Stop voting for fucking Tories

[petej]

Pumped hydro isn't a scaleable solution for the UK. You need to plan for around 5 days of no wind which is about 1TWh of energy. Dinorwig, the UK's largest pumped hydro station has a capacity of 9 GWh so you would need over 100 more of those, or 10 at 10x the capacity each. There's another pumped hydro station being planned near Dinorwig with a 700MWh capacity at an estimated cost of £120m (in 2017)

Hooking up everybody's EV car batteries to the grid is likely to be a better option. TFL already do this with their electric buses.

Yeah I'm not suggesting it's a hole in one. Obviously if tidal can be made to work at scale at a decent price we're about the best placed of anyone to exploit that.

My idea was more that over the next few years we are going to have to really sort out our water situation, so whilst we're at it we may as well generate energy off of it as well, even if it is only for the local communities impacted.

I'm going to add tidal power to the list of non starters. Given that the UK has one of the biggest tidal ranges in the world, has been looking at tidal for around 100 years and no project has ever got going suggests it never will. It's not a technology problem, it's an economics problem. Cost is high, energy density is low and it has an intermittency problem.

It has an intermittency problem but predictable compared to wind and solar. Cost isn't that high but timescale to recoup is very long. La Rance payed for itself in 20 years according to wiki.

[_Os_]

Don't know the timescales involved, but is this so unreasonable after a year being housed in a hotel? That's enough time to get settled to an extent over here.

You'd have thought the home office would have a resettlement team in place? Seems a bit odd to (a) have them in hotels for a year anyway especially when there's so many jobs around and then (b) tell them to do it themselves. What about credit checks for example? I can't imagine renting in the UK is that similar to renting in Afghanistan.

And when I say you'd have thought I mean the government obviously don't.

Any landlord/letting agent will require: A deposit, proof of identity, proof of immigration status, credit history, and likely proof of employment status.

It's illegal for landlords to provide accommodation to an illegal immigrant, part of the hostile environment forces unqualified people to become petty officials enforcing laws they don't understand. This is compounded by the constant changes in the UK's immigration system which have turned legal immigrants into illegal immigrants overnight, in addition to any migration system having provision for an immigrant's status to change (time limited visas for example). Potentially any landlord housing an immigrant could end up housing an illegal immigrant and be heavily fined. There's increasing competition for rented accommodation (landlords have been squeezed and many have quit, and there's not enough houses in the right areas), most landlords/letting agents will look at an Afghan refugee with potentially an immigration status they don't understand and unemployed with no credit history, then immediately bin them in favour of others that are less complicated.

The only landlords interested will be a subset of those that exclusively let to those on housing benefit. Those landlords aren't putting up nice photos on Zoopla and Rightmove.

Turns out some Ukrainian refugees are already experiencing this. The crazy plan to house refugees in people's homes is starting to unravel (not sure those signing up realised it could be indefinite, and what they were being paid would barely cover the additional energy use), this has left some Ukrainians trying to find homes through the rental sector.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/ ... or-ukraine

Olha Plyushch, 36, a refugee from Kyiv who works for the Ukrainian Institute in London and for the Opora charity, where she helps advise Ukrainians arriving in the UK, said the renting process is a vicious cycle for refugees because they cannot pay big deposits and do not have a UK job history or a willing guarantor.

She knows of people who are already homeless and sleeping on friends’ sofas because their accommodation has fallen through. In some rare cases, she said, members of the British Ukrainian diaspora who can afford the outlay are helping out by renting entire houses and letting rooms to refugees.

“I know there are Ukrainians who have money to pay rent on a monthly basis, but they are being asked to pay between six and 12 months’ rent in advance. That is a lot of money, so not many Ukrainians can afford it.

“They do have jobs, so they do have money to pay on a monthly basis but, in advance, a 12-month payment is too much.

“It’s a very uncertain situation because September and October is actually when these six-month sponsorships come to an end. But honestly, I can speak for myself and for many Ukrainians, when we made the decision to come here, we were planning to go back to Ukraine within the six months because we all believed the war would be over.

When Olha Apriamova and her nine-year-old daughter Alina’s Homes for Ukraine sponsorship fell apart by text message after less than a month in July, they didn’t know what to do.

Apriamova, 34, whose husband died in the war in June, wrote to friends and was offered temporary shelter in their two-bedroom flat, where the five of them are now living.

But finding something permanent is proving impossible. At every flat viewing, landlords tell her that they will not rent to refugees.

[Paddington Bear]

Yeah I'm not suggesting it's a hole in one. Obviously if tidal can be made to work at scale at a decent price we're about the best placed of anyone to exploit that.

My idea was more that over the next few years we are going to have to really sort out our water situation, so whilst we're at it we may as well generate energy off of it as well, even if it is only for the local communities impacted.

