New Tory Leader

[1902 1,167]

13 hours ago, TeemuVanBasten said:

Of course, but the fact remains that if we set tuition fees at £0.... £7.5bn per year would need to be found, as detailed in the  link I provided.

Student loans are written off after 30 years now I believe, so a 21 year old graduate will have their balance written off at 51.

Depends on your plan, mine is 65. It was arbitrarily changed from 30 years quite recently. 

That's true up to a point, but is the money for the loans lent to students by the government via a quango or are they getting the funding from the private sector? If it's the first, then it's still 7.5 BN that has to be found each year, just with the unrealistic expectation that it will be paid back and therefore isn't real expenditure. 

[horsefly 4,325]

39 minutes ago, Nuff Said said:

@TeemuVanBasten Does Truss’ pledge to scrap all remaining EU inherited regulation by the end of next year make any difference to your decision who to vote for?

https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/truss-review-eu-laws-sunak-tackle-nhs-backlog/
 

Utter madness IMHO. Even the death eater Rees-Mogg allowed until June 2026. And how is this going to be done with fewer civil servants?

Nothing more than Truss trying to prove her new found Brexit credentials, and nakedly appeal to the gammon vote. The idea is, as you say, utter madness. Have you seen her claim the she should be leader as she has a proven record of "getting things done", and unashamedly cites the NI protocol as an example. Simply hilarious! Perhaps she should have a look at what the EU has announced today with regard to her getting the NI protocol done.

[littleyellowbirdie 2,613]

14 minutes ago, horsefly said:

This is pure speculation that this is what caused him to commit suicide, you have absolutely NO evidence of cause and effect. I even included a quote from the article I linked describing the views of those who had been in contact with him the very day of his death. None of them confirm your supposition. Indeed they say something very different, that his mood changed for the worse BECAUSE a friend at the MOD had informed him that the BBC intended to release recordings of conversations which would potentially implicate him. 

Kelly very much plays a key part in his own downfall. The minute Gilligan went public with his "45 minute" claim and pointed to an unnamed expert as his source it became impossible for the government not to respond by locating the source of that claim. I can only imagine what you and others would have brayed about government cover-ups and conspiracies if they had denied any knowledge. A select committee inquiry into such serious allegations was inevitable, and it was inevitable that any attempt to get to the truth of the matter would require the main person implicated to provide evidence. Imagine we had a government that resorted to the defence that it can't reveal details about the source of serious allegations of wrong doing in government because the individual(s) concerned might commit suicide. You would rightly ridicule such a claim as a charter for unmitigated government corruption. 

Let's just say there's less doubt about that than there was in intelligence reports concerning Saddam Hussein's weapons programme and the threat he presented; beyond that, I've added some key points from Chilcot that underline all of the holes in the dossier were there one way or the other, and we invaded another country on the basis of Blair's decision to misrepresent the intelligence as more certain than it was, which was an action against the will of the UN.

Blair involved us in an exercise that permanently damaged the credibility of international law and undermined the ability of the UN to act as an arbitrator. If that's not worthy of resignation then nothing is. 

Edited July 23, 2022 by littleyellowbirdie

[keelansgrandad 6,679]

51 minutes ago, Nuff Said said:

@TeemuVanBasten Does Truss’ pledge to scrap all remaining EU inherited regulation by the end of next year make any difference to your decision who to vote for?

https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/truss-review-eu-laws-sunak-tackle-nhs-backlog/
 

Utter madness IMHO. Even the death eater Rees-Mogg allowed until June 2026. And how is this going to be done with fewer civil servants?

Its because she is in hock to the ERG.

[horsefly 4,325]

1 minute ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

beyond that, I've added some key points from Chilcot that underline all of the holes in the dossier were there one way or the other, and we invaded another country on the basis of Blair's decision to misrepresent the intelligence as more certain than it was, against the will of the UN. Blair involved us in an exercise that permanently damaged the credibility of international law and undermined the ability of the UN to act as an arbitrator. If that's not worthy of resignation then nothing is. 

