What Boris may be doing in undermining his cabinet colleagues like this is persuading many dithering MPs that anyone claiming that if we only get rid of Boris all our problems go away is delusional. If there is no clear advantage in a replacement, which there threatened to be with Rishi for a while, then ripping the party apart looks a lot less atteactive.
As others have said it is brutal politics but you don't get to be PM by being nice. Who could have imagined that the long serving and excellent Ken Clarke would end his career as not a Tory? Why is someone as capable as Hunt, compared with most of his cabinet, still on the back benches? Who was quite happy to have remainers arguing that it was "only" £200m rather than £350m a week that went to Brussels net? Boris is not the nice man he pretends to be and a bad enemy to have. But that is why he is PM and likely, in my view, to remain so for some time to come.
The public has no idea who Sunak, or God forbid, Truss is. The idea these issues are on a par with Boris' woes is seriously comical.
I suspect our PM has done his greased piglet trick again; Sue Gray's report is in the long grass and we've moved on to a 'will he, won't he' about NI contributions.
At the least, he has lost what political capital he might have had to do anything remotely unpopular, just at the time he needed it
1 Blaming Sunak for blocking triggering Article 16 and wanting to stick with NI rise despite cost of living crisis
2 Accusing Truss of wasting taxpayers money on private jet flights to, from and around Australia
I think it was pointed out on the past thread that there is little point in having a plane painted in GB colours for trade missions if you don't use it for trips like Truss's Australia jaunt.
One might wonder why the Embassy staff in Canberra were cut to the point that they needed fly ins by Ms "any deal is better than no deal" Truss.
The idea that embassy staff could simply replace visits/interactions with leading members of the government is laughable. International diplomacy is made of meetings like these.
My experience is that 90% of the actual work is done before the big guns arrive to settle and remaining thorny issues and take the credit.
No doubt, but that 10% can't be replaced with more meetings with the embassy staff.
Do we have any evidence at all to support BJO's claim wrt to Truss's trip?
The first piece I saw on that was a piece of misleading drivel in the Independent.
eg the basis for the £500k claim is 'from a source in the charter industry', which the Indy turns into 'the cost to the taxpayer'. Instead of doing some journalism and finding out what the actual cost was - quite accessible via FOI.
I was going to put in a complaint to the independent regulator, but for some reason the Indy has chosen not to have one.
£500k sounds a reasonable ballpark figure for chartering a plane for the trip, but will be a lot higher than the marginal cost of operating a plane that’s leased by the government already.
If there were more than 30 or 40 government people on the plane, the cost is probably a wash compared to commercial biz class flights
And all 40 of those government people absolutely had to travel business class, of course.
‘Public servants should spend taxpayers’ money with the care they would give to their own. This would be reflected in changes such as travelling by economy rather than business class’
- Liz Truss, 2007
If I have some govt bods flying to Oz for trade purposes I don't want them tossing and turning in economy seats for the 20-odd hours of the journey. I'd rather they had a good chance of a good night's sleep and be fit and raring to go on arrival.
1 Blaming Sunak for blocking triggering Article 16 and wanting to stick with NI rise despite cost of living crisis
2 Accusing Truss of wasting taxpayers money on private jet flights to, from and around Australia
I think it was pointed out on the past thread that there is little point in having a plane painted in GB colours for trade missions if you don't use it for trips like Truss's Australia jaunt.
One might wonder why the Embassy staff in Canberra were cut to the point that they needed fly ins by Ms "any deal is better than no deal" Truss.
The idea that embassy staff could simply replace visits/interactions with leading members of the government is laughable. International diplomacy is made of meetings like these.
My experience is that 90% of the actual work is done before the big guns arrive to settle and remaining thorny issues and take the credit.
No doubt, but that 10% can't be replaced with more meetings with the embassy staff.
Do we have any evidence at all to support BJO's claim wrt to Truss's trip?
The first piece I saw on that was a piece of misleading drivel in the Independent.
eg the basis for the £500k claim is 'from a source in the charter industry', which the Indy turns into 'the cost to the taxpayer'. Instead of doing some journalism and finding out what the actual cost was - quite accessible via FOI.
I was going to put in a complaint to the independent regulator, but for some reason the Indy has chosen not to have one.
£500k sounds a reasonable ballpark figure for chartering a plane for the trip, but will be a lot higher than the marginal cost of operating a plane that’s leased by the government already.
If there were more than 30 or 40 government people on the plane, the cost is probably a wash compared to commercial biz class flights
And all 40 of those government people absolutely had to travel business class, of course.
‘Public servants should spend taxpayers’ money with the care they would give to their own. This would be reflected in changes such as travelling by economy rather than business class’
- Liz Truss, 2007
You mean she’s changed her view now it’s her doing the travelling on expenses?
I’m shocked. Shocked, I tell you.
Hope you’re feeling a bit better this morning.
Yes, thank you! Still a bit coughy but on the way back up.
What Boris may be doing in undermining his cabinet colleagues like this is persuading many dithering MPs that anyone claiming that if we only get rid of Boris all our problems go away is delusional. If there is no clear advantage in a replacement, which there threatened to be with Rishi for a while, then ripping the party apart looks a lot less atteactive.
As others have said it is brutal politics but you don't get to be PM by being nice. Who could have imagined that the long serving and excellent Ken Clarke would end his career as not a Tory? Why is someone as capable as Hunt, compared with most of his cabinet, still on the back benches? Who was quite happy to have remainers arguing that it was "only" £200m rather than £350m a week that went to Brussels net? Boris is not the nice man he pretends to be and a bad enemy to have. But that is why he is PM and likely, in my view, to remain so for some time to come.
The public has no idea who Sunak, or God forbid, Truss is. The idea these issues are on a par with Boris' woes is seriously comical.
The public are not the target of this messaging. It is the 358 Tory MPs who can decide the PM's fate. And they know exactly who they are.
I suspect our PM has done his greased piglet trick again; Sue Gray's report is in the long grass and we've moved on to a 'will he, won't he' about NI contributions.
At the least, he has lost what political capital he might have had to do anything remotely unpopular, just at the time he needed it
You may well be right; sadly sometimes it is necessary to do things which are unpopular in the short-term.
For the West to lose one F35, off the side of a carrier, is unlucky.
To lose TWO F35s, off the side of two carriers, in as many months…
The US Navy generally operates at a rate of 2-3 Class A (ie you've destroyed the fucking aircraft) Aviation Mishaps (no such thing as an accident) every 100,000 flight hours. The F-14 was about 5.5 due its erm... challenging landing characteristics.
In its fixed wing heyday (1950 - 2000ish) the RN was operating at 20(!) per 100,000 flight hours. Wyvern squadrons used to come back from Far East cruises without any of their original aircraft.
1 Blaming Sunak for blocking triggering Article 16 and wanting to stick with NI rise despite cost of living crisis
2 Accusing Truss of wasting taxpayers money on private jet flights to, from and around Australia
I think it was pointed out on the past thread that there is little point in having a plane painted in GB colours for trade missions if you don't use it for trips like Truss's Australia jaunt.
One might wonder why the Embassy staff in Canberra were cut to the point that they needed fly ins by Ms "any deal is better than no deal" Truss.
The idea that embassy staff could simply replace visits/interactions with leading members of the government is laughable. International diplomacy is made of meetings like these.
My experience is that 90% of the actual work is done before the big guns arrive to settle and remaining thorny issues and take the credit.
No doubt, but that 10% can't be replaced with more meetings with the embassy staff.
Do we have any evidence at all to support BJO's claim wrt to Truss's trip?
The first piece I saw on that was a piece of misleading drivel in the Independent.
eg the basis for the £500k claim is 'from a source in the charter industry', which the Indy turns into 'the cost to the taxpayer'. Instead of doing some journalism and finding out what the actual cost was - quite accessible via FOI.
I was going to put in a complaint to the independent regulator, but for some reason the Indy has chosen not to have one.
£500k sounds a reasonable ballpark figure for chartering a plane for the trip, but will be a lot higher than the marginal cost of operating a plane that’s leased by the government already.
If there were more than 30 or 40 government people on the plane, the cost is probably a wash compared to commercial biz class flights
And all 40 of those government people absolutely had to travel business class, of course.
‘Public servants should spend taxpayers’ money with the care they would give to their own. This would be reflected in changes such as travelling by economy rather than business class’
- Liz Truss, 2007
If I have some govt bods flying to Oz for trade purposes I don't want them tossing and turning in economy seats for the 20-odd hours of the journey. I'd rather they had a good chance of a good night's sleep and be fit and raring to go on arrival.
True, but given recent events, do you think they would be sleeping or thinking, yay, free booze? And suitcases too!
1 Blaming Sunak for blocking triggering Article 16 and wanting to stick with NI rise despite cost of living crisis
2 Accusing Truss of wasting taxpayers money on private jet flights to, from and around Australia
I think it was pointed out on the past thread that there is little point in having a plane painted in GB colours for trade missions if you don't use it for trips like Truss's Australia jaunt.
One might wonder why the Embassy staff in Canberra were cut to the point that they needed fly ins by Ms "any deal is better than no deal" Truss.
The idea that embassy staff could simply replace visits/interactions with leading members of the government is laughable. International diplomacy is made of meetings like these.
My experience is that 90% of the actual work is done before the big guns arrive to settle and remaining thorny issues and take the credit.
No doubt, but that 10% can't be replaced with more meetings with the embassy staff.
Do we have any evidence at all to support BJO's claim wrt to Truss's trip?
The first piece I saw on that was a piece of misleading drivel in the Independent.
eg the basis for the £500k claim is 'from a source in the charter industry', which the Indy turns into 'the cost to the taxpayer'. Instead of doing some journalism and finding out what the actual cost was - quite accessible via FOI.
I was going to put in a complaint to the independent regulator, but for some reason the Indy has chosen not to have one.
£500k sounds a reasonable ballpark figure for chartering a plane for the trip, but will be a lot higher than the marginal cost of operating a plane that’s leased by the government already.
If there were more than 30 or 40 government people on the plane, the cost is probably a wash compared to commercial biz class flights, if there were any journalists or non-government staff on the plane, they will have been billed which reduces the cost to government further.
There were also security and logistics considerations, Covid protocols around commercial flights, and the background of the ongoing situation in Ukraine.
It’s one of these stories that makes for a great headline, but doesn’t really stand up once you start digging. But for those ploting against Ms Truss, the headline will be enough.
Hard working voters are about to lose their shirts on energy bills and the Johnsonian apologists are claiming what good value for money Truss spaffing half a million for some flights to Australia in a plane that Johnson spent £900k painting is It looks dreadful.
When Jeremy Hunt was Foreign Secretary in May's Government, he sat in the row before me in the BACK of an ANA flight from Tokyo.
We are watching Johnson's rerun of the Court of Louis XIV. It will end, metaphorically speaking, in the same way. The question is when?
I fly economy too, when I’m paying for it myself and going on holiday - but I’d sure as hell expect biz class, if work needed to send me half way around the world for an important meeting.
I’ll give a lot of leeway to people on genuine government business travelling in some comfort. It’s really not unreasonable for the Foreign Secretary or the Trade Secretary to run up an awful lot of travel, it’s the nature of the role.
I save my ire for things like the ‘conferences’ that happen to be in Barbados or Davos in the middle of winter, or the COP meeting to discuss climate change where a couple of hundred planes turn up on short haul flights.
BTW am I the only one who is perplexed that Putin is waiting for the mud to freeze in Ukraine at the end of January? Surely we are at peak winter now. I have read this several times in different places and it just makes no sense, does it?
What Boris may be doing in undermining his cabinet colleagues like this is persuading many dithering MPs that anyone claiming that if we only get rid of Boris all our problems go away is delusional. If there is no clear advantage in a replacement, which there threatened to be with Rishi for a while, then ripping the party apart looks a lot less atteactive.
As others have said it is brutal politics but you don't get to be PM by being nice. Who could have imagined that the long serving and excellent Ken Clarke would end his career as not a Tory? Why is someone as capable as Hunt, compared with most of his cabinet, still on the back benches? Who was quite happy to have remainers arguing that it was "only" £200m rather than £350m a week that went to Brussels net? Boris is not the nice man he pretends to be and a bad enemy to have. But that is why he is PM and likely, in my view, to remain so for some time to come.
The public has no idea who Sunak, or God forbid, Truss is. The idea these issues are on a par with Boris' woes is seriously comical.