I'm going to add tidal power to the list of non starters. Given that the UK has one of the biggest tidal ranges in the world, has been looking at tidal for around 100 years and no project has ever got going suggests it never will. It's not a technology problem, it's an economics problem. Cost is high, energy density is low and it has an intermittency problem.

It has an intermittency problem but predictable compared to wind and solar. Cost isn't that high but timescale to recoup is very long. La Rance payed for itself in 20 years according to wiki.

See also how the price of wind power has fallen rapidly as it's become mainstream. And the main tidal projects proposed are around the UK, the Bay of Fundy and Alderney - i.e. the places with the highest tidal ranges in the world, so clearly people involved have some confidence it works in these scenarios.

[SaintK]

When she's sacked from the Home Office next week, Patel's legacy will be writ large in capital letters

Former residents of a hostel in Rwanda who were forced to leave under a controversial deal to house asylum seekers flown from the UK say they have been left homeless and destitute while the property remains unused.
The men, all of whom are survivors of the Rwandan genocide, had lived in Hope Hostel in Kigali for up to eight years. But they were told to vacate two days after Priti Patel, the British home secretary, signed a £120m agreement to send refugees arriving in the UK by small boats to the east African country.
Some former residents of the hotel were still students who say they lost their families in the genocide and have nowhere to go. The UK government has so far failed to send a single asylum seeker to Rwanda

[fishfoodie]

There's talk of 70% of pubs closing down due to energy bills. That's a 70% loss of revenue for the energy companies from that one sector alone, along with the loss of tax to Inland Revenue. This will knock on through the hospitality industry as discretionary spending is swallowed by the energy companies, which will in turn affect all areas of discretionary spending and the jobs that come with it. That leads to more reliance on Universal Credit and other benefits

To my mind it's economic incompetence of the highest order to not ameliorate the increases in bills, recessions are no joke, this is the rainy day that you pull out all the stops for.

Unfortunately we have the least suitable cohort choosing our next PM, mainly white older men from the South East who are relatively well off.

Not showing up for a BBC interview which isn't exactly going to be Hardtalk isn't just "Why bother? I've nothing to gain" it shows the venal ambition over substance that is at the heart of the rot

The country needs a leader and Truss ain't it, not by a long long way.

I share Tichtheid's pessimism. We are on the edge of a precipice and whilst we are all standing on the edge and shitting ourselves looking down into the spiralling abyss Truss and her ERG mates are looking up to their rich paymasters, licking their arses and waiting for orders. It is now all but certain that we will slide into a dangerous and damaging recession and by mid winter there will be a huge uprising of public unrest and trouble on the streets. It is going to get nasty.

Post Brexit we are now the dirty, shit covered, drunk and broken old man of Europe, bitter about broken marriages and good jobs we once had but lost whilst pissing ourselves in the gutter and cursing and swearing at anyone trying to offer us help. We are complete basket cases. This is going to take some serious sorting by some serious and grown up politicians and leaders ... this current Tory Gov bunch of cunts are not the answer and their zealotism will just speed up our decline. It is going to get nasty.

Haven't you heard Lizzy's master plan ?

She's going to pull you out of a recession, & stagflation, by deliberately triggering a Trade war with the EU. Brilliant !

[I like neeps]

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/a204 ... b91401d126

This is quite incredible. Shamima Begum was trafficked to Syria by a Canadian intelligence double agent and everyone then covered it up!

[fishfoodie]

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/a204 ... b91401d126

This is quite incredible. Shamima Begum was trafficked to Syria by a Canadian intelligence double agent and everyone then covered it up!

Iran-Contra did it for me; after the revelations in it, nothing ever seemed incredible anymore, it was just wondering about how much cognitive dissonance people were capable of, without their heads exploding, & how far people could disappear up their own rectums to justify the most unjustifiable.

There are a lot of sociopaths out there, & they often end up in positions of significant power.

[Blackmac]

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/a204 ... b91401d126

This is quite incredible. Shamima Begum was trafficked to Syria by a Canadian intelligence double agent and everyone then covered it up!

Double agent is a bit of a stretch. He is a CHIS, nothing more. It's as if law enforcement and intelligence agencies getting info from disreputable people is a surprise.

[tabascoboy]

Express reporting that Boris is "proud of what we did". Oh really?

Don’t fall for the revisionism – Boris Johnson was a catastrophe for Britain
In three years he almost destroyed the country. Could the Conservatives really be mad or desperate enough to give this man another chance to finish the job?

A week to go, and the most destructive, divisive and dishonest prime minister in modern British history will finally be gone. Or will he?

Already the revisionism is well under way. Boris Johnson triggered it the day he announced his resignation on the steps of No 10, referring to his “incredible mandate” from the British people and the treachery of the Westminster “herd” who had deposed him.

