#breaking ministerial code

[eaglesnick]

This is a wonderful planet, and it is being completely destroyed by people who have too much money and power and no empathy. -Alice Walker

Spot the difference.

“Tory MP apologises for failing to report extra earnings on time.” Guardian: 19/10/15)

Tory MP failed to notice receiving £400,00 in outside earnings. (Financial Times: 04/02/16)

Boris Johnson apologises to Commons for failing to declare £52,000 earnings on time." sky news: 06/12/18)

“A Conservative MP has not been formally disciplined despite breaching rules on declaring interests after being lent £150,000 by a businessman for a rental property and then writing to a financial watchdog to praise the same person."  (Guardian: 21/11/22)

“Nadhim Zahawi is under scrutiny over a multi-million pound tax dispute. The Conservative chairman says he made a “careless and not deliberate” error according to HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC), but he is now facing calls to resign."  (4 news: 25/01/23)

“Rishi Sunak "inadvertently" broke the code of conduct for MPs by not correctly declaring his wife's financial interest in a childminding company set to benefit from government support” sky news: 24/08/23).

Did you spot the difference. No? Of course not, there isn’t any. All of the above failures to declare financial interests or income were all slips of memory and totally unintentional.

It must be really nice to have so much money that you cannot remember how much you have or where you last stashed it. 

[lavelled]

I should have typed: Kamala. One word. She ran a strong campaign. In unscripted moments. In the one and only debate where it was a prosecutorial job of strategized goals for the country. On not using code to justify xenophobic sentiment toward human citizens. There is nothing wrong with her as the more effective operative—I guess the societal shift is about ancient liar, Prince Harry, on the cutting table. As long as you realize that veeped little girl doesn’t exist. I don’t answer to anything closely resembling that, nor does any paperwork for my identity.

I’d prefer that elections impact things like inequality, low-income, unemployment, climate, and crime rather than affluent aristocracy through code. An epistolary story that began four decades ago, or pink pedophilia, shouldn’t be used for civic virtue. I’m concerned that the probability of a coded election means implementation of an agenda that could hurt healthcare, young women, and immigration laws. I’m disappointed. This victory seems like we’re facing dread in radical ideological areas. I often repeat it: I’ve got nothing upon nothing. Job discrimination and university debt at 52. I’ll be wordy on dysfunction and conflict that affect me and those around the world.

I read that Prince Harry and his date participated with a video at the Ministerial Conference on Ending Violence Against Children on November 7th. I’m shocked that the complicit bathroom stall duo wasn’t invited for an in-person seminar on the sexual exploitation of little girls. Prince Harry discussing the topic of online safety for children. His high-paying Twitter CEO job is to monetize and sensationalize tweets of racism, ignorance, and aggression toward kids and adults who prefer not to think about it, but do think about it and often kill themselves. Was he given an award and a new 10-part Netflix series?

How’s Charlie, the pervert pediatrician? I never noticed the rigorous affixing of certain words near King Charles’ snaking news coverage. Being chopped, freshly chipper, crochet, cabbage, largely intact, pay postage, hindered, neutered, major abdominal surgery, squeaky toy, knitting knighting, breaking off chunks. I suppose the composition is aimed at a younger Windsor. Harry gives the Internet a sprinkling of his confessional content by using the vomit emoji, which means upchucked. Harry inherited a doghouse business as a baby from his pedo dad, Chuck.

How’s your Foundation charity? In May, there was something about bullshit missing donations. California’s DOJ really spends funds investigating a quid pro quo breeding organization, sure. How’s the spouse? Galloping ahead pretending you’re an actual couple—you have zero interest in your wife, no matter what you might want us to believe. I’ve caught you calling her an unsussexful trollop and a cuntress. The most English medieval castle of wordsmithing.

Harry’s ilk, however, is more hypnotic graduation march toward sex-centric literacy and Playboy models. Subject to his vulgarian tweets when trapped in his webcam ménage for about 12 years, I still can’t believe he’s curtsying nobility. Ennoblement that is misinformed. The adult film industry isn’t taboo nor is it meant to be weaponized for a one-sided argumentation with Tom Cruise, a man not provoking you on the Internet. These are real actors in a cinematic business who are working to provide for their family. You show up, spilling one’s guts, using sex and ownership flippancies, hardcore code, your buye buye lewdness, and you upset them.

