The management may be second rate (is that too kind?), but they have first rate egos, and draw first rate salaries.
I think the Post Office had/have the same problem as Suella Braverman.
They are both arrogant and ignorant, that's a toxic mix.
Could also be said of the DfE, DfT, OFQUAL, OFSTED, the Treasury, the DoH, Oxford University's History faculty, the people running the MA in public policy at Birkbeck...
It's a long list of people involved in running our country and not in a good way.
I am coming to the conclusion the biggest problem in this country is people vastly overestimate their abilities, particularly those in senior positions.
That's because they mostly went to private schools. The rot starts there.
I doubt if they *mostly* went there. Certainly not the boneheads of the NCB, mentioned in the header.
More, the problem is unwillingness to take responsibility. When something goes wrong, the official response is (a) deny responsibility (b) organise the cover up.
No, the Privately educated dominate our establishment, including the medical profession.
The problem is much simpler.
Certainly the dominant culture on PB of privately educated men doesn't want to accept that the system that they benefited personally from is a large part of the problem of entitlement.
One of the defining characteristics of entitlement is not recognising one is entitled.
Former Tory leader Michael Howard says Andrea Jenkyns is “some distance from reality” in calling for Rishi Sunak to go
This is really a class war within the Tory party.
Those with no class wanting Rishi to go....
I commend you for going down with the ship. It would have been so easy to stay quiet and pretend you'd had the political nous to know he was an overpromoted disaster from day dot.
A welcome drop in inflation to below 5% and fulfilling Sunak's promise to half it
As far as Braverman is concerned, she seemed to believe that she was unsackable as she could blackmail Sunak into keeping her through some agreement they had made, but then Sunak is PM and his actions over WF and GFA meant he would not prejudice these by leaving the ECHR and finally had enough of her antics and rightly told her to go
Braverman is widely disliked with 70% backing Sunak sacking her and it seems she does not have the support in the party she think she has
I expect Sunak and Cleverly already have an answer to the SC on Rwanda, as they will already know the judgment, and Cleverly in the HOC later today will bring a refreshing and constructive response
Anyway, I remain content with Sunak's move to the centre as I attend yet another medical consultation on my recent health issues
Can I say how nice it is to see one of your "Good morning" comments? Let us hope for many many more.
On inflation I do have to ask what the real world inflation is? The aim behind the pledge was to get a grip on the cost of living crisis - "halving inflation" sounds chunky.
Suspect that people are still seeing prices going up more than their wages, and are confused why prices are not coming back down as promised. Yes, they weren't promised that, but this is what happens when you weaponise ignorance for political points. Inflation of 5% is still 2.5% the target, so prices which are unaffordable continue to get more unaffordable.
Statistics vs lived experience. Tory activists beware if they start quoting statistics at people who know what their actual reality is...
Did I hear the BBC say that Rishi had described the lower inflation figure as 'a cut in the cost of living'?
Good luck with that one Rishi, aren’t you supposed to be the spreadsheet guy?
Yes wages are now rising faster than prices, but we’re nowhere near where we were a couple of years ago and there’s still a lot of catching up to do.
Private Sector pay rises are still higher than Public Sector rises even now.
The gap is a lot less but the former has been ahead of the latter by a massive margin for years
Not everywhere. Pay freeze for all our staff here.
Yes, my understanding of the stats is what BJO has said, but that's never been my experience. I wonder if the stats are distorted by some at the very top in the private sector?
In the private sector it will vary massively by which sector you are in, where the demand for labour is highest.
Some private sector employers are now doing pay reviews twice a year to hold onto staff. I've noticed in some recent interviews I've done that interviewees are asking more questions now, in the knowledge that they are in a position to pick and choose employers to a greater extent than before.
Regarding the thread, the PO scandal highlights a bigger problem with the quangocracy and civil service ecosystem. These bodies have far too much power, and zero accountability. Public service productivity has cratered, with every pound of tax spent worth 7.5% less work than it used to be. Indulging these organisations with public money and sheilding them from criticism has clearly had a very negative and damaging effect. Labour, as you rightly say, are planning to worsen the problem; Sunak has never addressed it.
Rwanda judgement soon. Two scenarios: 1. Court says go ahead. Jubliation in Tory ranks quickly turns to anger when they realise the practical barriers remain. Sunak very quickly under enormous political stress. 2. Court says you can't go ahead. Anger in Tory ranks quickly turns to fury when they are told that even leaving the ECHR - which the government won't do - won't fix the practical barriers.
Practical barriers regardless of the court ruling today: We can't / won't stop the smugglers We can't detain everyone as too many boats We don't have anywhere to hold refugees we detain as won't pay for hotels and have run out of camps / barges which local Tories refuse to allow anyway We don't have enough people in the Border Force to process the legal side nor the capacity in the legal system to then legally rule them onto a plane We can't find charter planes to fly them to Rwanda Rwanda doesn't have remotely the capability to take the numbers we want to send
But apart from that, its a great plan which definitely will deter every man jack of them.
"Some observations from 24 hours on the ground in Israel.
I hadn’t fully understood how much the country had so profoundly changed.
The horrors of October 7 were much worse than I had imagined and have been reported.
The resolve of the Israeli people and willingness to do what is necessary to defeat this unimaginable evil is much greater than I had expected.
They are deeply appreciative of American support. But committed to do what they have to do regardless of that support. They are prepared to pay a much higher price than ever before.
Nothing will be the same again. Israel will emerge stronger under a new leadership and a new generation.
You cannot appreciate any of this until you’re here and look in their eyes. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen.
Khamenei, Hamas and Hezbollah have awakened something that they will live to regret. And many of these monsters won’t live to even experience that regret."
The Israelis are going to grind Gaza into dust. Make it uninhabitable. They don't care what America says, they won't care what anyone says. They might easily kill 50,000 or even 100,000 Gazans. They want to exterminate Hamas and its supporters to to the extent Gaza will never produce a fighting force ever again
And they've only just started. Who knows what this means for the world
Former Tory leader Michael Howard says Andrea Jenkyns is “some distance from reality” in calling for Rishi Sunak to go
Notably, she has not called for Braverman to lead the Party.
This I think is quite instructive. Even those on the right of the party think Suella’s a busted flush. She might be a useful idiot for them to try and bring down Sunak, but I suspect that is all now.
Rwanda judgement soon. Two scenarios: 1. Court says go ahead. Jubliation in Tory ranks quickly turns to anger when they realise the practical barriers remain. Sunak very quickly under enormous political stress. 2. Court says you can't go ahead. Anger in Tory ranks quickly turns to fury when they are told that even leaving the ECHR - which the government won't do - won't fix the practical barriers.
Practical barriers regardless of the court ruling today: We can't / won't stop the smugglers We can't detain everyone as too many boats We don't have anywhere to hold refugees we detain as won't pay for hotels and have run out of camps / barges which local Tories refuse to allow anyway We don't have enough people in the Border Force to process the legal side nor the capacity in the legal system to then legally rule them onto a plane We can't find charter planes to fly them to Rwanda Rwanda doesn't have remotely the capability to take the numbers we want to send
But apart from that, its a great plan which definitely will deter every man jack of them.
Rwanda has many many flaws as a plan. But I haven't seen a better plan, apart from so much waffle which basically means "Oh, let them all in"
This is why other European countries are now looking at VERSIONS of Rwanda
Also, a lot of people don't understand Rwanda. You don't have to send 40,000 people every year to Rwanda. You just have to send the first few hundred, or the first 2000, but be rigorous about it, REALLY send them - and then people will think Fuck that I'm not risking a boat to the UK, they really DO send people to Rwanda, and so the boats stop and you don't have to send any more people to Rwanda. Deterrence theory
Will it work? dunno. But it is worth a go, not least coz it will actually save lives if it stops people crossing the Med and then the Channel. Britain must be cruel to be kind
Good morning all. The P.O. scandal is disgraceful and well done for keeping on it.
However, my attention is inevitably drawn this morning to the civil war in the Conservative party....
That unfortunately illustrates the sort of response which has helped perpetuate this kind of behaviour in government.
If a change of government is to mean anything, a little more attention to issues, and less to party politics is necessary.
Read the header again - successive governments of all political stripes did absolutely nothing about this.
Not quite - the government, through its agency the DWP, was a partner to the original Horizon project, which wasted £millions trying to put in a computer system that didn’t have minor glitches (if ones with catestrophic human consequences) but didn’t work at all, and was widely known to a disaster of a project. The original idea having been to automate benefit payments and integrate payment through post offices.
When it came to Horizon 2, the government pulled out of the project altogether, leaving the PO and Fujitsu to press on alone, and the rest is history.
