Though Partygate seems to be getting the attention the real long term damage to the Conservative Party could come from the Rwanda Experiment. For some voters a louche Prime Minister comes way down their list of concerns. The Rwanda episode is of a diferent order. This has legs and has the capacity to change the perception of the Party itself
The more that people hear about the Rwanda plans, the more they are in favour of them. The British want to see a sense a fair play, and jumping the immigration queue by paying thousands to people traffickers to come from France, just isn’t cricket.
Brits where you are may be saying that. Brits in Britain appear to be saying the opposite. At least thats what polls are saying. Increasing numbers of Tory MPs and ministers giving off-the-record comments to that effect too.
Perhaps - and its only a theory - you need to live here to say with confidence what people who live here think. I wouldn't do an HY and presume to tell you what your local residents think having never been there.
I was going by the polling reported over the weekend, which suggested the policy was popular.
What's your understanding of the policy being proposed?
Because the polling I've seen is about a different policy, which is significantly less drastic than the actual plan.
I’ve said before that I think Johnson believes it when he says he didn’t lie. They convinced themselves that all the things they did were within the rules for working during the lockdowns. Now everyone else can believe that’s bollocks, but I think it is germane to the charge of lying to the house. No PM should have to resign over. FPN. Other mps have had them, for instance, and they are trivial. The weapon people are wielding is the lying to parliament. But Johnson, in his eyes, didn’t lie, they just got it wrong. Ultimately it will make little difference. I suspect the 80% of the public who scrupulously followed the rules will be waiting for the election, daggers raised. And I doubt anyone else on here will agree with my view.
But British law doesn't work like like that.
"I didn't think she meant it when she said "no". It was a genuine error so I carried on regardless". Case dismissed, or a ten year custodial sentence?
The HoC is not a court of law. He is being accused of breaching ministerial conduct by lying to the house. As I’ve explained, he doesn’t think he did so deliberately. We both want him gone, just I can understand why he feels he didn’t lie.
Must be a decent sized pinhead for both you and Boris to be dancing on.
As I have consistently said, I think he should go, but I also try to understand people’s opinions.
That’s fair. I do too, but since I heard his comments in Parliament over the recording of Allegra Stratton, I find it simply impossible to believe he wasn’t consciously lying. Unless, as suggested above, that he has some pathological disorder.
Though Partygate seems to be getting the attention the real long term damage to the Conservative Party could come from the Rwanda Experiment. For some voters a louche Prime Minister comes way down their list of concerns. The Rwanda episode is of a diferent order. This has legs and has the capacity to change the perception of the Party itself
The more that people hear about the Rwanda plans, the more they are in favour of them. The British want to see a sense a fair play, and jumping the immigration queue by paying thousands to people traffickers to come from France, just isn’t cricket.
Where is your evidence? I have none other than the texts I'm getting are showing a fury that matches mine.
I never cease to be amazed at peoples ability to dredge up others who, by a happy coincidence, share their worldview on an issue when debating the same issue.
I don’t know a single person in the real world who has even expressed a view on it.
I know one person who has, and they do not share my views m. They were and remain a Boris fan who thinks the partygate stuff is just people out to get him. Their reaction was confusion about why Rwanda, and to continue to focus ire on the French over the boats.
If its successful, I think they'll not care about any concerns.
It always did make me curious why British economic migrants living in enclaves abroad were so often so against economic migrants living in enclaves in Britain.
People trying to play the UK immigration system by the rules, are furious that those arriving by irregular means, having paid large amounts of cash to smugglers and traffickers, are jumping the queue for settlement rights in the UK.
When that opinion of fence sitter appeared in polling in 2018 I think it was, that was the beginning of the end. Johnson’s version of that is people calling him a liar.
Now Rishi is gone, who can win the Tories a majority again?
There are quite a lot of good MPs in the Tory ranks. Unfortunately Boris has managed to bring out the worst elements in a few, and tarnished the image, often unfairly, of more. I expect him to go after locals and I'd hope that he's replaced with someone that instills the respect for parliament that seems to be lacking at the moment.
Boris hasn't been all bad - he did manage to steer a course through Brexit (albeit a very contentious one) and perhaps other politicians might have finish up being mired in a Brexit stalemate for years. However I think he's lost the respect of the country and that'll be reflected in the elections, and most likely there will be further revalations about partys too which really are inexcusable (the birthday bash being potentially the least bad).
I’ve said before that I think Johnson believes it when he says he didn’t lie. They convinced themselves that all the things they did were within the rules for working during the lockdowns. Now everyone else can believe that’s bollocks, but I think it is germane to the charge of lying to the house. No PM should have to resign over. FPN. Other mps have had them, for instance, and they are trivial. The weapon people are wielding is the lying to parliament. But Johnson, in his eyes, didn’t lie, they just got it wrong. Ultimately it will make little difference. I suspect the 80% of the public who scrupulously followed the rules will be waiting for the election, daggers raised. And I doubt anyone else on here will agree with my view.
Looking on from afar, most of my social group can’t understand this story at all.
The only fine the PM has been given so far, was for turning up to a work meeting on his birthday, where everyone present was meeting anyway, then his wife and a colleague turned up with a cake those present sang happy birthday to him. No cake was eaten, and only the PM’s wife was not going to be there anyway.
The alleged lying to Parliament, is based on whether the above event is described as ‘a party’ or not, when asked more than a year later if there were ‘any more parties’.
On the basis of this, numerous people are calling for the PM to resign.
The law was not against parties but non essential work gatherings. Whether anyone believed or believes it to be a party is irrelevant to the law, or whether the PM was lying when he said he followed the rules.
The questions are was it a gathering (yes) and was it essential work (no). On this particular party there is a grey area because they were already gathered. I think this one could have been let go on that basis.
But the leaving drinks ones, and the email to make the most of the lovely weather with drinks are definitely clear breaches of the rules, regardless of whether one thinks of them as parties or not.
Agreed, that the leaving drinks was definitely a party by any definition of the word - although was attended only by civil servants rather than politicians.
Inviting a group of people who had been working together indoors all day, to sit in the garden outdoors for half an hour, may have been a technical breach of the letter of the rules, but doesn’t meet most people’s definition of a party - except in the minds of those who start with wanting the PM to resign and work backwards from there.
Johnson (a politician) is reported to have attended at least one leaving drinks.
The COVID regulations didn’t ban parties. It is irrelevant whether something was or was not a party. They banned non-essential gatherings.
You’re correct about the regulations. The issue with ‘parties’ is that opponents of the PM are using his comments on ‘parties’ to Parliament, to accuse him of lying. The ‘lie’ only exists, if one accepts that the PM being delivered a cake on his birthday amounts to a ‘party’, when he was asked about it more than a year later.
Not true. He said to Parliament that all rules were followed. They were not. That they were not should’ve been palpably obvious to him.
Not true. People can have different interpretations of what the rules are and can justify to themselves that they're not breaking them even if others think they are.
Many people seem to forget that this is a workplace that allows alcohol to be consumed in the workplace. There are many, many bars in Parliament etc - the idea that work + alcohol = broken rules is simply not true.
Whether its a good or bad idea to be drinking alcohol at work is an entirely different matter.
Only 42 sailors dying would seem remarkable to be honest, weren't there said to be more than 10x as many on the ship?
For the explosions to have done enough damage to sink the ship, but only to kill less than a tenth of the crew seems like a lucky escape for most of the sailors.
Considering many of the sailors are possibly conscripts or have little choice but to be there, having the ship at the bottom of the sea but most sailors surviving is a nice outcome if so.
The report is that 42 sailors were killed by the explosion. The suggestion is that many hundreds more died as it sank. There are reports of 50 ish rescued, of nearly 500 total crew, which would suggest c.450 went down with the ship.
Delighted for Johnson to be pilloried over Party-gate .... but it seems relatively unimportant to me compared to the much bigger questions of the origin of the virus & our preparedness & our response to it.
I would like to see these questions receive much, much more attention than hitherto.
Just as it was obvious to neutrals that it was all over for Blair after the lies of the Iraq War, so it is obvious to neutrals that it is all over for Johnson after the lies of Party-gate.
The flaws of both these men are clear in the manner of the events that brought them down.
I’ve said before that I think Johnson believes it when he says he didn’t lie. They convinced themselves that all the things they did were within the rules for working during the lockdowns. Now everyone else can believe that’s bollocks, but I think it is germane to the charge of lying to the house. No PM should have to resign over. FPN. Other mps have had them, for instance, and they are trivial. The weapon people are wielding is the lying to parliament. But Johnson, in his eyes, didn’t lie, they just got it wrong. Ultimately it will make little difference. I suspect the 80% of the public who scrupulously followed the rules will be waiting for the election, daggers raised. And I doubt anyone else on here will agree with my view.
Looking on from afar, most of my social group can’t understand this story at all.
The only fine the PM has been given so far, was for turning up to a work meeting on his birthday, where everyone present was meeting anyway, then his wife and a colleague turned up with a cake those present sang happy birthday to him. No cake was eaten, and only the PM’s wife was not going to be there anyway.
The alleged lying to Parliament, is based on whether the above event is described as ‘a party’ or not, when asked more than a year later if there were ‘any more parties’.
On the basis of this, numerous people are calling for the PM to resign.
The law was not against parties but non essential work gatherings. Whether anyone believed or believes it to be a party is irrelevant to the law, or whether the PM was lying when he said he followed the rules.
The questions are was it a gathering (yes) and was it essential work (no). On this particular party there is a grey area because they were already gathered. I think this one could have been let go on that basis.
But the leaving drinks ones, and the email to make the most of the lovely weather with drinks are definitely clear breaches of the rules, regardless of whether one thinks of them as parties or not.
Agreed, that the leaving drinks was definitely a party by any definition of the word - although was attended only by civil servants rather than politicians.
Inviting a group of people who had been working together indoors all day, to sit in the garden outdoors for half an hour, may have been a technical breach of the letter of the rules, but doesn’t meet most people’s definition of a party - except in the minds of those who start with wanting the PM to resign and work backwards from there.
Johnson (a politician) is reported to have attended at least one leaving drinks.
The COVID regulations didn’t ban parties. It is irrelevant whether something was or was not a party. They banned non-essential gatherings.
You’re correct about the regulations. The issue with ‘parties’ is that opponents of the PM are using his comments on ‘parties’ to Parliament, to accuse him of lying. The ‘lie’ only exists, if one accepts that the PM being delivered a cake on his birthday amounts to a ‘party’, when he was asked about it more than a year later.
Not true. He said to Parliament that all rules were followed. They were not. That they were not should’ve been palpably obvious to him.
Not true. People can have different interpretations of what the rules are and can justify to themselves that they're not breaking them even if others think they are.
Many people seem to forget that this is a workplace that allows alcohol to be consumed in the workplace. There are many, many bars in Parliament etc - the idea that work + alcohol = broken rules is simply not true.
Whether its a good or bad idea to be drinking alcohol at work is an entirely different matter.
The events concerned did not take place in Parliament but in a government office, where there are no bars whatsoever.
If no laws were broken, why is he being handed a fine?
He is basically saying the Met are wrong. So why is he not fighting it in court?
Simples.
Because fighting it in court has costs (financial and non financial). Settling should not be seen as an admission of guilt.
If you are PM you have the financial means to fight, and politically you have the incentive since it would be seen as an admission and puts you under pressure. There's no way he wouldn't see it as worth fighting if he had any hope of success
Only 42 sailors dying would seem remarkable to be honest, weren't there said to be more than 10x as many on the ship?
For the explosions to have done enough damage to sink the ship, but only to kill less than a tenth of the crew seems like a lucky escape for most of the sailors.
Considering many of the sailors are possibly conscripts or have little choice but to be there, having the ship at the bottom of the sea but most sailors surviving is a nice outcome if so.
The report is that 42 sailors were killed by the explosion. The suggestion is that many hundreds more died as it sank. There are reports of 50 ish rescued, of nearly 500 total crew, which would suggest c.450 went down with the ship.
That doesn't make any sense to me. If it sank while being towed, why weren't the crew evacuated?
Unless the ship sank before it could even start to be towed.
Only 42 sailors dying would seem remarkable to be honest, weren't there said to be more than 10x as many on the ship?
For the explosions to have done enough damage to sink the ship, but only to kill less than a tenth of the crew seems like a lucky escape for most of the sailors.
Considering many of the sailors are possibly conscripts or have little choice but to be there, having the ship at the bottom of the sea but most sailors surviving is a nice outcome if so.
The report is that 42 sailors were killed by the explosion. The suggestion is that many hundreds more died as it sank. There are reports of 50 ish rescued, of nearly 500 total crew, which would suggest c.450 went down with the ship.
Only 42 sailors dying would seem remarkable to be honest, weren't there said to be more than 10x as many on the ship?
For the explosions to have done enough damage to sink the ship, but only to kill less than a tenth of the crew seems like a lucky escape for most of the sailors.
Considering many of the sailors are possibly conscripts or have little choice but to be there, having the ship at the bottom of the sea but most sailors surviving is a nice outcome if so.
The report is that 42 sailors were killed by the explosion. The suggestion is that many hundreds more died as it sank. There are reports of 50 ish rescued, of nearly 500 total crew, which would suggest c.450 went down with the ship.
Supposedly 250 of the Moskva crew paraded yesterday. Not convinced they were genuine though.
I would expect many major burns in survivors, judging by the survivors of ships hit in the Falklands.
Delighted for Johnson to be pilloried over Party-gate .... but it seems relatively unimportant to me compared to the much bigger questions of the origin of the virus & our preparedness & our response to it.
I would like to see these questions receive much, much more attention than hitherto.
Just as it was obvious to neutrals that it was all over for Blair after the lies of the Iraq War, so it is obvious to neutrals that it is all over for Johnson after the lies of Party-gate.
The flaws of both these men are clear in the manner of the events that brought them down.
I'm hoping that over Easter SKS has been looking back through his files and reviewing the least credible and most amusing stories cooked up by desperate, and subsequently unsuccessful, defendants. And sorting out a speech comparing those with those of the Prime Minister.
I don't know if its been linked to before, but if you what to see what the Moskva looked like after the missile (or accidental fire?!?!?!) and before sinking then:
It would be wrong of the PM to deliver a single statement tomorrow on partygate, Ukraine and the Rwanda plan. These should be separate standalone statements. Each deserves proper attention. The House should insist on this. https://twitter.com/RhonddaBryant/status/1515967928470024198
Though Partygate seems to be getting the attention the real long term damage to the Conservative Party could come from the Rwanda Experiment. For some voters a louche Prime Minister comes way down their list of concerns. The Rwanda episode is of a diferent order. This has legs and has the capacity to change the perception of the Party itself
The more that people hear about the Rwanda plans, the more they are in favour of them. The British want to see a sense a fair play, and jumping the immigration queue by paying thousands to people traffickers to come from France, just isn’t cricket.
Brits where you are may be saying that. Brits in Britain appear to be saying the opposite. At least thats what polls are saying. Increasing numbers of Tory MPs and ministers giving off-the-record comments to that effect too.
Perhaps - and its only a theory - you need to live here to say with confidence what people who live here think. I wouldn't do an HY and presume to tell you what your local residents think having never been there.
I was going by the polling reported over the weekend, which suggested the policy was popular.
What's your understanding of the policy being proposed?
Because the polling I've seen is about a different policy, which is significantly less drastic than the actual plan.
If you arrive on an irregular boat, you go to Rwanda and will be processed for asylum there.
Some of the polling suggested that people would be assessed in Rwanda for immigration to the UK, which will likely be even less popular.
If you’re genuinely fleeing persecution, you shouldn’t be too worried about where you end up settled so long as it’s safe. For people who are primarily economic migrants trying to jump the queue, on the other hand…
Only 42 sailors dying would seem remarkable to be honest, weren't there said to be more than 10x as many on the ship?
For the explosions to have done enough damage to sink the ship, but only to kill less than a tenth of the crew seems like a lucky escape for most of the sailors.
Considering many of the sailors are possibly conscripts or have little choice but to be there, having the ship at the bottom of the sea but most sailors surviving is a nice outcome if so.
The report is that 42 sailors were killed by the explosion. The suggestion is that many hundreds more died as it sank. There are reports of 50 ish rescued, of nearly 500 total crew, which would suggest c.450 went down with the ship.
That doesn't make any sense to me. If it sank while being towed, why weren't the crew evacuated?
Unless the ship sank before it could even start to be towed.
The only mention of it being towed, has been from the Russians themselves. It got bombed, and sank pretty quickly.
I’ve said before that I think Johnson believes it when he says he didn’t lie. They convinced themselves that all the things they did were within the rules for working during the lockdowns. Now everyone else can believe that’s bollocks, but I think it is germane to the charge of lying to the house. No PM should have to resign over. FPN. Other mps have had them, for instance, and they are trivial. The weapon people are wielding is the lying to parliament. But Johnson, in his eyes, didn’t lie, they just got it wrong. Ultimately it will make little difference. I suspect the 80% of the public who scrupulously followed the rules will be waiting for the election, daggers raised. And I doubt anyone else on here will agree with my view.
Looking on from afar, most of my social group can’t understand this story at all.
The only fine the PM has been given so far, was for turning up to a work meeting on his birthday, where everyone present was meeting anyway, then his wife and a colleague turned up with a cake those present sang happy birthday to him. No cake was eaten, and only the PM’s wife was not going to be there anyway.
The alleged lying to Parliament, is based on whether the above event is described as ‘a party’ or not, when asked more than a year later if there were ‘any more parties’.
On the basis of this, numerous people are calling for the PM to resign.
The law was not against parties but non essential work gatherings. Whether anyone believed or believes it to be a party is irrelevant to the law, or whether the PM was lying when he said he followed the rules.
The questions are was it a gathering (yes) and was it essential work (no). On this particular party there is a grey area because they were already gathered. I think this one could have been let go on that basis.
But the leaving drinks ones, and the email to make the most of the lovely weather with drinks are definitely clear breaches of the rules, regardless of whether one thinks of them as parties or not.
Agreed, that the leaving drinks was definitely a party by any definition of the word - although was attended only by civil servants rather than politicians.
Inviting a group of people who had been working together indoors all day, to sit in the garden outdoors for half an hour, may have been a technical breach of the letter of the rules, but doesn’t meet most people’s definition of a party - except in the minds of those who start with wanting the PM to resign and work backwards from there.
Johnson (a politician) is reported to have attended at least one leaving drinks.
The COVID regulations didn’t ban parties. It is irrelevant whether something was or was not a party. They banned non-essential gatherings.
You’re correct about the regulations. The issue with ‘parties’ is that opponents of the PM are using his comments on ‘parties’ to Parliament, to accuse him of lying. The ‘lie’ only exists, if one accepts that the PM being delivered a cake on his birthday amounts to a ‘party’, when he was asked about it more than a year later.
Not true. He said to Parliament that all rules were followed. They were not. That they were not should’ve been palpably obvious to him.
Not true. People can have different interpretations of what the rules are and can justify to themselves that they're not breaking them even if others think they are.
Many people seem to forget that this is a workplace that allows alcohol to be consumed in the workplace. There are many, many bars in Parliament etc - the idea that work + alcohol = broken rules is simply not true.
Whether its a good or bad idea to be drinking alcohol at work is an entirely different matter.
The events concerned did not take place in Parliament but in a government office, where there are no bars whatsoever.
And no people who work in Downing Street work in Parliament?
Alcohol has been allowed in Downing Street all along. Suitcases of wine have been a tradition for many, many years as part of the working culture there including under previous Prime Ministers it is nothing new.
So if that's your normal working day pre-pandemic, then no people won't automatically think "oh there's alcohol here, that's not work" during it.
Sweden’s prime minister Magdalena Andersson has told Dagens Nyheter, the leading broadsheet, that a Swedish NATO membership application in current circumstances would lead to further instability in Europe. She said: “In a situation like this, my judgment is that the best thing for Sweden’s security is that we are predictable, clear and hold a steady course.”
Opinion polling shows the large number of Don’t Knows breaking to the No side. However, if Finland joins that’s a game changer.
It is fascinating to see Sweden following Finnish affairs so closely. The country that was formerly simply eastern Sweden does not usually figure highly in modern Swedes’ consciousness. Mumins, party boats and homely tv shows in.quaint archaic dialects are about the sum of Finnish contribution to Swedish popular culture.
I can understand reversion to status quo and a much cherished position, but it is hard at this present moment to see how Sweden joining could lead to greater instability.
Hard to see how more nuclear weapons in the Baltic is in Sweden’s interest. Or anybody’s interest.
Only 42 sailors dying would seem remarkable to be honest, weren't there said to be more than 10x as many on the ship?
For the explosions to have done enough damage to sink the ship, but only to kill less than a tenth of the crew seems like a lucky escape for most of the sailors.
Considering many of the sailors are possibly conscripts or have little choice but to be there, having the ship at the bottom of the sea but most sailors surviving is a nice outcome if so.
The report is that 42 sailors were killed by the explosion. The suggestion is that many hundreds more died as it sank. There are reports of 50 ish rescued, of nearly 500 total crew, which would suggest c.450 went down with the ship.
That doesn't make any sense to me. If it sank while being towed, why weren't the crew evacuated?
Unless the ship sank before it could even start to be towed.
The only mention of it being towed, has been from the Russians themselves. It got bombed, and sank pretty quickly.
- “My view is this is something that will be remembered whenever the election happens and Johnson needs to do more to show his contrition.”
In order to show contrition you need to be contrite. Or to be able to fake sincerity. Johnson is unrepentant and transparent. A fatal combination for his party.
My view is this is something that will be remembered whenever the election happens, and long thereafter, and the Conservatives are going to be defeated. The brand is forever tarnished by the antics of the past few years. It’ll get worse as the full magnitude of the Brexit unforced error sinks in. Decent centre-right people should consider a fresh start.
Starmer needs to introduce PR and kill the repulsive Tory monster for good.
So you are one of those people who would change the rules of the game to help your side.
PR would not help the SNP.
I was speaking more broadly than party.
He was clear his purpose in introducing PR was to eliminate a party that he opposes.
That’s fine, if wrong. But no more squealing about gerrymandering from him please
Introducing a fair electoral system isn't 'gerrymandering'.
And, to be fair, I don't think anyone would really want to 'eliminate' the Conservative ;party. It normally represents a strand of opinion which deserves to be represented in Parliament. However, our system means that if either of the two parties is 'captured' by an extremist element, as appears to have happened now, then it can wreak havoc.
We have a fair voting system at the moment, whoever gets the most votes wins their constituency.
What people who call for a "fair" voting system really mean is they don't like the results and want those who aren't getting enough votes to still get elected anyway, rather than convincing more voters to vote for them.
Circa 60% of voters over the last seven years have no say. In 2005 the party of government were re elected with a majority on just 36% of votes cast, meaning 64% of voters were without a voice.
It's only a fair system because the party you want to win generally wins, 1997 to 2010 notwithstanding.
P.S. It worked OK between 2010 and 2015.
100% of voters have a say.
If you lose, then you still have your say, you just lost. Get more votes next time if you want to win.
This is true, but it’s also flawed as in many seats the size of the majority means your vote against the winner has no chance. In my constituency the Tory vote is massive, in many inner cities the same is true of labour. Voters in more marginal seats have votes that are ‘worth’ more. FPTP is not perfect, and neither is PR, in any of its myriad forms.
There is no flaw in a system just because X number (a big number) of people historically vote for party A. It only shows that party A is popular in a place.
No individual vote is worth anything except as part of the totality of votes which gives rise a to a result according to a system which all voters comprehend, and take account of when they vote. All votes count the same whether in South Holland or Bootle.
if you think your Tory vote in Bootle counts less, you are saying that your Tory vote ought for some mystical reason should count more than all the Labour ones. Why?
And BTW it is not true that overwhelmingly party Z seats can't change. Ask the SNP.
Though Partygate seems to be getting the attention the real long term damage to the Conservative Party could come from the Rwanda Experiment. For some voters a louche Prime Minister comes way down their list of concerns. The Rwanda episode is of a diferent order. This has legs and has the capacity to change the perception of the Party itself
The more that people hear about the Rwanda plans, the more they are in favour of them. The British want to see a sense a fair play, and jumping the immigration queue by paying thousands to people traffickers to come from France, just isn’t cricket.
Where is your evidence? I have none other than the texts I'm getting are showing a fury that matches mine.
I never cease to be amazed at peoples ability to dredge up others who, by a happy coincidence, share their worldview on an issue when debating the same issue.
I don’t know a single person in the real world who has even expressed a view on it.
That was rather my point. I have no evidence but like everyone we have our bellwethers which though not admissable in the court of PB give us individually a clue what might be going on. In the Rwanda episode the only poll I saw on it showed a majority against (something like 50/35) but it didn't show the intensity of that opposition.
My sense is that as with Australia who many now see it as a racist country this will be the fate of the UK.
Though Partygate seems to be getting the attention the real long term damage to the Conservative Party could come from the Rwanda Experiment. For some voters a louche Prime Minister comes way down their list of concerns. The Rwanda episode is of a diferent order. This has legs and has the capacity to change the perception of the Party itself
The more that people hear about the Rwanda plans, the more they are in favour of them. The British want to see a sense a fair play, and jumping the immigration queue by paying thousands to people traffickers to come from France, just isn’t cricket.
Brits where you are may be saying that. Brits in Britain appear to be saying the opposite. At least thats what polls are saying. Increasing numbers of Tory MPs and ministers giving off-the-record comments to that effect too.