The public are not the targeting of this messaging. It is the 358 Tory MPs who can decide the PM's fate. And they know exactly who they are.
Well if they're put off trying to top Boris on the back of Truss using the official government plane to strike a trade deal with Oz, and Sunak's department having issues with fraud whilst setting up one of the quickest support schemes in history at the start of a global pandemic they deserve to forfeit every one of their seats.
BTW am I the only one who is perplexed that Putin is waiting for the mud to freeze in Ukraine at the end of January? Surely we are at peak winter now. I have read this several times in different places and it just makes no sense, does it?
Climate change is buggering the plans of one of the world's largest exporters of gas?
What Boris may be doing in undermining his cabinet colleagues like this is persuading many dithering MPs that anyone claiming that if we only get rid of Boris all our problems go away is delusional. If there is no clear advantage in a replacement, which there threatened to be with Rishi for a while, then ripping the party apart looks a lot less atteactive.
As others have said it is brutal politics but you don't get to be PM by being nice. Who could have imagined that the long serving and excellent Ken Clarke would end his career as not a Tory? Why is someone as capable as Hunt, compared with most of his cabinet, still on the back benches? Who was quite happy to have remainers arguing that it was "only" £200m rather than £350m a week that went to Brussels net? Boris is not the nice man he pretends to be and a bad enemy to have. But that is why he is PM and likely, in my view, to remain so for some time to come.
The public has no idea who Sunak, or God forbid, Truss is. The idea these issues are on a par with Boris' woes is seriously comical.
The public are not the targeting of this messaging. It is the 358 Tory MPs who can decide the PM's fate. And they know exactly who they are.
Well if they're put off trying to top Boris on the back of Truss
Given the ummmm, known antics of both of them - separately - that was very poor phrasing!
The prime minister is a hostage of his own MPs. Boris Johnson sits in his Commons study and they come in and make demands. However brutal their assessment or sweeping their requests, he does his best to say he has heard them and will address their concerns.
It is a bizarre situation for someone whose personal appeal was so key to the election victory just two years ago, but he can’t afford to make a single extra enemy. His MPs have his fate in their hands.
Backbenchers speak even more bluntly to those arranging the “save Boris” operation. They demand changes to the No 10 team and say that these should come straight after the publication of Sue Gray’s report into the Downing Street parties. They are adamant they will brook no delay to this. If things don’t start to move, they warn that they will conclude Johnson isn’t serious about changing. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/boris-johnson-is-a-hostage-with-no-hope-of-escape-n82dg9qq6
If true, the MPs are completely delusional. Boris has no intention of changing, even if he needs to say he will. And if and when his power is on the rise again he has shown he will be brutal to those he perceives as disloyal or a threat.
1 Blaming Sunak for blocking triggering Article 16 and wanting to stick with NI rise despite cost of living crisis
2 Accusing Truss of wasting taxpayers money on private jet flights to, from and around Australia
I think it was pointed out on the past thread that there is little point in having a plane painted in GB colours for trade missions if you don't use it for trips like Truss's Australia jaunt.
One might wonder why the Embassy staff in Canberra were cut to the point that they needed fly ins by Ms "any deal is better than no deal" Truss.
The idea that embassy staff could simply replace visits/interactions with leading members of the government is laughable. International diplomacy is made of meetings like these.
My experience is that 90% of the actual work is done before the big guns arrive to settle and remaining thorny issues and take the credit.
No doubt, but that 10% can't be replaced with more meetings with the embassy staff.
Do we have any evidence at all to support BJO's claim wrt to Truss's trip?
The first piece I saw on that was a piece of misleading drivel in the Independent.
eg the basis for the £500k claim is 'from a source in the charter industry', which the Indy turns into 'the cost to the taxpayer'. Instead of doing some journalism and finding out what the actual cost was - quite accessible via FOI.
I was going to put in a complaint to the independent regulator, but for some reason the Indy has chosen not to have one.
£500k sounds a reasonable ballpark figure for chartering a plane for the trip, but will be a lot higher than the marginal cost of operating a plane that’s leased by the government already.
If there were more than 30 or 40 government people on the plane, the cost is probably a wash compared to commercial biz class flights
And all 40 of those government people absolutely had to travel business class, of course.
‘Public servants should spend taxpayers’ money with the care they would give to their own. This would be reflected in changes such as travelling by economy rather than business class’
- Liz Truss, 2007
If I have some govt bods flying to Oz for trade purposes I don't want them tossing and turning in economy seats for the 20-odd hours of the journey. I'd rather they had a good chance of a good night's sleep and be fit and raring to go on arrival.
It's the same as the Universal Credit job search changes, flying on a scheduled flight looks great but creates a whole set of very obvious problems once you stop to think for a second.
Furthermore it's clearly not possible for Rishi or any other cabinet minister to work to maximum effectiveness with such a lazy boss. Something like Sunak PM and Hunt chancellor would be what any business would go for.
BTW am I the only one who is perplexed that Putin is waiting for the mud to freeze in Ukraine at the end of January? Surely we are at peak winter now. I have read this several times in different places and it just makes no sense, does it?
I heard it the other way around, that he’s got 4-6 weeks before the mud starts to unfreeze, after which time the tanks won’t go across the steppe.
That makes much more sense, it’s definitely freezing in Ukraine at the moment!
BTW am I the only one who is perplexed that Putin is waiting for the mud to freeze in Ukraine at the end of January? Surely we are at peak winter now. I have read this several times in different places and it just makes no sense, does it?
I heard it the other way around, that he’s got 4-6 weeks before the mud starts to unfreeze, after which time the tanks won’t go across the steppe.
That makes much more sense, it’s definitely freezing in Ukraine at the moment!
The claim is it's been milder than usual so the mud hasn't frozen as hard as usual.
BTW am I the only one who is perplexed that Putin is waiting for the mud to freeze in Ukraine at the end of January? Surely we are at peak winter now. I have read this several times in different places and it just makes no sense, does it?
Climate change is buggering the plans of one of the world's largest exporters of gas?
Karma's a bitch.
I think it is something that has been dreamed up to explain Putin's apparent dithering and is nonsense. Putin, meanwhile, is waiting to see if he can get what he wants without a difficult battle. So far the Americans are refusing to play and are offering nothing, at least publically. Putin will not be able to keep that level of troops there in a high state of readiness indefinitely.
I wonder whether, perhaps, Lord Agnew's rather dramatic resignation is going to have consequences. Coupled with some of PPE contracts it rather looks as though Sunak was spending our money like the proverbial drunken sailor.
Looks up, sees news still depressing as all hell. The liar is still there supported by Tory MPs. A mad bastard still threatening war. The far right and left shrills still having too much influence. America broken. Sighs. Looks back down.
The prime minister is a hostage of his own MPs. Boris Johnson sits in his Commons study and they come in and make demands. However brutal their assessment or sweeping their requests, he does his best to say he has heard them and will address their concerns.
It is a bizarre situation for someone whose personal appeal was so key to the election victory just two years ago, but he can’t afford to make a single extra enemy. His MPs have his fate in their hands.
Backbenchers speak even more bluntly to those arranging the “save Boris” operation. They demand changes to the No 10 team and say that these should come straight after the publication of Sue Gray’s report into the Downing Street parties. They are adamant they will brook no delay to this. If things don’t start to move, they warn that they will conclude Johnson isn’t serious about changing. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/boris-johnson-is-a-hostage-with-no-hope-of-escape-n82dg9qq6
If true, the MPs are completely delusional. Boris has no intention of changing, even if he needs to say he will. And if and when his power is on the rise again he has shown he will be brutal to those he perceives as disloyal or a threat.
Boris should be fired for the parties, but if he isn't, he shouldn't need to change.
Having parties isn't illegal anymore. And on the day job of being PM he's doing a good job.
The issue is the lawbreaking of telling us not to gather, then doing so himself. But that law has gone, so throwing boozy parties now is perfectly legal.
1 Blaming Sunak for blocking triggering Article 16 and wanting to stick with NI rise despite cost of living crisis
2 Accusing Truss of wasting taxpayers money on private jet flights to, from and around Australia
I think it was pointed out on the past thread that there is little point in having a plane painted in GB colours for trade missions if you don't use it for trips like Truss's Australia jaunt.
One might wonder why the Embassy staff in Canberra were cut to the point that they needed fly ins by Ms "any deal is better than no deal" Truss.
The idea that embassy staff could simply replace visits/interactions with leading members of the government is laughable. International diplomacy is made of meetings like these.
Perhaps, but the FCO have been cutting staff in Canberra and other places for the last 5 years.
1 Blaming Sunak for blocking triggering Article 16 and wanting to stick with NI rise despite cost of living crisis
2 Accusing Truss of wasting taxpayers money on private jet flights to, from and around Australia
I think it was pointed out on the past thread that there is little point in having a plane painted in GB colours for trade missions if you don't use it for trips like Truss's Australia jaunt.
One might wonder why the Embassy staff in Canberra were cut to the point that they needed fly ins by Ms "any deal is better than no deal" Truss.
The idea that embassy staff could simply replace visits/interactions with leading members of the government is laughable. International diplomacy is made of meetings like these.
My experience is that 90% of the actual work is done before the big guns arrive to settle and remaining thorny issues and take the credit.
No doubt, but that 10% can't be replaced with more meetings with the embassy staff.
Do we have any evidence at all to support BJO's claim wrt to Truss's trip?
The first piece I saw on that was a piece of misleading drivel in the Independent.
eg the basis for the £500k claim is 'from a source in the charter industry', which the Indy turns into 'the cost to the taxpayer'. Instead of doing some journalism and finding out what the actual cost was - quite accessible via FOI.
I was going to put in a complaint to the independent regulator, but for some reason the Indy has chosen not to have one.
£500k sounds a reasonable ballpark figure for chartering a plane for the trip, but will be a lot higher than the marginal cost of operating a plane that’s leased by the government already.
If there were more than 30 or 40 government people on the plane, the cost is probably a wash compared to commercial biz class flights
And all 40 of those government people absolutely had to travel business class, of course.
‘Public servants should spend taxpayers’ money with the care they would give to their own. This would be reflected in changes such as travelling by economy rather than business class’
- Liz Truss, 2007
If I have some govt bods flying to Oz for trade purposes I don't want them tossing and turning in economy seats for the 20-odd hours of the journey. I'd rather they had a good chance of a good night's sleep and be fit and raring to go on arrival.
Did 50 people really fly out for a couple of days for serious negotiations? Truss and a couple of flunkies perhaps, but nothing like 50. This was a visit to shore up Morrison before the elections.
Rehashed mutterings about Sunak writing off £4.3m of fraudulent claims without Boris agreement doing rounds.
Not exactly scotched by Boris at PMQs was it.
Mutual destruction game here at play surely a high risk strategy is it not.
I don't get it I thought Boris was pretty safe now.
If the Gray report is even vaguely damaging, I think Sunak's best chance might be to resign very soon afterwards, or even immediately.
Yes, fairly easy to envisage a sequence:
1. Report is published, and fairly damaging. 2. Boris expresses deep regret and a fresh look at policy too, starting with cancelling the NI rise 3. Tory MPs say well, OK, he's making an effort, maybe give him another chance. 4. Sunak resigns - indefensible financial policy coupled with party outrage. 5. Tory MPs say oooh, well, in that case... 6. VONC happens, and narrowly passes.
Isn’t traditional Tory wisdom that the assassin never wears the crown, though?
Wasn't that from when stalking horse candidates were needed. The rules are quite different now.
Also from the days when it was a conservative party. Authoritarian nationalist flag wavers have quite different views on leadership to conservatives.
BTW am I the only one who is perplexed that Putin is waiting for the mud to freeze in Ukraine at the end of January? Surely we are at peak winter now. I have read this several times in different places and it just makes no sense, does it?
I heard it the other way around, that he’s got 4-6 weeks before the mud starts to unfreeze, after which time the tanks won’t go across the steppe.
That makes much more sense, it’s definitely freezing in Ukraine at the moment!
The claim is it's been milder than usual so the mud hasn't frozen as hard as usual.
If that doesn't match what your in laws are saying, however, we may assume the Americans are indulging in wishful thinking.
A friend of my wife’s travelled yesterday, and it was -8°C during the day at Boryspil airport near Kiev, which is probably the warmest place in Ukraine. A quick look at an aviation weather site suggests it’s -1°C right now.
