Remind me again who was DPP that stood by and allowed these poor people to be prosecuted? Not Ed!
If any Party Leader needs to consider their position it is not Ed Davey.
I see implicating Starmer as a massive opportunity for Rishi. Even if it is a false narrative it will gain massive traction.
Implicate both...
Is this the first black swan ahead of the election - where Rishi gets to expedite justice for the poor Post Office folk shafted by Davey and Starmer?
(Probably not. But people are talking about it - and only Rishi has the opportunity to come out of it smelling of roses.)
Why on earth do you keep on saying Starmer is responsible for this. The Post Office brought their own prosecutions...
It's getting to the point where I will treat your posts as as stupid as a HYUFD one...
Hey, look on the bright side - it's not people linking Starmer to Savile.
It may be unfair for people to think the then DPP might have had some interest in wrongful prosecutions of the Post Office staff. But politics isn't fair. And it is not as if Starmer has a great body of work that the voters can point to that gives them comfort in his judgment.
People are going to ask "How could this have happened?" Starmer looking at his shoes saying "Nothing to do with me" might be factually correct - but not exactly reassuring.
Rishi has to light the blue touch paper, and make the connection. Even though it might be bollocks it would look horrendous for Starmer.
Nope because I answered it in my post below yours.
at the time I was DPP the Post Office had the right in England to prosecute people directly. I will be removing that right from them..
Except... Rishi will be the one removing that right - before the election.
"I have made sure this injustice will not happen again."
That the Tories, in their desperate spot, are trying to weaponise this story against the LibDems, despite their shared culpability and their sole accountability for proceeding, in majority government, to shower such honour and preferment onto Vennells after all the key facts were in the public domain, is shameful.
That this header plays along with this disgraceful political smear campaign is equally shameful.
I won’t be contributing further to this thread.
Did you miss this bit?
Whilst Davey should have displayed a bit more curiosity when dealing with this issue I do have a smidgen of sympathy with him, the real ire should be aimed at those at the Post Office and their confederates who knew the Horizon system was producing hugely incorrect figures but kept quiet and continued on with the prosecutions.
I think this is, ultimately, like Jeremy Corbyn and the Islington child sex abuse scandal.
He was with hindsight very foolish to accept what he was being told by the people complained about rather than by the whistleblower. And with hindsight, I'm sure he feels an idiot.
But unless more comes out than there has so far about his actions, it's going to be difficult to argue he bears particular blame.
I also think no party's going to be keen to press this too far. Too many of their senior members have unclean hands, including a former leader of the Labour Party and a wannabe leader of the Tories.
So rightly or wrongly I don't see it being more than embarrassing for Davey.
Of course he deserves blame - like every other minister who didn’t perform their oversight role effectively. But they are far less culpable than those who actively participated in the offence/coverup
But the danger is political - this has salience now thanks to ITV. It may be unfair, but if the LibDems become associate with this I think it will be damaging as it challenges their USP of being semi-outsiders who stick up for their constituents / speak truth to power. Except on this occasion they didn’t.
Everything bad that has happened since 2010 is the fault of the last Labour government.
Everything bad that happened since Maggie was cruel removed in 1990 is the fault of Labour...
Ironic you should mention that since I was about to respond to Sandy that in 2009 we still had Labour people suggesting everything bad that has happened since 1997 was the fault of the last Tory government, or especially Maggie.
So what are the odds on Ed Davey resigning as Leader of Liberal Democrat Party?
And with what timeframe?
Am waiting for someone to attempt to convince me, that the merit Ed Davey brings to/for Lib Dems, are greater (or even equal) to his demerits?
For one thing, as far as I can tell, ED has been pretty much the Invisible Man of today's UK politics - until now that is.
Is he expected to be some kind of vote-winning, Tory-slaying dynamo whenever Sunak finally summons the courage (or lack thereof) to actually set the date for the GE? Somehow I doubt it.
We had a bit of a run-in with British Gas. Mrs PtP wants to switch to Octopus. I know nothing about them but have heard them mentioned here. Can anyone say....yea or nay?
I have had an even more spectacular run-in with them (at least, I hope for your sake mine was more spectacular as it involves court action against them for fraud). I switched to Octopus as well, and so far their customer service has been approximately one million times better.
Be warned, BG will be sticky about letting you go especially if you have a credit balance.
Remind me again who was DPP that stood by and allowed these poor people to be prosecuted? Not Ed!
If any Party Leader needs to consider their position it is not Ed Davey.
I see implicating Starmer as a massive opportunity for Rishi. Even if it is a false narrative it will gain massive traction.
Implicate both...
Is this the first black swan ahead of the election - where Rishi gets to expedite justice for the poor Post Office folk shafted by Davey and Starmer?
(Probably not. But people are talking about it - and only Rishi has the opportunity to come out of it smelling of roses.)
If I were Rishi, I wouldn't rush to point fingers at Davey or Starmer. People may look at the relationship between Fujitsu and Infosys from 2002 onwards.
That would be an incredibly awkward false narrative...
On topic. 😇 The way Sunday Times has hilariously skewed this to focus in Lib Dem’s, does suggest this election just wants to get dirty, doesn’t it? You suspect those strategists surrounding Sunak, whose Shareprice and next gig depends on credible results, won’t hesitate to go Dirty if the polls don’t tighten.
But Everyone’s got plenty of silage to throw. 😧
Davey helped screw the stitched up Post Office Managers in the biggest cruelest scandal of all time?
As head of the CPS and director of Public Prosecutions, Starmer started with an open file of Saville, ended with the Saville file closed down, and didn’t get it reopened?
And Rishi Sunak - who ran the Treasury at the time of covid - profited from a surge in the share price of the Moderna vaccine through a blind trust, so one of his own MPs has publicly claimed. 😯 (if true, any MP knowing this before installing Sunak as leader, should never have installed him - it will be many more than just Sunak in deep trouble).
But from political-betting point of view, Does successfully predicting a very dirty election help us get ahead of the game? Does a very dirty election level a playing field, suppress overall vote, so a great option for those coming from behind? Or will “gutter politics” not really benefit anyone or reshape a result? Could any of these dirty attacks really breakthrough and turn the election, or even spectacularly backfire and lose votes?
For example, the Sunday Times story today, smearing Lib Dem’s on behalf of Tories? It’s already encouraging the response: where were the senior partners in the coalition? If PO scandal hurts Lib Dem’s, it will certainly hurt Tories too, perhaps more so as the senior government partner - questions for Osborne, questions for Cameron current Foreign Secretary. As the Coalition souvenir Mug showed us, both parties were cheeks of the same governmental arse.
Especially as Sunak today showed as much understanding of this scandal, (everyone in the country is now expert on, not just Cyclefree) to tell us that it was all over in the 1990s? 😧
The election is 2nd May. The avalanche of shit being thrown around is a clear sign that they want to smear as many people as possible before bringing a Big Tax Giveaway to the table to make only the Tories look good.
It is going to be the nastiest campaign ever. The Tories are about to be cut off from their access to public money. Lining Tory pockets is the last remaining purpose in being the government and they will keep fighting to the last to keep their noses in the trough.
And then we come back to comparisons with 1997. In that election, Major decided there was a line he wasn't prepared to cross- the Faust PPB that never was.
Major lost big, of course, but kept some personal dignity.
Sunak's harder to read. He's still got the rabid bits of the press on side, but they're way less useful than they were A Very Long Time Ago. And he personally sounds rubbish when he tries to be attack dog-y. Can he really leave all that to the hired helps?
Besides, suppose Rishi does pull it off and win. Then he's got to deal with all the nonsense he's creating for the next government.
Don't forget who Faust was in that PPB, whispering to Blair in the shadows.
Remind me again who was DPP that stood by and allowed these poor people to be prosecuted? Not Ed!
If any Party Leader needs to consider their position it is not Ed Davey.
I see implicating Starmer as a massive opportunity for Rishi. Even if it is a false narrative it will gain massive traction.
Implicate both...
Is this the first black swan ahead of the election - where Rishi gets to expedite justice for the poor Post Office folk shafted by Davey and Starmer?
(Probably not. But people are talking about it - and only Rishi has the opportunity to come out of it smelling of roses.)
Why on earth do you keep on saying Starmer is responsible for this. The Post Office brought their own prosecutions...
It's getting to the point where I will treat your posts as as stupid as a HYUFD one...
Hey, look on the bright side - it's not people linking Starmer to Savile.
It may be unfair for people to think the then DPP might have had some interest in wrongful prosecutions of the Post Office staff. But politics isn't fair. And it is not as if Starmer has a great body of work that the voters can point to that gives them comfort in his judgment.
People are going to ask "How could this have happened?" Starmer looking at his shoes saying "Nothing to do with me" might be factually correct - but not exactly reassuring.
Rishi has to light the blue touch paper, and make the connection. Even though it might be bollocks it would look horrendous for Starmer.
Nope because I answered it in my post below yours.
at the time I was DPP the Post Office had the right in England to prosecute people directly. I will be removing that right from them..
Except... Rishi will be the one removing that right - before the election.
Keep looking at your shoes, Starmer.
Rishi doing anything - I'll believe it when I see it...
On topic. 😇 The way Sunday Times has hilariously skewed this to focus in Lib Dem’s, does suggest this election just wants to get dirty, doesn’t it? You suspect those strategists surrounding Sunak, whose Shareprice and next gig depends on credible results, won’t hesitate to go Dirty if the polls don’t tighten.
But Everyone’s got plenty of silage to throw. 😧
Davey helped screw the stitched up Post Office Managers in the biggest cruelest scandal of all time?
As head of the CPS and director of Public Prosecutions, Starmer started with an open file of Saville, ended with the Saville file closed down, and didn’t get it reopened?
And Rishi Sunak - who ran the Treasury at the time of covid - profited from a surge in the share price of the Moderna vaccine through a blind trust, so one of his own MPs has publicly claimed. 😯 (if true, any MP knowing this before installing Sunak as leader, should never have installed him - it will be many more than just Sunak in deep trouble).
But from political-betting point of view, Does successfully predicting a very dirty election help us get ahead of the game? Does a very dirty election level a playing field, suppress overall vote, so a great option for those coming from behind? Or will “gutter politics” not really benefit anyone or reshape a result? Could any of these dirty attacks really breakthrough and turn the election, or even spectacularly backfire and lose votes?
For example, the Sunday Times story today, smearing Lib Dem’s on behalf of Tories? It’s already encouraging the response: where were the senior partners in the coalition? If PO scandal hurts Lib Dem’s, it will certainly hurt Tories too, perhaps more so as the senior government partner - questions for Osborne, questions for Cameron current Foreign Secretary. As the Coalition souvenir Mug showed us, both parties were cheeks of the same governmental arse.
Especially as Sunak today showed as much understanding of this scandal, (everyone in the country is now expert on, not just Cyclefree) to tell us that it was all over in the 1990s? 😧
The election is 2nd May. The avalanche of shit being thrown around is a clear sign that they want to smear as many people as possible before bringing a Big Tax Giveaway to the table to make only the Tories look good.
It is going to be the nastiest campaign ever. The Tories are about to be cut off from their access to public money. Lining Tory pockets is the last remaining purpose in being the government and they will keep fighting to the last to keep their noses in the trough.
And then we come back to comparisons with 1997. In that election, Major decided there was a line he wasn't prepared to cross- the Faust PPB that never was.
