That’s what I thought. In his mind, the events that occurred were not “parties”. It could be argued that, most of us looking from the outside probably wouldn’t describe a glass of wine after work or a birthday cake as “parties” either.
Asking someone if he went to any parties, him saying no, then saying that you had a birthday cake for 10 minutes two years ago, you’re a lying liar who needs to resign, is in my mind taking the piss.
I see what you mean. But if you'd personally instigated a law at the time making exactly that illegal, and lots of people had been prosecuted and fined for infringing your law in similar or more minor ways, don't you think that changes the position? I know we've rehearsed this debate many times, but it's still the view of most of the public.
From the reports that I’ve seen, there were two incidents that could reasonably be described as parties.
One was instigated by Mrs Johnson on the day Cummings resigned, and the other was a staff party when the PM was out of town.
It’s also a slightly weird position that the PM lives and works in the same building, so rules about inviting people into your home are not necessarily relevant, except to the dedicated private flat above the office.
I also think there’s confusion between law and guidance, and a number of the incidents refer to what may be breaches of guidance, with the context of most of the people there having had covid already and their all being at their regular place of work.
If there is evidence of the PM inviting people not working in the government complex, to a purely social gathering when this was prohibited by law, then that is of course more serious.
The law doesn't refer to parties so it doesn't matter how they could reasonably be described for legal purposes.
The PMs denials in Parliament were not limited to parties so it doesn't matter whether he can claim that they were not parties for the purpose of backing up his parliamentary statements.
The Downing Street complex in its entirety is not the PM's dwelling.
The law was not based on "inviting" people into a home.
First the law was based on being outside your home without a reasonable excuse (for these purposes, the absence from home would need to be reasonably necessary for work, and once the work that necessitated it was complete there was no longer a reasonable excuse, which means that killing 10 minutes at a social event and then returning work doesn't cut it).
Latterly it was based on gatherings of two or more people (other than those within a household) without reasonable excuse/permitted purpose. If someone turned up to "gather" then it was not relevant who had caused that to happen. I guess the PM would have an excuse if he tried to run away but wasn't fit enough to escape, e.g., an over-enthusiastic technology tutor. But that's about it.
Actually, I'm not too sure about the bit in bold. You can claim that hanging around after work was completed to have a drink was prohibited, but surely (since virtually everyone who was going to work in the period had to travel for more than five minutes to do so) hanging around for 10 minutes between meetings can't automatically have been prohibited.
New - Labour to fight only minimal campaign in top 30 Lib Dem target seats as part of "ruthless" targeting of scarce resources by @Keir_Starmer on Lab targets..Blue Wall danger for Tories as informal Lib-Labbery grows
Suggests Labour will not make more than a token campaign in any of the top 30 LD target seats apart from Sheffield Hallam and Cambridge, where Labour hold the seats not the Tories.
Also states Labour Shadow Cabinet Ministers have been getting to know Davey's team in case there is a hung parliament and they need a confidence and supply deal. Suggesting if there is a hung parliament the LDs would definitely back Labour this time unlike 2010 when they backed the Tories
After the way the Tories shafted their LD partners in 2014-5 I think there's more chance of them making a pact with Farage than the Tories.
How did the Conservatives shaft the LD while in government ?
I know this is a common meme in centre-left thoughts but the reality is the LibDems shafted themselves.
Firstly by totally breaking their word on issues such as student tuition fees and Middle Eastern warmongering.
Secondly by the behaviour of such people as Chris Huhne and David Laws.
Clearly the LDs believed that they had an agreement that the Conservatives would not (at least officially) campaign for No on the voting reform referendum. A belief which Cameron disabused them of in short order.
Otherwise, yes: the LDs mostly stabbed themselves in the front by voting for policies which they had explicitly pledged not to do in their campaign literature. No amount of real-politic about how the student loan scheme was really a graduate tax in disguise & that was down to LD influence on the government could change the fact that the LDs had voted in a thing that called itself a student loan scheme.
Even worse, Nick Clegg then said in more-or-less as many words that voters were fools for ever believing any LibDem policies because at best they were, and could only ever be, mere bargaining chips in coalition negotiations.
Clegg effectively destroyed the LibDem image of being the 'nice party'.
We've had this argument on here though. In terms of leaving the EU, Brexit is over. The new landscape is still forming, and that is where the big questions are. Should we try to be closer to the EU in trade, or carry on with what we are doing at the moment (which seems to be self harm to an extent)? Would a closer trading relationship without the political project mean that Brexit is over? I don't think so.
My problem was with the political project. Now that is resolved I am open to as close a trading relationship as the EU will allow. So far they are still in a huff though. Hopefully that will change over time.
That’s what I thought. In his mind, the events that occurred were not “parties”. It could be argued that, most of us looking from the outside probably wouldn’t describe a glass of wine after work or a birthday cake as “parties” either.
Asking someone if he went to any parties, him saying no, then saying that you had a birthday cake for 10 minutes two years ago, you’re a lying liar who needs to resign, is in my mind taking the piss.
I see what you mean. But if you'd personally instigated a law at the time making exactly that illegal, and lots of people had been prosecuted and fined for infringing your law in similar or more minor ways, don't you think that changes the position? I know we've rehearsed this debate many times, but it's still the view of most of the public.
From the reports that I’ve seen, there were two incidents that could reasonably be described as parties.
One was instigated by Mrs Johnson on the day Cummings resigned, and the other was a staff party when the PM was out of town.
It’s also a slightly weird position that the PM lives and works in the same building, so rules about inviting people into your home are not necessarily relevant, except to the dedicated private flat above the office.
I also think there’s confusion between law and guidance, and a number of the incidents refer to what may be breaches of guidance, with the context of most of the people there having had covid already and their all being at their regular place of work.
If there is evidence of the PM inviting people not working in the government complex, to a purely social gathering when this was prohibited by law, then that is of course more serious.
The law doesn't refer to parties so it doesn't matter how they could reasonably be described for legal purposes.
The PMs denials in Parliament were not limited to parties so it doesn't matter whether he can claim that they were not parties for the purpose of backing up his parliamentary statements.
The Downing Street complex in its entirety is not the PM's dwelling.
The law was not based on "inviting" people into a home.
First the law was based on being outside your home without a reasonable excuse (for these purposes, the absence from home would need to be reasonably necessary for work, and once the work that necessitated it was complete there was no longer a reasonable excuse, which means that killing 10 minutes at a social event and then returning work doesn't cut it).
Latterly it was based on gatherings of two or more people (other than those within a household) without reasonable excuse/permitted purpose. If someone turned up to "gather" then it was not relevant who had caused that to happen. I guess the PM would have an excuse if he tried to run away but wasn't fit enough to escape, e.g., an over-enthusiastic technology tutor. But that's about it.
Ah okay, someone genuinely engaging with the discussion. Thank you.
Do we know exactly what the PM said in Parliament, it must be written somewhere? It has been suggested here that the PM was lying when he said there were no other parties in Downing St.
Whether or not people got up from their desks for a few minutes, to eat food which someone had brought to the office, is in my mind the most trivial of incidents, not something which one might reasonably expect the PM to remember more than a year later, and certainly not something on which he might be accused of lying for not remembering.
The fact that Mr Cummings was clearly keeping detailed notes at the time, doesn’t mean the PM himself might be rather more forgetful of past instances. Would he have even written in his diary, that his wife bought a cake to the office on his birthday?
I’m not a particular fan of Johnson and his style of government, I just think that this ‘scandal’ is nothing of the sort. I’ve been happy to critisise him for not following processes and and making silly decisions in other areas. My biggest critism is for the media environment, in no other country do we see this keeping trivialities in the news for weeks.
Once again, the fact that we have an entitled dishonest hypocrite as our national leader is not a triviality. Especially since he's not even competent in the first place.
New - Labour to fight only minimal campaign in top 30 Lib Dem target seats as part of "ruthless" targeting of scarce resources by @Keir_Starmer on Lab targets..Blue Wall danger for Tories as informal Lib-Labbery grows
Suggests Labour will not make more than a token campaign in any of the top 30 LD target seats apart from Sheffield Hallam and Cambridge, where Labour hold the seats not the Tories.
Also states Labour Shadow Cabinet Ministers have been getting to know Davey's team in case there is a hung parliament and they need a confidence and supply deal. Suggesting if there is a hung parliament the LDs would definitely back Labour this time unlike 2010 when they backed the Tories
After the way the Tories shafted their LD partners in 2014-5 I think there's more chance of them making a pact with Farage than the Tories.
How did the Conservatives shaft the LD while in government ?
I know this is a common meme in centre-left thoughts but the reality is the LibDems shafted themselves.
Firstly by totally breaking their word on issues such as student tuition fees and Middle Eastern warmongering.
Secondly by the behaviour of such people as Chris Huhne and David Laws.
Reneging on tuition fees was indeed an act of incredible stupidity. And David Laws was an idiot; not quite so sure about Chris Huhne. However once the government had settled down, and as we got toward the election the Tories worked hard in LD seats, and, it should be forgotten, actually lost a few seats to Labour. If they hadn't stuffed the LD's 2016 and 2017 probably wouldn't have happened. There'd have been a referendum, but Remain would have won.
But why shouldn't the Conservatives have targeted LibDem seats in 2015 ?
The local elections from 2011 onwards showed that the LibDem vote had collapsed in those areas - mostly to Labour rather than the Conservatives.
And after all the only way for the Conservatives to stay in government in 2015 was to gain seats from the LibDems to make up for expected losses to Labour.
For the avoidance of doubt, I think Clegg got several things wrong; badly, and as it turned out catastrophically, wrong. However the horrendous errors were very early. Taking the non-job of DPM for example, as well as tuition fees. I've opined before that Clegg should have insisted on one of the Great Offices; probably the Home Office, unless Hague could have been bought off from the FCO.
We've had this argument on here though. In terms of leaving the EU, Brexit is over. The new landscape is still forming, and that is where the big questions are. Should we try to be closer to the EU in trade, or carry on with what we are doing at the moment (which seems to be self harm to an extent)? Would a closer trading relationship without the political project mean that Brexit is over? I don't think so.
My problem was with the political project. Now that is resolved I am open to as close a trading relationship as the EU will allow. So far they are still in a huff though. Hopefully that will change over time.
Russian-state outlets are reporting Ukrainian shelling in Luhansk, eastern #Ukraine. Now, this isn't particularly unusual, considering this region has been in conflict for 8 years now. What's unusual is how many Russian outlets are reporting on this.
That’s the ‘false flag’ excuse they’re looking for.
Probably such attacks being done by Putin's informals, of course.
See Poland, Sept 1 1939.
Yes, it was reported a couple of weeks ago that Ukraine found a bunch of informal Russian soldiers (either mercenaries or special forces) on the Ukranian side of the border, planning to lob munitions onto the Russian side so that Russia could say they were attacked first.
Obliged. Are the Game of Thrones books more or less readable that Sir Terry Pratchetts (pbuh) books?
Pratchett is Barbara Cartland for middle class Englishmen.
The optimum GoT experience is listen to the first four books on audiobook. Don't bother with any of the other books or the TV series.
Don't you mean first three books? Feast for Crows isn't exactly a masterpiece, and Dance at least has in Jon, Dany, and Tyrion in it rather than just being about how incompetent Cersei is at ruling.
That’s what I thought. In his mind, the events that occurred were not “parties”. It could be argued that, most of us looking from the outside probably wouldn’t describe a glass of wine after work or a birthday cake as “parties” either.
Asking someone if he went to any parties, him saying no, then saying that you had a birthday cake for 10 minutes two years ago, you’re a lying liar who needs to resign, is in my mind taking the piss.
I see what you mean. But if you'd personally instigated a law at the time making exactly that illegal, and lots of people had been prosecuted and fined for infringing your law in similar or more minor ways, don't you think that changes the position? I know we've rehearsed this debate many times, but it's still the view of most of the public.
From the reports that I’ve seen, there were two incidents that could reasonably be described as parties.
One was instigated by Mrs Johnson on the day Cummings resigned, and the other was a staff party when the PM was out of town.
It’s also a slightly weird position that the PM lives and works in the same building, so rules about inviting people into your home are not necessarily relevant, except to the dedicated private flat above the office.
I also think there’s confusion between law and guidance, and a number of the incidents refer to what may be breaches of guidance, with the context of most of the people there having had covid already and their all being at their regular place of work.
If there is evidence of the PM inviting people not working in the government complex, to a purely social gathering when this was prohibited by law, then that is of course more serious.
The law doesn't refer to parties so it doesn't matter how they could reasonably be described for legal purposes.
The PMs denials in Parliament were not limited to parties so it doesn't matter whether he can claim that they were not parties for the purpose of backing up his parliamentary statements.
The Downing Street complex in its entirety is not the PM's dwelling.
The law was not based on "inviting" people into a home.
First the law was based on being outside your home without a reasonable excuse (for these purposes, the absence from home would need to be reasonably necessary for work, and once the work that necessitated it was complete there was no longer a reasonable excuse, which means that killing 10 minutes at a social event and then returning work doesn't cut it).
Latterly it was based on gatherings of two or more people (other than those within a household) without reasonable excuse/permitted purpose. If someone turned up to "gather" then it was not relevant who had caused that to happen. I guess the PM would have an excuse if he tried to run away but wasn't fit enough to escape, e.g., an over-enthusiastic technology tutor. But that's about it.
Ah okay, someone genuinely engaging with the discussion. Thank you.
Do we know exactly what the PM said in Parliament, it must be written somewhere? It has been suggested here that the PM was lying when he said there were no other parties in Downing St.
Whether or not people got up from their desks for a few minutes, to eat food which someone had brought to the office, is in my mind the most trivial of incidents, not something which one might reasonably expect the PM to remember more than a year later, and certainly not something on which he might be accused of lying for not remembering.
The fact that Mr Cummings was clearly keeping detailed notes at the time, doesn’t mean the PM himself might be rather more forgetful of past instances. Would he have even written in his diary, that his wife bought a cake to the office on his birthday?
I’m not a particular fan of Johnson and his style of government, I just think that this ‘scandal’ is nothing of the sort. I’ve been happy to critisise him for not following processes and and making silly decisions in other areas. My biggest critism is for the media environment, in no other country do we see this keeping trivialities in the news for weeks.
It doesn't look good though. Even though 10 Downing Street is a 'very unusual' workplace.
Just because Starmer isn’t committing to joining the EU doesn’t mean he can’t put in place a more productive relationship with it - or small steps toward EEA membership
Meanwhile where is @BartholomewRoberts these days. Very interested to read his higher wages and higher prices and higher wages is a good thing posts. .
You’ll have noted that there was strong growth in real wages in 2021 being confirmed earlier this week? The increase in inflation since the beginning of the year has left wages behind temporarily but hopefully only for a few months.
We've had this argument on here though. In terms of leaving the EU, Brexit is over. The new landscape is still forming, and that is where the big questions are. Should we try to be closer to the EU in trade, or carry on with what we are doing at the moment (which seems to be self harm to an extent)? Would a closer trading relationship without the political project mean that Brexit is over? I don't think so.
My problem was with the political project. Now that is resolved I am open to as close a trading relationship as the EU will allow. So far they are still in a huff though. Hopefully that will change over time.
The political project that we negotiated an opt out from?
Meanwhile where is @BartholomewRoberts these days. Very interested to read his higher wages and higher prices and higher wages is a good thing posts. .
You’ll have noted that there was strong growth in real wages in 2021 being confirmed earlier this week? The increase in inflation since the beginning of the year has left wages behind temporarily but hopefully only for a few months.
high wages in a few months means stagflation here we come..
Which is why the Governor of the Bank of England made his stupid remarks a fortnight ago because without productivity increases higher wages = higher costs = higher prices > high wages (continual).
It was previously broken by high unemployment pushing wages down but that isn't a great option for a government.
Russian-state outlets are reporting Ukrainian shelling in Luhansk, eastern #Ukraine. Now, this isn't particularly unusual, considering this region has been in conflict for 8 years now. What's unusual is how many Russian outlets are reporting on this.
That’s the ‘false flag’ excuse they’re looking for.
Probably such attacks being done by Putin's informals, of course.
See Poland, Sept 1 1939.
Yes, it was reported a couple of weeks ago that Ukraine found a bunch of informal Russian soldiers (either mercenaries or special forces) on the Ukranian side of the border, planning to lob munitions onto the Russian side so that Russia could say they were attacked first.
Do you have a link for that?
There are quite a lot of people in Eastern Ukraine who have lived there a very long time, regard themselves as Russian and, AIUI, would like to return their homeland to Mother Russia
Meanwhile where is @BartholomewRoberts these days. Very interested to read his higher wages and higher prices and higher wages is a good thing posts. .
You’ll have noted that there was strong growth in real wages in 2021 being confirmed earlier this week? The increase in inflation since the beginning of the year has left wages behind temporarily but hopefully only for a few months.
"hopefully" indeed. But where does the cycle end? Costs and therefore prices rise so wages rise and costs and prices rise and wages rise.