I’ve mentioned that performers have hurt themselves. Mercedes Grabowski, born to a military family, changed her name to August Ames and was a Canadian pornographic actress. In 2017, she got caught in a tweetstorm, displeased with the performer on her next film, saying: “Choose who YOU want to work with. Do agents really not care about who they’re representing? I do my homework for my body.” I was on Twitter, chatting with you. I don’t know if it was her or you, the boss, who scribbled it. Her page is still visible. I do know that a twitterer intensely criticized her feminist tweets, and a day later, she hanged herself in a California park. She was 23.

Twitter CEO, Prince Harry, got escort-service married one year later.

There is an uptick of clickbait and shitposting—absurd media to optically attention grab youths in the 15-19 age group on all electronic media. There are real online predators in the deepest circle of hell. There is also Henry Charles Albert David Mountbatten-Windsor. He is CEO of the big blue web that is a Twitter marquee where he pens double-faced formula to gratifyingly seek retribution against an absentee middle-aged actor through those online instead: children. He extends his reach to BetterUp, an online mental health and digital coaching firm where he serves as Chief Impact Officer. Better, Twitter: sounds like a confession. Most of the time it’s not “just kids being kids.” It’s Prince Harry goading your children through jazz hands and the routine of surgical face masks that is his own perjury. Him: I’m exposing lies in italicized text font, you can’t squeal. His overflow of emotion is mainly due to being irredeemable and also his marriage.

2018 was a horrible, no good, bad year.

14-year-old Adriana Kuch of Bayville, New Jersey killed herself due to cyber bullying. 14-year-old Sewell Setzer III, son of Megan Garcia, recently shot himself in the head because he thought a Game of Thrones chatbot told him to.

Team Meghan: Have you noticed the significant print exposure, articulated, of your client? Do you intend to only advertise exfoliation cream and not a fraudster divorce—if so, why?

Celebrities have been cancelled or fired due to digital obscenities they didn’t write. A mild stab at a joke from Prince Harry that resulted in scandal. I’ll show picturesquely. I want to mention UK artist and abstract painter, Sarah Cunningham, 31, who died last week. Her body was found on the tracks of the Chalk Farm Station in Camden. No foul play.

Your dishonest, catastrophic marriage belongs in the adult history books. Divorce.

K

Red boat shoes 2012 Instagram:

Onion layers of Hawaii luau or Harry u lie:

All posts authored by Prince Harry.

For data’s sake, 3 days before wedding:

Lucrative microphone victim:

Files in iClout:

Stork wedding, taxpayer banknotes:

Morning sickness, Netflix lies:

Miscarriage of justice, Netflix lies:

I know she doesn’t. The interviewed initiative, “No Child Lost to Social Media.” Harry, CEO of Twitter, goads kids to their deaths and Meg is lap style deep in royal legalese that she isn’t allowed news or Internet access:

Meghan McCain didn’t write it; we’re privy to Harry’s decimated fruit fetish:

Roseanne Barr didn’t write it; Harry’s racist cretinism did; she wouldn’t insult a beloved sister:

Harry’s upending wedded bliss month; wasn’t great for the tv star either:

Ken Jennings didn’t write the 2014 wheelchair discrimination tweet; Prince Harry did:

Ken doesn’t tweet romantic interludes about Stormy in his downtime; Harry haikus:

Prince Harry gloats of taxpayer financial abuse while invalidating credible cancer patients. A male triangle of crown rot:

Divorce.

[ceevee5]

Rishi can’t fire her, because he made her Home Secretary six days after having to resign for breaking the ministerial code. He knew exactly who he was appointing. All that she does is a reflection on his bad judgement.

Do ppl outside the UK know how absolutely fucking deranged our home secretary has gone over the last few days. The media are theorising that she’s deliberately trying to get fired from government so she can launch her own leadership campaign as some martyr for the far-right. She is openly calling for peaceful protests to be made illegal. She wants to ban charities from helping the homeless.

