He’s been in positive territory ever since Boris quit. What a gift that was for him
And now he’s making speeches equating mass immigration with low wages.
By the end of Boris’s time Starmer was giving him a weekly dressing down in PMQs. Sure, he had good material to go on - repeatedly catching him out for lying, and watching while we got half apology after half apology - but that was the time I think Starmer hit his stride in parliament. And Boris was by then a shadow of his former self. Truss then gave him a series of wonderful open goals of course, and the opportunity to start using humour, which he was never able to do with Boris.
Yes, Boris getting an FPN was the perfect storm for Sir Keir. What made it even better was that Boris didn’t think he’d done anything that bad, if anything wrong at all; the fine was for sitting in his office having some birthday cake, deliberately captured on film by the PMs official photographer. So his attitude made for a great contrast with Starmer’s appalled, pious lawyer schtick.
You know your narrative is bollocks so why do you persist with it? Johnson attended multiple illegal events during lockdown. If you believe him that he didn't realise they were parties, you must agree he had no business being Prime Minister.
Sorry? I said ‘Boris didn’t think he’d done anything that bad, if anything wrong at all’. This is evident; he had the official photographer take pictures of it. He didn’t think it was breaking the rules, hence his lack of contrition. What I think about it is neither here nor there, but those are the facts.
Those really are not the "facts". Johnson attended multiple events contrary to rules he set. Those are the facts. In the news students were being fined £10,000 for attending similar events. Those students are still being harassed by bailiffs. No 10 was a disgrace and Johnson was in charge of no 10. It is disingenuous to suggest he was unaware that he was attending events contrary to his laws. Perhaps he felt he was above his own laws.
There is an argument that these were work events, that the presence of alcohol or a birthday cake didn't change that, that it is normal for the sake of morale to celebrate birthdays and people leaving, and that it was for the employer to determine that, that might have covered at least some events, but no-one seems to have made the argument.
Or if they'd said "it's been a hard week, you can have alcohol at your desk from 4pm Friday"
But I strongly suspect that what it shows is that Boris felt he could not only flout the law, but flaunt it.
Work events sure, happy to accept that. The law was reasonably necessary for work purposes. Do you think there is an argument that without these events work would have been impossible?
Frankly the leadership of No 10, both civil service and political failed to match what the rest of the country did. The NHS didn't socialise at the end of a shift because they had been together all day anyway . I have long said that most of the 'parties' were pathetic little events, nothing like the fantasy of the recent C4 program. But even so, the rest of the country didn't do it, and No 19 shouldn't have either.
And let's remember this is not why Boris Johnson was ousted. That he was brought down by illegal socialising during lockdown is a rewrite of history. It wasn't that. It was the lying. Lying to his colleagues, lying to parliament. He was ejected from the House for the latter.
It got to the point where people couldn't trust him. By the end he couldn't even rustle up the numbers to form a government. It is not tenable to be PM if parliament deems you unfit to be an MP and nobody is prepared to work for you. Either of these ends your premiership and with Johnson it was both.
Nevertheless a couple of PB Boris supporters have repeatedly claimed he was ousted for "eating birthday cake".
It is painful for them to admit the cherry on the parfait was Boris Johnson was Boris lying about putting a known sexual predator in a position of authority then lying about it.
Apple's market value is nearing a wild milestone: It's about to overtake the French stock market — Europe's largest. The tech behemoth's shares closed at another record high on Thursday, bringing its market value to about $3.1 trillion; the combined market value of the companies on France's exchange is $3.2 trillion. Apple's stock is up more than 50% this year https://www.linkedin.com/news/story/apple-is-almost-as-big-as-france-5853380/
Incredible. That has a "Tokyo real estate in 1991 was worth more than the whole of America" feel to it. Wish I'd bought into it and if I had I think I'd be selling some now.
The difference is that the Tokyo real estate thing was an unrealisable nonsense caused by a boom.
Apple’s price/earnings says the valuation isn’t that out of line with norms.
Yes I doubt Apple are going to collapse. Nevertheless I think I'd be selling some if I were lucky (or astute) enough to have a decent holding.
