Are the Tories going to yield on reparations for slavery to commonwealth nations. Interesting comment from the PM of tiny island nation, Barbados who are demanding just under 5 Trillion USD.
"Mottley met David Cameron earlier on Tuesday but would not give details of the foreign secretary’s thoughts on the UK’s slavery-related debt.
“I’m not going to get into the details of our conversation but suffice to say I think the foreign secretary will take his lead from his majesty,” she said."
One bizarre thing are claims that slaves never received compensation.
The West Indies are now a collection of mostly independent black republics - effectively West African colonies which are far more affluent and developed than West Africa itself.
The descendants of the slaves got the countries.
I suspect a few politicians are just jumping on a bandwaggon eyeing up a potential payday on the back of guilt shaming western nations.
The President of Guyana was making such demands recently. Now he may need our help I wonder if he will change his tune.
Descendants of Brits enslaved by the Romans, Vikings and Barbary Corsairs can presumably also claim compensation from Italy, Denmark and Tunisia?
Can you name a single one of those descendants? Otoh all you'd need is a Carribean phone directory to identify the descendants of our 'commercial activities'.
The entire white* population of Europe will be descended from Roman slaves. Working on a generous 30-year generation, a person born in 1970 has ten thousand million million ancestors as at AD410, and obviously, exponentially more going back further. Given the churn in populations in the 1600 years since and the lengthy social instability in several of those periods, it's inconceivable that each one of us isn't the descendant of slaves - and indeed, the descendant of emperors.
* Probably a surprisingly large proportion of the non-white population too.
Shame that there's not a surviving Roman (or Norse or Barbary for that matter) nation state from which reparations can be claimed.
Turkey is very definitely the successor state of the Ottoman Empire, so anyone enslaved by them - several million black people, and a million or two whites - can apply to Ankara
Successor state means piss all, the UK is the actual state that did all that v. profitable C18th slavering.
There are of course many reasons to despise the right but their current spasm of victimy self pity is one of the bigger ones. ‘BUT WE WERE SLAVES TOOOOO!’ sounds so pathetic.
lol. You're so determined that Britain must be to blame, and ONLY Britain (and somehow not Scotland, natch)
Read Giles Milton's White Gold. The Barbary Slave trade was very real, and very cruel, and inflicted awful wounds on west country England, esp Cornwall and Devon. And, as I note below. this was done by the Moroccan monarchy which still exists today, indeed you can visit the Moroccan palaces built by British slaves
Whiney whitey syndrome in all its glory.
I’m all for Scotland accepting its part in the great British Empire slaving project, but the descendants of the movers and shakers of the time are awfy touchy about any references to it.
You are severely embittered, these days. But I can see why, when I look at the cause of independence, drifting over the horizon and far into an impossible future
You have my genune sympathies. To burn for a wild poliical ambition, and to come so close, only for it to drift out of reach, and then to basically vanish, must be quite hard to deal with
Even more painful when Brexiteers got their dream delivered.
Although ScotNats can continue to believe that independence, even though unobtainable, would be a good thing.
In contrast Brexiteers have to face the fact that their dream turned out to be utter shite.
You keep projecting your own flawed views onto Brexiteers. And yet, whilst not perfect, this is still better than staying in the EU.
I hope the Tories go down in flames, its the least they deserve, but if I was Sunak, a spring election, April or May would definitely be the best option for them, the country has had enough, don't give it another year, for what's left of their support, to give up on them as well
With the added advantage that the 2024 locals are likely to be terrible, given that 2020 wasn't so bad for them, and the hit to morale after losing tons of councillors could stain the rest of the year. Plus a lot of the people likely to stay away from the polls for a local election might be pulled back if there's a GE concurrent.
For information; two TwiX lawyers worth having glance at/following over the coming Rwanda stuff where there are fascinating legal implications: Tom de la Mare and Adam Wagner
I love the idea that Sunak is aiming for the centre left, and that is the Tories problem. I disagree with that quite confidently......
That's a different issue to whether or not Tory MPs often dislike their own voters, which may well be true in many cases.
Well we know Cameron thinks the usurpers are representative of swivel eyed loons so sure. But the Tories in the past have been perfectly capable of both winning elections and governing reasonably whilst some of them hold such views.
Their problem is not whether or not the MPs like batches of their voters, but that they are hopelessly divided and a bunch of incompetent backstabbers. And I guess to be fair dealt a tough hand with covid and the global economy too.
I have been very busy working so have missed everything.
And, yes, the Investigations Webinar was a triumph. Thank you for asking. In a few hours I will be the star attraction (no, really) at a French bank's training session.
"I never got anywhere near it (thank god), but from the evidence given by multiple people at the inquiry, it seems like the PO got the routine accounting output routinely, but if they wanted to run any sort of query to extract background data from the system, someone had to ring up Fujitsu and then pay for the privilege. Which does seem bizarre - if true, that the PO people couldn’t interrogate their own system and had to jump through hoops and incur cost to dig deeper into their own data, is surely a major contributor to what happened?"
And he is absolutely right. The fundamental problem was that there was never any - or any proper - investigation into what caused the discrepancies at branches. So there was never any basis for saying these were caused by fraud or theft. From that flaw - caused by a flawed contract between the Post Office and Fujitsu, all else followed: the unjustified and malicious prosecutions, the unjustified claims for monies, the unjustified civil litigation, the disclosure failings. And the repeated and prolonged cover ups.
Worth reminding everyone what an experienced IT Professor said - the poor understanding of IT by many bodies, of its complexity and risks leads to “lax legislation, lax regulation and lax procurement”. The first and third certainly happened here.
How many similar contractual provisions are there in other PFI contracts in other parts of the public sector? Someone should be asking this question and looking hard for the answers. I bet no-one is and - worse - no-one ever will.
Do other banks and financial institutions with their large, complex accounting systems, leave IT support and maintenance with the supplier, or insist that in-house people are trained up to do more than just 'use' the system, or contract it out to specialist third party contractors, or what?
I enjoy the deadpan expression which follows the gesture, then the slight raise of the left eyebrow. Artfully done. Could be Chris Morris or one of those fellas.
I can't help feeling that this "the government is totally useless" meme is somewhat overdone. Yes, we are bored to tears with them, yes their priorities tend towards the weird, yes piss ups and breweries come to mind along with shortages of drink, but actually things are nowhere near as bad as people seem to think.
We have very low unemployment, we have rapidly falling inflation, we have moderate growth rather than the forecast recession, the living wage is rising quite quickly in nominal and real terms reducing income disparities, the government has finally taken a modest step towards reducing the penalisation of earned income, things are just not as bad as they are being painted.
We were briefly discussing the same phenomenon last week in the context of Biden who has an extremely hostile press despite having an even better economic record. Our media both in the US as well as here have lost any sense of proportion and I rather think that some on this site have also.
If you're right, and the government is getting little or no credit for an improving economic situation, why is this?
Could it possibly be because all they seem to talk or care about is ******* SMALL BOATS?
When the five pledges were first introduced most of us thought it was back of a fag packet stuff that all governments try to bring a bit of focus. They were so trite and forgettable that under normal circumstances would have drifted into the ether.....
But as often happens the most unlikely caught people's imagination. Dreams of holidays small boats lilos who knows why......but like 'vorsprung durch technik' it became 'a thing' which though making no sense became one of the memorable lines of our time.
It reminded me of the story of Chiat Day Advertising a New York Agency who were commissioned to introduce Nissan into the States. A bunch of their creatives were bouncing around ideas for a headline with their Japanese clients when someone said how about "From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave us Pearl Harbour"
Though never used for their advertising their creative director Della Famina wrote a book using that line which became a worldwide best seller
My father in law died of a brain tumour and it was that quick as well. Time enough for him to say goodbye to his family and friends and then go gently into the good night without prolonged suffering.
I have been very busy working so have missed everything.
And, yes, the Investigations Webinar was a triumph. Thank you for asking. In a few hours I will be the star attraction (no, really) at a French bank's training session.
"I never got anywhere near it (thank god), but from the evidence given by multiple people at the inquiry, it seems like the PO got the routine accounting output routinely, but if they wanted to run any sort of query to extract background data from the system, someone had to ring up Fujitsu and then pay for the privilege. Which does seem bizarre - if true, that the PO people couldn’t interrogate their own system and had to jump through hoops and incur cost to dig deeper into their own data, is surely a major contributor to what happened?"
And he is absolutely right. The fundamental problem was that there was never any - or any proper - investigation into what caused the discrepancies at branches. So there was never any basis for saying these were caused by fraud or theft. From that flaw - caused by a flawed contract between the Post Office and Fujitsu, all else followed: the unjustified and malicious prosecutions, the unjustified claims for monies, the unjustified civil litigation, the disclosure failings. And the repeated and prolonged cover ups.
Worth reminding everyone what an experienced IT Professor said - the poor understanding of IT by many bodies, of its complexity and risks leads to “lax legislation, lax regulation and lax procurement”. The first and third certainly happened here.
How many similar contractual provisions are there in other PFI contracts in other parts of the public sector? Someone should be asking this question and looking hard for the answers. I bet no-one is and - worse - no-one ever will.
Do other banks and financial institutions with their large, complex accounting systems, leave IT support and maintenance with the supplier, or insist that in-house people are trained up to do more than just 'use' the system, or contract it out to specialist third party contractors, or what?
In my experience, it's done in-house. Or often by people who were in-house but are now contractors. But there are so many different systems and when they do go wrong it can be a hell of a job tracking what is happening and why. I have done a few such investigations - usually in order to expIain to an exchange or regulator why it is that stuff that should have been reported wasn't - and they give you prolonged brain ache.
There were a whole load of fines of major banks by the FCA a few years back over transaction reporting failures going back years. The more complex a system is because the rules and requirements become more complex the more scope for cock ups there are. Being in charge of IT at a bank would give me nightmares, frankly.