Nadine Dorries, Jacob Rees-Mogg and other Johnson sycophants followed his lead, claiming he had been the victim of an undemocratic coup. The right-wing tabloids took up the theme. A recent YouGov poll showed Conservative Party members still prefer Johnson to either of his would-be successors. Nearly 9,000 have signed a petition demanding a vote on whether he should have been forced to resign. The Sunday Times reports that many voters are now suffering “seller’s remorse”. Rory Stewart, the former Conservative minister, warns in a Guardian interview that Johnson will be like Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi, “hovering around, hoping for a populist return”.

Johnson is a supremely artful crafter of mendacious narratives. As the Daily Telegraph’s Brussels correspondent in the early 1990s, he did as much as anyone to create the potent myth about lonely Britain fighting a desperate rearguard action against a scheming European Union bent on destroying our traditional way of life (the truth is that we were a big powerful member state with many allies). In 2019 he succeeded brilliantly in portraying himself as a champion of the Brexit-voting masses defending the “will of the people” against the wicked “metropolitan elite”.

Now he will sit on the backbenches – posing as the country’s unjustly deposed leader, biding his time as Liz Truss’s premiership is destroyed by the dire consequences of his own misgovernment, once again evading the blame and using his undoubted charisma to hog the limelight. As Stewart says, this is “dangerous” stuff and “we need to remind people why he left… What he did was deeply, deeply shameful.”

Let me seek to oblige, lest the nation does indeed succumb to collective amnesia. Just a few weeks ago Johnson became the first British prime minister forced to resign in disgrace, after more than 40 members of his own government and scores of Tory backbenchers demanded he step down. His approval rating in the country as a whole was a staggering minus 48. His party had lost three seats in by-elections. He was universally reviled and ridiculed, and with good reason: his three years in power have been catastrophic for Britain.

https://www.newstatesman.com/comment/20 ... or-britain - spoilered the rest to avoid massive wall of text

Spoiler

Show

Yes, Johnson won a “stonking” majority in 2019, but he was running against a cartoon caricature of the loony left in Jeremy Corbyn.

Yes, he “got Brexit done”, but only by betraying Northern Ireland, sundering the United Kingdom and gravely damaging our relations with Europe and the US. His promised trade deal with the US has never transpired, incidentally. Nor has his “bonfire of red tape”.

Yes, he has robustly and rightly supported Ukraine following Putin’s invasion. And yes, he gambled with taxpayers’ money to develop a Covid vaccine – and won. But he reacted lamentably slowly to the pandemic, allowed it to spread to care homes, squandered tens of billions of pounds on useless or fraudulent PPE contracts and still presided over 202,000 Covid-related deaths.

He promised that post-Brexit Britain would “take off its Clark Kent spectacles and leap into the phone booth” and emerge with its “cloak flowing” – but on his watch it has succumbed to the highest inflation in 40 years, the sharpest fall in living standards since records began in the 1950s, the heaviest tax burden since the 1940s and record debt.

He promised “levelling up” which is a laudable aim, but under his leadership the gap between rich and poor, north and south, blue- and white-collar workers, has actually widened dramatically. According to YouGov, more than two thirds of voters now regard the Conservatives as “not close” or “not close at all” to the working class.

It is hard to think of a single public service that has not deteriorated sharply during Johnson’s rule. He promised 40 new hospitals and an additional £350 million a week for the NHS, but the health service is now perilously close to collapse – as is the judicial system. He promised to solve the social care crisis “once and for all”, but it is more acute than ever. He promised to “make your streets safer”, but the police now solve barely 4 per cent of thefts and 7 per cent of burglaries. He promised to make Britain the “cleanest, greenest” country in the world, but our rivers and seas grow rank with untreated sewage. He promised to “take back control” of our borders, but asylum seekers arrive in ever greater numbers.

It has become almost impossibly hard to get ambulances, GP appointments, passports or driving licences. Travelling has become a nightmare. Our railway workers, postal workers, barristers and dockers are on strike, with doctors, teachers and civil servants threatening to follow suit. For millions of Britons basics like gas and electricity are rapidly becoming unaffordable.

Much of the above can be attributed to Covid and the Ukraine war, of course, but Britain’s moral decline over the past three years is almost entirely Johnson’s responsibility.

The man who promised to “restore trust in democracy” is the first prime minister in living memory who has actively stoked social division for political gain; the first to receive a sanction for breaking the law while in office; the first to lose not one, but two, ethical advisers; the first to put his personal ambition before the good of the country, and to make his government’s raison d’être a policy (Brexit) which he surely knows to be deeply damaging to the national interest. Through Brexit he also unleashed the worst instincts of many people in Britain – their latent xenophobia, jingoism and arrogance.