Perhaps - and its only a theory - you need to live here to say with confidence what people who live here think. I wouldn't do an HY and presume to tell you what your local residents think having never been there.
I was going by the polling reported over the weekend, which suggested the policy was popular.
What's your understanding of the policy being proposed?
Because the polling I've seen is about a different policy, which is significantly less drastic than the actual plan.
If you arrive on an irregular boat, you go to Rwanda and will be processed for asylum there.
Some of the polling suggested that people would be assessed in Rwanda for immigration to the UK, which will likely be even less popular.
If you’re genuinely fleeing persecution, you shouldn’t be too worried about where you end up settled so long as it’s safe. For people who are primarily economic migrants trying to jump the queue, on the other hand…
It always did make me curious why British economic migrants living in enclaves abroad were so often so against economic migrants living in enclaves in Britain.
People trying to play the UK immigration system by the rules, are furious that those arriving by irregular means, having paid large amounts of cash to smugglers and traffickers, are jumping the queue for settlement rights in the UK.
No, that's not the issue at all. People in Spain who live in Spain who barely speak Spanish and live in all-British enclaves only interacting with actual Spaniards in shops have told me - different people repeatedly - with a straight face that they're against people in the UK coming to the country who don't speak English or integrate.
Those aren't queue-jumpers they are referring to, or people living and working illegally. They are British citizens and people with indefinite leave and people who have valid papers to be working and paying taxes in the UK.
You personally may be quite content with the equivalent of you in the UK. Many are not. And the people who your party are pandering to see no difference between legal and illegal, queue jumpers or proper asylum seekers. They just want them gone.
- “My view is this is something that will be remembered whenever the election happens and Johnson needs to do more to show his contrition.”
In order to show contrition you need to be contrite. Or to be able to fake sincerity. Johnson is unrepentant and transparent. A fatal combination for his party.
My view is this is something that will be remembered whenever the election happens, and long thereafter, and the Conservatives are going to be defeated. The brand is forever tarnished by the antics of the past few years. It’ll get worse as the full magnitude of the Brexit unforced error sinks in. Decent centre-right people should consider a fresh start.
Starmer needs to introduce PR and kill the repulsive Tory monster for good.
So you are one of those people who would change the rules of the game to help your side.
PR would not help the SNP.
I was speaking more broadly than party.
He was clear his purpose in introducing PR was to eliminate a party that he opposes.
That’s fine, if wrong. But no more squealing about gerrymandering from him please
Introducing a fair electoral system isn't 'gerrymandering'.
And, to be fair, I don't think anyone would really want to 'eliminate' the Conservative ;party. It normally represents a strand of opinion which deserves to be represented in Parliament. However, our system means that if either of the two parties is 'captured' by an extremist element, as appears to have happened now, then it can wreak havoc.
Introducing a new* electoral system for the purpose of “kill[ing] the repulsive Tory monster” is what he said. I’m choosing to take him at his word. You’re right though - it’s not gerrymandering. It’s far worse than that. It’s fundamentally undemocratic and illiberal.
* “fair” is a value judgement. I believe that it is right that a local area chooses someone to represent their interests. The person with most votes gets picked. What could be fairer than that?
Any system that ensures the plurality of views in that local area are represented in parliament would be fairer. And more complicated. And prone to bringing out the kind of people who will endlessly lecture you on how it is in fact not complicated.
How is a party with a manifesto supported by (say) 48% of the voters beaten by fairness when a party with 47% support is propped up by a party with 5% - who demand that half their (massively rejected) manifesto is then implemented?
It might be a pragmatic power grab. But "fair"???
But... Your 48% lot were also massively rejected. That's the problem with your argument. In those circumstances, I'd want that constitutency represented by 1 from the 48% lot, one from the 47% lot. Then a top up pool nationally/regionally ensuring that a party that ended up with 5% of the NEV got a tiny bit of representation.
If that 5% candidate was a local independent, then yes, they'd be massively rejected and deserve no particular representation at a national level.
It always did make me curious why British economic migrants living in enclaves abroad were so often so against economic migrants living in enclaves in Britain.
People trying to play the UK immigration system by the rules, are furious that those arriving by irregular means, having paid large amounts of cash to smugglers and traffickers, are jumping the queue for settlement rights in the UK.
No, that's not the issue at all. People in Spain who live in Spain who barely speak Spanish and live in all-British enclaves only interacting with actual Spaniards in shops have told me - different people repeatedly - with a straight face that they're against people in the UK coming to the country who don't speak English or integrate.
Those aren't queue-jumpers they are referring to, or people living and working illegally. They are British citizens and people with indefinite leave and people who have valid papers to be working and paying taxes in the UK.
You personally may be quite content with the equivalent of you in the UK. Many are not. And the people who your party are pandering to see no difference between legal and illegal, queue jumpers or proper asylum seekers. They just want them gone.
That’s not what I’m saying at all. I’m saying that those trying to immigrate to the UK legitimately - my wife, to give one example - are not at all happy that hundreds of people a day are arriving with no paperwork on small boats, and almost all of them end up settled in the UK.
Only 42 sailors dying would seem remarkable to be honest, weren't there said to be more than 10x as many on the ship?
For the explosions to have done enough damage to sink the ship, but only to kill less than a tenth of the crew seems like a lucky escape for most of the sailors.
Considering many of the sailors are possibly conscripts or have little choice but to be there, having the ship at the bottom of the sea but most sailors surviving is a nice outcome if so.
The report is that 42 sailors were killed by the explosion. The suggestion is that many hundreds more died as it sank. There are reports of 50 ish rescued, of nearly 500 total crew, which would suggest c.450 went down with the ship.
That doesn't make any sense to me. If it sank while being towed, why weren't the crew evacuated?
Unless the ship sank before it could even start to be towed.
Weirdness happens. There are all sorts of scenarios: the ship is damaged and on fire, and many of the crew uninjured by the initial hit and fire are firefighting when a magazine blows near them.
In WWII a US cruiser was severely damaged when alongside an aircraft carrier, helping to fight a fire on the latter. The carrier suffered an explosion, and far more people were lost on the cruiser than the carrier.
Sweden’s prime minister Magdalena Andersson has told Dagens Nyheter, the leading broadsheet, that a Swedish NATO membership application in current circumstances would lead to further instability in Europe. She said: “In a situation like this, my judgment is that the best thing for Sweden’s security is that we are predictable, clear and hold a steady course.”
Opinion polling shows the large number of Don’t Knows breaking to the No side. However, if Finland joins that’s a game changer.
It is fascinating to see Sweden following Finnish affairs so closely. The country that was formerly simply eastern Sweden does not usually figure highly in modern Swedes’ consciousness. Mumins, party boats and homely tv shows in.quaint archaic dialects are about the sum of Finnish contribution to Swedish popular culture.
I can understand reversion to status quo and a much cherished position, but it is hard at this present moment to see how Sweden joining could lead to greater instability.
Hard to see how more nuclear weapons in the Baltic is in Sweden’s interest. Or anybody’s interest.
The only thing Putin understands is force. He'll exploit any kind of weakness. The trouble for Sweden is do they want to send weapons to Ukraine? They are perfectly entitled to but that will 'provoke' Moscow.
Sweden’s prime minister Magdalena Andersson has told Dagens Nyheter, the leading broadsheet, that a Swedish NATO membership application in current circumstances would lead to further instability in Europe. She said: “In a situation like this, my judgment is that the best thing for Sweden’s security is that we are predictable, clear and hold a steady course.”
Opinion polling shows the large number of Don’t Knows breaking to the No side. However, if Finland joins that’s a game changer.
It is fascinating to see Sweden following Finnish affairs so closely. The country that was formerly simply eastern Sweden does not usually figure highly in modern Swedes’ consciousness. Mumins, party boats and homely tv shows in.quaint archaic dialects are about the sum of Finnish contribution to Swedish popular culture.
I can understand reversion to status quo and a much cherished position, but it is hard at this present moment to see how Sweden joining could lead to greater instability.
Hard to see how more nuclear weapons in the Baltic is in Sweden’s interest. Or anybody’s interest.
The only thing Putin understands is force. He'll exploit any kind of weakness. The trouble for Sweden is do they want to send weapons to Ukraine? They are perfectly entitled to but that will 'provoke' Moscow.
Will they care about ‘provoking’ Moscow, now that the Russian military has revealed itself to be a paper bear?
Sweden’s prime minister Magdalena Andersson has told Dagens Nyheter, the leading broadsheet, that a Swedish NATO membership application in current circumstances would lead to further instability in Europe. She said: “In a situation like this, my judgment is that the best thing for Sweden’s security is that we are predictable, clear and hold a steady course.”
Opinion polling shows the large number of Don’t Knows breaking to the No side. However, if Finland joins that’s a game changer.
It is fascinating to see Sweden following Finnish affairs so closely. The country that was formerly simply eastern Sweden does not usually figure highly in modern Swedes’ consciousness. Mumins, party boats and homely tv shows in.quaint archaic dialects are about the sum of Finnish contribution to Swedish popular culture.
I can understand reversion to status quo and a much cherished position, but it is hard at this present moment to see how Sweden joining could lead to greater instability.
Hard to see how more nuclear weapons in the Baltic is in Sweden’s interest. Or anybody’s interest.
The only thing Putin understands is force. He'll exploit any kind of weakness. The trouble for Sweden is do they want to send weapons to Ukraine? They are perfectly entitled to but that will 'provoke' Moscow.
Huh? What on earth are you talking about? We already do.
- “My view is this is something that will be remembered whenever the election happens and Johnson needs to do more to show his contrition.”
In order to show contrition you need to be contrite. Or to be able to fake sincerity. Johnson is unrepentant and transparent. A fatal combination for his party.
My view is this is something that will be remembered whenever the election happens, and long thereafter, and the Conservatives are going to be defeated. The brand is forever tarnished by the antics of the past few years. It’ll get worse as the full magnitude of the Brexit unforced error sinks in. Decent centre-right people should consider a fresh start.
Starmer needs to introduce PR and kill the repulsive Tory monster for good.
So you are one of those people who would change the rules of the game to help your side.
PR would not help the SNP.
I was speaking more broadly than party.
He was clear his purpose in introducing PR was to eliminate a party that he opposes.
That’s fine, if wrong. But no more squealing about gerrymandering from him please
Introducing a fair electoral system isn't 'gerrymandering'.
And, to be fair, I don't think anyone would really want to 'eliminate' the Conservative ;party. It normally represents a strand of opinion which deserves to be represented in Parliament. However, our system means that if either of the two parties is 'captured' by an extremist element, as appears to have happened now, then it can wreak havoc.
Introducing a new* electoral system for the purpose of “kill[ing] the repulsive Tory monster” is what he said. I’m choosing to take him at his word. You’re right though - it’s not gerrymandering. It’s far worse than that. It’s fundamentally undemocratic and illiberal.
* “fair” is a value judgement. I believe that it is right that a local area chooses someone to represent their interests. The person with most votes gets picked. What could be fairer than that?
Any system that ensures the plurality of views in that local area are represented in parliament would be fairer. And more complicated. And prone to bringing out the kind of people who will endlessly lecture you on how it is in fact not complicated.
How is a party with a manifesto supported by (say) 48% of the voters beaten by fairness when a party with 47% support is propped up by a party with 5% - who demand that half their (massively rejected) manifesto is then implemented?
It might be a pragmatic power grab. But "fair"???
But... Your 48% lot were also massively rejected. That's the problem with your argument. In those circumstances, I'd want that constitutency represented by 1 from the 48% lot, one from the 47% lot. Then a top up pool nationally/regionally ensuring that a party that ended up with 5% of the NEV got a tiny bit of representation.
If that 5% candidate was a local independent, then yes, they'd be massively rejected and deserve no particular representation at a national level.
There are plenty of systems that do that.
We're not discussing a sim0le choice though, are we. We're supposed at least discussing the best way of running a country, and having watched two parties alone and one period of coalition for very many years I'm far from convinced that all wisdom always resides on the Government side of the House, no matter which party ()or parties) occupy those benches. Which is what FPTP and our adversarial system tries to suggest.
Sweden’s prime minister Magdalena Andersson has told Dagens Nyheter, the leading broadsheet, that a Swedish NATO membership application in current circumstances would lead to further instability in Europe. She said: “In a situation like this, my judgment is that the best thing for Sweden’s security is that we are predictable, clear and hold a steady course.”
Opinion polling shows the large number of Don’t Knows breaking to the No side. However, if Finland joins that’s a game changer.
It is fascinating to see Sweden following Finnish affairs so closely. The country that was formerly simply eastern Sweden does not usually figure highly in modern Swedes’ consciousness. Mumins, party boats and homely tv shows in.quaint archaic dialects are about the sum of Finnish contribution to Swedish popular culture.
I can understand reversion to status quo and a much cherished position, but it is hard at this present moment to see how Sweden joining could lead to greater instability.
Hard to see how more nuclear weapons in the Baltic is in Sweden’s interest. Or anybody’s interest.
I'm confused, would nukes be moved into Sweden as part of membership? Or through its waters? If it is that Russia would decide to move some closer does that actually make a big difference?
And if that is the the reason for retaining the policy, why would Finland joining be a gamechanger?
I know little of the region so these are genuine questions, though I recall an article awhile back about Finland being in a bit of modern denial about the historic influence of Sweden and that continuing impact.
Only 42 sailors dying would seem remarkable to be honest, weren't there said to be more than 10x as many on the ship?
For the explosions to have done enough damage to sink the ship, but only to kill less than a tenth of the crew seems like a lucky escape for most of the sailors.
Considering many of the sailors are possibly conscripts or have little choice but to be there, having the ship at the bottom of the sea but most sailors surviving is a nice outcome if so.
20 out of about 300 died on Sheffield in similar circumstances. Missile strike, fire, sank under tow.
The 42 dead can have a salute from me. No roses bloom on a sailor's grave.
Sweden’s prime minister Magdalena Andersson has told Dagens Nyheter, the leading broadsheet, that a Swedish NATO membership application in current circumstances would lead to further instability in Europe. She said: “In a situation like this, my judgment is that the best thing for Sweden’s security is that we are predictable, clear and hold a steady course.”
Opinion polling shows the large number of Don’t Knows breaking to the No side. However, if Finland joins that’s a game changer.
It is fascinating to see Sweden following Finnish affairs so closely. The country that was formerly simply eastern Sweden does not usually figure highly in modern Swedes’ consciousness. Mumins, party boats and homely tv shows in.quaint archaic dialects are about the sum of Finnish contribution to Swedish popular culture.
I can understand reversion to status quo and a much cherished position, but it is hard at this present moment to see how Sweden joining could lead to greater instability.
Hard to see how more nuclear weapons in the Baltic is in Sweden’s interest. Or anybody’s interest.
The only thing Putin understands is force. He'll exploit any kind of weakness. The trouble for Sweden is do they want to send weapons to Ukraine? They are perfectly entitled to but that will 'provoke' Moscow.
Sweden has already supplied anti tank weapons to Ukraine. Being in NATO is a different issue.
When that opinion of fence sitter appeared in polling in 2018 I think it was, that was the beginning of the end. Johnson’s version of that is people calling him a liar.
Now Rishi is gone, who can win the Tories a majority again?
I don't think the leadership is the only problem. The brand is now shot and as Cameron found fixing that takes a lot of effort. I heard Grant Shapps -one of their better communicators- and even he sounded like he'd had enough.
If you’re genuinely fleeing persecution, you shouldn’t be too worried about where you end up settled so long as it’s safe. For people who are primarily economic migrants trying to jump the queue, on the other hand…
If you imagine Britain getting invaded by Russia and you needing to escape, I think it's obvious that although being safe from the politically-posting-person purge is your first problem, you wouldn't be "not too worried" about all the other things like how you're going to make a living, or how you're going to get medical treatment you need. You would be extremely worried about these things. You'd want to go somewhere where you could speak the language, where you had friends or family, etc etc.
And no people who work in Downing Street work in Parliament?
Alcohol has been allowed in Downing Street all along. Suitcases of wine have been a tradition for many, many years as part of the working culture there including under previous Prime Ministers it is nothing new.
So if that's your normal working day pre-pandemic, then no people won't automatically think "oh there's alcohol here, that's not work" during it.
Your political enemies always exploit your weaknesses. That is their job.
I don't believe Corbyn was anti-Semitic. He did however have friends and colleagues who expressed anti-Semitic viewed and he was slow to perceive the danger. The accusations of anti-Semitism (from his enemies in Labour & the Tories) destroyed him.
Perhaps there was an impromptu party for Boris and he found it difficult to close it down. Perhaps alcohol has been part of Downing Street culture under previous PMs. It doesn't really matter. Boris' opponents have found an accusation that is damaging and Boris has been slow to perceive the danger.
Like Corbyn and anti-semitism, the allegations carry enough credibility that they have destroyed him. From a political POV, it now does not really matter whether Boris has a technical defence, or not.
I don't believe Boris will get to GE2024. Though it may be in the Tory interest to let him carry the can for a bit longer.
Only 42 sailors dying would seem remarkable to be honest, weren't there said to be more than 10x as many on the ship?
For the explosions to have done enough damage to sink the ship, but only to kill less than a tenth of the crew seems like a lucky escape for most of the sailors.
Considering many of the sailors are possibly conscripts or have little choice but to be there, having the ship at the bottom of the sea but most sailors surviving is a nice outcome if so.
The report is that 42 sailors were killed by the explosion. The suggestion is that many hundreds more died as it sank. There are reports of 50 ish rescued, of nearly 500 total crew, which would suggest c.450 went down with the ship.
AIUI: the published size of the crow is 510, but its beloved on this occasion it had 485 people onboard at the time of the incident, (perhaps, they did not sail with the 'trainees/cadet officers that are normally onboard?) and the first ship on the seen was a Turkish ship, who took 54 people onboard. However, beyond that its unclear at this point, some, lots, or zero other people survived.
If 250 paraded yesterday that could indicate that when taken with any who are in hospital over half survived, However knowing Putin's 'integrity' and propaganda, its also possible that they just rounded some sailors in Stvastapol Naval Base and gave them the right uniform.
If I was going to guess, grabbing totally random people to use in a parade like that has some risk that the truth might come out, but using people like the trainee/cadet officers, to boost the number on parade a bit would be more credible.
It always did make me curious why British economic migrants living in enclaves abroad were so often so against economic migrants living in enclaves in Britain.
People trying to play the UK immigration system by the rules, are furious that those arriving by irregular means, having paid large amounts of cash to smugglers and traffickers, are jumping the queue for settlement rights in the UK.
No, that's not the issue at all. People in Spain who live in Spain who barely speak Spanish and live in all-British enclaves only interacting with actual Spaniards in shops have told me - different people repeatedly - with a straight face that they're against people in the UK coming to the country who don't speak English or integrate.
Those aren't queue-jumpers they are referring to, or people living and working illegally. They are British citizens and people with indefinite leave and people who have valid papers to be working and paying taxes in the UK.
You personally may be quite content with the equivalent of you in the UK. Many are not. And the people who your party are pandering to see no difference between legal and illegal, queue jumpers or proper asylum seekers. They just want them gone.
That’s not what I’m saying at all. I’m saying that those trying to immigrate to the UK legitimately - my wife, to give one example - are not at all happy that hundreds of people a day are arriving with no paperwork on small boats, and almost all of them end up settled in the UK.
An extended family member was for a while engaged to a Turk, living in UK. She remarked at a family gathering yesterday that in her experience there was no-one so opposed to more immigration as a recent immigrant.
Having said that I feel very sympathetic to Mr S and his wife; I suspect that my half-Thai grandchildren, now approaching adulthood, who currently carry two passports, are going to have some hoops to jump through shortly.
You’re correct about the regulations. The issue with ‘parties’ is that opponents of the PM are using his comments on ‘parties’ to Parliament, to accuse him of lying. The ‘lie’ only exists, if one accepts that the PM being delivered a cake on his birthday amounts to a ‘party’, when he was asked about it more than a year later.
Not true. He said to Parliament that all rules were followed. They were not. That they were not should’ve been palpably obvious to him.
His first statements also clearly suggest that he was not involved in any events at all - he was, he said, in a suitably distant manner, assured that everything had proceeded according to the rules. I don't think one can reasonably conclude that he was being frank. Opinions may, I suppose, vary on whether it matters whether the PM is honest if people otherwise approve of his policies, but it gets in the way of policy too - something like the Rwandan scheme gets dismissed as an obvious distraction rather than being considered seriously by people who might support it.
Though Partygate seems to be getting the attention the real long term damage to the Conservative Party could come from the Rwanda Experiment. For some voters a louche Prime Minister comes way down their list of concerns. The Rwanda episode is of a diferent order. This has legs and has the capacity to change the perception of the Party itself
The more that people hear about the Rwanda plans, the more they are in favour of them. The British want to see a sense a fair play, and jumping the immigration queue by paying thousands to people traffickers to come from France, just isn’t cricket.
Brits where you are may be saying that. Brits in Britain appear to be saying the opposite. At least thats what polls are saying. Increasing numbers of Tory MPs and ministers giving off-the-record comments to that effect too.
Perhaps - and its only a theory - you need to live here to say with confidence what people who live here think. I wouldn't do an HY and presume to tell you what your local residents think having never been there.
I was going by the polling reported over the weekend, which suggested the policy was popular.
What's your understanding of the policy being proposed?
Because the polling I've seen is about a different policy, which is significantly less drastic than the actual plan.
If you arrive on an irregular boat, you go to Rwanda and will be processed for asylum there.
If the detainee accepts the financial blandishment from the UK government to go and Rwanda agrees to take them...
Only 42 sailors dying would seem remarkable to be honest, weren't there said to be more than 10x as many on the ship?
For the explosions to have done enough damage to sink the ship, but only to kill less than a tenth of the crew seems like a lucky escape for most of the sailors.
Considering many of the sailors are possibly conscripts or have little choice but to be there, having the ship at the bottom of the sea but most sailors surviving is a nice outcome if so.
The report is that 42 sailors were killed by the explosion. The suggestion is that many hundreds more died as it sank. There are reports of 50 ish rescued, of nearly 500 total crew, which would suggest c.450 went down with the ship.
That doesn't make any sense to me. If it sank while being towed, why weren't the crew evacuated?
Unless the ship sank before it could even start to be towed.
The only mention of it being towed, has been from the Russians themselves. It got bombed, and sank pretty quickly.
Actually, given there was at least one tug boat pictured around it, I would not be surprised if they got lines onto the Moskva and stated trying to tow.
But even if they had got the Moskva back to port, I very much doubt that it would ever be ready for combat again. It was toasty.
What gets me (as a non-expert) about the pictures and videos are: *) No sign of heavy swells or a storm, which we had been told were in the area at the time. *) No lifeboats or debris in the sea. *) Clear signs of smoke damage along the ship, but none coming out of those at the time. *) No visible crew on board fighting fires or mustered for evacuation. *) I wonder how near it was rolling over.
These make me think that the pictures might well be many hours after it was initially hit.
Though Partygate seems to be getting the attention the real long term damage to the Conservative Party could come from the Rwanda Experiment. For some voters a louche Prime Minister comes way down their list of concerns. The Rwanda episode is of a diferent order. This has legs and has the capacity to change the perception of the Party itself
The more that people hear about the Rwanda plans, the more they are in favour of them. The British want to see a sense a fair play, and jumping the immigration queue by paying thousands to people traffickers to come from France, just isn’t cricket.
Brits where you are may be saying that. Brits in Britain appear to be saying the opposite. At least thats what polls are saying. Increasing numbers of Tory MPs and ministers giving off-the-record comments to that effect too.
Perhaps - and its only a theory - you need to live here to say with confidence what people who live here think. I wouldn't do an HY and presume to tell you what your local residents think having never been there.
I was going by the polling reported over the weekend, which suggested the policy was popular.
What's your understanding of the policy being proposed?
Because the polling I've seen is about a different policy, which is significantly less drastic than the actual plan.
If you arrive on an irregular boat, you go to Rwanda and will be processed for asylum there.
Some of the polling suggested that people would be assessed in Rwanda for immigration to the UK, which will likely be even less popular.
If you’re genuinely fleeing persecution, you shouldn’t be too worried about where you end up settled so long as it’s safe. For people who are primarily economic migrants trying to jump the queue, on the other hand…
Close, but no cigar.
Most won't go to Rwanda, because that scheme has fairly low capacity, and the Rwandans haven't agreed to take everyone the UK wants to send. Even a 90% cut in small boat migrant numbers would overwhelm the system.
And we don't know the overall view of "process in Rwanda/bring to UK" vs. "process in Rwanda/stay in Rwanda", because that polling hasn't been done. (The ambiguity in the question bothers me. People are often ambiguous when their conscience bothers them.)
- “My view is this is something that will be remembered whenever the election happens and Johnson needs to do more to show his contrition.”
In order to show contrition you need to be contrite. Or to be able to fake sincerity. Johnson is unrepentant and transparent. A fatal combination for his party.
My view is this is something that will be remembered whenever the election happens, and long thereafter, and the Conservatives are going to be defeated. The brand is forever tarnished by the antics of the past few years. It’ll get worse as the full magnitude of the Brexit unforced error sinks in. Decent centre-right people should consider a fresh start.
Starmer needs to introduce PR and kill the repulsive Tory monster for good.
So you are one of those people who would change the rules of the game to help your side.
PR would not help the SNP.
I was speaking more broadly than party.
