Senate The UK Politics discussion

No, both are needed - active, successful regions and London. The current bunch have actively been pushing a London vs The North narrative for the last year or so. They overlooked entirely that the city / regional Mayors:

1 - talk to each other and
2 - do so across party lines.

All the current government has is culture wars / divide and rule. Unfortunately, it can be successful.

 

The vast majority of people in London would barely notice. Let me tell you there's a huge difference between having to take a bus across your city and having to travel across the country to see the civil servant who can answer your question and make a decision about it.

See above. Most people who live in the capital are blissfully unaware of what a difference it makes when it comes to contacting the central government.

 

See a civil servant? You think that'll happen?

As far as people are concerned they contact their local council. For Londoners, that'll be their local borough.

Most of the time I can follow what you're getting at but not this time. What you arguing for? What is wanted?

But I suspect it'll come back to something that is within the gift of central government. Guess what? They're not in a giving mood!

 

What am I arguing for? Decision-making, and decision-makers in civil service who are actually an hour's drive away at most of the places their decision-making revolves around, so that they can see - and be made to see - the places they make decisions about.

 

Ok, that helps. I think our disagreement is only over mechanisms, rather than principles. With a side of language / country differences. (Civil service in the UK = central government only, regional / local government officers are not deemed civil servants.)

Practically, that is what local government exists for and it should be both fully empowered and funded to deliver it. Currently? Neither is true.

Central government's greatest flaw is it thinks it can and should control everything from the top down. It doesn't work.

 

Oh yeah, in the middle of a housing crisis, where both house prices and rents are sky-high, let's scrap homebuilding targets.

https://www.theguardian.com/politic...building-targets-after-pressure-from-tory-mps

 

Michelle Mone’s under a bit of scrutiny. Everyone is entitled to a fair and impartial investigation and I hope she gets that. That said, I would be very surprised if these allegations were groundless.

 

I'm just looking forward to the tabloid puns.

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-63891100 - Matt Hancock to stand down at the next election.

 

good

 

Good news, yes, but I think it'll be more satisfying seeing some of them fall by being voted out at the next election.

 

Guaranteed he gets a peerage to join Mone in the Lords.

 

Hopefully he'll get booted out with the rest of them a few years from now with the much anticipated abolition of the House of Lords.

 

So let's remind everyone that we have a government, just before Xmas, that is so high on being a macho bastard that it thinks:

- It can win a pay dispute with the nurses, on strike for the first time in their union's history.

- Whip hatred up against striking ambulance drivers, quite literally driven to do by systenatic dysfunction, engineered by the same government that is resorting to emotional blackmail

- With the same tactics applied to train staff and posties and next junior doctors.

It's sickening just how much they glory in reigning over total dysfunction.

 

This is the Tory's winter of discontent, the only thing we're missing is marches on the street and if we end up with the often rumoured blackouts or continued strikes and cost of living issues carrying into Q1 next year there is a chance that marches could follow.

 

Well, it's not over yet. In a strange way, I relish what is to come. This mangled excuse for a party can only laugh and crow, it has nothing else left as it slowly disintegrates under its own hubris.

 

But we all feel the pain as they do

 

didn't know where to put this :

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-64289461

A Metropolitan Police armed officer who used his role to put fear into his victims has admitted dozens of rape and sexual offences against 12 women. .

he was at it for nearly 20 years .

 

Hating humans one person at a time.

 

Depressingly this is now kind of expected at the MET based on the last umpteen years of mismanagement.

Numerous occurrences where it could and should have been identified and multiple events that raised flags which no one linked

If the leadership had any sense they would have been running a check on all historical allegations and looking for patterns. If they have any sense they should now at least start doing it and showing that they're being proactive.

If they ever want to restore public trust, this is what they have to do to begin the process and even then, they're on for a long trek. They need to show that they're rooting out their own and cleaning house.

Gone Mobile

 

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...-met-police-rape-domestic-abuse-b2262870.html

They have indeed done the investigation and just over 1k have prior allegations.

That's a fair few "bad apples"

Gone Mobile

 

Only a few days back the current commissioner dropped this bombshell:

https://amp.theguardian.com/uk-news...-toxic-officers-who-broke-the-law-mark-rowley

But it should be more than dismissal where criminal offences are in the picture. As usual I find Nazir Afzal to be bang on target: