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They’re trolling us now. – politicalbetting.com
They’re trolling us now. – politicalbetting.com
Michelle Mone in the Lords was bad enough. What on earth possessed Cameron? It comes as no surprise to find that the VIP lane during Covid resulted in her and others making large profits from their friendships and contacts with politicians, the supply of goods fit for the purpose being purely incidental and often non-existent. Questions have been asked about what she bought with the humongous profits made and where the money has gone. What ought to be asked is what role politicians played in the award of these contracts, why there were no contractual provisions allowing the recovery of monies or, if there were, why they have not been used and why government is so unwilling to pursue allegations of fraud where public money is involved. A “Goldman Sachs style audit” (as favoured by Sunak for the money given to Ukraine) might even be worthwhile. Ukrainians fighting for their freedom can be cut some slack; chancers treating a killer virus as an opportunity to help themselves to our money should not be.
Comments
Nice to see a reference to the serially incompetent or corrupt Mike Veale.
The story about Boris's partygate legal fees I think it is quite telling - he can afford his own and is not in office now, so why stump up the cash? It must be because Sunak is in such a very weak position. Had he been able to reverse the polling slump more perhaps he'd be able to be bolder, but he hasn't. There's no enthusiasm, just resignation, so he cannot piss of Boris - after all, he knows he would still probably have lost to Boris had there been a leadership contest.
Your final suggestion might as well happen - just end the pretence already, it's just frustrating.
It seems the people who worry most about this kind of change are people who don’t actually live in central London. For them it looks and feels different and exotic. For Londoners it’s just normal life.
How people respond to the exoticism and difference of London - which has always been there regardless of migration, in the bigness of things, the noise, the bustle - does seem to vary. Some find it exciting and want more of it. Others feel panicked and disoriented and want to get out.
I think the latter group tend to focus on the obvious things that look different: sometimes that’s the traffic and pollution, sometimes it’s the multi-ethnic look of the place.
A good friend is a full Professor of physics at a high end university. They say that he has pretty much run out of things to achieve - only a couple of awards have escaped his grasp, to date. He is clearly brilliant and a leading mind.
When he talks of physics his default is not to use jargon - he explains things clearly even to me. He has a reputation as an excellent teacher, as you might expect
The truly smart don’t need to bluff.
He hanged his way through his address book..
1) Oak National Academy. Why was £15 million in public money given to an organisation (Ark Academies Trust) that had no expertise in digital learning to essentially produce a series of poor quality videos that were not suitable for online learning but pushed as the solution to all our ills? Without competition or even looking around to see what was out there?
2) on the wider subject of procurement, why were Primary Care Trusts in this area not permitted to negotiate their own hand sanitiser contracts, instead being ordered to accept a demonstrably inferior product at a considerably higher price?
3) Who paid for the wine at these illegal parties? If it was the government, then should individuals be under investigation not merely for breach of lockdown regs, but for misuse of public funds? If civil servants, why were they buying alcohol for unlawful purposes on government time?
That's even before we get on to recruitment of people who have no experience in the relevant fields to run major government offices without a process being followed. Harding, Spielman, Bingham (the fact she happened to do OK doesn't really address the question). You could even legitimately extend that to Simon Case.
The government absolutely stinks.
And, unfortunately, so did Labour.
The Augean Stables springs to mind.
As for the Afghan question, life is unfair. But that's nothing more than an argument to never do anything anywhere ever, because states are not consistently moral, that if we cannot or do not do everything we should not do anything.
Bowling allrounders score runs.
On Ukraine it is just as simple. The overwhelming majority of Ukrainians support Zelensky and his government. Hence the astonishingly effective fight back by the Ukrainian military.
The speed of demographic change is bewildering and fairly new. The stats don’t lie. London has gone from a majority white British city to a minority white British city in 20 years, and the trend is accelerating, if anything
1097 runs, 5 centuries.
http://www.cricmetric.com/playerstats.py?player=JE Root&role=batsman
No runs.
What’s seems to have been proposed is some form of independent consultancy style audit, which is a nonsense. The cost benefit analysis is unavoidably a political one - and Sunak has already stated he’s 100% in support of Ukraine.
