Most of what a Minister says in the Commons has been scripted by officials. Even the few Ministers who insist on writing their own texts as I did would always get it checked by officials, as what a Ministers says has to reflect what the department has done and is doing as well as the Minister’s interpretation of government policy.
Departments are large and employ many senior people who have some powers to make decisions and make statements to individuals and companies coming into contact with their department. Any one of these contacts can miscarry. The Minister has to accept the blame and handle the fall out when official conduct of business causes a national outcry or a media storm. Officials of course have to operate within the policy framework laid down by Ministers, but the framework allows for flex and officials are good at selective enforcement of the policies depending on their own enthusiasm level for what the government is trying to do.
When I first became a Minister I was asked a question about what the Business department knew about a company that was behaving badly. The officials drafted the reply as of course it all related to a time before I was a Minister. The reply stated clearly the department had had no contact with or knowledge of the miscreant company. Realising the importance of this answer I invited the relevant officials to a meeting and stressed the importance of this being accurate, as it was a convenient response for the Department. They confirmed they had checked files and there were no complaints/ reports/queries. Shortly after I had published this written answer I was sent a memo by a different official telling me I had given a wrong answer as he had a file and contacts with the company which the officials answering had not known about! It meant I put myself on a crash course into the inadequacies of central filing in the department, whilst apologising fully and promptly for the mistake to the Shadow Minister who had rightly asked the question.
The employment of a lot of officials with a general education not relevant to the specialist area they are handling, coupled with rapid changes of job and personnel drives officials when drafting for Ministers to ambiguity, vagueness or generality away from specific, data driven replies. These are “safer” and easier to write. A Minister supervising replies to Parliamentary Questions needs to insist on a proper answer with relevant and factual back up and data.
The issue over whether the former PM misled the House over gatherings in Downing Street raises important issues about the interplay of officials and Ministers. The gatherings in question were organised by officials who sent out invites, arranged any food and drink and attended themselves. In Downing Street they did so under the eyes of very senior officials who also came to some of these events. Several of the events were not attended by any Minister, and others were subject to the Prime Minister dropping in briefly. Presumably the officials thought these happenings were within the rules, as part of the permissions within a workplace between colleagues. Clearly no senior official intervened to stop them or to alert the Prime Minister to their possible illegality. They would have to brief the Prime Minister for subsequent questions about their conduct that nothing had occurred that broke the law.
The civil service is understandably defensive. In a democracy it has to deal with many false allegations about its services from people who are angry the policy does not help them or with the decisions made. Ministers need to help- sift the complaints and make sure the ones that are true are followed up with suitable remedies and apologies.
June 18, 2023
It is clear that the Civil Service needs fundamental reform
June 18, 2023
No. It needs culling.
June 18, 2023
Profumo was the biggest lie, 60 years ago.
The absence of comments for a few days must have been a small relief for Sir John Redwood – especially around his birthday.
Now itâs back to normal with the usual complaints and whinging from most posters, myself included.
It is feedback from those who do comment I suppose but it must be rather depressing.
June 18, 2023
David, reform yes. Also feels they need reminding on their responsibilities for political neutrality.
Sir J’s comments on the lockdown parties is telling. The implication is that the majority of attendees at No 10 gatherings were civil servants. If so, for the Priviliges Committee to find Boris lied to parliament about these sojourns I’d think they need evidence that Boris was told the events were happening and were unsuitable. In the 30,000 word 100 page report it appears no such evidence is recorded. The Committee found him guilty becasue he ‘must have know’. This isn’t evidence that would stand up in a legal test. It is opinion.
June 18, 2023
Quite right Pete. One of Boris’s strongest points is that not only did he not think he was breaking the rules, but neither did anyone else, including the then Chancellor [who has now benefited from the traducing of the then PM].
June 18, 2023
Of course it is evidence that would stand up in a legal test. It is EXACTLY how law operates. No one can see inside a personâs head, but you look at what they did and said, and draw inferences. Johnson attended multiple parties, had no documented assurances the parties were legal (they werenât), and joked (!) about how they were âsocially undistancedâ. And then told Parliament repeatedly no rules were broken
June 18, 2023
Ken, Boris is a buffoon.
That said, I can see him joining the dots in his under-fives fashion: 1) These people have been working together face to face all day long, 2) It’s Billy’s birthday, 3) Let’s share some cake and raise a toast to keep morale up. Boris thinks… not a social event but a motivating pep talk from the hallowed leader. With this mindset he would have believed he did nothing wrong.
Priviliges Committee needed to prove he didn’t believe this, not prove the events themselves were in breach of rules and state he should have known.
Also, not sure how it is different from Kier’s beer and curry session after a day of mixing with strangers in Durham?
June 18, 2023
PeteB â
I have never seen Boris joking about rules being broken by him or in his presence Ken please send me the link to that video. I thought the people âjokingâ about that were the Shaun Bailey London team and they got punished for that and he got removed as candidate didnât he?
Boris is claiming he didnât believe it was a âpartyâ. People working indoors in teams during covid had team meetings, wished each other well when people left or it was their birthday. Let me tell you we thought we were doing a good public service working whilst the vast majority were at home relaxing in the sunshine in that first couple of months. Unlike no.10 because I was in charge of H&S we followed the rules, with tape on the floor to keep our distances, we even moved the person near the photocopier so people didnât walk near him. Where were Jenkins, Harmen and the others on that committee working during the period under review?
June 18, 2023
I have no problem with the staff of No 10 and even the PM relaxing in what must have been a high pressure environment. However, the fact that they needed to do so should have alerted them to the unacceptable draconian policy they were party to, and should have seen them think again. That they failed to do so to my mind is the real crime.
June 18, 2023
In June 2020 the majority were still at home not working in offices. Many of them other than the business owners, the small business owners and the people losing a lot of money personally were very happy to take the coin to do nothing. What people forget is that for those people to stay at home entertained and fed and kept safe it left a small % of people working and mixing and having to take risks with their lives (as we thought at the time). This feigned hurt by civil servants in the main is frankly unbelievable.
June 18, 2023
Civil servants attended illegal gatherings. My understanding is that, like Johnson, they were among the 123 people who paid a fixed penalty, as mentioned by Littlejohn in today’s Mail. Did they knowingly break the law? If in good faith they believed workplace gatherings were within the law, so might Johnson have done. For example, a civil servants leaving party at No 10 in June 2020 was attended by the government’s former Director of Propriety and Ethics, Helen MacNamara. If I was the prime minister, and saw a person who until three months earlier had stood for ‘propriety and ethics’ attending a gathering during lockdown, I would assume she was doing nothing wrong.
June 18, 2023
It is clear the WHOLE of government needs reform. The lowly general public were expected to understand and follow covid rules, so what level of intelligence in certain government officials? They are NOT stupid. It’s the usual double standards and the plebs get the least care and consideration while being made to suffer the most restrictive rules.
On reflection, maybe Boris needed an honest adviser to accompany him 24/7, to balance out his low moral character.
June 18, 2023
Whilst I am with you, I do wish we all would in for more direct speech. We do need reform, but we need wholesale sackings in tbe government civil service first. We must demand it, daily, until we get it as we will never get our host to say anything so direct.
June 18, 2023
Well as he has a low moral character Shirley and is one of those people who like to be liked by the people working with him, then the Health & Safety officer in Downing Street (who are they and how much do they earn to follow H&S rules?), the Senior Management team (did they have a meeting to discuss 1m-2m distance rules, Perspex screens, hand gel stations, any other purchases i.e. tape to ensure compliance of the busy people in that building?), Did the report detail any of that or just concentrate on trying to line Boris up against the wall? HR staff leaders ALL of them in there appear to be âStupid enoughâ not to follow the indoor working rules they asked the rest of businesses that were open to follow.
June 18, 2023
The police only went to gatherings where neighbours had shopped neighbours. They were not on the lookout for parties. Unlike parks and dog walks
Anyone who stuck to the rules was a fool.
June 18, 2023
NS, the reason I stuck to the rules at work is vicarious liability, corporate manslaughter and the H&S regulations. There is always a âKarenâ in the workplace that points out to the big boss if someone isnât doing something right, where was the âKarenâ or âKevinâ in number 10 e-mailing Boris to say we are breaching the 1m – 2m rule, a work meeting doesnât include a morale meeting we shouldnât be having them we should be wearing hair shirts and just getting on with it. I bought cakes for everyone every month to say thanks but we had individual wrapped cakes and sandwiches to help the local baker out as our estate manager asked us to. We didnât break the 2m rule but I did give thank youâs to my team. I was very grateful they just got on with the job whilst all their families were sat at home on furlough enjoying the sunshine.
June 18, 2023
I’m sorry but Johnson’s behaviour can’t be excused-away by claiming that Civil Servants weren’t specialists or have a (deliberately?) malfunctioning filing system …. although both of those things are correct in other circumstances.
