Exclusive: Graham claims financials ‘fake’ – but they were ‘on Unite Sharepoint’
‘Unhinged’ claim challenged by screenshots – no response from Unite to request to confirm whether union management stands by bizarre comment from general secretary in letter to all staff, officers and organisers
As Skwawkbox covered earlier today, Unite general secretary Sharon Graham sent a bizarre email to all the union’s organisers, staff and officers that was described as ‘unhinged’, ‘flailing’ and ‘a rant’ by union insiders – and called ‘disgusting’ for its prioritisation of weapons-making jobs over opposing Israel’s genocide in Gaza and Britain’s complicity in it.
As well as its section on Palestine, Graham’s letter also attempted to defuse criticism of the union’s financial management – by claiming that the ‘preliminary’ financial report circulating among astonished officers, members and activists is a forgery in which ‘those with much to lose’ even copied the font and layout of a real Unite finance report:
Fake Finance Document
Those with much to lose from the new way forward, including curtailing money given to outside organisations and the new industrial focus, have escalated actions by producing a fake Unite Finance Document for release on Social Media. Most recently appearing on social media. The document was headed “Unite Finance Report” and mirrored (down to the same font and layout) Unite’s usual finance report style. This had the sole aim of discrediting the leadership but most importantly it undermined the Union. It stated that the Union’s financial position was in difficulty since the General Secretary election. This is untrue and is now being dealt with legally.
Ms Graham did not name ‘those with much to lose’ – but those challenging her claim have pointed out that the screenshots of the ‘fake finance document’ appear to show that it was screengrabbed directly from Unite’s ‘Sharepoint’ system:
Sharepoint, a Microsoft platform, is a “web-based collaborative platform that integrates natively with Microsoft 365 … primarily sold as a document management and storage system, although it is also used for sharing information through an intranet, implementing internal applications, and for implementing business processes.” The Unite address shown on the screengrabs appears to indicate that the document was at least stored, and potentially created, on the union’s own dedicated server. It is unclear against whom the issue “is now being dealt with legally”, since no supposed culprits are identified.
The claim was perceived as so outlandish that union activists have been contacting Skwawkbox all day about it. One said:
This is unhinged, she just looks like she’s flailing all over the place.
Another commented:
This is a rant and she’s sent it to everyone, what is she thinking?
Skwawkbox wrote to Unite’s press office:
Ms Graham’s letter referred to in my previous email today also claims Unite financials were a forgery and even that someone has copied the layout and font of genuine reports to fool people. The claim has been described by Unite recipients as ‘unhinged’. Screenshots of the report show that it came from the Unite Sharepoint – is the union really claiming this was faked and stored on the official network??
No response, apart from a confirmation of receipt, was received by the reply deadline of 5pm or since. It would be extraordinarily thorough for someone to go to the lengths of adding Sharepoint details to a fake, but Unite was given the opportunity to say that it believes this was done and has not done so.
Graham also told recipients that Unite’s finances were “pushing up towards half a billion pounds”. Skwawkbox understands that they were around half a billion pounds when she took over as general secretary.
As Skwawkbox showed earlier, Graham’s letter had disgusted many who read it because it said that the union will always prioritise weapons-making jobs over the need to fight Israel’s genocide in Gaza – and appeared to imply that those working in that sector didn’t care about them being used in the slaughter of Palestinian women and children.
Sharon Graham has been alleged by insiders to have:
- banned Unite officials and national banners from pro-Gaza protests
- banned and smeared films and books exposing the ‘Labour antisemitism’ scam
- placed an official under investigation who refused to cancel a Palestine solidarity fringe event at Labour’s 2023 annual conference
- told her chief of staff to threaten a soon-to-retire official with the loss of a pension bonus if he did not soften his support for Palestinians
Her supporters also prevented debate and votes on Gaza at a meeting of the union’s elected executive earlier this month.
Apart from the issue of Gaza, her tenure as Unite boss has also been marked by a string of other allegations – which neither she nor the union has denied – including destruction of evidence against her husband in threat, misogyny and bullying complaints brought by union employees. She is also embroiled in both an employment tribunal for discrimination and a defamation lawsuit brought by Irish union legend Brendan Ogle for the union’s treatment of him and comments made about him by Graham and her close ally Tony Woodhouse.