Major lost big, of course, but kept some personal dignity.
Sunak's harder to read. He's still got the rabid bits of the press on side, but they're way less useful than they were A Very Long Time Ago. And he personally sounds rubbish when he tries to be attack dog-y. Can he really leave all that to the hired helps?
Besides, suppose Rishi does pull it off and win. Then he's got to deal with all the nonsense he's creating for the next government.
Don't forget who Faust was in that PPB, whispering to Blair in the shadows.
Remind me again who was DPP that stood by and allowed these poor people to be prosecuted? Not Ed!
If any Party Leader needs to consider their position it is not Ed Davey.
I see implicating Starmer as a massive opportunity for Rishi. Even if it is a false narrative it will gain massive traction.
Implicate both...
Is this the first black swan ahead of the election - where Rishi gets to expedite justice for the poor Post Office folk shafted by Davey and Starmer?
(Probably not. But people are talking about it - and only Rishi has the opportunity to come out of it smelling of roses.)
Why on earth do you keep on saying Starmer is responsible for this. The Post Office brought their own prosecutions...
It's getting to the point where I will treat your posts as as stupid as a HYUFD one...
But it *must* be Starmer. He is a bad'un. Both utterly inconsequential with no plan and no policies, and the man who will wreck the country. A man So Bad that as DPP he failed to stop these private prosecutions.
So it may cost Starmer a few votes from the hard of thinking - given the current polling difference between Labour and Tories and the consequences of a party getting a very large majority that may not be an issue...
As George W Bush almost said:
"You can fool some hard of thinking voters all of the time - and those are the ones you want to concentrate on."
Remind me again who was DPP that stood by and allowed these poor people to be prosecuted? Not Ed!
If any Party Leader needs to consider their position it is not Ed Davey.
I see implicating Starmer as a massive opportunity for Rishi. Even if it is a false narrative it will gain massive traction.
Implicate both...
Is this the first black swan ahead of the election - where Rishi gets to expedite justice for the poor Post Office folk shafted by Davey and Starmer?
(Probably not. But people are talking about it - and only Rishi has the opportunity to come out of it smelling of roses.)
Why on earth do you keep on saying Starmer is responsible for this. The Post Office brought their own prosecutions...
It's getting to the point where I will treat your posts as as stupid as a HYUFD one...
But it *must* be Starmer. He is a bad'un. Both utterly inconsequential with no plan and no policies, and the man who will wreck the country. A man So Bad that as DPP he failed to stop these private prosecutions.
Implicating Starmer also moves the light away from Sir Ed.
lolol - the only reason the light is over Davey is because desperate Tories sellotaped it there.
As I said, I do have to giggle. Is that what is going to save them? Really? That all that's left? The big play?
Thinking about Octopus if you use the link below to join both you and me will get £50 - I'll throw my contribution into site funds if you use this link https://share.octopus.energy/maize-wren-199
We can't go straight away but will get back to you when we do.
Everything bad that has happened since 2010 is the fault of the last Labour government.
Everything bad that happened since Maggie was cruel removed in 1990 is the fault of Labour...
Ironic you should mention that since I was about to respond to Sandy that in 2009 we still had Labour people suggesting everything bad that has happened since 1997 was the fault of the last Tory government, or especially Maggie.
The partner of disgraced ex-Tory MP Peter Bone has been chosen as the Conservative candidate to replace him in the Wellingborough by-election.
Helen Harrison, who is a Conservative councillor in Wellingborough's North Northamptonshire area, was selected by members of the party on Sunday afternoon, according to party chair Richard Holden.
An election is being held after Mr Bone was found by parliament to have subjected a staff member to bullying and sexual misconduct. He has denied the allegations.
Just finished the whole thing. Exceptionally good TV in terms of what it aimed to do: explain a horrible injustice, make you feel angry, tell the nation what happened
I reckon Davey is terminally damaged. Will struggle on but this now hangs around him. All the post office bigwigs are in danger of going to jail
On the upside this shows that - slowly, belatedly - British democracy and justice still kinda works. The 4th estate did its job. Journalists listened to a story and wrote it. Then tv came alone and shamed the powers that be (via a brilliant scriptwriter)
That’s something to cheer amidst what is still a pretty bleak tale. I apologise to all subpostmasters on PB for yawningly belittling this story
Look, Starmer was Director of Public Prosecutions. The Post Office was publicly owned. So these so-called "private" prosecutions by this public body are public.
Why won't Starmer come clean about his outrageous role personally prosecuting these poor subpostmasters.
We had a bit of a run-in with British Gas. Mrs PtP wants to switch to Octopus. I know nothing about them but have heard them mentioned here. Can anyone say....yea or nay?
I use So Energy but Octopus has a good reputation. They are also large and stable - Ofgen’s go to firm when rescuing others
Just finished the whole thing. Exceptionally good TV in terms of what it aimed to do: explain a horrible injustice, make you feel angry, tell the nation what happened
I reckon Davey is terminally damaged. Will struggle on but this now hangs around him. All the post office bigwigs are in danger of going to jail
On the upside this shows that - slowly, belatedly - British democracy and justice still kinda works. The 4th estate did its job. Journalists listened to a story and wrote it. Then tv came alone and shamed the powers that be (via a brilliant scriptwriter)
That’s something to cheer amidst what is still a pretty bleak tale. I apologise to all subpostmasters on PB for yawningly belittling this story
You owe me a drink or two when we meet.
You still have that visit to West Cumbria to do and the picnic on the beach I promised you.
As for Sunak, whoever is briefing him needs sacking.
Sunak talks like the intern who's wandered into the office, just managed to work out where the canteen & loos are & has only the vaguest idea what's going on & what he's meant to be doing.
Remind me again who was DPP that stood by and allowed these poor people to be prosecuted? Not Ed!
If any Party Leader needs to consider their position it is not Ed Davey.
I see implicating Starmer as a massive opportunity for Rishi. Even if it is a false narrative it will gain massive traction.
Implicate both...
Is this the first black swan ahead of the election - where Rishi gets to expedite justice for the poor Post Office folk shafted by Davey and Starmer?
(Probably not. But people are talking about it - and only Rishi has the opportunity to come out of it smelling of roses.)
Why on earth do you keep on saying Starmer is responsible for this. The Post Office brought their own prosecutions...
It's getting to the point where I will treat your posts as as stupid as a HYUFD one...
Hey, look on the bright side - it's not people linking Starmer to Savile.
It may be unfair for people to think the then DPP might have had some interest in wrongful prosecutions of the Post Office staff. But politics isn't fair. And it is not as if Starmer has a great body of work that the voters can point to that gives them comfort in his judgment.
People are going to ask "How could this have happened?" Starmer looking at his shoes saying "Nothing to do with me" might be factually correct - but not exactly reassuring.
Rishi has to light the blue touch paper, and make the connection. Even though it might be bollocks it would look horrendous for Starmer.
Nope because I answered it in my post below yours.
at the time I was DPP the Post Office had the right in England to prosecute people directly. I will be removing that right from them..
Except... Rishi will be the one removing that right - before the election.
"I have made sure this injustice will not happen again."
Keep looking at your shoes, Starmer.
Those LibDems you sold me. They won't mate. They just walk around all day Tweeting, and not mating. You sold me... queer LibDems. I want my money back!
Anyway, awfully proud (actually humbly grateful) that not only do my headers get published by this site, but now I have actually been mentioned in one.
Sunak was poor on Kunnessberg on BBC this morning then on Sky Starmer was uninspiring
For the first time in my near 80 years I am politically homeless and am certain I am not alone
I will not join any political party again and frankly have no confidence we have any prospect of addressing our country's deep seated problems with the current politicians on offer
Have you considered Laurence Fox and the 'reclaim' party? I would in all seriousness vote for them because I think their arguments should form part of the mainstream political discourse and not ridiculed/cancelled as they are at present. The more people attack the 'far right' the more I am minded to vote for them as an alternative to the failing model of business as usual.
The ones who accepted Andrew Bridgen, the vaccine conspiracy theorist? Even if business as usual isn’t working, I’m pretty confident that believing a pack of lies about COVID vaccines being like the Holocaust is not the way forward.
My objection is that Laurence Fox is branded a 'racist' and Andrew Bridgen a 'conspiracy theorist' and their views are discarded by the 'right thinking' mainstream as being part of a mad fringe. But actually they are both raising important issues that we should be discussing not sidelining, if we want to avoid a Trump situation a few years down the line. So I will definetely consider lending them my support.
Are you contending that Fox isn’t a racist or that he should be listened to despite being a racist?
I don't think that people should be categorised as a 'racist', 'misogynist' or whatever and then they cancelled, their life ruined etc based on one thing that they said at a particular point in time, particularly in the heat of the moment on the internet. This is a particularly irritating and annoying feature of the current puritanical age and Fox is an antidote to that, as Johnson was. He raises some serious points that no one else will touch, like whether the Equalities Act is a good idea - in the same way as Bridgen raises valid issues about vaccinations. Bridgen incedentally has parted ways with Laurence Fox and Reclaim.
Fox was hardly 'cancelled' in the sense that can be destructive for someone who makes a mistake or, say a university professor who espouses a position that's entirely legitimate but prompts a vicious response from colleagues and students.
He was a middling actor whose career and fame was on the wane because his big role had ended, as had his marriage to someone more famous (personally sad, I'm sure but with a professional effect too). Who then hit upon the grift that you could get publicity and plaudits from certain people if you were deliberately obnoxious on TV.
It's an important distinction, because while there is a censoriousness that needs ditching around people who have honest opinions, there are also a lot of grifters who use 'anti-wokeness' as a cover to say things we'd have rightly said were awful 20 or 30 years ago, because they know there's an audience for people saying you have a licence to be foul and people objecting to that is their fault not yours.
There may have been a deliberate decision on his part to go this way. But so what? There was a gap in the market and in his case it obviously reflects sincerely held beliefs. There are grifters on all sides but I just don't think Fox falls in to this category. Obviously he is being an idiot on the internet and doing stunts like getting arrested for inciting vandalism of ULEZ cameras because how else are you going to get attention when everyone has been trained to unthinkingly assume you are a racist/fascist/misogynist? It is all pretty harmless stuff. The whole liberal establishment have been useless at keeping the 'woke' in check with the effect that voters in the US are so sick of it that they are about to elect Donald Trump, we should try and avoid this fate.
As for Sunak, whoever is briefing him needs sacking.
Sunak talks like the intern who's wandered into the office, just managed to work out where the canteen & loos are & has only the vaguest idea what's going on & what he's meant to be doing.
It's beyond pathetic.
In practice, that's because he is the intern who's wandered in etc ...
Remind me again who was DPP that stood by and allowed these poor people to be prosecuted? Not Ed!
If any Party Leader needs to consider their position it is not Ed Davey.
I see implicating Starmer as a massive opportunity for Rishi. Even if it is a false narrative it will gain massive traction.
Implicate both...
Is this the first black swan ahead of the election - where Rishi gets to expedite justice for the poor Post Office folk shafted by Davey and Starmer?
(Probably not. But people are talking about it - and only Rishi has the opportunity to come out of it smelling of roses.)
Why on earth do you keep on saying Starmer is responsible for this. The Post Office brought their own prosecutions...
It's getting to the point where I will treat your posts as as stupid as a HYUFD one...
