Mailwatch(ed) Forum

I always assumed Billy Joel heard Dancing in the Dark by Bruce Springsteen and It’s the end of the world as I know it (and I feel fine) by REM and thought “they both did well - I’ll mash them together, shuffle a few notes round and hopefully no one will notice”

"The Dark End of Billy Joel", I'd give that a spin.

Baroness Helena Kennedy has accused Shabana Mahmood of "Trumpism" because she objects to some sentencing guidelines which are an absolute gift to Farage and Badenoch by (at the very least) appearing to promote non-custodial sentences for minority defendants. You can argue that this is necessary to address other biases, and I'm not naive about how easy color blindness is, but doesn't seem unreasonable to expect judges to get reasonably close to it. These guidelines are more trouble than they're worth.

Mahmood, who is doing good work on imprisonment of women and can potentially save the government money, as well as do good for a lot of women. In the election, she had an Andrew Tate fan arsehole on her case. The fact she can see a trap so obvious, the Sentencing Guidelines Council might as well have painted arrows on the ground outside the Ministry of Justice doesn't make her "Trumpian".

Helena Kennedy, do better. Well done, Shabana.

Response from the Greens here. Think this is pretty poor and not the first time I've seen them do this. No Justice Secretary has ever focussed as much on the effect of imprisonment on women as Mahmood, and I'm not sure even Jenrick is really bothering with attacking that bit. So Sian Berry duly talks about that bit the most, while eventually getting round to the bit people are complaining about in one sentence (with no examples) before moving on to a political insult.

Failure to implement these changes would be a serious mistake, causing genuine harm to women, families and young people for whom these new recommendations will create much safer sentencing.
Contrary to reporting, nowhere does the guidance focus primarily on ethnicity. Instead, the guidance, based on strong evidence, helps improve sentencing of women, including pregnant women and parents, and young adults, for whom custodial sentences do huge amounts of harm including to their loved ones and wider society.
Ethnicity and other protected characteristics are mentioned simply so that judges are reminded to consider unconscious bias and that the personal circumstances of offenders may be different than assumed. Bowing to the opposition’s ridiculous accusation of ‘two tier justice’ clearly serves to divide people when we all want to build a genuinely fair and effective justice system.

A new entrant here. Jonathan Hinder (Pendle) who doesn't understand what the OBR or the Bank of England do, by the look of it.

Shades of Liz Truss - who also infamously ignored OBR advice/forecasts altogether and saw her premiership outlasted by a lettuce.

We might be about to get a real life test of politicians setting interest rates, in the US. It all sounds great and democratic until you consider that the markets would want to be paid extra for lending.

It goes without saying that the benefits being bandied about are exaggerated, and I'm obviously no fan of Sir Jim Ratcliffe, but not even he deserves aging Kipper MP Graham Stringer on his back like this.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/20 ... um-project

Graham Stringer, a Labour MP and former leader of Manchester city council, hit out at the project last week, describing it on the website Confidentials Manchester as a “tax exile’s half-baked, misbegotten scheme”.

Speaking to the Observer, Stringer, a United season ticket holder, said: “The stadium doesn’t happen without public funds. Any representations to local or central government for public money to go into this scheme should be refused.”

The plans are massive. Lots of the people coming to the site (to live or visit) won't be spending a farthing with Man Utd. It would be, to say the least, harsh, for the taxpayer to contribute nothing towards it.

Shame about the design of the stadium but I reckon that'll be toned down a fair bit. Nobody actually cares what football stadiums look like from the outside.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/202 ... labour-mps

People who always opposed assisted dying in "we oppose the new assisted dying plans" shock.

They also criticised ministers involved in the process for giving no impact assessments or indications of the costs of the service and no guarantee of improvements to palliative care to ensure a real choice.

This blows my mind. "Palliative care isn't good enough, but we think you should suffer anyway". Plus of course the ridiculous overestimation of what palliative care can achieve.

Among the other concerns raised by MPs was the prospect that doctors would still be allowed to proactively suggest assisted dying to patients who had not raised it themselves and the potential for the private sector to make a profit from the legislation.

Doctor in "presenting options to patients" shock. There are lots of people who make profit from palliative care, if you want to put it like that.

