UK Politics - Caesar: Most senators didn’t stab me, so all good!

[Which Tyler]

11 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

Prospective Wakefield tory MP making a torturous analogy using Harold Shipman, was exactly what I needed to cheer myself up this morning. 

Do you think he even realised what he was saying?

He's equated the current government - who are still in power - to Britain's biggest mass murderer - and want people to vote for him...

[Spockydog]

Probably won't happen, but can you imagine how entertaining it would be if he was forced to sit before that committee knowing that a single lie could see him sent to prison.

Boris Johnson may have to give evidence under oath about whether he lied to MPs

Quote

 

Boris Johnson could be ordered to give evidence under oath when MPs begin a new investigation into claims he lied about Partygate.

The privileges committee is expected to start its inquiry within the next month and will aim to deliver a verdict by the autumn on whether Johnson misled parliament. Sessions are likely to be held in public, in an attempt to limit potential criticism about the group’s work and avoid any accusations of a “cover up”.

A call for evidence may also be set up before the summer recess, for people – including potential whistleblowers working in No 10 – to submit any testimony or evidence.

The committee will not seek to reinvestigate the extent of Covid law-breaking in Downing Street, which was the subject of inquiries by Scotland Yard and Whitehall, but will instead focus on whether Johnson misled MPs.

The step of requiring a witness to give evidence under oath to a parliamentary committee is not unprecedented but rarely used. The Parliamentary Witnesses Oaths Act stipulates that the oath is administered by the committee’s chair or clerk, and any false evidence carries the penalty of perjury.

After criticism over the handling of the Met and Sue Gray inquiries, a source said of the privileges committee investigation: “The adults are in charge now.”

 

 

[mormont]

Looking at the list of candidates for Wakefield and the number of right wing nutters is deeply concerning. All flavours of insanity on the right are available: seven flat out racist candidates on the ballot. You can't 'both sides' this stuff. There is a deeply concerning element on the right in the UK.

[A wilding]

Of course it won't happen. And "adults" indeed.

But I do wonder in Johnson could limit himself to just speaking the truth if he tried.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

Lie, truth, lies, truths. One man's lie, is another man's truth. So it's all a wash.

So you say party, he says official goverment work puke on the walls of number 10. You say birthday cake, he says representative of the bakery and cake industry showing the benefits of the Great British Baking industry. You say disgrace, he says another round on the house - official goverment business of course. 

 

[Spockydog]

27 minutes ago, A wilding said:

And "adults" indeed.

 

The privileges committee is chaired by Labour. I think that's what they mean.

[Spockydog]

Aw, the poor wee lamb. 

 

[mormont]

So more on Johnson and ethics:

https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/boris-johnson-wanted-to-give-carrie-symonds-a-100000-downing-street-role/

It turns out that, allegedly, and surely to no one's surprise, Boris Johnson - while still married to Marina Wheeler, who had cancer at the time - was having an affair with Carrie Symonds. He then tried to appoint her as his chief of staff at the Foreign Office. The report claims this was blocked and he had to have it explained to him why this was not OK.

So far, so predictable. But then we find that the Mail turned down the story. The Times ran it in their print edition and online, before it suddenly disappeared from the online edition. Reporting on the story is thin - not a word on the BBC at present. But the story is credible, and the Times print version suggests that it checks out.

[Spockydog]

I've read some pretty disturbing things about Carrie Johnson, one of the three founding members of the now disbanded treason factory, Conservative Friends of Russia. 

Luckily for her, Boris Johnson, and the Tories, it is doubtful that her links to Putin will ever be properly investigated and exposed. 

[SeanF]

10 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

I've read some pretty disturbing things about Carrie Johnson, one of the three founding members of the now disbanded treason factory, Conservative Friends of Russia. 

Luckily for her, Boris Johnson, and the Tories, it is doubtful that her links to Putin will ever be properly investigated and exposed. 

Putin never got value for money, there.

[Derfel Cadarn]

1 hour ago, mormont said:

So more on Johnson and ethics:

https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/boris-johnson-wanted-to-give-carrie-symonds-a-100000-downing-street-role/

It turns out that, allegedly, and surely to no one's surprise, Boris Johnson - while still married to Marina Wheeler, who had cancer at the time - was having an affair with Carrie Symonds. He then tried to appoint her as his chief of staff at the Foreign Office. The report claims this was blocked and he had to have it explained to him why this was not OK.

So far, so predictable. But then we find that the Mail turned down the story. The Times ran it in their print edition and online, before it suddenly disappeared from the online edition. Reporting on the story is thin - not a word on the BBC at present. But the story is credible, and the Times print version suggests that it checks out.