So you remain determined to ignore the statement from the Chilcot Report that exonerated Blair from blame for the intelligence failures, which they laid firmly at the door of the Joint Intelligence Committee and the head of MI6. I'm afraid to claim that Blair should have resigned for their failures is really quite preposterous. 

[littleyellowbirdie 2,613]

7 minutes ago, horsefly said:

So you remain determined to ignore the statement from the Chilcot Report that exonerated Blair from blame for the intelligence failures, which they laid firmly at the door of the Joint Intelligence Committee and the head of MI6. I'm afraid to claim that Blair should have resigned for their failures is really quite preposterous. 

There weren't intelligence failures. The failure was Blair insisting on adding commentary to the intelligence that suggested the intelligence was more certain than it was. 

Blair personally had 'no doubt' about Saddam's weapons programmes; the intelligence he was given expressed plenty of doubts and reservations. 

From Chilcot:

Quote

538. But the deliberate selection of a formulation which grounded the statement in what Mr Blair believed, rather than in the judgements which the JIC had actually reached in its assessment of the intelligence, indicates a distinction between his beliefs and the JIC’s actual judgements.

539. That is supported by the position taken by the JIC and No.10 officials at the time, and in the evidence offered to the Inquiry by some of those involved.

540. The assessed intelligence had not established beyond doubt that Saddam Hussein had continued to produce chemical and biological weapons. The Executive Summary of the dossier [by Blair] stated that the JIC judged that Iraq had “continued to produce chemical and biological agents”. The main text of the dossier said that there had been “recent” production. It also stated that Iraq had the means to deliver chemical and biological weapons. It did not say that Iraq had continued to produce weapons.

 

Edited July 23, 2022 by littleyellowbirdie

[horsefly 4,325]

11 minutes ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

Let's just say there's less doubt about that than there was in intelligence reports concerning Saddam Hussein's weapons programme and the threat he presented

Sorry, but that is just obviously untrue. The judicial inquiry into his death could not determine why he killed himself. Even his own family have expressed (on numerous occasions) that they don't know what tipped him over the edge and caused him to take his own life. I don't understand why you persist in thinking you know better than those two sources.

[littleyellowbirdie 2,613]

12 minutes ago, horsefly said:

Sorry, but that is just obviously untrue. The judicial inquiry into his death could not determine why he killed himself. Even his own family have expressed (on numerous occasions) that they don't know what tipped him over the edge and caused him to take his own life. I don't understand why you persist in thinking you know better than those two sources.

Okay, it can't be proven. Just a big coincidence that he killed himself less than 48 hours after actually being outed as the source of Gilligan's article. Good luck getting anyone to genuinely believe that. 

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/jul/16/david-kelly-death-10-years-on

None of it changes the fact that Blair should have resigned as soon as it was clear there were no WMDs in Iraq, because we only went into it because of his personal determination to take us there to please the Bush administration; not because the intelligence was telling us there was any real threat that wasn't being contained by the sanctions in place. 

Edited July 23, 2022 by littleyellowbirdie

[Hook's-Walk-Canary 213]

Tory MPs will regret eliminating Kemi 👇

 

[horsefly 4,325]

3 minutes ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

There weren't intelligence failures. The failure was Blair insisting on adding commentary to the intelligence that suggested the intelligence was more certain than it was. 

Blair personality had 'no doubt' about Saddam's weapons programmes; the intelligence he was given expressed plenty of doubts and reservations. 

From Chilcot:

 

And :

880.  The Inquiry is not questioning Mr Blair’s belief, which he consistently

reiterated in his evidence to the Inquiry, or his legitimate role in advocating

Government policy.

 

[littleyellowbirdie 2,613]

12 minutes ago, horsefly said:

And :

880.  The Inquiry is not questioning Mr Blair’s belief, which he consistently

reiterated in his evidence to the Inquiry, or his legitimate role in advocating

Government policy.

 

Which in itself creates an argument that he should have resigned for failure of personal judgement with enormous consequences. 

