I don’t think anyone has ever satisfactorily answered Tam Dalyell’s West Lothian Question
I think the answer that works in practice- just not in theory- is the Spanish one post-Franco.
Roughly, identify the powers that are in principle devolvable. Put them in a box, then leave it up to areas to take them. There were two different routes to forming an Autonomous Community. A simple application by a province or group of provinces got them base-level powers. If they wanted more and they weren't obviously historically distinct (like Catalonia), win a referendum first.
Two big benefits of that approach. First is that the map was designed bottom-up and had a point. It's trying to carve England up for no apparent reason that has caused English devolution so many problems. Second is that no region can complain about something like the WLQ. The powers are still there in the box if they want them.
I don’t think anyone has ever satisfactorily answered Tam Dalyell’s West Lothian Question
The West Lothian question is really only relevant if we have a government which is depending upon Scottish seats to have a majority in the House of Commons. That means they need to have more than half the Scottish seats. We obviously have not had that for the last 14 years (although May was presumably grateful for the increase in Scottish Tories in 2015) and it wasn't particularly relevant during the Blair majorities either.
It looks somewhat unlikely to me that the Scottish Labour MPs are going to be the extent of Starmer's majority although I suppose that is still possible. If that occurs the question will return.
DavidL is being uncharacteristically unlawyerly here! Constitutional issues are not only relevant to what happens to be the parliamentary situation to-day, they are relevant to any possible futures; the constitution's job is to provide for a secure future. The worst time to address it is when it suddenly becomes a political hot potato.
Great header. I think there will be prosecutions. I certainly hope there are. I also hope we don't see all the vitriol funnelled onto the one figure of Paula Vennells.
I think, slightly uncharacteristically, @Cyclefree is cutting Mr Leighton too much slack here. The Horizon program was not some incidental or side issue for what became Post Office Counters. It was, and remains, the core management tool for the business allowing the business to monitor the hundreds of thousands of remote transactions being carried out on its behalf by hundreds of staff and self employed contractors. Any suggestion that it had some serious flaws which made that information flow inaccurate really went to the heart of the business and the senior management and the Chairman should have been all over it looking for reassurance.
It is the stunning lack of curiosity and reluctance to glance under the bonnet even when some rather odd noises were being emitted which frankly makes you wonder whether this was indeed gross neglect or wilful blindness.
I don't think I am. The reason I wrote this header was precisely because all the focus is on Ms Vennells and not on those in charge earlier under whose leadership this scandal developed. Leighton is in many ways far more responsible since his failure to look into the concerns raised in 2003 was what allowed this to develop into the horror show we have now.
Vennells inherited the mess. Leighton created it.
As for this statement - "the senior management and the Chairman should have been all over it looking for reassurance." this is precisely the problem. If you look for reassurance, that is what you will get.
No - you ask for an investigation into what is being stated and any worthwhile investigator knows that you do not start with preconceptions and conclusions. But that is not what happened here because:-
(a) Leighton and others did not want to know - like most senior managers. It is people like me who have to make them want to know and it's a bloody hard lonely furrow sometimes and persistent bolshy people prepared to do this are not exactly ten a penny; (b) his organisation did not have an investigations or audit or risk team capable of doing the work; and (c) everyone was already convinced that subpostmasters were crooks and Horizon was right and when people have such beliefs they cling onto them like a religion in the teeth of any evidence to the contrary.
Why didn't Leighton want to know? Because the whole focus was on making Royal Mail profitable and fattening it up for privatisation. Imagine putting in your prospectus that your accounting system is shit and you have probably been responsible for the biggest miscarriage of justice in English history. You wouldn't be able to give away the shares.
That's why ultimate responsibility for this goes right up into government.
Oh - and Leighton himself, like so many other senior managers, had half a dozen other jobs. So whether he had the time to turn up in the office let alone do any actual work is moot.
Justice here - in the non-legal sense - would mean taking all of these people from the Chairs down, putting them all in prison right now and letting them argue why they shouldn't remain there for the rest of their lives. Their wealth should be taken and distributed to the subpostmasters.
I will be Chair of the Panel with the casting vote. I have Sicilian levels of vengefulness.
What executives, RM and PO lawyers and IT knew about Horizon really has little relevance to its profitability, which is based long term on its share of the parcels market ultimately.
It may be a matter for legal account for those concerned, most of whom no longer work for RM and the PO but that is a separate matter. Post privatisation anyway Horizon was an issue for the still publicly owned PO, RM was a private company no longer responsible for Post Offices
Thank you, CF, for another excellent piece on this subject.
Following this scandal has proved not only enlightening but personally helpful in my own jousts with large organisations in recent years. In my case it has been Gloucestershire Police and British Gas, but it could equally well have been others, and I'm sure PBers will be able to quote their own examples.
Lessons have been learned, by me at least. Don't accept that they are either competent or honest. Do not accept what you know not to be true, even if it is offered as a compromise deal. Fight your corner, and if possible, connect with others who have been mistreated.
I'm still hoping to see prosecutions in the PO case. Although part of me feels some sympathy with Vennels - how does she sleep nights? - I think we have to see her and her colleagues in the dock if the message is ever to get through to the senior management of large organisations that they are not immune, however well-connected they may be. If that can be demonstrated in the PO case, there is some hope that others will truly learn lessons.
I am not holding my breath but I remain hopeful. Your efforts, and those of other like you, Ms CF, nurture that hope.
How does Vennels et al sleep at night?
I suggest you find some gloss magazine interviews with some Big Cheese(s) a couple of years downstream from the Big Scandal.
In a spread, which often contains shots of nice country house in summer, Our Victim explains how he/she was Victimised. Despite being a super achiever, somehow they got saddled with the responsibility they were legally responsible for.
It was a hard time. Maybe even a stay at the posh end of Priory Chain. But he/she found another 6 figure job, where he/she is Doing Good Work for The Public Benefit.
In every such story, what is missing?
Very possibly, M, although in the case of Vennels (and possibly her friend, Et Al) I suspect the Priory visit will have to wait until she's out of chokey.
After yesterday's evidence from Sir Anthony Hooper, it's hard to see how she dodges a stretch.
What I don't understand is why she hasn't already been arrested. As you say, there appears to be enough information already in the public domain for a prima facie case, so why the delay? I don't see how waiting until after the inquiry finishes is just?
It always struck me as perfectly reasonable that the CPS should hold back until the Inquiry ended, but I have changed my mind now.
Witness Sir Wyn Nice-Old-Thng's dismay at the PO'sbelated dumping of thousands of emails on the Inquiry team. For good order, this required a pause in the investigation process while the contents were digested, but Sir N-O-T wasn't having it. He saw through it as a deliberate ploy to further delay findings that have been delayed too much already. He chose to press on. Well played, Sir.
The CPS should take a leaf out of his book. Fuck the niceties, and good order. Charge them, now.
The consensus in response to my question about the set-up of the Horizon programme was that the “benefit” of increased detection and prosecution of SPM fraud emerged as the programme was rolled-out rather than being an original intent when the programme was signed-off. Maybe, but I’d still like to see the original documentation and the governance structure if anyone knows where it can be found. I will do my own digging.
There is a lot of information on the Inquiry website as the commissioning of Horizon was covered in evidence so you can read or hear the evidence and see the documents referred to.
How any Tory can look at the treatment David Cameron has received from Putin-backing Republicans in the US and still want Trump to be President is quite beyond me. The GOP is making it very clear that they hold vital UK security, defence and economic interests in absolute contempt.
To be fair to Trump, he met Cameron at Mar a Lago only 2 days ago
They met but there was no consensus and Trump refused to recognise the urgency and importance of support for Ukraine. He then told his lackey, the Speaker, to not even meet Cameron and he cancelled the meeting like the obedient cur he is.
I don’t think anyone has ever satisfactorily answered Tam Dalyell’s West Lothian Question
The West Lothian question is really only relevant if we have a government which is depending upon Scottish seats to have a majority in the House of Commons. That means they need to have more than half the Scottish seats. We obviously have not had that for the last 14 years (although May was presumably grateful for the increase in Scottish Tories in 2015) and it wasn't particularly relevant during the Blair majorities either.
It looks somewhat unlikely to me that the Scottish Labour MPs are going to be the extent of Starmer's majority although I suppose that is still possible. If that occurs the question will return.
DavidL is being uncharacteristically unlawyerly here! Constitutional issues are not only relevant to what happens to be the parliamentary situation to-day, they are relevant to any possible futures; the constitution's job is to provide for a secure future. The worst time to address it is when it suddenly becomes a political hot potato.
Oh I frequently unlawyerly! I take your point, I am merely pointing out why hardly anyone has talked about it since Tam went to a better place.
Was the actual polling done by a reputable pollster, all I can see in the article is it is based on something from the hardly impartial group "Best For Britain".
Survation.
From the Best for Britain site:- The massive Best for Britain MRP poll of more than 15,000 people undertaken by Survation found that 16% of respondents don’t know about new voter ID rules suggesting that around 5 million voters could be turned away when they try to cast their vote in the upcoming local and General Elections with 1.85 million in marginal and ultra marginal seats. https://www.bestforbritain.org/5_million_to_be_disenfranchised_voter_id_rules
Funnily enough, I reckon that's quite good news; I thought it would be much higher than 16%. Once the GE, in particular, is called, I'd expect the opposition parties to drive that figure down to a very low % through a bombardment of messages, particularly aimed at the young. I think voter ID could negatively affect turnout in the locals and mayorals, though.
I also wonder if it will affect young people as disproportionately as we think. They are used to having to produce ID. It is the oldies who don't and are less likely to carry a driving licence/passport around with them.
Outside London, does everybody have a bus pass now?
I mean do all over 60s (or is it pensioners? I'm out of the loop on this now!) have a bus pass?
Good morning.
60 in London
State Pension age everywhere else
tsk, usual little englander mentality,
60 in Northern Ireland.
to be fair, I saw your post after I had already posted about the differences re. Scotland. The England and Wales pass cannot be used there.
An England pass cannot be used in Wales and vice versa. Source:
This is all totally ridiculous and so is the way London is split from the rest of England. It's a pain in the neck for people who live near the boundaries. I thought there was supposed to be a union. I've no problem with it being administered by devolved bodies, but the actual provision should be universal: if you're resident in Britain and over 60, you get free bus travel.
We really need to stop these universal benefits to concentrate on those really in need.
There’s an inconsistency in that comment and an assumption that older people aren’t in need. Perhaps more seriously it can lead to the kind of Norfolk Passmore remark which lends itself to the uncaring attitude of the Right.
There is perhaps a wider discussion of how pensioners are cared for to include the triple lock and state retirement age. But if it’s going to be discussed it shouldn’t be a carte blanche ‘we need to stop xyz’ but a reflection of how we care for our older people, as indeed how we look after those of tax paying age.
Some pensioners are in need and we don't do enough for them. Many pensioners are not, either because they are still working or because they have additional pension provision. It is absurd to treat this ever growing segment of our population as if they were all the same, in their Garratt, struggling with keeping the heating on.
As this segment grows it will be ever more important to be selective in what help they are given. As we have discussed on here before I think that the pension itself should be means tested albeit at a fairly generous level to avoid disincentives to save. Fringe benefits, like TV licences, bus passes, free prescriptions in England, discounts on various tickets etc are an absurd allocation of scarce resources and should stop.
I tend to agree with that, but there are times when it is simpler and cheaper to just make it a universal benefit. In such cases it should stay. However if it is more expensive to administrator then why give it to people who don't need it.
Bizarrely I have benefited from this recently twice when I never expected to. I didn't have a bus pass because I had no intention of taking a bus because frankly they pretty well don't exist where I live. Someone said to me they were a useful form of id because of the picture on them (although having said that my driving licence would do as well). Any way my wife broke her wrist at our holiday home and I had to drive up to recover her. That meant going up again later to recover the other car by train and bus. I saved a whole £2 on the bus fare. Last week I had a minor operation on my hand for trigger finger and my wife couldn't drive me because of said broken wrist. So again train and bus to the hospital and back. I suppose I shouldn't have used my pass, but I did.
Heavy bombardment of Ukraine again last night. As usual, the vast majority of targets were civilian infrastructure. And civilians.
It is unbearable. russia has just struck the Odesa district w ballistic missiles, killing four, including a 10yo girl and injuring seven. One man lost both legs, doctors fight for his life. Ffs, the West has enough Patriots, which were produced to save people, not collect dust https://twitter.com/OlenaHalushka/status/1778102937857765690
If Sunak really wants to cement a legacy, something undoubtedly good he achieved with his time in office, he’d act unilaterally now to send every spare weapon we can get our hands on to Ukraine. JFDI.
Bonus points if he can set aside political rivalries, and brings Starmer and Johnson into the programme as well.
To add, it appears that in recent weeks most countries appears to have replaced actions with discussions with regard to Ukraine, with the possible exception, I hate to say, of the French.
The Germans are heading for a severe recession, the Americans are more interested in Israel and on domestic spending in an election year, Eastern European countries are more concerned about supporting the Ukranian refugees and have already given much in military aid given their own position, and the Baltics and Finland are concentrating on their own threat from the angry bear.
Hell, I wouldn’t even mind if Sunak teams up with Macron, that’s how bad the situation is now. Let them announce a new Concorde project, getting everyone together from both countries to quickly get new production lines of Ukranian weapons running.
There do seem to have been a lot of announcements in recent weeks of Eastern European countries managing to find shells on the global market. That, alongside air defence, seems to be the main need of Ukraine at the moment - ammunition.
Also air defence, which is just as vital, and in almost equally short supply.
I've been saying for years that we spend far too much on large capital projects (the fairly useless carriers, for example, or Ajax), and far too little on shells, bombs and missiles of all types.
Many, many "smart" weapons consist of an old dumb bomb with guidance systems strapped to it.
EDIT: The problem in Ukraine is that they have (barely) enough advanced air defence to guard major sites. Which is why the Russians are going after civilian targets.
And apparently, some dumb f***wit in the Biden administration has called Russian oil facilities 'civilian' targets.
The Americans are not only withholding arms and aid (thanks, Republicans!); the Biden administration is actually making it next-to impossible to fight, let alone win.
This is the way evil wins.
American politics is totally broken at the moment, and there’s a whole bunch of other domestic and international distractions that mean Ukraine isn’t leading the news any more. Biden appears worried that American weapons end up used in Russia, or that bombing refineries might cause the oil price to rise ahead of the election. Many of the house Republicans are contrarian for the hell of it, and both parties in Congress are trying to tie unrelated things together for political reasons.
Europe needs to step up and get on a war footing, just as Russia has started to do. That means getting production of basic weapons running ASAP.
Come on Rishi, do the right thing and be remembered for something good you did.
As Joseph Borell noted yesterday, dealing with the consequences of a Ukrainian defeat would likely be a great deal more costly and difficult for Europe than is preventing that defeat.
That ought to have been clear two years ago, but better late than never.
Indeed. The war is on Europe’s borders, and while the Americans have provided a fair amount of aid so far, it’s clear their priorities are now elsewhere so Europe needs to collectively step up.
We can hope that American politics gets un-broken at some point, but it’s not going to be this year and the weapons are needed now.
Great header. I think there will be prosecutions. I certainly hope there are. I also hope we don't see all the vitriol funnelled onto the one figure of Paula Vennells.
I think, slightly uncharacteristically, @Cyclefree is cutting Mr Leighton too much slack here. The Horizon program was not some incidental or side issue for what became Post Office Counters. It was, and remains, the core management tool for the business allowing the business to monitor the hundreds of thousands of remote transactions being carried out on its behalf by hundreds of staff and self employed contractors. Any suggestion that it had some serious flaws which made that information flow inaccurate really went to the heart of the business and the senior management and the Chairman should have been all over it looking for reassurance.
It is the stunning lack of curiosity and reluctance to glance under the bonnet even when some rather odd noises were being emitted which frankly makes you wonder whether this was indeed gross neglect or wilful blindness.
I don't think I am. The reason I wrote this header was precisely because all the focus is on Ms Vennells and not on those in charge earlier under whose leadership this scandal developed. Leighton is in many ways far more responsible since his failure to look into the concerns raised in 2003 was what allowed this to develop into the horror show we have now.
Vennells inherited the mess. Leighton created it.
As for this statement - "the senior management and the Chairman should have been all over it looking for reassurance." this is precisely the problem. If you look for reassurance, that is what you will get.
No - you ask for an investigation into what is being stated and any worthwhile investigator knows that you do not start with preconceptions and conclusions. But that is not what happened here because:-
(a) Leighton and others did not want to know - like most senior managers. It is people like me who have to make them want to know and it's a bloody hard lonely furrow sometimes and persistent bolshy people prepared to do this are not exactly ten a penny; (b) his organisation did not have an investigations or audit or risk team capable of doing the work; and (c) everyone was already convinced that subpostmasters were crooks and Horizon was right and when people have such beliefs they cling onto them like a religion in the teeth of any evidence to the contrary.
