I would also add, I don’t think she was stupid, I think she was stressed - her child was permanently disabled due to some injury at birth and her marriage appears to have finally collapsed around the time of the pandemic. Though the divorce didn’t become final until 2023 in the run up to the general election. Meanwhile she has been doing a shared care arrangement for her children, including her disabled son - and given they’ve needed a court appointed trust I am going to guess their son has high needs.
Frankly, if I was in that position I think I’d have had a nervous breakdown years ago - let alone not quite asked enough tax lawyers about selling my house.
Precisely this.
As far as one can tell from what's in the public domain, she acted appropriately and with integrity in a very, very difficult situation. There is literally zero evidence that she had any intent to avoid tax. She made a small and very understandable mistake.* She referred herself to the independent ethics advisor and resigned on his advice.
Seriously, what more could she have possibly done?
And I have extreme nausea at the extreme hypocrisy of most of her critics.
Please note that the Telegraph that has been the main vehicle of attack runs whole sections on how to minimise one's tax burden. Those that come from money don't get that she doesn't have a tax accountant and lawyer on retainer because doesn't everyone?
I have owned more than one property at times and the tax rules are complex and subject to change. It is not easy to access advice or even work out where and when you need to.** There's a common trope on social media that she should be prosecuted 'like anyone else would be.' That is plain nonsense. She declared the error to HMRC, they will expect full payment plus interest, plus a penalty potentially but would never launch a prosecution for this. If they did, it would fail.
AFZ
*I don’t mean that 40k is small. It is and it isn't. I mean small in terms of the process.
**and no, as a minister she did not have access to civil service advice. That would have been entirely improper.
P.S. A hundred years ago, Churchill ran into trouble for not paying tax on publishing earnings so he got a Treasury official to write him a special exemption. Just by contrast.
I see the appointment of the ambassador to the US is ageing like fine milk.
Sir Ed Davey is insinuating that Trump might have "compromising material" on Epstein/Mandelson, which he could use against Mandelson in US-UK negotiations.
Which is kinda funny, because conspiracy-theorists are also claiming that the Israelis have stuff from the Epstein files which they're using against American politicians. So it looks like everyone's in the files, and blackmailing everyone else who's in them!
(Though my own view is that the espionage aspect of all this is severely overblown.)
And as I said on the other thread, Mandelson's little once-upon-a-time story in the birthday book is more cringeworthy than lurid; in fact, it's not lurid at all.
But if you're someone who hasn't been really paying attention to the previously revealed details, the text and the bathrobe-photo suddenly apoearing in the media might hit you as sensational breaking news.
The Guardian has reported, citing The Sun, that Mandelson sent a consolatory email to Epstein after he was charged in 2008. Something about "your friends love you", such an injustice could never happen in Britain etc.
Probably not overly bold to predict he's not long for his current job.
A story from the Sun ... yeah, that'll be worth as much as the paper it's printed on (which isn't even good enough to be used for loo roll).
The emails themselves are legitimate, as they were sourced by Bloomberg, and if the Sun was fabricating their content they'd open themselves up to legal action.
"In particular Peter Mandelson’s suggestion that Jeffrey Epstein’s first conviction was wrongful and should be challenged is new information. In light of that, and mindful of the victims of Epstein’s crimes he has been withdrawn as Ambassador with immediate effect."
Which begs a question; prior to his appointment it was already known (via a court case) that Mandelson had maintained contact with and stayed with Epstein after his conviction. So it's okay to maintain contact with him if you believe he is guilty ?
Which begs a question; prior to his appointment it was already known (via a court case) that Mandelson had maintained contact with and stayed with Epstein after his conviction. So it's okay to maintain contact with him if you believe he is guilty ?
And the appointment was only a few months ago, ie. long after Epstein's notoriety had been fully established on both sides of the Atlantic. So it's not like Starmer could say "Bloody hell, I didn't know what kind of friends Mandelson had when I appointed him."
So it's okay to maintain contact with him if you believe he is guilty ?
In some circumstances, yes.
It's normal for close family to maintain contact with convicted relatives, for example, while in other cases families disown and never again contact convicted relatives - that's going to depend on the crime, sentence and views of the family. I don't see why friends shouldn't fall into the same category.
But, there's a difference between maintaining contact and condoning the crime. You can maintain contact while still saying "you deserve what you're getting for what you did", you can even wish that the convict receives help while in prison.
It's odd to both maintain contact and wish you'd never made friends with someone in the first place.
So it's okay to maintain contact with him if you believe he is guilty ?
In some circumstances, yes.
Yes, but this is one of those cases where the inference is that it was okay to keep contact with him if you believe he is guilty but not if you think he's innocent.
In other words it is more like this:
It's odd to both maintain contact and wish you'd never made friends with someone in the first place.
So, apparently, this Ovenden guy is "truly deeply sorry" that he sent text-messages recounting a game of
"marry, shag, kill"
with Diane Abbott as the target, but thinks it's "chilling" that he has to resign over a "private conversation" from "almost a decade ago".
Apart from what would appear to be the reprehrensibility of the game and subsequent conversation, 2017 is WAY too late to be pleading "How was I supposed to know that everyone would be able to read this for years into the future?"
