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Ministers are not handling the COVID inquiry well – politicalbetting.com
Ministers are not handling the COVID inquiry well – politicalbetting.com
Another PM who doesn't like answering straight questions. You can only assume that there is something they want to hide on the handling of COVID. https://t.co/FegyrSV4oH
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https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-documenting-equipment.html
Again.
It’s a reminder that, whatever his relative virtues, he’s not actually up to it.
Get rid.
Civil servant who handed Boris diaries to police is related to Harriet Harman
https://twitter.com/fifisyms/status/1663605523285942279
Your point is?
Pause
The grandmother of the woman he was/is married to is the sister of either the father or the mother of Harriet Harman
or:
He is married to the first cousin once removed of Harriet Harman
A fraudster who posed as a cruise ship captain and conned £270,000 out of prospective holidaymakers has told a court that he can pay back only £350 to his victims.
Jody Oliver, 45, from Hereford, claimed to be the captain of a luxury liner that was offering cut-price holidays with a company called Carnival Cruises. He was said to have dressed as a captain and sent emails to himself from fake accounts that purported to be from Carnival employees.
Cardiff crown court was told that Oliver had also sent victims bills for £35 to cover invented excursions from the ship as it would sail around the Mediterranean. The entire venture was bogus, however, and that Oliver splurged hundreds of thousands of pounds on internet gambling, while also taking out payday loans.
He has been ordered to reimburse his victims but has told the court that only £350 of the £272,000 he swindled is left. Among his victims were pensioners who lost their savings after booking what they thought would be “once-in-a-lifetime” holidays.
Oliver, a former police special constable who was described as a Walter Mitty-style swindler, went to considerable lengths to maintain the ruse, dressing as a P&O captain to further his deceit.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/cruise-ship-captain-conman-can-repay-only-350-0f-270-000-he-swindled-z8zh5hv2s
Again.
It’s a reminder that, whatever his personal merits, he adds nothing interesting or clever to PB debate.
He is best off going BTL at Guido Fawkes.
I’ll phrase it like this: it was not just Boris more than ready to take plaudits for vaccine roll out, it was his whole party - it’s not just Boris who should be ready to be accountable for all decisions and activity fighting covid, it’s his whole party. As Chancellor, Sunak was up to his eyebrows in decision making and activity fighting covid, without doubt trying to hide the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth from a public enquiry, without even offering a good reason why, Sunak is trying to save his own skin.
Penny Mourdant by Christmas is not as far fetched as some push on this forum.
I understand Harriet Harman once sat in a room with someone whose great uncle visited Berlin when Adolf Hitler was the Fuhrer. That’s why Hartiet Harman hates democracy. She should recuse herself from everything.
Imagine being Calgie. Imagine writing this shite.
https://twitter.com/SpaJw/status/1663608559945277442
Mr Chisholm is married to the cousin of Harriet Harman.
Nadine Dorries says: “Harriet Harman should recuse herself from the Privileges Committee kangaroo court. Failing that the Committee must completely reject the information Mr Chisholm handed to them.”
https://twitter.com/christiancalgie/status/1663576757260132352
His wife's father, Thomas Pakenham, is Hattie's cousin
As I noted last thread, the neo-liberal era is over.
After the death throes set in after 2008, it finally collapsed somewhere between the onset of Covid and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Rishi Sunak thinks it is still 1991 or something.
He has nothing to offer the Britain of 2023.
Should that be an issue? Those were remarkable times and we need a proper study into what worked and what didn't, which preparations were made and which others were needed, the necessity or otherwise of some of the clearly damaging measures taken.
We need to meet the next such crisis with such lessons learned and it is very dangerous to assume we have a lot of time to do so. Frankly the failings (or otherwise) of Messrs Hunt and Sunak are very small beer compared to that. In a very few years they will both be a largely forgotten footnotes anyway.
There should be three forms of written communication allowed:
1. Email. Formal, recorded communication between ministers, and between ministers and civil servants.
2. Business Messaging application. Teams or Slack, records kept centrally, for interaction between ministers and civil servants.
3. Informal messaging application, Signal, messages set to automatically delete after 24 hours. Only to be used between ministers and their own staff, not permanent CS.
This stuff is IT management 101.
IT management 102, is dealing with the senior management who don’t want to follow the rules they want everyone else to follow!
But it appears rather that the British government now runs like a dodgy start-up which has run out of early stage funding due to the CEO’s coke habit.
The CFO has now taken over and realised that there’s no fucking viable product, never was any, and that they’re going to have to pivot.
But if he does, he loses his job…
I'm actually drawing the family tree for this.
I’ve no idea about the book, but I can confirm that Harriet Harman, via the Harmans, is also related to Keith Moon.
So I wonder if emotionally ministers are reluctant to give up WhatsApp, even if intellectually they know they should.
And what if, say, a junior requisitions officer in the HMRC office in Bootle needs to receive a phone call from their kid’s school, or needs to message someone to say they’ll be late home?
