David Conn @david_conn 18m18 minutes ago Also re the cricket, sponsorship of England by Waitrose and #Ashes tests by bank Investec gives impression of comfy middle class exclusivity.
Has this guy analysed backers of football, rugby etc.
I plead guilty to "old school" .... bring back Wackford Squeers.
They can't. Mrs Thatcher's government abolished corporal punishment and imposed a national curriculum that included neither spelling nor cleaning winders.
The BBC is doing its' moral duty by dumping the Met Office after the latter disgracefully provided a public forecast of rain for the fourth and fifth days of the 5th Test Match, thereby giving vital intelligence to the Australian team that then applied the follow-on to our brave fellows.
The BBC refused to say who the remaining bidders were, insisting the tender process was ‘ongoing’, but they are thought to be Metra, an offshoot of the New Zealand national forecasting service and Meteo, a collaboration between the Press Association, based in the UK, and the Dutch national weather service.
I think we can be magnanimous in our victory over the convicts!
But what are the Bildiberger lizards up to? Surely the Met Office and the BBC are two arms of the same Common Purpose agenda to spread the global warming fraud and thereby exploit the sturdy yeomanry of Britain?
Rather an interesting piece and a refreshing change from many of this sites's posts which would make the rocks weep in despair with their recycled propaganda posing as argument.
there are more who think it would be more successful within the UK but that's not the same thing even if you think it is wrong.
Why are we still talking about this? There was a referendum that both sides agreed would be final.
No one believes that. Believe me I wish it was final. 5-10 years I give it at max.
That would be pointless. Why hold a referendum (which is supposed to make a decision) if one side won't accept a result that goes against them?
It's their reason for existence, they cannot accept it if it goes against. A defeat is merely a delay. Until independence is not popular among a significant portion of the country a political force asking for it will call referendums at some point, how can they not? If they remain popular by or in spite of committing to or leaving the door open to asking the people again, they can.
On another matter, I did scoff at the idea the Scottish conservatives should change their names, and apparently any unionist transfer votes were minimal, but maybe they really should change their name to the Scottish unionist party or something. It's not like it will hurt them even if it won't help.
Interestingly in Scotland the only folks who are devoting much energy about the referendum result are the unionist parties, right wing commentators ( + David Clegg) and a hand full of the more extreme nationalists (most of them not even SNP members). Similarly there's a group of folks on this site who just cant seem to accept that the SNP's success following IndyRef. In an average day on this site the SNP can be described as a Cult, a fascist party, ultra left wing, centre left, socialist, nationalist, tartan Tories, a chameleon party, anti-austerity, austerity-lite etc. Corbyn is now being subject to the same approach, sadly folks have not learned any lessons from the SNP’s rise and are just going to drive forward Corbynisim.
I think between now and 2020, as well as a recession and a bruising Tory leadership battle post-EU Ref - there'll be a stock market crash, interest rate rises and possibly a bursting of the London property bubble. Cameron's attacks on the unions could also result in a much more focused partnership between Corbyn, Labour and the unions - putting aside all their petty disputes to beat the main enemy. Cameron is no Thatcher, his union attack will be more rhetoric than substance, where as Lady T really did go to war with the union movement - Cameron doesn't have her killer instinct.
Kids Company helped scores of immigrants stay in UK on benefits and arranged private sex-change against NHS doctors advice
Kids Company spent public money helping immigrants and on surgery A 207-page report from 2013 states that between March 2011 - March 2013 charity helped 123 people with 'immigration issues' by paying legal bills Sources also say gender reassignment surgery, funded by one of the charity’s private donors, was organised after NHS refused to carry it out It also doled out £60,000 to Oxford University graduate over past 2 years Follows revelations founder Camila Batmanghelidjh had a 'personal private swimming pool' in a £5,000-a-month mansion paid for from charity's funds
Kids Company helped scores of immigrants stay in UK on benefits and arranged private sex-change against NHS doctors advice
Kids Company spent public money helping immigrants and on surgery A 207-page report from 2013 states that between March 2011 - March 2013 charity helped 123 people with 'immigration issues' by paying legal bills Sources also say gender reassignment surgery, funded by one of the charity’s private donors, was organised after NHS refused to carry it out It also doled out £60,000 to Oxford University graduate over past 2 years Follows revelations founder Camila Batmanghelidjh had a 'personal private swimming pool' in a £5,000-a-month mansion paid for from charity's funds
Rather an interesting piece and a refreshing change from many of this sites's posts which would make the rocks weep in despair with their recycled propaganda posing as argument.
However it is rather wasted by being written as a devils argument. TSE clearly doesn't believe that Corbyn ia a danger just wants to provoke the more anxious Tories among us - the ones who have regular nightmares about all sorts of things.
Finally TSE heavily and rather patronisingly underates the strength of presentation of the Scottish independence argument last year. Against a hugely hostile press corps (and Nick Robinson et al) it was done rather well - those on this site who don't accept that an independent Scotland would be a viable and successful state really do need to extend their reading beyond the Daily Telegraph.
And there I think is the key difference. In reaching over and beyond the establishment media I think I would back Salmond in Scotland to do a lot better than Corbyn in the UK. And that I fear, plus the bottomless pit of right wing Labour treachery, will be Jeremy's fall.
I don't think there are really that many people even here who think Scotland couldn't be a successful independent state, though no doubt there are a few, there are more who think it would be more successful within the UK but that's not the same thing even if you think it is wrong.
Why are we still talking about this? There was a referendum that both sides agreed would be final.
No one believes that. Believe me I wish it was final. 5-10 years I give it at max.
That would be pointless. Why hold a referendum (which is supposed to make a decision) if one side won't accept a result that goes against them?
It's their reason for existence, they cannot accept it if it goes against.
Agreed, but since the SNP has conceded that they can't call a legitimate referendum and that only HMG can do that, why would HMG permit a second referendum when the SNP has proven that it can't accept Scots' democratic decision?
The BBC refused to say who the remaining bidders were, insisting the tender process was ‘ongoing’, but they are thought to be Metra, an offshoot of the New Zealand national forecasting service and Meteo, a collaboration between the Press Association, based in the UK, and the Dutch national weather service.
Kids Company helped scores of immigrants stay in UK on benefits and arranged private sex-change against NHS doctors advice
Kids Company spent public money helping immigrants and on surgery A 207-page report from 2013 states that between March 2011 - March 2013 charity helped 123 people with 'immigration issues' by paying legal bills Sources also say gender reassignment surgery, funded by one of the charity’s private donors, was organised after NHS refused to carry it out It also doled out £60,000 to Oxford University graduate over past 2 years Follows revelations founder Camila Batmanghelidjh had a 'personal private swimming pool' in a £5,000-a-month mansion paid for from charity's funds
They were also claiming to help upwards of 16000 vulnerable children. It appears it was somewhat less than 500.
If Mrs Batman quoted these kind of fake numbers in grant applications, doesn't that count as fraud?
It certainly does merit enquiry.
Increasingly government, council, NHS and DHS money goes via 3rd sector organisations. I suspect that many are better run than the flamboyant Ms Batmanandrobin, but what sort of audit and oversight is there?
Kids Company helped scores of immigrants stay in UK on benefits and arranged private sex-change against NHS doctors advice
Kids Company spent public money helping immigrants and on surgery A 207-page report from 2013 states that between March 2011 - March 2013 charity helped 123 people with 'immigration issues' by paying legal bills Sources also say gender reassignment surgery, funded by one of the charity’s private donors, was organised after NHS refused to carry it out It also doled out £60,000 to Oxford University graduate over past 2 years Follows revelations founder Camila Batmanghelidjh had a 'personal private swimming pool' in a £5,000-a-month mansion paid for from charity's funds
They were also claiming to help upwards of 16000 vulnerable children. It appears it was somewhat less than 500.
If Mrs Batman quoted these kind of fake numbers in grant applications, doesn't that count as fraud?
Are the numbers fake or is it a matter of interpretation? If one boy is persistently disrupting a class of 20, then does "curing" him help 1 or 20 children?
Rather an interesting piece and a refreshing change from many of this sites's posts which would make the rocks weep in despair with their recycled propaganda posing as argument.
However it is rather wasted by being written as a devils argument. TSE clearly doesn't believe that Corbyn ia a danger just wants to provoke the more anxious Tories among us - the ones who have regular nightmares about all sorts of things.
Finally TSE heavily and rather patronisingly underates the strength of presentation of the Scottish independence argument last year. Against a hugely hostile press corps (and Nick Robinson et al) it was done rather well - those on this site who don't accept that an independent Scotland would be a viable and successful state really do need to extend their reading beyond the Daily Telegraph.
And there I think is the key difference. In reaching over and beyond the establishment media I think I would back Salmond in Scotland to do a lot better than Corbyn in the UK. And that I fear, plus the bottomless pit of right wing Labour treachery, will be Jeremy's fall.
I don't think there are really that many people even here who think Scotland couldn't be a successful independent state, though no doubt there are a few, there are more who think it would be more successful within the UK but that's not the same thing even if you think it is wrong.
Why are we still talking about this? There was a referendum that both sides agreed would be final.
No one believes that. Believe me I wish it was final. 5-10 years I give it at max.
That would be pointless. Why hold a referendum (which is supposed to make a decision) if one side won't accept a result that goes against them?
It's their reason for existence, they cannot accept it if it goes against.
Agreed, but since the SNP has conceded that they can't call a legitimate referendum and that only HMG can do that, why would HMG permit a second referendum when the SNP has proven that it can't accept Scots' democratic decision?
Not sure, but that'll be the next big kerfuffle no doubt.
David Conn @david_conn 18m18 minutes ago Also re the cricket, sponsorship of England by Waitrose and #Ashes tests by bank Investec gives impression of comfy middle class exclusivity.
Has this guy analysed backers of football, rugby etc.
Lack of analysis seems pretty common around here. Fantasy projections for the future abound from Corbynites to Callumites. Quite hilarious.
Kids Company helped scores of immigrants stay in UK on benefits and arranged private sex-change against NHS doctors advice
Kids Company spent public money helping immigrants and on surgery A 207-page report from 2013 states that between March 2011 - March 2013 charity helped 123 people with 'immigration issues' by paying legal bills Sources also say gender reassignment surgery, funded by one of the charity’s private donors, was organised after NHS refused to carry it out It also doled out £60,000 to Oxford University graduate over past 2 years Follows revelations founder Camila Batmanghelidjh had a 'personal private swimming pool' in a £5,000-a-month mansion paid for from charity's funds
They were also claiming to help upwards of 16000 vulnerable children. It appears it was somewhat less than 500.
Another failure of David Cameron's "big society". How shocking.
Yes he was very stupid to believe what he was told by a darling of the luvvie left. He should have know that she was lying when she claimed to be spending public money effectively.
I plead guilty to "old school" .... bring back Wackford Squeers.