As far as the military efficacy of our contributions is concerned, that is in any event being done, and on an ongoing basis. See, for example the recent RUSI report.
Note also that there was a rash of stories cooked up by US Republicans earlier in the conflict about military aid not reaching the front, embezzlement, etc - which were investigated, and proved wholly confected.
The “cut some slack” Cyclefree refers to in the header has been applied to the fast track friends; fas less so to Ukraine.
There aren’t many recent analogues to Ukraine. Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait; Kagame’s invasion of Eastern Congo (though arguably not a war of annexation); the two Nagorno Karabakh wars, the Russian occupation of Ossetia and Abkhazia. Further back Israel’s occupation of the Golan Heights. Any others? Most wars in
modern times have been civil ones.
Life in this instance is not simply unfair, it is distorted beyond farce. We leave Afghanistan because it's realpolitik 'sorry chaps we can't be everywhere', but Ukraine gets a blank cheque and grannies can fucking freeze.
Shame the likes of Harding were just mates, rather than successful people who happened to be mates.
Consoling him watching the (really just brilliant) Paddington 2 and getting ready for the final. He’s going France, so I’ll go Argentina. My track record of predictions in this WC has been pretty awful (excepting that at the outset I guessed that England would go out to France in the QF), so lump on France if you’re daft enough to bet on this result.
I did guess that Hamza would win Strictly after the first episode this series though - wish I’d have stuck a few quid on that.
It’s very hard to call. Well matched teams. I suspect Messi is just that bit hungrier and will edge it. But if Mbappe decides to put on a masterclass…
They even had the audacity to mock the Kensington and Chelsea house they were gifted by the Queen
Is London unique or are all major western cities now like this, with easy global travel opening up the world over the past 50 years?
E.g. HMRC, OFSTED, OFQUAL, several universities, the SLC, the NHS system of primary care trusts...
On the audit - tbh I still don’t see the problem with making sure the money is being spent as effectively as possible. Though as others have noted - the same approach could be significantly more urgently applied elsewhere.
London’s population went over 9m last year, for the first time ever
https://data.london.gov.uk/dataset/londons-population
I'm afraid this is where I have to take a very strong counter to OGH. If he really thinks that Labour aren't going to win a majority then he is not listening to the anger out there. It's visceral, cerebral, palpable.
The tories are going to get the full force of the electorate's wrath. And they bloody-well deserve it.
6/1 is looking pretty good now. I have Argentina in the work sweepstake, so there’s that.
That’s a huge change, and unprecedented in human history. I cannot think of an equivalent
Messi for the Golden Boot, France for the trophy.
Clarkson expresses a wish to see Meghan publicly and sexually humiliated.
He believes she should be stripped naked and pelted with faeces.
As I said, it’s kind of Nazi-era rhetoric.
I believe the biggest scandal is Markle's unprovoked attack on the Daily Mail and the Sun. Two of Britain's greatest bastions of truth.
I'm being snarky. If she and Harry brought the whole sorry edifice down, I'd doff my cap to 'em.
The real one is where people back new ides and companies with actual, real money (in the US, home of this stuff, there are specific laws banning borrowing money for VC). This is done with the clear expectation that only a fraction of the investments will pan out.
The phoney version is… well look a Theranos. All the real VC outfits didn’t touch them with a barge pole. It was a bunch of rich rubes who thought they were VC that backed that turkey.
What we need in the U.K. is more real VC.
Except that the Ex-Foxtons, Ex-Aston Carter chap in HR would probably steal it.
Meghan complains that the UK press media tried to crush her with bile and hatred, so how do they respond? Crush her further with more bile and hatred.
Demographically, London is probably changing as fast as New York changed in the 19th century. Which is mind boggling
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2022/12/09/after-prince-andrew-prince-harry-and-meghan-markle
Plus without their royal links they are just a dim ex captain with poor A levels and a C- list actress
It comes down to a belief that the kind of spivery you see on Alan Sugars horror show is Real Business.
And claims it is not a great city are pure Kant.
There were plenty of characters moaning about Eastern European Jewry arriving in large numbers.
