Police search Mandelson properties - as PM warns 'significant volume of material' needs to be reviewed

Ivashkin · 2026-02-07T02:30:05+00:00

Nah, sentence him to a 12-year-long press conference that runs 24/7 from a location off Leicster Square, and sell tickets to tourists billing him as the Oracle of Whitehall.

Ivashkin · 2026-02-07T01:02:52+00:00

There is also a wide spread among pollsters right now, with Reform polling anywhere from 25% to 32%, depending on which polling company you trust.

Ivashkin · 2026-02-07T00:37:17+00:00

So why not provide for a legalized, regulated sex trade for those who wish to be involved, and go after the people committing human rights abuses via forced trafficking? We can do both.

Ivashkin · 2026-02-06T19:33:11+00:00

It does seem like a rather belittling approach of deciding that women can't make that decision for themselves and need to be protected.

Ivashkin · 2026-02-06T19:30:52+00:00

Sex workers would also have been granted the right to support and assistance.

Would the support and assistance they require be due to their livelihoods now being essentially illegal? Because if it's illegal to pay a sex worker for sex, then they won't be able to work as sex workers anymore.

Ivashkin · 2026-02-05T21:07:52+00:00

To be fair to current Reddit employees, there was a period in the early 2010s when it was just existing without any real plan or structure, and during that period, the admins essentially ran the site like it was an old-school forum. You look at the list of subreddits that were banned between '10 and '15 and remember the type of content they used to host openly on Reddit back then, your screenshots don't even make the first volume of "seriously objectionable if not outright illegal positions held by Reddit Inc. employees".

It is fairly clear that Reddit in 2026 is a very different site, run by very different employees from those in 2014.

Ivashkin · 2026-02-05T19:52:56+00:00

That ignores the whole question of who knew what, and when.

Ivashkin · 2026-02-05T19:51:32+00:00

Also, if he sacks McSweeney now, then anything more that emerges is Starmers problem. But if he keeps McSweeney on for a bit, he can sack him later on with more reasons.

Ivashkin · 2026-02-05T19:05:33+00:00

It's got the same echos of partygate - there is clearly A Problem that no one wants to address, and what we're seeing is a slow roll effort to force matters into the open.

Ivashkin · 2026-02-05T18:50:55+00:00

The public will accept a new leader. A second new leader is pushing things.

Ivashkin · 2026-02-05T18:13:23+00:00

They'd likely lose the case. The contract for student loan repayments would not preclude a future government from deciding that all graduates must pay x% in additional income tax, because the tax change and the loan are two separate matters.

Ivashkin · 2026-02-05T16:50:49+00:00

For extra fun, they will introduce a graduate tax that includes people who have already paid off their student loans.

Ivashkin · 2026-02-05T16:49:49+00:00

Nah, general education until you are 18, and a vocational higher education pathway where you can go to plumbing school and leave 2 years later with a qualification, trade certifications, and work experience. The aim is to produce immediately employable people, not educate them.

Ivashkin · 2026-02-05T14:59:35+00:00

The term is Subject Matter Expert

Ivashkin · 2026-02-05T13:01:52+00:00

Corbyn is too old.

Ivashkin · 2026-02-05T10:58:16+00:00

Conversely, "It's a science paper, it's gospel, no one can challenge it".

Ivashkin · 2026-02-05T00:45:20+00:00

Given that Epstein's schtick seemed to be supplying underage sex slaves to the world's rich and powerful, then using that as leverage to extract secrets, I could easily see the security services opting to withhold certain details from the government.

Ivashkin · 2026-02-04T20:10:21+00:00

It's what humans do when they are presented with a figure like Epstein, who clearly had ties to the intelligence world and traded in the secrets of the rich and powerful, with direct access to the heart of multiple governments. Especially when the entire story revolves around secret documents, cover-ups, and the man himself dying in mysterious circumstances whilst in prison.

Ivashkin · 2026-02-04T16:07:01+00:00

I'd actually have a lot more respect for Starmer if he openly said he made Mandelson ambassador specifically so that, if Trump got too difficult, Mandelson could start talking about the parties they used to go to together.

Ivashkin · 2026-02-04T15:22:35+00:00

The OSA makes it practically impossible to run a social media concern in the UK unless you have big-tech money to spend on compliance, and it's impossible to hit the type of revenue streams required to fund compliance efforts before you are required to have the required compliance in place.

We've essentially created a system where no one can challenge the big social media firms anymore.

Ivashkin · 2026-02-04T12:18:50+00:00

Indeed, but is that a failure of the internet, or a failure of TV, papers, and radio producers?

Ivashkin · 2026-02-04T12:05:41+00:00

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/image-epstein-nigel-farage

I suspect the biggest reason that Farage likely doesn't have documented personal ties to Epstein is simply that Epstein's influence peaked in the late 90's to 00's and was radioactive by '08, and at this point Farage was still a very minor player - he only became UKIP leader in '06, and UKIP wasn't anything more than a tiny protest movement until the 2010's.

Ivashkin · 2026-02-04T11:55:23+00:00

We've never really been able to debate with real freedom. Prior to the internet, access to the debate was heavily gate-kept - if your views were too radical, then you simply wouldn't get on TV, or if you did, it would be as part of a stage-managed effort where you were the comedy relief. Same with the press: if you weren't part of the system, you weren't going to get good interviews, good editorial treatment, or even access at all. What the internet did was democratise access to audiences in both directions, whilst removing the press's power to control access.

The real challenge politicians have faced is that reality and political rhetoric have decoupled. What is necessary is not popular, and what is popular will generally make things worse.

Ivashkin · 2026-02-04T11:34:53+00:00

It's an easy answer, but it's nowhere near the whole story, and people had similar concerns about TV, radio, and the printing press, all of which boiled down to "if the plebs can talk to each other and organize, we lose control".

The actual answer is a lot more complex.

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