The charge sheet continues. Johnson has knowingly breached international and domestic law. He has trashed the ministerial code. He has routinely lied to parliament and the country. He has regularly rewarded cronies with jobs, peerages and lucrative contracts. He has sought to restrict the right to vote and protest, and to neuter any institution that he could not control. He betrayed millions of vulnerable Afghans through “Global” Britain’s shameful withdrawal. Equally shamefully, he has approved the deportation of desperate asylum seekers to one of Africa’s nastiest regimes.

He is guilty of sins of omission as well as commission. He has governed through hollow promises, empty rhetoric and naked gimmickry while neglecting the hard graft of government. He has failed to prepare Britain for future crises – be they pandemics, energy shortages or rampant inflation. For the last six weeks he has gone almost entirely awol.

In his final Prime Minister’s Question Johnson declared: “Mission largely accomplished.” If he was referring to the destruction of Britain, he was quite right. Would the Conservatives really be mad, or desperate, enough to give this man another chance to finish the job?

[Hal Jordan]

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/a204 ... b91401d126

This is quite incredible. Shamima Begum was trafficked to Syria by a Canadian intelligence double agent and everyone then covered it up!

Iran-Contra did it for me; after the revelations in it, nothing ever seemed incredible anymore, it was just wondering about how much cognitive dissonance people were capable of, without their heads exploding, & how far people could disappear up their own rectums to justify the most unjustifiable.

There are a lot of sociopaths out there, & they often end up in positions of significant power.

Being a sociopath is a positive boon to climbing the ladder, you feel nothing as you slide the knife in.

"he's got lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll's eye. When he comes at ya, he doesn't seem be living, ..."

[SaintK]

Express reporting that Boris is "proud of what we did". Oh really?

Don’t fall for the revisionism – Boris Johnson was a catastrophe for Britain
In three years he almost destroyed the country. Could the Conservatives really be mad or desperate enough to give this man another chance to finish the job?

A week to go, and the most destructive, divisive and dishonest prime minister in modern British history will finally be gone. Or will he?

Already the revisionism is well under way. Boris Johnson triggered it the day he announced his resignation on the steps of No 10, referring to his “incredible mandate” from the British people and the treachery of the Westminster “herd” who had deposed him.

Nadine Dorries, Jacob Rees-Mogg and other Johnson sycophants followed his lead, claiming he had been the victim of an undemocratic coup. The right-wing tabloids took up the theme. A recent YouGov poll showed Conservative Party members still prefer Johnson to either of his would-be successors. Nearly 9,000 have signed a petition demanding a vote on whether he should have been forced to resign. The Sunday Times reports that many voters are now suffering “seller’s remorse”. Rory Stewart, the former Conservative minister, warns in a Guardian interview that Johnson will be like Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi, “hovering around, hoping for a populist return”.

Johnson is a supremely artful crafter of mendacious narratives. As the Daily Telegraph’s Brussels correspondent in the early 1990s, he did as much as anyone to create the potent myth about lonely Britain fighting a desperate rearguard action against a scheming European Union bent on destroying our traditional way of life (the truth is that we were a big powerful member state with many allies). In 2019 he succeeded brilliantly in portraying himself as a champion of the Brexit-voting masses defending the “will of the people” against the wicked “metropolitan elite”.

Now he will sit on the backbenches – posing as the country’s unjustly deposed leader, biding his time as Liz Truss’s premiership is destroyed by the dire consequences of his own misgovernment, once again evading the blame and using his undoubted charisma to hog the limelight. As Stewart says, this is “dangerous” stuff and “we need to remind people why he left… What he did was deeply, deeply shameful.”

Let me seek to oblige, lest the nation does indeed succumb to collective amnesia. Just a few weeks ago Johnson became the first British prime minister forced to resign in disgrace, after more than 40 members of his own government and scores of Tory backbenchers demanded he step down. His approval rating in the country as a whole was a staggering minus 48. His party had lost three seats in by-elections. He was universally reviled and ridiculed, and with good reason: his three years in power have been catastrophic for Britain.

https://www.newstatesman.com/comment/20 ... or-britain - spoilered the rest to avoid massive wall of text

Spoiler

Show

Yes, Johnson won a “stonking” majority in 2019, but he was running against a cartoon caricature of the loony left in Jeremy Corbyn.

Yes, he “got Brexit done”, but only by betraying Northern Ireland, sundering the United Kingdom and gravely damaging our relations with Europe and the US. His promised trade deal with the US has never transpired, incidentally. Nor has his “bonfire of red tape”.

Yes, he has robustly and rightly supported Ukraine following Putin’s invasion. And yes, he gambled with taxpayers’ money to develop a Covid vaccine – and won. But he reacted lamentably slowly to the pandemic, allowed it to spread to care homes, squandered tens of billions of pounds on useless or fraudulent PPE contracts and still presided over 202,000 Covid-related deaths.