It's particularly disgusting that his colleagues are piping up saying Starmer should have kept him on! The misogynoir at the centre of the Starmer project is really quite horrendous.
It's particularly disgusting that his colleagues are piping up saying Starmer should have kept him on! The misogynoir at the centre of the Starmer project is really quite horrendous.
According to the BBC, one of his apologists called this "a factional hit", which might not be entirely inaccurate, given that the venue originally reporting the story was the Daily Mail. Still Ovenden's fault for painting the target on his back in the first place.
Ovenden thought it relevant to mention that the people he was playing the game with were "other female staff members". The implication, of course, being that female participation somehow mitigates the offensiveness of the joke, though his phrasing also has the presumably unintended effect of making it sound as if Ovenden himself is a woman.
Labour right now is almost certainly trying to make every Conservative and Reformer look like a racist Unite The Kingdom gammon, so this type of scandal is especially unhelpful for their messaging.
It's particularly disgusting that his colleagues are piping up saying Starmer should have kept him on! The misogynoir at the centre of the Starmer project is really quite horrendous.
According to the BBC, one of his apologists called this "a factional hit", which might not be entirely inaccurate, given that the venue originally reporting the story was the Daily Mail. Still Ovenden's fault for painting the target on his back in the first place.
"The call is coming from inside the house". Leaking to the right wing gutter press is behaviour associated with the right of the Labour Party. I suppose it's possible this is Streeting or his pals on manoeuvres.
I wish, I wish, that Starmer was willing to call out the anti-immigrant racist crap for what it is, but he's far more interested in reasonable-concerning his way onto their turf.
It's particularly disgusting that his colleagues are piping up saying Starmer should have kept him on! The misogynoir at the centre of the Starmer project is really quite horrendous.
According to the BBC, one of his apologists called this "a factional hit", which might not be entirely inaccurate, given that the venue originally reporting the story was the Daily Mail. Still Ovenden's fault for painting the target on his back in the first place.
"The call is coming from inside the house". Leaking to the right wing gutter press is behaviour associated with the right of the Labour Party. I suppose it's possible this is Streeting or his pals on manoeuvres.
I wish, I wish, that Starmer was willing to call out the anti-immigrant racist crap for what it is, but he's far more interested in reasonable-concerning his way onto their turf.
He gives every impression of not actually understanding or caring.
Testimonial after testimonial from journalists ventriloquising their sources to say how they really feel, with only Cole being stupid enough to break kayfabe.
I wish, I wish, that Starmer was willing to call out the anti-immigrant racist crap for what it is, but he's far more interested in reasonable-concerning his way onto their turf.
Yeah, but he still wants to maintain plausible deniability with the anti-racists on his left flank.
Granted. But if you know there’s a lion standing there, why put your head into its mouth?
Because the Labour Right think in factional terms, and this was presumably seen as sticking it to the left.
Every other time it's been brought up - including in the extraordinary FT interview - they've treated questions as completely illegitimate.
From where I'm standing the entire Labour Party - left, right and centre - thinks in factional terms.
I'm a 'critical friend' but Labour appears to gnaw its own entrails over and over again.
Going back to Raynor's alleged wealth. I got it from a bloke who doesn't tend to consult right-wing sources. I'll check with him but will happily accept that she isn't worth the oft-cited amount if it isn't the case.
Meanwhile, the media is rubbing its hands with glee and giving Farage even more of a platform than they've given him already.
Anyone would think they want him to be the next PM. Oh, wait ...
He'd come for them if he ever did get to Number 10.
Sorry to cross-thread with the Reform thread but it's almost as if we can't talk about any of the political parties these days without bringing them into the equation. Which is part of the problem, of course.
Granted. But if you know there’s a lion standing there, why put your head into its mouth?
Because the Labour Right think in factional terms, and this was presumably seen as sticking it to the left.
Every other time it's been brought up - including in the extraordinary FT interview - they've treated questions as completely illegitimate.
From where I'm standing the entire Labour Party - left, right and centre - thinks in factional terms.
I realise you want pride yourself on posing as the voice of reason, but you can compare the composition of Corbyn's shadow cabinets, and ponder that even under Blair the composition of the parliamentary party was wider than the sorts of candidates picked under Akehurst et al (not to mention the various manoeuvres to narrow the selectorate and candidates in any future internal election).
Going back to Raynor's alleged wealth. I got it from a bloke who doesn't tend to consult right-wing sources. I'll check with him but will happily accept that she isn't worth the oft-cited amount if it isn't the case.
I'm glad we are adopting a very high standard of evidence here.
Testimonial after testimonial from journalists ventriloquising their sources to say how they really feel, with only Cole being stupid enough to break kayfabe.
Reading all those comments, ventriloquised or otherwise, I'm worryingly inclined toward thinking that they can't all be wrong about Ovenden's pivotal importance to Labour's aquisition and maintenance of power, and the damage that might ensue from his removal.
But I've also just been reading the transcripts of his original WhatsApp posts. Ugh. I mean, I get it, everybody improvs their way into offensive verbal jokes at one time or another, but to then go and repeat them to a third-party, via the most permanent form of communication in existence, is just beyond-belief brain-dead.
Plus, it's hard not to read it as a bit o' laddish bragging about all the naughty shenanigans he gets up to with his lady friends.
