United Kingdom VI: Summer Lovin'

[MartyG]

In terms of delivering care, the restrictions here haven't changed at all. The support bubble thing always struck me as a bit of a strange one, but it's very well defined on the central government website.

You're never going to cover all bases on announcements, even if you're a completely competent government, hence these soundbite slogans that are easy to remember. There's always going to be a need to follow them up via a council's website for example - they're not being draconianly enforced the moment they take affect as you rightly state as these things do take a little while to filter down through the various sources.

I can tell you that if you really want the local council to respond to you, the way to achieve this it's via their complaints procedure as there are reply targets they're supposed to meet (and if you really want you can escalate them if they aren't met) - but abuse this too much and you could end up on the vexatious complainant list. The traffic to local councils has increased since March, so they're having to deal with a lot more support calls at the moment, so they are under a lot pressure and most of them are just everyday Janes and Joes.

[Cassius_Smoke]

Turns out the UK is the number 1 money laundring country in the world. So that's nice.
Oh and the Torys have been receiving money from Russia. Not that anything will come of any of this. Just like the Panama papers.

[MartyG]

So it looks like despite the science heralded yesterday, the goverment is delaying doing anything meaningful until it's too late again.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/21/pubs-and-restaurants-across-england-to-be-forced-to-shut-at-10pm

The equivalency here is trying to fix a leaking tap by standing on a copper pipe.

[QualityChimp]

I think people who are doing stuff that is obviously wrong will know full well they are doing so and couldn't give a toss.

Yeah, I heard about one guy who was preaching about everyone following lockdown rules, but then jets off to Italy to stay at his mate's house, but his company denied it!

I can't keep this up, basically Officials at Perugia airport said that Boris Johnson was there from the 11th to the 14th September.
Downing Street said "no he wasn't."

https://twitter.com/rickycoxon/status/1308021191047876609

Obviously, the below is speculation with some additional research, but it's interesting to think that it's entirely believable, because of his past form, that Johnson would have a jolly at his Russian, KGB-linked, owner's friend's house when he's telling people to stay at home, or not, are we eating out to help out?

->Open Spoiler<-

1/ "Boris did/not go to Perugia in Italy" - why does this matter? A thread.
Background first. On the 17th Sept, officials at Perugia airport said Johnson was there "in the last few days". Later they confirmed he "landed on the 11th at 2pm and left on the 14th at 7:45am".

2/ Downing Street denies he went at all. So the first issue is that either the officials at Perugia airport are lying or Johnson's staff at Downing street are.
This isn't the first and only time Johnson has lied so I'm calling dibs on it being him.

3/ The evidence is pretty obvious. The Flightradar site shows a couple of private jets flying in and out of Perugia's airport at approximately the times above - one even landed at an RAF base in Johnson's home constituency.

4/ Why Perugia? And why lie about it? Well apart from making the lie the dead cat story, it is pretty worrying that Johnson has gone there.
Perugia is the home of Johnson's longtime friend Evgeny Lebedev. He's been there before on a number of occasions.

5/ One time in 2018, whilst foreign secretary and just after the Salisbury poisonings, he went to Perugia without any security and was seen at the airport looking disheveled and worse for wear.

6/ Lebedev also threw a huge party for Johnson after he won the 2019 general election in December.
Aww, that's nice. Friends.

7/ But the real question is: in the midst of the 2nd wave of Covid-19 AND during the most crucial period in EU trade deal negotiations AND during the largest recession in modern history, did Prime Minister Johnson toddle off on a jolly?

8/ Evgeny Lebedev is the son of Alexander Lebedev. Alexander was a KGB spy for Russia based in London. During the collapse of the USSR, Alexander became an oligarch worth an estimated $3b.

Not bad considering his parents were teachers in communist Russia.

9/ Like most of the Russian oligarchs, at the end of the USSR, Alexander was given a ton of state assets that moved from public ownership to private hands making him very rich indeed.

10/ Many people, including myself, have warned that Brexit will create a handful of extremely rich oligarchs at the cost of the ordinary UK citizen.

But that might just be a complete coincidence.

11/ The Putin-supporting Lebedev's own two British newspapers, the Evening Standard and the Independent, as well as a Russian newspaper.

12/ If I were an oligarch that gained my wealth by illicit means, I would buy a newspaper in a foreign tax haven and use it to control the narrative and spread misinformation that enabled me to continue my life of total lawlessness & spoilt privilege.

But that's me.

13/ In Fact, in spring 2019, MI6 and special branch had Evgeny Lebedev down as a "potential security risk".

But by June 2019 this was down-graded by order of the Cabinet Office and Lebedev was then given an honours in the Queens new years honours list.

