At this rate, the UK will soon be no better than a so-called Banana Republic.
According to Transparency International,
Data for this year’s CPI was collected between November 2019 and October 2022, during which time:
Details continued to emerge of the government’s ‘VIP lane’ for fast-tracking offers of PPE from companies with political links. Our research previously warned this process appeared systemically biased in favour of those with connections to the party of government.
A cross-party parliamentary watchdog raised concerns that decisions on how to award money from the £3.6bn towns fund, designed to boost economic growth in struggling towns, were not impartial and were politically motivated.
An investigation revealed wealthy donors to the Conservatives who gave at least £3million and took on a temporary role as the party treasurer commonly went on to be given a place in the House of Lords.
This was mostly during Boris Johnson’s period in office.
And the Tories want to bring him back!
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That’s right – the UK is far more corrupt than the EU and the arrest of the vice-president of the European Parliament proves it.
It seems that Brexiteers are trying to claim that the raids and arrests are signs of corruption in the EU system – but this is nonsense; a corrupt system would have blocked investigations and hidden corruption.
In fact, corruption is far more likely to flourish in the UK’s political system, that doesn’t have the checks and balances that are found in the European Parliament. In fact, we see evidence of that corruption – and the refusal to face it – all the time.
The ultimate irony is that those responsible for the cover-ups – even if they abhore what has happened – tell themselves it is for the greater good.
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The bank holiday weekend may be over, but this article is being produced in the period before everybody goes back to work – so I’m still putting up material that has interested me – and I hope it interests you. Make of it what you will:
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Wow. Tory columnist Tony Parsons reckoned Queen Elizabeth II went to Balmoral to die – but also to save the union between the countries of the United Kingdom.
Alternatively: did she just go there because it’s an escape from the rigours of day-to-day life, and she ended up passing away there because it’s where she happened to be?
Here’s a video clip:
(Incidentally, I love the sideswipe in which Robespierre namechecks someone for sitting through the Piers Morgan show in order to get the clip.)
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Protest: you can tell the strength of public feeling in support of Julian Assange from this image – but the law is the law, even if it is a bad one.
The UK Home Secretary who wants to send asylum-seekers to a country with a record of human rights abuses has approved the extradition of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange to the United States. Is anybody surprised?
The decision flies against fears that Assange will be mistreated by US authorities who – it is alleged – planned to either kidnap or assassinate him while he was in UK custody.
The United States has been foiled in its attempts to prosecute Assange for around 12 years after he published reports on Wikileaks that alleged war crimes and corruption by that country.
The US government wants to prosecute Assange for 18 alleged crimes – 17 of them under a 1917 terrorism act – because his reports allegedly caused risk to the lives of American military personnel.
No evidence has been brought forward to substantiate the claim. US prosecutors have admitted that they do not have any.
Those said to be responsible for the alleged war crimes and corruptions have not faced any form of justice and were allowed to walk free, despite the allegations and the evidence supporting them.
The US has been foiled in its attempts to bring Assange to trial for 12 years – firstly because the journalist, fearing his own life would be under threat if he was brought into US custody, fled to the UK’s Ecuadorian Embassy seeking asylum, which he received until 2019, when he was arrested for breaking UK bail by British police.
He has stayed in Belmarsh Prison since then – long after his jail term for the bail offence was over – because the US had applied to extradite him and he has a history of absconding.
This has led him to suffer mental ill-health, according to his supporters.
It led a court to deny the US extradition request in January 2021, on the grounds that his mental health would suffer much more if he were subjected to the US penal system, which is far more hostile that that in the UK.
Meanwhile, it is understood that US secret service operatives planned to either kidnap or assassinate Assange, while he was in UK custody.
Former CIA director and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, confronted with the allegation, said the 30 sources who spoke to Yahoo News reporters “should all be prosecuted for speaking about classified activity inside the Central Intelligence Agency” – which seems to be an admission that the claims were accurate.
It seems that in 2017, US intelligence agents plotted to poison Assange. They bugged the Ecuadorian embassy in London so they could listen to meetings with his solicitors, followed Assange’s family and associates, targeted his then six-months-old baby to steal his DNA, and burgled the office of his lawyer.
Given this information, one would expect a UK court to dismiss any extradition request at once, on the basis that Assange’s life is in clear danger.
Unfortunately, the UK has a one-sided extradition treaty with the US – signed during Tony Blair’s period in office – that makes no provisions for such circumstances. Indeed, the UK must take US assurances that a suspect will not be ill-treated at face value, with no evidence requirement, and US claims cannot even be cross-examined in court.
So it should be unsurprising that the Home Office has said the courts found that extradition would not be “incompatible with his human rights” and that while in the US “he will be treated appropriately”; the law binds them into saying that.