This is good in your opinion? What are you some kind of pre-Thatcher era Union leader?
We've had this argument on here though. In terms of leaving the EU, Brexit is over. The new landscape is still forming, and that is where the big questions are. Should we try to be closer to the EU in trade, or carry on with what we are doing at the moment (which seems to be self harm to an extent)? Would a closer trading relationship without the political project mean that Brexit is over? I don't think so.
My problem was with the political project. Now that is resolved I am open to as close a trading relationship as the EU will allow. So far they are still in a huff though. Hopefully that will change over time.
Fast forward.
My problem was with the political project. Now that is resolved I am open to as close a trading relationship as the rUK will allow. So far they are still in a huff though. Hopefully that will change over time.
Russian-state outlets are reporting Ukrainian shelling in Luhansk, eastern #Ukraine. Now, this isn't particularly unusual, considering this region has been in conflict for 8 years now. What's unusual is how many Russian outlets are reporting on this.
That’s the ‘false flag’ excuse they’re looking for.
Probably such attacks being done by Putin's informals, of course.
See Poland, Sept 1 1939.
Yes, it was reported a couple of weeks ago that Ukraine found a bunch of informal Russian soldiers (either mercenaries or special forces) on the Ukranian side of the border, planning to lob munitions onto the Russian side so that Russia could say they were attacked first.
We've had this argument on here though. In terms of leaving the EU, Brexit is over. The new landscape is still forming, and that is where the big questions are. Should we try to be closer to the EU in trade, or carry on with what we are doing at the moment (which seems to be self harm to an extent)? Would a closer trading relationship without the political project mean that Brexit is over? I don't think so.
My problem was with the political project. Now that is resolved I am open to as close a trading relationship as the EU will allow. So far they are still in a huff though. Hopefully that will change over time.
The political project that we negotiated an opt out from?
That was part of the issue. How long would we be allowed to be a brake on progress? How long could we stay out of the Euro? What would happen with the EU army?
Already the voting system had changed to qualified majority.
New - Labour to fight only minimal campaign in top 30 Lib Dem target seats as part of "ruthless" targeting of scarce resources by @Keir_Starmer on Lab targets..Blue Wall danger for Tories as informal Lib-Labbery grows
Suggests Labour will not make more than a token campaign in any of the top 30 LD target seats apart from Sheffield Hallam and Cambridge, where Labour hold the seats not the Tories.
Also states Labour Shadow Cabinet Ministers have been getting to know Davey's team in case there is a hung parliament and they need a confidence and supply deal. Suggesting if there is a hung parliament the LDs would definitely back Labour this time unlike 2010 when they backed the Tories
After the way the Tories shafted their LD partners in 2014-5 I think there's more chance of them making a pact with Farage than the Tories.
How did the Conservatives shaft the LD while in government ?
I know this is a common meme in centre-left thoughts but the reality is the LibDems shafted themselves.
Firstly by totally breaking their word on issues such as student tuition fees and Middle Eastern warmongering.
Secondly by the behaviour of such people as Chris Huhne and David Laws.
Clearly the LDs believed that they had an agreement that the Conservatives would not (at least officially) campaign for No on the voting reform referendum. A belief which Cameron disabused them of in short order.
Otherwise, yes: the LDs mostly stabbed themselves in the front by voting for policies which they had explicitly pledged not to do in their campaign literature. No amount of real-politic about how the student loan scheme was really a graduate tax in disguise & that was down to LD influence on the government could change the fact that the LDs had voted in a thing that called itself a student loan scheme.
Even worse, Nick Clegg then said in more-or-less as many words that voters were fools for ever believing any LibDem policies because at best they were, and could only ever be, mere bargaining chips in coalition negotiations.
Clegg effectively destroyed the LibDem image of being the 'nice party'.
Clegg was a genuine liberal, ie a classical economic liberal as well as a social liberal.
He showed the LDs were more than just a soft left social democrat party, they still had a liberal wing as well as an SDP wing.
Davey as an Orange Booker is also more of a traditional liberal than a social democrat
That’s what I thought. In his mind, the events that occurred were not “parties”. It could be argued that, most of us looking from the outside probably wouldn’t describe a glass of wine after work or a birthday cake as “parties” either.
Asking someone if he went to any parties, him saying no, then saying that you had a birthday cake for 10 minutes two years ago, you’re a lying liar who needs to resign, is in my mind taking the piss.
I see what you mean. But if you'd personally instigated a law at the time making exactly that illegal, and lots of people had been prosecuted and fined for infringing your law in similar or more minor ways, don't you think that changes the position? I know we've rehearsed this debate many times, but it's still the view of most of the public.
From the reports that I’ve seen, there were two incidents that could reasonably be described as parties.
One was instigated by Mrs Johnson on the day Cummings resigned, and the other was a staff party when the PM was out of town.
It’s also a slightly weird position that the PM lives and works in the same building, so rules about inviting people into your home are not necessarily relevant, except to the dedicated private flat above the office.
I also think there’s confusion between law and guidance, and a number of the incidents refer to what may be breaches of guidance, with the context of most of the people there having had covid already and their all being at their regular place of work.
If there is evidence of the PM inviting people not working in the government complex, to a purely social gathering when this was prohibited by law, then that is of course more serious.
The law doesn't refer to parties so it doesn't matter how they could reasonably be described for legal purposes.
The PMs denials in Parliament were not limited to parties so it doesn't matter whether he can claim that they were not parties for the purpose of backing up his parliamentary statements.
The Downing Street complex in its entirety is not the PM's dwelling.
The law was not based on "inviting" people into a home.
First the law was based on being outside your home without a reasonable excuse (for these purposes, the absence from home would need to be reasonably necessary for work, and once the work that necessitated it was complete there was no longer a reasonable excuse, which means that killing 10 minutes at a social event and then returning work doesn't cut it).
Latterly it was based on gatherings of two or more people (other than those within a household) without reasonable excuse/permitted purpose. If someone turned up to "gather" then it was not relevant who had caused that to happen. I guess the PM would have an excuse if he tried to run away but wasn't fit enough to escape, e.g., an over-enthusiastic technology tutor. But that's about it.
Ah okay, someone genuinely engaging with the discussion. Thank you.
Do we know exactly what the PM said in Parliament, it must be written somewhere? It has been suggested here that the PM was lying when he said there were no other parties in Downing St.
Whether or not people got up from their desks for a few minutes, to eat food which someone had brought to the office, is in my mind the most trivial of incidents, not something which one might reasonably expect the PM to remember more than a year later, and certainly not something on which he might be accused of lying for not remembering.
The fact that Mr Cummings was clearly keeping detailed notes at the time, doesn’t mean the PM himself might be rather more forgetful of past instances. Would he have even written in his diary, that his wife bought a cake to the office on his birthday?
I’m not a particular fan of Johnson and his style of government, I just think that this ‘scandal’ is nothing of the sort. I’ve been happy to critisise him for not following processes and and making silly decisions in other areas. My biggest critism is for the media environment, in no other country do we see this keeping trivialities in the news for weeks.
It doesn't look good though. Even though 10 Downing Street is a 'very unusual' workplace.
I think it would be particularly harsh if Carrie was in the wrong by wandering downstairs in her home to see what was happening.
Meanwhile where is @BartholomewRoberts these days. Very interested to read his higher wages and higher prices and higher wages is a good thing posts. .
You’ll have noted that there was strong growth in real wages in 2021 being confirmed earlier this week? The increase in inflation since the beginning of the year has left wages behind temporarily but hopefully only for a few months.
"temporarily"
do tell us what wage growth and inflation will be over the next few years, if you already know.
I am naïve enough to broadly accept the BoE projection for inflation which is that it will peak about the end of April, WW III and Taiwan permitting. Wages will inevitably continue to rise when we have 1m vacancies and less imported labour.
We've had this argument on here though. In terms of leaving the EU, Brexit is over. The new landscape is still forming, and that is where the big questions are. Should we try to be closer to the EU in trade, or carry on with what we are doing at the moment (which seems to be self harm to an extent)? Would a closer trading relationship without the political project mean that Brexit is over? I don't think so.
My problem was with the political project. Now that is resolved I am open to as close a trading relationship as the EU will allow. So far they are still in a huff though. Hopefully that will change over time.
The political project that we negotiated an opt out from?
We've had this argument on here though. In terms of leaving the EU, Brexit is over. The new landscape is still forming, and that is where the big questions are. Should we try to be closer to the EU in trade, or carry on with what we are doing at the moment (which seems to be self harm to an extent)? Would a closer trading relationship without the political project mean that Brexit is over? I don't think so.
My problem was with the political project. Now that is resolved I am open to as close a trading relationship as the EU will allow. So far they are still in a huff though. Hopefully that will change over time.
Fast forward.
My problem was with the political project. Now that is resolved I am open to as close a trading relationship as the rUK will allow. So far they are still in a huff though. Hopefully that will change over time.
LOL. You better hope so, and before the last NHS consultant leaves too.
That’s what I thought. In his mind, the events that occurred were not “parties”. It could be argued that, most of us looking from the outside probably wouldn’t describe a glass of wine after work or a birthday cake as “parties” either.
Asking someone if he went to any parties, him saying no, then saying that you had a birthday cake for 10 minutes two years ago, you’re a lying liar who needs to resign, is in my mind taking the piss.
I see what you mean. But if you'd personally instigated a law at the time making exactly that illegal, and lots of people had been prosecuted and fined for infringing your law in similar or more minor ways, don't you think that changes the position? I know we've rehearsed this debate many times, but it's still the view of most of the public.
From the reports that I’ve seen, there were two incidents that could reasonably be described as parties.
One was instigated by Mrs Johnson on the day Cummings resigned, and the other was a staff party when the PM was out of town.
It’s also a slightly weird position that the PM lives and works in the same building, so rules about inviting people into your home are not necessarily relevant, except to the dedicated private flat above the office.
I also think there’s confusion between law and guidance, and a number of the incidents refer to what may be breaches of guidance, with the context of most of the people there having had covid already and their all being at their regular place of work.
If there is evidence of the PM inviting people not working in the government complex, to a purely social gathering when this was prohibited by law, then that is of course more serious.
The law doesn't refer to parties so it doesn't matter how they could reasonably be described for legal purposes.
The PMs denials in Parliament were not limited to parties so it doesn't matter whether he can claim that they were not parties for the purpose of backing up his parliamentary statements.
The Downing Street complex in its entirety is not the PM's dwelling.
The law was not based on "inviting" people into a home.
First the law was based on being outside your home without a reasonable excuse (for these purposes, the absence from home would need to be reasonably necessary for work, and once the work that necessitated it was complete there was no longer a reasonable excuse, which means that killing 10 minutes at a social event and then returning work doesn't cut it).
Latterly it was based on gatherings of two or more people (other than those within a household) without reasonable excuse/permitted purpose. If someone turned up to "gather" then it was not relevant who had caused that to happen. I guess the PM would have an excuse if he tried to run away but wasn't fit enough to escape, e.g., an over-enthusiastic technology tutor. But that's about it.
Ah okay, someone genuinely engaging with the discussion. Thank you.
Do we know exactly what the PM said in Parliament, it must be written somewhere? It has been suggested here that the PM was lying when he said there were no other parties in Downing St.
Whether or not people got up from their desks for a few minutes, to eat food which someone had brought to the office, is in my mind the most trivial of incidents, not something which one might reasonably expect the PM to remember more than a year later, and certainly not something on which he might be accused of lying for not remembering.
The fact that Mr Cummings was clearly keeping detailed notes at the time, doesn’t mean the PM himself might be rather more forgetful of past instances. Would he have even written in his diary, that his wife bought a cake to the office on his birthday?
I’m not a particular fan of Johnson and his style of government, I just think that this ‘scandal’ is nothing of the sort. I’ve been happy to critisise him for not following processes and and making silly decisions in other areas. My biggest critism is for the media environment, in no other country do we see this keeping trivialities in the news for weeks.
Once again, the fact that we have an entitled dishonest hypocrite as our national leader is not a triviality. Especially since he's not even competent in the first place.
In your opinion.
Sort of response you get from a 10 year old.
Obviously it was his opinion. It just happens to be shared by most of Britain, where you don't live.
New - Labour to fight only minimal campaign in top 30 Lib Dem target seats as part of "ruthless" targeting of scarce resources by @Keir_Starmer on Lab targets..Blue Wall danger for Tories as informal Lib-Labbery grows
Suggests Labour will not make more than a token campaign in any of the top 30 LD target seats apart from Sheffield Hallam and Cambridge, where Labour hold the seats not the Tories.
Also states Labour Shadow Cabinet Ministers have been getting to know Davey's team in case there is a hung parliament and they need a confidence and supply deal. Suggesting if there is a hung parliament the LDs would definitely back Labour this time unlike 2010 when they backed the Tories
After the way the Tories shafted their LD partners in 2014-5 I think there's more chance of them making a pact with Farage than the Tories.
How did the Conservatives shaft the LD while in government ?
I know this is a common meme in centre-left thoughts but the reality is the LibDems shafted themselves.
Firstly by totally breaking their word on issues such as student tuition fees and Middle Eastern warmongering.
Secondly by the behaviour of such people as Chris Huhne and David Laws.
Clearly the LDs believed that they had an agreement that the Conservatives would not (at least officially) campaign for No on the voting reform referendum. A belief which Cameron disabused them of in short order.
Otherwise, yes: the LDs mostly stabbed themselves in the front by voting for policies which they had explicitly pledged not to do in their campaign literature. No amount of real-politic about how the student loan scheme was really a graduate tax in disguise & that was down to LD influence on the government could change the fact that the LDs had voted in a thing that called itself a student loan scheme.
Even worse, Nick Clegg then said in more-or-less as many words that voters were fools for ever believing any LibDem policies because at best they were, and could only ever be, mere bargaining chips in coalition negotiations.
Oh come on. Anyone who believes any parties manifesto will be even mostly implemented as written down is already hopelessly naive. Anyone who votes for a party who have never won a general election or even 100 seats before and then expects their policies to be delivered really is a fool. I don't understand how anyone can have come to such a conclusion.
That does not mean they did not handle tuition fees horribly wrong, but anyone voting for the LDS was voting for coalition and compromises.
Meanwhile where is @BartholomewRoberts these days. Very interested to read his higher wages and higher prices and higher wages is a good thing posts. .
You’ll have noted that there was strong growth in real wages in 2021 being confirmed earlier this week? The increase in inflation since the beginning of the year has left wages behind temporarily but hopefully only for a few months.
"hopefully" indeed. But where does the cycle end? Costs and therefore prices rise so wages rise and costs and prices rise and wages rise.
This is good in your opinion? What are you some kind of pre-Thatcher era Union leader?
The main cause of inflation now is that we put the cost of the pandemic on the QE tab 2 years ago. We have a bit of that to work through but my hope is that increasing wages will drive increased investment to boost productivity and the general standard of living.
We've had this argument on here though. In terms of leaving the EU, Brexit is over. The new landscape is still forming, and that is where the big questions are. Should we try to be closer to the EU in trade, or carry on with what we are doing at the moment (which seems to be self harm to an extent)? Would a closer trading relationship without the political project mean that Brexit is over? I don't think so.
My problem was with the political project. Now that is resolved I am open to as close a trading relationship as the EU will allow. So far they are still in a huff though. Hopefully that will change over time.
The political project that we negotiated an opt out from?
"opt out". Yeah, right.
What would you call it. Actually nevermind. A five-year old discussion. I'm guessing you think it wasn't worth the paper it was printed on. Fair enough. We will never know.
On Partygate, it seems to be going exactly how Boris would wish, both here and elsewhere. Everybody's dancing on the head of a pin and having tedious debates about technicalities: which, if any, rules/guidance/laws were broken? Personally I don't think the Met should ever have got involved, and any judgement should be left to the supreme court of public opinion. We're not going to get to the full truth, either through the Met or through Sue Gray, so both are a waste of time. I'd encourage the PM's opponents to revert to the big picture and forget about legal/illegal:
Did Boris knowingly do things that the rest of us thought were not allowed during the pandemic? Yes. Does his breaking of rules that he himself made make him a gross hypocrite? Yes. Has he lied about this stuff, both to parliament and elsewhere? Yes.
And his defenders can go with Sandpit's 'it's trivial, it doesn't matter, bigger fish to fry' line. We'll see who wins in the fulness of time.
We've had this argument on here though. In terms of leaving the EU, Brexit is over. The new landscape is still forming, and that is where the big questions are. Should we try to be closer to the EU in trade, or carry on with what we are doing at the moment (which seems to be self harm to an extent)? Would a closer trading relationship without the political project mean that Brexit is over? I don't think so.
My problem was with the political project. Now that is resolved I am open to as close a trading relationship as the EU will allow. So far they are still in a huff though. Hopefully that will change over time.
Fast forward.
