Tag Archives: bridge

Anti-vax MP Andrew Bridgen expelled from the Conservative Party

Andrew Bridgen: he’s not a Tory MP anymore.

The Conservative Party has expelled Andrew Bridgen for saying Covid-19 vaccinations were “the biggest crime against humanity since the Holocaust”.

A party disciplinary panel said he had to go for making the comparison, and for breaching lobbying rules.

He had failed to declare an interest in a firm called Mere Plantations while lobbying on behalf of that firm, He had also attacked the integrity of then-Standards Commissioner Kathryn Stone, and he tried to claim that her investigation was part of a personal attack by whoever made the complaint against him (further details are here).

Everybody involved seems to be delighted, for a change.

The Tories are happy to be rid of Bridgen, with prime minister Rishi Sunak saying Bridgen’s comments were “totally unacceptable”. Whether that’s true or not, This Writer will leave for you to decide.

And Bridgen seems happy to be out of the Tory Party, saying he had been expelled under “false pretences” amid a “culture of corruption, collusion and cover-ups”.

He said the Conservative Party had made an example of him because of his vocal criticism of the vaccine rollout.

He said he would “continue to fight for justice for all those harmed, injured and bereaved due to governmental incompetence” – and he’ll campaign to be returned to his Parliamentary seat at the next general election.

It seems the House of Commons is filling up with MPs who have been cut loose from their parties, saying it is the parties’ dogma that is at fault.

How long before they become the largest group in Parliament?

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Tory Bridgen facing Commons suspension over lobbying – but is the penalty strong enough?

Suspension threat: Andrew Bridgen.

Conservative MP Andrew Bridgen may be suspended from the House of Commons for five days after he failed to declare a financial interest in a firm while writing to ministers about it.

The Commons Standards Committee found that Bridgen had breached lobbying rules “on multiple occasions and in multiple ways” – and that he had also made an “unacceptable attack on the integrity” of Standards Commissioner Kathryn Stone.

A BBC report stated:

The committee said Mr Bridgen had called the integrity of Ms Stone into question on the basis of “wholly unsubstantiated and false allegations, and attempted to improperly influence the House’s standards processes”.

According to the BBC (again),

It was recommended he be suspended for three days for this – in addition to two days for three breaches of the code of conduct, including failing to declare a relevant interest in emails to ministers.

The committee said Mr Bridgen should have told ministers and officials he received a donation and a funded visit to Ghana from the Cheshire-based firm Mere Plantations, and had a £12,000 contract to be an adviser.

Bridgen appealed against the decision, but a panel has dismissed this, saying the proposed penalty was appropriate. MPs will vote on whether to uphold the recommended five-day suspension.

It seems Bridgen had had questioned whether his reputation as an outspoken critic of then-prime minister Boris Johnson could have influenced Ms Stone’s findings:

He wrote to her saying: “I was distressed to hear on a number of occasions an unsubstantiated rumour that your contract as Parliamentary Standards Commissioner is due to end in the coming months and that there are advanced plans to offer you a peerage, potentially as soon as the Prime Minister’s resignation honours list.

“There is also some suggestion amongst colleagues that those plans are dependent upon arriving at the ‘right’ outcomes when conducting parliamentary standards investigations.

“Clearly my own travails with Number 10 and the former PM have been well documented and obviously a small part of me is naturally concerned to hear such rumours.

“More importantly however you are rightfully renowned for your integrity and decency and no doubt such rumours are only designed to harm your reputation.”

The committee said Mr Bridgen’s email “appears to be an attempt to place wholly inappropriate pressure on the commissioner” which is “completely unacceptable behaviour”.

In his appeal, it seems Bridgen criticised the investigation as “flawed”, arguing that it had not fully considered the motivations of the person who had made the initial complaint.

He also said he had been carrying out the duties of a constituency MP.

But the Independent Expert Panel, that had been asked to consider his appeal, concluded that the motivations of the complainant were “completely irrelevant” and that an exemption for an MPs constituency duties did not apply in his case.

Its members added that sanctions “could properly and fairly have been more severe”.

Then why weren’t they?

