Many individuals should face criminal trials over this scandal, but do we think any will ?
And on more depressing news both labour and the conservatives make solemn pledges to retain the triple lock which shows just how much serious trouble we are when neither are fit to govern when they put their popularity before doing the right thing
Where on earth is the leader we need to take the difficult decisions, wean us off spending and borrowing, and take the country away from an inevitable debt crisis
Are they currently making those pledges on the triple lock ?
Many individuals should face criminal trials over this scandal, but do we think any will ?
And on more depressing news both labour and the conservatives make solemn pledges to retain the triple lock which shows just how much serious trouble we are when neither are fit to govern when they put their popularity before doing the right thing
Where on earth is the leader we need to take the difficult decisions, wean us off spending and borrowing, and take the country away from an inevitable debt crisis
Given how this scandal is so utterly dwarfed by other vaster scandals, I find it hard to get exercised by it. Indeed I have suspicions of those that do. This one is so much easier to take - the villains are nasty managers - so let’s make tv dramas about it and write 5000 word essays about it and ventilate about it endlessly
Rather than focusing on much greater and more troubling problems
In short: this is chaff
Talking bollocks again I see.
I have written quite a few headers on even more serious scandals and there have also been TV dramas about them and they share with this one the same essential elements which cause them to happen, to continue and to involve cruelty to the victims.
What I wrote here could and does apply to every other scandal. I am writing about it today because a report came out and to remind those with goldfish memories that nothing has changed. I have written in my book about Grenfell and blood contamination and many others and if I included every single scandal pointing out the depressing similarities it wouldn't be so much a book as a bloody enormous encyclopaedia - Cyclefree's Big Book of British Scandals.
The people mentioned in the case studies are not chaff. (The last time I heard that word used so dismissively it was by an MP in a Select Committee aimed at Dr David Kelly. He committed suicide shortly after.)
They are people like us. One of them is your age and at about the age you stopped taking drugs and turned your life around, he had a good business, a family and was looking forward to doing even better. Instead, he was wrongly convicted, had his reputation trashed, lost everything and has never been able to find employment again. He lives on charity from his family and friends. His name is Harjinder Butoy.
Don't you fucking dare call him and everyone like him and what happened to them all "chaff".
I must admit, for reasons I find hard to understand, I have also found it hard to get too exercised about this scandal. Perhaps it is too technical, too hard to follow. But for that reason I am very grateful that there are others like Cyclefree who do. Because I'm exercised about it now. It's the casual trashing of people's reputations which really rankles. "Thou shalt not bear false witness" is one of the less fashionable commandments, but it's the biggie, really. Most people have nothing more valuable.
Good header, anyway. I liked the attempt to broaden the scope to 'all scandals' and the thought that those in charge consider themselves virtuous because they are in charge. Never trust people whise starting point is that they are the good guys, because all sorts of dubious conclusions flow from that.
It’s really simple. The Horizon computer system made shit up. They prosecuted people. When they found out, early on, that it was bollocks, they lied to cover it up. And kept on prosecuting people.
That's a good summary. I have two major feelings about the scandal: exasperation at the whole awful mess, and a weariness that we've seen it all before, and no doubt we'll see it all again. Lessons will not be learnt.
And it is important, because the next scandal and cover-up might affect me. Or you. Or perhaps even @Leon .
Morning all. Polling start to the morning today from More In Common. As you were figures. We are still in the holding pattern that emerged after the May locals with minor noise moves week to week. None of the 'scandals' or dramas are moving the dial. The creation of the Dried Fruits will likely be the next mover, weird black swans or Trussery notwithstanding
➡️ REF UK 29% (nc) 🌹 LAB 24% (nc) 🌳 CON 19% (nc) 🔶 LIB DEM 14% (+2) 🌍 GREEN 7% (-2) 🟡 SNP 3% (nc)
N = 2,084 | Dates:4 - 7/7 | Change w 30/6
The curious incident….
Labour might actually be relived by these polls. It seems that the welfare climbdown has not hurt them - or it has hurt them politically but not electorally (so far). Put it another way, they are already in the toilet but they’re not even further down the toilet = “phew”
Labour will feel they can still win the next election. Tories will feel they are not dead in the water yet, LDs and Greens that progress can be protected and advanced. Hayward quoted in the Indy today saying he thinks Reform have topped out and that local by elections are a better or as good an indicator of where we are compared to VI polling. In which case, JL Partners get your finger out and update the Polaris model!
It’s really hard to know. Farage has made some errors recently, and Reform are looking fissiparous
And yet the electoral direction of the country still points firmly towards polarisation - some going hard left and green and more going hard right and ??
I see on X that Farage is predicting that Jenrick will take over the Tories and then Jenrick will try and outflank reform by going FURTHER to the right on migration, asylum and woke
A fascinating analysis
You can't out Farage Farage, the Tories would be better off going for say Mel Stride if they removed Kemi and focusing solely on the economy and balancing the books and placing themselves as sensible fiscal conservatives as an alternative to both Labour and Reform.
Badenock has proved she can't out war on woke Nigel and Jenrick couldn't out Farage on sending back the boats and immigrants either.
If Farage lost the next GE and left the Reform leadership then Jenrick would have a better chance as leader and to scoop up Farage's supporters on the right
Ahahahahahaha
As someone once nearly put it, “if ‘Mel Stride’ is the answer, what in the name of God’s Holy Testicles is the question??”
The Tories are fucking obsessed with themselves and think we all should be too.
Many individuals should face criminal trials over this scandal, but do we think any will ?
And on more depressing news both labour and the conservatives make solemn pledges to retain the triple lock which shows just how much serious trouble we are when neither are fit to govern when they put their popularity before doing the right thing
Where on earth is the leader we need to take the difficult decisions, wean us off spending and borrowing, and take the country away from an inevitable debt crisis
It’s the same with the victims of the tainted blood scandal.
Politicians and the political classes more concerned about protecting themselves and their institutions.
They all talk a good game but don’t deliver. I doubt compensation will be sorted this Parliament and this is not really a Labour thing, yet another shit legacy from the past govts.
Plenty of sympathetic warm words and half apologies, ‘I’m sorry I was misled’, however no hard cash or restitution and I doubt the likes of Vennels will ever face a court over this.
I can kind of understand why earlier governments tried to hide the situation and hope it went away, however morally wrong that was. But post the tv series there are zero excuses for Starmer and Sunak. There is now absolutely no political advantage in hoping this goes away, just get it done quickly and if that means the compo is a couple of hundred mil higher so be it. Drop the inquiries and go straight to police with instructions to focus only on the most culpable to streamline the process.
It’s the Process State.
The PM requests that compensation is paid. This does not cause compensation to be paid. Instead, it cause another branch in the labyrinth of files and communications.
A request for it to be expedited, again, will create another tide of paperwork. No action.
The purpose of the Process State is more process. This is because
- action is dangerous. - a quick, bare action with clear responsibility is doubly so. - creating 100k pages of nonsense is safe. It is hard to read. It looks professional. It means having lots of underlings - promotion? It means not upsetting other people in the Process State. Indeed, they will se you as a Safe Pair If Hands. A Team Player.
Yes. Of course there has to be a process to govern how compensation is paid. We'll start with a mission statement. Or maybe we'll create a process to govern recruiting someone who will oversee the creation of the compensation process. And we'll need quarterly progress reports and metrics. Where do we stand on home-working? Do we need an office? Does the contract for designing our letterhead need to go through a competitive tendering process?
What this country needs is a politician who is prepared to lie outrageously, rather than lie cravenly or pathetically like Starmer
ie we need a right wing leader who says “yes I’m going to keep the triple lock and reform the ECHR and keep all benefits and tax the rich” etc etc
Then as soon as they get into power just shamelessly switch to “oops sorry there is no money so we’re going to ditch the triple lock and welcome back non Doms slash all benefits and quit the ECHR and also cut spending by half. Soz”
Do that in the first year. By year 5 the benefits will be showing and you can get re-elected and Britain booms again
I was kinda hoping starmer was going to do all this but it turns out he really is a dismal stupid lefty lawyer who lies to save himself and nothing else
Morning all. Polling start to the morning today from More In Common. As you were figures. We are still in the holding pattern that emerged after the May locals with minor noise moves week to week. None of the 'scandals' or dramas are moving the dial. The creation of the Dried Fruits will likely be the next mover, weird black swans or Trussery notwithstanding
➡️ REF UK 29% (nc) 🌹 LAB 24% (nc) 🌳 CON 19% (nc) 🔶 LIB DEM 14% (+2) 🌍 GREEN 7% (-2) 🟡 SNP 3% (nc)
N = 2,084 | Dates:4 - 7/7 | Change w 30/6
The curious incident….
Labour might actually be relived by these polls. It seems that the welfare climbdown has not hurt them - or it has hurt them politically but not electorally (so far). Put it another way, they are already in the toilet but they’re not even further down the toilet = “phew”
Labour will feel they can still win the next election. Tories will feel they are not dead in the water yet, LDs and Greens that progress can be protected and advanced. Hayward quoted in the Indy today saying he thinks Reform have topped out and that local by elections are a better or as good an indicator of where we are compared to VI polling. In which case, JL Partners get your finger out and update the Polaris model!
It’s really hard to know. Farage has made some errors recently, and Reform are looking fissiparous
And yet the electoral direction of the country still points firmly towards polarisation - some going hard left and green and more going hard right and ??
I see on X that Farage is predicting that Jenrick will take over the Tories and then Jenrick will try and outflank reform by going FURTHER to the right on migration, asylum and woke
A fascinating analysis
You can't out Farage Farage, the Tories would be better off going for say Mel Stride if they removed Kemi and focusing solely on the economy and balancing the books and placing themselves as sensible fiscal conservatives as an alternative to both Labour and Reform.
Badenock has proved she can't out war on woke Nigel and Jenrick couldn't out Farage on sending back the boats and immigrants either.
If Farage lost the next GE and left the Reform leadership then Jenrick would have a better chance as leader and to scoop up Farage's supporters on the right
Ahahahahahaha
As someone once nearly put it, “if ‘Mel Stride’ is the answer, what in the name of God’s Holy Testicles is the question??”
Who would be a heavyweight, serious if a little dull leader who offers sensible fiscal conservatism as an alternative to Reform populism and Labour tax and spend for swing voters instead of a poor Farage tribute act which won't win back many voters from Reform?
Many individuals should face criminal trials over this scandal, but do we think any will ?
And on more depressing news both labour and the conservatives make solemn pledges to retain the triple lock which shows just how much serious trouble we are when neither are fit to govern when they put their popularity before doing the right thing
Where on earth is the leader we need to take the difficult decisions, wean us off spending and borrowing, and take the country away from an inevitable debt crisis
Many individuals should face criminal trials over this scandal, but do we think any will ?
And on more depressing news both labour and the conservatives make solemn pledges to retain the triple lock which shows just how much serious trouble we are when neither are fit to govern when they put their popularity before doing the right thing
Where on earth is the leader we need to take the difficult decisions, wean us off spending and borrowing, and take the country away from an inevitable debt crisis
Morning all. Polling start to the morning today from More In Common. As you were figures. We are still in the holding pattern that emerged after the May locals with minor noise moves week to week. None of the 'scandals' or dramas are moving the dial. The creation of the Dried Fruits will likely be the next mover, weird black swans or Trussery notwithstanding
➡️ REF UK 29% (nc) 🌹 LAB 24% (nc) 🌳 CON 19% (nc) 🔶 LIB DEM 14% (+2) 🌍 GREEN 7% (-2) 🟡 SNP 3% (nc)
N = 2,084 | Dates:4 - 7/7 | Change w 30/6
The curious incident….
Labour might actually be relived by these polls. It seems that the welfare climbdown has not hurt them - or it has hurt them politically but not electorally (so far). Put it another way, they are already in the toilet but they’re not even further down the toilet = “phew”
Labour will feel they can still win the next election. Tories will feel they are not dead in the water yet, LDs and Greens that progress can be protected and advanced. Hayward quoted in the Indy today saying he thinks Reform have topped out and that local by elections are a better or as good an indicator of where we are compared to VI polling. In which case, JL Partners get your finger out and update the Polaris model!
It’s really hard to know. Farage has made some errors recently, and Reform are looking fissiparous
And yet the electoral direction of the country still points firmly towards polarisation - some going hard left and green and more going hard right and ??
I see on X that Farage is predicting that Jenrick will take over the Tories and then Jenrick will try and outflank reform by going FURTHER to the right on migration, asylum and woke
A fascinating analysis
Farage just thinks Jenrick might make a better DPM for him than Tice in a Reform led government, he doesn't actually see a Jenrick led Tories as a threat to him and Reform
It’s all part of the shift from principles-based regulation to a rules-based approach.
Principles-based is hard work. It requires integrity, trust and judgement from both the regulator and the regulated. But when it works it’s so much better.
I remember being told once about the bank of England’s regulatory approach: rock up to a meeting with senior management of a bank every quarter and spend the meeting asking about management’s concerns about their competitors… they believed it gave a much clearer view of systemic risk
I'm not sure it's even that.
I'd diagnose the issue as "reality doesn't matter, as long as you can keep telling the right story."
Principles are better than rules, sure. They give better answers in edge cases and when something unexpected comes up. But when those in charge are able to compartmentalise their brains enough, so that words and reality are independent things, we're in trouble.
Once the structures measure and reward the words, irrespective of what the reality shows, that trouble is double. And because it's easier to change words than reality, that's where we have ended up.
IMV principles get around that.
In this case the “rules” say - public money being spent to correct something the state did wrong. We must spend it correctly and according to the process.
Morning all. Polling start to the morning today from More In Common. As you were figures. We are still in the holding pattern that emerged after the May locals with minor noise moves week to week. None of the 'scandals' or dramas are moving the dial. The creation of the Dried Fruits will likely be the next mover, weird black swans or Trussery notwithstanding
➡️ REF UK 29% (nc) 🌹 LAB 24% (nc) 🌳 CON 19% (nc) 🔶 LIB DEM 14% (+2) 🌍 GREEN 7% (-2) 🟡 SNP 3% (nc)
N = 2,084 | Dates:4 - 7/7 | Change w 30/6
The curious incident….
Labour might actually be relived by these polls. It seems that the welfare climbdown has not hurt them - or it has hurt them politically but not electorally (so far). Put it another way, they are already in the toilet but they’re not even further down the toilet = “phew”
Labour will feel they can still win the next election. Tories will feel they are not dead in the water yet, LDs and Greens that progress can be protected and advanced. Hayward quoted in the Indy today saying he thinks Reform have topped out and that local by elections are a better or as good an indicator of where we are compared to VI polling. In which case, JL Partners get your finger out and update the Polaris model!
It’s really hard to know. Farage has made some errors recently, and Reform are looking fissiparous
And yet the electoral direction of the country still points firmly towards polarisation - some going hard left and green and more going hard right and ??
I see on X that Farage is predicting that Jenrick will take over the Tories and then Jenrick will try and outflank reform by going FURTHER to the right on migration, asylum and woke
A fascinating analysis
Farage just thinks Jenrick might make a better DPM for him than Tice in a Reform led government, he doesn't actually see a Jenrick led Tories as a threat to him and Reform
Many individuals should face criminal trials over this scandal, but do we think any will ?
And on more depressing news both labour and the conservatives make solemn pledges to retain the triple lock which shows just how much serious trouble we are when neither are fit to govern when they put their popularity before doing the right thing
Where on earth is the leader we need to take the difficult decisions, wean us off spending and borrowing, and take the country away from an inevitable debt crisis
Robert Jenrick on Sky this morning gave an undertaking the conservatives will keep the triple lock
Correct me if I am wrong but I believe Kemi won the Tory leadership last year NOT Jenrick and Kemi has made clear she would means test the triple lock
Is she going to take into account capital?????
I believe said poster I had a minor spat with on that is a big supporter of the LDs who are the only main UK party permanently committed to keeping the triple lock
Many individuals should face criminal trials over this scandal, but do we think any will ?
And on more depressing news both labour and the conservatives make solemn pledges to retain the triple lock which shows just how much serious trouble we are when neither are fit to govern when they put their popularity before doing the right thing
Where on earth is the leader we need to take the difficult decisions, wean us off spending and borrowing, and take the country away from an inevitable debt crisis
Robert Jenrick on Sky this morning gave an undertaking the conservatives will keep the triple lock
Correct me if I am wrong but I believe Kemi won the Tory leadership last year NOT Jenrick and Kemi has made clear she would means test the triple lock
Jenrick stated it publicly this morning so conservative party policy
Or will he have to resign?
Jenrick is Shadow Justice Secretary not leader nor even Shadow Chancellor, note he also did not say it would not be means tested as if he had then he might have been sacked given Kemi's commitment to means test the triple lock already made
What this country needs is a politician who is prepared to lie outrageously, rather than lie cravenly or pathetically like Starmer
ie we need a right wing leader who says “yes I’m going to keep the triple lock and reform the ECHR and keep all benefits and tax the rich” etc etc
Then as soon as they get into power just shamelessly switch to “oops sorry there is no money so we’re going to ditch the triple lock and welcome back non Doms slash all benefits and quit the ECHR and also cut spending by half. Soz”
Do that in the first year. By year 5 the benefits will be showing and you can get re-elected and Britain booms again
I was kinda hoping starmer was going to do all this but it turns out he really is a dismal stupid lefty lawyer who lies to save himself and nothing else
Refrom are already promising to ditch the triple lock, welcome non Doms, quit the ECHR and do DOGE to slash local government spending. They want to end the 2 child cap though for benefits
Many individuals should face criminal trials over this scandal, but do we think any will ?
And on more depressing news both labour and the conservatives make solemn pledges to retain the triple lock which shows just how much serious trouble we are when neither are fit to govern when they put their popularity before doing the right thing
Where on earth is the leader we need to take the difficult decisions, wean us off spending and borrowing, and take the country away from an inevitable debt crisis
Robert Jenrick on Sky this morning gave an undertaking the conservatives will keep the triple lock
Correct me if I am wrong but I believe Kemi won the Tory leadership last year NOT Jenrick and Kemi has made clear she would means test the triple lock
Is she going to take into account capital?????
