Tag Archives: John

Former Shadow Chancellor confirms water and energy privatisation are riddled with corruption

John McDonnell: he knows exactly what’s been going on in the water companies since privatisation.

It’s always welcome when a senior politician confirms one’s suspicions.

In an article yesterday (May 20, 2023), This Writer suggested that greed has overtaken service provision in the boardrooms of both the privatised water and energy firms.

Now we discover that former Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell has reached much the same conclusion.

In an article published by the Yorkshire Post, he stated:

The water industry is second only to the energy industry in ripping off the British public. Since privatisation, the water companies have stolen from the average consumer of water in this country.

He added some details to the story of water privatisation, too:

Privatisation was meant to reduce prices, increase investment and make the industry more accountable to the wider public through shareholding. That has not been the case.

Those of you who have been following this issue on Vox Political will know I’ve stated that privatisation was meant to reduce prices and increase investment.

As for making the industry accountable to the wider public through shareholding, I’m not sure how that is supposed to be better than nationalisation, which makes the industry accountable to us all, rather than the comparatively few people who own company shares.

In any case,

It is not more accountable through shareholding, because most of the companies that now own British water are owned by overseas shareholders.

That’s overseas shareholders who own most of the British water companies, and not pension funds – as some apologists for privatisation have tried to claim.

And what has happened?

Since 1989, real water bills have risen 50 per cent. Since 2010, bills have gone up by more than 12.5 per cent. At the same time, individual family incomes have gone down by five per cent.

This is interesting:

Significant investment has been made in the infrastructure, but the problem is that since the 1990s that has declined as a proportion of the overall turnover of the industry.

How strange. Significant investment, yet the system leaks like a sieve. One hesitates to image what it would be like without this ever-decreasing contribution.

Most of the money we’ve paid the water firms, on the other hand,

has gone into paying interest charges on water company debts or dividends to their owners and shareholders.

It has now been exposed that some of the borrowing is being used to pay dividends to shareholders and high salaries to chief executives and board directors.

Six UK water companies took high-interest loans from their owners through the Channel Islands and then converted them into euro bonds. They then lent them back to the companies and paid virtually no tax on them whatsoever.

This is a tax scam for which these water companies are used as a vehicle… This is a scandal.

Mr McDonnell recommends, rather than privatisation, a shift to the not-for-profit company model exemplified by Welsh Water.

It’s nice to know that This Writer’s local water company is considered the way of the future by at least one influential politician – but I still think re-nationalisation is best; it eliminates the risk of corruption altogether (or, at least, should).

But what’s to be done about the scandal(s) that Mr McDonnell has identified?

Under the current government – nothing, most likely.

So we need a better government.

If more young people were encouraged to vote, we might actually get it. And it is in their best interest.

After all, it’s the young who’ll suffer the most over the long term if rampant water corruption and profiteering isn’t halted – not to mention the sewage scandal.

Source: John McDonnell: Our money seeps away into profiteering by water firms | Yorkshire Post


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Lisa Nandy’s attacks on the left only betray her own repulsiveness

Nandy: a mouthpiece for Labour attack lines without any apparent intelligence to filter out the offensive nonsense.

A confrontation between Labour MPs has won an inordinate amount of attention on the social media, considering the failures of one of the participants.

I refer of course to the argument between right-winger Lisa Nandy and left-wing former Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell over their party’s current line of attack adverts – in particular the one accusing Rishi Sunak of wanting child sex offenders to escape prison.

Here’s the relevant part of the discussion on Robert Peston’s ITV show:

Both of them were wrong, in different ways.

Mr McDonnell was mistaken to suggest that Nandy would not make personal attacks – quite clearly, because her response to his reasonable assertion that Labour should not have made an unsupportable personal attack was to make an unsupportable personal attack.

And Nandy was wrong in her entire approach – supporting the advert and attacking Mr McDonnell with the old line about anti-Semitism.

For the record, the manufactured anti-Semitism crisis, in which people like Nandy persuaded much of the country that under Jeremy Corbyn, two-thirds of their party were anti-Semites (in fact, I believe the true figure was found to be fewer than one per cent), was not the worst stain on Labour’s history.

