WTF is happening in the UK?

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Re: WTF is happening in the UK?

#5421 Post by Boac » Sun Jan 29, 2023 9:58 am

Zahawi reportedly 'sacked' by Sunak. The Times https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/nadh ... -btkw8796l

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Re: WTF is happening in the UK?

#5422 Post by OFSO » Sun Jan 29, 2023 10:13 am

Sunak is weak and indecisive: delayed too long and his dismissal letter to Zahawi is BS.

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Re: WTF is happening in the UK?

#5423 Post by Boac » Sun Jan 29, 2023 10:24 am

The Telegraph is rumoured to have a picture of Zahawi's bath which will prove he could not have misbehaved as alleged. =))

Top paper!!

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Re: WTF is happening in the UK?

#5424 Post by Fox3WheresMyBanana » Sun Jan 29, 2023 10:54 am

Man under investigation for unpaid 5 million tax bill becomes Head of HMRC - what could go wrong?
"Accidentally" set up secret trust in Gibraltar under parents' names and sold millions of shares through it...
..happens all the time. Did it myself last week when I thought I was paying my gas bill.

Who says comedy is dead?

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Re: WTF is happening in the UK?

#5425 Post by PHXPhlyer » Sun Jan 29, 2023 4:07 pm

Boac wrote:
Sun Jan 29, 2023 9:58 am
Zahawi reportedly 'sacked' by Sunak. The Times https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/nadh ... -btkw8796l
Paywalled! :-o ~X( :((

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Re: WTF is happening in the UK?

#5426 Post by G-CPTN » Sun Jan 29, 2023 4:14 pm


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Re: WTF is happening in the UK?

#5427 Post by FD2 » Sun Jan 29, 2023 9:18 pm

Man of Honour:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/what- ... ld-change/

Review
Frank Field was purged by Corbyn’s Labour, but his Christian idealism could actually change lives
5/5

The former MP's outstanding new book, Politics, Poverty and Belief, blends memoir with incisive, practical ideas

By Tim Stanley 29 January 2023 • 7:00am


Frank Field, former Labour minister and now a crossbench peer, has always defied labels. A frequent rebel, he campaigned for child benefit and the minimum wage (years ahead of its time), yet he also supported council tax sales and was friendly with Margaret Thatcher. It epitomised his career that he nominated Jeremy Corbyn for Labour leader to give the far-Left a fair hearing, only to be driven out of his party in 2018 in a far-Left purge.

Today, he is terminally ill. This book, a blend of memoir and political philosophy, was completed with the help of two friends, Brian Griffiths (once Thatcher’s chief policy adviser) and his wife Rachel Griffiths, who, in a touching introduction, say that “to spend a day with Frank... meant being constantly interrupted by members of the public, of all shades of political opinion, thanking him for what he had done.”

He was born in Edmonton in 1942, son of working-class Tories. At the age of 15, his father, a violent bully, threatened him with a hammer. Frank took it away from him and said that if he tried that again, “I would use the hammer on him.”

He found “protection and belonging” in church. Field shouldn’t be understood as dogmatically Left or Right but as a Christian, a detail he tended to omit from speeches. He studied and admired Idealism, the school of thought that worried Britain was losing its moral compass – so it sought new, more popular ways to transmit religious teaching via social activism. For Field, this meant joining the Labour Party.

He quickly discovered that the Left, though noble in theory, often puts ideology and tribe before practical steps to reduce poverty. As a councillor in the 1970s, Field saw how council housing could reduce tenants to the status of serf: let them buy their homes, he argued, and they’d have an asset of their own. But the Left ruled it out. Their politics was flawed because it worked against the grain of human nature. Selfishness might be wrong, but self-interest is natural and can serve the common good.

Elected to Parliament for Birkenhead in 1979, Field paid particular attention to the question of why, in such a rich country, some people seem permanently left behind. Money is one answer: the Conservatives under Cameron cut and froze benefits, depriving a family with children of around £1,800 a year. According to Field, one branch of Tesco reported that children had switched from stealing sweets to stealing sandwiches, “to assuage their hunger”.


Politics, Poverty and Belief is published by Bloomsbury at £20. To order your copy for £16.99 call 0844 871 1514 or visit Telegraph Books

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Re: WTF is happening in the UK?

#5428 Post by FD2 » Sun Jan 29, 2023 9:22 pm

Army’s ‘information warfare’ unit monitored Covid lockdown critics

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/0 ... n-critics/

Whistleblower reveals specialist military team spent time ‘monitoring the social media posts of ordinary, scared people’
By Telegraph Reporters 29 January 2023 • 2:57pm

The Army’s “information warfare” unit monitored Covid lockdown critics during the pandemic, the Government has revealed.