This is the second most powerful member of our government.

[danteskygod]

I'll tell you what. It takes a lot to make me properly angry, but the notion, the actual notion, that there are some members of the Tory party who are contemplating supporting Boris Johnson, a man that they literally forced out of power just four months ago, back into 10 Downing Street is just the absolute straw.

Forgetting the fact that;

he is a criminal, found guilty of breaking his own covid lockdown laws

he consistently lied about the fact that he broke said laws

his government paid millions and millions of taxpayers' money to their friends and relatives for PPE that didn't work and had to be destroyed

he agreed to waive the need for that money to be paid back into the government coffers

he didn't sack his Home Secretary after she broke the Ministerial code when found guilty of bullying and intimidation of her staff

he paid a woman he was alleged to have been having an affair with large sums of public money and allowed her to attend trade trips with him whilst he was London mayor (and lied about it)

He illegally tried to close down Parliament

Brexit

he lied about knowing an MP's history of inappropriate behaviour when he appointed him as a government minister

he was sacked from a previous job as a journalist for making up a quote i.e. lying

And these are just the things that have come to me off the top of my head. There are so many more.

Boris Johnson is not coming back because he loves the Tory Party.

Boris Johnson is not coming back because he loves the British public.

Boris Johnson is coming back because he loves Boris Johnson.

[llamagoddessofficial]

So how you feeling about the shit going down in ur country rn? Bc as an American it's both hilarious to watch but also your government currently *doesn't have enough people to function* and that's kinda worrying to think about

Overjoyed, honestly. I don't care what happens now, I'm just glad that idiot is out. I do appreciate all the people who reached out to congratulate me on his resignation!

For those of you who don't know about the (ex!!!) prime minister of the UK, Boris Johnson, here's a list of his best moments;

Went to parties with his buds during lockdown (while going to see your dying relatives in hospital was banned) and was fined for it, making him the first PM in UK history to break the law while in office

Lied about the parties, said they never happened

Silently changed the ministerial code that said he had to resign after breaking the law, so he wouldn't have to go

Quoted a far-right conspiracy theory about the opposition leader having connections to a famous UK paedophile when he was questioned about his partying

Overturned rules on what can get a parliament member sacked so he could save his buddy who was in trouble for illegally lobbying for a big food company

Originally wouldn't let Ukrainian refugees into the country if they didn't have a UK relative

Tried to (and is still trying to) send asylum seekers to Rwanda

Promoted a sex offender to a high office position despite knowing the guy had ongoing cases against him, guy proceeded to offend again several times, told everyone he didn't know about the inital offences... turned out he did

Made numerous racist comments I won't repeat here

That's just the worst of it, I didn't even get into him using taxpayer money to refurbish his apartment or refusing to tax oil companies. Hopefully you all can understand why I'm so chuffed he's finally gone.

[lesbiansandgayssupporttheminers]

Our prime minister has been fined for breaking the law during lockdown - the first sitting prime minister of the UK to be found to have broken a law whilst in office. The "ministerial code" which is a loose selection of rules that ministers are meant to follow on and honour system says he should resign.

He's not resigning. And his party is openly backing him.

The excuses offered are feeble. The war in Ukraine in of no relevance. The cost of living crisis was caused by him. And no, everyone else wasn't doing the same thing.

The fine is pocket change to him, and even then Boris tried to block the investigation and the report and was clearly held to different standards than a "private individual" and given far more courtesy by the police. This undermines the principle of rule of law which is supposedly a "British value" and a cornerstone of liberal democracy.

It is a sign that we are sliding ever further towards authoritarianism.

It is very clear that Boris can do literally anything and his party will back him. MPs know it would be a bad time for an election, that there's no one on the front bench who could easily steer them through it. They don't want to lose their seats or their spot on the gravy train.

Meanwhile, people will die of cold or starvation or suicide or not being able to get vital medication or of panic and despair at not being able to pay their bills leading to suicide. Children will go cold and hungry.

But it's alright, because we're protecting the profits of energy companies, and your taxes are going straight into the pocket of Tory party doners.

