Liz Truss had an Amazon Prime subscription in her expenses. You paid for it. She hosted a small work lunch in January and spent 3k. You paid for it. She chose a private jet to go to Australia costing half a million. You paid for it.
Perhaps someone should tell her to sit quietly and watch her telly.
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This is a bit of fun filler from YouTube. I don’t think even Phil Moorhouse of A Different Bias takes the threat of Boris Johnson returning to Downing Street seriously:
The takeouts from this are that:
Rishi Sunak is prime minister because he is boring – and the Tories want people to be bored by politics right now because the news is dire and they want to hide it from us.
The UK is going into (who are we kidding? We’re already in it!) a major recession and the Tories are the cause.
The Tories are likely to lose a huge number of council seats in the local elections in May.
Boris Johnson is just too damned noisy; if he’s brought back, he’ll draw attention to all the horrible things that are happening, and that’s the last thing the Tories want.
The headline for political writers like Yr Obdt Srvt is that we must draw as much attention as possible to all the political news that the Tories and their clients in the mainstream media want to bury.
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The pick of the Tories: Iain Duncan Smith is a creature of odious habits and even worse politics.
The former Tory leader whose ‘reforms’ of social security have led to the deaths of thousands upon thousands of people has been appointed to lend his ignorance to the government again.
Iain Duncan Smith will chair the new Taskforce on Innovation, Growth and Regulatory Reform.
The title of the organisation creates the acronym TIGRR – tiger, get it? But Duncan Smith is no kind of tiger. As benefit claimants know from his time as Work and Pensions Secretary, he’s a little bitch.
This Site has its own acronym for him – RTU. It stands for “Returned To Unit”, the message of shame on the record of armed forces personnel who fail training for promotion up the officers’ ranks – as he is said to have done.
The government has claimed that the TIGRR will “identify and develop proposals across a range of areas that will drive innovation and competitiveness, reduce barriers to start-ups and scale-ups, create opportunities for innovation to make the most of cutting-edge technologies, and support growth and dynamism right across the UK economy”.
But with RTU at the helm it is more likely to reduce competitiveness with new schemes that will be massively expensive while helping nobody (like Universal Credit), create barriers that stop people getting what they need (as he did with all benefits, particularly those for the sick and disabled), and abandon cutting-edge technologies for paper and ink (as DWP workers were forced to do when his plan for Universal Credit to be fully computerised fell on its ass).
He didn’t even help his own government! All his so-called “reforms” created more expense and none of them saved any money at all.
Labour has said it is ready to fight over any reforms that could be harmful – particularly to employment rights.
While This Writer has nothing personal against Andy McDonald, I remember when the party under Ed Miliband, in the dying days of its previous right-wing, neoliberal incarnation, voted in support of RTU to harm benefit claimants and I have a doubt.
The simple fact is that the appointment of this death machine should tell us everything we need to know about what his organisation will do. And it won’t help anybody.
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Shamima Begum: she won’t be allowed to return to the UK and fight for her citizenship.
The Supreme Court has ruled that Shamima Begum should not be allowed to return to the UK to fight for her citizenship to be restored.
Its members unanimously overruled a decision by the Court of Appeal that said she would not be able to make an effective appeal from the camp in northern Syria where she is currently living.
The Home Office had appealed against the decision on the grounds that allowing her to return would create “significant national security risks”.
The Supreme Court agreed:
Lord Reed said: “The Supreme Court unanimously allows all of the home secretary’s appeals and dismisses Ms Begum’s cross-appeal.”
He said the Court of Appeal’s judgment “did not give the home secretary’s assessment the respect which it should have received” given the role’s “responsibility for making such assessments” and accountability to parliament.
Lord Reed added the Court of Appeal had “mistakenly believed that, when an individual’s right to have a fair hearing… came into conflict with the requirements of national security, her right to a fair hearing must prevail.”
He said the right to a fair hearing did “not trump all other considerations, such as the safety of the public”.
Ms Begum has proved extremely divisive among some members of the UK community.
She was enticed abroad to join Islamic State, aged just 15, and married a Dutch IS fighter – with whom she had three children. They have all died.
After IS largely collapsed, she found herself in a refugee camp and appealed for the UK’s government to return her to this country, so she could rely on the National Health Service to care for her and her last child, before that child died.
But then-Home Secretary Sajid Javid instead stripped her of her UK citizenship, citing the by-then-20-year-old’s still-apparent enthusiasm for the bloodthirsty regime she fled the country to join.
