Last week the mainstream media was full of stories of “top aides” quitting Downing Street. But typically the real scandal was entirely missed – the fact that ever-increasing numbers of unqualified and unelected political hacks are given positions of real power, and large salaries, at public expense.
The question is not why Munira Mirza resigned, the question is why the taxpayer was paying £143,762 a year in salary to this very dubious failed politician. Similarly, can anybody find anything about Elena Narozanski that remotely suggests she was worth a public salary of over £80,000 to provide policy advice on equalities to Boris Johnson? What precisely were her qualifications and experience for that kind of income and influence?
There are currently 113 Special Advisers in Whitehall. That has increased steadily over the last thirty years. Liz Truss as Foreign Secretary, for example, has five where Robin Cook had two. Since 2011 there has been a requirement to publish an annual report giving numbers and cost.
The first annual report in 2012 showed, under David Cameron, 78 Special Advisers with a total paybill of £6.2 million. The most recent report shows this has leapt to 111 special advisers with a paybill of £11.9 million. That is £11.9 million to pay Tory Party hacks (because that is all they are) over £100,000 a year each on average.
Did you ever wonder where Dominic Cummings came from? He went from somebody very few had ever heard of, to the man running the country, in an extraordinarily brief period of time. Which did not involve anybody ever having voted for him.
Well, in the 2012 report, there he is, already ensconced behind the scenes on £69,266 a year of public money, as Special Adviser to Gove as Minister of Education. There Cummings epitomised the Special Adviser by bullying and harassing long-serving civil servants who actually did know something about education. The taxpayer had to pay compensation to one female victim.
Special Advisers are supposed to fulfil the role of Stalin’s political commissars, ensuring the ideological views of the party are adhered to by the government machine.
There is in fact little evidence the civil service is unable to put into effect the ideological views of governments. The Attlee government introduced the largest revolution in the British state of modern times, nationalising the major industries and utilities and creating the National Health Service, with no Special Advisers at all. Ministers told the civil service what to do, and the civil service did it. Margaret Thatcher ran a counter-revolution with a government that had about two dozen Special Advisers in an average year.
John Major had at most 38; but like tuition fees, academy schools, illegal wars and many other terrible things in public life, it was Tony Blair who first initiated the great expansion of Special Advisers, to 84. Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Theresa May maintained this or a slightly lower level, until the Johnson boom.
Special Advisers are an actively dangerous tumour on the body politic. Neither elected, expert nor accountable, they are the most entitled and irresponsible set of people, suddenly handed very real and entirely unmerited power. I recognise precisely that arrogance, that sense of entitlement, in the culture of elite privilege that, in their minds alone, justified the culture of partying through lockdown in government buildings, hidden by the multiple screens of official security.
Four of the five “aides” who resigned from Downing Street last week were Special Advisers. I strongly suspect Special Advisers were the main instigators and participants in the parties being investigated by Sue Gray.
It is a factor which the mainstream media has been peculiarly reluctant to explore, and indeed so has Sue Gray. While her “update” at para 20 refers to “officials and special advisers”, there is no indication within it that she is considering the Hooray Henry culture of Tory Special Advisers as central to what has gone wrong. She is ignoring the actual cause, deliberately.
Gray’s conclusion at 23 (vii) that the problem is that the Prime Minister needs even more staff, can only be a prelude to a ridiculous “pressure of work” exoneration cooked up for her final report. Johnson has in consequence announced that he will create an “Office of the Prime Minister” – all of which misdirection is going to lead to the public purse shelling out money to an even greater number of Special Advisers for the new Office.
One of the five aides who resigned last week was Martin Reynolds, the Principal Private Secretary, who is indeed a career civil servant, not a SPAD. In his case “resigned” should be qualified as I understand he is just returning to the Foreign Office. Reynolds is, like David Frost, an example of a civil servant Johnson came across who shared Johnson’s political enthusiasms, and consequently got promoted far beyond his talents.
There has been insufficient scrutiny on Reynolds. As he is both an experienced career civil servant and a lawyer, there is no excuse whatsoever for his sending out invitations to parties in the garden during lockdown, as nobody denies he did on at least one occasion. As a life member of the senior civil servants’ trade union, the First Division Association, it does not really behove me to say that Reynolds should be sacked, but…
Scotland too suffers from infection by Special Advisers. In 2018 it had 14 Special Advisers – SNP party hacks paid from the public purse – costing the Scottish taxpayer over £1 million a year. The Scottish Government is extraordinarily defensive about them. Unlike Westminster, the Scottish government does not provide an annual report on Special Advisers, although it is supposed to do so under the same legislation covering Westminster. Instead, it gives the information out in reply to a well buried written parliamentary question.
This reply from the Scottish Government to a freedom of information request is deliberately obstructive and unhelpful:
Under the terms of the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010, the First Minister is responsible for all Special Adviser appointments and is required to prepare an annual report setting out the number and cost of Special Advisers and to lay it before the Scottish Parliament. Therefore, some of the information that you have requested about Special Advisers has been provided previously in response to Written Scottish Parliamentary Questions (PQs). Under section 25(1) of FOISA, we do not have to provide you with information if it is already reasonably accessible to you. All Scottish PQs and their replies are published on the Scottish Parliament website. The search facility is available at:
http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx
The reply goes on to give the serial numbers for the relevant questions, but if you enter each serial number in to the search facility you get every government initiated parliamentary question for that session, and you have to search manually through a great many to find the answer you want. It all seems a less than open way of putting out information the Scottish government has a legal obligation to publish.
