World News Random, Random

[ti-amie]

[ponchi101]

How Europe has changed in a couple of decades.
Democracy is truly getting scarcer around the world.

[ti-amie]

Via RussJones@RussinCheshire

Tweets aggregated via @threadeaderapp

1. Let’s start #TheWeekInTory with PartyGate, where randy Honey Monster and (no, really) Prime Minister Boris Johnson denied 20 fines meant there had been wrongdoing

2. This doesn’t quite explain why he had personally phoned the Queen to apologise for all the wrongdoing
3. Regardless, The Met issued MASSIVE fines of £50 for breaching lockdown rules

4. Last week a £2,200 was handed down to a member of the public (who didn't live or work in Downing St) for breaching lockdown rules, thus proving we’re all equal in the eyes of the law
5. Maria Caulfield said the PM was “very clear there was wrongdoing”

6. Same TV show, she said the PM “did not believe there was wrongdoing”

7. Dom Cummings (Lucius Malfoy after a flash-fire) said “the PM encouraged attacks on junior officials” to distract from his own crimes
8. Having promised to release all party photos to the Sue Gray inquiry, No 10 now refuses to release photos, and denies they even exist

9. Anyway, off (very slowly) to Dover, to find a week of 23-mile, 30 hr traffic jams as a combination of Brexit paperwork and P&O problems hit
10. Last week the govt promised to sue P&O

11. It dropped that promise 4 days later, once it had attracted enough good headlines

12. The govt had also promised to improve worker’s rights

13. This week the govt shelved those plans for the second year running
14. Kent had a "temporary traffic management system" that we were told would be scrapped in Oct 2021, by which time Brexit would be simply marvellous

15. This week that temporary traffic system was made permanent, in recognition that Brexit will never stop being dog-(expletive)
16. This brings us on to a cross-party report this week, which found Brexit has caused 500,000 agriculture vacancies

17. So the govt issued 30,000 temp visas, which is 6% of what we need

18. Amazingly, this didn’t solve the problem

19. Nor did a 50% increase in farm pay
20. But it has led to a huge increase in food prices and costs for farmers

21. Lack of workers means crops are going unharvested, and left to rot

22. The loss of crops, cost increases, and damage to supply chains caused by Brexit has been “financially ruinous” to UK farmers
23. And it has led to 27000 healthy pigs being culled cos we don’t have enough staff to prepare them for the table

24. That’s 27000 healthy animals shot and chucked in the bin, while we have over 2.5 million people using foodbanks

25. You definitely voted for that, right?
26. But at least it’s better than the horror of Ukraine, where 6.5 million refugees seek homes, and our world-leading govt has taken 43 days to issue just 2700 visas

27. So far only 500 refugees have been allowed into the country. Out of 6.5 million
28. Naturally, given the urgent crisis, this week the Home Office chose to shut down part of its visa system, which officials called “chaotic”

29. And then the govt admitted they’ve been “giving Ukrainian refugees the wrong guidance” on how to apply to come here for over a month
30. The Tory refugee minister in the Lords said his own govt’s response to refugees was “embarrassing”

31. Undeterred – but definitely still turd – Home Secretary and rabid Dolores Umbridge cosplayer Priti Patel’s put forward lovely new plans to criminalise refugees
32. They were rejected by the House of Lords after the lord chief justice pointed out they “breach international law”

33. Over to Number 11, where Rishi Sunak, who is being chancellor during his gap year, made loads of friends in yet another devastatingly successful week
34. He began by blocking the Green Homes plan that would have reduced energy bills

35. Then he forced everybody with rocketing and terrifying fuel debt to take on an additional £200 of fuel debt, whether they like it or not
36. Sunak then insisted giving people money that they had to repay “doesn’t make it a loan”

37. Brandon Lewis, out of his depth on a sheet of graphene and battling to hold 2 ideas in his head at once, told an interviewer “It is a loan, let’s remember. No, it isn’t”
38. To show how much he sympathised with the desperate plight of the poor, Sunak generously donated £100,000 to foodbanks

