Hunt? Too Coalition era, May era, yesterday's coming man. Would be like wingnut Davis standing again after Cameron stood down, a look backwards. He's too posh, too home counties, too Cameron frankly. He'd scare the horses amongst the new support they've garnered. He might save half a dozen threatened in the blue wall. Hunt vs Starmer and we are all asleep by elevenses. Utterly unispirational. Way too much a retrograde step. Lump on.
Yesterday's sequel to the disastrous failed river crossing.
https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1524974467146866690 On May 12, the 🇺🇦artillery destroyed another 🇷🇺pontoon bridge and equipment. 4 days of 🇷🇺unsuccessful attempts to cross the Siverskyi Donets river in Luhansk Oblast saw the 🇷🇺losses of more than 70 units of equipment & 2 battalions of infantry & engineers...
A thought for the Armchair Admiral Generals - a lot has been made of the dangers in modern warfare of fixed positions. Parking your artillery in a neat line and setting up the tea tent is now considered suicide.
What about military bridges and other military engineering? - they create fixed, obvious targets.
What will be the solution there?
They are temporary expedients. The Russians are trying to capture a strategic town which controls several river crossings nearby. So far they've failed.
The lesson here is probably more about the huge disparity in battlefield information available to the two sides. Not in Russia's favour.
Johnson wants to restore civil service numbers to 2016 levels (cutting 90k jobs) to save £3.5bn a year. The additional numbers were employed to process Brexit.
More proof it has cost, rather than saved us money.
Actually many of those people were hired to deal with the pandemic, but hey ho, I don't expect integrity from you.
Brexit is done and the pandemic is done, so people hired to deal with that should be let go.
Is the pandemic done? Well, COVID-19 isn't done. I still have regular meetings with UK civil servants on COVID-19 and expect to do so for many months to come. I have a meeting later today to bid for some Govt money on a COVID-19 vaccination project.
People are still dying. We have an ongoing vaccination programme to run. COVID-19 is never going away. Hopefully, we'll get to the point where it is like the flu, but people seem to forget that the flu is a major seasonal infectious disease that causes considerably mortality and morbidity (including lost working days). Civil servants are employed to deal with the flu, with public health information programmes, with vaccination programmes, with managing the NHS response. If COVID-19 becomes like another flu, then take all those flu jobs and double them.
Boris Johnson promised that we would build a world-leading health security agency to prepare for future pandemics. You can't deliver on that promise with pre-pandemic staffing. So, which is it? Was Boris (gasp) lying? Or do you accept that we will need more civil servants working in health security? We don't need as many people working on COVID-19 as in 2020-1, sure, but we can't go back to 2016 levels.
Is Brexit done? One could quibble that we haven't worked out a post-Brexit relationship with the EU yet, as the continued politicking over Northern Ireland shows. But let's presume that will settle down eventually. What did Brexit mean? It meant, I understand, taking back control. Let's take as an example pesticide regulation. This is done for the EU in Parma. Part of what we paid to the EU was for this function and there were British people among the staff working in Parma. But we've taken back control now. We now control the UK's pesticide regulatory system. That's what the Brexiteers wanted, I understand.
OK, so whatever we choose to do with our now independent pesticide regulatory system, we need civil servants to man that system, forever. Taking back control means what was once done by Eurocrats now has to be done by UK bureaucrats. There is a necessary, permanent increase in UK civil servant jobs associated with Brexit.
So, COVID-19 and Brexit both require higher civil service numbers in perpetuity.
Rees-Mogg wasn't specifically referring to civil servants in the health area was he?
If you're returning civil servant numbers to 2016 levels, but you have more health-related civil servants, then you'll have to cut services elsewhere. Is the Government going to tell us what services it proposes to chop? Because the right-wing press like the sound of cutting numbers, but voters are rather less keen when services vanish.
The balance between the public sector and the private sector is the important thing.
I don't know if anyone heard J R-M on radio 4 this morning but he was dreadful. He's an ongoing car crash......
While I was listening I wondered why Johnson would choose someone as unattractive to be the face of the Party. The only thing I could think-and it was a long shot-was that Rees Mogg is the closest in accent and demeanour to Johnson himself and he thought the comparison might show him in a good light.
If any of the civil servants are unhappy with the situation, why don't they quit and get a better job elsewhere?
Then the 91,000 surplus will be gone, and the former civil servants will be able to be happy in a new role elsewhere, everybody wins.
...except perhaps people who wanted an effective civil service, since disproportionately the good people will have left and government will be left with those not confident of finding a job elsewhere...
I despair at the loss of talent and organisational memory that I have seen happen over and over again in the NHS and other health-related parts of Government. Good companies thrive by supporting their workforce: this is a lesson Government never learns, treating civil servants as political footballs, always to be re-organised or, when you want Daily Mail headlines, disparaged or just sacked.
The state isn't a company though.
It needs to be slimmed down, the state is too big and we can't afford it. Good companies thrive better than the state does.
But, given you've offered no rebuttal, I take it you accept that Brexit and COVID-19 both mean necessary increases in civil servant numbers on an ongoing basis.
Miniscule, not 90k, yes I accept.
People who are already working with annual vaccines may need to add Covid vaccines to the mix of annual vaccines already arranged. That may require some extra staff, but miniscule on the scale of the Civil Service and not 91,000.
A fair amount of speculation this morning on whether Hunt will keep his seat but, as far as I noticed, no mention of boundary changes. Does anyone know what is proposed? As obviously this is somthing that needs to be considered in the calculations.
You can also discern it is very good news for him.
Even if the boundary changes go through on those numbers the combined LD and Labour voteshare would still be comfortably more than the Tory voteshare in Surrey SW
Yes but. That's true for many, many Tory seats.
The rather key thing is that the notional result has Labour very close to the Lib Dems. That's unlikely to all go yellow in a general election contest.
EC are extrapolating national polling to the wards. What you need to consider is Hunt is 12% down on his Surrey SW % and in affluent blue wall as per the locals are they really going to Lab??
A fair amount of speculation this morning on whether Hunt will keep his seat but, as far as I noticed, no mention of boundary changes. Does anyone know what is proposed? As obviously this is somthing that needs to be considered in the calculations.
You can also discern it is very good news for him.
Even if the boundary changes go through on those numbers the combined LD and Labour voteshare would still be comfortably more than the Tory voteshare in Surrey SW
Yes but. That's true for many, many Tory seats.
The rather key thing is that the notional result has Labour very close to the Lib Dems. That's unlikely to all go yellow in a general election contest.
EC are extrapolating national polling to the wards. What you need to consider is Hunt is 12% down on his Surrey SW % and in affluent blue wall as per the locals are they really going to Lab??
Are Labour going to do as badly as they did under Corbyn?
I don't know if anyone heard J R-M on radio 4 this morning but he was dreadful. He's an ongoing car crash......
While I was listening I wondered why Johnson would choose someone as unattractive to be the face of the Party. The only thing I could think-and it was a long shot-was that Rees Mogg is the closest in accent and demeanour to Johnson himself and he thought the comparison might show him in a good light.
It's just one old Etonian giving another one a job, standard operating procedure.
It's pathetic, it really is. Whenever this government is in a bit of trouble, it lashes out in the sure knowledge that enough people will agree that the targets are legitimate.
This week's targets for lashing out are a) the EU, and b) the Civil Service. Next week? Who knows. Woke universities probably, then the French, then asylum seekers. Let's feed the hate, they think. It's so divisive and dangerous for the body politic.
The 2 minutes hate is one of the "benefits of Brexit"...
All good targets, to my mind. We need more of them
Don't understand UKG's game plan on the Northern Ireland Protocol, assuming they want some kind of outcome beyond creating suitably hysterical headlines in their client press.
If they want to reduce trade frictions, their actions are increasing them. They could do things to reduce checks across the Irish Sea in coordination with the EU but they choose not to do them. Meanwhile unilateral action will shut down any EU cooperation. It's also guaranteed to create greater instability, while they disingenuously claim to protect the GFA. Unlike the EU Commission, UKG has made no effort to get the various stakeholders on board: politicians in NI, business in NI, Irish government etc.
Oh really?
What has the EU Commission done to get the Unionist politicians on board?
I have been saying here what the solution is for five years and its deceptively simple: No checks.
We do no checks in GB/NI, no checks NI/Republic, and no alignment.
If we do that, we don't need EU "cooperation". They're bluffing and always have been, they're not going to erect a border on the island of Ireland and if we don't erect one in the Irish Sea then what exactly is the issue that threatens the GFA?
Yeah, but they are not going to get that, so trade friction will definitely go up, while there are things UKG can do reduce trade frictions that they choose not to do. Also they are not doing the stakeholder engagement, as I said,
I don't know if anyone heard J R-M on radio 4 this morning but he was dreadful. He's an ongoing car crash......
While I was listening I wondered why Johnson would choose someone as unattractive to be the face of the Party. The only thing I could think-and it was a long shot-was that Rees Mogg is the closest in accent and demeanour to Johnson himself and he thought the comparison might show him in a good light.
It's just one old Etonian giving another one a job, standard operating procedure.
But their combined efforts are going to lose both of them their jobs
If any of the civil servants are unhappy with the situation, why don't they quit and get a better job elsewhere?
Then the 91,000 surplus will be gone, and the former civil servants will be able to be happy in a new role elsewhere, everybody wins.
...except perhaps people who wanted an effective civil service, since disproportionately the good people will have left and government will be left with those not confident of finding a job elsewhere...
I despair at the loss of talent and organisational memory that I have seen happen over and over again in the NHS and other health-related parts of Government. Good companies thrive by supporting their workforce: this is a lesson Government never learns, treating civil servants as political footballs, always to be re-organised or, when you want Daily Mail headlines, disparaged or just sacked.
The state isn't a company though.
It needs to be slimmed down, the state is too big and we can't afford it. Good companies thrive better than the state does.
But, given you've offered no rebuttal, I take it you accept that Brexit and COVID-19 both mean necessary increases in civil servant numbers on an ongoing basis.
Miniscule, not 90k, yes I accept.
People who are already working with annual vaccines may need to add Covid vaccines to the mix of annual vaccines already arranged. That may require some extra staff, but miniscule on the scale of the Civil Service and not 91,000.
And all the functions that used to be done at an EU level? Pesticide regulation? Pharmaceutical approvals? Financial regulations? Handling intellectual property rights? Police and judicial cooperation with EU countries? Data protection? Nuclear safeguards? Etc. etc.
I don't know if anyone heard J R-M on radio 4 this morning but he was dreadful. He's an ongoing car crash......
While I was listening I wondered why Johnson would choose someone as unattractive to be the face of the Party. The only thing I could think-and it was a long shot-was that Rees Mogg is the closest in accent and demeanour to Johnson himself and he thought the comparison might show him in a good light.
JRM is a decades ago Tory party hangover. His act has gone very stale, and we are left with a minor character from a Dickens novel inserted purely to personify some grotesque characteristic of man
Hunt is not the only politician on manoeuvres. Here in Tallinn the Juri Ratas, leader of Kesk, the junior government coalition partner is attempting to disrupt the government and return to power. So far he has failed and the outcry at his devious and conniving strategy is going to seriously damage Kesk.
Unfortunately the next election is not due until March 5th next year, and the government has been badly undermined, so it is possible that Kaja Kallas, who is achieving new heights of popularity may still have to stand down at some point. From near parity in December, the polls now show Reform on 32% and Kesk on 17%.
I don't know if anyone heard J R-M on radio 4 this morning but he was dreadful. He's an ongoing car crash......
While I was listening I wondered why Johnson would choose someone as unattractive to be the face of the Party. The only thing I could think-and it was a long shot-was that Rees Mogg is the closest in accent and demeanour to Johnson himself and he thought the comparison might show him in a good light.
You’ve never particularly mastered the literary art of the “unexpected opening line” or the “arresting first concept” have you?
I don't know if anyone heard J R-M on radio 4 this morning but he was dreadful. He's an ongoing car crash......
While I was listening I wondered why Johnson would choose someone as unattractive to be the face of the Party. The only thing I could think-and it was a long shot-was that Rees Mogg is the closest in accent and demeanour to Johnson himself and he thought the comparison might show him in a good light.
As a justification for breaking your own rules, this is perhaps a bit thin.
