UK Politics: Johnsons Hoaxy Yurt North of Hadrian's Wall

[williamjm]

11 minutes ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

Was still a bit in disbelief how she could be that stupid. With the Cumming-Johnson Tory party, you expect that kind of idiocy. With SNP, there's simply an expectation of higher standards.

Arguably, it is worse. Being sick and getting on a train with with other passengers and in limited space. And I don'T believe whataboutism is ever a good argument. SNP is not the Tory party, so you should expect them to do the right thing. And how can the SNP credibly nail the Tories on the CUmmings stuff, if she is allowed to stay?

Breaking news is that she has been suspended by the SNP: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-54379026

I think that was the only correct course of action. Even if we ignore Cummings, the Scottish CMO got fired by Sturgeon for a much lesser offence of going to their holiday home while they had no virus symptoms.

[Chaircat Meow]

9 minutes ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

Duncan Smith, Cameron, May, Johnson. You really think you want to have that argument, when May looks like the least dim of that set?

All of them saving Duncan Smith are probably at least as bright as Salmond. As regards standards none of them appeared in court on multiple charges of sexual assault and had to defend themselves saying they were no angel.

 

[A Horse Named Stranger]

Not bothering with defending Salmond, other than being my favorite fish to eat. Anyway, iirc he was booted out after the allegations came out.

Anyway, Ferrier has her whip withdrawn, and I expect her to resign within the next couple of days.

[Chaircat Meow]

7 minutes ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

Not bothering with defending Salmond, other than being my favorite fish to eat. Anyway, iirc he was booted out after the allegations came out.

Anyway, Ferrier has her whip withdrawn, and I expect her to resign within the next couple of days.

Yea, just not worth it is it.  And Salmond actually resigned from the party, not 'booted.'

[A Horse Named Stranger]

No, I can find Salmond's actions to be indefensible, thus not bothering with defending it. At the same time, I can still point out, that he was a more effective party leader than his Tory counterparts for the past twenty years, and that the SNP as a whole looked more credible/competent.

[Chaircat Meow]

4 minutes ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

No, I can find Salmond's actions to be indefensible, thus not bothering with defending it. At the same time, I can still point out, that he was a more effective party leader than his Tory counterparts for the past twenty years, and that the SNP as a whole looked more credible.

Whether that's true or not the point was about standards of conduct.

 

[A Horse Named Stranger]

Even on that metric, the SNP have always cleaned their own house, haven't they?

I can't recall Sturgeon going out her way to defend Salmond, the way Johnson (and his entire cabinet) did with Cummings.

While talking about indefensibles. Have fun defending Sir Upskirt Christopher Chope.

[Chaircat Meow]

15 minutes ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

Even on that metric, the SNP have always cleaned their own house, haven't they?

I can't recall Sturgeon going out her way to defend Salmond, the way Johnson (and his entire cabinet) did with Cummings.

While talking about indefensibles. Have fun defending Sir Upskirt Christopher Chope.

Salmond resigned as I said. He had actually lost his seat to the 'O so incompetent' Tories led by Theresa May by that point. 

The SNP house looks far less clean than any other at the moment, given their own enquiry into the government's investigation of harassment allegations against Salmond has just said that the SNP are obstructing it. And that's without all the stuff going round about Murrell and the whatsapp messages and so on. The questions when people knew about the allegations and the bad behaviour by Salmond are still contentious.

So basically, no.

[mormont]

The SNP have their problems, no doubt about it. Scandals, including this one. Poor handling of some situations - secondary education, for example.

Yet nobody in Scotland is a serious or credible threat to their dominance. Ruth Davidson was a media darling but never in with even a 100-1 shot of becoming FM. Richard Leonard is one of those politicians who tries to make a principle out of not having charisma ('I'd rather talk about policy', he says, as no-one pays a blind bit of attention). Willie Rennie's all right but knows he's not at the races.

So, as long as Sturgeon cleans house here, and she will, this won't harm the SNP in any real way.

[Chaircat Meow]

Let's hope Margaret Ferrier gets better.

[john]

2 hours ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

While talking about indefensibles. Have fun defending Sir Upskirt Christopher Chope.

Chope blocked parliamentary proceedings. Salmond was accused of fourteen instances of sexual assault. Not quite the same thing.

The SNP seems to have a reasonable excuse in not providing the materials in question as apparently it’s difficult or impossible to redact all the information which might reveal the identity of the complainant in the Salmond case.