My problem was with the political project. Now that is resolved I am open to as close a trading relationship as the rUK will allow. So far they are still in a huff though. Hopefully that will change over time.
LOL. You better hope so, and before the last NHS consultant leaves too.
We're in trouble tomorrow. There's no let up in the outputs. In fact if anything they are worse with a 'sting jet' showing up and possible tornadoes.
Damage and destruction across southern Britain will be extensive.
Stay indoors.
Yes, the 'sting jet' was originally expected out to sea but that does rather look like one over East Anglia as the thing exits into the North Sea.
Here in the northern Flatlands we're right on the borderline between bad and not that bad. It looks like SW Wales and Devon will get the 100mph gusts, but 80+ in London is not to be sneezed at and if that sting jet materialises Norwich might be less than good.
Meanwhile where is @BartholomewRoberts these days. Very interested to read his higher wages and higher prices and higher wages is a good thing posts. .
You’ll have noted that there was strong growth in real wages in 2021 being confirmed earlier this week? The increase in inflation since the beginning of the year has left wages behind temporarily but hopefully only for a few months.
"hopefully" indeed. But where does the cycle end? Costs and therefore prices rise so wages rise and costs and prices rise and wages rise.
This is good in your opinion? What are you some kind of pre-Thatcher era Union leader?
Depends upon what the causes of the inflation and higher wages are.
But we may be seeing an economic shift from the owners and consumers to the workers.
Which would also be an economic shift from the oldies to those young enough to work.
We've had this argument on here though. In terms of leaving the EU, Brexit is over. The new landscape is still forming, and that is where the big questions are. Should we try to be closer to the EU in trade, or carry on with what we are doing at the moment (which seems to be self harm to an extent)? Would a closer trading relationship without the political project mean that Brexit is over? I don't think so.
My problem was with the political project. Now that is resolved I am open to as close a trading relationship as the EU will allow. So far they are still in a huff though. Hopefully that will change over time.
The political project that we negotiated an opt out from?
We didn’t. Merkel said no. Didn’t believe we would leave. Wrong. Again.
Have just seen a clip from the Scottish version of Question Time. Commentator points out that for 29 years of her 43 years Scotland has had a government that we didn't elect.
What's the equivalent figure for London (or Manchester, Liverpool, etc)? Lots of the country lives in areas that would never vote Tory but gets stuck with them in power nationally...
LOL. What a convenient time to be born, in the first year of Mrs Thatcher's 18 years - the point of maximum outrage! I wonder if she actually is 43.
If she had been born 15 years earlier, it would have been 33 years out of 59.
The point is a bit vapid though, it is not unusual for a region, and is perhaps inevitable for one currently dominated by its own sectarian political party.
It is a terrible argument, is a government only legitimate when a certain subset (nation, region, county, constituency, street, or household) elects it? No, that's daft, anyone arguing for that is effectively asking for a veto over the result.
I have never voted for a winning candidate in a parliamentary election, but every election I have voted in has been legitimate.
That’s what I thought. In his mind, the events that occurred were not “parties”. It could be argued that, most of us looking from the outside probably wouldn’t describe a glass of wine after work or a birthday cake as “parties” either.
Asking someone if he went to any parties, him saying no, then saying that you had a birthday cake for 10 minutes two years ago, you’re a lying liar who needs to resign, is in my mind taking the piss.
I see what you mean. But if you'd personally instigated a law at the time making exactly that illegal, and lots of people had been prosecuted and fined for infringing your law in similar or more minor ways, don't you think that changes the position? I know we've rehearsed this debate many times, but it's still the view of most of the public.
From the reports that I’ve seen, there were two incidents that could reasonably be described as parties.
One was instigated by Mrs Johnson on the day Cummings resigned, and the other was a staff party when the PM was out of town.
It’s also a slightly weird position that the PM lives and works in the same building, so rules about inviting people into your home are not necessarily relevant, except to the dedicated private flat above the office.
I also think there’s confusion between law and guidance, and a number of the incidents refer to what may be breaches of guidance, with the context of most of the people there having had covid already and their all being at their regular place of work.
If there is evidence of the PM inviting people not working in the government complex, to a purely social gathering when this was prohibited by law, then that is of course more serious.
The law doesn't refer to parties so it doesn't matter how they could reasonably be described for legal purposes.
The PMs denials in Parliament were not limited to parties so it doesn't matter whether he can claim that they were not parties for the purpose of backing up his parliamentary statements.
The Downing Street complex in its entirety is not the PM's dwelling.
The law was not based on "inviting" people into a home.
First the law was based on being outside your home without a reasonable excuse (for these purposes, the absence from home would need to be reasonably necessary for work, and once the work that necessitated it was complete there was no longer a reasonable excuse, which means that killing 10 minutes at a social event and then returning work doesn't cut it).
Latterly it was based on gatherings of two or more people (other than those within a household) without reasonable excuse/permitted purpose. If someone turned up to "gather" then it was not relevant who had caused that to happen. I guess the PM would have an excuse if he tried to run away but wasn't fit enough to escape, e.g., an over-enthusiastic technology tutor. But that's about it.
Ah okay, someone genuinely engaging with the discussion. Thank you.
Do we know exactly what the PM said in Parliament, it must be written somewhere? It has been suggested here that the PM was lying when he said there were no other parties in Downing St.
Whether or not people got up from their desks for a few minutes, to eat food which someone had brought to the office, is in my mind the most trivial of incidents, not something which one might reasonably expect the PM to remember more than a year later, and certainly not something on which he might be accused of lying for not remembering.
The fact that Mr Cummings was clearly keeping detailed notes at the time, doesn’t mean the PM himself might be rather more forgetful of past instances. Would he have even written in his diary, that his wife bought a cake to the office on his birthday?
I’m not a particular fan of Johnson and his style of government, I just think that this ‘scandal’ is nothing of the sort. I’ve been happy to critisise him for not following processes and and making silly decisions in other areas. My biggest critism is for the media environment, in no other country do we see this keeping trivialities in the news for weeks.
It doesn't look good though. Even though 10 Downing Street is a 'very unusual' workplace.
I think it would be particularly harsh if Carrie was in the wrong by wandering downstairs in her home to see what was happening.
And she just happened to be carrying a birthday cake at the time.
That’s what I thought. In his mind, the events that occurred were not “parties”. It could be argued that, most of us looking from the outside probably wouldn’t describe a glass of wine after work or a birthday cake as “parties” either.
Asking someone if he went to any parties, him saying no, then saying that you had a birthday cake for 10 minutes two years ago, you’re a lying liar who needs to resign, is in my mind taking the piss.
I see what you mean. But if you'd personally instigated a law at the time making exactly that illegal, and lots of people had been prosecuted and fined for infringing your law in similar or more minor ways, don't you think that changes the position? I know we've rehearsed this debate many times, but it's still the view of most of the public.
From the reports that I’ve seen, there were two incidents that could reasonably be described as parties.
One was instigated by Mrs Johnson on the day Cummings resigned, and the other was a staff party when the PM was out of town.
It’s also a slightly weird position that the PM lives and works in the same building, so rules about inviting people into your home are not necessarily relevant, except to the dedicated private flat above the office.
I also think there’s confusion between law and guidance, and a number of the incidents refer to what may be breaches of guidance, with the context of most of the people there having had covid already and their all being at their regular place of work.
If there is evidence of the PM inviting people not working in the government complex, to a purely social gathering when this was prohibited by law, then that is of course more serious.
The law doesn't refer to parties so it doesn't matter how they could reasonably be described for legal purposes.
The PMs denials in Parliament were not limited to parties so it doesn't matter whether he can claim that they were not parties for the purpose of backing up his parliamentary statements.
The Downing Street complex in its entirety is not the PM's dwelling.
The law was not based on "inviting" people into a home.
First the law was based on being outside your home without a reasonable excuse (for these purposes, the absence from home would need to be reasonably necessary for work, and once the work that necessitated it was complete there was no longer a reasonable excuse, which means that killing 10 minutes at a social event and then returning work doesn't cut it).
Latterly it was based on gatherings of two or more people (other than those within a household) without reasonable excuse/permitted purpose. If someone turned up to "gather" then it was not relevant who had caused that to happen. I guess the PM would have an excuse if he tried to run away but wasn't fit enough to escape, e.g., an over-enthusiastic technology tutor. But that's about it.
Actually, I'm not too sure about the bit in bold. You can claim that hanging around after work was completed to have a drink was prohibited, but surely (since virtually everyone who was going to work in the period had to travel for more than five minutes to do so) hanging around for 10 minutes between meetings can't automatically have been prohibited.
There was a real lack of clarity about what kind of waiting/travelling was permitted. For example there was a point where you could be at a medical appointment but it wasn't clear that driving your child to that appointment was legal. I remember cases where parents had dropped children off places that they were permitted to be for an hour, decided it wasn't worth driving 20 mins home and 20 mins back again and tried to wait and read a book in their car in a car park, and got moved on by the police (not aware of anyone being fined). That's perhaps specific to Cornwall where the police were pretty over-enthusiastic in their attitude that a car park where you could see the sea was a Really Fun Place, so they decided it was clearly against the rules to wait there. It was pretty stressful and there was actually a lot of fear of getting into trouble for doing normal, probably legal things.
There were also cases of healthcare workers being fined for parking by the sea to decompress for a few minutes on the way home after difficult shifts during the covid peaks.
Obviously there would have been a common-sense test around travel time versus waiting time, as per your example, but I still don't think "as I'm waiting around I'll sit in the garden and have a quick beer with my colleagues" would have been accepted if observed by "normal" police.
New - Labour to fight only minimal campaign in top 30 Lib Dem target seats as part of "ruthless" targeting of scarce resources by @Keir_Starmer on Lab targets..Blue Wall danger for Tories as informal Lib-Labbery grows
Suggests Labour will not make more than a token campaign in any of the top 30 LD target seats apart from Sheffield Hallam and Cambridge, where Labour hold the seats not the Tories.
Also states Labour Shadow Cabinet Ministers have been getting to know Davey's team in case there is a hung parliament and they need a confidence and supply deal. Suggesting if there is a hung parliament the LDs would definitely back Labour this time unlike 2010 when they backed the Tories
After the way the Tories shafted their LD partners in 2014-5 I think there's more chance of them making a pact with Farage than the Tories.
How did the Conservatives shaft the LD while in government ?
I know this is a common meme in centre-left thoughts but the reality is the LibDems shafted themselves.
Firstly by totally breaking their word on issues such as student tuition fees and Middle Eastern warmongering.
Secondly by the behaviour of such people as Chris Huhne and David Laws.
Clearly the LDs believed that they had an agreement that the Conservatives would not (at least officially) campaign for No on the voting reform referendum. A belief which Cameron disabused them of in short order.
Otherwise, yes: the LDs mostly stabbed themselves in the front by voting for policies which they had explicitly pledged not to do in their campaign literature. No amount of real-politic about how the student loan scheme was really a graduate tax in disguise & that was down to LD influence on the government could change the fact that the LDs had voted in a thing that called itself a student loan scheme.
Even worse, Nick Clegg then said in more-or-less as many words that voters were fools for ever believing any LibDem policies because at best they were, and could only ever be, mere bargaining chips in coalition negotiations.
Oh come on. Anyone who believes any parties manifesto will be even mostly implemented as written down is already hopelessly naive. Anyone who votes for a party who have never won a general election or even 100 seats before and then expects their policies to be delivered really is a fool. I don't understand how anyone can have come to such a conclusion.
That does not mean they did not handle tuition fees horribly wrong, but anyone voting for the LDS was voting for coalition and compromises.
I was a long term LD and I knew that coalition meant compromises. Didn't like the tuition fees business AT ALL. Felt badly let down. Not personally, far too old, but in 2010 I had grandchildren at or approaching Uni.
That’s what I thought. In his mind, the events that occurred were not “parties”. It could be argued that, most of us looking from the outside probably wouldn’t describe a glass of wine after work or a birthday cake as “parties” either.
Asking someone if he went to any parties, him saying no, then saying that you had a birthday cake for 10 minutes two years ago, you’re a lying liar who needs to resign, is in my mind taking the piss.
I see what you mean. But if you'd personally instigated a law at the time making exactly that illegal, and lots of people had been prosecuted and fined for infringing your law in similar or more minor ways, don't you think that changes the position? I know we've rehearsed this debate many times, but it's still the view of most of the public.
From the reports that I’ve seen, there were two incidents that could reasonably be described as parties.
One was instigated by Mrs Johnson on the day Cummings resigned, and the other was a staff party when the PM was out of town.
It’s also a slightly weird position that the PM lives and works in the same building, so rules about inviting people into your home are not necessarily relevant, except to the dedicated private flat above the office.
I also think there’s confusion between law and guidance, and a number of the incidents refer to what may be breaches of guidance, with the context of most of the people there having had covid already and their all being at their regular place of work.
If there is evidence of the PM inviting people not working in the government complex, to a purely social gathering when this was prohibited by law, then that is of course more serious.
The law doesn't refer to parties so it doesn't matter how they could reasonably be described for legal purposes.
The PMs denials in Parliament were not limited to parties so it doesn't matter whether he can claim that they were not parties for the purpose of backing up his parliamentary statements.
The Downing Street complex in its entirety is not the PM's dwelling.
The law was not based on "inviting" people into a home.
First the law was based on being outside your home without a reasonable excuse (for these purposes, the absence from home would need to be reasonably necessary for work, and once the work that necessitated it was complete there was no longer a reasonable excuse, which means that killing 10 minutes at a social event and then returning work doesn't cut it).
Latterly it was based on gatherings of two or more people (other than those within a household) without reasonable excuse/permitted purpose. If someone turned up to "gather" then it was not relevant who had caused that to happen. I guess the PM would have an excuse if he tried to run away but wasn't fit enough to escape, e.g., an over-enthusiastic technology tutor. But that's about it.
Ah okay, someone genuinely engaging with the discussion. Thank you.
Do we know exactly what the PM said in Parliament, it must be written somewhere? It has been suggested here that the PM was lying when he said there were no other parties in Downing St.
Whether or not people got up from their desks for a few minutes, to eat food which someone had brought to the office, is in my mind the most trivial of incidents, not something which one might reasonably expect the PM to remember more than a year later, and certainly not something on which he might be accused of lying for not remembering.
The fact that Mr Cummings was clearly keeping detailed notes at the time, doesn’t mean the PM himself might be rather more forgetful of past instances. Would he have even written in his diary, that his wife bought a cake to the office on his birthday?
I’m not a particular fan of Johnson and his style of government, I just think that this ‘scandal’ is nothing of the sort. I’ve been happy to critisise him for not following processes and and making silly decisions in other areas. My biggest critism is for the media environment, in no other country do we see this keeping trivialities in the news for weeks.
It doesn't look good though. Even though 10 Downing Street is a 'very unusual' workplace.
I think it would be particularly harsh if Carrie was in the wrong by wandering downstairs in her home to see what was happening.
And she just happened to be carrying a birthday cake at the time.
And playing Abba, which in the eyes of many would be the most serious offence.
Mark Galleotti: In his famous thought experiment, Schrödinger’s cat was both dead and alive in potential, until its box was opened to find out. Likewise, it seems the much-heralded war in Ukraine is at once imminent and unthinkable, and we don’t know which. https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/putin-has-created-a-shr-dinger-s-war-in-ukraine
New - Labour to fight only minimal campaign in top 30 Lib Dem target seats as part of "ruthless" targeting of scarce resources by @Keir_Starmer on Lab targets..Blue Wall danger for Tories as informal Lib-Labbery grows
Suggests Labour will not make more than a token campaign in any of the top 30 LD target seats apart from Sheffield Hallam and Cambridge, where Labour hold the seats not the Tories.
Also states Labour Shadow Cabinet Ministers have been getting to know Davey's team in case there is a hung parliament and they need a confidence and supply deal. Suggesting if there is a hung parliament the LDs would definitely back Labour this time unlike 2010 when they backed the Tories
After the way the Tories shafted their LD partners in 2014-5 I think there's more chance of them making a pact with Farage than the Tories.
How did the Conservatives shaft the LD while in government ?
I know this is a common meme in centre-left thoughts but the reality is the LibDems shafted themselves.
Firstly by totally breaking their word on issues such as student tuition fees and Middle Eastern warmongering.
Secondly by the behaviour of such people as Chris Huhne and David Laws.
Clearly the LDs believed that they had an agreement that the Conservatives would not (at least officially) campaign for No on the voting reform referendum. A belief which Cameron disabused them of in short order.
Otherwise, yes: the LDs mostly stabbed themselves in the front by voting for policies which they had explicitly pledged not to do in their campaign literature. No amount of real-politic about how the student loan scheme was really a graduate tax in disguise & that was down to LD influence on the government could change the fact that the LDs had voted in a thing that called itself a student loan scheme.
Even worse, Nick Clegg then said in more-or-less as many words that voters were fools for ever believing any LibDem policies because at best they were, and could only ever be, mere bargaining chips in coalition negotiations.
