I regularly advised senior Ministers to institute proper reporting and accountability for the host of Ā so called independent bodies that rule us. They usually agreed, yet they seem to struggle to impose the discipline or to find the time to do it.
As a result we have The Environment Agency and Ofwat Ā responsible for water often unable to stop floods and granting permissions for sewage discharges to rivers owing to a long term lack of investment in sufficient pipe capacity. The Environment Agency wanted wilding Ā instead of food growing and profitable forestry. The Bank of England charged with keeping inflation down gave us a peak inflation five and a half times target. The NHS England Board insulated the NHS from much ministerial involvement, then denied any responsibility for falling out with the staff or for the build up of waiting lists and the Ā drop in productivity. Border force was unable to propose and implement a policy to carry throughMinisterial wishes to end the small boats business across the Channel.
The role Ā of the Minister should encompass an annual budget meeting to review finance and use of resources, agree fee and charge levels and any Treasury payment to the body. It should include a meeting to agree the annual report and review the annual performance. There needs to be special meetings to agree changes of policy and guidance, to lead to Parliamentary statements so we know what is expected of the body. Chairmen and Chief Executives should get bonuses for outperformance, but should not be paid a bonus at all when performance is poor.
Esther Mc Vey was working from the Cabinet Office on improved accountability for these bodies when the election was suddenly called. That work needs to be revived by Ministers after the election.
June 13, 2024
Many of us will remember it was the Sun Newspaper that commanded a huge army of undecided and hidden voters. The Sun donāt have a comment section in their online paper, so nobody knows what this mass of voters are thinking. However they ran an online poll yesterday and here are the results.
Conservatives 36.2%
Labour 14.8%
LibDems 2.3%
Green 1.2%
Reform 41.5%
Another 3.9%
June 13, 2024
So Reform’s bots are a little better than the Conservative’s bots and both have a much better bot operations than any rival?
June 13, 2024
Many people I know will be voting Reform bur are shy to admit it. Even my wife who was a lifetime labour supporter says only Farage is talking sense.
Believe me, there is going to be a seismic shift in July and not all for liebour.
June 13, 2024
Indeed. Reform are against net zero, want to reduce low skilled immigration significantly, cut the size of government and to have a proper inquiry into the vast Covid vaccine harms all entirely avoidable. For these policies alone they surely deserve support.
Britain is heading for a populist tsunami far greater than anything seen in Europe
Sir Keir Starmerās coming supermajority could be the last hurrah of the failing, neo-Blairite political order
ALLISTER HEATH today.
But how long will this dreadful last hurrah last? Five years, ten or fifteen+? Will I still be around to see a sensible government ever again?
Will Sunak be remembered for taking the Tories from an 80 seat majority to 80 seats in total?
June 13, 2024
Also read Peter Hitchens article in the Daily Mail today about Starmer and Brown’s intention to neutralise Parliament. Frightening.
June 13, 2024
JR, it was Treacherous May who implemented the left wing woke identity policy/ law that McVey is now allegedly addressing!! Surely, you have not forgotten? Are you serious that we should have a minister to unravel what your former Prime Minister created? Another expensive and socially stupid policy implemented by the left wing socialist Tory part of the Uni party.
Who signed up to the UN Migration pact? Has Sunak or is Sunak going to withdraw? No of course not. More spin and lies about migration. WHO treaty anyone? Who gave the WHO Ā£400 million extra of our taxes? Johnson!
June 13, 2024
I do hope you are right. The future of our country depends upon it. We shall go down with even more crazy socialist ideals crashing our economy and our will to live.
June 13, 2024
JR, the answer to you question is that Blaire created the alleged āindependentā quangos to implement EU laws, regs and directives so it could bypass parliament to act in stealth without any questions. A quiet EU takeover without fuss.
Farage raised the issue in TV debate with Clegg who falsely claimed hardly anything came from EU. Here we are 8 years after voting to leave and Sunak refuses to scrap 4,000 EU laws and an unknown huge amount of regs and directives in quangos. Cameron promised a bonfire of quangos because of the cost, when he realised they hid EU laws, regs and directives the plan was shelved and He created more quangos!
Your party had 14 years to scrap quangos implementing EU laws, regs and directives, your party given an instruction by the nation to deliver Brexit and take back control of borders, laws and money and your party refused acting in complete contempt to the public. Now the best it can say, through Shapps yesterday, is we are going to be wiped out giving Labour a huge majority.
Get stuffed would be my reply, you deserve to be wiped out after deliberately betraying the nation and repeatedly lying what you would do in office.
June 13, 2024
A good article in āConservative Homeā – ā How powerful Conservative parties can dieā.
It discusses low points for this countryās Conservatives from the mid 19th century (Peel) to Labour landslides post war. It also looks at parties in Italy, France and Norn Iron.
Mussolini banned their conservative party in 1926, but it prospered after that ban was removed for many decades.
France had Gaullist conservatives doing well for a long time too.
There is no mention of Poujadistes, who had a huge anti establishment outlook ( before anti globalism was a thing). No mention either of the decline in influence of the Catholic Church – an important element of Italian and French conservatism.
The author outlines three important features of decline:-
1The establishment of an alternative right wing party.
2 ā the original conservative party must drift away from its core, usually by becoming consciously more centristā
3 ā for the spiral of decline to begin, leading members of the original party must lose touch with the minimum requirements and aspirations of their electorate.ā
Mercifully, no conclusion that elections are always won from the centre ground.
Perhaps David Gauke will take a break from the āNew Statesmanā and make that case again in a few days time?
June 13, 2024
Peter
Given Conservative Home seem to filter and reject sensible comments that criticised the Party and its policies from the outside, they are partly to blame from the fiasco which is steadily unfolding, because they tried to keep dissatisfaction quiet, as if there was no problems at all.
Unfortunately you cannot cover it up forever.
June 13, 2024
Two good political pamphlets through the front door today. One was a leaflet to petition Ed Davey to apologise to the postmasters and return his knighthood.
The other was a local residents group with details of their next meeting in the church by the sawn off ULEZ camera. Worth a look, in the absence of anything more useful.
June 13, 2024
What do you think a poll in the guardian, the mirror, the independent, the FT would look like?!
June 13, 2024
@Richard1; Indeed, that is why all sensible, credible, media outlets jointly commission independent opinion polls.
How do we even know there was even a (functioning) online poll, not just a website front-end Form whose data was dumped on submission, with the “result” having already been decided by editorial decree.
June 13, 2024
The Telegraph do and Conservative ministers writing there are despised.
Who will control these dangerous independent bodies? Expensive, dangerous and out of control too. No one will it seems. Start with the appalling Committee for Climate Change which is doing appalling damage and costing Ā£Billions. It will cost Ā£Trillions if their mad advice is followed. Then the appallingly inept and compromised MHRA which has inflicted huge harms and costs too with their appalling failures in vaccine regulation.
June 13, 2024
@LL; More expensive AI bots to generate ‘readers comments’ the editorial line wants to see perhaps?!
June 13, 2024
Gerry, bots canāt vote.
If more than 50% refuse to vote Parliament and any Government drawn from it have no authority from the electorate.
