Stop voting for fucking Tories

[SaintK]

What a twat.......an unelected twat!!

[tabascoboy]

Wonder if any meaningful consequences will arise from findings of the "Pandora Papers"? The Blairs for one had a very uncomfortable revelation but of course wave their hands and say "they are doing nothing wrong". Now it's the Tories in the spotlight:

Pandora Papers: Businessman linked to Tory donations made millions from alleged fraud

A businessman whose companies have backed 34 Tory MPs made millions from an allegedly corrupt Russian pipeline deal, leaked files show. Former oil executive Victor Fedotov owns a firm currently seeking UK government approval for a controversial energy link between the UK and France. A BBC investigation shows he secretly benefitted from the alleged $4bn fraud in Russia.

Last year Mr Fedotov was revealed to be the owner of Aquind, the company behind a £1.24bn project to build an electricity cable linking the UK to France. Aquind is currently seeking UK government approval for the project and a decision will be made in weeks. His connection to Aquind has been hidden through an exemption to UK company laws granted to people with personal security concerns.

Andrew Mitchell QC told Panorama the scheme appeared to be "a pure attempt to slice money out of government and, when you factor in that the CEO of the government-owned entity organised and did the subcontracting with a couple of mates, um, that's fraud."

Mr Vainshtok's lawyers said the allegations of fraud were "unfounded" and made for "political purposes".

Mr Fedotov is now identified on the company's public records, alongside Alexander Temerko, the Ukraine-born public face and part owner of Aquind. Mr Temerko is a Conservative Party activist and personal friend of Prime Minister Boris Johnson. He is a regular at Conservative Party fundraisers and has personally donated more than £700,000 to the party.

Research by the BBC has established that in addition to Mr Temerko's donations to the Conservative Party, Mr Fedotov's businesses have donated another £700,000 to 34 MPs and their local parties since the Aquind project began.

Aquind's relationship with the Conservative Party does not end there. Lord Callanan, currently a business minister responsible for corporate responsibility, is a former director of the company, while former minister Lord James Wharton took up a role as a paid adviser when he lost his House of Commons seat in 2017.

In an interview for the BBC, journalist Peter Oborne says this raises questions about Aquind. He says "You have to ask yourself why … Aquind feels it needs to go to such elaborate efforts and spend such money and so much time to get access to the Conservative Party."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-58791274

"Alleged" of course is a key word.

A part of me is just resigned to the fact that "greasing the wheels" of decision making within government is just now a normal part of any major infrastructure project and this just happens to be the Tories when it could be any government anywhere. It's probably nothing very new, just a little less easier to conduct but not so easy to keep things completely secret these days.

[SaintK]

Mad Nad on the warpath.....watch out BBC

I can’t look into the future. Will the BBC still be here in 10 years? I don’t know.
We can’t look into the future. It is a very competitive environment at the moment.
You have got Amazon Prime, Netflix and other bods coming down the line.
This younger generation that are coming through, they certainly watch their television in a very different way to how my generation watched its TV, so who knows where we will be?

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2 ... -dorries

[tabascoboy]

And more...

Pandora Papers: Tory donor Mohamed Amersi involved in telecoms corruption scandal

Pandora Papers: Questions over Tory donations by ex-Russian minister's wife

plus for a bit of balance

Pandora Papers: Blairs saved £312,000 stamp duty in property deal

[Torquemada 1420]

And more...

Pandora Papers: Tory donor Mohamed Amersi involved in telecoms corruption scandal

Pandora Papers: Questions over Tory donations by ex-Russian minister's wife

plus for a bit of balance

Pandora Papers: Blairs saved £312,000 stamp duty in property deal

Was just thinking we should add the Pandora Papers to this thread. Notice how silent the media had been on this subject.

[Slick]

And more...

Pandora Papers: Tory donor Mohamed Amersi involved in telecoms corruption scandal

Pandora Papers: Questions over Tory donations by ex-Russian minister's wife

plus for a bit of balance

Pandora Papers: Blairs saved £312,000 stamp duty in property deal

Was just thinking we should add the Pandora Papers to this thread. Notice how silent the media had been on this subject.

BBC website has had it as the first 5 or 6 stories for the last 3 days.

