Good Morning everyone. As someone else said, a powerful piece by Ms Cyclefree. I really do not recall a time when flagrant dishonesty was so common in public life.
I keep being told that politicians always lie, why am I making such a fuss. Nice to hear you say differently
It's a fact of life that people lie. How the governing system deal with that is a choice. As Monday's events - and the actions of the Speaker - showed, we now have a system which rules those lies in order, and suspends from the Commons MPs who call out those lies.
Although Blackford, as usual, bungled it. He should have asked if Johnson could reconcile his statement that there were no parties in his flat with Gray's finding that there was one, and asked the Speaker, separately, what the penalty is for misleading the House.
Then he'd not only have got away with it but effectively forced the Speaker to be the one calling out Johnson for lying.
Perhaps this is what Starmerama will do today. Or will Johnson hide behind being tired from his Ukraine jaunt and not turn up?
If I was him in question 1 I would ask Johnson to state categorically for the parliamentary record if he will release the Gray report in full and without delay. And if he prevaricates at all I would begin question 2 by giving notice of a parliamentary motion to compel him to. That’s a motion he would so easily win that Johnson would cave before the vote.
He can then follow up by forcing the issue of Johnson’s prior statements to the house, inviting him to correct the Parliamentary record, given he has accepted the Gray Update in full. And if he refuses to, turn it over to the Speaker. And if the Speaker refuses to (which he probably would the wet flannel), then give notice of a further parliamentary motion along the lines of “This House condemns the Prime Minister for misleading parliament”. Force the Tory rebels to put their cards on the table.
Personally I think it’s time for Starmer to go for the jugular. It will be a far more compelling narrative for him if he is the one that directly sets in motion Johnson’s exit than to let his future opponent claim the credit for being the new broom cleaning up the mess.
Agree.
I don't know if it's been discussed but currently it takes 54 Tory MPs and then a successful VONC by the same Tory MPs to remove him. Instead why can't there be a VONC in him in Parliament. It is single step and only requires just over 35 Tory MPs to vote against or even to be achieved with a few more MPs abstaining.
Or a VONC in the government. Typically that results in a GE, but it doesn't have to if the Tories can form a new government. That is not uncommon in Europe under PR and only doesn't happen here because a loss of confidence isn't normally recoverable, but with a 70+ majority is currently.
Sadly I think there is no chance of that happening, when even the most publicly vocal opponents of Johnson freely admit to not having bothered sending in their letter.
Agree. Particularly as they will have to vote with Labour, but worth ago. Also I don't actually know what I have suggested is possible as neither I assume have happened before so I could have just made it all up as 2 options.
Not sure that I often agree with Dan Hodges but he was spot on, as were some others including Pesto, that the Met intervention has made things worse for Johnson and the tories. If the partygate report had all been out there in one go last week then it would have been possible to say sorry and draw a line under it so that he could focus on ... all the other scandals and corruption .
As it is, alongside all the rest of the sh*tshow we have a continuous drip drip drip of lurid partying details which is likely to continue for months.
It's another cack-handed and misguided call by Johnson and his cronies.
Perhaps Johnson's basic work method of say or do anything to get through a single next news cycle will do for him in the end?
Nope because his playbook works. We can see it in both the other news stories from the last week - on PPE we focus on the unfixable and unavoidable stock write downs rather than the fraud.
On BBL we do the same and ignore the bit of fraud that should be charged back to banks because of their own incompetency.
As long as Boris has at least 50 loyalists amongst Tory MPs, those loyalists can vote down any alternative Tory Leader and PM except Boris. So a VONC in Boris' government would lead to a general election which most Tory MPs would still not risk
The ridicule of Boris Johnson over the Partygate scandal has extended across the East and West, with U.S. President Joe Biden's spokeswoman laughing at the Prime Minister being 'ambushed by cake' at a birthday party in No10. White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Tuesday said Biden has 'never been ambushed by a cake' as she responded to a question on the lockdown-breaching parties at Downing Street.
TV channels in Russia have also been revelling in Mr Johnson's discomfort, with one branding him 'the most disliked, disrespected and ridiculed character in Britain' who was 'completely under the control and heel of his young wife' Carrie.
You’re celebrating the Russian misogyny?
But it's true? Boris is completely and utterly controlled by Carrie.
She certainly has a significant influence it appears. But the way it is phrased is specifically designed to demean him.
This government is basically a crook’s charter. Practically a free hit if you want to go out and defraud someone. Or worse.
(Boris not especially to blame, although there’s no evidence he gives a fuck. This is the impact of austerity).
Fraud? Also open corruption. Like the PPE contracts handed out without tender to friends? To companies who had zero experience in PPE and in some cases delivered near zero usable but were able to pocket the public money anyway? How about the company who then won a contract to charge £stupid to store the unusable PPE it had procured? Or the company awarded a contract without tender before it had even been incorporated?
When the government practice open corruption and ask no questions tenders with no penalty clauses for non-delivery, why should we expect them to run a proper legal system? Where is the benefit?
The fraud is wrong - where it is genuine fraud.
However, you fail to remember where we were in April/May last year. We needed PPE. In this case - as in war - the government had to do whatever it could to get PPE. It did.
According to the article below, the government had 8,000 offers from suppliers of PPE. That is a massive number, when decisions needed making immediately, sometimes to the day, or the kit would not be got. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-52369223
Here's a sad truth for you: Labour under Starmer would have done exactly the same thing, because not to do so would have been a grossly wrong.
Labour under Starmer wouldn't have done the same thing - they would have tasked people with hitting their systems and the internet to find suppliers rather than letting their mates become middle men.
That's the issue here but again it's hidden alongside other issues so people don't focus on the important one.
In fact this is an incredibly obvious playbook - we get given the complete picture (PPE, BBL fraud) and then when people pick up the real fixable problems that demonstrate a real screw up that they were responsible flaw they change the conversation to a different issue that was revealed at the same time.
PPE has - mates without experience allowed to purchase anything at vast expense, expensive proper PPE purchased when supply was less than demand and fraud. BBL has - clearly fraudulent loans (companies created after the scheme began), dodgy loans and failed firms.
In both cases there is a clear area that could be investigated but it can't be because other issues are used to hide and sidetrack from the outright fraud.
What I find most baffling is how these contracts had no penalty clauses. Money has been paid out even when the PPE is either unfit or non-existent. We even had one company not only deliver unusable PPE and keep the money but then win an even more lucrative contract to store said unusable PPE.
How have contracts like this been issued? I can park the issue about friends donors and patrons being awarded contracts without tender at high risk. But how can contracts be issued which do not let the powers that be claw the money back when in some cases literally nothing is delivered? No business would operate in such a manner. Does the government usually do so?
No but then again I suspect there is virtually zero paperwork to go with the original deal because everyone (especially the ministers responsible) was panicking and their "mates" used that knowledge to their advantage.
Would have been very simple to ensure that the contracts issued - even simple generic ones with a "write the name of the supplier here" line had clauses with penalties for non-delivery of suitable kit.
Anecdata, the most Leavey members of my quite Leavey family have now turned on Boris
‘It’s a shame, but he has to go’
That means literally no-one of my acquaintance now supports him, as far as I can tell. And I know - or knew - a LOT of Borisovian Brexiteers
What’s odd is how the MPs are just ignoring what must be a continuing flood of emails and letters from constituents. I know of at least two people (Tories) who have never written to their Mp before but who have done so to try and remove Boris. I assume they are not unusual.
I think there’s this casual complacency that so long as there’s a new leader in place before the election, it doesn’t matter what damage Johnson does in the meantime.
No doubt stemming from his remarkable trick in 2019 to make it feel like he was an insurgent fighting as the change candidate, rather than as the incumbent PM of a party which had been in power for a decade. This will be very difficult for the party to pull off twice.
They are afraid of him. He runs the Tory party like Tony Soprano.
Time for someone to walk into Cabinet banging out Don’t Stop Believing and then turn the lights out.
Trouble is, the Cabinet is bereft of household names that have a sufficient profile that their resignation would make much difference. Short of going full on Tunisian self immolator with allegations so extreme it would bring down the whole Party.
Good Morning everyone. As someone else said, a powerful piece by Ms Cyclefree. I really do not recall a time when flagrant dishonesty was so common in public life.
I keep being told that politicians always lie, why am I making such a fuss. Nice to hear you say differently
It's a fact of life that people lie. How the governing system deal with that is a choice. As Monday's events - and the actions of the Speaker - showed, we now have a system which rules those lies in order, and suspends from the Commons MPs who call out those lies.
Although Blackford, as usual, bungled it. He should have asked if Johnson could reconcile his statement that there were no parties in his flat with Gray's finding that there was one, and asked the Speaker, separately, what the penalty is for misleading the House.
Then he'd not only have got away with it but effectively forced the Speaker to be the one calling out Johnson for lying.
Perhaps this is what Starmerama will do today. Or will Johnson hide behind being tired from his Ukraine jaunt and not turn up?
If I was him in question 1 I would ask Johnson to state categorically for the parliamentary record if he will release the Gray report in full and without delay. And if he prevaricates at all I would begin question 2 by giving notice of a parliamentary motion to compel him to. That’s a motion he would so easily win that Johnson would cave before the vote.
He can then follow up by forcing the issue of Johnson’s prior statements to the house, inviting him to correct the Parliamentary record, given he has accepted the Gray Update in full. And if he refuses to, turn it over to the Speaker. And if the Speaker refuses to (which he probably would the wet flannel), then give notice of a further parliamentary motion along the lines of “This House condemns the Prime Minister for misleading parliament”. Force the Tory rebels to put their cards on the table.
Personally I think it’s time for Starmer to go for the jugular. It will be a far more compelling narrative for him if he is the one that directly sets in motion Johnson’s exit than to let his future opponent claim the credit for being the new broom cleaning up the mess.
Agree.
I don't know if it's been discussed but currently it takes 54 Tory MPs and then a successful VONC by the same Tory MPs to remove him. Instead why can't there be a VONC in him in Parliament. It is single step and only requires just over 35 Tory MPs to vote against or even to be achieved with a few more MPs abstaining.
Or a VONC in the government. Typically that results in a GE, but it doesn't have to if the Tories can form a new government. That is not uncommon in Europe under PR and only doesn't happen here because a loss of confidence isn't normally recoverable, but with a 70+ majority is currently.
As long as Boris has at least 50 loyalists amongst Tory MPs, those loyalists can vote down any alternative Tory Leader and PM except Boris. So a VONC in Boris' government would lead to a general election which most Tory MPs would still not risk
That's never going to happen. As soon as there's a new leader in place support for Boris will simply disappear. You're digging yourself into a really weird hole to try and hold onto Boris. Their assertion yesterday that he would try and contend the leadership race after losing a VONC shows that they know they're done the minute we hit 54 letters.
The ridicule of Boris Johnson over the Partygate scandal has extended across the East and West, with U.S. President Joe Biden's spokeswoman laughing at the Prime Minister being 'ambushed by cake' at a birthday party in No10. White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Tuesday said Biden has 'never been ambushed by a cake' as she responded to a question on the lockdown-breaching parties at Downing Street.
TV channels in Russia have also been revelling in Mr Johnson's discomfort, with one branding him 'the most disliked, disrespected and ridiculed character in Britain' who was 'completely under the control and heel of his young wife' Carrie.
You’re celebrating the Russian misogyny?
But it's true? Boris is completely and utterly controlled by Carrie.
I’m not sure he’s ‘controlled’. I’ve met controlled men and their controlling wives. They are quite obvious.
It’s more that he can’t be arsed. He is happy to let Carrie do what she wants until the point when it bothers him, from decorating the fiat to organising their social life. It keeps Carrie happy which means less grief and tedium. But as Carrie seems unusually flighty and a bit clueless, this leads to trouble
Nah, it's across government policy too. Boris is gutting the Brexit red tape bonfire in favour of some undefined net zero action. That's 100% a Carrie policy that Boris has bought into because if he doesn't agree she will withhold sex and it's not as of he can pop out secretly to see the nearest violinist either, that was possible when he was mayor and no one gave a fuck where he was. Carrie knows what Boris is like too so one imagines the leash is very, very short.
He wakes up every morning with a heel over his balls.
That net zero plan is also impossible without money - prime example on transport we don't get there without HS2.
And that's not because of passengers its to allow freight to become the priority service on the existing lines.
The ridicule of Boris Johnson over the Partygate scandal has extended across the East and West, with U.S. President Joe Biden's spokeswoman laughing at the Prime Minister being 'ambushed by cake' at a birthday party in No10. White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Tuesday said Biden has 'never been ambushed by a cake' as she responded to a question on the lockdown-breaching parties at Downing Street.
TV channels in Russia have also been revelling in Mr Johnson's discomfort, with one branding him 'the most disliked, disrespected and ridiculed character in Britain' who was 'completely under the control and heel of his young wife' Carrie.
You’re celebrating the Russian misogyny?
But it's true? Boris is completely and utterly controlled by Carrie.
I’m not sure he’s ‘controlled’. I’ve met controlled men and their controlling wives. They are quite obvious.
It’s more that he can’t be arsed. He is happy to let Carrie do what she wants until the point when it bothers him, from decorating the fiat to organising their social life. It keeps Carrie happy which means less grief and tedium. But as Carrie seems unusually flighty and a bit clueless, this leads to trouble
Nah, it's across government policy too. Boris is gutting the Brexit red tape bonfire in favour of some undefined net zero action. That's 100% a Carrie policy that Boris has bought into because if he doesn't agree she will withhold sex and it's not as of he can pop out secretly to see the nearest violinist either, that was possible when he was mayor and no one gave a fuck where he was. Carrie knows what Boris is like too so one imagines the leash is very, very short.
He wakes up every morning with a heel over his balls.
Lol. Vividly phrased!
I just don’t see it. As I say, I’ve met men controlled by their women - pussy whipped - and Boris does not come across that way. He’s more the bored silverback who lets his woman do whatever she wants, if that makes his life more pleasant/less stressful
He’s quite capable of cheating on her, or dumping her (if he loses the job), and she knows it. That’s not a controlled man
But this is an unedifying conversation for 8am in London. Even if it is a hot, sunny afternoon in Sri Lanka. I must hie myself to the swimming pool!
Can those on here critical of Boris Johnson please desist in calling him by his preferred cuddly stage name "Boris". Under the circumstances "Boris Johnson" "Mr Johnson" or preferably simply "Johnson" would seem far more appropriate. He is not a lovable uncle, a music hall comedian or the old fool down the pub, he is supposed to be the Prime Minister.
He is a malevolent politician, he is not our friend.
Surely better to call him Boris and irrevocably tarnish his persona, connecting it to the current shitshow?
No, it demonstrates we are playing along with the lie.
Don't forget his friends, family and close associates refer to "Boris" as Al, or Alexander.
If they're in the electoral equivalent of a burning building, and face the certainty of burning to death or leaping from a dark window and facing a wide range and diversity of potential outcomes, what's the smart move?
Guaranteed agonising death, or the possibility of survival?
It's their own damned fault for backing the clown in the first place. Failing to remove him is another critical failure.
I wonder if that observation is right, but Conservative MPs are processing it differently.
Boris has led them to a world of pain, and it's going to get worse before it gets better. But he also possesses the Boris Myth, that he alone can work miracles. I've never met him (lucky me), but I can imagine him having the strange terrible charisma to make up for his many obvious flaws as a person and politician. He probably leads the Conservatives to a huge defeat in 2024, but maybe, just maybe...
Whereas anyone else, even if there was agreement on who, calmly leads the Conservatives to a calm, dignified, small but decisive defeat in 2024.
And in a way, that's how it should be. A political party shouldn't get away with letting itself be taken over by a clown. And not one of the jolly ones either.
Some real nuggets in here and I think you've explained better something I've been hinting.
If the tories stay with Boris Johnson until 2024 then I think Labour will be in power for at least two terms, so through to 2034. Effectively we are talking about a once in a generation sea change: like 1979 and 1997. Remember that Margaret Thatcher only beat Jim Callaghan by 7% and her majority was 'just' 44 seats. It was sufficient to usher in the most momentous change in this country since Attlee.
If they ditch him and have someone sensible and competent then they might be able to avoid a sea change defeat and at the worst leave Labour in coalition territory. That gives them every chance of returning to power in 2029.
Stay with Johnson and we're looking at 1979 or 1997. A sea change.
No party having lost power at a general election has returned to power by winning the subsequent general election since February 1974. That was the first time it had happened since 1924 and Heath's Tories still won the popular vote. So unlikely.
Except that in that time we had two sea changes: the Conservatives were in power from 1979 to 1997 and Labour from 1997 to 2010 - the very thing to which I was referring.
The only comparable period in your timeframe is 2010 to 2019. Cameron's win in 2015 is exactly the kind of thing I mean.
If, but it's a big if, the Conservatives don't do a Labour and select an unelectable leader (Jeremy Corbyn) then they would stand every chance of winning in c. 2029
Stay with Johnson and they're out of power for a generation.
So? Labour were back in front in the polls by 1980, Ed Miliband's by 2011 even though they still did not win.
Labour won a landslide in 1945 over Churchill but Churchill slashed their majority in 1950 from 146 to just 5 as the economy still continued sluggish growth with rationing post war.
Yes Labour won a landslide in 1997 and 2001 but that was mainly as Blair's first government was reasonably competent and the economy was growing and doing well.
If New Labour had run an incompetent government like Heath's in 1970 then they would have seen their majority at least slashed or lost power in 2001. Regardless of who the Tory PM who lost power in 1997 was
The ridicule of Boris Johnson over the Partygate scandal has extended across the East and West, with U.S. President Joe Biden's spokeswoman laughing at the Prime Minister being 'ambushed by cake' at a birthday party in No10. White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Tuesday said Biden has 'never been ambushed by a cake' as she responded to a question on the lockdown-breaching parties at Downing Street.
TV channels in Russia have also been revelling in Mr Johnson's discomfort, with one branding him 'the most disliked, disrespected and ridiculed character in Britain' who was 'completely under the control and heel of his young wife' Carrie.
You’re celebrating the Russian misogyny?
But it's true? Boris is completely and utterly controlled by Carrie.
I’m not sure he’s ‘controlled’. I’ve met controlled men and their controlling wives. They are quite obvious.
It’s more that he can’t be arsed. He is happy to let Carrie do what she wants until the point when it bothers him, from decorating the fiat to organising their social life. It keeps Carrie happy which means less grief and tedium. But as Carrie seems unusually flighty and a bit clueless, this leads to trouble
Sounds plausible. After all, Dom's plan was to appoint someone so lazy that Dom could run things behind the scenes.
But Dom gave Boris what he wanted in 2019, and can't do so again until 2023/4.
This government is basically a crook’s charter. Practically a free hit if you want to go out and defraud someone. Or worse.
(Boris not especially to blame, although there’s no evidence he gives a fuck. This is the impact of austerity).
Fraud? Also open corruption. Like the PPE contracts handed out without tender to friends? To companies who had zero experience in PPE and in some cases delivered near zero usable but were able to pocket the public money anyway? How about the company who then won a contract to charge £stupid to store the unusable PPE it had procured? Or the company awarded a contract without tender before it had even been incorporated?
When the government practice open corruption and ask no questions tenders with no penalty clauses for non-delivery, why should we expect them to run a proper legal system? Where is the benefit?
The fraud is wrong - where it is genuine fraud.
However, you fail to remember where we were in April/May last year. We needed PPE. In this case - as in war - the government had to do whatever it could to get PPE. It did.
According to the article below, the government had 8,000 offers from suppliers of PPE. That is a massive number, when decisions needed making immediately, sometimes to the day, or the kit would not be got. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-52369223
Here's a sad truth for you: Labour under Starmer would have done exactly the same thing, because not to do so would have been a grossly wrong.
Labour under Starmer wouldn't have done the same thing - they would have tasked people with hitting their systems and the internet to find suppliers rather than letting their mates become middle men.
That's the issue here but again it's hidden alongside other issues so people don't focus on the important one.
In fact this is an incredibly obvious playbook - we get given the complete picture (PPE, BBL fraud) and then when people pick up the real fixable problems that demonstrate a real screw up that they were responsible flaw they change the conversation to a different issue that was revealed at the same time.
PPE has - mates without experience allowed to purchase anything at vast expense, expensive proper PPE purchased when supply was less than demand and fraud. BBL has - clearly fraudulent loans (companies created after the scheme began), dodgy loans and failed firms.
In both cases there is a clear area that could be investigated but it can't be because other issues are used to hide and sidetrack from the outright fraud.
What I find most baffling is how these contracts had no penalty clauses. Money has been paid out even when the PPE is either unfit or non-existent. We even had one company not only deliver unusable PPE and keep the money but then win an even more lucrative contract to store said unusable PPE.
How have contracts like this been issued? I can park the issue about friends donors and patrons being awarded contracts without tender at high risk. But how can contracts be issued which do not let the powers that be claw the money back when in some cases literally nothing is delivered? No business would operate in such a manner. Does the government usually do so?
