Gong, peerage or influence. The only reasons for large political donations. Will always be grubby.
If you donate more than, say, £1000 to a political party I believe you should be excluded from receiving an honour until 5 years has passed, rolling forward if you make more donations.
It's not a punishment, no one has to donate to a party and they surely are not doing so seeking a reward. So it just ensures there's not even a hint that the honour was bought.
If someone would rather focus on getting an honour then they can just not donate, and if they want to influence and support a party they can do that instead.
You still get internal influence, but nothing external.
Just direct the gift through a Northern Ireland branch of the party. Complete secrecy.
(Sinn Fein bring in just over £1m a year, the other parties get half that or less)
But the system can be used to redirect dosh to GB activities. (That came to attention because of slush money going to the No side in Indyref, which happened before those limits.)
Personally am keeping ‘em crossed for July, but that’s a hope not a prediction. I don’t know when it will be, but my actual prediction is that the longer he waits the more the public will see him as either frit or a ditherer.
He wants the wedge issue of immigration to be hot so he won't go until he's 100% he can get flights off before or during the campaign. As soon as practicable after that seems likely.
Now, I'm not in the UK. But are there really millions of potential Conservative voters who are desperate to return to the fold just so long as a couple of flights have left for Rwanda?
My gut - and I realize I'm in California - is that voters have now reached that stage where they want a change. Sunak isn't right wing enough to stop defections to Reform. And he isn't centrist enough to avoid losing votes to the LibDems and Labour. He's also screwed by the fact that the Left is likely to vote highly tactically, while the Right will very definitely not.
There's no bogeyman, either. Who - other than @bigjohnowls and @isam - is going to march to the polling station and vote Conservative out of fear of Starmer? (And with Johnson gone, I think bjo will be going green.)
And I don't see an easy way out. There's no popular MP in the wings who can galvanize support and bring the disparate factions together.
It's time for the Conservative Party to accept that the electorate is going to give them a drubbing.
And, if it's any consolation, the problems with the UK economy will still be there in five years time. So you never know, the Conservatives may get another chance sooner rather than later.
The answer is control. You are right for all the reasons you describe that it's time for a change. The government is tired, a shambles, is losing MPs, and appears out of control. And that is the key. Well, a key.
Let's imagine that Rwanda flights start, boat crossings drop (who cares why the weather perhaps), net immigration comes down. Rishi will have shown that he can control our borders, arguably one of the most important functions of government.
Which then brings us to Lab. All SKS would be able to say is well done we'll do more of the same while the Cons will do all they can to suggest that Lab will open the floodgates again, let everyone in, and give them a personal GP on call 24hrs a day.
That might give pause to some, who knows perhaps those in the Red Wall, who might think well we are now going in the right direction and we have secured the UK from invaders so it's going to be a doddle to fix housing, the NHS, education, etc, and lo and behold the election result is not the total wipeout that it is currently forecast to be.
I think the issue of immigration generally is very important to the British public. But not so important that a drop in, or even a cessation of, small boats will save the Conservatives.
The discontent with the Tory Party goes far beyond that issue. While it is proper that it is considered (and I completely accept it is becoming more important to voters' minds) it is overemphasised by the Conservative Party and on here. People are not going to forgive the Tories on the economy and health, or forget that they've had 14/15 years to sort out immigration, if the flights to Rwanda are successful.
I think the last sentence is the key one: the Conservatives have been in power for almost fifteen years. We voted to leave the EU eight years ago.
Why should anyone trust them now they're suddenly getting religious on immigration levels?
I mostly agree, but the thing that gives me pause is that Britain has FPTP, so the election is ultimately a choice between Labour and Conservative. They don't need people to trust them, they just need people to trust Labour less.
Personally am keeping ‘em crossed for July, but that’s a hope not a prediction. I don’t know when it will be, but my actual prediction is that the longer he waits the more the public will see him as either frit or a ditherer.
He wants the wedge issue of immigration to be hot so he won't go until he's 100% he can get flights off before or during the campaign. As soon as practicable after that seems likely.
Now, I'm not in the UK. But are there really millions of potential Conservative voters who are desperate to return to the fold just so long as a couple of flights have left for Rwanda?
My gut - and I realize I'm in California - is that voters have now reached that stage where they want a change. Sunak isn't right wing enough to stop defections to Reform. And he isn't centrist enough to avoid losing votes to the LibDems and Labour. He's also screwed by the fact that the Left is likely to vote highly tactically, while the Right will very definitely not.
There's no bogeyman, either. Who - other than @bigjohnowls and @isam - is going to march to the polling station and vote Conservative out of fear of Starmer? (And with Johnson gone, I think bjo will be going green.)
And I don't see an easy way out. There's no popular MP in the wings who can galvanize support and bring the disparate factions together.
It's time for the Conservative Party to accept that the electorate is going to give them a drubbing.
And, if it's any consolation, the problems with the UK economy will still be there in five years time. So you never know, the Conservatives may get another chance sooner rather than later.
The answer is control. You are right for all the reasons you describe that it's time for a change. The government is tired, a shambles, is losing MPs, and appears out of control. And that is the key. Well, a key.
Let's imagine that Rwanda flights start, boat crossings drop (who cares why the weather perhaps), net immigration comes down. Rishi will have shown that he can control our borders, arguably one of the most important functions of government.
Which then brings us to Lab. All SKS would be able to say is well done we'll do more of the same while the Cons will do all they can to suggest that Lab will open the floodgates again, let everyone in, and give them a personal GP on call 24hrs a day.
That might give pause to some, who knows perhaps those in the Red Wall, who might think well we are now going in the right direction and we have secured the UK from invaders so it's going to be a doddle to fix housing, the NHS, education, etc, and lo and behold the election result is not the total wipeout that it is currently forecast to be.
I think the issue of immigration generally is very important to the British public. But not so important that a drop in, or even a cessation of, small boats will save the Conservatives.
The discontent with the Tory Party goes far beyond that issue. While it is proper that it is considered (and I completely accept it is becoming more important to voters' minds) it is overemphasised by the Conservative Party and on here. People are not going to forgive the Tories on the economy and health, or forget that they've had 14/15 years to sort out immigration, if the flights to Rwanda are successful.
I think the last sentence is the key one: the Conservatives have been in power for almost fifteen years. We voted to leave the EU eight years ago.
Why should anyone trust them now they're suddenly getting religious on immigration levels?
I mostly agree, but the thing that gives me pause is that Britain has FPTP, so the election is ultimately a choice between Labour and Conservative. They don't need people to trust them, they just need people to trust Labour less.
Agreed. It seems highly likely the change vote will win out but there will be a stop Labour vote that boosts the Tory % too by some amount
Barristers having to treat Lesley Sewell of the PO as though she is a child, such is her fragility and uselessness.
Lesley Sewell former Chief Information Officer of the PO, that is.
Being a senior IT person does not prepare you for this. I am surprised, given it is televised and has been the subject of such scrutiny in recent months, more people have not reacted as she did.
Maybe but she was the head of IT. Not just some IT bod stuck in the back in a black t-shirt. You would expect her to be all over her department and what was going on. Which should in turn have provided cover and competence for the questions being asked.
Although I suppose the whole inquiry has been characterised by PO heads of this and that who knew nothing that was happening in their departments.
She seems to have sort-of known. But comes across as too feeble to make an issue of it.
Sewell said: “When I read this email I couldn’t understand it.”
She said she also disagreed with the Post Office’s strategy to refer to software bugs as “exceptions” or “anomalies” in reports about the Horizon system, but went along with it because it was a direction.
“I just thought it was mad,” said Sewell. “I really didn’t understand the concern of using the word ‘bug’ or ‘fault’ because that’s what they were.”
She agreed it appears management wanted to minimise the seriousness of bugs through the use of language. “They were faults and I wouldn’t class them as anomalies, but it changed how we had to communicate about bugs,” said Sewell.
During the hearing, it emerged she felt on the outside of the organisation towards the end of her time there, and was tearful when asked about a period she described as “very hard” for her...
The PO IT department seems to have been quite small: .. On her arrival, she said the Post Office IT team was very small and reliant on Royal Mail Group IT; there was no IT risk register; and there were concerns, in the legal team, over the Horizon contract with Fujitsu, which had not been put out for tender..
Barristers having to treat Lesley Sewell of the PO as though she is a child, such is her fragility and uselessness.
Lesley Sewell former Chief Information Officer of the PO, that is.
Being a senior IT person does not prepare you for this. I am surprised, given it is televised and has been the subject of such scrutiny in recent months, more people have not reacted as she did.
Maybe but she was the head of IT. Not just some IT bod stuck in the back in a black t-shirt. You would expect her to be all over her department and what was going on. Which should in turn have provided cover and competence for the questions being asked.
Although I suppose the whole inquiry has been characterised by PO heads of this and that who knew nothing that was happening in their departments.
Giving evidence is horribly stressful. Giving evidence on live TV even more so. Competent honest people are not necessarily great witnesses or public speakers, and incompetent liars are often the best bullshitters. As recent electoral history shows.
Bullshitters work best when you encounter them in short bursts or repetitive scenarios, which is why politics is a good breeding ground.
They don't work well when pinned down and forced to confront their own words and actions, and where smooth nonsense will be exposed by rigorous questioning.
So id say they actually do badly at inquiries if, and here's the major caveat, the inquiry is itself being competently managed.
Barristers having to treat Lesley Sewell of the PO as though she is a child, such is her fragility and uselessness.
Lesley Sewell former Chief Information Officer of the PO, that is.
Being a senior IT person does not prepare you for this. I am surprised, given it is televised and has been the subject of such scrutiny in recent months, more people have not reacted as she did.
Maybe but she was the head of IT. Not just some IT bod stuck in the back in a black t-shirt. You would expect her to be all over her department and what was going on. Which should in turn have provided cover and competence for the questions being asked.
Although I suppose the whole inquiry has been characterised by PO heads of this and that who knew nothing that was happening in their departments.
Giving evidence is horribly stressful. Giving evidence on live TV even more so. Competent honest people are not necessarily great witnesses or public speakers, and incompetent liars are often the best bullshitters. As recent electoral history shows.
Post Office enquiry clearly suffering from a lack of porn stars.
I don’t believe Pesto has inside info on this. It’s recycled from George Osborne, who doesn’t either.
December 12th as suggested by the BBC this morning is the first date that makes sense to me.
5th anniversary of the last one. Get memories stirring. Wheel out Boris. It’s neat.
If Boris were interested in being helpful he'd have been camped out in the Red Wall already. He'll put in some performances to show he tried, but no sense tying himself to the unpopular Rishi.
I don’t believe Pesto has inside info on this. It’s recycled from George Osborne, who doesn’t either.
December 12th as suggested by the BBC this morning is the first date that makes sense to me.
5th anniversary of the last one. Get memories stirring. Wheel out Boris. It’s neat.
December 12th which year?
I mean, given the government has already repealed the Fixed Term Parliament Act of 2011, why not also repeal the 1911 Parliament Act and revert us to the Septennial Act of 1715, which guarantees elections only every seven years.
Personally am keeping ‘em crossed for July, but that’s a hope not a prediction. I don’t know when it will be, but my actual prediction is that the longer he waits the more the public will see him as either frit or a ditherer.
He wants the wedge issue of immigration to be hot so he won't go until he's 100% he can get flights off before or during the campaign. As soon as practicable after that seems likely.
Now, I'm not in the UK. But are there really millions of potential Conservative voters who are desperate to return to the fold just so long as a couple of flights have left for Rwanda?
My gut - and I realize I'm in California - is that voters have now reached that stage where they want a change. Sunak isn't right wing enough to stop defections to Reform. And he isn't centrist enough to avoid losing votes to the LibDems and Labour. He's also screwed by the fact that the Left is likely to vote highly tactically, while the Right will very definitely not.
There's no bogeyman, either. Who - other than @bigjohnowls and @isam - is going to march to the polling station and vote Conservative out of fear of Starmer? (And with Johnson gone, I think bjo will be going green.)
And I don't see an easy way out. There's no popular MP in the wings who can galvanize support and bring the disparate factions together.
It's time for the Conservative Party to accept that the electorate is going to give them a drubbing.
And, if it's any consolation, the problems with the UK economy will still be there in five years time. So you never know, the Conservatives may get another chance sooner rather than later.
The answer is control. You are right for all the reasons you describe that it's time for a change. The government is tired, a shambles, is losing MPs, and appears out of control. And that is the key. Well, a key.
Let's imagine that Rwanda flights start, boat crossings drop (who cares why the weather perhaps), net immigration comes down. Rishi will have shown that he can control our borders, arguably one of the most important functions of government.
Which then brings us to Lab. All SKS would be able to say is well done we'll do more of the same while the Cons will do all they can to suggest that Lab will open the floodgates again, let everyone in, and give them a personal GP on call 24hrs a day.
That might give pause to some, who knows perhaps those in the Red Wall, who might think well we are now going in the right direction and we have secured the UK from invaders so it's going to be a doddle to fix housing, the NHS, education, etc, and lo and behold the election result is not the total wipeout that it is currently forecast to be.
I think the issue of immigration generally is very important to the British public. But not so important that a drop in, or even a cessation of, small boats will save the Conservatives.