June 13, 2024
@Lucy Atkinson; Nonsense, a low turnout can not stymie the formation of the next govt, the ballot on the 4th July is not a referendum were a minimum turnout is needed. You are also wrong about Computer Bots, whilst they can not vote, they can influence the vote, hence why there is real concern about foreign interference in the democratic process.
June 13, 2024
LL,
JR is not that stupid or he is trying to take us for fools today. Who is going to control these bodies when JRās party is willing to let the WHO have control over our health and economic policy by lock downs and refuses to scrap EU laws. Who joined UN. If ration pact? Treacherous May! Come on, JRās party had an 85 seat majority to take back control and govern for the nation on behalf of the nation. JRās party chose not to implement the will of the nation.
As for the EA it was created by Blaire in 1997 taking away responsibility from councils. We had no reduction in our community charge for this. JRās party gave some of the work back to councils and we are now charged extra in our community charge with Sunak ordering councils to tax to the maximum! The 3.5 billion cost of EA is not worth it. Majority of cost goes to staff salaries and pensions, about 500 million to infrastructure projects, then JR talks about productivity! The EA implements the EU environmental level playing field ie lock step to EU preventing divergence! JR knows this.
June 13, 2024
Well you can make sense of it; if you don’t want more of the same incompetence, then you can’t vote for the Tories, and if you don’t want a socialist, return to EU, tax and waste government, you can’t vote Labour. All the others want to remove our nuclear deterrent EXCEPT Reform….
June 13, 2024
Starmer is an unrepentant Trot. He makes Corbyn look sound. Actually Corbyn is sound on the two most important issues, the EU and anti-war with Russia.
June 13, 2024
…traditionally a Conservative rag! Swing to Reform not denied !
June 13, 2024
Good morning
These were part of the Blair / New Labour reforms. I have just commented elsewhere on this and stated that New Labour boasted that they would still be in power even when no longer in office. This has proved to be true.
Sir John you inadvertently provide the solution to the problem. ie He who controls the purse strings controls what goes on.
Perhaps if Ministers looked at what policies these departments were doing and stated that these would not receive funding there would be a change. If the policies went a head then the Minster has grounds to dismiss those responsible. If they cannot be dismissed, then cut funding completely and shutdown the department.
You only ever have to do this once to get the message. But because Ministers and government were weak and ineffective, they could be safely ignored.
And let us not forget. These QUANGO departments were also created to avoid UK Government and receive orders directly from their EU equivalent. It was all part of the EU plan to destroy the nation state.
June 13, 2024
the above .. in spades.
We should be re-shoring our industries and government should be taking back the roles of NGOs.
Except if elected ministers are so rubbish at managing such crap middle management (the civil service), why would that change?
The problem is attitude and competence at all levels, I’m not sure that simply voting in a different batch of politicians would solve this.
That Sunak believes that the immigrant invasion is the sole reason brexit voters feel betrayed is a clear indication he really does not have a clue.
June 13, 2024
If they are Labour , it certainly will not Stop Dixie.
we need total clear out and fresh people with the strength to smash the corrupt civil service and impose discipline !
June 13, 2024
Dr David Starkey gave a talk about the Blair and New Labour reforms- and states that they must be reversed. Those quangos, as you say in your comment, Mark B, are effectively by-passing Parliament and government, with almost more power. The judiciary have also been an obstacle to law making at times!
June 13, 2024
+1
June 13, 2024
And Sunak wants to give another unaccountable body, the Migration Advisory Committee, the right to dictate what the level of immigration should be.
June 13, 2024
+++++
You point out precisely what should have happened to curb the powers handed over to the quango mafia.
We hear the words transparency, accountability, dare I say it even democracy, yet we seem to be run by increasingly powerful bodies and individuals who have never been elected here to run our affairs, and with minimum transparency and seemingly no accountability.
Why the hell was an alleged conservative government having their strings pulled by the likes of Stonewall and Hope not Hate????
June 13, 2024
@Mark B; “New Labour boasted that they would still be in power even when no longer in office. This has proved to be true.”
Your point being what? What you accuse New Labour of doing between 1997-2010 was exactly what Thatcherism did between 1979-1997 -perhaps even more effectively, it is one thing for a following govt to disbanded a Quango or two, it is something else to reverse wholesale social reforms that structurally changed how many (now have to) live their lives.
What is the difference between a die-hard Socialist and a die-hard Capitalist; nothing, they both only ever see the world though their tinted specs!
June 14, 2024
I think you have an important key. Stopping the money flow is the only way to bring them to heel, or close them down. Some of them do hold some other levers of power capable of jamming up the economy. For them, alternative provision would be necessary to have lined up ready to go.
June 13, 2024
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
June 13, 2024
Self regulating I believe.
June 13, 2024
Likely no-one, alas. If present senior Ministers have struggled there would not seem grounds for supposing their replacements will do better.
Who has been controlling the not-fit-for-purpose Home Office this last 17 years, when that is not even an independent body?
June 13, 2024
Good question,āāā
June 13, 2024
We should question why these Quangos exist at all. Weren’t they set up to remove politics from their functions? The civil service is supposed also to be apolitical. The root problem in both cases is lack of accountability. There are two sides to accountability. The quangos must account for their activities to the relevant minister but equally the ministers need to know what needs to be done, how to direct the bodies and how to delegate and ministers need to have the will to direct the quangos, they need they courage of their convictions. Ministers who lack these capacities cannot effectively delegate, direct or hold to account.
I suspect that for some ministers it is convenient to defer to a quango rather than to make a decision for him or her self, and thus bear the responsibility.
June 13, 2024
Peter Gardner – although typically responsibility (with all the blame) is foisted upon Ministers no matter how uninvolved, as Sir John has shown in previous articles.
June 13, 2024
The Not-a-Conservative-Party has had 14 years to reform and scale back Blair’s Quangocracy – the means by which he intended Labour would continue to govern the country when the voters kicked Labour out of Office.
Like everything else, the Not-a-Conservative Party failed to do anything about it, despite “promising” a bonfire of the Quangos.
So we know the Not-a-Conservative-Party won’t do it even IF it gets another chance (which looks extremely unlikely). And a Labour Government obviously won’t since the Quangocracy was created by Labour to enforce socialist rule without the messy and usually unreliable business of getting a mandate for it.
So nothing will happen.
Like nothing has happened for the last, utterly wasted, 14 years.
June 13, 2024
Spot on Donna.āāā
June 13, 2024
Sadly, Donna, I think you’re right!
However, I do think that Nigel Farage understands this, and will determine to do something about this. Hence, I shall vote Reform, and hope the Sun online poll is correct, and enough other voters think and do the same.
June 13, 2024
Oh, a lot has happened over the last 14 years, Donna. My goodness it has. And the Tories did nothing to stop it, or they even promoted the same vile agendas that have overtaken our country.
You’re absolutely right about the quangocracy, though. The question has to be why Conservative administrations went on for years leaving (or putting) power in the hands of people who would not implement what the elected government stood for. Or at least what its voters thought it stood for.
June 13, 2024
Because the Tory party is wedded to the EU and is currently preventing divergence from EU, acting in lock step to EU and the Sunak EU sell out Windsor,agreement was to secure and prevent divergence! Tory party acting against the reason they were given a 85 seat majority. They deserve to be obliterated.
Vote Reform.
The penny has finally dropped with my conservative friends and colleagues who will be voting Reform. We have been betrayed by the Tory party too many times.
