It's not up to CCHQ though because the decision is Sunak's
Only until the men in grey suits come a calling...
Then what? Can they find a suicide bomber who can beat Big Rish in a leadership contents AND is prepared to be PM just for the duration of a disastrous election campaign?
The only excusable way for the Tories to change leader again, and for that leader to have any legitimacy, is to find a way of getting Boris back, then begging him to take it
Meanwhile thanks @StillWaters for the link to the taxpolicy.org article.
Crystal clear. Did she make the nomination. Does any married couple make such a nomination? Married couples let's hear from you. The planet would forgive her, just, as she is an MP who makes the rules (sound familiar?) if she wasn't aware of a line in the tax code about married couples making nominations when there are two properties in the family.
Are you making a correlation between Rayner's ignorance of rules surrounding right to buy, and someone who made rules of social distancing, believing he remained within those rules when he was photographed in a confined space with many other people all wearing party hats, and with glasses of Champagne in hand?
I am making a "correlation" between politicians being given less slack for breaches of the rules they preside over.
I don't know the ins and out of Rayner's case, and far be it from me to defend her, but your allusion that the confusion is on a par with Partygate is nonsense.
You would think that...
As would anyone with a functional brain.
The two cases are chalk and cheese (and wine).
I am comfortable to give Sunak a free pass over Cakegate, he was ambushed, but Johnson innocently not knowing the rules, give me a break!.
Let's just look at partygate another way, shall we? A group of people being forced to make life-and-death decisions, often with no clear obvious answers, and having those decisions dissected in real time by both real and self-professed experts. A PM who nearly died of the disease. On a few occasions they let their hair down a little from the enormous stress in a relatively safe manner.
As did many other people with similar and far less excuse. The pressures within government at the time must have been hideous.
It was wrong, but not the massive travesty so many people paint it out to be.
And as I've said passim, currygate was worse. (And no, I don't trust the police on this - not after plebgate)
Currygate was not worse. If you don't want to trust the police, how about an experienced lawyer, perhaps even a former DPP, who was so confident that he pledged to resign if charged, knowing that he could not be.
On Partygate, even if we accept your judgement that there were mitigating pressures, what Boris should have done is draw a line under the affair by separating himself from the weekly wine o'clock boozers, apologising on their behalf, and ensuring there would be no repeats. What Boris actually did, if we are generous, and we saw a similar pattern with various other scandals that combined to bring him down, was issue a blanket denial in brazen disregard of the known facts, and repeat it under questioning by an experienced lawyer (see above) at PMQs.
If Boris had first troubled to establish the facts about the parties, and about Pincher, Paterson and so on, he might not have painted himself into a corner each time. We cannot be sure but that is a plausible basis for an alternative timeline where Boris is still Prime Minister.
Epidemiolocally, currygate was far worse. Getting people to travel from all around the country, meet lots of the public, then get together for a piss-up was a hideous idea. Especially when compared to people who mostly worked together in No. 10 and 11 getting together in the garden.
And no, I don't trust the police on these matters, given their track record. And your argument about SKS is poor - he did not *know* he could not be charged - unless you're claiming he knew what the police would say? There was far more risk of virus spread from currygate than the no.10 party.
Yes, Johnson was a victim of his own character flaws - I've gone on enough about that. I have zero compassion for him over Pincher, Patterson etc. But on partygate... yes, I do have some sympathy, especially given his own personal ordeal months earlier.
Starmer is a lawyer. He knew the law. That's what he does for a living. He works with the rules to his advantage. It is how he sidelined Labour's left and ousted Boris Johnson. Currygate was legal under the rules at the time. Starmer knew that, which is why he could pledge to resign. He knew there was no legal basis for any charge. You substituting your own view of what the rules should have been as opposed to what they were gets us, and Boris, nowhere.
Meanwhile thanks @StillWaters for the link to the taxpolicy.org article.
Crystal clear. Did she make the nomination. Does any married couple make such a nomination? Married couples let's hear from you. The planet would forgive her, just, as she is an MP who makes the rules (sound familiar?) if she wasn't aware of a line in the tax code about married couples making nominations when there are two properties in the family.
Are you making a correlation between Rayner's ignorance of rules surrounding right to buy, and someone who made rules of social distancing, believing he remained within those rules when he was photographed in a confined space with many other people all wearing party hats, and with glasses of Champagne in hand?
Certainly I wasn't aware of any such requirement, and I was in the same position for a few years for the same reason (although a few years earlier, and it may have changed in between).
And also in my case I wasn't liable for any CGT because I had bought it as my principal residence and lived in it for a sufficient length of time that liability for CGT only just kicked in (and there wasn't any due).
Angela Rayner is - checks wiki - shadow housing minister. Whatever she knew at the time, when she wasn't an MP, is one thing. Making a full and frank declaration now of what happened should be the bare minimum now she is responsible for the whole sector.
When I read the details originally, based on my own experience, it didn't look like there would be any liability as allowances and timings were quite generous provided you did actually buy the house to live in and lived in it for a significant period of time. It's not like it was a £1m mansion with a massive gain. In my case I only lived in my flat for about 3 years out of 9, but (from memory) CGT only became due in the final year, and the rise in value liable was within the personal allowance.
Perhaps she should give details, and I'm not a Labour supporter and don't have an axe to grind particularly here. But if you asked me to explain my circumstances with my flat 20 years ago or so, including workings, I couldn't now tell you. I wouldn't have been able to tell you 10 years ago either. But I did them at the time and no tax was due. So if she is like me (and I'm anally retentive and organised, being a good Project Manager, and no longer have the records) then she probably can't.
Oh yes it appears to be fearsomely complicated. But she is shadow SoS for housing and it is her brief. She is responsible in opposition for the sector.
So she blimmin' well should know.
But she doesn't necessarily need to know the rules from 10+ years ago, and nor is she legally required to retain records from that long ago either. I suspect she can't come clean enough to satisfy you, because she simply doesn't have the details any more. As I wouldn't if I had decided to become a prominent politician and somebody was now quizzing me on my historic tax affairs. Anything more than 7 years ago - sorry, I can't tell you, it's been shredded.
Interesting. I disagree and there continue to be questions so as that taxpolicy.org article makes clear, there are certain criteria that could have been adopted then and I think it would be sensible for her to make a statement explaining what her understanding of them was. All those years ago. There is not necessarily a statute of limitations on tax payments (ie suspected fraud) and HMRC can look back 20 years.
And here the parallel with partygate is meaningful. All experts seem to agree that this part of the tax code is extraordinarily complicated. It does no harm for politicians to understand what the rest of us have to go through as a result of the laws they make or preside over.
Ah well - fair enough, it's not a big deal for me either way. I agree it would be best if she could give full details, I merely suggest they may be valid reasons why she can't. Anyway, I'd better get back to work, thanks for the discussion.
Hoisted with his own petard. This is what the crackdown on extremist language looks like.
It was OBVIOUS that something like this was going to happen after Sunak's speech in Downing Street. The only surprise is that such a perfect example cropped up so soon.
I'm starting to wonder whether this is a grand conspiracy between Hester and Sunak's political opponents. It's too perfect.
Off topic, and not particularly heartwarming, apologies.
I spent Wednesday at the funeral of one of my students killed in a knife attack, and yesterday trying to pick up the pieces psychologically amongst the student’s close friends who are dealing with the trauma whilst preparing to sit their GCSEs in a couple of months.
The student’s death itself was tragic and perhaps not preventable regardless of the support that might have been in place in previous years.
But two things stand out for me within the education system:
1. There is almost nothing left outside the school gates and the home that might provide an anchor to young people struggling to navigate their teenage years. In my Year 11 class alone I could probably list a third of the students who badly need mental health support, or a youth worker, or a kick up the backside, or a positive role model etc etc (mostly the first tbh). Probably a handful are at risk of the same fate of the student we commemorated on Weds. We know this in school but are powerless to do anything (more) about it.
I can recognise that local services are never perfect, but those who currently advocate lowering taxes bear direct responsibility for the decimation of support for young people at a local level, which increase the risk of tragedies like this.
2. The toll that is being placed on teachers and school leaders who have to operate in an environment I’ve just described is not sustainable. Both I and my boss on our senior leadership team shed tears of frustration yesterday as we discussed what more we can do to prevent a similar tragedy, and admitted to feeling a deep sense of futility and powerlessness. My boss is probably the strongest, most principled and most uncompromising school leader I have ever met. To hear her admit that she feels powerless to change things is shocking and depressing.
Again, I can recognise that more money won’t solve all the ills for young people at the moment, and can also recognise that education rightly wouldn’t be top priority for any spare funding at present.
But again, those advocating for a lower tax take bear direct responsibility for the sorts of decisions that are being made within schools that mean students are left to fend for themselves, with whatever imperfect support is available from home.
Lastly, I’m clear-eyed enough to see that education (and LA) funding will get worse rather than better in the next decade. On a personal level I’m left wondering whether, for my own self- preservation, I need to admit defeat and get out of the system.
Sorry for a long and fairly depressing post - this is more of a lament and part of my own grieving than anything else. Apologies for any self indulgence herein.
The only quibble I have with your excellent post is the idea that anyone advocating for lower tax bear some responsibility for your lack of funding.
It would be possible to cut taxes while diverting a much larger proportion of government spending towards younger people for a net positive effect. Just look at how health and social care spending (both more likely to be used by older people) has increased much faster than demographic change, even while spending on education has fallen.
Local Authority funding is one issue that no political party, north or south of the border, wants to address. It's where most of the cuts have fallen and I reckon a direct reason why central government spending is now coming under such pressure.
Thanks. And yes good point, and it was heartening to hear on the Private Eye podcast yesterday that the doctor who writes for them about the NHS was advocating for money to be diverted from health towards education (best bang of your buck in terms of prevention).
Part of the issue as well is down to the checks that have to be done for safeguarding, when I was younger for example I used to volunteer and help run a youth club organised by the local methodists. Would I do it now? Not a chance because it has now gone from a simple request asking if I would help to which the answer is yes....to fill out this form wait weeks while someone rifles through your life etc. It just isn't something I feel strongly enough to jump through the hoops for.
The same issue has caused many clubs that had junior sections to close them. People don't want to jump through the hoops of getting vetted and the clubs don't want to do all the work of appointing a safe guarding officer etc.
This alone has caused a drop in whats available to youths.
I'm surprised by this, I got an enhanced DBS check to do voluntary work with children and it was quick and completely painless.
I had to have one for a job it wasn't quick certainly. However having one to volunteer not going to bother. For many people its just the idea of having your life raked over to qualify when all they are trying to do is put back something. A lot of people also believe it is overkill.
The club i volunteered at all I was doing was setting up equipement like table tennis tables and breaking them down and clearing up at the end of the session as well as being present and defusing squabbles between the kids. The club was held in one big room with no hidden corners and a minimum of 3 adults present. Potential for abuse as close to zero as can be. Sheer beauracratic overkill
It's not up to CCHQ though because the decision is Sunak's
Only until the men in grey suits come a calling...
Then what? Can they find a suicide bomber who can beat Big Rish in a leadership contents AND is prepared to be PM just for the duration of a disastrous election campaign?
I suppose there are two reasons someone might do it.
Firstly, there is a decent argument, if that person beats expectations by losing badly but not disastrously, that they should stay on as party leader.
Secondly, if it's a real grey man (or woman) then at least they get their name on the honours board and are forever a former Prime Minister. With the best will in the world, Oliver Dowden or Mel Stride or whoever are not going to be PM in normal circumstances, and are not going to be remembered at all. Sure, it's all with the caveat they were there for less time than someone who was there for less time than a lettuce. But it isn't total ignominy like Truss who had an opportunity and made a pigs ear of it - they would simply have tried their best in the very brief time they had, and lost. Douglas-Home was there for longer but still a pretty short spell - he isn't remembered as an dreadful PM, but merely as a pretty inconsequential one. If he'd not done it, he'd scarcely be remembered at all.
I don't think it'll happen though. Not because someone couldn't be found, but because it would make an awful situation worse - yet more instability, chaos, and frankly self-indulgence.
Off topic, and not particularly heartwarming, apologies.
I spent Wednesday at the funeral of one of my students killed in a knife attack, and yesterday trying to pick up the pieces psychologically amongst the student’s close friends who are dealing with the trauma whilst preparing to sit their GCSEs in a couple of months.
The student’s death itself was tragic and perhaps not preventable regardless of the support that might have been in place in previous years.
But two things stand out for me within the education system:
1. There is almost nothing left outside the school gates and the home that might provide an anchor to young people struggling to navigate their teenage years. In my Year 11 class alone I could probably list a third of the students who badly need mental health support, or a youth worker, or a kick up the backside, or a positive role model etc etc (mostly the first tbh). Probably a handful are at risk of the same fate of the student we commemorated on Weds. We know this in school but are powerless to do anything (more) about it.
I can recognise that local services are never perfect, but those who currently advocate lowering taxes bear direct responsibility for the decimation of support for young people at a local level, which increase the risk of tragedies like this.
2. The toll that is being placed on teachers and school leaders who have to operate in an environment I’ve just described is not sustainable. Both I and my boss on our senior leadership team shed tears of frustration yesterday as we discussed what more we can do to prevent a similar tragedy, and admitted to feeling a deep sense of futility and powerlessness. My boss is probably the strongest, most principled and most uncompromising school leader I have ever met. To hear her admit that she feels powerless to change things is shocking and depressing.
Again, I can recognise that more money won’t solve all the ills for young people at the moment, and can also recognise that education rightly wouldn’t be top priority for any spare funding at present.
But again, those advocating for a lower tax take bear direct responsibility for the sorts of decisions that are being made within schools that mean students are left to fend for themselves, with whatever imperfect support is available from home.
Lastly, I’m clear-eyed enough to see that education (and LA) funding will get worse rather than better in the next decade. On a personal level I’m left wondering whether, for my own self- preservation, I need to admit defeat and get out of the system.
Sorry for a long and fairly depressing post - this is more of a lament and part of my own grieving than anything else. Apologies for any self indulgence herein.
Always a tragedy when someone is killed. I'm sure increasing taxes (I think we are already quite highly taxed and no one is talking about raising them further) would be one of several factors in this situation.
Having locked all students down on and off for two years, for example, while likewise not the sole cause of many young peoples' fragile mental health would nevertheless also be a contributory factor I'm sure.
The money to pay for support services, while welcome, is treating the symptom not the cause.
Agreed, as I read back through my post I almost edited the sections about tax take; there are good reasons to argue against taxes at present.
I’m really expressing a deep frustration that we have got into this mess financially - @Stuartinromford and others have it right when he argues that we have been selling off the family silver, so to speak, at least since North Sea oil and probably before then, and as interest rates rise that’s now coming home to roost.
Agreed mental health support etc would be treating symptoms not causes. But better that than nothing.
I mean I yield nothing to the idiocy of Johnson's premiership and the lunacy of Truss's but we have had some pretty bonkers once in a generation exogenous shocks over the past five years. One was of course self-inflicted that would have cut a few percentage points off our wealth and growth but the others really were out of the blue.
Reflecting on Mike’s post yesterday, one of the very best things about this site is the quality of discussion below the line.
This is another good challenge Topping, thanks. If my original post came across as a party political one it wasn’t intended that way. I agree the current government could not have predicted the shocks of the past few years, aside from Brexit and an unfunded Trussterfuck.
Brown deserves some of the blame too for failing to shore up the finances when we were in a more prosperous position.
To add to this: the particular brand of austerity since 2008 was a choice, and left us with invidious choices as eg the pandemic hit.
My real argument, though, is with those who believe that if only the state got out of the way and enabled more growth, these problems would somehow magically recede.
I don’t have solutions, and have deep sympathy for any politicians trying to find solutions. But leaving communities and young people to fend for themselves with bankrupt local authorities is definitely not the answer.
There is a good body of opinion which believes austerity was a mistake and I have a great deal of sympathy for that, while accepting that the UK was spending too much in the years leading up to the GFC.
I suppose the issue is that we the public don't cut our politicians any slack for the attempted management of what scarce resources we now have. Read through each department's literature, their aims, and the costings which would allow them to implement their plans and it is a picture of reasoned sanity. And then I'm sure once the red pen comes out, for it must come out, we are left with a piecemeal, inadequate state of affairs which satisfies almost no one, as we are seeing right now.
Off topic, and not particularly heartwarming, apologies.
I spent Wednesday at the funeral of one of my students killed in a knife attack, and yesterday trying to pick up the pieces psychologically amongst the student’s close friends who are dealing with the trauma whilst preparing to sit their GCSEs in a couple of months.
The student’s death itself was tragic and perhaps not preventable regardless of the support that might have been in place in previous years.
But two things stand out for me within the education system:
1. There is almost nothing left outside the school gates and the home that might provide an anchor to young people struggling to navigate their teenage years. In my Year 11 class alone I could probably list a third of the students who badly need mental health support, or a youth worker, or a kick up the backside, or a positive role model etc etc (mostly the first tbh). Probably a handful are at risk of the same fate of the student we commemorated on Weds. We know this in school but are powerless to do anything (more) about it.
I can recognise that local services are never perfect, but those who currently advocate lowering taxes bear direct responsibility for the decimation of support for young people at a local level, which increase the risk of tragedies like this.
2. The toll that is being placed on teachers and school leaders who have to operate in an environment I’ve just described is not sustainable. Both I and my boss on our senior leadership team shed tears of frustration yesterday as we discussed what more we can do to prevent a similar tragedy, and admitted to feeling a deep sense of futility and powerlessness. My boss is probably the strongest, most principled and most uncompromising school leader I have ever met. To hear her admit that she feels powerless to change things is shocking and depressing.
Again, I can recognise that more money won’t solve all the ills for young people at the moment, and can also recognise that education rightly wouldn’t be top priority for any spare funding at present.
But again, those advocating for a lower tax take bear direct responsibility for the sorts of decisions that are being made within schools that mean students are left to fend for themselves, with whatever imperfect support is available from home.
Lastly, I’m clear-eyed enough to see that education (and LA) funding will get worse rather than better in the next decade. On a personal level I’m left wondering whether, for my own self- preservation, I need to admit defeat and get out of the system.
