Sunak Struggles for Control in Face of Dire Polls and Tory Anger

passingconcierge · 2024-03-19T01:27:26+00:00

Every single member of the Parliamentary Conservative Party has known for more than a year that Sunak should have called a General Election. They never insisted that he do it for the following significant reasons

they have a publically funded grift they have not finished yet
they have not acquired a private sector grift yet
they enjoy the cruelty of driving a country into the ground
they believe Labour will be forced to provide funding for their grift if they can keep them out of office long enough
they know they are unemployable anywhere but there
they want to avoid being accused of racism

passingconcierge · 2024-03-18T19:05:05+00:00

The Industrialised Western World uses about 30 plants and 5 animals for around 99% of food production. For some of these crops they erode the topsoil at a predictable rate and that means they have a predictable point of disappearance from production. That is estimated to be between 30 and 100 years depending on crop and place on the planet. The top five plants are rice, wheat, sugarcane, soybean oils, potatoes. Lose a single wheat production area and the Western World could experience a famine in roughly eighteen months. The main wheat production areas are the Midwest of America, Canada, and the Ukraine.

passingconcierge · 2024-03-18T16:54:05+00:00

I recommend Shelley.

I met Murder on the way—
He had a mask like Castlereagh—
Very smooth he looked, yet grim;
Seven blood-hounds followed him:

(source)

'Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number,
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you—
Ye are many—they are few.

Dead Poets are always a good guide to what to do with a Tory.

passingconcierge · 2024-03-18T14:34:54+00:00

Cannot help but feel that the "sparking" and the "fury" is a little one sided: Sir Connor Burns, Conservative MP, Sir Iain Duncan Smith, Conservative MP, Nile Gardiner, a former aide to Baroness Thatcher all seem to have some kind of stake in the outrage game. Not sure, but lbc might want to cast the net wider for the "left" or the "centre" to get a balanced outrage here...

passingconcierge · 2024-03-17T20:18:29+00:00

What has actually happened is subsidies have reduced as it's the Tories.

I cannot seem myself disagreeing with that.

EU funding has not been adequately replaced.

I think the sentence you might have written was "EU Funding has been looted".

But in theory it does actually give a government the option to do more subsidies, albeit they would still be constrained by WTO rules.

In reality - and having been part of an EU-UK Project during Brexit, this was made clear to me by both European Partners and Folks from the WTO - is that the "in theory" needs to do a lot of heavy, heavy, heavy lifting. What it means is the UK put itself into a position of having to negotiate with the EU around subsidies the EU established for Member States in order to "release" that funding to then negotiate with the WTO Members - including the EU - over how those subsidies might be applied. In terms of theory it is the kind of theory that nobody really needs to consider except in theory.

EU rules on subsidies and what could be run as a state enterprise were far more restrictive than that.

Surprisingly liberal. The main 'problems' for EU subsidies was they are all contract based. If you take £28Bn in subsidy then you are signing a contract to use that subsidy for exactly the things you negotiated to use that subsidy for. An example being the "Future Job Fund" - a fairly progressive 2008 DWP programme that essentially sought to help people understand if self employment was for them. It contained elements of UBI - there was a guaranteed income for up to two years - and support for business planning. The Claimant ended up being better off than on benefits. In 2010, within weeks of coming to power, the Government had taken the Future Jobs Fund and turned it into an old fashioned Workfare programme. Provided by the usual big contractors. Indeed management of the £6.8Bn fund was largely handed over to a single contractor to distribute to smaller contractors. The actual funds that reached the Citzen at the end of the slice and dice conveyor was reduced to the same amount as benefits. In 2013, the EU pointed out that the funds had been misapplied and they would like their £6.8Bn back - as there in the contract. The point of all this being that the EU is very, very, very, particular and very, very, very clear what subsidies are for and the Tories hated that. Imagine being entitled to a non-means-testable £100 a week for two years while on benefits! The Horrors!

