Not as straightforward as John makes out - the CPS has the power to take over or end private prosecutions for example that are vexatious or malicious - the Post Office was prosecuting hundreds of people, what interest did the CPS take in it & what if any review did they conduct?
Further, Seema Misra was prosecuted on behalf of the Post Office by the CPS when Keir Starmer was DPP.
Misra, recalling the moment she was sentenced to 15 months in prison in 2010, said, "It's hard to say but I think that if I had not been pregnant, I would have killed myself."
How many people work in the CPS - it can't just have been SKS yet all the Tory Groupies seem to think he was a one man superman doing the job of 500 people....
Starmer getting weak attacks like this which any sensible onlooker can see are vexatious (perhaps the current DPP can step in and stop them) can't do him any harm, in fact it might even give him a bit of cry-wolf protection.
Look at the record so far: donkey sanctuary; currygate; Saville; and now, surely the weakest attack line of all. If and when an actual scandal comes up people may well look and think it's those right wing newspapers making something out of nothing again.
Farage has accused Sir Keir of not doing anything as DPP about the Post Office prosecutions… at first glance this just seems an ill informed and he has been community noted for it on X, but…
Sir Keir has now come out and said the Post Office shouldn’t be able to prosecute people, presumably to draw attention to the fact it was nothing to do with him as DPP. A potential problem for him is that he has been parading around depicting his time as DPP as a Sheriff of Justice, riding into town righting any wrongs that unscrupulous corporations and politicians committed… even though he was unable to do anything about it, I think the public might see his Uncle Albert “When I was DPP…” white knight act differently, and maybe that what Farage was getting at
Or maybe Farage just messed up
Or maybe Tories these days are so desperate that they have no shame.
Since when was Farage a Tory? Been a while I reckon....
That which we call a Tory by any other name would smell as ...
There is a far wider gulf between Farage and Sunak than there is between Corbyn and the guy who was prepared to sit in his Shadow Cabinet for years as anti-semitism raged in the Labour Party...
Sorry, but I know what I mean by "Tory", whether inside or outside the Conservative Party. And Farage is a Tory to his roots.
What an idiotic thing to say!
It seems to be absolutely standard here to dismiss opinions one disagrees with as "idiotic" or "nonsensical".
I suppose actually explaining why you hold a different opinion might be a bit too taxing.
That’s better than “you are stupid” which is your approach.
Tory is a specific proper noun referring to members of the Tory party. Farage is not a member of the Tory party. Therefore Farage is not a Tory.
Sometimes it really is that simple
Dominic Grieve is no longer a member of the Conservative Party. He still calls himself a "one nation Conservative/Tory"
I am no longer a member of the conservative party but I am a one nation conservative
I remain a member of the Conservative party, and look forward to voting for a right-wing leader again after Sunak - the most left wing PM of my lifetime - gets pummelled electorally at the next election.
So you think Sunak is too left wing and BigG thinks Sunak is too right wing, have I got that right?
Part of the hilarity of Sunak's situation.
Too right wing for centrists, not right wing enough for right wingers, too incompetent to satisfy those who just want competent government.
And for a lot of Cameronian types he's both too right wing and too left wing at the same time. Too right wing on culture and Brexit, too left wing on tax and spend.
I do think he's the Tory Ed Miliband. Both in terms of personality and politics-wise. Geeky and awkward, but quite liked and championed by party/media insiders because he's one of them. Just as heavily involved Labour activist and types media types thought Ed was the sort of person they'd quite like running the country - earnest, nerdy, very into left-wing thought without the rough edges of the far left, Sunak is the kind of person the Spectatorati think should run things. Terribly clever, went to the right school and college, worked in finance, but he's not a toff you know.
The problem being, what each group likes about them comes across as weakness, arrogance, ineptness, privilege, and aloofness to others.
Politically there are similarities too. Miliband suffered because he wasn't right-wing enough for those who'd deserted New Labour to the right, but not left-wing enough for the malcontent activist part of the left that wanted (and would get) an unencumbered vessel for their anger.
Similarly, Sunak's right-wing core beliefs mean he's never going to win back the liberal voters who have drifted away from the party since (but not wholly because of) Brexit. But also doesn't have the blood and thunder tone the 'own the libs', populist anti-establishment section of the electorate that's fed up of the Tories too, want either.
Milliband has become an accomplished parliamentarian - and has the sticking power, having lost any prospect of leadership, to be willing to hang around and serve in a future cabinet. I doubt either is likely to be true of Sunak.
In that way he was the William Hague of Labour. Or Tim Farron for that matter - better post-leadership as a parliamentarian than he was as leader. Who knows about Sunak. We all assume he'll toddle off to California but I'm not sure. The only former leader ever to have done that from Westminster is Clegg, and only after a massive job offer.
Not as straightforward as John makes out - the CPS has the power to take over or end private prosecutions for example that are vexatious or malicious - the Post Office was prosecuting hundreds of people, what interest did the CPS take in it & what if any review did they conduct?
Further, Seema Misra was prosecuted on behalf of the Post Office by the CPS when Keir Starmer was DPP.
Misra, recalling the moment she was sentenced to 15 months in prison in 2010, said, "It's hard to say but I think that if I had not been pregnant, I would have killed myself."
How many people work in the CPS - it can't just have been SKS yet all the Tory Groupies seem to think he was a one man superman doing the job of 500 people....
Ah no, Sir Keir insists on the head of the party/business taking full responsibility when things aren’t done properly. He set that precedent when he was after Boris for partygate
An Azeri farmstead, every video is the same but oddly compelling. The matriarch quietly makes traditional food over an open fire, while her husband buggers about in the yard with bits of wood. Cats, dogs and farmyard animals frolic. Lovely.
Farage has accused Sir Keir of not doing anything as DPP about the Post Office prosecutions… at first glance this just seems an ill informed and he has been community noted for it on X, but…
Sir Keir has now come out and said the Post Office shouldn’t be able to prosecute people, presumably to draw attention to the fact it was nothing to do with him as DPP. A potential problem for him is that he has been parading around depicting his time as DPP as a Sheriff of Justice, riding into town righting any wrongs that unscrupulous corporations and politicians committed… even though he was unable to do anything about it, I think the public might see his Uncle Albert “When I was DPP…” white knight act differently, and maybe that what Farage was getting at
Or maybe Farage just messed up
Or maybe Tories these days are so desperate that they have no shame.
Since when was Farage a Tory? Been a while I reckon....
That which we call a Tory by any other name would smell as ...
There is a far wider gulf between Farage and Sunak than there is between Corbyn and the guy who was prepared to sit in his Shadow Cabinet for years as anti-semitism raged in the Labour Party...
Sorry, but I know what I mean by "Tory", whether inside or outside the Conservative Party. And Farage is a Tory to his roots.
What an idiotic thing to say!
It seems to be absolutely standard here to dismiss opinions one disagrees with as "idiotic" or "nonsensical".
I suppose actually explaining why you hold a different opinion might be a bit too taxing.
That’s better than “you are stupid” which is your approach.
Tory is a specific proper noun referring to members of the Tory party. Farage is not a member of the Tory party. Therefore Farage is not a Tory.
Sometimes it really is that simple
Dominic Grieve is no longer a member of the Conservative Party. He still calls himself a "one nation Conservative/Tory"
I am no longer a member of the conservative party but I am a one nation conservative
I remain a member of the Conservative party, and look forward to voting for a right-wing leader again after Sunak - the most left wing PM of my lifetime - gets pummelled electorally at the next election.
So you think Sunak is too left wing and BigG thinks Sunak is too right wing, have I got that right?
Part of the hilarity of Sunak's situation.
Too right wing for centrists, not right wing enough for right wingers, too incompetent to satisfy those who just want competent government.
And for a lot of Cameronian types he's both too right wing and too left wing at the same time. Too right wing on culture and Brexit, too left wing on tax and spend.
I do think he's the Tory Ed Miliband. Both in terms of personality and politics-wise. Geeky and awkward, but quite liked and championed by party/media insiders because he's one of them. Just as heavily involved Labour activist and types media types thought Ed was the sort of person they'd quite like running the country - earnest, nerdy, very into left-wing thought without the rough edges of the far left, Sunak is the kind of person the Spectatorati think should run things. Terribly clever, went to the right school and college, worked in finance, but he's not a toff you know.
The problem being, what each group likes about them comes across as weakness, arrogance, ineptness, privilege, and aloofness to others.
Politically there are similarities too. Miliband suffered because he wasn't right-wing enough for those who'd deserted New Labour to the right, but not left-wing enough for the malcontent activist part of the left that wanted (and would get) an unencumbered vessel for their anger.
Similarly, Sunak's right-wing core beliefs mean he's never going to win back the liberal voters who have drifted away from the party since (but not wholly because of) Brexit. But also doesn't have the blood and thunder tone the 'own the libs', populist anti-establishment section of the electorate that's fed up of the Tories too, want either.
Milliband has become an accomplished parliamentarian - and has the sticking power, having lost any prospect of leadership, to be willing to hang around and serve in a future cabinet. I doubt either is likely to be true of Sunak.
In that way he was the William Hague of Labour. Or Tim Farron for that matter - better post-leadership as a parliamentarian than he was as leader. Who knows about Sunak. We all assume he'll toddle off to California but I'm not sure. The only former leader ever to have done that from Westminster is Clegg, and only after a massive job offer.
Does Neil Kinnock climbing on the European gravy train not count?
House GOP releases Hunter Biden contempt resolution https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4395208-hunter-biden-contempt-resolution-house-gop/ The House Oversight and Accountability Committee on Monday released the text of a resolution to hold Hunter Biden, the president’s son, in contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena to appear for a closed-door deposition as part of the House GOP’s impeachment inquiry into President Biden.
The brief resolution directs the Speaker to refer the contempt report “to an appropriate United States attorney, to the end that Mr. Biden be proceeded against in the manner and form provided by law,” and it calls on the Speaker to “otherwise take all appropriate action to enforce the subpoena.”..
No doubt will be voted for by Congressmen who ignored this subpoena along with Rudy, and half of Trump's admin.
I have received a subpoena signed only by Democrat Chairs who have prejudged this case. It raises significant issues concerning legitimacy and constitutional and legal issues including,inter alia, attorney client and other privileges. It will be given appropriate consideration. https://twitter.com/RudyGiuliani/status/1178806474073620482
None of whom had offered - as H Biden has done - to appear in public.
Not as straightforward as John makes out - the CPS has the power to take over or end private prosecutions for example that are vexatious or malicious - the Post Office was prosecuting hundreds of people, what interest did the CPS take in it & what if any review did they conduct?
Further, Seema Misra was prosecuted on behalf of the Post Office by the CPS when Keir Starmer was DPP.
Misra, recalling the moment she was sentenced to 15 months in prison in 2010, said, "It's hard to say but I think that if I had not been pregnant, I would have killed myself."
How many people work in the CPS - it can't just have been SKS yet all the Tory Groupies seem to think he was a one man superman doing the job of 500 people....
Ah no, Sir Keir insists on the head of the party/business taking full responsibility when things aren’t done properly. He set that precedent when he was after Boris for partygate
I was with you all the way until Boris. The issue for Starmer is a serious oversight failure. You are right the buck stops with him. But Johnson was the author of his own downfall.
Just listening to the news, how typical it is that various politicians go on air and talk mainly about Vennells' CBE - as if that discredited bauble really matters.
They ought rather to concentrate on explaining why they didn't sort out the whole affair half a decade back. And now sort it sharpish.
Displacement activity and distracts those who are furious.
"As you yourself have identified - the idea that this whole scandal could be made to go away by playing dirty and maximising the legal costs until the other side ran out of money - will have originated from the legal profession. That Vennells went along with it is shameful, but it will have been qualified lawyers who devised, advocated and implemented that strategy."
This may well be so. But it will have been signed off by the boss. So both are responsible. Or in @Leon's words: "all a bunch of tossers."
Also the procurement of Horizon is a key part of the Inquiry - worth listening to Jason Beer KC's opening statement on this. Why? Because Ministers and senior managers knew about the problems right from the start and still went ahead. The idea that it was only in 2007 that Ministers should have become concerned is just nonsense. The poor procurement process is highly relevant to how this scandal came about and to the culture and belief it inculcated in the Post Office which lay behind its approach both to the prosecutions and the concerns / complaints raised repeatedly.