They can't. Mrs Thatcher's government abolished corporal punishment and imposed a national curriculum that included neither spelling nor cleaning winders.
Congratulations to PB for getting Owen Jones to write a thread for PB this morning.
Ouch.
That's absurd - his pieces surely wouldn't be 'here's some ways Corbyn could win' and more 'Corbyn will win you nasty b*stards, now don't be rude back to me, death to the aristos, buy my book'?
Kids Company helped scores of immigrants stay in UK on benefits and arranged private sex-change against NHS doctors advice
Kids Company spent public money helping immigrants and on surgery A 207-page report from 2013 states that between March 2011 - March 2013 charity helped 123 people with 'immigration issues' by paying legal bills Sources also say gender reassignment surgery, funded by one of the charity’s private donors, was organised after NHS refused to carry it out It also doled out £60,000 to Oxford University graduate over past 2 years Follows revelations founder Camila Batmanghelidjh had a 'personal private swimming pool' in a £5,000-a-month mansion paid for from charity's funds
They were also claiming to help upwards of 16000 vulnerable children. It appears it was somewhat less than 500.
If Mrs Batman quoted these kind of fake numbers in grant applications, doesn't that count as fraud?
Are the numbers fake or is it a matter of interpretation? If one boy is persistently disrupting a class of 20, then does "curing" him help 1 or 20 children?
We criticise political parties for that kind of specialised interpretation which they may not explain, they would know very well that if you claim to have helped x number, most people assume you mean directly helped that number.
The BBC is doing its' moral duty by dumping the Met Office after the latter disgracefully provided a public forecast of rain for the fourth and fifth days of the 5th Test Match, thereby giving vital intelligence to the Australian team that then applied the follow-on to our brave fellows.
The BBC refused to say who the remaining bidders were, insisting the tender process was ‘ongoing’, but they are thought to be Metra, an offshoot of the New Zealand national forecasting service and Meteo, a collaboration between the Press Association, based in the UK, and the Dutch national weather service.
I think we can be magnanimous in our victory over the convicts!
But what are the Bildiberger lizards up to? Surely the Met Office and the BBC are two arms of the same Common Purpose agenda to spread the global warming fraud and thereby exploit the sturdy yeomanry of Britain?
Nobles and their sturdy British yeoman only find magnanimity after we've ground opposing bastards into the dirt.
Kids Company helped scores of immigrants stay in UK on benefits and arranged private sex-change against NHS doctors advice
Kids Company spent public money helping immigrants and on surgery A 207-page report from 2013 states that between March 2011 - March 2013 charity helped 123 people with 'immigration issues' by paying legal bills Sources also say gender reassignment surgery, funded by one of the charity’s private donors, was organised after NHS refused to carry it out It also doled out £60,000 to Oxford University graduate over past 2 years Follows revelations founder Camila Batmanghelidjh had a 'personal private swimming pool' in a £5,000-a-month mansion paid for from charity's funds
They were also claiming to help upwards of 16000 vulnerable children. It appears it was somewhat less than 500.
Another failure of David Cameron's "big society". How shocking.
Yes he was very stupid to believe what he was told by a darling of the luvvie left. He should have know that she was lying when she claimed to be spending public money effectively.
Traditionally, many on the left are suspicious of charities and believe the state should act directly. This is a Conservative failure, which perhaps accounts for the frantic spinning.
Kids Company helped scores of immigrants stay in UK on benefits and arranged private sex-change against NHS doctors advice
Kids Company spent public money helping immigrants and on surgery A 207-page report from 2013 states that between March 2011 - March 2013 charity helped 123 people with 'immigration issues' by paying legal bills Sources also say gender reassignment surgery, funded by one of the charity’s private donors, was organised after NHS refused to carry it out It also doled out £60,000 to Oxford University graduate over past 2 years Follows revelations founder Camila Batmanghelidjh had a 'personal private swimming pool' in a £5,000-a-month mansion paid for from charity's funds
They were also claiming to help upwards of 16000 vulnerable children. It appears it was somewhat less than 500.
Another failure of David Cameron's "big society". How shocking.
Yes he was very stupid to believe what he was told by a darling of the luvvie left. He should have know that she was lying when she claimed to be spending public money effectively.
Traditionally, many on the left are suspicious of charities and believe the state should act directly. This is a Conservative failure, which perhaps accounts for the frantic spinning.
Yes you're correct, by letting me know you've helped 20 others too.
Congratulations to PB for getting Owen Jones to write a thread for PB this morning.
Ouch.
You will be telling us next that there will be a no vote for in the EU Referendum. Scotland will go Independent. The conservatives will meet their migration target, and keep all their manifesto pledges.
"... is something that Douglas Adams would have rejected as being too improbable."
As the late Mr. Adams invented the infinite improbability drive your assertion seems, well, improbable.
That was sort of my point...
But it was terrible. They sent responses that had been encoded in such a way that you had to be a geek to know how to unscramble them .
Yes, I got that you were making a rather clever jest on the point that a person who could conceive of infinite improbabilities would find something improbable but how probable is it that such a level of improbability could, probably, exist?
Probably the question turns on the nature of infinity. Whilst the Hilbert's Hotel provides a model of the nature of infinity that is probably accessible to the average layman, it does miss out on the crucial element of infinity. That is to say there is not one infinity but an infinite number of infinities (as five minutes with a textbook on set theory will finitely demonstrate).
Thus, if there is an infinite number of infinite improbabilities there is no probability of an infinitely improbable event let alone an event that is so improbable as to be beyond the set of improbable events.
Kids Company helped scores of immigrants stay in UK on benefits and arranged private sex-change against NHS doctors advice
Kids Company spent public money helping immigrants and on surgery A 207-page report from 2013 states that between March 2011 - March 2013 charity helped 123 people with 'immigration issues' by paying legal bills Sources also say gender reassignment surgery, funded by one of the charity’s private donors, was organised after NHS refused to carry it out It also doled out £60,000 to Oxford University graduate over past 2 years Follows revelations founder Camila Batmanghelidjh had a 'personal private swimming pool' in a £5,000-a-month mansion paid for from charity's funds
Does anyone know who the other 40 economists are in the Guardian?
David Blanchflower professor of economics, Dartmouth and Stirling; Mariana Mazzucato professor, economics of innovation, Sussex; Dr Judith Heyer Emeritus Fellow, Somerville College, Oxford, Grazia Ietto-Gillies, emeritus professor, London South Bank University Malcolm Walker, emeritus professor, Leeds Robert Wade, professor, LSE Michael Burke, economist Steve Keen, professor, Kingston Victoria Chick, emeritus professor, UCL Anna Coote, NEF, personal capacity Ozlem Onaran, professor, Greenwich Andrew Cumbers, professor, Glasgow Tina Roberts, economist Dr Suzanne J Konzelmann, Birkbeck, Tanweer Ali, lecturer, New York John Weeks, professor, SOAS Marco Veronese Passarella, lecturer, Leeds Dr Jerome De-Henau, senior lecturer, Open University. Stefano Lucarelli, professor, Bergamo Paul Hudson, formerly Universität Wissemburg-Halle Mario Seccareccia, professor, Ottawa Dr Pritam Singh, professor, Oxford Brookes Arturo Hermann, senior research fellow at Istat, Rome Dr John Roberts, Brunel Cyrus Bina, professor, Minnesota Alan Freeman, retired former economist George Irvin, professor, SOAS Susan Pashkoff, economist Radhika Desai, professor, Manitoba Diego Sánchez-Ancochea, associate professor, Oxford Guglielmo Forges Davanzati, associate professor, Salento Jeanette Findlay, senior lecturer, Glasgow Raphael Kaplinsky, emeritus professor, Open University John Ross, Socialist Economic Bulletin Steven Hail, adjunct lecturer, Adelaide Louis-Philippe Rochon, associate professor, Laurentian Hilary Wainwright, editor, Red Pepper Arturo Hermann, senior researcher, ISAE, Rome Joshua Ryan-Collins, NEF, personal capacity James Medway, lecturer City University Alberto Paloni, professor, Glasgow Dr Mary Roberton, Leeds
Does anyone know who the other 40 economists are in the Guardian?
David Blanchflower professor of economics, Dartmouth and Stirling; Mariana Mazzucato professor, economics of innovation, Sussex; Dr Judith Heyer Emeritus Fellow, Somerville College, Oxford, Grazia Ietto-Gillies, emeritus professor, London South Bank University Malcolm Walker, emeritus professor, Leeds Robert Wade, professor, LSE Michael Burke, economist Steve Keen, professor, Kingston Victoria Chick, emeritus professor, UCL Anna Coote, NEF, personal capacity Ozlem Onaran, professor, Greenwich Andrew Cumbers, professor, Glasgow Tina Roberts, economist Dr Suzanne J Konzelmann, Birkbeck, Tanweer Ali, lecturer, New York John Weeks, professor, SOAS Marco Veronese Passarella, lecturer, Leeds Dr Jerome De-Henau, senior lecturer, Open University. Stefano Lucarelli, professor, Bergamo Paul Hudson, formerly Universität Wissemburg-Halle Mario Seccareccia, professor, Ottawa Dr Pritam Singh, professor, Oxford Brookes Arturo Hermann, senior research fellow at Istat, Rome Dr John Roberts, Brunel Cyrus Bina, professor, Minnesota Alan Freeman, retired former economist George Irvin, professor, SOAS Susan Pashkoff, economist Radhika Desai, professor, Manitoba Diego Sánchez-Ancochea, associate professor, Oxford Guglielmo Forges Davanzati, associate professor, Salento Jeanette Findlay, senior lecturer, Glasgow Raphael Kaplinsky, emeritus professor, Open University John Ross, Socialist Economic Bulletin Steven Hail, adjunct lecturer, Adelaide Louis-Philippe Rochon, associate professor, Laurentian Hilary Wainwright, editor, Red Pepper Arturo Hermann, senior researcher, ISAE, Rome Joshua Ryan-Collins, NEF, personal capacity James Medway, lecturer City University Alberto Paloni, professor, Glasgow Dr Mary Roberton, Leeds http://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/news/comment
Some of them don't even appear to be economists.
Just think of the terrible damage these people do to the minds of the young folk they lecture and work with.
An interesting piece from TSE and a useful antidote to the anti-Corbyn vitriol doing the rounds here on a daily or even hourly basis. The fact it's Corbyn of course is irrelevant - if any of Cooper, Burnham or Kendall were leading clearly, there would be the same torrent of invective. It's the standard Conservative tactic of trying to discredit the leaders of other political parties but that's politics.
As TSE rightly says, the British Government has frequently dealt with people it calls "terrorists" - beyond Ireland, there's a certain Nelson Mandela and of course those Likud leaders in Israel who were members of the Irgun which blew up British soldiers in the 1940s.