Sturgeon’s special advisers are particularly pernicious. They are used as a conduit to leak to the media, and famously were involved in orchestrating the attempt to have Alex Salmond falsely convicted. The mainstream media unanimously presented the SPADs involved in the orchestration as “civil servants”, to give a misleading impression of reliability and impartiality.
You may ask, why do the opposition not campaign against this Spad disease affecting our politics? Well, the problem is that they are in on the act. The opposition parties receive “Short money” and “Cranborne money” from the taxpayer to finance their own cadre of political hacks. The more Special Advisers there are, the more cash the opposition parties get. Thus in 2021 the Tories got £11.9 million of your and my money for Special Advisers, but the opposition parties split £10.2 million of public money from Short and Cranborne plus a further £1.1 million in “policy development grant”.
In fact the nomenklatura of unelected opposition hacks supported by the taxpayer is a slightly larger number of people than government special advisers, though on average paid a bit less.
This public financing of political parties – for that is what it is – has been brought in by stealth and foisted on the people. Opinion polling has always found strong opposition to the public purse funding political parties. When you add to these SPADs and Short staff, the ever expanding allowance for personal staff for each MP, again funded by the taxpayer, the problem is serious.
It is not that they constitute any even slightly significant percentage of overall public spending. It is that we have bred an entire political class, unelected, entitled and deeply unpleasant, who enter politics as a profession. Labour Special Advisers and Short money staff, with no interest whatsoever in socialism, played a key role in the destruction of Jeremy Corbyn.
I believe strongly that those engaged in politics, and in putting ideas to the people for democratic choice, should do so at their own expense. Voluntary associations of any kind may choose to back parties. But political activity, as opposed to the business of the government, should not be state funded. It gives established parties a huge advantage over fresh ones, and of course encourages the narrowing of political thought to fall within the doctrine of the state.
Special Advisers, Short money and all public payments to political parties should be abolished. They have a disastrous effect on politics, of which the partygate scandal has given us a little glimpse, though the issues run much deeper.
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The proliferation of these know-nothings is indeed a blight at the heart of government. A very serious structural weakness. I do think however that the resignation by Johnson”s spad last week was also a genuine scandal For being so obviously staged. Just like the ‘now-notorious’ film of Sir Keir Starmer’s ‘harrowing, shameful, disgraceful’ abuse at the hands of ‘an extreme rightwing mob,’ ‘whipped up by the PM’. Had this man ever before been filmed walking in the street outside Parliament through a crowd of protesters? If not, why suddenly now?
Sir Keir ‘In cahoots with the suits’ Starrner
David Kelly RIP
Very much in line with the fake ‘angry SNP mob’ who ‘abused’ Jim Murphy and Eddie Izzard during GE 2015 campaigning in Glasgow.
I recall the incident was filmed close up to make it look serious, I think one of them even walked into a placard to make it look like a proper tussle, when in reality there were a handful of people and some one posted footage of the same incident filmed from a distance showing it up for the propaganda piece it was.
Initial reports suggested these were rabid anti vaxxers, a few of whom were shouting out trending insults at a politician targeted for other reasons. Subsequent reports have totally ignored Johnson’s mention of a “journalist” and the fact that Labour must be happy to be able to present its leader as a victim at a time when it once again abstained on a bill designed to impoverish those on benefits and the state pension.
Ah those “rabid anti vaxxers”, the new subject for our two-minute hate. How we have progressed from the anti-semitism of 1984!
Civilisation disrupted, livelihoods destroyed, millions dead or with long term health issues… There are plenty of good reasons to hate the anti-vaxxer nutcases.
Nutcases!
Incisive and insightful. Another fascinating post. Thank you.
” ensuring the ideological views of the party are adhered to “
This suggests to me that senior Party politicians including Boris Johnson lack any personal conviction in regard to party ideology, while the leader of the opposition has full conviction of the Tory ideology he is supposed to oppose. Thus making the hollow words of the business secretary even more fatuous because it is totally obvious that the PM has no interest in or knowledge of the policies he is supposed to be mandated to implement, but would prefer to hold parties during lockdowns instead.
Like Ullyses tying himself to the mast as he sails past Scylla and Charybdis because the temptations of high office are irresistible. Winston Churchill loved the Empire, but this clown should have had a career in Bollywood, where his insincerities and excesses might have been better understood.
And the threats to our country are supposedly: boat people, Muslims, Corbyn supporters and whistle blowers, while under imminent threat of invasion from Russia and China. Where are the adults in the Establishment who call themselves Patriots ? Are they all corrupted and bought off. If so, the decline and fall of UK is complete.
Wikikettle
Where are they? All in the washing machine I’m afraid having their crimy pasts whitewashed as part of a regular Spring clean.
W, You’ve forgotten the anti-vaxxers.
Spads: a tacit admission that politicians don’t know WTF they are doing ?