The 77th Brigade, a specialist unit set up to counter disinformation and other online activity deemed harmful to the UK, assisted other government units in the task.

Publicly available social media posts were scrutinised for accuracy and challenged if the Government felt information presented to the public was incorrect, inaccurate or deliberately misleading.

The Government made the admission in response to an article in the Mail on Sunday, based on reports from an anonymous Army whistleblower and documents obtained by the civil liberties group Big Brother Watch.

The Army whistleblower told the Mail on Sunday: “It is quite obvious that our activities resulted in the monitoring of the UK population ... monitoring the social media posts of ordinary, scared people”.

A government spokesman said: “Online disinformation is a serious threat to the UK, which is why during the pandemic we brought together expertise from across Government to monitor disinformation about Covid.

“These units used publicly available data, including material shared on social media platforms, to assess UK disinformation trends and narratives.

“They did not target individuals or take any action that could impact anyone’s ability to discuss and debate issues freely.”


Now what is the Army doing being involved in this? Isn't this the sort of thing, if free speech were actually a threat, that the police should be doing?

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Re: WTF is happening in the UK?

#5429 Post by FD2 » Sun Jan 29, 2023 9:31 pm

Man of Honour?

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/20 ... -or-break/


How Nadhim Zahawi had just half an hour to save his job at make-or-break meeting


Sacked chairman's allies claim speed with which Rishi Sunak signed off investigation suggests he gave in to political pressure

By Daniel Martin, Deputy Political Editor 29 January 2023 • 7:38pm


Nadhim Zahawi's allies claim he was given just 30 minutes to make his case before the independent ethics investigator looking into his tax affairs.

The Tory chairman was removed from his post after Sir Laurie Magnus concluded he had been guilty of a “serious breach” of the ministerial code.

He detailed at least seven occasions on which the code had been breached, accused Mr Zahawi of repeatedly failing to act with openness and honesty, and revealed talks with the HMRC about the tax bill had been going on since April 2021.

The Prime Minister could have summarily dismissed Mr Zahawi last week, when political pressure was at its highest and it first emerged that he had paid a penalty for not paying the taxes he should have.

Instead he opted for due process - allowing an investigation to take place by the independent adviser on ministerial interests.

But on Sunday allies of Mr Zahawi raised questions about the process asking why the inquiry was so short, especially as it had been expected that it would run for three weeks.

Had the Prime Minister in fact ended up giving in to political pressure to get rid of him early, before Sir Laurie had been able to properly investigate the case?


The speed of the sacking could possibly indicate that there was no point in waiting for more obfuscation and accusations of yet more Tory sleaze!

Go lemmings, go! The only way to rescue the situation is to get that paragon of virtue Boris back in power! The evidence was possibly too obvious to hide or spin away.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... -Mogg.html

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Re: WTF is happening in the UK?

#5430 Post by Woody » Mon Jan 30, 2023 8:45 pm

Helen Whately gives hope to all below average, under-achievers everywhere.
=)) =)) =))
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Re: WTF is happening in the UK?

#5431 Post by G-CPTN » Mon Jan 30, 2023 10:09 pm

Why are so many (relatively) voting for strikes?

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Re: WTF is happening in the UK?

#5432 Post by Woody » Tue Jan 31, 2023 1:09 pm

When all else fails, read the instructions.

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Re: WTF is happening in the UK?

#5433 Post by Fox3WheresMyBanana » Tue Jan 31, 2023 2:27 pm

Canada has back-to-work legislation which the Government typically now uses within a few days of a strike starting.
The consequence of which is that people steadily quit that occupation and find other work.
Initially, anti-strike legislation looks like a good idea, but after a few years there are much bigger problems, with insufficient people in the occupation to run it, those left tend to be either the already hugely-overworked or the useless time-servers, the overall experience level is way down, there's no capacity or ability to cope with a crisis, the experienced leavers aren't coming back for anything, and recruiting is pitiful-to-none.

Just so you know what will happen.

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Re: WTF is happening in the UK?

#5434 Post by Boac » Tue Jan 31, 2023 2:31 pm

nsufficient people in the occupation to run it, those left tend to be either the already hugely-overworked or the useless time-servers, the overall experience level is way down, there's no capacity or ability to cope with a crisis, the experienced leavers aren't coming back for anything, and recruiting is pitiful-to-none.
Bit behind the times, there, Fox - we' are there already. We didn't need any legislation, just a Conservative government.

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Re: WTF is happening in the UK?