June 13, 2024
(W)hat (E)vidence explains their (F)ailure.
June 13, 2024
‘a lot has happened over the last 14 years, Donna. My goodness it has.’
— and I struggle to think of anything that has been good!
June 13, 2024
@Donna – well said
June 13, 2024
That sums it up. Yet I still come across people who though they are aware of this, proudly claim themselves as life long Conservative voters and will therefore be voting for their team again!!!!
Perhaps the education curriculum should include a short course on political parties not being football teams?
No allegiance owed when none is shown, and outright lying and double dealing deserves oblivion of said parties.
June 13, 2024
Exactly. All health, public services, emergency services, quangos, Treasury, Home Office etc all led by woke left wing new Labour types as Blair etc created the permanent selection processes to ensure continuity NuLabour. After 14 years we can only assume the Tory’s not only agree with it but have gold plated this with their non equality legislation, deliberate mass immigration to destroy the English race plus DEI/ESG, 192 Companies Act that is destroying our company’s competitive global positions, capitalism and a former meritocracy. Reform is on the march. The Tory’s were the future once!!!
June 13, 2024
For the first time in a long time John in this article has made reference to one of the most potent threats to democracy and Parliamentary accountability. The rise of client state totalitarianism and yes, it will in time morph into totalitarianism and there will be no recourse to drain their powers
Starmer is the personification, the living expression of this unadulterated state power to do what it likes and when it likes using all the tools available to it
I am convinced this nation will not survive a decade of Labour power. I absolutely blame the Tories for not destroying Blair’s client state he started to build when he slithered into power in 1997.
A good article so thanks but I believe the issue goes far deeper and is more embedded than this article references
Starmer and Brown (Knighted today by a docile, clueless King whose family will in time be swept from power due to cultural Marxism) are loathsome creatures of the night, operating beyond oversight
June 13, 2024
@DOM +1 – we want our Democracy, I would say back but successive Politico’s keep stealing and downgrading it to protect themselves from challenge
June 13, 2024
The King is certainly clueless on Climate Change, not keeping out of politics like his sensible mother and his gross hypocrisy on Net Zero. Can he not see how absurd this makes him look.
June 13, 2024
He, like his mother have one job. To defend the Constitution. She agreed to become a common citizen of German Europe (aka the EU).
June 13, 2024
What is this about Brown? I had not read that. For services to private pension destruction, selling our gold a the bottom of the market and āsaving he Worldā I assume.
June 13, 2024
@ Lifelogic – Brown is due a K.G., following modern tradition of prime ministers being awarded such.
There was an unusually long period before Blair was admitted (in one of the last appointments by the late Queen) and that was thought to be holding up awards to those who served after him. We can now expect Cameron, May et al to see similar in due course unless the King decides otherwise.
June 13, 2024
just goes to show you can tread in soft dog’s shit, but years later the scent might still waft around you!
June 13, 2024
+++
Isn’t Starmer a Fabian? The wolf in sheep’s clothing.
He’s dodging around, looking absolutely terrified I might add. As dim as he is I think he knows controlling the vast chasms between people now, because of mass immigration and multi-culture, is going to be a nightmare and he must wake up sweating.
His will be a cabinet of the barely capable and he will be bullied by the Unions and various other factions now resident and powerful here. I also think the Rayner woman will try and oust him pronto with Union backing, and she is dangerous.
June 13, 2024
We are in this mess simply due to the fact that we have elected, then appointed people who were not intellectually capable of doing the job. This has been an issue in every Government Department for years but we survived because it was isolated Departments. This last Tory Government has allowed it to occur in every Department, starting in No 10. They have developed a system whereby poor performance has been rewarded, either financially or by elevation to the Upper House where mediocracy has been allowed to thrive. i.e. Lord Watson ! There needs to be a system of Government whereby if Ministers and Departments are not performing adequately then they are immediately disciplined. Accountability starts with the Prime Minister, but has the 1922 Committee been doing its job? They are the people responsible for watching over the Watchman!
June 13, 2024
@William +1 so very true. To have a democracy we must remove the unelected unaccountable upper house it is an insult among many insults that this Conservative Government has nurtured for their own personal benefit
June 13, 2024
The general election will bring about a merger of the government with the blob. One of the most foolish failures of the Conservatives over 14 years has been the failure to deal with the size, power and scope of the blob. The Blair- Brown govt cleverly spotted an opportunity to create and empower a perma-government of āindependentā bodies and stuff them with leftists. Amazingly It has if anything got worse under the Tories.
If thereās ever a right-of-centre govt again it needs to deal with this problem at the beginning. I suppose the trouble is this kind of work appeals to people with a bossy, collectivist mindset, not to natural conservatives. The best solution is to abolish these bodies and have the work done by our burgeoning civil service, accountable to ministers. Too late now of course but there would be both improvements in administration and cost savings (and votes) from closures and cuts to the blobbish quangocracy.
June 13, 2024
@Richard1 +1 As you suggest this is not a Conservative Government but a Socialist gang continuing the Blair/Brown trashing of democracy, the Country and its people. The Conservative Party if they are, Conservatives, have a lot to answer for in their allowing the Socialist Hard Left, to become a Government and run CCHQ. The choice was their gift.
Starmer and his crew are going to be bad, very bad. Worse if not equal to the Sunak/Hunt duo. But, we have to endure that punishment to get rid of this Conservative Government because the Conservative Party themselves couldn’t be bothered, the promises that have become lies for 14 years are now beyond a joke.
June 13, 2024
They didn’t even have the guts, or the nous, to deal with the blatantly biased BBC …… or let the public do it for them.
June 13, 2024
@Donna; Yawn… Funny how you never complain about the blatant bias of other broadcasters, you seem to have two rule books, depending on who you think has been ‘playing away’, method of funding is irrelevant…
By the way, since 2015, the Conservative govt did ‘deal’ with the BBC, at least as far as they could without themselves appearing to be blatantly biased (against the Corporation), in 2020 they chose and appointed the current BBC Director General, in 2017 they also made the BBC accountable to Ofcom investigation and regulation, of which they have also chosen the current and last two Chairman.
June 13, 2024
@Richard1; Rather than just being rude about those you dislike, remember many on the left describe, often uncountable, Corporate Business as the “blob”, perhaps if you asked yourself why the Blair govt felt the need “to create and empower a perma-government of āindependentā bodies” after (18) years of Tory rule, something no previous Socialist govt had felt any need to do, not even in 1945.
“The best solution is to abolish these bodies and have the work done by our burgeoning civil service, accountable to ministers.”
Oh you mean like it was, back 45 plus years ago! Ho-hmm. š
June 13, 2024
Of course! Corporate business combined with state power is classic fascism. It is unaccountable. The blob.
Left right and centre the British oppose this Continental system imposed on us by enthusiasts like you, in place of what Hitler called āthe English Systemā I.e capitalism and democracy.
Do try to keep up Gerry!
June 14, 2024
@LA; Whatever Lucy, you are clearly choosing to misrepresent what I actually said, at not time have I mentioned “Corporate business combined with state power”, quite the opposite in fat, the issue I raised was a lack of regulation.