Sorry for a long and fairly depressing post - this is more of a lament and part of my own grieving than anything else. Apologies for any self indulgence herein.
Always a tragedy when someone is killed. I'm sure increasing taxes (I think we are already quite highly taxed and no one is talking about raising them further) would be one of several factors in this situation.
Having locked all students down on and off for two years, for example, while likewise not the sole cause of many young peoples' fragile mental health would nevertheless also be a contributory factor I'm sure.
The money to pay for support services, while welcome, is treating the symptom not the cause.
Agreed, as I read back through my post I almost edited the sections about tax take; there are good reasons to argue against taxes at present.
I’m really expressing a deep frustration that we have got into this mess financially - @Stuartinromford and others have it right when he argues that we have been selling off the family silver, so to speak, at least since North Sea oil and probably before then, and as interest rates rise that’s now coming home to roost.
Agreed mental health support etc would be treating symptoms not causes. But better that than nothing.
We simply do not - as a society - value our children seriously enough. See the way the government has simply kicked the recommendations of the IICSA Final Report into the long grass, effectively abandoning some of our most vulnerable children.
This is not a new problem. One of mine had serious mental issues and there was no help - none - either for the child or us as a family, though the school did try. This was under the Labour government. I say this not to make a political point but simply to point out that the neglect of mental health services and help for troubled teenagers and their families has been going on a long time.
It was only when matters got to the very worst that finally the bare minimum was done. But had I not paid (huge amounts over many years) for professional help we'd have been mourning our losses at funerals too. It is why I still work - because I have to. I do not begrudge what I did. But for those without those resources what happens to them? The misery they must endure. It pretty much destroyed our family for years and I would not wish what happened onto my worst enemy. That misery and unhappiness and violence and shredded families just go unseen. The loneliness is unbearable.
I know this is not heartwarming either. But I do remember the kindness of teachers and the help they tried to give. So if it is any consolation - and even if you may not realise it at the time - whatever you do will be a help, will mean something.
Great comment, Cyclefree.
Btw, for those who have the time, and might want to make a small difference, there is a chronic shortage of both school governors (Cyclefree is one, I think), and independent visitors for children in care.
Both require serious commitment - but aren't hugely time consuming.
We have reached the stage where the electorate is punishing the tories for not calling the GE when the county needs it. If they wait till autumn or, worse, January, they will get totally slaughtered at the polls - Canada 93. They must understand that they have to cut their losses. Nothing will make it better: not a rwanda flight or half a percent off inflation. Nothing. They simply have to go to the polls now.
Why would they go to the polls now with some polls having them under 20%? On the latest Yougov or PP they are already nearly at Canada 93 anyway.
By the autumn they would hope inflation and immigration are down further and interest rates are further stabilised. The biggest risk of Canada 93 is Farage replacing Tice as Reform leader anyway, not when the election is called
I don't think the tories are going to turn the trend.... go to yougov. Draw a line through the tory numbers since 2022. Extend that trend 6 months into autumn. There is no turning that mega trend. It ain't happening. We are way beyond a rwanda flight and 1 more % off inflation helping. Way beyond that. The electorate is looking at a broken party. Why would you vote for them? You could get a big government big tax one nation in charge. You could get a kamikaze libertarian in charge. You could get a blood and soil ethnonationalist in charge. You'd have no clue what you were suppoting. What you would be voting for for sure was 5 more years of chaos, disorder, bad governance, aimlessness and infighting. Nope, there ain't no coming back with an extra 6 months.... what every tory knows in their heart today is that they should have gone to the polls a year ago.
“ Why would they go to the polls now with some polls having them under 20%? On the latest Yougov or PP they are already nearly at Canada 93 anyway.”
Lots of reasons HY.
In no particular order, because they are all important,
Worse forecasts for later in the year election. Inflation up, energy costs, up, and you can’t do a charity swim of the channel as theres dingys everywhere.
The polls you are quoting being rubbish, the polls I’m looking at being more accurate. The last forced choice poll I looked at 2 weeks ago had the gap at 11 and Con on 31.
And you are making the same mistake as a senior and influential PBer did yesterday, who was as wrong as a step mom without her morning after pills. In the Psephological Physiologus there is this theory of the Lion Election. Don’t see all elections as being the same beast, they have completely different DNA. create an election Hierarchy based on power being handed over with votes to a politician. Because all elections are not empowering with same amount of power,
In a previous thread, as I’m pointing out this hierarchy, for the mistake being made on PB is too much comparing election results and shares without appreciating the hierarchy, a well known and respected PBer replied to me with some bygone Con Euro election share 🤷♀️
When it comes to UK elections there’s really only one beast in town. The Lion.
The only excusable way for the Tories to change leader again, and for that leader to have any legitimacy, is to find a way of getting Boris back, then begging him to take it
That would involve a Tory MP standing down and Boris fighting a by-election. Boris would not win a by-election in any constituency in the UK at the moment.
The only excusable way for the Tories to change leader again, and for that leader to have any legitimacy, is to find a way of getting Boris back, then begging him to take it
That would involve a Tory MP standing down and Boris fighting a by-election. Boris would not win a by-election in any constituency in the UK at the moment.
Yes. Do you not think so? If that’s true, it’s not worth making him leader! But I’d have thought there was somewhere
Meanwhile thanks @StillWaters for the link to the taxpolicy.org article.
Crystal clear. Did she make the nomination. Does any married couple make such a nomination? Married couples let's hear from you. The planet would forgive her, just, as she is an MP who makes the rules (sound familiar?) if she wasn't aware of a line in the tax code about married couples making nominations when there are two properties in the family.
Are you making a correlation between Rayner's ignorance of rules surrounding right to buy, and someone who made rules of social distancing, believing he remained within those rules when he was photographed in a confined space with many other people all wearing party hats, and with glasses of Champagne in hand?
I am making a "correlation" between politicians being given less slack for breaches of the rules they preside over.
I don't know the ins and out of Rayner's case, and far be it from me to defend her, but your allusion that the confusion is on a par with Partygate is nonsense.
You would think that...
As would anyone with a functional brain.
The two cases are chalk and cheese (and wine).
I am comfortable to give Sunak a free pass over Cakegate, he was ambushed, but Johnson innocently not knowing the rules, give me a break!.
Let's just look at partygate another way, shall we? A group of people being forced to make life-and-death decisions, often with no clear obvious answers, and having those decisions dissected in real time by both real and self-professed experts. A PM who nearly died of the disease. On a few occasions they let their hair down a little from the enormous stress in a relatively safe manner.
As did many other people with similar and far less excuse. The pressures within government at the time must have been hideous.
It was wrong, but not the massive travesty so many people paint it out to be.
And as I've said passim, currygate was worse. (And no, I don't trust the police on this - not after plebgate)
There are at least a couple of problems with that.
The first is the, "as did many other people" argument. That is probably so, but many did not. There were lots of people who religiously followed the rules that Johnson himself set. The Queen sitting alone at her husband's funeral is emblematic because it represents the experience of so many. Your line therefore probably has resonance with a lot of people... but it is incredibly aggrievating for many others.
Secondly, your argument was NOT the one Johnson went for. Maybe it would have worked if he had, but he simply chose to lie. That, in a nutshell, is his tragic flaw as a PM and as a man. He will always choose the momentarily convenient lie ahead of the even vaguely discomforting truth. His final downfall over Pincher was a classic case - he could have said, "I knew the stories but gave him another chance, and I clearly shouldn't have." He'd have taken a hit but remained standing. But he lied and sent colleagues out to lie for him.
I agree with the first - and as I said in my post; It was wrong.
And I pretty much agree with your second point. I find myself in the odd position of (slightly) defending Johnson, given I said he was totally unsuited to being PM before he got the job - and for the correct reasons. It is even more odder given that many who supported him then (coz Brexit!) are now vocally critical of him.
But again, I do think everyone in No. 10 were under an immense pressure at the time, quite unlike anything that has probably been seen in this country for eighty years. Given that, I think the 'parties' (*) were understandable, if not forgivable. The levels of stress must have been hellish, especially when you had idiots like Peston shouting questions at you.
Johnson should have gone over events like Pincher, which far better showed the flaws in his character.
(*) What sort of drab affairs people must go to if they class them as 'parties'!
I think your view as to the level of pressure people were under at Number 10 is entirely overblown. It's a busy job, lots going on, unprecedented times, you're working with bellends like Cummings which isn't ideal etc. But the idea of Number 10 being a nerve centre where a selection of SPADs ran the entire country is one they largely put out for themselves.
A lot of the key work and decisions were being taken in other parts of government, and I'm not even going to go into the pressures on hospital staff.
They just didn't think the rules applied to them, because the boss at the time has never thought rules applied to him, and the Head of the Civil Service was (and still is) a nasty little weasel who didn't get to where he is by having a backbone.
Quite agree. My missus worked in central London hospital during the pandemic. It was well known that letting off steam was not allowed.
Her team were redeployed to deal with all sorts of horrid things in the pandemic. One of her admin assistants ended up helping out in the morgue. She ended up getting psychologists in to support the team when the shit was over. At no point would they even socialise in a nearby park. Let alone get ambushed by a cake.
Pity the poor SPADs getting questions from Peston.
Off topic, and not particularly heartwarming, apologies.
I spent Wednesday at the funeral of one of my students killed in a knife attack, and yesterday trying to pick up the pieces psychologically amongst the student’s close friends who are dealing with the trauma whilst preparing to sit their GCSEs in a couple of months.
The student’s death itself was tragic and perhaps not preventable regardless of the support that might have been in place in previous years.
But two things stand out for me within the education system:
1. There is almost nothing left outside the school gates and the home that might provide an anchor to young people struggling to navigate their teenage years. In my Year 11 class alone I could probably list a third of the students who badly need mental health support, or a youth worker, or a kick up the backside, or a positive role model etc etc (mostly the first tbh). Probably a handful are at risk of the same fate of the student we commemorated on Weds. We know this in school but are powerless to do anything (more) about it.
I can recognise that local services are never perfect, but those who currently advocate lowering taxes bear direct responsibility for the decimation of support for young people at a local level, which increase the risk of tragedies like this.
2. The toll that is being placed on teachers and school leaders who have to operate in an environment I’ve just described is not sustainable. Both I and my boss on our senior leadership team shed tears of frustration yesterday as we discussed what more we can do to prevent a similar tragedy, and admitted to feeling a deep sense of futility and powerlessness. My boss is probably the strongest, most principled and most uncompromising school leader I have ever met. To hear her admit that she feels powerless to change things is shocking and depressing.
Again, I can recognise that more money won’t solve all the ills for young people at the moment, and can also recognise that education rightly wouldn’t be top priority for any spare funding at present.
But again, those advocating for a lower tax take bear direct responsibility for the sorts of decisions that are being made within schools that mean students are left to fend for themselves, with whatever imperfect support is available from home.
Lastly, I’m clear-eyed enough to see that education (and LA) funding will get worse rather than better in the next decade. On a personal level I’m left wondering whether, for my own self- preservation, I need to admit defeat and get out of the system.
Sorry for a long and fairly depressing post - this is more of a lament and part of my own grieving than anything else. Apologies for any self indulgence herein.
The only quibble I have with your excellent post is the idea that anyone advocating for lower tax bear some responsibility for your lack of funding.
It would be possible to cut taxes while diverting a much larger proportion of government spending towards younger people for a net positive effect. Just look at how health and social care spending (both more likely to be used by older people) has increased much faster than demographic change, even while spending on education has fallen.
Local Authority funding is one issue that no political party, north or south of the border, wants to address. It's where most of the cuts have fallen and I reckon a direct reason why central government spending is now coming under such pressure.
Thanks. And yes good point, and it was heartening to hear on the Private Eye podcast yesterday that the doctor who writes for them about the NHS was advocating for money to be diverted from health towards education (best bang of your buck in terms of prevention).
Part of the issue as well is down to the checks that have to be done for safeguarding, when I was younger for example I used to volunteer and help run a youth club organised by the local methodists. Would I do it now? Not a chance because it has now gone from a simple request asking if I would help to which the answer is yes....to fill out this form wait weeks while someone rifles through your life etc. It just isn't something I feel strongly enough to jump through the hoops for.
The same issue has caused many clubs that had junior sections to close them. People don't want to jump through the hoops of getting vetted and the clubs don't want to do all the work of appointing a safe guarding officer etc.
This alone has caused a drop in whats available to youths.
I'm surprised by this, I got an enhanced DBS check to do voluntary work with children and it was quick and completely painless.
I had to have one for a job it wasn't quick certainly. However having one to volunteer not going to bother. For many people its just the idea of having your life raked over to qualify when all they are trying to do is put back something. A lot of people also believe it is overkill.
The club i volunteered at all I was doing was setting up equipement like table tennis tables and breaking them down and clearing up at the end of the session as well as being present and defusing squabbles between the kids. The club was held in one big room with no hidden corners and a minimum of 3 adults present. Potential for abuse as close to zero as can be. Sheer beauracratic overkill
It's just a records check and verification of identity - a long way from "having your life raked over". Unless you have some sort of police record, it's just a mild inconvenience.
Further to the SAS Einsatzgruppen discussion yesterday, link to to the DAG piece. Much to my surprise Johnny Mercer is sort of the hero of the tale and not the twattish, attention seeking idiot I had thought. Well, not just the twattish, attention seeking idiot I had thought.
The only excusable way for the Tories to change leader again, and for that leader to have any legitimacy, is to find a way of getting Boris back, then begging him to take it
That would involve a Tory MP standing down and Boris fighting a by-election. Boris would not win a by-election in any constituency in the UK at the moment.
Yes. Do you not think so? If that’s true, it’s not worth making him leader! But I’d have thought there was somewhere
If it happened tomorrow, he’d be up against a man-in-a-white-suit with everyone else withdrawn, and could easily lose a two-horse race in the safest of seats.
Presumably Labour being the incumbent in London accounts for some of this.
I think the Tory strategy in London is to create quite hard wedge issues. They're on the wrong side of the wedge in all cases, and it won't get Hall close, but it will probably save them some GLA seats - they got 31% on the list last time, and may get near to that level again.
That's problematic nationally. Firstly, as you say, it's hard to do as an incumbent - Sunak's problem on small boats (leaving aside whether it's a sensible policy or not) is that even people inclined to agree with him say, "hang on, haven't the Tories been in for a while now?" Secondly, it only makes sense in London due to PR - they may keep some constituency seats but it's mainly about gunning for list seats.
The only excusable way for the Tories to change leader again, and for that leader to have any legitimacy, is to find a way of getting Boris back, then begging him to take it
That would involve a Tory MP standing down and Boris fighting a by-election. Boris would not win a by-election in any constituency in the UK at the moment.
Yes. Do you not think so? If that’s true, it’s not worth making him leader! But I’d have thought there was somewhere
If Boris stood in a byelection the opposition vote would unite behind whichever party was best placed to beat him. And he would be crushed - he has a small band of loyalists but the vast majority of people have a negative view.
Presumably Labour being the incumbent in London accounts for some of this.
I think the Tory strategy in London is to create quite hard wedge issues. They're on the wrong side of the wedge in all cases, and it won't get Hall close, but it will probably save them some GLA seats - they got 31% on the list last time, and may get near to that level again.
That's problematic nationally. Firstly, as you say, it's hard to do as an incumbent - Sunak's problem on small boats (leaving aside whether it's a sensible policy or not) is that even people inclined to agree with him say, "hang on, haven't the Tories been in for a while now?" Secondly, it only makes sense in London due to PR - they may keep some constituency seats but it's mainly about gunning for list seats.
It wasn't a bad strategy at all this time around imho, but for the big prize it was dependent on Corbyn standing too. Then Hall had a chance of winning with 25-30% of the vote.
Earlier in the year I think that was their best chance of winning, absent finding a high profile, non politician willing to stand for them.
Yesterdays local by elections. Truly appalling for the Conservatives, let us leave it at that, do not want to publish their vote fall it is too embarrassing.
Presumably Labour being the incumbent in London accounts for some of this.
I think the Tory strategy in London is to create quite hard wedge issues. They're on the wrong side of the wedge in all cases, and it won't get Hall close, but it will probably save them some GLA seats - they got 31% on the list last time, and may get near to that level again.
That's problematic nationally. Firstly, as you say, it's hard to do as an incumbent - Sunak's problem on small boats (leaving aside whether it's a sensible policy or not) is that even people inclined to agree with him say, "hang on, haven't the Tories been in for a while now?" Secondly, it only makes sense in London due to PR - they may keep some constituency seats but it's mainly about gunning for list seats.
It wasn't a bad strategy at all this time around imho, but for the big prize it was dependent on Corbyn standing too. Then Hall had a chance of winning with 25-30% of the vote.
Earlier in the year I think that was their best chance of winning, absent finding a high profile, non politician willing to stand for them.
Yes, they needed to find another Andy Street, a businessman with a high profile in the city. Someone like Charlie Mullins who everyone knows. (Although Mullins is now 70, and fell out with the Tories over something-or-other restricting his supply of Polish plumbers).
The only excusable way for the Tories to change leader again, and for that leader to have any legitimacy, is to find a way of getting Boris back, then begging him to take it
That would involve a Tory MP standing down and Boris fighting a by-election. Boris would not win a by-election in any constituency in the UK at the moment.
Yes. Do you not think so? If that’s true, it’s not worth making him leader! But I’d have thought there was somewhere
If Boris stood in a byelection the opposition vote would unite behind whichever party was best placed to beat him. And he would be crushed - he has a small band of loyalists but the vast majority of people have a negative view.
As Mr Sandpit posted upthread it'd be Boris vs a 'Man in a White Suit'. Boris would lose and the Tories would have lost a safe sear ..... Patel, Williamson..... for nothing.
The only excusable way for the Tories to change leader again, and for that leader to have any legitimacy, is to find a way of getting Boris back, then begging him to take it
That would involve a Tory MP standing down and Boris fighting a by-election. Boris would not win a by-election in any constituency in the UK at the moment.
Yes. Do you not think so? If that’s true, it’s not worth making him leader! But I’d have thought there was somewhere
I agree with those saying he'd not win a by-election anywhere at the moment.
