In effect Johnson can say wait for the privileges committee and then say to Labour you wanted that committee to investigate so we need to wait . Then he’s found of not being in contempt and then uses that to stay on . So could the opposition be shooting themselves in the foot by going down this road .
SKS wants to keep Boris in place, he's trying to win by default.
Yes, SKS wants to keep Johnson in place. Which is the reason Tories should oust Johnson.
SKS has structured today's motion to commence after the Gray report is out so as to ensure he stretches out the party-gate issue as long as he can. SKS is a ruthless political tactician. His MPs are trying to paint the picture of Covid sob-stories to create the impression that the measures were the government's doing despite the LP voting for them and wanting even more - they may get away with it. Baker called them out for hypocrisy today I see.
With Bryant recusing himself that leaves 4 Tories 1 SNP and 1 Labour on the committee . Zip chance of them finding Johnson guilty of contempt as I can’t see two Tories going for that and joining the latter two even if the evidence is overwhelming.
Bryant has, AIUI, recused himself from chairing, but will still participate in the cttee, so it’s 4 Con, 2 Lab, 1 SNP.
Bryant was very smart to step back from the process, as he has been (rightfully) vocal about the PM's behaviour. His brief speech in the debate was calm, but quite powerful. https://twitter.com/sturdyAlex/status/1517110481663803392
So where did the 'Eton of Scotland' thing come from? I have to say I'd never heard of Fettes before Blair came along. Was that phrase just an invention designed to make him seem posh?
As an OE friend of mine observed once, when a Fettesian said that Fettes was the "Eton of Scotland": Eton is the Eton of Scotland.
Didn't Eton recruit its headmaster from Fettes so that Blair, Cameron and Boris were all taught, at least nominally, by the same man?
Did I tell you that I saw SKS walking into Tony Blair's house last night.
Jesus this is the third time I have posted this doesn't a PB contributor get _any_ credit for what is surely the most momentous scoop of the age?!
We were just waiting for what we thought was an inevitable punchline.
Out of curiousity my phone just made a wierd noise so checked it. Apparently a mobile operator test of the emergency broadcast network. I have never seen that before. Anyone else get this and does it mean some shit is expected to hit the fan in the near future?
Never heard of it before.
Test
Were you able to listen to the Today programme this morning??
Do you mean, I *shouldn't* have launched all the nuclear weapons?
Out of curiousity my phone just made a wierd noise so checked it. Apparently a mobile operator test of the emergency broadcast network. I have never seen that before. Anyone else get this and does it mean some shit is expected to hit the fan in the near future?
Never heard of it before.
Test
Were you able to listen to the Today programme this morning??
Do you mean, I *shouldn't* have launched all the nuclear weapons?
With Bryant recusing himself that leaves 4 Tories 1 SNP and 1 Labour on the committee . Zip chance of them finding Johnson guilty of contempt as I can’t see two Tories going for that and joining the latter two even if the evidence is overwhelming.
Bryant has, AIUI, recused himself from chairing, but will still participate in the cttee, so it’s 4 Con, 2 Lab, 1 SNP.
Bryant was very smart to step back from the process, as he has been (rightfully) vocal about the PM's behaviour. His brief speech in the debate was calm, but quite powerful. https://twitter.com/sturdyAlex/status/1517110481663803392
Should anyone who has supported the PMs standards also recuse themselves?
I think tactically Bryant is right to recuse himself, not sure about it process wise though. Is it not the nature of the committee by design that it will be open to accusations of partisanship?
What do people say when they resign - "I was in danger of becoming a distraction from the work the government is doing and didn't want to become the story myself..."
So where did the 'Eton of Scotland' thing come from? I have to say I'd never heard of Fettes before Blair came along. Was that phrase just an invention designed to make him seem posh?
As an OE friend of mine observed once, when a Fettesian said that Fettes was the "Eton of Scotland": Eton is the Eton of Scotland.
Didn't Eton recruit its headmaster from Fettes so that Blair, Cameron and Boris were all taught, at least nominally, by the same man?
Did I tell you that I saw SKS walking into Tony Blair's house last night.
Jesus this is the third time I have posted this doesn't a PB contributor get _any_ credit for what is surely the most momentous scoop of the age?!
We were just waiting for what we thought was an inevitable punchline.
He is smaller than he looks on the telly is all I thought.
So where did the 'Eton of Scotland' thing come from? I have to say I'd never heard of Fettes before Blair came along. Was that phrase just an invention designed to make him seem posh?
As an OE friend of mine observed once, when a Fettesian said that Fettes was the "Eton of Scotland": Eton is the Eton of Scotland.
Didn't Eton recruit its headmaster from Fettes so that Blair, Cameron and Boris were all taught, at least nominally, by the same man?
Did I tell you that I saw SKS walking into Tony Blair's house last night.
Jesus this is the third time I have posted this doesn't a PB contributor get _any_ credit for what is surely the most momentous scoop of the age?!
We were just waiting for what we thought was an inevitable punchline.
He is smaller than he looks on the telly is all I thought.
Maggie was tiny. Projected this huge personality, but very wee......
Out of curiousity my phone just made a wierd noise so checked it. Apparently a mobile operator test of the emergency broadcast network. I have never seen that before. Anyone else get this and does it mean some shit is expected to hit the fan in the near future?
Never heard of it before.
Test
Were you able to listen to the Today programme this morning??
Do you mean, I *shouldn't* have launched all the nuclear weapons?
Oops. My bad.
Did the Today programme go out with a bang?
It would be typically human for world war 3 to start because someone at the beeb decides to axe the today programme as its not pulling in a big enough audience and no one thinks "oh damn better tell the subs"
So where did the 'Eton of Scotland' thing come from? I have to say I'd never heard of Fettes before Blair came along. Was that phrase just an invention designed to make him seem posh?
As an OE friend of mine observed once, when a Fettesian said that Fettes was the "Eton of Scotland": Eton is the Eton of Scotland.
Didn't Eton recruit its headmaster from Fettes so that Blair, Cameron and Boris were all taught, at least nominally, by the same man?
Did I tell you that I saw SKS walking into Tony Blair's house last night.
Jesus this is the third time I have posted this doesn't a PB contributor get _any_ credit for what is surely the most momentous scoop of the age?!
We were just waiting for what we thought was an inevitable punchline.
He is smaller than he looks on the telly is all I thought.
Maggie was tiny. Projected this huge personality, but very wee......
Johnson's very wee, too.
Well, he!s taking massive amounts of piss, anyway.
In effect Johnson can say wait for the privileges committee and then say to Labour you wanted that committee to investigate so we need to wait . Then he’s found of not being in contempt and then uses that to stay on . So could the opposition be shooting themselves in the foot by going down this road .
SKS wants to keep Boris in place, he's trying to win by default.
Yes, SKS wants to keep Johnson in place. Which is the reason Tories should oust Johnson.
SKS has structured today's motion to commence after the Gray report is out so as to ensure he stretches out the party-gate issue as long as he can. SKS is a ruthless political tactician. His MPs are trying to paint the picture of Covid sob-stories to create the impression that the measures were the government's doing despite the LP voting for them and wanting even more - they may get away with it. Baker called them out for hypocrisy today I see.
"Covid sob-stories" seems a rather unpleasant way to describe the tales of those who lost people close to them to Covid.
Out of curiousity my phone just made a wierd noise so checked it. Apparently a mobile operator test of the emergency broadcast network. I have never seen that before. Anyone else get this and does it mean some shit is expected to hit the fan in the near future?
Never heard of it before.
Test
Were you able to listen to the Today programme this morning??
Do you mean, I *shouldn't* have launched all the nuclear weapons?
Oops. My bad.
I was reading the other day about the "Letters of Last Resort". Pretty eerie I must say. You are in charge of Vanguard. Not a peep out of Mishal Husain that morning, and you have to open a letter from the PM of the UK and do what has been described as "the last official act of the United Kingdom".
And it says do this, that or the other. What would you do!!
Although I think he will survive until the GE, I'm vaguely wondering if Boris Johnson has just made the same error as Jim Callaghan. Sunny Jim, it will be remembered, sauntered off to the Caribbean during the Winter of Discontent and was skewered as a result.
Is Jaunty Johnson's trip to India destined to cause his downfall?
So, Met will continue to issue fines and may do so before the locals, BUT they’re not going to publicly announce what they’ve done until after, presumably as some sort of respecting of purdah.
Won’t the next excuse to delay publication of the Sue Grey report be wait for the privileges committee to rule .
Before the Sue Grey report is published, there should perhaps be an enquiry into whether it is in the public interest to publish it now. Perhaps this new enquiry and its report could be undertaken by a public servant who is experienced in this matter, and has recently become available - like Sue Grey.
So where did the 'Eton of Scotland' thing come from? I have to say I'd never heard of Fettes before Blair came along. Was that phrase just an invention designed to make him seem posh?
As an OE friend of mine observed once, when a Fettesian said that Fettes was the "Eton of Scotland": Eton is the Eton of Scotland.
