Demonstrating his command of the political narrative the levelling-up minister gets my taxpayer to fund his own, personal smoking den on his office: Michael Gove has taxpayer-funded smoking hut on roof of his office Den was built for levelling up secretary after he was heckled in street and targeted by terrorist https://www.theguardian.com/politic...ayer-funded-smoking-hut-on-roof-of-his-office
Leadership: UK to ignore ECHR rulings on small boats ‘after Sunak caves in to Tory right’ Backbench rebels push prime minister to harden illegal migration bill to ignore court’s interim rulings
Raab resigns but takes pot shots at the investigation which upheld 2 claims against him on his way out of the door.
Sort of puts both Sunak's "...Sir Softie..." jibes and his integrity/competence into focus as Raab was one the PM's first appointments (even then Raab had a 'reputation').
Perfectly timed news as the latest Tory SM love-bombing 'hits': https://twitter.com/MarinaPurkiss/status/1649301702892220422
Good news! Oliver Dowden now the Deputy PM. You must be honoured to be represented by a man in such high office?
Not even the Tories will touch him with a bargepole: MP Julian Knight to stand down at next election and not seek return of Tory whip Solihull MP says ‘malicious’ sexual assault accusation has damaged his health and caused pain to loved ones
Surely he would love the whip. Now more than ever it's time for a revolution. Not just here but globally. Enough of the plutocrats and their chums destroying the world for their own benefit and pleasure.
It's clear that Raab is bad news and he is one of a lot of politicians I'd like to see cleared out (all parties). There is no excuse for bullying, there is the right way and the wrong way to deal with employees that are not up to scratch. I've been reading around the story over the last day or two and from personal experience, knowing a couple of civil servants, I can say that there's no smoke without fire regarding the allegations made that the service is somewhat problematic with regards to actually doing their job. However, point of discussion. If an idiotic boss gives you an idiotic task, are you an idiot for carrying that task out? In my career I've suffered many questionable "superiors". On occasion I've convinced them that the idiotic task is as such, and suggested a better solution. I've found that the approach "not the best idea because..... but we could do this instead...." is better than "that's **** and I'm not doing it" or just quiet quitting. On occasion I've failed and had to complete the idiotic task suffering the consequences. The thing is the civil service is there to perform their function apolitically and I know in my heart this isn't always the case. Got a feeling this one will run for a bit.
The relationship between a minister and civil servants isn't akin to that of a boss and worker in the private sector, the power dynamic is completely different. The civil service has had to crack on with many bonkers ideas on the whim of a minister. However, what they do need to do is provide impact assessments, advice on legal risk etc. That's not the same as obstructing the minister, it's making them aware of the impact/potential repercussions of their policy. And just think about this for a moment. If the woke civil service blob really was trying to frustrate Tory policy why is it only Raab and Patel that have had bullying allegations raised against them? There have been dozens of Tory ministers over the last 13 years but the civil service has got on with the job without complaining, other than about these two. And in both cases, independent inquiries have found that their behaviour did indeed constitute bullying. Not for the first time recently, you're being misdirected.
Exactly this. Watching this play out and hearing people already parroting the 'woke civil service' attack lines they are being fed is really instructive. The civil service literally work for us, the public. They are necessarily bureaucratic, considered and slow-moving for good reason – characteristics that were exaggerated for comic effect by Yes, Minister, for example. This current Government of blowhards is full of libertarians who don't want any barrier between them and the latest brainfart idea that enriches them or cements their power. There are so many pundits in the media commenting on the civil service to whom this phrase applies: 'Tell me you don't know what the civil service is or how it works without telling me you don't understand what it is or how it works."
Completely take what you're saying on board and some interesting points. Not defending Raab at all. Last sentence, unnecessary.
Completely. But I think that it's on both sides, both pro and anti government. I'm certainly not pro the current government, but I can say that recent conversations with a couple of civil servents have made me aware that all is not well there and likely hasn't been for a very long time.
Bothsides-ism is a real issue in this country. It's two very uneven sides. It's comforting to think it's an even scrap but it really isn't. It gives us permission to think that the extremism of these ghouls is kind of okay. Day after day after day after day of right-wing nonsense, confected outrage, culture war rubbish pumped out by half a dozen newspapers, talk radio, GB News which is then repeated in the more moderate media. It shapes everything. Absolutely everything, I'm afraid. From Laura Kuenssberg to the types of stories that lead radio news bulletins, to Sky News. The Overton Window has been nudged considerably rightwards over the past six or seven years. On the other side there's The Guardian and James O'Brien. Okay, I'm exaggerating slightly for comic effect but I've observed (and worked in) the media for 30 years and I've never seen such a partisan media. It wasn't even this bad in the 80s and 90s when Murdoch wielded so much of his power.
It’s not even Raab’s first case. In 2007, David Davies paid a member of staff off in connection with bullying claims when Raab was his Chief of Staff. No civil servants involved. These were Tories complaining about him.
Every time I watch LK interview an opposition MP I marvel at how she latches on to a single potentially ‘awkward’ issue for them and batters away at it to the exclusion of what one would assume would be the more salient issues. Government ministers however seem to get away with describing what they had for breakfast. And people still parrot the view the BBC is somehow ‘left wing’.
Britain, Britain, Britain. Gets 365 days of sunshine and we invented the cat… Genuinely hilarious video of Sunak being escorted by gazillions of Police on pushbikes, while bonkers man heckles. So much to unpick in the one clip. https://twitter.com/politlcsuk/status/1650452381216174081?s=46&t=oqOMSJXE_g7J5C7kNPG9LA
David Frost the Unelected, as he should be keen to point out. He is one of the most amusing by-products of Brexit and now fills his role as a sort of Territorial Army officer in the Culture War with self-confidence that exceeds his self-awareness. He used to be one of these "woke leftie"civil servants we're hearing so much about, then he became an unelected politician. One of the big fears of the EU was that people didn't like the idea that unelected bureaucrats and spooks and euro-oddballs could MAKE OUR LAWS and have influence over our brains. But a good British unelected bureaucrat oddball is absolutely fine. We can remove him from office by just waiting patiently for him to resign or be sacked. In the meantime, he writes opinion pieces for the World's Worst Newspaper (formerly one of the finest), The Telegraph. These pieces are the intellectual equivalent of bubblegum. Half-a-dozen chews and the flavour has gone and all you're left with is a tough indigestible ball of matter. Frost's main idea for restoring Britain to its former position as global superpower is to look backwards to an era that resonates with the last remaining readers of The Telegraph. Forget the way the world is today or the way it'll be tomorrow. That's just confusing and frightening. He wants everyone to remember how good spam fritters were, red telephone boxes, a district nurse cycling past a cricket match being played on the village green, thatched roofs and the Jaguar Mark 2 that ran on proper leaded petrol. Oh those were the days when Britain – actually England – was at its finest. A copy of Just William with a cracked spine folded across the arm of a child's-size Chesterfield armchair while nanny toasts crumpets on the Aga. Oh, and lashings of xenophobia and weirdo cultural protectionism too. Oh why can't England be like that anymore instead of all this noise and Tik-Tok and rap music and avocados.
