A police officer who claimed he was too injured to walk has been jailed for defrauding his force out of £150,000, after an app on his mobile phone showed he had been taking 10,000 steps a day.
PC Matthew Littlefair, 36, claimed full pay and other benefits for two years while “putting on an act” that he was so badly hurt he “couldn’t even lift a kettle” after a minor car crash.
A covert surveillance operation was launched after colleagues became suspicious and he was spotted playing football with his children, walking his dog, going jogging and riding bicycles.
When investigators examined his phone they found he had repeatedly been recorded taking 10,000 steps a day — the equivalent of five miles — while claiming he was unable to work.
A judge condemned Littlefair for his “arrogance” and said his crime would damage public confidence in the police.
Jailing Littlefair for two years and three months, Judge Robert Pawson said the case had come “during one of the worst years in recent policing history”, referring to the rape and murder of Sarah Everard by the Metropolitan Police officer Wayne Couzens
Whilst at Uni (gulp!) nearly 30 years ago, I had a health issue that meant I found it hard to walk at times. I was in a lot of pain. This got me a room in Halls for my second year, and in the Halls nearest uni.
Yet occasionally during that second year, I would walk seven or so miles along the Regents Canal to Paddington, and get the tube back. People would ask how I could do that if the pain was so bad. The answer was simple; the pain often reduced, and I liked to fight it. Because it was nerve damage, walking itself didn't seem to make the pain worse, and walking helped my mood immeasurably.
There was no way I could have done anything that involved me regularly and reliably walking, because I could never know when the pain would strike. That meant I could have had no job that relied on my walking alot - even if I occasionally could.
Though this isn't the case here ("lift a kettle"), I'm always a little concerned when people accuse others of not being disabled. Often people are lying, but sometimes pain can be intermittent, and people can be fighting it. But the pain can still be something that is debilitating.
Pain is a weird thing.
So my wife was injured in a car accident (hit from behind at a junction, clearly not her fault). She suffered a ruptured disc and took a long time to get back to near normal, and arguably will never fully recover. She is a runner, and has done around 30 marathons, something which was both a help and a hindrance in her recovery. During the protracted insurance claim she gradually returned to running, and in truth exercise usually is good for back injuries (resting and doing nothing is usually the worst thing to do). We were finally offered 15K. Not insignificant, but not huge either, considering there is permanent injury, and pain which can limit her running, and causes pain and sciatica after long races. We considered not settling, and going to court. In the end, a big reason not to was that my wife was now running again, taking on tough off road races (20 miles etc) and marathons, albeit suffering a lot after. I was afraid this would be used against her claim.
Considering I'm now healthy (at least one run every day this year; 317 runs and 2,344 miles in total), I don't think so.
I'd also like to think I've got a better personality - although that might not always show up on here ...
Since when was running 2,344 miles “healthy”?
I bet if you check, a lot of it was on a bus route.
That Greek guy who did the first long distance run dropped dead at the end of it, as I recall (from history, obvs). There’s the clue, right there.
You may be shocked to hear that I have no intention of dying.
I'm trying to run every path and road (bar motorways) in an area between Royston, Cambridge, Huntingdon, and Sandy. This is my second year at it, and the GPS logs have produced what my wife calls my 'Map of Crazy'. I'll hopefully be done early next year; Cambridge is sucking up the miles, and I'm only doing the stuff west of the guided busway/River Cam.
And most of it is not on bus routes. But since every run has been circular (or at least ending at the point it started), no public transport was required. Unless I get lost ...
That must be near Old Warden? Bit hazy about the geography ...
Who is this Angela Richardson person who has been sacked and unsacked?
Tory MP, PPS to Michael Gove, didn't vote for the amendment yesterday.
Meanwhile, in case you missed it, Owen Paterson is the reverse - unsacked then sacked.
That's all today's news in a nutshell.
Apart from the "Independent" MP being found guilty of harrasment you mean
She was found guilty a month ago (sentencing today). When she was convicted, the Labour Party immediately called on her to resign as an MP, rather than trying to save her, then performing a screeching U-turn and throwing her under the bus.
It may not be a comparison you wish to highlight.
The sky ticker should have mentioned something about Labour rather than the obviously ambigious "Independant"
Why? Labour suspended her from the party when she was charged and formerly revoked her membership when she was found guilty.
They should have said "former Labour MP, now an independant MP."
Who is this Angela Richardson person who has been sacked and unsacked?
Tory MP, PPS to Michael Gove, didn't vote for the amendment yesterday.
Meanwhile, in case you missed it, Owen Paterson is the reverse - unsacked then sacked.
That's all today's news in a nutshell.
Apart from the "Independent" MP being found guilty of harrasment you mean
She was found guilty a month ago (sentencing today). When she was convicted, the Labour Party immediately called on her to resign as an MP, rather than trying to save her, then performing a screeching U-turn and throwing her under the bus.
It may not be a comparison you wish to highlight.
The sky ticker should have mentioned something about Labour rather than the obviously ambigious "Independant"
Why? Labour suspended her from the party when she was charged and formerly revoked her membership when she was found guilty.
And in addition also called for her to resign as an MP and by implication would have instigated or backed a recall petition had her sentence enabled one.
Just to throw this out there - Owen Paterson's resignation as an MP is enabled by the legal fiction of the Chancellor appointing him to be the Crown Steward and Bailiff of the Manor of Northstead.
In theory, the Chancellor could refuse.
And wouldn't that be fun.
Didn't Gerry Adams dispense with all that "legal fiction rubbish" when he quit parliament to stand in the Republic's election?
No. It's an entirely harmless procedural device, and people don't actually need to apply, a statement they wish to resign can be taken as seeking to be appointed, so old curmudgeon's like him don't prevent it. There's no need to change it either since no one is actually prevented from resigning in practice.
In case any Tories on here wonder, how could a Tory government ever appear so chaotic and ridiculous, I give you the answer: Boris Johnson. I hate to say I told you so, but.... I told you so.
As someone noted on ConHome of all places -elect a clown, expect a circus.
The Covid death rate in parts of Europe is now higher than the peak here before the vaccines.
The UK is still "beating" its Western European peers on deaths though.
The UK is also beating its Western European peers on having lifted all restrictions, which is more important than the negligible number of deaths that are occurring at the moment.
Hardly negligible - around 10% of all deaths in the UK are currently from covid. But I suppose that for some people money is more important than life.
People die. 10% of all deaths is something that we can live with.
No, I must not, I must not, I must not ...
I've just been reading asbout possible unit trusts, and the difference that a percentage point extra in annual charge makes over time. Annd it's not 1%, no sirree. No self-respecting Tory would accept an extra 1% annually on top of 9% without good reason (i.e. additiona yield). As presimably PT is not including yield in the form of babies (unlikely in the main mortality age groiups), then he's happy to see people have a much reduced life expectancy. Exponential growoth works in both directions, after all.
You're wrong, we're not having exponential deaths or a much reduced life expectancy.
The only ones dying young now are [barring extreme exceptions] the unvaccinated. They've made their bed, they can lie in it.
The vaccinated who are dying are predominantly those close to death where any illness can be the final straw.
If the unvaccinated want to die early then yes I am OK to live with that. And if the price of keeping those who've lived their lives already even longer is to tell everyone they can't live their lives, then I'm not prepared to pay that price - are you?
Not that idea again about the covid only killing off the ternimally ill.
The terminally ill and the unvaccinated.
How many non-terminally ill vaccinated people are dying on a daily basis?
I can't give you a figure, although I have just got of a call with a young colleague whose not particularly old, reasonably fit, non-terminally ill, double vaccinated grandfather died of it just last week. Anecdata, I know, and I'm not on the "lets all hide in our cellars" end of the spectrum. But I think you're at risk of being flippant about the situation.
Yes, the vaccine has helped the older population, but it isn’t only the very ill from other things that are dying. However they will be a large component of the numbers. I find the lack of information disturbing. The data is there, and can be released when anonymised.
In case any Tories on here wonder, how could a Tory government ever appear so chaotic and ridiculous, I give you the answer: Boris Johnson. I hate to say I told you so, but.... I told you so.
Yet if the Tories had not been led by Boris Johnson to a landslide election victory in 2019, then we may still have a hung parliament, Corbyn would still be Labour leader and we may still not have seen Brexit delivered.
I am beginning to think that if Boris Johnson's first act after winning your much loved landslide had been slaughter of the first born, replacing the Union Flag with a fecking great swastika, and had his own fat ugly mug printed on our bank notes, you would still say "Oooh, but he led us to a landslide so that's ok then!"
We do not have a parallel universe to know what might have happened under an alternative Tory leader, but there is evidence to suggest that it was very much an anti-Corbyn vote, so who knows, we might have had a Tory victory, "got Brexit done (FFS - has that been so great??!)" AND had a government that is not led by a global laughing stock; a man who couldn't plan the proverbial drinks party in a beer making establishment!!!!!!!!
Every day we sacrifice people's liberties under lockdown is a day lost to 67 million people. That's equivalent to 183,561 years sacrificed.
Lockdown was a price that was potentially arguably justified pre-vaccines. Now its simply inexcusable.
If people die, they die. Celebrate their life, and make the most of your own life.
Thank God you are no longer a member of the Tory Party. Go and find a nasty party to join.
Saying that death is a fact of life is "nasty" is it? No it isn't, its being realistic instead of delusional.
I think you'll find the Tory Party are treating this issue with the same cold logic as I am.
Your post is odious and callous in the extreme. It is an indicator of how you view the world. You need to get out more and mix with real people. Oh, hang on, maybe it is best you don't!
Saying to celebrate people's life is not callous.
Five people die every day on the roads, should we ban cars as a result?
Jesus Christ Philip - don't give the Extinction Rebellion people ideas.
In case any Tories on here wonder, how could a Tory government ever appear so chaotic and ridiculous, I give you the answer: Boris Johnson. I hate to say I told you so, but.... I told you so.
Yet if the Tories had not been led by Boris Johnson to a landslide election victory in 2019, then we may still have a hung parliament, Corbyn would still be Labour leader and we may still not have seen Brexit delivered.
I am beginning to think that if Boris Johnson's first act after winning your much loved landslide had been slaughter of the first born, replacing the Union Flag with a fecking great swastika, and had his own fat ugly mug printed on our bank notes, you would still say "Oooh, but he led us to a landslide so that's ok then!"
We do not have a parallel universe to know what might have happened under an alternative Tory leader, but there is evidence to suggest that it was very much an anti-Corbyn vote, so who knows, we might have had a Tory victory, "got Brexit done (FFS - has that been so great??!)" AND had a government that is not led by a global laughing stock; a man who couldn't plan the proverbial drinks party in a beer making establishment!!!!!!!!
How'd you get your hands on the 2024 manifesto? That's for CCHQ eyes only.
Considering I'm now healthy (at least one run every day this year; 317 runs and 2,344 miles in total), I don't think so.
I'd also like to think I've got a better personality - although that might not always show up on here ...
Since when was running 2,344 miles “healthy”?
I bet if you check, a lot of it was on a bus route.
That Greek guy who did the first long distance run dropped dead at the end of it, as I recall (from history, obvs). There’s the clue, right there.
You may be shocked to hear that I have no intention of dying.
I'm trying to run every path and road (bar motorways) in an area between Royston, Cambridge, Huntingdon, and Sandy. This is my second year at it, and the GPS logs have produced what my wife calls my 'Map of Crazy'. I'll hopefully be done early next year; Cambridge is sucking up the miles, and I'm only doing the stuff west of the guided busway/River Cam.
And most of it is not on bus routes. But since every run has been circular (or at least ending at the point it started), no public transport was required. Unless I get lost ...
That must be near Old Warden? Bit hazy about the geography ...
Not quite - that's a bit too far south and west. Near, though. The Great Ouse and A1 are the western edge between Huntingdon and Sandy.
edit: there's actually a pavement beside the A1 between St Neots and Sandy. I did it as a Summer Sunday Sunup Special - where I run busy roads at first light on Sunday mornings in summer.
Who is this Angela Richardson person who has been sacked and unsacked?
Tory MP, PPS to Michael Gove, didn't vote for the amendment yesterday.
Meanwhile, in case you missed it, Owen Paterson is the reverse - unsacked then sacked.
That's all today's news in a nutshell.
Apart from the "Independent" MP being found guilty of harrasment you mean
She was found guilty a month ago (sentencing today). When she was convicted, the Labour Party immediately called on her to resign as an MP, rather than trying to save her, then performing a screeching U-turn and throwing her under the bus.
It may not be a comparison you wish to highlight.
The sky ticker should have mentioned something about Labour rather than the obviously ambigious "Independant"
Why? Labour suspended her from the party when she was charged and formerly revoked her membership when she was found guilty.
They should have said "former Labour MP, now an independant MP."
Gambling on this site is normally about identifying value, not jumping onto bandwagons as a mug bet.
Who is this Angela Richardson person who has been sacked and unsacked?
Tory MP, PPS to Michael Gove, didn't vote for the amendment yesterday.
Meanwhile, in case you missed it, Owen Paterson is the reverse - unsacked then sacked.
That's all today's news in a nutshell.
Apart from the "Independent" MP being found guilty of harrasment you mean
She was found guilty a month ago (sentencing today). When she was convicted, the Labour Party immediately called on her to resign as an MP, rather than trying to save her, then performing a screeching U-turn and throwing her under the bus.
