[Crabcakes]

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”

[kreuzberger]

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

[Tubby Isaacs]

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.

[Tubby Isaacs]

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.

[Tubby Isaacs]

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.

[Abernathy]

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

[Tubby Isaacs]

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.

[Tubby Isaacs]

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.