Johnson (plus Handcock, Cummings, Ferguson and no doubt others) knew, or should have known, full well what the Regulations and guidance were.
No MP who voted on the suspension of our Civil and Human Rights has any excuse for breaking the rules they supposedly scrutinised and in the vast majority of cases, supported.
The Civil Service does need fundamental reform. And that’s what Cummings intended doing – until Johnson disposed of him in favour of pandering to the Eco agenda of his latest squeeze. He has no-one to blame but himself.
June 18, 2023
Too true!
June 18, 2023
Donna, it seems to me the people working in Downing St were not social distancing at all, not just at this Birthday lunch and it became custom and practice. Were all these staff tested on a daily basis right from the start (which I would assume so as DC knew he had covid early on) and thats why they were blasé thinking that testing would protect them, did they take vaccines earlier than the rest of us?
If I were on the committee checking up on them thatâs what I want to know, did the H&S officer write to them all to remind them of mind-the-gaps, did they say no food and drink to be shared, did they lay out tape on the floor and buy in Perspex thats the responsibility they put on other businesses, it was me not the other directors who read up on all the rules and it was my job to make the other Directors aware in meetings and in memorandum. I was on kittens and if I had spotted an infraction I would have told them immediately and e-mailed them re-stating the rules so it didnât happen again, especially in the early stages when I thought someone could potentially die if rules werenât followed and if someone had caught it and died I could be sued for corporate manslaughter if it turned out in an investigation Iâd been blase about rules.
Boris didnât write all the rules, he may have signed off on all the thousands of pieces of advice and legislation but one man wasnât responsible for the whole kit and caboodle, thats why you pay experts and that is why in a company one or two people are ultimately responsible for H&S and itâs not always the CEO. Boris surrounded himself with the wrong people he needed someone like Sir John at his side to watch his back and keep him ethical and leading from the front that he didnât do this was his biggest failure. I honestly donât think the thought that happy birthday lunch was a âpartyâ I think Borisâ âpartiesâ are much more lively than that. So when asked did you attend a âpartyâ both him and Mr Sensible uptight Sunak both said they didnât believe there had been a party.
June 18, 2023
Agreed, Donna. I would be interested in hearing if ANY civil servants were given fines or reprimands or are all their mistakes the fault of others, just like their then PM?
June 18, 2023
Allegra Stratton? The PMâs âspokeswomanâ remember the clip of her laughing at the law-abiding?
June 20, 2023
SM, A total of 126 FPNs were given by the Metropolitan Police to a total of 83 people on 19 May 2022, including 35 men and 48 women, many of them junior public servants.
This appeared in the news on or after 19/05/2022 eg. guardian âCivil servants and No.10 advisers furious over single fine for Boris Johnsonâ.
June 18, 2023
No MP should have voted to suspend our civil rights. Then they would not have become hypocrites, and would have been more open to sensible policies.
June 18, 2023
Mark, werenât you watching the NHS managers, their unions saying people were going to kill NHS workers unless we stayed at home, they didnât want us doing sports because sports risk injuries and hospital visits. All the things that lead to hospital visits were culled so as not to overwhelm the NHS. In the future if people wonât support lockdowns then donât expect a hospital service because it was those people who forced us to be locked down, more so than Boris who actually wanted to try to keep things edging along until the Easter break circuit breaker. Planes should have been stopped, people should have faced quarantine after returning from holiday there were lots of more appropriate circuit brakes that should have been applied that werenât. Thats what we should have been analysing just who were the patients requiring NHS treatment and how did they catch CV19.
June 18, 2023
But only Reform would do it.
June 18, 2023
Hopefully AGRICOLA! I also believed the whole imprisonment of the population was wrong and and therefore ignored it all. Thank goodness I refused the jab as well, people of my age group ( late 70,s) are now suffering from incurable infections as their immune systems are destroyed.
Then Reform UK can destroy the BLOB as well!
June 18, 2023
Hopefully AGRICOLA! We need REFORM UK to destroy the blob as well.
I do hope they are true, honest and have the guts to keep their word
June 18, 2023
As many others have said …. they would have to be really, REALLY bad to be worse than the current main parties. No doubt the election, or re-election, of either main party would consider that to be full permission from the electorate for them to continue destroying our country.
June 18, 2023
David⊠left hand not knowing what the right is doing comes to mind ie. too many of them?
Plus, it all begs the question, why the dickens did we need the rules of lockdowns in the first place? It would have caused a lot less hassle in so many ways, if people had been allowed to use their own discretion!
Also, Martin Daubney said that several journalists informed him that on the daily PM update, had the camera been turned 180* – it would have shown up dozens of staff – in a huddle, unmasked. More proof that government wasnât unduly worried by Covid.
June 18, 2023
Not everyone remembers the history of mask wearing during the pandemic. To begin with, the Chinese had bought up the whole world’s supplies and we couldn’t get them. Nor could the Americans or the Turks who made them. [German doctors and dentists, who went on practising throughout the pandemic, had to supply their own PPE.]
Whitty told us masks were not suitable for the public to use, for obvious reasons of hygiene. Drakeford seems to have taken this to heart because in the summer of 2020 in Wales they still weren’t wearing masks, even when they were available. England had been gradually eased into them, first on the ground that it would make people feel safer to go out and about. Then they became more quasi obligatory, in trains and buses, and in hosptitals and doctors’ surgeries, though not, as I remember, legally enforced. Drakeford, meanwhile, only finally put his population into masks when they eased up in England, to enforce a difference. You can see how they became so political in America.
June 18, 2023
PS you may remember the then PM did not for a while wear a mask except in hospitals. One of the sinister “nudge unit” has since boasted about how they got him into one. Chilling.
June 18, 2023
And there was no reason to be.
It was the population and the media who were scared of Covid. Government just gave them what they wanted.
And didn’t the middle classes just lap it up
June 18, 2023
Very clear indeed. First reform needed is fire about 75% of them (the ones that do nothing useful) and reform their gold pensions schemes so they so do not get so much more than the 80% in the private sector who end up footing the bills for all this.
Rod Liddle today is surely right “Lockdowns are useless. But you wonât hear that from the inquiry”
Indeed but lockdown were far worse than useless they were totally (and predictably) counterproductive in health (physical and mental) terms and also in economic terms (which also affects health even further). But the vaccine programme has clearly done far more net harm still. Excess death still circa 200 a day and showing little sign of much decline. Surely it was criminal negligence to coerce them onto children.
The ÂŁ multimillion Covid inquiry show every sign that it going to be a very expensive sick joke.
June 18, 2023
Truth is everyoneâs most faithful friend.
Disreputable slugs who try to break that loyalty leave a shining path to expose the origin of their treachery.
June 18, 2023
Good quote.
June 18, 2023
Good morning.
Whilst I do not disagree with the fact above, I do disagree that it should be so. Civil Serpents need to know that, they too must be held account and made responsible for their mistakes. If this were to happen I am sure we would get a better service. Just saying.
No one really cares about whether or not some silly rules were broken. Sir Keir Starmer MP broke the rules if I remember correctly and I am sure a good few others too. But it is not the breaking of said rules by the people who created them in the first place that gets my ire, but the creation of them and the events leading up to them for, if both the government and parliament had their jobs and scrutinized all the relevant information, and had government not used the powers of the State (the army spying on its own citizens and colluding with social media to shutdown legitimate websites and silence opposition to lockdowns and the jab) to impose draconian measures on its own people. Measure that, if I remember, appeared miraculously out of thin air.
This ‘displacement activity’ that we are seeing will not wash. Certainly not with me. We had, for a brief moment in time, to live an experience only those living behind the Iron Curtain and Nazi Germany would recognize. Armed Police at train stations. Neighbours being encouraged to inform on others. The wearing of with either badges or masks, reminiscent of Jews and yellow Stars of David. The gleeful banging of posts and pans every Thursday evening. To me the whole world seem to have gone totally mad.
This isn’t about a bit of cake. This is about what we became. You, parliament, put us in the hands of a latter day Nero on an ego trip and simply walked away. You should have gotten rid of the monster there and then, not after it has wrecked havoc on our lives. The fact that you are only doing it now is because you all want to distance yourselves from it all.
A plague on all your houses.
June 18, 2023
Correct, it was never about cake; Al Capone wasn’t convicted of murder or mobster activity but tax fraud.
However, it is now beyond comprehension why so many still want Bunter back, with his now known defects and general incompetency for the job.
June 18, 2023
PW, I think it speaks volumes about the general intelligence and knowledge of the electorate, the people who will be voting at the next general election.
We are probably going to get useless Labour and Lib/Dem, so perhaps we will get PR and maybe a closer association with the EU. Maybe we will get free movement back. England as a country is finished.
June 18, 2023
I don’t think Euostar comes inside your 15 minute limit. Flying will be for the new Chancellor as she heads to the IMF begging for a loan.
