starmer's replacement - after all, he's virtually certainly to be gone at the next GE if not before, and that's a maximum of just over three years away now. Much better to get a decent run of it under Starmer's successor than have a six month stint before being made the fall guy for Starmer's political problems.
If the pool of candidates for roles like this (and other critical ones, eg communications director) dries up completely, what on earth happens next?
It will just make things worse because you get idiots like Case or Wormald under those circumstances, but I don't think he'll struggle to fill the posts.
Trump: WE HAVE DEAL!
Markets: HOORAY!!
Iran: We don't.
Trump: THE STRAIT IS OPEN FOR ALL!!
Markets: ALL RIGHT, LFG!!
Iran: It is not.
Trump: WE'RE GETTING ALONG GREAT WITH IRAN!!
Markets: OH MY GOD AWESOME!!
Iran: The fuck is wrong with you?
Have you borrowed @Morris_Dancer ’s space cannon again?
Good morning, everyone.
Everyone knew Mandelson was iffy. He had previously been ousted twice for ethical failings of one sort of another.
Almost no-one knew Mandelson had failed vetting, not least because he was appointed first and vetted later, but also because from Number 10's standpoint, FO vetting cleared Mandelson by overriding UKSC.
So maybe Kemi and others are asking the wrong question. Rather than did the Prime Minister know Mandelson had been fingered by UKSC but whether Starmer, like everyone who had read a newspaper this millennium, already knew about the grounds that UKSC flagged up.
If he wins, the Dems want him nailed to his Senate seat for the next decade.
We have
Robbins alleged to have overruled UKSV and not mentioned that to ministers even after the shit hit the fan
Romeo and Little who delayed telling Starmer that UKSV has been overruled
Case an idiot
Wormald taking can for Mandelson vetting
Gray victim of conflict with McS (Mandelson acolyte)
To hold that legislators cannot take their partisan interests into account when drawing district lines would essentially countermand the Framers’ decision to entrust districting to political entities.
You are defining 'sanity' and 'normal' in your own terms.
I'm beginning to wish that our rulers were up to the standards of The Thick of It.
I think we will find the pattern is that they don't want to say PeterM was in the clear vetting wise, and don't want to say he wasn't, and don't want to say it is not a matter for them (or us proles) to know anyway.
Gray victim of conflict with McS (Mandy acolyte)
Sedwill reservations about Brexit
Clear that Mandelson is utterly toxic, could be 5 CS careers finished over his latest debacle.
However is this also a Brexit bonus, with only CS without Brexit misgivings progressing up the ranks since. 2019 or earlier?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c30r2v68lg8o
Kind of interesting, but it's the last line that caught my eye:
""Nobody wants to make the cuts," Kennedy responded, adding that they were necessary because of a $39 trillion deficit. "
https://www.reddit.com/r/Scotland/comments/1sn7jdn/new_more_in_common_poll_seat_model_suggests_snp/
Extremely poor judgement to have let Mandelson back in, he's been a liability for every labour PM he's worked for.
1: Coldplay. I know it's a cliche to deride Coldplay, but it's a cliche for a reason. But it's not their fault: pop music is highly subjective: even the most likeable pop music is going to be disliked by more people than it is liked by. There is an asinine assumption made by people who don't really like music that because a band is successful, everyone likes them. I like the Fall, but I don't arrogantly assume everyone wants to listen to them.
2: But even if it was a band I liked: surely the World Cup Final (or any other sporting event) is exciting enough, if you like football? It's the biggest event in the football calendar. It doesn't need anything else. People watching it are watching it because they want to watch it: incorporating something they haven't asked for makes the whole experience, on average, less exciting.
But if F1 had a halfway break for 15 minutes, and that got more or less doubled for some wanky American bullshit, I wouldn't be pleased.
This will be their 8th election since 2021 !
Currently leading in the polls is Rumen Radev of Progressive Bulgaria which is seen as centre left , they are somewhat Eurosceptic and the leader is more pro Russian but nowhere near Orban and it’s likely that they’d need a coalition with a more pro EU and more anti Russian party .
At least Mandy had the decency to get his own mandate in Hartlepool.
Amidst all of the coming storm of who told who what and how, we need to remember that the original sin comes from the Prime Minister who wanted to appoint a morally bankrupt grifter in the first place. It wasn't like concerns about Peter Mandelson weren't known until vetting turned them up.
It is also worth bearing in mind that what (so far as has been leaked to the press) was not uncovered by UKSV was the real scandal, that Mandelson was systematically leaking market-sensitive Cabinet discussions to his rich mates, which became public from the Epstein disclosures in America.
Have the World Cup organisers organised Bovril at the venues? No chance.
It's more for the TV audience but what do they do at halftime? Watch clips of the first half.
What on earth is the point of it if you dont use it to inform the decision!?
For all yesterday's optinmism, it seems Hormuz is still closed due to the American naval blockade.
There were some on here who argued the naval blockade was the only real card (sorry, Lobanukes everywhere) Washington had left to play in terms of regime change in Iran. Perhaps but how long is it going to take for a naval blockade alone to incite an uprising?
