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A Missed Opportunity – politicalbetting.com
A Missed Opportunity – politicalbetting.com
It is not easy for a Cabinet Minister to make a good impression or even achieve very much. Staying out of trouble is a high bar these days. Maybe much worthwhile work is being done behind the scenes without much, if any, publicity. Still, ambitious politicians need to make the best of whatever opportunities present themselves. So let’s look at one of those vying to be Tory party leader and PM barely a year ago: Kemi Badenoch.
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However:
As for Badenoch, she can join the list of Tory hopefuls with more ego than achievement to their name.
Wouldn't it be quicker to list the ones who were the other way around?
At Aber, the way emails were worked was, staff had their initials, postgrads had a double year of start next to their name (so if you started in 2005 it would be ano05) and undergrads had a single number (so ano5). It was simple and effective. (I had all three at different times.)
One day, a young lady had passed a most enjoyable evening with her boyfriend. They seem to have explored many different - ahem - avenues. And in the morning she was still buzzing and sent him an email describing it in detail and saying how much she loved him.
Alas, she forgot to put the number on the end of the email address.
Her boyfriend had the same initials as the Dean of Arts.
Fortunately, all involved had a lively sense of humour.
The gaming of the enquiry by the PO and it's legal representatives is pretty blatant, and the minister is the only one with the clout to address that.
Because it looks to me as though there's more manoeuvres in the background to protect the bosses *of* the PO rather than *at* the PO.
https://www.postofficehorizoninquiry.org.uk/news/chairs-interim-report-calls-action-government-resolve-compensation-issues-sub-postmasters
What private schools are doing is attempting to create as much educational attainment as possible, with more resources.
If the same methodology was applied to the state school sector, then you would get similar results.
With the caveat of streaming the angry ones who are determined to disrupt others educations out of the way of the bright.
Without the private sector, educational attainment in this country would be held up for stark international comparison.
Who appears, finally, to have lost patience with the PO too.
Sir Wyn gives determination on Post Office disclosure failings
https://www.postofficehorizoninquiry.org.uk/news/sir-wyn-gives-determination-post-office-disclosure-failings
Sir Wyn Williams has announced today that all future Inquiry requests for evidence to the Post Office will carry a notice under Section 21 of the Inquiries Act 2005, which he said “carries a threat of a criminal sanction” (including a sentence of up to 51 weeks’ imprisonment).
The announcement follows an urgent disclosure hearing the Chair convened on Tuesday 11 July to address what he called “grossly unsatisfactory” disclosure failings by the Post Office.
After hearing submissions from legal representatives of former sub-postmasters, the Post Office and the National Federation of SubPostmasters, Sir Wyn decided to postpone hearing from witnesses due to give evidence in weeks commencing 10 and 17 July 2023, until relevant disclosure was complete. He writes: “I was clear in my mind that this represented the best way forward both in relation to evidence gathering but also, ultimately, in relation to the most efficacious use of the Inquiry’s time.”
Sir Wyn has also today issued further Directions to the Post Office, which state that he will hold a further disclosure hearing on 5 September 2023 at 10:00am. He said Post Office’s General Counsel, Ben Foat, will be required to attend to give further evidence and Sir Wyn will determine who, if anyone else, should give evidence after making further enquiries of the Post Office as to the identity of senior persons who are directly and substantially involved in the disclosure for Phase 4 of the Inquiry.
He also said it is probable that from now on he will treat the issue of disclosure as he has treated the issue of compensation, by holding regular discrete hearings. He anticipates disclosure hearings will be held at regular intervals throughout the remainder of the Inquiry.
In his determination, Sir Wyn says “I stress, of course, that holding such hearings should be unnecessary and they will, inevitably, impact upon the smooth running of the Inquiry, and will impact on the work of all Core Participants and the Inquiry team.”
He said the hearings have become necessary, because of the “significant failures in disclosure on the part of the Post Office”.
..
I will be willing to bet that this includes substantial amounts of lying and distortion (see Hillsborough) *internally*.
Remember ACPO telling Cameron when he entered Downing Street that allowing the Hillsborough enquiries to proceed would be anti-police?
But the PO certainly are.
I am losing confidence in the ability or willingness of the state to do anything properly. Or that a change of government will make any difference. It would manage to miss the floor if it fell out of bed.
