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

[snowychap]

51 minutes ago, Chindie said:

Tories are attempting to change Commons committee selection rules

From the Huff Post article:

Quote

...

The move effectively creates a back-door way around the Committee of Selection, the body that is the traditional way of choosing MPs for each standing and select committee.

It also ensures that the Tories will have a majority to rule on Statutory Instruments included in the EU (Withdrawal) Bill, and avoid attempts to amend their Brexit plans.

...

The powerful but little known Committee of Selection chooses which MPs go on select committees that scrutinise policy and ministers, and standing committees that govern legislation.

The Leadsom motion sets the Committee up with nine members, but specifies that there will be five Tory members.

This is despite Commons officials allocating four members each for Labour and Conservatives and one SNP member - in line with the June election result.

...

A spokeswoman for the Commons Leader told HuffPost UK: “These proposals create the fairest balance between the Opposition and Government, and will ensure technical, procedural rules do not cause unwarranted delays to the business of Parliament.

“The adjustments provide for maximum scrutiny with minimum disruption and delay, both to parliamentary proceedings and to the governance of the country.”

I'm not sure about the wording 'rule on' as select committees are more about questioning, scrutinizing and then reporting on issues but, in essence, this will surely mean that the government are trying to ensure favourable reports on any of the secondary legislation that Ministers want to push through using the powers they hope to get from the EU (Withdrawal) Bill.

'Taking back control'.

[HanoiVillan]

I do hope this is real:

 

[andym]

Without wishing to turn this into the cricket thread, May was on TMS at lunch pretending to like the sport and trying to sound human. She failed to convince on both fronts. 

In an excruciatingly awful interivew, she managed to be stumped by the hardline political questioning of cricket commentator Jonathan Agnew. 

[magnkarl]

39 minutes ago, andym said:

Without wishing to turn this into the cricket thread, May was on TMS at lunch pretending to like the sport and trying to sound human. She failed to convince on both fronts. 

In an excruciatingly awful interivew, she managed to be stumped by the hardline political questioning of cricket commentator Jonathan Agnew. 

[sharkyvilla]

40 minutes ago, andym said:

Without wishing to turn this into the cricket thread, May was on TMS at lunch pretending to like the sport and trying to sound human. She failed to convince on both fronts. 

In an excruciatingly awful interivew, she managed to be stumped by the hardline political questioning of cricket commentator Jonathan Agnew. 

It really was unspeakably bad.  

[HanoiVillan]

To be fair, Jonathan Agnew vs Theresa May isn't exactly an equal battle of wit or likability. 

She just shouldn't pretend to be human, it doesn't work for her. 

[Xann]

Quote

 

With a grandmother born in Dublin in 1895, Charles Tannock is one of the thousands of people who has used his relatives to secure an Irish passport in the rush after the Brexit referendum.

Where he differs is that Mr Tannock is a Conservative Party MEP for London.

Describing himself as a “pretty angry pro-European Tory” and a “passionate remainer”, he is virulently opposed to Brexit, and applied and received the passport following the vote to leave the European Union.

Criticising the “arrogance and hubris . . . the petty nationalism, the triumphalism” of members of his own party after the vote, Tannock says his interest in his Irish past has always been in the back of his mind, but has now been reignited.

“It has been awakened by Brexit because, to be honest, I am quite ashamed to be British in many ways,” he said.

“I deeply regret the Brexit outcome. It was done on a slim majority on a broad franchise. And there were a pack of lies and false promises made. I don’t feel morally bound by the outcome but I accept that legally that was the result."

 

Irish Times

[Xann]

Quote

 

A secret “fire sale” of hospital land – including dozens of properties still being used for medical care – is planned to bail out the cash-strapped NHS, new documents show.

The Department of Health has quietly doubled the amount of land it intends to dispose of, triggering accusations of desperate measures to plug a big hole in NHS finances.

Details of more than half of the 1,300 hectares now up for sale have been kept under wraps because of “sensitivity” – raising suspicions that many other sites also have clinical uses.

The revelation comes after the Naylor review called for the NHS to adopt “a more commercial approach” to selling off assets – branding them a “source of untapped value” – and was embraced by Theresa May to help inject £10bn into the NHS.

Today’s analysis, carried out for Labour by the House of Commons Library, went through Department of Health data of land that NHS organisations “have deemed surplus” and eligible for sale.

Of the 543 plots, totaling 1,332 hectares – worth many hundreds of millions of pounds – 117 are currently being used for clinical or medical purposes, Labour said.

However, data on 734 of those hectares, spread over 63 sites, has been held back due to “issues of sensitivity”, the analysis found.

Jonathan Ashworth, Labour’s Shadow Health Secretary, claimed a long-running failure to fund the NHS properly had forced “a blanket sell-off of sites which are currently being used for patient care”.

“Crumbling hospitals are in desperate need of investment for repair and renewal,” Mr Ashworth said.

“But the Government must provide that investment, not strip hospitals of their assets and force them into a fire sale. 