[Rhubarb & Custard]

And more...

Pandora Papers: Tory donor Mohamed Amersi involved in telecoms corruption scandal

Pandora Papers: Questions over Tory donations by ex-Russian minister's wife

plus for a bit of balance

Pandora Papers: Blairs saved £312,000 stamp duty in property deal

Was just thinking we should add the Pandora Papers to this thread. Notice how silent the media had been on this subject.

BBC website has had it as the first 5 or 6 stories for the last 3 days.

They'll be the first to go to the wall come the revolution

We do get some coverage on these stories whenever they break, then they get sidetracked quickly into personality stories, whether a Cameron or Blair or other, and then coverage stops period. And the situation as regards the amount of money being hidden and the number of people involved is only growing, there's little to no reform, there's plenty of profiteering and corruption, and there's little that puts one in mind of levelling up, it's much more grinding down.

There's no attempt to remove loopholes in tax legislation on the avoidance side, and on the evasion side the best that can be managed (as of the fag end of last year) is the slight acceptance by HMG that money laundering has probably increased over recent years. There'll be some blather about UWOs, but they can issued against almost no one, and even if they are almost any response (really short of flat out and obvious BS, or just saying nothing) will be treated as an explanation as the target will be deemed to have purported to have made a response

[Torquemada 1420]

And more...

Pandora Papers: Tory donor Mohamed Amersi involved in telecoms corruption scandal

Pandora Papers: Questions over Tory donations by ex-Russian minister's wife

plus for a bit of balance

Pandora Papers: Blairs saved £312,000 stamp duty in property deal

Was just thinking we should add the Pandora Papers to this thread. Notice how silent the media had been on this subject.

BBC website has had it as the first 5 or 6 stories for the last 3 days.

Okay. Not somewhere I routinely look at but been nothing I've seen on BBC Breakfast or heard on R4 on the way to work.

[Rhubarb & Custard]

Was just thinking we should add the Pandora Papers to this thread. Notice how silent the media had been on this subject.

BBC website has had it as the first 5 or 6 stories for the last 3 days.

Okay. Not somewhere I routinely look at but been nothing I've seen on BBC Breakfast or heard on R4 on the way to work.

They were discussing the Pandora Papers earlier on Today for sure

[Insane_Homer]

Asked about crime against women Boris Johnson replies “What we need to do is concentrate on real crime”
His bumbling words are dangerous, and offensive to everybody
#bbcbreakfast

Crimes against women aren't real crimes?

[Torquemada 1420]

We do get some coverage on these stories whenever they break, then they get sidetracked quickly into personality stories, whether a Cameron or Blair or other, and then coverage stops period. And the situation as regards the amount of money being hidden and the number of people involved is only growing, there's little to no reform, there's plenty of profiteering and corruption, and there's little that puts one in mind of levelling up, it's much more grinding down.

There's no attempt to remove loopholes in tax legislation on the avoidance side, and on the evasion side the best that can be managed (as of the fag end of last year) is the slight acceptance by HMG that money laundering has probably increased over recent years. There'll be some blather about UWOs, but they can issued against almost no one, and even if they are almost any response (really short of flat out and obvious BS, or just saying nothing) will be treated as an explanation as the target will be deemed to have purported to have made a response

All of the above.

[Paddington Bear]

Asked about crime against women Boris Johnson replies “What we need to do is concentrate on real crime”
His bumbling words are dangerous, and offensive to everybody
#bbcbreakfast

Crimes against women aren't real crimes?

Is misogyny a crime? Is it really worth taking up police time with?

[Slick]

Asked about crime against women Boris Johnson replies “What we need to do is concentrate on real crime”
His bumbling words are dangerous, and offensive to everybody
#bbcbreakfast

Crimes against women aren't real crimes?

I think this is ridiculous IH, he has been pretty unequivocal on this all week.

[SaintK]

Cunt being a cunt!

He blamed the conduct of defence lawyers for the low level of rape convictions. He told BBC Breakfast:
"People are not being convicted of rape in the way that they should be convicted of rape, and there’s a reason for that. The reason is that we’ve got these immense complications with evidence from mobile phones, and the defence is too often able to produce a spurious or otherwise reason why the defendant might have thought consent was given."

