Stop voting for fucking Tories

[Tichtheid]

Doesn’t really matter if they are still pumping shit into the rivers and sea

That's not a Gotcha.

I've been away for a long time so I don't know the detail on Scottish Water and Sepa, but a publicly owned body failing does not mean that the ideal of public ownership is failing any more than Blackberry showed that private enterprise is bound to fail.

We all have to be more demanding of our elected representatives, we don't have the option of not buying a product from them, well, I suppose we do in that we can vote for others, but they need to know that effluent in the seas and rivers is not acceptable

It wasn’t meant in any way to be a gotcha, just a frustration that whatever the system our marine environment is still being trashed. There is a very widely held view that because our water is publicly run everything is OK, it’s really not, and in some ways even more frustrating because SG will just not engage on it because they don’t want to have to confront and admit the reality.

SEPA are being defunded year on year and under huge amounts of political pressure to toe the line.

I do think the tide (no pun) is slightly turning though. We have our local Surfers Against Sewage (combined with our community pressure group) Paddle Out Protest today and our sign ups have quadrupled since last years event and expecting many more to turn up. All the new prospective MP’s have been extremely supportive and joining today and have made the issue a priority in their upcoming manifestos. Well, all except one.

Soz, I know you’re on the good side of this, I was talking through beer and my annoyance at the Embra game.

[dpedin]

Doesn’t really matter if they are still pumping shit into the rivers and sea

That's not a Gotcha.

I've been away for a long time so I don't know the detail on Scottish Water and Sepa, but a publicly owned body failing does not mean that the ideal of public ownership is failing any more than Blackberry showed that private enterprise is bound to fail.

We all have to be more demanding of our elected representatives, we don't have the option of not buying a product from them, well, I suppose we do in that we can vote for others, but they need to know that effluent in the seas and rivers is not acceptable

It wasn’t meant in any way to be a gotcha, just a frustration that whatever the system our marine environment is still being trashed. There is a very widely held view that because our water is publicly run everything is OK, it’s really not, and in some ways even more frustrating because SG will just not engage on it because they don’t want to have to confront and admit the reality.

SEPA are being defunded year on year and under huge amounts of political pressure to toe the line.

I do think the tide (no pun) is slightly turning though. We have our local Surfers Against Sewage (combined with our community pressure group) Paddle Out Protest today and our sign ups have quadrupled since last years event and expecting many more to turn up. All the new prospective MP’s have been extremely supportive and joining today and have made the issue a priority in their upcoming manifestos. Well, all except one.

I agree Scottish Water could and should do more and stop sewage spills etc and it does need more investment particularly given climate change and the volumes of rain we had in the Spring. However Im not sure we have had the major widespread problems being experienced down south with significant interruptions to water supply, sewage spills regulalry into streets and people getting poisoned by their tap water? However I did have some wonderful 'peaty' water when in Tiree which helped my whisky no end! Also Scottish Water also doesn't pay £billions in dividends to overseas share holders. It does carry some debt but this is borrowed by Scottish Gov at preferential rates and doesnt have cliff edge when it needs to be rolled over.However main difference is that Scottish Water is accountable directly to Scottish Gov via SEPA. CEO salary is £295k, way below £million packages paid by private Water Companies.

[SaintK]

I'm sure the HOme Office can be trusted to manage this effectively!

Lawyers and migrant rights campaigners have warned that the government is heading for a repeat of the Windrush scandal after imposing a “cliff edge” deadline for immigrants to switch to new digital visas.
By the end of this year an estimated 500,000 or more non-EU immigrants with leave to remain in the UK will need to replace their physical biometric residence permits (BRPs) – which demonstrate proof of their right to reside, rent, work and claim benefits – with digital e-visas.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/a ... -deadline

[fishfoodie]

I'm sure the HOme Office can be trusted to manage this effectively!

Lawyers and migrant rights campaigners have warned that the government is heading for a repeat of the Windrush scandal after imposing a “cliff edge” deadline for immigrants to switch to new digital visas.
By the end of this year an estimated 500,000 or more non-EU immigrants with leave to remain in the UK will need to replace their physical biometric residence permits (BRPs) – which demonstrate proof of their right to reside, rent, work and claim benefits – with digital e-visas.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/a ... -deadline

Presumably the deadline is EOY, so that it'll happen in the early weeks of the Labour term, & then in a decades time when the Government is having another Inquiry, the Tories will claim it was all Labours fault ?