Edited July 23, 2022 by littleyellowbirdie

[horsefly 4,325]

11 minutes ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

Okay, it can't be proven. Just a big coincidence that he killed himself less than 48 hours after actually being outed as the source of Gilligan's article. Good luck getting anyone to genuinely believe that. 

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/jul/16/david-kelly-death-10-years-on

None of it changes the fact that Blair should have resigned as soon as it was clear there were no WMDs in Iraq, because we only went into it because of his personal determination to take us there to please the Bush administration; not because the intelligence was telling us there was any real threat that wasn't being contained by the sanctions in place. 

Okay, it can't be proven. Just a big coincidence that he killed himself less than 48 hours after actually being outed as the source of Gilligan's article. Good luck getting anyone to genuinely believe that. 

I repeat, he was outed by the press, and on the day of his death had been told by a friend at the MOD that the BBC intended to release recordings that might incriminate him. How you get from those facts to the claim that the Labour Party/Blair killed him is frankly bizarre. 

None of it changes the fact that Blair should have resigned as soon as it was clear there were no WMDs in Iraq, because we only went into it because of his personal determination to take us there to please the Bush administration; not because the intelligence was telling us there was any real threat that wasn't being contained by the sanctions in place. 

Then there should have been mass resignations throughout the world because many nations believed Iraq had WMDs because he had actually used them on Iran and on his own people. Many Western nations were pretty certain too on the grounds that they themselves had provided Iraq with the materials required to produce WMDs (such is the hypocritical world of the arms industry). Kelly's own assessment (I quoted earlier) was that Iraq did possess these weapons and did present a threat (if not immediate). There's a reason why the UN had a mandate for weapons inspections in Iraq, they didn't just make up a case for them. Just a shame Saddam was so uncooperative with those inspections.

[horsefly 4,325]

7 minutes ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

Which in itself creates an argument that he should have resigned for failure of personal judgement with enormous consequences. 

I repeat, The Chilcot Report said it had no grounds to dispute that Blair believed what he said was true; and rather importantly, the Report was published several years after Blair had already resigned.

Edited July 23, 2022 by horsefly

[littleyellowbirdie 2,613]

Just now, horsefly said:

Okay, it can't be proven. Just a big coincidence that he killed himself less than 48 hours after actually being outed as the source of Gilligan's article. Good luck getting anyone to genuinely believe that. 

I repeat, he was outed by the press, and on the day of his death had been told by a friend at the MOD that the BBC intended to release recordings that might incriminate him. How you get from those facts to the claim that the Labour Party/Blair killed him is frankly bizarre. 

None of it changes the fact that Blair should have resigned as soon as it was clear there were no WMDs in Iraq, because we only went into it because of his personal determination to take us there to please the Bush administration; not because the intelligence was telling us there was any real threat that wasn't being contained by the sanctions in place. 

Then there should have been mass resignations throughout the world because many nations believed Iraq had WMDs because he had actually used them on Iran and on his own people. Many Western nations were pretty certain too on the grounds that they themselves had provided Iraq with the materials required to produce WMDs (such is the hypocritical world of the arms industry). Kelly's own assessment (I quoted earlier) was that Iraq did possess these weapons and did present a threat (if not immediate). There's a reason why the UN had a mandate for weapons inspections in Iraq, they didn't just make up a case for them. Just a shame Saddam was so uncooperative with those inspections.

Only two nations invaded Iraq because of these beliefs about this: the US and us. Again, this was an invasion having made a case for action under the auspices of the UN that had been rejected. 

[Well b back 3,309]

1 hour ago, Nuff Said said:

@TeemuVanBasten Does Truss’ pledge to scrap all remaining EU inherited regulation by the end of next year make any difference to your decision who to vote for?

https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/truss-review-eu-laws-sunak-tackle-nhs-backlog/
 

Utter madness IMHO. Even the death eater Rees-Mogg allowed until June 2026. And how is this going to be done with fewer civil servants?

Rees-Mogg’s latest little puppet to stir up his hatred.
See she is also having a go at the French today for not providing more customs officers in Dover making it sound like it’s their fault we voted for Brexit. Dear Liz, Boris and Mogg said this would never happen as they need us more than we need them. I wonder how many of those swearing and abusing the staff at Dover actually voted for it to happen.