I note Corbyn's use of the words "reserves the right to" - there are many Councils who have gone down the route of outsourcing and have lived to regret it including one which ended up being charged £120 by a Contractor to change a light bulb at a home for vulnerable children.
We've also seen how the State has had to step in to rescue ailing rail franchises and of course Network Rail itself. My line (so to speak) has always been I don't care who runs the railways but I'll be damned if they should make any money from the fare-paying passengers (there are many other income generation possibilities).
Someone wittered on earlier about the benefits of going out to tender - yes, fine, but when the Conservative Government forced Councils to accept the lowest bid irrespective of the quality of that bid and the financial strength of the company making the bid, the whole process had become corrupted by ill-considered ideology.
Congratulations to PB for getting Owen Jones to write a thread for PB this morning.
Ouch.
That's absurd - his pieces surely wouldn't be 'here's some ways Corbyn could win' and more 'Corbyn will win you nasty b*stards, now don't be rude back to me, death to the aristos, buy my book'?
Both points of view are equally absurd though. Corbyn may make arguments but they should neither frighten nor fool anyone.
Kids Company helped scores of immigrants stay in UK on benefits and arranged private sex-change against NHS doctors advice
Kids Company spent public money helping immigrants and on surgery A 207-page report from 2013 states that between March 2011 - March 2013 charity helped 123 people with 'immigration issues' by paying legal bills Sources also say gender reassignment surgery, funded by one of the charity’s private donors, was organised after NHS refused to carry it out It also doled out £60,000 to Oxford University graduate over past 2 years Follows revelations founder Camila Batmanghelidjh had a 'personal private swimming pool' in a £5,000-a-month mansion paid for from charity's funds
They were also claiming to help upwards of 16000 vulnerable children. It appears it was somewhat less than 500.
Another failure of David Cameron's "big society". How shocking.
Yes he was very stupid to believe what he was told by a darling of the luvvie left. He should have know that she was lying when she claimed to be spending public money effectively.
Traditionally, many on the left are suspicious of charities and believe the state should act directly. This is a Conservative failure, which perhaps accounts for the frantic spinning. Failure came under the chairmanship of Alan Yentob. He was in place for 10+ years. Was he a Conservative?
On TSE's PS, the Corbyn argument is that you have to meet bad people you disagree with and hear what they have to say etc etc. If that is his argument, one would expect Corbyn to have met with Israeli right wingers, for instance, to hear what they have to say, no?
And yet we don't find that. On the contrary, he campaigned to keep the Israeli foreign minister out of the country or arrested for war crimes if she landed here.
He is spinning a line to justify what he is doing. It is pure spin: dishonest spin worthy of Blair. His principles - if they can even be called that - can be summed up thus: is this person an enemy of or opposed to my enemy? If yes, I'm on their side. No further enquiry needed.
TSE "It is thought that some of Corbyn’s friends could cause him problems, but again that might not be the case."
Corbyn has so many faults and scandalous friends that are going to provide an almost never ending list of attack points for all the media. Even the Guardian, Mirror or Independent will struggle to find a way to support Corbyn.
Kids Company helped scores of immigrants stay in UK on benefits and arranged private sex-change against NHS doctors advice
Kids Company spent public money helping immigrants and on surgery A 207-page report from 2013 states that between March 2011 - March 2013 charity helped 123 people with 'immigration issues' by paying legal bills Sources also say gender reassignment surgery, funded by one of the charity’s private donors, was organised after NHS refused to carry it out It also doled out £60,000 to Oxford University graduate over past 2 years Follows revelations founder Camila Batmanghelidjh had a 'personal private swimming pool' in a £5,000-a-month mansion paid for from charity's funds
They were also claiming to help upwards of 16000 vulnerable children. It appears it was somewhat less than 500.
Another failure of David Cameron's "big society". How shocking.
Yes he was very stupid to believe what he was told by a darling of the luvvie left. He should have know that she was lying when she claimed to be spending public money effectively.
Traditionally, many on the left are suspicious of charities and believe the state should act directly. This is a Conservative failure, which perhaps accounts for the frantic spinning.
AIUI Labour also funded the charity whilst they were in power.
There is not one failure here; but multiple. Trying to blame this mess on just one thing is both stupid and unhelpful. Yes, the government have questions to answer. But so too might the charity's management, the charity commission, Labour, the MPs of all parties who supported it, and the many media who fawned over her without asking difficult questions.
Remember; it is rare for an incident to be caused by just one factor. That's why phrases like 'causal factors' are so useful.
Interestingly in Scotland the only folks who are devoting much energy about the referendum result are the unionist parties, right wing commentators ( + David Clegg) and a hand full of the more extreme nationalists (most of them not even SNP members).
LOL
The zoomers are on top form this morning, You should take that show to the Fringe...
Sitting SNP MSPs have been deselected for talking about IndyRef2
“Only one voter out of a hundred ever attends an election meeting, and he or she is nearly always already committed to one party or the other. Michael Foot and I... were speaking every night at public meetings of people whose minds were already made up.”
Talking to the converted doesn't work - as Gordon and EdM discovered.
"The losing side in Labour’s civil war that nearly wrecked the party 30 years ago is on the march again and it doesn’t give a fig who knows it. The result is already widely foreseen as a sweeping victory for those who want a radical change in the party’s direction and “upheaval”, one of their favourite words, in the way the country is run.
“Arrogance was part of their arsenal,” I wrote in my memoirs. This arrogance was on display again at a recent rally in support of Jeremy Corbyn in Liverpool. We used to sing The Red Flag at the end of Labour conferences as an emotional reminder of our solidarity. But Corbyn’s supporters prepared for his arrival with a rendering of the Internationale, the communist anthem."
We've also seen how the State has had to step in to rescue ailing rail franchises and of course Network Rail itself. My line (so to speak) has always been I don't care who runs the railways but I'll be damned if they should make any money from the fare-paying passengers (there are many other income generation possibilities).
I don't feel strongly about the railways one way or the other. But why shouldn't those who run the railways make money from fare-paying passengers? Who else should they make money from?
That's a bit like saying "I don't care who runs John Lewis but I'll be damned if they should make any money from their customers."
Kids Company helped scores of immigrants stay in UK on benefits and arranged private sex-change against NHS doctors advice
Kids Company spent public money helping immigrants and on surgery A 207-page report from 2013 states that between March 2011 - March 2013 charity helped 123 people with 'immigration issues' by paying legal bills Sources also say gender reassignment surgery, funded by one of the charity’s private donors, was organised after NHS refused to carry it out It also doled out £60,000 to Oxford University graduate over past 2 years Follows revelations founder Camila Batmanghelidjh had a 'personal private swimming pool' in a £5,000-a-month mansion paid for from charity's funds
They were also claiming to help upwards of 16000 vulnerable children. It appears it was somewhat less than 500.
Another failure of David Cameron's "big society". How shocking.
Yes he was very stupid to believe what he was told by a darling of the luvvie left. He should have know that she was lying when she claimed to be spending public money effectively.
Traditionally, many on the left are suspicious of charities and believe the state should act directly. This is a Conservative failure, which perhaps accounts for the frantic spinning.
The Left's suspicion of charities is because they prefer to have their own appointees in control and receiving gold-plated taxpayer funded perks.
An interesting piece from TSE and a useful antidote to the anti-Corbyn vitriol doing the rounds here on a daily or even hourly basis. The fact it's Corbyn of course is irrelevant - if any of Cooper, Burnham or Kendall were leading clearly, there would be the same torrent of invective. It's the standard Conservative tactic of trying to discredit the leaders of other political parties but that's politics.
As TSE rightly says, the British Government has frequently dealt with people it calls "terrorists" - beyond Ireland, there's a certain Nelson Mandela and of course those Likud leaders in Israel who were members of the Irgun which blew up British soldiers in the 1940s.
I note Corbyn's use of the words "reserves the right to" - there are many Councils who have gone down the route of outsourcing and have lived to regret it including one which ended up being charged £120 by a Contractor to change a light bulb at a home for vulnerable children.
We've also seen how the State has had to step in to rescue ailing rail franchises and of course Network Rail itself. My line (so to speak) has always been I don't care who runs the railways but I'll be damned if they should make any money from the fare-paying passengers (there are many other income generation possibilities).
Someone wittered on earlier about the benefits of going out to tender - yes, fine, but when the Conservative Government forced Councils to accept the lowest bid irrespective of the quality of that bid and the financial strength of the company making the bid, the whole process had become corrupted by ill-considered ideology.
Stodge.
Maybe we are at the beginning to the end, of the Blair, heir to Blair Cameron concencus. Once Labour move away , this will give the oppurtunity for the conservatives to as well. As many will think, a right wing leader will always beat a left wing leader under FPTP.
I think they will be correct, but eventually the electoral system will have to change.
Kids Company helped scores of immigrants stay in UK on benefits and arranged private sex-change against NHS doctors advice
Kids Company spent public money helping immigrants and on surgery A 207-page report from 2013 states that between March 2011 - March 2013 charity helped 123 people with 'immigration issues' by paying legal bills Sources also say gender reassignment surgery, funded by one of the charity’s private donors, was organised after NHS refused to carry it out It also doled out £60,000 to Oxford University graduate over past 2 years Follows revelations founder Camila Batmanghelidjh had a 'personal private swimming pool' in a £5,000-a-month mansion paid for from charity's funds
They were also claiming to help upwards of 16000 vulnerable children. It appears it was somewhat less than 500.
Another failure of David Cameron's "big society". How shocking.
Yes he was very stupid to believe what he was told by a darling of the luvvie left. He should have know that she was lying when she claimed to be spending public money effectively. The issue is one for the charity commission and the trustees of Kids Company. Its their failure. The criminals here (if there are any of course) are a bunch of leftie luvvie criminals.
Kids Company helped scores of immigrants stay in UK on benefits and arranged private sex-change against NHS doctors advice
Kids Company spent public money helping immigrants and on surgery A 207-page report from 2013 states that between March 2011 - March 2013 charity helped 123 people with 'immigration issues' by paying legal bills Sources also say gender reassignment surgery, funded by one of the charity’s private donors, was organised after NHS refused to carry it out It also doled out £60,000 to Oxford University graduate over past 2 years Follows revelations founder Camila Batmanghelidjh had a 'personal private swimming pool' in a £5,000-a-month mansion paid for from charity's funds
They were also claiming to help upwards of 16000 vulnerable children. It appears it was somewhat less than 500.
Another failure of David Cameron's "big society". How shocking.
Yes he was very stupid to believe what he was told by a darling of the luvvie left. He should have know that she was lying when she claimed to be spending public money effectively.
Traditionally, many on the left are suspicious of charities and believe the state should act directly. This is a Conservative failure, which perhaps accounts for the frantic spinning.
Failure came under the chairmanship of Alan Yentob. He was in place for 10+ years. Was he a Conservative?
Yes the establishment always are in one shape or another. New Labour - Conservative .