Post Office Horizon inquiry reaction: Business Committee Chair Darren Jones
https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/365/business-and-trade-committee/news/196539/post-office-horizon-inquiry-reaction-business-committee-chair-darren-jones/
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/post-office-horizon-it-inquiry-2020/terms-of-reference#
From the last thread - @Dura_Ace, take a leaf out of George MacDonald Fraser's work and write a book that is nominally fiction.
There was a very good one about Arnhem from many years ago - claimed to be a novel, but was universally said by those who were there, to be based on truth.
https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/6070/documents/68239/default/
A man who now has his reputation in tatters.
Rather like Benjamin Mendy.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/ryan-giggs-retrial-abandoned-after-domestic-violence-charges-withdrawn/ar-AA1e0tCw?ocid=entnewsntp&cvid=50d3a30d73304d69931333da06e8c7ea&ei=8
We need the likes of Andy Burnham, David Cameron, and Dominic Grieve to sort it out.
Instead we get Kemi Badenoch and Suella Braverman.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-66236837
The arrest will actually increase his support.
https://www.cyclefree.co.uk/the-price-of-indifference/
But I will never stop being furious about this.
Remember how no-one was held to account for Rotherham?
I do wonder what would have happened if ACPO hadn't put Camerons back up with that meeting in No. 10.
We need to see is as part of a template - a way that the System tries to form a protective cyst around such events, rather than allowing real investigation. And real healing.
What we need is members of the NU10K coming down the steps in handcuffs.
The death of a once great party described in 4 words.
@AliFortescue
Excl: Two cruise ships pledged by PM in June to house 500 asylum seekers each (in addition to the Bibby Stockholm) returned to owner, snr source tells Sky. Understand they were refused docking in Liverpool and Edinburgh.
Oh, wait
I was sov96@aber.ac.uk as an undergraduate starting in 1996. Post graduates starting the same year would have been sov6@aber.ac.uk
Interesting that it changed around.
Many people were paid their pensions that way. Some still are.
Many more still have to, to get at banking and cash (ANABOBAZINA TRIGGER WARNING) because of bank closures.
And there are lots of things that can't be sent by a standard 1st or 2nd class stamp especially after RM monkeyed up the postal rates. It's just about possible to do it online but you need very accurate scales and be able to wait for the postie to collect.
Two trips to the Post Office.
Once to Cannock, which was a stupid mistake as the queue's always a mile long.
So the next time I went to Chadsmoor.
I consider that remark unfair to c***s.
Brits consider Brexit has failed by a ratio of 6 to 1, including a majority of those who voted to Leave. ~AA
https://twitter.com/BestForBritain/status/1681315073783123969?s=20
The only curious anomaly was it was the date you started, not the date you started the current degree. So I was 1 then 01 all the way to 2009 when I got my one with initials only.
It was Hillsborough that caused some in the police to claim that the "Tory party is going to war with the Police". This was because Cameron refused to kick the enquiries into the long gras, at the express request of ACPO in a face to face meeting.
I was wandering around old Krakow half an hour ago. Marvelling at the beauty. Despite the fairly heavy tourism, It is one of the loveliest of cities
ANYWAY at one point I looked up and saw this view
And I thought Hey that’s the cathedral. And then I thought Hey that’s not just any old cathedral that’s the cathedral of Pope John Paul 2. One of the TRULY great men of history. The conqueror of communism
And then I had a series of hefty thoughts about how Karol Wotyjla’s courage and faith and conviction must have been shaped in part by all this superb and heavenly architecture. You couldn’t live here without being a tad spiritual and of course when he
was here the atheist commies were building
hideous concrete shite - you’d have no doubt that faith and history and the Polish spirit are superior and would overcome the horror. So Cracow made John Paul II. It’s nobility forged his nobility
And then I looked up and saw this
I was having all these sudden thoughts about him outside his actual house. Spooooooky.
The actual results achieved by the state are worse than those of the private sector. This is the fault of the state system, not the fault of the private system.
The "creaming off" claim, by the way, has been debunked. There are a plenty of pupils in the state system who should be getting their 3 A* etc.
Bags of Moe Sbihi's out there, waiting for the talent scouts...
But they aren't. This isn't because of private school mind control rays - it is because they are not being trained to their potential.
The idea that the fix is somehow to get all the BrightPrivateSchoolToffMorons to go to state schools, to just lift the attainment numbers, is to abandon those who could actually benefit from the same level of education.
