Monthly Archives: April 2022

Sunak makes you wait; if you were banking on Tory council tax rebate, you’re in trouble

Rishi Sunak: the cowboy Chancellor.

People who were told they’d receive a £150 council tax rebate in April have been betrayed by Tory Chancellor Rishi Sunak.

He – and the Treasury – are now saying council taxpayers whose homes are in Bands A, B, C or D will receive the money from April.

In practical terms, people who pay by Direct Debit are first in the queue – but are not likely to get their cash until May or June.

Those who don’t – around a third of council taxpayers – may have to wait until September or later. They are being told to wait to be contacted by their councils to arrange payment – but that is expected to draw the process out even longer.

The Treasury is saying: “We’ve always been clear, including in our press notice and the leaflet which went out to millions of households, that the £150 council tax rebate to help with the cost of living would be paid ‘from’ April.”

This is a lie; the BBC has demonstrated that the wording of Treasury documentation changed between February and this month.

So those of us who were encouraged to believe a vital cash injection was on its way have been deceived by a Chancellor who is so rich personally that he has absolutely no concept of how important it is for people to receive government funding when the government originally promised it.

There is no justification for this. It’s irresponsible.

People are facing serious financial cash-flow difficulties because of conditions created by Sunak and by Tories before him – the largest number of tax rises in 40 years; Brexit-prompted price rises and inflation; energy price rises and so on.

They have ordered their household budgets in the belief that they would receive this council tax rebate at a particular time – and now that isn’t happening.

Unacceptable. Sunak is a cowboy, not a chancellor.

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What’s the big secret about how Lebedev became a Lord? What did Johnson do?

Buddies: Boris Johnson and Evgeny Lebedev. What public interest issues could possibly justify delaying whether the liar on the left interfered to put the son-of-a-Russian-spy on the right into the House of Lords?

It seems the Conservative government has found yet another piece of important information about Boris Johnson that it wants to hide. That’s right: Boris Johnson.

It concerns the way Johnson’s close friend, the Russian son-of-a-spy Evgeny Lebedev, was ennobled (given a place in the House of Lords).

Parliament voted to instruct the government that it must provide all information on how this happened, by April 28.

But the government has ignored this instruction from the UK’s sovereign institution.

Cabinet Office Minister Michael Ellis has argued that he could not give out information where it was “not in the public interest to do so” and the government would need more time to deal with “all the necessary considerations”.

Funny, that. The instruction was given at the end of March so ministers have had a month to sort out any public interest issues. That’s plenty of time.

Also, we all know that the substantive issue is whether Boris Johnson interfered to override concerns about Lebedev by the security services. There’s absolutely no public interest issue around that.

In fact, it seems to This Writer that “Save Big Dog” is the only issue here.

Let’s recap the situation, from This Site’s previous article:

The Guardian revealed back in 2020 that Boris Johnson overruled concerns voiced by the security services in order to give Lebedev a peerage:

Two days before Johnson met Lebedev in March [he did this on March 19, right after telling us all to stay in our homes because of Covid-19, so this happened on March 17], the House of Lords appointments commission (Holac), which scrutinises all nominations, wrote to the prime minister. It is understood to have expressed concerns about Lebedev’s proposed peerage and asked Downing Street to reconsider.

The commission, made up of cross-party peers, carries out “propriety checks” on candidates. It does not have the power of veto. But it can suggest that a party come up with an alternative, which is what is understood to have happened in Lebedev’s case.

Peers were apparently alarmed following a confidential briefing from the UK security services. They told the commission Lebedev was viewed as a potential security risk because of his father, Alexander Lebedev, a one-time Moscow spy. During the late cold war period, Lebedev Sr worked undercover at the Soviet embassy in London. His real employer was KGB foreign intelligence.

Johnson ignored the concerns and Lebedev became a Lord.

Labour leader Keir Starmer called for Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee to review all the reports on Lord Lebedev that Holac saw, after Russians in the UK came under suspicion in the wake of the war between Russia and Ukraine.

Lebedev himself has supported publication of the material, saying, “I have nothing to hide.”

But Downing Street insisted that “all peerages are vetted by the House of Lords Appointments Commission” – an assertion that failed to acknowledge that Holac can’t veto an appointment, which always remains within the gift of the prime minister.

And Johnson himself has denied overruling the concerns expressed by the security services.

If the documents are published and show that Johnson did indeed ignore concerns raised by the security services, then he has lied in his capacity as prime minister. If he uttered those words in Parliament, then he will have broken the Ministerial Code and his resignation will be required.

And the irony is that any security risk posed by Lebedev is tiny in any case – because Lords are not shown “classified” documents.

It seems clear that the Tory government is hiding something, and it seems clear that the only thing they have to hide is interference by Boris Johnson in UK security concerns.

Ellis has promised to publish the necessary information “promptly” on May 10, when Parliament reconvenes.

This will be after the local elections, and I wonder whether the delay is motivated by the possibility that it will influence voters against supporting the Tories. But then, why not just say, “This may affect the outcome of an election”?

Or would that be an admission of Johnson’s guilt?

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Starmer ‘rule breach’ looks like Tory mud-slinging ahead of local vote

Keir and the beer: but isn’t the real question what the person who took the image thought they were doing? VoyeurGate, anybody?

Did Keir Starmer have a bottle of beer in a Durham MP’s constituency office last year?

Yes.

Was it against the rules at the time?

Probably not. There isn’t really enough information to be sure.

Skwawkbox has provided a handy list of the rules here – and that site considers Starmer to have broken the rules.

But the BBC takes a more nuanced view.

Labour itself says Starmer was at the office of City of Durham MP Mary Foy for an online event ahead of the Hartlepool by-election – a neighbouring constituency. As pubs were closed, getting take-out food was the logical course of action.

Rules in force at the time said people should work from home if they could. It could be argued that this was an occasion in which working from home was not possible – and there was an exemption for “work purposes”. There were no specific rules for meals at work events or for socialising at them.

Durham police have investigated and said they were satisfied that no rules were broken.

That wasn’t enough for North West Durham Tory MP Richard Holden. He argued that “this location was not the usual workplace” of Sir Keir, and there was “no necessity” for him to attend the event.

Really? If it was billed as an online rally with Keir Starmer and Mary Foy, then it was probably reasonable for him to attend, and if it was organised by Ms Foy’s constituency party, then it was probably reasonable for him to attend it there.

And now there’s a question about Labour Deputy Leader Angela Rayner attending – which, again, is probably neither here nor there, considering the restrictions described above.

So on balance, This Site tends to agree (for possibly the first time!) with Starmer: “We’re a few days away from local elections, and Conservative MPs are trying to throw as much mud as possible.”

There isn’t any correspondence with the so-called Partygate scandal because the Downing Street gatherings were social events. Boris Johnson was fined for attending a party, not a work event.

So this issue is nothing more than a distraction – and a shot in the foot for the Tories.

That’s because, by concentrating on alleged lockdown rule-breaking, the Tories are focusing attention on their own wrongdoing more than anybody else’s. Their prime minister has been caught breaking those rules; Starmer is only accused.

And the simple there are far worse failings in Keir Starmer’s Labour Party that the Tories could be exploiting.

What surprises This Writer is that either party is anywhere at all in the polls. Other political organisations should be walking all over them while they squabble about this.

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Law on records of government comms is badly out-of-date, WhatsApp court ruling shows

Social media junkie: Boris Johnson is probably deleting WhatsApp messages in this shot.

The Tory government has been crowing after High Court judges said there is nothing in the law to stop ministers from using services like WhatsApp and personal email accounts to make decisions and authorise action.

But this doesn’t mean ministers are justified in carrying out their business away from the official records.

It means the law on what should be counted as a public or official record is badly out of date and must be amended at once.

In fact, let’s face it, there should have been a constant policy of updating as soon as the Internet emerged as the communications revolution it has become.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has used WhatsApp to make decisions on the procurement of ventilators and on Covid-19 testing in care homes. We only know this because his ex-aide, now enemy, Dominic Cummings took screenshots of the now-deleted messages.

The procurement decisions are important because we know the Tory government paid huge amounts to fellow Tories who were not able to fulfil the contracts, while ignoring experienced firms that could have honoured any deals easily, and lives are certain to have been lost as a result.

And we know that government failures on Covid-19 in care homes certainly led to more than 20,000 deaths there.

Lord Brownlow discussed his funding of Boris Johnson’s Downing Street flat refurbishment with Johnson on WhatsApp, and it has been suggested that he only put up the money because Johnson had made a vague undertaking to consider his “Great Exhibition” idea.

Then-Health Secretary Matt Hancock diverted £40 million to Alex Bourne for vials to be used in Covid-19 tests, despite his having no previous experience of providing medical supplies, after the former landlord of a pub close to Hancock’s constituency home sent him a WhatsApp message.

Lord Bethell claimed that he never used his private email or telephone accounts for official business – but then replaced his mobile phone before it could be searched for information relevant to £85m of PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) deals.

None of the information in the messages mentioned above is covered by the 1958 Public Records Act, so judges at the High Court said it was not illegal to have used WhatsApp, or to have used auto-delete software to remove evidence of the decision-making carried out there:

In their ruling, Lord Justice Singh and Mr Justice Johnson said the 1958 act “says nothing about such matters as whether a person can use a personal device to communicate with others about government business”.

They added: “Nor… does it require the production of a record of something in the first place.”

The widespread use of instant messaging services such as WhatsApp meant it was often a forum for workplace conversations “that would previously have been undertaken face-to-face” and not recorded, the judges said.

And the act’s wording meant there would “in practice be a large measure of discretion [within government] involved as to precisely what ‘arrangements’ there should be”, according to the ruling.

A Cabinet Office spokesperson said the ruling “vindicates our long-standing position that we have acted in a proper and appropriate manner” – but it doesn’t do anything of the sort. It merely states that a 64-year-old, out-of-date law did not foresee changes in the way we communicate.

Gemma Abbott, legal director of the Good Law Project, one of the groups that took the case to the High Court, had it right when she said, “The use of private email accounts by ministers creates information black holes, thwarting Freedom of Information requests and critically undermining public inquiries.”

For that reason, the law needs to be updated to bring new methods of communication under its authority.

But, having got away with a killing (or, indeed, tens of thousands of them), can you see your corrupt Tory government lifting a finger?

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Tory MP alleged to have been caught watching porn is named. Are you any wiser?

Neil Parish: now you know what he looks like.

The Conservative MP who has been alleged to have been seen watching pornography in the House of Commons chamber has been named as Neil Parish.

Who?

Beats me. Apparently he’s the chair of the Commons Environment, Food and Rural Affairs committee. I’m not sure that qualifies him to be described as a front-bencher, as was claimed on Wednesday (April 27).

His membership of the Conservative Party has been suspended while an investigation takes place, and he has said he will not comment on the allegation before it reports its findings.

It’s reminiscent of Boris Johnson and the Downing Street parties. These Tories seem to want us to believe they are incapable of remembering what they have or haven’t done until they are told by somebody else.

To This Writer, that suggests that they must be extremely unintelligent – or lying.

In either eventuality, it also suggests that they are not suitable material to be members of Parliament.

At least this one has said he will quit if he is found guilty of the allegation. Johnson will have to be scoured out of Downing Street with some form of decontaminant.

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UK is heading into recession – probably – as your savings run down

Consumer confidence has fallen off a cliff: will spending do the same – and, if so, will the UK economy go into reverse at the worst possible moment?

Be careful with those savings you racked up during the Covid-19 lockdowns, because you’re going to need them to ride out the cost of living crisis!

That’s the message, as far as This Writer can tell, from economist Simon Wren-Lewis on his Mainly Macro blog – and it’s as close to a prediction that the UK is going into recession as you’re likely to see.

Most economic forecasters aren’t saying it because they’re afraid to, it seems.

We know we’re looking at the biggest fall in living standards since records began in 1956-7, because of Brexit-fuelled increases in the cost of goods (including food), rising energy bills and the largest number of tax rises to be inflicted on a UK population in around 40 years.

You will be expected to use your savings to cushion this blow.

That’s fine – as long as you can be sure that the cost-of-living crisis will be only a short-term shock. But there’s no evidence that this is the case; the effects of Brexit are expected to last for decades, we’re being told to brace for another energy bill shock in October, and the Tories have absolutely no intention of reducing taxes – they want to squeeze you until your pips squeak.