I believe said poster I had a minor spat with on that is a big supporter of the LDs who are the only main UK party permanently committed to keeping the triple lock
Minor spat that latest days, bored us all, and still you refer to it
Worst of all, you were wrong and failed to find anyone to support your claims
Many individuals should face criminal trials over this scandal, but do we think any will ?
And on more depressing news both labour and the conservatives make solemn pledges to retain the triple lock which shows just how much serious trouble we are when neither are fit to govern when they put their popularity before doing the right thing
Where on earth is the leader we need to take the difficult decisions, wean us off spending and borrowing, and take the country away from an inevitable debt crisis
Robert Jenrick on Sky this morning gave an undertaking the conservatives will keep the triple lock
Correct me if I am wrong but I believe Kemi won the Tory leadership last year NOT Jenrick and Kemi has made clear she would means test the triple lock
Is she going to take into account capital?????
More to the point, how on earth can the "triple lock" part be means tested. In the first year you'd presumably end up with two sets of pensioners, one receiving 3.1% or whatever higher than the other cohort. I know there's a change for pensioners born in 1951/53 between the basic and the new state pension but that isn't means testing. It's a hellacious amount of effort for not much reward in the medium term ! Over time it'd grow into the weirdest system tbh.
Many individuals should face criminal trials over this scandal, but do we think any will ?
And on more depressing news both labour and the conservatives make solemn pledges to retain the triple lock which shows just how much serious trouble we are when neither are fit to govern when they put their popularity before doing the right thing
Where on earth is the leader we need to take the difficult decisions, wean us off spending and borrowing, and take the country away from an inevitable debt crisis
Robert Jenrick on Sky this morning gave an undertaking the conservatives will keep the triple lock
Correct me if I am wrong but I believe Kemi won the Tory leadership last year NOT Jenrick and Kemi has made clear she would means test the triple lock
Jenrick stated it publicly this morning so conservative party policy
Or will he have to resign?
Jenrick is Shadow Justice Secretary not leader nor even Shadow Chancellor, note he also did not say it would not be means tested as if he had then he might have been sacked given Kemi's commitment to means test the triple lock already made
So you did watch him publicly commit to the triple lock
I doubt Badenoch would sack Jenrick under any circumstances
Many individuals should face criminal trials over this scandal, but do we think any will ?
And on more depressing news both labour and the conservatives make solemn pledges to retain the triple lock which shows just how much serious trouble we are when neither are fit to govern when they put their popularity before doing the right thing
Where on earth is the leader we need to take the difficult decisions, wean us off spending and borrowing, and take the country away from an inevitable debt crisis
Robert Jenrick on Sky this morning gave an undertaking the conservatives will keep the triple lock
Correct me if I am wrong but I believe Kemi won the Tory leadership last year NOT Jenrick and Kemi has made clear she would means test the triple lock
Jenrick stated it publicly this morning so conservative party policy
Or will he have to resign?
A poster previously explained the triple lock mechanism and how it guaranteed that pensions would increase above inflation with the cost fairly rapidly ballooning out of control. It seems it would benefit all parties who think they might be in government to explain this to the electorate.
Many individuals should face criminal trials over this scandal, but do we think any will ?
And on more depressing news both labour and the conservatives make solemn pledges to retain the triple lock which shows just how much serious trouble we are when neither are fit to govern when they put their popularity before doing the right thing
Where on earth is the leader we need to take the difficult decisions, wean us off spending and borrowing, and take the country away from an inevitable debt crisis
Robert Jenrick on Sky this morning gave an undertaking the conservatives will keep the triple lock
Correct me if I am wrong but I believe Kemi won the Tory leadership last year NOT Jenrick and Kemi has made clear she would means test the triple lock
Is she going to take into account capital?????
More to the point, how on earth can the "triple lock" part be means tested. In the first year you'd presumably end up with two sets of pensioners, one receiving 3.1% or whatever higher than the other cohort. I know there's a change for pensioners born in 1951/53 between the basic and the new state pension but that isn't means testing. Over time it'd grow into the weirdest system tbh.
Just link it to inflation only for pensioners earning over £35k, the ones who will also lose their WFA
Married banker sacked over affair with colleague sues for sex discrimination
Former bank director claims investigation against him was ‘tainted’ given his senior role
A married City banker sued for sex discrimination after he was sacked over his affair with a junior colleague.
Stanislav Stepchuk, who was a director at American investment bank Merrill Lynch, was in a relationship with the woman for several months but broke it off when he learnt his pregnant wife was expecting.
He sent an unsolicited explicit photo to the younger woman four days after they began messaging each other.
He claims that after the breakup the junior colleague responded with “hostility”, “taunts” and “threats” that his life may be in danger.
An internal disciplinary process found the father-of-two had actually been the one to threaten her and sacked him for “acting inappropriately” by embarking on the affair.
Mr Stepchuk is suing Merrill Lynch International for sex discrimination and harassment, age discrimination, and unfair dismissal.
Details of the affair emerged during a preliminary hearing to determine if Mr Stepchuk or his junior colleague were entitled to anonymity.
While he demanded that her identity be made public, he applied to have his name remain a secret to protect his family - a request that was denied by a judge.
Many individuals should face criminal trials over this scandal, but do we think any will ?
And on more depressing news both labour and the conservatives make solemn pledges to retain the triple lock which shows just how much serious trouble we are when neither are fit to govern when they put their popularity before doing the right thing
Where on earth is the leader we need to take the difficult decisions, wean us off spending and borrowing, and take the country away from an inevitable debt crisis
Robert Jenrick on Sky this morning gave an undertaking the conservatives will keep the triple lock
Correct me if I am wrong but I believe Kemi won the Tory leadership last year NOT Jenrick and Kemi has made clear she would means test the triple lock
Is she going to take into account capital?????
More to the point, how on earth can the "triple lock" part be means tested. In the first year you'd presumably end up with two sets of pensioners, one receiving 3.1% or whatever higher than the other cohort. I know there's a change for pensioners born in 1951/53 between the basic and the new state pension but that isn't means testing. It's a hellacious amount of effort for not much reward in the medium term ! Over time it'd grow into the weirdest system tbh.
Indeed.
Triple lock pension credit might make an iota of sense (though any form of triple lock is a stupid system) but that's just not viable.
John Redwood @johnredwood · 2h Offering us a loan of the Bayeux embroidery reminds us of the invasion and the way so many English were forced into serfdom by the Normans. It depicts the violent deaths of English soldiers.
Trying to get people outraged or emotionally invested in the outcome of events 1000 years ago is a bold move.
I often think society can be weirdly specific about which historic sins we are supposed to still feel guilty about on an individual level and which not, but that one may be a stretch.
You have been whooshed by John Redwood. He is using the Norman Conquest ironically. Redwood is using this parallel to say Britain should not pay reparations to the descendants of, well, you get the picture.
But, the major role in all this, and the crowning error is NOT the Post Office or the minions in government. It is the Courts. THE COURTS.
Their role is to discriminate between right and wrong. THEY were presented with evidence which a bright 14 yo reader of Computer Weekly, the sort of lad dispised as a nerd could have seen was WRONG IN FACT.
They say there were directed to accept the veracity of the evidence of the Horizons software and make their decisions accordingly. If this is any different from the defences offered by those acting in a judical capacity in Nazi Germany, in what way does it differ, except in magnitude.
This is probably the greatest miscarriage of justice probably since 1689 in this country. Those who condemned the victims of this crime are criminals themselves and they should not be sleeping easily in their beds. Nor should Ed Davey.
The courts are about law, not justice.
Juries are the mechanism for avoiding injustice where the law is an ass.
That’s why Levinson is trying to abolish them. Again.
What this country needs is a politician who is prepared to lie outrageously, rather than lie cravenly or pathetically like Starmer
ie we need a right wing leader who says “yes I’m going to keep the triple lock and reform the ECHR and keep all benefits and tax the rich” etc etc
Then as soon as they get into power just shamelessly switch to “oops sorry there is no money so we’re going to ditch the triple lock and welcome back non Doms slash all benefits and quit the ECHR and also cut spending by half. Soz”
Do that in the first year. By year 5 the benefits will be showing and you can get re-elected and Britain booms again
I was kinda hoping starmer was going to do all this but it turns out he really is a dismal stupid lefty lawyer who lies to save himself and nothing else
I'm certain that the UK did "lie outrageously" in 2019 and it wasn't the answer
Many individuals should face criminal trials over this scandal, but do we think any will ?
And on more depressing news both labour and the conservatives make solemn pledges to retain the triple lock which shows just how much serious trouble we are when neither are fit to govern when they put their popularity before doing the right thing
Where on earth is the leader we need to take the difficult decisions, wean us off spending and borrowing, and take the country away from an inevitable debt crisis
Robert Jenrick on Sky this morning gave an undertaking the conservatives will keep the triple lock
Correct me if I am wrong but I believe Kemi won the Tory leadership last year NOT Jenrick and Kemi has made clear she would means test the triple lock
Jenrick stated it publicly this morning so conservative party policy
Or will he have to resign?
Jenrick is Shadow Justice Secretary not leader nor even Shadow Chancellor, note he also did not say it would not be means tested as if he had then he might have been sacked given Kemi's commitment to means test the triple lock already made
So you did watch him publicly commit to the triple lock
I doubt Badenoch would sack Jenrick under any circumstances
So as I said he did NOT say it would not be means tested by the Tories
What this country needs is a politician who is prepared to lie outrageously, rather than lie cravenly or pathetically like Starmer
ie we need a right wing leader who says “yes I’m going to keep the triple lock and reform the ECHR and keep all benefits and tax the rich” etc etc
Then as soon as they get into power just shamelessly switch to “oops sorry there is no money so we’re going to ditch the triple lock and welcome back non Doms slash all benefits and quit the ECHR and also cut spending by half. Soz”
Do that in the first year. By year 5 the benefits will be showing and you can get re-elected and Britain booms again
I was kinda hoping starmer was going to do all this but it turns out he really is a dismal stupid lefty lawyer who lies to save himself and nothing else
Has anyone ever told you you are so full of s***? You should have been a fiction novelist rather than a backpacking travel writer.
What this country needs is a politician who is prepared to lie outrageously, rather than lie cravenly or pathetically like Starmer
ie we need a right wing leader who says “yes I’m going to keep the triple lock and reform the ECHR and keep all benefits and tax the rich” etc etc
Then as soon as they get into power just shamelessly switch to “oops sorry there is no money so we’re going to ditch the triple lock and welcome back non Doms slash all benefits and quit the ECHR and also cut spending by half. Soz”
Do that in the first year. By year 5 the benefits will be showing and you can get re-elected and Britain booms again
I was kinda hoping starmer was going to do all this but it turns out he really is a dismal stupid lefty lawyer who lies to save himself and nothing else
Sounds like you want a Reform and LD coalition of shameless populism? All of that plus uber Nimby
How else do we climb out of this hole? The voters want to eat cake. They also want the having of cake. More Brits now depend on the state than pay into it
This is a recipe for New York in the 70s doom loop except we don’t have a federal government to bail us out
Eventually the bond markets will do it for us. They will refuse to lend and the UK will go bust and then we will have ten years or more of brutal brutal austerity. The likes of which we have not seen since WW2
Given the febrile state of race relations I can see that easily turning into civil strife as factions turn on each other violently amidst the decay
Do you want that? I certainly don’t. So I’m proposing a time honoured alternative. A Tory that lies through his teeth but does it convincingly then puts the screws on in year 1 of the next government
Many individuals should face criminal trials over this scandal, but do we think any will ?
And on more depressing news both labour and the conservatives make solemn pledges to retain the triple lock which shows just how much serious trouble we are when neither are fit to govern when they put their popularity before doing the right thing
Where on earth is the leader we need to take the difficult decisions, wean us off spending and borrowing, and take the country away from an inevitable debt crisis
Robert Jenrick on Sky this morning gave an undertaking the conservatives will keep the triple lock
Correct me if I am wrong but I believe Kemi won the Tory leadership last year NOT Jenrick and Kemi has made clear she would means test the triple lock
Is she going to take into account capital?????
More to the point, how on earth can the "triple lock" part be means tested. In the first year you'd presumably end up with two sets of pensioners, one receiving 3.1% or whatever higher than the other cohort. I know there's a change for pensioners born in 1951/53 between the basic and the new state pension but that isn't means testing. Over time it'd grow into the weirdest system tbh.
Just link it to inflation only for pensioners earning over £35k, the ones who will also lose their WFA
So you get a higher rate if you earn under £35k? Isn’t that just Pension Credit?
Many individuals should face criminal trials over this scandal, but do we think any will ?
And on more depressing news both labour and the conservatives make solemn pledges to retain the triple lock which shows just how much serious trouble we are when neither are fit to govern when they put their popularity before doing the right thing
Where on earth is the leader we need to take the difficult decisions, wean us off spending and borrowing, and take the country away from an inevitable debt crisis
Robert Jenrick on Sky this morning gave an undertaking the conservatives will keep the triple lock
Correct me if I am wrong but I believe Kemi won the Tory leadership last year NOT Jenrick and Kemi has made clear she would means test the triple lock
Is she going to take into account capital?????
More to the point, how on earth can the "triple lock" part be means tested. In the first year you'd presumably end up with two sets of pensioners, one receiving 3.1% or whatever higher than the other cohort. I know there's a change for pensioners born in 1951/53 between the basic and the new state pension but that isn't means testing. It's a hellacious amount of effort for not much reward in the medium term ! Over time it'd grow into the weirdest system tbh.
Yes, just daft.
Get rid of the triple lock. Simple; effective. Labour is polling around 15% with the demographic. What have they got to lose ?
Many individuals should face criminal trials over this scandal, but do we think any will ?
And on more depressing news both labour and the conservatives make solemn pledges to retain the triple lock which shows just how much serious trouble we are when neither are fit to govern when they put their popularity before doing the right thing
Where on earth is the leader we need to take the difficult decisions, wean us off spending and borrowing, and take the country away from an inevitable debt crisis
Robert Jenrick on Sky this morning gave an undertaking the conservatives will keep the triple lock
Correct me if I am wrong but I believe Kemi won the Tory leadership last year NOT Jenrick and Kemi has made clear she would means test the triple lock
Is she going to take into account capital?????
More to the point, how on earth can the "triple lock" part be means tested. In the first year you'd presumably end up with two sets of pensioners, one receiving 3.1% or whatever higher than the other cohort. I know there's a change for pensioners born in 1951/53 between the basic and the new state pension but that isn't means testing. It's a hellacious amount of effort for not much reward in the medium term ! Over time it'd grow into the weirdest system tbh.
They'll do it by age; anyone under 50 in 2025 will see their future state pension increased by nominal wages, for anyone older it will be triple locked.
Secures the gerontocracy for the next election while settling the nerves of the OBR's long term projections.
Irony is we have many MPs and public figures queuing up to demand compensation for the WASPE women who don’t deserve a penny.
The Waspy women thing was entirely without merit but had the politically critical quality of being easy to understand. Hence the number of MPs and others lining up behind it. And hence the fondness for issues involving calculable amounts of free money to a readily identifiable group. See also WFA and last week's benefits shambles and two child cap which have the same quality.
Surely the WASPI issue is simple.
I have had my retirement age pushed back several times. The changes were decades into the future and made no effect to my plans.
Some of the WASPI women were told that instead of being able to retire and draw your pension next year, you now have to wait 6 years. That's a massive difference.
"But the law changed in 1995" seems to be the defence, Sure. Who goes around proactively checking Hansard in case the government have changed the law against you? They started writing to the affected in 2009 about the change coming into effect the following year. Not much notice if you'd planned to retire and now couldn't.
John Redwood @johnredwood · 2h Offering us a loan of the Bayeux embroidery reminds us of the invasion and the way so many English were forced into serfdom by the Normans. It depicts the violent deaths of English soldiers.
Trying to get people outraged or emotionally invested in the outcome of events 1000 years ago is a bold move.
I often think society can be weirdly specific about which historic sins we are supposed to still feel guilty about on an individual level and which not, but that one may be a stretch.
Personally, as I've said before, I'm still bitter about the Norman Conquest. But I suspect this is a niche position and those who are relaxed about it will get no less so based on the inanity of John Redwood. And even I don't want the French to apologise. The amount of responsibility born by the current generation of French people is exactly zero.
Married banker sacked over affair with colleague sues for sex discrimination
Former bank director claims investigation against him was ‘tainted’ given his senior role
A married City banker sued for sex discrimination after he was sacked over his affair with a junior colleague.
Stanislav Stepchuk, who was a director at American investment bank Merrill Lynch, was in a relationship with the woman for several months but broke it off when he learnt his pregnant wife was expecting.
He sent an unsolicited explicit photo to the younger woman four days after they began messaging each other.
He claims that after the breakup the junior colleague responded with “hostility”, “taunts” and “threats” that his life may be in danger.
An internal disciplinary process found the father-of-two had actually been the one to threaten her and sacked him for “acting inappropriately” by embarking on the affair.
Mr Stepchuk is suing Merrill Lynch International for sex discrimination and harassment, age discrimination, and unfair dismissal.
Details of the affair emerged during a preliminary hearing to determine if Mr Stepchuk or his junior colleague were entitled to anonymity.
While he demanded that her identity be made public, he applied to have his name remain a secret to protect his family - a request that was denied by a judge.
Morning all. Polling start to the morning today from More In Common. As you were figures. We are still in the holding pattern that emerged after the May locals with minor noise moves week to week. None of the 'scandals' or dramas are moving the dial. The creation of the Dried Fruits will likely be the next mover, weird black swans or Trussery notwithstanding
➡️ REF UK 29% (nc) 🌹 LAB 24% (nc) 🌳 CON 19% (nc) 🔶 LIB DEM 14% (+2) 🌍 GREEN 7% (-2) 🟡 SNP 3% (nc)
N = 2,084 | Dates:4 - 7/7 | Change w 30/6
The curious incident….
Labour might actually be relived by these polls. It seems that the welfare climbdown has not hurt them - or it has hurt them politically but not electorally (so far). Put it another way, they are already in the toilet but they’re not even further down the toilet = “phew”
Labour will feel they can still win the next election. Tories will feel they are not dead in the water yet, LDs and Greens that progress can be protected and advanced. Hayward quoted in the Indy today saying he thinks Reform have topped out and that local by elections are a better or as good an indicator of where we are compared to VI polling. In which case, JL Partners get your finger out and update the Polaris model!
