It gets worse: No 10 also tried to get Matthew Doyle - a close friend of Mandelson - a job working for him in DC.
Remember - Doyle was asked by PM to investigate Mandelson's responses about links to Jeffrey Epstein & concluded he was "satisfied".
A *clear* conflict of interests.
NTS is great! Only a matter of time before London Centric caught the eyes and ears of East London’s trendy musichead circles. Huge crossover with people who care about Prince Charles cinema and exploitative landlords
I know this is me still mourning a long dead world but it does feel remarkable that, not that long ago, British papers on the right would have run editorials and columns arguing that Hungary showed that only a solid, reliable centre-right party could defeat dangerous populists, but now? [crickets]
Bluesky goes crazy for obvious anti-Trump AI slop packaged as human drawings/designs
Crispin Odey abandons £79mn libel case against the FT over sexual misconduct claims ft.trib.al/ltCxjpR
How did you spend the Easter weekend? Someone spent it registering new accounts with London Centric to post rapid-fire comments in support of billionaire landlord Asif Aziz and his company Criterion Capital.
The 30 Rockification of real life is nearing completion
A company founded by a man who doesn't believe in democracy and which is aiding Trump's destruction of the American republic and whose UK arm is run by the grandson of Britain's most famous fascist, which helped him get his job, criticises "ideological groups."
www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
Everything is always someone else’s fault. If only the publishing industry had been less woke; a decent editor might have saved him from the consequences of his dishonesty.
A miserable, hyper-online group of people seeking both escapism and self-punishment… and those compulsive masturbators are a bit weird as well!
NOT MY WORDS CAROL. THE WORDS OF ZEROGPT
This is exactly why so many transparency campaigners are calling for crypto donations to be banned
Sources told @theobserveruk.bsky.social that crypto donations had “come into a wallet controlled by a permissible donor” and were then turned into fiat, adding “this makes it much harder to track”.
observer.co.uk/news/nationa...
Least aware religious fanatic I’ve ever seen.
Dark money isn’t just a party political problem
Main voice in this is ‘a forum for concerned members’ - actually Restore Trust is a Tufton street operation that refuses to declare its funders
Incredible how much of our politics has been warped like this
www.thetimes.com/uk/environme...
They missed a guy
Excl: Reform UK is planning a purge of Whitehall’s most senior civil servants if it wins the next general election
Nigel Farage’s party is proposing to sack virtually all the permanent secretaries and directors general, @theobserveruk.bsky.social has learned
👇
observer.co.uk/news/nationa...
This is one of those things that, like the in-door smoking ban, is proportionate and absolutely inevitable - and will prove very popular on introduction - but will still be frustrated for years by industry lobbying and lily-livered government.
This is a good lesson for journalists: Use plain language to state true things clearly.
nigel farage tweet: The Bank of England is replacing Winston Churchill with a picture of a beaver on our bank notes. This is the definition of woke.
i, for one, am delighted that we finally have a definition of “woke”
What if these straight men, one of whom was a prolific abuser of girls and one of whom is accused of sexually harassing multiple women, were gay?
Thats satire, baby!
NEW: I wrote about how the far-right press and usually pro-Trump conspiracy outlets are covering the Iran war, and I have to say, it's a bit more interesting than I anticipated. For once, Alex Jones has found a news event that he thinks is both real and worrying: www.motherjones.com/politics/202...
To reiterate:
Having been fired as US Ambassador, Peter Mandelson asked for HALF A MILLION POUNDS as a severance settment
Not the big story from the Mandelson files, but I just find this astonishing.
Here is Peter Mandelson, having been fired as US ambassador in September (and presumably knowing what else could come out re Epstein), making threatening noises about employment rights and how he "expects to be treated"
Completely mad proposal from the Commons to hide the names of MPs staff who have parliamentary passes which could prove invaluable to vested interests looking to buy access to Westminster. Staff members taking hospitality + freebies would no longer be identified.