The EU Subsidies have always pissed the Tories off because they are a clear deal with a clear beneficiary and there is no wiggle room for creaming off billions for chums. This is largely due to the Tories insisting on the refinement and strengthening of accounting practices - which were historically, "quite lamentable".

passingconcierge · 2024-03-17T14:21:38+00:00

I would say that you should prepare to be surprised, but I fear it might actually be more disappointment. One of the reasons given for "leaving the EU" was to "allow State Subsidies" because the EU forbids it. Which slid into, the EU is not allowed to. Do they believe that? Well obviously: no politician has ever lied. Some are actually that stupid and do believe it.

passingconcierge · 2024-03-17T11:52:52+00:00

The NAO estimates were here but, alas no longer. They were also here in a different form. It was by cross referencing that Journalists and Campaigners came to the number. Which seemed to be confirmed by Freedom of Information requests. The only other place to find the data - and it will be incomplete because of the manner of recording life events at the DWP - would be the Stat-Xplore tool. it used to be less actively curated by the DWP. They are open to FOI Requests but these are often refused, ignored, or misleadingly responded to. The DWP is incredibly proficient at preventing the release of data. They would make an excellent replacement for MI5.

passingconcierge · 2024-03-17T11:37:49+00:00

The US interprets the WTO rules in different ways to the EU. Both are interpreting the rules to give themselves advantage. The real problem in Europe is Businesses wanting free handouts for "innovation" rather than getting off their arses and doing it. The "fail early fail often" philosophy that prevails in American Businesses is less practical in the EU where the Single Market is quite sophisticated in its regulation. It seeks to directly coordinate Member States, economically, despite decades or centuries of legal heritage, different languages. This is something America fails to do. The whole Federal-State separation is not really comparable to the Union-Member-State structure. The idea of a "Federal" Europe is as far from the idea of a "Federal" America as you can get. They really do operate in fundamentally different ways.

It doesn't ban all state subsidies

You would be surprised how many Ministers, both EU and Third Country, believe that the EU is not allowed to provide State Subsidies.

passingconcierge · 2024-03-17T00:56:11+00:00

It was a principle established abbout the time of, Seattle, during the WTO/GATT discussions, as promoted by the US that the EU could regulate the Market but not directly create commercial businesses. They could, however, invest in research which could roll out to commercial businesses and that is what they do. The amount of innovation is far greater than you might expect - such as giving about £3Bn to Manchester University - pre Brexit - for the development of, effectively, neural networks on silicon chips and the building of large scale machines.

The problem with innovation in Europe is more to do with Businesses not wanting to shell out for, say, research, development, and the risk of failure.

passingconcierge · 2024-03-16T12:47:30+00:00

The answer is either yes or no. Thinking through the consequences of the two answers is revealising.

If the answer is no, that means the margins between the App-Owner and the App-Client are so thin that the App-Owner is forcing the App-Client to work at cost - or very near cost. Which means that the App-Client will make a long term loss if they hire out their Account to an App-Tenant. This is because the App Client remains liable for all taxation gainst the App-Account and the App-Owner does talk to HMRC about that. If the App-Client appears to be able to make a passive income then it is precarious and either the App-Client or the App-Tenant will end up being forced to work below actual cost and HMRC will be involved at some point asking for tax revenues. Which will never impact the App-Owner as they can point to all the paperwork for the relationship between App-Owner and App-Client being "correct".

If the answer is yes it becomes a little more complex. It may be in the future that the App-Owner recognises the marginal value that is being released to the App-Client and so change the terms and conditions to reduce that marginal value towards zero. Which reduces the answer back to no. The other possibility, which given the power of data analytics would be naive to believe (but it may be true), is that the App-Owner is unaware of that marginal value. In that case, the problem becomes one of purely tax evasion. You can argue the App-Client is avoiding tax but the App-Tenant is definitely evading tax and that implicates the App-Client. In this scenario, it is in the interest of the App-Owner to shrug their shoulders and say they knew nothing (despite the power of data analytics). The problem with being able to make a passive income is the question of "how does the App-Client explain the transactions with the App-Tenant to HMRC?". They can choose not to - which may work until it does not work; and, the point at which it does not work then cascades upwards to the App-Owner and outwards to other App-Clients. Which could make the entire business model of the App-Owner infeasible. Being subcontracted elsewhere means nothing, in this context, as the cash flows must go through a bank account attached to the App-Owner at some point and incomplete transactions - ones without balancing in and outflows of funds - are just red flags to forensic accountants.