Oh come on. Anyone who believes any parties manifesto will be even mostly implemented as written down is already hopelessly naive. Anyone who votes for a party who have never won a general election or even 100 seats before and then expects their policies to be delivered really is a fool. I don't understand how anyone can have come to such a conclusion.
That does not mean they did not handle tuition fees horribly wrong, but anyone voting for the LDS was voting for coalition and compromises.
I was a long term LD and I knew that coalition meant compromises. Didn't like the tuition fees business AT ALL. Felt badly let down. Not personally, far too old, but in 2010 I had grandchildren at or approaching Uni.
Sure, saying you did not like the compromises chosen makes sense.
Whereas someone saying that they feel let down because the LD manifesto was not implemented as written down really is a fool.
That’s what I thought. In his mind, the events that occurred were not “parties”. It could be argued that, most of us looking from the outside probably wouldn’t describe a glass of wine after work or a birthday cake as “parties” either.
Asking someone if he went to any parties, him saying no, then saying that you had a birthday cake for 10 minutes two years ago, you’re a lying liar who needs to resign, is in my mind taking the piss.
I see what you mean. But if you'd personally instigated a law at the time making exactly that illegal, and lots of people had been prosecuted and fined for infringing your law in similar or more minor ways, don't you think that changes the position? I know we've rehearsed this debate many times, but it's still the view of most of the public.
From the reports that I’ve seen, there were two incidents that could reasonably be described as parties.
One was instigated by Mrs Johnson on the day Cummings resigned, and the other was a staff party when the PM was out of town.
It’s also a slightly weird position that the PM lives and works in the same building, so rules about inviting people into your home are not necessarily relevant, except to the dedicated private flat above the office.
I also think there’s confusion between law and guidance, and a number of the incidents refer to what may be breaches of guidance, with the context of most of the people there having had covid already and their all being at their regular place of work.
If there is evidence of the PM inviting people not working in the government complex, to a purely social gathering when this was prohibited by law, then that is of course more serious.
The law doesn't refer to parties so it doesn't matter how they could reasonably be described for legal purposes.
The PMs denials in Parliament were not limited to parties so it doesn't matter whether he can claim that they were not parties for the purpose of backing up his parliamentary statements.
The Downing Street complex in its entirety is not the PM's dwelling.
The law was not based on "inviting" people into a home.
First the law was based on being outside your home without a reasonable excuse (for these purposes, the absence from home would need to be reasonably necessary for work, and once the work that necessitated it was complete there was no longer a reasonable excuse, which means that killing 10 minutes at a social event and then returning work doesn't cut it).
Latterly it was based on gatherings of two or more people (other than those within a household) without reasonable excuse/permitted purpose. If someone turned up to "gather" then it was not relevant who had caused that to happen. I guess the PM would have an excuse if he tried to run away but wasn't fit enough to escape, e.g., an over-enthusiastic technology tutor. But that's about it.
Ah okay, someone genuinely engaging with the discussion. Thank you.
Do we know exactly what the PM said in Parliament, it must be written somewhere? It has been suggested here that the PM was lying when he said there were no other parties in Downing St.
Whether or not people got up from their desks for a few minutes, to eat food which someone had brought to the office, is in my mind the most trivial of incidents, not something which one might reasonably expect the PM to remember more than a year later, and certainly not something on which he might be accused of lying for not remembering.
The fact that Mr Cummings was clearly keeping detailed notes at the time, doesn’t mean the PM himself might be rather more forgetful of past instances. Would he have even written in his diary, that his wife bought a cake to the office on his birthday?
I’m not a particular fan of Johnson and his style of government, I just think that this ‘scandal’ is nothing of the sort. I’ve been happy to critisise him for not following processes and and making silly decisions in other areas. My biggest critism is for the media environment, in no other country do we see this keeping trivialities in the news for weeks.
It doesn't look good though. Even though 10 Downing Street is a 'very unusual' workplace.
I think it would be particularly harsh if Carrie was in the wrong by wandering downstairs in her home to see what was happening.
It'll blow your mind when you find out about some of the documents in her "home" she isn't security cleared to read and the meetings in her "home" she isn't allowed to attend.
Meanwhile where is @BartholomewRoberts these days. Very interested to read his higher wages and higher prices and higher wages is a good thing posts. .
You’ll have noted that there was strong growth in real wages in 2021 being confirmed earlier this week? The increase in inflation since the beginning of the year has left wages behind temporarily but hopefully only for a few months.
"hopefully" indeed. But where does the cycle end? Costs and therefore prices rise so wages rise and costs and prices rise and wages rise.
This is good in your opinion? What are you some kind of pre-Thatcher era Union leader?
The main cause of inflation now is that we put the cost of the pandemic on the QE tab 2 years ago. We have a bit of that to work through but my hope is that increasing wages will drive increased investment to boost productivity and the general standard of living.
Blimey. You think that is going to happen. Now. When everyone is battered and businesses are having to pay more to get hitherto plentiful labour and raise prices just to stand still.
You think amidst this there will be a boost to increase productivity and the general standard of living.
At present price growth is outstripping wage growth. Once inflation takes hold then it is very difficult to get it out of the system. Better economists than you or I (and much better ones than @BartholomewRoberts) are praying that it will work its way through once energy price rises have worked their way through, etc. .
Have just seen a clip from the Scottish version of Question Time. Commentator points out that for 29 years of her 43 years Scotland has had a government that we didn't elect.
What's the equivalent figure for London (or Manchester, Liverpool, etc)? Lots of the country lives in areas that would never vote Tory but gets stuck with them in power nationally...
LOL. What a convenient time to be born, in the first year of Mrs Thatcher's 18 years - the point of maximum outrage! I wonder if she actually is 43.
If she had been born 15 years earlier, it would have been 33 years out of 59.
The point is a bit vapid though, it is not unusual for a region, and is perhaps inevitable for one currently dominated by its own sectarian political party.
It is a terrible argument, is a government only legitimate when a certain subset (nation, region, county, constituency, street, or household) elects it? No, that's daft, anyone arguing for that is effectively asking for a veto over the result.
I have never voted for a winning candidate in a parliamentary election, but every election I have voted in has been legitimate.
Voted in every Parliamentary election since 1959 and have only once voted for a winner. Been an Agent in several, and have never had any concerns about the validity of the system. Felt 2019 was probably the one with the greatest amount of deliberate misleading, though.
That’s what I thought. In his mind, the events that occurred were not “parties”. It could be argued that, most of us looking from the outside probably wouldn’t describe a glass of wine after work or a birthday cake as “parties” either.
Asking someone if he went to any parties, him saying no, then saying that you had a birthday cake for 10 minutes two years ago, you’re a lying liar who needs to resign, is in my mind taking the piss.
I see what you mean. But if you'd personally instigated a law at the time making exactly that illegal, and lots of people had been prosecuted and fined for infringing your law in similar or more minor ways, don't you think that changes the position? I know we've rehearsed this debate many times, but it's still the view of most of the public.
From the reports that I’ve seen, there were two incidents that could reasonably be described as parties.
One was instigated by Mrs Johnson on the day Cummings resigned, and the other was a staff party when the PM was out of town.
It’s also a slightly weird position that the PM lives and works in the same building, so rules about inviting people into your home are not necessarily relevant, except to the dedicated private flat above the office.
I also think there’s confusion between law and guidance, and a number of the incidents refer to what may be breaches of guidance, with the context of most of the people there having had covid already and their all being at their regular place of work.
If there is evidence of the PM inviting people not working in the government complex, to a purely social gathering when this was prohibited by law, then that is of course more serious.
I am not sure that your perspective from Cloud Base is ideal.
At the time of the Downing St. events I was being stopped by police checking I had not strayed more than five miles from home walking my dogs. The rules were taken that seriously, and yet at Downing Street it appears, they were not.
None of that matters in the grand scheme of things. Johnson apologises, Johnson survives. What does matter is did Johnson "mislead" Parliament? If a Minister did mislead Parliament the Minister goes. There are precedents, no ifs no buts.
Meanwhile where is @BartholomewRoberts these days. Very interested to read his higher wages and higher prices and higher wages is a good thing posts. .
You’ll have noted that there was strong growth in real wages in 2021 being confirmed earlier this week? The increase in inflation since the beginning of the year has left wages behind temporarily but hopefully only for a few months.
"hopefully" indeed. But where does the cycle end? Costs and therefore prices rise so wages rise and costs and prices rise and wages rise.
This is good in your opinion? What are you some kind of pre-Thatcher era Union leader?
The main cause of inflation now is that we put the cost of the pandemic on the QE tab 2 years ago. We have a bit of that to work through but my hope is that increasing wages will drive increased investment to boost productivity and the general standard of living.
Blimey. You think that is going to happen. Now. When everyone is battered and businesses are having to pay more to get hitherto plentiful labour and raise prices just to stand still.
You think amidst this there will be a boost to increase productivity and the general standard of living.
At present price growth is outstripping wage growth. Once inflation takes hold then it is very difficult to get it out of the system. Better economists than you or I (and much better ones than @BartholomewRoberts) are praying that it will work its way through once energy price rises have worked their way through, etc. .
The main problem since 2008 has been deflation not inflation. The price of oil fell 5% yesterday and gas even more. No doubt they will be back up again today given the latest shenanigans but there is a big war premium in the price right now.
That’s what I thought. In his mind, the events that occurred were not “parties”. It could be argued that, most of us looking from the outside probably wouldn’t describe a glass of wine after work or a birthday cake as “parties” either.
Asking someone if he went to any parties, him saying no, then saying that you had a birthday cake for 10 minutes two years ago, you’re a lying liar who needs to resign, is in my mind taking the piss.
I see what you mean. But if you'd personally instigated a law at the time making exactly that illegal, and lots of people had been prosecuted and fined for infringing your law in similar or more minor ways, don't you think that changes the position? I know we've rehearsed this debate many times, but it's still the view of most of the public.
From the reports that I’ve seen, there were two incidents that could reasonably be described as parties.
One was instigated by Mrs Johnson on the day Cummings resigned, and the other was a staff party when the PM was out of town.
It’s also a slightly weird position that the PM lives and works in the same building, so rules about inviting people into your home are not necessarily relevant, except to the dedicated private flat above the office.
I also think there’s confusion between law and guidance, and a number of the incidents refer to what may be breaches of guidance, with the context of most of the people there having had covid already and their all being at their regular place of work.
If there is evidence of the PM inviting people not working in the government complex, to a purely social gathering when this was prohibited by law, then that is of course more serious.
I am not sure that your perspective from Cloud Base is ideal.
At the time of the Downing St. events I was being stopped by police checking I had not strayed more than five miles from home walking my dogs. The rules were taken that seriously, and yet at Downing Street it appears, they were not.
None of that matters in the grand scheme of things. Johnson apologises, Johnson survives. What does matter is did Johnson "mislead" Parliament? If a Minister did mislead Parliament the Minister goes. There are precedents, no ifs no buts.
Why were they checking that? That was never a law.
We've had this argument on here though. In terms of leaving the EU, Brexit is over. The new landscape is still forming, and that is where the big questions are. Should we try to be closer to the EU in trade, or carry on with what we are doing at the moment (which seems to be self harm to an extent)? Would a closer trading relationship without the political project mean that Brexit is over? I don't think so.
My problem was with the political project. Now that is resolved I am open to as close a trading relationship as the EU will allow. So far they are still in a huff though. Hopefully that will change over time.
The political project that we negotiated an opt out from?
"opt out". Yeah, right.
Were we members of the Euro? Were we members of Schengen? Were we involved in their army project? Did we have a Veto?
I am sympathetic to the general thrust you are making. The need for us to step off their integration project in our own time rather than theirs was my rationale for voting to leave. But it is simply wrong to suggest that we did not have an opt out or things we had opted out of.
That’s what I thought. In his mind, the events that occurred were not “parties”. It could be argued that, most of us looking from the outside probably wouldn’t describe a glass of wine after work or a birthday cake as “parties” either.
Asking someone if he went to any parties, him saying no, then saying that you had a birthday cake for 10 minutes two years ago, you’re a lying liar who needs to resign, is in my mind taking the piss.
I see what you mean. But if you'd personally instigated a law at the time making exactly that illegal, and lots of people had been prosecuted and fined for infringing your law in similar or more minor ways, don't you think that changes the position? I know we've rehearsed this debate many times, but it's still the view of most of the public.
From the reports that I’ve seen, there were two incidents that could reasonably be described as parties.
One was instigated by Mrs Johnson on the day Cummings resigned, and the other was a staff party when the PM was out of town.
It’s also a slightly weird position that the PM lives and works in the same building, so rules about inviting people into your home are not necessarily relevant, except to the dedicated private flat above the office.
I also think there’s confusion between law and guidance, and a number of the incidents refer to what may be breaches of guidance, with the context of most of the people there having had covid already and their all being at their regular place of work.
If there is evidence of the PM inviting people not working in the government complex, to a purely social gathering when this was prohibited by law, then that is of course more serious.
I am not sure that your perspective from Cloud Base is ideal.
At the time of the Downing St. events I was being stopped by police checking I had not strayed more than five miles from home walking my dogs. The rules were taken that seriously, and yet at Downing Street it appears, they were not.
None of that matters in the grand scheme of things. Johnson apologises, Johnson survives. What does matter is did Johnson "mislead" Parliament? If a Minister did mislead Parliament the Minister goes. There are precedents, no ifs no buts.
What matters in Parliament won't work with the general public that much. Lying to Parliament is only important to some people, Bozo partying while your parents / friend died alone is very different.
That’s what I thought. In his mind, the events that occurred were not “parties”. It could be argued that, most of us looking from the outside probably wouldn’t describe a glass of wine after work or a birthday cake as “parties” either.
Asking someone if he went to any parties, him saying no, then saying that you had a birthday cake for 10 minutes two years ago, you’re a lying liar who needs to resign, is in my mind taking the piss.
I see what you mean. But if you'd personally instigated a law at the time making exactly that illegal, and lots of people had been prosecuted and fined for infringing your law in similar or more minor ways, don't you think that changes the position? I know we've rehearsed this debate many times, but it's still the view of most of the public.
From the reports that I’ve seen, there were two incidents that could reasonably be described as parties.
One was instigated by Mrs Johnson on the day Cummings resigned, and the other was a staff party when the PM was out of town.
It’s also a slightly weird position that the PM lives and works in the same building, so rules about inviting people into your home are not necessarily relevant, except to the dedicated private flat above the office.
I also think there’s confusion between law and guidance, and a number of the incidents refer to what may be breaches of guidance, with the context of most of the people there having had covid already and their all being at their regular place of work.
If there is evidence of the PM inviting people not working in the government complex, to a purely social gathering when this was prohibited by law, then that is of course more serious.
The law doesn't refer to parties so it doesn't matter how they could reasonably be described for legal purposes.
The PMs denials in Parliament were not limited to parties so it doesn't matter whether he can claim that they were not parties for the purpose of backing up his parliamentary statements.
The Downing Street complex in its entirety is not the PM's dwelling.
The law was not based on "inviting" people into a home.
First the law was based on being outside your home without a reasonable excuse (for these purposes, the absence from home would need to be reasonably necessary for work, and once the work that necessitated it was complete there was no longer a reasonable excuse, which means that killing 10 minutes at a social event and then returning work doesn't cut it).
Latterly it was based on gatherings of two or more people (other than those within a household) without reasonable excuse/permitted purpose. If someone turned up to "gather" then it was not relevant who had caused that to happen. I guess the PM would have an excuse if he tried to run away but wasn't fit enough to escape, e.g., an over-enthusiastic technology tutor. But that's about it.
Ah okay, someone genuinely engaging with the discussion. Thank you.
Do we know exactly what the PM said in Parliament, it must be written somewhere? It has been suggested here that the PM was lying when he said there were no other parties in Downing St.
Whether or not people got up from their desks for a few minutes, to eat food which someone had brought to the office, is in my mind the most trivial of incidents, not something which one might reasonably expect the PM to remember more than a year later, and certainly not something on which he might be accused of lying for not remembering.
The fact that Mr Cummings was clearly keeping detailed notes at the time, doesn’t mean the PM himself might be rather more forgetful of past instances. Would he have even written in his diary, that his wife bought a cake to the office on his birthday?
I’m not a particular fan of Johnson and his style of government, I just think that this ‘scandal’ is nothing of the sort. I’ve been happy to critisise him for not following processes and and making silly decisions in other areas. My biggest critism is for the media environment, in no other country do we see this keeping trivialities in the news for weeks.
I've not seen the different bits of Hansard collated - I'll post them if I find them.
I agree it's plausible (though probably untrue for a famously precise grudge-bearer like Johnson) to claim they couldn't remember a few minutes of socialising on a particular day. What is not plausible or credible as an excuse is to deny something happened when a scandal has been raging for weeks, various photos and allegations have surfaced, and we all know full well that Johnson and his advisers will have discussed in detail what happened, what evidence there is, and what they can get away with denying. There's zero chance that after the various Daily Mirror stories he and the advisers simply ignored the matter and didn't look into what had happened.
