And the gravy train rolls on . . .

[stockhausen]

Sir Ivor Crewe was interviewed for post of head of the Office of Students but job was given to former Tory MP.

Perhaps it was the long passage in Professor Sir Ivor Crewe’s book The Blunders of Our Governments about the way ministers’ mistakes never catch up with them that led Gavin Williamson to reject the expert as the new head of the Office for Students.

Or maybe the education secretary was put off by the section of the 2013 book, written with the late Anthony King, dealing with how ministers put underqualified, inexperienced people in charge of public bodies.

The job of independent regulator of higher education in England was instead handed to James Wharton, a 36-year-old former Tory MP with no experience in higher education who ran Boris Johnson’s leadership campaign. But the Observer can reveal that Crewe – the former vice-chancellor of the University of Essex, one-time head of Universities UK and most recently the master of University College, Oxford – was interviewed for the post and rejected. (LINK)

Of one thing you can be quite sure, it was definitely not a case of "Jobs for the boys" or in this case, a job for an ex-Tory MP who has popped up in the House of Lords


Next up - the Government is to appoint a 'free-speech champion' for English universities to discourage the re-evaluation of British history - AKA - Don't mention slavery or Colonial theft

 

[FoxEye]

OMG how terrible...

What next? What if we had a health Secretary who was also a qualified medical practitioner? They’d go from doctor to doctors’ friend... and then they might go back to being a doctor after giving up politics.

You've never heard of "conflict of interest" have you?

 

[dowie]

You've never heard of "conflict of interest" have you?

Ah, Mr Covid herd immunity enthusiast...

If he's not a minister anymore then he's allowed to work - there isn't some massive inherent conflict of interest here simply because he's got some part-time paid employment elsewhere and an advisor or whatever. If he actually were a minister then that would be different.

 

[robfosters]

Next up - the Government is to appoint a 'free-speech champion' for English universities to discourage the re-evaluation of British history - AKA - Don't mention slavery or Colonial theft

quite right too. This rubbish has gone on far too long and to ridiculous levels. Needs stopping quickly.

 

[FoxEye]

Ah, Mr Covid herd immunity enthusiast...

I thought you were smarter than that. Petty baiting and all. Disappointing.

 

[stockhausen]

Dominic Cummings was instrumental in the process of awarding a government contract worth over £½ million without tender to a polling company named Public First run by his “friends”, according to court documents that raise questions about whether the Cabinet Office may have misled the public. (LINK and LINK)

Cummings must have found something really embarrassing about our esteemed Prime Minister on Facebook to have been able to exercise the authority he did

 

[Roar87]

Of one thing you can be quite sure, it was definitely not a case of "Jobs for the boys" or in this case, a job for an ex-Tory MP who has popped up in the House of Lords


Next up - the Government is to appoint a 'free-speech champion' for English universities to discourage the re-evaluation of British history - AKA - Don't mention slavery or Colonial theft

Funny how you never mention how we abolished slavery, a practice which is thousands of years old, or how we stood alone against Nazi Germany when the Russians and United States didn't want a war with Hitler. Funny how you choose to focus on the negative of your own country despite all of the good things we've also done. Maybe just go somewhere else if you dislike the UK?

 

[Werewolf]

Funny how you never mention how we abolished slavery, a practice which is thousands of years old, or how we stood alone against Nazi Germany when the Russians and United States didn't want a war with Hitler. Funny how you choose to focus on the negative of your own country despite all of the good things we've also done. Maybe just go somewhere else if you dislike the UK?

Erm what has that got to do with it?

The fact we industrialised slavery and profited from it massively for many years is something that tends to not really get mentioned much, whilst the fact that we abolished it is, and WW2 is a very large part of what is taught in history lessons.

You can't have a history were you only ever show yourselves as the good guys and never the bad sides and consider it complete, you need to teach both the good and the bad unless you want to teach nothing but propaganda.

 

[stockhausen]

. . . Maybe just go somewhere else if you dislike the UK?

Who said I dislike the UK

I have lived and worked in a number of countries around the world and I love the UK.