No, a route from unqualified PPE graduate onto the Westminster gravy train.
Hmm. A “graduate” is a person with a qualification.
They might have a qualification in how to write a political essay, they certainly don’t have any qualifications in how to run a country.
When the PPE degree was established it was a qualification to run a country — someone else’s.
The post was not meant to be funny but made me laugh actually. Glad to see you haven’t lost an inch of your eloquence, despite prison, SPADs, Assange and all the rest of it.
Thank you and looking forward to the next one 🙂
In asking this question I don ‘t mean to be rude or challenging your views, more for my own edification. Are SPADs not also civil servants? Do they not have to abide by whatever civil service code of conduct there is? It’s not that I disagree with you on the unelected people wielding power but don’t senior civil service people also wield unelected power? What about ambassadors? I get that SPADs are appointed by politicians and likely haven’t gone through the rigorous selection processes that senior civil servants and ambassadors do, but are ambassadors and departmental heads not also somewhat unelected political appointees?
SpAds are only temporary civil servants, nominally appointed to the civil service directly by ministers as a dodge to inject party political hacks with little relevant expertise into the heart of government at the taxpayers’ expense. Craig is comparing them to “career civil servants” who have been recruited through the normal channels on merit according to employment law. The distinction is explained on the politics.co.uk site with a simple animation showing the bloat of advisers under certain ministers (as of last summer).
SpAds have a special type of temporary contract with an accompanying code of conduct: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/special-advisers-code-of-conduct
On the other hand, diplomats are career civil servants with years of highly specialised training who administer the interests of the state, under remote direction from politicians via multiple layers of bureaucratic cross-checking. It would make no more sense to elect them from the general populace than it would for experts in other domains like science, engineering or medicine.
“On the other hand, diplomats are career civil servants with years of highly specialised training who administer the interests of the state, under remote direction from politicians via multiple layers of bureaucratic cross-checking. It would make no more sense to elect them from the general populace than it would for experts in other domains like science, engineering or medicine.”
A useful way of understanding Chinese government. We have the professional career service without the overlay of know-nothing here-today-gone-tomorrow politicians screwing the country.
Trvelyan & Northcote drew heavily on the Chinese system for their civil service reforms of 1854.The imprisonment of Sun Yat Sen and the Cultural Revolution hatchetman attacks at the Chinese embassy to the UK, though, lacked a certain finesse.
Meanwhile , under the US system, Biden et al. have awarded the very undiplomatic Rahm Israel Emmanuel the ambassadorship to Japan and a similarly inclined warmongering State Department hack that to Korea after leaving the post vacant over a year pending the forthcomoing election of a new president who may not press for a Treaty ending the war.
From this I would conclude that the effectiveness of systems may differ, but outcomes remain similar, at least until the memoirs emerge.
Things like this don’t happen in democracies.
Squeeth
Socialism for the rich and austerity for the poor is both counter intuitive and counter productive. The more rabid the ideology the more spads required to man the helm and the more press gangs required on election day. Your painfully true statement is universal for any ideology and the process of consultation is essential to keep government of any sort in check , including brainwashed imams.
“all public payments to political parties should be abolished”
Really? You prefer parties to get money from private donors? Surely they have to get money from somewhere, and private donors obviously enable corruption and lead to distorted policymaking, as can be seen above all in the US (Kyrsten Sinema etc.). Well-managed public funding is more fair and less corrupt, surely?
Perhaps, if you have time, you can publish an explanation of your preferred party funding model.
Well ssshh I’ll try to help with your conundrum until a better answer from someone else. First though it seems that your comment adds nothing with the whatabouterry.
Just because CM has very clearly and accurately shot the legs out from under the pig troughing tweedle Dee Dums of the modern political partying parties fake Opposition and Representation of their voters – doesn’t mean that he is advocating ‘no state support’ or that he is advocating full-on US-style corporate- and billionaire-led SuperPACs to distort the electoral processes.
Millions in overt funding on top of billions in covert grey money that goes into the pantomime which doesn’t really matter which puppet with a hand up its arse wins – because the special interest funds both and all puppets.
These puppets are provided with the spaddy types to make sure that the specific interests are delivered because the muppet politicians of today are too dumb to be left to their own devices when put in position of usurping government and actual public service minded civil servants. There will be many more people working on managing their political asset from many corporate HQ’s – no doubt running the spad, maybe even providing them and certainly revolving them through many such doors between private and public sectors.
Your specific question was clearly answered in the great article (deserving as usual an independent journalism prize) but you chose to ignore it.
Most U.K. political parties have been financially supported by local members and their subscription. That is how it should be. Transparent.
The State promised that they would get fair media coverage at elections.
Which doesn’t extend to unbiased coverage as clearly shown by years of excessive support of the one-man kipper-skipper Fartage with many uncriticised appearances on QT, daily news and entertainment programs on the BBC – never mind a daily bully pulpit on prime time talk radio.
The ideal having been binned in actuality for a couple of decades now as explained by the shenanigans of NuLabInc masquerading as Trad Labour and fooling us with its fake hugging of Britpop and a promise of reversing the excesses of Thatcherism and Americanisation only to double down on it instead. Murdoch in Downing Street daily through the back door or his proxies through the front.