Winter has been relatively mild, but these things are all very much relative - it’s still bloody freezing there! Things will definitely turn around by March though, so if the reports about soft ground are correct Putin might have a very small window indeed.
Mr. Jonathan, if you think that's bad, I've just reached the start of Julian's invasion of Persia in Ammianus Marcellinus' history of The Later Roman Empire.
And don't get me started on Honorius and Arcadius.
The prime minister is a hostage of his own MPs. Boris Johnson sits in his Commons study and they come in and make demands. However brutal their assessment or sweeping their requests, he does his best to say he has heard them and will address their concerns.
It is a bizarre situation for someone whose personal appeal was so key to the election victory just two years ago, but he can’t afford to make a single extra enemy. His MPs have his fate in their hands.
Backbenchers speak even more bluntly to those arranging the “save Boris” operation. They demand changes to the No 10 team and say that these should come straight after the publication of Sue Gray’s report into the Downing Street parties. They are adamant they will brook no delay to this. If things don’t start to move, they warn that they will conclude Johnson isn’t serious about changing. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/boris-johnson-is-a-hostage-with-no-hope-of-escape-n82dg9qq6
If true, the MPs are completely delusional. Boris has no intention of changing, even if he needs to say he will. And if and when his power is on the rise again he has shown he will be brutal to those he perceives as disloyal or a threat.
Boris should be fired for the parties, but if he isn't, he shouldn't need to change.
Having parties isn't illegal anymore. And on the day job of being PM he's doing a good job.
The issue is the lawbreaking of telling us not to gather, then doing so himself. But that law has gone, so throwing boozy parties now is perfectly legal.
The other issue is the constant and completely obvious lying, which suggests he thinks the electorate and his party are simply there to be fooled for his own amusement.
Morning all! Probably worth focusing in the hook that BJ has spaffed hinself onto - lying. Its his usual habit but sadly he has done two things that he will be very very lucky to get away with this time:
1. Lying to the House. Regardless of what excuses HY simpers away with, you cannot be a minister and deliberately lie to the House. He is about to be held to account for doing so repeatedly over a long period. The House investigating and then acting on such behaviour is not something that the remaining WhatsApp Group Loyalists can protect him over
2. Conspiracy to Pervert the Course of Justice. We aren't yet all the way through the two investigations. Numerous reports - backed up seemingly by evidence - that Number 10 has been forcing staff to delete messages about all of the law breaking. And its not isolated - "whoops I lost all my WhatsApp messages" etc etc
Whilst they may not pin the latter on BJ, it makes it almost impossible for any of his colleagues who want to remain front line politicians to sit schtum. HY may have the personal moral standards to be happy to back open lies but I doubt they all have. DD of the SS, Wragg etc will surely be joined by Sunak and Truss and others. To sink the ship you have to step off at the right time.
That time is the Gray report. If its as wall to wall awful as Nut Nut's flat decoration then the people who think they can do a better job - a respectable job maintaining British standards and decency - will need to decide. The ship is sinking regardless, am I sinking with it?
1 Blaming Sunak for blocking triggering Article 16 and wanting to stick with NI rise despite cost of living crisis
2 Accusing Truss of wasting taxpayers money on private jet flights to, from and around Australia
I think it was pointed out on the past thread that there is little point in having a plane painted in GB colours for trade missions if you don't use it for trips like Truss's Australia jaunt.
One might wonder why the Embassy staff in Canberra were cut to the point that they needed fly ins by Ms "any deal is better than no deal" Truss.
The idea that embassy staff could simply replace visits/interactions with leading members of the government is laughable. International diplomacy is made of meetings like these.
My experience is that 90% of the actual work is done before the big guns arrive to settle and remaining thorny issues and take the credit.
No doubt, but that 10% can't be replaced with more meetings with the embassy staff.
Do we have any evidence at all to support BJO's claim wrt to Truss's trip?
The first piece I saw on that was a piece of misleading drivel in the Independent.
eg the basis for the £500k claim is 'from a source in the charter industry', which the Indy turns into 'the cost to the taxpayer'. Instead of doing some journalism and finding out what the actual cost was - quite accessible via FOI.
I was going to put in a complaint to the independent regulator, but for some reason the Indy has chosen not to have one.
£500k sounds a reasonable ballpark figure for chartering a plane for the trip, but will be a lot higher than the marginal cost of operating a plane that’s leased by the government already.
If there were more than 30 or 40 government people on the plane, the cost is probably a wash compared to commercial biz class flights
And all 40 of those government people absolutely had to travel business class, of course.
‘Public servants should spend taxpayers’ money with the care they would give to their own. This would be reflected in changes such as travelling by economy rather than business class’
- Liz Truss, 2007
If I have some govt bods flying to Oz for trade purposes I don't want them tossing and turning in economy seats for the 20-odd hours of the journey. I'd rather they had a good chance of a good night's sleep and be fit and raring to go on arrival.
It's the same as the Universal Credit job search changes, flying on a scheduled flight looks great but creates a whole set of very obvious problems once you stop to think for a second.
I have no problem with them flying business class, especially long haul. I just don't think there's any way that 50 people was the right number to fly out there. It feels like they just thought we've got this flash government plane, let's fill it with people and fly to Australia, which illustrates why having the plane is a bad idea.
Morning all! Probably worth focusing in the hook that BJ has spaffed hinself onto - lying. Its his usual habit but sadly he has done two things that he will be very very lucky to get away with this time:
1. Lying to the House. Regardless of what excuses HY simpers away with, you cannot be a minister and deliberately lie to the House. He is about to be held to account for doing so repeatedly over a long period. The House investigating and then acting on such behaviour is not something that the remaining WhatsApp Group Loyalists can protect him over
2. Conspiracy to Pervert the Course of Justice. We aren't yet all the way through the two investigations. Numerous reports - backed up seemingly by evidence - that Number 10 has been forcing staff to delete messages about all of the law breaking. And its not isolated - "whoops I lost all my WhatsApp messages" etc etc
Whilst they may not pin the latter on BJ, it makes it almost impossible for any of his colleagues who want to remain front line politicians to sit schtum. HY may have the personal moral standards to be happy to back open lies but I doubt they all have. DD of the SS, Wragg etc will surely be joined by Sunak and Truss and others. To sink the ship you have to step off at the right time.
That time is the Gray report. If its as wall to wall awful as Nut Nut's flat decoration then the people who think they can do a better job - a respectable job maintaining British standards and decency - will need to decide. The ship is sinking regardless, am I sinking with it?
I suspect you are too optimistic. I suspect like Francis Urqhart, Boris has enough guile to keep them loyal. Sunak and Truss will look at the glittering ministerial careers Boris has already destroyed (Rudd, Stewart) and hesitate again. We’re stuck with Boris for years.
The prime minister is a hostage of his own MPs. Boris Johnson sits in his Commons study and they come in and make demands. However brutal their assessment or sweeping their requests, he does his best to say he has heard them and will address their concerns.
It is a bizarre situation for someone whose personal appeal was so key to the election victory just two years ago, but he can’t afford to make a single extra enemy. His MPs have his fate in their hands.
Backbenchers speak even more bluntly to those arranging the “save Boris” operation. They demand changes to the No 10 team and say that these should come straight after the publication of Sue Gray’s report into the Downing Street parties. They are adamant they will brook no delay to this. If things don’t start to move, they warn that they will conclude Johnson isn’t serious about changing. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/boris-johnson-is-a-hostage-with-no-hope-of-escape-n82dg9qq6
If true, the MPs are completely delusional. Boris has no intention of changing, even if he needs to say he will. And if and when his power is on the rise again he has shown he will be brutal to those he perceives as disloyal or a threat.
Boris should be fired for the parties, but if he isn't, he shouldn't need to change.
Having parties isn't illegal anymore. And on the day job of being PM he's doing a good job.
The issue is the lawbreaking of telling us not to gather, then doing so himself. But that law has gone, so throwing boozy parties now is perfectly legal.
It's not the law breaking that was the issue, it's the fact it was one rule for us (enforced randomly but ruthlessly when enforced) and another for him.
Add the continual lying on top and you can see why people are annoyed.
However 30% of the population can't see the issue so I would love to know what would be an issue or whether they simply avoid all news.
1 Blaming Sunak for blocking triggering Article 16 and wanting to stick with NI rise despite cost of living crisis
2 Accusing Truss of wasting taxpayers money on private jet flights to, from and around Australia
I think it was pointed out on the past thread that there is little point in having a plane painted in GB colours for trade missions if you don't use it for trips like Truss's Australia jaunt.
One might wonder why the Embassy staff in Canberra were cut to the point that they needed fly ins by Ms "any deal is better than no deal" Truss.
The idea that embassy staff could simply replace visits/interactions with leading members of the government is laughable. International diplomacy is made of meetings like these.
My experience is that 90% of the actual work is done before the big guns arrive to settle and remaining thorny issues and take the credit.
No doubt, but that 10% can't be replaced with more meetings with the embassy staff.
Do we have any evidence at all to support BJO's claim wrt to Truss's trip?
The first piece I saw on that was a piece of misleading drivel in the Independent.
eg the basis for the £500k claim is 'from a source in the charter industry', which the Indy turns into 'the cost to the taxpayer'. Instead of doing some journalism and finding out what the actual cost was - quite accessible via FOI.
I was going to put in a complaint to the independent regulator, but for some reason the Indy has chosen not to have one.
It’s one of these stories that makes for a great headline, but doesn’t really stand up once you start digging.
Aka Bollocks.
You don't really need to start digging. The first para in the Indy was enough.
I wonder whether, perhaps, Lord Agnew's rather dramatic resignation is going to have consequences. Coupled with some of PPE contracts it rather looks as though Sunak was spending our money like the proverbial drunken sailor.
Without those Bounceback loans a lot of small businesses wouldn't exist any more.
The issue is really one about failed bank checks - loans made to businesses that didn't exist earlier should be the banks problem not the Governments.
Done Wordle 3 times, got it once in 3 goes and twice in 4. Not sure whether that's good or average.
I have avoided so far, but the scoring system (right letter - right place, and right letter - wrong place) is the peg scoring system for the Mastermind game.
1 Blaming Sunak for blocking triggering Article 16 and wanting to stick with NI rise despite cost of living crisis
2 Accusing Truss of wasting taxpayers money on private jet flights to, from and around Australia
I think it was pointed out on the past thread that there is little point in having a plane painted in GB colours for trade missions if you don't use it for trips like Truss's Australia jaunt.
One might wonder why the Embassy staff in Canberra were cut to the point that they needed fly ins by Ms "any deal is better than no deal" Truss.
The idea that embassy staff could simply replace visits/interactions with leading members of the government is laughable. International diplomacy is made of meetings like these.
My experience is that 90% of the actual work is done before the big guns arrive to settle and remaining thorny issues and take the credit.
No doubt, but that 10% can't be replaced with more meetings with the embassy staff.
Do we have any evidence at all to support BJO's claim wrt to Truss's trip?
The first piece I saw on that was a piece of misleading drivel in the Independent.
eg the basis for the £500k claim is 'from a source in the charter industry', which the Indy turns into 'the cost to the taxpayer'. Instead of doing some journalism and finding out what the actual cost was - quite accessible via FOI.
I was going to put in a complaint to the independent regulator, but for some reason the Indy has chosen not to have one.
£500k sounds a reasonable ballpark figure for chartering a plane for the trip, but will be a lot higher than the marginal cost of operating a plane that’s leased by the government already.
If there were more than 30 or 40 government people on the plane, the cost is probably a wash compared to commercial biz class flights
And all 40 of those government people absolutely had to travel business class, of course.
‘Public servants should spend taxpayers’ money with the care they would give to their own. This would be reflected in changes such as travelling by economy rather than business class’
- Liz Truss, 2007
If I have some govt bods flying to Oz for trade purposes I don't want them tossing and turning in economy seats for the 20-odd hours of the journey. I'd rather they had a good chance of a good night's sleep and be fit and raring to go on arrival.
It's the same as the Universal Credit job search changes, flying on a scheduled flight looks great but creates a whole set of very obvious problems once you stop to think for a second.
I have no problem with them flying business class, especially long haul. I just don't think there's any way that 50 people was the right number to fly out there. It feels like they just thought we've got this flash government plane, let's fill it with people and fly to Australia, which illustrates why having the plane is a bad idea.
In particular, I suspect it doesn’t play very well with the thousands of us who don’t even get a jolly to London for the day now that everything has moved onto Zoom/Teams/that Google thing that sends my laptop fans into F1 engine simulation mode.