According to human rights group Euro Med Monitor, since 7 October last year Israel has killed over 40,000 Palestinians in Gaza and wounded more than double that number, overwhelmingly women and children and many of them with life-changing injuries, while Gaza’s health and school systems have been bombed into collapse, often using US- and UK-made weapons and systems. More than a million people have been forcibly displaced and Gaza is in famine because of Israel’s blockade of food and vital supplies. Israel is formally on trial for genocide before the International Court of Justice and ordered to stop its slaughter – and has been found by UN human rights investigators to be committing genocide.
The finance and Gaza comments are not the end of the issues with Graham’s email. Skwawkbox will cover further aspects shortly.
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Exclusive: whistleblower accuses Labour W Mids PCC of refusing to act on abuse allegations
No response from Simon Foster’s press office to Elaina Cohen’s allegations – also covered up by Keir Starmer
A former MP’s staffer who blew the whistle on alleged abuse of Muslim domestic violence victims has accused West Midlands Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) Simon Foster of ‘refus[ing] to investigate’ the failure of the force’s then-Chief Constable to act on evidence of the abuse – and that Foster and the current Chief Constable ‘disregarding’ further allegations, from a separate source, about the same alleged perpetrator.
Elaina Cohen, who used to work for Birmingham MP Khalid Mahmood and took him successfully to an industrial tribunal for unfair dismissal when she lost her job after making protected disclosures about the abuse, first made the allegations against Foster during submissions to the tribunal, which Skwawkbox attended on behalf of its readers. Evidence given under oath to the tribunal by one of the victims of the ‘sadistic’ abuse, threats and blackmail she suffered was not disputed by Mahmood or his legal team.
And in an email today to Wolverhampton South East MP Pat McFadden, a Keir Starmer front-bencher, seen by Skwawkbox, Cohen wrote that:
Evidence already in the public domain shows Simon Foster has steadfastly refused to investigate why former West Midlands Chief Constable Thompson abandoned multiple victims when presented with evidenced abuse perpetrated by a Labour member working in a parliamentary office of a Labour MP.
An email from [Tory West Midlands Mayor] Andy Street states when he has the authority of a PCC he will seek justice for these women…
…an opposition party councillor has made representation to Simon Foster and Chief Constable Guildford with further allegations about the same perpetrator and was also disregarded.
I believe this information questions Simon Foster’s suitability to be a candidate.
Skwawkbox contacted Mr Foster’s press office for contact this morning, but received only an automated acknowledgement in reply.
Labour leader Keir Starmer and his general secretary David Evans also covered up the abuse, taking no action despite repeated warnings and appeals from Ms Cohen. They also did not act on Ms Cohen’s complaints of the antisemitism she suffered – or on complaints from Muslim women councillors in Birmingham about bullying, misogyny and threats at the hands of local party right-wingers.
Despite this appalling record, Starmer has continued to boast that he will be a ‘champion’ for victims of domestic abuse. Simon Foster has also promised to act to protect women:
Foster, who is standing for re-election, has just won a legal battle to prevent his PCC role being absorbed by Tory metro mayor Andy Street, but Elaina Cohen told Skwawkbox of her dissatisfaction with both Foster and his party boss:
I remain disappointed that Sir Keir Starmer refuses to acknowledge or act upon my protected disclosures and whilst I would support an independent office of a PCC I would question political appointments based on my own experience. In my opinion the cover-up of criminal abuse of vulnerable women is just as abhorrent as racism as a candidate issue.
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Exclusive: pro-Graham faction blocks exec Palestine motions
Anti-genocide members narrowly defeated in outcome described as a ‘disgrace’ as pro-Graham faction backs her silence on Gaza
Two motions on Palestine were ruled out last Thursday during the Unite union’s week-long meeting of its executive, after supporters of the union’s general secretary Sharon Graham backed the chair’s ruling that they should not be discussed. The excuse for the ruling was that supporting Palestinians in Gaza was not part of the union’s service to its members.
The chair was challenged and the issue went to a vote, in which eighteen exec members voted against the ruling, twenty supported it and two abstained.
