Official House of Commons Twitter account banned from publicising the outcome of Parliamentary votes because informing the public about how their elected representatives have voted is supposedly ‘biased’ against the government.

https://evolvepolitics.com/tories-ba...he-government/

"Government dealt string of defeats on post-Brexit immigration bill in Lords

Peers have backed a call for unaccompanied child refugees to be reunited with close relatives in the UK as they inflicted a series of defeats on Boris Johnson's flagship post-Brexit immigration bill.

The Lords overwhelmingly supported an amendment by Lord Dubs, who himself fled the Nazis as a child, to restore potections after the EU transition period ends later this year.

Before the vote Lord Dubs had asked: “Surely it is right that when there are young people who have got relatives here that family reunion must be a basic, basic thing that we should support?"

The vote was one of a number of defeats home secretary Priti Patel suffered as peers considered the legislation in the Lords, just hours after she pledged to ‘fix’ what she said was a broken asylum system."

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknew...?ocid=msedgdhp

Boris has called for a response to the post-COVID era like the one after WWII: https://www.theguardian.com/politics...ch-really-mean

The first step seems obvious.

So many parallels:

Boris says it should be done by private enterprise and not state lead though. So no comparison with post ww2 at all.

As I said, the first step is obvious.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics...he-lobbied-for

Sleaze.

Good old-fashioned Conservative behaviour!

It’ll be OK, we’ll all be able to retrain as cinema projectionists, lock-keepers, or boxers.

Boxer or lock-keeper? Government careers quiz scorned by users

Imagine how it would be now if Ed Milliband had won the election in 2015. A properly funded NHS with nurses and doctors who aren't demoralised, a public sector able to deal with the pandemic and stability instead of chaos and the disaster plus, no Brexit.
But there was a picture of him eating a bacon sandwich so obviously he wasn't fit to be Prime Minister.

Thought we were all supposed to be digging foundations for offshore wind farms?

It may be the usual nostalgia effect, but I do not recall the UK having such a corrupt and incompetent government in my lifetime as we have now. While I may have disagreed (violently in some cases) with the policies, at least the people in the Cabinet were generally able to do their jobs, and with at least some semblance of doing things for the public good rather than lining the pockets of their friends.

I honestly don't think it's just nostalgia.

There's been the odd numpty or eejit in most cabinets during my life time (I'm in my early 60s), but this bunch aren't even sensible or competent enough to make it as numpties or eejits, well off into couldn't find the brewery for the drunken entertainment category.

Definitely NOT nostalgia.

No 10 press secretary Allegra Stratton is married to the Spectator political editor who works with the commissioning editor married to Dominic Cummings adviser to Boris Johnson. The Spectator is part of Press Holdings: chairman Andrew Neil & owned by Barclay Bros.

Here in Whitehall we have a lucrative contract to hand out, so hold on to your sears as it's time to spin "The Wheel of Nepotisim"!

The difference today is that more people have access to the information and you have lots of people not from the establishment willing to "publish" this information. Go back to Thatcher's years and they were all in it for backhanders, non-exec directorships, jobs and lucrative contracts and the like. Go back to the 60s and 70s and it was even worse, up to their necks for access to the "glamour" of the gangsters, to sex workers and all the rest.

And never forget that Major's years were embroiled in constant sleaze of every kind not just "family values", the press had enough sex stories to get them sales they didn't have space for all the other sleaze!

So I would say that they were equally incompetent back then, in fact I'd say they were worse because there was zero expectation that ministers were meant to do anything and be competent, it is a sign of a (very slow) change in culture that we now expect ministers to be competent and do something!

Following on from Patels stance on immigration:

"A “violent, racist attack” in which a man entered a law firm in London armed with a knife was inspired by a speech given by Priti Patel, lawyers have claimed.

On 7 September, a 28-year-old man entered the office of a law firm whose identity has been withheld, armed with a knife. He was subsequently charged with assault, racially aggravated public disorder, possession of, and making threats with, a bladed article in a public place and making threats to kill.

Days earlier, the home secretary had complained about “activist lawyers” who were working to delay the removal of failed asylum seekers."

https://uk.yahoo.com/news/knife-atta...154456285.html

Next up is black sites and kidnappings leaving targeted people in overburdened rafts on sea, who then risk being capsized by the Coast Guard to make them drown.

Plus he got scared as the election drew in and dropped every single policy Labour had and began aping the tories.