They know the end is nigh, but they're determined to get every last bit of cash they can out of the British people first.

This is a democracy that is no longer functional, a country being run solely for the benefit of the super rich. It's not enough to say "hold on for two years and we can vote them out" because very clearly the whole system is broken. And anyway, people will be dead by then.

Electoral politics, party politics are not the answer. We need something more radical.

[omgscotlandthebestweecountry]

Those same divisive forces are at work in the U.K too. But the current cost of living crises is just the latest in a long line of crises to befall the U.K economy since 2008.

We are also currently been governed by the most incompetent and corrupt morons this country has ever seen with a PM who lies as easy as breaths just like the last guy whose name rhymes with Doris. He wants another stab at being PM (yawn).

Just this week the PM finally sacked the Tory party chairman whose been dodging taxes and found to be in breach of the ministerial code. His Home Secretary, he reinstated after his predecessor sacked her for also breaking the ministerial code. Riddle me that!

Ordinary, full time working people can’t afford to heat our homes and feed ourselves. Nurses are having to use food banks, kids are starving and we’ve all had enough! Still the racist right wing British Press are vilifying our nurses, paramedics, train drivers and postal workers for standing up for all our rights.

What I’d like to see is a national strike where we all down tools, bring the country and the economy to a grinding halt to show these useless cunts who actually keep this country going!

London — "An estimated half a million workers across multiple sectors in the U.K. went on strike Wednesday in the biggest industrial action Great Britain has seen in more than a decade. The strikers included teachers, civil servants, train and bus drivers, border officials and university staff demanding better pay and working conditions amid soaring inflation and energy prices — difficult circumstances that an IMF forecast suggests may have been exacerbated by Brexit.

"The government have been running down our education (system), underfunding our schools and underpaying the people who work in them," the National Education Union's joint general secretary, Kevin Courtney, said, according to The Associated Press. 

About 85% of schools across the country were either fully or partially closed due to the strikes on Wednesday, according to BBC News, leaving thousands of parents to either change their own work schedules or seek child care options.

"Primary schools where you can't find special needs assistants because they're taking jobs in supermarkets, where they are paid better — that's what's making people take action," said Courtney.

Wide-scale strikes have been held across the U.K. for months, grinding public services to a halt and disrupting hospital and emergency care, among other things. While nurses and ambulance workers weren't striking again Wednesday, they do plan to return to picket lines in the coming days.

Inflation in the U.K. has soared over the last year to the highest rates seen in 40 years, and it still stood Wednesday at 10.5%. 

On Tuesday, the International Monetary Fund said the U.K. would be the only major economy to contract this year, performing worse even than Russia, which is still under heavy international sanctions over its invasion of Ukraine. 

In October, the IMF forecast that Britain could expect modest growth in 2023, along with other European nations emerging from the coronavirus pandemic and adjusting to energy markets largely devoid of Russian fuel. But its new forecast this week sees the British economy shrinking by 0.6%.

The IMF did not link its prediction to the U.K.'s exit from the European Union three years ago, but Britain's trade has shrunk as a result, and many workers from the EU have left the U.K. since Brexit, causing a labor shortage that other European countries haven't had to contend with.

Many public sector workers say that their salaries have decreased in real terms over the last decade, and the soaring inflation has pushed them into financial difficulty, with some forced to use food banks.

U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has so far taken a hard line against the strikes, insisting that some of the pay increases being demanded by public sector workers are not affordable for the government. Union leaders say the government has refused to offer anything that would be meaningful enough to call off the strikes.

"Our children's education is precious, and they deserve to be in school today," Sunak said.

The leader of a national federation of trade unions, Paul Nowak, said the strikes would not stop unless meaningful change was achieved.

"The message to the government is that this is not going to go away. These problems won't magically disappear," he said, according to The Associated Press."

I'm so proud of England for doing this. We could have done this long ago but America is still being inundated with divisive tactics to keep people from joining together to fight.