I don't have the quotes but at one stage he said that he had been assured that all the rules were followed - which clearly implies having asked someone to check, even if it allows you to shift the blame - and stating how appalled he was by the Allegra Stratton video. At that time the substance of that statement was "I'm as shocked as you to have found out about the event the video refers to" and it was only later that it became clear he knew about it and was probably present. Not sure if that's actually a lie, but it's certainly wilfully misleading.
On Partygate, it seems to be going exactly how Boris would wish, both here and elsewhere. Everybody's dancing on the head of a pin and having tedious debates about technicalities: which, if any, rules/guidance/laws were broken? Personally I don't think the Met should ever have got involved, and any judgement should be left to the supreme court of public opinion. We're not going to get to the full truth, either through the Met or through Sue Gray, so both are a waste of time. I'd encourage the PM's opponents to revert to the big picture and forget about legal/illegal:
Did Boris knowingly do things that the rest of us thought were not allowed during the pandemic? Yes. Does his breaking of rules that he himself made make him a gross hypocrite? Yes. Has he lied about this stuff, both to parliament and elsewhere? Yes.
And his defenders can go with Sandpit's 'it's trivial, it doesn't matter, bigger fish to fry' line. We'll see who wins in the fulness of time.
I agree with all of that and as usual Boris has picked a ridiculous and self damaging strategy but got the tactics about right. As to who wins, I would expect two winners, two losers. Boris wins by staying for his full term. Starmer wins by winning the next election against an already damaged opponent facing an economic crisis.
The biggest losers are the Tory MPs, with the exception of a few honourables like Aaron Bell, shown to be weak, indecisive and lacking moral courage. The other losers are the country as a whole, who have to put up with this government for longer (the reason we are not the biggest losers is there is no guarantee the next government will be any better than this shambles).
That’s what I thought. In his mind, the events that occurred were not “parties”. It could be argued that, most of us looking from the outside probably wouldn’t describe a glass of wine after work or a birthday cake as “parties” either.
Asking someone if he went to any parties, him saying no, then saying that you had a birthday cake for 10 minutes two years ago, you’re a lying liar who needs to resign, is in my mind taking the piss.
I see what you mean. But if you'd personally instigated a law at the time making exactly that illegal, and lots of people had been prosecuted and fined for infringing your law in similar or more minor ways, don't you think that changes the position? I know we've rehearsed this debate many times, but it's still the view of most of the public.
From the reports that I’ve seen, there were two incidents that could reasonably be described as parties.
One was instigated by Mrs Johnson on the day Cummings resigned, and the other was a staff party when the PM was out of town.
It’s also a slightly weird position that the PM lives and works in the same building, so rules about inviting people into your home are not necessarily relevant, except to the dedicated private flat above the office.
I also think there’s confusion between law and guidance, and a number of the incidents refer to what may be breaches of guidance, with the context of most of the people there having had covid already and their all being at their regular place of work.
If there is evidence of the PM inviting people not working in the government complex, to a purely social gathering when this was prohibited by law, then that is of course more serious.
The law doesn't refer to parties so it doesn't matter how they could reasonably be described for legal purposes.
The PMs denials in Parliament were not limited to parties so it doesn't matter whether he can claim that they were not parties for the purpose of backing up his parliamentary statements.
The Downing Street complex in its entirety is not the PM's dwelling.
The law was not based on "inviting" people into a home.
First the law was based on being outside your home without a reasonable excuse (for these purposes, the absence from home would need to be reasonably necessary for work, and once the work that necessitated it was complete there was no longer a reasonable excuse, which means that killing 10 minutes at a social event and then returning work doesn't cut it).
Latterly it was based on gatherings of two or more people (other than those within a household) without reasonable excuse/permitted purpose. If someone turned up to "gather" then it was not relevant who had caused that to happen. I guess the PM would have an excuse if he tried to run away but wasn't fit enough to escape, e.g., an over-enthusiastic technology tutor. But that's about it.
Ah okay, someone genuinely engaging with the discussion. Thank you.
Do we know exactly what the PM said in Parliament, it must be written somewhere? It has been suggested here that the PM was lying when he said there were no other parties in Downing St.
Whether or not people got up from their desks for a few minutes, to eat food which someone had brought to the office, is in my mind the most trivial of incidents, not something which one might reasonably expect the PM to remember more than a year later, and certainly not something on which he might be accused of lying for not remembering.
The fact that Mr Cummings was clearly keeping detailed notes at the time, doesn’t mean the PM himself might be rather more forgetful of past instances. Would he have even written in his diary, that his wife bought a cake to the office on his birthday?
I’m not a particular fan of Johnson and his style of government, I just think that this ‘scandal’ is nothing of the sort. I’ve been happy to critisise him for not following processes and and making silly decisions in other areas. My biggest critism is for the media environment, in no other country do we see this keeping trivialities in the news for weeks.
It doesn't look good though. Even though 10 Downing Street is a 'very unusual' workplace.
I think it would be particularly harsh if Carrie was in the wrong by wandering downstairs in her home to see what was happening.
And she just happened to be carrying a birthday cake at the time.
We're in trouble tomorrow. There's no let up in the outputs. In fact if anything they are worse with a 'sting jet' showing up and possible tornadoes.
Damage and destruction across southern Britain will be extensive.
Stay indoors.
I'm hoping for some sensible employer behaviour - if(when!) the red warnings arrive I think it would be prudent to get as many people working from home as possible and certainly close schools etc (those that are open, like most in the SW).
We've had this argument on here though. In terms of leaving the EU, Brexit is over. The new landscape is still forming, and that is where the big questions are. Should we try to be closer to the EU in trade, or carry on with what we are doing at the moment (which seems to be self harm to an extent)? Would a closer trading relationship without the political project mean that Brexit is over? I don't think so.
My problem was with the political project. Now that is resolved I am open to as close a trading relationship as the EU will allow. So far they are still in a huff though. Hopefully that will change over time.
The political project that we negotiated an opt out from?
"opt out". Yeah, right.
Were we members of the Euro? Were we members of Schengen? Were we involved in their army project? Did we have a Veto?
I am sympathetic to the general thrust you are making. The need for us to step off their integration project in our own time rather than theirs was my rationale for voting to leave. But it is simply wrong to suggest that we did not have an opt out or things we had opted out of.
We (the people) didn't have a reliable opt out - had we voted to remain there was no guarantee that a future europhile PM (or even the then-current one) wouldn't have surrendered them in exchange for something minimal (or even for nothing at all).
Meanwhile where is @BartholomewRoberts these days. Very interested to read his higher wages and higher prices and higher wages is a good thing posts. .
You’ll have noted that there was strong growth in real wages in 2021 being confirmed earlier this week? The increase in inflation since the beginning of the year has left wages behind temporarily but hopefully only for a few months.
"hopefully" indeed. But where does the cycle end? Costs and therefore prices rise so wages rise and costs and prices rise and wages rise.
This is good in your opinion? What are you some kind of pre-Thatcher era Union leader?
The main cause of inflation now is that we put the cost of the pandemic on the QE tab 2 years ago. We have a bit of that to work through but my hope is that increasing wages will drive increased investment to boost productivity and the general standard of living.
Blimey. You think that is going to happen. Now. When everyone is battered and businesses are having to pay more to get hitherto plentiful labour and raise prices just to stand still.
You think amidst this there will be a boost to increase productivity and the general standard of living.
At present price growth is outstripping wage growth. Once inflation takes hold then it is very difficult to get it out of the system. Better economists than you or I (and much better ones than @BartholomewRoberts) are praying that it will work its way through once energy price rises have worked their way through, etc. .
The main problem since 2008 has been deflation not inflation. The price of oil fell 5% yesterday and gas even more. No doubt they will be back up again today given the latest shenanigans but there is a big war premium in the price right now.
I think people would love a bit of deflation in petrochemicals right now
That’s what I thought. In his mind, the events that occurred were not “parties”. It could be argued that, most of us looking from the outside probably wouldn’t describe a glass of wine after work or a birthday cake as “parties” either.
Asking someone if he went to any parties, him saying no, then saying that you had a birthday cake for 10 minutes two years ago, you’re a lying liar who needs to resign, is in my mind taking the piss.
I see what you mean. But if you'd personally instigated a law at the time making exactly that illegal, and lots of people had been prosecuted and fined for infringing your law in similar or more minor ways, don't you think that changes the position? I know we've rehearsed this debate many times, but it's still the view of most of the public.
From the reports that I’ve seen, there were two incidents that could reasonably be described as parties.
One was instigated by Mrs Johnson on the day Cummings resigned, and the other was a staff party when the PM was out of town.
It’s also a slightly weird position that the PM lives and works in the same building, so rules about inviting people into your home are not necessarily relevant, except to the dedicated private flat above the office.
I also think there’s confusion between law and guidance, and a number of the incidents refer to what may be breaches of guidance, with the context of most of the people there having had covid already and their all being at their regular place of work.
If there is evidence of the PM inviting people not working in the government complex, to a purely social gathering when this was prohibited by law, then that is of course more serious.
I am not sure that your perspective from Cloud Base is ideal.
At the time of the Downing St. events I was being stopped by police checking I had not strayed more than five miles from home walking my dogs. The rules were taken that seriously, and yet at Downing Street it appears, they were not.
None of that matters in the grand scheme of things. Johnson apologises, Johnson survives. What does matter is did Johnson "mislead" Parliament? If a Minister did mislead Parliament the Minister goes. There are precedents, no ifs no buts.
Why were they checking that? That was never a law.
There was a lot of do gooder action from a few police forces who felt that they were doing the public a favour during the pandemic in spite of it not being law.
e.g Cambridgeshire proudly tweeting that they were patrolling non-residential aisles in Tesco, an officer in South Yorkshire trying to make out it was illegal to sit in a garden and most famously Derbyshire arguing that takeaway coffees were picnics. Probably loads more that went unreported like what happened to @Mexicanpete
We've had this argument on here though. In terms of leaving the EU, Brexit is over. The new landscape is still forming, and that is where the big questions are. Should we try to be closer to the EU in trade, or carry on with what we are doing at the moment (which seems to be self harm to an extent)? Would a closer trading relationship without the political project mean that Brexit is over? I don't think so.
My problem was with the political project. Now that is resolved I am open to as close a trading relationship as the EU will allow. So far they are still in a huff though. Hopefully that will change over time.
Fast forward.
My problem was with the political project. Now that is resolved I am open to as close a trading relationship as the rUK will allow. So far they are still in a huff though. Hopefully that will change over time.
LOL. You better hope so, and before the last NHS consultant leaves too.
Limbering up for Project Fear II I see.
In Tayside there was an argument about the quantity of poison cancer patients should get. The SNP jumped on the bandwagon that didn’t happen to have any wheels but there are now no oncologists in Tayside.
That’s what I thought. In his mind, the events that occurred were not “parties”. It could be argued that, most of us looking from the outside probably wouldn’t describe a glass of wine after work or a birthday cake as “parties” either.
Asking someone if he went to any parties, him saying no, then saying that you had a birthday cake for 10 minutes two years ago, you’re a lying liar who needs to resign, is in my mind taking the piss.
I see what you mean. But if you'd personally instigated a law at the time making exactly that illegal, and lots of people had been prosecuted and fined for infringing your law in similar or more minor ways, don't you think that changes the position? I know we've rehearsed this debate many times, but it's still the view of most of the public.
From the reports that I’ve seen, there were two incidents that could reasonably be described as parties.
One was instigated by Mrs Johnson on the day Cummings resigned, and the other was a staff party when the PM was out of town.
It’s also a slightly weird position that the PM lives and works in the same building, so rules about inviting people into your home are not necessarily relevant, except to the dedicated private flat above the office.
I also think there’s confusion between law and guidance, and a number of the incidents refer to what may be breaches of guidance, with the context of most of the people there having had covid already and their all being at their regular place of work.
If there is evidence of the PM inviting people not working in the government complex, to a purely social gathering when this was prohibited by law, then that is of course more serious.
The law doesn't refer to parties so it doesn't matter how they could reasonably be described for legal purposes.
The PMs denials in Parliament were not limited to parties so it doesn't matter whether he can claim that they were not parties for the purpose of backing up his parliamentary statements.
The Downing Street complex in its entirety is not the PM's dwelling.
The law was not based on "inviting" people into a home.
First the law was based on being outside your home without a reasonable excuse (for these purposes, the absence from home would need to be reasonably necessary for work, and once the work that necessitated it was complete there was no longer a reasonable excuse, which means that killing 10 minutes at a social event and then returning work doesn't cut it).
Latterly it was based on gatherings of two or more people (other than those within a household) without reasonable excuse/permitted purpose. If someone turned up to "gather" then it was not relevant who had caused that to happen. I guess the PM would have an excuse if he tried to run away but wasn't fit enough to escape, e.g., an over-enthusiastic technology tutor. But that's about it.
Ah okay, someone genuinely engaging with the discussion. Thank you.
Do we know exactly what the PM said in Parliament, it must be written somewhere? It has been suggested here that the PM was lying when he said there were no other parties in Downing St.
Whether or not people got up from their desks for a few minutes, to eat food which someone had brought to the office, is in my mind the most trivial of incidents, not something which one might reasonably expect the PM to remember more than a year later, and certainly not something on which he might be accused of lying for not remembering.
The fact that Mr Cummings was clearly keeping detailed notes at the time, doesn’t mean the PM himself might be rather more forgetful of past instances. Would he have even written in his diary, that his wife bought a cake to the office on his birthday?
I’m not a particular fan of Johnson and his style of government, I just think that this ‘scandal’ is nothing of the sort. I’ve been happy to critisise him for not following processes and and making silly decisions in other areas. My biggest critism is for the media environment, in no other country do we see this keeping trivialities in the news for weeks.
It doesn't look good though. Even though 10 Downing Street is a 'very unusual' workplace.
I think it would be particularly harsh if Carrie was in the wrong by wandering downstairs in her home to see what was happening.
It'll blow your mind when you find out about some of the documents in her "home" she isn't security cleared to read and the meetings in her "home" she isn't allowed to attend.
Yes it is a particularly difficult scenario. Home and office I wonder if plod has a colour-coded map of the building.
That’s what I thought. In his mind, the events that occurred were not “parties”. It could be argued that, most of us looking from the outside probably wouldn’t describe a glass of wine after work or a birthday cake as “parties” either.
Asking someone if he went to any parties, him saying no, then saying that you had a birthday cake for 10 minutes two years ago, you’re a lying liar who needs to resign, is in my mind taking the piss.
I see what you mean. But if you'd personally instigated a law at the time making exactly that illegal, and lots of people had been prosecuted and fined for infringing your law in similar or more minor ways, don't you think that changes the position? I know we've rehearsed this debate many times, but it's still the view of most of the public.
From the reports that I’ve seen, there were two incidents that could reasonably be described as parties.
One was instigated by Mrs Johnson on the day Cummings resigned, and the other was a staff party when the PM was out of town.
It’s also a slightly weird position that the PM lives and works in the same building, so rules about inviting people into your home are not necessarily relevant, except to the dedicated private flat above the office.
I also think there’s confusion between law and guidance, and a number of the incidents refer to what may be breaches of guidance, with the context of most of the people there having had covid already and their all being at their regular place of work.
If there is evidence of the PM inviting people not working in the government complex, to a purely social gathering when this was prohibited by law, then that is of course more serious.
The law doesn't refer to parties so it doesn't matter how they could reasonably be described for legal purposes.
The PMs denials in Parliament were not limited to parties so it doesn't matter whether he can claim that they were not parties for the purpose of backing up his parliamentary statements.
The Downing Street complex in its entirety is not the PM's dwelling.
The law was not based on "inviting" people into a home.
First the law was based on being outside your home without a reasonable excuse (for these purposes, the absence from home would need to be reasonably necessary for work, and once the work that necessitated it was complete there was no longer a reasonable excuse, which means that killing 10 minutes at a social event and then returning work doesn't cut it).
Latterly it was based on gatherings of two or more people (other than those within a household) without reasonable excuse/permitted purpose. If someone turned up to "gather" then it was not relevant who had caused that to happen. I guess the PM would have an excuse if he tried to run away but wasn't fit enough to escape, e.g., an over-enthusiastic technology tutor. But that's about it.
Actually, I'm not too sure about the bit in bold. You can claim that hanging around after work was completed to have a drink was prohibited, but surely (since virtually everyone who was going to work in the period had to travel for more than five minutes to do so) hanging around for 10 minutes between meetings can't automatically have been prohibited.
There was a real lack of clarity about what kind of waiting/travelling was permitted. For example there was a point where you could be at a medical appointment but it wasn't clear that driving your child to that appointment was legal. I remember cases where parents had dropped children off places that they were permitted to be for an hour, decided it wasn't worth driving 20 mins home and 20 mins back again and tried to wait and read a book in their car in a car park, and got moved on by the police (not aware of anyone being fined). That's perhaps specific to Cornwall where the police were pretty over-enthusiastic in their attitude that a car park where you could see the sea was a Really Fun Place, so they decided it was clearly against the rules to wait there. It was pretty stressful and there was actually a lot of fear of getting into trouble for doing normal, probably legal things.
