Mailwatch(ed) Forum

You can’t conclude anything from not reporting domestic abuse. But it’s been strongly suggested that serious criminal offences are taking place now. I might expect to see public evidence of that. But equally I might well not. I’m not impressed with Private Eye eliding the two situations at all.

Cohen was, supposedly, Ratbiter, although that particular pseudonym vanished from the Eye’s pages at approximately the same time as the sexual harassment allegations finally broke cover off the back of Lucy Siegle’s tweets. A few deeply cynical people have wondered whether this means that Cohen is no longer writing for them, or whether they’ve simply continued to publish him anonymously.

Straight talking Ian Hislop will no doubt be happy to answer that question.

I don't necessarily think leftwing MPs are the worst, but they do pop up on some of the stuff. I'm interested in on Twitter. Couple of examples today of "had enough of experts".

I assume she’s calling for new home office guidelines for judges and magistrates not to accept the use of rap lines as evidence to finger suspects.
How does this work? I present a rap to the court, m’lud: ‘I blagged the Catford Nat West.’

What is this 'rap' of which you speak?

"Shot a crack dealer by the name of Peter, mowed him down with my nine millimetre...."

The prosecution rests.

Oh.

Was Bob Marley arrested for shooting the sheriff's deputy?

Or Tom Jones for murder?

I reckon that Richard Marx did it. Just walked her down by the river, eh? Nah, he's a wrong'un.

At least Nick Cave owned up to doing in Kylie.

And someone had better take a look up at Steve Earle's allotments.

Some of these cases seem to be based not so much on completed videos or songs as on writings found in the accused's home which are the accused claims are lyrics for a song they're writing. If it were someone accused of a sexual offence who'd written rapey prose, would we be happy with it being let out because art?

The campaign Whittome references seem to be saying they don't want blanket rules, so maybe they mean they think the tests at the moment aren't appropriately done. So I may have been a bit harsh on Whittome putting her on this thread. But I think she needs to be clearer about what she wants to happen. Then again, don't we all need to do that?

Malcolm Armsteen wrote: ↑Tue Jan 16, 2024 2:18 pm What is this 'rap' of which you speak?

Didn't you hear, defendants are now presenting at court with a brief and a D.J.

So this is the wrap of which the beloved Sir Michael Take speaks?

A Labour Lord here. What does this achieve except make people think there are easy solutions to everything?

The figures for tax evasion, when you look at his link, isn't from corporates at all. It's the overall tax gap- of which over half, per HMRC, is small business (presumably jobs for cash). The next largest is criminals. And his argument for the larget figures is basically that somebody has estimated this- Richard Murphy, I presume. He includes stuff like profit shifting by Google- which isn't evasion.

I'm not impressed by this guy. This is like something the Tory press would try on Ed Davey.

The Post Office's accountants would have looked for the money (probably not that big in the greater scheme of things) and written it off when they couldn't find it. I'm not sure anyone expects ministers to be working through internal accounting spreadsheets.

Yeah, that's it, Diane.

So why did she post a picture of Arthur Lowe?

I was wondering when you'd spot that deliberate mistake, Wilson

Not content with sticking £54bn on to a losing manifesto just before polling day, McDonnell is (as he rightly realises will happen) trying to get the government to stick it on to Labour's to do list.

This is such a ridiculous issue. A load of people claiming never to have heard that pension equalisation was happening, 12 years after the law was passed. I'm surprised any of the campaign spokespeople managed to show up for the interviews they did today, given how unalert they apparently are.

There are plenty of poor old people, like there are off any age. Why don't we forget this stuff and help them for a fraction of the cost?

I see Marie Black and Caroline Lucas are big into WASPI as well. Long-Bailey is also involved with the APPG.

That in a nutsell why I'm not keen on this wing of politics. Little sense of what things cost or what you could do with that money instead.

Of course what you could do with the money is give it the people who paid NI their whole working lives and were contracted to have it when they retired at an agreed retirement age.

Just a thought.

15 years is without reasonable warning, is it? In fairness to Long-Bailey, she was far from the only Labour MP to fall for this stuff. Nandy and Rayner did too, but being in Starmer's shadow cabinet has forced them to learn maths.