[ladymazzy]

Boris Johnson changes ministerial code to avoid need to resign over breaches

From the article;

'The change comes as Johnson faces his own investigation by the privileges committee into whether he misled parliament by claiming there were no parties in No 10 during lockdown and that the rules were followed at all times.

The ministerial code continues to say that it is a resignation matter if a minister “knowingly” misleads the House of Commons.

However, if Johnson is found to have breached other principles of public life, such as lacking openness and honesty, then the changes to the rules make it less likely that he would be automatically expected to resign.

Under changes to the guidance, Johnson also rejected the idea that his independent adviser should have the power to launch investigations into ministers or the prime minister without his permission.

The adviser, currently Christopher Geidt, a former aide to the Queen, will in future be able to instigate investigations but only with the consent of the prime minister, who will retain the power to block an inquiry. In such a case, the adviser would have the power to make this situation public.

Johnson has also rewritten the foreword to the code, removing all references to honesty, integrity, transparency and accountability.'

[thessalian]

Thess vs The Last Two Days

Okay. I promised some kind of explanation - or at least breaking it down for the non-Brits who are following this catastrophe we call a government. So. Let’s take it from the top:

A Bit Of History: So a few months ago, a mass wave of resignations basically forced Boris Johnson to resign as PM himself. It took months for them to pick a new one. They called it an ‘election’, but it wasn’t, really - what happened was that paid-up members of the Conservative Party (note: this does not include members of Parliament; this is just a bunch of rich old white dudes, a fair few of whom don’t even fucking live here anymore) voted on which candidate they wanted in the leadership position. This got us Liz Truss, and no mandate whatsoever - the MPs hadn’t chosen her, the people hadn’t chosen her, no one but this 160k people or so were even able to vote for her ... and she didn’t even really get the majority of those; there were just some abstentions. Then, of course, the Queen died, and there was two weeks of sweet fuck all done. Then, Truss basically announced this awful economic idea (but not a budget because she didn’t want the Office of Fiscal Responsibility anywhere near it) of heavy borrowing, tax breaks for the wealthy and zero accountability, which freaked out the markets, tanked the pound, and made a few people who’d shorted the pound just before this happened even more wealthy than they already were. There were U-turns. Truss sacked her Chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, in an attempt to blame him for the ‘mini-budget’ or ‘fiscal event’ or whatever godsawful euphemism we were using for it. We got Hunt, who went back on basically everything (except the bonuses for bankers) and went full austerity. The problem is, we’ve been operating under austerity policies since Cameron took power (because the LibDems did fuck all in that so-called coalition government) in 2010 or so. There can’t be any more spending cuts on public services because there isn’t anything left to cut without destroying public services altogether. That’s still in limbo because of the events of the last couple of days.

So. Let me try to explain the last couple of days. I’m trying to sum this up as succinctly as I can but it’s so stupid and convoluted that it’s difficult.

Who’s Suella Braverman, Why Did She Resign, And Why Did This Matter? Okay, Suella Braverman was one of the people who stood for the leadership position a few months back. She’s the one who is by her own admission obsessed with deporting refugees to Rwanda. (No, she literally called it her dream and her obsession. She is one of at least four boomerang bigots in government right now.) The reason she gave for her resignation was breach of the ministerial code - namely ... well, BUT HER EMAILS (she sent sensitive information to colleagues via her personal email account). Thing is, it’s pretty clear by the tone of her resignation letter that she did so deliberately because she wasn’t happy that no one was helping her live her dreams of sending refugees to a country with a history of crimes against humanity because of being too busy dealing with the collapse of the economy. Seriously, her entire resignation letter was a passive-aggressive “fuck you”. Thing is, this mattered because of how Johnson was forced out of office - when key members of your cabinet start resigning, it’s a death knell.