The prime minister is a hostage of his own MPs. Boris Johnson sits in his Commons study and they come in and make demands. However brutal their assessment or sweeping their requests, he does his best to say he has heard them and will address their concerns.
It is a bizarre situation for someone whose personal appeal was so key to the election victory just two years ago, but he can’t afford to make a single extra enemy. His MPs have his fate in their hands.
Backbenchers speak even more bluntly to those arranging the “save Boris” operation. They demand changes to the No 10 team and say that these should come straight after the publication of Sue Gray’s report into the Downing Street parties. They are adamant they will brook no delay to this. If things don’t start to move, they warn that they will conclude Johnson isn’t serious about changing. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/boris-johnson-is-a-hostage-with-no-hope-of-escape-n82dg9qq6
If true, the MPs are completely delusional. Boris has no intention of changing, even if he needs to say he will. And if and when his power is on the rise again he has shown he will be brutal to those he perceives as disloyal or a threat.
Boris should be fired for the parties, but if he isn't, he shouldn't need to change.
Having parties isn't illegal anymore. And on the day job of being PM he's doing a good job.
The issue is the lawbreaking of telling us not to gather, then doing so himself. But that law has gone, so throwing boozy parties now is perfectly legal.
NHS waiting lists at record levels, debt at an all time high, inflation heading for 7%, tax rises for ordinary workers, energy bills up 50%, 150k+ dead from a pandemic the government didn't prepare for, ministerial resignations, red tape and queues of lorries at the border, and government in stasis as wave upon wave of scandals and sleaze break over them... If this chaos is the PM doing a good job I'd hate to see him doing a bad one.
1 Blaming Sunak for blocking triggering Article 16 and wanting to stick with NI rise despite cost of living crisis
2 Accusing Truss of wasting taxpayers money on private jet flights to, from and around Australia
I think it was pointed out on the past thread that there is little point in having a plane painted in GB colours for trade missions if you don't use it for trips like Truss's Australia jaunt.
One might wonder why the Embassy staff in Canberra were cut to the point that they needed fly ins by Ms "any deal is better than no deal" Truss.
The idea that embassy staff could simply replace visits/interactions with leading members of the government is laughable. International diplomacy is made of meetings like these.
My experience is that 90% of the actual work is done before the big guns arrive to settle and remaining thorny issues and take the credit.
No doubt, but that 10% can't be replaced with more meetings with the embassy staff.
Do we have any evidence at all to support BJO's claim wrt to Truss's trip?
The first piece I saw on that was a piece of misleading drivel in the Independent.
eg the basis for the £500k claim is 'from a source in the charter industry', which the Indy turns into 'the cost to the taxpayer'. Instead of doing some journalism and finding out what the actual cost was - quite accessible via FOI.
I was going to put in a complaint to the independent regulator, but for some reason the Indy has chosen not to have one.
£500k sounds a reasonable ballpark figure for chartering a plane for the trip, but will be a lot higher than the marginal cost of operating a plane that’s leased by the government already.
If there were more than 30 or 40 government people on the plane, the cost is probably a wash compared to commercial biz class flights
And all 40 of those government people absolutely had to travel business class, of course.
‘Public servants should spend taxpayers’ money with the care they would give to their own. This would be reflected in changes such as travelling by economy rather than business class’
- Liz Truss, 2007
If I have some govt bods flying to Oz for trade purposes I don't want them tossing and turning in economy seats for the 20-odd hours of the journey. I'd rather they had a good chance of a good night's sleep and be fit and raring to go on arrival.
It's the same as the Universal Credit job search changes, flying on a scheduled flight looks great but creates a whole set of very obvious problems once you stop to think for a second.
I have no problem with them flying business class, especially long haul. I just don't think there's any way that 50 people was the right number to fly out there. It feels like they just thought we've got this flash government plane, let's fill it with people and fly to Australia, which illustrates why having the plane is a bad idea.
Johnson has bought two flash planes with the taxpayers' money: A330 MRTT ZZ336 (that was the one with the million quid paint job) and A321 G-XATW. They've also got a tender out for a further two GV types.
The A321 had to stop in Adelaide, Kuala Lumpur and Dubai to get there and back so it was hardly the most efficient way to do it.
What did Live Laugh Truss and Baldy Ben actually achieve on their winter sun break?
1 Blaming Sunak for blocking triggering Article 16 and wanting to stick with NI rise despite cost of living crisis
2 Accusing Truss of wasting taxpayers money on private jet flights to, from and around Australia
I think it was pointed out on the past thread that there is little point in having a plane painted in GB colours for trade missions if you don't use it for trips like Truss's Australia jaunt.
One might wonder why the Embassy staff in Canberra were cut to the point that they needed fly ins by Ms "any deal is better than no deal" Truss.
The idea that embassy staff could simply replace visits/interactions with leading members of the government is laughable. International diplomacy is made of meetings like these.
My experience is that 90% of the actual work is done before the big guns arrive to settle and remaining thorny issues and take the credit.
No doubt, but that 10% can't be replaced with more meetings with the embassy staff.
Do we have any evidence at all to support BJO's claim wrt to Truss's trip?
The first piece I saw on that was a piece of misleading drivel in the Independent.
eg the basis for the £500k claim is 'from a source in the charter industry', which the Indy turns into 'the cost to the taxpayer'. Instead of doing some journalism and finding out what the actual cost was - quite accessible via FOI.
I was going to put in a complaint to the independent regulator, but for some reason the Indy has chosen not to have one.
£500k sounds a reasonable ballpark figure for chartering a plane for the trip, but will be a lot higher than the marginal cost of operating a plane that’s leased by the government already.
If there were more than 30 or 40 government people on the plane, the cost is probably a wash compared to commercial biz class flights, if there were any journalists or non-government staff on the plane, they will have been billed which reduces the cost to government further.
There were also security and logistics considerations, Covid protocols around commercial flights, and the background of the ongoing situation in Ukraine.
It’s one of these stories that makes for a great headline, but doesn’t really stand up once you start digging. But for those ploting against Ms Truss, the headline will be enough.
Hard working voters are about to lose their shirts on energy bills and the Johnsonian apologists are claiming what good value for money Truss spaffing half a million for some flights to Australia in a plane that Johnson spent £900k painting is It looks dreadful.
When Jeremy Hunt was Foreign Secretary in May's Government, he sat in the row before me in the BACK of an ANA flight from Tokyo.
We are watching Johnson's rerun of the Court of Louis XIV. It will end, metaphorically speaking, in the same way. The question is when?
The 500k claim is transparent BS, as has been shown.
For a start, the aircraft is a long term lease, not a "charter". That claim in the first para of the Indy story is a straight up lie. Or, I guess, what passes for journalism in that paper.
And on it goes.
Sad to see anyone going for the stuff written for Gormless the Independent Reader.
1 Blaming Sunak for blocking triggering Article 16 and wanting to stick with NI rise despite cost of living crisis
2 Accusing Truss of wasting taxpayers money on private jet flights to, from and around Australia
I think it was pointed out on the past thread that there is little point in having a plane painted in GB colours for trade missions if you don't use it for trips like Truss's Australia jaunt.
One might wonder why the Embassy staff in Canberra were cut to the point that they needed fly ins by Ms "any deal is better than no deal" Truss.
The idea that embassy staff could simply replace visits/interactions with leading members of the government is laughable. International diplomacy is made of meetings like these.
My experience is that 90% of the actual work is done before the big guns arrive to settle and remaining thorny issues and take the credit.
No doubt, but that 10% can't be replaced with more meetings with the embassy staff.
Do we have any evidence at all to support BJO's claim wrt to Truss's trip?
The first piece I saw on that was a piece of misleading drivel in the Independent.
eg the basis for the £500k claim is 'from a source in the charter industry', which the Indy turns into 'the cost to the taxpayer'. Instead of doing some journalism and finding out what the actual cost was - quite accessible via FOI.
I was going to put in a complaint to the independent regulator, but for some reason the Indy has chosen not to have one.
£500k sounds a reasonable ballpark figure for chartering a plane for the trip, but will be a lot higher than the marginal cost of operating a plane that’s leased by the government already.
If there were more than 30 or 40 government people on the plane, the cost is probably a wash compared to commercial biz class flights
And all 40 of those government people absolutely had to travel business class, of course.
‘Public servants should spend taxpayers’ money with the care they would give to their own. This would be reflected in changes such as travelling by economy rather than business class’
- Liz Truss, 2007
If I have some govt bods flying to Oz for trade purposes I don't want them tossing and turning in economy seats for the 20-odd hours of the journey. I'd rather they had a good chance of a good night's sleep and be fit and raring to go on arrival.
It's the same as the Universal Credit job search changes, flying on a scheduled flight looks great but creates a whole set of very obvious problems once you stop to think for a second.
I have no problem with them flying business class, especially long haul. I just don't think there's any way that 50 people was the right number to fly out there. It feels like they just thought we've got this flash government plane, let's fill it with people and fly to Australia, which illustrates why having the plane is a bad idea.
In particular, I suspect it doesn’t play very well with the thousands of us who don’t even get a jolly to London for the day now that everything has moved onto Zoom/Teams/that Google thing that sends my laptop fans into F1 engine simulation mode.
Switch to Edge rather than Chrome - it's the same Chromium backend but Google have about 3 tonnes of pointless something or other (tracking code?) that Microsoft removed from their version.
I have a (low spec single purpose) VM that dies when 3 windows are open in chrome but can support 25 or so in Edge
I wonder whether, perhaps, Lord Agnew's rather dramatic resignation is going to have consequences. Coupled with some of PPE contracts it rather looks as though Sunak was spending our money like the proverbial drunken sailor.
Without those Bounceback loans a lot of small businesses wouldn't exist any more.
The issue is really one about failed bank checks - loans made to businesses that didn't exist earlier should be the banks problem not the Governments.
How much incentive did the banks have to conduct proper due diligence, given the government were underwriting the loans?
As you say, thousands of small businesses were kept alive by the loans, but there was some abuse that’s needs to be looked into and prosecuted where necessary. Set up business > get loan > buy car > shut down business - that’s simply fraud.
Ditto with the PPE contracts, especially the later ones or where things were paid for up front but not delivered. An awful lot of sympathy at the start of the pandemic though, where it’s quite conceivable that ministers were saying “Does anyone know anyone, who knows anyone who can get PPE here quickly?”
"Sunak is a plastic Brexiteer not a true believer"
Proper hatchet job stuff
Eh?
Sunak is a true Brexit believer, and has been for a long time.
Back to the central problem the UK now has. There was a majority for Brexit, and no enthusiasm to reverse it.
But the question not what to do with the Brexit we asked for remains as unsolved as ever. It's safe to say that Rishi's Brexit would betray Boris's Brexit and vice versa. But the only path to 52% was to combine the two.
I wonder whether, perhaps, Lord Agnew's rather dramatic resignation is going to have consequences. Coupled with some of PPE contracts it rather looks as though Sunak was spending our money like the proverbial drunken sailor.
Without those Bounceback loans a lot of small businesses wouldn't exist any more.
The issue is really one about failed bank checks - loans made to businesses that didn't exist earlier should be the banks problem not the Governments.
How much incentive did the banks have to conduct proper due diligence, given the government were underwriting the loans?
As you say, thousands of small businesses were kept alive by the loans, but there was some abuse that’s needs to be looked into and prosecuted where necessary. Set up business > get loan > buy car > shut down business - that’s simply fraud.
Ditto with the PPE contracts, especially the later ones or where things were paid for up front but not delivered. An awful lot of sympathy at the start of the pandemic though, where it’s quite conceivable that ministers were saying “Does anyone know anyone, who knows anyone who can get PPE here quickly?”
It seems to be taking my son 3 years. Oh, as you were.
I wonder whether, perhaps, Lord Agnew's rather dramatic resignation is going to have consequences. Coupled with some of PPE contracts it rather looks as though Sunak was spending our money like the proverbial drunken sailor.
Without those Bounceback loans a lot of small businesses wouldn't exist any more.
The issue is really one about failed bank checks - loans made to businesses that didn't exist earlier should be the banks problem not the Governments.
How much incentive did the banks have to conduct proper due diligence, given the government were underwriting the loans?
As you say, thousands of small businesses were kept alive by the loans, but there was some abuse that’s needs to be looked into and prosecuted where necessary. Set up business > get loan > buy car > shut down business - that’s simply fraud.