[_Os_]

I'm sure the HOme Office can be trusted to manage this effectively!

Lawyers and migrant rights campaigners have warned that the government is heading for a repeat of the Windrush scandal after imposing a “cliff edge” deadline for immigrants to switch to new digital visas.
By the end of this year an estimated 500,000 or more non-EU immigrants with leave to remain in the UK will need to replace their physical biometric residence permits (BRPs) – which demonstrate proof of their right to reside, rent, work and claim benefits – with digital e-visas.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/a ... -deadline

This will 100% be a total fucking mess.

There's already two legacy systems. The oldest is the one that existed before there was any system, just laws which had no enforcement mechanism and even the records the Home Office kept were destroyed (which is where the Windrush scandal victims come in). Then there was a system that attempted to enforce those laws, using stamps/paper visas in passports. Then there is the current system of biometric residency permits, which is an ID card. Now they're going create yet another new system of e-visas, which that article says will be a government run IT system which holds all the records without there being any physical proof.

My bet is most on ILR will have heard nothing about this change. They'll then bump into a "jumped up milk monitor" when they try to open a bank account/rent a house/get a job, who doesn't understand the system themselves (ie any of the legacy system forms of evidence are legal, even a stamp in an expired passport from the 1970s or something like that), who decides there's a problem. And if that happens in an unlucky way (someone loses their job etc), then that person's life is destroyed.

That person's complicated mess of a legal immigrant that the UK government has decided to turn into an illegal immigrant, then gets dumped onto the Home Office staff to try and fix. I have no clue why they keep changing this entire system, getting rid of physical proof of residency seems like a bad move.

[_Os_]

In the asylum part of the UK immigration system:

'It’s actual chaos,' a Home Office source tells i. 'They don’t understand what they’ve done and they need us to explain it to them.' “Inept” ministers who fail to understand “the mess they have created” are responsible for new delays to Rishi Sunak’s flagship Rwanda plan, Home Office insiders have told i.

https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/home- ... rs-3060457

As I've posted before, a big part of the problem in the UK is the people running it do not have a clue how it works. Because they do not understand their own country, they then do things which make it worse. There's now a broken asylum system, 75k-100k people are in limbo. There is no means to process that amount of people, nor the capacity to deport the failed claims once they're processed because the Rwanda scheme is shit (as both the PM and Home Secretary are known to believe too). Every week more people are added to the backlog. Eventually the only way to clear this up will be a mass amnesty.

[Slick]

That's not a Gotcha.

I've been away for a long time so I don't know the detail on Scottish Water and Sepa, but a publicly owned body failing does not mean that the ideal of public ownership is failing any more than Blackberry showed that private enterprise is bound to fail.

We all have to be more demanding of our elected representatives, we don't have the option of not buying a product from them, well, I suppose we do in that we can vote for others, but they need to know that effluent in the seas and rivers is not acceptable

It wasn’t meant in any way to be a gotcha, just a frustration that whatever the system our marine environment is still being trashed. There is a very widely held view that because our water is publicly run everything is OK, it’s really not, and in some ways even more frustrating because SG will just not engage on it because they don’t want to have to confront and admit the reality.

SEPA are being defunded year on year and under huge amounts of political pressure to toe the line.

I do think the tide (no pun) is slightly turning though. We have our local Surfers Against Sewage (combined with our community pressure group) Paddle Out Protest today and our sign ups have quadrupled since last years event and expecting many more to turn up. All the new prospective MP’s have been extremely supportive and joining today and have made the issue a priority in their upcoming manifestos. Well, all except one.

Soz, I know you’re on the good side of this, I was talking through beer and my annoyance at the Embra game.

No worries at all, didn’t take it that way

[Slick]

That's not a Gotcha.

I've been away for a long time so I don't know the detail on Scottish Water and Sepa, but a publicly owned body failing does not mean that the ideal of public ownership is failing any more than Blackberry showed that private enterprise is bound to fail.