What’s the 1922 Committee, And How Are They Involved? For our purposes here, the 1922 Committee deals with votes of no confidence in either Prime Minister or Government. If a party in government has no confidence in their leader, or if the MPs in general lose confidence in their government, they send letters to the 1922 Committee demanding a vote of no confidence. If they receive enough letters, they put it to a vote. Winning a vote doesn’t always mean anything - if the margin by which a PM wins is small enough, they might quit anyway owing to lack of mandate (that’s what happened with Thatcher; Johnson had a smaller margin than Thatcher did, but stayed until the mass resignations because the man has a massive sense of entitlement and no shame). Anyway, there are a couple of rules about when you can and cannot send letters to the 1922 Committee about this. By those rules, a PM has to be in office for a reasonable span of time (I think a year?) before they can face a vote of no confidence ... unless the 1922 Committee has been given reason to change the rules. The 1922 Committee was given reason to change the rules not only by the sheer number of letters they were getting, but also Braverman’s resignation - they remember how Johnson was forced out too, after all. That put the writing on the wall for Truss, because the new rules they set were getting her really close to facing a vote of no confidence.

How The Hell Does The Fracking Vote Come In? The fracking vote is complicated. Basically, there are a couple of factions in government who are dedicated to restarting fracking in the UK despite the serious ecological and safety concerns - to the point that they’re basically trying to sabotage land laws to make it nearly impossible to put solar panels on any land that might conceivably, in some far-distant universe, grow a thing. Thing is, the Tory manifesto states that they will not give the go-ahead to recommence fracking in the UK until or unless it is deemed safe by experts. And they did have it looked at by experts! Thing is ... the government won’t show us the results of this. All we have is that Victorian-undertaker-looking motherfucker Jacob Rees-Mogg saying that we could probably survive a few earthquakes, and a statement from the government that fracking is the only way to deal with the energy crisis (see above re: solar panels).This breaks with the Tory manifesto, and is a hard sell with most. And Labour, bless their little cotton socks, put forward a motion to Parliament to ban fracking entirely. This is technically more in line with the Tory manifesto than “Fracking is all that will save us! No, you don’t need to see the safety studies!”, so a fair few Tories would be inclined to vote for this thing. Except that someone close to the PM said, “We’re going to be using this vote to determine whether Liz Truss has a mandate, in the face of all this attention from the 1922 Committee”. And then someone else said, “No, scratch that, it’s just a vote!” And it got all confused but it was pretty clear by the three-line whip that was called for this particular situation that for some reason, this vote was still being seen as Truss’ salvation.

Why Are We Talking About Whips Now? It’s not quite as kinky as it sounds but is honestly more BDSM than it sounds. When you think ‘whip’, literally think like the country’s the carriage, the PM’s the driver, and the MPs are the horses. When something’s put through to the vote in Parliament, the whips from all parties involved (who are actual people in this case) are briefed on exactly how the party should be voting, and they pass that along to the MPs. There are different grades (lines) depending on how serious it’s supposed to be taken - everything from first line “You’re a rebel and we’re keeping an eye on you” to third line “YOU MUST VOTE THIS WAY OR BE BANISHED!” (Literally; anyone rebelling against a third-line whip has to leave the party and sit as an independent.) So calling a third-line whip and telling them to vote in a way that entirely goes against the Tory manifesto because the party said so ... well, honestly, whoever made that decision, it was turned into a test of whether the MPs would put country before party ... and they were expected to put party before country, or face serious consequences.

So What Happened In The Voting Chamber Last Night? It was bedlam. There was yelling. Both chief whip and deputy chief whip briefly resigned. Tory MPs were being bodily dragged into the voting chamber, effectively being forced to vote. I’m not sure what it says that Truss herself was one of the forty who abstained ... probably her way of at least trying to signal that no, it really wasn’t a test of party loyalty, this vote. It didn’t work, anyway. The motion to ban fracking was dismissed because forty abstentions isn’t enough to kill an eighty seat majority in Parliament. Thing is, it didn’t show party loyalty either, just because of the bullying, yelling, and general mishegoss of the vote itself. All it showed was just how fractured the Conservative party has become.

So What Happens Now? As you’ve probably already heard, Liz Truss resigned today, which means she holds the record for shortest term for a Prime Minister. Anyway, she’s going to be in office for as long as it takes them to find a successor.

So That’s Good, Right? Not really. While it took months to vote in a successor for Johnson, they’re getting Truss’ replacement in about a week. This through online voting - same 160k old rich white men that make up the Conservative Party membership, but this time the contenders have to have at least 100 MPs supporting them before they can be considered.