Didn't Eton recruit its headmaster from Fettes so that Blair, Cameron and Boris were all taught, at least nominally, by the same man?
Did I tell you that I saw SKS walking into Tony Blair's house last night.
Jesus this is the third time I have posted this doesn't a PB contributor get _any_ credit for what is surely the most momentous scoop of the age?!
We were just waiting for what we thought was an inevitable punchline.
He is smaller than he looks on the telly is all I thought.
Maggie was tiny. Projected this huge personality, but very wee......
Johnson's very wee, too.
Well, he!s taking massive amounts of piss, anyway.
So where did the 'Eton of Scotland' thing come from? I have to say I'd never heard of Fettes before Blair came along. Was that phrase just an invention designed to make him seem posh?
As an OE friend of mine observed once, when a Fettesian said that Fettes was the "Eton of Scotland": Eton is the Eton of Scotland.
Didn't Eton recruit its headmaster from Fettes so that Blair, Cameron and Boris were all taught, at least nominally, by the same man?
Did I tell you that I saw SKS walking into Tony Blair's house last night.
Jesus this is the third time I have posted this doesn't a PB contributor get _any_ credit for what is surely the most momentous scoop of the age?!
We were just waiting for what we thought was an inevitable punchline.
He is smaller than he looks on the telly is all I thought.
Maggie was tiny. Projected this huge personality, but very wee......
Johnson's very wee, too.
Well, he!s taking massive amounts of piss, anyway.
Out of curiousity my phone just made a wierd noise so checked it. Apparently a mobile operator test of the emergency broadcast network. I have never seen that before. Anyone else get this and does it mean some shit is expected to hit the fan in the near future?
Never heard of it before.
Test
Were you able to listen to the Today programme this morning??
Do you mean, I *shouldn't* have launched all the nuclear weapons?
Oops. My bad.
I was reading the other day about the "Letters of Last Resort". Pretty eerie I must say. You are in charge of Vanguard. Not a peep out of Mishal Husain that morning, and you have to open a letter from the PM of the UK and do what has been described as "the last official act of the United Kingdom".
And it says do this, that or the other. What would you do!!
All in all all, I am not sure that the events of the last 48 hours are a great advertisement for the "Brilliant New Downing Street Team" that Johnson told us he had put together.
I’m at the beautiful Vilajuïga railway station and the next train is to Barcelona. So I’m going to Barcelona.
Please don't stop posting your travelogue! Has been great to follow.
I concur. Although it is somewhat saddening when sat in my home office thinking where I could be, it overall brings pleasure seeing something different from the world, albeit virtually.
I’m at the beautiful Vilajuïga railway station and the next train is to Barcelona. So I’m going to Barcelona.
Please don't stop posting your travelogue! Has been great to follow.
+1. Be sure to keep your wallet deep in your side (not back) pocket and the top compartment of your rucksack empty in barcelona. Pickpocketing abounds.
All in all all, I am not sure that the events of the last 48 hours are a great advertisement for the "Brilliant New Downing Street Team" that Johnson told us he had put together.
The problem is although his team has usually been shit (coughCummingscough) it's not their shitness that's the problem. It's the fact you can't polish a turd.
"He was fined after his puppy caused a stampede when it chased a 200-strong herd of deer in London's Richmond Park. Kruger apologised and said he would be more careful in future."
"He was fined after his puppy caused a stampede when it chased a 200-strong herd of deer in London's Richmond Park. Kruger apologised and said he would be more careful in future."
I think Boris needs to go. Having said that, our scandal is that the PM had birthday cake on his birthday. The German scandal is that it seems that the Chancellor is not being helpful in supplying weapons to Ukraine, to say the least. Ukraine is something Boris has got right and when he has left office there will hopefully be many people in Ukraine very grateful to him for it.
All in all all, I am not sure that the events of the last 48 hours are a great advertisement for the "Brilliant New Downing Street Team" that Johnson told us he had put together.
The problem is although his team has usually been shit (coughCummingscough) it's not their shitness that's the problem. It's the fact you can't polish a turd.
What are the odds, that after Boris Johnson is booted from No 10, he and his partisans will maintain that he is still the "true" Prime Minister?
Just like his "true" role model, the Sage Mar-a-Lardo & his MAGA-fans, maintain that 45 is the "true" POTUS?
Possible I suppose but unlikely. The PM is appointed by the Queen and unless then want to drag Brenda (or possibly Charlie at this rate) into it then it’s a hard argument to pull off.
I think the Met Police are not going to issue any more FPN before the May elections . So it’s not a case of them not just reporting that they’ve issued some . The greased piglet can now swan around pretending he’s Churchill for the next few weeks .
So, Met will continue to issue fines and may do so before the locals, BUT they’re not going to publicly announce what they’ve done until after, presumably as some sort of respecting of purdah.
Yes. And it does the Tories egregious harm in waiting. Every single candidate running for the Conservative Party is personally pledged to lies, criminality, malfeasance and impropriety.
Its not the best of election platforms. "You can trust us" they say - to back lies and criminality. Up here my Tory opponents have lots of pictures of them with David Duguid. A man so lacking a spine that when the CCS project was awarded to sites in England instead of Peterhead he stood up in PMQ's praising the liar for promising to at least consider Peterhead for future funding rounds in 2025 onwards.
So. Running for council as Tories. Backing the non-funding of mega energy jobs. Backing the criminal and liar. Vote Conservative?
Or the Met could have ended this. Drop the next 7 FPNs on the best acca there is. Position untenable. Removed. "We're cleaning house" as a slogan. More votes.
Although I think he will survive until the GE, I'm vaguely wondering if Boris Johnson has just made the same error as Jim Callaghan. Sunny Jim, it will be remembered, sauntered off to the Caribbean during the Winter of Discontent and was skewered as a result.
Is Jaunty Johnson's trip to India destined to cause his downfall?
Wasn't the blessed Lady Margaret herself (PBUH) away in France on the night of the first 1990 ballot vs Heseltine?
I think Boris needs to go. Having said that, our scandal is that the PM had birthday cake on his birthday. The German scandal is that it seems that the Chancellor is not being helpful in supplying weapons to Ukraine, to say the least. Ukraine is something Boris has got right and when he has left office there will hopefully be many people in Ukraine very grateful to him for it.
The scandal is 15 different events at 10 Downing Street, that we know about, most of which were more substantial than a piece of cake, and a PM lying about them all to the Commons.
With Commons leader Mark Spencer confirming Tory MPs will have a free vote on the Labour motion (rather than the 3-line whip they were briefing last night) it means Boris Johnson will almost certainly face a privileges committee investigation into whether he misled the Commons. https://twitter.com/KevinASchofield/status/1517086619207090176
Anybody think the privileges committee won't find Boris lied to the House?
Anybody think Boris can survive that finding as PM?
Boris will not lead the Conservatives into the next election, nailed on....
The privileges committee has a Tory majority. They know what impact finding Boris to be a liar will have. They won’t do that lightly. So, I think it’s possible the cttee will vote on party lines and find BJ innocent; I think it’s possible they’ll figure out some sort of compromise statement that lightly smacks BJ on the wrist but which BJ can weather; I think it’s possible that they turn up some smoking gun that makes BJ’s position untenable and they go for the jugular; and I think it’s possible that BJ will have been forced out before they even meet because further FPNs or the Gray report provide that smoking gun. Now to try to put probabilities on each of those options…
Further FPNs and photographs will be the end for Boris
I think this is all about getting the photos in the public domain. We live in an increasingly visual culture. Once the pictures are published he is toast, I think.
So where are they? Surely they should have been published by now?
I have watched, it is OK as a drama but a bit far fetched. Also out of date, the majority of Tory MPs are not Eton and Oxford educated with glamorous wives living in Belgravia.
Indeed most Tory MPs now went to state schools. As for Oxford it too has changed, the Bullingdon Club has effectively gone extinct and there about as many privately educated pupils at St Andrews, Durham and Edinburgh now as Oxford and Cambridge has more state educated pupils than all of them
State school ones are just voting lobby fodder. The ones in control are toffs as you very well know.,
Toffs, liars and crooks. Vote Conservative.
The Foreign Secretary and Home Secretary and Health Secretary in Cabinet all went to state schools, as did Theresa May and Philip Hammond. The PM and Chancellor in the previous Tory government
And still a refusal to face into the issue that anyone supporting this government is personally supporting criminality and lying and impropriety.
Of course Starmer has done exactly the same. He broke the law just as seriously with photos of him drinking beer in a gathering with others. He also "inadvertently misled" Parliament yesterday it seems. Drakeford and Sturgeon also broke their own rules too.
But you don't care about any of that, do you?
What an absolute crock!
The Sturgeon issue bears no relationship to what Johnson got up to. I can't speak for Drakeford, as I do not understand the issue to which you refer.
As for Starmer the police authority investigated and determined it was not a breach of Covid rules and was a legitimate action. As to Starmer "misleading" the house yesterday, the accusation made by Starmer was repeated directly by most media organisations quoting Conservative sources who attended the meeting, without the cover of Parliamentary Privilege, which speaks volumes.