He was clear his purpose in introducing PR was to eliminate a party that he opposes.
That’s fine, if wrong. But no more squealing about gerrymandering from him please
Introducing a fair electoral system isn't 'gerrymandering'.
And, to be fair, I don't think anyone would really want to 'eliminate' the Conservative ;party. It normally represents a strand of opinion which deserves to be represented in Parliament. However, our system means that if either of the two parties is 'captured' by an extremist element, as appears to have happened now, then it can wreak havoc.
Introducing a new* electoral system for the purpose of “kill[ing] the repulsive Tory monster” is what he said. I’m choosing to take him at his word. You’re right though - it’s not gerrymandering. It’s far worse than that. It’s fundamentally undemocratic and illiberal.
* “fair” is a value judgement. I believe that it is right that a local area chooses someone to represent their interests. The person with most votes gets picked. What could be fairer than that?
Any system that ensures the plurality of views in that local area are represented in parliament would be fairer. And more complicated. And prone to bringing out the kind of people who will endlessly lecture you on how it is in fact not complicated.
How is a party with a manifesto supported by (say) 48% of the voters beaten by fairness when a party with 47% support is propped up by a party with 5% - who demand that half their (massively rejected) manifesto is then implemented?
It might be a pragmatic power grab. But "fair"???
But... Your 48% lot were also massively rejected. That's the problem with your argument. In those circumstances, I'd want that constitutency represented by 1 from the 48% lot, one from the 47% lot. Then a top up pool nationally/regionally ensuring that a party that ended up with 5% of the NEV got a tiny bit of representation.
If that 5% candidate was a local independent, then yes, they'd be massively rejected and deserve no particular representation at a national level.
There are plenty of systems that do that.
But the massively rejected 5% tail ends up wagging the dog. FPTP at least delivers the manifesto of the plurality.
I realise this is an argument neither side can win.
Only 42 sailors dying would seem remarkable to be honest, weren't there said to be more than 10x as many on the ship?
For the explosions to have done enough damage to sink the ship, but only to kill less than a tenth of the crew seems like a lucky escape for most of the sailors.
Considering many of the sailors are possibly conscripts or have little choice but to be there, having the ship at the bottom of the sea but most sailors surviving is a nice outcome if so.
The report is that 42 sailors were killed by the explosion. The suggestion is that many hundreds more died as it sank. There are reports of 50 ish rescued, of nearly 500 total crew, which would suggest c.450 went down with the ship.
AIUI: the published size of the crow is 510, but its beloved on this occasion it had 485 people onboard at the time of the incident, (perhaps, they did not sail with the 'trainees/cadet officers that are normally onboard?) and the first ship on the seen was a Turkish ship, who took 54 people onboard. However, beyond that its unclear at this point, some, lots, or zero other people survived.
If 250 paraded yesterday that could indicate that when taken with any who are in hospital over half survived, However knowing Putin's 'integrity' and propaganda, its also possible that they just rounded some sailors in Stvastapol Naval Base and gave them the right uniform.
If I was going to guess, grabbing totally random people to use in a parade like that has some risk that the truth might come out, but using people like the trainee/cadet officers, to boost the number on parade a bit would be more credible.
The most likely explanation for yesterday’s video of the sailors, is that it’s historic footage.
Sweden’s prime minister Magdalena Andersson has told Dagens Nyheter, the leading broadsheet, that a Swedish NATO membership application in current circumstances would lead to further instability in Europe. She said: “In a situation like this, my judgment is that the best thing for Sweden’s security is that we are predictable, clear and hold a steady course.”
Opinion polling shows the large number of Don’t Knows breaking to the No side. However, if Finland joins that’s a game changer.
It is fascinating to see Sweden following Finnish affairs so closely. The country that was formerly simply eastern Sweden does not usually figure highly in modern Swedes’ consciousness. Mumins, party boats and homely tv shows in.quaint archaic dialects are about the sum of Finnish contribution to Swedish popular culture.
I can understand reversion to status quo and a much cherished position, but it is hard at this present moment to see how Sweden joining could lead to greater instability.
Hard to see how more nuclear weapons in the Baltic is in Sweden’s interest. Or anybody’s interest.
The only thing Putin understands is force. He'll exploit any kind of weakness. The trouble for Sweden is do they want to send weapons to Ukraine? They are perfectly entitled to but that will 'provoke' Moscow.
Huh? What on earth are you talking about? We already do.
So Putin may well threaten Sweden whether it is inside Nato or not.
We need to stop indulging this drivel about Putin seeing Nato as a direct threat to Russia. What sort of country with the biggest military alliance in the world on its doorstep would choose to commit its entire military capability to fighting a non-Nato with no likelihood of joining it? Russia has left itself completely exposed to a conventional attack from Nato - as general HR McMaster pointed out (in jest?) the Lithuanian army could probably march on St Petersburg right now.
So how can Putin AFFORD to be going all in on Ukraine? Because he clearly doesn't see Nato as a directly military threat to Russia at all. It is a completely bogus argument made as an excuse whereas in reality he knows that Nato membership stops him exerting his sphere of influence over eastern Europe. Given his entire modus operandi is one of fear and submission I think we know what that would mean in practice.
- “My view is this is something that will be remembered whenever the election happens and Johnson needs to do more to show his contrition.”
In order to show contrition you need to be contrite. Or to be able to fake sincerity. Johnson is unrepentant and transparent. A fatal combination for his party.
My view is this is something that will be remembered whenever the election happens, and long thereafter, and the Conservatives are going to be defeated. The brand is forever tarnished by the antics of the past few years. It’ll get worse as the full magnitude of the Brexit unforced error sinks in. Decent centre-right people should consider a fresh start.
Starmer needs to introduce PR and kill the repulsive Tory monster for good.
So you are one of those people who would change the rules of the game to help your side.
PR would not help the SNP.
I was speaking more broadly than party.
He was clear his purpose in introducing PR was to eliminate a party that he opposes.
That’s fine, if wrong. But no more squealing about gerrymandering from him please
Introducing a fair electoral system isn't 'gerrymandering'.
And, to be fair, I don't think anyone would really want to 'eliminate' the Conservative ;party. It normally represents a strand of opinion which deserves to be represented in Parliament. However, our system means that if either of the two parties is 'captured' by an extremist element, as appears to have happened now, then it can wreak havoc.
Introducing a new* electoral system for the purpose of “kill[ing] the repulsive Tory monster” is what he said. I’m choosing to take him at his word. You’re right though - it’s not gerrymandering. It’s far worse than that. It’s fundamentally undemocratic and illiberal.
* “fair” is a value judgement. I believe that it is right that a local area chooses someone to represent their interests. The person with most votes gets picked. What could be fairer than that?
Do you think it would be ‘right’ and ‘fair’ if Holyrood converted solely to FTP and the SNP having 90%+ of elected representatives?
Yes.
If that's how the voters vote, that's their choice.
However I expect you'd very rapidly find that the voters would react accordingly and the SNP wouldn't end up with 90%+ of representatives, however if the voters vote that way that's their choice.
You’re imagining collective agency in the voters in a situation where there are competing parties on one side of a constitutional argument. Since 2014 Westminster elections have given the SNP successively 95%+, 60%+ and 85%+ MPs, there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of voters reacting accordingly within an FPTP system.
Though Partygate seems to be getting the attention the real long term damage to the Conservative Party could come from the Rwanda Experiment. For some voters a louche Prime Minister comes way down their list of concerns. The Rwanda episode is of a diferent order. This has legs and has the capacity to change the perception of the Party itself
The more that people hear about the Rwanda plans, the more they are in favour of them. The British want to see a sense a fair play, and jumping the immigration queue by paying thousands to people traffickers to come from France, just isn’t cricket.
Brits where you are may be saying that. Brits in Britain appear to be saying the opposite. At least thats what polls are saying. Increasing numbers of Tory MPs and ministers giving off-the-record comments to that effect too.
Perhaps - and its only a theory - you need to live here to say with confidence what people who live here think. I wouldn't do an HY and presume to tell you what your local residents think having never been there.
I was going by the polling reported over the weekend, which suggested the policy was popular.
What's your understanding of the policy being proposed?
Because the polling I've seen is about a different policy, which is significantly less drastic than the actual plan.
If you arrive on an irregular boat, you go to Rwanda and will be processed for asylum there.
Some of the polling suggested that people would be assessed in Rwanda for immigration to the UK, which will likely be even less popular.
If you’re genuinely fleeing persecution, you shouldn’t be too worried about where you end up settled so long as it’s safe. For people who are primarily economic migrants trying to jump the queue, on the other hand…
Close, but no cigar.
Most won't go to Rwanda, because that scheme has fairly low capacity, and the Rwandans haven't agreed to take everyone the UK wants to send. Even a 90% cut in small boat migrant numbers would overwhelm the system.
And we don't know the overall view of "process in Rwanda/bring to UK" vs. "process in Rwanda/stay in Rwanda", because that polling hasn't been done. (The ambiguity in the question bothers me. People are often ambiguous when their conscience bothers them.)
I reckon that the scheme will start with failed asylum seekers where deportation to their home country is impossible.
It would be legal to do so, these people will have an evaluation of their claim and they are already in custody.
I dont think transporting folk straight from beach to airport is legally possible or viable.
Sweden’s prime minister Magdalena Andersson has told Dagens Nyheter, the leading broadsheet, that a Swedish NATO membership application in current circumstances would lead to further instability in Europe. She said: “In a situation like this, my judgment is that the best thing for Sweden’s security is that we are predictable, clear and hold a steady course.”
Opinion polling shows the large number of Don’t Knows breaking to the No side. However, if Finland joins that’s a game changer.
It is fascinating to see Sweden following Finnish affairs so closely. The country that was formerly simply eastern Sweden does not usually figure highly in modern Swedes’ consciousness. Mumins, party boats and homely tv shows in.quaint archaic dialects are about the sum of Finnish contribution to Swedish popular culture.
I can understand reversion to status quo and a much cherished position, but it is hard at this present moment to see how Sweden joining could lead to greater instability.
It will focus anger from Russia on Sweden. The question is whether that increased anger will make much difference to Sweden’s safety and that of her neighbours.
Given that during the Cold War, Russia had plans to nuke New Zealand despite the anti-nuclear stuff. And Invade Sweden in a number of conventional war scenarios… well, I don’t think it makes much difference at this point
Though Partygate seems to be getting the attention the real long term damage to the Conservative Party could come from the Rwanda Experiment. For some voters a louche Prime Minister comes way down their list of concerns. The Rwanda episode is of a diferent order. This has legs and has the capacity to change the perception of the Party itself
The more that people hear about the Rwanda plans, the more they are in favour of them. The British want to see a sense a fair play, and jumping the immigration queue by paying thousands to people traffickers to come from France, just isn’t cricket.
Brits where you are may be saying that. Brits in Britain appear to be saying the opposite. At least thats what polls are saying. Increasing numbers of Tory MPs and ministers giving off-the-record comments to that effect too.
Perhaps - and its only a theory - you need to live here to say with confidence what people who live here think. I wouldn't do an HY and presume to tell you what your local residents think having never been there.
I was going by the polling reported over the weekend, which suggested the policy was popular.
What's your understanding of the policy being proposed?
Because the polling I've seen is about a different policy, which is significantly less drastic than the actual plan.
If you arrive on an irregular boat, you go to Rwanda and will be processed for asylum there.
Some of the polling suggested that people would be assessed in Rwanda for immigration to the UK, which will likely be even less popular.
If you’re genuinely fleeing persecution, you shouldn’t be too worried about where you end up settled so long as it’s safe. For people who are primarily economic migrants trying to jump the queue, on the other hand…
Close, but no cigar.
Most won't go to Rwanda, because that scheme has fairly low capacity, and the Rwandans haven't agreed to take everyone the UK wants to send. Even a 90% cut in small boat migrant numbers would overwhelm the system.
And we don't know the overall view of "process in Rwanda/bring to UK" vs. "process in Rwanda/stay in Rwanda", because that polling hasn't been done. (The ambiguity in the question bothers me. People are often ambiguous when their conscience bothers them.)
In my mind, not taking all the boat arrivals makes it a less popular policy. It will only be effective, if it is very clear to those in Calais that irregular UK arrivals will never be settled there.
The primary aim needs to be to remove the pull factors, which currently lead to deaths at sea and enrichment of traffickers.
Though Partygate seems to be getting the attention the real long term damage to the Conservative Party could come from the Rwanda Experiment. For some voters a louche Prime Minister comes way down their list of concerns. The Rwanda episode is of a diferent order. This has legs and has the capacity to change the perception of the Party itself
The more that people hear about the Rwanda plans, the more they are in favour of them. The British want to see a sense a fair play, and jumping the immigration queue by paying thousands to people traffickers to come from France, just isn’t cricket.
Brits where you are may be saying that. Brits in Britain appear to be saying the opposite. At least thats what polls are saying. Increasing numbers of Tory MPs and ministers giving off-the-record comments to that effect too.
Perhaps - and its only a theory - you need to live here to say with confidence what people who live here think. I wouldn't do an HY and presume to tell you what your local residents think having never been there.
I was going by the polling reported over the weekend, which suggested the policy was popular.
What's your understanding of the policy being proposed?
Because the polling I've seen is about a different policy, which is significantly less drastic than the actual plan.
If you arrive on an irregular boat, you go to Rwanda and will be processed for asylum there.
Some of the polling suggested that people would be assessed in Rwanda for immigration to the UK, which will likely be even less popular.
If you’re genuinely fleeing persecution, you shouldn’t be too worried about where you end up settled so long as it’s safe. For people who are primarily economic migrants trying to jump the queue, on the other hand…
Close, but no cigar.
Most won't go to Rwanda, because that scheme has fairly low capacity, and the Rwandans haven't agreed to take everyone the UK wants to send. Even a 90% cut in small boat migrant numbers would overwhelm the system.
And we don't know the overall view of "process in Rwanda/bring to UK" vs. "process in Rwanda/stay in Rwanda", because that polling hasn't been done. (The ambiguity in the question bothers me. People are often ambiguous when their conscience bothers them.)
In my mind, not taking all the boat arrivals makes it a less popular policy. It will only be effective, if it is very clear to those in Calais that irregular UK arrivals will never be settled there.
The primary aim needs to be to remove the pull factors, which currently leads to deaths at sea and enrichment of traffickers.
The scheme will only work if everyone who arrives in a boat is guaranteed to go to Rwanda.
That is what worked in Australia. Everyone who arrived in a boat was guaranteed to go to Nauru. So they stopped coming at all via boat and the tiny few that still attempted it turned around because they didn't want to go to Nauru.
It always did make me curious why British economic migrants living in enclaves abroad were so often so against economic migrants living in enclaves in Britain.
People trying to play the UK immigration system by the rules, are furious that those arriving by irregular means, having paid large amounts of cash to smugglers and traffickers, are jumping the queue for settlement rights in the UK.
No, that's not the issue at all. People in Spain who live in Spain who barely speak Spanish and live in all-British enclaves only interacting with actual Spaniards in shops have told me - different people repeatedly - with a straight face that they're against people in the UK coming to the country who don't speak English or integrate.
Those aren't queue-jumpers they are referring to, or people living and working illegally. They are British citizens and people with indefinite leave and people who have valid papers to be working and paying taxes in the UK.
You personally may be quite content with the equivalent of you in the UK. Many are not. And the people who your party are pandering to see no difference between legal and illegal, queue jumpers or proper asylum seekers. They just want them gone.
That’s not what I’m saying at all. I’m saying that those trying to immigrate to the UK legitimately - my wife, to give one example - are not at all happy that hundreds of people a day are arriving with no paperwork on small boats, and almost all of them end up settled in the UK.
With respect your wife isn't the person who isn't the upset xenophobes whom the New Party are pandering to. She may very well think that and I respect her views - I also want to stop the traffic of small boats and undocumented people who disappear off into the black economy.
But that isn't what this is about. A section of the British population think its fine for them to do something but not fine for others to do the same. They wanted free movement - to live in France or Spain in enclaves - but wanted to stop free movement for anyone doing the same in Britain.
Sweden’s prime minister Magdalena Andersson has told Dagens Nyheter, the leading broadsheet, that a Swedish NATO membership application in current circumstances would lead to further instability in Europe. She said: “In a situation like this, my judgment is that the best thing for Sweden’s security is that we are predictable, clear and hold a steady course.”
Opinion polling shows the large number of Don’t Knows breaking to the No side. However, if Finland joins that’s a game changer.
It is fascinating to see Sweden following Finnish affairs so closely. The country that was formerly simply eastern Sweden does not usually figure highly in modern Swedes’ consciousness. Mumins, party boats and homely tv shows in.quaint archaic dialects are about the sum of Finnish contribution to Swedish popular culture.
I can understand reversion to status quo and a much cherished position, but it is hard at this present moment to see how Sweden joining could lead to greater instability.
Hard to see how more nuclear weapons in the Baltic is in Sweden’s interest. Or anybody’s interest.
The only thing Putin understands is force. He'll exploit any kind of weakness. The trouble for Sweden is do they want to send weapons to Ukraine? They are perfectly entitled to but that will 'provoke' Moscow.
Huh? What on earth are you talking about? We already do.
So Putin may well threaten Sweden whether it is inside Nato or not.
We need to stop indulging this drivel about Putin seeing Nato as a direct threat to Russia. What sort of country with the biggest military alliance in the world on its doorstep would choose to commit its entire military capability to fighting a non-Nato with no likelihood of joining it? Russia has left itself completely exposed to a conventional attack from Nato - as general HR McMaster pointed out (in jest?) the Lithuanian army could probably march on St Petersburg right now.
So how can Putin AFFORD to be going all in on Ukraine? Because he clearly doesn't see Nato as a directly military threat to Russia at all. It is a completely bogus argument made as an excuse whereas in reality he knows that Nato membership stops him exerting his sphere of influence over eastern Europe. Given his entire modus operandi is one of fear and submission I think we know what that would mean in practice.
We ought to stop excuse-making for Russia. Putin wants the Baltic states and most of Eastern Europe under his thumb. He will take anything as an 'excuse' for getting what he wants, real or invented. NATO expansion? WAR! Providing weapons to Ukraine? A clear casus belli! Looking at Putin in a funny way? Tactical nuclear weapons release!
Though Partygate seems to be getting the attention the real long term damage to the Conservative Party could come from the Rwanda Experiment. For some voters a louche Prime Minister comes way down their list of concerns. The Rwanda episode is of a diferent order. This has legs and has the capacity to change the perception of the Party itself
The more that people hear about the Rwanda plans, the more they are in favour of them. The British want to see a sense a fair play, and jumping the immigration queue by paying thousands to people traffickers to come from France, just isn’t cricket.
Where is your evidence? I have none other than the texts I'm getting are showing a fury that matches mine.
I never cease to be amazed at peoples ability to dredge up others who, by a happy coincidence, share their worldview on an issue when debating the same issue.
I don’t know a single person in the real world who has even expressed a view on it.
The phenomenon where people surround themselves with others who are *vocally* like minded, is well documented.
Those of their acquaintances who don’t share the group view on subject x, keep their mouths shut.
Hence the funny story of the lady in New York who couldn’t believe Reagan beat Mondale in 1984, because no one she knew had voted for Reagan.
We had an interesting demonstration of this here on PB, where a poster described his shock that instead of being anti-nuclear (like the rest of his group at uni) someone went and became a nuclear weapon engineer. The said scientist could not have considered the moral aspect - because he hadn’t discussed this with the rest of the group, first!
- “My view is this is something that will be remembered whenever the election happens and Johnson needs to do more to show his contrition.”
In order to show contrition you need to be contrite. Or to be able to fake sincerity. Johnson is unrepentant and transparent. A fatal combination for his party.
My view is this is something that will be remembered whenever the election happens, and long thereafter, and the Conservatives are going to be defeated. The brand is forever tarnished by the antics of the past few years. It’ll get worse as the full magnitude of the Brexit unforced error sinks in. Decent centre-right people should consider a fresh start.
Starmer needs to introduce PR and kill the repulsive Tory monster for good.
So you are one of those people who would change the rules of the game to help your side.
PR would not help the SNP.
I was speaking more broadly than party.
He was clear his purpose in introducing PR was to eliminate a party that he opposes.
That’s fine, if wrong. But no more squealing about gerrymandering from him please
Introducing a fair electoral system isn't 'gerrymandering'.
And, to be fair, I don't think anyone would really want to 'eliminate' the Conservative ;party. It normally represents a strand of opinion which deserves to be represented in Parliament. However, our system means that if either of the two parties is 'captured' by an extremist element, as appears to have happened now, then it can wreak havoc.
Introducing a new* electoral system for the purpose of “kill[ing] the repulsive Tory monster” is what he said. I’m choosing to take him at his word. You’re right though - it’s not gerrymandering. It’s far worse than that. It’s fundamentally undemocratic and illiberal.
* “fair” is a value judgement. I believe that it is right that a local area chooses someone to represent their interests. The person with most votes gets picked. What could be fairer than that?
Any system that ensures the plurality of views in that local area are represented in parliament would be fairer. And more complicated. And prone to bringing out the kind of people who will endlessly lecture you on how it is in fact not complicated.
How is a party with a manifesto supported by (say) 48% of the voters beaten by fairness when a party with 47% support is propped up by a party with 5% - who demand that half their (massively rejected) manifesto is then implemented?
It might be a pragmatic power grab. But "fair"???
But... Your 48% lot were also massively rejected. That's the problem with your argument. In those circumstances, I'd want that constitutency represented by 1 from the 48% lot, one from the 47% lot. Then a top up pool nationally/regionally ensuring that a party that ended up with 5% of the NEV got a tiny bit of representation.
If that 5% candidate was a local independent, then yes, they'd be massively rejected and deserve no particular representation at a national level.
There are plenty of systems that do that.
But the massively rejected 5% tail ends up wagging the dog. FPTP at least delivers the manifesto of the plurality.
I realise this is an argument neither side can win.
Sure. I'm not even in favour of changing the system, per se (I voted against the last change, as I felt that proposed system was no better than FPTP).
I don't buy the tail-wagging-the-dog argument, though. I think that is what we frequently get with internal party coalitions. I'd rather see a more open set of parties on 20% each forming coalitions in the open.
Though Partygate seems to be getting the attention the real long term damage to the Conservative Party could come from the Rwanda Experiment. For some voters a louche Prime Minister comes way down their list of concerns. The Rwanda episode is of a diferent order. This has legs and has the capacity to change the perception of the Party itself
The more that people hear about the Rwanda plans, the more they are in favour of them. The British want to see a sense a fair play, and jumping the immigration queue by paying thousands to people traffickers to come from France, just isn’t cricket.
Brits where you are may be saying that. Brits in Britain appear to be saying the opposite. At least thats what polls are saying. Increasing numbers of Tory MPs and ministers giving off-the-record comments to that effect too.
Perhaps - and its only a theory - you need to live here to say with confidence what people who live here think. I wouldn't do an HY and presume to tell you what your local residents think having never been there.
I was going by the polling reported over the weekend, which suggested the policy was popular.
What's your understanding of the policy being proposed?
Because the polling I've seen is about a different policy, which is significantly less drastic than the actual plan.
If you arrive on an irregular boat, you go to Rwanda and will be processed for asylum there.
Some of the polling suggested that people would be assessed in Rwanda for immigration to the UK, which will likely be even less popular.
If you’re genuinely fleeing persecution, you shouldn’t be too worried about where you end up settled so long as it’s safe. For people who are primarily economic migrants trying to jump the queue, on the other hand…
No. If you go to Rwanda you will not have your asylum processed at all. Thats the whole point in this press release. Nobody going to Rwanda will come back to the UK legally. They are being deported and thats the official end of the process. Which is why your opinion poll wasn't a reliable witness - its wrongly says what you said.
The policy is the 21st century equivalent of being sent to Botany Bay. Its a one-way trip.
- “My view is this is something that will be remembered whenever the election happens and Johnson needs to do more to show his contrition.”
In order to show contrition you need to be contrite. Or to be able to fake sincerity. Johnson is unrepentant and transparent. A fatal combination for his party.
My view is this is something that will be remembered whenever the election happens, and long thereafter, and the Conservatives are going to be defeated. The brand is forever tarnished by the antics of the past few years. It’ll get worse as the full magnitude of the Brexit unforced error sinks in. Decent centre-right people should consider a fresh start.
Starmer needs to introduce PR and kill the repulsive Tory monster for good.
So you are one of those people who would change the rules of the game to help your side.
PR would not help the SNP.
I was speaking more broadly than party.
He was clear his purpose in introducing PR was to eliminate a party that he opposes.
That’s fine, if wrong. But no more squealing about gerrymandering from him please
Introducing a fair electoral system isn't 'gerrymandering'.
And, to be fair, I don't think anyone would really want to 'eliminate' the Conservative ;party. It normally represents a strand of opinion which deserves to be represented in Parliament. However, our system means that if either of the two parties is 'captured' by an extremist element, as appears to have happened now, then it can wreak havoc.
Introducing a new* electoral system for the purpose of “kill[ing] the repulsive Tory monster” is what he said. I’m choosing to take him at his word. You’re right though - it’s not gerrymandering. It’s far worse than that. It’s fundamentally undemocratic and illiberal.
* “fair” is a value judgement. I believe that it is right that a local area chooses someone to represent their interests. The person with most votes gets picked. What could be fairer than that?
Do you think it would be ‘right’ and ‘fair’ if Holyrood converted solely to FTP and the SNP having 90%+ of elected representatives?