So that hopefully answers your cry of ‘who will care for the suffering politician’.
If not, I suggest you get your head around this great article by Janathan Cook. Another great actual independent journalist on thinking critically.
“There are reasons why people are drawn to critical thinking. Often it is because they have been exposed in detail to one particular issue that has opened their eyes to wider narrative manipulations on other issues. Or because they have the tools and incentives – the education and access to information – to explore some issues more fully. Or, perhaps most importantly, because they have the emotional and psychological resilience to cope with stripping away the veneer of official narratives to see the bleaker reality beneath and to grasp the fearsome obstacles to liberating ourselves from the corrupt elites that rule over us and are pushing us towards ecocidal oblivion.”
https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2022-01-06/lesson-covid-critical-thinking/
I don’t believe that I should fund anybody to ask me to vote for him.
The present political system results in no real opposition, no party that tackles at root the massive social and economic equality. If the billionaires funded the politicians direct the net result would be no different.
Craig,
“massive social and economic equality.”
‘inequality’?
A more radical, and in my mind, sensible solution is to ban all political parties. People who join a party/club tend to place allegiance to the party above personal beliefs. So in politics you have the parties driving their own agendas irrespective of the people or even personal beliefs. A business does not hire dependent on membership of a particular club. So why should a country be run by different gangs? Skills, experience, beliefs and personal convictions should be the qualifications needed to be a politician. We have the technology and means to manage our country without the baggage of parties.
I’m not so sure about your contentions on ‘businesses’. I was once hired by a firm filled with Man Utd supporters and I was told that, had they known about my differing affiliations, they would not have hired me!
I did write a pungently direct football song for the supporters of Manchester City in the months after leaving that firm, and it would appear that, since I did, that the fortunes of City have risen as those of Utd have waned…..
Parties and campaigns should be funded by donations, which should (a) be restricted to individuals, and (b) capped, at maybe £1,000.
That would reduce the practice of bussing in professional campaigners from outside of a constituency, making parties dependent on the support of real, local activists. It would reduce the influence of expensive advertising companies on election outcomes. It would increase the importance of campaigning “on the doorstep” – it’s about 20 years since I met an actual candidate on my doorstep, and I’ve never, ever met a parliamentary candidate. And the “campaigners” that I have met never discuss policies; they’re just out collecting stats on voting intentions. They’re not interested in my views, because they’re not really campaigning.
Making candidates dependent on real, local activists would place parties with no grassroots support at a big disadvantage; which (ISTM) can only be a good thing. TTBOMK the Tory party has precious little grassroots support.
Unfortunately that wouldn’t work. The USA has similar restrictions which have been bypassed by lobby groups. They tend to hold dinners and funding events where individuals pool there contributions, this results in millions being raised for the various parties and groups – all totally ‘legal’.
Where there’s money there’s corruption, and politicians are never far away.
That is a fascinating account. It reminds me of an e-mail that turned up two or three weeks ago:
– Trust the Science – it is now fact…
– Boffins at Imperial College have discovered the densest element yet known to science.
– The new element, “takingbackcontroltium” (symbol=Tbc), has one neutron, 22 assistant neutrons, 88 deputy neutrons and 198 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 365. These 365 particles are held together by forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called pillocks. Since takingbackcontroltium has no electrons, it is inert. However, it can be detected, because it impedes every reaction with which it comes into contact.
– Takingbackcontroltium can have a normal half-life of 5 to 25 years. It does not decay, but instead undergoes a reorganisation in which a portion of the assistant neutrons and deputy neutrons exchange places. In fact, takingbackcontroltium’s mass will actually increase over time, since each reorganisation will cause more morons to become neutrons, forming what is known as iso-dopes. This characteristic of moron promotion leads some scientists to believe that takingbackcontroltium is formed whenever morons reach a critical concentration in a single binary event. This hypothetical quantity is referred to as a ‘critical morass’.
– When catalysed with deceit, takingbackcontroltium becomes numbertentium (symbol=Ntn), an element that radiates just as much energy as takingbackcontroltium since it has half as many pillocks but twice as many morons.
Love it. Physics, which tells us that matter cannot be created, gets it wrong again.
Don’t follow the scientists…_
Normal laws don’t apply to numbertentium.
Or maybe it’s that conservation laws don’t apply to Conservatives.
Clark
Mr takingbackcontroltium himself, recently had to intervene in the inflammable cladding dispute, where a construction industry, freed from the watchful eye of John Prescott , has been riding roughshod over the rules since 2009. This construction industry had already swallowed an overdose of takingbackcontroltium when Cameron took office.
My point being, that somebody will have to sort out each and every one of the bad decisions these Tories make after releasing themselves from EU legislation and to sort out the billionaire construction companies for example will be harder than dealing with the EU.
Michael Gove, prat extraordinaire, only managed to ask the construction industry to pay for rectifying the cladding above a certain height. Anybody living in a flat under that height is now bankrupt. In other words he saw a legal looophole and , thinking it was only politics, removed all lower flats from government support.
Future generations will look back at Brexit and wonder how so much bullshit was implemented by so few spads since it will take a military coup to remove all the stupidities of Tory governments. Like Mad cow disease.