Ditto with the PPE contracts, especially the later ones or where things were paid for up front but not delivered. An awful lot of sympathy at the start of the pandemic though, where it’s quite conceivable that ministers were saying “Does anyone know anyone, who knows anyone who can get PPE here quickly?”
That's the thing in both cases - March through to June / July failed PPE projects are just one of those things - stuff could easily go wrong for millions of cases.
On the BBL stuff - again there wasn't the time to check things properly but checking if a company existed prior to March 20th 2020 was a 2 second check at Companies house and would have taken a developer 1 day max to add to a system (I know as I did it in 2 hours a couple of weeks back and I'm not the greatest developer)
Other loans would be harder to validate (so yep there will be failures and fraud, meh) but start date really should have been validated and any banks who lent that money out deserves to pay out for those loans.
As an aside, I was repeatedly sent letters for the furlough. Didn't use it, of course (I work from home anyway and was unaffected professionally by the pandemic).
After all that fuss about Sue Gray's report being published unredacted, it seems the Met got there first - below statement says police have asked her to make "minimal reference" to any potentially illegal parties which it is now investigating https://twitter.com/FraserNelson/status/1486972451187789826/photo/1
This is significant as it suggests if the Gray report is published before the Met investigation is finalised then the most serious allegations may be scaled back. Which would clearly be good news for the PM.
1 Blaming Sunak for blocking triggering Article 16 and wanting to stick with NI rise despite cost of living crisis
2 Accusing Truss of wasting taxpayers money on private jet flights to, from and around Australia
I think it was pointed out on the past thread that there is little point in having a plane painted in GB colours for trade missions if you don't use it for trips like Truss's Australia jaunt.
One might wonder why the Embassy staff in Canberra were cut to the point that they needed fly ins by Ms "any deal is better than no deal" Truss.
The idea that embassy staff could simply replace visits/interactions with leading members of the government is laughable. International diplomacy is made of meetings like these.
My experience is that 90% of the actual work is done before the big guns arrive to settle and remaining thorny issues and take the credit.
No doubt, but that 10% can't be replaced with more meetings with the embassy staff.
Do we have any evidence at all to support BJO's claim wrt to Truss's trip?
The first piece I saw on that was a piece of misleading drivel in the Independent.
eg the basis for the £500k claim is 'from a source in the charter industry', which the Indy turns into 'the cost to the taxpayer'. Instead of doing some journalism and finding out what the actual cost was - quite accessible via FOI.
I was going to put in a complaint to the independent regulator, but for some reason the Indy has chosen not to have one.
£500k sounds a reasonable ballpark figure for chartering a plane for the trip, but will be a lot higher than the marginal cost of operating a plane that’s leased by the government already.
If there were more than 30 or 40 government people on the plane, the cost is probably a wash compared to commercial biz class flights
And all 40 of those government people absolutely had to travel business class, of course.
‘Public servants should spend taxpayers’ money with the care they would give to their own. This would be reflected in changes such as travelling by economy rather than business class’
- Liz Truss, 2007
If I have some govt bods flying to Oz for trade purposes I don't want them tossing and turning in economy seats for the 20-odd hours of the journey. I'd rather they had a good chance of a good night's sleep and be fit and raring to go on arrival.
It's the same as the Universal Credit job search changes, flying on a scheduled flight looks great but creates a whole set of very obvious problems once you stop to think for a second.
I have no problem with them flying business class, especially long haul. I just don't think there's any way that 50 people was the right number to fly out there. It feels like they just thought we've got this flash government plane, let's fill it with people and fly to Australia, which illustrates why having the plane is a bad idea.
Johnson has bought two flash planes with the taxpayers' money: A330 MRTT ZZ336 (that was the one with the million quid paint job) and A321 G-XATW. They've also got a tender out for a further two GV types.
The A321 had to stop in Adelaide, Kuala Lumpur and Dubai to get there and back so it was hardly the most efficient way to do it.
What did Live Laugh Truss and Baldy Ben actually achieve on their winter sun break?
A trade deal that damages UK farming while not increasing a exports by any significant amount - I deal with Oz every week but my exports have and always will be invisible as it's software.
Morning all! Probably worth focusing in the hook that BJ has spaffed hinself onto - lying. Its his usual habit but sadly he has done two things that he will be very very lucky to get away with this time:
1. Lying to the House. Regardless of what excuses HY simpers away with, you cannot be a minister and deliberately lie to the House. He is about to be held to account for doing so repeatedly over a long period. The House investigating and then acting on such behaviour is not something that the remaining WhatsApp Group Loyalists can protect him over
2. Conspiracy to Pervert the Course of Justice. We aren't yet all the way through the two investigations. Numerous reports - backed up seemingly by evidence - that Number 10 has been forcing staff to delete messages about all of the law breaking. And its not isolated - "whoops I lost all my WhatsApp messages" etc etc
Whilst they may not pin the latter on BJ, it makes it almost impossible for any of his colleagues who want to remain front line politicians to sit schtum. HY may have the personal moral standards to be happy to back open lies but I doubt they all have. DD of the SS, Wragg etc will surely be joined by Sunak and Truss and others. To sink the ship you have to step off at the right time.
That time is the Gray report. If its as wall to wall awful as Nut Nut's flat decoration then the people who think they can do a better job - a respectable job maintaining British standards and decency - will need to decide. The ship is sinking regardless, am I sinking with it?
I suspect you are too optimistic. I suspect like Francis Urqhart, Boris has enough guile to keep them loyal. Sunak and Truss will look at the glittering ministerial careers Boris has already destroyed (Rudd, Stewart) and hesitate again. We’re stuck with Boris for years.
Possibly so. Then again what the "I think lies are moral" brigade miss is that normals outside the bubble hate being lied to. Brexit was a big FU to a system that had lied to them for ever. And if you look at the vox pops and the MP postbags an awful lot of Tory voters have had enough.
That isn't going to improve. The policy agenda going forward is bad for the Tories. And we have a lot more of Boris's discarded shit to be thrown at Boris. So whatever the ministerial career looks like it won't last more than a few years unless they do something.
Sunak is the one to watch. Remember that he doesn't need the money and has already made the elite in world politics (G7 finance minister) so if his offski flit doesn't work he can always go back to earning £gazillions elsewhere. He hasn't remotely positioned himself as anything loyal to the PM who in turn is now spinning furiously against him.
Set up business > get loan > buy car > shut down business
I sort of wish I'd thought of that.
Ha, as you were trawling through the auctions looking for something off-lease that would clean up, actually doing work rather than just playing with numbers…
I wonder whether, perhaps, Lord Agnew's rather dramatic resignation is going to have consequences. Coupled with some of PPE contracts it rather looks as though Sunak was spending our money like the proverbial drunken sailor.
Without those Bounceback loans a lot of small businesses wouldn't exist any more.
The issue is really one about failed bank checks - loans made to businesses that didn't exist earlier should be the banks problem not the Governments.
That is one of the problems - Agnew listed a number in his resignation speech - but that too is down to the Treasury having set up a scheme which reimbursed the banks 100% without any penalties for not chasing fraud. Providing they ticked the boxes on the loan applications, there's little or no comeback.
Admittedly it was a hard problem at the time - any onerous due diligence would have meant the scheme didn't operate in time to save genuine businesses. But the problem has continued to be ignored for well over a year now.
1 Blaming Sunak for blocking triggering Article 16 and wanting to stick with NI rise despite cost of living crisis
2 Accusing Truss of wasting taxpayers money on private jet flights to, from and around Australia
I think it was pointed out on the past thread that there is little point in having a plane painted in GB colours for trade missions if you don't use it for trips like Truss's Australia jaunt.
One might wonder why the Embassy staff in Canberra were cut to the point that they needed fly ins by Ms "any deal is better than no deal" Truss.
The idea that embassy staff could simply replace visits/interactions with leading members of the government is laughable. International diplomacy is made of meetings like these.
My experience is that 90% of the actual work is done before the big guns arrive to settle and remaining thorny issues and take the credit.
No doubt, but that 10% can't be replaced with more meetings with the embassy staff.
Do we have any evidence at all to support BJO's claim wrt to Truss's trip?
The first piece I saw on that was a piece of misleading drivel in the Independent.
eg the basis for the £500k claim is 'from a source in the charter industry', which the Indy turns into 'the cost to the taxpayer'. Instead of doing some journalism and finding out what the actual cost was - quite accessible via FOI.
I was going to put in a complaint to the independent regulator, but for some reason the Indy has chosen not to have one.
£500k sounds a reasonable ballpark figure for chartering a plane for the trip, but will be a lot higher than the marginal cost of operating a plane that’s leased by the government already.
If there were more than 30 or 40 government people on the plane, the cost is probably a wash compared to commercial biz class flights
And all 40 of those government people absolutely had to travel business class, of course.
‘Public servants should spend taxpayers’ money with the care they would give to their own. This would be reflected in changes such as travelling by economy rather than business class’
- Liz Truss, 2007
If I have some govt bods flying to Oz for trade purposes I don't want them tossing and turning in economy seats for the 20-odd hours of the journey. I'd rather they had a good chance of a good night's sleep and be fit and raring to go on arrival.
It's the same as the Universal Credit job search changes, flying on a scheduled flight looks great but creates a whole set of very obvious problems once you stop to think for a second.
I have no problem with them flying business class, especially long haul. I just don't think there's any way that 50 people was the right number to fly out there. It feels like they just thought we've got this flash government plane, let's fill it with people and fly to Australia, which illustrates why having the plane is a bad idea.
In particular, I suspect it doesn’t play very well with the thousands of us who don’t even get a jolly to London for the day now that everything has moved onto Zoom/Teams/that Google thing that sends my laptop fans into F1 engine simulation mode.
Switch to Edge rather than Chrome - it's the same Chromium backend but Google have about 3 tonnes of pointless something or other (tracking code?) that Microsoft removed from their version.
I have a (low spec single purpose) VM that dies when 3 windows are open in chrome but can support 25 or so in Edge
Wow I had no idea about that and would have expected the opposite.
I normally use either Chrome or Firefox and have done for a long time as Internet Explorer was crap.
I half expected Edge to be a rebranded IE or have similar MS issues not the other way around. So have never used Edge.
1 Blaming Sunak for blocking triggering Article 16 and wanting to stick with NI rise despite cost of living crisis
2 Accusing Truss of wasting taxpayers money on private jet flights to, from and around Australia
I think it was pointed out on the past thread that there is little point in having a plane painted in GB colours for trade missions if you don't use it for trips like Truss's Australia jaunt.
One might wonder why the Embassy staff in Canberra were cut to the point that they needed fly ins by Ms "any deal is better than no deal" Truss.
The idea that embassy staff could simply replace visits/interactions with leading members of the government is laughable. International diplomacy is made of meetings like these.
My experience is that 90% of the actual work is done before the big guns arrive to settle and remaining thorny issues and take the credit.
No doubt, but that 10% can't be replaced with more meetings with the embassy staff.
Do we have any evidence at all to support BJO's claim wrt to Truss's trip?
The first piece I saw on that was a piece of misleading drivel in the Independent.
eg the basis for the £500k claim is 'from a source in the charter industry', which the Indy turns into 'the cost to the taxpayer'. Instead of doing some journalism and finding out what the actual cost was - quite accessible via FOI.
I was going to put in a complaint to the independent regulator, but for some reason the Indy has chosen not to have one.
£500k sounds a reasonable ballpark figure for chartering a plane for the trip, but will be a lot higher than the marginal cost of operating a plane that’s leased by the government already.
If there were more than 30 or 40 government people on the plane, the cost is probably a wash compared to commercial biz class flights
And all 40 of those government people absolutely had to travel business class, of course.
‘Public servants should spend taxpayers’ money with the care they would give to their own. This would be reflected in changes such as travelling by economy rather than business class’
- Liz Truss, 2007
If I have some govt bods flying to Oz for trade purposes I don't want them tossing and turning in economy seats for the 20-odd hours of the journey. I'd rather they had a good chance of a good night's sleep and be fit and raring to go on arrival.
It's the same as the Universal Credit job search changes, flying on a scheduled flight looks great but creates a whole set of very obvious problems once you stop to think for a second.
I have no problem with them flying business class, especially long haul. I just don't think there's any way that 50 people was the right number to fly out there. It feels like they just thought we've got this flash government plane, let's fill it with people and fly to Australia, which illustrates why having the plane is a bad idea.