But don’t take my words on it. Here’s Cornish Damo with a detailed breakdown of the incident, the issues, and why Nandy is as vile as she undoubtedly is:

This Writer wonders whether she’s happy now, having done what seems to be her real job – propping up the Tories.

They will get a sympathy bounce because the claims against Rishi Sunak are not supportable, and thinking right-wingers will support them because they will see Labour as divided.


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Tory crumbles under cross examination over Budget

John Glen, Tory Chief Secretary to the Treasury, got badly mauled when he tried to dissemble about the Budget in an interview with Victoria Derbyshire on the BBC’s Newsnight.

He couldn’t explain why it was a “Budget for growth” when medium-term growth forecasts have been downgraded.

And on the effects of Brexit, challenged to admit that it has made the UK poorer, he could not provide an alternative explanation for what has happened since the country left the European Union.

He crumbled under scrutiny.

Watch this car crash interview and understand why Tory leadership has taken the UK nowhere.


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The chairman of NatWest understands the problems facing the UK – why can’t Rishi Sunak?

Rishi Sunak: the economy is beyond the understanding of this former Chancellor of the Exchequer, who is now the UK’s prime minister.

This Writer is guilty of terrible omissions in my political viewing habits; I keep forgetting Robert Peston’s interview show.

This week, he was talking to Howard Davies, chairman of NatWest, along with Labour’s John McDonnell and Ruth Davidson of the Conservatives, and it was Mr Davies who proved most interesting.

He laid into former PM Liz Truss, who has claimed she was brought down by a mythical “left-wing establishment”:

His words were supported by Mr McDonnell, who explained how he had planned for a future Labour government in 2017 and 2019 by liaising with the relevant economic movers and shakers in order to be sure that everybody knew what he was planning. He considered Truss’s failure to prepare as “incompetent”:

Mr Davies also described the economic levers that he believed were tipping the UK into recession – including Brexit, despite Tory claims to the contrary:

And he said although the recession was likely to be shallow, it would be hard to bring it to an end because the government has no plans to do so:

This is unsurprising. If a government refuses to accept the reasons for recession (like Brexit), then it is unlikely to be able to plan a successful way out.

But that leaves the question: if Howard Davies can recognise the problems, why can’t Rishi Sunak?


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BBC Chairman said he did not help arrange a loan for Boris Johnson. Do you believe him?

Corruption? Richard Sharp (left) and Boris Johnson.

I can’t say I do.

Richard Sharp appeared before the Commons’ Digital, Culture, Media and Sport committee to explain his involvement in the arrangement of an alleged £800,000 loan for then-prime minister Boris Johnson, right before Johnson appointed him Chairman of the BBC.

According to the BBC News report,

BBC chairman Richard Sharp has denied that he helped arrange a loan for Boris Johnson when he was prime minister.

But the same report states that

Mr Sharp confirmed he had introduced his friend Sam Blyth to Cabinet Secretary Simon Case in late 2020, which was shortly before his appointment at the BBC.

Mr Sharp has previously said Mr Blyth had told him he wanted to provide financial assistance to Mr Johnson after reading about the then-PM’s money troubles in the media.

On Tuesday, Mr Sharp agreed with acting committee chairman Damian Green that he had “acted as a sort of introduction agency” between Mr Blyth and Mr Case.

It’s all a bit murky as to why this was necessary. Sam Blyth is said to be Boris Johnson’s cousin and well-known to him; the claim seems to be that Mr Sharp stepped in to provide a buffer between the two family members in order to bring Mr Blyth to the attention of civil servants.

Mr Sharp also said

“I did not provide and have not provided the former prime minister personal financial advice. I know nothing about his [financial] affairs, I never have done. I didn’t facilitate a loan.”

Really?

If he knew nothing about Johnson’s financial affairs, how did he know Johnson needed a loan?