Not as straightforward as John makes out - the CPS has the power to take over or end private prosecutions for example that are vexatious or malicious - the Post Office was prosecuting hundreds of people, what interest did the CPS take in it & what if any review did they conduct?
Further, Seema Misra was prosecuted on behalf of the Post Office by the CPS when Keir Starmer was DPP.
Misra, recalling the moment she was sentenced to 15 months in prison in 2010, said, "It's hard to say but I think that if I had not been pregnant, I would have killed myself."
How many people work in the CPS - it can't just have been SKS yet all the Tory Groupies seem to think he was a one man superman doing the job of 500 people....
Ah no, Sir Keir insists on the head of the party/business taking full responsibility when things aren’t done properly. He set that precedent when he was after Boris for partygate
Bozo the clown was at the party and was allowing the downstairs of his house (10 Downing Street) to be party central...
Edit: but I should add that since 2019/ 2020 I haven't gone anywhere in real terms despite promotions and salary rises, but I have gone up enough to stand still.
Not as straightforward as John makes out - the CPS has the power to take over or end private prosecutions for example that are vexatious or malicious - the Post Office was prosecuting hundreds of people, what interest did the CPS take in it & what if any review did they conduct?
Further, Seema Misra was prosecuted on behalf of the Post Office by the CPS when Keir Starmer was DPP.
Misra, recalling the moment she was sentenced to 15 months in prison in 2010, said, "It's hard to say but I think that if I had not been pregnant, I would have killed myself."
How many people work in the CPS - it can't just have been SKS yet all the Tory Groupies seem to think he was a one man superman doing the job of 500 people....
Ah no, Sir Keir insists on the head of the party/business taking full responsibility when things aren’t done properly. He set that precedent when he was after Boris for partygate
That would be every PM since 2010 in the frame, then.
HMG, as owner of the business, had both the power and responsibility of oversight, in a way that simply isn't true of the CPS. Pretending Starmer bears some greater responsibility, as you persist in, is pathetic stuff.
Farage has accused Sir Keir of not doing anything as DPP about the Post Office prosecutions… at first glance this just seems an ill informed and he has been community noted for it on X, but…
Sir Keir has now come out and said the Post Office shouldn’t be able to prosecute people, presumably to draw attention to the fact it was nothing to do with him as DPP. A potential problem for him is that he has been parading around depicting his time as DPP as a Sheriff of Justice, riding into town righting any wrongs that unscrupulous corporations and politicians committed… even though he was unable to do anything about it, I think the public might see his Uncle Albert “When I was DPP…” white knight act differently, and maybe that what Farage was getting at
Or maybe Farage just messed up
Or maybe Tories these days are so desperate that they have no shame.
Since when was Farage a Tory? Been a while I reckon....
That which we call a Tory by any other name would smell as ...
There is a far wider gulf between Farage and Sunak than there is between Corbyn and the guy who was prepared to sit in his Shadow Cabinet for years as anti-semitism raged in the Labour Party...
Sorry, but I know what I mean by "Tory", whether inside or outside the Conservative Party. And Farage is a Tory to his roots.
What an idiotic thing to say!
It seems to be absolutely standard here to dismiss opinions one disagrees with as "idiotic" or "nonsensical".
I suppose actually explaining why you hold a different opinion might be a bit too taxing.
That’s better than “you are stupid” which is your approach.
Tory is a specific proper noun referring to members of the Tory party. Farage is not a member of the Tory party. Therefore Farage is not a Tory.
Sometimes it really is that simple
Dominic Grieve is no longer a member of the Conservative Party. He still calls himself a "one nation Conservative/Tory"
I am no longer a member of the conservative party but I am a one nation conservative
I remain a member of the Conservative party, and look forward to voting for a right-wing leader again after Sunak - the most left wing PM of my lifetime - gets pummelled electorally at the next election.
So you think Sunak is too left wing and BigG thinks Sunak is too right wing, have I got that right?
Part of the hilarity of Sunak's situation.
Too right wing for centrists, not right wing enough for right wingers, too incompetent to satisfy those who just want competent government.
And for a lot of Cameronian types he's both too right wing and too left wing at the same time. Too right wing on culture and Brexit, too left wing on tax and spend.
I do think he's the Tory Ed Miliband. Both in terms of personality and politics-wise. Geeky and awkward, but quite liked and championed by party/media insiders because he's one of them. Just as heavily involved Labour activist and types media types thought Ed was the sort of person they'd quite like running the country - earnest, nerdy, very into left-wing thought without the rough edges of the far left, Sunak is the kind of person the Spectatorati think should run things. Terribly clever, went to the right school and college, worked in finance, but he's not a toff you know.
The problem being, what each group likes about them comes across as weakness, arrogance, ineptness, privilege, and aloofness to others.
Politically there are similarities too. Miliband suffered because he wasn't right-wing enough for those who'd deserted New Labour to the right, but not left-wing enough for the malcontent activist part of the left that wanted (and would get) an unencumbered vessel for their anger.
Similarly, Sunak's right-wing core beliefs mean he's never going to win back the liberal voters who have drifted away from the party since (but not wholly because of) Brexit. But also doesn't have the blood and thunder tone the 'own the libs', populist anti-establishment section of the electorate that's fed up of the Tories too, want either.
Milliband has become an accomplished parliamentarian - and has the sticking power, having lost any prospect of leadership, to be willing to hang around and serve in a future cabinet. I doubt either is likely to be true of Sunak.
In that way he was the William Hague of Labour. Or Tim Farron for that matter - better post-leadership as a parliamentarian than he was as leader. Who knows about Sunak. We all assume he'll toddle off to California but I'm not sure. The only former leader ever to have done that from Westminster is Clegg, and only after a massive job offer.
Does Neil Kinnock climbing on the European gravy train not count?
If we're broadening it out to foreign placements then Ashdown in Bosnia also gets on the list. And David Owen.
Not as straightforward as John makes out - the CPS has the power to take over or end private prosecutions for example that are vexatious or malicious - the Post Office was prosecuting hundreds of people, what interest did the CPS take in it & what if any review did they conduct?
Further, Seema Misra was prosecuted on behalf of the Post Office by the CPS when Keir Starmer was DPP.
Misra, recalling the moment she was sentenced to 15 months in prison in 2010, said, "It's hard to say but I think that if I had not been pregnant, I would have killed myself."
How many people work in the CPS - it can't just have been SKS yet all the Tory Groupies seem to think he was a one man superman doing the job of 500 people....
Starmer getting weak attacks like this which any sensible onlooker can see are vexatious (perhaps the current DPP can step in and stop them) can't do him any harm, in fact it might even give him a bit of cry-wolf protection. If every attack
Look at the record so far: donkey sanctuary; currygate; Saville; and now, surely the weakest attack line of all. If and when an actual scandal comes up people may well look and think it's those right wing newspapers making something out of nothing again.
Something that happened with Corbyn at first. He had some absolutely dire baggage we don't really need to endlessly go over, that in the end harmed him when it became apparent. But the Tories were absolutely woeful at attacking him, and maybe even helped his cause by leading on completely trivial stuff or nonsense (scruffiness, Czech Spy guff), so that even when genuinely awful stuff that was pretty undeniable was raised, some dismissed it as a "smear".
It was only really because he was fool enough to prove past criticisms had real validity with his actions in the present, that bad things, in the end, stuck. I know there are some negative views of Starmer, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say he's not as thick as his predecessor.
Peculiar that both R4 and LBC are talking about "Paula Vennell", missing off the final 's.
The spelling is curious. Is it not "Venal"?
This tells us she is a proper wrong ‘un.
She then studied Russian and French at the University of Bradford, graduating in 1981 with a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree.
In the 1980s I believe Bradford was the only UK University which had an actual student exchange with real Russian students visiting every year from Leningrad.
A few years later I was house sharing with UK students learning Russian in Bradford when that year's group of 16 came over. It was interesting - they all came with food supplies in their luggage so they could reserve the money for consumer durables to take home.
Very knowledgeable about English literature from the 18/19C - perhaps from Russian authorities teaching Russians caricatures about the UK, and a rather clunky use of selected English idioms as is sometimes characteristic of Germans speaking English eg "I am in two minds".
Lots of comparisons of the Komsomol to the Scout Movement.
And it caused mild havoc when one of the Russian students converted to evangelical Christianity whilst in Bradford.
Fascinating how you say "UK" (a political regime) and "Russian" (it's highly unlikely that all 16 were Russian) rather than "British" and "Soviet".
I guess learning caricatures must have explained a knowledge of Wordsworth and Austen etc. Were these the first foreigners you met?
No, not the first.
"Russian students" was the parlance for both sides - I think perhaps because of the name of the language, and the name of the course.
"UK" is a country, of course - the "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland".
On the 'unlikely all 16 were Russian", it's difficult to comment from this range. Students (& accompanying lecturers) confirmed that political control had been applied on selection (which was one of the obvious questions to ask), and it was an exchange with a University in Leningrad. That may mean Komsomol in good standing, or something else.
I don't know how much the Russian Higher Education system was under political control on entrance by non-Russians in the mid-1980s. Perhaps others here can comment? Political control at that time would not be a surprise.
That was still a time period when eg non-approved of poets were being given long prison/gulag sentences for their politically unacceptable writings. For example in 1983 poet Irina Ratushinskaya received a sentence of 7 years in a strict-regime Labour camp, then 5 years of internal exile, for "agitation carried on for the purpose of subverting or weakening the Soviet regime" (ie writing poetry).
Released as presumably a gesture of intent before the 1986 Gorbachev-Reagan Reykjavik summit.
Just listening to the news, how typical it is that various politicians go on air and talk mainly about Vennells' CBE - as if that discredited bauble really matters.
They ought rather to concentrate on explaining why they didn't sort out the whole affair half a decade back. And now sort it sharpish.
Displacement activity and distracts those who are furious.
"As you yourself have identified - the idea that this whole scandal could be made to go away by playing dirty and maximising the legal costs until the other side ran out of money - will have originated from the legal profession. That Vennells went along with it is shameful, but it will have been qualified lawyers who devised, advocated and implemented that strategy."
This may well be so. But it will have been signed off by the boss. So both are responsible. Or in @Leon's words: "all a bunch of tossers."
Also the procurement of Horizon is a key part of the Inquiry - worth listening to Jason Beer KC's opening statement on this. Why? Because Ministers and senior managers knew about the problems right from the start and still went ahead. The idea that it was only in 2007 that Ministers should have become concerned is just nonsense. The poor procurement process is highly relevant to how this scandal came about and to the culture and belief it inculcated in the Post Office which lay behind its approach both to the prosecutions and the concerns / complaints raised repeatedly.
Lazy wording.
Your first really says nothing different.
Your second is true, but assumes the nature of “the problems” is singular. Yes, there were various and significant problems from the outset. As is probably true, if we could know, with most large governmental projects, certainly in the IT field. But aside from the general weaknesses of design and culture, there isn’t a straight line between the issues they had at the outset and the problem that generated the shortfalls out in the field. No-one at the time could have inferred one from the other, even if the causal weaknesses are related.
I know I'm slow to the party but isn't Davey another example of the cover-up being worse than the original offence. When the PO comes into the headlines shouldn't he have got out in front of the issue. He had an argument - in that its hard to see why a Minister is expected to know more about someone's guilt or otherwise than the Police, prosecutors, judges and juries. In fact a Minister probably shouldn't get involved at that moment Combined with a genuine apology many would have accepted that. His inaction has left him very open to attack.
The same, incidentally, goes for every other Lab and Con responsible Minister from 1999 until ITV broadcast their programme. The guilt growing greater as time passed and the injustice became ever more obvious and ever greater in scope.
Farage has accused Sir Keir of not doing anything as DPP about the Post Office prosecutions… at first glance this just seems an ill informed and he has been community noted for it on X, but…
Sir Keir has now come out and said the Post Office shouldn’t be able to prosecute people, presumably to draw attention to the fact it was nothing to do with him as DPP. A potential problem for him is that he has been parading around depicting his time as DPP as a Sheriff of Justice, riding into town righting any wrongs that unscrupulous corporations and politicians committed… even though he was unable to do anything about it, I think the public might see his Uncle Albert “When I was DPP…” white knight act differently, and maybe that what Farage was getting at
Or maybe Farage just messed up
Or maybe Tories these days are so desperate that they have no shame.
Since when was Farage a Tory? Been a while I reckon....
