Careless Tories!

[Trickytreesreds]

Its not even something that they are entitled to, its just recent history. IMO the HOL should be completely reformed into a democratic upper chamber, something which Blair failed to do when he had the chance.

hear hear

Nor does it need, a small army of them, sponging tax payers cash.

No more than a hundred and they are elected in, not selected by their "mates"

[Trickytreesreds]

Brexit isn’t really my ‘personal hobby horse’ anymore than it is most of the electorate these days, still I take your point...although I think your first sentence is a bit daft seeing as ‘getting Brexit done’, rather than anything LGBTQ related, was the main issue at the last (2019) election.

My point was that, isn’t it sad that at a time when the British electorate was deciding on such a hugely important issue we had three such incompetents in charge? Either way...the ‘three stooges’ have hopefully all come unstuck and it’s nice to see you recognising Johnson for what he is...in your own words, a ‘right leaning untrustworthy bender of the truth’. There was a time when I seem to recall you referring to him as a ‘nice bloke’ and that’s something he really, really isn’t.

I dispute your right leaning.
This is a man who wanted to give every illegal immigrant "amnesty" and despite the mandate presented him, failed to sever EU/ECHR links that stopped him performing the job at hand.

You call him right leaning, I call him selfish and cunning to suit himself.
A PM handed a majority of over 80 seats should have been laughing like a hyena, as to how easy his job could have been.
He blew it.

It's easy to just blast the Tories, but British politics across the board is a corrupt mess in many forms. Be it financial, or flavour of the day politics.

Whilst we are at it, the civil service deserves a mention. If they cannot do the job the elected government asks for, then they should be swept aside and replaced by either a neutral or a reflection of the party in power.
They are by definition of word "servants" .
They are unelected and paid to do a task issued.
They are employees nothing more. They get no say, in bringing their personal issues or bias in to the mix.

[swaledale]

hear hear

Nor does it need, a small army of them, sponging tax payers cash.

No more than a hundred and they are elected in, not selected by their "mates"

No doubt Gp will fall off his chair, but I'm in full agreement with you. A reasonable counter balance to the commons, but a fully elected one, slimmed down and cheaper.

[swaledale]

I dispute your right leaning.
This is a man who wanted to give every illegal immigrant "amnesty" and despite the mandate presented him, failed to sever EU/ECHR links that stopped him performing the job at hand.

You call him right leaning, I call him selfish and cunning to suit himself.
A PM handed a majority of over 80 seats should have been laughing like a hyena, as to how easy his job could have been.
He blew it.

It's easy to just blast the Tories, but British politics across the board is a corrupt mess in many forms. Be it financial, or flavour of the day politics.

Whilst we are at it, the civil service deserves a mention. If they cannot do the job the elected government asks for, then they should be swept aside and replaced by either a neutral or a reflection of the party in power.
They are by definition of word "servants" .
They are unelected and paid to do a task issued.
They are employees nothing more. They get no say, in bringing their personal issues or bias in to the mix.

Agree with you re Johnson a total incompetent and self serving liar.

Me thinks your taking too much notice of the right wing media who conveniently label the civil service as being the problem, when in actual fact its the Tory government who are incompetent. Indeed a leading Tory, I forget who, has just yesterday said, the Government need to stop blaming the civil service for when things go wrong, when they are down to government errors.

So lets get this clear - the civil service has always been neutral and served the government of the day, however, they are obliged as part of their job to advise government when a policy or action they propose is a) illegal, b) unworkable or c) just pie in the sky.

We saw what happened with Truss when she sacked the leading civil servant in the Treasury who warned her about her infamous budget and sure enough the markets spooked at the uncosted and unrealistic proposals.

There is more to the job, certainly at the higher level, (A friend of mine was a very senior civil servant and used to say that it was fine doing what the politicians wanted but they often ignored advice on how to achieve it and then had a strop when it didn't work. He worked under Labour and the conservative/Lib Dem coalition and said both were equally problematic in not liking being told the actual consequences of what they were proposing, or being advised that something was illegal.

On the whole the UK civil service do a very good job, compared to other countries where it is very much politicised. One has to remember that on the whole politicians have little detailed understanding on how to deliver their policies.

As for the ECHR, for all it may seem a solution to enabling some policies to happen, one would surely far ratherlive in a country that observes it - remember its got nowt to do with the EU, it was the UK that help set it up to go some way to ensuring there was a way of calling governments to account who abused human rights.