No but then again I suspect there is virtually zero paperwork to go with the original deal because everyone (especially the ministers responsible) was panicking and their "mates" used that knowledge to their advantage.
Would have been very simple to ensure that the contracts issued - even simple generic ones with a "write the name of the supplier here" line had clauses with penalties for non-delivery of suitable kit.
Which you don't really need anyway, it's kind of implied in contracts for the supply of stuff, that the stuff works as intended, or you don't get paid.
This government is basically a crook’s charter. Practically a free hit if you want to go out and defraud someone. Or worse.
(Boris not especially to blame, although there’s no evidence he gives a fuck. This is the impact of austerity).
Fraud? Also open corruption. Like the PPE contracts handed out without tender to friends? To companies who had zero experience in PPE and in some cases delivered near zero usable but were able to pocket the public money anyway? How about the company who then won a contract to charge £stupid to store the unusable PPE it had procured? Or the company awarded a contract without tender before it had even been incorporated?
When the government practice open corruption and ask no questions tenders with no penalty clauses for non-delivery, why should we expect them to run a proper legal system? Where is the benefit?
The fraud is wrong - where it is genuine fraud.
However, you fail to remember where we were in April/May last year. We needed PPE. In this case - as in war - the government had to do whatever it could to get PPE. It did.
According to the article below, the government had 8,000 offers from suppliers of PPE. That is a massive number, when decisions needed making immediately, sometimes to the day, or the kit would not be got. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-52369223
Here's a sad truth for you: Labour under Starmer would have done exactly the same thing, because not to do so would have been a grossly wrong.
Labour under Starmer wouldn't have done the same thing - they would have tasked people with hitting their systems and the internet to find suppliers rather than letting their mates become middle men.
That's the issue here but again it's hidden alongside other issues so people don't focus on the important one.
In fact this is an incredibly obvious playbook - we get given the complete picture (PPE, BBL fraud) and then when people pick up the real fixable problems that demonstrate a real screw up that they were responsible flaw they change the conversation to a different issue that was revealed at the same time.
PPE has - mates without experience allowed to purchase anything at vast expense, expensive proper PPE purchased when supply was less than demand and fraud. BBL has - clearly fraudulent loans (companies created after the scheme began), dodgy loans and failed firms.
In both cases there is a clear area that could be investigated but it can't be because other issues are used to hide and sidetrack from the outright fraud.
Read my post. Reeves stood up with a list of companies - some of which were dubious AFAICR. The government had a massive need, and 8,000 offers. You either go through the proper process and delay things - meaning you do not have the PPE - or you risk fraud and waste.
The government got the PPE. Your approach would not have got it.
(As for Labour not letting their mates get advantage; the history of Labour rather goes against this.)
Can I ask your perspective on one simple point. Where the contractor did not deliver - either no PPE at all or PPE that was not fit for purpose - should there have been a simple clause in their contract allowing the government to get its (our) money back?
We have numerous examples of £107m being spent and nothing produced. Surely you can't be supporting that. Of a company not only producing unusable PPE and keeping the money but then being awarded an even bigger contract to store the unusable crap. Surely you can't be supporting that.
The corruption claims from so many of us aren't just because of contracts awarded blind - that would inevitably have happened. Its the lack of basic scrutiny. £107m paid for nothing to mates with no ability to get the money back. Yes, they got the PPE. But they also handed £107m at a time to the right people and got nothing in return...
This government is basically a crook’s charter. Practically a free hit if you want to go out and defraud someone. Or worse.
(Boris not especially to blame, although there’s no evidence he gives a fuck. This is the impact of austerity).
Fraud? Also open corruption. Like the PPE contracts handed out without tender to friends? To companies who had zero experience in PPE and in some cases delivered near zero usable but were able to pocket the public money anyway? How about the company who then won a contract to charge £stupid to store the unusable PPE it had procured? Or the company awarded a contract without tender before it had even been incorporated?
When the government practice open corruption and ask no questions tenders with no penalty clauses for non-delivery, why should we expect them to run a proper legal system? Where is the benefit?
The fraud is wrong - where it is genuine fraud.
However, you fail to remember where we were in April/May last year. We needed PPE. In this case - as in war - the government had to do whatever it could to get PPE. It did.
According to the article below, the government had 8,000 offers from suppliers of PPE. That is a massive number, when decisions needed making immediately, sometimes to the day, or the kit would not be got. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-52369223
Here's a sad truth for you: Labour under Starmer would have done exactly the same thing, because not to do so would have been a grossly wrong.
Labour under Starmer wouldn't have done the same thing - they would have tasked people with hitting their systems and the internet to find suppliers rather than letting their mates become middle men.
That's the issue here but again it's hidden alongside other issues so people don't focus on the important one.
In fact this is an incredibly obvious playbook - we get given the complete picture (PPE, BBL fraud) and then when people pick up the real fixable problems that demonstrate a real screw up that they were responsible flaw they change the conversation to a different issue that was revealed at the same time.
PPE has - mates without experience allowed to purchase anything at vast expense, expensive proper PPE purchased when supply was less than demand and fraud. BBL has - clearly fraudulent loans (companies created after the scheme began), dodgy loans and failed firms.
In both cases there is a clear area that could be investigated but it can't be because other issues are used to hide and sidetrack from the outright fraud.
What I find most baffling is how these contracts had no penalty clauses. Money has been paid out even when the PPE is either unfit or non-existent. We even had one company not only deliver unusable PPE and keep the money but then win an even more lucrative contract to store said unusable PPE.
How have contracts like this been issued? I can park the issue about friends donors and patrons being awarded contracts without tender at high risk. But how can contracts be issued which do not let the powers that be claw the money back when in some cases literally nothing is delivered? No business would operate in such a manner. Does the government usually do so?
No but then again I suspect there is virtually zero paperwork to go with the original deal because everyone (especially the ministers responsible) was panicking and their "mates" used that knowledge to their advantage.
Would have been very simple to ensure that the contracts issued - even simple generic ones with a "write the name of the supplier here" line had clauses with penalties for non-delivery of suitable kit.
It's not as if plenty of people on here at the time pointed out the need to some basic due diligence to minimise the possibility of fraud etc. And were roundly criticised on here by the usual suspects.
Well, now that fraud and those losses have to be paid for. And it will be - by the very same people who supported the government then and are now complaining about the tax increases.
This government is basically a crook’s charter. Practically a free hit if you want to go out and defraud someone. Or worse.
(Boris not especially to blame, although there’s no evidence he gives a fuck. This is the impact of austerity).
Fraud? Also open corruption. Like the PPE contracts handed out without tender to friends? To companies who had zero experience in PPE and in some cases delivered near zero usable but were able to pocket the public money anyway? How about the company who then won a contract to charge £stupid to store the unusable PPE it had procured? Or the company awarded a contract without tender before it had even been incorporated?
When the government practice open corruption and ask no questions tenders with no penalty clauses for non-delivery, why should we expect them to run a proper legal system? Where is the benefit?
The fraud is wrong - where it is genuine fraud.
However, you fail to remember where we were in April/May last year. We needed PPE. In this case - as in war - the government had to do whatever it could to get PPE. It did.
According to the article below, the government had 8,000 offers from suppliers of PPE. That is a massive number, when decisions needed making immediately, sometimes to the day, or the kit would not be got. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-52369223
Here's a sad truth for you: Labour under Starmer would have done exactly the same thing, because not to do so would have been a grossly wrong.
Labour under Starmer wouldn't have done the same thing - they would have tasked people with hitting their systems and the internet to find suppliers rather than letting their mates become middle men.
That's the issue here but again it's hidden alongside other issues so people don't focus on the important one.
In fact this is an incredibly obvious playbook - we get given the complete picture (PPE, BBL fraud) and then when people pick up the real fixable problems that demonstrate a real screw up that they were responsible flaw they change the conversation to a different issue that was revealed at the same time.
PPE has - mates without experience allowed to purchase anything at vast expense, expensive proper PPE purchased when supply was less than demand and fraud. BBL has - clearly fraudulent loans (companies created after the scheme began), dodgy loans and failed firms.
In both cases there is a clear area that could be investigated but it can't be because other issues are used to hide and sidetrack from the outright fraud.
What I find most baffling is how these contracts had no penalty clauses. Money has been paid out even when the PPE is either unfit or non-existent. We even had one company not only deliver unusable PPE and keep the money but then win an even more lucrative contract to store said unusable PPE.
How have contracts like this been issued? I can park the issue about friends donors and patrons being awarded contracts without tender at high risk. But how can contracts be issued which do not let the powers that be claw the money back when in some cases literally nothing is delivered? No business would operate in such a manner. Does the government usually do so?
No but then again I suspect there is virtually zero paperwork to go with the original deal because everyone (especially the ministers responsible) was panicking and their "mates" used that knowledge to their advantage.
Would have been very simple to ensure that the contracts issued - even simple generic ones with a "write the name of the supplier here" line had clauses with penalties for non-delivery of suitable kit.
Which you don't really need anyway, it's kind of implied in contracts for the supply of stuff, that the stuff works as intended, or you don't get paid.
Does the Sale of Goods Act not apply to Government?
If I buy a toaster and it doesn't make toast I can return it to the supplier and demand my money back.
Idiots like Dorries. "Distinguished lawyer's" like Raab. HY. They all think that people are utterly and totally stupid, can be fed any old lies and will lap it up.
They got that idea from Brexit, and the 2019 election proved it
Good Morning everyone. As someone else said, a powerful piece by Ms Cyclefree. I really do not recall a time when flagrant dishonesty was so common in public life.
I keep being told that politicians always lie, why am I making such a fuss. Nice to hear you say differently
It's a fact of life that people lie. How the governing system deal with that is a choice. As Monday's events - and the actions of the Speaker - showed, we now have a system which rules those lies in order, and suspends from the Commons MPs who call out those lies.
Although Blackford, as usual, bungled it. He should have asked if Johnson could reconcile his statement that there were no parties in his flat with Gray's finding that there was one, and asked the Speaker, separately, what the penalty is for misleading the House.
Then he'd not only have got away with it but effectively forced the Speaker to be the one calling out Johnson for lying.
Of course. Blackford is as subtle as a brick, but on this occasion he was stating what everyone knows to be true.
And in the circumstances, the Speaker's why can't we all just get along schtick about Johnson's comments, on which he won't take action - “I am far from satisfied that the comments in question were appropriate on this occasion,” he said. “I want to see more compassionate, reasonable politics in this house and these sort of comments can only inflame opinions.” - is ridiculous.
It looked as if the Speaker was exceptionally keen NOT to throw him out - doubtless realising, as we all do, that Blackford was very clearly right. He'd got as far as letting the matter drop when Blackford stood up and used "inadvertently", and my read is that the Speaker was pushed by someone near on the government bench to go back and check that Blackford had withdrawn his earlier statement, which he hadn't.
This government is basically a crook’s charter. Practically a free hit if you want to go out and defraud someone. Or worse.
(Boris not especially to blame, although there’s no evidence he gives a fuck. This is the impact of austerity).
Fraud? Also open corruption. Like the PPE contracts handed out without tender to friends? To companies who had zero experience in PPE and in some cases delivered near zero usable but were able to pocket the public money anyway? How about the company who then won a contract to charge £stupid to store the unusable PPE it had procured? Or the company awarded a contract without tender before it had even been incorporated?
When the government practice open corruption and ask no questions tenders with no penalty clauses for non-delivery, why should we expect them to run a proper legal system? Where is the benefit?
The fraud is wrong - where it is genuine fraud.
However, you fail to remember where we were in April/May last year. We needed PPE. In this case - as in war - the government had to do whatever it could to get PPE. It did.
According to the article below, the government had 8,000 offers from suppliers of PPE. That is a massive number, when decisions needed making immediately, sometimes to the day, or the kit would not be got. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-52369223
Here's a sad truth for you: Labour under Starmer would have done exactly the same thing, because not to do so would have been a grossly wrong.
Labour under Starmer wouldn't have done the same thing - they would have tasked people with hitting their systems and the internet to find suppliers rather than letting their mates become middle men.
That's the issue here but again it's hidden alongside other issues so people don't focus on the important one.
In fact this is an incredibly obvious playbook - we get given the complete picture (PPE, BBL fraud) and then when people pick up the real fixable problems that demonstrate a real screw up that they were responsible flaw they change the conversation to a different issue that was revealed at the same time.
PPE has - mates without experience allowed to purchase anything at vast expense, expensive proper PPE purchased when supply was less than demand and fraud. BBL has - clearly fraudulent loans (companies created after the scheme began), dodgy loans and failed firms.
In both cases there is a clear area that could be investigated but it can't be because other issues are used to hide and sidetrack from the outright fraud.
Read my post. Reeves stood up with a list of companies - some of which were dubious AFAICR. The government had a massive need, and 8,000 offers. You either go through the proper process and delay things - meaning you do not have the PPE - or you risk fraud and waste.
The government got the PPE. Your approach would not have got it.
(As for Labour not letting their mates get advantage; the history of Labour rather goes against this.)
Can I ask your perspective on one simple point. Where the contractor did not deliver - either no PPE at all or PPE that was not fit for purpose - should there have been a simple clause in their contract allowing the government to get its (our) money back?
We have numerous examples of £107m being spent and nothing produced. Surely you can't be supporting that. Of a company not only producing unusable PPE and keeping the money but then being awarded an even bigger contract to store the unusable crap. Surely you can't be supporting that.
The corruption claims from so many of us aren't just because of contracts awarded blind - that would inevitably have happened. Its the lack of basic scrutiny. £107m paid for nothing to mates with no ability to get the money back. Yes, they got the PPE. But they also handed £107m at a time to the right people and got nothing in return...
Again, clause not really needed. And wouldn't do any good anyway, because BentPPECo has distributed the 107m as int free loans to the Caribbean bank accounts of its shadow directors and gone into liquidation
If they're in the electoral equivalent of a burning building, and face the certainty of burning to death or leaping from a dark window and facing a wide range and diversity of potential outcomes, what's the smart move?
Guaranteed agonising death, or the possibility of survival?
It's their own damned fault for backing the clown in the first place. Failing to remove him is another critical failure.
I wonder if that observation is right, but Conservative MPs are processing it differently.
Boris has led them to a world of pain, and it's going to get worse before it gets better. But he also possesses the Boris Myth, that he alone can work miracles. I've never met him (lucky me), but I can imagine him having the strange terrible charisma to make up for his many obvious flaws as a person and politician. He probably leads the Conservatives to a huge defeat in 2024, but maybe, just maybe...
Whereas anyone else, even if there was agreement on who, calmly leads the Conservatives to a calm, dignified, small but decisive defeat in 2024.
And in a way, that's how it should be. A political party shouldn't get away with letting itself be taken over by a clown. And not one of the jolly ones either.
Some real nuggets in here and I think you've explained better something I've been hinting.
If the tories stay with Boris Johnson until 2024 then I think Labour will be in power for at least two terms, so through to 2034. Effectively we are talking about a once in a generation sea change: like 1979 and 1997. Remember that Margaret Thatcher only beat Jim Callaghan by 7% and her majority was 'just' 44 seats. It was sufficient to usher in the most momentous change in this country since Attlee.
If they ditch him and have someone sensible and competent then they might be able to avoid a sea change defeat and at the worst leave Labour in coalition territory. That gives them every chance of returning to power in 2029.
Stay with Johnson and we're looking at 1979 or 1997. A sea change.
No party having lost power at a general election has returned to power by winning the subsequent general election since February 1974. That was the first time it had happened since 1924 and Heath's Tories still won the popular vote. So unlikely.
Except that in that time we had two sea changes: the Conservatives were in power from 1979 to 1997 and Labour from 1997 to 2010 - the very thing to which I was referring.
The only comparable period in your timeframe is 2010 to 2019. Cameron's win in 2015 is exactly the kind of thing I mean.
If, but it's a big if, the Conservatives don't do a Labour and select an unelectable leader (Jeremy Corbyn) then they would stand every chance of winning in c. 2029
Stay with Johnson and they're out of power for a generation.
So? Labour were back in front in the polls by 1980, Ed Miliband's by 2011 even though they still did not win.
Labour won a landslide in 1945 over Churchill but Churchill slashed their majority in 1950 from 146 to just 5 as the economy still continued sluggish growth with rationing post war.
Yes Labour won a landslide in 1997 and 2001 but that was mainly as Blair's first government was reasonably competent and the economy was growing and doing well.
If New Labour had run an incompetent government like Heath's in 1970 then they would have seen their majority at least slashed or lost power in 2001. Regardless of who the Tory PM who lost power in 1997 was
I read your analysis with interest most of the time, but that post makes no sense whatsoever.
Rachel Wearmouth @REWearmouth Most headlines on levelling up say there is no new money & no new ideas. Rather than moving people on from partygate, the govt has signalled a major weakness
Good Morning everyone. As someone else said, a powerful piece by Ms Cyclefree. I really do not recall a time when flagrant dishonesty was so common in public life.
I keep being told that politicians always lie, why am I making such a fuss. Nice to hear you say differently
It's a fact of life that people lie. How the governing system deal with that is a choice. As Monday's events - and the actions of the Speaker - showed, we now have a system which rules those lies in order, and suspends from the Commons MPs who call out those lies.
Although Blackford, as usual, bungled it. He should have asked if Johnson could reconcile his statement that there were no parties in his flat with Gray's finding that there was one, and asked the Speaker, separately, what the penalty is for misleading the House.
Then he'd not only have got away with it but effectively forced the Speaker to be the one calling out Johnson for lying.
Johnsons reply would have been.
"He is wrong and really needs to wait for the inquiry. Oh and Brexit and Vaccines and Levelling Up. Errr and you and Starmer smell."
If I'd been an MP I'd have been tempted to stand up and simply ask the PM "which day of the year is his birthday?". If he made the slip of repeating the standard reply about Gray, or even started down that path, he'd have looked a complete idiot. If, more likely, he gave the actual answer, it would have been the first piece of concrete information achieved by a question for some time in that debate, and the point wouldn't have been lost on the House.
Good Morning everyone. As someone else said, a powerful piece by Ms Cyclefree. I really do not recall a time when flagrant dishonesty was so common in public life.
I keep being told that politicians always lie, why am I making such a fuss. Nice to hear you say differently
It's a fact of life that people lie. How the governing system deal with that is a choice. As Monday's events - and the actions of the Speaker - showed, we now have a system which rules those lies in order, and suspends from the Commons MPs who call out those lies.
Although Blackford, as usual, bungled it. He should have asked if Johnson could reconcile his statement that there were no parties in his flat with Gray's finding that there was one, and asked the Speaker, separately, what the penalty is for misleading the House.
Then he'd not only have got away with it but effectively forced the Speaker to be the one calling out Johnson for lying.
Johnsons reply would have been.
"He is wrong and really needs to wait for the inquiry. Oh and Brexit and Vaccines and Levelling Up. Errr and you and Starmer smell."
If I'd been an MP I'd have been tempted to stand up and simply ask the PM "which day of the year is his birthday?". If he made the slip of repeating the standard reply about Gray, or even started down that path, he'd have looked a complete idiot. If, more likely, he gave the actual answer, it would have been the first piece of concrete information achieved by a question for some time in that debate, and the point wouldn't have been lost on the House.
He could have said: "Can't tell you. GDPR." Which I suppose would also have had its impact, given the publicity already given ...
The ridicule of Boris Johnson over the Partygate scandal has extended across the East and West, with U.S. President Joe Biden's spokeswoman laughing at the Prime Minister being 'ambushed by cake' at a birthday party in No10. White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Tuesday said Biden has 'never been ambushed by a cake' as she responded to a question on the lockdown-breaching parties at Downing Street.
TV channels in Russia have also been revelling in Mr Johnson's discomfort, with one branding him 'the most disliked, disrespected and ridiculed character in Britain' who was 'completely under the control and heel of his young wife' Carrie.
You’re celebrating the Russian misogyny?
But it's true? Boris is completely and utterly controlled by Carrie.
She certainly has a significant influence it appears. But the way it is phrased is specifically designed to demean him.
Well, that isn't really misogyny then, is it?
The caricature of a scheming young woman weaving a web to bedazzle a foolish man is a classic trope. Designed to appeal to some unpleasant parts of the Russian psyche
If they're in the electoral equivalent of a burning building, and face the certainty of burning to death or leaping from a dark window and facing a wide range and diversity of potential outcomes, what's the smart move?
Guaranteed agonising death, or the possibility of survival?
It's their own damned fault for backing the clown in the first place. Failing to remove him is another critical failure.
I wonder if that observation is right, but Conservative MPs are processing it differently.
Boris has led them to a world of pain, and it's going to get worse before it gets better. But he also possesses the Boris Myth, that he alone can work miracles. I've never met him (lucky me), but I can imagine him having the strange terrible charisma to make up for his many obvious flaws as a person and politician. He probably leads the Conservatives to a huge defeat in 2024, but maybe, just maybe...