Yes.
If that's how the voters vote, that's their choice.
However I expect you'd very rapidly find that the voters would react accordingly and the SNP wouldn't end up with 90%+ of representatives, however if the voters vote that way that's their choice.
You’re imagining collective agency in the voters in a situation where there are competing parties on one side of a constitutional argument. Since 2014 Westminster elections have given the SNP successively 95%+, 60%+ and 85%+ MPs, there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of voters reacting accordingly within an FPTP system.
Since 2014 Westminster elections have given the SNP successively 8.6%, 5.4% and 7.4% of MPs.
Scottish MPs aren't elected in a vacuum. If they were, then we'd have had an SNP Prime Minister, but they've been on the Opposition benches.
Though Partygate seems to be getting the attention the real long term damage to the Conservative Party could come from the Rwanda Experiment. For some voters a louche Prime Minister comes way down their list of concerns. The Rwanda episode is of a diferent order. This has legs and has the capacity to change the perception of the Party itself
The more that people hear about the Rwanda plans, the more they are in favour of them. The British want to see a sense a fair play, and jumping the immigration queue by paying thousands to people traffickers to come from France, just isn’t cricket.
Brits where you are may be saying that. Brits in Britain appear to be saying the opposite. At least thats what polls are saying. Increasing numbers of Tory MPs and ministers giving off-the-record comments to that effect too.
Perhaps - and its only a theory - you need to live here to say with confidence what people who live here think. I wouldn't do an HY and presume to tell you what your local residents think having never been there.
I was going by the polling reported over the weekend, which suggested the policy was popular.
What's your understanding of the policy being proposed?
Because the polling I've seen is about a different policy, which is significantly less drastic than the actual plan.
If you arrive on an irregular boat, you go to Rwanda and will be processed for asylum there.
Some of the polling suggested that people would be assessed in Rwanda for immigration to the UK, which will likely be even less popular.
If you’re genuinely fleeing persecution, you shouldn’t be too worried about where you end up settled so long as it’s safe. For people who are primarily economic migrants trying to jump the queue, on the other hand…
Close, but no cigar.
Most won't go to Rwanda, because that scheme has fairly low capacity, and the Rwandans haven't agreed to take everyone the UK wants to send. Even a 90% cut in small boat migrant numbers would overwhelm the system.
And we don't know the overall view of "process in Rwanda/bring to UK" vs. "process in Rwanda/stay in Rwanda", because that polling hasn't been done. (The ambiguity in the question bothers me. People are often ambiguous when their conscience bothers them.)
In my mind, not taking all the boat arrivals makes it a less popular policy. It will only be effective, if it is very clear to those in Calais that irregular UK arrivals will never be settled there.
The primary aim needs to be to remove the pull factors, which currently lead to deaths at sea and enrichment of traffickers.
The pull factor being that people can get off the boats undetected and go straight to work in the black economy. We can't stop the boats, we can stop the scum employers.
Though Partygate seems to be getting the attention the real long term damage to the Conservative Party could come from the Rwanda Experiment. For some voters a louche Prime Minister comes way down their list of concerns. The Rwanda episode is of a diferent order. This has legs and has the capacity to change the perception of the Party itself
The more that people hear about the Rwanda plans, the more they are in favour of them. The British want to see a sense a fair play, and jumping the immigration queue by paying thousands to people traffickers to come from France, just isn’t cricket.
Brits where you are may be saying that. Brits in Britain appear to be saying the opposite. At least thats what polls are saying. Increasing numbers of Tory MPs and ministers giving off-the-record comments to that effect too.
Perhaps - and its only a theory - you need to live here to say with confidence what people who live here think. I wouldn't do an HY and presume to tell you what your local residents think having never been there.
I was going by the polling reported over the weekend, which suggested the policy was popular.
What's your understanding of the policy being proposed?
Because the polling I've seen is about a different policy, which is significantly less drastic than the actual plan.
If you arrive on an irregular boat, you go to Rwanda and will be processed for asylum there.
Some of the polling suggested that people would be assessed in Rwanda for immigration to the UK, which will likely be even less popular.
If you’re genuinely fleeing persecution, you shouldn’t be too worried about where you end up settled so long as it’s safe. For people who are primarily economic migrants trying to jump the queue, on the other hand…
No. If you go to Rwanda you will not have your asylum processed at all. Thats the whole point in this press release. Nobody going to Rwanda will come back to the UK legally. They are being deported and thats the official end of the process. Which is why your opinion poll wasn't a reliable witness - its wrongly says what you said.
The policy is the 21st century equivalent of being sent to Botany Bay. Its a one-way trip.
As I now understand. If it’s a one way trip, that likely makes it more popular with the British public, rather than less popular.
I look forward to more nuanced polling on this issue.
Though Partygate seems to be getting the attention the real long term damage to the Conservative Party could come from the Rwanda Experiment. For some voters a louche Prime Minister comes way down their list of concerns. The Rwanda episode is of a diferent order. This has legs and has the capacity to change the perception of the Party itself
The more that people hear about the Rwanda plans, the more they are in favour of them. The British want to see a sense a fair play, and jumping the immigration queue by paying thousands to people traffickers to come from France, just isn’t cricket.
Brits where you are may be saying that. Brits in Britain appear to be saying the opposite. At least thats what polls are saying. Increasing numbers of Tory MPs and ministers giving off-the-record comments to that effect too.
Perhaps - and its only a theory - you need to live here to say with confidence what people who live here think. I wouldn't do an HY and presume to tell you what your local residents think having never been there.
I was going by the polling reported over the weekend, which suggested the policy was popular.
What's your understanding of the policy being proposed?
Because the polling I've seen is about a different policy, which is significantly less drastic than the actual plan.
If you arrive on an irregular boat, you go to Rwanda and will be processed for asylum there.
Some of the polling suggested that people would be assessed in Rwanda for immigration to the UK, which will likely be even less popular.
If you’re genuinely fleeing persecution, you shouldn’t be too worried about where you end up settled so long as it’s safe. For people who are primarily economic migrants trying to jump the queue, on the other hand…
No. If you go to Rwanda you will not have your asylum processed at all. Thats the whole point in this press release. Nobody going to Rwanda will come back to the UK legally. They are being deported and thats the official end of the process. Which is why your opinion poll wasn't a reliable witness - its wrongly says what you said.
The policy is the 21st century equivalent of being sent to Botany Bay. Its a one-way trip.
You will have your asylum processed there.
That's the end of the process for the UK, but they can still be granted asylum there.
That is what worked in Australia. Everyone who arrived in a boat was guaranteed to go to Nauru. So they stopped coming at all via boat and the tiny few that still attempted it turned around because they didn't want to go to Nauru.
It worked in Australia because they had Christmas Island where the refugees could be interned outside the Australian Migration Zone and thus unable to lodge asylum claims or access the legal system. There is no such facility available to the UK.
The Australian government also had the fortitude to do tow backs as a further deterrent. There is no such fortitude available to Johnson.
If no laws were broken, why is he being handed a fine?
He is basically saying the Met are wrong. So why is he not fighting it in court?
Simples.
Because fighting it in court has costs (financial and non financial). Settling should not be seen as an admission of guilt.
All of this matters little.
BJ partying in No10 is in the public consciousness. It has entered the non-political obsessive* discourse. A disheveled Boris doing a Conga through the building while drinking wine from the bottle, every night of lockdown seems to be the image implanted in the minds of the public
*most people regard knowing your MPs name as making someone a political expert. More than that is seen as a bit… activist.
Though Partygate seems to be getting the attention the real long term damage to the Conservative Party could come from the Rwanda Experiment. For some voters a louche Prime Minister comes way down their list of concerns. The Rwanda episode is of a diferent order. This has legs and has the capacity to change the perception of the Party itself
The more that people hear about the Rwanda plans, the more they are in favour of them. The British want to see a sense a fair play, and jumping the immigration queue by paying thousands to people traffickers to come from France, just isn’t cricket.
Brits where you are may be saying that. Brits in Britain appear to be saying the opposite. At least thats what polls are saying. Increasing numbers of Tory MPs and ministers giving off-the-record comments to that effect too.
Perhaps - and its only a theory - you need to live here to say with confidence what people who live here think. I wouldn't do an HY and presume to tell you what your local residents think having never been there.
I was going by the polling reported over the weekend, which suggested the policy was popular.
What's your understanding of the policy being proposed?
Because the polling I've seen is about a different policy, which is significantly less drastic than the actual plan.
If you arrive on an irregular boat, you go to Rwanda and will be processed for asylum there.
Some of the polling suggested that people would be assessed in Rwanda for immigration to the UK, which will likely be even less popular.
If you’re genuinely fleeing persecution, you shouldn’t be too worried about where you end up settled so long as it’s safe. For people who are primarily economic migrants trying to jump the queue, on the other hand…
Close, but no cigar.
Most won't go to Rwanda, because that scheme has fairly low capacity, and the Rwandans haven't agreed to take everyone the UK wants to send. Even a 90% cut in small boat migrant numbers would overwhelm the system.
And we don't know the overall view of "process in Rwanda/bring to UK" vs. "process in Rwanda/stay in Rwanda", because that polling hasn't been done. (The ambiguity in the question bothers me. People are often ambiguous when their conscience bothers them.)
In my mind, not taking all the boat arrivals makes it a less popular policy. It will only be effective, if it is very clear to those in Calais that irregular UK arrivals will never be settled there.
The primary aim needs to be to remove the pull factors, which currently leads to deaths at sea and enrichment of traffickers.
The scheme will only work if everyone who arrives in a boat is guaranteed to go to Rwanda.
That is what worked in Australia. Everyone who arrived in a boat was guaranteed to go to Nauru. So they stopped coming at all via boat and the tiny few that still attempted it turned around because they didn't want to go to Nauru.
Yup. And since that's not on the agenda, this scheme isn't going to work, and Rwanda aren't going to be mad enough to sign up for a scheme with enough capacity to work like that.
So how about we cut to the chase, and look for things that might work? That's (for example) clamping down on the irregular economy, and recognising that we need to co-operate with the French, ghastly though they are?
Because otherwise, we're in the "this was worse than immoral, it was a mistake" territory.
Though Partygate seems to be getting the attention the real long term damage to the Conservative Party could come from the Rwanda Experiment. For some voters a louche Prime Minister comes way down their list of concerns. The Rwanda episode is of a diferent order. This has legs and has the capacity to change the perception of the Party itself
The more that people hear about the Rwanda plans, the more they are in favour of them. The British want to see a sense a fair play, and jumping the immigration queue by paying thousands to people traffickers to come from France, just isn’t cricket.
Brits where you are may be saying that. Brits in Britain appear to be saying the opposite. At least thats what polls are saying. Increasing numbers of Tory MPs and ministers giving off-the-record comments to that effect too.
Perhaps - and its only a theory - you need to live here to say with confidence what people who live here think. I wouldn't do an HY and presume to tell you what your local residents think having never been there.
I was going by the polling reported over the weekend, which suggested the policy was popular.
What's your understanding of the policy being proposed?
Because the polling I've seen is about a different policy, which is significantly less drastic than the actual plan.
If you arrive on an irregular boat, you go to Rwanda and will be processed for asylum there.
Some of the polling suggested that people would be assessed in Rwanda for immigration to the UK, which will likely be even less popular.
If you’re genuinely fleeing persecution, you shouldn’t be too worried about where you end up settled so long as it’s safe. For people who are primarily economic migrants trying to jump the queue, on the other hand…
Close, but no cigar.
Most won't go to Rwanda, because that scheme has fairly low capacity, and the Rwandans haven't agreed to take everyone the UK wants to send. Even a 90% cut in small boat migrant numbers would overwhelm the system.
And we don't know the overall view of "process in Rwanda/bring to UK" vs. "process in Rwanda/stay in Rwanda", because that polling hasn't been done. (The ambiguity in the question bothers me. People are often ambiguous when their conscience bothers them.)
In my mind, not taking all the boat arrivals makes it a less popular policy. It will only be effective, if it is very clear to those in Calais that irregular UK arrivals will never be settled there.
The primary aim needs to be to remove the pull factors, which currently lead to deaths at sea and enrichment of traffickers.
The pull factor being that people can get off the boats undetected and go straight to work in the black economy. We can't stop the boats, we can stop the scum employers.
Agreed on employers, but AIUI it’s already very much illegal to give work or accommodation to undocumented immigrants. I know that landlords and tenants have to jump through numerous hoops to prove right of residence.
Only 42 sailors dying would seem remarkable to be honest, weren't there said to be more than 10x as many on the ship?
For the explosions to have done enough damage to sink the ship, but only to kill less than a tenth of the crew seems like a lucky escape for most of the sailors.
Considering many of the sailors are possibly conscripts or have little choice but to be there, having the ship at the bottom of the sea but most sailors surviving is a nice outcome if so.
20 died on HMS Sheffield when she was hit in the Falklands War out of a complement of 280 (I think).
Smaller ship, one missile, smaller warhead (which may or may not of detonated)….
Though Partygate seems to be getting the attention the real long term damage to the Conservative Party could come from the Rwanda Experiment. For some voters a louche Prime Minister comes way down their list of concerns. The Rwanda episode is of a diferent order. This has legs and has the capacity to change the perception of the Party itself
The more that people hear about the Rwanda plans, the more they are in favour of them. The British want to see a sense a fair play, and jumping the immigration queue by paying thousands to people traffickers to come from France, just isn’t cricket.
Brits where you are may be saying that. Brits in Britain appear to be saying the opposite. At least thats what polls are saying. Increasing numbers of Tory MPs and ministers giving off-the-record comments to that effect too.
Perhaps - and its only a theory - you need to live here to say with confidence what people who live here think. I wouldn't do an HY and presume to tell you what your local residents think having never been there.
I was going by the polling reported over the weekend, which suggested the policy was popular.
What's your understanding of the policy being proposed?
Because the polling I've seen is about a different policy, which is significantly less drastic than the actual plan.
If you arrive on an irregular boat, you go to Rwanda and will be processed for asylum there.
Some of the polling suggested that people would be assessed in Rwanda for immigration to the UK, which will likely be even less popular.
If you’re genuinely fleeing persecution, you shouldn’t be too worried about where you end up settled so long as it’s safe. For people who are primarily economic migrants trying to jump the queue, on the other hand…
No. If you go to Rwanda you will not have your asylum processed at all. Thats the whole point in this press release. Nobody going to Rwanda will come back to the UK legally. They are being deported and thats the official end of the process. Which is why your opinion poll wasn't a reliable witness - its wrongly says what you said.
The policy is the 21st century equivalent of being sent to Botany Bay. Its a one-way trip.
Yes you will, you will be treated as seeking asylum in Rwanda (i.e. applying in Rwanda for permission to stay in Rwanda). God knows what happens if Rwanda reject you.
I’ve said before that I think Johnson believes it when he says he didn’t lie. They convinced themselves that all the things they did were within the rules for working during the lockdowns. Now everyone else can believe that’s bollocks, but I think it is germane to the charge of lying to the house. No PM should have to resign over. FPN. Other mps have had them, for instance, and they are trivial. The weapon people are wielding is the lying to parliament. But Johnson, in his eyes, didn’t lie, they just got it wrong. Ultimately it will make little difference. I suspect the 80% of the public who scrupulously followed the rules will be waiting for the election, daggers raised. And I doubt anyone else on here will agree with my view.
Looking on from afar, most of my social group can’t understand this story at all.
The only fine the PM has been given so far, was for turning up to a work meeting on his birthday, where everyone present was meeting anyway, then his wife and a colleague turned up with a cake those present sang happy birthday to him. No cake was eaten, and only the PM’s wife was not going to be there anyway.
The alleged lying to Parliament, is based on whether the above event is described as ‘a party’ or not, when asked more than a year later if there were ‘any more parties’.
On the basis of this, numerous people are calling for the PM to resign.
The law was not against parties but non essential work gatherings. Whether anyone believed or believes it to be a party is irrelevant to the law, or whether the PM was lying when he said he followed the rules.
The questions are was it a gathering (yes) and was it essential work (no). On this particular party there is a grey area because they were already gathered. I think this one could have been let go on that basis.
But the leaving drinks ones, and the email to make the most of the lovely weather with drinks are definitely clear breaches of the rules, regardless of whether one thinks of them as parties or not.
Agreed, that the leaving drinks was definitely a party by any definition of the word - although was attended only by civil servants rather than politicians.
Inviting a group of people who had been working together indoors all day, to sit in the garden outdoors for half an hour, may have been a technical breach of the letter of the rules, but doesn’t meet most people’s definition of a party - except in the minds of those who start with wanting the PM to resign and work backwards from there.
Johnson (a politician) is reported to have attended at least one leaving drinks.
The COVID regulations didn’t ban parties. It is irrelevant whether something was or was not a party. They banned non-essential gatherings.
You’re correct about the regulations. The issue with ‘parties’ is that opponents of the PM are using his comments on ‘parties’ to Parliament, to accuse him of lying. The ‘lie’ only exists, if one accepts that the PM being delivered a cake on his birthday amounts to a ‘party’, when he was asked about it more than a year later.
Not true. He said to Parliament that all rules were followed. They were not. That they were not should’ve been palpably obvious to him.
Not true. People can have different interpretations of what the rules are and can justify to themselves that they're not breaking them even if others think they are.
Many people seem to forget that this is a workplace that allows alcohol to be consumed in the workplace. There are many, many bars in Parliament etc - the idea that work + alcohol = broken rules is simply not true.
Whether its a good or bad idea to be drinking alcohol at work is an entirely different matter.
The events concerned did not take place in Parliament but in a government office, where there are no bars whatsoever.
And no people who work in Downing Street work in Parliament?
Alcohol has been allowed in Downing Street all along. Suitcases of wine have been a tradition for many, many years as part of the working culture there including under previous Prime Ministers it is nothing new.
So if that's your normal working day pre-pandemic, then no people won't automatically think "oh there's alcohol here, that's not work" during it.
I'm sure the people who work in Downing Street who are also sometimes in Parliament know that they are different places. All civil servants in Downing Street will have been made well aware of their constitutional position. Let's consider a similar situation: I work in a university. There are student bars on campus. My office is closer to the nearest student bar than No. 10 is to Parliament. I am aware that my office is different from a student bar and the behaviour that goes on in student bars is not appropriate behaviour in my office.
So, anyway, we're agreed that the presence of bars in Parliament is a red herring. Good. Where have you moved to the goal posts to next? Oh, it's the "there was a drinking culture" defence...
Has there been a long-standing drinking culture in No. 10? Perhaps. There were lots of things we all used to do in offices before lockdown. Lockdown changed everything for most people. They knew we were in a different situation. People working on pandemic work knew that more than most in my experience. So the idea that everyone was just carrying on pre-pandemic habits unthinkingly is ridiculous.
Maybe there were some individuals who were stupid enough to think that lockdown hadn't changed anything. That's where leadership comes in. There should have been clear guidance from the senior civil servants and the political leadership, i.e. Boris Johnson. Johnson was going on TV regularly laying out the rules. He must have known what they were, or does he just move his lips without listening to what he's actually saying?
Though Partygate seems to be getting the attention the real long term damage to the Conservative Party could come from the Rwanda Experiment. For some voters a louche Prime Minister comes way down their list of concerns. The Rwanda episode is of a diferent order. This has legs and has the capacity to change the perception of the Party itself
The more that people hear about the Rwanda plans, the more they are in favour of them. The British want to see a sense a fair play, and jumping the immigration queue by paying thousands to people traffickers to come from France, just isn’t cricket.
Brits where you are may be saying that. Brits in Britain appear to be saying the opposite. At least thats what polls are saying. Increasing numbers of Tory MPs and ministers giving off-the-record comments to that effect too.
Perhaps - and its only a theory - you need to live here to say with confidence what people who live here think. I wouldn't do an HY and presume to tell you what your local residents think having never been there.
I was going by the polling reported over the weekend, which suggested the policy was popular.
What's your understanding of the policy being proposed?
Because the polling I've seen is about a different policy, which is significantly less drastic than the actual plan.
If you arrive on an irregular boat, you go to Rwanda and will be processed for asylum there.
Some of the polling suggested that people would be assessed in Rwanda for immigration to the UK, which will likely be even less popular.
If you’re genuinely fleeing persecution, you shouldn’t be too worried about where you end up settled so long as it’s safe. For people who are primarily economic migrants trying to jump the queue, on the other hand…
Close, but no cigar.
Most won't go to Rwanda, because that scheme has fairly low capacity, and the Rwandans haven't agreed to take everyone the UK wants to send. Even a 90% cut in small boat migrant numbers would overwhelm the system.
And we don't know the overall view of "process in Rwanda/bring to UK" vs. "process in Rwanda/stay in Rwanda", because that polling hasn't been done. (The ambiguity in the question bothers me. People are often ambiguous when their conscience bothers them.)
In my mind, not taking all the boat arrivals makes it a less popular policy. It will only be effective, if it is very clear to those in Calais that irregular UK arrivals will never be settled there.
The primary aim needs to be to remove the pull factors, which currently lead to deaths at sea and enrichment of traffickers.
The pull factor being that people can get off the boats undetected and go straight to work in the black economy. We can't stop the boats, we can stop the scum employers.
How do you propose that? We already have tried a hostile environment introduced by Labour and continued under the Tories were the scum employers are meant to be heavily fined and/or jailed if they employ illegal migrants.
The hostile environment has seriously hurt a lot of decent people, both public and employers though and the scum continue.
Only 42 sailors dying would seem remarkable to be honest, weren't there said to be more than 10x as many on the ship?
For the explosions to have done enough damage to sink the ship, but only to kill less than a tenth of the crew seems like a lucky escape for most of the sailors.
Considering many of the sailors are possibly conscripts or have little choice but to be there, having the ship at the bottom of the sea but most sailors surviving is a nice outcome if so.
The report is that 42 sailors were killed by the explosion. The suggestion is that many hundreds more died as it sank. There are reports of 50 ish rescued, of nearly 500 total crew, which would suggest c.450 went down with the ship.
I’ve said before that I think Johnson believes it when he says he didn’t lie. They convinced themselves that all the things they did were within the rules for working during the lockdowns. Now everyone else can believe that’s bollocks, but I think it is germane to the charge of lying to the house. No PM should have to resign over. FPN. Other mps have had them, for instance, and they are trivial. The weapon people are wielding is the lying to parliament. But Johnson, in his eyes, didn’t lie, they just got it wrong. Ultimately it will make little difference. I suspect the 80% of the public who scrupulously followed the rules will be waiting for the election, daggers raised. And I doubt anyone else on here will agree with my view.
Looking on from afar, most of my social group can’t understand this story at all.
The only fine the PM has been given so far, was for turning up to a work meeting on his birthday, where everyone present was meeting anyway, then his wife and a colleague turned up with a cake those present sang happy birthday to him. No cake was eaten, and only the PM’s wife was not going to be there anyway.
The alleged lying to Parliament, is based on whether the above event is described as ‘a party’ or not, when asked more than a year later if there were ‘any more parties’.
On the basis of this, numerous people are calling for the PM to resign.
The law was not against parties but non essential work gatherings. Whether anyone believed or believes it to be a party is irrelevant to the law, or whether the PM was lying when he said he followed the rules.
The questions are was it a gathering (yes) and was it essential work (no). On this particular party there is a grey area because they were already gathered. I think this one could have been let go on that basis.
But the leaving drinks ones, and the email to make the most of the lovely weather with drinks are definitely clear breaches of the rules, regardless of whether one thinks of them as parties or not.
Agreed, that the leaving drinks was definitely a party by any definition of the word - although was attended only by civil servants rather than politicians.
Inviting a group of people who had been working together indoors all day, to sit in the garden outdoors for half an hour, may have been a technical breach of the letter of the rules, but doesn’t meet most people’s definition of a party - except in the minds of those who start with wanting the PM to resign and work backwards from there.
Johnson (a politician) is reported to have attended at least one leaving drinks.
The COVID regulations didn’t ban parties. It is irrelevant whether something was or was not a party. They banned non-essential gatherings.
You’re correct about the regulations. The issue with ‘parties’ is that opponents of the PM are using his comments on ‘parties’ to Parliament, to accuse him of lying. The ‘lie’ only exists, if one accepts that the PM being delivered a cake on his birthday amounts to a ‘party’, when he was asked about it more than a year later.
Not true. He said to Parliament that all rules were followed. They were not. That they were not should’ve been palpably obvious to him.
Not true. People can have different interpretations of what the rules are and can justify to themselves that they're not breaking them even if others think they are.
Many people seem to forget that this is a workplace that allows alcohol to be consumed in the workplace. There are many, many bars in Parliament etc - the idea that work + alcohol = broken rules is simply not true.
Whether its a good or bad idea to be drinking alcohol at work is an entirely different matter.
The events concerned did not take place in Parliament but in a government office, where there are no bars whatsoever.
And no people who work in Downing Street work in Parliament?
Alcohol has been allowed in Downing Street all along. Suitcases of wine have been a tradition for many, many years as part of the working culture there including under previous Prime Ministers it is nothing new.
So if that's your normal working day pre-pandemic, then no people won't automatically think "oh there's alcohol here, that's not work" during it.
I'm sure the people who work in Downing Street who are also sometimes in Parliament know that they are different places. All civil servants in Downing Street will have been made well aware of their constitutional position. Let's consider a similar situation: I work in a university. There are student bars on campus. My office is closer to the nearest student bar than No. 10 is to Parliament. I am aware that my office is different from a student bar and the behaviour that goes on in student bars is not appropriate behaviour in my office.