It’s really hard to know. Farage has made some errors recently, and Reform are looking fissiparous
And yet the electoral direction of the country still points firmly towards polarisation - some going hard left and green and more going hard right and ??
I see on X that Farage is predicting that Jenrick will take over the Tories and then Jenrick will try and outflank reform by going FURTHER to the right on migration, asylum and woke
A fascinating analysis
You can't out Farage Farage, the Tories would be better off going for say Mel Stride if they removed Kemi and focusing solely on the economy and balancing the books and placing themselves as sensible fiscal conservatives as an alternative to both Labour and Reform.
Badenock has proved she can't out war on woke Nigel and Jenrick couldn't out Farage on sending back the boats and immigrants either.
If Farage lost the next GE and left the Reform leadership then Jenrick would have a better chance as leader and to scoop up Farage's supporters on the right
Ahahahahahaha
As someone once nearly put it, “if ‘Mel Stride’ is the answer, what in the name of God’s Holy Testicles is the question??”
Viable party leader answers where you asked the question wrong Mel Stride Zarah Sultana Liz Truss Boris Johnson Iain Duncan Smith
Many individuals should face criminal trials over this scandal, but do we think any will ?
And on more depressing news both labour and the conservatives make solemn pledges to retain the triple lock which shows just how much serious trouble we are when neither are fit to govern when they put their popularity before doing the right thing
Where on earth is the leader we need to take the difficult decisions, wean us off spending and borrowing, and take the country away from an inevitable debt crisis
Robert Jenrick on Sky this morning gave an undertaking the conservatives will keep the triple lock
Correct me if I am wrong but I believe Kemi won the Tory leadership last year NOT Jenrick and Kemi has made clear she would means test the triple lock
Jenrick stated it publicly this morning so conservative party policy
Or will he have to resign?
A poster previously explained the triple lock mechanism and how it guaranteed that pensions would increase above inflation with the cost fairly rapidly ballooning out of control. It seems it would benefit all parties who think they might be in government to explain this to the electorate.
The BR report yesterday stated it will cost over £15 billion more and is unsustainable
Labour and conservatives ignore the comment by openly committed to it this morning
So why does anyone wonder why the bond markets are jittery, and are actually charging more today than under Truss
What this country needs is a politician who is prepared to lie outrageously, rather than lie cravenly or pathetically like Starmer
ie we need a right wing leader who says “yes I’m going to keep the triple lock and reform the ECHR and keep all benefits and tax the rich” etc etc
Then as soon as they get into power just shamelessly switch to “oops sorry there is no money so we’re going to ditch the triple lock and welcome back non Doms slash all benefits and quit the ECHR and also cut spending by half. Soz”
Do that in the first year. By year 5 the benefits will be showing and you can get re-elected and Britain booms again
I was kinda hoping starmer was going to do all this but it turns out he really is a dismal stupid lefty lawyer who lies to save himself and nothing else
Has anyone ever told you you are so full of s***? You should have been a fiction novelist rather than a backpacking travel writer.
I presume I touched some kind of nerve tho, TBH, I’ve no idea how or why
Many individuals should face criminal trials over this scandal, but do we think any will ?
And on more depressing news both labour and the conservatives make solemn pledges to retain the triple lock which shows just how much serious trouble we are when neither are fit to govern when they put their popularity before doing the right thing
Where on earth is the leader we need to take the difficult decisions, wean us off spending and borrowing, and take the country away from an inevitable debt crisis
Robert Jenrick on Sky this morning gave an undertaking the conservatives will keep the triple lock
Correct me if I am wrong but I believe Kemi won the Tory leadership last year NOT Jenrick and Kemi has made clear she would means test the triple lock
Is she going to take into account capital?????
More to the point, how on earth can the "triple lock" part be means tested. In the first year you'd presumably end up with two sets of pensioners, one receiving 3.1% or whatever higher than the other cohort. I know there's a change for pensioners born in 1951/53 between the basic and the new state pension but that isn't means testing. Over time it'd grow into the weirdest system tbh.
Just link it to inflation only for pensioners earning over £35k, the ones who will also lose their WFA
That'd be an extraordinary amount of political capital to spend for absolute bobbins saving. Who would have guessed Rachel posted here all this time !
Many individuals should face criminal trials over this scandal, but do we think any will ?
And on more depressing news both labour and the conservatives make solemn pledges to retain the triple lock which shows just how much serious trouble we are when neither are fit to govern when they put their popularity before doing the right thing
Where on earth is the leader we need to take the difficult decisions, wean us off spending and borrowing, and take the country away from an inevitable debt crisis
Robert Jenrick on Sky this morning gave an undertaking the conservatives will keep the triple lock
Correct me if I am wrong but I believe Kemi won the Tory leadership last year NOT Jenrick and Kemi has made clear she would means test the triple lock
Is she going to take into account capital?????
More to the point, how on earth can the "triple lock" part be means tested. In the first year you'd presumably end up with two sets of pensioners, one receiving 3.1% or whatever higher than the other cohort. I know there's a change for pensioners born in 1951/53 between the basic and the new state pension but that isn't means testing. It's a hellacious amount of effort for not much reward in the medium term ! Over time it'd grow into the weirdest system tbh.
They'll do it by age; anyone under 50 in 2025 will see their future state pension increased by nominal wages, for anyone older it will be triple locked.
Secures the gerontocracy for the next election while settling the nerves of the OBR's long term projections.
Many individuals should face criminal trials over this scandal, but do we think any will ?
And on more depressing news both labour and the conservatives make solemn pledges to retain the triple lock which shows just how much serious trouble we are when neither are fit to govern when they put their popularity before doing the right thing
Where on earth is the leader we need to take the difficult decisions, wean us off spending and borrowing, and take the country away from an inevitable debt crisis
Robert Jenrick on Sky this morning gave an undertaking the conservatives will keep the triple lock
Correct me if I am wrong but I believe Kemi won the Tory leadership last year NOT Jenrick and Kemi has made clear she would means test the triple lock
Jenrick stated it publicly this morning so conservative party policy
Or will he have to resign?
A poster previously explained the triple lock mechanism and how it guaranteed that pensions would increase above inflation with the cost fairly rapidly ballooning out of control. It seems it would benefit all parties who think they might be in government to explain this to the electorate.
One would hope that in normal circumstances everyone's wages would rise above inflation. You would expect this as the economy grows. Since even without the triple lock, pensions are linked to average wages, it follows that even without the triple lock, pensions will rise above inflation.
A scandal over the Bayeux Tapestry is exactly what this summer is missing. Looking forward to the weekend BBQ and watching England tear itself apart.
Rest is History specials, a Reform rally at Hastings, Spectator in turmoil. In. My. Veins.
After R** L*****'s disgusting piece last week I don't believe we are allowed to mention S***tator ever again.
If you think it was “disgusting” then you clearly haven’t read it and just seen the headline. Alternatively you might want to quit PB because there are infinitely more offensive things written here most days to trouble such a fragile temperament. But I think you didn’t actually read it.
Many individuals should face criminal trials over this scandal, but do we think any will ?
And on more depressing news both labour and the conservatives make solemn pledges to retain the triple lock which shows just how much serious trouble we are when neither are fit to govern when they put their popularity before doing the right thing
Where on earth is the leader we need to take the difficult decisions, wean us off spending and borrowing, and take the country away from an inevitable debt crisis
In a couple of years or so, the triple lock will take the state pension up to the level of the basic tax allowance, the latter being frozen (with the freeze hotly expected to be extended). At that point, I suggest something will have to change, to avoid the scenario whereby millions of pensioners whose only income is the state pension suddenly starting to pay tax. Somehow, the state pension and the basic tax allowance will have to be harmonised, and while it might be good news if the tax allowance were indexed to the triple lock, I suspect this will prove unaffordable and therefore the triple lock will have to go.
That looks like next year, we already know what will happen, pensioners will demand a larger personal tax allowance than everyone else, it's already started https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz74yw87jygo
Many individuals should face criminal trials over this scandal, but do we think any will ?
And on more depressing news both labour and the conservatives make solemn pledges to retain the triple lock which shows just how much serious trouble we are when neither are fit to govern when they put their popularity before doing the right thing
Where on earth is the leader we need to take the difficult decisions, wean us off spending and borrowing, and take the country away from an inevitable debt crisis
Robert Jenrick on Sky this morning gave an undertaking the conservatives will keep the triple lock
Correct me if I am wrong but I believe Kemi won the Tory leadership last year NOT Jenrick and Kemi has made clear she would means test the triple lock
Jenrick stated it publicly this morning so conservative party policy
Or will he have to resign?
A poster previously explained the triple lock mechanism and how it guaranteed that pensions would increase above inflation with the cost fairly rapidly ballooning out of control. It seems it would benefit all parties who think they might be in government to explain this to the electorate.
The BR report yesterday stated it will cost over £15 billion more and is unsustainable
Labour and conservatives ignore the comment by openly committed to it this morning
So why does anyone wonder why the bond markets are jittery, and are actually charging more today than under Truss
We are in a very depressing state
No as I just told you Badenoch has said the Tories will means test the triple lock, Labour have not committed to it beyond this parliament and Reform have also not committed to the triple lock as now.
Only the LDs have committed to permanently keep the triple lock un means tested as it is now
Many individuals should face criminal trials over this scandal, but do we think any will ?
And on more depressing news both labour and the conservatives make solemn pledges to retain the triple lock which shows just how much serious trouble we are when neither are fit to govern when they put their popularity before doing the right thing
Where on earth is the leader we need to take the difficult decisions, wean us off spending and borrowing, and take the country away from an inevitable debt crisis
Robert Jenrick on Sky this morning gave an undertaking the conservatives will keep the triple lock
Correct me if I am wrong but I believe Kemi won the Tory leadership last year NOT Jenrick and Kemi has made clear she would means test the triple lock
Jenrick stated it publicly this morning so conservative party policy
Or will he have to resign?
Jenrick is Shadow Justice Secretary not leader nor even Shadow Chancellor, note he also did not say it would not be means tested as if he had then he might have been sacked given Kemi's commitment to means test the triple lock already made
So you did watch him publicly commit to the triple lock
I doubt Badenoch would sack Jenrick under any circumstances
So as I said he did NOT say it would not be means tested by the Tories
Means testing was not discussed but confirmation of the triple lock was confirmed
If you and the conservatives are in favour of means testing the pension then that is another issues
Many individuals should face criminal trials over this scandal, but do we think any will ?
And on more depressing news both labour and the conservatives make solemn pledges to retain the triple lock which shows just how much serious trouble we are when neither are fit to govern when they put their popularity before doing the right thing
Where on earth is the leader we need to take the difficult decisions, wean us off spending and borrowing, and take the country away from an inevitable debt crisis
Robert Jenrick on Sky this morning gave an undertaking the conservatives will keep the triple lock
Correct me if I am wrong but I believe Kemi won the Tory leadership last year NOT Jenrick and Kemi has made clear she would means test the triple lock
Is she going to take into account capital?????
More to the point, how on earth can the "triple lock" part be means tested. In the first year you'd presumably end up with two sets of pensioners, one receiving 3.1% or whatever higher than the other cohort. I know there's a change for pensioners born in 1951/53 between the basic and the new state pension but that isn't means testing. Over time it'd grow into the weirdest system tbh.
Just link it to inflation only for pensioners earning over £35k, the ones who will also lose their WFA
Yes, but you would then have a two tier state pension scheme, and either there would be a widening cliff edge effect between the two, with bizarre incentives for someone about to reach £35k, or you’d need some complicated sliding scale between the two, which would be a nightmare to manage. It’s quite obvious that this suggestion hasn’t been thought through, and could only be a temporary expedient, not a sound long term basis for our state pensions.
Given how this scandal is so utterly dwarfed by other vaster scandals, I find it hard to get exercised by it. Indeed I have suspicions of those that do. This one is so much easier to take - the villains are nasty managers - so let’s make tv dramas about it and write 5000 word essays about it and ventilate about it endlessly
Rather than focusing on much greater and more troubling problems
In short: this is chaff
Talking bollocks again I see.
I have written quite a few headers on even more serious scandals and there have also been TV dramas about them and they share with this one the same essential elements which cause them to happen, to continue and to involve cruelty to the victims.
What I wrote here could and does apply to every other scandal. I am writing about it today because a report came out and to remind those with goldfish memories that nothing has changed. I have written in my book about Grenfell and blood contamination and many others and if I included every single scandal pointing out the depressing similarities it wouldn't be so much a book as a bloody enormous encyclopaedia - Cyclefree's Big Book of British Scandals.
The people mentioned in the case studies are not chaff. (The last time I heard that word used so dismissively it was by an MP in a Select Committee aimed at Dr David Kelly. He committed suicide shortly after.)
They are people like us. One of them is your age and at about the age you stopped taking drugs and turned your life around, he had a good business, a family and was looking forward to doing even better. Instead, he was wrongly convicted, had his reputation trashed, lost everything and has never been able to find employment again. He lives on charity from his family and friends. His name is Harjinder Butoy.
Don't you fucking dare call him and everyone like him and what happened to them all "chaff".
It is not easy to see appropriate retributive justice when many of the potentially guilty are politicians from Labour and the Tories plus possibly a LD lady.
Maybe one of the very few bonuses of a Farage Government is he will have no qualms about throwing political opponents to the wolves.
I wasn’t being edgy at all. As I say I respect @cyclefree too much to casually troll her for bantz
I think this scandal is now being overdone. Far greater evils - of all kinds - are happening right now - and getting worse
It is therefore emotionally easier to distract ourselves with this relatively minor affair which has gratifyingly acceptable villains (the system, evil managers) and satisfyingly humble victims - poor Mr Bates
It’s a bit like the Salt Path (tho of course this scandal is true not fiction and real people have died and suffered)
Of course there are other equally or even more serious scandals out there. But that does not make this one chaff or unimportant. You can disagree if you want but you are, I'm afraid, being profoundly ignorant and stupid in doing so.
The entire legal system failed here. Not just failed but parts of it were actively involved in this scandal. The legal system is an essential part of law and order - the most fundamental duty of the state, one which has been at the heart of our history since the Tudors, earlier in fact. What that law and order means - for the state and the people living in it, how it is enforced, what justice is, how power is exercised, how to do so fairly not arbitrarily etc - are at the heart of history and politics. This case shows what happens when that fails, when lawyers - who are meant to be the custodes of this system, who are meant to be trustworthy - break that trust. They are the gatekeepers and when they go wrong the consequences are awful.
Someone asked why the courts didn't inquire. I'll tell you why. If someone pleads guilty the court assumes they've been properly advised. It doesn't inquire into whether they've been coerced or bullied or told lies or badly advised. It trusts that the professionals have done their job honestly.
But they didn't and when trust evaporates no system, no society can function.
I am incandescent about this scandal because these professionals were meant to be lawyers and investigators like me. But unlike me they have disgraced the profession I have spent a lifetime in. And they have done incalculable harm to the trust we ought to be able to have in professionals, in those we have to rely on.
You think this is a minor matter.
I give you Edmund Burke:
"Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little."
Me writing about this is my very small attempt to do a little.
A scandal over the Bayeux Tapestry is exactly what this summer is missing. Looking forward to the weekend BBQ and watching England tear itself apart.
Rest is History specials, a Reform rally at Hastings, Spectator in turmoil. In. My. Veins.
After R** L*****'s disgusting piece last week I don't believe we are allowed to mention S***tator ever again.
If you think it was “disgusting” then you clearly haven’t read it and just seen the headline. Alternatively you might want to quit PB because there are infinitely more offensive things written here most days to trouble such a fragile temperament. But I think you didn’t actually read it.
I read it and I genuinely thought he could have gone a lot further with the “modest proposal” satire and made it much more offensive - and funny
It was pretty weaksauce (and he can be an excellent polemicist). The fact it caused such a stir is an indictment of the times
Many individuals should face criminal trials over this scandal, but do we think any will ?
And on more depressing news both labour and the conservatives make solemn pledges to retain the triple lock which shows just how much serious trouble we are when neither are fit to govern when they put their popularity before doing the right thing
Where on earth is the leader we need to take the difficult decisions, wean us off spending and borrowing, and take the country away from an inevitable debt crisis
In a couple of years or so, the triple lock will take the state pension up to the level of the basic tax allowance, the latter being frozen (with the freeze hotly expected to be extended). At that point, I suggest something will have to change, to avoid the scenario whereby millions of pensioners whose only income is the state pension suddenly starting to pay tax. Somehow, the state pension and the basic tax allowance will have to be harmonised, and while it might be good news if the tax allowance were indexed to the triple lock, I suspect this will prove unaffordable and therefore the triple lock will have to go.
That looks like next year, we already know what will happen, pensioners will demand a larger personal tax allowance than everyone else, it's already started https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz74yw87jygo
Morning all. Polling start to the morning today from More In Common. As you were figures. We are still in the holding pattern that emerged after the May locals with minor noise moves week to week. None of the 'scandals' or dramas are moving the dial. The creation of the Dried Fruits will likely be the next mover, weird black swans or Trussery notwithstanding
➡️ REF UK 29% (nc) 🌹 LAB 24% (nc) 🌳 CON 19% (nc) 🔶 LIB DEM 14% (+2) 🌍 GREEN 7% (-2) 🟡 SNP 3% (nc)
N = 2,084 | Dates:4 - 7/7 | Change w 30/6
The curious incident….
Labour might actually be relived by these polls. It seems that the welfare climbdown has not hurt them - or it has hurt them politically but not electorally (so far). Put it another way, they are already in the toilet but they’re not even further down the toilet = “phew”
Labour will feel they can still win the next election. Tories will feel they are not dead in the water yet, LDs and Greens that progress can be protected and advanced. Hayward quoted in the Indy today saying he thinks Reform have topped out and that local by elections are a better or as good an indicator of where we are compared to VI polling. In which case, JL Partners get your finger out and update the Polaris model!
It’s really hard to know. Farage has made some errors recently, and Reform are looking fissiparous
And yet the electoral direction of the country still points firmly towards polarisation - some going hard left and green and more going hard right and ??
I see on X that Farage is predicting that Jenrick will take over the Tories and then Jenrick will try and outflank reform by going FURTHER to the right on migration, asylum and woke
A fascinating analysis
You can't out Farage Farage, the Tories would be better off going for say Mel Stride if they removed Kemi and focusing solely on the economy and balancing the books and placing themselves as sensible fiscal conservatives as an alternative to both Labour and Reform.