We all have to be more demanding of our elected representatives, we don't have the option of not buying a product from them, well, I suppose we do in that we can vote for others, but they need to know that effluent in the seas and rivers is not acceptable

It wasn’t meant in any way to be a gotcha, just a frustration that whatever the system our marine environment is still being trashed. There is a very widely held view that because our water is publicly run everything is OK, it’s really not, and in some ways even more frustrating because SG will just not engage on it because they don’t want to have to confront and admit the reality.

SEPA are being defunded year on year and under huge amounts of political pressure to toe the line.

I do think the tide (no pun) is slightly turning though. We have our local Surfers Against Sewage (combined with our community pressure group) Paddle Out Protest today and our sign ups have quadrupled since last years event and expecting many more to turn up. All the new prospective MP’s have been extremely supportive and joining today and have made the issue a priority in their upcoming manifestos. Well, all except one.

I agree Scottish Water could and should do more and stop sewage spills etc and it does need more investment particularly given climate change and the volumes of rain we had in the Spring. However Im not sure we have had the major widespread problems being experienced down south with significant interruptions to water supply, sewage spills regulalry into streets and people getting poisoned by their tap water? However I did have some wonderful 'peaty' water when in Tiree which helped my whisky no end! Also Scottish Water also doesn't pay £billions in dividends to overseas share holders. It does carry some debt but this is borrowed by Scottish Gov at preferential rates and doesnt have cliff edge when it needs to be rolled over.However main difference is that Scottish Water is accountable directly to Scottish Gov via SEPA. CEO salary is £295k, way below £million packages paid by private Water Companies.

We’ve got no idea of the scale of the problem in Scotland - only 4% of outflows are monitored - it’s 100% in England so at least there is accountability of sorts.They promised to add a thousand more in the last year but are refusing to give an update on that and zero new ones have officially come on line.

Being accountable to the government sounds like a nice idea but not when it’s a government who don’t do bad news when there is no one else to blame. As I said above, SEPA has been absolutely gutted and warned off rocking the boat - this is straight from the horses mouth by the way.

I do think it’s fair to say it’s not as bad as England, but it’s still a national disgrace and, as I say, we still don’t even know the scale of the problem

[ScarfaceClaw]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-69031180

Unpaid carers must repay more than £250 million after many were unknowingly overpaid their allowance, new figures show.
The government is seeking to recover money from more than 134,000 carers.

So instead of scrapping to just over the £151 a week threshold by taking a part time job at a supermarket they should have cosied up with a Tory MP and snaffled the a cheeky £250m with a dodgy PPE company.

[sockwithaticket]

Yet again, this Tory government knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

£250m across several years (report seems to indicate at least 5) is spit in the ocean as regards the social care budget and I would guarantee that allowing these overpayments would deliver far more value to the public purse than these carers working enough to not be eligible and having to shunt some of their care responsibilities onto the state or areas paid by the state.

[fishfoodie]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-69031180

Unpaid carers must repay more than £250 million after many were unknowingly overpaid their allowance, new figures show.
The government is seeking to recover money from more than 134,000 carers.

So instead of scrapping to just over the £151 a week threshold by taking a part time job at a supermarket they should have cosied up with a Tory MP and snaffled the a cheeky £250m with a dodgy PPE company.

It's a lot easier to pursue thousands of relatively poor people for a small amount of money each, than it is to go toe to toe with a handful of wealthy people who've grifted billions !

These carers won't have the where with all to defend themselves in Court, while the grifters will all fight to the last penny of their ill gotten gains.

[dpedin]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-69031180

Unpaid carers must repay more than £250 million after many were unknowingly overpaid their allowance, new figures show.
The government is seeking to recover money from more than 134,000 carers.

So instead of scrapping to just over the £151 a week threshold by taking a part time job at a supermarket they should have cosied up with a Tory MP and snaffled the a cheeky £250m with a dodgy PPE company.

It's a lot easier to pursue thousands of relatively poor people for a small amount of money each, than it is to go toe to toe with a handful of wealthy people who've grifted billions !

These carers won't have the where with all to defend themselves in Court, while the grifters will all fight to the last penny of their ill gotten gains.

