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Going postal – politicalbetting.com
Going postal – politicalbetting.com
The letter is one of five Bates sent to Davey between 2010 and 2012 as he and the JFSA repeatedly sought to get the coalition government to intervene over the Horizon scandal Bates has allowed me this week to review all of his ministerial correspondence dating back to 20102/
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The partner of disgraced ex-Tory MP Peter Bone has been chosen as the Conservative candidate to replace him in the Wellingborough by-election.
Helen Harrison, who is a Conservative councillor in Wellingborough's North Northamptonshire area, was selected by members of the party on Sunday afternoon, according to party chair Richard Holden.
An election is being held after Mr Bone was found by parliament to have subjected a staff member to bullying and sexual misconduct. He has denied the allegations.
https://news.sky.com/story/disgraced-ex-tory-mp-peter-bones-partner-chosen-to-run-as-his-replacement-13043617
That this header plays along with this disgraceful political smear campaign is equally shameful.
I won’t be contributing further to this thread.
Whilst Davey should have displayed a bit more curiosity when dealing with this issue I do have a smidgen of sympathy with him, the real ire should be aimed at those at the Post Office and their confederates who knew the Horizon system was producing hugely incorrect figures but kept quiet and continued on with the prosecutions.
It may well do Davey significant damage and if it rumbles on then him standing down in favour of Daisy Cooper might be necessary.
Much as I like Davey, he clearly was one of many who contributed to this becoming such an intractable nightmare for the Sub-posties.
Daisy would be good, and likely to be a distinctive fresh face for the GE. It would also increase the pressure on the Tory ministers to resign for their actions and inactions.
Rightly so, given what's happened.
Edit: only joking. But they won't be happy with the splash-over.
He was with hindsight very foolish to accept what he was being told by the people complained about rather than by the whistleblower. And with hindsight, I'm sure he feels an idiot.
But unless more comes out than there has so far about his actions, it's going to be difficult to argue he bears particular blame.
I also think no party's going to be keen to press this too far. Too many of their senior members have unclean hands, including a former leader of the Labour Party and a wannabe leader of the Tories.
So rightly or wrongly I don't see it being more than embarrassing for Davey.
He should do what Vennells and colleagues signally failed to do once they knew they had a scandal on their hands. He should front up, tell the whole tuth, and name names where necessasry. His role is in the scandal is quite a small one, so this could work. It could even play to his advantage, but whether it does or not, it's the only way forward from here.
Same applies to Cable and Swinson.
Seeing as how he's already got both feet firmly on the plank . . .
a) it doesn't look to me as if he's spectacularly culpable, and more importantly
b) many more people will have heard of him as this unfolds - he could do with some name recognition.
If any Party Leader needs to consider their position it is not Ed Davey.
I see implicating Starmer as a massive opportunity for Rishi. Even if it is a false narrative it will gain massive traction.
Do keep up lad.
And with Helen as the Tory candidate, Peter won't stand which means that the Tory vote won't be split.
Ideally this means the Tories come a close second kicking off the momentum that results in a May election..
It was Tory-central when I lived there - with many Peter Fry wins for the Tories. I'm surprised it went Lab in 1997 (and then again in 2001).
I haven't got a read on it now but wouldn't be surprised if the electorate sympathised with Bone and disagreed with his removal. He was quite highly regarded I think.
I'm not betting.
They want to be careful what you wish for. Lets say that Davey decides to step down. And challenges the Tories to find their own honour and spines. Which they don't have. Won't look good for them...
See you all soon
All because Bone threatens to run as independent if his partner wasn’t chosen? And somehow they still let it happen?
At the current rate, they’re looking at a good decade or so out of power. Good riddance
The real problem is the unsatisfactory relationship between Government and the businesses it owns and runs. Davey's attitude illustrates the problem, but it was by no means untypical.
The way Sunday Times has hilariously skewed this to focus in Lib Dem’s, does suggest this election just wants to get dirty, doesn’t it? You suspect those strategists surrounding Sunak, whose Shareprice and next gig depends on credible results, won’t hesitate to go Dirty if the polls don’t tighten.
But Everyone’s got plenty of silage to throw. 😧
Davey helped screw the stitched up Post Office Managers in the biggest cruelest scandal of all time?
As head of the CPS and director of Public Prosecutions, Starmer started with an open file of Saville, ended with the Saville file closed down, and didn’t get it reopened?
And Rishi Sunak - who ran the Treasury at the time of covid - profited from a surge in the share price of the Moderna vaccine through a blind trust, so one of his own MPs has publicly claimed. 😯 (if true, any MP knowing this before installing Sunak as leader, should never have installed him - it will be many more than just Sunak in deep trouble).
But from political-betting point of view, Does successfully predicting a very dirty election help us get ahead of the game? Does a very dirty election level a playing field, suppress overall vote, so a great option for those coming from behind? Or will “gutter politics” not really benefit anyone or reshape a result? Could any of these dirty attacks really breakthrough and turn the election, or even spectacularly backfire and lose votes?
For example, the Sunday Times story today, smearing Lib Dem’s on behalf of Tories? It’s already encouraging the response: where were the senior partners in the coalition? If PO scandal hurts Lib Dem’s, it will certainly hurt Tories too, perhaps more so as the senior government partner - questions for Osborne, questions for Cameron current Foreign Secretary. As the Coalition souvenir Mug showed us, both parties were cheeks of the same governmental arse.