There were also cases of healthcare workers being fined for parking by the sea to decompress for a few minutes on the way home after difficult shifts during the covid peaks.
Obviously there would have been a common-sense test around travel time versus waiting time, as per your example, but I still don't think "as I'm waiting around I'll sit in the garden and have a quick beer with my colleagues" would have been accepted if observed by "normal" police.
And that's the resigning issue. Putting in place this culture of fear, of criminalisation of the most banal of acts when, by their actions, they knew it wasn't as bad as all that. That is a far bigger issue than whether the arrival of cake made it a party.
That’s what I thought. In his mind, the events that occurred were not “parties”. It could be argued that, most of us looking from the outside probably wouldn’t describe a glass of wine after work or a birthday cake as “parties” either.
Asking someone if he went to any parties, him saying no, then saying that you had a birthday cake for 10 minutes two years ago, you’re a lying liar who needs to resign, is in my mind taking the piss.
I see what you mean. But if you'd personally instigated a law at the time making exactly that illegal, and lots of people had been prosecuted and fined for infringing your law in similar or more minor ways, don't you think that changes the position? I know we've rehearsed this debate many times, but it's still the view of most of the public.
From the reports that I’ve seen, there were two incidents that could reasonably be described as parties.
One was instigated by Mrs Johnson on the day Cummings resigned, and the other was a staff party when the PM was out of town.
It’s also a slightly weird position that the PM lives and works in the same building, so rules about inviting people into your home are not necessarily relevant, except to the dedicated private flat above the office.
I also think there’s confusion between law and guidance, and a number of the incidents refer to what may be breaches of guidance, with the context of most of the people there having had covid already and their all being at their regular place of work.
If there is evidence of the PM inviting people not working in the government complex, to a purely social gathering when this was prohibited by law, then that is of course more serious.
I am not sure that your perspective from Cloud Base is ideal.
At the time of the Downing St. events I was being stopped by police checking I had not strayed more than five miles from home walking my dogs. The rules were taken that seriously, and yet at Downing Street it appears, they were not.
None of that matters in the grand scheme of things. Johnson apologises, Johnson survives. What does matter is did Johnson "mislead" Parliament? If a Minister did mislead Parliament the Minister goes. There are precedents, no ifs no buts.
Why were they checking that? That was never a law.
There was a lot of do gooder action from a few police forces who felt that they were doing the public a favour during the pandemic in spite of it not being law.
e.g Cambridgeshire proudly tweeting that they were patrolling non-residential aisles in Tesco, an officer in South Yorkshire trying to make out it was illegal to sit in a garden and most famously Derbyshire making out takeaway coffees were picnics. Probably loads more that went unreported like what happened to @Mexicanpete
Don't forget the police interpretation that shops can sell chocolate, but not chocolate shaped as eggs. I would love to see them try and reconcile that to the actual law!
Russia state TV host posted that a Ukrainian shell hit a kindergarten in separatist Luhansk. "Novaya Kondrashovka" is actually in Ukraine-controlled territory. The post has been replaced by one arguing that Ukrainians shelled their own kindergarten. (@barabanch)
New - Labour to fight only minimal campaign in top 30 Lib Dem target seats as part of "ruthless" targeting of scarce resources by @Keir_Starmer on Lab targets..Blue Wall danger for Tories as informal Lib-Labbery grows
Suggests Labour will not make more than a token campaign in any of the top 30 LD target seats apart from Sheffield Hallam and Cambridge, where Labour hold the seats not the Tories.
Also states Labour Shadow Cabinet Ministers have been getting to know Davey's team in case there is a hung parliament and they need a confidence and supply deal. Suggesting if there is a hung parliament the LDs would definitely back Labour this time unlike 2010 when they backed the Tories
After the way the Tories shafted their LD partners in 2014-5 I think there's more chance of them making a pact with Farage than the Tories.
How did the Conservatives shaft the LD while in government ?
I know this is a common meme in centre-left thoughts but the reality is the LibDems shafted themselves.
Firstly by totally breaking their word on issues such as student tuition fees and Middle Eastern warmongering.
Secondly by the behaviour of such people as Chris Huhne and David Laws.
Clearly the LDs believed that they had an agreement that the Conservatives would not (at least officially) campaign for No on the voting reform referendum. A belief which Cameron disabused them of in short order.
Otherwise, yes: the LDs mostly stabbed themselves in the front by voting for policies which they had explicitly pledged not to do in their campaign literature. No amount of real-politic about how the student loan scheme was really a graduate tax in disguise & that was down to LD influence on the government could change the fact that the LDs had voted in a thing that called itself a student loan scheme.
Even worse, Nick Clegg then said in more-or-less as many words that voters were fools for ever believing any LibDem policies because at best they were, and could only ever be, mere bargaining chips in coalition negotiations.
Oh come on. Anyone who believes any parties manifesto will be even mostly implemented as written down is already hopelessly naive. Anyone who votes for a party who have never won a general election or even 100 seats before and then expects their policies to be delivered really is a fool. I don't understand how anyone can have come to such a conclusion.
That does not mean they did not handle tuition fees horribly wrong, but anyone voting for the LDS was voting for coalition and compromises.
Well, if you're right, everyone knew this anyway, and if I'm right the LibDem vote will have collapsed, which it did.
So much for history. Now for current events.
Boris has now broken at least two manifesto pledges. Will this matter at the next election? That might depend on Keir Starmer.
Historic day for the Bailiwick of Guernsey as emergency regulations fall away after nearly 2 years. Thank you to everyone - including SOG officers, healthcare partners, education staff, law enforcement, border team, CVC team, 3rd sector and whole community for getting us here.
That’s what I thought. In his mind, the events that occurred were not “parties”. It could be argued that, most of us looking from the outside probably wouldn’t describe a glass of wine after work or a birthday cake as “parties” either.
Asking someone if he went to any parties, him saying no, then saying that you had a birthday cake for 10 minutes two years ago, you’re a lying liar who needs to resign, is in my mind taking the piss.
I see what you mean. But if you'd personally instigated a law at the time making exactly that illegal, and lots of people had been prosecuted and fined for infringing your law in similar or more minor ways, don't you think that changes the position? I know we've rehearsed this debate many times, but it's still the view of most of the public.
From the reports that I’ve seen, there were two incidents that could reasonably be described as parties.
One was instigated by Mrs Johnson on the day Cummings resigned, and the other was a staff party when the PM was out of town.
It’s also a slightly weird position that the PM lives and works in the same building, so rules about inviting people into your home are not necessarily relevant, except to the dedicated private flat above the office.
I also think there’s confusion between law and guidance, and a number of the incidents refer to what may be breaches of guidance, with the context of most of the people there having had covid already and their all being at their regular place of work.
If there is evidence of the PM inviting people not working in the government complex, to a purely social gathering when this was prohibited by law, then that is of course more serious.
I am not sure that your perspective from Cloud Base is ideal.
At the time of the Downing St. events I was being stopped by police checking I had not strayed more than five miles from home walking my dogs. The rules were taken that seriously, and yet at Downing Street it appears, they were not.
None of that matters in the grand scheme of things. Johnson apologises, Johnson survives. What does matter is did Johnson "mislead" Parliament? If a Minister did mislead Parliament the Minister goes. There are precedents, no ifs no buts.
What matters in Parliament won't work with the general public that much. Lying to Parliament is only important to some people, Bozo partying while your parents / friend died alone is very different.
That’s what I’m getting at, sorry.
Words like “partying” in no way describe the actual incidents involving the PM, and the use of such emotive language is designed to mislead and upset people.
There’s no evidence of the PM “partying”, unless he is a fan of some really crappy parties. No-one was hiring caterers and DJs here.
That’s what I thought. In his mind, the events that occurred were not “parties”. It could be argued that, most of us looking from the outside probably wouldn’t describe a glass of wine after work or a birthday cake as “parties” either.
Asking someone if he went to any parties, him saying no, then saying that you had a birthday cake for 10 minutes two years ago, you’re a lying liar who needs to resign, is in my mind taking the piss.
I see what you mean. But if you'd personally instigated a law at the time making exactly that illegal, and lots of people had been prosecuted and fined for infringing your law in similar or more minor ways, don't you think that changes the position? I know we've rehearsed this debate many times, but it's still the view of most of the public.
From the reports that I’ve seen, there were two incidents that could reasonably be described as parties.
One was instigated by Mrs Johnson on the day Cummings resigned, and the other was a staff party when the PM was out of town.
It’s also a slightly weird position that the PM lives and works in the same building, so rules about inviting people into your home are not necessarily relevant, except to the dedicated private flat above the office.
I also think there’s confusion between law and guidance, and a number of the incidents refer to what may be breaches of guidance, with the context of most of the people there having had covid already and their all being at their regular place of work.
If there is evidence of the PM inviting people not working in the government complex, to a purely social gathering when this was prohibited by law, then that is of course more serious.
The law doesn't refer to parties so it doesn't matter how they could reasonably be described for legal purposes.
The PMs denials in Parliament were not limited to parties so it doesn't matter whether he can claim that they were not parties for the purpose of backing up his parliamentary statements.
The Downing Street complex in its entirety is not the PM's dwelling.
The law was not based on "inviting" people into a home.
First the law was based on being outside your home without a reasonable excuse (for these purposes, the absence from home would need to be reasonably necessary for work, and once the work that necessitated it was complete there was no longer a reasonable excuse, which means that killing 10 minutes at a social event and then returning work doesn't cut it).
Latterly it was based on gatherings of two or more people (other than those within a household) without reasonable excuse/permitted purpose. If someone turned up to "gather" then it was not relevant who had caused that to happen. I guess the PM would have an excuse if he tried to run away but wasn't fit enough to escape, e.g., an over-enthusiastic technology tutor. But that's about it.
Ah okay, someone genuinely engaging with the discussion. Thank you.
Do we know exactly what the PM said in Parliament, it must be written somewhere? It has been suggested here that the PM was lying when he said there were no other parties in Downing St.
Whether or not people got up from their desks for a few minutes, to eat food which someone had brought to the office, is in my mind the most trivial of incidents, not something which one might reasonably expect the PM to remember more than a year later, and certainly not something on which he might be accused of lying for not remembering.
The fact that Mr Cummings was clearly keeping detailed notes at the time, doesn’t mean the PM himself might be rather more forgetful of past instances. Would he have even written in his diary, that his wife bought a cake to the office on his birthday?
I’m not a particular fan of Johnson and his style of government, I just think that this ‘scandal’ is nothing of the sort. I’ve been happy to critisise him for not following processes and and making silly decisions in other areas. My biggest critism is for the media environment, in no other country do we see this keeping trivialities in the news for weeks.
It doesn't look good though. Even though 10 Downing Street is a 'very unusual' workplace.
I think it would be particularly harsh if Carrie was in the wrong by wandering downstairs in her home to see what was happening.
And she just happened to be carrying a birthday cake at the time.
In her home.
An illegal social gathering in her home. Fair enough.
We've had this argument on here though. In terms of leaving the EU, Brexit is over. The new landscape is still forming, and that is where the big questions are. Should we try to be closer to the EU in trade, or carry on with what we are doing at the moment (which seems to be self harm to an extent)? Would a closer trading relationship without the political project mean that Brexit is over? I don't think so.
My problem was with the political project. Now that is resolved I am open to as close a trading relationship as the EU will allow. So far they are still in a huff though. Hopefully that will change over time.
The political project that we negotiated an opt out from?
"opt out". Yeah, right.
Were we members of the Euro? Were we members of Schengen? Were we involved in their army project? Did we have a Veto?
I am sympathetic to the general thrust you are making. The need for us to step off their integration project in our own time rather than theirs was my rationale for voting to leave. But it is simply wrong to suggest that we did not have an opt out or things we had opted out of.
We (the people) didn't have a reliable opt out - had we voted to remain there was no guarantee that a future europhile PM (or even the then-current one) wouldn't have surrendered them in exchange for something minimal (or even for nothing at all).
"a reliable opt-out". So we *did* have an opt out after all.
The choice of a future europhile PM to surrender our opt-outs would of course be the democratic will of the people. Voted into power.
So what you really mean is that your narrow view must prevail and the future democratic votes of people who disagree with you must be stopped at all costs.
That’s what I thought. In his mind, the events that occurred were not “parties”. It could be argued that, most of us looking from the outside probably wouldn’t describe a glass of wine after work or a birthday cake as “parties” either.
Asking someone if he went to any parties, him saying no, then saying that you had a birthday cake for 10 minutes two years ago, you’re a lying liar who needs to resign, is in my mind taking the piss.
I see what you mean. But if you'd personally instigated a law at the time making exactly that illegal, and lots of people had been prosecuted and fined for infringing your law in similar or more minor ways, don't you think that changes the position? I know we've rehearsed this debate many times, but it's still the view of most of the public.
From the reports that I’ve seen, there were two incidents that could reasonably be described as parties.
One was instigated by Mrs Johnson on the day Cummings resigned, and the other was a staff party when the PM was out of town.
It’s also a slightly weird position that the PM lives and works in the same building, so rules about inviting people into your home are not necessarily relevant, except to the dedicated private flat above the office.
I also think there’s confusion between law and guidance, and a number of the incidents refer to what may be breaches of guidance, with the context of most of the people there having had covid already and their all being at their regular place of work.
If there is evidence of the PM inviting people not working in the government complex, to a purely social gathering when this was prohibited by law, then that is of course more serious.
I am not sure that your perspective from Cloud Base is ideal.
At the time of the Downing St. events I was being stopped by police checking I had not strayed more than five miles from home walking my dogs. The rules were taken that seriously, and yet at Downing Street it appears, they were not.
The rules were different in Vale of Glamorgan, Wales.
They were set by Mark 'Don't go down the Supermarket Aisle' Drakeford.
I am not sure that level of COVID-paranoia ever happened in England.
New - Labour to fight only minimal campaign in top 30 Lib Dem target seats as part of "ruthless" targeting of scarce resources by @Keir_Starmer on Lab targets..Blue Wall danger for Tories as informal Lib-Labbery grows
Suggests Labour will not make more than a token campaign in any of the top 30 LD target seats apart from Sheffield Hallam and Cambridge, where Labour hold the seats not the Tories.
Also states Labour Shadow Cabinet Ministers have been getting to know Davey's team in case there is a hung parliament and they need a confidence and supply deal. Suggesting if there is a hung parliament the LDs would definitely back Labour this time unlike 2010 when they backed the Tories
After the way the Tories shafted their LD partners in 2014-5 I think there's more chance of them making a pact with Farage than the Tories.
How did the Conservatives shaft the LD while in government ?
I know this is a common meme in centre-left thoughts but the reality is the LibDems shafted themselves.
Firstly by totally breaking their word on issues such as student tuition fees and Middle Eastern warmongering.
Secondly by the behaviour of such people as Chris Huhne and David Laws.
Clearly the LDs believed that they had an agreement that the Conservatives would not (at least officially) campaign for No on the voting reform referendum. A belief which Cameron disabused them of in short order.
Otherwise, yes: the LDs mostly stabbed themselves in the front by voting for policies which they had explicitly pledged not to do in their campaign literature. No amount of real-politic about how the student loan scheme was really a graduate tax in disguise & that was down to LD influence on the government could change the fact that the LDs had voted in a thing that called itself a student loan scheme.
Even worse, Nick Clegg then said in more-or-less as many words that voters were fools for ever believing any LibDem policies because at best they were, and could only ever be, mere bargaining chips in coalition negotiations.
Oh come on. Anyone who believes any parties manifesto will be even mostly implemented as written down is already hopelessly naive. Anyone who votes for a party who have never won a general election or even 100 seats before and then expects their policies to be delivered really is a fool. I don't understand how anyone can have come to such a conclusion.
That does not mean they did not handle tuition fees horribly wrong, but anyone voting for the LDS was voting for coalition and compromises.
Sure people don't believe the promises of politicians but not all promises are the same.
The issue of student tuition fees was fundamental to the LibDems in 2010 and they wilfully and needlessly broke it immediately after entering government.
It was the equivalent of the Conservatives getting rid of the nuclear deterrent or of Labour privatising the NHS.
If the LibDems has said in 2010 "we are willing to make concessions in other areas but the one thing we must insist on is no increase in student tuition fees" do you think Cameron would have refused them ?
Starmer at 8 or 9 does appear the value in the next PM market at the moment.
Will the wider country really want to keep talking about 2020 birthday cakes for much longer, even if the Lobby think it’s the most important thing going on in the world right now?
Sunak’s chance of being next PM I think disappears after the May election. His reputation is going to quickly go from being the nice guy handing out piles of money to get us through the pandemic, to being the nasty guy raising taxes while bills are rising.
