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Starmer, Rayner and Reeves have announced that they will no longer accept donated clothing. https://www.manxradio.com/news/uk-news/starmer-to-no-longer-accept-donations-to-pay-for-clothes-sky-news-understands/

Absolutely spot on. Those Tory mouthpieces and apologists who lost their sense of moral outrage over Tory snouts in the trough have now woken up and will crucify Starmer for everything they can. There are some very short memories around.

What is that famous saying? When you assume you make an ass out of you and me. I should suggest that you make fewer assumptions and do more research into how the Criminal Justice System operates. It is not perfect, never has been never will be, but is still respected around the world despite the best efforts of the last Government to run it into the ground. For information, paralegals (caseworkers) are not lawyers and do not make charging decisions. People who manage paralegals have even less input into charging decisions so no, no charging decisions had anything to do with me or the people that I managed.

Of course they don’t. You don’t have to understand that people running large organisations do not do the day to day work. The country is divided up into areas and each area is controlled by a Chief Crown Prosecutor. They manage a team of Area Crown Prosecutor who in term manage team of lawyers. When a case is presented by the police a reviewing lawyer will look at the case and if it meets to prosecution guidelines (is it in the public interest to prosecute and is there a realistic prospect of a successful prosecution). If so they will also decided under what laws the case will be prosecuted. The reviewing lawyer will work with their line manager on more difficult cases and they both will work with the CCP for the area on even more difficult cases. If they feel that the evidence is not strong enough they will e ask the police to provide more. If that is not forthcoming the case will be dropped until such time as stronger evidence is available. I don’t know about the evidence presented by the Met about Al-Fayed but assume that it didn’t meet the threshold for prosecution at that point. To try and pin the blame on Starmer for the lack of a prosecution for either Savile or Al-Fayed is just as dumb as blaming the CEO of a brewery if your local pub serves you a dodgy pint. You wouldn’t expect them to be involved directly with the way the beer is served at customer level. You wouldn’t expect the DPP to spend his days reviewing charging decisions at local level either. Given GM’s problem with major public institutions, he might be slightly placated to hear that, certainly during the time I was employed by the CPS, it was regularly drummed into us that we had to make every penny count. Thanks to the Government’s austerity measures, every year the police, the CPS, the court service and probation faced budget cuts which made a hard job even harder. Fewer police meant that fewer cases had the resources needed to build the initial case. Fewer prosecutors meant that backlogs grew as did pressure to get the work done. GM is desperate to lay blame at Starmer’s feet when the real culprits are those who spent the last 14 years cutting public services to the bone. * I seem to remember Starmer saying that he wasn’t happy that the case wasn’t referred to him at the time, given its high profile, and changed the system subsequently so that any future high profile cases were to be referred to the DPP if there were any charging issues.

Air attacks launched against targets in Lebanon. https://news.sky.com/story/israel-lebanon-pager-walkie-talkie-explosions-middle-east-crisis-hezbollah-hamas-gaza-war-latest-sky-news-live-blog-12978800

Here we go again 🙄 https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-border-force-fleet-immigration-b2615450.html

Looking at your list again many CEO’s of major companies could probably tick off many of those benefits as being part of their package. As for the “free security detail” do you see that as a freebie or as something that clearly goes with the job as a necessity?

I am aware of that. I am just surprised that nothing has been done about it yet.

Do London CEO’s have the responsibility of running the country,live their lives in a goldfish bowl and have the media pouring over everything they do?

What surprises me about the current wage disclosures is how little the PM is paid relative to others senior roles. Apparently the average London CEO salary is £169,500 p.a. Surely the PM role is worth more than that?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13868377/amp/israel-did-not-tamper-hezbollah-pagers-built-scratch-lebanon.html

Come on then. Tell us the “truth” about the conspiracy theories you believe in.

When I used to work in what was known then as Fleet Street it was commonly believed that there was a safe at News International that was full of stories to be used in either quite news periods and circulation needed a boost or when they could be politically beneficial to Rupert’s needs at the time. As for his baseless claims, he is usually on the wrong side of an argument so resorts to calling people names be that lefty, pinko, paedo, anti-Semite, Lego head etc.

Pot, kettle, black. I have no idea if the last assassination attempt was set up or not. It just seems strange that the person hung about for hours in the bushes when Trump only made the decision to play golf at the last minute. Given your love of conspiracy theories I thought you would have been all over this like a cheap suit. Farage has just come out and supported Trump over his claim that Haitians are eating dogs and cats in Springfield. Your thoughts on that claim please.

Ok, I’ll bite. Where is your modern forensic evidence that JFK was not killed by one shooter, that the towers didn’t collapse because of the impact of the planes and that Covid wasn’t ALL real? You forgot to add that the world is flat.