The discontent with the Tory Party goes far beyond that issue. While it is proper that it is considered (and I completely accept it is becoming more important to voters' minds) it is overemphasised by the Conservative Party and on here. People are not going to forgive the Tories on the economy and health, or forget that they've had 14/15 years to sort out immigration, if the flights to Rwanda are successful.
I think the last sentence is the key one: the Conservatives have been in power for almost fifteen years. We voted to leave the EU eight years ago.
Why should anyone trust them now they're suddenly getting religious on immigration levels?
I mostly agree, but the thing that gives me pause is that Britain has FPTP, so the election is ultimately a choice between Labour and Conservative. They don't need people to trust them, they just need people to trust Labour less.
That's why, as frustrating as it is, Starmer's strategy of trying never to do anything to offend Tory voters is probably his best option. He needs to make sure disillusioned Boris voters have no reason to vote against Labour.
Barristers having to treat Lesley Sewell of the PO as though she is a child, such is her fragility and uselessness.
Lesley Sewell former Chief Information Officer of the PO, that is.
Being a senior IT person does not prepare you for this. I am surprised, given it is televised and has been the subject of such scrutiny in recent months, more people have not reacted as she did.
Maybe but she was the head of IT. Not just some IT bod stuck in the back in a black t-shirt. You would expect her to be all over her department and what was going on. Which should in turn have provided cover and competence for the questions being asked.
Although I suppose the whole inquiry has been characterised by PO heads of this and that who knew nothing that was happening in their departments.
Giving evidence is horribly stressful. Giving evidence on live TV even more so. Competent honest people are not necessarily great witnesses or public speakers, and incompetent liars are often the best bullshitters. As recent electoral history shows.
Post Office enquiry clearly suffering from a lack of porn stars.
Barristers having to treat Lesley Sewell of the PO as though she is a child, such is her fragility and uselessness.
Lesley Sewell former Chief Information Officer of the PO, that is.
Being a senior IT person does not prepare you for this. I am surprised, given it is televised and has been the subject of such scrutiny in recent months, more people have not reacted as she did.
The big secret of top people is that for every genuinely impressive figure there are a dozen useless chancers bungling their way through life.
Inquiries can be a rare chance to demonstrate the ordinariness of so many top people, and puncture the idea they deserve the remunerations they often get, as they scramble to show they are incompetent not malicious.
Of course, know the right people and you can usually just move on to a directorship somewhere else. Companies and organisations just look at the last job you has, and apparently don't care how you actually did.
"Top person"?. She was head of IT.
Further, and I don't want to stereotype here but as an employment lawyer I have not generally had Heads of IT at the top of my wish list as Tribunal witnesses, however good they are at fixing my PC.
Are you sure she came in through actually spending her time messing around with cables? Not being unkind to her: it's a realistic question in this era of generalist managers.
Yes, I am. In her own words -
5. I have a bachelor's degree in Applied Computing from Newcastle Polytechnic and an MBA from Newcastle University. I started my career at Newcastle Polytechnic within its Computing department as a trainee Computer Operator. I left in 1985 to join Northern Rock as a trainee programmer. I worked at Northern Rock until 2010. During my 25 years at Northern Rock, I held numerous IT roles and led many major IT programmes. When I left Northern Rock I held the position of Managing Director of IT.
Barristers having to treat Lesley Sewell of the PO as though she is a child, such is her fragility and uselessness.
Lesley Sewell former Chief Information Officer of the PO, that is.
Being a senior IT person does not prepare you for this. I am surprised, given it is televised and has been the subject of such scrutiny in recent months, more people have not reacted as she did.
Maybe but she was the head of IT. Not just some IT bod stuck in the back in a black t-shirt. You would expect her to be all over her department and what was going on. Which should in turn have provided cover and competence for the questions being asked.
Although I suppose the whole inquiry has been characterised by PO heads of this and that who knew nothing that was happening in their departments.
She seems to have sort-of known. But comes across as too feeble to make an issue of it.
Sewell said: “When I read this email I couldn’t understand it.”
She said she also disagreed with the Post Office’s strategy to refer to software bugs as “exceptions” or “anomalies” in reports about the Horizon system, but went along with it because it was a direction.
“I just thought it was mad,” said Sewell. “I really didn’t understand the concern of using the word ‘bug’ or ‘fault’ because that’s what they were.”
She agreed it appears management wanted to minimise the seriousness of bugs through the use of language. “They were faults and I wouldn’t class them as anomalies, but it changed how we had to communicate about bugs,” said Sewell.
During the hearing, it emerged she felt on the outside of the organisation towards the end of her time there, and was tearful when asked about a period she described as “very hard” for her...
The PO IT department seems to have been quite small: .. On her arrival, she said the Post Office IT team was very small and reliant on Royal Mail Group IT; there was no IT risk register; and there were concerns, in the legal team, over the Horizon contract with Fujitsu, which had not been put out for tender..
In my role I work for a lot of good people who've worked for horrible organisations, and who have just been too weak to do anything about the horribleness. She strikes me as one of those. She's not heroic whistleblower material, and clearly didn't feel able to stand up to management, but, equally, she doesn't deserve automatic opprobrium just because she worked at the malignant PO for 5 years.
She worked at Northern Rock for 25 years until 2010. She probably thought taking the PO job would enhance her career after an organisation she had clearly been loyal to hit the skids spectacularly - again through no fault of her own.
Wtf? I downloaded the pledge card from the QR code and I'm sure it was 6 first steps. Now it just says 'all animals are equal but some are more equal than others'
I don’t believe Pesto has inside info on this. It’s recycled from George Osborne, who doesn’t either.
December 12th as suggested by the BBC this morning is the first date that makes sense to me.
5th anniversary of the last one. Get memories stirring. Wheel out Boris. It’s neat.
December 12th which year?
I mean, given the government has already repealed the Fixed Term Parliament Act of 2011, why not also repeal the 1911 Parliament Act and revert us to the Septennial Act of 1715, which guarantees elections only every seven years.
A pedant writes...
The technical answer to that is that section 2(1) of the Parliament Act 1911 means that the provisions in both Parliament Acts that allow the Commons to override the Lords don't apply to any attempts by the Commons to extend the life of parliaments beyond five years, howsoever put forward. That's why the FTPA was okay but if it contained provisions extending the life of Parliament to 7 years it would likely be rejected by the Lords and the Commons couldn't do anything about it. The extension during WW2 had the Lords' approval.
I'd get out more but I'm too busy trying to finish reading the complete Hansard before the Summer.
Personally am keeping ‘em crossed for July, but that’s a hope not a prediction. I don’t know when it will be, but my actual prediction is that the longer he waits the more the public will see him as either frit or a ditherer.
He wants the wedge issue of immigration to be hot so he won't go until he's 100% he can get flights off before or during the campaign. As soon as practicable after that seems likely.
Now, I'm not in the UK. But are there really millions of potential Conservative voters who are desperate to return to the fold just so long as a couple of flights have left for Rwanda?
My gut - and I realize I'm in California - is that voters have now reached that stage where they want a change. Sunak isn't right wing enough to stop defections to Reform. And he isn't centrist enough to avoid losing votes to the LibDems and Labour. He's also screwed by the fact that the Left is likely to vote highly tactically, while the Right will very definitely not.
There's no bogeyman, either. Who - other than @bigjohnowls and @isam - is going to march to the polling station and vote Conservative out of fear of Starmer? (And with Johnson gone, I think bjo will be going green.)
And I don't see an easy way out. There's no popular MP in the wings who can galvanize support and bring the disparate factions together.
It's time for the Conservative Party to accept that the electorate is going to give them a drubbing.
And, if it's any consolation, the problems with the UK economy will still be there in five years time. So you never know, the Conservatives may get another chance sooner rather than later.
The answer is control. You are right for all the reasons you describe that it's time for a change. The government is tired, a shambles, is losing MPs, and appears out of control. And that is the key. Well, a key.
Let's imagine that Rwanda flights start, boat crossings drop (who cares why the weather perhaps), net immigration comes down. Rishi will have shown that he can control our borders, arguably one of the most important functions of government.
Which then brings us to Lab. All SKS would be able to say is well done we'll do more of the same while the Cons will do all they can to suggest that Lab will open the floodgates again, let everyone in, and give them a personal GP on call 24hrs a day.
That might give pause to some, who knows perhaps those in the Red Wall, who might think well we are now going in the right direction and we have secured the UK from invaders so it's going to be a doddle to fix housing, the NHS, education, etc, and lo and behold the election result is not the total wipeout that it is currently forecast to be.
I think the issue of immigration generally is very important to the British public. But not so important that a drop in, or even a cessation of, small boats will save the Conservatives.
The discontent with the Tory Party goes far beyond that issue. While it is proper that it is considered (and I completely accept it is becoming more important to voters' minds) it is overemphasised by the Conservative Party and on here. People are not going to forgive the Tories on the economy and health, or forget that they've had 14/15 years to sort out immigration, if the flights to Rwanda are successful.
I think the last sentence is the key one: the Conservatives have been in power for almost fifteen years. We voted to leave the EU eight years ago.
Why should anyone trust them now they're suddenly getting religious on immigration levels?
Plenty of Brexiters on here say they bloody love immigration and wanted it to continue, increase even, post the 2016 vote.
Elite Brexit was "open to the world".
Most of the 17 million was "shut that door".
You can't reconcile those. But until we do, there's a political problem.
In one sense you can't reconcile the two positions, but that's common in politics. You can't reconcile simultaneous higher and lower state expenditure, or whatever. What you can do is to ensure that there is a link between democracy and the outfits who make the decisions over contested matters. With the EU and FOM that link was (in the minds of many UK voters) broken.
Barristers having to treat Lesley Sewell of the PO as though she is a child, such is her fragility and uselessness.
Lesley Sewell former Chief Information Officer of the PO, that is.
Being a senior IT person does not prepare you for this. I am surprised, given it is televised and has been the subject of such scrutiny in recent months, more people have not reacted as she did.
Maybe but she was the head of IT. Not just some IT bod stuck in the back in a black t-shirt. You would expect her to be all over her department and what was going on. Which should in turn have provided cover and competence for the questions being asked.
Although I suppose the whole inquiry has been characterised by PO heads of this and that who knew nothing that was happening in their departments.
She seems to have sort-of known. But comes across as too feeble to make an issue of it.
Sewell said: “When I read this email I couldn’t understand it.”
She said she also disagreed with the Post Office’s strategy to refer to software bugs as “exceptions” or “anomalies” in reports about the Horizon system, but went along with it because it was a direction.
“I just thought it was mad,” said Sewell. “I really didn’t understand the concern of using the word ‘bug’ or ‘fault’ because that’s what they were.”
She agreed it appears management wanted to minimise the seriousness of bugs through the use of language. “They were faults and I wouldn’t class them as anomalies, but it changed how we had to communicate about bugs,” said Sewell.
During the hearing, it emerged she felt on the outside of the organisation towards the end of her time there, and was tearful when asked about a period she described as “very hard” for her...
The PO IT department seems to have been quite small: .. On her arrival, she said the Post Office IT team was very small and reliant on Royal Mail Group IT; there was no IT risk register; and there were concerns, in the legal team, over the Horizon contract with Fujitsu, which had not been put out for tender..
In my role I work for a lot of good people who've worked for horrible organisations, and who have just been too weak to do anything about the horribleness. She strikes me as one of those. She's not heroic whistleblower material, and clearly didn't feel able to stand up to management, but, equally, she doesn't deserve automatic opprobrium just because she worked at the malignant PO for 5 years.
She worked at Northern Rock for 25 years until 2010. She probably thought taking the PO job would enhance her career after an organisation she had clearly been loyal to hit the skids spectacularly - again through no fault of her own.
Having worked with a lot of people like her over the years I suspect she very quickly moved from development to project management and then management.
Barristers having to treat Lesley Sewell of the PO as though she is a child, such is her fragility and uselessness.
Lesley Sewell former Chief Information Officer of the PO, that is.
Being a senior IT person does not prepare you for this. I am surprised, given it is televised and has been the subject of such scrutiny in recent months, more people have not reacted as she did.
Maybe but she was the head of IT. Not just some IT bod stuck in the back in a black t-shirt. You would expect her to be all over her department and what was going on. Which should in turn have provided cover and competence for the questions being asked.
Although I suppose the whole inquiry has been characterised by PO heads of this and that who knew nothing that was happening in their departments.
She seems to have sort-of known. But comes across as too feeble to make an issue of it.
Sewell said: “When I read this email I couldn’t understand it.”
She said she also disagreed with the Post Office’s strategy to refer to software bugs as “exceptions” or “anomalies” in reports about the Horizon system, but went along with it because it was a direction.
“I just thought it was mad,” said Sewell. “I really didn’t understand the concern of using the word ‘bug’ or ‘fault’ because that’s what they were.”
She agreed it appears management wanted to minimise the seriousness of bugs through the use of language. “They were faults and I wouldn’t class them as anomalies, but it changed how we had to communicate about bugs,” said Sewell.
During the hearing, it emerged she felt on the outside of the organisation towards the end of her time there, and was tearful when asked about a period she described as “very hard” for her...
The PO IT department seems to have been quite small: .. On her arrival, she said the Post Office IT team was very small and reliant on Royal Mail Group IT; there was no IT risk register; and there were concerns, in the legal team, over the Horizon contract with Fujitsu, which had not been put out for tender..