Asked about the latest round of fines for Covid rule-breaking in Downing Street, Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg says: "We need to look at whether these rules were right in the first place"
A fair amount of speculation this morning on whether Hunt will keep his seat but, as far as I noticed, no mention of boundary changes. Does anyone know what is proposed? As obviously this is somthing that needs to be considered in the calculations.
You can also discern it is very good news for him.
Even if the boundary changes go through on those numbers the combined LD and Labour voteshare would still be comfortably more than the Tory voteshare in Surrey SW
Yes but. That's true for many, many Tory seats.
The rather key thing is that the notional result has Labour very close to the Lib Dems. That's unlikely to all go yellow in a general election contest.
Yep. You need a clear and obviously credible challenger for tactical voting to work. And even then it isn't as simple as adding up all the opposition votes. Dominic Raab is in far more trouble imho. It's closer. has an obvious challenger and is nearer to London. Boundary changes are to his disadvantage. Even though there is a much tinier Labour vote to squeeze.
Perhaps you thought the Conservative party took partygate seriously. Last night a champagne bottle signed by @BorisJohnson was donated to a charity event in Hertfordshire by local MP and Tory party chairman @OliverDowden.
Is there a remote possibility that the description wasn't written by Boris or by Dowden, but was written by someone working for the charity hosting the event who isn't a fan of theirs?
"Mr Dowden, who has been the MP for Hertsmere since 2015 and co-chairman of the Conservative Party since 2021, confirmed he donated the item – but had no knowledge of the description.
The MP’s spokesperson said: “This item was donated in good faith several months ago for a local charity auction.
It's pathetic, it really is. Whenever this government is in a bit of trouble, it lashes out in the sure knowledge that enough people will agree that the targets are legitimate.
This week's targets for lashing out are a) the EU, and b) the Civil Service. Next week? Who knows. Woke universities probably, then the French, then asylum seekers. Let's feed the hate, they think. It's so divisive and dangerous for the body politic.
The 2 minutes hate is one of the "benefits of Brexit"...
All good targets, to my mind. We need more of them
Yesterday's sequel to the disastrous failed river crossing.
https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1524974467146866690 On May 12, the 🇺🇦artillery destroyed another 🇷🇺pontoon bridge and equipment. 4 days of 🇷🇺unsuccessful attempts to cross the Siverskyi Donets river in Luhansk Oblast saw the 🇷🇺losses of more than 70 units of equipment & 2 battalions of infantry & engineers...
A thought for the Armchair Admiral Generals - a lot has been made of the dangers in modern warfare of fixed positions. Parking your artillery in a neat line and setting up the tea tent is now considered suicide.
What about military bridges and other military engineering? - they create fixed, obvious targets.
What will be the solution there?
They are temporary expedients. The Russians are trying to capture a strategic town which controls several river crossings nearby. So far they've failed.
The lesson here is probably more about the huge disparity in battlefield information available to the two sides. Not in Russia's favour.
What I mean is this - we have an example of a battlefield with continuous, full spectrum surveillance. That is, instead of a once a day spy flight, we have 24/7 (probably) coverage from a variety of systems. See JSTARS and the first Gulf War. Instead of occasional picture, the West (and probably the Ukrainians) are seeing what is happening. Near real time.
When you tie that to the target generating and allocating system that the Ukrainians are supposed to be using (described the other day) - the gap between starting to assemble your bridge and steel rain could be *minutes*.
In this case, it must have been hours, since the bridge was in place. Or did they wait to get the whole bridge, the engineers and the equipment crossing it?
A fair amount of speculation this morning on whether Hunt will keep his seat but, as far as I noticed, no mention of boundary changes. Does anyone know what is proposed? As obviously this is somthing that needs to be considered in the calculations.
You can also discern it is very good news for him.
Even if the boundary changes go through on those numbers the combined LD and Labour voteshare would still be comfortably more than the Tory voteshare in Surrey SW
Yes but. That's true for many, many Tory seats.
The rather key thing is that the notional result has Labour very close to the Lib Dems. That's unlikely to all go yellow in a general election contest.
EC are extrapolating national polling to the wards. What you need to consider is Hunt is 12% down on his Surrey SW % and in affluent blue wall as per the locals are they really going to Lab??
Are Labour going to do as badly as they did under Corbyn?
No but look at raw data to give you some idea of where things may go Surrey SW - Hunt 53%, LD 38%. OK new boundaries but now Hunt 41, LD 28 and big labour recovery? In Surrey SW and Hampshire East? They will do better, yes, in line with national polling but the LDs will gain ground if the Tories are falling back. I'm not trying to be Sammy the Sage but those are the factors I'd consider. Surrey SW and Hampshire East giving Lab 23%??
These people were hired to deal with Brexit the pandemic...
Aye, right.
What part of Brexit is done and the pandemic is done are you struggling to wrap your head around.
If Brexit is done, and the pandemic is done, we can go back 2016 levels of staff.
The civil servants are needed to oversee the post Brexit environment, where all kind of regulatory functions have been repatriated from the EU to the UK and where new regulatory frictions, eg at the UK border, have been created. Not to oversee the act of Brexit, which is over. This is why the whole spiel about saving money by leaving the EU was nonsense (the European Commission is actually a remarkably lean and efficient piece of government machinery).
Only the other day we were being told that the Treasury was having to outsource a large part of its legal work relating to the post-Brexit financial services sector to Hogan Lovells because it did not have the staff to do it. So clearly in some areas we do not have enough civil servants with the right skills. Outsourcing to a City law firm will not be cheap at all.
A sensible government which was genuinely concerned about cost effectiveness would ensure that it has high quality lawyers on its staff to do such an important part of government work. But somehow I doubt we will be hearing Boris or JRM demanding the hiring of more government lawyers.
Not necessarily. Is the legal work a permanent, on-going requirement, or a one-off temporary issue?
If the latter, outsourcing makes perfect sense. There's a reason why firms can outsource legal work rather than having in-house lawyers.
Ongoing restructuring and regulation of the financial services sector is not an one-off temporary issue but an ongoing key part of the Treasury's functions. Even if you bring in external specialist advisors you still need high quality in-house people because it is not simply giving the advice which is needed but understanding its implications for other policy areas / legislation / how it fits with international obligations / proposed trade treaties / prioritising within the legislative programme / liaison with the other government departments involved - the BoE, the FCA, the PRA etc.
It has been happening for the 40 years I have been working in the sector and before then too.
But perhaps you know different.
No, I don't know different, which is why I asked the question.
If its ongoing, then it probably makes sense to have in house to me.
But if the level of demand isn't consistent but varies like a sine curve then it'd make sense to have a mix of in house and outsourcing at the peak of demand.
Well, it is ongoing. It matters getting it right. I don't have an issue with seeking expertise on particular issues. But wholesale outsourcing of such an important function for a key sector is not sensible - either in financial terms or in terms of embedding knowledge at the heart of government so that it is available all the time.
The loss of institutional memory is one of the reasons why the same failings occur over and over again. People don't know that the issues have been considered before, don't have any well of experience or wisdom to draw on, don't even realise that they need to get help. And so the same blunders recur. I have seen it so often.
Good financial regulation matters. And it matters now in a post-Brexit world. We should make sure we get it right.
I see the DUP are now refusing to participate in the election of a Speaker at Stormont. What is it with these clowns?
Tbf. They'd be filling a position with no function. First off the mark for job cutting in the public sector. Maybe the Speaker's salary along with the DUP MLA's could go towards tax cuts?
A fair amount of speculation this morning on whether Hunt will keep his seat but, as far as I noticed, no mention of boundary changes. Does anyone know what is proposed? As obviously this is somthing that needs to be considered in the calculations.
You can also discern it is very good news for him.
Even if the boundary changes go through on those numbers the combined LD and Labour voteshare would still be comfortably more than the Tory voteshare in Surrey SW
Yes but. That's true for many, many Tory seats.
The rather key thing is that the notional result has Labour very close to the Lib Dems. That's unlikely to all go yellow in a general election contest.
EC are extrapolating national polling to the wards. What you need to consider is Hunt is 12% down on his Surrey SW % and in affluent blue wall as per the locals are they really going to Lab??
Are Labour going to do as badly as they did under Corbyn?
Nationally, no.
In certain places, very probably. In 2019, left wing voters in Chesham + Amersham, or in North Shropshire, hadn't really forgiven the Lib Dems for their role in coalition. Now, for whatever coughborisjohnsoncough reason, they largely have.
The nature of FPTP with three parties means that the tension in the tactical wind/unwind matters an awful lot- maybe more than the total number of votes for each party. (See 2015 and 2017; the Conservative share went up under TMthethenPM but the seat count went down. Or 2010 and 2015; the Labour vote share went up under MiliEd, but the seat count went down.)
Public servants, Whitehall, being told by PM that 91,000 are surplus to requirements and a pay rise of 3% is sufficient when inflation is heading for 10%. They’re also being told they are slackers if they work from home. Morale among public servants being tested, to put it mildly https://twitter.com/Peston/status/1525012331293511680
Lucky the Government doesn't need goodwill from civil servants to advance any of its agenda...
You mean like those that partied in Downing Street and Whitehall
A good start would be by sacking each and everyone of them
Glad to see you aren't condemning a hundred thousand on the basis of a couple of hundred.
And even some of the partiers will be doing a job that needs doing - sure, sack them all, but some will need replacing, so not much progress toward the target number.
I also wonder how the industrial tribunals would go if BigG were HR manager. Sure, some got FPN, but is that sufficient for instant dismissal? Especially if each event was sanctioned/ordered by senior management and political management.
The defenders of Mr J et al tell us a FPN is like a parking offence - but that wouldn't be sufficient for summary dismissal in itself, even if in the government car. Bollocking and perhaps warning, I'd think.
I am fed up with the way partygate is being run by the police. we are seeing victimisation of one set of people - those at No 10 with investigations that are not happening to any other people in the country, aside of the ridiculous Starmer event (so yes they are being victimised too). The level of the offences is so tiny and the money and time being put into it is totally out of proportion.
No-one else will ever be investigated for a lock down breach from 2020 to 2021. No-one. Those given FPN's should really be contesting their cases in a court of law. I strongly suspect most would win. Sunak for sure.
They were wrong to have behaved as they did. Yes government made the rules, but they were stupid, badly written rules which NO-ONE to this day fully understands. And yet partygate is dragging on and on over trivial offences. And we wonder why politicians get frustrated at the media.
"No-one else will ever be investigated for a lock down breach from 2020 to 2021." On a PBpedantry point - the wallpaper lady; and SKS et al ...
In the spirit of pragmatism and the PMs ambitious target of getting rid of 90,000 within the government, I would suggest we can make a start with Mr Johnson leaving. 1 down, 89,999 to go.
Yesterday's sequel to the disastrous failed river crossing.
https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1524974467146866690 On May 12, the 🇺🇦artillery destroyed another 🇷🇺pontoon bridge and equipment. 4 days of 🇷🇺unsuccessful attempts to cross the Siverskyi Donets river in Luhansk Oblast saw the 🇷🇺losses of more than 70 units of equipment & 2 battalions of infantry & engineers...
A thought for the Armchair Admiral Generals - a lot has been made of the dangers in modern warfare of fixed positions. Parking your artillery in a neat line and setting up the tea tent is now considered suicide.
What about military bridges and other military engineering? - they create fixed, obvious targets.
What will be the solution there?
They are temporary expedients. The Russians are trying to capture a strategic town which controls several river crossings nearby. So far they've failed.
The lesson here is probably more about the huge disparity in battlefield information available to the two sides. Not in Russia's favour.
What I mean is this - we have an example of a battlefield with continuous, full spectrum surveillance. That is, instead of a once a day spy flight, we have 24/7 (probably) coverage from a variety of systems. See JSTARS and the first Gulf War. Instead of occasional picture, the West (and probably the Ukrainians) are seeing what is happening. Near real time.
When you tie that to the target generating and allocating system that the Ukrainians are supposed to be using (described the other day) - the gap between starting to assemble your bridge and steel rain could be *minutes*.
In this case, it must have been hours, since the bridge was in place. Or did they wait to get the whole bridge, the engineers and the equipment crossing it?
This is the probable shape of future conflicts.
I'm not a military strategist, but I guess you'd need to look at scenarios with more evenly matched opponents to draw useful conclusions.
Johnson wants to restore civil service numbers to 2016 levels (cutting 90k jobs) to save £3.5bn a year. The additional numbers were employed to process Brexit.