The only thing that was in question was if he penetrated her with his penis or digitally. He was found guilty of sexual abuse. The CPS did not ignore allegations about Jimmy Savile as has been explained many times. Yes I worked there at the time but in a different area to where the case was handled. It has been explained very clearly that for a case to be taken to court, it has to be in the public interest and have a reasonable chance of a successful prosecution. Once the two witnesses withdrew their evidence the reviewing lawyer along with the particular area Chief Crown Prosecutor concluded that the case did not have a chance of a successful outcome. You make the mistake in believing that the information available to the CJS that became available after Savile’s death was available before his death. If only hindsight was available at the time eh? Does it ever strike you as hypocritical that one the one hand you become apoplectic about one sex offender avoiding justice yet are more than happy to defend another sexual predator and even claim he was convicted of sexual assault in court? Back to the Savile case, a prosecution is reliant on the testimony of credible witnesses. Many people and firmer evidence came to light after he died. The same is happening with Al-Fayed now. There have been several witnesses coming forward now, after his death, accusing him of rape and sexual assault. Why now? They were afraid to come forward when he was alive. It is well documented about how difficult it is to bring sexual assault cases to court. This is not due to the lack of will by the CPS to bring the cases to court. It is down to the difficulties to find witnesses prepared to go through what is often a hard and harrowing experience. Witnesses are put through the wringer by the defence lawyers and have to relive what was a major trauma all over again in a courtroom. The more rich and powerful the alleged perpetrators, the harder it is for the victims and witnesses in the courtroom. If those two witnesses had stood by their statements and presented in court, the trial would have gone ahead. I know it doesn’t suit your agenda, but that is the truth of the matter.

You like a conspiracy theory. What is wrong with this one?

Maybe not, but they are still farmers just the same. Perhaps it was just an East Kent thing, but the local farmers were very supportive of leave. Interesting article here. https://westcountryvoices.co.uk/challenging-the-myth-that-farmers-voted-for-brexit-and-therefore-deserve-whats-coming-to-them/ More… https://www.fwi.co.uk/news/farmer-support-brexit-strong-ever-fw-poll-reveals

I was talking about those killed. I have no idea what the percentage of those injured who weren’t operatives was but the news reports tell of people standing next to exploding devices being severely injured too.

The bigger question is will the action make a major conflict more or less likely? As for the targeting, a 50% kill rate sounds just as random in racking up “collateral damage” as shelling packed buildings. Duckie was almost right, but should have said that the Israelis are finding even more ingenious ways of killing other human beings, no matter who they are.

12 dead yesterday now including 2 children and 4 aid workers.

You should worry too. They don’t seem to be bothered about who gets killed, as usual. Are you happy about the ever more likely prospect of us being dragged into a war in the Middle East?

Priceless. https://www.independent.co.uk/tv/news/kemi-badenoch-working-class-tory-leadership-race-b2614729.html

Your condemnation of sexual offenders is commendable. Do you therefore still give convicted sexual offender Donald Trump your full support?

I am sorry that you feel that way and clearly I did not make my points particularly well. I used the “trivial” word as it had been used in another post earlier and I ran with it. A better choice of words would have been “less serious.” My mistake and I apologise for it unreservedly. As for the not crime of the century comment, it wasn’t and pointing that out does not lessen the actual crime committed. Would you put it in the same category as those carried out by Harold Shipman or Lucy Letby? When put into context his crimes of being in the possession of indecent images are on the lesser end of the scale. Many offenders are in possession of hundreds if not thousands of these images. That is not to mitigate his actions, but he is on the lower end of sex offenders in this category. I have no idea about his mental health situation, but he does seem to have gone through some kind of breakdown. Again, it doesn’t mitigate his actions in obtaining these images but it is reflected in the sentencing. Whether he ended up with a custodial sentence or not, his life as was is over and he will carry this shame to the grave, so I’m not sure if he can be seen to have avoided a just sentence. His face is known everywhere across the country. Wherever he goes he will know that the people he comes into contact with will know what he has done. In itself, that is a life sentence of shame. Of course it should have been reported on, I have not disputed that. If you feel that the news coverage was proportionate that’s your opinion. Mine is that it wasn’t proportionate over the whole period since the original story broke. Again, that is not to try and mitigate his actions, it is just an opinion about certain editorial decisions made in the news media. We all have opinions on things that should be in the news more, or less. Some people think there is too much reporting from Gaza, some not enough. I worked for the CPS for many years and the last few involved managing the paralegal team in the RASSO (rape and serious sexual offences) unit in Kent. The management of the indecent images cases was always strictly controlled and access to the images was highly restricted so, fortunately, I have never seen these types of images. I have no idea of what the images were of but 7 were in the worst category A, 12 in the next category B and 22 in the lesser category C. Whilst all of the cases were dealt with seriously (hence the setting up of specialist units) the more serious cases were those where the perpetrators were a direct threat to the public. I’m assuming that the sentence that Edwards was given was based on him being a first time offender, being no direct threat to the public, suffering mental health problems and number of the images possessed being relatively low in comparison with other offenders.