In my role I work for a lot of good people who've worked for horrible organisations, and who have just been too weak to do anything about the horribleness. She strikes me as one of those. She's not heroic whistleblower material, and clearly didn't feel able to stand up to management, but, equally, she doesn't deserve automatic opprobrium just because she worked at the malignant PO for 5 years.
She worked at Northern Rock for 25 years until 2010. She probably thought taking the PO job would enhance her career after an organisation she had clearly been loyal to hit the skids spectacularly - again through no fault of her own.
And one of the things that horrible organisations do is to push up the level of courage needed to whistleblow and push down employees' courage to do so. See also domestic abuse.
Yes, we should cherish and value those who don't buckle, but I'm also not sure if I want to condemn those who do.
But, once again, so much of success and failure is luck- the sliding door moments and coin tosses. One of the keys to a successful life is ignoring that reality, but it doesn't change it.
Barristers having to treat Lesley Sewell of the PO as though she is a child, such is her fragility and uselessness.
Lesley Sewell former Chief Information Officer of the PO, that is.
Being a senior IT person does not prepare you for this. I am surprised, given it is televised and has been the subject of such scrutiny in recent months, more people have not reacted as she did.
Maybe but she was the head of IT. Not just some IT bod stuck in the back in a black t-shirt. You would expect her to be all over her department and what was going on. Which should in turn have provided cover and competence for the questions being asked.
Although I suppose the whole inquiry has been characterised by PO heads of this and that who knew nothing that was happening in their departments.
I was going to provide a guardian link but apparently they don't talk about this. If you point out the NHS is killing people your career will be destroyed by NHS managers. I think that dwarfs the Post Office thing.
Barristers having to treat Lesley Sewell of the PO as though she is a child, such is her fragility and uselessness.
Lesley Sewell former Chief Information Officer of the PO, that is.
Being a senior IT person does not prepare you for this. I am surprised, given it is televised and has been the subject of such scrutiny in recent months, more people have not reacted as she did.
Maybe but she was the head of IT. Not just some IT bod stuck in the back in a black t-shirt. You would expect her to be all over her department and what was going on. Which should in turn have provided cover and competence for the questions being asked.
Although I suppose the whole inquiry has been characterised by PO heads of this and that who knew nothing that was happening in their departments.
She seems to have sort-of known. But comes across as too feeble to make an issue of it.
Sewell said: “When I read this email I couldn’t understand it.”
She said she also disagreed with the Post Office’s strategy to refer to software bugs as “exceptions” or “anomalies” in reports about the Horizon system, but went along with it because it was a direction.
“I just thought it was mad,” said Sewell. “I really didn’t understand the concern of using the word ‘bug’ or ‘fault’ because that’s what they were.”
She agreed it appears management wanted to minimise the seriousness of bugs through the use of language. “They were faults and I wouldn’t class them as anomalies, but it changed how we had to communicate about bugs,” said Sewell.
During the hearing, it emerged she felt on the outside of the organisation towards the end of her time there, and was tearful when asked about a period she described as “very hard” for her...
The PO IT department seems to have been quite small: .. On her arrival, she said the Post Office IT team was very small and reliant on Royal Mail Group IT; there was no IT risk register; and there were concerns, in the legal team, over the Horizon contract with Fujitsu, which had not been put out for tender..
If they'd outsourced all development and support, then it wouldn't be unreasonable to assume that her team's only real function would have been vendor management.
But I would have thought that getting to even a mid-level position would require an ability to talk to non-technical managers about issues in terms of impact and risk, rather than simply throwing up her hands and saying "well, of course it has bugs, all software has bugs".
Barristers having to treat Lesley Sewell of the PO as though she is a child, such is her fragility and uselessness.
Lesley Sewell former Chief Information Officer of the PO, that is.
Being a senior IT person does not prepare you for this. I am surprised, given it is televised and has been the subject of such scrutiny in recent months, more people have not reacted as she did.
The big secret of top people is that for every genuinely impressive figure there are a dozen useless chancers bungling their way through life.
Inquiries can be a rare chance to demonstrate the ordinariness of so many top people, and puncture the idea they deserve the remunerations they often get, as they scramble to show they are incompetent not malicious.
Of course, know the right people and you can usually just move on to a directorship somewhere else. Companies and organisations just look at the last job you has, and apparently don't care how you actually did.
"Top person"?. She was head of IT.
Further, and I don't want to stereotype here but as an employment lawyer I have not generally had Heads of IT at the top of my wish list as Tribunal witnesses, however good they are at fixing my PC.
Top person is a relative term, especially depending on the hierarchy and scale of a business.
It absolute could cover a role such as Head of IT, if in an organisation where complex software is essential to things, or where it is central to the matter being Inquired about as here.
The Head of IT is the kind of job where, for endless years, people who actually know about IT are told they can’t have the job.
Because it is really a political job which requires a Proper Generalist who won’t Get Bogged Down In Pointless Detail.
I don’t believe Pesto has inside info on this. It’s recycled from George Osborne, who doesn’t either.
December 12th as suggested by the BBC this morning is the first date that makes sense to me.
5th anniversary of the last one. Get memories stirring. Wheel out Boris. It’s neat.
December 12th which year?
I mean, given the government has already repealed the Fixed Term Parliament Act of 2011, why not also repeal the 1911 Parliament Act and revert us to the Septennial Act of 1715, which guarantees elections only every seven years.
A pedant writes...
The technical answer to that is that section 2(1) of the Parliament Act 1911 means that the provisions in both Parliament Acts that allow the Commons to override the Lords don't apply to any attempts by the Commons to extend the life of parliaments beyond five years, howsoever put forward. That's why the FTPA was okay but if it contained provisions extending the life of Parliament to 7 years it would likely be rejected by the Lords and the Commons couldn't do anything about it. The extension during WW2 had the Lords' approval.
I'd get out more but I'm too busy trying to finish reading the complete Hansard before the Summer.
Actually, you're right, the big question is whether the Commons could change the Parliament Act to remove the section on 5 year parliaments. I remember there was some discussion on this in Jackson ( https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2005/126.html ) but in my naivety I'd always thought a "... a Bill containing any provision to extend the maximum duration of Parliament beyond five years..." would be construed very widely given its importance.
New Labour's ongoing legacy: Dr Karl Pike analyses the battles over the ‘New Labour’ years and how they affected the party long after Blair and Brown left office In the wake of the release of "Getting Over New Labour," a highly anticipated publication authored by Dr Karl Pike of Queen Mary University of London, political pundits and Labour enthusiasts are delving into the intricate web of the party's history and its lingering impact on contemporary politics. ... At the heart of "Getting Over New Labour" lies the question that has haunted the party since its departure from government in 2010: what are the lessons of the New Labour years? Dr Pike, a former advisor to senior Labour figures and now an academic at QMUL, dissects the efforts of successive party leaders – from Ed Miliband to Jeremy Corbyn and now Keir Starmer – in reshaping Labour's ideology, internal democracy, organizational structure, and leadership style. https://www.qmul.ac.uk/media/news/2024/hss/new-labours-ongoing-legacy-dr-karl-pike-analyses-the-battles-over-the-new-labour-years-and-how-they-affected-the-party-long-after-blair-and-brown-left-office.html
Personally am keeping ‘em crossed for July, but that’s a hope not a prediction. I don’t know when it will be, but my actual prediction is that the longer he waits the more the public will see him as either frit or a ditherer.
He wants the wedge issue of immigration to be hot so he won't go until he's 100% he can get flights off before or during the campaign. As soon as practicable after that seems likely.
Now, I'm not in the UK. But are there really millions of potential Conservative voters who are desperate to return to the fold just so long as a couple of flights have left for Rwanda?
My gut - and I realize I'm in California - is that voters have now reached that stage where they want a change. Sunak isn't right wing enough to stop defections to Reform. And he isn't centrist enough to avoid losing votes to the LibDems and Labour. He's also screwed by the fact that the Left is likely to vote highly tactically, while the Right will very definitely not.
There's no bogeyman, either. Who - other than @bigjohnowls and @isam - is going to march to the polling station and vote Conservative out of fear of Starmer? (And with Johnson gone, I think bjo will be going green.)
And I don't see an easy way out. There's no popular MP in the wings who can galvanize support and bring the disparate factions together.
It's time for the Conservative Party to accept that the electorate is going to give them a drubbing.
And, if it's any consolation, the problems with the UK economy will still be there in five years time. So you never know, the Conservatives may get another chance sooner rather than later.
The answer is control. You are right for all the reasons you describe that it's time for a change. The government is tired, a shambles, is losing MPs, and appears out of control. And that is the key. Well, a key.
Let's imagine that Rwanda flights start, boat crossings drop (who cares why the weather perhaps), net immigration comes down. Rishi will have shown that he can control our borders, arguably one of the most important functions of government.
Which then brings us to Lab. All SKS would be able to say is well done we'll do more of the same while the Cons will do all they can to suggest that Lab will open the floodgates again, let everyone in, and give them a personal GP on call 24hrs a day.
That might give pause to some, who knows perhaps those in the Red Wall, who might think well we are now going in the right direction and we have secured the UK from invaders so it's going to be a doddle to fix housing, the NHS, education, etc, and lo and behold the election result is not the total wipeout that it is currently forecast to be.
I think the issue of immigration generally is very important to the British public. But not so important that a drop in, or even a cessation of, small boats will save the Conservatives.
The discontent with the Tory Party goes far beyond that issue. While it is proper that it is considered (and I completely accept it is becoming more important to voters' minds) it is overemphasised by the Conservative Party and on here. People are not going to forgive the Tories on the economy and health, or forget that they've had 14/15 years to sort out immigration, if the flights to Rwanda are successful.
I think the last sentence is the key one: the Conservatives have been in power for almost fifteen years. We voted to leave the EU eight years ago.
Why should anyone trust them now they're suddenly getting religious on immigration levels?
I mostly agree, but the thing that gives me pause is that Britain has FPTP, so the election is ultimately a choice between Labour and Conservative. They don't need people to trust them, they just need people to trust Labour less.
That's why, as frustrating as it is, Starmer's strategy of trying never to do anything to offend Tory voters is probably his best option. He needs to make sure disillusioned Boris voters have no reason to vote against Labour.
In almost all relevant seats - those where either Con or Lab can win (Scotland is a bit different) - there is only one way to vote against Labour and that is by voting Tory. If an ex Tory voter votes Labour, Labour gain 2 (one more for Labour, one fewer for Tory) if he votes for anyone else (Gr, LD, Reform, Lozza, Binface or stays at home) Labour gain 1 vote (1 fewer for the Tory).
Starmer's friends therefore are: Tory to Lab switchers, every other party that isn't Tory, apathy, and active hostility to all politics. Starmer's approach recognises all of this.
Barristers having to treat Lesley Sewell of the PO as though she is a child, such is her fragility and uselessness.
Lesley Sewell former Chief Information Officer of the PO, that is.
Being a senior IT person does not prepare you for this. I am surprised, given it is televised and has been the subject of such scrutiny in recent months, more people have not reacted as she did.
Maybe but she was the head of IT. Not just some IT bod stuck in the back in a black t-shirt. You would expect her to be all over her department and what was going on. Which should in turn have provided cover and competence for the questions being asked.
Although I suppose the whole inquiry has been characterised by PO heads of this and that who knew nothing that was happening in their departments.
Giving evidence is horribly stressful. Giving evidence on live TV even more so. Competent honest people are not necessarily great witnesses or public speakers, and incompetent liars are often the best bullshitters. As recent electoral history shows.
Bullshitters work best when you encounter them in short bursts or repetitive scenarios, which is why politics is a good breeding ground.
They don't work well when pinned down and forced to confront their own words and actions, and where smooth nonsense will be exposed by rigorous questioning.
So id say they actually do badly at inquiries if, and here's the major caveat, the inquiry is itself being competently managed.
A question is how much systematic issues and errors should be placed on the head of specific individuals - and this is probably at the heart of this awful mess. Most people want to do a good job. Lots of people want to do a good job with minimal effort. If doing a good job involves fighting an internal culture in an organisation, then it is far from easy. In fact, fighting it can lose you your job and/or friends. And for some people most importantly of all, prestige.
Another issue is that what you say about bullshitters is also true of people who *tried* to do the right thing. Can you look back at a decision you made in business a decade or more ago and defend it robustly? Especially if you now know it was the wrong decision?
I wouldn't want to give evidence in this environment. I fear, like many inquiries, it's findings will not get to the important facts, and instead excoriate people. In some cases, unjustly.
New Labour's ongoing legacy: Dr Karl Pike analyses the battles over the ‘New Labour’ years and how they affected the party long after Blair and Brown left office In the wake of the release of "Getting Over New Labour," a highly anticipated publication authored by Dr Karl Pike of Queen Mary University of London, political pundits and Labour enthusiasts are delving into the intricate web of the party's history and its lingering impact on contemporary politics. ... At the heart of "Getting Over New Labour" lies the question that has haunted the party since its departure from government in 2010: what are the lessons of the New Labour years? Dr Pike, a former advisor to senior Labour figures and now an academic at QMUL, dissects the efforts of successive party leaders – from Ed Miliband to Jeremy Corbyn and now Keir Starmer – in reshaping Labour's ideology, internal democracy, organizational structure, and leadership style. https://www.qmul.ac.uk/media/news/2024/hss/new-labours-ongoing-legacy-dr-karl-pike-analyses-the-battles-over-the-new-labour-years-and-how-they-affected-the-party-long-after-blair-and-brown-left-office.html
I haven't read the article, but my own (probably wrong) opinion: Blair did not go far enough. He had a stonking majority, and the country was in need of a change. The changes he made were often good, but relatively minor. He could have been more adventurous.