That which we call a Tory by any other name would smell as ...
There is a far wider gulf between Farage and Sunak than there is between Corbyn and the guy who was prepared to sit in his Shadow Cabinet for years as anti-semitism raged in the Labour Party...
Sorry, but I know what I mean by "Tory", whether inside or outside the Conservative Party. And Farage is a Tory to his roots.
What an idiotic thing to say!
It seems to be absolutely standard here to dismiss opinions one disagrees with as "idiotic" or "nonsensical".
I suppose actually explaining why you hold a different opinion might be a bit too taxing.
That’s better than “you are stupid” which is your approach.
Tory is a specific proper noun referring to members of the Tory party. Farage is not a member of the Tory party. Therefore Farage is not a Tory.
Sometimes it really is that simple
Dominic Grieve is no longer a member of the Conservative Party. He still calls himself a "one nation Conservative/Tory"
I am no longer a member of the conservative party but I am a one nation conservative
I remain a member of the Conservative party, and look forward to voting for a right-wing leader again after Sunak - the most left wing PM of my lifetime - gets pummelled electorally at the next election.
That's a bit silly Mortimer.
I know you don't like Sunak, but he's not left-wing.
The most left-wing Tory leader was Heath and possibly Major.
It would have been Heseltine or Clarke had they got elected, but they didn't.
And when Boris was trying to get the One Nation types to sleep with vote for him, he happily described himself as Brexitty Hezza.
Taxes have gone up, because even Rishi can't find electorally acceptable spending cuts. How else is Rishi left wing?
He not only didn't cut spending, he jacked up spending to a record high.
Spending on welfare under Rishi Sunak was a higher share of the budget than spending on welfare under Gordon Brown. With welfare increases growing much faster than wage increases.
As Chancellor he significantly increased taxes.
In what ways is he not left-wing?
If we're going to have a left-wing tax and spend government, it might as well be Labour.
Not as straightforward as John makes out - the CPS has the power to take over or end private prosecutions for example that are vexatious or malicious - the Post Office was prosecuting hundreds of people, what interest did the CPS take in it & what if any review did they conduct?
Further, Seema Misra was prosecuted on behalf of the Post Office by the CPS when Keir Starmer was DPP.
Misra, recalling the moment she was sentenced to 15 months in prison in 2010, said, "It's hard to say but I think that if I had not been pregnant, I would have killed myself."
How many people work in the CPS - it can't just have been SKS yet all the Tory Groupies seem to think he was a one man superman doing the job of 500 people....
Starmer getting weak attacks like this which any sensible onlooker can see are vexatious (perhaps the current DPP can step in and stop them) can't do him any harm, in fact it might even give him a bit of cry-wolf protection. If every attack
Look at the record so far: donkey sanctuary; currygate; Saville; and now, surely the weakest attack line of all. If and when an actual scandal comes up people may well look and think it's those right wing newspapers making something out of nothing again.
Something that happened with Corbyn at first. He had some absolutely dire baggage we don't really need to endlessly go over, that in the end harmed him when it became apparent. But the Tories were absolutely woeful at attacking him, and maybe even helped his cause by leading on completely trivial stuff or nonsense (scruffiness, Czech Spy guff), so that even when genuinely awful stuff that was pretty undeniable was raised, some dismissed it as a "smear".
It was only really because he was fool enough to prove past criticisms had real validity with his actions in the present, that bad things, in the end, stuck. I know there are some negative views of Starmer, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say he's not as thick as his predecessor.
Also, one of Farage's talents is to provoke people into overreacting- see the Coutts fiasco. It takes a certain inner calm to ignore that. Let's see if Starmer possesses it.
Not as straightforward as John makes out - the CPS has the power to take over or end private prosecutions for example that are vexatious or malicious - the Post Office was prosecuting hundreds of people, what interest did the CPS take in it & what if any review did they conduct?
Further, Seema Misra was prosecuted on behalf of the Post Office by the CPS when Keir Starmer was DPP.
Misra, recalling the moment she was sentenced to 15 months in prison in 2010, said, "It's hard to say but I think that if I had not been pregnant, I would have killed myself."
How many people work in the CPS - it can't just have been SKS yet all the Tory Groupies seem to think he was a one man superman doing the job of 500 people....
Ah no, Sir Keir insists on the head of the party/business taking full responsibility when things aren’t done properly. He set that precedent when he was after Boris for partygate
You mean, when Johnson was photographed repeatedly and wilfully flouting his own laws?
Not as straightforward as John makes out - the CPS has the power to take over or end private prosecutions for example that are vexatious or malicious - the Post Office was prosecuting hundreds of people, what interest did the CPS take in it & what if any review did they conduct?
Further, Seema Misra was prosecuted on behalf of the Post Office by the CPS when Keir Starmer was DPP.
Misra, recalling the moment she was sentenced to 15 months in prison in 2010, said, "It's hard to say but I think that if I had not been pregnant, I would have killed myself."
How many people work in the CPS - it can't just have been SKS yet all the Tory Groupies seem to think he was a one man superman doing the job of 500 people....
Ah no, Sir Keir insists on the head of the party/business taking full responsibility when things aren’t done properly. He set that precedent when he was after Boris for partygate
That would be every PM since 2010 in the frame, then.
HMG, as owner of the business, had both the power and responsibility of oversight, in a way that simply isn't true of the CPS. Pretending Starmer bears some greater responsibility, as you persist in, is pathetic stuff.
I haven’t persisted in doing anything!
Earlier I said I thought Farage was ill informed, but maybe he was hoping some mud might stick, next time I looked a Barrister on Twitter, who appears to be anti-Brexit, has said Farage has a point & Sir Keir could have done something. Argue with him if you like @RupertMyers
Not as straightforward as John makes out - the CPS has the power to take over or end private prosecutions for example that are vexatious or malicious - the Post Office was prosecuting hundreds of people, what interest did the CPS take in it & what if any review did they conduct?
Further, Seema Misra was prosecuted on behalf of the Post Office by the CPS when Keir Starmer was DPP.
Misra, recalling the moment she was sentenced to 15 months in prison in 2010, said, "It's hard to say but I think that if I had not been pregnant, I would have killed myself."
How many people work in the CPS - it can't just have been SKS yet all the Tory Groupies seem to think he was a one man superman doing the job of 500 people....
Ah no, Sir Keir insists on the head of the party/business taking full responsibility when things aren’t done properly. He set that precedent when he was after Boris for partygate
You mean, when Johnson was photographed repeatedly and wilfully flouting his own laws?
No I mean before that, at some PMQs or other, Sir Keir was very insistent that even if Boris wasn’t present at the parties, he as the boss had to take full responsibility
Not as straightforward as John makes out - the CPS has the power to take over or end private prosecutions for example that are vexatious or malicious - the Post Office was prosecuting hundreds of people, what interest did the CPS take in it & what if any review did they conduct?
Further, Seema Misra was prosecuted on behalf of the Post Office by the CPS when Keir Starmer was DPP.
Misra, recalling the moment she was sentenced to 15 months in prison in 2010, said, "It's hard to say but I think that if I had not been pregnant, I would have killed myself."
How many people work in the CPS - it can't just have been SKS yet all the Tory Groupies seem to think he was a one man superman doing the job of 500 people....
Ah no, Sir Keir insists on the head of the party/business taking full responsibility when things aren’t done properly. He set that precedent when he was after Boris for partygate
You mean, when Johnson was photographed repeatedly and wilfully flouting his own laws?
No I mean before that, at some PMQs or other, Sir Keir was very insistent that even if Boris wasn’t present at the parties, he as the boss had to take full responsibility
Yes because Bozo allowed No 10 to be party central...
Just listening to the news, how typical it is that various politicians go on air and talk mainly about Vennells' CBE - as if that discredited bauble really matters.
They ought rather to concentrate on explaining why they didn't sort out the whole affair half a decade back. And now sort it sharpish.
Yes. A key reason why progress has been slow and a key reason why the story hasn’t been bigger until now is that all the political parties have fingerprints at the crime scene and all of them have been keeping their heads down, waiting to see what transpires. That this includes those who have current responsibility for getting the sorry saga resolved is very unedifying. More unedifying still, now that the story has broken into the headlines, is that some of them are more interested in where the political blame should fall than in the plight and circumstance of the victims.
Not as straightforward as John makes out - the CPS has the power to take over or end private prosecutions for example that are vexatious or malicious - the Post Office was prosecuting hundreds of people, what interest did the CPS take in it & what if any review did they conduct?
Further, Seema Misra was prosecuted on behalf of the Post Office by the CPS when Keir Starmer was DPP.
Misra, recalling the moment she was sentenced to 15 months in prison in 2010, said, "It's hard to say but I think that if I had not been pregnant, I would have killed myself."
How many people work in the CPS - it can't just have been SKS yet all the Tory Groupies seem to think he was a one man superman doing the job of 500 people....
Ah no, Sir Keir insists on the head of the party/business taking full responsibility when things aren’t done properly. He set that precedent when he was after Boris for partygate
You mean, when Johnson was photographed repeatedly and wilfully flouting his own laws?
Not as straightforward as John makes out - the CPS has the power to take over or end private prosecutions for example that are vexatious or malicious - the Post Office was prosecuting hundreds of people, what interest did the CPS take in it & what if any review did they conduct?
Further, Seema Misra was prosecuted on behalf of the Post Office by the CPS when Keir Starmer was DPP.
Misra, recalling the moment she was sentenced to 15 months in prison in 2010, said, "It's hard to say but I think that if I had not been pregnant, I would have killed myself."
How many people work in the CPS - it can't just have been SKS yet all the Tory Groupies seem to think he was a one man superman doing the job of 500 people....
Ah no, Sir Keir insists on the head of the party/business taking full responsibility when things aren’t done properly. He set that precedent when he was after Boris for partygate
You mean, when Johnson was photographed repeatedly and wilfully flouting his own laws?
No I mean before that, at some PMQs or other, Sir Keir was very insistent that even if Boris wasn’t present at the parties, he as the boss had to take full responsibility
Yes because Bozo allowed No 10 to be party central...
I can’t remember exactly what it was about, I think it was partygate, but Sir Keir was insistent that the head of something had to take full responsibility for the whole kaboodle. I think that’s what provoked the Jimmy Savile jibe at a later PMQs
Just listening to the news, how typical it is that various politicians go on air and talk mainly about Vennells' CBE - as if that discredited bauble really matters.
They ought rather to concentrate on explaining why they didn't sort out the whole affair half a decade back. And now sort it sharpish.
Yes. A key reason why progress has been slow and a key reason why the story hasn’t been bigger until now is that all the political parties have fingerprints at the crime scene and all of them have been keeping their heads down, waiting to see what transpires. That this includes those who have current responsibility for getting the sorry saga resolved is very unedifying. More unedifying still, now that the story has broken into the headlines, is that some of them are more interested in where the political blame should fall than in the plight and circumstance of the victims.
Plus ca change ...
See also: The Covid19 inquiry which seems more interested in salacious gossip of who said what and when, rather than what lessons can be learned either domestically or from abroad for future pandemics.
Edit: but I should add that since 2019/ 2020 I haven't gone anywhere in real terms despite promotions and salary rises, but I have gone up enough to stand still.
Yes. I'm better off mainly because very low interest rates allowed us to clear our mortgage, borrow back against that mortgage (0.49%), renovate the house and pay it off. In terms of disposable income, much less healthy - recent inflation has eroded much of the pay advantage I got in the 2010s.
In truth, however, I did a lot better between 1997 and 2010 - the era of cheap food, cheap fuel, cheap money and endlessly rising asset values. Unsustainable? Yes. Personally beneficial? Also yes.
Farage has accused Sir Keir of not doing anything as DPP about the Post Office prosecutions… at first glance this just seems an ill informed and he has been community noted for it on X, but…
Sir Keir has now come out and said the Post Office shouldn’t be able to prosecute people, presumably to draw attention to the fact it was nothing to do with him as DPP. A potential problem for him is that he has been parading around depicting his time as DPP as a Sheriff of Justice, riding into town righting any wrongs that unscrupulous corporations and politicians committed… even though he was unable to do anything about it, I think the public might see his Uncle Albert “When I was DPP…” white knight act differently, and maybe that what Farage was getting at
Or maybe Farage just messed up
Or maybe Tories these days are so desperate that they have no shame.
Since when was Farage a Tory? Been a while I reckon....