Whereas anyone else, even if there was agreement on who, calmly leads the Conservatives to a calm, dignified, small but decisive defeat in 2024.
And in a way, that's how it should be. A political party shouldn't get away with letting itself be taken over by a clown. And not one of the jolly ones either.
Some real nuggets in here and I think you've explained better something I've been hinting.
If the tories stay with Boris Johnson until 2024 then I think Labour will be in power for at least two terms, so through to 2034. Effectively we are talking about a once in a generation sea change: like 1979 and 1997. Remember that Margaret Thatcher only beat Jim Callaghan by 7% and her majority was 'just' 44 seats. It was sufficient to usher in the most momentous change in this country since Attlee.
If they ditch him and have someone sensible and competent then they might be able to avoid a sea change defeat and at the worst leave Labour in coalition territory. That gives them every chance of returning to power in 2029.
Stay with Johnson and we're looking at 1979 or 1997. A sea change.
No party having lost power at a general election has returned to power by winning the subsequent general election since February 1974. That was the first time it had happened since 1924 and Heath's Tories still won the popular vote. So unlikely.
Except that in that time we had two sea changes: the Conservatives were in power from 1979 to 1997 and Labour from 1997 to 2010 - the very thing to which I was referring.
The only comparable period in your timeframe is 2010 to 2019. Cameron's win in 2015 is exactly the kind of thing I mean.
If, but it's a big if, the Conservatives don't do a Labour and select an unelectable leader (Jeremy Corbyn) then they would stand every chance of winning in c. 2029
Stay with Johnson and they're out of power for a generation.
So? Labour were back in front in the polls by 1980, Ed Miliband's by 2011 even though they still did not win.
Labour won a landslide in 1945 over Churchill but Churchill slashed their majority in 1950 from 146 to just 5 as the economy still continued sluggish growth with rationing post war.
Yes Labour won a landslide in 1997 and 2001 but that was mainly as Blair's first government was reasonably competent and the economy was growing and doing well.
If New Labour had run an incompetent government like Heath's in 1970 then they would have seen their majority at least slashed or lost power in 2001. Regardless of who the Tory PM who lost power in 1997 was
I read your analysis with interest most of the time, but that post makes no sense whatsoever.
The point is if Starmer becomes PM and loses power to the Tories after just 1 term it will likely be because his government was incompetent and the economy was doing poorly.
Whether the Tories had removed Boris as PM or not in the previous government would by then be irrelevant
I've thought on balance that Johnson was going to get away with it but I'm less and less sure.
There's just so much sewerage around and whatever he does turns to sh*t. When papers like the Mail, Telegraph and even the Express start turning on him you can be sure it's a reflection of the mood in the country.
There's about eight weeks until the local election campaign starts, and that's looking like a long period of time for those MPs hoping to shunt forcing him out off until after May. It would help, of course, if the police investigation remained unfinished for that long, but that too looks unlikely.
The number of letters may creep over the line in coming days or, more likely, when the finished police/Gray emerges, or perhaps equally likely, after bad losses in May. The scenario where Johnson lasts until the end of the year looks the least likely of all.
I do not know enough about the criminal justice system in England to comment in detail but the consequences for trials in Scotland of Covid have been severe. So many court days have been lost. The last trial I was set to do, where the complainers and the accused had been waiting 2 years for the case to come to trial, collapsed before the first witness was in the box because the principal complainer had come down with Covid. Trials with multiple accused have been impossible for the last 2 years, they simply require too many people in the same room.
In Scotland the High Court and the Sheriff court have used cinemas as Jury centres keeping juries remote from the court and able to maintain social distancing. In every trial this has added at least a day to the case because the first day is used selecting the jury who then have to attend the Jury centre the following morning. Almost every trial I have done in this period has had technical problems with the connection between the centre and the court. This becomes inevitable if the witness is also giving evidence remotely, which is often the case in sex trials.
The system is trying hard. We are running 19 High Court trial courts at once. This is unprecedented. I was talked into taking on another one yesterday due to start on the 16th. Bodies for both the defence and prosecution are quite hard to find. Defence counsel are racing from trial to trial and the system is having to accomodate them, recognising the importance of their role.
At the less serious end there was nearly 18 months with no trials except for those in custody. The processing capacity of JP and Sheriff courts have been massively reduced by the Covid regulations which limit the number of people allowed in the building at any one time, inevitably causing down time where something comes to an end prematurely and where witnesses have to be timetabled. It is really hard to get through the business in circumstances like that.
I mention all of this because I am not really convinced that the delays in matters coming to trial are being caused by the reasons @Cyclefree says. The mass departure of young criminal barristers and experienced solicitors capable of preparing a case because they simply cannot make a living on ridiculous legal aid rates will certainly be having an effect. But I would be astonished if the lack of court rooms was the problem.
As in so many other areas of life we need to get back to normal with the restrictions removed. And then we need to catch up the backlog. Its going to be a hell of a slog.
Can those on here critical of Boris Johnson please desist in calling him by his preferred cuddly stage name "Boris". Under the circumstances "Boris Johnson" "Mr Johnson" or preferably simply "Johnson" would seem far more appropriate. He is not a lovable uncle, a music hall comedian or the old fool down the pub, he is supposed to be the Prime Minister.
He is a malevolent politician, he is not our friend.
Surely better to call him Boris and irrevocably tarnish his persona, connecting it to the current shitshow?
No, it demonstrates we are playing along with the lie.
Don't forget his friends, family and close associates refer to "Boris" as Al, or Alexander.
Boris won elections, Al never did. Boris needs to be defeated. Defeat Boris and the rest is nothing.
Good Morning everyone. As someone else said, a powerful piece by Ms Cyclefree. I really do not recall a time when flagrant dishonesty was so common in public life.
I keep being told that politicians always lie, why am I making such a fuss. Nice to hear you say differently
It's a fact of life that people lie. How the governing system deal with that is a choice. As Monday's events - and the actions of the Speaker - showed, we now have a system which rules those lies in order, and suspends from the Commons MPs who call out those lies.
Although Blackford, as usual, bungled it. He should have asked if Johnson could reconcile his statement that there were no parties in his flat with Gray's finding that there was one, and asked the Speaker, separately, what the penalty is for misleading the House.
Then he'd not only have got away with it but effectively forced the Speaker to be the one calling out Johnson for lying.
Johnsons reply would have been.
"He is wrong and really needs to wait for the inquiry. Oh and Brexit and Vaccines and Levelling Up. Errr and you and Starmer smell."
If I'd been an MP I'd have been tempted to stand up and simply ask the PM "which day of the year is his birthday?". If he made the slip of repeating the standard reply about Gray, or even started down that path, he'd have looked a complete idiot. If, more likely, he gave the actual answer, it would have been the first piece of concrete information achieved by a question for some time in that debate, and the point wouldn't have been lost on the House.
Try this for size. Ravey Mikey Govey squirming on Sky News. Trying to hold the "we won't know if the PM was at a party in his flat singing The Winner Takes It All until the met investigate" line. "But he knows if he was there" is pointed out.
Rachel Wearmouth @REWearmouth Most headlines on levelling up say there is no new money & no new ideas. Rather than moving people on from partygate, the govt has signalled a major weakness
Final thought. Boris is Charles II, the Merrie Monarch. Supposedly he was easily manipulated by his younger mistresses, which proved near-fatal to the governance of the country
‘Writing for BBC History Magazine, Don Jordan and Michael Walsh reveal how the merry monarch's obsession with sex cost England a fortune and left it vulnerable to attack’
But was Charles ever ‘controlled’ by these women? No. He was always the king. He was controlled by himself, by his own appetites: his urgent desire for sex, his need for female company, and his hunger for a constant variety of partners
This government is basically a crook’s charter. Practically a free hit if you want to go out and defraud someone. Or worse.
(Boris not especially to blame, although there’s no evidence he gives a fuck. This is the impact of austerity).
Fraud? Also open corruption. Like the PPE contracts handed out without tender to friends? To companies who had zero experience in PPE and in some cases delivered near zero usable but were able to pocket the public money anyway? How about the company who then won a contract to charge £stupid to store the unusable PPE it had procured? Or the company awarded a contract without tender before it had even been incorporated?
When the government practice open corruption and ask no questions tenders with no penalty clauses for non-delivery, why should we expect them to run a proper legal system? Where is the benefit?
The fraud is wrong - where it is genuine fraud.
However, you fail to remember where we were in April/May last year. We needed PPE. In this case - as in war - the government had to do whatever it could to get PPE. It did.
According to the article below, the government had 8,000 offers from suppliers of PPE. That is a massive number, when decisions needed making immediately, sometimes to the day, or the kit would not be got. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-52369223
Here's a sad truth for you: Labour under Starmer would have done exactly the same thing, because not to do so would have been a grossly wrong.
Labour under Starmer wouldn't have done the same thing - they would have tasked people with hitting their systems and the internet to find suppliers rather than letting their mates become middle men.
That's the issue here but again it's hidden alongside other issues so people don't focus on the important one.
In fact this is an incredibly obvious playbook - we get given the complete picture (PPE, BBL fraud) and then when people pick up the real fixable problems that demonstrate a real screw up that they were responsible flaw they change the conversation to a different issue that was revealed at the same time.
PPE has - mates without experience allowed to purchase anything at vast expense, expensive proper PPE purchased when supply was less than demand and fraud. BBL has - clearly fraudulent loans (companies created after the scheme began), dodgy loans and failed firms.
In both cases there is a clear area that could be investigated but it can't be because other issues are used to hide and sidetrack from the outright fraud.
What I find most baffling is how these contracts had no penalty clauses. Money has been paid out even when the PPE is either unfit or non-existent. We even had one company not only deliver unusable PPE and keep the money but then win an even more lucrative contract to store said unusable PPE.
How have contracts like this been issued? I can park the issue about friends donors and patrons being awarded contracts without tender at high risk. But how can contracts be issued which do not let the powers that be claw the money back when in some cases literally nothing is delivered? No business would operate in such a manner. Does the government usually do so?
No but then again I suspect there is virtually zero paperwork to go with the original deal because everyone (especially the ministers responsible) was panicking and their "mates" used that knowledge to their advantage.
Would have been very simple to ensure that the contracts issued - even simple generic ones with a "write the name of the supplier here" line had clauses with penalties for non-delivery of suitable kit.
Which you don't really need anyway, it's kind of implied in contracts for the supply of stuff, that the stuff works as intended, or you don't get paid.
But which legal jurisdiction for a start? What delivery date is acceptable? Next year? Folk such as RP know far more than I do, but having a clear statement up front is important. Plus it's not as if the sale of goods by distance selling regulations apply on that scale. You can't ring up Mastercard and get the payment refunded.
Nasir Afzal devastating re Boris/Saville this morning. Boris really should be in big trouble over this, particularly because of the impact it has on his victims as a consequence of him reopening it.
Guess what the latest threat is to Tory backbenchers thinking of toppling the PM? That @BorisJohnson would 'do a Corbyn': fight a leadership ballot and win with the backing of party members.
This government is basically a crook’s charter. Practically a free hit if you want to go out and defraud someone. Or worse.
(Boris not especially to blame, although there’s no evidence he gives a fuck. This is the impact of austerity).
Fraud? Also open corruption. Like the PPE contracts handed out without tender to friends? To companies who had zero experience in PPE and in some cases delivered near zero usable but were able to pocket the public money anyway? How about the company who then won a contract to charge £stupid to store the unusable PPE it had procured? Or the company awarded a contract without tender before it had even been incorporated?
When the government practice open corruption and ask no questions tenders with no penalty clauses for non-delivery, why should we expect them to run a proper legal system? Where is the benefit?
The fraud is wrong - where it is genuine fraud.
However, you fail to remember where we were in April/May last year. We needed PPE. In this case - as in war - the government had to do whatever it could to get PPE. It did.
According to the article below, the government had 8,000 offers from suppliers of PPE. That is a massive number, when decisions needed making immediately, sometimes to the day, or the kit would not be got. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-52369223
Here's a sad truth for you: Labour under Starmer would have done exactly the same thing, because not to do so would have been a grossly wrong.
Labour under Starmer wouldn't have done the same thing - they would have tasked people with hitting their systems and the internet to find suppliers rather than letting their mates become middle men.
That's the issue here but again it's hidden alongside other issues so people don't focus on the important one.
In fact this is an incredibly obvious playbook - we get given the complete picture (PPE, BBL fraud) and then when people pick up the real fixable problems that demonstrate a real screw up that they were responsible flaw they change the conversation to a different issue that was revealed at the same time.
PPE has - mates without experience allowed to purchase anything at vast expense, expensive proper PPE purchased when supply was less than demand and fraud. BBL has - clearly fraudulent loans (companies created after the scheme began), dodgy loans and failed firms.
In both cases there is a clear area that could be investigated but it can't be because other issues are used to hide and sidetrack from the outright fraud.
What I find most baffling is how these contracts had no penalty clauses. Money has been paid out even when the PPE is either unfit or non-existent. We even had one company not only deliver unusable PPE and keep the money but then win an even more lucrative contract to store said unusable PPE.
How have contracts like this been issued? I can park the issue about friends donors and patrons being awarded contracts without tender at high risk. But how can contracts be issued which do not let the powers that be claw the money back when in some cases literally nothing is delivered? No business would operate in such a manner. Does the government usually do so?
As there seem to be precious few records, you'll never know.
If they're in the electoral equivalent of a burning building, and face the certainty of burning to death or leaping from a dark window and facing a wide range and diversity of potential outcomes, what's the smart move?
Guaranteed agonising death, or the possibility of survival?
It's their own damned fault for backing the clown in the first place. Failing to remove him is another critical failure.
I wonder if that observation is right, but Conservative MPs are processing it differently.
Boris has led them to a world of pain, and it's going to get worse before it gets better. But he also possesses the Boris Myth, that he alone can work miracles. I've never met him (lucky me), but I can imagine him having the strange terrible charisma to make up for his many obvious flaws as a person and politician. He probably leads the Conservatives to a huge defeat in 2024, but maybe, just maybe...
Whereas anyone else, even if there was agreement on who, calmly leads the Conservatives to a calm, dignified, small but decisive defeat in 2024.
And in a way, that's how it should be. A political party shouldn't get away with letting itself be taken over by a clown. And not one of the jolly ones either.
Some real nuggets in here and I think you've explained better something I've been hinting.
If the tories stay with Boris Johnson until 2024 then I think Labour will be in power for at least two terms, so through to 2034. Effectively we are talking about a once in a generation sea change: like 1979 and 1997. Remember that Margaret Thatcher only beat Jim Callaghan by 7% and her majority was 'just' 44 seats. It was sufficient to usher in the most momentous change in this country since Attlee.
If they ditch him and have someone sensible and competent then they might be able to avoid a sea change defeat and at the worst leave Labour in coalition territory. That gives them every chance of returning to power in 2029.
Stay with Johnson and we're looking at 1979 or 1997. A sea change.
No party having lost power at a general election has returned to power by winning the subsequent general election since February 1974. That was the first time it had happened since 1924 and Heath's Tories still won the popular vote. So unlikely.
Except that in that time we had two sea changes: the Conservatives were in power from 1979 to 1997 and Labour from 1997 to 2010 - the very thing to which I was referring.
The only comparable period in your timeframe is 2010 to 2019. Cameron's win in 2015 is exactly the kind of thing I mean.
If, but it's a big if, the Conservatives don't do a Labour and select an unelectable leader (Jeremy Corbyn) then they would stand every chance of winning in c. 2029
Stay with Johnson and they're out of power for a generation.
So? Labour were back in front in the polls by 1980, Ed Miliband's by 2011 even though they still did not win.
Labour won a landslide in 1945 over Churchill but Churchill slashed their majority in 1950 from 146 to just 5 as the economy still continued sluggish growth with rationing post war.
Yes Labour won a landslide in 1997 and 2001 but that was mainly as Blair's first government was reasonably competent and the economy was growing and doing well.
If New Labour had run an incompetent government like Heath's in 1970 then they would have seen their majority at least slashed or lost power in 2001. Regardless of who the Tory PM who lost power in 1997 was
I read your analysis with interest most of the time, but that post makes no sense whatsoever.
The point is if Starmer becomes PM and loses power to the Tories after just 1 term it will likely be because his government was incompetent and the economy was doing poorly.
Whether the Tories had removed Boris as PM or not in the previous government would by then be irrelevant
Oh. Surely the rule is, if Starmer is economically incompetent he would likely lose in 2028. However the economy might be booming in 2028, but he loses anyway because he was caught having Covid lockdown parties.
So your methodology or working out is all over the place, even if you have reached the correct answer.
The ridicule of Boris Johnson over the Partygate scandal has extended across the East and West, with U.S. President Joe Biden's spokeswoman laughing at the Prime Minister being 'ambushed by cake' at a birthday party in No10. White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Tuesday said Biden has 'never been ambushed by a cake' as she responded to a question on the lockdown-breaching parties at Downing Street.
TV channels in Russia have also been revelling in Mr Johnson's discomfort, with one branding him 'the most disliked, disrespected and ridiculed character in Britain' who was 'completely under the control and heel of his young wife' Carrie.
You’re celebrating the Russian misogyny?
But it's true? Boris is completely and utterly controlled by Carrie.
I’m not sure he’s ‘controlled’. I’ve met controlled men and their controlling wives. They are quite obvious.
It’s more that he can’t be arsed. He is happy to let Carrie do what she wants until the point when it bothers him, from decorating the fiat to organising their social life. It keeps Carrie happy which means less grief and tedium. But as Carrie seems unusually flighty and a bit clueless, this leads to trouble
Nah, it's across government policy too. Boris is gutting the Brexit red tape bonfire in favour of some undefined net zero action. That's 100% a Carrie policy that Boris has bought into because if he doesn't agree she will withhold sex and it's not as of he can pop out secretly to see the nearest violinist either, that was possible when he was mayor and no one gave a fuck where he was. Carrie knows what Boris is like too so one imagines the leash is very, very short.
He wakes up every morning with a heel over his balls.
Lol. Vividly phrased!
I just don’t see it. As I say, I’ve met men controlled by their women - pussy whipped - and Boris does not come across that way. He’s more the bored silverback who lets his woman do whatever she wants, if that makes his life more pleasant/less stressful
He’s quite capable of cheating on her, or dumping her (if he loses the job), and she knows it. That’s not a controlled man
But this is an unedifying conversation for 8am in London. Even if it is a hot, sunny afternoon in Sri Lanka. I must hie myself to the swimming pool!
You've missed the key point, which is that Johnson goes for the easy route with everyone, giving them what they want, or at least promising or appearing to do so. There's nothing particular about his relationship with his wife, except that she has opinions and he sees her more than anyone else.
Guess what the latest threat is to Tory backbenchers thinking of toppling the PM? That @BorisJohnson would 'do a Corbyn': fight a leadership ballot and win with the backing of party members.
I thought this was just a hyufd fantasy, apparently not
I didn't think that was possible under Tory rules. The incumbent faces a VONC, if they lose that is it. They are not allowed to be a candidate in the new election. If they win they are, in theory, safe for a year but May showed that is not necessarily the case in practice.
If they're in the electoral equivalent of a burning building, and face the certainty of burning to death or leaping from a dark window and facing a wide range and diversity of potential outcomes, what's the smart move?
Guaranteed agonising death, or the possibility of survival?
It's their own damned fault for backing the clown in the first place. Failing to remove him is another critical failure.
I wonder if that observation is right, but Conservative MPs are processing it differently.
Boris has led them to a world of pain, and it's going to get worse before it gets better. But he also possesses the Boris Myth, that he alone can work miracles. I've never met him (lucky me), but I can imagine him having the strange terrible charisma to make up for his many obvious flaws as a person and politician. He probably leads the Conservatives to a huge defeat in 2024, but maybe, just maybe...
Whereas anyone else, even if there was agreement on who, calmly leads the Conservatives to a calm, dignified, small but decisive defeat in 2024.
And in a way, that's how it should be. A political party shouldn't get away with letting itself be taken over by a clown. And not one of the jolly ones either.
Some real nuggets in here and I think you've explained better something I've been hinting.
If the tories stay with Boris Johnson until 2024 then I think Labour will be in power for at least two terms, so through to 2034. Effectively we are talking about a once in a generation sea change: like 1979 and 1997. Remember that Margaret Thatcher only beat Jim Callaghan by 7% and her majority was 'just' 44 seats. It was sufficient to usher in the most momentous change in this country since Attlee.
If they ditch him and have someone sensible and competent then they might be able to avoid a sea change defeat and at the worst leave Labour in coalition territory. That gives them every chance of returning to power in 2029.
Stay with Johnson and we're looking at 1979 or 1997. A sea change.
