The Divided State of Europe

[Dejan Corovic]

Back in 2022 when war started there were sabotages all over Russia, some by Ukrainians some by CIA, MI5 etc. In time of war sabotage is "new normal" tits-for-tats palytime. Thankfully we have one sided media who'll blame cloudy day on Putin. Why waste money NHS when we can safely store it in missiles that would be sold to Ukraininians at a markup once they pass sell-by-date time.

 

[nivek]

Russian sabotage

I think it's become an all too convenient catch all to blame Russia...We've heard it here on the other side of the pond, mostly by the previous administration...Blaming Russian interference or Russian spies or Russian aggression, without checking their own deficiencies or seeing the problem objectively...

...

 

[AD1184]

I think it's become an all too convenient catch all to blame Russia...We've heard it here on the other side of the pond, mostly by the previous administration...Blaming Russian interference or Russian spies or Russian aggression, without checking their own deficiencies or seeing the problem objectively...

Every reversal suffered by the western liberal establishment has been blamed on Russia for the past decade. The Brexit vote, the election of Trump in 2016, ad infinitum.

 

[Dejan Corovic]

The worst thing is that liberalism is actually a good thing, just gets self-soiled by its own dirt of politics.

 

[AD1184]

The worst thing is that liberalism is actually a good thing, just gets self-soiled by its own dirt of politics.

There are perhaps some good aspects to classical liberalism. However, many modern self-identifying liberals are actually illiberal. For one, many present day "liberals" reject the liberal tenet of pluralism, and believe that political opposition is illegitimate, and that their opponents ought to have their opinions outlawed.

 

[Dejan Corovic]

There are perhaps some good aspects to classical liberalism. However, many modern self-identifying liberals are actually illiberal. For one, many present day "liberals" reject the notion of pluralism, and believe that political opposition is illegitimate, and that their opponents ought to have their opinions outlawed.

Me growing up in a socialist country that "novelty" makes me realy nervous.

 

[AD1184]

All the clues that Putin is behind the Heathrow fire: Intelligence expert NEIL BARNETT says we should treat the blaze as sabotage - and Britain is already at war with Russia​

The shooting may not have started yet, but let me tell you: Britain is already at war with Russia. When I saw the horrific images this morning of black smoke billowing from a critical energy substation linked to Heathrow Airport, I was immediately suspicious. It may be too early to come to any hard conclusions. But make no mistake: Heathrow is one of our enemies' juiciest targets. At least 1,351 flights have been cancelled today and the knock-on effect to the British economy is likely run into the billions - to say nothing of the stress to ordinary passengers and the loss to Britain's international prestige.

(More on the link)

It appears that this article has been taken down from the Daily Mail website. I should think it is because, on review, they realized it was complete twaddle.

 

[nivek]

Meghan Markle slammed for 'monetizing the monarchy' after launching ShopMy account to earn commission​

Meghan Markle is being slammed after she created a ShopMy account that allows her to earn commission on affiliate links she posts, including the clothes she wore on her Netflix show - and many are not impressed.

On Monday, Meghan took to her Instagram stories to announce that she would now be linking items on the platform, writing a message to her followers. 'Many of you have asked, so here you go!' Meghan wrote in text on top of the story. 'A little shopping to start the week. More to come. Link in bio.' The wardrobe comprised mostly of elevated basics, including linen shirts, crewneck sweaters, sunglasses, and handbags, in neutral shades like beige, brown, white, black, and navy blue.

Among the items she has linked is a $1,415 beige cashmere crewneck from designer Loro Piana, an ivory silk maxi dress by Heidi Merrick listed $1,350, and a pair of loose brown pants for $388 from Brochu Walker.

She has labeled the store under the name 'Meghan, Duchess of Sussex' - just weeks after she was seen correcting comedian Mindy Kaling on her proper last name of 'Sussex.' However, many are already taking a stand against the new venture, as many users took to X, formerly Twitter, to air their grievances.

'Do people need another celebrity selling them things they don't need at this moment in our country's financial status? I wish her well!' one person typed.

'Meghan Markle's affiliate marketing store. Get them while they're hot!!! They look like sandals Walmart has on sale for $19.95 but to each her own lol,' someone else wrote, as they included a picture of a pair of $495 sandals from Emme Parsons that the Duchess had linked.

Another agreed, 'I have enough cream clothing, but thanks! Plus, I like clothes that aren't wrinkled and that fit properly.'