Squeamishness. I can't think of anything else that sums up so many people's reactions to perhaps the most natural of things.

I think they're more worried about being responsible for an "active" wrong (ie they change the law and someone is killed who shouldn't have been) than a "passive one" (ie people carry on dying in unnecessary agony.

I note that these MPs aren't required to provide estimates for the palliative care that they claim is necessary before anyone be given the choice of avoiding agony.

Funny old game.

Clive Lewis and Rachael Maskell here criticizing Rachel Reeves for trying to avoid a trade war with Trump. Ed Davey, as ever, is here too.

Clive Lewis, the Labour MP and another former shadow cabinet minister, said: “This was entirely predictable given how desperate the government is to appease the Trump administration and tech oligarchs around it.

“This is extractive politics at it worst and exactly the kind of deal the Maga [Make America Great Again movement] wants. Rather than move closer to Europe and stand together we’re allowing ourselves to be ripped off.”

He said it was “an abject surrender” even before the government chooses tax cuts for big US tech and austerity for the mohttps://www.ft.com/content/bed348ee-3e05-47f6-8 ... b8b99eable, adding: “Frankly, it’s unacceptable.”

What does this actually mean? We join up with the EU and cop their tariffs? MAGA are openly telling their base they've got pain heading their way. They don't give a fuck, they just want to break stuff, with some vague sense that they're playing a long game whereby all this business is reshored.

This isn't part of the Spring Statement. It's not paid for by benefit cuts, however bad they are. And the cost of not doing this might be higher.

Talking of abject surrender to Trump, what does Clive make of this?

https://www.ft.com/content/bed348ee-3e0 ... 3286b8b99e

EU proposing lower tariffs on cars. Quite sensibly.

Clive Lewis and Rachael Maskell here criticizing Rachel Reeves for trying to avoid a trade war with Trump. Ed Davey, as ever, is here too.

Clive Lewis, the Labour MP and another former shadow cabinet minister, said: “This was entirely predictable given how desperate the government is to appease the Trump administration and tech oligarchs around it.

“This is extractive politics at it worst and exactly the kind of deal the Maga [Make America Great Again movement] wants. Rather than move closer to Europe and stand together we’re allowing ourselves to be ripped off.”

He said it was “an abject surrender” even before the government chooses tax cuts for big US tech and austerity for the most vulnerable, adding: “Frankly, it’s unacceptable.”

What does this actually mean? We join up with the EU and cop their tariffs? MAGA are openly telling their base they've got pain heading their way. They don't give a fuck, they just want to break stuff, with some vague sense that they're playing a long game whereby all this business is reshored.

This isn't part of the Spring Statement. It's not paid for by benefit cuts, however bad they are. And the cost of not doing this might be higher.

Talking of abject surrender to Trump, what does Clive make of this?

https://www.ft.com/content/bed348ee-3e0 ... 3286b8b99e

EU proposing lower tariffs on cars. Quite sensibly.

Someone who's seemed competent before. Utterly crass, even by the standards of the policy he was defending.

Tubby Isaacs wrote: ↑Wed Mar 26, 2025 8:29 pm Someone who's seemed competent before. Utterly crass, even by the standards of the policy he was defending.

That's just bloody stupid.

Tubby Isaacs wrote: ↑Wed Mar 26, 2025 8:29 pm Someone who's seemed competent before. Utterly crass, even by the standards of the policy he was defending.

Where's his fucking chin?!

What an arse.

The shocking thing about these benefit cuts is the Labour MPs' reaction to them. Their almost collective silence on the issue has been deafening at worst.

When I see ministers react on the cuts with glee, it makes my blood boil.

When will MPs start to grow a spine?

Will MPs start to break ranks and resign the whip?

This sort of issue normally would've seen a public spat, but this time, either nothing or very little. The present government in its brief time in office has almost united the whole country against them.

The fact there’s little reaction of course could say another thing - that people who have seen the numbers realise there are very few ways out of the financial black hole the Tories left behind that don’t involve unpopular choices.

Plus there’s always the fact that these cuts aren’t very obviously funding tax breaks for the wealthy.