I can't help feeling that this "the government is totally useless" meme is somewhat overdone. Yes, we are bored to tears with them, yes their priorities tend towards the weird, yes piss ups and breweries come to mind along with shortages of drink, but actually things are nowhere near as bad as people seem to think.
We have very low unemployment, we have rapidly falling inflation, we have moderate growth rather than the forecast recession, the living wage is rising quite quickly in nominal and real terms reducing income disparities, the government has finally taken a modest step towards reducing the penalisation of earned income, things are just not as bad as they are being painted.
We were briefly discussing the same phenomenon last week in the context of Biden who has an extremely hostile press despite having an even better economic record. Our media both in the US as well as here have lost any sense of proportion and I rather think that some on this site have also.
If you're right, and the government is getting little or no credit for an improving economic situation, why is this?
Could it possibly be because all they seem to talk or care about is ******* SMALL BOATS?
When the five pledges were first introduced most of us thought it was back of a fag packet stuff that all governments try to bring a bit of focus. They were so trite and forgettable that under normal circumstances would have drifted into the ether.....
But as often happens the most unlikely caught people's imagination. Dreams of holidays small boats lilos who knows why......but like 'vorsprung durch technik' it became 'a thing' which though making no sense became one of the memorable lines of our time.
It reminded me of the story of Chiat Day Advertising a New York Agency who were commissioned to introduce Nissan into the States. A bunch of their creatives were bouncing around ideas for a headline with their Japanese clients when someone said how about "From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave us Pearl Harbour"
Though never used for their advertising their creative director Della Famina wrote a book using that line which became a worldwide best seller
One of my mates had what I thought was a great idea for an anti smoking tv ad - have the bloke from the Ronseal ads at a funeral and, as the coffin is being lowered behind him, he holds up a pack of Bensons and says ‘Smoking - does exactly what it says on the tin’
Whether to use ‘tin’ or ‘pack’ would have been the only decision
I think splitting the immigration minister's job in two is actually not a bad move as legal and illegal (Or regular/irregular if that's your preferred adjective) migration are two separate issues. He should probably join a ministry elsewhere though so the Gov't payroll doesn't keep growing.
Just goes to show. People. Enjoy your lives. You don’t know what’s around the corner.
He was only a few years older than me.
Something similar happened to one of my best mates in September. Just turned 48, down the pub on Friday, collapsed w an aneurysm on Saturday and passed away on the Thursday.
And how did I spend yesterday? Arguing online about Beergate. Shameful really
I’ve not listened to the speech but multiple people on X/twitter seem to be saying that Rishi hasn’t got the numbers within the Tory party to win next weeks vote on Rwanda
And how did I spend yesterday? Arguing online about Beergate. Shameful really
It's not really shameful. Absent a large amount of wealth, peoples lives have to be concerned with day-to-day minutae. There's a reason for the saying "life is what happens when you're making other plans"...
Last nights Republican debate. CNN have another group of Republican Iowa voters together and of the 8, 1 said Trump won, 1 De-Santis and 6 Haley. 4 said they will vote for her in the Caucus. Haley has come out on top the last 3 debates by ever increasing margins, I would put money on her to win the Caucus in January, then South Carolina. With her as the candidate the Republicans would probably sweep the General Election in November.
This is bald-men-fighting-over-a-comb stuff though. Trump is running at 60% in the primary race. It's possible that Haley wins Iowa, though I don't think it likely. It's a very outside chance she wins S Carolina. Both, however, are special cases and Trump is not going to allow her a free ride; by contrast, she's not challenging him directly. As long as no-one takes Trump down, he wins.
Are the Tories going to yield on reparations for slavery to commonwealth nations. Interesting comment from the PM of tiny island nation, Barbados who are demanding just under 5 Trillion USD.
"Mottley met David Cameron earlier on Tuesday but would not give details of the foreign secretary’s thoughts on the UK’s slavery-related debt.
“I’m not going to get into the details of our conversation but suffice to say I think the foreign secretary will take his lead from his majesty,” she said."
One bizarre thing are claims that slaves never received compensation.
The West Indies are now a collection of mostly independent black republics - effectively West African colonies which are far more affluent and developed than West Africa itself.
The descendants of the slaves got the countries.
Don't even send us a Christmas Tree to say thanks.
I don't think there is a good case for slavery reparations, but if the best arguments against are "what about the ancient Romans?" and "the West Indies are better off than West Africa", then maybe the case for reparations is better than I thought.
Rwanda is a gimmick, and not serious as policy. It would have been stupid to make it a die-in-a-ditch cause of an election, as the subsequent campaign would have ripped the policy to shreds and made the Tories look ridiculous as well as venomous.
Mind you the adolescents of CCHQ still think the "power stance" for ministers actually works, rather than making them look simply absurd, so they could even have been planning to do it. Jenrick quitting reveals that even the Tories know that the Rwanda policy is a dead duck.
The problem now is that the Tories are beginning to have a nervous breakdown in the face of an epochal defeat.
And the more obvious the nervous breakdown the greater the scale that defeat is going to be
I'm struggling to see how this Government gets to March to allow an election to be called for May..
I think they should go in May, and get it over with. They probably won't but I think it would be better for them in the long run. It will be worse if they hang on until November, and the subsequent rebuilding will be more difficult.
The May local elections are going to be bad for the Tories, they are going to lose some regional mayors and a fair number of council seats.
That is going to make May onwards very difficult for Rishi which is why they should (but probably won’t) go for May
To add to this - the first thing any incoming new leadership of a council is going to do is to look at the finances and get the bad news out of the way immediately while they can blame the previously leadership.
Which means I can see a lot of councils issuing Section 114 notices in June next year.
Rishi really does need the election to occur before the reality of local council finances (and a lot of other things) becomes clear
Just goes to show. People. Enjoy your lives. You don’t know what’s around the corner.
He was only a few years older than me.
Something similar happened to one of my best mates in September. Just turned 48, down the pub on Friday, collapsed w an aneurysm on Saturday and passed away on the Thursday.
And how did I spend yesterday? Arguing online about Beergate. Shameful really
That is very sad and in my recent health issues the medics discovered I had a small aortic aneurysm and they will monitor it and if necessary in time will operate on it
It is a relief that this was discovered on my scan for my DVT, and it is not known generally but all men 65 plus are eligible for screening
I just don’t think you’re meant to say the bit out loud, where you warn *your own MPs* that sadly we can’t make the legislation more extreme because the Rwandan dictator won’t let us.
Rishi Sunak’s line is that he won’t let foreign courts dictate UK legislation but he will let the Rwandan government dictate UK legislation. Not sure that argument’s going to fly with his party.
Just goes to show. People. Enjoy your lives. You don’t know what’s around the corner.
He was only a few years older than me.
Something similar happened to one of my best mates in September. Just turned 48, down the pub on Friday, collapsed w an aneurysm on Saturday and passed away on the Thursday.
And how did I spend yesterday? Arguing online about Beergate. Shameful really
When you’re young you think you’re invincible, you will go on forever.
The older you get the more you become aware of your own mortality.
PM pushed a second time by @BethRigby: If you can't succeed, is it election time?
"I'm confident I can get this thing done," Sunak says - swerving the question again.
What on earth do you or Rigby expect him to say
It is upto the conservative mps to decide whether they back the legislation or not and if 29 vote against then a GE looks very possible and a very heavy defeat
I have been very busy working so have missed everything.
And, yes, the Investigations Webinar was a triumph. Thank you for asking. In a few hours I will be the star attraction (no, really) at a French bank's training session.
"I never got anywhere near it (thank god), but from the evidence given by multiple people at the inquiry, it seems like the PO got the routine accounting output routinely, but if they wanted to run any sort of query to extract background data from the system, someone had to ring up Fujitsu and then pay for the privilege. Which does seem bizarre - if true, that the PO people couldn’t interrogate their own system and had to jump through hoops and incur cost to dig deeper into their own data, is surely a major contributor to what happened?"
And he is absolutely right. The fundamental problem was that there was never any - or any proper - investigation into what caused the discrepancies at branches. So there was never any basis for saying these were caused by fraud or theft. From that flaw - caused by a flawed contract between the Post Office and Fujitsu, all else followed: the unjustified and malicious prosecutions, the unjustified claims for monies, the unjustified civil litigation, the disclosure failings. And the repeated and prolonged cover ups.
Worth reminding everyone what an experienced IT Professor said - the poor understanding of IT by many bodies, of its complexity and risks leads to “lax legislation, lax regulation and lax procurement”. The first and third certainly happened here.
How many similar contractual provisions are there in other PFI contracts in other parts of the public sector? Someone should be asking this question and looking hard for the answers. I bet no-one is and - worse - no-one ever will.
Do other banks and financial institutions with their large, complex accounting systems, leave IT support and maintenance with the supplier, or insist that in-house people are trained up to do more than just 'use' the system, or contract it out to specialist third party contractors, or what?
The model used by competent organisations is this (for core systems) -
1) management and core *development* team are in house, on shore 2) during build the team(s) are expanded with external contractors etc 3) as you move to the support part of the software lifecycle, the team(s) shrink back to 1) 4) if significant redevelopment is required, see 2)
Are the Tories going to yield on reparations for slavery to commonwealth nations. Interesting comment from the PM of tiny island nation, Barbados who are demanding just under 5 Trillion USD.
"Mottley met David Cameron earlier on Tuesday but would not give details of the foreign secretary’s thoughts on the UK’s slavery-related debt.
“I’m not going to get into the details of our conversation but suffice to say I think the foreign secretary will take his lead from his majesty,” she said."
One bizarre thing are claims that slaves never received compensation.
The West Indies are now a collection of mostly independent black republics - effectively West African colonies which are far more affluent and developed than West Africa itself.
The descendants of the slaves got the countries.
Don't even send us a Christmas Tree to say thanks.
I don't think there is a good case for slavery reparations, but if the best arguments against are "what about the ancient Romans?" and "the West Indies are better off than West Africa", then maybe the case for reparations is better than I thought.
