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Case closed – politicalbetting.com
Case closed – politicalbetting.com
Is Simon Case the new Cressida Dick? The Civil Service has not been declared institutionally misogynist, racist or homophobic. Nor institutionally corrupt. But it has not been well led in recent years. Had Jeremy Heywood lived, he would have had serious questions to answer about the Greensill affair, though it is fair to note that he may have had good answers. Still, that whole episode does not reflect well on anyone involved: not the civil service nor the politicians nor the banks all falling over themselves to help a fluent opportunist without asking any hard questions. As was all too predictable, reputations have been harmed and vast sums lost.
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https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/george-osborne-it-s-time-to-ban-smoking-in-the-uk-times-health-commission-f3d8k0xxt (apparently free to read)
The period since 2016 has truly been a low, dishonest decade.
Better to liberalise marijuana use the better to regulate its strength and availability.
As for sugary foods, I rather think the culprit is ultra-high processed foods, not just sugar.
Personally I avoid orange juice precisely because it is too sweet, but I doubt there many out there getting fat on it.
I think that it is inevitable at the very senior levels that Civil Servants become very associated with the political regime. In the end it makes for ineffective and dysfunctional government and administration if there is a mutually undermining relationship .
It doesn't help that Ministers are appointed for their politics and connections rather than any ability to manage departments thousands strong, with budgets of billions. Hence both the bullying and claims of a Civil Service Blob. In reality it is ineffective management by people way out of their depth.
Many other countries have executive political appointments to run such departments. Perhaps we should do that too.
And he ought already to have sacked him.
Well done Cyclefree for making the effort to lay out in some detail the extent of his utter inadequacy in the role he occupies. While that has been a commonplace for some time, it's still something of a shock to read through in the context of his still being in post.
And reading the article, mildly ironic that no one bothered to post it yesterday.
Hundreds of lives ruined. Not a single person held to account. And still: silence on the Post Office scandal
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/may/02/post-office-horizon-scandal-inquiry
Followed by his willingness to instruct civil servants (albeit later reversed) to brief the press in line with what Sharp later claimed had been said in their meeting, even though he had no recollection of it itself and he couldn't confirm it from the jottings he had made at the time.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/may/02/raining-molten-wax-hungry-peers-and-fainting-guests-coronations-of-yore-that-went-awry
George IV sounds like fun. Peers rained with hot wax must have added dignity to the occasion.
Dr. Foxy, hard to beat how William the Conqueror's went.
Fun fact: banning smoking would create a huge financial black hole for NHS revenue due to the high taxes on it far exceeding the associated costs.
Remind you of anyone on the political side of things?
I think I’m going to have to drink some orange juice..
I don't know how The Times, and this was back then, got away from a totally justified but utterly excoriating editorial about him.
All you can really do is change the culture, set expectations and hold people to account.
I struggle with it a bit myself at times - not at that level, but still as a director - people just don't do as they're directed or perform as I expect them to and don't take kindly to you pointing it out.
I think he was probably the right person for the job, in the sense that the civil service adapted to what ministers wanted at the time.
A strange case of Hara-Kiri?
Perhaps the current bunch in Downing Street are not much better than their predecessors when it comes to dealing with incompetent appointees.
The Case case seems to be a case in point.
I don't know why all prosecutions weren't immediately cancelled as soon as the IT bug was discovered.
It's extraordinary what a single name can conjure up. But what it doesn't is 'Keir Starmer'.
The Tories need professional help. Urgently!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Q6K5faghUg
What we do is what we do. What you do is an outrageous lowering of public standards.
Meanwhile, voters try to pay their bills and put food on the table...
When I suggested to an MP (not Tory) that people needed prosecuting over this, the response was that going after Senior Officials was wrong. Immoral even.
We are obsessed as a society with trivialities, for which only narcissism need suffice, rather than substance, which requires character and integrity.
Answers Cyclefree's question about motives.
Probably because it concerns advertising.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/may/02/keir-starmer-labour-tuition-fees-politics-sketch
I can see that performance being replicated come the GE.
And people who expect policies to be identical 3 years on are a tad weird.
Is that necessarily a bad thing ?
Good for LDs though. Labour campaigners won't want to bang on about Tuition fees betrayal anymore.
So in essence Starmer had to sing a song for these people to ensure that he could win the leadership (as opposed to Rebecca Wrong-Daily!!!) and save the Labour Party from those people. So he sang their song, won their votes, and proceeded to drive them out of the party in a bid to restore sanity and the potential to actually win.
Understandibly they're a bit aggrieved by this. Politics is all about angrily denouncing class traitors whilst bringing everything to a stop in a comradely fashion around a brazier on a picket line, so unless Starmer is calling for a general strike and doing whatever UNITE said, he's obviously a Tory.
Starmer isn't very good. We can all see that. But what he did that was almost unbelievable was purge Labour of the trot sickness so quickly that winning the next election isn't just a remote chance (as we all expected after 2019) but odds-on.
If the intention was to damage Starmer's electoral chances my feeling is that it'll have the opposite effect. His description made Starmer sound middle of the road. Jones by contrast looked like the token from the loony left.
I have sympathy for your tenacity but I'm certain you're misreading this. I've been really pissed off with Starmer of late but realistically he's the only show in town and his brand of Labour has by far the best chance of getting rid of this grotesque Tory government. Certainly more than the Corbyn/Jones version which has already been shown to fail.
Should we stop charging students silly amounts of interest on debt that are significantly more than mortgage rates? Of course
Should we make university courses that meet skills shortages the country needs, cheap or free? Sure
Can we do more to offer more flexible and cheaper university level training generally? Yes, much more.