June 18, 2023
The TV watching Electorate want a no-brain engagement, just slapstick. And they got it.
June 18, 2023
It is not so much that they want him back as that they are acutely aware of a very great and continuing injustice being done, not just to him but to the electorate, and by a tiny number of people who should not be allowed to get away with it but probably will.
June 18, 2023
Rose âïž
June 19, 2023
Mr Warburton is now speaking out for the first time. He says he resigned his seat in order to be able to speak out. A shocking thing for an MP to say. An MP used to be able to say more than the rest of us. He seems to have undergone a similar injustice to Paterson and Boris – not allowed the usual rights in a case like calling witnesses, cross examining witnesses, knowing who the anonymous denouncers are, etc. And he was intimidated into silence, not allowed to criticise the kangaroo (wallaby, he called it) process, and not allowed to set foot in Parliament. In other words rendered defenceless.
June 18, 2023
PW I see he is starting to comb his hair again gone to the barbers I suppose and has shirt tucked in – but too late – people have been told too many porkies.
June 18, 2023
Mark B
Good comment.
June 18, 2023
I canât work out why the ârelevant officialsâ didnât inform JR that there were even more relevant ones who remained unasked.
June 18, 2023
I am in no doubt that the civil servants who organized (some) of the parties knew that they were breaking the rules, but correctly assumed that the virus was unaware of the time, and if it had not infected them during working hours probably would not infect them an hour later.
No Prime Minister who announces variants of ârulesâ enforced as âlawsâ should require a junior civil servant to interpret the rule for him. âNo more than 4â is pretty simple to understand. â6 feet apartâ even Imperial College should comprehend.
Boris Johnson lied in his teeth. Repeatedly. He ignored his own ârulesâ and imposed horrors on the rest of us. He deserves to be cast into oblivion – what is that these days? The House of âLordsâ?
June 18, 2023
Lockdown Sceptics have a link to Th Sun newspaper of a civil service party where people were dancing and behaving like one does at a party. But one can be heard saying that they were breaking the rules a bit, and they hoped they werenât being filmed!
Again, I repeat. These draconian rules should never have been put in place!
June 18, 2023
There were slightly different rules in the workplace Lynn so that businesses could remain open, the use of Perspex screens etc ie. In supermarkets but people were still walking around restocking shelves. âThe risk of transmission is small at 2m and where possible, you should maintain 2m distance. If it is not possible to keep 2m distance, reduce the risk to yourself and others at 1m by taking suitable precautions.â
In a workplace you couldnât always restrict yourself to four in a room especially large open plan rooms. When it first started we were doing temperature tests on entry into the workplace, hand gel, if temperatures were high sent to a testing centre. It is the H&S managers job to get all people including seniors to follow the rules.
I want to be clear Iâm trying to be a Boris cheerleader, but I also strongly donât believe in witch hunts, I read the Crucible and the fear of accusatory ganging up has stayed with me all my life.
June 18, 2023
Iâm âNOTâ trying to be a Boris cheerleader.
June 19, 2023
Unfortunately, A-Tracy, witch hunting has become normal now in this country which used to be so particular about insisting people were innocent unless proved guilty, and where guilt by association was thought to be the speciality of national socialism and communism. It seems to be classic Maoist denunciation and humiliation that we are witnessing, whereby the charge and the sentence have little to do with the motive for destroying the victim and making a terrifying example.
June 20, 2023
I follow Twitter Rose because it is a big leftie protest space, especially when under the previous boss the right got expunged off the site, just to keep abreast with their thought process.
They hate that the right in the USA has started to turn their ‘block and ban’ back on to them, and it will come here. Howard Donaldson from Take That was their latest cancel target over the weekend because he liked a couple of tweets they feel he shouldn’t have. He lost work over it and had to grovel before he got fully cancelled and it impacted his teammates, he has “a lot to learn” he said.
People need to start becoming more aware because one day they might be cancelled over something important to them. Teachers daren’t say anything they have to toe the line and they’re the ones forced to pass on all this new creed.
June 18, 2023
I wonder if the officials you mention, Sir John, not merely ‘thought’ they were acting within the rules, but consulted their legal colleagues to check that such gatherings were permitted. If they did, is the response on record?
One for the Covid Enquiry, perhaps?
June 18, 2023
Not for the inquiry – they are limiting evidence and witnesses, presumably preparatory to going to a DIY store for a large bucket of whitewash. Anyway, by the time it gets around to reporting and wasting millions of pounds, most of those involved will be long gone. Who really expects the report to come out on time? – it will overrun by years and then be sat on by ministers to ‘consider’ its findings. I’ll probably never hear the results in my lifetime, such is the way these things always go.
June 18, 2023
Just like FCO30/1048, the document that could have proven good judgement and honesty was kept secret for 30 years, because it had neither good judgement or honesty! The document revealed they had knowledge of the illegal actions involved. The worst part is that even though many knew it was illegal, the whole of Parliament were complicit in allowing Heath to proceed!
We didn’t have the internet to use for research in those days, so few would have known the extent of their chicanery. I have few hopes for the future also, as I am sure we will see the equivalent of FCO30/0488 in regard to covid, and the riches paid out to mates via PPE. Before the 2016 referendum I made a big effort to read every EU Treaty to the dismay of anyone around me as I came out with exclamations of shock and surprise! I was absolutely gobsmacked that Parliament had agreed to any of them without consulting the electorate.
June 18, 2023
Thanks, Shirley that was the document I was referring to yesterday.
June 18, 2023
Apropos your tweet on blackouts this winter. Russia is currently honouring its contract and pumping gas via Ukraine to the EU. But the contract expires before winter and on that day it is expected that Russia will supply âfriendlyâ countries clamouring for its natural resources leaving the whole of Europe, including the U.K. dependent on being the âSaudi Arabia of windpowerâ (now was that a lie Sir John, or is Boris Johnston a dunce?)
The Pentagon is pointing out that NATO is our of ammunition and armaments and has broken all its erstwhile supply lines. It wonders how it will defeat China and Russia. I wonder if the wind will power these armaments factories the neo-cons assume will deliver so that they can continue to worship Ares.
June 18, 2023
You can monitor the flows on EUstream at the ENTSOG transparency website.
https://transparency.entsog.eu/#/points/data?points=sk-tso-0001itp-00168exit%2Cat-tso-0001itp-00062entry%2Cat-tso-0003itp-00037entry%2Cat-tso-0001itp-00162entry&to=2023-06-24
They are well down on levels from last year, but the flow continues. Russian LNG also continues to be shipped into Europe in considerable volumes with Spain, Belgium, France the Netherlands and Portugal being ongoing customers. The EU is beginning discussions on whether it can reduce these imports. In practice it looks difficult. The Russians have additional capacity coming onstream soon. With the Arctic route having been heavily iced they really need European markets.
June 18, 2023
I imagined that boozy lunches in Downing Street were just the normâŠgoing right back to the âbeer and sandwichesâ era when we had a proper Labour Party. Later it was maybe hampers of champers?
Surely all this sound and fury about Boris is just obfuscation, smoke and mirrors while the inquiry into covid response is whitewashed?
All that the parties prove beyond any doubt is that those partying werenât scared.
Well, nor was I but then successive, childishly naive govt.s just arenât very good liars.
The truly scary thing is WHY? Why did they do that to us?
June 18, 2023
Cuibono
A whitewash it will be. Perhaps Sir John will address the very important issues not being discussed in future posts. Like excess deaths and ‘vaccines’ that cause net harm.
June 18, 2023
We definitely need someone to address those issues. ( But look what happened to the MP who did!)
JR allows us to discuss them ( we canât know all of what he deletes obviously).
It is difficult for him I imagine.
June 18, 2023
Building Back Better first requires complete destruction of what went before.
June 18, 2023
Yes indeed.
I have long considered that we are seeing communism ( or whatever one wishes to call it) imposed before our very eyes.
But againâŠwhy on earth would anyone want to do that?
June 18, 2023
Bounce Back Boris ha ha
June 18, 2023
Why? Surely we get to the answer, Cuibono, via your pen-name: who benefited?
Was it small and medium-size businesses? Children needing an education? NHS patients needing an operation? No.
Was it global corporate business? Online platforms such as Zoom and all the rest? Billionaire ‘philanthropists’? I think so. And more.
Remember one of the main ‘lessons’ of the pandemic simulation exercises pre-Covid was that governments should cooperate more closely with the corporate sector. That cooperation took the form of lot of state spending on its pandemic-related products (vaccines, PPE etc., public information etc.).
June 18, 2023
The Mirror Headline this morning â First ever Partygate video revealed as Tories drink, dance and laugh at Covid rulesâ.
If Tories and civil servants think this is the definition of a âwork eventâ no wonder state sector productivity is not registering.
Boris Johnson lied in his teeth. Here is the proof.
June 18, 2023
Maybe.
But we need to ask why the Mirror is so keen to revel in all this unremarkable stuff.