[SaintK]

Oh and fuck you pig farmers hahaha!!

Johnson joked about the fact that pig farmers say they are going to have to incinerate their stock because of the shortage of butchers and slaughterers. When Andrew Marr asked about this crisis on Sunday, Johnson referred to the “great hecatomb of pigs” and said pigs raised for eating were slaughtered anyway. He did not acknowledge that, if they cannot be processed for meats, the farmers lose income, and normal welfare standards might not be maintained. When the subject was raised again by Times Radio, Johnson talked about his “unhappy duty” having to tell Marr what happened to pigs, and he started asking about bacon sandwiches. He did not engage with the concerns of the pig farmers.

[Torquemada 1420]

Cunt being a cunt!

He blamed the conduct of defence lawyers for the low level of rape convictions. He told BBC Breakfast:
"People are not being convicted of rape in the way that they should be convicted of rape, and there’s a reason for that. The reason is that we’ve got these immense complications with evidence from mobile phones, and the defence is too often able to produce a spurious or otherwise reason why the defendant might have thought consent was given."

And the CPS's refusal to support such cases.

How many cases brought (let alone successful prosecutions) have there been EVER in Britain for FGM?

Spoiler

Show

Answer = zero

[Torquemada 1420]

And this worked out well

https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/ ... uk-293595/

[Insane_Homer]

I think this is ridiculous IH, he has been pretty unequivocal on this all week.

yup, lasted all of 10 mins...

[robmatic]

Cunt being a cunt!

He blamed the conduct of defence lawyers for the low level of rape convictions. He told BBC Breakfast:
"People are not being convicted of rape in the way that they should be convicted of rape, and there’s a reason for that. The reason is that we’ve got these immense complications with evidence from mobile phones, and the defence is too often able to produce a spurious or otherwise reason why the defendant might have thought consent was given."

I don't get it, the tweet is about delays in the criminal justice system but the quote is about the low conviction rate for rape cases. These are two separate issues?

Regarding rape cases, there is a fair point there that the balance is probably tilted towards the defence in that it is difficult to successfully prosecute them.

[Paddington Bear]

Rape is an absolute minefield of criminal justice as by it's nature a lot of cases are very 'he said/she said'. No easy solution given we should be very careful about lowering the burden of proof.

CPS being shit and underfunded doesn't help either

[Lobby]

Cunt being a cunt!

He blamed the conduct of defence lawyers for the low level of rape convictions. He told BBC Breakfast:
"People are not being convicted of rape in the way that they should be convicted of rape, and there’s a reason for that. The reason is that we’ve got these immense complications with evidence from mobile phones, and the defence is too often able to produce a spurious or otherwise reason why the defendant might have thought consent was given."

And the CPS's refusal to support such cases.

How many cases brought (let alone successful prosecutions) have there been EVER in Britain for FGM?

Spoiler

Show

Answer = zero

Not true. While it is the case that very few cases proceed to trial, the CPS has been proceeding with cases of FGM in recent years. Most have resulted in acquittals, but in 2019 the CPS had its first successful prosecution, with the mother who had caused the injuries to her daughter being sentenced to 11 years in prison.

[Torquemada 1420]

Cunt being a cunt!

And the CPS's refusal to support such cases.

How many cases brought (let alone successful prosecutions) have there been EVER in Britain for FGM?

Spoiler

Show

Answer = zero

Not true. While it is the case that very few cases proceed to trial, the CPS has been proceeding with cases of FGM in recent years. Most have resulted in acquittals, but in 2019 the CPS had its first successful prosecution, with the mother who had caused the injuries to her daughter being sentenced to 11 years in prison.

I have been quoting that for years and am guilty of not checking for updates. Regardless, the situation is a disgrace and I suspect the only reason there has been any change at all followed the Bradford furore spin offs.

Would be interested in how any of these are acquittals: either the girls are intact or they are not.

(July 31, 2019) Despite laws against Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) being on the books in the United Kingdon (UK) since 1985, the first successful prosecution in the UK for FGM occurred in February 2019. The defendant in this case was convicted of carrying out FGM on her daughter when she was three years old, with the crime being discovered after the defendant called an ambulance for her daughter due to extensive bleeding caused by the procedure.

