Senate The UK Politics discussion

He needs something to make him feel like he's a fighting chance; the politics of envy and paranoid suspicion aren't really aiding him at all.

 

I've seen V-2 say it before. A crappy argument from an otherwise smart guy, "it's just a Star Wars message board". Yeah? It's also just your life, man.

 

Some people don't like having their position, usually formed through slit-eyed suspicion at the wicked motives of Person X or Company Y, doused with a bucket of cold practicality. Case in point; "The CEO covered up." Response - wrong. I report to boards; this is how board structures work. HSBC has a part-independent board who represent shareholders, not management. There's no way the CEO was told in a minuted meeting with people who don't owe him anything and who can sack him that HSBC was engaging in wholesale avoidance for clients.

"Glib remark, sarcastic indifference!"

Yes yes, you go ahead and sulk.

 

Did the CEO cover anything up? Well it depends who, what, and when:
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/feb/11/hsbc-files-timeline-from-swiss-bank-leak-to-fallout
It's an interesting question. It seems a lot is still unclear.
But I only really wanted to remark on the "it's just a Star Wars message board" fallacy.

 

I report to four boards at the moment, all of them legal entities within the wider Group structure. One has a wholly independent board; two have a mix of independent and executive directors, and one is wholly executive directors.

I am a compliance manager, so my work is independent from the business functions aligned to these boards.

With the exception of the latter, which is an exception only by virtue of having responsible people (RP) of the entity on its board (who are closer to business activity) the rest would have no way of knowing if an issue existed if it wasn't reported to them. Part of the reason I'm independent from the business is I can't be pressured into keeping quiet; I have access to monitor activity and a duty to report.

I read the HSBC situation as being one where Line One and Line Two compliance were probably not centralised and was a business unit activity, which cripples its effectiveness. Line Three compliance, which is internal audit, I can't comment on but generally they will audit by requesting samples of data to test. Samples-based audit testing has its limitations, as you can imagine.

For more on three lines of defence compliance, you can see what KPMG have to say about it.

Again, though, we have to be clear: that the CEO knew or didn't know is entirely separate conceptually and practically as to whether the CEO is responsible. CEOs pick a management team of people based on, in part, trust in their judgement. Lapses in this judgement still affect the CEO.

 

I wasn't trying to attack the forum, just Ender's pedantry, his white knighting of international banking corruption, and need to be respected as the intelligent right thinking man he presents himself as. I suppose it's not as fun for everyone else, so I'll try to lay off him. A bit.

 

No personal remarks, please.

 

So will Ed repeat his "dodgy" allegations against Lord Fink outside Parliament and get himself sued? I hear he's due to say something at noon!

 

Doubt it.

From what I've read, Fink didn't actually have to pay tax and everything was above board.

 

New MORI poll out this morning has:

Con 34% Lab 36% Lib-Dem 6%!!!!!!!! UKIP 9% Green 7%

Apparently this is the lowest the Lib-Dems have been with MORI for 25 years and the Lib-Dems are even behind the combined SNP/Plaid vote!

Clocks really ticking now for the Lib's to avoid total oblivion.

 

[double post]

 

LD's deserve it for breaking the Bush Snr rule: never make big public election promises, then break them.

Voters will never, ever forgive you.

 

The better lesson to learn is never enter coalition with the Conservatives. Every single government breaks their big election promises.

 

What should the Lib-Dems have done in May 2010?

Bearing in mind the nation gave the politicians a result of:

Con 306 seats. Lab 258 seats. Lib-Dem 57 seats.

A coalition with Labour wasn't possible given that they lost more seats than at any election since 1930 and the Lib-Lab combined seats wouldn't have reached a majority in the HOC anyway.

The only viable outcome from the election was a Con-Lib government.

I suppose the Lib's could have gone into a "confidence and supply" arrangement but at that time it wasn't in anybody's interest's to have a government that could fall at any moment.. We needed a stable government and overall the Coalition has proved a pretty effective, stable government government I think.

What's interesting is that even though it's a coalition of two parties it hasn't really suffered from a lot of the neurosis' of many majority administrations in my life (Major 92-97 and Blair/Brown 97-10).

From the appalling mess we was in back in 2010 things have turned out MUCH better than I was expecting. Personally I'm sorry the Lib-Dems are being punished for entering into government with the Tories. If I was in a seat where a Lib-Dem MP was a possibility I would be happy to vote Yellow, LOL! Unfortunately I'm in one of the safest Con seats in the country!

 

Not really understanding the glee about LD's downfall. Even if you don't support the party, it's good to have them. The more parties the merrier. Isn't it wonderful that these days four parties are always mentioned whenever polls come out? Would you want to go back to just two major parties? Or worse - two and UKIP?

 

I didn't actually once white knight banking corruption. I would like to know if you genuinely think this or it's your passive-aggressive baiting at work. Saying, several times, the CEO is responsible but would not have known; and that HSBC failed the compliance test, is to a reasonable mind a condemnation of their practices.

If you can't provide an actual example, then it's baiting. If you don't understand the mechanics of what we're talking about, just say so.

 

The LIb-Dems have actually done really quite well out of the coalition in policy terms. They have lifted low income earners out of tax for example. Clegg even managed to get his free school meals policy past Gove.

Anyway, here's an opinion piece you don't read every day - In praise of Ed Miliband:

http://www.spectator.co.uk/features...s-failed-they-hate-him-for-how-hes-succeeded/

 

When there's a coalition government, what does the minority party to the coalition get besides some ministries?

 

They get some of their policies implemented and they get a say on the polices of the majority party. That's a pretty big deal, especially when the minority party hasn't had a sniff of power for 70 years!

 

G-FETT, I just wrote a long reply but my browser ate it, somehow. I have no idea what I pressed, but most of my reply vanished and ctrl-z only affected things I'd written before the text vanished. Weird.

Take it as read that I've pained over these bullet points and that they were at some point relevant:

I mostly agree.
It would seem odd that the public hold the libdems to higher moral standards than the Nasty Party if you ignored how embedded the Conservatives are in the mainstream media, how the media have treated the libdems in the past, and how embedded the tories are in the political bureaucracy.
I'm not the best a mathematician but it looks like None Of The Above won with roughly 15.9m non-votes, followed by Conservative with 10.7m, Labour's 8.6m and LD's 6.8m... Don't trust my numbers, I'm practically innumerate, but that seems to be the general shape of the result. The nation didn't give the results you quote, the political institution did.
In hindsight, perhaps it would have been better to let the government fail in 2010 (as it may have been better to let the banks fail in 2008).

 

I assume this is during question time.



I wonder if they coordinate their ties?