Some said she had been groomed and did not know what she was doing; some said she knew exactly what she was about.
The Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC), a semi-secret court that hears national security cases, ruled that Mr Javid was right and Ms Begum could appeal for citizenship to Bangladesh, to which she may have a claim to nationality through her mother.
The Court of Appeal overruled that judgement and now the Supreme Court has reversed that decision.
Some are now saying that Ms Begum is now in legal limbo. She isn’t – she can still make her appeal from Syria, using lawyers in the UK.
But is that a reasonable course of action? Let’s have a poll:
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It seems Shamima Begum is likely to have her wish to live back in the UK after all – as a criminal serving a prison sentence for terror crimes.
The Home Office announced its disappointment that the Court of Appeal had allowed her to come home to beg for the return of her UK citizenship, and said it would appeal against the ruling.
Well, it seems someone has come up with this in the meantime.
Interestingly, a (non-scientific) poll of This Site’s readers has shown (at the time of writing) that roughly three-fifths of those who voted favoured returning her citizenship, against 40 per cent who did not.
So it seems she may have her citizenship restored – only to spend the next few years enjoying it in a prison cell.
Here’s LBC:
Richard Walton, who led Scotland Yard’s counter terrorism unit between 2011 and 2016, said that Shamima, now 20, who fled the UK as a schoolgirl to join IS in Syria, is likely to face arrest and a subsequent terror trial if she takes up the opportunity to return to the UK.
Mr Walton said he believes the appeal court had made a mistake in its judgement yesterday and that the ruling “undermines” the ability of elected officials to keep the public safe.
Mr Walton said: “I think the court of appeal has made a profound mistake. It will set a dangerous precedent.
“Frankly it is alarming to see the court of appeal taking over the Home Secretary’s responsibility of who should be allowed in the UK.
“It has opened the door for her return to Britain and has undermined a statutory power of parliament.
“She is highly likely to be arrested… but it is almost impossible to gather sufficient evidence from war zones.”
It seems to This Writer that, if Ms Begum is indeed arrested on her arrival in the UK, then it presents an opportunity for our security forces.
As a commenter on This Site’s previous story wrote: “If she was a child that was groomed, as some are saying, then we need to know who has been doing the grooming.”
Exactly. Let’s find out who has been encouraging teenagers to betray their country, track them down and bring them to justice.
I think that should be something we can all support.
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Shamima Begum: do you think her UK citizenship should be returned to her?
The Court of Appeal has said former IS bride Shamima Begum may return to the UK to appeal for the return of her citizenship.
Judges said she had been denied a fair hearing because she could not make her case from a Syrian refugee camp.
Ms Begum has proved extremely divisive among some members of the UK community.
She was enticed abroad to join Islamic State, aged just 15, and married a Dutch IS fighter – with whom she had three children. They have all died.
After IS largely collapsed, she found herself in a refugee camp and appealed for the UK’s government to return her to this country, so she could rely on the National Health Service to care for her and her last child, before that child died.
But then-Home Secretary Sajid Javid instead stripped her of her UK citizenship, citing the now-20-year-old’s still-apparent enthusiasm for the bloodthirsty regime she fled the country to join.
Some said she had been groomed and did not know what she was doing; some said she knew exactly what she was about.
The Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC), a semi-secret court that hears national security cases, ruled that Mr Javid was right and Ms Begum could appeal for citizenship to Bangladesh, to which she may have a claim to nationality through her mother.
The Court of Appeal has overruled that judgement – but the Home Office has said it will apply for permission to appeal.
Is this a good decision? Let’s be clear – Ms Begum is not being offered her citizenship back; she’s just getting a chance to plead for it, showing that she has learned her lesson.
But has she? Or would we be allowing a viper into our collective bosom?
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Jacob Rees-Mogg: he wants a return to the way Parliament was conducted long ago and he doesn’t care if MPs die as a result.
MPs have voted to end the “virtual” Parliamentary proceedings they have been enjoying since the lockdown started.
From June 2, they will have to attend in order to take part in debates – even though the limit of 50 people in the Commons chamber at any time will remain.
How’s that going to work, then?
Jacob Rees-Mogg, laughably the current Leader of the House, reckons the change will restore sufficient scrutiny of policy matters, but it is difficult to understand his reasoning.
With fewer people allowed in the Chamber, there will be less opportunity for our representatives to have their voices heard.
