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QUESTIONS THE BUSINESS SELECT COMMITTEE SHOULD BE ASKING – politicalbetting.com
QUESTIONS THE BUSINESS SELECT COMMITTEE SHOULD BE ASKING – politicalbetting.com
Please ask whether they are also delaying compensation for the victims of contaminated blood for the same reason too? I can think of no other reason for the government’s baffling delays given they have had final compensation recommendations for almost a year already!
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Post Office scandal: Kemi Badenoch hits back at Henry Staunton
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-68330465
Justice Secretary Alex Chalk previously announced criminals may be let off jail because of a lack of space
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/26026128/cocaine-dealing-sentence-reduced-prisons-overcrowding/
Thanks for the header, Ms @Cyclefree .
I'm just picking up a detail from Trump pieces: he has another $99m of interest to pay on top of his $355 million of disgorgement and other bits.
He has been hit with an enormous financial penalty of $355m (£282m; €329m) - which jumps to more than $450m once interest is included - that far exceeds how much cash he has to hand. His business will continue to be be watched by an independent monitor, with a separate independent director of compliance also signing off on major business decisions.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-68323086
Apologies if that has been noted - I've had a very chopped around day.
That makes this one $453,500,000 ish.
Plus $88m for defamation.
Plus around $10m for Trumpites Jr.
Makes it as near as dammit my original $550m punt, in toto.
But I can only claim 1.5 cheers because I said that would be a number for just the Civil Fraud case.
The newly elected Member of Parliament for Kingswood, Damien Egan, has been offered enhanced security protection because protesters have made threats against him and his Israeli husband.
https://www.thejc.com/news/uk/labour-mp-damien-egan-offered-extra-security-sunl688c
That didn't take long.
This is not normal, and will induce further climate feedbacks.
February on course to break unprecedented number of heat records
Rapid ocean warming and unusually hot winter days recorded as human-made global heating combines with El Niño
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/feb/17/february-on-course-to-break-unprecedented-number-of-heat-records
...Ocean surface heat continues to astonish seasoned observers and raises the prospect of intense storms later in the year. The hurricane specialist Michael Lowry tweeted that sea surface temperatures across the Atlantic main development region, where most of the US category 3 or stronger hurricanes form, “are as warm today in mid-February as they typically are in middle July. Incredible.”
Global sea surface temperatures are in “uncharted territory” according to Hirschi, who expects March to break last August’s record by 0.1C to 0.2C. March is typically the hottest time of the year for oceans because it is late summer in the southern hemisphere, which is home to most of the world’s great seas...
Accounting firm BDO also warns of future impact of fraudsters using artificial intelligence to rip off customers
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2024/feb/19/amount-of-in-uk-more-than-doubled-to-23bn-in-2023-report-finds
...BDO said the true overall level of fraud was likely to be significantly higher than £2.3bn because statistics from the Crime Survey for England and Wales had revealed that fewer than one in seven offences are reported to the police...
What a state we’re in.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/02/18/trans-womens-milk-as-good-as-breast-milk-says-nhs-trust/
🤔
Groundbreaking research found the medication cut or even eliminated cravings in people formerly hooked on powerful opioids
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/02/19/weight-loss-jabs-wegovy-better-rehab-addicts/ (£££)
Good news from an American study of Fentanyl addicts.
Staunton is a perfect example of…. Yes, that.
It is of interest to see the mechanism of how it works.
1) keep changing the people supposedly in charge
2) make sure they are incurious about the supposed role (not reading a 200 page report? If I can be bothered…)
3) they take their instructions from permanent officials.
4) the permanent officials are not making policy, but they play a role in the game of Telephone that keeps the underlying, unofficial policies going.
1. Wrongdoers who come clean are entitled to some credit for doing so - as out courts recognise.
2. Henry Stanton does not seem to have come clean. Though he has given us a peek behind the official veil.
Bring it on,
In his mind, very probably, he is cooperating as much as he can. Actually naming people, providing documents etc would be “letting the side down”. Someone who did that would cease to be a “safe pair of hands” and wouldn’t be considered to future gigs.
This is how the non-exec system works. As a method of *losing* responsibility. After all, didn’t the judge in the Kids Company case say that it would be unfair to assign legal liability to the legally liable? Because otherwise people might not do the job?
A former SNP official who was backed to be an MSP by Humza Yousaf has defected to Labour and says he no longer believes in Scottish independence.