And I say that as someone in favour of evolution over revolution (i.e. slow change)...
Doubtless there will be as many comments on here about Sunak's enunciation failure as there were about Starmer's stumble at PMQ's yesterday.
LOL!
This exchange prompted me to actually look at what happened, which was starmer cocking up a joke about someone else's technological incompetence, because of his own technological incompetence. Whereas Sunak is inaudible because of recording quality. They are both dorks, and Starmer will win the election, but on this metric Sunak is ahead.
Barristers having to treat Lesley Sewell of the PO as though she is a child, such is her fragility and uselessness.
Lesley Sewell former Chief Information Officer of the PO, that is.
Being a senior IT person does not prepare you for this. I am surprised, given it is televised and has been the subject of such scrutiny in recent months, more people have not reacted as she did.
Maybe but she was the head of IT. Not just some IT bod stuck in the back in a black t-shirt. You would expect her to be all over her department and what was going on. Which should in turn have provided cover and competence for the questions being asked.
Although I suppose the whole inquiry has been characterised by PO heads of this and that who knew nothing that was happening in their departments.
She seems to have sort-of known. But comes across as too feeble to make an issue of it.
Sewell said: “When I read this email I couldn’t understand it.”
She said she also disagreed with the Post Office’s strategy to refer to software bugs as “exceptions” or “anomalies” in reports about the Horizon system, but went along with it because it was a direction.
“I just thought it was mad,” said Sewell. “I really didn’t understand the concern of using the word ‘bug’ or ‘fault’ because that’s what they were.”
She agreed it appears management wanted to minimise the seriousness of bugs through the use of language. “They were faults and I wouldn’t class them as anomalies, but it changed how we had to communicate about bugs,” said Sewell.
During the hearing, it emerged she felt on the outside of the organisation towards the end of her time there, and was tearful when asked about a period she described as “very hard” for her...
The PO IT department seems to have been quite small: .. On her arrival, she said the Post Office IT team was very small and reliant on Royal Mail Group IT; there was no IT risk register; and there were concerns, in the legal team, over the Horizon contract with Fujitsu, which had not been put out for tender..
In my role I work for a lot of good people who've worked for horrible organisations, and who have just been too weak to do anything about the horribleness. She strikes me as one of those. She's not heroic whistleblower material, and clearly didn't feel able to stand up to management, but, equally, she doesn't deserve automatic opprobrium just because she worked at the malignant PO for 5 years.
She worked at Northern Rock for 25 years until 2010. She probably thought taking the PO job would enhance her career after an organisation she had clearly been loyal to hit the skids spectacularly - again through no fault of her own.
"Through no fault of her own" is doing WAY WAY WAY toooooooo much heavy lifting here.
SKS running out of numbers? He's had five missions, six fixes, ten pledges Lords a leaping looks like a given So so far 21 straight-out lies? Next Seven swans a-swimming in shit infested waters as were not nationalising water? A EdStone in a pear tree?
Barristers having to treat Lesley Sewell of the PO as though she is a child, such is her fragility and uselessness.
Lesley Sewell former Chief Information Officer of the PO, that is.
Being a senior IT person does not prepare you for this. I am surprised, given it is televised and has been the subject of such scrutiny in recent months, more people have not reacted as she did.
The big secret of top people is that for every genuinely impressive figure there are a dozen useless chancers bungling their way through life.
Inquiries can be a rare chance to demonstrate the ordinariness of so many top people, and puncture the idea they deserve the remunerations they often get, as they scramble to show they are incompetent not malicious.
Of course, know the right people and you can usually just move on to a directorship somewhere else. Companies and organisations just look at the last job you has, and apparently don't care how you actually did.
"Top person"?. She was head of IT.
Further, and I don't want to stereotype here but as an employment lawyer I have not generally had Heads of IT at the top of my wish list as Tribunal witnesses, however good they are at fixing my PC.
Top person is a relative term, especially depending on the hierarchy and scale of a business.
It absolute could cover a role such as Head of IT, if in an organisation where complex software is essential to things, or where it is central to the matter being Inquired about as here.
The Head of IT is the kind of job where, for endless years, people who actually know about IT are told they can’t have the job.
Because it is really a political job which requires a Proper Generalist who won’t Get Bogged Down In Pointless Detail.
I've said this before, but IMV the most important characteristics in a leader is a finely-honed BS detector. They cannot know all the details of what is going on underneath them; therefore it's important that they get the unvarnished truth.
One of the best bosses I've ever worked for knew f-all about tech; but he ran a successful-ish tech company. Because he trusted people. You never lied to him, as if you did and he found out, you were out. No argument. No discussion, Out. As such, he had people around him who knew their business, and he could trust to tell him the truth. they were not yes-men.
You could tell him the project was f***ed, and he would listen calmly and ask what could be done (it was best to tell him it was f***ed and have at least one potential way forwards...). But if you said things were fine when you knew they were not... he would go ballistic when he found out.
Barristers having to treat Lesley Sewell of the PO as though she is a child, such is her fragility and uselessness.
Lesley Sewell former Chief Information Officer of the PO, that is.
Being a senior IT person does not prepare you for this. I am surprised, given it is televised and has been the subject of such scrutiny in recent months, more people have not reacted as she did.
Maybe but she was the head of IT. Not just some IT bod stuck in the back in a black t-shirt. You would expect her to be all over her department and what was going on. Which should in turn have provided cover and competence for the questions being asked.
Although I suppose the whole inquiry has been characterised by PO heads of this and that who knew nothing that was happening in their departments.
She seems to have sort-of known. But comes across as too feeble to make an issue of it.
Sewell said: “When I read this email I couldn’t understand it.”
She said she also disagreed with the Post Office’s strategy to refer to software bugs as “exceptions” or “anomalies” in reports about the Horizon system, but went along with it because it was a direction.
“I just thought it was mad,” said Sewell. “I really didn’t understand the concern of using the word ‘bug’ or ‘fault’ because that’s what they were.”
She agreed it appears management wanted to minimise the seriousness of bugs through the use of language. “They were faults and I wouldn’t class them as anomalies, but it changed how we had to communicate about bugs,” said Sewell.
During the hearing, it emerged she felt on the outside of the organisation towards the end of her time there, and was tearful when asked about a period she described as “very hard” for her...
The PO IT department seems to have been quite small: .. On her arrival, she said the Post Office IT team was very small and reliant on Royal Mail Group IT; there was no IT risk register; and there were concerns, in the legal team, over the Horizon contract with Fujitsu, which had not been put out for tender..
In my role I work for a lot of good people who've worked for horrible organisations, and who have just been too weak to do anything about the horribleness. She strikes me as one of those. She's not heroic whistleblower material, and clearly didn't feel able to stand up to management, but, equally, she doesn't deserve automatic opprobrium just because she worked at the malignant PO for 5 years.
She worked at Northern Rock for 25 years until 2010. She probably thought taking the PO job would enhance her career after an organisation she had clearly been loyal to hit the skids spectacularly - again through no fault of her own.
"Through no fault of her own" is doing WAY WAY WAY toooooooo much heavy lifting here.
You’re holding her responsible for the downfall of Northern Rock? Huge if true.
New Labour's ongoing legacy: Dr Karl Pike analyses the battles over the ‘New Labour’ years and how they affected the party long after Blair and Brown left office In the wake of the release of "Getting Over New Labour," a highly anticipated publication authored by Dr Karl Pike of Queen Mary University of London, political pundits and Labour enthusiasts are delving into the intricate web of the party's history and its lingering impact on contemporary politics. ... At the heart of "Getting Over New Labour" lies the question that has haunted the party since its departure from government in 2010: what are the lessons of the New Labour years? Dr Pike, a former advisor to senior Labour figures and now an academic at QMUL, dissects the efforts of successive party leaders – from Ed Miliband to Jeremy Corbyn and now Keir Starmer – in reshaping Labour's ideology, internal democracy, organizational structure, and leadership style. https://www.qmul.ac.uk/media/news/2024/hss/new-labours-ongoing-legacy-dr-karl-pike-analyses-the-battles-over-the-new-labour-years-and-how-they-affected-the-party-long-after-blair-and-brown-left-office.html
I haven't read the article, but my own (probably wrong) opinion: Blair did not go far enough. He had a stonking majority, and the country was in need of a change. The changes he made were often good, but relatively minor. He could have been more adventurous.
And I say that as someone in favour of evolution over revolution (i.e. slow change)...
O/T but interesting piece on how it's possible to build cycle paths cheaply if one knows how to use the planning system and has lots of free labour (especially for @MattW ):
Obvious issues about it really only working out in the sticks rather than the urban jungle, but Shepton M is not that small a place.
And the emphasis of the article is on cycling (despite the notice in onw photo!).
Interesting. There is an awful lot of difficulty with landowners, including Network Rail who sit on land that would be perfect for cycle lanes (and indeed trams), even when there is plenty of funding available.
There is also a tension with the provision of off-road cycle networks in lieu of ones alongside roads. Women, in particular, do not like cycling along them in the dark, and the one factor that has a discernible effect on cycling rates is hours of daylight (often wrongly ascribed to the weather). Thus, adding good lighting is essential but massively increases costs and maintenance.
"including Network Rail who sit on land that would be perfect for cycle lanes"
Do you have examples? I can understand BRB (Residuals) / HA Historical Railways Estate having such land, but what are the NR examples?
Tracks alongside exiting railway lines are frequently used for access by workers, and probably would not be either safe or accessible to the public.
My personal example is a closed freight line in Edinburgh. It's been in the council's plan for cycling for at least 6 years but apparently Network Rail are yet to provide a price for the purchase (and they have form for these kind of delays elsewhere, I'm told).
If it takes that long to provide a quote for a disused stretch of land for a cycle lane in the middle of the capital, you start to understand why nuclear energy takes such a long time!
Thanks. Do you know its name, and if it is actually officially closed, as opposed to mothballed?
If the latter; we are now in a slow trend of mothballed lines being reopened - especially in Scotland. If a mothballed line becomes a cycle path, there's f;all chance of it being turned back into a railway.
Edit: I see this question's already been answered, thanks.
The track is still there, at least on Google air. I'm in two minds about its conversion. It used ot be a very useful branch line taking rubbish out to the cement works at Dunbar for incineration. Still potential for industrial purposes as it runs through a very mixed area with quite a bit of industry though admittedly not as much as there used to be.
That's actually an important and difficult question - and raises tough balances, especially in certain 'not car' travel groups which have historic biases (eg the one that used to be called Transport 2000 which was set up by iirc bus companies back in the 1990s) .
For example there was a proposal to turn the Monsal Trail in Derbyshire, which is walking / cycling multiuser path which has 300k+ users every year, into a railway.
Similarly the Roseburn Path in Edinburgh is a railway repurposed as a walking / cycling route, which is now well enough established that Edinburgh has designed its active travel provision around its existence.
Yet there were recent proposals by the Council to turn it into a tram line extension, which would degrade the quality of service of what is now a key link in the Edinburgh active travel network.
Neither strategic nor joined-up. These need to be protected from politicians thinking short-term.
One of the things I want is for these all to be dedicated as Public Rights of Way, by statute - at least in England / Wales. Afaics it is never done, and when it is something like a Planning Condition (eg Summerleaze Bridge, Windsor) it is forgotten about.
I'd instinctively give the tramway priority - but insist on a pathway next to it.
When I lived in Edinburgh I was very close to the Roseburn path and used it frequently. It's not wide enough to have both a tramway and a cycle path, and the geography (some of it is in deep cuttings, there are many bridges of a certain size, etc) means that it isn't possible to widen it to take both.
The idea of putting the tramway there is purely to take space away from cyclists, rather than to have cars sharing with trams (as happens in dozens of European cities).
If it happens it will be a disaster for cycling in Edinburgh as it will force cyclists onto major arterial roads, probably resulting in lots of people just giving up on cycling.
There are things here about local politics, and "not invented here", and fear-based small-c conservatism, and partisanship, and lack of understanding of what can be achieved that are in common in many places - I can see certain similarities between Ashfield local politics and Edinburgh local politics.
Edinburgh tramways have been a political football for about 2 decades. And the Transport Portfolio has been, shall we say, a bit of a mess - best advice and experience form elsewhere was ignored, and safety been neglected in some ways to save money. Plus disputes between Edinburgh Council and Holyrood.
On the Roseburn Path, alternatives have not been well-considered relative to first-ideas-that-occurred.
Down here active travel is a political football, with the Ashfield Independent District Council campaigning against improvements proposed by the Conservative County Council, to the extent that they have successfully undermined certain schemes which would have been fully funded by Govt and County.
One difference is that Edinburgh has more, and more more vociferous, activists, than we do. That's one reason why my focus is mainly on things I can force through eventually via threat of legal action should it be necessary.
Barristers having to treat Lesley Sewell of the PO as though she is a child, such is her fragility and uselessness.
Lesley Sewell former Chief Information Officer of the PO, that is.
Being a senior IT person does not prepare you for this. I am surprised, given it is televised and has been the subject of such scrutiny in recent months, more people have not reacted as she did.
