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Post by stuttgartershrew on Nov 4, 2021 18:00:30 GMT 1
I do think it would be better to increase their wage somewhat and then just tell them that that's it whilst you are an MP, no second jobs.
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Post by SeanBroseley on Nov 6, 2021 18:02:32 GMT 1
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Post by Worthingshrew on Nov 6, 2021 19:09:49 GMT 1
I do think it would be better to increase their wage somewhat and then just tell them that that's it whilst you are an MP, no second jobs. I agree 100%. There’s more than enough for a proper MP to do for it to be full time. They could even attend some of the debates in the Commons. It’s argued that MPs continuing to work keeps them in touch with the world of business, but they should do that by visiting businesses in their constituencies.
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Post by northwestman on Nov 6, 2021 19:48:29 GMT 1
No surprise here. The allocation of PPE contracts is in need of forensic investigation.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 6, 2021 19:51:21 GMT 1
I think it’s a good idea to increase universal credit and tell them no more food banks.
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Post by northwestman on Nov 7, 2021 10:27:51 GMT 1
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10172739/Tory-donors-pay-3-million-seats-Lords.htmlThe Conservative Party has been accused of guaranteeing peerages to a group of multi-millionaires who have donated more than £3 million to the party. Wealthy backers who take on the temporary role of party treasurer appear to be offered a seat in the House of Lords once they have donated the set figure. All 16 of the Conservatives' main treasurers, excluding the most recent, were offered a seat in the Lords in the past two decades including Peter Cruddas, Lord Spencer, Lord Fraser, Lord Lupton and Lord Farmer.
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Post by zenfootball2 on Nov 7, 2021 10:49:36 GMT 1
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10172739/Tory-donors-pay-3-million-seats-Lords.htmlThe Conservative Party has been accused of guaranteeing peerages to a group of multi-millionaires who have donated more than £3 million to the party. Wealthy backers who take on the temporary role of party treasurer appear to be offered a seat in the House of Lords once they have donated the set figure. All 16 of the Conservatives' main treasurers, excluding the most recent, were offered a seat in the Lords in the past two decades including Peter Cruddas, Lord Spencer, Lord Fraser, Lord Lupton and Lord Farmer. hardly a suprise as we have leader who should have sleaze as his middle name
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Post by staffordshrew on Nov 7, 2021 11:04:56 GMT 1
I do think it would be better to increase their wage somewhat and then just tell them that that's it whilst you are an MP, no second jobs. Good idea. Unfortunately the devious will find a way around it. A holiday at a luxery appartment? A directorship when you retire as an MP? Sponsor your wife's horse race? Cash for questions?
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Post by frankwellshrews on Nov 8, 2021 9:19:47 GMT 1
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Post by northwestman on Nov 8, 2021 10:24:00 GMT 1
Boris was playing the long game in attacking Stone and the Standards Committee. Sooner or later, the issue of the awarding of PPE contracts is going to be investigated.
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Post by northwestman on Nov 8, 2021 10:28:31 GMT 1
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Post by northwestman on Nov 8, 2021 11:13:29 GMT 1
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10175591/Tory-peer-Lord-Bethell-changes-story-90m-Covid-contracts.htmlA former health minister has admitted he deleted text and WhatsApp messages about Covid testing contracts from his phone because he wrongly believed there would be back-up copies. Lord Bethell also said three apparently contradictory explanations he gave to government lawyers as to why the messages could not be produced were all mistaken because they related to a phone he stopped using before the pandemic began. He set out the account in a witness statement for a High Court hearing over a legal challenge relating to deals for Covid tests worth £87.5million. Lord Bethell, who was sacked in last month’s reshuffle, is said to have used his private email address thousands of times in relation to official business. Official guidance says ministers should use Whitehall systems to conduct government business, and if they do not, should ensure they copy private emails and other communications to departmental computers so a full record is preserved. The use of private emails to conduct official business is being investigated by information commissioner Elizabeth Denham. The controversy over Lord Bethell’s phone emerged in August, when letters from the Government’s legal department said that after he confirmed he had sent the texts and messages relating to the deal from his phone, he first said he could not produce them because the handset had been ‘lost’. A few days later, Lord Bethell said instead his phone was ‘broken’ or ‘defective’. Finally, in a meeting with the lawyers, he said that too was wrong, and he had given the phone to a member of his family. But now his signed witness statement says he realises that he bought a new phone in November 2019, which he still uses. It comes after it emerged that scandal-hit Owen Paterson, who was forced to stand down as a Tory MP last week, had contact with Lord Bethell at the start of the pandemic. Mr Paterson was party to a call with Lord Bethell and health firm Randox in April last year, shortly after the company won its first contract to provide Covid tests. Government sources said at the time it was merely a ‘courtesy call’. Last autumn Randox was awarded a £347million contract for Covid testing services. A recent sleaze inquiry looking at Mr Paterson’s paid consultancy work for Randox did not consider this contact with Lord Bethell.