In many ways, the conversation itself is not that explicit - what is really offensive is the description in the conversation of what he had been doing the previous night.
This has not helped the current government at all. The buck stops with Starmer. Yes he cannot be over all issues, but that is why he has advisors. These advisors are coming in for a lot of criticism, even from favourable commentators. The calls for Starmer’s head are growing. His popularity has tanked. He has made too many mistakes. The changes Labour are making are happing too slowly and those which are making a change are not being pushed hard enough. The communications department seem to be relying on influencers to do their job for them.
It is all a mess.
Starmer has no political instincts.
Granted. But if you know there’s a lion standing there, why put your head into its mouth?
Because the Labour Right think in factional terms, and this was presumably seen as sticking it to the left.
Every other time it's been brought up - including in the extraordinary FT interview - they've treated questions as completely illegitimate.
From where I'm standing the entire Labour Party - left, right and centre - thinks in factional terms.
I realise you want pride yourself on posing as the voice of reason, but you can compare the composition of Corbyn's shadow cabinets, and ponder that even under Blair the composition of the parliamentary party was wider than the sorts of candidates picked under Akehurst et al (not to mention the various manoeuvres to narrow the selectorate and candidates in any future internal election).
Going back to Raynor's alleged wealth. I got it from a bloke who doesn't tend to consult right-wing sources. I'll check with him but will happily accept that she isn't worth the oft-cited amount if it isn't the case.
I'm glad we are adopting a very high standard of evidence here.
Oi! Less of the ad hominem accusations if you don't mind.
The Labour Party is no more sacrosanct than any other. At the moment it's pretty sulphurous.
I can only speak as I find and I've seen the fall-out from local Labour branches when they tear their own innards out and it ain't pretty, whether it's the right or left of the Party that's doing the tearing.
I'll concede the point about 'the bloke' and I've yet to ask him about his source. He's generally pretty good on that sort of thing but as I said upthread, I'm more than happy to accept that Raynor's not worth as much as some of her detractors claim.
In many ways, the conversation itself is not that explicit - what is really offensive is the description in the conversation of what he had been doing the previous night.
You mean the details of the game they were playing? Yeah, that was what made the conversation objectionable.
Granted. But if you know there’s a lion standing there, why put your head into its mouth?
Because the Labour Right think in factional terms, and this was presumably seen as sticking it to the left.
Every other time it's been brought up - including in the extraordinary FT interview - they've treated questions as completely illegitimate.
From where I'm standing the entire Labour Party - left, right and centre - thinks in factional terms.
I realise you want pride yourself on posing as the voice of reason, but you can compare the composition of Corbyn's shadow cabinets, and ponder that even under Blair the composition of the parliamentary party was wider than the sorts of candidates picked under Akehurst et al (not to mention the various manoeuvres to narrow the selectorate and candidates in any future internal election).
Going back to Raynor's alleged wealth. I got it from a bloke who doesn't tend to consult right-wing sources. I'll check with him but will happily accept that she isn't worth the oft-cited amount if it isn't the case.
I'm glad we are adopting a very high standard of evidence here.
Oi! Less of the ad hominem accusations if you don't mind.
The Labour Party is no more sacrosanct than any other. At the moment it's pretty sulphurous.
I can only speak as I find and I've seen the fall-out from local Labour branches when they tear their own innards out and it ain't pretty, whether it's the right or left of the Party that's doing the tearing.
I'll concede the point about 'the bloke' and I've yet to ask him about his source. He's generally pretty good on that sort of thing but as I said upthread, I'm more than happy to accept that Raynor's not worth as much as some of her detractors claim.
Read what I wrote, not what you think I wrote.
Sorry GG but we're in an era now when "a bloke told me" and "trust me, bro" have become sources of so much utter bollocks - sometimes dangerous and damaging bollocks at that - that we've really got to start being solid about our sources.
There's an Ibis hotel being taken over by Travelodge in my town, and an old Wilko that's being turned into flats, but the false rumour they're going to be used for asylum seeker accommodation is proving very hard to counter and is causing a lot of damage.
It's also apparently a fact that the Charlie Kirk shooter was both an extreme leftist and an extreme right-winger, because "I heard that..." is gospel as long as it's what the hearer wants to hear.
Granted. But if you know there’s a lion standing there, why put your head into its mouth?
Because the Labour Right think in factional terms, and this was presumably seen as sticking it to the left.
Every other time it's been brought up - including in the extraordinary FT interview - they've treated questions as completely illegitimate.
From where I'm standing the entire Labour Party - left, right and centre - thinks in factional terms.
I realise you want pride yourself on posing as the voice of reason, but you can compare the composition of Corbyn's shadow cabinets, and ponder that even under Blair the composition of the parliamentary party was wider than the sorts of candidates picked under Akehurst et al (not to mention the various manoeuvres to narrow the selectorate and candidates in any future internal election).
Going back to Raynor's alleged wealth. I got it from a bloke who doesn't tend to consult right-wing sources. I'll check with him but will happily accept that she isn't worth the oft-cited amount if it isn't the case.
I'm glad we are adopting a very high standard of evidence here.
Oi! Less of the ad hominem accusations if you don't mind.