Johnson has bought two flash planes with the taxpayers' money: A330 MRTT ZZ336 (that was the one with the million quid paint job) and A321 G-XATW. They've also got a tender out for a further two GV types.
The A321 had to stop in Adelaide, Kuala Lumpur and Dubai to get there and back so it was hardly the most efficient way to do it.
What did Live Laugh Truss and Baldy Ben actually achieve on their winter sun break?
1 Blaming Sunak for blocking triggering Article 16 and wanting to stick with NI rise despite cost of living crisis
2 Accusing Truss of wasting taxpayers money on private jet flights to, from and around Australia
I think it was pointed out on the past thread that there is little point in having a plane painted in GB colours for trade missions if you don't use it for trips like Truss's Australia jaunt.
One might wonder why the Embassy staff in Canberra were cut to the point that they needed fly ins by Ms "any deal is better than no deal" Truss.
The idea that embassy staff could simply replace visits/interactions with leading members of the government is laughable. International diplomacy is made of meetings like these.
My experience is that 90% of the actual work is done before the big guns arrive to settle and remaining thorny issues and take the credit.
No doubt, but that 10% can't be replaced with more meetings with the embassy staff.
Do we have any evidence at all to support BJO's claim wrt to Truss's trip?
The first piece I saw on that was a piece of misleading drivel in the Independent.
eg the basis for the £500k claim is 'from a source in the charter industry', which the Indy turns into 'the cost to the taxpayer'. Instead of doing some journalism and finding out what the actual cost was - quite accessible via FOI.
I was going to put in a complaint to the independent regulator, but for some reason the Indy has chosen not to have one.
£500k sounds a reasonable ballpark figure for chartering a plane for the trip, but will be a lot higher than the marginal cost of operating a plane that’s leased by the government already.
If there were more than 30 or 40 government people on the plane, the cost is probably a wash compared to commercial biz class flights
And all 40 of those government people absolutely had to travel business class, of course.
‘Public servants should spend taxpayers’ money with the care they would give to their own. This would be reflected in changes such as travelling by economy rather than business class’
- Liz Truss, 2007
If I have some govt bods flying to Oz for trade purposes I don't want them tossing and turning in economy seats for the 20-odd hours of the journey. I'd rather they had a good chance of a good night's sleep and be fit and raring to go on arrival.
It's the same as the Universal Credit job search changes, flying on a scheduled flight looks great but creates a whole set of very obvious problems once you stop to think for a second.
I have no problem with them flying business class, especially long haul. I just don't think there's any way that 50 people was the right number to fly out there. It feels like they just thought we've got this flash government plane, let's fill it with people and fly to Australia, which illustrates why having the plane is a bad idea.
Johnson has bought two flash planes with the taxpayers' money: A330 MRTT ZZ336 (that was the one with the million quid paint job) and A321 G-XATW. They've also got a tender out for a further two GV types.
The A321 had to stop in Adelaide, Kuala Lumpur and Dubai to get there and back so it was hardly the most efficient way to do it.
What did Live Laugh Truss and Baldy Ben actually achieve on their winter sun break?
Yes it was a two-stop trip, both of which were simply tech stops for what’s really a short-haul plane. Adelaide was the origin for the return trip though.
I’d have taken the one-stop A330 rather than the A321 myself, maybe it was u/s, or perhaps the increased cost would have been a lot harder for the department to justify!
1 Blaming Sunak for blocking triggering Article 16 and wanting to stick with NI rise despite cost of living crisis
2 Accusing Truss of wasting taxpayers money on private jet flights to, from and around Australia
I think it was pointed out on the past thread that there is little point in having a plane painted in GB colours for trade missions if you don't use it for trips like Truss's Australia jaunt.
One might wonder why the Embassy staff in Canberra were cut to the point that they needed fly ins by Ms "any deal is better than no deal" Truss.
The idea that embassy staff could simply replace visits/interactions with leading members of the government is laughable. International diplomacy is made of meetings like these.
My experience is that 90% of the actual work is done before the big guns arrive to settle and remaining thorny issues and take the credit.
No doubt, but that 10% can't be replaced with more meetings with the embassy staff.
Do we have any evidence at all to support BJO's claim wrt to Truss's trip?
The first piece I saw on that was a piece of misleading drivel in the Independent.
eg the basis for the £500k claim is 'from a source in the charter industry', which the Indy turns into 'the cost to the taxpayer'. Instead of doing some journalism and finding out what the actual cost was - quite accessible via FOI.
I was going to put in a complaint to the independent regulator, but for some reason the Indy has chosen not to have one.
£500k sounds a reasonable ballpark figure for chartering a plane for the trip, but will be a lot higher than the marginal cost of operating a plane that’s leased by the government already.
If there were more than 30 or 40 government people on the plane, the cost is probably a wash compared to commercial biz class flights
And all 40 of those government people absolutely had to travel business class, of course.
‘Public servants should spend taxpayers’ money with the care they would give to their own. This would be reflected in changes such as travelling by economy rather than business class’
- Liz Truss, 2007
If I have some govt bods flying to Oz for trade purposes I don't want them tossing and turning in economy seats for the 20-odd hours of the journey. I'd rather they had a good chance of a good night's sleep and be fit and raring to go on arrival.
It's the same as the Universal Credit job search changes, flying on a scheduled flight looks great but creates a whole set of very obvious problems once you stop to think for a second.
I have no problem with them flying business class, especially long haul. I just don't think there's any way that 50 people was the right number to fly out there. It feels like they just thought we've got this flash government plane, let's fill it with people and fly to Australia, which illustrates why having the plane is a bad idea.
In particular, I suspect it doesn’t play very well with the thousands of us who don’t even get a jolly to London for the day now that everything has moved onto Zoom/Teams/that Google thing that sends my laptop fans into F1 engine simulation mode.
Switch to Edge rather than Chrome - it's the same Chromium backend but Google have about 3 tonnes of pointless something or other (tracking code?) that Microsoft removed from their version.
I have a (low spec single purpose) VM that dies when 3 windows are open in chrome but can support 25 or so in Edge
Wow I had no idea about that and would have expected the opposite.
I normally use either Chrome or Firefox and have done for a long time as Internet Explorer was crap.
I half expected Edge to be a rebranded IE or have similar MS issues not the other way around. So have never used Edge.
Is Edge really better than Chrome or Firefox?
It was certainly why I switched to Chrome in the first place - that it was the most efficient browser - but it's not hard to believe that a lot of ad-related bloat has been added to Chrome over the years. I've been having some issues with Chrome recently, so perhaps I'll give FIrefox another go.
I wonder whether, perhaps, Lord Agnew's rather dramatic resignation is going to have consequences. Coupled with some of PPE contracts it rather looks as though Sunak was spending our money like the proverbial drunken sailor.
Without those Bounceback loans a lot of small businesses wouldn't exist any more.
The issue is really one about failed bank checks - loans made to businesses that didn't exist earlier should be the banks problem not the Governments.
That is one of the problems - Agnew listed a number in his resignation speech - but that too is down to the Treasury having set up a scheme which reimbursed the banks 100% without any penalties for not chasing fraud. Providing they ticked the boxes on the loan applications, there's little or no comeback.
Admittedly it was a hard problem at the time - any onerous due diligence would have meant the scheme didn't operate in time to save genuine businesses. But the problem has continued to be ignored for well over a year now.
The sensible thing would be to set up an HMRC department to investigate and chase down the fraud. Fraud is a criminal offence, but the first stage could be to make significant publicity to this matter and offer an amnesty to anyone who returns the money either in full or agrees proper repayments. The next stage will be to track down the directors of the shell companies. The monies recovered should pay for the additional resources. Obviously there will be offshore fraudsters that will never be tracked down, so it depends on how much has gone to organised crime, but I suspect a large amount could be recovered. The banks could even be incentivised to help recover it.
After all that fuss about Sue Gray's report being published unredacted, it seems the Met got there first - below statement says police have asked her to make "minimal reference" to any potentially illegal parties which it is now investigating https://twitter.com/FraserNelson/status/1486972451187789826/photo/1
This is significant as it suggests if the Gray report is published before the Met investigation is finalised then the most serious allegations may be scaled back. Which would clearly be good news for the PM.
So for the sake of avoiding prejudicing a behind closed doors police investigation which is only ever likely to lead to the issuing of some fixed penalty notices, a civil servant is being asked to pull her punches in a report for publication which would otherwise bring down the Prime Minister.
Thanks, Met Police. Just when it yet again it seems that you can't sink any lower, you head off further into the abyss.
There isn't mention of 50 trade negotiators, though she did take her official photographer.
If you wanted to get from London to Sydney and back in the most comfortable and convenient way possible I don't know why you'd do anything other than first class on Emirates or Etihad.
I refuse to believe the Australians were in any way impressed by an A321 with a livery that looks a child designed it to win a Blue Peter Badge.
There isn't mention of 50 trade negotiators, though she did take her official photographer.
If you wanted to get from London to Sydney and back in the most comfortable and convenient way possible I don't know why you'd do anything other than first class on Emirates or Etihad.
I refuse to believe the Australians were in any way impressed by an A321 with a livery that looks a child designed it to win a Blue Peter Badge.
On the contrary. There was initially much excitement. They thought it was promoting a new Austin Powers movie.
1 Blaming Sunak for blocking triggering Article 16 and wanting to stick with NI rise despite cost of living crisis
2 Accusing Truss of wasting taxpayers money on private jet flights to, from and around Australia
I think it was pointed out on the past thread that there is little point in having a plane painted in GB colours for trade missions if you don't use it for trips like Truss's Australia jaunt.
One might wonder why the Embassy staff in Canberra were cut to the point that they needed fly ins by Ms "any deal is better than no deal" Truss.
The idea that embassy staff could simply replace visits/interactions with leading members of the government is laughable. International diplomacy is made of meetings like these.
My experience is that 90% of the actual work is done before the big guns arrive to settle and remaining thorny issues and take the credit.
No doubt, but that 10% can't be replaced with more meetings with the embassy staff.
Do we have any evidence at all to support BJO's claim wrt to Truss's trip?
The first piece I saw on that was a piece of misleading drivel in the Independent.
eg the basis for the £500k claim is 'from a source in the charter industry', which the Indy turns into 'the cost to the taxpayer'. Instead of doing some journalism and finding out what the actual cost was - quite accessible via FOI.
I was going to put in a complaint to the independent regulator, but for some reason the Indy has chosen not to have one.
£500k sounds a reasonable ballpark figure for chartering a plane for the trip, but will be a lot higher than the marginal cost of operating a plane that’s leased by the government already.
If there were more than 30 or 40 government people on the plane, the cost is probably a wash compared to commercial biz class flights
And all 40 of those government people absolutely had to travel business class, of course.
‘Public servants should spend taxpayers’ money with the care they would give to their own. This would be reflected in changes such as travelling by economy rather than business class’
- Liz Truss, 2007
If I have some govt bods flying to Oz for trade purposes I don't want them tossing and turning in economy seats for the 20-odd hours of the journey. I'd rather they had a good chance of a good night's sleep and be fit and raring to go on arrival.
It's the same as the Universal Credit job search changes, flying on a scheduled flight looks great but creates a whole set of very obvious problems once you stop to think for a second.
I have no problem with them flying business class, especially long haul. I just don't think there's any way that 50 people was the right number to fly out there. It feels like they just thought we've got this flash government plane, let's fill it with people and fly to Australia, which illustrates why having the plane is a bad idea.
In particular, I suspect it doesn’t play very well with the thousands of us who don’t even get a jolly to London for the day now that everything has moved onto Zoom/Teams/that Google thing that sends my laptop fans into F1 engine simulation mode.
Switch to Edge rather than Chrome - it's the same Chromium backend but Google have about 3 tonnes of pointless something or other (tracking code?) that Microsoft removed from their version.
I have a (low spec single purpose) VM that dies when 3 windows are open in chrome but can support 25 or so in Edge
Interesting. I use Safari for everything else because it’s so much faster than anything Chromium-based (I’m on a Mac) but Google Whatever is only tolerable on Chrome. Haven’t tried Edge - will do so, thanks.
After all that fuss about Sue Gray's report being published unredacted, it seems the Met got there first - below statement says police have asked her to make "minimal reference" to any potentially illegal parties which it is now investigating https://twitter.com/FraserNelson/status/1486972451187789826/photo/1
This is significant as it suggests if the Gray report is published before the Met investigation is finalised then the most serious allegations may be scaled back. Which would clearly be good news for the PM.