Sorry Giyane, yours is the only reply I can’t think up a pun for. It’s all hugely sad and angering.
Ah the branch of science known as Quntum Electoral Dupism ( QED )
Also naughtily referred to by certain professors and their students – having bantz about these ether (drinking) believers & mainstream consumers of that theory – as BrexShitheads (BS’s).
– “Quantum Electoral Dupism”
Bohr complimentarity between superposition, in which one party is simultaneously in two states eg. Schrodinger’s cat, and electoral dupism in which two parties share the same state eg. neoliberalism.
♫ ” But they say the sky’s the limit
And to me that’s really true
But my friend you have seen nothing
Just wait till I get through
Coz I’m Spad, I’m Spad…….. ” ♫
With apologies to M.Jackson
“It is a factor which the mainstream media has been peculiarly reluctant to explore…”
Presumably because the political hacks, media hacks, financial hacks, and legal hacks are all pretty much inter-related, in-bred, and inter-changeable examples of the same parasitic species.
Found a tattered copy of this in some old paperwork today and wondered whether anyone feels that dear old Pierre-Joseph was awfully wide of the mark?
“To be governed is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so.
To be governed is to be at every operation, at every transaction, noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected and punished.
It is, under pretext of public utility and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged and dishonoured. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality.”
— Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809-1865)
Good quote and say what you like about Proudhon he would never drink herbal tea.
When I worked in Whitehall, I first came across SPADS after 1997. There was a particularly unpleasant one I crossed swords with, who tried to bully, intimidate and talk over very senior and knowledgeable civil servants. However, if said civil servants had stood up to him, he would have stopped. The trouble was they all seemed focussed on career progression and as a result put up with it and kept saying yes to some quite stupid ideas. With that experience in mind, I have little sympathy for civil servants – the remedy was always in their hands. I must also add that this nasty individual never tried it on with me once I had put him in his place – the benefit of growing up in East London and not having the privileged background and schooling of most of the senior spineless civil servants I worked with. I was told by one of the spineless that my approach might be career limiting and I made it quite clear that my career came second to my integrity. I was forced to conclude that so many of them must have been bullied endlessly at their private schools and thought it the norm.
You mention the FDA , but where have they been in all this SPAD growth? They have been well aware of the uselessness of so many of them, and also the behaviour they are prone to – behaviour that could, and often did, lead to disciplinary action against their members. The bad behaviour extends to ministers and I have personally seen a minister screaming at an assistant secretary in a corridor in a way that bordered on assault. Some were far worse than others and some ministers, both Tory and Labour, were a joy to work with, but there were and are ministers (Patel being the most obvious) who show no respect and think themselves above good manners and process.
In short, whilst the growth in SPADS is deplorable, I firmly believe that civil servants could have stemmed the growth by standing up for themselves.
Bob, there’s not a lot you can do as a kid if bigger boys decide to beat you up, repeatedly. It’s not very helpful having adults telling you to ‘ignore it, they’ll grow out of it’. Maybe they did, but by the time they had, my emotional sanguinity was on a par with many of those Mr Murray met at HMP. My survival mechanism was simply to shut down emotionally and then aged 18 I was told that ‘there is something wrong with you’, because I didn’t have any kind of natural belief that females would treat me pleasantly (which in the main they didn’t either). They grew out of that courtesy of learning that hard-drinking rugger buggers weren’t as good in bed as they thought they were, but once again, if you’ve had either being ignored or being put down for seven years, you just blot them out and climb mountains/go ski-ing instead. Then when they come running to you to sort out their issues, you don’t really have the natural impulses to help. Not straight away, anyway….
If there’s one thing I’ve learned in Britain it’s that having brains isn’t very useful unless you have fists to go with it.
It wasn’t my experience in overseas lands, although maybe as I was only there temporarily people didn’t feel threatened by me.
Thankyou Rhys.
Your early life experiences appear to have taken a similar path to mine. I am somewhat comforted to discover I was not the only one experiencing the “do as you are told or get your head kicked in” routine.
As I understand it, bad annual civil service staff reports mean no incremental pay rise; and so the pressure to conform to instructions from superiors is even greater than may be imagined.
That sounds like a recipe for a disaffected and downtrodden runt who harbours fantasies of violent reprisals against powerful figures to comfort his wounded ego. Guys like that can be found down the pub boring people with tall tales about thumping tough guys or big talk about being in the army (they’re known as ‘Walts’ by real soldiers), or on web forums threatening violence against remote figures – though they would crumple in the face of genuine aggression in reality. In positions of power they tend to become bullies themselves. There was a study about it in the papers a few months ago: e.g. ‘Being bullied in your teens can trigger dark and violent fantasies’ – https://theworldnews.net/gb-news/being-bullied-in-your-teens-can-trigger-dark-and-violent-fantasies
When those repressed bullies get into a position of authority, they tend to vent their frustrations on people below them who can’t do much about it. Political parties and the civil service are probably riddled with folk like that.
I grew up in NZ and it might have been like that in some boys only schools it wasn’t in my Coed one.
I was a swot by any measure but also sporty etc and was never bullied or bullied anyone else. In the lower school my friends and I saved an Orthodox Jewish boy (a real rarity in NZ) from being bullied by dint of sitting with him at my suggestion.