If you, Johnson and the Conservative Party understand Johnson has no case to answer regarding "misleading the House" why don't you just come clean and say it like it is? You believe Johnson is above rules, laws, norms and etiquettes. That being so why not just say it?
All in all all, I am not sure that the events of the last 48 hours are a great advertisement for the "Brilliant New Downing Street Team" that Johnson told us he had put together.
With Commons leader Mark Spencer confirming Tory MPs will have a free vote on the Labour motion (rather than the 3-line whip they were briefing last night) it means Boris Johnson will almost certainly face a privileges committee investigation into whether he misled the Commons. https://twitter.com/KevinASchofield/status/1517086619207090176
Anybody think the privileges committee won't find Boris lied to the House?
Anybody think Boris can survive that finding as PM?
Boris will not lead the Conservatives into the next election, nailed on....
The privileges committee has a Tory majority. They know what impact finding Boris to be a liar will have. They won’t do that lightly. So, I think it’s possible the cttee will vote on party lines and find BJ innocent; I think it’s possible they’ll figure out some sort of compromise statement that lightly smacks BJ on the wrist but which BJ can weather; I think it’s possible that they turn up some smoking gun that makes BJ’s position untenable and they go for the jugular; and I think it’s possible that BJ will have been forced out before they even meet because further FPNs or the Gray report provide that smoking gun. Now to try to put probabilities on each of those options…
Further FPNs and photographs will be the end for Boris
I think this is all about getting the photos in the public domain. We live in an increasingly visual culture. Once the pictures are published he is toast, I think.
So where are they? Surely they should have been published by now?
There are literally hundreds of them, apparently. They form the evidence on which Sue Gray based her preliminary report and on which the police have been issuing FPNs. They've not been published yet because the police wouldn't normally publish them and Sue Gray presumably didn't want to prejudice the police investigations. I don't know if she was planning to publish any of them alongside or in her final report. But the parliamentary investigation will certainly see them put in the public domain. I really cannot see Johnson surviving that.
I’m at the beautiful Vilajuïga railway station and the next train is to Barcelona. So I’m going to Barcelona.
Please don't stop posting your travelogue! Has been great to follow.
+1. Be sure to keep your wallet deep in your side (not back) pocket and the top compartment of your rucksack empty in barcelona. Pickpocketing abounds.
We were on the Ramblas when we saw an old man collapse. Some passers by went to help him. A crowd gathered and we watched the pickpockets move in. They worked through the crowd, passing items off to accomplices who walked off. The police turned up and the old man recovered and walked swiftly away with his helpers. Beware.
I’m at the beautiful Vilajuïga railway station and the next train is to Barcelona. So I’m going to Barcelona.
Please don't stop posting your travelogue! Has been great to follow.
+1. Be sure to keep your wallet deep in your side (not back) pocket and the top compartment of your rucksack empty in barcelona. Pickpocketing abounds.
We were on the Ramblas when we saw an old man collapse. Some passers by went to help him. A crowd gathered and we watched the pickpockets move in. They worked through the crowd, passing items off to accomplices who walked off. The police turned up and the old man recovered and walked swiftly away with his helpers. Beware.
I visited Barcelona with schoolfriends when we were teenagers, and a gang tried it on with me, but luckily my mate punched one of them in the face and they scarpered.
"Aerospace defence research institute of the Russian Ministry of Defence burnt down in Tver. "Iskander" and "S-400" missile systems were designed here. Reportedly it was the old wiring and flammable plastic cladding that caused the fire."
I’m at the beautiful Vilajuïga railway station and the next train is to Barcelona. So I’m going to Barcelona.
Please don't stop posting your travelogue! Has been great to follow.
+1. Be sure to keep your wallet deep in your side (not back) pocket and the top compartment of your rucksack empty in barcelona. Pickpocketing abounds.
We were on the Ramblas when we saw an old man collapse. Some passers by went to help him. A crowd gathered and we watched the pickpockets move in. They worked through the crowd, passing items off to accomplices who walked off. The police turned up and the old man recovered and walked swiftly away with his helpers. Beware.
I visited Barcelona with schoolfriends when we were teenagers, and a gang tried it on with me, but luckily my mate punched one of them in the face and they scarpered.
Once went on a rugby tour to Barcelona with no rugby (the opposition had double booked their own tour in the opposite direction) and all I remember are multiple stories of pickpockets and muggings.
I’m at the beautiful Vilajuïga railway station and the next train is to Barcelona. So I’m going to Barcelona.
Please don't stop posting your travelogue! Has been great to follow.
+1. Be sure to keep your wallet deep in your side (not back) pocket and the top compartment of your rucksack empty in barcelona. Pickpocketing abounds.
We were on the Ramblas when we saw an old man collapse. Some passers by went to help him. A crowd gathered and we watched the pickpockets move in. They worked through the crowd, passing items off to accomplices who walked off. The police turned up and the old man recovered and walked swiftly away with his helpers. Beware.
I visited Barcelona with schoolfriends when we were teenagers, and a gang tried it on with me, but luckily my mate punched one of them in the face and they scarpered.
Once went on a rugby tour to Barcelona with no rugby (the opposition had double booked their own tour in the opposite direction) and all I remember are multiple stories of pickpockets and muggings.
I went to Barcelona and was not pickpocketed and saw no-one else being pickpocketed and no-one I was with got pickpocketed!
I’m at the beautiful Vilajuïga railway station and the next train is to Barcelona. So I’m going to Barcelona.
Please don't stop posting your travelogue! Has been great to follow.
+1. Be sure to keep your wallet deep in your side (not back) pocket and the top compartment of your rucksack empty in barcelona. Pickpocketing abounds.
We were on the Ramblas when we saw an old man collapse. Some passers by went to help him. A crowd gathered and we watched the pickpockets move in. They worked through the crowd, passing items off to accomplices who walked off. The police turned up and the old man recovered and walked swiftly away with his helpers. Beware.
I visited Barcelona with schoolfriends when we were teenagers, and a gang tried it on with me, but luckily my mate punched one of them in the face and they scarpered.
Once went on a rugby tour to Barcelona with no rugby (the opposition had double booked their own tour in the opposite direction) and all I remember are multiple stories of pickpockets and muggings.
I went to Barcelona and was not pickpocketed and saw no-one else being pickpocketed and no-one I was with got pickpocketed!
So, Met will continue to issue fines and may do so before the locals, BUT they’re not going to publicly announce what they’ve done until after, presumably as some sort of respecting of purdah.
Yes. And it does the Tories egregious harm in waiting. Every single candidate running for the Conservative Party is personally pledged to lies, criminality, malfeasance and impropriety.
Its not the best of election platforms. "You can trust us" they say - to back lies and criminality. Up here my Tory opponents have lots of pictures of them with David Duguid. A man so lacking a spine that when the CCS project was awarded to sites in England instead of Peterhead he stood up in PMQ's praising the liar for promising to at least consider Peterhead for future funding rounds in 2025 onwards.
So. Running for council as Tories. Backing the non-funding of mega energy jobs. Backing the criminal and liar. Vote Conservative?
Or the Met could have ended this. Drop the next 7 FPNs on the best acca there is. Position untenable. Removed. "We're cleaning house" as a slogan. More votes.
This all takes me back two years when Mr Roberts, in a previous guise, was ready to die in a ditch for Cummings,
I have watched, it is OK as a drama but a bit far fetched. Also out of date, the majority of Tory MPs are not Eton and Oxford educated with glamorous wives living in Belgravia.
Indeed most Tory MPs now went to state schools. As for Oxford it too has changed, the Bullingdon Club has effectively gone extinct and there about as many privately educated pupils at St Andrews, Durham and Edinburgh now as Oxford and Cambridge has more state educated pupils than all of them
I've not seen it, but I do think there's a general tendency to simplify and play up to viewers' caricatures. Bridgerton is a ridiculous pastiche of Jane Austen, but I know people who think that aristocrats really were and are like that. Political dramas portray all politicians as scheming crooks, idiots or fanatics (much like CD13's post upthread). Tories are all Eton-educated toffs. Labour MPs are either smooth careerists or horny-handed trade unionists.
It's hard to complain since these are primarily for entertainment, and really they can portray people any way they like. But it's worth being careful not to swallow the portrayals as having much to do with reality.
Indeed, it is more entertainment than reality.
In the 1950s there was certainly a big class difference between MPs, most Tory MPs were privately educated and often Oxbridge educated as well. Most Labour MPs were state school educated with many having had working class jobs down the mines or on the factory floor.
Now most Labour and Conservative MPs went to state schools, indeed there were almost as many LD MPs who went to private schools as Conservative MPs who did percentage wise after the 2019 general election.
Almost all MPs are middle class and went to university with about a third going to Oxbridge. Indeed class wise MPs of all parties now look more like each other than the rest of the population, with many having been SPADs or researchers after university and rarely stepped outside politics
My rule of thumb is that Tories went to major public schools and Labour to minor public schools.
