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Betting opens on Rutherglen & Hamilton even though there’s no vacancy – politicalbetting.com
Betting opens on Rutherglen & Hamilton even though there’s no vacancy – politicalbetting.com
A possible by-election in the offing? The seat of Rutherglen and Hamilton was an SNP gain from LAB at GE2019. My money would be on Labour winning it back https://t.co/Sgjssb6Gyf
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That’s what 2/3 ended up in jail/criminal records.
At least one is a pervert.
Some fecked off to other parties.
There’s some that make Richard Burgon look like Einstein.
Then you’ve got the thickos about the currency.
Edit - besides, even if it *is* stupidity, that doesn't elevate Burgon to Einstein level. Dawkins, possibly.
But the only way Burgon would look like Einstein is if his hairdresser had had a few.
Although, that might just be Putin empying a few of his accounts.
I've watched some of the select committee hearings on HS2. So far, the level of engagement with issues seems fairly high, and the level of political point scoring seems low.
That's not to say my faith that it will get built is high. There is a strong chance that the mood of the treasury will prevail and the whole thing be deemed too expensive. But I don't necessarily lay the blame for that with our political model.
Natalie McGarry for embezzlement, Ferrier for Covid-19.
* Recall isn't automatic, as the header (and the Guardian) says - it opens the possibility of a petition getting 10% of local voters demanding a by-election. I'm sure that Labour can do that and it will offer a tasty campaigning opportunity ahead of the by-election, but it'll take some months, I suppose
* Labour doesn't have a candidate yet, though they are in the process of picking one, so they may want the process to take a few months
* Ferrier could decide to resign, shortt-circuiting the process, or at the other extreme could decide to fight as an independent
Just in terms of who was elected in 2019, we’ve had:
Margaret Ferrier
Neale Hanvey: suspended for antisemitism, re-admitted, defected to Alba
Kenny MacAskill: defected to Alba
Patrick Grady: suspended for sexual harassment, re-admitted
Bit sloppy when ascribing criminality, particularly for a lawyer. Who’s the third man/woman?
In the most recent case, Chris Davies was sentenced in late April. The Speaker triggered the recall petition process on 24 April. It opened on 9 May and ran until 20 June. The by-election was 1 August. So, quicker than I thought, but, yes, all takes a few months, and a month is a long time in politics.
Although in purely spreading-the-virus terms what Ferrier did is far worse than anything Boris did, he was PM and gets held to a higher standard.
He added dryly that the country would be better governed if more members were like him!
It's about Johnson lying to Parliament.
Which should be a very serious matter.
In terms of the political decisions Johnson took, e.g. being slow to call the second lockdown, definitely not!
https://twitter.com/AdamBienkov/status/1641193520433119232
The former Parliamentary Standards Commissioner who ruled against both Boris Johnson and Owen Paterson, says she was warned by a "doughty Conservative woman MP" that "you need to watch yourself. The knives are out for you. You just watch your back."
https://twitter.com/BrianCathcart/status/1641389285046730752
The UK is close to the bottom among democracies for public trust in institutions - with large declines in recent years.
Trust in trouble? UK and international confidence in institutions
https://www.kcl.ac.uk/policy-institute/assets/confidence-in-institutions.pdf
But, given he has lied so often before...and indeed, was sacked just a few weeks later for lying to his cabinet...
Seems fair
I knew she was forced to stand down as an MP.
1) My personal hobbyhorse: the catastrophic effect lockdown has had on children, particularly those who were very young in 2020. The number of children in years 1/2/3 with special educational needs is absolutely off the charts.
2) The disastrous effect of lockdown on the economy, which will make many individuals poorer and the state considerably poorer. Leaving less money to be spent on health.
Taken together, the number of life years lost as a result of lockdown will, in my view, considerably outweigh the number of life years which were saved as a result of lockdown. We don't know what this would be. We have models, but we also know from the models given for the Dec 2021 lockdown which didn't happen, and other instances, that the models were vastly, vastly overstated.
I'm not arguing that nothing should have been done. Lockdown was on a scale, rather than on/off. But my view is that the optimum solution was considerably less lockdown than actually happened.
Margaret Ferrier gets a four week sanction for a foolish, but not dishonest, breach of the COVID rules. Boris Johnson who instituted systematic breaches and lied about it continuously including to parliament gets the best lawyer our taxpayer money can buy and so far has resisted any sanction. Another woman, Allegra Stratton, who had a bit part at most, is the only person to have resigned over these breaches.
We can quibble over what the negative effects of lockdown are, but I agree a shorter lockdown would obviously have reduced those negative effects.
Had Johnson called the first and second lockdowns sooner, they would have been more effective at cutting cases and could have been shorter in duration. So, it doesn't matter whether we agree or not on the precise costs of lockdown, we can agree that Johnson being slow to call lockdowns had a negative impact in terms of virus spread, in terms of deaths from COVID-19 and in terms of the various costs associated with lockdown.
Especially if you then died of it.
