Liz Truss asked for public money to cover £3,000 lunch

Liz Truss, the current favourite to succeed Boris Johnson as leader of the Conservatives among party members, hosted a lunch at an expensive private club owned by a Tory donor after overruling civil service advice to look for a cheaper venue.

Leaked correspondence has revealed the foreign secretary “refused to consider anywhere else” and asked that public funds should pay for a £3,000 event with Joe Biden’s trade representative.
Civil servants were so concerned at the cost and the venue’s close links to the Tories that the proposal was referred to the most senior official at the Department for International Trade.

According to the correspondence, Truss, then the trade secretary, “explicitly asked that we book 5 Hertford Street”, which is owned by Robin Birley, a £20,000 donor to Boris Johnson’s leadership campaign and the half-brother of Zac Goldsmith, the environment minister.
The venue agreed to reduce the bill to £1,400, but on condition of immediate payment – which meant civil servants had to use an emergency process to pay up straight away.

The correspondence, disclosed by the Sunday Times, comes as Truss’s supporters conduct a campaign for her to succeed the prime minister should he be toppled by Tory MPs.
Truss and her companions drank two bottles of dry gin, three £153 bottles of Pazo Barrantes Albariño, a Spanish white wine and two bottles of the French red Coudoulet de Beaucastel at £130 a bottle, it was reported.
Before attending the event with US trade representatives, a civil servant described the club as “obviously incredibly expensive and more than I understand we’d usually expect to pay for such a venue”.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics...ice-objections

ETA I don't think that is right about two bottles of gin. From the itemised bill it appears that they were just two expensive glasses of gin

Liz Truss tweeted
@trussliz
· Dec 31, 2021
The UK has advanced the cause of freedom, democracy, free trade and free enterprise this year.

In 2022 we will continue to deliver for the United Kingdom, boosting economic and security ties across the world and building a global network of liberty.

You missed the footnote

*excludes GB

WTAF is any restaurant doing charging £130 a pop for Coudoulet? Or £153 for that particular Albarino? Neither cost £20 retail...That's just robbery!

ETA And this was work, so WTAF are these folk doing drinking at work, in a way pretty much ALL public employees are barred from doing so?

Presumably that will continue to be 'Liberty' in the exclusive sense of "Taking a Bloody"

Apparently it’s fine at government meetings, that’s why none of the parties were actually parties, and it explains a lot about how the country is being run.

Was cheese involved?

+++OUT OF CHEESE ERROR+++

Law change allows wild birds to be killed to protect game birds in England

Some wild birds can now be killed in order to protect game birds bred for shooting in England, after the government updated guidelines on its general licences.

General shooting licences give broad permissions to shoot certain species of wild birds to protect livestock, aid conservation, and preserve health and public safety.

The new licences have been issued for two years rather than one, with government officials saying this is to provide “stability and certainty” to shooters.

General licences are permissive licences, meaning users do not need to apply for them but they must comply with their terms and conditions when undertaking licensed acts.

There has been debate over whether pheasants, partridges and grouse count as livestock, as they are wild birds, and so whether predators can be shot in order to protect them.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has released a new definition of “livestock” including these birds, to give explicit permission to shoot carrion crows, jackdaws, magpies and rooks.

https://www.theguardian.com/environm...-birds-england


Got to have plenty of tame targets for the toffs to massacre.

He's not as much of an idiot as he pretends.

It doesn't take a genius to take advantage of the opportunities for increasing wealth that he's had, but he is taking them. Utterly cynical.

In response to a FOI request, the Treasury revealed that it had wiped 117 phones in 2020, and the Cabinet Office said it had wiped 153 phones.

Apparently if the wrong unlock code is put in to an official mobile phone 3 times it is locked and has to be wiped to reset it destroying any text messages, call records and other data on the phone.

I’ve been using mobile phones since last century, and have never had one locked.

