Tory Cabinet Thread

[Bruce Spanner]

Could go in either thread, but here you are.

 

8 August – Michael Gove
26 August – Rishi Sunak
14 September – Priti Patel
17 September – Rishi Sunak
18 September – Boris Johnson
21 September – Boris Johnson
25 September – Jacob Rees-Mogg

 

The dates of private meetings between Murdock, Brookes and the above.

 

All above board one assumes, just talking about the price of fish most likely.

[Harry's Lad]

34 minutes ago, Bruce Spanner said:

Could go in either thread, but here you are.

 

8 August – Michael Gove
26 August – Rishi Sunak
14 September – Priti Patel
17 September – Rishi Sunak
18 September – Boris Johnson
21 September – Boris Johnson
25 September – Jacob Rees-Mogg

 

The dates of private meetings between Murdock, Brookes and the above.

 

All above board one assumes, just talking about the price of fish most likely.

British fish in Rees-Moggs case the fucking bellend.

[Anubis]

£6,200 on luxury chocolate? In one day? Seriously?

 

 

 

[Mudface]

9 minutes ago, Anubis said:

£6,200 on luxury chocolate? In one day? Seriously?

 

 

 

 

[Gnasher]

These are dark times...

 

 

 

[Gnasher]

The taxpayer funded photos are to "document government ministers going about their work" 

 

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-56015861

[Gnasher]

They're just taking the piss, although the mutt would do a better job

 

 

[Bruce Spanner]

I mentioned this the other day, but the Governement, and their cronies, are trying to sue the Good Law Project in to silence.

 

They believe they are above the fucking law...

 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/10/government-to-spend-up-to-600000-defending-covid-contract

 

'The government has been criticised for spending up to £600,000 defending a legal challenge against its award of a contract to a company run by long-term associates of Michael Gove and Dominic Cummings.

The estimated costs could exceed the £550,000 the government spent on the contract with the company, Public First, to conduct focus groups on its Covid-19 messaging.

 

Public First is a policy and research company run by James Frayne and Rachel Wolf, a married couple who have both previously worked with Gove, the Cabinet Office minister, and Cummings, who was the prime minister’s chief adviser when the contract was agreed last March.

 

The contract was not put out to competitive tender, under emergency regulations that waived normal procurement procedures due to the pandemic.

 

The Good Law Project (GLP), a not-for-profit organisation that raises money through crowdfunding to question the legality of some government conduct, issued a judicial review challenge last summer, having claimed there was “apparent bias” in the award of the contract and that competitive tendering should not have been waived.

 

The Cabinet Office rejects those claims; it said at the time that Public First was appointed due to its “wealth of experience” in conducting the necessary research, and described as “nonsense” any suggestion it was awarded the contract due to its links to Gove and Cummings.

 

Frayne has said Public First’s work researching public opinion, particularly among “hard-to-reach groups”, was vital and “consistently of the highest quality, performed at unusually short notice”.

Of the direct contract award, he said: “We would have much preferred to do this work via standard contractual mechanisms, but took the view that the state of national emergency meant we could not demand it.”

 

The case is due to be decided at a one-day hearing on Monday. However, controversy has emerged over the legal costs being incurred by the government.

 

In a letter last week, the Government Legal Department notified the GLP that its estimated costs for defending the Public First case would be “in the region of £500,000 to £600,000”.

 

If the GLP loses the case, it could be made to pay those costs in addition to its own. Its director, Jolyon Maugham QC, argues the costs are excessive, pointing to two other recent judicial review cases in which the government’s costs were less than £200,000. “The government has in-house solicitors and can employ barristers at low rates, but here money has been no object,” he said. “Such costs have a deterrent effect, to scare people off challenging them in the courts; it is another attempt by the government to remove itself from a layer of accountability.”

 

A Cabinet Office spokesperson denied the accusation, saying the Public First case has involved more work for lawyers, including extensive gathering of evidence and disclosure.

 

A government spokesperson said: “It is entirely correct that we should defend this legal action, which was brought by the Good Law Project. As with any case, we look to keep legal costs to a minimum.”

 

Last week a judge, Mrs Justice O’Farrell, gave permission to the GLP to pursue another judicial review claim relating to a government contract with the firm Hanbury Strategy, which also has connections with Cummings and the Conservative party.

 

The government has also defended that direct award as necessary and proper. O’Farrell stated in her ruling that the judicial review “raises serious issues of public importance that would otherwise not be scrutinised”.

[Bobby Hundreds]

They're bastards. 

[Stickman]

21 hours ago, Gnasher said:

These are dark times...

 

 

 

 

Seriously when is this horrible cunt going to die?

 

 

 

 

And Murdoch can’t have long left either 

[Nelly-Szoboszlai]

Is this real? I hope so! 

