Louise Haigh

[Tryingtokeepgoing]

AIBU to think that if you really didn’t commit the crime, don’t plead guilty even if your solicitor advises you to. I mean, sure, for a traffic or speeding offence maybe that’d be the expedient thing to do. But fraud…?

Louise Haigh resigns over stolen mobile phone fraud conviction

https://www.thetimes.com/article/6772fe81-8e36-4e5d-baa8-4902a6553b4d?shareToken=3fe1e52cb5b31dc1a3e40721c219a69e

In her resignation letter she actually says

”whatever the facts of the matter…”

yeah, whatever …. Very Vicky Pollard

In her resignation letter she actually says

”whatever the facts of the matter…”

yeah, whatever …. Very Vicky Pollard

Which surely just throws even more doubt on his judgement? Overtly going out of his way to say that this would be a serious government, that there would be no more sleaze or corruption, and that he’d restore service and respect to politics, and then knowingly putting someone with a conviction for fraud, spent or otherwise, in a position of power is just stupid.

What’s to say that this bit of information wasn’t known by the train drivers union, and used to put pressure on her to agree to their demands? What’s to say if it hadn’t come out now that when she’s negotiating to nationalise all or part of the railways that it wasn’t used again her then It’s clearly out there somewhere, as The Times found it. This is why it’s so serious, and why Starmer should never have got himself in this position.

And that’s why my AIBU was to understand just who would please guilty to a fraud charge in the scenario she’s set out. A small minority. There’s a lot more to this, and it stinks. We all hoped we’d moved on from this with the ousting of the last government…and yet, here we are again.

On the plus side for the government, it’s keeping the Banks of England’s warning about the level of public debt out of the headlines ;)

Why does Sheffield keep electing weirdo, dodgy labour MPs. Must be something in the water.

Remember this guy?
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/jared-omara-jailed-cocaine-drugs-expenses-fraud-b1059087.html

Anyway, this is the tip of the iceberg. MPs on the whole are fairly scummy people, in it for themselves, and always looking for a way to rip off the taxpayer. Labour will have plenty of skeletons in the closet, if these first few weeks are anything to go by.

I think LH is Momentum, so if Starmer were a more shrewd political operator, I would question whether he accepted LH's conviction disclosure so that he would have a lever to pull on her later. In the real world, it seems more likely to be yet more appalling judgment.

I think you can get A job, but not necessarily as a government minister, particularly when the conviction was for fraud.
I'm not even sure you could be a solicitor ( but don't quote me on that one)

To be convicted of fraud, surely you have to have the intention to gain something for yourself.
It's not one of these "strict liability " offences where intentional doesn't matter.
So WHY would she plead guilty rather than defending her actions in the strongest possible terms?

@Littlemissgobby She would be precluded from a career as a solicitor. Rightly so.

The BBC says on the News website:
"Whitehall sources told the BBC the transport secretary declared her spent condition to Sir Keir when he appointed her to his shadow cabinet in 2020, when the Labour Party was in opposition."

and then:
"Questioned for 25 minutes by reporters, the PM's official spokesman would say only that Sir Keir had accepted Haigh's resignation after "further information" emerged."

What further information, over and above that about the spent conviction, is that, then?

Definitely more to this

it’s sad but public confidence in politicians is through the floor so it’s important we see integrity and honesty

Was she Starmer’s 1 token private school cabinet member?

yes this And also solicitors are not allowed to ever say who their clients were / are and can never say publicly ; 'Now hang on a fucking minute!'.

What? You don’t think being honest is an important requirement for a government minister??

She's a dishonest repeat criminal. She does not represent values that align with mine and hopefully most other people's.

There was only one option here.

Precisely because they sell themselves as not being the bloody Tories. That is how they scraped the votes to get in.

Next leader? Boris won a landslide.

Sorry to be slow on the uptake but I've only read patchily on this. Is the mugging known to have taken place? Is it fraud because she may not have been mugged or because she didn't report the phone found when she discovered it later?

I have said this so many times since July, or similar.
The fact 'the Tories are/were worse' is not an argument and has nothing to do with the matter in hand, apart from using it as a convenient smokescreen.
If all the apologists can honestly say - hand on heart - they would airily waive away this situation with, say, Richard Holden, then good on them.
Except we all know they would be calling for resignation then shouting Tory Sleaze when he went.
What's different? Apart from Labour setting themselves up as sleaze-free and winning votes on the back of that, nothing.
It's rank hypocrisy.
And how Louise Haigh had the brass neck to stand po-faced and criticise BJ about the lockdown parties when she herself is a convicted criminal, I'll never know.
No doubt the full story will come out, and no doubt the Labour fangirls will be all over MN justifying whatever it is.
Double standards at its finest.

how Louise Haigh had the brass neck to stand po-faced and criticise BJ about the lockdown parties when she herself is a convicted criminal, I'll never know.

So a person can never criticise others because they did once did something (completely different and unrelated) wrong? Do you have to be perfect to voice disapproval of others? Of course she’s wrong for committing fraud against a successful company but it’s hardly comparable to the Tories wilfully partying whilst knowing that the rules they were deliberately breaking meant thousands of people couldn’t visit their dying relatives or attend the funerals of loved ones.

Possibly both …. But certainly definitely she never thought that phone was stolen. She likely got caught trying to sell it, on eBay, Cex or Cash Converters. They checked the IMEI & she busted.

But I guess my AIBU is why even then you’d plead guilty to fraud if you knew you hadn’t done it.

Er ... Post Office scandal ?

I don’t think she’s suggesting that Aviva or the police have acted improperly though, is she…?

Post office is a bad example - the evidence was stacked against them and a guilty plea would reduce their sentence. But the evidence was hugely flawed

in this case - we don’t have all the facts but it seems highly unlikely that one or more of the mugger/aviva/police were faking evidence

I think that the phone that broke the camel's back "pinged" in the possession of the person that Ms Haigh had sold it onto.
Previous phones in her possession that had "broken"/"gone missing"/"fallen in water" had no need to have been reported to the police .
When she had run out of reasons as to.why she needed a new phone ( so that she could sell on the one in her possession), a mugging with a phone stolen was reported.
Being clever, as opposed to intelligent, she rightly thought that a crime number would make a suspicious HR look the other way and the phone was replaced.

But when the "stolen" phone pinged and she could not locate it in order for her to give the new one back.to her employer and go to the police and say she had found it down the sofa cushion......she was in two way schtuck.
Her employer had obviosly been onto her and just continued giving her rope. Her having involved the Old Bill was the "justification" for Aviva taking their concerns ( and evidence) to them.
So she was prosecuted on behalf of Aviva and the police, was bang to rights and her counsel WISELY advised her to plead guilty as the alternative was far less pretty.
If the story does not go like that, it nearly does.
Instead of being grateful that she had "got away" with the previous phone scams and accepting that the well had run dry, she chose to take advantage of a mugging to continue perpetrating.
And what a wrong'un if the mugging was a lie too.
Maybe the phone ping alerted the police to the "mugger" who instead turned out to be a buyer of the phone?
I'm going with the second scenario.
But either way, it was involving the law in order to get a crime number that did for her.

.

Not only one claim either, she seems to have done it a few times.