Interesting article TSE though I think, short of a depression, there is little likelihood of Corbyn actually winning most seats. If that ever were a danger I also think Cameron would stay on for one more term for the sake of the country and the party if he thought he was the only Tory leader who could prevent a Corbyn election victory
On John Major, I don't think he ever met the IRA face to face until the peace process was confirmed, he did have agents negotiate them to get that process under way but that is not quite the same thing
We've also seen how the State has had to step in to rescue ailing rail franchises and of course Network Rail itself. My line (so to speak) has always been I don't care who runs the railways but I'll be damned if they should make any money from the fare-paying passengers (there are many other income generation possibilities).
I don't feel strongly about the railways one way or the other. But why shouldn't those who run the railways make money from fare-paying passengers? Who else should they make money from?
That's a bit like saying "I don't care who runs John Lewis but I'll be damned if they should make any money from their customers."
Or have I misunderstood your point?
Furthermore, isn't the whole criticism of put forward of privatisation that they are not making money from Fare paying passengers? The argument goes that they are making money even though being subsidised by the Government. So they are not making money from fare paying passengers they are making money, so the argument logically goes, from the General Taxpayer.
Kids Company helped scores of immigrants stay in UK on benefits and arranged private sex-change against NHS doctors advice
Kids Company spent public money helping immigrants and on surgery A 207-page report from 2013 states that between March 2011 - March 2013 charity helped 123 people with 'immigration issues' by paying legal bills Sources also say gender reassignment surgery, funded by one of the charity’s private donors, was organised after NHS refused to carry it out It also doled out £60,000 to Oxford University graduate over past 2 years Follows revelations founder Camila Batmanghelidjh had a 'personal private swimming pool' in a £5,000-a-month mansion paid for from charity's funds
They were also claiming to help upwards of 16000 vulnerable children. It appears it was somewhat less than 500.
If Mrs Batman quoted these kind of fake numbers in grant applications, doesn't that count as fraud?
Are the numbers fake or is it a matter of interpretation? If one boy is persistently disrupting a class of 20, then does "curing" him help 1 or 20 children?
I think the numbers have been documented as including all 'contacts'.
Claims have also been made for 36,000 not 16,000. Full-Fact teased it out a bit here:
"Through our street-level centres, our over-16s educational centre and our early intervention programme in 40 schools, to provide assistance to vulnerable children and young people. currently the charity works with 36,000 children, approximately 18,000 of whom receive intensive support."
"The total income raised in the year was £15.63million, which represented a growth of 10.5% compared to the previous 12 months"
On those numbers I just don't believe the "intensive" claim, unless there is a very creative definition.
I guess the Fraud thing turns on the precise claims made in particular circumstances - eg to apply for a grant or obtain the support of Gok. I think there are more worms in this can.
Kids Company helped scores of immigrants stay in UK on benefits and arranged private sex-change against NHS doctors advice
Kids Company spent public money helping immigrants and on surgery A 207-page report from 2013 states that between March 2011 - March 2013 charity helped 123 people with 'immigration issues' by paying legal bills Sources also say gender reassignment surgery, funded by one of the charity’s private donors, was organised after NHS refused to carry it out It also doled out £60,000 to Oxford University graduate over past 2 years Follows revelations founder Camila Batmanghelidjh had a 'personal private swimming pool' in a £5,000-a-month mansion paid for from charity's funds
They were also claiming to help upwards of 16000 vulnerable children. It appears it was somewhat less than 500.
Another failure of David Cameron's "big society". How shocking.
Yes he was very stupid to believe what he was told by a darling of the luvvie left. He should have know that she was lying when she claimed to be spending public money effectively.
The issue is one for the charity commission and the trustees of Kids Company. Its their failure. The criminals here (if there are any of course) are a bunch of leftie luvvie criminals.
I don't believe that the CC are fit to address that.
I dealt with them over a charitable chain of bookshops that was asset stripped by shysters. They were quite cotton-batting useless.
Kids Company helped scores of immigrants stay in UK on benefits and arranged private sex-change against NHS doctors advice
Kids Company spent public money helping immigrants and on surgery A 207-page report from 2013 states that between March 2011 - March 2013 charity helped 123 people with 'immigration issues' by paying legal bills Sources also say gender reassignment surgery, funded by one of the charity’s private donors, was organised after NHS refused to carry it out It also doled out £60,000 to Oxford University graduate over past 2 years Follows revelations founder Camila Batmanghelidjh had a 'personal private swimming pool' in a £5,000-a-month mansion paid for from charity's funds
They were also claiming to help upwards of 16000 vulnerable children. It appears it was somewhat less than 500.
Another failure of David Cameron's "big society". How shocking.
Yes he was very stupid to believe what he was told by a darling of the luvvie left. He should have know that she was lying when she claimed to be spending public money effectively.
Traditionally, many on the left are suspicious of charities and believe the state should act directly. This is a Conservative failure, which perhaps accounts for the frantic spinning.
Failure came under the chairmanship of Alan Yentob. He was in place for 10+ years. Was he a Conservative?
No idea. Yentob is not a Labour politician, nor one of any stripe sfaict, so what's your point?
Tying two of this morning's themes together, it is hard to see how "rebalancing the economy" can be achieved without an "active state".
Oh 'active states' certainly 'rebalance the economy' - just look at Zimbabwe or Venezuela.....
Is having a Chancellor of the Exchequer and a Budget to be called an 'active state' these days? DecrepitJohn is allowing exposure to Corbynite to addle his brain.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: the Conservatives are being far too dismissive of the dangers of a Labour party led by Corbyn. Whilst he seems a joke at the moment, we should not underestimate the public's ability to vote for jokes. Just look at Boris as London mayor, or Ed Miliband's entire time as leader.
In 2020 we'll have had 41 years of a Thatcherite or neo-Thatcherite consensus. It might be that large swathes of the public are ready for an alternative, however disastrous that might be,
The Brown premiership was not Thatcherite by any definition, he raised the top tax rate to 50% from the 40% Thatcher left and increased spending as a percentage of GDP to 48%, when Thatcher left office it was nearer 35%
On John Major, I don't think he ever met the IRA face to face until the peace process was confirmed, he did have agents negotiate them to get that process under way but that is not quite the same thing
The whole point about the peace process in NI which Corby conveniently forgets is that the IRA had to abandon what they had been fighting for - a united Ireland imposed without the consent of the people of NI. In short, in their key aim - they were defeated - and it was only once they recognised that that a settlement could be achieved.
If they had realised that sooner, a lot of people who died in the Troubles would still be alive. People like Corbyn did nothing to hasten the process. If anything - and he was an irrelevance, however much he and his supporters may now try to pretend that he was some sort of John the Baptist figure, boldly going where governments later timidly followed - people like him slowed down the path to peace by giving succour to the terrorists. That is why people like him were rightly described by Orwell as "useful idiots".
Kids Company helped scores of immigrants stay in UK on benefits and arranged private sex-change against NHS doctors advice
Kids Company spent public money helping immigrants and on surgery A 207-page report from 2013 states that between March 2011 - March 2013 charity helped 123 people with 'immigration issues' by paying legal bills Sources also say gender reassignment surgery, funded by one of the charity’s private donors, was organised after NHS refused to carry it out It also doled out £60,000 to Oxford University graduate over past 2 years Follows revelations founder Camila Batmanghelidjh had a 'personal private swimming pool' in a £5,000-a-month mansion paid for from charity's funds
They were also claiming to help upwards of 16000 vulnerable children. It appears it was somewhat less than 500.
Another failure of David Cameron's "big society". How shocking.
Yes he was very stupid to believe what he was told by a darling of the luvvie left. He should have know that she was lying when she claimed to be spending public money effectively.
The issue is one for the charity commission and the trustees of Kids Company. Its their failure. The criminals here (if there are any of course) are a bunch of leftie luvvie criminals.
The problem for the Conservatives isn't that they are responsible for how Kids Company was run, and its subsequent failure (although they have questions to answer about why they (against the advice of civil servants) gave them money without due diligence.
The problem is that the entire thread of current Conservative policy thinking running through most areas of Government is based on funnelling public money through these sorts of organisations, as opposed to the traditional state or local government bureaucracies. Whether it be in schools through academies/free schools, third sector organisation involved in the Health service, non-governmental organisations for foreign aid etc etc. And the lack of clear audit oversight and accountability is part of the attraction, because all of these "safeguards" generate costs.
Andrew Neil @afneil 24m24 minutes ago Scotland's "geographic share" of oil revenues plummets to £168m in Q1 this year compared with £1bn 2014 Q1, £1.37bn 2013 Q1, £3bn 2012 Q1.
A 207-page report from 2013 states that between March 2011 - March 2013 charity helped 123 people with 'immigration issues' by paying legal bills Sources also say gender reassignment surgery, funded by one of the charity’s private donors, was organised after NHS refused to carry it out It also doled out £60,000 to Oxford University graduate over past 2 years Follows revelations founder Camila Batmanghelidjh had a 'personal private swimming pool' in a £5,000-a-month mansion paid for from charity's funds
They were also claiming to help upwards of 16000 vulnerable children. It appears it was somewhat less than 500.
If Mrs Batman quoted these kind of fake numbers in grant applications, doesn't that count as fraud?
Are the numbers fake or is it a matter of interpretation? If one boy is persistently disrupting a class of 20, then does "curing" him help 1 or 20 children?
I think the numbers have been documented as including all 'contacts'.
Claims have also been made for 36,000 not 16,000. Full-Fact teased it out a bit here:
"Through our street-level centres, our over-16s educational centre and our early intervention programme in 40 schools, to provide assistance to vulnerable children and young people. currently the charity works with 36,000 children, approximately 18,000 of whom receive intensive support."
"The total income raised in the year was £15.63million, which represented a growth of 10.5% compared to the previous 12 months"
On those numbers I just don't believe the "intensive" claim, unless there is a very creative definition.
I guess the Fraud thing turns on the precise claims made in particular circumstances - eg to apply for a grant or obtain the support of Gok. I think there are more worms in this can.
Whether the criminal offences of fraud have been committed will depend on a lot of things: what was said, to whom, the context, whether it was said dishonestly etc.
But on a more general level it is clear that KC told a load of fairy stories about what it was doing. It seems to have been no more than a youth club at its heart, which morphed into a gigantic ego trip for its gigantic owner and her friends. I'm not even clear that CB had any professionally recognised child therapy qualifications or experience.
On John Major, I don't think he ever met the IRA face to face until the peace process was confirmed, he did have agents negotiate them to get that process under way but that is not quite the same thing
The whole point about the peace process in NI which Corby conveniently forgets is that the IRA had to abandon what they had been fighting for - a united Ireland imposed without the consent of the people of NI. In short, in their key aim - they were defeated - and it was only once they recognised that that a settlement could be achieved.