More proof it has cost, rather than saved us money.
Actually many of those people were hired to deal with the pandemic, but hey ho, I don't expect integrity from you.
Brexit is done and the pandemic is done, so people hired to deal with that should be let go.
Is the pandemic done? Well, COVID-19 isn't done. I still have regular meetings with UK civil servants on COVID-19 and expect to do so for many months to come. I have a meeting later today to bid for some Govt money on a COVID-19 vaccination project.
People are still dying. We have an ongoing vaccination programme to run. COVID-19 is never going away. Hopefully, we'll get to the point where it is like the flu, but people seem to forget that the flu is a major seasonal infectious disease that causes considerably mortality and morbidity (including lost working days). Civil servants are employed to deal with the flu, with public health information programmes, with vaccination programmes, with managing the NHS response. If COVID-19 becomes like another flu, then take all those flu jobs and double them.
Boris Johnson promised that we would build a world-leading health security agency to prepare for future pandemics. You can't deliver on that promise with pre-pandemic staffing. So, which is it? Was Boris (gasp) lying? Or do you accept that we will need more civil servants working in health security? We don't need as many people working on COVID-19 as in 2020-1, sure, but we can't go back to 2016 levels.
Is Brexit done? One could quibble that we haven't worked out a post-Brexit relationship with the EU yet, as the continued politicking over Northern Ireland shows. But let's presume that will settle down eventually. What did Brexit mean? It meant, I understand, taking back control. Let's take as an example pesticide regulation. This is done for the EU in Parma. Part of what we paid to the EU was for this function and there were British people among the staff working in Parma. But we've taken back control now. We now control the UK's pesticide regulatory system. That's what the Brexiteers wanted, I understand.
OK, so whatever we choose to do with our now independent pesticide regulatory system, we need civil servants to man that system, forever. Taking back control means what was once done by Eurocrats now has to be done by UK bureaucrats. There is a necessary, permanent increase in UK civil servant jobs associated with Brexit.
So, COVID-19 and Brexit both require higher civil service numbers in perpetuity.
Rees-Mogg wasn't specifically referring to civil servants in the health area was he?
If you're returning civil servant numbers to 2016 levels, but you have more health-related civil servants, then you'll have to cut services elsewhere. Is the Government going to tell us what services it proposes to chop? Because the right-wing press like the sound of cutting numbers, but voters are rather less keen when services vanish.
Anyone with “Diversity”, “Equality”, or “Inclusion” in their job title?
You mean, following the legislation passed by Parliament? And making sure we get the best persons, not just public school Oxbridge grads?
I don't know if anyone heard J R-M on radio 4 this morning but he was dreadful. He's an ongoing car crash......
While I was listening I wondered why Johnson would choose someone as unattractive to be the face of the Party. The only thing I could think-and it was a long shot-was that Rees Mogg is the closest in accent and demeanour to Johnson himself and he thought the comparison might show him in a good light.
As a justification for breaking your own rules, this is perhaps a bit thin.
Asked about the latest round of fines for Covid rule-breaking in Downing Street, Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg says: "We need to look at whether these rules were right in the first place"
Dowden’s office has now clarified, saying “This item was donated in good faith several months ago for a local charity auction. Oliver Dowden had no prior knowledge of the description and this is obviously not his view.”
These people were hired to deal with Brexit the pandemic...
Aye, right.
What part of Brexit is done and the pandemic is done are you struggling to wrap your head around.
If Brexit is done, and the pandemic is done, we can go back 2016 levels of staff.
The civil servants are needed to oversee the post Brexit environment, where all kind of regulatory functions have been repatriated from the EU to the UK and where new regulatory frictions, eg at the UK border, have been created. Not to oversee the act of Brexit, which is over. This is why the whole spiel about saving money by leaving the EU was nonsense (the European Commission is actually a remarkably lean and efficient piece of government machinery).
Only the other day we were being told that the Treasury was having to outsource a large part of its legal work relating to the post-Brexit financial services sector to Hogan Lovells because it did not have the staff to do it. So clearly in some areas we do not have enough civil servants with the right skills. Outsourcing to a City law firm will not be cheap at all.
A sensible government which was genuinely concerned about cost effectiveness would ensure that it has high quality lawyers on its staff to do such an important part of government work. But somehow I doubt we will be hearing Boris or JRM demanding the hiring of more government lawyers.
Not necessarily. Is the legal work a permanent, on-going requirement, or a one-off temporary issue?
If the latter, outsourcing makes perfect sense. There's a reason why firms can outsource legal work rather than having in-house lawyers.
Ongoing restructuring and regulation of the financial services sector is not an one-off temporary issue but an ongoing key part of the Treasury's functions. Even if you bring in external specialist advisors you still need high quality in-house people because it is not simply giving the advice which is needed but understanding its implications for other policy areas / legislation / how it fits with international obligations / proposed trade treaties / prioritising within the legislative programme / liaison with the other government departments involved - the BoE, the FCA, the PRA etc.
It has been happening for the 40 years I have been working in the sector and before then too.
But perhaps you know different.
No, I don't know different, which is why I asked the question.
If its ongoing, then it probably makes sense to have in house to me.
But if the level of demand isn't consistent but varies like a sine curve then it'd make sense to have a mix of in house and outsourcing at the peak of demand.
Well, it is ongoing. It matters getting it right. I don't have an issue with seeking expertise on particular issues. But wholesale outsourcing of such an important function for a key sector is not sensible - either in financial terms or in terms of embedding knowledge at the heart of government so that it is available all the time.
The loss of institutional memory is one of the reasons why the same failings occur over and over again. People don't know that the issues have been considered before, don't have any well of experience or wisdom to draw on, don't even realise that they need to get help. And so the same blunders recur. I have seen it so often.
Good financial regulation matters. And it matters now in a post-Brexit world. We should make sure we get it right.
The history of railway privatisation is a key example of loss of memory when it came to maintaining the track. Whence the Hatfield derailment and the collapse of the commercial firm involved. And very serious damage to the industry, and huge disruption to travellers in the ensuing panic.
Dowden’s office has now clarified, saying “This item was donated in good faith several months ago for a local charity auction. Oliver Dowden had no prior knowledge of the description and this is obviously not his view.”
Supersonic flying over land is usually only done for genuine operational reasons, not in training.
IIRC, in the UK at least, supersonic requests go pretty high up the command chain, because it always results in noise complaints and bills for broken windows.
I don't know if anyone heard J R-M on radio 4 this morning but he was dreadful. He's an ongoing car crash......
While I was listening I wondered why Johnson would choose someone as unattractive to be the face of the Party. The only thing I could think-and it was a long shot-was that Rees Mogg is the closest in accent and demeanour to Johnson himself and he thought the comparison might show him in a good light.
A fair amount of speculation this morning on whether Hunt will keep his seat but, as far as I noticed, no mention of boundary changes. Does anyone know what is proposed? As obviously this is somthing that needs to be considered in the calculations.
You can also discern it is very good news for him.
Even if the boundary changes go through on those numbers the combined LD and Labour voteshare would still be comfortably more than the Tory voteshare in Surrey SW
Yes but. That's true for many, many Tory seats.
The rather key thing is that the notional result has Labour very close to the Lib Dems. That's unlikely to all go yellow in a general election contest.
EC are extrapolating national polling to the wards. What you need to consider is Hunt is 12% down on his Surrey SW % and in affluent blue wall as per the locals are they really going to Lab??
Are Labour going to do as badly as they did under Corbyn?
Nationally, no.
In certain places, very probably. In 2019, left wing voters in Chesham + Amersham, or in North Shropshire, hadn't really forgiven the Lib Dems for their role in coalition. Now, for whatever coughborisjohnsoncough reason, they largely have.
The nature of FPTP with three parties means that the tension in the tactical wind/unwind matters an awful lot- maybe more than the total number of votes for each party. (See 2015 and 2017; the Conservative share went up under TMthethenPM but the seat count went down. Or 2010 and 2015; the Labour vote share went up under MiliEd, but the seat count went down.)
In 2019, the LDs got 59% of the non-Tory vote in both C&A and NS, so I'm not sure that "hadn't really forgiven the Lib Dems for their role in coalition" is accurate.
In the spirit of pragmatism and the PMs ambitious target of getting rid of 90,000 within the government, I would suggest we can make a start with Mr Johnson leaving. 1 down, 89,999 to go.
HMG is looking to get rid of Civil Servants. Johnson is more of an arrogant master.
Johnson wants to restore civil service numbers to 2016 levels (cutting 90k jobs) to save £3.5bn a year. The additional numbers were employed to process Brexit.
More proof it has cost, rather than saved us money.
Actually many of those people were hired to deal with the pandemic, but hey ho, I don't expect integrity from you.
Brexit is done and the pandemic is done, so people hired to deal with that should be let go.
Is the pandemic done? Well, COVID-19 isn't done. I still have regular meetings with UK civil servants on COVID-19 and expect to do so for many months to come. I have a meeting later today to bid for some Govt money on a COVID-19 vaccination project.
People are still dying. We have an ongoing vaccination programme to run. COVID-19 is never going away. Hopefully, we'll get to the point where it is like the flu, but people seem to forget that the flu is a major seasonal infectious disease that causes considerably mortality and morbidity (including lost working days). Civil servants are employed to deal with the flu, with public health information programmes, with vaccination programmes, with managing the NHS response. If COVID-19 becomes like another flu, then take all those flu jobs and double them.
Boris Johnson promised that we would build a world-leading health security agency to prepare for future pandemics. You can't deliver on that promise with pre-pandemic staffing. So, which is it? Was Boris (gasp) lying? Or do you accept that we will need more civil servants working in health security? We don't need as many people working on COVID-19 as in 2020-1, sure, but we can't go back to 2016 levels.
Is Brexit done? One could quibble that we haven't worked out a post-Brexit relationship with the EU yet, as the continued politicking over Northern Ireland shows. But let's presume that will settle down eventually. What did Brexit mean? It meant, I understand, taking back control. Let's take as an example pesticide regulation. This is done for the EU in Parma. Part of what we paid to the EU was for this function and there were British people among the staff working in Parma. But we've taken back control now. We now control the UK's pesticide regulatory system. That's what the Brexiteers wanted, I understand.
OK, so whatever we choose to do with our now independent pesticide regulatory system, we need civil servants to man that system, forever. Taking back control means what was once done by Eurocrats now has to be done by UK bureaucrats. There is a necessary, permanent increase in UK civil servant jobs associated with Brexit.
So, COVID-19 and Brexit both require higher civil service numbers in perpetuity.
Rees-Mogg wasn't specifically referring to civil servants in the health area was he?
If you're returning civil servant numbers to 2016 levels, but you have more health-related civil servants, then you'll have to cut services elsewhere. Is the Government going to tell us what services it proposes to chop? Because the right-wing press like the sound of cutting numbers, but voters are rather less keen when services vanish.
Anyone with “Diversity”, “Equality”, or “Inclusion” in their job title?
You mean, following the legislation passed by Parliament? And making sure we get the best persons, not just public school Oxbridge grads?
EDI isn't about making sure you get the best people.
I don't know if anyone heard J R-M on radio 4 this morning but he was dreadful. He's an ongoing car crash......
While I was listening I wondered why Johnson would choose someone as unattractive to be the face of the Party. The only thing I could think-and it was a long shot-was that Rees Mogg is the closest in accent and demeanour to Johnson himself and he thought the comparison might show him in a good light.
As a justification for breaking your own rules, this is perhaps a bit thin.
Asked about the latest round of fines for Covid rule-breaking in Downing Street, Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg says: "We need to look at whether these rules were right in the first place"
Exactly! The man's brain has gone walk-about
You don't think we need to look at whether these rules were right in the first place?
Public servants, Whitehall, being told by PM that 91,000 are surplus to requirements and a pay rise of 3% is sufficient when inflation is heading for 10%. They’re also being told they are slackers if they work from home. Morale among public servants being tested, to put it mildly https://twitter.com/Peston/status/1525012331293511680
Lucky the Government doesn't need goodwill from civil servants to advance any of its agenda...
You mean like those that partied in Downing Street and Whitehall
A good start would be by sacking each and everyone of them
Glad to see you aren't condemning a hundred thousand on the basis of a couple of hundred.
And even some of the partiers will be doing a job that needs doing - sure, sack them all, but some will need replacing, so not much progress toward the target number.
I also wonder how the industrial tribunals would go if BigG were HR manager. Sure, some got FPN, but is that sufficient for instant dismissal? Especially if each event was sanctioned/ordered by senior management and political management.
The defenders of Mr J et al tell us a FPN is like a parking offence - but that wouldn't be sufficient for summary dismissal in itself, even if in the government car. Bollocking and perhaps warning, I'd think.
I am fed up with the way partygate is being run by the police. we are seeing victimisation of one set of people - those at No 10 with investigations that are not happening to any other people in the country, aside of the ridiculous Starmer event (so yes they are being victimised too). The level of the offences is so tiny and the money and time being put into it is totally out of proportion.
No-one else will ever be investigated for a lock down breach from 2020 to 2021. No-one. Those given FPN's should really be contesting their cases in a court of law. I strongly suspect most would win. Sunak for sure.
They were wrong to have behaved as they did. Yes government made the rules, but they were stupid, badly written rules which NO-ONE to this day fully understands. And yet partygate is dragging on and on over trivial offences. And we wonder why politicians get frustrated at the media.
"No-one else will ever be investigated for a lock down breach from 2020 to 2021." On a PBpedantry point - the wallpaper lady; and SKS et al ...
I thought I'd covered SKS, and wallpaper lady by implication?
Public servants, Whitehall, being told by PM that 91,000 are surplus to requirements and a pay rise of 3% is sufficient when inflation is heading for 10%. They’re also being told they are slackers if they work from home. Morale among public servants being tested, to put it mildly https://twitter.com/Peston/status/1525012331293511680
Lucky the Government doesn't need goodwill from civil servants to advance any of its agenda...
You mean like those that partied in Downing Street and Whitehall
A good start would be by sacking each and everyone of them
Glad to see you aren't condemning a hundred thousand on the basis of a couple of hundred.
And even some of the partiers will be doing a job that needs doing - sure, sack them all, but some will need replacing, so not much progress toward the target number.
I also wonder how the industrial tribunals would go if BigG were HR manager. Sure, some got FPN, but is that sufficient for instant dismissal? Especially if each event was sanctioned/ordered by senior management and political management.
The defenders of Mr J et al tell us a FPN is like a parking offence - but that wouldn't be sufficient for summary dismissal in itself, even if in the government car. Bollocking and perhaps warning, I'd think.
I am fed up with the way partygate is being run by the police. we are seeing victimisation of one set of people - those at No 10 with investigations that are not happening to any other people in the country, aside of the ridiculous Starmer event (so yes they are being victimised too). The level of the offences is so tiny and the money and time being put into it is totally out of proportion.
No-one else will ever be investigated for a lock down breach from 2020 to 2021. No-one. Those given FPN's should really be contesting their cases in a court of law. I strongly suspect most would win. Sunak for sure.
They were wrong to have behaved as they did. Yes government made the rules, but they were stupid, badly written rules which NO-ONE to this day fully understands. And yet partygate is dragging on and on over trivial offences. And we wonder why politicians get frustrated at the media.
"No-one else will ever be investigated for a lock down breach from 2020 to 2021." On a PBpedantry point - the wallpaper lady; and SKS et al ...
I thought I'd covered SKS, and wallpaper lady by implication?
Yep, sorry for brain fart - can't think what happened.
Dowden’s office has now clarified, saying “This item was donated in good faith several months ago for a local charity auction. Oliver Dowden had no prior knowledge of the description and this is obviously not his view.”
Phew, can go back to thinking these bunch of ****s are too stupid to be humorous and are without a hint of satirical self awareness.
I don't know if anyone heard J R-M on radio 4 this morning but he was dreadful. He's an ongoing car crash......
While I was listening I wondered why Johnson would choose someone as unattractive to be the face of the Party. The only thing I could think-and it was a long shot-was that Rees Mogg is the closest in accent and demeanour to Johnson himself and he thought the comparison might show him in a good light.
As a justification for breaking your own rules, this is perhaps a bit thin.
Asked about the latest round of fines for Covid rule-breaking in Downing Street, Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg says: "We need to look at whether these rules were right in the first place"
Exactly! The man's brain has gone walk-about
You don't think we need to look at whether these rules were right in the first place?
Mogg voted for them. If he had such a problem with them he should have voted against . Telling the public now the rules might have been wrong in an effort to mitigate no 10s rule breaking is pathetic and only going to wind people up .
Johnson wants to restore civil service numbers to 2016 levels (cutting 90k jobs) to save £3.5bn a year. The additional numbers were employed to process Brexit.
More proof it has cost, rather than saved us money.
Actually many of those people were hired to deal with the pandemic, but hey ho, I don't expect integrity from you.
Brexit is done and the pandemic is done, so people hired to deal with that should be let go.
Is the pandemic done? Well, COVID-19 isn't done. I still have regular meetings with UK civil servants on COVID-19 and expect to do so for many months to come. I have a meeting later today to bid for some Govt money on a COVID-19 vaccination project.
People are still dying. We have an ongoing vaccination programme to run. COVID-19 is never going away. Hopefully, we'll get to the point where it is like the flu, but people seem to forget that the flu is a major seasonal infectious disease that causes considerably mortality and morbidity (including lost working days). Civil servants are employed to deal with the flu, with public health information programmes, with vaccination programmes, with managing the NHS response. If COVID-19 becomes like another flu, then take all those flu jobs and double them.
Boris Johnson promised that we would build a world-leading health security agency to prepare for future pandemics. You can't deliver on that promise with pre-pandemic staffing. So, which is it? Was Boris (gasp) lying? Or do you accept that we will need more civil servants working in health security? We don't need as many people working on COVID-19 as in 2020-1, sure, but we can't go back to 2016 levels.
Is Brexit done? One could quibble that we haven't worked out a post-Brexit relationship with the EU yet, as the continued politicking over Northern Ireland shows. But let's presume that will settle down eventually. What did Brexit mean? It meant, I understand, taking back control. Let's take as an example pesticide regulation. This is done for the EU in Parma. Part of what we paid to the EU was for this function and there were British people among the staff working in Parma. But we've taken back control now. We now control the UK's pesticide regulatory system. That's what the Brexiteers wanted, I understand.
OK, so whatever we choose to do with our now independent pesticide regulatory system, we need civil servants to man that system, forever. Taking back control means what was once done by Eurocrats now has to be done by UK bureaucrats. There is a necessary, permanent increase in UK civil servant jobs associated with Brexit.
So, COVID-19 and Brexit both require higher civil service numbers in perpetuity.
Rees-Mogg wasn't specifically referring to civil servants in the health area was he?
If you're returning civil servant numbers to 2016 levels, but you have more health-related civil servants, then you'll have to cut services elsewhere. Is the Government going to tell us what services it proposes to chop? Because the right-wing press like the sound of cutting numbers, but voters are rather less keen when services vanish.
Anyone with “Diversity”, “Equality”, or “Inclusion” in their job title?
You mean, following the legislation passed by Parliament? And making sure we get the best persons, not just public school Oxbridge grads?
EDI isn't about making sure you get the best people.
It's a very necessary tool for any sort of organization. I've just done some refresher training as part of helpinjg out with an organization. Rather iompressed wit it, actually - very painless (vastly so, compared with myth) and some unexpected insights.
These people were hired to deal with Brexit the pandemic...
Aye, right.
What part of Brexit is done and the pandemic is done are you struggling to wrap your head around.
If Brexit is done, and the pandemic is done, we can go back 2016 levels of staff.
The civil servants are needed to oversee the post Brexit environment, where all kind of regulatory functions have been repatriated from the EU to the UK and where new regulatory frictions, eg at the UK border, have been created. Not to oversee the act of Brexit, which is over. This is why the whole spiel about saving money by leaving the EU was nonsense (the European Commission is actually a remarkably lean and efficient piece of government machinery).
Only the other day we were being told that the Treasury was having to outsource a large part of its legal work relating to the post-Brexit financial services sector to Hogan Lovells because it did not have the staff to do it. So clearly in some areas we do not have enough civil servants with the right skills. Outsourcing to a City law firm will not be cheap at all.
A sensible government which was genuinely concerned about cost effectiveness would ensure that it has high quality lawyers on its staff to do such an important part of government work. But somehow I doubt we will be hearing Boris or JRM demanding the hiring of more government lawyers.
Not necessarily. Is the legal work a permanent, on-going requirement, or a one-off temporary issue?
If the latter, outsourcing makes perfect sense. There's a reason why firms can outsource legal work rather than having in-house lawyers.
Ongoing restructuring and regulation of the financial services sector is not an one-off temporary issue but an ongoing key part of the Treasury's functions. Even if you bring in external specialist advisors you still need high quality in-house people because it is not simply giving the advice which is needed but understanding its implications for other policy areas / legislation / how it fits with international obligations / proposed trade treaties / prioritising within the legislative programme / liaison with the other government departments involved - the BoE, the FCA, the PRA etc.
It has been happening for the 40 years I have been working in the sector and before then too.
But perhaps you know different.
No, I don't know different, which is why I asked the question.
If its ongoing, then it probably makes sense to have in house to me.
But if the level of demand isn't consistent but varies like a sine curve then it'd make sense to have a mix of in house and outsourcing at the peak of demand.
Well, it is ongoing. It matters getting it right. I don't have an issue with seeking expertise on particular issues. But wholesale outsourcing of such an important function for a key sector is not sensible - either in financial terms or in terms of embedding knowledge at the heart of government so that it is available all the time.
The loss of institutional memory is one of the reasons why the same failings occur over and over again. People don't know that the issues have been considered before, don't have any well of experience or wisdom to draw on, don't even realise that they need to get help. And so the same blunders recur. I have seen it so often.
Good financial regulation matters. And it matters now in a post-Brexit world. We should make sure we get it right.
Outsourcing completely leads to loss of institutional knowledge, and control Insourcing completely means either the staff become very stretched when a major increase in work is required, or there will be excess staff in the slack times.
One answer has been found in the idea of permanent teams managing functions. When there is a "bump" in work, they bring in outside recourses (develop an application, says). The permanent staff need to have the skills that the temporary staff do - this is so that they retain the knowledge - the temporary staff provide capacity, not the knowledge as such.
Johnson wants to restore civil service numbers to 2016 levels (cutting 90k jobs) to save £3.5bn a year. The additional numbers were employed to process Brexit.
More proof it has cost, rather than saved us money.
Actually many of those people were hired to deal with the pandemic, but hey ho, I don't expect integrity from you.
Brexit is done and the pandemic is done, so people hired to deal with that should be let go.
Is the pandemic done? Well, COVID-19 isn't done. I still have regular meetings with UK civil servants on COVID-19 and expect to do so for many months to come. I have a meeting later today to bid for some Govt money on a COVID-19 vaccination project.
People are still dying. We have an ongoing vaccination programme to run. COVID-19 is never going away. Hopefully, we'll get to the point where it is like the flu, but people seem to forget that the flu is a major seasonal infectious disease that causes considerably mortality and morbidity (including lost working days). Civil servants are employed to deal with the flu, with public health information programmes, with vaccination programmes, with managing the NHS response. If COVID-19 becomes like another flu, then take all those flu jobs and double them.
Boris Johnson promised that we would build a world-leading health security agency to prepare for future pandemics. You can't deliver on that promise with pre-pandemic staffing. So, which is it? Was Boris (gasp) lying? Or do you accept that we will need more civil servants working in health security? We don't need as many people working on COVID-19 as in 2020-1, sure, but we can't go back to 2016 levels.
Is Brexit done? One could quibble that we haven't worked out a post-Brexit relationship with the EU yet, as the continued politicking over Northern Ireland shows. But let's presume that will settle down eventually. What did Brexit mean? It meant, I understand, taking back control. Let's take as an example pesticide regulation. This is done for the EU in Parma. Part of what we paid to the EU was for this function and there were British people among the staff working in Parma. But we've taken back control now. We now control the UK's pesticide regulatory system. That's what the Brexiteers wanted, I understand.
OK, so whatever we choose to do with our now independent pesticide regulatory system, we need civil servants to man that system, forever. Taking back control means what was once done by Eurocrats now has to be done by UK bureaucrats. There is a necessary, permanent increase in UK civil servant jobs associated with Brexit.
So, COVID-19 and Brexit both require higher civil service numbers in perpetuity.
Rees-Mogg wasn't specifically referring to civil servants in the health area was he?