Why didn't Leighton want to know? Because the whole focus was on making Royal Mail profitable and fattening it up for privatisation. Imagine putting in your prospectus that your accounting system is shit and you have probably been responsible for the biggest miscarriage of justice in English history. You wouldn't be able to give away the shares.
That's why ultimate responsibility for this goes right up into government.
Oh - and Leighton himself, like so many other senior managers, had half a dozen other jobs. So whether he had the time to turn up in the office let alone do any actual work is moot.
Justice here - in the non-legal sense - would mean taking all of these people from the Chairs down, putting them all in prison right now and letting them argue why they shouldn't remain there for the rest of their lives. Their wealth should be taken and distributed to the subpostmasters.
I will be Chair of the Panel with the casting vote. I have Sicilian levels of vengefulness.
You’ll Never Guess Which State Court Just Approved Religious Exemptions From Abortion Bans
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/04/indiana-abortion-ban-religious-exemption-judaism-faith.html ..A three-judge panel on the Indiana Court of Appeals agreed to enjoin Indiana’s near-total abortion ban, as applied against a class of religious plaintiffs who had argued that the ban violates a state law protecting religious freedom. In its unanimous 76-page opinion, authored by Judge Leanna K. Weissmann, the panel determined that a preliminary injunction granted to a group of plaintiffs who had alleged that Indiana’s abortion law violated their rights under the state’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act could remain in place. The case now proceeds to trial, or more likely to a direct appeal to the state Supreme Court...
The fundamentalist Christian right seems to have forgotten the existence of other religious in rewriting the state's laws.
If you read the details of the ruling, its logic is unassailable.
Following the overturning of Roe v Wade the responsibility for the matter has been returned not to pressure groups like the fundamentalist 'Christian' right (or those who would confer no rights on the unborn at all) but to voters and those they elect, just as in the UK.
Thank you, CF, for another excellent piece on this subject.
Following this scandal has proved not only enlightening but personally helpful in my own jousts with large organisations in recent years. In my case it has been Gloucestershire Police and British Gas, but it could equally well have been others, and I'm sure PBers will be able to quote their own examples.
Lessons have been learned, by me at least. Don't accept that they are either competent or honest. Do not accept what you know not to be true, even if it is offered as a compromise deal. Fight your corner, and if possible, connect with others who have been mistreated.
I'm still hoping to see prosecutions in the PO case. Although part of me feels some sympathy with Vennels - how does she sleep nights? - I think we have to see her and her colleagues in the dock if the message is ever to get through to the senior management of large organisations that they are not immune, however well-connected they may be. If that can be demonstrated in the PO case, there is some hope that others will truly learn lessons.
I am not holding my breath but I remain hopeful. Your efforts, and those of other like you, Ms CF, nurture that hope.
How does Vennels et al sleep at night?
I suggest you find some gloss magazine interviews with some Big Cheese(s) a couple of years downstream from the Big Scandal.
In a spread, which often contains shots of nice country house in summer, Our Victim explains how he/she was Victimised. Despite being a super achiever, somehow they got saddled with the responsibility they were legally responsible for.
It was a hard time. Maybe even a stay at the posh end of Priory Chain. But he/she found another 6 figure job, where he/she is Doing Good Work for The Public Benefit.
In every such story, what is missing?
But the reason that remorse is missing is because of the selection and formation processes people have undergone to get to the top. Any empathy for others or willingness to admit fault tends to have been internally suppressed and externally trained out of them.
And that's not surprising, given the head-on-a-spike treatment given to those who come off on the wrong side of a scandal. Aggressive cover-ups are just playing the odds rationally.
Deep down, we all know (I think) that an approach to management that is humbler and more honest would be better. Accepting that mistakes happen and the important thing is to find and fix them quickly. Less reputation management, more like aviation.
What we don't know is how to get there from here.
I think that tensions here are about diversity and perhaps even opposition, and how to institutionalise both in the short and long term in a way that creates an overall benefit.
And then to do that in the face of organisational cultures that seek to align everyone in the same direction, and do not value conflict.
How do we tolerate, encourage and facilitate appropriate conflict?
In the words of Deep Thought ... TRICKY !
Part of that is about Non-Executive Directors. Part is about whistleblowers, and the bounds of acceptability as to what can go in a contract to restrict employees. And checks and balances, and how the power of the leadership of the organisation should be circumscribed *. And a whole bundle of other aspects.
* An interesting example here is how certain office holders in the Church of England basically cannot be removed without extreme difficulty, and how the tenure is essentially permanent ("Freehold"), and the appointment process are managed by external stakeholders ("the Patron").
It can be frustrating for the organsation's 'management' (ie Bishosp), but has had a place in maintaining diversity over centuries.
You can go a long way in a career by being very nice to all the right people, supporting institutions, being pleasant, giving innocuous help here and there, and word getting around. What you don't want is a reputation as being difficult or a troublemaker, and I suspect that often drives behaviour.
Looking at her CV that appears to be precisely what happened to Paula Vennells:
On a ridiculously complicated financial structure I was working on years ago I was one of the key stakeholders along with two other groups. We would have many calls with potential partners in the structure who were introduced in by one of the other parties.
Every single time we had a new potential partner one of the key parties on the initial group introduction call would follow up my introduction with “yes, Boulay has a problem for every solution” and everyone would laugh away.
The thing was is that the other parties just believed that we could charge headlong and if problems arose then we would work around them later, ignore them, beg people to bend the rules whereas I wanted to identify every possible problem from the start and check if there was an alternative way before we spent a year working on something which we knew could not be done legally, technically or financially. It made me very unpopular in the group and I eventually had to sack them off because they were wasting time and money and blowing up relations with other parties by having false hopes and ignoring problems.
Every institution and company needs people who say “hang on, this won’t work”. They should actually have a specific role of “Director of No” and department of “I don’t think so” to sit at the board table with the directors of “false positivity”, department of “how to spend future bonuses on things you really want” and the “Too Scared to say no” committee.
There is/was (at least when I was taught it many decades ago) a management philosophy around constructing teams along these lines. Teams should be made up of different types of people (Salesman type, Chairman type, Evaluator type, Problem solvers, etc). What you describe is the evaluator type. I and my wife fall into the category (she was involved in drug safety). We are both of the type that go 'Hang on that won't work because' or 'What about if x happens'. Although life isn't that simple of course as people have multiple skills (I also can present so worked on pre sales and marketing and I also enjoy problem solving so took over projects that had gone pear-shaped). However I do have a bias to seeing where things will go pear-shaped. However you can't have a team made up just of these types otherwise nothing gets done, which is a big flaw I have. So you need the evaluator to hold back the salesman type, but you need the salesman type to ensure the evaluator doesn't grind the whole thing to a halt.
A very simple example of the usefulness of the evaluator: I was involved in organising large conferences. In big planning meetings I could tell I was being a big pain in the arse by constantly going 'That doesn't work because'. I think I only finally convinced people of my usefulness when they were desperate to wind stuff up and go and I pointed out that the one presenter was presenting in two different rooms at the same time.
Did a rather odd management course at Anglia Ruskin many years ago which said much the same, although they put it differently. A team, the man told us, needed a Critic, a member of the Awkward Squad. Someone who could think things from an outsiders point of view. I ended up writing an essay at the end of it allegedly from the point of view of someone who had, in pre-Roman times, 'emigrated' from what is now Switzerland to the Belgian coast, and had to describe the scene to his tribal leader back in the mountains.
I don’t think anyone has ever satisfactorily answered Tam Dalyell’s West Lothian Question
The West Lothian question is really only relevant if we have a government which is depending upon Scottish seats to have a majority in the House of Commons. That means they need to have more than half the Scottish seats. We obviously have not had that for the last 14 years (although May was presumably grateful for the increase in Scottish Tories in 2015) and it wasn't particularly relevant during the Blair majorities either.
It looks somewhat unlikely to me that the Scottish Labour MPs are going to be the extent of Starmer's majority although I suppose that is still possible. If that occurs the question will return.
Even if SLab MPs do make up Starmer’s majority, all the evidence is that they’ll be so supine that the question will remain unanswered for another few years. I guess the prospective candidate for Cowdenbeath & Kirkcaldy might have made a fuss about Labour not being racist enough but she’s been Gulaged.
Heavy bombardment of Ukraine again last night. As usual, the vast majority of targets were civilian infrastructure. And civilians.
It is unbearable. russia has just struck the Odesa district w ballistic missiles, killing four, including a 10yo girl and injuring seven. One man lost both legs, doctors fight for his life. Ffs, the West has enough Patriots, which were produced to save people, not collect dust https://twitter.com/OlenaHalushka/status/1778102937857765690
If Sunak really wants to cement a legacy, something undoubtedly good he achieved with his time in office, he’d act unilaterally now to send every spare weapon we can get our hands on to Ukraine. JFDI.
Bonus points if he can set aside political rivalries, and brings Starmer and Johnson into the programme as well.
To add, it appears that in recent weeks most countries appears to have replaced actions with discussions with regard to Ukraine, with the possible exception, I hate to say, of the French.
The Germans are heading for a severe recession, the Americans are more interested in Israel and on domestic spending in an election year, Eastern European countries are more concerned about supporting the Ukranian refugees and have already given much in military aid given their own position, and the Baltics and Finland are concentrating on their own threat from the angry bear.
Hell, I wouldn’t even mind if Sunak teams up with Macron, that’s how bad the situation is now. Let them announce a new Concorde project, getting everyone together from both countries to quickly get new production lines of Ukranian weapons running.
There do seem to have been a lot of announcements in recent weeks of Eastern European countries managing to find shells on the global market. That, alongside air defence, seems to be the main need of Ukraine at the moment - ammunition.
Also air defence, which is just as vital, and in almost equally short supply.
I've been saying for years that we spend far too much on large capital projects (the fairly useless carriers, for example, or Ajax), and far too little on shells, bombs and missiles of all types.
Many, many "smart" weapons consist of an old dumb bomb with guidance systems strapped to it.
EDIT: The problem in Ukraine is that they have (barely) enough advanced air defence to guard major sites. Which is why the Russians are going after civilian targets.
And apparently, some dumb f***wit in the Biden administration has called Russian oil facilities 'civilian' targets.
The Americans are not only withholding arms and aid (thanks, Republicans!); the Biden administration is actually making it next-to impossible to fight, let alone win.
This is the way evil wins.
American politics is totally broken at the moment, and there’s a whole bunch of other domestic and international distractions that mean Ukraine isn’t leading the news any more. Biden appears worried that American weapons end up used in Russia, or that bombing refineries might cause the oil price to rise ahead of the election. Many of the house Republicans are contrarian for the hell of it, and both parties in Congress are trying to tie unrelated things together for political reasons.
Europe needs to step up and get on a war footing, just as Russia has started to do. That means getting production of basic weapons running ASAP.
Come on Rishi, do the right thing and be remembered for something good you did.
As Joseph Borell noted yesterday, dealing with the consequences of a Ukrainian defeat would likely be a great deal more costly and difficult for Europe than is preventing that defeat.
That ought to have been clear two years ago, but better late than never.
Indeed. The war is on Europe’s borders, and while the Americans have provided a fair amount of aid so far, it’s clear their priorities are now elsewhere so Europe needs to collectively step up.
We can hope that American politics gets un-broken at some point, but it’s not going to be this year and the weapons are needed now.
They're running out of more advanced systems which can shoot down ballistic and hypersonic missiles. And have little to counter Russain aviation using standoff glide bombs to target the front - and frontline cities like Kharkiv.
You can go a long way in a career by being very nice to all the right people, supporting institutions, being pleasant, giving innocuous help here and there, and word getting around. What you don't want is a reputation as being difficult or a troublemaker, and I suspect that often drives behaviour.
Looking at her CV that appears to be precisely what happened to Paula Vennells:
On a ridiculously complicated financial structure I was working on years ago I was one of the key stakeholders along with two other groups. We would have many calls with potential partners in the structure who were introduced in by one of the other parties.
Every single time we had a new potential partner one of the key parties on the initial group introduction call would follow up my introduction with “yes, Boulay has a problem for every solution” and everyone would laugh away.
The thing was is that the other parties just believed that we could charge headlong and if problems arose then we would work around them later, ignore them, beg people to bend the rules whereas I wanted to identify every possible problem from the start and check if there was an alternative way before we spent a year working on something which we knew could not be done legally, technically or financially. It made me very unpopular in the group and I eventually had to sack them off because they were wasting time and money and blowing up relations with other parties by having false hopes and ignoring problems.
Every institution and company needs people who say “hang on, this won’t work”. They should actually have a specific role of “Director of No” and department of “I don’t think so” to sit at the board table with the directors of “false positivity”, department of “how to spend future bonuses on things you really want” and the “Too Scared to say no” committee.
There is/was (at least when I was taught it many decades ago) a management philosophy around constructing teams along these lines. Teams should be made up of different types of people (Salesman type, Chairman type, Evaluator type, Problem solvers, etc). What you describe is the evaluator type. I and my wife fall into the category (she was involved in drug safety). We are both of the type that go 'Hang on that won't work because' or 'What about if x happens'. Although life isn't that simple of course as people have multiple skills (I also can present so worked on pre sales and marketing and I also enjoy problem solving so took over projects that had gone pear-shaped). However I do have a bias to seeing where things will go pear-shaped. However you can't have a team made up just of these types otherwise nothing gets done, which is a big flaw I have. So you need the evaluator to hold back the salesman type, but you need the salesman type to ensure the evaluator doesn't grind the whole thing to a halt.
A very simple example of the usefulness of the evaluator: I was involved in organising large conferences. In big planning meetings I could tell I was being a big pain in the arse by constantly going 'That doesn't work because'. I think I only finally convinced people of my usefulness when they were desperate to wind stuff up and go and I pointed out that the one presenter was presenting in two different rooms at the same time.
Did a rather odd management course at Anglia Ruskin many years ago which said much the same, although they put it differently. A team, the man told us, needed a Critic, a member of the Awkward Squad. Someone who could think things from an outsiders point of view. I ended up writing an essay at the end of it allegedly from the point of view of someone who had, in pre-Roman times, 'emigrated' from what is now Switzerland to the Belgian coast, and had to describe the scene to his tribal leader back in the mountains.
We have lost sight of some simplicities, and process along with group think has taken over. In the simple world no-one can ever be morally exempt from the requirement to be honest, just and honourable.
For example, no-one can be exempt from the duty to act if they are in possession of any information tending to show that someone who has been charged, or convicted, or imprisoned, or financially disadvantaged may in fact be innocent.
No team formation, training or courses attended can make up for lack of honesty, honour or justice in any individual.
The template through which to look at the PO enquiry is not complicated.
Heavy bombardment of Ukraine again last night. As usual, the vast majority of targets were civilian infrastructure. And civilians.
It is unbearable. russia has just struck the Odesa district w ballistic missiles, killing four, including a 10yo girl and injuring seven. One man lost both legs, doctors fight for his life. Ffs, the West has enough Patriots, which were produced to save people, not collect dust https://twitter.com/OlenaHalushka/status/1778102937857765690
If Sunak really wants to cement a legacy, something undoubtedly good he achieved with his time in office, he’d act unilaterally now to send every spare weapon we can get our hands on to Ukraine. JFDI.
Bonus points if he can set aside political rivalries, and brings Starmer and Johnson into the programme as well.
To add, it appears that in recent weeks most countries appears to have replaced actions with discussions with regard to Ukraine, with the possible exception, I hate to say, of the French.
The Germans are heading for a severe recession, the Americans are more interested in Israel and on domestic spending in an election year, Eastern European countries are more concerned about supporting the Ukranian refugees and have already given much in military aid given their own position, and the Baltics and Finland are concentrating on their own threat from the angry bear.
Hell, I wouldn’t even mind if Sunak teams up with Macron, that’s how bad the situation is now. Let them announce a new Concorde project, getting everyone together from both countries to quickly get new production lines of Ukranian weapons running.
There do seem to have been a lot of announcements in recent weeks of Eastern European countries managing to find shells on the global market. That, alongside air defence, seems to be the main need of Ukraine at the moment - ammunition.
Also air defence, which is just as vital, and in almost equally short supply.
I've been saying for years that we spend far too much on large capital projects (the fairly useless carriers, for example, or Ajax), and far too little on shells, bombs and missiles of all types.
Many, many "smart" weapons consist of an old dumb bomb with guidance systems strapped to it.
EDIT: The problem in Ukraine is that they have (barely) enough advanced air defence to guard major sites. Which is why the Russians are going after civilian targets.
And apparently, some dumb f***wit in the Biden administration has called Russian oil facilities 'civilian' targets.