 

[Spockydog]

Great piece by the most courageous journalist in the country, with some important clarification for anyone who has been sucking on the teat of misinformation and thinks Banks somehow 'won' this case. 

Arron Banks almost crushed me in court. Instead, my quest for the facts was vindicated

Quote

 

And then a year later, he sued.

Over these words that I told the audience at Ted’s main conference in Vancouver: “… and I’m not even going to get into the lies that Arron Banks told about his covert relationship with the Russian government”.

I thought the meaning of these words was blindingly obvious. That he’d told lies about his covert relationship with the Russian government! I was wrong. In November 2019, as part of the hearing to determine the “legal” meaning of the words I had used, Mr Justice Saini came up with his formulation, not the one I thought the words had meant; not even the one Banks had advanced. He contended that I’d said he’d had “a secret relationship with the Russian government in relation to acceptance of foreign funding of electoral campaigns in breach of the law”.

It felt like I’d stepped into the pages of a Kafka novel. The judge’s ruling meant that I was going to be put on trial to defend the truth of a statement I’d never actually said or meant.

When news broke that I’d withdrawn the truth defence and would instead be defending it only on public interest, it sent the rightwing media system into meltdown. A tsunami of abusive articles, tweets, pronouncements from commentators and MPs, the low point of which was when the chair of the Orwell prize rang me to say that of course they wouldn’t be asking for my prize back as the Spectator was demanding, but they’d taken it sufficiently seriously to take legal advice.

I don’t know if it was because these smears against me stuck or if our entire press had been rendered mute in the face of Banks’s legal threats, but the near total silence around this case has been one of its most extraordinary aspects. One month before Russia invaded Ukraine, as part of the legal action, documents disclosed by both me and Banks provided new insight about the relationship between the biggest funder of the Brexit campaign and the Kremlin in a multimillion pound trial against a journalist that 19 press freedom organisations said they believed was an abuse of law. Much of this went wholly unreported. Save for the Guardian, not a single mainstream news outlet covered any of it.

I’m writing this today because the law must change. We cannot and must not allow another journalist to go through this. Not for the sake of their sanity but for the health of our democracy. Because this is not democracy. It’s oligarchy. And Banks v Cadwalladr needs to be the last time these obscene laws are used against a journalist in this way.

What this case proves is that no journalist is safe. The judge, Mrs Justice Steyn, said that Banks’s case against me was not a “Slapp” suit, that is a strategic lawsuit against public participation. She said his attempt to seek vindication through the proceedings against me was legitimate. She is correct because it couldn’t be. There is no definition of a Slapp suit in UK law, which is why none of what I believe to be the abusive aspects of this case were entered into evidence. They formed no part of my defence, one of the things I found most upsetting after the trial.

However, the judge clearly states in her judgment that the Observer had previously published a report containing “essentially the same allegations, and a very similar meaning”. But Banks didn’t sue the Observer and he didn’t sue Ted, he sued me. He presumably thought I was the weakest link. He was wrong. But only because an incredible sea of people rose up to support me. I relied on the generosity of my legal team and the kindness of strangers: 28,887 people who contributed the astonishing sum of £819,835 to my two crowdfunders. Even writing that makes me tear up.

It would have been utterly impossible for me to defend myself without this support. It was only barely possible even with it. But if I hadn’t done so, some key facts about the political moment that changed our country forever – Brexit – could have been rewritten.The ability to report on the Kremlin’s involvement with leading individuals in the Brexit campaign would have been stifled forever. The record could have been changed.

This is because what the coverage of the case last week missed, and what lay readers of the judgment probably won’t understand, is what an extraordinary document it is. Not just for what it means for all UK news outlets in terms of a public interest defence succeeding, but for a forensic examination of the facts of Banks’s relationship with the Russian government that is on the record forever.

I was blown away reading it. Mrs Justice Steyn painstakingly undertook her own examination of the accuracy of Banks’s claim that his “sole involvement with the Russians was a boozy six-hour lunch”. That is what he claimed after the Electoral Commission announced it would investigate the “true source” of his £8m donation to the Brexit campaign. And this is what she found. That statement was, she said, “wholly inaccurate”.

She examined all the underlying documentation, including evidence newly revealed in the case, and concluded “he had at least four meetings, including three lunches”. She added: “It would be wrong to expect a journalist to refrain from identifying such an inaccurate statement… as a lie.”

But it doesn’t end there. She noted: “The four meetings on 6 November 2015, 17 November 2015, 19 August 2016 and 18 November 2016 were probably not the full extent [of] Mr Banks’s meetings with Russian officials.” There were reasonable grounds to believe numerous other meetings occurred. She regards Banks’s words in an email on 19 January 2016 that he intended “to pop in and see the ambassador as well” were “suggestive of a relationship in which he could visit the Russian ambassador with ease”.