Badenock has proved she can't out war on woke Nigel and Jenrick couldn't out Farage on sending back the boats and immigrants either.
If Farage lost the next GE and left the Reform leadership then Jenrick would have a better chance as leader and to scoop up Farage's supporters on the right
Ahahahahahaha
As someone once nearly put it, “if ‘Mel Stride’ is the answer, what in the name of God’s Holy Testicles is the question??”
Viable party leader answers where you asked the question wrong Mel Stride Zarah Sultana Liz Truss Boris Johnson Iain Duncan Smith
Mel Stride could be very credible, started a successful business (unlike Starmer and Davey) after Oxford (unlike Kemi), grammar school boy (unlike Farage) etc.
If Kemi went he could be the Michael Howard to her IDS.
Boris was of course the only Conservative leader to get Brexit done and beat Corbyn with an overall majority and keep Farage's party under 10%
Many individuals should face criminal trials over this scandal, but do we think any will ?
And on more depressing news both labour and the conservatives make solemn pledges to retain the triple lock which shows just how much serious trouble we are when neither are fit to govern when they put their popularity before doing the right thing
Where on earth is the leader we need to take the difficult decisions, wean us off spending and borrowing, and take the country away from an inevitable debt crisis
Robert Jenrick on Sky this morning gave an undertaking the conservatives will keep the triple lock
Correct me if I am wrong but I believe Kemi won the Tory leadership last year NOT Jenrick and Kemi has made clear she would means test the triple lock
Is she going to take into account capital?????
More to the point, how on earth can the "triple lock" part be means tested. In the first year you'd presumably end up with two sets of pensioners, one receiving 3.1% or whatever higher than the other cohort. I know there's a change for pensioners born in 1951/53 between the basic and the new state pension but that isn't means testing. Over time it'd grow into the weirdest system tbh.
Just link it to inflation only for pensioners earning over £35k, the ones who will also lose their WFA
Yes, but you would then have a two tier state pension scheme, and either there would be a widening cliff edge effect between the two, with bizarre incentives for someone about to reach £35k, or you’d need some complicated sliding scale between the two, which would be a nightmare to manage. It’s quite obvious that this suggestion hasn’t been thought through, and could only be a temporary expedient, not a sound long term basis for our state pensions.
Surely you could keep your private pension invested and take no income and then receive the higher state pension for a number of years before you start drawing on capital?
Given how this scandal is so utterly dwarfed by other vaster scandals, I find it hard to get exercised by it. Indeed I have suspicions of those that do. This one is so much easier to take - the villains are nasty managers - so let’s make tv dramas about it and write 5000 word essays about it and ventilate about it endlessly
Rather than focusing on much greater and more troubling problems
In short: this is chaff
Talking bollocks again I see.
I have written quite a few headers on even more serious scandals and there have also been TV dramas about them and they share with this one the same essential elements which cause them to happen, to continue and to involve cruelty to the victims.
What I wrote here could and does apply to every other scandal. I am writing about it today because a report came out and to remind those with goldfish memories that nothing has changed. I have written in my book about Grenfell and blood contamination and many others and if I included every single scandal pointing out the depressing similarities it wouldn't be so much a book as a bloody enormous encyclopaedia - Cyclefree's Big Book of British Scandals.
The people mentioned in the case studies are not chaff. (The last time I heard that word used so dismissively it was by an MP in a Select Committee aimed at Dr David Kelly. He committed suicide shortly after.)
They are people like us. One of them is your age and at about the age you stopped taking drugs and turned your life around, he had a good business, a family and was looking forward to doing even better. Instead, he was wrongly convicted, had his reputation trashed, lost everything and has never been able to find employment again. He lives on charity from his family and friends. His name is Harjinder Butoy.
Don't you fucking dare call him and everyone like him and what happened to them all "chaff".
I must admit, for reasons I find hard to understand, I have also found it hard to get too exercised about this scandal. Perhaps it is too technical, too hard to follow. But for that reason I am very grateful that there are others like Cyclefree who do. Because I'm exercised about it now. It's the casual trashing of people's reputations which really rankles. "Thou shalt not bear false witness" is one of the less fashionable commandments, but it's the biggie, really. Most people have nothing more valuable.
Good header, anyway. I liked the attempt to broaden the scope to 'all scandals' and the thought that those in charge consider themselves virtuous because they are in charge. Never trust people whise starting point is that they are the good guys, because all sorts of dubious conclusions flow from that.
It’s really simple. The Horizon computer system made shit up. They prosecuted people. When they found out, early on, that it was bollocks, they lied to cover it up. And kept on prosecuting people.
That's a good summary. I have two major feelings about the scandal: exasperation at the whole awful mess, and a weariness that we've seen it all before, and no doubt we'll see it all again. Lessons will not be learnt.
And it is important, because the next scandal and cover-up might affect me. Or you. Or perhaps even @Leon .
@Leon - how could he be affected by a scandal? It would take something really unlikely, like being arrested for a crime he didn’t commit and being remanded for years, awaiting trial.
A scandal over the Bayeux Tapestry is exactly what this summer is missing. Looking forward to the weekend BBQ and watching England tear itself apart.
Rest is History specials, a Reform rally at Hastings, Spectator in turmoil. In. My. Veins.
After R** L*****'s disgusting piece last week I don't believe we are allowed to mention S***tator ever again.
If you think it was “disgusting” then you clearly haven’t read it and just seen the headline. Alternatively you might want to quit PB because there are infinitely more offensive things written here most days to trouble such a fragile temperament. But I think you didn’t actually read it.
I read it and I genuinely thought he could have gone a lot further with the “modest proposal” satire and made it much more offensive - and funny
It was pretty weaksauce (and he can be an excellent polemicist). The fact it caused such a stir is an indictment of the times
Agreed, the fact that he writes that doing such a thing would be psychopathic and wrong shows it’s just weak satire. In fact he comes across as a fan of protest songs, or if not a fan as such then accepting of their role in society.
Many individuals should face criminal trials over this scandal, but do we think any will ?
And on more depressing news both labour and the conservatives make solemn pledges to retain the triple lock which shows just how much serious trouble we are when neither are fit to govern when they put their popularity before doing the right thing
Where on earth is the leader we need to take the difficult decisions, wean us off spending and borrowing, and take the country away from an inevitable debt crisis
Robert Jenrick on Sky this morning gave an undertaking the conservatives will keep the triple lock
Correct me if I am wrong but I believe Kemi won the Tory leadership last year NOT Jenrick and Kemi has made clear she would means test the triple lock
Jenrick stated it publicly this morning so conservative party policy
Or will he have to resign?
A poster previously explained the triple lock mechanism and how it guaranteed that pensions would increase above inflation with the cost fairly rapidly ballooning out of control. It seems it would benefit all parties who think they might be in government to explain this to the electorate.
The BR report yesterday stated it will cost over £15 billion more and is unsustainable
Labour and conservatives ignore the comment by openly committed to it this morning
So why does anyone wonder why the bond markets are jittery, and are actually charging more today than under Truss
We are in a very depressing state
No as I just told you Badenoch has said the Tories will means test the triple lock, Labour have not committed to it beyond this parliament and Reform have also not committed to the triple lock as now.
Only the LDs have committed to permanently keep the triple lock un means tested as it is now
You are so obtuse
Labour and conservatives have committed to the triple lock for this parliament
Means testing is another subject altogether and maybe you should explain exactly how Badenoch is considering means testing the pension
What this country needs is a politician who is prepared to lie outrageously, rather than lie cravenly or pathetically like Starmer
ie we need a right wing leader who says “yes I’m going to keep the triple lock and reform the ECHR and keep all benefits and tax the rich” etc etc
Then as soon as they get into power just shamelessly switch to “oops sorry there is no money so we’re going to ditch the triple lock and welcome back non Doms slash all benefits and quit the ECHR and also cut spending by half. Soz”
Do that in the first year. By year 5 the benefits will be showing and you can get re-elected and Britain booms again
I was kinda hoping starmer was going to do all this but it turns out he really is a dismal stupid lefty lawyer who lies to save himself and nothing else
Has anyone ever told you you are so full of s***? You should have been a fiction novelist rather than a backpacking travel writer.
I presume I touched some kind of nerve tho, TBH, I’ve no idea how or why
I don't want to live in your right wing version of Victorian Britain. You'll be fine galavanting around the free world while we are locked into some Farage-Jenrick nightmare.
Many individuals should face criminal trials over this scandal, but do we think any will ?
And on more depressing news both labour and the conservatives make solemn pledges to retain the triple lock which shows just how much serious trouble we are when neither are fit to govern when they put their popularity before doing the right thing
Where on earth is the leader we need to take the difficult decisions, wean us off spending and borrowing, and take the country away from an inevitable debt crisis
In a couple of years or so, the triple lock will take the state pension up to the level of the basic tax allowance, the latter being frozen (with the freeze hotly expected to be extended). At that point, I suggest something will have to change, to avoid the scenario whereby millions of pensioners whose only income is the state pension suddenly starting to pay tax. Somehow, the state pension and the basic tax allowance will have to be harmonised, and while it might be good news if the tax allowance were indexed to the triple lock, I suspect this will prove unaffordable and therefore the triple lock will have to go.
That looks like next year, we already know what will happen, pensioners will demand a larger personal tax allowance than everyone else, it's already started https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz74yw87jygo
Everyone read that article. We. Are. F*****.
Ridiculous. The only reason they would be paying (a tiny bit of) tax is because the pension is going up much faster than inflation.
Given how this scandal is so utterly dwarfed by other vaster scandals, I find it hard to get exercised by it. Indeed I have suspicions of those that do. This one is so much easier to take - the villains are nasty managers - so let’s make tv dramas about it and write 5000 word essays about it and ventilate about it endlessly
Rather than focusing on much greater and more troubling problems
In short: this is chaff
Talking bollocks again I see.
I have written quite a few headers on even more serious scandals and there have also been TV dramas about them and they share with this one the same essential elements which cause them to happen, to continue and to involve cruelty to the victims.
What I wrote here could and does apply to every other scandal. I am writing about it today because a report came out and to remind those with goldfish memories that nothing has changed. I have written in my book about Grenfell and blood contamination and many others and if I included every single scandal pointing out the depressing similarities it wouldn't be so much a book as a bloody enormous encyclopaedia - Cyclefree's Big Book of British Scandals.
The people mentioned in the case studies are not chaff. (The last time I heard that word used so dismissively it was by an MP in a Select Committee aimed at Dr David Kelly. He committed suicide shortly after.)
They are people like us. One of them is your age and at about the age you stopped taking drugs and turned your life around, he had a good business, a family and was looking forward to doing even better. Instead, he was wrongly convicted, had his reputation trashed, lost everything and has never been able to find employment again. He lives on charity from his family and friends. His name is Harjinder Butoy.
Don't you fucking dare call him and everyone like him and what happened to them all "chaff".
It is not easy to see appropriate retributive justice when many of the potentially guilty are politicians from Labour and the Tories plus possibly a LD lady.
Maybe one of the very few bonuses of a Farage Government is he will have no qualms about throwing political opponents to the wolves.
I wasn’t being edgy at all. As I say I respect @cyclefree too much to casually troll her for bantz
I think this scandal is now being overdone. Far greater evils - of all kinds - are happening right now - and getting worse
It is therefore emotionally easier to distract ourselves with this relatively minor affair which has gratifyingly acceptable villains (the system, evil managers) and satisfyingly humble victims - poor Mr Bates
It’s a bit like the Salt Path (tho of course this scandal is true not fiction and real people have died and suffered)
Of course there are other equally or even more serious scandals out there. But that does not make this one chaff or unimportant. You can disagree if you want but you are, I'm afraid, being profoundly ignorant and stupid in doing so.
The entire legal system failed here. Not just failed but parts of it were actively involved in this scandal. The legal system is an essential part of law and order - the most fundamental duty of the state, one which has been at the heart of our history since the Tudors, earlier in fact. What that law and order means - for the state and the people living in it, how it is enforced, what justice is, how power is exercised, how to do so fairly not arbitrarily etc - are at the heart of history and politics. This case shows what happens when that fails, when lawyers - who are meant to be the custodes of this system, who are meant to be trustworthy - break that trust. They are the gatekeepers and when they go wrong the consequences are awful.
Someone asked why the courts didn't inquire. I'll tell you why. If someone pleads guilty the court assumes they've been properly advised. It doesn't inquire into whether they've been coerced or bullied or told lies or badly advised. It trusts that the professionals have done their job honestly.
But they didn't and when trust evaporates no system, no society can function.
I am incandescent about this scandal because these professionals were meant to be lawyers and investigators like me. But unlike me they have disgraced the profession I have spent a lifetime in. And they have done incalculable harm to the trust we ought to be able to have in professionals, in those we have to rely on.
You think this is a minor matter.
I give you Edmund Burke:
"Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little."
Me writing about this is my very small attempt to do a little.
We can all care about different things. You REALLY care about this; good for you
I really don’t, as is my right. Indeed I believe this story is an emotional diversion (hence “chaff” in the military sense) - it diverts us from graver matters
Anyway I must bid goodbye from sunny Bulgaria for now. I have a ticket to ride home
Many individuals should face criminal trials over this scandal, but do we think any will ?
And on more depressing news both labour and the conservatives make solemn pledges to retain the triple lock which shows just how much serious trouble we are when neither are fit to govern when they put their popularity before doing the right thing
Where on earth is the leader we need to take the difficult decisions, wean us off spending and borrowing, and take the country away from an inevitable debt crisis
In a couple of years or so, the triple lock will take the state pension up to the level of the basic tax allowance, the latter being frozen (with the freeze hotly expected to be extended). At that point, I suggest something will have to change, to avoid the scenario whereby millions of pensioners whose only income is the state pension suddenly starting to pay tax. Somehow, the state pension and the basic tax allowance will have to be harmonised, and while it might be good news if the tax allowance were indexed to the triple lock, I suspect this will prove unaffordable and therefore the triple lock will have to go.
That looks like next year, we already know what will happen, pensioners will demand a larger personal tax allowance than everyone else, it's already started https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz74yw87jygo
Everyone read that article. We. Are. F*****.
Quadruple Lock
The state pension is made equal to the personal allowance - both as a maximum and a minimum.
So if the politicians want the state pension to rise, they will have to raise the personal allowance.
Many individuals should face criminal trials over this scandal, but do we think any will ?
And on more depressing news both labour and the conservatives make solemn pledges to retain the triple lock which shows just how much serious trouble we are when neither are fit to govern when they put their popularity before doing the right thing
Where on earth is the leader we need to take the difficult decisions, wean us off spending and borrowing, and take the country away from an inevitable debt crisis
In a couple of years or so, the triple lock will take the state pension up to the level of the basic tax allowance, the latter being frozen (with the freeze hotly expected to be extended). At that point, I suggest something will have to change, to avoid the scenario whereby millions of pensioners whose only income is the state pension suddenly starting to pay tax. Somehow, the state pension and the basic tax allowance will have to be harmonised, and while it might be good news if the tax allowance were indexed to the triple lock, I suspect this will prove unaffordable and therefore the triple lock will have to go.
That looks like next year, we already know what will happen, pensioners will demand a larger personal tax allowance than everyone else, it's already started https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz74yw87jygo
Everyone read that article. We. Are. F*****.
Whilst I may not express your comment as you do, but yes we are and it is really depressing for the future of our grandchildren two of whom are entering the jobs market
It’s the same with the victims of the tainted blood scandal.
Politicians and the political classes more concerned about protecting themselves and their institutions.
They all talk a good game but don’t deliver. I doubt compensation will be sorted this Parliament and this is not really a Labour thing, yet another shit legacy from the past govts.
Plenty of sympathetic warm words and half apologies, ‘I’m sorry I was misled’, however no hard cash or restitution and I doubt the likes of Vennels will ever face a court over this.
Sadly you are absolutely right and it isn't just those two. There are several other high profile cases and some others that are much smaller so don't have any attention. I am involved in helping a group of one of these scandals. I don't want to go into details here but @Cyclefree and @NickPalmer are aware of it who have given a little help in the past.
Politicians often quote 'It must never happen again' and it always does.
In the case I am helping on it is 12 years on so the Tories, Labour and the LDs all have a hand in it. Finally at the end of the last Govt we got an admission of liability from the Govt and now that has been backtracked on. Because most impacted are in their 80s many have died or will die without resolution.
Our impression is it is mainly civil servants who block progress. This has been clear from FOIs carried out and ministers change so often you go around the loop over and over again. It has all party support.
Just to give you some idea of the pain (and the campaign for justice, as with the PO, is often more painful than the original event, or at least makes it much worse) our campaign has had both the NAO and PAC find in our favour, 2 parliamentary debates and two blocked bills.
The process is as punishing as the original ordeal
I guess we only get to hear of the high profile ones. There must be dozens
I am sure there are. I doubt you will be aware of the one I am involved in and it has a relatively cheap simple solution and for many the process is far worse than the original issue. Of the original campaign committee, half have died even though the National Audit Office and Parliamentary Accounts Committee found the Govt liable.
I help this campaign because I am aware of people impacted and it makes me very angry.
We need more people getting angry
The issue is at heart principa-agent
If an individual short-circuits the process then they are at individual risk but wo t get additional credit. So it takes leadership by those capable of driving change. But they are all focused on “does this advance my chances of getting/keeping the to job”,
With social media today the story would be “Sunak pays billions in compensation for PO scandal”. A meaningful percentage of people seeing that headline would assume that Sunak did something wrong.
I've not done more than glance at it but am sure it is a bundle of laughs for fans of the process state and a chance for GCSE English classes to identify split infinitives and other solecisms.
Given how this scandal is so utterly dwarfed by other vaster scandals, I find it hard to get exercised by it. Indeed I have suspicions of those that do. This one is so much easier to take - the villains are nasty managers - so let’s make tv dramas about it and write 5000 word essays about it and ventilate about it endlessly
Rather than focusing on much greater and more troubling problems
In short: this is chaff
Talking bollocks again I see.
I have written quite a few headers on even more serious scandals and there have also been TV dramas about them and they share with this one the same essential elements which cause them to happen, to continue and to involve cruelty to the victims.