No party having lost power at a general election has returned to power by winning the subsequent general election since February 1974. That was the first time it had happened since 1924 and Heath's Tories still won the popular vote. So unlikely.
Except that in that time we had two sea changes: the Conservatives were in power from 1979 to 1997 and Labour from 1997 to 2010 - the very thing to which I was referring.
The only comparable period in your timeframe is 2010 to 2019. Cameron's win in 2015 is exactly the kind of thing I mean.
If, but it's a big if, the Conservatives don't do a Labour and select an unelectable leader (Jeremy Corbyn) then they would stand every chance of winning in c. 2029
Stay with Johnson and they're out of power for a generation.
So? Labour were back in front in the polls by 1980, Ed Miliband's by 2011 even though they still did not win.
Labour won a landslide in 1945 over Churchill but Churchill slashed their majority in 1950 from 146 to just 5 as the economy still continued sluggish growth with rationing post war.
Yes Labour won a landslide in 1997 and 2001 but that was mainly as Blair's first government was reasonably competent and the economy was growing and doing well.
If New Labour had run an incompetent government like Heath's in 1970 then they would have seen their majority at least slashed or lost power in 2001. Regardless of who the Tory PM who lost power in 1997 was
I read your analysis with interest most of the time, but that post makes no sense whatsoever.
This government is basically a crook’s charter. Practically a free hit if you want to go out and defraud someone. Or worse.
(Boris not especially to blame, although there’s no evidence he gives a fuck. This is the impact of austerity).
Fraud? Also open corruption. Like the PPE contracts handed out without tender to friends? To companies who had zero experience in PPE and in some cases delivered near zero usable but were able to pocket the public money anyway? How about the company who then won a contract to charge £stupid to store the unusable PPE it had procured? Or the company awarded a contract without tender before it had even been incorporated?
When the government practice open corruption and ask no questions tenders with no penalty clauses for non-delivery, why should we expect them to run a proper legal system? Where is the benefit?
The fraud is wrong - where it is genuine fraud.
However, you fail to remember where we were in April/May last year. We needed PPE. In this case - as in war - the government had to do whatever it could to get PPE. It did.
According to the article below, the government had 8,000 offers from suppliers of PPE. That is a massive number, when decisions needed making immediately, sometimes to the day, or the kit would not be got. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-52369223
Here's a sad truth for you: Labour under Starmer would have done exactly the same thing, because not to do so would have been a grossly wrong.
Labour under Starmer wouldn't have done the same thing - they would have tasked people with hitting their systems and the internet to find suppliers rather than letting their mates become middle men.
That's the issue here but again it's hidden alongside other issues so people don't focus on the important one.
In fact this is an incredibly obvious playbook - we get given the complete picture (PPE, BBL fraud) and then when people pick up the real fixable problems that demonstrate a real screw up that they were responsible flaw they change the conversation to a different issue that was revealed at the same time.
PPE has - mates without experience allowed to purchase anything at vast expense, expensive proper PPE purchased when supply was less than demand and fraud. BBL has - clearly fraudulent loans (companies created after the scheme began), dodgy loans and failed firms.
In both cases there is a clear area that could be investigated but it can't be because other issues are used to hide and sidetrack from the outright fraud.
What I find most baffling is how these contracts had no penalty clauses. Money has been paid out even when the PPE is either unfit or non-existent. We even had one company not only deliver unusable PPE and keep the money but then win an even more lucrative contract to store said unusable PPE.
How have contracts like this been issued? I can park the issue about friends donors and patrons being awarded contracts without tender at high risk. But how can contracts be issued which do not let the powers that be claw the money back when in some cases literally nothing is delivered? No business would operate in such a manner. Does the government usually do so?
No but then again I suspect there is virtually zero paperwork to go with the original deal because everyone (especially the ministers responsible) was panicking and their "mates" used that knowledge to their advantage.
Would have been very simple to ensure that the contracts issued - even simple generic ones with a "write the name of the supplier here" line had clauses with penalties for non-delivery of suitable kit.
Which you don't really need anyway, it's kind of implied in contracts for the supply of stuff, that the stuff works as intended, or you don't get paid.
But which legal jurisdiction for a start? What delivery date is acceptable? Next year? Folk such as RP know far more than I do, but having a clear statement up front is important. Plus it's not as if the sale of goods by distance selling regulations apply on that scale. You can't ring up Mastercard and get the payment refunded.
Sure. I am pretty certain the contracts would have made some sort of stab at providing for that kind of stuff. Irrelevant anyway, as these were off the shelf companies set up ad hoc which will have dissipated the money within hours of receiving it.
I do not know enough about the criminal justice system in England to comment in detail but the consequences for trials in Scotland of Covid have been severe. So many court days have been lost. The last trial I was set to do, where the complainers and the accused had been waiting 2 years for the case to come to trial, collapsed before the first witness was in the box because the principal complainer had come down with Covid. Trials with multiple accused have been impossible for the last 2 years, they simply require too many people in the same room.
In Scotland the High Court and the Sheriff court have used cinemas as Jury centres keeping juries remote from the court and able to maintain social distancing. In every trial this has added at least a day to the case because the first day is used selecting the jury who then have to attend the Jury centre the following morning. Almost every trial I have done in this period has had technical problems with the connection between the centre and the court. This becomes inevitable if the witness is also giving evidence remotely, which is often the case in sex trials.
The system is trying hard. We are running 19 High Court trial courts at once. This is unprecedented. I was talked into taking on another one yesterday due to start on the 16th. Bodies for both the defence and prosecution are quite hard to find. Defence counsel are racing from trial to trial and the system is having to accomodate them, recognising the importance of their role.
At the less serious end there was nearly 18 months with no trials except for those in custody. The processing capacity of JP and Sheriff courts have been massively reduced by the Covid regulations which limit the number of people allowed in the building at any one time, inevitably causing down time where something comes to an end prematurely and where witnesses have to be timetabled. It is really hard to get through the business in circumstances like that.
I mention all of this because I am not really convinced that the delays in matters coming to trial are being caused by the reasons @Cyclefree says. The mass departure of young criminal barristers and experienced solicitors capable of preparing a case because they simply cannot make a living on ridiculous legal aid rates will certainly be having an effect. But I would be astonished if the lack of court rooms was the problem.
As in so many other areas of life we need to get back to normal with the restrictions removed. And then we need to catch up the backlog. Its going to be a hell of a slog.
Doesn't mean that the covid problems aren't adduing to the structural ones, in at least some areas/jurisdictions. But an interesting post. Clearly a problem to be fixed.
Nasir Afzal devastating re Boris/Saville this morning. Boris really should be in big trouble over this, particularly because of the impact it has on his victims as a consequence of him reopening it.
Some in the media seem to think it's a suggestion from Crosby, following his dead cat strategy.
But the idea of 'dead cat' is that you get people talking about something else, even if it's bad.
Trying to distract from the matter of the PM being a big liar, by telling another big lie, isn't going to work the same way.
I find cuts to justice pretty inexplicable as it ends up as a false economy given the problems, delays and costs that arise. Simply spending more money doesnt help all things, but putting a decent amount into courts etc, including legal aid, seems like it would aggravation and money in the end.
On.the voter ID discussion on the last thread in think opponents are prone to hyperbole on how awful it is given it is common even in 'good' countries, but my stance is it seems unnecessary and so the motivation is questionable. The benefits dont seem worth the aggravation.
This government is basically a crook’s charter. Practically a free hit if you want to go out and defraud someone. Or worse.
(Boris not especially to blame, although there’s no evidence he gives a fuck. This is the impact of austerity).
Fraud? Also open corruption. Like the PPE contracts handed out without tender to friends? To companies who had zero experience in PPE and in some cases delivered near zero usable but were able to pocket the public money anyway? How about the company who then won a contract to charge £stupid to store the unusable PPE it had procured? Or the company awarded a contract without tender before it had even been incorporated?
When the government practice open corruption and ask no questions tenders with no penalty clauses for non-delivery, why should we expect them to run a proper legal system? Where is the benefit?
The fraud is wrong - where it is genuine fraud.
However, you fail to remember where we were in April/May last year. We needed PPE. In this case - as in war - the government had to do whatever it could to get PPE. It did.
According to the article below, the government had 8,000 offers from suppliers of PPE. That is a massive number, when decisions needed making immediately, sometimes to the day, or the kit would not be got. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-52369223
Here's a sad truth for you: Labour under Starmer would have done exactly the same thing, because not to do so would have been a grossly wrong.
Labour under Starmer wouldn't have done the same thing - they would have tasked people with hitting their systems and the internet to find suppliers rather than letting their mates become middle men.
That's the issue here but again it's hidden alongside other issues so people don't focus on the important one.
In fact this is an incredibly obvious playbook - we get given the complete picture (PPE, BBL fraud) and then when people pick up the real fixable problems that demonstrate a real screw up that they were responsible flaw they change the conversation to a different issue that was revealed at the same time.
PPE has - mates without experience allowed to purchase anything at vast expense, expensive proper PPE purchased when supply was less than demand and fraud. BBL has - clearly fraudulent loans (companies created after the scheme began), dodgy loans and failed firms.
In both cases there is a clear area that could be investigated but it can't be because other issues are used to hide and sidetrack from the outright fraud.
Read my post. Reeves stood up with a list of companies - some of which were dubious AFAICR. The government had a massive need, and 8,000 offers. You either go through the proper process and delay things - meaning you do not have the PPE - or you risk fraud and waste.
The government got the PPE. Your approach would not have got it.
(As for Labour not letting their mates get advantage; the history of Labour rather goes against this.)
Can I ask your perspective on one simple point. Where the contractor did not deliver - either no PPE at all or PPE that was not fit for purpose - should there have been a simple clause in their contract allowing the government to get its (our) money back?
We have numerous examples of £107m being spent and nothing produced. Surely you can't be supporting that. Of a company not only producing unusable PPE and keeping the money but then being awarded an even bigger contract to store the unusable crap. Surely you can't be supporting that.
The corruption claims from so many of us aren't just because of contracts awarded blind - that would inevitably have happened. Its the lack of basic scrutiny. £107m paid for nothing to mates with no ability to get the money back. Yes, they got the PPE. But they also handed £107m at a time to the right people and got nothing in return...
I'd rather like you to address my points, but I'll answer yours, so strongly I'l even put it in bold:
We needed the PPE urgently. That was the priority. Your priority was not getting the PPE.
Ideally, the contract should have had a non-delivery clause. However: if having a non-delivery clause meant we might not get it, we shouldn't have had one. If a company said: "I can get you a million pieces of item x for £5 per item, but we need to pay our supplier in advance today or he'll give the order to another organisation."
What do you do, if the normal price was £2 per item, and the new price is £4-£6 per item? If there's a risk you won't get the money back? If there's a risk it won't quite be the correct kit?
Do you spend three weeks negotiating terms, as you would in 'normal' times? No. The answer might well be you run over, give them a big sloppy kiss and shake their hands. Heck, have their babies if you could. Because the majority of the deals came off and we got the PPE we needed, even if there was some waste and corruption.
We needed the PPE in unprecedented quantities. That was the priority.
I am not supporting the (small in the scheme of things) fraud and corruption. What I am supporting is getting the PPE.
Heck, I am not a fan of this government, but the sh*t spoken about PPE and ventilators is ridiculous.
If they're in the electoral equivalent of a burning building, and face the certainty of burning to death or leaping from a dark window and facing a wide range and diversity of potential outcomes, what's the smart move?
Guaranteed agonising death, or the possibility of survival?
It's their own damned fault for backing the clown in the first place. Failing to remove him is another critical failure.
I wonder if that observation is right, but Conservative MPs are processing it differently.
Boris has led them to a world of pain, and it's going to get worse before it gets better. But he also possesses the Boris Myth, that he alone can work miracles. I've never met him (lucky me), but I can imagine him having the strange terrible charisma to make up for his many obvious flaws as a person and politician. He probably leads the Conservatives to a huge defeat in 2024, but maybe, just maybe...
Whereas anyone else, even if there was agreement on who, calmly leads the Conservatives to a calm, dignified, small but decisive defeat in 2024.
And in a way, that's how it should be. A political party shouldn't get away with letting itself be taken over by a clown. And not one of the jolly ones either.
Some real nuggets in here and I think you've explained better something I've been hinting.
If the tories stay with Boris Johnson until 2024 then I think Labour will be in power for at least two terms, so through to 2034. Effectively we are talking about a once in a generation sea change: like 1979 and 1997. Remember that Margaret Thatcher only beat Jim Callaghan by 7% and her majority was 'just' 44 seats. It was sufficient to usher in the most momentous change in this country since Attlee.
If they ditch him and have someone sensible and competent then they might be able to avoid a sea change defeat and at the worst leave Labour in coalition territory. That gives them every chance of returning to power in 2029.
Stay with Johnson and we're looking at 1979 or 1997. A sea change.
No party having lost power at a general election has returned to power by winning the subsequent general election since February 1974. That was the first time it had happened since 1924 and Heath's Tories still won the popular vote. So unlikely.
Except that in that time we had two sea changes: the Conservatives were in power from 1979 to 1997 and Labour from 1997 to 2010 - the very thing to which I was referring.
The only comparable period in your timeframe is 2010 to 2019. Cameron's win in 2015 is exactly the kind of thing I mean.
If, but it's a big if, the Conservatives don't do a Labour and select an unelectable leader (Jeremy Corbyn) then they would stand every chance of winning in c. 2029
Stay with Johnson and they're out of power for a generation.
So? Labour were back in front in the polls by 1980, Ed Miliband's by 2011 even though they still did not win.
Labour won a landslide in 1945 over Churchill but Churchill slashed their majority in 1950 from 146 to just 5 as the economy still continued sluggish growth with rationing post war.
Yes Labour won a landslide in 1997 and 2001 but that was mainly as Blair's first government was reasonably competent and the economy was growing and doing well.
If New Labour had run an incompetent government like Heath's in 1970 then they would have seen their majority at least slashed or lost power in 2001. Regardless of who the Tory PM who lost power in 1997 was
I read your analysis with interest most of the time, but that post makes no sense whatsoever.
HYUFD would do a lot better to post 1/10th of the quantity in the hope that it might raise the quality.
You're right: it was a senseless post which was all over the place and totally incoherent.
Guess what the latest threat is to Tory backbenchers thinking of toppling the PM? That @BorisJohnson would 'do a Corbyn': fight a leadership ballot and win with the backing of party members.
I thought this was just a hyufd fantasy, apparently not
I didn't think that was possible under Tory rules. The incumbent faces a VONC, if they lose that is it. They are not allowed to be a candidate in the new election. If they win they are, in theory, safe for a year but May showed that is not necessarily the case in practice.
We think that is right, but per discussions last night, the bedrock rules rather than 2nd hand statements about them are hard to come at. It's like the recipe for coca cola, known to Lord Hague and one other person
Guess what the latest threat is to Tory backbenchers thinking of toppling the PM? That @BorisJohnson would 'do a Corbyn': fight a leadership ballot and win with the backing of party members.
I thought this was just a hyufd fantasy, apparently not
I didn't think that was possible under Tory rules. The incumbent faces a VONC, if they lose that is it. They are not allowed to be a candidate in the new election. If they win they are, in theory, safe for a year but May showed that is not necessarily the case in practice.
It also doesn't work in practice, since Tory members are already keener to see him go now than are the MPs, and if he'd already been rejected by the MPs his path through the ballot would likely see him lose. The further you get away from Parliament the less support he has.
In other matters, I am stuck at home with Rona and watching Bedknobs and Broomsticks with the kid, who is quite interested in the idea of all the children going on trains to stay safely in the countryside. Does anyone know how I’d find out if my house was used in the WW2 evacuation of children? Rural Kent.
I do not know enough about the criminal justice system in England to comment in detail but the consequences for trials in Scotland of Covid have been severe. So many court days have been lost. The last trial I was set to do, where the complainers and the accused had been waiting 2 years for the case to come to trial, collapsed before the first witness was in the box because the principal complainer had come down with Covid. Trials with multiple accused have been impossible for the last 2 years, they simply require too many people in the same room.
In Scotland the High Court and the Sheriff court have used cinemas as Jury centres keeping juries remote from the court and able to maintain social distancing. In every trial this has added at least a day to the case because the first day is used selecting the jury who then have to attend the Jury centre the following morning. Almost every trial I have done in this period has had technical problems with the connection between the centre and the court. This becomes inevitable if the witness is also giving evidence remotely, which is often the case in sex trials.
The system is trying hard. We are running 19 High Court trial courts at once. This is unprecedented. I was talked into taking on another one yesterday due to start on the 16th. Bodies for both the defence and prosecution are quite hard to find. Defence counsel are racing from trial to trial and the system is having to accomodate them, recognising the importance of their role.
At the less serious end there was nearly 18 months with no trials except for those in custody. The processing capacity of JP and Sheriff courts have been massively reduced by the Covid regulations which limit the number of people allowed in the building at any one time, inevitably causing down time where something comes to an end prematurely and where witnesses have to be timetabled. It is really hard to get through the business in circumstances like that.
I mention all of this because I am not really convinced that the delays in matters coming to trial are being caused by the reasons @Cyclefree says. The mass departure of young criminal barristers and experienced solicitors capable of preparing a case because they simply cannot make a living on ridiculous legal aid rates will certainly be having an effect. But I would be astonished if the lack of court rooms was the problem.
As in so many other areas of life we need to get back to normal with the restrictions removed. And then we need to catch up the backlog. Its going to be a hell of a slog.
It is a little like the emergency hospitals in that you can call a room a court room but you cannot staff it with lawyers and judges that do not exist. They are currently recruiting for 100 recorders in England and Wales (part time criminal judges) but the recruitment alone takes a year. The CPS is so depleted it is recruiting lots of solicitors from criminal defence firms but if there are no defence solicitors or barristers the system cannot function either. Defence solicitors are getting so old and rare that even a large cash injection now may not save it as there may not be time to train the next generation. I do have a friend who was a criminal defence lawyer in England but moved to Scotland and is now a sheriff there and he told me the situation is much healthier in Scotland. In England there was a huge backlog before covid in any event.
I do not know enough about the criminal justice system in England to comment in detail but the consequences for trials in Scotland of Covid have been severe. So many court days have been lost. The last trial I was set to do, where the complainers and the accused had been waiting 2 years for the case to come to trial, collapsed before the first witness was in the box because the principal complainer had come down with Covid. Trials with multiple accused have been impossible for the last 2 years, they simply require too many people in the same room.
In Scotland the High Court and the Sheriff court have used cinemas as Jury centres keeping juries remote from the court and able to maintain social distancing. In every trial this has added at least a day to the case because the first day is used selecting the jury who then have to attend the Jury centre the following morning. Almost every trial I have done in this period has had technical problems with the connection between the centre and the court. This becomes inevitable if the witness is also giving evidence remotely, which is often the case in sex trials.
The system is trying hard. We are running 19 High Court trial courts at once. This is unprecedented. I was talked into taking on another one yesterday due to start on the 16th. Bodies for both the defence and prosecution are quite hard to find. Defence counsel are racing from trial to trial and the system is having to accomodate them, recognising the importance of their role.
At the less serious end there was nearly 18 months with no trials except for those in custody. The processing capacity of JP and Sheriff courts have been massively reduced by the Covid regulations which limit the number of people allowed in the building at any one time, inevitably causing down time where something comes to an end prematurely and where witnesses have to be timetabled. It is really hard to get through the business in circumstances like that.
I mention all of this because I am not really convinced that the delays in matters coming to trial are being caused by the reasons @Cyclefree says. The mass departure of young criminal barristers and experienced solicitors capable of preparing a case because they simply cannot make a living on ridiculous legal aid rates will certainly be having an effect. But I would be astonished if the lack of court rooms was the problem.
As in so many other areas of life we need to get back to normal with the restrictions removed. And then we need to catch up the backlog. Its going to be a hell of a slog.
Covid has caused real problems in the criminal justice system. But it was on its knees before that and so the measures needed by Covid have exacerbated problems.
The cuts to legal aid, the inept privatisation of the probation service (which had to be reversed), the disclosure failures which harmed so many rape trials, the cuts to sitting hours, the budget cuts - all of these happened before Covid.
The failure in the police were not caused by Covid.
The failure in local authorities over child sexual abuse were not caused by Covid.
Covid will be used as an excuse for all sorts of failings. It will have played a part but its part will be hugely exaggerated and, if we let the government get away with it, it will be used as an all-purpose excuse for all sorts of failings and problems which are in reality down to deliberate decisions by government ministers.
Guess what the latest threat is to Tory backbenchers thinking of toppling the PM? That @BorisJohnson would 'do a Corbyn': fight a leadership ballot and win with the backing of party members.
I thought this was just a hyufd fantasy, apparently not
The underpinning article does simply read like none of the Tory rules to remove him can be made to apply. I think that is simply another plain lie to sew doubt in backbenchers' minds. They should utterly disregard such efforts and plough on.