If you feel that way then feel free to dig deep and send some cash. There are plenty of NGO’s doing work in these regions. 👍
I’ve not listened to the speech but multiple people on X/twitter seem to be saying that Rishi hasn’t got the numbers within the Tory party to win next weeks vote on Rwanda
I would be amazed if he lost the vote . Unless that is a bunch of Tory MPs want to lose the election. Perhaps their plan is to ensure a heavy defeat with most of the right wingers sitting on big majorities hanging on and they can complete the takeover of the party .
I have been very busy working so have missed everything.
And, yes, the Investigations Webinar was a triumph. Thank you for asking. In a few hours I will be the star attraction (no, really) at a French bank's training session.
"I never got anywhere near it (thank god), but from the evidence given by multiple people at the inquiry, it seems like the PO got the routine accounting output routinely, but if they wanted to run any sort of query to extract background data from the system, someone had to ring up Fujitsu and then pay for the privilege. Which does seem bizarre - if true, that the PO people couldn’t interrogate their own system and had to jump through hoops and incur cost to dig deeper into their own data, is surely a major contributor to what happened?"
And he is absolutely right. The fundamental problem was that there was never any - or any proper - investigation into what caused the discrepancies at branches. So there was never any basis for saying these were caused by fraud or theft. From that flaw - caused by a flawed contract between the Post Office and Fujitsu, all else followed: the unjustified and malicious prosecutions, the unjustified claims for monies, the unjustified civil litigation, the disclosure failings. And the repeated and prolonged cover ups.
Worth reminding everyone what an experienced IT Professor said - the poor understanding of IT by many bodies, of its complexity and risks leads to “lax legislation, lax regulation and lax procurement”. The first and third certainly happened here.
How many similar contractual provisions are there in other PFI contracts in other parts of the public sector? Someone should be asking this question and looking hard for the answers. I bet no-one is and - worse - no-one ever will.
Do other banks and financial institutions with their large, complex accounting systems, leave IT support and maintenance with the supplier, or insist that in-house people are trained up to do more than just 'use' the system, or contract it out to specialist third party contractors, or what?
In my experience, it's done in-house. Or often by people who were in-house but are now contractors. But there are so many different systems and when they do go wrong it can be a hell of a job tracking what is happening and why. I have done a few such investigations - usually in order to expIain to an exchange or regulator why it is that stuff that should have been reported wasn't - and they give you prolonged brain ache.
There were a whole load of fines of major banks by the FCA a few years back over transaction reporting failures going back years. The more complex a system is because the rules and requirements become more complex the more scope for cock ups there are. Being in charge of IT at a bank would give me nightmares, frankly.
Most banks haven’t replaced their core transactional system in decades, for exactly this reason. They’ve developed fancy new web and app interfaces, but most of the mainframes are running software older than me.
A friend is one of the old-school COBOL programmers, who maintains that code, and he’s now earning more in retirement than he ever did in work, contracting at several grand a day. There’s very few of them left, and they can pretty much name their price at this point.
Last nights Republican debate. CNN have another group of Republican Iowa voters together and of the 8, 1 said Trump won, 1 De-Santis and 6 Haley. 4 said they will vote for her in the Caucus. Haley has come out on top the last 3 debates by ever increasing margins, I would put money on her to win the Caucus in January, then South Carolina. With her as the candidate the Republicans would probably sweep the General Election in November.
This is bald-men-fighting-over-a-comb stuff though. Trump is running at 60% in the primary race. It's possible that Haley wins Iowa, though I don't think it likely. It's a very outside chance she wins S Carolina. Both, however, are special cases and Trump is not going to allow her a free ride; by contrast, she's not challenging him directly. As long as no-one takes Trump down, he wins.
I have been very busy working so have missed everything.
And, yes, the Investigations Webinar was a triumph. Thank you for asking. In a few hours I will be the star attraction (no, really) at a French bank's training session.
"I never got anywhere near it (thank god), but from the evidence given by multiple people at the inquiry, it seems like the PO got the routine accounting output routinely, but if they wanted to run any sort of query to extract background data from the system, someone had to ring up Fujitsu and then pay for the privilege. Which does seem bizarre - if true, that the PO people couldn’t interrogate their own system and had to jump through hoops and incur cost to dig deeper into their own data, is surely a major contributor to what happened?"
And he is absolutely right. The fundamental problem was that there was never any - or any proper - investigation into what caused the discrepancies at branches. So there was never any basis for saying these were caused by fraud or theft. From that flaw - caused by a flawed contract between the Post Office and Fujitsu, all else followed: the unjustified and malicious prosecutions, the unjustified claims for monies, the unjustified civil litigation, the disclosure failings. And the repeated and prolonged cover ups.
Worth reminding everyone what an experienced IT Professor said - the poor understanding of IT by many bodies, of its complexity and risks leads to “lax legislation, lax regulation and lax procurement”. The first and third certainly happened here.
How many similar contractual provisions are there in other PFI contracts in other parts of the public sector? Someone should be asking this question and looking hard for the answers. I bet no-one is and - worse - no-one ever will.
Do other banks and financial institutions with their large, complex accounting systems, leave IT support and maintenance with the supplier, or insist that in-house people are trained up to do more than just 'use' the system, or contract it out to specialist third party contractors, or what?
In my experience, it's done in-house. Or often by people who were in-house but are now contractors. But there are so many different systems and when they do go wrong it can be a hell of a job tracking what is happening and why. I have done a few such investigations - usually in order to expIain to an exchange or regulator why it is that stuff that should have been reported wasn't - and they give you prolonged brain ache.
There were a whole load of fines of major banks by the FCA a few years back over transaction reporting failures going back years. The more complex a system is because the rules and requirements become more complex the more scope for cock ups there are. Being in charge of IT at a bank would give me nightmares, frankly.
I see it's just been evidenced that the PO's investigators couldn't ask Fujitsu directly for data from the system, but had to go through a central PO team, and that there was a limit on the total amount of data that could be requested nationally each month.
PM pushed a second time by @BethRigby: If you can't succeed, is it election time?
"I'm confident I can get this thing done," Sunak says - swerving the question again.
What on earth do you or Rigby expect him to say
It is upto the conservative mps to decide whether they back the legislation or not and if 29 vote against then a GE looks very possible and a very heavy defeat
We've all spent ages musing on how bad things would have to be for the Conservatives to have an election campaign straddling Christmas '24.
They'd have to have an absolute death wish to run it over Christmas '23. On an issue which may have merits, but certainly isn't peace and goodwill to all men.
The hard right may not like the Sunak plan, but they're not that dumb... are they?
PM pushed a second time by @BethRigby: If you can't succeed, is it election time?
"I'm confident I can get this thing done," Sunak says - swerving the question again.
What on earth do you or Rigby expect him to say
It is upto the conservative mps to decide whether they back the legislation or not and if 29 vote against then a GE looks very possible and a very heavy defeat
We've all spent ages musing on how bad things would have to be for the Conservatives to have an election campaign straddling Christmas '24.
They'd have to have an absolute death wish to run it over Christmas '23. On an issue which may have merits, but certainly isn't peace and goodwill to all men.
The hard right may not like the Sunak plan, but they're not that dumb... are they?
I have been very busy working so have missed everything.
And, yes, the Investigations Webinar was a triumph. Thank you for asking. In a few hours I will be the star attraction (no, really) at a French bank's training session.
"I never got anywhere near it (thank god), but from the evidence given by multiple people at the inquiry, it seems like the PO got the routine accounting output routinely, but if they wanted to run any sort of query to extract background data from the system, someone had to ring up Fujitsu and then pay for the privilege. Which does seem bizarre - if true, that the PO people couldn’t interrogate their own system and had to jump through hoops and incur cost to dig deeper into their own data, is surely a major contributor to what happened?"
And he is absolutely right. The fundamental problem was that there was never any - or any proper - investigation into what caused the discrepancies at branches. So there was never any basis for saying these were caused by fraud or theft. From that flaw - caused by a flawed contract between the Post Office and Fujitsu, all else followed: the unjustified and malicious prosecutions, the unjustified claims for monies, the unjustified civil litigation, the disclosure failings. And the repeated and prolonged cover ups.
Worth reminding everyone what an experienced IT Professor said - the poor understanding of IT by many bodies, of its complexity and risks leads to “lax legislation, lax regulation and lax procurement”. The first and third certainly happened here.
How many similar contractual provisions are there in other PFI contracts in other parts of the public sector? Someone should be asking this question and looking hard for the answers. I bet no-one is and - worse - no-one ever will.
Do other banks and financial institutions with their large, complex accounting systems, leave IT support and maintenance with the supplier, or insist that in-house people are trained up to do more than just 'use' the system, or contract it out to specialist third party contractors, or what?
In my experience, it's done in-house. Or often by people who were in-house but are now contractors. But there are so many different systems and when they do go wrong it can be a hell of a job tracking what is happening and why. I have done a few such investigations - usually in order to expIain to an exchange or regulator why it is that stuff that should have been reported wasn't - and they give you prolonged brain ache.
There were a whole load of fines of major banks by the FCA a few years back over transaction reporting failures going back years. The more complex a system is because the rules and requirements become more complex the more scope for cock ups there are. Being in charge of IT at a bank would give me nightmares, frankly.
I see it's just been evidenced that the PO's investigators couldn't ask Fujitsu directly for data from the system, but had to go through a central PO team, and that there was a limit on the total amount of data that could be requested nationally each month.
No private-sector organisation of that size, would ever sign a vendor contract that limited data in that way, other than a cloud computing contract that scaled with use.
I hope the Tories go down in flames, its the least they deserve, but if I was Sunak, a spring election, April or May would definitely be the best option for them, the country has had enough, don't give it another year, for what's left of their support, to give up on them as well
With the added advantage that the 2024 locals are likely to be terrible, given that 2020 wasn't so bad for them, and the hit to morale after losing tons of councillors could stain the rest of the year. Plus a lot of the people likely to stay away from the polls for a local election might be pulled back if there's a GE concurrent.