[TheGunnShow 6,092]

32 minutes ago, Hook's-Walk-Canary said:

Tory MPs will regret eliminating Kemi 👇

 

Eh, she had a fair chance in a series of ballots and thankfully fell short. 

[horsefly 4,325]

1 minute ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

Only two nations invaded Iraq because of these beliefs about this: the US and us. Again, this was an invasion having made a case for action under the auspices of the UN that had been rejected. 

Again, there remains dispute among international lawyers regarding the extent to which the invasion of Iraq was justified by the various resolutions sanctioning Iraq.

You are also mistaken regarding the combatants in the second Iraq war https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combatants_of_the_Iraq_War

[keelansgrandad 6,679]

36 minutes ago, Hook's-Walk-Canary said:

Tory MPs will regret eliminating Kemi 👇

 

Remember Johnson and his levelling up, get things done, Brexit benefit Britain?

She was just hitting on topics that are marmite.

[horsefly 4,325]

36 minutes ago, Hook's-Walk-Canary said:

Tory MPs will regret eliminating Kemi 👇

 

Yeah! I'm sure Tory constituency parties up and down the country are venting their outrage that they cannot elect a black woman as their next leader. I never realised they were the locus of such "Wokery"!!!

[littleyellowbirdie 2,613]

17 minutes ago, horsefly said:

Again, there remains dispute among international lawyers regarding the extent to which the invasion of Iraq was justified by the various resolutions sanctioning Iraq.

You are also mistaken regarding the combatants in the second Iraq war https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combatants_of_the_Iraq_War

Well, I guess I'll move on at this stage. I'm sure Blair is grateful for your efforts championing him as a worthy and honourable former PM of the nation with no stain on his character. 

Edited July 23, 2022 by littleyellowbirdie

[Hook's-Walk-Canary 213]

12 minutes ago, horsefly said:

Yeah! I'm sure Tory constituency parties up and down the country are venting their outrage that they cannot elect a black woman as their next leader. I never realised they were the locus of such "Wokery"!!!

First time I have heard a Tory MP, or any MP come to that, recognising what everyone knows, our population is now too large for the country to support more and she will cut back on immigration. And I certainly can not fault the rest of he manifesto, especially the state religion of the NHS, it is a breath of fresh air.

Not sure why you've brought her skin colour into the conversation.

Edited July 23, 2022 by Hook's-Walk-Canary

[horsefly 4,325]

3 minutes ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

Well, I guess I'll move on at this stage. I'm sure Blair is grateful for your efforts championing him as a worthy and honourable former PM of the nation with no stain on his character. 

Happy to move on. But I have to say I'm somewhat perplexed as to where you get the idea that I have said anywhere that there is "no stain on his character". Read back (here and elsewhere) and I think you will find quite otherwise. 

[littleyellowbirdie 2,613]

Just now, horsefly said:

Happy to move on. But I have to say I'm somewhat perplexed as to where you get the idea that I have said anywhere that there is "no stain on his character". Read back (here and elsewhere) and I think you will find quite otherwise. 

Because ultimately, if there was stain on his character from his actions then he should have resigned as a result of his actions. 

[horsefly 4,325]

6 minutes ago, Hook's-Walk-Canary said:

Not sure why you've brought her skin colour into the conversation.

Because it was YOU that posted this:

Perhaps you should have read it before you posted it. You only had to read the first line FFS!

[horsefly 4,325]

2 minutes ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

Because ultimately, if there was stain on his character from his actions then he should have resigned as a result of his actions. 

Then there would have been no PM in the history of this country who would not have resigned. We would almost certainly need a new MP every year if that was the requirement. It's the nature of the stain that matters and whether that stain amounts to a breach of parliamentary protocol.

[littleyellowbirdie 2,613]

32 minutes ago, horsefly said:

Then there would have been no PM in the history of this country who would not have resigned. We would almost certainly need a new MP every year if that was the requirement. It's the nature of the stain that matters and whether that stain amounts to a breach of parliamentary protocol.