The move on to a Trumpian reading of the 1922 rules should simply be another reason to oust him, not another excuse not to.
Good Morning everyone. As someone else said, a powerful piece by Ms Cyclefree. I really do not recall a time when flagrant dishonesty was so common in public life.
I keep being told that politicians always lie, why am I making such a fuss. Nice to hear you say differently
It's a fact of life that people lie. How the governing system deal with that is a choice. As Monday's events - and the actions of the Speaker - showed, we now have a system which rules those lies in order, and suspends from the Commons MPs who call out those lies.
Although Blackford, as usual, bungled it. He should have asked if Johnson could reconcile his statement that there were no parties in his flat with Gray's finding that there was one, and asked the Speaker, separately, what the penalty is for misleading the House.
Then he'd not only have got away with it but effectively forced the Speaker to be the one calling out Johnson for lying.
Perhaps this is what Starmerama will do today. Or will Johnson hide behind being tired from his Ukraine jaunt and not turn up?
If I was him in question 1 I would ask Johnson to state categorically for the parliamentary record if he will release the Gray report in full and without delay. And if he prevaricates at all I would begin question 2 by giving notice of a parliamentary motion to compel him to. That’s a motion he would so easily win that Johnson would cave before the vote.
He can then follow up by forcing the issue of Johnson’s prior statements to the house, inviting him to correct the Parliamentary record, given he has accepted the Gray Update in full. And if he refuses to, turn it over to the Speaker. And if the Speaker refuses to (which he probably would the wet flannel), then give notice of a further parliamentary motion along the lines of “This House condemns the Prime Minister for misleading parliament”. Force the Tory rebels to put their cards on the table.
Personally I think it’s time for Starmer to go for the jugular. It will be a far more compelling narrative for him if he is the one that directly sets in motion Johnson’s exit than to let his future opponent claim the credit for being the new broom cleaning up the mess.
Agree.
I don't know if it's been discussed but currently it takes 54 Tory MPs and then a successful VONC by the same Tory MPs to remove him. Instead why can't there be a VONC in him in Parliament. It is single step and only requires just over 35 Tory MPs to vote against or even to be achieved with a few more MPs abstaining.
Or a VONC in the government. Typically that results in a GE, but it doesn't have to if the Tories can form a new government. That is not uncommon in Europe under PR and only doesn't happen here because a loss of confidence isn't normally recoverable, but with a 70+ majority is currently.
As long as Boris has at least 50 loyalists amongst Tory MPs, those loyalists can vote down any alternative Tory Leader and PM except Boris. So a VONC in Boris' government would lead to a general election which most Tory MPs would still not risk
That's a bluff I would definitely call. "Move against me and I hand the keys to Keir" is an empty threat. The "loyalists" would never pull the trigger on that.
Leon in his dotage (60 I think by now?) still seems to think he's the authority on women, relationships and, well, just about everything from nature to Sri Lanka to arts to history.
Well I don't think you've got Johnson's relationship to Carrie right at all. Way way way wide of the mark.
I'm obviously something of a feminist but Carrie has Boris under her thumb. Why so? Apart from being married and in such a public relationship she has a LOT on him.
You think Dom is vicious? One misstep by Johnson and Carrie can unleash hell on him.
I do not know enough about the criminal justice system in England to comment in detail but the consequences for trials in Scotland of Covid have been severe. So many court days have been lost. The last trial I was set to do, where the complainers and the accused had been waiting 2 years for the case to come to trial, collapsed before the first witness was in the box because the principal complainer had come down with Covid. Trials with multiple accused have been impossible for the last 2 years, they simply require too many people in the same room.
In Scotland the High Court and the Sheriff court have used cinemas as Jury centres keeping juries remote from the court and able to maintain social distancing. In every trial this has added at least a day to the case because the first day is used selecting the jury who then have to attend the Jury centre the following morning. Almost every trial I have done in this period has had technical problems with the connection between the centre and the court. This becomes inevitable if the witness is also giving evidence remotely, which is often the case in sex trials.
The system is trying hard. We are running 19 High Court trial courts at once. This is unprecedented. I was talked into taking on another one yesterday due to start on the 16th. Bodies for both the defence and prosecution are quite hard to find. Defence counsel are racing from trial to trial and the system is having to accomodate them, recognising the importance of their role.
At the less serious end there was nearly 18 months with no trials except for those in custody. The processing capacity of JP and Sheriff courts have been massively reduced by the Covid regulations which limit the number of people allowed in the building at any one time, inevitably causing down time where something comes to an end prematurely and where witnesses have to be timetabled. It is really hard to get through the business in circumstances like that.
I mention all of this because I am not really convinced that the delays in matters coming to trial are being caused by the reasons @Cyclefree says. The mass departure of young criminal barristers and experienced solicitors capable of preparing a case because they simply cannot make a living on ridiculous legal aid rates will certainly be having an effect. But I would be astonished if the lack of court rooms was the problem.
As in so many other areas of life we need to get back to normal with the restrictions removed. And then we need to catch up the backlog. Its going to be a hell of a slog.
Doesn't mean that the covid problems aren't adduing to the structural ones, in at least some areas/jurisdictions. But an interesting post. Clearly a problem to be fixed.
Sure, the system was creaking before Covid. But the consequences of the pandemic have taken us into an unknown land. I personally think that many tens of thousands of less serious cases will have to be dropped.
As for @Cyclefree's comments on the police, it really shows where the defunding movement in the US has come from. They do not want no police, what they want is a police force that is not a major part of the problem and they have given up in despair of reform for exactly the reasons @Cyclefree so eloquently summarises.
Good Morning everyone. As someone else said, a powerful piece by Ms Cyclefree. I really do not recall a time when flagrant dishonesty was so common in public life.
I keep being told that politicians always lie, why am I making such a fuss. Nice to hear you say differently
It's a fact of life that people lie. How the governing system deal with that is a choice. As Monday's events - and the actions of the Speaker - showed, we now have a system which rules those lies in order, and suspends from the Commons MPs who call out those lies.
Although Blackford, as usual, bungled it. He should have asked if Johnson could reconcile his statement that there were no parties in his flat with Gray's finding that there was one, and asked the Speaker, separately, what the penalty is for misleading the House.
Then he'd not only have got away with it but effectively forced the Speaker to be the one calling out Johnson for lying.
Perhaps this is what Starmerama will do today. Or will Johnson hide behind being tired from his Ukraine jaunt and not turn up?
If I was him in question 1 I would ask Johnson to state categorically for the parliamentary record if he will release the Gray report in full and without delay. And if he prevaricates at all I would begin question 2 by giving notice of a parliamentary motion to compel him to. That’s a motion he would so easily win that Johnson would cave before the vote.
He can then follow up by forcing the issue of Johnson’s prior statements to the house, inviting him to correct the Parliamentary record, given he has accepted the Gray Update in full. And if he refuses to, turn it over to the Speaker. And if the Speaker refuses to (which he probably would the wet flannel), then give notice of a further parliamentary motion along the lines of “This House condemns the Prime Minister for misleading parliament”. Force the Tory rebels to put their cards on the table.
Personally I think it’s time for Starmer to go for the jugular. It will be a far more compelling narrative for him if he is the one that directly sets in motion Johnson’s exit than to let his future opponent claim the credit for being the new broom cleaning up the mess.
Agree.
I don't know if it's been discussed but currently it takes 54 Tory MPs and then a successful VONC by the same Tory MPs to remove him. Instead why can't there be a VONC in him in Parliament. It is single step and only requires just over 35 Tory MPs to vote against or even to be achieved with a few more MPs abstaining.
Or a VONC in the government. Typically that results in a GE, but it doesn't have to if the Tories can form a new government. That is not uncommon in Europe under PR and only doesn't happen here because a loss of confidence isn't normally recoverable, but with a 70+ majority is currently.
As long as Boris has at least 50 loyalists amongst Tory MPs, those loyalists can vote down any alternative Tory Leader and PM except Boris. So a VONC in Boris' government would lead to a general election which most Tory MPs would still not risk
I didn't know that. Odd rule if another Tory can get a majority but 50 can stop it. Are you sure?
And surely they wouldn't support him if that would result in a GE. Surely they would get behind a compromise candidate so as not to force a GE.
On a point of fact do you think my 2 suggestions are valid in principle even if not practical in practice?
This government is basically a crook’s charter. Practically a free hit if you want to go out and defraud someone. Or worse.
(Boris not especially to blame, although there’s no evidence he gives a fuck. This is the impact of austerity).
Fraud? Also open corruption. Like the PPE contracts handed out without tender to friends? To companies who had zero experience in PPE and in some cases delivered near zero usable but were able to pocket the public money anyway? How about the company who then won a contract to charge £stupid to store the unusable PPE it had procured? Or the company awarded a contract without tender before it had even been incorporated?
When the government practice open corruption and ask no questions tenders with no penalty clauses for non-delivery, why should we expect them to run a proper legal system? Where is the benefit?
The fraud is wrong - where it is genuine fraud.
However, you fail to remember where we were in April/May last year. We needed PPE. In this case - as in war - the government had to do whatever it could to get PPE. It did.
According to the article below, the government had 8,000 offers from suppliers of PPE. That is a massive number, when decisions needed making immediately, sometimes to the day, or the kit would not be got. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-52369223
Here's a sad truth for you: Labour under Starmer would have done exactly the same thing, because not to do so would have been a grossly wrong.
Labour under Starmer wouldn't have done the same thing - they would have tasked people with hitting their systems and the internet to find suppliers rather than letting their mates become middle men.
That's the issue here but again it's hidden alongside other issues so people don't focus on the important one.
In fact this is an incredibly obvious playbook - we get given the complete picture (PPE, BBL fraud) and then when people pick up the real fixable problems that demonstrate a real screw up that they were responsible flaw they change the conversation to a different issue that was revealed at the same time.
PPE has - mates without experience allowed to purchase anything at vast expense, expensive proper PPE purchased when supply was less than demand and fraud. BBL has - clearly fraudulent loans (companies created after the scheme began), dodgy loans and failed firms.
In both cases there is a clear area that could be investigated but it can't be because other issues are used to hide and sidetrack from the outright fraud.
What I find most baffling is how these contracts had no penalty clauses. Money has been paid out even when the PPE is either unfit or non-existent. We even had one company not only deliver unusable PPE and keep the money but then win an even more lucrative contract to store said unusable PPE.
How have contracts like this been issued? I can park the issue about friends donors and patrons being awarded contracts without tender at high risk. But how can contracts be issued which do not let the powers that be claw the money back when in some cases literally nothing is delivered? No business would operate in such a manner. Does the government usually do so?
No but then again I suspect there is virtually zero paperwork to go with the original deal because everyone (especially the ministers responsible) was panicking and their "mates" used that knowledge to their advantage.
Would have been very simple to ensure that the contracts issued - even simple generic ones with a "write the name of the supplier here" line had clauses with penalties for non-delivery of suitable kit.
It's not as if plenty of people on here at the time pointed out the need to some basic due diligence to minimise the possibility of fraud etc. And were roundly criticised on here by the usual suspects.
Well, now that fraud and those losses have to be paid for. And it will be - by the very same people who supported the government then and are now complaining about the tax increases.
I am not a supporter of this government or Johnson. But the country faced an unprecedented situation in March-May 2020 - something akin to a war footing. We needed that PPE. The government got it.
The question is whether we would have got it, or saved money, if proper processes had been followed. Given everyone wanted the PPE and it was a seller's market, I'd strongly argue we would not.
To repeat: PPE demand was 20 times what it was beforehand. Through most of the world.
(To be clear, not only am I not a supporter of Johnson or the government, I've also repeatedly said that tax rises are unavoidable.)
Mr. NorthWales, I'll believe there's a VONC when I see it.
There is precedent. John Major’s ‘put up or shut up’ moment. Not sure if new rules allow it, but Boris resigns Tory leader, enters the ballot and dares anyone to challenge. The big beasts hesitate, so we’re left with a John Redwood, Owen Smith figure and the circus goes on.
This government is basically a crook’s charter. Practically a free hit if you want to go out and defraud someone. Or worse.
(Boris not especially to blame, although there’s no evidence he gives a fuck. This is the impact of austerity).
Fraud? Also open corruption. Like the PPE contracts handed out without tender to friends? To companies who had zero experience in PPE and in some cases delivered near zero usable but were able to pocket the public money anyway? How about the company who then won a contract to charge £stupid to store the unusable PPE it had procured? Or the company awarded a contract without tender before it had even been incorporated?
When the government practice open corruption and ask no questions tenders with no penalty clauses for non-delivery, why should we expect them to run a proper legal system? Where is the benefit?
The fraud is wrong - where it is genuine fraud.
However, you fail to remember where we were in April/May last year. We needed PPE. In this case - as in war - the government had to do whatever it could to get PPE. It did.
According to the article below, the government had 8,000 offers from suppliers of PPE. That is a massive number, when decisions needed making immediately, sometimes to the day, or the kit would not be got. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-52369223
Here's a sad truth for you: Labour under Starmer would have done exactly the same thing, because not to do so would have been a grossly wrong.
Labour under Starmer wouldn't have done the same thing - they would have tasked people with hitting their systems and the internet to find suppliers rather than letting their mates become middle men.
That's the issue here but again it's hidden alongside other issues so people don't focus on the important one.
In fact this is an incredibly obvious playbook - we get given the complete picture (PPE, BBL fraud) and then when people pick up the real fixable problems that demonstrate a real screw up that they were responsible flaw they change the conversation to a different issue that was revealed at the same time.
PPE has - mates without experience allowed to purchase anything at vast expense, expensive proper PPE purchased when supply was less than demand and fraud. BBL has - clearly fraudulent loans (companies created after the scheme began), dodgy loans and failed firms.
In both cases there is a clear area that could be investigated but it can't be because other issues are used to hide and sidetrack from the outright fraud.
Read my post. Reeves stood up with a list of companies - some of which were dubious AFAICR. The government had a massive need, and 8,000 offers. You either go through the proper process and delay things - meaning you do not have the PPE - or you risk fraud and waste.
The government got the PPE. Your approach would not have got it.
(As for Labour not letting their mates get advantage; the history of Labour rather goes against this.)
Can I ask your perspective on one simple point. Where the contractor did not deliver - either no PPE at all or PPE that was not fit for purpose - should there have been a simple clause in their contract allowing the government to get its (our) money back?
We have numerous examples of £107m being spent and nothing produced. Surely you can't be supporting that. Of a company not only producing unusable PPE and keeping the money but then being awarded an even bigger contract to store the unusable crap. Surely you can't be supporting that.
The corruption claims from so many of us aren't just because of contracts awarded blind - that would inevitably have happened. Its the lack of basic scrutiny. £107m paid for nothing to mates with no ability to get the money back. Yes, they got the PPE. But they also handed £107m at a time to the right people and got nothing in return...
I'd rather like you to address my points, but I'll answer yours, so strongly I'l even put it in bold:
We needed the PPE urgently. That was the priority. Your priority was not getting the PPE.
Ideally, the contract should have had a non-delivery clause. However: if having a non-delivery clause meant we might not get it, we shouldn't have had one. If a company said: "I can get you a million pieces of item x for £5 per item, but we need to pay our supplier in advance today or he'll give the order to another organisation."
What do you do, if the normal price was £2 per item, and the new price is £4-£6 per item? If there's a risk you won't get the money back? If there's a risk it won't quite be the correct kit?
Do you spend three weeks negotiating terms, as you would in 'normal' times? No. The answer might well be you run over, give them a big sloppy kiss and shake their hands. Heck, have their babies if you could. Because the majority of the deals came off and we got the PPE we needed, even if there was some waste and corruption.
We needed the PPE in unprecedented quantities. That was the priority.
I am not supporting the (small in the scheme of things) fraud and corruption. What I am supporting is getting the PPE.
Heck, I am not a fan of this government, but the sh*t spoken about PPE and ventilators is ridiculous.
In that case we should have had the non delivery clause or we should have paid a finders fee and asked him to forward a deal with the non delivery clause. One way or another you endeavour to pass the risk up the chain.
At lot of this should be going in to a (very expensive) lessons learnt and lets get prepared for the next disaster folder with a playbook on how to deal with things. But sadly it won't so we will have spent £bns and learnt nothing to avoid making the same mistakes next time round.
This government is basically a crook’s charter. Practically a free hit if you want to go out and defraud someone. Or worse.
(Boris not especially to blame, although there’s no evidence he gives a fuck. This is the impact of austerity).
Fraud? Also open corruption. Like the PPE contracts handed out without tender to friends? To companies who had zero experience in PPE and in some cases delivered near zero usable but were able to pocket the public money anyway? How about the company who then won a contract to charge £stupid to store the unusable PPE it had procured? Or the company awarded a contract without tender before it had even been incorporated?
When the government practice open corruption and ask no questions tenders with no penalty clauses for non-delivery, why should we expect them to run a proper legal system? Where is the benefit?
The fraud is wrong - where it is genuine fraud.
However, you fail to remember where we were in April/May last year. We needed PPE. In this case - as in war - the government had to do whatever it could to get PPE. It did.
According to the article below, the government had 8,000 offers from suppliers of PPE. That is a massive number, when decisions needed making immediately, sometimes to the day, or the kit would not be got. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-52369223
Here's a sad truth for you: Labour under Starmer would have done exactly the same thing, because not to do so would have been a grossly wrong.
Labour under Starmer wouldn't have done the same thing - they would have tasked people with hitting their systems and the internet to find suppliers rather than letting their mates become middle men.
That's the issue here but again it's hidden alongside other issues so people don't focus on the important one.
In fact this is an incredibly obvious playbook - we get given the complete picture (PPE, BBL fraud) and then when people pick up the real fixable problems that demonstrate a real screw up that they were responsible flaw they change the conversation to a different issue that was revealed at the same time.
PPE has - mates without experience allowed to purchase anything at vast expense, expensive proper PPE purchased when supply was less than demand and fraud. BBL has - clearly fraudulent loans (companies created after the scheme began), dodgy loans and failed firms.
In both cases there is a clear area that could be investigated but it can't be because other issues are used to hide and sidetrack from the outright fraud.
Read my post. Reeves stood up with a list of companies - some of which were dubious AFAICR. The government had a massive need, and 8,000 offers. You either go through the proper process and delay things - meaning you do not have the PPE - or you risk fraud and waste.
The government got the PPE. Your approach would not have got it.
(As for Labour not letting their mates get advantage; the history of Labour rather goes against this.)
Can I ask your perspective on one simple point. Where the contractor did not deliver - either no PPE at all or PPE that was not fit for purpose - should there have been a simple clause in their contract allowing the government to get its (our) money back?
We have numerous examples of £107m being spent and nothing produced. Surely you can't be supporting that. Of a company not only producing unusable PPE and keeping the money but then being awarded an even bigger contract to store the unusable crap. Surely you can't be supporting that.
The corruption claims from so many of us aren't just because of contracts awarded blind - that would inevitably have happened. Its the lack of basic scrutiny. £107m paid for nothing to mates with no ability to get the money back. Yes, they got the PPE. But they also handed £107m at a time to the right people and got nothing in return...
I'd rather like you to address my points, but I'll answer yours, so strongly I'l even put it in bold:
We needed the PPE urgently. That was the priority. Your priority was not getting the PPE.
Ideally, the contract should have had a non-delivery clause. However: if having a non-delivery clause meant we might not get it, we shouldn't have had one. If a company said: "I can get you a million pieces of item x for £5 per item, but we need to pay our supplier in advance today or he'll give the order to another organisation."
What do you do, if the normal price was £2 per item, and the new price is £4-£6 per item? If there's a risk you won't get the money back? If there's a risk it won't quite be the correct kit?
Do you spend three weeks negotiating terms, as you would in 'normal' times? No. The answer might well be you run over, give them a big sloppy kiss and shake their hands. Heck, have their babies if you could. Because the majority of the deals came off and we got the PPE we needed, even if there was some waste and corruption.
We needed the PPE in unprecedented quantities. That was the priority.
I am not supporting the (small in the scheme of things) fraud and corruption. What I am supporting is getting the PPE.
Heck, I am not a fan of this government, but the sh*t spoken about PPE and ventilators is ridiculous.
Yes but there are specific specifications for procurement of stock by public bodies. PPE is CE marked. Without assurances that in an emergency procurement situation it meets the standard it is not fit for purpose and never was
Your analysis is "I'm short of fruit, but I know where I can get some over ripe bananas, that should do".
In other matters, I am stuck at home with Rona and watching Bedknobs and Broomsticks with the kid, who is quite interested in the idea of all the children going on trains to stay safely in the countryside. Does anyone know how I’d find out if my house was used in the WW2 evacuation of children? Rural Kent.