If they had realised that sooner, a lot of people who died in the Troubles would still be alive. People like Corbyn did nothing to hasten the process. If anything - and he was an irrelevance, however much he and his supporters may now try to pretend that he was some sort of John the Baptist figure, boldly going where governments later timidly followed - people like him slowed down the path to peace by giving succour to the terrorists. That is why people like him were rightly described by Orwell as "useful idiots".
To believe this, you have to hold that the IRA believed that they could have run the British out of Ireland by force of arms, against not only the Army but also the loyalist paramilitaries colluding with Westminster, and that they held this belief throughout the 1980s right up to, and immediately ending at, the point at which they met publicly with John Major (let's set aside the Thatcher-authorised talks with the IRA for argument's sake). This is just not credible to me. It was evident from the loyalist response alone that they could not have believed this. You forget that this was not a merely territorial war and that the IRA was also motivated by other principles like protecting Catholic communities from loyalists.
Kids Company helped scores of immigrants stay in UK on benefits and arranged private sex-change against NHS doctors advice
Kids Company spent public money helping immigrants and on surgery A 207-page report from 2013 states that between March 2011 - March 2013 charity helped 123 people with 'immigration issues' by paying legal bills Sources also say gender reassignment surgery, funded by one of the charity’s private donors, was organised after NHS refused to carry it out It also doled out £60,000 to Oxford University graduate over past 2 years Follows revelations founder Camila Batmanghelidjh had a 'personal private swimming pool' in a £5,000-a-month mansion paid for from charity's funds
They were also claiming to help upwards of 16000 vulnerable children. It appears it was somewhat less than 500.
Another failure of David Cameron's "big society". How shocking.
Yes he was very stupid to believe what he was told by a darling of the luvvie left. He should have know that she was lying when she claimed to be spending public money effectively.
Traditionally, many on the left are suspicious of charities and believe the state should act directly. This is a Conservative failure, which perhaps accounts for the frantic spinning.
Failure came under the chairmanship of Alan Yentob. He was in place for 10+ years. Was he a Conservative?
No idea. Yentob is not a Labour politician, nor one of any stripe sfaict, so what's your point? You said "This is a Conservative failure" for a charity chaired by Yentob. Therefore Yentob should be held accountable under the principle that the chairman (and other trustees) are responsible for how a charity is run.
Re the Iraq war: did Corbyn oppose or support the first Iraq war - in 1991 - to liberate Kuwait? Does anyone know?
I assume he supported it, what with its clear mandate based on UN resolutions and all.
I expect he opposed it, in fact opposition from many Democrats in 1990 meant it only passed the Senate 52-47 and the House 250-183. I know he voted against intervention in Afghanistan though that had UN approval for a military operation to stabilise the country
As TSE rightly says, the British Government has frequently dealt with people it calls "terrorists" - beyond Ireland, there's a certain Nelson Mandela and of course those Likud leaders in Israel who were members of the Irgun which blew up British soldiers in the 1940s.
This must have come up 20 times on this forum and every time myself or someone else points out that the criticism isn't that the man deals with terrorists. It's that he supports then as honoured citizens and friends. Yet every time the discussion comes up again, left wingers pretend its just about talking to them, entirely ignoring the actual criticism. I do my best to be polite to people on here, but given that we have clarified the criticism several times, you must surely have seen it and are now just being wilfully dishonest.
It's not just you: JWisemann and Nick_Palmer have done the same thing.
Re the Iraq war: did Corbyn oppose or support the first Iraq war - in 1991 - to liberate Kuwait? Does anyone know?
I assume he supported it, what with its clear mandate based on UN resolutions and all.
I expect he opposed it, in fact opposition from many Democrats in 1990 meant it only passed the Senate 52-47 and the House 250-183. I know he voted against intervention in Afghanistan though that had UN approval
Irony just doesn't work on the internet does it...
On John Major, I don't think he ever met the IRA face to face until the peace process was confirmed, he did have agents negotiate them to get that process under way but that is not quite the same thing
The whole point about the peace process in NI which Corby conveniently forgets is that the IRA had to abandon what they had been fighting for - a united Ireland imposed without the consent of the people of NI. In short, in their key aim - they were defeated - and it was only once they recognised that that a settlement could be achieved.
If they had realised that sooner, a lot of people who died in the Troubles would still be alive. People like Corbyn did nothing to hasten the process. If anything - and he was an irrelevance, however much he and his supporters may now try to pretend that he was some sort of John the Baptist figure, boldly going where governments later timidly followed - people like him slowed down the path to peace by giving succour to the terrorists. That is why people like him were rightly described by Orwell as "useful idiots".
To believe this, you have to hold that the IRA believed that they could have run the British out of Ireland by force of arms, against not only the Army but also the loyalist paramilitaries colluding with Westminster, and that they held this belief throughout the 1980s right up to, and immediately ending at, the point at which they met publicly with John Major (let's set aside the Thatcher-authorised talks with the IRA for argument's sake). This is just not credible to me. It was evident from the loyalist response alone that they could not have believed this. You forget that this was not a merely territorial war and that the IRA was also motivated by other principles like protecting Catholic communities from loyalists.
Oh really ?
And how were they protecting Catholic communities as they swapped guns and drugs with the people who indisciminately murdered catholics ?
I don't feel strongly about the railways one way or the other. But why shouldn't those who run the railways make money from fare-paying passengers? Who else should they make money from?
That's a bit like saying "I don't care who runs John Lewis but I'll be damned if they should make any money from their customers."
Or have I misunderstood your point?
I think the use of the term "make money" may be open to misinterpretation. I meant that in this context "make profit from". The provision of the public service aspect of the railways should be either non-profit making or any profit made should be 100% re-invested into the service in terms of improvements not sent out as executive bonuses or shareholder dividends.
There are plenty of other ways for a company making a railway to make a profit but it shouldn't be from gouging passengers. In the same way, the specification for operating the franchise in terms of punctuality, reliability and above all passenger comfort in terms of reducing the number of passengers forced to stand and the time they have to stand should be metrics used to determine whether the franchise is fit for purpose.
Crowding commuters like cattle onto under-stocked services is not a sign of a well-run franchise and shouldn't be viewed as such.
Why is it so mrally repugnant for people to make a profit from running railways when no one has an issue with profit making from supplying our food or building our roads?
On John Major, I don't think he ever met the IRA face to face until the peace process was confirmed, he did have agents negotiate them to get that process under way but that is not quite the same thing
The whole point about the peace process in NI which Corby conveniently forgets is that the IRA had to abandon what they had been fighting for - a united Ireland imposed without the consent of the people of NI. In short, in their key aim - they were defeated - and it was only once they recognised that that a settlement could be achieved.
If they had realised that sooner, a lot of people who died in the Troubles would still be alive. People like Corbyn did nothing to hasten the process. If anything - and he was an irrelevance, however much he and his supporters may now try to pretend that he was some sort of John the Baptist figure, boldly going where governments later timidly followed - people like him slowed down the path to peace by giving succour to the terrorists. That is why people like him were rightly described by Orwell as "useful idiots".
Indeed, it was the changed circumstances which made a deal possible
We've also seen how the State has had to step in to rescue ailing rail franchises and of course Network Rail itself. My line (so to speak) has always been I don't care who runs the railways but I'll be damned if they should make any money from the fare-paying passengers (there are many other income generation possibilities).
I don't feel strongly about the railways one way or the other. But why shouldn't those who run the railways make money from fare-paying passengers? Who else should they make money from?
That's a bit like saying "I don't care who runs John Lewis but I'll be damned if they should make any money from their customers."
Or have I misunderstood your point?
Furthermore, isn't the whole criticism of put forward of privatisation that they are not making money from Fare paying passengers? The argument goes that they are making money even though being subsidised by the Government. So they are not making money from fare paying passengers they are making money, so the argument logically goes, from the General Taxpayer.
Exactly so. Left to market forces the railways might well not exist, or exist only as a premium service for high earning commuters into London. If we want a railway network we will only get it with state intervention on a fairly large scale. The easiest way to do that is to have the major infrastructure managed by the government on the public's behalf. Under any other system the businesses in receipt of the public funds will obviously devote a lot of time and effort to diverting the maximum proportion of those funds into their own pockets. What else would you expect them to do?
Distributing newspapers and cups of coffee to the passengers on the other hand is just the sort of thing the private sector is good at. There is no reason to nationalise that kind of thing, and indeed it is perfectly possible for the state and private sectors to work together each doing the bit it does best.
I don't feel strongly about the railways one way or the other. But why shouldn't those who run the railways make money from fare-paying passengers? Who else should they make money from?
That's a bit like saying "I don't care who runs John Lewis but I'll be damned if they should make any money from their customers."
Or have I misunderstood your point?
I think the use of the term "make money" may be open to misinterpretation. I meant that in this context "make profit from". The provision of the public service aspect of the railways should be either non-profit making or any profit made should be 100% re-invested into the service in terms of improvements not sent out as executive bonuses or shareholder dividends.
There are plenty of other ways for a company making a railway to make a profit but it shouldn't be from gouging passengers. In the same way, the specification for operating the franchise in terms of punctuality, reliability and above all passenger comfort in terms of reducing the number of passengers forced to stand and the time they have to stand should be metrics used to determine whether the franchise is fit for purpose.
Crowding commuters like cattle onto under-stocked services is not a sign of a well-run franchise and shouldn't be viewed as such.
If every one wants to get on a train at the same time, it's not immediately obvious how you go about stopping them.
Re the Iraq war: did Corbyn oppose or support the first Iraq war - in 1991 - to liberate Kuwait? Does anyone know?
I'm almost certain I read he opposed it.
Anything led by the USA is to be opposed. Rule 1 of Corbynism.
Indeed, Corbyn would rather have a 'Special Relationship' with Putin, Hamas, Venezuala and Cuba than the USA, with the possible exception of a Bernie Sanders Presidency
Re the Iraq war: did Corbyn oppose or support the first Iraq war - in 1991 - to liberate Kuwait? Does anyone know?
I'm almost certain I read he opposed it.
That was a legal war - assuming that UN resolutions make a war legal (which is a whole other debate, of course). So all the guff about the second Iraq war being opposed because illegal is so much guff, then.
On John Major, I don't think he ever met the IRA face to face until the peace process was confirmed, he did have agents negotiate them to get that process under way but that is not quite the same thing
The whole point about the peace process in NI which Corby conveniently forgets is that the IRA had to abandon what they had been fighting for - a united Ireland imposed without the consent of the people of NI. In short, in their key aim - they were defeated - and it was only once they recognised that that a settlement could be achieved.
If they had realised that sooner, a lot of people who died in the Troubles would still be alive. People like Corbyn did nothing to hasten the process. If anything - and he was an irrelevance, however much he and his supporters may now try to pretend that he was some sort of John the Baptist figure, boldly going where governments later timidly followed - people like him slowed down the path to peace by giving succour to the terrorists. That is why people like him were rightly described by Orwell as "useful idiots".