The Labour Party is no more sacrosanct than any other. At the moment it's pretty sulphurous.
I can only speak as I find and I've seen the fall-out from local Labour branches when they tear their own innards out and it ain't pretty, whether it's the right or left of the Party that's doing the tearing.
The "both sides"-ism is not merited here. The factional purging and abuse is overwhelmingly from the right of the party. Has anyone in authority on the left of the party in the last decade been revealed as making about anyone the sort of disgusting remarks repeatedly made just about Diane Abbott by senior staff on the right of the party? I find it very hard to believe that the left could hide it if they had - we suck at opsec almost as badly as the US DoW.
I know several very capable Labour activists round here who are no longer involved because of ugly infighting - and yes, it's right to call out the Labour Right on their treatment of Diane Abbott and much else besides.
I'd have been tempted to join Labour if it wasn't for the way they tear one another apart. There are more factions than within evangelicalism.
@KarlLB - again, read what I wrote. I'm not saying my source is right. He may have consulted dodgy sources. If so, as I said upthread, if he has I'm more than happy to concede that.
I'll check with him and find out.
If he's wrong I'll come on here and say so. If not and it can be proven that Angela Raynor is loaded then I'll cite chapter and verse to that effect.
I can't say fairer than that.
Just because someone might be on the left of the Labour Party doesn't make them some kind of Saint any more than it makes them the Devil Incarnate either.
Right now I'm waiting for them to find a science and technology policy. No less than 5 big players in pharma have cut back their UK operations in the last week - meaning even more people on the hunt for even fewer science jobs
Meanwhile, I expect the Cabinet are still trying to climb under Farage's prepuce.
He works in financial services and yes, as @Doublethink identifies the source was Finance Monthly and also Finance Investing Monthly which I assume is a sister trade publication.
I would agree with Doublethink that it doesn't exactly scream thorough investigative journalism but we are not comparing like with like. It's a financial trade mag not Private Eye or The Washington Post.
I find it hard to believe that Rayner could have amassed a small fortune of almost £5m but it's not beyond the realm of possibility. I wouldn't begrudge it her were it to be the case. She'll have certainly taken a big financial hit following her resignation.
I can't help but think though - to be quite honest - that there's a fair bit of tribalism going on here. 'Oh no, she couldn't possibly be worth that amount, it must be the right-wing press up to their old tricks ...'
But what do I know? I'm just a 'bothsides-ist' old fogey.
She may be worth a lot less than was reported but the point is she should really have acted differently but hindsight is always a wonderful thing.
Corbyn doesn't poo gold ingots any more than Starmer, Blair or the Sainted Ed Davey (whose halo was tarnished by the Post Office scandal).
Whatever the case, I do think Rayner should have been more circumspect but then, as I think I said upthread, I don't think she was deliberately out to cheat the system.
We all have our tribal loyalties and I'd certainly put Farage into a deeper Dante-esque Circle of Hell than the current Labour Cabinet, even though they are teetering on the brink or toppling into it.
Just because someone might be on the left of the Labour Party doesn't make them some kind of Saint any more than it makes them the Devil Incarnate either.
Is anyone saying otherwise? You're engaging in "false balance" to an extent that could get you a job at the BBC.
He works in financial services and yes, as @Doublethink identifies the source was Finance Monthly and also Finance Investing Monthly which I assume is a sister trade publication.
Both seem to be content mills selling product, and most of the articles on the first - including the one on Rayner - are very long on assertions and short on supporting evidence.
They may be right, but they provide little or no supporting evidence (I suspect they are doing things like inferring house price appreciation, pension valuations and so on)
I agree. I’ve seen nothing to substantiate multi-million worth allegations about Angela Rayner. Stories I’ve seen refer to Finance Monthly as a source for alleged £4.7 million wealth, but the article there offers next to no evidence for its suggestion. More credible estimates that I’ve seen suggest a much more modest £500,000 to £1M.
@KarlLB - again, read what I wrote. I'm not saying my source is right. He may have consulted dodgy sources. If so, as I said upthread, if he has I'm more than happy to concede that.
You miss the point. Sooner or later the caveats get dropped as claims are propagated and next thing you know it's "truth".
It's particularly disgusting that his colleagues are piping up saying Starmer should have kept him on! The misogynoir at the centre of the Starmer project is really quite horrendous.
So here's a counterpoint. "Snog, Marry, Avoid" was a show on BBC3 about 15 years ago. Part of its format was showing images of the week's contestants to random members of the public, and asking whether they were suited for snogging, marrying, or avoiding.
Is it crude? Sure. A resigning matter? I find it hard to think that an activity routinely engaged with by celebrities on TV can be cuturally beyond the pale.
It's particularly disgusting that his colleagues are piping up saying Starmer should have kept him on! The misogynoir at the centre of the Starmer project is really quite horrendous.
So here's a counterpoint. "Snog, Marry, Avoid" was a show on BBC3 about 15 years ago. Part of its format was showing images of the week's contestants to random members of the public, and asking whether they were suited for snogging, marrying, or avoiding.
Well, their follow up conversation went into somewhat graphic detail:
@KarlLB - again, read what I wrote. I'm not saying my source is right. He may have consulted dodgy sources. If so, as I said upthread, if he has I'm more than happy to concede that.