Rees-Mogg whined that virtual proceedings slowed down debates to one-third of normal pace – but isn’t that better than excluding MPs from debates altogether?
And then there’s the question of whether the decision is effectively one to “euthanise” MPs:
Jacob Rees-Mogg has been told by a senior Conservative backbencher that an attempt to return to a “physical” parliament will in effect “euthanise” MPs who are sick, shielding and self-isolating.
Former minister Robert Halfon said the proposals would discriminate and threaten the lives of some MPs.
“Is it really morally just to say in effect to MPs, because you are not Tarzan-like and able to swing through the chamber, beating your chest shouting to your constituents: ‘Look, I am here!’ that you are effectively euthanised from the Commons?
“MPs who are disrupted by this awful pandemic are not just old horses to be sent to the knackers’ yard,” he said.
Some of you may be confused by Mr Halfon’s speech.
It seems he was not suggesting that MPs would catch the coronavirus and die in what some members of the public might consider a mercy-killing (as far as the UK’s citizens are concerned).
Instead, it seems he was suggesting that MPs would be excluded from proceedings, meaning they might as well be dead as far as the good of their constituents is concerned. It’s opaque.
More to the point, perhaps is a letter signed by 35 MPs, arguing that a return to a “physical” parliament could mean that those in high-risk categories including BAME MPs, older MPs or those who are pregnant will be disproportionately restricted.
One very dangerous aspect will be the return of physical voting, in which MPs will be packed into small spaces as they file through the “aye” or “no” lobby. That creates a threat of contracting Covid-19, that could be fatal for some.
But Rees-Mogg was never likely to listen to arguments against it. That is the traditional way in which MPs vote and, as the “Member for the 18th Century”, his emotional tie to it far outweighs any concern for the wellbeing of others.
ADDITIONAL: A reader has just reminded me that MPs were all given £10,000 to facilitate working from home. Are they going to give any of that money back? Ten big ones for just eight weeks’ lockdown seems exorbitantly excessive to This Writer!
Tube commuters after Johnson’s speech on May 10: this is on the Jubilee Line.
Boris Johnson’s speech on Sunday (May 10) becomes more opaque by the hour.
He said all workers who cannot work from home should travel to work if their workplace is open, telling construction workers and manufacturing employees in particular to go back (we know now that the construction industry is part of a Tory plan to boost house buying that flies in the face of common sense).
And it resulted in scenes like this:
Buses in London are packed with passengers this morning, despite the govt asking people to avoid public transport if possible when the #coronavirus lockdown eased.
Some of these people are going to catch Covid-19. A few may die of it.
That’s what Johnson’s message to the nation contained: death.
And it seems he didn’t even cover all the professions that are expected to go back.
Also endangered are domestic cleaners, who are now expected to go back to their employers’ homes – no matter what those other people have been doing, where they’ve been, what diseases they may have picked up. But they can’t visit their friends/relatives.
Owen Jones has this one right:
For those wondering what triggered this tweet: the government has declared that cleaners can now clean houses and flats, but that we are simultaneously barred from seeing friends or relatives except in open public spaces, one at a time, if we socially distance.
His advice to the people who employ domestic cleaners is right on the button.
Edwina Currie got into a proper state while trying to discuss it with Piers Morgan on Good Morning Britain:
'Why can a cleaner come into my house but neither of my sons can do the same? @piersmorgan challenges Edwina Currie on the confusion surrounding the government's new guidelines allowing cleaners to enter people's homes but restricting contact with family members. pic.twitter.com/YDjDbgWbBE
Anyway, why is it so important to bring in cleaning staff from outside your home, possibly to spread the infection? Why can’t people just clean their own homes?
That’s what I’ve been doing!
Another comedy addition to those going back to work is film and television production companies. Here‘s Screen Daily:
Film and television production in the UK are permitted to restart providing all involved abide by social distancing guidelines, the Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport has confirmed to Screen.
The change comes as part of the government’s latest guidelines for the coronavirus pandemic, which include the instruction “All workers who cannot work from home should travel to work if their workplace is open.”
Workplaces that do reopen – including screen productions – should “ensure employees can maintain a two-metre distance from others, and wash their hands regularly”, according to the Covid-19 guidelines on the government’s website.
Here is the appropriate response:
How the hell is this supposed to work? Socially distanced make up and hair? Love scenes two metres apart? Very long family sofas? https://t.co/bqsO4L2bQ9
Also reopening (in England) is the fast food chain McDonalds – creating widespread fear among employees who will be asked to risk their lives in contact with hundreds – possibly thousands – of other people every day.