 

https://mobile.twitter.com/jeffsprogress/status/1359936751280734211

[Bjornebye]

6 minutes ago, Nelly-Torres said:

Is this real? I hope so! 

 

https://mobile.twitter.com/jeffsprogress/status/1359936751280734211

Funny I uttered them exact words as soon as I heard him talking then 

[sir roger]

The government have been fobbing off Women's rights activists looking for an improvement on maternity rights for over two years saying that it is a very complicated issue and can't be rushed. Suella Braverman , The present Attorney General , informed that she was pregnant and they drew up a law in 24 hours changing the rules for cabinet ministers to be allowed to have 6 months paid maternity leave. They presumably can't find any other lawyer with as few scruples and happy to protect Johnson above protecting the rule of law.

[Gnasher]

Zing

 

 

 

[Bruce Spanner]

I think this is in here already, but always worth seeing it again...

 

I don't think we need an election victory I think we need revolution, we are living in a tin pot state masquerading as a developed nation.

 

'Jason Evans was four when his father died of Aids having received a HIV-contaminated blood transfusion from the NHS. This scandal, in which more than 1,000 people died, is the subject of a long-running inquiry. However, Jason, now in his 30s, became tired of waiting and decided to try to get some answers for himself. In 2018, he submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FoI) request to the Treasury to see if its files could shed any light on what happened. Government departments are supposed to respond to FoI requests within 20 working days yet, for months, there was nothing.

 

What happened? It turns out the Treasury was willing to give Jason what he was looking for, but then staff from an FoI “clearing house” stepped in. They said the information had to be “managed” and compared the situation to the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war. They warned that former ministers “will be very sore” about the disclosures which included a private acknowledgment from then health secretary, Ken Clarke, that some health authorities had been negligent.

 

This wasn’t an isolated incident. In November, openDemocracy revealed how this secretive clearing house, which operates within Michael Gove’s Cabinet Office, regularly screens hundreds of FoI requests from journalists and campaigners such as Jason and then blocks the release of “sensitive” information. It’s been described as “Orwellian” by the head of the National Union of Journalists. Legal experts say it also breaks the law, which is supposed to treat FoI requests as “applicant blind”.

 

In a rare show of unity this week, editors from rival newspapers across Fleet Street – including the Guardian and Observer, the Times, Telegraph and Paul Dacre of Associated Newspapers – signed a joint letter to MPs demanding an urgent investigation into the clearing house. They have also called for a number of steps to protect and strengthen FoI laws, which they see as a vital pillar of press freedom. Without the Freedom of Information Act our taxes would still be paying for MPs' duck houses and moat cleaning Without the Freedom of Information Act, the MPs’ expenses scandal would never have come to light and our taxes would still be paying for duck houses and moat cleaning. We’d never have known about the Prince of Wales’s private lobbying or about Britain’s role in Israel’s nuclear weapons programme.

 

Yet now our fundamental right to access information and scrutinise the workings of government is being fatally undermined. FoI response rates are the lowest since the act came into force 15 years ago, and the regulator has slammed the government for repeated and “unacceptable” failures.

This isn’t just some administrative accident. From ignoring MPs’ parliamentary questions, to the heavy redacting of details of public contracts and the “stonewalling” of reporters, Boris Johnson’s government has used the pandemic as a pretext for secrecy and evasion.

 

Journalists in our newsroom at openDemocracy have experienced it first-hand. Our political correspondent, James Cusick, has held a parliamentary lobby pass for decades – but was told last year that he’s not permitted to ask questions at the daily Covid press briefings. Why? According No 10, openDemocracy is not a news outlet but a “campaigning” organisation; an epithet also used to smear the Guardian and Mirror when they dared to ask what Dominic Cummings was doing in Barnard Castle.

 

The censorship watchdog, Reporters without Borders, has criticised the government’s “vindictive” response to media criticism during Covid and warned that press freedom in the UK is being eroded. The promised “reset” with the departure of Cummings and the installation of Allegra Stratton as Downing Street press secretary is yet to materialise. Meanwhile, Michael Gove insisted to MPs in December that the government treats all FoI requests in “exactly the same way … whether or not it’s a freelance journalist, someone working for an established title, or a concerned citizen”.

This is false. When our reporter, Jenna Corderoy, sent a FoI request to the attorney general’s office, staff wrote in internal emails: “Just flagging that Jenna Corderoy is a journalist,” and: “Once the response is confirmed, I’ll just need [redacted] to sign off on this before it goes out, since Jenna Corderoy is a reporter for openDemocracy.”

Other disclosures suggest that many other FoI requests, including those from the Guardian, the Times, the BBC, Privacy International and Big Brother Watch have been treated in similar ways.