Boris's mate Mr 'JCB' Bamford and family is reportedly due the HMRC £500m but which would pay for the £250 twice over, probably more, cost a lot less to recover and wouldn't bring harm and misery to a very vulnerable group of people but he is Boris's mate and a big Tory donor!

[SaintK]

This is working out as well as expected according to the NAO.

The government expects to have spent at least £4.7bn on introducing post-Brexit border controls, which have been repeatedly hit by delays, the public spending watchdog has warned.
Plans to bring in border checks on goods coming from the EU faced “significant issues” including critical shortages of inspectors before their introduction last month, the National Audit Office said in a report.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/a ... atchdog

[Tichtheid]

I don't know if it was common practice, but elsewhere the Torygraph was referred to as The Ukipper, or just "The 'kipper" during the run up to and during the Brexit calamity.

Now the 'kipper has begun running articles advising rich people on how to gain EU passports by investing in Europe, in this case Portugal. https://archive.ph/4ZkX2

At the bottom of the article there is a link with the title, "Quitting High Tax Britain? Here's where to move to get most for your money"
That's the high taxes put in place by the party they have supported in government for 14 years, whilst public services have been decimated.

This might be funny if it wasn't so tragic.

I never though it would be worse than Thatcher, how naive I was

[Biffer]

I don't know if it was common practice, but elsewhere the Torygraph was referred to as The Ukipper, or just "The 'kipper" during the run up to and during the Brexit calamity.

Now the 'kipper has begun running articles advising rich people on how to gain EU passports by investing in Europe, in this case Portugal. https://archive.ph/4ZkX2

At the bottom of the article there is a link with the title, "Quitting High Tax Britain? Here's where to move to get most for your money"
That's the high taxes put in place by the party they have supported in government for 14 years, whilst public services have been decimated.

This might be funny if it wasn't so tragic.

I never though it would be worse than Thatcher, how naive I was

That's Portugal, with higher tax rates than the UK. These people are fucking idiots.

[C69]

£10bn reportedly earmarked for he blood scandal victims.
The victims and relatives really want accountability and named individuals to face prosecution.
Ken Clarke in the firing line ATM and rightly so for his ridiculous fallacious comments.

[Biffer]

£10bn reportedly earmarked for he blood scandal victims.
The victims and relatives really want accountability and named individuals to face prosecution.
Ken Clarke in the firing line ATM and rightly so for his ridiculous fallacious comments.

Difficult to think what they might be charged with at this distance in time.

[C69]

£10bn reportedly earmarked for he blood scandal victims.
The victims and relatives really want accountability and named individuals to face prosecution.
Ken Clarke in the firing line ATM and rightly so for his ridiculous fallacious comments.

Difficult to think what they might be charged with at this distance in time.

I expect nothing to be done, whilst I applaud Andy Burnham for his comments on justice need to be done as seen to be done.
It is a bit rich given his antipathy and obfuscation regarding the Mid Staffs scandal.

[Dinsdale Piranha]

I don't know if it was common practice, but elsewhere the Torygraph was referred to as The Ukipper, or just "The 'kipper" during the run up to and during the Brexit calamity.

Now the 'kipper has begun running articles advising rich people on how to gain EU passports by investing in Europe, in this case Portugal. https://archive.ph/4ZkX2

At the bottom of the article there is a link with the title, "Quitting High Tax Britain? Here's where to move to get most for your money"
That's the high taxes put in place by the party they have supported in government for 14 years, whilst public services have been decimated.

This might be funny if it wasn't so tragic.

I never though it would be worse than Thatcher, how naive I was

That's Portugal, with higher tax rates than the UK. These people are fucking idiots.

From the article it looks like they have some special tax rates for pension and overseas income.

I'd love to get an EU passport but I can't do it on family background reasons. Buying one is the only option. I was in Malta recently and they have a similar scheme to Portugal which has also been revised to exclude property purchases as the investment. If you're dropping half a million on an investment, it would be nice to know there's a return coming at the end.

[Tichtheid]

If only there had been a way to enable everyone in the UK to have the benefits of an EU passport, not just those that can afford to sink half a million quid into an investment.

I'm sure we'll get back there eventually, but what an expensive, destructive fuckup this is.