The SNP also clapping back at the Torys by complaining at the marked difference in “tone” between the letters sent to the government and to the court of session regarding the Salmond inquiry.  

[The Anti-Targ]

5 hours ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

Hum, do you happen to have another source? Really dumb if true, but the source you quoted couldn't be trusted with a headline reading planet evolves around sun.

Typo, but still true nontheless.

[Spockydog]

5 hours ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

Arguably, it is worse. Being sick and getting on a train with with other passengers and in limited space. And I don'T believe whataboutism is ever a good argument. SNP is not the Tory party, so you should expect them to do the right thing. And how can the SNP credibly nail the Tories on the CUmmings stuff, if she is allowed to stay?

I totally agree. And apologies for the whataboutism, that wasn't my intention. I merely wanted to highlight the parallels with Cummings (as loose as they are, he's certainly being mentioned in the overall context of this story), along with the abominable levels of Tory hypocrisy when it comes to holding their own to account for scandal and incompetence.

 

[A wilding]

11 hours ago, john said:

Chope blocked parliamentary proceedings. Salmond was accused of fourteen instances of sexual assault. Not quite the same thing.

While I would of course agree, Chope does have a history of blocking bills against FGM, upskirting, etc and his figleaf of justification - preventing the transfer of power away from parliament and towards the government - is undermined by his choice of bills to block. While his own hands may be clean, he has probably indirectly caused a great deal of harm.

[Heartofice]

7 minutes ago, A wilding said:

While I would of course agree, Chope does have a history of blocking bills against FGM, upskirting, etc and his figleaf of justification - preventing the transfer of power away from parliament and towards the government - is undermined by his choice of bills to block. While his own hands may be clean, he has probably indirectly caused a great deal of harm.

Chope didn’t block those bills due to the content of them though, he in fact probably agreed with most of them, he objected to the procedure of passing the bills themselves 

[A wilding]

See my comment above "undermined by his choice of bills to block".

[A wilding]

9 hours ago, Spockydog said:

I totally agree. And apologies for the whataboutism, that wasn't my intention. I merely wanted to highlight the parallels with Cummings

On that note there is an interesting quote from the BBC:

Quote

Ms Ferrier was one of the MPs who called on the prime minister's adviser Dominic Cummings to resign in the wake of the controversy over his visit to the North East of England during lockdown.

At the time, she said his actions had "undermined the sacrifices that we have all been making in lockdown to protect each other from coronavirus" and described his position as "untenable".

And the SNP are now calling for her to resign as an MP.

[Maltaran]

33 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Chope didn’t block those bills due to the content of them though, he in fact probably agreed with most of them, he objected to the procedure of passing the bills themselves 

This argument would be more effective if he was consistent instead of just blocking the ones covering crimes against women.

[mormont]

4 hours ago, Heartofice said:

Chope didn’t block those bills due to the content of them though, he in fact probably agreed with most of them, he objected to the procedure of passing the bills themselves 

This claim has been refuted. Chope does not object to bills he favours being passed under this procedure.

Entirely by coincidence, I'm sure, the bills he blocks for principled 'procedural reasons' have included pardons for Alan Turing's prosecution for homosexuality, measures to reduce female genital mutilation, bills protecting poorer countries from financial exploitation, bans on the use of circus animals, bills cutting parking charges for NHS staff, the upskirting bill and others, but he was silent on bills calling for privatisation of the BBC and Channel 4 (proposed by one C. Chope MP) or hundreds of others. He only discovers these 'objections' when he dislikes the topic of the bill.

[john]

3 hours ago, A wilding said:

While I would of course agree, Chope does have a history of blocking bills against FGM, upskirting, etc and his figleaf of justification - preventing the transfer of power away from parliament and towards the government - is undermined by his choice of bills to block. While his own hands may be clean, he has probably indirectly caused a great deal of harm.

True, Chope is hardly defensible, just probably more defensible than Salmond at this point. On reflection I shouldn’t really have got involved in that argument, it’s enough to say that the SNP are open for criticism too, like any political party.

On Chope in general - yeah, he’s a scumbag, there’s little doubt about that. He’s a climate change denier, against mandatory minimum wage, equal pay and same sex marriages. He’s also tabled bills to reduce student debt and decriminalise TV licence cheating so perhaps not a total monster ...?  

On the private members bills - I said this at the time, there’s something wrong with our system if the government is trying to pass legislation which is apparently important to them in special sessions where they can be blocked by one guy. I suspect Chope picks bills that will cause outcry to somehow increase his standing in the party, it certainly gets him notoriety.