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Post by staffordshrew on Nov 8, 2021 11:41:21 GMT 1
"Official guidance says ministers should use Whitehall systems to conduct government business, and if they do not, should ensure they copy private emails and other communications to departmental computers so a full record is preserved".
The key to keeping your integrity. If there is no official record you can find yourself suspected of all sorts. True or not.
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Post by northwestman on Nov 8, 2021 11:42:24 GMT 1
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6661513/Climate-Change-chief-John-Gummer-faces-calls-quit-payments-green-businesses.htmlTory peer John Selwyn Gummer's private company has been paid more than £600,000 from 'green' businesses that stand to make millions from his advice to Ministers. The Conservative grandee heads the Government's powerful Climate Change Committee that vigorously supports pumping billions of pounds in public subsidies into firms developing environmentally friendly technology. Yet a Mail on Sunday investigation has discovered that his family-run consultancy has been paid huge sums by businesses that have cashed in on those lucrative taxpayer-funded handouts. MPs say Gummer should have declared the payments – but he never has. Sancroft International has been paid by at least nine businesses and campaign groups involved in projects to cut greenhouse gases. That is the main aim of the committee 79-year-old Gummer leads – although policies it champions have been criticised for forcing up taxes and household energy bills. Among the dossier's contents, we can reveal that: Engineering giant Johnson Matthey, which makes batteries for electric cars, paid Gummer's firm nearly £300,000 over five years before he personally urged the Government to speed up plans to make all new cars on Britain's roads battery-powered; Venture capitalists Temporis Capital – whose profits from windfarms and solar energy projects are bolstered by huge Government subsidies – paid the company £50,000 between 2012 and 2017; Controversial green energy producer Drax, which gets £700 million a year in Government subsidies, paid Sancroft £15,500 while the Climate Change Committee was writing a report on its activities. The Committee on Climate Change, established by the 2008 Climate Change Act, is a supposedly independent quango which advises the Government on how to achieve Britain's target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 80 per cent by 2050. Chaired by Gummer since 2012, it has urged Ministers to fund vast subsidies paid to 'renewable' energy companies. The cost is met by adding 'green' levies to household and industry fuel bills, currently totalling £8.6 billion a year. The CCC supports green taxes that feed the coffers of renewable energy firms. It has also argued in favour of a new carbon tax – a move that would benefit the companies paying Sancroft International. He has always declared the fact that he owns and chairs Sancroft to both the House of Lords register and the CCC – but has never identified its clients. This article is a couple of years old, but certainly still has some relevance both to sleaze and COP26. That said, he was cleared by the House of Lords Commissioner for Standards. www.politicshome.com/news/article/tory-peer-john-gummer-cleared-of-alleged-failure-to-declare-green-payments
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Post by northwestman on Nov 8, 2021 12:07:06 GMT 1
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Post by northwestman on Nov 8, 2021 13:18:36 GMT 1
Prime minister Boris Johnson will miss today’s debate on sleaze in the House of Commons because he is visiting a hospital in the northeast, Downing Street has said.
What more needs to be said? A visit to a hospital and yet another photo call takes priority over a debate on sleaze.