Especially as Sunak today showed as much understanding of this scandal, (everyone in the country is now expert on, not just Cyclefree) to tell us that it was all over in the 1990s? 😧
I agree Hodge is more culpable, to the extent a case could be made she should be doing prison time. Almost more disgusting were her later attempts to smear the victims to try and silence them.
Bit of a procurement fail too. Could there be similar problems with other contracts, e.g. in defence? That's what the leader of a proper opposition would ask the prime minister.
Leaders of all the major parties probably want this affair to go away, or at least to stay in its box labelled "Look what happened to the poor subpostmasters - mustn't let that happen again".
Similarly with the undercover policing inquiry. Make it mostly about cops shagging those they were spying on and using dead children's identities - yawn.
We had a bit of a run-in with British Gas. Mrs PtP wants to switch to Octopus. I know nothing about them but have heard them mentioned here. Can anyone say....yea or nay?
But admitting that is not exactly a good look for a party leader - where to some extent your authority and appeal flows from the necessary fiction it's you who really knows what they're doing, that you're brave and a doer. Rather than relying the good advice, expertise, and intentions of others to make good decisions and right wrongs.
Is this the first black swan ahead of the election - where Rishi gets to expedite justice for the poor Post Office folk shafted by Davey and Starmer?
(Probably not. But people are talking about it - and only Rishi has the opportunity to come out of it smelling of roses.)
It is going to be the nastiest campaign ever. The Tories are about to be cut off from their access to public money. Lining Tory pockets is the last remaining purpose in being the government and they will keep fighting to the last to keep their noses in the trough.
https://private-prosecutions.com/referral-to-the-director-of-public-prosecutions/#:~:text=The DPP has the power,exercised by a Crown Prosecutor.
Without reading the underlying acts, it looks to me like 6.1.2 is key, as it defines the scope of what private prosecutions the CPS needs to be informed of and can intervene in (including to put a stop to). I don't know where post office fraud cases sit in that system, depending on how broad that scope is I could imagine them being within or without.
11 left footers on the park?
There was a case little while ago. A woman had accused a man of rape. He hired private investigators, who came up with evidence that she had forged evidence against him. He started a private prosecution. Her parents (I think) appealed to the DPP, who took over the prosecution. But then continued it, on the grounds that there was a case. The woman committed suicide.
It's getting to the point where I will treat your posts as as stupid as a HYUFD one...
1) to carry on. And be labelled as launching a “vendetta against the civil service”, starting “a war with the police” etc
2) believe them.
If you’re of an even slightly techy bent Octopus are the obvious choice as you get to have endless fun with their spot-price energy tariffs. Even more so if you have access to solar panels / batteries etc. Take being “thermostat Dad” as far as your heart desires! They have most of their customers on plain old standard tariffs that they run perfectly competently though - their standard tariffs are very competitive.
They also broke the cosy energy provider cartel that was taking government heat pump subsidies & just adding them to the installation bill. If your property is suitable, you can get a heat pump installation for £500 by going through them IIRC. Obviously YMMV depending on need, property type & insulation etc etc.
I had wondered for a second - not far from Oxfordshire, safeish seat - whether it could be a Cameron move to stand there, but a bit of Googling on the local situation told me it was a QTWTAIN.
Major lost big, of course, but kept some personal dignity.
Sunak's harder to read. He's still got the rabid bits of the press on side, but they're way less useful than they were A Very Long Time Ago. And he personally sounds rubbish when he tries to be attack dog-y. Can he really leave all that to the hired helps?
Besides, suppose Rishi does pull it off and win. Then he's got to deal with all the nonsense he's creating for the next government.
"When the CPS receives a request to intervene in a private prosecution, it will contact the prosecutor, the defence and the police to ask for information to be supplied, usually within 14 days."
"There is no obligation on the private prosecutor to provide anything to the CPS. That being said, failure to provide adequate information may result in the CPS concluding that the case should be taken over and stopped."
Instead AIUI some solicitors were advising clients to plead guilty to false accounting. I'm interested in whether a single solicitor tried to represent their client properly.
LNER Azumas don't pass through Luton, they pass through Stevenage.
Alex Chalk or Clever Jimmy could nudge plod to interview the LOTO under caution. That would be electoral gold dust!
It may be unfair for people to think the then DPP might have had some interest in wrongful prosecutions of the Post Office staff. But politics isn't fair. And it is not as if Starmer has a great body of work that the voters can point to that gives them comfort in his judgment.
People are going to ask "How could this have happened?" Starmer looking at his shoes saying "Nothing to do with me" might be factually correct - but not exactly reassuring.
Isn’t Cooper Paula Vennells MP?
Technology changes. I have my watch set to display a mock analogue display with hands, as its what I had growing up and I like the look of it, but I don't expect my children ever will do that and why should they?
People need to keep up with the times. Its like expecting kids to count with coins for spending money, when transactions are done digitally and few will ever handle cash anymore.
They deserve a shellacking for this alone.
at the time I was DPP the Post Office had the right in England to prosecute people directly. I will be removing that right from them..
They selected from what they had.
Let's be honest there is zero chance she will win this by-election which means they can dump her before the general election is called...
It would be giving Starmer yet another opportunity to eviscerate Sunak on his home ground.
Everything bad that has happened since 2010 is the fault of the last Labour government.