[sturginho]

And this worked out well

https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/ ... uk-293595/

The EU workers we speak to won't go back to the UK on a short term visa to help them out of the shit they created for themselves

[Rhubarb & Custard]

Rape is an absolute minefield of criminal justice as by it's nature a lot of cases are very 'he said/she said'. No easy solution given we should be very careful about lowering the burden of proof.

CPS being shit and underfunded doesn't help either

No easy solution, but there's no fence in this scenario, you either bias letting guilty people go free, or you bias sending innocent people to jail, both shitty outcomes.

And fwiw depending on the jury you can already get away with a he/she said prosecution

[tabascoboy]

It's just staggering that someone who can't seem to articulate without saying something jaw-droppingly idiotic can be a PM - but then we do like to follow the US example so much

[sturginho]

It's just staggering that someone who can't seem to articulate without saying something jaw-droppingly idiotic can be a PM - but then we do like to follow the US example so much

He's an intelligent man and this is all just an act, remember?

[fishfoodie]

It's just staggering that someone who can't seem to articulate without saying something jaw-droppingly idiotic can be a PM - but then we do like to follow the US example so much

He's an intelligent man and this is all just an act, remember?

Fundamentally he a lazy cunt; & everything else flows from that.

He doesn't read his briefs, he just ad libs his way thru life; & as a result; even when he knows the questions ahead of time, he frequently fucks up a simple answer.

It's dangerous at the best of times; it's unforgivable as a senior Politician; because it can literally kill people !

[Paddington Bear]

It's just staggering that someone who can't seem to articulate without saying something jaw-droppingly idiotic can be a PM - but then we do like to follow the US example so much

How can a country have consistently strong healthcare if it doesn't have high wage growth? Britain's stagnant economic growth is the whole reason the government feel they need to have a battle every year over whether NHS staff get a pay rise or not.

[Rhubarb & Custard]

It's just staggering that someone who can't seem to articulate without saying something jaw-droppingly idiotic can be a PM - but then we do like to follow the US example so much

How can a country have consistently strong healthcare if it doesn't have high wage growth? Britain's stagnant economic growth is the whole reason the government feel they need to have a battle every year over whether NHS staff get a pay rise or not.

Isn't government policy to drive out foreign nurses so they can raise the pay of British nurses? Just to follow their own line of thinking on abattoir work, on HGV drivers. They say it's not a government issue but an employer one, just when it comes to the public sector they are the employer so no doubt we'll be seeing a 5-10% pay increases agreed pronto

There was a nurse on the radio earlier who aged 55 probably doesn't have many more promotional bands to climb I'm thinking as she'll be more starting to thing retirement, and she was saying her pay increase this time around equates to an extra £3.50 a week, which is going to be trampled over by rising fuel, energy, food prices and the like

[Torquemada 1420]

It's just staggering that someone who can't seem to articulate without saying something jaw-droppingly idiotic can be a PM - but then we do like to follow the US example so much

How can a country have consistently strong healthcare if it doesn't have high wage growth? Britain's stagnant economic growth is the whole reason the government feel they need to have a battle every year over whether NHS staff get a pay rise or not.

Cuba says hello.

As for the rest

[_Os_]

And more...

Pandora Papers: Tory donor Mohamed Amersi involved in telecoms corruption scandal

Pandora Papers: Questions over Tory donations by ex-Russian minister's wife

plus for a bit of balance

Pandora Papers: Blairs saved £312,000 stamp duty in property deal

The Blair story is years old isn't it?

There's quit a few links between the Tories and Russian oligarchs emerging. Johnson's connection to Evgeny Lebedev, who owns the Evening Standard and Independent, his father was a KGB agent the KGB being a bit like the mafia no one ever really leaves and membership is a family affair. Johnson of course made Lebedev a life peer and he now sits in the House of Lords, Lebedev was deemed a security risk until Johnson rescinded that also. Megahertz a company that was bought by Russians years ago, the Russians that bought them working extensively for Russian state TV (Russia Today and others), winning the contract to renovate Number 9 Downing Street/the press briefing room for £2.6 million. There's also Cummings' time spent in Russia a period lasting years little is known about, he apparently ran a failed airline from a flat and that took 3 or 4 years to play out.