One can't just remove a respect for human rights because it seems convenient to do so.

[ramAnag]

I dispute your right leaning.
This is a man who wanted to give every illegal immigrant "amnesty" and despite the mandate presented him, failed to sever EU/ECHR links that stopped him performing the job at hand.

You call him right leaning, I call him selfish and cunning to suit himself.
A PM handed a majority of over 80 seats should have been laughing like a hyena, as to how easy his job could have been.
He blew it.

It's easy to just blast the Tories, but British politics across the board is a corrupt mess in many forms. Be it financial, or flavour of the day politics.

Whilst we are at it, the civil service deserves a mention. If they cannot do the job the elected government asks for, then they should be swept aside and replaced by either a neutral or a reflection of the party in power.
They are by definition of word "servants" .
They are unelected and paid to do a task issued.
They are employees nothing more. They get no say, in bringing their personal issues or bias in to the mix.

You can dispute ‘right leaning’ if you like, but take it up with GP not me. They were his words, which represent a bit of an about turn since the election victory you speak of back in 2019.

I’m inclined to agree...he’s a lot more than merely ‘right leaning’ and he is ‘selfish’. ‘Cunning’...I’m not so sure of. Would someone who is genuinely ‘cunning’ screw things up in the way he has? I think not. Devious, dishonest, disingenuous and dishonourable would be the four adjectives I’d always have used to describe him and everything that’s happened has only confirmed that opinion.

Agree with your earlier comments (#461) about the House of Lords.

[SithHappens]

Johnson Corbyn and Farage? By my reckoning there were 8 parties involved in the 2019 election and the leaders of all 8 have gone, one way or tother

was thinking Sturgeon who's resignation appears murky considering

[Trickytreesreds]

Agree with you re Johnson a total incompetent and self serving liar.

Me thinks your taking too much notice of the right wing media who conveniently label the civil service as being the problem, when in actual fact its the Tory government who are incompetent. Indeed a leading Tory, I forget who, has just yesterday said, the Government need to stop blaming the civil service for when things go wrong, when they are down to government errors.

So lets get this clear - the civil service has always been neutral and served the government of the day, however, they are obliged as part of their job to advise government when a policy or action they propose is a) illegal, b) unworkable or c) just pie in the sky.

We saw what happened with Truss when she sacked the leading civil servant in the Treasury who warned her about her infamous budget and sure enough the markets spooked at the uncosted and unrealistic proposals.

There is more to the job, certainly at the higher level, (A friend of mine was a very senior civil servant and used to say that it was fine doing what the politicians wanted but they often ignored advice on how to achieve it and then had a strop when it didn't work. He worked under Labour and the conservative/Lib Dem coalition and said both were equally problematic in not liking being told the actual consequences of what they were proposing, or being advised that something was illegal.

On the whole the UK civil service do a very good job, compared to other countries where it is very much politicised. One has to remember that on the whole politicians have little detailed understanding on how to deliver their policies.

As for the ECHR, for all it may seem a solution to enabling some policies to happen, one would surely far ratherlive in a country that observes it - remember its got nowt to do with the EU, it was the UK that help set it up to go some way to ensuring there was a way of calling governments to account who abused human rights.

One can't just remove a respect for human rights because it seems convenient to do so.

Yes it is more than a job Swale. But they don't get to pick and choose the policies set. They seem to think they do.
They have threatened strike action over Rwanda and Border Force have threatened it over boat control. That is not their call. They do not answer for it.

As for the ECHR, we all know why it was introduced after the Nazi's There is nothing wrong with a country having an adequate judicial system or "bill of rights". I don't think we'll be seeing genocide in the UK anytime soon.
Countries around the world don't need the ECHR to do the right thing.

Thus situations, like a plane being held on the tarmac by a judge somewhere in Europe, who over rides a countrys legal system. Cannot be allowed to continue.
You aren't even allowed to know who this judge was and what grounds he stalled it.
Then there's the foreign criminals, stuck here, because they lodge appeal after appeal through the European courts to prevent deportation. It's outrageous. We aren't even talking minor league nasties here, but real hard core.

So sorry Swale, you and I will have to remain poles apart on this one.
The rights of a countrys citizens and innocents, far out weigh some scumbags whinging about their human rights.

[swaledale]

Yes it is more than a job Swale. But they don't get to pick and choose the policies set. They seem to think they do.
They have threatened strike action over Rwanda and Border Force have threatened it over boat control. That is not their call. They do not answer for it.