Maybe but she was the head of IT. Not just some IT bod stuck in the back in a black t-shirt. You would expect her to be all over her department and what was going on. Which should in turn have provided cover and competence for the questions being asked.
Although I suppose the whole inquiry has been characterised by PO heads of this and that who knew nothing that was happening in their departments.
She seems to have sort-of known. But comes across as too feeble to make an issue of it.
Sewell said: “When I read this email I couldn’t understand it.”
She said she also disagreed with the Post Office’s strategy to refer to software bugs as “exceptions” or “anomalies” in reports about the Horizon system, but went along with it because it was a direction.
“I just thought it was mad,” said Sewell. “I really didn’t understand the concern of using the word ‘bug’ or ‘fault’ because that’s what they were.”
She agreed it appears management wanted to minimise the seriousness of bugs through the use of language. “They were faults and I wouldn’t class them as anomalies, but it changed how we had to communicate about bugs,” said Sewell.
During the hearing, it emerged she felt on the outside of the organisation towards the end of her time there, and was tearful when asked about a period she described as “very hard” for her...
The PO IT department seems to have been quite small: .. On her arrival, she said the Post Office IT team was very small and reliant on Royal Mail Group IT; there was no IT risk register; and there were concerns, in the legal team, over the Horizon contract with Fujitsu, which had not been put out for tender..
In my role I work for a lot of good people who've worked for horrible organisations, and who have just been too weak to do anything about the horribleness. She strikes me as one of those. She's not heroic whistleblower material, and clearly didn't feel able to stand up to management, but, equally, she doesn't deserve automatic opprobrium just because she worked at the malignant PO for 5 years.
She worked at Northern Rock for 25 years until 2010. She probably thought taking the PO job would enhance her career after an organisation she had clearly been loyal to hit the skids spectacularly - again through no fault of her own.
"Through no fault of her own" is doing WAY WAY WAY toooooooo much heavy lifting here.
It is interesting that senior management roles appear to be filled with Life’s Victims. People who collect vast salaries, but have no idea what heir organisation does or why. And appear to be remorselessly bullied and manipulated by Them. Strangely no one can ever put a name to Them.
Doubtless there will be as many comments on here about Sunak's enunciation failure as there were about Starmer's stumble at PMQ's yesterday.
LOL!
Would be even funnier if there had been an enunciation failure from Sunak!
I think the point is that it's an incredibly trivial matter – he slipped up on a word. People do it all the time; you do it; I do it. We all do. I present for a living. It doesn't matter as long as you KBO.
New Labour's ongoing legacy: Dr Karl Pike analyses the battles over the ‘New Labour’ years and how they affected the party long after Blair and Brown left office In the wake of the release of "Getting Over New Labour," a highly anticipated publication authored by Dr Karl Pike of Queen Mary University of London, political pundits and Labour enthusiasts are delving into the intricate web of the party's history and its lingering impact on contemporary politics. ... At the heart of "Getting Over New Labour" lies the question that has haunted the party since its departure from government in 2010: what are the lessons of the New Labour years? Dr Pike, a former advisor to senior Labour figures and now an academic at QMUL, dissects the efforts of successive party leaders – from Ed Miliband to Jeremy Corbyn and now Keir Starmer – in reshaping Labour's ideology, internal democracy, organizational structure, and leadership style. https://www.qmul.ac.uk/media/news/2024/hss/new-labours-ongoing-legacy-dr-karl-pike-analyses-the-battles-over-the-new-labour-years-and-how-they-affected-the-party-long-after-blair-and-brown-left-office.html
I haven't read the article, but my own (probably wrong) opinion: Blair did not go far enough. He had a stonking majority, and the country was in need of a change. The changes he made were often good, but relatively minor. He could have been more adventurous.
And I say that as someone in favour of evolution over revolution (i.e. slow change)...
I'm not sure I agree; his government made lots of consequential (albeit incremental) changes - I feel his bigger problem was a lack of consistent direction.
Some of that was a result of getting distracted by Iraq, some was down to trying something different in response to a policy failure (the various NHS reforms might be an example of this), some of it was simply down to a previous minister's pet project being dumped after a reshuffle - and the ever-present TB-GB fighting meant there were a lot of reshuffles.
It's interesting that Cameron avoided lots of this in his first term - partly as a result of consciously trying to avoid New Labour's mistakes... but mostly, I suspect, by the coalition agreement imposing some external structure (and/or a straitjacket, depending on how you view it).
New Labour's ongoing legacy: Dr Karl Pike analyses the battles over the ‘New Labour’ years and how they affected the party long after Blair and Brown left office In the wake of the release of "Getting Over New Labour," a highly anticipated publication authored by Dr Karl Pike of Queen Mary University of London, political pundits and Labour enthusiasts are delving into the intricate web of the party's history and its lingering impact on contemporary politics. ... At the heart of "Getting Over New Labour" lies the question that has haunted the party since its departure from government in 2010: what are the lessons of the New Labour years? Dr Pike, a former advisor to senior Labour figures and now an academic at QMUL, dissects the efforts of successive party leaders – from Ed Miliband to Jeremy Corbyn and now Keir Starmer – in reshaping Labour's ideology, internal democracy, organizational structure, and leadership style. https://www.qmul.ac.uk/media/news/2024/hss/new-labours-ongoing-legacy-dr-karl-pike-analyses-the-battles-over-the-new-labour-years-and-how-they-affected-the-party-long-after-blair-and-brown-left-office.html
I haven't read the article, but my own (probably wrong) opinion: Blair did not go far enough. He had a stonking majority, and the country was in need of a change. The changes he made were often good, but relatively minor. He could have been more adventurous.
And I say that as someone in favour of evolution over revolution (i.e. slow change)...
New Labour's ongoing legacy: Dr Karl Pike analyses the battles over the ‘New Labour’ years and how they affected the party long after Blair and Brown left office In the wake of the release of "Getting Over New Labour," a highly anticipated publication authored by Dr Karl Pike of Queen Mary University of London, political pundits and Labour enthusiasts are delving into the intricate web of the party's history and its lingering impact on contemporary politics. ... At the heart of "Getting Over New Labour" lies the question that has haunted the party since its departure from government in 2010: what are the lessons of the New Labour years? Dr Pike, a former advisor to senior Labour figures and now an academic at QMUL, dissects the efforts of successive party leaders – from Ed Miliband to Jeremy Corbyn and now Keir Starmer – in reshaping Labour's ideology, internal democracy, organizational structure, and leadership style. https://www.qmul.ac.uk/media/news/2024/hss/new-labours-ongoing-legacy-dr-karl-pike-analyses-the-battles-over-the-new-labour-years-and-how-they-affected-the-party-long-after-blair-and-brown-left-office.html
I haven't read the article, but my own (probably wrong) opinion: Blair did not go far enough. He had a stonking majority, and the country was in need of a change. The changes he made were often good, but relatively minor. He could have been more adventurous.
And I say that as someone in favour of evolution over revolution (i.e. slow change)...
Barristers having to treat Lesley Sewell of the PO as though she is a child, such is her fragility and uselessness.
Lesley Sewell former Chief Information Officer of the PO, that is.
Being a senior IT person does not prepare you for this. I am surprised, given it is televised and has been the subject of such scrutiny in recent months, more people have not reacted as she did.
Maybe but she was the head of IT. Not just some IT bod stuck in the back in a black t-shirt. You would expect her to be all over her department and what was going on. Which should in turn have provided cover and competence for the questions being asked.
Although I suppose the whole inquiry has been characterised by PO heads of this and that who knew nothing that was happening in their departments.
Giving evidence is horribly stressful. Giving evidence on live TV even more so. Competent honest people are not necessarily great witnesses or public speakers, and incompetent liars are often the best bullshitters. As recent electoral history shows.
Bullshitters work best when you encounter them in short bursts or repetitive scenarios, which is why politics is a good breeding ground.
They don't work well when pinned down and forced to confront their own words and actions, and where smooth nonsense will be exposed by rigorous questioning.
So id say they actually do badly at inquiries if, and here's the major caveat, the inquiry is itself being competently managed.
A question is how much systematic issues and errors should be placed on the head of specific individuals - and this is probably at the heart of this awful mess. Most people want to do a good job. Lots of people want to do a good job with minimal effort. If doing a good job involves fighting an internal culture in an organisation, then it is far from easy. In fact, fighting it can lose you your job and/or friends. And for some people most importantly of all, prestige.
Another issue is that what you say about bullshitters is also true of people who *tried* to do the right thing. Can you look back at a decision you made in business a decade or more ago and defend it robustly? Especially if you now know it was the wrong decision?
I wouldn't want to give evidence in this environment. I fear, like many inquiries, it's findings will not get to the important facts, and instead excoriate people. In some cases, unjustly.
It's pretty clear from the enquiry evidence that a large number of witnesses had little or no interest in "doing a good job", and the ongoing miscarriages of justice were a matter to be covered up, which they did.
It's also obvious that from today's evidence there's not much that shows Sewell being actively culpable.
Barristers having to treat Lesley Sewell of the PO as though she is a child, such is her fragility and uselessness.
Lesley Sewell former Chief Information Officer of the PO, that is.
Being a senior IT person does not prepare you for this. I am surprised, given it is televised and has been the subject of such scrutiny in recent months, more people have not reacted as she did.
The big secret of top people is that for every genuinely impressive figure there are a dozen useless chancers bungling their way through life.
Inquiries can be a rare chance to demonstrate the ordinariness of so many top people, and puncture the idea they deserve the remunerations they often get, as they scramble to show they are incompetent not malicious.
Of course, know the right people and you can usually just move on to a directorship somewhere else. Companies and organisations just look at the last job you has, and apparently don't care how you actually did.
"Top person"?. She was head of IT.
Further, and I don't want to stereotype here but as an employment lawyer I have not generally had Heads of IT at the top of my wish list as Tribunal witnesses, however good they are at fixing my PC.
Top person is a relative term, especially depending on the hierarchy and scale of a business.
It absolute could cover a role such as Head of IT, if in an organisation where complex software is essential to things, or where it is central to the matter being Inquired about as here.
The Head of IT is the kind of job where, for endless years, people who actually know about IT are told they can’t have the job.
Because it is really a political job which requires a Proper Generalist who won’t Get Bogged Down In Pointless Detail.
It’s the person who goes mend the really important people’s computers.
Not going to lie, I experienced a near sexual thrill when this news broke.
The UK’s financial watchdog has charged seven reality TV stars, including former Love Island contestants and cast members from The Only Way is Essex (Towie), with promoting an unauthorised foreign exchange trading scheme on Instagram.
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has brought charges against nine people in a crackdown on “finfluencers” who have a combined follower count of 4.5 million on the social media platform.
The former Love island contestants Biggs Chris, 32, Jamie Clayton, 32, Rebecca Gormley, 26, and Eva Zapico, 25, face one count of issuing unauthorised communications of financial promotions, an offence under the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 that is punishable by a fine and up to two years in jail.
The Towie stars Lauren Goodger, 37, and Yazmin Oukhellou, 30, face the same charge along with Scott Timlin, 36, a former winner of Celebrity Big Brother.
New Labour's ongoing legacy: Dr Karl Pike analyses the battles over the ‘New Labour’ years and how they affected the party long after Blair and Brown left office In the wake of the release of "Getting Over New Labour," a highly anticipated publication authored by Dr Karl Pike of Queen Mary University of London, political pundits and Labour enthusiasts are delving into the intricate web of the party's history and its lingering impact on contemporary politics. ... At the heart of "Getting Over New Labour" lies the question that has haunted the party since its departure from government in 2010: what are the lessons of the New Labour years? Dr Pike, a former advisor to senior Labour figures and now an academic at QMUL, dissects the efforts of successive party leaders – from Ed Miliband to Jeremy Corbyn and now Keir Starmer – in reshaping Labour's ideology, internal democracy, organizational structure, and leadership style. https://www.qmul.ac.uk/media/news/2024/hss/new-labours-ongoing-legacy-dr-karl-pike-analyses-the-battles-over-the-new-labour-years-and-how-they-affected-the-party-long-after-blair-and-brown-left-office.html
I haven't read the article, but my own (probably wrong) opinion: Blair did not go far enough. He had a stonking majority, and the country was in need of a change. The changes he made were often good, but relatively minor. He could have been more adventurous.
And I say that as someone in favour of evolution over revolution (i.e. slow change)...
I'm not sure I agree; his government made lots of consequential (albeit incremental) changes - I feel his bigger problem was a lack of consistent direction.
Some of that was a result of getting distracted by Iraq, some was down to trying something different in response to a policy failure (the various NHS reforms might be an example of this), some of it was simply down to a previous minister's pet project being dumped after a reshuffle - and the ever-present TB-GB fighting meant there were a lot of reshuffles.
It's interesting that Cameron avoided lots of this in his first term - partly as a result of consciously trying to avoid New Labour's mistakes... but mostly, I suspect, by the coalition agreement imposing some external structure (and/or a straitjacket, depending on how you view it).
Fair enough; but you cannot blame Iraq. That occurred five years into his time in power.
One of the things I really liked about Cameron's ministry was that he kept people in their jobs for years. If Starmer can do the same, it'll be a start. Constant chopping and changing ministers is really detrimental to good governance IMO.
