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

[Xann]

She loved the now disgraced Brexit PM and Cummings.

Could imagine the public reminding her of that association.

I would.

[bickster]

5 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

I’ve put it down to those two things, Derbyshire doing the job properly, and the end of the tories.

There’s no future in being their stooge.

Nick Robinson is proving more stubborn. Some of his interviews in the last week have been like some overplayed Chris Morris sketch, switching between fawning and angry as he’s switched between asking a tory and a labour spokesperson a question. 

His history speaks for itself, he is not now nor ever has been unbiased

Even when he was having a pop at Johnson, that was only because they hated each other when Robinson was Chairman of the Oxford Uni Tories (which also puts him as a contemporary of Osborne and Cameron)

[Genie]

38 minutes ago, Xann said:

She loved the now disgraced Brexit PM and Cummings.

Could imagine the public reminding her of that association.

I would.

So would I, but this is a serious topic and not really appropriate for such sexualising

[bickster]

It’s quite revealing to me how skewed the left wing twitter buffoons are. Consensus seems to be that The Wragg issue (where he’s essentially a victim) is more important than Dowden covering up a rape allegation. 
Twitter as ever is full of imbeciles 

[mjmooney]

2 hours ago, bickster said:

His history speaks for itself, he is not now nor ever has been unbiased

Even when he was having a pop at Johnson, that was only because they hated each other when Robinson was Chairman of the Oxford Uni Tories (which also puts him as a contemporary of Osborne and Cameron)

Chris Mason has been a big improvement on Robinson. 

[mjmooney]

There's a joke in here somewhere. 

[Genie]

5 hours ago, mjmooney said:

There's a joke in here somewhere. 

He died yesterday 

[Xann]

Quote

 

Working for the Royal Mail sounded like an ideal job. But I discovered it’s falling apart, just like its vans

My year there was marked by crumbling depots, staff constantly leaving and impossible targets. This once-great institution is on its knees

 

Grauniad

Special delivery of more Tory fail.

[bickster]

And Wragg now resigns the whip  

Meanwhile Dowden… 

[The Fun Factory]

21 hours ago, Xann said:

Grauniad

Special delivery of more Tory fail.

Well in fairness wasn't it Vince Cable who finally privatised it? 

[cyrusr]

37 minutes ago, The Fun Factory said:

Well in fairness wasn't it Vince Cable who finally privatised it? 

Has there been any form of privatisation of public services that has actually been successful? Water, trains, mail are the obvious failures and I do not think power has been particularly great along with public transport generally. BT and British Gas don't seem the healthiest either but then have more competition. am genuinely struggling to see anything has been made better by it. 

[choffer]

2 minutes ago, cyrusr said:

Has there been any form of privatisation of public services that has actually been successful? Water, trains, mail are the obvious failures and I do not think power has been particularly great along with public transport generally. BT and British Gas don't seem the healthiest either but then have more competition. am genuinely struggling to see anything has been made better by it. 

When you say 'successful", obviously you mean from the perspective of the customer, rather than the investors/vampires?

[cyrusr]

12 minutes ago, choffer said:

When you say 'successful", obviously you mean from the perspective of the customer, rather than the investors/vampires?

Indeed! From investors/vampires of course its been successful!

[Xann]

5 hours ago, The Fun Factory said:

Well in fairness wasn't it Vince Cable who finally privatised it? 

Obviously it was handed to Goldman Sachs to botch at the taxpayers expense.

Quote

Royal Mail birthday celebrations overshadowed by privatisation chaos

Government banking adviser accused of ‘making a killing’ at taxpayers’ expense on postal firm’s stock market debut

Grauniad

Not sure the LDs did pledge to hand the Royal Mail to the company that triggered the 2008 global financial collapse?

The pig f**king smear of shit was in the driving seat at the time.

[The Fun Factory]

5 hours ago, cyrusr said:

Has there been any form of privatisation of public services that has actually been successful? Water, trains, mail are the obvious failures and I do not think power has been particularly great along with public transport generally. BT and British Gas don't seem the healthiest either but then have more competition. am genuinely struggling to see anything has been made better by it. 

Telephony is widely seen as broadly positive privatisation.  It opened up the market for new competitors and technology. All of the third-term Maggie privatisation like the water and energy utilities and then later the railways under Major have widely been seen as poor policy.

Ironically Labour started the first privisation of BP before Thatcher.

[Jonesy7211]

34 minutes ago, The Fun Factory said:

Telephony is widely seen as broadly positive privatisation.  It opened up the market for new competitors and technology. All of the third-term Maggie privatisation like the water and energy utilities and then later the railways under Major have widely been seen as poor policy.

