A quick look at a few of the scandals before they get swept under the carpet.
"I genuinely believe that the UK is not remotely a corrupt country"
Boris Johnson says "you've got cases where sadly MPs have broken the rules in the past, maybe guilty of breaking the rules today, what I want to see is them facing appropriate sanctions"https://t.co/3JjRunVstUpic.twitter.com/QZKLS4gFeO
“Those who break the rules must be investigated and punished,” says Boris Johnson, who just whipped his entire party to stop an MP who had broken the rules from being punished. (From Adam Bienkov.)
**********
**********
UK govt brought the British army in to help with corrupt Tory MP’s Covid contract. The army had to help as the company Randox – which secretly gained the £133 million contract with no tender to other firms – was completely unequipped to deliver.
**********
There were plenty of warnings when he was Mayor of London. It’s a pity so many people don’t follow the news isn’t it. #ToryBritainpic.twitter.com/jqW96LUEfq
Tory MP Marcus Fysh ‘wrong’ not to mention his financial interest in insurance firm when proposing insurance-friendly amendment to care levy, says ex-standards committee chair.
**********
Tory Defense Minister Philip Dunne has been paid £51,000 by aerospace company Reaction Engines last year, while consistently asking questions in parliament demanding more defence spending.
**********
Pete Wishart’s complaint about Tory Sleaze has been dismissed by the MET.
**********
Institutionally racist, institutionally corrupt and apparently unable to investigate corruption in the Commons. I wonder if Dame Dick has hopes of a Lordhood or is Patel pulling the strings here?
41 thoughts on “BORIS JOHNSON DOESN’T THINK THE UK IS CORRUPT”
The UK is not corrupt, because the great majority of the population do not behave dishonestly. More cynically, it could be said that very few of us are in a position to be corrupt. However, there is little doubt that most of the members of the UK Government are corrupt, as is ,possibly, a majority of Conservative MPs. It is likely that some MPs of other parties have behaved corruptly, but, I think that they are few in number, partly because they are not in position to be corrupt. While some public servants might be corrupt, I think most- thank goodness – are honest and principled.
Yes. Certainly I doubt if the UK is hugely different from most other similar states.
But every ten years or so there seems to be an investigation by newspapers into the massive corruption of the UK parliament.
Sleaze engulfed John Major’s government after his “Back to Basics” campaign in the middle 90s. Then there was the scandal of expenses (for most parties) in Westminster when first the Telegraph looked at MPs and then the Times at their “Noble”???? Lordships.
Now this is htting the Tories, but I suspect that papers will be looking hard at Labour too, and for that matter they’d probably be over the moon if they could unearth some scandal about the SNP.
I forgot to mention the Tory baroness that wants special measures from the EU so that people can get good nannies. Take back control of you borders but not for nannies!
Ha! Always so convenient to flap one’s lips about the evils of immigration…until you find you actually need the immigrants.
Same happens here in the States–everybody loves to make noise about closing the border and halting immigration, but the moment you actually do, the farmers start to complain about all those crops going unpicked and rotting in the fields. Oops.
A lot of it goes back to the false notion so common among the — to be brutal about it — racist-minded that immigrants are a financial drain on the community, when the reverse is true. Any investment in getting them housed, teaching them necessary language skills and so on is far outweighed by the additional contributions they will make to the economy as a result.
“Coming over here, stealing our jobs and living high on the hog on benefits” – aye, right.
I’ve always thought that, someone who has it hard in their own country, for whatever reason, war, drought, famine, discrimination…whatever, and who, instead of just tolerating it, actually has the drive to get up and move somewhere else, is likely to be the kind of person who will be driven to work hard and achieve.
Indeed, Tris. The other thing is that so many people who come here because they are fleeing intolerable situations at home have usually had the experience of doors being slammed in their faces wherever they have gone. So, when they finally find a country that will take them in, and not only that, make them welcome, they are going to love that country with a passion.
To hell with the appalling Theresa May’s and Priti Patel’s “hostile environment”.
I’ve always said that you’d have to be half daft to imagine that someone who, for whatever reason, is prepared to treck half way across the world to somewhere new to work, was likely to be a shirtless loser.
