The banker loving, baby-eating Tory party thread (regenerated)

[Davkaus]

26 minutes ago, bickster said:

They'll surely need to examine the evidence or are they just taking the Police's word for it?

 

 

They'll have details of the offence, "information" from the police (though this is a bit vague, does it include the evidence? It's unclear) but not the name of the person they're assessing

It's not exactly uncommon to suspend people from work while they're the subject of active criminal investigations

FWIW, I'd probably have preferred the previous motion - for the threshold to be based on a charge, not merely an arrest, but based on your concerns about prejudicing trials, etc, I guess you'd not be in favour of that either?

Edited May 14 by Davkaus

[bickster]

28 minutes ago, Davkaus said:

They'll have details of the offence, "information" from the police (though this is a bit vague, does it include the evidence? It's unclear) but not the name of the person they're assessing

It's not exactly uncommon to suspend people from work while they're the subject of active criminal investigations

FWIW, I'd probably have preferred the previous motion - for the threshold to be based on a charge, not merely an arrest, but based on your concerns about prejudicing trials, etc, I guess you'd not be in favour of that either?

Charge is better because at least an investigation has already taken place. Arrest as I keep saying is a VERY low bar

[ml1dch]

Sorry Jack, what's that?

 

 

[T-Dog]

4 hours ago, bickster said:

Banning people from Parliament who have been arrested presents some serious problems for democracy. The evidential bar for an officer to make an arrest is spectacularly low, it can amount to an accusation has been made.

This is yet more woke up this morning and had an idea shite and is completely anti democratic. 
Want to disrupt democracy? Go and make an accusation about a big bunch of MPs

Nope, stupid idea

Having been on the wrong side of the legal system, I can personally say, and not from an aggrieved position, that any kind of Police involvement, whether completely innocent or absolutely guilty sticks around, not just the stigma, but also professionally, personally, emotionally.

Innocent until proven guilty is fine, if you're in a position where you have 3/4/5 people accusing you of something, that the Police have reviewed three times and decided there's nothing, absolutely nothing there, but you're STILL in a position where it's stopping you in your every day life, particularly with your livelihood. that's not cool.

I'm no fan of the Tories, I fully believe there's a lot of murky shit that's gone on - with ALL parties - but you can't be stopping people working because someone has ACCUSED you of ill behaviour. Suspend someone, investigate, and then decide. 

 

[Davkaus]

13 hours ago, T-Dog said:

Suspend someone, investigate, and then decide. 

 

This is their plan?

The protocol is:

• Arrest made
• Panel selected by the Speaker is given details of the allegation, some unspecified information from the police, and not told the name of the individual accused to try to prevent it being a party political vote
• Panel then makes a risk assessment and decides what steps are taken to safeguard people within parliament. A ban is the extreme option.
• While suspended from attending parliament, the MP in question can still do constituency work and vote in parliament via proxy, the main impact is that they won't be able to ask questions or speak in the chamber
• When a police investigation is concluded, if a ban was given, it is immediately revoked.

I think there are a few problems with it, we'll see how it shakes out in practice.

I do worry that although the ban is the extreme option, it might end up being the default option by a panel trying to cover their arse, I also think that while their intention is to keep the MP anonymous, this is only going to work for very short-lived police investigations, because people will soon notice MPs that are voting exclusively via proxy for a few months.

I'm on the fence about the threshold of arrest/charge, I don't think we're going to see an outbreak of people being arrested based on anonymous accusations, or vexatious complaints that are in no way plausible, but perhaps I'll look like a complete idiot in a year's time when PMQ's is just the speaker sat in their chair in front of an empty house.

Edited May 15 by Davkaus

[Davkaus]

Another sign that this lot are in no way serious about their tough stance on immigration. It's all theatre. They need someone for us to hate, a group they can point to and blame for all of their own failings. They don't want the Rwanda plan to work, they don't want to reduce the numbers, that's not helpful to them. They need an enemy.

The asylum backlog is a joke, I know, let's cut headcount to make it even worse.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/may/14/home-office-department-processing-rwanda-deportations-told-to-cut-jobs?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Quote

The head of the Home Office section that detains and processes asylum seekers for deportation to Rwanda has halted recruitment and is drawing up plans for staff cuts after demands from Jeremy Hunt, leaked documents show.

Stuart Skeates, the director general for strategic operations at Illegal Migration Operations Command (IMOC), wrote to colleagues on Tuesday to say his department had been told to cut the numbers of staff to “pre-pandemic levels”, in line with the chancellor’s plans.

 

In an email, Skeates said he “had not anticipated” that the department, central to Rishi Sunak’s immigration policy, would be asked to make the cuts demanded of others in Whitehall.

IMOC job vacancies have already been taken down from its website. The Home Office is also “urgently reviewing” job offers to people who have not yet started in their roles, the leaked documents show.

Home Office insiders are shocked at the decision, which comes just weeks before the first flight is expected to take off for Kigali.

 

[Mandy Lifeboats]

40 minutes ago, Davkaus said:

This is their plan?

The protocol is:

• Arrest made
• Panel selected by the Speaker is given details of the allegation, some unspecified information from the police, and not told the name of the individual accused to try to prevent it being a party political vote
• Panel then makes a risk assessment and decides what steps are taken to safeguard people within parliament. A ban is the extreme option.
• While suspended from attending parliament, the MP in question can still do constituency work and vote in parliament via proxy, the main impact is that they won't be able to ask questions or speak in the chamber
• When a police investigation is concluded, if a ban was given, it is immediately revoked.

I think there are a few problems with it, we'll see how it shakes out in practice.