June 13, 2024
If there was little response to your ideas expressed from the green benches, who is listening to a lone voice from Wokingham. A more perceptive nose in the kitchen would have seen you and your small number of like minded colleagues joining Reform, if you really wanted to espouse Conservatism. Your last remaining gesture is to vote for them, it is all that is left for retired Vulcans.
Reply So why do you bother with my site? I am not retiring from the public debate and have much more to say and propose. The Conservative government did agree with my campaign to get our own oil and gas out, to cut legal migration and to identify the U.K. public sector productivity collapse
June 13, 2024
The Conservative government agreed with your campaign to cut legal migration ? When was this ? If you mean they have put it in the election manifesto that is no big deal because it was also in the last four so it hardly needed a campaign for them to include it again this time. And ignore it again if they win.
Reply They changed policies this January
June 13, 2024
Far too late and you know it still isn’t enough Sir John.
June 13, 2024
John is a true Conservative, in the Conservative Party where he belongs, maintaining views which the Conservative Party membership as a whole would agree with. Too bad this is in disagreement with CCHQ.
Reform on the other hand are a hornet’s nest of egos. Don’t be surprised if the whole operation falls apart in the near future.
June 13, 2024
There’s no point in kicking sir John Agri – it really isn’t his fault that the Conservative Party became such a “broad church” that the majority of ‘Conservative’ MPs are actually Liberals (who knee they’d never get a seat via the Liberal Party).
My family was 100% working class and 100% Labour. I left home and joined the Army at 17. I am proud of my country and it’s history, as were my parents & grandparents – who fought in both World Wars. They would be angered by much of what has been allowed to happen to this country over the past few years. We seem to apologise for everything and to everyone, with many afraid to defend what is a proud heritage.
The truth is that Labour is no longer labour (e.g. “working” class) and the Conservatives are no longer conservative ( “middle” class). The old ‘class’ definitions no longer apply for most of us. I’m certain Starmer doesn’t understand the people of this country – he still sees us through the old ‘class’ lens, when things are so much more nuanced these days. This country is still a good place to live. I hope we can keep it that way but we need to remember who we are. Starmer certainly isn’t the person to do that but I’m not sure the Conservative Party is any better…
June 13, 2024
IanT,
Keir’s dad was a toolmaker. This did not go down well on telly last night though.
Angela is definitely working class, school of hard knocks etc. Though teenage pregnancy and family background means she is not ‘respectable working class’ and in earlier times would never have been considered as a parliamentary candidate. Though she does know the price of a loaf of bread – like ordinary folk (not Rishi).
June 13, 2024
oh! and how to benefit by using rules and a smart head.
June 13, 2024
Having watched Starner’s ‘Non-Manifesto’ this morning (and wondered what he really has in store for us) I saw Trevor Kavanagh (Ex-Sun Poitical Editor) on TV this evening. He very much agrees with Peter Hitchins that Starmer plans to change our Constitution permanently, thereby making it virtually impossible to get rid of them. Maybe we should all stop being p***ed off with the Conservatives and start thinking about what we are about to do to ourselves.
Hitchens wrote recently that instead of voting FOR someone, we should seriously think about voting AGAINST what we most fear. I’m well and truly fed-up with the useless conservatives but I’m now really starting to worry about the alternative…
June 13, 2024
Here is the problem with Reform. Agricola personifies it. Swaggering before they even win a seat. They have no inkling of the problems of government. When they are elected and have their noses firmly in the trough, they will no longer care about the problems of government. They will occupy themselves on the terraces with bubbles.
June 13, 2024
@agricola; Somewhat of an Oxymoron there, you claim a lone voice has no influence but then suggest our host should have become a lone voice by crossing the floor! Influence stretches further than the green benches, and even on the green benches it is better to be sat with the govt than two sword lengths or more away.
@JR reply; With regards our “own oil”, is it not true that one of the first things the Thatcher govt did on taking office in 1979 was sell off UK govt owned shares in both BP and then BNOC (keeping the UK govt to authorize drilling/extraction licenses), thus is it in the gift of private oil companies if they want to extract the oil and gas from UK fields, not the UK govt? We can ask, we can not demand nor make them.
Reply The private companies were keen to produce and sell! It is government that has got in the way.
June 13, 2024
@JR reply; Yes the private companies are keen, but only when it suits their own purpose, not necessarily when it suits the UK need.
Also as most of UK production (at least from the North Sea) does not get sold for refining and/or consumption here in the UK, we buy on the open market a much lower quality crude better suited to our domestic needs. So basically the private oil companies sell UK crude high, buy world crude cheaper, and pocket the difference! Something the State could have done, using the majority owned BNOC, BP and regulation, investing the surplus as Norway did -a fund now worth over US$1.62 trillion. How could Norway take such a sensible course and we couldn’t, other than simply not having the political will?
June 13, 2024
Can you not comprehend that where there is a āneedā there is an opportunity – and private companies are keen to take opportunities and fulfil needs – itās profitable. They do it efficiently and well because there are others prepared to take the same opportunity.
State entities have no competition, so they always end up unproductive, stagnating, disappointing.
This is nursery school stuff. You are going to bore us all unless you can catch up and address the conundrums facing us all.
June 13, 2024
@LA; “This is nursery school stuff.”
Oh really, is that the best you can do!
Of course I accept “where there is a āneedā there is an opportunity”.
Opportunity for who though, sorry to sound like Corbyn but, the few or the many, when it comes to a _once-only_ opportunity, such as the UK’s North Sea oil and gas reserves were. You do know what the ‘Government Pension Fund of Norway’ is, and how the bulk came about, don’t you? I’ve already told you how much it is worth.
Designed a new widget, mobile phone, found a better way of making Sliced Bread, the best of capitalist luck, there is no reason for the State to get involved.
June 14, 2024
In reply to Lynn A, private bodies are even worse than state ones if they face minimal competition. Free markets tend towards monopoly power, unless a single operator is stopped from gaining say 80% overall market share and then screwing buyers or users.
June 13, 2024
….they ‘agreed’ ha ha but did sweet FA about it !
June 13, 2024
With 100’s if not 1000’s of NGOs and QUANGOs how can a small group of ministers maintain direct oversight?
I do agree with your view just looking at the UKRI you can see a structure where the beneficiaries are in charge of distribution and decision making.
June 13, 2024
The only people in government who have any interest in acting in the interests of the public are the elected politicians seeking to be re-elected. This degree of control of MPs (elected only every 4 or 5 years on a FPTP system and usually on a pack of lies) is virtually zero real control. Even if we had 650 excellent MPs in the house they still could do rather little we have 6M working in the state sector. In practice we are lucky if 100 MPs are honest, sensible and actually have the public interests at heart. Only a tiny hand full voted against the total insanity of the Climate Change Act. This has done vast damage for example. Similarly the lockdowns, net harm vaccines all the vast tax and regulatory increasesā¦
June 13, 2024
If those elected because they have pleased those who make up the lists, have a lot of opportunities in Quangoes, NGOs etc, they donāt mind standing aside for the next group to pass through the process.
Contingent corruption. Another very good reason to scrap the whole āindependent stateā.
June 13, 2024
@JayCee; By not setting-up or allowing 100ās if not 1000ās of NGOs and Quangos to be created perhaps?!