Not true now.
Only 44% of current Conservative MPs, 38% of LD MPs and just 19% of Labour MPs went to private schools.
In 1979 by contrast 73% of Conservative MPs, 55% of Liberal MPs and 18% of Labour MPs went to private schools
But of the ones who did go to public schools, does the major/minor relationship still hold? A quick look at Wikipedia finds a lot of PPE, economists and lawyers, and that is just the Shadow Cabinet.
A bit ironic that when so many of our leading politicians have studied PPE that we were so ripped off when purchasing it.
What's more worrying is that many of our leading politicians don't think we were so ripped off when purchasing it.
And the profits from supplying PPE are an example of 'trade' and 'business' working well.
Its 100% true.
There's an old saying, you can have it good, fast and cheap - but you need to pick two out of three.
During the pandemic we needed PPE fast and good. We got it, but it wasn't cheap. Considering the pandemic was costing billions, that was the right two out of three to go for and that people made a profit from that is business in action.
Without the profit motive, we would not have had the PPE.
Most of the write-down of PPE has come not from 'fraud' but from the fact that the stockpiles purchased now aren't worth what they were paid for at the time, as the price of the goods has come down since they were purchased. Again, that is how the market works.
We spent something more than £500m on PPE that was unusable. I suppose it was fast, but it certainly wasn't cheap or even good enough.
A lot wasn't that fast either. Sweetheart contacts were being given out to mates of the government in summer 2020
Of course, Labour were demanding to know why we weren't doing deals with people who, er, had no PPE.
We ended up with enough PPE. The Govt. did its job. The same people saying we spent too much on dodgy PPE would have been demanding the Government fall if we had actually, you know, run out of PPE. On this aspect of Covid at least, Labour deserve to be called out as shameless political hypocrites.
Yes, and some (quite a lot by some accounts) of that expensive PPE is gathering dust on warehouse shelves, unused and unusable.
Won’t the next excuse to delay publication of the Sue Grey report be wait for the privileges committee to rule .
No, because the motion is for them to consider it after the Sue Gray report.
Apologies, I got that wrong. The motion is to consider it after the police have concluded their investigations. However, Sue Gray's report is generally thought to be ready for release after purdah.
A wrinkle is that if he were to resign as PM due to local election results and/or the Gray report, the Committee would presumably wish to have the hearings anyway, since it's out of order for any Member to mislead the House deliberately. If they decided that he has, a by-election in Uxbridge might follow, which would be an amusing challenge for the new Tory leader.
"Aerospace defence research institute of the Russian Ministry of Defence burnt down in Tver. "Iskander" and "S-400" missile systems were designed here. Reportedly it was the old wiring and flammable plastic cladding that caused the fire."
So now we know - the whole flammable cladding thing in the UK was actually a monstrous strategic plot by the Johnsonite Junta against Mother Russia.
I have watched, it is OK as a drama but a bit far fetched. Also out of date, the majority of Tory MPs are not Eton and Oxford educated with glamorous wives living in Belgravia.
Indeed most Tory MPs now went to state schools. As for Oxford it too has changed, the Bullingdon Club has effectively gone extinct and there about as many privately educated pupils at St Andrews, Durham and Edinburgh now as Oxford and Cambridge has more state educated pupils than all of them
I've not seen it, but I do think there's a general tendency to simplify and play up to viewers' caricatures. Bridgerton is a ridiculous pastiche of Jane Austen, but I know people who think that aristocrats really were and are like that. Political dramas portray all politicians as scheming crooks, idiots or fanatics (much like CD13's post upthread). Tories are all Eton-educated toffs. Labour MPs are either smooth careerists or horny-handed trade unionists.
It's hard to complain since these are primarily for entertainment, and really they can portray people any way they like. But it's worth being careful not to swallow the portrayals as having much to do with reality.
Indeed, it is more entertainment than reality.
In the 1950s there was certainly a big class difference between MPs, most Tory MPs were privately educated and often Oxbridge educated as well. Most Labour MPs were state school educated with many having had working class jobs down the mines or on the factory floor.
Now most Labour and Conservative MPs went to state schools, indeed there were almost as many LD MPs who went to private schools as Conservative MPs who did percentage wise after the 2019 general election.
Almost all MPs are middle class and went to university with about a third going to Oxbridge. Indeed class wise MPs of all parties now look more like each other than the rest of the population, with many having been SPADs or researchers after university and rarely stepped outside politics
My rule of thumb is that Tories went to major public schools and Labour to minor public schools.
Not true now.
Only 44% of current Conservative MPs, 38% of LD MPs and just 19% of Labour MPs went to private schools.
In 1979 by contrast 73% of Conservative MPs, 55% of Liberal MPs and 18% of Labour MPs went to private schools
But of the ones who did go to public schools, does the major/minor relationship still hold? A quick look at Wikipedia finds a lot of PPE, economists and lawyers, and that is just the Shadow Cabinet.
To some extent, the Tories still have more Etonians and Wykehamists.
Albeit Blair went to Fettes, the Eton of Scotland.
Overall however the average Tory MP is much less posh than they were 50 years ago and that is even more so post Brexit. Indeed the LD MPs are almost as posh on average as the Tory MPs now (as more of the former come from London and the South and more of the latter from the Redwall)
Hang on, young HY!!! Remind us, if you would be so kind, who are these Lib Dems MPs who come from London and the South? Then add them up, divide by thirteen and express the result as a percentage......
Now, what were you saying?
It may be as you say after the next election, of course.
To help HYUFD… There are 13 LDem MPs: 4 representing constituencies in Scotland, none from Wales or NI. Among the English MPs, there are 3 London, 3 south + east, 1 west, 1 north-west and 1 midlands. So, less than half come from London or the South.
So 7 out of 13 from London and the South East and South West, a majority exactly as I said.
1 of the Scottish MPs represents Edinburgh West too, which is posher than most of London and another represents Fife North East which contains St Andrews, the poshest UK university after Oxford
"Aerospace defence research institute of the Russian Ministry of Defence burnt down in Tver. "Iskander" and "S-400" missile systems were designed here. Reportedly it was the old wiring and flammable plastic cladding that caused the fire."
About 400 miles as the crow flies from Chernihiv Oblast. Perhaps domestic sabotage??
All in all all, I am not sure that the events of the last 48 hours are a great advertisement for the "Brilliant New Downing Street Team" that Johnson told us he had put together.
The problem is although his team has usually been shit (coughCummingscough) it's not their shitness that's the problem. It's the fact you can't polish a turd.
But you can roll it in glitter.
Should be the title of Boris Johnson's autobiography.
I’m at the beautiful Vilajuïga railway station and the next train is to Barcelona. So I’m going to Barcelona.
Please don't stop posting your travelogue! Has been great to follow.
+1. Be sure to keep your wallet deep in your side (not back) pocket and the top compartment of your rucksack empty in barcelona. Pickpocketing abounds.
We were on the Ramblas when we saw an old man collapse. Some passers by went to help him. A crowd gathered and we watched the pickpockets move in. They worked through the crowd, passing items off to accomplices who walked off. The police turned up and the old man recovered and walked swiftly away with his helpers. Beware.
I visited Barcelona with schoolfriends when we were teenagers, and a gang tried it on with me, but luckily my mate punched one of them in the face and they scarpered.
Once went on a rugby tour to Barcelona with no rugby (the opposition had double booked their own tour in the opposite direction) and all I remember are multiple stories of pickpockets and muggings.
I went to Barcelona and was not pickpocketed and saw no-one else being pickpocketed and no-one I was with got pickpocketed!
All in all all, I am not sure that the events of the last 48 hours are a great advertisement for the "Brilliant New Downing Street Team" that Johnson told us he had put together.
The problem is although his team has usually been shit (coughCummingscough) it's not their shitness that's the problem. It's the fact you can't polish a turd.
One may not be able to polish a turd, but at the very least someone could comb it's hair.
I’m at the beautiful Vilajuïga railway station and the next train is to Barcelona. So I’m going to Barcelona.
Please don't stop posting your travelogue! Has been great to follow.
+1. Be sure to keep your wallet deep in your side (not back) pocket and the top compartment of your rucksack empty in barcelona. Pickpocketing abounds.
We were on the Ramblas when we saw an old man collapse. Some passers by went to help him. A crowd gathered and we watched the pickpockets move in. They worked through the crowd, passing items off to accomplices who walked off. The police turned up and the old man recovered and walked swiftly away with his helpers. Beware.
I visited Barcelona with schoolfriends when we were teenagers, and a gang tried it on with me, but luckily my mate punched one of them in the face and they scarpered.
I glassed a bloke on the Ramblas who tried to nick Mrs DA's handbag. Unfortunately I apparently had the most robust drinking glass in Catalonia to hand and it didn’t break. She was still fucking furious with me.
So, Met will continue to issue fines and may do so before the locals, BUT they’re not going to publicly announce what they’ve done until after, presumably as some sort of respecting of purdah.
