Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Josquius]

Which neighbour?

[Tonitrus]

Pick your very worst one. 

[Josquius]

Then I save the dog any day :p

It is interesting that no politicians have ever really latched onto the animal love factor. Pledging to massively increase punishments for animal cruelty, dognapping, etc... seems a pretty easy win.

[Sheilbh]

Latest in the trend of "I just don't understand what Labour's thinking is here":
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/aug/09/boris-johnson-ipcc-climate-report-makes-sobering-reading

Labour has said Johnson's pledge to cut UK carbon emissions by 68% by 2030 compared with 1990 levels is inadequate and that the target should be 70% as a minimum. The Lib Dems are calling for a more ambitious green recovery plan, and the Greens want a global carbon tax, as well as significantly higher investment in public transport and home insulation.

Edit: Separately we're starting to get papers released from the Blair government. Highlight so far is a memo from Peter Mandelson about whether Sean Connery can come to campaign for a "yes" vote in the Scottish Parliament referendum. The issue was it might cause problems with Connery's tax statusif he was in the UK for more than 90 days. From Mandelson: "He sees this as iniquitous to him personally and claims that certain other individuals and indeed ethnic groups (he mentioned the "Arabs") are not subject to the same strictures."

On the issues of trying to fix it so Connery could campaign, Blair annotate: "Shurely 'yesh'"

[Jacob]

Then I save the dog any day :p

It is interesting that no politicians have ever really latched onto the animal love factor. Pledging to massively increase punishments for animal cruelty, dognapping, etc... seems a pretty easy win.

That sort of card is best played when there's some sort of outrage to respond to. Like starting a Super League that will destroy the soul of football, but the animal equivalent.

[Tamas]

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/aug/09/david-cameron-said-made-about-10m-greensill-capital-bbc

[garbon]

They hardly got value for money.

[Sheilbh]

Quite.

But this is what I mean by focusing on what PMs and Ministers do after they leave office as the main avenue for corruption in the UK. There's no need to take actual bribes when you can just wait a couple of years after leaving office and cash in.

[Josquius]

It's a hard one to tackle really.
The logical solution is to give them a decent pension for life alongside tight controls on what they can do after they leave power.
But there's a lot of irrational misplaced hate for MPs salaries. The whole thing that people don't understand big numbers is a big hurdle.

[Tamas]

Seeing all the crap around covid contracts with the buddies of the current government, I don't know how you guys can convince yourself this is not happening while they are in office.

[Sheilbh]

Seeing all the crap around covid contracts with the buddies of the current government, I don't know how you guys can convince yourself this is not happening while they are in office.

It's not that necessarily - more that the real benefits are when they don't have to make annual publicly available reports of their interests and income (as do all MPs). I don't think it's crazy to look at Tony Blair (who earns millions advising JP Morgan and assorted tyrants like the Saudi government and the Kazakh government), or Cameron (£7 million for some sub-par lobbying/strategic advice), or Osborne (hundreds of thousands a year advising various PE funds and asset managers) to say that's probably where the money is and the corruption isn't immediate and direct, but done in the expectation of a reward once they leave office.

I think we need to wait and see on that because a lot of that is coming out of the Good Law Project which is very political and they're basically issuing press releases based on disclosure. Their only legal victory so far is that the Health Department behaved unlawfully in its failure to publish contracts within the required 30 day period; they were published, on average, 47 days after execution. So you see lots of people on Twitter going off about how the courts have found this government behaved unlawfully and why isn't that the lead story on the BBC every night - when the answer is it was, frankly, a pretty minor point about the government fulfilling its transparency obligations slowly during a pandemic.

I don't have an issue with business people who know minister (or other MPs) or are their constituents saying "I can help on this" during a pandemic and those ministers/MPs forwarding the email to civil servants saying "can you have a look at this". I don't think that's corrupt. Similarly I don't think it's corrupt if you need something urgently during a pandemic - for example you need someone to build a data dashboard (we know that in the first weeks of the crisis the government was getting figures from hospitals over the phone and writing them on a whiteboard, that's how admissions were being tracked) to use someone you know/have worked with previously rather than have a formal procurement process with an RfP and a tender etc.