That which we call a Tory by any other name would smell as ...
There is a far wider gulf between Farage and Sunak than there is between Corbyn and the guy who was prepared to sit in his Shadow Cabinet for years as anti-semitism raged in the Labour Party...
Sorry, but I know what I mean by "Tory", whether inside or outside the Conservative Party. And Farage is a Tory to his roots.
What an idiotic thing to say!
It seems to be absolutely standard here to dismiss opinions one disagrees with as "idiotic" or "nonsensical".
I suppose actually explaining why you hold a different opinion might be a bit too taxing.
That’s better than “you are stupid” which is your approach.
Tory is a specific proper noun referring to members of the Tory party. Farage is not a member of the Tory party. Therefore Farage is not a Tory.
Sometimes it really is that simple
Dominic Grieve is no longer a member of the Conservative Party. He still calls himself a "one nation Conservative/Tory"
I am no longer a member of the conservative party but I am a one nation conservative
I remain a member of the Conservative party, and look forward to voting for a right-wing leader again after Sunak - the most left wing PM of my lifetime - gets pummelled electorally at the next election.
That's a bit silly Mortimer.
I know you don't like Sunak, but he's not left-wing.
The most left-wing Tory leader was Heath and possibly Major.
It would have been Heseltine or Clarke had they got elected, but they didn't.
And when Boris was trying to get the One Nation types to sleep with vote for him, he happily described himself as Brexitty Hezza.
Taxes have gone up, because even Rishi can't find electorally acceptable spending cuts. How else is Rishi left wing?
He not only didn't cut spending, he jacked up spending to a record high.
Spending on welfare under Rishi Sunak was a higher share of the budget than spending on welfare under Gordon Brown. With welfare increases growing much faster than wage increases.
As Chancellor he significantly increased taxes.
In what ways is he not left-wing?
If we're going to have a left-wing tax and spend government, it might as well be Labour.
And a very large chunk of that increase in welfare is the increase in the number of pensioners.
And yes, it's infuriating that there's a big bill about to land on working age people like you and me. Doubly so since it was utterly predictable. But being cross about it is going to do us no more good than it did Canute's courtiers.
Not as straightforward as John makes out - the CPS has the power to take over or end private prosecutions for example that are vexatious or malicious - the Post Office was prosecuting hundreds of people, what interest did the CPS take in it & what if any review did they conduct?
Further, Seema Misra was prosecuted on behalf of the Post Office by the CPS when Keir Starmer was DPP.
Misra, recalling the moment she was sentenced to 15 months in prison in 2010, said, "It's hard to say but I think that if I had not been pregnant, I would have killed myself."
How many people work in the CPS - it can't just have been SKS yet all the Tory Groupies seem to think he was a one man superman doing the job of 500 people....
Ah no, Sir Keir insists on the head of the party/business taking full responsibility when things aren’t done properly. He set that precedent when he was after Boris for partygate
You mean, when Johnson was photographed repeatedly and wilfully flouting his own laws?
No I mean before that, at some PMQs or other, Sir Keir was very insistent that even if Boris wasn’t present at the parties, he as the boss had to take full responsibility
Yes because Bozo allowed No 10 to be party central...
I can’t remember exactly what it was about, I think it was partygate, but Sir Keir was insistent that the head of something had to take full responsibility for the whole kaboodle. I think that’s what provoked the Jimmy Savile jibe at a later PMQs
You are conflating two different issues. Yes, as DPP Starmer has an indirect culpability for the outrageous prosecution of 700 innocent sub-Postmasters. Johnson raided the tuck shop denied it and was found troughing a case of Mars bars marked "property of the tuck shop".
Farage has accused Sir Keir of not doing anything as DPP about the Post Office prosecutions… at first glance this just seems an ill informed and he has been community noted for it on X, but…
Sir Keir has now come out and said the Post Office shouldn’t be able to prosecute people, presumably to draw attention to the fact it was nothing to do with him as DPP. A potential problem for him is that he has been parading around depicting his time as DPP as a Sheriff of Justice, riding into town righting any wrongs that unscrupulous corporations and politicians committed… even though he was unable to do anything about it, I think the public might see his Uncle Albert “When I was DPP…” white knight act differently, and maybe that what Farage was getting at
Or maybe Farage just messed up
Or maybe Tories these days are so desperate that they have no shame.
Since when was Farage a Tory? Been a while I reckon....
That which we call a Tory by any other name would smell as ...
There is a far wider gulf between Farage and Sunak than there is between Corbyn and the guy who was prepared to sit in his Shadow Cabinet for years as anti-semitism raged in the Labour Party...
Sorry, but I know what I mean by "Tory", whether inside or outside the Conservative Party. And Farage is a Tory to his roots.
What an idiotic thing to say!
It seems to be absolutely standard here to dismiss opinions one disagrees with as "idiotic" or "nonsensical".
I suppose actually explaining why you hold a different opinion might be a bit too taxing.
That’s better than “you are stupid” which is your approach.
Tory is a specific proper noun referring to members of the Tory party. Farage is not a member of the Tory party. Therefore Farage is not a Tory.
Sometimes it really is that simple
Dominic Grieve is no longer a member of the Conservative Party. He still calls himself a "one nation Conservative/Tory"
I am no longer a member of the conservative party but I am a one nation conservative
I remain a member of the Conservative party, and look forward to voting for a right-wing leader again after Sunak - the most left wing PM of my lifetime - gets pummelled electorally at the next election.
That's a bit silly Mortimer.
I know you don't like Sunak, but he's not left-wing.
The most left-wing Tory leader was Heath and possibly Major.
It would have been Heseltine or Clarke had they got elected, but they didn't.
And when Boris was trying to get the One Nation types to sleep with vote for him, he happily described himself as Brexitty Hezza.
Taxes have gone up, because even Rishi can't find electorally acceptable spending cuts. How else is Rishi left wing?
He not only didn't cut spending, he jacked up spending to a record high.
Spending on welfare under Rishi Sunak was a higher share of the budget than spending on welfare under Gordon Brown. With welfare increases growing much faster than wage increases.
As Chancellor he significantly increased taxes.
In what ways is he not left-wing?
If we're going to have a left-wing tax and spend government, it might as well be Labour.
And a very large chunk of that increase in welfare is the increase in the number of pensioners.
And yes, it's infuriating that there's a big bill about to land on working age people like you and me. Doubly so since it was utterly predictable. But being cross about it is going to do us no more good than it did Canute's courtiers.
Being cross about it won't do anything.
Voting against the party that is boasting about the triple lock boosting pensions might though.
If only there were an actual rightwing party out there to vote for. And don't make me laugh by saying Reform.
Not as straightforward as John makes out - the CPS has the power to take over or end private prosecutions for example that are vexatious or malicious - the Post Office was prosecuting hundreds of people, what interest did the CPS take in it & what if any review did they conduct?
Further, Seema Misra was prosecuted on behalf of the Post Office by the CPS when Keir Starmer was DPP.
Misra, recalling the moment she was sentenced to 15 months in prison in 2010, said, "It's hard to say but I think that if I had not been pregnant, I would have killed myself."
How many people work in the CPS - it can't just have been SKS yet all the Tory Groupies seem to think he was a one man superman doing the job of 500 people....
Ah no, Sir Keir insists on the head of the party/business taking full responsibility when things aren’t done properly. He set that precedent when he was after Boris for partygate
You mean, when Johnson was photographed repeatedly and wilfully flouting his own laws?
Davey has a lot of explaining to do.
Many others do as well. Davey's mistake, which I suspect is one many new Ministers make, was to take the advice of senior civil servants and other officials without question. We've seen this with the pandemic and a rash of other issues.
Should Davey (and all other responsible MInisters) have asked more probing questions? Clearly, yes, but that's not how Government works. It may be how we would like it to work but ultimately if we went down that road nothing would get done.
He didn't think that asking an official to falsify an election return might be illegal?
Did the canine also consume his homework?
He self identifies as an omniscient genius, or an utter naïf, as suits him. His immunity claims are similarly risible - but that's not really the point. It's more like a cephalopod releasing clouds of ink.
Not as straightforward as John makes out - the CPS has the power to take over or end private prosecutions for example that are vexatious or malicious - the Post Office was prosecuting hundreds of people, what interest did the CPS take in it & what if any review did they conduct?
Further, Seema Misra was prosecuted on behalf of the Post Office by the CPS when Keir Starmer was DPP.
Misra, recalling the moment she was sentenced to 15 months in prison in 2010, said, "It's hard to say but I think that if I had not been pregnant, I would have killed myself."
How many people work in the CPS - it can't just have been SKS yet all the Tory Groupies seem to think he was a one man superman doing the job of 500 people....
Ah no, Sir Keir insists on the head of the party/business taking full responsibility when things aren’t done properly. He set that precedent when he was after Boris for partygate
You mean, when Johnson was photographed repeatedly and wilfully flouting his own laws?
No I mean before that, at some PMQs or other, Sir Keir was very insistent that even if Boris wasn’t present at the parties, he as the boss had to take full responsibility
Yes because Bozo allowed No 10 to be party central...
I can’t remember exactly what it was about, I think it was partygate, but Sir Keir was insistent that the head of something had to take full responsibility for the whole kaboodle. I think that’s what provoked the Jimmy Savile jibe at a later PMQs
You are conflating two different issues. Yes, as DPP Starmer has an indirect culpability for the outrageous prosecution of 700 innocent sub-Postmasters. Johnson raided the tuck shop denied it and was found troughing a case of Mars bars marked "property of the tuck shop".
The issues don’t really matter, it is the principle of ‘the buck stopping with the man at the top’ that Sir Keir is saddled by
Just listening to the news, how typical it is that various politicians go on air and talk mainly about Vennells' CBE - as if that discredited bauble really matters.
They ought rather to concentrate on explaining why they didn't sort out the whole affair half a decade back. And now sort it sharpish.
Displacement activity and distracts those who are furious.
"As you yourself have identified - the idea that this whole scandal could be made to go away by playing dirty and maximising the legal costs until the other side ran out of money - will have originated from the legal profession. That Vennells went along with it is shameful, but it will have been qualified lawyers who devised, advocated and implemented that strategy."
This may well be so. But it will have been signed off by the boss. So both are responsible. Or in @Leon's words: "all a bunch of tossers."
Also the procurement of Horizon is a key part of the Inquiry - worth listening to Jason Beer KC's opening statement on this. Why? Because Ministers and senior managers knew about the problems right from the start and still went ahead. The idea that it was only in 2007 that Ministers should have become concerned is just nonsense. The poor procurement process is highly relevant to how this scandal came about and to the culture and belief it inculcated in the Post Office which lay behind its approach both to the prosecutions and the concerns / complaints raised repeatedly.
Lazy wording.
Your first really says nothing different.
Your second is true, but assumes the nature of “the problems” is singular. Yes, there were various and significant problems from the outset. As is probably true, if we could know, with most large governmental projects, certainly in the IT field. But aside from the general weaknesses of design and culture, there isn’t a straight line between the issues they had at the outset and the problem that generated the shortfalls out in the field. No-one at the time could have inferred one from the other, even if the causal weaknesses are related.
This is missing the point. The problems in the Post Office do not simply relate to the Horizon shortfalls. See the Detica report for instance. The whole way the PO was managed and the Network Transformation Programme, including the procurement of this accounting system was flawed from the start and was down to the decisions the Ministers made, the managers they put in charge and the strategy they set. The prosecutions are a consequence of those decisions and cannot be properly understood without that important context and background.
That is why I say that this is also a governance failure, as well as a legal one. That governance aspect is part of the current phase of the Inquiry. For once we will get some sort of insight into how these decisions were made which may help us do better in future.
The Post Office is trying to say that this is just about Horizon. It's one reason why they are still opposing some of the appeals, for instance. But the evidence shows that the legal failings were so great and so widespread that nothing based on what the Post Office's lawyers said can be relied on at all, regardless of whether there is any Horizon link at all. Similarly, the problems with the Post Office during this period are greater than just the prosecutions and do relate back to the decisions made in the late 1990's and subsequently. It suits the Post Office and government to ignore this but we should not do so.
This post office debacle has made me thing about these geographically-distributed issues.
There are ~650 MPs. If each gets one letter about an important issue from a constituent, they may be tempted to ignore or softball it; it is only a single complaint, and it may not be in an area that the MP deals with, either at a constituency or ministerial level.