We've had three PMs resign in the last 7 years. One for losing a referendum, one for failing to get agreement in parliament over a way forward, and one for illegal parties in Downing street.

The Iraq war was: 

-legally questionable under international law; we, as champions of international law should not have been involved in actions not explicitly mandated by the UN without cast iron certainty there were grounds to do so. We definitely had no explicit mandate from the UN to partake in regime change in Iraq. 

-The intelligence community had doubts over the certainty of the case that Saddam was a serious threat

-Blair was personally convinced in spite of full access to the intelligence that we know the intelligence community had doubts about; what does that say about his personal judgement? 

-We know after the event that there were no WMDs

Like I said before, if that's not worthy of resignation nothing is worthy of resignation; two of his own cabinet believed strongly enough that he had been wrong that they resigned from the government in protest. Our involvement in Iraq is a stain on our reputation as a champion of international law, let alone on Blair's personal reputation. But Blair was personally responsible for that stain on our international reputation. 

 

Edited July 23, 2022 by littleyellowbirdie

[Herman 9,857]

On 21/07/2022 at 18:27, A Load of Squit said:

The return on Paul Moy's favourite economist.

 

🤣

 

[horsefly 4,325]

41 minutes ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

We've had three PMs resign in the last 7 years. One for losing a referendum, one for failing to get agreement in parliament over a way forward, and one for illegal parties in Downing street.

The Iraq war was: 

-legally questionable under international law; we, as champions of international law should not have been involved in actions not explicitly mandated by the UN without cast iron certainty there were grounds to do so. We definitely had no explicit mandate from the UN to partake in regime change in Iraq. 

-The intelligence community had doubts over the certainty of the case that Saddam was a serious threat

-Blair was personally convinced in spite of full access to the intelligence that we know the intelligence community had doubts about; what does that say about his personal judgement? 

-We know after the event that there were no WMDs

Like I said before, if that's not worthy of resignation nothing is worthy of resignation; two of his own cabinet believed strongly enough that he had been wrong that they resigned from the government in protest. Our involvement in Iraq is a stain on our reputation as a champion of international law, let alone on Blair's personal reputation. But Blair was personally responsible for that stain on our international reputation. 

 

Which the Hutton Report and the Chilcot report both deny.

Edited July 23, 2022 by horsefly

[littleyellowbirdie 2,613]

4 minutes ago, horsefly said:

Which the Hutton Report and the Chilcot report both deny.

Hutton happened while Blair was still PM, and Blair set the scope of the inquiry, so I'm not convinced it has much value, especially given that it was far more focussed on discrediting Gilligan and the BBC than it was looking at the questions over the decision-making and presentation of data to parliament making the case for an invasion that we now know had no solid case based in fact, particularly without an explicit mandate from the UN. 

As for Chilcot, which has more credibility for both independence and quality and quantity of data available, deny what exactly?

Edited July 23, 2022 by littleyellowbirdie

[Yellow Fever 3,850]

1 hour ago, Well b back said:

Rees-Mogg’s latest little puppet to stir up his hatred.
See she is also having a go at the French today for not providing more customs officers in Dover making it sound like it’s their fault we voted for Brexit. Dear Liz, Boris and Mogg said this would never happen as they need us more than we need them. I wonder how many of those swearing and abusing the staff at Dover actually voted for it to happen.

I think Truss's EU regulations comments today summed up for me everything about her and the other-worldly people she is trying to appeal too.

Tidying up the EU left over regulations is simply not a priority for anybody even remotely concerned with the actual day to day problems the UK currently suffers from and which she or Sunak will inherit from September - cost of living, inflation etc. Even Johnson wasn't too bothered!

I can only imagine that those that think a few EU loose ends needs tidying up in a hurry are fully detached from the real world, likely retired and fully insulated / cosseted from the real economic realities for many. Even Martin Lewis fears serious social unrest as the economic realities of the cost of living - heating & food bite this autumn. 

Truss fiddles while the UK burns. 

Edited July 23, 2022 by Yellow Fever