I greatly admire my parents for taking the risk they did. By the time they moved to the States (with me in tow as a teenager), they were in their 40s. Not easy to pick up and move to a different culture at that stage in life. I’m not so sure I could do it.
Someone who does that kind of thing, leaving friends, relatives and everything they are used to behind, is made of solid stuff.
Some great stories recently on line of people who have made the journey to the UK as teenagers and studied here and become doctors, currently working in the NHS saving lives.
Cressida Dick, Gold Commander in charge of the operation when a completely innocent man, Jean Charles de Menezes, was shot dead. Even the jury didn’t believe her, returning an Open verdict.
As an ex cop, I remember Operation Countryman in the 1970s, which was supposed to root out corruption in the Met. It now seems that that starts at the very top. Nothing to see hear. Move on.
Hm. “Dame Dick”. Sounds like something that might happen in pantomime — but that aside…
The corrupt can be corrupt only if there are opportunities to defraud. That said, to act on those antisocial attitudes there has to be a lack of the kind of conscience that stops the rest of us engaging in corruption beyond nicking a few paperclips and biros from the office.
Its often been said — and is frequently true — that Tories have some essential part of the human soul missing. They lack empathy, which is already half the battle lost in preventing us humans from acting antisocially. Throw in the sense of entitlement so common among the privileged scions of the English upper classes and their wannabes, and you get the ineffable Boris Johnson, Dodgy Dave Cameron, the delightful Dame Ledsom, the perverse Priti Patel, the oleaginous Gove, the absurd but repellent Rees-Mogg, the petty authoritarian bully DRoss, and so many other awful, obnoxious gammons such as Frankwaz and our very own Stephen Kerr.
It’s relatively easy for the corrupt to flourish when the institutions of the society are weak. Putin’s Russia is a case in point, as are so many poor countries and tinpot dictatorships around the world. It is also both a feature and a cause of declining, threatened democracies such as Trump’s America and Johnson’s UK. Under such circumstances, the authoritarian-minded can set up a congenial environment, ripe for plundering, where they can pervert the truth for their own purposes using a congenially slavish media machine; where their power can be exercised without restraint or accountability; where they can treat the public purse as their own; where they can soak up power, privilege and wealth as a ruling class of kleptocrats, a new and sickening nobility; where their jackboot stamps on the face of the rest of us for ever.
Time to take to the lifeboat, people, and in our progress toward independence, adduce as grounds and motive the rampant corruption — “sleaze” is far too mild a word — of the elite of England who affect to rule us, in defiance of democracy.
I wish I could add to that… but I’m not sure that I can.
You’d think, though, that if, like say Charlie or Willie, you were born to have everything as a matter of right without ever having to steal, without ever having to lie, without ever having to cheat, you might be reasonably likely to be more or less trustworthy.
So what are the royals so tainted and what ever happened to people looking into Charlie and his dubious honours?
I have decided that the pantomime in which Dame Dick will star is to be called “Dick Whittington and Puss-in-Boots Do Drag”.
As for Charlie’s tainted honours, and the other offences of the royals – well, another feature of failed and failing States, and of failing liberal democracies, is that the rule of law is weak or weakening, of flat out does not obtain. That is the ideal circumstance in which the so-called culture of impunity can thrive. The UK, with its weak or absent constitutional protections, has always been at higher risk of falling into that trap than the other liberal democracies in Europe, which came out of WWII or the overthrow of their own dictators to update and strengthen their constitutions and beef up the rule of law to prevent the recurrence of the excesses of the past.
The problem of impunity is instantiated in the royals, who have always been pretty much beyond the reach of the laws applicable to mere commoners. Contempt for the law is also a feature of the personality disorders and other psychopathies.
Couple all that with the concept of entitlement, and you get a Boris Johnson and a sweatless prince. For the rest of the royals, including Charlie, I expect he feels entitled to do whatever he likes within his power, because who is there who can contradict him? You can probably count them on the fingers of one hand, and still have fingers left over.
Travelling to Scotland in the midst of the pandemic, as Charlie did (while infected), and Wills and Kate Middleclass did in the face of a request from the Scottish Government not to, are examples of rules applicable to commoners not applying to royals, and also show exactly what the royals think of the Scottish Government.
