[Politics] Dominic Cummings v H&SC and S&T select committees *Official Match Thread*

[A1X]

(narrator's voice) O'Brien has gone on record saying that he voted for Johnson in the London mayoral election

It’s basically the affliction too many suffer from online that people are not allowed to change their minds about things. If you voted Johnson / Corbyn / whoever once it means you believed everything about them and must still think exactly the same way.

It’s not just limited to politics either. Look at the way certain users have bumped posts about Potter from earlier this season since we became safe.

 

[Swansman]

 

[Neville's Breakfast]

Good that you have respect for the ability of others to make their own reasoned judgements.

Ironic that you follow this by suggesting that I don't have the ability to make a reasoned judgement, just 'a mindset' that I'm unlikely to change.

Your posts have labelled me as a conspiracy theorist, accused me of having a fixed mindset and compared me with Donald Trump and I have tackled nothing but your argument. If you're 'happy to leave it there', then I'm probably the one to benefit. As the old gag goes, I don't come here to be insulted. I've got plenty of places I can go for that.

I have also made it clear that I respect your views on issues but not on your belittling of the motivations of people with whom you disagree. My comment on your mindset was purely related to this attitude.

 

[Neville's Breakfast]

Bit of a shame. I have enjoyed both your and [MENTION=22849]Stato[/MENTION]'s analyses.

For what it's worth I would argue that everyone always knows what's in their best interest, and yet it may turn out not to be in their best interest.

Here is a tale of the irony of trust in one's judgement of best interest. How could anyone living in a nice council semi (there were plenty in Portslade where I grew up) not see it as in their best interest to vote for Maggie so they could buy their council house at a knock down price (except this wasn't in the manifesto, but that's for another time)? And yet 40 years later, the same person may have voted for Boris in order to leave the EU, then been killed, in their care home, by someone sent back from hospital infected with Covid. Would they have been better off supporting the reds forever, or is it better to argue they lived a long and prosperous life, thanks to the tories, and we all have to die at some point. I suspect a majority of the electorate would take the latter view.

Anyway. None of this matters. Eventually Boris will be flushed away, like Trump has been. I'd give it another 8 years, though, (unless he gets bored and decides to walk). The die of self interest has been cast, and labour still look, to a majority, like they would **** up the vaccines and tank the economy given half a chance. And I say that as a party member.

Everything could change before the next GE, of course. I have no idea if it will.

It’s an interesting question and I would imagine the answer wouldn’t be straightforward. It probably depends upon all sorts of other life events. My in-laws bought their council houses and would tell you it was a great decision. Whether it was in the best interests of society is another question and I would argue it was not because the state should have benefited from the capital appreciation. Politics is usually only a part of the answer. I have no problem with [MENTION=22849]Stato[/MENTION] and often enjoy both his analyses and his posting style. Don’t tell him though.

 

[Gwylan]

It’s basically the affliction too many suffer from online that people are not allowed to change their minds about things. If you voted Johnson / Corbyn / whoever once it means you believed everything about them and must still think exactly the same way.

It’s not just limited to politics either. Look at the way certain users have bumped posts about Potter from earlier this season since we became safe.

It's not about changing minds though. The point I was making is that you couldn't say O'Brien hated Johnson if he'd actually voted for him. He may not agree with his current views but 'hate' is a very strong word.

 

[Stato]

Anyway. None of this matters. Eventually Boris will be flushed away, like Trump has been. I'd give it another 8 years, though, (unless he gets bored and decides to walk). The die of self interest has been cast, and labour still look, to a majority, like they would **** up the vaccines and tank the economy given half a chance. And I say that as a party member.

Everything could change before the next GE, of course. I have no idea if it will.