It may not be a comparison you wish to highlight.
The sky ticker should have mentioned something about Labour rather than the obviously ambigious "Independant"
Why? Labour suspended her from the party when she was charged and formerly revoked her membership when she was found guilty.
They should have said "former Labour MP, now an independant MP."
Gambling on this site is normally about identifying value, not jumping onto bandwagons as a mug bet.
In case any Tories on here wonder, how could a Tory government ever appear so chaotic and ridiculous, I give you the answer: Boris Johnson. I hate to say I told you so, but.... I told you so.
Yet if the Tories had not been led by Boris Johnson to a landslide election victory in 2019, then we may still have a hung parliament, Corbyn would still be Labour leader and we may still not have seen Brexit delivered.
I am beginning to think that if Boris Johnson's first act after winning your much loved landslide had been slaughter of the first born, replacing the Union Flag with a fecking great swastika, and had his own fat ugly mug printed on our bank notes, you would still say "Oooh, but he led us to a landslide so that's ok then!"
We do not have a parallel universe to know what might have happened under an alternative Tory leader, but there is evidence to suggest that it was very much an anti-Corbyn vote, so who knows, we might have had a Tory victory, "got Brexit done (FFS - has that been so great??!)" AND had a government that is not led by a global laughing stock; a man who couldn't plan the proverbial drinks party in a beer making establishment!!!!!!!!
HYUFD might vote for that manifesto without the landslide.
In case any Tories on here wonder, how could a Tory government ever appear so chaotic and ridiculous, I give you the answer: Boris Johnson. I hate to say I told you so, but.... I told you so.
Yet if the Tories had not been led by Boris Johnson to a landslide election victory in 2019, then we may still have a hung parliament, Corbyn would still be Labour leader and we may still not have seen Brexit delivered.
I am beginning to think that if Boris Johnson's first act after winning your much loved landslide had been slaughter of the first born, replacing the Union Flag with a fecking great swastika, and had his own fat ugly mug printed on our bank notes, you would still say "Oooh, but he led us to a landslide so that's ok then!"
We do not have a parallel universe to know what might have happened under an alternative Tory leader, but there is evidence to suggest that it was very much an anti-Corbyn vote, so who knows, we might have had a Tory victory, "got Brexit done (FFS - has that been so great??!)" AND had a government that is not led by a global laughing stock; a man who couldn't plan the proverbial drinks party in a beer making establishment!!!!!!!!
HYUFD might vote for that manifesto without the landslide.
HYUFD was in fact slightly more circumspect about the government’s actions over the past 24 hours than a certain Philip “I won’t read the report” Thompson.
In case any Tories on here wonder, how could a Tory government ever appear so chaotic and ridiculous, I give you the answer: Boris Johnson. I hate to say I told you so, but.... I told you so.
Yet if the Tories had not been led by Boris Johnson to a landslide election victory in 2019, then we may still have a hung parliament, Corbyn would still be Labour leader and we may still not have seen Brexit delivered.
I am beginning to think that if Boris Johnson's first act after winning your much loved landslide had been slaughter of the first born, replacing the Union Flag with a fecking great swastika, and had his own fat ugly mug printed on our bank notes, you would still say "Oooh, but he led us to a landslide so that's ok then!"
We do not have a parallel universe to know what might have happened under an alternative Tory leader, but there is evidence to suggest that it was very much an anti-Corbyn vote, so who knows, we might have had a Tory victory, "got Brexit done (FFS - has that been so great??!)" AND had a government that is not led by a global laughing stock; a man who couldn't plan the proverbial drinks party in a beer making establishment!!!!!!!!
Had Hunt been Tory leader not Boris we know Farage would have stood Brexit party candidates in Tory seats. So more Tory seats would have gone LD as the Tory and Leaver vote would have been split in seats like Esher and Walton or Cheltenham. Neither Hunt nor Gove, Boris' main rivals in 2019, would have had the same appeal to Labour Leave voters in the Redwall Boris had either so Corbyn would have held far more Labour Leave seats too.
So most likely absent Boris as leader we would still be in the same hung parliament limbo we had with May in 2017 and Corbyn would still be Labour leader.
Boris has not been a complete disaster as PM either, see his success with the vaccines and furlough, the security deal with the US and Australia, COP26 etc and of course he did get Brexit done with a trade deal with the EU against the odds
In the meantime, YCCC are suspended from hosting international or major matches until it has clearly demonstrated that it can meet the standards expected of an international venue, ECB member and First Class County.
In case any Tories on here wonder, how could a Tory government ever appear so chaotic and ridiculous, I give you the answer: Boris Johnson. I hate to say I told you so, but.... I told you so.
Yet if the Tories had not been led by Boris Johnson to a landslide election victory in 2019, then we may still have a hung parliament, Corbyn would still be Labour leader and we may still not have seen Brexit delivered.
I am beginning to think that if Boris Johnson's first act after winning your much loved landslide had been slaughter of the first born, replacing the Union Flag with a fecking great swastika, and had his own fat ugly mug printed on our bank notes, you would still say "Oooh, but he led us to a landslide so that's ok then!"
We do not have a parallel universe to know what might have happened under an alternative Tory leader, but there is evidence to suggest that it was very much an anti-Corbyn vote, so who knows, we might have had a Tory victory, "got Brexit done (FFS - has that been so great??!)" AND had a government that is not led by a global laughing stock; a man who couldn't plan the proverbial drinks party in a beer making establishment!!!!!!!!
HYUFD might vote for that manifesto without the landslide.
HYUFD was in fact slightly more circumspect about the government’s actions over the past 24 hours than a certain Philip “I won’t read the report” Thompson.
I never said Paterson was innocent or shouldn't face justice though.
Mine was entirely a process point that there should be always be a right to an appeal. Nothing that can or ever will be in the report changes that.
In case any Tories on here wonder, how could a Tory government ever appear so chaotic and ridiculous, I give you the answer: Boris Johnson. I hate to say I told you so, but.... I told you so.
Yet if the Tories had not been led by Boris Johnson to a landslide election victory in 2019, then we may still have a hung parliament, Corbyn would still be Labour leader and we may still not have seen Brexit delivered.
Yes, all very well, but what would be the downside?
In case any Tories on here wonder, how could a Tory government ever appear so chaotic and ridiculous, I give you the answer: Boris Johnson. I hate to say I told you so, but.... I told you so.
Yet if the Tories had not been led by Boris Johnson to a landslide election victory in 2019, then we may still have a hung parliament, Corbyn would still be Labour leader and we may still not have seen Brexit delivered.
I am beginning to think that if Boris Johnson's first act after winning your much loved landslide had been slaughter of the first born, replacing the Union Flag with a fecking great swastika, and had his own fat ugly mug printed on our bank notes, you would still say "Oooh, but he led us to a landslide so that's ok then!"
We do not have a parallel universe to know what might have happened under an alternative Tory leader, but there is evidence to suggest that it was very much an anti-Corbyn vote, so who knows, we might have had a Tory victory, "got Brexit done (FFS - has that been so great??!)" AND had a government that is not led by a global laughing stock; a man who couldn't plan the proverbial drinks party in a beer making establishment!!!!!!!!
Had Hunt been Tory leader not Boris we know Farage would have stood Brexit party candidates in Tory seats, so more Tory seats would have gone LD. Neither Hunt nor Gove, Boris' main rivals in 2019, would have had the same appeal to Labour Leave voters in the Redwall Boris had either.
So most likely absent Boris as leader we would still be in the same hung parliament limbo we had with May in 2017 and Corbyn would still be Labour leader.
Boris has not been a complete disaster as PM either, see his success with the vaccines and furlough, the security deal with the US and Australia, COP26 etc and of course he did get Brexit done with a trade deal with the EU against the odds
Keep deluding yourself. You are not daft though, and actually I think you are decent chap, so deep down you know he is not up to the job. He will do much more long lasting damage to the Tory Party than a minority Corbyn government would have done, even if that had come to pass, which I think is very unlikely.
In case any Tories on here wonder, how could a Tory government ever appear so chaotic and ridiculous, I give you the answer: Boris Johnson. I hate to say I told you so, but.... I told you so.
Yet if the Tories had not been led by Boris Johnson to a landslide election victory in 2019, then we may still have a hung parliament, Corbyn would still be Labour leader and we may still not have seen Brexit delivered.
I am beginning to think that if Boris Johnson's first act after winning your much loved landslide had been slaughter of the first born, replacing the Union Flag with a fecking great swastika, and had his own fat ugly mug printed on our bank notes, you would still say "Oooh, but he led us to a landslide so that's ok then!"
We do not have a parallel universe to know what might have happened under an alternative Tory leader, but there is evidence to suggest that it was very much an anti-Corbyn vote, so who knows, we might have had a Tory victory, "got Brexit done (FFS - has that been so great??!)" AND had a government that is not led by a global laughing stock; a man who couldn't plan the proverbial drinks party in a beer making establishment!!!!!!!!
HYUFD might vote for that manifesto without the landslide.
HYUFD was in fact slightly more circumspect about the government’s actions over the past 24 hours than a certain Philip “I won’t read the report” Thompson.
I never said Paterson was innocent or shouldn't face justice though.
Mine was entirely a process point that there should be always be a right to an appeal. Nothing that can or ever will be in the report changes that.
The way things are shaping up, he is getting more appeals than he probably wanted.
In the meantime, YCCC are suspended from hosting international or major matches until it has clearly demonstrated that it can meet the standards expected of an international venue, ECB member and First Class County.
In case any Tories on here wonder, how could a Tory government ever appear so chaotic and ridiculous, I give you the answer: Boris Johnson. I hate to say I told you so, but.... I told you so.
Yet if the Tories had not been led by Boris Johnson to a landslide election victory in 2019, then we may still have a hung parliament, Corbyn would still be Labour leader and we may still not have seen Brexit delivered.
I am beginning to think that if Boris Johnson's first act after winning your much loved landslide had been slaughter of the first born, replacing the Union Flag with a fecking great swastika, and had his own fat ugly mug printed on our bank notes, you would still say "Oooh, but he led us to a landslide so that's ok then!"
We do not have a parallel universe to know what might have happened under an alternative Tory leader, but there is evidence to suggest that it was very much an anti-Corbyn vote, so who knows, we might have had a Tory victory, "got Brexit done (FFS - has that been so great??!)" AND had a government that is not led by a global laughing stock; a man who couldn't plan the proverbial drinks party in a beer making establishment!!!!!!!!
Had Hunt been Tory leader not Boris we know Farage would have stood Brexit party candidates in Tory seats, so more Tory seats would have gone LD. Neither Hunt nor Gove, Boris' main rivals in 2019, would have had the same appeal to Labour Leave voters in the Redwall Boris had either.
So most likely absent Boris as leader we would still be in the same hung parliament limbo we had with May in 2017 and Corbyn would still be Labour leader.
Boris has not been a complete disaster as PM either, see his success with the vaccines and furlough, the security deal with the US and Australia, COP26 etc and of course he did get Brexit done with a trade deal with the EU against the odds
Keep deluding yourself. You are not daft though, and actually I think you are decent chap, so deep down you know he is not up to the job. He will do much more long lasting damage to the Tory Party than a minority Corbyn government would have done, even if that had come to pass, which I think is very unlikely.
Never mind the Tory party, a Corbyn government of any kind would have destroyed the country, thank goodness we avoided that.
The Tories may well have quickly built up a big poll lead in opposition had Corbyn won enough seats to become PM but the damage done to the country would have taken far longer to repair
One of the questions many in Westminster have been asking over the past year and a bit is why the numerous Tory sleaze stories haven't had the sort of cut-through that similar rows and revelations had in the John Major years?
And I really don't know what the answer is...
John Major started a morality campaign - his MPs were not up to it, and it turned out he was having an affair!
People don't like hypocrisy. And when you place today's 'misdemeamours' against the sleaze of the past it looks feeble.
Cash for access Cash for honours Cash for questions Drug use Perjury to get out of speeding ticket Writing letters on behalf of paid employer which had some content related to health concerns, some lobbying
The thing that is worse for the government is using political capital to get support then back out. Next week / next month most voters will not know who Owen Paterson is but they will notice if Boris cannot get his MPs to support him.
We've just had cash for questions and access. Eyebrows have been raised about peerages and donations. About Covid contracts and donations. About planning decisions and donations.
Who is this Angela Richardson person who has been sacked and unsacked?
Tory MP, PPS to Michael Gove, didn't vote for the amendment yesterday.
Meanwhile, in case you missed it, Owen Paterson is the reverse - unsacked then sacked.
That's all today's news in a nutshell.
Apart from the "Independent" MP being found guilty of harrasment you mean
She was found guilty a month ago (sentencing today). When she was convicted, the Labour Party immediately called on her to resign as an MP, rather than trying to save her, then performing a screeching U-turn and throwing her under the bus.
It may not be a comparison you wish to highlight.
The sky ticker should have mentioned something about Labour rather than the obviously ambigious "Independant"
Why? Labour suspended her from the party when she was charged and formerly revoked her membership when she was found guilty.
And in addition also called for her to resign as an MP and by implication would have instigated or backed a recall petition had her sentence enabled one.
The sentence does enable a recall petition - but only once all appeal options have been followed or time expire...
