the day after the deadline: can the union survive brexit and other deep questions

I simply don't understand how it's possible someone as incompetent, blatantly lying, thinking up crazy stuff every other week for the glorification of his own ego, is still secretary.

But then that probably goes for the whole lot idk

Unsackable.

https://www.ft.com/content/075d679e-0033-11e8-9650-9c0ad2d7c5b5?segmentid=acee4131-99c2-09d3-a635-873e61754ec6

"Be a Brexit Beater, have lunch with Boris Johnson and take tea with Mark Carney"

Appropriate company after you've just finished making a pissed up prick out of yourself + groping the hostesses at a men only charity event. Harvey who?

Every paragraph absolutely bone-chilling, an Inglourious Basterds-style lock the door and burn it down setup would have been too good for them

i am moved once more to ponder the morality, legality, and mechanics of crowdfunding an assassination

Enjoyed the BBC interview about this where the interviewer kept asking the reporter variations of “did these women know what they were getting into?” as though that made the events less awful.

not like the bbc to prop up the establishment, dunno what's going on there

Chilling and infuriating.

"The President of the Presidents Club" shouldn't have made me laugh as much as it did :(

For real though that's an excellent piece of journalism, just the act of going into that environment as a young female journalist in full knowledge of what's going to happen.

second-tier point perhaps, but i like the FT's robust (and correct) attitude to NDAs: "lol they are worthless, come at us"

"The comedian David Walliams was the host for the evening."

"At 10pm, the main money-raising portion of the evening got under way: the charity auction, where the lots on offer ranged from a supercharged Land Rover to the right to name a character in Mr Walliams’ next children's book."

Walliams name should be the first on any gulag list.

"Great Ormond Street Hospital to return all Presidents Club donations"

Enjoyed the BBC interview about this where the interviewer kept asking the reporter variations of “did these women know what they were getting into?” as though that made the events less awful.

lots of FT commenters saying "they were doing it for money" so don't need any sympathy or legal protection I suppose; good to know

a sum of money many FT-reading business dudes would not curtail an extended business lunch for, for 10 hours of being treated like a piece of meat

great piece and interesting that the FT blows the whistle on this while the BBC shrugs - feels like a post-Brexit sea change, but maybe not as I never read the FT before Brexit (came for the angry Remoaner takes, stayed for uh pretty much the same "Brexit still nuts, govt still not listening to anyone" articles 18 months later - thank you free work subscription)

(also lol ignorant, but I had to check that David Meller was not David Mellor, and he is not)

FT reporters are on the whole extremely well-trained and very aware that they are reporting on the City *as a story* rather than stanning for it. This breaks down a bit once you get into the opinion section but even there are some excellent writers (Martin Wolf) as well as some trash (Janan Ganesh). Its editorial team is unquestionably the strongest of any national newspaper.

janan ganesh is a good hate read tbf

in my capacity as ilx gossipmonger ratting out key elements of the professional revolutionary left, i can attest that they *all* read FT, and have done since the 60s: "it's where capital keeps itself accurately informed"

xp LOL yes, an NDA the signatories are not even allowed to read would be thrown out.

David Walliams is priapic, oleaginous trash BTW - notable even amongst comedians for being a scuzzbucket.

Hardly anyone is mentioned by name in that piece which suggests their lawyers have had a good go at it.

i: this is obviously the tip of the iceberg, there are going to be many events that are similar-but-not-quite-so-bad ( but still bad!) and some that are much worse
ii: fingers crossed it's another nail in the coffin of the third-way, public-private world as it currently functions -- events like this are exactly where councillors and developers and politicians and VCs and oligarchs and etc rub shoulders and discuss their real plans w/o being overheard, since everyone present is pressurable into silence by virtue ("virtue") of being present (even if they actually keep their hands to themselves and quietly feel bad abt it, which may be the case with a handful, they are alrwady pre-compromised)
iii: i'm thinking abt the mechanisms by which academies and [CONTROVERSIAL MODERATOR EDIT] and PFIs inevitably go rotten (from a dubious start-point)
iv: sleaze isn't really about individual peccadilloes, poor old stephen milligan with his auto-erotic tangerine, it's about communal pressure -- not to take away from how ugly it is just as an event in itself, presidents' club is by design a pressure point

lol i shd probably actually redact the more specific names in point iii shouldn't i? can a mod do this for me and i'll find a less perilous way to say it later?