With these expectations in mind, consumer confidence is flatlining:

“The GfK Consumer Confidence Index fell for the fourth month in a row to -31 from -26 in February, its lowest since November 2020, deep in the coronavirus pandemic. Readings of -30 and below have presaged recession on four out of five occasions since the survey started in 1974.” Since then the March data is available, and it’s at -38!

That’s the weakest consumer confidence since the 2008 financial crisis, and weaker than at any time during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.

So it seems likely that spending will tail off as the year progresses, people see how the cost-of-living shocks affect their savings, and improvements in their financial position fail to appear.

As spending tails off, the economy will falter. And the Tory government has already told us it does not have any plan to stimulate growth with an injection of public cash.

So, even if you have a well-stuffed savings account now, expect those funds to run low by the end of the year, while bills and taxes remain high. What are you going to do then?

Source: mainly macro: Is the UK heading for a recession?

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Dorries defies public opinion to push ahead with Channel 4 privatisation

Cash cow: campaigning organisation We Own It created this banner, with a highly-relevant message. And why DO the Tories want to privatise Channel 4 so much? For their own profit?

What is the point of the government running a public consultation if it is only going to ignore the result because it disagrees with it?

That is the question we should ask after a public consultation on Nadine Dorries’s plan to privatise Channel 4 showed that a massive 24/25 of the public don’t want it to happen.

96% of responses to a Government consultation said they did not agree with the statement that there are “challenges in the current TV broadcasting market” that present barriers to “a sustainable Channel Four” staying in public hands.

Just 2% said they agreed.

A large number of responses to the consultation came through the social campaigning organisation 38 Degrees, which rephrased the Government’s statement as: “Do you think Channel Four should be privatised?”

But even with these stripped out of the figures, the vast majority of the other respondents – 89% – disagreed that Channel Four is facing challenges to a successful future in public ownership, while 5% agreed.

Dorries has unilaterally decided that the 55,737 UK citizens who responded to her consultation don’t matter.

In a response, she reiterated her claim that the broadcaster faces “serious challenges” and that anyone “choosing to dismiss them” is “burying their head in the sand”.

It seems to This Writer that it is the Culture Secretary who is burying her head in the sand!

Her counter-claim is that Channel 4’s current ownership model, as a publicly-owned, advertising-funded broadcaster, is too restrictive.

But it is a model dictated by the government. Dorries says after the channel is privatised it will be better-able to make its own programmes, because the government will then lift restrictions on borrowing money or raising private sector capital by issuing shares.

While remaining in public ownership would preclude the issuing of shares, it would be perfectly possible for the government to vary Channel 4’s current ownership model to provide it with other forms of revenue generation in order to make, and then sell, programmes.

There is absolutely no need at all – and no public desire – for Channel 4 to be privatised.

But Dorries is determined to do it anyway.

Governments don’t make any changes lightly. They always act (in the case of good governments) in the public interest or (in the case of bad governments like that of Boris Johnson) in their own members’ selfish self-interest.

Look at the increasing influence on the National Health Service of private health companies who count dozens (if not hundreds) of MPs as shareholders.

Dorries’s decision means it is appropriate for us to ask: what do the Tories hope to get out of this? And why should we tolerate the loss of another great public institution to their greed?

Source: Nine in 10 people disagree with Government plans to privatise Channel 4 – survey

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UK brinkmanship may turn the world into a radioactive cinder

UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace: he even looks shifty, doesn’t he?

Why is the UK’s Defence Secretary, Ben Wallace, so popular among Tory voters? If he has his way, he’ll turn the world into a radioactive cinder!

Wallace has been making a big show of defiance against Vladimir Putin, saying that the threats of nuclear attack from Russia are worthless because he is outnumbered and outgunned by Nato.

But that won’t help if Putin actually launches a nuclear strike. There is no defence against such an attack.

Wallace reckons that Britain’s nuclear weapon-armed submarines are “deep underwater, hiding, waiting, in case Britain needs to be protected”.

But they’ll only be asked to decide whether to launch their missiles – and even then, only if the United States approves of it – after an enemy (possibly Russia) launches a nuclear attack against the UK.

By then, it will be too late for all of us. We’ll either be dead as a result of bombing, or we’ll die soon after from radiation poisoning, and that’s not a pleasant way to go.