If you're returning civil servant numbers to 2016 levels, but you have more health-related civil servants, then you'll have to cut services elsewhere. Is the Government going to tell us what services it proposes to chop? Because the right-wing press like the sound of cutting numbers, but voters are rather less keen when services vanish.
Anyone with “Diversity”, “Equality”, or “Inclusion” in their job title?
You mean, following the legislation passed by Parliament? And making sure we get the best persons, not just public school Oxbridge grads?
EDI isn't about making sure you get the best people.
I don't know if anyone heard J R-M on radio 4 this morning but he was dreadful. He's an ongoing car crash......
While I was listening I wondered why Johnson would choose someone as unattractive to be the face of the Party. The only thing I could think-and it was a long shot-was that Rees Mogg is the closest in accent and demeanour to Johnson himself and he thought the comparison might show him in a good light.
Tory members love the Mogg though.
He is the Tory Corbyn
and almost as thick, which says a lot about the type of people that are attracted to be members of the two main parties at the current time
Public servants, Whitehall, being told by PM that 91,000 are surplus to requirements and a pay rise of 3% is sufficient when inflation is heading for 10%. They’re also being told they are slackers if they work from home. Morale among public servants being tested, to put it mildly https://twitter.com/Peston/status/1525012331293511680
Lucky the Government doesn't need goodwill from civil servants to advance any of its agenda...
You mean like those that partied in Downing Street and Whitehall
A good start would be by sacking each and everyone of them
Glad to see you aren't condemning a hundred thousand on the basis of a couple of hundred.
And even some of the partiers will be doing a job that needs doing - sure, sack them all, but some will need replacing, so not much progress toward the target number.
I also wonder how the industrial tribunals would go if BigG were HR manager. Sure, some got FPN, but is that sufficient for instant dismissal? Especially if each event was sanctioned/ordered by senior management and political management.
The defenders of Mr J et al tell us a FPN is like a parking offence - but that wouldn't be sufficient for summary dismissal in itself, even if in the government car. Bollocking and perhaps warning, I'd think.
I am fed up with the way partygate is being run by the police. we are seeing victimisation of one set of people - those at No 10 with investigations that are not happening to any other people in the country, aside of the ridiculous Starmer event (so yes they are being victimised too). The level of the offences is so tiny and the money and time being put into it is totally out of proportion.
No-one else will ever be investigated for a lock down breach from 2020 to 2021. No-one. Those given FPN's should really be contesting their cases in a court of law. I strongly suspect most would win. Sunak for sure.
They were wrong to have behaved as they did. Yes government made the rules, but they were stupid, badly written rules which NO-ONE to this day fully understands. And yet partygate is dragging on and on over trivial offences. And we wonder why politicians get frustrated at the media.
There's a strong argument for it not being a police matter. The sheer number of events at Downing Street IS a legitimate political scandal though, and probably should have been judged that way.
I don't know if anyone heard J R-M on radio 4 this morning but he was dreadful. He's an ongoing car crash......
While I was listening I wondered why Johnson would choose someone as unattractive to be the face of the Party. The only thing I could think-and it was a long shot-was that Rees Mogg is the closest in accent and demeanour to Johnson himself and he thought the comparison might show him in a good light.
As a justification for breaking your own rules, this is perhaps a bit thin.
Asked about the latest round of fines for Covid rule-breaking in Downing Street, Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg says: "We need to look at whether these rules were right in the first place"
Exactly! The man's brain has gone walk-about
You don't think we need to look at whether these rules were right in the first place?
Would we have done that if a builder from Burnley was the bloke getting loads of fines rather than the PM and his mates?
Dowden’s office has now clarified, saying “This item was donated in good faith several months ago for a local charity auction. Oliver Dowden had no prior knowledge of the description and this is obviously not his view.”
Phew, can go back to thinking these bunch of ****s are too stupid to be humorous and are without a hint of satirical self awareness.
Not so sure. There's either some irony, or some confused thinking in the statement that
"the description [...] is obviously not his view"
His view is that Mr Johnson isn't a person of exemplary morality?
It's pathetic, it really is. Whenever this government is in a bit of trouble, it lashes out in the sure knowledge that enough people will agree that the targets are legitimate.
This week's targets for lashing out are a) the EU, and b) the Civil Service. Next week? Who knows. Woke universities probably, then the French, then asylum seekers. Let's feed the hate, they think. It's so divisive and dangerous for the body politic.
The 2 minutes hate is one of the "benefits of Brexit"...
All good targets, to my mind. We need more of them
Public servants, Whitehall, being told by PM that 91,000 are surplus to requirements and a pay rise of 3% is sufficient when inflation is heading for 10%. They’re also being told they are slackers if they work from home. Morale among public servants being tested, to put it mildly https://twitter.com/Peston/status/1525012331293511680
Lucky the Government doesn't need goodwill from civil servants to advance any of its agenda...
You mean like those that partied in Downing Street and Whitehall
A good start would be by sacking each and everyone of them
Glad to see you aren't condemning a hundred thousand on the basis of a couple of hundred.
And even some of the partiers will be doing a job that needs doing - sure, sack them all, but some will need replacing, so not much progress toward the target number.
I also wonder how the industrial tribunals would go if BigG were HR manager. Sure, some got FPN, but is that sufficient for instant dismissal? Especially if each event was sanctioned/ordered by senior management and political management.
The defenders of Mr J et al tell us a FPN is like a parking offence - but that wouldn't be sufficient for summary dismissal in itself, even if in the government car. Bollocking and perhaps warning, I'd think.
I am fed up with the way partygate is being run by the police. we are seeing victimisation of one set of people - those at No 10 with investigations that are not happening to any other people in the country, aside of the ridiculous Starmer event (so yes they are being victimised too). The level of the offences is so tiny and the money and time being put into it is totally out of proportion.
No-one else will ever be investigated for a lock down breach from 2020 to 2021. No-one. Those given FPN's should really be contesting their cases in a court of law. I strongly suspect most would win. Sunak for sure.
They were wrong to have behaved as they did. Yes government made the rules, but they were stupid, badly written rules which NO-ONE to this day fully understands. And yet partygate is dragging on and on over trivial offences. And we wonder why politicians get frustrated at the media.
There's a strong argument for it not being a police matter. The sheer number of events at Downing Street IS a legitimate political scandal though, and probably should have been judged that way.
I'd argue it has been. The Gray report and now the investigation into whether Johnson misled the house (he did).
Public servants, Whitehall, being told by PM that 91,000 are surplus to requirements and a pay rise of 3% is sufficient when inflation is heading for 10%. They’re also being told they are slackers if they work from home. Morale among public servants being tested, to put it mildly https://twitter.com/Peston/status/1525012331293511680
Lucky the Government doesn't need goodwill from civil servants to advance any of its agenda...
You mean like those that partied in Downing Street and Whitehall
A good start would be by sacking each and everyone of them
Glad to see you aren't condemning a hundred thousand on the basis of a couple of hundred.
And even some of the partiers will be doing a job that needs doing - sure, sack them all, but some will need replacing, so not much progress toward the target number.
I also wonder how the industrial tribunals would go if BigG were HR manager. Sure, some got FPN, but is that sufficient for instant dismissal? Especially if each event was sanctioned/ordered by senior management and political management.
The defenders of Mr J et al tell us a FPN is like a parking offence - but that wouldn't be sufficient for summary dismissal in itself, even if in the government car. Bollocking and perhaps warning, I'd think.
I am fed up with the way partygate is being run by the police. we are seeing victimisation of one set of people - those at No 10 with investigations that are not happening to any other people in the country, aside of the ridiculous Starmer event (so yes they are being victimised too). The level of the offences is so tiny and the money and time being put into it is totally out of proportion.
No-one else will ever be investigated for a lock down breach from 2020 to 2021. No-one. Those given FPN's should really be contesting their cases in a court of law. I strongly suspect most would win. Sunak for sure.
They were wrong to have behaved as they did. Yes government made the rules, but they were stupid, badly written rules which NO-ONE to this day fully understands. And yet partygate is dragging on and on over trivial offences. And we wonder why politicians get frustrated at the media.
There's a strong argument for it not being a police matter. The sheer number of events at Downing Street IS a legitimate political scandal though, and probably should have been judged that way.
Any other PM in my lifetime, if it had happened they would have properly apologised early on, possibly resigned, possibly not, but either way their apology would have left it a political issue and the police would not have been involved.
Where I think the police should have been involved is when the parties were actually happening! At a minimum there should have been a strong word from a senior officer after the first party to say no more.
I don't know if anyone heard J R-M on radio 4 this morning but he was dreadful. He's an ongoing car crash......
While I was listening I wondered why Johnson would choose someone as unattractive to be the face of the Party. The only thing I could think-and it was a long shot-was that Rees Mogg is the closest in accent and demeanour to Johnson himself and he thought the comparison might show him in a good light.
As a justification for breaking your own rules, this is perhaps a bit thin.
Asked about the latest round of fines for Covid rule-breaking in Downing Street, Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg says: "We need to look at whether these rules were right in the first place"
Exactly! The man's brain has gone walk-about
You don't think we need to look at whether these rules were right in the first place?
That is certain, but it is a very strange defence. I suspect that if Johnson was arrested for bashing one out in a public place while shouting I am a lizard man from Planet Zog, you and Mr Rees-Smug would trot out the same defence
Supersonic flying over land is usually only done for genuine operational reasons, not in training.
IIRC, in the UK at least, supersonic requests go pretty high up the command chain, because it always results in noise complaints and bills for broken windows.
The MoD care more about engine life (serious £££) than windows which only amount to a few grand a year. That is the main reason for the supersonic ban. They spent years trying to slow the Tornado F3 down by derating the engines with FADEC software changes in order to extend engine life and maintenance intervals.
In the US we could (and did) go supersonic over land as often as we felt like as long at it was at FL300+.
Owen Jones 🌹 @OwenJones84 I've just been told that the entire executive of the Wakefield Constituency Labour Party has resigned in protest at the national Labour party breaking its own rules and refusing to allow local members to freely choose their own candidate.
Johnson wants to restore civil service numbers to 2016 levels (cutting 90k jobs) to save £3.5bn a year. The additional numbers were employed to process Brexit.
More proof it has cost, rather than saved us money.
Actually many of those people were hired to deal with the pandemic, but hey ho, I don't expect integrity from you.
Brexit is done and the pandemic is done, so people hired to deal with that should be let go.
Is the pandemic done? Well, COVID-19 isn't done. I still have regular meetings with UK civil servants on COVID-19 and expect to do so for many months to come. I have a meeting later today to bid for some Govt money on a COVID-19 vaccination project.
People are still dying. We have an ongoing vaccination programme to run. COVID-19 is never going away. Hopefully, we'll get to the point where it is like the flu, but people seem to forget that the flu is a major seasonal infectious disease that causes considerably mortality and morbidity (including lost working days). Civil servants are employed to deal with the flu, with public health information programmes, with vaccination programmes, with managing the NHS response. If COVID-19 becomes like another flu, then take all those flu jobs and double them.
Boris Johnson promised that we would build a world-leading health security agency to prepare for future pandemics. You can't deliver on that promise with pre-pandemic staffing. So, which is it? Was Boris (gasp) lying? Or do you accept that we will need more civil servants working in health security? We don't need as many people working on COVID-19 as in 2020-1, sure, but we can't go back to 2016 levels.
Is Brexit done? One could quibble that we haven't worked out a post-Brexit relationship with the EU yet, as the continued politicking over Northern Ireland shows. But let's presume that will settle down eventually. What did Brexit mean? It meant, I understand, taking back control. Let's take as an example pesticide regulation. This is done for the EU in Parma. Part of what we paid to the EU was for this function and there were British people among the staff working in Parma. But we've taken back control now. We now control the UK's pesticide regulatory system. That's what the Brexiteers wanted, I understand.
OK, so whatever we choose to do with our now independent pesticide regulatory system, we need civil servants to man that system, forever. Taking back control means what was once done by Eurocrats now has to be done by UK bureaucrats. There is a necessary, permanent increase in UK civil servant jobs associated with Brexit.
So, COVID-19 and Brexit both require higher civil service numbers in perpetuity.
Rees-Mogg wasn't specifically referring to civil servants in the health area was he?
