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Post by ssshrew on Jun 29, 2020 10:13:46 GMT 1
Maybe he is so outstanding they'll put a statue up of Cummings. That would be interesting Now even I would tear that down!
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Post by northwestman on Jun 29, 2020 10:38:49 GMT 1
Mark Sedwill will stand down in September as the UK’s most senior civil servant, as Boris Johnson launches a controversial overhaul of the centre of power in the wake of the coronavirus crisis.
Sir Mark currently serves as cabinet secretary and national security adviser and is leaving both posts, following months of tensions inside Downing Street over the government’s handling of Covid-19. Mr Johnson will split the two roles, which had been combined under Sir Mark.
Sir Mark, who has served as cabinet secretary since 2018 and national security adviser since 2017, has been “unhappy” recently, according to colleagues.
Senior civil servants and permanent secretaries are all saying how toxic the atmosphere has been for the last four or five months
Sir Mark will step down from both roles in September and become a peer.
The exit of Sir Mark, a career diplomat, is part of a wider shake-up of the civil service overseen by the prime minister’s chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, and cabinet office minister Michael Gove.
A Whitehall figure said the shake-up seemed as much about Mr Gove and Mr Cummings ensuring that their “people” were in charge rather than the pursuit of a radical policy agenda: “It’s all about control.”
“Senior civil servants and permanent secretaries are all saying how toxic the atmosphere has been for the last four or five months. Some permanent secretaries are saying ‘I’m not going to stay on and complete my term’,” the official said.
Financial Times.
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Post by ssshrew on Jun 29, 2020 12:16:07 GMT 1
Boris better hope Cummings doesn’t team up with the weasel Gove so that Gove can stab him in the back again!
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Post by northwestman on Jun 29, 2020 12:25:07 GMT 1
Attorney General breaks the rigid convention not to be partisan on prosecutions to support Cummings. The planning process is subverted to help a Tory developer. Now Boris fires the Cabinet Secretary. One check and balance after another out of the window.
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Post by ssshrew on Jun 29, 2020 12:27:14 GMT 1
Ive said it before and I’ll say it again. There is a lot to be worried about over the coming years.
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Post by northwestman on Jun 29, 2020 12:29:54 GMT 1
They are talking about ditching trial by jury too and replacing it with a Judge and 2 Magistrates.
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Post by ssshrew on Jun 29, 2020 13:53:49 GMT 1
Interesting because I thought it part of British law - the right to be tried by your peers? Any change would surely be very controversial and a fundamental change in everything we hold dear.
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Post by northwestman on Jun 29, 2020 15:54:09 GMT 1
Boris better hope Cummings doesn’t team up with the weasel Gove so that Gove can stab him in the back again! A lot of people forget that Cummings worked for Gove when Gove was Secretary of State for Education. They both have form.
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Post by staffordshrew on Jun 29, 2020 15:58:10 GMT 1
Something strange about Cummings politics, he just doesn't seem very .... conservative?
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Post by northwestman on Jun 30, 2020 14:13:53 GMT 1
Dominic Cummings, the prime minister’s senior adviser, favours creative destruction but he often seems to be keener on demolition than the more difficult task of rebuilding. Having threatened to “whack” the BBC, “get the judges sorted”, and gone to war with the education establishment “blob”, he is now turning his attention to Whitehall. Just days after Mr Cummings warned that a “hard rain is coming” for the civil service, Sir Mark Sedwill is on the way out as cabinet secretary and national security adviser.
A friend of the country’s most senior civil servant says he will be relieved to leave behind a dysfunctional and divisive Downing Street. “He’s fed up with them,” the ally told me. “There’s only so much you can put up with and the way they operate is appalling.” But Sir Mark’s departure is part of a pattern in which Sir Philip Rutnam has resigned from the Home Office and Sir Simon McDonald has been eased out of the Foreign Office, prompting concerns about the politicisation of the civil service. “What they’re doing with Mark demonstrates that unless you are ‘one of us’ and think the right way they will treat you nastily,” says one Whitehall grandee.
The latest stand-off can be partly explained by the fact that a pandemic blame game is already under way. Downing Street wants to pin responsibility on the civil service but officials know what mistakes have also been made by ministers and political advisers.
The Times.
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Post by staffordshrew on Apr 24, 2021 9:57:14 GMT 1
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Post by Worthingshrew on Apr 24, 2021 11:56:52 GMT 1
Well I agree with you, and pot and kettle comes to mind! However I hope Cummings has many more bombshells to drop over the coming days. The saddest thing is that many people in the country don’t seem to care about honesty and integrity.
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Post by SeanBroseley on Apr 26, 2021 3:58:30 GMT 1
People will overlook impropriety and even clear corruption if it is by someone whose politics they agree with.
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Post by Exkeeper on Apr 26, 2021 6:43:08 GMT 1
People will overlook impropriety and even clear corruption if it is by someone whose politics they agree with. For a while, but Trump discovered that there comes a time when lies and corruption turn people off you.
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Post by stuttgartershrew on Apr 26, 2021 8:17:28 GMT 1
"Guess who's back, back again..."I've not been able to get that song out of my head these last few days. You suspect this going to be a tad uncomfortable for Johnson these next few weeks. Just get the impression that Cummings will throw one or two things out there that were said, Number 10 will deny this and then Cummings will produce a recording or an email or a text message or whatever to try and cause as much damage as possible. We have to remember, Cummings is no Tory so party loyalty won't play a part here. Could well be a drip, drip approach over the next week or so to reel him in. We wait and see.