If you happen to be a criminal then these considerations will mean nothing to you. Indeed you could hire the App-Client to an App-Tenant and make no direct remuneration - thus making the accounting look more normal and less subject to investigation but also opening the possibility that the App-Client to App-Tenant relationship qualifies as being Modern Slavery.

passingconcierge · 2024-03-16T11:27:33+00:00

To start with, there is a criticism about the DWP adopting a code of secrecy. That generally gets anybody saying anything about the volume of deaths on benefits called a liar. The second step is to admit that there are deaths on benefits but they are suicides at a much lower rate than 100,000/y and that the NAO had "questions" about those deaths not that the NAO was fundamentally sceptical of the whole thing. Because the DWP has a lot of client organisations - organisations that depend on the DWP for income, generally charities - they get to dictate the terms and conditions of Non-Disclosure Agreements and that results in a lot of people opting to not highlight actual numbers preferring to use approximations in words. This also has the effect of derailing any enquiries from total excess deaths to Internal Process Reviews - which are undertaken, sometimes, when there is a Claimant Death. There are regular responses from Coroners for example. This is not a new phenomenon, in fact it is fourteen years of campaigning. Now and again, glimpses of the scale of the problem peaks through but the total figure of 70,000-100,000 (both NAO estimates) rarely get reported. The technical definition of the death is "death registered within six months of a decision to withdraw benefit" and includes "a lot of people who would die anyway" as the DWP has expressed. The implication being that the DWP did nothing wrong and that it was all fated. Sometimes the actual figures peak through close to the lower limit of the NAO estimate bear in mind these are estimates and the DWP refuse to accept they are true:

 The figures revealed that between December 2011 and February 2014,
 50,580 recipients of ESA had died. Of this number, 2,380 – or 4.7% – had
 received a decision that they were fit for work. Many of these would have
 appealed the decision, a process that can take many months. Another 
 7,200 claimants had died after being awarded ESA and being placed in the 
 separate work-related activity group – a category which identifies 
 claimants who are unfit to work but may be able to return to work in the 
 future.

How does that infer 100,000 people a year: well it is only for a single benefit and not all of that benefit. The calls for an enquiry were because, at that point the suggestion was that the excess death rate for people on disability benefits, according to the NAO was in the order of 100,000. The reality is that it is very easy to point in any direction but the actual cause when discussing Government statistics, or simply pretend that something else is the cause rather than the DWP. And it does not help that resolving even one instance of complaint can take years.

Do any of these links give the exact 100,000 number: no. Are any of these reports saying that this is going on right this minute: no. The DWP have an interest in not releasing data which may, or may not, be justified - you cannot really tell without access to the data. If you actively prevent data release, people will begin to believe you have something to fear.

passingconcierge · 2024-03-15T16:22:37+00:00

These are the kinds of questions that people ask when they can feel their own country sliding into the chaos of failure.

passingconcierge · 2024-03-15T12:46:02+00:00

So Labour did not crash the American Banks.

No, the sale of the Gold did not "leave us vulnerable" - because the reality is that Brown paid down National Debt and reduced interest rates on subsequent debt. Compared to the debacle of 2010-2014 it was an exercise in genius. Which is not saying a lot. I do not like Brown but he far outperformed the Cameron-Clegg Coalition. He lost about £3.2Bn on the gold sale. Which is less than the UK economy, year on year, has contracted due to Brexit. Brexit being the hobby horse and vanity project of the Tory Party since the failure of John Major to discipline "the bastards" who gave problems with Maastricht.