I expect those in government who knew a little about it were simply pleased to be out from under and thought they had washed their hands of the whole affair.
The government did not pull out in any meaningful sense. It still owned Royal Mail and the Post Office. It was still responsible and should have made sure it knew and understood what was going on. It was responsible for accepting the Law Commission's recommendation on computer evidence. And so on. If government ministers and civil servants thought they had washed their hands of the affair it could only be because they did not bother to know what their responsibilities were.
The management may be second rate (is that too kind?), but they have first rate egos, and draw first rate salaries.
I think the Post Office had/have the same problem as Suella Braverman.
They are both arrogant and ignorant, that's a toxic mix.
Could also be said of the DfE, DfT, OFQUAL, OFSTED, the Treasury, the DoH, Oxford University's History faculty, the people running the MA in public policy at Birkbeck...
It's a long list of people involved in running our country and not in a good way.
I am coming to the conclusion the biggest problem in this country is people vastly overestimate their abilities, particularly those in senior positions.
That's because they mostly went to private schools. The rot starts there.
I doubt if they *mostly* went there. Certainly not the boneheads of the NCB, mentioned in the header.
More, the problem is unwillingness to take responsibility. When something goes wrong, the official response is (a) deny responsibility (b) organise the cover up.
No, the Privately educated dominate our establishment, including the medical profession.
The problem is much simpler.
Certainly the dominant culture on PB of privately educated men doesn't want to accept that the system that they benefited personally from is a large part of the problem of entitlement.
One of the defining characteristics of entitlement is not recognising one is entitled.
I've just read Swella's epistolary version of the Turner Diaries. She is a ludicrous termagant with multiple, co-morbid personality disorders but it was very well written.
On topic, none of the major political parties come out of the Post Office scandal with any credit. Why on earth did no-one ask questions when the cases became public knowledge? Or, of course, perhaps they did and were lied to!
In a sense, OKC, it's good that they are all implicated because it stops it from being a Party Political Issue.
Governments were undoubtedly lied to, but then they wanted to be. If they had been told the truth, they would have had to get involved and make difficult decisions.
All the indications are that successive Governments were happy to be fobbed off.
On topic, none of the major political parties come out of the Post Office scandal with any credit. Why on earth did no-one ask questions when the cases became public knowledge? Or, of course, perhaps they did and were lied to!
In a sense, OKC, it's good that they are all implicated because it stops it from being a Party Political Issue.
Governments were undoubtedly lied to, but then they wanted to be. If they had been told the truth, they would have had to get involved and make difficult decisions.
All the indications are that successive Governments were happy to be fobbed off.
Agree; it’s much easier to accept the word of those doing the work that ‘everything is under control’. However if so many Sub Postmasters were shown, by Horizon, to be ‘dishonest’, what did that say about the recruitment process and about what had gone on before?
Long before I became acquainted with the detail, I remember thinking that so many prosecutions had to raise questions about the integrity of the process. Common sense alone would tell you that the PO could surely not have cornered the market in dishonest staff.
Common sense appears however to have been chronically lacking throughout the organisation, along with many other homely virtues.
In fairness prosecutions did not start with Horizon. There have always been sub postmasters who have found themselves dipping into the money that they held in trust, just as there are with others in a similar situation such as lawyers.
Nobody disputes it, David.
Out of 900 or so prosecutions, it is bound to be the case that some involved genuine dishonesty. Nevertheless all cases involving Horizon were in principle unsound. Most, I would say, were utterly bogus.
Well, legally, they are simply not safe convictions because the evidential base, provided by Horizon, is not reliable. I was simply making the point that it wasn't as if it would have occurred to management that we are suddenly getting thefts that we have not got before. Rather they may well have concluded that the new system is working better than the old and making it much easier to spot the thefts when they did occur.
A small drop in interest rates will save me thousands of pounds. That’s all I really care about. My fixed rate expiry in February 2024 beckons…
That's going to be an ongoing problem for hundreds of thousands of mortgaged home owners. Every month, for as long as interest rates stay higher than the ultra low rates we all got used to, eighty odd thousand people will see their mortgage payments shoot up. Some of them won't be able to afford to live in their home any longer. If sold house prices continue to fall as they look like doing, many will be in negative equity. That dominos into arrears and repossessions (both on the way up). It's going to be a grim 5+years, and Sunak will be off in California enjoying his wife's billions.
Former Tory leader Michael Howard says Andrea Jenkyns is “some distance from reality” in calling for Rishi Sunak to go
This is really a class war within the Tory party.
Those with no class wanting Rishi to go....
I commend you for going down with the ship. It would have been so easy to stay quiet and pretend you'd had the political nous to know he was an overpromoted disaster from day dot.
Those who I know who work with Rishi say he is the smartest guy in the room.
Many of his problems stem from the hand he was dealt. No government in our lifetime has had to deal with resolving the Brexit impasse in Parliament, then Covid, then Ukraine feeding into a domestic cost of living crisis. All of these arose at a time when the United Kingdom has been creaking at the seams - and structurally it is an extremely difficult time to govern, without these additional woes piled upon it.
It is somewhat easier to stick with Rishi when there is no obvious alternative on offer, from either within the Conservative Party or from the opposition. As Churchill said, "if you're going through hell - keep going".
A welcome drop in inflation to below 5% and fulfilling Sunak's promise to half it
As far as Braverman is concerned, she seemed to believe that she was unsackable as she could blackmail Sunak into keeping her through some agreement they had made, but then Sunak is PM and his actions over WF and GFA meant he would not prejudice these by leaving the ECHR and finally had enough of her antics and rightly told her to go
Braverman is widely disliked with 70% backing Sunak sacking her and it seems she does not have the support in the party she think she has
I expect Sunak and Cleverly already have an answer to the SC on Rwanda, as they will already know the judgment, and Cleverly in the HOC later today will bring a refreshing and constructive response
Anyway, I remain content with Sunak's move to the centre as I attend yet another medical consultation on my recent health issues
Can I say how nice it is to see one of your "Good morning" comments? Let us hope for many many more.
On inflation I do have to ask what the real world inflation is? The aim behind the pledge was to get a grip on the cost of living crisis - "halving inflation" sounds chunky.
Suspect that people are still seeing prices going up more than their wages, and are confused why prices are not coming back down as promised. Yes, they weren't promised that, but this is what happens when you weaponise ignorance for political points. Inflation of 5% is still 2.5% the target, so prices which are unaffordable continue to get more unaffordable.
Statistics vs lived experience. Tory activists beware if they start quoting statistics at people who know what their actual reality is...
Did I hear the BBC say that Rishi had described the lower inflation figure as 'a cut in the cost of living'?
Good luck with that one Rishi, aren’t you supposed to be the spreadsheet guy?
Yes wages are now rising faster than prices, but we’re nowhere near where we were a couple of years ago and there’s still a lot of catching up to do.
Private Sector pay rises are still higher than Public Sector rises even now.
The gap is a lot less but the former has been ahead of the latter by a massive margin for years
Not everywhere. Pay freeze for all our staff here.
Yes, my understanding of the stats is what BJO has said, but that's never been my experience. I wonder if the stats are distorted by some at the very top in the private sector?
I think probably influenced by pay in the most squeezed parts of the service industry: hospitality (chef pay has rocketed), private healthcare etc. With pay freezes or small sub-inflation rises in other sectors. Year on year I'd expect the very top to see pay (or profit share / bonus) cuts this year, albeit from very high starting points.
Hospitality got totally screwed by the pandemic, as so many people took advantage of shutdowns and furthoughs to retrain.
Chef must be one of the most antisocial and worst-paid trades, many have realised that even a semi-skilled trade such as van driving pays more for better hours.
I've just read Swella's epistolary version of the Turner Diaries. She is a ludicrous termagant with multiple, co-morbid personality disorders but it was very well written.
There's no logical reason she can't be both unhinged herself and essentially right about Sunak's shortcomings as prime minister.
I've just read Swella's epistolary version of the Turner Diaries. She is a ludicrous termagant with multiple, co-morbid personality disorders but it was very well written.
Yes, of course it is. A five year old child can see that it's decidedly well written. A skilful and painful uppercut
What was amazing was the PB-ers on here, so blinded by their loathing of her, they could not admit that, or they could not even see it. Such wilful blindness does not make for astute political judgments (let alone clever political bets)
"Some observations from 24 hours on the ground in Israel.
I hadn’t fully understood how much the country had so profoundly changed.
The horrors of October 7 were much worse than I had imagined and have been reported.
The resolve of the Israeli people and willingness to do what is necessary to defeat this unimaginable evil is much greater than I had expected.