There is the 1939 Register, now on ancestry.co.uk - a kind of emergency census. But quite early on, end Sept 1939; might catch the first wave of evacuees? And anyone who might still be alive today is blanked out. There was no 1941 census, alas (but it wouldn't be accessible for another 20 years anyway).
Russia's Deputy UN Ambassador, Dmitry Polyanskiy, never a diplomat to hold back, tells Sky News: "There is always room for diplomacy, but frankly, we don't trust British diplomacy. I think in recent years, British diplomacy has shown that it is absolutely worthless. https://twitter.com/patrickwintour/status/1488798946868842502
I find cuts to justice pretty inexplicable as it ends up as a false economy given the problems, delays and costs that arise. Simply spending more money doesnt help all things, but putting a decent amount into courts etc, including legal aid, seems like it would aggravation and money in the end.
The words 'cost less' are missing before aggravation.
Conservative MP Tobias Ellwood has told Sky News he will be submitting a letter of no confidence in Boris Johnson today.
The senior Tory, who is chair of the Defence Select Committee, revealed in an interview with Kay Burley that he would be making the move.
He said it is "time to resolve this" as the Conservative Party is "slipping into a very ugly place".
It comes as the prime minister faces continued pressure over the partygate revelations, with the Metropolitan Police investigating 12 gatherings during COVID-19 restrictions for potential breaches of regulations.
This government is basically a crook’s charter. Practically a free hit if you want to go out and defraud someone. Or worse.
(Boris not especially to blame, although there’s no evidence he gives a fuck. This is the impact of austerity).
Fraud? Also open corruption. Like the PPE contracts handed out without tender to friends? To companies who had zero experience in PPE and in some cases delivered near zero usable but were able to pocket the public money anyway? How about the company who then won a contract to charge £stupid to store the unusable PPE it had procured? Or the company awarded a contract without tender before it had even been incorporated?
When the government practice open corruption and ask no questions tenders with no penalty clauses for non-delivery, why should we expect them to run a proper legal system? Where is the benefit?
The fraud is wrong - where it is genuine fraud.
However, you fail to remember where we were in April/May last year. We needed PPE. In this case - as in war - the government had to do whatever it could to get PPE. It did.
According to the article below, the government had 8,000 offers from suppliers of PPE. That is a massive number, when decisions needed making immediately, sometimes to the day, or the kit would not be got. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-52369223
Here's a sad truth for you: Labour under Starmer would have done exactly the same thing, because not to do so would have been a grossly wrong.
Labour under Starmer wouldn't have done the same thing - they would have tasked people with hitting their systems and the internet to find suppliers rather than letting their mates become middle men.
That's the issue here but again it's hidden alongside other issues so people don't focus on the important one.
In fact this is an incredibly obvious playbook - we get given the complete picture (PPE, BBL fraud) and then when people pick up the real fixable problems that demonstrate a real screw up that they were responsible flaw they change the conversation to a different issue that was revealed at the same time.
PPE has - mates without experience allowed to purchase anything at vast expense, expensive proper PPE purchased when supply was less than demand and fraud. BBL has - clearly fraudulent loans (companies created after the scheme began), dodgy loans and failed firms.
In both cases there is a clear area that could be investigated but it can't be because other issues are used to hide and sidetrack from the outright fraud.
Read my post. Reeves stood up with a list of companies - some of which were dubious AFAICR. The government had a massive need, and 8,000 offers. You either go through the proper process and delay things - meaning you do not have the PPE - or you risk fraud and waste.
The government got the PPE. Your approach would not have got it.
(As for Labour not letting their mates get advantage; the history of Labour rather goes against this.)
Can I ask your perspective on one simple point. Where the contractor did not deliver - either no PPE at all or PPE that was not fit for purpose - should there have been a simple clause in their contract allowing the government to get its (our) money back?
We have numerous examples of £107m being spent and nothing produced. Surely you can't be supporting that. Of a company not only producing unusable PPE and keeping the money but then being awarded an even bigger contract to store the unusable crap. Surely you can't be supporting that.
The corruption claims from so many of us aren't just because of contracts awarded blind - that would inevitably have happened. Its the lack of basic scrutiny. £107m paid for nothing to mates with no ability to get the money back. Yes, they got the PPE. But they also handed £107m at a time to the right people and got nothing in return...
I'd rather like you to address my points, but I'll answer yours, so strongly I'l even put it in bold:
We needed the PPE urgently. That was the priority. Your priority was not getting the PPE.
Ideally, the contract should have had a non-delivery clause. However: if having a non-delivery clause meant we might not get it, we shouldn't have had one. If a company said: "I can get you a million pieces of item x for £5 per item, but we need to pay our supplier in advance today or he'll give the order to another organisation."
What do you do, if the normal price was £2 per item, and the new price is £4-£6 per item? If there's a risk you won't get the money back? If there's a risk it won't quite be the correct kit?
Do you spend three weeks negotiating terms, as you would in 'normal' times? No. The answer might well be you run over, give them a big sloppy kiss and shake their hands. Heck, have their babies if you could. Because the majority of the deals came off and we got the PPE we needed, even if there was some waste and corruption.
We needed the PPE in unprecedented quantities. That was the priority.
I am not supporting the (small in the scheme of things) fraud and corruption. What I am supporting is getting the PPE.
Heck, I am not a fan of this government, but the sh*t spoken about PPE and ventilators is ridiculous.
Yes but there are specific specifications for procurement of stock by public bodies. PPE is CE marked. Without assurances that in an emergency procurement situation it meets the standard it is not fit for purpose and never was
Your analysis is "I'm short of fruit, but I know where I can get some over ripe bananas, that should do".
(Whispers quietly): if we got into a real, massive shortage, we'd be using the non-CE marked stuff.
We needed the PPE. It was a massive seller's market. The government got the PPE.
Your analysis is: opponents were criticising the government for not getting the PPE and risking lives; they got the PPE and now we're criticising how it was obtained in an emergency.
I do not know enough about the criminal justice system in England to comment in detail but the consequences for trials in Scotland of Covid have been severe. So many court days have been lost. The last trial I was set to do, where the complainers and the accused had been waiting 2 years for the case to come to trial, collapsed before the first witness was in the box because the principal complainer had come down with Covid. Trials with multiple accused have been impossible for the last 2 years, they simply require too many people in the same room.
In Scotland the High Court and the Sheriff court have used cinemas as Jury centres keeping juries remote from the court and able to maintain social distancing. In every trial this has added at least a day to the case because the first day is used selecting the jury who then have to attend the Jury centre the following morning. Almost every trial I have done in this period has had technical problems with the connection between the centre and the court. This becomes inevitable if the witness is also giving evidence remotely, which is often the case in sex trials.
The system is trying hard. We are running 19 High Court trial courts at once. This is unprecedented. I was talked into taking on another one yesterday due to start on the 16th. Bodies for both the defence and prosecution are quite hard to find. Defence counsel are racing from trial to trial and the system is having to accomodate them, recognising the importance of their role.
At the less serious end there was nearly 18 months with no trials except for those in custody. The processing capacity of JP and Sheriff courts have been massively reduced by the Covid regulations which limit the number of people allowed in the building at any one time, inevitably causing down time where something comes to an end prematurely and where witnesses have to be timetabled. It is really hard to get through the business in circumstances like that.
I mention all of this because I am not really convinced that the delays in matters coming to trial are being caused by the reasons @Cyclefree says. The mass departure of young criminal barristers and experienced solicitors capable of preparing a case because they simply cannot make a living on ridiculous legal aid rates will certainly be having an effect. But I would be astonished if the lack of court rooms was the problem.
As in so many other areas of life we need to get back to normal with the restrictions removed. And then we need to catch up the backlog. Its going to be a hell of a slog.
Doesn't mean that the covid problems aren't adduing to the structural ones, in at least some areas/jurisdictions. But an interesting post. Clearly a problem to be fixed.
Sure, the system was creaking before Covid. But the consequences of the pandemic have taken us into an unknown land. I personally think that many tens of thousands of less serious cases will have to be dropped.
As for @Cyclefree's comments on the police, it really shows where the defunding movement in the US has come from. They do not want no police, what they want is a police force that is not a major part of the problem and they have given up in despair of reform for exactly the reasons @Cyclefree so eloquently summarises.
Radically reforming the police is a worthy goal. It's a very weird thing how some are so wedded to a misleading slogan theyd rather whinge about it being misinterpreted by opponents than swap it for a more appropriate one.
Guess what the latest threat is to Tory backbenchers thinking of toppling the PM? That @BorisJohnson would 'do a Corbyn': fight a leadership ballot and win with the backing of party members.
I thought this was just a hyufd fantasy, apparently not
The underpinning article does simply read like none of the Tory rules to remove him can be made to apply. I think that is simply another plain lie to sew doubt in backbenchers' minds. They should utterly disregard such efforts and plough on.
The move on to a Trumpian reading of the 1922 rules should simply be another reason to oust him, not another excuse not to.
What is also bloody difficult is the lying rule. My understanding is you can't say that in the HoC because an accusation of lying to the House entailed impeachment proceedings 200 years ago when we had impeachment proceedings. Now we have no impeachment and no mechanism for determining a lie, is a lie. Speaker is purely procedural, he can say "you must not say x is a liar" but he has no investigative power to look into x's statement and say I find that x has lied to the house. It depends on x coming clean.
So, bizarrely if MP1 says untruthfully to MP2 You are a serial child rapist and MP2 says that is a lie, MP2 gets it in the neck.
This government is basically a crook’s charter. Practically a free hit if you want to go out and defraud someone. Or worse.
(Boris not especially to blame, although there’s no evidence he gives a fuck. This is the impact of austerity).
Fraud? Also open corruption. Like the PPE contracts handed out without tender to friends? To companies who had zero experience in PPE and in some cases delivered near zero usable but were able to pocket the public money anyway? How about the company who then won a contract to charge £stupid to store the unusable PPE it had procured? Or the company awarded a contract without tender before it had even been incorporated?
When the government practice open corruption and ask no questions tenders with no penalty clauses for non-delivery, why should we expect them to run a proper legal system? Where is the benefit?
The fraud is wrong - where it is genuine fraud.
However, you fail to remember where we were in April/May last year. We needed PPE. In this case - as in war - the government had to do whatever it could to get PPE. It did.
According to the article below, the government had 8,000 offers from suppliers of PPE. That is a massive number, when decisions needed making immediately, sometimes to the day, or the kit would not be got. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-52369223
Here's a sad truth for you: Labour under Starmer would have done exactly the same thing, because not to do so would have been a grossly wrong.
Labour under Starmer wouldn't have done the same thing - they would have tasked people with hitting their systems and the internet to find suppliers rather than letting their mates become middle men.
That's the issue here but again it's hidden alongside other issues so people don't focus on the important one.
In fact this is an incredibly obvious playbook - we get given the complete picture (PPE, BBL fraud) and then when people pick up the real fixable problems that demonstrate a real screw up that they were responsible flaw they change the conversation to a different issue that was revealed at the same time.
PPE has - mates without experience allowed to purchase anything at vast expense, expensive proper PPE purchased when supply was less than demand and fraud. BBL has - clearly fraudulent loans (companies created after the scheme began), dodgy loans and failed firms.
In both cases there is a clear area that could be investigated but it can't be because other issues are used to hide and sidetrack from the outright fraud.
Read my post. Reeves stood up with a list of companies - some of which were dubious AFAICR. The government had a massive need, and 8,000 offers. You either go through the proper process and delay things - meaning you do not have the PPE - or you risk fraud and waste.
The government got the PPE. Your approach would not have got it.
(As for Labour not letting their mates get advantage; the history of Labour rather goes against this.)
Can I ask your perspective on one simple point. Where the contractor did not deliver - either no PPE at all or PPE that was not fit for purpose - should there have been a simple clause in their contract allowing the government to get its (our) money back?
We have numerous examples of £107m being spent and nothing produced. Surely you can't be supporting that. Of a company not only producing unusable PPE and keeping the money but then being awarded an even bigger contract to store the unusable crap. Surely you can't be supporting that.
The corruption claims from so many of us aren't just because of contracts awarded blind - that would inevitably have happened. Its the lack of basic scrutiny. £107m paid for nothing to mates with no ability to get the money back. Yes, they got the PPE. But they also handed £107m at a time to the right people and got nothing in return...
I'd rather like you to address my points, but I'll answer yours, so strongly I'l even put it in bold:
We needed the PPE urgently. That was the priority. Your priority was not getting the PPE.
Ideally, the contract should have had a non-delivery clause. However: if having a non-delivery clause meant we might not get it, we shouldn't have had one. If a company said: "I can get you a million pieces of item x for £5 per item, but we need to pay our supplier in advance today or he'll give the order to another organisation."
What do you do, if the normal price was £2 per item, and the new price is £4-£6 per item? If there's a risk you won't get the money back? If there's a risk it won't quite be the correct kit?
Do you spend three weeks negotiating terms, as you would in 'normal' times? No. The answer might well be you run over, give them a big sloppy kiss and shake their hands. Heck, have their babies if you could. Because the majority of the deals came off and we got the PPE we needed, even if there was some waste and corruption.
We needed the PPE in unprecedented quantities. That was the priority.
I am not supporting the (small in the scheme of things) fraud and corruption. What I am supporting is getting the PPE.
Heck, I am not a fan of this government, but the sh*t spoken about PPE and ventilators is ridiculous.
In that case we should have had the non delivery clause or we should have paid a finders fee and asked him to forward a deal with the non delivery clause. One way or another you endeavour to pass the risk up the chain.
At lot of this should be going in to a (very expensive) lessons learnt and lets get prepared for the next disaster folder with a playbook on how to deal with things. But sadly it won't so we will have spent £bns and learnt nothing to avoid making the same mistakes next time round.
And if the sellers were not willing to sign a non-delivery clause, because they would have handed the money onto others?
You'd end up with no PPE.
We'll end up doing the same thing next time, because not doing it was unthinkable.
Conservative MP Tobias Ellwood has told Sky News he will be submitting a letter of no confidence in Boris Johnson today.
The senior Tory, who is chair of the Defence Select Committee, revealed in an interview with Kay Burley that he would be making the move.
He said it is "time to resolve this" as the Conservative Party is "slipping into a very ugly place".
It comes as the prime minister faces continued pressure over the partygate revelations, with the Metropolitan Police investigating 12 gatherings during COVID-19 restrictions for potential breaches of regulations.
He's right of course. The Conservative Party is indeed slipping into a very ugly place and they probably have only one chance left to resolve this.
They can still staunch this wound. Starmer is okay but he's not going to light up the world in my opinion. A competent and honest opponent could put up a very good fight and things could go to the wire.
With Johnson in place they are going to take a hammering in 2024. This isn't 2019 and Starmer isn't that vile Jeremy Corbyn. Labour are very electable. The tories need to be too.
Guess what the latest threat is to Tory backbenchers thinking of toppling the PM? That @BorisJohnson would 'do a Corbyn': fight a leadership ballot and win with the backing of party members.
I thought this was just a hyufd fantasy, apparently not
I didn't think that was possible under Tory rules. The incumbent faces a VONC, if they lose that is it. They are not allowed to be a candidate in the new election. If they win they are, in theory, safe for a year but May showed that is not necessarily the case in practice.
It also doesn't work in practice, since Tory members are already keener to see him go now than are the MPs, and if he'd already been rejected by the MPs his path through the ballot would likely see him lose. The further you get away from Parliament the less support he has.
Not true, only last month 66% of Tory members still wanted Boris to stay PM and Tory leader with Opinium. That was far higher than the 28% of the public and even the 49% of 2019 Tory voters who wanted Boris to stay
I do not know enough about the criminal justice system in England to comment in detail but the consequences for trials in Scotland of Covid have been severe. So many court days have been lost. The last trial I was set to do, where the complainers and the accused had been waiting 2 years for the case to come to trial, collapsed before the first witness was in the box because the principal complainer had come down with Covid. Trials with multiple accused have been impossible for the last 2 years, they simply require too many people in the same room.
In Scotland the High Court and the Sheriff court have used cinemas as Jury centres keeping juries remote from the court and able to maintain social distancing. In every trial this has added at least a day to the case because the first day is used selecting the jury who then have to attend the Jury centre the following morning. Almost every trial I have done in this period has had technical problems with the connection between the centre and the court. This becomes inevitable if the witness is also giving evidence remotely, which is often the case in sex trials.
The system is trying hard. We are running 19 High Court trial courts at once. This is unprecedented. I was talked into taking on another one yesterday due to start on the 16th. Bodies for both the defence and prosecution are quite hard to find. Defence counsel are racing from trial to trial and the system is having to accomodate them, recognising the importance of their role.
At the less serious end there was nearly 18 months with no trials except for those in custody. The processing capacity of JP and Sheriff courts have been massively reduced by the Covid regulations which limit the number of people allowed in the building at any one time, inevitably causing down time where something comes to an end prematurely and where witnesses have to be timetabled. It is really hard to get through the business in circumstances like that.
I mention all of this because I am not really convinced that the delays in matters coming to trial are being caused by the reasons @Cyclefree says. The mass departure of young criminal barristers and experienced solicitors capable of preparing a case because they simply cannot make a living on ridiculous legal aid rates will certainly be having an effect. But I would be astonished if the lack of court rooms was the problem.
As in so many other areas of life we need to get back to normal with the restrictions removed. And then we need to catch up the backlog. Its going to be a hell of a slog.
It is a little like the emergency hospitals in that you can call a room a court room but you cannot staff it with lawyers and judges that do not exist. They are currently recruiting for 100 recorders in England and Wales (part time criminal judges) but the recruitment alone takes a year. The CPS is so depleted it is recruiting lots of solicitors from criminal defence firms but if there are no defence solicitors or barristers the system cannot function either. Defence solicitors are getting so old and rare that even a large cash injection now may not save it as there may not be time to train the next generation. I do have a friend who was a criminal defence lawyer in England but moved to Scotland and is now a sheriff there and he told me the situation is much healthier in Scotland. In England there was a huge backlog before covid in any event.
Yes, as in Scotland it is the number of qualified and capable staff that is the key determinate as to what can be done and we have not been replacing our retirees for a long time.
Russia's Deputy UN Ambassador, Dmitry Polyanskiy, never a diplomat to hold back, tells Sky News: "There is always room for diplomacy, but frankly, we don't trust British diplomacy. I think in recent years, British diplomacy has shown that it is absolutely worthless. https://twitter.com/patrickwintour/status/1488798946868842502
In mid-2020, there were no vaccines, we'd had a debilitating Covid wave, and the French had banned PPE exports.
Yes, we probably overpaid. But if the world had turned out even slightly differently, this purchase would have been seen as a masterstroke.
There is much to criticise about our government. Overpaying somewhat for PPE equipment at the height of Covid is not near the top of the list.
It would be worth knowing how much was lost by having to import any PPE in 2020 irrespective of whether it was usable compared to how much money was saved by deciding in previous years that the UK didn't need to produce any PPE because it could be imported cheaper.
This government is basically a crook’s charter. Practically a free hit if you want to go out and defraud someone. Or worse.
(Boris not especially to blame, although there’s no evidence he gives a fuck. This is the impact of austerity).
Fraud? Also open corruption. Like the PPE contracts handed out without tender to friends? To companies who had zero experience in PPE and in some cases delivered near zero usable but were able to pocket the public money anyway? How about the company who then won a contract to charge £stupid to store the unusable PPE it had procured? Or the company awarded a contract without tender before it had even been incorporated?
When the government practice open corruption and ask no questions tenders with no penalty clauses for non-delivery, why should we expect them to run a proper legal system? Where is the benefit?
The fraud is wrong - where it is genuine fraud.
However, you fail to remember where we were in April/May last year. We needed PPE. In this case - as in war - the government had to do whatever it could to get PPE. It did.
According to the article below, the government had 8,000 offers from suppliers of PPE. That is a massive number, when decisions needed making immediately, sometimes to the day, or the kit would not be got. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-52369223
Here's a sad truth for you: Labour under Starmer would have done exactly the same thing, because not to do so would have been a grossly wrong.
Labour under Starmer wouldn't have done the same thing - they would have tasked people with hitting their systems and the internet to find suppliers rather than letting their mates become middle men.
That's the issue here but again it's hidden alongside other issues so people don't focus on the important one.
In fact this is an incredibly obvious playbook - we get given the complete picture (PPE, BBL fraud) and then when people pick up the real fixable problems that demonstrate a real screw up that they were responsible flaw they change the conversation to a different issue that was revealed at the same time.
PPE has - mates without experience allowed to purchase anything at vast expense, expensive proper PPE purchased when supply was less than demand and fraud. BBL has - clearly fraudulent loans (companies created after the scheme began), dodgy loans and failed firms.
In both cases there is a clear area that could be investigated but it can't be because other issues are used to hide and sidetrack from the outright fraud.
Read my post. Reeves stood up with a list of companies - some of which were dubious AFAICR. The government had a massive need, and 8,000 offers. You either go through the proper process and delay things - meaning you do not have the PPE - or you risk fraud and waste.
