Categories
Should the Liz Truss Honours list be blocked? – politicalbetting.com
Should the Liz Truss Honours list be blocked? – politicalbetting.com
Liz Truss – one of the most disastrous Tory Prime Ministers – will today lecture us on how it was all *our* fault she crashed the economy. At the same time, our Inaction Man Tory Prime Minister, is about to approve peerages for Liz Truss’s supporters. https://t.co/PfKNcUBhHr
0
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
This is Liz Truss we're talking about, right? Of course she doesn't. She's about to give a speech saying how she was right and everyone else was wrong. Thankfully, she'll be an eternal symbol of the ridiculousness and destructiveness of the post-Brexit Tory Party.
QTWTAIN
From my brief reading up, what seems to have happened is:
Derbyshire and Derby City Councils teamed up to build a new incinerator. They dished out some sort of PFI type contract to a private sector consortium to build it.
The incinerator is built, but repeatedly fails commissioning tests.
Eventually the councils decide to pull the plug on the basis that the plant is clearly a turkey. This is after dishing out various management and maintenance contracts worth millions to look after the closed plant.
Somehow the councils find themselves sharing the liability for a £100millon payment to the an outfit behind the building of the incinerator. Derbyshire's £57million share of this appears to be a large part of what is putting them very in the red this year.
Can anyone explain:
a) How did the councils manage to end up paying out to not use a facility which they paid to have built which doesn't work, and seems to have little prospect of ever working?
b) How on earth this isn't a massive political scandal, given that at best it's spectacular incompetence and at worst it smells more like straight up corruption. To manage to end up in a mess like this must have taken some gritty determination to pick all the wrong choices at every point.
https://youtu.be/8-0Rb0zweS8?si=vHcRGRAyob6JXDER
Though given Starmer's plans to reform the upper house, those she has sent to the Lords may not be there too long anyway
Those with paper boarding passes: no problem at the gate. Those using their phones: much faffing about.
Also, I don't think Sunak should really tear up the tradition just because he doesn't like the specific case - a bad precedent. If he abolished the tradition (which I believe Blair and Brown didn't avail themselves of anyway) without reference to a specific list, that would be fine, but not "Euu, I don't like you so you can't have it".
Whereas they might well have a dim view on a PM, who was objectively a failure and who they might well think is the cause of their mortgage going up quite a bit, giving gongs, baubles, and seats in the Lords to her cronies.
The project was an absolute disaster from start to finish, and that was apparently clear from the planning stages.
https://www.derbytelegraph.co.uk/news/derby-news/new-papers-reveal-many-reasons-5310814
These things are always written assuming people will have wherewithal, restraint, a sense of what is appropriate and what isn't.
The problem is that shame left the building a while back. See also Trump, top NHS appointments, Cressida Dick, Sharon Shoesmith and so on.
Truss's lack of room reading skills is really quite remarkable though. Speaking to people who knew her in her youth this is by no means a new thing. She was always somewhat in her own world. I think one key difference between her and Johnson is that Johnson knew what he was saying was bullshit and/or would wind up everyone but said it anyway, whereas Truss really didn't know.
Blair effectively couldn't do it - if it looks bad for Truss now, it would've looked worse for a man who'd only recently been interviewed by the Police regarding Cash-for-Honours.
On tearing up tradition, this isn't the Trooping of the Colour. It's handing out seats for life in the legislature, amongst other baubles, and should have been torn up years ago.
The only reason Sunak doesn't abolish it is that he wants his own go when the time comes.
Get rid.
It's a dishonourable racket.
They even have a word for the ability - 눈치
I have no idea whether you live and pay taxes in the UK - the fact we're on PB and discuss politics and politicians all the time perhaps gives us the feeling that we are arch political insiders as opposed to (for example) physics teachers living in Essex, but non-lying politicians from the perspective of a tax-payer are something to be welcomed rather than deplored; it's some bizarre stockholm syndrome shite that any of us do the opposite.
This is the lady who fired her Chancellor for promoting her own economic policies?
Last few times I flew, I just had my QR code on my Wallet app on my watch. No stupid bits of paper to fart about with. Straight through. Worked like a dream. Same with trains.
Go paperless. It’s liberating.
Here in the private sector contracts are usually pretty tight - certainly are when I am involved. If there is non-conformance or worse, what happens is clearly spelled out. For the protection of all parties.
And yet in PFI it seems that we pay £stupid for cheaply built crap, with no ability to claw back if the building is unusable or the PPE is unsuitable. The spivs get their money, we get the bill. Why?
Public procurement is essentially set up to deliver the cheapest option, even if it doesn't work. These systems were set up because we didn't believe public sector procurement was either as cheap as it could be or as honest as it could be. And to be fair, it has succeeded in its aims. What it now doesn't deliver is quality.
It's quite a challenge for those working in the public sector not to get stuck in this trap, and it's surprising it doesn't happen more often than it does.
A friend of mine was telling me about public procurement in the Netherlands yesterday. Apparently standard practice is to rule out the cheapest bid. The effect of this is that nobody tries to buy the job - if you can't do it just by being as cheap as possible, you have to be offer something else. You still have to be good value, but have added quality elsewhere.
It's not perfect of course. And it's considerably more expensive up front. But I find it quite an interesting approach.
The siting of the incinerator was very much up to the council.
Bring in contracts teams who worked on North Sea oil platforms. These platforms have to withstand a 100 year wave. And if they go 10% over budget/fail commissioning, there is hell to pay.
There is no Scottish Labour.
Legally.