The Americans are not only withholding arms and aid (thanks, Republicans!); the Biden administration is actually making it next-to impossible to fight, let alone win.
This is the way evil wins.
American politics is totally broken at the moment, and there’s a whole bunch of other domestic and international distractions that mean Ukraine isn’t leading the news any more. Biden appears worried that American weapons end up used in Russia, or that bombing refineries might cause the oil price to rise ahead of the election. Many of the house Republicans are contrarian for the hell of it, and both parties in Congress are trying to tie unrelated things together for political reasons.
Europe needs to step up and get on a war footing, just as Russia has started to do. That means getting production of basic weapons running ASAP.
Come on Rishi, do the right thing and be remembered for something good you did.
As Joseph Borell noted yesterday, dealing with the consequences of a Ukrainian defeat would likely be a great deal more costly and difficult for Europe than is preventing that defeat.
That ought to have been clear two years ago, but better late than never.
Indeed. The war is on Europe’s borders, and while the Americans have provided a fair amount of aid so far, it’s clear their priorities are now elsewhere so Europe needs to collectively step up.
We can hope that American politics gets un-broken at some point, but it’s not going to be this year and the weapons are needed now.
They're running out of more advanced systems which can shoot down ballistic and hypersonic missiles. And have little to counter Russain aviation using standoff glide bombs to target the front - and frontline cities like Kharkiv.
It does appear that the air defences are limited in many areas, I suspect the Patriot systems they do have are guarding Kiev and major military facilities, rather than secondary cities closer to the front line such as Kharkiv and Odessa.
Unfortunately, air defences are complex and expensive assemblies of kit, and even NATO countries don’t keep huge supplies of spare systems lying around, but yes we need to get more of them into theatre as a matter of urgency.
Why shouldn't they lie? Everyone else is doing it too.
We say we want "X" but we reward "Y". Well, "Y" is what we'll get.
This is one of the issues with bonus schemes. Most don't work and aren't needed. Most professionals will do the job anyway. Many lead to someone doing something that is to their benefit and not the businesses benefit.
Two examples:
I mentioned below my wife was involved in drug safety. She received a bonus of around 20% of her salary based upon business performance. That was in direct contradiction to her role, not that she ever let it affect her. True her intervention may save the company 10 or 20 years down the line when the company is going through a Thalidomide type scandal, but she wouldn't be around then so the incentive was to let stuff pass and she did have pressure put on her to do so on occasions.
In the large computer company I worked at salesman got 'double bubble' for selling a particular piece of software. They used to roll it into to deals where it wasn't needed to get the extra commission. The price would increase, but they would simply give a bigger discount and if the discount was within the managements accepted margin it passed. The company then paid royalties to the s/w owner on a pointless sale. So the business made a smaller margin on the sale.
Why shouldn't they lie? Everyone else is doing it too.
We say we want "X" but we reward "Y". Well, "Y" is what we'll get.
This is one of the issues with bonus schemes. Most don't work and aren't needed. Most professionals will do the job anyway. Many lead to someone doing something that is to their benefit and not the businesses benefit.
Two examples:
I mentioned below my wife was involved in drug safety. She received a bonus of around 20% of her salary based upon business performance. That was in direct contradiction to her role, not that she ever let it affect her. True her intervention may save the company 10 or 20 years down the line when the company is going through a Thalidomide scandal, but she wouldn't be around then so the incentive was to let stuff pass and she did have pressure put on her to do so on occasions.
In the large computer company I worked at salesman got 'double bubble' for selling a particular piece of software. They used to roll it into to deals where it wasn't needed to get the extra commission. The price would increase, but they would simply give a bigger discount and if the discount was within the managements accepted margin it passed. The company then paid royalties to the s/w owner on a pointless sale. So the business made a smaller margin on the sale.
Totally agree with that. "Fair day's work for a fair day's pay" has a lot going for it.
Thank you, CF, for another excellent piece on this subject.
Following this scandal has proved not only enlightening but personally helpful in my own jousts with large organisations in recent years. In my case it has been Gloucestershire Police and British Gas, but it could equally well have been others, and I'm sure PBers will be able to quote their own examples.
Lessons have been learned, by me at least. Don't accept that they are either competent or honest. Do not accept what you know not to be true, even if it is offered as a compromise deal. Fight your corner, and if possible, connect with others who have been mistreated.
I'm still hoping to see prosecutions in the PO case. Although part of me feels some sympathy with Vennels - how does she sleep nights? - I think we have to see her and her colleagues in the dock if the message is ever to get through to the senior management of large organisations that they are not immune, however well-connected they may be. If that can be demonstrated in the PO case, there is some hope that others will truly learn lessons.
I am not holding my breath but I remain hopeful. Your efforts, and those of other like you, Ms CF, nurture that hope.
How does Vennels et al sleep at night?
I suggest you find some gloss magazine interviews with some Big Cheese(s) a couple of years downstream from the Big Scandal.
In a spread, which often contains shots of nice country house in summer, Our Victim explains how he/she was Victimised. Despite being a super achiever, somehow they got saddled with the responsibility they were legally responsible for.
It was a hard time. Maybe even a stay at the posh end of Priory Chain. But he/she found another 6 figure job, where he/she is Doing Good Work for The Public Benefit.
In every such story, what is missing?
Very possibly, M, although in the case of Vennels (and possibly her friend, Et Al) I suspect the Priory visit will have to wait until she's out of chokey.
After yesterday's evidence from Sir Anthony Hooper, it's hard to see how she dodges a stretch.
What I don't understand is why she hasn't already been arrested. As you say, there appears to be enough information already in the public domain for a prima facie case, so why the delay? I don't see how waiting until after the inquiry finishes is just?
Because if arrested she could avoid answering questions as that would prejudice her trial.
Why shouldn't they lie? Everyone else is doing it too.
We say we want "X" but we reward "Y". Well, "Y" is what we'll get.
This is one of the issues with bonus schemes. Most don't work and aren't needed. Most professionals will do the job anyway. Many lead to someone doing something that is to their benefit and not the businesses benefit.
Two examples:
I mentioned below my wife was involved in drug safety. She received a bonus of around 20% of her salary based upon business performance. That was in direct contradiction to her role, not that she ever let it affect her. True her intervention may save the company 10 or 20 years down the line when the company is going through a Thalidomide scandal, but she wouldn't be around then so the incentive was to let stuff pass and she did have pressure put on her to do so on occasions.
In the large computer company I worked at salesman got 'double bubble' for selling a particular piece of software. They used to roll it into to deals where it wasn't needed to get the extra commission. The price would increase, but they would simply give a bigger discount and if the discount was within the managements accepted margin it passed. The company then paid royalties to the s/w owner on a pointless sale. So the business made a smaller margin on the sale.
Totally agree with that. "Fair day's work for a fair day's pay" has a lot going for it.
In the 80s DEC took their salesman off commission and put them on good salaries. It was unique in the industry and it worked. DEC prospered. Salesmen didn't abuse the system because it was still a cut throat industry and they could easily lose their job if they didn't perform. It did stop salesmen spending a good deal of their time working out how to manipulate the complex commission schemes.
Thank you, CF, for another excellent piece on this subject.
Following this scandal has proved not only enlightening but personally helpful in my own jousts with large organisations in recent years. In my case it has been Gloucestershire Police and British Gas, but it could equally well have been others, and I'm sure PBers will be able to quote their own examples.
Lessons have been learned, by me at least. Don't accept that they are either competent or honest. Do not accept what you know not to be true, even if it is offered as a compromise deal. Fight your corner, and if possible, connect with others who have been mistreated.
I'm still hoping to see prosecutions in the PO case. Although part of me feels some sympathy with Vennels - how does she sleep nights? - I think we have to see her and her colleagues in the dock if the message is ever to get through to the senior management of large organisations that they are not immune, however well-connected they may be. If that can be demonstrated in the PO case, there is some hope that others will truly learn lessons.
I am not holding my breath but I remain hopeful. Your efforts, and those of other like you, Ms CF, nurture that hope.
How does Vennels et al sleep at night?
I suggest you find some gloss magazine interviews with some Big Cheese(s) a couple of years downstream from the Big Scandal.
In a spread, which often contains shots of nice country house in summer, Our Victim explains how he/she was Victimised. Despite being a super achiever, somehow they got saddled with the responsibility they were legally responsible for.
It was a hard time. Maybe even a stay at the posh end of Priory Chain. But he/she found another 6 figure job, where he/she is Doing Good Work for The Public Benefit.
In every such story, what is missing?
Very possibly, M, although in the case of Vennels (and possibly her friend, Et Al) I suspect the Priory visit will have to wait until she's out of chokey.
After yesterday's evidence from Sir Anthony Hooper, it's hard to see how she dodges a stretch.
What I don't understand is why she hasn't already been arrested. As you say, there appears to be enough information already in the public domain for a prima facie case, so why the delay? I don't see how waiting until after the inquiry finishes is just?
Because if arrested she could avoid answering questions as that would prejudice her trial.
You can see the logic there
Not sure that's right, but happy to be corrected if wrong.
I think she can still give evidence to the inquiry but would be cautioned about saying anything that could incriminate herself.
Incidentally, whilst you can tap your freedom (bus) pass in London you cannot do that with a non-London bus pass. You have to wave it at the driver. It won’t work if tapped, even though tapping it is how it works outside London … until you reach the border with Wales and Scotland.
Presumably if you catch a bus that crosses the border of this non-union, union, you can use it but not if you use it for the return leg.
Just to add to the bizarre confusion.
I now have an image of a pensioner catching a bus from Lydney to Chepstow and having to get out at the Wye Bridge and walk the rest of the way!
My bus pass also allows reduced price train travel outwith the old Strathclyde PTE area, i.e. Ayrshire, Renfrewshire, Glasgow, Lanarkshire and Dunbartonshire. I can use it for cheap travel halfway to Edinburgh, for example. However, the tickets can’t be bought from a ticket machine, or from Trainline, etc, only from a ticket office or on the train. My bus pass can be used throughout Scotland, though. Some coach operators take advantage of this to operate “service buses” such as from Dundee and Angus to the Ayrshire coast. When are you 60, @DavidL?
You can go a long way in a career by being very nice to all the right people, supporting institutions, being pleasant, giving innocuous help here and there, and word getting around. What you don't want is a reputation as being difficult or a troublemaker, and I suspect that often drives behaviour.
Looking at her CV that appears to be precisely what happened to Paula Vennells:
On a ridiculously complicated financial structure I was working on years ago I was one of the key stakeholders along with two other groups. We would have many calls with potential partners in the structure who were introduced in by one of the other parties.
Every single time we had a new potential partner one of the key parties on the initial group introduction call would follow up my introduction with “yes, Boulay has a problem for every solution” and everyone would laugh away.
The thing was is that the other parties just believed that we could charge headlong and if problems arose then we would work around them later, ignore them, beg people to bend the rules whereas I wanted to identify every possible problem from the start and check if there was an alternative way before we spent a year working on something which we knew could not be done legally, technically or financially. It made me very unpopular in the group and I eventually had to sack them off because they were wasting time and money and blowing up relations with other parties by having false hopes and ignoring problems.
Every institution and company needs people who say “hang on, this won’t work”. They should actually have a specific role of “Director of No” and department of “I don’t think so” to sit at the board table with the directors of “false positivity”, department of “how to spend future bonuses on things you really want” and the “Too Scared to say no” committee.
There is/was (at least when I was taught it many decades ago) a management philosophy around constructing teams along these lines. Teams should be made up of different types of people (Salesman type, Chairman type, Evaluator type, Problem solvers, etc). What you describe is the evaluator type. I and my wife fall into the category (she was involved in drug safety). We are both of the type that go 'Hang on that won't work because' or 'What about if x happens'. Although life isn't that simple of course as people have multiple skills (I also can present so worked on pre sales and marketing and I also enjoy problem solving so took over projects that had gone pear-shaped). However I do have a bias to seeing where things will go pear-shaped. However you can't have a team made up just of these types otherwise nothing gets done, which is a big flaw I have. So you need the evaluator to hold back the salesman type, but you need the salesman type to ensure the evaluator doesn't grind the whole thing to a halt.
A very simple example of the usefulness of the evaluator: I was involved in organising large conferences. In big planning meetings I could tell I was being a big pain in the arse by constantly going 'That doesn't work because'. I think I only finally convinced people of my usefulness when they were desperate to wind stuff up and go and I pointed out that the one presenter was presenting in two different rooms at the same time.
Did a rather odd management course at Anglia Ruskin many years ago which said much the same, although they put it differently. A team, the man told us, needed a Critic, a member of the Awkward Squad. Someone who could think things from an outsiders point of view. I ended up writing an essay at the end of it allegedly from the point of view of someone who had, in pre-Roman times, 'emigrated' from what is now Switzerland to the Belgian coast, and had to describe the scene to his tribal leader back in the mountains.
We have lost sight of some simplicities, and process along with group think has taken over. In the simple world no-one can ever be morally exempt from the requirement to be honest, just and honourable.
For example, no-one can be exempt from the duty to act if they are in possession of any information tending to show that someone who has been charged, or convicted, or imprisoned, or financially disadvantaged may in fact be innocent.
No team formation, training or courses attended can make up for lack of honesty, honour or justice in any individual.
The template through which to look at the PO enquiry is not complicated.
Incidentally, whilst you can tap your freedom (bus) pass in London you cannot do that with a non-London bus pass. You have to wave it at the driver. It won’t work if tapped, even though tapping it is how it works outside London … until you reach the border with Wales and Scotland.
Presumably if you catch a bus that crosses the border of this non-union, union, you can use it but not if you use it for the return leg.
Just to add to the bizarre confusion.
I now have an image of a pensioner catching a bus from Lydney to Chepstow and having to get out at the Wye Bridge and walk the rest of the way!
My bus pass also allows reduced price train travel outwith the old Strathclyde PTE area, i.e. Ayrshire, Renfrewshire, Glasgow, Lanarkshire and Dunbartonshire. I can use it for cheap travel halfway to Edinburgh, for example. However, the tickets can’t be bought from a ticket machine, or from Trainline, etc, only from a ticket office or on the train. My bus pass can be used throughout Scotland, though. Some coach operators take advantage of this to operate “service buses” such as from Dundee and Angus to the Ayrshire coast. When are you 60, @DavidL?
2 years ago, sadly. As I say I don't have a bus pass but do have an old fogies' card for the trains.
Got too much time on my hands, so went on our local Council's website, and this is the list of 'acceptable' ID:
To vote at a polling station, you must present one of the following:
Passport issued by the UK, any Channel Islands, the Isle of Man, A British Overseas Territory, an EEA state or a Commonwealth country Driving licence issued by the UK, any Channel Islands, the Isle of Man or an EEA state (including provisional) Biometric immigration document Identity card bearing Proof of Age Standards Scheme hologram (a PASS card) Ministry of Defence Form 90 (Defence Identity Card) Blue Badge National Identity Card issued by an EEA state Older Person's Bus Pass Disabled Person's Bus Pass Oyster 60+ Card Scottish National Entitlement Card issued in Scotland 60 or Over Welsh Concessionary Travel Card Senior SmartPass or Blind Person's SmartPass issued in Northern Ireland War Disablement SmartPass or War Disabled SmartPass issued in Northern Ireland 60+ SmartPass issued in Northern Island Electoral Identify card issued in Northern Ireland Voter Authority Certificate (VAC) or a temporary VAC
The Identity card bearing Proof of Age Standards Scheme hologram (a PASS card) isn't a young persons travel card; it's a different document.
Unfortunately, air defences are complex and expensive assemblies of kit, and even NATO countries don’t keep huge supplies of spare systems lying around, but yes we need to get more of them into theatre as a matter of urgency.
Patriot is a super-heavyweight system; it's designed around a six launcher battalion of 1,000 people most of whom are highly trained (expensive) technical specialists and it costs an astonishing $4m every time you fire it. There's a full platoon just to look after the power generation set. The US could send shitloads of Patriot but Ukraine just hasn't got the people to operate them effectively.
If anyone gave a shit (and certainly looks like Big Rish and Abu Hunter don't particularly) they would be better off scouring the Middle East and Africa for SA-8/SA-10/SA-12 gear and buying that for whatever it costs.
Thank you, CF, for another excellent piece on this subject.
Following this scandal has proved not only enlightening but personally helpful in my own jousts with large organisations in recent years. In my case it has been Gloucestershire Police and British Gas, but it could equally well have been others, and I'm sure PBers will be able to quote their own examples.
Lessons have been learned, by me at least. Don't accept that they are either competent or honest. Do not accept what you know not to be true, even if it is offered as a compromise deal. Fight your corner, and if possible, connect with others who have been mistreated.