I guess in many ways, having single-handedly won the wars, the Brits felt entitled to go on as they had before, whilst everyone else was changing.
Well, until America pointed out that it had had a hand in it all… (not to mention the USSR).
I don’t know how the law and foreign royalty works out, but quite literally in England (and probably Britain), the Queen cannot be touched by law. Quite apart form the fact that she outranks everyone, she IS the law. The Crown versus the Crown would be an odd case to argue.
It seems too that no member of her family can be arrested whilst in her company… presumably why the Duke of York hastened to Balmoral to be with Mummy when the cops were looking for him.
Princess Anne has been fined for driving at excessive speeds and for letting her dogs go wild…
However, you’ll remember that when at 98 Edinburgh crashed his car, wrecking someone else’s vehicle and injuring someone, all because the sun was in his eyes, he escaped any prosecution and was, in fact, seen driving a brand new car the very next day.
The queen has also frequently been seen recently driving without seat belts.
I’m sure that Dame Dick would make any case against any of them disappear pretty sharpish as I’m sure that one day she wants, regardless of her shocking record, to be Lady Dick!
Just a wee point,
There are only TWO countries on the planet with a 2 child limit for benefits.
Vietnam and englandland.
We forget so much, the flounder relies on the fact we only seem to hold 3 things in our memory boxes without some trigger.
More of the mps paying family members from their office and researcher benefit.
Millions claimed for First Class travel on expenses.
I’ve witnessed a now retired mp ask for an upgrade to first class at no cost.
The cox voted against having to report foreign earnings, have a look at the voting histories of the tory party.
Seems that the levelling up of building the HS2 extension to Leeds is being dumped.
Do you remember when they accused the SNP MPs of travelling from Glasgow to London on planes, first class.
There is, of course, no such thing. If you want to go first class you have to do what Charles Saxe Coburg and Mrs Parker Bowles do … or indeed Mr Johnson does and take a private jet.
I doubt HS2 will ever reach Birmingham.
When I look at what Mitterrand did 40 years ago in France, I really do ask myself why we are attached to a third world country.
Speaking as somebody who only ever managed to reach the dizzy heights of minor functionary in local government I can tell you there were whole departments spewing out volume after volume of instructions regarding how the cooncils coin would be accounted for. All this was backed up physically by Auditors and other guardians of the public purse. Having the Auditors in was a pleasure that all managers of frontline services endured from time to time and rightly so. Some were over zealous, demanding investigation into minor anomalies that cost a great deal more in man hours than the sum misplaced. Most were perfectly sensible and nice people when they weren’t being treated like the anti-Christ by nervous managers.
It seems though that like the brown stuff, accountability also rolls downhill , where the hierarchies have the freedom while the plebs justify every 2nd class stamp in triplicate.
We find ourselves with little choice other than having to elect our politicians from a professional political class, who anybody that’s been paying attention knows contains more than its fair share of amoral people. They’re then handed the keys to the corrupt systems safe and left to it, and gasp… many help themselves….. wha’d have thocht it?.
There’s no easy answer so it’s something that’s set to raise its scabby heid periodically. It’s how brazenly obvious this latest batch is that’s so worrying and very possibly another indication of the lack of intellectual ability in our over-educated under intelligent politicians.
Still, if we’re worrying about that then we’re not worrying so much about something else are we? 🤔
Do you think that the utter lack of morality in the current leadership in London would account for an increase, at least in the most obvious stuff, like doing your North Devonshire job from the comfort of a beachside home in a tax haven…at the same time as earning silly money from that tax haven government?
MUNGUIN'S NEW REPUBLIC 
The UK is not corrupt, because the great majority of the population do not behave dishonestly. More cynically, it could be said that very few of us are in a position to be corrupt. However, there is little doubt that most of the members of the UK Government are corrupt, as is ,possibly, a majority of Conservative MPs. It is likely that some MPs of other parties have behaved corruptly, but, I think that they are few in number, partly because they are not in position to be corrupt. While some public servants might be corrupt, I think most- thank goodness – are honest and principled.
