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SKS looks out of step with his party on renationisation – politicalbetting.com
SKS looks out of step with his party on renationisation – politicalbetting.com
We are now moving into that period of the year when all the focus in domestic politics will be on the agendas at the autumn party conferences.
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Good man.
https://sotn.newstatesman.com/2022/06/britainpredicts/
Lots of debatable assumptions, but not just a projection of polling, so possibly "Labour majority" is too long in the betting markets.
I hope we don't get back to the polluted waterways and beaches of pre-privatisation levels.
Privatisation worked, but many people know no alternative.
If Labour has a majority at the next general election and does not need LD support to get legislation through then he may well renationalise energy and water companies and Royal Mail too
https://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/20579678.keir-starmer-commits-labour-rail-nationalisation/
Killers of the King by Charles Spencer (which definitely gets into the story behind that Harris book it seems) and The Tyrannicide Brief by Geoffrey Robertson (about John Cooke, the Solicitor General who tried the case) are both good reads.
Quite the thread, honestly you'd expect this discourse on CNN.
https://twitter.com/justinbaragona/status/1565749664422498305
Bill Barr: "If in fact he sort of stood over scores of boxes, not really knowing what was in them and said I hereby declassify everything in here, that would be such an abuse and -- that shows such recklessness it’s almost worse than taking the documents
Yep. Sounds believable - he's been told he can declassify things, so would assume there's no need for any sort of process or assessment to do so.
Seen it before with the GOP and mouthpieces though. Next week they'll be toeing the line. Not to bang on too much, but its worth bearing in mind how Pence, a man a Trump mob would have lynched if they'd had the chance, won't oppose him too obviously even then.
Edit: The funny part is how deferential most appear to be, outraged at the idea of a President being raided, when there are surely legitimate occasions to do so.
Foot was pro Brexit but so was Enoch Powell
Bill Barr: "I think the driver on this from the beginning was loads of classified information sitting in Mar-a-Lago. People say this was unprecedented, well it’s also unprecedented for a president to take all this classified information and put them in a country club, ok!"
Nail -> Head.
Whatever you think the Tories ought to be asking why such policies lack public appeal.
It's the poor clerks to the court I feel sorry for, they didn't get let off either.
There are a couple of problems with promising large scale nationalisation. Firstly, you get characterised as wastefully spending vast sums, at the behest of union barons, on stuff that doesn't actually keep pensioners warm in winter, and that puts off the soft Tories you want to win over. Secondly, and more importantly, you then have to bloody well do it in office, and the reality is your entire first term is taking up with huge projects that don't actually deliver the improved rail services and cheaper energy bills people fantasise about - it sucks the oxygen out of your administration for the sake of a few headlines.
I know this site is about short term electoral politics and betting. But political leaders do actually have to think about what they want to end up spending the capital they earn through electoral success on. That's the legacy, and also the reelection chance - you try to do stuff that might have a good chance of working so people say "yes, I do think things are better than 4 years ago". Otherwise it's all tactics and no strategy, which is doomed.
Presidents have powers to declassify, but there are limitations on that power, both written into law, and constrained by previous presidential directives on declassification.
As Congress had not repealed those laws, and nor had Trump issued directives superseding the ones still in force, he remained subject to and bound by those laws and directives, president or not.
What Barr is describing is a fiction which exists only in the minds of those still trying to placate the orange @rse. And perhaps those of a few seriously dodgy judges Trump had appointed during his term.
Interesting, though, that they possibly sense blood in the water and some chance to break free. And very good news for Ron DeSantis if they can.
1) De Santis losing this November
and then
2) Winning the GOP nomination for 2024?
But I can even more easily believe Trump thinks nothing a President does (even when out of office) can be illegal. Unless it was his opponent.
The grid; the retailers; the generators; oil and gas producers; wind turbine operators etc ?
Or all of the above - which would be absurd.
Royal Mail, no. I don’t care about that. I’m fine with privatisation. Snail mail is dying and a competitive private sector does the job perfectly well.
Related - I think there’s a decent case for keeping the post office as a publicly owned public service and expanding it into a full-service “front-of-house” public-facing government shop. Proper identity verification services for .gov. Perhaps they could take on some of those legal services, where you currently need an expensive, qualified person to sign/stamp documents etc. Use legislation to force these new branchless app-banks to offer counter services through them. Etc etc. maybe combine them with libraries, in some locations.
The bottom line is that we can't renationalise these industries because there is less than no money left.
Over the next few years, there's a risk we won't be able to afford luxuries like clean beaches, because we won't be able to afford the things that make beaches clean.