I'm still hoping to see prosecutions in the PO case. Although part of me feels some sympathy with Vennels - how does she sleep nights? - I think we have to see her and her colleagues in the dock if the message is ever to get through to the senior management of large organisations that they are not immune, however well-connected they may be. If that can be demonstrated in the PO case, there is some hope that others will truly learn lessons.
I am not holding my breath but I remain hopeful. Your efforts, and those of other like you, Ms CF, nurture that hope.
How does Vennels et al sleep at night?
I suggest you find some gloss magazine interviews with some Big Cheese(s) a couple of years downstream from the Big Scandal.
In a spread, which often contains shots of nice country house in summer, Our Victim explains how he/she was Victimised. Despite being a super achiever, somehow they got saddled with the responsibility they were legally responsible for.
It was a hard time. Maybe even a stay at the posh end of Priory Chain. But he/she found another 6 figure job, where he/she is Doing Good Work for The Public Benefit.
In every such story, what is missing?
Very possibly, M, although in the case of Vennels (and possibly her friend, Et Al) I suspect the Priory visit will have to wait until she's out of chokey.
After yesterday's evidence from Sir Anthony Hooper, it's hard to see how she dodges a stretch.
What I don't understand is why she hasn't already been arrested. As you say, there appears to be enough information already in the public domain for a prima facie case, so why the delay? I don't see how waiting until after the inquiry finishes is just?
Because if arrested she could avoid answering questions as that would prejudice her trial.
You can see the logic there
Not sure that's right, but happy to be corrected if wrong.
I think she can still give evidence to the inquiry but would be cautioned about saying anything that could incriminate herself.
Which would rather reduce the answers she makes to - no comment / 5th amendment (yes I know we aren’t in the States).
We are now in the joyful position where the people being interviewed a likely at some point in the future to be in jail. I actually think it may be better to pause the inquiry and kick off the prosecutions off and return to the inquiry with some interviewees via zoom from their prison cell
I don’t think anyone has ever satisfactorily answered Tam Dalyell’s West Lothian Question
The West Lothian question is really only relevant if we have a government which is depending upon Scottish seats to have a majority in the House of Commons. That means they need to have more than half the Scottish seats. We obviously have not had that for the last 14 years (although May was presumably grateful for the increase in Scottish Tories in 2015) and it wasn't particularly relevant during the Blair majorities either.
It looks somewhat unlikely to me that the Scottish Labour MPs are going to be the extent of Starmer's majority although I suppose that is still possible. If that occurs the question will return.
But there have been occasions, I think, when votes affecting only England (and Wales?) have been defeated despite a majority of English (and Welsh?) MPs being in favour, because of the votes of Scottish MPs (something to do with Sunday trading, possibly?).
I think the answer to the WLQ is simply that MPs for those territories for which relevant powers are devolved don't get to vote on those issues in parliament. In practice, that's complicated - devolution is lumpy, and issues sometimes have implications beyond the territories for which they are relevant. (Matters concerning transport, for example.) But they could at least try.
I don’t think anyone has ever satisfactorily answered Tam Dalyell’s West Lothian Question
The West Lothian question is really only relevant if we have a government which is depending upon Scottish seats to have a majority in the House of Commons. That means they need to have more than half the Scottish seats. We obviously have not had that for the last 14 years (although May was presumably grateful for the increase in Scottish Tories in 2015) and it wasn't particularly relevant during the Blair majorities either.
It looks somewhat unlikely to me that the Scottish Labour MPs are going to be the extent of Starmer's majority although I suppose that is still possible. If that occurs the question will return.
Even if SLab MPs do make up Starmer’s majority, all the evidence is that they’ll be so supine that the question will remain unanswered for another few years. I guess the prospective candidate for Cowdenbeath & Kirkcaldy might have made a fuss about Labour not being racist enough but she’s been Gulaged.
Their supine nature would be the problem in that scenario if they trotted through the lobbies to enforce changes to the English NHS, for example. Although even the SNP have found so many exceptions to their self limitation that they will not vote on English matters that it cannot be relied upon.
Why shouldn't they lie? Everyone else is doing it too.
We say we want "X" but we reward "Y". Well, "Y" is what we'll get.
This is one of the issues with bonus schemes. Most don't work and aren't needed. Most professionals will do the job anyway. Many lead to someone doing something that is to their benefit and not the businesses benefit.
Two examples:
I mentioned below my wife was involved in drug safety. She received a bonus of around 20% of her salary based upon business performance. That was in direct contradiction to her role, not that she ever let it affect her. True her intervention may save the company 10 or 20 years down the line when the company is going through a Thalidomide scandal, but she wouldn't be around then so the incentive was to let stuff pass and she did have pressure put on her to do so on occasions.
In the large computer company I worked at salesman got 'double bubble' for selling a particular piece of software. They used to roll it into to deals where it wasn't needed to get the extra commission. The price would increase, but they would simply give a bigger discount and if the discount was within the managements accepted margin it passed. The company then paid royalties to the s/w owner on a pointless sale. So the business made a smaller margin on the sale.
Totally agree with that. "Fair day's work for a fair day's pay" has a lot going for it.
In the 80s DEC took their salesman off commission and put them on good salaries. It was unique in the industry and it worked. DEC prospered. Salesmen didn't abuse the system because it was still a cut throat industry and they could easily lose their job if they didn't perform. It did stop salesmen spending a good deal of their time working out how to manipulate the complex commission schemes.
And there's no doubt the bonus culture in banking contributed greatly to the financial crash. The crisis was to a large extent behavioural and the bonus culture drove much of that behaviour.
As for its supposed performance benefits, why would you want to attract the sort of people who will only do a good job if there's the prospect of big lump sum windfalls on top of their salary?
I don’t think anyone has ever satisfactorily answered Tam Dalyell’s West Lothian Question
The West Lothian question is really only relevant if we have a government which is depending upon Scottish seats to have a majority in the House of Commons. That means they need to have more than half the Scottish seats. We obviously have not had that for the last 14 years (although May was presumably grateful for the increase in Scottish Tories in 2015) and it wasn't particularly relevant during the Blair majorities either.
It looks somewhat unlikely to me that the Scottish Labour MPs are going to be the extent of Starmer's majority although I suppose that is still possible. If that occurs the question will return.
But there have been occasions, I think, when votes affecting only England (and Wales?) have been defeated despite a majority of English (and Welsh?) MPs being in favour, because of the votes of Scottish MPs (something to do with Sunday trading, possibly?).
I do vaguely recall that and think it resulted in EVEL provisions being brought in but I think that they are now gone again?
I don’t think anyone has ever satisfactorily answered Tam Dalyell’s West Lothian Question
The West Lothian question is really only relevant if we have a government which is depending upon Scottish seats to have a majority in the House of Commons. That means they need to have more than half the Scottish seats. We obviously have not had that for the last 14 years (although May was presumably grateful for the increase in Scottish Tories in 2015) and it wasn't particularly relevant during the Blair majorities either.
It looks somewhat unlikely to me that the Scottish Labour MPs are going to be the extent of Starmer's majority although I suppose that is still possible. If that occurs the question will return.
But there have been occasions, I think, when votes affecting only England (and Wales?) have been defeated despite a majority of English (and Welsh?) MPs being in favour, because of the votes of Scottish MPs (something to do with Sunday trading, possibly?).
I do vaguely recall that and think it resulted in EVEL provisions being brought in but I think that they are now gone again?
Possibly. Amazing how something which seemed such a big issue ten years ago now barely scratches the surface of memory!
Got too much time on my hands, so went on our local Council's website, and this is the list of 'acceptable' ID:
To vote at a polling station, you must present one of the following:
Passport issued by the UK, any Channel Islands, the Isle of Man, A British Overseas Territory, an EEA state or a Commonwealth country Driving licence issued by the UK, any Channel Islands, the Isle of Man or an EEA state (including provisional) Biometric immigration document Identity card bearing Proof of Age Standards Scheme hologram (a PASS card) Ministry of Defence Form 90 (Defence Identity Card) Blue Badge National Identity Card issued by an EEA state Older Person's Bus Pass Disabled Person's Bus Pass Oyster 60+ Card Scottish National Entitlement Card issued in Scotland 60 or Over Welsh Concessionary Travel Card Senior SmartPass or Blind Person's SmartPass issued in Northern Ireland War Disablement SmartPass or War Disabled SmartPass issued in Northern Ireland 60+ SmartPass issued in Northern Island Electoral Identify card issued in Northern Ireland Voter Authority Certificate (VAC) or a temporary VAC
The Identity card bearing Proof of Age Standards Scheme hologram (a PASS card) isn't a young persons travel card; it's a different document.
Thank you for digging up the list.
I think if we are to have ID requirements, then they must be available to all, so no age or other restrictions.
On that basis I'm not sure about Military or even disabled ID as being acceptable. Before I open a hot debate about a Disabled Person's Bus pass, for example, I will add that I wouldn't lose any sleep over it; it is the age qualification that I object to most strongly.
I don’t think anyone has ever satisfactorily answered Tam Dalyell’s West Lothian Question
The West Lothian question is really only relevant if we have a government which is depending upon Scottish seats to have a majority in the House of Commons. That means they need to have more than half the Scottish seats. We obviously have not had that for the last 14 years (although May was presumably grateful for the increase in Scottish Tories in 2015) and it wasn't particularly relevant during the Blair majorities either.
It looks somewhat unlikely to me that the Scottish Labour MPs are going to be the extent of Starmer's majority although I suppose that is still possible. If that occurs the question will return.
But there have been occasions, I think, when votes affecting only England (and Wales?) have been defeated despite a majority of English (and Welsh?) MPs being in favour, because of the votes of Scottish MPs (something to do with Sunday trading, possibly?).
I do vaguely recall that and think it resulted in EVEL provisions being brought in but I think that they are now gone again?
Yes, though Redwood wasn't happy. In 2005 Howard's Tories won most votes in England so it was nearly relevant then but Blair's Labour still won most seats in England as it had in the UK. I expect it would start to be an issue 2 or 3 elections into a Labour government if England votes Tory but they are re elected via Scottish or Welsh Labour MPs
Why shouldn't they lie? Everyone else is doing it too.
We say we want "X" but we reward "Y". Well, "Y" is what we'll get.
This is one of the issues with bonus schemes. Most don't work and aren't needed. Most professionals will do the job anyway. Many lead to someone doing something that is to their benefit and not the businesses benefit.
Two examples:
I mentioned below my wife was involved in drug safety. She received a bonus of around 20% of her salary based upon business performance. That was in direct contradiction to her role, not that she ever let it affect her. True her intervention may save the company 10 or 20 years down the line when the company is going through a Thalidomide type scandal, but she wouldn't be around then so the incentive was to let stuff pass and she did have pressure put on her to do so on occasions.
In the large computer company I worked at salesman got 'double bubble' for selling a particular piece of software. They used to roll it into to deals where it wasn't needed to get the extra commission. The price would increase, but they would simply give a bigger discount and if the discount was within the managements accepted margin it passed. The company then paid royalties to the s/w owner on a pointless sale. So the business made a smaller margin on the sale.
People are self interested in their behaviour: who knew?
Freakonomics is simply a list of examples of such.
The consensus in response to my question about the set-up of the Horizon programme was that the “benefit” of increased detection and prosecution of SPM fraud emerged as the programme was rolled-out rather than being an original intent when the programme was signed-off. Maybe, but I’d still like to see the original documentation and the governance structure if anyone knows where it can be found. I will do my own digging.
There is a lot of information on the Inquiry website as the commissioning of Horizon was covered in evidence so you can read or hear the evidence and see the documents referred to.
Thank you, and an enjoyable hours reading has been had.
Turns out that a reduction in fraud was indeed an intended benefit from the Horizon project but not for the Post Office (in respect of SPMs) but for the Benefits Agency in respect of benefits claimants. The Post Office benefits concerned matters other than fraud:
If anyone is interested, and hasn’t already read it, the report from which the above image was taken is fascinating (certainly to a project/programme anorak):
Incidentally, whilst you can tap your freedom (bus) pass in London you cannot do that with a non-London bus pass. You have to wave it at the driver. It won’t work if tapped, even though tapping it is how it works outside London … until you reach the border with Wales and Scotland.
Presumably if you catch a bus that crosses the border of this non-union, union, you can use it but not if you use it for the return leg.
Just to add to the bizarre confusion.
I now have an image of a pensioner catching a bus from Lydney to Chepstow and having to get out at the Wye Bridge and walk the rest of the way!
My bus pass also allows reduced price train travel outwith the old Strathclyde PTE area, i.e. Ayrshire, Renfrewshire, Glasgow, Lanarkshire and Dunbartonshire. I can use it for cheap travel halfway to Edinburgh, for example. However, the tickets can’t be bought from a ticket machine, or from Trainline, etc, only from a ticket office or on the train. My bus pass can be used throughout Scotland, though. Some coach operators take advantage of this to operate “service buses” such as from Dundee and Angus to the Ayrshire coast. When are you 60, @DavidL?
2 years ago, sadly. As I say I don't have a bus pass but do have an old fogies' card for the trains.
I have never applied for one either, I only use public transport infrequently
A straw in the wind - anecdotally my local MP (Andrew Murrison) is rather worried about his seat (as told to my colleague who socialises with him occasionally).
His majority is 21,630.
Apparently most Tory MP's have accepted the inevitable. They know what's coming!
Personally I'd be amazed if Murrison lost in leafy, rural, south west wilts, but who knows?
Incidentally, whilst you can tap your freedom (bus) pass in London you cannot do that with a non-London bus pass. You have to wave it at the driver. It won’t work if tapped, even though tapping it is how it works outside London … until you reach the border with Wales and Scotland.
Presumably if you catch a bus that crosses the border of this non-union, union, you can use it but not if you use it for the return leg.
Just to add to the bizarre confusion.
I now have an image of a pensioner catching a bus from Lydney to Chepstow and having to get out at the Wye Bridge and walk the rest of the way!
My bus pass also allows reduced price train travel outwith the old Strathclyde PTE area, i.e. Ayrshire, Renfrewshire, Glasgow, Lanarkshire and Dunbartonshire. I can use it for cheap travel halfway to Edinburgh, for example. However, the tickets can’t be bought from a ticket machine, or from Trainline, etc, only from a ticket office or on the train. My bus pass can be used throughout Scotland, though. Some coach operators take advantage of this to operate “service buses” such as from Dundee and Angus to the Ayrshire coast. When are you 60, @DavidL?
2 years ago, sadly. As I say I don't have a bus pass but do have an old fogies' card for the trains.
I have never applied for one either, I only use public transport infrequently
The obsession with free public transport is misplaced IMO. More older people would benefit from more frequent services (or any service at all) than free travel.
Poorer pensioners should receive higher cash benefits that they can spend in whatever way is efficient for them.
I don’t think anyone has ever satisfactorily answered Tam Dalyell’s West Lothian Question
The West Lothian question is really only relevant if we have a government which is depending upon Scottish seats to have a majority in the House of Commons. That means they need to have more than half the Scottish seats. We obviously have not had that for the last 14 years (although May was presumably grateful for the increase in Scottish Tories in 2015) and it wasn't particularly relevant during the Blair majorities either.
It looks somewhat unlikely to me that the Scottish Labour MPs are going to be the extent of Starmer's majority although I suppose that is still possible. If that occurs the question will return.
Even if SLab MPs do make up Starmer’s majority, all the evidence is that they’ll be so supine that the question will remain unanswered for another few years. I guess the prospective candidate for Cowdenbeath & Kirkcaldy might have made a fuss about Labour not being racist enough but she’s been Gulaged.
Their supine nature would be the problem in that scenario if they trotted through the lobbies to enforce changes to the English NHS, for example. Although even the SNP have found so many exceptions to their self limitation that they will not vote on English matters that it cannot be relied upon.
Can you list these ‘many exceptions’ just for the record?
I manage to stay my pity for the poor put-upon English by remembering the 2016 Scotland act voted through by English MPs with every single one of the suggested 120 amendments by opposition parties rejected. And then we turn to Brexit..
Has anyone seen any documentation relating to the set-up of the Horizon programme (or parent programme, if it was part of some broader change initiative)? In particular, the weight given to the reduction of Sub-postmaster fraud in any cost-benefit-risk analysis and whether the realisation of those benefits, specifically fraud reduction, was embedded in senior management bonus schemes.
Looking for what incentives motivated those who behaved appallingly, it may have simply been the threat of having to lose and even pay back the bonuses that were paying for school fees and a second holiday every year.
You don’t need to look at benefits if you listened to the last set of witness the investigators were only on temporary contracts - getting renewed was incentive enough
As for the plan - it was always believed their was fraud within branches - the whole point of horizon was that it would capture it and the reduction in losses would then cover the cost of it
So, fuelling the whole disaster was a cynical belief that they’re all wrong ‘uns… which ultimately has led, judging by comments today, to a cynical belief about management that they’re all wrong ‘uns. Maybe we should all be a bit more cautious about generalising?