June 13, 2024
Dangerous bodies should be avoided and prevented. They need controlling by persuasion in a first instance, then psychiatrists and / or force for containment according to the extent of their hostility and the damage, waste and other harm their risky behaviour causes. The public needs protection, independent of clueless weak politicians who are unable to foresee what is going wrong and unable to deal with it.
June 13, 2024
Nobody has mentioned the cruel culling of badgers in the manifestoes. As of 2024, DEFRA has organised the shooting of 210,000 badgers at a cost of Ā£58.8 million in an attempt to “control” the transmission of bovine TB. According to the RSPCA, the bTB infection rate among badgers is only 4ā6%. As culling is not selective, as many as six out of seven badgers killed are believed to have been perfectly healthy and bTB free
The risk of humans contracting bTB from milk is extremely low, thanks to milk pasteurisation and the bTB surveillance and control programme in cattle; many scientists have argued that badger culling is unnecessary.
Research reported in 2016 indicates that bTB is not transmitted by direct contact between badgers and cattle, but through contaminated pasture and dung. This has important implications for widespread farm practices such as the spreading of slurry.
In October 2012, MPs voted 147 in favour of a motion to stop the 2012/2013 badger cull and 28 against. Vaccines for both the badgers and cattle are available; as of 2011, DEFRA have invested around Ā£18 million in the development of badger/cattle bTB vaccines and associated diagnostic tools.
In 15 years, badger culling has failed to “control” the widespread infection of the UK herd by bTB. The infection of the UK cattle herd with bTB appears to be caused by poor farming procedures. It is time that this cruel practice is stopped and replaced with a dual vaccination programme
June 13, 2024
+ 1
June 13, 2024
Has anyone asked the Farmers who suffer the culling of their cattle for a sensible solution. ?
Given Badgers are wild animals and roam at will, I would think it difficult to have a vaccine system that will work, how would you find and record, by Tagging ?
June 13, 2024
@ Berkshire Alan
The NFU want the badgers killed on the basis of flawed science. Cattle live close together in herds and bTB is easily passed between them. The DEFRA test for bTB is not good (remember the poor pet Llama that George Eustace ordered to be shot, but was found to be free of TB on autopsy?) Many infected cattle escape being culled.
Vaccination of cattle is expensive and the NFU want the badgers shot because DEFRA pays for it. The badgers can be vaccinated using bait spread near their setts but the farmers will not pay for it. The solution to the cattle bTB problem is better animal husbandry and a more reliable bTB test
June 13, 2024
Nobody mentioned the coming glut of oil either! I was rather hoping you would šš¤£ prices are already falling.
June 13, 2024
@LA; OPEC will soon wipe that smirk of yours off…
You really think those Middle Eastern countries are going to lower their standard of living if they can at all help it?!
June 13, 2024
Dubai do pretty well without oil or gas. Of course they have 5% income tax regardless of amount and 10% VAT – thatās it in total.
There is a glut of oil predicted in the not to distant future. I sticking to my ICE, hope you have an EV Gerry.
June 14, 2024
@LA; “Dubai do pretty well without oil or gas.”
Lucy, that’s a bit like saying Milton Keynes gets by pretty well without oil and gas…
Dubai us not a country, it is a City within the UAE, oil & gas contribute c. 26% to their overall GDP, without which both income taxes and VAT would likely be far higher.
You do realize that EVs are just as reliant on oil, its just that they do not require certain parts of the refining refraction (petrol or diesel). Enjoy your ICE (In Car Entertainment)! I’ll be sticking to hydrocarbon powered vehicles myself, although I will be dumping any that are reliant in IC’s – you might need to think/research that one, look up “VHI”. š
June 13, 2024
SG,
It is difficult to buy a badger shaving brush in this country now. Kent brush company now use artificial bristles. Previously the badger hair knots were imported from China and just put into the handle in the UK.
If we are culling the creatures anyway, why can we not use the bristles? Silver tip, best and pure were the categories. Not tried the artificial brushes and I don’t intend to start now.
Badger in my garden a couple of months ago. Try to keep them out. They destroy lawns. Worse than foxes, squirrels & cats.
June 13, 2024
+
June 13, 2024
Mrs Gold has drawn my attention to the following information, mostly taken from the Badger Trust’s website. Bovine TB is a complex subject and it is difficult to get at the facts behind the spin.
1) Badgers are not to blame for bTB in cattle
2) The badger cull has made no difference to bTB infections in cattle
3) Science doesnāt support the badger cull as a way to end bTB
4) Over 94% of bovine TB transmission in cattle is cow-to-cow
5) The answer to solving bTB in cattle starts and ends with cattle
6) UK Gov aims to cull between 70% and 90% of badgers in each cull area, but regularly fails to do so
7) Up to 72% of all UK badgers will be killed by 2025
8) Badgers are the scapegoats for a failed government bTB strategy
9) In many areas DEFRA is running out of badgers to kill; however bTB is still present in the cattle
10) The cull is inhumane and causes fear and pain to badgers
11) 99.5% of badgers are killed without animal welfare monitoring
12) Almost 25% of England’s entire land area covered by badger cull zones
13) When tested the vast majority of culled badgers have been bTB free
14) Cattle testing for bTB is unreliable, leaving infected cattle to spread bTB
15) The taxpayer pays most for the badger cull, not the farmers
16) Taxpayer-funded farmer compensation has increased 20% to Ā£34 million
There is too much doubt over the effectiveness of the badger cull to make it’s continuation worthwhile
June 13, 2024
thank you Mrs Gold, don’t bother next time Mr Gold with any more revelations.
June 13, 2024
@SG; For those 16 points of *protest*, most dairy farmers and live stock vets could cite 32 point of contradictory _evidence_.
Kenneth Grahame (1859-1932) has a lot to answer for in my opinion, Badgers are neither cute nor cuddly!
June 13, 2024
in the real world its called sub contracting responsibility but still drawing the full salary
June 13, 2024
Starmer’s Labour will not change the independent bodies for the same reason they are keen on “alignment” with the EU. By devolving power to these bodies they ensure left-wing policies they approve of will be imposed in perpetuity independently of the government of the day. The Conservatives should say they will implement a “bonfire of the QUANGOS”. Oh wait …. they already did … and that turned out to be a lie too (partly because the Civil Service were allowed to impede the policy).
June 13, 2024
Roy Grainger:
Conservatives choked the fire out by growing too many new QUANGOS with green rubbish (aka ācrapā) that add smoke without efficient heat or light.
The recent EU elections pulling to the right will help repel Keir Starmerās attraction to its nonsense, and hopefully the SNPās irrational attitudes with it.
June 13, 2024
“He who pays the piper calls the tune”
Sunak/Hunt, this Conservative Government have the management job and responsibility on our behalf – no one else. That’s why it is their heads on the block and no one else’s. We empower and pay them to do a ‘job’ – if they can’t do that they should walk and let someone with the capabilities take over
June 13, 2024
In other words it is we the people the taxpayer that pays this Conservative Government and empower them to do a job, they have failed at every level so they must go.
These independent bodies are only there and only have the job that this Conservative Government and Ministers give them. So the Independent entities cant be held responsible for the neglect.
In return we grant the Conservative Government the authority to take ‘our’ money to pay for these operations.