DC's already done it ffs, I wanted to see :D

Reader comments on @miss_marriage's brave investigation are now closed, but read them, too, for confirmation that the attitudes and behaviour she describes are widespread. https://t.co/RtD8vR4dDx

— Andrew Hill (@andrewtghill) January 24, 2018

don't need to read the comments to know that tbf

yes i meant the section between "academies and" and "and PFIs" -- i think that could do with a <REDACTED> slapped over it

it's certainly true that you're the first person on the internet to claim that C4rillion has gone rotten. look i even googleproofed it

sigh

they're all in the guilds!

I'm not sure this will bleed into the wider PFI/Third Way story that much in the public consciousness, individuals donating to Great Ormond Street or whatever isn't really the sort of mechanism we're talking about here. What it does represent is potentially the moment where the #MeToo wave crashes straight into the wider, growing sense of anti-business, anti-establishment feeling that's been growing for the last decade.

The extent to which actual plans or business are discussed at these things is a moot point, I suspect it's more drunken jolly than anything else, but it's where connections are made that can be followed up in private later.

matt are you a mod? can you redact my (iii) as requested above? i will re-say it in a way that doesn't claim specific groups of people are being pressured towards in specific ways (which i think leaves the board a bit wide open)

speaking of which, i see great ormond street have returned the donation they received from the event xp

What does bear more examination is the murky nature of 'philanthropy' as it currently functions in international business elite culture.

(xpost - I can change it although I doubt it's an issue)

if you could

BBC Newsnight reported on this yesterday as a very bad / inappropriate / shameful event.

What does bear more examination is the murky nature of 'philanthropy' as it currently functions in international business elite culture

philanthropy has always been a figleaf to help capitalism appear less amoral, all the way back to andrew carnegie et al, but i'd struggle to name any unambiguous good which has come from it - like, i'm sure the amount this event raised for charity is absolutely dwarfed by the amount which could be raised for the treasury if the attendees and their businesses paid their fair share of tax, and stuff like the gates foundation's devotion to improving education is predicated on beneficiaries agreeing to enact bill and melinda gates' preferences for how teaching is done

I worked for charities in the past, never again.

"The comedian David Walliams was the host for the evening."

The latest Private Eye reveals that Walliams is good friends with the Candy Brothers. Jimmy Carr is too apparently.

more re david meller, pres of the pres club (and not to be confused w/david "toes" mellor or david "soons" mellor):

David Meller is also a patron of 'Academy Ambassadors', which is part of New Schools Network, led by Toby ‘best baps’ Young. ('Access denied' to the AA patrons webpage; see cached version, or Powerbase: https://t.co/xqKdThmlSh) https://t.co/FT5hnoyxBZ

— Tamasin Cave (@CaveTamasin) January 24, 2018

xp and Vernon Kay, bafflingly

lol david "soons" mellor = david "spoons" mellor (ie the late designer, as far as i know blameless in anything like this)

He’s quit now.

Walliams is claiming he didn’t see anything.

david walliams is appalled 👍

big of him

tbf it's hard to live as a typo

you have one bullet, use it wisely

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/imageserver/image/methode%2Ftimes%2Fprod%2Fweb%2Fbin%2F9ad8b71c-e67f-11e7-a07e-b2db9e9d66b2.jpg?crop=1593%2C896%2C0%2C83&resize=685

the angle might work for a single shot there

tbf to Walliams how was he to know that this event where the only women allowed in were paid hostesses would turn out to be a bit sordid?

i'd be tempted to put it in my own head tbh, and i don't think anyone could fault me for it xp

i hate these ppl -- and this kind of celebrity activity -- with the force of a trillion mcgraths and wish them the harm they deserve, but i actually suspect being "host" mainly involves being parachuted onto the dais for a bad keynote then tootling off to the next envelope-opening