Johnson will go when he gets too bored or too skint to continue, or until his colleagues turn on him. They are always happy to eat their own to keep the beast alive. I think that your point about the Labour party's inadequacy is well made and key. I think that there has been an underestimation of how devastating the dismantling of the manufacturing industries has been for the traditional representatives of those communities. With the industries went the trade unions and whatever view one has of them, its hard to avoid the fact that, in terms of organisation, representation and ground roots communications that actually show how politics and people's lives are linked, they've left a massive hole in the labour movement. This article: https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/keir-starmer-stacey-abrams-election-georgia-b1784429.html makes the argument that Starmer should learn from the work of Stacy Abrams in Georgia. It doesn't go further into the tactics used. Labour was built from the bottom up and that is what is missing now. It has to have activists who want to go into their communities to help people solve problems, not people who want to be an MP, or people who want to argue about the ideology of the party. That's got to be the first aim. If electoral success follows, then great. If it doesn't then at least the organisation will be getting back to doing what it was formed for in the first place.

I am optimistic that progressive opinions are still in the majority in the country, but less hopeful that the electoral system will get the changes needed to allow this to be properly represented in Parliament and subsequently Government. I had hoped that Starmer would have already identified that PR needs to be a backbone of his argument, but there has been no sign of it. Like the Tories, Labour was always opposed, not on ideological grounds, but because of narrow self interest. They should have realised that the demographic shifts have removed this advantage and taken the opportunity to engage with other parties who know this to be the only way to a modern democracy equipped to deal with the twenty first century.

 

[Neville's Breakfast]

It's not about changing minds though. The point I was making is that you couldn't say O'Brien hated Johnson if he'd actually voted for him. He may not agree with his current views but 'hate' is a very strong word.

He probably voted for Boris partly because Boris is and was at heart a metropolitan liberal. He is not some sort of right wing extremist and has only been tarnished with that brush because of the propensity of some to equate Brexit with far right nationalism. It is a ridiculous charge to make at metropolitan, liberal, ecologically aware, libertarian Boris. Of course Brexit is very important to James O’Brien and this would have been enough to change his mind. Overwhelmingly though when the choice was Boris or Ken Livingstone it probably wasn’t a difficult decision. Sadiq Khan is a much stronger Labour candidate.

 

[Stato]

It’s an interesting question and I would imagine the answer wouldn’t be straightforward. It probably depends upon all sorts of other life events. My in-laws bought their council houses and would tell you it was a great decision. Whether it was in the best interests of society is another question and I would argue it was not because the state should have benefited from the capital appreciation. Politics is usually only a part of the answer. I have no problem with [MENTION=22849]Stato[/MENTION] and often enjoy both his analyses and his posting style. Don’t tell him though.

The only problem I ever had with the sale of council houses was that local authorities were prevented from using the money received to build more council houses. Its the same now with Academies and Free Schools arriving whilst councils are disallowed from opening new schools themselves. There is a pretence that this is about increasing choice, but if the system prevents the status quo from being an option, where is the choice?

I take no offence from you, or anyone else disagreeing with me. I'm just happy in the knowledge that I'm the one who knows what's best for you all.

 

[Guinness Boy]

Johnson will go when he gets too bored or too skint to continue, or until his colleagues turn on him. They are always happy to eat their own to keep the beast alive. I think that your point about the Labour party's inadequacy is well made and key. I think that there has been an underestimation of how devastating the dismantling of the manufacturing industries has been for the traditional representatives of those communities. With the industries went the trade unions and whatever view one has of them, its hard to avoid the fact that, in terms of organisation, representation and ground roots communications that actually show how politics and people's lives are linked, they've left a massive hole in the labour movement. This article: https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/keir-starmer-stacey-abrams-election-georgia-b1784429.html makes the argument that Starmer should learn from the work of Stacy Abrams in Georgia. It doesn't go further into the tactics used. Labour was built from the bottom up and that is what is missing now. It has to have activists who want to go into their communities to help people solve problems, not people who want to be an MP, or people who want to argue about the ideology of the party. That's got to be the first aim. If electoral success follows, then great. If it doesn't then at least the organisation will be getting back to doing what it was formed for in the first place.

