IMO the issue we have is one of fundamentally not understanding the purpose of the Gray inquiry.

We think it's to investigate the various parties that are alleged to have taken place at various locations during various lockdowns and to identify if there were any breaches of the law, lockdown rules and ministerial code.

As Sue Gray understands it IMO, the purpose of the report is to assuage public anger over "Partygate" by giving the impression that a thorough investigation is being carried out whilst keeping the terms of the investigation and scope of the investigation narrow enough to ensure that no-one of consequence needs to be held to account. :mad:

The Met is only involved because they've determined that inaction is more damaging than carrying out an investigation but they too will do their best not to find anything of consequence because it will justify their decision not to investigate in the first place - "See we told you we didn't need to investigate, as you can see we've wasted time, manpower and money investigating these baseless claims" :rolleyes:

It’s misleading to say the National Insurance rise is only 1.25%
NI will rise from 9% to 10.25% … this means that on a £10k earning you will pay £1025 rather than £900

That means that your NÍ bill has gone up by 14%

Operation Save Greased Weasel is in full force.

I wonder what the odds are of the unredacted Sue Gray report being leaked? Surely there must be a Clive Ponting in Whitehall somewhere?

You realise we'll have to put up with Tory MP sycophants 'explaining' how policing works today?

Cressida Dick earning her contract renewal?

Sarah Vine's ex-husband?

After all, it looks as though Sunak has been caught as well - with his inadvertent attendance of a party.

Main two differences are that Cameron is not as thick as two planks and has a tiny ember of personal shame remaining.

I've seen people elsewhere comment that he's a politician and what do you expect? But in my lifetime I don't recall any politician, let alone a Prime Minister, who has so shamelessly lied, and lied, and lied, as well as being so incompetent and purely interested in holding office for the sake of it and at any cost.

ETA: I should qualify that statement with "in the UK".

But what would a former chief prosecutor know about criminal investigations


https://twitter.com/nazirafzal/statu...m4NpK3BitUCqjg

I see that she's 61 now, so maybe another term with The Met and then a cosy spot in The Lords?

I always smile when they mention her in radio and TV, always careful to use her full name, rather than just "Commissioner Dick". No idea why.

Thing is though while all politicians are bound to either lie or have to walk back promises either way, the sheer scope of BoJo's being a ****-up was plain even before he became PM. His ridiculous bollocks-bus during the Brexit fiasco for instance.

The fact is though little Englanders like that he's a slimy bastard, or at least don't care because he echoes their prejudices and that's enough for them and this country is riddled with them.

Dick by name...

I think they don't anymore. I have a twitter alt that follows and reports antivaxers and that feed is even more against Johnson than my normal one.

My local Look North news recently read out some emails from viewers with comments like:
"He's the best PM since Churchill"
"He's had such a lot to deal with, I thinl he's donea great job".

It seems we'll get a redacted version of the Gray report pretty soon. Then weeks or months or years will pass before the full version is released.

(Any cynicism in this post is strictly coincidental and not intended to portray the current reality of politics in the UK :rolleyes:)

Tory sleaze rears its head again, only this time the Met are colluding with them.

Ukraine: Boris Johnson to call Vladimir Putin and visit region

Boris Johnson will telephone Russian President Vladimir Putin and visit Eastern Europe in the coming days as the UK steps up its diplomatic efforts to resolve the Ukraine border crisis.
No 10 said the PM would repeat the need for Russia to "engage diplomatically" when he spoke to Mr Putin this week.

He would "reiterate the need for Russia to step back", No 10 added.
Mr Johnson has said the UK could deploy troops to protect NATO allies if Russia invaded Ukraine. However, Ukraine is not part of NATO and Russia wants the West to promise it will never join the military alliance, seeing it as a direct threat to its security.

As well as Mr Johnson's visit to the region, Foreign Secretary Liz Truss will visit Moscow in the next two weeks, the Russian Embassy in the UK said.
Mr Johnson has asked military and security chiefs to give him more options to mitigate against what Downing Street has called "growing Russian aggression".

This weekend, the prime minister is considering those options - including the deployment of more British troops to NATO countries in the region.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-60179127

Send more troops to help NATO allies?
I bet he wishes the Tories hadn't cut the infantry by almost 20% over the last few years.

Sue Grey - oh that’s last week’s news. How can Labour keep going on about a glass of wine at the office when Starma was seen drinking a beer in the office and Johnson is trying to deal with a possible Russian invasion*.




*Not the invasion of London - that one is fine

Cressida Dick is not new to obstruction
In June last year an inquiry into police corruption over the Daniel Morgan murder:
“blamed Dick personally for obstructing access to documents the panel thought vital”

3 months later Priti Patel extended her contract by 2 years

The Gray report is worthless anyway, as one of the Tories inadvertently admitted when the Met opened their investigation, noting that officials were more likely to be forthcoming when speaking to the police than to Gray.

Memorial Device tweeted
@memorialdevice
·
3h
The state cannot be trusted to investigate itself. Hillsborough. Orgreave. The Pat Finucane case etc. The truth about Bloody Sunday took 40 YEARS to emerge. Hide behind a bogus 'official investigation' and ride-out the outrage. The incumbent administration survives.

