Off Topic Politics Thread

I agree. I normally err on the side of caution calling out people's tax affairs as there is a huge difference between legal tax mitigation (I am not getting into the rights and wrongs here of legal loopholes) and downright illegal fraud. This seems to fall in the latter.

The seatbelt thing is stupid IMO - I am glad he got the fine, but to be honest I wouldn't be outraged if a politician from any side of the political spectrum did it. Annoyed that they broke the law, not outraged.

 

Could it be that the printed media is overwhelmingly right of centre?

 

As I mentioned, it’s the top story on the BBC and it’s in all the print media that I’ve seen. It’s an outrage and I hope he gets kicked out, but we shouldn’t just make stuff up about it not being covered.


Edit - it’s probably further down than it should be, but it’s even one of the top stories on the Mail website, so really not sure where this idea it isn’t being covered is from.

 

The James O’Brien programme yesterday was very interesting on this subject. James wanted people to phone in stating which of the 3 incidents currently in the news featuring Tory politicians were actually the worst. The 3 were Sunak’s seatbelt, Zahawi’s tax, and Lee Anderson throwing his intern under a bus.

Anderson was the early leader, but as the show went on, Zahawi came back into the running until he took the lead right at the end. No one at any point thought that the seatbelt faux pas was as bad as the other two stories.

In terms of summing up the entire last 13 years of Tory malfeasance in a single act, a former Chancellor who is at present Tory Party Chairman being penalised for tax evasion and still not coming clean about it is just perfect. The media are “strangely” silent about the murky depths of Zahawi’s involvement with YouGov.

In former days, the expectation was that MP’s, and especially government ministers, should hold their behaviour at a higher standard than that of the average person. Any question of malpractice or misbehaviour would be followed by immediate resignation.

Sadly the abiding legacy of 13 years of Tory scumbags given free rein to scoff at the public while lining their pockets and those of their cronies and donors has made that golden era a distant memory.

 

Worth remembering that Boris Becker was jailed for hiding £2.5 million of assets, to avoid paying his creditors.
If the stories are to be believed, Zahawi was avoiding/evading paying £3.7 million in taxes, a figure said to have risen to around £5 million when penalties were added.
Given Zahawi’s position in the government, (at one time Chancellor of the Exchequer and therefore the head of HMRC) I would strongly suggest that his crime is greater than that of Becker.

 

Whether it's avoidance or evasion is moot nowadays. Every single communication I receive from the treasury conflates the two. If it's good enough to tell me that avoidance is the same as evasion it's good enough for a former chancellor.

I do wonder what has to happen for the public to wake up to this.

I know the BBC is covering it but it took three days for them to mention it. I suspect the government's incessant threats against the BBC are having an effect.

Vin

 

Not sure if people are aware that the French were on the streets in protest against their retirement age being raised from 62-64 years. I did read about it but I don’t know if all the other claims on this poster are accurate.

 

Well, the UK certainly has the lowest state pension in Europe and the highest energy bills, but I don’t know about the other claims.

 

The lead item on the Classic FM news this morning was the seatbelt non-story, no mention of Zadawi unless I missed it. Doesn’t seem to be on any front pages either. Obviously it’s being covered, or I wouldn’t know about it.

 

Those easily confirmed facts should be trumpeted all over the media imo.

On Thursday there were protests all over France because the state pension age was extended from 60-64. Not getting much coverage in the U.K. but perhaps it’s not news. No one seemed to bat an eyelid here when it was pushed back to 67.

 

Any essential service not nationalised is a crime against the people.

 

Do you think it would ever be possible to remove party politics and instigate a system of issue-based politics? Imagine a society where we voted specifically for individuals who expressed their political viewpoints to us across a broad range of areas. I would love to see party politics banned as it reminds me of football tribalism.

At the very least I would love to see the House of Commons restructured. The aggressive face to face approach is awful. It should be a circle. Proportional representation obviously.

i am just so sad about the state of politics in this country.

 

The BBC being ……..well the BBC.

 

Another healthcare **** up under the Tories, this time the lack of nurses to visit and carry out checks on young children, leading to health problems to be noticed later than is normal or not noticed at all because the visits haven’t been made or have been made by non medically trained staff.


A QUARTER of children aged two are missing out on vital wellbeing checks due to a shortage of more than 5,000 health visitors.

The crisis is threatening the life chances of hundreds of tots through delays in diagnosing developmental conditions such as autism, deafness and cerebral palsy.

Since October 2015, the number of health visitors in England has been slashed by 40%, from 10,309 to 5,842.

Research shows one in 10 are juggling caseloads of more than 1,000 kids – four times the recommended ratio – and nearly a third have more than 750 children on their books. As trained nurses, health visitors are meant to conduct five mandatory checks before a child reaches the age of two-and-a-half.

But the shortages mean many checks are delegated to non-qualified staff – or not done at all.

One in five health visitors have turned to mental health services for work stress, an Institute of Health Visiting poll found.

Nearly half plan to quit in the next five years.

Many say they can no longer do the job they trained for – and feel they have become de facto social workers. One struggling health visitor said: “We are drowning. We are missing maternal mental health issues, domestic abuse, delayed development etc. We are failing a generation.”

IHV boss Alison Morton warned: “Ignoring this tsunami of unmet need risks undermining the life chances of so many children.”

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesman said: “We are modernising the Healthy Child programme and investing £300million to create new family hubs in 75 local authorities to ensure parents and carers can access the support to give children a healthy start in life.”

Labour has vowed to abolish non-dom tax breaks to cover the cost of training 5,000 more health visitors.

Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting said: “Every child deserves a healthy start to life.”

 

I am reading a novel about a guy who is kind of like the Charles Bronson vigilante type of “hero” from the Death Wish films.
I guess the author isn’t too enamoured with the BBC because the latest story has a BBC reporter being shutdown by the top executives because she wants to investigate the son of a billionaire who has just been found not guilty in a rape case, but who has a history of sexual assault claims against him that have been made to disappear with the help of Non Disclosure Agreements.
The reason given for the reporter being shutdown was because the billionaire had threatened legal action against the corporation if they didn’t stop talking about his son.
Got me thinking about just how much gets shutdown now, simply because of the appointments to high office in the BBC, made by the government.

 

And how come Zahawi was allowed to form a company called YouGov. When I was thinking of forming a company, it was made clear that the name should not be such that it could infer any association with a governmental organisation or department.

 

Comedian Leaves Oxford Union SPEECHLESS - YouTube

 

BBC online news UK today has Johnson loan headlining Zahawi next to it.

 

That’s one way of putting it.