To think Labour are hypocrites

[Labscollie]

Beergate. Turns out the event was planned. To think of all the slating Starmer gave Johnson. 🤔 This site's favourite newspaper, the Dailymail, has released a leaked memo, which might mark Starmer's downfall. If Johnson could survive, can Starmer?

This worked both ways though: partygate only broke in January but there had been lots of tittle-tattle in the months before that stuff had gone on in Downing Street - so at the time the tory shennanigans weren't deemed politically interesting enough either. Once partygate became a going concern that Starmer video was front page news pretty quickly. Nature of the beast.

@SleeplessInEngland Oh, don't imagine I am in any way defending anyone or trying to say that anyone, politician, journalist etc, has acted differently, better, worse in any of this crap!

I am saying, as I have said for a few years now, that the behaviour by all concerned is the same, whichever party, whichever newspaper etc. And I dislike it, no matter who it is I am looking at!

That I did not know until this week that the media had sat on the Starmer video in the same way as they had sat on the Johnson info was my point. Knowing this doesn't make anyone look any better, or worse!

As you say, nature of the beast!

It makes me wonder if the Labour Party had an idea that number 10 hadn't followed all the rules to the letter the year previously and just thought it would be fine to have this in 21?
I'm not sure what the rules were last year , but they did keep on changing and it wasn't as strict as the first lockdown were (at that time. )
I'm NOT condoning any of their actions by the way and I'm glad he has made this statement about what he'll do and now he'll have to stick to it if they receive the FPNs and did break the lockdown rules.
Just some musings.

I just want to make a few points that seem to have been ignored or misinterpreted in this discussion.

1. Durham police, just like the Met, deliberately refused to progress their investigations in the lead up to the local elections. Durham were going to reopen their investigation as soon as possible afterwards due to receiving further information at an earlier date.
2. Durham police did not "cave in" to pressure from a local Tory MP - they have a duty to investigate all believable reports of crime.
3. It doesn't matter at all what Starmer et al were doing before the curry & beer, and it doesn't matter what they did afterwards. It doesn't matter whether it was planned or impromptu. It is solely the gathering itself which should be (and probably is) the subject of investigation.
4. Whether the event was a "party" or not is irrelevant. It doesn't have to have been a "party" for it to have been illegal. All that matters is whether the gathering itself was strictly necessary for work purposes, and if not, did it break rules on the numbers attending and social distancing involved.
5. Making statements of "non equivalence" between the multiple breaches at No.10 and a single breach by Labour in Durham is ludicrous. Saying someone who murdered one person isn't really a bad guy because someone else murdered six is the same sort of warped thinking as this.
6. As seems to be nearly always the case, discussion of Johnson, Sunak, Starmer or Rayner "resigning" misses the point that all that may happen is they will get demoted and still hold a job paying £84k. Resigning means losing your job and salary - as is the case with Neil Parish.

Whether the event was a "party" or not is irrelevant. It doesn't have to have been a "party" for it to have been illegal. All that matters is whether the gathering itself was strictly necessary for work purposes, and if not, did it break rules on the numbers attending and social distancing involved.

Not quite. What matters is whether it was reasonably necessary for the purposes of campaigning in an election. It is regarded as particularly important that there should be no more interference than is strictly necessary in the democratic process.

Sorry, I meant to put the first paragraph of that in bold to show it was a quote.

I think if this meal is fined, then there may be questions about a lot of campaign events across all parties.

I presume Keir has cynically been trying to suck the oxygen out of the room in anticipation of the triumphant agenda announces in the Queen's Speech., the Trump-esque scallywag. Just goes to show there is literally nothing more that could be done to help people before the next election than the Tories have set out as Keir had to resort to underhand tactics to distract from Boris' success rather than repeating the airy fairey impractical ideas around tax cuts, tax raises (on energy firms) and such like. The Chancellor's tax cut in a couple of years when things will probably be much more predictable looks inspired. Keir called the PM a joke. Who's laughing now?

Yes but I doubt they'll have had the benefit of a Spectator/Telegraph columnist's son filming them.

in anticipation of the triumphant agenda announces in the Queen's Speech hahahaha

It isn't the film that would prompt the fine though, the film makes it look really boring and shit - it is the 'memo' the Mail was calling new info. There will be many memoes of many events.

Ah yes. Reckon a few are being deleted/shredded?
And yes the video does make it look boring and shit! I suppose that could be another angle - Labour don't even know how to have a party (where's the karaoke and broken garden toys?)