I think that considerably overrates the importance of local elections to No 10 or to the public. Yes, they'll be horrible results for the Tories but in a week, that will still just be background noise.
The basic question remains why lose heavily now when something might turn up later?
A good example of why I love reading Theodore Dalrymple articles.
"There is a little Italian restaurant that we usually go to soon after our arrival in Paris, an unpretentious place where the pasta is good. It has a friendly atmosphere, and by now we are frequent enough customers to be greeted as friends.
The patronne allows her children, aged about 7 and 9, when they have no school the next day, to act as auxiliaries in the restaurant. How proud they are to show patrons to their table, to take their orders, and to bring their dishes when ready! It is charming to watch, and it is an excellent way to teach them things informally. When customers pay in cash, it is they who calculate the change due; they are even learning how to use the credit card machine. In this safe environment, they learn not to fear strangers and how to address them politely. These things will stay with them for the rest of their lives.
Imagine, however, a busybody who reported the use of child labor to the authorities. Children kept up after they should be in bed, and who might be exhausted the next day! Children exploited as ultracheap labor in place of adult labor! Children entering a busy kitchen where all sorts of dangers await them! Children carrying hot dishes that might scald or burn them if spilt! What a horrific picture could be painted! You could, if you wanted, make it all sound like the horrors of child labor of the 19th century. The children would therefore have to be protected from their cruel or irresponsible mother, who, being of Sicilian peasant origin, found this all perfectly normal. Never mind that it was obvious from a glance that she was a loving and solicitous mother, and the children were happy: The case must be investigated, and the law invoked."
The basic question remains why lose heavily now when something might turn up later?
One of the few tools available to Sunak to impose even this little discipline on his party is the threat of a GE, so he can't rule it and the rumours of it probably help.
PM pushed a second time by @BethRigby: If you can't succeed, is it election time?
"I'm confident I can get this thing done," Sunak says - swerving the question again.
What on earth do you or Rigby expect him to say
It is upto the conservative mps to decide whether they back the legislation or not and if 29 vote against then a GE looks very possible and a very heavy defeat
I'm sorry but this is "therefore, second referendum" logic.
How do you get from the Tories losing a vote to a general election? What's the mechanism? It won't be a confidence vote and if Sunak does lose and Starmer then tables a confidence vote (which he'd be sensible to do), Sunak would win with the rebel Tories back on side.
Put simply, why would either Sunak or his MPs pitch the country into an election they would be trounced in, if they have the option of waiting?
The basic question remains why lose heavily now when something might turn up later?
One of the few tools available to Sunak to impose even this little discipline on his party is the threat of a GE, so he can't rule it and the rumours of it probably help.
It’s a false threat . He’s not a turkey voting for Christmas and his MPs know that .
PM pushed a second time by @BethRigby: If you can't succeed, is it election time?
"I'm confident I can get this thing done," Sunak says - swerving the question again.
What on earth do you or Rigby expect him to say
It is upto the conservative mps to decide whether they back the legislation or not and if 29 vote against then a GE looks very possible and a very heavy defeat
We've all spent ages musing on how bad things would have to be for the Conservatives to have an election campaign straddling Christmas '24.
They'd have to have an absolute death wish to run it over Christmas '23. On an issue which may have merits, but certainly isn't peace and goodwill to all men.
The hard right may not like the Sunak plan, but they're not that dumb... are they?
The hard right now have a big problem. They either follow Braverman/Jenrick, vote against the government and face the very real risk of oblivion in an imminent election. Alternatively, they stick with Sunak and lose all credibility with RefUK-type voters and risk their own future when the election comes.
There may be some type of fudge that allows Braverman/Jenrick to back down, but that shreds their chances of becoming leader after the election.
It is quite astonishing how all parts of the Tory party have got themselves into a complete mess.
It's always worth putting a bet on another Tory leadership challenge within 18 months. I should have learnt that by now.
What we are witnessing is Sunak refusing to leave the EHCR and other international bodies and challenging those in his party who want us to align with Russia and Belarus as the only countries outside international law
On this he has my support and maybe it is better to take the right on now, as if he does win the vote with just a handful of his mps voting against then he will be in a more secure position - of course if the right decide to commit 'hari - kari' then it is all over for the conservative party as we know it
I have been very busy working so have missed everything.
And, yes, the Investigations Webinar was a triumph. Thank you for asking. In a few hours I will be the star attraction (no, really) at a French bank's training session.
"I never got anywhere near it (thank god), but from the evidence given by multiple people at the inquiry, it seems like the PO got the routine accounting output routinely, but if they wanted to run any sort of query to extract background data from the system, someone had to ring up Fujitsu and then pay for the privilege. Which does seem bizarre - if true, that the PO people couldn’t interrogate their own system and had to jump through hoops and incur cost to dig deeper into their own data, is surely a major contributor to what happened?"
And he is absolutely right. The fundamental problem was that there was never any - or any proper - investigation into what caused the discrepancies at branches. So there was never any basis for saying these were caused by fraud or theft. From that flaw - caused by a flawed contract between the Post Office and Fujitsu, all else followed: the unjustified and malicious prosecutions, the unjustified claims for monies, the unjustified civil litigation, the disclosure failings. And the repeated and prolonged cover ups.
Worth reminding everyone what an experienced IT Professor said - the poor understanding of IT by many bodies, of its complexity and risks leads to “lax legislation, lax regulation and lax procurement”. The first and third certainly happened here.
How many similar contractual provisions are there in other PFI contracts in other parts of the public sector? Someone should be asking this question and looking hard for the answers. I bet no-one is and - worse - no-one ever will.
Do other banks and financial institutions with their large, complex accounting systems, leave IT support and maintenance with the supplier, or insist that in-house people are trained up to do more than just 'use' the system, or contract it out to specialist third party contractors, or what?
In my experience, it's done in-house. Or often by people who were in-house but are now contractors. But there are so many different systems and when they do go wrong it can be a hell of a job tracking what is happening and why. I have done a few such investigations - usually in order to expIain to an exchange or regulator why it is that stuff that should have been reported wasn't - and they give you prolonged brain ache.
There were a whole load of fines of major banks by the FCA a few years back over transaction reporting failures going back years. The more complex a system is because the rules and requirements become more complex the more scope for cock ups there are. Being in charge of IT at a bank would give me nightmares, frankly.
I see it's just been evidenced that the PO's investigators couldn't ask Fujitsu directly for data from the system, but had to go through a central PO team, and that there was a limit on the total amount of data that could be requested nationally each month.
No private-sector organisation of that size, would ever sign a vendor contract that limited data in that way, other than a cloud computing contract that scaled with use.
TBF it wasn't clear whether the limit was imposed by the supplier or by the contract, or by some sort of budget internal to the PO.
PM pushed a second time by @BethRigby: If you can't succeed, is it election time?
"I'm confident I can get this thing done," Sunak says - swerving the question again.
What on earth do you or Rigby expect him to say
It is upto the conservative mps to decide whether they back the legislation or not and if 29 vote against then a GE looks very possible and a very heavy defeat
I'm sorry but this is "therefore, second referendum" logic.
How do you get from the Tories losing a vote to a general election? What's the mechanism? It won't be a confidence vote and if Sunak does lose and Starmer then tables a confidence vote (which he'd be sensible to do), Sunak would win with the rebel Tories back on side.
Put simply, why would either Sunak or his MPs pitch the country into an election they would be trounced in, if they have the option of waiting?
PM pushed a second time by @BethRigby: If you can't succeed, is it election time?
"I'm confident I can get this thing done," Sunak says - swerving the question again.
What on earth do you or Rigby expect him to say
It is upto the conservative mps to decide whether they back the legislation or not and if 29 vote against then a GE looks very possible and a very heavy defeat
We've all spent ages musing on how bad things would have to be for the Conservatives to have an election campaign straddling Christmas '24.
They'd have to have an absolute death wish to run it over Christmas '23. On an issue which may have merits, but certainly isn't peace and goodwill to all men.
The hard right may not like the Sunak plan, but they're not that dumb... are they?
The hard right now have a big problem. They either follow Braverman/Jenrick, vote against the government and face the very real risk of oblivion in an imminent election. Alternatively, they stick with Sunak and lose all credibility with RefUK-type voters and risk their own future when the election comes.
There may be some type of fudge that allows Braverman/Jenrick to back down, but that shreds their chances of becoming leader after the election.
It is quite astonishing how all parts of the Tory party have got themselves into a complete mess.
This is reminiscent of the harder left of the good old days. The voluble wing of the Tory party has abandoned running the country with boring competence (NHS, picking soft fruit, price of milk, mortgages) in favour of the articulation of a set of theories about issues of remarkably little practical consequence for most people most of the time. They have then set about splitting hairs and dividing over a policy which is beyond rational implementation, and if set in motion will make no difference.
It's always worth putting a bet on another Tory leadership challenge within 18 months. I should have learnt that by now.
What we are witnessing is Sunak refusing to leave the EHCR and other international bodies and challenging those in his party who want us to align with Russia and Belarus as the only countries outside international law
On this he has my support and maybe it is better to take the right on now, as if he does win the vote with just a handful of his mps voting against then he will be in a more secure position - of course if the right decide to commit 'hari - kari' then it is all over for the conservative party as we know it
Russia is rapidly expanding its territory and is about to win a major war in Europe. Meanwhile its economy is growing healthily and its people are infused with patriotic fervour, and they know that a woman is a woman and a good cigar is a smoke
Here in the west we cower pathetically from the likes of Barbados as they demand “$5.4 trillion” in reparations and some of the leading universities of the western world say it’s ok to ask for genocide on the Jews but don’t misgender anyone!
If a government can successfully legislate to take human rights from one set of people, what’s to stop it doing the same to another set and another and so on? A cornerstone of any free, democratic country is protection of minorities. The UK government is seeking to legislate that away.