Nobody seems convinced by all this mummery:

And then there is the fact that this happened while Mr Sharp was applying for the job of BBC Chairman. This has also attracted round criticism:

His evidence suggested that he did realise there would be a perceived conflict of interest; that’s why he said he told both Simon Case and Mr Blyth that he had to step back, after introducing them. But still…

John Nicolson, the SNP MP who hotly grilled Mr Sharp at the committee meeting, had this to say:

In the meeting itself, he went a little further:

“It leaves the impression so much of this is deeply ‘Establishment’; it’s pals appointing pals, donating money to pals.

“It rather leaves the impression that it is all a bit… ‘banana republic’ and cosy.”

Yes it does.

Here’s a video clip of the full confrontation between Mr Nicolson and Mr Sharp:

BBC staff are said to be furious about the shame Mr Sharp has brought down on the organisation.

So here’s the question:

Should he remain as BBC Chair or should he quit?


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Boris Johnson’s anti-corruption champion quits – calls on PM to resign

John Penrose: when the Anti-Corruption Champion resigns because of the behaviour of the prime minister, it can only mean that he has found the PM to be corrupt.

Is this the killing blow against Boris Johnson?

The government’s anti-corruption champion has resigned, saying it is clear that Johnson has broken the Ministerial Code and the only honourable choice for the PM is to step down as well.

John Penrose, MP for Weston-Super-Mare, has himself suffered criticism related to corruption because he is married to Dido Harding who – as the person in charge of the government’s disastrous ‘test and trace’ strategy – wasted £37 billion of public money on a system that did not work at all.

But he has salvaged his reputation today by making it clear that he considers Boris Johnson to be unfit to lead the Conservative Party or the country – and that his reason for believing this is corruption.

In a letter to Johnson, published on Twitter, he stated: “It wouldn’t be honourable or right for me to remain as your Anti-Corruption Champion… nor for you to remain as Prime Minister either.”

He wrote: “My reason for stepping down is your public letter last week, replying to your independent Adviser on the Ministerial Code about the recent Sue Gray Report into ‘partygate’.

“In it you addressed the concerns over the Fixed Penalty Notice you paid, but not the broader and very serious criticisms of what the Report called ‘failures of leadership and judgment’ and its conclusion that ‘senior leadership at the centre, both political and official, must bear responsibility for this culture’.

“You will know (and your letter to your Adviser on the Ministerial Code explicitly says) that the Nolan Principles of Public Life are absolutely central to the Ministerial Code, and that the seventh of them is ‘Leadership’.

“So the only fair conclusion to draw from the Sue Gray Report is that you have breached a fundamental principle of the Ministerial Code – a clear resigning matter.

“But your letter to your independent Adviser on the Ministerial Code ignores this absolutely central, non-negotiable issue completely. And, if it had addressed it, it is hard to see how it could have reached any other conclusion than that you had broken the code.”

Mr Penrose listed some of what he considered to be Johnson’s achievements, but then stated: “I hope you will understand that none of these can excuse or justify a fundamental breach of the Ministerial Code. As a result, I’m afraid it wouldn’t be honourable or right for me to remain as your Anti-Corruption Champion after reaching this conclusion, nor for you to remain as Prime Minister either.

“I hope you will now stand aside so we can look to the future and choose your successor.”

Damning words.

They make it clear that the government’s Anti-Corruption Chief considered Johnson to be corrupt according to the rules.

And they state that the prime minister should resign ahead of today’s vote on his future. Staying on to await the result of a ballot would be dishonourable and wrong.

Johnson now sits on the horns of a dilemma. Should he resign now, on Penrose’s advice? Or should he try to brazen it out and tempt the wrath of backbenchers incensed at being asked to support somebody who is dishonourable and corrupt?

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Bercow found guilty of bullying but Patel innocent – because Johnson is corrupt

‘Or-DURE!’ John Bercow looks as though even he can’t believe the latest corruption coming from the UK’s Parliament, headed by Boris Johnson.

Priti Patel is utterly vile.

She bullied civil servants in three government departments, according to a report by the Parliamentary Standards watchdog, and the relevant MPs’ committee.

But she was let off the hook by Boris Johnson who, as prime minister, had the ultimate say over whether she should be penalised for the transgression or exonerated of it altogether.