The one route, though, would be to make him party leader and "PM designate" with an immediate general election. He'd have a reasonable chance of becoming an MP in a General Election as it's harder for parties to pour resources into a single seat, and turnout is higher so much harder to get the by-election swings which are based on a combination of switching and differential turnout.
It won't happen, though. Far too many Tory MPs are far too opposed to make it in any way credible. It's a fantasy for a certain type of Tory, but nothing more.
The only excusable way for the Tories to change leader again, and for that leader to have any legitimacy, is to find a way of getting Boris back, then begging him to take it
That would involve a Tory MP standing down and Boris fighting a by-election. Boris would not win a by-election in any constituency in the UK at the moment.
Yes. Do you not think so? If that’s true, it’s not worth making him leader! But I’d have thought there was somewhere
Are no banks being robbed in West Yorkshire? Are the facts about Hester even in dispute? Are there any banks still open in West Yorkshire? Will CCHQ give the money back? QTWAIN.
The correct response to this is Northumbria Police to open an investigation into West Yorkshire police for the offence of wasting police time. Followed by a judicial review to investigate whether a police force can be charged for wasting its own time instead of the usual process of wasting other peoples time.
The only excusable way for the Tories to change leader again, and for that leader to have any legitimacy, is to find a way of getting Boris back, then begging him to take it
Or for young, fit Rishi to have a "health episode"...
The only excusable way for the Tories to change leader again, and for that leader to have any legitimacy, is to find a way of getting Boris back, then begging him to take it
That would involve a Tory MP standing down and Boris fighting a by-election. Boris would not win a by-election in any constituency in the UK at the moment.
Yes. Do you not think so? If that’s true, it’s not worth making him leader! But I’d have thought there was somewhere
I agree with those saying he'd not win a by-election anywhere at the moment.
The one route, though, would be to make him party leader and "PM designate" with an immediate general election. He'd have a reasonable chance of becoming an MP in a General Election as it's harder for parties to pour resources into a single seat, and turnout is higher so much harder to get the by-election swings which are based on a combination of switching and differential turnout.
It won't happen, though. Far too many Tory MPs are far too opposed to make it in any way credible. It's a fantasy for a certain type of Tory, but nothing more.
That’s a shame, because he is the only possible PM with any legitimacy, and the choice of people who voted Tory at the next GE
For all the guff about ‘we vote for an MP…’ changing PMs midterm for anything other than health reasons should mean a GE within six months. A party with Truss or Sunak as leader would not have won in 2019, so they had no right to be running the country
Are no banks being robbed in West Yorkshire? Are the facts about Hester even in dispute? Are there any banks still open in West Yorkshire? Will CCHQ give the money back? QTWAIN.
The correct response to this is Northumbria Police to open an investigation into West Yorkshire police for the offence of wasting police time. Followed by a judicial review to investigate whether a police force can be charged for wasting its own time instead of the usual process of wasting other peoples time.
You forgot lessons will be learned trebles all round.
Presumably Labour being the incumbent in London accounts for some of this.
And Hall is benefitting from being a real unknown. The Tories best strategy would be to keep it that way.
I don't think she's that much of an unknown in London. She's a divisive harridan, but that's the strategy (as well as what she is). She's running a campaign based on diesel, crime, and Islamophobia. It isn't a winning formula, but does make RefUK rather irrelevant, and might get a bit of turnout.
Meanwhile thanks @StillWaters for the link to the taxpolicy.org article.
Crystal clear. Did she make the nomination. Does any married couple make such a nomination? Married couples let's hear from you. The planet would forgive her, just, as she is an MP who makes the rules (sound familiar?) if she wasn't aware of a line in the tax code about married couples making nominations when there are two properties in the family.
Are you making a correlation between Rayner's ignorance of rules surrounding right to buy, and someone who made rules of social distancing, believing he remained within those rules when he was photographed in a confined space with many other people all wearing party hats, and with glasses of Champagne in hand?
I am making a "correlation" between politicians being given less slack for breaches of the rules they preside over.
I don't know the ins and out of Rayner's case, and far be it from me to defend her, but your allusion that the confusion is on a par with Partygate is nonsense.
You would think that...
As would anyone with a functional brain.
The two cases are chalk and cheese (and wine).
I am comfortable to give Sunak a free pass over Cakegate, he was ambushed, but Johnson innocently not knowing the rules, give me a break!.
Let's just look at partygate another way, shall we? A group of people being forced to make life-and-death decisions, often with no clear obvious answers, and having those decisions dissected in real time by both real and self-professed experts. A PM who nearly died of the disease. On a few occasions they let their hair down a little from the enormous stress in a relatively safe manner.
As did many other people with similar and far less excuse. The pressures within government at the time must have been hideous.
It was wrong, but not the massive travesty so many people paint it out to be.
And as I've said passim, currygate was worse. (And no, I don't trust the police on this - not after plebgate)
What about those fined 10 grand students who wanted to let their hair down?
Few occasions? There are at least five that we know about and the Met "forgot" to investigate Johnson. On this I do believe Sunak was tucked up. He really was at a work event and got caught up in Mr and Mrs Johnson's cavalier behaviour by accident. Johnson was in the thick of things. Partygate was analogous to Johnson's carefree arrogance. And I don't see Johnson contracting COVID means he could thus "party like it's 1999", while we hunkered down like moles.
The only excusable way for the Tories to change leader again, and for that leader to have any legitimacy, is to find a way of getting Boris back, then begging him to take it
That would involve a Tory MP standing down and Boris fighting a by-election. Boris would not win a by-election in any constituency in the UK at the moment.
Yes. Do you not think so? If that’s true, it’s not worth making him leader! But I’d have thought there was somewhere
I agree with those saying he'd not win a by-election anywhere at the moment.
The one route, though, would be to make him party leader and "PM designate" with an immediate general election. He'd have a reasonable chance of becoming an MP in a General Election as it's harder for parties to pour resources into a single seat, and turnout is higher so much harder to get the by-election swings which are based on a combination of switching and differential turnout.
It won't happen, though. Far too many Tory MPs are far too opposed to make it in any way credible. It's a fantasy for a certain type of Tory, but nothing more.
That’s a shame, because he is the only possible PM with any legitimacy, and the choice of people who voted Tory at the next GE
For all the guff about ‘we vote for an MP…’ changing PMs midterm for anything other than health reasons should mean a GE within six months. A party with Truss or Sunak as leader would not have won in 2019, so they had no right to be running the country
Sorry, “and the choice of people who voted Tory at the last GE”
Are no banks being robbed in West Yorkshire? Are the facts about Hester even in dispute? Are there any banks still open in West Yorkshire? Will CCHQ give the money back? QTWAIN.
The former Bradford & Bingley branch in Bingley is now a pizza shop.
Across the road, the site where their HQ was located is now occupied by a Lidl.
Meanwhile thanks @StillWaters for the link to the taxpolicy.org article.
Crystal clear. Did she make the nomination. Does any married couple make such a nomination? Married couples let's hear from you. The planet would forgive her, just, as she is an MP who makes the rules (sound familiar?) if she wasn't aware of a line in the tax code about married couples making nominations when there are two properties in the family.
Are you making a correlation between Rayner's ignorance of rules surrounding right to buy, and someone who made rules of social distancing, believing he remained within those rules when he was photographed in a confined space with many other people all wearing party hats, and with glasses of Champagne in hand?
I am making a "correlation" between politicians being given less slack for breaches of the rules they preside over.
I don't know the ins and out of Rayner's case, and far be it from me to defend her, but your allusion that the confusion is on a par with Partygate is nonsense.
You would think that...
As would anyone with a functional brain.
The two cases are chalk and cheese (and wine).
I am comfortable to give Sunak a free pass over Cakegate, he was ambushed, but Johnson innocently not knowing the rules, give me a break!.
Let's just look at partygate another way, shall we? A group of people being forced to make life-and-death decisions, often with no clear obvious answers, and having those decisions dissected in real time by both real and self-professed experts. A PM who nearly died of the disease. On a few occasions they let their hair down a little from the enormous stress in a relatively safe manner.
As did many other people with similar and far less excuse. The pressures within government at the time must have been hideous.
It was wrong, but not the massive travesty so many people paint it out to be.
And as I've said passim, currygate was worse. (And no, I don't trust the police on this - not after plebgate)
Currygate was not worse. If you don't want to trust the police, how about an experienced lawyer, perhaps even a former DPP, who was so confident that he pledged to resign if charged, knowing that he could not be.
On Partygate, even if we accept your judgement that there were mitigating pressures, what Boris should have done is draw a line under the affair by separating himself from the weekly wine o'clock boozers, apologising on their behalf, and ensuring there would be no repeats. What Boris actually did, if we are generous, and we saw a similar pattern with various other scandals that combined to bring him down, was issue a blanket denial in brazen disregard of the known facts, and repeat it under questioning by an experienced lawyer (see above) at PMQs.
If Boris had first troubled to establish the facts about the parties, and about Pincher, Paterson and so on, he might not have painted himself into a corner each time. We cannot be sure but that is a plausible basis for an alternative timeline where Boris is still Prime Minister.
Epidemiolocally, currygate was far worse. Getting people to travel from all around the country, meet lots of the public, then get together for a piss-up was a hideous idea. Especially when compared to people who mostly worked together in No. 10 and 11 getting together in the garden.
And no, I don't trust the police on these matters, given their track record. And your argument about SKS is poor - he did not *know* he could not be charged - unless you're claiming he knew what the police would say? There was far more risk of virus spread from currygate than the no.10 party.
Yes, Johnson was a victim of his own character flaws - I've gone on enough about that. I have zero compassion for him over Pincher, Patterson etc. But on partygate... yes, I do have some sympathy, especially given his own personal ordeal months earlier.
Starmer is a lawyer. He knew the law. That's what he does for a living. He works with the rules to his advantage. It is how he sidelined Labour's left and ousted Boris Johnson. Currygate was legal under the rules at the time. Starmer knew that, which is why he could pledge to resign. He knew there was no legal basis for any charge. You substituting your own view of what the rules should have been as opposed to what they were gets us, and Boris, nowhere.
You may not have noticed, but lawyers often disagree on points of law. Indeed, it is how many of them make their money. And it is not as if lawyers never get caught out doing anything illegal...
Off topic, and not particularly heartwarming, apologies.
I spent Wednesday at the funeral of one of my students killed in a knife attack, and yesterday trying to pick up the pieces psychologically amongst the student’s close friends who are dealing with the trauma whilst preparing to sit their GCSEs in a couple of months.
The student’s death itself was tragic and perhaps not preventable regardless of the support that might have been in place in previous years.
But two things stand out for me within the education system:
1. There is almost nothing left outside the school gates and the home that might provide an anchor to young people struggling to navigate their teenage years. In my Year 11 class alone I could probably list a third of the students who badly need mental health support, or a youth worker, or a kick up the backside, or a positive role model etc etc (mostly the first tbh). Probably a handful are at risk of the same fate of the student we commemorated on Weds. We know this in school but are powerless to do anything (more) about it.
I can recognise that local services are never perfect, but those who currently advocate lowering taxes bear direct responsibility for the decimation of support for young people at a local level, which increase the risk of tragedies like this.
2. The toll that is being placed on teachers and school leaders who have to operate in an environment I’ve just described is not sustainable. Both I and my boss on our senior leadership team shed tears of frustration yesterday as we discussed what more we can do to prevent a similar tragedy, and admitted to feeling a deep sense of futility and powerlessness. My boss is probably the strongest, most principled and most uncompromising school leader I have ever met. To hear her admit that she feels powerless to change things is shocking and depressing.
Again, I can recognise that more money won’t solve all the ills for young people at the moment, and can also recognise that education rightly wouldn’t be top priority for any spare funding at present.
But again, those advocating for a lower tax take bear direct responsibility for the sorts of decisions that are being made within schools that mean students are left to fend for themselves, with whatever imperfect support is available from home.
Lastly, I’m clear-eyed enough to see that education (and LA) funding will get worse rather than better in the next decade. On a personal level I’m left wondering whether, for my own self- preservation, I need to admit defeat and get out of the system.
Sorry for a long and fairly depressing post - this is more of a lament and part of my own grieving than anything else. Apologies for any self indulgence herein.
The only quibble I have with your excellent post is the idea that anyone advocating for lower tax bear some responsibility for your lack of funding.
It would be possible to cut taxes while diverting a much larger proportion of government spending towards younger people for a net positive effect. Just look at how health and social care spending (both more likely to be used by older people) has increased much faster than demographic change, even while spending on education has fallen.
Local Authority funding is one issue that no political party, north or south of the border, wants to address. It's where most of the cuts have fallen and I reckon a direct reason why central government spending is now coming under such pressure.
Thanks. And yes good point, and it was heartening to hear on the Private Eye podcast yesterday that the doctor who writes for them about the NHS was advocating for money to be diverted from health towards education (best bang of your buck in terms of prevention).
Part of the issue as well is down to the checks that have to be done for safeguarding, when I was younger for example I used to volunteer and help run a youth club organised by the local methodists. Would I do it now? Not a chance because it has now gone from a simple request asking if I would help to which the answer is yes....to fill out this form wait weeks while someone rifles through your life etc. It just isn't something I feel strongly enough to jump through the hoops for.
The same issue has caused many clubs that had junior sections to close them. People don't want to jump through the hoops of getting vetted and the clubs don't want to do all the work of appointing a safe guarding officer etc.
This alone has caused a drop in whats available to youths.
I'm surprised by this, I got an enhanced DBS check to do voluntary work with children and it was quick and completely painless.
I had to have one for a job it wasn't quick certainly. However having one to volunteer not going to bother. For many people its just the idea of having your life raked over to qualify when all they are trying to do is put back something. A lot of people also believe it is overkill.
The club i volunteered at all I was doing was setting up equipement like table tennis tables and breaking them down and clearing up at the end of the session as well as being present and defusing squabbles between the kids. The club was held in one big room with no hidden corners and a minimum of 3 adults present. Potential for abuse as close to zero as can be. Sheer beauracratic overkill
Whilst I see your point on delays, I think you're being a bit naive about how grooming works.
It's generally not an opportunistic thing in the room. Bob builds a reputation as reliable and good with the kids - and the parents. Bob is always on time, very understanding when the kids have problems at home. Bob gave little Sam a lift home when his Mum's car broke down. But Bob has always had a second game.
Are no banks being robbed in West Yorkshire? Are the facts about Hester even in dispute? Are there any banks still open in West Yorkshire? Will CCHQ give the money back? QTWAIN.
The correct response to this is Northumbria Police to open an investigation into West Yorkshire police for the offence of wasting police time. Followed by a judicial review to investigate whether a police force can be charged for wasting its own time instead of the usual process of wasting other peoples time.
The question is should it be considered lawful to tell a group of people that an MP should be shot.
In this case the MP is a person who gets a huge amount of hatred directed at her by racist wackos, a demographic not known for its lack of intersection with the demographic of violent nutcases.
It seems that since Spencer Perceval's assassination in 1812 the only two MPs who are known to have been murdered for reasons unconnected with Ireland were both killed in the past 8 years.
Meanwhile thanks @StillWaters for the link to the taxpolicy.org article.
Crystal clear. Did she make the nomination. Does any married couple make such a nomination? Married couples let's hear from you. The planet would forgive her, just, as she is an MP who makes the rules (sound familiar?) if she wasn't aware of a line in the tax code about married couples making nominations when there are two properties in the family.
Are you making a correlation between Rayner's ignorance of rules surrounding right to buy, and someone who made rules of social distancing, believing he remained within those rules when he was photographed in a confined space with many other people all wearing party hats, and with glasses of Champagne in hand?
I am making a "correlation" between politicians being given less slack for breaches of the rules they preside over.
I don't know the ins and out of Rayner's case, and far be it from me to defend her, but your allusion that the confusion is on a par with Partygate is nonsense.
You would think that...
As would anyone with a functional brain.
The two cases are chalk and cheese (and wine).
I am comfortable to give Sunak a free pass over Cakegate, he was ambushed, but Johnson innocently not knowing the rules, give me a break!.
Let's just look at partygate another way, shall we? A group of people being forced to make life-and-death decisions, often with no clear obvious answers, and having those decisions dissected in real time by both real and self-professed experts. A PM who nearly died of the disease. On a few occasions they let their hair down a little from the enormous stress in a relatively safe manner.
As did many other people with similar and far less excuse. The pressures within government at the time must have been hideous.
It was wrong, but not the massive travesty so many people paint it out to be.
And as I've said passim, currygate was worse. (And no, I don't trust the police on this - not after plebgate)
What about those fined 10 grand students who wanted to let their hair down?
Few occasions? There are at least five that we know about and the Met "forgot" to investigate Johnson. On this I do believe Sunak was tucked up. He really was at a work event and got caught up in Mr and Mrs Johnson's cavalier behaviour by accident. Johnson was in the thick of things. Partygate was analogous to Johnson's carefree arrogance. And I don't see Johnson contracting COVID means he could thus "party like it's 1999", while we hunkered down like moles.
Currygate? Different time, different rules.
Indeed, several people were very heavily fined, especially proportional to their income, for breaches of the lockdown rules, and after, unless I am much mistaken, pleading guilty. The PM and his associates, often, although not invariably, wealthy people argued the toss for weeks, and then were fined pittances.
It was heart-warming to read the many posts yesterday showing appreciation of OGH and his team. This was no surprise, but I was amazed at the number of comments from Lurkers who had posted seldom, or never before. That's some tribute. To think that in addition to the likes of me droning on publicly there's a small army of silent followers....
Impressive.
They should get themselves commenting. I know it's not for everyone but it all helps to make the site go round.
Vaguely related, I have often thought of two PB thought experiments.
The first is to have us all debating a familiar topic - Brexit, AV, what have you and instead of making our arguments simply use numbers to refer to the points eg Pt 1 = We were always sovereign, etc
The other is for one day (hour?) to have us all argue vehemently the opposite position to our own. @Richard_Tyndall for staying in (now rejoining) the EU, @BartholomewRoberts about the importance of the greenbelt and sanctity of our planning laws and the countryside, etc. Would be vaguely amusing.
Until the thread was sidetracked by a discussion about Transnistrian Cabernet Franc.