'Meghan joining ShopMy is shocking. I thought she would at least wait until after As Ever launched before we started seeing affiliate links. My guess is she saw that others were making $ from items on the show and wanted a cut, but she has truly reached full influencer status,' one account suggested.

One X user commented, 'I can't believe she is allowed to get away with monetizing the monarchy.'

'And here we go-affiliate links. She's making money off affiliate links,' another wrote. 'That's literally the most low budget influencer crap, and a Duchess of the British Royal Family is shilling links to make commission.'

(More on the link)

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[nivek]

Europe’s half-baked rearmament boom is already turning into a fiasco​

Never underestimate Europe’s capacity to disappoint. Rearmament euphoria and the explosive catch-up rally in European industrial stocks over the last month have run ahead of hard fiscal facts.

Italy and Spain do not have credible plans to ramp up defense spending, and nor does France when you drill into the details. The Club Med bloc and Belgium are already in an incipient compound interest trap of rising real borrowing costs (as is the UK). “It is simply not possible for us to find another €20bn [€17bn] or €30bn euros for weapons when we are already making tremendous efforts to cut our debt burden, and we’re fundamentally constrained in what we can do for the Italian people,” said Italy’s finance minister, Giancarlo Giorgetti.

The military Keynesian boom is chiefly a German story. The €900bn coalition plan for extra defense and infrastructure spending over 10 years is large. It amounts to €90bn annually or 2pc of German GDP. But keep it in perspective. The Draghi Report says the EU as a whole must raise investment by €800bn every year to pull the bloc out of technological decline, coupled with deregulation shock therapy. The more we see of Europe’s patchy and fractious rearmament, the less it looks like Chamberlain’s blitz in 1938 or Roosevelt’s in 1941.

Sven Jari Stehn from Goldman Sachs has added up the aggregate stimulus for the eurozone and concluded that it barely moves the needle over the mid-2020s. The net “fiscal impulse” will still be negative this year, and neutral next year.

Growth will be just 0.9pc in 2025. He has cut his forecast to 1.3pc in 2026, and 1.5pc in 2027. There is a further catch: the spike in German Bund yields has forced up yields for others, further poisoning Club Med debt dynamics. This effect “more than offsets the small tailwinds to growth,” he said. I can see why investors are spurning Wall Street and rotating out of “American exceptionalism”, and not just because the US economy is stalling, or because Donald Trump’s tariffs will bring 1970s stagflation, or because he has destroyed so much American credibility in just eight short weeks.

It is above all because Trump is weakening the struts of US capitalism by playing fast and loose with the legal system, shaking down companies and threatening judges. Sarah Bianchi, from Evercore ISI, says the market exodus will accelerate if he meddles with “the judiciary’s ability to enforce contracts” – in my view he already is – or defies the Supreme Court. Bank of America data show that foreign funds cut their $16 trillion (£12.4 trillion) holding of US equities very fast in March.

It is less obvious why traders are betting on a secular euro-boom instead. Europe is just as likely to deliver another of its habitual damp squibs. Are they assuming that Trump will not impose draconian tariffs on the EU, and will not escalate further when Brussels retaliates?

Surplus countries suffer most in a trade war. Europe has made itself asymmetrically vulnerable by relying for so long on Anglo-Saxon demand to drive its economy.

France’s Emmanuel Macron talks grandly of EU rearmament but lacks both the political capital and the fiscal firepower to put his economy on a war footing. France has a structural budget deficit of 5pc of GDP. The International Monetary Fund says public debt hit 112pc last year and is heading for 124pc by 2029 even before any rise in military spending. He faces a parliament in thrall to the pacifist Front Populaire on the Left and Marine Le Pen’s Trumpian Rassemblement on the Right. Macron aims to boost defense by around 0.8pc of GDP by 2030, but how will he pay for it on top of all his other nosebleed pledges – AI dominance, a fleet of nuclear reactors, etc. – while also pledging to ringfence the French social model?

The European Commission’s €800bn ReArm Europe Plan slips through your fingers like fine sand – “virtual” money in the lapidary words of Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, who said it was “mad” to try to go it alone without the US. Most of the €800bn is a theoretical figure to come from member states. The hard core is a €150bn EU lending facility to beef up Europe’s arms industry but this has already run into trouble, starting with Hungary’s veto.