Hey, look on the bright side - it's not people linking Starmer to Savile.
It may be unfair for people to think the then DPP might have had some interest in wrongful prosecutions of the Post Office staff. But politics isn't fair. And it is not as if Starmer has a great body of work that the voters can point to that gives them comfort in his judgment.
People are going to ask "How could this have happened?" Starmer looking at his shoes saying "Nothing to do with me" might be factually correct - but not exactly reassuring.
🤣 Who do you think held power in this country 2010 to 2015? The Lib Dem’s and a head of the CPS?
This moment is extremely dangerous for the Conservatives - not only they are perceived to have been in power the last 14 years, but more importantly they are in power right now, when action is just about to be demanded, and they need to deliver some.
On topic, there is an obvious agenda by the Tory press to try to pin the blame on the LDs in general and Ed Davey in particular.
It may well do Davey significant damage and if it rumbles on then him standing down in favour of Daisy Cooper might be necessary.
Much as I like Davey, he clearly was one of many who contributed to this becoming such an intractable nightmare for the Sub-posties.
Daisy would be good, and likely to be a distinctive fresh face for the GE. It would also increase the pressure on the Tory ministers to resign for their actions and inactions.
The right wing press do seem to be doing a number on Ed. There's lots they could say about Labour, under whose watch it happened, and about Pat McFadden in particular. Singling out Ed from the 18 or so Postal Affairs Ministers does seem very specific.
We had a bit of a run-in with British Gas. Mrs PtP wants to switch to Octopus. I know nothing about them but have heard them mentioned here. Can anyone say....yea or nay?
I have had an even more spectacular run-in with them (at least, I hope for your sake mine was more spectacular as it involves court action against them for fraud). I switched to Octopus as well, and so far their customer service has been approximately one million times better.
Be warned, BG will be sticky about letting you go especially if you have a credit balance.
I've been with Octopus for 18 months, and I find them very good.
The only thing to take care with is that the range of tariffs can seem complex if you have solar, battery or electric vehicle.
Anyway, awfully proud (actually humbly grateful) that not only do my headers get published by this site, but now I have actually been mentioned in one.
😊
You are a valued contributor, and certainly as far as I am concerned, have contributed to my knowledge. And my understanding of the fringes of the Lake District.
And that was last year. I imagine things have got worse since.
Chris O'Shea arrived as CEO with a mandate to cut costs. He's done this by hollowing out customer services. There are comparatively few operatives, based overseas and paid a pittance. Unsurprisingly, they're making mistakes.
His attitude is that since domestic supply is not where British Gas currently makes its money, better to draw resources from that side and put them where the profit is to boost revenue and ergo profits, thus dividends.
Which is logical, but rather short term in its thinking. Thirty years from now at the latest the currently profitable side of the business will likely be gone, and if they hollow out their other operations nobody will use them for anything else. Hence, no company.
My personal experience suggests it isn't malicious, but every single mistake they made was entirely avoidable if they hadn't cut their costs to the bone.
Remind me again who was DPP that stood by and allowed these poor people to be prosecuted? Not Ed!
If any Party Leader needs to consider their position it is not Ed Davey.
I see implicating Starmer as a massive opportunity for Rishi. Even if it is a false narrative it will gain massive traction.
Implicate both...
Is this the first black swan ahead of the election - where Rishi gets to expedite justice for the poor Post Office folk shafted by Davey and Starmer?
(Probably not. But people are talking about it - and only Rishi has the opportunity to come out of it smelling of roses.)
If I were Rishi, I wouldn't rush to point fingers at Davey or Starmer. People may look at the relationship between Fujitsu and Infosys from 2002 onwards.
That would be an incredibly awkward false narrative...
Or people might ask why Fujitsu was awarded a £480 million contract last year to do the IT for schools in Northern Ireland. On top of all the other contracts they've been given over recent years.
Or which party chose to award honours to Ms Vennells in 2019.
This is not a party political matter. No party comes out of this well. But it is the Tory party which is in power now and which can do something to put this right. That is what it must do. Now.
How hard is it for the government to understand this?
On topic. 😇 The way Sunday Times has hilariously skewed this to focus in Lib Dem’s, does suggest this election just wants to get dirty, doesn’t it? You suspect those strategists surrounding Sunak, whose Shareprice and next gig depends on credible results, won’t hesitate to go Dirty if the polls don’t tighten.
But Everyone’s got plenty of silage to throw. 😧
Davey helped screw the stitched up Post Office Managers in the biggest cruelest scandal of all time?
As head of the CPS and director of Public Prosecutions, Starmer started with an open file of Saville, ended with the Saville file closed down, and didn’t get it reopened?
And Rishi Sunak - who ran the Treasury at the time of covid - profited from a surge in the share price of the Moderna vaccine through a blind trust, so one of his own MPs has publicly claimed. 😯 (if true, any MP knowing this before installing Sunak as leader, should never have installed him - it will be many more than just Sunak in deep trouble).
But from political-betting point of view, Does successfully predicting a very dirty election help us get ahead of the game? Does a very dirty election level a playing field, suppress overall vote, so a great option for those coming from behind? Or will “gutter politics” not really benefit anyone or reshape a result? Could any of these dirty attacks really breakthrough and turn the election, or even spectacularly backfire and lose votes?
For example, the Sunday Times story today, smearing Lib Dem’s on behalf of Tories? It’s already encouraging the response: where were the senior partners in the coalition? If PO scandal hurts Lib Dem’s, it will certainly hurt Tories too, perhaps more so as the senior government partner - questions for Osborne, questions for Cameron current Foreign Secretary. As the Coalition souvenir Mug showed us, both parties were cheeks of the same governmental arse.
Especially as Sunak today showed as much understanding of this scandal, (everyone in the country is now expert on, not just Cyclefree) to tell us that it was all over in the 1990s? 😧
The election is 2nd May. The avalanche of shit being thrown around is a clear sign that they want to smear as many people as possible before bringing a Big Tax Giveaway to the table to make only the Tories look good.
It is going to be the nastiest campaign ever. The Tories are about to be cut off from their access to public money. Lining Tory pockets is the last remaining purpose in being the government and they will keep fighting to the last to keep their noses in the trough.
And then we come back to comparisons with 1997. In that election, Major decided there was a line he wasn't prepared to cross- the Faust PPB that never was.
Major lost big, of course, but kept some personal dignity.
Sunak's harder to read. He's still got the rabid bits of the press on side, but they're way less useful than they were A Very Long Time Ago. And he personally sounds rubbish when he tries to be attack dog-y. Can he really leave all that to the hired helps?
Besides, suppose Rishi does pull it off and win. Then he's got to deal with all the nonsense he's creating for the next government.
In retrospect, Conservatives now think Major holding on till last minute gave him a worse result than he could have got earlier. I wasn’t around, but I read it on sky yesterday.
But the main lesson from mud slinging in politics is you are as much likely to end up covered in it yourself - and this PO scandal is excellent example of if one of Cameron’s ministers has questions to answer, Cameron and his government has questions to answer.
Remind me again who was DPP that stood by and allowed these poor people to be prosecuted? Not Ed!
If any Party Leader needs to consider their position it is not Ed Davey.
I see implicating Starmer as a massive opportunity for Rishi. Even if it is a false narrative it will gain massive traction.
Implicate both...
Is this the first black swan ahead of the election - where Rishi gets to expedite justice for the poor Post Office folk shafted by Davey and Starmer?
(Probably not. But people are talking about it - and only Rishi has the opportunity to come out of it smelling of roses.)
If I were Rishi, I wouldn't rush to point fingers at Davey or Starmer. People may look at the relationship between Fujitsu and Infosys from 2002 onwards.
That would be an incredibly awkward false narrative...
Or people might ask why Fujitsu was awarded a £480 million contract last year to do the IT for schools in Northern Ireland. On top of all the other contracts they've been given over recent years.
Or which party chose to award honours to Ms Vennells in 2019.
This is not a party political matter. No party comes out of this well. But it is the Tory party which is in power now and which can do something to put this right. That is what it must do. Now.
How hard is it for the government to understand this?
Do we know which individual put Vennells forward for her gong? Presumably it was one of Jeremy Wright or Nicky Morgan? (If it was Morgan, enough said.)
Remind me again who was DPP that stood by and allowed these poor people to be prosecuted? Not Ed!
If any Party Leader needs to consider their position it is not Ed Davey.
I see implicating Starmer as a massive opportunity for Rishi. Even if it is a false narrative it will gain massive traction.
Implicate both...
Is this the first black swan ahead of the election - where Rishi gets to expedite justice for the poor Post Office folk shafted by Davey and Starmer?
(Probably not. But people are talking about it - and only Rishi has the opportunity to come out of it smelling of roses.)
If I were Rishi, I wouldn't rush to point fingers at Davey or Starmer. People may look at the relationship between Fujitsu and Infosys from 2002 onwards.
That would be an incredibly awkward false narrative...
Or people might ask why Fujitsu was awarded a £480 million contract last year to do the IT for schools in Northern Ireland. On top of all the other contracts they've been given over recent years.
Or which party chose to award honours to Ms Vennells in 2019.
This is not a party political matter. No party comes out of this well. But it is the Tory party which is in power now and which can do something to put this right. That is what it must do. Now.
How hard is it for the government to understand this?
Not very. But it has an election to win. And spreading the blame for this mess might just save a seat or two!
On topic, there is an obvious agenda by the Tory press to try to pin the blame on the LDs in general and Ed Davey in particular.
It may well do Davey significant damage and if it rumbles on then him standing down in favour of Daisy Cooper might be necessary.
Much as I like Davey, he clearly was one of many who contributed to this becoming such an intractable nightmare for the Sub-posties.
Daisy would be good, and likely to be a distinctive fresh face for the GE. It would also increase the pressure on the Tory ministers to resign for their actions and inactions.
The right wing press do seem to be doing a number on Ed. There's lots they could say about Labour, under whose watch it happened, and about Pat McFadden in particular. Singling out Ed from the 18 or so Postal Affairs Ministers does seem very specific.
Correct me if I am wrong, but the reply to the subpostmasters from Davey was dated 21st May 2010.
He only became a minister on the 20th!!
It seems like he was just signing off legacy letters left by the previous administration.
Not fully blameless, but lets face it, he never sent them to Jail. We should be concentrating on the Post Office villains in this case, rather than the politicians over a 15 year period. What about Fujitsu's role as well?
Remind me again who was DPP that stood by and allowed these poor people to be prosecuted? Not Ed!
If any Party Leader needs to consider their position it is not Ed Davey.
I see implicating Starmer as a massive opportunity for Rishi. Even if it is a false narrative it will gain massive traction.
Implicate both...
Is this the first black swan ahead of the election - where Rishi gets to expedite justice for the poor Post Office folk shafted by Davey and Starmer?
(Probably not. But people are talking about it - and only Rishi has the opportunity to come out of it smelling of roses.)
If I were Rishi, I wouldn't rush to point fingers at Davey or Starmer. People may look at the relationship between Fujitsu and Infosys from 2002 onwards.
That would be an incredibly awkward false narrative...
Or people might ask why Fujitsu was awarded a £480 million contract last year to do the IT for schools in Northern Ireland. On top of all the other contracts they've been given over recent years.
Or which party chose to award honours to Ms Vennells in 2019.