People keep forgetting Government do NOT have money just access to theirs
June 13, 2024
I read today of a crisis in cancer treatment. Long delays in getting treatment and a huge shortage of radiology and oncology staff. Mr. Redwood? Iām fed up with your daily blame game. Itās everyoneās elseās fault apart from your governmentās. Well, we rely on our government to run things on our behalf. You canāt do it. Thank heavens you are about to be booted out – hopefully permanently.
June 13, 2024
Mike
Not making excuses for anyone, but think you will find the pandemic had much to do with the original delays, as staff were required elsewhere.
Certainly we know a few people who had Cancer treatment stoped, limited or curtailed due to the pandemic, and the inroads into that lengthening wait is still ongoing.
The other problem is with lack of available staff, as it is rare for patients to get treatment overnight or at weekends.
The machinery is all in place, but not the will of the staff to use them.
I am sure that if I was suffering a wait for treatment I would be prepared to turn up at any time, day night or weekends.
Perhaps staff are not being given enough inducement to work out of hours ?
June 13, 2024
I donāt believe that these appalling things like sewage being poured into rivers happen by accident. They are planned to advance the agenda.
I bet all the sewage shenanigans have something ( a lot) to do with āmaking room for waterā , āsponge citiesā and reed bed ātechnologyā and various other ā solutionsā to wilfully caused problems.
Remember the Somerset Levels?
Reply The main reason we have sewage spills is we have expanded the population without putting in Enough extra pipes
June 13, 2024
There is no “we” in Tory’s or Labour. YOU have encouraged mass immigration and all its problems, defying the will of the English people, so your Party’s must go!!
June 13, 2024
Reply to reply
Yes I agree totally.
But the same people who work frantically against any sensible measures re immigration are busily not pumping water, not doing a Springtime ditch clean out, doing away with weirs, installing reed beds and dreaming of waterless loos.
Timaction
Is that a pun?
June 13, 2024
Sir John was distancing his Party from the Uni Party’s responsibility for mass immigration and all its costs and problems. Housing, education, health, congestion, culture, crime and our feelings and belief in our Nation, England.
Reply I am not representing a party but providing analysis.The Conservative case is freely available on Conservative election websites.
June 13, 2024
they are mostly due to ‘excess ‘ rainfall. Who would have thought it all those years ago that it might rain more?
June 13, 2024
And how many flood plains have been built upon?
June 13, 2024
Once upon a time Ministers of State took responsibility for the departments they ran, the services they controlled, some even resigned when their department messed up, or would at least take direct action, instructing a State owned entity to do things differently, replacing (forcing out) Chairman or mangers if needs-be.
It might have been better had someone advised against creating a need for “dangerous” Independent Agencies, not just suggest that such regulators will need regulating themselves, which is in its-self an admission that the original wider policy had errors (of judgment?) within.
Reply I think you mean Secretaries of State, not Ministers
June 13, 2024
āWho will control these dangerous independent bodies?ā
Well, certainly not the Conservatives. They have used this device, originally devised by the EU to bypass elected national representatives, in order to continue with the Blair/socialist policies whilst pretending the opposite to the electorate to garner their votes.
You have omitted, Sir John, the most dangerous of all, the CCC, who are tasked with destroying the countryās wealth, social cohesion and finally democracy by sabotaging our access to cheap, abundant and reliable energy and replacing it with third world very expensive and chaotic intermittency. De-industrialisation and electrification will make us both economically and militarily insecure.
There is no climate emergency caused by increasing atmospheric CO2 by burning hydrocarbon fuels even if the UN Sec Gen says that we are now in an era of āglobal boilingā. The IPCC WG1 calculates only 1.2 degrees C of warming for a doubling of CO2 (P95) with Happer & Wijngaarden calculating 0.7 degrees C.
BTW I see that New Zealand has sensibly reversed its ban on new oil and gas exploration.
June 13, 2024
PS : There are 5 powerful groups, often intertwined, pushing the fake climate crisis and the Net Zero āsolution” :
1) The UN to give a reason for a world government to combat a common existential threat.
2) Communists to impoverish the West, whose success is an embarrassment, and to cause de-industrialisation and social disharmony to enable a take-over.
3) Extremely wealthy elites who want to own even more and are upset with so many people having stuff, enjoying themselves and flying around the world on holidays. They prefer a feudal system where no-one leaves their village and hence the idea for 15 minute cities.
4) Energy grifters.
5) Doomsday cultists and Malthusians.And there are always the āuseful idiotsā as coined by Stalin.
June 13, 2024
As Mr Trump says, clear the swamp
June 13, 2024
kenneth – Yes our swamp is just as deep as the US. Plus cut the BS regulationsand those that implement them as jointly they stifle independent thinking and progress. Many spend more time discussing /debating why you cannot do something rather than just doing it.
June 13, 2024
Reply to reply.
You make a good point. It is one thing to offer advice to an MP who is one of 650 and belongs to a party in nominal power. In making points to one of 68,000,000 I may as well offer the same to my next door neighbour.
As for the misnamed Conservative government, they may have listened, but in reality did nothing. We are still dependant on overseas power sources at whatever the war and political influences may be, and at prices to the end user that are three times those in the USA. We have vast resources under our seas, land, and around the Falkland Islands, from which your government runs scared, however good your advice.
Any advice on migration is yet to bare results. Who in a logical state of mind calls an election on the 4th of July stating that deportation flights start at the end of that month, when the overwhelmingly forecast winner has vowed to cancel the lot. They were not listening to you.
Anyone phoneing HMRC can advise that public sector productivity and service is at an all time low. We want the situation rectified, not advised on or talked about.
I accept your sincerity and an honest wish to change matters, but failure to do so from a seat in the Commons is not likely to be surpassed by a lone voice from Wokingham.
I further assume that continuation of this diary has a purpose, and you want a thermometer within the electorate. If the opinions your receive are not to your liking so be it. The current arrows are directed at government, not a lone voice from Wokingham that most of the time I agree with.
Reply The aim is not to be a lone voice. My voice can still be heard without the MP job
June 13, 2024
Loud and clear JR, and Iām saving up for a loud hailer – I can give you that now you are no longer an MP.
June 13, 2024
Sir John, you describe the issue succinctly, it is a classic reflection of the old adage, delegation is easy maintaining control is the hard part.
Clearly government is forced into relying on those it delegates responsibilities to and must find effective methods of controlling those agents.
My simple observation is this.
Count how many of the ‘agents the government has fired for incompetence, then compare that number to how many have been given permanent privilege positions such as a seat in the HoL.
I do not know of a single high profile failed public body executive that has been fired? I could name endless ones that left their roles in disgrace and been allowed to adopt early gold plated retirement benefits. Many even allowed ongoing employment roles in the public sector. ( named e,g, given)
June 13, 2024
What you describe John is simple and basic management responsibility and practice, for goodness sake is no supervision or the setting of targets, both productive and financial, being carried out at all on these quango’s
Seems like most of them are now just swanning around at home and spending taxpayers money like its going out of fashion before it does.
Shameful neglect by the Government of the day, which has I guess been going on for decades given it seems so entrenched.
This is the problem with electing Wannabe politicians who have no actual business, commercial, financial, man management skills or common sense.
June 13, 2024
From the media
Rishi Sunak pleads with voters to ‘find it in their hearts’ to forgive him. Then from the same source donāt give labour a massive majority.