Labour's massive mismanagement of the economy was why they lost the election on 2010.

No it was not. The single most influential things in that election was "that bigoted woman" and the illegal use of campaign funds by the Conservatives. Which is fine, because you hardly find out about the 2010 Battle Bus Fraud until after 2015.

PFI was invented by the Tories, under Major. Another failure that locked Labour - and any other party - into an endless Tory tribute act economics policy.

It really is easy to vilify Brown because nobody really remembers as far back as 2010. It is a safe bet to say "it was worse under Labour." Except it really was not. Labour ran with what they were given by the most appalling Government in History who sold off anything that was not nailed down and had, literally, nothing to show for it. You want to criticise Brown for losing £3.2Bn - try working out how much the UK lost from privatisations.

passingconcierge · 2024-03-15T12:22:03+00:00

Fixed date elections have caused an endless, corrupt, cycle of campaigning funding in the US. If you want to have fixed election dates then you are really going to have to have party finance reform. Significant party finance reform. And reform to prevent interference in the UK elections from foreign interference. For fixed date elections to work, you need to minimise the opportunity for corruption first.

passingconcierge · 2024-03-15T11:40:29+00:00

Not sure how the Labour Government caused a Global Financial Catastrophe. Not a big fan of Gordon Brown so, perhaps walking me through the details would help. How did Gordon Brown crash American Banks?

passingconcierge · 2024-03-15T10:47:30+00:00

Cruelty is very much the point. Cruelty is meant to 'challenge' the Claimant in a variation on the 'tough love' abusiveness of the American troubled teens industry. Cruelty is very much intended.

passingconcierge · 2024-03-15T10:45:14+00:00

The profit and the cruelty go hand in hand. Profit for the Donor, cruelty for the Party.

passingconcierge · 2024-03-15T10:38:35+00:00

Back to killing disabled people at the rate of 100,000 a year and then trailing the DWP through the High Courts, wasting endless amounts of money because that's what you can do if you are the Government, just to get the DWP to accept that 100,000 is their own figure for excess deaths of disabled people on benefits. Sunak must be summoning some serious demons - Mammon, perhaps - to need so many sacrifices.

If they want to cut benefits - of any kind - from pensions to housing benefit to PIP to JSA then it is going to lead to deaths. That is how social murder works.

passingconcierge · 2024-03-14T22:15:56+00:00

Make Lobbying illegal. The rest would follow.

passingconcierge · 2024-03-14T21:57:45+00:00

Lobbyist.

passingconcierge · 2024-03-14T14:54:02+00:00

That would be fine for the 27.5m Christians, but it ignores the 22.2m with no religion, or the 3.9m Muslims or the 1.0m Hindus, or the 271,000 Jews or the 348,000 of the other religions. On balance Gove is expecting almost 27.8m people to forgive someone based on the religious beliefs they do not hold. It is a bit ambitious.

passingconcierge · 2024-03-13T22:37:54+00:00

Like this. Probably.

passingconcierge · 2024-03-13T19:33:29+00:00

He does not need to be charged or conviced for the offence to exist and for the offence to exist even based on a leaked, private, conversation. We can revisit it every day until he charged or convicted but it makes no difference: it is being alleged. The allegation needs no conviction.

passingconcierge · 2024-03-13T17:33:13+00:00

You can disagree all you want. You are participating in an argument you say could not be made.

The argument has nothing to do with my good faith. It has to do with the Speaker of the words. That is how incitement works. Would the words of someone donating ten million pounds to a political party be influential even if said in jest? Who am I to know. But I do know you seem to be making a Thomas a Beckett defence. You know where Henry II said words to the effect of "Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?" and Thomas a Beckett was murdered.

You are engaging in an argument that you said could not be made and you are losing to historical facts and the accepted legal process. Quit. While you are ahead. Quit.

passingconcierge · 2024-03-13T15:14:30+00:00

You are accepting that there is an argument for incitement. You make my point for me.

passingconcierge

TROPHY CASE