[Tubby Isaacs]

From 1986.

[Philip Marlow]

In the papers this morning, the actress Sally Phillips says her son, who has Down's syndrome, was refused entry to a trampoline playspace.

Seems this shit is quietly on the rise.

The treatment of disabled people in this country is an ever rolling shame. A friend of mine who was sadly claimed by cancer a few years ago noted that people started talking to her as if she were five years old - and not a particularly bright five years old - at the precise moment she became reliant on a wheelchair in public. Other friends refuse the label, not because they aren’t but because of the shame that seems to come inseparably with it.

[Andy McDandy]

I know. I seriously injured my leg about 2 years ago, and while I can walk, I need a stick, brace, and plenty of time. I've had the "does he take sugar?" treatment.

[davidjay]

Fascinating Aida do a typically bad taste and funny song about one of their members having cancer and her friends' reactions.

[Youngian]

From 1986.

Flag wise, why hasn’t Labour in England fallen in line with Scotland and Wales?
London and Leicester are the only places in Britain which see British as their primary identity.

[Tubby Isaacs]

It's an election for the UK Parliament, and Labour run everywhere on the same manifesto (apart from NI). Think it would be odd if I got a leaflet with the English flag on it.

[The Weeping Angel]

[Youngian]

Don’t want to sound like Rod Liddle but Mr Beckett looks like a tedious lefty bore who goes camping in May with Alison Steadman.
Link on that thread to a Steve Richards podcast on this subject
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/r ... 0642512214

[Philip Marlow]

More culture war bullshit.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/202 ... cial-abuse

“Following the announcement of our Romeo & Juliet cast, there has been a barrage of deplorable racial abuse online directed towards a member of our company,” the statement said. “This must stop. We are working with a remarkable group of artists. We insist that they are free to create work without facing online harassment.”

Long story short, they’ve cast a black actress as Juliet. The horror.

An extraordinary amount of this abuse seems to be coming from very angry Americans who know shit-all about the London theatre scene and are thus completely unaware that there are multiple productions featuring gender swapped and/or race blind casting on any given day; productions they’ll never hear about because they aren’t taking place in the West End with a Hollywood star cast in one of the leading roles.

[Tubby Isaacs]

See also the two theatre performances for black only audiences.

London is a particular bogeyman for the international online hard right. In the US, San Francisco plays that role, where it's certainly possible to make the argument that it's worse than it needs to be in terms of property crime and anti-social behaviour (even if it''s by no means a violent city by US standards). London doesn't really work as an equivalent- there's no equivalent of "liberal District Attorneys", no open fentanyl dealing on Oxford Street, etc. So they cast around for stuff like theatres casting a black Juliet.

[davidjay]

"The big city is a hotbed of liberal decadence" is a far-right idea dating back to the Weimar Republic and probably before then.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Sodom and Gomorrah...

[The Weeping Angel]

Mind you when you look at things like this you do begin to wonder whether San Fransisco's critics have a point.

Not to mention the NIMBYism.

[Youngian]

Think I’ll take lucrative trip to ‘frisco under the name Lord Melberry with a brick in my briefcase.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Here's the Guardian again. Panel of tax ezperts plus investment committed to bring in extra tax that goes uncollected. Fairly unobjectionable right? Nope. They instead stick it to Rachel Reeves for not appointing the media showboaters it has on speed dial to her panel. It zeroes in on Sir Edward Troup.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... f-insiders

In a distinguished career, Sir Edward has been a corporate lawyer in the City, an adviser to the Treasury and a commentator on tax affairs. In that last role, he wrote in the Financial Times in 1999 that “taxation is legalised extortion”.

He's also had very sernior government tax roles (starting under the Labour Government in 2004) for 13 years. He did say that rather striking phrase, but the whole paragraph isn't objectionable. Just "you want less avoidance, you write laws to stop it". He's not some ant-tax fundamentalist, as you might infer from that phrase.