So for the sake of avoiding prejudicing a behind closed doors police investigation which is only ever likely to lead to the issuing of some fixed penalty notices, a civil servant is being asked to pull her punches in a report for publication which would otherwise bring down the Prime Minister.
Thanks, Met Police. Just when it yet again it seems that you can't sink any lower, you head off further into the abyss.
Yes it all has quite a stench about it.
I bet Priti Patel at the Home Office pressured the Met.
"Sunak is a plastic Brexiteer not a true believer"
Proper hatchet job stuff
Eh?
Sunak is a true Brexit believer, and has been for a long time.
Back to the central problem the UK now has. There was a majority for Brexit, and no enthusiasm to reverse it.
But the question not what to do with the Brexit we asked for remains as unsolved as ever. It's safe to say that Rishi's Brexit would betray Boris's Brexit and vice versa. But the only path to 52% was to combine the two.
We left the EU and it isn't controversial to say we aren't rejoining any time soon. But we need need to create a Border Operating Model that works. Right now it doesn't work and it will get worse as traffic increases next month and more checks phase in at the start of April and again July.
They can't blame other people - the hauliers, the exporters, the ports. They can't say "do business somewhere else". They just need to make it work. The late running new computer system will help (eventually) but as it comes in after the next 2 tranches of red tape it may only improve things back to now - which doesn't work...
1 Blaming Sunak for blocking triggering Article 16 and wanting to stick with NI rise despite cost of living crisis
2 Accusing Truss of wasting taxpayers money on private jet flights to, from and around Australia
I think it was pointed out on the past thread that there is little point in having a plane painted in GB colours for trade missions if you don't use it for trips like Truss's Australia jaunt.
One might wonder why the Embassy staff in Canberra were cut to the point that they needed fly ins by Ms "any deal is better than no deal" Truss.
The idea that embassy staff could simply replace visits/interactions with leading members of the government is laughable. International diplomacy is made of meetings like these.
My experience is that 90% of the actual work is done before the big guns arrive to settle and remaining thorny issues and take the credit.
No doubt, but that 10% can't be replaced with more meetings with the embassy staff.
Do we have any evidence at all to support BJO's claim wrt to Truss's trip?
The first piece I saw on that was a piece of misleading drivel in the Independent.
eg the basis for the £500k claim is 'from a source in the charter industry', which the Indy turns into 'the cost to the taxpayer'. Instead of doing some journalism and finding out what the actual cost was - quite accessible via FOI.
I was going to put in a complaint to the independent regulator, but for some reason the Indy has chosen not to have one.
£500k sounds a reasonable ballpark figure for chartering a plane for the trip, but will be a lot higher than the marginal cost of operating a plane that’s leased by the government already.
If there were more than 30 or 40 government people on the plane, the cost is probably a wash compared to commercial biz class flights
And all 40 of those government people absolutely had to travel business class, of course.
‘Public servants should spend taxpayers’ money with the care they would give to their own. This would be reflected in changes such as travelling by economy rather than business class’
- Liz Truss, 2007
If I have some govt bods flying to Oz for trade purposes I don't want them tossing and turning in economy seats for the 20-odd hours of the journey. I'd rather they had a good chance of a good night's sleep and be fit and raring to go on arrival.
It's the same as the Universal Credit job search changes, flying on a scheduled flight looks great but creates a whole set of very obvious problems once you stop to think for a second.
I have no problem with them flying business class, especially long haul. I just don't think there's any way that 50 people was the right number to fly out there. It feels like they just thought we've got this flash government plane, let's fill it with people and fly to Australia, which illustrates why having the plane is a bad idea.
In particular, I suspect it doesn’t play very well with the thousands of us who don’t even get a jolly to London for the day now that everything has moved onto Zoom/Teams/that Google thing that sends my laptop fans into F1 engine simulation mode.
Switch to Edge rather than Chrome - it's the same Chromium backend but Google have about 3 tonnes of pointless something or other (tracking code?) that Microsoft removed from their version.
I have a (low spec single purpose) VM that dies when 3 windows are open in chrome but can support 25 or so in Edge
Wow I had no idea about that and would have expected the opposite.
I normally use either Chrome or Firefox and have done for a long time as Internet Explorer was crap.
I half expected Edge to be a rebranded IE or have similar MS issues not the other way around. So have never used Edge.
Is Edge really better than Chrome or Firefox?
If you do use Edge (as I am right now) then you might want to change its default search engine because Bing is not as good (although it used to have a reputation for being better for certain niche searches). I use Chrome, Firefox and Edge every day and for the non-technical user (as I now am) there is not a lot in it.
There isn't mention of 50 trade negotiators, though she did take her official photographer.
If you wanted to get from London to Sydney and back in the most comfortable and convenient way possible I don't know why you'd do anything other than first class on Emirates or Etihad.
I refuse to believe the Australians were in any way impressed by an A321 with a livery that looks a child designed it to win a Blue Peter Badge.
Because the same mudslingers would sling slightly different mud.
Can you imagine the Rayner Ranting to her twitter mini-trolls - "Foreign Minister flies First Class - EeEvVvVvIiIlLlLlL tTtToRrIeEzZ".
Quite astonishing turn of events with the Met effectively neutering the Gray report . Unless the full report in its original form can still be released after the Met reports then effectively the pathological liar gets off. Johnson will not receive a penalty notice and that will be the end of it , the Met won’t be an issuing a report but simply whether penalty notices will be issued .
In this BBC report - "The Met Police has asked an internal inquiry into alleged lockdown parties at No 10 to make "minimal reference" to any events it is investigating" - the meaning of the word "it" is left ambiguous.
At the least, he has lost what political capital he might have had to do anything remotely unpopular, just at the time he needed it
Per the article in the Times, his problem now is defining "popular"
If he does something the headbangers like, it pisses off the Red Wall.
Something "green" pisses off the headbangers.
"Levelling up" is what the Red Wall want - they don't want "green" unless it benefits them directly with jobs or money.
They really don’t want a large increase in their energy bills, in support of (to them) vacuous slogans like “Net Zero”
Lots of people in the Red Wall care about green policies. The people who don't care about green policies are the elderly, who are probably the bulk of Red Wall Tory voters. I was briefed recently on some focus group work carried out with elderly people looking at how a wide range of issues impact them. They want to be able to ring their doctor and get an appointment the same day, like they used to be able to. They want to stay in their own homes until they're carried out in a box, if at all possible. They don't give a damn about climate change.
For the West to lose one F35, off the side of a carrier, is unlucky.
To lose TWO F35s, off the side of two carriers, in as many months…
The US Navy generally operates at a rate of 2-3 Class A (ie you've destroyed the fucking aircraft) Aviation Mishaps (no such thing as an accident) every 100,000 flight hours. The F-14 was about 5.5 due its erm... challenging landing characteristics.
In its fixed wing heyday (1950 - 2000ish) the RN was operating at 20(!) per 100,000 flight hours. Wyvern squadrons used to come back from Far East cruises without any of their original aircraft.
Quite. My dad served on a carrier out in the Far East at the start of that period and he had a very jaundiced view of the life prospects of the chaps who landed on the roof. He told us once about the day five aircrew and, I believe, roof rats were killed before breakfast (some of the deck crew got caught) - over the edge in hammocks the same day. And the Photo Dept used to make unofficial money selling photos of crashes. I still have the ones Dad bought.
Not just any Conservative MP. I did spend a few seconds wondering about the 4NUL part of his username before realising it is his constituency and not a nerdy computer joke.
Not just any Conservative MP. I did spend a few seconds wondering about the 4NUL part of his username before realising it is his constituency and not a nerdy computer joke.
Yep - Aaron (formerly of this parish) is one of the few clueful ones
If this were submitted as the plot of a TV drama it would be rejected as too ridiculous.
But if you designed a stich up to save the Big Dog, it would look a lot like this...
All you had to do was ask why Boris Johnson was so keen to wait for the report to know that it was not a good idea to wait for the report. He knew he could manipulate events. We’ll blow me over with a feather.
1 Blaming Sunak for blocking triggering Article 16 and wanting to stick with NI rise despite cost of living crisis
2 Accusing Truss of wasting taxpayers money on private jet flights to, from and around Australia
I think it was pointed out on the past thread that there is little point in having a plane painted in GB colours for trade missions if you don't use it for trips like Truss's Australia jaunt.
One might wonder why the Embassy staff in Canberra were cut to the point that they needed fly ins by Ms "any deal is better than no deal" Truss.
The idea that embassy staff could simply replace visits/interactions with leading members of the government is laughable. International diplomacy is made of meetings like these.
My experience is that 90% of the actual work is done before the big guns arrive to settle and remaining thorny issues and take the credit.
No doubt, but that 10% can't be replaced with more meetings with the embassy staff.
Do we have any evidence at all to support BJO's claim wrt to Truss's trip?
The first piece I saw on that was a piece of misleading drivel in the Independent.
eg the basis for the £500k claim is 'from a source in the charter industry', which the Indy turns into 'the cost to the taxpayer'. Instead of doing some journalism and finding out what the actual cost was - quite accessible via FOI.
I was going to put in a complaint to the independent regulator, but for some reason the Indy has chosen not to have one.
£500k sounds a reasonable ballpark figure for chartering a plane for the trip, but will be a lot higher than the marginal cost of operating a plane that’s leased by the government already.
If there were more than 30 or 40 government people on the plane, the cost is probably a wash compared to commercial biz class flights,.
This is not true I'm afraid Sandpit.
For any regular fliers out there let's first of all scotch the notion about 1st Class. Loads of airlines have done away with 1st because Business Class travel these days is superb. All good airlines have flat bed and some of the suites e.g. Qater Q are fantastic. Business is brilliant and a perfectly acceptable way to travel long haul.
A single passenger flying business to Sydney can get a return with Qantas for £4000.
Booking 30 or 40 business class tickets in bulk should result in a negotiation for an all-through business class return fare to Sydney of no more than £3000 especially with the publicity for the airline at a time when they're desperate to get people flying again.
30 x 3000 = £90,000
Of course, this all begs the question of whether an entourage of 30 would be needed.
Unless you are a party diehard loyalist who has lost all moral compass there is no way to dress up the fact that Liz Truss has disgracefully splurged taxpayers' money.
This on a day that we learned Boris agreed to evacuate dogs from Kabul rather than people, and the Treasury have blown billions on tax fraud.
But they're going after vulnerable people on universal credit and raising taxes for ordinary working people.
Disbanding the Met, RUC->PSNI style, would not be a bad thing for Starmer to do on Day 1 of a new government.
If he announced that I would vote for him, heck I might even campaign for him.
+1 - the Met has a whole pile of things that shouldn't be under their direct control and should be part of a national police force.
I would be tempted to expand the remit of the Transport Police to cover such things (or just separate it out).
Likewise Fraud needs to be moved to a national service with appropriate skills but that just requires a tiny increase in the City of London Police's remit. Fraud is rarely something that occurs at a local level that needs local intervention and when it does the City of London police should just have the right to call others as appropriate.
Disbanding the Met, RUC->PSNI style, would not be a bad thing for Starmer to do on Day 1 of a new government.
It is quite surprising that this has not yet been seriously suggested. The Met has consistently shown itself to be totally unfit for purpose in recent years.
I wonder whether, perhaps, Lord Agnew's rather dramatic resignation is going to have consequences. Coupled with some of PPE contracts it rather looks as though Sunak was spending our money like the proverbial drunken sailor.
Without those Bounceback loans a lot of small businesses wouldn't exist any more.
The issue is really one about failed bank checks - loans made to businesses that didn't exist earlier should be the banks problem not the Governments.
That is one of the problems - Agnew listed a number in his resignation speech - but that too is down to the Treasury having set up a scheme which reimbursed the banks 100% without any penalties for not chasing fraud. Providing they ticked the boxes on the loan applications, there's little or no comeback.
Admittedly it was a hard problem at the time - any onerous due diligence would have meant the scheme didn't operate in time to save genuine businesses. But the problem has continued to be ignored for well over a year now.
Was it not suggested that fraud appeared to be concentrated on certain banks, not evenly spread?
Sixteen percent said they would choose a different candidate, while 6 percent said they would not vote...
Surely the two parties have it in themselves, to find candidates who are neither senile nor insane, to compete for the highest office in the land?