They are deeply appreciative of American support. But committed to do what they have to do regardless of that support. They are prepared to pay a much higher price than ever before.
Nothing will be the same again. Israel will emerge stronger under a new leadership and a new generation.
You cannot appreciate any of this until you’re here and look in their eyes. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen.
Khamenei, Hamas and Hezbollah have awakened something that they will live to regret. And many of these monsters won’t live to even experience that regret."
The Israelis are going to grind Gaza into dust. Make it uninhabitable. They don't care what America says, they won't care what anyone says. They might easily kill 50,000 or even 100,000 Gazans. They want to exterminate Hamas and its supporters to to the extent Gaza will never produce a fighting force ever again
And they've only just started. Who knows what this means for the world
And you wonder why people feel the need to protest against it?
On topic, none of the major political parties come out of the Post Office scandal with any credit. Why on earth did no-one ask questions when the cases became public knowledge? Or, of course, perhaps they did and were lied to!
In a sense, OKC, it's good that they are all implicated because it stops it from being a Party Political Issue.
Governments were undoubtedly lied to, but then they wanted to be. If they had been told the truth, they would have had to get involved and make difficult decisions.
All the indications are that successive Governments were happy to be fobbed off.
On topic, none of the major political parties come out of the Post Office scandal with any credit. Why on earth did no-one ask questions when the cases became public knowledge? Or, of course, perhaps they did and were lied to!
In a sense, OKC, it's good that they are all implicated because it stops it from being a Party Political Issue.
Governments were undoubtedly lied to, but then they wanted to be. If they had been told the truth, they would have had to get involved and make difficult decisions.
All the indications are that successive Governments were happy to be fobbed off.
Agree; it’s much easier to accept the word of those doing the work that ‘everything is under control’. However if so many Sub Postmasters were shown, by Horizon, to be ‘dishonest’, what did that say about the recruitment process and about what had gone on before?
Long before I became acquainted with the detail, I remember thinking that so many prosecutions had to raise questions about the integrity of the process. Common sense alone would tell you that the PO could surely not have cornered the market in dishonest staff.
Common sense appears however to have been chronically lacking throughout the organisation, along with many other homely virtues.
In fairness prosecutions did not start with Horizon. There have always been sub postmasters who have found themselves dipping into the money that they held in trust, just as there are with others in a similar situation such as lawyers.
Nobody disputes it, David.
Out of 900 or so prosecutions, it is bound to be the case that some involved genuine dishonesty. Nevertheless all cases involving Horizon were in principle unsound. Most, I would say, were utterly bogus.
Well, legally, they are simply not safe convictions because the evidential base, provided by Horizon, is not reliable. I was simply making the point that it wasn't as if it would have occurred to management that we are suddenly getting thefts that we have not got before. Rather they may well have concluded that the new system is working better than the old and making it much easier to spot the thefts when they did occur.
Indeed. One of the key reasons for implementing the system in the first place, was to spot more thefts, so it was high-fives and bonuses all round when more thefts were discovered.
The fact that the lovely new system was reporting total bollocks, and many people involved in the prosecutions knew it was reporting total bollocks, well that’s a rather big problem!
Excellent header on the Post Office scandal and the role of the government. The one part where I might raise an eyebrow is the parenthetical lauding of the private sector which too has its fair share, even some involving lawyers as reported on yesterday's thread.
But yes, where was the government? And the opposition? And the mainstream media, the fourth estate, once the scandal started to be reported in Computer Weekly and Private Eye?
I do not laud the private sector. I have been involved in enough of their scandals to know that "private sector good / public sector bad" is utter nonsense. My point is that the government treated the PO as if it were a private sector organisation but did not subject it even to the rigours and scrutiny, limited and fallible as they are, of the private sector. But nor did it properly oversee a public sector company. So the main consequence of it being in the public sector was that the public is having to pay for all its failings and some members of the public have paid with their lives, money, family life and reputation while those at the top have walked away with riches beyond the dreams of avarice.
Honestly, some tut-tutting from a judge is not what these bastards deserve.
I've just read Swella's epistolary version of the Turner Diaries. She is a ludicrous termagant with multiple, co-morbid personality disorders but it was very well written.
Yes, of course it is. A five year old child can see that it's decidedly well written. A skilful and painful uppercut
What was amazing was the PB-ers on here, so blinded by their loathing of her, they could not admit that, or they could not even see it. Such wilful blindness does not make for astute political judgments (let alone clever political bets)
Suella divides opinion because she is good at some stuff (culture war shit stirring, expressing her ludicrous opinions in a cogent fashion, self promotion) while bad at other stuff (being Home Secretary, being a lawyer, being collegiate).
I've just read Swella's epistolary version of the Turner Diaries. She is a ludicrous termagant with multiple, co-morbid personality disorders but it was very well written.
Yes, of course it is. A five year old child can see that it's decidedly well written. A skilful and painful uppercut
What was amazing was the PB-ers on here, so blinded by their loathing of her, they could not admit that, or they could not even see it. Such wilful blindness does not make for astute political judgments (let alone clever political bets)
She has had long enough to prepare very many drafts.
On topic, none of the major political parties come out of the Post Office scandal with any credit. Why on earth did no-one ask questions when the cases became public knowledge? Or, of course, perhaps they did and were lied to!
In a sense, OKC, it's good that they are all implicated because it stops it from being a Party Political Issue.
Governments were undoubtedly lied to, but then they wanted to be. If they had been told the truth, they would have had to get involved and make difficult decisions.
All the indications are that successive Governments were happy to be fobbed off.
On topic, none of the major political parties come out of the Post Office scandal with any credit. Why on earth did no-one ask questions when the cases became public knowledge? Or, of course, perhaps they did and were lied to!
In a sense, OKC, it's good that they are all implicated because it stops it from being a Party Political Issue.
Governments were undoubtedly lied to, but then they wanted to be. If they had been told the truth, they would have had to get involved and make difficult decisions.
All the indications are that successive Governments were happy to be fobbed off.
Agree; it’s much easier to accept the word of those doing the work that ‘everything is under control’. However if so many Sub Postmasters were shown, by Horizon, to be ‘dishonest’, what did that say about the recruitment process and about what had gone on before?
Long before I became acquainted with the detail, I remember thinking that so many prosecutions had to raise questions about the integrity of the process. Common sense alone would tell you that the PO could surely not have cornered the market in dishonest staff.
Common sense appears however to have been chronically lacking throughout the organisation, along with many other homely virtues.
In fairness prosecutions did not start with Horizon. There have always been sub postmasters who have found themselves dipping into the money that they held in trust, just as there are with others in a similar situation such as lawyers.
Nobody disputes it, David.
Out of 900 or so prosecutions, it is bound to be the case that some involved genuine dishonesty. Nevertheless all cases involving Horizon were in principle unsound. Most, I would say, were utterly bogus.
Well, legally, they are simply not safe convictions because the evidential base, provided by Horizon, is not reliable. I was simply making the point that it wasn't as if it would have occurred to management that we are suddenly getting thefts that we have not got before. Rather they may well have concluded that the new system is working better than the old and making it much easier to spot the thefts when they did occur.
Yes, that is exactly what did happen. Management was not surprised by the large number of cases because that is what they expected to find once a 'robust' accounting system was put in place.
What you are focusing on is in fact the origin of the problem. It started to get out of hand when a) the management lacked the curiosity or common sense to say 'hold on, something's not quite right here', and b) the well documented shortcomings with Horizon were ignored.
After that everything that could go wrong, did go wrong.
"Some observations from 24 hours on the ground in Israel.
I hadn’t fully understood how much the country had so profoundly changed.
The horrors of October 7 were much worse than I had imagined and have been reported.
The resolve of the Israeli people and willingness to do what is necessary to defeat this unimaginable evil is much greater than I had expected.
They are deeply appreciative of American support. But committed to do what they have to do regardless of that support. They are prepared to pay a much higher price than ever before.
Nothing will be the same again. Israel will emerge stronger under a new leadership and a new generation.
You cannot appreciate any of this until you’re here and look in their eyes. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen.
Khamenei, Hamas and Hezbollah have awakened something that they will live to regret. And many of these monsters won’t live to even experience that regret."
The Israelis are going to grind Gaza into dust. Make it uninhabitable. They don't care what America says, they won't care what anyone says. They might easily kill 50,000 or even 100,000 Gazans. They want to exterminate Hamas and its supporters to to the extent Gaza will never produce a fighting force ever again
And they've only just started. Who knows what this means for the world
And you wonder why people feel the need to protest against it?
If only they'd also protested against Hamas's evil actions on 7/10. But no.
In fact, too many people are in denial about what happened then; a new form of Holocaust denial.