You miss the point. Sooner or later the caveats get dropped as claims are propagated and next thing you know it's "truth".
No, I do get that, which is why I avoided dropping the caveats myself.
The time to complain would be if I were trying to pass it off as 'truth' - which I'm not.
@Arethosemyfeet - I don’t think even the BBC would be daft enough to employ me. Paxman didn't think they were 'balanced'. He thought they were all a bunch of lefties.
Not that the BBC is covering itself in glory. I watched Nick Mason saying on the news last night how all the mainstream parties are concerned about Reform stealing their thunder. The Lib Dems are concerned that Farage is getting more air-time with a handful of MPs for instance than they are with more MPs than they've ever had, he intoned.
'Well, whose fault is that, then?' I wanted to ask.
And yes, were I a Labourite I'd be hacked off with the BBC too.
@KarlLB - again, read what I wrote. I'm not saying my source is right. He may have consulted dodgy sources. If so, as I said upthread, if he has I'm more than happy to concede that.
You miss the point. Sooner or later the caveats get dropped as claims are propagated and next thing you know it's "truth".
No, I do get that, which is why I avoided dropping the caveats myself.
The time to complain would be if I were trying to pass it off as 'truth' - which I'm not.
@Arethosemyfeet - I don’t think even the BBC would be daft enough to employ me. Paxman didn't think they were 'balanced'. He thought they were all a bunch of lefties.
Not that the BBC is covering itself in glory. I watched Nick Mason saying on the news last night how all the mainstream parties are concerned about Reform stealing their thunder. The Lib Dems are concerned that Farage is getting more air-time with a handful of MPs for instance than they are with more MPs than they've ever had, he intoned.
'Well, whose fault is that, then?' I wanted to ask.
And yes, were I a Labourite I'd be hacked off with the BBC too.
As a recreational LibDems voter, I do at least recognise the bitter truth. Reform get loads of airtime (never mind arguments about whether airtime built them to where they are now) because they have polling numbers the LibDems can only dream of. In their/our* case a memory of when the SDP achieved similar mass coverage with similar polling numbers (actually better, IIRC the SDP went north of 50% in the polls at one point).
Basically the media craves novelty and will build stories. This is not good. However they also tend to destroy what they have created.
Essentially the British media is a cat. To misquote a friend of Lord Sebastian Flyte after he vomited copiously through Charles Ryder’s college window (itself not an inapposite metaphor) , ‘grasp that and you have the root of the matter’.
*I say ‘we’ with the caveat that I am a Liberal who would had I been old enough have voted no to the merger with the SDP, and grew up in a stronghold of the continuity Liberals, whom I have voted for.
I'll try to avoid heading off on a tangent as this is a thread about the Labour government, he said, heading off into a tangent regardless ...
I wasn't involved with the old school Liberals but was impressed with Shirley Williams when I met here and with David Owen when I heard him speak once. I've forgotten what he said now.
I drifted to the Lib Dems after I'd become disillusioned with Blair and because I was less than impressed by the antics of some of the Labourites where I was living at that time.
Coming in as a Johnny-Come-Lately I missed all the kerfuffle between the SDP types and the older Liberals.
The latter, in my experience, were often very illiberal, but that may have been a generational thing.
I saw nothing particularly attractive about the Liberal Party of Thorpe and Cyril Smith.
All that aside and whether I was right or wrong to throw my hat into the Lib Dem ring when I did, I do have grave concerns about the current Labour government and also the way the media continues to build and promote the monster that is Reform.
Yes, the media does turn on whatever it builds up and creates but my concern is that it'll end up trying to plug the dam once it's already burst.
The Beeb would be among the first to be swamped by the rise of the populist right.
It wouldn't only be migrants, minorities and perceived hard-left activists who'd suffer. They'd come for all of us.
That's why we need a strong Labour Party and why it grieves me to see the current government make so many mistakes.
It's particularly disgusting that his colleagues are piping up saying Starmer should have kept him on! The misogynoir at the centre of the Starmer project is really quite horrendous.
So here's a counterpoint. "Snog, Marry, Avoid" was a show on BBC3 about 15 years ago. Part of its format was showing images of the week's contestants to random members of the public, and asking whether they were suited for snogging, marrying, or avoiding.
Well, their follow up conversation went into somewhat graphic detail:
It's particularly disgusting that his colleagues are piping up saying Starmer should have kept him on! The misogynoir at the centre of the Starmer project is really quite horrendous.
So here's a counterpoint. "Snog, Marry, Avoid" was a show on BBC3 about 15 years ago. Part of its format was showing images of the week's contestants to random members of the public, and asking whether they were suited for snogging, marrying, or avoiding.
Well, their follow up conversation went into somewhat graphic detail:
Spoilered text is link to an ITV article contain an extract of the transcript.
And he was using the Labour Party's own communications infrastructure to relate the story? That's just beyond bad judgement.
One of the links I posted had Amanda Holden discussing what noises she imagined David Walliams would make during sex. Crude graphic detail is the name of the game.
