Categories
Muddying the Waters on BoJo’s £130k legal bill – politicalbetting.com
Muddying the Waters on BoJo’s £130k legal bill – politicalbetting.com
The advice has been published. You can read it here. Quite why it has been published on a government website when it is advice to the Prime Minister (instructing Peters & Peters, a reputable firm well-known to lawyers practising in the field of fraud and other financial shenanigans) is unclear. The advice is long and learned, with many references to Erskine May and others. But it is curious because it is based on one fundamentally flawed understanding and one (possibly unintentional) revealing one. The first is best set out in this analysis by Professor Mark Elliott, an eminent constitutional lawyer. In summary, it is that Boris’s lawyers are seeking to treat the Privileges and Standards Committee and its work as if it were a non-Parliamentary public body and saying that it is not complying with the rules applicable to such bodies. But that is precisely the point of the Committee: it is not a normal public authority but a Parliamentary one and entitled to set its own rules as to what it can look into and how. As Professor Elliott puts it, the legal advice is the equivalent of criticising a rugby team for not following the rules of football.
Comments
Excellent timing after a few days away.
Lack of r n' r.
Have to be honest, I'm not as enraged by the Pannick advice (and the cost to the taxpayer therein) as I am by the Winsor report on the Cressida Dick ousting.
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.
And thank-you for the header.
So that makes him the QC instructed by the P&P Solicitors?
Pannick on the streets of London
Pannick on the streets of Birmingham
I wonder to myself
Could life ever be sane again?
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.
Sorry
Pannick would have enjoyed a big share of the overall fee ultimately, but P&P aren't totally a post box. The formal instructions to counsel will have been quite complex in terms of the questions being ask (notably because you try not to ask questions unless you really want an answer - "what do you reckon?" is a really bad way to instruct) and there's also provision of relevant papers etc.
It is unusual to go out to private solicitors rather than the Government Legal Department (and quite fishy as the GLD tend to be more independent than someone you're directly paying to get to a "helpful" answer). But the basic structure isn't odd.
Not even my
mythicallegendary modesty could spare us from the smugness.I suppose we can take some encouragement that the contract didn’t go to a confectioners owned by Boris Johnson’s neighbour
https://twitter.com/AdamWagner1/status/1565785279042043908
Tony Diver
@Tony_Diver
·
1h
Rishi joked at a dinner last night about leaving the UK when he loses the Tory leadership race.
“I want to reassure people about my political future. I’m not going to jet off to California on Monday,” he said.
“The flights are much cheaper on Tuesday.”
Betfair next prime minister
1.04 Liz Truss 96%
20 Rishi Sunak 5%
Next Conservative leader
1.05 Liz Truss 95%
20 Rishi Sunak 5%
Save our strength and distract with something else instead. Civilization 6 Platinum edition is going for £13 right now, that'll do.
Daniel Kral
@DanielKral1
·
8h
Wholesale gas prices in Europe are collapsing (down over 10% today after large falls in previous days) even as Nordstream is under "maintenance" and other pipeline gas flows from Russia continue to be drastically reduced. Russia is no longer the marginal price setter for EU gas.
https://twitter.com/DanielKral1/status/1565656026921197568
See the sort of thing where estimated costs treble, then reduce by 10%, and its presented as a saving.
His ego will love people clamouring for his return but he will be like someone who loves the knowledge their ex wants them back, gets the rush from being wanted but also prefers being with the wealthy new girl who lets him do whatever he wants when he wants.
He won’t come back once he has freedom but knowing he’s wanted and loved will be enough.
Apparently she's got into the Smiths.
I'm not sure how to feel about this. On the one hand, I love the Smiths. On the other, she's a 12 year old girl and the Smiths split up 35 years ago. It would be like me, as a 12 year old in 1987, getting into, I don't know, Rosemary Clooney.
As speculation perhaps now that the storage facilities are getting close to 'full' European nations have eased back on bidding against each other to every available, square meatier of gas?
As Disraeli once said: “A Conservative government is an organised hypocrisy.” Nice of Boris to conserve that tradition at least.
I would argue he has only conserved 50% of this tradition. There's nothing organised about this lot.
He bought me Johnny Marr tickets earlier in the Summer so he'd have someone to go with.
Good lad.
Gotta wonder whether the other Alexander, Lebedev, bugs his castle. Because Johnson told the Commons that no government business was discussed as far as he was aware. What if he misled them?
"(T)he equivalent of criticising a rugby team for not following the rules of football." Don't say that in the wrong company!
Ticker said "Khan 'gets Dick out'".
I'd have to reread it to get full chapter and verse, but it was a number of factors all combining. A significant one being that as ships got bigger, many yards were too small to build them - and the private companies too small to invest in new, larger yards (which might be further away from workers), and the nationalised ones too unwilling to invest or to upset the unions and workers.