In the meantime, YCCC are suspended from hosting international or major matches until it has clearly demonstrated that it can meet the standards expected of an international venue, ECB member and First Class County.
Considering I'm now healthy (at least one run every day this year; 317 runs and 2,344 miles in total), I don't think so.
I'd also like to think I've got a better personality - although that might not always show up on here ...
Since when was running 2,344 miles “healthy”?
I bet if you check, a lot of it was on a bus route.
That Greek guy who did the first long distance run dropped dead at the end of it, as I recall (from history, obvs). There’s the clue, right there.
You may be shocked to hear that I have no intention of dying.
I'm trying to run every path and road (bar motorways) in an area between Royston, Cambridge, Huntingdon, and Sandy. This is my second year at it, and the GPS logs have produced what my wife calls my 'Map of Crazy'. I'll hopefully be done early next year; Cambridge is sucking up the miles, and I'm only doing the stuff west of the guided busway/River Cam.
And most of it is not on bus routes. But since every run has been circular (or at least ending at the point it started), no public transport was required. Unless I get lost ...
Just think about how far away from home you’d be by now, if you hadn’t bothered doubling back?
In the meantime, YCCC are suspended from hosting international or major matches until it has clearly demonstrated that it can meet the standards expected of an international venue, ECB member and First Class County.
Has anyone ever seen YCCC and the JohnsonIan Conservative Government together in the same room?
The fact that Rafiq could be disciplined for calling Ballance "Zimbo" yet the "P" word was deemed mere banter by YCCC is anti-woke gone mad.
This once proud nation is going to the dogs.
Not really: a few decades ago, there would have been no scandal about someone calling another person the 'P' word. Or the 'N' word, for that matter. It's sad that people still use these words, but the fact that its usage - and more significantly the poor way an organisation reacted to its usage - had caused a scandal is positive IMV.
In case any Tories on here wonder, how could a Tory government ever appear so chaotic and ridiculous, I give you the answer: Boris Johnson. I hate to say I told you so, but.... I told you so.
Yet if the Tories had not been led by Boris Johnson to a landslide election victory in 2019, then we may still have a hung parliament, Corbyn would still be Labour leader and we may still not have seen Brexit delivered.
I am beginning to think that if Boris Johnson's first act after winning your much loved landslide had been slaughter of the first born, replacing the Union Flag with a fecking great swastika, and had his own fat ugly mug printed on our bank notes, you would still say "Oooh, but he led us to a landslide so that's ok then!"
We do not have a parallel universe to know what might have happened under an alternative Tory leader, but there is evidence to suggest that it was very much an anti-Corbyn vote, so who knows, we might have had a Tory victory, "got Brexit done (FFS - has that been so great??!)" AND had a government that is not led by a global laughing stock; a man who couldn't plan the proverbial drinks party in a beer making establishment!!!!!!!!
HYUFD might vote for that manifesto without the landslide.
HYUFD was in fact slightly more circumspect about the government’s actions over the past 24 hours than a certain Philip “I won’t read the report” Thompson.
I never said Paterson was innocent or shouldn't face justice though.
Mine was entirely a process point that there should be always be a right to an appeal. Nothing that can or ever will be in the report changes that.
As you might have realised had you looked more than an inch into it, the standards committee review *was* the appeal.
Who is this Angela Richardson person who has been sacked and unsacked?
Tory MP, PPS to Michael Gove, didn't vote for the amendment yesterday.
Meanwhile, in case you missed it, Owen Paterson is the reverse - unsacked then sacked.
That's all today's news in a nutshell.
Apart from the "Independent" MP being found guilty of harrasment you mean
She was found guilty a month ago (sentencing today). When she was convicted, the Labour Party immediately called on her to resign as an MP, rather than trying to save her, then performing a screeching U-turn and throwing her under the bus.
It may not be a comparison you wish to highlight.
The sky ticker should have mentioned something about Labour rather than the obviously ambigious "Independant"
Why? Labour suspended her from the party when she was charged and formerly revoked her membership when she was found guilty.
And in addition also called for her to resign as an MP and by implication would have instigated or backed a recall petition had her sentence enabled one.
The sentence does enable a recall petition - but only once all appeal options have been followed or time expire...
In the meantime, YCCC are suspended from hosting international or major matches until it has clearly demonstrated that it can meet the standards expected of an international venue, ECB member and First Class County.
In the meantime, YCCC are suspended from hosting international or major matches until it has clearly demonstrated that it can meet the standards expected of an international venue, ECB member and First Class County.
Just to throw this out there - Owen Paterson's resignation as an MP is enabled by the legal fiction of the Chancellor appointing him to be the Crown Steward and Bailiff of the Manor of Northstead.
In theory, the Chancellor could refuse.
And wouldn't that be fun.
Didn't Gerry Adams dispense with all that "legal fiction rubbish" when he quit parliament to stand in the Republic's election?
I believe the issue there was that David Cameron wrongly said he had APPLIED for the position (the usual terminology) which is obviously pretty embarrassing in Irish Republican circles.
In fact he'd never asked for any role - he simply resigned. The Chancellor APPOINTED him without any request being made by Adams and without Adams ACCEPTING the position. It's a pedantic point in a way, but clearly if I said you'd applied to be my Chief Bottom Washer and Dogsbody, that's more embarrassing for you than me simply declaring I'd unilaterally appointed you to the position.
So it remains the case that an MP cannot resign and the procedural device remains in use, and the Chancellor could in theory decide not to appoint Paterson as Crown Steward. Although clearly that won't happen in practice.
Wait. So in theory the Chancellor* could get rid of MPs he didn't like by appointing them to the Chiltern Hundreds (or equivalent), and there's nothing they could do?
In case any Tories on here wonder, how could a Tory government ever appear so chaotic and ridiculous, I give you the answer: Boris Johnson. I hate to say I told you so, but.... I told you so.
Yet if the Tories had not been led by Boris Johnson to a landslide election victory in 2019, then we may still have a hung parliament, Corbyn would still be Labour leader and we may still not have seen Brexit delivered.
I am beginning to think that if Boris Johnson's first act after winning your much loved landslide had been slaughter of the first born, replacing the Union Flag with a fecking great swastika, and had his own fat ugly mug printed on our bank notes, you would still say "Oooh, but he led us to a landslide so that's ok then!"
We do not have a parallel universe to know what might have happened under an alternative Tory leader, but there is evidence to suggest that it was very much an anti-Corbyn vote, so who knows, we might have had a Tory victory, "got Brexit done (FFS - has that been so great??!)" AND had a government that is not led by a global laughing stock; a man who couldn't plan the proverbial drinks party in a beer making establishment!!!!!!!!
Had Hunt been Tory leader not Boris we know Farage would have stood Brexit party candidates in Tory seats, so more Tory seats would have gone LD. Neither Hunt nor Gove, Boris' main rivals in 2019, would have had the same appeal to Labour Leave voters in the Redwall Boris had either.
So most likely absent Boris as leader we would still be in the same hung parliament limbo we had with May in 2017 and Corbyn would still be Labour leader.
Boris has not been a complete disaster as PM either, see his success with the vaccines and furlough, the security deal with the US and Australia, COP26 etc and of course he did get Brexit done with a trade deal with the EU against the odds
Keep deluding yourself. You are not daft though, and actually I think you are decent chap, so deep down you know he is not up to the job. He will do much more long lasting damage to the Tory Party than a minority Corbyn government would have done, even if that had come to pass, which I think is very unlikely.
Never mind the Tory party, a Corbyn government of any kind would have destroyed the country, thank goodness we avoided that
Your mate Boris is doing a pretty good job of damaging our somewhat shaky version of democracy. In reality a Corbyn government would have been pretty bad yes, but his best hope would have been a minority government, so his ability to do anything genuinely damaging would have been limited. He would have probably been out of office after a year or two.
In case any Tories on here wonder, how could a Tory government ever appear so chaotic and ridiculous, I give you the answer: Boris Johnson. I hate to say I told you so, but.... I told you so.
Yet if the Tories had not been led by Boris Johnson to a landslide election victory in 2019, then we may still have a hung parliament, Corbyn would still be Labour leader and we may still not have seen Brexit delivered.
I am beginning to think that if Boris Johnson's first act after winning your much loved landslide had been slaughter of the first born, replacing the Union Flag with a fecking great swastika, and had his own fat ugly mug printed on our bank notes, you would still say "Oooh, but he led us to a landslide so that's ok then!"
We do not have a parallel universe to know what might have happened under an alternative Tory leader, but there is evidence to suggest that it was very much an anti-Corbyn vote, so who knows, we might have had a Tory victory, "got Brexit done (FFS - has that been so great??!)" AND had a government that is not led by a global laughing stock; a man who couldn't plan the proverbial drinks party in a beer making establishment!!!!!!!!
HYUFD might vote for that manifesto without the landslide.
HYUFD was in fact slightly more circumspect about the government’s actions over the past 24 hours than a certain Philip “I won’t read the report” Thompson.
I never said Paterson was innocent or shouldn't face justice though.
Mine was entirely a process point that there should be always be a right to an appeal. Nothing that can or ever will be in the report changes that.
As you might have realised had you looked more than an inch into it, the standards committee review *was* the appeal.
An appeal comes after a decision is made if you're not happy with it, not as part of the process.
Every day we sacrifice people's liberties under lockdown is a day lost to 67 million people. That's equivalent to 183,561 years sacrificed.
Lockdown was a price that was potentially arguably justified pre-vaccines. Now its simply inexcusable.
If people die, they die. Celebrate their life, and make the most of your own life.
Thank God you are no longer a member of the Tory Party. Go and find a nasty party to join.
Saying that death is a fact of life is "nasty" is it? No it isn't, its being realistic instead of delusional.
I think you'll find the Tory Party are treating this issue with the same cold logic as I am.
Your post is odious and callous in the extreme. It is an indicator of how you view the world. You need to get out more and mix with real people. Oh, hang on, maybe it is best you don't!
Saying to celebrate people's life is not callous.
Five people die every day on the roads, should we ban cars as a result?
I was referring to the callousness of your post. Your attempt to justify it looks a little like a parallel to anyone trying to justify what happened in parliament yesterday. It is a post that makes you look like an uncaring, callous little twerp at best. Whether you are an uncaring callous little twerp is only known to those that know you in real life. You do little to disabuse those of us on here who do not, but who think that is probably what you are.
Anyone who doesn't care about the destitution and misery that lockdown causes is an uncaring, callous little twerp.
Hear, hear.
It's not even as if Sweden, Florida and Japan did badly. They did as well as or better than regions with restrictions. (NB Florida opened up summer 2020.)
You ought to read some sceptic websites. The data's a bit suppressed by the MSM who are mostly pushing a pro-lockdown narrative, even though we never used them before 2020. Funny, that.
Considering I'm now healthy (at least one run every day this year; 317 runs and 2,344 miles in total), I don't think so.
I'd also like to think I've got a better personality - although that might not always show up on here ...
Since when was running 2,344 miles “healthy”?
I bet if you check, a lot of it was on a bus route.
That Greek guy who did the first long distance run dropped dead at the end of it, as I recall (from history, obvs). There’s the clue, right there.
You may be shocked to hear that I have no intention of dying.
I'm trying to run every path and road (bar motorways) in an area between Royston, Cambridge, Huntingdon, and Sandy. This is my second year at it, and the GPS logs have produced what my wife calls my 'Map of Crazy'. I'll hopefully be done early next year; Cambridge is sucking up the miles, and I'm only doing the stuff west of the guided busway/River Cam.
And most of it is not on bus routes. But since every run has been circular (or at least ending at the point it started), no public transport was required. Unless I get lost ...
Just think about how far away from home you’d be by now, if you hadn’t bothered doubling back?
My hiking intention is to walk the equivalent of the circumference of the world. I'm currently at 18571.7 miles, so have ~6,500 miles to go. I haven't done any walks for a couple of years though, due to Covid. I'll probably get there running first ...
If you know the story of the first person to walk around the world, Dave Kunst, it's probably best to remain in your own country and do it.
I don’t think any of the forthcoming crop by-elections are winnable by Labour or the Lib Dems, sadly.
+1 - you couldn't pick a worse set of seats for the opposition to attack if you asked Tory Central Office to pick any three seats to defend.
Labour will surely hold Leicester East if Webbe does end up being recalled, likely with an increased majority given the fall in Webbe's majority in 2019.
The other 2 should be Tory holds even with a smaller majority, Labour 2nd and RefUK and LDs fighting it out for 3rd
I don’t think any of the forthcoming crop by-elections are winnable by Labour or the Lib Dems, sadly.
In a parallel universe, Labour is taking the Tories on in Bexley, and the LibDems in Shropshire, and the Greens are stepping back with a deal for some uncontested council wards in their pocket.
Just to throw this out there - Owen Paterson's resignation as an MP is enabled by the legal fiction of the Chancellor appointing him to be the Crown Steward and Bailiff of the Manor of Northstead.
In theory, the Chancellor could refuse.
And wouldn't that be fun.
Didn't Gerry Adams dispense with all that "legal fiction rubbish" when he quit parliament to stand in the Republic's election?
I believe the issue there was that David Cameron wrongly said he had APPLIED for the position (the usual terminology) which is obviously pretty embarrassing in Irish Republican circles.