If a UK government can successfully legislate to remove its actions from legal scrutiny, as this government is seeking to do, what is to stop it legislating to end elections, create a one party state, end press freedom and so on?
The constitutional implications of the Rwanda bill becoming implementable law are huge. Effectively, it would demonstrate our current settlement offers no protection against tyranny in a situation where the executive has a majority in the House of Commons.
I particularly like the effortless transition from 'up yours' -> 'neutral expression' -> 'newsreader's one raised eyebrow'. Actually, I think her left eyebrow deserves its own Twitter profile.
I can't help feeling that this "the government is totally useless" meme is somewhat overdone. Yes, we are bored to tears with them, yes their priorities tend towards the weird, yes piss ups and breweries come to mind along with shortages of drink, but actually things are nowhere near as bad as people seem to think.
We have very low unemployment, we have rapidly falling inflation, we have moderate growth rather than the forecast recession, the living wage is rising quite quickly in nominal and real terms reducing income disparities, the government has finally taken a modest step towards reducing the penalisation of earned income, things are just not as bad as they are being painted.
We were briefly discussing the same phenomenon last week in the context of Biden who has an extremely hostile press despite having an even better economic record. Our media both in the US as well as here have lost any sense of proportion and I rather think that some on this site have also.
If you're right, and the government is getting little or no credit for an improving economic situation, why is this?
Could it possibly be because all they seem to talk or care about is ******* SMALL BOATS?
When the five pledges were first introduced most of us thought it was back of a fag packet stuff that all governments try to bring a bit of focus. They were so trite and forgettable that under normal circumstances would have drifted into the ether.....
But as often happens the most unlikely caught people's imagination. Dreams of holidays small boats lilos who knows why......but like 'vorsprung durch technik' it became 'a thing' which though making no sense became one of the memorable lines of our time.
It reminded me of the story of Chiat Day Advertising a New York Agency who were commissioned to introduce Nissan into the States. A bunch of their creatives were bouncing around ideas for a headline with their Japanese clients when someone said how about "From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave us Pearl Harbour"
Though never used for their advertising their creative director Della Famina wrote a book using that line which became a worldwide best seller
One of my mates had what I thought was a great idea for an anti smoking tv ad - have the bloke from the Ronseal ads at a funeral and, as the coffin is being lowered behind him, he holds up a pack of Bensons and says ‘Smoking - does exactly what it says on the tin’
Whether to use ‘tin’ or ‘pack’ would have been the only decision
Good taste might have been another! The rules are still strict
As much as I’d love the license fee to go I cannot honestly see the problem here. She’s clearly having a jolly jape with a work chum.
There are many reasons to criticise the BBC. This isn’t one.
I wonder what she was getting in her ear from the producer. There's a similar tale from shopping TV of a presenter doing exactly the same thing - her producer was calling her a bitch and a slut via her earpiece. As I recall, she was dismissed immediately for bringing the channel into disrepute but he wasn't.
It’s that time of year again. If old shiny head can’t even sort out homelessness for his pal Dave in three years..
This must be write like the Daily Mail day .
1 - The chap isn't homeless. He now has a flat and a living. 2 - I'm sure that headline says "3 times in one year'. 3 - I don't think he promised to end all homelessless, and that his current contribution is a 5 year project that started about 5 months ago.
More seriously, I think the model he needs is perhaps the Prince's Trust, which is a fairly small organisation but has made a huge contribution by doing it for 50 years.
If a government can successfully legislate to take human rights from one set of people, what’s to stop it doing the same to another set and another and so on? A cornerstone of any free, democratic country is protection of minorities. The UK government is seeking to legislate that away.
If a UK government can successfully legislate to remove its actions from legal scrutiny, as this government is seeking to do, what is to stop it legislating to end elections, create a one party state, end press freedom and so on?
The constitutional implications of the Rwanda bill becoming implementable law are huge. Effectively, it would demonstrate our current settlement offers no protection against tyranny in a situation where the executive has a majority in the House of Commons.
That has literally been the constitutional settlement for centuries - and has indeed been demonstrated clearly at times, most obviously, recently, with the Covid restrictions (which whether justified or not were immense infringements on civil liberties).
There are no constitutional implications to the Rwanda Bill. There are political ones.
I have been very busy working so have missed everything.
And, yes, the Investigations Webinar was a triumph. Thank you for asking. In a few hours I will be the star attraction (no, really) at a French bank's training session.
"I never got anywhere near it (thank god), but from the evidence given by multiple people at the inquiry, it seems like the PO got the routine accounting output routinely, but if they wanted to run any sort of query to extract background data from the system, someone had to ring up Fujitsu and then pay for the privilege. Which does seem bizarre - if true, that the PO people couldn’t interrogate their own system and had to jump through hoops and incur cost to dig deeper into their own data, is surely a major contributor to what happened?"
And he is absolutely right. The fundamental problem was that there was never any - or any proper - investigation into what caused the discrepancies at branches. So there was never any basis for saying these were caused by fraud or theft. From that flaw - caused by a flawed contract between the Post Office and Fujitsu, all else followed: the unjustified and malicious prosecutions, the unjustified claims for monies, the unjustified civil litigation, the disclosure failings. And the repeated and prolonged cover ups.
Worth reminding everyone what an experienced IT Professor said - the poor understanding of IT by many bodies, of its complexity and risks leads to “lax legislation, lax regulation and lax procurement”. The first and third certainly happened here.
How many similar contractual provisions are there in other PFI contracts in other parts of the public sector? Someone should be asking this question and looking hard for the answers. I bet no-one is and - worse - no-one ever will.
Do other banks and financial institutions with their large, complex accounting systems, leave IT support and maintenance with the supplier, or insist that in-house people are trained up to do more than just 'use' the system, or contract it out to specialist third party contractors, or what?
The model used by competent organisations is this (for core systems) -
1) management and core *development* team are in house, on shore 2) during build the team(s) are expanded with external contractors etc 3) as you move to the support part of the software lifecycle, the team(s) shrink back to 1) 4) if significant redevelopment is required, see 2)
I can’t think of a single UK bank that meets that criteria nowadays except probably Nationwide and the new starters
Are you jealous that they now have Brooklyn Beckham doing travel writing ?
I take my computer with me wherever I go because Nicola and I love watching TV shows and always have a series on the go. If we’re staying in a hotel then we’ll get room service — my go-to order is chicken and chips with an ice water; Nicola goes for fruit and ice cream — and binge-watch something like Sex and the City or Gilmore Girls in the evening.
If a government can successfully legislate to take human rights from one set of people, what’s to stop it doing the same to another set and another and so on? A cornerstone of any free, democratic country is protection of minorities. The UK government is seeking to legislate that away.
If a UK government can successfully legislate to remove its actions from legal scrutiny, as this government is seeking to do, what is to stop it legislating to end elections, create a one party state, end press freedom and so on?
The constitutional implications of the Rwanda bill becoming implementable law are huge. Effectively, it would demonstrate our current settlement offers no protection against tyranny in a situation where the executive has a majority in the House of Commons.
That has literally been the constitutional settlement for centuries - and has indeed been demonstrated clearly at times, most obviously, recently, with the Covid restrictions (which whether justified or not were immense infringements on civil liberties).
There are no constitutional implications to the Rwanda Bill. There are political ones.
The problem of the Commons being able to do anything it likes without fetter, now the power of the Lords and the Monarch has withered, has been a constitutional issue for over a century. That the EU was able to fetter the discretion of the Commons to a even tiny degree was not a bug but a feature. A party that wins 45% of the vote in our system can remove any civil liberty it likes. Leaving the ECHR will only increase that ability. Reactionaries should be careful what they wish for. One day the majority might come for them.
I can't help feeling that this "the government is totally useless" meme is somewhat overdone. Yes, we are bored to tears with them, yes their priorities tend towards the weird, yes piss ups and breweries come to mind along with shortages of drink, but actually things are nowhere near as bad as people seem to think.
We have very low unemployment, we have rapidly falling inflation, we have moderate growth rather than the forecast recession, the living wage is rising quite quickly in nominal and real terms reducing income disparities, the government has finally taken a modest step towards reducing the penalisation of earned income, things are just not as bad as they are being painted.
We were briefly discussing the same phenomenon last week in the context of Biden who has an extremely hostile press despite having an even better economic record. Our media both in the US as well as here have lost any sense of proportion and I rather think that some on this site have also.
Yes, except that there’s a large disconnect between the economic statistics and how the average person is feeling.
To paraphrase Mr Reagan, the average person very much doesn’t feel better off than they did four years ago, something that’s true for both the US and UK.
Normally that is because people have a bias that way but in this case its absolutely true. Although real wages are rising now there is a long way to go before the loss in real terms over the last 4 years is recovered and even longer until that increase in enough to pay the additional tax imposed on those earnings. But that is the price of a pandemic and a slightly overblown response to it. We are poorer because we spent £400bn dealing with Covid and the cost of that debt is increasing.
David, surely you mean the Tories and their friends and families pocketed most of the £400B. Your average mug is paying for their largesse
It does seem that Cummings, Case, Vallance, Whitty, McNamara et all were bullshitting during their testimony, unless Johnson is not as up front as he claims.
TBF he has been very well schooled in dealing with Keith.
I have been very busy working so have missed everything.
And, yes, the Investigations Webinar was a triumph. Thank you for asking. In a few hours I will be the star attraction (no, really) at a French bank's training session.
"I never got anywhere near it (thank god), but from the evidence given by multiple people at the inquiry, it seems like the PO got the routine accounting output routinely, but if they wanted to run any sort of query to extract background data from the system, someone had to ring up Fujitsu and then pay for the privilege. Which does seem bizarre - if true, that the PO people couldn’t interrogate their own system and had to jump through hoops and incur cost to dig deeper into their own data, is surely a major contributor to what happened?"