I do worry that although the ban is the extreme option, it might end up being the default option by a panel trying to cover their arse, I also think that while their intention is to keep the MP anonymous, this is only going to work for very short-lived police investigations, because people will soon notice MPs that are voting exclusively via proxy for a few months.

I'm on the fence about the threshold of arrest/charge, I don't think we're going to see an outbreak of people being arrested based on anonymous accusations, or vexatious complaints that are in no way plausible, but perhaps I'll look like a complete idiot in a year's time when PMQ's is just the speaker sat in their chair in front of an empty house.

There's no need for any of this.  There is a system already in place. 

If you are arrested for an offence AND a magistrate/judge feels its a serious offence AND a magistrate feels you pose a danger to society then you will be remanded in custody until the trial.  Or you will be released on bail with conditions attached.  It could easily be made a condition of bail that the accused does not attend parliament (a workplace), does not deal with certain matters or does not interact with certain people.  

[Davkaus]

1 minute ago, Mandy Lifeboats said:

There's no need for any of this.  There is a system already in place. 

If you are arrested for an offence AND a magistrate/judge feels its a serious offence AND a magistrate feels you pose a danger to society then you will be remanded in custody until the trial.  Or you will be released on bail with conditions attached.  It could easily be made a condition of bail that the accused does not attend parliament (a workplace), does not deal with certain matters or does not interact with certain people.  

Sex offenders are allowed out on bail all the time. Do you think it's appropriate to return to the workplace if that is the same workplace as the accuser? I bloody don't.

The only reason this is a story is because MPs aren't employees and don't have a normal HR department, for businesses there are already laws on the books letting them do this and pretty much any large organisation has a policy similar to this one

 

[Mandy Lifeboats]

2 hours ago, Davkaus said:

Sex offenders are allowed out on bail all the time. Do you think it's appropriate to return to the workplace if that is the same workplace as the accuser? I bloody don't.

 

Sex offenders are often given CONDITIONAL bail.  Those conditions are often that they cannot come into contact with named individuals or certain types of people (children).  

 

[meregreen]

Hunt claiming his Party is the Party of low taxation. It’s as if the previous 14 years didn’t happen. They’re toast.

[Davkaus]

48 minutes ago, meregreen said:

Hunt claiming his Party is the Party of low taxation. It’s as if the previous 14 years didn’t happen. They’re toast.

The party for low taxation who kept raising taxes.

The party for low immigration while it's at record high levels on their watch.

The party that's tough on crime, but closed prisons without replacing them and now has to release people because prisons are literally full.

And even if you ignore their record, what kind of **** idiot looks at the state of our crumbling infrastructure and failing public services and thinks "yeah, what we need is less funding".

 

Edited May 17 by Davkaus

[Genie]

1 hour ago, meregreen said:

Hunt claiming his Party is the Party of low taxation. It’s as if the previous 14 years didn’t happen. They’re toast.

He’s hinting at another NI cut in the Autumn. Setting the stall out for when they’re in opposition and Labour have to undo these irresponsible decisions.

”we cut taxes 3 times in 2024 and Labour are putting them up, can you beliiiiiieve it????”

 

[Genie]

29 minutes ago, Davkaus said:

The party that's tough on crime, but closed prisons without replacing them and now has to release people because prisons are literally full.

and closed the police stations. Tamworth doesn’t have a front desk anymore, and if you want to report a crime on the phone be prepared to wait 40-60 minutes for them to answer. 

[Jon]

17 hours ago, meregreen said:

Hunt claiming his Party is the Party of low taxation. It’s as if the previous 14 years didn’t happen. They’re toast.

We know you love low taxation for the wealthy and ruling elite.  

We know you love to underfund public services. 

It's why the country is buggered.

Taxation on the low to middle earners certainly isn't low though.  

They're going to get soundly beaten.  

[bickster]

2 hours ago, Jon said:

They're going to get soundly beaten

It’s not just beaten, or even soundly beaten. They are as good as finished.

Theres currently only one age demographic that has a majority of Tory voters (65+) and even in that demographic the gap between Labour and Tory is significantly narrowing.

It’s not just one generation of people that will not be voting Tory any time soon, it’s most of them and the ones that live longer. It was a widely held thought amongst psephologists that the Tory base in the UK was 30% of the population, that they’d never go below that in an election. They obviously went below that mid-term in the run up to 1997 but recovered at the election. People will say their vote always goes up before an election, it doesn’t, it just did in 1997. Journalists keep saying that it MIGHT be a loss on a par with 1997, the evidence that it will be much worse. Check out the polling from 1997 and compare it to now

1997

Current

Polling techniques have also improved since the late 90s and not only that the Tory recovery in the run up to 1997 was slow, gradual and took a couple of years, they don’t have time to do that nor will they have time in the next decade to recover. It’s an extinction event

Populism Will Eat Itself - Can You Dig It?   

 

[Genie]

Obviously the answer is to bring back Boris Johnson

[NurembergVillan]

Think I might be just as excited for the next election as I was to see Oasis at Knebworth.

This is history! This is history! 

[mjmooney]

Quote

Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris will not stand at next election
The Northern Ireland Secretary joins an exodus of Tory politicians who have announced they will be leaving Westminster at the next general election.

Sky

 

[Chindie]

You could put this is various threads. But some will like it because it has that there Liverpool in it, centre of the world, la.

Anyway it's an interesting video on the state of local government in the UK. It starts in Birmingham, obviously. There's nothing really revelatory but it's always good to see something put together that lays out how things are ****.

[ml1dch]

Blimey.