Not a good time for the Conservative government in the UK

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  • JonahMan wrote: »
    Telford wrote: »

    Fair enough but not all taxpayers are hard working.

    True, for one thing Tory MPs pay tax.
    So do I

  • ArethosemyfeetArethosemyfeet Shipmate, Heaven Host
    JonahMan wrote: »
    Telford wrote: »

    Fair enough but not all taxpayers are hard working.

    True, for one thing Tory MPs pay tax.

    Well, at least some of them do. I wouldn't be at all surprised to find tax cheats among their ranks.
  • Alan Cresswell Alan Cresswell Admin, 8th Day Host
    They'll all pay tax, the question is do any of them exercise options not available to most people to reduce the amount of tax they pay?
  • KarlLBKarlLB Shipmate
    They'll all pay tax, the question is do any of them exercise options not available to most people to reduce the amount of tax they pay?

    Surely not?
  • HugalHugal Shipmate
    edited January 2024
    So Rishi got the bill through the Commons. Most commentators say it will not have an easy time passing through the lords. They could easily keep it in limbo up to the election.
  • MaryLouiseMaryLouise Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    Hugal wrote: »
    So Rishi got the bill through the Commons. Most commentators say it will not have an easy time passing through the lords. They could easily keep it in limbo up to the election.

    Limbo sounds good from here. Especially since a senior Tory MP (Theresa Coffey) had no idea of the name of the capital city of Rwanda despite planning to send planeloads of people to Kigali.
  • BoogieBoogie Heaven Host
    Sinai has backed himself into a corner. I predict his bill will stall and grind on slowly in the Lords. He knows summer will bring a huge increase in numbers of ‘small boats’. So he’ll cut his losses and call a May election.
  • Hugal wrote: »
    So Rishi got the bill through the Commons. Most commentators say it will not have an easy time passing through the lords. They could easily keep it in limbo up to the election.

    What! And go against the 'will of the people'? To Rwanda with the lot of them!
  • BoogieBoogie Heaven Host
    Sinai? 🤔

    Sunak!

  • Sun*k, more likely...
    RockyRoger wrote: »
    Hugal wrote: »
    So Rishi got the bill through the Commons. Most commentators say it will not have an easy time passing through the lords. They could easily keep it in limbo up to the election.

    What! And go against the 'will of the people'? To Rwanda with the lot of them!

    Where the feck does he get this Stuff? What *people*, apart from the swivel-eyed loons...
  • So the right wing rebels climbed the hill of dissent, and between them mustered 11 votes. Oh, some abstained.
  • Sushi the Mad is right to want to Stop the Boats - but he's aiming at the wrong kind of boat:

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/18/tories-stop-the-boats-superyachts-plutocrats-britain
  • Alan29Alan29 Shipmate
    RockyRoger wrote: »
    Hugal wrote: »
    So Rishi got the bill through the Commons. Most commentators say it will not have an easy time passing through the lords. They could easily keep it in limbo up to the election.

    What! And go against the 'will of the people'? To Rwanda with the lot of them!

    Whenever I hear "the will of the people" I expect to hear the sound of jackboots in the background.
  • Alan29 wrote: »
    RockyRoger wrote: »
    Hugal wrote: »
    So Rishi got the bill through the Commons. Most commentators say it will not have an easy time passing through the lords. They could easily keep it in limbo up to the election.

    What! And go against the 'will of the people'? To Rwanda with the lot of them!

    Whenever I hear "the will of the people" I expect to hear the sound of jackboots in the background.

    Which is exactly why Sushi the Mad and his equally deranged myrmidons seem so sinister these days...
  • Alan Cresswell Alan Cresswell Admin, 8th Day Host
    So the right wing rebels climbed the hill of dissent, and between them mustered 11 votes. Oh, some abstained.
    And, the former deputy chairman had been so wounded by Labour comments when he entered the no lobby for the amendment that he fled back to the Conservative fold for the main vote. Now known as 30p Flee.
  • So the right wing rebels climbed the hill of dissent, and between them mustered 11 votes. Oh, some abstained.
    And, the former deputy chairman had been so wounded by Labour comments when he entered the no lobby for the amendment that he fled back to the Conservative fold for the main vote. Now known as 30p Flee.