The Spanish want to use the money for climate change, turning the mechanism into a slush fund like the Covid Recovery Fund, which ended up being used for every pet scheme except for Covid. As always, Brussels, Paris and others have an ulterior motive in pushing for joint debt issuance. They seize on every chance to try to smuggle through fiscal union – or to get their hands on the credit card of “the frugals”, to be more prosaic. The Dutch refuse any use of ReArm Europe for joint lending; the Germans are unlikely to be more sympathetic once Friedrich Merz takes charge. He must bend over backwards to show that last week’s changes to the constitutional debt-brake do not open the floodgates to fiscal ruin.

“Having ditched one taboo, the German centre-Right is even more reluctant to breach another,” said Berenberg Bank. Eurobonds are stone dead.

The rearmament saga is exposing deep lines of cleavage within the EU, above all between those states still trying to keep the US on board, and Europeanists who see it as a chance – a blessing from Mars, to borrow from German historian Fritz Fischer – to break free and turn Europe into a muscular great power. Germany’s excellent Sparta plan calls for drastic spending on the “sharp end” of defense to block Vladimir Putin before he is tempted to attack again (next time Narva or the Suwalki Gap).

It wants a drone wall, along with weapons that can be delivered within months, or five years at the limit. Europe should work with what it has got and not waste time arguing about new instruments, or let the mission be hijacked by Brussels. But the worst is now happening. The talks are degenerating into a procurement carve-up, with each country hoping to use EU money to push its own weapons systems as a form of industrial and jobs policy.

An unpleasant mix of euro ideology and hard-nosed protectionism means that the UK is being excluded even though it is an integral part of Europe’s military ecosystem, and is defending the EU’s frontline against Russia with troops and is rock solid behind Ukraine. We have the surreal situation where South Korea and Japan can bid for contracts, up to a point, but British firms cannot because the UK does not have a formal defense pact with the EU, and such a pact is not possible unless London submits to other Commission demands, starting with fish. It is doubly surreal because Berlin is angling for British nuclear protection, and talks are under way behind the scenes for a joint Anglo-French nuclear deterrent.

The likely result of ReArm Europe is to weaken the emotional solidarity that binds the cross-Channel alliance, and to cure a generation of Labour leaders of their reflexive europhilia. Please forgive my burst of optimism a few weeks ago. I now fear that the EU’s incorrigible pathologies will reassert themselves, and that Europe’s half-baked rearmament will degenerate into a fiasco. I fear too that Europe will abandon brave Ukraine to the wolves (plural).

Europe is gripped by a defense crisis. And Brussels wants to talk about fish.

.

 

[nivek]

Prince Harry in astonishing 'racist, sexist bullying' row: Chairwoman of his beloved African charity makes thinly veiled swipe at those who 'play the victim card' and accuses colleagues of 'harassment and misogyny' - after he QUIT amid bust-up with her​

Prince Harry last night announced he would step down from his own charity following 'unthinkable' controversy from within - and now its chair has sensationally hit back.

Sentebale, which the Duke of Sussex co-founded with Prince Seeiso of Lesotho in 2006 to benefit African orphans, dedicates itself to tackling poverty and AIDS in Lesotho and Botswana.

The royal travelled to Africa last year to support its work and in December proudly attended an event in New York. Harry co-founded Sentebale in memory of his late mother Princess Diana.

But yesterday Harry quit in solidarity with his co-founder and the entire board of trustees after 'the relationship between the charity's trustees and the chair of the board broke down beyond repair, creating an untenable situation'.

Sophie Chandauka, a Zimbabwe-born lawyer, was appointed to be chair of the trustees last year. It's reported the trustees were deeply unhappy with the decision and wanted her to step down, prompting her to sue.

The row seemingly stemmed from a decision to move its fundraising operation to Africa and several key figures then walked away from the organisation.

And now, in a bombshell statement to the Mail, Dr Chandauka alleged there was a 'cover up' going at the charity, blasting 'weak executive management, abuse of power, bullying, harassment, misogyny, and misogynoir'.

She also took a swipe at 'people in this world who behave as though they are above the law and mistreat people'.

Dr Chandauka blasted that the such people 'then play the victim card and use the very press they disdain'.

She hit out in a volley of accusations at her colleagues: 'For me, this is not a vanity project from which I can resign when I am called to account.

'I am an African who has had the privilege of a worldclass education and career. I will not be intimidated. I must stand for something. I stand for those other women who do not have the ways and means.'