I am optimistic that progressive opinions are still in the majority in the country, but less hopeful that the electoral system will get the changes needed to allow this to be properly represented in Parliament and subsequently Government. I had hoped that Starmer would have already identified that PR needs to be a backbone of his argument, but there has been no sign of it. Like the Tories, Labour was always opposed, not on ideological grounds, but because of narrow self interest. They should have realised that the demographic shifts have removed this advantage and taken the opportunity to engage with other parties who know this to be the only way to a modern democracy equipped to deal with the twenty first century.

Great post

I still argue that Starmer is better than Corbyn but he's still going to have to live with a number of Corbynista / Momentum favourites, ironically because of the thing that Brexiteers accuse Labour of not respecting - democracy. All the time he's got one eye on his internal machinations he's not fully on the ball taking Johnson and Hancock to bits like he should be, at this precise moment.

But the other stuff in your post is exactly what I argued for on one of the May election threads. Labour has to stop telling people what to think and start finding people who will find a way to persuasively show working people they'll be better off with social democracy than Brexit. How you do that without Unions, strong working class party membership and party unity I have no idea.

The alternative is to leave the former red wall to its fate and start to court more middle class social liberals. There was a swing to Labour in Worthing in the local election and they're still incredibly popular in the big cities. I'm not sure there'll be enough seats in that though, even if there's enough popular vote.

Clapham or Clacton? Worthing or Workington? It's a dilemma.

 

[Neville's Breakfast]

The only problem I ever had with the sale of council houses was that local authorities were prevented from using the money received to build more council houses. Its the same now with Academies and Free Schools arriving whilst councils are disallowed from opening new schools themselves. There is a pretence that this is about increasing choice, but if the system prevents the status quo from being an option, where is the choice?

I take no offence from you, or anyone else disagreeing with me. I'm just happy in the knowledge that I'm the one who knows what's best for you all.

Amen to that

 

[clapham_gull]

He probably voted for Boris partly because Boris is and was at heart a metropolitan liberal.

Well Johnson will appear as anything to get elected and that is his problem. After Brexit he was telling any EU ambassador at a party that would listen that he wanted the UK to stay in the common market.

The journalist (and the paper) who broke the story ended up being threatened by his lawyers. The paper published a retraction on the basis of the evidence of a single ambassador who was at the gathering and said no such thing was said.

Months later the journalist found out the ambassador was at a different party.

I'll remember Johnson's time as mayor for 4 reasons.

1) Introducing schemes already started by the previous administration and taking credit.
2) Jumping on the coat tails of the successful Olympic bid that was nothing to do with him and being a general annoyance to those involved.
3) Going completely missing during the riots, only to return from his holiday after pressure from the Government and to appear on St Johns Road with a broom.
4) Spunking almost a billion pounds on failed vanity projects.

Garden Bridge £52m
New Routemaster £321.6m
Emirates Air Line £24m
Water cannon £323,000
Hire bikes £225m
Estuary airport £5.2m
Olympic stadium conversion £305.5m
ArcelorMittal Orbit £6.1m

 

[Bodian]

Well Johnson will appear as anything to get elected and that is his problem. After Brexit he was telling any EU ambassador at a party that would listen that he wanted the UK to stay in the common market.

The journalist (and the paper) who broke the story ended up being threatened by his lawyers. The paper published a retraction on the basis of the evidence of a single ambassador who was at the gathering and said no such thing was said.

Months later the journalist found out the ambassador was at a different party.

I'll remember Johnson's time as mayor for 4 reasons.

1) Introducing schemes already started by the previous administration and taking credit.
2) Jumping on the coat tails of the successful Olympic bid that was nothing to do with him and being a general annoyance to those involved.
3) Going completely missing during the riots, only to return from his holiday after pressure from the Government and to appear on St Johns Road with a broom.
4) Spunking almost a billion pounds on failed vanity projects.