I'd happily see Johnson suspended from Parliament for longer for lying to the place though. Given people normally get slung in jail for lying in Court I'd happily see a Bill of Attainder used to give Johnson some prison time too.
Her breach of COVID rules was foolish. It was also deliberate. It was dishonest: she was effectively lying to the people on the train with her. I think Johnson's conduct has been worse, but I don't feel we should be forgiving of Ferrier.
It is ridiculous that Stratton resigned over Partygate while Johnson still tries to bluster his way out of it. I don't know that it's accurate to say she's the only person to have resigned, however. Shaun Bailey resigned various roles. Ultimately, Johnson did resign as PM/Tory leader, albeit at gunpoint, and that was in part because of Partygate.
Further evidence, were it needed, of the excellence of a trebuchet-based justice system.
He was given a chance by the Committee. Harman specifically gave him that chance before it retired.
He didn't take it.
I expect it to cost him his seat.
Banquo in the Scottish play? Piling on guilt is his forte....
I can see the argument that you are making. I think I probably agree that being slow to call lockdown had a negative impact in terms of virus spread - though the relationship between rules imposed by government and spread of the virus was weak at best. What might the counterfactual have been? We might equally have had a shorter, briefer peak; we might have had no difference at all. In terms of deaths from covid? Perhaps, but the relationship here gets weaker still. I'm not convinced that an earlier lockdown could or would have led to a shorter lockdown though. In modelling terms, it would have flattened the curve (if it worked), slowing rather than stopping the spread - so wouldn't have reduced the period covid was around. And I don't think the political will to lift lockdown would have been any greater. From both a mathematical or a human reading of the situation I think we would have ended up with a longer lockdown (and therefore greater costs).
And again, if all this sounds a bit pompous, I apologise. I'm sceptical about the benefits of most aspects of lockdown (in particular school closures - again, my particular hobbyhorse) - but I don't want to come across as angry man on the internet.
Russia arrests US journalist Evan Gershkovich on spying charge
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-65121885
Johnson somehow rode out the worst of Partygate, at least the first time round. It was Pincher that did for him as PM.
It was always 'in the supermarket' or 'from our careless neighbours'
Not, as is most likely, from their own families.
In terms of criminality among MPs elected to the 2019 Westminster Parliament...
Imran Ahmad Khan (Con): 18 months
Claudia Webbe (Lab): 10 weeks, suspended
Ferrier (SNP): community service
Jonathan Edwards (PC): accepted a caution
Tom Tugendhat (Con): banned from driving
Boris Johnson (Con): accepted a fine
Rishi Sunak (Con): accepted a fine, accepted another fine
Penny Mordaunt (Con): speeding ticket
Mike Hill (Lab): paid compensation to employee following an employment tribunal
Nadhim Zahawi (Con): tax penalty
Anyone think of any others?
And in the case of a friend: "One of our kids got it, probably from school, gave it to the other kid, then on to us. We're a sharing family." Which made me laugh.
It's human to want to think about where you might have got it. That's very different from 'blaming' where you got it from.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-65088182
I even heard a doctor blame himself for spreading it to his patients.
Bonkers.
As an ardent atheist, one of my oddest opinions is that, perhaps, we’ve lost an important thing that religion gave us: the ability to blame god for these unattributable risks.
It was very psychologically and socially useful.
We should spend a lot more time talking about how to improve the other methods of controlling virus spread, and a lot less time discussing whether the government should impose a legal lockdown on top of the de facto self-lockdown most people imposed on themselves in response to a deadly virus that was clearly spreading out of control.
Of course, you may not know that you're going to need to lockdown until later. That's the challenge!
(I guess there is one exception to this. A friend of mine blames going to a football match for his - rather serious - case of Covid. Or, technically, he blames his daughter for forcing him to spend 30 minutes in the shop after the game.)
According to Wiki
On 15 January 2019, she was found guilty of professional misconduct by the Scottish Solicitors' Discipline Tribunal (SSDT) and fined £3,000.[9] The Tribunal found that Ahmed-Sheikh and fellow solicitor Alan Mickel had shown "disregard for the rules" in running a trust and had a conflict of interest when they borrowed money from it to help their ailing firm.[10] In addition to their fines, the pair also had to pay the expenses of the Law Society of Scotland, which had brought the case forward.[11]
In September 2021, the SSDT found her guilty for a second time when she was ruled to have committed "recklessness by omission" during her tenure as the designated cashroom partner at Hamilton Burns, which went into administration in 2017. Ahmed-Sheikh admitted six other breaches of financial rules too but was cleared of any suggestion of dishonesty or a lack of integrity.[12]"
The second time she was restricted in her practising certificate for 2 years if she ever applied to come back to practice but by then she had not had a practising certificate for 6 years. So yes, probably a slight overstatement to say she was struck off.
* I hate the lockdown word, and I would have stopped far, far short of the extreme lockdown the UK saw
The evidence is now clear: smartphones are the major cause of the mental illness epidemic among young women.
By Jonathan Haidt"
https://www.newstatesman.com/technology/2023/03/jonathan-haidt-social-media-dangerous-teenage-girls-anxiety-depression