De Santis also trails Biden in that poll. If he isn't totally gone by then, it's fairly likely he'll run again. And having a Republican Congress to battle after 2022 might actually help him electorally.
1 Blaming Sunak for blocking triggering Article 16 and wanting to stick with NI rise despite cost of living crisis
2 Accusing Truss of wasting taxpayers money on private jet flights to, from and around Australia
I think it was pointed out on the past thread that there is little point in having a plane painted in GB colours for trade missions if you don't use it for trips like Truss's Australia jaunt.
One might wonder why the Embassy staff in Canberra were cut to the point that they needed fly ins by Ms "any deal is better than no deal" Truss.
The idea that embassy staff could simply replace visits/interactions with leading members of the government is laughable. International diplomacy is made of meetings like these.
My experience is that 90% of the actual work is done before the big guns arrive to settle and remaining thorny issues and take the credit.
No doubt, but that 10% can't be replaced with more meetings with the embassy staff.
Do we have any evidence at all to support BJO's claim wrt to Truss's trip?
The first piece I saw on that was a piece of misleading drivel in the Independent.
eg the basis for the £500k claim is 'from a source in the charter industry', which the Indy turns into 'the cost to the taxpayer'. Instead of doing some journalism and finding out what the actual cost was - quite accessible via FOI.
I was going to put in a complaint to the independent regulator, but for some reason the Indy has chosen not to have one.
£500k sounds a reasonable ballpark figure for chartering a plane for the trip, but will be a lot higher than the marginal cost of operating a plane that’s leased by the government already.
If there were more than 30 or 40 government people on the plane, the cost is probably a wash compared to commercial biz class flights,.
This is not true I'm afraid Sandpit.
For any regular fliers out there let's first of all scotch the notion about 1st Class. Loads of airlines have done away with 1st because Business Class travel these days is superb. All good airlines have flat bed and some of the suites e.g. Qater Q are fantastic. Business is brilliant and a perfectly acceptable way to travel long haul.
A single passenger flying business to Sydney can get a return with Qantas for £4000.
Booking 30 or 40 business class tickets in bulk should result in a negotiation for an all-through business class return fare to Sydney of no more than £3000 especially with the publicity for the airline at a time when they're desperate to get people flying again.
30 x 3000 = £90,000
Of course, this all begs the question of whether an entourage of 30 would be needed.
Unless you are a party diehard loyalist who has lost all moral compass there is no way to dress up the fact that Liz Truss has disgracefully splurged taxpayers' money.
This on a day that we learned Boris agreed to evacuate dogs from Kabul rather than people, and the Treasury have blown billions on tax fraud.
But they're going after vulnerable people on universal credit and raising taxes for ordinary working people.
It stinks.
Booking London to Sydney for a random few days in February, was £8k - £10k biz class when I looked yesterday, and those are probably non-changeable flights, although airlines are quite flexible at the moment with all the Covid goings-on.
My daughter (10) not going to school today as P5/6/7 are WFH due to so many teachers being off work with Covid. Quite a lot of kids also off with it as well.
Comments
The idea these issues are on a par with Boris' woes is seriously comical.
If he does something the headbangers like, it pisses off the Red Wall.
Something "green" pisses off the headbangers.
In its fixed wing heyday (1950 - 2000ish) the RN was operating at 20(!) per 100,000 flight hours. Wyvern squadrons used to come back from Far East cruises without any of their original aircraft.
I’ll give a lot of leeway to people on genuine government business travelling in some comfort. It’s really not unreasonable for the Foreign Secretary or the Trade Secretary to run up an awful lot of travel, it’s the nature of the role.
I save my ire for things like the ‘conferences’ that happen to be in Barbados or Davos in the middle of winter, or the COP meeting to discuss climate change where a couple of hundred planes turn up on short haul flights.
Karma's a bitch.
Something like Sunak PM and Hunt chancellor would be what any business would go for.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/59999541
That makes much more sense, it’s definitely freezing in Ukraine at the moment!
https://www.businessinsider.com/russian-invasion-of-ukraine-mud-complication-2022-1?r=US&IR=T
If that doesn't match what your in laws are saying, however, we may assume the Americans are indulging in wishful thinking.
Coupled with some of PPE contracts it rather looks as though Sunak was spending our money like the proverbial drunken sailor.
Having parties isn't illegal anymore. And on the day job of being PM he's doing a good job.
The issue is the lawbreaking of telling us not to gather, then doing so himself. But that law has gone, so throwing boozy parties now is perfectly legal.
Winter has been relatively mild, but these things are all very much relative - it’s still bloody freezing there! Things will definitely turn around by March though, so if the reports about soft ground are correct Putin might have a very small window indeed.
Mr. Jonathan, if you think that's bad, I've just reached the start of Julian's invasion of Persia in Ammianus Marcellinus' history of The Later Roman Empire.
And don't get me started on Honorius and Arcadius.
1. Lying to the House. Regardless of what excuses HY simpers away with, you cannot be a minister and deliberately lie to the House. He is about to be held to account for doing so repeatedly over a long period. The House investigating and then acting on such behaviour is not something that the remaining WhatsApp Group Loyalists can protect him over
2. Conspiracy to Pervert the Course of Justice. We aren't yet all the way through the two investigations. Numerous reports - backed up seemingly by evidence - that Number 10 has been forcing staff to delete messages about all of the law breaking. And its not isolated - "whoops I lost all my WhatsApp messages" etc etc
Whilst they may not pin the latter on BJ, it makes it almost impossible for any of his colleagues who want to remain front line politicians to sit schtum. HY may have the personal moral standards to be happy to back open lies but I doubt they all have. DD of the SS, Wragg etc will surely be joined by Sunak and Truss and others. To sink the ship you have to step off at the right time.
That time is the Gray report. If its as wall to wall awful as Nut Nut's flat decoration then the people who think they can do a better job - a respectable job maintaining British standards and decency - will need to decide. The ship is sinking regardless, am I sinking with it?
Add the continual lying on top and you can see why people are annoyed.
However 30% of the population can't see the issue so I would love to know what would be an issue or whether they simply avoid all news.
You don't really need to start digging. The first para in the Indy was enough.
The issue is really one about failed bank checks - loans made to businesses that didn't exist earlier should be the banks problem not the Governments.
The A321 had to stop in Adelaide, Kuala Lumpur and Dubai to get there and back so it was hardly the most efficient way to do it.
What did Live Laugh Truss and Baldy Ben actually achieve on their winter sun break?
For a start, the aircraft is a long term lease, not a "charter". That claim in the first para of the Indy story is a straight up lie. Or, I guess, what passes for journalism in that paper.
And on it goes.
Sad to see anyone going for the stuff written for Gormless the Independent Reader.
I have a (low spec single purpose) VM that dies when 3 windows are open in chrome but can support 25 or so in Edge
As you say, thousands of small businesses were kept alive by the loans, but there was some abuse that’s needs to be looked into and prosecuted where necessary. Set up business > get loan > buy car > shut down business - that’s simply fraud.
Ditto with the PPE contracts, especially the later ones or where things were paid for up front but not delivered. An awful lot of sympathy at the start of the pandemic though, where it’s quite conceivable that ministers were saying “Does anyone know anyone, who knows anyone who can get PPE here quickly?”
But the question not what to do with the Brexit we asked for remains as unsolved as ever. It's safe to say that Rishi's Brexit would betray Boris's Brexit and vice versa. But the only path to 52% was to combine the two.
On the BBL stuff - again there wasn't the time to check things properly but checking if a company existed prior to March 20th 2020 was a 2 second check at Companies house and would have taken a developer 1 day max to add to a system (I know as I did it in 2 hours a couple of weeks back and I'm not the greatest developer)
Other loans would be harder to validate (so yep there will be failures and fraud, meh) but start date really should have been validated and any banks who lent that money out deserves to pay out for those loans.
This is significant as it suggests if the Gray report is published before the Met investigation is finalised then the most serious allegations may be scaled back. Which would clearly be good news for the PM.
That isn't going to improve. The policy agenda going forward is bad for the Tories. And we have a lot more of Boris's discarded shit to be thrown at Boris. So whatever the ministerial career looks like it won't last more than a few years unless they do something.
Sunak is the one to watch. Remember that he doesn't need the money and has already made the elite in world politics (G7 finance minister) so if his offski flit doesn't work he can always go back to earning £gazillions elsewhere. He hasn't remotely positioned himself as anything loyal to the PM who in turn is now spinning furiously against him.
So Rishi. Stick or twist?
About what a shitshow Brexit is...
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/liz-truss-takes-private-plane-26065628?utm_source=linkCopy&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=sharebar
There isn't mention of 50 trade negotiators, though she did take her official photographer.
Providing they ticked the boxes on the loan applications, there's little or no comeback.
Admittedly it was a hard problem at the time - any onerous due diligence would have meant the scheme didn't operate in time to save genuine businesses. But the problem has continued to be ignored for well over a year now.
I normally use either Chrome or Firefox and have done for a long time as Internet Explorer was crap.
I half expected Edge to be a rebranded IE or have similar MS issues not the other way around. So have never used Edge.
Is Edge really better than Chrome or Firefox?
https://twitter.com/DavidGauke/status/1486973581594615810
https://www.newstatesman.com/comment/2022/01/there-are-no-good-arguments-for-boris-johnson-to-remain-as-prime-minister
https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/foreign-secretarys-speech-to-the-lowy-institute
And visited the Naval shipyard in Adelaide.
Raises prospect of Sue Gray report being a bit thin if she can write about anything except rule-breaking parties
https://twitter.com/MattChorley/status/1486974534003662854
I’d have taken the one-stop A330 rather than the A321 myself, maybe it was u/s, or perhaps the increased cost would have been a lot harder for the department to justify!
Thanks, Met Police. Just when it yet again it seems that you can't sink any lower, you head off further into the abyss.
I refuse to believe the Australians were in any way impressed by an A321 with a livery that looks a child designed it to win a Blue Peter Badge.
I bet Priti Patel at the Home Office pressured the Met.
They can't blame other people - the hauliers, the exporters, the ports. They can't say "do business somewhere else". They just need to make it work. The late running new computer system will help (eventually) but as it comes in after the next 2 tranches of red tape it may only improve things back to now - which doesn't work...
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/591590-biden-leading-trump-desantis-by-similar-margins-in-new-poll
The survey, conducted by Marquette Law School, found that 43 percent of adults nationwide would support Biden if the 2024 presidential election were held today, while 33 percent would vote for Trump in a one-on-one match-up.
Sixteen percent said they would choose a different candidate, while 6 percent said they would not vote...
If I were Gray, I'd resign and state that I am unable to complete a report timeously due to the ongoing to police investigation.
Or, publish the whole report with massive redactions. That, at least, would cause some political damage.
Can you imagine the Rayner Ranting to her twitter mini-trolls - "Foreign Minister flies First Class - EeEvVvVvIiIlLlLlL tTtToRrIeEzZ".
Better to ignore them and do the job.
For any regular fliers out there let's first of all scotch the notion about 1st Class. Loads of airlines have done away with 1st because Business Class travel these days is superb. All good airlines have flat bed and some of the suites e.g. Qater Q are fantastic. Business is brilliant and a perfectly acceptable way to travel long haul.
A single passenger flying business to Sydney can get a return with Qantas for £4000.
Booking 30 or 40 business class tickets in bulk should result in a negotiation for an all-through business class return fare to Sydney of no more than £3000 especially with the publicity for the airline at a time when they're desperate to get people flying again.
30 x 3000 = £90,000
Of course, this all begs the question of whether an entourage of 30 would be needed.
Unless you are a party diehard loyalist who has lost all moral compass there is no way to dress up the fact that Liz Truss has disgracefully splurged taxpayers' money.
This on a day that we learned Boris agreed to evacuate dogs from Kabul rather than people, and the Treasury have blown billions on tax fraud.
But they're going after vulnerable people on universal credit and raising taxes for ordinary working people.
It stinks.
I would be tempted to expand the remit of the Transport Police to cover such things (or just separate it out).
Likewise Fraud needs to be moved to a national service with appropriate skills but that just requires a tiny increase in the City of London Police's remit. Fraud is rarely something that occurs at a local level that needs local intervention and when it does the City of London police should just have the right to call others as appropriate.
If he isn't totally gone by then, it's fairly likely he'll run again.
And having a Republican Congress to battle after 2022 might actually help him electorally.
US politics is weirder than ours.
o/t but one for @OldKingCole on Essex rebranding itself