One exec member told Skwawkbox:
It was a disgrace. The two motions were both from London and Eastern re Palestine, both were ruled out by the Chair because ‘Unite members are priority’. This ruling was challenged by a member but the left lost the challenge and we were not given the opportunity to debate.
This is not the notionally-left chair’s ‘first offence’ regarding Gaza. Another senior Unite figure told Skwawkbox:
A lot of the United Left [left-wing Unite caucus] are unhappy with the new chair , especially over Gaza as he stopped the debate last EC and sided with Sharon.
The meeting’s start on Monday was marked by a protest by Unite members outraged by Graham’s public silence on Gaza and behind-the-scenes actions to block shows of solidarity with its people and discussion of the UK’s – including Keir Starmer, with whom Graham has become increasingly cosy – complicity in Israel’s genocide.
Graham has been publicly silent about the slaughter, but has:
- been criticised for banning Unite officials and national banners from pro-Gaza protests
- banned and smeared films and books exposing the ‘Labour antisemitism’ scam, placed an official under investigation who refused to cancel a Palestine solidarity fringe event at Labour’s 2023 annual conference
- allegedly told her chief of staff to threaten a soon-to-retire official with the loss of a pension bonus if he did not soften his support for Palestinians
An email from her official union address to an angry member also dismissed the genocide perpetrated on the civilians of Gaza.
Ms Graham’s tenure as Unite boss has also been marked by a string of other allegations – which neither she nor the union has denied – including alleged destruction of evidence against her husband in threat, misogyny and bullying complaints brought by union employees. She is also embroiled in both an employment tribunal for discrimination and a defamation lawsuit brought by Irish union legend Brendan Ogle for the union’s treatment of him and comments made about him by Graham and her close ally Tony Woodhouse.
This latest development will further fuel the outrage of Unite’s many members sickened by Israel’s mass murder of innocents and the union’s silence. Skwawkbox understands that the names of those who voted to support the gagging of the executive on the issue will be published soon.
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Graham suspends official who refused to cancel pro-Palestine Labour conference fringe
Simon Dubbins told Graham’s proxies she should come and tell him herself if she wanted Unite Palestine solidarity fringe cancelling.
CORRECTION: Dubbins is ‘under investigation’, but not suspended..
Unite general secretary Sharon Graham has suspended a senior Unite official who refused last October to cancel a solidarity fringe even for the Palestinian people that he had arranged during Labour’s annual conference in Liverpool.
Graham sent underlings to tell Simon Dubbins, Unite’s Director for International Affairs, that the event must be pulled – but as Skwawkbox revealed exclusively at the time Dubbins refused, telling the proxies that if Graham wanted the event cancelled she should come and say so herself. She didn’t, and it went ahead.
The official reasons for the suspension have not been revealed, but Unite insiders have linked it to the fringe event.
Sharon Graham has been slammed for her actions – and inaction – relating to Palestine and the Israeli regime’s genocide in Gaza. She has been publicly silent about the slaughter, but has been criticised for banning Unite officials and national banners from pro-Gaza protests, banned and smeared films and books exposing the ‘Labour antisemitism’ scam – and an email from her official union address to an angry member dismissed the genocide perpetrated on the people of Gaza.
Ms Graham’s tenure as Unite boss has also been marked by a string of other allegations – which neither she nor the union has denied – including alleged destruction of evidence against her husband in threat, misogyny and bullying complaints brought by union employees. She is also embroiled in both an employment tribunal for discrimination and a defamation lawsuit brought by Irish union legend Brendan Ogle for the union’s treatment of him and comments made about him by Graham and her close ally Tony Woodhouse.
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Uni ‘urgently investigating’ pro-Israel professor who told Greenstein ‘all Jews should be gassed’
Justin Stebbing says he was clearly speaking ironically in attack on left-wing, pro-Palestinian Jew Tony Greenstein – but went on to say Greenstein would have been ‘thrilled’ to murder all Jews during WWII
A professor at Imperial College is being ‘urgently’ investigated by the university after sending emails to left-wing Jewish pro-Palestinian activist Tony Greenstein about ‘gas[sing] all Jews.