This is genuinely one of the maddest things I’ve read on here.
For those who weren’t around in the 90s, UCL would do this with groups of students with very high predicted grades. According to a prof, the actual results didn’t drop off much, if at all.
Since I’d taken 2 A levels a year early, I got a place on the spot….
I was however mostly referring to the Whitehall offices, rather than random non-customer-facing admin centres.
Most banks and trading companies will have similar rules, it’s not just a public-sector thing.
You simply divert your personal calls to your desk phone. If you want to call out - free from the desk phone.
Next time/if ever we get a Labour government, will there be any improvement in UK democracy by looking at party funding? Can Labour look into changing it for the better when up to their eyebrows in sleaze of the current political funding system in UK?
Especially you HorseBat, banging on it’s going to be hung parliament when seat predictors on current swing has majority in three figures - when in coalition with libdems Deputy Primeminister Davey asks for a fresh look at party funding, Labour will say no chance, we are having too much fun splashing around in the current sleazy system. You think that’s good?
Riz Possnett, a student activist is sitting in front of Prof Stock wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with the words “No More Dead Trans Kids”
https://twitter.com/Telegraph/status/1663591273607966721?s=20
But the video is horrific. It’s bad enough having a junior minister wheeled out to do the interviews who is unwilling to step beyond their brief and so transparently parrots the sound bite they have been told to parrot.
But for the PM to do this? Makes you wonder who (if anyone) is in charge. Pathetic.
I had been on the fence about Sunak, but this interview is inexcusable in my view.
95% of the civil service has nowt to do with politics, and is about delivering public services. Why should they be punished because of a few morally incontinent ministers?
But for you that's akin to going in to work with a toy fish on your head, right?
Sir Desmond: If you're incompetent you have to be honest, and if you're crooked you have to be clever. See, if you're honest, then when you make a pig's breakfast of things the chaps rally round and help you out.
Sir Humphrey : If you're crooked?
Sir Desmond: Well, if you're making good profits for them, chaps don't start asking questions; they're not stupid. Well, not that stupid.
Sir Humphrey : So the ideal is a firm which is honest and clever.
Sir Desmond Glazebrook : Yes. Let me know if you ever come across one, won't you.
Rishi's problem is that he's not clever enough to get away with being crooked. Boris only got away with it for a while, and Rishi isn't as clever as Boris. Unfortunately, he's also not honest enough to get away with being incompetent.
The Conservative problem is that Rishi is certainly as good as they can do for now, and perhaps for a decade.
2) Pineapple on pizza - warcrime?
3) what is the one question Piers Corbyn is the answer to?
The problem is shitty MPs doing shitty things. They will find a way around it.
" Bloomberg has obtained written legal advice from the government‘s top lawyer Sir James Eadie KC to the Cabinet Office
It advises them NOT to hand over “politically sensitive” material about ministers’ private discussions to the Covid inquiry.
Eadie advised that disclosing “politically sensitive” material to the inquiry on discussions between ministers would breach Cabinet collective responsibility, which allows confidentiality to debate policy."
https://twitter.com/alexwickham/status/1663595047894372352
Admittedly that seems to make a nonsense of the Inquiry, but that perhaps reflects the fact that an Inquiry like this, into politically-charged events at the heart of government, is problematic so soon after the events.
That said, Sunak's interview does show a weakness. He adopts a position he thinks logical, but doesn't have the fluent ease in diverting the discussion that most politicians acquire. In a way it does him credit, but he'll get eaten up in debates.
Ah yes but Boris Johnson's godmother is the aunt of Chisholm's wife. So it all evens out.
The fact of the pandemic, meant that a lot of conversations that would happen in person between two individuals, ended up happening electronically, and therefore were recorded somewhere.
The remit of the inquiry, needs to be focussed on what went right and what didn’t, and on how disaster plans should be updated to better cope with the next pandemic. It should explicitly not seek to blame individuals.
The template should be a transport accident inquiry, where the inquiry takes as much physical and electronic evidence as they can find, and speaks to individuals involved privately (with perhaps a union rep, definitely not a lawyer present). The evidence may be presented in summary form in the final report, but individuals are not identified.
https://twitter.com/TPointUK/status/1663609367835312131
The simple question remains - why should anyone vote for him or the Conservatives next year? All you seem to have is the nonsense that "Labour would be worse" - perhaps, but after 13 years of the same party leading the Government and a list of accomplishments which would fill a medium sized water biscuit, simply trying to claim the other lot would be worse has to punch well above its weight.
Probably for some small groups both personally, professionally and politically there'll be some genuinely useful nuggets that come from the report, but mostly this is just the price that needs to be paid to get through the crisis at the time i.e. do whatever you do during it and mollify people with the promise of the inquiry later when the world's mostly moved on.
In any case we already know what the most important lesson is: don't choose a dishonest charlatan with the attention span of a gnat and an incorrigible refusal to take anything seriously as PM.
