Guesty

I do think it's important to consider stuff like this. I don't think they spend 4 years on this without being sure and having other stuff. They must have more evidence. It will just be stuff that they weren't 100% sure would be okay in court. It might be stuff they couldn't use because it would reveal the identity of victims. Or it could be stuff involving victims/people who didn't want to participate. Maybe this is just the first part and they're hoping more will now go on the record. Only one male comedian was prepared to participate despite there being WhatsApp groups with them all in. There was more stuff in The Times about the 16 year olds mother: apparently Brand kissed her when she confronted him. I also thought it was strange how they glossed over the text message conversation where one of the victims said no means no as part of the message and he apologised. The Times' lawyers seemed to let a little more in. I don't think Katy Perry was mentioned once. Not even the fact they were married - it's like she never existed. Which showed how much lawyers had been involved. If none of this is true then Brand can sue them. All the journalists will lose their jobs and never be trusted to investigate again - and he could possibly bankrupt The Times and Channel 4. Brand had 8 days warning about this; it would appear he didn't legally challenge it.

I was expecting more to be honest given how much it was hyped up. But the stuff they published will only be the stuff that they and their lawyers one hundred percent feel they can include without being sued. I assume (which could be totally incorrect) they will probably have other stuff which didn't pass the legal tests or incidents where people didn't want to be included. I guess they're hoping more people come forward now.

Harvey Weinstein only got exposed because of a New York Times investigation. Sometimes this is what it takes to expose powerful people.

It's not up to journalists or news organisations to force traumatised women to go to the police. As I said in another post 67,169 rapes were reported last year in the UK. Only 1.9% even had charges brought. Do we really think all 64,000 odd people were lying about being raped? Or is there a serious issue with rape convictions. Why would woman want to report rape anyway - especially of a famous person. If it did go to court they've got to wait years whilst everyone slags them off about the reason they've reported him. They just want fame, they just want his money, they just want attention, why now why not then. There's an excuse to slag them off and spin it no matter when or why they report it. Then if they do get to court, expensive lawyers dig into their life and look for anything that could discredit them and they basically get put on trial and retraumatised. Sounds like most of these woman were uncovered through four years of research. None of them knew each other or were paid for this or it seems wanted the attention.

The Times article has text messages where (I'm paraphrasing) he says sorry to one of the women about how he'd treated her that day and she didn't deserve it. She's one who says he raped her. But it doesn't actually say raped in the messages. There's much more in The Times article. If you go on twitter someone has an archive link and you can read behind the paywall. But I'm sure it will all be covered in Dispatches I think it's more than 5 woman some want anonymity and don't want to go on record. Some are in the UK and some are in US. But you are right it's hard; and it's why of all the 67,169 rapes reported to UK police only 1.9% had charges brought in 2022. And the ones that were brought have like a 5 year wait to get to court. Which are really grim figures.

If you've got a Times subscription there story is out now too.

I'm genuinely surprised at the amount of people defending Brand on twitter. I get they defend people they see as their own tribe. I expect some people to blindly defend him - especially nobodies on twitter. But people with big followings like Elon Musk, Laurence Fox. Bev Turner on GB News calling him a hero. There are people who are saying I believe in facts and evidence defending him. They don't know what he's about to be accused of - no one knows the facts or has seen the evidence yet. What if it's really depraved stuff and the evidence is irrefutable. Like how do you walk that back. Surely you at least moderate your support before hand, or wait. You've got comedians (or people who work in that industry) on twitter now coming out with things about super injunctions and stuff they've heard or seen. Apparently this is who Katherine Ryan was talking about months ago.

He's had such a strange career trajectory. 20 years ago he was everywhere. Always on the tv; Radio 2 DJ (Sacksgate was just weird); went to Hollywood and was in some movies; married one of the most famous popstars in the world. Then got divorced and slowly vanished into what he said was a self-imposed exile as he didn't like being famous anymore. Went from being quite politically outspoken on left-wing topics to becoming an alt-right anti-mainstream media conspiracy theorist podcaster. A political grifter is a clever place to go if you have skeleton's in your closet. Wonder what he's done: he's been pretty open about his mistakes in the past and he's not really famous enough for the mainstream media to want to bring him down under false pretences.

The rumour on twitter is it's a famous comedian or comedians. But it's quite clear no one actually knows.

If it couldn't get any worse for Maguire we've now reached the point where his mum is in the press. I feel bad for the guy but it seems all the people close to him just make it worse. His mum should no comment; how does this help him. Southgate complaining in the press; yet he's made it worse than anyone. He shouldn't be picking him precisely because of what happened the other day.

Looks like the club are upping their Youtube media. Impressed with this along with the Alves Braybrooke video and the Maresca Balague interview.

I wondered that originally. People have already looked him up on the medical registrar. Someone with his name and the same job history exists. There's also a book from an anaesthetist with his name on sale on Amazon apparently. I imagine before The Times published the letter they would have double checked as well. The guy clearly has main character energy and he's about to get it - he's been trending in the top 10 of twitter all morning. It's bordering on journalistic malpractice not to find him and (more importantly) his ex-colleagues. How dense do you have to be the write that with your name, location and former job title. His former employer must be readying themselves for sexual harassment claims from former colleagues and subordinates.

