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UK Politics: Mone, Mone, Mone. It's not funny. It's a rich toff's world.


Spockydog

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So it looks like Michelle Mone and her husband tried to steal far more public money than we already know about.

Revealed: Second firm pushed by Michelle Mone was secret entity of husband’s office

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A second company that the Tory peer Michelle Mone lobbied ministers over in an attempt to secure government Covid contracts was a secret entity of her husband’s family office, the Guardian can reveal.

Lady Mone’s lobbying on behalf of the company, LFI Diagnostics, which she tried to help secure government contracts for Covid lateral flow tests, prompted a formal rebuke from a health minister who reminded her of “the need for propriety”.

 

At this stage, it's not clear whether LFI were awarded any contracts.

But I'll tell you one thing, Michael Gove is fucking shitting himself over all this.

 

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2 hours ago, Spockydog said:

So it looks like Michelle Mone and her husband tried to steal far more public money than we already know about.

Revealed: Second firm pushed by Michelle Mone was secret entity of husband’s office

At this stage, it's not clear whether LFI were awarded any contracts.

But I'll tell you one thing, Michael Gove is fucking shitting himself over all this.

 

Kudos to Pippa Crerar and the Guardian's political journalists for breaking essentially a story a day exposing Tory corruption.  Journalism matters, Exhibit A.  And yes, Gove has smelly underpants.  

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I prefer the classics. ;)

What Sunak is more worried about, it seems, is the current wave of strikes due to nurses and teachers having to use food banks and pick which room in the house to heat. The solution is, of course, to pass laws to stop them striking.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-63885549

And build more coal mines.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-63892381

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Of course, if nurses (and other essential workers) are kept on low pay, and terrible hours and conditions, and aren't allowed to strike, then what many of them will do (indeed, have been doing) is quit. And because the job is badly paid and extremely stressful, they won't be replaced.

Here's what I find so frustrating about the whole thing, let's say they defeat all the labour unrest. No pay rises for anyone, serious real-term cuts for everyone across the board, not to be alleviated for the forseeable future. What's their endgame? To be wealthy and powerful in a society in which even the most basic services just don't work anymore? Like, even if their wealth insulates them from the worst effects to some extent, they can't live in a totally parallel system. They're reliant on the same underpinning infrastructure as the rest of us.

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Yet another Tory MP is in trouble:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-63897387

Quote

Julian Knight has been suspended as a Conservative MP after a complaint was made to the Metropolitan Police, a party spokeswoman has said.

She declined to comment on the nature of the complaint as it is now under investigation.

 

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Yay - no more need to food banks in England/Britain

Because we've rebranded them as Food Pantries, which sounds much posher - and much like George Osbourne's rebrand of minimum wage, completely misses the point.

Of course, rather than pride that she's opening food banks, shouldn't she be ashamed that they're necessary - as a direct result of her governments' policies.


I've said it before, and I'll sat it again: Rich countries shouldn't have poor people!
 

 

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I'd put a bit of nuance on that last sentence. Rich countries should not have people so poor that they need to rely on charity to meet their basic needs. Poor is always going to be a somewhat relative term, since there will always be people who do not have sufficient means to live the kind of life to which they aspire, even when that aspiration is reasonably modest, such as being able to buy a decently reliable late-model non-luxury car when in absolute need of one.

 

A discussion on whether the future for civilisation needs to include individual ownership of personal transport can be reserved for another time.

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15 minutes ago, Varysblackfyre321 said:

Charity typically is a gross evil and abuse.

The need for organised charity to mitigate preventable societal deprivation. Yes. As is the belief that such organised charity should be the mechanism used to mitigate such deprivation. Such charity is typically tax deductible, allows wealthy people to make a public show of their generosity, feel morally good and righteous about themselves and be part of justifying opposition to taxation.

Personal, private and anonymous charity is to be commended.

Spit-balling an idea, which now that we have the technology is probably doable, for food. I would propose that people earning 100+x% of the living wage should be able to buy whatever groceries (excl any foods (incl alcohol) subject to taxation or other measures intended to discourage excessive consumption) they want and only pay a certain % of their income per week, with the govt picking up the tab for the balance. Same should apply to rent. Below a certain income threshold you only pay a fixed % of your income in rent, for the balance landlords have to negotiate with the govt.

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making private owned rented properties cheaper to rent  is not necessary a simple solution as it first looks.

 

Private landlords need to charge enough rent to cover the costs.  Unfortunately this often means covering the mortgage on the property.  (which I agree really sucks cos most renters rent because they can't afford to save up a deposit and buy but still end up paying the same amount).   If rents are capped and don't pay landlords enough then they will either sell the houses or put them on Airbnb.  which means less properties to rent.

If a lot of former rented properties are sold this could lead to a housing price crash which on one hand would be helpful to those that have already saved up a deposit but not yet bought.  it would also be disastrous for those that have just bought trapping them in negative equity.  

What we really need is good quality subsidised social house on a massive scale.  but that needs the government to spend lots of money.  and some way to bring house prices down without crashing them.

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Why would capped rents be needed though? Capping the % of a low income person's income that is paid in rent and the govt covering the rest is not a rent cap. It's up to the landlord to negotiate with the govt on the rental amount, which would be at least somewhat based on objective criteria, such as the assessed property value for any land or local body taxation purposes, market rents for similar houses in the same area, or similar neighbourhoods in other parts of the country, current mortgage interest rates etc.

It ends up, possibly being cheaper for the govt to cover rentals in the private sector than to build social housing. It's likely that govt might need to get into the house / apartment building game where there is an absolute housing shortage and the private sector is simply not building the right kind of homes in the right locations. But also, if the only rentals available in reasonable proximity to where a low income person works are 5 bedroom high priced homes then perhaps it's not such a bad thing for low income families to move into those areas where they pay a fixed % of their income and the govt picks up the rest of the rent bill. Doing that would tend to help avoid creating slums where poor people are herded into undesirable parts of town and forced to live in shitty conditions.

The govt pays one way or another for poor people's living situation, whether it's through increased use of the health service because people living in shitty conditions get sick more, or its through having to deal with poverty and deprivation led crime. So why not pay in a way that gives people the opportunities and benefits that come with a decent standard of living rather than pay for the inevitable consequences of having a poor standard of living?

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