To believe this, you have to hold that the IRA believed that they could have run the British out of Ireland by force of arms, against not only the Army but also the loyalist paramilitaries colluding with Westminster, and that they held this belief throughout the 1980s right up to, and immediately ending at, the point at which they met publicly with John Major (let's set aside the Thatcher-authorised talks with the IRA for argument's sake). This is just not credible to me. It was evident from the loyalist response alone that they could not have believed this. You forget that this was not a merely territorial war and that the IRA was also motivated by other principles like protecting Catholic communities from loyalists.
The IRA's stated war aim was to achieve a United Ireland. Their view was that they could impose such a high price on the British that they'd pull out, like the French from Algeria, and that loyalist resistance would collapse once the British withdrew.
I don't know when their leaders came to the conclusion that they couldn't achieve this, but probably not before the late 80's.
This must have come up 20 times on this forum and every time myself or someone else points out that the criticism isn't that the man deals with terrorists. It's that he supports then as honoured citizens and friends. Yet every time the discussion comes up again, left wingers pretend its just about talking to them, entirely ignoring the actual criticism. I do my best to be polite to people on here, but given that we have clarified the criticism several times, you must surely have seen it and are now just being wilfully dishonest.
It's not just you: JWisemann and Nick_Palmer have done the same thing.
So, apart from the fact you clearly believe there should be no contact with these groups, how should Corbyn or any other MP deal with them ? Are we simply to hear only one side of any given story or are we brave enough to accept the other side may just have some legitimate grievances which we need to understand even though we condemn how they going about addressing those grievances ?
It's your reluctance to deal with how the political process works that is the "wilful dishonesty" on show here.
The railways in this country are not make exploitative profits. Their margins are far lower than most companies. The idea that their private operation is causing passengers to be crammed in is incorrect, as demonstrated by the London Underground's situation. What is being suggested should be done here? Train companies should limit passenger numbers on each carriage, increasing the subsidy needed per passenger mile and forcing commuters onto our gridlocked roads? Traffic congestion on all forms of transport is nothing to do with operating models. It is down to a rapidly expanding population. There has actually been much more investment in capacity expansion since privatisation than under National Rail.
I don't feel strongly about the railways one way or the other. But why shouldn't those who run the railways make money from fare-paying passengers? Who else should they make money from?
That's a bit like saying "I don't care who runs John Lewis but I'll be damned if they should make any money from their customers."
Or have I misunderstood your point?
I think the use of the term "make money" may be open to misinterpretation. I meant that in this context "make profit from". The provision of the public service aspect of the railways should be either non-profit making or any profit made should be 100% re-invested into the service in terms of improvements not sent out as executive bonuses or shareholder dividends.
There are plenty of other ways for a company making a railway to make a profit but it shouldn't be from gouging passengers. In the same way, the specification for operating the franchise in terms of punctuality, reliability and above all passenger comfort in terms of reducing the number of passengers forced to stand and the time they have to stand should be metrics used to determine whether the franchise is fit for purpose.
Crowding commuters like cattle onto under-stocked services is not a sign of a well-run franchise and shouldn't be viewed as such.
Thanks. I don't have an issue for making the terms of the franchise very strict so that a proper service is provided. Nor with reinvestment i.e. being run as not for profit operation.
Wasn't the issue with nationalisation that there was never enough money for the investment which the railways needed so that the service was poor and the structure becoming very run down?
We've also seen how the State has had to step in to rescue ailing rail franchises and of course Network Rail itself. My line (so to speak) has always been I don't care who runs the railways but I'll be damned if they should make any money from the fare-paying passengers (there are many other income generation possibilities).
I don't feel strongly about the railways one way or the other. But why shouldn't those who run the railways make money from fare-paying passengers? Who else should they make money from?
That's a bit like saying "I don't care who runs John Lewis but I'll be damned if they should make any money from their customers."
Or have I misunderstood your point?
Furthermore, isn't the whole criticism of put forward of privatisation that they are not making money from Fare paying passengers? The argument goes that they are making money even though being subsidised by the Government. So they are not making money from fare paying passengers they are making money, so the argument logically goes, from the General Taxpayer.
Exactly so. Left to market forces the railways might well not exist, or exist only as a premium service for high earning commuters into London. If we want a railway network we will only get it with state intervention on a fairly large scale. The easiest way to do that is to have the major infrastructure managed by the government on the public's behalf. Under any other system the businesses in receipt of the public funds will obviously devote a lot of time and effort to diverting the maximum proportion of those funds into their own pockets. What else would you expect them to do?
Distributing newspapers and cups of coffee to the passengers on the other hand is just the sort of thing the private sector is good at. There is no reason to nationalise that kind of thing, and indeed it is perfectly possible for the state and private sectors to work together each doing the bit it does best.
I think you are confusing "state intervention", with "state funding". It is not axiomatic that state funding is best spent by state organisations. It is also the case that investment decisions are generally better made by the Private Sector needing to make a return on their investment.
Why is it so mrally repugnant for people to make a profit from running railways when no one has an issue with profit making from supplying our food or building our roads?
Airlines next for the return to the 60s polices of Corbyn?
Re fares, fine balance between subsidies, funded by taxpayers and fares paid for by customer.
This must have come up 20 times on this forum and every time myself or someone else points out that the criticism isn't that the man deals with terrorists. It's that he supports then as honoured citizens and friends. Yet every time the discussion comes up again, left wingers pretend its just about talking to them, entirely ignoring the actual criticism. I do my best to be polite to people on here, but given that we have clarified the criticism several times, you must surely have seen it and are now just being wilfully dishonest.
It's not just you: JWisemann and Nick_Palmer have done the same thing.
So, apart from the fact you clearly believe there should be no contact with these groups, how should Corbyn or any other MP deal with them ? Are we simply to hear only one side of any given story or are we brave enough to accept the other side may just have some legitimate grievances which we need to understand even though we condemn how they going about addressing those grievances ?
It's your reluctance to deal with how the political process works that is the "wilful dishonesty" on show here.
I don't know how many ways there are to explain this. I say the criticism is not about meeting with these groups. You respond to this by saying "you are wrong to say we should not meet with them". It's like banging my head against the wall.
I don't feel strongly about the railways one way or the other. But why shouldn't those who run the railways make money from fare-paying passengers? Who else should they make money from?
That's a bit like saying "I don't care who runs John Lewis but I'll be damned if they should make any money from their customers."
Or have I misunderstood your point?
I think the use of the term "make money" may be open to misinterpretation. I meant that in this context "make profit from". The provision of the public service aspect of the railways should be either non-profit making or any profit made should be 100% re-invested into the service in terms of improvements not sent out as executive bonuses or shareholder dividends. There are plenty of other ways for a company making a railway to make a profit but it shouldn't be from gouging passengers. In the same way, the specification for operating the franchise in terms of punctuality, reliability and above all passenger comfort in terms of reducing the number of passengers forced to stand and the time they have to stand should be metrics used to determine whether the franchise is fit for purpose. Crowding commuters like cattle onto under-stocked services is not a sign of a well-run franchise and shouldn't be viewed as such.
Are you willfully missing the point? In case you missed it - trains run on tracks and stop at stations. Thus there is a limit to the frequency and size of trains that can run. The number of passengers is unlimited - especially at peak times. The public service aspect of railways is paid for by subsidy - subsidies which have been slowly reduced. The rail companies have been responsible for considerable investment in the railways.
But if you want poor taxpayers to subsidise wealthy rail travellers and commuters keep on cheerleading numpty loony lefties.
Why is it so mrally repugnant for people to make a profit from running railways when no one has an issue with profit making from supplying our food or building our roads?
Airlines next for the return to the 60s polices of Corbyn.
On John Major, I don't think he ever met the IRA face to face until the peace process was confirmed, he did have agents negotiate them to get that process under way but that is not quite the same thing
The whole point about the peace process in NI which Corby conveniently forgets is that the IRA had to abandon what they had been fighting for - a united Ireland imposed without the consent of the people of NI. In short, in their key aim - they were defeated - and it was only once they recognised that that a settlement could be achieved.
If they had realised that sooner, a lot of people who died in the Troubles would still be alive. People like Corbyn did nothing to hasten the process. If anything - and he was an irrelevance, however much he and his supporters may now try to pretend that he was some sort of John the Baptist figure, boldly going where governments later timidly followed - people like him slowed down the path to peace by giving succour to the terrorists. That is why people like him were rightly described by Orwell as "useful idiots".
To believe this, you have to hold that the IRA believed that they could have run the British out of Ireland by force of arms, against not only the Army but also the loyalist paramilitaries colluding with Westminster, and that they held this belief throughout the 1980s right up to, and immediately ending at, the point at which they met publicly with John Major (let's set aside the Thatcher-authorised talks with the IRA for argument's sake). This is just not credible to me. It was evident from the loyalist response alone that they could not have believed this. You forget that this was not a merely territorial war and that the IRA was also motivated by other principles like protecting Catholic communities from loyalists.
I'm not privy to the inner minds of the IRA of course. But I think they probably did believe this. Violent Irish nationalists had managed to get Britain out of the rest of Ireland, after all. Why wouldn't they think they could achieve the same for a very much smaller part of the island?
Protecting Catholics - if that was really your aim - could have been done by strengthening, rather than undermining, the non-violent parties, such as the SDLP and John Hume and Gerry Fitt and others. The SDLP was Labour's sister party after all and loathed the IRA and what it did, not least to the Catholic communities it claimed to serve. And yet Corbyn still chose to cosy up to the IRA rather than to genuine heroes like Fitt and Hume.
Re the Iraq war: did Corbyn oppose or support the first Iraq war - in 1991 - to liberate Kuwait? Does anyone know?
I assume he supported it, what with its clear mandate based on UN resolutions and all.
I expect he opposed it, in fact opposition from many Democrats in 1990 meant it only passed the Senate 52-47 and the House 250-183. I know he voted against intervention in Afghanistan though that had UN approval
Irony just doesn't work on the internet does it...
' Yes. Given his real loyalties, Corbyn should be apologising for Saddam's invasion of Kuwait before he starts on any of his other revisionisms.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: the Conservatives are being far too dismissive of the dangers of a Labour party led by Corbyn. Whilst he seems a joke at the moment, we should not underestimate the public's ability to vote for jokes. Just look at Boris as London mayor, or Ed Miliband's entire time as leader.
In 2020 we'll have had 41 years of a Thatcherite or neo-Thatcherite consensus. It might be that large swathes of the public are ready for an alternative, however disastrous that might be,
The Brown premiership was not Thatcherite by any definition, he raised the top tax rate to 50% from the 40% Thatcher left and increased spending as a percentage of GDP to 48%, when Thatcher left office it was nearer 35%
What a hilarious rewriting of history. For what percentage of his near ten years as chancellor was the rate at 50%? What percentage of time as PM?