I fondly remember the University debating society having the annual ‘argue the other side’ debate. It’s a very good intellectual exercise, to understand what your political opponents think and be able to argue their side.
The year they did womens society vs catholic society, on the subject of abortion, was probably the highlight of three years of attending debates.
Sadly it would never happen now, at least not for in-person debates, because social media clips and a lack of context.
It would certainly be used to attack the careers of those presenting the unfashionable side of the debate.
My father tells me that when doing such philosophical debates in university, some students refuse, and others demand a no recording policy.
I hope they are not training to be lawyers. Because learning how to make your opponent's case as well as possible, even better than them, is essential training.
Perhaps they need to be reminded of Mills' quote: "He who knows only his side of a case knows little of that."
Rozzers investigating Frank Hestor for his Diane Abbott comments.
The rozzers need to have a word with themselves. He's clearly an unpleasant person and what he said about Abbott was offensive, but if that's the criteria for getting the rozzers involved, we're gonna need a bigger police service.
Ahem ..... Scotland and its new Hate Crime Act. Though, oddly, women are not protected by it.
Meanwhile thanks @StillWaters for the link to the taxpolicy.org article.
Crystal clear. Did she make the nomination. Does any married couple make such a nomination? Married couples let's hear from you. The planet would forgive her, just, as she is an MP who makes the rules (sound familiar?) if she wasn't aware of a line in the tax code about married couples making nominations when there are two properties in the family.
Are you making a correlation between Rayner's ignorance of rules surrounding right to buy, and someone who made rules of social distancing, believing he remained within those rules when he was photographed in a confined space with many other people all wearing party hats, and with glasses of Champagne in hand?
I am making a "correlation" between politicians being given less slack for breaches of the rules they preside over.
I don't know the ins and out of Rayner's case, and far be it from me to defend her, but your allusion that the confusion is on a par with Partygate is nonsense.
You would think that...
As would anyone with a functional brain.
The two cases are chalk and cheese (and wine).
I am comfortable to give Sunak a free pass over Cakegate, he was ambushed, but Johnson innocently not knowing the rules, give me a break!.
Let's just look at partygate another way, shall we? A group of people being forced to make life-and-death decisions, often with no clear obvious answers, and having those decisions dissected in real time by both real and self-professed experts. A PM who nearly died of the disease. On a few occasions they let their hair down a little from the enormous stress in a relatively safe manner.
As did many other people with similar and far less excuse. The pressures within government at the time must have been hideous.
It was wrong, but not the massive travesty so many people paint it out to be.
And as I've said passim, currygate was worse. (And no, I don't trust the police on this - not after plebgate)
Currygate was not worse. If you don't want to trust the police, how about an experienced lawyer, perhaps even a former DPP, who was so confident that he pledged to resign if charged, knowing that he could not be.
On Partygate, even if we accept your judgement that there were mitigating pressures, what Boris should have done is draw a line under the affair by separating himself from the weekly wine o'clock boozers, apologising on their behalf, and ensuring there would be no repeats. What Boris actually did, if we are generous, and we saw a similar pattern with various other scandals that combined to bring him down, was issue a blanket denial in brazen disregard of the known facts, and repeat it under questioning by an experienced lawyer (see above) at PMQs.
If Boris had first troubled to establish the facts about the parties, and about Pincher, Paterson and so on, he might not have painted himself into a corner each time. We cannot be sure but that is a plausible basis for an alternative timeline where Boris is still Prime Minister.
Epidemiolocally, currygate was far worse. Getting people to travel from all around the country, meet lots of the public, then get together for a piss-up was a hideous idea. Especially when compared to people who mostly worked together in No. 10 and 11 getting together in the garden.
And no, I don't trust the police on these matters, given their track record. And your argument about SKS is poor - he did not *know* he could not be charged - unless you're claiming he knew what the police would say? There was far more risk of virus spread from currygate than the no.10 party.
Yes, Johnson was a victim of his own character flaws - I've gone on enough about that. I have zero compassion for him over Pincher, Patterson etc. But on partygate... yes, I do have some sympathy, especially given his own personal ordeal months earlier.
Starmer is a lawyer. He knew the law. That's what he does for a living. He works with the rules to his advantage. It is how he sidelined Labour's left and ousted Boris Johnson. Currygate was legal under the rules at the time. Starmer knew that, which is why he could pledge to resign. He knew there was no legal basis for any charge. You substituting your own view of what the rules should have been as opposed to what they were gets us, and Boris, nowhere.
You may not have noticed, but lawyers often disagree on points of law. Indeed, it is how many of them make their money. And it is not as if lawyers never get caught out doing anything illegal...
As defences go, that's a rather poor one.
"As defences go" operating within the law as it was understood at that moment in time is a pretty good defence, I would have thought.
Presumably Labour being the incumbent in London accounts for some of this.
I think the Tory strategy in London is to create quite hard wedge issues. They're on the wrong side of the wedge in all cases, and it won't get Hall close, but it will probably save them some GLA seats - they got 31% on the list last time, and may get near to that level again.
That's problematic nationally. Firstly, as you say, it's hard to do as an incumbent - Sunak's problem on small boats (leaving aside whether it's a sensible policy or not) is that even people inclined to agree with him say, "hang on, haven't the Tories been in for a while now?" Secondly, it only makes sense in London due to PR - they may keep some constituency seats but it's mainly about gunning for list seats.
It wasn't a bad strategy at all this time around imho, but for the big prize it was dependent on Corbyn standing too. Then Hall had a chance of winning with 25-30% of the vote.
Earlier in the year I think that was their best chance of winning, absent finding a high profile, non politician willing to stand for them.
Yes, they needed to find another Andy Street, a businessman with a high profile in the city. Someone like Charlie Mullins who everyone knows. (Although Mullins is now 70, and fell out with the Tories over something-or-other restricting his supply of Polish plumbers).
That's going to be a problem for the Conservative rebuilding.
A lot of the people who, by age, social standing and whatnot really ought to be Conservatives aren't signing up. This week's YouGov had them on 11% with the 25-49 age group. The reason that London Conervatives chose Hall as their candidate was that there wasn't really anyone better available. A SPAD from the Cameron era isn't really any better, just differently wrong.
Based on that chart the biggest threat to Sunak and the Tories is Farage. He has a higher favourability and net positive rating now than Sunak, although Sunak still has a higher favourable rating than Tice if he stays Reform leader. Beyond that getting immigration under control, cutting tax and controlling inflation and interest rate levels are more important for the Tories than who their leader is.
Burnham's higher rating than Starmer makes him still a contender for the Labour leadership at some stage if Starmer wins but proves unpopular in power and if he is back as an MP
It's interesting that Tice's favourable rating is closely correlated with Reform's polling numbers. On that basis, I think I would agree - they could maybe get a percentage or two from going with Farage; however, I suspect that would be a blip (albeit a blip that could last through the next GE) and insufficient to propel reform to the 20%+ they need (along with some vote concentration) to actually win a few seats.
The leader Reform needs to do that probably isn't in this list; but someone who emerges after the next election if they do well enough to stay in touch with a Tory party that does particularly badly.
If Reform got to 20%+ they would certainly win seats
If Reform did win a number of seats AND got a higher national vote share than the CP do you think Reform would try to completely snuff out the CP or do you think a merging of the two parties is more likely?
Meanwhile thanks @StillWaters for the link to the taxpolicy.org article.
Crystal clear. Did she make the nomination. Does any married couple make such a nomination? Married couples let's hear from you. The planet would forgive her, just, as she is an MP who makes the rules (sound familiar?) if she wasn't aware of a line in the tax code about married couples making nominations when there are two properties in the family.
Are you making a correlation between Rayner's ignorance of rules surrounding right to buy, and someone who made rules of social distancing, believing he remained within those rules when he was photographed in a confined space with many other people all wearing party hats, and with glasses of Champagne in hand?
I am making a "correlation" between politicians being given less slack for breaches of the rules they preside over.
I don't know the ins and out of Rayner's case, and far be it from me to defend her, but your allusion that the confusion is on a par with Partygate is nonsense.
You would think that...
As would anyone with a functional brain.
The two cases are chalk and cheese (and wine).
I am comfortable to give Sunak a free pass over Cakegate, he was ambushed, but Johnson innocently not knowing the rules, give me a break!.
Let's just look at partygate another way, shall we? A group of people being forced to make life-and-death decisions, often with no clear obvious answers, and having those decisions dissected in real time by both real and self-professed experts. A PM who nearly died of the disease. On a few occasions they let their hair down a little from the enormous stress in a relatively safe manner.
As did many other people with similar and far less excuse. The pressures within government at the time must have been hideous.
It was wrong, but not the massive travesty so many people paint it out to be.
And as I've said passim, currygate was worse. (And no, I don't trust the police on this - not after plebgate)
You talk of a group of people being forced to make life-and-death decisions. One of the most infamous Partygate events was that on 16 April 2021, which involved two leaving parties, one for James Slack, Boris Johnson's director of communications, and one for a personal photographer to Johnson. Was a personal photographer to Johnson making life-and-death decisions? (If so, that might explain some of the poor decisions the government made!)
Meanwhile, healthcare staff, who were making actual life-and-death decisions on a regular basis, somehow managed to do without multiple cheese and wine parties.
Off topic, and not particularly heartwarming, apologies.
I spent Wednesday at the funeral of one of my students killed in a knife attack, and yesterday trying to pick up the pieces psychologically amongst the student’s close friends who are dealing with the trauma whilst preparing to sit their GCSEs in a couple of months.
The student’s death itself was tragic and perhaps not preventable regardless of the support that might have been in place in previous years.
But two things stand out for me within the education system:
1. There is almost nothing left outside the school gates and the home that might provide an anchor to young people struggling to navigate their teenage years. In my Year 11 class alone I could probably list a third of the students who badly need mental health support, or a youth worker, or a kick up the backside, or a positive role model etc etc (mostly the first tbh). Probably a handful are at risk of the same fate of the student we commemorated on Weds. We know this in school but are powerless to do anything (more) about it.
I can recognise that local services are never perfect, but those who currently advocate lowering taxes bear direct responsibility for the decimation of support for young people at a local level, which increase the risk of tragedies like this.
2. The toll that is being placed on teachers and school leaders who have to operate in an environment I’ve just described is not sustainable. Both I and my boss on our senior leadership team shed tears of frustration yesterday as we discussed what more we can do to prevent a similar tragedy, and admitted to feeling a deep sense of futility and powerlessness. My boss is probably the strongest, most principled and most uncompromising school leader I have ever met. To hear her admit that she feels powerless to change things is shocking and depressing.
Again, I can recognise that more money won’t solve all the ills for young people at the moment, and can also recognise that education rightly wouldn’t be top priority for any spare funding at present.
But again, those advocating for a lower tax take bear direct responsibility for the sorts of decisions that are being made within schools that mean students are left to fend for themselves, with whatever imperfect support is available from home.
Lastly, I’m clear-eyed enough to see that education (and LA) funding will get worse rather than better in the next decade. On a personal level I’m left wondering whether, for my own self- preservation, I need to admit defeat and get out of the system.
Sorry for a long and fairly depressing post - this is more of a lament and part of my own grieving than anything else. Apologies for any self indulgence herein.
The only quibble I have with your excellent post is the idea that anyone advocating for lower tax bear some responsibility for your lack of funding.
It would be possible to cut taxes while diverting a much larger proportion of government spending towards younger people for a net positive effect. Just look at how health and social care spending (both more likely to be used by older people) has increased much faster than demographic change, even while spending on education has fallen.
Local Authority funding is one issue that no political party, north or south of the border, wants to address. It's where most of the cuts have fallen and I reckon a direct reason why central government spending is now coming under such pressure.
Thanks. And yes good point, and it was heartening to hear on the Private Eye podcast yesterday that the doctor who writes for them about the NHS was advocating for money to be diverted from health towards education (best bang of your buck in terms of prevention).
Part of the issue as well is down to the checks that have to be done for safeguarding, when I was younger for example I used to volunteer and help run a youth club organised by the local methodists. Would I do it now? Not a chance because it has now gone from a simple request asking if I would help to which the answer is yes....to fill out this form wait weeks while someone rifles through your life etc. It just isn't something I feel strongly enough to jump through the hoops for.
The same issue has caused many clubs that had junior sections to close them. People don't want to jump through the hoops of getting vetted and the clubs don't want to do all the work of appointing a safe guarding officer etc.
This alone has caused a drop in whats available to youths.
I'm surprised by this, I got an enhanced DBS check to do voluntary work with children and it was quick and completely painless.
I had to have one for a job it wasn't quick certainly. However having one to volunteer not going to bother. For many people its just the idea of having your life raked over to qualify when all they are trying to do is put back something. A lot of people also believe it is overkill.
The club i volunteered at all I was doing was setting up equipement like table tennis tables and breaking them down and clearing up at the end of the session as well as being present and defusing squabbles between the kids. The club was held in one big room with no hidden corners and a minimum of 3 adults present. Potential for abuse as close to zero as can be. Sheer beauracratic overkill
You are being utterly naive about how abusers work. They gravitate to places, where they can get close to children and be trusted. Then .....
Taking drugs after leaving uni is hardly the same thing as taking them "at work" is it? We have this thing called the "weekend".
Yep. And who cares whether he took drugs? After all, alcohol and caffeine are drugs, alcohol one of the most dangerous drugs of all.
Also, WTF is going on with the music in that clip? I could hardly hear the interview @isam
I wasn’t making a judgement on whether he did/didn’t should have/ shouldn’t have taken drugs as a youngster - I did quite a lot, so did everyone I know
I posted it because he wouldn’t answer in the same way politicians never answer, by repeating a phrase constantly each time they are asked, which makes them look like someone out of One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest
I wish he’d said ‘Yes I did, it was a mistake and I’d advise youngsters not to get involved’. By answering the way he did he’s admitting it but wriggling out of responsibility
Khan is also polling better in London than Starmer across the UK. Cox is polling much worse than Reform UK. What is this telling us other than that different parts of the UK are different?
Khan is also polling better in London than Starmer across the UK. Cox is polling much worse than Reform UK. What is this telling us other than that different parts of the UK are different?
There is also no doubt that Ms Hall is polling better in London than my tortoise (decd). But I'm not sure it tells us anything, either.
Taking drugs after leaving uni is hardly the same thing as taking them "at work" is it? We have this thing called the "weekend".
Yep. And who cares whether he took drugs? After all, alcohol and caffeine are drugs, alcohol one of the most dangerous drugs of all.
Also, WTF is going on with the music in that clip? I could hardly hear the interview @isam
I wasn’t making a judgement on whether he did/didn’t should have/ shouldn’t have taken drugs as a youngster - I did quite a lot, so did everyone I know
I posted it because he wouldn’t answer in the same way politicians never answer, by repeating a phrase constantly each time they are asked, which makes them look like someone out of One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest
I wish he’d said ‘Yes I did, it was a mistake and I’d advise youngsters not to get involved’. By answering the way he did he’s admitting it but wriggling out of responsibility
The song was ‘Cocaine’ by Eric Clapton I think
Yeah, I know the song but my point was I could barely hear what Sir Keir and Cole were saying. I wouldn’t mind watching the proper interview without the background noise.
And you are making a huge assumption that Sir Keir believes his drug taking to be a mistake!!
Meanwhile thanks @StillWaters for the link to the taxpolicy.org article.
Crystal clear. Did she make the nomination. Does any married couple make such a nomination? Married couples let's hear from you. The planet would forgive her, just, as she is an MP who makes the rules (sound familiar?) if she wasn't aware of a line in the tax code about married couples making nominations when there are two properties in the family.
Are you making a correlation between Rayner's ignorance of rules surrounding right to buy, and someone who made rules of social distancing, believing he remained within those rules when he was photographed in a confined space with many other people all wearing party hats, and with glasses of Champagne in hand?
I am making a "correlation" between politicians being given less slack for breaches of the rules they preside over.
I don't know the ins and out of Rayner's case, and far be it from me to defend her, but your allusion that the confusion is on a par with Partygate is nonsense.
You would think that...
As would anyone with a functional brain.
The two cases are chalk and cheese (and wine).
I am comfortable to give Sunak a free pass over Cakegate, he was ambushed, but Johnson innocently not knowing the rules, give me a break!.
Let's just look at partygate another way, shall we? A group of people being forced to make life-and-death decisions, often with no clear obvious answers, and having those decisions dissected in real time by both real and self-professed experts. A PM who nearly died of the disease. On a few occasions they let their hair down a little from the enormous stress in a relatively safe manner.
As did many other people with similar and far less excuse. The pressures within government at the time must have been hideous.
It was wrong, but not the massive travesty so many people paint it out to be.
And as I've said passim, currygate was worse. (And no, I don't trust the police on this - not after plebgate)
You talk of a group of people being forced to make life-and-death decisions. One of the most infamous Partygate events was that on 16 April 2021, which involved two leaving parties, one for James Slack, Boris Johnson's director of communications, and one for a personal photographer to Johnson. Was a personal photographer to Johnson making life-and-death decisions? (If so, that might explain some of the poor decisions the government made!)
Meanwhile, healthcare staff, who were making actual life-and-death decisions on a regular basis, somehow managed to do without multiple cheese and wine parties.
The government was trying to make policies that did affect the lives of tens of millions of people, whereas healthcare staff were (rightly) being lauded. Your implication that the government did not make 'actual' life-and-death decisions is hideously crass.
As I said repeatedly at the time: I'm glad I wasn't the one having to make decisions over Covid.
Taking drugs after leaving uni is hardly the same thing as taking them "at work" is it? We have this thing called the "weekend".
Yep. And who cares whether he took drugs? After all, alcohol and caffeine are drugs, alcohol one of the most dangerous drugs of all.
Also, WTF is going on with the music in that clip? I could hardly hear the interview @isam
I wasn’t making a judgement on whether he did/didn’t should have/ shouldn’t have taken drugs as a youngster - I did quite a lot, so did everyone I know
I posted it because he wouldn’t answer in the same way politicians never answer, by repeating a phrase constantly each time they are asked, which makes them look like someone out of One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest
I wish he’d said ‘Yes I did, it was a mistake and I’d advise youngsters not to get involved’. By answering the way he did he’s admitting it but wriggling out of responsibility
Presumably Labour being the incumbent in London accounts for some of this.