39. No, hold on: let me correct that: he donated £100,000 to his old boarding school Winchester College, alma mater of some of the richest people on earth
40. In his next act of empathy, Sunak demonstrated a great way we could all avoid freezing as his fuel and tax policies cause catastrophic hardship: leave behind all the massive problems you just caused, and fly off to your £5m holiday home in sunny Santa Monica
41. Feral gonad Sajid Javid said it was “right and fair” that we all pay more tax than we can afford

42. He then said it was right and fair for Rishi Sunak’s billionaire wife to avoid tax she can easily afford, cos what are we: animals? Or - god help us - Belgians?!
43. Akshata Murthy (Mrs Sunak) has non-dom status, so doesn’t pay tax on most of her billions of income

44. This includes income derived from the £727m stake she has in Russian businesses that her husband spent last week telling the rest of us we shouldn’t invest in
45. Sunak said his wife was only avoiding tax cos she’s Indian

46. But being Indian doesn’t make you exempt from UK tax if you live/earn here

47. And being non-dom isn’t an accident of birth: she pays £30k a year for it

48. But it has allowed her to avoid £20m of tax
49. The average Brit worker pays £6k per year in tax, so Murthy’s greed has wiped out the entire contribution of 3,330 British workers

50. And then the govt, by some amazing twist of happenstance, chose her family firm to be recipients of £50m in contracts
51. Let us enter the (presumably quite large) orbit of Eric Pickles, former housing minister and current twat, who respectfully attended the Grenfell Inquiry

52. He respectfully told them he was too busy to answer their questions
53. He said the fire killed 96 people. It killed 72, which he respectfully couldn’t be arsed remembering

54. Still, he’s an improvement on Nadine Dorries, who ignored a committee of MPs telling her the new Ofcom head shouldn’t get the job because he has a “clear lack of depth”
55. The same flaw hadn’t stopped Dorries getting into cabinet, so she pressed on regardless

56. The last time Dorries appointed a head of the Charity Commission – and a friend of Boris Johnson’s, wouldn’t you just know it – was December, and he lasted barely a week
57. So this week, without bothering to run an appointments process, she appointed a different member of the Tory inner-circle as the new charities head

58. MPs had already rejected this one too, as being “slapdash”, and I think I’m starting to spot a pattern
59. The Tory chair of the culture committee said the actions of Dorries simply proved “the public appointments process is broken”

60. Taking her queue from this, Dorries then moved on to breaking Channel 4
61. Dorries (the actual Culture Minister, and not a woman dragged in front of the cameras straight from a fight outside a flat-roofed pub) said C4 being publicly funded was “holding it back”

62. C4 isn’t publicly funded, and Nadine is so thick you could stand a spoon up in her
63. Dorries's sterling native stupidity didn’t stop Ben Bradley (the Lego form of Al Murray) from using her as a role-model, so he also claimed C4 gets “£ from the taxpayer” and can’t raise its own funds

64. It raises its own funds via advertising
65. Grade B MP David Warburton was suspended for class A drugs, and for sexually assaulting 3 women

66. It probably won’t help his defence that he’d posed for photos next to a baking-tray full of cocaine

67. Tory whips knew about his drugs/assaults for weeks, and did nothing
68. Warburton has checked himself into a psychiatric unit

69. He somehow jumped the place of the 60% of children’s mental health referrals currently being rejected, because a decade of Tory cuts (which Warburton voted for) has left us unable to care for our kids
70. Perhaps Warburton will pay for his own care, maybe using the undisclosed £100k he just took from a Russian businessman

71. This was hot on the cloven-heels of Priti Patel, who this week took a £100k “donation” from an oil trader
72. A donation is not the same as a bribe. One is illegal, the other legal. But occasionally, by some chance-in-a-million fluke, they produce identical results

