Call Me. Dave. – politicalbetting.com
Call Me. Dave. – politicalbetting.com
GUARDIAN: Cameron faces inquiry into Greensill lobbying scandal #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/Huaxg7YUdg
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The good thing is that the civil service and ministers collectively judged - having looked at it - that Cameron was peddling something they didn’t want to buy.
It actually seems to be that the government and ministers behaved properly here. The person who - once again - demonstrates that he simply lacks judgement and didn’t do the hard graft necessary was Cameron.
No doubt the ‘enquiry’ will satisfy you, too.
Already happened - it appeared in Cameron’s statement. In this case, “There are important lessons to be learnt...”
... What no-one will look at is what is happening now. If Greensill’s supply chain finance schemes ( all that “free money“) were of questionable benefit in the past, why is the government currently still planning to use similar schemes? Was Greensill really the problem? Or is there a fundamental issue with these schemes when used by government? Why are they needed? What problem are they seeking to solve and why is government not coming up with its own solution? If there was no rationale for them then, what’s changed now? What is the benefit to taxpayers? And who else will benefit and by how much? Is this value for money?
Who is asking these questions? Not the opposition. Not the Treasury Select Committee. And not the Boardman Inquiry either...
David Cameron, no sympathy at all. He literally wrote the book on the ministerial lobbying rules, and knows damn well that getting the mobile phone number of a minister to message him directly on behalf of a paying company, is way out of order.
I am rather glad my career never took me any near her as an investigator. Not that I've been involved I. anything financial.
Happy to acknowledge it should I be wrong.
Asking for a friend...
As for Cameron, well, I am seriously disappointed. As for current Ministers are they really not supposed to answer the calls or texts of their former boss and PM? I would be very reluctant to have lobbying rules that were so tight. The safeguards in place seemed to have worked reasonably well although who can doubt that the default provisions on the Greensill loans will be significantly higher than those through banks? Not a happy incident but I would reserve my condemnation for Cameron, Haywood and no doubt Greensill on the current evidence.
Cameron was a fool. He has besmirched his reputation. There needs to be an enquiry into how to tighten the rules but it will be impossible to prevent PMs from using their networks. Unless you pay them a £1m pension pa and require them not to work.
The government doesn’t seem to have done anything except had a second look. I don’t have an issue with them doing that provided it’s an independent look.
It appears based on the limited information I’ve read that Greensill may have extended too large a loan to Gupta in breach of the rules. That would incur some liability if that were the case but I suspect that the government will struggle to reclaim the money.
They should have been more sceptical about the wage advance scheme for nurses but primarily because the benefit for Greensill was unclear. I can see the scheme has some utility if it avoids nurses needing payday loans (is this a big issue in that sector?). My guess that that Greensill was pump priming... they were going to raise capital to “reinvest” in this scheme but divert money to other uses. Which would have been fraud. But that wouldn’t have been the government’s responsibility. And I don’t have the issue that @Cyclefree has with the government continuing to look at the scheme with another bank - even a bad person can have good ideas.
Off topic, why Boris Johnson can thrown NI off the bus and still be supported by patriotic Brits - they haven't a frigging clue where NI is.
https://twitter.com/aoifeslattsx/status/1381041555864227841
The problem of Plutocracy shifting over to Kleptocracy is that such influence peddling, sleaze and corruption is quite complex. It needs to be a more obvious hand in the taxpayers pocket to really hit a public preoccupied with other stuff.
We have become used to sleaze and shameless behaviour from our leaders. It is hard to imagine any of this lot resigning or being sacked for avaricious incompetence. In many ways it is a return to pre-Victorian times, when government sinecures were openly sold and used for self enrichment.
The scheme do have utility and mau solve a problem - I don’t know - but it’s hardly revolutionary
Cameron should have known better, which was known by those currently in Government. They politely listened to the former Prime Minister - and then ignored him.
Is trying to mountainise this molehill, following on from the similar Big Meh of Carrie's furnishings, an admission by the media that they can't get traction on PPE acquisition contracts?
The “innovation” was “future invoice factoring”. If that had been properly disclosed to investors then they could have priced it accordingly.