The joke doing the rounds in diplomatic circles during the Thatcher years was how easily and cheaply UK ministers could be bought. I think the going rate was £10,000 for a Cabinet Secretary, and a bit of plamásing for the PM herself.

How come Cummings gets away with £50k unpaid council tax when people have been sent to jail for owing a tiny fraction of that?

It's not what you do it's where you went to school?

I think you're being a bit hard on him. Which one of us hasn't occasionally lost track of how many houses they own for a decade or three?

Dave

Or converted some outbuildings but forgotten about them.....

Hey, I went to school in Durham City too!

Not that one though, but a better one. Cummings went to the one that in my day the lads who failed the 11+, but had wealthy parents, went to...

Text was probably too small for him to read and he didn’t have time to get to his optician.

Johnson didn't tell the truth?

I'm shocked!

I’m old enough to remember when paying public money for sex was called corruption and prostitution.

"You're fooling yourself. We're living in a dictatorship.. A self-perpetuating autocracy in which the working classes--"
"Oh there you go, bringing class into it again."
"But that's what it's all about, if people only would -"

YouTube Video This video is not hosted by the ISF. The ISF can not be held responsible for the suitability or legality of this material. By clicking the link below you agree to view content from an external website.

I AGREE

Ministers should waste no time to make unpopular cuts to pensioner benefits, a think tank director has said.

Many of those hit by a cut to the winter fuel allowance might "not be around" at the next election, said Alex Wild of the Taxpayers' Alliance.

And others would forget which party had done it, he added.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-34439965

Still nothing from the Taxpayers Alliance on money being spaffed on the awful Test, Track and Trace system (I checked their website after reading that they are upset about MPs being reimbursed for poppy wreaths).

https://twitter.com/thesundaytimes/s...22252524326912

Article embedded in tweet.

Ian Botham is a Lord.

I don't really want Sentamu in the Lords, but I don't want Botham or Claire Fox there either. Can they just avoid giving peerages to twats for a bit?

Is it an extraordinary snub? I know former Archbishops of Canterbury tend to be given life peerages when they retire and thus lose their position as a Lord Spiritual, but I don’t recall Archbishops of York being given them. I don’t follow that side of the Palace of Westminster that closely, though, so I may be wrong.

ETA - I correct myself. The previous three Archbishops of York had been given life peerages, so it does seem unusual not to follow that pattern, small sample size aside.

FWIW, the reason given was that there are too many Lords.

wrong thread

And yet there's space for "Lord" Botham of 1981 for services to grouse shooting?

Perhaps his smile didn't extend as far as a watermelon for Boris's liking

'too many Lords' but Boris still found room for a Russian Oligarch and Ian bloody Botham!

I hope you used your visit to leave a message asking who funds them.

Ah, the right-wing libertarian nuts are true to form. :rolleyes:

Multi-millionaire property developer Tony Gallagher who hosted David Cameron's 50th birthday party has received a knighthood for 'services to land development and the property business.' Gallagher has given the Tories almost £750,000 since Boris Johnson became prime minister.

At 9pm on BBC1 was Roadkill, a fictional drama about a ruthless Tory MP who will stop at nothing to achieve his ambitions.
Or you could just watch the news and see the real thing.

I don't watch the News any more, it got too unrealistic when the comic relief became the bad guys (twice, sack the writers!) & now it's just got that 'final season' vibe.

2020 as a whole does seem to have been scripted by Charlie Brooker and Armando Ianucci, with additional material from Frankie Boyle.

Based on an idea by Mitchell & Webb

("Hello, Good Evening and Stay Indoors")

Par for the course. John Bercow is still being denied a peerage as well.

A mark of how badly Boris wanted Charles Moore to be BBC chairman is Boris agreed that the salary for the post could rise from £100,000 to £280,000, to match what Moore is paid by the Telegraph even though the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport pointed out that the government’s official position is to reduce pay at the BBC.

Johnson wanted to throw money at a mate? I'm shocked, shocked I tell you!

Mind, he is the man who can't live on 150k and all the freebies he gets and who once described his quarter of a million a year from the Torygraph as "chicken feed", suggesting his grasp of personal finance is loose at best.

The overriding policy, though, seems to be to give money to their mates.

He might just have a lot of chickens, but I suspect that if he did they wouldn’t do too well. He’d probably plant them too close together.