( When they should be raging about our loss of liberty and prosperity at globalist hands).
Remember the 80 seat majority.
June 18, 2023
+1 Cuibono
June 18, 2023
It is not unremarkable for a PM to fail to observe his own âlawsâ. Indeed there was a time when all lawmakers were required to break no laws at all. The âpandemicâ was used as a cover by Remainer Johnson for not Getting Brexit Done. The 80 seat majority was to âget Brexit doneâ and was not a popularity poll won by Johnson.
June 18, 2023
Absolutely !!!
They were ALL for locking people up in their homes and arresting them if they dared to go outside for some fresh air.
Now they want to wash their hands of it and put the sole blame on one individual, all to save their own skins.
June 18, 2023
Lynn, was Boris at the âfirst ever partygate videoâ? Did someone write to him about it? I wasnât aware of that if they did. And then are you saying he went on and lied about being aware of that boozy dancing proper party video?
June 18, 2023
There are many party gate videos. Johnson is in a few that I have seen. He said, when challenged, that âhe thought it was a work-eventâ. There is a very funny video commenting on that which starts with a clip from a film of bands, waiters, champagne tubs and strippers marching into a high-rise office with the workers dancing on their desks – it then cuts to Johnson at the Despatch Box stating that âhe thought it was a work eventâ. You need to recall that Johnson said getting people back into the office after the lockdowns would be easy âbecause they would come for the sexâ.
June 18, 2023
+1 Lynn Atkinson
And they sang and they danced
as they walked down by the billabong
Who’ll come a waltzing Matilda with me
June 18, 2023
This was not in Downing St or Whitehall and has already been disciplined. Bailey is already not allowed to stand for Mayor though he nearly won last time and would have done with a bit of help from the Conservative Party who wrote him off. First things first.
Meanwhile, are we going to see repeated photographs of the Starmer gathering? Or will editors say that has all been dealt with?
June 18, 2023
Two attendees have recently been given âhonoursâ. An accurate commentary of the Honours system.
Starmer did not unilaterally lockdown. Johnson did. Whether Starmer would have done so or worse is irrelevant. Johnson was PM Starmer is nothing.
June 18, 2023
Except the Mirror video is not of a âpartygateâ event, it is of a Conservative event related to the mayor for London campaign, it wasnât at No 10 and didnât involve Johnson, any member of the government, any MP or any civil servant, so why are you calling it âproofâ ?
June 18, 2023
There are other videos, from Downing Street. Videos and recordings of the attendees laughing at the population for obeying the ârulesâ have been about for some time. The PMâs âspokeswomanâ featured in one, which cost her her job.
June 20, 2023
Yes, isn’t she and her husband Sunaks best friend, the Sunak that was plotting for months to bring down his boss? Wonder what she’s doing now, and her husband rewarded for falling on her little, tiny foam sword.
June 18, 2023
The general drift of the civil service is always going to be agnostic to business or anti-business. Were civil servants pro-business and entrepreneurialism, that’s where they’d be. Their reason for getting out of bed every day, when they do, is to control over reach whilst somehow preserving just enough of what’s left to tax and pay their salary. This ties in very closely with Starmerism. Business will work within extremely tight confines as to what can/can’t be sold, where it can be sold, who can be employed, which fuel can be used, which data held, which hours worked, minimum salary levels, maximum salary levels by taxing, caps on gains made by taxing.
Many have given up under the Labour lite of the past 13 years. Many more will follow, and perhaps that’s what is needed to reach rock bottom.
June 18, 2023
Hard to justify innocence or even ignorance when a video emerges and someone can clearly be heard saying âAs long as we donât stream that weâre like, bending the rulesâ on the very day that the rest of us were forced towards and into even more severe restrictions.
“The employment of a lot of officials with a general education not relevant to the specialist area they are handling, coupled with rapid changes of job and personnel drives officials when drafting for Ministers to ambiguity, vagueness or generality away from specific, data driven replies.” The same applies to every single minister of the current and recent governments who all drift along “with a general education not relevant to the specialist area they are handling”. Is that not why this country of ours is sinking faster than the Titanic? It is our country that you are all forcing into the mire of destruction. It’s not YOUR country. I despair of you all.
Reply The Central Office video was not an event organised by or attended by the Prime Minister.
June 18, 2023
You guys are bunched toast up the creek deluded if you are still backing that oven ready loser.
June 18, 2023
Blazes Iâm just trying to ensure he isnât the only one lying on the floor with rocks on his chest.
If he was such a loser, heâd have lost his seat so what would the problem be, instead of wasting all this time and energy and money? They were just not confident the public wouldnât oust the Tories with him in charge because if they were why on earth would the opposition be working so hard to not only get rid of him but crush him.
June 18, 2023
Sorry a-tracy, but I think you underestimate the electorate. We know the majority of politicians were just as guilty, and some have committed far worse crimes against the electorate (eg. Heath and every single PM that followed) but Boris was silly enough to do it all the time, non-stop, with every subject and made the mistake of blaming everyone else thereby alienating himself. What truths did he ever utter? The answer will be much shorter than asking which lies he told.
June 18, 2023
Mr Johnson is a coward. By resigning his position as MP he did not risk being voted out by the voters of Uxbridge and South Ruislip, by calling the Conservative MPs not to vote in tomorrowâs vote, he wants to make sure that his number of supporters will not go below the 29 last seen in the 22 March 2023 vote on the post-Brexit deal for Northern Ireland.
As he has done in the past when he said âIâll lie in front of the bulldozersâ (his 2015 victorâs speech as a MP about the extension of Heathrow) and went to Kabul on 25/06/2018 on the day of the vote for Heathrowâs third runway.
Or when as Mayor of London he was visiting (aka on holiday in) the States at the time of the 2011 August riots;
or later on another holiday in Marbella during the October 2021 petrol pump crisis;
or hiding in a fridge to avoid Piers Morganâs questions.
Is that really the man you want to be your knight in shining armour, a-tracy?
June 18, 2023
Finally, something we both can agree on.
June 18, 2023
I just canât see Fred Flintstone in armour! đł
June 19, 2023
Boris is looking after himself, Hefner; he has a new baby imminent and a book to write. He has let us all down severely, and I am very disappointed with his actions of resigning rather than fighting a by-election, but I guess that would take a lot of energy when he wanted his parental leave! Very good timing for this report.
June 18, 2023
He did lose his seat and more than that he has probably lost any chance of a future in politics in any capscity – he has sailed too close to the sun
June 18, 2023
Which one ?
June 18, 2023
I will cut to your penultimate paragraph and ask one question. Should, the senior officials and middle ranking officials who attended the booze and smooze events at No 10, have been in front of the Parliamentry holier than thou committee as well as Boris. Who sanctions and penalises the scribes. If said scribes by their actions sanctioned organised and attended these events, isn’t it excusable for Boris to believe that they were within the spirit of the rules. I could argue the merits and demerits of Boris’s tenure at No 10, but nothing he did merited the pre-judged inquisition he faced. In a crunch situation they are the very last people I would want on my side. Sanctimonious executioners comes to mind.
A last point, is it not long overdue that the recruiting of scribes came from a much wider base reflecting the commercial and industrial base of the country with secondments in both directions. The blatant errors and fallout due to incompetence in the BoE and Treasury should be raising red flags in political government even as they sit in Gods waiting room.
June 18, 2023
+ many, Agricola.
June 18, 2023
The officials did not lie to Parliament. Johnston was censored for lying to Parliament. Attending parties during you own imposed lockdown is a completely different offence.
June 18, 2023
Didn’t the more junior Civil Service staff who organised and attended, and invited others, ever watch the TV broadcast ‘rules’ of behaviour the PM and top medical heads insisted on what was required? If Senior CS people knew what was taking place, didn’t they insist on clarification of the detail of the proposed ‘meetings, gatherings, parties?’
08.28
June 18, 2023
I agree with you on the civil serpents, Mickey, though let’s not forget the rules kept changing. Johnson was probably clueless as to what the latest version said at any one time.
June 18, 2023
Home Office â 15 June 2023
Illegal Immigrants â 172
Boats â 3
June 18, 2023
Thanks for the update.
And so it churns on.
Ceaselessly and senselesslyâŠ.
Or is there method in the madness?
June 18, 2023
Look over there, nothing to see here.
Did you see Glen that the Britannia Hotel group are having their most profitable couple of years ever housing immigrants, I wonder if they have to provide the meals as they would hotel guests paying the rates we are for their rooms? Are the hotel guests having to clean their own rooms or do the hotels clean them, if the guests clean their own rules why didnât the government ask for a lower price per night, some hotels in Glasgow charge you more if you want your room cleaning every day on three and four day stays.
June 18, 2023
UK Gov figures just in ( Sun a.m. ) for Fri & Sat 16 and 17 Jun : Friday 486 / 10 boats and yesterday 374 / 7 boats
That is Total 2529 / 50 boats in the last 8 days – 10/6 to 17/6 inclusive.
