From yesterday's Covid hearing.
Sunak is our prime minister.
I think he should be serving time.
Many people died too young as a result of his recklessness and total indifference.
If that is not criminal, what is?
"Rishi thinks just let people die and that's OK" should go down as the first line of his political obituary. pic.twitter.com/oiVSpRUlGe
— Aditya Chakrabortty (@chakrabortty) November 20, 2023
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He wasn’t the only one. Johnson should join him.
Sunak, Truss, Johnson etc are all clearly entirely unsuited for any position of public power. Private schooling and/or a useless Oxbridge degree (PPE/Classics) is often the common link. Personal callousness or indifference seems be a mandatory requirement. It’s a conveyor belt of tory people totally detached from the reality and needs of the vast majority of people.
It is ironic though that of all the political parties, that the tories are the only ones that are honest about what they stand for – namely the rich. Labour, Greens & SNP simply lie about where their primary focus is. Libdems? Who knows what they profess to want. Besides, they just lie anyway. Plutocracy or kleptocracy, take your pick.
You say, Ian, that all parties except the Tories lie about their primary focus. On the Green Party’s web site https://policy.greenparty.org.uk/ you will find a link to a statement of the Party’s core values and to the philosophical basis for these values as well as links to statements of every policy currently agreed by the membership. I would be interested to know where in any of these documents I can find the lies you refer to.
Bernard, As a member of the Green party, I can assure the Greens are not as pure as the driven snow as you make out. Their core values of non-discrimination and democratic participation are routinely flouted by the party leadership in its internal dealings with members who believe that biological sex exists and that this matters. The party is being taken to court by members hounded out of senior positions in the party for the crime of ‘wrong think’. The harassment reached a new nadir this past week with the disaffiliation of the Green Party Women’s group – representing no less than 25,000+ members. So much for “non-discrimination” and “democratic participation”.
Well, Ian …during the Covid pandemic, the SNP didn’t sit back and say it was okay to let people die, did they? As First Minister of Scotland, Nicola worked tirelessly to get Scotland through the pandemic. If that indicates a loss of focus, I’m your grannie.
Just because the SNP hasn’t yet ACHIEVED their goal of independence again for Scotland doesn’t mean they aren’t focused on it. Sorry. I couldn’t let your remark pass without notice.
The SNP is very focused on their goal. As a long-time party member, I can attest to that. And the same goes for the Greens.
Neither party has a magic wand to wipe away hundreds of years of an entirely different political focus. It takes time and effort and a lot of mind-changing to turn the ship around—plus the ability to absorb the united ire and weaponry of those who profit from the status quo, which has been turned—full force—on the SNP for the last few years. But we’re still here, and still moving forward, still focused on what is best for Scotland. We won’t go away UNTIL Scotland is independent and settled into its role as a nation in its own right, and able to tackle the issues the world needs addressed …like climate change.
Here in Scotland the Tories and Labour and the LibDems openly unite at all political levels to ‘defeat’ the SNP. Is it any wonder these parties also cooperate at Westminster to keep ordinary British people from winning anything significant?
Thank you, Richard.
Working in the City, one comes across these sociopaths all too frequently.
Sunak’s predecessor as chancellor was no different. There are horror stories from where said predecessor and I worked. There’s an even worse one about said predecessor at his first job, a US bank during the Mexico crisis of 1994. One can understand why the City blue blood firms turned down said predecessor’s applications. He talks about his school tie or lack thereof. That may be so, but it’s not the whole story.
The one thing that puzzles me about Sunak is how his time in the City is never talked about. The City is a parish. Also, about how he was parachuted. If I have time later, I will elaborate.
What I find utterly extraordinary is that the prime minister and ex prime minister can say that it’s fine to just let people die and there isn’t a national outcry to have the former removed from office and both held to account. Are we really content as a nation to be ruled by people who clearly don’t give a s**t about those who elected them???! Why isn’t the so called “patriotic press,” who like to think they speak for the people, calling for their resignation?!
Meanwhile there’s talk of cutting benefits for the disabled if they don’t seek to work from home…….
The saddest thing is that a total lack of compassion or consideration for social cohesion has become normalised. It becomes increasingly difficult to feel anything but despair and disbelief at the state of this country.
It is atsgering, isn’t it
In fairness, Susannah Reid was weploding about this on ITV this morning
People don’t care or people don’t know?
https://www.change.org/p/make-rishi-sunak-resign?redirect=false
There was one last year which got over 560,000 signatures and is believed to have helped get rid of Johnson. It wa started by Matthew Tovey, who is a nurse, and was working in a high-dependency unit in Cardiff. He spent his 30th birthday alone, just a few days after Johnson’s birthday celebrations in no. 10.