Yes. And it does the Tories egregious harm in waiting. Every single candidate running for the Conservative Party is personally pledged to lies, criminality, malfeasance and impropriety.
Its not the best of election platforms. "You can trust us" they say - to back lies and criminality. Up here my Tory opponents have lots of pictures of them with David Duguid. A man so lacking a spine that when the CCS project was awarded to sites in England instead of Peterhead he stood up in PMQ's praising the liar for promising to at least consider Peterhead for future funding rounds in 2025 onwards.
So. Running for council as Tories. Backing the non-funding of mega energy jobs. Backing the criminal and liar. Vote Conservative?
Or the Met could have ended this. Drop the next 7 FPNs on the best acca there is. Position untenable. Removed. "We're cleaning house" as a slogan. More votes.
This all takes me back two years when Mr Roberts, in a previous guise, was ready to die in a ditch for Cummings,
I still don't see anything wrong in what Cummings did. 🤷♂️
I think the curtain twitching is quite distasteful.
So where did the 'Eton of Scotland' thing come from? I have to say I'd never heard of Fettes before Blair came along. Was that phrase just an invention designed to make him seem posh?
As an OE friend of mine observed once, when a Fettesian said that Fettes was the "Eton of Scotland": Eton is the Eton of Scotland.
Didn't Eton recruit its headmaster from Fettes so that Blair, Cameron and Boris were all taught, at least nominally, by the same man?
Did I tell you that I saw SKS walking into Tony Blair's house last night.
Jesus this is the third time I have posted this doesn't a PB contributor get _any_ credit for what is surely the most momentous scoop of the age?!
We were just waiting for what we thought was an inevitable punchline.
He is smaller than he looks on the telly is all I thought.
That's a general phenomenon. TV inflates a person.
So, Met will continue to issue fines and may do so before the locals, BUT they’re not going to publicly announce what they’ve done until after, presumably as some sort of respecting of purdah.
Yes. And it does the Tories egregious harm in waiting. Every single candidate running for the Conservative Party is personally pledged to lies, criminality, malfeasance and impropriety.
Its not the best of election platforms. "You can trust us" they say - to back lies and criminality. Up here my Tory opponents have lots of pictures of them with David Duguid. A man so lacking a spine that when the CCS project was awarded to sites in England instead of Peterhead he stood up in PMQ's praising the liar for promising to at least consider Peterhead for future funding rounds in 2025 onwards.
So. Running for council as Tories. Backing the non-funding of mega energy jobs. Backing the criminal and liar. Vote Conservative?
Or the Met could have ended this. Drop the next 7 FPNs on the best acca there is. Position untenable. Removed. "We're cleaning house" as a slogan. More votes.
This all takes me back two years when Mr Roberts, in a previous guise, was ready to die in a ditch for Cummings,
I still don't see anything wrong in what Cummings did. 🤷♂️
I think the curtain twitching is quite distasteful.
So, Met will continue to issue fines and may do so before the locals, BUT they’re not going to publicly announce what they’ve done until after, presumably as some sort of respecting of purdah.
Yes. And it does the Tories egregious harm in waiting. Every single candidate running for the Conservative Party is personally pledged to lies, criminality, malfeasance and impropriety.
Its not the best of election platforms. "You can trust us" they say - to back lies and criminality. Up here my Tory opponents have lots of pictures of them with David Duguid. A man so lacking a spine that when the CCS project was awarded to sites in England instead of Peterhead he stood up in PMQ's praising the liar for promising to at least consider Peterhead for future funding rounds in 2025 onwards.
So. Running for council as Tories. Backing the non-funding of mega energy jobs. Backing the criminal and liar. Vote Conservative?
Or the Met could have ended this. Drop the next 7 FPNs on the best acca there is. Position untenable. Removed. "We're cleaning house" as a slogan. More votes.
This all takes me back two years when Mr Roberts, in a previous guise, was ready to die in a ditch for Cummings,
I still don't see anything wrong in what Cummings did. 🤷♂️
I think the curtain twitching is quite distasteful.
We know. Believe me, we know.
Given your phrasing, if it was just a partisan 'dying in a ditch' I'd be attacking Cummings now, since Cummings turned against what was then 'my side' but I stand by my own views and have my own mind.
Even if its different to other people's, its for my own reasons and not partisanship.
All in all all, I am not sure that the events of the last 48 hours are a great advertisement for the "Brilliant New Downing Street Team" that Johnson told us he had put together.
The problem is although his team has usually been shit (coughCummingscough) it's not their shitness that's the problem. It's the fact you can't polish a turd.
One may not be able to polish a turd, but at the very least someone could comb it's hair.
No! The weed-wacker look is key part of Boris Johnson's personal charisma & electoral appeal!
His "true" problem, is that he's rapidly loosing his hair, and it shows.
Perhaps he needs to invest in a good wig?
NOT hopelessly outdated Whig like Rees-Mogg. And NOT pound-store fright job sported by Fabricant.
I have watched, it is OK as a drama but a bit far fetched. Also out of date, the majority of Tory MPs are not Eton and Oxford educated with glamorous wives living in Belgravia.
Indeed most Tory MPs now went to state schools. As for Oxford it too has changed, the Bullingdon Club has effectively gone extinct and there about as many privately educated pupils at St Andrews, Durham and Edinburgh now as Oxford and Cambridge has more state educated pupils than all of them
I've not seen it, but I do think there's a general tendency to simplify and play up to viewers' caricatures. Bridgerton is a ridiculous pastiche of Jane Austen, but I know people who think that aristocrats really were and are like that. Political dramas portray all politicians as scheming crooks, idiots or fanatics (much like CD13's post upthread). Tories are all Eton-educated toffs. Labour MPs are either smooth careerists or horny-handed trade unionists.
It's hard to complain since these are primarily for entertainment, and really they can portray people any way they like. But it's worth being careful not to swallow the portrayals as having much to do with reality.
Indeed, it is more entertainment than reality.
In the 1950s there was certainly a big class difference between MPs, most Tory MPs were privately educated and often Oxbridge educated as well. Most Labour MPs were state school educated with many having had working class jobs down the mines or on the factory floor.
Now most Labour and Conservative MPs went to state schools, indeed there were almost as many LD MPs who went to private schools as Conservative MPs who did percentage wise after the 2019 general election.
Almost all MPs are middle class and went to university with about a third going to Oxbridge. Indeed class wise MPs of all parties now look more like each other than the rest of the population, with many having been SPADs or researchers after university and rarely stepped outside politics
My rule of thumb is that Tories went to major public schools and Labour to minor public schools.
Not true now.
Only 44% of current Conservative MPs, 38% of LD MPs and just 19% of Labour MPs went to private schools.
In 1979 by contrast 73% of Conservative MPs, 55% of Liberal MPs and 18% of Labour MPs went to private schools
But of the ones who did go to public schools, does the major/minor relationship still hold? A quick look at Wikipedia finds a lot of PPE, economists and lawyers, and that is just the Shadow Cabinet.
To some extent, the Tories still have more Etonians and Wykehamists.
Albeit Blair went to Fettes, the Eton of Scotland.
Overall however the average Tory MP is much less posh than they were 50 years ago and that is even more so post Brexit. Indeed the LD MPs are almost as posh on average as the Tory MPs now (as more of the former come from London and the South and more of the latter from the Redwall)
Hang on, young HY!!! Remind us, if you would be so kind, who are these Lib Dems MPs who come from London and the South? Then add them up, divide by thirteen and express the result as a percentage......
Now, what were you saying?
It may be as you say after the next election, of course.
To help HYUFD… There are 13 LDem MPs: 4 representing constituencies in Scotland, none from Wales or NI. Among the English MPs, there are 3 London, 3 south + east, 1 west, 1 north-west and 1 midlands. So, less than half come from London or the South.
So 7 out of 13 from London and the South East and South West, a majority exactly as I said.
1 of the Scottish MPs represents Edinburgh West too, which is posher than most of London and another represents Fife North East which contains St Andrews, the poshest UK university after Oxford
Bristol is posher than St Andrews. I’ll fight you naked in a supermarket car park if you insist otherwise.
So, Met will continue to issue fines and may do so before the locals, BUT they’re not going to publicly announce what they’ve done until after, presumably as some sort of respecting of purdah.
Yes. And it does the Tories egregious harm in waiting. Every single candidate running for the Conservative Party is personally pledged to lies, criminality, malfeasance and impropriety.
Its not the best of election platforms. "You can trust us" they say - to back lies and criminality. Up here my Tory opponents have lots of pictures of them with David Duguid. A man so lacking a spine that when the CCS project was awarded to sites in England instead of Peterhead he stood up in PMQ's praising the liar for promising to at least consider Peterhead for future funding rounds in 2025 onwards.
So. Running for council as Tories. Backing the non-funding of mega energy jobs. Backing the criminal and liar. Vote Conservative?
Or the Met could have ended this. Drop the next 7 FPNs on the best acca there is. Position untenable. Removed. "We're cleaning house" as a slogan. More votes.