[fishfoodie]

£10bn reportedly earmarked for he blood scandal victims.
The victims and relatives really want accountability and named individuals to face prosecution.
Ken Clarke in the firing line ATM and rightly so for his ridiculous fallacious comments.

Difficult to think what they might be charged with at this distance in time.

I'm amazed it took this long for it to get this far !

I mean Ireland is hardly the model for doing this kind of thing, but even we completed the inquiry into contaminated blood products in the mid-90s, when at least some of the victims were still alive.

[Lobby]

Its no surprise to see that the High Court has found that Cruella Braverman has been acting illegally again.

"The former home secretary Suella Braverman acted unlawfully in making it easier for the police to criminalise peaceful protests, the high court has ruled.

She was found to have both acted outside her powers and to have failed to consult properly over regulations that would be likely to increase prosecutions of protesters by a third."

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/art ... ourt-rules

It worth remembering as well that Parliament rejected these regulations when asked to vote on them, but in one her last acts as Home Secretary Cruella ignored Parliament and used so-called Henry VIII powers to lower the threshold for the police to impose restrictions on protests anyway.

[SaintK]

£10bn reportedly earmarked for he blood scandal victims.
The victims and relatives really want accountability and named individuals to face prosecution.
Ken Clarke in the firing line ATM and rightly so for his ridiculous fallacious comments.

Clarke the only Health Secretary to be named in the enquiry report. For his comtemtible and utterly tin eared, tone deaf performance as a witness 3 years he deserves as much shit as can be possibly thrown his way.
Hasn't even bothered with an apology.

[SaintK]

Angela van den Bogerd up at the Post Office inquiry this morning. Very clearly perjured herself previously

Get the popcorn in.
Paula Vennells up at the Horizon scandal enquiry tomorrow. She's already been proven a liar but she's going to be shown lots more incriminating evidence against her

Paula Vennells: ‘Smoking gun’ email shows she knew of Horizon concerns in 2013
Despite reading evidence of possible wrongful convictions years before, the Post Office boss continued to deny its IT system was faulty until 2019

[Insane_Homer]

IMG_20240521_174557_435.jpg (69.24 KiB) Viewed 1533 times

[yermum]

My uncle died of AIDS in the 90s he was a victim of contaminated blood. He had no dependents and no one will be receiving compensation. I would like to see some convictions even with suspended sentences.

[dpedin]

My uncle died of AIDS in the 90s he was a victim of contaminated blood. He had no dependents and no one will be receiving compensation. I would like to see some convictions even with suspended sentences.

This stopped me in my tracks to be honest! If for nothing else than to honour this poor man's memory there should be criminal convictions!

[Biffer]

My uncle died of AIDS in the 90s he was a victim of contaminated blood. He had no dependents and no one will be receiving compensation. I would like to see some convictions even with suspended sentences.

That's absolutely awful. Can't really get my head round how terrible that must have been.

But again, what would they be prosecuted for? It has to be something that was on the books at the time (you can't introduce a law that makes something in the past illegal after the fact, that's a basic principle of a free society)

[yermum]

Thank you for your response. The whole situation has had a big impact on my mum as much of the trauma of his death is being revisited.

I was at university when he died and I remember going to visit him at the Middlesex hospital. It was such a depressing place as there were so many young people who should have been in the prime of life dying.

Ken was very unlucky because he just missed the introduction of the HAART protocol that has been so effective in helping stop progression from HIV to AIDS.

[Blackmac]

Angela van den Bogerd up at the Post Office inquiry this morning. Very clearly perjured herself previously

Get the popcorn in.
Paula Vennells up at the Horizon scandal enquiry tomorrow. She's already been proven a liar but she's going to be shown lots more incriminating evidence against her

Paula Vennells: ‘Smoking gun’ email shows she knew of Horizon concerns in 2013
Despite reading evidence of possible wrongful convictions years before, the Post Office boss continued to deny its IT system was faulty until 2019

I received a first hand account at the weekend of how the Crown Office in Scotland were made aware in 2014 that the Post Office convictions were seriously flawed and despite protestations from a number of staff, refused to revisit the prosecutions.

[yermum]

My uncle died of AIDS in the 90s he was a victim of contaminated blood. He had no dependents and no one will be receiving compensation. I would like to see some convictions even with suspended sentences.