Recent PPs have a good point. Call that a party, Labour scallywags? The average chap in the street, salt of the earth, the Daily Mail reader is having to painfully stretch to call that a party and are only doing so for the national interest to hold Labour to account. Cake, karaoke, suitcases of booze, lots of young ladies, that's a party, or a series of parties, what is the collective noun for 14 parties that obviously weren't really parties for the purpose of reports and fines? Let's say a Bozza of parties? Jo and Josephine public won't respect Labour if a beer and a curry in a room full of people then back to work constitutes a party. Then walking to a premier inn. Boris would have stayed at the Ritz. OK there might not be a Ritz in Tyneside or Teeside or wherever his might have been so a flight back to a decent hotel. Roll on the next election, Schrodinger's party will influence the results.

And only a fool would jeopardise future economic growth for short term tax cuts and tax rises and other measures that probably won't work and would jeopardise the interests of important people who make investment decisions and can easily take their wealth abroad to benefit other countries. The pie needs to get bigger even if it takes decades and if more slices of that bigger pie are taken by the really hard working then the wealth will trickle down like a warm shower running down your backs. Economic growth can take decades to build and seconds to ruin by foolish knee jerk decisions by populists like those Labour scoundrels. We are only in the place we are because of the last twelve years of Tory rule.

Trickle down economics doesn’t work. Social inequality has grown so much. We need a wholesale change - if we want to tackle poverty, injustice and social inequality.

Of course - we could also keep going as we are and bring back workhouses. Sod it. Let’s start hanging people in the town centre too. Bring it on.

Or let’s evolve.

Trickle down economics doesn’t work.

That just flies in the face of common sense. Rewarding talent and hard work and wealth creators allows the wealth to be created then it trickles down like the warm feeling of a summer rain storm trickling down someone's neck. A wealthy person has an expensive meal and leaves a tip. Wealth trickling down to the waiter unless the proprietor takes the tips then it's wealth trickling down and back up again only to trickle down later. A wealth rollercoaster. Rich people buy houses that poor people can't afford then let the poor people rent them. Wealth rollercoaster. If you don't like trickling then everyone loves the fun of rollercoasters. If you force the wealth creators to emigrate then wealth doesn't get created and there's no tax to share. That's where those Labour scallywags go wrong. Simultaneously proposing tax cuts and tax rises. inconsistent.

@Zilla1 what’s the place we are
at ? Like levelling up after 12 years of Tory misadministration ? Lies ? Corruption ? Pork barrel politics where constituencies are literally bribed to vote Tory ? That all that is now common place and no one bats an eye ? Is that the place we are at ? Or surely you are being ironic ?

And the whole idea of trickle down economics as well as austerity have been debunked a million times over.

The place we're at is on the good ship GB, sailing into headwinds, ghastly headwinds from abroad but making hard decisions to help economic growth in the long term which everyone would agree is sensible. Who would support a Queen's speech that said it wouldn't help economic growth in the long term?

I agree with Zilla1. Trickle down works, and keeps employment rates high. Raise taxes too much, and people start cutting down costs - whether that’s not getting a new kitchen, which would have meant employing a kitchen designer, plumber, kitchen fitters, tilers, electricians etc. Or simply cutting back/down on facials, haircuts, meals out, days out, gardeners, cleaners, car washers etc.

Zella: ‘Rewarding talent and hard work and wealth creators allows the wealth to be created then it trickles down like the warm feeling of a summer rain storm trickling down someone's neck.‘

Yes. I’m sure all the Amazon workers adding to Bezo’s wealth, enjoy that fuzzy warmth all the time. For any wealth generator, there will be people ‘doing the do’. People in factories, call centres, shops, lorries etc. in order for wealth to be generated - these people are needed too. Why wouldn’t you want to make it fairer so that the people making the goods in the factory also gain if the company dies well. In order to generate wealth, we don’t need to give employees the very bare minimum. Lockdown showed us exactly how important everyone is and how we all rely on each other.

I work with families. Don’t you dare to suggest that ‘hard work’ is rewarded and suggest that if people just worked hard enough they too would be wealthy. Utter rubbish. Don’t kid yourself that we live in any kind of meritocracy. The system is massively stacked against huge swathes of people. I see it in my work daily.

The gap between rich and poor in the UK is massive. That’s proven to have a negative impact on all sorts of things - including EVERYONE’s mental health and crime rates.

More like being pised on from on high. Rewarding only for the person with the full bladder.

newnamethanks · 11/05/2022 18:56
More like being pised on from on high. Rewarding only for the person with the full bladder.

So true!!! I was just coming on again to say something similar - but not all as witty! Trickle down economics absolutely works if your aim is to create a two tier society where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

The UK and the rest of the world are entereimg an economic shitstorm, war.in Europe, just getting past all.the covid bs, yet we in the UK squabble over who had a beer or not during lockdown.
I couldn't give a stuff if they all partied every night, I really couldn't.

Yess, the world is facing challenges and the UK is a world leader in the economic challenges it faces. Doesn't it make every patriot proud that the UK is a world leader in something? None of the 'We're Number one' that the USA crowd chant. We're knocking them into a cocked hat when it comes to economic difficulties.