There are three fairly serious misdemeanours here:

  • he failed to follow lobbying rules (on multiple occasions, we’re told);
  • he tried to exert pressure on the Standards Commissioner by attacking her integrity; and
  • he tried to claim the investigation was part of a personal attack by whoever made the complaint about him.

So this is not just about lobbying, and possibly benefiting financially from such activities; it’s also about bullying and deflecting blame.

If a five-day suspension is the worst sanction that the Parliamentary standards system can impose, then perhaps there should be legislation to formally criminalise this behaviour, with jurisdiction on any punishment handed over to the courts?

Or would this simply give the police another opportunity to kowtow to the Conservatives?

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If these lies are all Johnson has, Sadiq Khan is on course for a second term as London mayor

Boris Johnson used Prime Minister’s Questions to launch an unwise and unmerited two-pronged attack on London’s Labour Mayor, Sadiq Khan.

First he said that financial problems suffered by Transport for London (TfL) were Khan’s fault.

The Department for Transport is, it seems, refusing to provide £5.65 billion to keep TfL running after it suffered huge losses due to Covid-19 lockdown restrictions. It is offering a “papering-over-the-cracks” funding package that comes with a demand that Khan accepts measures including higher council tax, a larger congestion charge zone and higher tube and bus fares – including the removal of free travel for children and young people. Otherwise, the threat is that the Westminster government will take over control of TfL from City Hall.

Asked if he was going to inflict a congestion charge on four million Londoners who had already been afflicted with Covid-19 and financial ruin, Johnson said: “The current Mayor of London had effectively bankrupted TfL before coronavirus had even hit and left a massive black hole in its finances… Any expansion of the congestion charge or any other measure taken to improve the finances of TfL are entirely the responsibility of the bankrupt current Labour Mayor of London.”

Responding to a further question from Tory Bob Blackman, Johnson became extremely concerned with self-justification: “The black hole in [the] finances of TfL, the bankruptcy of TfL, which, by the way, was left in robust financial health by the previous Mayor—it certainly was—is entirely the fault of the current Labour Mayor of London, with his grossly irresponsible demagogic fare policies, which, I may say, were never pursued by the previous Mayor of London, and the fault lies entirely with him.”

But Johnson’s claims were put to rest within minutes by the fact-checkers at the BBC’s Politics Live:

Khan himself brought figures directly relating to TfL to TV audiences later:

Not satisfied with one lie, Johnson also used PMQs to claim that Hammersmith Bridge is falling down because of Khan’s “incompetence”: “Hammersmith bridge has been closed thanks entirely to the incompetence of the current Labour Mayor of London, and that Shaun Bailey, the Conservative candidate, is going to reopen it, which is the best thing possible.”

In fact, the incompetent who failed to repair the bridge at the right time was Boris Johnson himself.

The bridge was built 133 years ago and is structurally unsafe after decades of failure – by successive political authorities – to repair it while traffic for which it was never intended used it.

It was closed in 2014 and repairs could have been authorised in 2016 – but the mayor at the time – Boris Johnson – refused to authorise them.

Instead, Boris Johnson spent around £50 million on consultants working on his vanity ‘Garden Bridge’ project that was ultimately cancelled.

Oh, and didn’t a bomb go off there as well?

The public were having none of Boris Johnson‘s lies:

Shaun Bailey has agreed that he would re-open Hammersmith Bridge if he became London Mayor…

… he just didn’t say he would repair it first. So members of the public have drawn their own conclusions about what he would do:

Yes indeed: “Shaun Bailey will probably suggest a zip wire across the river.”

The issue of the bridge can be summed up in this tweet:

That’s right – Boris Johnson can indeed make it up. And he did.

But we know the facts. All he has done is show the world he’s the stupidest kind of liar – and that his lickspittle Bailey should never be given elected office anywhere.

When Khan became London Mayor, he was voted in with the highest personal mandate of any UK politician in history.

Johnson’s words today may help ensure that he is re-elected with a mandate that is even higher.

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Johnson is pressing ahead with money-wasting Scotland-Ireland bridge plan

Remember the Garden Bridge: Boris Johnson spaffed nearly £60 million on this while he was Mayor of London – and not a single minute’s work was spent trying to build it. The NI-Scotland bridge is just his latest pie-in-the-sky project.This is arrogant lunacy and it will cost a fortune.