The management may be second rate (is that too kind?), but they have first rate egos, and draw first rate salaries.
I think the Post Office had/have the same problem as Suella Braverman.
They are both arrogant and ignorant, that's a toxic mix.
Could also be said of the DfE, DfT, OFQUAL, OFSTED, the Treasury, the DoH, Oxford University's History faculty, the people running the MA in public policy at Birkbeck...
It's a long list of people involved in running our country and not in a good way.
I am coming to the conclusion the biggest problem in this country is people vastly overestimate their abilities, particularly those in senior positions.
That's because they mostly went to private schools. The rot starts there.
This is just blind prejudice.
You could wipe out every private school in the country (and bear in mind there are many different types, specialist, international, progressive, religious and traditional) and it wouldn't change this one jot.
Rubbish, we have a bunch of chinless duffers running the show, there due to money and old boy network rather than talent.
Our lame duck prime minister has made his most irrational move yet The fabric of Britain has fallen into disrepair and foreign ownership makes it much harder to reverse
The consequences of this country’s naive help-yourself attitude to foreign takeovers are everywhere.
The pipes that carry the nation’s water to our homes are leaking millions of litres of water every day.
Car manufacturers have repeatedly threatened to pack up and leave unless the state hands over hundreds of millions of pounds in subsidies, and thousands of steel workers have become pawns in this Government’s yearning for a post-Brexit trade deal with India.
Meanwhile, strategic assets such as our airports, ports and even the pipeline that sends gas around the UK are traded like pieces on a Monopoly board without a thought for the wider national interest.
Swathes of this country’s vital infrastructure and key industries have ended up in the hands of unaccountable overseas investors, and private equity companies, who have routinely prioritised dividend payments and executive bonuses over basic yet necessary capital investment.
As a result, the fabric of Britain has fallen into disrepair and foreign ownership makes it much harder to reverse.
Elsewhere, some of the most promising firms in high-growth sectors such as engineering, software, and cyber-security have vanished abroad without so much as a whimper.
The government (in the shape of Oliver Dowden) is now planning to weaken what little protection we have against foreign takeovers, just months after telling us how well its new takeover regime was performing.
It is certainly remarkable how different our attitude is from, well, almost everywhere else. Even the home of global free capitalism the US protects its economic national interests more doggedly.
As someone said on here the other day, it all started to go wrong when the balance of payments figures stopped being reported as front page news.
We need to export more as a country, otherwise the incoming money starts buying up shares and property instead.
Yep, those that lament our infrastructure and our companies being in foreign ownership with all the detriments of a branch economy that means simply refuse to accept that this is a consequence of having a massive and ongoing trade deficit creating the need to sell capital assets to balance the books.
Those who condemn the lack of regulation of those foreign owners fail to acknowledge that this was a buyers market and it was not for us, as distressed sellers, to set the terms.
The fact that those who complain about this also complain about supposed "austerity" means that they have failed to understand the consequences of the ruinous policies operated in the 1990s and early 2000s.
If we want control of our assets and our futures we need to stop borrowing from abroad and start paying that mountain of debt back. The economic consequences of reducing our standard of living to our actual earnings would be severe but we are running out of road.
splutter
are you saving we might have to work for a living ?
Former Tory leader Michael Howard says Andrea Jenkyns is “some distance from reality” in calling for Rishi Sunak to go
This is really a class war within the Tory party.
Those with no class wanting Rishi to go....
I commend you for going down with the ship. It would have been so easy to stay quiet and pretend you'd had the political nous to know he was an overpromoted disaster from day dot.
Those who I know who work with Rishi say he is the smartest guy in the room.
Many of his problems stem from the hand he was dealt. No government in our lifetime has had to deal with resolving the Brexit impasse in Parliament, then Covid, then Ukraine feeding into a domestic cost of living crisis. All of these arose at a time when the United Kingdom has been creaking at the seams - and structurally it is an extremely difficult time to govern, without these additional woes piled upon it.
It is somewhat easier to stick with Rishi when there is no obvious alternative on offer, from either within the Conservative Party or from the opposition. As Churchill said, "if you're going through hell - keep going".
Personally I think anyone who uses the phrase 'smartest guy in the room' has pretty much ruled themselves out of that competition, but I note Sunak's academic achievements, though he does manage to come over as simultaneously patronising and rather stupid when speaking.
My real question is, what exactly has he done about all those things you list? Where is his programme? His Ministry is disastrously inactive and inneffectual whilst he farts on about banning smoking and maths till 18.
As for who can replace him - at this point, anyone. I'd be happy with Count Binface, as long as he pledged to spend whatever months are left governing well and making some progress, to try to exculpate some of the shame of the past year.
Further progress towards 2% will be hard and slow though, so interest rates not likely to fall significantly until late 2025.
But, as I have pointed out previously, the gap between wage growth and inflation will broaden sharply giving back a fair bit of the loss in real wages over the last couple of years. People will actually be better off than they are now, if not as well off as they were before the inflation genie escaped. Will the Tories get credit for that? I have my doubts.
It is the driver of a late election though. All those waaah-waaah-waaah election now types are not going to get their way!
I think that the Conservatives may live to regret that option. They need to watch broad money, specifically M4, very carefully. There may be trouble ahead....
The UK has been living on the never-never since 2001, under governments of all colours. The reckoning, when it eventually comes, is going to be brutal.
As recently as that? Didn't we start having problems in the 1980s? (And then the situation was flattered by North Sea oil/gas.)
I think the rot set in in 1694 when the government borrowed £1.2m at a rate of 8% and established the Bank of England for the investors to finance it by issuing notes. The rest is history.
Noteworthy is that the national debt in 1815 after the Napoleonic Wars was 200% of GDP compared with 98% currently.
The management may be second rate (is that too kind?), but they have first rate egos, and draw first rate salaries.
I think the Post Office had/have the same problem as Suella Braverman.
They are both arrogant and ignorant, that's a toxic mix.
Could also be said of the DfE, DfT, OFQUAL, OFSTED, the Treasury, the DoH, Oxford University's History faculty, the people running the MA in public policy at Birkbeck...
It's a long list of people involved in running our country and not in a good way.
I am coming to the conclusion the biggest problem in this country is people vastly overestimate their abilities, particularly those in senior positions.
That's because they mostly went to private schools. The rot starts there.
I doubt if they *mostly* went there. Certainly not the boneheads of the NCB, mentioned in the header.
More, the problem is unwillingness to take responsibility. When something goes wrong, the official response is (a) deny responsibility (b) organise the cover up.
No, the Privately educated dominate our establishment, including the medical profession.
The problem is much simpler.
Certainly the dominant culture on PB of privately educated men doesn't want to accept that the system that they benefited personally from is a large part of the problem of entitlement.
One of the defining characteristics of entitlement is not recognising one is entitled.
Supreme Court pres currently making clear it's not *just* the ECHR that applies to this: there are other treaties, including the UN refugee convention, which need to be respected under intl' law
I've just read Swella's epistolary version of the Turner Diaries. She is a ludicrous termagant with multiple, co-morbid personality disorders but it was very well written.
There's no logical reason she can't be both unhinged herself and essentially right about Sunak's shortcomings as prime minister.
And no logical reason, and some positive evidence to suggest that she's both unhinged and taking bollocks.
"Some observations from 24 hours on the ground in Israel.
I hadn’t fully understood how much the country had so profoundly changed.
The horrors of October 7 were much worse than I had imagined and have been reported.
The resolve of the Israeli people and willingness to do what is necessary to defeat this unimaginable evil is much greater than I had expected.
They are deeply appreciative of American support. But committed to do what they have to do regardless of that support. They are prepared to pay a much higher price than ever before.
Nothing will be the same again. Israel will emerge stronger under a new leadership and a new generation.
You cannot appreciate any of this until you’re here and look in their eyes. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen.
Khamenei, Hamas and Hezbollah have awakened something that they will live to regret. And many of these monsters won’t live to even experience that regret."
The Israelis are going to grind Gaza into dust. Make it uninhabitable. They don't care what America says, they won't care what anyone says. They might easily kill 50,000 or even 100,000 Gazans. They want to exterminate Hamas and its supporters to to the extent Gaza will never produce a fighting force ever again
And they've only just started. Who knows what this means for the world
And you wonder why people feel the need to protest against it?
If only they'd also protested against Hamas's evil actions on 7/10. But no.
In fact, too many people are in denial about what happened then; a new form of Holocaust denial.
Time for another bar chart, me thinks. Y-axis starts at zero:
Good morning all. The P.O. scandal is disgraceful and well done for keeping on it.
However, my attention is inevitably drawn this morning to the civil war in the Conservative party....
