You’re right it is whataboutery and whataboutery is not a defence. Yet people like O’Brien will constantly use it as a fall back in the absence of a substantive defenceOriginally Posted by Letters
You’re right it is whataboutery and whataboutery is not a defence. Yet people like O’Brien will constantly use it as a fall back in the absence of a substantive defence
Yeah, I don't think "But Johnson was even worse", while true, is a particularly good defence.
As I said, we can't do anything in my organisation. Even down to silly things like if we want to have a "team dinner" it has to all be approved - one time I think we literally all had to pay individually on our individual work cards, otherwise someone would have been over the spending limit and there would have been a kerfuffle. One time I went to Sri Lanka and for some reason we were all using the wrong meal rate so most evenings I'd spent a bit more than I should have - obviously we're talking about a place where things are pretty cheap anyway, so we're talking pounds here and there. My line manager queried it and I pointed out I'd gone sodding economy class - I was entitled to Premium - so that saved the organisation £1000 so how about she shut the hell up*! Which she did.
I'm just ranting now - I guess the point is the level of scrutiny we are under is insane. Especially as actually as much as I enjoy winding people up about jetting round the world at the tax-payers' expense that actually isn't true. We are mostly kept going by an exams business and most of the money comes from there, not the government. I raise an eyebrow that people who are actually paid by the tax-payer and are able to make or influence policy are allowed to accept so much free stuff like this.
*I didn't phrase it quite like that.
The public sector is a strange beast, it’s both ultra vigilant and blithely ignorant about perception of impropriety and conflict of interest
If you were getting gifts from a company putting out to tender for a government contract, whilst it’s clearly bribery…it’s the kind of bribery that the general public is less likely to find out about, unless some investigative journalist found receipts for lobster dinners, first class suites, magnums of bollinger and Thai masseuses that you had been the recipient of. And that you weren’t just one person but a cog in the pipeline of a whole culture of gifts for access.
With a politician the potential for quid pro quo is evidently more explicit, especially so the leader of the opposition and prime minister. So you have on two fronts a) this doesn’t look good when you’re not helping Bert with Arthritis out with the leccy bills anymore and b) what did the guy who bought your glasses and your wife that frock want in return? Just lunch on the commons terrace roof, did they also want you to look favourably on some kind of regulatory issue tying up their business in red tape?.
Bit late now...
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c20j3428vyyo
Who does that leave?!
literally no-one
I don't agree with their Europe stance but otherwise, me.
The problem for Starmer & labour is they made hay for the past 5 years on tories taking donations, in it for themselves etc. there are so many tweets from the likes of Rayner on this subject and it is coming back to bite them, hard.
They’ve been in office for almost 3 months and already there are sleaze scandals around labour. This is either by putting donors in civil service jobs or by taking as many freebies as possible. It makes it look like they are not in office for the country but rather the perks. To do this so quickly after spending 5 years hammering the other side for it just opens them up to accusations of hypocrisy.
The nonsense from David Lammy last week as well about how Starmer can’t afford to clothe himself or his wife. This is a man who was on around 200k as director of public prosecutions, 120k as leader of opposition and now 160k as prime minister. If he can’t afford clothes on that salary, why does he think people on 13k can afford their heating bills?
He also needs to sort out the arsenal ticket issue. His defence that he can’t sit in the stands so therefore must have corporate hospitality doesn’t exactly wash when the previous prime minister (a man Starmer labelled out of touch with ordinary people) regularly sat in the stands to watch Southampton.
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