Because we collectively decided to prioritise house prices, nice views from The Old Vicarage and National Prestige.
None of this is fixed or eternal, but bad choices have consequences.
Irrespective of whether there are constitutional limitations, there are existing legal limitations.
Absent their repeal, they apply to Presidents as much as to any other person.
The President is not an absolute monarch; he is subject to the nation’s laws in the same way as everyone else.
https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/1565747762972557312
But a dignified public office in every neighbourhood, whose services were widely known and used, would be a very good thing.
Betfair next prime minister
1.04 Liz Truss 96%
19.5 Rishi Sunak 5%
Next Conservative leader
1.05 Liz Truss 95%
19 Rishi Sunak 5%
No, Trump didn’t declassify everything; it’s barred by the Nixon tapes decision
https://thehill.com/opinion/3622679-no-trump-didnt-declassify-everything-its-barred-by-the-nixon-tapes-decision/
… The court also rebuffed the contention that the president’s ultimate control over the regulations and the attorney general who issued them undercut their binding effect on the president: “[I]t is theoretically possible for the Attorney General to amend or revoke the regulation defining the Special Prosecutor’s authority. But he has not done so. So long as this regulation remains in force the Executive Branch” — including the president there — “is bound by it, and indeed the United States as the sovereign composed of the three branches is bound to respect and to enforce it.”…
Firstly, he's very unlikely to lose in November as, although polls have picked up for Democrats, it's still a midterm, in it's a reddish-purple state Trump won by 3.5% in 2020.
Secondly, because he's unlikely to lose, if he did it'd be a big shock and very damaging to his brand. He can't then claim to be a popular, campaigning conservative, or a winner... he'd have lost an election that people thought was pretty much in the bag. So the unlikely event of the first happening makes the second really unlikely.
I know Nixon won a Presidential election after losing a Gubernatorial election in bruising fashion. But that was six years earlier, and he was up against an incumbent so his loss was disappointing (and the margin a bit surprising at the time) but not a total bolt from the blue.
Exc: Taxpayers are footing the bill for Pannick’s legal advice disparaging the Partygate probe by privileges committee.
£129,700 contract for “legal advice” awarded last month and published today.
It went to Peters and Peters - who instructed Pannick.
contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/Notice/26bfbb0…
https://twitter.com/breeallegretti/status/1565761214206156807?t=Id2f6ZIclrN9bawuhjRdvA&s=19
But Johnson doesn't really care any more. Yes it's totally indefensible spaffing of public money. But he's spent the summer essentially saying he doesn't give two sh1ts about that and he'll just be doing it until they cut up the credit card next week.
Starmer is, unlike Liz Truss, not going to provide too many hostages to fortune so far out from a GE with a huge amount of uncertainty not only through this winter but beyond. Is today's G7 action a game changer?
I'm not sure - are the signs from the US and elsewhere indicating a significant economic slowdown or are we seeing the post-pandemic fizz finally coming out and more normal conditions returning? Oil prices have eased back as have gas albeit still on the high side (and well ahead of where they were this time last year).
In Sweden, the latest Novus poll is very good for the centre-right bloc showing them on 51.8% with the centre-left on 47.4% which would mean a decisive victory and presumably a Sweden Democrat-led Government as they would be the largest of the four parties in the centre-right bloc.
Two strong by-election gains for Labour overnight but we'll see if the tide is running as well in a couple of weeks once the era of Truss gets under way next week (presumably) and we get to see which enlightened souls/poor sods (delete as appropriate) will be serving in her Cabinet.
A "Ministry of all the Talents" ? I'm not entirely convinced.
It's indefensible as a prudent use of public money, and auditors may have some things to say. But it isn't illegal.
His official capacity is neither here nor there.
This looks to me like an improper use of public funds, and he should be sued for recovery of the monies by the next government.
There was an interesting book written by one of the people who tried to save the ship building industry. He went round trying to get them contracts. Their response - if it means changing working practises and methods, we are not interested.
I worked with the tanker Captain who did the sea trials for the last products of one yard. Three small tankers built with a big audits from the government. A few miles out to sea, he and the engineers agreed - they went back, that ship and the others were used as storage. After being strengthened. the government essentially paid off he oil company with some tax breaks to buy tankers from a foreign yard….
The pattern was repeated, with some exceptions, across industry. British exceptionalism ruled (even in Scotland)… they literally couldn’t believe that British products and engineering could be beaten. Which hey were, on quality and price.
Every few years a bung from the government would keep them going for a bit. And so they staggered on.
I was also struck by the fact our tickets were never checked at any point on either journey - I wonder what their level of fare evasion is. Fare evasion is endemic in parts of the London Underground but the idea of arresting evaders and either fining them or flogging them seems to be out of favour.