This all takes me back two years when Mr Roberts, in a previous guise, was ready to die in a ditch for Cummings,
I still don't see anything wrong in what Cummings did. 🤷♂️
I think the curtain twitching is quite distasteful.
I do.
There was pretty widespread compliance with Covid regulations before the Cummings story broke. After that, people were much more inclined to use their own judgement. I attribute the illness of a close relative to this. Whether I am correct to or not, the Cummings incident indicated a shocking disregard for the rules, and fundamental dishonesty by those charged with making the rules.
If you don't see anything wrong in what he did, and the way he lied about it afterwards, maybe you too need to go to Specsavers.
I have to wonder if Boris had just stood up at the beginning of this and said 'looking back these events were inappropriate, I did not consider them to be in breach of the rules at the time as I considered them as part of my work, but now see that this was wrong, and I apologise; if too much would have been made of it.
From my professional career, it's a lesson that if you make a cock-up, own up, and accept it, then it's nearly always fine. brave it out, or try to hide it, and you'll find yourself in deeper and deeper water..
In my banking days, I recall a senior banker lending a decent sum to a coal miner on the Wed and by the Friday it had collapsed. He apologised by throwing an office wide party on his own account, at which he gave a self deprecating speech and was presented with an award for fastest defaulting loan ever. Got through it just fine.
Not that Boris could have responded in exactly the same way, but it was the lying when caught out that’s done him. Hands up before Xmas about it, “I showed very poor judgement and set a bad example to my staff. If the Opposition and Parliamentary standards people want to go over the detail of what I did where during the pandemic then I encourage them to do so. They’ll find breaches, for which I’m deeply sorry etc… ”. And he’d be sailing in the polls by now I reckon.
All in all all, I am not sure that the events of the last 48 hours are a great advertisement for the "Brilliant New Downing Street Team" that Johnson told us he had put together.
The problem is although his team has usually been shit (coughCummingscough) it's not their shitness that's the problem. It's the fact you can't polish a turd.
One may not be able to polish a turd, but at the very least someone could comb it's hair.
No! The weed-wacker look is key part of Boris Johnson's personal charisma & electoral appeal!
His "true" problem, is that he's rapidly loosing his hair, and it shows.
Perhaps he needs to invest in a good wig?
NOT hopelessly outdated Whig like Rees-Mogg. And NOT pound-store fright job sported by Fabricant.
I think Fabricant’s is actually an expensively designed prop for the piece of performance art that is Michael Fabricant. It’s the only explanation.
So, Met will continue to issue fines and may do so before the locals, BUT they’re not going to publicly announce what they’ve done until after, presumably as some sort of respecting of purdah.
Yes. And it does the Tories egregious harm in waiting. Every single candidate running for the Conservative Party is personally pledged to lies, criminality, malfeasance and impropriety.
Its not the best of election platforms. "You can trust us" they say - to back lies and criminality. Up here my Tory opponents have lots of pictures of them with David Duguid. A man so lacking a spine that when the CCS project was awarded to sites in England instead of Peterhead he stood up in PMQ's praising the liar for promising to at least consider Peterhead for future funding rounds in 2025 onwards.
So. Running for council as Tories. Backing the non-funding of mega energy jobs. Backing the criminal and liar. Vote Conservative?
Or the Met could have ended this. Drop the next 7 FPNs on the best acca there is. Position untenable. Removed. "We're cleaning house" as a slogan. More votes.
This all takes me back two years when Mr Roberts, in a previous guise, was ready to die in a ditch for Cummings,
I still don't see anything wrong in what Cummings did. 🤷♂️
I think the curtain twitching is quite distasteful.
We know. Believe me, we know.
Given your phrasing, if it was just a partisan 'dying in a ditch' I'd be attacking Cummings now, since Cummings turned against what was then 'my side' but I stand by my own views and have my own mind.
Even if its different to other people's, its for my own reasons and not partisanship.
I have watched, it is OK as a drama but a bit far fetched. Also out of date, the majority of Tory MPs are not Eton and Oxford educated with glamorous wives living in Belgravia.
Indeed most Tory MPs now went to state schools. As for Oxford it too has changed, the Bullingdon Club has effectively gone extinct and there about as many privately educated pupils at St Andrews, Durham and Edinburgh now as Oxford and Cambridge has more state educated pupils than all of them
I've not seen it, but I do think there's a general tendency to simplify and play up to viewers' caricatures. Bridgerton is a ridiculous pastiche of Jane Austen, but I know people who think that aristocrats really were and are like that. Political dramas portray all politicians as scheming crooks, idiots or fanatics (much like CD13's post upthread). Tories are all Eton-educated toffs. Labour MPs are either smooth careerists or horny-handed trade unionists.
It's hard to complain since these are primarily for entertainment, and really they can portray people any way they like. But it's worth being careful not to swallow the portrayals as having much to do with reality.
Indeed, it is more entertainment than reality.
In the 1950s there was certainly a big class difference between MPs, most Tory MPs were privately educated and often Oxbridge educated as well. Most Labour MPs were state school educated with many having had working class jobs down the mines or on the factory floor.
Now most Labour and Conservative MPs went to state schools, indeed there were almost as many LD MPs who went to private schools as Conservative MPs who did percentage wise after the 2019 general election.
Almost all MPs are middle class and went to university with about a third going to Oxbridge. Indeed class wise MPs of all parties now look more like each other than the rest of the population, with many having been SPADs or researchers after university and rarely stepped outside politics
My rule of thumb is that Tories went to major public schools and Labour to minor public schools.
Not true now.
Only 44% of current Conservative MPs, 38% of LD MPs and just 19% of Labour MPs went to private schools.
In 1979 by contrast 73% of Conservative MPs, 55% of Liberal MPs and 18% of Labour MPs went to private schools
But of the ones who did go to public schools, does the major/minor relationship still hold? A quick look at Wikipedia finds a lot of PPE, economists and lawyers, and that is just the Shadow Cabinet.
To some extent, the Tories still have more Etonians and Wykehamists.
Albeit Blair went to Fettes, the Eton of Scotland.
Overall however the average Tory MP is much less posh than they were 50 years ago and that is even more so post Brexit. Indeed the LD MPs are almost as posh on average as the Tory MPs now (as more of the former come from London and the South and more of the latter from the Redwall)
Hang on, young HY!!! Remind us, if you would be so kind, who are these Lib Dems MPs who come from London and the South? Then add them up, divide by thirteen and express the result as a percentage......
Now, what were you saying?
It may be as you say after the next election, of course.
To help HYUFD… There are 13 LDem MPs: 4 representing constituencies in Scotland, none from Wales or NI. Among the English MPs, there are 3 London, 3 south + east, 1 west, 1 north-west and 1 midlands. So, less than half come from London or the South.
So 7 out of 13 from London and the South East and South West, a majority exactly as I said.
1 of the Scottish MPs represents Edinburgh West too, which is posher than most of London and another represents Fife North East which contains St Andrews, the poshest UK university after Oxford
Bristol is posher than St Andrews. I’ll fight you naked in a supermarket car park if you insist otherwise.
I have watched, it is OK as a drama but a bit far fetched. Also out of date, the majority of Tory MPs are not Eton and Oxford educated with glamorous wives living in Belgravia.
Indeed most Tory MPs now went to state schools. As for Oxford it too has changed, the Bullingdon Club has effectively gone extinct and there about as many privately educated pupils at St Andrews, Durham and Edinburgh now as Oxford and Cambridge has more state educated pupils than all of them
I've not seen it, but I do think there's a general tendency to simplify and play up to viewers' caricatures. Bridgerton is a ridiculous pastiche of Jane Austen, but I know people who think that aristocrats really were and are like that. Political dramas portray all politicians as scheming crooks, idiots or fanatics (much like CD13's post upthread). Tories are all Eton-educated toffs. Labour MPs are either smooth careerists or horny-handed trade unionists.
It's hard to complain since these are primarily for entertainment, and really they can portray people any way they like. But it's worth being careful not to swallow the portrayals as having much to do with reality.
Indeed, it is more entertainment than reality.
In the 1950s there was certainly a big class difference between MPs, most Tory MPs were privately educated and often Oxbridge educated as well. Most Labour MPs were state school educated with many having had working class jobs down the mines or on the factory floor.
Now most Labour and Conservative MPs went to state schools, indeed there were almost as many LD MPs who went to private schools as Conservative MPs who did percentage wise after the 2019 general election.
Almost all MPs are middle class and went to university with about a third going to Oxbridge. Indeed class wise MPs of all parties now look more like each other than the rest of the population, with many having been SPADs or researchers after university and rarely stepped outside politics
My rule of thumb is that Tories went to major public schools and Labour to minor public schools.
Not true now.
Only 44% of current Conservative MPs, 38% of LD MPs and just 19% of Labour MPs went to private schools.
In 1979 by contrast 73% of Conservative MPs, 55% of Liberal MPs and 18% of Labour MPs went to private schools
But of the ones who did go to public schools, does the major/minor relationship still hold? A quick look at Wikipedia finds a lot of PPE, economists and lawyers, and that is just the Shadow Cabinet.