So, anyway, we're agreed that the presence of bars in Parliament is a red herring. Good. Where have you moved to the goal posts to next? Oh, it's the "there was a drinking culture" defence...
Has there been a long-standing drinking culture in No. 10? Perhaps. There were lots of things we all used to do in offices before lockdown. Lockdown changed everything for most people. They knew we were in a different situation. People working on pandemic work knew that more than most in my experience. So the idea that everyone was just carrying on pre-pandemic habits unthinkingly is ridiculous.
Maybe there were some individuals who were stupid enough to think that lockdown hadn't changed anything. That's where leadership comes in. There should have been clear guidance from the senior civil servants and the political leadership, i.e. Boris Johnson. Johnson was going on TV regularly laying out the rules. He must have known what they were, or does he just move his lips without listening to what he's actually saying?
Quite so. I have worked in offices with not so much a drinking as a full on alcoholism culture, and nobody ever thought drinking in the workplace therefore counted as work.
It always did make me curious why British economic migrants living in enclaves abroad were so often so against economic migrants living in enclaves in Britain.
People trying to play the UK immigration system by the rules, are furious that those arriving by irregular means, having paid large amounts of cash to smugglers and traffickers, are jumping the queue for settlement rights in the UK.
No, that's not the issue at all. People in Spain who live in Spain who barely speak Spanish and live in all-British enclaves only interacting with actual Spaniards in shops have told me - different people repeatedly - with a straight face that they're against people in the UK coming to the country who don't speak English or integrate.
Those aren't queue-jumpers they are referring to, or people living and working illegally. They are British citizens and people with indefinite leave and people who have valid papers to be working and paying taxes in the UK.
You personally may be quite content with the equivalent of you in the UK. Many are not. And the people who your party are pandering to see no difference between legal and illegal, queue jumpers or proper asylum seekers. They just want them gone.
That’s not what I’m saying at all. I’m saying that those trying to immigrate to the UK legitimately - my wife, to give one example - are not at all happy that hundreds of people a day are arriving with no paperwork on small boats, and almost all of them end up settled in the UK.
I'm afraid the UK, in particular this Brexiteer government, doesn't want ANY foreigners including your wife, unless they have money to launder. The cohort that might be transported to Rwanda are almost all genuine refugees. They got to the UK by mistake in the view of the government.
- “My view is this is something that will be remembered whenever the election happens and Johnson needs to do more to show his contrition.”
In order to show contrition you need to be contrite. Or to be able to fake sincerity. Johnson is unrepentant and transparent. A fatal combination for his party.
My view is this is something that will be remembered whenever the election happens, and long thereafter, and the Conservatives are going to be defeated. The brand is forever tarnished by the antics of the past few years. It’ll get worse as the full magnitude of the Brexit unforced error sinks in. Decent centre-right people should consider a fresh start.
Starmer needs to introduce PR and kill the repulsive Tory monster for good.
So you are one of those people who would change the rules of the game to help your side.
PR would not help the SNP.
I was speaking more broadly than party.
He was clear his purpose in introducing PR was to eliminate a party that he opposes.
That’s fine, if wrong. But no more squealing about gerrymandering from him please
Introducing a fair electoral system isn't 'gerrymandering'.
And, to be fair, I don't think anyone would really want to 'eliminate' the Conservative ;party. It normally represents a strand of opinion which deserves to be represented in Parliament. However, our system means that if either of the two parties is 'captured' by an extremist element, as appears to have happened now, then it can wreak havoc.
Introducing a new* electoral system for the purpose of “kill[ing] the repulsive Tory monster” is what he said. I’m choosing to take him at his word. You’re right though - it’s not gerrymandering. It’s far worse than that. It’s fundamentally undemocratic and illiberal.
* “fair” is a value judgement. I believe that it is right that a local area chooses someone to represent their interests. The person with most votes gets picked. What could be fairer than that?
Any system that ensures the plurality of views in that local area are represented in parliament would be fairer. And more complicated. And prone to bringing out the kind of people who will endlessly lecture you on how it is in fact not complicated.
How is a party with a manifesto supported by (say) 48% of the voters beaten by fairness when a party with 47% support is propped up by a party with 5% - who demand that half their (massively rejected) manifesto is then implemented?
It might be a pragmatic power grab. But "fair"???
But... Your 48% lot were also massively rejected. That's the problem with your argument. In those circumstances, I'd want that constitutency represented by 1 from the 48% lot, one from the 47% lot. Then a top up pool nationally/regionally ensuring that a party that ended up with 5% of the NEV got a tiny bit of representation.
If that 5% candidate was a local independent, then yes, they'd be massively rejected and deserve no particular representation at a national level.
There are plenty of systems that do that.
But the massively rejected 5% tail ends up wagging the dog. FPTP at least delivers the manifesto of the plurality.
I realise this is an argument neither side can win.
Sure. I'm not even in favour of changing the system, per se (I voted against the last change, as I felt that proposed system was no better than FPTP).
I don't buy the tail-wagging-the-dog argument, though. I think that is what we frequently get with internal party coalitions. I'd rather see a more open set of parties on 20% each forming coalitions in the open.
In the Cameron/Clegg coalition, the LibDems stipulated that there was to not even be discussion of the UK's place within the EU. A position that led to the rise of UKIP, the Conservative response to that rise, the referendum - and Brexit.
If Cameron's Conservatives (307 seats) had been free to hold an EU referendum in 2011 over the objections of Clegg's LibDems (57 seats) we would almost certainly have been in the EU for a generation (and to all intents and purposes, forever).
The most profound post-war political change was entirely down to the tail wagging the dog.
Though Partygate seems to be getting the attention the real long term damage to the Conservative Party could come from the Rwanda Experiment. For some voters a louche Prime Minister comes way down their list of concerns. The Rwanda episode is of a diferent order. This has legs and has the capacity to change the perception of the Party itself
The more that people hear about the Rwanda plans, the more they are in favour of them. The British want to see a sense a fair play, and jumping the immigration queue by paying thousands to people traffickers to come from France, just isn’t cricket.
Brits where you are may be saying that. Brits in Britain appear to be saying the opposite. At least thats what polls are saying. Increasing numbers of Tory MPs and ministers giving off-the-record comments to that effect too.
Perhaps - and its only a theory - you need to live here to say with confidence what people who live here think. I wouldn't do an HY and presume to tell you what your local residents think having never been there.
I was going by the polling reported over the weekend, which suggested the policy was popular.
What's your understanding of the policy being proposed?
Because the polling I've seen is about a different policy, which is significantly less drastic than the actual plan.
If you arrive on an irregular boat, you go to Rwanda and will be processed for asylum there.
Some of the polling suggested that people would be assessed in Rwanda for immigration to the UK, which will likely be even less popular.
If you’re genuinely fleeing persecution, you shouldn’t be too worried about where you end up settled so long as it’s safe. For people who are primarily economic migrants trying to jump the queue, on the other hand…
Close, but no cigar.
Most won't go to Rwanda, because that scheme has fairly low capacity, and the Rwandans haven't agreed to take everyone the UK wants to send. Even a 90% cut in small boat migrant numbers would overwhelm the system.
And we don't know the overall view of "process in Rwanda/bring to UK" vs. "process in Rwanda/stay in Rwanda", because that polling hasn't been done. (The ambiguity in the question bothers me. People are often ambiguous when their conscience bothers them.)
In my mind, not taking all the boat arrivals makes it a less popular policy. It will only be effective, if it is very clear to those in Calais that irregular UK arrivals will never be settled there.
The primary aim needs to be to remove the pull factors, which currently lead to deaths at sea and enrichment of traffickers.
The pull factor being that people can get off the boats undetected and go straight to work in the black economy. We can't stop the boats, we can stop the scum employers.
Agreed on employers, but AIUI it’s already very much illegal to give work or accommodation to illegal immigrants. I know that landlords and tenants have to jump through numourous hoops to prove right of residence.
Not far from me, a four bed house was being lived in by 15 people, who were fairly obviously illegal immigrants.
The way this works is the landlord rents the house for cash ( if he doesn’t give a shit) or rents it to a single person with documents, who then sublets. Those using the single-tenant-who-sublets approach are careful to make subletting a breach of the tenancy. So they can claim “I knew nothing - the bastard I rented the house to broke the lease and wrecked the place. I need compensation”.
I’ve said before that I think Johnson believes it when he says he didn’t lie. They convinced themselves that all the things they did were within the rules for working during the lockdowns. Now everyone else can believe that’s bollocks, but I think it is germane to the charge of lying to the house. No PM should have to resign over. FPN. Other mps have had them, for instance, and they are trivial. The weapon people are wielding is the lying to parliament. But Johnson, in his eyes, didn’t lie, they just got it wrong. Ultimately it will make little difference. I suspect the 80% of the public who scrupulously followed the rules will be waiting for the election, daggers raised. And I doubt anyone else on here will agree with my view.
Looking on from afar, most of my social group can’t understand this story at all.
The only fine the PM has been given so far, was for turning up to a work meeting on his birthday, where everyone present was meeting anyway, then his wife and a colleague turned up with a cake those present sang happy birthday to him. No cake was eaten, and only the PM’s wife was not going to be there anyway.
The alleged lying to Parliament, is based on whether the above event is described as ‘a party’ or not, when asked more than a year later if there were ‘any more parties’.
On the basis of this, numerous people are calling for the PM to resign.
The law was not against parties but non essential work gatherings. Whether anyone believed or believes it to be a party is irrelevant to the law, or whether the PM was lying when he said he followed the rules.
The questions are was it a gathering (yes) and was it essential work (no). On this particular party there is a grey area because they were already gathered. I think this one could have been let go on that basis.
But the leaving drinks ones, and the email to make the most of the lovely weather with drinks are definitely clear breaches of the rules, regardless of whether one thinks of them as parties or not.
Agreed, that the leaving drinks was definitely a party by any definition of the word - although was attended only by civil servants rather than politicians.
Inviting a group of people who had been working together indoors all day, to sit in the garden outdoors for half an hour, may have been a technical breach of the letter of the rules, but doesn’t meet most people’s definition of a party - except in the minds of those who start with wanting the PM to resign and work backwards from there.
Johnson (a politician) is reported to have attended at least one leaving drinks.
The COVID regulations didn’t ban parties. It is irrelevant whether something was or was not a party. They banned non-essential gatherings.
You’re correct about the regulations. The issue with ‘parties’ is that opponents of the PM are using his comments on ‘parties’ to Parliament, to accuse him of lying. The ‘lie’ only exists, if one accepts that the PM being delivered a cake on his birthday amounts to a ‘party’, when he was asked about it more than a year later.
Not true. He said to Parliament that all rules were followed. They were not. That they were not should’ve been palpably obvious to him.
Not true. People can have different interpretations of what the rules are and can justify to themselves that they're not breaking them even if others think they are.
Many people seem to forget that this is a workplace that allows alcohol to be consumed in the workplace. There are many, many bars in Parliament etc - the idea that work + alcohol = broken rules is simply not true.
Whether its a good or bad idea to be drinking alcohol at work is an entirely different matter.
The events concerned did not take place in Parliament but in a government office, where there are no bars whatsoever.
And no people who work in Downing Street work in Parliament?
Alcohol has been allowed in Downing Street all along. Suitcases of wine have been a tradition for many, many years as part of the working culture there including under previous Prime Ministers it is nothing new.
So if that's your normal working day pre-pandemic, then no people won't automatically think "oh there's alcohol here, that's not work" during it.
I'm sure the people who work in Downing Street who are also sometimes in Parliament know that they are different places. All civil servants in Downing Street will have been made well aware of their constitutional position. Let's consider a similar situation: I work in a university. There are student bars on campus. My office is closer to the nearest student bar than No. 10 is to Parliament. I am aware that my office is different from a student bar and the behaviour that goes on in student bars is not appropriate behaviour in my office.
So, anyway, we're agreed that the presence of bars in Parliament is a red herring. Good. Where have you moved to the goal posts to next? Oh, it's the "there was a drinking culture" defence...
Has there been a long-standing drinking culture in No. 10? Perhaps. There were lots of things we all used to do in offices before lockdown. Lockdown changed everything for most people. They knew we were in a different situation. People working on pandemic work knew that more than most in my experience. So the idea that everyone was just carrying on pre-pandemic habits unthinkingly is ridiculous.
Maybe there were some individuals who were stupid enough to think that lockdown hadn't changed anything. That's where leadership comes in. There should have been clear guidance from the senior civil servants and the political leadership, i.e. Boris Johnson. Johnson was going on TV regularly laying out the rules. He must have known what they were, or does he just move his lips without listening to what he's actually saying?
That doesn't address a single point that I made.
If you at university are allowed to have wine while working, then you're allowed to drink while working and the fact that you're drinking wine does not preclude you from being at work.
The pandemic meant that people who weren't needed in the building shouldn't be there, but the law never said a single thing about alcohol. If people who needed to be in the building for work reasons were drinking while working, then that was not against the law - and if they were entitled to drink while working, that's not against their employment either.
There was never any guidance about alcohol at work. The key question was "did you need to leave your house for this", if no (because non-essential work) then you were supposed to be at home, but there was nothing preventing those who were essential workers from having refreshments, and there was nothing preventing those refreshments from being alcoholic.
- “My view is this is something that will be remembered whenever the election happens and Johnson needs to do more to show his contrition.”
In order to show contrition you need to be contrite. Or to be able to fake sincerity. Johnson is unrepentant and transparent. A fatal combination for his party.
My view is this is something that will be remembered whenever the election happens, and long thereafter, and the Conservatives are going to be defeated. The brand is forever tarnished by the antics of the past few years. It’ll get worse as the full magnitude of the Brexit unforced error sinks in. Decent centre-right people should consider a fresh start.
Starmer needs to introduce PR and kill the repulsive Tory monster for good.
So you are one of those people who would change the rules of the game to help your side.
PR would not help the SNP.
I was speaking more broadly than party.
He was clear his purpose in introducing PR was to eliminate a party that he opposes.
That’s fine, if wrong. But no more squealing about gerrymandering from him please
Introducing a fair electoral system isn't 'gerrymandering'.
And, to be fair, I don't think anyone would really want to 'eliminate' the Conservative ;party. It normally represents a strand of opinion which deserves to be represented in Parliament. However, our system means that if either of the two parties is 'captured' by an extremist element, as appears to have happened now, then it can wreak havoc.
Introducing a new* electoral system for the purpose of “kill[ing] the repulsive Tory monster” is what he said. I’m choosing to take him at his word. You’re right though - it’s not gerrymandering. It’s far worse than that. It’s fundamentally undemocratic and illiberal.
* “fair” is a value judgement. I believe that it is right that a local area chooses someone to represent their interests. The person with most votes gets picked. What could be fairer than that?
Any system that ensures the plurality of views in that local area are represented in parliament would be fairer. And more complicated. And prone to bringing out the kind of people who will endlessly lecture you on how it is in fact not complicated.
How is a party with a manifesto supported by (say) 48% of the voters beaten by fairness when a party with 47% support is propped up by a party with 5% - who demand that half their (massively rejected) manifesto is then implemented?
It might be a pragmatic power grab. But "fair"???
But... Your 48% lot were also massively rejected. That's the problem with your argument. In those circumstances, I'd want that constitutency represented by 1 from the 48% lot, one from the 47% lot. Then a top up pool nationally/regionally ensuring that a party that ended up with 5% of the NEV got a tiny bit of representation.
If that 5% candidate was a local independent, then yes, they'd be massively rejected and deserve no particular representation at a national level.
There are plenty of systems that do that.
But the massively rejected 5% tail ends up wagging the dog. FPTP at least delivers the manifesto of the plurality.
I realise this is an argument neither side can win.
Sure. I'm not even in favour of changing the system, per se (I voted against the last change, as I felt that proposed system was no better than FPTP).
I don't buy the tail-wagging-the-dog argument, though. I think that is what we frequently get with internal party coalitions. I'd rather see a more open set of parties on 20% each forming coalitions in the open.
In the Cameron/Clegg coalition, the LibDems stipulated that there was to not even be discussion of the UK's place within the EU. A position that led to the rise of UKIP, the Conservative response to that rise, the referendum - and Brexit.
If Cameron's Conservatives (307 seats) had been free to hold an EU referendum in 2011 over the objections of Clegg's LibDems (57 seats) we would almost certainly have been in the EU for a generation (and to all intents and purposes, forever).
The most profound post-war political change was entirely down to the tail wagging the dog.
Despite the fact that Clegg's Lib Dems were elected on a manifesto of holding a referendum on EU membership. Once Cameron chose to hold that referendum, Clegg was appalled at the idea one of his manifesto commitments might actually be implemented.
I’ve said before that I think Johnson believes it when he says he didn’t lie. They convinced themselves that all the things they did were within the rules for working during the lockdowns. Now everyone else can believe that’s bollocks, but I think it is germane to the charge of lying to the house. No PM should have to resign over. FPN. Other mps have had them, for instance, and they are trivial. The weapon people are wielding is the lying to parliament. But Johnson, in his eyes, didn’t lie, they just got it wrong. Ultimately it will make little difference. I suspect the 80% of the public who scrupulously followed the rules will be waiting for the election, daggers raised. And I doubt anyone else on here will agree with my view.
Looking on from afar, most of my social group can’t understand this story at all.
The only fine the PM has been given so far, was for turning up to a work meeting on his birthday, where everyone present was meeting anyway, then his wife and a colleague turned up with a cake those present sang happy birthday to him. No cake was eaten, and only the PM’s wife was not going to be there anyway.
The alleged lying to Parliament, is based on whether the above event is described as ‘a party’ or not, when asked more than a year later if there were ‘any more parties’.
On the basis of this, numerous people are calling for the PM to resign.
The law was not against parties but non essential work gatherings. Whether anyone believed or believes it to be a party is irrelevant to the law, or whether the PM was lying when he said he followed the rules.
The questions are was it a gathering (yes) and was it essential work (no). On this particular party there is a grey area because they were already gathered. I think this one could have been let go on that basis.
But the leaving drinks ones, and the email to make the most of the lovely weather with drinks are definitely clear breaches of the rules, regardless of whether one thinks of them as parties or not.
Agreed, that the leaving drinks was definitely a party by any definition of the word - although was attended only by civil servants rather than politicians.
Inviting a group of people who had been working together indoors all day, to sit in the garden outdoors for half an hour, may have been a technical breach of the letter of the rules, but doesn’t meet most people’s definition of a party - except in the minds of those who start with wanting the PM to resign and work backwards from there.
Johnson (a politician) is reported to have attended at least one leaving drinks.
The COVID regulations didn’t ban parties. It is irrelevant whether something was or was not a party. They banned non-essential gatherings.
You’re correct about the regulations. The issue with ‘parties’ is that opponents of the PM are using his comments on ‘parties’ to Parliament, to accuse him of lying. The ‘lie’ only exists, if one accepts that the PM being delivered a cake on his birthday amounts to a ‘party’, when he was asked about it more than a year later.
Not true. He said to Parliament that all rules were followed. They were not. That they were not should’ve been palpably obvious to him.
Not true. People can have different interpretations of what the rules are and can justify to themselves that they're not breaking them even if others think they are.
Many people seem to forget that this is a workplace that allows alcohol to be consumed in the workplace. There are many, many bars in Parliament etc - the idea that work + alcohol = broken rules is simply not true.
Whether its a good or bad idea to be drinking alcohol at work is an entirely different matter.
The events concerned did not take place in Parliament but in a government office, where there are no bars whatsoever.
And no people who work in Downing Street work in Parliament?
Alcohol has been allowed in Downing Street all along. Suitcases of wine have been a tradition for many, many years as part of the working culture there including under previous Prime Ministers it is nothing new.
So if that's your normal working day pre-pandemic, then no people won't automatically think "oh there's alcohol here, that's not work" during it.
I'm sure the people who work in Downing Street who are also sometimes in Parliament know that they are different places. All civil servants in Downing Street will have been made well aware of their constitutional position. Let's consider a similar situation: I work in a university. There are student bars on campus. My office is closer to the nearest student bar than No. 10 is to Parliament. I am aware that my office is different from a student bar and the behaviour that goes on in student bars is not appropriate behaviour in my office.
So, anyway, we're agreed that the presence of bars in Parliament is a red herring. Good. Where have you moved to the goal posts to next? Oh, it's the "there was a drinking culture" defence...
Has there been a long-standing drinking culture in No. 10? Perhaps. There were lots of things we all used to do in offices before lockdown. Lockdown changed everything for most people. They knew we were in a different situation. People working on pandemic work knew that more than most in my experience. So the idea that everyone was just carrying on pre-pandemic habits unthinkingly is ridiculous.
Maybe there were some individuals who were stupid enough to think that lockdown hadn't changed anything. That's where leadership comes in. There should have been clear guidance from the senior civil servants and the political leadership, i.e. Boris Johnson. Johnson was going on TV regularly laying out the rules. He must have known what they were, or does he just move his lips without listening to what he's actually saying?
That doesn't address a single point that I made.
If you at university are allowed to have wine while working, then you're allowed to drink while working and the fact that you're drinking wine does not preclude you from being at work.
The pandemic meant that people who weren't needed in the building shouldn't be there, but the law never said a single thing about alcohol. If people who needed to be in the building for work reasons were drinking while working, then that was not against the law - and if they were entitled to drink while working, that's not against their employment either.
There was never any guidance about alcohol at work. The key question was "did you need to leave your house for this", if no (because non-essential work) then you were supposed to be at home, but there was nothing preventing those who were essential workers from having refreshments, and there was nothing preventing those refreshments from being alcoholic.
You rival HYUFD for wrong headed literal minded monomania. You would have a point if everyone were sitting at a workstation editing spreadsheets or talking on phones, and had a glass of wine rather than cup of coffee next to the mouse. Literally nobody thinks that was happening. What was happening, was socialising. The presence of alcohol is not an offence in itself, but a strong indicator that what was happening, was not work but socialising. As are toasts, singing, birthday cakes and the damaging of outdoor toys.
- “My view is this is something that will be remembered whenever the election happens and Johnson needs to do more to show his contrition.”
In order to show contrition you need to be contrite. Or to be able to fake sincerity. Johnson is unrepentant and transparent. A fatal combination for his party.
My view is this is something that will be remembered whenever the election happens, and long thereafter, and the Conservatives are going to be defeated. The brand is forever tarnished by the antics of the past few years. It’ll get worse as the full magnitude of the Brexit unforced error sinks in. Decent centre-right people should consider a fresh start.
Starmer needs to introduce PR and kill the repulsive Tory monster for good.
So you are one of those people who would change the rules of the game to help your side.
PR would not help the SNP.
I was speaking more broadly than party.
He was clear his purpose in introducing PR was to eliminate a party that he opposes.
That’s fine, if wrong. But no more squealing about gerrymandering from him please
Introducing a fair electoral system isn't 'gerrymandering'.
And, to be fair, I don't think anyone would really want to 'eliminate' the Conservative ;party. It normally represents a strand of opinion which deserves to be represented in Parliament. However, our system means that if either of the two parties is 'captured' by an extremist element, as appears to have happened now, then it can wreak havoc.
Introducing a new* electoral system for the purpose of “kill[ing] the repulsive Tory monster” is what he said. I’m choosing to take him at his word. You’re right though - it’s not gerrymandering. It’s far worse than that. It’s fundamentally undemocratic and illiberal.
* “fair” is a value judgement. I believe that it is right that a local area chooses someone to represent their interests. The person with most votes gets picked. What could be fairer than that?
Any system that ensures the plurality of views in that local area are represented in parliament would be fairer. And more complicated. And prone to bringing out the kind of people who will endlessly lecture you on how it is in fact not complicated.
How is a party with a manifesto supported by (say) 48% of the voters beaten by fairness when a party with 47% support is propped up by a party with 5% - who demand that half their (massively rejected) manifesto is then implemented?
It might be a pragmatic power grab. But "fair"???
But... Your 48% lot were also massively rejected. That's the problem with your argument. In those circumstances, I'd want that constitutency represented by 1 from the 48% lot, one from the 47% lot. Then a top up pool nationally/regionally ensuring that a party that ended up with 5% of the NEV got a tiny bit of representation.
If that 5% candidate was a local independent, then yes, they'd be massively rejected and deserve no particular representation at a national level.
There are plenty of systems that do that.
But the massively rejected 5% tail ends up wagging the dog. FPTP at least delivers the manifesto of the plurality.
I realise this is an argument neither side can win.
Sure. I'm not even in favour of changing the system, per se (I voted against the last change, as I felt that proposed system was no better than FPTP).
I don't buy the tail-wagging-the-dog argument, though. I think that is what we frequently get with internal party coalitions. I'd rather see a more open set of parties on 20% each forming coalitions in the open.
In the Cameron/Clegg coalition, the LibDems stipulated that there was to not even be discussion of the UK's place within the EU. A position that led to the rise of UKIP, the Conservative response to that rise, the referendum - and Brexit.
If Cameron's Conservatives (307 seats) had been free to hold an EU referendum in 2011 over the objections of Clegg's LibDems (57 seats) we would almost certainly have been in the EU for a generation (and to all intents and purposes, forever).
The most profound post-war political change was entirely down to the tail wagging the dog.