And he is absolutely right. The fundamental problem was that there was never any - or any proper - investigation into what caused the discrepancies at branches. So there was never any basis for saying these were caused by fraud or theft. From that flaw - caused by a flawed contract between the Post Office and Fujitsu, all else followed: the unjustified and malicious prosecutions, the unjustified claims for monies, the unjustified civil litigation, the disclosure failings. And the repeated and prolonged cover ups.
Worth reminding everyone what an experienced IT Professor said - the poor understanding of IT by many bodies, of its complexity and risks leads to “lax legislation, lax regulation and lax procurement”. The first and third certainly happened here.
How many similar contractual provisions are there in other PFI contracts in other parts of the public sector? Someone should be asking this question and looking hard for the answers. I bet no-one is and - worse - no-one ever will.
Do other banks and financial institutions with their large, complex accounting systems, leave IT support and maintenance with the supplier, or insist that in-house people are trained up to do more than just 'use' the system, or contract it out to specialist third party contractors, or what?
The model used by competent organisations is this (for core systems) -
1) management and core *development* team are in house, on shore 2) during build the team(s) are expanded with external contractors etc 3) as you move to the support part of the software lifecycle, the team(s) shrink back to 1) 4) if significant redevelopment is required, see 2)
I can’t think of a single UK bank that meets that criteria nowadays except probably Nationwide and the new starters
Yes. Competence in organisations is somewhat rare.
I have been very busy working so have missed everything.
And, yes, the Investigations Webinar was a triumph. Thank you for asking. In a few hours I will be the star attraction (no, really) at a French bank's training session.
"I never got anywhere near it (thank god), but from the evidence given by multiple people at the inquiry, it seems like the PO got the routine accounting output routinely, but if they wanted to run any sort of query to extract background data from the system, someone had to ring up Fujitsu and then pay for the privilege. Which does seem bizarre - if true, that the PO people couldn’t interrogate their own system and had to jump through hoops and incur cost to dig deeper into their own data, is surely a major contributor to what happened?"
And he is absolutely right. The fundamental problem was that there was never any - or any proper - investigation into what caused the discrepancies at branches. So there was never any basis for saying these were caused by fraud or theft. From that flaw - caused by a flawed contract between the Post Office and Fujitsu, all else followed: the unjustified and malicious prosecutions, the unjustified claims for monies, the unjustified civil litigation, the disclosure failings. And the repeated and prolonged cover ups.
Worth reminding everyone what an experienced IT Professor said - the poor understanding of IT by many bodies, of its complexity and risks leads to “lax legislation, lax regulation and lax procurement”. The first and third certainly happened here.
How many similar contractual provisions are there in other PFI contracts in other parts of the public sector? Someone should be asking this question and looking hard for the answers. I bet no-one is and - worse - no-one ever will.
Do other banks and financial institutions with their large, complex accounting systems, leave IT support and maintenance with the supplier, or insist that in-house people are trained up to do more than just 'use' the system, or contract it out to specialist third party contractors, or what?
In my experience, it's done in-house. Or often by people who were in-house but are now contractors. But there are so many different systems and when they do go wrong it can be a hell of a job tracking what is happening and why. I have done a few such investigations - usually in order to expIain to an exchange or regulator why it is that stuff that should have been reported wasn't - and they give you prolonged brain ache.
There were a whole load of fines of major banks by the FCA a few years back over transaction reporting failures going back years. The more complex a system is because the rules and requirements become more complex the more scope for cock ups there are. Being in charge of IT at a bank would give me nightmares, frankly.
I see it's just been evidenced that the PO's investigators couldn't ask Fujitsu directly for data from the system, but had to go through a central PO team, and that there was a limit on the total amount of data that could be requested nationally each month.
No private-sector organisation of that size, would ever sign a vendor contract that limited data in that way, other than a cloud computing contract that scaled with use.
Perhaps part of the reason is data protection. I don't want Miss Marple snooping through my savings account even if she doesn't like the cut of the sub-postmaster's gib, and there might even be laws against it.
It is only a couple of years since Dominic Cummings was complaining that NHS patient databases did not flow through his Number 10 "war room".
If a government can successfully legislate to take human rights from one set of people, what’s to stop it doing the same to another set and another and so on? A cornerstone of any free, democratic country is protection of minorities. The UK government is seeking to legislate that away.
If a UK government can successfully legislate to remove its actions from legal scrutiny, as this government is seeking to do, what is to stop it legislating to end elections, create a one party state, end press freedom and so on?
The constitutional implications of the Rwanda bill becoming implementable law are huge. Effectively, it would demonstrate our current settlement offers no protection against tyranny in a situation where the executive has a majority in the House of Commons.
That has literally been the constitutional settlement for centuries - and has indeed been demonstrated clearly at times, most obviously, recently, with the Covid restrictions (which whether justified or not were immense infringements on civil liberties).
There are no constitutional implications to the Rwanda Bill. There are political ones.
It is not impossible that there are wider implications. Tom de la Mare KC comments thus today on TwiX:
One of the practical merits of the British Constitution hitherto is that the limits of the doctrine of Parliamentary Sovereignty have never been explored by the passing of extreme legislation testing the unstated but assumed premises of our constitutional arrangements.
Those problems are amplified by the other multifold ways in which our Parliament is evidently defective, starting with the abuse of delegated legislation and power transfer to the Executive, against which only the Courts are a safeguard, leading to further constitutional strain.
It's always worth putting a bet on another Tory leadership challenge within 18 months. I should have learnt that by now.
What we are witnessing is Sunak refusing to leave the EHCR and other international bodies and challenging those in his party who want us to align with Russia and Belarus as the only countries outside international law
On this he has my support and maybe it is better to take the right on now, as if he does win the vote with just a handful of his mps voting against then he will be in a more secure position - of course if the right decide to commit 'hari - kari' then it is all over for the conservative party as we know it
Russia is rapidly expanding its territory and is about to win a major war in Europe. Meanwhile its economy is growing healthily and its people are infused with patriotic fervour, and they know that a woman is a woman and a good cigar is a smoke
Here in the west we cower pathetically from the likes of Barbados as they demand “$5.4 trillion” in reparations and some of the leading universities of the western world say it’s ok to ask for genocide on the Jews but don’t misgender anyone!
We are pitiful. Putin is right
"Hurrah for the Black Shirts",
Even as a jest this is one of your worst ever posts.
I have been very busy working so have missed everything.
And, yes, the Investigations Webinar was a triumph. Thank you for asking. In a few hours I will be the star attraction (no, really) at a French bank's training session.
"I never got anywhere near it (thank god), but from the evidence given by multiple people at the inquiry, it seems like the PO got the routine accounting output routinely, but if they wanted to run any sort of query to extract background data from the system, someone had to ring up Fujitsu and then pay for the privilege. Which does seem bizarre - if true, that the PO people couldn’t interrogate their own system and had to jump through hoops and incur cost to dig deeper into their own data, is surely a major contributor to what happened?"
And he is absolutely right. The fundamental problem was that there was never any - or any proper - investigation into what caused the discrepancies at branches. So there was never any basis for saying these were caused by fraud or theft. From that flaw - caused by a flawed contract between the Post Office and Fujitsu, all else followed: the unjustified and malicious prosecutions, the unjustified claims for monies, the unjustified civil litigation, the disclosure failings. And the repeated and prolonged cover ups.
Worth reminding everyone what an experienced IT Professor said - the poor understanding of IT by many bodies, of its complexity and risks leads to “lax legislation, lax regulation and lax procurement”. The first and third certainly happened here.
How many similar contractual provisions are there in other PFI contracts in other parts of the public sector? Someone should be asking this question and looking hard for the answers. I bet no-one is and - worse - no-one ever will.
Do other banks and financial institutions with their large, complex accounting systems, leave IT support and maintenance with the supplier, or insist that in-house people are trained up to do more than just 'use' the system, or contract it out to specialist third party contractors, or what?
In my experience, it's done in-house. Or often by people who were in-house but are now contractors. But there are so many different systems and when they do go wrong it can be a hell of a job tracking what is happening and why. I have done a few such investigations - usually in order to expIain to an exchange or regulator why it is that stuff that should have been reported wasn't - and they give you prolonged brain ache.
There were a whole load of fines of major banks by the FCA a few years back over transaction reporting failures going back years. The more complex a system is because the rules and requirements become more complex the more scope for cock ups there are. Being in charge of IT at a bank would give me nightmares, frankly.
I see it's just been evidenced that the PO's investigators couldn't ask Fujitsu directly for data from the system, but had to go through a central PO team, and that there was a limit on the total amount of data that could be requested nationally each month.
No private-sector organisation of that size, would ever sign a vendor contract that limited data in that way, other than a cloud computing contract that scaled with use.
Perhaps part of the reason is data protection. I don't want Miss Marple snooping through my savings account even if she doesn't like the cut of the sub-postmaster's gib, and there might even be laws against it.
It is only a couple of years since Dominic Cummings was complaining that NHS patient databases did not flow through his Number 10 "war room".
Surely that would fall within the data protection exemption for law enforcement agencies as the PO has rights of investigation and prosecution, and could always bring in the Police if needed. (Which, of course, it often didn't do when neeeded, I suppose.)
It's always worth putting a bet on another Tory leadership challenge within 18 months. I should have learnt that by now.
What we are witnessing is Sunak refusing to leave the EHCR and other international bodies and challenging those in his party who want us to align with Russia and Belarus as the only countries outside international law
On this he has my support and maybe it is better to take the right on now, as if he does win the vote with just a handful of his mps voting against then he will be in a more secure position - of course if the right decide to commit 'hari - kari' then it is all over for the conservative party as we know it
Russia is rapidly expanding its territory and is about to win a major war in Europe. Meanwhile its economy is growing healthily and its people are infused with patriotic fervour, and they know that a woman is a woman and a good cigar is a smoke
Here in the west we cower pathetically from the likes of Barbados as they demand “$5.4 trillion” in reparations and some of the leading universities of the western world say it’s ok to ask for genocide on the Jews but don’t misgender anyone!