To some extent, the Tories still have more Etonians and Wykehamists.
Albeit Blair went to Fettes, the Eton of Scotland.
Overall however the average Tory MP is much less posh than they were 50 years ago and that is even more so post Brexit. Indeed the LD MPs are almost as posh on average as the Tory MPs now (as more of the former come from London and the South and more of the latter from the Redwall)
Hang on, young HY!!! Remind us, if you would be so kind, who are these Lib Dems MPs who come from London and the South? Then add them up, divide by thirteen and express the result as a percentage......
Now, what were you saying?
It may be as you say after the next election, of course.
To help HYUFD… There are 13 LDem MPs: 4 representing constituencies in Scotland, none from Wales or NI. Among the English MPs, there are 3 London, 3 south + east, 1 west, 1 north-west and 1 midlands. So, less than half come from London or the South.
So 7 out of 13 from London and the South East and South West, a majority exactly as I said.
1 of the Scottish MPs represents Edinburgh West too, which is posher than most of London and another represents Fife North East which contains St Andrews, the poshest UK university after Oxford
Bristol is posher than St Andrews. I’ll fight you naked in a supermarket car park if you insist otherwise.
Lubov Chernukhin wife of ex Putin crony and who has had paid for access to our last 3 PMs with £2m donated to the Tory party turns out to have been a director of a company secretly owned by a sanctioned Russian oligarch. Of course she now can't recall being a director of said company. Her husband received $8m from the same Russian oligarch she can't remember being a director for.
I wonder if the Tory fan boys will continue to say it is racist for links between Putin and Tory funding to be highlighted.
The ridicule is directed at the idea that the Tory party has been bought or influenced by Russian oligarchs when the UK has led the charge in both supporting and training Ukrainian forces. Yesterday the UK was being specifically named as having caused the default on Russian state backed loans by its sanctions regime. Not only is there no evidence of influence but such evidence as there is points in the opposite direction.
I agree the government has been solidly supportive of Ukraine during the current offensive. It wasn't always the case before this year. Including after Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2014 when Boris Johnson wrote an article criticising the EU and indirectly Ukraine for provoking Russia. The Conservative Party has certainly received a lot of Russian money. This money may not have directly come from Putin, but it never does. The Government tried to suppress a Russia Report that said while there is no identified Russian influence on the 2016 Brexit vote, it was because the government deliberately chose not to investigate (presumably in case someone found something). The UK has a flourishing money laundering business that was (still is?) targeted at Russian oligarchs who have established themselves in all parts of UK society including parliament.
So if there is evidence they are guilty and if there is no evidence they are guilty. Ok then
Russia and the Conservative Party are associated. How much effective influence the first have on the second is unknown because governance is weak and the current government is undermining it further. If they had proper governance in place these Russian actors would be not be close to the Conservative Party as now.
Russians by birth now UK citizens.
But you would exclude them from the full rights and privileges of a British citizen.
How very progressive of you
Russian by money, is the key point, I think. What are they getting for it?
The same as any large donor: the appearance of access and influence
It doesn’t give them any in reality, but the appearance is worth something for people with Russian enemies
So, Met will continue to issue fines and may do so before the locals, BUT they’re not going to publicly announce what they’ve done until after, presumably as some sort of respecting of purdah.
Yes. And it does the Tories egregious harm in waiting. Every single candidate running for the Conservative Party is personally pledged to lies, criminality, malfeasance and impropriety.
Its not the best of election platforms. "You can trust us" they say - to back lies and criminality. Up here my Tory opponents have lots of pictures of them with David Duguid. A man so lacking a spine that when the CCS project was awarded to sites in England instead of Peterhead he stood up in PMQ's praising the liar for promising to at least consider Peterhead for future funding rounds in 2025 onwards.
So. Running for council as Tories. Backing the non-funding of mega energy jobs. Backing the criminal and liar. Vote Conservative?
Or the Met could have ended this. Drop the next 7 FPNs on the best acca there is. Position untenable. Removed. "We're cleaning house" as a slogan. More votes.
This all takes me back two years when Mr Roberts, in a previous guise, was ready to die in a ditch for Cummings,
I still don't see anything wrong in what Cummings did. 🤷♂️
I think the curtain twitching is quite distasteful.
I do.
There was pretty widespread compliance with Covid regulations before the Cummings story broke. After that, people were much more inclined to use their own judgement. I attribute the illness of a close relative to this. Whether I am correct to or not, the Cummings incident indicated a shocking disregard for the rules, and fundamental dishonesty by those charged with making the rules.
If you don't see anything wrong in what he did, and the way he lied about it afterwards, maybe you too need to go to Specsavers.
I have slightly more sympathy fpr him personally than when I did at the time, in view of the brain effects of covid, but that was becoming clear already at the time, and the only way to deal with that, in terms of the public health priorities, was to be even more emphatic about the rules and the need to see them publicly enforced. Not flout them so soon.
Lubov Chernukhin wife of ex Putin crony and who has had paid for access to our last 3 PMs with £2m donated to the Tory party turns out to have been a director of a company secretly owned by a sanctioned Russian oligarch. Of course she now can't recall being a director of said company. Her husband received $8m from the same Russian oligarch she can't remember being a director for.
I wonder if the Tory fan boys will continue to say it is racist for links between Putin and Tory funding to be highlighted.
The ridicule is directed at the idea that the Tory party has been bought or influenced by Russian oligarchs when the UK has led the charge in both supporting and training Ukrainian forces. Yesterday the UK was being specifically named as having caused the default on Russian state backed loans by its sanctions regime. Not only is there no evidence of influence but such evidence as there is points in the opposite direction.
If someone truly believes that Russia spent millions trying to get influence within the Conservative Party, then they should be congratulating the Conservative Party for having taken the money, and then done exactly the opposite of what the Kremlin desired! Indeed, doing the opposite even whilst the money was being given...
Although IMV it's probably much more complex than that. I do not think all Russian donors who gave money in any western country were doing so under Putin's orders. It's just the way things are done in Russia, and the amounts were trivial to many of them. Some would also be feeling (with good reason) uncertain about their status.
Aside from Brexit, presumably.
And the defence is that oligarchs were trying to buy influence but that is all right because it is separate from the Russian state trying to buy influence? Some neutral observers might think influence-peddling is morally suspect from the off. Notwithstanding that some might be less independent from the Kremlin than advertised.
I think any connection between Brexit and Russia is fairly minor, if it exists at all.
Brexit occurred because the people voted for it; and remain lost the vote (sadly, IMO) because they could not make a good enough case for remaining. If they had made a better case, they would have won.
The sour grapes are just because some Remainers still don't understand why they lost the vote, since they think all sensible people must have voted like them, and so therefore there must be some nefarious explanation - despite no evidence for such being found despite nearly a decade of the most ardent Remainers digging and looking for that non-existent evidence.
As often in modern times the existence of Twitter has helped to further reinforce and radicalise those with these delusions.
And how do you account for the continuing sour grapes on the part of the Brexiteers?
Speaking personally I have no sour grapes because I think Brexit is going well. I think by and large we have what I voted for now.
However there are definite elements of sour grapes within some people who voted for Brexit:
1: There is a perpetually-sour element of society (stereotypical "grumpy old man") that Brexit appealed to. These people are never happier than when complaining, so they're never going to be happy.
2: An element of society ( @RochdalePioneers may fall in this category) that voted for it because it was contrarian to the Tory government policy and they could give the government a kicking. Now the Tory government is doing Brexit, they're appalled at what the Tory government is doing (as they always are) so are unhappy.
3: People who had a specific vision in mind for Brexit and its not "this" Brexit. I personally fell under this category when Theresa May was in charge and was trying to force through the Backstop, I think but am not certain that @Richard_Tyndall may fall in this category now.
I voted for Brexit because I could see the logic that as we did not want to participate in the currency or Schengen or the Army that we would be spun to the outer edges at some point anyway so best do it ourselves than be pushed.
As for Brexit going well, clearly. M20 car park, best in the world.
Yeah its going well. The M20 has long been an on-again, off-again car park even pre-Brexit, that didn't stop the voters of Kent voting for it.
IANAE but it seems to me that the fact that it is once again a car park, not for the first time and not just post-Brexit, might just have something to do with the fact that P&O recently sacked all their staff and now all their ferries are grounded.
Question: if it was. P&O issue why did queues not build when they stopped sailing and then dissipate now whilst they are not sailing?
The queues were only there on that scale when the broken customs computer was offline
I think it was 2 weeks ago that DFDS decided they would stop honouring P&O bookings for failed bookings. That has probably added some hassle to it.
And locals are getting annoyed now - it took a friend 2 hours to get to Canterbury on Sunday when it should have taken 45 minutes because Lorry drivers are doing anything and everything to avoid the M20 and using a different route.
Kent people voted in large numbers for Brexit, then to elect intellectual giants like Natalie "this has nothing to do with Brexit" Elphicke. As I always say, you get what you vote for.