The chair said: 'I chose to join Sentebale first and foremost as a proud African who understands that, in the spirit of ubuntu: to whom much is given, much is expected.

'Everything I do at Sentebale is in pursuit of the integrity of the organisation, its mission, and the young people we serve. My actions are guided by the principles of fairness and equitable treatment for all, regardless of social status or financial means.

'There are people in this world who behave as though they are above the law and mistreat people, and then play the victim card and use the very press they disdain to harm people who have the courage to challenge their conduct.

'Discerning readers will ask themselves: why would the Chair of the Board report her own Trustees to the Charity Commission? Why would the High Court of England and Wales accept her application to hear the matter at all if the case had no merit?

'Well, because beneath all the victim narrative and fiction that has been syndicated to press is the story of a woman who dared to blow the whistle.'

(More on the link)

.

 

[Dejan Corovic]

Europe’s half-baked rearmament boom is already turning into a fiasco​

Never underestimate Europe’s capacity to disappoint. Rearmament euphoria and the explosive catch-up rally in European industrial stocks over the last month have run ahead of hard fiscal facts.

Italy and Spain do not have credible plans to ramp up defense spending, and nor does France when you drill into the details. The Club Med bloc and Belgium are already in an incipient compound interest trap of rising real borrowing costs (as is the UK). “It is simply not possible for us to find another €20bn [€17bn] or €30bn euros for weapons when we are already making tremendous efforts to cut our debt burden, and we’re fundamentally constrained in what we can do for the Italian people,” said Italy’s finance minister, Giancarlo Giorgetti.

The military Keynesian boom is chiefly a German story. The €900bn coalition plan for extra defense and infrastructure spending over 10 years is large. It amounts to €90bn annually or 2pc of German GDP. But keep it in perspective. The Draghi Report says the EU as a whole must raise investment by €800bn every year to pull the bloc out of technological decline, coupled with deregulation shock therapy. The more we see of Europe’s patchy and fractious rearmament, the less it looks like Chamberlain’s blitz in 1938 or Roosevelt’s in 1941.

Sven Jari Stehn from Goldman Sachs has added up the aggregate stimulus for the eurozone and concluded that it barely moves the needle over the mid-2020s. The net “fiscal impulse” will still be negative this year, and neutral next year.

Growth will be just 0.9pc in 2025. He has cut his forecast to 1.3pc in 2026, and 1.5pc in 2027. There is a further catch: the spike in German Bund yields has forced up yields for others, further poisoning Club Med debt dynamics. This effect “more than offsets the small tailwinds to growth,” he said. I can see why investors are spurning Wall Street and rotating out of “American exceptionalism”, and not just because the US economy is stalling, or because Donald Trump’s tariffs will bring 1970s stagflation, or because he has destroyed so much American credibility in just eight short weeks.

It is above all because Trump is weakening the struts of US capitalism by playing fast and loose with the legal system, shaking down companies and threatening judges. Sarah Bianchi, from Evercore ISI, says the market exodus will accelerate if he meddles with “the judiciary’s ability to enforce contracts” – in my view he already is – or defies the Supreme Court. Bank of America data show that foreign funds cut their $16 trillion (£12.4 trillion) holding of US equities very fast in March.

It is less obvious why traders are betting on a secular euro-boom instead. Europe is just as likely to deliver another of its habitual damp squibs. Are they assuming that Trump will not impose draconian tariffs on the EU, and will not escalate further when Brussels retaliates?

Surplus countries suffer most in a trade war. Europe has made itself asymmetrically vulnerable by relying for so long on Anglo-Saxon demand to drive its economy.

France’s Emmanuel Macron talks grandly of EU rearmament but lacks both the political capital and the fiscal firepower to put his economy on a war footing. France has a structural budget deficit of 5pc of GDP. The International Monetary Fund says public debt hit 112pc last year and is heading for 124pc by 2029 even before any rise in military spending. He faces a parliament in thrall to the pacifist Front Populaire on the Left and Marine Le Pen’s Trumpian Rassemblement on the Right. Macron aims to boost defense by around 0.8pc of GDP by 2030, but how will he pay for it on top of all his other nosebleed pledges – AI dominance, a fleet of nuclear reactors, etc. – while also pledging to ringfence the French social model?

The European Commission’s €800bn ReArm Europe Plan slips through your fingers like fine sand – “virtual” money in the lapidary words of Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, who said it was “mad” to try to go it alone without the US. Most of the €800bn is a theoretical figure to come from member states. The hard core is a €150bn EU lending facility to beef up Europe’s arms industry but this has already run into trouble, starting with Hungary’s veto.