He promised that post-Brexit Britain would “take off its Clark Kent spectacles and leap into the phone booth” and emerge with its “cloak flowing” – but on his watch it has succumbed to the highest inflation in 40 years, the sharpest fall in living standards since records began in the 1950s, the heaviest tax burden since the 1940s and record debt.

He promised “levelling up” which is a laudable aim, but under his leadership the gap between rich and poor, north and south, blue- and white-collar workers, has actually widened dramatically. According to YouGov, more than two thirds of voters now regard the Conservatives as “not close” or “not close at all” to the working class.

It is hard to think of a single public service that has not deteriorated sharply during Johnson’s rule. He promised 40 new hospitals and an additional £350 million a week for the NHS, but the health service is now perilously close to collapse – as is the judicial system. He promised to solve the social care crisis “once and for all”, but it is more acute than ever. He promised to “make your streets safer”, but the police now solve barely 4 per cent of thefts and 7 per cent of burglaries. He promised to make Britain the “cleanest, greenest” country in the world, but our rivers and seas grow rank with untreated sewage. He promised to “take back control” of our borders, but asylum seekers arrive in ever greater numbers.

It has become almost impossibly hard to get ambulances, GP appointments, passports or driving licences. Travelling has become a nightmare. Our railway workers, postal workers, barristers and dockers are on strike, with doctors, teachers and civil servants threatening to follow suit. For millions of Britons basics like gas and electricity are rapidly becoming unaffordable.

Much of the above can be attributed to Covid and the Ukraine war, of course, but Britain’s moral decline over the past three years is almost entirely Johnson’s responsibility.

The man who promised to “restore trust in democracy” is the first prime minister in living memory who has actively stoked social division for political gain; the first to receive a sanction for breaking the law while in office; the first to lose not one, but two, ethical advisers; the first to put his personal ambition before the good of the country, and to make his government’s raison d’être a policy (Brexit) which he surely knows to be deeply damaging to the national interest. Through Brexit he also unleashed the worst instincts of many people in Britain – their latent xenophobia, jingoism and arrogance.

The charge sheet continues. Johnson has knowingly breached international and domestic law. He has trashed the ministerial code. He has routinely lied to parliament and the country. He has regularly rewarded cronies with jobs, peerages and lucrative contracts. He has sought to restrict the right to vote and protest, and to neuter any institution that he could not control. He betrayed millions of vulnerable Afghans through “Global” Britain’s shameful withdrawal. Equally shamefully, he has approved the deportation of desperate asylum seekers to one of Africa’s nastiest regimes.

He is guilty of sins of omission as well as commission. He has governed through hollow promises, empty rhetoric and naked gimmickry while neglecting the hard graft of government. He has failed to prepare Britain for future crises – be they pandemics, energy shortages or rampant inflation. For the last six weeks he has gone almost entirely awol.

In his final Prime Minister’s Question Johnson declared: “Mission largely accomplished.” If he was referring to the destruction of Britain, he was quite right. Would the Conservatives really be mad, or desperate, enough to give this man another chance to finish the job?

And from the other side of the political centre

WHILE the Conservative Party indulges itself with a mammoth election bore lasting an extraordinary eight weeks – a process that any sane organisation could have arranged over perhaps three weeks in this digital age – Britain faces its greatest crisis, I would argue, since the Second World War. The crisis is not just energy and cost of living, self-inflicted as that is. It is far, far more.

The challenge is economic, cultural, institutional, societal and constitutional. In essence it is becoming existential and will be resolvable only with leadership showing philosophical compass, honesty, integrity and sheer determination.

https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/ ... tential/

[petej]

I read articles like the one in conservative women and it is devoid of content. It is the same bullshit as written in any number of columns in the telegraph and mail dressed up in more serious langauge. When did the conservative movement abandon numbers or perhaps when did conservatives forget what the word means. How can they talk about printing money but never about taxation and tax avoidance.

A quiet and successful nation is built on personal liberty, family and community. A good society is built on creativity, hard work and perseverance.

The very frameworks most under attack by our "conservative" gov. Hard work is far less important than your parents wealth in the UK. A lack of energy policy isn't due to a woke agenda but incompetence. We have low unemployment so people are working.

[SaintK]

I read articles like the one in conservative women and it is devoid of content. It is the same bullshit as written in any number of columns in the telegraph and mail dressed up in more serious langauge. When did the conservative movement abandon numbers or perhaps when did conservatives forget what the word means. How can they talk about printing money but never about taxation and tax avoidance.

A quiet and successful nation is built on personal liberty, family and community. A good society is built on creativity, hard work and perseverance.

The very frameworks most under attack by our "conservative" gov. Hard work is far less important than your parents wealth in the UK. A lack of energy policy isn't due to a woke agenda but incompetence. We have low unemployment so people are working.