This is all such total bollocks. As PB's East Kent correspondent I hear so many anecdotes from people as far away as Scotland (looking at you @RochdalePioneers and @eek ) about how bad things in East Kent are. It's like you're descrbing another planet.
I live in Wye, between Canterbury and Ashford, closer to Ashford, use the M20 all the time. On Saturday I had to drive to Heathrow twice. The Covid test the wife took the previous day was faulty so I had to get there early enough for her to take one at the airport, where she failed the rapid antigen test and I had to go back to get her. It was Easter but the M20 was empty, no lorries whatsoever, M25 fine. Made it Wye TN25 to Terminal 3 in 1 hour 20 minutes and back in about the same. Twice.
I'm as anti-Brexit as they come but reports of the roads round here are completely off the scale wrong. The reason it would take 2 hours to get to Canterbury from London on the M2 is (a) it was a sunny Easter weekend and people were trying to get to the coast and (b) the roadworks at Brenley Corner, where you turn off to get on the A2 for Canterbury, have screwed the whole thing up.
All the sneering "look at stupid people from Kent" is wish fulfilment. The roads here are not noticably worse than they were during a French dockers strike or bad weather before Brexit.
@DougSeal It's 2 days old but it was due to a combination of the Brenley Corner roadworks attached to be a police campaign (at that junction) to redirect Lorries back on to the M20...
Lubov Chernukhin wife of ex Putin crony and who has had paid for access to our last 3 PMs with £2m donated to the Tory party turns out to have been a director of a company secretly owned by a sanctioned Russian oligarch. Of course she now can't recall being a director of said company. Her husband received $8m from the same Russian oligarch she can't remember being a director for.
I wonder if the Tory fan boys will continue to say it is racist for links between Putin and Tory funding to be highlighted.
The ridicule is directed at the idea that the Tory party has been bought or influenced by Russian oligarchs when the UK has led the charge in both supporting and training Ukrainian forces. Yesterday the UK was being specifically named as having caused the default on Russian state backed loans by its sanctions regime. Not only is there no evidence of influence but such evidence as there is points in the opposite direction.
If someone truly believes that Russia spent millions trying to get influence within the Conservative Party, then they should be congratulating the Conservative Party for having taken the money, and then done exactly the opposite of what the Kremlin desired! Indeed, doing the opposite even whilst the money was being given...
Although IMV it's probably much more complex than that. I do not think all Russian donors who gave money in any western country were doing so under Putin's orders. It's just the way things are done in Russia, and the amounts were trivial to many of them. Some would also be feeling (with good reason) uncertain about their status.
Aside from Brexit, presumably.
And the defence is that oligarchs were trying to buy influence but that is all right because it is separate from the Russian state trying to buy influence? Some neutral observers might think influence-peddling is morally suspect from the off. Notwithstanding that some might be less independent from the Kremlin than advertised.
I think any connection between Brexit and Russia is fairly minor, if it exists at all.
Brexit occurred because the people voted for it; and remain lost the vote (sadly, IMO) because they could not make a good enough case for remaining. If they had made a better case, they would have won.
The sour grapes are just because some Remainers still don't understand why they lost the vote, since they think all sensible people must have voted like them, and so therefore there must be some nefarious explanation - despite no evidence for such being found despite nearly a decade of the most ardent Remainers digging and looking for that non-existent evidence.
As often in modern times the existence of Twitter has helped to further reinforce and radicalise those with these delusions.
And how do you account for the continuing sour grapes on the part of the Brexiteers?
Speaking personally I have no sour grapes because I think Brexit is going well. I think by and large we have what I voted for now. .
Except you haven't yet got back the Troubles in Northern Ireland, which you said you wanted as a fair price to pay for Brexit.
Speaking about Northern Ireland, the article should be uploaded soon.
Comments
SKS has structured today's motion to commence after the Gray report is out so as to ensure he stretches out the party-gate issue as long as he can. SKS is a ruthless political tactician. His MPs are trying to paint the picture of Covid sob-stories to create the impression that the measures were the government's doing despite the LP voting for them and wanting even more - they may get away with it. Baker called them out for hypocrisy today I see.
https://twitter.com/sturdyAlex/status/1517110481663803392
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-61171529
Oops. My bad.
I think tactically Bryant is right to recuse himself, not sure about it process wise though. Is it not the nature of the committee by design that it will be open to accusations of partisanship?
Dish out the fines - or don’t. And then announce when they’ve reached the end of their investigation.
Bloody stupid for them to play politics / leak their timescale to journalists.
Well that ship has sailed...
But now claims he didn’t know birthday parties were illegal.
https://twitter.com/nickmurftweets/status/1517053369348722688/photo/1
Johnson has committed to reveal fines. Would he dare wait until after elections out the way before doing so? https://twitter.com/JackElsom/status/1517121093655478273
Well, he!s taking massive amounts of piss, anyway.
And it says do this, that or the other. What would you do!!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letters_of_last_resort
Is Jaunty Johnson's trip to India destined to cause his downfall?
Hybrid meetings. Just no.
Muttering from the room. So turn up your volume. Next speaker is virtual. Get deafened.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/apr/21/urinal-in-my-flat-changed-my-life-so-why-are-people-appalled?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
"He was fined after his puppy caused a stampede when it chased a 200-strong herd of deer in London's Richmond Park. Kruger apologised and said he would be more careful in future."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danny_Kruger
Its not the best of election platforms. "You can trust us" they say - to back lies and criminality. Up here my Tory opponents have lots of pictures of them with David Duguid. A man so lacking a spine that when the CCS project was awarded to sites in England instead of Peterhead he stood up in PMQ's praising the liar for promising to at least consider Peterhead for future funding rounds in 2025 onwards.
So. Running for council as Tories. Backing the non-funding of mega energy jobs. Backing the criminal and liar. Vote Conservative?
Or the Met could have ended this. Drop the next 7 FPNs on the best acca there is. Position untenable. Removed. "We're cleaning house" as a slogan. More votes.
And always has been
A lair, however? I doubt if many have found him a refuge...
The Sturgeon issue bears no relationship to what Johnson got up to. I can't speak for Drakeford, as I do not understand the issue to which you refer.
As for Starmer the police authority investigated and determined it was not a breach of Covid rules and was a legitimate action. As to Starmer "misleading" the house yesterday, the accusation made by Starmer was repeated directly by most media organisations quoting Conservative sources who attended the meeting, without the cover of Parliamentary Privilege, which speaks volumes.
If you, Johnson and the Conservative Party understand Johnson has no case to answer regarding "misleading the House" why don't you just come clean and say it like it is? You believe Johnson is above rules, laws, norms and etiquettes. That being so why not just say it?
RT reporting at least one killed and 16 injured. Cause unknown
https://twitter.com/Joyce_Karam/status/1517118119784951808
https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1517128844746055681
"Aerospace defence research institute of the Russian Ministry of Defence burnt down in Tver. "Iskander" and "S-400" missile systems were designed here. Reportedly it was the old wiring and flammable plastic cladding that caused the fire."
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/london-local-elections-2022-conservative-candidates-partygate-b995491.html
A wrinkle is that if he were to resign as PM due to local election results and/or the Gray report, the Committee would presumably wish to have the hearings anyway, since it's out of order for any Member to mislead the House deliberately. If they decided that he has, a by-election in Uxbridge might follow, which would be an amusing challenge for the new Tory leader.
Forget hypersonic, nuclear power cruise missiles (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supersonic_Low_Altitude_Missile) . We get our enemies to literally coat their strategic installations in fire!
1 of the Scottish MPs represents Edinburgh West too, which is posher than most of London and another represents Fife North East which contains St Andrews, the poshest UK university after Oxford
I think the curtain twitching is quite distasteful.
Even if its different to other people's, its for my own reasons and not partisanship.
His "true" problem, is that he's rapidly loosing his hair, and it shows.
Perhaps he needs to invest in a good wig?
NOT hopelessly outdated Whig like Rees-Mogg. And NOT pound-store fright job sported by Fabricant.
There was pretty widespread compliance with Covid regulations before the Cummings story broke. After that, people were much more inclined to use their own judgement. I attribute the illness of a close relative to this. Whether I am correct to or not, the Cummings incident indicated a shocking disregard for the rules, and fundamental dishonesty by those charged with making the rules.
If you don't see anything wrong in what he did, and the way he lied about it afterwards, maybe you too need to go to Specsavers.
Not that Boris could have responded in exactly the same way, but it was the lying when caught out that’s done him. Hands up before Xmas about it, “I showed very poor judgement and set a bad example to my staff. If the Opposition and Parliamentary standards people want to go over the detail of what I did where during the pandemic then I encourage them to do so. They’ll find breaches, for which I’m deeply sorry etc… ”. And he’d be sailing in the polls by now I reckon.
https://thetab.com/uk/2019/09/19/uk-private-school-universities-125931
It doesn’t give them any in reality, but the appearance is worth something for people with Russian enemies