In fact he'd never asked for any role - he simply resigned. The Chancellor APPOINTED him without any request being made by Adams and without Adams ACCEPTING the position. It's a pedantic point in a way, but clearly if I said you'd applied to be my Chief Bottom Washer and Dogsbody, that's more embarrassing for you than me simply declaring I'd unilaterally appointed you to the position.
So it remains the case that an MP cannot resign and the procedural device remains in use, and the Chancellor could in theory decide not to appoint Paterson as Crown Steward. Although clearly that won't happen in practice.
Wait. So in theory the Chancellor* could get rid of MPs he didn't like by appointing them to the Chiltern Hundreds (or equivalent), and there's nothing they could do?
In the meantime, YCCC are suspended from hosting international or major matches until it has clearly demonstrated that it can meet the standards expected of an international venue, ECB member and First Class County.
Considering I'm now healthy (at least one run every day this year; 317 runs and 2,344 miles in total), I don't think so.
I'd also like to think I've got a better personality - although that might not always show up on here ...
Since when was running 2,344 miles “healthy”?
I bet if you check, a lot of it was on a bus route.
That Greek guy who did the first long distance run dropped dead at the end of it, as I recall (from history, obvs). There’s the clue, right there.
You may be shocked to hear that I have no intention of dying.
I'm trying to run every path and road (bar motorways) in an area between Royston, Cambridge, Huntingdon, and Sandy. This is my second year at it, and the GPS logs have produced what my wife calls my 'Map of Crazy'. I'll hopefully be done early next year; Cambridge is sucking up the miles, and I'm only doing the stuff west of the guided busway/River Cam.
And most of it is not on bus routes. But since every run has been circular (or at least ending at the point it started), no public transport was required. Unless I get lost ...
Just think about how far away from home you’d be by now, if you hadn’t bothered doubling back?
My hiking intention is to walk the equivalent of the circumference of the world. I'm currently at 18571.7 miles, so have ~6,500 miles to go. I haven't done any walks for a couple of years though, due to Covid. I'll probably get there running first ...
If you know the story of the first person to walk around the world, Dave Kunst, it's probably best to remain in your own country and do it.
I guess you could do it round and round your own living room, if you were determined enough. But it would somewhat be lacking in adventure.
What I don't get (and granted I was at the dentist between 9 and 10 this morning) is what changed that meant Boris and Co had no choice but to switch from protecting Owen to getting shot of him by close of play today?
From what I heard Tory MPs had sympathy for Paterson because of his wife’s suicide.
Overnight they finally read the allegations and his defence (sic) and realised he was guilty as sin.
So there had to be another vote to censure him and nobody wanted to defend that.
Why the f*** did they not look at the allegations and defence before starting to defend him.
The paperwork was available online and made it 100% clear why this was the wrong case to do anything with.
Heck I said as much yesterday, no character witness can explain multiple letters (so not a single accidental mistake) where you misrepresent the reason you are writing the letter and fail to mention you are being paid to do so.
Some of them fell for the bullshit perpetuated on here about the Commissioner and the process.
Something which was rebutted extensively.
I though the Standards Committee dealt with this very well. They restrained themselves to commenting that they had found the personal allegations against the Commissioner unsubstantiated.
I’ve no idea who might be the MPs referred to in Paterson’s resignation letter who ‘mocked’ his dead wife, despite following the story quite closely.
I think it was actually a response to Mr Johnson's speech which was itself - not the suicide - seen as inappropriate. The Graun feed discusses this issue. See its entry for 1506 today:
"Oppositon MPs may be surprised by the claim in Owen Paterson’s statement that some of them mocked his wife’s death by suicide last year. (See 2.45pm.) He may have been referring to a moment during PMQs yesterday. In his sketch (paywall) for The Times (paywall), Quentin Letts said: “At PMQs earlier, Boris Johnson had mentioned Rose Paterson’s suicide. Up went several aw-diddums “ahhs” from the Labour side.” My colleague John Crace, the Guardian’s sketchwriter, was also in the gallery and he tells me he did not see anything that could be described as MPs mocking Rose’s death. My impression was that when Johnson mentioned Rose’s suicide, that did prompt a feint reaction from some MPs, but that was more because they felt Johnson was using Rose’s death as cover because he was finding it hard to justify the vote exempting Paterson from the standards committee recommendations. But I was listening to the debate on TV, not watching from the gallery, so I may have missed aspects of the reaction."
That makes sense. I heard that part of the debate, and the Guardian account seems far more accurate than that of Letts.
I suppose it’s possible he’s genuinely persuaded himself that’s the case, but objectively it seems nonsense.
The Guardian account seems far more accurate than= LOL
Nigel is giving his opinion having heard it. Now no doubt Nigel and the Guardian are capable of bias (particularly the Guardian), but don't you think it is possible that they have done a reasonable job and Nigel has spotted that is the case. Did you listen to the debate and read the Guardian article to know that Nigel is wrong?
Nope. Its just a huge stretch to think the Guardian would give an honest account of anything to do with the Tories. It never has done yet....
This whole business has been seriously mismanaged by the Govt, that doesn't mean one should use hyperbole with respect to the Guardian and its journalistic inegrity.
Its like saying you can trust the Daily Mail equally a huge LOL.
I thought I was cynical but...
I treat most newspapers reports with a pinch of salt but I don't dismiss them out of hand and if someone independent confirms the accuracy of the report I tend to believe them.
Also although I think the Daily Mail is a particularly bad newspaper it does occasionally get things right. Its campaign on the Stephen Lawrence murder was particularly commendable.
Sometimes, not often, but sometimes they get stuff right.
Best to start with the opinion that they havent and be prepared to adjust one's opinion.. of course they can get it right but its hardly a common occurance.
Perpaps you are not old enough to have become very cynical about politics.
That is very sweet of you @SquareRoot but I'm an OAP. How old did you think I came across? I'm rather flattered.
PS Just realized I have left myself open to an answer of 5.
Every day we sacrifice people's liberties under lockdown is a day lost to 67 million people. That's equivalent to 183,561 years sacrificed.
Lockdown was a price that was potentially arguably justified pre-vaccines. Now its simply inexcusable.
If people die, they die. Celebrate their life, and make the most of your own life.
Thank God you are no longer a member of the Tory Party. Go and find a nasty party to join.
Saying that death is a fact of life is "nasty" is it? No it isn't, its being realistic instead of delusional.
I think you'll find the Tory Party are treating this issue with the same cold logic as I am.
Your post is odious and callous in the extreme. It is an indicator of how you view the world. You need to get out more and mix with real people. Oh, hang on, maybe it is best you don't!
Saying to celebrate people's life is not callous.
Five people die every day on the roads, should we ban cars as a result?
I was referring to the callousness of your post. Your attempt to justify it looks a little like a parallel to anyone trying to justify what happened in parliament yesterday. It is a post that makes you look like an uncaring, callous little twerp at best. Whether you are an uncaring callous little twerp is only known to those that know you in real life. You do little to disabuse those of us on here who do not, but who think that is probably what you are.
Anyone who doesn't care about the destitution and misery that lockdown causes is an uncaring, callous little twerp.
Hear, hear.
It's not even as if Sweden, Florida and Japan did badly. They did as well as or better than regions with restrictions. (NB Florida opened up summer 2020.)
You ought to read some sceptic websites. The data's a bit suppressed by the MSM who are mostly pushing a pro-lockdown narrative, even though we never used them before 2020. Funny, that.
I'd rather not read any media that is pushing parasite medicine for farm animals as a cure for Covid thanks.
Mine is a value judgement that the price of lockdown is not worth paying for the deaths avoided - and you can get that data including data on Sweden etc from legitimate sources without dealing with fake news crackpots.
Is the Welsh tidal power scheme basically now awaiting a rainbow coalition to approve it? Seems very disappointing with all this funny money sloshing about that the Treasury haven’t had a punt on the Swansea pilot scheme.
Who is this Angela Richardson person who has been sacked and unsacked?
Tory MP, PPS to Michael Gove, didn't vote for the amendment yesterday.
Meanwhile, in case you missed it, Owen Paterson is the reverse - unsacked then sacked.
That's all today's news in a nutshell.
Apart from the "Independent" MP being found guilty of harrasment you mean
What's the subjudice position? Are we allowed to comment after sentence and before the entry of an intended Appeal?
Being circumlocutary, I'm not very sure if 10 weeks suspended for 2 years is too light or too heavy for a credible threat of an acid attack as part of a harrassment campaign.
I'm also not sure if pleading poverty and going for a compensation payment limited to £100 per month is very defensible or not very defensible if you are drawing an income of £82k per year, plus up to £3k ish on accommodation expenses for London accommodation.
One of the questions many in Westminster have been asking over the past year and a bit is why the numerous Tory sleaze stories haven't had the sort of cut-through that similar rows and revelations had in the John Major years?
And I really don't know what the answer is...
John Major started a morality campaign - his MPs were not up to it, and it turned out he was having an affair!
People don't like hypocrisy. And when you place today's 'misdemeamours' against the sleaze of the past it looks feeble.
Cash for access Cash for honours Cash for questions Drug use Perjury to get out of speeding ticket Writing letters on behalf of paid employer which had some content related to health concerns, some lobbying
The thing that is worse for the government is using political capital to get support then back out. Next week / next month most voters will not know who Owen Paterson is but they will notice if Boris cannot get his MPs to support him.
We've just had cash for questions and access. Eyebrows have been raised about peerages and donations. About Covid contracts and donations. About planning decisions and donations.
How much corruption are you willing to excuse?
Major would never have contemplated making his own brother, Terry Major-Ball, a Lord, as Johnson has done with his. There's both the traditional Tory, grandiose hubris and degradation after a long period in power, but also something quite different and brazenly, almost deliberatively provocative in the case of Johnson, and the key to that is the formative influence of Trumpism, starting and particularly from the Dominic Cummings era.
In case any Tories on here wonder, how could a Tory government ever appear so chaotic and ridiculous, I give you the answer: Boris Johnson. I hate to say I told you so, but.... I told you so.
Yet if the Tories had not been led by Boris Johnson to a landslide election victory in 2019, then we may still have a hung parliament, Corbyn would still be Labour leader and we may still not have seen Brexit delivered.
I am beginning to think that if Boris Johnson's first act after winning your much loved landslide had been slaughter of the first born, replacing the Union Flag with a fecking great swastika, and had his own fat ugly mug printed on our bank notes, you would still say "Oooh, but he led us to a landslide so that's ok then!"
We do not have a parallel universe to know what might have happened under an alternative Tory leader, but there is evidence to suggest that it was very much an anti-Corbyn vote, so who knows, we might have had a Tory victory, "got Brexit done (FFS - has that been so great??!)" AND had a government that is not led by a global laughing stock; a man who couldn't plan the proverbial drinks party in a beer making establishment!!!!!!!!
Had Hunt been Tory leader not Boris we know Farage would have stood Brexit party candidates in Tory seats, so more Tory seats would have gone LD. Neither Hunt nor Gove, Boris' main rivals in 2019, would have had the same appeal to Labour Leave voters in the Redwall Boris had either.
So most likely absent Boris as leader we would still be in the same hung parliament limbo we had with May in 2017 and Corbyn would still be Labour leader.
Boris has not been a complete disaster as PM either, see his success with the vaccines and furlough, the security deal with the US and Australia, COP26 etc and of course he did get Brexit done with a trade deal with the EU against the odds
Keep deluding yourself. You are not daft though, and actually I think you are decent chap, so deep down you know he is not up to the job. He will do much more long lasting damage to the Tory Party than a minority Corbyn government would have done, even if that had come to pass, which I think is very unlikely.
Never mind the Tory party, a Corbyn government of any kind would have destroyed the country, thank goodness we avoided that
Your mate Boris is doing a pretty good job of damaging our somewhat shaky version of democracy. In reality a Corbyn government would have been pretty bad yes, but his best hope would have been a minority government, so his ability to do anything genuinely damaging would have been limited. He would have probably been out of office after a year or two.
If Corbyn had won enough seats to become PM he would have had SNP backing and not needed the moderation of the LDs (who said they would refuse to back him).
That would have clearly shifted the country left with even higher taxes and spending than now, their would have been nationalisations, the unions would be back in force with few limits on their power, there would be open war on our history and we would now be more aligned to Cuba and Putin and China and Palestine and Iran than the western world. Crime would be up with an ultra soft approach to law and order and we would have immigration largely without controls unlike the controlled, points based immigration we have now. Jews too would be living in fear
In case any Tories on here wonder, how could a Tory government ever appear so chaotic and ridiculous, I give you the answer: Boris Johnson. I hate to say I told you so, but.... I told you so.
Agree that BJ is a back-of-the-envelope kind of PM, and I think the quality of running the place suffered when the Remainer generation defenestrated themselves.
I guess that politically the question is how good are the current generation. And the need to build a rather more resolute secretariat. The outcome of the French fishing argument might tell us whether they ultimately suffer from LMF or not.
We understand the Prime Minister was deeply unimpressed with Owen Paterson's interview on Sky News on Tuesday evening where OP insisted he "wouldn't hesitate" to act in the same way "tomorrow", two sources have told Sky News.
Considering I'm now healthy (at least one run every day this year; 317 runs and 2,344 miles in total), I don't think so.