Greenstein is a Brighton-based human rights campaigner who received a suspended sentence last year in a farcical trial for criminal damage to an Israeli-owned weapons factor when no damage occurred and who has been further targeted by anti-terror police for saying he supports the struggle of Gazans for freedom. He told Skwawkbox that he didn’t know who Stebbing was when he first received an email, from a personal email address, linking to discredited claims of mass rape and mutilation by Hamas and saying that Stebbing ‘agree[d] with you [Jews] should all be gassed‘.
Greenstein reported the incident to police as hate speech, but then realised Stebbing is an academic and, assuming his email had been hacked, contacted him on his university address to let him know. Greenstein said he was astonished when Stebbing wrote back – from his official email – to attack him further.
Stebbing retorted that he was being ‘ironic’ when he made his comment – but claimed that Greenstein would have been ‘thrilled to gas all Jews’ if he had been alive during the Second World War:
“My e mail was pure irony, but as always here the response to the crime is blamed. I have zero doubt that in WW2, you ,would have been thrilled to gas all Jews. That was the point I was making.”
The email headers showed that the email was genuinely from an Imperial email account. Greenstein accordingly sent a complaint to the university, which received an email acknowledgment.
Skwawkbox contacted Prof Stebbing about his emails to Greenstein. He responded:
The reason I wrote to Tony Greenstein was him contacting several senior colleagues accusing them of being doctors for genocide. He was of course aware he had just written that e mail and would and should have understood my e mail as being ironic in that context. We have had previous contact. Tony Greenstein knew that he’d written that so would have understood the context and this affects the meaning of what I wrote and it was clear, as I’d said, I was being ironic.
On Stebbing’s allegation that Greenstein had previous contact with him, Greenstein said:
They were doctors opposing a BMA statement calling for a ceasefire and accusing Israel of having broken international law including his colleague at Imperial. Yes I accused them of being Doctors 4 Genocide. There was an article in the Jewish Chronicle (see below) naming them. However Stebbing wasn’t named and I didn’t contact him. So it’s a lie that we have had previous contact. I’ve searched my email and his name doesn’t come up and it’s an unusual name so I would see immediately.
All these doctors say they have resigned from the BMA which is a good thing. Good riddance as Ghada Karmi said.
He added:
I emailed Stebbing to let him know that someone was clearly impersonating him. You could have blown me down with a feather when he responded saying that I was wrong. He wasn’t being impersonated. It was him. An ultra Zionist lunatic.
An Imperial College spokesperson told Skwawkbox that it was ‘urgently investigating this case involving a Visiting Professor’:
There is no place for antisemitic or hateful behaviour of any kind at Imperial. We are urgently investigating this case involving a Visiting Professor.
The International Court of Justice is expected to give a decision on South Africa’s application under the Genocide Convention for an order to Israel to stop its slaughter, which has killed and maimed more than a hundred thousand Palestinians, mostly women and children, as well as 117 journalists and more than 150 United Nations staff.
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Israeli media discussing ‘horrifying’ mass ‘friendly fire’ killings by IDF – but UK media stay silent
Mass murder of Israeli citizens by country’s own military during Hamas raid has been a topic of discussion in Israeli papers and TV for some time – now it is an acknowledged fact, yet UK media still talking as if it never happened
Cars burned – it’s now clear by Israeli rockets – on a road from an Israeli rave to the Gaza border in October
Israeli media has begun to freely discuss as fact the mass murder of Israeli citizens by so-called ‘friendly fire’ from the IDF during the 7 October Hamas raid near Israel’s border with Gaza.
The reality of the killings has not been treated with any serious doubt by Israeli papers and broadcasters for weeks – they could hardly do otherwise, when they have interviewed survivors who have talked about it, Israeli police have admitted it and even the IDF issued a statement to Israeli press saying it would not be ‘morally sound’ to investigate the ‘immense and complex’ deaths its troops, tankers and pilots had caused on that day.
But now a new article in Israeli paper Haaretz – including quotes from a similar article by Yediot Aharonot, a more right-wing paper than Haaretz – discusses the ‘friendly fire’ attacks by Israeli tank fire and helicopter missiles as established fact with Asa Kasher, the Israeli army’s ‘ethics chief’. For example:
Kasher discussed another incident that took place on October 7, on the Israeli border with Gaza. According to an investigation conducted by the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot, troops received orders to prevent hostages from being taken into Gaza by force, if necessary.
Around 12:00 P.M. on October 7, IDF helicopters strafed cars attempting to cross the border.