Tax law does not codify some Platonic set of tax-raising principles. Taxation is legalised extortion and is valid only to the extent of the law. Tax avoidance is not paying less tax than you ‘should'. Tax avoidance is paying less tax than Parliament would have wanted. Avoidance is where Parliament got it wrong, or didn't foresee all possible combinations of circumstance. The problem of tax avoidance is reduced to the problem of finding an answer to the question of what parliament intended and making sure that this is complied with. I would not pretend this is a simple task. But recognising this as the issue and dealing with it equitably and constitutionally would be a significant step on the way to tackling avoidance effectively.

As ever, the implication is "anyone who works in the private sector for tax ever is corrupt, for the rest of their life". Like when somebody from there is seconded to a political party or the government. A friend of mine got seconded from a law firm to the DTI. It's possible that he was called in by Mr Big and told to sabotage the government, but he never mentioned it.

Comments left open for the (now) preferred BTL audience to take the hint and wade in.

[Tubby Isaacs]

And again. This is basically the Guardian telling its core readers how important they are. Of course, core voters exist in all seats, but they're (by definition) concentrated in safe seats, and parties can afford to lose lots of those. If you're level with the Tories, you've got bigger problems than losing a few voters to the Greens.

[AOB]

What is it with the Guardian and Channel 4 setting themselves up in recent times as police, judge, jury and executioner.

Fresh from their rip-roaringly successful investigations of Noel Clarke and Russell Brand, with a combined zero charges to date and an upcoming £10m High Court lawsuit from Clarke for the Guardian to deal with, they've hauled David Copperfield into their kangaroo court now. This is in addition to Channel 4 arrogantly deciding jury verdicts aren't worth bothering with and they'll have a show about how guilty they think Kevin Spacey is. How about the pair of them do their investigations and pass the findings to the police and wait to see if charges are brought before publishing and broadcasting their findings. It's no different than a group of Daily Star reading pub locals deciding the odd looking middle-aged bloke who lives round the corner on his own must be a nonce and getting the local community to gather their pitchforks.

[Youngian]

How about the pair of them do their investigations and pass the findings to the police and wait to see if charges are brought before publishing and broadcasting their findings.

News of the World would send their investigations into wronguns to the police before publishing. And open the story with ‘Police are investigating allegations into…’

Don’t agree with the blokes in the pub analogy, the Russell Brand programme would never be aired if the witnesses weren’t reliable. Celebs have expensive junkyard dog briefs who see to that. Just because police aren’t prosecuting doesn’t mean the allegations were unsubstantiated tittle-tattle. Isn’t it a measly two percent of rapists who are ever bought to book?

[Andy McDandy]

Sensitive subject, but I'd say there was a gulf of difference between actively preying on people (as Brand is accused of and denies) and what in Spacey's case could arguably be called assuming that his behaviour was industry standard and not keeping up with changing standards of acceptability.

[The Weeping Angel]

This doesn't look good for David Copperfield

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/art ... ey-epstein

Phone messages and meetings suggest a friendship between Copperfield and the disgraced financier. His lawyers deny it

Stephanie Kirchgaessner and Lucy Osborne
Fri 17 May 2024 12.06 BST
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The message pads appear a little faded, but the handwriting on the spiral-bound notebooks is clear enough.

Staff at Jeffrey Epstein’s mansion in Florida’s Palm Beach used the pads to jot down the names of the people who had called the financier, and between 2004 and 2005, one well-known person appeared to be calling persistently.

Not Prince Andrew or Bill Gates, or even Bill Clinton, the former US president, though all of them have come under a spotlight over their relationships with the disgraced billionaire.

The name on the pads is one that – until recently – has had far less scrutiny: David Copperfield.

According to copies of the phone message pads, seen by the Guardian, the magician appears to have left messages for Epstein 16 times in just a few months. The notations on the pads include brief messages such as “it’s important” and “just called to say hello”. One says “it’s jackpot” without further explanation.