If you're returning civil servant numbers to 2016 levels, but you have more health-related civil servants, then you'll have to cut services elsewhere. Is the Government going to tell us what services it proposes to chop? Because the right-wing press like the sound of cutting numbers, but voters are rather less keen when services vanish.
Anyone with “Diversity”, “Equality”, or “Inclusion” in their job title?
You mean, following the legislation passed by Parliament? And making sure we get the best persons, not just public school Oxbridge grads?
EDI isn't about making sure you get the best people.
That's exactly what it is about.
Also dealing with all people - customers, for instance.
Johnson wants to restore civil service numbers to 2016 levels (cutting 90k jobs) to save £3.5bn a year. The additional numbers were employed to process Brexit.
More proof it has cost, rather than saved us money.
Actually many of those people were hired to deal with the pandemic, but hey ho, I don't expect integrity from you.
Brexit is done and the pandemic is done, so people hired to deal with that should be let go.
Is the pandemic done? Well, COVID-19 isn't done. I still have regular meetings with UK civil servants on COVID-19 and expect to do so for many months to come. I have a meeting later today to bid for some Govt money on a COVID-19 vaccination project.
People are still dying. We have an ongoing vaccination programme to run. COVID-19 is never going away. Hopefully, we'll get to the point where it is like the flu, but people seem to forget that the flu is a major seasonal infectious disease that causes considerably mortality and morbidity (including lost working days). Civil servants are employed to deal with the flu, with public health information programmes, with vaccination programmes, with managing the NHS response. If COVID-19 becomes like another flu, then take all those flu jobs and double them.
Boris Johnson promised that we would build a world-leading health security agency to prepare for future pandemics. You can't deliver on that promise with pre-pandemic staffing. So, which is it? Was Boris (gasp) lying? Or do you accept that we will need more civil servants working in health security? We don't need as many people working on COVID-19 as in 2020-1, sure, but we can't go back to 2016 levels.
Is Brexit done? One could quibble that we haven't worked out a post-Brexit relationship with the EU yet, as the continued politicking over Northern Ireland shows. But let's presume that will settle down eventually. What did Brexit mean? It meant, I understand, taking back control. Let's take as an example pesticide regulation. This is done for the EU in Parma. Part of what we paid to the EU was for this function and there were British people among the staff working in Parma. But we've taken back control now. We now control the UK's pesticide regulatory system. That's what the Brexiteers wanted, I understand.
OK, so whatever we choose to do with our now independent pesticide regulatory system, we need civil servants to man that system, forever. Taking back control means what was once done by Eurocrats now has to be done by UK bureaucrats. There is a necessary, permanent increase in UK civil servant jobs associated with Brexit.
So, COVID-19 and Brexit both require higher civil service numbers in perpetuity.
Rees-Mogg wasn't specifically referring to civil servants in the health area was he?
If you're returning civil servant numbers to 2016 levels, but you have more health-related civil servants, then you'll have to cut services elsewhere. Is the Government going to tell us what services it proposes to chop? Because the right-wing press like the sound of cutting numbers, but voters are rather less keen when services vanish.
Anyone with “Diversity”, “Equality”, or “Inclusion” in their job title?
You mean, following the legislation passed by Parliament? And making sure we get the best persons, not just public school Oxbridge grads?
EDI isn't about making sure you get the best people.
It's a very necessary tool for any sort of organization. I've just done some refresher training as part of helpinjg out with an organization. Rather iompressed wit it, actually - very painless (vastly so, compared with myth) and some unexpected insights.
Maybe so - but it isn't about making sure you get the best people.
These people were hired to deal with Brexit the pandemic...
Aye, right.
What part of Brexit is done and the pandemic is done are you struggling to wrap your head around.
If Brexit is done, and the pandemic is done, we can go back 2016 levels of staff.
The civil servants are needed to oversee the post Brexit environment, where all kind of regulatory functions have been repatriated from the EU to the UK and where new regulatory frictions, eg at the UK border, have been created. Not to oversee the act of Brexit, which is over. This is why the whole spiel about saving money by leaving the EU was nonsense (the European Commission is actually a remarkably lean and efficient piece of government machinery).
Only the other day we were being told that the Treasury was having to outsource a large part of its legal work relating to the post-Brexit financial services sector to Hogan Lovells because it did not have the staff to do it. So clearly in some areas we do not have enough civil servants with the right skills. Outsourcing to a City law firm will not be cheap at all.
A sensible government which was genuinely concerned about cost effectiveness would ensure that it has high quality lawyers on its staff to do such an important part of government work. But somehow I doubt we will be hearing Boris or JRM demanding the hiring of more government lawyers.
Not necessarily. Is the legal work a permanent, on-going requirement, or a one-off temporary issue?
If the latter, outsourcing makes perfect sense. There's a reason why firms can outsource legal work rather than having in-house lawyers.
Ongoing restructuring and regulation of the financial services sector is not an one-off temporary issue but an ongoing key part of the Treasury's functions. Even if you bring in external specialist advisors you still need high quality in-house people because it is not simply giving the advice which is needed but understanding its implications for other policy areas / legislation / how it fits with international obligations / proposed trade treaties / prioritising within the legislative programme / liaison with the other government departments involved - the BoE, the FCA, the PRA etc.
It has been happening for the 40 years I have been working in the sector and before then too.
But perhaps you know different.
No, I don't know different, which is why I asked the question.
If its ongoing, then it probably makes sense to have in house to me.
But if the level of demand isn't consistent but varies like a sine curve then it'd make sense to have a mix of in house and outsourcing at the peak of demand.
Well, it is ongoing. It matters getting it right. I don't have an issue with seeking expertise on particular issues. But wholesale outsourcing of such an important function for a key sector is not sensible - either in financial terms or in terms of embedding knowledge at the heart of government so that it is available all the time.
The loss of institutional memory is one of the reasons why the same failings occur over and over again. People don't know that the issues have been considered before, don't have any well of experience or wisdom to draw on, don't even realise that they need to get help. And so the same blunders recur. I have seen it so often.
Good financial regulation matters. And it matters now in a post-Brexit world. We should make sure we get it right.
We are still, are we not, awaiting the interrogation of Post Office management by the Inquiry.
It's pathetic, it really is. Whenever this government is in a bit of trouble, it lashes out in the sure knowledge that enough people will agree that the targets are legitimate.
This week's targets for lashing out are a) the EU, and b) the Civil Service. Next week? Who knows. Woke universities probably, then the French, then asylum seekers. Let's feed the hate, they think. It's so divisive and dangerous for the body politic.
The 2 minutes hate is one of the "benefits of Brexit"...
All good targets, to my mind. We need more of them
Scots, Irish and Welsh do?
Swedes. Why the F are they wavering over NATO membership? They know they need to be a military colony under the UK nuclear umbrella, protected by England and her might - and her Tridents. Finland has seen the light and taken the plunge. If Stockholm doesn’t hurry up, there will be consequences
I don't know if anyone heard J R-M on radio 4 this morning but he was dreadful. He's an ongoing car crash......
While I was listening I wondered why Johnson would choose someone as unattractive to be the face of the Party. The only thing I could think-and it was a long shot-was that Rees Mogg is the closest in accent and demeanour to Johnson himself and he thought the comparison might show him in a good light.
As a justification for breaking your own rules, this is perhaps a bit thin.
Asked about the latest round of fines for Covid rule-breaking in Downing Street, Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg says: "We need to look at whether these rules were right in the first place"
Exactly! The man's brain has gone walk-about
You don't think we need to look at whether these rules were right in the first place?
Would we have done that if a builder from Burnley was the bloke getting loads of fines rather than the PM and his mates?
Supersonic flying over land is usually only done for genuine operational reasons, not in training.
IIRC, in the UK at least, supersonic requests go pretty high up the command chain, because it always results in noise complaints and bills for broken windows.
They smashed some of mum’s favourite plates once. I don’t think she bothered making a complaint. It is super common in parts of Scotland so folk just mumble ‘arseholes’ under their breath and ignore them.
Johnson wants to restore civil service numbers to 2016 levels (cutting 90k jobs) to save £3.5bn a year. The additional numbers were employed to process Brexit.
More proof it has cost, rather than saved us money.
Actually many of those people were hired to deal with the pandemic, but hey ho, I don't expect integrity from you.
Brexit is done and the pandemic is done, so people hired to deal with that should be let go.
Is the pandemic done? Well, COVID-19 isn't done. I still have regular meetings with UK civil servants on COVID-19 and expect to do so for many months to come. I have a meeting later today to bid for some Govt money on a COVID-19 vaccination project.
People are still dying. We have an ongoing vaccination programme to run. COVID-19 is never going away. Hopefully, we'll get to the point where it is like the flu, but people seem to forget that the flu is a major seasonal infectious disease that causes considerably mortality and morbidity (including lost working days). Civil servants are employed to deal with the flu, with public health information programmes, with vaccination programmes, with managing the NHS response. If COVID-19 becomes like another flu, then take all those flu jobs and double them.
Boris Johnson promised that we would build a world-leading health security agency to prepare for future pandemics. You can't deliver on that promise with pre-pandemic staffing. So, which is it? Was Boris (gasp) lying? Or do you accept that we will need more civil servants working in health security? We don't need as many people working on COVID-19 as in 2020-1, sure, but we can't go back to 2016 levels.
Is Brexit done? One could quibble that we haven't worked out a post-Brexit relationship with the EU yet, as the continued politicking over Northern Ireland shows. But let's presume that will settle down eventually. What did Brexit mean? It meant, I understand, taking back control. Let's take as an example pesticide regulation. This is done for the EU in Parma. Part of what we paid to the EU was for this function and there were British people among the staff working in Parma. But we've taken back control now. We now control the UK's pesticide regulatory system. That's what the Brexiteers wanted, I understand.
OK, so whatever we choose to do with our now independent pesticide regulatory system, we need civil servants to man that system, forever. Taking back control means what was once done by Eurocrats now has to be done by UK bureaucrats. There is a necessary, permanent increase in UK civil servant jobs associated with Brexit.
So, COVID-19 and Brexit both require higher civil service numbers in perpetuity.
Rees-Mogg wasn't specifically referring to civil servants in the health area was he?
If you're returning civil servant numbers to 2016 levels, but you have more health-related civil servants, then you'll have to cut services elsewhere. Is the Government going to tell us what services it proposes to chop? Because the right-wing press like the sound of cutting numbers, but voters are rather less keen when services vanish.
Anyone with “Diversity”, “Equality”, or “Inclusion” in their job title?
You mean, following the legislation passed by Parliament? And making sure we get the best persons, not just public school Oxbridge grads?
EDI isn't about making sure you get the best people.
It's a very necessary tool for any sort of organization. I've just done some refresher training as part of helpinjg out with an organization. Rather iompressed wit it, actually - very painless (vastly so, compared with myth) and some unexpected insights.
Maybe so - but it isn't about making sure you get the best people.
Oh, it is. And dealing with people generally. Absolutely required to meet the law of the land, in many ways - both directly and indirectly (e.g. avoiding damaging and expensive fiascos). Recruitment, services, sales, training, staff promotion, etc.
Public servants, Whitehall, being told by PM that 91,000 are surplus to requirements and a pay rise of 3% is sufficient when inflation is heading for 10%. They’re also being told they are slackers if they work from home. Morale among public servants being tested, to put it mildly https://twitter.com/Peston/status/1525012331293511680
Lucky the Government doesn't need goodwill from civil servants to advance any of its agenda...
You mean like those that partied in Downing Street and Whitehall
A good start would be by sacking each and everyone of them
Glad to see you aren't condemning a hundred thousand on the basis of a couple of hundred.
And even some of the partiers will be doing a job that needs doing - sure, sack them all, but some will need replacing, so not much progress toward the target number.
I also wonder how the industrial tribunals would go if BigG were HR manager. Sure, some got FPN, but is that sufficient for instant dismissal? Especially if each event was sanctioned/ordered by senior management and political management.
The defenders of Mr J et al tell us a FPN is like a parking offence - but that wouldn't be sufficient for summary dismissal in itself, even if in the government car. Bollocking and perhaps warning, I'd think.
I am fed up with the way partygate is being run by the police. we are seeing victimisation of one set of people - those at No 10 with investigations that are not happening to any other people in the country, aside of the ridiculous Starmer event (so yes they are being victimised too). The level of the offences is so tiny and the money and time being put into it is totally out of proportion.