Once extradited to the States, it seems Assange will face a kangaroo court, rather than receiving any actual justice.
The law under which he is charged does not allow a public interest defence, meaning he cannot argue that he was holding the US government to account by publishing details of its alleged war crimes.
And as Assange is not a US citizen, it seems he would not enjoy constitutional free-speech rights.
Furthermore, the US authorities have arranged for his case to be heard in Alexandria, Virginia – home of the US intelligence services, where people cannot be excluded from a jury because they work for the US government – prompting fears that Assange will be judged by people with a vested interest in supporting their employer.
He could go to prison for 175 years, according to colleagues at Wikileaks – although the US government says the term is more likely to be between four and six years. Who do you believe?
Assange has 14 days to appeal the decision and Wikileaks has said that it will.
Otherwise the UK will send a man to a foreign country whose government, we understand, has already tried to kill him, to face a trial on crimes for which there is no evidence, judged by people employed by the prosecutor, facing a possible 175-year prison sentence – on the basis of safety assurances that aren’t worth the time it takes to speak them.
So much for British justice!
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Hate face: would you trust Priti Patel with a duty of care over any human beings at all?
Priti Patel should stop lying that refugees from foreign countries arriving in the UK are merely “economic migrants” looking for a bit of easy money.
That’s the gist of a report by the United Nations’ refugee agency:
The United Nations high commissioner for refugees (UNHCR) told the Guardian that those travelling by small boat to the UK should be considered to be asylum seekers or refugees, and not migrants.
“Based on currently available Home Office data, UNHCR considers that a clear majority of those recently arriving to the United Kingdom by boat are likely to be refugees. Refugees and asylum seekers are not, and should not be described as, ‘migrants’,” the spokesperson told the Guardian.
“Access to asylum should never be contingent on mode of arrival or nationality. Equally, the only way to establish whether people are refugees is through a fair and efficient determination of their claims, for which the UK has a clear responsibility.”
The intervention comes as the Home Office prepares to deport the first set of people to Rwanda, after Patel announced her intention to emulate a failed Israeli plan to do the same that was wound up a few years ago.
The policy is explicitly focused on people who arrive via so-called “irregular” routes, such as in small boats across the Channel or hidden in lorries.
Here’s the part of the Home Office statement referring to this (that isn’t waffle):
“Only those with inadmissible asylum claims who have made dangerous, unnecessary and illegal journeys will be relocated and to suggest otherwise is wrong.”
Inadmissible in what way?
Because they arrived by an “irregular” route? Who defines what is an “unnecessary” journey and what are their criteria?
Are they as described by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees? If so, is the UK breaking UN rules again, as it did with sick and disabled benefit claimants?
And will the Tory government get away with it yet again, after the UN proved utterly toothless in effecting change?
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Out on a limb: Boris Johnson was notably ignored by Joe Biden at the start of a recent Nato defence summit and it seems Biden will ignore him on trade too.
Boris Johnson’s blatherings about Brexit can’t change the fact that the United States couldn’t care less about doing a free trade deal with the UK.
US President Joe Biden is far more interested in trading with the European Union – the very organisation Johnson said we would be better-off without.
Oh yes, the States cut their high tariffs on UK steel and aluminium – but that only indicates that we produce higher-quality steel than they do, and they want to buy it on the cheap.
In all other regards, Biden has adopted a protectionist approach that is anathema to Boris Johnson’s globalist government.
Simply put: Biden wants to build up the United States as an industrial nation, independent of other advanced economies like China, thereby creating high-quality jobs for American citizens.
Johnson, on the other hand, wants to sell everything in the UK to foreign concerns, so he and his Tory cronies can make a quick profit that they can bank in a tax haven. He couldn’t care less about the well-being of UK citizens.
As Dr Peter Holmes, a fellow at the University of Sussex’s UK Trade Policy Observatory, told the Express, “Britain is out on a limb.”
He said Biden agrees with the EU that governments should not subsidise industry – but Johnson’s government believes the exact opposite because it wants to sweeten our assets as prizes for foreign investors.
Look at the £7.1 billion of public money the government gave to the UK’s rail industry, and then look at the prices of tickets on trains that are mainly owned by foreign governments.
And Biden does not subscribe to the UK’s plan to cut carbon emissions; he’s far more in tune with the EU on that, too.
He would be more likely to consider a free trade agreement if the National Health Service was opened up to profit-making US companies, but he would not be interested in full privatisation of the NHS, in trade terms, according to Dr Holmes.
He might also be interested if the UK lowered its food safety standards (remember the fuss over chlorinated chicken?) – but divergence from EU standards would create more problems with imports and exports in Northern Ireland, which the States would want to avoid.
But the Johnson government insists that it remains keen to talk with the States about a free trade deal.