It's a security thing on official phones apparently, in case they are lost or fall in to the wrong hands.

there is a similar system on official laptops.

Three tries and they are locked and encrypted.

Daniel Kawczynski, Tory MP for Shrewsbury has claimed over £8000 in expenses last year to learn Polish. Daniel Kawczynski was born in Poland to Polish speaking parents and speaks fluent Polish!

The Tories are stealing our money.

What is it about "country folk" which leads them to the conclusion that the solution to any problem is the wholesale slaughter of wild animals ? :confused:

If your only tool is a shotgun, every problem looks like a quail.

Dave

Apparently it's fine because "they all do it". :rolleyes:

The fact that one party seem to do it far more often and steal far more money is irrelevant.

The question that arises is "what did he spend the £8k on ?". If it was, say, to improve his old fashioned rural Polish to modern business Polish and he can produce receipts to show 200 lessons at £40 a pop then I suppose there's some defence (though still ridiculously expensive".

If the £8k actually covered him and others going to visit his family in Poland then that's less defendable.

According to the Daily Fail, it's over £22k over the last few years.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...h-lessons.html

Story dates back to November last year.

:D:D

I must correct my statement about wine prices, as the Graun now has it as 2 bottles of the Albarino and 3 of Coudoulet and that the price given is for 2 and 3 bottles respectively, not to mention that it was only 2 glasses of gin.

One does begin to wonder about the accuracy of some of the reporting here and if there is - though it pains me to say - some class of an agenda.

That was after the bill was reduced from £3000 to £1400.

True. I do wonder what has been left off to get down to actually £1308.13. The room booking fee appears to be £500 and isn't on that bill, which still leaves well over a grand which has somehow disappeared or else been billed separately so they can claim not to have spent £3k.

And the Graun is still wrong on the wine (seen a supposed pic of the bill).

It doesn't look great, but there does seem to be some bandwagon jumping about the reporting and not properly fact checking in the hope of making Truss look even hookier.

Yeah sadly that is always a problem, it does mean the politicians often get a chance to muddy the waters.

George Monbiot tweeted
@GeorgeMonbiot
·
4h
Actually, we know who wrote (or passed) these laws: MPs and lords who own shooting estates. They created a fantastically tortuous legal system to enable this unspeakable "sport" to continue, regardless of the havoc it wreaks and the ecological damage it inflicts.

The pheasant is a non-native bird that belongs to the same family as chickens and turkeys (Phasianidae).
Imagine the outcry if farmers bred 47 million chickens every year to be released, then forced to fly over a line of people with shotguns, to be blasted out of the air.

Every aspect of this practice is an outrage. It reflects the continued domination of a landed elite, whose power is such that they can craft the law to suit themselves, however labyrinthine it has to be.
Is this country a democracy, or a semi-feudal barony?

It's a gigantic, state-sanctioned cosplay, simultaneously deadly serious and utterly risible.

https://i.imgur.com/neReZHvm.jpg

Well I certainly know its a thing for quite a few corporate phones, especially those that have passcode generators on them for system access and official mail. I have had to do the wipe and reset process for customers many a time.

No, we've been forced to export it all to Japan to keep up with demand...

Happened across this earlier on twitter which sums up the situation pretty well.

http://www.internationalskeptics.com...5e3bd0bbe1.jpg

Sounds like Johnson's 'IT Lessons'

I’m imagining something like the Monty Python Italian lesson sketch.

Some of today's lies from Boris at PMQs:

He never said inflation fears were "unfounded"

Tory government has built new nuclear plants

Warm Homes Discount is £140 a week (it's £140 for a year)

Labour would rejoin EU

Labour wanted Xmas lockdown

Labour has committed to nationalise the energy sector

UK would not be able to cut VAT on energy bills if we were in the EU

UK has the fastest growing G7 economy

Income inequality has fallen under this government

40 new hospitals are being built

Winter fuel payment is £300 for "pensioners"

No sanction from the Speaker.