As for the ECHR, we all know why it was introduced after the Nazi's There is nothing wrong with a country having an adequate judicial system or "bill of rights". I don't think we'll be seeing genocide in the UK anytime soon.
Countries around the world don't need the ECHR to do the right thing.

Thus situations, like a plane being held on the tarmac by a judge somewhere in Europe, who over rides a countrys legal system. Cannot be allowed to continue.
You aren't even allowed to know who this judge was and what grounds he stalled it.
Then there's the foreign criminals, stuck here, because they lodge appeal after appeal through the European courts to prevent deportation. It's outrageous. We aren't even talking minor league nasties here, but real hard core.

So sorry Swale, you and I will have to remain poles apart on this one.
The rights of a countrys citizens and innocents, far out weigh some scumbags whinging about their human rights.

I fear you miss the point Tricky - and some of the measures taken by this government point towards a more authoritarian regime - thats how it starts, with measures that people think that seems reasonable, doesn't impinge on my freedoms and then suddenly it does - one only has to look at Erdogan and Turkey to realise that bit by bit measures tighten so that anybody can be affected if they displease the regime. Its not just baout genocide, its about basic human rights, and removing the legal protection is not a sensible move.

Look at Poland and Hungary, given that China, North Korea, Belarus, China and Russia are the only non signatories, do you really want the UK to be associated with that group of countries? In any case it would be political and diplomatic suicide to leave, it would trash UK's reputation abroad and prevent us from taking any kind of moral stance on any issue.


The civil service don't pick and choose the policies set, again you seem to believe the fake news in right wing media. Yes Union leaders make statements, an understanding of the situation would immediately show that it would be difficult for them to do. BUT and here's the important bit, if a policy was illegal, then an employee is entitled to refuse to carry it out. Remember, those Germans that carried out atrocities were "only obeying orders"! Or do you think its an employees duty to do as he or she is told irrespective of the legality of the action?

Also Border Force isn't the civil service!! Even the Royal Navy refused to get involved in "pushing the boats back to France!"

The reason the ECHR stopped the Rwanda deportations was simple, the 7 on board had not had their appeals against Asylum claims heard as they were legally entitled to do.

The fact is this, the government knew the flight would be stopped, because they knew the legal situation, they pressed ahead precisely to create the situation where the flight was stopped. That creates the headlines which the right wing media report in distorted fashion avoiding the actual facts and whipping up voters who don't understand the reality.

The same applies to the deportation of foreign criminals, its not down to the ECHR or even so called "lefty lawyers" its down to an Government not getting its act together and making sure all the i's and t's are crossed before taking an action. Now that's either incompetence or often its deliberate to create a situation to exploit politically.

Rwanda is a dead cat, a distraction used by the government to look as if its doing something when in it actually isn't. Nor is it a solution to the issue, its supposedly only for 250 or so, but it will never happen and this government knows that.

After all the boats could easily be stopped, just open up a legal route, a processing centre in Calais, process claims quickly and deport those who don't qualify. After all we have a fraction of the numbers other EU countries deal with and the those that qualify are generally good additions to our workforce.

Oh and you do realise that the boats and the asylum seekers or migrants on them have only become an issue since Brexit, because this incompetent government failed to reach a post Brexit agreement on the return policy, whereby those that could legitimately have claimed asylum in another country or who did not qualify could and were returned to France or another country.

Of course I disagree, the rights of a country's citizens do take precedence, they need to be protected, but weakening the legislation and protection afforded to all is not going to do that is it? And yes all human beings have rights and should be treated fairly, to do otherwise means lowering ones country into a rogue authoritarian state. Leaving the ECHR won't solve the issue nor will it compensate for a government seemingly unable to do its job properly.

After all the government has the whip hand, it has the lawyers and money to be able to deal with all the issues you mention, yet it consistently fails to do so, now why is that do you think?

As a matter of fact, many hundreds of foreign criminals are deported every month, but funnily enough the media never reports on them does it?

[swaledale]

Sorry its such a an essay Tricky but these issues cannot be covered by simple slogans or short answers, much as this government would like to do so. Also I acknowledge an error, the countries signed up to the ECHR are of course European even Turkey, though given Erdogan's direction of travel one wonders for how much longer, the others are of course not signed up to the United Nations equivalent.

[swaledale]

I note Johnson's hairdresser has had a honour, who knew he even had a hair dresser!!!!!!