Dare We Ask Who’s Standing? Rishi Sunak is back. So’s Kemi Badenoch, the boomerang bigot and transphobe. So’s Suella Braverman - you know, that one I mentioned just above who deliberately broke the ministerial code and dreams of sending refugees to Rwanda? A couple of dipshits I’ve never heard of. And... Well...

Oh No. Oh yes. Boris fucking Johnson is apparently going to stand again, or is at least “taking soundings” about it. And since he’s this country’s Trump, he actually still has actual people who have been horribly adversely affected by his policies making the #BringBackBoris hashtag trend again.

But Didn’t He Also Breach Ministerial Code? AND HE BROKE THE FUCKING LAW, BUT APPARENTLY NO ONE CARES. He’s being seen as a “big tent leader”. They’re clearly trying to evoke an image of ‘ringmaster’; all anyone with a brain sees is ‘clowns’.

I ... honestly don’t know if this makes any more sense than the headlines do, but I tried. This is as uncomplicated as I can make it. It’s just idiotic. People are screaming for a general election so that we can actually see a manifesto and get some kind of mandate of the people, but the Tories are going to hang on until the Elections Act kicks in properly so that we require voter ID and so that the Elections Commission will be at least partly under their jurisdiction (under their thumb, more like). We get no say in what happens now. AGAIN. All we get is a succession of lapdogs to the exorbitantly wealthy, and they are fucking killing us at this point. This from a country that dragged us out of the EU on “the will of the people” that was decided by the slimmest fucking margin in the universe.

Hope this helps, anyway.

[eaglesnick]

Second-Rate Britain 4

By any stretch of the imagination Britain is far from the most corrupt country in the world. The United Kingdom is the 18th least corrupt nation out of 180 countries, according to the 2022 Corruption Perceptions Index reported by Transparency International. Not too bad you might think, but in 2017 we were rated the 8th least corrupt country in the world. Clearly something has gone wrong.

“Peoples indifference is the best breeding ground for corruption to grow.”  Delia Ferreira Rubio.

Is this the reason the UK is becoming more corrupt and not less? Everyone in the Conservative Party knew Boris Johnson was a serial liar when they elected him as leader in 2019. Most of the general public who voted Tory in the last general election knew he was a serial liar when they elected him Prime Minister.

A majority of the British electorate WERE indifferent to Johnson’s lying, and this has set the tone for UK politics for the last five years. But it was not only the electorate that turned a blind eye to Boris Johnson’s lying.

“Its not just Boris Johnson’s lying. It’s that the media let him get a way with it. The prime minister’s falsehoods are mostly left unchallenged. If this goes on, the integrity of our politics faces collapse." (Guardian 18/10/19)

This is exactly what has happened. Scandal, sleaze and corruption have been the hallmark of Tory government for the last five years.

 In 2019, Johnson unlawfully prorogued Parliament, in an attempt to avoid Parliamentary scrutiny of his Brexit deal

Priti Patel, Home Secretary, was found to have broken the ministerial code during an enquiry into allegations of bullying.

Conservatives were accused of cronyism during the pandemic, issuing billions of pounds worth of contracts to their friends and supporters

In 2020, Johnson’s staff began to break Covid lockdown rules

 Matt Hancock forced to resign for breaking Lockdown rules.

The Partygate scandal broke, with Johnson denying any rules or guidelines had been broken. 

Former Tory Minister, and close friend of Johnson, Owen Paterson was found to be in “egregious breach" of lobbying rules, involving two companies paying him £100,00 per year.

Simon Case, the UK’s most senior civil servant, forced to stand down because he had attended one of the Downing Street lockdown parties he was charged with investigating.

In 2022, The Deputy Chief Whip of the Conservative Party was forced to resign after allegations that he had groped men.  It was reported that Johnson knew of this behaviour but had failed to take action.

Other dubious actions regarding Johnson involved payments around the refurbishment of Johnson’s flat: questions around who paid for his luxury Mustique holiday: an £800.000 loan and the political appointment of Richard Sharp as BBC Director General: a life peerage given to the son of a Russian oligarch despite the security forces telling Johnson it would be a security risk.