“There has been a huge rise in the amount of NHS land available for sale this year, but for more than half of it the Government are keeping the details secret and refusing to fully answer reasonable questions".

 

Independent

Cheap property for their chums.

Oink Oink!

[peterms]

More on Mrs May here.

Quote

...The authors also reveal that May rarely visited party workers, fearing that Conservative HQ was “a pit of germs”. “There were quite a lot of germs flying around,” one Conservative source said.

When the prime minister did finally arrive to give a morale-boosting speech to staff, it was a rehash of her already wearily familiar stump speech. “It was all ‘strong and stable’ and the risks of Corbyn’s ‘coalition of chaos’. I couldn’t believe it,” one eyewitness said.

Some party workers began visibly checking their phones for Twitter updates. “This was the prime minister of the United Kingdom talking in the middle of an election to her own campaign staff and she couldn’t even hold the room,” the source told McTague and Ross...

 

[HanoiVillan]

Oh, what a big surprise:

 

[darrenm]

4 hours ago, HanoiVillan said:

Oh, what a big surprise:

 

Big news!

Oh, wait

 

[Chindie]

On 08/09/2017 at 08:56, Chindie said:

More power grabs coming.

The Tories are attempting to change Commons committee selection rules, which currently mandate a committee is representative of the Commons proportions, to instead give the Government a majority in odd numbered committees and evenly matched in even numbered committees (except any public bill committee, which tend to be rather important...) 

So basically a minority zombie government is trying to change the rules so they have the benefits of a majority more or less.

This government is evil.

They won this.

Farcical.

This country is ever more becoming a joke.

[bobzy]

Horrific government leading country through a catastrophic removal from the EU.  We are being completely shafted as a country.

 

 

 

**** anyone who voted for Conservative in the last GE and to Leave the EU in the referendum previously.  Absolute jokers.  The truly sad thing is that, should we have another GE now, the Conservatives would win again.

[Jon]

9 minutes ago, bobzy said:

  The truly sad thing is that, should we have another GE now, the Conservatives would win again.

What do you base that on?

[Amsterdam_Neil_D]

4 minutes ago, Jon said:

What do you base that on?

At a guess it's the same reason why Apple will manage to sell loads of new Iphone X's

[darrenm]

25 minutes ago, Jon said:

What do you base that on?

The current polls aggregated have Labour just in front but Tories more seats.

[Chindie]

33 minutes ago, Jon said:

What do you base that on?

I'd suspect if you called another election now you'd get a rerun of June. All the same issues are still there.

In other news interesting that the next round of banging heads against wal- sorry, EU talks have been delayed by a week. Verhofstadt had suggested a couple of weeks back that that would happen due to an intervention by May of some sort. I'm sure it'll be another shitshow. It's what this government does. And now they get rewarded for it!

[darrenm]

18 minutes ago, Chindie said:

I'd suspect if you called another election now you'd get a rerun of June. All the same issues are still there.

In other news interesting that the next round of banging heads against wal- sorry, EU talks have been delayed by a week. Verhofstadt had suggested a couple of weeks back that that would happen due to an intervention by May of some sort. I'm sure it'll be another shitshow. It's what this government does. And now they get rewarded for it!

I don't think so. The Tories have been hugely damaged by the GE. They started from a position of strength with Labour heading for disaster because of an extremely unpopular Jeremy Corbyn.

The campaign from Labour created a huge surge and would likely create a landslide to Labour if done again when starting from a relatively even starting point. Don't underestimate Momentum.

[ml1dch]

27 minutes ago, Chindie said:

In other news interesting that the next round of banging heads against wal- sorry, EU talks have been delayed by a week. Verhofstadt had suggested a couple of weeks back that that would happen due to an intervention by May of some sort. I'm sure it'll be another shitshow. It's what this government does. And now they get rewarded for it!

Apparently the May speech is to give our formal notice to withdraw from the EEA (you all remember that question on the ballot paper last June, right? And how Parliament have voted to give her that authority?), and at the same time asking the other members of EFTA whether they'd like to form a shiny, new arrangement instead which does all the same things as they currently have, just without freedom of movement.

So a whole new thing, with a whole new bunch of people to reject unrealistic proposals, made by people who probably wouldn't pass a GCSE in understanding this stuff.

Edited September 13, 2017 by ml1dch

[Chindie]

9 minutes ago, darrenm said:

I don't think so. The Tories have been hugely damaged by the GE. They started from a position of strength with Labour heading for disaster because of an extremely unpopular Jeremy Corbyn.

The campaign from Labour created a huge surge and would likely create a landslide to Labour if done again when starting from a relatively even starting point. Don't underestimate Momentum.

We've been over this . The result wouldn't much change. A few seats might switch but nothing to get a change in result. And theres no chance of a Labour landslide, that's silly talk.

And the Tories always have their rather large base. The great 97 victory came about largely from courting the younger professional in that base, and of course a tired Tory party shooting itself in the foot after years of scandal.

Edited September 13, 2017 by Chindie