If the public campaigning is relentless enough, the truth MAY emerge years later. But the political fallout will then be zero. Nobody is ever held to account. A shrug of the shoulders and a 'we will learn from it'. They do learn from it. They learn to do it again.

Yes, Minister/Prime Minister was a documentary...Sir Humphrey lives on.

Damned with faint praise.

"What this country needs is a short, victorious war to stem the tide of revolution."

Their incursion into the House of Lords & corporate takeover of Tory Central Office don't seem to have caused much of a stir either.

David Schneider tweeted
@davidschneider
·
3h
Maybe if you’re Rishi Sunak and your wife’s richer than the Queen, it doesn’t seem that big a deal to write off £4.3bn in fraud even in a country with more food banks than McDonalds.

Memorial Device tweeted
@memorialdevice
·
8 hours after our tweet: ‘we must learn from the past’
Quote Tweet
Boris Johnson
@BorisJohnson
United Kingdom government official
· 2h
Tomorrow marks a tragic day in our history, the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday. This was one of the darkest days of the Troubles. We must learn from the past, reconcile, and build a peaceful future for people in Northern Ireland.

Of course BlowJob did nothing, absolutely nothing I tell you, wrong or potentially criminal when he was shagging Jennifer Arcuri (who was he married to at the time?)...

https://www.theguardian.com/politics...-boris-johnson

Sue Gray will have to look into that as Johnson of course can't remember.

Our Foreign Secretary said today that the UK will offer extra support "into our [b]Baltic/[b] allies across the Black Sea".

https://twitter.com/BBCPolitics/stat...29051271843842

Good to see that she's maintaining the recent tradition of being unencumbered by knowledge.

https://twitter.com/annietrev/status...63659212869637

Yes you read that correctly.

A country with about half the population of a UK Parliamentary constituency.

Meanwhile to offset this, I make it that since Thursday we have found that the government has wasted £7Bn.

£4.3Bn in fraudulent Covid loans written off
£2.7Bn in PPE purchased that needs to be written off.

Rishi Rich has lost more than that down the back of the sofa.

"The Party of Fiscal Responsibility"...

She's my sodding MP: even going back to when she was the Tory PPC I reckoned she was a talent-free zone (part of my calling her Tory Girl goes back to those times, as her blether was soooooo reminiscent of Harry Enfield's Hague spoof), but that hasn't stopped some of the eejits round here voting for her.

Sky News - Trevor Phillips On Sunday

Phillips - Everybody is going to be hit with a 10% increase in National Insurance... 6 weeks shopping, then a £600 increase in energy prices, 12 weeks shopping, where are people going to find that money from?

Liz Truss - We have the fastest growing economy in the G7.

Also it's a lie. In the last quarter of 2021 UK economic growth was 5th not 1st.

David Schneider tweeted
@davidschneider
Good to hear that the Tories are going to clamp down on Russian money. Perhaps they could start with the £1.9m given to Tories since Boris Johnson became Prime Minister.

Boris Johnson now has the redacted Sue Gray report into No 10 parties.

Cabinet Office spokesperson: "We can confirm that Sue Gray has provided an update on her investigations to the Prime Minister."

Boris Johnson’s spokesman says he "can’t confirm" whether the parts of Sue Gray’s report taken out because of the Metropolitan Police’s intervention, will ever be published.

Presumably those are the bits which are critical of the government so the version to be released will exonerate them and then by the time the Met release the results of their investigation, we won't care any more.

The report is published.

At first read, it's a hamstrung report, but Sue Gray appears to have done her best to not pull too many punches. In particular I quite liked this section:

Yes, the most damning parts would have been those that she passed to the Police.

This is the part that's left in.

Load of rubbish - all hospitals had to do was to convert operating theatres to IC units, how anyone can compare that to civil servants and politicians having to move their desk over a bit to the left, to make room for the drinks' fridge is beyond me, we should be supporting out brave first responders*. Pure political posturing!

*First responder classified as - first to pop the cork

Totally Sir Humphreyed there. Well done.

Carrot Flower Queen says it reminds her of NHS audit reports (which she wrote for a time) in that the language has to be so veiled as to be opaque and criticism so coded that an Enigma machine is required.

And excellently played by the Met in ensuring that chunks are kicked even further into that very long grass.

What a load of old bollocks.

Oh FFS!

Blackford is suspended for telling the truth about BlowJob lying to the House, as he has done repeatedly, but "I am a waste of space! Look on my emptiness, ye mighty, and despair!" Hoyle does nothing about BlowJob.

WTAF is Hoyle for? He already has his "K", so he doesn't need that pay off. Is he after a peerage? Or is one of BlowJob's backers slipping him a few choice envelopes?

And Evan Davies on PM played a recording of BlowJob flat out lying to the House about one of the parties in Downing Street and challenged Brandon "I am such a useful idiot" Lewis to say that BlowJob was misleading the House and comment on whether it was intentional or not.

Useful Idiot just went into Farage Mode, repeating "Will you let me finish what I'm saying?" over and over without actually saying anything else...

Mebbe those questions would have been better addressed to Vast Emptiness Hoyle for him to explain why he has repeatedly allowed BlowJob to get away with lying to the House?

An expertly crafted, precisely calibrated, fully collaborated whitewash.
What’s different this time, is that everyone knows it Now, not in ten years time.
A ******* embarrassment of a Government.