How many privatisations were there under Blair and Brown? How many PFI projects? What percentage of NHS spending went to private providers? How many NHS hospitals were privatised?
On John Major, I don't think he ever met the IRA face to face until the peace process was confirmed, he did have agents negotiate them to get that process under way but that is not quite the same thing
The whole point about the peace process in NI which Corby conveniently forgets is that the IRA had to abandon what they had been fighting for - a united Ireland imposed without the consent of the people of NI. In short, in their key aim - they were defeated - and it was only once they recognised that that a settlement could be achieved.
If they had realised that sooner, a lot of people who died in the Troubles would still be alive. People like Corbyn did nothing to hasten the process. If anything - and he was an irrelevance, however much he and his supporters may now try to pretend that he was some sort of John the Baptist figure, boldly going where governments later timidly followed - people like him slowed down the path to peace by giving succour to the terrorists. That is why people like him were rightly described by Orwell as "useful idiots".
To believe this, you have to hold that the IRA believed that they could have run the British out of Ireland by force of arms, against not only the Army but also the loyalist paramilitaries colluding with Westminster, and that they held this belief throughout the 1980s right up to, and immediately ending at, the point at which they met publicly with John Major (let's set aside the Thatcher-authorised talks with the IRA for argument's sake). This is just not credible to me. It was evident from the loyalist response alone that they could not have believed this. You forget that this was not a merely territorial war and that the IRA was also motivated by other principles like protecting Catholic communities from loyalists.
The IRA were motivated by the money they were making. As were the Loyalist paramilitaries. Stop pretending. The IRA then the PIRA both ended their fatuous campaign of violence and took to politics - they did so because they were losing their violent campaign. Both sides drew back from what was an escalating and sickening spiral of violence. Corbyn and crass lefties were always all set to give in without any fight. They argued with and side by side with the IRA. They did not argue face to face against the IRA. Do you want me to repeat that in case you are deaf? Corbyn argued for and side by side with the IRA. They did not argue face to face against the IRA.
As TSE rightly says, the British Government has frequently dealt with people it calls "terrorists" - beyond Ireland, there's a certain Nelson Mandela and of course those Likud leaders in Israel who were members of the Irgun which blew up British soldiers in the 1940s.
This must have come up 20 times on this forum and every time myself or someone else points out that the criticism isn't that the man deals with terrorists. It's that he supports then as honoured citizens and friends. Yet every time the discussion comes up again, left wingers pretend its just about talking to them, entirely ignoring the actual criticism. I do my best to be polite to people on here, but given that we have clarified the criticism several times, you must surely have seen it and are now just being wilfully dishonest.
It's not just you: JWisemann and Nick_Palmer have done the same thing.
To try to respond in the terms that you set: you don't necessarily object to talking to people you think are appalling terrorists (which is a perfectly fair description of the IRA and Hamas, in my opinion), but you draw the line at referring to them in as discussion as friends or honoured citizens.
I think that either one engages or one doesn't. It's a safe and defensible course of action to refuse to be in the same room as extremists (as parts of the far left do when they refuse to share any discussion with right-wing extremists like the BNP), but where the extremists have reached a critical mass and are a major problem, it's worth considering talking to them, and if you do then I think you have to do it on a superficially friendly basis, trying to find element of common humanity as a basis. It's a matter of judgment from case to case whether it's worth doing - talking to ISIS seems a waste of time since they have no discernible objectives except killing us; talking to the IRA proved ultimately a sensible course of action.
I think that on the left there's a widespread view that anyone acting against American interests gets relatively little opportunity to say what their issue actually is and what they might be willing to settle for, so there's more willingness to give a platform to, say, Hamas than to, say, the Ku Klux Klan. And I also think this can spill out into naivete at times, when you end up being excessively polite to someone who is basically nuts. But it's a genuine misunderstanding to suppose that such meetings are intended as a form of endorsement. Leftists aren't shy of giving an endorsement when they want to - you can find lots of "Support the ANC" or "Support the Vietnamese NLF" stickers in our cupboards from yesteryear, but you'd struggle to find a "Support Hamas" one.
I doubt if you agree, but I hope you will accept that it's not evading your question.
I'm not privy to the inner minds of the IRA of course. But I think they probably did believe this. Violent Irish nationalists had managed to get Britain out of the rest of Ireland, after all. Why wouldn't they think they could achieve the same for a very much smaller part of the island?
Protecting Catholics - if that was really your aim - could have been done by strengthening, rather than undermining, the non-violent parties, such as the SDLP and John Hume and Gerry Fitt and others. The SDLP was Labour's sister party after all and loathed the IRA and what it did, not least to the Catholic communities it claimed to serve. And yet Corbyn still chose to cosy up to the IRA rather than to genuine heroes like Fitt and Hume.
The Troubles was a far more complex story than "the IRA started it because they thought they could conquer Antrim" - and that story itself absolves one side, it's too convenient a narrative. I guess people on the ground in West Belfast didn't really think the SDLP was going to stop men with guns crashing their cars into funerals or shooting up pubs. It seems to me that the real problem with Corbyn is that he was meeting the IRA because he basically sympathised with their efforts to fight Britain and that this betrays his unsuitability to run Britain.
Rather an interesting piece and a refreshing change from many of this sites's posts which would make the rocks weep in despair with their recycled propaganda posing as argument.
However it is rather wasted by being written as a devils argument. TSE clearly doesn't believe that Corbyn ia a danger just wants to provoke the more anxious Tories among us - the ones who have regular nightmares about all sorts of things.
Finally TSE heavily and rather patronisingly underates the strength of presentation of the Scottish independence argument last year. Against a hugely hostile press corps (and Nick Robinson et al) it was done rather well - those on this site who don't accept that an independent Scotland would be a viable and successful state really do need to extend their reading beyond the Daily Telegraph.
And there I think is the key difference. In reaching over and beyond the establishment media I think I would back Salmond in Scotland to do a lot better than Corbyn in the UK. And that I fear, plus the bottomless pit of right wing Labour treachery, will be Jeremy's fall.
I don't think there are really that many people even here who think Scotland couldn't be a successful independent state, though no doubt there are a few, there are more who think it would be more successful within the UK but that's not the same thing even if you think it is wrong.
Why are we still talking about this? There was a referendum that both sides agreed would be final.
No one believes that. Believe me I wish it was final. 5-10 years I give it at max.
That would be pointless. Why hold a referendum (which is supposed to make a decision) if one side won't accept a result that goes against them?
It's their reason for existence, they cannot accept it if it goes against.
Agreed, but since the SNP has conceded that they can't call a legitimate referendum and that only HMG can do that, why would HMG permit a second referendum when the SNP has proven that it can't accept Scots' democratic decision?
As ever DC's no 2nd referendum on my watch speech helped propel the SNP to over 60% in the most recent poll by TMS. When looking deeper into the SNP's current support levels, in the Scots born 16-55 group, SNP support is probably now over 70% !!
Comments
"... is something that Douglas Adams would have rejected as being too improbable."
As the late Mr. Adams invented the infinite improbability drive your assertion seems, well, improbable.
Also re the cricket, sponsorship of England by Waitrose and #Ashes tests by bank Investec gives impression of comfy middle class exclusivity.
Has this guy analysed backers of football, rugby etc.
But what are the Bildiberger lizards up to? Surely the Met Office and the BBC are two arms of the same Common Purpose agenda to spread the global warming fraud and thereby exploit the sturdy yeomanry of Britain?
I think between now and 2020, as well as a recession and a bruising Tory leadership battle post-EU Ref - there'll be a stock market crash, interest rate rises and possibly a bursting of the London property bubble. Cameron's attacks on the unions could also result in a much more focused partnership between Corbyn, Labour and the unions - putting aside all their petty disputes to beat the main enemy. Cameron is no Thatcher, his union attack will be more rhetoric than substance, where as Lady T really did go to war with the union movement - Cameron doesn't have her killer instinct.
Another failure of David Cameron's "big society". How shocking.
But it was terrible. They sent responses that had been encoded in such a way that you had to be a geek to know how to unscramble them .
If Mrs Batman quoted these kind of fake numbers in grant applications, doesn't that count as fraud?
It certainly does merit enquiry.
Increasingly government, council, NHS and DHS money goes via 3rd sector organisations. I suspect that many are better run than the flamboyant Ms Batmanandrobin, but what sort of audit and oversight is there?
Are the numbers fake or is it a matter of interpretation? If one boy is persistently disrupting a class of 20, then does "curing" him help 1 or 20 children?
Congratulations to PB for getting Owen Jones to write a thread for PB this morning.
Ouch.
Yes he was very stupid to believe what he was told by a darling of the luvvie left. He should have know that she was lying when she claimed to be spending public money effectively.
What can be made may be unmade ....
We criticise political parties for that kind of specialised interpretation which they may not explain, they would know very well that if you claim to have helped x number, most people assume you mean directly helped that number.
Traditionally, many on the left are suspicious of charities and believe the state should act directly. This is a Conservative failure, which perhaps accounts for the frantic spinning.
Yes you're correct, by letting me know you've helped 20 others too.
Scotland will go Independent.
The conservatives will meet their migration target, and keep all their manifesto pledges.
Probably the question turns on the nature of infinity. Whilst the Hilbert's Hotel provides a model of the nature of infinity that is probably accessible to the average layman, it does miss out on the crucial element of infinity. That is to say there is not one infinity but an infinite number of infinities (as five minutes with a textbook on set theory will finitely demonstrate).
Thus, if there is an infinite number of infinite improbabilities there is no probability of an infinitely improbable event let alone an event that is so improbable as to be beyond the set of improbable events.
Probably.
Whilst Yentob the chair of Kids Company just floats above the stench underneath....
An interesting piece from TSE and a useful antidote to the anti-Corbyn vitriol doing the rounds here on a daily or even hourly basis. The fact it's Corbyn of course is irrelevant - if any of Cooper, Burnham or Kendall were leading clearly, there would be the same torrent of invective. It's the standard Conservative tactic of trying to discredit the leaders of other political parties but that's politics.
As TSE rightly says, the British Government has frequently dealt with people it calls "terrorists" - beyond Ireland, there's a certain Nelson Mandela and of course those Likud leaders in Israel who were members of the Irgun which blew up British soldiers in the 1940s.
I note Corbyn's use of the words "reserves the right to" - there are many Councils who have gone down the route of outsourcing and have lived to regret it including one which ended up being charged £120 by a Contractor to change a light bulb at a home for vulnerable children.
We've also seen how the State has had to step in to rescue ailing rail franchises and of course Network Rail itself. My line (so to speak) has always been I don't care who runs the railways but I'll be damned if they should make any money from the fare-paying passengers (there are many other income generation possibilities).