That said, he’s still young (41) and will have other opportunities in the next couple of decades of leadership contests.
Will the wider country remember that they suffered whilst the crook partied? Yes. Will they talk about nothing else? No. Will they remember that the PM is an amoral liar who thinks the law only applies to the little people? Yes. Will their vote change accordingly? Likely.
I know you are a long way away and don't seem to share the majority opinion that a lying crook in Downing Street is a bad thing. So I understand your question even if I sadly shake my head when I read it.
I'm not sure Sandpit has ever acknowledged the concern over a brazenly dishonest PM ? It's always a fuss over cakes for him.
Yes, it’s the perfect example of everything that’s wrong with politics and media in the UK, obsessing about trivialities from years ago while ignoring the important stories going on in the country and wider world.
We saw it almost daily during the pandemic press conferences, with the most stupid, scientifically illiterate questions and media obsessions, it’s really not healthy for the country.
I agree with pretty much all of that @Sandpit but the fact that the PM lied to Parliament is not trivial.
Agreed. What exactly was he supposed to have said that was a direct lie?
He told the Commons that to the best of his knowledge there had been no parties and that he would be angry if there had been.
That’s what I thought. In his mind, the events that occurred were not “parties”. It could be argued that, most of us looking from the outside probably wouldn’t describe a glass of wine after work or a birthday cake as “parties” either.
Asking someone if he went to any parties, him saying no, then saying that you had a birthday cake for 10 minutes two years ago, you’re a lying liar who needs to resign, is in my mind taking the piss.
We'd know it was against the rules though, especially if we wrote them. What they were called is besides the point, when he was so clear on what was pernissable. It no more works to claim he wouldn't call it a party than people saying they attended a rave not a party.
The triviality of his breaches is also part of the point, not an argument in his favour - wilfully or unwilfully careless.
His defence relies on him claiming he must be incredibly stupid or inattentive or both. Neither of which makes him the person to sought out a mess going on under his nose (and he acknowledges a need to sort it out so it cannot be called nothing) which he apparently knew nothing about or couldn't recognise even if it put a drink in his hand.
I can well believe he was inattentive at the time, with the context that he was recovering from Covid himself, in some pretty serious meetings for most of the day and doing daily press conferences.
I just really don’t think that sort of thing is important now, and certainly isn’t something worth a PM’s resignation.
It also looks silly to many people, who see this obsession with triviality as being more important than the more serious stories. Okay, so taxes are about to go up to pay for the pandemic, so how are the fraud investigations going into the fake companies set up to receive grants and loans, plus the undelivered PPE, that cost the country billions?
The Post Office enquiry and Ukraine should be running the news at the moment, not birthday cake and Prince Andrew. The serious press have all turned into lowest-common-denominator clickbait tabloids, and no-one is actually holding the government to account for the serious things.
The problem with the 'there's more important stuff going on' argument is that it can be true, but should be a reason to prioritise focus and action on other matters but, crucially, still need to address the other matter. Not to just ignore the less urgent thing until the heat is off.
Which do you think they are trying?
Professional standards are important even though they are not life threateningly urgent. Since they will ignore that if they can, probably so, theres no option but to seek to keep focus on it, otherwise it will disappear into the aether.
We're in trouble tomorrow. There's no let up in the outputs. In fact if anything they are worse with a 'sting jet' showing up and possible tornadoes.
Damage and destruction across southern Britain will be extensive.
Stay indoors.
Please stop telling me to stay indoors when my wife has to go to work or she won't earn any money,
Is earning one day's wages more important than life itself?
Anyone going out tomorrow is taking a life and death risk.
It's that serious.
At the risk of sounding like one of our Nat friends what is it about the southern English and a draught?
Oh don't be silly. ScotRail suspended train services for an Amber warning yesterday, and they've just issued a Red warning for the Bristol Channel coasts.
I would urge everyone to abide by a Red Weather Warning.
We're in trouble tomorrow. There's no let up in the outputs. In fact if anything they are worse with a 'sting jet' showing up and possible tornadoes.
Damage and destruction across southern Britain will be extensive.
Stay indoors.
Please stop telling me to stay indoors when my wife has to go to work or she won't earn any money,
Is earning one day's wages more important than life itself?
Anyone going out tomorrow is taking a life and death risk.
It's that serious.
At the risk of sounding like one of our Nat friends what is it about the southern English and a draught?
Anyone going outdoors tomorrow is indeed taking a life or death risk. But how many will die in the storms tomorrow? My guess is rather fewer than 10. And how many tomorrow will go outside? 20 million? I may be proved wrong - but I'd say chances of death by simply venturing outside are rather less than one in 2 million. That's not to say it isn't looking jolly blowy tomorrow, and it might be prudent to postpone certain events (skydiving/tree surgery/aimlessly driving round and round for no reason whatsoever) to another day. But most of us will have to go outside at some point, even if only to retrieve the remains of the trampoline from the neighbours' garden.
Meanwhile, a headline on the BBC's business news site indicates just how serious inflation has become:
"KitKat and Durex makers...warn of price rises."
Urgent financial restructuring now taking place in the PtP household.
KitKat pricing strategy baffles me. Go to a petrol station linked to a mini supermarket and you will often find a single KitKat near the till is 85p whereas on the shelf it is 4 for £1.
Meanwhile where is @BartholomewRoberts these days. Very interested to read his higher wages and higher prices and higher wages is a good thing posts. .
You’ll have noted that there was strong growth in real wages in 2021 being confirmed earlier this week? The increase in inflation since the beginning of the year has left wages behind temporarily but hopefully only for a few months.
"hopefully" indeed. But where does the cycle end? Costs and therefore prices rise so wages rise and costs and prices rise and wages rise.
This is good in your opinion? What are you some kind of pre-Thatcher era Union leader?
The main cause of inflation now is that we put the cost of the pandemic on the QE tab 2 years ago. We have a bit of that to work through but my hope is that increasing wages will drive increased investment to boost productivity and the general standard of living.
Blimey. You think that is going to happen. Now. When everyone is battered and businesses are having to pay more to get hitherto plentiful labour and raise prices just to stand still.
You think amidst this there will be a boost to increase productivity and the general standard of living.
At present price growth is outstripping wage growth. Once inflation takes hold then it is very difficult to get it out of the system. Better economists than you or I (and much better ones than @BartholomewRoberts) are praying that it will work its way through once energy price rises have worked their way through, etc. .
The main problem since 2008 has been deflation not inflation. The price of oil fell 5% yesterday and gas even more. No doubt they will be back up again today given the latest shenanigans but there is a big war premium in the price right now.
Yes of course, those rises are volatile and likely temporary. But if wages continue to go up then that will mean higher prices which leads to higher wages and that is not temporary; inflation becomes permanent or embedded and then we have a problem. And policy responses are equally problematic.
That’s what I thought. In his mind, the events that occurred were not “parties”. It could be argued that, most of us looking from the outside probably wouldn’t describe a glass of wine after work or a birthday cake as “parties” either.
Asking someone if he went to any parties, him saying no, then saying that you had a birthday cake for 10 minutes two years ago, you’re a lying liar who needs to resign, is in my mind taking the piss.
I see what you mean. But if you'd personally instigated a law at the time making exactly that illegal, and lots of people had been prosecuted and fined for infringing your law in similar or more minor ways, don't you think that changes the position? I know we've rehearsed this debate many times, but it's still the view of most of the public.
From the reports that I’ve seen, there were two incidents that could reasonably be described as parties.
One was instigated by Mrs Johnson on the day Cummings resigned, and the other was a staff party when the PM was out of town.
It’s also a slightly weird position that the PM lives and works in the same building, so rules about inviting people into your home are not necessarily relevant, except to the dedicated private flat above the office.
I also think there’s confusion between law and guidance, and a number of the incidents refer to what may be breaches of guidance, with the context of most of the people there having had covid already and their all being at their regular place of work.
If there is evidence of the PM inviting people not working in the government complex, to a purely social gathering when this was prohibited by law, then that is of course more serious.
The law doesn't refer to parties so it doesn't matter how they could reasonably be described for legal purposes.
The PMs denials in Parliament were not limited to parties so it doesn't matter whether he can claim that they were not parties for the purpose of backing up his parliamentary statements.
The Downing Street complex in its entirety is not the PM's dwelling.
The law was not based on "inviting" people into a home.
First the law was based on being outside your home without a reasonable excuse (for these purposes, the absence from home would need to be reasonably necessary for work, and once the work that necessitated it was complete there was no longer a reasonable excuse, which means that killing 10 minutes at a social event and then returning work doesn't cut it).
Latterly it was based on gatherings of two or more people (other than those within a household) without reasonable excuse/permitted purpose. If someone turned up to "gather" then it was not relevant who had caused that to happen. I guess the PM would have an excuse if he tried to run away but wasn't fit enough to escape, e.g., an over-enthusiastic technology tutor. But that's about it.
Ah okay, someone genuinely engaging with the discussion. Thank you.
Do we know exactly what the PM said in Parliament, it must be written somewhere? It has been suggested here that the PM was lying when he said there were no other parties in Downing St.
Whether or not people got up from their desks for a few minutes, to eat food which someone had brought to the office, is in my mind the most trivial of incidents, not something which one might reasonably expect the PM to remember more than a year later, and certainly not something on which he might be accused of lying for not remembering.
The fact that Mr Cummings was clearly keeping detailed notes at the time, doesn’t mean the PM himself might be rather more forgetful of past instances. Would he have even written in his diary, that his wife bought a cake to the office on his birthday?
I’m not a particular fan of Johnson and his style of government, I just think that this ‘scandal’ is nothing of the sort. I’ve been happy to critisise him for not following processes and and making silly decisions in other areas. My biggest critism is for the media environment, in no other country do we see this keeping trivialities in the news for weeks.
It doesn't look good though. Even though 10 Downing Street is a 'very unusual' workplace.
I think it would be particularly harsh if Carrie was in the wrong by wandering downstairs in her home to see what was happening.
And she just happened to be carrying a birthday cake at the time.
In her home.
An illegal social gathering in her home. Fair enough.
We've had this argument on here though. In terms of leaving the EU, Brexit is over. The new landscape is still forming, and that is where the big questions are. Should we try to be closer to the EU in trade, or carry on with what we are doing at the moment (which seems to be self harm to an extent)? Would a closer trading relationship without the political project mean that Brexit is over? I don't think so.
My problem was with the political project. Now that is resolved I am open to as close a trading relationship as the EU will allow. So far they are still in a huff though. Hopefully that will change over time.
The political project that we negotiated an opt out from?
"opt out". Yeah, right.
Were we members of the Euro? Were we members of Schengen? Were we involved in their army project? Did we have a Veto?
I am sympathetic to the general thrust you are making. The need for us to step off their integration project in our own time rather than theirs was my rationale for voting to leave. But it is simply wrong to suggest that we did not have an opt out or things we had opted out of.
We (the people) didn't have a reliable opt out - had we voted to remain there was no guarantee that a future europhile PM (or even the then-current one) wouldn't have surrendered them in exchange for something minimal (or even for nothing at all).
"a reliable opt-out". So we *did* have an opt out after all.
The choice of a future europhile PM to surrender our opt-outs would of course be the democratic will of the people. Voted into power.
So what you really mean is that your narrow view must prevail and the future democratic votes of people who disagree with you must be stopped at all costs.
Wither democracy...
When Blair surrendered half the rebate in exchange for nothing, was that "the democratic will of the people"?
New - Labour to fight only minimal campaign in top 30 Lib Dem target seats as part of "ruthless" targeting of scarce resources by @Keir_Starmer on Lab targets..Blue Wall danger for Tories as informal Lib-Labbery grows
Suggests Labour will not make more than a token campaign in any of the top 30 LD target seats apart from Sheffield Hallam and Cambridge, where Labour hold the seats not the Tories.
Also states Labour Shadow Cabinet Ministers have been getting to know Davey's team in case there is a hung parliament and they need a confidence and supply deal. Suggesting if there is a hung parliament the LDs would definitely back Labour this time unlike 2010 when they backed the Tories
After the way the Tories shafted their LD partners in 2014-5 I think there's more chance of them making a pact with Farage than the Tories.
How did the Conservatives shaft the LD while in government ?
I know this is a common meme in centre-left thoughts but the reality is the LibDems shafted themselves.
Firstly by totally breaking their word on issues such as student tuition fees and Middle Eastern warmongering.
Secondly by the behaviour of such people as Chris Huhne and David Laws.
Clearly the LDs believed that they had an agreement that the Conservatives would not (at least officially) campaign for No on the voting reform referendum. A belief which Cameron disabused them of in short order.
Otherwise, yes: the LDs mostly stabbed themselves in the front by voting for policies which they had explicitly pledged not to do in their campaign literature. No amount of real-politic about how the student loan scheme was really a graduate tax in disguise & that was down to LD influence on the government could change the fact that the LDs had voted in a thing that called itself a student loan scheme.
Even worse, Nick Clegg then said in more-or-less as many words that voters were fools for ever believing any LibDem policies because at best they were, and could only ever be, mere bargaining chips in coalition negotiations.
Oh come on. Anyone who believes any parties manifesto will be even mostly implemented as written down is already hopelessly naive. Anyone who votes for a party who have never won a general election or even 100 seats before and then expects their policies to be delivered really is a fool. I don't understand how anyone can have come to such a conclusion.
That does not mean they did not handle tuition fees horribly wrong, but anyone voting for the LDS was voting for coalition and compromises.
Sure people don't believe the promises of politicians but not all promises are the same.
The issue of student tuition fees was fundamental to the LibDems in 2010 and they wilfully and needlessly broke it immediately after entering government.
It was the equivalent of the Conservatives getting rid of the nuclear deterrent or of Labour privatising the NHS.
If the LibDems has said in 2010 "we are willing to make concessions in other areas but the one thing we must insist on is no increase in student tuition fees" do you think Cameron would have refused them ?
I concur that they handled tuition fees very badly and it has cost them a decades worth of support. I disagree that the process of negotiating away policies in a coalition is taking voters for fools, unless those voters really are fools.
That’s what I thought. In his mind, the events that occurred were not “parties”. It could be argued that, most of us looking from the outside probably wouldn’t describe a glass of wine after work or a birthday cake as “parties” either.
Asking someone if he went to any parties, him saying no, then saying that you had a birthday cake for 10 minutes two years ago, you’re a lying liar who needs to resign, is in my mind taking the piss.
I see what you mean. But if you'd personally instigated a law at the time making exactly that illegal, and lots of people had been prosecuted and fined for infringing your law in similar or more minor ways, don't you think that changes the position? I know we've rehearsed this debate many times, but it's still the view of most of the public.
From the reports that I’ve seen, there were two incidents that could reasonably be described as parties.
One was instigated by Mrs Johnson on the day Cummings resigned, and the other was a staff party when the PM was out of town.
It’s also a slightly weird position that the PM lives and works in the same building, so rules about inviting people into your home are not necessarily relevant, except to the dedicated private flat above the office.
I also think there’s confusion between law and guidance, and a number of the incidents refer to what may be breaches of guidance, with the context of most of the people there having had covid already and their all being at their regular place of work.
If there is evidence of the PM inviting people not working in the government complex, to a purely social gathering when this was prohibited by law, then that is of course more serious.
I am not sure that your perspective from Cloud Base is ideal.
At the time of the Downing St. events I was being stopped by police checking I had not strayed more than five miles from home walking my dogs. The rules were taken that seriously, and yet at Downing Street it appears, they were not.
None of that matters in the grand scheme of things. Johnson apologises, Johnson survives. What does matter is did Johnson "mislead" Parliament? If a Minister did mislead Parliament the Minister goes. There are precedents, no ifs no buts.
What matters in Parliament won't work with the general public that much. Lying to Parliament is only important to some people, Bozo partying while your parents / friend died alone is very different.
That’s what I’m getting at, sorry.
Words like “partying” in no way describe the actual incidents involving the PM, and the use of such emotive language is designed to mislead and upset people.
There’s no evidence of the PM “partying”, unless he is a fan of some really crappy parties. No-one was hiring caterers and DJs here.
That is outright denial of the facts. We know there were actual parties, the evidence has gone to the police who have confirmed they have it. Abba being played loudly and a large group singing along etc etc.
And the BYOB party. Trestle tables full of food and booze. Completely illegal with ministers demanding that people not meet with anyone literally the hour before.
And the Christmas party. Bottles of open plonk and party garlands.
And the birthday party. With cake and singing. Do you know how many kids - my own included - were forced to spend their birthday on their own doing nothing and seeing nobody?
The person who has "mislead and upset people" is the Prime Minister.
Why are you still defending this? I know you are both intelligent and moral yet you are dying in a sand dune ditch defending stupidity and immorality.
