General UK politics

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Captain_Swoop said:
That was after the bill was reduced from £3000 to £1400.
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True. I do wonder what has been left off to get down to actually £1308.13. The room booking fee appears to be £500 and isn't on that bill, which still leaves well over a grand which has somehow disappeared or else been billed separately so they can claim not to have spent £3k.

And the Graun is still wrong on the wine (seen a supposed pic of the bill).

It doesn't look great, but there does seem to be some bandwagon jumping about the reporting and not properly fact checking in the hope of making Truss look even hookier.
 
Carrot Flower King said:
True. I do wonder what has been left off to get down to actually £1308.13. The room booking fee appears to be £500 and isn't on that bill, which still leaves well over a grand which has somehow disappeared or else been billed separately so they can claim not to have spent £3k.

And the Graun is still wrong on the wine (seen a supposed pic of the bill).

It doesn't look great, but there does seem to be some bandwagon jumping about the reporting and not properly fact checking in the hope of making Truss look even hookier.
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Yeah sadly that is always a problem, it does mean the politicians often get a chance to muddy the waters.
 
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Actually, we know who wrote (or passed) these laws: MPs and lords who own shooting estates. They created a fantastically tortuous legal system to enable this unspeakable "sport" to continue, regardless of the havoc it wreaks and the ecological damage it inflicts.

The pheasant is a non-native bird that belongs to the same family as chickens and turkeys (Phasianidae).
Imagine the outcry if farmers bred 47 million chickens every year to be released, then forced to fly over a line of people with shotguns, to be blasted out of the air.

Every aspect of this practice is an outrage. It reflects the continued domination of a landed elite, whose power is such that they can craft the law to suit themselves, however labyrinthine it has to be.
Is this country a democracy, or a semi-feudal barony?

It's a gigantic, state-sanctioned cosplay, simultaneously deadly serious and utterly risible.

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Captain_Swoop said:
It's a security thing on official phones apparently, in case they are lost or fall in to the wrong hands.

there is a similar system on official laptops.

Three tries and they are locked and encrypted.
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Well I certainly know its a thing for quite a few corporate phones, especially those that have passcode generators on them for system access and official mail. I have had to do the wipe and reset process for customers many a time.
 
Captain_Swoop said:
Law change allows wild birds to be killed to protect game birds in England

Some wild birds can now be killed in order to protect game birds bred for shooting in England, after the government updated guidelines on its general licences.

General shooting licences give broad permissions to shoot certain species of wild birds to protect livestock, aid conservation, and preserve health and public safety.

The new licences have been issued for two years rather than one, with government officials saying this is to provide “stability and certainty” to shooters.

General licences are permissive licences, meaning users do not need to apply for them but they must comply with their terms and conditions when undertaking licensed acts.

There has been debate over whether pheasants, partridges and grouse count as livestock, as they are wild birds, and so whether predators can be shot in order to protect them.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has released a new definition of “livestock” including these birds, to give explicit permission to shoot carrion crows, jackdaws, magpies and rooks.

https://www.theguardian.com/environ...-wild-birds-killed-protect-game-birds-england


Got to have plenty of tame targets for the toffs to massacre.
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Happened across this earlier on twitter which sums up the situation pretty well.

 
The Don said:
Apparently it's fine because "they all do it". :rolleyes:

The fact that one party seem to do it far more often and steal far more money is irrelevant.

The question that arises is "what did he spend the £8k on ?". If it was, say, to improve his old fashioned rural Polish to modern business Polish and he can produce receipts to show 200 lessons at £40 a pop then I suppose there's some defence (though still ridiculously expensive".
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I’m imagining something like the Monty Python Italian lesson sketch.
 
Some of today's lies from Boris at PMQs:

He never said inflation fears were "unfounded"

Tory government has built new nuclear plants

Warm Homes Discount is £140 a week (it's £140 for a year)

Labour would rejoin EU

Labour wanted Xmas lockdown

Labour has committed to nationalise the energy sector

UK would not be able to cut VAT on energy bills if we were in the EU

UK has the fastest growing G7 economy

Income inequality has fallen under this government

40 new hospitals are being built

Winter fuel payment is £300 for "pensioners"

No sanction from the Speaker.

Also no sanction for the way he constantly refers to female Labour MP’s as “she” and not “The Honourable Lady”
 
Here's the story of British industry in microcosm - electric buses for Wales.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-59880876

Wales is rolling out electric buses but is importing them from China. Some Welsh politicians want them to be made in Wales (or at least in the UK).

Electric buses should be made in Wales instead of being imported from China, Wales' deputy minister for climate change has said.

Lee Waters wants to see an electric bus factory opened in Wales to create green jobs.
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There is insufficient manufacturing capacity in the UK:

One of a handful of UK based companies already making electric buses, Switch Mobility, said it had been trying to expand and bring jobs to Wales, but with no success.