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Post by ssshrew on Apr 26, 2021 8:21:06 GMT 1
As I’ve written in the Covid thread, I find the notion of the words Cummings and integrity in the same sentence hilarious. He obviously doesn’t do irony.
They all as bad as each other. There’s nothing to choose between them.
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Post by staffordshrew on Apr 26, 2021 8:22:39 GMT 1
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Post by SeanBroseley on Apr 26, 2021 11:19:25 GMT 1
It's one liar's word against another. The more interesting question is why are Murdoch and the Daily Mail so interested in undermining Johnson?
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Post by SeanBroseley on Apr 26, 2021 11:25:47 GMT 1
People will overlook impropriety and even clear corruption if it is by someone whose politics they agree with. For a while, but Trump discovered that there comes a time when lies and corruption turn people off you. I think the Biden voctory in key states was down to incredible voter registartion and Get Out The Vote operations in key states especially. And not just over a few months but during the years of the Trump Presodency. And they needed to do it because the number of people who voted Trump increased too. This is why I am not sanguine about outcomes over a timescale of 5-10 years in this country. The revelations in theDaily Mail today suggest that Johnson was happy to kill his core vote to protect the economic interests he is bankrolled to represent. Next poll result: Conservative +2 Almost guaranteed.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 26, 2021 11:29:28 GMT 1
I saw one interesting view this morning, Boris is in a difficult position, he can come out swinging and say the whole thing is nonsense and Cummings is lying, the problem being Cummings was appointed by Boris, was at the heart of government and Boris stood by him last summer. That certainly doesn't reflect well on him, even if it just reinforces many peoples views
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Post by Feedo Gnasher on Apr 26, 2021 11:56:01 GMT 1
Really hard to get my interest in this, not because it doesn’t matter but because morally and ethically the governments standards have been dragged so low that this all just feels like business as usual. And the party remain as popular as ever in the polls.
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Post by martinshrew on Apr 26, 2021 12:02:27 GMT 1
I saw one interesting view this morning, Boris is in a difficult position, he can come out swinging and say the whole thing is nonsense and Cummings is lying, the problem being Cummings was appointed by Boris, was at the heart of government and Boris stood by him last summer. That certainly doesn't reflect well on him, even if it just reinforces many peoples views Everyone is coming out saying it's nonsense.
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Post by staffordshrew on Apr 26, 2021 12:31:20 GMT 1
I saw one interesting view this morning, Boris is in a difficult position, he can come out swinging and say the whole thing is nonsense and Cummings is lying, the problem being Cummings was appointed by Boris, was at the heart of government and Boris stood by him last summer. That certainly doesn't reflect well on him, even if it just reinforces many peoples views Everyone is coming out saying it's nonsense. Are you?
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Post by stuttgartershrew on Apr 26, 2021 12:44:04 GMT 1
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Post by Deleted on Apr 26, 2021 13:01:31 GMT 1
It's almost comical now, well to be honest this made me laugh
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Post by martinshrew on Apr 26, 2021 13:02:48 GMT 1
Shows they're getting it right in the main when people are that desperate the gossip pages are getting attention.
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Post by stuttgartershrew on Apr 26, 2021 13:17:26 GMT 1
Shows they're getting it right in the main when people are that desperate the gossip pages are getting attention. Bit of a mess though. Although to be fair I suppose if no one has an actual recording of what was said it might just end up as someone's word against another's and that'll be it. But he may well have said it, he may not have, he might have said something that sounded like he had. Who knows. And of course if he did say it, it might well have been in a fit of anger and I don't think too many will take him on his word considering the UK did, in fact, lockdown.
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Post by stuttgartershrew on Apr 26, 2021 13:27:28 GMT 1
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Post by mattmw on Apr 26, 2021 13:32:20 GMT 1
It's one liar's word against another. The more interesting question is why are Murdoch and the Daily Mail so interested in undermining Johnson? I think Johnson has served his purpose now and "got Brexit done" and with his bluster provided a nice alternative to May's Leadership. More than an other party the Conservatives know when to change leadership and Johnson might be popular with the man on the street but for most MP's and Councillors he's never been massively respected and I think it highly unlikely that Johnson will lead them into the next election, and a new leader will be in place within a few years. Im not sure Johnson has enjoyed being PM as much as he thought - obviously Covid has an impact - but the day to day boring stuff of Government isn't for him and if a nice "out" can be found which sees him bow out and get back to writing and after diner speaking and he'll be fine.
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Post by Exkeeper on Apr 26, 2021 14:04:11 GMT 1
Shows they're getting it right in the main when people are that desperate the gossip pages are getting attention. Bit of a mess though. Although to be fair I suppose if no one has an actual recording of what was said it might just end up as someone's word against another's and that'll be it. But he may well have said it, he may not have, he might have said something that sounded like he had. Who knows. And of course if he did say it, it might well have been in a fit of anger and I don't think too many will take him on his word considering the UK did, in fact, lockdown. Ah but, Crafty Mr Cummings has announced that he has audio recordings to back up his claims about the mismanagement of the pandemic as well as fiddling the upgrade of BiJo’s flat. Much like Trump’s “blind” followers, our clown seems to have a similar cult, including some on here. I wonder how they would react if this had been Corbyn? I do not expect a truthful answer to that question.
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