I’m terrified of returning to work… The amount of customers will be astronomical… and I still don’t know how we will be protected.
I can’t help but think the official advice means that if you’re middle class or above, everyone thinks it’s fine for you to work from home, but if you’re working class like us, it’s no problem and you can go back to work.
Yes indeed – and this means low-paid workers are most at risk:
“The Government’s strategy will put low-paid workers with the poorest employment rights most at risk,” [said Shadow Secretary of State for Women and Equalities, Marsha de Cordova].
Shadow Business Secretary Ed Miliband [said] “It is the highest-paid workers who will generally carry on being able to work from home and lower-paid workers who are being asked to go back to work.
“We also know from … ONS figures that among men, construction workers have so far been more than twice as likely to die from Covid-19 as the average member of the population.”
The Tory government says it is prioritising safety for everyone returning to work.
But… well, look:
This is what getting the bus looks like the morning after lockdown was eased https://t.co/shloWtPnQh
It isn’t happening; it won’t happen. It is the same as all the Tory promises throughout the crisis, about PPE, about ventilators, about testing, about contact tracing. If it isn’t exclusively for the rich, it isn’t true.
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House of Commons: here’s a scene that won’t be allowed while the coronavirus crisis continues. But Boris Johnson called for others to go back to work, ensuring that they would be packed like sardines into public transport whether he wanted it or not.
Little did This Writer know, when I reported that Jacob Rees-Mogg wanted MPs to go back to work, that he was going to insist on it.
It seems that, as Leader of the House of Commons, he is determined that MPs should set an example for others who are being asked to go back to their jobs by Boris Johnson:
— Carol Monaghan MP 🏴 (@CMonaghanSNP) May 13, 2020
It’s certainly true that some MPs aren’t too keen:
Valerie Vaz, Labour’s shadow leader of the House of Commons, said she was “alarmed” by Mr Rees-Mogg’s announcement and asked why parliament should “contradict” the government’s own health advice by returning to “business as usual” in June.
The SNP’s Tommy Sheppard said it was a “fantasy” to believe that physical sittings could resume in June without special procedures being in place.
He asked what should happen to MPs considered among those most vulnerable to coronavirus, or Scottish, Welsh or Northern Irish MPs, whose devolved governments have not yet eased any lockdown measures.
Rees-Mogg, of course, instantly seized on this as a way to run down the opposition:
He said: “How can we say to our schoolchildren, ‘you’re safe going back’, some of them, but that we’re not, that we’re going to hide away whilst schoolchildren are going back – is that the right message to give to our constituents?”
Yes!
MPs have every right to be afraid of returning to Parliament, if they can’t be assured that social distancing rules will be maintained, or that they won’t be exposed to a risk of catching the coronavirus from other people working on the Parliamentary estate.
And of course those living in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have those countries’ “no movement” rules to consider; they aren’t actually allowed out to attend Parliament.
Clive Lewis is right about the motivation for Rees-Mogg’s decision:
Tory hawks know unless MPs go back they’ll have more difficulty making the case for the public too. This premature end to lockdown is vague, dangerous and has no scientific basis. Tory ideology has trumped public safety. https://t.co/SK1WtOUpjG
We’ll find out when we see how many of them turn up after the Whitsun break.
It’s a “win-win” scenario for everybody who isn’t a Tory, of course.
If they don’t turn up, they’re cowards who are afraid to support their own government’s policy; if they do, they’ll probably catch Covid-19 and spend some time in hospital.
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Jacob Rees-Mogg: he probably didn’t intend his words to be the way I’ve interpreted them.
Jacob Rees-Mogg reckons MPs should return to Westminster and vote in person – as an example to all those being urged back to work in spite of the coronavirus.
Good for him!
He’s a complete an utter dunderhead.
Social distancing rules mean there can only be about 50 MPs in the Commons chamber at any time, and many have been using videoconferencing to take part in debates from home.
There is no way anybody should be cramped together like sardines – which is the usual situation during the busier Commons votes – while Covid-19 remains a threat to life.
But in his speech on Sunday, Boris Johnson said he hoped to reopen schools (in England) at the beginning of June, suggesting that reception classes would be among the first to come back.
The problem with that is obvious – it will be impossible to get very young children to understand the need to stay at least two metres away from each other.
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