But if 650 MPs get such a complaint, from 650 different people; is there a system where MPs (of all parties) can flag up something the others may be hearing about?
I guess not, and I guess this is why campaign groups exist...
Yes the mood is for change and we are in difficult economic times. On the positive side for the Tories however a new Labour government would then have to deal with inflation, interest rates and sluggish growth and strikes
This post office debacle has made me thing about these geographically-distributed issues.
There are ~650 MPs. If each gets one letter about an important issue from a constituent, they may be tempted to ignore or softball it; it is only a single complaint, and it may not be in an area that the MP deals with, either at a constituency or ministerial level.
But if 650 MPs get such a complaint, from 650 different people; is there a system where MPs (of all parties) can flag up something the others may be hearing about?
I guess not, and I guess this is why campaign groups exist...
Yes the mood is for change and we are in difficult economic times. On the positive side for the Tories however a new Labour government would then have to deal with inflation, interest rates and sluggish growth and strikes
You say that like that's a legacy you Tories should be proud of!
Not as straightforward as John makes out - the CPS has the power to take over or end private prosecutions for example that are vexatious or malicious - the Post Office was prosecuting hundreds of people, what interest did the CPS take in it & what if any review did they conduct?
Further, Seema Misra was prosecuted on behalf of the Post Office by the CPS when Keir Starmer was DPP.
Misra, recalling the moment she was sentenced to 15 months in prison in 2010, said, "It's hard to say but I think that if I had not been pregnant, I would have killed myself."
How many people work in the CPS - it can't just have been SKS yet all the Tory Groupies seem to think he was a one man superman doing the job of 500 people....
Ah no, Sir Keir insists on the head of the party/business taking full responsibility when things aren’t done properly. He set that precedent when he was after Boris for partygate
You mean, when Johnson was photographed repeatedly and wilfully flouting his own laws?
No I mean before that, at some PMQs or other, Sir Keir was very insistent that even if Boris wasn’t present at the parties, he as the boss had to take full responsibility
Yes because Bozo allowed No 10 to be party central...
I can’t remember exactly what it was about, I think it was partygate, but Sir Keir was insistent that the head of something had to take full responsibility for the whole kaboodle. I think that’s what provoked the Jimmy Savile jibe at a later PMQs
You are conflating two different issues. Yes, as DPP Starmer has an indirect culpability for the outrageous prosecution of 700 innocent sub-Postmasters. Johnson raided the tuck shop denied it and was found troughing a case of Mars bars marked "property of the tuck shop".
The issues don’t really matter, it is the principle of ‘the buck stopping with the man at the top’ that Sir Keir is saddled by
If the CPS are culpable then Starmer as its head needs to resign as LOTO and then relinquish his knighthood. And of course risk potential prosecution for incompetent negligence. That doesn't, as you seem to believe, render Boris Johnson innocent of Partygate
Yes the mood is for change and we are in difficult economic times. On the positive side for the Tories however a new Labour government would then have to deal with inflation, interest rates and sluggish growth and strikes
You say that like that's a legacy you Tories should be proud of!
Whatever they got wrong, John'n'Ken did leave a pretty decent economic legacy.
He didn't think that asking an official to falsify an election return might be illegal?
Did the canine also consume his homework?
He self identifies as an omniscient genius, or an utter naïf, as suits him. His immunity claims are similarly risible - but that's not really the point. It's more like a cephalopod releasing clouds of ink.
I think there is evidence that multiple staff members at the Whitehouse told him precisely that, and that there is testimony from witnesses and cooperating defendants to that effect.
Yes the mood is for change and we are in difficult economic times. On the positive side for the Tories however a new Labour government would then have to deal with inflation, interest rates and sluggish growth and strikes
I was told inflation was falling and interest rates were on the way down through 2025 so I suspect initially Starmer will have a bit of a honey moon - we could well see a bounce in the housing market.
Longer term, I agree - the issues of growth and dealing with unions will be the biggest initial problems for Starmer and Reeves. We may already be seeing elements of this in the suspension of the planned tube strikes.
It seems Khan "found" £30 million which effectively bought off the RMT and this week's strikes (given the doom-laden prophesies of business, £30 million seems a small price to pay and perhaps we should ask the same grateful London businesses to find the £30 million so the taxpayer doesn't have to).
A good result for Mick Lynch who has done well by his members without having to inconvenience Londoners too much. It was a tactic Bob Crow used against Boris Johnson - Crow realised the threat of strike action was far more powerful than the reality.
The problem is having smelt easy money, ASLEF, who had previously settled with Transport for London, are now back on the prowl sensing the back of Khan's sofa hasn't been given a proper shaking yet.
Perhaps Khan should go to London business and ask them how much they are prepared to stump up to buy off ASLEF.
(Interestingly, monarchism is now neck and neck in Scotland with republicanism.)
I see you posted about a poll commissioned by Republic which still showed monarchy with a 16% lead over a republic and support for a republic/elected head of state having fallen from 34% in the November poll they had done to just 32% now.
They simply changed the question from do you support a monarchy v a republic to do you support a monarchy v an elected head of state to get the headline they wanted and shift some monarchy supporters to DK.
If even Republic can't get a majority of Scots in their own poll to back a Republic shows how farcical the idea is.
Especially given the republican Corbyn has been replaced as Labour leader by Starmer who now backs the monarchy with reforms (and both the Tories and LDs continue to back the monarchy)
Not as straightforward as John makes out - the CPS has the power to take over or end private prosecutions for example that are vexatious or malicious - the Post Office was prosecuting hundreds of people, what interest did the CPS take in it & what if any review did they conduct?
Further, Seema Misra was prosecuted on behalf of the Post Office by the CPS when Keir Starmer was DPP.
Misra, recalling the moment she was sentenced to 15 months in prison in 2010, said, "It's hard to say but I think that if I had not been pregnant, I would have killed myself."
How many people work in the CPS - it can't just have been SKS yet all the Tory Groupies seem to think he was a one man superman doing the job of 500 people....
Ah no, Sir Keir insists on the head of the party/business taking full responsibility when things aren’t done properly. He set that precedent when he was after Boris for partygate
You mean, when Johnson was photographed repeatedly and wilfully flouting his own laws?
Davey has a lot of explaining to do.
Many others do as well. Davey's mistake, which I suspect is one many new Ministers make, was to take the advice of senior civil servants and other officials without question. We've seen this with the pandemic and a rash of other issues.
Should Davey (and all other responsible MInisters) have asked more probing questions? Clearly, yes, but that's not how Government works. It may be how we would like it to work but ultimately if we went down that road nothing would get done.
On the contrary, I rather suspect that, brand new to ministerial office, Davey ignored, after an initial waver, officials’ advice not to meet Bates, and went ahead and did so. Unlike any of the others. Subsequent events have shown why the officials, if cynical, were also wise.
Yes the mood is for change and we are in difficult economic times. On the positive side for the Tories however a new Labour government would then have to deal with inflation, interest rates and sluggish growth and strikes
You say that like that's a legacy you Tories should be proud of!
Not as straightforward as John makes out - the CPS has the power to take over or end private prosecutions for example that are vexatious or malicious - the Post Office was prosecuting hundreds of people, what interest did the CPS take in it & what if any review did they conduct?
Further, Seema Misra was prosecuted on behalf of the Post Office by the CPS when Keir Starmer was DPP.
Misra, recalling the moment she was sentenced to 15 months in prison in 2010, said, "It's hard to say but I think that if I had not been pregnant, I would have killed myself."
How many people work in the CPS - it can't just have been SKS yet all the Tory Groupies seem to think he was a one man superman doing the job of 500 people....
Ah no, Sir Keir insists on the head of the party/business taking full responsibility when things aren’t done properly. He set that precedent when he was after Boris for partygate
You mean, when Johnson was photographed repeatedly and wilfully flouting his own laws?
No I mean before that, at some PMQs or other, Sir Keir was very insistent that even if Boris wasn’t present at the parties, he as the boss had to take full responsibility
Not the boss. The DPP can step in and take over private prosecutions and then discontinue them. The Attorney-General, a law officer of the crown, a minister, the person the DPP reports to, and (since May 2010) a Tory, has a similar power to stop prosecutions. Neither was was the “boss” in this case. If the Tories want to make hay over this by attacking Starmer they’re on thin ice.
This post office debacle has made me thing about these geographically-distributed issues.
There are ~650 MPs. If each gets one letter about an important issue from a constituent, they may be tempted to ignore or softball it; it is only a single complaint, and it may not be in an area that the MP deals with, either at a constituency or ministerial level.
But if 650 MPs get such a complaint, from 650 different people; is there a system where MPs (of all parties) can flag up something the others may be hearing about?
I guess not, and I guess this is why campaign groups exist...
Arbuthnot in interview has said that one of his early actions was to write round colleagues asking whether any of them have had similar issues from constituents, and a small group of MPs who had such was formed. When I saw the names it seemed to me that they were all (not absolutely sure, as I didn’t check each name out) Tories, so I guess he didn’t include the opposition, which as a government MP he wouldn’t want to do.
Not as straightforward as John makes out - the CPS has the power to take over or end private prosecutions for example that are vexatious or malicious - the Post Office was prosecuting hundreds of people, what interest did the CPS take in it & what if any review did they conduct?
Further, Seema Misra was prosecuted on behalf of the Post Office by the CPS when Keir Starmer was DPP.
Misra, recalling the moment she was sentenced to 15 months in prison in 2010, said, "It's hard to say but I think that if I had not been pregnant, I would have killed myself."
How many people work in the CPS - it can't just have been SKS yet all the Tory Groupies seem to think he was a one man superman doing the job of 500 people....
Ah no, Sir Keir insists on the head of the party/business taking full responsibility when things aren’t done properly. He set that precedent when he was after Boris for partygate
You mean, when Johnson was photographed repeatedly and wilfully flouting his own laws?
No I mean before that, at some PMQs or other, Sir Keir was very insistent that even if Boris wasn’t present at the parties, he as the boss had to take full responsibility
Not the boss. The DPP can step in and take over private prosecutions and then discontinue them. The Attorney-General, a law officer of the crown, a minister, the person the DPP reports to, and (since May 2010) a Tory, has a similar power to stop prosecutions. Neither was was the “boss” in this case. If the Tories want to make hay over this by attacking Starmer they’re on thin ice.
The Jum Hacker line "require a resignation if the problem could reasonably have been foreseen at the time" seems relevant here.
Yes the mood is for change and we are in difficult economic times. On the positive side for the Tories however a new Labour government would then have to deal with inflation, interest rates and sluggish growth and strikes
Tory governments used to complain about having to clear up the mess left by their Labour predecessors.
More recently they’ve struck on the novel gambit of complaining about the mess left by their own Conservative predecessors.
Not as straightforward as John makes out - the CPS has the power to take over or end private prosecutions for example that are vexatious or malicious - the Post Office was prosecuting hundreds of people, what interest did the CPS take in it & what if any review did they conduct?
Further, Seema Misra was prosecuted on behalf of the Post Office by the CPS when Keir Starmer was DPP.
Misra, recalling the moment she was sentenced to 15 months in prison in 2010, said, "It's hard to say but I think that if I had not been pregnant, I would have killed myself."
How many people work in the CPS - it can't just have been SKS yet all the Tory Groupies seem to think he was a one man superman doing the job of 500 people....
Ah no, Sir Keir insists on the head of the party/business taking full responsibility when things aren’t done properly. He set that precedent when he was after Boris for partygate
You mean, when Johnson was photographed repeatedly and wilfully flouting his own laws?
No I mean before that, at some PMQs or other, Sir Keir was very insistent that even if Boris wasn’t present at the parties, he as the boss had to take full responsibility
Yes because Bozo allowed No 10 to be party central...
I can’t remember exactly what it was about, I think it was partygate, but Sir Keir was insistent that the head of something had to take full responsibility for the whole kaboodle. I think that’s what provoked the Jimmy Savile jibe at a later PMQs
You are conflating two different issues. Yes, as DPP Starmer has an indirect culpability for the outrageous prosecution of 700 innocent sub-Postmasters. Johnson raided the tuck shop denied it and was found troughing a case of Mars bars marked "property of the tuck shop".
The issues don’t really matter, it is the principle of ‘the buck stopping with the man at the top’ that Sir Keir is saddled by
If the CPS are culpable then Starmer as its head needs to resign as LOTO and then relinquish his knighthood. And of course risk potential prosecution for incompetent negligence. That doesn't, as you seem to believe, render Boris Johnson innocent of Partygate
The DPP reports to the Attorney-General. Who reports to the PM. The buck stops where?