Just keep those barges and cruise liners coming Dear Rishi !
June 18, 2023
As soon as they set foot in the UK they start costing us heaps on money, whether refugees or not. Much better to prevent illegals from landing in the UK and take them elsewhere. Australia managed, why can’t we?
June 18, 2023
Ask Theresa May just what she signed up to, what Serco agreements she agreed to house them and what she agreed behind close doors.
June 18, 2023
I wonder how many students are departing through Heathrow after their courses or extensions of stay end.
June 18, 2023
Chinese PhD student brings his wife over, they have a child here âŠfree family ticket for life …and under this tory government rules, its legal
June 18, 2023
…and didn’t Sunak recent report that the figures where down 20% …crazy
I’m surprised that more MPs aren’t resigning; we’re being invaded
June 18, 2023
If I cannot cross borders or enter another country without ID, why should these illegal immigrants arriving by small boats be allowed to enter the UK without ID?
And, if they were genuine asylum seekers, fleeing persecution, wouldnât they want to prove this to us by keeping their ID?
There is only one way to âstop the boatsâ and that is to return to France anyone who attempts to enter the UK without ID. Since we are supposedly âsaving themâ from drowning in the Channel the correct international procedure would to take them back to their embarkation point.
June 18, 2023
Revoke ECHR and deport these criminals or return them to France, the same day.
June 18, 2023
by Gavin Sutherland, sung by Rod Stewart.
Can you hear me? Can you hear me?
Through the dark night, far away
I am dying, forever crying
To be with you, who can say?
We are sailing, we are sailing
Home again
‘Cross the sea
We are sailing
Stormy waters
To be near you
To be free
June 18, 2023
The boat that sank last week in Greek waters from Tobruk in Libya to Italy, had over a 100 Pakistanis onboard, Pakistan is holding a day of mourning on Monday â Pakistan like Albania is considered a safe nation
June 18, 2023
UPDATE
Home Office â 16 June 2023
Illegal Immigrants â 486
Boats â 10
Home Office â 17 June 2023
Illegal Immigrants â 374
Boats â 17
June 18, 2023
JR: “The issue over whether the former PM misled the House over gatherings in Downing Street raises important issues about the interplay of officials and Ministers.”
Are you trying to say, the liar ( for now it is officially recorded, he is such ) Boris Johnson, took civil service written answers that the event he which he personally attended, wasn’t really a party, or a gathering of more than four close family members. Or to use the infantile terminology at the time ( four people in your ‘bubble’ ), so he isn’t really a liar, because he was just reading out the text prepared for him by his civil servants ? Is that what you are trying to say ?
Because if so, that’s just too pathetic.
Finally, given that Mr Johnson is now; officially a liar, no longer an MP, and in no way representing the UK government, can you have him stop gallivanting around the world, making rash and ill advised statements about the UK and it’s international behaviour.
The sort of statements that, after all, we have a diplomatic corp, paid to deliver.
I notice, the liar ( for it is now officially so, ) has just been popped into a nice plush number getting paid on a newspaper – hopefully when he starts vomiting his self justifications through that organ, the circulation will drop through the floor.
June 18, 2023
https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/coronavirus-national-restrictions-movement-gatherings-and-businesses-no4-regs
Regulation 11 exemptions on gatherings.
Note that these are the only exceptions permitted. They include:
*all the people in the gathering are part of the same household or are members or two households which are linked households in relation to each other as defined in R. 12
*gatherings reasonably necessary for certain stated purposes. These include, work, education, training, emergency assistance, providing care to a vulnerable person and moving house.
June 18, 2023
My friends and I needed to get together regularly to discuss a venture we were considering. Ultimately it proved unfeasible so we did not go ahead after lockdown ended, but we did need to meet once a week to discuss it prior to that.
June 18, 2023
So is the video in the Daily Mirror related to âwork, education, training, emergency assistance, providing care to a vulnerable person or moving houseâ?
Have you ever heard of the Law of Holes: âIf you find yourself in a hole, stop diggingâ.
June 18, 2023
It’s related to work, quite plainly.
You could work together with hundreds of your fellow employees during the restrictions.
Many companies were open and working normally.
But add cake or a vol au vont and its illegal.
Seems rather odd.
June 19, 2023
Boris wasn’t at, nor did he organise the party in the Daily Mirror, so I don’t get your point. Those people in that video should face the exact same punishment as any member of the public. I saw a tweet about an article in the Independent at the weekend that claimed four university students were fined ÂŁ10,000 each (I find it hard to believe if they were) for organised a student meet up with 30 others ÂŁ40,000. If that is true then some people in that video are going to be very hard up soon.
June 18, 2023
a-tracy: “*gatherings reasonably necessary for certain stated purposes. These include, work, education, training, emergency assistance, providing care to a vulnerable person and moving house.”
So what’s all the fuss about? If this ‘gathering’ was within the legal framework, why did Johnson say (1) he didn’t attend, (2) he wasn’t there (iii) he didn’t know anything about it ?
We do know, that officially, Boris Johnson, is a liar, and knowingly misled Parliament. And by resigning, has admitted his guilt.
June 19, 2023
Sunak caved to the charge to dump a load of shit on Boris, once he accepted it and paid up Boris wasn’t given an option, Sunak got away with it Boris didn’t.
The Mirror party wasn’t attended or organised by BJ so that is irrelevant. If those people got away with this ‘party’ with dancing and music then they shouldn’t have done.
June 20, 2023
“Sunak caved to the charge to dump a load of shit on Boris, once he accepted it and paid up Boris wasnât given an option, Sunak got away with it Boris didnât.”
Well, since it is Sunak that is responsible for the inflation rate, having expanded the money supply by five hundred percent, I’ve no love for Sunak, so you are pushing at an open door, a-tracy.
But the fact of the matter is, if Johnson had held to his initial position ( Many people might die over the course of the pandemic, but the NHS will come through it ) to with in 48 hours, Wah! we’ve got to lock everyone in their homes, and shut down the economy and print 500% more money in 2021, if he’d been a man with backbone and character he would have held fast.
But he isn’t, and he didn’t. Not only that, he bankrupted the country, failed to implement any of the manifesto policies, wasted one of the largest Tory majorities in recent history, and involved us in the horrendous ( in terms of human life and British sterling aid ) interference in Ukraine – a country we have no mutual defense treaty with, and not much in the way of historical relations with*. It’s not exactly Portugal, supposedly our oldest ally.
Johnson deserves everything that he’s got.
* In fact Ukraine was carved out of Hungry, Poland and Russia so Ukraine has almost no history of it’s own prior to 1950 either.
June 21, 2023
APL – Boris didn’t live up to his pledges.
https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/publication/report/2019-conservative-manifesto-half-time-analysis. Claims in 19 Dec 2021 half of the pledges were on track or completed (19) and 41 are at risk of failure or have been delayed. Our hospital is being rebuilt, and money has already been spent on a much-needed upgrade to the A&E.
Ukraine – I can’t begin to understand why we are neck deep in that, and why that is seen as a success for Boris, it isn’t.
June 18, 2023
He, Johnson, has been dismissed twice from two separate positions due to him making false statements. The fact that the man is a liar was well known BEFORE he became an MP and elevated to the position of PM asks questions of those who allowed all this to happen.
June 18, 2023
Max Hastings is Brexit deranged and has only encouraged this since 2016. Before that he supported Boris.
Lord Howard was quizzed about this and disowned it. The latest time, a few days ago on Today, he said he might have done the wrong thing all those years ago… whereupon Robinson swiftly changed the subject before he could elaborate.
The idea that Boris is a liar has been carefully cultivated by the left, for example by Dorothy Byrne, ever since 2016. They repeated it again and again, pushing the boundaries ever further, until they were able to get away with it in Parliament itself. All those people who tell us no Member should mislead Parliament, also know no Member should be called a liar. But an exception was made in this Remain Parliament for Boris.
It was important to the left and to Remain to brand Boris a liar because then they could undo Brexit. Never mind that the lies were on the Remain side. [See Robert Tombs today in the Sun Telegraph].
As we learned in the last century, if something is repeated often enough, people will come to believe it and to utter it themselves.
June 18, 2023
PS I notice a great many lies are told by a great many people in order to convince us Boris is the liar.
June 19, 2023
I agree Rose, trying to align Boris with the party in The Mirror is the biggest lie yet.
June 19, 2023
When he commented in 2012 (10/10/2012 âBrilliant, warm, funny but totally unfit to be PMâ) Max Hastings was not âBrexit derangedâ.
How wonderful to see you rewriting âhis storyâ.
June 19, 2023
But you must concede Hefner that he really disliked Boris.
Would you describe him as a person who gave Boris a fair and reasonable testimonial.
Because I don’t.