This is not a party political matter. No party comes out of this well. But it is the Tory party which is in power now and which can do something to put this right. That is what it must do. Now.
How hard is it for the government to understand this?
No no, this IS a party political issue. This scandal is generational. Institutional. Across a succession of governments involving all parties.
It *should* be non-political. But the Tories - trying to fight the dirtiest campaign possible - have made it politcal.
As we have seen, they are pushing that the guilty party is Sir Ed Davey. So voting LibDem in blue wall seats would be like you personally voting to persecute all these sub postmasters.
And not just the LibDems. That Starmer is a Bad'Un, allowing all these prosecutions to happen. Only the Tories stand above this, doing everything they can to fix Labour and the LibDem's crimes.
Remind me again who was DPP that stood by and allowed these poor people to be prosecuted? Not Ed!
If any Party Leader needs to consider their position it is not Ed Davey.
I see implicating Starmer as a massive opportunity for Rishi. Even if it is a false narrative it will gain massive traction.
Implicate both...
Is this the first black swan ahead of the election - where Rishi gets to expedite justice for the poor Post Office folk shafted by Davey and Starmer?
(Probably not. But people are talking about it - and only Rishi has the opportunity to come out of it smelling of roses.)
If I were Rishi, I wouldn't rush to point fingers at Davey or Starmer. People may look at the relationship between Fujitsu and Infosys from 2002 onwards.
That would be an incredibly awkward false narrative...
Or people might ask why Fujitsu was awarded a £480 million contract last year to do the IT for schools in Northern Ireland. On top of all the other contracts they've been given over recent years.
Or which party chose to award honours to Ms Vennells in 2019.
This is not a party political matter. No party comes out of this well. But it is the Tory party which is in power now and which can do something to put this right. That is what it must do. Now.
How hard is it for the government to understand this?
Remind me again who was DPP that stood by and allowed these poor people to be prosecuted? Not Ed!
If any Party Leader needs to consider their position it is not Ed Davey.
I see implicating Starmer as a massive opportunity for Rishi. Even if it is a false narrative it will gain massive traction.
Implicate both...
Is this the first black swan ahead of the election - where Rishi gets to expedite justice for the poor Post Office folk shafted by Davey and Starmer?
(Probably not. But people are talking about it - and only Rishi has the opportunity to come out of it smelling of roses.)
If I were Rishi, I wouldn't rush to point fingers at Davey or Starmer. People may look at the relationship between Fujitsu and Infosys from 2002 onwards.
That would be an incredibly awkward false narrative...
Or people might ask why Fujitsu was awarded a £480 million contract last year to do the IT for schools in Northern Ireland. On top of all the other contracts they've been given over recent years.
Or which party chose to award honours to Ms Vennells in 2019.
This is not a party political matter. No party comes out of this well. But it is the Tory party which is in power now and which can do something to put this right. That is what it must do. Now.
How hard is it for the government to understand this?
Remind me again who was DPP that stood by and allowed these poor people to be prosecuted? Not Ed!
If any Party Leader needs to consider their position it is not Ed Davey.
I see implicating Starmer as a massive opportunity for Rishi. Even if it is a false narrative it will gain massive traction.
Implicate both...
Is this the first black swan ahead of the election - where Rishi gets to expedite justice for the poor Post Office folk shafted by Davey and Starmer?
(Probably not. But people are talking about it - and only Rishi has the opportunity to come out of it smelling of roses.)
If I were Rishi, I wouldn't rush to point fingers at Davey or Starmer. People may look at the relationship between Fujitsu and Infosys from 2002 onwards.
That would be an incredibly awkward false narrative...
Or people might ask why Fujitsu was awarded a £480 million contract last year to do the IT for schools in Northern Ireland. On top of all the other contracts they've been given over recent years.
Or which party chose to award honours to Ms Vennells in 2019.
This is not a party political matter. No party comes out of this well. But it is the Tory party which is in power now and which can do something to put this right. That is what it must do. Now.
How hard is it for the government to understand this?
Very hard. Harder than a hard thing.
Nobody in Number 10 has realised that doing the right thing would go some way to scoring some brownie points with the public.
Ignoring the Starmer line being spun by some Tories on here (which to be honest I find a little tasteless as well as pointless), surely the bigger point is that we need to have a change of the law to prevent anyone but the CPS launching criminal prosecutions. The system has been shown to be utterly corrupt and running counter to the basic principles of justice.
I don't know which other organisations are still able to launch their own private criminal prosecutions but I would suggest it is long past the time when this practice ended.
Remind me again who was DPP that stood by and allowed these poor people to be prosecuted? Not Ed!
If any Party Leader needs to consider their position it is not Ed Davey.
I see implicating Starmer as a massive opportunity for Rishi. Even if it is a false narrative it will gain massive traction.
Implicate both...
Is this the first black swan ahead of the election - where Rishi gets to expedite justice for the poor Post Office folk shafted by Davey and Starmer?
(Probably not. But people are talking about it - and only Rishi has the opportunity to come out of it smelling of roses.)
If I were Rishi, I wouldn't rush to point fingers at Davey or Starmer. People may look at the relationship between Fujitsu and Infosys from 2002 onwards.
That would be an incredibly awkward false narrative...
Or people might ask why Fujitsu was awarded a £480 million contract last year to do the IT for schools in Northern Ireland. On top of all the other contracts they've been given over recent years.
Or which party chose to award honours to Ms Vennells in 2019.
This is not a party political matter. No party comes out of this well. But it is the Tory party which is in power now and which can do something to put this right. That is what it must do. Now.
How hard is it for the government to understand this?
No no, this IS a party political issue. This scandal is generational. Institutional. Across a succession of governments involving all parties.
It *should* be non-political. But the Tories - trying to fight the dirtiest campaign possible - have made it politcal.
As we have seen, they are pushing that the guilty party is Sir Ed Davey. So voting LibDem in blue wall seats would be like you personally voting to persecute all these sub postmasters.
And not just the LibDems. That Starmer is a Bad'Un, allowing all these prosecutions to happen. Only the Tories stand above this, doing everything they can to fix Labour and the LibDem's crimes.
If a side salad of shit horsery is the price for this fag end government of 13 years to put a few things genuinely in the out tray properly sorted I'll take it.
On topic. 😇 The way Sunday Times has hilariously skewed this to focus in Lib Dem’s, does suggest this election just wants to get dirty, doesn’t it? You suspect those strategists surrounding Sunak, whose Shareprice and next gig depends on credible results, won’t hesitate to go Dirty if the polls don’t tighten.
But Everyone’s got plenty of silage to throw. 😧
Davey helped screw the stitched up Post Office Managers in the biggest cruelest scandal of all time?
As head of the CPS and director of Public Prosecutions, Starmer started with an open file of Saville, ended with the Saville file closed down, and didn’t get it reopened?
And Rishi Sunak - who ran the Treasury at the time of covid - profited from a surge in the share price of the Moderna vaccine through a blind trust, so one of his own MPs has publicly claimed. 😯 (if true, any MP knowing this before installing Sunak as leader, should never have installed him - it will be many more than just Sunak in deep trouble).
But from political-betting point of view, Does successfully predicting a very dirty election help us get ahead of the game? Does a very dirty election level a playing field, suppress overall vote, so a great option for those coming from behind? Or will “gutter politics” not really benefit anyone or reshape a result? Could any of these dirty attacks really breakthrough and turn the election, or even spectacularly backfire and lose votes?
For example, the Sunday Times story today, smearing Lib Dem’s on behalf of Tories? It’s already encouraging the response: where were the senior partners in the coalition? If PO scandal hurts Lib Dem’s, it will certainly hurt Tories too, perhaps more so as the senior government partner - questions for Osborne, questions for Cameron current Foreign Secretary. As the Coalition souvenir Mug showed us, both parties were cheeks of the same governmental arse.
Especially as Sunak today showed as much understanding of this scandal, (everyone in the country is now expert on, not just Cyclefree) to tell us that it was all over in the 1990s? 😧
The election is 2nd May. The avalanche of shit being thrown around is a clear sign that they want to smear as many people as possible before bringing a Big Tax Giveaway to the table to make only the Tories look good.
It is going to be the nastiest campaign ever. The Tories are about to be cut off from their access to public money. Lining Tory pockets is the last remaining purpose in being the government and they will keep fighting to the last to keep their noses in the trough.
And then we come back to comparisons with 1997. In that election, Major decided there was a line he wasn't prepared to cross- the Faust PPB that never was.
Major lost big, of course, but kept some personal dignity.
Sunak's harder to read. He's still got the rabid bits of the press on side, but they're way less useful than they were A Very Long Time Ago. And he personally sounds rubbish when he tries to be attack dog-y. Can he really leave all that to the hired helps?
Besides, suppose Rishi does pull it off and win. Then he's got to deal with all the nonsense he's creating for the next government.
In retrospect, Conservatives now think Major holding on till last minute gave him a worse result than he could have got earlier. I wasn’t around, but I read it on sky yesterday.
But the main lesson from mud slinging in politics is you are as much likely to end up covered in it yourself - and this PO scandal is excellent example of if one of Cameron’s ministers has questions to answer, Cameron and his government has questions to answer.
And Cameron is back in Government so this is all Rishi's fault...
On topic, I think this is a problem for the Liberal Democrats as part of their leitmotif is that they're unlike the big two and stand up for the little guy. Unfortunately, you've got a letter from Ed Davey on the record saying, "not my problem, mate" and that's hard to explain away.
You know it's touched a nerve from the strops one or two of our Lib Dem regulars have thrown on here, going so far as to flag posts that point it out.
And that was last year. I imagine things have got worse since.
Chris O'Shea arrived as CEO with a mandate to cut costs. He's done this by hollowing out customer services. There are comparatively few operatives, based overseas and paid a pittance. Unsurprisingly, they're making mistakes.
His attitude is that since domestic supply is not where British Gas currently makes its money, better to draw resources from that side and put them where the profit is to boost revenue and ergo profits, thus dividends.
Which is logical, but rather short term in its thinking. Thirty years from now at the latest the currently profitable side of the business will likely be gone, and if they hollow out their other operations nobody will use them for anything else. Hence, no company.
My personal experience suggests it isn't malicious, but every single mistake they made was entirely avoidable if they hadn't cut their costs to the bone.
Scale that up from a company to a country, and it's a fair summary of why we are where we are.
It is a joke that lefties bang on about how Thatch ruined everything, and righties do the same re: Blair/Brown. But sometimes, they both have a point- the conseqences of decisions don't flow neatly in five year blocks that the electorate can pass rapid judgement on.
On topic. 😇 The way Sunday Times has hilariously skewed this to focus in Lib Dem’s, does suggest this election just wants to get dirty, doesn’t it? You suspect those strategists surrounding Sunak, whose Shareprice and next gig depends on credible results, won’t hesitate to go Dirty if the polls don’t tighten.
But Everyone’s got plenty of silage to throw. 😧
Davey helped screw the stitched up Post Office Managers in the biggest cruelest scandal of all time?
As head of the CPS and director of Public Prosecutions, Starmer started with an open file of Saville, ended with the Saville file closed down, and didn’t get it reopened?
And Rishi Sunak - who ran the Treasury at the time of covid - profited from a surge in the share price of the Moderna vaccine through a blind trust, so one of his own MPs has publicly claimed. 😯 (if true, any MP knowing this before installing Sunak as leader, should never have installed him - it will be many more than just Sunak in deep trouble).
