UK government approves 50% funding cut for arts and design courses. The move will save around £20m, says the education secretary Gavin Williamson.

Only need to find another 1,850 cuts like that and they'll have paid for Test and Trace. :mad:

Labour MP Dawn Butler Brent was told to leave the Chamber by Deputy Speaker for raising Boris' rampant lying in Parliament. Apparently you can't accuse another MP of telling lies even after they have been shown to be telling lies.

It is ridiculous that you are not allowed to discuss the fact that the Prime Minister is a liar in our parliament without punishment but the Prime Minister can tell obvious lies in parliament on a daily basis without any sanction.

The system is from an age where everyone behaved honourably and to be caught lying would finish a politician's career instantly.
Today they lie with impunity because they know they can't be called out on it and the rules need to change to keep up.

The Tory Home Secretary has just announced legislation that means journalists can get up to 14 years in prison for embarrassing the govt … but 5 Tory MPs get only a day’s ban from Parliament for trying to influence judges in a rape trial.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-57914664

They wrote references for MP convicted of sex offence.
They wanted to keep that secret.
They tried to get senior judges to pressure the trial judge to keep it secret.
They assumed judges do what Tory MPs tell them.
Judges don’t thank goodness.

That's the same Natalie Elphicke who suggested Rashford's failed penalty was because he interfered in politics & didn't stick to football.

I find this encouraging :

"Rank-and-file police officers have overwhelmingly supported a vote of no confidence in the home secretary, Priti Patel, the first such move in more than a decade.

In a scathing announcement, the Police Federation of England and Wales (PFEW), which represents 130,000 officers, said Patel and the government “could not be trusted” and warned “warm words are no longer enough”. "

link

Only over pay though. It's not some principled stand against anything, just self interest.

In this day and age this is the only way we might actually get change. Influential groups are only going to get involved if it benefits their own self interest. The majority of Tory voters don't seem to care.

I know it wasn't Lindsay Hoyle yesterday (House of Commons Speaker) but I wonder if he is really up to the job. He has reprimanded 'Boris' Johnson and Matthew Hancock in the past for announcing new government policies on television and press conferences without first bothering to consult parliament, as they ought to. However, he is also supposed to remind the Prime Minister that he should answer the questions asked, instead of swerving around them with silly catchphrases. John Bercow was the master of the putdown and of points of order. Hoyle really needs to be much tougher. Governance needs to be through parliament not the DAILY TELEGRAPH.

Dawn Butler should have known you cannot call someone a liar in the house. There are a hundred and one different ways of doing the same without using that word. See Ian Blackford. Bit of a gasbag but he doesn't let up.

Judges today are traitors. They seem to think themselves independent from parliament. They are not! Someone should tell them they must not upset 'Boris' or Priti. And all those activist lawyers helping defendants and people about to be deported. You know, we need to go back to the days of King John when people just did what they were told. Or else.

It is up to the speaker to call out a lie and ask the liar to 'amend the record' and retract their statement as they were 'mistaken', he can't do anything to stop it.

It's all ********.
If an MP tells an obvious and deliberate lie it should be called out as a lie.

At the moment there is no way to stop a Minister deliberately telling lies and no way to hold them to account or sanction them.
Instead it's any MP that tries to hold them properly to account that gets sanctioned.

The government has said it will not search the private email account of former Health Secretary Matt Hancock for discussions on official business.

Downing Street has admitted Mr Hancock, who quit last month, used his personal address for this reason.

The campaign group Good Law Project argued his inbox should be checked for the sake of transparency.

But the government rejected this, saying a sweep of emails was "neither necessary nor proportionate".

Given the key job description for a politician is LYING, if they were allowed to call each other 'liar' in Parliament, they'd be doing it all day long. Now that issue of who is lying to whom, is out of the way, let the PMQ's begin, and let the Speaker demand proper accountability.

I don't use my personal email for work-related matters (other than perhaps as a formality or pleasantry of some sort; certainly, not to do business) I find it amazing that ministers covered by the Official Secrets Act should even think of inviting tenders on 'matt.hancock@gmail.com'.

I really hate this view. The key job description of a politician in a representative democracy is to present their constituents (and to be realistic their party and most often themselves). The idea that all politicians are dishonourable and lie all the time is one of the the reason we're in this mess.

Sure I'm not saying normal politicians don't lie most often about their opponents, often out of political expediency ("do you support this stupid idea", "yes of course I do (because I want to get x, y & z done in return for my support)", and sometimes by just ignoring evidence against their political dogma while highlighting anything that supports that dogma. What they don't do is the complete disassociation from verifiable fact that we have with this current government and where they claim one thing one week and the complete opposite the next week while lying they ever said the first thing in the first place. And quite frankly a system, like we have in the House of Commons, where you can't point out provable untruths (while still allowing for rules against the political equivalent of calling your opponent "a big smelly poopy head") is broken.

Each day a different member of the House of Commons should denounce Johnson as a liar.