Doubtless there will be as many comments on here about Sunak's enunciation failure as there were about Starmer's stumble at PMQ's yesterday.
LOL!
Would be even funnier if there had been an enunciation failure from Sunak!
Er, but that's exactly what there was.
If he'd actually said "good" (or "book") rather than "goo'" (or "boo'"), then the word would have been much clearer despite the poor sound causing the initial consonant to be clipped.
Mind you, Peston's interpretation would still have been nonsense as it relies on Judi Love wanting the election to clash with her holiday.
I think the general election will be on 24th October and will return a Labour majority of 112 seats.
The weather on the day? Overcast but dry, temperature about average for that time of year.
With voting described as brisk.
And the pundits saying it will be "close".
Followed by “It’s a terrrrrrrrrrible night for the Tories” after the polls close.
I’ve long been of the view it’s going to be a “Chuck the Buggers Out” election - the only question remaining whether the Tories were going out of the second floor window or the tenth.
I think the general election will be on 24th October and will return a Labour majority of 112 seats.
The weather on the day? Overcast but dry, temperature about average for that time of year.
With voting described as brisk.
And the pundits saying it will be "close".
And forum posters swearing that postal votes have swung heavily to the Tories in Outer London!
'It's clear our vote hasn't turned out' 'We are hopeful of better news from the Telford suburbs' 'Let's wait and see the actual votes being counted' 'That's not the message we were getting on the doorstep' 'Oh ffffffffffffffucccccck'
Barristers having to treat Lesley Sewell of the PO as though she is a child, such is her fragility and uselessness.
Lesley Sewell former Chief Information Officer of the PO, that is.
Being a senior IT person does not prepare you for this. I am surprised, given it is televised and has been the subject of such scrutiny in recent months, more people have not reacted as she did.
The big secret of top people is that for every genuinely impressive figure there are a dozen useless chancers bungling their way through life.
Inquiries can be a rare chance to demonstrate the ordinariness of so many top people, and puncture the idea they deserve the remunerations they often get, as they scramble to show they are incompetent not malicious.
Of course, know the right people and you can usually just move on to a directorship somewhere else. Companies and organisations just look at the last job you has, and apparently don't care how you actually did.
"Top person"?. She was head of IT.
Further, and I don't want to stereotype here but as an employment lawyer I have not generally had Heads of IT at the top of my wish list as Tribunal witnesses, however good they are at fixing my PC.
Top person is a relative term, especially depending on the hierarchy and scale of a business.
It absolute could cover a role such as Head of IT, if in an organisation where complex software is essential to things, or where it is central to the matter being Inquired about as here.
The Head of IT is the kind of job where, for endless years, people who actually know about IT are told they can’t have the job.
Because it is really a political job which requires a Proper Generalist who won’t Get Bogged Down In Pointless Detail.
I've said this before, but IMV the most important characteristics in a leader is a finely-honed BS detector. They cannot know all the details of what is going on underneath them; therefore it's important that they get the unvarnished truth.
One of the best bosses I've ever worked for knew f-all about tech; but he ran a successful-ish tech company. Because he trusted people. You never lied to him, as if you did and he found out, you were out. No argument. No discussion, Out. As such, he had people around him who knew their business, and he could trust to tell him the truth. they were not yes-men.
You could tell him the project was f***ed, and he would listen calmly and ask what could be done (it was best to tell him it was f***ed and have at least one potential way forwards...). But if you said things were fine when you knew they were not... he would go ballistic when he found out.
I liked him.
I always tell people "I love bad news! because if I know about it, I can do something about fixing it."
New Labour's ongoing legacy: Dr Karl Pike analyses the battles over the ‘New Labour’ years and how they affected the party long after Blair and Brown left office In the wake of the release of "Getting Over New Labour," a highly anticipated publication authored by Dr Karl Pike of Queen Mary University of London, political pundits and Labour enthusiasts are delving into the intricate web of the party's history and its lingering impact on contemporary politics. ... At the heart of "Getting Over New Labour" lies the question that has haunted the party since its departure from government in 2010: what are the lessons of the New Labour years? Dr Pike, a former advisor to senior Labour figures and now an academic at QMUL, dissects the efforts of successive party leaders – from Ed Miliband to Jeremy Corbyn and now Keir Starmer – in reshaping Labour's ideology, internal democracy, organizational structure, and leadership style. https://www.qmul.ac.uk/media/news/2024/hss/new-labours-ongoing-legacy-dr-karl-pike-analyses-the-battles-over-the-new-labour-years-and-how-they-affected-the-party-long-after-blair-and-brown-left-office.html
I haven't read the article, but my own (probably wrong) opinion: Blair did not go far enough. He had a stonking majority, and the country was in need of a change. The changes he made were often good, but relatively minor. He could have been more adventurous.
And I say that as someone in favour of evolution over revolution (i.e. slow change)...
I'm not sure I agree; his government made lots of consequential (albeit incremental) changes - I feel his bigger problem was a lack of consistent direction.
Some of that was a result of getting distracted by Iraq, some was down to trying something different in response to a policy failure (the various NHS reforms might be an example of this), some of it was simply down to a previous minister's pet project being dumped after a reshuffle - and the ever-present TB-GB fighting meant there were a lot of reshuffles.
It's interesting that Cameron avoided lots of this in his first term - partly as a result of consciously trying to avoid New Labour's mistakes... but mostly, I suspect, by the coalition agreement imposing some external structure (and/or a straitjacket, depending on how you view it).
Fair enough; but you cannot blame Iraq. That occurred five years into his time in power.
One of the things I really liked about Cameron's ministry was that he kept people in their jobs for years. If Starmer can do the same, it'll be a start. Constant chopping and changing ministers is really detrimental to good governance IMO.
I recall that Cameron actually talked about keeping people in their jobs before the coalition - he made a big play of wanting people to bed in as shadow ministers so that they could devote their time to preparing for government.
And it worked, to an extent - but Lansley at Health and Gove at Education proved that a potential PM can't just delegate and hope for the best.
It's not really a model that Starmer will be able to follow, either - the bottleneck in the pool of Labour MP's likely means that he'll need to try to promote some of his new intake much faster than Blair or Cameron did.
Doubtless there will be as many comments on here about Sunak's enunciation failure as there were about Starmer's stumble at PMQ's yesterday.
LOL!
Would be even funnier if there had been an enunciation failure from Sunak!
I think the point is that it's an incredibly trivial matter – he slipped up on a word. People do it all the time; you do it; I do it. We all do. I present for a living. It doesn't matter as long as you KBO.
Do you slip up because your own thoughts have run ahead of your speaking, or because .you are reading someone else's words off a piece of paper and have not taken the trouble to rehearse? Bear in mind that he presents as a barrister and they are normally exceptionally good at uttering coherent and grammatical filler while planning what to say next. He will win the election but that won't tell us what his talents are or what he is for.
New Labour's ongoing legacy: Dr Karl Pike analyses the battles over the ‘New Labour’ years and how they affected the party long after Blair and Brown left office In the wake of the release of "Getting Over New Labour," a highly anticipated publication authored by Dr Karl Pike of Queen Mary University of London, political pundits and Labour enthusiasts are delving into the intricate web of the party's history and its lingering impact on contemporary politics. ... At the heart of "Getting Over New Labour" lies the question that has haunted the party since its departure from government in 2010: what are the lessons of the New Labour years? Dr Pike, a former advisor to senior Labour figures and now an academic at QMUL, dissects the efforts of successive party leaders – from Ed Miliband to Jeremy Corbyn and now Keir Starmer – in reshaping Labour's ideology, internal democracy, organizational structure, and leadership style. https://www.qmul.ac.uk/media/news/2024/hss/new-labours-ongoing-legacy-dr-karl-pike-analyses-the-battles-over-the-new-labour-years-and-how-they-affected-the-party-long-after-blair-and-brown-left-office.html
I haven't read the article, but my own (probably wrong) opinion: Blair did not go far enough. He had a stonking majority, and the country was in need of a change. The changes he made were often good, but relatively minor. He could have been more adventurous.
And I say that as someone in favour of evolution over revolution (i.e. slow change)...
I'm not sure I agree; his government made lots of consequential (albeit incremental) changes - I feel his bigger problem was a lack of consistent direction.
Some of that was a result of getting distracted by Iraq, some was down to trying something different in response to a policy failure (the various NHS reforms might be an example of this), some of it was simply down to a previous minister's pet project being dumped after a reshuffle - and the ever-present TB-GB fighting meant there were a lot of reshuffles.
It's interesting that Cameron avoided lots of this in his first term - partly as a result of consciously trying to avoid New Labour's mistakes... but mostly, I suspect, by the coalition agreement imposing some external structure (and/or a straitjacket, depending on how you view it).
Fair enough; but you cannot blame Iraq. That occurred five years into his time in power.
One of the things I really liked about Cameron's ministry was that he kept people in their jobs for years. If Starmer can do the same, it'll be a start. Constant chopping and changing ministers is really detrimental to good governance IMO.
I recall that Cameron actually talked about keeping people in their jobs before the coalition - he made a big play of wanting people to bed in as shadow ministers so that they could devote their time to preparing for government.
And it worked, to an extent - but Lansley at Health and Gove at Education proved that a potential PM can't just delegate and hope for the best.
It's not really a model that Starmer will be able to follow, either - the bottleneck in the pool of Labour MP's likely means that he'll need to try to promote some of his new intake much faster than Blair or Cameron did.
Cameron had a bigger "bottleneck" (198 MPs) than Starmer does but it will be interesting to see how quickly the first of the 2024 intake get into PPS roles.
Not going to lie, I experienced a near sexual thrill when this news broke.
The UK’s financial watchdog has charged seven reality TV stars, including former Love Island contestants and cast members from The Only Way is Essex (Towie), with promoting an unauthorised foreign exchange trading scheme on Instagram.
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has brought charges against nine people in a crackdown on “finfluencers” who have a combined follower count of 4.5 million on the social media platform.
The former Love island contestants Biggs Chris, 32, Jamie Clayton, 32, Rebecca Gormley, 26, and Eva Zapico, 25, face one count of issuing unauthorised communications of financial promotions, an offence under the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 that is punishable by a fine and up to two years in jail.
The Towie stars Lauren Goodger, 37, and Yazmin Oukhellou, 30, face the same charge along with Scott Timlin, 36, a former winner of Celebrity Big Brother.
If you think the Tories are having a bad time spare a thought for the IDF. They're saying they've run out of Palestinians to shoot so they're turning on their own men.
Barristers having to treat Lesley Sewell of the PO as though she is a child, such is her fragility and uselessness.
Lesley Sewell former Chief Information Officer of the PO, that is.
Being a senior IT person does not prepare you for this. I am surprised, given it is televised and has been the subject of such scrutiny in recent months, more people have not reacted as she did.
Maybe but she was the head of IT. Not just some IT bod stuck in the back in a black t-shirt. You would expect her to be all over her department and what was going on. Which should in turn have provided cover and competence for the questions being asked.
Although I suppose the whole inquiry has been characterised by PO heads of this and that who knew nothing that was happening in their departments.
She seems to have sort-of known. But comes across as too feeble to make an issue of it.
Sewell said: “When I read this email I couldn’t understand it.”
She said she also disagreed with the Post Office’s strategy to refer to software bugs as “exceptions” or “anomalies” in reports about the Horizon system, but went along with it because it was a direction.
“I just thought it was mad,” said Sewell. “I really didn’t understand the concern of using the word ‘bug’ or ‘fault’ because that’s what they were.”
She agreed it appears management wanted to minimise the seriousness of bugs through the use of language. “They were faults and I wouldn’t class them as anomalies, but it changed how we had to communicate about bugs,” said Sewell.
During the hearing, it emerged she felt on the outside of the organisation towards the end of her time there, and was tearful when asked about a period she described as “very hard” for her...
The PO IT department seems to have been quite small: .. On her arrival, she said the Post Office IT team was very small and reliant on Royal Mail Group IT; there was no IT risk register; and there were concerns, in the legal team, over the Horizon contract with Fujitsu, which had not been put out for tender..
In my role I work for a lot of good people who've worked for horrible organisations, and who have just been too weak to do anything about the horribleness. She strikes me as one of those. She's not heroic whistleblower material, and clearly didn't feel able to stand up to management, but, equally, she doesn't deserve automatic opprobrium just because she worked at the malignant PO for 5 years.
She worked at Northern Rock for 25 years until 2010. She probably thought taking the PO job would enhance her career after an organisation she had clearly been loyal to hit the skids spectacularly - again through no fault of her own.
"Through no fault of her own" is doing WAY WAY WAY toooooooo much heavy lifting here.
You’re holding her responsible for the downfall of Northern Rock? Huge if true.
No. What I'm doubting, is your contention she was faultless with regard to EITHER of the quasi-criminal enterprises she's been employed by for the most of her career as an (alleged) IT expert.
BTW (also FYI) here is an interesting sample of Leslie Sewell's "leadership" at as (alleged) PO CIO:
A: Visionary, inclusive, pacesetting, clear on outcomes and goals, coaching, decisive and people focused.
Q: What key technologies do you consider enable transformation?
A: In the context of Post Office our Digital platform will be a key enabler and at the heart of our strategy. Building it in such a way that we utilise all aspects of open, cloud and COTs products to give us flexibility is key. In addition, fixing the infrastructure around our end user capability.