#5435 Post by Fox3WheresMyBanana » Tue Jan 31, 2023 2:46 pm

It can get worse.
It is in some professions here.
I know of school janitors taking Math classes, for some time. (already got working with children clearance, see).
Worse still, he was better than the qualified math teacher they'd had till then!

Anyway, you have a Conservative government, not a conservative Government - they're all corrupt socialists in practice, now.
https://fullfact.org/economy/labour-and ... onal-debt/

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Re: WTF is happening in the UK?

#5436 Post by Fox3WheresMyBanana » Tue Jan 31, 2023 5:11 pm

Household grocery bills jump by £788 as food prices hit record high
Shoppers are facing the sharpest increase in their grocery bills on record, after signs that food price inflation had passed its peak vanished in January.
Retail editor Hannah Boland has the details:
Grocery prices were up 16.7pc year-on-year in January, in the largest rise since Kantar started monitoring food inflation in 2008.
That included a "staggering" 2.3 percentage point jump in the four weeks to January 22.
The previous high had been in October 2022, with inflation appearing to ease in November and December.
However, analysts at Kantar said "that small sign of relief for consumers has been short-lived" in January, as supermarkets upped their prices once again after the Christmas period.
Milk, eggs and dog food were among the items where prices rose the most, according to the Kantar analysis.
Obviously the supermarkets also want to profit from the people forced to eat dog food now. :ymdevil:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/20 ... cord-high/

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Re: WTF is happening in the UK?

#5437 Post by TheGreenAnger » Tue Jan 31, 2023 8:58 pm

UK economy last in the G7, below Russia's... go figure...
My necessaries are embark'd: farewell. Adieu! I have too grieved a heart to take a tedious leave.

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Re: WTF is happening in the UK?

#5438 Post by TheGreenAnger » Tue Jan 31, 2023 9:08 pm

Woody wrote:
Tue Jan 31, 2023 1:09 pm
The man is a whited sepulcher. The sort of person I would gladly threaten to torture to death just to hear him declaim or scream in Latin! An odious sanctimonious charlatan!
Was there ever a more exquisitely polite thug than Jacob Rees-Mogg?

On indefinite secondment from the mid-18th century, the Honourable Member for the East India Company has finally offered a flash of the real Moggy behind the mask. Hidden until now beneath the Savile Row three-piece and floridly courteous facade lies a deceitful bully with a taste for attacking those more honest than himself.

In the week the early Trump supporter’s role model granted Republican sycophants day release from his colon to smear the FBI, Moggy took a gigantic leaf from the President’s most malevolent playbook.

His Commons accusation of an anti-Brexit conspiracy, involving a respected think tank and the Treasury officials responsible for those dismal economic impact assessments, was one thing. It wasn’t a pretty thing, since it seemed a pre-prepared routine with Brexit minister Steve Baker. But we all make mistakes, and Baker was quick and almost gracious in apologising for wrongly confirming a falsehood.

Moggy favoured the Trumpian path, as previously colonised by Boris Johnson over that mythical £350m per week for the NHS. After the lie had been rigorously debunked, he aggressively doubled down on it.

He is not, in IQ terms, stupid. He may, again like Boris, be one of those clever fools who seem to pepper British public life, the spiritual children of Enoch Powell with pure intellects in inverse proportion to their common sense. But he has more than enough mental capacity to appreciate that any allegation denied by the political ally who originally confirmed it must be false.

In this context, he would repeat it only if he calculated that the personal benefit outweighs any contamination of his USP as a paradigm of civility and reasonableness in a rude and shouty world.

For all the pretence to altruistic patriotism, in other words, this is just another attention-craving mega-narcissist. It’s me-me-me with him – or, as the French tauntingly chant at him when he takes the vintage Bentley to Normandy, “Moggy, Moggy, Moggy, moi, moi, moi!” He would very much like to be PM, and reckons that any ingratiation with Brexit ultras, even at a cost to his wider reputation, will help.
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/ja ... 94011.html
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Re: WTF is happening in the UK?

#5439 Post by Woody » Fri Feb 03, 2023 10:05 am

When all else fails, read the instructions.

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Re: WTF is happening in the UK?

#5440 Post by TheGreenAnger » Fri Feb 03, 2023 11:30 am

Woody wrote:
Fri Feb 03, 2023 10:05 am
Nothing to worry about here :-o

https://www.thedailymash.co.uk/politics/****


404 Not found. Now I am really worried! :-ss

Everything about Liz Truss was and still is dysfunctional!
My necessaries are embark'd: farewell. Adieu! I have too grieved a heart to take a tedious leave.

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