There's been lots of corrupt Russian money flowing into London since Putin had been in power a few years, from around the mid-2000s onward. Tories seem to have just gone with it and incorporated that Russian money into their party like it was normal cash, but every super rich Russian is Putin/KGB connected somehow, they don't get rich otherwise. There's probably enough links to make a documentary purely on Russians and Russian money and its influence on the Tory party. 90%+ of the UK media carries on like it's all entirely normal, which I guess it is. Just another coincidental Tory-Russian connection, nothing to see.

[I like neeps]

And more...

Pandora Papers: Tory donor Mohamed Amersi involved in telecoms corruption scandal

Pandora Papers: Questions over Tory donations by ex-Russian minister's wife

plus for a bit of balance

Pandora Papers: Blairs saved £312,000 stamp duty in property deal

The Blair story is years old isn't it?

There's quit a few links between the Tories and Russian oligarchs emerging. Johnson's connection to Evgeny Lebedev, who owns the Evening Standard and Independent, his father was a KGB agent the KGB being a bit like the mafia no one ever really leaves and membership is a family affair. Johnson of course made Lebedev a life peer and he now sits in the House of Lords, Lebedev was deemed a security risk until Johnson rescinded that also. Megahertz a company that was bought by Russians years ago, the Russians that bought them working extensively for Russian state TV (Russia Today and others), winning the contract to renovate Number 9 Downing Street/the press briefing room for £2.6 million. There's also Cummings' time spent in Russia a period lasting years little is known about, he apparently ran a failed airline from a flat and that took 3 or 4 years to play out.

There's been lots of corrupt Russian money flowing into London since Putin had been in power a few years, from around the mid-2000s onward. Tories seem to have just gone with it and incorporated that Russian money into their party like it was normal cash, but every super rich Russian is Putin/KGB connected somehow, they don't get rich otherwise. There's probably enough links to make a documentary purely on Russians and Russian money and its influence on the Tory party. 90%+ of the UK media carries on like it's all entirely normal, which I guess it is. Just another coincidental Tory-Russian connection, nothing to see.

The UK press goes along with it because they're mostly owned by offshore oligarchs. The Barclays, Rothermere's, and Rupert Murdoch are based offshore and will be up to their eyeballs in dodgy tax dealings themselves.

Turkeys voting for Christmas if they start making a fuss on offshoring. Russian links or not.

[Rinkals]

And more...

Pandora Papers: Tory donor Mohamed Amersi involved in telecoms corruption scandal

Pandora Papers: Questions over Tory donations by ex-Russian minister's wife

plus for a bit of balance

Pandora Papers: Blairs saved £312,000 stamp duty in property deal

Was just thinking we should add the Pandora Papers to this thread. Notice how silent the media had been on this subject.

Silent?

Are you kidding?

There have been 600 plus journalists working on this all over the World.

There is no fake news/MSM cover up, mate. And even if there were, you can't keep stuff secret when that many people know about it.

[tabascoboy]

And more...

Pandora Papers: Tory donor Mohamed Amersi involved in telecoms corruption scandal

Pandora Papers: Questions over Tory donations by ex-Russian minister's wife

plus for a bit of balance

Pandora Papers: Blairs saved £312,000 stamp duty in property deal

Was just thinking we should add the Pandora Papers to this thread. Notice how silent the media had been on this subject.

Silent?

Are you kidding?

There have been 600 plus journalists working on this all over the World.

There is no fake news/MSM cover up, mate. And even if there were, you can't keep stuff secret when that many people know about it.

Torq may have been talking about the UK newspapers - as you'd expect apart from the Guardian it doesn't make front page ( but for a tiny below the fold column in The Times ) whether it's covered in detail inside I don't know though.

[SaintK]

How much more moronic can one man get?

[SaintK]

Was just thinking we should add the Pandora Papers to this thread. Notice how silent the media had been on this subject.

Silent?

Are you kidding?

There have been 600 plus journalists working on this all over the World.