He was initially suspicious of us but realised we were not there to mock him. I hope you did okay wherever you are, David.
These salary numbers probably don’t include estate and management costs, such as providing offices, IT, HR. I don’t even know if it incudes employer pension contribution. In my experience this is all adds up to about the same amount again in the public sector. So it’s perhaps double the cost you’ve given, really.
Special Adviser on Geography for Liz Truss, much needed.
That’s probably why Raab isn’t Foreign Secretary any longer. He probably didn’t have a SPAD for geography either as he didn’t have a clue where Dover was. Probably still doesn’t.
Surprisingly, it was not Mark Twain but the great Ambrose Bierce – a veteran of the War aginst the Confederacy – who said,
“War is God’s way of teaching Americans geography”.
Apparently little has changed in the intervening 170 years.
Before anyone corrects me, let me point out that all “UK” government officials are effectively employees of the US government.
And the UK government is increasingly modelled on the “To the victors, the spoils” system. Both Thatcher and Blair wanted so desperately to be Americans
Very good Tatyana! May also help her differentiate between her arse and her elbow.
On the BBC Breakfast show today a reporter remarked that the demonstration involving Starmer and another minister was about Julian Assange and that the Savile demonstrators became involved.
Did anyone else hear that?
Sound track on the video linked here certainly gives some support to that idea, Grouser.
https://skwawkbox.org/2022/02/07/video-starmer-flees-shouts-of-traitor-and-questions-about-targeting-of-assange-and-journalism/
The bit about Assange sounded like a voice-over added in later, to prove that it was really violent lefties (in spite of the far right flag). That was what happened with the gilets jaunes, when people were claiming the violence came from the left, and even for a while at the Capitol, though that claim dissolved pretty quickly.
And enabling the SPADS is the exponential growth in University courses with “Politics” in the title. The ranks of salaried SNP politicos are chock full of these “never had a proper job in their life” careerists.
The closer you get to Sturgeon the greater the concentration of careerists. The most recent intake of SNP initiates to Holyrood was mercifully short of these 20 something and 30 something professional politicians. Constituency selection was able to resist the urging to install “Sturgeon’s favourites”. I’m sure this will be “corrected” by yet more rule changes imposed from head office (carefully bypassing any democratic veto).
The utility of graduates of Politics courses to an autocratic leader is obvious. They have no marketable skill beyond professional sleakitness. They are beholden to the leader for their survival and career progression. And what are the qualification requirements to enter these “Politics” courses? I doubt science and mathematics feature strongly.
The grand-daddy must be PPE.
Qualification, acceptance to Oxford.
Wikipedia says:
“The first institution to offer degrees in PPE was the University of Oxford in the 1920s.”
Downhillall the way from there.
Funnily enough, in spite of the insults flung at it, PPE is one of the degrees necessary for the training of the professional civil servants so admired in Craig’s post. That’s what Humanities does for you – it teaches you how to deal with human beings, necessary for administration.
Agreed. But arguably STEM subjects are more important for managing a modern economy.
You don’t learn how to deal with people in STEM subjects, it’s quite notorious.
laguerre
You don’t need a degree in Humanities to have humanity. You only need a degree in Humanities in order to create narratives about those who disagree with you, as Craig mentions Sturgeon’s spads did for Alex Salmond and Lady Dorrian did for Craig. The best lies are those which contain a tiny grain of truth in them, which 24/7 spying makes available to the professional narrative weavers otherwise known as liars.
It certainly is an unedifying spectacle to see Boris Johnson accuse Kier Starmer of excessively kowtowing to the security services and covering up sexual perversion for them, when he himself spouted the Skripal tripe and blags about Russia for them . What’s a chap to do, ingratiate himself to the PPE fiction writers or be a whistle blower and get blown away like thistle seed?
“Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!” It’s one of those moments when in a hole , stop digging looks the better answer. But these Tories never had a lick of common sense. Will the RNLI come to the rescue as Britain helplessly drifts towards the white cliffs of Dover, or will the populist mob bar their way? Boris has found his special place in hell, just , it seems, by sticking two fingers up to the public on the roof garden of No 10.
We’re bound for davey joneses locker and nothing can save us now, unless Pritti Patel can sort something.
“You don’t need a degree in Humanities to have humanity. “
You do need to know humanity in order to administrate them. As indeed was Craig’s experience. Technology isn’t enough.
I said to Laguerre that I agreed with him but STEM is also required for progress.
He doesn’t seem to think so.
Wang Shui
Apparently you think STEM is all you need. Humans no longer come into it, according to you.
Sue Gray wrote (in the published “update”) –
“The number of staff working in No 10 Downing Street has steadily increased in recent years. In terms of size, scale and range of responsibility it is now more akin to a small Government Department than purely a dedicated Prime Minister’s office. The structures that support the smooth operation of Downing Street, however, have not evolved sufficiently to meet the demands of this expansion. The leadership structures are fragmented and complicated and this has sometimes led to the blurring of lines of accountability. Too much responsibility and expectation is placed on the senior official whose principal function is the direct support of the Prime Minister. This should be addressed as a matter of priority.”