LikeLike
Yes. Certainly I doubt if the UK is hugely different from most other similar states.
But every ten years or so there seems to be an investigation by newspapers into the massive corruption of the UK parliament.
Sleaze engulfed John Major’s government after his “Back to Basics” campaign in the middle 90s. Then there was the scandal of expenses (for most parties) in Westminster when first the Telegraph looked at MPs and then the Times at their “Noble”???? Lordships.
Now this is htting the Tories, but I suspect that papers will be looking hard at Labour too, and for that matter they’d probably be over the moon if they could unearth some scandal about the SNP.
LikeLike
“Back to Basics”
Which, if nothing else, spawned a Viz cartoon character (Baxter Basics MP).
LikeLiked by 1 person
Well, it did do some good then… and just think of all those spinsters cycling to church, and the thwack of cork on willow…
LikeLike
But I was just quoting his words…. he said the Uk wasn’t corrupt.
LikeLike
I forgot to mention the Tory baroness that wants special measures from the EU so that people can get good nannies. Take back control of you borders but not for nannies!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Ha! Always so convenient to flap one’s lips about the evils of immigration…until you find you actually need the immigrants.
Same happens here in the States–everybody loves to make noise about closing the border and halting immigration, but the moment you actually do, the farmers start to complain about all those crops going unpicked and rotting in the fields. Oops.
LikeLiked by 1 person
A lot of it goes back to the false notion so common among the — to be brutal about it — racist-minded that immigrants are a financial drain on the community, when the reverse is true. Any investment in getting them housed, teaching them necessary language skills and so on is far outweighed by the additional contributions they will make to the economy as a result.
“Coming over here, stealing our jobs and living high on the hog on benefits” – aye, right.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I’ve always thought that, someone who has it hard in their own country, for whatever reason, war, drought, famine, discrimination…whatever, and who, instead of just tolerating it, actually has the drive to get up and move somewhere else, is likely to be the kind of person who will be driven to work hard and achieve.
LikeLike
Indeed, Tris. The other thing is that so many people who come here because they are fleeing intolerable situations at home have usually had the experience of doors being slammed in their faces wherever they have gone. So, when they finally find a country that will take them in, and not only that, make them welcome, they are going to love that country with a passion.
To hell with the appalling Theresa May’s and Priti Patel’s “hostile environment”.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’m an immigrant myself, so I know the truth–we contribute far more to our adopted countries than we take away! Immigrants are hard workers.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I’ve always said that you’d have to be half daft to imagine that someone who, for whatever reason, is prepared to treck half way across the world to somewhere new to work, was likely to be a shirtless loser.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I greatly admire my parents for taking the risk they did. By the time they moved to the States (with me in tow as a teenager), they were in their 40s. Not easy to pick up and move to a different culture at that stage in life. I’m not so sure I could do it.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Absolutely.
Someone who does that kind of thing, leaving friends, relatives and everything they are used to behind, is made of solid stuff.
Some great stories recently on line of people who have made the journey to the UK as teenagers and studied here and become doctors, currently working in the NHS saving lives.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Wonderful–nothing but respect for those people.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Eurobrat, to you I say “welcome”.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Well, Eurobrat is actually an immigrant in Oregon, unless I’m mistaken….
LikeLike
Different continent, same sentiment…
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Absolutely.
The right wing press had a lot of fun with that here. Hundreds of front pages about how all Britain’s ills could be set at the door of “foreigners”.
Not that the truth has changed the minds of the faithful Brexiteers!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Cressida Dick, Gold Commander in charge of the operation when a completely innocent man, Jean Charles de Menezes, was shot dead. Even the jury didn’t believe her, returning an Open verdict.
As an ex cop, I remember Operation Countryman in the 1970s, which was supposed to root out corruption in the Met. It now seems that that starts at the very top. Nothing to see hear. Move on.
LikeLiked by 2 people
How she got promoted I have no idea!
LikeLike
Hm. “Dame Dick”. Sounds like something that might happen in pantomime — but that aside…
The corrupt can be corrupt only if there are opportunities to defraud. That said, to act on those antisocial attitudes there has to be a lack of the kind of conscience that stops the rest of us engaging in corruption beyond nicking a few paperclips and biros from the office.