For a long time, it was pretty normal to blur personal and official in digital communications. Particularly in the sort of environment where the same group of people would tend to work together and play together, and work long hours, work discussions, casual banter, and crude party games often all happened in the same spaces. In recent years, there has been a shift towards keeping things separate (people suddenly learned what data retention and subpoenas were), but outside a small number of highly-regulated spaces, blurring work and personal conversations was normal.
Comments
Precisely this.
As far as one can tell from what's in the public domain, she acted appropriately and with integrity in a very, very difficult situation. There is literally zero evidence that she had any intent to avoid tax. She made a small and very understandable mistake.* She referred herself to the independent ethics advisor and resigned on his advice.
Seriously, what more could she have possibly done?
And I have extreme nausea at the extreme hypocrisy of most of her critics.
Please note that the Telegraph that has been the main vehicle of attack runs whole sections on how to minimise one's tax burden. Those that come from money don't get that she doesn't have a tax accountant and lawyer on retainer because doesn't everyone?
I have owned more than one property at times and the tax rules are complex and subject to change. It is not easy to access advice or even work out where and when you need to.** There's a common trope on social media that she should be prosecuted 'like anyone else would be.' That is plain nonsense. She declared the error to HMRC, they will expect full payment plus interest, plus a penalty potentially but would never launch a prosecution for this. If they did, it would fail.
AFZ
*I don’t mean that 40k is small. It is and it isn't. I mean small in terms of the process.
**and no, as a minister she did not have access to civil service advice. That would have been entirely improper.
P.S. A hundred years ago, Churchill ran into trouble for not paying tax on publishing earnings so he got a Treasury official to write him a special exemption. Just by contrast.
Granted. But if you know there’s a lion standing there, why put your head into its mouth?
No one forced Starmer to make that appointment.
Because the Labour Right think in factional terms, and this was presumably seen as sticking it to the left.
Every other time it's been brought up - including in the extraordinary FT interview - they've treated questions as completely illegitimate.
Sir Ed Davey is insinuating that Trump might have "compromising material" on Epstein/Mandelson, which he could use against Mandelson in US-UK negotiations.
Which is kinda funny, because conspiracy-theorists are also claiming that the Israelis have stuff from the Epstein files which they're using against American politicians. So it looks like everyone's in the files, and blackmailing everyone else who's in them!
(Though my own view is that the espionage aspect of all this is severely overblown.)
And as I said on the other thread, Mandelson's little once-upon-a-time story in the birthday book is more cringeworthy than lurid; in fact, it's not lurid at all.
But if you're someone who hasn't been really paying attention to the previously revealed details, the text and the bathrobe-photo suddenly apoearing in the media might hit you as sensational breaking news.
* Sic transit gloria mundi - thus passes the glory of the world
Probably not overly bold to predict he's not long for his current job.
The emails themselves are legitimate, as they were sourced by Bloomberg, and if the Sun was fabricating their content they'd open themselves up to legal action.
"In particular Peter Mandelson’s suggestion that Jeffrey Epstein’s first conviction was wrongful and should be challenged is new information. In light of that, and mindful of the victims of Epstein’s crimes he has been withdrawn as Ambassador with immediate effect."
Which begs a question; prior to his appointment it was already known (via a court case) that Mandelson had maintained contact with and stayed with Epstein after his conviction. So it's okay to maintain contact with him if you believe he is guilty ?
And the appointment was only a few months ago, ie. long after Epstein's notoriety had been fully established on both sides of the Atlantic. So it's not like Starmer could say "Bloody hell, I didn't know what kind of friends Mandelson had when I appointed him."
It's normal for close family to maintain contact with convicted relatives, for example, while in other cases families disown and never again contact convicted relatives - that's going to depend on the crime, sentence and views of the family. I don't see why friends shouldn't fall into the same category.
But, there's a difference between maintaining contact and condoning the crime. You can maintain contact while still saying "you deserve what you're getting for what you did", you can even wish that the convict receives help while in prison.
It's odd to both maintain contact and wish you'd never made friends with someone in the first place.
Yes, but this is one of those cases where the inference is that it was okay to keep contact with him if you believe he is guilty but not if you think he's innocent.
In other words it is more like this:
Apart from what would appear to be the reprehrensibility of the game and subsequent conversation, 2017 is WAY too late to be pleading "How was I supposed to know that everyone would be able to read this for years into the future?"
According to the BBC, one of his apologists called this "a factional hit", which might not be entirely inaccurate, given that the venue originally reporting the story was the Daily Mail. Still Ovenden's fault for painting the target on his back in the first place.
Ovenden thought it relevant to mention that the people he was playing the game with were "other female staff members". The implication, of course, being that female participation somehow mitigates the offensiveness of the joke, though his phrasing also has the presumably unintended effect of making it sound as if Ovenden himself is a woman.
Labour right now is almost certainly trying to make every Conservative and Reformer look like a racist Unite The Kingdom gammon, so this type of scandal is especially unhelpful for their messaging.
"The call is coming from inside the house". Leaking to the right wing gutter press is behaviour associated with the right of the Labour Party. I suppose it's possible this is Streeting or his pals on manoeuvres.
I wish, I wish, that Starmer was willing to call out the anti-immigrant racist crap for what it is, but he's far more interested in reasonable-concerning his way onto their turf.
He gives every impression of not actually understanding or caring.