Quite!

[tabascoboy]

Don't know if I should laugh or cry at how true this is

[I like neeps]

Don't know if I should laugh or cry at how true this is

You misestimate her

Out of interest - what do you think are her ministerial achievements? She seems to have done nothing in any of the offices she's held.

[C69]

Didn't she do great trade deals with Niger, Chad and Burkina Faso

[C69]

Didn't she do great trade deals with Niger, Chad and Burkina Faso

I think she said she was surprised Niger got away with being called that

I have it on good authority she is a pet lover and her favourite film is the Dam Busters.

[SaintK]

£120m..................spaffed up the wall!!!

Unboxed, the arts festival widely dubbed the “festival of Brexit” has seen just 238,000 visitors, against its organizers’ initial “stretch target” of 66 million. This is despite the festival costing £120 million — more than four times the cost of the celebrations to mark the queen’s Platinum Jubilee. The gory details come in an investigation by the House magazine.

https://www.politicshome.com/thehous ... million

[Hal Jordan]

I see Liz Truss is "prepared to look at" raising the speed limit on motorways in response to an audience member's suggestion. Jesus, anything for a vote.

In fact, I have little doubt she would be "prepared to look at" replacing PMQs with a weekly live stream of her engaged in enthusiastic congress with a horse if she thought it would buy her a vote.

[tabascoboy]

Online magazine Tortoise, which is seeking judicial review, branded the process of picking a new Tory leader “undemocratic”, as it effectively places the choice of a PM in the hands of a few thousand individuals who are unrepresentative of the country as a whole.

In order to highlight concerns over the nature of the contest, the magazine successfully enrolled a pet tortoise named Archie, two foreign nationals, and the late former prime minister Margaret Thatcher – under her maiden name Margaret Roberts – as Tory members.

All received invitations to attend leadership hustings, though they are not entitled to vote for Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak as they have not been party members for the required three months.

Tortoise took the decision to take legal action after the Conservatives refused to provide information about the number of members entitled to vote for Boris Johnson’s successor, or their demographic make-up, or what measures the party takes to verify the identity of those voting in order to prevent infiltration attempts.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/l ... f80ca6f7fe

[I like neeps]

Woman are going to have to hold in their babies now? Seems an interesting move.

[Hal Jordan]

Woman are going to have to hold in their babies now? Seems an interesting move.

I believe Mr Barclay means that the NHS is best placed in the hands of private medical suppliers and US insurance companies.

[SaintK]

............and another first place for us.

The energy crisis is hitting UK household budgets harder than any country in western Europe, according to analysis by the International Monetary Fund. The difference between the cost burden on poor and rich households is also far more unequal in the UK compared with other countries.
The reason is the UK’s heavy reliance on gas to heat homes and produce electricity at a time when Russia’s war in Ukraine has sent gas prices soaring. In addition, the UK has the least energy efficient homes in western Europe.

https://www.theguardian.com/money/202 ... nds-imf

[GogLais]

Online magazine Tortoise, which is seeking judicial review, branded the process of picking a new Tory leader “undemocratic”, as it effectively places the choice of a PM in the hands of a few thousand individuals who are unrepresentative of the country as a whole.

In order to highlight concerns over the nature of the contest, the magazine successfully enrolled a pet tortoise named Archie, two foreign nationals, and the late former prime minister Margaret Thatcher – under her maiden name Margaret Roberts – as Tory members.

All received invitations to attend leadership hustings, though they are not entitled to vote for Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak as they have not been party members for the required three months.

Tortoise took the decision to take legal action after the Conservatives refused to provide information about the number of members entitled to vote for Boris Johnson’s successor, or their demographic make-up, or what measures the party takes to verify the identity of those voting in order to prevent infiltration attempts.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/l ... f80ca6f7fe

Too lazy to check - anyone know how prime ministerial countries like Oz or NZ deal with this?

[petej]

............and another first place for us.

The energy crisis is hitting UK household budgets harder than any country in western Europe, according to analysis by the International Monetary Fund. The difference between the cost burden on poor and rich households is also far more unequal in the UK compared with other countries.
The reason is the UK’s heavy reliance on gas to heat homes and produce electricity at a time when Russia’s war in Ukraine has sent gas prices soaring. In addition, the UK has the least energy efficient homes in western Europe.

https://www.theguardian.com/money/202 ... nds-imf

We're shit (and cold) and we know we are.

[Slick]

Spoke to a couple of die hard Torys last night, my MiL and FiL, and even they are saying they have had enough and would struggle to vote for them next time. I suspect they probably still would but they wouldn't even entertain any critical thoughts even 6 months ago

[tabascoboy]

Quality advice, I'm sure we can expect more of these helpful gems from JRM as well once he gets in post.

[petej]

Quality advice, I'm sure we can expect more of these helpful gems from JRM as well once he gets in post.

