Have you stood before for Reform, Dr Goodwin? How did it go? Got a good narrative going, did you? Bit of a common touch, yeah? Didn't come across as a distant, completely out of touch, freakishly empathy-free, total fucking loon too much?
Have you stood before for Reform, Dr Goodwin? How did it go? Got a good narrative going, did you? Bit of a common touch, yeah? Didn't come across as a distant, completely out of touch, freakishly empathy-free, total fucking loon too much?
Yeah, good stuff - you're approved.
I suspect he will have to be in the Reform Cabinet via the House of Lords to be honest.
Have you stood before for Reform, Dr Goodwin? How did it go? Got a good narrative going, did you? Bit of a common touch, yeah? Didn't come across as a distant, completely out of touch, freakishly empathy-free, total fucking loon too much?
Yeah, good stuff - you're approved.
I suspect he will have to be in the Reform Cabinet via the House of Lords to be honest.
If Matt Goodwin doesn't cry himself to sleep every night, comparing who he could have been to what he actually is, then there is no justice.
EXC: The cabinet will present Keir Starmer with a specially engraved carriage clock for his leaving present tomorrow
David Lammy has organised the whip-round
Free Gear Keir to the end ...
Oh come, come Fishing, joking aside, you weren't quite so dismissive of Boris Johnson's exit from Downing Street. Living in a buckshee shed (ok, guest house) in Anthony Bamford's garden* and gratis food parcels for the Johnson family from Carole Bamford's version of Stay Fresh (Daylesford) after he has been defenestrated by the fragrant Liz Truss.
Reports in The Times that the Treasury are looking to bring forward the increase in state pension age to 68 to start from 2037. The current published plan is to phase this increase in from April 2044.
I just hope it still exists in the 40s…
No government will get re elected proposing anything else
I have worked in banking & financial service regulatory affairs for the last fifteen years.
Gordon Brown is entirely responsible for the fuck ups at RBS and Northern Rock that happened thanks to his regulatory changes.
I'll dig out Peter Lilley's warning in 1997/98 that turned out to be prescient.
So bankers are desperate to behave like irresponsible arseholes, and it is only tight regulation that stops them doing so?
Nobody forced the banks to play fast and loose. It was a crisis of their own making.
They were encouraged by politicians.
ALEX Salmond offered the assistance of the Scottish Government to Sir Fred Goodwin for the disastrous takeover of ABN Amro that almost destroyed the Royal Bank of Scotland.
The Scottish Government spent 18 months trying to prevent the release of a secret letter from the First Minister in which he fully endorsed Sir Fred's bid for the Dutch bank.
Mr Salmond offered the chief executive "any assistance my office can provide" and said it would be in Scotland's best interest for the RBS takeover to succeed. Two years later he would describe the deal as a "huge mistake" and one of the bank's many "grievous errors".
RBS bought ABN for 49 billion, a grossly inflated price that was put down to Sir Fred's determination not to lose a bidding war with Barclays. In buying the bank RBS exposed itself during the credit crunch to ABN's toxic assets and, as a result, posted the biggest loss in UK corporate history, 24bn, in 2008.
By 1999, Brown had the banker involved in the kind of charitable work mixed with policy reviews he so likes to bestow on friends: Sir Fred chaired a government task force on the work of credit unions and the New Deal programme, talismanic New Labour projects.
In 2001, Goodwin was in the contingent of businessmen who attended a pre-election lunch at Chequers aimed at securing the backing of the bankers for that year's poll. This was despite Goodwin disliking the limelight and dismissing "networking".
At the height of its success, it will not have gone unnoticed by Brown that RBS channelled £3bn in taxes into the Treasury. Brown and Goodwin did not diverge when RBS performed the takeover of the Dutch bank ABN Amro, the biggest European financial takeover, that proved the undoing of the Scottish bank.
Viscount Ridley is a reasonably good journalist but had no banking or accountancy qualifications to speak of or significant experience in the financial services industry to make him chairman of Northern Rock. Indeed his PhD was on 'the mating system of the common pheasant (Phasianus colchicus)'
But to pay a 17 year old for sex is still an offence today. And he was 39. Yusuf is a creep but the discriminatory laws at the time are not that relevant to this.
But, as he said, the lad said he was older than that. 21 IIRC.
Well Proctor said he did. The difference between a 17 year old boy and a 21 year old man is normally pretty obvious, arguably more obvious than it might be with girls.
But as he points out, the discriminatory age difference is no longer law.
And back then, it was probably not illegal to pay an u-18 for sex, as has been discussed regarding Prince Andrew
Did Andrew pay? It was illegal for Epstein / Maxwell to have procured someone under 21 to have sex with Andrew.
Ooh, so it’s Spain in the final and not France. That might be slightly preferable from an England perspective, so long as we can overcome the Argies tonight.
Comments
Yeah, good stuff - you're approved.
* Poetic licence but largely true.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Ridley