Doug Thomson, a businessman, has swapped parties after 14 years as a card-carrying nationalist. He said he had become disillusioned with the SNP leadership and a lack of policy vision.
Thomson, who is married to Mandy Rhodes, editor of Holyrood magazine, said the “final straw” had been the news that senior figures including Nicola Sturgeon had deleted evidence wanted by the UK Covid inquiry.
Thomson was formerly a convener of his SNP branch in Edinburgh and was an approved potential parliamentary candidate for Westminster and Holyrood.
He was backed by Yousaf, who said Thomson had the “drive, the commitment, the background and the belief to bring something very special” to the party.
Asked if he still believes in independence, Thomson said: “No, I don’t. And that’s probably something that’s been weakening with me for a period of time and I suspect some of that was maybe during the first ministership of Nicola. We lost so much focus on our core values.”
Thomson, from Edinburgh, is the latest in a series of political figures to ditch the SNP. Last week Karl Rosie, a Highland councillor who was a candidate at the last general election, quit and said he was “deeply troubled” by the party’s policies.
There has been a particular shift towards Labour since Anas Sarwar, the party leader, put greater focus on economic growth and relationships with businesses.
Benny Higgins, the former chief executive of Tesco Bank who also advised Sturgeon when she was in office, last week wrote in The Times that it “made sense” for businesses to back Labour.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/snp-loses-top-talent-as-former-candidate-doug-thomson-joins-labour-3mzl7dkx9
Instead, actual people, who fucked up, need to lose their jobs for gross incompetence.
Maneuver 1 complete ✅
The Curie engine has successfully completed a perigee lowering burn as planned.
It's the first of four Curie burns in the coming days to bring the Winnebago-1 spacecraft home for @VardaSpace
https://twitter.com/RocketLab/status/1759477437531091033
Joe Biden: “Having 81 years behind you is better than having 91 criminal charges ahead of you.” 🔥
https://twitter.com/TheFungi669/status/1759290712284348763
The government would then have to respond within a period - say, a couple of months - to say what their response is to each issue and proposal. For ones they accept, they would have to give an implementation timetable. The original inquiry team would be responsible for checking on the progress towards implementation.
It creates extra bureaucracy, but would help prevent reports being kicked into the long grass and forgotten.
Furthermore he can be interviewed about his relationship with the Business Secretary in the Select Committee, where he is obliged to answer fully regardless of NDAs and has no incentive to hold back.
Keep clapping and banging those pots and pans.
IIRC this was tried under Thatcher a couple of times - not naming people but other no-towing-the-line. She responded by re-appointing the Ministers in question.
There are alot of people and companies making alot of money out of weight loss and weight issues. They won't go down without a fight.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Pournelle#Pournelle's_laws
It is, of course entirely possible, indeed likely, that the government, as shareholders, were more than content with the POs lack of candour and evasion as they did not want to be writing large cheques. It also appears as if the various Ministers, starting but by no means ending with Davey, were deliberately incurious for solid financial reasons.
It is the job of a non executive Chairman to protect the integrity and good reputation of the business. That means addressing grossly immoral, indeed illegal, behaviour being carried out by the business. Staunton completely failed in his task. He deserved the sack and a new broom was needed. Sadly, the new broom looks suspiciously like the old broom.
Interesting topic though, to what extent hormones can induce production of something that can replicate breast milk.
I do not think she is ready for the role. I do think some of her opponents fear her as a leader. Just see some of the puerile and childish retorts aimed at her.
How she handles this has the potential to set her future career in politics either way.
The whole Post Office scandal crosses all parties, the Tories are left holding the baby. They need to resolve this and pay compensation, as they do with the contaminated blood scandal.
I saw Pat McFadden interviewed on Kuenssberg a week or so ago and asked about this when he was minister. He handled the questionning well. Certainly compared to the inept way Ed Davey responded to questions.
The new broom was purchased from the same rack, in the same shop, as the old. Strangely it resembles the old broom. We need a judge led enquiry over 2 decades to figure out why, perhaps?
The more complicated part of the story, as is mentioned in the BBC piece about Badenoch, is that in a lot of cases Horizon was not the only evidence against many of the Post Office managers. There is, frankly, an inevitability that a complete exoneration of the PO managers will create another injustice in that a largish number of them will indeed have been guilty. But that is still better than the alternative where the innocent remain tarnished with unsafe convictions.
Three scenarios:
Staunton is right
Badenoch is right
Neither are right
On the balance of probabilities, the lying Tory minister is lying.