Despite the fact that Clegg's Lib Dems were elected on a manifesto of holding a referendum on EU membership. Once Cameron chose to hold that referendum, Clegg was appalled at the idea one of his manifesto commitments might actually be implemented.
I'm not doubting the accuracy of either of your memories, but I thought the only argument over a referendum was the one over voting systems.
Though Partygate seems to be getting the attention the real long term damage to the Conservative Party could come from the Rwanda Experiment. For some voters a louche Prime Minister comes way down their list of concerns. The Rwanda episode is of a diferent order. This has legs and has the capacity to change the perception of the Party itself
The more that people hear about the Rwanda plans, the more they are in favour of them. The British want to see a sense a fair play, and jumping the immigration queue by paying thousands to people traffickers to come from France, just isn’t cricket.
Brits where you are may be saying that. Brits in Britain appear to be saying the opposite. At least thats what polls are saying. Increasing numbers of Tory MPs and ministers giving off-the-record comments to that effect too.
Perhaps - and its only a theory - you need to live here to say with confidence what people who live here think. I wouldn't do an HY and presume to tell you what your local residents think having never been there.
I was going by the polling reported over the weekend, which suggested the policy was popular.
What's your understanding of the policy being proposed?
Because the polling I've seen is about a different policy, which is significantly less drastic than the actual plan.
If you arrive on an irregular boat, you go to Rwanda and will be processed for asylum there.
Some of the polling suggested that people would be assessed in Rwanda for immigration to the UK, which will likely be even less popular.
If you’re genuinely fleeing persecution, you shouldn’t be too worried about where you end up settled so long as it’s safe. For people who are primarily economic migrants trying to jump the queue, on the other hand…
Close, but no cigar.
Most won't go to Rwanda, because that scheme has fairly low capacity, and the Rwandans haven't agreed to take everyone the UK wants to send. Even a 90% cut in small boat migrant numbers would overwhelm the system.
And we don't know the overall view of "process in Rwanda/bring to UK" vs. "process in Rwanda/stay in Rwanda", because that polling hasn't been done. (The ambiguity in the question bothers me. People are often ambiguous when their conscience bothers them.)
In my mind, not taking all the boat arrivals makes it a less popular policy. It will only be effective, if it is very clear to those in Calais that irregular UK arrivals will never be settled there.
The primary aim needs to be to remove the pull factors, which currently leads to deaths at sea and enrichment of traffickers.
The scheme will only work if everyone who arrives in a boat is guaranteed to go to Rwanda.
That is what worked in Australia. Everyone who arrived in a boat was guaranteed to go to Nauru. So they stopped coming at all via boat and the tiny few that still attempted it turned around because they didn't want to go to Nauru.
Yup. And since that's not on the agenda, this scheme isn't going to work, and Rwanda aren't going to be mad enough to sign up for a scheme with enough capacity to work like that.
So how about we cut to the chase, and look for things that might work? That's (for example) clamping down on the irregular economy, and recognising that we need to co-operate with the French, ghastly though they are?
Because otherwise, we're in the "this was worse than immoral, it was a mistake" territory.
There's absolutely no reason why Rwanda shouldn't sign up to a scheme with sufficient capacity as if they did sign up with unlimited capacity and a guarantee that 100% would end up in Rwanda then the capacity required would rapidly approach zero.
Since Autumn 2013 there has been a guarantee in place that 100% of boat travellers to Australia would end up in Nauru if they didn't turn around. Since 2014 Australia has to the best of my knowledge deported a grand total of zero people to Nauru. Why? Because they stopped coming and the extremely few that attempted the crossing voluntarily turned back when faced with the choice of Nauru or turning around.
If there was a guarantee everyone who came via a boat would end up in Rwanda, rather than the UK, then within a year approximately zero people per annum is my expectation as to how many people would end up in Rwanda.
Since 2014 not only has not a single person needed to be sent to Nauru, there hasn't been a single reported drowning from boat travellers to Australia in the same time either. How many have drowned in the Channel in the same time period?
Though Partygate seems to be getting the attention the real long term damage to the Conservative Party could come from the Rwanda Experiment. For some voters a louche Prime Minister comes way down their list of concerns. The Rwanda episode is of a diferent order. This has legs and has the capacity to change the perception of the Party itself
The more that people hear about the Rwanda plans, the more they are in favour of them. The British want to see a sense a fair play, and jumping the immigration queue by paying thousands to people traffickers to come from France, just isn’t cricket.
Brits where you are may be saying that. Brits in Britain appear to be saying the opposite. At least thats what polls are saying. Increasing numbers of Tory MPs and ministers giving off-the-record comments to that effect too.
Perhaps - and its only a theory - you need to live here to say with confidence what people who live here think. I wouldn't do an HY and presume to tell you what your local residents think having never been there.
I was going by the polling reported over the weekend, which suggested the policy was popular.
What's your understanding of the policy being proposed?
Because the polling I've seen is about a different policy, which is significantly less drastic than the actual plan.
If you arrive on an irregular boat, you go to Rwanda and will be processed for asylum there.
Some of the polling suggested that people would be assessed in Rwanda for immigration to the UK, which will likely be even less popular.
If you’re genuinely fleeing persecution, you shouldn’t be too worried about where you end up settled so long as it’s safe. For people who are primarily economic migrants trying to jump the queue, on the other hand…
Close, but no cigar.
Most won't go to Rwanda, because that scheme has fairly low capacity, and the Rwandans haven't agreed to take everyone the UK wants to send. Even a 90% cut in small boat migrant numbers would overwhelm the system.
And we don't know the overall view of "process in Rwanda/bring to UK" vs. "process in Rwanda/stay in Rwanda", because that polling hasn't been done. (The ambiguity in the question bothers me. People are often ambiguous when their conscience bothers them.)
In my mind, not taking all the boat arrivals makes it a less popular policy. It will only be effective, if it is very clear to those in Calais that irregular UK arrivals will never be settled there.
The primary aim needs to be to remove the pull factors, which currently lead to deaths at sea and enrichment of traffickers.
The repeated claims from the BJ party and their supporters that it's all about stopping dirty people traffickers from making money from drowning babies is truly heartwarming. That milky human kindness is never slow to ooze out of them.
I’ve said before that I think Johnson believes it when he says he didn’t lie. They convinced themselves that all the things they did were within the rules for working during the lockdowns. Now everyone else can believe that’s bollocks, but I think it is germane to the charge of lying to the house. No PM should have to resign over. FPN. Other mps have had them, for instance, and they are trivial. The weapon people are wielding is the lying to parliament. But Johnson, in his eyes, didn’t lie, they just got it wrong. Ultimately it will make little difference. I suspect the 80% of the public who scrupulously followed the rules will be waiting for the election, daggers raised. And I doubt anyone else on here will agree with my view.
Looking on from afar, most of my social group can’t understand this story at all.
The only fine the PM has been given so far, was for turning up to a work meeting on his birthday, where everyone present was meeting anyway, then his wife and a colleague turned up with a cake those present sang happy birthday to him. No cake was eaten, and only the PM’s wife was not going to be there anyway.
The alleged lying to Parliament, is based on whether the above event is described as ‘a party’ or not, when asked more than a year later if there were ‘any more parties’.
On the basis of this, numerous people are calling for the PM to resign.
The law was not against parties but non essential work gatherings. Whether anyone believed or believes it to be a party is irrelevant to the law, or whether the PM was lying when he said he followed the rules.
The questions are was it a gathering (yes) and was it essential work (no). On this particular party there is a grey area because they were already gathered. I think this one could have been let go on that basis.
But the leaving drinks ones, and the email to make the most of the lovely weather with drinks are definitely clear breaches of the rules, regardless of whether one thinks of them as parties or not.
Agreed, that the leaving drinks was definitely a party by any definition of the word - although was attended only by civil servants rather than politicians.
Inviting a group of people who had been working together indoors all day, to sit in the garden outdoors for half an hour, may have been a technical breach of the letter of the rules, but doesn’t meet most people’s definition of a party - except in the minds of those who start with wanting the PM to resign and work backwards from there.
Johnson (a politician) is reported to have attended at least one leaving drinks.
The COVID regulations didn’t ban parties. It is irrelevant whether something was or was not a party. They banned non-essential gatherings.
You’re correct about the regulations. The issue with ‘parties’ is that opponents of the PM are using his comments on ‘parties’ to Parliament, to accuse him of lying. The ‘lie’ only exists, if one accepts that the PM being delivered a cake on his birthday amounts to a ‘party’, when he was asked about it more than a year later.
Not true. He said to Parliament that all rules were followed. They were not. That they were not should’ve been palpably obvious to him.
Not true. People can have different interpretations of what the rules are and can justify to themselves that they're not breaking them even if others think they are.
Many people seem to forget that this is a workplace that allows alcohol to be consumed in the workplace. There are many, many bars in Parliament etc - the idea that work + alcohol = broken rules is simply not true.
Whether its a good or bad idea to be drinking alcohol at work is an entirely different matter.
The events concerned did not take place in Parliament but in a government office, where there are no bars whatsoever.
And no people who work in Downing Street work in Parliament?
Alcohol has been allowed in Downing Street all along. Suitcases of wine have been a tradition for many, many years as part of the working culture there including under previous Prime Ministers it is nothing new.
So if that's your normal working day pre-pandemic, then no people won't automatically think "oh there's alcohol here, that's not work" during it.
I'm sure the people who work in Downing Street who are also sometimes in Parliament know that they are different places. All civil servants in Downing Street will have been made well aware of their constitutional position. Let's consider a similar situation: I work in a university. There are student bars on campus. My office is closer to the nearest student bar than No. 10 is to Parliament. I am aware that my office is different from a student bar and the behaviour that goes on in student bars is not appropriate behaviour in my office.
So, anyway, we're agreed that the presence of bars in Parliament is a red herring. Good. Where have you moved to the goal posts to next? Oh, it's the "there was a drinking culture" defence...
Has there been a long-standing drinking culture in No. 10? Perhaps. There were lots of things we all used to do in offices before lockdown. Lockdown changed everything for most people. They knew we were in a different situation. People working on pandemic work knew that more than most in my experience. So the idea that everyone was just carrying on pre-pandemic habits unthinkingly is ridiculous.
Maybe there were some individuals who were stupid enough to think that lockdown hadn't changed anything. That's where leadership comes in. There should have been clear guidance from the senior civil servants and the political leadership, i.e. Boris Johnson. Johnson was going on TV regularly laying out the rules. He must have known what they were, or does he just move his lips without listening to what he's actually saying?
That doesn't address a single point that I made.
If you at university are allowed to have wine while working, then you're allowed to drink while working and the fact that you're drinking wine does not preclude you from being at work.
The pandemic meant that people who weren't needed in the building shouldn't be there, but the law never said a single thing about alcohol. If people who needed to be in the building for work reasons were drinking while working, then that was not against the law - and if they were entitled to drink while working, that's not against their employment either.
There was never any guidance about alcohol at work. The key question was "did you need to leave your house for this", if no (because non-essential work) then you were supposed to be at home, but there was nothing preventing those who were essential workers from having refreshments, and there was nothing preventing those refreshments from being alcoholic.
You rival HYUFD for wrong headed literal minded monomania. You would have a point if everyone were sitting at a workstation editing spreadsheets or talking on phones, and had a glass of wine rather than cup of coffee next to the mouse. Literally nobody thinks that was happening. What was happening, was socialising. The presence of alcohol is not an offence in itself, but a strong indicator that what was happening, was not work but socialising. As are toasts, singing, birthday cakes and the damaging of outdoor toys.
Sending a junior SPAD out to Tesco to buy enough bottles to fill a suitcase is also not the sort of thing likely to be done 'at work'.
Though Partygate seems to be getting the attention the real long term damage to the Conservative Party could come from the Rwanda Experiment. For some voters a louche Prime Minister comes way down their list of concerns. The Rwanda episode is of a diferent order. This has legs and has the capacity to change the perception of the Party itself
The more that people hear about the Rwanda plans, the more they are in favour of them. The British want to see a sense a fair play, and jumping the immigration queue by paying thousands to people traffickers to come from France, just isn’t cricket.
Brits where you are may be saying that. Brits in Britain appear to be saying the opposite. At least thats what polls are saying. Increasing numbers of Tory MPs and ministers giving off-the-record comments to that effect too.
Perhaps - and its only a theory - you need to live here to say with confidence what people who live here think. I wouldn't do an HY and presume to tell you what your local residents think having never been there.
I was going by the polling reported over the weekend, which suggested the policy was popular.
What's your understanding of the policy being proposed?
Because the polling I've seen is about a different policy, which is significantly less drastic than the actual plan.
If you arrive on an irregular boat, you go to Rwanda and will be processed for asylum there.
Some of the polling suggested that people would be assessed in Rwanda for immigration to the UK, which will likely be even less popular.
If you’re genuinely fleeing persecution, you shouldn’t be too worried about where you end up settled so long as it’s safe. For people who are primarily economic migrants trying to jump the queue, on the other hand…
Close, but no cigar.
Most won't go to Rwanda, because that scheme has fairly low capacity, and the Rwandans haven't agreed to take everyone the UK wants to send. Even a 90% cut in small boat migrant numbers would overwhelm the system.
And we don't know the overall view of "process in Rwanda/bring to UK" vs. "process in Rwanda/stay in Rwanda", because that polling hasn't been done. (The ambiguity in the question bothers me. People are often ambiguous when their conscience bothers them.)
In my mind, not taking all the boat arrivals makes it a less popular policy. It will only be effective, if it is very clear to those in Calais that irregular UK arrivals will never be settled there.
The primary aim needs to be to remove the pull factors, which currently lead to deaths at sea and enrichment of traffickers.
The pull factor being that people can get off the boats undetected and go straight to work in the black economy. We can't stop the boats, we can stop the scum employers.
Agreed on employers, but AIUI it’s already very much illegal to give work or accommodation to undocumented immigrants. I know that landlords and tenants have to jump through numerous hoops to prove right of residence.
We all do. But we have an under-resourced police. Same for HMRC. The Home Office. So it goes on with impunity. We could resource these things up and make it very difficult for scum employers to use cash in hand. But we don't, instead pursuing "solutions" that do nothing.
- “My view is this is something that will be remembered whenever the election happens and Johnson needs to do more to show his contrition.”
In order to show contrition you need to be contrite. Or to be able to fake sincerity. Johnson is unrepentant and transparent. A fatal combination for his party.
My view is this is something that will be remembered whenever the election happens, and long thereafter, and the Conservatives are going to be defeated. The brand is forever tarnished by the antics of the past few years. It’ll get worse as the full magnitude of the Brexit unforced error sinks in. Decent centre-right people should consider a fresh start.
Starmer needs to introduce PR and kill the repulsive Tory monster for good.
So you are one of those people who would change the rules of the game to help your side.
PR would not help the SNP.
I was speaking more broadly than party.
He was clear his purpose in introducing PR was to eliminate a party that he opposes.
That’s fine, if wrong. But no more squealing about gerrymandering from him please
Introducing a fair electoral system isn't 'gerrymandering'.
And, to be fair, I don't think anyone would really want to 'eliminate' the Conservative ;party. It normally represents a strand of opinion which deserves to be represented in Parliament. However, our system means that if either of the two parties is 'captured' by an extremist element, as appears to have happened now, then it can wreak havoc.
Introducing a new* electoral system for the purpose of “kill[ing] the repulsive Tory monster” is what he said. I’m choosing to take him at his word. You’re right though - it’s not gerrymandering. It’s far worse than that. It’s fundamentally undemocratic and illiberal.
* “fair” is a value judgement. I believe that it is right that a local area chooses someone to represent their interests. The person with most votes gets picked. What could be fairer than that?
Any system that ensures the plurality of views in that local area are represented in parliament would be fairer. And more complicated. And prone to bringing out the kind of people who will endlessly lecture you on how it is in fact not complicated.
How is a party with a manifesto supported by (say) 48% of the voters beaten by fairness when a party with 47% support is propped up by a party with 5% - who demand that half their (massively rejected) manifesto is then implemented?
It might be a pragmatic power grab. But "fair"???
But... Your 48% lot were also massively rejected. That's the problem with your argument. In those circumstances, I'd want that constitutency represented by 1 from the 48% lot, one from the 47% lot. Then a top up pool nationally/regionally ensuring that a party that ended up with 5% of the NEV got a tiny bit of representation.
If that 5% candidate was a local independent, then yes, they'd be massively rejected and deserve no particular representation at a national level.
There are plenty of systems that do that.
But the massively rejected 5% tail ends up wagging the dog. FPTP at least delivers the manifesto of the plurality.
I realise this is an argument neither side can win.
Sure. I'm not even in favour of changing the system, per se (I voted against the last change, as I felt that proposed system was no better than FPTP).
I don't buy the tail-wagging-the-dog argument, though. I think that is what we frequently get with internal party coalitions. I'd rather see a more open set of parties on 20% each forming coalitions in the open.
In the Cameron/Clegg coalition, the LibDems stipulated that there was to not even be discussion of the UK's place within the EU. A position that led to the rise of UKIP, the Conservative response to that rise, the referendum - and Brexit.
If Cameron's Conservatives (307 seats) had been free to hold an EU referendum in 2011 over the objections of Clegg's LibDems (57 seats) we would almost certainly have been in the EU for a generation (and to all intents and purposes, forever).
The most profound post-war political change was entirely down to the tail wagging the dog.
Despite the fact that Clegg's Lib Dems were elected on a manifesto of holding a referendum on EU membership. Once Cameron chose to hold that referendum, Clegg was appalled at the idea one of his manifesto commitments might actually be implemented.
I'm not doubting the accuracy of either of your memories, but I thought the only argument over a referendum was the one over voting systems.
“ The European Union has evolved significantly since the last public vote on membership over thirty years ago. Liberal Democrats therefore remain committed to an in / out referendum the next time a British government signs up for fundamental change in the relationship between the UK and the EU.”
Though Partygate seems to be getting the attention the real long term damage to the Conservative Party could come from the Rwanda Experiment. For some voters a louche Prime Minister comes way down their list of concerns. The Rwanda episode is of a diferent order. This has legs and has the capacity to change the perception of the Party itself
The more that people hear about the Rwanda plans, the more they are in favour of them. The British want to see a sense a fair play, and jumping the immigration queue by paying thousands to people traffickers to come from France, just isn’t cricket.
Brits where you are may be saying that. Brits in Britain appear to be saying the opposite. At least thats what polls are saying. Increasing numbers of Tory MPs and ministers giving off-the-record comments to that effect too.
Perhaps - and its only a theory - you need to live here to say with confidence what people who live here think. I wouldn't do an HY and presume to tell you what your local residents think having never been there.
I was going by the polling reported over the weekend, which suggested the policy was popular.
What's your understanding of the policy being proposed?
Because the polling I've seen is about a different policy, which is significantly less drastic than the actual plan.
If you arrive on an irregular boat, you go to Rwanda and will be processed for asylum there.
Some of the polling suggested that people would be assessed in Rwanda for immigration to the UK, which will likely be even less popular.
If you’re genuinely fleeing persecution, you shouldn’t be too worried about where you end up settled so long as it’s safe. For people who are primarily economic migrants trying to jump the queue, on the other hand…
No. If you go to Rwanda you will not have your asylum processed at all. Thats the whole point in this press release. Nobody going to Rwanda will come back to the UK legally. They are being deported and thats the official end of the process. Which is why your opinion poll wasn't a reliable witness - its wrongly says what you said.
The policy is the 21st century equivalent of being sent to Botany Bay. Its a one-way trip.
Yes you will, you will be treated as seeking asylum in Rwanda (i.e. applying in Rwanda for permission to stay in Rwanda). God knows what happens if Rwanda reject you.
You've made my point. The UK will not process your claim for asylum in the UK at all.
- “My view is this is something that will be remembered whenever the election happens and Johnson needs to do more to show his contrition.”
In order to show contrition you need to be contrite. Or to be able to fake sincerity. Johnson is unrepentant and transparent. A fatal combination for his party.
My view is this is something that will be remembered whenever the election happens, and long thereafter, and the Conservatives are going to be defeated. The brand is forever tarnished by the antics of the past few years. It’ll get worse as the full magnitude of the Brexit unforced error sinks in. Decent centre-right people should consider a fresh start.
Starmer needs to introduce PR and kill the repulsive Tory monster for good.
So you are one of those people who would change the rules of the game to help your side.
PR would not help the SNP.
I was speaking more broadly than party.
He was clear his purpose in introducing PR was to eliminate a party that he opposes.
That’s fine, if wrong. But no more squealing about gerrymandering from him please
Introducing a fair electoral system isn't 'gerrymandering'.
And, to be fair, I don't think anyone would really want to 'eliminate' the Conservative ;party. It normally represents a strand of opinion which deserves to be represented in Parliament. However, our system means that if either of the two parties is 'captured' by an extremist element, as appears to have happened now, then it can wreak havoc.
Introducing a new* electoral system for the purpose of “kill[ing] the repulsive Tory monster” is what he said. I’m choosing to take him at his word. You’re right though - it’s not gerrymandering. It’s far worse than that. It’s fundamentally undemocratic and illiberal.
* “fair” is a value judgement. I believe that it is right that a local area chooses someone to represent their interests. The person with most votes gets picked. What could be fairer than that?
Any system that ensures the plurality of views in that local area are represented in parliament would be fairer. And more complicated. And prone to bringing out the kind of people who will endlessly lecture you on how it is in fact not complicated.
How is a party with a manifesto supported by (say) 48% of the voters beaten by fairness when a party with 47% support is propped up by a party with 5% - who demand that half their (massively rejected) manifesto is then implemented?
It might be a pragmatic power grab. But "fair"???
But... Your 48% lot were also massively rejected. That's the problem with your argument. In those circumstances, I'd want that constitutency represented by 1 from the 48% lot, one from the 47% lot. Then a top up pool nationally/regionally ensuring that a party that ended up with 5% of the NEV got a tiny bit of representation.
If that 5% candidate was a local independent, then yes, they'd be massively rejected and deserve no particular representation at a national level.
There are plenty of systems that do that.
But the massively rejected 5% tail ends up wagging the dog. FPTP at least delivers the manifesto of the plurality.
I realise this is an argument neither side can win.
Sure. I'm not even in favour of changing the system, per se (I voted against the last change, as I felt that proposed system was no better than FPTP).
I don't buy the tail-wagging-the-dog argument, though. I think that is what we frequently get with internal party coalitions. I'd rather see a more open set of parties on 20% each forming coalitions in the open.
In the Cameron/Clegg coalition, the LibDems stipulated that there was to not even be discussion of the UK's place within the EU. A position that led to the rise of UKIP, the Conservative response to that rise, the referendum - and Brexit.
If Cameron's Conservatives (307 seats) had been free to hold an EU referendum in 2011 over the objections of Clegg's LibDems (57 seats) we would almost certainly have been in the EU for a generation (and to all intents and purposes, forever).
The most profound post-war political change was entirely down to the tail wagging the dog.
Despite the fact that Clegg's Lib Dems were elected on a manifesto of holding a referendum on EU membership. Once Cameron chose to hold that referendum, Clegg was appalled at the idea one of his manifesto commitments might actually be implemented.
The tories wouldn't even agree to the house of lords reform they promised. The idea that the LDs were holding the tories to ransom is one of the more bizarre interpretations of the coalition.
Though Partygate seems to be getting the attention the real long term damage to the Conservative Party could come from the Rwanda Experiment. For some voters a louche Prime Minister comes way down their list of concerns. The Rwanda episode is of a diferent order. This has legs and has the capacity to change the perception of the Party itself
The more that people hear about the Rwanda plans, the more they are in favour of them. The British want to see a sense a fair play, and jumping the immigration queue by paying thousands to people traffickers to come from France, just isn’t cricket.
Brits where you are may be saying that. Brits in Britain appear to be saying the opposite. At least thats what polls are saying. Increasing numbers of Tory MPs and ministers giving off-the-record comments to that effect too.
Perhaps - and its only a theory - you need to live here to say with confidence what people who live here think. I wouldn't do an HY and presume to tell you what your local residents think having never been there.
I was going by the polling reported over the weekend, which suggested the policy was popular.
What's your understanding of the policy being proposed?
Because the polling I've seen is about a different policy, which is significantly less drastic than the actual plan.
If you arrive on an irregular boat, you go to Rwanda and will be processed for asylum there.
Some of the polling suggested that people would be assessed in Rwanda for immigration to the UK, which will likely be even less popular.
If you’re genuinely fleeing persecution, you shouldn’t be too worried about where you end up settled so long as it’s safe. For people who are primarily economic migrants trying to jump the queue, on the other hand…
No. If you go to Rwanda you will not have your asylum processed at all. Thats the whole point in this press release. Nobody going to Rwanda will come back to the UK legally. They are being deported and thats the official end of the process. Which is why your opinion poll wasn't a reliable witness - its wrongly says what you said.
The policy is the 21st century equivalent of being sent to Botany Bay. Its a one-way trip.
Yes you will, you will be treated as seeking asylum in Rwanda (i.e. applying in Rwanda for permission to stay in Rwanda). God knows what happens if Rwanda reject you.
I'd (grimly) laugh my arse off if Rwanda made moves to send them back to the last place they came from.
I’ve said before that I think Johnson believes it when he says he didn’t lie. They convinced themselves that all the things they did were within the rules for working during the lockdowns. Now everyone else can believe that’s bollocks, but I think it is germane to the charge of lying to the house. No PM should have to resign over. FPN. Other mps have had them, for instance, and they are trivial. The weapon people are wielding is the lying to parliament. But Johnson, in his eyes, didn’t lie, they just got it wrong. Ultimately it will make little difference. I suspect the 80% of the public who scrupulously followed the rules will be waiting for the election, daggers raised. And I doubt anyone else on here will agree with my view.