I assumed jrm getting a role in the cabinet was a joke.

[tabascoboy]

Quality advice, I'm sure we can expect more of these helpful gems from JRM as well once he gets in post.

I assumed jrm getting a role in the cabinet was a joke.

I wish...

[Insane_Homer]

[fishfoodie]

Online magazine Tortoise, which is seeking judicial review, branded the process of picking a new Tory leader “undemocratic”, as it effectively places the choice of a PM in the hands of a few thousand individuals who are unrepresentative of the country as a whole.

In order to highlight concerns over the nature of the contest, the magazine successfully enrolled a pet tortoise named Archie, two foreign nationals, and the late former prime minister Margaret Thatcher – under her maiden name Margaret Roberts – as Tory members.

All received invitations to attend leadership hustings, though they are not entitled to vote for Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak as they have not been party members for the required three months.

Tortoise took the decision to take legal action after the Conservatives refused to provide information about the number of members entitled to vote for Boris Johnson’s successor, or their demographic make-up, or what measures the party takes to verify the identity of those voting in order to prevent infiltration attempts.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/l ... f80ca6f7fe

Too lazy to check - anyone know how prime ministerial countries like Oz or NZ deal with this?

You don't have to look quite that far afield

Appointments

In June 2020, the President handed the Seal of Office to Taoiseach Micheál Martin In June 2020, the President handed the Seal of Office to Taoiseach Micheál Martin

The President appoints the Taoiseach (Prime Minister) on the nomination of Dáil Éireann; and the other members of the Government on the nomination of the Taoiseach, after Dáil approval.

Other office holders appointed by the President, on the advice of the Government, include Judges, the Attorney General, the Comptroller and Auditor General, and Commissioned officers of the Defence Forces.

We currently have a Coalition Government, & the two largest Parties in it have rotated the role of Taoiseach, between them, as part of the deal they did to form a Government.

All that matters is that someone can count on enough votes in the Dáil, in support of them forming a Government, & then the President rubber stamps it.

In Ireland, all that would have been required would be a vote of the entire Parliament in support of whom the Tories had elected their new Leader, & if they got a majority, that would have been that !

[GogLais]

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/l ... f80ca6f7fe

Too lazy to check - anyone know how prime ministerial countries like Oz or NZ deal with this?

You don't have to look quite that far afield

Appointments

In June 2020, the President handed the Seal of Office to Taoiseach Micheál Martin In June 2020, the President handed the Seal of Office to Taoiseach Micheál Martin

The President appoints the Taoiseach (Prime Minister) on the nomination of Dáil Éireann; and the other members of the Government on the nomination of the Taoiseach, after Dáil approval.

Other office holders appointed by the President, on the advice of the Government, include Judges, the Attorney General, the Comptroller and Auditor General, and Commissioned officers of the Defence Forces.

We currently have a Coalition Government, & the two largest Parties in it have rotated the role of Taoiseach, between them, as part of the deal they did to form a Government.

All that matters is that someone can count on enough votes in the Dáil, in support of them forming a Government, & then the President rubber stamps it.

In Ireland, all that would have been required would be a vote of the entire Parliament in support of whom the Tories had elected their new Leader, & if they got a majority, that would have been that !

Basically what's happening here then, It's just that the Tory process for choosing a new leader has been dreadfully drawn out.

[Insane_Homer]

[SaintK]

Ending the week in the usual fashion?

A cabinet minister and a top Number 10 aide serve at the heart of Boris Johnson's government despite allegations of sexual misconduct, a Sky News investigation can reveal.
Sky News has published testimony from two women who give detailed, first-hand accounts of what they claim happened to them when one was assaulted and the other groped by political figures who are both now in senior roles.

https://news.sky.com/story/sexual-misc ... 12686969

The prime minister's official jet was used for a "boozy jolly" by civil servants, according to a report.
Sky News understands a number of officials joined the 91-minute journey over the UK - and that it took place with "usual catering for a flight".
The Sun newspaper claims that during the 700-mile trip - which reportedly cost £50,000 - a "fancy meal with a selection of alcoholic drinks" was served.

https://news.sky.com/story/pms-officia ... 12687409

A major Tory donor has pleaded not guilty to charges including bribery in Puerto Rico.
Julio Martin Herrera Velutini is accused of promising to help a former governor of the US territory to get re-elected if she dismissed an official investigating a bank he owned there.
Mr Herrera has donated more than £500,000 to the Conservative Party through his London-based firm Britannia Financial Group Limited since 2019.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-62754148

[tabascoboy]

Cabinet Office is to publish legal advice criticising a parliamentary inquiry into whether Boris Johnson misled MPs over Partygate.