Duolingo laid off a huge percentage of their contract translators, and the remaining ones are simply reviewing AI translations to make sure they're 'acceptable'. This is the world we're creating. Removing the humanity from how we learn to connect with humanity. https://twitter.com/Rahll/status/1744234385891594380
Noteworthy CEOs bring in AI to replace the people doing the actual work, but not to replace themselves. When they are likely more replaceable by AI.
I've been making quiet digs at my bosses bosses boss for a little while now - when asked to demo some GPT/AI thing always making sure it's completed some project $mega_boss was taking credit for in about 2 minutes and costing £0.03.
Yes the mood is for change and we are in difficult economic times. On the positive side for the Tories however a new Labour government would then have to deal with inflation, interest rates and sluggish growth and strikes
You say that like that's a legacy you Tories should be proud of!
To be fair to Sunak he has cut inflation since becoming PM, interest rates are stabilising and the economy is starting to grow again.
However globally the economic situation remains difficult and a Labour government would also have to deal with it
Just listening to the news, how typical it is that various politicians go on air and talk mainly about Vennells' CBE - as if that discredited bauble really matters.
They ought rather to concentrate on explaining why they didn't sort out the whole affair half a decade back. And now sort it sharpish.
Displacement activity and distracts those who are furious.
"As you yourself have identified - the idea that this whole scandal could be made to go away by playing dirty and maximising the legal costs until the other side ran out of money - will have originated from the legal profession. That Vennells went along with it is shameful, but it will have been qualified lawyers who devised, advocated and implemented that strategy."
This may well be so. But it will have been signed off by the boss. So both are responsible. Or in @Leon's words: "all a bunch of tossers."
Also the procurement of Horizon is a key part of the Inquiry - worth listening to Jason Beer KC's opening statement on this. Why? Because Ministers and senior managers knew about the problems right from the start and still went ahead. The idea that it was only in 2007 that Ministers should have become concerned is just nonsense. The poor procurement process is highly relevant to how this scandal came about and to the culture and belief it inculcated in the Post Office which lay behind its approach both to the prosecutions and the concerns / complaints raised repeatedly.
Lazy wording.
Your first really says nothing different.
Your second is true, but assumes the nature of “the problems” is singular. Yes, there were various and significant problems from the outset. As is probably true, if we could know, with most large governmental projects, certainly in the IT field. But aside from the general weaknesses of design and culture, there isn’t a straight line between the issues they had at the outset and the problem that generated the shortfalls out in the field. No-one at the time could have inferred one from the other, even if the causal weaknesses are related.
This is missing the point. The problems in the Post Office do not simply relate to the Horizon shortfalls. See the Detica report for instance. The whole way the PO was managed and the Network Transformation Programme, including the procurement of this accounting system was flawed from the start and was down to the decisions the Ministers made, the managers they put in charge and the strategy they set. The prosecutions are a consequence of those decisions and cannot be properly understood without that important context and background.
That is why I say that this is also a governance failure, as well as a legal one. That governance aspect is part of the current phase of the Inquiry. For once we will get some sort of insight into how these decisions were made which may help us do better in future.
The Post Office is trying to say that this is just about Horizon. It's one reason why they are still opposing some of the appeals, for instance. But the evidence shows that the legal failings were so great and so widespread that nothing based on what the Post Office's lawyers said can be relied on at all, regardless of whether there is any Horizon link at all. Similarly, the problems with the Post Office during this period are greater than just the prosecutions and do relate back to the decisions made in the late 1990's and subsequently. It suits the Post Office and government to ignore this but we should not do so.
For sure.
But it doesn’t follow that anyone who knew about the problems during the pilots could foresee what eventually came to transpire, which - as far as the evidence we have so far - appears to have mostly arisen from a different cause.
Saying “…knew about the problems right from the start and still went ahead” is back-projecting. Fujitsu certainly should have taken the advice they were given that their product wasn’t yet fit for purpose, and delayed its release - the reasons why it didn’t being all too sadly obvious. But the customer and the owner were, at that stage, heavily reliant on the assurances from and decisions by the supplier.
Not as straightforward as John makes out - the CPS has the power to take over or end private prosecutions for example that are vexatious or malicious - the Post Office was prosecuting hundreds of people, what interest did the CPS take in it & what if any review did they conduct?
Further, Seema Misra was prosecuted on behalf of the Post Office by the CPS when Keir Starmer was DPP.
Misra, recalling the moment she was sentenced to 15 months in prison in 2010, said, "It's hard to say but I think that if I had not been pregnant, I would have killed myself."
How many people work in the CPS - it can't just have been SKS yet all the Tory Groupies seem to think he was a one man superman doing the job of 500 people....
Ah no, Sir Keir insists on the head of the party/business taking full responsibility when things aren’t done properly. He set that precedent when he was after Boris for partygate
You mean, when Johnson was photographed repeatedly and wilfully flouting his own laws?
No I mean before that, at some PMQs or other, Sir Keir was very insistent that even if Boris wasn’t present at the parties, he as the boss had to take full responsibility
Not the boss. The DPP can step in and take over private prosecutions and then discontinue them. The Attorney-General, a law officer of the crown, a minister, the person the DPP reports to, and (since May 2010) a Tory, has a similar power to stop prosecutions. Neither was was the “boss” in this case. If the Tories want to make hay over this by attacking Starmer they’re on thin ice.
Stop bringing facts into this debate.
Although Liz Truss was Lord Chancellor during this period, perhaps she should have intervened.
Yes the mood is for change and we are in difficult economic times. On the positive side for the Tories however a new Labour government would then have to deal with inflation, interest rates and sluggish growth and strikes
Tory governments used to complain about having to clear up the mess left by their Labour predecessors.
More recently they’ve struck on the novel gambit of complaining about the mess left by their own Conservative predecessors.
I trust we’ll now be hearing no more of either?
Rather doubt it.
What about Reggie Maudling's note to Jim Callaghan in 1964- "Sorry to leave it in such a mess, old cock."
One of the ways of working out whether a change election (either way) is due is whether there has been an economic fiasco since the last one.
Not as straightforward as John makes out - the CPS has the power to take over or end private prosecutions for example that are vexatious or malicious - the Post Office was prosecuting hundreds of people, what interest did the CPS take in it & what if any review did they conduct?
Further, Seema Misra was prosecuted on behalf of the Post Office by the CPS when Keir Starmer was DPP.
Misra, recalling the moment she was sentenced to 15 months in prison in 2010, said, "It's hard to say but I think that if I had not been pregnant, I would have killed myself."
How many people work in the CPS - it can't just have been SKS yet all the Tory Groupies seem to think he was a one man superman doing the job of 500 people....
Ah no, Sir Keir insists on the head of the party/business taking full responsibility when things aren’t done properly. He set that precedent when he was after Boris for partygate
You mean, when Johnson was photographed repeatedly and wilfully flouting his own laws?
No I mean before that, at some PMQs or other, Sir Keir was very insistent that even if Boris wasn’t present at the parties, he as the boss had to take full responsibility
Yes because Bozo allowed No 10 to be party central...
I can’t remember exactly what it was about, I think it was partygate, but Sir Keir was insistent that the head of something had to take full responsibility for the whole kaboodle. I think that’s what provoked the Jimmy Savile jibe at a later PMQs
You are conflating two different issues. Yes, as DPP Starmer has an indirect culpability for the outrageous prosecution of 700 innocent sub-Postmasters. Johnson raided the tuck shop denied it and was found troughing a case of Mars bars marked "property of the tuck shop".
The issues don’t really matter, it is the principle of ‘the buck stopping with the man at the top’ that Sir Keir is saddled by
If the CPS are culpable then Starmer as its head needs to resign as LOTO and then relinquish his knighthood. And of course risk potential prosecution for incompetent negligence. That doesn't, as you seem to believe, render Boris Johnson innocent of Partygate
The DPP reports to the Attorney-General. Who reports to the PM. The buck stops where?
Yes the mood is for change and we are in difficult economic times. On the positive side for the Tories however a new Labour government would then have to deal with inflation, interest rates and sluggish growth and strikes
You say that like that's a legacy you Tories should be proud of!
To be fair to Sunak he has cut inflation since becoming PM, interest rates are stabilising and the economy is starting to grow again.
However globally the economic situation remains difficult and a Labour government would also have to deal with it
If Sunak himself has cut inflation, did Sunak also rise inflation? I mean - it's quite a superpower if he can just raise or lower it as he sees fit.
Or possibly it's more at the whims of the markets, wider economy, BoE, geopolitics.
(Interestingly, monarchism is now neck and neck in Scotland with republicanism.)
I see you posted about a poll commissioned by Republic which still showed monarchy with a 16% lead over a republic and support for a republic/elected head of state having fallen from 34% in the November poll they had done to just 32% now.
They simply changed the question from do you support a monarchy v a republic to do you support a monarchy v an elected head of state to get the headline they wanted and shift some monarchy supporters to DK.
If even Republic can't get a majority of Scots in their own poll to back a Republic shows how farcical the idea is.
Especially given the republican Corbyn has been replaced as Labour leader by Starmer who now backs the monarchy with reforms (and both the Tories and LDs continue to back the monarchy)
You mean, *despite* SKS taking over.
And the point I made was that the monarchists and the republicans are neck and neck. Not that the latter are a majority.
PS: still counting the Dks on your side, only sneakily and not up front. Didn't they teach you the rules of cricket at your minor "public" school/grammar school, old boy, what?
Not as straightforward as John makes out - the CPS has the power to take over or end private prosecutions for example that are vexatious or malicious - the Post Office was prosecuting hundreds of people, what interest did the CPS take in it & what if any review did they conduct?
Further, Seema Misra was prosecuted on behalf of the Post Office by the CPS when Keir Starmer was DPP.
Misra, recalling the moment she was sentenced to 15 months in prison in 2010, said, "It's hard to say but I think that if I had not been pregnant, I would have killed myself."
How many people work in the CPS - it can't just have been SKS yet all the Tory Groupies seem to think he was a one man superman doing the job of 500 people....
Ah no, Sir Keir insists on the head of the party/business taking full responsibility when things aren’t done properly. He set that precedent when he was after Boris for partygate
You mean, when Johnson was photographed repeatedly and wilfully flouting his own laws?
No I mean before that, at some PMQs or other, Sir Keir was very insistent that even if Boris wasn’t present at the parties, he as the boss had to take full responsibility
Yes because Bozo allowed No 10 to be party central...
I can’t remember exactly what it was about, I think it was partygate, but Sir Keir was insistent that the head of something had to take full responsibility for the whole kaboodle. I think that’s what provoked the Jimmy Savile jibe at a later PMQs
You are conflating two different issues. Yes, as DPP Starmer has an indirect culpability for the outrageous prosecution of 700 innocent sub-Postmasters. Johnson raided the tuck shop denied it and was found troughing a case of Mars bars marked "property of the tuck shop".
The issues don’t really matter, it is the principle of ‘the buck stopping with the man at the top’ that Sir Keir is saddled by
If the CPS are culpable then Starmer as its head needs to resign as LOTO and then relinquish his knighthood. And of course risk potential prosecution for incompetent negligence. That doesn't, as you seem to believe, render Boris Johnson innocent of Partygate
The DPP reports to the Attorney-General. Who reports to the PM. The buck stops where?
Not as straightforward as John makes out - the CPS has the power to take over or end private prosecutions for example that are vexatious or malicious - the Post Office was prosecuting hundreds of people, what interest did the CPS take in it & what if any review did they conduct?
Further, Seema Misra was prosecuted on behalf of the Post Office by the CPS when Keir Starmer was DPP.
Misra, recalling the moment she was sentenced to 15 months in prison in 2010, said, "It's hard to say but I think that if I had not been pregnant, I would have killed myself."
How many people work in the CPS - it can't just have been SKS yet all the Tory Groupies seem to think he was a one man superman doing the job of 500 people....
Ah no, Sir Keir insists on the head of the party/business taking full responsibility when things aren’t done properly. He set that precedent when he was after Boris for partygate
You mean, when Johnson was photographed repeatedly and wilfully flouting his own laws?