73. For example, days after getting a donation from an oil trader, Patel opposed windfall taxes on oil company profits
74. Which brings us to the energy crisis, and 2 weeks ago the PM promised a “long-term energy policy” based around windfarms

75. And then 9 cabinet ministers – the usual supercluster of arrant gobshites, Patel, Dorries, Rees-Mogg etc – demanded a cut in support for windfarms
76. So the PM’s “long-term energy policy” has lasted 2 weeks, and today's wild, sweaty fumble in the policy tombola has led to a new one: 6 nuclear power stations instead, which won’t open for decades, and for which there is no money
77. There’s also no money for home insulation, which is the cheapest, fastest, and greenest way to conserve energy and reduce bills, and could start tomorrow

78. However, ministers did launch a plan to drop the ban on fracking, contradicting their own manifesto pledge
79. Other manifesto pledges: a mini-thread, as if you haven't suffered enough

a. “We will not raise National Insurance”

b. National Insurance increased by 10%

c. “We will keep the pension Triple Lock”

d. They abolished the triple lock
e. “No-one will have to sell their home to pay for care”

f. People still have to sell their homes for care

g. “We'll build rail between Manchester and Leeds”

h. Scrapped

i. “40 new hospitals”

j. Isn’t happening

k. “We will cap energy bills”

l. Energy bills are up 54%
m. “0.7% of GDP on international aid”

n. They ended most international aid

o. “We will host the first ever LGBT conference”

p. So this week govt cancelled that conference as 100s boycotted it in protest at Tories failing to outlaw conversion practices for transgender people
80. Anyway, back to the main thread, which - yep - is still grinding on, you poor (expletive). The latest broken pledge on clean energy came the same week the IPCC said “extreme steps” are needed immediately to avert “catastrophic climate change”
81. Faced with this existential threat, Jacob Rees-Mogg, the result of a Dalek having hate-sex with a pendulum, said he supported extracting “every last drop of oil from the North Sea”

82. Bear in mind this lot hosted the COP26 climate summit less than a year ago
83. Although Boris Johnson did take a private jet to Devon to attend it, which should have given us a hint about his intentions

84. And if that wasn’t a big enough clue, the Tories let Shell pay £0 tax on oil and gas production last year, and instead we PAID THEM £92 million
85. Research this week showed in 2 years the PM has told 17 uncorrected lies in parliament, and ministers a further 27

86. The ministerial code says any falsehood must be corrected, or the minister must resign. But still they cling on
87. And finally, 5 million people had Covid last week, experts called the cancellation of health measures a “perfect storm”, and 3000 NHS staff per week are off sick with the virus

88.So naturally, we chose this exact moment to cancel free rapid testing.

[ti-amie]

The Brits have such interesting scandals.

Sunak asks PM for investigation into his own financial affairs
Entry on the list of ministers’ interests does not mention his wife’s £690m stake in Infosys – which has UK government contracts

Rowena Mason Deputy political editor
Sun 10 Apr 2022 19.23 BST

Rishi Sunak has written to the prime minister to ask for an investigation into his own affairs after days of criticism over his wife’s “non dom” tax status and lack of transparency over their financial affairs.

The chancellor wrote to Boris Johnson asking him for a referral to Lord Geidt, the independent adviser, requesting a review of all his declarations since becoming a minister in 2018.

Sunak said he was confident it would find “all relevant information was properly declared” on the advice of officials. It follows criticism that his entry on the list of ministers’ interests contains no mention of Akshata Murty’s £690m stake in Indian company Infosys – which has UK government contracts.

He is also facing scrutiny over his investments held in a blind management arrangement, with his spokesperson declining to say which jurisdiction they are held in or when the arrangement was formed. Sunak has come under pressure over whether his decision to keep a US green card conferring permanent residency for 19 months while chancellor represents a conflict of interest with his UK government role.