Unfortunately, air defences are complex and expensive assemblies of kit, and even NATO countries don’t keep huge supplies of spare systems lying around, but yes we need to get more of them into theatre as a matter of urgency.
Patriot is a super-heavyweight system; it's designed around a six launcher battalion of 1,000 people most of whom are highly trained (expensive) technical specialists and it costs an astonishing $4m every time you fire it. There's a full platoon just to look after the power generation set. The US could send shitloads of Patriot but Ukraine just hasn't got the people to operate them effectively.
If anyone gave a shit (and certainly looks like Big Rish and Abu Hunter don't particularly) they would be better off scouring the Middle East and Africa for SA-8/SA-10/SA-12 gear and buying that for whatever it costs.
This war has been interesting for the effectiveness of much old military technology, as well as a lot of low-level improvised technology at the front lines. That, and the silly Soviet tank design that sees them spontaneously explode when hit because they keep all the ammo under the gunner’s seat.
As you say, perhaps a very complex $1b+ system that costs $4m a missile and uses a lot of well-trained manpower, isn’t an effective use of resources when they’re mostly shooting down $1m drones or old Soviet missiles with them.
I agree that we should start looking for old-but-serviceable kit wherever we can find it in the world, although it will probably require somewhat unconventional procurement processes for much of it!
Incidentally, whilst you can tap your freedom (bus) pass in London you cannot do that with a non-London bus pass. You have to wave it at the driver. It won’t work if tapped, even though tapping it is how it works outside London … until you reach the border with Wales and Scotland.
Presumably if you catch a bus that crosses the border of this non-union, union, you can use it but not if you use it for the return leg.
Just to add to the bizarre confusion.
I now have an image of a pensioner catching a bus from Lydney to Chepstow and having to get out at the Wye Bridge and walk the rest of the way!
My bus pass also allows reduced price train travel outwith the old Strathclyde PTE area, i.e. Ayrshire, Renfrewshire, Glasgow, Lanarkshire and Dunbartonshire. I can use it for cheap travel halfway to Edinburgh, for example. However, the tickets can’t be bought from a ticket machine, or from Trainline, etc, only from a ticket office or on the train. My bus pass can be used throughout Scotland, though. Some coach operators take advantage of this to operate “service buses” such as from Dundee and Angus to the Ayrshire coast. When are you 60, @DavidL?
2 years ago, sadly. As I say I don't have a bus pass but do have an old fogies' card for the trains.
I have never applied for one either, I only use public transport infrequently
Worth having even so, Malc. It's amazing how often a trip coincides with a chance to use public transport. It's wet and windy and I need to get home - oh, look, there's a bus due in five minutes! Without the bus pass you'd have got home, certainly, but the journey would have been either more expensive or more tiresome. You've paid taxes your whole life to earn that bus pass!
Unfortunately, air defences are complex and expensive assemblies of kit, and even NATO countries don’t keep huge supplies of spare systems lying around, but yes we need to get more of them into theatre as a matter of urgency.
Patriot is a super-heavyweight system; it's designed around a six launcher battalion of 1,000 people most of whom are highly trained (expensive) technical specialists and it costs an astonishing $4m every time you fire it. There's a full platoon just to look after the power generation set. The US could send shitloads of Patriot but Ukraine just hasn't got the people to operate them effectively.
If anyone gave a shit (and certainly looks like Big Rish and Abu Hunter don't particularly) they would be better off scouring the Middle East and Africa for SA-8/SA-10/SA-12 gear and buying that for whatever it costs.
The NASAMS missiles are a quarter of that cost. And there are quite a lot of AMRAAMs around.
A straw in the wind - anecdotally my local MP (Andrew Murrison) is rather worried about his seat (as told to my colleague who socialises with him occasionally).
His majority is 21,630.
Apparently most Tory MP's have accepted the inevitable. They know what's coming!
Personally I'd be amazed if Murrison lost in leafy, rural, south west wilts, but who knows?
Hmmm. He can hardly afford to say to acquaintances, "I'll be safe as houses" as it's potential gossip column stuff about complacency and doesn't motivate his campaigners. Probably a bit of candidate jitters too.
It can't be all that joyous on the doorsteps for him just now, but he'll be fine - he had triple the Labour vote last time, and the Lib Dems (in a fairly close third) will largely be over in Chippenham where they have a reasonable chance.
A straw in the wind - anecdotally my local MP (Andrew Murrison) is rather worried about his seat (as told to my colleague who socialises with him occasionally).
His majority is 21,630.
Apparently most Tory MP's have accepted the inevitable. They know what's coming!
Personally I'd be amazed if Murrison lost in leafy, rural, south west wilts, but who knows?
ditto
my MP Nadhim Zahawi has communicated with the voters for the first time in ages. He has a majority of 19972.
A straw in the wind - anecdotally my local MP (Andrew Murrison) is rather worried about his seat (as told to my colleague who socialises with him occasionally).
His majority is 21,630.
Apparently most Tory MP's have accepted the inevitable. They know what's coming!
Personally I'd be amazed if Murrison lost in leafy, rural, south west wilts, but who knows?
Electoral calculus suggests he will hold, but it will be close. The LDs would be the danger, especially in the event of tactical voting.
Incidentally, whilst you can tap your freedom (bus) pass in London you cannot do that with a non-London bus pass. You have to wave it at the driver. It won’t work if tapped, even though tapping it is how it works outside London … until you reach the border with Wales and Scotland.
Presumably if you catch a bus that crosses the border of this non-union, union, you can use it but not if you use it for the return leg.
Just to add to the bizarre confusion.
I now have an image of a pensioner catching a bus from Lydney to Chepstow and having to get out at the Wye Bridge and walk the rest of the way!
My bus pass also allows reduced price train travel outwith the old Strathclyde PTE area, i.e. Ayrshire, Renfrewshire, Glasgow, Lanarkshire and Dunbartonshire. I can use it for cheap travel halfway to Edinburgh, for example. However, the tickets can’t be bought from a ticket machine, or from Trainline, etc, only from a ticket office or on the train. My bus pass can be used throughout Scotland, though. Some coach operators take advantage of this to operate “service buses” such as from Dundee and Angus to the Ayrshire coast. When are you 60, @DavidL?
2 years ago, sadly. As I say I don't have a bus pass but do have an old fogies' card for the trains.
I have never applied for one either, I only use public transport infrequently
The obsession with free public transport is misplaced IMO. More older people would benefit from more frequent services (or any service at all) than free travel.
Poorer pensioners should receive higher cash benefits that they can spend in whatever way is efficient for them.
Possibly true. But while I believe in higher frequencies, and that providing them drives up demand, it is not always viable to do so. Whereas if the bus/train is going to run anyway and not be full, you may as well give away free tickets to someone. The good thing about giving them to pensioners is that there are many pensioners who don't drive (I'm thinking more of the over 85s than the over 65s). It's the same logic as allowing free transport for the under 5s.
I don’t think anyone has ever satisfactorily answered Tam Dalyell’s West Lothian Question
The West Lothian question is really only relevant if we have a government which is depending upon Scottish seats to have a majority in the House of Commons. That means they need to have more than half the Scottish seats. We obviously have not had that for the last 14 years (although May was presumably grateful for the increase in Scottish Tories in 2015) and it wasn't particularly relevant during the Blair majorities either.
It looks somewhat unlikely to me that the Scottish Labour MPs are going to be the extent of Starmer's majority although I suppose that is still possible. If that occurs the question will return.
Even if SLab MPs do make up Starmer’s majority, all the evidence is that they’ll be so supine that the question will remain unanswered for another few years. I guess the prospective candidate for Cowdenbeath & Kirkcaldy might have made a fuss about Labour not being racist enough but she’s been Gulaged.
Their supine nature would be the problem in that scenario if they trotted through the lobbies to enforce changes to the English NHS, for example. Although even the SNP have found so many exceptions to their self limitation that they will not vote on English matters that it cannot be relied upon.
Can you list these ‘many exceptions’ just for the record?
I manage to stay my pity for the poor put-upon English by remembering the 2016 Scotland act voted through by English MPs with every single one of the suggested 120 amendments by opposition parties rejected. And then we turn to Brexit..
Unfortunately, air defences are complex and expensive assemblies of kit, and even NATO countries don’t keep huge supplies of spare systems lying around, but yes we need to get more of them into theatre as a matter of urgency.
Patriot is a super-heavyweight system; it's designed around a six launcher battalion of 1,000 people most of whom are highly trained (expensive) technical specialists and it costs an astonishing $4m every time you fire it. There's a full platoon just to look after the power generation set. The US could send shitloads of Patriot but Ukraine just hasn't got the people to operate them effectively.
If anyone gave a shit (and certainly looks like Big Rish and Abu Hunter don't particularly) they would be better off scouring the Middle East and Africa for SA-8/SA-10/SA-12 gear and buying that for whatever it costs.
This war has been interesting for the effectiveness of much old military technology, as well as a lot of low-level improvised technology at the front lines. That, and the silly Soviet tank design that sees them spontaneously explode when hit because they keep all the ammo under the gunner’s seat.
As you say, perhaps a very complex $1b+ system that costs $4m a missile and uses a lot of well-trained manpower, isn’t an effective use of resources when they’re mostly shooting down $1m drones or old Soviet missiles with them.
I agree that we should start looking for old-but-serviceable kit wherever we can find it in the world, although it will probably require somewhat unconventional procurement processes for much of it!
"I agree that we should start looking for old-but-serviceable kit wherever we can find it in the world, although it will probably require somewhat unconventional procurement processes for much of it!"
Which has already been happening - see the resurrection of SPAAG such as Gepard from scrapyards/warehouses.
Most of what has gone to Ukraine was either totally obsolete (Nick at TanksALot https://tanks-alot.co.uk/military-vehicles-for-sale/ is a a major source of light armoured vehicles...) or about to be replaced.
A straw in the wind - anecdotally my local MP (Andrew Murrison) is rather worried about his seat (as told to my colleague who socialises with him occasionally).
His majority is 21,630.
Apparently most Tory MP's have accepted the inevitable. They know what's coming!
Personally I'd be amazed if Murrison lost in leafy, rural, south west wilts, but who knows?
Hmmm. He can hardly afford to say to acquaintances, "I'll be safe as houses" as it's potential gossip column stuff about complacency and doesn't motivate his campaigners. Probably a bit of candidate jitters too.
It can't be all that joyous on the doorsteps for him just now, but he'll be fine - he had triple the Labour vote last time, and the Lib Dems (in a fairly close third) will largely be over in Chippenham where they have a reasonable chance.
You've answered the question I was going to ask: is the identity of the main challenger clearly understood? In seats like this where the Lib Dems and Labour might both think they're in contention I think there will be a lot of near misses where the Tory gets in on less than the combined Lib-Lab vote.
Thank you, CF, for another excellent piece on this subject.
Following this scandal has proved not only enlightening but personally helpful in my own jousts with large organisations in recent years. In my case it has been Gloucestershire Police and British Gas, but it could equally well have been others, and I'm sure PBers will be able to quote their own examples.
Lessons have been learned, by me at least. Don't accept that they are either competent or honest. Do not accept what you know not to be true, even if it is offered as a compromise deal. Fight your corner, and if possible, connect with others who have been mistreated.
I'm still hoping to see prosecutions in the PO case. Although part of me feels some sympathy with Vennels - how does she sleep nights? - I think we have to see her and her colleagues in the dock if the message is ever to get through to the senior management of large organisations that they are not immune, however well-connected they may be. If that can be demonstrated in the PO case, there is some hope that others will truly learn lessons.
I am not holding my breath but I remain hopeful. Your efforts, and those of other like you, Ms CF, nurture that hope.
How does Vennels et al sleep at night?
I suggest you find some gloss magazine interviews with some Big Cheese(s) a couple of years downstream from the Big Scandal.
In a spread, which often contains shots of nice country house in summer, Our Victim explains how he/she was Victimised. Despite being a super achiever, somehow they got saddled with the responsibility they were legally responsible for.
It was a hard time. Maybe even a stay at the posh end of Priory Chain. But he/she found another 6 figure job, where he/she is Doing Good Work for The Public Benefit.
In every such story, what is missing?
Very possibly, M, although in the case of Vennels (and possibly her friend, Et Al) I suspect the Priory visit will have to wait until she's out of chokey.
After yesterday's evidence from Sir Anthony Hooper, it's hard to see how she dodges a stretch.
What I don't understand is why she hasn't already been arrested. As you say, there appears to be enough information already in the public domain for a prima facie case, so why the delay? I don't see how waiting until after the inquiry finishes is just?
Because if arrested she could avoid answering questions as that would prejudice her trial.
You can see the logic there
Not sure that's right, but happy to be corrected if wrong.
I think she can still give evidence to the inquiry but would be cautioned about saying anything that could incriminate herself.
Which would rather reduce the answers she makes to - no comment / 5th amendment (yes I know we aren’t in the States).
We are now in the joyful position where the people being interviewed a likely at some point in the future to be in jail. I actually think it may be better to pause the inquiry and kick off the prosecutions off and return to the inquiry with some interviewees via zoom from their prison cell
No. Let them sit there saying 'no comment'. We can make the due inferences.
I suspect that Vennels' best chance of keeping her prison sentence down to single figures would be to open up and be brutally frank about what she instructed to do by Government. If it then transpired that she was a pawn in its game, she maybe gets some credit for that.
A straw in the wind - anecdotally my local MP (Andrew Murrison) is rather worried about his seat (as told to my colleague who socialises with him occasionally).
His majority is 21,630.
Apparently most Tory MP's have accepted the inevitable. They know what's coming!
Personally I'd be amazed if Murrison lost in leafy, rural, south west wilts, but who knows?
In Feb 1974 I was the Liberal Party Agent in SE Essex, so therefore was at the count watching the process. It was clear to me quite soon that the Conservative candidate had won, so when I bumped into him I congratulated him. Do you really think so? He replied. I've been worried. He had a substantial majority.
Incidentally, whilst you can tap your freedom (bus) pass in London you cannot do that with a non-London bus pass. You have to wave it at the driver. It won’t work if tapped, even though tapping it is how it works outside London … until you reach the border with Wales and Scotland.
Presumably if you catch a bus that crosses the border of this non-union, union, you can use it but not if you use it for the return leg.
Just to add to the bizarre confusion.
I now have an image of a pensioner catching a bus from Lydney to Chepstow and having to get out at the Wye Bridge and walk the rest of the way!
My bus pass also allows reduced price train travel outwith the old Strathclyde PTE area, i.e. Ayrshire, Renfrewshire, Glasgow, Lanarkshire and Dunbartonshire. I can use it for cheap travel halfway to Edinburgh, for example. However, the tickets can’t be bought from a ticket machine, or from Trainline, etc, only from a ticket office or on the train. My bus pass can be used throughout Scotland, though. Some coach operators take advantage of this to operate “service buses” such as from Dundee and Angus to the Ayrshire coast. When are you 60, @DavidL?
2 years ago, sadly. As I say I don't have a bus pass but do have an old fogies' card for the trains.
I have never applied for one either, I only use public transport infrequently
The obsession with free public transport is misplaced IMO. More older people would benefit from more frequent services (or any service at all) than free travel.
Poorer pensioners should receive higher cash benefits that they can spend in whatever way is efficient for them.
Possibly true. But while I believe in higher frequencies, and that providing them drives up demand, it is not always viable to do so. Whereas if the bus/train is going to run anyway and not be full, you may as well give away free tickets to someone. The good thing about giving them to pensioners is that there are many pensioners who don't drive (I'm thinking more of the over 85s than the over 65s). It's the same logic as allowing free transport for the under 5s.
And there is the German argument that subsidising cheap public transport is actually a better use of resources - make it cheap for everyone.
Has anyone seen any documentation relating to the set-up of the Horizon programme (or parent programme, if it was part of some broader change initiative)? In particular, the weight given to the reduction of Sub-postmaster fraud in any cost-benefit-risk analysis and whether the realisation of those benefits, specifically fraud reduction, was embedded in senior management bonus schemes.
Looking for what incentives motivated those who behaved appallingly, it may have simply been the threat of having to lose and even pay back the bonuses that were paying for school fees and a second holiday every year.
You don’t need to look at benefits if you listened to the last set of witness the investigators were only on temporary contracts - getting renewed was incentive enough
As for the plan - it was always believed their was fraud within branches - the whole point of horizon was that it would capture it and the reduction in losses would then cover the cost of it
So, fuelling the whole disaster was a cynical belief that they’re all wrong ‘uns… which ultimately has led, judging by comments today, to a cynical belief about management that they’re all wrong ‘uns. Maybe we should all be a bit more cautious about generalising?
Naaaaah. Those Post Office Managers. Eyes a bit too close together. Wrong 'uns for sure.