The list could go on, as there are many more examples of sleaze and corruption under Johnson’s period as PM.

We all know that his own party eventually forced Johnson out of office as even they had had enough of continuing Johnsonian scandals. The Johnson era culminated in the Parliamentary Privileges Committee investigating whether Johnson had deliberately lied or recklessly misled Parliament over the Partygate Scandal.  This committee has yet to issue its verdict.

It is interesting to note that it was lying to Parliament about partying that was Johnson’s final undoing. All of the other scandals, often involving large sums of money or turning a blind eye to unethical and ministerial code-breaking behaviour, went largely uncensored.

Is Johnson’s downfall a turning point? No, Johnson’s premiership has set the new low standard of behaviour in public office, and we can expect to fall further down the World Corruption Table.

From Sunak’s wife claiming non-dom status to save millions of pounds in UK taxes, to Chancellor Nadhim Zahawi breaching the ministerial code by hiding the fact he was being investigated for tax avoidance, sleaze is still the order of the day. Suella Braverman was forced to resign from one government for breaching the ministerial code only to be reappointed by another. From allegations of bullying by Gavin Williamson (forced to resign) and Rishi Sunak’s right-hand man Dominic Raab (ongoing enquiry), the current Tory administration is besieged by ongoing scandal.

Only  last week

“Former British cabinet ministers Matt Hancock and Kwasi Kwarteng were among the top Tory lawmakers who were duped into offering their services for up to 10,000 pounds by a fake South Korean firm, amidst a row over MPs taking second jobs.” (wionnews:26/03/23)

Some of these actions may not be illegal under UK law, but I would argue many of them are morally corrupt. And as Pope Francis said, ”Corruption is paid by the poor”. While our politicians are either busy feathering their own nests, or defending the privileges they already enjoy, it is ordinary decent people who suffer.

I would like to think that Kirk Cobain's believe that it is "the duty of youth...to challenge corruption" had some traction in the UK but I would be disappointed.

[spacerocksarethebestrocks]

Feel kind of sick reading the news. This should have happened months ago. Years ago. He never should have been given the chance to be prime minister.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a duel Iranian and British citizen, spent years and years in jail in Iran on charges of espionage and propaganda. In 2016, our then foreign secretary Boris Johnson made false statements about her, saying she was a journalist (which she wasn't) and that she was merely teaching journalism (which he wasn't). He made these false statements because he didn't actually know what he was talking about, and was making things up on the spot. Iran used this as evidence in her trial.

Boris Johnson should have been fired then.

Instead he was allowed to continue as foreign secretary, only resigning when it became a part of his plan to become prime minister.

His cabinet is filled with people like this. Corruption scandals, breaking the ministerial code, massive failures due to massive incompetence. They remained in Government, some were even promoted. Matt Hancock resigned after being caught on camera cheating on his wife, not after being found to have given covid-19 associated contracts to his old university friends, several of whom probed to be unable to properly complete these contracts. One of these people was the woman he was seen to be sleeping with.

He resigned because he was caught breaking social distancing laws, not because of the massive corruption.

Priti Patel has been fired for breaking the ministerial code. On more than one occasion, I'm pretty sure. She is now our home secretary.

Rishi Sunak's wife pays no tax on her millions of pounds of income, because it comes from her family. He is our Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Well, not anymore.

There are loads of people, resigning now over Boris Johnson's scandal that broke the camel's back, who should have been fired for their own scandals long ago.

When I say that I feel sick watching the news right now, it's because this should have happened years ago. The fact that it didn't makes me worry about what, and who, is coming next.

[youreamonocoque]

Braverman's back??? Didn't she resign like under a week ago?? For breaking the ministerial code??? Just kill me honestly jesus fucking christ

[useless-englandfacts]

Another point is Boris Johnson changed the ministerial code to say that rulebreakers didn't have to resign which is >:/ incredibly fucked up to say the least. It's not satire what this says (granted it is from the Guardian which is more left-wing but eh).

u can't break the law when u make the law - boris johnson, probably