June 20, 2023
Max Hastings is one man; we all have people who don’t like us; I’m sure some people don’t rate MH; millions disagreed with him and you, Hefner. They gave Boris the platform and the power; Boris and the collective Tory party elected in 2019 let those people down, not by ‘misleading’ because there are a lot of people in that place that ‘mislead’ all the time, but by not following through with the right people in his team with his pledge.
This will be fun moving forward, “you’re a LIAR” ad infinitum. They in that place reap what they sow.
June 18, 2023
All that is left now is for the parliamentary Conservative Party to finally stab Boris by not supporting him over this witch hut and incredibly biased committee. They should all vote against the committee and show real democratic support. It was so biased that I thought the Boris despising Chair would have been better dressed as the grim reaper.
June 18, 2023
Johnson is to be made the scapegoat and allow others to cleans themselves in the fountain of righteousness.
June 18, 2023
This piece demonstrates in greater detail that Boris was, indeed stitched up.
The Sue Grade report damned him and ultimately led to his loss of office and of his basic job as an MP.
Yet we now find from the Sunday Times today that, as many of us suspected, Ms Gray is not the innocent civil servant we were assured she was, but herself broke the civil service and ministerial code over her negotiations with Labour to work for Starmer!
There are also serious questions for Starmer and Labour over who lied to whom over the appointment process.
This all adds to the suspicion that not just one Conservative PM, Liz Truss, but two have been deprived of office by concerted action by a combination of the Civil Service, the Treasury, the media, especially the BBC, and mostly Remainer MPs. What happened to Ms Truss was certainly an organised coup to ensure a sound Treasury man took over at the helm. Has the same been done to Boris?
One can be quite certain, if the Gray issue was another conservative scandal, it would have been the lead on the BBC news today. But there was not even a mention.
June 18, 2023
Sue Gray sent for the police didn’t she? An extraordinary thing for her to do. She was being legally advised at the time by a then QC who was a Labour Party activist.
June 18, 2023
No, she didnât. On 08/12/2021 Mr Johnson commissioned Sue Gray to run an investigation on No.10 meetings in November and December 2020 following the 22/12/2020 Allegra Stratton video that âemergedâ at the beginning of December 2021.
By the end of January 2022, Sue Gray sent more than 300 pictures and more than 500 pages of documents collected during her investigation to the police for them to decide whether these were showing rule-breaking. It was the thing to do as as a civil servant she did not have any power to fine or not these potential instances of rule-breaking.
June 18, 2023
Yes, as you say, she brought the police in.
She was not a judge or QC conducting an official inquiry. She was not conducting a criminal inquiry.
She had been asked by the then PM, who had first asked the Cabinet Secretary, to find out the details of what happened and provide him with an aide memoire so that he could answer questions in Parliament. It was quite extraordinary that she brought the police into it. Just as it was quite extraordinary that her old Department sent the then PM’s diaries to the police and without telling him too.
June 18, 2023
Liam Halligan today:
“The uncomfortable truth is that Andrew Bailey doesn’t control our inflation â Putin does.”
“The Bank of England deserves criticism. But food and energy prices are geopolitical.”
Reply Not so Chinese inflation is 0.2% though they import a lot of food and energy
June 18, 2023
https://www.disruptionbanking.com/2023/04/11/why-is-inflation-in-china-so-low/
“Why is inflation in China so low?”
“One of the major drivers of inflation in the West has been energy prices … Beijing, which has maintained close relations with Moscow, has secured access to cheaper energy from Russia â which is happy to sell at a discount given the commodity is sanctioned elsewhere … China has also bought plenty of cheap oil from Iran, which has also been sanctioned by the US and other Western countries … ”
So because we are on opposite sides we have more expensive energy while china is getting it cheaper.
Also: “… for many commodities, China is largely self-sufficient.”
June 18, 2023
Japan and Switzerland?
June 19, 2023
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/10/why-japan-low-inflation/
“Government price controls, an ageing population and negative interest rates are among the factors keeping down inflation in Japan.
Another reason is that Japan reopened its economy more slowly than many countries following the pandemic.”
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4584582-ewl-inflation-remains-low-in-switzerland
“Switzerlandâs low inflation rates can be attributed to a range of factors, including a strong currency, energy self-sufficiency, and a high GDP per capita.”
Thanks for making me do that; it confirms in my mind that our monetary policy, and in particular the 2% CPI target, is as stupid and self-destructive as our ERM policy with sterling locked to the DMark:
http://johnredwoodsdiary.com/2022/08/23/my-conservative-home-article-2/#comment-1336748
June 18, 2023
Of course if Russia stopped supplying oil and gas to Europe via India and Turkey, they could unilaterally put prices up. The BOE donât know the difference between high prices and inflation, so they will point the finger.
June 18, 2023
But, but, but, Mr Carney says no & claims he was right from the start & that his / BoE negative predictions about consequences of ‘leaving’, before we actually ‘left’, have proven his case. So many opinions, so many truths but for some who will just accept the headline, yet another unquestioned and ill defined snippet for the Brexit Bad list.
June 18, 2023
Reply to reply
Yes, Sir John they do buy a lot of energy, at good rates from Russia. đ
June 20, 2023
Lord Balfour today, in The Times:
“Sir, I find it hard to believe that members of the Bank of Englandâs monetary policy committee cannot see that increases in interest rates are having zero effect on the global price of energy, which has been feeding into the price of absolutely everything. Far from cooling domestic price increases, rate rises are adding to the cost of capital, which is crucial to achieving growth and increased productivity. Not only that, but rates affect the availability and price of rental properties. Thus it can be argued that this interconnected inflation also reinforces the demand for pay increases; the Bank of England has no sway over those demands, particularly in the public sector.
All central banks acted late and the UK has had its own problems, but our bank really needs to hold back and let price levels and the government bond market find their own levels over the next few months.”
I imagine that the MPC do understand this, but they have their remit as set by the Chancellor.
June 18, 2023
It would appear then, that the civil service code of conduct needs scrutiny. To ensure that there responsibility of fact checking lies firmly at their feet. Any misleading or blatant misinformation should be a stackable offense. Currently a civil servant can basically get a Minister removed from office. By providing misinformation as truth. That is not democracy.
June 18, 2023
There’s not a lot to say in answer to these comments, apart from ‘why are civil servants allowed so much leeway, when they clearly abuse their powers at every opportunity?’
June 18, 2023
How many officials should be sacked? Can’t write about that, too risky. Nothing we change while this kind of talk only goes on and attempt at self defence.
We, the people who are despised as unimportant and without power, will see no benefit until we have some MPs with courage. We need many who will go beyond debate only.
June 18, 2023
Clearly there is a miss step, between the will of the people(democracy/electorate) and what the Bureaucrats wish.
It is time to politicises the running of the State. The senior department managers need to be appointed, or even reappointed by the incoming elected Government. Each term fixed to that of Parliament. For instance the perceived Socialist âBlobâ appear to want to mirror the bad habits we have seen in the EU Commission, as it is the self appointed, unelected, unaccountable Bureaucrats that get to tell/order the elected representative what they must do. In the UK it has moved on from âadvisingâ ministers to telling them, this then appears to be enforced with the caveat/threat of âor elseâ, in most cases that means something will get leaked and the briefing against those that support democracy will be undermined.
What we are fighting for here is the right to live in a democracy
June 18, 2023
Similar issue in the USA , a proposed partial answer being a Schedule F.
June 18, 2023
It doesnât matter to most of us whether the former PM mislead the House. Sir John you have summed up in recent days why that sort of pantomime floats over our heads. Parliament as you have indicated is a house of lies, intentional or otherwise that can get rectified when people are not listening. Parliament is a house of petty snipping, political backstabbing and so on. In is not a seat of democracy, they fight democracy not reinforce it.
What parliament is ânotâ nowadays is a legislative house, they refuse to make, amend or repeal laws for the citizens of the UK. What parliament does ânotâ do is hold the excitative to account, that is left to the Left leaning âBlobâ
The former PM, I donât think any one saw him as a serious leader, more a bumbling buffoon, a chancer that thought he could talk rather than do. What he did do was fail on the election promise of getting Brexit done, he created a race to NetZero with the creation of punishment and controlling the UK people. NetZero is an aim the no other Country in the world is thinking about above their own economy, everyone but a bumbling buffoon knows that big projects need big money, money has to be earned, strong economies are the only thing that create money. Punishing the electorate with high taxes, levies on energy and so on â is not âmanagementâ of a Country, it destruction. Some will already have forgotten that today’s woes come from the BJ Collective Cabinet that is still in place. Removing a PM while leaving his people in place changes nothing â so we still get destruction.
June 18, 2023
Ian, I saw him as a PR man, a sales man. A media star. An ideas man, a dreamer. His deputy and senior advisor should have been someone to keep him in line and have his back. We have a burgeoning civil service and tonnes of lawyers on board to write up the rules. They overblew everything up. They padded it out. Whenever Boris tried to fight back and said canât we keep the kids in schools until the Easter break etc. Even Macron got involved and threatened us close or else.