When Birmingham stepped up in 2017 and agreed to host last year’s Commonwealth Games, a warning was communicated from the government to the federation’s London offices that it was a rescue operation ministers would be reluctant to repeat.
The Commonwealth Games was in crisis. When the South African city of Durban was awarded the 2022 event in 2015, it was the only bidder after Edmonton in Canada had withdrawn citing financial concerns.
Two years later, however, and Durban was stripped of the rights after failing to meet requirements, with South African officials echoing their Canadian counterparts by blaming spiralling costs.
It was then that the Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF) turned in desperation to the British when Birmingham had in fact been scheduled to host the 2026 Games. Pressure, insiders say, came from the very top, with the Palace — The Queen was the patron of the Games with Prince Edward its vice-patron — stressing the importance of the Games to the Commonwealth.
Ultimately, the British taxpayer footed the bill. The UK government committed more than £560 million to ensure the Games could go ahead, with the local council agreeing to another £190 million. Total expenditure was close to £1 billion.
But after Victoria pulled out of hosting the 2026 Games, the chances of the British saving the event again, say those same insiders, will be remote. That is because of logistical challenges as well as the optics of committing yet more public money to sport when the country remains in the grip of a cost of living crisis.
It leaves the CGF in serious danger of collapse, given how difficult it proved to find Victoria as a host in the first place.
The federation was due to announce the location of the 2026 Games in 2019. But Cardiff, Kuala Lumpur, Edmonton, Calgary and Adelaide all withdrew from the bidding process and in the end it was not until February last year, as The Times revealed at the time, that the Australian state of Victoria agreed to take it on.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/commonwealth-games-the-event-that-no-one-wants-to-host-0hd9gwlpl
So it will cost £200m not £2bn
I asked repeatedly on here what people saw in Bad Enoch, who appears to be yet another one-dimensional waster, in a party full of them.
I got no good answer.
Chalk another one off.
And I have never forgotten this summary observation from that book: "The great advantage of decision-making in an economic market is that markets automatically, routinely force the recognition of error. Presumably computers will someday make it possible to recognize and correct mistakes; but this presumption is likely to remain just that, because bureaucracies are fundamentally motivated by the fear of the discovery or error."
Mayer goes on to qualify that summary, mentioning well-known market faults, such as short time horizons. Notably, he says that markets are worse at allocating resources in financial markets, than in physical markets.
For some time, I have thought that Cyclefree is providing a valuable service to all of us by illustrating Mayer's conclusion about bureaucracies.
And money is now much tighter.
It would take a very bold vision to make the reforms needed to our system. I do not believe Starmer has it. Certainly Phillipson does not.
Right now the people who are being abandoned are the kids growing up under a government that is cutting spending per pupil.
Every parish shall have one. (OK, not the stupid microparishes you get in the centre of cities like Cambridge. But you get the idea.)
It shall be in a suitably dignified building of its own- not a counter in a corner of something else.
There shall be at least three flags outside, and a regularly planted window box or hanging basket.
It shall be a formal counter for doing all those bits of business that need a formal counter- postal, banking, local and central government.
Having made this happen, I shall resign my position. A grateful nation can build statues of me later.
AND any reason this should NOT also include the minister in question???
Send a letter to Kemi
And on it should be writ -
"Kindly please forward
To someone giving a shit"
a) a prediction
b) trolling
c) a fantasy
?
It's dead if even Canada and Australia can't be arsed with it. Only solution, welcome UAE or Qatar into the commonwealth.
What do they need cash for?
Is it
a) to buy illegal drugs
b) to take illegal drugs or
c) to pay someone outside the glare of HMRC
?
And the depths of the MAGA lunacy.
There is no way that any trial will actually begin before the election.
Today I take a leisurely 10K jog, get home, take my sock off, and find it is filled with blood from a toenail that's immolated itself. Didn't hurt at all until I took the sock off - reminiscent of Wile E. Coyote not falling until he realises he's run off the cliff.
Now it hurts like *****.
One of the difficulties with education is it is an incredibly complex subject but most people think it's very easy. What's worse is if they had a good education themselves they paradoxically are more likely to assume it's easy as they never saw the problems.
Therefore too often parents will just swallow superficial policies and assume that will be all right, then decide their actual vote on other things.