Looking on from afar, most of my social group can’t understand this story at all.
The only fine the PM has been given so far, was for turning up to a work meeting on his birthday, where everyone present was meeting anyway, then his wife and a colleague turned up with a cake those present sang happy birthday to him. No cake was eaten, and only the PM’s wife was not going to be there anyway.
The alleged lying to Parliament, is based on whether the above event is described as ‘a party’ or not, when asked more than a year later if there were ‘any more parties’.
On the basis of this, numerous people are calling for the PM to resign.
The law was not against parties but non essential work gatherings. Whether anyone believed or believes it to be a party is irrelevant to the law, or whether the PM was lying when he said he followed the rules.
The questions are was it a gathering (yes) and was it essential work (no). On this particular party there is a grey area because they were already gathered. I think this one could have been let go on that basis.
But the leaving drinks ones, and the email to make the most of the lovely weather with drinks are definitely clear breaches of the rules, regardless of whether one thinks of them as parties or not.
Agreed, that the leaving drinks was definitely a party by any definition of the word - although was attended only by civil servants rather than politicians.
Inviting a group of people who had been working together indoors all day, to sit in the garden outdoors for half an hour, may have been a technical breach of the letter of the rules, but doesn’t meet most people’s definition of a party - except in the minds of those who start with wanting the PM to resign and work backwards from there.
Johnson (a politician) is reported to have attended at least one leaving drinks.
The COVID regulations didn’t ban parties. It is irrelevant whether something was or was not a party. They banned non-essential gatherings.
You’re correct about the regulations. The issue with ‘parties’ is that opponents of the PM are using his comments on ‘parties’ to Parliament, to accuse him of lying. The ‘lie’ only exists, if one accepts that the PM being delivered a cake on his birthday amounts to a ‘party’, when he was asked about it more than a year later.
Not true. He said to Parliament that all rules were followed. They were not. That they were not should’ve been palpably obvious to him.
Not true. People can have different interpretations of what the rules are and can justify to themselves that they're not breaking them even if others think they are.
Many people seem to forget that this is a workplace that allows alcohol to be consumed in the workplace. There are many, many bars in Parliament etc - the idea that work + alcohol = broken rules is simply not true.
Whether its a good or bad idea to be drinking alcohol at work is an entirely different matter.
The events concerned did not take place in Parliament but in a government office, where there are no bars whatsoever.
And no people who work in Downing Street work in Parliament?
Alcohol has been allowed in Downing Street all along. Suitcases of wine have been a tradition for many, many years as part of the working culture there including under previous Prime Ministers it is nothing new.
So if that's your normal working day pre-pandemic, then no people won't automatically think "oh there's alcohol here, that's not work" during it.
I'm sure the people who work in Downing Street who are also sometimes in Parliament know that they are different places. All civil servants in Downing Street will have been made well aware of their constitutional position. Let's consider a similar situation: I work in a university. There are student bars on campus. My office is closer to the nearest student bar than No. 10 is to Parliament. I am aware that my office is different from a student bar and the behaviour that goes on in student bars is not appropriate behaviour in my office.
So, anyway, we're agreed that the presence of bars in Parliament is a red herring. Good. Where have you moved to the goal posts to next? Oh, it's the "there was a drinking culture" defence...
Has there been a long-standing drinking culture in No. 10? Perhaps. There were lots of things we all used to do in offices before lockdown. Lockdown changed everything for most people. They knew we were in a different situation. People working on pandemic work knew that more than most in my experience. So the idea that everyone was just carrying on pre-pandemic habits unthinkingly is ridiculous.
Maybe there were some individuals who were stupid enough to think that lockdown hadn't changed anything. That's where leadership comes in. There should have been clear guidance from the senior civil servants and the political leadership, i.e. Boris Johnson. Johnson was going on TV regularly laying out the rules. He must have known what they were, or does he just move his lips without listening to what he's actually saying?
That doesn't address a single point that I made.
If you at university are allowed to have wine while working, then you're allowed to drink while working and the fact that you're drinking wine does not preclude you from being at work.
The pandemic meant that people who weren't needed in the building shouldn't be there, but the law never said a single thing about alcohol. If people who needed to be in the building for work reasons were drinking while working, then that was not against the law - and if they were entitled to drink while working, that's not against their employment either.
There was never any guidance about alcohol at work. The key question was "did you need to leave your house for this", if no (because non-essential work) then you were supposed to be at home, but there was nothing preventing those who were essential workers from having refreshments, and there was nothing preventing those refreshments from being alcoholic.
You rival HYUFD for wrong headed literal minded monomania. You would have a point if everyone were sitting at a workstation editing spreadsheets or talking on phones, and had a glass of wine rather than cup of coffee next to the mouse. Literally nobody thinks that was happening. What was happening, was socialising. The presence of alcohol is not an offence in itself, but a strong indicator that what was happening, was not work but socialising. As are toasts, singing, birthday cakes and the damaging of outdoor toys.
Sending a junior SPAD out to Tesco to buy enough bottles to fill a suitcase is also not the sort of thing likely to be done 'at work'.
I knew a bloke whose first job was with IDV, and his first job there was to visit London pubs and order a whisky [unspecified] to verify that their default whisky was Haig or whatever the IDV brand was. Nice work if you can get it
Though Partygate seems to be getting the attention the real long term damage to the Conservative Party could come from the Rwanda Experiment. For some voters a louche Prime Minister comes way down their list of concerns. The Rwanda episode is of a diferent order. This has legs and has the capacity to change the perception of the Party itself
The more that people hear about the Rwanda plans, the more they are in favour of them. The British want to see a sense a fair play, and jumping the immigration queue by paying thousands to people traffickers to come from France, just isn’t cricket.
Brits where you are may be saying that. Brits in Britain appear to be saying the opposite. At least thats what polls are saying. Increasing numbers of Tory MPs and ministers giving off-the-record comments to that effect too.
Perhaps - and its only a theory - you need to live here to say with confidence what people who live here think. I wouldn't do an HY and presume to tell you what your local residents think having never been there.
I was going by the polling reported over the weekend, which suggested the policy was popular.
What's your understanding of the policy being proposed?
Because the polling I've seen is about a different policy, which is significantly less drastic than the actual plan.
If you arrive on an irregular boat, you go to Rwanda and will be processed for asylum there.
Some of the polling suggested that people would be assessed in Rwanda for immigration to the UK, which will likely be even less popular.
If you’re genuinely fleeing persecution, you shouldn’t be too worried about where you end up settled so long as it’s safe. For people who are primarily economic migrants trying to jump the queue, on the other hand…
Close, but no cigar.
Most won't go to Rwanda, because that scheme has fairly low capacity, and the Rwandans haven't agreed to take everyone the UK wants to send. Even a 90% cut in small boat migrant numbers would overwhelm the system.
And we don't know the overall view of "process in Rwanda/bring to UK" vs. "process in Rwanda/stay in Rwanda", because that polling hasn't been done. (The ambiguity in the question bothers me. People are often ambiguous when their conscience bothers them.)
In my mind, not taking all the boat arrivals makes it a less popular policy. It will only be effective, if it is very clear to those in Calais that irregular UK arrivals will never be settled there.
The primary aim needs to be to remove the pull factors, which currently lead to deaths at sea and enrichment of traffickers.
The pull factor being that people can get off the boats undetected and go straight to work in the black economy. We can't stop the boats, we can stop the scum employers.
How do you propose that? We already have tried a hostile environment introduced by Labour and continued under the Tories were the scum employers are meant to be heavily fined and/or jailed if they employ illegal migrants.
The hostile environment has seriously hurt a lot of decent people, both public and employers though and the scum continue.
The problem is enforcement. Currently, the scumbag employers are moderately good at hiding from enforcement. The naive and unsuspecting employees are easier to target.
To improve the situation you need evidence. Both @rcs1000 and I suggest motivating the undocumented employees to shop their employees. My suggestion was give them half of a 100k fine, his was give them the residency they desire. Why not both.
The main problem would be the load on the courts. A whole army of lawyers would spring from the ground to get some of that sweet cash.
I’ve said before that I think Johnson believes it when he says he didn’t lie. They convinced themselves that all the things they did were within the rules for working during the lockdowns. Now everyone else can believe that’s bollocks, but I think it is germane to the charge of lying to the house. No PM should have to resign over. FPN. Other mps have had them, for instance, and they are trivial. The weapon people are wielding is the lying to parliament. But Johnson, in his eyes, didn’t lie, they just got it wrong. Ultimately it will make little difference. I suspect the 80% of the public who scrupulously followed the rules will be waiting for the election, daggers raised. And I doubt anyone else on here will agree with my view.
Looking on from afar, most of my social group can’t understand this story at all.
The only fine the PM has been given so far, was for turning up to a work meeting on his birthday, where everyone present was meeting anyway, then his wife and a colleague turned up with a cake those present sang happy birthday to him. No cake was eaten, and only the PM’s wife was not going to be there anyway.
The alleged lying to Parliament, is based on whether the above event is described as ‘a party’ or not, when asked more than a year later if there were ‘any more parties’.
On the basis of this, numerous people are calling for the PM to resign.
The law was not against parties but non essential work gatherings. Whether anyone believed or believes it to be a party is irrelevant to the law, or whether the PM was lying when he said he followed the rules.
The questions are was it a gathering (yes) and was it essential work (no). On this particular party there is a grey area because they were already gathered. I think this one could have been let go on that basis.
But the leaving drinks ones, and the email to make the most of the lovely weather with drinks are definitely clear breaches of the rules, regardless of whether one thinks of them as parties or not.
Agreed, that the leaving drinks was definitely a party by any definition of the word - although was attended only by civil servants rather than politicians.
Inviting a group of people who had been working together indoors all day, to sit in the garden outdoors for half an hour, may have been a technical breach of the letter of the rules, but doesn’t meet most people’s definition of a party - except in the minds of those who start with wanting the PM to resign and work backwards from there.
Johnson (a politician) is reported to have attended at least one leaving drinks.
The COVID regulations didn’t ban parties. It is irrelevant whether something was or was not a party. They banned non-essential gatherings.
You’re correct about the regulations. The issue with ‘parties’ is that opponents of the PM are using his comments on ‘parties’ to Parliament, to accuse him of lying. The ‘lie’ only exists, if one accepts that the PM being delivered a cake on his birthday amounts to a ‘party’, when he was asked about it more than a year later.
Not true. He said to Parliament that all rules were followed. They were not. That they were not should’ve been palpably obvious to him.
Not true. People can have different interpretations of what the rules are and can justify to themselves that they're not breaking them even if others think they are.
Many people seem to forget that this is a workplace that allows alcohol to be consumed in the workplace. There are many, many bars in Parliament etc - the idea that work + alcohol = broken rules is simply not true.
Whether its a good or bad idea to be drinking alcohol at work is an entirely different matter.
The events concerned did not take place in Parliament but in a government office, where there are no bars whatsoever.
And no people who work in Downing Street work in Parliament?
Alcohol has been allowed in Downing Street all along. Suitcases of wine have been a tradition for many, many years as part of the working culture there including under previous Prime Ministers it is nothing new.
So if that's your normal working day pre-pandemic, then no people won't automatically think "oh there's alcohol here, that's not work" during it.
I'm sure the people who work in Downing Street who are also sometimes in Parliament know that they are different places. All civil servants in Downing Street will have been made well aware of their constitutional position. Let's consider a similar situation: I work in a university. There are student bars on campus. My office is closer to the nearest student bar than No. 10 is to Parliament. I am aware that my office is different from a student bar and the behaviour that goes on in student bars is not appropriate behaviour in my office.
So, anyway, we're agreed that the presence of bars in Parliament is a red herring. Good. Where have you moved to the goal posts to next? Oh, it's the "there was a drinking culture" defence...
Has there been a long-standing drinking culture in No. 10? Perhaps. There were lots of things we all used to do in offices before lockdown. Lockdown changed everything for most people. They knew we were in a different situation. People working on pandemic work knew that more than most in my experience. So the idea that everyone was just carrying on pre-pandemic habits unthinkingly is ridiculous.
Maybe there were some individuals who were stupid enough to think that lockdown hadn't changed anything. That's where leadership comes in. There should have been clear guidance from the senior civil servants and the political leadership, i.e. Boris Johnson. Johnson was going on TV regularly laying out the rules. He must have known what they were, or does he just move his lips without listening to what he's actually saying?
That doesn't address a single point that I made.
If you at university are allowed to have wine while working, then you're allowed to drink while working and the fact that you're drinking wine does not preclude you from being at work.
The pandemic meant that people who weren't needed in the building shouldn't be there, but the law never said a single thing about alcohol. If people who needed to be in the building for work reasons were drinking while working, then that was not against the law - and if they were entitled to drink while working, that's not against their employment either.
There was never any guidance about alcohol at work. The key question was "did you need to leave your house for this", if no (because non-essential work) then you were supposed to be at home, but there was nothing preventing those who were essential workers from having refreshments, and there was nothing preventing those refreshments from being alcoholic.
Hold on... sorry... I'm a bit out of breath... I've been running to keep up with your goal post shifting...
OK... breathe...
Right, over 50 people at No. 10 have received FPNs for breaking COVID rules. They were not fined for drinking alcohol at work. The complaint is not that they were drinking at work. The complaint is that there was widespread breaking of the COVID rules that they imposed on all on us, including by the Prime Minister, his wife and the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
I noted that the PM said all rules were followed. You then started talking about drinking. That's a sozzled red herring. The PM said all rules were followed. The PM and multiple others have now admitted that all rules were not followed.
I’ve said before that I think Johnson believes it when he says he didn’t lie. They convinced themselves that all the things they did were within the rules for working during the lockdowns. Now everyone else can believe that’s bollocks, but I think it is germane to the charge of lying to the house. No PM should have to resign over. FPN. Other mps have had them, for instance, and they are trivial. The weapon people are wielding is the lying to parliament. But Johnson, in his eyes, didn’t lie, they just got it wrong. Ultimately it will make little difference. I suspect the 80% of the public who scrupulously followed the rules will be waiting for the election, daggers raised. And I doubt anyone else on here will agree with my view.
Looking on from afar, most of my social group can’t understand this story at all.
The only fine the PM has been given so far, was for turning up to a work meeting on his birthday, where everyone present was meeting anyway, then his wife and a colleague turned up with a cake those present sang happy birthday to him. No cake was eaten, and only the PM’s wife was not going to be there anyway.
The alleged lying to Parliament, is based on whether the above event is described as ‘a party’ or not, when asked more than a year later if there were ‘any more parties’.
On the basis of this, numerous people are calling for the PM to resign.
The law was not against parties but non essential work gatherings. Whether anyone believed or believes it to be a party is irrelevant to the law, or whether the PM was lying when he said he followed the rules.
The questions are was it a gathering (yes) and was it essential work (no). On this particular party there is a grey area because they were already gathered. I think this one could have been let go on that basis.
But the leaving drinks ones, and the email to make the most of the lovely weather with drinks are definitely clear breaches of the rules, regardless of whether one thinks of them as parties or not.
Agreed, that the leaving drinks was definitely a party by any definition of the word - although was attended only by civil servants rather than politicians.
Inviting a group of people who had been working together indoors all day, to sit in the garden outdoors for half an hour, may have been a technical breach of the letter of the rules, but doesn’t meet most people’s definition of a party - except in the minds of those who start with wanting the PM to resign and work backwards from there.
Johnson (a politician) is reported to have attended at least one leaving drinks.
The COVID regulations didn’t ban parties. It is irrelevant whether something was or was not a party. They banned non-essential gatherings.
You’re correct about the regulations. The issue with ‘parties’ is that opponents of the PM are using his comments on ‘parties’ to Parliament, to accuse him of lying. The ‘lie’ only exists, if one accepts that the PM being delivered a cake on his birthday amounts to a ‘party’, when he was asked about it more than a year later.
Not true. He said to Parliament that all rules were followed. They were not. That they were not should’ve been palpably obvious to him.
Not true. People can have different interpretations of what the rules are and can justify to themselves that they're not breaking them even if others think they are.
Many people seem to forget that this is a workplace that allows alcohol to be consumed in the workplace. There are many, many bars in Parliament etc - the idea that work + alcohol = broken rules is simply not true.
Whether its a good or bad idea to be drinking alcohol at work is an entirely different matter.
The events concerned did not take place in Parliament but in a government office, where there are no bars whatsoever.
And no people who work in Downing Street work in Parliament?
Alcohol has been allowed in Downing Street all along. Suitcases of wine have been a tradition for many, many years as part of the working culture there including under previous Prime Ministers it is nothing new.
So if that's your normal working day pre-pandemic, then no people won't automatically think "oh there's alcohol here, that's not work" during it.
I'm sure the people who work in Downing Street who are also sometimes in Parliament know that they are different places. All civil servants in Downing Street will have been made well aware of their constitutional position. Let's consider a similar situation: I work in a university. There are student bars on campus. My office is closer to the nearest student bar than No. 10 is to Parliament. I am aware that my office is different from a student bar and the behaviour that goes on in student bars is not appropriate behaviour in my office.
So, anyway, we're agreed that the presence of bars in Parliament is a red herring. Good. Where have you moved to the goal posts to next? Oh, it's the "there was a drinking culture" defence...
Has there been a long-standing drinking culture in No. 10? Perhaps. There were lots of things we all used to do in offices before lockdown. Lockdown changed everything for most people. They knew we were in a different situation. People working on pandemic work knew that more than most in my experience. So the idea that everyone was just carrying on pre-pandemic habits unthinkingly is ridiculous.
Maybe there were some individuals who were stupid enough to think that lockdown hadn't changed anything. That's where leadership comes in. There should have been clear guidance from the senior civil servants and the political leadership, i.e. Boris Johnson. Johnson was going on TV regularly laying out the rules. He must have known what they were, or does he just move his lips without listening to what he's actually saying?
That doesn't address a single point that I made.
If you at university are allowed to have wine while working, then you're allowed to drink while working and the fact that you're drinking wine does not preclude you from being at work.
The pandemic meant that people who weren't needed in the building shouldn't be there, but the law never said a single thing about alcohol. If people who needed to be in the building for work reasons were drinking while working, then that was not against the law - and if they were entitled to drink while working, that's not against their employment either.
There was never any guidance about alcohol at work. The key question was "did you need to leave your house for this", if no (because non-essential work) then you were supposed to be at home, but there was nothing preventing those who were essential workers from having refreshments, and there was nothing preventing those refreshments from being alcoholic.
You rival HYUFD for wrong headed literal minded monomania. You would have a point if everyone were sitting at a workstation editing spreadsheets or talking on phones, and had a glass of wine rather than cup of coffee next to the mouse. Literally nobody thinks that was happening. What was happening, was socialising. The presence of alcohol is not an offence in itself, but a strong indicator that what was happening, was not work but socialising. As are toasts, singing, birthday cakes and the damaging of outdoor toys.
Except for the fact I've said that the socialising was wrong and that Boris should resign.
However some people are claiming alcohol = broken rules = must be known about = must be lying. That chain of though is fundamentally broken by the fact that as you say alcohol was not an offence. It was never an offence to drink alcohol.
It was the socialising that was the offence, not the alcohol, on that we are agreed.
I equally do not accept that birthday cakes, singing etc are a breach either. If people are required to be at work for essential purposes, then I do not accept that people singing or having cake while at work for work reasons is a breach of the rules.
If you cast your mind back how many videos went viral of doctors/nurses etc doing dances or other things while in uniform at work? It kept morale up and people were positive about that at the time, I don't recall a single person ever saying "dancing is non-essential, this is socialising and it is against the law" - did you?
Do you think if a nurse took a birthday cake in for a colleague, or a nurse sang happy birthday to a colleague on the ward, or to a patient on a ward, that it was a breach of the law?
I’ve said before that I think Johnson believes it when he says he didn’t lie. They convinced themselves that all the things they did were within the rules for working during the lockdowns. Now everyone else can believe that’s bollocks, but I think it is germane to the charge of lying to the house. No PM should have to resign over. FPN. Other mps have had them, for instance, and they are trivial. The weapon people are wielding is the lying to parliament. But Johnson, in his eyes, didn’t lie, they just got it wrong. Ultimately it will make little difference. I suspect the 80% of the public who scrupulously followed the rules will be waiting for the election, daggers raised. And I doubt anyone else on here will agree with my view.
Looking on from afar, most of my social group can’t understand this story at all.
The only fine the PM has been given so far, was for turning up to a work meeting on his birthday, where everyone present was meeting anyway, then his wife and a colleague turned up with a cake those present sang happy birthday to him. No cake was eaten, and only the PM’s wife was not going to be there anyway.
The alleged lying to Parliament, is based on whether the above event is described as ‘a party’ or not, when asked more than a year later if there were ‘any more parties’.
On the basis of this, numerous people are calling for the PM to resign.
The law was not against parties but non essential work gatherings. Whether anyone believed or believes it to be a party is irrelevant to the law, or whether the PM was lying when he said he followed the rules.
The questions are was it a gathering (yes) and was it essential work (no). On this particular party there is a grey area because they were already gathered. I think this one could have been let go on that basis.
But the leaving drinks ones, and the email to make the most of the lovely weather with drinks are definitely clear breaches of the rules, regardless of whether one thinks of them as parties or not.
Agreed, that the leaving drinks was definitely a party by any definition of the word - although was attended only by civil servants rather than politicians.
Inviting a group of people who had been working together indoors all day, to sit in the garden outdoors for half an hour, may have been a technical breach of the letter of the rules, but doesn’t meet most people’s definition of a party - except in the minds of those who start with wanting the PM to resign and work backwards from there.
Johnson (a politician) is reported to have attended at least one leaving drinks.
The COVID regulations didn’t ban parties. It is irrelevant whether something was or was not a party. They banned non-essential gatherings.
You’re correct about the regulations. The issue with ‘parties’ is that opponents of the PM are using his comments on ‘parties’ to Parliament, to accuse him of lying. The ‘lie’ only exists, if one accepts that the PM being delivered a cake on his birthday amounts to a ‘party’, when he was asked about it more than a year later.
Not true. He said to Parliament that all rules were followed. They were not. That they were not should’ve been palpably obvious to him.
Not true. People can have different interpretations of what the rules are and can justify to themselves that they're not breaking them even if others think they are.
Many people seem to forget that this is a workplace that allows alcohol to be consumed in the workplace. There are many, many bars in Parliament etc - the idea that work + alcohol = broken rules is simply not true.
Whether its a good or bad idea to be drinking alcohol at work is an entirely different matter.
The events concerned did not take place in Parliament but in a government office, where there are no bars whatsoever.
And no people who work in Downing Street work in Parliament?
Alcohol has been allowed in Downing Street all along. Suitcases of wine have been a tradition for many, many years as part of the working culture there including under previous Prime Ministers it is nothing new.
So if that's your normal working day pre-pandemic, then no people won't automatically think "oh there's alcohol here, that's not work" during it.
I'm sure the people who work in Downing Street who are also sometimes in Parliament know that they are different places. All civil servants in Downing Street will have been made well aware of their constitutional position. Let's consider a similar situation: I work in a university. There are student bars on campus. My office is closer to the nearest student bar than No. 10 is to Parliament. I am aware that my office is different from a student bar and the behaviour that goes on in student bars is not appropriate behaviour in my office.
So, anyway, we're agreed that the presence of bars in Parliament is a red herring. Good. Where have you moved to the goal posts to next? Oh, it's the "there was a drinking culture" defence...
Has there been a long-standing drinking culture in No. 10? Perhaps. There were lots of things we all used to do in offices before lockdown. Lockdown changed everything for most people. They knew we were in a different situation. People working on pandemic work knew that more than most in my experience. So the idea that everyone was just carrying on pre-pandemic habits unthinkingly is ridiculous.
Maybe there were some individuals who were stupid enough to think that lockdown hadn't changed anything. That's where leadership comes in. There should have been clear guidance from the senior civil servants and the political leadership, i.e. Boris Johnson. Johnson was going on TV regularly laying out the rules. He must have known what they were, or does he just move his lips without listening to what he's actually saying?
That doesn't address a single point that I made.
If you at university are allowed to have wine while working, then you're allowed to drink while working and the fact that you're drinking wine does not preclude you from being at work.
The pandemic meant that people who weren't needed in the building shouldn't be there, but the law never said a single thing about alcohol. If people who needed to be in the building for work reasons were drinking while working, then that was not against the law - and if they were entitled to drink while working, that's not against their employment either.
There was never any guidance about alcohol at work. The key question was "did you need to leave your house for this", if no (because non-essential work) then you were supposed to be at home, but there was nothing preventing those who were essential workers from having refreshments, and there was nothing preventing those refreshments from being alcoholic.
Hold on... sorry... I'm a bit out of breath... I've been running to keep up with your goal post shifting...
OK... breathe...
Right, over 50 people at No. 10 have received FPNs for breaking COVID rules. They were not fined for drinking alcohol at work. The complaint is not that they were drinking at work. The complaint is that there was widespread breaking of the COVID rules that they imposed on all on us, including by the Prime Minister, his wife and the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
I noted that the PM said all rules were followed. You then started talking about drinking. That's a sozzled red herring. The PM said all rules were followed. The PM and multiple others have now admitted that all rules were not followed.