Someone wittered on earlier about the benefits of going out to tender - yes, fine, but when the Conservative Government forced Councils to accept the lowest bid irrespective of the quality of that bid and the financial strength of the company making the bid, the whole process had become corrupted by ill-considered ideology.
Failure came under the chairmanship of Alan Yentob. He was in place for 10+ years. Was he a Conservative?
And yet we don't find that. On the contrary, he campaigned to keep the Israeli foreign minister out of the country or arrested for war crimes if she landed here.
He is spinning a line to justify what he is doing. It is pure spin: dishonest spin worthy of Blair. His principles - if they can even be called that - can be summed up thus: is this person an enemy of or opposed to my enemy? If yes, I'm on their side. No further enquiry needed.
Corbyn has so many faults and scandalous friends that are going to provide an almost never ending list of attack points for all the media. Even the Guardian, Mirror or Independent will struggle to find a way to support Corbyn.
AIUI Labour also funded the charity whilst they were in power.
There is not one failure here; but multiple. Trying to blame this mess on just one thing is both stupid and unhelpful. Yes, the government have questions to answer. But so too might the charity's management, the charity commission, Labour, the MPs of all parties who supported it, and the many media who fawned over her without asking difficult questions.
Remember; it is rare for an incident to be caused by just one factor. That's why phrases like 'causal factors' are so useful.
The zoomers are on top form this morning, You should take that show to the Fringe...
Sitting SNP MSPs have been deselected for talking about IndyRef2
“Only one voter out of a hundred ever attends an election meeting, and he or she is nearly always already committed to one party or the other. Michael Foot and I... were speaking every night at public meetings of people whose minds were already made up.”
Talking to the converted doesn't work - as Gordon and EdM discovered.
from Betty Boothroyd's piece in the Sunday Times (http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/comment/columns/article1596848.ece)
"The losing side in Labour’s civil war that nearly wrecked the party 30 years ago is on the march again and it doesn’t give a fig who knows it. The result is already widely foreseen as a sweeping victory for those who want a radical change in the party’s direction and “upheaval”, one of their favourite words, in the way the country is run.
“Arrogance was part of their arsenal,” I wrote in my memoirs. This arrogance was on display again at a recent rally in support of Jeremy Corbyn in Liverpool. We used to sing The Red Flag at the end of Labour conferences as an emotional reminder of our solidarity. But Corbyn’s supporters prepared for his arrival with a rendering of the Internationale, the communist anthem."
The only circumstance that changed is they lost. Badly.
That's a bit like saying "I don't care who runs John Lewis but I'll be damned if they should make any money from their customers."
Or have I misunderstood your point?
The Left's suspicion of charities is because they prefer to have their own appointees in control and receiving gold-plated taxpayer funded perks.
Maybe we are at the beginning to the end, of the Blair, heir to Blair Cameron concencus.
Once Labour move away , this will give the oppurtunity for the conservatives to as well.
As many will think, a right wing leader will always beat a left wing leader under FPTP.
I think they will be correct, but eventually the electoral system will have to change.
https://twitter.com/ali_harper/status/635358327271227392
Zoooooooooooooooooommmmmmmm
The issue is one for the charity commission and the trustees of Kids Company. Its their failure. The criminals here (if there are any of course) are a bunch of leftie luvvie criminals.
Yes the establishment always are in one shape or another.
New Labour - Conservative .
I think the numbers have been documented as including all 'contacts'.
Claims have also been made for 36,000 not 16,000. Full-Fact teased it out a bit here:
https://fullfact.org/factcheck/education/kids_company_36000_helped-47069
Annual Report 2011 p13:
"Through our street-level centres, our over-16s educational centre and our early intervention
programme in 40 schools, to provide assistance to vulnerable children and young people.
currently the charity works with 36,000 children, approximately 18,000 of whom receive
intensive support."
"The total income raised in the year was £15.63million, which represented a growth of 10.5%
compared to the previous 12 months"
On those numbers I just don't believe the "intensive" claim, unless there is a very creative definition.
I guess the Fraud thing turns on the precise claims made in particular circumstances - eg to apply for a grant or obtain the support of Gok. I think there are more worms in this can.
Ok, let's talk about Police Scotland?
Or the higher maths exam?
So, IndeyRef2 then...
@paulhutcheon: FFS http://t.co/sETOipf85x
I don't believe that the CC are fit to address that.
I dealt with them over a charitable chain of bookshops that was asset stripped by shysters. They were quite cotton-batting useless.
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA
No idea. Yentob is not a Labour politician, nor one of any stripe sfaict, so what's your point?
DecrepitJohn is allowing exposure to Corbynite to addle his brain.
If they had realised that sooner, a lot of people who died in the Troubles would still be alive. People like Corbyn did nothing to hasten the process. If anything - and he was an irrelevance, however much he and his supporters may now try to pretend that he was some sort of John the Baptist figure, boldly going where governments later timidly followed - people like him slowed down the path to peace by giving succour to the terrorists. That is why people like him were rightly described by Orwell as "useful idiots".
The problem for the Conservatives isn't that they are responsible for how Kids Company was run, and its subsequent failure (although they have questions to answer about why they (against the advice of civil servants) gave them money without due diligence.
The problem is that the entire thread of current Conservative policy thinking running through most areas of Government is based on funnelling public money through these sorts of organisations, as opposed to the traditional state or local government bureaucracies. Whether it be in schools through academies/free schools, third sector organisation involved in the Health service, non-governmental organisations for foreign aid etc etc. And the lack of clear audit oversight and accountability is part of the attraction, because all of these "safeguards" generate costs.
Scotland's "geographic share" of oil revenues plummets to £168m in Q1 this year compared with £1bn 2014 Q1, £1.37bn 2013 Q1, £3bn 2012 Q1.
Claims have also been made for 36,000 not 16,000. Full-Fact teased it out a bit here:
https://fullfact.org/factcheck/education/kids_company_36000_helped-47069
Annual Report 2011 p13:
"Through our street-level centres, our over-16s educational centre and our early intervention
programme in 40 schools, to provide assistance to vulnerable children and young people.
currently the charity works with 36,000 children, approximately 18,000 of whom receive
intensive support."
"The total income raised in the year was £15.63million, which represented a growth of 10.5%
compared to the previous 12 months"
On those numbers I just don't believe the "intensive" claim, unless there is a very creative definition.
I guess the Fraud thing turns on the precise claims made in particular circumstances - eg to apply for a grant or obtain the support of Gok. I think there are more worms in this can.
Whether the criminal offences of fraud have been committed will depend on a lot of things: what was said, to whom, the context, whether it was said dishonestly etc.
But on a more general level it is clear that KC told a load of fairy stories about what it was doing. It seems to have been no more than a youth club at its heart, which morphed into a gigantic ego trip for its gigantic owner and her friends. I'm not even clear that CB had any professionally recognised child therapy qualifications or experience.
You said "This is a Conservative failure" for a charity chaired by Yentob. Therefore Yentob should be held accountable under the principle that the chairman (and other trustees) are responsible for how a charity is run.
It's not just you: JWisemann and Nick_Palmer have done the same thing.
And how were they protecting Catholic communities as they swapped guns and drugs with the people who indisciminately murdered catholics ?
There are plenty of other ways for a company making a railway to make a profit but it shouldn't be from gouging passengers. In the same way, the specification for operating the franchise in terms of punctuality, reliability and above all passenger comfort in terms of reducing the number of passengers forced to stand and the time they have to stand should be metrics used to determine whether the franchise is fit for purpose.
Crowding commuters like cattle onto under-stocked services is not a sign of a well-run franchise and shouldn't be viewed as such.
Distributing newspapers and cups of coffee to the passengers on the other hand is just the sort of thing the private sector is good at. There is no reason to nationalise that kind of thing, and indeed it is perfectly possible for the state and private sectors to work together each doing the bit it does best.
I don't know when their leaders came to the conclusion that they couldn't achieve this, but probably not before the late 80's.
It's your reluctance to deal with how the political process works that is the "wilful dishonesty" on show here.
Wasn't the issue with nationalisation that there was never enough money for the investment which the railways needed so that the service was poor and the structure becoming very run down?
Re fares, fine balance between subsidies, funded by taxpayers and fares paid for by customer.
In case you missed it - trains run on tracks and stop at stations.
Thus there is a limit to the frequency and size of trains that can run. The number of passengers is unlimited - especially at peak times.
The public service aspect of railways is paid for by subsidy - subsidies which have been slowly reduced.
The rail companies have been responsible for considerable investment in the railways.
But if you want poor taxpayers to subsidise wealthy rail travellers and commuters keep on cheerleading numpty loony lefties.
Protecting Catholics - if that was really your aim - could have been done by strengthening, rather than undermining, the non-violent parties, such as the SDLP and John Hume and Gerry Fitt and others. The SDLP was Labour's sister party after all and loathed the IRA and what it did, not least to the Catholic communities it claimed to serve. And yet Corbyn still chose to cosy up to the IRA rather than to genuine heroes like Fitt and Hume.
Yes. Given his real loyalties, Corbyn should be apologising for Saddam's invasion of Kuwait before he starts on any of his other revisionisms.
How many privatisations were there under Blair and Brown? How many PFI projects? What percentage of NHS spending went to private providers? How many NHS hospitals were privatised?
Etc, etc.
The IRA then the PIRA both ended their fatuous campaign of violence and took to politics - they did so because they were losing their violent campaign. Both sides drew back from what was an escalating and sickening spiral of violence.
Corbyn and crass lefties were always all set to give in without any fight. They argued with and side by side with the IRA. They did not argue face to face against the IRA.
Do you want me to repeat that in case you are deaf?
Corbyn argued for and side by side with the IRA. They did not argue face to face against the IRA.
I think that either one engages or one doesn't. It's a safe and defensible course of action to refuse to be in the same room as extremists (as parts of the far left do when they refuse to share any discussion with right-wing extremists like the BNP), but where the extremists have reached a critical mass and are a major problem, it's worth considering talking to them, and if you do then I think you have to do it on a superficially friendly basis, trying to find element of common humanity as a basis. It's a matter of judgment from case to case whether it's worth doing - talking to ISIS seems a waste of time since they have no discernible objectives except killing us; talking to the IRA proved ultimately a sensible course of action.
I think that on the left there's a widespread view that anyone acting against American interests gets relatively little opportunity to say what their issue actually is and what they might be willing to settle for, so there's more willingness to give a platform to, say, Hamas than to, say, the Ku Klux Klan. And I also think this can spill out into naivete at times, when you end up being excessively polite to someone who is basically nuts. But it's a genuine misunderstanding to suppose that such meetings are intended as a form of endorsement. Leftists aren't shy of giving an endorsement when they want to - you can find lots of "Support the ANC" or "Support the Vietnamese NLF" stickers in our cupboards from yesteryear, but you'd struggle to find a "Support Hamas" one.
I doubt if you agree, but I hope you will accept that it's not evading your question.
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