The Irish and Catholics more widely were widely disliked - the Irish Cultural Centre near you in Camden, and the Irish pubs emerged because they weren't welcomed in normal pubs originally.
Similarly for Soho's China town.
Is the difference the colour of the skin - or the longer delay it is taking for them to assimilate and/or become Loyal Brits like the Orthodox communities in North London?
I really don't want to go down the Muslim Vs good Ukrainian and Hongkonger immigrant rabbit hole.
As I have said, I hope and pray that it works. We don’t have much choice now. But we shouldn’t pretend it isn’t happening, nor can we dismiss it as a minor evolution
There was a rather whiny article in the Guardian a while back talking of Black Flight from London. First generation immigrants from Africa l, mainly. AKA moving to large houses out in the sticks for better schools, green fields… just like all the other immigrants on the “train” have done, historically. Apparently (HORROR!) they were then tending to mix with the locals. Yes, mix in *that* sense….
It was one of those articles where you transpose black and white and it reads very very badly.
A small number of groups are not especially well adapted, culturally, to using education to move up the social ladder.
Its also not true for all US major cities, places like Seattle / Portland were (and still are) majority white and the non-white demographic is majority Asian. The African-American demographic is very small.
Ukraine was invaded by neighbour.
That you see the two situations as analogous is bizarre.
What your comment might highlight is the UK is actually a very tolerant place, a lot more than some race grifters like to make it seem e.g Nobody batted an eyelid at Sunak becoming PM, other than people like that knobhead Trevor Noah.
In any case this is a bit of a red herring, as you're still not arguing on a cost benefit way either, though you are trying to present it that way, you are just arguing that no one should ever do anything in these situations because it is not consistently applied.
Why not just say that, instead of pretending it is about cost/benefit analysis? That's logically coherent, perhaps more so than those arguing occasional intervention. Muddling yourself up by introducing a suggestion it might be ok if the costs were different just confuses your message.
Am I to believe if we didn't face a cost of living crisis and if we had stayed in Afghanistan you'd support Ukrainian intervention? Come on, that't not believable.
incursions into NATO airspace.
They are a menace. A fascistic state with narcissistic and sociopathic tendencies.
That’s where the “British malaise” exists. Neither the Conservatives nor Labour deserve office.
As to Clarkson, yes his comments are loathsome. I still don’t have much sympathy for Harry and Meghan, who are spoiled, narcissistic, self-absorbed, and self-pitying.
I wonder if Rome was like this, towards the end of Empire?
The experiment, like all experiments, might fail. The “native” population might grow allergic and angry, and vote in a Far Right party. That would be failure, to my mind
My point of course is that the country as a whole is tolerant and that for the vast majority race or background is not an issue. I'd be surprised if many people are 'shocked' or bothered by the mix of ethnicities in London or other urban centres, it after all shown on the TV all the time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-rnM-MwRHY
decades.
NATO isn’t even sending the Ukrainians fighter jets or US tanks.
Its also worth pointing out that some very "white" areas have seen large scale immigration, but white immigration from Eastern Europe. So again, a very different lived experience of demographic change. My "home" area of Crewe / Stoke has seen huge immigration from places like Poland, when I pop back from time to time, it is really "noticeable" the change.
And that isn't to say I am "bothered" or gone full Nige Farage "send em back", just pointing out that is noticeably different makeup.
Clarkson is a creation in the style of the pub landlord, Al Murray. His comments have worked because people are talking about Clarkson.
(*Actually that's not true - I don't think household solar panels are typically included in the UK solar generation stats.)
I would agree with some earlier posts that, as someone who's lived in the city for decades, the ethnic mix doesn't feel noticeably different from 10 years ago. Fewer poles, perhaps. As also mentioned a couple of weeks ago, the capital was also minority "white british" ( self-declared) , but probably still about 50% white at the time of the last census, 10 years ago, too. The rightwing media likes to get exercised about these sometimes more complicated statistics, and that then feeds into support for parties like Reform UK, etc.
If anything, even more of the white middle-classes have moved into inner London, more of the global super-rich have moved into areas like Kensington and Chelsea etc, and very slightly more minorities have decamped to the outer suburbs, in the unfortunate Parisian-stylee.