I’ve said before that I think Johnson believes it when he says he didn’t lie. They convinced themselves that all the things they did were within the rules for working during the lockdowns. Now everyone else can believe that’s bollocks, but I think it is germane to the charge of lying to the house. No PM should have to resign over. FPN. Other mps have had them, for instance, and they are trivial. The weapon people are wielding is the lying to parliament. But Johnson, in his eyes, didn’t lie, they just got it wrong. Ultimately it will make little difference. I suspect the 80% of the public who scrupulously followed the rules will be waiting for the election, daggers raised. And I doubt anyone else on here will agree with my view.
Looking on from afar, most of my social group can’t understand this story at all.
The only fine the PM has been given so far, was for turning up to a work meeting on his birthday, where everyone present was meeting anyway, then his wife and a colleague turned up with a cake those present sang happy birthday to him. No cake was eaten, and only the PM’s wife was not going to be there anyway.
The alleged lying to Parliament, is based on whether the above event is described as ‘a party’ or not, when asked more than a year later if there were ‘any more parties’.
On the basis of this, numerous people are calling for the PM to resign.
The law was not against parties but non essential work gatherings. Whether anyone believed or believes it to be a party is irrelevant to the law, or whether the PM was lying when he said he followed the rules.
The questions are was it a gathering (yes) and was it essential work (no). On this particular party there is a grey area because they were already gathered. I think this one could have been let go on that basis.
But the leaving drinks ones, and the email to make the most of the lovely weather with drinks are definitely clear breaches of the rules, regardless of whether one thinks of them as parties or not.
Agreed, that the leaving drinks was definitely a party by any definition of the word - although was attended only by civil servants rather than politicians.
Inviting a group of people who had been working together indoors all day, to sit in the garden outdoors for half an hour, may have been a technical breach of the letter of the rules, but doesn’t meet most people’s definition of a party - except in the minds of those who start with wanting the PM to resign and work backwards from there.
Johnson (a politician) is reported to have attended at least one leaving drinks.
The COVID regulations didn’t ban parties. It is irrelevant whether something was or was not a party. They banned non-essential gatherings.
You’re correct about the regulations. The issue with ‘parties’ is that opponents of the PM are using his comments on ‘parties’ to Parliament, to accuse him of lying. The ‘lie’ only exists, if one accepts that the PM being delivered a cake on his birthday amounts to a ‘party’, when he was asked about it more than a year later.
Not true. He said to Parliament that all rules were followed. They were not. That they were not should’ve been palpably obvious to him.
Not true. People can have different interpretations of what the rules are and can justify to themselves that they're not breaking them even if others think they are.
Many people seem to forget that this is a workplace that allows alcohol to be consumed in the workplace. There are many, many bars in Parliament etc - the idea that work + alcohol = broken rules is simply not true.
Whether its a good or bad idea to be drinking alcohol at work is an entirely different matter.
The events concerned did not take place in Parliament but in a government office, where there are no bars whatsoever.
And no people who work in Downing Street work in Parliament?
Alcohol has been allowed in Downing Street all along. Suitcases of wine have been a tradition for many, many years as part of the working culture there including under previous Prime Ministers it is nothing new.
So if that's your normal working day pre-pandemic, then no people won't automatically think "oh there's alcohol here, that's not work" during it.
I'm sure the people who work in Downing Street who are also sometimes in Parliament know that they are different places. All civil servants in Downing Street will have been made well aware of their constitutional position. Let's consider a similar situation: I work in a university. There are student bars on campus. My office is closer to the nearest student bar than No. 10 is to Parliament. I am aware that my office is different from a student bar and the behaviour that goes on in student bars is not appropriate behaviour in my office.
So, anyway, we're agreed that the presence of bars in Parliament is a red herring. Good. Where have you moved to the goal posts to next? Oh, it's the "there was a drinking culture" defence...
Has there been a long-standing drinking culture in No. 10? Perhaps. There were lots of things we all used to do in offices before lockdown. Lockdown changed everything for most people. They knew we were in a different situation. People working on pandemic work knew that more than most in my experience. So the idea that everyone was just carrying on pre-pandemic habits unthinkingly is ridiculous.
Maybe there were some individuals who were stupid enough to think that lockdown hadn't changed anything. That's where leadership comes in. There should have been clear guidance from the senior civil servants and the political leadership, i.e. Boris Johnson. Johnson was going on TV regularly laying out the rules. He must have known what they were, or does he just move his lips without listening to what he's actually saying?
That doesn't address a single point that I made.
If you at university are allowed to have wine while working, then you're allowed to drink while working and the fact that you're drinking wine does not preclude you from being at work.
The pandemic meant that people who weren't needed in the building shouldn't be there, but the law never said a single thing about alcohol. If people who needed to be in the building for work reasons were drinking while working, then that was not against the law - and if they were entitled to drink while working, that's not against their employment either.
There was never any guidance about alcohol at work. The key question was "did you need to leave your house for this", if no (because non-essential work) then you were supposed to be at home, but there was nothing preventing those who were essential workers from having refreshments, and there was nothing preventing those refreshments from being alcoholic.
You rival HYUFD for wrong headed literal minded monomania. You would have a point if everyone were sitting at a workstation editing spreadsheets or talking on phones, and had a glass of wine rather than cup of coffee next to the mouse. Literally nobody thinks that was happening. What was happening, was socialising. The presence of alcohol is not an offence in itself, but a strong indicator that what was happening, was not work but socialising. As are toasts, singing, birthday cakes and the damaging of outdoor toys.
Sending a junior SPAD out to Tesco to buy enough bottles to fill a suitcase is also not the sort of thing likely to be done 'at work'.
I’ve said before that I think Johnson believes it when he says he didn’t lie. They convinced themselves that all the things they did were within the rules for working during the lockdowns. Now everyone else can believe that’s bollocks, but I think it is germane to the charge of lying to the house. No PM should have to resign over. FPN. Other mps have had them, for instance, and they are trivial. The weapon people are wielding is the lying to parliament. But Johnson, in his eyes, didn’t lie, they just got it wrong. Ultimately it will make little difference. I suspect the 80% of the public who scrupulously followed the rules will be waiting for the election, daggers raised. And I doubt anyone else on here will agree with my view.
Looking on from afar, most of my social group can’t understand this story at all.
The only fine the PM has been given so far, was for turning up to a work meeting on his birthday, where everyone present was meeting anyway, then his wife and a colleague turned up with a cake those present sang happy birthday to him. No cake was eaten, and only the PM’s wife was not going to be there anyway.
The alleged lying to Parliament, is based on whether the above event is described as ‘a party’ or not, when asked more than a year later if there were ‘any more parties’.
On the basis of this, numerous people are calling for the PM to resign.
The law was not against parties but non essential work gatherings. Whether anyone believed or believes it to be a party is irrelevant to the law, or whether the PM was lying when he said he followed the rules.
The questions are was it a gathering (yes) and was it essential work (no). On this particular party there is a grey area because they were already gathered. I think this one could have been let go on that basis.
But the leaving drinks ones, and the email to make the most of the lovely weather with drinks are definitely clear breaches of the rules, regardless of whether one thinks of them as parties or not.
Agreed, that the leaving drinks was definitely a party by any definition of the word - although was attended only by civil servants rather than politicians.
Inviting a group of people who had been working together indoors all day, to sit in the garden outdoors for half an hour, may have been a technical breach of the letter of the rules, but doesn’t meet most people’s definition of a party - except in the minds of those who start with wanting the PM to resign and work backwards from there.
Johnson (a politician) is reported to have attended at least one leaving drinks.
The COVID regulations didn’t ban parties. It is irrelevant whether something was or was not a party. They banned non-essential gatherings.
You’re correct about the regulations. The issue with ‘parties’ is that opponents of the PM are using his comments on ‘parties’ to Parliament, to accuse him of lying. The ‘lie’ only exists, if one accepts that the PM being delivered a cake on his birthday amounts to a ‘party’, when he was asked about it more than a year later.
Not true. He said to Parliament that all rules were followed. They were not. That they were not should’ve been palpably obvious to him.
Not true. People can have different interpretations of what the rules are and can justify to themselves that they're not breaking them even if others think they are.
Many people seem to forget that this is a workplace that allows alcohol to be consumed in the workplace. There are many, many bars in Parliament etc - the idea that work + alcohol = broken rules is simply not true.
Whether its a good or bad idea to be drinking alcohol at work is an entirely different matter.
The events concerned did not take place in Parliament but in a government office, where there are no bars whatsoever.
And no people who work in Downing Street work in Parliament?
Alcohol has been allowed in Downing Street all along. Suitcases of wine have been a tradition for many, many years as part of the working culture there including under previous Prime Ministers it is nothing new.
So if that's your normal working day pre-pandemic, then no people won't automatically think "oh there's alcohol here, that's not work" during it.
I'm sure the people who work in Downing Street who are also sometimes in Parliament know that they are different places. All civil servants in Downing Street will have been made well aware of their constitutional position. Let's consider a similar situation: I work in a university. There are student bars on campus. My office is closer to the nearest student bar than No. 10 is to Parliament. I am aware that my office is different from a student bar and the behaviour that goes on in student bars is not appropriate behaviour in my office.
So, anyway, we're agreed that the presence of bars in Parliament is a red herring. Good. Where have you moved to the goal posts to next? Oh, it's the "there was a drinking culture" defence...
Has there been a long-standing drinking culture in No. 10? Perhaps. There were lots of things we all used to do in offices before lockdown. Lockdown changed everything for most people. They knew we were in a different situation. People working on pandemic work knew that more than most in my experience. So the idea that everyone was just carrying on pre-pandemic habits unthinkingly is ridiculous.
Maybe there were some individuals who were stupid enough to think that lockdown hadn't changed anything. That's where leadership comes in. There should have been clear guidance from the senior civil servants and the political leadership, i.e. Boris Johnson. Johnson was going on TV regularly laying out the rules. He must have known what they were, or does he just move his lips without listening to what he's actually saying?
That doesn't address a single point that I made.
If you at university are allowed to have wine while working, then you're allowed to drink while working and the fact that you're drinking wine does not preclude you from being at work.
The pandemic meant that people who weren't needed in the building shouldn't be there, but the law never said a single thing about alcohol. If people who needed to be in the building for work reasons were drinking while working, then that was not against the law - and if they were entitled to drink while working, that's not against their employment either.
There was never any guidance about alcohol at work. The key question was "did you need to leave your house for this", if no (because non-essential work) then you were supposed to be at home, but there was nothing preventing those who were essential workers from having refreshments, and there was nothing preventing those refreshments from being alcoholic.
You rival HYUFD for wrong headed literal minded monomania. You would have a point if everyone were sitting at a workstation editing spreadsheets or talking on phones, and had a glass of wine rather than cup of coffee next to the mouse. Literally nobody thinks that was happening. What was happening, was socialising. The presence of alcohol is not an offence in itself, but a strong indicator that what was happening, was not work but socialising. As are toasts, singing, birthday cakes and the damaging of outdoor toys.
Sending a junior SPAD out to Tesco to buy enough bottles to fill a suitcase is also not the sort of thing likely to be done 'at work'.
I knew a bloke whose first job was with IDV, and his first job there was to visit London pubs and order a whisky [unspecified] to verify that their default whisky was Haig or whatever the IDV brand was. Nice work if you can get it
Comments
Because the polling I've seen is about a different policy, which is significantly less drastic than the actual plan.
I do too, but since I heard his comments in Parliament over the recording of Allegra Stratton, I find it simply impossible to believe he wasn’t consciously lying.
Unless, as suggested above, that he has some pathological disorder.
If its successful, I think they'll not care about any concerns.
Boris hasn't been all bad - he did manage to steer a course through Brexit (albeit a very contentious one) and perhaps other politicians might have finish up being mired in a Brexit stalemate for years. However I think he's lost the respect of the country and that'll be reflected in the elections, and most likely there will be further revalations about partys too which really are inexcusable (the birthday bash being potentially the least bad).
Many people seem to forget that this is a workplace that allows alcohol to be consumed in the workplace. There are many, many bars in Parliament etc - the idea that work + alcohol = broken rules is simply not true.
Whether its a good or bad idea to be drinking alcohol at work is an entirely different matter.
Delighted for Johnson to be pilloried over Party-gate .... but it seems relatively unimportant to me compared to the much bigger questions of the origin of the virus & our preparedness & our response to it.
I would like to see these questions receive much, much more attention than hitherto.
Just as it was obvious to neutrals that it was all over for Blair after the lies of the Iraq War, so it is obvious to neutrals that it is all over for Johnson after the lies of Party-gate.
The flaws of both these men are clear in the manner of the events that brought them down.
Unless the ship sank before it could even start to be towed.
I would expect many major burns in survivors, judging by the survivors of ships hit in the Falklands.
And sorting out a speech comparing those with those of the Prime Minister.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDEgTJPRSu4
It would be wrong of the PM to deliver a single statement tomorrow on partygate, Ukraine and the Rwanda plan. These should be separate standalone statements. Each deserves proper attention. The House should insist on this.
https://twitter.com/RhonddaBryant/status/1515967928470024198
Some of the polling suggested that people would be assessed in Rwanda for immigration to the UK, which will likely be even less popular.
If you’re genuinely fleeing persecution, you shouldn’t be too worried about where you end up settled so long as it’s safe. For people who are primarily economic migrants trying to jump the queue, on the other hand…
Alcohol has been allowed in Downing Street all along. Suitcases of wine have been a tradition for many, many years as part of the working culture there including under previous Prime Ministers it is nothing new.
So if that's your normal working day pre-pandemic, then no people won't automatically think "oh there's alcohol here, that's not work" during it.
No individual vote is worth anything except as part of the totality of votes which gives rise a to a result according to a system which all voters comprehend, and take account of when they vote. All votes count the same whether in South Holland or Bootle.
if you think your Tory vote in Bootle counts less, you are saying that your Tory vote ought for some mystical reason should count more than all the Labour ones. Why?
And BTW it is not true that overwhelmingly party Z seats can't change. Ask the SNP.
My sense is that as with Australia who many now see it as a racist country this will be the fate of the UK.
Those aren't queue-jumpers they are referring to, or people living and working illegally. They are British citizens and people with indefinite leave and people who have valid papers to be working and paying taxes in the UK.
You personally may be quite content with the equivalent of you in the UK. Many are not. And the people who your party are pandering to see no difference between legal and illegal, queue jumpers or proper asylum seekers. They just want them gone.
If that 5% candidate was a local independent, then yes, they'd be massively rejected and deserve no particular representation at a national level.
There are plenty of systems that do that.
In WWII a US cruiser was severely damaged when alongside an aircraft carrier, helping to fight a fire on the latter. The carrier suffered an explosion, and far more people were lost on the cruiser than the carrier.
https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-history-magazine/2009/october/hell-broke-loose-leyte-gulf
BTW, the people on the tug trying to help the Moskva were reasonably brave, considering there were lots of explosives on board it, along with a fire.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/sweden-provide-ukraine-with-5000-more-anti-tank-weapons-tt-news-agency-2022-03-23/
Which is what FPTP and our adversarial system tries to suggest.
And if that is the the reason for retaining the policy, why would Finland joining be a gamechanger?
I know little of the region so these are genuine questions, though I recall an article awhile back about Finland being in a bit of modern denial about the historic influence of Sweden and that continuing impact.
The 42 dead can have a salute from me. No roses bloom on a sailor's grave.
I don't believe Corbyn was anti-Semitic. He did however have friends and colleagues who expressed anti-Semitic viewed and he was slow to perceive the danger. The accusations of anti-Semitism (from his enemies in Labour & the Tories) destroyed him.
Perhaps there was an impromptu party for Boris and he found it difficult to close it down. Perhaps alcohol has been part of Downing Street culture under previous PMs. It doesn't really matter. Boris' opponents have found an accusation that is damaging and Boris has been slow to perceive the danger.
Like Corbyn and anti-semitism, the allegations carry enough credibility that they have destroyed him. From a political POV, it now does not really matter whether Boris has a technical defence, or not.
I don't believe Boris will get to GE2024. Though it may be in the Tory interest to let him carry the can for a bit longer.
If 250 paraded yesterday that could indicate that when taken with any who are in hospital over half survived, However knowing Putin's 'integrity' and propaganda, its also possible that they just rounded some sailors in Stvastapol Naval Base and gave them the right uniform.
If I was going to guess, grabbing totally random people to use in a parade like that has some risk that the truth might come out, but using people like the trainee/cadet officers, to boost the number on parade a bit would be more credible.
Having said that I feel very sympathetic to Mr S and his wife; I suspect that my half-Thai grandchildren, now approaching adulthood, who currently carry two passports, are going to have some hoops to jump through shortly.
But even if they had got the Moskva back to port, I very much doubt that it would ever be ready for combat again. It was toasty.
What gets me (as a non-expert) about the pictures and videos are:
*) No sign of heavy swells or a storm, which we had been told were in the area at the time.
*) No lifeboats or debris in the sea.
*) Clear signs of smoke damage along the ship, but none coming out of those at the time.
*) No visible crew on board fighting fires or mustered for evacuation.
*) I wonder how near it was rolling over.
These make me think that the pictures might well be many hours after it was initially hit.
Most won't go to Rwanda, because that scheme has fairly low capacity, and the Rwandans haven't agreed to take everyone the UK wants to send. Even a 90% cut in small boat migrant numbers would overwhelm the system.
And we don't know the overall view of "process in Rwanda/bring to UK" vs. "process in Rwanda/stay in Rwanda", because that polling hasn't been done. (The ambiguity in the question bothers me. People are often ambiguous when their conscience bothers them.)
I realise this is an argument neither side can win.
We need to stop indulging this drivel about Putin seeing Nato as a direct threat to Russia. What sort of country with the biggest military alliance in the world on its doorstep would choose to commit its entire military capability to fighting a non-Nato with no likelihood of joining it? Russia has left itself completely exposed to a conventional attack from Nato - as general HR McMaster pointed out (in jest?) the Lithuanian army could probably march on St Petersburg right now.
So how can Putin AFFORD to be going all in on Ukraine? Because he clearly doesn't see Nato as a directly military threat to Russia at all. It is a completely bogus argument made as an excuse whereas in reality he knows that Nato membership stops him exerting his sphere of influence over eastern Europe. Given his entire modus operandi is one of fear and submission I think we know what that would mean in practice.
It would be legal to do so, these people will have an evaluation of their claim and they are already in custody.
I dont think transporting folk straight from beach to airport is legally possible or viable.
Given that during the Cold War, Russia had plans to nuke New Zealand despite the anti-nuclear stuff. And Invade Sweden in a number of conventional war scenarios… well, I don’t think it makes much difference at this point
The primary aim needs to be to remove the pull factors, which currently lead to deaths at sea and enrichment of traffickers.
That is what worked in Australia. Everyone who arrived in a boat was guaranteed to go to Nauru. So they stopped coming at all via boat and the tiny few that still attempted it turned around because they didn't want to go to Nauru.
But that isn't what this is about. A section of the British population think its fine for them to do something but not fine for others to do the same. They wanted free movement - to live in France or Spain in enclaves - but wanted to stop free movement for anyone doing the same in Britain.
Those of their acquaintances who don’t share the group view on subject x, keep their mouths shut.
Hence the funny story of the lady in New York who couldn’t believe Reagan beat Mondale in 1984, because no one she knew had voted for Reagan.
We had an interesting demonstration of this here on PB, where a poster described his shock that instead of being anti-nuclear (like the rest of his group at uni) someone went and became a nuclear weapon engineer. The said scientist could not have considered the moral aspect - because he hadn’t discussed this with the rest of the group, first!
I don't buy the tail-wagging-the-dog argument, though. I think that is what we frequently get with internal party coalitions. I'd rather see a more open set of parties on 20% each forming coalitions in the open.
The policy is the 21st century equivalent of being sent to Botany Bay. Its a one-way trip.
Scottish MPs aren't elected in a vacuum. If they were, then we'd have had an SNP Prime Minister, but they've been on the Opposition benches.
That may be the case in the eyes of his god, but not in the eyes of the voters.
I look forward to more nuanced polling on this issue.
That's the end of the process for the UK, but they can still be granted asylum there.
Boris Johnson may be one of the most Godly people on the planet. The more he sins the holier he becomes. Allelujah.
The Australian government also had the fortitude to do tow backs as a further deterrent. There is no such fortitude available to Johnson.
BJ partying in No10 is in the public consciousness. It has entered the non-political obsessive* discourse. A disheveled Boris doing a Conga through the building while drinking wine from the bottle, every night of lockdown seems to be the image implanted in the minds of the public
*most people regard knowing your MPs name as making someone a political expert. More than that is seen as a bit… activist.
So how about we cut to the chase, and look for things that might work? That's (for example) clamping down on the irregular economy, and recognising that we need to co-operate with the French, ghastly though they are?
Because otherwise, we're in the "this was worse than immoral, it was a mistake" territory.
Smaller ship, one missile, smaller warhead (which may or may not of detonated)….
So, anyway, we're agreed that the presence of bars in Parliament is a red herring. Good. Where have you moved to the goal posts to next? Oh, it's the "there was a drinking culture" defence...
Has there been a long-standing drinking culture in No. 10? Perhaps. There were lots of things we all used to do in offices before lockdown. Lockdown changed everything for most people. They knew we were in a different situation. People working on pandemic work knew that more than most in my experience. So the idea that everyone was just carrying on pre-pandemic habits unthinkingly is ridiculous.
Maybe there were some individuals who were stupid enough to think that lockdown hadn't changed anything. That's where leadership comes in. There should have been clear guidance from the senior civil servants and the political leadership, i.e. Boris Johnson. Johnson was going on TV regularly laying out the rules. He must have known what they were, or does he just move his lips without listening to what he's actually saying?
The hostile environment has seriously hurt a lot of decent people, both public and employers though and the scum continue.
If Cameron's Conservatives (307 seats) had been free to hold an EU referendum in 2011 over the objections of Clegg's LibDems (57 seats) we would almost certainly have been in the EU for a generation (and to all intents and purposes, forever).
The most profound post-war political change was entirely down to the tail wagging the dog.
The way this works is the landlord rents the house for cash ( if he doesn’t give a shit) or rents it to a single person with documents, who then sublets. Those using the single-tenant-who-sublets approach are careful to make subletting a breach of the tenancy. So they can claim “I knew nothing - the bastard I rented the house to broke the lease and wrecked the place. I need compensation”.
If you at university are allowed to have wine while working, then you're allowed to drink while working and the fact that you're drinking wine does not preclude you from being at work.
The pandemic meant that people who weren't needed in the building shouldn't be there, but the law never said a single thing about alcohol. If people who needed to be in the building for work reasons were drinking while working, then that was not against the law - and if they were entitled to drink while working, that's not against their employment either.
There was never any guidance about alcohol at work. The key question was "did you need to leave your house for this", if no (because non-essential work) then you were supposed to be at home, but there was nothing preventing those who were essential workers from having refreshments, and there was nothing preventing those refreshments from being alcoholic.
Since Autumn 2013 there has been a guarantee in place that 100% of boat travellers to Australia would end up in Nauru if they didn't turn around. Since 2014 Australia has to the best of my knowledge deported a grand total of zero people to Nauru. Why? Because they stopped coming and the extremely few that attempted the crossing voluntarily turned back when faced with the choice of Nauru or turning around.
If there was a guarantee everyone who came via a boat would end up in Rwanda, rather than the UK, then within a year approximately zero people per annum is my expectation as to how many people would end up in Rwanda.
Since 2014 not only has not a single person needed to be sent to Nauru, there hasn't been a single reported drowning from boat travellers to Australia in the same time either. How many have drowned in the Channel in the same time period?
To improve the situation you need evidence. Both @rcs1000 and I suggest motivating the undocumented employees to shop their employees. My suggestion was give them half of a 100k fine, his was give them the residency they desire. Why not both.
The main problem would be the load on the courts. A whole army of lawyers would spring from the ground to get some of that sweet cash.
OK... breathe...
Right, over 50 people at No. 10 have received FPNs for breaking COVID rules. They were not fined for drinking alcohol at work. The complaint is not that they were drinking at work. The complaint is that there was widespread breaking of the COVID rules that they imposed on all on us, including by the Prime Minister, his wife and the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
I noted that the PM said all rules were followed. You then started talking about drinking. That's a sozzled red herring. The PM said all rules were followed. The PM and multiple others have now admitted that all rules were not followed.
https://twitter.com/JuliaHB1/status/1515989979142533122?s=20&t=Jjz1MN7BgjU8tUA3uVYOdg
However some people are claiming alcohol = broken rules = must be known about = must be lying. That chain of though is fundamentally broken by the fact that as you say alcohol was not an offence. It was never an offence to drink alcohol.
It was the socialising that was the offence, not the alcohol, on that we are agreed.
I equally do not accept that birthday cakes, singing etc are a breach either. If people are required to be at work for essential purposes, then I do not accept that people singing or having cake while at work for work reasons is a breach of the rules.
If you cast your mind back how many videos went viral of doctors/nurses etc doing dances or other things while in uniform at work? It kept morale up and people were positive about that at the time, I don't recall a single person ever saying "dancing is non-essential, this is socialising and it is against the law" - did you?
Do you think if a nurse took a birthday cake in for a colleague, or a nurse sang happy birthday to a colleague on the ward, or to a patient on a ward, that it was a breach of the law?
“Utter anus”.
I am going to use that