No I mean before that, at some PMQs or other, Sir Keir was very insistent that even if Boris wasn’t present at the parties, he as the boss had to take full responsibility
Not the boss. The DPP can step in and take over private prosecutions and then discontinue them. The Attorney-General, a law officer of the crown, a minister, the person the DPP reports to, and (since May 2010) a Tory, has a similar power to stop prosecutions. Neither was was the “boss” in this case. If the Tories want to make hay over this by attacking Starmer they’re on thin ice.
Stop bringing facts into this debate.
Although Liz Truss was Lord Chancellor during this period, perhaps she should have intervened.
Not as straightforward as John makes out - the CPS has the power to take over or end private prosecutions for example that are vexatious or malicious - the Post Office was prosecuting hundreds of people, what interest did the CPS take in it & what if any review did they conduct?
Further, Seema Misra was prosecuted on behalf of the Post Office by the CPS when Keir Starmer was DPP.
Misra, recalling the moment she was sentenced to 15 months in prison in 2010, said, "It's hard to say but I think that if I had not been pregnant, I would have killed myself."
How many people work in the CPS - it can't just have been SKS yet all the Tory Groupies seem to think he was a one man superman doing the job of 500 people....
Ah no, Sir Keir insists on the head of the party/business taking full responsibility when things aren’t done properly. He set that precedent when he was after Boris for partygate
You mean, when Johnson was photographed repeatedly and wilfully flouting his own laws?
No I mean before that, at some PMQs or other, Sir Keir was very insistent that even if Boris wasn’t present at the parties, he as the boss had to take full responsibility
Yes because Bozo allowed No 10 to be party central...
I can’t remember exactly what it was about, I think it was partygate, but Sir Keir was insistent that the head of something had to take full responsibility for the whole kaboodle. I think that’s what provoked the Jimmy Savile jibe at a later PMQs
You are conflating two different issues. Yes, as DPP Starmer has an indirect culpability for the outrageous prosecution of 700 innocent sub-Postmasters. Johnson raided the tuck shop denied it and was found troughing a case of Mars bars marked "property of the tuck shop".
The issues don’t really matter, it is the principle of ‘the buck stopping with the man at the top’ that Sir Keir is saddled by
If the CPS are culpable then Starmer as its head needs to resign as LOTO and then relinquish his knighthood. And of course risk potential prosecution for incompetent negligence. That doesn't, as you seem to believe, render Boris Johnson innocent of Partygate
The DPP reports to the Attorney-General. Who reports to the PM. The buck stops where?
And when? Mr Sunak has been PM for 18 months. Roughlyu the same time as Mr Davey was minister for the PO.
Scotland's Equalities Minister joins the First Minister and the Health Secretary in opposing 'assisted dying'. Emma Roddick says she cannot see how any law can be "safe while disabled people don’t have equality.”
Not as straightforward as John makes out - the CPS has the power to take over or end private prosecutions for example that are vexatious or malicious - the Post Office was prosecuting hundreds of people, what interest did the CPS take in it & what if any review did they conduct?
Further, Seema Misra was prosecuted on behalf of the Post Office by the CPS when Keir Starmer was DPP.
Misra, recalling the moment she was sentenced to 15 months in prison in 2010, said, "It's hard to say but I think that if I had not been pregnant, I would have killed myself."
How many people work in the CPS - it can't just have been SKS yet all the Tory Groupies seem to think he was a one man superman doing the job of 500 people....
Ah no, Sir Keir insists on the head of the party/business taking full responsibility when things aren’t done properly. He set that precedent when he was after Boris for partygate
You mean, when Johnson was photographed repeatedly and wilfully flouting his own laws?
No I mean before that, at some PMQs or other, Sir Keir was very insistent that even if Boris wasn’t present at the parties, he as the boss had to take full responsibility
Not the boss. The DPP can step in and take over private prosecutions and then discontinue them. The Attorney-General, a law officer of the crown, a minister, the person the DPP reports to, and (since May 2010) a Tory, has a similar power to stop prosecutions. Neither was was the “boss” in this case. If the Tories want to make hay over this by attacking Starmer they’re on thin ice.
Stop bringing facts into this debate.
Although Liz Truss was Lord Chancellor during this period, perhaps she should have intervened.
Rishi Sunak has refused to endorse the partner of the disgraced former Conservative MP Peter Bone to replace him as the party’s candidate in the Wellingborough byelection.
(Interestingly, monarchism is now neck and neck in Scotland with republicanism.)
I see you posted about a poll commissioned by Republic which still showed monarchy with a 16% lead over a republic and support for a republic/elected head of state having fallen from 34% in the November poll they had done to just 32% now.
They simply changed the question from do you support a monarchy v a republic to do you support a monarchy v an elected head of state to get the headline they wanted and shift some monarchy supporters to DK.
If even Republic can't get a majority of Scots in their own poll to back a Republic shows how farcical the idea is.
Especially given the republican Corbyn has been replaced as Labour leader by Starmer who now backs the monarchy with reforms (and both the Tories and LDs continue to back the monarchy)
You mean, *despite* SKS taking over.
And the point I made was that the monarchists and the republicans are neck and neck. Not that the latter are a majority.
PS: still counting the Dks on your side, only sneakily and not up front. Didn't they teach you the rules of cricket at your minor "public" school/grammar school, old boy, what?
Even in a Republic poll, it cannot get a lead for a republic in Scotland. The last Yougov poll on the subject by contrast had 49% of Scots backing retaining the monarchy and only 38% for a republic
Just listening to the news, how typical it is that various politicians go on air and talk mainly about Vennells' CBE - as if that discredited bauble really matters.
They ought rather to concentrate on explaining why they didn't sort out the whole affair half a decade back. And now sort it sharpish.
Displacement activity and distracts those who are furious.
"As you yourself have identified - the idea that this whole scandal could be made to go away by playing dirty and maximising the legal costs until the other side ran out of money - will have originated from the legal profession. That Vennells went along with it is shameful, but it will have been qualified lawyers who devised, advocated and implemented that strategy."
This may well be so. But it will have been signed off by the boss. So both are responsible. Or in @Leon's words: "all a bunch of tossers."
Also the procurement of Horizon is a key part of the Inquiry - worth listening to Jason Beer KC's opening statement on this. Why? Because Ministers and senior managers knew about the problems right from the start and still went ahead. The idea that it was only in 2007 that Ministers should have become concerned is just nonsense. The poor procurement process is highly relevant to how this scandal came about and to the culture and belief it inculcated in the Post Office which lay behind its approach both to the prosecutions and the concerns / complaints raised repeatedly.
Lazy wording.
Your first really says nothing different.
Your second is true, but assumes the nature of “the problems” is singular. Yes, there were various and significant problems from the outset. As is probably true, if we could know, with most large governmental projects, certainly in the IT field. But aside from the general weaknesses of design and culture, there isn’t a straight line between the issues they had at the outset and the problem that generated the shortfalls out in the field. No-one at the time could have inferred one from the other, even if the causal weaknesses are related.
This is missing the point. The problems in the Post Office do not simply relate to the Horizon shortfalls. See the Detica report for instance. The whole way the PO was managed and the Network Transformation Programme, including the procurement of this accounting system was flawed from the start and was down to the decisions the Ministers made, the managers they put in charge and the strategy they set. The prosecutions are a consequence of those decisions and cannot be properly understood without that important context and background.
That is why I say that this is also a governance failure, as well as a legal one. That governance aspect is part of the current phase of the Inquiry. For once we will get some sort of insight into how these decisions were made which may help us do better in future.
The Post Office is trying to say that this is just about Horizon. It's one reason why they are still opposing some of the appeals, for instance. But the evidence shows that the legal failings were so great and so widespread that nothing based on what the Post Office's lawyers said can be relied on at all, regardless of whether there is any Horizon link at all. Similarly, the problems with the Post Office during this period are greater than just the prosecutions and do relate back to the decisions made in the late 1990's and subsequently. It suits the Post Office and government to ignore this but we should not do so.
For sure.
But it doesn’t follow that anyone who knew about the problems during the pilots could foresee what eventually came to transpire, which - as far as the evidence we have so far - appears to have mostly arisen from a different cause.
Saying “…knew about the problems right from the start and still went ahead” is back-projecting. Fujitsu certainly should have taken the advice they were given that their product wasn’t yet fit for purpose, and delayed its release - the reasons why it didn’t being all too sadly obvious. But the customer and the owner were, at that stage, heavily reliant on the assurances from and decisions by the supplier.
I am very interested in the relationship with Fujitsu and what was going on in that company. Far too little attention has been paid to them.
" United has found loose bolts and other parts on 737 Max 9 plug doors as it inspects its fleet of Boeing jets following the rapid depressurization aboard an Alaska jet, according to three people familiar with the findings."
Rishi Sunak has refused to endorse the partner of the disgraced former Conservative MP Peter Bone to replace him as the party’s candidate in the Wellingborough byelection.
Well it looks like even Rishi and CCHQ won't give their candidate any support, I doubt the former famed Mrs Bone will be voting for either him or his new partner either.
Not as straightforward as John makes out - the CPS has the power to take over or end private prosecutions for example that are vexatious or malicious - the Post Office was prosecuting hundreds of people, what interest did the CPS take in it & what if any review did they conduct?
Further, Seema Misra was prosecuted on behalf of the Post Office by the CPS when Keir Starmer was DPP.
Misra, recalling the moment she was sentenced to 15 months in prison in 2010, said, "It's hard to say but I think that if I had not been pregnant, I would have killed myself."
How many people work in the CPS - it can't just have been SKS yet all the Tory Groupies seem to think he was a one man superman doing the job of 500 people....
Ah no, Sir Keir insists on the head of the party/business taking full responsibility when things aren’t done properly. He set that precedent when he was after Boris for partygate
You mean, when Johnson was photographed repeatedly and wilfully flouting his own laws?
Davey has a lot of explaining to do.
Many others do as well. Davey's mistake, which I suspect is one many new Ministers make, was to take the advice of senior civil servants and other officials without question. We've seen this with the pandemic and a rash of other issues.
Should Davey (and all other responsible MInisters) have asked more probing questions? Clearly, yes, but that's not how Government works. It may be how we would like it to work but ultimately if we went down that road nothing would get done.
On the contrary, I rather suspect that, brand new to ministerial office, Davey ignored, after an initial waver, officials’ advice not to meet Bates, and went ahead and did so. Unlike any of the others. Subsequent events have shown why the officials, if cynical, were also wise.
I doubt somehow the current Conservative attacks on Sir Ed would be any less if he hadn't met Bates.
Rishi Sunak has refused to endorse the partner of the disgraced former Conservative MP Peter Bone to replace him as the party’s candidate in the Wellingborough byelection.
Well it looks like even Rishi and CCHQ won't give their candidate any support, I doubt the former famed Mrs Bone will be voting for either him or his new partner either.
Rishi Sunak has refused to endorse the partner of the disgraced former Conservative MP Peter Bone to replace him as the party’s candidate in the Wellingborough byelection.
Not really in control of events is our little sorcerers apprentice.
Just listening to the news, how typical it is that various politicians go on air and talk mainly about Vennells' CBE - as if that discredited bauble really matters.
They ought rather to concentrate on explaining why they didn't sort out the whole affair half a decade back. And now sort it sharpish.
Exactly. It is a poor effort at displacement activity. Its not about her CBE, it is about the charges she should be facing in court.
Rishi Sunak has refused to endorse the partner of the disgraced former Conservative MP Peter Bone to replace him as the party’s candidate in the Wellingborough byelection.
Well it looks like even Rishi and CCHQ won't give their candidate any support, I doubt the former famed Mrs Bone will be voting for either him or his new partner either.
What on Earth were the local party thinking?
Ironically it gives Rishi an excellent excuse for a likely by election defeat that was coming whoever the Tory candidate was, he can now brush it off as a poor local candidate he did not support
Rishi Sunak has refused to endorse the partner of the disgraced former Conservative MP Peter Bone to replace him as the party’s candidate in the Wellingborough byelection.
Well it looks like even Rishi and CCHQ won't give their candidate any support, I doubt the former famed Mrs Bone will be voting for either him or his new partner either.
What's the mechanism here? Was there a way of keeping PB's partner off the shortlist?
(And it there isn't, what's to stop the Little Dunny on the Wold association selecting Boris as a candidate?)
Yes the mood is for change and we are in difficult economic times. On the positive side for the Tories however a new Labour government would then have to deal with inflation, interest rates and sluggish growth and strikes
You say that like that's a legacy you Tories should be proud of!