Thank you, CF, for another excellent piece on this subject.
Following this scandal has proved not only enlightening but personally helpful in my own jousts with large organisations in recent years. In my case it has been Gloucestershire Police and British Gas, but it could equally well have been others, and I'm sure PBers will be able to quote their own examples.
Lessons have been learned, by me at least. Don't accept that they are either competent or honest. Do not accept what you know not to be true, even if it is offered as a compromise deal. Fight your corner, and if possible, connect with others who have been mistreated.
I'm still hoping to see prosecutions in the PO case. Although part of me feels some sympathy with Vennels - how does she sleep nights? - I think we have to see her and her colleagues in the dock if the message is ever to get through to the senior management of large organisations that they are not immune, however well-connected they may be. If that can be demonstrated in the PO case, there is some hope that others will truly learn lessons.
I am not holding my breath but I remain hopeful. Your efforts, and those of other like you, Ms CF, nurture that hope.
How does Vennels et al sleep at night?
I suggest you find some gloss magazine interviews with some Big Cheese(s) a couple of years downstream from the Big Scandal.
In a spread, which often contains shots of nice country house in summer, Our Victim explains how he/she was Victimised. Despite being a super achiever, somehow they got saddled with the responsibility they were legally responsible for.
It was a hard time. Maybe even a stay at the posh end of Priory Chain. But he/she found another 6 figure job, where he/she is Doing Good Work for The Public Benefit.
In every such story, what is missing?
Very possibly, M, although in the case of Vennels (and possibly her friend, Et Al) I suspect the Priory visit will have to wait until she's out of chokey.
After yesterday's evidence from Sir Anthony Hooper, it's hard to see how she dodges a stretch.
What I don't understand is why she hasn't already been arrested. As you say, there appears to be enough information already in the public domain for a prima facie case, so why the delay? I don't see how waiting until after the inquiry finishes is just?
Because if arrested she could avoid answering questions as that would prejudice her trial.
You can see the logic there
Not sure that's right, but happy to be corrected if wrong.
I think she can still give evidence to the inquiry but would be cautioned about saying anything that could incriminate herself.
Which would rather reduce the answers she makes to - no comment / 5th amendment (yes I know we aren’t in the States).
We are now in the joyful position where the people being interviewed a likely at some point in the future to be in jail. I actually think it may be better to pause the inquiry and kick off the prosecutions off and return to the inquiry with some interviewees via zoom from their prison cell
No. Let them sit there saying 'no comment'. We can make the due inferences.
I suspect that Vennels' best chance of keeping her prison sentence down to single figures would be to open up and be brutally frank about what she instructed to do by Government. If it then transpired that she was a pawn in its game, she maybe gets some credit for that.
I don't recall the I was only following orders defence working particularly brilliantly at Nuremberg.
Has anyone seen any documentation relating to the set-up of the Horizon programme (or parent programme, if it was part of some broader change initiative)? In particular, the weight given to the reduction of Sub-postmaster fraud in any cost-benefit-risk analysis and whether the realisation of those benefits, specifically fraud reduction, was embedded in senior management bonus schemes.
Looking for what incentives motivated those who behaved appallingly, it may have simply been the threat of having to lose and even pay back the bonuses that were paying for school fees and a second holiday every year.
You don’t need to look at benefits if you listened to the last set of witness the investigators were only on temporary contracts - getting renewed was incentive enough
As for the plan - it was always believed their was fraud within branches - the whole point of horizon was that it would capture it and the reduction in losses would then cover the cost of it
So, fuelling the whole disaster was a cynical belief that they’re all wrong ‘uns… which ultimately has led, judging by comments today, to a cynical belief about management that they’re all wrong ‘uns. Maybe we should all be a bit more cautious about generalising?
Um, no. All I was saying is that I suspect a lot of people may not be 100% truthfully when answering questions to the inquiry for fear of their answers being used against them later
Unfortunately, air defences are complex and expensive assemblies of kit, and even NATO countries don’t keep huge supplies of spare systems lying around, but yes we need to get more of them into theatre as a matter of urgency.
Patriot is a super-heavyweight system; it's designed around a six launcher battalion of 1,000 people most of whom are highly trained (expensive) technical specialists and it costs an astonishing $4m every time you fire it. There's a full platoon just to look after the power generation set. The US could send shitloads of Patriot but Ukraine just hasn't got the people to operate them effectively.
If anyone gave a shit (and certainly looks like Big Rish and Abu Hunter don't particularly) they would be better off scouring the Middle East and Africa for SA-8/SA-10/SA-12 gear and buying that for whatever it costs.
This war has been interesting for the effectiveness of much old military technology, as well as a lot of low-level improvised technology at the front lines. That, and the silly Soviet tank design that sees them spontaneously explode when hit because they keep all the ammo under the gunner’s seat.
As you say, perhaps a very complex $1b+ system that costs $4m a missile and uses a lot of well-trained manpower, isn’t an effective use of resources when they’re mostly shooting down $1m drones or old Soviet missiles with them.
I agree that we should start looking for old-but-serviceable kit wherever we can find it in the world, although it will probably require somewhat unconventional procurement processes for much of it!
"I agree that we should start looking for old-but-serviceable kit wherever we can find it in the world, although it will probably require somewhat unconventional procurement processes for much of it!"
Which has already been happening - see the resurrection of SPAAG such as Gepard from scrapyards/warehouses.
Most of what has gone to Ukraine was either totally obsolete (Nick at TanksALot https://tanks-alot.co.uk/military-vehicles-for-sale/ is a a major source of light armoured vehicles...) or about to be replaced.
There’s a lot of fun-looking vehicles on that site! Most advertised as having one careful owner - the British army.
I don’t think anyone has ever satisfactorily answered Tam Dalyell’s West Lothian Question
The West Lothian question is really only relevant if we have a government which is depending upon Scottish seats to have a majority in the House of Commons. That means they need to have more than half the Scottish seats. We obviously have not had that for the last 14 years (although May was presumably grateful for the increase in Scottish Tories in 2015) and it wasn't particularly relevant during the Blair majorities either.
It looks somewhat unlikely to me that the Scottish Labour MPs are going to be the extent of Starmer's majority although I suppose that is still possible. If that occurs the question will return.
Even if SLab MPs do make up Starmer’s majority, all the evidence is that they’ll be so supine that the question will remain unanswered for another few years. I guess the prospective candidate for Cowdenbeath & Kirkcaldy might have made a fuss about Labour not being racist enough but she’s been Gulaged.
Their supine nature would be the problem in that scenario if they trotted through the lobbies to enforce changes to the English NHS, for example. Although even the SNP have found so many exceptions to their self limitation that they will not vote on English matters that it cannot be relied upon.
Can you list these ‘many exceptions’ just for the record?
I manage to stay my pity for the poor put-upon English by remembering the 2016 Scotland act voted through by English MPs with every single one of the suggested 120 amendments by opposition parties rejected. And then we turn to Brexit..
Now, silly me, but I had the impression that one of the causes of the Civil War was to ensure that the Law was above the Monarch, rather than the Monarch above the Law. Where did it all go wrong?
"...an archaic custom that requires UK parliaments to obtain the consent of the monarch for draft bills before they can be implemented..."
Has anyone seen any documentation relating to the set-up of the Horizon programme (or parent programme, if it was part of some broader change initiative)? In particular, the weight given to the reduction of Sub-postmaster fraud in any cost-benefit-risk analysis and whether the realisation of those benefits, specifically fraud reduction, was embedded in senior management bonus schemes.
Looking for what incentives motivated those who behaved appallingly, it may have simply been the threat of having to lose and even pay back the bonuses that were paying for school fees and a second holiday every year.
You don’t need to look at benefits if you listened to the last set of witness the investigators were only on temporary contracts - getting renewed was incentive enough
As for the plan - it was always believed their was fraud within branches - the whole point of horizon was that it would capture it and the reduction in losses would then cover the cost of it
So, fuelling the whole disaster was a cynical belief that they’re all wrong ‘uns… which ultimately has led, judging by comments today, to a cynical belief about management that they’re all wrong ‘uns. Maybe we should all be a bit more cautious about generalising?
Um, no. All I was saying is that I suspect a lot of people may not be 100% truthfully when answering questions to the inquiry for fear of their answers being used against them later
I think that, in fairness to Vennels et al, there always has been the odd dodgy Sub Postmaster.
A straw in the wind - anecdotally my local MP (Andrew Murrison) is rather worried about his seat (as told to my colleague who socialises with him occasionally).
His majority is 21,630.
Apparently most Tory MP's have accepted the inevitable. They know what's coming!
Personally I'd be amazed if Murrison lost in leafy, rural, south west wilts, but who knows?
In Feb 1974 I was the Liberal Party Agent in SE Essex, so therefore was at the count watching the process. It was clear to me quite soon that the Conservative candidate had won, so when I bumped into him I congratulated him. Do you really think so? He replied. I've been worried. He had a substantial majority.
Yes. It's candidate-itis. Shoo-ins think they're toast because they see an opponent out canvassing, while no-hopers start picking out wallpaper for their Westminster office because an old lady flatters them on the doorstep.
It may well be Murrison's closest election as SW Wilts MP and clearly won't be the cake walk of recent times... but as his previous closest was a 20% bufffer in 2010, that's not saying a huge amount.
I don’t think anyone has ever satisfactorily answered Tam Dalyell’s West Lothian Question
The West Lothian question is really only relevant if we have a government which is depending upon Scottish seats to have a majority in the House of Commons. That means they need to have more than half the Scottish seats. We obviously have not had that for the last 14 years (although May was presumably grateful for the increase in Scottish Tories in 2015) and it wasn't particularly relevant during the Blair majorities either.
It looks somewhat unlikely to me that the Scottish Labour MPs are going to be the extent of Starmer's majority although I suppose that is still possible. If that occurs the question will return.
But there have been occasions, I think, when votes affecting only England (and Wales?) have been defeated despite a majority of English (and Welsh?) MPs being in favour, because of the votes of Scottish MPs (something to do with Sunday trading, possibly?).
I do vaguely recall that and think it resulted in EVEL provisions being brought in but I think that they are now gone again?
Yes, though Redwood wasn't happy. In 2005 Howard's Tories won most votes in England so it was nearly relevant then but Blair's Labour still won most seats in England as it had in the UK. I expect it would start to be an issue 2 or 3 elections into a Labour government if England votes Tory but they are re elected via Scottish or Welsh Labour MPs
Unfortunately, air defences are complex and expensive assemblies of kit, and even NATO countries don’t keep huge supplies of spare systems lying around, but yes we need to get more of them into theatre as a matter of urgency.
Patriot is a super-heavyweight system; it's designed around a six launcher battalion of 1,000 people most of whom are highly trained (expensive) technical specialists and it costs an astonishing $4m every time you fire it. There's a full platoon just to look after the power generation set. The US could send shitloads of Patriot but Ukraine just hasn't got the people to operate them effectively.
If anyone gave a shit (and certainly looks like Big Rish and Abu Hunter don't particularly) they would be better off scouring the Middle East and Africa for SA-8/SA-10/SA-12 gear and buying that for whatever it costs.
This war has been interesting for the effectiveness of much old military technology, as well as a lot of low-level improvised technology at the front lines. That, and the silly Soviet tank design that sees them spontaneously explode when hit because they keep all the ammo under the gunner’s seat.
As you say, perhaps a very complex $1b+ system that costs $4m a missile and uses a lot of well-trained manpower, isn’t an effective use of resources when they’re mostly shooting down $1m drones or old Soviet missiles with them.
I agree that we should start looking for old-but-serviceable kit wherever we can find it in the world, although it will probably require somewhat unconventional procurement processes for much of it!
Many of the missiles they're shooting down are as expensive, if not more so. They're not using Patriots on cheap drones.
That's what the Gepards and similar are for.
There's also this.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Precision_Kill_Weapon_System Ukraine is being supplied with APKWS rockets following the 2022 Russia invasion of Ukraine.[54][55] As part of an aid package announced by the U.S. in August 2022, the L3Harris Vehicle-Agnostic Modular Palletized ISR Rocket Equipment (VAMPIRE [uk]) system was ordered to be sent to Ukraine. The system consists of a sensor ball and a four-barreled APKWS rocket launcher that can be mounted on trucks. While it can direct laser-guided rockets on ground targets, the Pentagon specified it as a counter-UAS system...
A couple of the serious problems Ukraine has are defending high value, widely distributed targets (eg power stations) against long range high speed missiles, and the long range glide bombs being used in large numbers at the front. Those need the more expensive solutions.
Unfortunately, air defences are complex and expensive assemblies of kit, and even NATO countries don’t keep huge supplies of spare systems lying around, but yes we need to get more of them into theatre as a matter of urgency.
Patriot is a super-heavyweight system; it's designed around a six launcher battalion of 1,000 people most of whom are highly trained (expensive) technical specialists and it costs an astonishing $4m every time you fire it. There's a full platoon just to look after the power generation set. The US could send shitloads of Patriot but Ukraine just hasn't got the people to operate them effectively.
If anyone gave a shit (and certainly looks like Big Rish and Abu Hunter don't particularly) they would be better off scouring the Middle East and Africa for SA-8/SA-10/SA-12 gear and buying that for whatever it costs.
This war has been interesting for the effectiveness of much old military technology, as well as a lot of low-level improvised technology at the front lines. That, and the silly Soviet tank design that sees them spontaneously explode when hit because they keep all the ammo under the gunner’s seat.
As you say, perhaps a very complex $1b+ system that costs $4m a missile and uses a lot of well-trained manpower, isn’t an effective use of resources when they’re mostly shooting down $1m drones or old Soviet missiles with them.
I agree that we should start looking for old-but-serviceable kit wherever we can find it in the world, although it will probably require somewhat unconventional procurement processes for much of it!
"I agree that we should start looking for old-but-serviceable kit wherever we can find it in the world, although it will probably require somewhat unconventional procurement processes for much of it!"
Which has already been happening - see the resurrection of SPAAG such as Gepard from scrapyards/warehouses.
Most of what has gone to Ukraine was either totally obsolete (Nick at TanksALot https://tanks-alot.co.uk/military-vehicles-for-sale/ is a a major source of light armoured vehicles...) or about to be replaced.
There’s a lot of fun-looking vehicles on that site! Most advertised as having one careful owner - the British army.
He tried to sell me a live Chieftain, way back. Tempting, but I didn't have parking space. Or the right firearms license.
At Aintree today in the cheap seats near the last fence. Already placed a couple of bets and had a pint (£7.80). Might have a couple more bets but think I will give alcohol at those prices a miss. Can of diet coke is £3.20 ffs
Incidentally, whilst you can tap your freedom (bus) pass in London you cannot do that with a non-London bus pass. You have to wave it at the driver. It won’t work if tapped, even though tapping it is how it works outside London … until you reach the border with Wales and Scotland.
Presumably if you catch a bus that crosses the border of this non-union, union, you can use it but not if you use it for the return leg.
Just to add to the bizarre confusion.
I now have an image of a pensioner catching a bus from Lydney to Chepstow and having to get out at the Wye Bridge and walk the rest of the way!
My bus pass also allows reduced price train travel outwith the old Strathclyde PTE area, i.e. Ayrshire, Renfrewshire, Glasgow, Lanarkshire and Dunbartonshire. I can use it for cheap travel halfway to Edinburgh, for example. However, the tickets can’t be bought from a ticket machine, or from Trainline, etc, only from a ticket office or on the train. My bus pass can be used throughout Scotland, though. Some coach operators take advantage of this to operate “service buses” such as from Dundee and Angus to the Ayrshire coast. When are you 60, @DavidL?
2 years ago, sadly. As I say I don't have a bus pass but do have an old fogies' card for the trains.
I have never applied for one either, I only use public transport infrequently
Worth having even so, Malc. It's amazing how often a trip coincides with a chance to use public transport. It's wet and windy and I need to get home - oh, look, there's a bus due in five minutes! Without the bus pass you'd have got home, certainly, but the journey would have been either more expensive or more tiresome. You've paid taxes your whole life to earn that bus pass!
Exactly. I'm no pauper but I love my 60+ oyster. It makes me feel valued.
Unfortunately, air defences are complex and expensive assemblies of kit, and even NATO countries don’t keep huge supplies of spare systems lying around, but yes we need to get more of them into theatre as a matter of urgency.
Patriot is a super-heavyweight system; it's designed around a six launcher battalion of 1,000 people most of whom are highly trained (expensive) technical specialists and it costs an astonishing $4m every time you fire it. There's a full platoon just to look after the power generation set. The US could send shitloads of Patriot but Ukraine just hasn't got the people to operate them effectively.
If anyone gave a shit (and certainly looks like Big Rish and Abu Hunter don't particularly) they would be better off scouring the Middle East and Africa for SA-8/SA-10/SA-12 gear and buying that for whatever it costs.
