The stink of unfettered corruption. They don’t care how blatant it is any more, they just want to cash in while they have the power. I don’t like hating my fellow human beings, but this government scarcely qualify as humans.
Shame, but not unexpected. Can but hope Labour are forced into a change by the need for a coalition after the next general election. https://www.theguardian.com/politic...post-voting-system?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
Seems absurdly early to be making any concrete commitments on a manifesto. Hopefully this is just a tactic to ensure the right wing gutter press doesn’t get two years of screaming “they can’t win properly so want to change the rules”. Which you know will be the narrative
What could possibly go wrong? Fujitsu, the company responsible for the Post Office computer system that falsely criminalised many sub-postmasters, has been given the contract to run the PNC - Police National Computer. I wonder which MP has been benefiting from donations? THE computer firm blamed for the scandal that put innocent Post Office workers in jail has landed a new contract – to run the Police National Computer. The Home Office has handed Fujitsu a £48million four-year deal to maintain a vital database tracking the records and whereabouts of criminals and suspects across the country. That is despite glitches in the Japanese firm’s Horizon software causing accounting shortfalls at subpost offices between 2000 and 2014. It meant hundreds of sub-postmasters were wrongly prosecuted and sent to prison for offences ranging from theft to fraud, with many losing their homes. The deal comes while two former Fujitsu staff are at the centre of a Scotland Yard perjury probe over evidence they gave police prosecuting post workers. Alan Bates, of the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance, said: “It is hard to believe Fujitsu still gets so much government business, and staggering they have the Police National Computer deal.” Now Labour’s Angela Rayner has called for a review of all government contracts with the firm. The new Fujitsu deal was awarded as a “direct contract with a single supplier, without competition” and will run until 2026. The PNC is used by all UK policing and security services to maintain public safety and to minimise risk to officers. In April Fujitsu also landed a five-year deal worth up to £500million to provide a range of banking IT services for HMRC. It has recently been given a £44million Foreign Office telecommunications services contract. The firm made £6.1million providing a phone network at the Commonwealth Games this summer. Two years ago 555 subpostmasters won a High Court case showing the Horizon software was at fault. It led to £57.75million paid out in damages and a compensation scheme now joined by a further 2,500 sub postmasters impacted by the faulty software. Fujitsu did not comment. The Home Office said the contract was awarded to Fujitsu without competition to “ensure the future of the PNC service”.
The Labour Party's National Conference was required to sing the National Anthem today, for the first time in its history. Keir Hardy's quote, from 1897. "Even under a representative system of government it is possible to paralyse a nation by maintaining the fiction that a reigning family is a necessity of good government. Now, one of two things must be – either the British people are fit to govern themselves or they are not. If they are, an hereditary ruler who in legislation has more power than the whole nation is an insult. Despotism and monarchy are compatible; democracy and monarchy are an unthinkable connection. If we are for the Queen we are not for her subjects. The throne represents the power of caste – class rule. Round the throne gather the unwholesome parasites who cling to the system which lends itself to their disordered condition. The toady who crawls through the mire of self-abasement to enable him to bask in the smile of royalty is the victim of a diseased organism. No healthy, well-developed people could for one moment tolerate an institution which belongs to the childhood of the race, and which in these latter days is the centre, if not the source, of the corrupting influences which constitute Society. The great mind, the strong heart, the detestation of wrong, the love of truth whether in cot or palace will always command my respect. But to worship an empty form, to make pretence to believe a gilded mediocrity indispensable to the well-being of the nation – where is the man who will so far forget what is due to his manhood? In this country loyalty to the Queen is used by the profit-mongers to blind the eyes of the people. We can have but one feeling in the matter – contempt for thrones and for all who bolster them up."
Too many easy points are scored against labour for not being patriotic. Better to reduce the lines of attack. And perhaps suggest a different national anthem as legislation since the issue appears to be the subject of the anthem and not the notion of singing one
I would most definitely support a change that was supportive of the nation over the support of an entitled person/family.
And yet despite all that, Labour are going to get hung up about singing the National Anthem at their conference.
A sad reality of the left - determined to cannibalise themselves in the pursuit of ideological purity.
Not really. There will be a few dissenting voices, as you’d properly expect of a democratic organisation. And the right wing press will of course make as much of it as they can, but I think that for once, the rest of the country has other priorities than this non story.