But effectively the whole set up appears to have been about lying to investors to funnel money to Gupta.
With the NHS he was offering advances against wages. Useful, albeit fairly marginal. But I suspect he would have leveraged the scheme to raise more money from investors for unauthorised purposes.
Now, when I say "clever", what I actually mean is "fucked up". Because an invoice that might exist in the future, with a company you have no contractual arrangement with, is the absolute opposite of "secure".
When that much taxpayers' money is spent supporting a businessman's luxury lifestyle, one should probably ask questions. When the sums are done, I suspect one will find that maybe half the missing funds went on employing people, and the other half has disappeared.
Yep...
The suggestion that the "security" for Gupta loans was fake invoices is troubling. It shows a lack of due diligence on the part of Greensill. A non banking group turned out not to be as good as a bank at spotting inconsistencies (although it may be a bit early for the banks to be given a clean bill of health).
It seems inevitable that other loans which were issued with government guarantees will turn out to be bad. But this is part of a wider picture where the government was providing massive "bounce back" loans and guarantees across the economy to stop collapse in a time of lockdown. That seems to have largely worked, the odd retail group apart, we have not seen anything like the consequences that we should for a 5-10% fall in GDP. What we will see over the coming year is a fair number of businesses going bust and such loans going bad. No doubt Rishi will get some flack for this but the consequences of not acting could have been much, much worse. Many will describe these bad loans as a "scandal" and no doubt it will be claimed that there was corruption and cronyism. We shall see and much will depend upon the extent of taxpayer largesse but so far, Greensill apart, the performance of the Treasury has been not much short of incredible.
Its also probably the app most used by non-voters.
Oh sorry, were you not referring to Cameron?
Do you know about the SoftBank's Vision Fund? They invested in Greensill (buying shares), and Greensill 'helped them out' by lending - IIRC - £140m to a SoftBank investment a month or so later. £140m of low-risk invoice financing.
That same year, the business went bust. And not a penny of the £140m was repaid.
Bear in mind this was "low risk" invoice financing.
I think that Greensill knew *exactly* what they were doing. It wasn’t crappy due diligence. It was fraud (in my view)
I said it as I see it. That the PPE contracts issue had far, far greater legs as a threat to the Party with the voters. But the media has done a half-arsed job in nailing jelly to a wall.
Didn't see that coming. Impressive. Due to us being in lockdown perhaps?
That may help significantly on relative turnout.
Far greater threat would have been if doctors and nurses etc went without PPE.
Had medics gone without PPE and there'd been problems with contracts, that could have really hurt the Party, but that money was thrown at a crisis and PPE was secured, even if it was haphazardly done, is mission accomplished during a pandemic. Especially when the same was done over vaccines etc and the country can see that the Government throwing money at issues has fixed the issues.
Its the polar opposite of what the Tories normally stand for mind, but desperate times call for desperate measures. The danger is that the public expects more normal issues to have money thrown at them in the same way going forward.
Exports “partially rebounded” by 47%... [partial, shakes head, not good]
Imports showed a “weaker rebound” of 7% [weaker, shakes head, not good]
Personally I think exports +47% and imports +7% is fantastic
His worst facet has always been his self-entitled establishment character, which he also lets drift him along into guiding his politics.
Sure, UK steel will be extremely expensive and uncompetitive but you don't want to be 100% reliant on China.
So speaks someone who has sought to be the centre of attention in everything she does !
I heard Gordon Brown talking about it on the Today programme and he saw it as a moral issue - it is. His only suggestion was that ex ministers shouldn't be allowed to lobby for 5 years. Since this happened after 4;years since Cameron was in office perhaps we should see it in that light. The more fundamental questions about what the hell are people trying to do - this is the obfuscation if PFI all over again!!
It does appear that the media have drawn a blank trying to get a story out of it, which to be honest is surprising. If the worst they've got is that a PPE supplier once donated a few quid to his local Con Club bar refurbishment fund, then that counts as a very good job by the government.