I accept public flogging of fare evaders may be a shade draconian but it would certainly mark a step change between the Truss Government and previous namby-pamby wishy-wishy snowflake cancel culture so-called Conservative administrations. We can't expect a weak criminal-loving liberal like Patel to bring in some serious measures to improve law and order, can we?
Something I realised too late in life. Just because your business plan is outrageous, insane or downright immoral… the more of those qualities it has, the more it will work.
I’m thinking of some acquaintances who lived a “his and hers Range Rovers parked on the drive of nice Georgian” lifestyle, based on a charity that did no actual charitable work.
Two former business partners fell out big time, director 1 accused director 2 of misusing company funds by making payments which weren't to mandate, for which director 1 also brought legal action against the bank.
I reckon the disputed payments were about £200,000 of which about £35k were to director 1's companies, the rest were legitimate payments such as to the inland revenue/customs & excise, payroll etc but most were not to mandate.
Both directors were determined not to lose the case, we were advising director 2 and I reckon the costs involved each director was north of £400,000 in both legal and accountancy services.
*plus one bit of spam
Edit: sorry CHB3 that was meant tongue in cheek.
Johnson didn't personally steal from the petty cash. What happened is that the Cabinet Office made a really stupid decision about what to spend money on. If proper procedures weren't followed, then individual civil servants who signed it off could have disciplinary issues to contend with. Auditors might criticise the controls in place. The Treasury might even say they spent outside agreed delegations. But, ultimately, Johnson will be long gone and there's no legal claim that can realistically be made against him. Indeed, even pursuing it would in itself be throwing away even more public money.
That report is utter bollocks and the author and the Home Secretary seem oblivious to the fact it was the same ruse that one Boris Johnson used to oust Ian Blair.
I know a few charities, and the first few years are grim as they spend a lot of money to get themselves donations, but the Sir Tom Moore foundation was taking the absolute fucking piss.
The traditional explanations (blame the unions, blame management) don’t really satisfy me.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/sep/02/officer-who-wrote-mets-drug-strategy-smoked-cannabis-daily-panel-told
Yet people go to court on principle all the time and lawyers coin it in.
The all time classic was Jennens v Jennens (or the "Acton Miser"). One of the wealthiest (if not wealthiest) non-titled men in England dies intestate with £2m assets in 1798. The case is discontinued 117 years later because the entire estate has been exhausted by legal fees (oh, and literally everyone involved is long dead). They say it inspired Bleak House, although there was quite a bit of similar stuff going on and the case wasn't even halfway through when it was published.
They didn’t have to worry about sharing the profits so could be focussed. Absolutely focussed.
Think of the returns from the slave trade for example - it helped build an empire until average punters started demanding input.
The country just became too nice. Look at China - booming.
Luckily JRM is on his way to lead us to sunlit uplands (assuming he gets ennobled otherwise he’s going to be one of the lumpenproletariat which would be awful).
The problems were evident before WWI.
When Jellicoe wanted built up guns for the battleships, rather than wire wound, he was told no by the gun makers. Because they had their process, the unions would get upset and it would all be inconvenient.
When, some years later, Denny designed the first U.K. longitudinally framed destroyer, a delegation from the unions and management of the shipyards asked for him to be fired. Since they had a nice business building transverse framed ships.
Having a summary glance at the topic, two threads ago, it strikes me that the USA would never become a superpower within the Empire. Empires are a terrible way to develop a place economically (India, I believe, did not develop much during the Raj). As for the UK remaining a Superpower, by the end of WWII Empires were already anachronisms. I disagree with Kinbalu in the previous thread, that the UK could have retained superpower status by being as brutal as the PRC, because I think if the UK had displayed such brutality they would have lost it anyway.
Pre-privatisation the nationalised water firms routinely flouted existing rules but there was no real sanction on them for that.
Post-privatisation the rules were actually enforced because firms could be fined if they flouted the rules as they had done in the past which would harm the firms profits, so pollution became a cost that they worked to avoid.
Putting a high cost onto pollution means that firms in a private sector avoid polluting in order to reduce their costs, the profit motive works there, whereas if its a state sector and targets aren't met there's no incentive to avoid that. It just becomes a political game of pass the parcel rather than anyone taking responsibility.
Article 9 of the Bill of Rights clearly states that “… the freedom of speech and debates or proceedings in Parliament ought not to be impeached or questioned in any court or place out of Parliament…”
There’s no way to bring a case to recover the money from Johnson, but Parliament should find whoever authorised this in contempt of Parliament.