The Spanish want to use the money for climate change, turning the mechanism into a slush fund like the Covid Recovery Fund, which ended up being used for every pet scheme except for Covid. As always, Brussels, Paris and others have an ulterior motive in pushing for joint debt issuance. They seize on every chance to try to smuggle through fiscal union – or to get their hands on the credit card of “the frugals”, to be more prosaic. The Dutch refuse any use of ReArm Europe for joint lending; the Germans are unlikely to be more sympathetic once Friedrich Merz takes charge. He must bend over backwards to show that last week’s changes to the constitutional debt-brake do not open the floodgates to fiscal ruin.

“Having ditched one taboo, the German centre-Right is even more reluctant to breach another,” said Berenberg Bank. Eurobonds are stone dead.

The rearmament saga is exposing deep lines of cleavage within the EU, above all between those states still trying to keep the US on board, and Europeanists who see it as a chance – a blessing from Mars, to borrow from German historian Fritz Fischer – to break free and turn Europe into a muscular great power. Germany’s excellent Sparta plan calls for drastic spending on the “sharp end” of defense to block Vladimir Putin before he is tempted to attack again (next time Narva or the Suwalki Gap).

It wants a drone wall, along with weapons that can be delivered within months, or five years at the limit. Europe should work with what it has got and not waste time arguing about new instruments, or let the mission be hijacked by Brussels. But the worst is now happening. The talks are degenerating into a procurement carve-up, with each country hoping to use EU money to push its own weapons systems as a form of industrial and jobs policy.

An unpleasant mix of euro ideology and hard-nosed protectionism means that the UK is being excluded even though it is an integral part of Europe’s military ecosystem, and is defending the EU’s frontline against Russia with troops and is rock solid behind Ukraine. We have the surreal situation where South Korea and Japan can bid for contracts, up to a point, but British firms cannot because the UK does not have a formal defense pact with the EU, and such a pact is not possible unless London submits to other Commission demands, starting with fish. It is doubly surreal because Berlin is angling for British nuclear protection, and talks are under way behind the scenes for a joint Anglo-French nuclear deterrent.

The likely result of ReArm Europe is to weaken the emotional solidarity that binds the cross-Channel alliance, and to cure a generation of Labour leaders of their reflexive europhilia. Please forgive my burst of optimism a few weeks ago. I now fear that the EU’s incorrigible pathologies will reassert themselves, and that Europe’s half-baked rearmament will degenerate into a fiasco. I fear too that Europe will abandon brave Ukraine to the wolves (plural).

Europe is gripped by a defense crisis. And Brussels wants to talk about fish.

.

Europe doesn't need a new wave of militarisation. Europe should be zone of piece and prosperity. Military spending is waste of money.

 

[pigfarmer]

Europe doesn't need a new wave of militarisation. Europe should be zone of piece and prosperity. Military spending is waste of money.

Well, I guess not having a credible military deterrent has left them in a bit of a crack hasn't it ?

 

[Spaceman spiff]

Whatever Trump does, he will be gone in 4 years, if not earlier. Unless he really plans to insert himself as a dictator that cannot be voted out. Whoever the next president is, I doubt he is as keen to separate as the current one is. They will probably start to build the relationship again.

 

[nivek]

'Lonely' Harry didn't know Charles was in hospital until he saw it on news as worried friends say he's Meghan Markle's 'spare'​

Prince Harry only heard his father was in hospital after suffering side effects from his cancer treatment when the news broke to the rest of the world, it has been claimed. Insiders have said the Prince of Sussex, 40, is 'lonelier than ever' and now barely leaves his Montecito mansion - as Monday marks the fifth anniversary of Megxit. Meghan Markle, on the other hand, has continued to push ahead with her own personal projects, including a lifestyle show released on Netflix earlier this month.



(More on the link)

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[nivek]

Head of Prince Harry's charity says he and Meghan have a 'toxic' brand - and claims she was asked to defend Duchess from bad PR​

The head of an African charity set up to help children with HIV has issued a devastating broadside against Harry and Meghan – describing the couple's brand as 'toxic'.

In a sensational interview, Dr Sophie Chandauka, chair of Sentebale - the organisation the Duke of Sussex co-founded – claimed she first felt tension between Harry and herself a year ago.