Andy Palmer, its Chief Executive, said his factory in Yorkshire was full to capacity and wanted to set up new factories.

"I am looking around for places to expand Switch and I have taken the opportunity to look at Wales because in my previous company I built a car factory in Wales," he said.
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The car factory in question was the Aston Martin factory which has turned out to be a "mixed blessing" at best:

About 200 workers are being made redundant at the Aston Martin car plant in the Vale of Glamorgan, according to the union Unite.

The St Athan plant opened in 2018, near Cardiff Airport, with plans to employ 300 by 2019 and 700 by spring 2020.

Unite said the car maker was seeking 95 job losses among its staff, with 100-plus jobs at an on-site agency that supplies workers also set to go.
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-56346835

Plenty of government money went into that factory and doubtless Switch will be looking for considerable subsidies in this case too. If there really is a market, then subsidies shouldn't be necessary but manufacturing industry in the UK has been taught to expect it.

IMO a lot of the UK's industrial woes are down to short-termism where investment in the future is curtailed in order to provide investor returns today. There's no incentive to look past the next quarter or two and as a result, UK manufacturing is outdated and unable to compete globally, or even within the EU.

Post-Brexit, we were supposed to be heading towards the sunny uplands but IMO we're still hopelessly stuck in the rainy lowlands with no clear path defined. :(
 
Energy prices doubling, inflation at 6%, child food poverty increasing, the NHS at breaking point, shortages of fresh produce in the supermarkets and MP Andrew Rosindell asks in parliament, what can be done to get the BBC to play the national anthem at the end of every day.

“Fantastic question,” says Nadine Dorries, she's going to look at it.

Nice to see their priorities are right.
 
Captain_Swoop said:
Energy prices doubling, inflation at 6%, child food poverty increasing, the NHS at breaking point, shortages of fresh produce in the supermarkets and MP Andrew Rosindell asks in parliament, what can be done to get the BBC to play the national anthem at the end of every day.

“Fantastic question,” says Nadine Dorries, she's going to look at it.

Nice to see their priorities are right.
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Isn't BBC programming 24 hours these days on the major channels/stations ?

There isn't an "end of day" as such.

Shows ignorance of basic facts as well as badly skewed priorities IMO
 
To be fair, the question clearly stated "at the end of the day's programming, before it switches to News 24"

Actually, the statement/question was really about the singing of the national anthem - which anyone is free to do, at any time of the day they please. You don't need the BBC to help you out.
 
The national anthem was broadcast, on radio as well as TV, when the channel was shutting down for the night (when that was a thing) begun in the era when theatres and even cinemas did the same at the end of their performance.

It's just a bit of weasley political point scoring about the BBC being less patriotic than in some golden age we might return to. As if the nation would leap to its feet and sing when they heard its stirring notes, if only the beeb would play it.
 
To be fair to Beeb, Newsnight did play out with God Save Queen once ….

 
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BBC Radio 4 do end the days transmission with the national anthem every night.
 
Jack by the hedge said:
The national anthem was broadcast, on radio as well as TV, when the channel was shutting down for the night (when that was a thing) begun in the era when theatres and even cinemas did the same at the end of their performance.
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I always assumed there was at least a partly cynical reason for playing the anthem at cinemas, getting the audience standing up and therefore halfway to leaving.

It's just a bit of weasley political point scoring about the BBC being less patriotic than in some golden age we might return to. As if the nation would leap to its feet and sing when they heard its stirring notes, if only the beeb would play it.
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Like Alf Garnett in the bath.
 
Downing Street today published a humiliating “lost” WhatsApp message that Boris Johnson sent a Tory donor begging for more cash to revamp his grace-and-favour flat.

The PM failed to inform his own ethics advisor about the message, which he sent to peer Lord Brownlow in November 2020 as the six-figure makeover spiralled out of control.
The text exchange shows the PM asked Lord Brownlow for "approvals" for the £112,000-plus makeover, moaning the flat above 11 Downing Street was a "bit of a tip” - despite the fact it had a new kitchen in the last decade.
He pressed the donor to provide money, saying he was "keen" to let the designer get on with it. Lord Brownlow replied promising to get on with the job, adding: "It’s only me and I know where the £ will come from".

Lord Geidt, the PM's advisor on the ministerial code, said the failure to disclose the texts to his probe into the funding of the refurb was "plainly unsatisfactory", demonstrated "insufficient respect" and presented a "threat to public confidence" in his role.
And while he suggested the texts alone did not undermine his conclusion that Mr Johnson had not broken the ministerial code, he said he would have had more questions for the PM had he know of their existence.
Yet despite voicing "grave concern" he cleared Mr Johnson of wrongdoing - after the PM claimed he forgot about the messages because they were on his old phone.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/breaking-boris-johnsons-humiliating-lost-25873177
 
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