That unfortunately illustrates the sort of response which has helped perpetuate this kind of behaviour in government.
If a change of government is to mean anything, a little more attention to issues, and less to party politics is necessary.
Read the header again - successive governments of all political stripes did absolutely nothing about this.
Absolutely, Nigel. The PO Scandal is serious, and at its core is the question of government. Suella is froth.
All governments have failed on this and similar scandals, so it isn't simply a Party Political matter. Maybe that's why it's a bit of a yawn for some people. It doesn't matter who is in charge. We have to find a way of making accountable those responsible for such iniquities. Sure, there are plenty of middle managers, IT consultants, lawyers, senior executives and Board Members who could and should be banged up on the evidence available to date (and it grows more damning daily.)
Nevertheless if these fiascos are to become less common (and they are alarmingly so at present) we need a better model, greater accountability, and greater transparency in the management of large public institutions. Who will deliver this?
Starmer could, but are there enough votes in it to attract his attention? It's not as if he isn't going to have enough on his plate when he moves into No 10. And my impression of the Labour Party is that it enjoys 'froth' rather than real action just as much as the current ruling crew and its supporters. So I'm not holding my breath.
If he or anyone were serious about rectifying the present lamentable situation they could do worse than appoint Lord Arbuthnot as Commissar in charge of Government control of its major Institutions. He has the experience of the Mull of Kintyre scandal, as well as the PO. He knows how and why things go wrong. He has immense political experience, nous, and endless goodwill.
But would Starmer, or any other PM, actually want someone in Government telling them things they'd rather not hear?
Your guess is as good as mine.
When the government was looking for a a new Post Office Chair, I understand that Arbuthnot applied and was not even given an interview.
New post office witness has just started giving evidence. "Warwick Tatford, external counsel instructed by the PO". Jason Beer KC asking the questions.
"Some observations from 24 hours on the ground in Israel.
I hadn’t fully understood how much the country had so profoundly changed.
The horrors of October 7 were much worse than I had imagined and have been reported.
The resolve of the Israeli people and willingness to do what is necessary to defeat this unimaginable evil is much greater than I had expected.
They are deeply appreciative of American support. But committed to do what they have to do regardless of that support. They are prepared to pay a much higher price than ever before.
Nothing will be the same again. Israel will emerge stronger under a new leadership and a new generation.
You cannot appreciate any of this until you’re here and look in their eyes. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen.
Khamenei, Hamas and Hezbollah have awakened something that they will live to regret. And many of these monsters won’t live to even experience that regret."
The Israelis are going to grind Gaza into dust. Make it uninhabitable. They don't care what America says, they won't care what anyone says. They might easily kill 50,000 or even 100,000 Gazans. They want to exterminate Hamas and its supporters to to the extent Gaza will never produce a fighting force ever again
And they've only just started. Who knows what this means for the world
And you wonder why people feel the need to protest against it?
If only they'd also protested against Hamas's evil actions on 7/10. But no.
In fact, too many people are in denial about what happened then; a new form of Holocaust denial.
The comparison with the Holocaust is offensive, and it is possible to deplore dead, innocent victims on both sides. You complain about protestors ignoring Israeli victims but do not have much to say about the innocent men, women and children killed in retaliation. This is, of course, the tragedy of the Middle East. Endless cycles of revenge.
@AdamWagner1 Some very public-facing comments by Lord Reed in the opening of his summary of the judgment:
- Policy is not that the UK will process asylum claims whilst people are in Rwanda, Rwanda will process them (despite the former often being claimed) - The non-refoulement principle is contained in a number of treaties not just the European Convention on Human Rights and Human Rights Act
@AdamWagner1 Prediction is a mug's game but if I were giving a public judgment rejecting the government's appeal this is how I would begin it!
Sky News suggests the fall in inflation is due to falling energy prices and sod all to do with interest rates, money supply and all that other Treasury orthodoxy.
The good news for Rishi (aside from falling inflation being one of his five pledges) is that for many households, wages are now up by more, so voters with limited memory spans might credit the government.
Still bollox, people struggling yesterday or living on the streets will not notice teh difference. Food , rent etc is still through the roof so scant consolation to your average punter.
"Some observations from 24 hours on the ground in Israel.
I hadn’t fully understood how much the country had so profoundly changed.
The horrors of October 7 were much worse than I had imagined and have been reported.
The resolve of the Israeli people and willingness to do what is necessary to defeat this unimaginable evil is much greater than I had expected.
They are deeply appreciative of American support. But committed to do what they have to do regardless of that support. They are prepared to pay a much higher price than ever before.
Nothing will be the same again. Israel will emerge stronger under a new leadership and a new generation.
You cannot appreciate any of this until you’re here and look in their eyes. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen.
Khamenei, Hamas and Hezbollah have awakened something that they will live to regret. And many of these monsters won’t live to even experience that regret."
The Israelis are going to grind Gaza into dust. Make it uninhabitable. They don't care what America says, they won't care what anyone says. They might easily kill 50,000 or even 100,000 Gazans. They want to exterminate Hamas and its supporters to to the extent Gaza will never produce a fighting force ever again
And they've only just started. Who knows what this means for the world
And you wonder why people feel the need to protest against it?
If only they'd also protested against Hamas's evil actions on 7/10. But no.
In fact, too many people are in denial about what happened then; a new form of Holocaust denial.
Time for another bar chart, me thinks. Y-axis starts at zero:
That would imply almost no Israeli soldiers have died since the counteroffensive started. That seems unlikely, but I’ve not seen any numbers.
I've just read Swella's epistolary version of the Turner Diaries. She is a ludicrous termagant with multiple, co-morbid personality disorders but it was very well written.
Yes, of course it is. A five year old child can see that it's decidedly well written. A skilful and painful uppercut
What was amazing was the PB-ers on here...
... ignored the polished invective and examined her arguments.
OK, *but apart from* the death threats from the Rwandan government to Rwandans in the UK, oh, and all the extra judicial killings... #RwandaAsylum #SupremeCourt
@AdamWagner1 Some very public-facing comments by Lord Reed in the opening of his summary of the judgment:
- Policy is not that the UK will process asylum claims whilst people are in Rwanda, Rwanda will process them (despite the former often being claimed) - The non-refoulement principle is contained in a number of treaties not just the European Convention on Human Rights and Human Rights Act
@AdamWagner1 Prediction is a mug's game but if I were giving a public judgment rejecting the government's appeal this is how I would begin it!
If they’re minded to rule against government I’d have thought they’ll want it to be as widely drawn and evidenced as possible, so no this doesn’t surprise me.
I’m not a mind reader but I do wonder if Cleverly (Colfes, Army) quietly hopes for a rock solid judgment that means he can quietly drop Rwanda and try something else (including actual offshore processing). It wasn’t his policy after all.
Further progress towards 2% will be hard and slow though, so interest rates not likely to fall significantly until late 2025.
But, as I have pointed out previously, the gap between wage growth and inflation will broaden sharply giving back a fair bit of the loss in real wages over the last couple of years. People will actually be better off than they are now, if not as well off as they were before the inflation genie escaped. Will the Tories get credit for that? I have my doubts.
It is the driver of a late election though. All those waaah-waaah-waaah election now types are not going to get their way!
I think that the Conservatives may live to regret that option. They need to watch broad money, specifically M4, very carefully. There may be trouble ahead....
The UK has been living on the never-never since 2001, under governments of all colours. The reckoning, when it eventually comes, is going to be brutal.
As recently as that? Didn't we start having problems in the 1980s? (And then the situation was flattered by North Sea oil/gas.)
I think the rot set in in 1694 when the government borrowed £1.2m at a rate of 8% and established the Bank of England for the investors to finance it by issuing notes. The rest is history.
Noteworthy is that the national debt in 1815 after the Napoleonic Wars was 200% of GDP compared with 98% currently.
What else would you expect with a Tory government?
A small drop in interest rates will save me thousands of pounds. That’s all I really care about. My fixed rate expiry in February 2024 beckons…
I've just signed on for a 2 year fix from 1st February. An extra £230 a month on the mortgage. Thanks Rishi!
What's the o/s, £150k or so ?
Mid '25 remortgage for me, from 1.49% with about 182k remaining. Hopefully Iran and the USA can keep their missiles from each other in the middle east till then...
ouch , that will be sore , be close to 4% jump unless a miracle happens so north of 400 a month.
@AdamWagner1 Some very public-facing comments by Lord Reed in the opening of his summary of the judgment:
- Policy is not that the UK will process asylum claims whilst people are in Rwanda, Rwanda will process them (despite the former often being claimed) - The non-refoulement principle is contained in a number of treaties not just the European Convention on Human Rights and Human Rights Act
@AdamWagner1 Prediction is a mug's game but if I were giving a public judgment rejecting the government's appeal this is how I would begin it!