I mention this because, now, former Commons Speaker John Bercow has also been found to have bullied staff in the Speaker’s office – according to a report by the Parliamentary Standards watchdog, and the relevant MPs’ committee.

But if he were still a member of Parliament it is unlikely that he would have escaped punishment because, unlike Priti Patel, he took a principled stand against a government he claimed was “disrespecting parliament, telling untruths to parliament and bypassing parliament” – and a prime minister he publicly denounced as someone who “stinks in the nostrils of decent people”.

Don’t get me wrong. It is entirely possible that John Bercow is as utterly vile as Priti Patel. There are reports from Parliament saying so!

But Patel’s record is clean and Bercow’s is dirty because Boris Johnson is utterly corrupt. That is what riles me. It’s what should upset you, too.

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Putin/Ukraine is NOT like Hitler/Poland – but there is a comparison to be made

Compare: the Cuban Missile Crisis was about Russian missiles being placed on the border of the United States – and the Ukraine crisis is about Nato troops being placed on Russia’s border.

How typical of the jingoists in the UK media to start comparing Vladimir Putin with Adolf Hitler over his invasion of Ukraine.

Don’t get me wrong – This Writer and This Site do not approve of the invasion; it should not have happened and represents a failure of democracy, on both sides.

But now that it has happened, it seems some opportunistic, unscrupulous commentators are keen to skew public opinion by presenting a false comparison of Russian president Vladimir Putin with the 20th century German dictator Adolf Hitler.

“It’s 1939 all over again,” they say. “Like Hitler, Putin is a dictator who thinks the West will try to appease him, no matter what he does. So he annexed the Crimea like Hitler annexed the Sudatenland – and now he has invaded Ukraine like Hitler invaded Poland.”

Well, the Crimea is a complicated matter. It was handed to Ukraine by Nikita Kruschev – himself a Ukrainian – because he believed the country of his birth had had a rough time of it in the USSR. Many believed he was wrong to do this and now believe Putin was right to take it back.

The comparison of Ukraine with Poland is similarly twisted – and I wonder if that is at least partly to take attention away from the fact that there is a much more appropriate comparison to be made – with the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.

Instead of comparing Putin with Hitler, we should be drawing parallels with US president John F Kennedy.

In 1962, Kennedy narrowly avoided a nuclear war over the positioning of a Russian missile base in Cuba – right on the border of the United States. He was able to negotiate with Kruschev (for it was he, again) for the dismantling of the base in return for certain reassurances and the crisis was averted.

Putin has stated all through the Ukraine crisis that he was concerned about the positioning of Nato troops on Russia’s borders, which he sees as a threat to his nation’s security – just as Kennedy saw Soviet ballistic missiles sited on Cuba as a threat to the United States.

Fortunately for Kennedy, Kruschev was a reasonable man – or at least, more reasonable than current US president Joe Biden, UK prime minister Boris Johnson, and Nato secretary general Jens Stoltenberg have been.

If we’re going to make comparisons, let’s make them accurate. And this one certainly casts a different complexion on the current crisis.

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‘Cancelled’ Young Labour rally is a huge success. Is this one part of the party we can still support?

Packed: the Young Labour rally that Keir Starmer’s Labour conference app falsely stated was cancelled. This is the way to beat liars like Starmer.

The antipathy shown by Keir Starmer, David Evans and their right-wing-dominated NEC toward Young Labour suggests that it is one of the few parts of the party that deserve to grow during their blighted reign.

According to the excellent Skwawkbox, Labour’s official conference app falsely announced that Young Labour’s “Rally for a Socialist Future” yesterday evening was “cancelled”; it wasn’t.

Instead, the event was packed with young socialists who heard speakers including Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell, Zarah Sultana, Nadia Whittome and representatives of the union Unite and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

And it was a huge success:

It seems to This Writer that Young Labour is one of the few parts of the Labour Party that is actually fulfilling its stated function as an organisation for democratic socialists.

As it represents a starting-point for people who will form the future heart of the Labour Party, CLPs should not only urge young people in their constituencies to join; they should actively find roles for Young Labour members as they mature – ultimately seeking to find Parliamentary candidates among them.

