[davidjay]

It's an easy grift. Cheap to produce, placebo effect accounts for any unexpected benefits*. Plays well with the sort of person who believes there are cheat codes to life (see also: pickup artists and other 'system gamers').

*And if you do end up on the loo shitting your intestines out all day, well, that's just your body purging the toxins, innit?

And if it doesn't work, who's going to ask for their money back?

[Andy McDandy]

Yup, it's the old dead vicar's porn habit trick. Or if you're familiar with the film "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels", the sex toy trick.

Route one is to sell something potentially embarrassing and organise payment to be made to a generic company. Then you never deliver it. When people complain, pay them off by cheques from Hideously Offensive and/or Embarrassing products, inc.

Route 2 is to look through the obits for recently deceased and suitably upright members of society. Vicars, for example. Contact their bereaved families asking to settle an account, then reveal you're from Bizarre Illegal Porn Inc., and you'd hate to go public...

Route one doesn't really work in these days of online transactions, while route two apparently was rumbled once when the vicar the grifters targeted the family of, turned out to be blind.

[Abernathy]

[Watchman]

Route one doesn't really work in these days of online transactions, while route two apparently was rumbled once when the vicar the grifters targeted the family of, turned out to be blind.

Not wishing to mock, but in this instance surely the word “eventually” should come after “blind”

[kreuzberger]

Nice to learn from the Prime Minister that he is finally taking “incredibly theriouthly” the accusations against Mone.

Not quite so encouraging that he speaks with all the thintherity of a pilot apologising for "any inconvenience caused" as he flies his 747 in to the side of a mountain.

He is beyond useless.

[Andy McDandy]

Still would be nice if someone asked why was there a fucking VIP lane in the first place.

[kreuzberger]

It still remains a mystery that they were able to found such a widespread criminal enterprise in the blink of an eye, particularly as they are so relentlessly shit at everything they turn to.

[Bones McCoy]

Nice to learn from the Prime Minister that he is finally taking “incredibly theriouthly” the accusations against Mone.

Not quite so encouraging that he speaks with all the thintherity of a pilot apologising for "any inconvenience caused" as he flies his 747 in to the side of a mountain.

He is beyond useless.

Claude Rains would be the ideal actor to play Rishi in his bio-pic.

The scene where the chancellor who signed off those overpriced contracts is SHOCKED!
SHOCKED! that people were profiting from overpriced contracts.

Claude would smash that.

[Bones McCoy]

[Abernathy]

Good byline Times article on Senga :

https://bylinetimes.com/2023/12/18/thr ... q-VJhvnjYw

[kreuzberger]

"Makes T-Sign"

I have nothing against Shettleston. My daughter's uncle lives there.

He's a Glasgow firefighter who got mightily bored with the regularity of helicopter crashes and the ensuing conflagrations. A lovely guy, despite highly dubious football allegiances, which are largely due to segregated schooling and being warned not to "tell anyone". That's fairly usual in Shettleston, and they rarely concrete over their front gardens.

If That Lot find themselves playing in Germany (due to an improbably extended run in Europe, or a draw in a group which they are nailed-on to win but risibly don't), I invariably source tickets for him and the wean. I like her too.

We usually meet up for a pint or two. I have a red, white and blue feather for the Homburg titfa which I always sport.

The wean rolls her eyes and leaves me with the bar bill.

[Bones McCoy]

I hear that if you watch Father Ted backwards it's a Michelle Mone Biopic.


Begins internally exiled, with money resting in his account.
Ends in a lingerie department.

[Andy McDandy]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... -barrowman

Marina delivers a Hydeing.

Michelle lied repeatedly and for years about her involvement to the Guardian – which broke the story – and on Sunday insisted: “That’s not a crime.” PPE Medpro and the couple are being investigated by the National Crime Agency, which – and I’m honestly just going on the title here – does maybe have something to do with crime.

Who knew that as long as you had a hotline to the people at the top, and just a phone number for some factory, you could set yourself up as a PPE provider, having never worked in the space before, and clear millions upon millions of pounds of profits, for a load of unusable crap that might end up getting flytipped next to New Forest nature reserves and the like?

Of course, the process was imperfect – that is understood by most people. What can’t be understood, and should never be understood in a nation that retains any level of self-respect, is why ordinary people are somehow supposed to be forelock-tuggingly grateful to those who were already multimillionaires (and in the case of the serial tax-avoider Barrowman, reportedly a billionaire), for “helping” in this way.

What absolute rubbish. If these white knights really were so altruistic then they’d have waived the profits in the interests of civic duty, instead of rinsing the public purse beyond all imagining, for equipment that often could not even be used.

Righteous fury. This isn't politics; it's crime.

[Abernathy]

Agreed. Mone is clearly not just corrupt, venal and greedy, she is obviously also as thick as a Boxing Day turd.

The very epitome of Toryism in 2023.

[Tubby Isaacs]

She was a Cameron pick. Blah blah outside political establishment blah blah will shake a few things up.

[Andy McDandy]

Blah blah blah and he thought he might get lucky.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Big tits.

[Bones McCoy]

[kreuzberger]

All that wealth and barely literate ...

[Watchman]

Nano- violin makers say responding to that is well beyond our level of expertise and empathy