But in a world where we actually need more plumbers, electricians, builders and many generic knowledge jobs are being threatened by AI it is now time to move on from universal free 3 year tuition being covered.
Nord Stream: Report puts Russian navy ships near pipeline blast site
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-65461401
In this case Casino has half a point. What he doesn't address is this part of Marina Hyde's argument.
...I know some politicians and some pundits bang on disparagingly about the “woke mind virus” or whatever, but I often think they must be secretly thrilled with the virtue games of recent times. It really couldn’t suit them more. How much better to have people sidelined into endless 24- or 48-hour online meltdowns, in which they are either pitted against one another litigating the narcissism of small differences – the dream! – or obsessing about one person’s transgressions and leaving iniquitous and dysfunctional systems free to sail on regardless.
Some of this is thought to be generational, and I have nothing but sympathy for the generations that come after mine, who have been shut out of so much of what they are entitled to and which most of those who criticise them simply took for granted...
I think we can all give you Iraq, but that aside (and granted it is a big aside) compared to what has gone on since Cameron's calamitous "in or out" Referendum pledge, the New Labour Government were masters of probity, and head and shoulders better than the May, Johnson and post- Johnson administrations. Now that is not a ringing endorsement of New Labour, merely an indication of how deep in the gutter we now find ourselves.
Off now lumbers Sharp, to join these poor souls in the elephants’ graveyard over whose portals is inscribed Hodie mihi, cras tibi (“To me today, to you tomorrow”). The Downing Street hopeful whom Boris backed, Liz Truss, is there already; but I notice that his creature, Simon Case, whom he made cabinet secretary, is urgently trying to reinvent himself as a Boris-sceptic. Too late, Simon, too late.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/plans-for-an-urban-heatpump-have-hit-the-wall-g9bh0r67z
Sure, our better universities have excellent research profiles, but even there the undergraduate teaching is pisspoor and delivered by a casualised workforce of Docs and post Docs, and sold as a social experience. "Starbucks University" as a friend of mine at a Russell group University describes it.
In many ways the German system of seperate undergraduate universities and research institutes makes more sense.
oh wait,,,
So if we cut the fees, we need to reinstate government funding. With adult social care the government axed direct funding and replaced it with cash raised by councils - at a level which managed to both starve adult social care of funding and piss voters off.
Cutting fees means directly funding students, and I just can't see that happening. Government funding was cut by 78% since 2010, and with the best will in the world it isn't going to be restored to that level plus inflation.
Students actually want an education and a university experience. A bodge job which both cuts their fees but makes our universities sub-standard would be bad. If Starmer is dodging that particular bullet then good.
The idea that we should tax young people starting out in life is just crass ,
SKS is a liar
The fact SKS is a liar will be an issue over and over and over and over at GE2024
The fact SKS is a proven liar will cost Lab a majority at GE 2024
You heard it here first
People like Roger would be fine if SKS came on TV this morning and said.
I never said its a pledge a solemn promise and because of that it will be in my Manifesto guaranteed, even though the evidence is available that is exactly what he said.
Owen Jones has SKS fans banged to rights
given I dont have a party that's quite a call.
...
Three drops of water, or a single large ice cube, is the optimum way to serve a whisky, according to researchers. Dilution of more than 20 per cent however, ruins the drink, data show.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/05/02/whisky-scotch-perfect-amount-of-water-ice-science-study/ (£££)
In time for the Coronation.
Not I think because she means to, but because she's pig ignorant and shows no inclination to actually listen to informed input however accurate.
Case is a different matter and is clearly in completely the wrong role. But even with his imminent removal I doubt there will be a reckoning. I am assuming he'll be found a cushy number at Buck House or Clarence House given his personal friendship with the royal family.
The technical colleges are already full of post-16construction students, so where do they all go?
Some lies are good lies Guv he swatted the Trots
FFS mate can you hear yourself
(I have not finished it because I have been dealing with fee-paying work, some serious medical news and, more pleasingly, writing on gardening and other non-PB topics for my new website - https://www.cyclefree.co.uk/.)
As well as the obvious villains - the Post Office - the lawyers - both in-house and external, politicians and Fujitsu have some very serious questions to answer.
Here's just one. Why in God's name are Fujitsu still being given government contracts despite their role in this? Why is one of their former CEO's in charge of them during some of the relevant time a Crown representative (with responsibility for contracts with BaE) in the Cabinet Office? He boasts about his extensive IT experience but not any responsibility for one of the worst IT failings ever. Utterly coincidentally, he is married to a current Cabinet Minister and is the son of a former Conservative MP.
The lawyers involved too have not behaved well, to put it mildly.
Hence a politicised civil service, voter ID, elected police commissioners, pie charts showing what tax is spent on and so in.
Arguably also general culture warring, and the recent (unsuccessful) trend for pork barrel policies on levelling up constituencies.
Site bookmarked!
Problem is that student loans was a nice bit of QE under the table. Government prints tens of billions in loans. Sells them to banks for a nominal fee who class the debt as an asset on their balance sheet. That half the loans will default is a problem for next decade...
Will never vote for liar SKS
Unlike pathetic Centrists who have the Animal Farm syndrome
ie some liars are better than others
What is it about the extremities of political opinion. So self-righteously indignant that their opinion is what all right-minded people think. So if they have been done over, EVERYONE has.
Jones is no different to Farage on that front.
But its ok to forgive Diane Abbott for lying and betrayal over her choice of school, because she is one of your own. As you say, its Animal Farm syndrome, but your side is as bad as everyone else.
So its a race to be the least shit. Not to be any good.