But from political-betting point of view, Does successfully predicting a very dirty election help us get ahead of the game? Does a very dirty election level a playing field, suppress overall vote, so a great option for those coming from behind? Or will “gutter politics” not really benefit anyone or reshape a result? Could any of these dirty attacks really breakthrough and turn the election, or even spectacularly backfire and lose votes?
For example, the Sunday Times story today, smearing Lib Dem’s on behalf of Tories? It’s already encouraging the response: where were the senior partners in the coalition? If PO scandal hurts Lib Dem’s, it will certainly hurt Tories too, perhaps more so as the senior government partner - questions for Osborne, questions for Cameron current Foreign Secretary. As the Coalition souvenir Mug showed us, both parties were cheeks of the same governmental arse.
Especially as Sunak today showed as much understanding of this scandal, (everyone in the country is now expert on, not just Cyclefree) to tell us that it was all over in the 1990s? 😧
The election is 2nd May. The avalanche of shit being thrown around is a clear sign that they want to smear as many people as possible before bringing a Big Tax Giveaway to the table to make only the Tories look good.
It is going to be the nastiest campaign ever. The Tories are about to be cut off from their access to public money. Lining Tory pockets is the last remaining purpose in being the government and they will keep fighting to the last to keep their noses in the trough.
And then we come back to comparisons with 1997. In that election, Major decided there was a line he wasn't prepared to cross- the Faust PPB that never was.
Major lost big, of course, but kept some personal dignity.
Sunak's harder to read. He's still got the rabid bits of the press on side, but they're way less useful than they were A Very Long Time Ago. And he personally sounds rubbish when he tries to be attack dog-y. Can he really leave all that to the hired helps?
Besides, suppose Rishi does pull it off and win. Then he's got to deal with all the nonsense he's creating for the next government.
In retrospect, Conservatives now think Major holding on till last minute gave him a worse result than he could have got earlier. I wasn’t around, but I read it on sky yesterday.
But the main lesson from mud slinging in politics is you are as much likely to end up covered in it yourself - and this PO scandal is excellent example of if one of Cameron’s ministers has questions to answer, Cameron and his government has questions to answer.
And Cameron is back in Government so this is all Rishi's fault...
Yeh but that was done to flip TSE back to the Tories
That's hysterical, I just asked Justin Madders @justinmadders MP why Nick Brown was suspended from the Labour party 16 months ago today and why Keir Starmer hasn't told the public
Ignoring the Starmer line being spun by some Tories on here (which to be honest I find a little tasteless as well as pointless), surely the bigger point is that we need to have a change of the law to prevent anyone but the CPS launching criminal prosecutions. The system has been shown to be utterly corrupt and running counter to the basic principles of justice.
I don't know which other organisations are still able to launch their own private criminal prosecutions but I would suggest it is long past the time when this practice ended.
AIUI anyone can bring a private prosecution, if they wish. What's unusual about the Post Office is it has the power to bring a government prosecution. Almost all other government agencies handed theirs over to the CPS in the 1980s.
The RSPCA abandoned private prosecutions a couple of years ago for similar reasons to the Post Office saga (although at a lower level).
On topic, I think this is a problem for the Liberal Democrats as part of their leitmotif is that they're unlike the big two and stand up for the little guy. Unfortunately, you've got a letter from Ed Davey on the record saying, "not my problem, mate" and that's hard to explain away.
You know it's touched a nerve from the strops one or two of our Lib Dem regulars have thrown on here, going so far as to flag posts that point it out.
They need to have a better answer than that.
Its made me laugh, but I'm not sure its touched a nerve. Davey receives a letter sent on his first day as responsible minister, asks the civil servants what the crack is, and sends a letter with their response 11 days into his role.
I know the Tories are desperate to do something, anything, to turn things around. But if thats all there is then the nerve thats been touched is theirs. Pants being shat at the coming loss of public money they can stuff into their pockets.
The best energy supplier we had was the one who didn't send us any bills for the two years we were living in the house and then had to write off what we had used.
I'm not sure that's a sustainable business model, though.
The partner of disgraced ex-Tory MP Peter Bone has been chosen as the Conservative candidate to replace him in the Wellingborough by-election.
Helen Harrison, who is a Conservative councillor in Wellingborough's North Northamptonshire area, was selected by members of the party on Sunday afternoon, according to party chair Richard Holden.
An election is being held after Mr Bone was found by parliament to have subjected a staff member to bullying and sexual misconduct. He has denied the allegations.
On topic, there is an obvious agenda by the Tory press to try to pin the blame on the LDs in general and Ed Davey in particular.
It may well do Davey significant damage and if it rumbles on then him standing down in favour of Daisy Cooper might be necessary.
Much as I like Davey, he clearly was one of many who contributed to this becoming such an intractable nightmare for the Sub-posties.
Daisy would be good, and likely to be a distinctive fresh face for the GE. It would also increase the pressure on the Tory ministers to resign for their actions and inactions.
The right wing press do seem to be doing a number on Ed. There's lots they could say about Labour, under whose watch it happened, and about Pat McFadden in particular. Singling out Ed from the 18 or so Postal Affairs Ministers does seem very specific.
Isn't it simpler than that? He is one of the very few Ministers involved who is still active in politics. Of all the Business and Postal Affairs Ministers there were, he is the only one left.
I agree that it is a tad unfair. But tough. It is also a tad unfair that people are going after Paula Vennells but not also going after the Chair of the Post Office at the same time - one Alice Perkins, a career civil servant and wife of Jack Straw (whose ex-SPAD was also the Post Office's Director of Communications at this time) - who was present at the Board meetings which made the decisions which enabled the cover up, like the sacking of Second Sight and so on.
Politics is brutal. But nowhere near as brutal as what was done to the subpostmasters.
We had a bit of a run-in with British Gas. Mrs PtP wants to switch to Octopus. I know nothing about them but have heard them mentioned here. Can anyone say....yea or nay?
I have had an even more spectacular run-in with them (at least, I hope for your sake mine was more spectacular as it involves court action against them for fraud). I switched to Octopus as well, and so far their customer service has been approximately one million times better.
Be warned, BG will be sticky about letting you go especially if you have a credit balance.
I have never in my life encountered customer service as terrible as that of British Gas. I've had the Ombudsman involved multiple times and British Gas have ended up forking over hundreds of pounds to me in compensation for repeated terrible service errors.
No one expects great customer service from a utility company, they know they can get away with being shit so don't put enough care or money into it, but even with that they excel at awfulness.
Ignoring the Starmer line being spun by some Tories on here (which to be honest I find a little tasteless as well as pointless), surely the bigger point is that we need to have a change of the law to prevent anyone but the CPS launching criminal prosecutions. The system has been shown to be utterly corrupt and running counter to the basic principles of justice.
I don't know which other organisations are still able to launch their own private criminal prosecutions but I would suggest it is long past the time when this practice ended.
Anyone can launch a private prosecution. You, me, anyone. There is a genuine case for allowing that. Any citizen etc.
On topic, there is an obvious agenda by the Tory press to try to pin the blame on the LDs in general and Ed Davey in particular.
It may well do Davey significant damage and if it rumbles on then him standing down in favour of Daisy Cooper might be necessary.
Much as I like Davey, he clearly was one of many who contributed to this becoming such an intractable nightmare for the Sub-posties.
Daisy would be good, and likely to be a distinctive fresh face for the GE. It would also increase the pressure on the Tory ministers to resign for their actions and inactions.
The right wing press do seem to be doing a number on Ed. There's lots they could say about Labour, under whose watch it happened, and about Pat McFadden in particular. Singling out Ed from the 18 or so Postal Affairs Ministers does seem very specific.
Isn't it simpler than that? He is one of the very few Ministers involved who is still active in politics. Of all the Business and Postal Affairs Ministers there were, he is the only one left.
I agree that it is a tad unfair. But tough. It is also a tad unfair that people are going after Paula Vennells but not also going after the Chair of the Post Office at the same time - one Alice Perkins - who was present at the Board meetings which made the decisions which enabled the cover up, like the sacking of Second Sight and so on.
Politics is brutal. But nowhere near as brutal as what was done to the subpostmasters.
As I said earlier, it would be interesting if Davey decided to resign. As it then puts Massive Pressure on the Tories. After all, who has been solely in charge as the PO as endlessly delayed, obsfucated and denied? Even today they do it.
And that was last year. I imagine things have got worse since.
Chris O'Shea arrived as CEO with a mandate to cut costs. He's done this by hollowing out customer services. There are comparatively few operatives, based overseas and paid a pittance. Unsurprisingly, they're making mistakes.
His attitude is that since domestic supply is not where British Gas currently makes its money, better to draw resources from that side and put them where the profit is to boost revenue and ergo profits, thus dividends.
Which is logical, but rather short term in its thinking. Thirty years from now at the latest the currently profitable side of the business will likely be gone, and if they hollow out their other operations nobody will use them for anything else. Hence, no company.
My personal experience suggests it isn't malicious, but every single mistake they made was entirely avoidable if they hadn't cut their costs to the bone.
Scale that up from a company to a country, and it's a fair summary of why we are where we are.
It is a joke that lefties bang on about how Thatch ruined everything, and righties do the same re: Blair/Brown. But sometimes, they both have a point- the conseqences of decisions don't flow neatly in five year blocks that the electorate can pass rapid judgement on.
Yes long term consequences are a thing, but I really don't think the level at which that is the case is proportionate to how much people bang on about Thatcher and equivalents.
We had a bit of a run-in with British Gas. Mrs PtP wants to switch to Octopus. I know nothing about them but have heard them mentioned here. Can anyone say....yea or nay?
I have had an even more spectacular run-in with them (at least, I hope for your sake mine was more spectacular as it involves court action against them for fraud). I switched to Octopus as well, and so far their customer service has been approximately one million times better.
Be warned, BG will be sticky about letting you go especially if you have a credit balance.
I have never in my life encountered customer service as terrible as that of British Gas. I've had the Ombudsman involved multiple times and British Gas have ended up forking over hundreds of pounds to me in compensation for repeated terrible service errors.
No one expects great customer service from a utility company, they know they can get away with being shit so don't put enough care or money into it, but even with that they excel at awfulness.
I have encountered worse. Not much, and not more than once.
But finding the Student Loan Company's Head of Repayments had personally bungled a simple transaction because he hadn't realised July is the month before August was quite noteworthy.
On topic, there is an obvious agenda by the Tory press to try to pin the blame on the LDs in general and Ed Davey in particular.
It may well do Davey significant damage and if it rumbles on then him standing down in favour of Daisy Cooper might be necessary.
Much as I like Davey, he clearly was one of many who contributed to this becoming such an intractable nightmare for the Sub-posties.
Daisy would be good, and likely to be a distinctive fresh face for the GE. It would also increase the pressure on the Tory ministers to resign for their actions and inactions.
The right wing press do seem to be doing a number on Ed. There's lots they could say about Labour, under whose watch it happened, and about Pat McFadden in particular. Singling out Ed from the 18 or so Postal Affairs Ministers does seem very specific.
Isn't it simpler than that? He is one of the very few Ministers involved who is still active in politics. Of all the Business and Postal Affairs Ministers there were, he is the only one left.