No-one else will ever be investigated for a lock down breach from 2020 to 2021. No-one. Those given FPN's should really be contesting their cases in a court of law. I strongly suspect most would win. Sunak for sure.
They were wrong to have behaved as they did. Yes government made the rules, but they were stupid, badly written rules which NO-ONE to this day fully understands. And yet partygate is dragging on and on over trivial offences. And we wonder why politicians get frustrated at the media.
There's a strong argument for it not being a police matter. The sheer number of events at Downing Street IS a legitimate political scandal though, and probably should have been judged that way.
Any other PM in my lifetime, if it had happened they would have properly apologised early on, possibly resigned, possibly not, but either way their apology would have left it a political issue and the police would not have been involved.
Where I think the police should have been involved is when the parties were actually happening! At a minimum there should have been a strong word from a senior officer after the first party to say no more.
The problem was, the decision the police took was to "say no more", not to say "no more"...
It's pathetic, it really is. Whenever this government is in a bit of trouble, it lashes out in the sure knowledge that enough people will agree that the targets are legitimate.
This week's targets for lashing out are a) the EU, and b) the Civil Service. Next week? Who knows. Woke universities probably, then the French, then asylum seekers. Let's feed the hate, they think. It's so divisive and dangerous for the body politic.
The 2 minutes hate is one of the "benefits of Brexit"...
All good targets, to my mind. We need more of them
Scots, Irish and Welsh do?
Swedes. Why the F are they wavering over NATO membership? They know they need to be a military colony under the UK nuclear umbrella, protected by England and her might - and her Tridents. Finland has seen the light and taken the plunge. If Stockholm doesn’t hurry up, there will be consequences
As part of the deal they are trying to see if there is a way that they can be allied to UK, but where they don't have to be allied with people who have twattish views such as yourself. Johnson has suggested he sends you to Rwanda so long as he doesn't have to go himself.
I don't know if anyone heard J R-M on radio 4 this morning but he was dreadful. He's an ongoing car crash......
While I was listening I wondered why Johnson would choose someone as unattractive to be the face of the Party. The only thing I could think-and it was a long shot-was that Rees Mogg is the closest in accent and demeanour to Johnson himself and he thought the comparison might show him in a good light.
As a justification for breaking your own rules, this is perhaps a bit thin.
Asked about the latest round of fines for Covid rule-breaking in Downing Street, Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg says: "We need to look at whether these rules were right in the first place"
Exactly! The man's brain has gone walk-about
You don't think we need to look at whether these rules were right in the first place?
Would we have done that if a builder from Burnley was the bloke getting loads of fines rather than the PM and his mates?
We certainly should have.
I am sure you can find tens of thousands of similarly sympathetic quotes from JRM questioning the law when the plebs were receiving their fines.
It's pathetic, it really is. Whenever this government is in a bit of trouble, it lashes out in the sure knowledge that enough people will agree that the targets are legitimate.
This week's targets for lashing out are a) the EU, and b) the Civil Service. Next week? Who knows. Woke universities probably, then the French, then asylum seekers. Let's feed the hate, they think. It's so divisive and dangerous for the body politic.
The 2 minutes hate is one of the "benefits of Brexit"...
All good targets, to my mind. We need more of them
Scots, Irish and Welsh do?
Swedes. Why the F are they wavering over NATO membership? They know they need to be a military colony under the UK nuclear umbrella, protected by England and her might - and her Tridents. Finland has seen the light and taken the plunge. If Stockholm doesn’t hurry up, there will be consequences
The reigning champion of superciliousness shows that he still has it.
It's pathetic, it really is. Whenever this government is in a bit of trouble, it lashes out in the sure knowledge that enough people will agree that the targets are legitimate.
This week's targets for lashing out are a) the EU, and b) the Civil Service. Next week? Who knows. Woke universities probably, then the French, then asylum seekers. Let's feed the hate, they think. It's so divisive and dangerous for the body politic.
The 2 minutes hate is one of the "benefits of Brexit"...
All good targets, to my mind. We need more of them
Scots, Irish and Welsh do?
Swedes. Why the F are they wavering over NATO membership? They know they need to be a military colony under the UK nuclear umbrella, protected by England and her might - and her Tridents. Finland has seen the light and taken the plunge. If Stockholm doesn’t hurry up, there will be consequences
I guess because they have had decades of studied neutrality. It is part of their identity I think. Big change.
I don't know if anyone heard J R-M on radio 4 this morning but he was dreadful. He's an ongoing car crash......
While I was listening I wondered why Johnson would choose someone as unattractive to be the face of the Party. The only thing I could think-and it was a long shot-was that Rees Mogg is the closest in accent and demeanour to Johnson himself and he thought the comparison might show him in a good light.
As a justification for breaking your own rules, this is perhaps a bit thin.
Asked about the latest round of fines for Covid rule-breaking in Downing Street, Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg says: "We need to look at whether these rules were right in the first place"
Exactly! The man's brain has gone walk-about
You don't think we need to look at whether these rules were right in the first place?
Would we have done that if a builder from Burnley was the bloke getting loads of fines rather than the PM and his mates?
We certainly should have.
I am sure you can find tens of thousands of similarly sympathetic quotes from JRM questioning the law when the plebs were receiving their fines.
Owen Jones 🌹 @OwenJones84 I've just been told that the entire executive of the Wakefield Constituency Labour Party has resigned in protest at the national Labour party breaking its own rules and refusing to allow local members to freely choose their own candidate.
A statement is being released shortly.
Christ, the Labour Party's capacity for shooting itself in the foot is truly impressive.
Owen Jones 🌹 @OwenJones84 I've just been told that the entire executive of the Wakefield Constituency Labour Party has resigned in protest at the national Labour party breaking its own rules and refusing to allow local members to freely choose their own candidate.
A statement is being released shortly.
Wait, I need to get more popcorn in!
But seriously, sounds like plan to parachute in a non-local and so another by-election may well be lost.
I don't know if anyone heard J R-M on radio 4 this morning but he was dreadful. He's an ongoing car crash......
While I was listening I wondered why Johnson would choose someone as unattractive to be the face of the Party. The only thing I could think-and it was a long shot-was that Rees Mogg is the closest in accent and demeanour to Johnson himself and he thought the comparison might show him in a good light.
As a justification for breaking your own rules, this is perhaps a bit thin.
Asked about the latest round of fines for Covid rule-breaking in Downing Street, Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg says: "We need to look at whether these rules were right in the first place"
Exactly! The man's brain has gone walk-about
You don't think we need to look at whether these rules were right in the first place?
Would we have done that if a builder from Burnley was the bloke getting loads of fines rather than the PM and his mates?
We certainly should have.
I am sure you can find tens of thousands of similarly sympathetic quotes from JRM questioning the law when the plebs were receiving their fines.
Cabinet collective responsibility.
Questioning laws is fine. Questioning laws only when your boss mate is the one caught not fine.
I don't know if anyone heard J R-M on radio 4 this morning but he was dreadful. He's an ongoing car crash......
While I was listening I wondered why Johnson would choose someone as unattractive to be the face of the Party. The only thing I could think-and it was a long shot-was that Rees Mogg is the closest in accent and demeanour to Johnson himself and he thought the comparison might show him in a good light.
Owen Jones 🌹 @OwenJones84 I've just been told that the entire executive of the Wakefield Constituency Labour Party has resigned in protest at the national Labour party breaking its own rules and refusing to allow local members to freely choose their own candidate.
A statement is being released shortly.
Sounds like an HQ parachute candidate the locals don’t want to support.
Yesterday's sequel to the disastrous failed river crossing.
https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1524974467146866690 On May 12, the 🇺🇦artillery destroyed another 🇷🇺pontoon bridge and equipment. 4 days of 🇷🇺unsuccessful attempts to cross the Siverskyi Donets river in Luhansk Oblast saw the 🇷🇺losses of more than 70 units of equipment & 2 battalions of infantry & engineers...
A thought for the Armchair Admiral Generals - a lot has been made of the dangers in modern warfare of fixed positions. Parking your artillery in a neat line and setting up the tea tent is now considered suicide.
What about military bridges and other military engineering? - they create fixed, obvious targets.
What will be the solution there?
They are temporary expedients. The Russians are trying to capture a strategic town which controls several river crossings nearby. So far they've failed.
The lesson here is probably more about the huge disparity in battlefield information available to the two sides. Not in Russia's favour.
What I mean is this - we have an example of a battlefield with continuous, full spectrum surveillance. That is, instead of a once a day spy flight, we have 24/7 (probably) coverage from a variety of systems. See JSTARS and the first Gulf War. Instead of occasional picture, the West (and probably the Ukrainians) are seeing what is happening. Near real time.
When you tie that to the target generating and allocating system that the Ukrainians are supposed to be using (described the other day) - the gap between starting to assemble your bridge and steel rain could be *minutes*.
In this case, it must have been hours, since the bridge was in place. Or did they wait to get the whole bridge, the engineers and the equipment crossing it?
This is the probable shape of future conflicts.
I'm not a military strategist, but I guess you'd need to look at scenarios with more evenly matched opponents to draw useful conclusions.
The main battle at the moment appears to be for the city of Severodonetsk. This is on the north bank of the Siverskyi Donets river, however the Russians are trying to encircle the city by trying to cross the river in the nearby area.
Owen Jones 🌹 @OwenJones84 I've just been told that the entire executive of the Wakefield Constituency Labour Party has resigned in protest at the national Labour party breaking its own rules and refusing to allow local members to freely choose their own candidate.
A statement is being released shortly.
Christ, the Labour Party's capacity for shooting itself in the foot is truly impressive.
Owen Jones 🌹 @OwenJones84 I've just been told that the entire executive of the Wakefield Constituency Labour Party has resigned in protest at the national Labour party breaking its own rules and refusing to allow local members to freely choose their own candidate.
A statement is being released shortly.
Wait, I need to get more popcorn in!
But seriously, sounds like plan to parachute in a non-local and so another by-election may well be lost.
Time for a punt on Mr Herdson?
NOT a betting post:
I think Mr Herdson has a good chance of getting more than 5% and will certainly finish top 3. I wouldn't go any further than that though.
Owen Jones 🌹 @OwenJones84 I've just been told that the entire executive of the Wakefield Constituency Labour Party has resigned in protest at the national Labour party breaking its own rules and refusing to allow local members to freely choose their own candidate.
A statement is being released shortly.
Sounds like an HQ parachute candidate the locals don’t want to support.
What's the tenor of the Wakefield Party, these days?
Is it that they don't like Mr Balls if he is lined up?
Hunt? Too Coalition era, May era, yesterday's coming man. Would be like wingnut Davis standing again after Cameron stood down, a look backwards. He's too posh, too home counties, too Cameron frankly. He'd scare the horses amongst the new support they've garnered. He might save half a dozen threatened in the blue wall. Hunt vs Starmer and we are all asleep by elevenses. Utterly unispirational. Way too much a retrograde step. Lump on.
Never get why people push Hunt so much but then I share all those views.
Owen Jones 🌹 @OwenJones84 I've just been told that the entire executive of the Wakefield Constituency Labour Party has resigned in protest at the national Labour party breaking its own rules and refusing to allow local members to freely choose their own candidate.
A statement is being released shortly.
Sounds like an HQ parachute candidate the locals don’t want to support.
Someone needs to get that sorted PDQ. And surely it shouldn't be that difficult. Thought; not trying to parachute in Lancastrian Andy Burnham are they.
Supersonic flying over land is usually only done for genuine operational reasons, not in training.
IIRC, in the UK at least, supersonic requests go pretty high up the command chain, because it always results in noise complaints and bills for broken windows.
They smashed some of mum’s favourite plates once. I don’t think she bothered making a complaint. It is super common in parts of Scotland so folk just mumble ‘arseholes’ under their breath and ignore them.
There is a lot of flying taking place from Valley over and near our house and I assume in Snowdonia
Owen Jones 🌹 @OwenJones84 I've just been told that the entire executive of the Wakefield Constituency Labour Party has resigned in protest at the national Labour party breaking its own rules and refusing to allow local members to freely choose their own candidate.
A statement is being released shortly.
Christ, the Labour Party's capacity for shooting itself in the foot is truly impressive.
Losing Wakefield would be a black swan level narrative changer. But given the noncery of the outgoing Tory, even this won't hurt. Unless they run an 'alt labour' candidate........