Ironically Labour started the first privisation of BP before Thatcher.

The BT network is hugely problematic and "legacy" in comparison to the infrastructure of other countries. The routing features available on the BT cable infrastructure and exchanges are light years behind the USA.

BT have had a monopoly on this for years, even with the creation of Openreach as a separate entity.

Where the Telco's have been wildly successful have been through the resellers and designers of services using this infrastructure, but even this industry has shrunk by a third over the last few years.

Also BT pay is crap. I've never worked for them, but I work in the industry and know loads of people who have and still do. The wages the techies and engineers get paid is insulting compared to the private sector. One of my friends is one of the union bosses for them, and there's still uproar of profits and pay rises for the senior managers, where the plebs have had nothing.

[limpid]

11 hours ago, Jonesy7211 said:

The BT network is hugely problematic and "legacy" in comparison to the infrastructure of other countries. The routing features available on the BT cable infrastructure and exchanges are light years behind the USA.

BT have had a monopoly on this for years, even with the creation of Openreach as a separate entity.

Where the Telco's have been wildly successful have been through the resellers and designers of services using this infrastructure, but even this industry has shrunk by a third over the last few years.

Also BT pay is crap. I've never worked for them, but I work in the industry and know loads of people who have and still do. The wages the techies and engineers get paid is insulting compared to the private sector. One of my friends is one of the union bosses for them, and there's still uproar of profits and pay rises for the senior managers, where the plebs have had nothing.

They are still pushing MPLS, a technology that should have been phased out with the contemporary digital watches.

For the BT privatisation to be successful, it had to be split into at least four parts, separating consumer side from international from network from last mile. This was bottled and they've been trying to fix it up ever since, leading to the appalling mess that is Openreach. Then selling their mobile network and then having to buy another (mobile would have been am fifth division had it been meaningful back then)

[stuart_75]

11 hours ago, Jonesy7211 said:

BT have had a monopoly on this for years, even with the creation of Openreach as a separate entity.

Where the Telco's have been wildly successful have been through the resellers and designers of services using this infrastructure, but even this industry has shrunk by a third over the last few years.

Also BT pay is crap. I've never worked for them, but I work in the industry and know loads of people who have and still do. The wages the techies and engineers get paid is insulting compared to the private sector. One of my friends is one of the union bosses for them, and there's still uproar of profits and pay rises for the senior managers, where the plebs have had nothing.

I also work in this sector and echo your comments about BT's pay scales. When BT bought EE and started properly merging the teams, the pay difference were huge (and still are) You'd have legacy EE staff on way more money than their "BT" managers. BT staff work ethic is like nothing I've ever encountered "can't be arsed, that's not my job, I only work 4 days a week" are phrases I hear every week. An absolute dinosaur of an organisation, surprised anything ever gets done. As for Openreach being a separate entity, that's just a blag. I see favoritism between these all the time.

[Seat68]

I used to work for BT but part of the company that provided pos software systems to retail. Absolutely odd that they would have a branch of the business for this. They sold up to an American company and I left about 6 years ago. My experience of BT was that they couldn’t organise a drinks party in a place that brews beer. To come full circle I now work for one of the largest clients that use that pos software. 

[Xann]

JCB head and 'super' Tory donor Lord Brexit Bamford quit the Lords a couple of days ago.

Quote

Prominent Tory donors and JCB owners Anthony and Mark Bamford are understood to be the subject of a three-year long investigation by HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC), which could result in a bill as high as £500m according to reports.

HMRC is reportedly probing Anthony Bamford, a Tory peer, and Mark, a director of The Conservative Party Foundation, over alleged aggressive tax avoidance measures spanning two decades, according to the Guardian.

The inquiry, understood to be of a magnitude only launched by HMRC when it suspects a substantial loss of tax revenue, focuses on the tax liabilities associated with shares held offshore in Bermudan family trusts, which ultimately control the JCB digging empire.

The Bamford brothers have owned those shares since 2001, following the death of their father Joseph Bamford.

Despite the seriousness of the tax investigation, it was suggested that Anthony Bamford, who was made a Lord by David Cameron in 2013, has yet to inform parliamentary authorities about his involvement in it...

...The Bamford brothers, who have donated over £10m to the Tories over the past two decades, have close ties with multiple former prime ministers, including Liz Truss and Boris Johnson. 

The Conservative Party refused to tell the Guardian whether it continues to accept donations from the family or its businesses and declined to comment on the Bamford investigation.

Lawyers for Lord Bamford and Mark Bamford declined to comment on the record.

City AM