Naturally the Heil and Excess claiming this proves that the inquiry is "anti-democratic" and a "witchhunt"

[fishfoodie]

Cabinet Office is to publish legal advice criticising a parliamentary inquiry into whether Boris Johnson misled MPs over Partygate.

Naturally the Heil and Excess claiming this proves that the inquiry is "anti-democratic" and a "witchhunt"

and the Torygraph....

This is presumably Plan A, in, "Operation Save Big Dogshite", to thwart the inquiry, & put Ministers above any Rules.

Plan B will be putting Mad Nad in the HoL, & adopting her, nice safe seat, ahead of any likely recall petition

[SaintK]

The fat, blonde cunt tru to form to the end.

Writer and journalist Harry Mount, the author of The Wit And Wisdom Of Boris Johnson, will take up the role on the House of Lords Appointments Commission from 11 September.
Johnson confirmed the appointment just days before he steps down as Prime Minister, PA Media reported. The body is responsible for vetting all nominations to the Lords.
This will include Johnson’s requests for peerages to be granted as part of the Prime Minister’s resignation honours.
Oxford educated Mr Mount is the editor of The Oldie magazine and a contributor to various titles including the Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail and the Spectator.

[Hal Jordan]

Cabinet Office is to publish legal advice criticising a parliamentary inquiry into whether Boris Johnson misled MPs over Partygate.

Naturally the Heil and Excess claiming this proves that the inquiry is "anti-democratic" and a "witchhunt"

Lord Pannick QC, who has form, he wrote a legal opinion for beloved entrepreneur and noted taxpayer Philip Green to challenge the Parliamentary enquiry into BHS.

However, in counterbalance he also represented Gina Miller twice in her judicial reviews, so he's definitely able to set his personal principles aside for the client.

But all this really is is another in the long list of the Tory Party and Johnson in particular throwing shit to try and either escape scrutiny or delegitimise unfavourable findings in the eyes of the public.

Johnson is a fucking blight on politics, public life and basic human decency.

[fishfoodie]

Cabinet Office is to publish legal advice criticising a parliamentary inquiry into whether Boris Johnson misled MPs over Partygate.

Naturally the Heil and Excess claiming this proves that the inquiry is "anti-democratic" and a "witchhunt"

Lord Pannick QC, who has form, he wrote a legal opinion for beloved entrepreneur and noted taxpayer Philip Green to challenge the Parliamentary enquiry into BHS.

However, in counterbalance he also represented Gina Miller twice in her judicial reviews, so he's definitely able to set his personal principles aside for the client.

But all this really is is another in the long list of the Tory Party and Johnson in particular throwing shit to try and either escape scrutiny or delegitimise unfavourable findings in the eyes of the public.

Johnson is a fucking blight on politics, public life and basic human decency.

I keep coming back to the letter in 1982, that told the world what a cunt he was, & would be !

Writing of him in a school report in April 1982, he said: “Boris really has adopted a disgracefully cavalier attitude to his classical studies . . . Boris sometimes seems affronted when criticised for what amounts to a gross failure of responsibility (and surprised at the same time that he was not appointed Captain of the School for next half): I think he honestly believes that it is churlish of us not to regard him as an exception, one who should be free of the network of obligation which binds everyone else.”

He still doesn't, & he never will, & as a result should never, ever have been given any responsibility over the lives, (& deaths), of others !

[Rhubarb & Custard]

Cabinet Office is to publish legal advice criticising a parliamentary inquiry into whether Boris Johnson misled MPs over Partygate.

Naturally the Heil and Excess claiming this proves that the inquiry is "anti-democratic" and a "witchhunt"

Lord Pannick QC, who has form, he wrote a legal opinion for beloved entrepreneur and noted taxpayer Philip Green to challenge the Parliamentary enquiry into BHS.

However, in counterbalance he also represented Gina Miller twice in her judicial reviews, so he's definitely able to set his personal principles aside for the client.

But all this really is is another in the long list of the Tory Party and Johnson in particular throwing shit to try and either escape scrutiny or delegitimise unfavourable findings in the eyes of the public.

Johnson is a fucking blight on politics, public life and basic human decency.

Pannick has offered an opinion, the Privileges committee progressing the issue received a legal opinion which stands at odds with the Pannick position. And both positions should be considered apart from whether one happens to like Boris and whether on the matter at hand one thinks he intentionally lied and lied and lied or you're clinically insane and think Boris has some sort of defence

How much a legal position even matters for what isn't a legal process I don't know. Parliament has retained the right to treat such situations seemingly as political considerations, i.e. it's a parliamentary process and not a court one

Myself I think he's a rancid liar and you wouldn't piss on him if he was on fire, I'm not sure if they can do much when I think the standard isn't did he lie and more did he hinder parliament. Given I think he wouldn't know the truth anymore than know his children I'd be hard pressed to consider parliament was hindered by his obvious BS