I hope Tovey gives evidence at the inquiry.
The only element that is surprising is that people are surprised.
A cursory glance at what passes for Tory policy making & legislation – themselves derived from tory attitudes shows that many/most/all tories are bereft of empathy.
The comments that were recorded are thus just an outcome of that situation/absent quality.
This has been known for decades (tory lack of empathy) & people are still surprised at outcomes.
Why?
I am not sure a scribbled note by Vallance not intended for the record relating a comment by the known unreliable witness Dominic Cummings would be taken as a sufficiently accurate report of Sunak’s views to secure a criminal conviction.
However there is no doubt that Sunak’s actions in creating the “eat out to help out” scheme displayed what at best could be naivety but really looks a lot like callousness, neither good qualities for a Prime Minister – though also found in several other recent Prime Ministers.
It was not naive
They knew exactly what they were doing
In another Cummings comment on a meeting – Johnson – Sunak – the latter was worrying about the impact that spending gov money for mitigation would have on……..bond markets. There is too much evidence from different sources that point to Sunak having no empathy or using Colonel Smithers take: a socipath.
I have known one or two sociopaths – outwardly charming – wholly destructive. Such people are a “law unto themselves” and that they often have positions of power is a “sign of the times”, ditto their obsession with “filthy lucre”.
I listened to Vallance yesterday. It wasn’t the scribbled note, or Cummings aside that mattered, save as a headline. Vallance made clear that the risks entailed by ‘Eat Out to Help Out’ (the virus) were sufficiently well rehearsed and circulated to be well understood by all those concerned. What makes it especially shocking is that the Counsel appeared to suggest that in Sunak’s own witness statement he denied he understood the risks, and showed the reference.
The problem is, even if you give Sunak’s proposition any credence; Vallance knew nothing about the ‘Eat Out to Help Out’ (the virus) plan in advance, and therefore had no opportunity to underscore the risks to the proposers. The question then follows, as an absolute minimum requirement in such a high-risk potential situation (if you are not a fool, or only care about business and profit before anything else); why did Sunak not ask for the advice of Vallance, or discuss any issues with him, before he implemented the plan? There is no escape from this conclusion.
I struggle to see how you can possibly find your way to “naivety” from that starting point. There is a pattern here, even in the chaos, that may lead us to the kind of priorities that find their way to the top of the list of possible management characteristics of too many members of the Johnson Cabinet.
We too easily ignore the fact that in our most powerful institutions, those which exercise commanding authority, vast financial and human resources. and offering great personal fame and status; that it is not the brightest and best who will necessarily rise to the top; and we forget or do not wish to think that the most ambitious, the most ruthless. and above all the best connected may be better equipped to prevail in the pursuit up ‘the greasy pole’ of advancement, potentially most effectively by displaying the sub-clinical personality traits of the Dark Triad (Narcissism, Machiavellism and Psychopathy).
There is a distinction to be made in all institutions between the formal and informal standards that are generally understood and prevail; but rarely discussed, or even acknowledged. For too long in Britain we have ignored the profound contradiction between the formal and informal standards to be found in organisations; and in our dedication to our national tendency to embrace grandiose myths applied to our greatest public institutions, we pretend to ourselves that they only possess formal standards; or worse, we know that there must be informal standards, but do not care to know what they are, and are therefore to some degree complicit; wherever they are out of control.
Isn’t Sunak going to be giving evidence next month? He won’t be able to escape his obvious criminality then. I know he has said that they can’t get hold of his whatsapp messages, but they will. That’s where his naivety comes in.
Why am I not surprised
The Tory war on the people of uk has been ongoing for 50 yrs they hate anyone that is not rich like them
Perhaps, crippling financial reparations along the lines of a life long debt that keeps corrupt types like Johnson, Sunak in the same income level of unemployed. Corruption like theirs and their types destroys the lives and joy of life itself for so so many. The penalty should reflect the crime.
Words like sociopath or even psychopath are thrown around too often and too lightly. In this case the comments from Sunak and Johnson that they found it quite acceptable to see large numbers of people die suggests that the labels are highly appropriate.
The Opposition should be going for Sunak’s jugular on this.
The Magdalen College and rogue Intelligence cartel that presently hold Britain hostage to their fortune building, at last, being exposed for who and what they are. Callous murderers and lust fuelled thieves of the lowest order.
How do we survive, let alone rid ourselves, of such focused selfish malice in high office in all of our political institutions ?