Testimonial after testimonial from journalists ventriloquising their sources to say how they really feel, with only Cole being stupid enough to break kayfabe.
Yeah, but he still wants to maintain plausible deniability with the anti-racists on his left flank.
From where I'm standing the entire Labour Party - left, right and centre - thinks in factional terms.
I'm a 'critical friend' but Labour appears to gnaw its own entrails over and over again.
Going back to Raynor's alleged wealth. I got it from a bloke who doesn't tend to consult right-wing sources. I'll check with him but will happily accept that she isn't worth the oft-cited amount if it isn't the case.
Meanwhile, the media is rubbing its hands with glee and giving Farage even more of a platform than they've given him already.
Anyone would think they want him to be the next PM. Oh, wait ...
He'd come for them if he ever did get to Number 10.
Sorry to cross-thread with the Reform thread but it's almost as if we can't talk about any of the political parties these days without bringing them into the equation. Which is part of the problem, of course.
I realise you want pride yourself on posing as the voice of reason, but you can compare the composition of Corbyn's shadow cabinets, and ponder that even under Blair the composition of the parliamentary party was wider than the sorts of candidates picked under Akehurst et al (not to mention the various manoeuvres to narrow the selectorate and candidates in any future internal election).
I'm glad we are adopting a very high standard of evidence here.
Reading all those comments, ventriloquised or otherwise, I'm worryingly inclined toward thinking that they can't all be wrong about Ovenden's pivotal importance to Labour's aquisition and maintenance of power, and the damage that might ensue from his removal.
But I've also just been reading the transcripts of his original WhatsApp posts. Ugh. I mean, I get it, everybody improvs their way into offensive verbal jokes at one time or another, but to then go and repeat them to a third-party, via the most permanent form of communication in existence, is just beyond-belief brain-dead.
Plus, it's hard not to read it as a bit o' laddish bragging about all the naughty shenanigans he gets up to with his lady friends.
It is all a mess.
Starmer has no political instincts.
Oi! Less of the ad hominem accusations if you don't mind.
The Labour Party is no more sacrosanct than any other. At the moment it's pretty sulphurous.
I can only speak as I find and I've seen the fall-out from local Labour branches when they tear their own innards out and it ain't pretty, whether it's the right or left of the Party that's doing the tearing.
I'll concede the point about 'the bloke' and I've yet to ask him about his source. He's generally pretty good on that sort of thing but as I said upthread, I'm more than happy to accept that Raynor's not worth as much as some of her detractors claim.
Read what I wrote, not what you think I wrote.
You mean the details of the game they were playing? Yeah, that was what made the conversation objectionable.
Sorry GG but we're in an era now when "a bloke told me" and "trust me, bro" have become sources of so much utter bollocks - sometimes dangerous and damaging bollocks at that - that we've really got to start being solid about our sources.
There's an Ibis hotel being taken over by Travelodge in my town, and an old Wilko that's being turned into flats, but the false rumour they're going to be used for asylum seeker accommodation is proving very hard to counter and is causing a lot of damage.
It's also apparently a fact that the Charlie Kirk shooter was both an extreme leftist and an extreme right-winger, because "I heard that..." is gospel as long as it's what the hearer wants to hear.
We're sinking in a cesspool of bullshit.
The "both sides"-ism is not merited here. The factional purging and abuse is overwhelmingly from the right of the party. Has anyone in authority on the left of the party in the last decade been revealed as making about anyone the sort of disgusting remarks repeatedly made just about Diane Abbott by senior staff on the right of the party? I find it very hard to believe that the left could hide it if they had - we suck at opsec almost as badly as the US DoW.
I know several very capable Labour activists round here who are no longer involved because of ugly infighting - and yes, it's right to call out the Labour Right on their treatment of Diane Abbott and much else besides.
I'd have been tempted to join Labour if it wasn't for the way they tear one another apart. There are more factions than within evangelicalism.
@KarlLB - again, read what I wrote. I'm not saying my source is right. He may have consulted dodgy sources. If so, as I said upthread, if he has I'm more than happy to concede that.
I'll check with him and find out.
If he's wrong I'll come on here and say so. If not and it can be proven that Angela Raynor is loaded then I'll cite chapter and verse to that effect.
I can't say fairer than that.
Just because someone might be on the left of the Labour Party doesn't make them some kind of Saint any more than it makes them the Devil Incarnate either.
Meanwhile, I expect the Cabinet are still trying to climb under Farage's prepuce.
He works in financial services and yes, as @Doublethink identifies the source was Finance Monthly and also Finance Investing Monthly which I assume is a sister trade publication.
I would agree with Doublethink that it doesn't exactly scream thorough investigative journalism but we are not comparing like with like. It's a financial trade mag not Private Eye or The Washington Post.
I find it hard to believe that Rayner could have amassed a small fortune of almost £5m but it's not beyond the realm of possibility. I wouldn't begrudge it her were it to be the case. She'll have certainly taken a big financial hit following her resignation.
I can't help but think though - to be quite honest - that there's a fair bit of tribalism going on here. 'Oh no, she couldn't possibly be worth that amount, it must be the right-wing press up to their old tricks ...'
But what do I know? I'm just a 'bothsides-ist' old fogey.
She may be worth a lot less than was reported but the point is she should really have acted differently but hindsight is always a wonderful thing.