I agree that it is a tad unfair. But tough. It is also a tad unfair that people are going after Paula Vennells but not also going after the Chair of the Post Office at the same time - one Alice Perkins - who was present at the Board meetings which made the decisions which enabled the cover up, like the sacking of Second Sight and so on.
Politics is brutal. But nowhere near as brutal as what was done to the subpostmasters.
As I said earlier, it would be interesting if Davey decided to resign. As it then puts Massive Pressure on the Tories. After all, who has been solely in charge as the PO as endlessly delayed, obsfucated and denied? Even today they do it.
Remind me again who was DPP that stood by and allowed these poor people to be prosecuted? Not Ed!
If any Party Leader needs to consider their position it is not Ed Davey.
I see implicating Starmer as a massive opportunity for Rishi. Even if it is a false narrative it will gain massive traction.
Implicate both...
Is this the first black swan ahead of the election - where Rishi gets to expedite justice for the poor Post Office folk shafted by Davey and Starmer?
(Probably not. But people are talking about it - and only Rishi has the opportunity to come out of it smelling of roses.)
Why on earth do you keep on saying Starmer is responsible for this. The Post Office brought their own prosecutions...
It's getting to the point where I will treat your posts as as stupid as a HYUFD one...
Starmer is not responsible
But it may be possible to (unfairly and inaccurately) implicate him. I think that’s @MarqueeMark’s point
What a dilemma for CCHQ. Blame Keir Starmer and save the Red Wall, or blame Ed Davey to save the Blue Wall. Luckily, directed social media advertising will let them do both provided their friends here and in the national media do not mess it up for them by choosing a side.
Ignoring the Starmer line being spun by some Tories on here (which to be honest I find a little tasteless as well as pointless), surely the bigger point is that we need to have a change of the law to prevent anyone but the CPS launching criminal prosecutions. The system has been shown to be utterly corrupt and running counter to the basic principles of justice.
I don't know which other organisations are still able to launch their own private criminal prosecutions but I would suggest it is long past the time when this practice ended.
I'm inclined to agree, though would be interested to see if someone can justify why it should still be a thing.
On topic, there is an obvious agenda by the Tory press to try to pin the blame on the LDs in general and Ed Davey in particular.
It may well do Davey significant damage and if it rumbles on then him standing down in favour of Daisy Cooper might be necessary.
Much as I like Davey, he clearly was one of many who contributed to this becoming such an intractable nightmare for the Sub-posties.
Daisy would be good, and likely to be a distinctive fresh face for the GE. It would also increase the pressure on the Tory ministers to resign for their actions and inactions.
The right wing press do seem to be doing a number on Ed. There's lots they could say about Labour, under whose watch it happened, and about Pat McFadden in particular. Singling out Ed from the 18 or so Postal Affairs Ministers does seem very specific.
Isn't it simpler than that? He is one of the very few Ministers involved who is still active in politics. Of all the Business and Postal Affairs Ministers there were, he is the only one left.
I agree that it is a tad unfair. But tough. It is also a tad unfair that people are going after Paula Vennells but not also going after the Chair of the Post Office at the same time - one Alice Perkins - who was present at the Board meetings which made the decisions which enabled the cover up, like the sacking of Second Sight and so on.
Politics is brutal. But nowhere near as brutal as what was done to the subpostmasters.
As I said earlier, it would be interesting if Davey decided to resign. As it then puts Massive Pressure on the Tories. After all, who has been solely in charge as the PO as endlessly delayed, obsfucated and denied? Even today they do it.
Yup. Paging Kemi ..... paging Kemi ......
This is starting to feel like it may burn through and end several leading politician's careers.
Top marks to ITV for doing this drama.
Bet the Beeb wouldn't have touched it with a bargepole.
And so it begins - the real victims become pawns in the political blame game. It shouldn't be beyond the collective political wit to agree a cross-party approach ensuring proper compensation and exoneration. However, there's an election coming and so slinging mud becomes the more attractive option and inevitably the partisans form up to put the blame on the individual and party they choose to act.
That's hysterical, I just asked Justin Madders @justinmadders MP why Nick Brown was suspended from the Labour party 16 months ago today and why Keir Starmer hasn't told the public
Yes if SKS wants more transparency in politics he should get his own house in order and tell us about Nick Brown and the conversations he has had with Mandelson about Epstein.
Should be simple starters for 10 by a main making the claims he has
Just finished the whole thing. Exceptionally good TV in terms of what it aimed to do: explain a horrible injustice, make you feel angry, tell the nation what happened
I reckon Davey is terminally damaged. Will struggle on but this now hangs around him. All the post office bigwigs are in danger of going to jail
On the upside this shows that - slowly, belatedly - British democracy and justice still kinda works. The 4th estate did its job. Journalists listened to a story and wrote it. Then tv came alone and shamed the powers that be (via a brilliant scriptwriter)
That’s something to cheer amidst what is still a pretty bleak tale. I apologise to all subpostmasters on PB for yawningly belittling this story
You owe me a drink or two when we meet.
You still have that visit to West Cumbria to do and the picnic on the beach I promised you.
I recently visited your beach. Some funny rules in the Gents...
On topic, I think this is a problem for the Liberal Democrats as part of their leitmotif is that they're unlike the big two and stand up for the little guy. Unfortunately, you've got a letter from Ed Davey on the record saying, "not my problem, mate" and that's hard to explain away.
You know it's touched a nerve from the strops one or two of our Lib Dem regulars have thrown on here, going so far as to flag posts that point it out.
They need to have a better answer than that.
Its made me laugh, but I'm not sure its touched a nerve. Davey receives a letter sent on his first day as responsible minister, asks the civil servants what the crack is, and sends a letter with their response 11 days into his role.
I know the Tories are desperate to do something, anything, to turn things around. But if thats all there is then the nerve thats been touched is theirs. Pants being shat at the coming loss of public money they can stuff into their pockets.
On topic, I think this is a problem for the Liberal Democrats as part of their leitmotif is that they're unlike the big two and stand up for the little guy. Unfortunately, you've got a letter from Ed Davey on the record saying, "not my problem, mate" and that's hard to explain away.
You know it's touched a nerve from the strops one or two of our Lib Dem regulars have thrown on here, going so far as to flag posts that point it out.
They need to have a better answer than that.
I love the way @IanB2 has flagged this too, continuing his strop.
On topic, I think this is a problem for the Liberal Democrats as part of their leitmotif is that they're unlike the big two and stand up for the little guy. Unfortunately, you've got a letter from Ed Davey on the record saying, "not my problem, mate" and that's hard to explain away.
You know it's touched a nerve from the strops one or two of our Lib Dem regulars have thrown on here, going so far as to flag posts that point it out.
They need to have a better answer than that.
A touch of humility from the party that's been in government for the last decade and a half - and its supporters - wouldn't go amiss.
Excellent news re: the cancellation of the planned strikes on the London Underground in the coming days.
It's an old dance - a strike is threatened, we get all the usual suspects telling us what a disaster said strikes will be for the London economy and how RMT is holding us all to ransom.
At the last minute, the strikes are called off as surprisingly more money is found. I'm not quite sure why we need all the threats and insults but in the mind everyone gets to save a little face and we can all go to work tomorrow subject to snow, ice, points and signal failures, plagues of locusts etc.
On topic, I think this is a problem for the Liberal Democrats as part of their leitmotif is that they're unlike the big two and stand up for the little guy. Unfortunately, you've got a letter from Ed Davey on the record saying, "not my problem, mate" and that's hard to explain away.
You know it's touched a nerve from the strops one or two of our Lib Dem regulars have thrown on here, going so far as to flag posts that point it out.
They need to have a better answer than that.
I love the way @IanB2 has flagged this too, continuing his strop.
Try not to act like a petulant child, Ian.
Politics is brutal. It comes for us all at times.
I see you've taken my point about a little humility to heart.
On topic, there is an obvious agenda by the Tory press to try to pin the blame on the LDs in general and Ed Davey in particular.
It may well do Davey significant damage and if it rumbles on then him standing down in favour of Daisy Cooper might be necessary.
Much as I like Davey, he clearly was one of many who contributed to this becoming such an intractable nightmare for the Sub-posties.
Daisy would be good, and likely to be a distinctive fresh face for the GE. It would also increase the pressure on the Tory ministers to resign for their actions and inactions.
The right wing press do seem to be doing a number on Ed. There's lots they could say about Labour, under whose watch it happened, and about Pat McFadden in particular. Singling out Ed from the 18 or so Postal Affairs Ministers does seem very specific.
Isn't it simpler than that? He is one of the very few Ministers involved who is still active in politics. Of all the Business and Postal Affairs Ministers there were, he is the only one left.
I agree that it is a tad unfair. But tough. It is also a tad unfair that people are going after Paula Vennells but not also going after the Chair of the Post Office at the same time - one Alice Perkins - who was present at the Board meetings which made the decisions which enabled the cover up, like the sacking of Second Sight and so on.
Politics is brutal. But nowhere near as brutal as what was done to the subpostmasters.
As I said earlier, it would be interesting if Davey decided to resign. As it then puts Massive Pressure on the Tories. After all, who has been solely in charge as the PO as endlessly delayed, obsfucated and denied? Even today they do it.
I haven't said much on this but the ones causing the delays are the lawyers whose fees are in the millions
I understand Chalk is to have a meeting tomorrow to speed up absolving all SPMs from any guilt
As for Davey this is just politics, but the first and for once it is the Lib Dems in the spotlight and their supporters do not like it
On topic, I think this is a problem for the Liberal Democrats as part of their leitmotif is that they're unlike the big two and stand up for the little guy. Unfortunately, you've got a letter from Ed Davey on the record saying, "not my problem, mate" and that's hard to explain away.
You know it's touched a nerve from the strops one or two of our Lib Dem regulars have thrown on here, going so far as to flag posts that point it out.
They need to have a better answer than that.
A touch of humility from the party that's been in government for the last decade and a half - and its supporters - wouldn't go amiss.
Not holding my breath.
The reason Lib Dems are so unhappy about this, of course, is that they were hoping for a nice bumper crop of seats this Autumn and are now terrified this scandal might scupper that at the last minute. Hence the frayed tempers and strops.
I never said the fault was theirs alone but Davey (and others) definitely share some of it and it just won't do to just scream "The Tories! The TOORRIES!!!" in the hope this makes it all go away.
On topic. 😇 The way Sunday Times has hilariously skewed this to focus in Lib Dem’s, does suggest this election just wants to get dirty, doesn’t it? You suspect those strategists surrounding Sunak, whose Shareprice and next gig depends on credible results, won’t hesitate to go Dirty if the polls don’t tighten.
But Everyone’s got plenty of silage to throw. 😧
Davey helped screw the stitched up Post Office Managers in the biggest cruelest scandal of all time?
As head of the CPS and director of Public Prosecutions, Starmer started with an open file of Saville, ended with the Saville file closed down, and didn’t get it reopened?
And Rishi Sunak - who ran the Treasury at the time of covid - profited from a surge in the share price of the Moderna vaccine through a blind trust, so one of his own MPs has publicly claimed. 😯 (if true, any MP knowing this before installing Sunak as leader, should never have installed him - it will be many more than just Sunak in deep trouble).
But from political-betting point of view, Does successfully predicting a very dirty election help us get ahead of the game? Does a very dirty election level a playing field, suppress overall vote, so a great option for those coming from behind? Or will “gutter politics” not really benefit anyone or reshape a result? Could any of these dirty attacks really breakthrough and turn the election, or even spectacularly backfire and lose votes?
