WTF is happening in the UK?

[Boac]

That would be way out of character.....................

[FD2]

OMG! Jacob Rees-Mogg guilty of borrowing from himself!

Bad luck Thangam - better luck next time. Love him or loathe him, he's probably one of the few on the Government side with a real sense of right or wrong.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/20 ... ion-loans/

Jacob Rees-Mogg cleared by parliamentary watchdog over £6 million loans

Leader of the House celebrates with a quote from Shakespeare as Commons Standards Commissioner rejects complaint from the Labour Party
By Tony Diver, Political Correspondent 22 December 2021 • 6:40pm

The Commons Standards Commissioner has rejected a Labour Party claim that Jacob Rees-Mogg broke parliamentary rules by failing to declare loans worth £6 million.

Kathryn Stone, who investigates MPs on behalf of Parliament, ruled that no regulations had been broken because Mr Rees-Mogg wholly owns the company that lent him the money, so was not at risk of being influenced in his political work.

Mr Rees-Mogg said he used the money for “temporary cash flow measures” to fund property purchases and renovations.

Although he did not declare the loans, he argued that since the money was for personal use, it fell out of the scope of the commissioner's regulation.

MPs are required to declare any “relevant” business interests, although the exact nature of a relevant interest is not clearly defined.

Mr Rees-Mogg’s letter to the commissioner said the company, Saliston, “cannot influence me by any payments because no action of mine could persuade the company to give me a higher or lower reward than that of full ownership, which is fully declared”.
‘Makes me poor indeed’

The company’s accounts show that the loans, of £2.94 million in 2018, £2.3 million the following year and £701,513 in 2019-20, attracted interest of 0.8 per cent, which is below market value.

In her judgment, Ms Stone wrote: “It is my decision that these loans were connected solely to your private and personal life.

“I am also not satisfied that these loans could reasonably be thought by others to influence your actions, speeches or votes in Parliament, or your actions taken in your capacity as a Member of Parliament.

“As such, it is my conclusion that these loans do not fit with the spirit or purpose of registration.”

The complaint against Mr Rees-Mogg was made by Thangam Debbonaire, his opposite number on the Labour benches.

At the time, she called for an investigation into “what appears to be another egregious breach of the rules”.

On Wednesday, Mr Rees-Mogg celebrated the ruling in his favour.

Quoting Othello, he tweeted: “Who steals my purse steals trash … But he that filches from me my good name robs me of that which not enriches him, and makes me poor indeed.”

[Undried Plum]

Thangam Debbonaire


What a wonderful name!

The sort of name that needs to be crushed by an apposite quote from Othello.

[Boac]

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/other/hu ... np1taskbar

[om15]

This is the umbilical result of the fact that Johnson is now the hostage of his backbenchers and their cabinet allies, who are in turn emboldened by the voters’ damning verdict in Shropshire.

I thought that was how governments work, collective responsibility and all that, far better than the two megalomaniacs in Wales and Scotland. I think Johnson should be commended for taking the whole picture into account, the mental health, the economics, both national and personal, the actual necessity of it all.

There may be those that think it is a good idea to fine people £60 to go to work, but Johnson has to pay for it all, not Drakeford or Sturgeon who just shrilly demand more of our money. I'm with Johnson on this, in my area the pubs are thriving, people are working and the shops are busy. Hospital admissions due to covid are down and more people are dying of accidents than of covid.

Typical Gaudian rubbish written for lefties.

[Boac]

to fine people £60 to go to work

Still pushing fake news, then?

[om15]

Rather than shrill hysteria peddled by the Gaurdian there is a well written and objective article penned by Jamie Blackett today, for those that have curious mind and quite like reading facts you may be interested.

When consoling one of his pupils faced by some disheartening vicissitude, my tutor would often quote Dr Johnson: “Consider one year hence what a small moment this will seem.”

No doubt distraught publicans in certain parts of the kingdom (if they are still in business) will have got over their disappointments by next Christmas, when, and it must surely now be when rather than if, Covid has been relegated to the status of a bad cold, and pubs and football terraces are back to their seasonal exuberance.

But history will one day also shake its head and ask, “What was all that about?” And nowhere more so than in Scotland and Wales, where there is now an enjoyment postcode lottery for Boxing Day. At the time of writing, fathers can still hope to take their sons to watch matches in England, as Boris Johnson bravely holds his nerve, under sustained, and sometimes hysterical, pressure from the health lobby and its cheerleaders in the media, and refuses to impose extra restrictions for as long as the omicron dog stubbornly refuses to bark.