At one point she was asked by his team to defend Meghan against negative publicity, but she refused.

Prince Harry dramatically quit Sentebale last week 'in solidarity' with the charity's disgruntled trustees who resigned when relations with formidable Zimbabwean lawyer Dr Chandauka 'broke down beyond repair' after she refused their request to step down.

But in an extraordinary interview yesterday she raised the stakes in the increasingly ugly dispute engulfing the charity, saying the Sussexes' 'brand' had hindered the charity.

'The number one risk for this organisation was the toxicity of its lead patron's brand,' Dr Chandauka told the Financial Times.

She argued that controversy surrounding Prince Harry since his move to the US had an impact on the charity's ability to diversify its donor pool and make senior hires.



(More on the link)

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[nivek]

Why it's suddenly time for 'lonely' Prince Harry to leave Meghan in Montecito​

If ever there was a time for Prince Harry to head home, it's now. In yet another bombshell, insiders say that Harry only learned that his father was hospitalized, due to side effects from his cancer treatment, on the news last week. That's how completely and utterly dire this fracture is.

Sources have also revealed that Harry is 'lonelier than ever' in Montecito. Of course he is. Harry seems to have few friends, and no core support system of his own. His wife is off promoting her Netflix series and making yet another podcast while hawking royal-adjacent merch on her website — replete with affiliate links that give her a cut of every sale.

Surely this is not the life he imagined post-Megxit.

The fall from grandeur is extreme — she's busy decanting pretzels and flogging her wedding make-up while he once hosted heads of state and was Britain's greatest soft-power export since Princess Diana.

Grim, indeed.

This all comes to a head as Harry was reportedly left 'reeling' after being forced to step down from his Sentebale charity amid mysterious controversy. Compounding this loss, the chair of Sentebale, Dr. Sophie Chandauka, told the Financial Times that Harry's brand is 'toxic' and actively harmed the charity's reputation. Her public message to Harry: 'The team is resolved that Sentebale will live on, with or without you.'

It's been a merciless week for the prodigal Duke, with one source telling The Sun that while initially Harry 'was a spare to William, now he's increasingly looking like a spare to Meghan — and it's not a good look.'

Meghan Markle, as we all regrettably know, is in it to win it. But she's trying to build a media empire, while Harry is… doing what, exactly? Sure, he has Invictus, but that's not enough to keep a 40-year-old unemployed man occupied. All that free time isn't healthy.

Unstructured days surely only allow him to perseverate on what's gone wrong and the mess he's made of what was once an easy, gilded, pampered life — a life that required not much effort in return for global admiration. Now he's left to twist in the soft winds of Montecito as his wife grinds out her products and podcasts.

'He misses his family terribly,' another source said, 'but no one is speaking to him anymore.'

Imagine: Harry hears, on the news, that his cancer-stricken elderly father has been hospitalized, and he can't call or text his brother, sister-in-law or stepmother to find out what's going on.

This should be setting off alarm bells for Harry. His father won't be around forever. Now is the time to fly back home, tail firmly between his legs, and beg for forgiveness. Really, he should just prostrate himself before his father — say he'll do whatever it takes.

Leave Meghan in Monetico for weeks or months at a time. She has plenty to keep her busy. He should also insist on taking their children to visit the grandfather they barely know. If Harry doesn't grow a spine now, he never will — and without William softening, he'll surely be totally cut off when his brother becomes king.

Doing the hard work of rebuilding a bond with his father — and making it clear he expects nothing in return, not money or another patronage or more titles for his children — is perhaps the only way William might entertain a rapprochement, however surface-level.

There's nothing much left for Harry in California. This was all clearly Meghan's dream, not his. Stripped of his purpose in life, and with many of his friends and family lost to him — for now, anyway — he has been left reliant on Meghan for what seems like everything.

(More on the link)

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[nivek]

Meghan Markle wants to be a 'fairytale British princess': Duchess criticised for cashing in on UK connections with As Ever range after 'insulting' fans by telling them how to make tea​

The Duchess of Sussex is in the midst of an 'identity crisis' where she lurches between being a British duchess and a California mum feeding her children chicken nuggets, New York Magazine claims.

In a stinging feature, Margaret Hartmann says that people who are unsure about her new lifestyle brand, hawking quintessentially British staples such as tea, jam and shortbread, are probably 'annoying' to the former Suits star. 'Don't I understand her journey from super-relatable mildly famous person to literal royal who is still very
eelelrelatable?', the writer asks sarcastically.