For example, the Sunday Times story today, smearing Lib Dem’s on behalf of Tories? It’s already encouraging the response: where were the senior partners in the coalition? If PO scandal hurts Lib Dem’s, it will certainly hurt Tories too, perhaps more so as the senior government partner - questions for Osborne, questions for Cameron current Foreign Secretary. As the Coalition souvenir Mug showed us, both parties were cheeks of the same governmental arse.
Especially as Sunak today showed as much understanding of this scandal, (everyone in the country is now expert on, not just Cyclefree) to tell us that it was all over in the 1990s? 😧
The election is 2nd May. The avalanche of shit being thrown around is a clear sign that they want to smear as many people as possible before bringing a Big Tax Giveaway to the table to make only the Tories look good.
It is going to be the nastiest campaign ever. The Tories are about to be cut off from their access to public money. Lining Tory pockets is the last remaining purpose in being the government and they will keep fighting to the last to keep their noses in the trough.
“The election is 2nd May. The avalanche of shit being thrown around is a clear sign that they want to smear as many people as possible before bringing a Big Tax Giveaway to the table to make only the Tories look good.”
Yes. Dirty Tricks Unit and Tax Cut talk now on steroids, add it to the list of reasons it is May 2nd. 🙂
Reasons for May 2nd Inflation battle won still fresh in minds Tax cuts and upbeat “right track - turning corner” budget still a bit fresh in pocket and minds May 2nd, coinciding with local and Mayor elections, allows to be have Uxbridge style election focus, on taxes on motorist, and on how Labours Green Contract will screw UK economy and every taxpayer. Avoids this years expected surge in illegal channel crossings, that would be failure impossible to explain Avoids the damning interim covid report publication Avoids credibility and moral shattering set of locals before General Election Avoids mortgage crisis of key voters actually deepening by switching to higher mortgage deals Avoids the predicted doom and gloom of Q3 economic downtown Avoids two year anniversary of Trussterfuck Avoids two year anniversary of PM Sunak, and much reflection how things haven’t got better Avoids opposition fun with “squatting” “frit” narrative, that some believe torpedoed Majors chance of much better result
In favour of June or later Micawberism - something better might turn up, despite all the expert predictions of a conveyer belt of ever increasing worse news coming on from 1st June. Courageously presumes voters still open minded who to vote for, and actually interested in hearing substance from Labour before deciding 🤣 Anything else? 😃
Ignoring the Starmer line being spun by some Tories on here (which to be honest I find a little tasteless as well as pointless), surely the bigger point is that we need to have a change of the law to prevent anyone but the CPS launching criminal prosecutions. The system has been shown to be utterly corrupt and running counter to the basic principles of justice.
I don't know which other organisations are still able to launch their own private criminal prosecutions but I would suggest it is long past the time when this practice ended.
Do the BBC launch their own private criminal prosecutions for non-payment of the licence fee?
On topic, I think this is a problem for the Liberal Democrats as part of their leitmotif is that they're unlike the big two and stand up for the little guy. Unfortunately, you've got a letter from Ed Davey on the record saying, "not my problem, mate" and that's hard to explain away.
You know it's touched a nerve from the strops one or two of our Lib Dem regulars have thrown on here, going so far as to flag posts that point it out.
They need to have a better answer than that.
I love the way @IanB2 has flagged this too, continuing his strop.
Try not to act like a petulant child, Ian.
Politics is brutal. It comes for us all at times.
I see you've taken my point about a little humility to heart.
I'm not interested in making this about political point scoring.
But, if others are, then I think it's only fair to point out that other parties were involved.
On topic, I think this is a problem for the Liberal Democrats as part of their leitmotif is that they're unlike the big two and stand up for the little guy. Unfortunately, you've got a letter from Ed Davey on the record saying, "not my problem, mate" and that's hard to explain away.
You know it's touched a nerve from the strops one or two of our Lib Dem regulars have thrown on here, going so far as to flag posts that point it out.
They need to have a better answer than that.
I love the way @IanB2 has flagged this too, continuing his strop.
The Mail on Sunday are beginning to notice Sir Keir’s Achilles heel.
“Starmer won the Labour leadership early in 2020 on an undiluted Corbynista platform which included all the major policies of Jeremy Corbyn's 2019 election manifesto (such as widespread nationalisation and abolition of university tuition fees), encapsulated in a ten-point plan.
In a BBC TV interview he assured me these weren't just promises, they were 'pledges' he was making to Labour members and the British people.
Every one, of course, has since been junked, most of them not long after he was elected leader.
For him now to rail against broken Tory promises and the 'political cynicism' that has engendered is rather like Satan setting his face against sin. It is simply not credible. If Starmer is our next prime minister — and I still regard that as the odds-on result come the election — then he will take power with the unique distinction of an opposition leader who has broken more promises and executed more U-turns out of power than most governments manage in office.”
On topic, there is an obvious agenda by the Tory press to try to pin the blame on the LDs in general and Ed Davey in particular.
It may well do Davey significant damage and if it rumbles on then him standing down in favour of Daisy Cooper might be necessary.
Much as I like Davey, he clearly was one of many who contributed to this becoming such an intractable nightmare for the Sub-posties.
Daisy would be good, and likely to be a distinctive fresh face for the GE. It would also increase the pressure on the Tory ministers to resign for their actions and inactions.
The right wing press do seem to be doing a number on Ed. There's lots they could say about Labour, under whose watch it happened, and about Pat McFadden in particular. Singling out Ed from the 18 or so Postal Affairs Ministers does seem very specific.
Isn't it simpler than that? He is one of the very few Ministers involved who is still active in politics. Of all the Business and Postal Affairs Ministers there were, he is the only one left.
I agree that it is a tad unfair. But tough. It is also a tad unfair that people are going after Paula Vennells but not also going after the Chair of the Post Office at the same time - one Alice Perkins, a career civil servant and wife of Jack Straw (whose ex-SPAD was also the Post Office's Director of Communications at this time) - who was present at the Board meetings which made the decisions which enabled the cover up, like the sacking of Second Sight and so on.
Politics is brutal. But nowhere near as brutal as what was done to the subpostmasters.
Pat McFadden was Postal Affairs Minister, is still an MP and is Labour's Election Chief. Not exactly low profile. There are about 10 Tories who have held the job since 2015. One of the very few ministers involved who is still involved in politics? Not really.
Hope this happens but IMO more likely to be a London Mayoral bid.
JmRoyle #LFC #YNWA #BLM #GTTO @MyArrse Jeremy Corbyn tipped to launch ‘new political party’ ahead of General Election. The MP for Islington North is reportedly planning something seismic.
Excellent news re: the cancellation of the planned strikes on the London Underground in the coming days.
It's an old dance - a strike is threatened, we get all the usual suspects telling us what a disaster said strikes will be for the London economy and how RMT is holding us all to ransom.
At the last minute, the strikes are called off as surprisingly more money is found. I'm not quite sure why we need all the threats and insults but in the mind everyone gets to save a little face and we can all go to work tomorrow subject to snow, ice, points and signal failures, plagues of locusts etc.
Perhaps the government should seek advice from TfL/RMT on how to bring an end to the dispute with the junior doctors.
Just finished the whole thing. Exceptionally good TV in terms of what it aimed to do: explain a horrible injustice, make you feel angry, tell the nation what happened
I reckon Davey is terminally damaged. Will struggle on but this now hangs around him. All the post office bigwigs are in danger of going to jail
On the upside this shows that - slowly, belatedly - British democracy and justice still kinda works. The 4th estate did its job. Journalists listened to a story and wrote it. Then tv came alone and shamed the powers that be (via a brilliant scriptwriter)
That’s something to cheer amidst what is still a pretty bleak tale. I apologise to all subpostmasters on PB for yawningly belittling this story
You owe me a drink or two when we meet.
You still have that visit to West Cumbria to do and the picnic on the beach I promised you.
I recently visited your beach. Some funny rules in the Gents...
Is not this standard UK practice? Think I saw more than one guy doing this in the jacks, believe it was a dive pub . . . in posher part of Mayfair . . .
Hope this happens but IMO more likely to be a London Mayoral bid.
JmRoyle #LFC #YNWA #BLM #GTTO @MyArrse Jeremy Corbyn tipped to launch ‘new political party’ ahead of General Election. The MP for Islington North is reportedly planning something seismic.
Either would be pretty major, so I'm pretty sceptical, since a mayoral bid would see him tossed out of Labour anyway so why not launch a new party?
But he should do it. He would probably do well in London, and if he does not loads of people will just claim he'd have won and oh what a shame he did not.
Andrew Neil makes a good point here - rsther than trying to smear other politicians, the Tories could earn a lot of brownie points with voters by paying out the sub masters in full immediately.
When you think of all the money wasted on PPE & furlough, it would not be that costly and could be the Black Swan they are looking for
Too much “business-as-usual” in Rishi Sunak’s remarks about the sub-postmasters this morning. He doesn’t get the scale of the national outrage. He should have announced Alan Johnson as head of new compensation agency, with all claims generously settled this year and bill sent to Post Office. Plus instructed government lawyers to resolve all miscarriages of justice this year too, with additional compensation. And encouraged NCA to pursue criminal charges against Post Office executives.
Remind me again who was DPP that stood by and allowed these poor people to be prosecuted? Not Ed!
If any Party Leader needs to consider their position it is not Ed Davey.
I see implicating Starmer as a massive opportunity for Rishi. Even if it is a false narrative it will gain massive traction.
Implicate both...
Is this the first black swan ahead of the election - where Rishi gets to expedite justice for the poor Post Office folk shafted by Davey and Starmer?
(Probably not. But people are talking about it - and only Rishi has the opportunity to come out of it smelling of roses.)
Why on earth do you keep on saying Starmer is responsible for this. The Post Office brought their own prosecutions...
It's getting to the point where I will treat your posts as as stupid as a HYUFD one...
But it *must* be Starmer. He is a bad'un. Both utterly inconsequential with no plan and no policies, and the man who will wreck the country. A man So Bad that as DPP he failed to stop these private prosecutions.
Implicating Starmer also moves the light away from Sir Ed.
lolol - the only reason the light is over Davey is because desperate Tories sellotaped it there.
As I said, I do have to giggle. Is that what is going to save them? Really? That all that's left? The big play?
The reason that Davey has a bit of problem isn't down to the Tories/Aliens/Illuminati etc.
It's just that as the scandal entered the public consciousness, he is the *first* Minister responsible for the Post Office *found* to have told the SPMs to bugger off. In writing.
Hopefully, a sequence of others from the Tories and Labour will also be in the shit.
Comments
"I have made sure this injustice will not happen again."
Keep looking at your shoes, Starmer.
But the danger is political - this has salience now thanks to ITV. It may be unfair, but if the LibDems become associate with this I think it will be damaging as it challenges their USP of being semi-outsiders who stick up for their constituents / speak truth to power. Except on this occasion they didn’t.
And with what timeframe?
Am waiting for someone to attempt to convince me, that the merit Ed Davey brings to/for Lib Dems, are greater (or even equal) to his demerits?
For one thing, as far as I can tell, ED has been pretty much the Invisible Man of today's UK politics - until now that is.