What I wrote here could and does apply to every other scandal. I am writing about it today because a report came out and to remind those with goldfish memories that nothing has changed. I have written in my book about Grenfell and blood contamination and many others and if I included every single scandal pointing out the depressing similarities it wouldn't be so much a book as a bloody enormous encyclopaedia - Cyclefree's Big Book of British Scandals.
The people mentioned in the case studies are not chaff. (The last time I heard that word used so dismissively it was by an MP in a Select Committee aimed at Dr David Kelly. He committed suicide shortly after.)
They are people like us. One of them is your age and at about the age you stopped taking drugs and turned your life around, he had a good business, a family and was looking forward to doing even better. Instead, he was wrongly convicted, had his reputation trashed, lost everything and has never been able to find employment again. He lives on charity from his family and friends. His name is Harjinder Butoy.
Don't you fucking dare call him and everyone like him and what happened to them all "chaff".
I must admit, for reasons I find hard to understand, I have also found it hard to get too exercised about this scandal. Perhaps it is too technical, too hard to follow. But for that reason I am very grateful that there are others like Cyclefree who do. Because I'm exercised about it now. It's the casual trashing of people's reputations which really rankles. "Thou shalt not bear false witness" is one of the less fashionable commandments, but it's the biggie, really. Most people have nothing more valuable.
Good header, anyway. I liked the attempt to broaden the scope to 'all scandals' and the thought that those in charge consider themselves virtuous because they are in charge. Never trust people whise starting point is that they are the good guys, because all sorts of dubious conclusions flow from that.
It’s really simple. The Horizon computer system made shit up. They prosecuted people. When they found out, early on, that it was bollocks, they lied to cover it up. And kept on prosecuting people.
That's a good summary. I have two major feelings about the scandal: exasperation at the whole awful mess, and a weariness that we've seen it all before, and no doubt we'll see it all again. Lessons will not be learnt.
And it is important, because the next scandal and cover-up might affect me. Or you. Or perhaps even @Leon .
@Leon - how could he be affected by a scandal? It would take something really unlikely, like being arrested for a crime he didn’t commit and being remanded for years, awaiting trial.
Apparently it was an open secret in publishing that the Salt Path duo were full of shit. Did @Leon know or guess? I mean we can't have travel writing - an honest account of real life adventures - turned into made up fiction, now can we? How could we survive such a revelation?
Given how this scandal is so utterly dwarfed by other vaster scandals, I find it hard to get exercised by it. Indeed I have suspicions of those that do. This one is so much easier to take - the villains are nasty managers - so let’s make tv dramas about it and write 5000 word essays about it and ventilate about it endlessly
Rather than focusing on much greater and more troubling problems
In short: this is chaff
Talking bollocks again I see.
I have written quite a few headers on even more serious scandals and there have also been TV dramas about them and they share with this one the same essential elements which cause them to happen, to continue and to involve cruelty to the victims.
What I wrote here could and does apply to every other scandal. I am writing about it today because a report came out and to remind those with goldfish memories that nothing has changed. I have written in my book about Grenfell and blood contamination and many others and if I included every single scandal pointing out the depressing similarities it wouldn't be so much a book as a bloody enormous encyclopaedia - Cyclefree's Big Book of British Scandals.
The people mentioned in the case studies are not chaff. (The last time I heard that word used so dismissively it was by an MP in a Select Committee aimed at Dr David Kelly. He committed suicide shortly after.)
They are people like us. One of them is your age and at about the age you stopped taking drugs and turned your life around, he had a good business, a family and was looking forward to doing even better. Instead, he was wrongly convicted, had his reputation trashed, lost everything and has never been able to find employment again. He lives on charity from his family and friends. His name is Harjinder Butoy.
Don't you fucking dare call him and everyone like him and what happened to them all "chaff".
It is not easy to see appropriate retributive justice when many of the potentially guilty are politicians from Labour and the Tories plus possibly a LD lady.
Maybe one of the very few bonuses of a Farage Government is he will have no qualms about throwing political opponents to the wolves.
I wasn’t being edgy at all. As I say I respect @cyclefree too much to casually troll her for bantz
I think this scandal is now being overdone. Far greater evils - of all kinds - are happening right now - and getting worse
It is therefore emotionally easier to distract ourselves with this relatively minor affair which has gratifyingly acceptable villains (the system, evil managers) and satisfyingly humble victims - poor Mr Bates
It’s a bit like the Salt Path (tho of course this scandal is true not fiction and real people have died and suffered)
Of course there are other equally or even more serious scandals out there. But that does not make this one chaff or unimportant. You can disagree if you want but you are, I'm afraid, being profoundly ignorant and stupid in doing so.
The entire legal system failed here. Not just failed but parts of it were actively involved in this scandal. The legal system is an essential part of law and order - the most fundamental duty of the state, one which has been at the heart of our history since the Tudors, earlier in fact. What that law and order means - for the state and the people living in it, how it is enforced, what justice is, how power is exercised, how to do so fairly not arbitrarily etc - are at the heart of history and politics. This case shows what happens when that fails, when lawyers - who are meant to be the custodes of this system, who are meant to be trustworthy - break that trust. They are the gatekeepers and when they go wrong the consequences are awful.
Someone asked why the courts didn't inquire. I'll tell you why. If someone pleads guilty the court assumes they've been properly advised. It doesn't inquire into whether they've been coerced or bullied or told lies or badly advised. It trusts that the professionals have done their job honestly.
But they didn't and when trust evaporates no system, no society can function.
I am incandescent about this scandal because these professionals were meant to be lawyers and investigators like me. But unlike me they have disgraced the profession I have spent a lifetime in. And they have done incalculable harm to the trust we ought to be able to have in professionals, in those we have to rely on.
You think this is a minor matter.
I give you Edmund Burke:
"Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little."
Me writing about this is my very small attempt to do a little.
Well said. There are several people who should be serving sizeable prison sentences for their role in this sorry affair.
I've not done more than glance at it but am sure it is a bundle of laughs for fans of the process state and a chance for GCSE English classes to identify split infinitives and other solecisms.
Impenetrable thicket of words, and not much else. No doubt boxes have been ticked, somewhere in there.
Many individuals should face criminal trials over this scandal, but do we think any will ?
And on more depressing news both labour and the conservatives make solemn pledges to retain the triple lock which shows just how much serious trouble we are when neither are fit to govern when they put their popularity before doing the right thing
Where on earth is the leader we need to take the difficult decisions, wean us off spending and borrowing, and take the country away from an inevitable debt crisis
In a couple of years or so, the triple lock will take the state pension up to the level of the basic tax allowance, the latter being frozen (with the freeze hotly expected to be extended). At that point, I suggest something will have to change, to avoid the scenario whereby millions of pensioners whose only income is the state pension suddenly starting to pay tax. Somehow, the state pension and the basic tax allowance will have to be harmonised, and while it might be good news if the tax allowance were indexed to the triple lock, I suspect this will prove unaffordable and therefore the triple lock will have to go.
That looks like next year, we already know what will happen, pensioners will demand a larger personal tax allowance than everyone else, it's already started https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz74yw87jygo
The people mentioned are on solely state pension ie below even full time minimum wage but fear being drawn into income tax
A scandal over the Bayeux Tapestry is exactly what this summer is missing. Looking forward to the weekend BBQ and watching England tear itself apart.
Rest is History specials, a Reform rally at Hastings, Spectator in turmoil. In. My. Veins.
After R** L*****'s disgusting piece last week I don't believe we are allowed to mention S***tator ever again.
If you think it was “disgusting” then you clearly haven’t read it and just seen the headline. Alternatively you might want to quit PB because there are infinitely more offensive things written here most days to trouble such a fragile temperament. But I think you didn’t actually read it.
I read it and I genuinely thought he could have gone a lot further with the “modest proposal” satire and made it much more offensive - and funny
It was pretty weaksauce (and he can be an excellent polemicist). The fact it caused such a stir is an indictment of the times
Agreed, the fact that he writes that doing such a thing would be psychopathic and wrong shows it’s just weak satire. In fact he comes across as a fan of protest songs, or if not a fan as such then accepting of their role in society.
Liddle was originally a lefty. As is so often the case
I think I might be unique in that I was really quite right wing as a kid (partly to shock and be different) and I am really quite right wing now (because this is obviously the correct perspective)
It’s been fun watching all my young lefty friends get closer and closer to my thinking over the decades. Then become uncomfortable when I point this out
Many individuals should face criminal trials over this scandal, but do we think any will ?
And on more depressing news both labour and the conservatives make solemn pledges to retain the triple lock which shows just how much serious trouble we are when neither are fit to govern when they put their popularity before doing the right thing
Where on earth is the leader we need to take the difficult decisions, wean us off spending and borrowing, and take the country away from an inevitable debt crisis
Robert Jenrick on Sky this morning gave an undertaking the conservatives will keep the triple lock
Correct me if I am wrong but I believe Kemi won the Tory leadership last year NOT Jenrick and Kemi has made clear she would means test the triple lock
Is she going to take into account capital?????
More to the point, how on earth can the "triple lock" part be means tested. In the first year you'd presumably end up with two sets of pensioners, one receiving 3.1% or whatever higher than the other cohort. I know there's a change for pensioners born in 1951/53 between the basic and the new state pension but that isn't means testing. It's a hellacious amount of effort for not much reward in the medium term ! Over time it'd grow into the weirdest system tbh.
Yes, just daft.
Get rid of the triple lock. Simple; effective. Labour is polling around 15% with the demographic. What have they got to lose ?
In three words "Winter Fuel Allowance". For all this government's mishandling of the partial removal, it is an absolute nonsense that it should be the public's biggest complaint of the Labour administration, by far, and as shown in the word cloud on this site a few days ago.
Many individuals should face criminal trials over this scandal, but do we think any will ?
And on more depressing news both labour and the conservatives make solemn pledges to retain the triple lock which shows just how much serious trouble we are when neither are fit to govern when they put their popularity before doing the right thing
Where on earth is the leader we need to take the difficult decisions, wean us off spending and borrowing, and take the country away from an inevitable debt crisis
In a couple of years or so, the triple lock will take the state pension up to the level of the basic tax allowance, the latter being frozen (with the freeze hotly expected to be extended). At that point, I suggest something will have to change, to avoid the scenario whereby millions of pensioners whose only income is the state pension suddenly starting to pay tax. Somehow, the state pension and the basic tax allowance will have to be harmonised, and while it might be good news if the tax allowance were indexed to the triple lock, I suspect this will prove unaffordable and therefore the triple lock will have to go.
That looks like next year, we already know what will happen, pensioners will demand a larger personal tax allowance than everyone else, it's already started https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz74yw87jygo
Everyone read that article. We. Are. F*****.
Quadruple Lock
The state pension is made equal to the personal allowance - both as a maximum and a minimum.
So if the politicians want the state pension to rise, they will have to raise the personal allowance.
Many individuals should face criminal trials over this scandal, but do we think any will ?
And on more depressing news both labour and the conservatives make solemn pledges to retain the triple lock which shows just how much serious trouble we are when neither are fit to govern when they put their popularity before doing the right thing
Where on earth is the leader we need to take the difficult decisions, wean us off spending and borrowing, and take the country away from an inevitable debt crisis
Robert Jenrick on Sky this morning gave an undertaking the conservatives will keep the triple lock
Correct me if I am wrong but I believe Kemi won the Tory leadership last year NOT Jenrick and Kemi has made clear she would means test the triple lock
Is she going to take into account capital?????
More to the point, how on earth can the "triple lock" part be means tested. In the first year you'd presumably end up with two sets of pensioners, one receiving 3.1% or whatever higher than the other cohort. I know there's a change for pensioners born in 1951/53 between the basic and the new state pension but that isn't means testing. It's a hellacious amount of effort for not much reward in the medium term ! Over time it'd grow into the weirdest system tbh.
Yes, just daft.
Get rid of the triple lock. Simple; effective. Labour is polling around 15% with the demographic. What have they got to lose ?
In three words "Winter Fuel Allowance". For all this government's mishandling of the partial removal, it is an absolute nonsense that it should be the public's biggest complaint of the Labour administration, by far, and as shown in the word cloud on this site a few days ago.
Voters thought they were electing a Labour government, not one that removed granny's heating in winter as its first big act to raise funds while not raising tax on the wealthiest and rich and the highest earners via a wealth tax or a higher top rate of income tax at all.
Starmer is polling lower than any Labour leader since WW2 as he is seen to be a PM for the rich and woke liberal metropolitan elite not the working class and ordinary middle class people. Hence Rayner is like a shark waiting to pounce and Reeves is dead in the water sooner rather than later and Farage has been making hay
I have discovered enough sleeping bags, camping equipment, Barbour jackets, anoraks, rucksacks, army surplus stuff, knives, torches, assorted tools and so on to equip a small militia to climb Everest! Also a large plastic bag full of ...... boom tish! ..... plastic bags.
If anyone is short of any of these please apply to me.
Then there is the wine breather in a box. I am sure PB'ers are familiar with this - it is another way of describing a decanter into which wine must be poured so that it can breathe before being drunk. A lovely idea but since in this household the wine barely makes it inside the front door before being drunk at great speed by my OH (not me), it is wholly unnecessary. I have been laughing about it for days. I am married, I now realise, to the love child of Harold Steptoe and Miss Havisham.
Morning all. Polling start to the morning today from More In Common. As you were figures. We are still in the holding pattern that emerged after the May locals with minor noise moves week to week. None of the 'scandals' or dramas are moving the dial. The creation of the Dried Fruits will likely be the next mover, weird black swans or Trussery notwithstanding
➡️ REF UK 29% (nc) 🌹 LAB 24% (nc) 🌳 CON 19% (nc) 🔶 LIB DEM 14% (+2) 🌍 GREEN 7% (-2) 🟡 SNP 3% (nc)
N = 2,084 | Dates:4 - 7/7 | Change w 30/6
The curious incident….
Labour might actually be relived by these polls. It seems that the welfare climbdown has not hurt them - or it has hurt them politically but not electorally (so far). Put it another way, they are already in the toilet but they’re not even further down the toilet = “phew”
Labour will feel they can still win the next election. Tories will feel they are not dead in the water yet, LDs and Greens that progress can be protected and advanced. Hayward quoted in the Indy today saying he thinks Reform have topped out and that local by elections are a better or as good an indicator of where we are compared to VI polling. In which case, JL Partners get your finger out and update the Polaris model!
It’s really hard to know. Farage has made some errors recently, and Reform are looking fissiparous
And yet the electoral direction of the country still points firmly towards polarisation - some going hard left and green and more going hard right and ??
I see on X that Farage is predicting that Jenrick will take over the Tories and then Jenrick will try and outflank reform by going FURTHER to the right on migration, asylum and woke
A fascinating analysis
You can't out Farage Farage, the Tories would be better off going for say Mel Stride if they removed Kemi and focusing solely on the economy and balancing the books and placing themselves as sensible fiscal conservatives as an alternative to both Labour and Reform.
Badenock has proved she can't out war on woke Nigel and Jenrick couldn't out Farage on sending back the boats and immigrants either.
If Farage lost the next GE and left the Reform leadership then Jenrick would have a better chance as leader and to scoop up Farage's supporters on the right
Ahahahahahaha
As someone once nearly put it, “if ‘Mel Stride’ is the answer, what in the name of God’s Holy Testicles is the question??”
Viable party leader answers where you asked the question wrong Mel Stride Zarah Sultana Liz Truss Boris Johnson Iain Duncan Smith
Mel Stride could be very credible, started a successful business (unlike Starmer and Davey) after Oxford (unlike Kemi), grammar school boy (unlike Farage) etc.
If Kemi went he could be the Michael Howard to her IDS.
Boris was of course the only Conservative leader to get Brexit done and beat Corbyn with an overall majority and keep Farage's party under 10%
To what extent is Boris responsible for the Conservative Party's current death spiral? Discuss.
Many individuals should face criminal trials over this scandal, but do we think any will ?
And on more depressing news both labour and the conservatives make solemn pledges to retain the triple lock which shows just how much serious trouble we are when neither are fit to govern when they put their popularity before doing the right thing
Where on earth is the leader we need to take the difficult decisions, wean us off spending and borrowing, and take the country away from an inevitable debt crisis
In a couple of years or so, the triple lock will take the state pension up to the level of the basic tax allowance, the latter being frozen (with the freeze hotly expected to be extended). At that point, I suggest something will have to change, to avoid the scenario whereby millions of pensioners whose only income is the state pension suddenly starting to pay tax. Somehow, the state pension and the basic tax allowance will have to be harmonised, and while it might be good news if the tax allowance were indexed to the triple lock, I suspect this will prove unaffordable and therefore the triple lock will have to go.
That looks like next year, we already know what will happen, pensioners will demand a larger personal tax allowance than everyone else, it's already started https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz74yw87jygo
Everyone read that article. We. Are. F*****.
Quadruple Lock
The state pension is made equal to the personal allowance - both as a maximum and a minimum.
So if the politicians want the state pension to rise, they will have to raise the personal allowance.
A scandal over the Bayeux Tapestry is exactly what this summer is missing. Looking forward to the weekend BBQ and watching England tear itself apart.
Rest is History specials, a Reform rally at Hastings, Spectator in turmoil. In. My. Veins.
After R** L*****'s disgusting piece last week I don't believe we are allowed to mention S***tator ever again.
If you think it was “disgusting” then you clearly haven’t read it and just seen the headline. Alternatively you might want to quit PB because there are infinitely more offensive things written here most days to trouble such a fragile temperament. But I think you didn’t actually read it.
I read it and I genuinely thought he could have gone a lot further with the “modest proposal” satire and made it much more offensive - and funny
It was pretty weaksauce (and he can be an excellent polemicist). The fact it caused such a stir is an indictment of the times
Agreed, the fact that he writes that doing such a thing would be psychopathic and wrong shows it’s just weak satire. In fact he comes across as a fan of protest songs, or if not a fan as such then accepting of their role in society.
Liddle was originally a lefty. As is so often the case
I think I might be unique in that I was really quite right wing as a kid (partly to shock and be different) and I am really quite right wing now (because this is obviously the correct perspective)
It’s been fun watching all my young lefty friends get closer and closer to my thinking over the decades. Then become uncomfortable when I point this out
Liddle still claims to be a Lefty doesn't he, albeit it one that is sympathetic to, or even encouraging of, racism within the white working class?
