Best Of

This looks like another costly scandal

https://news.sky.com/story/mod-data-breach-put-lives-of-around-20-000-afghans-at-risk-of-serious-violence-13396941

Costly in terms of 20,000 lives multiplied by family size.

Our government's main concern was to hush it up: Details about the blunder can finally be made public after a judge lifted a super injunction that had been sought by the government.

Not unusually, The disaster is thought to have been triggered by the careless handling of an email that contained a list of the names and other details...

Cybersecurity, who gives a damn?

LOL. If they give a laptop to a Bootie, what the fuck do they expect?

Right. I have an unusual commission for Basalt Bliss Magazine

I have to do a quick history of Political Lying. What are the standout lies in politics for PBers in the last decade or two, or indeed in all of history?

Brexit produced some corkers, on both sides. Any others?

For me the number one lie has to be from Gordon Brown in 1997: "I will not allow house prices to get out of control and put at risk the sustainability of the future."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/special/politics97/budget97/live/housing.shtml

People are not doing this properly. That's a broken promise not a lie. Politics is full of broken promises. They are its base currency. It's also full of deliberate misrepresentations and devious misleading language. These are not lies. "Lie" loses its specific meaning if applied to all that sort of thing.

A lie is a statement on a serious matter offered seriously that is knowingly and unequivocably false as a matter of fact. They are quite rare in politics and in life generally. Or rather they were quite rare in politics. It's one of the most pernicious Trump effects that he's normalising lying. We're not there yet but it's the direction of travel.

A good example would be the Thames Water director telling the Commons committee that their refinancing investors insisted on their director bonuses being paid as a condition of the refinancing.

That could well be true.

The phenomenon of Remuneration Committees recommending insane executive rewards is well known. The fact that such committees are always made up of executives…

Picture a circle of monkeys. Each scratches the back of their right hand neighbour.

Right. I have an unusual commission for Basalt Bliss Magazine

I have to do a quick history of Political Lying. What are the standout lies in politics for PBers in the last decade or two, or indeed in all of history?

Brexit produced some corkers, on both sides. Any others?

For me the number one lie has to be from Gordon Brown in 1997: "I will not allow house prices to get out of control and put at risk the sustainability of the future."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/special/politics97/budget97/live/housing.shtml

People are not doing this properly. That's a broken promise not a lie. Politics is full of broken promises. They are its base currency. It's also full of deliberate misrepresentations and devious misleading language. These are not lies. "Lie" loses its specific meaning if applied to all that sort of thing.

A lie is a statement on a serious matter offered seriously that is knowingly and unequivocably false as a matter of fact. They are quite rare in politics and in life generally. Or rather they were quite rare in politics. It's one of the most pernicious Trump effects that he's normalising lying. We're not there yet but it's the direction of travel.

What a load of shite. We Brexited partly because europhiles and Remainers told the British voters lie after lie after lie, for fifty years, about the EEC/EU. "It's just a tidying up exercise." "We promise you a referendum". "The Lisbon Treaty is not the Constitution". On and on

And in the end all those lies exploded in their faces, with Brexit

Good

Right. I have an unusual commission for Basalt Bliss Magazine

I have to do a quick history of Political Lying. What are the standout lies in politics for PBers in the last decade or two, or indeed in all of history?

Brexit produced some corkers, on both sides. Any others?

For me the number one lie has to be from Gordon Brown in 1997: "I will not allow house prices to get out of control and put at risk the sustainability of the future."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/special/politics97/budget97/live/housing.shtml

People are not doing this properly. That's a broken promise not a lie. Politics is full of broken promises. They are its base currency. It's also full of deliberate misrepresentations and devious misleading language. These are not lies. "Lie" loses its specific meaning if applied to all that sort of thing.

A lie is a statement on a serious matter offered seriously that is knowingly and unequivocably false as a matter of fact. They are quite rare in politics and in life generally. Or rather they were quite rare in politics. It's one of the most pernicious Trump effects that he's normalising lying. We're not there yet but it's the direction of travel.

I think its the case that politicians used to do almost every contortion possible to avoid telling a direct lie. See Michael Howard avoiding Paxman's question and so on. I think its changed a bit but I still think direct lies are quite rare. I think the covid parties is an example of this. Johnson idiotically thought that what had gone on was ok, so when said there where no parties, I think he believed it. Idiot. I also strongly suspect that the Blairs avoided the use of MMR for their youngest son as at the time there was a lot of pressure around it and Cherie was heavily under the influence of Carole Caplin. But he tended to avoid the question (perhaps fairly) rather than say yes or no.

Right. I have an unusual commission for Basalt Bliss Magazine

I have to do a quick history of Political Lying. What are the standout lies in politics for PBers in the last decade or two, or indeed in all of history?

Brexit produced some corkers, on both sides. Any others?

For me the number one lie has to be from Gordon Brown in 1997: "I will not allow house prices to get out of control and put at risk the sustainability of the future."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/special/politics97/budget97/live/housing.shtml

People are not doing this properly. That's a broken promise not a lie. Politics is full of broken promises. They are its base currency. It's also full of deliberate misrepresentations and devious misleading language. These are not lies. "Lie" loses its specific meaning if applied to all that sort of thing.

A lie is a statement on a serious matter offered seriously that is knowingly and unequivocably false as a matter of fact. They are quite rare in politics and in life generally. Or rather they were quite rare in politics. It's one of the most pernicious Trump effects that he's normalising lying. We're not there yet but it's the direction of travel.