Boris has it seems received money from a Lord (and friend) to redecorate the flat above No. 11 Downing Street, and has hired Lulu Lyttle (sp?), an "a la mode" decorator to refurbish not just the walls but the furniture, cushions etc etc. At a cost of roughly 115 thousand pounds. 800 pounds a roll for the wallpaper!! It was a murmur of an issue up until this week when it LOOKS via a "buried/forgotten" email that the Lord was supposed to set up a trust for such things, even thought PM's get 30,000 pounds ANNUALLY to spend on the flat (!) but when Boris asked for more money, he hadn't yet done so, so he was the only decision maker...and also asked that Boris pursue his idea of a Great Exhibition (no doubt he would have made a tidy profit ). Cash for favours. Or more directly, corruption? and the sad thing is, Boris will get away with it. Again. Let's hope it is only temporarily and that the public's memory isn't too short. and the decoration is soon removed. Only a clown would like it. Not a serious politician. Once again Boris is emphasising the division between himself and his friends, and the voters who elected him on the slogan about levelling up. I can only gasp at the chasm between what he says and what he assumes he can do. and that no one will either notice or care.
It's unethical. But it commonly happens. Reciprocity of little favors. In old parlance it was referred to as an "old boys club". I'm not sure I would go quite so far as to say it constitutes blatant corruption. The line between "very probably unethical" versus "criminally corrupt" is not such a clear one.
I think you mean politicians will be allowed to get away with it....its not just Boris.....they're all at it......Labour....Tories.....all of them.... People...Governments....they all come and go but they all like to get as much out of it as they can.....mind you they aren't paid much so.....maybe they should just keep snouting around in the tax trough... Who cares
Of course you are right...and one person's line is not necessarily another's. I guess we can only rely on the general opinion of where that line is and what political fallout happens from it. However IMO this behaviour has been a pattern in Bozo's government and the people are I suggest, in no mood for joining in with the frivolity. If you listen to public opinion say through LBC, there is a palpable seething against the antics of the UK government.
Think of it this way. If those who are voting for Boris are giving him a score out of 1000, something like this might only take away 1 point from that score. There are other much bigger things. Yes, sure, if someone was on the edge between voting for two candidates and had trouble making up their mind, enough little things like this might push them over the edge to vote for the other candidate.
From what I hear, the faultlines in the curent government's behaviour have been widened by Lord Frost (unelected Big Man or the Tory party) have widened into whether the government is really Tory, which is defined as low taxation and low state spending and higher productivity. This has IMO become an interesting question...can Tory ideology weather serious challenges such as a pandemic and still keep taxes down, minimum state interference etc etc? Or is state coordinated cooperation the best way to handle emergencies.
Just my personal perspective, but the Tory party (UK's political Right) seems to be the equivalent of the Moderate faction of the US's Democrat party (on the political Left in the US). I doubt Churchill or even Margaret Thatcher would even recognize the Tory party today. If there's anything conservative about it, it's extremely watered down.
I agree...this is the oddest Tory party perhaps in living memory. However some would say the reversals of "business as usual" has been the "correct response" to Covid...which makes me wonder if the Labour Party would not have done a better job and stuck to its principles. At least the chances of an honest government would have been IMO greater.
By today's standards, absolutely. And it is disappointing to see this UK government creating more and more cynicism as it is found to be less and less honest. As a side issue, I was astounded to hear JRM describe a Scottish minister as unimportant (sic). Does he not remember that Scotland is still of a mind to threaten the UNITED Kingdom??