The government got the PPE. Your approach would not have got it.
(As for Labour not letting their mates get advantage; the history of Labour rather goes against this.)
Can I ask your perspective on one simple point. Where the contractor did not deliver - either no PPE at all or PPE that was not fit for purpose - should there have been a simple clause in their contract allowing the government to get its (our) money back?
We have numerous examples of £107m being spent and nothing produced. Surely you can't be supporting that. Of a company not only producing unusable PPE and keeping the money but then being awarded an even bigger contract to store the unusable crap. Surely you can't be supporting that.
The corruption claims from so many of us aren't just because of contracts awarded blind - that would inevitably have happened. Its the lack of basic scrutiny. £107m paid for nothing to mates with no ability to get the money back. Yes, they got the PPE. But they also handed £107m at a time to the right people and got nothing in return...
I'd rather like you to address my points, but I'll answer yours, so strongly I'l even put it in bold:
We needed the PPE urgently. That was the priority. Your priority was not getting the PPE.
Ideally, the contract should have had a non-delivery clause. However: if having a non-delivery clause meant we might not get it, we shouldn't have had one. If a company said: "I can get you a million pieces of item x for £5 per item, but we need to pay our supplier in advance today or he'll give the order to another organisation."
What do you do, if the normal price was £2 per item, and the new price is £4-£6 per item? If there's a risk you won't get the money back? If there's a risk it won't quite be the correct kit?
Do you spend three weeks negotiating terms, as you would in 'normal' times? No. The answer might well be you run over, give them a big sloppy kiss and shake their hands. Heck, have their babies if you could. Because the majority of the deals came off and we got the PPE we needed, even if there was some waste and corruption.
We needed the PPE in unprecedented quantities. That was the priority.
I am not supporting the (small in the scheme of things) fraud and corruption. What I am supporting is getting the PPE.
Heck, I am not a fan of this government, but the sh*t spoken about PPE and ventilators is ridiculous.
Yes but there are specific specifications for procurement of stock by public bodies. PPE is CE marked. Without assurances that in an emergency procurement situation it meets the standard it is not fit for purpose and never was
Your analysis is "I'm short of fruit, but I know where I can get some over ripe bananas, that should do".
(Whispers quietly): if we got into a real, massive shortage, we'd be using the non-CE marked stuff.
We needed the PPE. It was a massive seller's market. The government got the PPE.
Your analysis is: opponents were criticising the government for not getting the PPE and risking lives; they got the PPE and now we're criticising how it was obtained in an emergency.
So it's a 2 part demand: you should do X immediately, and you should do it competently. Is that as unreasonable as you make it sound?
Russia's Deputy UN Ambassador, Dmitry Polyanskiy, never a diplomat to hold back, tells Sky News: "There is always room for diplomacy, but frankly, we don't trust British diplomacy. I think in recent years, British diplomacy has shown that it is absolutely worthless. https://twitter.com/patrickwintour/status/1488798946868842502
I still trust Britain over his shithole regime.
That cashes out as I still trust Boris and Liz over his shithole regime. Sure about that?
I do not know enough about the criminal justice system in England to comment in detail but the consequences for trials in Scotland of Covid have been severe. So many court days have been lost. The last trial I was set to do, where the complainers and the accused had been waiting 2 years for the case to come to trial, collapsed before the first witness was in the box because the principal complainer had come down with Covid. Trials with multiple accused have been impossible for the last 2 years, they simply require too many people in the same room.
In Scotland the High Court and the Sheriff court have used cinemas as Jury centres keeping juries remote from the court and able to maintain social distancing. In every trial this has added at least a day to the case because the first day is used selecting the jury who then have to attend the Jury centre the following morning. Almost every trial I have done in this period has had technical problems with the connection between the centre and the court. This becomes inevitable if the witness is also giving evidence remotely, which is often the case in sex trials.
The system is trying hard. We are running 19 High Court trial courts at once. This is unprecedented. I was talked into taking on another one yesterday due to start on the 16th. Bodies for both the defence and prosecution are quite hard to find. Defence counsel are racing from trial to trial and the system is having to accomodate them, recognising the importance of their role.
At the less serious end there was nearly 18 months with no trials except for those in custody. The processing capacity of JP and Sheriff courts have been massively reduced by the Covid regulations which limit the number of people allowed in the building at any one time, inevitably causing down time where something comes to an end prematurely and where witnesses have to be timetabled. It is really hard to get through the business in circumstances like that.
I mention all of this because I am not really convinced that the delays in matters coming to trial are being caused by the reasons @Cyclefree says. The mass departure of young criminal barristers and experienced solicitors capable of preparing a case because they simply cannot make a living on ridiculous legal aid rates will certainly be having an effect. But I would be astonished if the lack of court rooms was the problem.
As in so many other areas of life we need to get back to normal with the restrictions removed. And then we need to catch up the backlog. Its going to be a hell of a slog.
Doesn't mean that the covid problems aren't adduing to the structural ones, in at least some areas/jurisdictions. But an interesting post. Clearly a problem to be fixed.
Sure, the system was creaking before Covid. But the consequences of the pandemic have taken us into an unknown land. I personally think that many tens of thousands of less serious cases will have to be dropped.
As for @Cyclefree's comments on the police, it really shows where the defunding movement in the US has come from. They do not want no police, what they want is a police force that is not a major part of the problem and they have given up in despair of reform for exactly the reasons @Cyclefree so eloquently summarises.
Oh those 10,000s of cases will be dropped but they don't want to announce it as that makes it political when doing it quietly allows the same thing to be done without the publicity.
I do not know enough about the criminal justice system in England to comment in detail but the consequences for trials in Scotland of Covid have been severe. So many court days have been lost. The last trial I was set to do, where the complainers and the accused had been waiting 2 years for the case to come to trial, collapsed before the first witness was in the box because the principal complainer had come down with Covid. Trials with multiple accused have been impossible for the last 2 years, they simply require too many people in the same room.
In Scotland the High Court and the Sheriff court have used cinemas as Jury centres keeping juries remote from the court and able to maintain social distancing. In every trial this has added at least a day to the case because the first day is used selecting the jury who then have to attend the Jury centre the following morning. Almost every trial I have done in this period has had technical problems with the connection between the centre and the court. This becomes inevitable if the witness is also giving evidence remotely, which is often the case in sex trials.
The system is trying hard. We are running 19 High Court trial courts at once. This is unprecedented. I was talked into taking on another one yesterday due to start on the 16th. Bodies for both the defence and prosecution are quite hard to find. Defence counsel are racing from trial to trial and the system is having to accomodate them, recognising the importance of their role.
At the less serious end there was nearly 18 months with no trials except for those in custody. The processing capacity of JP and Sheriff courts have been massively reduced by the Covid regulations which limit the number of people allowed in the building at any one time, inevitably causing down time where something comes to an end prematurely and where witnesses have to be timetabled. It is really hard to get through the business in circumstances like that.
I mention all of this because I am not really convinced that the delays in matters coming to trial are being caused by the reasons @Cyclefree says. The mass departure of young criminal barristers and experienced solicitors capable of preparing a case because they simply cannot make a living on ridiculous legal aid rates will certainly be having an effect. But I would be astonished if the lack of court rooms was the problem.
As in so many other areas of life we need to get back to normal with the restrictions removed. And then we need to catch up the backlog. Its going to be a hell of a slog.
Doesn't mean that the covid problems aren't adduing to the structural ones, in at least some areas/jurisdictions. But an interesting post. Clearly a problem to be fixed.
Sure, the system was creaking before Covid. But the consequences of the pandemic have taken us into an unknown land. I personally think that many tens of thousands of less serious cases will have to be dropped.
As for @Cyclefree's comments on the police, it really shows where the defunding movement in the US has come from. They do not want no police, what they want is a police force that is not a major part of the problem and they have given up in despair of reform for exactly the reasons @Cyclefree so eloquently summarises.
Radically reforming the police is a worthy goal. It's a very weird thing how some are so wedded to a misleading slogan theyd rather whinge about it being misinterpreted by opponents than swap it for a more appropriate one.
Like a lot of US slogans that make it over here I think it makes a bit more sense in the US context. But "replace the police" would make more sense. The point of the slogan is that some police departments are beyond reform, and need to be rebuilt from the ground up. I'm not sure we are at that point yet with the Met but we're getting there.
I do not know enough about the criminal justice system in England to comment in detail but the consequences for trials in Scotland of Covid have been severe. So many court days have been lost. The last trial I was set to do, where the complainers and the accused had been waiting 2 years for the case to come to trial, collapsed before the first witness was in the box because the principal complainer had come down with Covid. Trials with multiple accused have been impossible for the last 2 years, they simply require too many people in the same room.
In Scotland the High Court and the Sheriff court have used cinemas as Jury centres keeping juries remote from the court and able to maintain social distancing. In every trial this has added at least a day to the case because the first day is used selecting the jury who then have to attend the Jury centre the following morning. Almost every trial I have done in this period has had technical problems with the connection between the centre and the court. This becomes inevitable if the witness is also giving evidence remotely, which is often the case in sex trials.
The system is trying hard. We are running 19 High Court trial courts at once. This is unprecedented. I was talked into taking on another one yesterday due to start on the 16th. Bodies for both the defence and prosecution are quite hard to find. Defence counsel are racing from trial to trial and the system is having to accomodate them, recognising the importance of their role.
At the less serious end there was nearly 18 months with no trials except for those in custody. The processing capacity of JP and Sheriff courts have been massively reduced by the Covid regulations which limit the number of people allowed in the building at any one time, inevitably causing down time where something comes to an end prematurely and where witnesses have to be timetabled. It is really hard to get through the business in circumstances like that.
I mention all of this because I am not really convinced that the delays in matters coming to trial are being caused by the reasons @Cyclefree says. The mass departure of young criminal barristers and experienced solicitors capable of preparing a case because they simply cannot make a living on ridiculous legal aid rates will certainly be having an effect. But I would be astonished if the lack of court rooms was the problem.
As in so many other areas of life we need to get back to normal with the restrictions removed. And then we need to catch up the backlog. Its going to be a hell of a slog.
Covid has caused real problems in the criminal justice system. But it was on its knees before that and so the measures needed by Covid have exacerbated problems.
The cuts to legal aid, the inept privatisation of the probation service (which had to be reversed), the disclosure failures which harmed so many rape trials, the cuts to sitting hours, the budget cuts - all of these happened before Covid.
The failure in the police were not caused by Covid.
The failure in local authorities over child sexual abuse were not caused by Covid.
Covid will be used as an excuse for all sorts of failings. It will have played a part but its part will be hugely exaggerated and, if we let the government get away with it, it will be used as an all-purpose excuse for all sorts of failings and problems which are in reality down to deliberate decisions by government ministers.
As I say I am not in a position to comment in detail on the English situation but I have read many articles about junior barristers simply leaving the profession because they cannot make ends meet. We have seen the same effect in Scotland where legal aid rates for criminal work have not been increased since 1991.
This government is basically a crook’s charter. Practically a free hit if you want to go out and defraud someone. Or worse.
(Boris not especially to blame, although there’s no evidence he gives a fuck. This is the impact of austerity).
Fraud? Also open corruption. Like the PPE contracts handed out without tender to friends? To companies who had zero experience in PPE and in some cases delivered near zero usable but were able to pocket the public money anyway? How about the company who then won a contract to charge £stupid to store the unusable PPE it had procured? Or the company awarded a contract without tender before it had even been incorporated?
When the government practice open corruption and ask no questions tenders with no penalty clauses for non-delivery, why should we expect them to run a proper legal system? Where is the benefit?
The fraud is wrong - where it is genuine fraud.
However, you fail to remember where we were in April/May last year. We needed PPE. In this case - as in war - the government had to do whatever it could to get PPE. It did.
According to the article below, the government had 8,000 offers from suppliers of PPE. That is a massive number, when decisions needed making immediately, sometimes to the day, or the kit would not be got. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-52369223
Here's a sad truth for you: Labour under Starmer would have done exactly the same thing, because not to do so would have been a grossly wrong.
Labour under Starmer wouldn't have done the same thing - they would have tasked people with hitting their systems and the internet to find suppliers rather than letting their mates become middle men.
That's the issue here but again it's hidden alongside other issues so people don't focus on the important one.
In fact this is an incredibly obvious playbook - we get given the complete picture (PPE, BBL fraud) and then when people pick up the real fixable problems that demonstrate a real screw up that they were responsible flaw they change the conversation to a different issue that was revealed at the same time.
PPE has - mates without experience allowed to purchase anything at vast expense, expensive proper PPE purchased when supply was less than demand and fraud. BBL has - clearly fraudulent loans (companies created after the scheme began), dodgy loans and failed firms.
In both cases there is a clear area that could be investigated but it can't be because other issues are used to hide and sidetrack from the outright fraud.
Read my post. Reeves stood up with a list of companies - some of which were dubious AFAICR. The government had a massive need, and 8,000 offers. You either go through the proper process and delay things - meaning you do not have the PPE - or you risk fraud and waste.
The government got the PPE. Your approach would not have got it.
(As for Labour not letting their mates get advantage; the history of Labour rather goes against this.)
Can I ask your perspective on one simple point. Where the contractor did not deliver - either no PPE at all or PPE that was not fit for purpose - should there have been a simple clause in their contract allowing the government to get its (our) money back?
We have numerous examples of £107m being spent and nothing produced. Surely you can't be supporting that. Of a company not only producing unusable PPE and keeping the money but then being awarded an even bigger contract to store the unusable crap. Surely you can't be supporting that.
The corruption claims from so many of us aren't just because of contracts awarded blind - that would inevitably have happened. Its the lack of basic scrutiny. £107m paid for nothing to mates with no ability to get the money back. Yes, they got the PPE. But they also handed £107m at a time to the right people and got nothing in return...
I'd rather like you to address my points, but I'll answer yours, so strongly I'l even put it in bold:
We needed the PPE urgently. That was the priority. Your priority was not getting the PPE.
Ideally, the contract should have had a non-delivery clause. However: if having a non-delivery clause meant we might not get it, we shouldn't have had one. If a company said: "I can get you a million pieces of item x for £5 per item, but we need to pay our supplier in advance today or he'll give the order to another organisation."
What do you do, if the normal price was £2 per item, and the new price is £4-£6 per item? If there's a risk you won't get the money back? If there's a risk it won't quite be the correct kit?
Do you spend three weeks negotiating terms, as you would in 'normal' times? No. The answer might well be you run over, give them a big sloppy kiss and shake their hands. Heck, have their babies if you could. Because the majority of the deals came off and we got the PPE we needed, even if there was some waste and corruption.
We needed the PPE in unprecedented quantities. That was the priority.
I am not supporting the (small in the scheme of things) fraud and corruption. What I am supporting is getting the PPE.
Heck, I am not a fan of this government, but the sh*t spoken about PPE and ventilators is ridiculous.
In that case we should have had the non delivery clause or we should have paid a finders fee and asked him to forward a deal with the non delivery clause. One way or another you endeavour to pass the risk up the chain.
At lot of this should be going in to a (very expensive) lessons learnt and lets get prepared for the next disaster folder with a playbook on how to deal with things. But sadly it won't so we will have spent £bns and learnt nothing to avoid making the same mistakes next time round.
And if the sellers were not willing to sign a non-delivery clause, because they would have handed the money onto others?
You'd end up with no PPE.
We'll end up doing the same thing next time, because not doing it was unthinkable.
No we shouldn't because 1 - we should have more PPE stored for future usage. 2 - we can use Brexit to bring manufacturing back onshore (hey it may cost more but so what Brexit and jobs).
If we end up having to purchase it in an emergency again then next time round some ministers should be facing treason charges for gross stupidity.
I do not know enough about the criminal justice system in England to comment in detail but the consequences for trials in Scotland of Covid have been severe. So many court days have been lost. The last trial I was set to do, where the complainers and the accused had been waiting 2 years for the case to come to trial, collapsed before the first witness was in the box because the principal complainer had come down with Covid. Trials with multiple accused have been impossible for the last 2 years, they simply require too many people in the same room.
In Scotland the High Court and the Sheriff court have used cinemas as Jury centres keeping juries remote from the court and able to maintain social distancing. In every trial this has added at least a day to the case because the first day is used selecting the jury who then have to attend the Jury centre the following morning. Almost every trial I have done in this period has had technical problems with the connection between the centre and the court. This becomes inevitable if the witness is also giving evidence remotely, which is often the case in sex trials.
The system is trying hard. We are running 19 High Court trial courts at once. This is unprecedented. I was talked into taking on another one yesterday due to start on the 16th. Bodies for both the defence and prosecution are quite hard to find. Defence counsel are racing from trial to trial and the system is having to accomodate them, recognising the importance of their role.
At the less serious end there was nearly 18 months with no trials except for those in custody. The processing capacity of JP and Sheriff courts have been massively reduced by the Covid regulations which limit the number of people allowed in the building at any one time, inevitably causing down time where something comes to an end prematurely and where witnesses have to be timetabled. It is really hard to get through the business in circumstances like that.
I mention all of this because I am not really convinced that the delays in matters coming to trial are being caused by the reasons @Cyclefree says. The mass departure of young criminal barristers and experienced solicitors capable of preparing a case because they simply cannot make a living on ridiculous legal aid rates will certainly be having an effect. But I would be astonished if the lack of court rooms was the problem.
As in so many other areas of life we need to get back to normal with the restrictions removed. And then we need to catch up the backlog. Its going to be a hell of a slog.
Doesn't mean that the covid problems aren't adduing to the structural ones, in at least some areas/jurisdictions. But an interesting post. Clearly a problem to be fixed.
Mr L refers indirectly, in his penultimate paragraph, to the slashing of legal aid fees and indeed availability. This surely has done more harm to 'justice' than the lack of bricks and mortar. There was a pice of BBC this morning about the sad mother whose daughter was raped and murdered in Hull a few years ago, and who now wanted to meet her murderer. 'Justice' doesn't apply to the perpetrators of crimes; it applies to the victims, too. A family member has been told that a case where they are the victim will probably not come to trial for two years, and the delay is unquestionably having an effect on them and their immediate family.
Boris Johnson’s latest effort to get the British public’s attention back onto his policy plans drowned out by more reports of lockdown parties at 10 Downing Street https://trib.al/5y2ASIl
If they're in the electoral equivalent of a burning building, and face the certainty of burning to death or leaping from a dark window and facing a wide range and diversity of potential outcomes, what's the smart move?
Guaranteed agonising death, or the possibility of survival?
It's their own damned fault for backing the clown in the first place. Failing to remove him is another critical failure.
I wonder if that observation is right, but Conservative MPs are processing it differently.
Boris has led them to a world of pain, and it's going to get worse before it gets better. But he also possesses the Boris Myth, that he alone can work miracles. I've never met him (lucky me), but I can imagine him having the strange terrible charisma to make up for his many obvious flaws as a person and politician. He probably leads the Conservatives to a huge defeat in 2024, but maybe, just maybe...
Whereas anyone else, even if there was agreement on who, calmly leads the Conservatives to a calm, dignified, small but decisive defeat in 2024.
And in a way, that's how it should be. A political party shouldn't get away with letting itself be taken over by a clown. And not one of the jolly ones either.
Some real nuggets in here and I think you've explained better something I've been hinting.
If the tories stay with Boris Johnson until 2024 then I think Labour will be in power for at least two terms, so through to 2034. Effectively we are talking about a once in a generation sea change: like 1979 and 1997. Remember that Margaret Thatcher only beat Jim Callaghan by 7% and her majority was 'just' 44 seats. It was sufficient to usher in the most momentous change in this country since Attlee.
If they ditch him and have someone sensible and competent then they might be able to avoid a sea change defeat and at the worst leave Labour in coalition territory. That gives them every chance of returning to power in 2029.
Stay with Johnson and we're looking at 1979 or 1997. A sea change.
No party having lost power at a general election has returned to power by winning the subsequent general election since February 1974. That was the first time it had happened since 1924 and Heath's Tories still won the popular vote. So unlikely.
Except that in that time we had two sea changes: the Conservatives were in power from 1979 to 1997 and Labour from 1997 to 2010 - the very thing to which I was referring.
The only comparable period in your timeframe is 2010 to 2019. Cameron's win in 2015 is exactly the kind of thing I mean.
If, but it's a big if, the Conservatives don't do a Labour and select an unelectable leader (Jeremy Corbyn) then they would stand every chance of winning in c. 2029
Stay with Johnson and they're out of power for a generation.
So? Labour were back in front in the polls by 1980, Ed Miliband's by 2011 even though they still did not win.
Labour won a landslide in 1945 over Churchill but Churchill slashed their majority in 1950 from 146 to just 5 as the economy still continued sluggish growth with rationing post war.
Yes Labour won a landslide in 1997 and 2001 but that was mainly as Blair's first government was reasonably competent and the economy was growing and doing well.
