Cronyism and cash for access scandal rolls on
Keir Starmer’s freebies and cash-for-access scandal continues to grow. After the row over the awarding of an all-areas Downing Street pass for multi-millionaire donor Waheed Alli, who bought designer clothes for Starmer, his wife and his front-benchers (sometimes disguised as ‘office support’), along with repeated free use of an £18m penthouse to Starmer, the ‘son of a toolmaker’ is facing fresh outrage for offering businesses the chance for a face-to-face brekkie with Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds in return for a £30k donation.
And not just breakfast – the email blurb for the event at The Ivy in Manchester offered attendees ‘distinct benefits’ in return for their investment. Supposedly those attending would also:
gain insights, network and exchange ideas amongst peers and a Government minister… We have carefully curated a package that offer [sic] distinct benefits, ensuring your brand receives optimal exposure and engagement during the event.
The emails were sent by the party’s former north-west regional direct Liam Didsbury, who suddenly resigned that post earlier this year but appears to be still in a party role.
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Centrist Labour out-torying even David Cameron and George Osborne?
Back in 2014, The Indie asked “How much for dinner with David Cameron?” and disclosed “Tories reveal list of ‘mega-rich donors’ who spend £50,000 to dine with the PM”.
Starmer’s not quite there yet but give him time – he’s been a bit distracted recently with his PR duties for Israel.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/how-much-for-dinner-with-david-cameron-tories-reveal-list-of-megarich-donors-who-spend-ps50-000-to-dine-with-the-pm-9858102.html
You can get a full English for a fiver. So that just leaves £29,995 to be justified…
It would be less. There is no chance that he would black pudding,, hang aboutget toasted lammies, can you get toasted lammies?
I ‘ve heard of lammys but ‘lammies’, no. Is it a Scottish “lorne sausage” v “slice” type thing alexander? Maybe ‘Lammies’ is what people in Edinburgh call ‘imbecilic idiots’ who claim that frail multi-billionaires (her late majesty QE2) took a very dangerous untested ‘vaccine’ for a respiratory virus that adequate levels of Vit D3 protect most people against?
One bad scruff that reynolds. And no amount of freebies from anyone’d change it.
And as for his credentials reynolds is the genius who, when asked just how he’d reform universal credit, replied he’d merely change the bleedin’ name.
At the very least I’d want someone with an iota of intelligence for my £30k. In fact, I’d wanna own the whole bastard party and everyone in it.
And even then I’d want quite a bit of change – as in moolah.
I don’t think Jonathan Reynolds is the only one who is, hhm, lacking in intelligence Toffee. Richard Murphy bloged “Starmer’s new climate policy is unforgivable” today. This particular piece of ‘unforgivable’ stupidity is pure Ed Milliband.
I’m hard-pressed to find any cabinet member that’s impressing any political analyst or correspondent with incisive policy-making. Wait till Budget Day and even Rachel Reeves will be Trussed by them?
I heartily concur. The whole tenor of the Cabinet is of a student union debating club and Reynolds isn’t the only one. The latest Private Eye makes an intriguing comment about the new Culture Secretary, who it appears, has paused a review of the “questionable” workings of Arts Council England, set up by the last government but with Labour support. The Eye thinks that the claim that a wider review of arts funding is required first is a smokescreen suggesting Lisa Nandy has “succumbed to pressure”. It then concludes with the damning sentence “She is weaker than we thought.”
That line in itself tells all.
I don’t think Jonathan Reynolds is the only one who is, hhm, lacking in intelligence Toffee
If i ever thought he was, there’d be nothing down for me. I’d be as brainless as them.
As for the rest of them, I’ve asked on several occasions…Remember how we (almost) chuckled when rees-smog ruled himself out of the toerag leadership campaign, citing: “The abundance of talent”??
Well, the public has replaced horseshit with cowshit. It’s still as stinky, and there’s a lot more of it.
On another note, the unholy trinity (keef, reeves and moribund) were at the bottling plant where I once worked (2011, at the height of the pig flu, which i caught while there) ; announcing several thousand well-paid jobs (including at that plant) in carbon capture technology.
I worked continental shifts when I was there, and was paid not much more than (the then) NMW. Mind you, it was through an agency (who tried to stiff me of a few days wages when I left)
A few years back, I saw a lad I know (from childhood) who was working there at the time of seeing him, and he said he wasn’t that good a screw even then.
Things may have changed there since then, but for the 4.5/1 (govt to private) ratio of investment, I should bleedin well hope that those jobs are well-paid.
The only ways to navigate the next 10yrs, of uniparty extremeism are to be shiftless and gormless. 10yrs, that’s wishful thinking already.
Where there’s money, there’s a fiddle.
UK MP’s, of whatever nominal stripe, are not the only ones coining it and benefitting from lobbyists for minority oligarch interests whose objective is controlling the State apparatus and using proxies to mass slaughter whole societies and anyone who gets in their way.
Here is what is happening on that other front in the financial scam that is the globalised forever Wars:
https://x.com/leonidragozin/status/1842044756861305291
“Ukrainian MP Oleksandr Merezhko told FT that the far right will dub any talks with the Russians capitulation and called them “a threat to democracy”.
A senior Azov movement figure, Maksym Zhorin, says that yes indeed they will and calls the far right “the foundation of country’s security”.
Zhorin is the deputy commander of the 3rd Detached Assault Brigade, an elite unit under the political control of the far right Azov movement.
For Azov movement and multinational securocratic interests behind it, the war is a lucrative business – an enormous pie they are sharing with the Russian siloviki mafia. They are not going to give it up easily.
One can engage in cheap and silly talk about “only 2% of Ukrainians supporting the far right” but they have all the military and political capability to upset any peace and they care little about 98% of Ukrainians.
They succeeded in derailing the 2019 Paris agreements between Putin and Zelensky. Together with other far right movements, they staged a menacing campaign to prevent Zelensky from reaching a last-minute deal on the eve of the Russian full-out invasion in 2022.
They are a major political and military force that should be reckoned with when peace talks start in earnest. If peace is finally reached, these professional soldiers and especially drone operators will fill up the ranks of organised crime in Europe and beyond.”
———————————————
It will be interesting to see what reaction, if any, occurs among the Nigel Farage’s and Yaxley-Lennon’s et al. of this world when these particular immigrants arrive on our shores. One suspects that we will need the best hearing aids Specsavers have to offer to have any chance of hearing any complaints from those sources who are normally so vociferous on the subject.
And doubtless, Herr Starmer and his incompetent Junta will magically find more money than you can shake a stick at to provide a safe haven to far right neo-Nazi knuckle draggers from 404 and their Zionist counterparts fleeing their respective nests they are responsible for soiling when things get too hot for them.
If you are capable of putting a bullet in one of your own diplomats I doubt that you would take chat rooms of the privileged too seriously.