Even reorganisation of yards to allow modern ways of working proved difficult, given the sometimes restricted (space-wise) sites. Nowadays large modules are built elsewhere and lifted onto the ship, which requires much more linear space 'inland' from the waterfront that traditional yards.
If ships had not got so much larger, our industry might have survived.
(The yard being too small for modern vessels was one of the reasons Thorneycrofts at Woolston in Southampton closed in 2004, and the work moved to Portsmouth. I'm glad I walked past it in 2002, and got to see some ships moored, including RV Triton.)
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Rise-Fall-British-Shipbuilding/dp/0752489690
Marr covers the old stuff well. Sings better than Morrisey too!
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.
I've seen the Smyths a couple of times and I'd heartily recommend them. As authentic an experience as you're realistically likely to get, nowadays. Not-Moz is spot on, stopping just short of parody; and as a group they are pretty tight.
“civil servants will reproduce documents using carbon paper if Britain is hit by energy blackouts this winter under emergency plans stress-tested in Whitehall in recent days….”
https://www.ft.com/content/a0ef9b60-e3ce-4888-b9e4-5bfd6b5055af
https://mobile.twitter.com/UAWeapons/status/1565798823703740416
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/jt199899/jtselect/jtpriv/43/4306.htm
And. Can play guitar just like ringing a bell.
My teen turned to me in amazement and said. "He's older than you Dad!"
Well. Yeah.
We're not outside Salford Lads Club anymore, Dorothy.
The Committee on Privileges should summon the relevant Cabinet Office officials and give them a good grilling to find out who authorised this.
The sanctions available to Parliament are limited, but a sufficiently forceful reprimand would not be great for the career of whoever did.
Oncve the SG intervenes (but that would be interfering with lower levels, Unionists say ...).
(I don't know why the Graun keeps saying that CoSLA is SNP-led - most of the local authorities are Unionist coalitions of one mixed breed or another, and it's a cross-party organization with a mix on committees and their conveners..)
Immigration INTO Ireland. I was unaware that it has exploded in recent years. For the last recorded year, net migration into Ireland was 64,000
The equivalent number, in Britain, would be 820,000 - heading towards a million people in a year, and more than twice the peak migration we have ever experienced. Extraordinary
Irexit on the way? Probably not, but I suggest there is big trouble ahead for Ireland if this continues
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-62771613
What happened to the contents ?
No way did he take empty boxes from the White House.
At this rate they'll be back to the 1841 population in a couple of decades.
Personally speaking, I found the toleration for intra-European migration admirable and the disdane for Non-European migration deeply troubling.
What do mafiosi do with leverage?
like all, (or at leased almost all), immigration is great for the economy overall, though it does produces winners and losers, house and rents have both risen markedly with the propotiantly high immigration levels, which has been good for those who one a house, and great for those who one a lot of houses or land that can be built on, less good for those who rent and/or are looking to buy.
I don’t know if any of you saw him on This Morning with Andi Peters 🫣 the fakeness of Rishi was making the skin crawl. Why couldn’t he have just been himself, like Dave Cameron always was, just be your genuine self?
Did anyone on PB realise that an Iranian Muslim guy beheaded and castrated two Irish gay guys in Sligo in April? I certainly didn't
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/sligo-suspect-planned-to-kill-more-men-in-the-coming-days-33hlwh67d
https://news.sky.com/story/sligo-man-in-his-20s-charged-with-murders-of-two-men-in-irish-town-12590072
As I said, trouble ahead
2021 +11k
2020 +29k
2019 +34k
2018 +34k
2017 +20k
2016 +16k
2015 +6k
2014 -9k
2013 -19k
2012 -26k
2011 -27k
https://emn.ie/immigration-decreases-by-nearly-24-in-year-to-april-2021/#:~:text=The number of emigrants also,compared to +28,900 in 2020.
Yes, the 2021 figure for Ireland was 65,200 but that was down 20,000 on 2020 and well off the 151,000 in the mid 2000s. I've no information on the source location for these immigrants - the UK is likely to be a significant player with the likes of Poland and Romania declining from the numbers in thee earlier 2010s.
In other matters, the question of "misleading" Parliament is one of those delicious uses of language which teased and tantalised in Yes Minister and similar. You can mislead Parliament deliberately as some allege Boris Johnson and others have done and you can mislead accidentally as Jim Hacker did when events beyond your knowledge and control cause whatever you said to Parliament to be false.
The net effect, some would assert, is the same. Whether deliberately or accidentally, you have misled Parliament and must suffer the consequences. As far as accidentally misleading Parliament is concerned, those who do so run the additional risk of not looking like being in control of events or even their own Department.
I'd argue the worst situation for any Government is to look to be out of control of events - yes, things happen quickly as we saw with the pandemic in the spring of 2020 but it's vital for confidence to believe the Government is in control. The sense, as we saw in September 1992, of a Government being out of control is hugely damaging.
Ireland speaks English. It has many of the attractions of the UK. The influx is so big and fast it brings infrastructure problems, and housing is calamitously expensive