How pointless. Johnson has painted the entire nation into a corner and is trying to avoid responsibility by pretending everything is going according to plan.
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Of course Windrush victims don't trust the Home Office. This is the agency that made them lose jobs, livelihoods and homes. It illegally deported some and refused re-entry to others. An independent agency to oversee the compensation scheme is long overdue.https://t.co/P561UPfYUz
Sajid Javid says the government's impact assessment on their changes to the social care cap, which should show how many people will have to sell their homes to pay for care, won't be published until next year, long after the legislation is passed by MPs. https://t.co/x72YkJGPFY
Majority of UK voters think the govt is corrupt, poll finds. People can smell the stench of corruption, it’s over all institutions of govt. We need politics which prioritises people rather than the interests of big corporations. Time to take back control.https://t.co/jLqVkGWMWt
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This baby’s nuclear: I have no idea if this is the kind of submarine Australia is getting.
Isn’t it?
This Writer wasn’t aware of Chinese sabre-rattling around Taiwan – I’m more concerned with domestic politics, and face it: how much did the BBC tell you about it up until now? – but I’m happy to accept that there’s an issue.
It seems the United States has been supplying Taiwan with military support of some kind, in order to fend off encroachment by the so-called Red Menace, but decided more help was needed and turned to Australia.
The Aussies saw an opportunity to progress into the military major leagues and said they’d help out – if they could have nuclear submarines – and the UK stepped in to offer to build them.
This meant Australia had to cancel a previously-existing deal for submarine upgrades – with France.
No wonder the French government is denouncing the deal as a “stab in the back”!
To This Writer’s way of thinking, it seems the United States is trying to drag the UK into yet another ill-advised foreign adventure.
Harold Wilson had the good sense to stay out of Vietnam, back in the 1960s – but then, he was probably the most intelligent prime minister the United Kingdom ever had.
Now we have Boris Johnson in charge – a man whose intelligence rates only slightly higher than a swamp filled with quicksand. And he has already started ramping up the UK’s warfaring capabilities in the hope that he can start a rumble that might make him popular at election time.
Let’s face it – all Joe Biden would have to do to drag that blonde lemming over the cliff* is whistle and point.
And Johnson gets to say he has whisked a plum contract out from under the noses of the French.
Never mind the fact that he’s bringing loads more nuclear waste into the country – it’s loadsamoney for… someone!
Yeah. This particular deal looks less and less tasty, the more I look at it.
Oh – and the Chinese have said they’re not happy with all this, but they would, wouldn’t they?
*I know Disney made up that particular urban myth but it’s such a well-known story that the comparison still works.
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Less than this much: Boris Johnson explains how much concern he has for improving social care for people who are poor.
A smaller-than-usual edition of ‘Also in…’ today because This Site was afflicted with technical problems yesterday (September 14), Enjoy:
Social care: Boris Johnson’s “plan” won’t improve quality but is only intended to help the rich
Dominic Lawson points out that Boris Johnson’s Social Care Plan is “not about quality of care”.
It will not fix it “once and for all” and is more about protecting the inheritance of the wealthy at the expense of a deeply unequal #NationalInsurance tax on the lowest paid. #Marrpic.twitter.com/I7ksOMa8pJ
Winter flu: Johnson is ‘finalising’ plans – that will be diabolical if his social care ideas are a yardstick
So Johnson is finalising his plans for dealing with a possible autumn and winter Covid spike, as well as seasonal 'flu. Ye Gods ! That should strike fear into the bravest hearts, 'cos the notion of a Johnson "plan" sure as hell terrifies me !
More than a quarter of Conservative donors who have given more than £100,000 to the party hold a title or honour.
Three-quarters of the party’s elite donors received these titles after the Conservatives came to power in 2010, an investigation by the Byline Intelligence Team and The Citizens has found.
Of the Conservative Party’s 20 biggest donors since 2010 – those donating more than £1.5 million – 55% (11) have received an honour or title. Ten were given these rewards in the last decade.
Industry boss says food and drink shortages are ‘permanent’ but Johnson protests that Christmas will be ‘normal’
Food shortages in supermarkets and restaurants are “permanent” and shoppers will never again enjoy a full choice of items, an industry boss has told Britons.
In an extraordinary warning, the head of the Food and Drink Federation said staff shortages – triggered by a combination of Covid and Brexit – had killed off the “just-in-time” delivery model.
But Downing Street rejected the claim of a broken system and, in a potential hostage to fortune, predicted the shortages will be over by the festive season.
Pressed on whether the shortages will ease to allow people to enjoy a “normal Christmas”, Boris Johnson’s spokesman told The Independent: “I believe so, yes.”
It’s another wild boast from a man with a bad reputation for making false claims.
What will people think when Christmas arrives and it is plagued with the shortages Johnson swore would not happen?
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