Rishi Sunak

[west didsblue]

It‘s more the tiredness of this Govt. It is striking how the new cabinet resembles one of the many old cabinets from the past few years. All Govts end up fatigued and out of ideas. The one idea they cling to is Brexit and that has gotten old fast. They keep talking about ‘Brexit opportunities’ and never cite any. It’s just the same tired, empty words on a constant loop.

I can’t see this Govt lasting two years because there is no energy or enthusiasm behind it. As soon as you appoint a Gavin Williamson or a Braverman, or a Raab you know there is nothing left. It’s like digging out old clothes from the laundry basket and hoping no one notices the stains or the stink from last time around.

As for them sorting out the problems of the country, well they are the problem to a large extent, so how they going to fix that? What problems are they going to solve with Braverman at the Home Office and obsessing over Rwanda? Last time Raab was at Justice he drive the barristers to strike action. How much is the ‘moron risk premium‘ the markets and overseas investors have priced into the UK going to cost us?

This Govt is finished. It doesn’t have a mandate, it ceased to have a mandate a while back. All it has is a blind instinct to make things worse.

I can't disagree with any of that but what's the mechanism for ending it and forcing a General Election?
The only way is for around 35 Tory MPs to vote with the opposition in a VONC and what would trigger that?
The markets getting spooked again might do it but it's more likely they would just do another reshuffle. Rioting wouldn't do it as we found out in 1981. Old people freezing or starving to death won't do it either - we've just seen tens of thousands more deaths in the pandemic than equivalent countries and that wasn't enough. What else is there?

 

[jacko74]

Control would mean that an agreement at the WEF means that it will become government policy because the WEF member would be able to dictate government policy in his own country.

Influence means that the person making the agreement at the WEF will make the argument in his home country and try his best to gain the support of the ruling party to introduce that policy. Because that person may well be in a senior government position or is an ex leader doesn’t make it automatic that what he says will happen.

It’s really not that difficult to understand. The terms “influence” and “control” are clearly not interchangeable because they mean different things.

How exactly does one find out just what is "agreed" let alone discussed at this unelected, unaccountable members only club?

When that person making the agreement at the WEF who then has to go and "try his best to gain support" happens to be the Prime Minister or President or Chancellor or Head of State of their country and when the people who he needs to gain the support of all happen to also be fellow WEF members I suspect it really won't be much of a challenge for him to gain that support.

 

[jacko74]

The WEF has no power or authority over anybody or anything.

The tinfoil is on aisle 6.

Utterly bizarre.

But I suppose it is understandable that your average low information, unthinking, compliant, obedient drone who's terrified at the prospect of the world be in any way different to the official narrative spoon-fed to them by their government would take comfort in believing this.

 

[BobKowalski]

I can't disagree with any of that but what's the mechanism for ending it and forcing a General Election?
The only way is for around 35 Tory MPs to vote with the opposition in a VONC and what would trigger that?
The markets getting spooked again might do it but it's more likely they would just do another reshuffle. Rioting wouldn't do it as we found out in 1981. Old people freezing or starving to death won't do it either - we've just seen tens of thousands more deaths in the pandemic than equivalent countries and that wasn't enough. What else is there?

A Govt that cannot get anything done. Want to cut health spending? There are more than a few new Tory MP’s who cannot accept that without a fight. Raise taxes? Again, a different faction of Tories cannot accept that, they want lower taxes. Tory ERG MPs want the NI protocol bill, does Sunak want a trade dispute with Europe during a cost of living crisis? No, but ditch the bill, he’s in bother, don’t ditch the bill, again Sunak is in bother.

Our problems sit directly on Tory fault lines which is why we keep having PM leadership contests. We are at the point where it is no longer sustainable and the Govt cannot function without collapsing. Yet if it doesn’t function it will also collapse.

I just don’t see the Govt having the will to survive. Its biggest obstacle to improving things is itself and its tired dogma and institutionalised incompetence.

That’s my take for what it’s worth.

 

[johnnytapia]

Like the Titanic analogy, but the way I see it is that the ship has already sunk and they are scrambling over each other to try and get in the lifeboats.
Of course there aren’t enough of them.

Lou Grade when discussing the eye-watering production costs he’d ran into making “Raise The Titanic” : “It would have been cheaper to lower the Atlantic.”

 

[west didsblue]

How exactly does one find out just what is "agreed" let alone discussed at this unelected, unaccountable members only club?

When that person making the agreement at the WEF who then has to go and "try his best to gain support" happens to be the Prime Minister or President or Chancellor or Head of State of their country and when the people who he needs to gain the support of all happen to also be fellow WEF members I suspect it really won't be much of a challenge for him to gain that support.

Sorry, you're too far down the rabbit hole to have a sensible discussion.

 

[BobKowalski]

Utterly bizarre.