I'd also like to think I've got a better personality - although that might not always show up on here ...
Since when was running 2,344 miles “healthy”?
I bet if you check, a lot of it was on a bus route.
That Greek guy who did the first long distance run dropped dead at the end of it, as I recall (from history, obvs). There’s the clue, right there.
You may be shocked to hear that I have no intention of dying.
I'm trying to run every path and road (bar motorways) in an area between Royston, Cambridge, Huntingdon, and Sandy. This is my second year at it, and the GPS logs have produced what my wife calls my 'Map of Crazy'. I'll hopefully be done early next year; Cambridge is sucking up the miles, and I'm only doing the stuff west of the guided busway/River Cam.
And most of it is not on bus routes. But since every run has been circular (or at least ending at the point it started), no public transport was required. Unless I get lost ...
Just think about how far away from home you’d be by now, if you hadn’t bothered doubling back?
My hiking intention is to walk the equivalent of the circumference of the world. I'm currently at 18571.7 miles, so have ~6,500 miles to go. I haven't done any walks for a couple of years though, due to Covid. I'll probably get there running first ...
If you know the story of the first person to walk around the world, Dave Kunst, it's probably best to remain in your own country and do it.
I guess you could do it round and round your own living room, if you were determined enough. But it would somewhat be lacking in adventure.
One of the reasons I'm doing the Map of Crazy is that I get bored running/walking the same routes too often. I've done every road and path in my village several times, and I love getting out and exploring.
I'm getting to know every nook ad cranny of my home area. It's been wonderful.
Doing this, I've found village ovenhouses, several village lockups, secret airfields (and their secret museums), sandy pits, wide-gauge railway tracks (*), stellar views, great sunrises, beautiful secluded spots, and one GOML.
(*) Extra points for anyone who can guess where the tracks were ...
In case any Tories on here wonder, how could a Tory government ever appear so chaotic and ridiculous, I give you the answer: Boris Johnson. I hate to say I told you so, but.... I told you so.
Yet if the Tories had not been led by Boris Johnson to a landslide election victory in 2019, then we may still have a hung parliament, Corbyn would still be Labour leader and we may still not have seen Brexit delivered.
I am beginning to think that if Boris Johnson's first act after winning your much loved landslide had been slaughter of the first born, replacing the Union Flag with a fecking great swastika, and had his own fat ugly mug printed on our bank notes, you would still say "Oooh, but he led us to a landslide so that's ok then!"
We do not have a parallel universe to know what might have happened under an alternative Tory leader, but there is evidence to suggest that it was very much an anti-Corbyn vote, so who knows, we might have had a Tory victory, "got Brexit done (FFS - has that been so great??!)" AND had a government that is not led by a global laughing stock; a man who couldn't plan the proverbial drinks party in a beer making establishment!!!!!!!!
Had Hunt been Tory leader not Boris we know Farage would have stood Brexit party candidates in Tory seats, so more Tory seats would have gone LD. Neither Hunt nor Gove, Boris' main rivals in 2019, would have had the same appeal to Labour Leave voters in the Redwall Boris had either.
So most likely absent Boris as leader we would still be in the same hung parliament limbo we had with May in 2017 and Corbyn would still be Labour leader.
Boris has not been a complete disaster as PM either, see his success with the vaccines and furlough, the security deal with the US and Australia, COP26 etc and of course he did get Brexit done with a trade deal with the EU against the odds
Keep deluding yourself. You are not daft though, and actually I think you are decent chap, so deep down you know he is not up to the job. He will do much more long lasting damage to the Tory Party than a minority Corbyn government would have done, even if that had come to pass, which I think is very unlikely.
Never mind the Tory party, a Corbyn government of any kind would have destroyed the country, thank goodness we avoided that
Your mate Boris is doing a pretty good job of damaging our somewhat shaky version of democracy. In reality a Corbyn government would have been pretty bad yes, but his best hope would have been a minority government, so his ability to do anything genuinely damaging would have been limited. He would have probably been out of office after a year or two.
Boris is mostly disappointing. Perhaps he has his good game in the wings.
He's been ok though as the PM in this crisis. Corbyn as PM in all this? Worse still an off-balance Corbyn government given that they'd have just had a couple of months in office. I think we'd have just been left with the rather spooky Long-Bailey smile.
One of the questions many in Westminster have been asking over the past year and a bit is why the numerous Tory sleaze stories haven't had the sort of cut-through that similar rows and revelations had in the John Major years?
And I really don't know what the answer is...
John Major started a morality campaign - his MPs were not up to it, and it turned out he was having an affair!
People don't like hypocrisy. And when you place today's 'misdemeamours' against the sleaze of the past it looks feeble.
Cash for access Cash for honours Cash for questions Drug use Perjury to get out of speeding ticket Writing letters on behalf of paid employer which had some content related to health concerns, some lobbying
The thing that is worse for the government is using political capital to get support then back out. Next week / next month most voters will not know who Owen Paterson is but they will notice if Boris cannot get his MPs to support him.
We've just had cash for questions and access. Eyebrows have been raised about peerages and donations. About Covid contracts and donations. About planning decisions and donations.
How much corruption are you willing to excuse?
Major would never have contemplated making his own brother, Terry Major-Ball, a Lord, as Johnson has done with his own. There's both the traditional Tory grandiose hubris and degradation after a long period in power, but also something quite different and brazenly, almost deliberatively provocative with Johnson, and the key to that is Trumpism.
Yes. Other examples that spring immediately to mind:
Ennobling Claire Fox His claim the other day that Rome was brought down by “immigration from the East”. The pretence that NI would see no paperwork (even telling local businessmen to rip it up if they see any). The ongoing Dacre thing.
Every day we sacrifice people's liberties under lockdown is a day lost to 67 million people. That's equivalent to 183,561 years sacrificed.
Lockdown was a price that was potentially arguably justified pre-vaccines. Now its simply inexcusable.
If people die, they die. Celebrate their life, and make the most of your own life.
Thank God you are no longer a member of the Tory Party. Go and find a nasty party to join.
Saying that death is a fact of life is "nasty" is it? No it isn't, its being realistic instead of delusional.
I think you'll find the Tory Party are treating this issue with the same cold logic as I am.
Your post is odious and callous in the extreme. It is an indicator of how you view the world. You need to get out more and mix with real people. Oh, hang on, maybe it is best you don't!
Saying to celebrate people's life is not callous.
Five people die every day on the roads, should we ban cars as a result?
I was referring to the callousness of your post. Your attempt to justify it looks a little like a parallel to anyone trying to justify what happened in parliament yesterday. It is a post that makes you look like an uncaring, callous little twerp at best. Whether you are an uncaring callous little twerp is only known to those that know you in real life. You do little to disabuse those of us on here who do not, but who think that is probably what you are.
Anyone who doesn't care about the destitution and misery that lockdown causes is an uncaring, callous little twerp.
Hear, hear.
It's not even as if Sweden, Florida and Japan did badly. They did as well as or better than regions with restrictions. (NB Florida opened up summer 2020.)
You ought to read some sceptic websites. The data's a bit suppressed by the MSM who are mostly pushing a pro-lockdown narrative, even though we never used them before 2020. Funny, that.
"MSM conspiracy" klaxon
Search 'Trusted News Initiative'. It's a bit Orwellian to me. But maybe you welcome the largest media outlets incl the four largest social media agreeing to push a single version of the truth and censor all dissenting voices.
Who is this Angela Richardson person who has been sacked and unsacked?
Tory MP, PPS to Michael Gove, didn't vote for the amendment yesterday.
Meanwhile, in case you missed it, Owen Paterson is the reverse - unsacked then sacked.
That's all today's news in a nutshell.
Apart from the "Independent" MP being found guilty of harrasment you mean
What's the subjudice position? Are we allowed to comment after sentence and before the entry of an intended Appeal?
Being circumlocutary, I'm not very sure if 10 weeks suspended for 2 years is too light or too heavy for a credible threat of an acid attack as part of a harrassment campaign.
I'm also not sure if pleading poverty and going for a compensation payment limited to £100 per month is very defensible or not very defensible if you are drawing an income of £82k per year, plus up to £3k ish on accommodation expenses for London accommodation.
I don't know, I'm not a lawyer.
My point was that #skynews should not have classed her as "Independant MP" on the ticker.
Every day we sacrifice people's liberties under lockdown is a day lost to 67 million people. That's equivalent to 183,561 years sacrificed.
Lockdown was a price that was potentially arguably justified pre-vaccines. Now its simply inexcusable.
If people die, they die. Celebrate their life, and make the most of your own life.
Thank God you are no longer a member of the Tory Party. Go and find a nasty party to join.
Saying that death is a fact of life is "nasty" is it? No it isn't, its being realistic instead of delusional.
I think you'll find the Tory Party are treating this issue with the same cold logic as I am.
Your post is odious and callous in the extreme. It is an indicator of how you view the world. You need to get out more and mix with real people. Oh, hang on, maybe it is best you don't!
Saying to celebrate people's life is not callous.
Five people die every day on the roads, should we ban cars as a result?
I was referring to the callousness of your post. Your attempt to justify it looks a little like a parallel to anyone trying to justify what happened in parliament yesterday. It is a post that makes you look like an uncaring, callous little twerp at best. Whether you are an uncaring callous little twerp is only known to those that know you in real life. You do little to disabuse those of us on here who do not, but who think that is probably what you are.
Anyone who doesn't care about the destitution and misery that lockdown causes is an uncaring, callous little twerp.
Hear, hear.
It's not even as if Sweden, Florida and Japan did badly. They did as well as or better than regions with restrictions. (NB Florida opened up summer 2020.)
You ought to read some sceptic websites. The data's a bit suppressed by the MSM who are mostly pushing a pro-lockdown narrative, even though we never used them before 2020. Funny, that.
Here's a thing I hope doesn't happen to you: that somebody close to you gets cancer and dies of it because they refuse conventional treatment because they read some rebarbative little timewaster, indistinguishable from yourself except for a slight variation in subject matter, telling them that the MSM are pushing big pharma's cut and poison agenda, for money. You think you are just an annoying little arsehole. I can promise you you are much, much nastier than that.
In the meantime, YCCC are suspended from hosting international or major matches until it has clearly demonstrated that it can meet the standards expected of an international venue, ECB member and First Class County.
I think I have heard of 5 major (?) sponsors / partners pulling out so far - Yorkshire Tea, Emerald Group, David Lloyd Leisure, Tetley Beer & Nike. And the "Yorkshire Cricket Association"?
Yet the Board Meeting has been called for a week after the crisis.
Do they have a death wish? AIUI decent work was being done some time ago.
We understand the Prime Minister was deeply unimpressed with Owen Paterson's interview on Sky News on Tuesday evening where OP insisted he "wouldn't hesitate" to act in the same way "tomorrow", two sources have told Sky News.
Considering I'm now healthy (at least one run every day this year; 317 runs and 2,344 miles in total), I don't think so.
I'd also like to think I've got a better personality - although that might not always show up on here ...
Since when was running 2,344 miles “healthy”?
I bet if you check, a lot of it was on a bus route.
That Greek guy who did the first long distance run dropped dead at the end of it, as I recall (from history, obvs). There’s the clue, right there.
You may be shocked to hear that I have no intention of dying.
I'm trying to run every path and road (bar motorways) in an area between Royston, Cambridge, Huntingdon, and Sandy. This is my second year at it, and the GPS logs have produced what my wife calls my 'Map of Crazy'. I'll hopefully be done early next year; Cambridge is sucking up the miles, and I'm only doing the stuff west of the guided busway/River Cam.
And most of it is not on bus routes. But since every run has been circular (or at least ending at the point it started), no public transport was required. Unless I get lost ...
Just think about how far away from home you’d be by now, if you hadn’t bothered doubling back?
My hiking intention is to walk the equivalent of the circumference of the world. I'm currently at 18571.7 miles, so have ~6,500 miles to go. I haven't done any walks for a couple of years though, due to Covid. I'll probably get there running first ...
If you know the story of the first person to walk around the world, Dave Kunst, it's probably best to remain in your own country and do it.
I guess you could do it round and round your own living room, if you were determined enough. But it would somewhat be lacking in adventure.
One of the reasons I'm doing the Map of Crazy is that I get bored running/walking the same routes too often. I've done every road and path in my village several times, and I love getting out and exploring.
I'm getting to know every nook ad cranny of my home area. It's been wonderful.
Doing this, I've found village ovenhouses, several village lockups, secret airfields (and their secret museums), sandy pits, wide-gauge railway tracks (*), stellar views, great sunrises, beautiful secluded spots, and one GOML.
(*) Extra points for anyone who can guess where the tracks were ...
I agree; I set myself the challenge of walking every footpath on the island with the dog, and in the last couple of years I’ve been marking up the OS map as I go, and I have made a very decent start. Whether I will ever finish the task, I don’t know - I’ll probably be left with a load of bits and pieces of path that objectively aren’t worth travelling out to walk.
My added wisdom is to leave all the running about to the dog.
We understand the Prime Minister was deeply unimpressed with Owen Paterson's interview on Sky News on Tuesday evening where OP insisted he "wouldn't hesitate" to act in the same way "tomorrow", two sources have told Sky News.
In case any Tories on here wonder, how could a Tory government ever appear so chaotic and ridiculous, I give you the answer: Boris Johnson. I hate to say I told you so, but.... I told you so.