    :lol:

    Yes, the vote showed (yet again) how many miserable yellow-bellies there are in the tory camp. They are, many of them, realising with increasing desperation that there will be NO JOB and NO EASY £££ for them after the next General Election...
  • TelfordTelford Shipmate
    edited January 2024
    So the right wing rebels climbed the hill of dissent, and between them mustered 11 votes. Oh, some abstained.
    And, the former deputy chairman had been so wounded by Labour comments when he entered the no lobby for the amendment that he fled back to the Conservative fold for the main vote. Now known as 30p Flee.
    Not quite correct. He abstained

  • Bishops FingerBishops Finger Shipmate
    edited January 2024
    So he did, but he remains in the tory party for the time being:

    https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/lee-anderson-rwanda-vote-commons-tory-rebels-labour-mps-dumb-and-dumber-b1133149.html

    O! those howwid people laughing and sniggering at him! Poor pathetic delicate little flower...I expect he'd have liked to scweam and scweam and scweam until he was sick, but the Speaker might not have been too pleased.
  • Alan Cresswell Alan Cresswell Admin, 8th Day Host
    Telford wrote: »
    So the right wing rebels climbed the hill of dissent, and between them mustered 11 votes. Oh, some abstained.
    And, the former deputy chairman had been so wounded by Labour comments when he entered the no lobby for the amendment that he fled back to the Conservative fold for the main vote. Now known as 30p Flee.
    Not quite correct. He abstained
    Still too much of a snowflake to stick to his convictions in the face of a bit of joshing in the lobbies.
  • Telford wrote: »
    So the right wing rebels climbed the hill of dissent, and between them mustered 11 votes. Oh, some abstained.
    And, the former deputy chairman had been so wounded by Labour comments when he entered the no lobby for the amendment that he fled back to the Conservative fold for the main vote. Now known as 30p Flee.
    Not quite correct. He abstained
    Still too much of a snowflake to stick to his convictions in the face of a bit of joshing in the lobbies.

    Just so. Cowardy, cowardy, custard...and to think GBeebies pays this runt about £100k a year for spewing out shite...
  • ArethosemyfeetArethosemyfeet Shipmate, Heaven Host
    So the right wing rebels climbed the hill of dissent, and between them mustered 11 votes. Oh, some abstained.
    And, the former deputy chairman had been so wounded by Labour comments when he entered the no lobby for the amendment that he fled back to the Conservative fold for the main vote. Now known as 30p Flee.

    :lol:

    Yes, the vote showed (yet again) how many miserable yellow-bellies there are in the tory camp. They are, many of them, realising with increasing desperation that there will be NO JOB and NO EASY £££ for them after the next General Election...

    I think you need the apologise to the good people of Lincolnshire for comparing them with this midden of gobshites.
  • So the right wing rebels climbed the hill of dissent, and between them mustered 11 votes. Oh, some abstained.
    And, the former deputy chairman had been so wounded by Labour comments when he entered the no lobby for the amendment that he fled back to the Conservative fold for the main vote. Now known as 30p Flee.

    :lol:

    Yes, the vote showed (yet again) how many miserable yellow-bellies there are in the tory camp. They are, many of them, realising with increasing desperation that there will be NO JOB and NO EASY £££ for them after the next General Election...

    I think you need the apologise to the good people of Lincolnshire for comparing them with this midden of gobshites.

    O dear.

    I had no idea that the expression was associated with that most excellent County, and so I hereby tender a full and unconditional Apology for the completely unintentional slur, with thanks to you, Sir, for pointing out my Egregious Error.

