Culture war latest: the Bank of England has announced that after a public consultation, to which it received 44,000 responses, the next new banknotes will feature native wildlife.
Tories: "It is deeply depressing that under Lab our national heroes are considered too 'divisive' to be on bank notes."
When I said 'Kemi Badenoch is so partisan, under her the Tories would oppose puppies and kittens if Labour said something nice about them', I didn't mean it literally.
One of my favorite parts of this whole thing is that it implies Rubio lied about his shoe size.
I think Trump knows exactly what he's doing with the shoes, it's another humiliation thing.
If it wasn't, they'd just rebuy the exact same Florsheim shoe in the right size and wear that. But they know he'd notice those aren't the clown shoes he gave them, so they can't do it.
2 panel comic Panel 1 is titled “Client Feedback (2012) Red Guy sits at his desk typing on his laptop. There is a bubble on the right hand side of the panel showing his screen. A small text panel says “and the”. There is an arrow pointing to the bottom of the words with a correction box that reads: “Text is slightly misaligned. Please fix” Panel 2 is titled “Client feedback (2026) Red Guy is slouched on chair typing into his phone. His phone screen shows a panel of text that is complete gibberish. This time the correction reads “not alphabet but who give a fuck”
client feedback in the GenAI era
Rules that are rational in commercial litigation become actively dangerous when they can be weaponised to silence critics of wrongdoing. And so it's right that we should treat libel law differently from other litigation.
Libel law enabled Jimmy Savile, Robert Maxwell, Cyril Smith, and many other monsters (note that I'm too cowardly to mention the still-living examples).
This is the chilling effect of libel law. No other area of litigation has libel law's potential to damage public life.
And that's the problem with libel law. The law itself is pretty reasonable. Our hypothetical blogger would be reasonably confident of winning, if their article was fair
But they couldn't afford to.
But - obviously - I'm immensely privileged.
A blogger or tweeterer receiving Kamal's threat would be irrational to fight it. Many people couldn't afford the £3k+ an initial lawyer letter would cost.
I could do this. I don't have a day job. I am financially secure. I'm a lawyer who relishes litigation...
This case, laughable in many ways, and struck out in forceful terms by Mrs Justice Collins Rice, still cost me six months and over £100k in fees. I should be able to recover this from Kamal - I don't know if in practice I'll be able to.
We then did something else.
the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 created a new way to strike out defamation claims if they were "SLAPPs" - litigation intended to chill free speech.
It had never been used. We used it.
He then filed a defamation claim, which had several extraordinary features.
Mainly, he didn't like being linked to the Arka Wealth scheme. That was super weird when their website said he gave an opinion for it.
(This point wasn't litigated in our strike out)
The barrister, Setu Kamal, objected to being linked to an absurd tax avoidance scheme sold by a firm called Arka Wealth. They claimed to eliminate all corporate tax, income tax, capital gains tax and inheritance tax – not just in the UK but across Europe.
Laughable.
A tax barrister sued me personally for £8m for libel after we linked him to a tax avoidance scheme.
Today the High Court struck out the claim, granted summary judgment, and ruled it was a SLAPP. The judgment is highly critical.
It takes a certain kind of…narcissistic nihilism to look across the country at people self-organizing against something that is generally a fairly good material symbol of the intangible class warfare that has alienated them and say, “what a silly distraction from what *really* matters.” And yet…
Theyre not even thinking about our deaths or incarcerations, theyre not thinking about us at all. Its not about trans people its about cis keeping cis people cis and in their assigned gender roles. We are what theyre preventing people from becoming, us already there are a lost cause in their eyes
British politics, more than any other, has an unrivalled streak of paternalism where marginalized people are easily dehumanized as spoilt children who must be sternly punished and managed and whipped into shape.
Our advocacy is simply seen as as tantrums.
Jim Cramer suggests on CNBC that Trump could “bomb Tehran into the Stone Age” until Iran reopens the strait, citing U.S. bombings of North Vietnam in the 1970s. Carl Quintanilla points out to him that Hanoi won that war.
The shoes are how everyone knows the pecking order. For every time someone displeases him their shoe size goes up one
'anyone spreading hatred and division'
it's you shabana. it's you.
these gaslighting fucks. i hate them so much.
telling people that they need to exercise their peaceful right to protest as you are literally banning a peaceful protest is just fucking diabolical
I'm pretty much an atheist these days, my identification as Muslim is cultural. However, one of the worst sins in Islam is apostasy, not unbelief itself, and I think Mahmood exemplifies exactly why: using Muslim identity to launder the most Islamophobic and genocidally fascist policies.
“My ‘steal the rings and jewels from refugees‘ plan has people asking a lot of questions about my party affiliation and if I have a human soul”
when I read about her various policies I was like “wait, did they have to keep a Tory on” and was really shocked to learn that she’s Labour
Shabana Mahmood MP ~ @ShabanaMahmood X.com I have approved the Metropolitan Police's request to ban the Al Quds march. I am satisfied doing so is necessary to prevent serious public disorder, due to the scale of the protest and multiple counter-protests, in the context of the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. Should a stationary demonstration proceed, the police will be able to apply strict conditions. I expect to see the full force of the law applied to anyone spreading hatred and division instead of exercising their right to peaceful protest.
Gentlemen, you can’t protest against the war here! There’s a war going on!
Per the Bible, Jesus specifically identified himself with the poor, the people others turn away (and he suggested you likely go to hell if u do that), and those in prisons
god, yes. the funny thing is that "figure it out in post" *worked* for Star Wars (ANH)—but it worked because Marcia Lucas is a S-tier editor and because they were extraordinarily constrained by what they could do in the edit
imo the reason why Andor resonated as true to the series when so many post-prequels spinoffs don't is because andor fed on the politics which offer a good foundation while the rest feed on the space wizard sword fights which is like building a house on sand