That's absolutely awful. Can't really get my head round how terrible that must have been.

But again, what would they be prosecuted for? It has to be something that was on the books at the time (you can't introduce a law that makes something in the past illegal after the fact, that's a basic principle of a free society)

Lord Saville has suggested there could be grounds for criminal prosecution so I hope something will be done. Most likely nothing will happen though.

[Tichtheid]

There is talk of possible manslaughter charges and gross negligence among doctors, some of whom were seemingly conducting tests on patients without their knowledge or consent. There also seems to have been cover ups from government ministers and senior civil servants from the Dept of Health and the Treasury.

Whatever happens, yermum, I hope your family and others can gain some kind of conclusion to all of this.

[yermum]

There is talk of possible manslaughter charges and gross negligence among doctors, some of whom were seemingly conducting tests on patients without their knowledge or consent. There also seems to have been cover ups from government ministers and senior civil servants from the Dept of Health and the Treasury.

Whatever happens, yermum, I hope your family and others can gain some kind of conclusion to all of this.

Thank you. The main issue I have is how long the issue of poor quality blood products were known about but was still procured.

David Owen made recommendations that we should have developed a self sustaining supply when he was health minister. We were getting blood from America taken from homeless people on skid row.

All of his health ministry records were destroyed so we can’t know exactly what happened. To me this goes deep into state coverup and like other dark secrets it will be lost in the depths of time.

[SaintK]

There is talk of possible manslaughter charges and gross negligence among doctors, some of whom were seemingly conducting tests on patients without their knowledge or consent. There also seems to have been cover ups from government ministers and senior civil servants from the Dept of Health and the Treasury.

Whatever happens, yermum, I hope your family and others can gain some kind of conclusion to all of this.

Thank you. The main issue I have is how long the issue of poor quality blood products were known about but was still procured.

David Owen made recommendations that we should have developed a self sustaining supply when he was health minister. We were getting blood from America taken from homeless people on skid row.

All of his health ministry records were destroyed so we can’t know exactly what happened. To me this goes deep into state coverup and like other dark secrets it will be lost in the depths of time.

It absolutely stinks of one!
I sincerely hope you get some sort of closure.

[fishfoodie]

There is talk of possible manslaughter charges and gross negligence among doctors, some of whom were seemingly conducting tests on patients without their knowledge or consent. There also seems to have been cover ups from government ministers and senior civil servants from the Dept of Health and the Treasury.

Whatever happens, yermum, I hope your family and others can gain some kind of conclusion to all of this.

Thank you. The main issue I have is how long the issue of poor quality blood products were known about but was still procured.

David Owen made recommendations that we should have developed a self sustaining supply when he was health minister. We were getting blood from America taken from homeless people on skid row.

All of his health ministry records were destroyed so we can’t know exactly what happened. To me this goes deep into state coverup and like other dark secrets it will be lost in the depths of time.

Worse, I'm afraid. One of the regular suppliers of blood was prisoners, as the US pays for blood donations.

I'm sure if the UK Inquiry asked the Irish one for their records, they'd find that all the same suppliers were used, as we just coat-trailed in behind the NHS & assumed that the NHS's due-diligence was good enough, & we didn't need to do our own.

[C69]

Has anyone said how the money will be found for the £10bn?

[tabascoboy]

Has anyone said how the money will be found for the £10bn?

Another SNAFU that they will be all to happy to leave with a prospective Labour government...

[Biffer]

Talk of a general election announcement - Cameron cuts short his trip to Albania to attend a meeting in London, Grant Shapps delays an overseas trip for the same reason and Jeremy Cunt has cancelled a TV interview tonight. Might be looking at 4th or 11th July?

[Hal Jordan]

Has anyone said how the money will be found for the £10bn?

My generation's taxes, paying for Boomer fuck ups as usual.

And no doubt it will be attributed to "investing another £10bn in the NHS!"

[Hal Jordan]

Talk of a general election announcement - Cameron cuts short his trip to Albania to attend a meeting in London, Grant Shapps delays an overseas trip for the same reason and Jeremy Cunt has cancelled a TV interview tonight. Might be looking at 4th or 11th July?

Cabinet reshuffle, probably.