So far - that's all I've seen with the exception of Hancock which seems a bit more dodgy. I think there's definitely enough to keep digging and for the GLP to go to the courts - but I am aware that we're seeing press releases based on disclosure so they'll be highlighting the most damning emails they've found so far - and I'd want to probably wait a bit to see what the courts' think once they've seen all the evidence/emails.

It's a hard one to tackle really.
The logical solution is to give them a decent pension for life alongside tight controls on what they can do after they leave power.

It's also an issue of having relatively young PMs - like the two worst offenders are Blair and Cameron who came to office in their early 40s and left in their late 40s/early 50s. It's not like when PMs left office in their 60s and were comfortable just moving to the House of Lords or sort of semi-retiring. I think they've also learned from the US model (Blair explicitly modelled his foundations on Clinton) so they want to have this continuing ongoing legacy which allows them to continue to have some influence/profile and requires fundraising.

I also think - and this goes for senior ministers too - that being an MP is more of a shit job than it used to be and there are far greater money-making opportunities outside parliament. At least as MPs they have to declare their interests and any paid income/benefits they get. So I quite like that May stayed in the Commons - I also respect Miliband for staying in the Commons and coming back as a shadow minister. But most senior ministers and former PMs now seem to leave the Commons - which I think is a shame in itself as they Commons doesn't have many "big beasts" in the way it used to and I think that lack of experience is a bad thing - but also don't want to go into the Lords because, again, there'd be some income reporting involved (see Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron v Baroness Thatcher, Baron Wilson, Baron Callaghan, Ted Heath MP, Earl MacMillan etc). I think that is entirely driven by the desire to earn money without any public records.

[Sheilbh]

Today is the end for Geronimo the alpaca and, inevitably, the Sun is running an Alpacalypse Now headline.

Stephen Bush has pointed out the craziness of this country on this stuff - he's been reading a book on the Troubles and noted that part of the coverage of the Hyde Park bombing (which killed four soldiers): "In Britain an extra dimension of condemnation arose from the fact that a number of horses were also killed in the Hyde Park explosion." One horse survived (but was injured) and featured on several TV shows through the year as it was recovering, before winning "Horse of the Year"

[garbon]

Today is the end for Geronimo the alpaca and, inevitably, the Sun is running an Alpacalypse Now headline.

Stephen Bush has pointed out the craziness of this country on this stuff - he's been reading a book on the Troubles and noted that part of the coverage of the Hyde Park bombing (which killed four soldiers): "In Britain an extra dimension of condemnation arose from the fact that a number of horses were also killed in the Hyde Park explosion." One horse survived (but was injured) and featured on several TV shows through the year as it was recovering, before winning "Horse of the Year"

On Good Morning Britain, they had a farmer who tried to be as timid as possible on importance of culling TB carriers, in part it seemed to avoid any public backlash. He made a veiled insinuation to badger culling and when asked if he meant badgers, he said he couldn't possibly comment or something like that.

[The Brain]

Stop rogering the witness.

[Tamas]

Today is the end for Geronimo the alpaca and, inevitably, the Sun is running an Alpacalypse Now headline.

Stephen Bush has pointed out the craziness of this country on this stuff - he's been reading a book on the Troubles and noted that part of the coverage of the Hyde Park bombing (which killed four soldiers): "In Britain an extra dimension of condemnation arose from the fact that a number of horses were also killed in the Hyde Park explosion." One horse survived (but was injured) and featured on several TV shows through the year as it was recovering, before winning "Horse of the Year"

On Good Morning Britain, they had a farmer who tried to be as timid as possible on importance of culling TB carriers, in part it seemed to avoid any public backlash. He made a veiled insinuation to badger culling and when asked if he meant badgers, he said he couldn't possibly comment or something like that.

The sheltered life of people on this island my goodness. 

I wonder how many know the meat they eat must first be slaughtered