Corbyn doesn't poo gold ingots any more than Starmer, Blair or the Sainted Ed Davey (whose halo was tarnished by the Post Office scandal).
Whatever the case, I do think Rayner should have been more circumspect but then, as I think I said upthread, I don't think she was deliberately out to cheat the system.
We all have our tribal loyalties and I'd certainly put Farage into a deeper Dante-esque Circle of Hell than the current Labour Cabinet, even though they are teetering on the brink or toppling into it.
But two wrongs don't make a right.
Digression over.
Back to the latest developments ...
Is anyone saying otherwise? You're engaging in "false balance" to an extent that could get you a job at the BBC.
Both seem to be content mills selling product, and most of the articles on the first - including the one on Rayner - are very long on assertions and short on supporting evidence.
They may be right, but they provide little or no supporting evidence (I suspect they are doing things like inferring house price appreciation, pension valuations and so on)
You miss the point. Sooner or later the caveats get dropped as claims are propagated and next thing you know it's "truth".
So here's a counterpoint. "Snog, Marry, Avoid" was a show on BBC3 about 15 years ago. Part of its format was showing images of the week's contestants to random members of the public, and asking whether they were suited for snogging, marrying, or avoiding.
This was known by every human involved in the project to be a bowdlerization of the playground game "Fuck, Marry, Kill". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GROqnjvqmX8 is Tom Cruise, Simon Pegg, and Rebecca Ferguson playing the game on MTV. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFxksiZZMlk is Amanda Holden playing the game about her BGT co-judges. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSRpXKRgK1Y is Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson, Rebel Wilson & Ricky Gervais playing the game. You can find plenty of others.
Is it crude? Sure. A resigning matter? I find it hard to think that an activity routinely engaged with by celebrities on TV can be cuturally beyond the pale.
Well, their follow up conversation went into somewhat graphic detail:
Spoilered text is link to an ITV article contain an extract of the transcript.
No, I do get that, which is why I avoided dropping the caveats myself.
The time to complain would be if I were trying to pass it off as 'truth' - which I'm not.
@Arethosemyfeet - I don’t think even the BBC would be daft enough to employ me. Paxman didn't think they were 'balanced'. He thought they were all a bunch of lefties.
Not that the BBC is covering itself in glory. I watched Nick Mason saying on the news last night how all the mainstream parties are concerned about Reform stealing their thunder. The Lib Dems are concerned that Farage is getting more air-time with a handful of MPs for instance than they are with more MPs than they've ever had, he intoned.
'Well, whose fault is that, then?' I wanted to ask.
And yes, were I a Labourite I'd be hacked off with the BBC too.
As a recreational LibDems voter, I do at least recognise the bitter truth. Reform get loads of airtime (never mind arguments about whether airtime built them to where they are now) because they have polling numbers the LibDems can only dream of. In their/our* case a memory of when the SDP achieved similar mass coverage with similar polling numbers (actually better, IIRC the SDP went north of 50% in the polls at one point).
Basically the media craves novelty and will build stories. This is not good. However they also tend to destroy what they have created.
Essentially the British media is a cat. To misquote a friend of Lord Sebastian Flyte after he vomited copiously through Charles Ryder’s college window (itself not an inapposite metaphor) , ‘grasp that and you have the root of the matter’.
*I say ‘we’ with the caveat that I am a Liberal who would had I been old enough have voted no to the merger with the SDP, and grew up in a stronghold of the continuity Liberals, whom I have voted for.
I wasn't involved with the old school Liberals but was impressed with Shirley Williams when I met here and with David Owen when I heard him speak once. I've forgotten what he said now.
I drifted to the Lib Dems after I'd become disillusioned with Blair and because I was less than impressed by the antics of some of the Labourites where I was living at that time.
Coming in as a Johnny-Come-Lately I missed all the kerfuffle between the SDP types and the older Liberals.
The latter, in my experience, were often very illiberal, but that may have been a generational thing.
I saw nothing particularly attractive about the Liberal Party of Thorpe and Cyril Smith.
All that aside and whether I was right or wrong to throw my hat into the Lib Dem ring when I did, I do have grave concerns about the current Labour government and also the way the media continues to build and promote the monster that is Reform.
Yes, the media does turn on whatever it builds up and creates but my concern is that it'll end up trying to plug the dam once it's already burst.
The Beeb would be among the first to be swamped by the rise of the populist right.
It wouldn't only be migrants, minorities and perceived hard-left activists who'd suffer. They'd come for all of us.
That's why we need a strong Labour Party and why it grieves me to see the current government make so many mistakes.
And he was using the Labour Party's own communications infrastructure to relate the story? That's just beyond bad judgement.
One of the links I posted had Amanda Holden discussing what noises she imagined David Walliams would make during sex. Crude graphic detail is the name of the game.
For a long time, it was pretty normal to blur personal and official in digital communications. Particularly in the sort of environment where the same group of people would tend to work together and play together, and work long hours, work discussions, casual banter, and crude party games often all happened in the same spaces. In recent years, there has been a shift towards keeping things separate (people suddenly learned what data retention and subpoenas were), but outside a small number of highly-regulated spaces, blurring work and personal conversations was normal.