....I don't know how old you are but I'm pushing up to 60 and today's fiasco is just one of a long line of crap perpetrated by all parties....does Johnson need to go....yes I'm sure he probably does. To me trying to make this just a Tory issue kindda misses a wider problem in that we tend to accept a lower standard of probity by our MP's and get all uppity when we're told about it as if we didn't realise it. These parties took place in 2020 and I'm sure beyond doubt that this was no secret and known to many in the Westminster village, the media, office staff, caters, cleaners, rat catchers, drivers even the police they'd have seen it on CCTV so why is this all coming out now...? What is the political dynamic that makes this the most opportune moment for these parties to become a news item when they happened ages ago? As I said I don't care anymore.....really couldn't give a shyte....if Johnson goes then we get another wanker....and so on.....at least this one hasn't led us into a war by lying to the people.... I'm convinced that we could remedy the whole political system with one simple sentence on the ballot sheet.....none of the above..... a lightweight........och aye....he probably is......but I kindda like JRM....
I have a lot of sympathy for your position but I personally can't dismiss national leaders quite so totally. Perhaps because I can't quite dismiss the awareness of the public so categorically. If you look to Boris' history, and many observers did before the election in 2019, it wasn't hard to see a continuous line of mendacity designed to assure his OWN success. I could mention Brexit but that will take us into endless off topic discussion but I do see it as an example that no one at the time anted to acknowledge, for whatever reason. But his campaign was FULL of lies and deceptions and circus antics which, since he saw they worked, he continued and even elaborated on. IMO to find that NO 10 is the workplace of juvenile partygoers who think nothing of thumbing their nose at the populace, even on the eve of the funeral of Prince Philip, and I hear the limp excuses, even to JRM suggesting the rules were too draconian, astonishing. What has the UK population voted for??? ISTM it voted for good times, frivolity and children, from top down. IMO it must be time for the UK to "wise up" and take serious life more seriously...value dignity and honesty far more highly, and recognise that they are the SERVANTS of the people, not their entertainers.
.....I know what you mean....the "awareness" of the people is based on news cycles....that tennis lad being chucked out of Australia got more coverage today than covid parties in London.... yeah but that takes a modicum of though and intelligence ...trouble is people have forgotten how to discern fact from fiction...how to nuance reality from fantasy...most people are just useful idiots and get pretty much what they deserve; not bothering to go further than their twitface accounts gobbling up shyte from people with agendas......point being the people got what they wanted because they couldn't be arsed to think beyond their phucking hashtags...... ......which is my point.....he made it whimsical and comical so....people ate it up......now that the hubris is wearing a tad thin and the people that insulted him are getting a bit wobbly round the edges the cracks are appearing.....will he go.....not in a thousand years coz Bojo doesn't do rules....and too many new MPs want to keep their jobs
I agree with most of what you say. However I do think that there may be enough MP's who are asking themselves whether Boris will be good or bad for their own political careers and for the party to stay in power. I have been noticing the lack of ability of the general UK public to fully assess facts OTHER than those the press prints in the largest typeface and repeats the most often. Though I have to say there is quite a lot of analysis done by TV news stars such as Laura Kuenssberg (carefully factual but is moving to a less restricted source) and Robert Peston (albeit late at night). As you say, social media has become the home delivery service for fast food/news and the quality is seriously unimpressive. You don't even have to get out of your chair/make an effort to think, to consume it.
...yeah I quite like Robert...sometimes he goes a bit over the top and comes off as just smug and basically disagreeable....anyway....remember the days on the today program when it was almost impossible to listen to him....glad they sorted his speech out bless im'
TBH I find it surprising that the government of the United Kingdom is crumbling to the degree that the Prime Minister will probably be replaced due to corruption and overt breaking of rules about lockdown that THEY made, and the American audience here never mention it. I am not sure if I find that surprising...or not.
.....I think for Americans they would find it less than normal after having had that total monger Trump for 4 years....I mean....Johnson is a lightweight compared to that numpty
They do say that Johnson is Trump's little brother. Happily both have been found out and hopefully more normal levels of state responsibility will be resumed.
I am sincerely sorry to have to agree with you on that. Until the people of the UK were deeply insulted by the clear gulf between their own covid compliance and No 10's, no one seemed to care about morality. In fact they thought it was amusing and endearing. Dignity, honesty and responsibility were boring. I can only hope (not assume) that this wake up call is enough to remind the British public what leadership is. It may be boring but it is not insulting.