I think the Tory strategy in London is to create quite hard wedge issues. They're on the wrong side of the wedge in all cases, and it won't get Hall close, but it will probably save them some GLA seats - they got 31% on the list last time, and may get near to that level again.
That's problematic nationally. Firstly, as you say, it's hard to do as an incumbent - Sunak's problem on small boats (leaving aside whether it's a sensible policy or not) is that even people inclined to agree with him say, "hang on, haven't the Tories been in for a while now?" Secondly, it only makes sense in London due to PR - they may keep some constituency seats but it's mainly about gunning for list seats.
It wasn't a bad strategy at all this time around imho, but for the big prize it was dependent on Corbyn standing too. Then Hall had a chance of winning with 25-30% of the vote.
Earlier in the year I think that was their best chance of winning, absent finding a high profile, non politician willing to stand for them.
It's a fun counterfactual now, but I think Corbyn would have absolutely crashed and burned.
A bunch of the most appalling crusties and half-wits in Labour - a rag-tag bunch of antisemites, Assange-adjacent nutcases and, worst of all, Owen Jones. What would his platform have been? Corbyn has no demonstrable interest in London or a vision for it, and it'd have come down to some gimic of buses and that we have to beat a (Muslim) mayor for the good of Gaza or something.
People compare it with Livingstone just because Ken was Red. But he'd also led the GLC for five years, was Mr London, and Labour were in office while Tories remained unpopular, so it was a good chance for a free swing.
I just don't think Corbyn would've been a factor, and indeed he isn't a fool and that probably contributed to his decision not to bother - he suspects, correctly, it would've been a bit embarrassing.
Khan is also polling better in London than Starmer across the UK. Cox is polling much worse than Reform UK. What is this telling us other than that different parts of the UK are different?
You are comparing Okapi’s with Abyssianian Guinea Pigs (the rosettes are different on the coat). Stop it. It’s silly.
Meanwhile thanks @StillWaters for the link to the taxpolicy.org article.
Crystal clear. Did she make the nomination. Does any married couple make such a nomination? Married couples let's hear from you. The planet would forgive her, just, as she is an MP who makes the rules (sound familiar?) if she wasn't aware of a line in the tax code about married couples making nominations when there are two properties in the family.
Are you making a correlation between Rayner's ignorance of rules surrounding right to buy, and someone who made rules of social distancing, believing he remained within those rules when he was photographed in a confined space with many other people all wearing party hats, and with glasses of Champagne in hand?
I am making a "correlation" between politicians being given less slack for breaches of the rules they preside over.
I don't know the ins and out of Rayner's case, and far be it from me to defend her, but your allusion that the confusion is on a par with Partygate is nonsense.
You would think that...
As would anyone with a functional brain.
The two cases are chalk and cheese (and wine).
I am comfortable to give Sunak a free pass over Cakegate, he was ambushed, but Johnson innocently not knowing the rules, give me a break!.
Let's just look at partygate another way, shall we? A group of people being forced to make life-and-death decisions, often with no clear obvious answers, and having those decisions dissected in real time by both real and self-professed experts. A PM who nearly died of the disease. On a few occasions they let their hair down a little from the enormous stress in a relatively safe manner.
As did many other people with similar and far less excuse. The pressures within government at the time must have been hideous.
It was wrong, but not the massive travesty so many people paint it out to be.
And as I've said passim, currygate was worse. (And no, I don't trust the police on this - not after plebgate)
Currygate was not worse. If you don't want to trust the police, how about an experienced lawyer, perhaps even a former DPP, who was so confident that he pledged to resign if charged, knowing that he could not be.
On Partygate, even if we accept your judgement that there were mitigating pressures, what Boris should have done is draw a line under the affair by separating himself from the weekly wine o'clock boozers, apologising on their behalf, and ensuring there would be no repeats. What Boris actually did, if we are generous, and we saw a similar pattern with various other scandals that combined to bring him down, was issue a blanket denial in brazen disregard of the known facts, and repeat it under questioning by an experienced lawyer (see above) at PMQs.
If Boris had first troubled to establish the facts about the parties, and about Pincher, Paterson and so on, he might not have painted himself into a corner each time. We cannot be sure but that is a plausible basis for an alternative timeline where Boris is still Prime Minister.
Epidemiolocally, currygate was far worse. Getting people to travel from all around the country, meet lots of the public, then get together for a piss-up was a hideous idea. Especially when compared to people who mostly worked together in No. 10 and 11 getting together in the garden.
And no, I don't trust the police on these matters, given their track record. And your argument about SKS is poor - he did not *know* he could not be charged - unless you're claiming he knew what the police would say? There was far more risk of virus spread from currygate than the no.10 party.
Yes, Johnson was a victim of his own character flaws - I've gone on enough about that. I have zero compassion for him over Pincher, Patterson etc. But on partygate... yes, I do have some sympathy, especially given his own personal ordeal months earlier.
Starmer is a lawyer. He knew the law. That's what he does for a living. He works with the rules to his advantage. It is how he sidelined Labour's left and ousted Boris Johnson. Currygate was legal under the rules at the time. Starmer knew that, which is why he could pledge to resign. He knew there was no legal basis for any charge. You substituting your own view of what the rules should have been as opposed to what they were gets us, and Boris, nowhere.
You may not have noticed, but lawyers often disagree on points of law. Indeed, it is how many of them make their money. And it is not as if lawyers never get caught out doing anything illegal...
As defences go, that's a rather poor one.
"As defences go" operating within the law as it was understood at that moment in time is a pretty good defence, I would have thought.
He did not know that, as he said afterwards. Besides, and the point you wilfully neglect - it was a terrible idea from a virus-spreading POV.
Off topic, and not particularly heartwarming, apologies.
I spent Wednesday at the funeral of one of my students killed in a knife attack, and yesterday trying to pick up the pieces psychologically amongst the student’s close friends who are dealing with the trauma whilst preparing to sit their GCSEs in a couple of months.
The student’s death itself was tragic and perhaps not preventable regardless of the support that might have been in place in previous years.
But two things stand out for me within the education system:
1. There is almost nothing left outside the school gates and the home that might provide an anchor to young people struggling to navigate their teenage years. In my Year 11 class alone I could probably list a third of the students who badly need mental health support, or a youth worker, or a kick up the backside, or a positive role model etc etc (mostly the first tbh). Probably a handful are at risk of the same fate of the student we commemorated on Weds. We know this in school but are powerless to do anything (more) about it.
I can recognise that local services are never perfect, but those who currently advocate lowering taxes bear direct responsibility for the decimation of support for young people at a local level, which increase the risk of tragedies like this.
2. The toll that is being placed on teachers and school leaders who have to operate in an environment I’ve just described is not sustainable. Both I and my boss on our senior leadership team shed tears of frustration yesterday as we discussed what more we can do to prevent a similar tragedy, and admitted to feeling a deep sense of futility and powerlessness. My boss is probably the strongest, most principled and most uncompromising school leader I have ever met. To hear her admit that she feels powerless to change things is shocking and depressing.
Again, I can recognise that more money won’t solve all the ills for young people at the moment, and can also recognise that education rightly wouldn’t be top priority for any spare funding at present.
But again, those advocating for a lower tax take bear direct responsibility for the sorts of decisions that are being made within schools that mean students are left to fend for themselves, with whatever imperfect support is available from home.
Lastly, I’m clear-eyed enough to see that education (and LA) funding will get worse rather than better in the next decade. On a personal level I’m left wondering whether, for my own self- preservation, I need to admit defeat and get out of the system.
Sorry for a long and fairly depressing post - this is more of a lament and part of my own grieving than anything else. Apologies for any self indulgence herein.
Always a tragedy when someone is killed. I'm sure increasing taxes (I think we are already quite highly taxed and no one is talking about raising them further) would be one of several factors in this situation.
Having locked all students down on and off for two years, for example, while likewise not the sole cause of many young peoples' fragile mental health would nevertheless also be a contributory factor I'm sure.
The money to pay for support services, while welcome, is treating the symptom not the cause.
Agreed, as I read back through my post I almost edited the sections about tax take; there are good reasons to argue against taxes at present.
I’m really expressing a deep frustration that we have got into this mess financially - @Stuartinromford and others have it right when he argues that we have been selling off the family silver, so to speak, at least since North Sea oil and probably before then, and as interest rates rise that’s now coming home to roost.
Agreed mental health support etc would be treating symptoms not causes. But better that than nothing.
I mean I yield nothing to the idiocy of Johnson's premiership and the lunacy of Truss's but we have had some pretty bonkers once in a generation exogenous shocks over the past five years. One was of course self-inflicted that would have cut a few percentage points off our wealth and growth but the others really were out of the blue.
Reflecting on Mike’s post yesterday, one of the very best things about this site is the quality of discussion below the line.
This is another good challenge Topping, thanks. If my original post came across as a party political one it wasn’t intended that way. I agree the current government could not have predicted the shocks of the past few years, aside from Brexit and an unfunded Trussterfuck.
Brown deserves some of the blame too for failing to shore up the finances when we were in a more prosperous position.
To add to this: the particular brand of austerity since 2008 was a choice, and left us with invidious choices as eg the pandemic hit.
My real argument, though, is with those who believe that if only the state got out of the way and enabled more growth, these problems would somehow magically recede.
I don’t have solutions, and have deep sympathy for any politicians trying to find solutions. But leaving communities and young people to fend for themselves with bankrupt local authorities is definitely not the answer.
There is a good body of opinion which believes austerity was a mistake and I have a great deal of sympathy for that, while accepting that the UK was spending too much in the years leading up to the GFC.
I suppose the issue is that we the public don't cut our politicians any slack for the attempted management of what scarce resources we now have. Read through each department's literature, their aims, and the costings which would allow them to implement their plans and it is a picture of reasoned sanity. And then I'm sure once the red pen comes out, for it must come out, we are left with a piecemeal, inadequate state of affairs which satisfies almost no one, as we are seeing right now.
Wholeheartedly agree.
To put a more positive spin on all this, an anecdote. I am on childcare on Fridays, and I’ve just taken my 3 and 1 year olds to our local park, where a new skatepark has just been built on the site of a derelict playground.
Today is the first day my 3 year old has got to play in the skate park because it has been chock full of skaters after pre-school every other day.
By all accounts the skate park was built by an enthusiast skater, with really quite a small amount of funding from the council. And yet it is, and will be, exactly what hundreds of local kids need to give themselves a purpose, some resilience, and respite from other stresses in the world.
It’s not in a prosperous part of town, it’s free to those who use it (and pretty cheap to us taxpayers). Dare I say it, it’s the Big Society in action.
ETA if there are solutions out there, this sort of thing must be part of it.
Taking drugs after leaving uni is hardly the same thing as taking them "at work" is it? We have this thing called the "weekend".
Yep. And who cares whether he took drugs? After all, alcohol and caffeine are drugs, alcohol one of the most dangerous drugs of all.
Also, WTF is going on with the music in that clip? I could hardly hear the interview @isam
I wasn’t making a judgement on whether he did/didn’t should have/ shouldn’t have taken drugs as a youngster - I did quite a lot, so did everyone I know
I posted it because he wouldn’t answer in the same way politicians never answer, by repeating a phrase constantly each time they are asked, which makes them look like someone out of One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest
I wish he’d said ‘Yes I did, it was a mistake and I’d advise youngsters not to get involved’. By answering the way he did he’s admitting it but wriggling out of responsibility
The song was ‘Cocaine’ by Eric Clapton I think
Yeah, I know the song but my point was I could barely hear what Sir Keir and Cole were saying. I wouldn’t mind watching the proper interview without the background noise.
And you are making a huge assumption that Sir Keir believes his drug taking to be a mistake!!
Well I just wish he’d said that, he may think it was not a mistake… but then why not just admit it?
Meanwhile thanks @StillWaters for the link to the taxpolicy.org article.
Crystal clear. Did she make the nomination. Does any married couple make such a nomination? Married couples let's hear from you. The planet would forgive her, just, as she is an MP who makes the rules (sound familiar?) if she wasn't aware of a line in the tax code about married couples making nominations when there are two properties in the family.
Are you making a correlation between Rayner's ignorance of rules surrounding right to buy, and someone who made rules of social distancing, believing he remained within those rules when he was photographed in a confined space with many other people all wearing party hats, and with glasses of Champagne in hand?
I am making a "correlation" between politicians being given less slack for breaches of the rules they preside over.
I don't know the ins and out of Rayner's case, and far be it from me to defend her, but your allusion that the confusion is on a par with Partygate is nonsense.
You would think that...
As would anyone with a functional brain.
The two cases are chalk and cheese (and wine).
I am comfortable to give Sunak a free pass over Cakegate, he was ambushed, but Johnson innocently not knowing the rules, give me a break!.
Let's just look at partygate another way, shall we? A group of people being forced to make life-and-death decisions, often with no clear obvious answers, and having those decisions dissected in real time by both real and self-professed experts. A PM who nearly died of the disease. On a few occasions they let their hair down a little from the enormous stress in a relatively safe manner.
As did many other people with similar and far less excuse. The pressures within government at the time must have been hideous.
It was wrong, but not the massive travesty so many people paint it out to be.
And as I've said passim, currygate was worse. (And no, I don't trust the police on this - not after plebgate)
Currygate was not worse. If you don't want to trust the police, how about an experienced lawyer, perhaps even a former DPP, who was so confident that he pledged to resign if charged, knowing that he could not be.
On Partygate, even if we accept your judgement that there were mitigating pressures, what Boris should have done is draw a line under the affair by separating himself from the weekly wine o'clock boozers, apologising on their behalf, and ensuring there would be no repeats. What Boris actually did, if we are generous, and we saw a similar pattern with various other scandals that combined to bring him down, was issue a blanket denial in brazen disregard of the known facts, and repeat it under questioning by an experienced lawyer (see above) at PMQs.
If Boris had first troubled to establish the facts about the parties, and about Pincher, Paterson and so on, he might not have painted himself into a corner each time. We cannot be sure but that is a plausible basis for an alternative timeline where Boris is still Prime Minister.
Epidemiolocally, currygate was far worse. Getting people to travel from all around the country, meet lots of the public, then get together for a piss-up was a hideous idea. Especially when compared to people who mostly worked together in No. 10 and 11 getting together in the garden.
And no, I don't trust the police on these matters, given their track record. And your argument about SKS is poor - he did not *know* he could not be charged - unless you're claiming he knew what the police would say? There was far more risk of virus spread from currygate than the no.10 party.
Yes, Johnson was a victim of his own character flaws - I've gone on enough about that. I have zero compassion for him over Pincher, Patterson etc. But on partygate... yes, I do have some sympathy, especially given his own personal ordeal months earlier.
Starmer is a lawyer. He knew the law. That's what he does for a living. He works with the rules to his advantage. It is how he sidelined Labour's left and ousted Boris Johnson. Currygate was legal under the rules at the time. Starmer knew that, which is why he could pledge to resign. He knew there was no legal basis for any charge. You substituting your own view of what the rules should have been as opposed to what they were gets us, and Boris, nowhere.
You may not have noticed, but lawyers often disagree on points of law. Indeed, it is how many of them make their money. And it is not as if lawyers never get caught out doing anything illegal...
As defences go, that's a rather poor one.
"As defences go" operating within the law as it was understood at that moment in time is a pretty good defence, I would have thought.
He did not know that, as he said afterwards. Besides, and the point you wilfully neglect - it was a terrible idea from a virus-spreading POV.
In April 2021 I was perfectly entitled to consume a Tesco Meal Deal alongside my colleagues in the office. A year earlier I was not.
As for the "virus spreading POV" that is not the debate. Whether he was entitled to have a beer and a curry in the Miners Welfare ( or wherever it was) in Durham is.
Based on that chart the biggest threat to Sunak and the Tories is Farage. He has a higher favourability and net positive rating now than Sunak, although Sunak still has a higher favourable rating than Tice if he stays Reform leader. Beyond that getting immigration under control, cutting tax and controlling inflation and interest rate levels are more important for the Tories than who their leader is.
Burnham's higher rating than Starmer makes him still a contender for the Labour leadership at some stage if Starmer wins but proves unpopular in power and if he is back as an MP
It's interesting that Tice's favourable rating is closely correlated with Reform's polling numbers. On that basis, I think I would agree - they could maybe get a percentage or two from going with Farage; however, I suspect that would be a blip (albeit a blip that could last through the next GE) and insufficient to propel reform to the 20%+ they need (along with some vote concentration) to actually win a few seats.
The leader Reform needs to do that probably isn't in this list; but someone who emerges after the next election if they do well enough to stay in touch with a Tory party that does particularly badly.
If Reform got to 20%+ they would certainly win seats
If Reform did win a number of seats AND got a higher national vote share than the CP do you think Reform would try to completely snuff out the CP or do you think a merging of the two parties is more likely?
The former would likely lead to the latter anyway under FPTP as in Canada.
If Reform overtook the Tories on voteshare and seats the only way the Tories remained an independent party would likely be with PR
Taking drugs after leaving uni is hardly the same thing as taking them "at work" is it? We have this thing called the "weekend".
Yep. And who cares whether he took drugs? After all, alcohol and caffeine are drugs, alcohol one of the most dangerous drugs of all.
Also, WTF is going on with the music in that clip? I could hardly hear the interview @isam
I wasn’t making a judgement on whether he did/didn’t should have/ shouldn’t have taken drugs as a youngster - I did quite a lot, so did everyone I know
I posted it because he wouldn’t answer in the same way politicians never answer, by repeating a phrase constantly each time they are asked, which makes them look like someone out of One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest
I wish he’d said ‘Yes I did, it was a mistake and I’d advise youngsters not to get involved’. By answering the way he did he’s admitting it but wriggling out of responsibility
The song was ‘Cocaine’ by Eric Clapton I think
Yeah, I know the song but my point was I could barely hear what Sir Keir and Cole were saying. I wouldn’t mind watching the proper interview without the background noise.
And you are making a huge assumption that Sir Keir believes his drug taking to be a mistake!!
Well I just wish he’d said that, he may think it was not a mistake… but then why not just admit it?