    Thirty-Pee Lee the Flee remains, however, a cowardly gobshite, as do (does?) the rest of the midden of gobshites.
  • Alan29Alan29 Shipmate
    Survey after survey has shown that the "will of the people" centres on the dire state of the NHS and the crippling cost of living crisis.
    If only the government benches were bothered enough about them to get steamed up.
    But they aren't.
    Instead the squabble about how to send asylum seekers to Rwanda.
    They are beneath contempt.
  • They are indeed, and I hope that there is a suitably unpleasant Circle Of Hell awaiting them.
  • EnochEnoch Shipmate
    Alan29 wrote: »
    RockyRoger wrote: »
    Hugal wrote: »
    So Rishi got the bill through the Commons. Most commentators say it will not have an easy time passing through the lords. They could easily keep it in limbo up to the election.


    What! And go against the 'will of the people'? To Rwanda with the lot of them!


    Whenever I hear "the will of the people" I expect to hear the sound of jackboots in the background.
    As also the words parroted out "what the British people want". How do Suella Braverman or any of the other abusers of that phrase know what anyone other than her and a few of her close political chums want? Clearly they haven't asked me, or anyone else what we might want.

    As others may recall from threads on other topics, I've a particular objection to the misuse of 'we' to mean 'what I want and therefore what you ought to want but I can't even be bothered to persuade you to agree with me'. These days I find myself shouting at the radio, 'there's no 'we' with you and me in it'.

  • Enoch wrote: »
    Alan29 wrote: »
    RockyRoger wrote: »
    Hugal wrote: »
    So Rishi got the bill through the Commons. Most commentators say it will not have an easy time passing through the lords. They could easily keep it in limbo up to the election.


    What! And go against the 'will of the people'? To Rwanda with the lot of them!


    Whenever I hear "the will of the people" I expect to hear the sound of jackboots in the background.
    As also the words parroted out "what the British people want". How do Suella Braverman or any of the other abusers of that phrase know what anyone other than her and a few of her close political chums want? Clearly they haven't asked me, or anyone else what we might want.

    As others may recall from threads on other topics, I've a particular objection to the misuse of 'we' to mean 'what I want and therefore what you ought to want but I can't even be bothered to persuade you to agree with me'. These days I find myself shouting at the radio, 'there's no 'we' with you and me in it'.

    This.

    The gobshites speak only for themselves, and a few other gobshites, but it's true that empty vessels make the most noise...
  • I see the Daily Heil uses the phrase 'Will of the People' in its headline today.
    I shall continue to read only the Daily Star. It seems a lot more sensible than other daily rags, and our beloved Pope is on the front cover giving good spiritual advice.
  • PigletPiglet All Saints Host, Circus Host
    I generally find that the Grauniad speaks good sense, and I'm very partial to their cryptic crosswords. :)
  • BroJames wrote: »
    To the best of my understanding, the Police and Criminal Evidence Act only puts evidence from the computer on the same footing as evidence from a person. There is a rebuttable presumption that what they are saying is true.

    One of the problems in the Post Office/ Fujitsu/ Horizon scandal is the extent to which known problems with the system were covered up both by the Post Office and by Fujitsu. Postmasters were repeatedly told, falsely, that no one else was having problems with the system. The Post Office should have disclosed fault logs, and call logs from their own and the Horizon helplines. This would (probably) have cast sufficient doubt in the computer evidence to make it inadmissible.

    It is reported that the investigator appointed by the Post Office, who earlier had confessed he 'wasn't a technical person' now disclaims any responsibilty for his role in the the prosecutions. 'I was only doing my job' he said. Hmm, .... this is too much like saying, 'I was only obeying orders'.
    How do these people sleep at night?
  • DoublethinkDoublethink Admin, 8th Day Host
    edited January 2024
    There is a fundamental investigatory problem - if the police have to investigate technical computery stuff they use a technical specialist. Detectives are not reading software code for errors. Presumably, if the police technical department said the output of a piece of software was correct, the detectives would believe them - they wouldn’t be in position to double check.

    The problem, is the conflict of interest in the equivalent of the post office’s technical department - who had a vested interest in telling their own investigators (and later everyone else) that the software was reliable.