A scandal over the Bayeux Tapestry is exactly what this summer is missing. Looking forward to the weekend BBQ and watching England tear itself apart.
Rest is History specials, a Reform rally at Hastings, Spectator in turmoil. In. My. Veins.
After R** L*****'s disgusting piece last week I don't believe we are allowed to mention S***tator ever again.
If you think it was “disgusting” then you clearly haven’t read it and just seen the headline. Alternatively you might want to quit PB because there are infinitely more offensive things written here most days to trouble such a fragile temperament. But I think you didn’t actually read it.
I read it and I genuinely thought he could have gone a lot further with the “modest proposal” satire and made it much more offensive - and funny
It was pretty weaksauce (and he can be an excellent polemicist). The fact it caused such a stir is an indictment of the times
Agreed, the fact that he writes that doing such a thing would be psychopathic and wrong shows it’s just weak satire. In fact he comes across as a fan of protest songs, or if not a fan as such then accepting of their role in society.
Liddle was originally a lefty. As is so often the case
I think I might be unique in that I was really quite right wing as a kid (partly to shock and be different) and I am really quite right wing now (because this is obviously the correct perspective)
It’s been fun watching all my young lefty friends get closer and closer to my thinking over the decades. Then become uncomfortable when I point this out
No, William Hague, Jacob Rees Mogg and I were the same you really were in the cool crowd of rightwing youth
Many individuals should face criminal trials over this scandal, but do we think any will ?
And on more depressing news both labour and the conservatives make solemn pledges to retain the triple lock which shows just how much serious trouble we are when neither are fit to govern when they put their popularity before doing the right thing
Where on earth is the leader we need to take the difficult decisions, wean us off spending and borrowing, and take the country away from an inevitable debt crisis
Robert Jenrick on Sky this morning gave an undertaking the conservatives will keep the triple lock
Correct me if I am wrong but I believe Kemi won the Tory leadership last year NOT Jenrick and Kemi has made clear she would means test the triple lock
Is she going to take into account capital?????
More to the point, how on earth can the "triple lock" part be means tested. In the first year you'd presumably end up with two sets of pensioners, one receiving 3.1% or whatever higher than the other cohort. I know there's a change for pensioners born in 1951/53 between the basic and the new state pension but that isn't means testing. Over time it'd grow into the weirdest system tbh.
Just link it to inflation only for pensioners earning over £35k, the ones who will also lose their WFA
Yes, but you would then have a two tier state pension scheme, and either there would be a widening cliff edge effect between the two, with bizarre incentives for someone about to reach £35k, or you’d need some complicated sliding scale between the two, which would be a nightmare to manage. It’s quite obvious that this suggestion hasn’t been thought through, and could only be a temporary expedient, not a sound long term basis for our state pensions.
Surely you could keep your private pension invested and take no income and then receive the higher state pension for a number of years before you start drawing on capital?
Yes. It just creates loop holes that those with capital will exploit. They can ensure they get the higher state pension by not accessing their private pension whereas say pensioners on a decent DB pension who don't have that choice and who exceed the threshold will have their state pension reduced even if though they may be a lot poorer.
Many individuals should face criminal trials over this scandal, but do we think any will ?
And on more depressing news both labour and the conservatives make solemn pledges to retain the triple lock which shows just how much serious trouble we are when neither are fit to govern when they put their popularity before doing the right thing
Where on earth is the leader we need to take the difficult decisions, wean us off spending and borrowing, and take the country away from an inevitable debt crisis
Robert Jenrick on Sky this morning gave an undertaking the conservatives will keep the triple lock
Correct me if I am wrong but I believe Kemi won the Tory leadership last year NOT Jenrick and Kemi has made clear she would means test the triple lock
Is she going to take into account capital?????
More to the point, how on earth can the "triple lock" part be means tested. In the first year you'd presumably end up with two sets of pensioners, one receiving 3.1% or whatever higher than the other cohort. I know there's a change for pensioners born in 1951/53 between the basic and the new state pension but that isn't means testing. It's a hellacious amount of effort for not much reward in the medium term ! Over time it'd grow into the weirdest system tbh.
Yes, just daft.
Get rid of the triple lock. Simple; effective. Labour is polling around 15% with the demographic. What have they got to lose ?
In three words "Winter Fuel Allowance". For all this government's mishandling of the partial removal, it is an absolute nonsense that it should be the public's biggest complaint of the Labour administration, by far, and as shown in the word cloud on this site a few days ago.
Voters thought they were electing a Labour government, not one that removed granny's heating in winter as its first big act to raise funds while not raising tax on the wealthiest and rich and the highest earners via a wealth tax or a higher top rate of income tax at all.
Starmer is polling lower than any Labour leader since WW2 as he is seen to be a PM for the rich and woke liberal metropolitan elite not the working class and ordinary middle class people. Hence Rayner is like a shark waiting to pounce and Reeves is dead in the water sooner rather than later and Farage has been making hay
Badenoch is polling lower than any Conservative leader ever. We live in an unprecedented time of four plus party politics. It makes comparison to times of two party politics difficult.
Morning all. Polling start to the morning today from More In Common. As you were figures. We are still in the holding pattern that emerged after the May locals with minor noise moves week to week. None of the 'scandals' or dramas are moving the dial. The creation of the Dried Fruits will likely be the next mover, weird black swans or Trussery notwithstanding
➡️ REF UK 29% (nc) 🌹 LAB 24% (nc) 🌳 CON 19% (nc) 🔶 LIB DEM 14% (+2) 🌍 GREEN 7% (-2) 🟡 SNP 3% (nc)
N = 2,084 | Dates:4 - 7/7 | Change w 30/6
The curious incident….
Labour might actually be relived by these polls. It seems that the welfare climbdown has not hurt them - or it has hurt them politically but not electorally (so far). Put it another way, they are already in the toilet but they’re not even further down the toilet = “phew”
Labour will feel they can still win the next election. Tories will feel they are not dead in the water yet, LDs and Greens that progress can be protected and advanced. Hayward quoted in the Indy today saying he thinks Reform have topped out and that local by elections are a better or as good an indicator of where we are compared to VI polling. In which case, JL Partners get your finger out and update the Polaris model!
It’s really hard to know. Farage has made some errors recently, and Reform are looking fissiparous
And yet the electoral direction of the country still points firmly towards polarisation - some going hard left and green and more going hard right and ??
I see on X that Farage is predicting that Jenrick will take over the Tories and then Jenrick will try and outflank reform by going FURTHER to the right on migration, asylum and woke
A fascinating analysis
You can't out Farage Farage, the Tories would be better off going for say Mel Stride if they removed Kemi and focusing solely on the economy and balancing the books and placing themselves as sensible fiscal conservatives as an alternative to both Labour and Reform.
Badenock has proved she can't out war on woke Nigel and Jenrick couldn't out Farage on sending back the boats and immigrants either.
If Farage lost the next GE and left the Reform leadership then Jenrick would have a better chance as leader and to scoop up Farage's supporters on the right
Ahahahahahaha
As someone once nearly put it, “if ‘Mel Stride’ is the answer, what in the name of God’s Holy Testicles is the question??”
Viable party leader answers where you asked the question wrong Mel Stride Zarah Sultana Liz Truss Boris Johnson Iain Duncan Smith
Mel Stride could be very credible, started a successful business (unlike Starmer and Davey) after Oxford (unlike Kemi), grammar school boy (unlike Farage) etc.
If Kemi went he could be the Michael Howard to her IDS.
Boris was of course the only Conservative leader to get Brexit done and beat Corbyn with an overall majority and keep Farage's party under 10%
To what extent is Boris responsible for the Conservative Party's current death spiral? Discuss.
When Boris resigned the Tories were polling only a few points behind Labour and Reform were a mere asterisk in the polls
Many individuals should face criminal trials over this scandal, but do we think any will ?
And on more depressing news both labour and the conservatives make solemn pledges to retain the triple lock which shows just how much serious trouble we are when neither are fit to govern when they put their popularity before doing the right thing
Where on earth is the leader we need to take the difficult decisions, wean us off spending and borrowing, and take the country away from an inevitable debt crisis
Robert Jenrick on Sky this morning gave an undertaking the conservatives will keep the triple lock
Correct me if I am wrong but I believe Kemi won the Tory leadership last year NOT Jenrick and Kemi has made clear she would means test the triple lock
Is she going to take into account capital?????
More to the point, how on earth can the "triple lock" part be means tested. In the first year you'd presumably end up with two sets of pensioners, one receiving 3.1% or whatever higher than the other cohort. I know there's a change for pensioners born in 1951/53 between the basic and the new state pension but that isn't means testing. It's a hellacious amount of effort for not much reward in the medium term ! Over time it'd grow into the weirdest system tbh.
Yes, just daft.
Get rid of the triple lock. Simple; effective. Labour is polling around 15% with the demographic. What have they got to lose ?
In three words "Winter Fuel Allowance". For all this government's mishandling of the partial removal, it is an absolute nonsense that it should be the public's biggest complaint of the Labour administration, by far, and as shown in the word cloud on this site a few days ago.
Voters thought they were electing a Labour government, not one that removed granny's heating in winter as its first big act to raise funds while not raising tax on the wealthiest and rich and the highest earners via a wealth tax or a higher top rate of income tax at all.
Starmer is polling lower than any Labour leader since WW2 as he is seen to be a PM for the rich and woke liberal metropolitan elite not the working class and ordinary middle class people. Hence Rayner is like a shark waiting to pounce and Reeves is dead in the water sooner rather than later and Farage has been making hay
Badenoch is polling lower than any Conservative leader ever. We live in an unprecedented time of four plus party politics. It makes comparison to times of two party politics difficult.
Reform now lead the polls. Labour are polling about 23%, even Foot Labour got 27% in 1983 and even Corbyn Labour got 32% in 2019 and even Ed Miliband Labour got 30% in 2015 and even Brown Labour got 29% in 2010.
That is how much Starmer Labour are now despised, Starmer is the most unpopular Labour leader since WW2. Apart from woke rich liberal lawyers like him who actually likes him?
Many individuals should face criminal trials over this scandal, but do we think any will ?
And on more depressing news both labour and the conservatives make solemn pledges to retain the triple lock which shows just how much serious trouble we are when neither are fit to govern when they put their popularity before doing the right thing
Where on earth is the leader we need to take the difficult decisions, wean us off spending and borrowing, and take the country away from an inevitable debt crisis
In a couple of years or so, the triple lock will take the state pension up to the level of the basic tax allowance, the latter being frozen (with the freeze hotly expected to be extended). At that point, I suggest something will have to change, to avoid the scenario whereby millions of pensioners whose only income is the state pension suddenly starting to pay tax. Somehow, the state pension and the basic tax allowance will have to be harmonised, and while it might be good news if the tax allowance were indexed to the triple lock, I suspect this will prove unaffordable and therefore the triple lock will have to go.
That looks like next year, we already know what will happen, pensioners will demand a larger personal tax allowance than everyone else, it's already started https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz74yw87jygo
Everyone read that article. We. Are. F*****.
Quadruple Lock
The state pension is made equal to the personal allowance - both as a maximum and a minimum.
So if the politicians want the state pension to rise, they will have to raise the personal allowance.
Morning all, and dam' good stuff from Cyclefree - both above and below the line.
Re state pensions, three issues - as I am reminded from doing my tax at the moment:
1. Actually knowing what your state pension is - let alone will be - is not easy. DWP are the sole organization not to provide a P60. And the SP is the sole income (AFAIK) to be counted not as it comes in the tax year, but as some notional income which does not directly correspond to reality and which has am arcane formula that I find difficult. HMRC do forecast it approximately in the February taxcode letter - but one has to know that; and what if you don't get such a letter? And hoiw does one check it? And it's still not a statement of taxable income for the previous year.
2. A lot of people have other income eg from a small work pension or savings - the latter now needing only to be about 25-35K capital to go over the 1K allowance. PLus I can't help thinking that the Tory wheeze of allowing a 1K savings allowance for, in practice, their target voters (ie people with cash savings = OAPs) has rather been allowed to obviate the underlying issues of clear and fair taxation, and that the rise in bank interest rates of recent years has caught them out. It's certainly a key factor in the recent agitation. So having the SP and the tax allowance equal to one another is a bit of a red herring.
3. It's easy for a computer literate PBer to forget how miserable it is dealing with an increasingly online UKG for tax if one is poor, unwell, incapable or just not generally clued up. And HMRC now threatens unlimited fines for trivial amounts of unpaid tax. I recall having a great deal of difficulty in paying my elderly father's £5 tax bill for him (with him getting increasingly panicky about it, though it worked the third time ...) - and that was when penalties were limited to a multiple of the underpayment. Now it's £1K or so.
Given how this scandal is so utterly dwarfed by other vaster scandals, I find it hard to get exercised by it. Indeed I have suspicions of those that do. This one is so much easier to take - the villains are nasty managers - so let’s make tv dramas about it and write 5000 word essays about it and ventilate about it endlessly
Rather than focusing on much greater and more troubling problems
In short: this is chaff
Talking bollocks again I see.
I have written quite a few headers on even more serious scandals and there have also been TV dramas about them and they share with this one the same essential elements which cause them to happen, to continue and to involve cruelty to the victims.
What I wrote here could and does apply to every other scandal. I am writing about it today because a report came out and to remind those with goldfish memories that nothing has changed. I have written in my book about Grenfell and blood contamination and many others and if I included every single scandal pointing out the depressing similarities it wouldn't be so much a book as a bloody enormous encyclopaedia - Cyclefree's Big Book of British Scandals.
The people mentioned in the case studies are not chaff. (The last time I heard that word used so dismissively it was by an MP in a Select Committee aimed at Dr David Kelly. He committed suicide shortly after.)
They are people like us. One of them is your age and at about the age you stopped taking drugs and turned your life around, he had a good business, a family and was looking forward to doing even better. Instead, he was wrongly convicted, had his reputation trashed, lost everything and has never been able to find employment again. He lives on charity from his family and friends. His name is Harjinder Butoy.
Don't you fucking dare call him and everyone like him and what happened to them all "chaff".
I must admit, for reasons I find hard to understand, I have also found it hard to get too exercised about this scandal. Perhaps it is too technical, too hard to follow. But for that reason I am very grateful that there are others like Cyclefree who do. Because I'm exercised about it now. It's the casual trashing of people's reputations which really rankles. "Thou shalt not bear false witness" is one of the less fashionable commandments, but it's the biggie, really. Most people have nothing more valuable.
Good header, anyway. I liked the attempt to broaden the scope to 'all scandals' and the thought that those in charge consider themselves virtuous because they are in charge. Never trust people whise starting point is that they are the good guys, because all sorts of dubious conclusions flow from that.
It’s really simple. The Horizon computer system made shit up. They prosecuted people. When they found out, early on, that it was bollocks, they lied to cover it up. And kept on prosecuting people.
I would also add in - they thought that lots of postmasters were likely on the fiddle. Horizon gave 'evidence' that they were so the managers etc thought horizon was working.
A scandal over the Bayeux Tapestry is exactly what this summer is missing. Looking forward to the weekend BBQ and watching England tear itself apart.
Rest is History specials, a Reform rally at Hastings, Spectator in turmoil. In. My. Veins.
After R** L*****'s disgusting piece last week I don't believe we are allowed to mention S***tator ever again.
If you think it was “disgusting” then you clearly haven’t read it and just seen the headline. Alternatively you might want to quit PB because there are infinitely more offensive things written here most days to trouble such a fragile temperament. But I think you didn’t actually read it.
I read it and I genuinely thought he could have gone a lot further with the “modest proposal” satire and made it much more offensive - and funny
It was pretty weaksauce (and he can be an excellent polemicist). The fact it caused such a stir is an indictment of the times
Agreed, the fact that he writes that doing such a thing would be psychopathic and wrong shows it’s just weak satire. In fact he comes across as a fan of protest songs, or if not a fan as such then accepting of their role in society.
Liddle was originally a lefty. As is so often the case
I think I might be unique in that I was really quite right wing as a kid (partly to shock and be different) and I am really quite right wing now (because this is obviously the correct perspective)
It’s been fun watching all my young lefty friends get closer and closer to my thinking over the decades. Then become uncomfortable when I point this out
I've gone on the opposite journey and got more left wing as I've got older. I used to be a proper young fogey but the more I experience terrible train services, venal water companies, the corruption of the internet by tech bros etc the more I have sympathy with some left wing arguments. It's really only the left's foreign policy stance that has stopped me travelling further down the road.
A scandal over the Bayeux Tapestry is exactly what this summer is missing. Looking forward to the weekend BBQ and watching England tear itself apart.
Rest is History specials, a Reform rally at Hastings, Spectator in turmoil. In. My. Veins.
After R** L*****'s disgusting piece last week I don't believe we are allowed to mention S***tator ever again.
If you think it was “disgusting” then you clearly haven’t read it and just seen the headline. Alternatively you might want to quit PB because there are infinitely more offensive things written here most days to trouble such a fragile temperament. But I think you didn’t actually read it.
I read it and I genuinely thought he could have gone a lot further with the “modest proposal” satire and made it much more offensive - and funny
It was pretty weaksauce (and he can be an excellent polemicist). The fact it caused such a stir is an indictment of the times
Agreed, the fact that he writes that doing such a thing would be psychopathic and wrong shows it’s just weak satire. In fact he comes across as a fan of protest songs, or if not a fan as such then accepting of their role in society.
Liddle was originally a lefty. As is so often the case
I think I might be unique in that I was really quite right wing as a kid (partly to shock and be different) and I am really quite right wing now (because this is obviously the correct perspective)
It’s been fun watching all my young lefty friends get closer and closer to my thinking over the decades. Then become uncomfortable when I point this out
No, William Hague, Jacob Rees Mogg and I were the same you really were in the cool crowd of rightwing youth
Touché
However I really WAS quite unusual in being openly right wing at UCL in the 1980s. Almost everyone else - especially if they hung out in the union bar - was left
Indeed and piquantly the only UCL acquaintance of mine who shared my right wing views was Ricky Gervais
Irony is we have many MPs and public figures queuing up to demand compensation for the WASPE women who don’t deserve a penny.