Garden Bridge £52m
New Routemaster £321.6m
Emirates Air Line £24m
Water cannon £323,000
Hire bikes £225m
Estuary airport £5.2m
Olympic stadium conversion £305.5m
ArcelorMittal Orbit £6.1m

Hire Bikes? - do you mean the Barclays/Santander bikes? I'd be interested to know why you think these have been a 'failed vanity project'? 90 million hires and counting - around 10m a year.

 

[clapham_gull]

Hire Bikes? - do you mean the Barclays/Santander bikes? I'd be interested to know why you think these have been a 'failed vanity project'? 90 million hires and counting - around 10m a year.

Because they were supposed to be self financing, but are/were heavily subsided. A similar scheme in Paris makes a profit.

That was actually Ken's idea but Boris stuck his name on it. I included it as "vanity" because of it's bad implementation and cost to the taxpayer.

Of course you could argue that's money well spent for the environment, but it wasn't supposed to be like that.

It's very Boris, he claimed the Emirates Air Line would be of zero cost to London tax-payers as well.

He just loves spending other peoples money and sticking his name on it.

The most bizarre one is the unwanted helter-skelter in the Olympic park.

 

[vegster]

Just posting this up more in hope than expectation, I'm still clinging to hope after the last few years despite the obvious pitfalls... ie : " No One Cares "

"So yes: you’ve heard a lot of denials over the past 24 hours. But the biggest UK repository of denial remains the polls, where no revelation of incompetence or failure impacts other than positively for the government. A midweek poll saw the Conservatives climb six points, to 44%, which feels about perfect for a country where at that moment Cummings was claiming industrial levels of lying, incompetence and contempt for elderly and vulnerable people, and spiking it all with such details as Boris Johnson wanting Chris Whitty to inject him with the virus live on TV. Remember, even Donald Trump at his maddest only wanted other people to inject the disinfectant."


https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/may/28/cult-britain-boris-johnson-prime-minister

Sadly too many will still forgive this madman and say he's " Doing the best he can " and too many will accept the trickle down ineptitude of successive Prime Ministers that even Vladamir Putin could not have counted on.

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

Johnson will go when he gets too bored or too skint to continue, or until his colleagues turn on him. They are always happy to eat their own to keep the beast alive. I think that your point about the Labour party's inadequacy is well made and key. I think that there has been an underestimation of how devastating the dismantling of the manufacturing industries has been for the traditional representatives of those communities. With the industries went the trade unions and whatever view one has of them, its hard to avoid the fact that, in terms of organisation, representation and ground roots communications that actually show how politics and people's lives are linked, they've left a massive hole in the labour movement. This article: https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/keir-starmer-stacey-abrams-election-georgia-b1784429.html makes the argument that Starmer should learn from the work of Stacy Abrams in Georgia. It doesn't go further into the tactics used. Labour was built from the bottom up and that is what is missing now. It has to have activists who want to go into their communities to help people solve problems, not people who want to be an MP, or people who want to argue about the ideology of the party. That's got to be the first aim. If electoral success follows, then great. If it doesn't then at least the organisation will be getting back to doing what it was formed for in the first place.

I am optimistic that progressive opinions are still in the majority in the country, but less hopeful that the electoral system will get the changes needed to allow this to be properly represented in Parliament and subsequently Government. I had hoped that Starmer would have already identified that PR needs to be a backbone of his argument, but there has been no sign of it. Like the Tories, Labour was always opposed, not on ideological grounds, but because of narrow self interest. They should have realised that the demographic shifts have removed this advantage and taken the opportunity to engage with other parties who know this to be the only way to a modern democracy equipped to deal with the twenty first century.

Nicely put.

I am not in favour of PR for the simple reason that 'a coalition' is never an option on the ballot box. If you support labour or tory, I can't see how PR would benefit you. If you support the liberals, greens or the latest Farrage shitshowparty, of course you'd favour PR because it's the only way you'd get more MPs.