Politically? Is this really the battle you want to fight? Reminding the country how utterly chaotic your party is? How it trashed the economy and cost voters a stack of money?
Truss is *offered* the ability to have a resignation honours list. Just as with the honour bestowed on former PMs with regards to a senior title and seat in the Lords, it is something they can choose not to do.
Truss needs to be told by party managers not to take the proverbial if she later wants a gong for herself. That some of you don't get this just demonstrates the political mess you are in.
Replace with an independent committee, have nominations from the public and scrap the HoL.
Apple Wallet doesn't need a password by the way. Have you never used it??
And the smartwatch is backed up by the phone, so no issue with battery life either even if you are stupid enough to forget to charge one device or the other. You always need a phone/watch for other stuff in any case – so make sure you charge it.
It really is very liberating, getting stupid, pointless pieces of paper out of your life.
Do it. You won't go back.
She is entitled to her deluded opinion of herself, and her policies, and as far as honours are concerned then the recipients will be forever associated with her contribution to the demise of the conservative party
This is how I imagine the wallets of the PB Old Farts.
They seem to be living in 2016.
Closer ties have strong support across the country .
There was however a period a few years ago when HMRC stopped issuing individual bank payment slips securely coded to the transaction in question with their tax demands, well before most people used online banking. I hate to think how much public and Civil Service time the Anabobs of the Treasury wasted as a result.
HMRC were harassing my elderly father over an £2 payment - well, they sent the kind of letter going on about £100 fines - and I had to pay the bloody thing three times over and spend several pounds' worth of postage stamps before it finally clicked.
Supposedly we are better than the foreign because unlike them we aren't corrupt. But we are - our police are corrupt, our public procurement process is corrupt, politicians do the bidding of media barons and foreign donors.
And no, I've never used Apple Wallet. I don't have an Apple. I don't use a smartphone enough to justify the cost of an Apple - I've got an Android which costs me about £12 per month. So I don't necessarily know whereof I speak.
But my heart always sinks when I am called upon to use an app rather than the previous technology. It necessitates having my glasses and working out technical details, and I am always quite surprised if it works. I may be tarring everything with the sins of the worst i.e. car parking apps, but there are many bad apps.
But surely the anxiety and inconvenience of not losing the pieces of paper is no worse than the anxiety and inconvenience of making sure your phone is in full working order (and indeed of making sure you have it with you)? And you're putting all your eggs in one basket. If you're as reliant on your phone/watch as you seem to be, that's an awful lot of life you suddenly lose if you lose it/it breaks/it runs out of battery. So you just replace lots of small anxieties with one big anxiety.
I do take your point about getting pieces of paper out of your life. But it's also very liberating getting a reliance on a phone out of your life. Try it! Next time you leave your house, do so without your phone.
The best thing about smartphones, for me, is that it comes with a camera. It's not as good a camera as the one I used to use (solely because of the lack of optical zoom), but it's so very convenient.
https://www.eurointelligence.com/
“Probably the biggest delusion yet to be unpicked is Sir Keir's repeated assertion that there is a better deal with the EU out there. This is simply not true. There was a lot of vindictive commentary from the EU during the entire Brexit process, but the deal that was eventually agreed was a reasonable third-country trade deal.. If your bottom line is that you do not wish to rejoin the single market and the customs union, there really is not a lot more out there.”
Starmer has ruled out SM/CU. There is, in that case, nothing to be done. The EU is not interested in rolling over to give Starmer a special deal. Why would it?
His Labour government is going to collide with the tank traps of reality very quickly
No, it shouldn't. Absent some general rules on eligibility to have a list, she was PM and if she wants to do one then whatever. The whole system seems nuts to me, but if we have it then it shouldn't be restricted based on whether a PM is any good or not. You could introduce some general minimum term or make the number you can nominate proportional to time served - e.g. you get X nominations per completed year as PM, say.
Mind you, she looks crass for pushing it, I think. And anyone with self-respect would surely refuse one of her resignation honours. But that's a different question to whether it should actually be blocked.
No supporter of Truss, but it's clear that the establishment boys are grading Sunak on a more charitable curve, considering the economic and political direction of the country.
And I don't have a physical wallet – they are pointless. Haven't had one for years.
1. Knowingly promising something he can’t deliver - a much ‘better’ deal with the EU. This is impossible without SM/CU membership
Or
2. He’s actually intending to take us into some form of the SM/CU, but won’t admit it - ie lying
I often wonder if it is (2). He can say ‘omg we’ve looked at the books and it’s a disaster, we need to be in the single market’
But then that means being a rule taker and accepting freedom of movement: a very hard sell
“Dame Priti Patel, post Lloyd George Liz Truss Lady of Marks Tey" is a bit of a mouthful in my opinion
All politics is relative. Labour don't have to score highly on truth, integrity, policy etc; they have to score less low than the Tories. Currently this is not hard.
Honours are baubles with no practical impact in the real world.
Composition of the second chamber is a different question but should be address from first principles which no one has been willing to do
I do wonder if he will go for it
Leaked footage of Russian Rostov-on-Don submarine. Sevastopol’s dry dock.
https://x.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1703727556757688788?s=20
https://x.com/asfarasdelgados/status/1629875370764693504?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q
As to the future; we should of course have joined EFTA/EEA after the Brexit vote (with FOM of course).perhaps we still shall.
One of the two essentials (SM or FOM) has to change sometime. I guess in the long run FOM may become less of a hot potato, now we all know that being outside FOM has made no difference at all to the need for inward migration to keep the UK show on the road.