In Scotland, however, only an arbitrary 500 fans will be able to go to the ‘Old Firm’ game in Glasgow as a result of a typically political differentiation from Nicola Sturgeon. And in Wales, all matches will be in empty stadia as Mark Drakeford allows his authoritarian tendencies to trump the evidence, which, thus far, is that the dire SAGE predictions of 200,000 extra hospital admissions by today’s date as a result of the omicron variant have been grossly over-estimated. Policies on pubs and nightclubs have been similarly differentiated with far greater freedom in England than in Scotland and Wales.

It is both a strength and a weakness of the British way of doing things that we won’t know for thirty years exactly what (identical) advice has been given to the three leaders at COBRA. But we can guess that Boris Johnson’s naturally libertarian character, and an acute awareness of what wider damage to national wellbeing and the exchequer extra restrictions would cause, have led him to take the advice with a pinch of salt and avoid closing down parts of the economy unless it is absolutely necessary. Sturgeon and Drakeford, on the other hand, have assiduously talked up Omicron since it first emerged in South Africa. They have trailed their media conferences in press releases laden with ominous threats before strutting onto their stages and inflicting economic pain on their peoples with faux gravitas and sonorous warnings of wholly hypothetical worst case scenarios.

In both cases they have gambled on being able to blame the wicked Westminster Government for not finding the money to compensate entertainment and hospitality businesses pushed into difficulty by their actions. It may yet be that they are proved right and omicron does ravage England while the devolved nations are unscathed. But for the moment the evidence does not support their actions. And if, as seems likely, their restrictions are proved to be unnecessarily draconian, I hope the narrative will finally shift its focus from Boris bashing to scrutinising these shameless demagogues.

It may be too much to hope for, but perhaps it might persuade the ‘indy curious’ to stare into the dystopian abyss of separation and conclude that the British way of looking on the bright side and muddling through is better after all.

[Boac]

Rather than shrill hysteria peddled by om15, there is a well written and objective article here: https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wale ... d-22528904

[om15]

Good link boac, I do like the enthusiasm for the Drakeford measures displayed by the readers in Wales.

Screenshot 2021-12-23 134952.png (56.23 KiB) Viewed 565 times

[Boac]

Yes - about as popular as your PM?

[AtomKraft]

I thought you might like this boac.

I'm a Tory and Boris clearly isn't.

[Undried Plum]

After Bumbling Boris disgracing himself and losing the place in his script and resorting to nonsense about Peppa The Pig, it's refreshing to hear a head of government lucidly explaining the recent fluctuations in European gas prices.




Here he is again, this time giving lucid and fact-packed answers to two snidey question from a Sky bimbo:

[Boac]

I thought you might like this boac.

Bit late seeing your contribution but I'm afraid the video was far too intellectual for me.

[OFSO]

News item on TV. Tens of thousands of Dutch are heading into Belgium each day to party as CV restrictions are far less there and the borders can't be closed.

[Undried Plum]

News item on TV. Tens of thousands of Dutch are heading into Belgium each day to party as CV restrictions are far less there and the borders can't be closed.

This increasing the infection rates on both side of the border.

It's a mistake which we are making in the UK and was repeatedly made within Scotland earlier this year where neighbouring counties (council areas) had widely differing pub rules.

A virus doesn't give a toss about county or national boundaries 'cos it can't read roadsigns.

[Boac]

Since Boris the Clown appears to have been hidden under the antimacassar of politics to avoid further disasters, who is ACTUALLY in charge at the moment?

[Boac]

Nigella Farago doing well I hear - apparently having a rant about Australia 'controlling its borders'.

[Boac]

From Matthew Parris in the Times:

Boris Johnson leaves a scar on all who deal with him.
Lords Brownlow and Geidt are just the latest in a long line of decent people to have been conned by the prime minister

For many Times readers, the name Brownlow has long been familiar: the kindly, wealthy, middle-aged gent who comes to the rescue of orphaned Oliver Twist in Dickens’s novel. In my youthful imagination “Mr Brownlow” triggered an association with benevolence.

Nothing I know about Lord Brownlow of Shurlock Row suggests that the life peer is cast from a different mould. Self-made, he appears to devote his later years to good works. A deputy lieutenant of Berkshire, he has helped fund a school in Lesotho, a garden at the Chelsea Flower Show and Prince Charles’s Countryside Fund; and he has been a generous donor to the Conservative Party over many years.

He believes in Conservative aims and doesn’t seem to want anything for himself. As we now know from WhatsApp exchanges with the prime minister, his latest enthusiasm has been for some kind of great exhibition for Britain: not a bad idea, if rather romantic. His contribution is public-spirited.

Picture him, then, this weekend. Once flattered by Boris Johnson’s friendship, he is now caught in a stupid and horrible web of Downing Street’s making, his name plastered across the newspapers. David Brownlow can hope only to escape into the shadows once the media and political spotlight moves on.

The peer is merely the latest among scores of individuals who, over decades, have become victims of the kiss of the vampire: our present prime minister.