It’s a way of preventing Starmer and/or his successors from parachuting Tories in as candidates instead.

Also popular among the fringe events yesterday evening was a discussion between John McDonnell and former US Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, who said left-wing Labour should challenge Starmer over his rejection of socialist policies.

According to the BBC,

Mr Sanders said what “the progressive movement” on the left was calling for was not “radical demands”, but it was time to put those who said no “on the defensive”.

“There is no reason why in the UK or the United States all workers should not be able to earn decent wages and have decent benefits,” he said.

“There is no reason all over the world [why] we cannot provide quality healthcare to all human beings as a right of citizenship.”

The senator added: “Those people who tell you you can’t do it, you ask them why, why can’t you do it? Because you are afraid to stand up to big money interests? That is not an acceptable reason.”

Mr Sanders said the approach would lead to a good outcome.

He concluded: “When you speak truth to people, they often respond in a positive way.”

He makes a good point.

And when you are speaking the truth in the face of an obvious lie – like the Starmer-run Labour app’s claim that the Young Labour rally had been cancelled – you have an immediate advantage.

Starmer’s supporters have voted to make Labour’s internal struggle a long, slow war of attrition, focusing on internal party politics while Boris Johnson and his Tories do whatever they like in the real world (and I use the word “real” advisedly). That has been their choice.

It should be the choice of socialists to call out their lies, put them under the spotlight and explain in the simplest possible terms why policies for everyone – upheld by honest people – are better.

Source: Labour ‘cancels’ Young Labour conference event – but it was still a big success – SKWAWKBOX

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Starmer out-politicked over Johnson’s lies by new Labour recruit Bercow

John Bercow: more imagination and intelligence than Keir Starmer.

Keir Starmer has been trumped in the row over Boris Johnson repeatedly lying to Parliament – by the new recruit he so warmly welcomed only recently.

John Bercow, the former Commons Speaker, said Labour backbencher Dawn Butler was right to claim the prime minister had lied – and called for “absurd” parliamentary rules to be changed so MPs can accuse one another of lying in the chamber.

In a joint article, written with Ms Butler for The Times, he wrote:

“The glaring weakness of the system is that someone lying to tens of millions of citizens knows he or she is protected by an ancient rule.

“They face no sanction. By contrast, an MP with the guts to tell the truth is judged to be in disgrace. It is absurd.”

Contrast this with party leader Starmer’s response, which was to say he agreed with what Ms Butler had said – but then to insist that Acting Deputy Speaker Judith Cummins was right to order the Labour MP to leave:

“In fairness to the temporary Speaker, Judith Cummins, who was there – she did the right thing, she followed the rules, because parliament doesn’t allow you to call other parliamentarians liars in the chamber. So I don’t criticise the deputy speaker for what she did.”

And not a word of support for changing the system.

This is just more evidence that Starmer is not fit to lead the Labour Party.

He simply doesn’t have the imagination to realise that rules are not immutable and may be changed – despite the fact that he works in a place where the rules that govern the whole of the UK are changed on a daily basis.

Ms Butler’s claims were factually accurate, by the way – the organisation Full Fact has checked them and supported them.

And just to blow my own trumpet, This Writer got there before either Starmer or Bercow: I wrote to the Speaker’s Office last week, telling current Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle the rule must be changed and that he should spend the summer devising a reasonable replacement.

I have yet to receive a reply, which should explain much about the state of the Speaker’s Office under Hoyle.

Meanwhile Bercow – by making the point that has been obvious to six-year-old chldren – has set himself up, already, as a potential leadership challenger from the right of the Labour Party.

He would be far more likely to succeed than a left-winger,under more ridiculous rules that demand a challenger must have a certain percentage of fellow MPs in support before a ballot can take place.

I don’t think he will challenge – at least, not yet – but this was a positive first step, and right-wingers in the Parliamentary Labour Party will have taken notice.

They won’t have been able to avoid noticing that the leader they backed only 15 months ago, and continued to support with nonsense claims ever since… is useless.

Source: Change ‘absurd’ rules so MPs can accuse each other of lying, says John Bercow | The Independent

Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.

https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/mike-sivier-libel-fight/


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