Yet if the Tories had not been led by Boris Johnson to a landslide election victory in 2019, then we may still have a hung parliament, Corbyn would still be Labour leader and we may still not have seen Brexit delivered.
I am beginning to think that if Boris Johnson's first act after winning your much loved landslide had been slaughter of the first born, replacing the Union Flag with a fecking great swastika, and had his own fat ugly mug printed on our bank notes, you would still say "Oooh, but he led us to a landslide so that's ok then!"
We do not have a parallel universe to know what might have happened under an alternative Tory leader, but there is evidence to suggest that it was very much an anti-Corbyn vote, so who knows, we might have had a Tory victory, "got Brexit done (FFS - has that been so great??!)" AND had a government that is not led by a global laughing stock; a man who couldn't plan the proverbial drinks party in a beer making establishment!!!!!!!!
Had Hunt been Tory leader not Boris we know Farage would have stood Brexit party candidates in Tory seats, so more Tory seats would have gone LD. Neither Hunt nor Gove, Boris' main rivals in 2019, would have had the same appeal to Labour Leave voters in the Redwall Boris had either.
So most likely absent Boris as leader we would still be in the same hung parliament limbo we had with May in 2017 and Corbyn would still be Labour leader.
Boris has not been a complete disaster as PM either, see his success with the vaccines and furlough, the security deal with the US and Australia, COP26 etc and of course he did get Brexit done with a trade deal with the EU against the odds
Keep deluding yourself. You are not daft though, and actually I think you are decent chap, so deep down you know he is not up to the job. He will do much more long lasting damage to the Tory Party than a minority Corbyn government would have done, even if that had come to pass, which I think is very unlikely.
Never mind the Tory party, a Corbyn government of any kind would have destroyed the country, thank goodness we avoided that.
The Tories may well have quickly built up a big poll lead in opposition had Corbyn won enough seats to become PM but the damage done to the country would have taken far longer to repair
Do you know what HYUFD. You have set a very, very low bar there which your Government has failed to clear.
Corbyn would have been disastrous but probably less so in minority than the coach and horses this bunch of chancers are driving through our long held conventions
We understand the Prime Minister was deeply unimpressed with Owen Paterson's interview on Sky News on Tuesday evening where OP insisted he "wouldn't hesitate" to act in the same way "tomorrow", two sources have told Sky News.
In the meantime, YCCC are suspended from hosting international or major matches until it has clearly demonstrated that it can meet the standards expected of an international venue, ECB member and First Class County.
Has anyone ever seen YCCC and the JohnsonIan Conservative Government together in the same room?
The fact that Rafiq could be disciplined for calling Ballance "Zimbo" yet the "P" word was deemed mere banter by YCCC is anti-woke gone mad.
This once proud nation is going to the dogs.
Not really: a few decades ago, there would have been no scandal about someone calling another person the 'P' word. Or the 'N' word, for that matter. It's sad that people still use these words, but the fact that its usage - and more significantly the poor way an organisation reacted to its usage - had caused a scandal is positive IMV.
Yes, that's the positive way to look at it. It doesn't surprise me that Yorkshire Cricket Club appears to be a deeply reactionary institution. My dad knew a senior member of it and he was quite fruity apparently. Given my dad is not completely unfruity himself that is a meaningful assessment.
In case any Tories on here wonder, how could a Tory government ever appear so chaotic and ridiculous, I give you the answer: Boris Johnson. I hate to say I told you so, but.... I told you so.
Agree that BJ is a back-of-the-envelope kind of PM, and I think the quality of running the place suffered when the Remainer generation defenestrated themselves.
I guess that politically the question is how good are the current generation. And the need to build a rather more resolute secretariat. The outcome of the French fishing argument might tell us whether they ultimately suffer from LMF or not.
Remainers were sacked (by Boris or the electorate) rather than defenestrating themselves.
The current “generation” are very bad, there is enough evidence already for that. In part, this is because they’ve had to sign up to a dishonest project to win power. It’s a government of dissemblance.
In case any Tories on here wonder, how could a Tory government ever appear so chaotic and ridiculous, I give you the answer: Boris Johnson. I hate to say I told you so, but.... I told you so.
Yet if the Tories had not been led by Boris Johnson to a landslide election victory in 2019, then we may still have a hung parliament, Corbyn would still be Labour leader and we may still not have seen Brexit delivered.
I am beginning to think that if Boris Johnson's first act after winning your much loved landslide had been slaughter of the first born, replacing the Union Flag with a fecking great swastika, and had his own fat ugly mug printed on our bank notes, you would still say "Oooh, but he led us to a landslide so that's ok then!"
We do not have a parallel universe to know what might have happened under an alternative Tory leader, but there is evidence to suggest that it was very much an anti-Corbyn vote, so who knows, we might have had a Tory victory, "got Brexit done (FFS - has that been so great??!)" AND had a government that is not led by a global laughing stock; a man who couldn't plan the proverbial drinks party in a beer making establishment!!!!!!!!
Had Hunt been Tory leader not Boris we know Farage would have stood Brexit party candidates in Tory seats, so more Tory seats would have gone LD. Neither Hunt nor Gove, Boris' main rivals in 2019, would have had the same appeal to Labour Leave voters in the Redwall Boris had either.
So most likely absent Boris as leader we would still be in the same hung parliament limbo we had with May in 2017 and Corbyn would still be Labour leader.
Boris has not been a complete disaster as PM either, see his success with the vaccines and furlough, the security deal with the US and Australia, COP26 etc and of course he did get Brexit done with a trade deal with the EU against the odds
Keep deluding yourself. You are not daft though, and actually I think you are decent chap, so deep down you know he is not up to the job. He will do much more long lasting damage to the Tory Party than a minority Corbyn government would have done, even if that had come to pass, which I think is very unlikely.
Never mind the Tory party, a Corbyn government of any kind would have destroyed the country, thank goodness we avoided that.
The Tories may well have quickly built up a big poll lead in opposition had Corbyn won enough seats to become PM but the damage done to the country would have taken far longer to repair
Do you know what HYUFD. You have set a very, very low bar there which your Government has failed to clear.
Corbyn would have been disastrous but probably less so in minority than the coach and horses this bunch of chancers are driving through our long held conventions
North Shropshire has had only two MPs since 1961, and three since 1950.
Massive support for Paterson's badger cull among the farmers there too, apparently. A commenter in the Daily Mail today described current events as "the badgers' revenge".
Considering I'm now healthy (at least one run every day this year; 317 runs and 2,344 miles in total), I don't think so.
I'd also like to think I've got a better personality - although that might not always show up on here ...
Since when was running 2,344 miles “healthy”?
I bet if you check, a lot of it was on a bus route.
That Greek guy who did the first long distance run dropped dead at the end of it, as I recall (from history, obvs). There’s the clue, right there.
You may be shocked to hear that I have no intention of dying.
I'm trying to run every path and road (bar motorways) in an area between Royston, Cambridge, Huntingdon, and Sandy. This is my second year at it, and the GPS logs have produced what my wife calls my 'Map of Crazy'. I'll hopefully be done early next year; Cambridge is sucking up the miles, and I'm only doing the stuff west of the guided busway/River Cam.
And most of it is not on bus routes. But since every run has been circular (or at least ending at the point it started), no public transport was required. Unless I get lost ...
Just think about how far away from home you’d be by now, if you hadn’t bothered doubling back?
My hiking intention is to walk the equivalent of the circumference of the world. I'm currently at 18571.7 miles, so have ~6,500 miles to go. I haven't done any walks for a couple of years though, due to Covid. I'll probably get there running first ...
If you know the story of the first person to walk around the world, Dave Kunst, it's probably best to remain in your own country and do it.
I guess you could do it round and round your own living room, if you were determined enough. But it would somewhat be lacking in adventure.
One of the reasons I'm doing the Map of Crazy is that I get bored running/walking the same routes too often. I've done every road and path in my village several times, and I love getting out and exploring.
I'm getting to know every nook ad cranny of my home area. It's been wonderful.
Doing this, I've found village ovenhouses, several village lockups, secret airfields (and their secret museums), sandy pits, wide-gauge railway tracks (*), stellar views, great sunrises, beautiful secluded spots, and one GOML.
(*) Extra points for anyone who can guess where the tracks were ...
I agree; I set myself the challenge of walking every footpath on the island with the dog, and in the last couple of years I’ve been marking up the OS map as I go, and I have made a very decent start. Whether I will ever finish the task, I don’t know - I’ll probably be left with a load of bits and pieces of path that objectively aren’t worth travelling out to walk.
My added wisdom is to leave all the running about to the dog.
The problem with trying to run every road and path in this area of Camridgeshire/Bedfordshire is that the buggers keep on building more of them. I was up in Godmanchester this morning, and a couple of new roads have sprung up in the last few months. I want a moratorium on new building until I've completed ...
But walking all the island (I assume the IoW?) is a great idea. It's a brilliant area.
We understand the Prime Minister was deeply unimpressed with Owen Paterson's interview on Sky News on Tuesday evening where OP insisted he "wouldn't hesitate" to act in the same way "tomorrow", two sources have told Sky News.
If I were a Tory MP I would be very depressed and demoralised tonight.
One thing has always been clear about Boris, when he needs to be ruthless he will be. That is what also led him to back Leave and abandon Cameron and also abandon May after her deal and that is what has got him where he is now.
He will throw anyone under the bus, including close allies, even Cummings, if need be if he sees a real threat to his popularity. Paterson is just another casualty
We understand the Prime Minister was deeply unimpressed with Owen Paterson's interview on Sky News on Tuesday evening where OP insisted he "wouldn't hesitate" to act in the same way "tomorrow", two sources have told Sky News.
We understand the Prime Minister was deeply unimpressed with Owen Paterson's interview on Sky News on Tuesday evening where OP insisted he "wouldn't hesitate" to act in the same way "tomorrow", two sources have told Sky News.
If I were a Tory MP I would be very depressed and demoralised tonight.
One thing has always been clear about Boris, when he needs to be ruthless he will be. He will throw anyone under the bus, including close allies, even Cummings, if need be if he sees a real threat to his popularity.
The problem is, he’s indicated over the last 24 hours that he’s willing to throw the entire parliamentary party under the bus to save his own hide.
In case any Tories on here wonder, how could a Tory government ever appear so chaotic and ridiculous, I give you the answer: Boris Johnson. I hate to say I told you so, but.... I told you so.
Yet if the Tories had not been led by Boris Johnson to a landslide election victory in 2019, then we may still have a hung parliament, Corbyn would still be Labour leader and we may still not have seen Brexit delivered.
I am beginning to think that if Boris Johnson's first act after winning your much loved landslide had been slaughter of the first born, replacing the Union Flag with a fecking great swastika, and had his own fat ugly mug printed on our bank notes, you would still say "Oooh, but he led us to a landslide so that's ok then!"
We do not have a parallel universe to know what might have happened under an alternative Tory leader, but there is evidence to suggest that it was very much an anti-Corbyn vote, so who knows, we might have had a Tory victory, "got Brexit done (FFS - has that been so great??!)" AND had a government that is not led by a global laughing stock; a man who couldn't plan the proverbial drinks party in a beer making establishment!!!!!!!!
Had Hunt been Tory leader not Boris we know Farage would have stood Brexit party candidates in Tory seats, so more Tory seats would have gone LD. Neither Hunt nor Gove, Boris' main rivals in 2019, would have had the same appeal to Labour Leave voters in the Redwall Boris had either.
So most likely absent Boris as leader we would still be in the same hung parliament limbo we had with May in 2017 and Corbyn would still be Labour leader.
Boris has not been a complete disaster as PM either, see his success with the vaccines and furlough, the security deal with the US and Australia, COP26 etc and of course he did get Brexit done with a trade deal with the EU against the odds
Keep deluding yourself. You are not daft though, and actually I think you are decent chap, so deep down you know he is not up to the job. He will do much more long lasting damage to the Tory Party than a minority Corbyn government would have done, even if that had come to pass, which I think is very unlikely.
Never mind the Tory party, a Corbyn government of any kind would have destroyed the country, thank goodness we avoided that.
The Tories may well have quickly built up a big poll lead in opposition had Corbyn won enough seats to become PM but the damage done to the country would have taken far longer to repair
And there’s no damage being to the country now? As I posted earlier I’ve been around a long time, and the current state of the country is worse than after Suez or the Winter of Discontent.
We understand the Prime Minister was deeply unimpressed with Owen Paterson's interview on Sky News on Tuesday evening where OP insisted he "wouldn't hesitate" to act in the same way "tomorrow", two sources have told Sky News.
In case any Tories on here wonder, how could a Tory government ever appear so chaotic and ridiculous, I give you the answer: Boris Johnson. I hate to say I told you so, but.... I told you so.
Agree that BJ is a back-of-the-envelope kind of PM, and I think the quality of running the place suffered when the Remainer generation defenestrated themselves.
I guess that politically the question is how good are the current generation. And the need to build a rather more resolute secretariat. The outcome of the French fishing argument might tell us whether they ultimately suffer from LMF or not.
Self-defenestrated? Most were unceremoniously escorted off the premises by Cummings?
In case any Tories on here wonder, how could a Tory government ever appear so chaotic and ridiculous, I give you the answer: Boris Johnson. I hate to say I told you so, but.... I told you so.