He did admit it. Just didn't want to go into details of exactly when and where. Which seems fair enough, a full very detailed disclosure may involve incriminating others and given it was over 30 years ago could have significant inconsistencies with others recollections. Not because one or the other is lying but memory over such things is not particularly accurate. We know he took some drugs, like most students of his time did, why do we need to know if he took some on a Saturday morning, or whether it was LSD or dope? Its tittle tattle yet again.
The only excusable way for the Tories to change leader again, and for that leader to have any legitimacy, is to find a way of getting Boris back, then begging him to take it
That would involve a Tory MP standing down and Boris fighting a by-election. Boris would not win a by-election in any constituency in the UK at the moment.
Yes. Do you not think so? If that’s true, it’s not worth making him leader! But I’d have thought there was somewhere
I agree with those saying he'd not win a by-election anywhere at the moment.
The one route, though, would be to make him party leader and "PM designate" with an immediate general election. He'd have a reasonable chance of becoming an MP in a General Election as it's harder for parties to pour resources into a single seat, and turnout is higher so much harder to get the by-election swings which are based on a combination of switching and differential turnout.
It won't happen, though. Far too many Tory MPs are far too opposed to make it in any way credible. It's a fantasy for a certain type of Tory, but nothing more.
And Boris would likely be far happier to have folk saying "if only.." rather than "told you the fat berk wouldn't make a difference".
Off topic, and not particularly heartwarming, apologies.
I spent Wednesday at the funeral of one of my students killed in a knife attack, and yesterday trying to pick up the pieces psychologically amongst the student’s close friends who are dealing with the trauma whilst preparing to sit their GCSEs in a couple of months.
The student’s death itself was tragic and perhaps not preventable regardless of the support that might have been in place in previous years.
But two things stand out for me within the education system:
1. There is almost nothing left outside the school gates and the home that might provide an anchor to young people struggling to navigate their teenage years. In my Year 11 class alone I could probably list a third of the students who badly need mental health support, or a youth worker, or a kick up the backside, or a positive role model etc etc (mostly the first tbh). Probably a handful are at risk of the same fate of the student we commemorated on Weds. We know this in school but are powerless to do anything (more) about it.
I can recognise that local services are never perfect, but those who currently advocate lowering taxes bear direct responsibility for the decimation of support for young people at a local level, which increase the risk of tragedies like this.
2. The toll that is being placed on teachers and school leaders who have to operate in an environment I’ve just described is not sustainable. Both I and my boss on our senior leadership team shed tears of frustration yesterday as we discussed what more we can do to prevent a similar tragedy, and admitted to feeling a deep sense of futility and powerlessness. My boss is probably the strongest, most principled and most uncompromising school leader I have ever met. To hear her admit that she feels powerless to change things is shocking and depressing.
Again, I can recognise that more money won’t solve all the ills for young people at the moment, and can also recognise that education rightly wouldn’t be top priority for any spare funding at present.
But again, those advocating for a lower tax take bear direct responsibility for the sorts of decisions that are being made within schools that mean students are left to fend for themselves, with whatever imperfect support is available from home.
Lastly, I’m clear-eyed enough to see that education (and LA) funding will get worse rather than better in the next decade. On a personal level I’m left wondering whether, for my own self- preservation, I need to admit defeat and get out of the system.
Sorry for a long and fairly depressing post - this is more of a lament and part of my own grieving than anything else. Apologies for any self indulgence herein.
The only quibble I have with your excellent post is the idea that anyone advocating for lower tax bear some responsibility for your lack of funding.
It would be possible to cut taxes while diverting a much larger proportion of government spending towards younger people for a net positive effect. Just look at how health and social care spending (both more likely to be used by older people) has increased much faster than demographic change, even while spending on education has fallen.
Local Authority funding is one issue that no political party, north or south of the border, wants to address. It's where most of the cuts have fallen and I reckon a direct reason why central government spending is now coming under such pressure.
Thanks. And yes good point, and it was heartening to hear on the Private Eye podcast yesterday that the doctor who writes for them about the NHS was advocating for money to be diverted from health towards education (best bang of your buck in terms of prevention).
Part of the issue as well is down to the checks that have to be done for safeguarding, when I was younger for example I used to volunteer and help run a youth club organised by the local methodists. Would I do it now? Not a chance because it has now gone from a simple request asking if I would help to which the answer is yes....to fill out this form wait weeks while someone rifles through your life etc. It just isn't something I feel strongly enough to jump through the hoops for.
The same issue has caused many clubs that had junior sections to close them. People don't want to jump through the hoops of getting vetted and the clubs don't want to do all the work of appointing a safe guarding officer etc.
This alone has caused a drop in whats available to youths.
I'm surprised by this, I got an enhanced DBS check to do voluntary work with children and it was quick and completely painless.
I had to have one for a job it wasn't quick certainly. However having one to volunteer not going to bother. For many people its just the idea of having your life raked over to qualify when all they are trying to do is put back something. A lot of people also believe it is overkill.
The club i volunteered at all I was doing was setting up equipement like table tennis tables and breaking them down and clearing up at the end of the session as well as being present and defusing squabbles between the kids. The club was held in one big room with no hidden corners and a minimum of 3 adults present. Potential for abuse as close to zero as can be. Sheer beauracratic overkill
You are being utterly naive about how abusers work. They gravitate to places, where they can get close to children and be trusted. Then .....
Presumably Labour being the incumbent in London accounts for some of this.
Reform also only on 2%
Yes, London isn't fertile territory for them and Hall is probably a more palatable candidate for Reform-inclined voters on the right.
Ironically therefore May 2nd may be better for Sunak than expected, for the media focus will be on London with most of the rest of the UK not having elections and it looks like the Sunak Tories are doing relatively OK there still.
If Reform fail to put up a good showing in London and the locals that will also reduce the traction they are getting at the moment from the likes of Goodwin
Meanwhile thanks @StillWaters for the link to the taxpolicy.org article.
Crystal clear. Did she make the nomination. Does any married couple make such a nomination? Married couples let's hear from you. The planet would forgive her, just, as she is an MP who makes the rules (sound familiar?) if she wasn't aware of a line in the tax code about married couples making nominations when there are two properties in the family.
Are you making a correlation between Rayner's ignorance of rules surrounding right to buy, and someone who made rules of social distancing, believing he remained within those rules when he was photographed in a confined space with many other people all wearing party hats, and with glasses of Champagne in hand?
I am making a "correlation" between politicians being given less slack for breaches of the rules they preside over.
I don't know the ins and out of Rayner's case, and far be it from me to defend her, but your allusion that the confusion is on a par with Partygate is nonsense.
You would think that...
As would anyone with a functional brain.
The two cases are chalk and cheese (and wine).
I am comfortable to give Sunak a free pass over Cakegate, he was ambushed, but Johnson innocently not knowing the rules, give me a break!.
Let's just look at partygate another way, shall we? A group of people being forced to make life-and-death decisions, often with no clear obvious answers, and having those decisions dissected in real time by both real and self-professed experts. A PM who nearly died of the disease. On a few occasions they let their hair down a little from the enormous stress in a relatively safe manner.
As did many other people with similar and far less excuse. The pressures within government at the time must have been hideous.
It was wrong, but not the massive travesty so many people paint it out to be.
And as I've said passim, currygate was worse. (And no, I don't trust the police on this - not after plebgate)
Currygate was not worse. If you don't want to trust the police, how about an experienced lawyer, perhaps even a former DPP, who was so confident that he pledged to resign if charged, knowing that he could not be.
On Partygate, even if we accept your judgement that there were mitigating pressures, what Boris should have done is draw a line under the affair by separating himself from the weekly wine o'clock boozers, apologising on their behalf, and ensuring there would be no repeats. What Boris actually did, if we are generous, and we saw a similar pattern with various other scandals that combined to bring him down, was issue a blanket denial in brazen disregard of the known facts, and repeat it under questioning by an experienced lawyer (see above) at PMQs.
If Boris had first troubled to establish the facts about the parties, and about Pincher, Paterson and so on, he might not have painted himself into a corner each time. We cannot be sure but that is a plausible basis for an alternative timeline where Boris is still Prime Minister.
Epidemiolocally, currygate was far worse. Getting people to travel from all around the country, meet lots of the public, then get together for a piss-up was a hideous idea. Especially when compared to people who mostly worked together in No. 10 and 11 getting together in the garden.
And no, I don't trust the police on these matters, given their track record. And your argument about SKS is poor - he did not *know* he could not be charged - unless you're claiming he knew what the police would say? There was far more risk of virus spread from currygate than the no.10 party.
Yes, Johnson was a victim of his own character flaws - I've gone on enough about that. I have zero compassion for him over Pincher, Patterson etc. But on partygate... yes, I do have some sympathy, especially given his own personal ordeal months earlier.
Starmer is a lawyer. He knew the law. That's what he does for a living. He works with the rules to his advantage. It is how he sidelined Labour's left and ousted Boris Johnson. Currygate was legal under the rules at the time. Starmer knew that, which is why he could pledge to resign. He knew there was no legal basis for any charge. You substituting your own view of what the rules should have been as opposed to what they were gets us, and Boris, nowhere.
You may not have noticed, but lawyers often disagree on points of law. Indeed, it is how many of them make their money. And it is not as if lawyers never get caught out doing anything illegal...
As defences go, that's a rather poor one.
"As defences go" operating within the law as it was understood at that moment in time is a pretty good defence, I would have thought.
He did not know that, as he said afterwards. Besides, and the point you wilfully neglect - it was a terrible idea from a virus-spreading POV.
In April 2021 I was perfectly entitled to consume a Tesco Meal Deal alongside my colleagues in the office. A year earlier I was not.
I fear your 'defence' is more political than it is epidemiological. It was a crass thing to do - and what happened was a heck of a lot more than a meal deal in an office.
Meanwhile thanks @StillWaters for the link to the taxpolicy.org article.
Crystal clear. Did she make the nomination. Does any married couple make such a nomination? Married couples let's hear from you. The planet would forgive her, just, as she is an MP who makes the rules (sound familiar?) if she wasn't aware of a line in the tax code about married couples making nominations when there are two properties in the family.
Are you making a correlation between Rayner's ignorance of rules surrounding right to buy, and someone who made rules of social distancing, believing he remained within those rules when he was photographed in a confined space with many other people all wearing party hats, and with glasses of Champagne in hand?
Certainly I wasn't aware of any such requirement, and I was in the same position for a few years for the same reason (although a few years earlier, and it may have changed in between).
And also in my case I wasn't liable for any CGT because I had bought it as my principal residence and lived in it for a sufficient length of time that liability for CGT only just kicked in (and there wasn't any due).
Angela Rayner is - checks wiki - shadow housing minister. Whatever she knew at the time, when she wasn't an MP, is one thing. Making a full and frank declaration now of what happened should be the bare minimum now she is responsible for the whole sector.
When I read the details originally, based on my own experience, it didn't look like there would be any liability as allowances and timings were quite generous provided you did actually buy the house to live in and lived in it for a significant period of time. It's not like it was a £1m mansion with a massive gain. In my case I only lived in my flat for about 3 years out of 9, but (from memory) CGT only became due in the final year, and the rise in value liable was within the personal allowance.
Perhaps she should give details, and I'm not a Labour supporter and don't have an axe to grind particularly here. But if you asked me to explain my circumstances with my flat 20 years ago or so, including workings, I couldn't now tell you. I wouldn't have been able to tell you 10 years ago either. But I did them at the time and no tax was due. So if she is like me (and I'm anally retentive and organised, being a good Project Manager, and no longer have the records) then she probably can't.
Oh yes it appears to be fearsomely complicated. But she is shadow SoS for housing and it is her brief. She is responsible in opposition for the sector.
So she blimmin' well should know.
But she doesn't necessarily need to know the rules from 10+ years ago, and nor is she legally required to retain records from that long ago either. I suspect she can't come clean enough to satisfy you, because she simply doesn't have the details any more. As I wouldn't if I had decided to become a prominent politician and somebody was now quizzing me on my historic tax affairs. Anything more than 7 years ago - sorry, I can't tell you, it's been shredded.
Rayner's problem is that there are two versions to this story.
Her version in which she received no rent and owes no CGT.
And the neighbours version in which she was a landlord and owes CGT.
After I moved in with my (future) wife, I let two of my sisters-in-law stay at my old flat.
Without charging them rent.
I was still registered to vote there, paid council tax and bills.
I would probably have described myself to a third party as “the landlord”, though.
Meanwhile thanks @StillWaters for the link to the taxpolicy.org article.
Crystal clear. Did she make the nomination. Does any married couple make such a nomination? Married couples let's hear from you. The planet would forgive her, just, as she is an MP who makes the rules (sound familiar?) if she wasn't aware of a line in the tax code about married couples making nominations when there are two properties in the family.
Are you making a correlation between Rayner's ignorance of rules surrounding right to buy, and someone who made rules of social distancing, believing he remained within those rules when he was photographed in a confined space with many other people all wearing party hats, and with glasses of Champagne in hand?
I am making a "correlation" between politicians being given less slack for breaches of the rules they preside over.
I don't know the ins and out of Rayner's case, and far be it from me to defend her, but your allusion that the confusion is on a par with Partygate is nonsense.
You would think that...
As would anyone with a functional brain.
The two cases are chalk and cheese (and wine).
I am comfortable to give Sunak a free pass over Cakegate, he was ambushed, but Johnson innocently not knowing the rules, give me a break!.
Let's just look at partygate another way, shall we? A group of people being forced to make life-and-death decisions, often with no clear obvious answers, and having those decisions dissected in real time by both real and self-professed experts. A PM who nearly died of the disease. On a few occasions they let their hair down a little from the enormous stress in a relatively safe manner.
As did many other people with similar and far less excuse. The pressures within government at the time must have been hideous.
It was wrong, but not the massive travesty so many people paint it out to be.
And as I've said passim, currygate was worse. (And no, I don't trust the police on this - not after plebgate)
Currygate was not worse. If you don't want to trust the police, how about an experienced lawyer, perhaps even a former DPP, who was so confident that he pledged to resign if charged, knowing that he could not be.
On Partygate, even if we accept your judgement that there were mitigating pressures, what Boris should have done is draw a line under the affair by separating himself from the weekly wine o'clock boozers, apologising on their behalf, and ensuring there would be no repeats. What Boris actually did, if we are generous, and we saw a similar pattern with various other scandals that combined to bring him down, was issue a blanket denial in brazen disregard of the known facts, and repeat it under questioning by an experienced lawyer (see above) at PMQs.
If Boris had first troubled to establish the facts about the parties, and about Pincher, Paterson and so on, he might not have painted himself into a corner each time. We cannot be sure but that is a plausible basis for an alternative timeline where Boris is still Prime Minister.
Epidemiolocally, currygate was far worse. Getting people to travel from all around the country, meet lots of the public, then get together for a piss-up was a hideous idea. Especially when compared to people who mostly worked together in No. 10 and 11 getting together in the garden.
And no, I don't trust the police on these matters, given their track record. And your argument about SKS is poor - he did not *know* he could not be charged - unless you're claiming he knew what the police would say? There was far more risk of virus spread from currygate than the no.10 party.
Yes, Johnson was a victim of his own character flaws - I've gone on enough about that. I have zero compassion for him over Pincher, Patterson etc. But on partygate... yes, I do have some sympathy, especially given his own personal ordeal months earlier.
Starmer is a lawyer. He knew the law. That's what he does for a living. He works with the rules to his advantage. It is how he sidelined Labour's left and ousted Boris Johnson. Currygate was legal under the rules at the time. Starmer knew that, which is why he could pledge to resign. He knew there was no legal basis for any charge. You substituting your own view of what the rules should have been as opposed to what they were gets us, and Boris, nowhere.
You may not have noticed, but lawyers often disagree on points of law. Indeed, it is how many of them make their money. And it is not as if lawyers never get caught out doing anything illegal...
As defences go, that's a rather poor one.
"As defences go" operating within the law as it was understood at that moment in time is a pretty good defence, I would have thought.
He did not know that, as he said afterwards. Besides, and the point you wilfully neglect - it was a terrible idea from a virus-spreading POV.
In April 2021 I was perfectly entitled to consume a Tesco Meal Deal alongside my colleagues in the office. A year earlier I was not.
Whether he was right or wrong, it’s always good to see his defenders, whether knowingly or not, omit the beering. Makes it seem far less party-ish
Yes. Two years into the war and the West is failing to provide Ukraine with enough ammunition to keep fighting, and to win the war. It's a massive, monumental failure that will have huge negative consequences if the situation is not rapidly turned around.
I can't help but feel that Boris Johnson would have taken a "do whatever it takes" approach, if he had still been PM, and Britain would have spent more money to increase the supply of ammunition to Ukraine.
Meanwhile thanks @StillWaters for the link to the taxpolicy.org article.
Crystal clear. Did she make the nomination. Does any married couple make such a nomination? Married couples let's hear from you. The planet would forgive her, just, as she is an MP who makes the rules (sound familiar?) if she wasn't aware of a line in the tax code about married couples making nominations when there are two properties in the family.
Are you making a correlation between Rayner's ignorance of rules surrounding right to buy, and someone who made rules of social distancing, believing he remained within those rules when he was photographed in a confined space with many other people all wearing party hats, and with glasses of Champagne in hand?
I am making a "correlation" between politicians being given less slack for breaches of the rules they preside over.
I don't know the ins and out of Rayner's case, and far be it from me to defend her, but your allusion that the confusion is on a par with Partygate is nonsense.
You would think that...
As would anyone with a functional brain.
The two cases are chalk and cheese (and wine).
I am comfortable to give Sunak a free pass over Cakegate, he was ambushed, but Johnson innocently not knowing the rules, give me a break!.
Let's just look at partygate another way, shall we? A group of people being forced to make life-and-death decisions, often with no clear obvious answers, and having those decisions dissected in real time by both real and self-professed experts. A PM who nearly died of the disease. On a few occasions they let their hair down a little from the enormous stress in a relatively safe manner.
As did many other people with similar and far less excuse. The pressures within government at the time must have been hideous.
It was wrong, but not the massive travesty so many people paint it out to be.
And as I've said passim, currygate was worse. (And no, I don't trust the police on this - not after plebgate)
There are at least a couple of problems with that.