 

Why does this clearing house even exist, when there is no legislation or mandate that stipulates the need for it?

Gove’s Cabinet Office claimed in a public statement this week that it is “fully committed” to transparency, denying there is anything “secret” about the clearing house. Why, then, is it paying lawyers to fight an information commissioner’s office ruling, which says it must release details about the operation? Why are there no published guidelines or criteria about when requests should be referred to it, no published statistics on what it reviews? Why does it even exist, when there is no legislation or mandate that stipulates the need for it? And why do reporters such as Corderoy, whose personal details are shared across Whitehall, have to fight long-running legal battles to extract basic information that we are all legally entitled to?

 

Pressure is mounting. It’s rare for Fleet Street to speak with one voice, and more than 40,000 people have now signed a petition to Gove. Labour is calling for the Freedom of Information Act to be extended to cover public service contracts outsourced to private firms, amid numerous reports of prominent Tory donors being handed lucrative Covid PPE contracts. Senior Conservatives are beginning to demand answers about the clearing house, too.

 

Freedom of information isn’t a luxury: it’s our right, and its corrosion has profound consequences for us all. Three and a half years after 72 people died in the Grenfell Tower fire, the housing ministry has been telling local councils it is “appropriate” to block FoI requests that would identify buildings that still have Grenfell-style cladding. Meanwhile, for Jason Evans, it’s “intolerable” that so many people, like his father, “have been killed due to Whitehall action – and now we’re having to fight for answers and are being delayed in the process due to Whitehall action”.

“Slowly but surely,” he said, “I believe we are piecing together one of the biggest UK cover-ups to have taken place in a generation.”

 

[Bobby Hundreds]

Doesn't matter what they do as long as the headlines support them we are stuck. Starmer has faced more scrutiny than Boris and Boris has been a giant fuck up from day one.

[Bruce Spanner]

5 minutes ago, Bobby Hundreds said:

Doesn't matter what they do as long as the headlines support them we are stuck. Starmer has faced more scrutiny than Boris and Boris has been a giant fuck up from day one.

 

True 'Oh, everyone knows he's a liar, that's just Boris, he's a laugh isn't he?'

 

No, he's a fucking disaster and I hate every single fiber of his stupid, entitled, born to rule sociopathy and I would gladly see him thrown in prison for the rest of his natural days for crimes against the state, but maybe that's just me who is unwilling to accept an entirely unsuitable, lying, incompetent, feral fucking imbecile to hold the highest office in the land just for the fucking 'lol's'

 

Pricks.

[RedKnight]

The polling bounce from the vaccine is so fucking stupid too.

 

'Never mind the 116,000 dead, they got it right in the end and that's all that matters'

 

England's obsession with Empire and Monarchy is the fuel that keeps these pricks in power.

[Anubis]

On 11/02/2021 at 21:38, Nelly-Torres said:

Is this real? I hope so! 

 

https://mobile.twitter.com/jeffsprogress/status/1359936751280734211

 

On 11/02/2021 at 21:45, Bjornebye said:

Funny I uttered them exact words as soon as I heard him talking then 

Do you think he’s worked out why he only got nanny’s homemade marmalade on toast once per month....?

[Anubis]

1 minute ago, RedKnight said:

The polling bounce from the vaccine is so fucking stupid too.

 

'Never mind the 116,000 dead, they got it right in the end and that's all that matters'

 

England's obsession with Empire and Monarchy is the fuel that keeps these pricks in power.

We are a country full of Doffers. 

[RedKnight]

Just now, Anubis said:

We are a country full of Doffers. 

Yep. Put a person with posh accent in front of most English people and it's like being in a George Eliot novel.

[magicrat]

Without doubt Johnson being the spineless cunt he is will bow to pressure from the right wing freedom nutters and open up far too early . Cue 3rd wave and resistant strains of the virus on the rampage

[Scooby Dudek]

9 minutes ago, magicrat said:

Without doubt Johnson being the spineless cunt he is will bow to pressure from the right wing freedom nutters and open up far too early . Cue 3rd wave and resistant strains of the virus on the rampage

Yeah but I will happily blame;

 

Members of the public

The EU

Captain Hindsight

Children hating, teachers

Activist lawyers

 

Stop picking on great old, one of us, Boris the jape, he is doing his best. Imagine Corbyn and Abbot....

 

 

[Gnasher]

Look out look out theres a think tank about

 

 

 

[cloggypop]

2 minutes ago, Gnasher said:

Look out look out theres a think tank about

 

 

 

The main problem with this is that trickle down economics are a load of fucking bollocks and don't work whatsoever as shown by recent extensive research from the London School of Economics 

 

https://www.lse.ac.uk/News/Latest-news-from-LSE/2020/L-December/Tax-cuts-for-the-rich