Yet if the Tories had not been led by Boris Johnson to a landslide election victory in 2019, then we may still have a hung parliament, Corbyn would still be Labour leader and we may still not have seen Brexit delivered.
I am beginning to think that if Boris Johnson's first act after winning your much loved landslide had been slaughter of the first born, replacing the Union Flag with a fecking great swastika, and had his own fat ugly mug printed on our bank notes, you would still say "Oooh, but he led us to a landslide so that's ok then!"
We do not have a parallel universe to know what might have happened under an alternative Tory leader, but there is evidence to suggest that it was very much an anti-Corbyn vote, so who knows, we might have had a Tory victory, "got Brexit done (FFS - has that been so great??!)" AND had a government that is not led by a global laughing stock; a man who couldn't plan the proverbial drinks party in a beer making establishment!!!!!!!!
Had Hunt been Tory leader not Boris we know Farage would have stood Brexit party candidates in Tory seats, so more Tory seats would have gone LD. Neither Hunt nor Gove, Boris' main rivals in 2019, would have had the same appeal to Labour Leave voters in the Redwall Boris had either.
So most likely absent Boris as leader we would still be in the same hung parliament limbo we had with May in 2017 and Corbyn would still be Labour leader.
Boris has not been a complete disaster as PM either, see his success with the vaccines and furlough, the security deal with the US and Australia, COP26 etc and of course he did get Brexit done with a trade deal with the EU against the odds
Keep deluding yourself. You are not daft though, and actually I think you are decent chap, so deep down you know he is not up to the job. He will do much more long lasting damage to the Tory Party than a minority Corbyn government would have done, even if that had come to pass, which I think is very unlikely.
Never mind the Tory party, a Corbyn government of any kind would have destroyed the country, thank goodness we avoided that.
The Tories may well have quickly built up a big poll lead in opposition had Corbyn won enough seats to become PM but the damage done to the country would have taken far longer to repair
Do you know what HYUFD. You have set a very, very low bar there which your Government has failed to clear.
Corbyn would have been disastrous but probably less so in minority than the coach and horses this bunch of chancers are driving through our long held conventions
Here's a hypothetical:
What would this government have to do, to push HY into the same position as are now so many others, saying that its behaviour has gone too far?
A question HY himself can surely have a stab at, if he has any self-awareness at all?
In case any Tories on here wonder, how could a Tory government ever appear so chaotic and ridiculous, I give you the answer: Boris Johnson. I hate to say I told you so, but.... I told you so.
Yet if the Tories had not been led by Boris Johnson to a landslide election victory in 2019, then we may still have a hung parliament, Corbyn would still be Labour leader and we may still not have seen Brexit delivered.
I am beginning to think that if Boris Johnson's first act after winning your much loved landslide had been slaughter of the first born, replacing the Union Flag with a fecking great swastika, and had his own fat ugly mug printed on our bank notes, you would still say "Oooh, but he led us to a landslide so that's ok then!"
We do not have a parallel universe to know what might have happened under an alternative Tory leader, but there is evidence to suggest that it was very much an anti-Corbyn vote, so who knows, we might have had a Tory victory, "got Brexit done (FFS - has that been so great??!)" AND had a government that is not led by a global laughing stock; a man who couldn't plan the proverbial drinks party in a beer making establishment!!!!!!!!
Had Hunt been Tory leader not Boris we know Farage would have stood Brexit party candidates in Tory seats, so more Tory seats would have gone LD. Neither Hunt nor Gove, Boris' main rivals in 2019, would have had the same appeal to Labour Leave voters in the Redwall Boris had either.
So most likely absent Boris as leader we would still be in the same hung parliament limbo we had with May in 2017 and Corbyn would still be Labour leader.
Boris has not been a complete disaster as PM either, see his success with the vaccines and furlough, the security deal with the US and Australia, COP26 etc and of course he did get Brexit done with a trade deal with the EU against the odds
Keep deluding yourself. You are not daft though, and actually I think you are decent chap, so deep down you know he is not up to the job. He will do much more long lasting damage to the Tory Party than a minority Corbyn government would have done, even if that had come to pass, which I think is very unlikely.
Never mind the Tory party, a Corbyn government of any kind would have destroyed the country, thank goodness we avoided that.
The Tories may well have quickly built up a big poll lead in opposition had Corbyn won enough seats to become PM but the damage done to the country would have taken far longer to repair
And there’s no damage being to the country now? As I posted earlier I’ve been around a long time, and the current state of the country is worse than after Suez or the Winter of Discontent.
Well I am not saying Boris is quite Stalin but he is utterly ruthless. The clown act is exactly that, an act to appeal to the working class, nothing more.
Blair and Thatcher could also be utterly ruthless when needed too, which is why they also were dominant PMs. Blair even dumped Mandelson when he thought he was a liability and forced him to leave the Cabinet and of course shafted Brown to get the top job.
In case any Tories on here wonder, how could a Tory government ever appear so chaotic and ridiculous, I give you the answer: Boris Johnson. I hate to say I told you so, but.... I told you so.
Yet if the Tories had not been led by Boris Johnson to a landslide election victory in 2019, then we may still have a hung parliament, Corbyn would still be Labour leader and we may still not have seen Brexit delivered.
I am beginning to think that if Boris Johnson's first act after winning your much loved landslide had been slaughter of the first born, replacing the Union Flag with a fecking great swastika, and had his own fat ugly mug printed on our bank notes, you would still say "Oooh, but he led us to a landslide so that's ok then!"
We do not have a parallel universe to know what might have happened under an alternative Tory leader, but there is evidence to suggest that it was very much an anti-Corbyn vote, so who knows, we might have had a Tory victory, "got Brexit done (FFS - has that been so great??!)" AND had a government that is not led by a global laughing stock; a man who couldn't plan the proverbial drinks party in a beer making establishment!!!!!!!!
Had Hunt been Tory leader not Boris we know Farage would have stood Brexit party candidates in Tory seats, so more Tory seats would have gone LD. Neither Hunt nor Gove, Boris' main rivals in 2019, would have had the same appeal to Labour Leave voters in the Redwall Boris had either.
So most likely absent Boris as leader we would still be in the same hung parliament limbo we had with May in 2017 and Corbyn would still be Labour leader.
Boris has not been a complete disaster as PM either, see his success with the vaccines and furlough, the security deal with the US and Australia, COP26 etc and of course he did get Brexit done with a trade deal with the EU against the odds
Keep deluding yourself. You are not daft though, and actually I think you are decent chap, so deep down you know he is not up to the job. He will do much more long lasting damage to the Tory Party than a minority Corbyn government would have done, even if that had come to pass, which I think is very unlikely.
Never mind the Tory party, a Corbyn government of any kind would have destroyed the country, thank goodness we avoided that.
The Tories may well have quickly built up a big poll lead in opposition had Corbyn won enough seats to become PM but the damage done to the country would have taken far longer to repair
And there’s no damage being to the country now? As I posted earlier I’ve been around a long time, and the current state of the country is worse than after Suez or the Winter of Discontent.
The Bank of England predicts absolutely anaemic growth through 2023 and falling real wages.
We understand the Prime Minister was deeply unimpressed with Owen Paterson's interview on Sky News on Tuesday evening where OP insisted he "wouldn't hesitate" to act in the same way "tomorrow", two sources have told Sky News.
If I were a Tory MP I would be very depressed and demoralised tonight.
I have only just seen the news. What the hell is Johnson playing at?
Usually he just sends out a luckless minister to defend the indefensible, then U turns the next day, but to send out the whole Conservative party to do so, get shat on, then the U turn. What a complete and total fuckwitted bustard!
Off to the match shortly. Interesting lineup for LCFC.
We understand the Prime Minister was deeply unimpressed with Owen Paterson's interview on Sky News on Tuesday evening where OP insisted he "wouldn't hesitate" to act in the same way "tomorrow", two sources have told Sky News.
If that was the case, clearly Boris didn't watch it until well after it was first shown.
It's almost like the first time he saw the interview was at 8:59 this morning just before the u-turn kicked off.
If Paterson was wholly innocent, as he claimed, then why shouldn't he act the same way again? So Boris must be presuming his guilt. But if Paterson is slam-dunk guilty then what was the whole 'right of appeal' thing about?
We understand the Prime Minister was deeply unimpressed with Owen Paterson's interview on Sky News on Tuesday evening where OP insisted he "wouldn't hesitate" to act in the same way "tomorrow", two sources have told Sky News.
If that was the case, clearly Boris didn't watch it until well after it was first shown.
It's almost like the first time he saw the interview was at 8:59 this morning just before the u-turn kicked off.
If Paterson was wholly innocent, as he claimed, then why shouldn't he act the same way again? So Boris must be presuming his guilt. But if Paterson is slam-dunk guilty then what was the whole 'right of appeal' thing about?
Boris is - rather sickeningly - trying to pin the whole debacle on a now-defenestrated Owen Paterson.
Considering I'm now healthy (at least one run every day this year; 317 runs and 2,344 miles in total), I don't think so.
I'd also like to think I've got a better personality - although that might not always show up on here ...
Since when was running 2,344 miles “healthy”?
I bet if you check, a lot of it was on a bus route.
That Greek guy who did the first long distance run dropped dead at the end of it, as I recall (from history, obvs). There’s the clue, right there.
You may be shocked to hear that I have no intention of dying.
I'm trying to run every path and road (bar motorways) in an area between Royston, Cambridge, Huntingdon, and Sandy. This is my second year at it, and the GPS logs have produced what my wife calls my 'Map of Crazy'. I'll hopefully be done early next year; Cambridge is sucking up the miles, and I'm only doing the stuff west of the guided busway/River Cam.
And most of it is not on bus routes. But since every run has been circular (or at least ending at the point it started), no public transport was required. Unless I get lost ...
Just think about how far away from home you’d be by now, if you hadn’t bothered doubling back?
My hiking intention is to walk the equivalent of the circumference of the world. I'm currently at 18571.7 miles, so have ~6,500 miles to go. I haven't done any walks for a couple of years though, due to Covid. I'll probably get there running first ...
If you know the story of the first person to walk around the world, Dave Kunst, it's probably best to remain in your own country and do it.
I guess you could do it round and round your own living room, if you were determined enough. But it would somewhat be lacking in adventure.
One of the reasons I'm doing the Map of Crazy is that I get bored running/walking the same routes too often. I've done every road and path in my village several times, and I love getting out and exploring.
I'm getting to know every nook ad cranny of my home area. It's been wonderful.
Doing this, I've found village ovenhouses, several village lockups, secret airfields (and their secret museums), sandy pits, wide-gauge railway tracks (*), stellar views, great sunrises, beautiful secluded spots, and one GOML.
(*) Extra points for anyone who can guess where the tracks were ...
I agree; I set myself the challenge of walking every footpath on the island with the dog, and in the last couple of years I’ve been marking up the OS map as I go, and I have made a very decent start. Whether I will ever finish the task, I don’t know - I’ll probably be left with a load of bits and pieces of path that objectively aren’t worth travelling out to walk.
My added wisdom is to leave all the running about to the dog.
The problem with trying to run every road and path in this area of Camridgeshire/Bedfordshire is that the buggers keep on building more of them. I was up in Godmanchester this morning, and a couple of new roads have sprung up in the last few months. I want a moratorium on new building until I've completed ...
But walking all the island (I assume the IoW?) is a great idea. It's a brilliant area.
Indeed it is! We've done all the coastal path on the eastern and southern sides, and tons of superb walks inland. There isn't a day when I am not thankful that I'm not having to walk the dog in Roding Valley Park, where I used to live, under the M11 flyover with lorries thundering by. But the task of actually walking every path on the island is going to leave me with tons of odd bits to spend days going out to walk. And some farmers have a habit of making some of the lesser used ones rather difficult to traverse.
In case any Tories on here wonder, how could a Tory government ever appear so chaotic and ridiculous, I give you the answer: Boris Johnson. I hate to say I told you so, but.... I told you so.
Yet if the Tories had not been led by Boris Johnson to a landslide election victory in 2019, then we may still have a hung parliament, Corbyn would still be Labour leader and we may still not have seen Brexit delivered.
I am beginning to think that if Boris Johnson's first act after winning your much loved landslide had been slaughter of the first born, replacing the Union Flag with a fecking great swastika, and had his own fat ugly mug printed on our bank notes, you would still say "Oooh, but he led us to a landslide so that's ok then!"
We do not have a parallel universe to know what might have happened under an alternative Tory leader, but there is evidence to suggest that it was very much an anti-Corbyn vote, so who knows, we might have had a Tory victory, "got Brexit done (FFS - has that been so great??!)" AND had a government that is not led by a global laughing stock; a man who couldn't plan the proverbial drinks party in a beer making establishment!!!!!!!!
Had Hunt been Tory leader not Boris we know Farage would have stood Brexit party candidates in Tory seats, so more Tory seats would have gone LD. Neither Hunt nor Gove, Boris' main rivals in 2019, would have had the same appeal to Labour Leave voters in the Redwall Boris had either.
So most likely absent Boris as leader we would still be in the same hung parliament limbo we had with May in 2017 and Corbyn would still be Labour leader.