Its often been said — and is frequently true — that Tories have some essential part of the human soul missing. They lack empathy, which is already half the battle lost in preventing us humans from acting antisocially. Throw in the sense of entitlement so common among the privileged scions of the English upper classes and their wannabes, and you get the ineffable Boris Johnson, Dodgy Dave Cameron, the delightful Dame Ledsom, the perverse Priti Patel, the oleaginous Gove, the absurd but repellent Rees-Mogg, the petty authoritarian bully DRoss, and so many other awful, obnoxious gammons such as Frankwaz and our very own Stephen Kerr.
It’s relatively easy for the corrupt to flourish when the institutions of the society are weak. Putin’s Russia is a case in point, as are so many poor countries and tinpot dictatorships around the world. It is also both a feature and a cause of declining, threatened democracies such as Trump’s America and Johnson’s UK. Under such circumstances, the authoritarian-minded can set up a congenial environment, ripe for plundering, where they can pervert the truth for their own purposes using a congenially slavish media machine; where their power can be exercised without restraint or accountability; where they can treat the public purse as their own; where they can soak up power, privilege and wealth as a ruling class of kleptocrats, a new and sickening nobility; where their jackboot stamps on the face of the rest of us for ever.
Time to take to the lifeboat, people, and in our progress toward independence, adduce as grounds and motive the rampant corruption — “sleaze” is far too mild a word — of the elite of England who affect to rule us, in defiance of democracy.
LikeLiked by 5 people
I wish I could add to that… but I’m not sure that I can.
You’d think, though, that if, like say Charlie or Willie, you were born to have everything as a matter of right without ever having to steal, without ever having to lie, without ever having to cheat, you might be reasonably likely to be more or less trustworthy.
So what are the royals so tainted and what ever happened to people looking into Charlie and his dubious honours?
LikeLike
Thanks, Tris!
I have decided that the pantomime in which Dame Dick will star is to be called “Dick Whittington and Puss-in-Boots Do Drag”.
As for Charlie’s tainted honours, and the other offences of the royals – well, another feature of failed and failing States, and of failing liberal democracies, is that the rule of law is weak or weakening, of flat out does not obtain. That is the ideal circumstance in which the so-called culture of impunity can thrive. The UK, with its weak or absent constitutional protections, has always been at higher risk of falling into that trap than the other liberal democracies in Europe, which came out of WWII or the overthrow of their own dictators to update and strengthen their constitutions and beef up the rule of law to prevent the recurrence of the excesses of the past.
The problem of impunity is instantiated in the royals, who have always been pretty much beyond the reach of the laws applicable to mere commoners. Contempt for the law is also a feature of the personality disorders and other psychopathies.
Couple all that with the concept of entitlement, and you get a Boris Johnson and a sweatless prince. For the rest of the royals, including Charlie, I expect he feels entitled to do whatever he likes within his power, because who is there who can contradict him? You can probably count them on the fingers of one hand, and still have fingers left over.
Travelling to Scotland in the midst of the pandemic, as Charlie did (while infected), and Wills and Kate Middleclass did in the face of a request from the Scottish Government not to, are examples of rules applicable to commoners not applying to royals, and also show exactly what the royals think of the Scottish Government.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Good points, Ed.
I guess in many ways, having single-handedly won the wars, the Brits felt entitled to go on as they had before, whilst everyone else was changing.
Well, until America pointed out that it had had a hand in it all… (not to mention the USSR).
I don’t know how the law and foreign royalty works out, but quite literally in England (and probably Britain), the Queen cannot be touched by law. Quite apart form the fact that she outranks everyone, she IS the law. The Crown versus the Crown would be an odd case to argue.
It seems too that no member of her family can be arrested whilst in her company… presumably why the Duke of York hastened to Balmoral to be with Mummy when the cops were looking for him.
Princess Anne has been fined for driving at excessive speeds and for letting her dogs go wild…
However, you’ll remember that when at 98 Edinburgh crashed his car, wrecking someone else’s vehicle and injuring someone, all because the sun was in his eyes, he escaped any prosecution and was, in fact, seen driving a brand new car the very next day.