In lots of businesses the risk and H&S manager isnât the CEO or Sales Director often different personality types. No.10 should be led by a team with the front man (the sales man) not expected to handle ten jobs by himself.
June 18, 2023
Ian B
Well said.
June 18, 2023
I never agreed with lockdowns but abided by the decision and followed the rules. The elites never seemed to follow the same rules. Look at the COP gathering in Glasgow where attendees didnât have to be vaccinated. Look at the gatherings of world leaders where they wore masks for the photo ops but then promptly removed them. Look at the BBQ parties on the beach in Cornwall. All this told me that those in charge never feared the virus and it was hyped up to bring in draconian measures to control us. Now we see our Government ceding sovereignty for health decisions to the corrupt WHO and Net Zero compliance to the UN. The whole lot of you are an utter disgrace and why anyone continues to vote for the main parties is a mystery to me but as you have given away the power to make any independent meaningful decisions for our country, what’s the point in having a House of Commons?
June 18, 2023
Well said Christine, what is the point of having a House of Commons or the fools who think they are Lords
June 18, 2023
The House was not sitting. It had passed an âEnabling Actâ and Boris became King of (our) World. The House shou;d have considered that Germany hot into real trouble when the Bundestag passed Enabling Acts in favour of Herr Schikelgrubber.
June 19, 2023
In those days, 23/03/1933, it was called the Reichstag.
June 19, 2023
It was the 1983 Health Act which was interpreted to make Hancock King of our World.
June 18, 2023
I wouldn’t go that far but I do believe that many MPs are finding direct accountability to the electorate very trying after decades of easily taking direction from the EU. Delegating upwards to WHO or the UN doesn’t come with the glamours, benefits and baubles of the EU gravy train. So it is much less appealing. Nevertheless Remainer types do like to be in step with their colleagues internationally.
June 18, 2023
Letâs be clear the issue isnât the occasional oversight, anyone can make an honest mistake. The problem is the wholesale lies and rubbish that we have been getting from the government over the last few years. I no longer trust the government or any of its agencies.
There should be a root and branch reform and a good place to start would be to examine the use of the term âSafe & Effectiveâ.
June 18, 2023
âBritain can still escape the OECDâs radical plan for permanent worldwide socialism
We are proposing to amend UK law, to give ministers an emergency brake on new global tax rulesâ
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/06/18/britain-can-still-escape-the-oecds-radical-plan-for-permane/
The above illustrates the serious disconnect that exists between our elected Parliament, the Excitative and the People of the UK. To even contemplate such a venture demonstrates the contempt this Conservative Government has for Democracy. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), is not an elected by the people, they are not accountable or held responsible, they are just bureaucrats that have got ahead of themselves.
âgive ministers an emergency brakeâ ⊠? Who is it elected to do what is right for the UK?
Competition, proper real competition keeps prices in check, including taxes. All taxes everywhere are part of the active competition between producers and consumers. The Socialist WEF concept of harmonization sets out to destroy competition, bring in a World Order of control by bureaucrats. It is an attempt to move democracy aside.
Any real world organization would know that the threat to World growth and harmonization is not from tax, the threat is from subsidies. Countries using taxpayer funding to subsidies things in their home market that subsequently get exported are weaponizing trade. World growth is also held back by the removal of competition using the âsoftâ word of consolidation or even takeover â for the most part there is no correct balance, but, any company, country etc dominating more that 25% of the market place needs to consider that it should be broken up. Competition isnât when you buy up the players it is when you compete.
June 18, 2023
@Ian B
Clearly there is more to it than the above, so many things are interwound and convoluted, they would appear it deliberately done that way to ensure it not possible to see the wood from the trees
Tax when levied equally across the whole spectrum is part of the competitive process between nations. The more effectively the Country is run the less tax is needed. If as suggested the bureaucrats get their claws into dictating one things the will certainly push to erode and salami slice all other elements of democracy.
In the UK the tax situation is not only ridiculously high, it fails to provide the basics of society. For every bit of tax someone pays, the first thing that happens someone else has to get an additional handout, a subsidy or allowance. Yet everyone for the most part consumes the same services. Conclusion, there must be more taxes collected in a merry go-round at high cost(administrative etc) than now gets spent on providing the purpose.
June 18, 2023
One of the most IDIOTIC concepts in British politics is “the minister must accept the blame” when something goes wrong in his department – even if he is not personally responsible!!! In the name of God, WHY???
Surely responsibility should lie with the person who is actually to blame? If a civil servant gives incorrect information then HE should be PUBLICLY named and blamed, and (if the failure was sufficiently serious) sacked. For a minister to fall on his sword is so pathetically WEAK and unjust: it is responsibility without power, which only idiots would accept.
As for answers to parliament, I would always start with the words “My officials inform me that”. How could anyone criticise that formulation?
But we have a government of left-wing morons who won’t take my advice. I have said many times that ministers MUST have the power to hire and fire officials and impose their own people – people they can trust – at all levels in their departments and in the quangos they are responsible for.
June 18, 2023
As someone who ran a professional international organisation for many years I knew the importance of control and communication if standards and objectives were to be achieved and maintained . Continuity of this depended entirely on effective delegation to individuals who knew the rules and had the necessary respect with the team they led . Frequency of contact I had with subordinate management was key . Clearly this has not been the case in Downing Street . The size of the Civil Service is an additional problem but the same discipline must apply .
June 19, 2023
I agree, Bert.
June 18, 2023
Let’s face it. The rules were a sham, to shore up the rediculous, no, dangerous notion that all our lives were in peril from a respiratory virus when it was mostly us old folk that were susceptible. Now the truth is oozing its way out like lava from a volcano and will be spectacular when it blows.
I feel for all those little people who were bullied, oppressed and had their freedoms trampled on by our government, scientists, media and zealous police. Ridiculous fines were imposed and some were even imprisoned.
Now that we have all seen how bad was the behaviour of most in government and the cs I look forward to seeing the culprits in court. I would like to see retribution. Forgiveness is for God to grant, if any of them get there.
June 18, 2023
The problem we now have is that you, SJ, from the Private Sector, have had the experience, knowledge and expertise required to run a particular government department whereas too many of today’s ministers have not.
So they have little choice but rely upon those in the back offices to provide answers and make policy. Despite the fact that they too have little or no private sector experience so essential when attempting to address the numerous problems of the Private Sector itself.
Especially when it is the Private Sector that drives our economy. A fact that passes by the current leadership it seems. Never mind bringing Mr Johnson back, I believe the Tory Party should recall Liz Truss to try and get us back on course. Who else is there though?
June 18, 2023
Who is SJ?
June 18, 2023
Itâs the creepily sycophantic initials of âSir Johnâ. The honours system is a discredited load of anachronistic bolleaux that should be consigned to history. If Mr. Redwood is somehow worthy of being called âSirâ because heâs done the same well-paid, hugely pensioned and expensed job for 36 years – then most of the country (who pay the taxes that pay him) deserve to be called âSirâ or âMadamâ or âLadyâ. So, as far as I am concerned, itâs Mr. Redwood.
June 19, 2023
Oh dear. I suppose you’d call our King, ‘Mr Windsor’, would you? However you are correct suggesting too many gongs are dished out to the undeserving but some are recognised for the work they do for the community. I’d like to see more gongs for life savers and less for Civil Servants for just doing their jobs (or for keeping quiet over dire costly policies).
June 18, 2023
Simon Case was in charge of all the civil servants who organised and attended (and were fined for ?) these multiple parties and he attended some himself but it seems there is no question of him losing his job too. Why ? Of course as with Andrew Bailey it is the governmentâs own fault for selecting them for jobs they were not capable of doing competently.
June 18, 2023
The laws against homosexuality have since been shown to have been unhelpful and incorrect, annesties have been given.
The Covid restrictions should be similarly removed from history with amnesties handed out and fines repaid.
The laws were worthless and unnecessary, this constant harping over who broke them us tiresome.
The inquiry should focus on the lack of preparation and how to be prepared for the next one. I am not interested in hearing individuals’ experiences.
June 18, 2023
You presume to know the answer on lockdowns. That you may not but remain so convinced you do is why an enquiry is necessary.
June 19, 2023
I can’t say the rather inarticulate Guardian woman interrogating Mr Cameron on his economic policy this morning gives me much confidence that the right questions are being asked and that the correct anwswers will be found..
June 18, 2023
NS
‘The inquiry should focus on the lack of preparation and how to be prepared for the next one.’
A false flag as the hospitals coped. Simply follow the long established procedures as set out in the Great Barrington Declaration. This essentially is what Sweden did and has emerged with about the best result in Europe.
June 19, 2023
Deaths per m population::Sweden 2396 (âemerged with about the best in Europeâ?)