Apple's market value is nearing a wild milestone: It's about to overtake the French stock market — Europe's largest. The tech behemoth's shares closed at another record high on Thursday, bringing its market value to about $3.1 trillion; the combined market value of the companies on France's exchange is $3.2 trillion. Apple's stock is up more than 50% this year https://www.linkedin.com/news/story/apple-is-almost-as-big-as-france-5853380/
Listening to further stuff from the Post Office inquiry, it is striking that the correspondence about the integrity of the computer system, both within the PO and within and between their various legal advisors, is all from a perspective of belief, marshalling arguments and evidence and reports as you might defend a political viewpoint that was always going to remain contestable. Yet the system was telling the postmaster how much money they should have in hand at the end of the day, and was either correct or it was not, as a simple matter of fact.
If there was anyone there who, as the mountain of challenges and contrary evidence grew higher, asked the obvious question whether it could just be checked (until it was way way too late), the evidence hasn't yet appeared.
It will also be interesting to discover how exactly the shortfalls occurred, and in the bigger scheme of things how commonly.
It is a common failing in pretty much all scandals that people believe what they want to be true.
Senior management simply could not bring themselves to believe that a system they had invested so much time and money in could have faults - let alone faults of a type leading to such disastrous consequences. That belief permeated what everyone else did.
In-house investigators have a huge responsibility in such an organisation because your job is to stand aside from the beliefs and assumptions that everyone else has and question them. You are in effect the small boy asking about the emperor's clothes. That is hard and lonely. At the same time you have to do your investigations so well that the results can be trusted by all concerned, no matter how tough the findings.
To do both is difficult and takes great professional skill but also strength of character. It is not an easy combination to find. From what I have seen of the evidence none of the investigators had either of these attributes.
Bluntly, there were no investigations worthy of the name, indeed no investigations at all. That so many in the legal department allowed these travesties to be presented to court utterly shames them and all the lawyers concerned.
It is one reason why I find this matter so compelling but also so shaming.
I get very annoyed when someone who has no knowledge, skill or experience is appointed to do an investigation as if it is a simple matter of just asking a few questions. This is bollocks - dangerous bollocks - on stilts. It is not a given that lawyers are necessarily good investigators. Good investigations are hard to do well. The Post Office did not even try and all of management from the CEO down from 2000 onwards - not just the wretched Paula Vennells - should be held responsible for what has happened.
He’s been in positive territory ever since Boris quit. What a gift that was for him
And now he’s making speeches equating mass immigration with low wages.
By the end of Boris’s time Starmer was giving him a weekly dressing down in PMQs. Sure, he had good material to go on - repeatedly catching him out for lying, and watching while we got half apology after half apology - but that was the time I think Starmer hit his stride in parliament. And Boris was by then a shadow of his former self. Truss then gave him a series of wonderful open goals of course, and the opportunity to start using humour, which he was never able to do with Boris.
Yes, Boris getting an FPN was the perfect storm for Sir Keir. What made it even better was that Boris didn’t think he’d done anything that bad, if anything wrong at all; the fine was for sitting in his office having some birthday cake, deliberately captured on film by the PMs official photographer. So his attitude made for a great contrast with Starmer’s appalled, pious lawyer schtick.
You know your narrative is bollocks so why do you persist with it? Johnson attended multiple illegal events during lockdown. If you believe him that he didn't realise they were parties, you must agree he had no business being Prime Minister.
Sorry? I said ‘Boris didn’t think he’d done anything that bad, if anything wrong at all’. This is evident; he had the official photographer take pictures of it. He didn’t think it was breaking the rules, hence his lack of contrition. What I think about it is neither here nor there, but those are the facts.
Those really are not the "facts". Johnson attended multiple events contrary to rules he set. Those are the facts. In the news students were being fined £10,000 for attending similar events. Those students are still being harassed by bailiffs. No 10 was a disgrace and Johnson was in charge of no 10. It is disingenuous to suggest he was unaware that he was attending events contrary to his laws. Perhaps he felt he was above his own laws.
There is an argument that these were work events, that the presence of alcohol or a birthday cake didn't change that, that it is normal for the sake of morale to celebrate birthdays and people leaving, and that it was for the employer to determine that, that might have covered at least some events, but no-one seems to have made the argument.