Oil fell back sharply yesterday though still well above where it was before all this started and I remain convinced the real winners are those who have trousered the profits from those rises but trying to ascertain who "they" are seems quite difficult.
Anyhow, a glorious morning in this part of East London and with three weeks to go until the elections, I suspect the pace of political activity will continue to quicken. Will anyone be down East Ham High Street trying to "rally" (as it were) support or to accost me as I purchase the Racing Post (an extravagance but still cheaper than a pint). One thing you can say for East Ham - the choice of breakfast items is considerable from full English through Indian, Pakistani, Romanian and even Caribbean.
He' still in the woods imo.
He says he wasn't and Robbins says he didn't tell him (because apparently that is civil service policy).
Radev heads a new party Progressive Bulgaria formed from a coalition of older smaller parties .
They have a big lead but will still need a coalition to govern . Radevs more pro Russian sentiment will likely be watered down if he has to govern with We Continue the Change- Democratic Bulgaria .
The party in second place in the polling GERB-SDS are centre right and pro EU but there’s been a lot of acrimony between them and PB and it will take a lot of bridge building for them to join forces .
They apparently have angled spiked on the back to stop them moving the wrong way, just like one of those Brazilian candiru fish that allegedly swim up the gentleman sausages of unaware gentlemen who are peeing in the Amazon.
I will watch cricket instead. Or enjoy the outdoors in ludicrously great Irish summer weather.
Again though we need to go back to the fact that Starmer made a political decision to circumvent normal appointment procedures. What should happen is that the FCDO would look for suitable candidates within the diplomatic service, give the PM a range of options privately and then do the checks. We haven't historically operated a US style system of giving diplomatic jobs to politically useful outsiders (with some exceptions in times of crisis) and the PM made things a hundred times worse by announcing the appointment before the checks had been done.
One of the committee members realised that the elaborate testing methodology was functionally equivalent to testing shells in a batch, until one worked. Then passing the batch. So 12 failures and then 1 success = pass for the whole batch.
In the current case, we are told that if you pass vetting, you get the job. If you fail vetting, you have to get the job became it would be embarrassing. For you and the PM
This is functionally equivalent to not having vetting.
I imagine that they'll be fuming at having a music band absorb valuable advertising time, and, worse, a British music band.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0kryzd8l7no
Do you go to a special Mandarin finishing school to come up with 99 different ways to say things like I think they are f##king lying?
My goto is changing "That's an insane idea" to "It doesn't withstand reasonable analysis".
In fact there have been more UK PMs educated at Eton than all the state educated UK PMs put together, though most Etonian PMs were in the 18th and 19th century and while Eton has produced Tory and Conservative, Whig and Liberal PMs it has yet to produce a Labour PM (even if Fettes was the Eton of the North). Farage went to Dulwich, Tice Uppingham and Jenrick Wolverhampton Grammar School so Eton is unlikely to produce a Reform PM either nor a Green PM anytime soon as Polanski went to Stockport Grammar School
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_prime_ministers_of_the_United_Kingdom_by_education
See for example this recent article.
https://www.irishtimes.com/health/2026/04/13/i-will-yeah-how-a-very-irish-phrase-created-a-challenge-for-an-immigrant-doctor/
“So I was happy he was really determined to quit smoking and I didn’t offer any nicotine replacement or psychological therapy because he didn‘t need it.
“But when he came back three months later for a follow-up, I asked him: ‘How was your journey with smoking cessation?’ And he said: ‘I told you I would never stop smoking.’ ‘But,’ I said, ‘you were very enthusiastic’. He explained to me then what ‘I will, yeah’ means in Ireland.”
The conclusion is that Starmer must go even if he is technically telling the truth (tho in fact he’s probably lying)
Because if you absolutely insist on appointing a twice sacked friend of a convicted pedo to Britain’s most important diplomatic job, you must - at the very least - ensure he is vetted and passed. That’s due diligence. As PM
Skyr didn’t do that.
In a statement carried by Iranian media, the Iranian military’s operational command, Khatam Al-Anbiya, described the ongoing US blockade as “piracy”, saying: “For this reason, control of the strait of Hormuz has reverted to its previous state, and this strategic waterway is under the strict management and control of the armed forces.
Guardian live blog
Hopefully Badenoch will now do the decent thing. Anyone who heard her interview on Ch4 News calling the Prime Minister a liar in the terms she did must know she's less suitable for high office than even an ignoramus like Trump
So in terms of this discussion your point was completely and utterly irrelevant, had Truss attended a private school in Canada you might have had a point but she didn't (there were a few Canadian grammar schools but they are now largely independent)
@Cyclefree I'm glad to see that you are enjoying your garden. Half a hectare is a LOT - we received double that when the parents bought an unfashionable small manor house in 1976, where they then lived for 40 years in a garden laid out in perhaps 1860-1880.
I love the wall - I have a section of my mid-Victorian stone wall (actually neighbours but they won't do it) waiting for repair, and it seems to be about £500-600 per metre run for a 2m high 9" stone wall, just for labour.
@Leon Keep pursuing it. I can confirm that automatic watering systems are good - I even have one running from a rainwater butt. They will happily run on solar, and if you have a timer a couple of batteries will last a year or more.
(When does your column start in the Oldie ?)