We are pitiful. Putin is right
"Hurrah for the Black Shirts",
Even as a jest this is one of your worst ever posts.
Councils in the South-East Nimby belt (here: Dacorum) think that a wee in the hedge is "littering"; a chap with a prostate problem was issued with a FPN when some apparatchik caught him having a discreet slash.
There's a huge volume of empty, meaningless words in the Council and DEFRA responses.
Issues also around the use of cameras, and access to DVLA data?
(Me, I think they should be using the staff to deal with the antisocial sods who drive onto / block / park on the pavement. Pass a PSPO like Broxbourne and hit 'em hard.)
If a government can successfully legislate to take human rights from one set of people, what’s to stop it doing the same to another set and another and so on? A cornerstone of any free, democratic country is protection of minorities. The UK government is seeking to legislate that away.
If a UK government can successfully legislate to remove its actions from legal scrutiny, as this government is seeking to do, what is to stop it legislating to end elections, create a one party state, end press freedom and so on?
The constitutional implications of the Rwanda bill becoming implementable law are huge. Effectively, it would demonstrate our current settlement offers no protection against tyranny in a situation where the executive has a majority in the House of Commons.
That has literally been the constitutional settlement for centuries - and has indeed been demonstrated clearly at times, most obviously, recently, with the Covid restrictions (which whether justified or not were immense infringements on civil liberties).
There are no constitutional implications to the Rwanda Bill. There are political ones.
Can you tell me the last time the UK government legislated to allow itself to break the law? Not to change the law, but to break it?
The current constitutional settlement wrests on the notion that there are some things the government won’t do even if, in theory, it can. I’d suggest that a couple of those are legislating to remove all human rights from a defined group of people and legislating to allow the government to break the law. That goes beyond politics, although only politics can resolve it - if the government does not legislate that away.
The whole concept of the Tories choosing to fight an election on an issue on which they are seen to have failed dismally - and were even before the Rwanda shambles - despite having been in power for the last 13 years, is utterly insane.
If a government can successfully legislate to take human rights from one set of people, what’s to stop it doing the same to another set and another and so on? A cornerstone of any free, democratic country is protection of minorities. The UK government is seeking to legislate that away.
If a UK government can successfully legislate to remove its actions from legal scrutiny, as this government is seeking to do, what is to stop it legislating to end elections, create a one party state, end press freedom and so on?
The constitutional implications of the Rwanda bill becoming implementable law are huge. Effectively, it would demonstrate our current settlement offers no protection against tyranny in a situation where the executive has a majority in the House of Commons.
That has literally been the constitutional settlement for centuries - and has indeed been demonstrated clearly at times, most obviously, recently, with the Covid restrictions (which whether justified or not were immense infringements on civil liberties).
There are no constitutional implications to the Rwanda Bill. There are political ones.
The problem of the Commons being able to do anything it likes without fetter, now the power of the Lords and the Monarch has withered, has been a constitutional issue for over a century. That the EU was able to fetter the discretion of the Commons to a even tiny degree was not a bug but a feature. A party that wins 45% of the vote in our system can remove any civil liberty it likes. Leaving the ECHR will only increase that ability. Reactionaries should be careful what they wish for. One day the majority might come for them.
It would be ironic for the Conservatives to complain about the Lords voting down the Bill given I think they were the only major party at the last election opposed to Lords reform.
If a government can successfully legislate to take human rights from one set of people, what’s to stop it doing the same to another set and another and so on? A cornerstone of any free, democratic country is protection of minorities. The UK government is seeking to legislate that away.
If a UK government can successfully legislate to remove its actions from legal scrutiny, as this government is seeking to do, what is to stop it legislating to end elections, create a one party state, end press freedom and so on?
The constitutional implications of the Rwanda bill becoming implementable law are huge. Effectively, it would demonstrate our current settlement offers no protection against tyranny in a situation where the executive has a majority in the House of Commons.
That has literally been the constitutional settlement for centuries - and has indeed been demonstrated clearly at times, most obviously, recently, with the Covid restrictions (which whether justified or not were immense infringements on civil liberties).
There are no constitutional implications to the Rwanda Bill. There are political ones.
It is not impossible that there are wider implications. Tom de la Mare KC comments thus today on TwiX:
One of the practical merits of the British Constitution hitherto is that the limits of the doctrine of Parliamentary Sovereignty have never been explored by the passing of extreme legislation testing the unstated but assumed premises of our constitutional arrangements.
Those problems are amplified by the other multifold ways in which our Parliament is evidently defective, starting with the abuse of delegated legislation and power transfer to the Executive, against which only the Courts are a safeguard, leading to further constitutional strain.
Councils in the South-East Nimby belt (here: Dacorum) think that a wee in the hedge is "littering"; a chap with a prostate problem was issued with a FPN when some apparatchik caught him having a discreet slash.
There's a huge volume of empty, meaningless words in the Council and DEFRA responses.
Issues also around the use of cameras, and access to DVLA data?
(Me, I think they should be using the staff to deal with the antisocial sods who drive onto / block / park on the pavement. Pass a PSPO like Broxbourne and hit 'em hard.)
I guess the authorities all acted with Dacorum?
ETA: Bugger, the spelling doesn't quite work, does it? I read it as Decorum to start with
It's always worth putting a bet on another Tory leadership challenge within 18 months. I should have learnt that by now.
What we are witnessing is Sunak refusing to leave the EHCR and other international bodies and challenging those in his party who want us to align with Russia and Belarus as the only countries outside international law
On this he has my support and maybe it is better to take the right on now, as if he does win the vote with just a handful of his mps voting against then he will be in a more secure position - of course if the right decide to commit 'hari - kari' then it is all over for the conservative party as we know it
Russia is rapidly expanding its territory and is about to win a major war in Europe. Meanwhile its economy is growing healthily and its people are infused with patriotic fervour, and they know that a woman is a woman and a good cigar is a smoke
Here in the west we cower pathetically from the likes of Barbados as they demand “$5.4 trillion” in reparations and some of the leading universities of the western world say it’s ok to ask for genocide on the Jews but don’t misgender anyone!
We are pitiful. Putin is right
It is impossible to take any of your "the west are cucks" posts seriously since your posts detailing your pants-filling terror at sailing on waters, from your photographs, were at a sea state 1 at worst. What an absolute melt you are.
If a government can successfully legislate to take human rights from one set of people, what’s to stop it doing the same to another set and another and so on? A cornerstone of any free, democratic country is protection of minorities. The UK government is seeking to legislate that away.
If a UK government can successfully legislate to remove its actions from legal scrutiny, as this government is seeking to do, what is to stop it legislating to end elections, create a one party state, end press freedom and so on?
The constitutional implications of the Rwanda bill becoming implementable law are huge. Effectively, it would demonstrate our current settlement offers no protection against tyranny in a situation where the executive has a majority in the House of Commons.
That has literally been the constitutional settlement for centuries - and has indeed been demonstrated clearly at times, most obviously, recently, with the Covid restrictions (which whether justified or not were immense infringements on civil liberties).
There are no constitutional implications to the Rwanda Bill. There are political ones.
Can you tell me the last time the UK government legislated to allow itself to break the law? Not to change the law, but to break it?
The current constitutional settlement wrests on the notion that there are some things the government won’t do even if, in theory, it can. I’d suggest that a couple of those are legislating to remove all human rights from a defined group of people and legislating to allow the government to break the law. That goes beyond politics, although only politics can resolve it - if the government does not legislate that away.
Well, your lot decided to try and cancel democracy by annulling a referendum - Britain’s biggest ever vote - before the result was even enacted. So frankly you can fuck off with this pious bullshit
Not least because Sir Kir Royale was a leading “2nd voter”
Immigration at the scale we have is itself a direct constitutional issue. It literally changes how the country is constituted and resets the parameters within which politics can take place.
If a government can successfully legislate to take human rights from one set of people, what’s to stop it doing the same to another set and another and so on? A cornerstone of any free, democratic country is protection of minorities. The UK government is seeking to legislate that away.
If a UK government can successfully legislate to remove its actions from legal scrutiny, as this government is seeking to do, what is to stop it legislating to end elections, create a one party state, end press freedom and so on?
The constitutional implications of the Rwanda bill becoming implementable law are huge. Effectively, it would demonstrate our current settlement offers no protection against tyranny in a situation where the executive has a majority in the House of Commons.
That has literally been the constitutional settlement for centuries - and has indeed been demonstrated clearly at times, most obviously, recently, with the Covid restrictions (which whether justified or not were immense infringements on civil liberties).
There are no constitutional implications to the Rwanda Bill. There are political ones.
Can you tell me the last time the UK government legislated to allow itself to break the law? Not to change the law, but to break it?
The current constitutional settlement wrests on the notion that there are some things the government won’t do even if, in theory, it can. I’d suggest that a couple of those are legislating to remove all human rights from a defined group of people and legislating to allow the government to break the law. That goes beyond politics, although only politics can resolve it - if the government does not legislate that away.
While the whole thing is misconceived and horrible, I would have more respect for a government/parliament breaking its own laws if they had the courage to enact unilateral 'Notwithstanding French/EU/International Law' legislation to return boat people to the country (France/Belgium etc) from which they had just arrived.
Who is advising the Prime Minister? He has hijacked national television and talked himself into a corner on what would otherwise be a niche issue of limited interest to anyone above junior minister level, and furthermore an issue he is unlikely to win in the court of public opinion where the people who care, care about immigration and not sodding Rwanda.
The Prime Minister appears alone at the rostrum, is that a good image, appears isolated. Secondly I sincerely hope he does not have some sort of breakdown, he looks very stressed and on the brink.
If a government can successfully legislate to take human rights from one set of people, what’s to stop it doing the same to another set and another and so on? A cornerstone of any free, democratic country is protection of minorities. The UK government is seeking to legislate that away.