The Waspy women thing was entirely without merit but had the politically critical quality of being easy to understand. Hence the number of MPs and others lining up behind it. And hence the fondness for issues involving calculable amounts of free money to a readily identifiable group. See also WFA and last week's benefits shambles and two child cap which have the same quality.
Surely the WASPI issue is simple.
I have had my retirement age pushed back several times. The changes were decades into the future and made no effect to my plans.
Some of the WASPI women were told that instead of being able to retire and draw your pension next year, you now have to wait 6 years. That's a massive difference.
"But the law changed in 1995" seems to be the defence, Sure. Who goes around proactively checking Hansard in case the government have changed the law against you? They started writing to the affected in 2009 about the change coming into effect the following year. Not much notice if you'd planned to retire and now couldn't.
That is simply untrue. The claim is that they were not individually notified when the law changed. I.e. no letter, phone call etc. But it was on the news. In the papers. They have not a leg to stand on.
No-one had the rug pulled from under them at the last minute and its ridiculous to say it was.
Many individuals should face criminal trials over this scandal, but do we think any will ?
And on more depressing news both labour and the conservatives make solemn pledges to retain the triple lock which shows just how much serious trouble we are when neither are fit to govern when they put their popularity before doing the right thing
Where on earth is the leader we need to take the difficult decisions, wean us off spending and borrowing, and take the country away from an inevitable debt crisis
Robert Jenrick on Sky this morning gave an undertaking the conservatives will keep the triple lock
Correct me if I am wrong but I believe Kemi won the Tory leadership last year NOT Jenrick and Kemi has made clear she would means test the triple lock
Is she going to take into account capital?????
More to the point, how on earth can the "triple lock" part be means tested. In the first year you'd presumably end up with two sets of pensioners, one receiving 3.1% or whatever higher than the other cohort. I know there's a change for pensioners born in 1951/53 between the basic and the new state pension but that isn't means testing. It's a hellacious amount of effort for not much reward in the medium term ! Over time it'd grow into the weirdest system tbh.
Yes, just daft.
Get rid of the triple lock. Simple; effective. Labour is polling around 15% with the demographic. What have they got to lose ?
In three words "Winter Fuel Allowance". For all this government's mishandling of the partial removal, it is an absolute nonsense that it should be the public's biggest complaint of the Labour administration, by far, and as shown in the word cloud on this site a few days ago.
Voters thought they were electing a Labour government, not one that removed granny's heating in winter as its first big act to raise funds while not raising tax on the wealthiest and rich and the highest earners via a wealth tax or a higher top rate of income tax at all.
Starmer is polling lower than any Labour leader since WW2 as he is seen to be a PM for the rich and woke liberal metropolitan elite not the working class and ordinary middle class people. Hence Rayner is like a shark waiting to pounce and Reeves is dead in the water sooner rather than later and Farage has been making hay
Badenoch is polling lower than any Conservative leader ever. We live in an unprecedented time of four plus party politics. It makes comparison to times of two party politics difficult.
Reform now lead the polls. Labour are polling about 23%, even Foot Labour got 27% in 1983 and even Corbyn Labour got 32% in 2019 and even Ed Miliband Labour got 30% in 2015 and even Brown Labour got 29% in 2010.
That is how much Starmer Labour are now despised, Starmer is the most unpopular Labour leader since WW2. Apart from woke rich liberal lawyers like him who actually likes him?
In the 1950s, there were two options, more or less. You voted Con or Lab. There are now many more options seen as viable. That means everyone's polling looks worse. Reform UK lead the polls, but with numbers that would have been derisorily low for many decades after WWII.
The big question is whether that means Labour "are now despised". Labour aren't many people's first choice, but if they're lots of people's second or third choice, that might be enough for them. You could say the same about the other parties: their polling is low, but are they despised?
John Redwood @johnredwood · 2h Offering us a loan of the Bayeux embroidery reminds us of the invasion and the way so many English were forced into serfdom by the Normans. It depicts the violent deaths of English soldiers.
I wonder if it’s possible to be more of an utter fanny
He's mocking (to good effect) all those idiots who are after "reparations" for the harms apparently done to them by slave trade a couple hundred years ago.
Many individuals should face criminal trials over this scandal, but do we think any will ?
And on more depressing news both labour and the conservatives make solemn pledges to retain the triple lock which shows just how much serious trouble we are when neither are fit to govern when they put their popularity before doing the right thing
Where on earth is the leader we need to take the difficult decisions, wean us off spending and borrowing, and take the country away from an inevitable debt crisis
Robert Jenrick on Sky this morning gave an undertaking the conservatives will keep the triple lock
Correct me if I am wrong but I believe Kemi won the Tory leadership last year NOT Jenrick and Kemi has made clear she would means test the triple lock
Is she going to take into account capital?????
More to the point, how on earth can the "triple lock" part be means tested. In the first year you'd presumably end up with two sets of pensioners, one receiving 3.1% or whatever higher than the other cohort. I know there's a change for pensioners born in 1951/53 between the basic and the new state pension but that isn't means testing. It's a hellacious amount of effort for not much reward in the medium term ! Over time it'd grow into the weirdest system tbh.
Yes, just daft.
Get rid of the triple lock. Simple; effective. Labour is polling around 15% with the demographic. What have they got to lose ?
In three words "Winter Fuel Allowance". For all this government's mishandling of the partial removal, it is an absolute nonsense that it should be the public's biggest complaint of the Labour administration, by far, and as shown in the word cloud on this site a few days ago.
Voters thought they were electing a Labour government, not one that removed granny's heating in winter as its first big act to raise funds while not raising tax on the wealthiest and rich and the highest earners via a wealth tax or a higher top rate of income tax at all.
Starmer is polling lower than any Labour leader since WW2 as he is seen to be a PM for the rich and woke liberal metropolitan elite not the working class and ordinary middle class people. Hence Rayner is like a shark waiting to pounce and Reeves is dead in the water sooner rather than later and Farage has been making hay
Badenoch is polling lower than any Conservative leader ever. We live in an unprecedented time of four plus party politics. It makes comparison to times of two party politics difficult.
Why are we living in four plus party politics though? Because people feel so let down by the Tories and yes, also Labour.
We can make the comparisons because the two main parties are each responsible for finding themselves in the position they do. It was not long ago that they were each polling 70-80% between them. What has changed? A fundamental breakdown in trust in the Tories, and a seismic sense of disappointment with Labour.
Irony is we have many MPs and public figures queuing up to demand compensation for the WASPE women who don’t deserve a penny.
The Waspy women thing was entirely without merit but had the politically critical quality of being easy to understand. Hence the number of MPs and others lining up behind it. And hence the fondness for issues involving calculable amounts of free money to a readily identifiable group. See also WFA and last week's benefits shambles and two child cap which have the same quality.
Surely the WASPI issue is simple.
I have had my retirement age pushed back several times. The changes were decades into the future and made no effect to my plans.
Some of the WASPI women were told that instead of being able to retire and draw your pension next year, you now have to wait 6 years. That's a massive difference.
"But the law changed in 1995" seems to be the defence, Sure. Who goes around proactively checking Hansard in case the government have changed the law against you? They started writing to the affected in 2009 about the change coming into effect the following year. Not much notice if you'd planned to retire and now couldn't.
Many individuals should face criminal trials over this scandal, but do we think any will ?
And on more depressing news both labour and the conservatives make solemn pledges to retain the triple lock which shows just how much serious trouble we are when neither are fit to govern when they put their popularity before doing the right thing
Where on earth is the leader we need to take the difficult decisions, wean us off spending and borrowing, and take the country away from an inevitable debt crisis
Robert Jenrick on Sky this morning gave an undertaking the conservatives will keep the triple lock
Correct me if I am wrong but I believe Kemi won the Tory leadership last year NOT Jenrick and Kemi has made clear she would means test the triple lock
Is she going to take into account capital?????
More to the point, how on earth can the "triple lock" part be means tested. In the first year you'd presumably end up with two sets of pensioners, one receiving 3.1% or whatever higher than the other cohort. I know there's a change for pensioners born in 1951/53 between the basic and the new state pension but that isn't means testing. It's a hellacious amount of effort for not much reward in the medium term ! Over time it'd grow into the weirdest system tbh.
Yes, just daft.
Get rid of the triple lock. Simple; effective. Labour is polling around 15% with the demographic. What have they got to lose ?
In three words "Winter Fuel Allowance". For all this government's mishandling of the partial removal, it is an absolute nonsense that it should be the public's biggest complaint of the Labour administration, by far, and as shown in the word cloud on this site a few days ago.
Voters thought they were electing a Labour government, not one that removed granny's heating in winter as its first big act to raise funds while not raising tax on the wealthiest and rich and the highest earners via a wealth tax or a higher top rate of income tax at all.
Starmer is polling lower than any Labour leader since WW2 as he is seen to be a PM for the rich and woke liberal metropolitan elite not the working class and ordinary middle class people. Hence Rayner is like a shark waiting to pounce and Reeves is dead in the water sooner rather than later and Farage has been making hay
Badenoch is polling lower than any Conservative leader ever. We live in an unprecedented time of four plus party politics. It makes comparison to times of two party politics difficult.
Reform now lead the polls. Labour are polling about 23%, even Foot Labour got 27% in 1983 and even Corbyn Labour got 32% in 2019 and even Ed Miliband Labour got 30% in 2015 and even Brown Labour got 29% in 2010.
That is how much Starmer Labour are now despised, Starmer is the most unpopular Labour leader since WW2. Apart from woke rich liberal lawyers like him who actually likes him?
Indeed, although I do see a fly in your ointment. Team HY are polling five percent below Labour on most polls, so what does that tell us about Team HY? However you might argue that Team RefCon are just shy of fifty percent and twice what Labour are polling, and I would have yo concede that to you.
Many individuals should face criminal trials over this scandal, but do we think any will ?
And on more depressing news both labour and the conservatives make solemn pledges to retain the triple lock which shows just how much serious trouble we are when neither are fit to govern when they put their popularity before doing the right thing
Where on earth is the leader we need to take the difficult decisions, wean us off spending and borrowing, and take the country away from an inevitable debt crisis
Robert Jenrick on Sky this morning gave an undertaking the conservatives will keep the triple lock
Correct me if I am wrong but I believe Kemi won the Tory leadership last year NOT Jenrick and Kemi has made clear she would means test the triple lock
Is she going to take into account capital?????
More to the point, how on earth can the "triple lock" part be means tested. In the first year you'd presumably end up with two sets of pensioners, one receiving 3.1% or whatever higher than the other cohort. I know there's a change for pensioners born in 1951/53 between the basic and the new state pension but that isn't means testing. It's a hellacious amount of effort for not much reward in the medium term ! Over time it'd grow into the weirdest system tbh.
Yes, just daft.
Get rid of the triple lock. Simple; effective. Labour is polling around 15% with the demographic. What have they got to lose ?
In three words "Winter Fuel Allowance". For all this government's mishandling of the partial removal, it is an absolute nonsense that it should be the public's biggest complaint of the Labour administration, by far, and as shown in the word cloud on this site a few days ago.
Voters thought they were electing a Labour government, not one that removed granny's heating in winter as its first big act to raise funds while not raising tax on the wealthiest and rich and the highest earners via a wealth tax or a higher top rate of income tax at all.
Starmer is polling lower than any Labour leader since WW2 as he is seen to be a PM for the rich and woke liberal metropolitan elite not the working class and ordinary middle class people. Hence Rayner is like a shark waiting to pounce and Reeves is dead in the water sooner rather than later and Farage has been making hay
Badenoch is polling lower than any Conservative leader ever. We live in an unprecedented time of four plus party politics. It makes comparison to times of two party politics difficult.
Why are we living in four plus party politics though? Because people feel so let down by the Tories and yes, also Labour.
We can make the comparisons because the two main parties are each responsible for finding themselves in the position they do. It was not long ago that they were each polling 70-80% between them. What has changed? A fundamental breakdown in trust in the Tories, and a seismic sense of disappointment with Labour.
Good question. Yes, there's a loss of faith in Labour and Conservative, but I think it has to be more than that. I think it's the Internet, social media, better targetting of seats, the end of the Cold War and various other factors, as well.
Many individuals should face criminal trials over this scandal, but do we think any will ?
And on more depressing news both labour and the conservatives make solemn pledges to retain the triple lock which shows just how much serious trouble we are when neither are fit to govern when they put their popularity before doing the right thing
Where on earth is the leader we need to take the difficult decisions, wean us off spending and borrowing, and take the country away from an inevitable debt crisis
Robert Jenrick on Sky this morning gave an undertaking the conservatives will keep the triple lock
Correct me if I am wrong but I believe Kemi won the Tory leadership last year NOT Jenrick and Kemi has made clear she would means test the triple lock
Is she going to take into account capital?????
More to the point, how on earth can the "triple lock" part be means tested. In the first year you'd presumably end up with two sets of pensioners, one receiving 3.1% or whatever higher than the other cohort. I know there's a change for pensioners born in 1951/53 between the basic and the new state pension but that isn't means testing. It's a hellacious amount of effort for not much reward in the medium term ! Over time it'd grow into the weirdest system tbh.
Yes, just daft.
Get rid of the triple lock. Simple; effective. Labour is polling around 15% with the demographic. What have they got to lose ?
In three words "Winter Fuel Allowance". For all this government's mishandling of the partial removal, it is an absolute nonsense that it should be the public's biggest complaint of the Labour administration, by far, and as shown in the word cloud on this site a few days ago.
Voters thought they were electing a Labour government, not one that removed granny's heating in winter as its first big act to raise funds while not raising tax on the wealthiest and rich and the highest earners via a wealth tax or a higher top rate of income tax at all.
Starmer is polling lower than any Labour leader since WW2 as he is seen to be a PM for the rich and woke liberal metropolitan elite not the working class and ordinary middle class people. Hence Rayner is like a shark waiting to pounce and Reeves is dead in the water sooner rather than later and Farage has been making hay
Badenoch is polling lower than any Conservative leader ever. We live in an unprecedented time of four plus party politics. It makes comparison to times of two party politics difficult.
I have a vague poll translator in my head for relative popularity in the 4.5 party system vs the old 3 party plus green system.
In VI today, mid 30s is high 40s plus, dominance, landslide in old money 30 equates to about 40 in the old world (heading for government /possible majority) 25 equates to lower 30s in old money (headed to opposition/unpopular govt) 20 equates to just above mid 20s (100 seats) 15 equates to just under 20 (50 plus seats) And it equals out by 10 and under (very few seats if any)
A scandal over the Bayeux Tapestry is exactly what this summer is missing. Looking forward to the weekend BBQ and watching England tear itself apart.
Rest is History specials, a Reform rally at Hastings, Spectator in turmoil. In. My. Veins.
After R** L*****'s disgusting piece last week I don't believe we are allowed to mention S***tator ever again.
If you think it was “disgusting” then you clearly haven’t read it and just seen the headline. Alternatively you might want to quit PB because there are infinitely more offensive things written here most days to trouble such a fragile temperament. But I think you didn’t actually read it.
I read it and I genuinely thought he could have gone a lot further with the “modest proposal” satire and made it much more offensive - and funny
It was pretty weaksauce (and he can be an excellent polemicist). The fact it caused such a stir is an indictment of the times
Agreed, the fact that he writes that doing such a thing would be psychopathic and wrong shows it’s just weak satire. In fact he comes across as a fan of protest songs, or if not a fan as such then accepting of their role in society.
Liddle was originally a lefty. As is so often the case
I think I might be unique in that I was really quite right wing as a kid (partly to shock and be different) and I am really quite right wing now (because this is obviously the correct perspective)
It’s been fun watching all my young lefty friends get closer and closer to my thinking over the decades. Then become uncomfortable when I point this out
I've gone on the opposite journey and got more left wing as I've got older. I used to be a proper young fogey but the more I experience terrible train services, venal water companies, the corruption of the internet by tech bros etc the more I have sympathy with some left wing arguments. It's really only the left's foreign policy stance that has stopped me travelling further down the road.
The worst thing is being proved correct on something deeply depressing
Eg I was quite fiercely anti multicultural and mass migration (esp of Islam) as far back as the 1990s. My arty left wing friends used to mock me as some kind of situationist British crypto-nazi (we still remained friends, despite)
Now every single one is either deeply anxious or in despair about migration and asylum and multiculturalism and islamism
I have to rein in my Told You So’s. But when I do yield and say “I told you so” they all look furtive and weird and guilty. So I don’t do it much. We drink nice wine and talk about art instead
Many individuals should face criminal trials over this scandal, but do we think any will ?
And on more depressing news both labour and the conservatives make solemn pledges to retain the triple lock which shows just how much serious trouble we are when neither are fit to govern when they put their popularity before doing the right thing
Where on earth is the leader we need to take the difficult decisions, wean us off spending and borrowing, and take the country away from an inevitable debt crisis
Robert Jenrick on Sky this morning gave an undertaking the conservatives will keep the triple lock
Correct me if I am wrong but I believe Kemi won the Tory leadership last year NOT Jenrick and Kemi has made clear she would means test the triple lock
Is she going to take into account capital?????
More to the point, how on earth can the "triple lock" part be means tested. In the first year you'd presumably end up with two sets of pensioners, one receiving 3.1% or whatever higher than the other cohort. I know there's a change for pensioners born in 1951/53 between the basic and the new state pension but that isn't means testing. It's a hellacious amount of effort for not much reward in the medium term ! Over time it'd grow into the weirdest system tbh.
You could add a "triple lock" based uplift to pension credit - we're already means testing that, so no extra paperwork required.
Given how this scandal is so utterly dwarfed by other vaster scandals, I find it hard to get exercised by it. Indeed I have suspicions of those that do. This one is so much easier to take - the villains are nasty managers - so let’s make tv dramas about it and write 5000 word essays about it and ventilate about it endlessly
Rather than focusing on much greater and more troubling problems
In short: this is chaff
Talking bollocks again I see.
I have written quite a few headers on even more serious scandals and there have also been TV dramas about them and they share with this one the same essential elements which cause them to happen, to continue and to involve cruelty to the victims.
What I wrote here could and does apply to every other scandal. I am writing about it today because a report came out and to remind those with goldfish memories that nothing has changed. I have written in my book about Grenfell and blood contamination and many others and if I included every single scandal pointing out the depressing similarities it wouldn't be so much a book as a bloody enormous encyclopaedia - Cyclefree's Big Book of British Scandals.
