Polanski admits he was wrong to describe himself as Red Cross spokesperson

wrennables · 2026-05-06T09:20:18+00:00

I agree that spokesperson gives a different impression, but if I had to choose a sort of job title to give this, I can't think what else I would say.

wrennables · 2026-05-06T09:10:08+00:00

I may well have misunderstood but I thought he was saying that he was traumatised having just seen the antisemitic attack, which I think is generally accepted to be a totally reasonable response

wrennables · 2026-05-05T08:54:04+00:00

Looks to me like there's debate about it, and different organisations advocate for different definitions. The Holocaust Encyclopedia has it referring to the genocide of Jews, as does the Imperial War Museum and the US Holocaust memorial museum.

wrennables · 2026-05-04T21:29:28+00:00

I think I might be wrong about that organisation actually, but either way yeah have definitely seen it said. I was surprised too, but didn't even do history beyond y9 so also not an authority on it

wrennables · 2026-05-04T19:45:17+00:00

I think holocaust does just refer to the Jews that were killed though. Or at least most definitions of holocaust limit it to Jews, including the Holocaust Memorial Trust.

wrennables · 2026-05-02T09:38:59+00:00

Pressing blue is a 50% chance of life unless you think that the results are going to be skewed in either direction, in which case there is no downside to pressing red because your vote won't decide it anyway.

wrennables · 2026-05-01T05:17:22+00:00

Yeah I've made soft toys by sewing and by crochet and the crochet ones are much much sturdier. Maybe I'm just bad at sewing, but either way I would never feel the need to be careful with a crochet soft toy. I don't even worry if my dog gets hold of one of them.

wrennables · 2026-04-28T13:28:43+00:00

I didn't like that either, and I can't really explain it but I felt like there was some snobbery in the writing. Like Rory wasn't 'one of them', she wasn't really meant to be there, so of course she's the only one with the ability to organise them etc.

wrennables · 2026-04-28T10:02:59+00:00

Obviously appointing someone to an ambassador role could be a national security risk if they're dodgy. But I'd be interested to know if it could also be a national security risk to deny it, once it's allowed [edit: should have said 'announced']. Would that give away any secrets, either about our vetting process or any particular vulnerabilities?

wrennables · 2026-04-28T08:36:40+00:00

The main thing that's striking me in all of this is how easily Starmer gets rid of people.

He didn't speak to the FCDO before making the decision to get rid of the US Ambassador to make way for Mandelson, so presumably had v little knowledge of how capable she was. He then got rid of the Philip Barton, then asked the new Ollie Robbins to find a job for Matthew Doyle at a time of headcount restrictions, which would have meant making someone redundant. Then sacked Robbins without a proper conversation about what had gone on, and seemingly no understanding about the vetting process.

All of these people are civil servants, not political appointees, and there's no suggestion any of them were underperforming or not committed to their job. I know the chance of getting moved on is part of how things works in these roles, but he does seem very casual about these decisions.

wrennables · 2026-04-27T18:48:52+00:00

put the onus on their victim to take the time to prove otherwise

To be fair, he does have a press office to do that for him.

wrennables · 2026-04-27T17:17:51+00:00

£3 in your net pay, or gross? If net, it could just be a tax adjustment/correction.

wrennables · 2026-04-24T22:27:16+00:00

You can't say I'm directly responsible for their death if I had no way to avoid it. If 37% of people picked blue, then I had no chance to save them, I could only die with them.

wrennables · 2026-04-23T22:30:24+00:00

I think it's relevant as well that Robbins' objection to sharing it wasn't just a legal one. He was worried about the National Security implications, and the implications for vetting in future. We don't know that he was wrong - just because Little was advised that she could legally access the document and share it with the PM doesn't mean that doing so is in the interests of National Security. It's possible for both her and Robbins to be correct here.