The first is the, "as did many other people" argument. That is probably so, but many did not. There were lots of people who religiously followed the rules that Johnson himself set. The Queen sitting alone at her husband's funeral is emblematic because it represents the experience of so many. Your line therefore probably has resonance with a lot of people... but it is incredibly aggrievating for many others.
Secondly, your argument was NOT the one Johnson went for. Maybe it would have worked if he had, but he simply chose to lie. That, in a nutshell, is his tragic flaw as a PM and as a man. He will always choose the momentarily convenient lie ahead of the even vaguely discomforting truth. His final downfall over Pincher was a classic case - he could have said, "I knew the stories but gave him another chance, and I clearly shouldn't have." He'd have taken a hit but remained standing. But he lied and sent colleagues out to lie for him.
I agree with the first - and as I said in my post; It was wrong.
And I pretty much agree with your second point. I find myself in the odd position of (slightly) defending Johnson, given I said he was totally unsuited to being PM before he got the job - and for the correct reasons. It is even more odder given that many who supported him then (coz Brexit!) are now vocally critical of him.
But again, I do think everyone in No. 10 were under an immense pressure at the time, quite unlike anything that has probably been seen in this country for eighty years. Given that, I think the 'parties' (*) were understandable, if not forgivable. The levels of stress must have been hellish, especially when you had idiots like Peston shouting questions at you.
Johnson should have gone over events like Pincher, which far better showed the flaws in his character.
(*) What sort of drab affairs people must go to if they class them as 'parties'!
Here’s the Wikipedia summary of 16 April 2021:
“Both parties took place on the evening before the funeral of Prince Philip on 17 April 2021, and featured alcohol and one of them featured loud music.[75][206] The Daily Telegraph reported partying continued from 6pm until 1am. A child's swing in the garden was broken.[207][14] ITV News reported dancing and at least two couples "getting it on with each other" and "touching each other up", while two other members of staff who were not openly a couple previously were "all over each other".[139][14]”
How is that not a ‘party’? Music, dancing, boozing, snogging, until 1am. Stop trying to re-write history!
The only excusable way for the Tories to change leader again, and for that leader to have any legitimacy, is to find a way of getting Boris back, then begging him to take it
That would involve a Tory MP standing down and Boris fighting a by-election. Boris would not win a by-election in any constituency in the UK at the moment.
Yes. Do you not think so? If that’s true, it’s not worth making him leader! But I’d have thought there was somewhere
I agree with those saying he'd not win a by-election anywhere at the moment.
The one route, though, would be to make him party leader and "PM designate" with an immediate general election. He'd have a reasonable chance of becoming an MP in a General Election as it's harder for parties to pour resources into a single seat, and turnout is higher so much harder to get the by-election swings which are based on a combination of switching and differential turnout.
It won't happen, though. Far too many Tory MPs are far too opposed to make it in any way credible. It's a fantasy for a certain type of Tory, but nothing more.
That’s a shame, because he is the only possible PM with any legitimacy, and the choice of people who voted Tory at the next GE
For all the guff about ‘we vote for an MP…’ changing PMs midterm for anything other than health reasons should mean a GE within six months. A party with Truss or Sunak as leader would not have won in 2019, so they had no right to be running the country
How does he have any legitimacy, having run away from Parliament ?
And how can you say who might be "the choice of people who voted Tory at the next GE" - or did you mean last GE ?
It’s been clear for a while that the White House doesn’t want Ukraine to win / Russia to lose. Since that intercepted call where the Russians were discussing use of nukes in autumn 2022 after the Russian front collapsed in Kherson and Izyum, new weapons provision really dried up. Biden / Blinken blinked and gave into the nuclear blackmail.
Politically it’s a useful wedge issue for the Dems to blame Trump and the GOP. But all the US is really going for is a slow bleed of soviet era military reserves, a chance to test some toys and a frozen conflict on roughly current lines that doesn’t risk internal collapse in Russia.
There was much fanfare to the summer 2023 counter offensive but with hindsight it was setup to fail. Insufficient heavy arms and no effective counter to the Russian choppers that completely disrupted Ukrainian mine clearance operations.
Interesting that the timing of weaker US support also roughly coincides with the change of the guard in Downing St.
In this context, easy to understand the poles arming themselves to the teeth and going big on consolidating and vertically integrating their energy supply.
I still find it hard to understand Biden’s cheerleaders. History will judge him as a fool on this I’m quite certain.
Off topic, and not particularly heartwarming, apologies.
I spent Wednesday at the funeral of one of my students killed in a knife attack, and yesterday trying to pick up the pieces psychologically amongst the student’s close friends who are dealing with the trauma whilst preparing to sit their GCSEs in a couple of months.
The student’s death itself was tragic and perhaps not preventable regardless of the support that might have been in place in previous years.
But two things stand out for me within the education system:
1. There is almost nothing left outside the school gates and the home that might provide an anchor to young people struggling to navigate their teenage years. In my Year 11 class alone I could probably list a third of the students who badly need mental health support, or a youth worker, or a kick up the backside, or a positive role model etc etc (mostly the first tbh). Probably a handful are at risk of the same fate of the student we commemorated on Weds. We know this in school but are powerless to do anything (more) about it.
I can recognise that local services are never perfect, but those who currently advocate lowering taxes bear direct responsibility for the decimation of support for young people at a local level, which increase the risk of tragedies like this.
2. The toll that is being placed on teachers and school leaders who have to operate in an environment I’ve just described is not sustainable. Both I and my boss on our senior leadership team shed tears of frustration yesterday as we discussed what more we can do to prevent a similar tragedy, and admitted to feeling a deep sense of futility and powerlessness. My boss is probably the strongest, most principled and most uncompromising school leader I have ever met. To hear her admit that she feels powerless to change things is shocking and depressing.
Again, I can recognise that more money won’t solve all the ills for young people at the moment, and can also recognise that education rightly wouldn’t be top priority for any spare funding at present.
But again, those advocating for a lower tax take bear direct responsibility for the sorts of decisions that are being made within schools that mean students are left to fend for themselves, with whatever imperfect support is available from home.
Lastly, I’m clear-eyed enough to see that education (and LA) funding will get worse rather than better in the next decade. On a personal level I’m left wondering whether, for my own self- preservation, I need to admit defeat and get out of the system.
Sorry for a long and fairly depressing post - this is more of a lament and part of my own grieving than anything else. Apologies for any self indulgence herein.
The only quibble I have with your excellent post is the idea that anyone advocating for lower tax bear some responsibility for your lack of funding.
It would be possible to cut taxes while diverting a much larger proportion of government spending towards younger people for a net positive effect. Just look at how health and social care spending (both more likely to be used by older people) has increased much faster than demographic change, even while spending on education has fallen.
Local Authority funding is one issue that no political party, north or south of the border, wants to address. It's where most of the cuts have fallen and I reckon a direct reason why central government spending is now coming under such pressure.
Thanks. And yes good point, and it was heartening to hear on the Private Eye podcast yesterday that the doctor who writes for them about the NHS was advocating for money to be diverted from health towards education (best bang of your buck in terms of prevention).
Part of the issue as well is down to the checks that have to be done for safeguarding, when I was younger for example I used to volunteer and help run a youth club organised by the local methodists. Would I do it now? Not a chance because it has now gone from a simple request asking if I would help to which the answer is yes....to fill out this form wait weeks while someone rifles through your life etc. It just isn't something I feel strongly enough to jump through the hoops for.
The same issue has caused many clubs that had junior sections to close them. People don't want to jump through the hoops of getting vetted and the clubs don't want to do all the work of appointing a safe guarding officer etc.
This alone has caused a drop in whats available to youths.
I'm surprised by this, I got an enhanced DBS check to do voluntary work with children and it was quick and completely painless.
I had to have one for a job it wasn't quick certainly. However having one to volunteer not going to bother. For many people its just the idea of having your life raked over to qualify when all they are trying to do is put back something. A lot of people also believe it is overkill.
The club i volunteered at all I was doing was setting up equipement like table tennis tables and breaking them down and clearing up at the end of the session as well as being present and defusing squabbles between the kids. The club was held in one big room with no hidden corners and a minimum of 3 adults present. Potential for abuse as close to zero as can be. Sheer beauracratic overkill
You are being utterly naive about how abusers work. They gravitate to places, where they can get close to children and be trusted. Then .....
That's true. But it is also true that lots don't want to jump through hoops to be cleared to volunteer at these places, and so they don't. We end up with less risk of abuse, especially as clubs shut, but more risk of abuse as vulnerable children are tipped onto the street.
Meanwhile thanks @StillWaters for the link to the taxpolicy.org article.
Crystal clear. Did she make the nomination. Does any married couple make such a nomination? Married couples let's hear from you. The planet would forgive her, just, as she is an MP who makes the rules (sound familiar?) if she wasn't aware of a line in the tax code about married couples making nominations when there are two properties in the family.
Are you making a correlation between Rayner's ignorance of rules surrounding right to buy, and someone who made rules of social distancing, believing he remained within those rules when he was photographed in a confined space with many other people all wearing party hats, and with glasses of Champagne in hand?
I am making a "correlation" between politicians being given less slack for breaches of the rules they preside over.
I don't know the ins and out of Rayner's case, and far be it from me to defend her, but your allusion that the confusion is on a par with Partygate is nonsense.
You would think that...
As would anyone with a functional brain.
The two cases are chalk and cheese (and wine).
I am comfortable to give Sunak a free pass over Cakegate, he was ambushed, but Johnson innocently not knowing the rules, give me a break!.
Let's just look at partygate another way, shall we? A group of people being forced to make life-and-death decisions, often with no clear obvious answers, and having those decisions dissected in real time by both real and self-professed experts. A PM who nearly died of the disease. On a few occasions they let their hair down a little from the enormous stress in a relatively safe manner.
As did many other people with similar and far less excuse. The pressures within government at the time must have been hideous.
It was wrong, but not the massive travesty so many people paint it out to be.
And as I've said passim, currygate was worse. (And no, I don't trust the police on this - not after plebgate)
Currygate was not worse. If you don't want to trust the police, how about an experienced lawyer, perhaps even a former DPP, who was so confident that he pledged to resign if charged, knowing that he could not be.
On Partygate, even if we accept your judgement that there were mitigating pressures, what Boris should have done is draw a line under the affair by separating himself from the weekly wine o'clock boozers, apologising on their behalf, and ensuring there would be no repeats. What Boris actually did, if we are generous, and we saw a similar pattern with various other scandals that combined to bring him down, was issue a blanket denial in brazen disregard of the known facts, and repeat it under questioning by an experienced lawyer (see above) at PMQs.
If Boris had first troubled to establish the facts about the parties, and about Pincher, Paterson and so on, he might not have painted himself into a corner each time. We cannot be sure but that is a plausible basis for an alternative timeline where Boris is still Prime Minister.
Epidemiolocally, currygate was far worse. Getting people to travel from all around the country, meet lots of the public, then get together for a piss-up was a hideous idea. Especially when compared to people who mostly worked together in No. 10 and 11 getting together in the garden.
And no, I don't trust the police on these matters, given their track record. And your argument about SKS is poor - he did not *know* he could not be charged - unless you're claiming he knew what the police would say? There was far more risk of virus spread from currygate than the no.10 party.
Yes, Johnson was a victim of his own character flaws - I've gone on enough about that. I have zero compassion for him over Pincher, Patterson etc. But on partygate... yes, I do have some sympathy, especially given his own personal ordeal months earlier.
Starmer is a lawyer. He knew the law. That's what he does for a living. He works with the rules to his advantage. It is how he sidelined Labour's left and ousted Boris Johnson. Currygate was legal under the rules at the time. Starmer knew that, which is why he could pledge to resign. He knew there was no legal basis for any charge. You substituting your own view of what the rules should have been as opposed to what they were gets us, and Boris, nowhere.
You may not have noticed, but lawyers often disagree on points of law. Indeed, it is how many of them make their money. And it is not as if lawyers never get caught out doing anything illegal...
As defences go, that's a rather poor one.
"As defences go" operating within the law as it was understood at that moment in time is a pretty good defence, I would have thought.
He did not know that, as he said afterwards. Besides, and the point you wilfully neglect - it was a terrible idea from a virus-spreading POV.
In April 2021 I was perfectly entitled to consume a Tesco Meal Deal alongside my colleagues in the office. A year earlier I was not.
Whether he was right or wrong, it’s always good to see his defenders, whether knowingly or not, omit the beering. Makes it seem far less party-ish
A curry house take away meal costing much less than £200 according to the restaurant with about 15 people present. Lively party!
Not a fan of Andrea Leadsom but enjoyed this comment by her, as reported in today's Times -
"Andrea Leadsom said it best, scoffing on Times Radio at the “sudden wokeness” that provoked Simon Case, head of the civil service, and Richard Moore of MI6 to resign from the Garrick Club. I am, she said sweetly, “not that interested in men’s decisions to feel good about themselves”."
Meanwhile thanks @StillWaters for the link to the taxpolicy.org article.
Crystal clear. Did she make the nomination. Does any married couple make such a nomination? Married couples let's hear from you. The planet would forgive her, just, as she is an MP who makes the rules (sound familiar?) if she wasn't aware of a line in the tax code about married couples making nominations when there are two properties in the family.
Are you making a correlation between Rayner's ignorance of rules surrounding right to buy, and someone who made rules of social distancing, believing he remained within those rules when he was photographed in a confined space with many other people all wearing party hats, and with glasses of Champagne in hand?
I am making a "correlation" between politicians being given less slack for breaches of the rules they preside over.
I don't know the ins and out of Rayner's case, and far be it from me to defend her, but your allusion that the confusion is on a par with Partygate is nonsense.
You would think that...
As would anyone with a functional brain.
The two cases are chalk and cheese (and wine).
I am comfortable to give Sunak a free pass over Cakegate, he was ambushed, but Johnson innocently not knowing the rules, give me a break!.
Let's just look at partygate another way, shall we? A group of people being forced to make life-and-death decisions, often with no clear obvious answers, and having those decisions dissected in real time by both real and self-professed experts. A PM who nearly died of the disease. On a few occasions they let their hair down a little from the enormous stress in a relatively safe manner.
As did many other people with similar and far less excuse. The pressures within government at the time must have been hideous.
It was wrong, but not the massive travesty so many people paint it out to be.
And as I've said passim, currygate was worse. (And no, I don't trust the police on this - not after plebgate)
Currygate was not worse. If you don't want to trust the police, how about an experienced lawyer, perhaps even a former DPP, who was so confident that he pledged to resign if charged, knowing that he could not be.
On Partygate, even if we accept your judgement that there were mitigating pressures, what Boris should have done is draw a line under the affair by separating himself from the weekly wine o'clock boozers, apologising on their behalf, and ensuring there would be no repeats. What Boris actually did, if we are generous, and we saw a similar pattern with various other scandals that combined to bring him down, was issue a blanket denial in brazen disregard of the known facts, and repeat it under questioning by an experienced lawyer (see above) at PMQs.
If Boris had first troubled to establish the facts about the parties, and about Pincher, Paterson and so on, he might not have painted himself into a corner each time. We cannot be sure but that is a plausible basis for an alternative timeline where Boris is still Prime Minister.
Epidemiolocally, currygate was far worse. Getting people to travel from all around the country, meet lots of the public, then get together for a piss-up was a hideous idea. Especially when compared to people who mostly worked together in No. 10 and 11 getting together in the garden.
And no, I don't trust the police on these matters, given their track record. And your argument about SKS is poor - he did not *know* he could not be charged - unless you're claiming he knew what the police would say? There was far more risk of virus spread from currygate than the no.10 party.
Yes, Johnson was a victim of his own character flaws - I've gone on enough about that. I have zero compassion for him over Pincher, Patterson etc. But on partygate... yes, I do have some sympathy, especially given his own personal ordeal months earlier.
Starmer is a lawyer. He knew the law. That's what he does for a living. He works with the rules to his advantage. It is how he sidelined Labour's left and ousted Boris Johnson. Currygate was legal under the rules at the time. Starmer knew that, which is why he could pledge to resign. He knew there was no legal basis for any charge. You substituting your own view of what the rules should have been as opposed to what they were gets us, and Boris, nowhere.
You may not have noticed, but lawyers often disagree on points of law. Indeed, it is how many of them make their money. And it is not as if lawyers never get caught out doing anything illegal...
As defences go, that's a rather poor one.
"As defences go" operating within the law as it was understood at that moment in time is a pretty good defence, I would have thought.
He did not know that, as he said afterwards. Besides, and the point you wilfully neglect - it was a terrible idea from a virus-spreading POV.
In April 2021 I was perfectly entitled to consume a Tesco Meal Deal alongside my colleagues in the office. A year earlier I was not.
Whether he was right or wrong, it’s always good to see his defenders, whether knowingly or not, omit the beering. Makes it seem far less party-ish
A curry house take away meal costing much less than £200 according to the restaurant with about 15 people present. Lively party!
The Number Ten events sound just as boring; not the massive rave many make them out to be. Not really 'parties' in the way most people would like parties to be.
We choked the weapons supply, we failed to provide enough air defence, and now we ask Ukrianians to sit on their hands while cruise missiles land on their families. Such mistakes are setting the course of the entire century. And there is no justification for any of this. https://twitter.com/GLandsbergis/status/1771120750071521579
Yes. Two years into the war and the West is failing to provide Ukraine with enough ammunition to keep fighting, and to win the war. It's a massive, monumental failure that will have huge negative consequences if the situation is not rapidly turned around.
I can't help but feel that Boris Johnson would have taken a "do whatever it takes" approach, if he had still been PM, and Britain would have spent more money to increase the supply of ammunition to Ukraine.
Yes. If there is one trait for which Johnson justly enjoys great renown, it is his dogged and enduring loyalty.
Meanwhile thanks @StillWaters for the link to the taxpolicy.org article.
Crystal clear. Did she make the nomination. Does any married couple make such a nomination? Married couples let's hear from you. The planet would forgive her, just, as she is an MP who makes the rules (sound familiar?) if she wasn't aware of a line in the tax code about married couples making nominations when there are two properties in the family.