However, the inquiry requested by Sunak will cover only his ministerial career, and there is still a mystery over his lack of any declaration of financial interests from the time he became an MP in 2015 until 2018, when he became a minister and formed a blind management arrangement.



Angela Rayner, Labour’s deputy leader, has also written to Johnson and Geidt with a detailed series of questions, including:

Whether Sunak had ever benefited from the use of tax havens.
Whether he had received any updates on his blind trust since becoming chancellor.
Whether Sunak made a legal promise to the US when he received his green card that it was his permanent residence, and, if so, whether he was legally a permanent US resident when he entered parliament and became a minister.
Whether the chancellor and his family would provide “full transparency” on all their overseas income and where they pay tax on it.

It comes after Sunak was criticised for “whingeing” about the leak of his wife’s non-dom tax status after he ordered a Whitehall inquiry and raised concerns the unauthorised disclosure could be a criminal offence.

Labour criticised the chancellor for complaining about the “smears” and insisting on an inquiry into the leak, instead of addressing the criticism of his family avoiding tax while he puts up taxes and cuts benefits in real terms this month.

An investigation by the Treasury and Cabinet Office is also under way after details of Murty’s tax details were given to the Independent. Her status as non-domiciled has allowed her to legally avoid about £20m of UK taxes on dividends from the Indian IT company founded by her billionaire father on the understanding that her long-term permanent domicile is in India.

Sunak initially responded to the story by saying it was a “smear”, but late on Friday Murty issued a statement saying she would in future pay UK tax on worldwide earnings.


Jonathan Ashworth, the shadow work and pensions secretary, said that “whingeing Rishi simply doesn’t get it”.

“Tomorrow he imposes biggest real terms cut to pension for 50 years. Tomorrow he imposes severe real terms cuts to support like universal credit. But he’s more bothered about settling scores for exposing him after days of obfuscating,” he said.

Labour is expected to increase criticism of Sunak this week, raising questions about his lack of transparency and potential for conflicts of interest.

The Liberal Democrats have also drawn up draft legislation aimed at forcing the chancellor and any other government ministers to reveal whether they or their spouses claim non-domiciled status or have holdings in overseas tax havens.

Sunak was strongly defended on Sunday by Kit Malthouse, the policing minister, who said the chancellor had been a “remarkable force of good” by bringing in the furlough scheme during the pandemic. However, Malthouse also admitted that the leak had been “not ideal” for Sunak.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... dom-status

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From non-dom to green card: questions still facing Rishi Sunak
The chancellor remains under pressure after controversy over the tax affairs of his wife

Rowena Mason Deputy political editor
Sun 10 Apr 2022 19.13 BST

The “non-dom” status: why will Rishi Sunak’s wife, Akshata Murty, not give it up?

Murty has agreed to pay UK tax on her worldwide earnings in future and for the last tax year, but she will continue to be a non-domiciled citizen. This potentially still confers inheritance tax advantages on her overseas wealth. Some critics are also still calling for her to pay UK tax on her worldwide earnings on a backdated basis.

The green card: why did Sunak cling on to a US “permanent resident” card even when UK chancellor?

There has still not been an adequate explanation as to why Sunak kept his US green card for six years while an MP, including 19 months as chancellor. It does not seem that the move gave him tax advantages, but it does suggest he was keeping his options open in terms of a move back to the US in case his political career did not work out.

US lawyers, though, have queried how he would have presented himself to US immigration officials when returning to his Santa Monica apartment in California, questioning whether they would have been misled about his true residence while a British MP. It is also understood that his wife gave up her green card before Sunak became chancellor, so it is not clear why he did not do so earlier.

The “blind” investments: why will Sunak not tell the public what he owns?

Sunak has so far avoided publicly declaring what companies or funds he holds investments in and where these investments are based. His spokesperson would not say what jurisdiction his holding was in, nor when his “blind management arrangement” was set up.