The burned cars and incinerated bodies were caused, according to experts, by US-made ‘Hellfire’ rockets fired by Israeli helicopters. A number of Israeli civilians – including children – were similarly killed by tank shells deliberately fired into kibbutz homes. Kasher discussed those with Haaretz too and the paper noted:
According to [survivor Yasmin] Porat, after she was released by a Hamas terrorist, she was questioned by the Police Special Anti-Terror Unit and told them that there were about 40 terrorists and 14 civilian hostages still in the house. Dagan was among the hostages inside the house, where she says an Israeli tank fired two shells at it. She was the only Israeli to survive, and she has confirmed Porat’s account.
Kasher is no ‘bleeding heart liberal’ eager to criticise Israel’s genocidal military. On the contrary, he is a right-winger who has openly valued Israeli lives above those of Palestinian civilians – in 2006 Asher wrote that Israeli troops must never be put at risk to protect Arab civilians, summarised by Haaretz:
Professor Asa Kasher, who compiled the IDF’s Code of Ethics, said that the restraint exercised by Israel to save civilian lives when bombing a terrorist apartment was a “mistake” that cost more Israeli lives later…
Kasher said it was inconceivable to let people be killed in Israel because the only way to prevent it involved killing dozens of Palestinians. “It is unacceptable to let people get killed here even if the number of people killed there is expected to be bigger,” he said.
Kasher considered the idea of Israeli soldiers deliberately firing at Israeli civilians ‘horrifying’, saying:
How is it possible that a high ranking army official would give a command that so immediately and definitely endangers the life of so many civilians? It’s just horrifying.”
But Kasher doesn’t for a moment deny or doubt that it happened.
As journalist Jonathan Cook has pointed out, despite the open discussion of the mass ‘friendly fire’ deaths on the day of the Hamas raid, the UK media continues to discuss the deaths as if they were all caused by Hamas. In an email article to subscribers, Cook writes:
So how is it possible that the BBC and the rest of the western media keep revisiting the horrors of October 7 but never to raise these issues , even though they have been so prominent in the Israeli public space for many weeks?
The only possible answer is that western media outlets are consciously censoring this story because it directly conflicts with the West’s ideological and strategic agenda. It raises disturbing questions about western complicity in genocide.
Once again, the establishment media’s unwillingness to report the real story starkly gives the lie to their claim to be ‘free and fearless’. In truth, they are there to uphold a narrative of western moral and civilisational superiority. They are there to justify the West’s wars – and the war industry and resource-grab portfolios that our economies, and the media corporations themselves, are so heavily invested in.
Subscribe to Jonathan Cook’s email bulletins here. Skwawkbox has received no incentive for including this link.
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This constituent’s glorious letter roasting Lammy over Gaza and careerism is priceless
Jessica Straker’s political and moral dismemberment of Starmeroid Tottenham MP is a masterclass as she demands he call for a ceasefire and then resign
Tottenham’s right-wing Labour MP David Lammy has been one of the most prominent faces attempting to excuse and justify Keir Starmer’s disgraceful support for Israel’s war crimes against Gazan civilians. He has also been one of the most eager to enjoy corporate junkets and donations.
And Jessica Straker’s decision to write to Lammy, under a heading of ’23 years of disappointment’, about his appalling record is a master-class in political and moral dismemberment of the politically unfit and morally vacuous – and even better when she tweeted it:
23 years of disappointment
Dear Mr Lammy MP
You have been my MP out of reluctance since the death of Bernie Grant – who was a family friend, with my grandfather being one of the pallbearers at his funeral. Your brother, my uncle Karl, is also a long-standing family friend and is Godfather to my sisters. My family attends St. Philip The Apostle. I have lived in Tottenham all my life and have been disappointed with you as an MP since before I could vote. Bernie Grant has been consistently spinning in his grave for the past 23 years.
You once told my teenage friend, a young black girl from White Hart Lane to not bother pursuing a career as a lawyer at university when she came to you for inspiration and
advice. She is now an award-winning Barrister at a leading chambers. That was my first personal understanding of you in relation to my own network.