But I suppose it is understandable that your average low information, unthinking, compliant, obedient drone who's terrified at the prospect of the world be in any way different to the official narrative spoon-fed to them by their government would take comfort in believing this.

Try using your own words, not copy and pasting sentences and phrases you read on some random blog.

To make an argument you need more than tired cliches. Avoid phrases like ‘average low information, unthinking, compliant, obedient drone’. For starters, most of these words are redundant. Just say ‘drone’. We know what it means.

No one is ‘terrified’ and there is no ‘official narrative’ - no one looking at the British Govt over the last few years could argue it was part of any official narrative, unless that narrative was to demonstrate Govts couldn’t wipe their own arses without fucking up.

Finally, you are not privy to some super secret insight on how the world is run. It would be comforting to know there were some shadowy organisations masterminding things, but alas they aren’t and we are back to our old friends cock-up and incompetence as the answer to pretty much everything. And that is the bit that is truly terrifying and why we invent, and spoon-feed, conspiracy nonsense to ourselves.

 

[metalblue]

Government policy. As the National Audit Office says, "To achieve the policy intention of supporting small businesses quickly during the pandemic, the government prioritised payment speed over almost all other aspects of value for money. The Scheme facilitated faster lending by removing credit and affordability checks and allowing businesses to self-certify their application documents. As the Scheme progressed, it continued to rely on businesses self-certifying their application details, even as the urgent need for finance reduced. Government ruled out options for additional upfront counter-fraud measures when the Scheme was extended. The impact of prioritising speed is apparent in the high levels of estimated fraud. Counter-fraud activity was implemented too slowly to prevent fraud effectively and the Department’s focus is now on detection and recovery of fraudulent loans."

That doesn’t say no basic checks were made on the company existing as you flagged in your earlier post.

I’d be stunned if banks didn’t do basic KYC on these companies - but they may not have and if that did occur then I’d be fining them if I were the government. It’s right speed (as you show above) was the priority but I’d be interested to know what banks did what checks - I read somewhere over 80% of all fraud cases stem from loans issued by 2 banks, Barclays I think was the largest issuer of these loans … it may be Barclays is the culprit here but in terms of % loans v fraud scale they aren’t an outlier as I think they issued 70+% of all loans. Questions need to be asked to ensure all banks done enough basic checks to satisfy the governments criteria. It’s plainly obvious that the criteria laid out by the government wasn’t rigid enough but I have some sympathy here given the priority was speed and if you’ve ever seen a corporate KYC you’ll know they ain’t quick…normally 6-8 weeks in the investment banks I’ve worked in, might be less stringent in retail banks. A more sensible approach to avoid KYC issues would have been to have loans issued by the banks businesses banked with (ie KYC already completed), these loans would be issued by the nominated lending banks to the bank who would ultimately issue the loan to the business. I suspect however there would be some legal/regulatory issues with that - specially around the government guarantee but that would be cleaner.

 

[BobKowalski]

That doesn’t say no basic checks were made on the company existing as you flagged in your earlier post.

I’d be stunned if banks didn’t do basic KYC on these companies - but they may not have and if that did occur then I’d be fining them if I were the government. It’s right speed (as you show above) was the priority but I’d be interested to know what banks did what checks - I read somewhere over 80% of all fraud cases stem from loans issued by 2 banks, Barclays I think was the largest issuer of these loans … it may be Barclays is the culprit here but in terms of % loans v fraud scale they aren’t an outlier as I think they issued 70+% of all loans. Questions need to be asked to ensure all banks done enough basic checks to satisfy the governments criteria. It’s plainly obvious that the criteria laid out by the government wasn’t rigid enough but I have some sympathy here given the priority was speed and if you’ve ever seen a corporate KYC you’ll know they ain’t quick…normally 6-8 weeks in the investment banks I’ve worked in, might be less stringent in retail banks. A more sensible approach to avoid KYC issues would have been to have loans issued by the banks businesses banked with (ie KYC already completed), these loans would be issued by the nominated lending banks to the bank who would ultimately issue the loan to the business. I suspect however there would be some legal/regulatory issues with that - specially around the government guarantee but that would be cleaner.

I‘m probably an outlier on this one, but I felt it was right to prioritise speed over procedures. Rather a few fraudulent claims go through, than a lot of people struggling to keep themselves and their businesses afloat go under through delays.

I‘d agree that procedures could have been better later on during the crisis when there was perhaps less urgency, but I still think the decision to give first and ask questions later was correct.

 

[Postman Pep]

I was going to say bringing in Raab etc., is like keeping Mahrez on penalty duty despite his constant failures, but I’m still too annoyed about his latest miss.

Yep. In the absence of a stand out candidate it might have been better to let somebody else step up, and given the overall record, probably fail , than give it to someone with a track record of failure.