New - Labour to fight only minimal campaign in top 30 Lib Dem target seats as part of "ruthless" targeting of scarce resources by @Keir_Starmer on Lab targets..Blue Wall danger for Tories as informal Lib-Labbery grows
Suggests Labour will not make more than a token campaign in any of the top 30 LD target seats apart from Sheffield Hallam and Cambridge, where Labour hold the seats not the Tories.
Also states Labour Shadow Cabinet Ministers have been getting to know Davey's team in case there is a hung parliament and they need a confidence and supply deal. Suggesting if there is a hung parliament the LDs would definitely back Labour this time unlike 2010 when they backed the Tories
After the way the Tories shafted their LD partners in 2014-5 I think there's more chance of them making a pact with Farage than the Tories.
How did the Conservatives shaft the LD while in government ?
I know this is a common meme in centre-left thoughts but the reality is the LibDems shafted themselves.
Firstly by totally breaking their word on issues such as student tuition fees and Middle Eastern warmongering.
Secondly by the behaviour of such people as Chris Huhne and David Laws.
Clearly the LDs believed that they had an agreement that the Conservatives would not (at least officially) campaign for No on the voting reform referendum. A belief which Cameron disabused them of in short order.
Otherwise, yes: the LDs mostly stabbed themselves in the front by voting for policies which they had explicitly pledged not to do in their campaign literature. No amount of real-politic about how the student loan scheme was really a graduate tax in disguise & that was down to LD influence on the government could change the fact that the LDs had voted in a thing that called itself a student loan scheme.
Even worse, Nick Clegg then said in more-or-less as many words that voters were fools for ever believing any LibDem policies because at best they were, and could only ever be, mere bargaining chips in coalition negotiations.
Oh come on. Anyone who believes any parties manifesto will be even mostly implemented as written down is already hopelessly naive. Anyone who votes for a party who have never won a general election or even 100 seats before and then expects their policies to be delivered really is a fool. I don't understand how anyone can have come to such a conclusion.
That does not mean they did not handle tuition fees horribly wrong, but anyone voting for the LDS was voting for coalition and compromises.
Well, if you're right, everyone knew this anyway, and if I'm right the LibDem vote will have collapsed, which it did.
So much for history. Now for current events.
Boris has now broken at least two manifesto pledges. Will this matter at the next election? That might depend on Keir Starmer.
I dont think people actually care about the principle of breaking manifestos. It only matters if they dont accept the necessity/benefit of it. If Boris can sell something as necessary hed be ok.
LD voters should have known if there was coalition there would be compromise, but many immediately jumped ship before it was clear if compromise was worth it and more then disliked the specific compromises made.
That’s what I thought. In his mind, the events that occurred were not “parties”. It could be argued that, most of us looking from the outside probably wouldn’t describe a glass of wine after work or a birthday cake as “parties” either.
Asking someone if he went to any parties, him saying no, then saying that you had a birthday cake for 10 minutes two years ago, you’re a lying liar who needs to resign, is in my mind taking the piss.
I see what you mean. But if you'd personally instigated a law at the time making exactly that illegal, and lots of people had been prosecuted and fined for infringing your law in similar or more minor ways, don't you think that changes the position? I know we've rehearsed this debate many times, but it's still the view of most of the public.
From the reports that I’ve seen, there were two incidents that could reasonably be described as parties.
One was instigated by Mrs Johnson on the day Cummings resigned, and the other was a staff party when the PM was out of town.
It’s also a slightly weird position that the PM lives and works in the same building, so rules about inviting people into your home are not necessarily relevant, except to the dedicated private flat above the office.
I also think there’s confusion between law and guidance, and a number of the incidents refer to what may be breaches of guidance, with the context of most of the people there having had covid already and their all being at their regular place of work.
If there is evidence of the PM inviting people not working in the government complex, to a purely social gathering when this was prohibited by law, then that is of course more serious.
I am not sure that your perspective from Cloud Base is ideal.
At the time of the Downing St. events I was being stopped by police checking I had not strayed more than five miles from home walking my dogs. The rules were taken that seriously, and yet at Downing Street it appears, they were not.
None of that matters in the grand scheme of things. Johnson apologises, Johnson survives. What does matter is did Johnson "mislead" Parliament? If a Minister did mislead Parliament the Minister goes. There are precedents, no ifs no buts.
What matters in Parliament won't work with the general public that much. Lying to Parliament is only important to some people, Bozo partying while your parents / friend died alone is very different.
That’s what I’m getting at, sorry.
Words like “partying” in no way describe the actual incidents involving the PM, and the use of such emotive language is designed to mislead and upset people.
There’s no evidence of the PM “partying”, unless he is a fan of some really crappy parties. No-one was hiring caterers and DJs here.
"Party" is shorthand for "Social gathering". Illegal, however you call it.
Meanwhile, a headline on the BBC's business news site indicates just how serious inflation has become:
"KitKat and Durex makers...warn of price rises."
Urgent financial restructuring now taking place in the PtP household.
KitKat pricing strategy baffles me. Go to a petrol station linked to a mini supermarket and you will often find a single KitKat near the till is 85p whereas on the shelf it is 4 for £1.
That's a classic sales strategy - plenty of people will just grab one at the till. The people who want the best price will look on the shelves at the multi packs.
That’s what I thought. In his mind, the events that occurred were not “parties”. It could be argued that, most of us looking from the outside probably wouldn’t describe a glass of wine after work or a birthday cake as “parties” either.
Asking someone if he went to any parties, him saying no, then saying that you had a birthday cake for 10 minutes two years ago, you’re a lying liar who needs to resign, is in my mind taking the piss.
I see what you mean. But if you'd personally instigated a law at the time making exactly that illegal, and lots of people had been prosecuted and fined for infringing your law in similar or more minor ways, don't you think that changes the position? I know we've rehearsed this debate many times, but it's still the view of most of the public.
From the reports that I’ve seen, there were two incidents that could reasonably be described as parties.
One was instigated by Mrs Johnson on the day Cummings resigned, and the other was a staff party when the PM was out of town.
It’s also a slightly weird position that the PM lives and works in the same building, so rules about inviting people into your home are not necessarily relevant, except to the dedicated private flat above the office.
I also think there’s confusion between law and guidance, and a number of the incidents refer to what may be breaches of guidance, with the context of most of the people there having had covid already and their all being at their regular place of work.
If there is evidence of the PM inviting people not working in the government complex, to a purely social gathering when this was prohibited by law, then that is of course more serious.
I am not sure that your perspective from Cloud Base is ideal.
At the time of the Downing St. events I was being stopped by police checking I had not strayed more than five miles from home walking my dogs. The rules were taken that seriously, and yet at Downing Street it appears, they were not.
None of that matters in the grand scheme of things. Johnson apologises, Johnson survives. What does matter is did Johnson "mislead" Parliament? If a Minister did mislead Parliament the Minister goes. There are precedents, no ifs no buts.
What matters in Parliament won't work with the general public that much. Lying to Parliament is only important to some people, Bozo partying while your parents / friend died alone is very different.
That’s what I’m getting at, sorry.
Words like “partying” in no way describe the actual incidents involving the PM, and the use of such emotive language is designed to mislead and upset people.
There’s no evidence of the PM “partying”, unless he is a fan of some really crappy parties. No-one was hiring caterers and DJs here.
"Party" is shorthand for "Social gathering". Illegal, however you call it.
For the convenience of us all can you reproduce the relevant bit in the legislation.
Comments
Only the Lib Dems did terribly.
However the horrendous errors were very early. Taking the non-job of DPM for example, as well as tuition fees.
I've opined before that Clegg should have insisted on one of the Great Offices; probably the Home Office, unless Hague could have been bought off from the FCO.
https://twitter.com/coupsure/status/1494249684667412480?s=21
Which is why the Governor of the Bank of England made his stupid remarks a fortnight ago because without productivity increases higher wages = higher costs = higher prices > high wages (continual).
It was previously broken by high unemployment pushing wages down but that isn't a great option for a government.
This is good in your opinion? What are you some kind of pre-Thatcher era Union leader?
My problem was with the political project. Now that is resolved I am open to as close a trading relationship as the rUK will allow. So far they are still in a huff though. Hopefully that will change over time.
https://www.shorenewsnetwork.com/2022/01/31/police-stop-group-suspected-of-plotting-mass-riots-in-ukraine-amid-threats-of-russian-invasion/?amp=1
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/14/us/politics/russia-ukraine-us-intelligence.html
Already the voting system had changed to qualified majority.
He showed the LDs were more than just a soft left social democrat party, they still had a liberal wing as well as an SDP wing.
Davey as an Orange Booker is also more of a traditional liberal than a social democrat
Damage and destruction across southern Britain will be extensive.
Stay indoors.
Just kidding but don't give him ideas.
Wages will inevitably continue to rise when we have 1m vacancies and less imported labour.
Obviously it was his opinion. It just happens to be shared by most of Britain, where you don't live.
That does not mean they did not handle tuition fees horribly wrong, but anyone voting for the LDS was voting for coalition and compromises.
Anyone going out tomorrow is taking a life and death risk.
It's that serious.
Did Boris knowingly do things that the rest of us thought were not allowed during the pandemic? Yes.
Does his breaking of rules that he himself made make him a gross hypocrite? Yes.
Has he lied about this stuff, both to parliament and elsewhere? Yes.
And his defenders can go with Sandpit's 'it's trivial, it doesn't matter, bigger fish to fry' line. We'll see who wins in the fulness of time.
Here in the northern Flatlands we're right on the borderline between bad and not that bad. It looks like SW Wales and Devon will get the 100mph gusts, but 80+ in London is not to be sneezed at and if that sting jet materialises Norwich might be less than good.
Definitely a day for staying indoors.
But we may be seeing an economic shift from the owners and consumers to the workers.
Which would also be an economic shift from the oldies to those young enough to work.
I have never voted for a winning candidate in a parliamentary election, but every election I have voted in has been legitimate.
There were also cases of healthcare workers being fined for parking by the sea to decompress for a few minutes on the way home after difficult shifts during the covid peaks.
Obviously there would have been a common-sense test around travel time versus waiting time, as per your example, but I still don't think "as I'm waiting around I'll sit in the garden and have a quick beer with my colleagues" would have been accepted if observed by "normal" police.
Felt badly let down. Not personally, far too old, but in 2010 I had grandchildren at or approaching Uni.
I can tell you with certainty that Wales, Northern England and Scotland are looking at just a serious event if not worse
In his famous thought experiment, Schrödinger’s cat was both dead and alive in potential, until its box was opened to find out. Likewise, it seems the much-heralded war in Ukraine is at once imminent and unthinkable, and we don’t know which.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/putin-has-created-a-shr-dinger-s-war-in-ukraine
Whereas someone saying that they feel let down because the LD manifesto was not implemented as written down really is a fool.
You think amidst this there will be a boost to increase productivity and the general standard of living.
At present price growth is outstripping wage growth. Once inflation takes hold then it is very difficult to get it out of the system. Better economists than you or I (and much better ones than @BartholomewRoberts) are praying that it will work its way through once energy price rises have worked their way through, etc.
.
Anybody know when the ground starts thawing in the Ukraine?
Felt 2019 was probably the one with the greatest amount of deliberate misleading, though.
At the time of the Downing St. events I was being stopped by police checking I had not strayed more than five miles from home walking my dogs. The rules were taken that seriously, and yet at Downing Street it appears, they were not.
None of that matters in the grand scheme of things. Johnson apologises, Johnson survives. What does matter is did Johnson "mislead" Parliament? If a Minister did mislead Parliament the Minister goes. There are precedents, no ifs no buts.
Were we members of Schengen?
Were we involved in their army project?
Did we have a Veto?
I am sympathetic to the general thrust you are making. The need for us to step off their integration project in our own time rather than theirs was my rationale for voting to leave. But it is simply wrong to suggest that we did not have an opt out or things we had opted out of.
I agree it's plausible (though probably untrue for a famously precise grudge-bearer like Johnson) to claim they couldn't remember a few minutes of socialising on a particular day. What is not plausible or credible as an excuse is to deny something happened when a scandal has been raging for weeks, various photos and allegations have surfaced, and we all know full well that Johnson and his advisers will have discussed in detail what happened, what evidence there is, and what they can get away with denying. There's zero chance that after the various Daily Mirror stories he and the advisers simply ignored the matter and didn't look into what had happened.
I don't have the quotes but at one stage he said that he had been assured that all the rules were followed - which clearly implies having asked someone to check, even if it allows you to shift the blame - and stating how appalled he was by the Allegra Stratton video. At that time the substance of that statement was "I'm as shocked as you to have found out about the event the video refers to" and it was only later that it became clear he knew about it and was probably present. Not sure if that's actually a lie, but it's certainly wilfully misleading.
The biggest losers are the Tory MPs, with the exception of a few honourables like Aaron Bell, shown to be weak, indecisive and lacking moral courage. The other losers are the country as a whole, who have to put up with this government for longer (the reason we are not the biggest losers is there is no guarantee the next government will be any better than this shambles).
e.g Cambridgeshire proudly tweeting that they were patrolling non-residential aisles in Tesco, an officer in South Yorkshire trying to make out it was illegal to sit in a garden and most famously Derbyshire arguing that takeaway coffees were picnics. Probably loads more that went unreported like what happened to @Mexicanpete
"Ikea’s Race for the Last of Europe’s Old-Growth Forest. The furniture giant is hungry for Romania’s famed trees. Little stands in its way."
https://newrepublic.com/article/165245/ikea-romania-europe-old-growth-forest
Doctors feet will follow their pensions.
That is a far bigger issue than whether the arrival of cake made it a party.
Russia state TV host posted that a Ukrainian shell hit a kindergarten in separatist Luhansk.
"Novaya Kondrashovka" is actually in Ukraine-controlled territory.
The post has been replaced by one arguing that Ukrainians shelled their own kindergarten. (@barabanch)
https://twitter.com/ASLuhn/status/1494250354795593736?s=20&t=aro9UbXFcDejSYghUJaSUQ
So much for history. Now for current events.
Boris has now broken at least two manifesto pledges. Will this matter at the next election? That might depend on Keir Starmer.
https://twitter.com/HeidiSoulsby/status/1494253973859151875?s=20&t=aro9UbXFcDejSYghUJaSUQ
🌳Johnson/🌹Starmer
Charismatic 24%/10%
Intelligent 20%/32%
Strong 11%/13%
Genuine 9%/22%
Understand ordinary people 9%/19%
Honest 5%/17%
Trustworthy 5%/16%
None of these 56%/42%
2,226 UK adults, 11-13 Feb
Words like “partying” in no way describe the actual incidents involving the PM, and the use of such emotive language is designed to mislead and upset people.
There’s no evidence of the PM “partying”, unless he is a fan of some really crappy parties. No-one was hiring caterers and DJs here.
"KitKat and Durex makers...warn of price rises."
Urgent financial restructuring now taking place in the PtP household.
The choice of a future europhile PM to surrender our opt-outs would of course be the democratic will of the people. Voted into power.
So what you really mean is that your narrow view must prevail and the future democratic votes of people who disagree with you must be stopped at all costs.
Wither democracy...
They were set by Mark 'Don't go down the Supermarket Aisle' Drakeford.
I am not sure that level of COVID-paranoia ever happened in England.
(I largely agree with @Cyclefree
The questions she is asking are the ones that are relevant.)
The issue of student tuition fees was fundamental to the LibDems in 2010 and they wilfully and needlessly broke it immediately after entering government.
It was the equivalent of the Conservatives getting rid of the nuclear deterrent or of Labour privatising the NHS.
If the LibDems has said in 2010 "we are willing to make concessions in other areas but the one thing we must insist on is no increase in student tuition fees" do you think Cameron would have refused them ?
Which do you think they are trying?
Professional standards are important even though they are not life threateningly urgent. Since they will ignore that if they can, probably so, theres no option but to seek to keep focus on it, otherwise it will disappear into the aether.
I would urge everyone to abide by a Red Weather Warning.
But how many will die in the storms tomorrow? My guess is rather fewer than 10. And how many tomorrow will go outside? 20 million?
I may be proved wrong - but I'd say chances of death by simply venturing outside are rather less than one in 2 million.
That's not to say it isn't looking jolly blowy tomorrow, and it might be prudent to postpone certain events (skydiving/tree surgery/aimlessly driving round and round for no reason whatsoever) to another day.
But most of us will have to go outside at some point, even if only to retrieve the remains of the trampoline from the neighbours' garden.
And the BYOB party. Trestle tables full of food and booze. Completely illegal with ministers demanding that people not meet with anyone literally the hour before.
And the Christmas party. Bottles of open plonk and party garlands.
And the birthday party. With cake and singing. Do you know how many kids - my own included - were forced to spend their birthday on their own doing nothing and seeing nobody?
The person who has "mislead and upset people" is the Prime Minister.
Why are you still defending this? I know you are both intelligent and moral yet you are dying in a
sand duneditch defending stupidity and immorality.LD voters should have known if there was coalition there would be compromise, but many immediately jumped ship before it was clear if compromise was worth it and more then disliked the specific compromises made.
tia