Is he expected to be some kind of vote-winning, Tory-slaying dynamo whenever Sunak finally summons the courage (or lack thereof) to actually set the date for the GE? Somehow I doubt it.
Be warned, BG will be sticky about letting you go especially if you have a credit balance.
That would be an incredibly awkward false narrative...
Keir Starmer.
He's a Bad'Un.
"You can fool some hard of thinking voters all of the time - and those are the ones you want to concentrate on."
As I said, I do have to giggle. Is that what is going to save them? Really? That all that's left? The big play?
FUSELAGE BLOWN OUT MID-AIR | Alaska Emergency at Portland
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29ghXy6O2dc
British Gas' 'customer browbeating team' rang me on this number:
01482 293983
Might be worth blocking it, if you don't want nuisance calls.
Or leave it unblocked so you can tell them exactly why you're leaving.
Why is that “un-classy”? And why do you dismiss her as a “side-piece”?
I reckon Davey is terminally damaged. Will struggle on but this now hangs around him. All the post office bigwigs are in danger of going to jail
On the upside this shows that - slowly, belatedly - British democracy and justice still kinda works. The 4th estate did its job. Journalists listened to a story and wrote it. Then tv came alone and shamed the powers that be (via a brilliant scriptwriter)
That’s something to cheer amidst what is still a pretty bleak tale. I apologise to all subpostmasters on PB for yawningly belittling this story
The Post Office was publicly owned.
So these so-called "private" prosecutions by this public body are public.
Why won't Starmer come clean about his outrageous role personally prosecuting these poor subpostmasters.
WHY WON'T HE COME CLEAN???
You still have that visit to West Cumbria to do and the picnic on the beach I promised you.
Another Alaska Airlines incident from October, but a more personal "malfunction":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=988j2-4CdgM
But it may be possible to (unfairly and inaccurately) implicate him. I think that’s @MarqueeMark’s point
Sunak talks like the intern who's wandered into the office, just managed to work out where the canteen & loos are & has only the vaguest idea what's going on & what he's meant to be doing.
It's beyond pathetic.
😊
I shall report back if the plane crashes.
Your man on the spot
This moment is extremely dangerous for the Conservatives - not only they are perceived to have been in power the last 14 years, but more importantly they are in power right now, when action is just about to be demanded, and they need to deliver some.
The only thing to take care with is that the range of tariffs can seem complex if you have solar, battery or electric vehicle.
And my understanding of the fringes of the Lake District.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/complaints-uk-energy-watchdog-hits-29131349
And that was last year. I imagine things have got worse since.
Chris O'Shea arrived as CEO with a mandate to cut costs. He's done this by hollowing out customer services. There are comparatively few operatives, based overseas and paid a pittance. Unsurprisingly, they're making mistakes.
His attitude is that since domestic supply is not where British Gas currently makes its money, better to draw resources from that side and put them where the profit is to boost revenue and ergo profits, thus dividends.
Which is logical, but rather short term in its thinking. Thirty years from now at the latest the currently profitable side of the business will likely be gone, and if they hollow out their other operations nobody will use them for anything else. Hence, no company.
My personal experience suggests it isn't malicious, but every single mistake they made was entirely avoidable if they hadn't cut their costs to the bone.
Or which party chose to award honours to Ms Vennells in 2019.
This is not a party political matter. No party comes out of this well. But it is the Tory party which is in power now and which can do something to put this right. That is what it must do. Now.
How hard is it for the government to understand this?
But the main lesson from mud slinging in politics is you are as much likely to end up covered in it yourself - and this PO scandal is excellent example of if one of Cameron’s ministers has questions to answer, Cameron and his government has questions to answer.
And spreading the blame for this mess might just save a seat or two!
He only became a minister on the 20th!!
It seems like he was just signing off legacy letters left by the previous administration.
Not fully blameless, but lets face it, he never sent them to Jail. We should be concentrating on the Post Office villains in this case, rather than the politicians over a 15 year period. What about Fujitsu's role as well?
It *should* be non-political. But the Tories - trying to fight the dirtiest campaign possible - have made it politcal.
As we have seen, they are pushing that the guilty party is Sir Ed Davey. So voting LibDem in blue wall seats would be like you personally voting to persecute all these sub postmasters.
And not just the LibDems. That Starmer is a Bad'Un, allowing all these prosecutions to happen. Only the Tories stand above this, doing everything they can to fix Labour and the LibDem's crimes.
Nobody in Number 10 has realised that doing the right thing would go some way to scoring some brownie points with the public.
I don't know which other organisations are still able to launch their own private criminal prosecutions but I would suggest it is long past the time when this practice ended.
Although the shit horsery will not pass unnoted.
You know it's touched a nerve from the strops one or two of our Lib Dem regulars have thrown on here, going so far as to flag posts that point it out.
They need to have a better answer than that.
It is a joke that lefties bang on about how Thatch ruined everything, and righties do the same re: Blair/Brown. But sometimes, they both have a point- the conseqences of decisions don't flow neatly in five year blocks that the electorate can pass rapid judgement on.
So Liverpool to sneak a winner?
And he switched off replies to his tweet!
😂🤣😂🤣
https://x.com/timmyvoe240886/status/1744034158324637711?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q
The RSPCA abandoned private prosecutions a couple of years ago for similar reasons to the Post Office saga (although at a lower level).
I know the Tories are desperate to do something, anything, to turn things around. But if thats all there is then the nerve thats been touched is theirs. Pants being shat at the coming loss of public money they can stuff into their pockets.
Granted the central offices are not exactly einsteins, so it's not like anyone's doing great.
I agree that it is a tad unfair. But tough. It is also a tad unfair that people are going after Paula Vennells but not also going after the Chair of the Post Office at the same time - one Alice Perkins, a career civil servant and wife of Jack Straw (whose ex-SPAD was also the Post Office's Director of Communications at this time) - who was present at the Board meetings which made the decisions which enabled the cover up, like the sacking of Second Sight and so on.
Politics is brutal. But nowhere near as brutal as what was done to the subpostmasters.
No one expects great customer service from a utility company, they know they can get away with being shit so don't put enough care or money into it, but even with that they excel at awfulness.
The Post Office has powers on top of that.
But finding the Student Loan Company's Head of Repayments had personally bungled a simple transaction because he hadn't realised July is the month before August was quite noteworthy.
Top marks to ITV for doing this drama.
Bet the Beeb wouldn't have touched it with a bargepole.
It's definitely made an impact on all of us and, much as we forget it at times, the powers that be do read this website.
They can't have failed to have been touched by it either.
And so it begins - the real victims become pawns in the political blame game. It shouldn't be beyond the collective political wit to agree a cross-party approach ensuring proper compensation and exoneration. However, there's an election coming and so slinging mud becomes the more attractive option and inevitably the partisans form up to put the blame on the individual and party they choose to act.
Pathetic - and the real victims are forgotten.
Should be simple starters for 10 by a main making the claims he has
"Mouse filmed tidying up man's shed every night"
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-67902966
Done two journeys in the last few days from Euston station and the new trains are excellent. Standard class feels like first class used to be.
Try not to act like a petulant child, Ian.
Politics is brutal. It comes for us all at times.
Not holding my breath.
It's an old dance - a strike is threatened, we get all the usual suspects telling us what a disaster said strikes will be for the London economy and how RMT is holding us all to ransom.
At the last minute, the strikes are called off as surprisingly more money is found. I'm not quite sure why we need all the threats and insults but in the mind everyone gets to save a little face and we can all go to work tomorrow subject to snow, ice, points and signal failures, plagues of locusts etc.
I understand Chalk is to have a meeting tomorrow to speed up absolving all SPMs from any guilt
As for Davey this is just politics, but the first and for once it is the Lib Dems in the spotlight and their supporters do not like it
https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/rishi-sunak-post-office-scandal/
I never said the fault was theirs alone but Davey (and others) definitely share some of it and it just won't do to just scream "The Tories! The TOORRIES!!!" in the hope this makes it all go away.
It won't.
Yes. Dirty Tricks Unit and Tax Cut talk now on steroids, add it to the list of reasons it is May 2nd. 🙂
Reasons for May 2nd
Inflation battle won still fresh in minds
Tax cuts and upbeat “right track - turning corner” budget still a bit fresh in pocket and minds
May 2nd, coinciding with local and Mayor elections, allows to be have Uxbridge style election focus, on taxes on motorist, and on how Labours Green Contract will screw UK economy and every taxpayer.
Avoids this years expected surge in illegal channel crossings, that would be failure impossible to explain
Avoids the damning interim covid report publication
Avoids credibility and moral shattering set of locals before General Election
Avoids mortgage crisis of key voters actually deepening by switching to higher mortgage deals
Avoids the predicted doom and gloom of Q3 economic downtown
Avoids two year anniversary of Trussterfuck
Avoids two year anniversary of PM Sunak, and much reflection how things haven’t got better
Avoids opposition fun with “squatting” “frit” narrative, that some believe torpedoed Majors chance of much better result
In favour of June or later
Micawberism - something better might turn up, despite all the expert predictions of a conveyer belt of ever increasing worse news coming on from 1st June.
Courageously presumes voters still open minded who to vote for, and actually interested in hearing substance from Labour before deciding 🤣
Anything else? 😃
But, if others are, then I think it's only fair to point out that other parties were involved.
Go and walk your dog @IanB2 and calm down.
“Starmer won the Labour leadership early in 2020 on an undiluted Corbynista platform which included all the major policies of Jeremy Corbyn's 2019 election manifesto (such as widespread nationalisation and abolition of university tuition fees), encapsulated in a ten-point plan.
In a BBC TV interview he assured me these weren't just promises, they were 'pledges' he was making to Labour members and the British people.
Every one, of course, has since been junked, most of them not long after he was elected leader.
For him now to rail against broken Tory promises and the 'political cynicism' that has engendered is rather like Satan setting his face against sin. It is simply not credible. If Starmer is our next prime minister — and I still regard that as the odds-on result come the election — then he will take power with the unique distinction of an opposition leader who has broken more promises and executed more U-turns out of power than most governments manage in office.”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-12931861/ANDREW-NEIL-Labour-leaders-big-New-Year-speech-turns-work-mind-numbing-banality-man-whos-broken-promises-executed-U-turns-opposition-governments-manage-office.html
JmRoyle #LFC #YNWA #BLM #GTTO
@MyArrse
Jeremy Corbyn tipped to launch ‘new political party’ ahead of General Election.
The MP for Islington North is reportedly planning something seismic.
But he should do it. He would probably do well in London, and if he does not loads of people will just claim he'd have won and oh what a shame he did not.
When you think of all the money wasted on PPE & furlough, it would not be that costly and could be the Black Swan they are looking for
Too much “business-as-usual” in Rishi Sunak’s remarks about the sub-postmasters this morning. He doesn’t get the scale of the national outrage. He should have announced Alan Johnson as head of new compensation agency, with all claims generously settled this year and bill sent to Post Office. Plus instructed government lawyers to resolve all miscarriages of justice this year too, with additional compensation. And encouraged NCA to pursue criminal charges against Post Office executives.
https://x.com/afneil/status/1743941239672606958?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q
It's just that as the scandal entered the public consciousness, he is the *first* Minister responsible for the Post Office *found* to have told the SPMs to bugger off. In writing.
Hopefully, a sequence of others from the Tories and Labour will also be in the shit.