Remember that Paula Vennells was a Church of England Minister destined for great things (supposedly a senior Bishop). Either she was beyond incompetent or knowingly sent innocent people to jail while bankrupting them.
Oh come on. Where is the evidence for this statement?
Badenoch is in the clear!
Not advising this as a slogan for the aforementioned NHS trust.
There's little utility in doling out punishments to so many, and the inquiry will have a job building a strong enough case against just one or two people. Vennells is the person most obviously in the frame, having been in charge when the most egregious decisions were taken; she will have the opportunity to muddy the water by implicating others, should she go down that route, but that's a dangerous path. Those that have appeared so far have opted for a mix of history re-writing and selective amnesia, whenever the cross-examination got particularly pointed.
I'd expect, probably in 2026, a long list of lessons to learn and some organisational punishments like curbing the powers of private prosecution. And a focus on resolving the compensation - under-commented in relation to this weekend's story about the government wanting to go slow on compensation for financial reasons is that it wouldn't help the politics to have the compensation finally resolved before the inquiry concludes, since getting that done afterwards will be needed as the crutch to which politicians will want to cling.
I'm yet to be convinced that, if you remove Badenoch's immaturity, there's much left at all. Her entire appeal seems to be the studs first culture warrior thing.
1. The PO had long used delays and obfuscation
2. Staunton does have an interest on blaming the government for delays that are now the subject of wider public outrage
3. Nonetheless, before said public outrage, officials, whether under ministerial direction or not, also wanted to delay, not understanding that the Post Office scandal would become the kind of cause that cuts through hugely
4. Badenoch has created a problem for herself by going in all guns blazing when Staunton's account maybe true - just not the entire one that obviously paints himself in the best possible light
It would not be the first time a whistleblower is not without blame themselves but outs others as guilty too.
Horizon was supposed to improve the accounting systems and make it easier to prove fraud. And it may well have done that, as well as creating a whole series of new, completely false, "frauds" through glitches in the system. An increase in prosecutions after the introduction of Horizon will initially have been taken as proof it worked rather than any problem.
Thirst the worst
Breast the best
Third the milk from the hairy chest
It may well be that both central accusations- Staunton needed to be removed from the board for being rubbish and the government wants to rook subpostmasters by delaying their compensation- are broadly true.
But if this descends into mud throwing, one of the throwers has a lot more to lose than the other.
Yes there is.
Someone published a paper, proving that after they shot Admiral Byng, performance in the Royal Navy jumped.
Seriously, that is exactly the argument that is used to do nothing.
Let’s ruin a lot of people
It was all someone’s fault. Not his.
That’s not whistle blowing. That’s just sloped shoulders.
From the House of Commons research briefing:-
The Bill would implement most of the proposals from the reviews. In particular it would:
- Introduce a new, lighter-touch regime for the retention and examination of bulk personal datasets where there is a low or no expectation of privacy in the data
- Create an additional condition, allowing authorities to access internet connection records in order to identify individuals accessing specific internet sites and services where necessary to address serious crime or to protect national security
- Create a new requirement for telecommunications operators to notify the Government of proposed changes to products or services which could impede intelligence services in lawfully accessing data
It would extend to the whole of the UK.https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-9960/
Essential to protect the children and find out who has been saying nasty things about the Prime Minister on PB.
I'll sail this ship alone amongst the, the sharks and the treasure
If you would rather go your way then go your way
I'll sail this ship alone
Just about covers it.
This kind of feels like SCOTUS post Dobbs when people turned up to protest at their houses and they started getting their knickers in a twist. Peaceful protesters (and I do want to highlight peaceful here before people claim I am defending death threats or whatever) protesting your actions when you have significant power over others is fair.
TBF to Byng, he was trying to follow his orders and the rule book! Not his fault if they were contradictory with what he was supposed to be doing.
Mr. Topping, I must disagree. Protesting at politicians' homes is unreasonable and will only deter even more people from aspiring to office.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/02/air-canada-must-honor-refund-policy-invented-by-airlines-chatbot/
PBers who claimed their economy would collapse in days when the West imposed sanctions, please explain.
February so far is 4.6C above average on the Central England Temperature and likely to go higher before the chill winds fortunately bring it down again from the end of this week onwards, heralding a cold March (and long may that continue as I'm going skiing over Easter).
The CET daily mean temperature on the 15th was 13.7C, far and away the highest 24 hour mean ever recorded in February as well as being the highest on record for any winter month, and a level we didn't reach last year until May.