Or if they'd said "it's been a hard week, you can have alcohol at your desk from 4pm Friday"
But I strongly suspect that what it shows is that Boris felt he could not only flout the law, but flaunt it.
Work events sure, happy to accept that. The law was reasonably necessary for work purposes. Do you think there is an argument that without these events work would have been impossible?
Frankly the leadership of No 10, both civil service and political failed to match what the rest of the country did. The NHS didn't socialise at the end of a shift because they had been together all day anyway . I have long said that most of the 'parties' were pathetic little events, nothing like the fantasy of the recent C4 program. But even so, the rest of the country didn't do it, and No 19 shouldn't have either.
And let's remember this is not why Boris Johnson was ousted. That he was brought down by illegal socialising during lockdown is a rewrite of history. It wasn't that. It was the lying. Lying to his colleagues, lying to parliament. He was ejected from the House for the latter.
It got to the point where people couldn't trust him. By the end he couldn't even rustle up the numbers to form a government. It is not tenable to be PM if parliament deems you unfit to be an MP and nobody is prepared to work for you. Either of these ends your premiership and with Johnson it was both.
Nevertheless a couple of PB Boris supporters have repeatedly claimed he was ousted for "eating birthday cake".
Yes and it needs to be stamped on. You have to face the truth about your political heroes otherwise your support for them becomes blind fandom, which is unhealthy and dangerous. Look at Donald Trump in America. That's where it can lead.
He’s been in positive territory ever since Boris quit. What a gift that was for him
And now he’s making speeches equating mass immigration with low wages.
You keep forgetting Johnson was a very bad man, and a Prime Minister totally out of his depth, due to his venality and his terminal laziness.
The post Johnson line is that all his election victories were accidents against useless opponents. This doesn’t, for example, match what I remember of the Mayoral election, where there startlement in the media that anyone could defeat Livingstone in London.
On immigration and wages. Because of a world wide shortage of degreed and qualified white collar professionals (Doctors etc), there is no practical level of immigration that can reduce wages.
There are two other tiers of the economy - the lower paid jobs and the frankly illegal conditions of the black economy. Here, there are much less shortages of the skills worldwide. So immigration does affect wages in both groups.
I buy this first point to a limited extent. In 2008 Livingstone was tired and Johnson was perceived by many to be a liberal “fun” breath of fresh air Tory. Even James O’Brian voted for Johnson. I think (but can’t recall - maybe I’m blanking the memory or am in denial) may have even put him in as second preference to Sian Berry, who I knew socially. I definitely recall I wanted Livingstone out, despite voting for him twice previously.
By 2012, however, Livingstone was definitely a busted flush. He should never have run. Johnson was against a man whose antisemitism was part of the overall package any everyone knew it.
The other issue is with the narrative of X person being a “proven election winner” so should be relied upon. That’s nuts. Tony Blair is a “proven election winner” but was (effectively) kicked out before it could be tested a fourth time. Ditto Thatcher. Major was, for 5 years, a “proven election winner”, and the Tory papers kept saying so. There’s no evidence that Johnson would necessarily be doing better than Sunak right now.
Very bad development in Ukraine. A local politician from Zelensky’s party blew himself up and threw hand grenades at a council meeting in Transcarpathia.
Ukraine is going to be under serious pressure with the restrictions on aid in the US and now this: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-67724357 I fear that by the New Year they will be forced to come to terms with Russia.
Listening to further stuff from the Post Office inquiry, it is striking that the correspondence about the integrity of the computer system, both within the PO and within and between their various legal advisors, is all from a perspective of belief, marshalling arguments and evidence and reports as you might defend a political viewpoint that was always going to remain contestable. Yet the system was telling the postmaster how much money they should have in hand at the end of the day, and was either correct or it was not, as a simple matter of fact.
If there was anyone there who, as the mountain of challenges and contrary evidence grew higher, asked the obvious question whether it could just be checked (until it was way way too late), the evidence hasn't yet appeared.
It will also be interesting to discover how exactly the shortfalls occurred, and in the bigger scheme of things how commonly.