There is only one effective way to use nuclear weapons, and that is not to use them at all.

Wallace is wrong to rattle the sabre at Putin because he is taunting a man who appears willing to go nuclear despite the consequences – which are that his entire country will become a radioactive hell very soon afterwards.

The simple fact is that the UK doesn’t have to broadcast that it is helping Ukraine.

Our government is entirely capable of arming Ukrainian forces to the hilt without ever letting Russia know how its enemy received the weapons.

Shouting about how we can poison Russia as badly as it can poison us does not help anybody.

By doing so, Wallace is attacking his own fellow citizens more than anybody in Russia.

Source: UK warns Putin that he will be ‘outgunned and outnumbered’ after frightening nuclear hint

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Establishment racism: Non-verbal black teenager who has never left UK detained at immigration centre

Priti Patel: it seems she’s so racist, she will merrily try to deport black people, even though they are UK citizens. She just won’t carry out the proper checks.

This is beyond This Writer’s ability to comment. The level of racism displayed by the UK authorities in this story is off the scale:

A woman has described how her 17-year-old black British son was found at an immigration detention centre after going missing while being treated for psychosis.

The boy – who is non-verbal – disappeared from a hospital in Kent, where he had been sectioned under the Mental Health Act, on 7 April. Two days later, he was arrested by British Transport Police (BTP) at Euston on suspicion of fare evasion, before being detained by Immigration Enforcement near Gatwick, despite being British.

“It’s just horrific,” the boy’s mother said. “Because he’s black they just assumed ‘let’s pick him and put him in a deportation centre’.”

When the boy was returned to the hospital, his clothes contained Home Office documents that incorrectly stated his name and date of birth, and recorded his nationality as Nigerian.

“How do they know he’s from Nigeria, when he doesn’t even speak to them?” the woman said of her son.

The boy is a British citizen and has never left the UK. His mother said he would not have been able to say his date of birth properly, and would never have said he was from Nigeria.

James Wilson, deputy director of Detention Action, which works with people facing removal, said unaccompanied minors or children under the age of 18 should not be in detention in the first place. “In theory detention should be an absolute last resort, rather than an early step you would go to,” he said.

This is a prime example of how Priti Patel’s Home Office treats UK citizens, isn’t it?

Let’s consider the Home Office’s comments on this case…

A Home Office spokesperson said: “We rely on information provided by our policing partners when an individual is referred to Immigration Enforcement. In this case, the individual declared himself to British Transport Police to be an adult male. Police nurses assessed him and raised no physical or mental health issues.”

Yeah, but did they? Really? a non-verbal 17-year-old?

I have a doubt about that.

I don’t think the person declared himself to be anything at all.

I don’t think nurses assessed him in anything like an adequate way.

do think that this case reveals serious failures in Home Office procedures.

And I think it is Priti Patel’s responsibility to sort them out.

But I don’t think – for a single minute – that she is in any way capable, or responsible enough, to take the necessary steps.

Source: Non-verbal black teenager who has never left UK detained at immigration centre

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Tone-deaf Truss backtracks – but not far enough – on warplanes for Ukraine call

Headbangers: Liz ‘War Head’ Truss and Dominic ‘Air Head’ Raab.

Don’t get your hopes up – she hasn’t learned her lesson.

Instead of demanding that the UK send warplanes to Ukraine – thereby provoking Vladimir Putin to nuke us until we glow, Liz Truss is now suggesting that we merely send the parts.

So now she wants us to send self-assembly kit planes to the eastern Europe conflict. How is that better?

It seems War Head Liz has been reminded that Nato policy is not to provoke Putin; the United States recently vetoed a Polish plan to deliver fighter jets for that very reason.

But she – and Air Head Dominic Raab, it seems – is still calling for western nations to declare in as loud a way as possible that they are helping Ukraine.

So my question remains: what is wrong with these people?

If they want to help a beleaguered fellow nation, then they can do it in the tried and tested way – covertly. They send it by secret routes and they don’t talk about it.

Blathering loudly and continually that they are ignoring Putin’s threats and will do whatever the hell they like will only attract harm.

Perhaps that is what Truss and Raab and the rest of the Tory headbangers really want.

Source: Liz Truss backtracks on call for West to send war planes to Ukraine

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