I’m not even talking about the price of building a bridge from Northern Ireland to Scotland; the consultants will bleed the public purse brutally before it can ever get that far.

In fact, we already know it can’t be done – at least, not for any acceptable price.

But then, Mr Johnson’s plans aren’t about cost-effectiveness. They’re about keeping public funds away from those members of the public who need them.

And, judging from Twitter, we all know it:

No; I don’t think there will.

But a lot of money will be spent before then – cash that could go on much better things but won’t.

Boris the bridge-builder wants to waste billions more of our money

Barmy: An impression of the ‘Boris Bridge’ idea, published by the ‘Fleet Street Fox’ column in the Mirror.

What is this fascination Boris Johnson has with blowing vast amounts of public money on duff bridge projects?

His ‘Garden Bridge’ vanity project, while he was London Mayor, cost us £53 million without ever being built.

Now he wants to build a bridge between Scotland and Northern Ireland, to provide a concrete connection between the countries of the UK, saying it “would only cost about £15 billion”.

“Only”?

This is a man with no understanding of the value of money. Let’s face it, he has never been poor so there’s no reason he would have such knowledge.

The Twitter commentariat are having fun with it:

Even the UK Business Insider – This Site’s source for this story – is scathing:

The prime minister first suggested the idea of a bridge across the Irish Sea when he was foreign secretary in 2018 and has apparently revived it since entering Downing Street.

His proposal was, at the time, branded by one expert as a “thoughtless soundbite” that “no sane contractor or responsible government” would sanction.

Writing to The Sunday Times last year, James Duncan, a retired offshore engineer from Edinburgh, said the idea was “about as feasible as building a bridge to the moon.”

“Many long bridges have been built, but none across such a wide, deep and stormy stretch of water,” he continued.

“For a great part of the 22-mile route the water is more than 1,000 feet deep. It would require about 30 support towers at least 1,400 feet high to carry the road deck across the deepest part and above the shipping channel. In total the bridge would require 54 towers, of heights never achieved anywhere in the world.”

Expensive and impractical… it is the Garden Bridge all over again. And at a time when the UK needs to save its money because of BoJob’s Brexit.

Source: Boris Johnson says bridge to Northern Ireland ‘would cost £15 billion’ – Business Insider

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Boris’s bizarre bridge plan stirs up troubled waters

[Image by ‘Hopeless Surfer’ on Twitter.]

Can’t he just pipe down?

It seems Boris Johnson has decided that he doesn’t like the Channel Tunnel, and we should have a bridge between the UK and France – across the world’s busiest shipping waters.

It encourages one to wonder why he suggested it – allegedly at the Anglo-French summit between Theresa May and Emmanuel Macron. The following seems persuasive:

Let’s face it, there’s no rational thinking behind it.

And the slapdowns have been hard, according to the Daily Mirror:

The UK Chamber of Shipping tweeted bluntly: “Building a huge concrete structure in the middle of the world’s busiest shipping lane might come with some challenges.”

And in a brutal slapdown, France’s finance minister Bruno Le Maire said: “All ideas merit consideration, even the most far-fetched ones.”

Asked if the Government was planning on building a bridge to France, Theresa May’s spokesman added: “I’ve not seen any plans on that.”

The Road Haulage Association wasn’t enthusiastic, either:

Meanwhile, the Road Haulage Association said a cross-Channel bridge “makes no sense” since the costs and practical implications would be huge.

Chief executive Richard Burnett said: “The Strait of Dover is the world’s busiest shipping lane carrying more than 500 ships daily, so construction would cause huge disruption to sea traffic.”

How about this one, from Twitter?

Here’s UK Shipping’s tweet:

How about this response?

Interestingly, it has been suggested that Mr Johnson was trying to distract attention from the substance of the summit:

That’s as may be, but he certainly succeeded in grabbing all the attention. And it’s a shame.

We’re letting him get away with distracting us all – with a clown routine that was worn out before he was shifted out of office as Mayor of London.

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