If a UK government can successfully legislate to remove its actions from legal scrutiny, as this government is seeking to do, what is to stop it legislating to end elections, create a one party state, end press freedom and so on?
The constitutional implications of the Rwanda bill becoming implementable law are huge. Effectively, it would demonstrate our current settlement offers no protection against tyranny in a situation where the executive has a majority in the House of Commons.
That has literally been the constitutional settlement for centuries - and has indeed been demonstrated clearly at times, most obviously, recently, with the Covid restrictions (which whether justified or not were immense infringements on civil liberties).
There are no constitutional implications to the Rwanda Bill. There are political ones.
Can you tell me the last time the UK government legislated to allow itself to break the law? Not to change the law, but to break it?
The current constitutional settlement wrests on the notion that there are some things the government won’t do even if, in theory, it can. I’d suggest that a couple of those are legislating to remove all human rights from a defined group of people and legislating to allow the government to break the law. That goes beyond politics, although only politics can resolve it - if the government does not legislate that away.
Well, your lot decided to try and cancel democracy by annulling a referendum - Britain’s biggest ever vote - before the result was even enacted. So frankly you can fuck off with this pious bullshit
Not least because Sir Kir Royale was a leading “2nd voter”
That would be Nigel Farage, surely, who was first to call for a second referendum (but only when he thought he'd lost the first one).
Comments
And so bloody quick as well. Scary.
https://twitter.com/thebrieftweet?ref_src=twsrc^google|twcamp^serp|twgr^author
https://twitter.com/AdamWagner1?ref_src=twsrc^google|twcamp^serp|twgr^author
(Adam Wagner was incredibly good during Covid)
Their problem is not whether or not the MPs like batches of their voters, but that they are hopelessly divided and a bunch of incompetent backstabbers. And I guess to be fair dealt a tough hand with covid and the global economy too.
https://x.com/ofalafel/status/1732554381478777044?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q
But as often happens the most unlikely caught people's imagination. Dreams of holidays small boats lilos who knows why......but like 'vorsprung durch technik' it became 'a thing' which though making no sense became one of the memorable lines of our time.
It reminded me of the story of Chiat Day Advertising a New York Agency who were commissioned to introduce Nissan into the States. A bunch of their creatives were bouncing around ideas for a headline with their Japanese clients when someone said how about "From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave us Pearl Harbour"
Though never used for their advertising their creative director Della Famina wrote a book using that line which became a worldwide best seller
But 65 is no age. RIP.
There were a whole load of fines of major banks by the FCA a few years back over transaction reporting failures going back years. The more complex a system is because the rules and requirements become more complex the more scope for cock ups there are. Being in charge of IT at a bank would give me nightmares, frankly.
It doesn't make it anything more true.
Just goes to show. People. Enjoy your lives. You don’t know what’s around the corner.
He was only a few years older than me.
Whether to use ‘tin’ or ‘pack’ would have been the only decision
And how did I spend yesterday? Arguing online about Beergate. Shameful really
PM pushed a second time by @BethRigby: If you can't succeed, is it election time?
"I'm confident I can get this thing done," Sunak says - swerving the question again.
Which means I can see a lot of councils issuing Section 114 notices in June next year.
Rishi really does need the election to occur before the reality of local council finances (and a lot of other things) becomes clear
It is a relief that this was discovered on my scan for my DVT, and it is not known generally but all men 65 plus are eligible for screening
https://digital.nhs.uk/services/screening-services/abdominal-aortic-aneurysm-screening#:~:text=In England, screening for abdominal,when it can be treated.
I just don’t think you’re meant to say the bit out loud, where you warn *your own MPs* that sadly we can’t make the legislation more extreme because the Rwandan dictator won’t let us.
Rishi Sunak’s line is that he won’t let foreign courts dictate UK legislation but he will let the Rwandan government dictate UK legislation. Not sure that argument’s going to fly with his party.
The older you get the more you become aware of your own mortality.
It is upto the conservative mps to decide whether they back the legislation or not and if 29 vote against then a GE looks very possible and a very heavy defeat
1) management and core *development* team are in house, on shore
2) during build the team(s) are expanded with external contractors etc
3) as you move to the support part of the software lifecycle, the team(s) shrink back to 1)
4) if significant redevelopment is required, see 2)
A friend is one of the old-school COBOL programmers, who maintains that code, and he’s now earning more in retirement than he ever did in work, contracting at several grand a day. There’s very few of them left, and they can pretty much name their price at this point.
They'd have to have an absolute death wish to run it over Christmas '23. On an issue which may have merits, but certainly isn't peace and goodwill to all men.
The hard right may not like the Sunak plan, but they're not that dumb... are they?
You love it, you slags.
The basic question remains why lose heavily now when something might turn up later?
This is really taking the piss.
A good example of why I love reading Theodore Dalrymple articles.
"There is a little Italian restaurant that we usually go to soon after our arrival in Paris, an unpretentious place where the pasta is good. It has a friendly atmosphere, and by now we are frequent enough customers to be greeted as friends.
The patronne allows her children, aged about 7 and 9, when they have no school the next day, to act as auxiliaries in the restaurant. How proud they are to show patrons to their table, to take their orders, and to bring their dishes when ready! It is charming to watch, and it is an excellent way to teach them things informally. When customers pay in cash, it is they who calculate the change due; they are even learning how to use the credit card machine. In this safe environment, they learn not to fear strangers and how to address them politely. These things will stay with them for the rest of their lives.
Imagine, however, a busybody who reported the use of child labor to the authorities. Children kept up after they should be in bed, and who might be exhausted the next day! Children exploited as ultracheap labor in place of adult labor! Children entering a busy kitchen where all sorts of dangers await them! Children carrying hot dishes that might scald or burn them if spilt! What a horrific picture could be painted! You could, if you wanted, make it all sound like the horrors of child labor of the 19th century. The children would therefore have to be protected from their cruel or irresponsible mother, who, being of Sicilian peasant origin, found this all perfectly normal. Never mind that it was obvious from a glance that she was a loving and solicitous mother, and the children were happy: The case must be investigated, and the law invoked."
https://www.takimag.com/article/blind-luck/
How do you get from the Tories losing a vote to a general election? What's the mechanism? It won't be a confidence vote and if Sunak does lose and Starmer then tables a confidence vote (which he'd be sensible to do), Sunak would win with the rebel Tories back on side.
Put simply, why would either Sunak or his MPs pitch the country into an election they would be trounced in, if they have the option of waiting?
There may be some type of fudge that allows Braverman/Jenrick to back down, but that shreds their chances of becoming leader after the election.
It is quite astonishing how all parts of the Tory party have got themselves into a complete mess.
On this he has my support and maybe it is better to take the right on now, as if he does win the vote with just a handful of his mps voting against then he will be in a more secure position - of course if the right decide to commit 'hari - kari' then it is all over for the conservative party as we know it
His autobiography is interesting, and he certainly was no angel, but mellowed well in time. Its no age.
Here in the west we cower pathetically from the likes of Barbados as they demand “$5.4 trillion” in reparations and some of the leading universities of
the western world say it’s ok to ask for genocide on the Jews but don’t misgender anyone!
We are pitiful. Putin is right
If a UK government can successfully legislate to remove its actions from legal scrutiny, as this government is seeking to do, what is to stop it legislating to end elections, create a one party state, end press freedom and so on?
The constitutional implications of the Rwanda bill becoming implementable law are huge. Effectively, it would demonstrate our current settlement offers no protection against tyranny in a situation where the executive has a majority in the House of Commons.
There are many reasons to criticise the BBC. This isn’t one.
I particularly like the effortless transition from 'up yours' -> 'neutral expression' -> 'newsreader's one raised eyebrow'. Actually, I think her left eyebrow deserves its own Twitter profile.
Senior coroner Heidi Connor said the inspection "lacked fairness, respect and sensitivity" and was at times "rude and intimidating"."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-67639942
1 - The chap isn't homeless. He now has a flat and a living.
2 - I'm sure that headline says "3 times in one year'.
3 - I don't think he promised to end all homelessless, and that his current contribution is a 5 year project that started about 5 months ago.
More seriously, I think the model he needs is perhaps the Prince's Trust, which is a fairly small organisation but has made a huge contribution by doing it for 50 years.
There are no constitutional implications to the Rwanda Bill. There are political ones.
It does seem that Cummings, Case, Vallance, Whitty, McNamara et all were bullshitting during their testimony, unless Johnson is not as up front as he claims.
TBF he has been very well schooled in dealing with Keith.
It is only a couple of years since Dominic Cummings was complaining that NHS patient databases did not flow through his Number 10 "war room".
One of the practical merits of the British Constitution hitherto is that the limits of the doctrine of Parliamentary Sovereignty have never been explored by the passing of extreme legislation testing the unstated but assumed premises of our constitutional arrangements.
Those problems are amplified by the other multifold ways in which our Parliament is evidently defective, starting with the abuse of delegated legislation and power transfer to the Executive, against which only the Courts are a safeguard, leading to further constitutional strain.
Even as a jest this is one of your worst ever posts.
Councils in the South-East Nimby belt (here: Dacorum) think that a wee in the hedge is "littering"; a chap with a prostate problem was issued with a FPN when some apparatchik caught him having a discreet slash.
Is it?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-67615231
There's a huge volume of empty, meaningless words in the Council and DEFRA responses.
Issues also around the use of cameras, and access to DVLA data?
(Me, I think they should be using the staff to deal with the antisocial
sods who drive onto / block / park on the pavement. Pass a PSPO like Broxbourne and hit 'em hard.)
The current constitutional settlement wrests on the notion that there are some things the government won’t do even if, in theory, it can. I’d suggest that a couple of those are legislating to remove all human rights from a defined group of people and legislating to allow the government to break the law. That goes beyond politics, although only politics can resolve it - if the government does not legislate that away.
ETA: Bugger, the spelling doesn't quite work, does it? I read it as Decorum to start with
Not least because Sir Kir Royale was a leading “2nd voter”