    I am not sure it is reasonable to expect the investigators themselves to know this information was wrong. And I am not sure that the same people were investigating all the cases - and thereby picking up patterns at the coalface as it were. (However, I’ve not been following the enquiry closely.)

    The other thing I am curious about - is whether the dodgy software resulted in more cases of apparent fraud than they would normally expect.
  • DoublethinkDoublethink Admin, 8th Day Host
    DP to add - consider the timescale - people old enough to be investigators at that point in time did not grow up with the widespread computer use of today. This is probably the generation who get the grandkids to program the video.
  • BroJamesBroJames Purgatory Host
    <snip>
    The other thing I am curious about - is whether the dodgy software resulted in more cases of apparent fraud than they would normally expect.
    I’ve seen something somewhere which argued that the Post Office had a long-standing, inbuilt mistrust of postmasters. So they may simply have thought that the clever software was simply showing up what had been going on undetected for some time.
  • HugalHugal Shipmate
    So the Conservatives seemed to have finally realised what a state they are in. One senior politician has called for Sunak to resign sighting the polls and saying they will get trashed if they don’t get rid of him (Sunak). Sunak’s supporters have come out against it but it is indicator of things starting to bubble over.
  • BroJames wrote: »
    <snip>
    The other thing I am curious about - is whether the dodgy software resulted in more cases of apparent fraud than they would normally expect.
    I’ve seen something somewhere which argued that the Post Office had a long-standing, inbuilt mistrust of postmasters. So they may simply have thought that the clever software was simply showing up what had been going on undetected for some time.

    I read somewhere thet the purpose of the software (I presume the justification for the cost and introduction) was to detect fraud. Not to provide reliable accounting or an easier centralised system for the PMs. It was explicitly to detect fraud, so it would have appeared to be doing a good job.

    Of course, if that was the stated aim, then checking and verifying the accuracy of this should have been a primary aspect of the software validation. But then, they might have found that the software was crap*.

    *Technical term.
  • EnochEnoch Shipmate
    Hugal wrote: »
    So the Conservatives seemed to have finally realised what a state they are in. One senior politician has called for Sunak to resign sighting the polls and saying they will get trashed if they don’t get rid of him (Sunak). Sunak’s supporters have come out against it but it is indicator of things starting to bubble over.
    That anyone should describe or regard Simon Clarke as a "senior politician" is testimony to there being nobody left of any calibre in their party.

    Fat Puppy (remember him anybody?) cleared out the last of those that were still left before the election in 2019.

  • Hugal wrote: »
    So the Conservatives seemed to have finally realised what a state they are in. One senior politician has called for Sunak to resign sighting the polls and saying they will get trashed if they don’t get rid of him (Sunak). Sunak’s supporters have come out against it but it is indicator of things starting to bubble over.

    I don't think this is really the explanation; there's a bunch of MPs in the party who want to push ever more ludicrous demands that they know won't be met so that post election they can make the pitch that real conservatism (represented by them) was not tried.
  • The Post Office investigator would conduct his investigation on the basis of the information he was supplied with. This was supplied by the contractors, Fujitsu, who, apparently, insisted their software was reliable while, apparently, knowing that it had various bugs as well as a backdoor facility whereby their operatives could tamper with data in real time. The smoking gun seems to be in their posseesion, though it is surprising no-one in the Post Office seems to have queried the apparent surge in cases of theft.
    But this is straying from the iheme of Conservative government.
  • Eirenist wrote: »
    The smoking gun seems to be in their posseesion, though it is surprising no-one in the Post Office seems to have queried the apparent surge in cases of theft.

    Why would it be surprising that the number of cases of detected theft/fraud went up when you started looking for them?

    The logical reason to introduce a fraud-detecting system is "we think there's some fraud going on, but it's too hard for us to find by hand, so let's make an automated screen to flag possibilities". Having that system detect a bunch of fraud you didn't previously detect is the expected outcome.
  • stetsonstetson Shipmate
    edited January 2024
    Just saw where Badenoch blames Joe Biden for the UK's failure to get all those anticipated post-brexit trade deals with the USA.