Let's hope someone other than the senior management of the hospital gets close enough to vent their feelings to him in front of a camera. Somehow I doubt it.
I certainly shall do so if he visits Ellesmere during the by election.
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Post by northwestman on Nov 8, 2021 16:43:45 GMT 1
So it's OK to take a private flight to have dinner with Charles Moore at the Garrick (and not a small business jet - a 200 seater Airbus A321)? But not to face the Commons and by extension us, the public, over the most egregious example of sleaze in recent years, and your attempt to dismantle the system that could hold you to account? Find that man a fridge, quickly !
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Post by northwestman on Nov 9, 2021 8:47:44 GMT 1
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10179601/Former-attorney-general-Geoffrey-Cox-second-job-saw-vote-remotely-Caribbean.htmlA Tory MP has earned hundreds of thousands of pounds from a second job that saw him vote in Parliament remotely from the Caribbean. Geoffrey Cox, a QC and former attorney general, is advising the government of the British Virgin Islands, a tax haven accused of corruption. A Whitehall insider said: ‘While he should have been in the UK working for his constituents he’s been over in the British Virgin Islands doing his second job working as a barrister and advising those accused of trousering cash for their mates.’ A senior Whitehall source accused Sir Geoffrey of ‘pocketing hundreds of thousands of pounds to help stop the exposure of corruption in a Caribbean paradise’. At the time, coronavirus restrictions meant MPs could participate in Commons debates via Zoom and vote by a proxy – meaning they did not have to come to Westminster.
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Post by The Shropshire Tenor on Nov 9, 2021 10:04:58 GMT 1
I was astonished to read that Chris Grayling is being paid £100k a year as a consultant. Talk about failing upwards!
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Post by northwestman on Nov 9, 2021 10:24:46 GMT 1
"Corrupt politicians make the other 10% look bad".
Henry Kissinger.
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Post by zenfootball2 on Nov 9, 2021 14:03:16 GMT 1
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6661513/Climate-Change-chief-John-Gummer-faces-calls-quit-payments-green-businesses.htmlTory peer John Selwyn Gummer's private company has been paid more than £600,000 from 'green' businesses that stand to make millions from his advice to Ministers. The Conservative grandee heads the Government's powerful Climate Change Committee that vigorously supports pumping billions of pounds in public subsidies into firms developing environmentally friendly technology. Yet a Mail on Sunday investigation has discovered that his family-run consultancy has been paid huge sums by businesses that have cashed in on those lucrative taxpayer-funded handouts. MPs say Gummer should have declared the payments – but he never has. Sancroft International has been paid by at least nine businesses and campaign groups involved in projects to cut greenhouse gases. That is the main aim of the committee 79-year-old Gummer leads – although policies it champions have been criticised for forcing up taxes and household energy bills. Among the dossier's contents, we can reveal that: Engineering giant Johnson Matthey, which makes batteries for electric cars, paid Gummer's firm nearly £300,000 over five years before he personally urged the Government to speed up plans to make all new cars on Britain's roads battery-powered; Venture capitalists Temporis Capital – whose profits from windfarms and solar energy projects are bolstered by huge Government subsidies – paid the company £50,000 between 2012 and 2017; Controversial green energy producer Drax, which gets £700 million a year in Government subsidies, paid Sancroft £15,500 while the Climate Change Committee was writing a report on its activities. The Committee on Climate Change, established by the 2008 Climate Change Act, is a supposedly independent quango which advises the Government on how to achieve Britain's target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 80 per cent by 2050. Chaired by Gummer since 2012, it has urged Ministers to fund vast subsidies paid to 'renewable' energy companies. The cost is met by adding 'green' levies to household and industry fuel bills, currently totalling £8.6 billion a year. The CCC supports green taxes that feed the coffers of renewable energy firms. It has also argued in favour of a new carbon tax – a move that would benefit the companies paying Sancroft International. He has always declared the fact that he owns and chairs Sancroft to both the House of Lords register and the CCC – but has never identified its clients. This article is a couple of years old, but certainly still has some relevance both to sleaze and COP26. That said, he was cleared by the House of Lords Commissioner for Standards. www.politicshome.com/news/article/tory-peer-john-gummer-cleared-of-alleged-failure-to-declare-green-payments talk about a conflict of intrest sleaze sleaze and yet more sleaze
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Post by zenfootball2 on Nov 9, 2021 14:04:49 GMT 1
Prime minister Boris Johnson will miss today’s debate on sleaze in the House of Commons because he is visiting a hospital in the northeast, Downing Street has said. What more needs to be said? A visit to a hospital and yet another photo call takes priority over a debate on sleaze. Let's hope someone other than the senior management of the hospital gets close enough to vent their feelings to him in front of a camera. Somehow I doubt it. I certainly shall do so if he visits Ellesmere during the by election. his contempt for parliment and the electorate knows no limit,
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Post by northwestman on Nov 9, 2021 17:50:44 GMT 1
Parliamentary Standards Debate.