14/ Gove and Cummings run the Cabinet office by the way.

Their financial backer and founder of LeaveEU is multi-millionaire Aaron Banks. He's married to the daughter of another former Russian spy and Putin oligarch. I **** you not, look it up.

15/ When Cummings broke the lockdown rules people asked "what does he have on Johnson?".

A former senior MI6 officer has speculated that "someone may have a Kompromat on the Prime Minister".

16/ Some of the foreign press are reporting that Johnson and Carrie have split up and the wedding canceled due to him having an affair with a 29yr old violinist from...you guessed it... Russia.

17/ Sidenote: When you leave your wife for your mistress you create a vacancy.

Who said the Tories didn't create jobs?

18/ Anyway, over the weekend, some files called #FINCEN were leaked. They contain over 200,000 suspicious financial transactions worth over $2trillion that were facilitated by banks around the world, including UK bank HSBC. Both the US and UK Gov't appears to have ignored them.

19/ One of these dodgy transactions was for $8m and involved another Russian oligarch called Vladimir Chernukhin. He's a close ally of Putin and a general bad guy. He's been accused by US officials as "playing a key role in advancing Russia's malign activities".

20/ Vladimir's wife, Lubov Chernukhin, has donated £1.7m to the Tory party just before the Brexit vote. She's paid £160,000 to Boris Johnson for a game of tennis too. The Chernukhin's live in London.

Is anyone spotting a pattern yet?

21/ Very powerful, wealthy, and loyal Russian oligarchs have set-up base in London. They own and use the British press and the UK's generous tax avoidance network, including British banks, along with the inner sanctum of the Tory party to influence UK politics to their advantage.

22/ And then earlier this year we finally got to hear about the Russian interference report. It said UK authorities were deliberately looking the other way when it came to foreign interference in our elections and democracy.

It's starting to make sense now.
[/end]

[MartyG]

I can't keep this up, basically Officials at Perugia airport said that Boris Johnson was there from the 11th to the 14th September.

No, they came out and flatly denied it - this stems from a couple of Italian tabloid papers: https://www.politicshome.com/news/ar...ohnson-perugia

I'm all for bashing the governement when it's doing a bad job - we don't need to make things up to do that.

[Hirst]

He doesn't help himself by disappearing from public view for days at a time with no clear explanation why, it makes people want to believe things like this.

[QualityChimp]

I did say it's speculation and even if proven false, then it's interesting to see how easy it is to believe because of his previous escapades.

[Brad]

So has Tony Blair confirmed it was actually him? WTF is going on in general, with everything?

[MartyG]

People have become dumber over time due to protection from Darwinism and as a result are more likely to believe unsubstantiated fake news?

Also, now we know, thanks to Sturgeon, that the measures put forward by Johnson earlier is, as per the advice given to the Cabinet by the Chief Medical Officer and the National Clinical Director

on its own will not be sufficient to bring the R number down

Well, I'm shocked.

[Lebowski]

No, they came out and flatly denied it - this stems from a couple of Italian tabloid papers: https://www.politicshome.com/news/ar...ohnson-perugia

I'm all for bashing the governement when it's doing a bad job - we don't need to make things up to do that.

get the story right at least

it wasn't tabloids it was the airport that issued a statement on 17 September boasting about the arrivals of a host of VIPs including Johnson, this was picked up by the tabloids so it comes from a credible source at least. They then said they got it wrong and back tracked saying they got him mixed up and it was in-fact Tony Blair, this sounds like bull**** to me.

Could it be that someone has moved quickly to do damage control and got the airport to issue this statement, its a massive security risk reporting on the movements of people like Johnson and surely this isn't the norm for people using private jets and trying to move about under the radar. sounds like bad business for the airport.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/sep/21/no-10-denies-reports-boris-johnson-went-on-secret-italy-trip

[MartyG]

No I think it's way way way way way way way way way more likely the airport just got it wrong rather than it being a multi-national conspiracy.

Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

[wheelaa]

(Apologies if this is too close to the bone for some, you know, this place...but read it as intended, with a smile and a reference to a, now somewhat dubious, comedy classic!)

What a mistake-a to make-a!

[Brad]

From the latest restrictions we seem to have found out quite a bit of new invormation about Covid-19:

1. It's nocturnal, and generally does not go out until partying until about 10pm at night, but it does sometimes visit the supermarket beforehand (any time from 8pm onwards) to stock up on pre-drinks
2. It's sympathetic in that it would never harm (up to 30) people at a funeral when they're already a bit sad

[MartyG]

[Brad]

I'd love to see Michael Gove explaining all the rules to Ali G. And of course the following back and forth.