Johnson grabbed this and said there will be an Office of the Prime Minister and staff started leaving and new(ish) faces arriving. All this will achieve is further centralisation of power around No 10 thereby strengthening the centre of an already over-centralised government machine.
Re the SNP in Scotland – the danger there is that there appears to be little effective Opposition in what is fast becoming a single party nation.
“The number of staff working in No 10 Downing Street has steadily increased in recent years. In terms of size, scale and range of responsibility it is now more akin to a small Government Department than purely a dedicated Prime Minister’s office.”
I note that there is no suggestion that this is either a bad thing, unnecessary, or should be reversed. No, only that yet more staff should be recruited. Parkinson’s Law in action.
That they are now in formal coalition with the Greens must have passed you by.
It was obvious from the outset that “Sir” Keir Starmer’s miraculous emergence as a ‘Labour’ politician and putative leader was a stage-managed act of his Deep State handlers.
It is ever more obvious as we survey his past and review his recent and current history, that he is a Security State asset – and the latest act in a long and disgraceful history of the British Establishment infiltrating the Labour movement in order to destroy it – or even better (from their point of view) neuter it as a political force of any substance.
A similar process has been in operation in the SNP – with a present leadership that will offer no resistance to the British State in its efforts to hold onto its northern military and economic assets.
John O’Dowd – quite agree.
We have (a decade or two after US) finally achieved the position of a two party “democracy” where the parties make slightly different policy promises at elections, but in are indistingishable by their actions when in power: both deliver the agenda of the same controlling elite.
Indeed so Casperger – in the famous words of Gore Vidal concerning the USA: “It is a one-party state with two right-wings”.
And so it is here – two right-wings of the neoliberal Business/Property Party. All with union flags a fluttering and identical foreign policies: NATO/US hegemony.
For me the big “tell” was when I learned of Starmer’s role in the McLibel business.
Where an undercover copper actually drafted the piece that caused all the trouble.
I think that he also got his girlfriend pregnant before he disappeared.
We’ve managed to get rid of the Labour Party (of which I was once a member) in Scotland.
It is telling that their sole MP (Ian “Union-Jack” Murray) sits for a South Edinburgh seat that includes Morningside, which with its bankers, judges, and others of the haute bourgeoisie, and its multi-million pound properties, is one of Scotland’s wealthiest, if not THE wealthiest seat in Scotland. He is jokingly referred to as the “member for Red Morningside”.
It is only his Unionist affiliation that gets him elected.
Labour in Scotland long ago deserted the working-class – and the Scottish working class reciprocated.
And Scotland has acquired its very own SPAD factory. A finishing school for Stepford politicians.
The John Smith Centre for Public Service (University of Glasgow).
Managed by Kezia Dugdale, herself a “never had a proper job in her life”, politics graduate who rose to become the (disastrous) leader of Scottish Labour.
A Board full of British ex-spooks and trans-Atlantic perma-players.
A registered charity that has had six employees since at least July 2019, but has let to publish any accounts that would disclose its sources of funding.
Needless to say, the core group around Sturgeon are in deep with the JSCfPS.
> I believe strongly that those engaged in politics, and in putting ideas to the people for democratic choice, should do so at their own expense.
Well, that doesn’t have much to do with the matter of SPADs (which I deplore).
Thing is, without public funding of political parties, then parties will be funded by special interests: corporations and lobby groups. Politicians are not going to be reaching for their wallets come election time. And if politicians did have to fund their own campaigns, there would only be wealthy people in parliament.
As Craig notes, SpAds are political commissars. They are not civil servants, the civil service isn’t (supposed to be) politically partisan. So they shouldn’t be paid out of the public purse. Simple as that.
I remember the area around Westminster Palace very well from my time in London.
After viewing as many of the video images that I can find, it seems that the journey taken by Starmer went in part via Westminster Bridge…..That is not the direct route from the MOD to Westminster Palace. In fact, there is no need to cross water anywhere between those two points.
The videos are of a reasonable quality, but it seems to reveal that two journeys were taken by Starmer. The backgrounds seem to me to be from points in the area that don’t show a journey direct from the MOD to Westminster Palace.
Are there any other spot the difference anoraks, who know the area around Westminster Palace well, who can comment?
Another issue I have is with the claim that Julian’s name was shouted at Starmer. Has anybody identified a sound bite from the videos to confirm this. I haven’t.
Finally, there was more than one demo group in the area. There were the hecklers with a Canadian and English flag (BritainFirst? English Defence League?) and Piers Corbyn with another group of anti mandatory vaxers and antivaxers. I don’t suspect they were in tandem with each other.
There again, Starmer may have simply popped out to stock up on paperclips and met some concerned citizens…_
Keir Starmer heckled by a crowd claiming he has abandoned the working class & is part of the elite. Julian Assange prosecution also mentioned as a grievance.
https://twitter.com/ToryFibs/status/1490739880946810880?s=20&t=hZnzXZp8OVlSYZcBc_L2lw
How could Starmer possibly “abandon” the working class? He probably knows none of them, has not the slightest interest in them, and looks down on them just as much as, say, Louis XIV or George I.
The only possible thing that can be said in his defence is that those attitudes are shared with the rest of the so-called “Labour” party. It is as much a “Labour” party as a hyena is a type of gazelle.