Are you making a correlation between Rayner's ignorance of rules surrounding right to buy, and someone who made rules of social distancing, believing he remained within those rules when he was photographed in a confined space with many other people all wearing party hats, and with glasses of Champagne in hand?
I am making a "correlation" between politicians being given less slack for breaches of the rules they preside over.
I don't know the ins and out of Rayner's case, and far be it from me to defend her, but your allusion that the confusion is on a par with Partygate is nonsense.
You would think that...
As would anyone with a functional brain.
The two cases are chalk and cheese (and wine).
I am comfortable to give Sunak a free pass over Cakegate, he was ambushed, but Johnson innocently not knowing the rules, give me a break!.
Let's just look at partygate another way, shall we? A group of people being forced to make life-and-death decisions, often with no clear obvious answers, and having those decisions dissected in real time by both real and self-professed experts. A PM who nearly died of the disease. On a few occasions they let their hair down a little from the enormous stress in a relatively safe manner.
As did many other people with similar and far less excuse. The pressures within government at the time must have been hideous.
It was wrong, but not the massive travesty so many people paint it out to be.
And as I've said passim, currygate was worse. (And no, I don't trust the police on this - not after plebgate)
Sorry, but if the only way you can handle things is by breaking the very laws you made, getting shit faced and puking up all over place then you're in the wrong job.
Like Currygate, it was uncertain whether the laws were being broken at the time - and at many of the so-called parties, no laws were broken. Yes, there should have been mare caution, and yes, it was wrong. But I can totally understand why it happened.
What evidence do you have that it “was uncertain whether the laws were being broken at the time”? Multiple staff raised concerns. Cummings has said he personally warned Johnson about one event. At Lee Cain's leaving event (13 November 2020), Johnson said that "this is the most unsocially distanced party in the UK right now". He knew!
Off topic, and not particularly heartwarming, apologies.
I spent Wednesday at the funeral of one of my students killed in a knife attack, and yesterday trying to pick up the pieces psychologically amongst the student’s close friends who are dealing with the trauma whilst preparing to sit their GCSEs in a couple of months.
The student’s death itself was tragic and perhaps not preventable regardless of the support that might have been in place in previous years.
But two things stand out for me within the education system:
1. There is almost nothing left outside the school gates and the home that might provide an anchor to young people struggling to navigate their teenage years. In my Year 11 class alone I could probably list a third of the students who badly need mental health support, or a youth worker, or a kick up the backside, or a positive role model etc etc (mostly the first tbh). Probably a handful are at risk of the same fate of the student we commemorated on Weds. We know this in school but are powerless to do anything (more) about it.
I can recognise that local services are never perfect, but those who currently advocate lowering taxes bear direct responsibility for the decimation of support for young people at a local level, which increase the risk of tragedies like this.
2. The toll that is being placed on teachers and school leaders who have to operate in an environment I’ve just described is not sustainable. Both I and my boss on our senior leadership team shed tears of frustration yesterday as we discussed what more we can do to prevent a similar tragedy, and admitted to feeling a deep sense of futility and powerlessness. My boss is probably the strongest, most principled and most uncompromising school leader I have ever met. To hear her admit that she feels powerless to change things is shocking and depressing.
Again, I can recognise that more money won’t solve all the ills for young people at the moment, and can also recognise that education rightly wouldn’t be top priority for any spare funding at present.
But again, those advocating for a lower tax take bear direct responsibility for the sorts of decisions that are being made within schools that mean students are left to fend for themselves, with whatever imperfect support is available from home.
Lastly, I’m clear-eyed enough to see that education (and LA) funding will get worse rather than better in the next decade. On a personal level I’m left wondering whether, for my own self- preservation, I need to admit defeat and get out of the system.
Sorry for a long and fairly depressing post - this is more of a lament and part of my own grieving than anything else. Apologies for any self indulgence herein.
The only quibble I have with your excellent post is the idea that anyone advocating for lower tax bear some responsibility for your lack of funding.
It would be possible to cut taxes while diverting a much larger proportion of government spending towards younger people for a net positive effect. Just look at how health and social care spending (both more likely to be used by older people) has increased much faster than demographic change, even while spending on education has fallen.
Local Authority funding is one issue that no political party, north or south of the border, wants to address. It's where most of the cuts have fallen and I reckon a direct reason why central government spending is now coming under such pressure.
Thanks. And yes good point, and it was heartening to hear on the Private Eye podcast yesterday that the doctor who writes for them about the NHS was advocating for money to be diverted from health towards education (best bang of your buck in terms of prevention).
Part of the issue as well is down to the checks that have to be done for safeguarding, when I was younger for example I used to volunteer and help run a youth club organised by the local methodists. Would I do it now? Not a chance because it has now gone from a simple request asking if I would help to which the answer is yes....to fill out this form wait weeks while someone rifles through your life etc. It just isn't something I feel strongly enough to jump through the hoops for.
The same issue has caused many clubs that had junior sections to close them. People don't want to jump through the hoops of getting vetted and the clubs don't want to do all the work of appointing a safe guarding officer etc.
This alone has caused a drop in whats available to youths.
I'm surprised by this, I got an enhanced DBS check to do voluntary work with children and it was quick and completely painless.
I had to have one for a job it wasn't quick certainly. However having one to volunteer not going to bother. For many people its just the idea of having your life raked over to qualify when all they are trying to do is put back something. A lot of people also believe it is overkill.
The club i volunteered at all I was doing was setting up equipement like table tennis tables and breaking them down and clearing up at the end of the session as well as being present and defusing squabbles between the kids. The club was held in one big room with no hidden corners and a minimum of 3 adults present. Potential for abuse as close to zero as can be. Sheer beauracratic overkill
You are being utterly naive about how abusers work. They gravitate to places, where they can get close to children and be trusted. Then .....
That's true. But it is also true that lots don't want to jump through hoops to be cleared to volunteer at these places, and so they don't. We end up with less risk of abuse, especially as clubs shut, but more risk of abuse as vulnerable children are tipped onto the street.
I had to have enhanced vetting as I am Chair of Trustees and governor of a primary school. It really is not jumping through hoops.
Biden basically wants Ukraine to accept defeat to Putin, and the rape of the Ukrainian nation, so that gas stays cheap and Biden has a better chance of taking Michigan
We choked the weapons supply, we failed to provide enough air defence, and now we ask Ukrianians to sit on their hands while cruise missiles land on their families. Such mistakes are setting the course of the entire century. And there is no justification for any of this. https://twitter.com/GLandsbergis/status/1771120750071521579
The blame has to lie primarily with Biden for imposing red lines on Ukraine rather than on Russia.
Comments
Khan 51%
Hall 27%
Blackie 10%
Garbett 8%
Cox 2%
https://twitter.com/Savanta_UK/status/1771103272201331148
It was OBVIOUS that something like this was going to happen after Sunak's speech in Downing Street. The only surprise is that such a perfect example cropped up so soon.
I'm starting to wonder whether this is a grand conspiracy between Hester and Sunak's political opponents. It's too perfect.
The club i volunteered at all I was doing was setting up equipement like table tennis tables and breaking them down and clearing up at the end of the session as well as being present and defusing squabbles between the kids. The club was held in one big room with no hidden corners and a minimum of 3 adults present. Potential for abuse as close to zero as can be. Sheer beauracratic overkill
Firstly, there is a decent argument, if that person beats expectations by losing badly but not disastrously, that they should stay on as party leader.
Secondly, if it's a real grey man (or woman) then at least they get their name on the honours board and are forever a former Prime Minister. With the best will in the world, Oliver Dowden or Mel Stride or whoever are not going to be PM in normal circumstances, and are not going to be remembered at all. Sure, it's all with the caveat they were there for less time than someone who was there for less time than a lettuce. But it isn't total ignominy like Truss who had an opportunity and made a pigs ear of it - they would simply have tried their best in the very brief time they had, and lost. Douglas-Home was there for longer but still a pretty short spell - he isn't remembered as an dreadful PM, but merely as a pretty inconsequential one. If he'd not done it, he'd scarcely be remembered at all.
I don't think it'll happen though. Not because someone couldn't be found, but because it would make an awful situation worse - yet more instability, chaos, and frankly self-indulgence.
I suppose the issue is that we the public don't cut our politicians any slack for the attempted management of what scarce resources we now have. Read through each department's literature, their aims, and the costings which would allow them to implement their plans and it is a picture of reasoned sanity. And then I'm sure once the red pen comes out, for it must come out, we are left with a piecemeal, inadequate state of affairs which satisfies almost no one, as we are seeing right now.
https://x.com/tpointuk/status/1771121029236052362?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q
Btw, for those who have the time, and might want to make a small difference, there is a chronic shortage of both school governors (Cyclefree is one, I think), and independent visitors for children in care.
Both require serious commitment - but aren't hugely time consuming.
Lots of reasons HY.
In no particular order, because they are all important,
Worse forecasts for later in the year election. Inflation up, energy costs, up, and you can’t do a charity swim of the channel as theres dingys everywhere.
The polls you are quoting being rubbish, the polls I’m looking at being more accurate. The last forced choice poll I looked at 2 weeks ago had the gap at 11 and Con on 31.
And you are making the same mistake as a senior and influential PBer did yesterday, who was as wrong as a step mom without her morning after pills. In the Psephological Physiologus there is this theory of the Lion Election. Don’t see all elections as being the same beast, they have completely different DNA. create an election Hierarchy based on power being handed over with votes to a politician. Because all elections are not empowering with same amount of power,
In a previous thread, as I’m pointing out this hierarchy, for the mistake being made on PB is too much comparing election results and shares without appreciating the hierarchy, a well known and respected PBer replied to me with some bygone Con Euro election share 🤷♀️
When it comes to UK elections there’s really only one beast in town. The Lion.
The Lion is coming. Listen to the lion.
Her team were redeployed to deal with all sorts of horrid things in the pandemic. One of her admin assistants ended up helping out in the morgue. She ended up getting psychologists in to support the team when the shit was over. At no point would they even socialise in a nearby park. Let alone get ambushed by a cake.
Pity the poor SPADs getting questions from Peston.
Unless you have some sort of police record, it's just a mild inconvenience.
https://x.com/barristersecret/status/1770895807010537511?s=61&t=LYVEHh2mqFy1oUJAdCfe-Q
That's problematic nationally. Firstly, as you say, it's hard to do as an incumbent - Sunak's problem on small boats (leaving aside whether it's a sensible policy or not) is that even people inclined to agree with him say, "hang on, haven't the Tories been in for a while now?" Secondly, it only makes sense in London due to PR - they may keep some constituency seats but it's mainly about gunning for list seats.
Earlier in the year I think that was their best chance of winning, absent finding a high profile, non politician willing to stand for them.
The one route, though, would be to make him party leader and "PM designate" with an immediate general election. He'd have a reasonable chance of becoming an MP in a General Election as it's harder for parties to pour resources into a single seat, and turnout is higher so much harder to get the by-election swings which are based on a combination of switching and differential turnout.
It won't happen, though. Far too many Tory MPs are far too opposed to make it in any way credible. It's a fantasy for a certain type of Tory, but nothing more.
For all the guff about ‘we vote for an MP…’ changing PMs midterm for anything other than health reasons should mean a GE within six months. A party with Truss or Sunak as leader would not have won in 2019, so they had no right to be running the country
Few occasions? There are at least five that we know about and the Met "forgot" to investigate Johnson. On this I do believe Sunak was tucked up. He really was at a work event and got caught up in Mr and Mrs Johnson's cavalier behaviour by accident. Johnson was in the thick of things. Partygate was analogous to Johnson's carefree arrogance. And I don't see Johnson contracting COVID means he could thus "party like it's 1999", while we hunkered down like moles.
Currygate? Different time, different rules.
Guardian.
Across the road, the site where their HQ was located is now occupied by a Lidl.
As defences go, that's a rather poor one.
Also, WTF is going on with the music in that clip? I could hardly hear the interview @isam
It's generally not an opportunistic thing in the room. Bob builds a reputation as reliable and good with the kids - and the parents. Bob is always on time, very understanding when the kids have problems at home. Bob gave little Sam a lift home when his Mum's car broke down. But Bob has always had a second game.
In this case the MP is a person who gets a huge amount of hatred directed at her by racist wackos, a demographic not known for its lack of intersection with the demographic of violent nutcases.
It seems that since Spencer Perceval's assassination in 1812 the only two MPs who are known to have been murdered for reasons unconnected with Ireland were both killed in the past 8 years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_British_MPs_killed_in_office
The PM and his associates, often, although not invariably, wealthy people argued the toss for weeks, and then were fined pittances.
Perhaps they need to be reminded of Mills' quote: "He who knows only his side of a case knows little of that." Ahem ..... Scotland and its new Hate Crime Act. Though, oddly, women are not protected by it.
Again.
Oh my Lord.
A lot of the people who, by age, social standing and whatnot really ought to be Conservatives aren't signing up. This week's YouGov had them on 11% with the 25-49 age group. The reason that London Conervatives chose Hall as their candidate was that there wasn't really anyone better available. A SPAD from the Cameron era isn't really any better, just differently wrong.
Meanwhile, healthcare staff, who were making actual life-and-death decisions on a regular basis, somehow managed to do without multiple cheese and wine parties.
See also @SirNorfolkPassmore's comment.
I posted it because he wouldn’t answer in the same way politicians never answer, by repeating a phrase constantly each time they are asked, which makes them look like someone out of One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest
I wish he’d said ‘Yes I did, it was a mistake and I’d advise youngsters not to get involved’. By answering the way he did he’s admitting it but wriggling out of responsibility
The song was ‘Cocaine’ by Eric Clapton I think
https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/1771096909387633142
And you are making a huge assumption that Sir Keir believes his drug taking to be a mistake!!
As I said repeatedly at the time: I'm glad I wasn't the one having to make decisions over Covid.
A bunch of the most appalling crusties and half-wits in Labour - a rag-tag bunch of antisemites, Assange-adjacent nutcases and, worst of all, Owen Jones. What would his platform have been? Corbyn has no demonstrable interest in London or a vision for it, and it'd have come down to some gimic of buses and that we have to beat a (Muslim) mayor for the good of Gaza or something.
People compare it with Livingstone just because Ken was Red. But he'd also led the GLC for five years, was Mr London, and Labour were in office while Tories remained unpopular, so it was a good chance for a free swing.
I just don't think Corbyn would've been a factor, and indeed he isn't a fool and that probably contributed to his decision not to bother - he suspects, correctly, it would've been a bit embarrassing.
Listen to the Lion. 🦁
They’ve run out of missiles to shoot down the Russian missiles
https://x.com/jayinkyiv/status/1771087479468175546?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw
Russians are beginning to advance
https://x.com/geromanat/status/1768149970501169502?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw
Russia is now calling it a “war” for the first time
https://x.com/marionawfal/status/1771119998288658816?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw
Outrageously, the USA is asking Ukraine to STOP attacking Russian oil refineries etc as it might drive up inflation and threaten Biden’s reelection
https://x.com/faytuks/status/1771044223090929918?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw
To put a more positive spin on all this, an anecdote. I am on childcare on Fridays, and I’ve just taken my 3 and 1 year olds to our local park, where a new skatepark has just been built on the site of a derelict playground.
Today is the first day my 3 year old has got
to play in the skate park because it has been chock full of skaters after pre-school every other day.
By all accounts the skate park was built by an enthusiast skater, with really quite a small amount of funding from the council. And yet it is, and will be, exactly what hundreds of local kids need to give themselves a purpose, some resilience, and respite from other stresses in the world.
It’s not in a prosperous part of town, it’s free to those who use it (and pretty cheap to us taxpayers). Dare I say it, it’s the Big Society in action.
ETA if there are solutions out there, this sort of thing must be part of it.
As for the "virus spreading POV" that is not the debate. Whether he was entitled to have a beer and a curry in the Miners Welfare ( or wherever it was) in Durham is.
If Reform overtook the Tories on voteshare and seats the only way the Tories remained an independent party would likely be with PR
Couple adopted vulnerable children to abuse
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-gloucestershire-68629466
If Reform fail to put up a good showing in London and the locals that will also reduce the traction they are getting at the moment from the likes of Goodwin
Without charging them rent.
I was still registered to vote there, paid council tax and bills.
I would probably have described myself to a third party as “the landlord”, though.
I can't help but feel that Boris Johnson would have taken a "do whatever it takes" approach, if he had still been PM, and Britain would have spent more money to increase the supply of ammunition to Ukraine.
But we are where we are, and it looks grim.
“Both parties took place on the evening before the funeral of Prince Philip on 17 April 2021, and featured alcohol and one of them featured loud music.[75][206] The Daily Telegraph reported partying continued from 6pm until 1am. A child's swing in the garden was broken.[207][14] ITV News reported dancing and at least two couples "getting it on with each other" and "touching each other up", while two other members of staff who were not openly a couple previously were "all over each other".[139][14]”
How is that not a ‘party’? Music, dancing, boozing, snogging, until 1am. Stop trying to re-write history!
And how can you say who might be "the choice of people who voted Tory at the next GE" - or did you mean last GE ?
Politically it’s a useful wedge issue for the Dems to blame Trump and the GOP. But all the US is really going for is a slow bleed of soviet era military reserves, a chance to test some toys and a frozen conflict on roughly current lines that doesn’t risk internal collapse in Russia.
There was much fanfare to the summer 2023 counter offensive but with hindsight it was setup to fail. Insufficient heavy arms and no effective counter to the Russian choppers that completely disrupted Ukrainian mine clearance operations.
Interesting that the timing of weaker US support also roughly coincides with the change of the guard in Downing St.
In this context, easy to understand the poles arming themselves to the teeth and going big on consolidating and vertically integrating their energy supply.
I still find it hard to understand Biden’s cheerleaders. History will judge him as a fool on this I’m quite certain.
According to the sage Alfie Solomons:
"Big fucks small always, actually. There is a fight going on out there between big and small. Big will fuck small"
"Andrea Leadsom said it best, scoffing on Times Radio at the “sudden wokeness” that provoked Simon Case, head of the civil service, and Richard Moore of MI6 to resign from the Garrick Club. I am, she said sweetly, “not that interested in men’s decisions to feel good about themselves”."
https://twitter.com/GLandsbergis/status/1771120750071521579
“American President, go fuck yourself”