So, from a young age I have learnt to ignore you – your politics, your suggestions, your views and perhaps ignorantly, your existence as my serving MP. I have voted for you in the past out of learned loyalty as a Caribbean person, and after that, as a means to avoid Conservatives getting into power. I have never voted for you because I want you as my mouthpiece. It has always been for the greater good (a good which has increasingly become a centrist malaise of purple politics), and I think you will find that many people have done the same.
Your comfortability within your seat is without merit and I believe deep down you know this. The only votes you can probably claim are that of the liberal-guilt afflicted gentrifiers who have been hoodwinked by your rebrands, soothing their disruption of the community by voting ‘Black’ as their shame at driving the prices up on houses along roads with names that make them uneasy after they block local commuters from driving down. You are a careerist, that is clear, and your alignment to Windrush, the diversity conversations that arose from BLM and your moments of condemnation for Grenfell had many of us remain silent – happy that for once your personal interests finally lined up with the community interests. But this current siding with Israel on genocide is abhorrent.
Your recent comment on BBC Radio 4 should have ended without the adage of ‘but’ and all that came after it.
Dropping six bombs on a refugee camp cannot be ‘legally justified’.
I know you identify as English, I sympathise with the sort of tokenism and self-devaluation you have had to do in order to get to where you are – but in turn know that all that has been a choice you didn’t have to make.
I don’t want a response from you, I want you to simply do better – in life. As a member of your constituency, I am asking you to call for a ceasefire and also to resign.
Regards,
Jessica Straker
Casting Director
www.jessicastraker.com
Ms Straker, we salute you. Now will a Holborn and St Pancras constituent please do the same for the Kid Starver?
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Killing a Friendship Over Email
Modern relationships end in strange ways. Last year, a friend terminated a friendship with me over email. We had not met in over a year, and had been exchanging emails on trying to find a time and place to meet and ‘catch up.’ Arranging a meeting time with another ambitious New Yorker that works is an intractable task at the best of times; still, my friend and I, thanks to our emailing back and forth, seemed to have found a rendezvous space-time point that worked. But that meeting fell apart thanks to my parenting commitments, and as it did, and as I asked to reschedule, my friend accused me of inattention, of not reading our communications carefully enough. I quickly and briefly apologized, and stunned by the anger on display in the accusation of inattention and distraction, retreated into embarrassed silence. A couple of weeks later, we ran into each other on the street, and found our conversation brief, rushed conversation–it’s New York City!–awkward and stilted. Having noticed that personal contact hadn’t helped, I tried again, over email, to reach out. But it didn’t; my email met with an another angry response; the relationship was well and truly over. Yet another attempt at reconciliation, hopefully in person, made by email contact, again ended in disaster, as I was accused of insensitivity and selfishness. I stared my email exchanges thread in some disbelief; there it lay, the forensic record of a relationship gone well and truly bad, down the tubes.
A year or so later, I’m still surprised by the speed at which an ostensibly ‘healthy’ relationship degenerated so quickly. My friend did send over a couple of accusations of self-centeredness on my part in our relationship, so the demise of our friendship was perhaps foretold, but I certainly had not been forewarned or been given a ‘call-out’ or a ‘heads-up’ to try to make amends. At the very least, as another friend of mine suggested, I should console myself with the thought that the friendship hadn’t been that great to begin with if all it took to end it was a ‘simple misunderstanding’ over email, one that did not even prompt a suggestion for a ‘conversation’ to sort things out.
I’m inclined to think too, that the intersection of our extended email correspondence with our hectic modern schedules and commitments had some role to play here. The endless back-and-forthing, the desperate hunt to find a time-slot that worked, the mounting frustration of scheduling details, the pressure to try to maintain a relationship through making appointments, the irritation of feeling another email to be replied to mounting – I’m inclined to think that trying to maintain a ‘friendship’ in the face of this can generate a temptation to just call ‘the whole fucking thing off.’ It’s tempting to want to trim ‘friend lists’ in the face of scheduling pressures; only some make the cut in the face of the imperatives of limited time and energies.
No doubt, my personal faults, as pointed out by my friend, had something do with the demise of our friendship; I’m deeply flawed like we all are, and these flaws often exert a damaging influence on my social interactions. But they might have been tolerated in a different social and cultural setting, where, if we had enough time and space to attend to personal relationships, my friend and I might have been able to work on ours.