Boris has not been a complete disaster as PM either, see his success with the vaccines and furlough, the security deal with the US and Australia, COP26 etc and of course he did get Brexit done with a trade deal with the EU against the odds
Keep deluding yourself. You are not daft though, and actually I think you are decent chap, so deep down you know he is not up to the job. He will do much more long lasting damage to the Tory Party than a minority Corbyn government would have done, even if that had come to pass, which I think is very unlikely.
Never mind the Tory party, a Corbyn government of any kind would have destroyed the country, thank goodness we avoided that.
The Tories may well have quickly built up a big poll lead in opposition had Corbyn won enough seats to become PM but the damage done to the country would have taken far longer to repair
And there’s no damage being to the country now? As I posted earlier I’ve been around a long time, and the current state of the country is worse than after Suez or the Winter of Discontent.
It isn't, after Suez we were isolated from the US and humiliated on the world stage.
After the Winter of Discontent the unions ran the country, rubbish was not collected, inflation was out of control, most industries were inefficient and nationalised and we had sky high tax
In case any Tories on here wonder, how could a Tory government ever appear so chaotic and ridiculous, I give you the answer: Boris Johnson. I hate to say I told you so, but.... I told you so.
Yet if the Tories had not been led by Boris Johnson to a landslide election victory in 2019, then we may still have a hung parliament, Corbyn would still be Labour leader and we may still not have seen Brexit delivered.
I am beginning to think that if Boris Johnson's first act after winning your much loved landslide had been slaughter of the first born, replacing the Union Flag with a fecking great swastika, and had his own fat ugly mug printed on our bank notes, you would still say "Oooh, but he led us to a landslide so that's ok then!"
We do not have a parallel universe to know what might have happened under an alternative Tory leader, but there is evidence to suggest that it was very much an anti-Corbyn vote, so who knows, we might have had a Tory victory, "got Brexit done (FFS - has that been so great??!)" AND had a government that is not led by a global laughing stock; a man who couldn't plan the proverbial drinks party in a beer making establishment!!!!!!!!
Had Hunt been Tory leader not Boris we know Farage would have stood Brexit party candidates in Tory seats, so more Tory seats would have gone LD. Neither Hunt nor Gove, Boris' main rivals in 2019, would have had the same appeal to Labour Leave voters in the Redwall Boris had either.
So most likely absent Boris as leader we would still be in the same hung parliament limbo we had with May in 2017 and Corbyn would still be Labour leader.
Boris has not been a complete disaster as PM either, see his success with the vaccines and furlough, the security deal with the US and Australia, COP26 etc and of course he did get Brexit done with a trade deal with the EU against the odds
Keep deluding yourself. You are not daft though, and actually I think you are decent chap, so deep down you know he is not up to the job. He will do much more long lasting damage to the Tory Party than a minority Corbyn government would have done, even if that had come to pass, which I think is very unlikely.
Never mind the Tory party, a Corbyn government of any kind would have destroyed the country, thank goodness we avoided that.
The Tories may well have quickly built up a big poll lead in opposition had Corbyn won enough seats to become PM but the damage done to the country would have taken far longer to repair
And there’s no damage being to the country now? As I posted earlier I’ve been around a long time, and the current state of the country is worse than after Suez or the Winter of Discontent.
What are the things that make the state of the country today worse than then in your view?
It is quite funny and telling that they have replaced it with a picture of an unknown Welsh hedgelayer, presumably on the basis that anyone famous from history they put up was probably going to turn out to be offensive to some section of the Wokerati and so the easiest answer was only to show pictures of people no one can identify.
It is quite funny and telling that they have replaced it with a picture of an unknown Welsh hedgelayer, presumably on the basis that anyone famous from history they put up was probably going to turn out to be offensive to some section of the Wokerati and so the easiest answer was only to show pictures of people no one can identify.
Those poor hedges! Being abused by that awful man! Hedges have feelings, too!
In case any Tories on here wonder, how could a Tory government ever appear so chaotic and ridiculous, I give you the answer: Boris Johnson. I hate to say I told you so, but.... I told you so.
Yet if the Tories had not been led by Boris Johnson to a landslide election victory in 2019, then we may still have a hung parliament, Corbyn would still be Labour leader and we may still not have seen Brexit delivered.
I am beginning to think that if Boris Johnson's first act after winning your much loved landslide had been slaughter of the first born, replacing the Union Flag with a fecking great swastika, and had his own fat ugly mug printed on our bank notes, you would still say "Oooh, but he led us to a landslide so that's ok then!"
We do not have a parallel universe to know what might have happened under an alternative Tory leader, but there is evidence to suggest that it was very much an anti-Corbyn vote, so who knows, we might have had a Tory victory, "got Brexit done (FFS - has that been so great??!)" AND had a government that is not led by a global laughing stock; a man who couldn't plan the proverbial drinks party in a beer making establishment!!!!!!!!
Had Hunt been Tory leader not Boris we know Farage would have stood Brexit party candidates in Tory seats, so more Tory seats would have gone LD. Neither Hunt nor Gove, Boris' main rivals in 2019, would have had the same appeal to Labour Leave voters in the Redwall Boris had either.
So most likely absent Boris as leader we would still be in the same hung parliament limbo we had with May in 2017 and Corbyn would still be Labour leader.
Boris has not been a complete disaster as PM either, see his success with the vaccines and furlough, the security deal with the US and Australia, COP26 etc and of course he did get Brexit done with a trade deal with the EU against the odds
Keep deluding yourself. You are not daft though, and actually I think you are decent chap, so deep down you know he is not up to the job. He will do much more long lasting damage to the Tory Party than a minority Corbyn government would have done, even if that had come to pass, which I think is very unlikely.
Never mind the Tory party, a Corbyn government of any kind would have destroyed the country, thank goodness we avoided that.
The Tories may well have quickly built up a big poll lead in opposition had Corbyn won enough seats to become PM but the damage done to the country would have taken far longer to repair
And there’s no damage being to the country now? As I posted earlier I’ve been around a long time, and the current state of the country is worse than after Suez or the Winter of Discontent.
It isn't, after Suez we were isolated from the US and humiliated on the world stage.
After the Winter of Discontent the unions ran the country, rubbish was not collected, inflation was out of control, most industries were inefficient and nationalised and we had sky high tax
Comments
We considered not settling, and going to court. In the end, a big reason not to was that my wife was now running again, taking on tough off road races (20 miles etc) and marathons, albeit suffering a lot after. I was afraid this would be used against her claim.
https://twitter.com/BenKentish/status/1456327642945363968/photo/1
We do not have a parallel universe to know what might have happened under an alternative Tory leader, but there is evidence to suggest that it was very much an anti-Corbyn vote, so who knows, we might have had a Tory victory, "got Brexit done (FFS - has that been so great??!)" AND had a government that is not led by a global laughing stock; a man who couldn't plan the proverbial drinks party in a beer making establishment!!!!!!!!
edit: there's actually a pavement beside the A1 between St Neots and Sandy. I did it as a Summer Sunday Sunup Special - where I run busy roads at first light on Sunday mornings in summer.
So most likely absent Boris as leader we would still be in the same hung parliament limbo we had with May in 2017 and Corbyn would still be Labour leader.
Boris has not been a complete disaster as PM either, see his success with the vaccines and furlough, the security deal with the US and Australia, COP26 etc and of course he did get Brexit done with a trade deal with the EU against the odds
Brøndby IF 1 V Rangers 0
KRC Genk 1 V West Ham 0
The fact that Rafiq could be disciplined for calling Ballance "Zimbo" yet the "P" word was deemed mere banter by YCCC is anti-woke gone mad.
This once proud nation is going to the dogs.
Mine was entirely a process point that there should be always be a right to an appeal. Nothing that can or ever will be in the report changes that.
Newsreader could be taken to task over impartiality after he criticised ‘decolonising’ gallery for removing portrait of Sir Thomas Picton"
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/11/04/huw-edwards-spoken-bbc-objected-censorship-historic-painting/
The Tories may well have quickly built up a big poll lead in opposition had Corbyn won enough seats to become PM but the damage done to the country would have taken far longer to repair
How much corruption are you willing to excuse?
Doubtless why she has today immediately appealed.
* Which Chancellor?
It's not even as if Sweden, Florida and Japan did badly. They did as well as or better than regions with restrictions. (NB Florida opened up summer 2020.)
You ought to read some sceptic websites. The data's a bit suppressed by the MSM who are mostly pushing a pro-lockdown narrative, even though we never used them before 2020. Funny, that.
If you know the story of the first person to walk around the world, Dave Kunst, it's probably best to remain in your own country and do it.
The other 2 should be Tory holds even with a smaller majority, Labour 2nd and RefUK and LDs fighting it out for 3rd
PS Just realized I have left myself open to an answer of 5.
Mine is a value judgement that the price of lockdown is not worth paying for the deaths avoided - and you can get that data including data on Sweden etc from legitimate sources without dealing with fake news crackpots.
Being circumlocutary, I'm not very sure if 10 weeks suspended for 2 years is too light or too heavy for a credible threat of an acid attack as part of a harrassment campaign.
I'm also not sure if pleading poverty and going for a compensation payment limited to £100 per month is very defensible or not very defensible if you are drawing an income of £82k per year, plus up to £3k ish on accommodation expenses for London accommodation.
https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2021/11/03/2003767228
That would have clearly shifted the country left with even higher taxes and spending than now, their would have been nationalisations, the unions would be back in force with few limits on their power, there would be open war on our history and we would now be more aligned to Cuba and Putin and China and Palestine and Iran than the western world. Crime would be up with an ultra soft approach to law and order and we would have immigration largely without controls unlike the controlled, points based immigration we have now. Jews too would be living in fear
I guess that politically the question is how good are the current generation. And the need to build a rather more resolute secretariat. The outcome of the French fishing argument might tell us whether they ultimately suffer from LMF or not.
We understand the Prime Minister was deeply unimpressed with Owen Paterson's interview on Sky News on Tuesday evening where OP insisted he "wouldn't hesitate" to act in the same way "tomorrow", two sources have told Sky News.
I’m told the PM made clear his fury at this clip
https://twitter.com/SamCoatesSky/status/1456330751918628875?s=20
I'm getting to know every nook ad cranny of my home area. It's been wonderful.
Doing this, I've found village ovenhouses, several village lockups, secret airfields (and their secret museums), sandy pits, wide-gauge railway tracks (*), stellar views, great sunrises, beautiful secluded spots, and one GOML.
(*) Extra points for anyone who can guess where the tracks were ...
He's been ok though as the PM in this crisis. Corbyn as PM in all this? Worse still an off-balance Corbyn government given that they'd have just had a couple of months in office. I think we'd have just been left with the rather spooky Long-Bailey smile.
Ennobling Claire Fox
His claim the other day that Rome was brought down by “immigration from the East”.
The pretence that NI would see no paperwork (even telling local businessmen to rip it up if they see any).
The ongoing Dacre thing.
My point was that #skynews should not have classed her as "Independant MP" on the ticker.
I think I have heard of 5 major (?) sponsors / partners pulling out so far - Yorkshire Tea, Emerald Group, David Lloyd Leisure, Tetley Beer & Nike. And the "Yorkshire Cricket Association"?
Yet the Board Meeting has been called for a week after the crisis.
Do they have a death wish? AIUI decent work was being done some time ago.
If I were a Tory MP I would be very depressed and demoralised tonight.
My added wisdom is to leave all the running about to the dog.
Corbyn would have been disastrous but probably less so in minority than the coach and horses this bunch of chancers are driving through our long held conventions
The current “generation” are very bad, there is enough evidence already for that. In part, this is because they’ve had to sign up to a dishonest project to win power. It’s a government of dissemblance.
As many other tutors have since followed Chang’s lead, he said he is planning to revise his channel next month.
“This is a top business secret and what I can only tell you is it will no longer be just me in the videos,” he said.…
Parliament is the highest court in the land. Which is why the law courts can't intervene in parliament matters. They are inferior to it.
The judicial committee of the House of Lords used, until 2009, to be our highest court.
Restore it as the body dealing with parliamentary standards, the membership being current and retired Supreme Court Justices.
But walking all the island (I assume the IoW?) is a great idea. It's a brilliant area.
He will throw anyone under the bus, including close allies, even Cummings, if need be if he sees a real threat to his popularity. Paterson is just another casualty
As I posted earlier I’ve been around a long time, and the current state of the country is worse than after Suez or the Winter of Discontent.
It's almost like the first time he saw the interview was at 8:59 this morning just before the u-turn kicked off.
What would this government have to do, to push HY into the same position as are now so many others, saying that its behaviour has gone too far?
A question HY himself can surely have a stab at, if he has any self-awareness at all?
Blair and Thatcher could also be utterly ruthless when needed too, which is why they also were dominant PMs. Blair even dumped Mandelson when he thought he was a liability and forced him to leave the Cabinet and of course shafted Brown to get the top job.
Usually he just sends out a luckless minister to defend the indefensible, then U turns the next day, but to send out the whole Conservative party to do so, get shat on, then the U turn. What a complete and total fuckwitted bustard!
Off to the match shortly. Interesting lineup for LCFC.
After the Winter of Discontent the unions ran the country, rubbish was not collected, inflation was out of control, most industries were inefficient and nationalised and we had sky high tax
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/taxes-record-levels-rishi-sunak-budget-2021-b962986.html