This war has been interesting for the effectiveness of much old military technology, as well as a lot of low-level improvised technology at the front lines. That, and the silly Soviet tank design that sees them spontaneously explode when hit because they keep all the ammo under the gunner’s seat.
As you say, perhaps a very complex $1b+ system that costs $4m a missile and uses a lot of well-trained manpower, isn’t an effective use of resources when they’re mostly shooting down $1m drones or old Soviet missiles with them.
I agree that we should start looking for old-but-serviceable kit wherever we can find it in the world, although it will probably require somewhat unconventional procurement processes for much of it!
Many of the missiles they're shooting down are as expensive, if not more so. They're not using Patriots on cheap drones.
That's what the Gepards and similar are for.
There's also this.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Precision_Kill_Weapon_System Ukraine is being supplied with APKWS rockets following the 2022 Russia invasion of Ukraine.[54][55] As part of an aid package announced by the U.S. in August 2022, the L3Harris Vehicle-Agnostic Modular Palletized ISR Rocket Equipment (VAMPIRE [uk]) system was ordered to be sent to Ukraine. The system consists of a sensor ball and a four-barreled APKWS rocket launcher that can be mounted on trucks. While it can direct laser-guided rockets on ground targets, the Pentagon specified it as a counter-UAS system...
A couple of the serious problems Ukraine has are defending high value, widely distributed targets (eg power stations) against long range high speed missiles, and the long range glide bombs being used in large numbers at the front. Those need the more expensive solutions.
On a tangential topic, the Ukraine war has demonstrated another benefit of a distributed energy grid. Solar and Wind power is much harder to target than centralised gas/coal or nuclear. And multiple smaller-scale, flexible gas plants are better than huge but fewer large coal stations.
Possibly the riskiest of all is hydro given the twin risks of a highly concentrated energy source - take out one hydro plant and in some countries you could be destroying 50% of national capacity - and the collateral damage of a destroyed dam.
Has anyone seen any documentation relating to the set-up of the Horizon programme (or parent programme, if it was part of some broader change initiative)? In particular, the weight given to the reduction of Sub-postmaster fraud in any cost-benefit-risk analysis and whether the realisation of those benefits, specifically fraud reduction, was embedded in senior management bonus schemes.
Looking for what incentives motivated those who behaved appallingly, it may have simply been the threat of having to lose and even pay back the bonuses that were paying for school fees and a second holiday every year.
You don’t need to look at benefits if you listened to the last set of witness the investigators were only on temporary contracts - getting renewed was incentive enough
As for the plan - it was always believed their was fraud within branches - the whole point of horizon was that it would capture it and the reduction in losses would then cover the cost of it
So, fuelling the whole disaster was a cynical belief that they’re all wrong ‘uns… which ultimately has led, judging by comments today, to a cynical belief about management that they’re all wrong ‘uns. Maybe we should all be a bit more cautious about generalising?
Um, no. All I was saying is that I suspect a lot of people may not be 100% truthfully when answering questions to the inquiry for fear of their answers being used against them later
I think that, in fairness to Vennels et al, there always has been the odd dodgy Sub Postmaster.
There were but prior to Horizon they were still uncovering dodgy Postmasters and they were being prosecuted.
Vennells is only deserving of contempt and, as someone put it, she is not the only one and they should not be forgotten as well.
Incidentally, whilst you can tap your freedom (bus) pass in London you cannot do that with a non-London bus pass. You have to wave it at the driver. It won’t work if tapped, even though tapping it is how it works outside London … until you reach the border with Wales and Scotland.
Presumably if you catch a bus that crosses the border of this non-union, union, you can use it but not if you use it for the return leg.
Just to add to the bizarre confusion.
I now have an image of a pensioner catching a bus from Lydney to Chepstow and having to get out at the Wye Bridge and walk the rest of the way!
My bus pass also allows reduced price train travel outwith the old Strathclyde PTE area, i.e. Ayrshire, Renfrewshire, Glasgow, Lanarkshire and Dunbartonshire. I can use it for cheap travel halfway to Edinburgh, for example. However, the tickets can’t be bought from a ticket machine, or from Trainline, etc, only from a ticket office or on the train. My bus pass can be used throughout Scotland, though. Some coach operators take advantage of this to operate “service buses” such as from Dundee and Angus to the Ayrshire coast. When are you 60, @DavidL?
2 years ago, sadly. As I say I don't have a bus pass but do have an old fogies' card for the trains.
I have never applied for one either, I only use public transport infrequently
You would if you lived in London. You'd be nipping around on the bus just like me.
At Aintree today in the cheap seats near the last fence. Already placed a couple of bets and had a pint (£7.80). Might have a couple more bets but think I will give alcohol at those prices a miss. Can of diet coke is £3.20 ffs
The beer will be cheap if the bets come in! Enjoy the day 🐎
A straw in the wind - anecdotally my local MP (Andrew Murrison) is rather worried about his seat (as told to my colleague who socialises with him occasionally).
His majority is 21,630.
Apparently most Tory MP's have accepted the inevitable. They know what's coming!
Personally I'd be amazed if Murrison lost in leafy, rural, south west wilts, but who knows?
ditto
my MP Nadhim Zahawi has communicated with the voters for the first time in ages. He has a majority of 19972.
Squeaky bums all round at Tory Towers.
I'd take that chance to eject him if I were you. Jealous.
I don’t think anyone has ever satisfactorily answered Tam Dalyell’s West Lothian Question
The West Lothian question is really only relevant if we have a government which is depending upon Scottish seats to have a majority in the House of Commons. That means they need to have more than half the Scottish seats. We obviously have not had that for the last 14 years (although May was presumably grateful for the increase in Scottish Tories in 2015) and it wasn't particularly relevant during the Blair majorities either.
It looks somewhat unlikely to me that the Scottish Labour MPs are going to be the extent of Starmer's majority although I suppose that is still possible. If that occurs the question will return.
But there have been occasions, I think, when votes affecting only England (and Wales?) have been defeated despite a majority of English (and Welsh?) MPs being in favour, because of the votes of Scottish MPs (something to do with Sunday trading, possibly?).
I do vaguely recall that and think it resulted in EVEL provisions being brought in but I think that they are now gone again?
Yes, though Redwood wasn't happy. In 2005 Howard's Tories won most votes in England so it was nearly relevant then but Blair's Labour still won most seats in England as it had in the UK. I expect it would start to be an issue 2 or 3 elections into a Labour government if England votes Tory but they are re elected via Scottish or Welsh Labour MPs
Isn't that what happens to Scotland all the time? They don't vote Tory but they get a Tory government.
That isn't relevant to the West Lothian question and EVEL, though.
The point of the West Lothian question is that, in a system where powers are devolved to Scotland but not to England/English regions, Scottish MPs vote on some matters that affect English voters but do NOT affect Scottish ones. The same is not true in reverse. It isn't simply that the Government isn't of the political stripe you'd like.
A straw in the wind - anecdotally my local MP (Andrew Murrison) is rather worried about his seat (as told to my colleague who socialises with him occasionally).
His majority is 21,630.
Apparently most Tory MP's have accepted the inevitable. They know what's coming!
Personally I'd be amazed if Murrison lost in leafy, rural, south west wilts, but who knows?
ditto
my MP Nadhim Zahawi has communicated with the voters for the first time in ages. He has a majority of 19972.
Squeaky bums all round at Tory Towers.
I'd take that chance to eject him if I were you. Jealous.
Now, silly me, but I had the impression that one of the causes of the Civil War was to ensure that the Law was above the Monarch, rather than the Monarch above the Law. Where did it all go wrong?
"...an archaic custom that requires UK parliaments to obtain the consent of the monarch for draft bills before they can be implemented..."
Unfortunately, air defences are complex and expensive assemblies of kit, and even NATO countries don’t keep huge supplies of spare systems lying around, but yes we need to get more of them into theatre as a matter of urgency.
Patriot is a super-heavyweight system; it's designed around a six launcher battalion of 1,000 people most of whom are highly trained (expensive) technical specialists and it costs an astonishing $4m every time you fire it. There's a full platoon just to look after the power generation set. The US could send shitloads of Patriot but Ukraine just hasn't got the people to operate them effectively.
If anyone gave a shit (and certainly looks like Big Rish and Abu Hunter don't particularly) they would be better off scouring the Middle East and Africa for SA-8/SA-10/SA-12 gear and buying that for whatever it costs.
This war has been interesting for the effectiveness of much old military technology, as well as a lot of low-level improvised technology at the front lines. That, and the silly Soviet tank design that sees them spontaneously explode when hit because they keep all the ammo under the gunner’s seat.
As you say, perhaps a very complex $1b+ system that costs $4m a missile and uses a lot of well-trained manpower, isn’t an effective use of resources when they’re mostly shooting down $1m drones or old Soviet missiles with them.
I agree that we should start looking for old-but-serviceable kit wherever we can find it in the world, although it will probably require somewhat unconventional procurement processes for much of it!
"I agree that we should start looking for old-but-serviceable kit wherever we can find it in the world, although it will probably require somewhat unconventional procurement processes for much of it!"
Which has already been happening - see the resurrection of SPAAG such as Gepard from scrapyards/warehouses.
Most of what has gone to Ukraine was either totally obsolete (Nick at TanksALot https://tanks-alot.co.uk/military-vehicles-for-sale/ is a a major source of light armoured vehicles...) or about to be replaced.
There’s a lot of fun-looking vehicles on that site! Most advertised as having one careful owner - the British army.
Although not the one with 25 kilos of gold hidden in a fuel tank!
Unfortunately, air defences are complex and expensive assemblies of kit, and even NATO countries don’t keep huge supplies of spare systems lying around, but yes we need to get more of them into theatre as a matter of urgency.
Patriot is a super-heavyweight system; it's designed around a six launcher battalion of 1,000 people most of whom are highly trained (expensive) technical specialists and it costs an astonishing $4m every time you fire it. There's a full platoon just to look after the power generation set. The US could send shitloads of Patriot but Ukraine just hasn't got the people to operate them effectively.
If anyone gave a shit (and certainly looks like Big Rish and Abu Hunter don't particularly) they would be better off scouring the Middle East and Africa for SA-8/SA-10/SA-12 gear and buying that for whatever it costs.
This war has been interesting for the effectiveness of much old military technology, as well as a lot of low-level improvised technology at the front lines. That, and the silly Soviet tank design that sees them spontaneously explode when hit because they keep all the ammo under the gunner’s seat.
As you say, perhaps a very complex $1b+ system that costs $4m a missile and uses a lot of well-trained manpower, isn’t an effective use of resources when they’re mostly shooting down $1m drones or old Soviet missiles with them.
I agree that we should start looking for old-but-serviceable kit wherever we can find it in the world, although it will probably require somewhat unconventional procurement processes for much of it!
"I agree that we should start looking for old-but-serviceable kit wherever we can find it in the world, although it will probably require somewhat unconventional procurement processes for much of it!"
Which has already been happening - see the resurrection of SPAAG such as Gepard from scrapyards/warehouses.
Most of what has gone to Ukraine was either totally obsolete (Nick at TanksALot https://tanks-alot.co.uk/military-vehicles-for-sale/ is a a major source of light armoured vehicles...) or about to be replaced.
There's obviously a limited quantity of nearly obsolete but still useful stuff lying around, so to keep supporting Ukraine we really do need to pull out all the stops on restarting production.
This sort of spending could be just the counter-cyclical boost the German economy needs right now too.
Now, silly me, but I had the impression that one of the causes of the Civil War was to ensure that the Law was above the Monarch, rather than the Monarch above the Law. Where did it all go wrong?
"...an archaic custom that requires UK parliaments to obtain the consent of the monarch for draft bills before they can be implemented..."
"Archaic" is not the same as "wrong"
I don't oppose it because it's archaic. I oppose it because it's wrong.
I'd say it's possible for parts of Glasgow to be a crumbling disgrace while G12 remains very desirable.
But yes, I'd certainly rather live in G12 than whatever I could afford for the same money in London, or even for that plus whatever more you get for London wages. London may be an amazing city, but I'd far rather live in a really good city in a nice house and a nice suburb than live in amazing city but a grotty house in a remote suburb.
And the nice bits of Glasgow are indeed very very nice, and Glasgow City Centre is certainly a really good city centre.
I don’t think anyone has ever satisfactorily answered Tam Dalyell’s West Lothian Question
The West Lothian question is really only relevant if we have a government which is depending upon Scottish seats to have a majority in the House of Commons. That means they need to have more than half the Scottish seats. We obviously have not had that for the last 14 years (although May was presumably grateful for the increase in Scottish Tories in 2015) and it wasn't particularly relevant during the Blair majorities either.
It looks somewhat unlikely to me that the Scottish Labour MPs are going to be the extent of Starmer's majority although I suppose that is still possible. If that occurs the question will return.
But there have been occasions, I think, when votes affecting only England (and Wales?) have been defeated despite a majority of English (and Welsh?) MPs being in favour, because of the votes of Scottish MPs (something to do with Sunday trading, possibly?).
I do vaguely recall that and think it resulted in EVEL provisions being brought in but I think that they are now gone again?
Yes, though Redwood wasn't happy. In 2005 Howard's Tories won most votes in England so it was nearly relevant then but Blair's Labour still won most seats in England as it had in the UK. I expect it would start to be an issue 2 or 3 elections into a Labour government if England votes Tory but they are re elected via Scottish or Welsh Labour MPs
Isn't that what happens to Scotland all the time? They don't vote Tory but they get a Tory government.
That isn't relevant to the West Lothian question and EVEL, though.
The point of the West Lothian question is that, in a system where powers are devolved to Scotland but not to England/English regions, Scottish MPs vote on some matters that affect English voters but do NOT affect Scottish ones. The same is not true in reverse. It isn't simply that the Government isn't of the political stripe you'd like.
I don’t think anyone has ever satisfactorily answered Tam Dalyell’s West Lothian Question
The West Lothian question is really only relevant if we have a government which is depending upon Scottish seats to have a majority in the House of Commons. That means they need to have more than half the Scottish seats. We obviously have not had that for the last 14 years (although May was presumably grateful for the increase in Scottish Tories in 2015) and it wasn't particularly relevant during the Blair majorities either.
It looks somewhat unlikely to me that the Scottish Labour MPs are going to be the extent of Starmer's majority although I suppose that is still possible. If that occurs the question will return.
But there have been occasions, I think, when votes affecting only England (and Wales?) have been defeated despite a majority of English (and Welsh?) MPs being in favour, because of the votes of Scottish MPs (something to do with Sunday trading, possibly?).
I do vaguely recall that and think it resulted in EVEL provisions being brought in but I think that they are now gone again?
Yes, though Redwood wasn't happy. In 2005 Howard's Tories won most votes in England so it was nearly relevant then but Blair's Labour still won most seats in England as it had in the UK. I expect it would start to be an issue 2 or 3 elections into a Labour government if England votes Tory but they are re elected via Scottish or Welsh Labour MPs
Isn't that what happens to Scotland all the time? They don't vote Tory but they get a Tory government.
That isn't relevant to the West Lothian question and EVEL, though.
The point of the West Lothian question is that, in a system where powers are devolved to Scotland but not to England/English regions, Scottish MPs vote on some matters that affect English voters but do NOT affect Scottish ones. The same is not true in reverse. It isn't simply that the Government isn't of the political stripe you'd like.
Yes, I know. Although I've never quite got the fuss about it tbh. England dominates the UK parliament and - going the other way - you have this technical point that potentially, every so often, might overweight Scotland. I mean, I do get it, but it's hardly a fatal flaw (of devolution) more a bug.
UK taxpayers have paid out more than £34,000 to cover the cost of science secretary Michelle Donelan’s libel case, the Guardian can reveal, more than double the sum the government had previously admitted.
Both fairly grim, horrid developments. I don't see the mature trees (the only pleasing thing aesthetically in the whole mock up) doing terribly well against the wind from the Irish sea either.
Unfortunately, air defences are complex and expensive assemblies of kit, and even NATO countries don’t keep huge supplies of spare systems lying around, but yes we need to get more of them into theatre as a matter of urgency.
Patriot is a super-heavyweight system; it's designed around a six launcher battalion of 1,000 people most of whom are highly trained (expensive) technical specialists and it costs an astonishing $4m every time you fire it. There's a full platoon just to look after the power generation set. The US could send shitloads of Patriot but Ukraine just hasn't got the people to operate them effectively.
If anyone gave a shit (and certainly looks like Big Rish and Abu Hunter don't particularly) they would be better off scouring the Middle East and Africa for SA-8/SA-10/SA-12 gear and buying that for whatever it costs.
This war has been interesting for the effectiveness of much old military technology, as well as a lot of low-level improvised technology at the front lines. That, and the silly Soviet tank design that sees them spontaneously explode when hit because they keep all the ammo under the gunner’s seat.