If they’re minded to rule against government I’d have thought they’ll want it to be as widely drawn and evidenced as possible, so no this doesn’t surprise me.
I’m not a mind reader but I do wonder if Cleverly (Colfes, Army) quietly hopes for a rock solid judgment that means he can quietly drop Rwanda and try something else (including actual offshore processing). It wasn’t his policy after all.
The implication of the judgment is that they can do more work with the Rwandan government, and then have another go - but certainly not in the short term.
A small drop in interest rates will save me thousands of pounds. That’s all I really care about. My fixed rate expiry in February 2024 beckons…
I've just signed on for a 2 year fix from 1st February. An extra £230 a month on the mortgage. Thanks Rishi!
What's the o/s, £150k or so ?
Mid '25 remortgage for me, from 1.49% with about 182k remaining. Hopefully Iran and the USA can keep their missiles from each other in the middle east till then...
ouch , that will be sore , be close to 4% jump unless a miracle happens so north of 400 a month.
Mine’s in 3 tranches after 2 remortgages. The first went a few months ago and jumped to about 5.5% but that was thankfully the smallest of the 3 chunks. The big ones come up in 2025 by which time I also hope rates are well on the way down.
Musing of the morning: will Esther McVey, who is I think a talking member of the Cabinet, now have to give up her TV mini-programme? (Update: Aha - I see she has already done so.)
On topic, none of the major political parties come out of the Post Office scandal with any credit. Why on earth did no-one ask questions when the cases became public knowledge? Or, of course, perhaps they did and were lied to!
In a sense, OKC, it's good that they are all implicated because it stops it from being a Party Political Issue.
Governments were undoubtedly lied to, but then they wanted to be. If they had been told the truth, they would have had to get involved and make difficult decisions.
All the indications are that successive Governments were happy to be fobbed off.
On topic, none of the major political parties come out of the Post Office scandal with any credit. Why on earth did no-one ask questions when the cases became public knowledge? Or, of course, perhaps they did and were lied to!
In a sense, OKC, it's good that they are all implicated because it stops it from being a Party Political Issue.
Governments were undoubtedly lied to, but then they wanted to be. If they had been told the truth, they would have had to get involved and make difficult decisions.
All the indications are that successive Governments were happy to be fobbed off.
Agree; it’s much easier to accept the word of those doing the work that ‘everything is under control’. However if so many Sub Postmasters were shown, by Horizon, to be ‘dishonest’, what did that say about the recruitment process and about what had gone on before?
Long before I became acquainted with the detail, I remember thinking that so many prosecutions had to raise questions about the integrity of the process. Common sense alone would tell you that the PO could surely not have cornered the market in dishonest staff.
Common sense appears however to have been chronically lacking throughout the organisation, along with many other homely virtues.
In fairness prosecutions did not start with Horizon. There have always been sub postmasters who have found themselves dipping into the money that they held in trust, just as there are with others in a similar situation such as lawyers.
Nobody disputes it, David.
Out of 900 or so prosecutions, it is bound to be the case that some involved genuine dishonesty. Nevertheless all cases involving Horizon were in principle unsound. Most, I would say, were utterly bogus.
Well, legally, they are simply not safe convictions because the evidential base, provided by Horizon, is not reliable. I was simply making the point that it wasn't as if it would have occurred to management that we are suddenly getting thefts that we have not got before. Rather they may well have concluded that the new system is working better than the old and making it much easier to spot the thefts when they did occur.
Yes, that is exactly what did happen. Management was not surprised by the large number of cases because that is what they expected to find once a 'robust' accounting system was put in place.
What you are focusing on is in fact the origin of the problem. It started to get out of hand when a) the management lacked the curiosity or common sense to say 'hold on, something's not quite right here', and b) the well documented shortcomings with Horizon were ignored.
After that everything that could go wrong, did go wrong.
Unlawful. As I predicted. No doubt there will be a gnashing of teeth on the right and the chance used to attack the ECHR but hopefully a much more measured response from Cleverly than we would have got from Braverman.
So if the Rwanda policy was for the UK to process asylum claims for people to come to the UK in Rwanda, with successful claimants brought back to the UK, then the government would have been given the go ahead.
As we keep pointing out, the Rwanda plan is incomparable to any other proposal or implementation elsewhere because it is a one way trip. And that has been ruled screamingly illegal on a variety of fronts.
@AdamWagner1 Some very public-facing comments by Lord Reed in the opening of his summary of the judgment:
- Policy is not that the UK will process asylum claims whilst people are in Rwanda, Rwanda will process them (despite the former often being claimed) - The non-refoulement principle is contained in a number of treaties not just the European Convention on Human Rights and Human Rights Act
@AdamWagner1 Prediction is a mug's game but if I were giving a public judgment rejecting the government's appeal this is how I would begin it!
If they’re minded to rule against government I’d have thought they’ll want it to be as widely drawn and evidenced as possible, so no this doesn’t surprise me.
I’m not a mind reader but I do wonder if Cleverly (Colfes, Army) quietly hopes for a rock solid judgment that means he can quietly drop Rwanda and try something else (including actual offshore processing). It wasn’t his policy after all.
The implication of the judgment is that they can do more work with the Rwandan government, and then have another go - but certainly not in the short term.
They would prob be best to quickly get together with like minded EU govs such as Denmark, Germany and co and announce a working group to set up a joint processing centre offshore. Gives them cover from the “British bad, EU good” people and should reduce costs through economies of scale.
Will also highlight that it’s not just evil Tories who want offshore processing and that much of the EU do too.
"Some observations from 24 hours on the ground in Israel.
I hadn’t fully understood how much the country had so profoundly changed.
The horrors of October 7 were much worse than I had imagined and have been reported.
The resolve of the Israeli people and willingness to do what is necessary to defeat this unimaginable evil is much greater than I had expected.
They are deeply appreciative of American support. But committed to do what they have to do regardless of that support. They are prepared to pay a much higher price than ever before.
Nothing will be the same again. Israel will emerge stronger under a new leadership and a new generation.
You cannot appreciate any of this until you’re here and look in their eyes. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen.
Khamenei, Hamas and Hezbollah have awakened something that they will live to regret. And many of these monsters won’t live to even experience that regret."
The Israelis are going to grind Gaza into dust. Make it uninhabitable. They don't care what America says, they won't care what anyone says. They might easily kill 50,000 or even 100,000 Gazans. They want to exterminate Hamas and its supporters to to the extent Gaza will never produce a fighting force ever again
And they've only just started. Who knows what this means for the world
And you wonder why people feel the need to protest against it?
If only they'd also protested against Hamas's evil actions on 7/10. But no.
In fact, too many people are in denial about what happened then; a new form of Holocaust denial.
Time for another bar chart, me thinks. Y-axis starts at zero:
Do you want to do one for British and German deaths in WW2 as well?
International law rightly regulates how states conduct wars but it places no upper limit on the number of casualties that can be caused; just on the circumstances in which they can be caused. The key questions are: - Did Israel have a legitimate reason to carry out a war against Gaza? - If so, are Israel's war aims legitimate and proportionate? - If so, are the means of conducting the war legitimate to those war aims?
FWIW, I think that some Israeli actions probably have been in breach of international law, and that irrespective of whether they were legal or not, they were ill-advised in terms of diplomatic consequence and global opinion.
We could also ask whether the war aims are achievable - but that would be a question of politics and military analysis, not law.
There seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding about the nature of war. It is not revenge where you are allowed to inflict proportional damage and then have to stop; it is not a computer game or sport, where the actions form some kind of penalty following a foul. War is the enforcement of policy by force, and can continue - within international law - until those policy goals are met.
Thoughts on the next stop the boats policy now Rwanda is gone (and Rwanda was never going to fix things alone)?
- Offshore processing - not permanent relocation - somewhere? Expensive - some kind of physical barrier / pushback? Humanitarian risks - Spend shed loads with France and tighten up policing? Probably effective but a slow burner - Process claims at source / in France? Not going to happen - Join Schengen so people can come legally on large boats and trains? Not going to happen - cross fingers and hope for the best?
@AdamWagner1 Some very public-facing comments by Lord Reed in the opening of his summary of the judgment:
- Policy is not that the UK will process asylum claims whilst people are in Rwanda, Rwanda will process them (despite the former often being claimed) - The non-refoulement principle is contained in a number of treaties not just the European Convention on Human Rights and Human Rights Act
@AdamWagner1 Prediction is a mug's game but if I were giving a public judgment rejecting the government's appeal this is how I would begin it!