Makes you wonder what it was like to work with this guy; and shows there is a real problem. This Dr Peter Hilton wrote this letter to The Times to publish after reading an article about female surgeons being groped in the operating theatre. Which I think he'll regret. Publicly suggesting women should expect sexually inappropriate comments and actions in their workplace is a sure fire way of getting people to dig into his past and find ex-colleagues.

Problem with Southgate continually picking Maguire and Henderson is he's now made them a big target. If he subs them, it makes them and him look even worse (possibly even get boo'd or sarcastically cheered coming off). I don't agree with it but I can understand taking Henderson because of his leadership. But playing the full 90 is ridiculous. Always thought that Southgate gets an unfair amount of criticism in some quarters (whilst having obvious faults). But after this squad and team selection. I've now gone to the darkside. You don't need Henderson against Ukraine when you've got Rice and Bellingham playing. He can't always set his team up in such a negative way and hope some individual brilliance wins it.

I read about it in a news article a while back. Apparently he was driving an open top vehicle and it flipped at speed - don't think it was a proper car. He wasn't wearing the correct helmet. After it flipped he got dragged along upside down at speed on his face. When you see his face after 9 months it must have been really bad. The article said it took emergency services while to get there and the production staff had to have counselling after as it was so traumatic.

Not sure the cyclist thought this through when he brought the case. I never heard about this before (happened in Belgium). He brings a defamation case because the dad posted this video after he refused to apologise for kneeing his 5 year old as he rode past. The cyclist originally got off with a 1 euro fine because, apparently, the social media backlash was punishment enough for knocking over a 5 year old. The cyclist has now won his defamation case against the dad for putting the recording on social media (which he only did originally asking for advice). Now it's going viral all over the world, instead of just Belgium, so many more people are watching him. I bet when cyclists saw this they just sighed and were like: it's people like you who give us a bad name. The cynical part of me suspects this cyclist is quite well connected; not sure a working class teenager would get this treatment.

I just edited my post. I hadn't realised the Birmingham story was an Oracle HR and Finance system. My story is all about Oracle HR and Finance. Wonder how many other councils took it on.

I genuinely don't think people realise how much of a mess some councils are - as in, they think it's bad, but it's actually worse than they think it is. Our department needed a new IT software (was the main operating system, so integral). None of the managers had any idea - didn't even know what the cloud was; but they were making the decision. They spent big money on a new system that they knew wouldn't do what we needed. To then pay a fortune to a consultancy firm from India to reprogramme the new software to get it usable for us. They also created a new team in the council to facilitate all this. They were working on this for about 4-5 years. There was software from a different provider that out of the box would do what we needed - they used to use it years ago. But all cause one senior manager in another department didn't want to change their software we couldn't use it. Our department was one which took on external business - so could make the council money. This new software was such a disaster and wasted so much money; not only did they not get any new business. All the existing external business had to leave. 30 to 50% of the department (roughly 40 people) were made redundant. Of course, all the managers and business development team were okay. Before that the same people tried to introduce a new set of software for something different. After spending a fortune they realised they'd forgotten all about data protection and had to scrap it. There are very valid arguments for the underfunding of local councils from central government. But some of the waste and incompetence is astounding and there's rarely any accountability for managers. They mainly promote from within so nothing ever improves and they all protect each other. Edit: I missed the fact it was and Oracle IT system in Birmingham. My story above is also an Oracle system.

Below is from when Sancho was at Dortmund in 2019. He had attitude problems at Man City: there's a video when he was a teenager where he refused to acknowledge a player as he was being subbed off (was Foden ironically). Reportedly was late or didn't turn up numerous times for training at Man City. When he has some adversity he throws his toys out the pram - and he's not a great trainer. Wasn't that long ago he seemed to vanish for a while and Ten Haag seemed to protect him in the press. Sancho's says he's been a scapegoat; he's had about 6 decent games since he joined. There seems to be a pattern starting to form with him.

Yeah. I never realised the relationship dynamic between Billy Graham and Ray Hatton. I remember when Graham left back in the day, it was weird (and even weirder when Mayweather Sr rocked up). Hard to work out if Ray Hatton was inept, just really dodgy (or a bit of both). Letting that case go to court was just stupid when he knew what he knew. His son didn't talk to him for 8 years after and it looks like Graham will never forgive them. I heard Graham didn't want to do the documentary and had to really be convinced. Thought it was notable that Matthew Hatton didn't feature anywhere.

I know what you mean about Colby. I think he takes the character too far. But it's worked for him, he was about to be cut, then he made everyone hate him. The fact he had to become that person is why I've lost interest. You see interviews from back in the day and he's a totally different person. It's almost like he's so not like that type of person he doesn't know when to stop. He's had to change camps and lost most of his MMA friends because it. Chael was sort of the OG of that stuff. But it was more just funny than hostile. He normally knew just where that line was and stopped.

There's this festival in America called Burning Man. It started off as a sort of hippy type festival where people would drive into the middle of the Nevada desert and be self sufficient for week. Now it's been commercialised and is basically just a bunch of Instagram influencers and rich people renting expensive RV's where they burn big structures (and apparently take a load of drugs). Last night it chucked it down in the middle of the desert (it's also in a dried up lake bed). The sand turned to mud and all these people who are claiming they could survive the apocalypse are now trapped, upset and the toilets can't be cleaned. The government has had to declare a emergency and warn people the shelter in place.