I'm still unsure whether I'm still happy with Starmer (the reason I rejoined labour) and hopeful that in 3 years the nation will be ready again to vote red, or fed up with the fact he can't seem to lay an opinion poll glove on Boris the Liar. I guess I'll have to stick till others decide to twist.

Finally, we can only work with what we have, unless we are fearless disrupters. Like Cummins. It's a funny old world.

and also :thumbsup@ to [MENTION=34242]Neville's Breakfast[/MENTION].

 

[Gwylan]

Because they were supposed to be self financing, but are/were heavily subsided. A similar scheme in Paris makes a profit.

That was actually Ken's idea but Boris stuck his name on it. I included it as "vanity" because of it's failed implementation and cost to the taxpayer.

Indeed. £200m over eight years in 2018, so it will be higher now

https://www.verdict.co.uk/londons-b...taxpayers-nearly-200m-foi-disclosure-reveals/


It's interesting how many of the items on Clapham Gull's list would appear on his PM record.

Taking credit for something where someone else has done the groundwork - Check
Presenting two different views depending on whom he is talking to - Check
Going on holiday when a crisis is breaking - Check
Spending money on a vanity project - Check

I still staggers me that someone with such an appalling record in public office gets voted in - that sort of record would have sent any other politician to the wildnerness.

 

[clapham_gull]

Indeed. £200m over eight years in 2018, so it will be higher now

https://www.verdict.co.uk/londons-b...taxpayers-nearly-200m-foi-disclosure-reveals/


It's interesting how many of the items on Clapham Gull's list would appear on his PM record.

Taking credit for something where someone else has done the groundwork - Check
Presenting two different views depending on whom he is talking to - Check
Going on holiday when a crisis is breaking - Check
Spending money on a vanity project - Check

I still staggers me that someone with such an appalling record in public office gets voted in - that sort of record would have sent any other politician to the wildnerness.

Because he is liked by the members and that's about it.

I'm not even making a political point, there are even ministers in the current Government who are clearly more competent. Nadhim Zahawi and Rishi Sunak for instance.

Ken Livingstone was a brilliant competent mayor until he completely lost the plot and had to go. Unfortunately the other mistake Cameron made was to encourage Johnson to take the role of London Mayor.

That put him in the spotlight and unfortunately the Johnson Fan Boys weren't really interested in his ridiculous over-spending in London.

 

[Lever]

Same old Lever, full of trivia with little substance.

...and another thought crosses your mind....

Careful - any more thoughts and it'll be a severe case of over congestion.

Don't forget to use spell check if you decide to reply....

 

[Gwylan]

Because he is liked by the members and that's about it.

But it's not just the members, he's clearly highly popular among the general public and I genuinely struggle to understand why. He's a lazy, greedy, mendacious, unscrupulous with the morals of a polecat and the financial rectitude of a drunken sailor on shore leave.

What's really surprising is that he and Thatcher are complete polar opposites in politics and personality and yet both are revered by Tory members. It's like saying you support Brighton and Crystal Palace.

 

[clapham_gull]

But it's not just the members, he's clearly highly popular among the general public and I genuinely struggle to understand why. He's a lazy, greedy, mendacious, unscrupulous with the morals of a polecat and the financial rectitude of a drunken sailor on shore leave.

What's really surprising is that he and Thatcher are complete polar opposites in politics and personality and yet both are revered by Tory members. It's like saying you support Brighton and Crystal Palace.

Yes, but he would never have been in a position to be elected, we don't have primaries.

But yes, the Conservative party is in a very odd place. I often use the analogy of Jeffrey Archer who was also very popular with members. To Thatcher's credit she knew that but kept him close whilst making his actual power worthless.

Unfortunately Cameron and May weren't Thatcher who irrespective of your political views was a formidable politician. The other being Blair who knew that Gordan Brown whilst a brilliant mind was unfit to be PM.

I don't disagree with Johnson's politics because essentially he doesn't have any beyond spending money on vanity projects and changing his opinion on the fly.

We have a Prime Minister desperately wanting to be liked, that's all.