The queen has also frequently been seen recently driving without seat belts.
I’m sure that Dame Dick would make any case against any of them disappear pretty sharpish as I’m sure that one day she wants, regardless of her shocking record, to be Lady Dick!
LikeLike
Ha! Lady Dick — oh no, let’s not go there.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Um, yeah!
LikeLike
Just a wee point,
There are only TWO countries on the planet with a 2 child limit for benefits.
Vietnam and englandland.
We forget so much, the flounder relies on the fact we only seem to hold 3 things in our memory boxes without some trigger.
More of the mps paying family members from their office and researcher benefit.
Millions claimed for First Class travel on expenses.
I’ve witnessed a now retired mp ask for an upgrade to first class at no cost.
The cox voted against having to report foreign earnings, have a look at the voting histories of the tory party.
Seems that the levelling up of building the HS2 extension to Leeds is being dumped.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Do you remember when they accused the SNP MPs of travelling from Glasgow to London on planes, first class.
There is, of course, no such thing. If you want to go first class you have to do what Charles Saxe Coburg and Mrs Parker Bowles do … or indeed Mr Johnson does and take a private jet.
I doubt HS2 will ever reach Birmingham.
When I look at what Mitterrand did 40 years ago in France, I really do ask myself why we are attached to a third world country.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hi, tris.
“. . . what Mitterrand did 40 years ago in France, . . .”
Credit where credit is due.
You keep forgetting about Georges “Diamonds are Forever” Pompidou.
The man who introduced the French to toilet bowls.
LikeLiked by 1 person
That, erm sounds fun…
Apart from the world’s most hideous building, I’m trying to think of something he did,,,
LikeLike
“. . . I’m trying to think of something he did . . . ”
Put France on the road to modernization?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Maybe he did, DonDon. I’ll never forgive him for that building though!
LikeLike
I have just visited my daughter in Staffordshire and unfortunately there is lots of construction happening due to HS2.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Is that (excuse me, I can’t remember my English geography) north of Birmingham?
It seemed to me that originally it was going to be a fast track from London to Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester… and then possibly on to Edinburgh.
But bit by bit it got cut back and now would only run to Birmingham, taking 15-20 minutes or so off the journey.
LikeLike
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FEBqBiuXIAsJ4U9?format=jpg&name=small
It’s spread to the wee branch office…
LikeLike
Speaking as somebody who only ever managed to reach the dizzy heights of minor functionary in local government I can tell you there were whole departments spewing out volume after volume of instructions regarding how the cooncils coin would be accounted for. All this was backed up physically by Auditors and other guardians of the public purse. Having the Auditors in was a pleasure that all managers of frontline services endured from time to time and rightly so. Some were over zealous, demanding investigation into minor anomalies that cost a great deal more in man hours than the sum misplaced. Most were perfectly sensible and nice people when they weren’t being treated like the anti-Christ by nervous managers.
It seems though that like the brown stuff, accountability also rolls downhill , where the hierarchies have the freedom while the plebs justify every 2nd class stamp in triplicate.
We find ourselves with little choice other than having to elect our politicians from a professional political class, who anybody that’s been paying attention knows contains more than its fair share of amoral people. They’re then handed the keys to the corrupt systems safe and left to it, and gasp… many help themselves….. wha’d have thocht it?.
There’s no easy answer so it’s something that’s set to raise its scabby heid periodically. It’s how brazenly obvious this latest batch is that’s so worrying and very possibly another indication of the lack of intellectual ability in our over-educated under intelligent politicians.
Still, if we’re worrying about that then we’re not worrying so much about something else are we? 🤔
LikeLiked by 1 person
True enough… LOL.
Do you think that the utter lack of morality in the current leadership in London would account for an increase, at least in the most obvious stuff, like doing your North Devonshire job from the comfort of a beachside home in a tax haven…at the same time as earning silly money from that tax haven government?
🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Is there a typo in the heading?
Shouldn’t there be a full stop between “think” and “the” ?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yeah, on two separate lines.
You’re dead right. He just opens his privileged mouth and a pile of rubbish comes out.
Could be his upbringing… could be the drink.
LikeLike