If New Labour had run an incompetent government like Heath's in 1970 then they would have seen their majority at least slashed or lost power in 2001. Regardless of who the Tory PM who lost power in 1997 was
I read your analysis with interest most of the time, but that post makes no sense whatsoever.
HYUFD would do a lot better to post 1/10th of the quantity in the hope that it might raise the quality.
You're right: it was a senseless post which was all over the place and totally incoherent.
Yet you still had no response to it.
Governments are re elected or not on their record and the quality of the Opposition.
Not whether the PM of the previous government stayed in post or not until the general election
Russia's Deputy UN Ambassador, Dmitry Polyanskiy, never a diplomat to hold back, tells Sky News: "There is always room for diplomacy, but frankly, we don't trust British diplomacy. I think in recent years, British diplomacy has shown that it is absolutely worthless. https://twitter.com/patrickwintour/status/1488798946868842502
I still trust Britain over his shithole regime.
That's the textbook example of a low bar. Britain's diplomatic chicanery over the Brexit deal and Northern Ireland had consequences. Who knew?
I do not know enough about the criminal justice system in England to comment in detail but the consequences for trials in Scotland of Covid have been severe. So many court days have been lost. The last trial I was set to do, where the complainers and the accused had been waiting 2 years for the case to come to trial, collapsed before the first witness was in the box because the principal complainer had come down with Covid. Trials with multiple accused have been impossible for the last 2 years, they simply require too many people in the same room.
In Scotland the High Court and the Sheriff court have used cinemas as Jury centres keeping juries remote from the court and able to maintain social distancing. In every trial this has added at least a day to the case because the first day is used selecting the jury who then have to attend the Jury centre the following morning. Almost every trial I have done in this period has had technical problems with the connection between the centre and the court. This becomes inevitable if the witness is also giving evidence remotely, which is often the case in sex trials.
The system is trying hard. We are running 19 High Court trial courts at once. This is unprecedented. I was talked into taking on another one yesterday due to start on the 16th. Bodies for both the defence and prosecution are quite hard to find. Defence counsel are racing from trial to trial and the system is having to accomodate them, recognising the importance of their role.
At the less serious end there was nearly 18 months with no trials except for those in custody. The processing capacity of JP and Sheriff courts have been massively reduced by the Covid regulations which limit the number of people allowed in the building at any one time, inevitably causing down time where something comes to an end prematurely and where witnesses have to be timetabled. It is really hard to get through the business in circumstances like that.
I mention all of this because I am not really convinced that the delays in matters coming to trial are being caused by the reasons @Cyclefree says. The mass departure of young criminal barristers and experienced solicitors capable of preparing a case because they simply cannot make a living on ridiculous legal aid rates will certainly be having an effect. But I would be astonished if the lack of court rooms was the problem.
As in so many other areas of life we need to get back to normal with the restrictions removed. And then we need to catch up the backlog. Its going to be a hell of a slog.
Covid has caused real problems in the criminal justice system. But it was on its knees before that and so the measures needed by Covid have exacerbated problems.
The cuts to legal aid, the inept privatisation of the probation service (which had to be reversed), the disclosure failures which harmed so many rape trials, the cuts to sitting hours, the budget cuts - all of these happened before Covid.
The failure in the police were not caused by Covid.
The failure in local authorities over child sexual abuse were not caused by Covid.
Covid will be used as an excuse for all sorts of failings. It will have played a part but its part will be hugely exaggerated and, if we let the government get away with it, it will be used as an all-purpose excuse for all sorts of failings and problems which are in reality down to deliberate decisions by government ministers.
As I say I am not in a position to comment in detail on the English situation but I have read many articles about junior barristers simply leaving the profession because they cannot make ends meet. We have seen the same effect in Scotland where legal aid rates for criminal work have not been increased since 1991.
I'm seriously surprised we have anything that looks like a legal system for criminal work - the pay is utterly crap...
Leon in his dotage (60 I think by now?) still seems to think he's the authority on women, relationships and, well, just about everything from nature to Sri Lanka to arts to history.
Well I don't think you've got Johnson's relationship to Carrie right at all. Way way way wide of the mark.
I'm obviously something of a feminist but Carrie has Boris under her thumb. Why so? Apart from being married and in such a public relationship she has a LOT on him.
You think Dom is vicious? One misstep by Johnson and Carrie can unleash hell on him.
He's under her thumb alright.
Well she's the one person able to talk about anything that the rest of us aren't, should there be a reason why we can't, which there isn't. She would hold his reputation in her hands, were that to be true, which it isn't. The media would also know about it, were there anything to know, and if there was they might find this frustrating not being able to use the story, which of course isn't actually there, and so adopt a more negative stance towards his personal foibles accordingly, so it's good news for him that there isn't and therefore they haven't.
Boris Johnson’s latest effort to get the British public’s attention back onto his policy plans drowned out by more reports of lockdown parties at 10 Downing Street https://trib.al/5y2ASIl
Probably for the best, TBH, if the underfunded waffle of the Levelling Up paper is anything to go by.
If they're in the electoral equivalent of a burning building, and face the certainty of burning to death or leaping from a dark window and facing a wide range and diversity of potential outcomes, what's the smart move?
Guaranteed agonising death, or the possibility of survival?
It's their own damned fault for backing the clown in the first place. Failing to remove him is another critical failure.
I wonder if that observation is right, but Conservative MPs are processing it differently.
Boris has led them to a world of pain, and it's going to get worse before it gets better. But he also possesses the Boris Myth, that he alone can work miracles. I've never met him (lucky me), but I can imagine him having the strange terrible charisma to make up for his many obvious flaws as a person and politician. He probably leads the Conservatives to a huge defeat in 2024, but maybe, just maybe...
Whereas anyone else, even if there was agreement on who, calmly leads the Conservatives to a calm, dignified, small but decisive defeat in 2024.
And in a way, that's how it should be. A political party shouldn't get away with letting itself be taken over by a clown. And not one of the jolly ones either.
Some real nuggets in here and I think you've explained better something I've been hinting.
If the tories stay with Boris Johnson until 2024 then I think Labour will be in power for at least two terms, so through to 2034. Effectively we are talking about a once in a generation sea change: like 1979 and 1997. Remember that Margaret Thatcher only beat Jim Callaghan by 7% and her majority was 'just' 44 seats. It was sufficient to usher in the most momentous change in this country since Attlee.
If they ditch him and have someone sensible and competent then they might be able to avoid a sea change defeat and at the worst leave Labour in coalition territory. That gives them every chance of returning to power in 2029.
Stay with Johnson and we're looking at 1979 or 1997. A sea change.
No party having lost power at a general election has returned to power by winning the subsequent general election since February 1974. That was the first time it had happened since 1924 and Heath's Tories still won the popular vote. So unlikely.
Except that in that time we had two sea changes: the Conservatives were in power from 1979 to 1997 and Labour from 1997 to 2010 - the very thing to which I was referring.
The only comparable period in your timeframe is 2010 to 2019. Cameron's win in 2015 is exactly the kind of thing I mean.
If, but it's a big if, the Conservatives don't do a Labour and select an unelectable leader (Jeremy Corbyn) then they would stand every chance of winning in c. 2029
Stay with Johnson and they're out of power for a generation.
So? Labour were back in front in the polls by 1980, Ed Miliband's by 2011 even though they still did not win.
Labour won a landslide in 1945 over Churchill but Churchill slashed their majority in 1950 from 146 to just 5 as the economy still continued sluggish growth with rationing post war.
Yes Labour won a landslide in 1997 and 2001 but that was mainly as Blair's first government was reasonably competent and the economy was growing and doing well.
If New Labour had run an incompetent government like Heath's in 1970 then they would have seen their majority at least slashed or lost power in 2001. Regardless of who the Tory PM who lost power in 1997 was
I read your analysis with interest most of the time, but that post makes no sense whatsoever.
HYUFD would do a lot better to post 1/10th of the quantity in the hope that it might raise the quality.
You're right: it was a senseless post which was all over the place and totally incoherent.
Yet you still had no response to it.
No I do but I don't mean to sound offensive but I have better things to do with my life than respond to your voluminous posting on here. 10% of the time you say something interesting, even useful. 90% is just a joke I'm afraid. Sorry. I don't mean to be personal and rude but that's how I see it.
Post less, think more. People will take you more seriously.
Ellwood also very unhappy about the Savile slur, telling @SkyNews: “The attacking this week of Keir Starmer with Jimmy Savile. I mean who advised the Prime Minister to say this? We’re better than this. We must seek to improve our standards and rise above where we are today.”
Comments
On BBL we do the same and ignore the bit of fraud that should be charged back to banks because of their own incompetency.
Trouble is, the Cabinet is bereft of household names that have a sufficient profile that their resignation would make much difference. Short of going full on Tunisian self immolator with allegations so extreme it would bring down the whole Party.
And that's not because of passengers its to allow freight to become the priority service on the existing lines.
I just don’t see it. As I say, I’ve met men controlled by their women - pussy whipped - and Boris does not come across that way. He’s more the bored silverback who lets his woman do whatever she wants, if that makes his life more pleasant/less stressful
He’s quite capable of cheating on her, or dumping her (if he loses the job), and she knows it. That’s not a controlled man
But this is an unedifying conversation for 8am in London. Even if it is a hot, sunny afternoon in Sri Lanka. I must hie myself to the swimming pool!
Don't forget his friends, family and close associates refer to "Boris" as Al, or Alexander.
Labour won a landslide in 1945 over Churchill but Churchill slashed their majority in 1950 from 146 to just 5 as the economy still continued sluggish growth with rationing post war.
Yes Labour won a landslide in 1997 and 2001 but that was mainly as Blair's first government was reasonably competent and the economy was growing and doing well.
If New Labour had run an incompetent government like Heath's in 1970 then they would have seen their majority at least slashed or lost power in 2001. Regardless of who the Tory PM who lost power in 1997 was
But Dom gave Boris what he wanted in 2019, and can't do so again until 2023/4.
Carrie, on the other hand...
We have numerous examples of £107m being spent and nothing produced. Surely you can't be supporting that. Of a company not only producing unusable PPE and keeping the money but then being awarded an even bigger contract to store the unusable crap. Surely you can't be supporting that.
The corruption claims from so many of us aren't just because of contracts awarded blind - that would inevitably have happened. Its the lack of basic scrutiny. £107m paid for nothing to mates with no ability to get the money back. Yes, they got the PPE. But they also handed £107m at a time to the right people and got nothing in return...
Well, now that fraud and those losses have to be paid for. And it will be - by the very same people who supported the government then and are now complaining about the tax increases.
If I buy a toaster and it doesn't make toast I can return it to the supplier and demand my money back.
New PM Day1, 2022: shred every copy of the Levelling Up white paper, stop all powerpoints & mtngs, disband all units, cancel all budgets, abort
https://twitter.com/Dominic2306/status/1488773965313101824
Whether the Tories had removed Boris as PM or not in the previous government would by then be irrelevant
The number of letters may creep over the line in coming days or, more likely, when the finished police/Gray emerges, or perhaps equally likely, after bad losses in May. The scenario where Johnson lasts until the end of the year looks the least likely of all.
In Scotland the High Court and the Sheriff court have used cinemas as Jury centres keeping juries remote from the court and able to maintain social distancing. In every trial this has added at least a day to the case because the first day is used selecting the jury who then have to attend the Jury centre the following morning. Almost every trial I have done in this period has had technical problems with the connection between the centre and the court. This becomes inevitable if the witness is also giving evidence remotely, which is often the case in sex trials.
The system is trying hard. We are running 19 High Court trial courts at once. This is unprecedented. I was talked into taking on another one yesterday due to start on the 16th. Bodies for both the defence and prosecution are quite hard to find. Defence counsel are racing from trial to trial and the system is having to accomodate them, recognising the importance of their role.
At the less serious end there was nearly 18 months with no trials except for those in custody. The processing capacity of JP and Sheriff courts have been massively reduced by the Covid regulations which limit the number of people allowed in the building at any one time, inevitably causing down time where something comes to an end prematurely and where witnesses have to be timetabled. It is really hard to get through the business in circumstances like that.
I mention all of this because I am not really convinced that the delays in matters coming to trial are being caused by the reasons @Cyclefree says. The mass departure of young criminal barristers and experienced solicitors capable of preparing a case because they simply cannot make a living on ridiculous legal aid rates will certainly be having an effect. But I would be astonished if the lack of court rooms was the problem.
As in so many other areas of life we need to get back to normal with the restrictions removed. And then we need to catch up the backlog. Its going to be a hell of a slog.
https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/1488777557990379520
Its no wonder the world is now laughing at this country.
So much for the idea of Dom C as Gove's thingummywhatsit.
‘Writing for BBC History Magazine, Don Jordan and Michael Walsh reveal how the merry monarch's obsession with sex cost England a fortune and left it vulnerable to attack’
Read the whole article. It really is Boris
https://www.historyextra.com/period/stuart/charles-ii-too-randy-to-rule/
But was Charles ever ‘controlled’ by these women? No. He was always the king. He was controlled by himself, by his own appetites: his urgent desire for sex, his need for female company, and his hunger for a constant variety of partners
Tobias Ellwood on Sky just announced he is submitting his letter to the 1922 today
That
@BorisJohnson
would 'do a Corbyn': fight a leadership ballot and win with the backing of party members.
https://twitter.com/paulwaugh/status/1488594714899144718
I thought this was just a hyufd fantasy, apparently not
thousand54 cuts?So your methodology or working out is all over the place, even if you have reached the correct answer.
He was scathing about the Savile attack on Starmer
This has the end game writ large, and more letters post pmqs hopefully or better still announced in pmqs by individual conservative mps
He wants British and NATO boots on the ground in Ukraine today!
But the idea of 'dead cat' is that you get people talking about something else, even if it's bad.
Trying to distract from the matter of the PM being a big liar, by telling another big lie, isn't going to work the same way.
On.the voter ID discussion on the last thread in think opponents are prone to hyperbole on how awful it is given it is common even in 'good' countries, but my stance is it seems unnecessary and so the motivation is questionable. The benefits dont seem worth the aggravation.
We needed the PPE urgently. That was the priority. Your priority was not getting the PPE.
Ideally, the contract should have had a non-delivery clause. However: if having a non-delivery clause meant we might not get it, we shouldn't have had one. If a company said: "I can get you a million pieces of item x for £5 per item, but we need to pay our supplier in advance today or he'll give the order to another organisation."
What do you do, if the normal price was £2 per item, and the new price is £4-£6 per item? If there's a risk you won't get the money back? If there's a risk it won't quite be the correct kit?
Do you spend three weeks negotiating terms, as you would in 'normal' times? No. The answer might well be you run over, give them a big sloppy kiss and shake their hands. Heck, have their babies if you could. Because the majority of the deals came off and we got the PPE we needed, even if there was some waste and corruption.
We needed the PPE in unprecedented quantities. That was the priority.
I am not supporting the (small in the scheme of things) fraud and corruption. What I am supporting is getting the PPE.
Heck, I am not a fan of this government, but the sh*t spoken about PPE and ventilators is ridiculous.
You're right: it was a senseless post which was all over the place and totally incoherent.
More here on Johnson shamelessness
https://inews.co.uk/opinion/boris-johnson-leadership-contest-tory-mps-partygate-1436704
The cuts to legal aid, the inept privatisation of the probation service (which had to be reversed), the disclosure failures which harmed so many rape trials, the cuts to sitting hours, the budget cuts - all of these happened before Covid.
The failure in the police were not caused by Covid.
The failure in local authorities over child sexual abuse were not caused by Covid.
Covid will be used as an excuse for all sorts of failings. It will have played a part but its part will be hugely exaggerated and, if we let the government get away with it, it will be used as an all-purpose excuse for all sorts of failings and problems which are in reality down to deliberate decisions by government ministers.
The move on to a Trumpian reading of the 1922 rules should simply be another reason to oust him, not another excuse not to.
Well I don't think you've got Johnson's relationship to Carrie right at all. Way way way wide of the mark.
I'm obviously something of a feminist but Carrie has Boris under her thumb. Why so? Apart from being married and in such a public relationship she has a LOT on him.
You think Dom is vicious? One misstep by Johnson and Carrie can unleash hell on him.
He's under her thumb alright.
As for @Cyclefree's comments on the police, it really shows where the defunding movement in the US has come from. They do not want no police, what they want is a police force that is not a major part of the problem and they have given up in despair of reform for exactly the reasons @Cyclefree so eloquently summarises.
And surely they wouldn't support him if that would result in a GE. Surely they would get behind a compromise candidate so as not to force a GE.
On a point of fact do you think my 2 suggestions are valid in principle even if not practical in practice?
The question is whether we would have got it, or saved money, if proper processes had been followed. Given everyone wanted the PPE and it was a seller's market, I'd strongly argue we would not.
To repeat: PPE demand was 20 times what it was beforehand. Through most of the world.
(To be clear, not only am I not a supporter of Johnson or the government, I've also repeatedly said that tax rises are unavoidable.)
At lot of this should be going in to a (very expensive) lessons learnt and lets get prepared for the next disaster folder with a playbook on how to deal with things. But sadly it won't so we will have spent £bns and learnt nothing to avoid making the same mistakes next time round.
Your analysis is "I'm short of fruit, but I know where I can get some over ripe bananas, that should do".
https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-your-research/research-guides/1939-register/
https://twitter.com/patrickwintour/status/1488798946868842502
The senior Tory, who is chair of the Defence Select Committee, revealed in an interview with Kay Burley that he would be making the move.
He said it is "time to resolve this" as the Conservative Party is "slipping into a very ugly place".
It comes as the prime minister faces continued pressure over the partygate revelations, with the Metropolitan Police investigating 12 gatherings during COVID-19 restrictions for potential breaches of regulations.
https://news.sky.com/story/boris-johnson-tory-mp-tobias-ellwood-reveals-he-will-be-submitting-letter-of-no-confidence-in-prime-minister-12530879
We needed the PPE. It was a massive seller's market. The government got the PPE.
Your analysis is: opponents were criticising the government for not getting the PPE and risking lives; they got the PPE and now we're criticising how it was obtained in an emergency.
So, bizarrely if MP1 says untruthfully to MP2 You are a serial child rapist and MP2 says that is a lie, MP2 gets it in the neck.
You'd end up with no PPE.
We'll end up doing the same thing next time, because not doing it was unthinkable.
They can still staunch this wound. Starmer is okay but he's not going to light up the world in my opinion. A competent and honest opponent could put up a very good fight and things could go to the wire.
With Johnson in place they are going to take a hammering in 2024. This isn't 2019 and Starmer isn't that vile Jeremy Corbyn. Labour are very electable. The tories need to be too.
https://twitter.com/OpiniumResearch/status/1469370138441003010?s=20&t=6MBxJxIhktjd6Kbof5JKlA
1 - we should have more PPE stored for future usage.
2 - we can use Brexit to bring manufacturing back onshore (hey it may cost more but so what Brexit and jobs).
If we end up having to purchase it in an emergency again then next time round some ministers should be facing treason charges for gross stupidity.
There was a pice of BBC this morning about the sad mother whose daughter was raped and murdered in Hull a few years ago, and who now wanted to meet her murderer. 'Justice' doesn't apply to the perpetrators of crimes; it applies to the victims, too. A family member has been told that a case where they are the victim will probably not come to trial for two years, and the delay is unquestionably having an effect on them and their immediate family.
Governments are re elected or not on their record and the quality of the Opposition.
Not whether the PM of the previous government stayed in post or not until the general election
I wonder if we will look back on this as 'the' moment? It may well give the greenlight confidence to all the others.
The Daily Telegraph are leading on the story. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/
What will not have helped Boris is the mailonline lead this morning which contains a load of yet more lurid details about Boris the Clown's antics.
Britain's diplomatic chicanery over the Brexit deal and Northern Ireland had consequences. Who knew?
Certainly not unless a NATO member country is invaded which Ukraine is not
Post less, think more. People will take you more seriously.
here is the press response
Michael Gove has defended Boris Johnson over false Jimmy Savile claim https://www.politicshome.com/news/article/michael-gove-boris-johnson-immy-savile-false-claim
Johnson has nothing to apologise for over Savile comments, says Gove https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/feb/02/boris-johnson-nothing-apologise-jimmy-savile-comments-keir-starmer-gove?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
"Should Boris Johnson apologise for what he said?"
"No."
Michael Gove MP defends claims made by the PM about Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer in relation to the prosecution of Jimmy Savile.
BBC Reality Check: https://bbc.in/3oiEfgT https://twitter.com/BBCBreakfast/status/1488787802443730946/video/1
And of course this
Ellwood also very unhappy about the Savile slur, telling @SkyNews:
“The attacking this week of Keir Starmer with Jimmy Savile. I mean who advised the Prime Minister to say this? We’re better than this. We must seek to improve our standards and rise above where we are today.”