The Conservatives think they can carry out an inquiry policing themselves and everyone will just look the other way.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/apr/12/david-cameron-faces-unprecedented-inquiry-into-greensill-scandal-boris-johnson-orders-independent-investigation
She's nearly right. BoZo and chums don't think people will look the other way, they think people will not care. Mendacity is their watchword.
Why would the govt/nhs need factoring services?
Seems like parasitism to me.
Fukushima: Japan approves releasing wastewater into ocean
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-56728068
Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian urged Japan to "act in a responsible manner".
Swipe right....
Second, what the people of Britain think about NI is largely irrelevant anyway, only what the people of NI and the UK and Irish governments think about NI and is future is relevant.
Hence the current loyalist rioting in response to the Irish Sea border is far more significant
It's also why the government has held very firm on not doing any unilateral alignment deals in any area. It's a loser for us.
So let them have their border pedantry win, all it's doing is turning the public against the EU. In macro terms it's worth almost nothing and the government will be even more determined to solve the NI issues without any standards alignment. The EU will never be able to dictate terms to the UK again, eventually they'll learn this and everyone will move on and the border issues will be dedramatised. Until then expect the border pedantry to contribute and for the likes of Rochdale to tell us daily why this means the UK economy will never recover until we have unilateral alignment with the EU in all areas.
The curious thing is why they are calling Dave out on this, right now.
But it's minor. Winning the principles of separation and having clean control of our own laws without being subordinate to anyone else is worth much more.
In Brussels.
I also fail to see why Cameron, a former PM who retired relatively young, cannot make some money from lobbying work.
The question that does need answering though is whether Greensill got work without going through the normal government tender process which would be more serious
Because there is no history of Labour local government corruption going back many decades is there? It almost defines what Socialism is.
They were interested in the payday loan scheme. It can be done by any HR department but there are economies of scale in creating a single app that individual nhs trusts can use if they want.
So worth considering, albeit fairly marginal in the scheme of things
For example banks should be about providing liquidity. But very long term certain risks are better suited to pension funds who need known
income to match their outgoings. So banks have a role to play in sourcing these needs and packaging them up for the pension funds.
Clearly “done correctly” is carrying a lot of weight here.
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/coronavirus-covid-19/coronavirus-vaccination/book-coronavirus-vaccination/
The caption was, ‘and will be sir be lining his own pockets?’
But she has chosen to make the story about her instead
Cameron: Former Prime Minister engages in legal lobbying. Is rebuffed politely.
Which is a "big deal" and which isn't?
I also get the impression that large companies were/are better able to cope with the vastly increased paperwork than smaller ones.
Quite willing, of course, to be corrected.
Former PMs Brown and May for all their mistakes in power seem to be rather more austere in their approach, though they do still do paid speeches, Major made a significant amount via the Carlyle Group but is not in the Cameron or Blair category for cashing in.
Most former PMs used to go to the Lords, it seems they now largely avoid that but often look to further their business interests instead with maybe a foundation on the side eg the Blair Faith Foundation and Institute for Global Change
Partisan much.......
I think the over 40s will take 3 weeks to get to 80% completion and then 35-39 year olds will be invited in early May, 30-34 just after the middle of May. I expect everyone under 50 from next week onwards will get Pfizer or Moderna for their first doses and in May we'll add Novavax to the mix.
I don't think we'll use the J&J vaccine at all.
Don't get me wrong, I'm free market, but I'd be willing to help at least one smelting works ticking over - just for resilience.
If we average over 1 million per day (first plus second doses) through May, I wouldn't be surprised - we've seen that the distribution and delivery system can cope with numbers on that scale, so when supply constraints disappear, there's no reason to prevent it.
And if we're getting Moderna and Novavax in wholesale fashion for first doses to add to the Pfizer and Astrazeneca second doses, supply constraints should be far less of an issue.
We could easily end May with every adult first-dosed and the majority of Groups 1-9 (30 million or so) double-dosed..
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/surge-testing-to-be-deployed-in-wandsworth-and-lambeth
But, as usual, comes across as a pound shop Blair.
Blair had JP Morgan giving him millions while Cameron has the Greensill humiliation.