Consider Lord Geidt, Johnson’s independent adviser on ministers’ interests, this weekend struggling in the same web. Men of Christopher Geidt’s type — for ten years private secretary to the Queen — recoil from the idea of flouncing out or making an exhibition of themselves, of becoming the story.

Geidt will have thought his present post offered quiet stature and the interesting challenge of an almost judicial role. Picture him this weekend, accused of playing patsy to a furtive PM who allowed him to be misled: the whole thing will disgust and sadden a man who has built his reputation on discretion.

And from the sublime to, not quite the ridiculous, but a junior minister. On Friday Paul Scully, a business minister who has nothing to do with the “Wallpapergate” affair, was put up on the airwaves to defend the prime minister. He did the job in the only way you can: by asserting the unassertible and making himself look like an idiot. This will not destroy Scully’s career, but he’ll be remembered for the first time he came to our attention — and not in a good way.

His boss, Kwasi Kwarteng, has been much worse hurt: put up (during the Owen Paterson affair) to question the future of Kathryn Stone, the parliamentary commissioner for standards whose work was beginning to spook the prime minister. This wasn’t Kwarteng’s idea: henceforward, though, he displays those indicative little toothmarks on his neck.

But these (and they include Paterson himself, now wrecked, and Paterson’s defender, the journalist and biographer Charles Moore) are only the most recent casualties among those who tangle with Boris Johnson. The list goes back a long, long way.

I’m put in mind of Marvin Gaye’s 1960s hit Abraham, Martin and John. “Has anybody seen. . . ” he sings in this homage to good men gunned down in American history. Has anybody seen Alex Allan (Geidt’s predecessor, who quit)? Dominic Grieve? David Gauke, Nick Soames, David Cameron (shafted over the referendum), Theresa May, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, Allegra Stratton, Johnson’s own brother, Jo, shunted off to the Lords?

The list includes many of whom you may approve, some of whom you don’t, but they have this in common: for a while their lives touched Boris’s, after which they stormed, wobbled, were kicked, staggered, limped or walked away, variously embittered, alienated, vengeful, damaged, broken or resolved to turn the page.

Dominic Cummings, Lee Cain, Robert Buckland, Julian Smith, Theresa Villiers, Esther McVey, Andrea Leadsom, Arlene Foster. . . these were, or are, serving politicians and special advisers. Likely future victims are still in post, but has anyone seen Downing Street’s chief of staff Daniel Rosenfield recently? What are the odds for Simon Case, the latest cabinet secretary?

Over the personal side of Johnson’s life — the wives, girlfriends and children — I draw a veil, preferring not to punch at bruised lives. All, political and personal, share this: they got themselves mixed up with a superlative confidence trickster. Believe me, I know the confiding wink that for a moment makes you feel you’re the only person in the room. We can add a range of newspaper editors, magazine proprietors and party leaders, tricked to their disadvantage but who live to tell the tale.

British political history is replete with prime ministers’ unsuitable liaisons — think of Lord Kagan and Harold Wilson’s “Lavender” honours list, Bernie Ecclestone and Tony Blair, David Cameron and Lex Greensill — but with the present prime minister the polarities are reversed. He’s the one the others should have steered clear of.

Only (by luck or judgment) Michael Gove has managed both to dissociate himself from Johnson, yet work for him. Rishi Sunak needs to attempt the same. Jeremy Hunt was lucky Johnson didn’t offer him the job he wanted — foreign secretary — in his first cabinet. Rory Stewart did well to walk away from the start. Does Dominic Raab know he’s up a creek? Has Liz Truss realised she’s cruising for a bruising over the Northern Ireland protocol?

When contemplating this column I was asked whether we might finally step back from close focus on the present prime minister, look more widely at rascality and high public office and draw some general conclusions. But I must conclude that there are none. Johnson is a one-off.

Many who reach the top (think of Benjamin Disraeli, and to some degree David Lloyd George) were confidence tricksters and more, but Downing Street is now occupied by someone who is only a confidence trickster. Disraeli and Lloyd George had some kind of personal vision of the country Britain could be, and — often flying by the seat of their pants — used their wiles as persuaders, charmers and sometimes deceivers.

But it was for a purpose. Even the Pied Piper had a purpose. What will baffle future historians will be the essential purposelessness of this present and most persuasive of prime ministers. I do wonder whether there may be a simple satisfaction to be had from winning another person’s trust, or heart, or mind, or body: not for some useful purpose, but for its own sake, for the pleasure of control; getting the sparrow to peck from your hand. If so, the Conservative Party had better watch out, lest it become the Vampire of Downing Street’s greatest and ultimate triumph.

[Undried Plum]

What an excellent piece!

[TheGreenGoblin]

What an excellent piece!

+1

I must start taking The Times again.