The Political Thread

[JayzusB.Christ]

Well, technically, yes, but it's not my boat's actual name (which is Sin É*, though I've been planning to change it for years).  I was only riffing on your alliterative use of the Sharkshed for your gaff.

*'That's It' in Irish, but also the name of a fairly crappy pub in Dublin so I've never liked it.

[Rately]

Deplatforming doesn't work, they said.

Be great if a few other serious arseholes could receive the same treatment.

At this stage, Trump is apparently floating the idea of starting his own party, purely for the grift, and the thought that he would decimate the Republican membership is hilarious. Everything Trump touches Dies.

[IndigoPrime]

I hope he does, because unlike Farage he probably wouldn't bottle it come election time and would fully split the GOP vote.

[The Legendary Shark]

...my boat's actual name... is Sin É*, though I've been planning to change it for years...

How about Sin E * Deck *?

(I'll get me coat.)

[JayzusB.Christ]

...my boat's actual name... is Sin É*, though I've been planning to change it for years...

How about Sin E * Deck *?

(I'll get me coat.)

Nice!

Sadly it's pronounced 'Shin ay' in Irish, so doesn't quite work 

[The Legendary Shark]

Story of my life

[JayzusB.Christ]

 

[JayzusB.Christ]

Looks like Republicans' tongues are way too firmly entrenched now for Trump to be convicted of putting their own lives in danger.  But Giuliani might be reaping the hurricane to the tune of 1.3 billion, and rightly so.

It's probably time to forget about these wankers really.

[Smith]

Anyone following Brian Rose and his mayoral run? That is some funny shit.

[IndigoPrime]

On Trump, there's a certain inevitability about how things play out now. The impeachment trial will likely end the same as it began: 55–45 but not the two thirds needed. Trump will issue some kind of I WON statement, but his deplatforming means it won't get as much traction as it once would have. Meanwhile, Biden will be getting on with sane government.

It's quite nice not seeing the orange buffoon pop up every single day, having said something new and hideous. But it is depressing that US media are already laying into Biden for having not miraculously fixed everything instantly. (I've seen more than one "honeymoon over" headline, which is bloody ridiculous.)

A pity we don't have our own equivalent of the USA's shift here in the UK. Alas, we appear to have gone full-on Stockholm Syndrome combined with Pravda. So many headlines yesterday about POOR BORIS and LOOK HOW SAD HE IS. Load of commentators slamming people who dare criticise his government and decisions. One professor called up by Liam Fox on Twitter, because she dared to point out how the government screwed up and — shocker — she was a REMAINER and votes LABOUR. So therefore the BBC should be scrapped due to allowing such partisan views!

Natch, I doubt Fox would have been so angry had some idiot Brexiter know-nothing coughed up some garbage about how great the government has done. We really are fucked.

[Dandontdare]

Breitbart's main headline todays was "31,000 Americans die of Covid in Biden's first week in office"

Not one mention of the 12 mths of incompetence and denial that caused it. Unbelievable.

[IndigoPrime]

Biden will be blamed for everything, despite his COVID team being astonished at the total lack of anything the Trump team did. There have been multiple comments that they will be dealing with distribution and other things from scratch, which is insane.

[shaolin_monkey]

Holy shit.

I can't remember if I mentioned it here before, but 'The Good Law Project' was issuing a legal challenge against the U.K. government re it's spending of billions of taxpayers money on questionable PPE and COVID related contracts.

This is the email I just got from the good folk at the Project:

"Correspondence with Government has revealed they expect to spend a staggering £1 million defending our judicial review of their decisions to award contracts criticised by the NAO. This is a sum unprecedented in our lawyers' experience of judicial review proceedings. We can't but wonder whether they are trying to scare us off – using the bottomless public purse to avoid accountability to the public.

Government also says, remarkably, that finding out whether they acted lawfully in channelling hundreds of millions or billions to their VIP associates, is not in the public interest.

We had until recently been working on the understanding that we had raised enough money for our challenges to Government's awards of hundreds of millions of pounds of PPE contracts to Pestfix, Ayanda, and Clandeboye.

We were shocked to learn that – having failed to provide the evidence we've been asking for since July – Government is threatening a vast disclosure exercise going well beyond what would normally be undertaken in a judicial review. And not just that they have hired an expensive international commercial law firm. They expect to have a team of 30-40 working for up to 3 months on an exercise that has not been requested by us, or by the Court.

In the experience of our legal team, costs incurred by Government in judicial review proceedings rarely exceed £100,000. Here Government says it has already spent over £325,000, and estimates their total costs will amount to £1 million – a staggering sum for a judicial review.

Government knows full well that we cannot take existential risk on bringing a single case. So we wrote to Government asking it to agree and order 'capping' both our costs and the taxpayers' costs in these public interest proceedings.

We were shocked this week to receive their response contending that the litigation is not in the public interest, and refusing our proposed reciprocal cap: "In particular our client does not agree that the proceedings are 'public interest proceedings'". These are cases involving on Government's own admission hundreds of millions of pounds being spent on unusable facemasks on companies that went through the VIP lane.

Not in the public interest? What are they on!

The point is all the more remarkable given that a barrister employed by the Government Legal Department in her witness statement of 30 November stated that: "We acknowledge that there is considerable public interest in Covid related procurement, particularly of PPE."

We have now applied to the court for a Cost Cap. In line with our transparency principles I am publishing my Witness Statement. But if we don't get one, unless a white knight or white knights emerge, the simple fact is we will have to abandon the litigation. We are not in a position to bear a £1 million risk.

Thank you,

Jolyon Maugham QC
Director of Good Law Project"

[shaolin_monkey]

Here's the Witness Statement mentioned above - it is insane:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ji1d2YOCesV7pTA21_zljiV2zuKUK1-E/view?usp=drivesdk

[Professor Bear]

A working guillotine costs only £1100.
Now.  I am not a scientist of doing numbers, but I am pretty sure this is less than 1 million pounds, and in these austerity times we surely have to go with the most cost-effective method of accountability?