Labour has Rishi to thank for getting it into power it is and will be nothing that the Labour Party or Starmer what they have has done or said that could have achieve that. It will not be the likes of Reform that lets Labour into office. It will be the Hard Left Socialist cabal that entered this Conservative Government and the CCHQ. They have single handedly excluded all middle ground thinking and people from all the entities they control. Above all it is the cumulation of 14 years of promises turned into lies that have got ramped up further since 2019.
The Country and its People, so-called middle England, has been let down by this left wing movement towards WEF Socialism.
June 13, 2024
So ministers and Parliament are failing miserably to put any controls in place to make sure the quango they created actually do their job. This is something that should have been very much of the construction phase for creating new bodies, but it seems nobody thought that far, somehow expecting quangos to be self regulating.
More sloping of shoulders from ministers who should have known from experience with the UN and other international bodies, that they only perform as well as they are policed and kept in check.
So now that the problem has been recognized, will we see action from ministers in making the quango elite responsible and accountable?
June 13, 2024
I think government rather likes Independent Bodies because it enables them to offload difficult decisions. Interestingly, the Independent Bodies donāt seem to take responsibility for their particular areas of āexpertiseā either, so the whole arrangement is blame free.
āThe Scienceā comes from Independent Bodies and is used to shutdown debate, stifle democracy and undermine true science.
June 13, 2024
Youāve just described modern government in a nutshell there.
June 13, 2024
Everything in this country is worse because of immigration. Stop and reverse immigration and things will get better.
Your party of watsers have been in power for 14 wasted years, and have actually connived with scum Labour in furthering the Blair treachery.
Tories are not educationally equipped to run a country, coming as they mostly do, from schools such as Oxford, Eton and Cambridge.
There is absolutely no hope in UK, other than that voting Reform in sufficient nunbers, might make a start on cleaning up this country.
June 13, 2024
As usual I entirely agree with Sir John’s post today . I wish he had and could continue to have more influence .
June 13, 2024
The quangos, civil service and local government are all expensive, dangerous and out of control .. so what do you suggest is done?
As a tax payer and voter I have zero choice or influence.
I complained to my local councilors about the Wokingham plan to establish a company operating a solar farm. All I got back from only 1 of the 3 councilors was waffle and bullshit defending the council. Zero recognition of my concerns and certainly no intention to raise them at the upcoming meeting.
All we have are arrogant, ignorant and greedy placemen – Democracy died a long time ago.
June 13, 2024
What bodies are responsible for the dulling of our skies? Are they independent of the government or is the government doing as they demand? It is probably the same setup as brought us the great vaccination. If the main substance being spewed out is aluminium oxide, that will not increase the population’s mental acuity.
I would like clear skies for the next three weeks.
June 13, 2024
It almost always seems to be like this, 11.30 a.m.
https://www.windy.com/-Satellite-satellite?satellite,53.527,-2.461,4
June 13, 2024
What’s the point of that wind map?
June 13, 2024
Labour broadcasting manifesto but I’m having difficulty with their flag. If it represents the bottom left corner then it is the reverse side. Says everything.
June 13, 2024
Or perhaps upside down!
June 13, 2024
And at moment we need more Tory MPs with real business-like experience to oversee it all.
The likes of Penny Mordaunt, being mooted as next leader, is hardly a woman with real business experience ..
So we have to have like a proper big business meeting in next Tory Conference about how to TRY and attract higher quality Tory MPs.
June 13, 2024
And until that happens (and discuss how to fight the cultural war against WOKE / socialism which is destroying Conservative cultural parties and the Tory Party) then the Tory Conference to me is nothing more than a Dad’s Army Tea Party.
June 13, 2024
ED M
You will only get the big Re-Set when the people at the top of the Party are OUT, if they are not removed and replaced with Proper Conservative thinkers, then they will still attract and nominate the One Nation Wannerbees.
June 13, 2024
I don’t know how to attract higher quality Tory MPs. But we have to TRY and figure out like in business.
June 13, 2024
Perhaps if if we had a rule that only if you lived in a constituency for 5 years you could stand for Parliament may help, certainly it would stop the parachuting in of centralist wannabes.
At least the Local people would perhaps know something about a candidates past if they had lived in the area for 5 plus years.
June 13, 2024
Ed, who’s “we”? I can assure you I won’t be there.
And it could probaby be held in a telephone kiosk, the way things are going.
June 13, 2024
@Bill,
Change for the better is possible. I’m optimistic there.
June 13, 2024
Sunak was said to have real business experience and look what he has managed to bugger up!
Interest and actions seems to be merely to increase forunes of those who are already wealthy.
June 13, 2024
fortunes
June 13, 2024
I think you need business experience + genuine sense of SERVICE (‘with duty comes privilege’). Sooo many people used to think like that 50+ odd years ago. No doubt some / many today might think me quaint .. but it is possible to reverse things. Have to try at least.
June 13, 2024
MT
Sunak is supposed to have a finance background ,
Not sure about his commercial business experience, his Father in Law certainly has that though.
June 13, 2024
Exactly ! Nail on head. We are NOT the Eurozone.
The UK, which issues its own currency, doesnāt need to collect taxes or borrow to fund spending. Instead, the government credits bank accounts with payments, which causes taxation to happen as the money moves from hand to hand over time ā like a stone skipping across a pond.
Mathematically, the total tax take is a geometric series, not a simple sum. In the UK, it will always be about 90% of whatever the government spends, largely regardless of the tax rates. (The other 10% is money people have decided to save, not spend.). Then some people move those savings into gilt edge saving certificates, Gilts. What in Orwellian language is called the debt.
The constraints on all of that, is as John says, our skills and real resources and productive capacity of the economy. That’s what politics should be all about. In 2024 and after Brexit that is what the political debate should have been.
What are our skills and real resources currently doing, what could they be doing, how do we carry out a transition without causing job losses and increase our productivity at the same time etc, etc, etc.
Alas, for 40 years, we can’t get passed the ” How are you going to pay for it ” , ” Is it fully costed ” myths. As if we use the Euro. Pushed by other unelected bodies.
We have handed these decisions to groups who love nothing more than stealing skills from abroad as soon as our own workers get a bit of pricing power. Leaving these other countries poorer. When what we should have are solid plans in place to train out own people to match the plan you have for the economy. After we have decided what we want our skills and real resources to be doing. Making sure any jobs lost via the transition or productivity improvements are transitioned back into the private sector as quickly as possible. The best way to do that is introduce a locally managed Job Guarantee rather than paying out unemployment benefit. That keeps local people working and makes it easier for these people to transition them back into the private sector. Rather than sitting idle and all local problems that causes.
June 13, 2024
Really interesting comment
June 13, 2024
Is it not possible to call upon experienced and knowledgeable experts within the respective Private Sector Industries to aid Ministers? They may even do it FoC if it were to improve the lot of the citizens of this once great Country and failing that, there’s always the carrot of a gong for their services.
If one can be knighted for doing their job as a actor or as a civil servant, why not one for the CEO who stops the above referenced flooding, et al?