Owen Jones 🌹 @OwenJones84 I've just been told that the entire executive of the Wakefield Constituency Labour Party has resigned in protest at the national Labour party breaking its own rules and refusing to allow local members to freely choose their own candidate.
A statement is being released shortly.
Sounds like an HQ parachute candidate the locals don’t want to support.
Someone needs to get that sorted PDQ. And surely it shouldn't be that difficult. Thought; not trying to parachute in Lancastrian Andy Burnham are they.
Do we have previous modern precedents of war crimes trials before the said conflict is over? I'm not aware of any.
Though even in WW2 it was known eg for POWs to be tried under the national justice system for alleged offences coming under that system rather than the military system.
Hunt? Too Coalition era, May era, yesterday's coming man. Would be like wingnut Davis standing again after Cameron stood down, a look backwards. He's too posh, too home counties, too Cameron frankly. He'd scare the horses amongst the new support they've garnered. He might save half a dozen threatened in the blue wall. Hunt vs Starmer and we are all asleep by elevenses. Utterly unispirational. Way too much a retrograde step. Lump on.
Never get why people push Hunt so much but then I share all those views.
I don't know if anyone heard J R-M on radio 4 this morning but he was dreadful. He's an ongoing car crash......
While I was listening I wondered why Johnson would choose someone as unattractive to be the face of the Party. The only thing I could think-and it was a long shot-was that Rees Mogg is the closest in accent and demeanour to Johnson himself and he thought the comparison might show him in a good light.
Tory members love the Mogg though.
He is the Tory Corbyn
And look what that did to labour
Landslide defeat in 2019 maybe but got a hung parliament in 2017 and frightened the life out of Tories and centrists
It's pathetic, it really is. Whenever this government is in a bit of trouble, it lashes out in the sure knowledge that enough people will agree that the targets are legitimate.
This week's targets for lashing out are a) the EU, and b) the Civil Service. Next week? Who knows. Woke universities probably, then the French, then asylum seekers. Let's feed the hate, they think. It's so divisive and dangerous for the body politic.
The 2 minutes hate is one of the "benefits of Brexit"...
All good targets, to my mind. We need more of them
Scots, Irish and Welsh do?
Swedes. Why the F are they wavering over NATO membership? They know they need to be a military colony under the UK nuclear umbrella, protected by England and her might - and her Tridents. Finland has seen the light and taken the plunge. If Stockholm doesn’t hurry up, there will be consequences
Probably waiting to see if Putin now invades Finland before its NATO membership application is completed
I don't know if anyone heard J R-M on radio 4 this morning but he was dreadful. He's an ongoing car crash......
While I was listening I wondered why Johnson would choose someone as unattractive to be the face of the Party. The only thing I could think-and it was a long shot-was that Rees Mogg is the closest in accent and demeanour to Johnson himself and he thought the comparison might show him in a good light.
Tory members love the Mogg though.
He is the Tory Corbyn
And look what that did to labour
Landslide defeat in 2019 maybe but got a hung parliament in 2017 and frightened the life out of Tories and centrists
Owen Jones 🌹 @OwenJones84 I've just been told that the entire executive of the Wakefield Constituency Labour Party has resigned in protest at the national Labour party breaking its own rules and refusing to allow local members to freely choose their own candidate.
A statement is being released shortly.
Sounds like an HQ parachute candidate the locals don’t want to support.
Someone needs to get that sorted PDQ. And surely it shouldn't be that difficult. Thought; not trying to parachute in Lancastrian Andy Burnham are they.
Wouldn't he have to resign as SELNEC mayor first?
Yeah, it won't be Burnham, Balls has said no too but might change his mind I guess
I don't know if anyone heard J R-M on radio 4 this morning but he was dreadful. He's an ongoing car crash......
While I was listening I wondered why Johnson would choose someone as unattractive to be the face of the Party. The only thing I could think-and it was a long shot-was that Rees Mogg is the closest in accent and demeanour to Johnson himself and he thought the comparison might show him in a good light.
Tory members love the Mogg though.
He is the Tory Corbyn
And look what that did to labour
Landslide defeat in 2019 maybe but got a hung parliament in 2017 and frightened the life out of Tories and centrists
Owen Jones 🌹 @OwenJones84 I've just been told that the entire executive of the Wakefield Constituency Labour Party has resigned in protest at the national Labour party breaking its own rules and refusing to allow local members to freely choose their own candidate.
A statement is being released shortly.
Sounds like an HQ parachute candidate the locals don’t want to support.
Someone needs to get that sorted PDQ. And surely it shouldn't be that difficult. Thought; not trying to parachute in Lancastrian Andy Burnham are they.
Do we have previous modern precedents of war crimes trials before the said conflict is over? I'm not aware of any.
Though even in WW2 it was known eg for POWs to be tried under the national justice system for alleged offences coming under that system rather than the military system.
Russia will just charge some random Ukrainian on a tit-for-tat basis.
Owen Jones 🌹 @OwenJones84 I've just been told that the entire executive of the Wakefield Constituency Labour Party has resigned in protest at the national Labour party breaking its own rules and refusing to allow local members to freely choose their own candidate.
A statement is being released shortly.
Christ, the Labour Party's capacity for shooting itself in the foot is truly impressive.
Losing Wakefield would be a black swan level narrative changer. But given the noncery of the outgoing Tory, even this won't hurt. Unless they run an 'alt labour' candidate........
Gut feel is might be the Tory party's Batley and Spen - expectations high they lose but they pull it out of the bag.
Owen Jones 🌹 @OwenJones84 I've just been told that the entire executive of the Wakefield Constituency Labour Party has resigned in protest at the national Labour party breaking its own rules and refusing to allow local members to freely choose their own candidate.
A statement is being released shortly.
Christ, the Labour Party's capacity for shooting itself in the foot is truly impressive.
Losing Wakefield would be a black swan level narrative changer. But given the noncery of the outgoing Tory, even this won't hurt. Unless they run an 'alt labour' candidate........
Gut feel is might be the Tory party's Batley and Spen - expectations high they lose but they pull it out of the bag.
I don't know if anyone heard J R-M on radio 4 this morning but he was dreadful. He's an ongoing car crash......
While I was listening I wondered why Johnson would choose someone as unattractive to be the face of the Party. The only thing I could think-and it was a long shot-was that Rees Mogg is the closest in accent and demeanour to Johnson himself and he thought the comparison might show him in a good light.
Tory members love the Mogg though.
He is the Tory Corbyn
And look what that did to labour
Landslide defeat in 2019 maybe but got a hung parliament in 2017 and frightened the life out of Tories and centrists
He frightened the life of the entire country
Not those who voted for him in 2017 and 2019
I rather liked him. Promoted way above his ability, of course, and beyond any reasonable computation of public support, but he had his fans. Good in a gadfly role, but not PM material.
Comments
Way too much a retrograde step.
Lump on.
The Russians are trying to capture a strategic town which controls several river crossings nearby. So far they've failed.
The lesson here is probably more about the huge disparity in battlefield information available to the two sides. Not in Russia's favour.
While I was listening I wondered why Johnson would choose someone as unattractive to be the face of the Party. The only thing I could think-and it was a long shot-was that Rees Mogg is the closest in accent and demeanour to Johnson himself and he thought the comparison might show him in a good light.
People who are already working with annual vaccines may need to add Covid vaccines to the mix of annual vaccines already arranged. That may require some extra staff, but miniscule on the scale of the Civil Service and not 91,000.
Unfortunately the next election is not due until March 5th next year, and the government has been badly undermined, so it is possible that Kaja Kallas, who is achieving new heights of popularity may still have to stand down at some point. From near parity in December, the polls now show Reform on 32% and Kesk on 17%.
https://twitter.com/BBCPolitics/status/1525038333151395840
"I think this is a non-story"
Asked about the latest round of fines for Covid rule-breaking in Downing Street, Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg says: "We need to look at whether these rules were right in the first place"
Dominic Raab is in far more trouble imho. It's closer. has an obvious challenger and is nearer to London. Boundary changes are to his disadvantage. Even though there is a much tinier Labour vote to squeeze.
The MP’s spokesperson said: “This item was donated in good faith several months ago for a local charity auction.
“Oliver Dowden had no prior knowledge of the description and this is obviously not his view.”"
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/champagne-jay-rayner-oliver-dowden-b2078221.html
When you tie that to the target generating and allocating system that the Ukrainians are supposed to be using (described the other day) - the gap between starting to assemble your bridge and steel rain could be *minutes*.
In this case, it must have been hours, since the bridge was in place. Or did they wait to get the whole bridge, the engineers and the equipment crossing it?
This is the probable shape of future conflicts.
Surrey SW - Hunt 53%, LD 38%. OK new boundaries but now Hunt 41, LD 28 and big labour recovery? In Surrey SW and Hampshire East? They will do better, yes, in line with national polling but the LDs will gain ground if the Tories are falling back. I'm not trying to be Sammy the Sage but those are the factors I'd consider. Surrey SW and Hampshire East giving Lab 23%??
Though I do not see why that would suddenly trigger supersonic flying.
The loss of institutional memory is one of the reasons why the same failings occur over and over again. People don't know that the issues have been considered before, don't have any well of experience or wisdom to draw on, don't even realise that they need to get help. And so the same blunders recur. I have seen it so often.
Good financial regulation matters. And it matters now in a post-Brexit world. We should make sure we get it right.
First off the mark for job cutting in the public sector.
Maybe the Speaker's salary along with the DUP MLA's could go towards tax cuts?
In certain places, very probably. In 2019, left wing voters in Chesham + Amersham, or in North Shropshire, hadn't really forgiven the Lib Dems for their role in coalition. Now, for whatever coughborisjohnsoncough reason, they largely have.
The nature of FPTP with three parties means that the tension in the tactical wind/unwind matters an awful lot- maybe more than the total number of votes for each party. (See 2015 and 2017; the Conservative share went up under TMthethenPM but the seat count went down. Or 2010 and 2015; the Labour vote share went up under MiliEd, but the seat count went down.)
https://thehill.com/policy/defense/599674-sweden-finland-participate-in-nato-military-exercises/
Supersonic flying over land is usually only done for genuine operational reasons, not in training.
IIRC, in the UK at least, supersonic requests go pretty high up the command chain, because it always results in noise complaints and bills for broken windows.
He is the Tory Corbyn
Insourcing completely means either the staff become very stretched when a major increase in work is required, or there will be excess staff in the slack times.
One answer has been found in the idea of permanent teams managing functions. When there is a "bump" in work, they bring in outside recourses (develop an application, says). The permanent staff need to have the skills that the temporary staff do - this is so that they retain the knowledge - the temporary staff provide capacity, not the knowledge as such.
"the description [...] is obviously not his view"
His view is that Mr Johnson isn't a person of exemplary morality?
And the consequences will be at the ballot box...
Where I think the police should have been involved is when the parties were actually happening! At a minimum there should have been a strong word from a senior officer after the first party to say no more.
In the US we could (and did) go supersonic over land as often as we felt like as long at it was at FL300+.
Owen Jones 🌹
@OwenJones84
I've just been told that the entire executive of the Wakefield Constituency Labour Party has resigned in protest at the national Labour party breaking its own rules and refusing to allow local members to freely choose their own candidate.
A statement is being released shortly.
But seriously, sounds like plan to parachute in a non-local and so another by-election may well be lost.
Time for a punt on Mr Herdson?
Questioning laws only when your boss mate is the one caught not fine.
Not complicated.
I think Mr Herdson has a good chance of getting more than 5% and will certainly finish top 3. I wouldn't go any further than that though.
Is it that they don't like Mr Balls if he is lined up?
He's the Tories' Andy Burnham
Thought; not trying to parachute in Lancastrian Andy Burnham are they.
Far more than usual
But given the noncery of the outgoing Tory, even this won't hurt. Unless they run an 'alt labour' candidate........
I see that Ukraine is starting its first war crimes trial today:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/12/first-russian-soldier-to-go-on-trial-in-ukraine-for-war-crimes
Do we have previous modern precedents of war crimes trials before the said conflict is over? I'm not aware of any.
Though even in WW2 it was known eg for POWs to be tried under the national justice system for alleged offences coming under that system rather than the military system.
https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1524695671135211521
More Britons see Keir Starmer as principled, competent, and trustworthy than Boris Johnson
Lab 38
Con 33
Ld 12
Green 6
2 point swings Con to Lab and green to ld
Normal service
Good in a gadfly role, but not PM material.