I can only assume that his arrogant belief in his own immunity to the rules that little people have to follow is the cause of this issue arising.
I can't see what Sunak gets out of obstructing the enquiry though.
It’d take out a good chunk of the current cabinet and all..
In fact Durham, St Andrews, Edinburgh, Exeter, Imperial and UCL now have more ex private school pupils as undergraduates than Oxford or Cambridge do
https://thetab.com/uk/2022/09/16/these-are-the-universities-with-the-most-private-school-students-2022-273947
https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1663011242074677248
He's just batting on a very sticky wicket as a bit of nightwatchman and people are calling him "shit" because they want to twist the knife in the carcass of the Conservative Party.
I get that visceral partisan desire, but it doesn't mean he's not good.
I think Labour will increase tax still further, nanny and regulate me further, and deteriorate the public finances further by punting out fiscal balance - I have no appetite for that.
In order not to disappoint @MoonRabbit, a quick take on tonight's "Red Wall" which has something for everyone. The numbers from a fortnight ago did look a bit frothy but tonight's numbers still represent a 13% swing from Conservative to Labour.
Last night's wider GB poll from R&W had a 13.5% swing from Conservative to Labour.
As a contrast, last week's GB poll had a Con-Lab swing of 12% and the "Blue Wall" had a swing of 14% from Conservative to Labour so it's still sitting fairly comfortably with a national swing of 12-13% and the swings in the respective "Walls" much the same.
What we've yet to see is the impact of tactical voting - according to last week's R&W Blue Wall polling, two thirds of LD voters would consider a tactical vote as would just over half of Labour's voters.
Don't know about live. I assume twitter. I'll have a quick look.
No one understands what once removed means anyway.
The Blue Wall has a number of Conservative-Labour marginals as well as Conservative-LD marginals and I'm sure a number of these would be vulnerable on a 14% swing which takes us to the 174th most marginal Conservative seat so a result closer to 2005 than 2001 or 1997 until we factor in tactical voting which could mean two thirds of LD voters and half of Labour voters switching tactically to unseat an incumbent Conservative.
In today's day we shut down anyone who wants to speak out against Juche.
That's how it's done, old boy.
Correction - I mean 180
https://redfieldandwiltonstrategies.com/latest-red-wall-voting-intention-28-may-2023/
https://redfieldandwiltonstrategies.com/latest-blue-wall-voting-intention-22-may-2023/
South Africa is going to change its law so that it has the power to decide whether or not to arrest a leader wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC), a deputy minister has told the BBC.
Earlier this year, Russia’s leader was invited to a summit in South Africa, but a subsequent arrest warrant issued by the ICC means South Africa would be expected to arrest Vladimir Putin if he attends the gathering of the Brics group of nations in August.
“In June we'll be submitting the law in parliament,” Obed Bapela, a deputy minister in the South African presidency, told the BBC’s Newshour programme.
Through the law South Africa "will give itself exemptions of who to arrest and who not to arrest", Mr Bapela said.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-africa-65361205?ns_mchannel=social&ns_source=twitter&ns_campaign=bbc_live&ns_linkname=64761bce3d616e0a28d068a7&South Africa to change law to stop arrest of Putin&2023-05-30T16:30:28.324Z&ns_fee=0&pinned_post_locator=urn:asset:005fa370-a777-409e-bed0-f6ffc7bfd80a&pinned_post_asset_id=64761bce3d616e0a28d068a7&pinned_post_type=share
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/world-news/climate-protesters-left-cold-dark-25318066
I struggle to see how much empathy he really has with ordinary people - he may surprise me come the election as Major did in 1992.
The problem he has is the Party he leads - I cannot see how anyone can contemplate voting for the Conservative Party after the way elements of the party (by no means all) have comported themselves in recent times and the emergence of the immigration fault line within the party is going to make herding cats seem easy.
As to what Labour will do, I can't answer that. I might well agree we are over-taxed and certainly we are over-regulated but the current Conservative Party has to take plenty of the blame and, I would argue, for all the notion of regulation, the real transfer of power since 2019 has been from Westminster to Whitehall. Ministers have played fast and loose with Parliament and Parliamentary scrutiny - how that is in any way defensible, especially by those who proclaimed the victory of "sovereignty" when we left the EU is beyond me.
I didn't support the repatriation of powers from Brussels to see those powers end up in Whitehall. Did you?
I still had an interview at Bristol (then quite a snooty university) so I got my parents to give me the money for the train and all that, and instead went to a pub in Hereford and got drunk all day and played Space Invaders with some mates
I then wrote a dismissive letter to Bristol Uni saying, please consider me in absentia, I'm busy. Basically: fuck off
They still made me an offer. Two Ds. They really wanted me
All this makes me realise my 6th form teachers must have written an incredibly flattering profile of me, which I did not deserve, as I was a total drunken wastrel nearly expelled from my 6th form college for drinking and gambling on college premises, age 17
Scenes, eh, scenes