Reply I have plenty of business experience and gave them plenty of good advice. The civil service usually sought to ignore or counter it and various Ministers did not succeed in getting things done
June 14, 2024
I know something of your background, SJ and believe you would have tried very hard to introduce Private Sector practices. Yourself, like many other Thatcherites, have always know the value of the Private Sector but have been blocked by the antiquated vagaries of the 20th Century Civil Servants who still believe they really do know what is best for the rest of us. Their “orders” are clear to see when we have weak leadership in Downing Street and major Government departments.
Until a real leader comes along and savagely cuts the assumed power of the Civil Service, our country will continue to live in the past and remain stuck in the heydays of the late “Sir Humphrey”.
And there’s another niggle. Why do retiring Mandarins gain a knighthood for just doing the job they’re paid to do? Why not knight coalminers or all those medics who save lives on a daily basis, for the same reason?
June 13, 2024
G7 starting today ā¦.first agenda ā deciding whoās going to win the UK election and how they should financially & socially manage the country
June 13, 2024
That’s already decided. Paddy Power odds on Labour victory – 1/40. Put Ā£100 on, win Ā£2.50. Easiest and most certain 2.5% increase in your money you’ll ever get.
June 13, 2024
are there odds for >400 majority – I could be interested in a small wager.
June 13, 2024
Some truth in that
June 13, 2024
Such a shame more of us were not aware of the date of the election. Great odds! Easy money – criminal – as usual.
June 13, 2024
Of course the biggest quangos are the devolved parliaments and the ever increasing Mayors and their armies of staff inflicted on us by this fake Tory Government against our will. How many billions of taxpayers money is being thrown at these little Hitlers and their fiefdoms. I see England hating Brown has shown his ugly face and intends to give the devolved parliaments even more powers but of course nothing for England except a continuation of its balkanisation. The Tories have done absolutely nothing to address the rotten deal England gets both constitutionally and financially. Even the sop that was EVEL was too good for us it seems. For that alone, they should never be forgiven. At least Reform acknowledge the WLQ and the Barnett Formula are totally unfair to England. Something the England hating main parties refuse to do.
June 13, 2024
John,
Why didn’t your government with a massive majority put leaders into these organisations who were ‘right-wing’ thinking instead of staying with people that are now running for labour parliamentary roles?
Why weren’t any of the bosses from these organisations forced into the studios with the Ministers for interviews?
They have walked your government up a dead-end road.
June 13, 2024
a tracy – the government do what they are told by the Globalist Establisment. they are ALL puppets.
June 13, 2024
There was obviously a coup some years ago. A soft coup , the old boiling frog analogy
June 14, 2024
Yes and Farage’s job is to ensure Labour’s majority and a change in the UK. He isn’t there to win.
June 13, 2024
Because people capable of controlling the rampant, unaccountable left are few and far between. Sir James McKinnon springs to mind. Tough, acerbic and sharp – from Glasgow. A true Conservative. He scared the pants off them šš¤£
June 14, 2024
How do we get John, if he’s willing, into one of these controlling roles?
June 13, 2024
The net zero brainwashing is so complete and so effective that nobody is going to present themselves to a Tory Party selection committee and say they are not fully woke on the net zero front. And that they believe we need high immigration to ‘fill the jobs’. How people expect some half-wit with a PPE degree to have the ability to control a department and run the country is beyond comprehension.
And now? We’re about to get something even worse. Even worse! Is that even possible. Yes it is.
How can you throw away an 80 seat majority in just 5 short years. I wonder how much the redundancy payments will add up to for the hundreds of Tory MPs about to lose their jobs. Still, we’re a rich country, apparently. We can afford it.
June 13, 2024
Ooh, and the gold plated, inflation proofed, ‘who cares how much they cost the public purse’, super pensions for MPs. It’s only right that they get a great package and pension for their ‘service’. Must stop, I’m choking.
June 13, 2024
MW – And there are 650 of them plus the others
June 13, 2024
Please remind me, how did Sunak end up as PM. I can’t remember there was so much musical chairs going on.
Looking at how he is performing now (no Sky TV when I grew up! boo-hoo), any MP that voted him to be PM should now be made to walk the plank and be deselected.
June 13, 2024
The 1922 decided to stage a coup, so altered the leadership election rules, de-franchising the entire Party Membership and engineering a majority in the PCP to whoosh Sunak into unelected office.
June 13, 2024
Sky didn’t exist when he was 8, and only had 1m subscribers when he was 11.
He left Stroud school at 12, went to Winchester College (public school)….I don’t suppose a lot of ‘poor’ boys ‘who went without’ rubbed shoulders with young Rishi?
Anyway he is keen to tell us that he is one of us.
June 13, 2024
MT
Brilliant answer, why has nobody else (all those reporters on high salaries) make this public ?
June 14, 2024
He should have just said, I missed the things that money can’t buy such as time with my parents as they were both so busy building their small businesses and earn enough to pay for the education they wanted for me from free choice that we should all support in the UK, because the other road is to take what we’re allotted by power and position.
June 13, 2024
I seem to recall that Sir JR is on the side of the angels here:
The whole argument in favour of taking decisions out of the hands of ministers and departments, and giving those powers to unelected quangos, ‘hands-off’ ALMOs, and deputed managements – always of subsidised state enterprises such as the NHS, the railways or regulators for products we all have to use – always seems mistaken to me. We – consumers and taxpayers – end up paying for their mistakes, mismanagement, laziness, incompetence or political skewing.
For example, NHS England pretends to manage the NHS – but their managers always end up wanting to pay striking unions more. In many cases, I surmise, the managers will have BUPA memberships as part of their package, or just pay for private healthcare. And as in many industries, management ends up hand in glove with unions. We, the taxpayers end up paying more either directly through higher taxes, or down the line, through economic underperformance as we sink beneath the accrued pile of government borrowing.
Much the same is true for the railways. Are railway bosses forced to use the railways? Or if the rail strikes prevent them, do they simply phone in and say they have to wfh? (A luxury many of us running real businesses do not have.) Regulators – if my experience is typical – are lamentably under-educated and woke/Stonewall-indoctrinated to the extent of losing any sense of judgement.
‘Ministers decide’ – but they don’t any more. Pay them more, get real industrialists in to do those jobs, break up all the industries (health, transport, tutti frutti), and sack the echelons of civil servants and quango-queens and ineffective regulators.
June 13, 2024
Mancunius – NAME a minister who really knows what his her department is all about? There are NONE. They are all career politicians, totally USELESS.
June 14, 2024
What do you think of Kemi? Alex Chalk? David TC Davies, Johnny Mercer (or don’t you think he knows about Veterens’ Affairs)?
June 13, 2024
For the third day in June Iāve had to wear a jumper and raincoat while outside, there isnāt any climate crisis or global warming ā¦..please disband the quango known as the Climate Change Committee
June 13, 2024
GC -you forgot to mention the NET ZERO Crap that JR has a fixation about.
June 13, 2024
I commented where I travel to today (on 2 trains to the place I volunteer at) ‘that several mid Junes in recent years meant I travelled in shirtsleeves, no jacket, no umbrella.
Brrrr.
June 13, 2024
The globalists know that the western people know that now. They are quietly ditching āclimate Changeā and opting for another āpandemicā as a control mechanism. I think they will be disappointed.
June 13, 2024
Great – wall to wall Euro Cup football starting tomorrow – no more Sunak or Starmer stuff and no more Farage or Reform – am sick of it all