As you say, perhaps a very complex $1b+ system that costs $4m a missile and uses a lot of well-trained manpower, isn’t an effective use of resources when they’re mostly shooting down $1m drones or old Soviet missiles with them.
I agree that we should start looking for old-but-serviceable kit wherever we can find it in the world, although it will probably require somewhat unconventional procurement processes for much of it!
Many of the missiles they're shooting down are as expensive, if not more so. They're not using Patriots on cheap drones.
That's what the Gepards and similar are for.
There's also this.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Precision_Kill_Weapon_System Ukraine is being supplied with APKWS rockets following the 2022 Russia invasion of Ukraine.[54][55] As part of an aid package announced by the U.S. in August 2022, the L3Harris Vehicle-Agnostic Modular Palletized ISR Rocket Equipment (VAMPIRE [uk]) system was ordered to be sent to Ukraine. The system consists of a sensor ball and a four-barreled APKWS rocket launcher that can be mounted on trucks. While it can direct laser-guided rockets on ground targets, the Pentagon specified it as a counter-UAS system...
A couple of the serious problems Ukraine has are defending high value, widely distributed targets (eg power stations) against long range high speed missiles, and the long range glide bombs being used in large numbers at the front. Those need the more expensive solutions.
On a tangential topic, the Ukraine war has demonstrated another benefit of a distributed energy grid. Solar and Wind power is much harder to target than centralised gas/coal or nuclear. And multiple smaller-scale, flexible gas plants are better than huge but fewer large coal stations.
Possibly the riskiest of all is hydro given the twin risks of a highly concentrated energy source - take out one hydro plant and in some countries you could be destroying 50% of national capacity - and the collateral damage of a destroyed dam.
Well, maybe, but how would Britain protect tens of thousands of North Sea wind turbines from large numbers of small cheap drones?
A couple of dozen larger power plants would be easier to protect with air defence equipment.
In both situations the best defence is offence - use your own long-range weaponry to take out the launch sites and warehouse where the enemy missiles and drones are stored and launched from.
I see Rollo has been banned. Wasn't there a famously metamorphosing contributor here who wrote about his ancestors including a fierce Viking leader who he said had a battlefield religious conversion? I could have sworn the said leader's name was Rollo.
Or Hrolf spelt proper and not with Normand pronunciation. Another to watch out for.
As a paid up member of the Trump is toast club it is notable that this comes on the day that his lead on the Opinion poll average with RCP falls to 0.2% https://www.realclearpolitics.com/ And that seems to come entirely from a somewhat dodgy Rasmussen poll which had Trump 8% ahead.
I will be surprised if the polling does not show a Biden lead by this time next week although any such lead will still be short of the 8% lead Biden had at this stage over Trump in 2020.
A straw in the wind - anecdotally my local MP (Andrew Murrison) is rather worried about his seat (as told to my colleague who socialises with him occasionally).
His majority is 21,630.
Apparently most Tory MP's have accepted the inevitable. They know what's coming!
Personally I'd be amazed if Murrison lost in leafy, rural, south west wilts, but who knows?
ditto
my MP Nadhim Zahawi has communicated with the voters for the first time in ages. He has a majority of 19972.
Squeaky bums all round at Tory Towers.
I'd take that chance to eject him if I were you. Jealous.
Fairly sure you're envious rather than jealous.
But jealous sounds better.
I didn't mean to hurt you. I didn't mean to make you cry. I didn't want to hurt you ... I'm just an Envious Guy.
Comments
Roughly, identify the powers that are in principle devolvable. Put them in a box, then leave it up to areas to take them. There were two different routes to forming an Autonomous Community. A simple application by a province or group of provinces got them base-level powers. If they wanted more and they weren't obviously historically distinct (like Catalonia), win a referendum first.
Two big benefits of that approach. First is that the map was designed bottom-up and had a point. It's trying to carve England up for no apparent reason that has caused English devolution so many problems. Second is that no region can complain about something like the WLQ. The powers are still there in the box if they want them.
It may be a matter for legal account for those concerned, most of whom no longer work for RM and the PO but that is a separate matter. Post privatisation anyway Horizon was an issue for the still publicly owned PO, RM was a private company no longer responsible for Post Offices
Witness Sir Wyn Nice-Old-Thng's dismay at the PO'sbelated dumping of thousands of emails on the Inquiry team. For good order, this required a pause in the investigation process while the contents were digested, but Sir N-O-T wasn't having it. He saw through it as a deliberate ploy to further delay findings that have been delayed too much already. He chose to press on. Well played, Sir.
The CPS should take a leaf out of his book. Fuck the niceties, and good order. Charge them, now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HX8rpjtr9WU
Bizarrely I have benefited from this recently twice when I never expected to. I didn't have a bus pass because I had no intention of taking a bus because frankly they pretty well don't exist where I live. Someone said to me they were a useful form of id because of the picture on them (although having said that my driving licence would do as well). Any way my wife broke her wrist at our holiday home and I had to drive up to recover her. That meant going up again later to recover the other car by train and bus. I saved a whole £2 on the bus fare. Last week I had a minor operation on my hand for trigger finger and my wife couldn't drive me because of said broken wrist. So again train and bus to the hospital and back. I suppose I shouldn't have used my pass, but I did.
We can hope that American politics gets un-broken at some point, but it’s not going to be this year and the weapons are needed now.
And then to do that in the face of organisational cultures that seek to align everyone in the same direction, and do not value conflict.
How do we tolerate, encourage and facilitate appropriate conflict?
In the words of Deep Thought ... TRICKY !
Part of that is about Non-Executive Directors. Part is about whistleblowers, and the bounds of acceptability as to what can go in a contract to restrict employees. And checks and balances, and how the power of the leadership of the organisation should be circumscribed *. And a whole bundle of other aspects.
* An interesting example here is how certain office holders in the Church of England basically cannot be removed without extreme difficulty, and how the tenure is essentially permanent ("Freehold"), and the appointment process are managed by external stakeholders ("the Patron").
It can be frustrating for the organsation's 'management' (ie Bishosp), but has had a place in maintaining diversity over centuries.
I ended up writing an essay at the end of it allegedly from the point of view of someone who had, in pre-Roman times, 'emigrated' from what is now Switzerland to the Belgian coast, and had to describe the scene to his tribal leader back in the mountains.
1. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/9e1ef65d-5a63-4fc2-a08d-4b98d7e11a80?shareToken=3717f0d0d57ac874c3beffc83aa6f6fe - "Lawyers admit charging for extra hours they have not worked" and
2. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/dutch-division-of-kpmg-fined-25m-for-cheating-in-exams-xkdqb97pg - "Hundreds of staff, including senior partners and managers, shared questions and answers, including on tests of understanding of professional ethics", following on from E&Y and Deloittes doing the same thing.
Why shouldn't they lie? Everyone else is doing it too.
We say we want "X" but we reward "Y". Well, "Y" is what we'll get.
Ukraine’s Air Force says 39 of 40 Russian Shahed drones were shot down by air defenses; just 18 of 42 missiles were downed.
https://twitter.com/ChristopherJM/status/1778310482878763020
They're running out of more advanced systems which can shoot down ballistic and hypersonic missiles.
And have little to counter Russain aviation using standoff glide bombs to target the front - and frontline cities like Kharkiv.
For example, no-one can be exempt from the duty to act if they are in possession of any information tending to show that someone who has been charged, or convicted, or imprisoned, or financially disadvantaged may in fact be innocent.
No team formation, training or courses attended can make up for lack of honesty, honour or justice in any individual.
The template through which to look at the PO enquiry is not complicated.
Unfortunately, air defences are complex and expensive assemblies of kit, and even NATO countries don’t keep huge supplies of spare systems lying around, but yes we need to get more of them into theatre as a matter of urgency.
Two examples:
I mentioned below my wife was involved in drug safety. She received a bonus of around 20% of her salary based upon business performance. That was in direct contradiction to her role, not that she ever let it affect her. True her intervention may save the company 10 or 20 years down the line when the company is going through a Thalidomide type scandal, but she wouldn't be around then so the incentive was to let stuff pass and she did have pressure put on her to do so on occasions.
In the large computer company I worked at salesman got 'double bubble' for selling a particular piece of software. They used to roll it into to deals where it wasn't needed to get the extra commission. The price would increase, but they would simply give a bigger discount and if the discount was within the managements accepted margin it passed. The company then paid royalties to the s/w owner on a pointless sale. So the business made a smaller margin on the sale.
Ploughing when the advice is 'don't' rarely leads to success.
You can see the logic there
I think she can still give evidence to the inquiry but would be cautioned about saying anything that could incriminate herself.
To vote at a polling station, you must present one of the following:
Passport issued by the UK, any Channel Islands, the Isle of Man, A British Overseas Territory, an EEA state or a Commonwealth country
Driving licence issued by the UK, any Channel Islands, the Isle of Man or an EEA state (including provisional)
Biometric immigration document
Identity card bearing Proof of Age Standards Scheme hologram (a PASS card)
Ministry of Defence Form 90 (Defence Identity Card)
Blue Badge
National Identity Card issued by an EEA state
Older Person's Bus Pass
Disabled Person's Bus Pass
Oyster 60+ Card
Scottish National Entitlement Card issued in Scotland
60 or Over Welsh Concessionary Travel Card
Senior SmartPass or Blind Person's SmartPass issued in Northern Ireland
War Disablement SmartPass or War Disabled SmartPass issued in Northern Ireland
60+ SmartPass issued in Northern Island
Electoral Identify card issued in Northern Ireland
Voter Authority Certificate (VAC) or a temporary VAC
The Identity card bearing Proof of Age Standards Scheme hologram (a PASS card) isn't a young persons travel card; it's a different document.
If anyone gave a shit (and certainly looks like Big Rish and Abu Hunter don't particularly) they would be better off scouring the Middle East and Africa for SA-8/SA-10/SA-12 gear and buying that for whatever it costs.
We are now in the joyful position where the people being interviewed a likely at some point in the future to be in jail. I actually think it may be better to pause the inquiry and kick off the prosecutions off and return to the inquiry with some interviewees via zoom from their prison cell
I think the answer to the WLQ is simply that MPs for those territories for which relevant powers are devolved don't get to vote on those issues in parliament. In practice, that's complicated - devolution is lumpy, and issues sometimes have implications beyond the territories for which they are relevant. (Matters concerning transport, for example.) But they could at least try.
As for its supposed performance benefits, why would you want to attract the sort of people who will only do a good job if there's the prospect of big lump sum windfalls on top of their salary?
https://www.placenorthwest.co.uk/blackpool-permits-pair-of-promenade-projects/
I think if we are to have ID requirements, then they must be available to all, so no age or other restrictions.
On that basis I'm not sure about Military or even disabled ID as being acceptable. Before I open a hot debate about a Disabled Person's Bus pass, for example, I will add that I wouldn't lose any sleep over it; it is the age qualification that I object to most strongly.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-57828406
Freakonomics is simply a list of examples of such.
Turns out that a reduction in fraud was indeed an intended benefit from the Horizon project but not for the Post Office (in respect of SPMs) but for the Benefits Agency in respect of benefits claimants. The Post Office benefits concerned matters other than fraud:
If anyone is interested, and hasn’t already read it, the report from which the above image was taken is fascinating (certainly to a project/programme anorak):
https://www.postofficehorizoninquiry.org.uk/evidence/pol00028094-bapocl-automation-programme-review-hm-treasury-independent-panel-report
His majority is 21,630.
Apparently most Tory MP's have accepted the inevitable. They know what's coming!
Personally I'd be amazed if Murrison lost in leafy, rural, south west wilts, but who knows?
Poorer pensioners should receive higher cash benefits that they can spend in whatever way is efficient for them.
I manage to stay my pity for the poor put-upon English by remembering the 2016 Scotland act voted through by English MPs with every single one of the suggested 120 amendments by opposition parties rejected. And then we turn to Brexit..
As you say, perhaps a very complex $1b+ system that costs $4m a missile and uses a lot of well-trained manpower, isn’t an effective use of resources when they’re mostly shooting down $1m drones or old Soviet missiles with them.
I agree that we should start looking for old-but-serviceable kit wherever we can find it in the world, although it will probably require somewhat unconventional procurement processes for much of it!
You've paid taxes your whole life to earn that bus pass!
It can't be all that joyous on the doorsteps for him just now, but he'll be fine - he had triple the Labour vote last time, and the Lib Dems (in a fairly close third) will largely be over in Chippenham where they have a reasonable chance.
my MP Nadhim Zahawi has communicated with the voters for the first time in ages. He has a majority of 19972.
Squeaky bums all round at Tory Towers.
But while I believe in higher frequencies, and that providing them drives up demand, it is not always viable to do so. Whereas if the bus/train is going to run anyway and not be full, you may as well give away free tickets to someone. The good thing about giving them to pensioners is that there are many pensioners who don't drive (I'm thinking more of the over 85s than the over 65s). It's the same logic as allowing free transport for the under 5s.
Even before that the consequentials arguments usually meant that they would vote if they thought it made a difference.
Which has already been happening - see the resurrection of SPAAG such as Gepard from scrapyards/warehouses.
Most of what has gone to Ukraine was either totally obsolete (Nick at TanksALot https://tanks-alot.co.uk/military-vehicles-for-sale/ is a a major source of light armoured vehicles...) or about to be replaced.
I suspect that Vennels' best chance of keeping her prison sentence down to single figures would be to open up and be brutally frank about what she instructed to do by Government. If it then transpired that she was a pawn in its game, she maybe gets some credit for that.
Do you really think so? He replied. I've been worried.
He had a substantial majority.
"Archaic" is not the same as "wrong"
It may well be Murrison's closest election as SW Wilts MP and clearly won't be the cake walk of recent times... but as his previous closest was a 20% bufffer in 2010, that's not saying a huge amount.
They're not using Patriots on cheap drones.
That's what the Gepards and similar are for.
There's also this.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Precision_Kill_Weapon_System
Ukraine is being supplied with APKWS rockets following the 2022 Russia invasion of Ukraine.[54][55] As part of an aid package announced by the U.S. in August 2022, the L3Harris Vehicle-Agnostic Modular Palletized ISR Rocket Equipment (VAMPIRE [uk]) system was ordered to be sent to Ukraine. The system consists of a sensor ball and a four-barreled APKWS rocket launcher that can be mounted on trucks. While it can direct laser-guided rockets on ground targets, the Pentagon specified it as a counter-UAS system...
A couple of the serious problems Ukraine has are defending high value, widely distributed targets (eg power stations) against long range high speed missiles, and the long range glide bombs being used in large numbers at the front.
Those need the more expensive solutions.
Possibly the riskiest of all is hydro given the twin risks of a highly concentrated energy source - take out one hydro plant and in some countries you could be destroying 50% of national capacity - and the collateral damage of a destroyed dam.
Vennells is only deserving of contempt and, as someone put it, she is not the only one and they should not be forgotten as well.
The point of the West Lothian question is that, in a system where powers are devolved to Scotland but not to England/English regions, Scottish MPs vote on some matters that affect English voters but do NOT affect Scottish ones. The same is not true in reverse. It isn't simply that the Government isn't of the political stripe you'd like.
This sort of spending could be just the counter-cyclical boost the German economy needs right now too.
What's your point?
Biden: 41% (38%)
Trump: 37% (43%)
But yes, I'd certainly rather live in G12 than whatever I could afford for the same money in London, or even for that plus whatever more you get for London wages. London may be an amazing city, but I'd far rather live in a really good city in a nice house and a nice suburb than live in amazing city but a grotty house in a remote suburb.
And the nice bits of Glasgow are indeed very very nice, and Glasgow City Centre is certainly a really good city centre.
UK taxpayers have paid out more than £34,000 to cover the cost of science secretary Michelle Donelan’s libel case, the Guardian can reveal, more than double the sum the government had previously admitted.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/apr/11/michelle-donelan-used-34000-of-taxpayer-funds-to-cover-libel-costs
A couple of dozen larger power plants would be easier to protect with air defence equipment.
In both situations the best defence is offence - use your own long-range weaponry to take out the launch sites and warehouse where the enemy missiles and drones are stored and launched from.
Still all to play for.
They do not have a great choice in the USA but the world would be a poorer place with the Trumpdozer in the Oval Office.
As a paid up member of the Trump is toast club it is notable that this comes on the day that his lead on the Opinion poll average with RCP falls to 0.2%
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/ And that seems to come entirely from a somewhat dodgy Rasmussen poll which had Trump 8% ahead.
I will be surprised if the polling does not show a Biden lead by this time next week although any such lead will still be short of the 8% lead Biden had at this stage over Trump in 2020.
I didn't mean to hurt you. I didn't mean to make you cry. I didn't want to hurt you ... I'm just an Envious Guy.
That would never have been a hit.