I just came out of a meeting of the local chamber of commerce devoted to Brexit.
Its worse than the Tories worst nightmares. Lifetime Tories cursing the Tory Party, absolute contempt for Brexit, Determination that change should be radical, including demands for PR.
I think for every month Sunak leaves it the Lib Dems will gain seats beyond their current forecast. Plenty want Farage´s head on a stick. It was actually quite sobering to see conservative and Conservative people so apoplectic.
Why would anyone attend such a meeting if they didn't hold those view about the subject?
Barristers having to treat Lesley Sewell of the PO as though she is a child, such is her fragility and uselessness.
Lesley Sewell former Chief Information Officer of the PO, that is.
Being a senior IT person does not prepare you for this. I am surprised, given it is televised and has been the subject of such scrutiny in recent months, more people have not reacted as she did.
Maybe but she was the head of IT. Not just some IT bod stuck in the back in a black t-shirt. You would expect her to be all over her department and what was going on. Which should in turn have provided cover and competence for the questions being asked.
Although I suppose the whole inquiry has been characterised by PO heads of this and that who knew nothing that was happening in their departments.
Giving evidence is horribly stressful. Giving evidence on live TV even more so. Competent honest people are not necessarily great witnesses or public speakers, and incompetent liars are often the best bullshitters. As recent electoral history shows.
Bullshitters work best when you encounter them in short bursts or repetitive scenarios, which is why politics is a good breeding ground.
They don't work well when pinned down and forced to confront their own words and actions, and where smooth nonsense will be exposed by rigorous questioning.
So id say they actually do badly at inquiries if, and here's the major caveat, the inquiry is itself being competently managed.
A question is how much systematic issues and errors should be placed on the head of specific individuals - and this is probably at the heart of this awful mess. Most people want to do a good job. Lots of people want to do a good job with minimal effort. If doing a good job involves fighting an internal culture in an organisation, then it is far from easy. In fact, fighting it can lose you your job and/or friends. And for some people most importantly of all, prestige.
Another issue is that what you say about bullshitters is also true of people who *tried* to do the right thing. Can you look back at a decision you made in business a decade or more ago and defend it robustly? Especially if you now know it was the wrong decision?
I wouldn't want to give evidence in this environment. I fear, like many inquiries, it's findings will not get to the important facts, and instead excoriate people. In some cases, unjustly.
It's pretty clear from the enquiry evidence that a large number of witnesses had little or no interest in "doing a good job", and the ongoing miscarriages of justice were a matter to be covered up, which they did.
It's also obvious that from today's evidence there's not much that shows Sewell being actively culpable.
Also not much evidence showing Sewell did much of anything actually useful? For the non-pittance (I presume) she got over-paid.
I noticed megasaur suggesting December on the previous thread and I've had a sneaking suspicion the same way myself for a whle now.
To be precise, I'm thinking the 12 of December. Again.
Rationale: Sunak doesn't want to pull the trigger on ending the Tory Government any sooner than he has to, which gives him the impulse to run as long as he can.
Accepting the fact that a campaign over Christmas would indeed be desperate, and look desperate, and piss people off still further, it's about as late as he realistically can go.
He can kind of justify (or at least pretend to justify) going that late on the grounds that the last one was December 12th, after all, so it's the five year point, and we all accepted a 12th December election last time.
Yes, it'll make things harder for activists, but that's more a Labour and Lib Dem problem than a Tory one, because they don't exactly have many activists left, so fewer activists all round makes for a more air-war/Royal Mail delivery campaign, which they'll be able to handle, and partly mitigate their activist disadvantage.
If you think the Tories are having a bad time spare a thought for the IDF. They're saying they've run out of Palestinians to shoot so they're turning on their own men.
Yes, it’s hilarious that a few young men have been killed by accident. As were British men, French men, Americans, pretty much everyone in war killed by their own side. I won’t ever know if my great uncle was shot down and killed by his own side in North Africa, frankly it doesn’t matter as it was all shit, but it’s an absolute blinder of a card to play for “my side v your side”. How Saddam’s supporters laughed at the UK/US blue on blue deaths.
If you think the Tories are having a bad time spare a thought for the IDF. They're saying they've run out of Palestinians to shoot so they're turning on their own men.
Yes, it’s hilarious that a few young men have been killed by accident. As were British men, French men, Americans, pretty much everyone in war killed by their own side. I won’t ever know if my great uncle was shot down and killed by his own side in North Africa, frankly it doesn’t matter as it was all shit, but it’s an absolute blinder of a card to play for “my side v your side”. How Saddam’s supporters laughed at the UK/US blue on blue deaths.
Barristers having to treat Lesley Sewell of the PO as though she is a child, such is her fragility and uselessness.
Lesley Sewell former Chief Information Officer of the PO, that is.
Being a senior IT person does not prepare you for this. I am surprised, given it is televised and has been the subject of such scrutiny in recent months, more people have not reacted as she did.
The big secret of top people is that for every genuinely impressive figure there are a dozen useless chancers bungling their way through life.
Inquiries can be a rare chance to demonstrate the ordinariness of so many top people, and puncture the idea they deserve the remunerations they often get, as they scramble to show they are incompetent not malicious.
Of course, know the right people and you can usually just move on to a directorship somewhere else. Companies and organisations just look at the last job you has, and apparently don't care how you actually did.
"Top person"?. She was head of IT.
Further, and I don't want to stereotype here but as an employment lawyer I have not generally had Heads of IT at the top of my wish list as Tribunal witnesses, however good they are at fixing my PC.
Top person is a relative term, especially depending on the hierarchy and scale of a business.
It absolute could cover a role such as Head of IT, if in an organisation where complex software is essential to things, or where it is central to the matter being Inquired about as here.
The Head of IT is the kind of job where, for endless years, people who actually know about IT are told they can’t have the job.
Because it is really a political job which requires a Proper Generalist who won’t Get Bogged Down In Pointless Detail.
Head of IT or Chief Information Officer is really a Management role rather than an IT role
Barristers having to treat Lesley Sewell of the PO as though she is a child, such is her fragility and uselessness.
Lesley Sewell former Chief Information Officer of the PO, that is.
Being a senior IT person does not prepare you for this. I am surprised, given it is televised and has been the subject of such scrutiny in recent months, more people have not reacted as she did.
Maybe but she was the head of IT. Not just some IT bod stuck in the back in a black t-shirt. You would expect her to be all over her department and what was going on. Which should in turn have provided cover and competence for the questions being asked.
Although I suppose the whole inquiry has been characterised by PO heads of this and that who knew nothing that was happening in their departments.
She seems to have sort-of known. But comes across as too feeble to make an issue of it.
Sewell said: “When I read this email I couldn’t understand it.”
She said she also disagreed with the Post Office’s strategy to refer to software bugs as “exceptions” or “anomalies” in reports about the Horizon system, but went along with it because it was a direction.
“I just thought it was mad,” said Sewell. “I really didn’t understand the concern of using the word ‘bug’ or ‘fault’ because that’s what they were.”
She agreed it appears management wanted to minimise the seriousness of bugs through the use of language. “They were faults and I wouldn’t class them as anomalies, but it changed how we had to communicate about bugs,” said Sewell.
During the hearing, it emerged she felt on the outside of the organisation towards the end of her time there, and was tearful when asked about a period she described as “very hard” for her...
The PO IT department seems to have been quite small: .. On her arrival, she said the Post Office IT team was very small and reliant on Royal Mail Group IT; there was no IT risk register; and there were concerns, in the legal team, over the Horizon contract with Fujitsu, which had not been put out for tender..
In my role I work for a lot of good people who've worked for horrible organisations, and who have just been too weak to do anything about the horribleness. She strikes me as one of those. She's not heroic whistleblower material, and clearly didn't feel able to stand up to management, but, equally, she doesn't deserve automatic opprobrium just because she worked at the malignant PO for 5 years.
She worked at Northern Rock for 25 years until 2010. She probably thought taking the PO job would enhance her career after an organisation she had clearly been loyal to hit the skids spectacularly - again through no fault of her own.
"Through no fault of her own" is doing WAY WAY WAY toooooooo much heavy lifting here.
You’re holding her responsible for the downfall of Northern Rock? Huge if true.
No. What I'm doubting, is your contention she was faultless with regard to EITHER of the quasi-criminal enterprises she's been employed by for the most of her career as an (alleged) IT expert.
BTW (also FYI) here is an interesting sample of Leslie Sewell's "leadership" at as (alleged) PO CIO:
A: Visionary, inclusive, pacesetting, clear on outcomes and goals, coaching, decisive and people focused.
Q: What key technologies do you consider enable transformation?
A: In the context of Post Office our Digital platform will be a key enabler and at the heart of our strategy. Building it in such a way that we utilise all aspects of open, cloud and COTs products to give us flexibility is key. In addition, fixing the infrastructure around our end user capability.
SSI - "In addition"!
Ok, “no fault” was perhaps over egging it. But when she started at Northern Rock it was a solid, staid, worthy (dare I say boring) provincial building society. The later, post-demutualisation, decisions that led to its demise have been well documented and, I can confidently assert, had nothing to do with the IT department.
As for the PO, the simple chronology mostly clears her. She joined in 2010, more than a decade after Horizon was installed, and years into the cavalcade of bent prosecutions that resulted therefrom. From bitter experience that there is not an organisation in this jurisdiction that willingly allows IT anywhere near legal decision making.
She should have stood up to management when they started doing shit she didn’t agree with. But that takes guts. No one knows what they would have done in that situation.
I noticed megasaur suggesting December on the previous thread and I've had a sneaking suspicion the same way myself for a whle now.
To be precise, I'm thinking the 12 of December. Again.
Rationale: Sunak doesn't want to pull the trigger on ending the Tory Government any sooner than he has to, which gives him the impulse to run as long as he can.
Accepting the fact that a campaign over Christmas would indeed be desperate, and look desperate, and piss people off still further, it's about as late as he realistically can go.
He can kind of justify (or at least pretend to justify) going that late on the grounds that the last one was December 12th, after all, so it's the five year point, and we all accepted a 12th December election last time.
Yes, it'll make things harder for activists, but that's more a Labour and Lib Dem problem than a Tory one, because they don't exactly have many activists left, so fewer activists all round makes for a more air-war/Royal Mail delivery campaign, which they'll be able to handle, and partly mitigate their activist disadvantage.
Moon Rabbit was certain in was going to be May! She explained how logically it could be no other date.
Don't tell me I've spent my life savings on a pup!
Doubtless there will be as many comments on here about Sunak's enunciation failure as there were about Starmer's stumble at PMQ's yesterday.
LOL!
Would be even funnier if there had been an enunciation failure from Sunak!
I think the point is that it's an incredibly trivial matter – he slipped up on a word. People do it all the time; you do it; I do it. We all do. I present for a living. It doesn't matter as long as you KBO.
I think the fact that Sir Keir gets flustered and mangles his words under pressure is not trivial, if you consider the public's opinion of a politician as important. The likes of Brown, Miliband and May all faltered in part due to their awkward personalities and manner of speech
If you think the Tories are having a bad time spare a thought for the IDF. They're saying they've run out of Palestinians to shoot so they're turning on their own men.
Yes, it’s hilarious that a few young men have been killed by accident. As were British men, French men, Americans, pretty much everyone in war killed by their own side. I won’t ever know if my great uncle was shot down and killed by his own side in North Africa, frankly it doesn’t matter as it was all shit, but it’s an absolute blinder of a card to play for “my side v your side”. How Saddam’s supporters laughed at the UK/US blue on blue deaths.
This isn't a war.
It's a Genocide
“Hey guys, I’ve got a great idea, let’s go and kill loads of our neighbours in a really really horrific way. What could go wrong?”
I noticed megasaur suggesting December on the previous thread and I've had a sneaking suspicion the same way myself for a whle now.
To be precise, I'm thinking the 12 of December. Again.
Rationale: Sunak doesn't want to pull the trigger on ending the Tory Government any sooner than he has to, which gives him the impulse to run as long as he can.
Accepting the fact that a campaign over Christmas would indeed be desperate, and look desperate, and piss people off still further, it's about as late as he realistically can go.
He can kind of justify (or at least pretend to justify) going that late on the grounds that the last one was December 12th, after all, so it's the five year point, and we all accepted a 12th December election last time.
Yes, it'll make things harder for activists, but that's more a Labour and Lib Dem problem than a Tory one, because they don't exactly have many activists left, so fewer activists all round makes for a more air-war/Royal Mail delivery campaign, which they'll be able to handle, and partly mitigate their activist disadvantage.
Moon Rabbit was certain in was going to be May! She explained how logically it could be no other date.
Don't tell me I've spent my life savings on a pup!
Doubtless there will be as many comments on here about Sunak's enunciation failure as there were about Starmer's stumble at PMQ's yesterday.
LOL!
Would be even funnier if there had been an enunciation failure from Sunak!
I think the point is that it's an incredibly trivial matter – he slipped up on a word. People do it all the time; you do it; I do it. We all do. I present for a living. It doesn't matter as long as you KBO.
I think the fact that Sir Keir gets flustered and mangles his words under pressure is not trivial, if you consider the public's opinion of a politician as important. The likes of Brown, Miliband and May all faltered in part due to their awkward personalities and manner of speech
Biden and Trump both seem to have got away with it...
Doubtless there will be as many comments on here about Sunak's enunciation failure as there were about Starmer's stumble at PMQ's yesterday.