She said the statement by Andy Wigmore, spokesman for the Leave.EU campaign and Banks’s business partner, about why he retracted his claim that Banks was in Moscow in early 2016 as “not credible”. Nor was Banks’s claim that he received a document entitled “Russian gold sector consolidation play” from a British associate, not a Russian oligarch.

 

 

[Spockydog]

44 minutes ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

 

Another little known fact about Boris Johnson:

For the entire duration of his time as Foreign Secretary, oversight of MI6 was removed from the Foreign Office and placed in the care of Downing Street. Theresa May routinely withheld security information from Johnson as he was deemed a security risk.

 

 

[Spockydog]

NHS going full DWP...

Man paralysed from neck down ‘not eligible’ for night-time care

Quote

 

A quadriplegic man was told his care funding would be revoked, after NHS officials deemed him not disabled enough to qualify for support.

Simon Shaw, 54, has received 24-hour care since he was left paralysed from the neck down after a car accident in 1984.

He relies on carers at night to help him with everything from turning in bed to having a drink of water. They also intervene with medical aid if he develops life-threatening complications related to his paralysis, which could happen at any time, without warning.

But a recent NHS assessment controversially ruled Shaw’s health needs were not severe enough to warrant full-time medical care. Local health authority officials told him he did not meet eligibility criteria and his NHS funding would be stopped from 20 June.

Shaw, from Clapham, south London, said that meant there was no money for his night-time care and he would be left unsupported from 8pm to 8am for the first time in nearly four decades.

“It’s frightening, to be honest,” Shaw said. “I don’t know what I’m going to do when they take my care away.

“I don’t cease to exist after 8pm. I still need to get into bed, have a drink of water and use the toilet – and I can’t do any of it on my own.

 

Fifth richest nation on the planet. 

[Spockydog]

Yeah, the plight of the quadriplegic man abandoned at night is simply fucking hilarious. Laughing at him will really stick it to the libs, this one in particular.

Honestly, wtf is wrong with you?

 

 

[Heartofice]

I’m laughing because days after telling others to ‘take a day off’ you are again spamming this thread making it basically unreadable with endless posts and reposts from Twitter. Maybe just take some time away from the computer and Twitter.

[Soylent Brown]

Nobody is forcing you to visit this thread, or this forum.

[Spockydog]

1 hour ago, Heartofice said:

I’m laughing because days after telling others to ‘take a day off’ you are again spamming this thread making it basically unreadable with endless posts and reposts from Twitter. Maybe just take some time away from the computer and Twitter.

Now I understand that, as a conservative in the year 2022, you have been programmed to reject even the most basic of facts, as well as the evidence of your eyes and ears. But I make, on average, three posts a day in this thread. This is a verifiable fact, because, unlike the meetings between Boris Johnson and his Russian handlers, the words are all preserved as part of the public record.

But guess what? Even if you actually believe your line that this constitutes endless spam, rendering the thread 'unreadable', you don't even have to try. If my three posts a day are wrecking your experience at westeros.org, you can always employ the ignore function. 

But if you want to continue your whining about me or my posts, perhaps try engaging with what I'm actually saying instead of just dropping your sad little emoji-turds at the bottom of my posts.

It's pathetic.

[Heartofice]

18 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

But if you want to continue your whining about me or my posts, perhaps try engaging with what I'm actually saying instead of just dropping your sad little emoji-turds at the bottom of my posts

I’ve ‘engaged’ with your conspiracy theories in the past, but correcting your bad information only results in insults and liberal use of the C word. So I don’t bother now. 
 

Im not especially bothered by your wall to wall vomitus on this thread, but if you want to tell other people to ‘take time off’ maybe look at your own behaviour first.

People wearing tin foil hats shouldn’t throw stones and all that. 

[Spockydog]

So the quadriplegic having his care removed is a conspiracy theory?

Or is it merely yet another illustration of how the NHS is being forced to abandon its patients, as a direct result of twelve years of Tory mismanagement and starvation of funds?

And as for my 'conspiracy theories'....

I remember, a couple of years ago, posting about how Boris Johnson, shortly after attending a special UN security briefing on the Salisbury Poisonings, gave his Special Branch protection detail the slip and left the country to attend a Bunga Bunga party at the Italian castle of a former KGB agent.

I remember BFC saying that it was quite the claim, and if proved true it would be explosive, or words along those lines.

Revealed: ex-KGB agent met Boris Johnson at Italian party