The people mentioned in the case studies are not chaff. (The last time I heard that word used so dismissively it was by an MP in a Select Committee aimed at Dr David Kelly. He committed suicide shortly after.)
They are people like us. One of them is your age and at about the age you stopped taking drugs and turned your life around, he had a good business, a family and was looking forward to doing even better. Instead, he was wrongly convicted, had his reputation trashed, lost everything and has never been able to find employment again. He lives on charity from his family and friends. His name is Harjinder Butoy.
Don't you fucking dare call him and everyone like him and what happened to them all "chaff".
I must admit, for reasons I find hard to understand, I have also found it hard to get too exercised about this scandal. Perhaps it is too technical, too hard to follow. But for that reason I am very grateful that there are others like Cyclefree who do. Because I'm exercised about it now. It's the casual trashing of people's reputations which really rankles. "Thou shalt not bear false witness" is one of the less fashionable commandments, but it's the biggie, really. Most people have nothing more valuable.
Good header, anyway. I liked the attempt to broaden the scope to 'all scandals' and the thought that those in charge consider themselves virtuous because they are in charge. Never trust people whise starting point is that they are the good guys, because all sorts of dubious conclusions flow from that.
It’s really simple. The Horizon computer system made shit up. They prosecuted people. When they found out, early on, that it was bollocks, they lied to cover it up. And kept on prosecuting people.
I would also add in - they thought that lots of postmasters were likely on the fiddle. Horizon gave 'evidence' that they were so the managers etc thought horizon was working.
Morning all; bright and sunny here.
I would suggest that, as in all societies, there have always been a few sub-postmasters 'on the fiddle'. I seem to recall the odd prosecution back in the dim and distant. Consequently when Horizon came along those 'fairly' high in Post Office management felt that their, to date unprovable, suspicions were justified. Consequently they went hard after those they 'caught' but it turned out that those they caught were the honest ones and those few actually cooking their books have probably continued to get away with it.
Irony is we have many MPs and public figures queuing up to demand compensation for the WASPE women who don’t deserve a penny.
The Waspy women thing was entirely without merit but had the politically critical quality of being easy to understand. Hence the number of MPs and others lining up behind it. And hence the fondness for issues involving calculable amounts of free money to a readily identifiable group. See also WFA and last week's benefits shambles and two child cap which have the same quality.
Surely the WASPI issue is simple.
I have had my retirement age pushed back several times. The changes were decades into the future and made no effect to my plans.
Some of the WASPI women were told that instead of being able to retire and draw your pension next year, you now have to wait 6 years. That's a massive difference.
"But the law changed in 1995" seems to be the defence, Sure. Who goes around proactively checking Hansard in case the government have changed the law against you? They started writing to the affected in 2009 about the change coming into effect the following year. Not much notice if you'd planned to retire and now couldn't.
One of the Government early responses to the campaign I am involved in was that those impacted should have read Hansard at the time. It is worth pointing out that:
a) This was pre-internet b) What average person reads Hansard c) If you had read Hansard it would have shown those that were campaigning were right.
Clearly the 18 year old civil servant didn't check it and assumed the internet had always existed and that non political people read Hansard like everyone used to read newspapers.
Many individuals should face criminal trials over this scandal, but do we think any will ?
And on more depressing news both labour and the conservatives make solemn pledges to retain the triple lock which shows just how much serious trouble we are when neither are fit to govern when they put their popularity before doing the right thing
Where on earth is the leader we need to take the difficult decisions, wean us off spending and borrowing, and take the country away from an inevitable debt crisis
Robert Jenrick on Sky this morning gave an undertaking the conservatives will keep the triple lock
Correct me if I am wrong but I believe Kemi won the Tory leadership last year NOT Jenrick and Kemi has made clear she would means test the triple lock
Is she going to take into account capital?????
More to the point, how on earth can the "triple lock" part be means tested. In the first year you'd presumably end up with two sets of pensioners, one receiving 3.1% or whatever higher than the other cohort. I know there's a change for pensioners born in 1951/53 between the basic and the new state pension but that isn't means testing. It's a hellacious amount of effort for not much reward in the medium term ! Over time it'd grow into the weirdest system tbh.
Yes, just daft.
Get rid of the triple lock. Simple; effective. Labour is polling around 15% with the demographic. What have they got to lose ?
In three words "Winter Fuel Allowance". For all this government's mishandling of the partial removal, it is an absolute nonsense that it should be the public's biggest complaint of the Labour administration, by far, and as shown in the word cloud on this site a few days ago.
Voters thought they were electing a Labour government, not one that removed granny's heating in winter as its first big act to raise funds while not raising tax on the wealthiest and rich and the highest earners via a wealth tax or a higher top rate of income tax at all.
Starmer is polling lower than any Labour leader since WW2 as he is seen to be a PM for the rich and woke liberal metropolitan elite not the working class and ordinary middle class people. Hence Rayner is like a shark waiting to pounce and Reeves is dead in the water sooner rather than later and Farage has been making hay
Badenoch is polling lower than any Conservative leader ever. We live in an unprecedented time of four plus party politics. It makes comparison to times of two party politics difficult.
Why are we living in four plus party politics though? Because people feel so let down by the Tories and yes, also Labour.
We can make the comparisons because the two main parties are each responsible for finding themselves in the position they do. It was not long ago that they were each polling 70-80% between them. What has changed? A fundamental breakdown in trust in the Tories, and a seismic sense of disappointment with Labour.
And the biggest factor in that disappointment? That Labour tried to means test a universal benefit.
But I suppose we can blame all politicians for not spelling out the facts of life to the voters.
Comments
Rest is History specials, a Reform rally at Hastings, Spectator in turmoil. In. My. Veins.
So depressing
And it is important, because the next scandal and cover-up might affect me. Or you. Or perhaps even @Leon .
ie we need a right wing leader who says “yes I’m going to keep the triple lock and reform the ECHR and keep all benefits and tax the rich” etc etc
Then as soon as they get into power just shamelessly switch to “oops sorry there is no money so we’re going to ditch the triple lock and welcome back non Doms slash all benefits and quit the ECHR and also cut spending by half. Soz”
Do that in the first year. By year 5 the benefits will be showing and you can get re-elected and Britain booms again
I was kinda hoping starmer was going to do all this but it turns out he really is a dismal stupid lefty lawyer who lies to save himself and nothing else
Or will he have to resign?
In this case the “rules” say - public money being spent to correct something the state did wrong. We must spend it correctly and according to the process.
The principles say - “how do we make this right”
Worst of all, you were wrong and failed to find anyone to support your claims
Over time it'd grow into the weirdest system tbh.
So you did watch him publicly commit to the triple lock
I doubt Badenoch would sack Jenrick under any circumstances
It seems it would benefit all parties who think they might be in government to explain this to the electorate.
Married banker sacked over affair with colleague sues for sex discrimination
Former bank director claims investigation against him was ‘tainted’ given his senior role
A married City banker sued for sex discrimination after he was sacked over his affair with a junior colleague.
Stanislav Stepchuk, who was a director at American investment bank Merrill Lynch, was in a relationship with the woman for several months but broke it off when he learnt his pregnant wife was expecting.
He sent an unsolicited explicit photo to the younger woman four days after they began messaging each other.
He claims that after the breakup the junior colleague responded with “hostility”, “taunts” and “threats” that his life may be in danger.
An internal disciplinary process found the father-of-two had actually been the one to threaten her and sacked him for “acting inappropriately” by embarking on the affair.
Mr Stepchuk is suing Merrill Lynch International for sex discrimination and harassment, age discrimination, and unfair dismissal.
Details of the affair emerged during a preliminary hearing to determine if Mr Stepchuk or his junior colleague were entitled to anonymity.
While he demanded that her identity be made public, he applied to have his name remain a secret to protect his family - a request that was denied by a judge.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/07/08/married-banker-sacked-affair-sues-for-sex-discrimination/
Triple lock pension credit might make an iota of sense (though any form of triple lock is a stupid system) but that's just not viable.
Juries are the mechanism for avoiding injustice where the law is an ass.
That’s why Levinson is trying to
abolish them. Again.
I doubt Badenoch would sack Jenrick under any circumstances
So as I said he did NOT say it would not be means tested by the Tories
This is a recipe for New York in the 70s doom loop except we don’t have a federal government to bail us out
Eventually the bond markets will do it for us. They will refuse to lend and the UK will go bust and then we will have ten years or more of brutal brutal
austerity. The likes of which we have not seen since WW2
Given the febrile state of race relations I can see that easily turning into civil strife as factions turn on each other violently amidst the decay
Do you want that? I certainly don’t. So I’m proposing a time honoured alternative. A Tory that lies through his teeth but does it convincingly then puts the screws on in year 1 of the next government
Get rid of the triple lock. Simple; effective.
Labour is polling around 15% with the demographic. What have they got to lose ?
Secures the gerontocracy for the next election while settling the nerves of the OBR's long term projections.
I have had my retirement age pushed back several times. The changes were decades into the future and made no effect to my plans.
Some of the WASPI women were told that instead of being able to retire and draw your pension next year, you now have to wait 6 years. That's a massive difference.
"But the law changed in 1995" seems to be the defence, Sure. Who goes around proactively checking Hansard in case the government have changed the law against you? They started writing to the affected in 2009 about the change coming into effect the following year. Not much notice if you'd planned to retire and now couldn't.
And even I don't want the French to apologise. The amount of responsibility born by the current generation of French people is exactly zero.
No shit Sherlock.
Mel Stride
Zarah Sultana
Liz Truss
Boris Johnson
Iain Duncan Smith
Labour and conservatives ignore the comment by openly committed to it this morning
So why does anyone wonder why the bond markets are jittery, and are actually charging more today than under Truss
We are in a very depressing state
Who would have guessed Rachel posted here all this time !
Only the LDs have committed to permanently keep the triple lock un means tested as it is now
Means testing was not discussed but confirmation of the triple lock was confirmed
If you and the conservatives are in favour of means testing the pension then that is another issues
The entire legal system failed here. Not just failed but parts of it were actively involved in this scandal. The legal system is an essential part of law and order - the most fundamental duty of the state, one which has been at the heart of our history since the Tudors, earlier in fact. What that law and order means - for the state and the people living in it, how it is enforced, what justice is, how power is exercised, how to do so fairly not arbitrarily etc - are at the heart of history and politics. This case shows what happens when that fails, when lawyers - who are meant to be the custodes of this system, who are meant to be trustworthy - break that trust. They are the gatekeepers and when they go wrong the consequences are awful.
Someone asked why the courts didn't inquire. I'll tell you why. If someone pleads guilty the court assumes they've been properly advised. It doesn't inquire into whether they've been coerced or bullied or told lies or badly advised. It trusts that the professionals have done their job honestly.
But they didn't and when trust evaporates no system, no society can function.
I am incandescent about this scandal because these professionals were meant to be lawyers and investigators like me. But unlike me they have disgraced the profession I have spent a lifetime in. And they have done incalculable harm to the trust we ought to be able to have in professionals, in those we have to rely on.
You think this is a minor matter.
I give you Edmund Burke:
"Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little."
Me writing about this is my very small attempt to do a little.
It was pretty weaksauce (and he can be an excellent polemicist). The fact it caused such a stir is an indictment of the times
If Kemi went he could be the Michael Howard to her IDS.
Boris was of course the only Conservative leader to get Brexit done and beat Corbyn with an overall majority and keep Farage's party under 10%
Labour and conservatives have committed to the triple lock for this parliament
Means testing is another subject altogether and maybe you should explain exactly how Badenoch is considering means testing the pension
And you do not tell me anything
I don't want to live in your right wing version of Victorian Britain. You'll be fine galavanting around the free world while we are locked into some Farage-Jenrick nightmare.
I really don’t, as is my right. Indeed I believe this story is an emotional diversion (hence “chaff” in the military sense) - it diverts us from graver matters
Anyway I must bid goodbye from sunny Bulgaria for now. I have a ticket to ride home
Merzi!
The state pension is made equal to the personal allowance - both as a maximum and a minimum.
So if the politicians want the state pension to rise, they will have to raise the personal allowance.
If an individual short-circuits the process then they are at individual risk but wo t get additional credit. So it takes leadership by those capable of driving change. But they are all focused on “does this advance my chances of getting/keeping the to job”,
With social media today the story would be “Sunak pays billions in compensation for PO scandal”. A meaningful percentage of people seeing that headline would assume that Sunak did something wrong.
UK Government UK COVID-19 Inquiry Response - Module 1 Implementation Update
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-government-response-to-the-covid-19-inquiry-module-1-report/uk-government-uk-covid-19-inquiry-response-module-1-implementation-update
I've not done more than glance at it but am sure it is a bundle of laughs for fans of the process state and a chance for GCSE English classes to identify split infinitives and other solecisms.
No doubt boxes have been ticked, somewhere in there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gs5ZFkocUs
A choir of about 30,000 in front of about 100,000 audience. Magnificent and spine chilling.
I think I might be unique in that I was really quite right wing as a kid (partly to shock and be different) and I am really quite right wing now (because this is obviously the correct perspective)
It’s been fun watching all my young lefty friends get closer and closer to my thinking over the decades. Then become uncomfortable when I point this out
https://ifs.org.uk/taxlab/taxlab-data-item/personal-allowance-over-time
Starmer is polling lower than any Labour leader since WW2 as he is seen to be a PM for the rich and woke liberal metropolitan elite not the working class and ordinary middle class people. Hence Rayner is like a shark waiting to pounce and Reeves is dead in the water sooner rather than later and Farage has been making hay
I have discovered enough sleeping bags, camping equipment, Barbour jackets, anoraks, rucksacks, army surplus stuff, knives, torches, assorted tools and so on to equip a small militia to climb Everest! Also a large plastic bag full of ...... boom tish! ..... plastic bags.
If anyone is short of any of these please apply to me.
Then there is the wine breather in a box. I am sure PB'ers are familiar with this - it is another way of describing a decanter into which wine must be poured so that it can breathe before being drunk. A lovely idea but since in this household the wine barely makes it inside the front door before being drunk at great speed by my OH (not me), it is wholly unnecessary. I have been laughing about it for days. I am married, I now realise, to the love child of Harold Steptoe and Miss Havisham.
It is difficult to make this sort of stuff fair.
That is how much Starmer Labour are now despised, Starmer is the most unpopular Labour leader since WW2. Apart from woke rich liberal lawyers like him who actually likes him?
Re state pensions, three issues - as I am reminded from doing my tax at the moment:
1. Actually knowing what your state pension is - let alone will be - is not easy. DWP are the sole organization not to provide a P60. And the SP is the sole income (AFAIK) to be counted not as it comes in the tax year, but as some notional income which does not directly correspond to reality and which has am arcane formula that I find difficult. HMRC do forecast it approximately in the February taxcode letter - but one has to know that; and what if you don't get such a letter? And hoiw does one check it? And it's still not a statement of taxable income for the previous year.
2. A lot of people have other income eg from a small work pension or savings - the latter now needing only to be about 25-35K capital to go over the 1K allowance. PLus I can't help thinking that the Tory wheeze of allowing a 1K savings allowance for, in practice, their target voters (ie people with cash savings = OAPs) has rather been allowed to obviate the underlying issues of clear and fair taxation, and that the rise in bank interest rates of recent years has caught them out. It's certainly a key factor in the recent agitation. So having the SP and the tax allowance equal to one another is a bit of a red herring.
3. It's easy for a computer literate PBer to forget how miserable it is dealing with an increasingly online UKG for tax if one is poor, unwell, incapable or just not generally clued up. And HMRC now threatens unlimited fines for trivial amounts of unpaid tax. I recall having a great deal of difficulty in paying my elderly father's £5 tax bill for him (with him getting increasingly panicky about it, though it worked the third time ...) - and that was when penalties were limited to a multiple of the underpayment. Now it's £1K or so.
This is a very revealing little piece.
https://www.taxadvisermagazine.com/article/state-pension-and-annual-taxable-figure
However I really WAS quite unusual in being openly right wing at UCL in the 1980s. Almost everyone else - especially if they hung out in the union bar - was left
Indeed and piquantly the only UCL acquaintance of mine who shared my right wing views was Ricky Gervais
No-one had the rug pulled from under them at the last minute and its ridiculous to say it was.
The big question is whether that means Labour "are now despised". Labour aren't many people's first choice, but if they're lots of people's second or third choice, that might be enough for them. You could say the same about the other parties: their polling is low, but are they despised?
We can make the comparisons because the two main parties are each responsible for finding themselves in the position they do. It was not long ago that they were each polling 70-80% between them. What has changed? A fundamental breakdown in trust in the Tories, and a seismic sense of disappointment with Labour.
Keep working and don't retire then.
Ignorance is no defence.
In VI today, mid 30s is high 40s plus, dominance, landslide in old money
30 equates to about 40 in the old world (heading for government /possible majority)
25 equates to lower 30s in old money (headed to opposition/unpopular govt)
20 equates to just above mid 20s (100 seats)
15 equates to just under 20 (50 plus seats)
And it equals out by 10 and under (very few seats if any)
Eg I was quite fiercely anti multicultural and mass migration (esp of Islam) as far back as the 1990s. My arty left wing friends used to mock me as some kind of situationist British crypto-nazi (we still remained friends, despite)
Now every single one is either deeply anxious or in despair about migration and asylum and multiculturalism and islamism
I have to rein in my Told You So’s. But when I do yield and say “I told you so” they all look furtive and weird and guilty. So I don’t do it much. We drink nice wine and talk about art instead
I would suggest that, as in all societies, there have always been a few sub-postmasters 'on the fiddle'. I seem to recall the odd prosecution back in the dim and distant. Consequently when Horizon came along those 'fairly' high in Post Office management felt that their, to date unprovable, suspicions were justified.
Consequently they went hard after those they 'caught' but it turned out that those they caught were the honest ones and those few actually cooking their books have probably continued to get away with it.
a) This was pre-internet
b) What average person reads Hansard
c) If you had read Hansard it would have shown those that were campaigning were right.
Clearly the 18 year old civil servant didn't check it and assumed the internet had always existed and that non political people read Hansard like everyone used to read newspapers.
But I suppose we can blame all politicians for not spelling out the facts of life to the voters.