Also no sanction for the way he constantly refers to female Labour MP’s as “she” and not “The Honourable Lady”

Here's the story of British industry in microcosm - electric buses for Wales.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-59880876

Wales is rolling out electric buses but is importing them from China. Some Welsh politicians want them to be made in Wales (or at least in the UK).

There is insufficient manufacturing capacity in the UK:

The car factory in question was the Aston Martin factory which has turned out to be a "mixed blessing" at best:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-56346835

Plenty of government money went into that factory and doubtless Switch will be looking for considerable subsidies in this case too. If there really is a market, then subsidies shouldn't be necessary but manufacturing industry in the UK has been taught to expect it.

IMO a lot of the UK's industrial woes are down to short-termism where investment in the future is curtailed in order to provide investor returns today. There's no incentive to look past the next quarter or two and as a result, UK manufacturing is outdated and unable to compete globally, or even within the EU.

Post-Brexit, we were supposed to be heading towards the sunny uplands but IMO we're still hopelessly stuck in the rainy lowlands with no clear path defined. :(

Energy prices doubling, inflation at 6%, child food poverty increasing, the NHS at breaking point, shortages of fresh produce in the supermarkets and MP Andrew Rosindell asks in parliament, what can be done to get the BBC to play the national anthem at the end of every day.

“Fantastic question,” says Nadine Dorries, she's going to look at it.

Nice to see their priorities are right.

Isn't BBC programming 24 hours these days on the major channels/stations ?

There isn't an "end of day" as such.

Shows ignorance of basic facts as well as badly skewed priorities IMO

To be fair, the question clearly stated "at the end of the day's programming, before it switches to News 24"

Actually, the statement/question was really about the singing of the national anthem - which anyone is free to do, at any time of the day they please. You don't need the BBC to help you out.

The national anthem was broadcast, on radio as well as TV, when the channel was shutting down for the night (when that was a thing) begun in the era when theatres and even cinemas did the same at the end of their performance.

It's just a bit of weasley political point scoring about the BBC being less patriotic than in some golden age we might return to. As if the nation would leap to its feet and sing when they heard its stirring notes, if only the beeb would play it.

With the current lot - Liz Truss volunteers as a translator....

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I AGREE

To be fair to Beeb, Newsnight did play out with God Save Queen once ….

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I AGREE

BBC Radio 4 do end the days transmission with the national anthem every night.

I always assumed there was at least a partly cynical reason for playing the anthem at cinemas, getting the audience standing up and therefore halfway to leaving.

Like Alf Garnett in the bath.

You are being deceptive again!


Just because something is a fact doesn’t make it true!

Downing Street today published a humiliating “lost” WhatsApp message that Boris Johnson sent a Tory donor begging for more cash to revamp his grace-and-favour flat.

The PM failed to inform his own ethics advisor about the message, which he sent to peer Lord Brownlow in November 2020 as the six-figure makeover spiralled out of control.
The text exchange shows the PM asked Lord Brownlow for "approvals" for the £112,000-plus makeover, moaning the flat above 11 Downing Street was a "bit of a tip” - despite the fact it had a new kitchen in the last decade.
He pressed the donor to provide money, saying he was "keen" to let the designer get on with it. Lord Brownlow replied promising to get on with the job, adding: "It’s only me and I know where the £ will come from".

Lord Geidt, the PM's advisor on the ministerial code, said the failure to disclose the texts to his probe into the funding of the refurb was "plainly unsatisfactory", demonstrated "insufficient respect" and presented a "threat to public confidence" in his role.
And while he suggested the texts alone did not undermine his conclusion that Mr Johnson had not broken the ministerial code, he said he would have had more questions for the PM had he know of their existence.
Yet despite voicing "grave concern" he cleared Mr Johnson of wrongdoing - after the PM claimed he forgot about the messages because they were on his old phone.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politi...-lost-25873177