It is a common failing in pretty much all scandals that people believe what they want to be true.
Senior management simply could not bring themselves to believe that a system they had invested so much time and money in could have faults - let alone faults of a type leading to such disastrous consequences. That belief permeated what everyone else did.
In-house investigators have a huge responsibility in such an organisation because your job is to stand aside from the beliefs and assumptions that everyone else has and question them. You are in effect the small boy asking about the emperor's clothes. That is hard and lonely. At the same time you have to do your investigations so well that the results can be trusted by all concerned, no matter how tough the findings.
To do both is difficult and takes great professional skill but also strength of character. It is not an easy combination to find. From what I have seen of the evidence none of the investigators had either of these attributes.
Bluntly, there were no investigations worthy of the name, indeed no investigations at all. That so many in the legal department allowed these travesties to be presented to court utterly shames them and all the lawyers concerned.
It is one reason why I find this matter so compelling but also so shaming.
I get very annoyed when someone who has no knowledge, skill or experience is appointed to do an investigation as if it is a simple matter of just asking a few questions. This is bollocks - dangerous bollocks - on stilts. It is not a given that lawyers are necessarily good investigators. Good investigations are hard to do well. The Post Office did not even try and all of management from the CEO down from 2000 onwards - not just the wretched Paula Vennells - should be held responsible for what has happened.
As I understand it, the Horizon system had next to no reconciliation and audit built in.
This is grotesquely unprofessional
The systems I am working on at the moment record every single change in state to database - so you can run through the transactions like a film. No records are ever deleted. Instead a new, updated record is created or the record is marked as “deleted” in a field - but all the versions of the records are kept.
In addition we have implemented multiple reconciliation systems - at various points the system reconciles against parts of itself and external data sources.
We don’t regard the result as infallible - but we think we can justify our answers with evidence.
Comments
https://www.euronews.com/business/2023/10/19/london-wins-back-title-as-europes-largest-stock-market-from-paris
But as ever, Morgan will worm his way out of it...
Senior management simply could not bring themselves to believe that a system they had invested so much time and money in could have faults - let alone faults of a type leading to such disastrous consequences. That belief permeated what everyone else did.
In-house investigators have a huge responsibility in such an organisation because your job is to stand aside from the beliefs and assumptions that everyone else has and question them. You are in effect the small boy asking about the emperor's clothes. That is hard and lonely. At the same time you have to do your investigations so well that the results can be trusted by all concerned, no matter how tough the findings.
To do both is difficult and takes great professional skill but also strength of character. It is not an easy combination to find. From what I have seen of the evidence none of the investigators had either of these attributes.
Bluntly, there were no investigations worthy of the name, indeed no investigations at all. That so many in the legal department allowed these travesties to be presented to court utterly shames them and all the lawyers concerned.
It is one reason why I find this matter so compelling but also so shaming.
I get very annoyed when someone who has no knowledge, skill or experience is appointed to do an investigation as if it is a simple matter of just asking a few questions. This is bollocks - dangerous bollocks - on stilts. It is not a given that lawyers are necessarily good investigators. Good investigations are hard to do well. The Post Office did not even try and all of management from the CEO down from 2000 onwards - not just the wretched Paula Vennells - should be held responsible for what has happened.
By 2012, however, Livingstone was definitely a busted flush. He should never have run. Johnson was against a man whose antisemitism was part of the overall package any everyone knew it.
The other issue is with the narrative of X person being a “proven election winner” so should be relied upon. That’s nuts. Tony Blair is a “proven election winner” but was (effectively) kicked out before it could be tested a fourth time. Ditto Thatcher. Major was, for 5 years, a “proven election winner”, and the Tory papers kept saying so. There’s no evidence that Johnson would necessarily be doing better than Sunak right now.
This is grotesquely unprofessional
The systems I am working on at the moment record every single change in state to database - so you can run through the transactions like a film. No records are ever deleted. Instead a new, updated record is created or the record is marked as “deleted” in a field - but all the versions of the records are kept.
In addition we have implemented multiple reconciliation systems - at various points the system reconciles against parts of itself and external data sources.
We don’t regard the result as infallible - but we think we can justify our answers with evidence.