If they’re minded to rule against government I’d have thought they’ll want it to be as widely drawn and evidenced as possible, so no this doesn’t surprise me.
I’m not a mind reader but I do wonder if Cleverly (Colfes, Army) quietly hopes for a rock solid judgment that means he can quietly drop Rwanda and try something else (including actual offshore processing). It wasn’t his policy after all.
The implication of the judgment is that they can do more work with the Rwandan government, and then have another go - but certainly not in the short term.
They would prob be best to quickly get together with like minded EU govs such as Denmark, Germany and co and announce a working group to set up a joint processing centre offshore. Gives them cover from the “British bad, EU good” people and should reduce costs through economies of scale.
Will also highlight that it’s not just evil Tories who want offshore processing and that much of the EU do too.
True . The difference is though that those processed overseas can still have their asylum granted and return to those countries .
"Some observations from 24 hours on the ground in Israel.
I hadn’t fully understood how much the country had so profoundly changed.
The horrors of October 7 were much worse than I had imagined and have been reported.
The resolve of the Israeli people and willingness to do what is necessary to defeat this unimaginable evil is much greater than I had expected.
They are deeply appreciative of American support. But committed to do what they have to do regardless of that support. They are prepared to pay a much higher price than ever before.
Nothing will be the same again. Israel will emerge stronger under a new leadership and a new generation.
You cannot appreciate any of this until you’re here and look in their eyes. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen.
Khamenei, Hamas and Hezbollah have awakened something that they will live to regret. And many of these monsters won’t live to even experience that regret."
The Israelis are going to grind Gaza into dust. Make it uninhabitable. They don't care what America says, they won't care what anyone says. They might easily kill 50,000 or even 100,000 Gazans. They want to exterminate Hamas and its supporters to to the extent Gaza will never produce a fighting force ever again
And they've only just started. Who knows what this means for the world
And you wonder why people feel the need to protest against it?
If only they'd also protested against Hamas's evil actions on 7/10. But no.
In fact, too many people are in denial about what happened then; a new form of Holocaust denial.
Time for another bar chart, me thinks. Y-axis starts at zero:
That would imply almost no Israeli soldiers have died since the counteroffensive started. That seems unlikely, but I’ve not seen any numbers.
52 IDF deaths since the ground operation began as of this morning, and there have been a few civilian deaths from rocket attacks, either from Gaza or Lebanon.
As I've said on here before, the "Gaza deaths" number needs a massive asterisk because it can't be verified and probably includes before terrorists and civilians (and there often isn't a clear distinction anyway), and in any event the precise numbers are relevant to absolutely nothing.
So Braverman has blown a couple of hundred million she could have spent on better processing of asylum claims.
Exactly. Instead of gimmicks the government needs to focus on both processing applications swiftly and actioning those that are refused by actual removals.
Jason Beer KC tearing the witness - a prosecutor - a new one at the hearing. He does it so quietly and politely and brilliantly. It is a joy to watch and, even better, watching the witnesses (many of them lawyers) fall into his traps.
A small drop in interest rates will save me thousands of pounds. That’s all I really care about. My fixed rate expiry in February 2024 beckons…
That's going to be an ongoing problem for hundreds of thousands of mortgaged home owners. Every month, for as long as interest rates stay higher than the ultra low rates we all got used to, eighty odd thousand people will see their mortgage payments shoot up. Some of them won't be able to afford to live in their home any longer. If sold house prices continue to fall as they look like doing, many will be in negative equity. That dominos into arrears and repossessions (both on the way up). It's going to be a grim 5+years, and Sunak will be off in California enjoying his wife's billions.
Yes be 2025/6 at least before we see any real interest rate drops.
So if the Rwanda policy was for the UK to process asylum claims for people to come to the UK in Rwanda, with successful claimants brought back to the UK, then the government would have been given the go ahead.
As we keep pointing out, the Rwanda plan is incomparable to any other proposal or implementation elsewhere because it is a one way trip. And that has been ruled screamingly illegal on a variety of fronts.
This was always the most utterly objectionable part of the whole thing. That, if you were found to be a genuine asylum seeker under our own laws and definitions, it didn't matter. You were still banned from returning to the UK.
Former Tory leader Michael Howard says Andrea Jenkyns is “some distance from reality” in calling for Rishi Sunak to go
She at least has a vote on the matter. Michael Howard is quite a distance from relevancy.
I imagine he remains a member of the Conservative Party and thus has a vote on the candidate MPs put forward. His view is thus of the same import as any other member outside the PCP.
So if the Rwanda policy was for the UK to process asylum claims for people to come to the UK in Rwanda, with successful claimants brought back to the UK, then the government would have been given the go ahead.
As we keep pointing out, the Rwanda plan is incomparable to any other proposal or implementation elsewhere because it is a one way trip. And that has been ruled screamingly illegal on a variety of fronts.
Yep, that is the key point. Unfortunately the roughly 80% success rate of asylum applications means that allowing them back into the UK would massively reduce the deterrence factor. So much so that I would suggest it would not be worth it. But it wouldn't surprise me if the government did something like this if only to save a little face.
"Some observations from 24 hours on the ground in Israel.
I hadn’t fully understood how much the country had so profoundly changed.
The horrors of October 7 were much worse than I had imagined and have been reported.
The resolve of the Israeli people and willingness to do what is necessary to defeat this unimaginable evil is much greater than I had expected.
They are deeply appreciative of American support. But committed to do what they have to do regardless of that support. They are prepared to pay a much higher price than ever before.
Nothing will be the same again. Israel will emerge stronger under a new leadership and a new generation.
You cannot appreciate any of this until you’re here and look in their eyes. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen.
Khamenei, Hamas and Hezbollah have awakened something that they will live to regret. And many of these monsters won’t live to even experience that regret."
The Israelis are going to grind Gaza into dust. Make it uninhabitable. They don't care what America says, they won't care what anyone says. They might easily kill 50,000 or even 100,000 Gazans. They want to exterminate Hamas and its supporters to to the extent Gaza will never produce a fighting force ever again
And they've only just started. Who knows what this means for the world
And you wonder why people feel the need to protest against it?
If only they'd also protested against Hamas's evil actions on 7/10. But no.
In fact, too many people are in denial about what happened then; a new form of Holocaust denial.
Time for another bar chart, me thinks. Y-axis starts at zero:
Do you want to do one for British and German deaths in WW2 as well?
International law rightly regulates how states conduct wars but it places no upper limit on the number of casualties that can be caused; just on the circumstances in which they can be caused. The key questions are: - Did Israel have a legitimate reason to carry out a war against Gaza? - If so, are Israel's war aims legitimate and proportionate? - If so, are the means of conducting the war legitimate to those war aims?
FWIW, I think that some Israeli actions probably have been in breach of international law, and that irrespective of whether they were legal or not, they were ill-advised in terms of diplomatic consequence and global opinion.
We could also ask whether the war aims are achievable - but that would be a question of politics and military analysis, not law.
There seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding about the nature of war. It is not revenge where you are allowed to inflict proportional damage and then have to stop; it is not a computer game or sport, where the actions form some kind of penalty following a foul. War is the enforcement of policy by force, and can continue - within international law - until those policy goals are met.
I am not in favour of an immediate ceasefire but I am in favour of an immediate end to the bombing.
Hamas are in 300 miles of tunnels on at least four levels (like a very large coal mine). Bombing residential properties, refugee camps, hospitals hardly touches the Hamas tunnels but kills thousands of innocents.
The IDF should focus on the tunnels and the supporting ventilation and power supplies in order to achieve their policy goal, even though this risks the 200+ hostages.
So if the Rwanda policy was for the UK to process asylum claims for people to come to the UK in Rwanda, with successful claimants brought back to the UK, then the government would have been given the go ahead.
As we keep pointing out, the Rwanda plan is incomparable to any other proposal or implementation elsewhere because it is a one way trip. And that has been ruled screamingly illegal on a variety of fronts.
This was always the most utterly objectionable part of the whole thing. That, if you were found to be a genuine asylum seeker under our own laws and definitions, it didn't matter. You were still banned from returning to the UK.
Leaving out the morality. The cost was even more absurd.
On that score alone, the judgement is a big win for Rishi.
Comments
https://x.com/MilkmanMeme/status/1724718602174054514?s=20
Some private sector employers are now doing pay reviews twice a year to hold onto staff. I've noticed in some recent interviews I've done that interviewees are asking more questions now, in the knowledge that they are in a position to pick and choose employers to a greater extent than before.
1. Court says go ahead. Jubliation in Tory ranks quickly turns to anger when they realise the practical barriers remain. Sunak very quickly under enormous political stress.