It is not unlikely that he could still have a holding in Theleme, the Cayman Islands-based hedge fund that he co-founded. But the public has no idea, because he is refusing to say.

His wife’s investments: where are they and how much does she own?

Likewise, Sunak has not declared all his wife’s shareholdings on his register of ministerial interests entry. It is public that she owns a shareholding worth an estimated £690m in Infosys, which has UK government contracts. She may own large chunks of other companies as well, but there is no transparency over what she has a stake in.

The decision about disclosure of his family’s financial interests is one for the independent adviser of ministerial interests, and questions have been raised in the past about why Murty’s substantial holdings do not appear on the register.

Conflicts of interest: what involvement has Sunak had in non-dom policy and other changes related to his investments?

The Guardian revealed on Friday that Sunak brought in tax breaks in April to benefit fund managers who are non-doms. In fact, the whole qualifying asset holding companies regime is likely to be used by people who work in his former industry. And there is no way of knowing whether any of his investments may benefit from the new regime. Officials in the Treasury working on non-dom policy are said to be dismayed that they did not know of his wife’s tax status. There are questions to be answered over whether his potential conflicts have been properly declared and managed.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... ishi-sunak

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[the Moz]

French Presidential debate was last night and it appears Macron bested Le Pen ahead of the run-off vote on Sunday. Macron is expected to beat Le Pen again, but by a smaller margin than their 2017 contest. I'm fine with EM continuing and will be very glad to see Marine's presidential aspirations laid to rest. Vive la république et vive la France!

[ponchi101]

The Far Right slowly continues to gain ground in France. There are two points that worry me there.
One is, for the last few elections they have reached the run-off stage. I means that their base is solid and not considering moving to a more responsible platform.
Second. They do better all the time in the Run-off. And it will take only one election win for the Far Right to do some very permanent and terrible damage.

[ti-amie]

[ponchi101]

Are there any other news about this? Why would an entire airport be closed?
Has Vlad already denied any involvement, meaning he is involved? Has he said nothing, meaning he is involved?

[mick1303]

Are there any other news about this? Why would an entire airport be closed?
Has Vlad already denied any involvement, meaning he is involved? Has he said nothing, meaning he is involved?

In Russian Vladimir is rarely shortens to Vlad. "Vlad" usually means Vladislav. For Vladimir another short names exist - Vova/Volodya. Or was it a reference to Dracula?

[ponchi101]

Are there any other news about this? Why would an entire airport be closed?
Has Vlad already denied any involvement, meaning he is involved? Has he said nothing, meaning he is involved?

In Russian Vladimir is rarely shortens to Vlad. "Vlad" usually means Vladislav. For Vladimir another short names exist - Vova/Volodya. Or was it a reference to Dracula?

Nope, it was a reference to Putin, so thanks for the clarification. As I have seem in other places that indeed he is called Vlad, I was simply following that path.
Thanks for the correction.
But: why would you shorten somebody's name from three syllables to... three syllables? Vladimir->Volodya? It makes no sense. I gather I will use Vova.
(By the way: internal joke here. In Spanish, BOBA would mean SILLY in female, so Vova sounds indeed silly).

[mick1303]

Yes, I understood that it was a reference to Putin once I passed initial confusion. Then I thought that you liken him to Dracula, not that you implied that actual Dracula got resurrected and meddled with Polish planes.

[meganfernandez]

But: why would you shorten somebody's name from three syllables to... three syllables? Vladimir->Volodya? It makes no sense. I gather I will use Vova.
(By the way: internal joke here. In Spanish, BOBA would mean SILLY in female, so Vova sounds indeed silly).

Nicknames aren't always about shortening. They express informality/familiarity/tenderness. Especially with diminutives. James/Jimmy, Alberto/Betito, Enrique/Enriquillo.

[ponchi101]

I know of Alberto going to Beto, but Betito is only when you are a little child.
Never heard of Enriquillo. We call those Quique (Key-Kuh). I guess different countries have different ones.