    Except that VP Biden's own boss had warned Britons they wouldn't be getting any trade deals in the event of a Leave victory, and that guy was still in the White House when the vote was held. So Biden's position really shouldn't be a surprise to anyone.
  • Alan Cresswell Alan Cresswell Admin, 8th Day Host
    Indeed, that had always been the position. Even Trump was saying "we'd like a good trade deal with the UK, but there won't be any queue jumping and all the other trade deals - like the one with the EU - will need to be sorted first" (my paraphrase, I don't want to sully my computer by searching for what he actually said - it would have been said multiple times, by several people, anyway).

    A trade deal with a little group of islands in the NW of Europe simply isn't important enough to delay other work for the people who would need to negotiate such a deal, especially when that other work includes trade with the whole of Europe except that little group of islands.
  • The caption of the latest Matt cartoon has a minister saying "The Tory Party is trying to give up leadership challenges for January. Of course there's been a few cheat days..."
  • :lol:

    Meanwhile, all you younger Shipmates had better be getting ready to be conscripted to fight Russia:

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/jan/24/army-chief-says-people-of-uk-are-prewar-generation-who-must-be-ready-to-fight-russia

    This swivel-eyed loon probably doesn't realise that just one nuclear bomb on London would rather remove the need...
  • PigletPiglet All Saints Host, Circus Host
    What does he mean by the "pre-war generation"? Anyone born pre-WWII would be over 80.

    Can we look forward to a gentle sitcom in 20 years' time called "Grandad's Army"?
  • :lol:

    Meanwhile, all you younger Shipmates had better be getting ready to be conscripted to fight Russia:

    https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/jan/24/army-chief-says-people-of-uk-are-prewar-generation-who-must-be-ready-to-fight-russia

    This swivel-eyed loon probably doesn't realise that just one nuclear bomb on London would rather remove the need...
    I doubt that a nuclear bomb on London would help us to win the war.

    There's forty shillings on the drum
    For those who volunteer to come,
    To 'list and fight the foe today
    Over the Hills and far away.

    We need to put far more money on the drum if we are going to sort out recruitment to the army and the navy.

    I doubt that we would have enough of the right personal to train conscripts
  • BroJamesBroJames Purgatory Host
    Piglet wrote: »
    What does he mean by the "pre-war generation"? Anyone born pre-WWII would be over 80.

    Can we look forward to a gentle sitcom in 20 years' time called "Grandad's Army"?
    I suspect that he means we are like the generation of the 1920s and 1930s over which war loomed unbeknownst.
  • SpikeSpike Ecclesiantics & MW Host, Admin Emeritus
    Piglet wrote: »
    What does he mean by the "pre-war generation"? Anyone born pre-WWII would be over 80.


    I read that as meaning that todays young people are a new pre-war generation
  • HugalHugal Shipmate
    Spike wrote: »
    Piglet wrote: »
    What does he mean by the "pre-war generation"? Anyone born pre-WWII would be over 80.


    I read that as meaning that todays young people are a new pre-war generation

    Yep me too. Though you never know. Someone may take Putin out of the equation.
  • Alan Cresswell Alan Cresswell Admin, 8th Day Host
    If adults today are a "pre-war generation" then we need to work harder to reduce the global tensions that could lead to further increases in armed conflict. Because the alternative is that our children will need to face the horrors of war.
  • How are we to reduce global tensions with Putin in charge of Russia, Netanyahu of Israel, the ayatollahs of Iran, Xi of China, plus the looming arrival of Trump?
  • Alan Cresswell Alan Cresswell Admin, 8th Day Host
    Reaching for the "fire missile" button as soon as someone threatens profit margins for international shipping doesn't help. Cutting aid budgets doesn't help. Refusing asylum to people fleeing war and persecution doesn't help. Supplying arms to dictators doesn't help. Constantly pumping toxins into the environment doesn't help. Voting for people who make things worse doesn't help.
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