To be fair to Sunak he has cut inflation since becoming PM, interest rates are stabilising and the economy is starting to grow again.
However globally the economic situation remains difficult and a Labour government would also have to deal with it
" United has found loose bolts and other parts on 737 Max 9 plug doors as it inspects its fleet of Boeing jets following the rapid depressurization aboard an Alaska jet, according to three people familiar with the findings."
Rishi Sunak has refused to endorse the partner of the disgraced former Conservative MP Peter Bone to replace him as the party’s candidate in the Wellingborough byelection.
Well it looks like even Rishi and CCHQ won't give their candidate any support, I doubt the former famed Mrs Bone will be voting for either him or his new partner either.
What on Earth were the local party thinking?
How do we stop Peter Bone running as an independent candidate especially given the awful selection we have to choose from.
Really interesting short account (8 mins) of the background to the Supreme Court's coming ruling on Colorado striking down Trump. And - on the impications of the decision.
Comments
A law enforcement official tells NBC News that Judge Chutkan was home when her house was "swatted" last night.
https://twitter.com/ryanjreilly/status/1744423889659215875
Look at the record so far: donkey sanctuary; currygate; Saville; and now, surely the weakest attack line of all. If and when an actual scandal comes up people may well look and think it's those right wing newspapers making something out of nothing again.
https://youtube.com/@country_life_vlog?si=TbUQtuzW-VbV6h_U
An Azeri farmstead, every video is the same but oddly compelling. The matriarch quietly makes traditional food over an open fire, while her husband buggers about in the yard with bits of wood. Cats, dogs and farmyard animals frolic. Lovely.
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4395208-hunter-biden-contempt-resolution-house-gop/
The House Oversight and Accountability Committee on Monday released the text of a resolution to hold Hunter Biden, the president’s son, in contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena to appear for a closed-door deposition as part of the House GOP’s impeachment inquiry into President Biden.
The brief resolution directs the Speaker to refer the contempt report “to an appropriate United States attorney, to the end that Mr. Biden be proceeded against in the manner and form provided by law,” and it calls on the Speaker to “otherwise take all appropriate action to enforce the subpoena.”..
No doubt will be voted for by Congressmen who ignored this subpoena along with Rudy, and half of Trump's admin.
I have received a subpoena signed only by Democrat Chairs who have prejudged this case. It raises significant issues concerning legitimacy and constitutional and legal issues including,inter alia, attorney client and other privileges. It will be given appropriate consideration.
https://twitter.com/RudyGiuliani/status/1178806474073620482
None of whom had offered - as H Biden has done - to appear in public.
'Trump claims he didn’t have ‘fair notice’ that Georgia actions could be illegal'
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-georgia-case-dismissed-immunity-b2475100.html
He didn't think that asking an official to falsify an election return might be illegal?
Did the canine also consume his homework?
Incidentally for @IanB2 (fpt) -
"As you yourself have identified - the idea that this whole scandal could be made to go away by playing dirty and maximising the legal costs until the other side ran out of money - will have originated from the legal profession. That Vennells went along with it is shameful, but it will have been qualified lawyers who devised, advocated and implemented that strategy."
This may well be so. But it will have been signed off by the boss. So both are responsible. Or in @Leon's words: "all a bunch of tossers."
Also the procurement of Horizon is a key part of the Inquiry - worth listening to Jason Beer KC's opening statement on this. Why? Because Ministers and senior managers knew about the problems right from the start and still went ahead. The idea that it was only in 2007 that Ministers should have become concerned is just nonsense. The poor procurement process is highly relevant to how this scandal came about and to the culture and belief it inculcated in the Post Office which lay behind its approach both to the prosecutions and the concerns / complaints raised repeatedly.
Edit: but I should add that since 2019/ 2020 I haven't gone anywhere in real terms despite promotions and salary rises, but I have gone up enough to stand still.
HMG, as owner of the business, had both the power and responsibility of oversight, in a way that simply isn't true of the CPS.
Pretending Starmer bears some greater responsibility, as you persist in, is pathetic stuff.
It was only really because he was fool enough to prove past criticisms had real validity with his actions in the present, that bad things, in the end, stuck. I know there are some negative views of Starmer, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say he's not as thick as his predecessor.
I don't know how much the Russian Higher Education system was under political control on entrance by non-Russians in the mid-1980s. Perhaps others here can comment? Political control at that time would not be a surprise.
That was still a time period when eg non-approved of poets were being given long prison/gulag sentences for their politically unacceptable writings. For example in 1983 poet Irina Ratushinskaya received a sentence of 7 years in a strict-regime Labour camp, then 5 years of internal exile, for "agitation carried on for the purpose of subverting or weakening the Soviet regime" (ie writing poetry).
Released as presumably a gesture of intent before the 1986 Gorbachev-Reagan Reykjavik summit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_titles_debate
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_v_Chrétien
Interesting that it was Tony Blair who decided to re-heat this Imperial debate. Or maybe not.
Your first really says nothing different.
Your second is true, but assumes the nature of “the problems” is singular. Yes, there were various and significant problems from the outset. As is probably true, if we could know, with most large governmental projects, certainly in the IT field. But aside from the general weaknesses of design and culture, there isn’t a straight line between the issues they had at the outset and the problem that generated the shortfalls out in the field. No-one at the time could have inferred one from the other, even if the causal weaknesses are related.
The same, incidentally, goes for every other Lab and Con responsible Minister from 1999 until ITV broadcast their programme. The guilt growing greater as time passed and the injustice became ever more obvious and ever greater in scope.
Spending on welfare under Rishi Sunak was a higher share of the budget than spending on welfare under Gordon Brown. With welfare increases growing much faster than wage increases.
As Chancellor he significantly increased taxes.
In what ways is he not left-wing?
If we're going to have a left-wing tax and spend government, it might as well be Labour.
Earlier I said I thought Farage was ill informed, but maybe he was hoping some mud might stick, next time I looked a Barrister on Twitter, who appears to be anti-Brexit, has said Farage has a point & Sir Keir could have done something. Argue with him if you like @RupertMyers
If he can then there won't be a wipeout. 32-34% should be enough to save them.
See also: The Covid19 inquiry which seems more interested in salacious gossip of who said what and when, rather than what lessons can be learned either domestically or from abroad for future pandemics.
https://twitter.com/SeanSafyre/status/1744138937239822685
Apparently the second one found.
In truth, however, I did a lot better between 1997 and 2010 - the era of cheap food, cheap fuel, cheap money and endlessly rising asset values. Unsustainable? Yes. Personally beneficial? Also yes.
I want to know what case the phone was in.
And yes, it's infuriating that there's a big bill about to land on working age people like you and me. Doubly so since it was utterly predictable. But being cross about it is going to do us no more good than it did Canute's courtiers.
Voting against the party that is boasting about the triple lock boosting pensions might though.
If only there were an actual rightwing party out there to vote for. And don't make me laugh by saying Reform.
Should Davey (and all other responsible MInisters) have asked more probing questions? Clearly, yes, but that's not how Government works. It may be how we would like it to work but ultimately if we went down that road nothing would get done.
His immunity claims are similarly risible - but that's not really the point. It's more like a cephalopod releasing clouds of ink.
Sir Keir is saddled by
That is why I say that this is also a governance failure, as well as a legal one. That governance aspect is part of the current phase of the Inquiry. For once we will get some sort of insight into how these decisions were made which may help us do better in future.
The Post Office is trying to say that this is just about Horizon. It's one reason why they are still opposing some of the appeals, for instance. But the evidence shows that the legal failings were so great and so widespread that nothing based on what the Post Office's lawyers said can be relied on at all, regardless of whether there is any Horizon link at all. Similarly, the problems with the Post Office during this period are greater than just the prosecutions and do relate back to the decisions made in the late 1990's and subsequently. It suits the Post Office and government to ignore this but we should not do so.
There are ~650 MPs. If each gets one letter about an important issue from a constituent, they may be tempted to ignore or softball it; it is only a single complaint, and it may not be in an area that the MP deals with, either at a constituency or ministerial level.
But if 650 MPs get such a complaint, from 650 different people; is there a system where MPs (of all parties) can flag up something the others may be hearing about?
I guess not, and I guess this is why campaign groups exist...
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-67914869
Kirkcaldy: Watch moment double-decker spins round on ice, smashing parked cars
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-67916370
Fat lot of good it did them.
Longer term, I agree - the issues of growth and dealing with unions will be the biggest initial problems for Starmer and Reeves. We may already be seeing elements of this in the suspension of the planned tube strikes.
It seems Khan "found" £30 million which effectively bought off the RMT and this week's strikes (given the doom-laden prophesies of business, £30 million seems a small price to pay and perhaps we should ask the same grateful London businesses to find the £30 million so the taxpayer doesn't have to).
A good result for Mick Lynch who has done well by his members without having to inconvenience Londoners too much. It was a tactic Bob Crow used against Boris Johnson - Crow realised the threat of strike action was far more powerful than the reality.
The problem is having smelt easy money, ASLEF, who had previously settled with Transport for London, are now back on the prowl sensing the back of Khan's sofa hasn't been given a proper shaking yet.
Perhaps Khan should go to London business and ask them how much they are prepared to stump up to buy off ASLEF.
They simply changed the question from do you support a monarchy v a republic to do you support a monarchy v an elected head of state to get the headline they wanted and shift some monarchy supporters to DK.
If even Republic can't get a majority of Scots in their own poll to back a Republic shows how farcical the idea is.
Especially given the republican Corbyn has been replaced as Labour leader by Starmer who now backs the monarchy with reforms (and both the Tories and LDs continue to back the monarchy)
case. If the Tories want to make hay over this by attacking Starmer they’re on thin ice.
More recently they’ve struck on the novel gambit of complaining about the mess left by their own Conservative predecessors.
I trust we’ll now be hearing no more of either?
However globally the economic situation remains difficult and a Labour government would also have to deal with it
But it doesn’t follow that anyone who knew about the problems during the pilots could foresee what eventually came to transpire, which - as far as the evidence we have so far - appears to have mostly arisen from a different cause.
Saying “…knew about the problems right from the start and still went ahead” is back-projecting. Fujitsu certainly should have taken the advice they were given that their product wasn’t yet fit for purpose, and delayed its release - the reasons why it didn’t being all too sadly obvious. But the customer and the owner were, at that stage, heavily reliant on the assurances from and decisions by the supplier.
Although Liz Truss was Lord Chancellor during this period, perhaps she should have intervened.
What about Reggie Maudling's note to Jim Callaghan in 1964- "Sorry to leave it in such a mess, old cock."
One of the ways of working out whether a change election (either way) is due is whether there has been an economic fiasco since the last one.
Or possibly it's more at the whims of the markets, wider economy, BoE, geopolitics.
I'm not 100% sure.
And the point I made was that the monarchists and the republicans are neck and neck. Not that the latter are a majority.
PS: still counting the Dks on your side, only sneakily and not up front. Didn't they teach you the rules of cricket at your minor "public" school/grammar school, old boy, what?
Scotland's Equalities Minister joins the First Minister and the Health Secretary in opposing 'assisted dying'. Emma Roddick says she cannot see how any law can be "safe while disabled people don’t have equality.”
https://twitter.com/jmgillies/status/1744303586262061186
This. Is. A. Disgrace.
Rishi Sunak has refused to endorse the partner of the disgraced former Conservative MP Peter Bone to replace him as the party’s candidate in the Wellingborough byelection.
And ignoring DKs of course Republic's poll still had the monarchy with a 16% lead over a republic UK wide.
https://ygo-assets-websites-editorial-emea.yougov.net/documents/Internal_RoyalFavourability_230831_W.pdf
" United has found loose bolts and other parts on 737 Max 9 plug doors as it inspects its fleet of Boeing jets following the rapid depressurization aboard an Alaska jet, according to three people familiar with the findings."
https://twitter.com/jonostrower/status/1744455383584997603
If it's Boeing, I'm not going...
Edit: problems found on at least five aircraft so far.
https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1853361/Nigel-Farage-Keir-Starmer-CPS-post-office
(And it there isn't, what's to stop the Little Dunny on the Wold association selecting Boris as a candidate?)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uFjRZ5R5pU&ab_channel=ZeihanonGeopolitics
(Spoiler: If the SC rules for Trump, then Biden wins. If it rules against, all bets are off.)