It might force the House, or the Speaker, to do something about the man and hold him to account.

Or, the speaker coud shout “Ordure Ordure” every time Boris tells a lie.

No, no no. The shortage of food supplies on the shelves is nothing to do with Brexit. This time it is to do with...immigration:

DM


Ah. Right.

I thought the shortage of food supplies was due to the pingdemic?

Edit: I'll rephrase that: I thought the excuse du jour was that the pingdemic is behind the shortage of food on store shelves, and that it has nothing to do with the estimated shortage of up to 100,000 HGV drivers.

It's difficult to tell, there is little consistency in the excuses peddled by 'Bloody Stupid' Johnson and his cronies.

Throw all of the excuses against the wall and see what sticks with various audiences. :mad:

As far as the Daily Express/Daily Mail crowd are concerned then it's the EU's fault regardless.

It is everything BUT Brexit. Bloody foreigners, now they are demanding £25,600, instead of being happy with minimum wage and zero contracts.

Seems to me that the latest is less an excuse for shortages and more a way to pave the way to lower things like minimum salaries for immigrants.

The inhumane new Borders Bill that criminalises asylum seekers fails to understand the need for proper accommodation of the asylum seekers whilst their cases are being processed and to safe guard them from the ever growing far-right threat, including migrants arriving on vessels from across the channel being pursued by the right wing press and tv cameras, portraying the new arrivals as less than human and only here to fiddle the benefits system. As if they have suddenly appeared from Sudan and kidnapped by 'Albanian' people smugglers, when it can take over four years to even reach that point. Strange how the same people who stand on beaches ready to film the destitute and desperate never seem to mention this.

Independent, Opinion

The paradox is that unskilled immigrants are unwelcome and 'skilled' ones can only come in if they can prove an employer is willing to pay them a minimum of £25,600, plus proof of money in the bank. So now the government plans to waive the stringent need for visas for HGV lorry drivers.

So in effect, once more, planeloads of East European Romanians will have to be allowed in to help with farm work.

So much for Vote Leave's brilliant idea of getting rid of 'em.

Unfortunately as far as HGV drivers is concerned, the race to the bottom has been a disturbing trend in recent years.

A few years ago, a Danish haulier company was discovered as having 'imported' truck drivers from the Philippines and Sri Lanka on an atrocious pay (as little as 15 DKK / £1.72 / €2 per hour), since they found that Eastern European drivers were becoming too expensive. They were initially brought to Poland and put up in accomodation, while the company sought a work permit for them there. Once they had that, they could freely move to the company's premises in Denmark and start working.

Newly licensed HGV drivers in the UK are reporting they aren't getting taken on as the haulage companies say the insurance for them is too expensive.

Bit of a Catch 22 then ? :confused:

Unless there's a previously untapped source of experienced HGV drivers (the forces ? the fire service ?) then it looks like we're knackered - unless the government are willing to underwrite the insurance.

That's communism.

Well, one of the alleged reasons for Brexit is that the UK would be free to subsidise industries to their heart's content and not be sanctioned buy the (rest of the) EU.

This strikes me as a particularly pathetic attitude, when the hauliers can't get enough EU-drivers. Also, mean-spirited, because, of course, newly-qualified drivers will have to pay higher premiums being statistically more prone to accidents in the first year or so. These firms could easily offset the expense of the higher premium against their profits and thus, pay less corporation tax It's the same shortsighted outlook some companies take, refusing to only hire 'experienced' people, expecting others to bear the expense of in job training, not to mention foregoing the value of developing one's own talent and inhouse training.

Govt have announced plans to 'streamline' driver qualification by combining the rigid and articulated test in to one and allowing the instructors to pass their students for the 'off road' and theory portions of the test.

Definitely the thinking of people that think that a 3hr non-Exec meeting a month is a 'real' job and driving a 22 ton metal battering ram at motorway speeds for ten hours a day is "something any idiot can do"...

Hhhmm, wonder if one of the next 'aren't the EU horrible' stories in the press will be when other countries refuse to let our drivers on their roads.

Oh, no, no, that's not it at all. Those were subsidies fro wealthy Conservative donors/suppers and B. S. Johnson's cronies.
Not the plebs.

I see non-recognition of UK licenses in the near future.

Slow news day ? BBC story about Boris's dog.

He is a total embarrassment. He goes round humping anything that moves said Dilyn.

Is this like "'I make cardboard boxes into buses.', says Boris"? Can we expect a revelation about how he's been shagging the dog-walker sometime soon?

That was wooden champagne boxes. It was a lie. It was a way of getting searches for him and champagne to find stories about making boxes in to busses.

I thought it was to redirect stories about him and busses after his failures in that area as London Mayor & the Brexit bus lie.

Inorder to set a good example to others and prevent unwanted litters with any female it encounters she should probably get it neutered. The vet might even give her a discount if she has the dog done at the same time.

Heh, don't underestimate Boris. Don't underestimate Boris...