LOL!
Would be even funnier if there had been an enunciation failure from Sunak!
I think the point is that it's an incredibly trivial matter – he slipped up on a word. People do it all the time; you do it; I do it. We all do. I present for a living. It doesn't matter as long as you KBO.
I think the fact that Sir Keir gets flustered and mangles his words under pressure is not trivial, if you consider the public's opinion of a politician as important. The likes of Brown, Miliband and May all faltered in part due to their awkward personalities and manner of speech
George W Bush did it all the time and was re elected
If you think the Tories are having a bad time spare a thought for the IDF. They're saying they've run out of Palestinians to shoot so they're turning on their own men.
Yes, it’s hilarious that a few young men have been killed by accident. As were British men, French men, Americans, pretty much everyone in war killed by their own side. I won’t ever know if my great uncle was shot down and killed by his own side in North Africa, frankly it doesn’t matter as it was all shit, but it’s an absolute blinder of a card to play for “my side v your side”. How Saddam’s supporters laughed at the UK/US blue on blue deaths.
This isn't a war.
It's a Genocide
“Hey guys, I’ve got a great idea, let’s go and kill loads of our neighbours in a really really horrific way. What could go wrong?”
Cue, everything going wrong.
“ oh that’s not fair”
You fucking idiot.
Proportionate response is acceptable a Genocide and bombing of civilians infrastructure is not.
I believe you are the aforesaid fucking idiot if you think 35000 civilians are Hamas
Comments
Seems on a par with most of Sunak's cunning plans ...
But comes across as too feeble to make an issue of it.
https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366584810/Post-Office-IT-boss-failed-to-raise-concern-over-false-Horizon-statements
..The email described the Post Office’s move away from a statement that said, “there are no bugs in Horizon” to one that said “there are known bugs in every computer system this size and ... they are found and put right, and no subpostmaster is disadvantaged by them”.
Sewell said: “When I read this email I couldn’t understand it.”
She said she also disagreed with the Post Office’s strategy to refer to software bugs as “exceptions” or “anomalies” in reports about the Horizon system, but went along with it because it was a direction.
“I just thought it was mad,” said Sewell. “I really didn’t understand the concern of using the word ‘bug’ or ‘fault’ because that’s what they were.”
She agreed it appears management wanted to minimise the seriousness of bugs through the use of language. “They were faults and I wouldn’t class them as anomalies, but it changed how we had to communicate about bugs,” said Sewell.
During the hearing, it emerged she felt on the outside of the organisation towards the end of her time there, and was tearful when asked about a period she described as “very hard” for her...
The PO IT department seems to have been quite small:
.. On her arrival, she said the Post Office IT team was very small and reliant on Royal Mail Group IT; there was no IT risk register; and there were concerns, in the legal team, over the Horizon contract with Fujitsu, which had not been put out for tender..
They don't work well when pinned down and forced to confront their own words and actions, and where smooth nonsense will be exposed by rigorous questioning.
So id say they actually do badly at inquiries if, and here's the major caveat, the inquiry is itself being competently managed.
The weather on the day? Overcast but dry, temperature about average for that time of year.
Just in case.
I mean, given the government has already repealed the Fixed Term Parliament Act of 2011, why not also repeal the 1911 Parliament Act and revert us to the Septennial Act of 1715, which guarantees elections only every seven years.
Could she please let me know where she next lands a job so I can short the shares?
She worked at Northern Rock for 25 years until 2010. She probably thought taking the PO job would enhance her career after an organisation she had clearly been loyal to hit the skids spectacularly - again through no fault of her own.
The technical answer to that is that section 2(1) of the Parliament Act 1911 means that the provisions in both Parliament Acts that allow the Commons to override the Lords don't apply to any attempts by the Commons to extend the life of parliaments beyond five years, howsoever put forward. That's why the FTPA was okay but if it contained provisions extending the life of Parliament to 7 years it would likely be rejected by the Lords and the Commons couldn't do anything about it. The extension during WW2 had the Lords' approval.
I'd get out more but I'm too busy trying to finish reading the complete Hansard before the Summer.
Yes, we should cherish and value those who don't buckle, but I'm also not sure if I want to condemn those who do.
But, once again, so much of success and failure is luck- the sliding door moments and coin tosses. One of the keys to a successful life is ignoring that reality, but it doesn't change it.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/964a769b-df59-4793-aa79-35f8124093c8?shareToken=e62aae1709bf8251313360ba786e7e77
Or
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/05/15/nhs-bosses-destroy-careers-whistleblowers-avoidable-deaths/
Or
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/health/nhs-bma-the-telegraph-gmc-victoria-atkins-b1158082.html
I was going to provide a guardian link but apparently they don't talk about this. If you point out the NHS is killing people your career will be destroyed by NHS managers. I think that dwarfs the Post Office thing.
But I would have thought that getting to even a mid-level position would require an ability to talk to non-technical managers about issues in terms of impact and risk, rather than simply throwing up her hands and saying "well, of course it has bugs, all software has bugs".
1935 & 1922.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_Kingdom_general_elections
Because it is really a political job which requires a Proper Generalist who won’t Get Bogged Down In Pointless Detail.
( https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2005/126.html ) but in my naivety I'd always thought a "... a Bill containing any provision to extend the maximum duration of Parliament beyond five years..." would be construed very widely given its importance.
In the wake of the release of "Getting Over New Labour," a highly anticipated publication authored by Dr Karl Pike of Queen Mary University of London, political pundits and Labour enthusiasts are delving into the intricate web of the party's history and its lingering impact on contemporary politics.
...
At the heart of "Getting Over New Labour" lies the question that has haunted the party since its departure from government in 2010: what are the lessons of the New Labour years? Dr Pike, a former advisor to senior Labour figures and now an academic at QMUL, dissects the efforts of successive party leaders – from Ed Miliband to Jeremy Corbyn and now Keir Starmer – in reshaping Labour's ideology, internal democracy, organizational structure, and leadership style.
https://www.qmul.ac.uk/media/news/2024/hss/new-labours-ongoing-legacy-dr-karl-pike-analyses-the-battles-over-the-new-labour-years-and-how-they-affected-the-party-long-after-blair-and-brown-left-office.html
Starmer's friends therefore are: Tory to Lab switchers, every other party that isn't Tory, apathy, and active hostility to all politics. Starmer's approach recognises all of this.
Another issue is that what you say about bullshitters is also true of people who *tried* to do the right thing. Can you look back at a decision you made in business a decade or more ago and defend it robustly? Especially if you now know it was the wrong decision?
I wouldn't want to give evidence in this environment. I fear, like many inquiries, it's findings will not get to the important facts, and instead excoriate people. In some cases, unjustly.
And I say that as someone in favour of evolution over revolution (i.e. slow change)...
Proposals to free some inmates serving sentences of less than four years will be tabled amid overcrowding crisis"
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/05/16/snp-prisoners-criminals-released-overcrowding/
"Donald Trump's former liar..."
One of the best bosses I've ever worked for knew f-all about tech; but he ran a successful-ish tech company. Because he trusted people. You never lied to him, as if you did and he found out, you were out. No argument. No discussion, Out. As such, he had people around him who knew their business, and he could trust to tell him the truth. they were not yes-men.
You could tell him the project was f***ed, and he would listen calmly and ask what could be done (it was best to tell him it was f***ed and have at least one potential way forwards...). But if you said things were fine when you knew they were not... he would go ballistic when he found out.
I liked him.
Edinburgh tramways have been a political football for about 2 decades. And the Transport Portfolio has been, shall we say, a bit of a mess - best advice and experience form elsewhere was ignored, and safety been neglected in some ways to save money. Plus disputes between Edinburgh Council and Holyrood.
On the Roseburn Path, alternatives have not been well-considered relative to first-ideas-that-occurred.
Down here active travel is a political football, with the Ashfield Independent District Council campaigning against improvements proposed by the Conservative County Council, to the extent that they have successfully undermined certain schemes which would have been fully funded by Govt and County.
One difference is that Edinburgh has more, and more more vociferous, activists, than we do. That's one reason why my focus is mainly on things I can force through eventually via threat of legal action should it be necessary.
And the text says *proposals*.
Some of that was a result of getting distracted by Iraq, some was down to trying something different in response to a policy failure (the various NHS reforms might be an example of this), some of it was simply down to a previous minister's pet project being dumped after a reshuffle - and the ever-present TB-GB fighting meant there were a lot of reshuffles.
It's interesting that Cameron avoided lots of this in his first term - partly as a result of consciously trying to avoid New Labour's mistakes... but mostly, I suspect, by the coalition agreement imposing some external structure (and/or a straitjacket, depending on how you view it).
It's also obvious that from today's evidence there's not much that shows Sewell being actively culpable.
The UK’s financial watchdog has charged seven reality TV stars, including former Love Island contestants and cast members from The Only Way is Essex (Towie), with promoting an unauthorised foreign exchange trading scheme on Instagram.
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has brought charges against nine people in a crackdown on “finfluencers” who have a combined follower count of 4.5 million on the social media platform.
The former Love island contestants Biggs Chris, 32, Jamie Clayton, 32, Rebecca Gormley, 26, and Eva Zapico, 25, face one count of issuing unauthorised communications of financial promotions, an offence under the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 that is punishable by a fine and up to two years in jail.
The Towie stars Lauren Goodger, 37, and Yazmin Oukhellou, 30, face the same charge along with Scott Timlin, 36, a former winner of Celebrity Big Brother.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/may/16/love-island-towie-stars-charged-promoting-trading-scheme-instagram
One of the things I really liked about Cameron's ministry was that he kept people in their jobs for years. If Starmer can do the same, it'll be a start. Constant chopping and changing ministers is really detrimental to good governance IMO.
If he'd actually said "good" (or "book") rather than "goo'" (or "boo'"), then the word would have been much clearer despite the poor sound causing the initial consonant to be clipped.
Mind you, Peston's interpretation would still have been nonsense as it relies on Judi Love wanting the election to clash with her holiday.
Nothing lasts forever, even cold November rain
I’ve long been of the view it’s going to be a “Chuck the Buggers Out” election - the only question remaining whether the Tories were going out of the second floor window or the tenth.
It’s looking increasingly like the tenth.
Exclusive: The Scottish Greens have expelled a number of members who declared "sex is a biological reality".
An official complaint accused them of making the party less safe for trans and non-binary members.
https://x.com/holyrooddaily/status/1791117209839767879?
'We are hopeful of better news from the Telford suburbs'
'Let's wait and see the actual votes being counted'
'That's not the message we were getting on the doorstep'
'Oh ffffffffffffffucccccck'
With every lie vetted by the Liar-in-Chief.
And it worked, to an extent - but Lansley at Health and Gove at Education proved that a potential PM can't just delegate and hope for the best.
It's not really a model that Starmer will be able to follow, either - the bottleneck in the pool of Labour MP's likely means that he'll need to try to promote some of his new intake much faster than Blair or Cameron did.
Always thinking that Starmer.
BTW (also FYI) here is an interesting sample of Leslie Sewell's "leadership" at as (alleged) PO CIO:
The Post Office CIO Lesley Sewell CIO Q&A
https://www.cio.com/article/200302/the-post-office-cio-lesley-sewell-cio-q-a.html
A few excepts:
Q: How would you describe your leadership style?
A: Visionary, inclusive, pacesetting, clear on outcomes and goals, coaching, decisive and people focused.
Q: What key technologies do you consider enable transformation?
A: In the context of Post Office our Digital platform will be a key enabler and at the heart of our strategy. Building it in such a way that we utilise all aspects of open, cloud and COTs products to give us flexibility is key. In addition, fixing the infrastructure around our end user capability.
SSI - "In addition"!
To be precise, I'm thinking the 12 of December. Again.
Rationale: Sunak doesn't want to pull the trigger on ending the Tory Government any sooner than he has to, which gives him the impulse to run as long as he can.
Accepting the fact that a campaign over Christmas would indeed be desperate, and look desperate, and piss people off still further, it's about as late as he realistically can go.
He can kind of justify (or at least pretend to justify) going that late on the grounds that the last one was December 12th, after all, so it's the five year point, and we all accepted a 12th December election last time.
Yes, it'll make things harder for activists, but that's more a Labour and Lib Dem problem than a Tory one, because they don't exactly have many activists left, so fewer activists all round makes for a more air-war/Royal Mail delivery campaign, which they'll be able to handle, and partly mitigate their activist disadvantage.
~15% on remand and doing nothing about building capacity in the 2 years since it was been clear are imo the underlying cause in England.
It's a Genocide
@NeilDotObrien
Oh no, firms are having to hire people from the UK, what a tragedy"
https://twitter.com/NeilDotObrien/status/1790809919425220906
As for the PO, the simple chronology mostly clears her. She joined in 2010, more than a decade after Horizon was installed, and years into the cavalcade of bent prosecutions
that resulted therefrom. From bitter experience that there is not an organisation in this jurisdiction that willingly allows IT anywhere near legal decision making.
She should have stood up to management when they started doing shit she didn’t agree with. But that takes guts. No one knows what they would have done in that situation.
Don't tell me I've spent my life savings on a pup!
Cue, everything going wrong.
“ oh that’s not fair”
You fucking idiot.
I believe you are the aforesaid fucking idiot if you think 35000 civilians are Hamas