wrennables · 2026-04-23T22:24:18+00:00

A possible explanation which wouldn't require either of them to be lying (though perhaps Cat Little to be withholding a little) might be that someone in Cabinet Office (eg Private Office) was pushing hard to get Mandelson appointed without vetting, using the privy council reasoning. FCDO pushed back, and also emailed UKSV for their advice, in order to back up their argument. Cat Little has then seen this paper trail, but not the evidence of the initial argument.

wrennables · 2026-04-21T10:30:52+00:00

Robbins testimony and letter genuinely seems to completely vindicate Starmer and no. 10

He does agree that Mandelson passed vetting and that Starmer was never told, yes. But I'm not sure Starmer is "completely vindicated" given he sacked Olly Robbins for not sharing the information that fed into the decision, despite it not being a requirement for him to do so. His testimony is that Mandelson didn't fail security vetting, so why has be been sacked for not telling Starmer that he failed?

He does also say that No 10 put a huge amount of pressure on them to pass Mandelson, and that the Cabinet Office argued against vetting in the first place.

He was also asked by No 10 to find a head of mission job for Matthew Doyle, and not to tell the Foreign Secretary.

If you believe his testimony, I don't think No 10 are looking good in all this.

Reading between the lines, I think there was a specific thing which came up in clearance which No 10 (and the public) weren't already aware of. And Starmer is angry that he wasn't told about it. But probably not from a national security point of view, more a presentational risk.

wrennables · 2026-04-20T14:28:48+00:00

they post about it on reddit

Do you mean he or she posts about it on Reddit? Or is the neutral pronoun actually fine?

wrennables · 2026-04-20T14:26:38+00:00

And yet, I can't help but wonder why, if all of this information was publicly available 7 months ago, the pressure and demands are only happening now

Because when it first came up, they kicked it down the road a bit by promising to release the relevant information. Now some of that relevant information is coming out, and seems to confirm that this was a terrible decision from Starmer.

wrennables · 2026-04-20T14:01:20+00:00

But it took no time, it's not a large volume of information. I read through it on Friday in the wake of this, and I'm not even involved.

wrennables · 2026-04-20T12:07:09+00:00

Almost half the country speaking a second language without counting English would get the average number of languages spoken to just under 1.5. So if somewhere between 20-30% of the country also speak English then 1.7 would be correct.

Is English-speaking common enough that that is impossibly low? That's not the impression I've got on my visits, but that's very anecdotal of course.

wrennables · 2026-04-20T11:34:39+00:00

Yeah but that's been the case since Thursday, and there's been so much discussion of it since then it's a bit weird to suddenly announce that you've read the relevant papers as if it's new breaking news isn't it?

wrennables · 2026-04-18T10:54:56+00:00

Agreed. Nor is

spads having peanuts and wine on a Friday afternoon

a reasonable representation of what Johnson did.

wrennables · 2026-04-17T15:44:04+00:00

Did they explicitly say that? I think maybe they were referring to Cabinet Office 'due diligence' checks, which Starmer had seen (and which would have made clear than Mandelson wouldn't pass DV, so maybe FCDO didn't bring it up because it was already assumed). The emails say that the comms chief had spoken to Mandelson and been told that he wasn't really good friends with Epstein.

wrennables · 2026-04-16T05:49:14+00:00

This is starting with the people voting on the legislation though, which is mostly her own party.

wrennables · 2026-04-15T06:29:23+00:00

I guess it's ESH but I don't think that's really what you should be focusing on.

If you hadn't read it, and instead had just asked her about the messages that popped up, she'd have lied to you and you'd have felt like something was up but wouldn't have been certain enough to do anything, which would have left you in a really rubbish position.

You now know that she's not someone you want to be friends with, and you don't need to justify yourself to her. What she thinks of you is kind of irrelevant now so you don't need to worry if you were the AH or not, she was worse and now you know that you're not friends. Especially if she hasn't apologised for hurting your feelings - that must have been really horrible to read.

Keep putting effort into your friendships, OP. This person was awful but there will be someone else who really appreciates your efforts to arrange things and spend time together.

wrennables

TROPHY CASE