What I am less enthusiastic about than some people seem to be is some of the undesirable attitudes and characteristics that exist, even in the UK (which I love). Amongst these I would include corruption, cronyism, inequality, discrimination and the protection of the "elite".

Admitting past errors and faults is the first (or at least an early) step on the road to being a better person and country

 

[stockhausen]

Legislation to pave the way for a US-style defence research agency to back high-risk research projects is set to be announced, government sources confirmed.

The idea, which was in the 2019 Conservative manifesto, was the brainchild of Boris Johnson’s former chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, who has written extensively about the success of the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

An announcement from the business secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, could be made as soon as this week, with £800m of funding set aside. The UK version is expected to be called the Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA).

Kwarteng’s intention is for the agency to be free of some of the rules that usually govern investments made with taxpayers’ money so that it can back projects in the knowledge that they could fail, government sources said.

The agency is also expected to be exempted from the Freedom of Information Act – a move that will raise concerns that it could become a secretive nexus between the government and arms industry. (LINK)

What a great idea, create an unaccountable slush fund where the Government can give "bungs" to its (and Cummings') chums

 

[FoxEye]

What a great idea, create an unaccountable slush fund where the Government can give "bungs" to its (and Cummings') chums

Yeah coz what the people of this country are most crying out for is more military spending. Often I hear this when visiting my local food bank. "We'd all feel much better if our prosperity - hold on, please can I have some tinned beans for little Jimmy? - were better protected by more spending on smart bombs and the like."

The Tories know what we need. More bombs, please.

But then the Tories are really good with financial matters in general. Like, they wouldn't waste millions paying some shady Del-boy type to procure PPE just recently. Who ultimately took the money and delivered much less than they expected. No, that wouldn't happen with the Tories in charge.

 

[Angilion]

Erm what has that got to do with it?

The fact we industrialised slavery and profited from it massively for many years is something that tends to not really get mentioned much, whilst the fact that we abolished it is, and WW2 is a very large part of what is taught in history lessons.

You can't have a history were you only ever show yourselves as the good guys and never the bad sides and consider it complete, you need to teach both the good and the bad unless you want to teach nothing but propaganda.

Which is why freedom of speech is required. Because the trend is to portray "the west"/"whites" (depending on how overtly racist the person doing it is) as purely bad and anyone who challenges that viewpoint as colonialist/imperalist/white supremacist/alt-right/etc.

It's not true that the fact that the British empire (as it was then) drove the abolition of slavery (single-handedly to begin with) is mentioned much. Maybe it was in the past, before I was in school, but not in the last 40 years and certainly not today.

 

[Angilion]

What a great idea, create an unaccountable slush fund where the Government can give "bungs" to its (and Cummings') chums

A research agency is a good idea. Keeping research secret while its being done is also usually a good idea. But I'm cynical enough to think it's likely to go at least partly the way you think. Some budget padding, some "consultancy fees", that sort of thing. Some percentage of the money creatively accounted away.

 

[Lartyconshayo]

It should be noted that the abolition of slavery by the British was mainly an economic decision rather than a humanitarian one. As per the book British Capitalism and British Slavery by Eric Williams.

Williams rejected moralised explanation and argued that abolition was driven by diminishing returns, after a century of sugarcane raising had exhausted the soil of the islands

.

 

[Angilion]

It should be noted that the abolition of slavery by the British was mainly an economic decision rather than a humanitarian one. As per the book British Capitalism and British Slavery by Eric Williams.

I know it's possible that all the abolitionists were lying, but I don't think it's likely. The "economic decision" explanation also doesn't explain why the British empire spent so much money fighting slavery, both directly (e.g. at its peak, the anti-slavery fleet was the 6th largest military navy in the world) and in less direct ways by annoying other countries (by boarding ships of that country, for example). If stopping slavery was an economic decision caused by slavery becoming less profitable, why spend so much money on stopping it? Why spend any money at all on stopping it? Why even bother making it illegal?

The "economic decision" argument would make a lot more sense if it was about Britain trying to force other countries out of the slave trade so they could make more money out of it, but that's the opposite of what happened.