Ms Hartmann remarks on how she'd like to know if Meghan sprinkles her edible flowers on the Tater Tots - an American bite-sized frozen hash brown - that she claims she serves to Archie and Lilibet, or on her husband's breakfast.

(More on the link)

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[nivek]

Meghan Markle is mercilessly mocked on Have I Got News For You as stars take aim at her As Ever brand and Netflix show - before ridiculing Prince Harry over Sentebale scandal​

The Duchess of Sussex was mocked up wearing a chef's hat while cooking jam on Have I Got News for You, which was watched by almost 3million people on Friday night. There were groans and jeers from the audience as host Alexander Armstrong read Meghan's description of the launch of her brand as a 'pivotal moment' and her jam jars as 'time capsules'. One gag at her expense suggested that she had only sold out of her 'fruit spread' online because there were hardly any for sale. 'It has immediately sold out, which I thought was good, unless there is only two jars', team captain and journalist Ian Hislop said sarcastically. A top comedian then suggested that Meghan was inauthentic and may not keep bees because she looked so repulsed when she was collecting honey on the show. 'She held each honeycomb like it was covered in s**t', stand-up Phil Wang said. Putting on an American accent he went on: 'And she's like: "I love coming out and getting in touch with nature" but you could see she was about to throw up'.

(More on the link)

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[nivek]

The REAL reason Meghan's 'jam' is so runny: Royal fans critique 'watery' spread amid confusion over what's actually in the jar​

Meghan Markle's As Ever range finally launched on Wednesday last week - and the products sold out within half an hour of going live. But some royal fans have been left unimpressed by one item in particular; The Duchess of Sussex's raspberry 'jam' has come under fire after appearing 'watery'.

In the first public review of the $14 spread, which arrives in keepsake packaging, FEMAIL revealed how the confection was 'very liquid and quite thin'.

'If we hadn't known better, we'd have thought it melted during its expedited journey to us,' explained reviewer Jane Herz For Dailymail.Com. 'When we stuck our spoon into Meghan's raspberry spread, its consistency dripped off the silverware like a sauce.' The review continued: 'It was difficult to eat the spread with the toast, as it was so thin that it dribbled everywhere and made a mess. Our once nicely toasted piece of bread became a sopping wet disaster after just a few minutes.'

Fans online were also quick to notice the thin consistency of the 'jam', with one person writing: 'I can tell it's runny just from the picture! No seeds, no texture. Just liquid red sugar water.' Another person said on X, formerly Twitter: 'Looks small, expensive, runny texture and not that special. I think I will stick with my regular jam.'

But the reason Meghan's spread is noticeably runny is likely due to it not actually being a jam - despite the Duchess herself claiming 'jam is my jam' in her Instagram post announcing the rebranding of her initial American Riviera Orchard business. However, her As Ever preserves can't technically be called jam, because 'jam is equal parts sugar and fruit,' explained Prince Harry's wife in an episode of her Netflix show, With Love, Meghan.

''I just don’t think you can taste the fruit that way,' suggested the mother-of-two on her series. Per Food & Wine, jam is regulated by the FDA, and it must come from a single fruit, containing at least 45 per cent fruit and 55 per cent sugar.

What Meghan is selling under As Ever is not called a jam or a preserve - it's a spread, with ingredients of raspberries, organic pure cane sugar, organic lemon juice concentrate, and fruit pectin, a natural stabilizer.

On the As Ever website, the company claims the raspberry fruit spread 'is inspired by the recipe Meghan crafted in her home kitchen'. The description of the Raspberry Spread in Keepsake Packaging also admits it 'is crafted with a fluid texture so it can be drizzled, spread, poured and enjoyed for so much more than your morning toast'. For DailyMail.com's review, it's the 'consistency that takes away from the product' and 'makes it an absolute failure', according to the reviewer, who awarded the product just two out of five stars.

'The Duchess says that jam is her jam, but we're not so sure. Maybe it's sauce?', added the writer.

(More on the link)

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[nivek]

The REAL reason Meghan's 'jam' is so runny: Royal fans critique 'watery' spread amid confusion over what's actually in the jar​

Best comment IMO.

When employees have to sign NDAs agreeing not to disclose where the food is made, that is your first red flag. None of her products are certified organic either, which is the second red flag. This slop could be imported from China for all you know, but its origins are just as hazy as MM herself.

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