2. Court says you can't go ahead. Anger in Tory ranks quickly turns to fury when they are told that even leaving the ECHR - which the government won't do - won't fix the practical barriers.
Practical barriers regardless of the court ruling today:
We can't / won't stop the smugglers
We can't detain everyone as too many boats
We don't have anywhere to hold refugees we detain as won't pay for hotels and have run out of camps / barges which local Tories refuse to allow anyway
We don't have enough people in the Border Force to process the legal side nor the capacity in the legal system to then legally rule them onto a plane
We can't find charter planes to fly them to Rwanda
Rwanda doesn't have remotely the capability to take the numbers we want to send
But apart from that, its a great plan which definitely will deter every man jack of them.
"Some observations from 24 hours on the ground in Israel.
I hadn’t fully understood how much the country had so profoundly changed.
The horrors of October 7 were much worse than I had imagined and have been reported.
The resolve of the Israeli people and willingness to do what is necessary to defeat this unimaginable evil is much greater than I had expected.
They are deeply appreciative of American support. But committed to do what they have to do regardless of that support. They are prepared to pay a much higher price than ever before.
Nothing will be the same again. Israel will emerge stronger under a new leadership and a new generation.
You cannot appreciate any of this until you’re here and look in their eyes. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen.
Khamenei, Hamas and Hezbollah have awakened something that they will live to regret. And many of these monsters won’t live to even experience that regret."
https://x.com/mdubowitz/status/1724560856153825640?s=20
The Israelis are going to grind Gaza into dust. Make it uninhabitable. They don't care what America says, they won't care what anyone says. They might easily kill 50,000 or even 100,000 Gazans. They want to exterminate Hamas and its supporters to to the extent Gaza will never produce a fighting force ever again
And they've only just started. Who knows what this means for the world
This I think is quite instructive. Even those on the right of the party think Suella’s a busted flush. She might be a useful idiot for them to try and bring down Sunak, but I suspect that is all now.
This is why other European countries are now looking at VERSIONS of Rwanda
Also, a lot of people don't understand Rwanda. You don't have to send 40,000 people every year to Rwanda. You just have to send the first few hundred, or the first 2000, but be rigorous about it, REALLY send them - and then people will think Fuck that I'm not risking a boat to the UK, they really DO send people to Rwanda, and so the boats stop and you don't have to send any more people to Rwanda. Deterrence theory
Will it work? dunno. But it is worth a go, not least coz it will actually save lives if it stops people crossing the Med and then the Channel. Britain must be cruel to be kind
I was simply making the point that it wasn't as if it would have occurred to management that we are suddenly getting thefts that we have not got before. Rather they may well have concluded that the new system is working better than the old and making it much easier to spot the thefts when they did occur.
Many of his problems stem from the hand he was dealt. No government in our lifetime has had to deal with resolving the Brexit impasse in Parliament, then Covid, then Ukraine feeding into a domestic cost of living crisis. All of these arose at a time when the United Kingdom has been creaking at the seams - and structurally it is an extremely difficult time to govern, without these additional woes piled upon it.
It is somewhat easier to stick with Rishi when there is no obvious alternative on offer, from either within the Conservative Party or from the opposition. As Churchill said, "if you're going through hell - keep going".
Chef must be one of the most antisocial and worst-paid trades, many have realised that even a semi-skilled trade such as van driving pays more for better hours.
What was amazing was the PB-ers on here, so blinded by their loathing of her, they could not admit that, or they could not even see it. Such wilful blindness does not make for astute political judgments (let alone clever political bets)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/live/cricket/66859416
The fact that the lovely new system was reporting total bollocks, and many people involved in the prosecutions knew it was reporting total bollocks, well that’s a rather big problem!
Honestly, some tut-tutting from a judge is not what these bastards deserve.
What you are focusing on is in fact the origin of the problem. It started to get out of hand when a) the management lacked the curiosity or common sense to say 'hold on, something's not quite right here', and b) the well documented shortcomings with Horizon were ignored.
After that everything that could go wrong, did go wrong.
In fact, too many people are in denial about what happened then; a new form of Holocaust denial.
Beyond that, Michael Howard and I can outvote her....
My real question is, what exactly has he done about all those things you list? Where is his programme? His Ministry is disastrously inactive and inneffectual whilst he farts on about banning smoking and maths till 18.
As for who can replace him - at this point, anyone. I'd be happy with Count Binface, as long as he pledged to spend whatever months are left governing well and making some progress, to try to exculpate some of the shame of the past year.
From Casciani's note on the UNHCR looks like it ?
Noteworthy is that the national debt in 1815 after the Napoleonic Wars was 200% of GDP compared with 98% currently.
#GrandsonOfHumbleImmigrants
Supreme Court pres currently making clear it's not *just* the ECHR that applies to this: there are other treaties, including the UN refugee convention, which need to be respected under intl' law
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kqbM0VlcnU
Some very public-facing comments by Lord Reed in the opening of his summary of the judgment:
- Policy is not that the UK will process asylum claims whilst people are in Rwanda, Rwanda will process them (despite the former often being claimed)
- The non-refoulement principle is contained in a number of treaties not just the European Convention on Human Rights and Human Rights Act
@AdamWagner1
Prediction is a mug's game but if I were giving a public judgment rejecting the government's appeal this is how I would begin it!
It's hard to see how the story being told right now is one that ends with a verdict in favour of the government.
OK, *but apart from* the death threats from the Rwandan government to Rwandans in the UK, oh, and all the extra judicial killings...
#RwandaAsylum #SupremeCourt
I’m not a mind reader but I do wonder if Cleverly (Colfes, Army) quietly hopes for a rock solid judgment that means he can quietly drop Rwanda and try something else (including actual offshore processing). It wasn’t his policy after all.
Supreme Court rejects the Rwanda policy
Says they "unanimously agree" with Court of Appeal
Ironically at £170,000 per asylum seeker sent to Rwanda, a loss today is a big win for Rishi tomorrow.
A unanimous decision and we count down to the next Braverman tirade .
Thanks for the header, @Cyclefree .
Musing of the morning: will Esther McVey, who is I think a talking member of the Cabinet, now have to give up her TV mini-programme? (Update: Aha - I see she has already done so.)
It will be interesting how Cleverly deals with this in the HOC but practically it is time to move on and seek alternatives
I would just add how is Steve Bray permitted to interrupt the broadcasters
As we keep pointing out, the Rwanda plan is incomparable to any other proposal or implementation elsewhere because it is a one way trip. And that has been ruled screamingly illegal on a variety of fronts.
Will also highlight that it’s not just evil Tories who want offshore processing and that much of the EU do too.
International law rightly regulates how states conduct wars but it places no upper limit on the number of casualties that can be caused; just on the circumstances in which they can be caused. The key questions are:
- Did Israel have a legitimate reason to carry out a war against Gaza?
- If so, are Israel's war aims legitimate and proportionate?
- If so, are the means of conducting the war legitimate to those war aims?
FWIW, I think that some Israeli actions probably have been in breach of international law, and that irrespective of whether they were legal or not, they were ill-advised in terms of diplomatic consequence and global opinion.
We could also ask whether the war aims are achievable - but that would be a question of politics and military analysis, not law.
There seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding about the nature of war. It is not revenge where you are allowed to inflict proportional damage and then have to stop; it is not a computer game or sport, where the actions form some kind of penalty following a foul. War is the enforcement of policy by force, and can continue - within international law - until those policy goals are met.
your regular reminder that the government has flown more journalists to Rwanda than asylum seekers
- Offshore processing - not permanent relocation - somewhere? Expensive
- some kind of physical barrier / pushback? Humanitarian risks
- Spend shed loads with France and tighten up policing? Probably effective but a slow burner
- Process claims at source / in France? Not going to happen
- Join Schengen so people can come legally on large boats and trains? Not going to happen
- cross fingers and hope for the best?
As I've said on here before, the "Gaza deaths" number needs a massive asterisk because it can't be verified and probably includes before terrorists and civilians (and there often isn't a clear distinction anyway), and in any event the precise numbers are relevant to absolutely nothing.
This is why the UK is a great place for international business.
They know our judiciary will put the government back in their box when appropriate.
But as far as mainstream politics is concerned, she's a busted flush.
Hamas are in 300 miles of tunnels on at least four levels (like a very large coal mine). Bombing residential properties, refugee camps, hospitals hardly touches the Hamas tunnels but kills thousands of innocents.
The IDF should focus on the tunnels and the supporting ventilation and power supplies in order to achieve their policy goal, even though this risks the 200+ hostages.
On that score alone, the judgement is a big win for Rishi.