There is no fake news/MSM cover up, mate. And even if there were, you can't keep stuff secret when that many people know about it.

Torq may have been talking about the UK newspapers - as you'd expect apart from the Guardian it doesn't make front page ( but for a tiny below the fold column in The Times ) whether it's covered in detail inside I don't know though.

Telegraph had it on the front page but only to reference the Blair's £300k of tax saving
No reference to the £gazillions the corrupt Russian and Middle Easterns have been laundering while quietly lining the Tory Party coffers with £millions

[Blackmac]

Rape is an absolute minefield of criminal justice as by it's nature a lot of cases are very 'he said/she said'. No easy solution given we should be very careful about lowering the burden of proof.

CPS being shit and underfunded doesn't help either

No easy solution, but there's no fence in this scenario, you either bias letting guilty people go free, or you bias sending innocent people to jail, both shitty outcomes.

And fwiw depending on the jury you can already get away with a he/she said prosecution

No, one of those outcomes will always be a lot shittier than the other. The scary thing is, once we get to the end of what will be a horrible rehash of the system to ensure more convictions, we will get many, many more of those outcomes.

[_Os_]

And more...

Pandora Papers: Tory donor Mohamed Amersi involved in telecoms corruption scandal

Pandora Papers: Questions over Tory donations by ex-Russian minister's wife

plus for a bit of balance

Pandora Papers: Blairs saved £312,000 stamp duty in property deal

The Blair story is years old isn't it?

There's quit a few links between the Tories and Russian oligarchs emerging. Johnson's connection to Evgeny Lebedev, who owns the Evening Standard and Independent, his father was a KGB agent the KGB being a bit like the mafia no one ever really leaves and membership is a family affair. Johnson of course made Lebedev a life peer and he now sits in the House of Lords, Lebedev was deemed a security risk until Johnson rescinded that also. Megahertz a company that was bought by Russians years ago, the Russians that bought them working extensively for Russian state TV (Russia Today and others), winning the contract to renovate Number 9 Downing Street/the press briefing room for £2.6 million. There's also Cummings' time spent in Russia a period lasting years little is known about, he apparently ran a failed airline from a flat and that took 3 or 4 years to play out.

There's been lots of corrupt Russian money flowing into London since Putin had been in power a few years, from around the mid-2000s onward. Tories seem to have just gone with it and incorporated that Russian money into their party like it was normal cash, but every super rich Russian is Putin/KGB connected somehow, they don't get rich otherwise. There's probably enough links to make a documentary purely on Russians and Russian money and its influence on the Tory party. 90%+ of the UK media carries on like it's all entirely normal, which I guess it is. Just another coincidental Tory-Russian connection, nothing to see.

The UK press goes along with it because they're mostly owned by offshore oligarchs. The Barclays, Rothermere's, and Rupert Murdoch are based offshore and will be up to their eyeballs in dodgy tax dealings themselves.

Turkeys voting for Christmas if they start making a fuss on offshoring. Russian links or not.

It'll be interesting what coverage it gets in The Evening Standard and Independent. The Independent hoovered some cash for the UK government paid articles supporting Brexit earlier this year (it ran enough of those articles, and was presumably paid), so it's perhaps not entirely "Independent".

I forgot about Lord Ashcroft's (a Belize citizen) brazen Russian infatuation. Selfies outside the Russian Duma (a parliament where the leading party is led/formed entirely by former KGB and current FSB mafia type networks, and the party allowed to the largest opposition party is the Communist Party), his yacht moored next to Putin's in Sochi. Russia isn't some economic world super power it's impossible to avoid doing business with if you're rich, it's not the USA/China/EU, its GDP is in the Italy/Canada/South Korea ballpark. Someone has to go really far out of their way to have dealings with them. Oh well, I'm sure it's all explained by being a coincidence.

[I like neeps]

Health should be family first, then community, then state. As a point I agree. So maybe they should start creating some family focused healthcare policies like decreasing the cost of childcare. Nah it'll never catch on.

[tabascoboy]

Imagine if they had taken that stance throughout the pandemic - which is of course precisely what they wanted to do in the first few weeks. If it's not the role of the State then why is this government constantly gagging for plaudits about the vaccination programme?