1 in 8 Conservatives turned up.
9 in 10 Opposition MPs did.
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Post by northwestman on Nov 9, 2021 17:56:22 GMT 1
This is quite something. Two different backbench Tory MPs tell me they have been approached by whips in the last 24 hours to tell them the Chief, Mark Spencer, was NOT the instigator of last week's disastrous motion, but he was following direct orders from the PM. It means government whips have (officially or not) begun actively briefing against No10. Sources close to Spencer emphatically deny he sanctioned this. Govt source: “It was a Government decision. It’s a team game, we stand or fall together”.
Tom Newton Dunn
Chief Political Commentator at Times Radio. Columnist at Evening Standard.
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Post by SeanBroseley on Nov 9, 2021 20:06:57 GMT 1
Nice to see the LOTO has a leg to stand on
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Post by kenwood on Nov 9, 2021 23:45:17 GMT 1
I see that Boris could have made the House to face questions about the standards committee and Paterson , he was photographed in London and was certainly not up North attending a prior appointment . He’s so blatantly lying now , he just couldn’t care a toss. Meanwhile our Geoff , Geoffrey Cox MP , can’t be bothered to attend his constituency office as he’s living it up making loads of dosh working in the British Virgin Islands . Fill your buckets lads , it’s a feeding frenzy says Boris .
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Post by Deleted on Nov 10, 2021 7:51:01 GMT 1
Nice to see the LOTO has a leg to stand on This is true, but wasn’t it stopped by Jeremy Corbyn? Imagine that kind of leadership and discipline in a prime minister👍
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Post by staffordshrew on Nov 10, 2021 8:53:37 GMT 1
Have Sky decided that no MP should have a second job? I thought the step too far was when you used your position as an MP to lobby for a company paying you lots of money when you don't really seem to in pocession of a skill that would merit earning big wages in that field?
If you are the party in government then surely you need to be even "cleaner". If you are a minister then you already have a "second job" MP and minister - probably even less hours in the day to have any outside jobs.
There are some MPs who need to keep their skill levels up, like pilots. There are some MPs where a second job gives them more insight that they can bring to politics, like doctors and lawyers. So long as they are stilll able to work for their constituents and not working in another country for weeks and months. for example.
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Post by SeanBroseley on Nov 10, 2021 9:04:22 GMT 1
Journalists falling over themselves revealing stories they've known about for ages. What a charade that profession is too.
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Post by ssshrew on Nov 10, 2021 9:06:33 GMT 1
Have Sky decided that no MP should have a second job? I thought the step too far was when you used your position as an MP to lobby for a company paying you lots of money when you don't really seem to in pocession of a skill that would merit earning big wages in that field? If you are the party in government then surely you need to be even "cleaner". If you are a minister then you already have a "second job" MP and minister - probably even less hours in the day to have any outside jobs. There are some MPs who need to keep their skill levels up, like pilots. There are some MPs where a sevond job gives them more insight that they can bring to politics, like doctors and lawyers. So long as they are stilll able to work for their constituents 0 not working in another country for weeks and months. for example. Perhaps whether they have second jobs should be decided on whether they fall into the ‘Key Worker’ category.
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