Finland 1780, Denmark 1498, Norway 1008
Germany 2078, Switzerland 1647, Netherlands 1336
worldometers.info 18/06/2023.
June 19, 2023
And the effect on their economies?
June 25, 2023
How is that relevant to BOFâs original post?
Could that be a rather weak attempt at strawmanning?
statista.com 31/01/2023 âKey economic indicators of the Nordic countries – Statistics & Factsâ
âGross domestic product (GDP) per capita at current prices in the Nordic countries from 2010 to 2022, by countryâ.
Sweden does not look better (or worse) than Norway, Iceland, Denmark or Finland.
June 18, 2023
The *real* point about all this, of course, is that ministersâ and civil servantsâ behaviour clearly shows that there was no danger whatsoever from socialising, and that they knew full well âthe deadly virusâ was nowhere near as deadly as they kept telling us it was.
June 18, 2023
âThe employment of a lot of officials with a general education not relevant to the specialist area they are handling,â
This is particularly true in the departments concerned with energy, BEIS & DES&NZ, where not only do the Ministers have no knowledge of the subject neither do the Permanent Secretaries or senior staff.
Not one of the senior staff who represented the Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy at a HoC Public Accounts Committee evidence session on Net Zero was an engineer. Degrees in PPE, Modern History and âdrafted in from social servicesâ is deemed the right qualifications. Even the MP recently selected to review the Net Zero Strategy was a graduate of modern history.
As Kate Bingham pointed out in her Romanes lecture :
âThe country will face unsurmountable challenges because of a notable lack of scientific, industrial, commercial and manufacturing skills both amongst Civil servants and politicians.â
June 18, 2023
âMinisters need to help- sift the complaints and make sure the ones that are true are followed up with suitable remedies and apologies.â
And, where serious or deliberate, the Civil Servant(s) responsible is (are) sacked.
I have never heard of any Civil Servant or quango employee sacked for laziness, negligence, incompetence, malfeasance, corruption, misbehaviour, insubordination or treachery.
June 18, 2023
researchbriefings.parliament.uk 21/10/2009 âMisconduct in public officeâ.
Also assets.publishing.service.gov.uk âMisconduct in public officeâ, Law Corn 397, HC 1027, 03/12/2020, 188 pp.
please look at Table 1 page 15, Table 2 page 16
The only conclusion I draw is that it is very difficult to take seriously anything you write âŠ
It is so easy when one is unable to run a web search to conclude âI have never heard of any Civil Servant or quango employee sacked for laziness, negligence, incompetence, malfeasance, corruption, misbehaviour, insubordination or treacheryâ.
Have you ever thought of sacking yourself for incompetence?
June 18, 2023
Weâre in our current mess because our membership of the EU has led to our MPs becoming lazy and ignorant of their briefs and only too happy to hand over power to bureaucrats in the form of Civil Servants, quangos, regulators and all manner of NGOs and institutions, as they do in the EU.
Consequently we find that these unelected and un-removable bureaucrats now running the country to be demonstrating the truth of Robert Conquestâs second and third laws of politics.
Unfortunately they would also be demonstrating the first law except they often know nothing about their subject.
June 18, 2023
Very clear indeed. First reform needed is fire about 75% of them (the ones that do nothing useful) and reform their gold pensions schemes so they so do not get so much more than the 80% in the private sector who end up footing the bills for all this.
Rod Liddle today is surely right “Lockdowns are useless. But you wonât hear that from the inquiry”
Indeed but lockdown were far worse than useless they were totally (and predictably) counterproductive in health (physical and mental) terms and also in economic terms (which also affects health even further). But the vaccine programme has clearly done far more net harm still. Excess death still circa 200 a day and showing little sign of much decline. Surely it was criminal negligence to coerce them onto children.
The ÂŁ multimillion Covid inquiry show every sign that it going to be a very expensive sick joke.
June 18, 2023
I searched Parliament’s website for a definition of contempt of Parliament. It says there isn’t one but gives some examples of things that would or would not be so considered.
Presumably for practical reasons the Privileges Committee is set up to far looser standards and procedures than apply to a court of law. Therefore it cannot claim nor be expected to be any kind of gold standard of justice, certainly not when the alleged crime is not even defined to a justiciable standard. As in sports when the umpire says you’re out, you are out and no argument. The difference is that the umpire is following clearly defined rules. The Privileges Committee makes them up to suit its purpose in respect of the alleged offender before it. There are no checks against bad or inadequate evidence, in fact no rules of evidence at all, no checks against prejudice. In fact there is very little rigour at all.
The same actors and their allies and everyone else with a grudge against Boris Johnson will vote in parliament on the committee’s report. It may well be in the Party’s best interests to remove Boris Johnson from the scene and move on without him. But it will be absurd to argue, as many will, that he has been removed by due and fair process of justice.
June 19, 2023
Hear Hear!
June 18, 2023
Within our school education system there appears a complete lack of undestanding of what biological sex was and currently is. There has been no great scientific discovery suggesting it is anything other than male and female, accepting in the case of some fauna that an hermaphrodite can exist as an aboration or a norm.
Question, how can a school teacher following the class textbook on the subject, because he was an historian not a biologist and standing in for a lack of biologists, have to answer to an inquisition of jobsworths who believe contrary to biological fact that there is a myriad of variations within the bounds of male and female in human form. Preaching such arrant nonesense to pubescent children of either sex can be very damaging.
Our minister, Gillian Keegan, presumed female, should make it absolutely clear to her ministry staff and then every head teacher and teacher in the UK that this idiocy should end as of Monday 19th June 2023, and that anyone wishing to preach anything other than biologucal fact to children, should leave the profession and espouse their theories at Speakers Corner, should they so desire.
June 18, 2023
agricola :
Agreed.
June 18, 2023
I voted for Boris Johnson because I wanted Brexit done. With an 80-seat majority, many people felt the same. I knew he was weak, as he showed in the negotiations with the EU, & before that as Mayor of London. So I was disappointed by the lack of determination to get Brexit done properly. I think the Partygate inquiry is a stitch-up, but the last thing we want is Boris Johnson back as PM. He lacks the discipline necessary to0 do the job. In yesterday’s & today’s diary, you underestimate the importance of Honesty to the voters. We don’t expect perfect MPs, but we do expect honest ones. The lack of honesty over the last 25 or so years has caused a lack of respect for our MPs. Net Zero is the latest example of their casual attitude to the truth & our money. The least we should expect is for MPs to do their homework before making very expensive decisions, but they have not done so. Research any so-called Global Warming or Climate Change event & you will find it has happened many times over the last 100, 200, 500 years. Why do our MPs do no research or question the nonsense in the media, especially the BBC.
June 18, 2023
Here, here
+1
June 18, 2023
Keith from Leeds : “Why do our MPs do no research or question the nonsense in the media, especially the BBC.”
Because they’re communists out to destroy the West. The proof is :
1) They have no issue with China, India, Indonesia and many other non-western counries continuing to burn vast quantities of coal and emitting enormous quantities CO2 relative to us in the process.
2) They are forcing us to transition from cheap, abundant, reliable fossil fuels to to expensive, unreliable, intermittent and resource hungry renewables instead of nuclear, the only low CO2 emitting form of energy which is affordable, abundant and reliable.
June 18, 2023
Professor Jordan Peterson explained that in order for a totalitarian state to exist, all of the people have to lie to everyone else all of the time.
June 18, 2023
Yes, and they do so out of fear. Fear that if we do not de-industrialize we will destroy the planet.
June 18, 2023
A more important aspect here is did those in authority know the risk of spreading Covid and risk of serious illness was a lot less than they actually told the public ? If it was really as bad as we were told it would have been madness to have a party.
June 18, 2023
Speaking of MPs, lies and idiotic if not downright cruel lawsâŠthere are many RSPCA adverts on the TV todayâŠbegging for money.
Yet because of the Chip Charter for Cruelty ordinary compassionate people are very limited in what they can do to help.
June 18, 2023
Although I find myself thinking all this fuss about people (at No. 10) having drinks in the cauldron that that workplace must have been is hysterical and unrealistic – I then remember the context. The draconian and absurd rules they imposed on everyone. The people who could not attend funerals of loved ones. That image of the queen at her husbandâs funeral. The people who couldnât hold the hand of their dying mum in a care home. So, no, root out and expose every one of those patronising hypocrites and sack the and prosecute them. How dare they!
June 18, 2023
how’s the prime minsters promise that we would start paying off the national debt going?
oh how I laughed when I heard that
June 18, 2023
Hope all MPs will attend in the House tomorrow – and looking forward to hearing contributions from all – it will be a show of democracy in action.
June 20, 2023
I would like most people to continue to stay a metre away from me with coughs and colds and summer bugs floating around.I prefer not to huddle around others but with the increase in population it will take a pepper spray to keep us a decent distance away from each other.All this hugging on another…is it really necessary?