Thanks.
It clears up the ‘journalists prosecuted’ and Julian’s name getting aired.
The videos also seem to show a walk along The Embankment, could be that there is access to the MOD building from there.
But who are Resistance GB? the stuff on line in their name does not appear to be very Britain First or EDL style language. Seems very Libertarian in its comments. It almost seems that they just whipped out their mobiles and tagged along with the ones waving Canadian and English flags…_
According to the Daily Mail (not a site I frequent that often), the main person shouting Julian Assange’s name at Starmer, was a former Tory councillor who was filming the event.
This may explain the BBC’s desperate attempts to link the whole episode only to Savile, and blame everything about the protest on Johnson’s remarks in Westminster; thus creating a smokescreen which avoids them having to mention Julian, and his lengthy Belmarsh confinement, at all.
According to a tweet about this incident from David Lammy, “Intimidation, harassment and lies have no place in our democracy”. Has he mentioned this to the security services?
Lammy might also like to read “A Thorn In Their Side” by Robert Green.
The telegraph has the timeline of events and a breakdown of who shouted what at whom:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/02/08/truth-keir-starmer-video-fifth-slurs-jimmy-savile-called-traitor/
Whether it’s normal practice for senior politicians to make that walk, idk? Someone with more knowledge of Westminster may be able to say.
Cynical because it reignites Johnson’s so-called slur, The recent Investigatory Powers Tribunal ordered payout by the Met and NPCC, of £230,000 to an activist tricked into a relationship, shows the people at these noisy demos aren’t necessarily what they appear to be and the demos aren’t always organic or spontaneous.
The press keep using the word ‘fact’ in dismissing Starmer’s role in decision making but records were destroyed, and the CPS was condemned for dragging its heels over a FoI request that may have shed more light.
Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, today described the abuse Sir Keir suffered as “sickening”, claiming it “is a reflection of the toxic cocktail of conspiracy theories, smears and lies that swirl around our politics now”.
Sickening? A few people shouting about how Starmer has betrayed his leadership pledges – which he has. Shouting about his appalling role in the outrageous ongoing political persecution of Julian Assange. And finally, a few others allegedly he had a role in allowing Sir Jimmy Savile to remain free – unclear. I’m no fan of Johnson, but what did Johnson say that could be viewed as spreading conspiracy theories?
In the far more volatile France, and other European countries they regularly have running street battles with protesters. In the docile ,submissive UK, a few people shouting their discontent, is seen as a grave threat to society.
As Jonathan Cook points out, this closing of ranks by the establishment worthies around Sir Keir, is more about their fury with Johnson for breaking the elite code or Omertà, that keeps the public in the dark about stuff that if known, would lift UK out of its long slumber.
“Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, today described the abuse Sir Keir suffered as “sickening”,”
Goose.
Sturgeon sticking up for Starmer, says it all really, apart from Cherry and McNeil at Westminster the SNP’s MPs and MSP at Holyrood are mere troughers proficient in the practice of the Three Wise Monkeys, if anything is sickening its Sturgeons’ unfettered loyalty to the union.
Johnson’s blurting out of Starmer’s dereliction of duty when head of the DPP has worried the establishment, that’s why all the creepy crawlies are coming out the woodwork to condemn Johnson truthful slip of the tongue.
RoS
He won’t do this because he’s part of the same club, as Jonathan Cook in his piece states. But imagine if Johnson came to parliament and said, since the records were deleted, let’s have a full independent, judge-led inquiry into all the decisions taken while Starmer was DPP.
Would any British govt agency survive such scrutiny with employees called under oath?
Something like this may happen in the future, the way political discontent is rising. An angry, anti-establishment populist is inevitable at some point, and he/she may be backed-up by a party of like-minded individuals, so establishment threats and intimidation won’t be effective.
Imagine him announcing such an inquiry to a stunned House of Commons, with Starmer sat motionless, ashen-faced.
And darkly, hilariously, finishing his announcement with… How’s About That Then?
Republicofscotland
This comes on the heels of Sturgeon’s lockstep with Neocon’s ‘talking points’ article in the guardian.
No one in the SNP seems capable of doing the bare minimum in terms of curiosity or scepticism. Sturgeon correctly attacks Johnson and calls out the Tories as thoroughly disreputable, but seemingly holds the view all other UK institutions such as the CPS, judiciary and other govt agencies are somehow beyond reproach? They’re not even remotely curious about what Starmer did and didn’t do at the CPS, why?
Sturgeon and her colleagues would no doubt trust the guardian’s warmonger-in -chief Luke Harding over the likes of Craig Murray, Glenn Greenwald or the excellent Aaron Maté. Is the SNP’s astonishing gullibility genuine? Or are they simply angling for cushy, important, big money roles post politics? Because it wasn’t always like this, the SNP did hold question everything. They should call Johnson out, but also call Starmer out too. Or does Sturgeon see in compromised Starmer, a reflection of herself?
The SNP’s views on Ukraine – Russia should be enough to generate a party membership revolt. All the Westminster MPs are in lockstep. And wrong!
The US/UK, having done little but ramp up tensions and bang the war drums, are now tonight poo-pooing Macron’s calls to implement Minsk 2.
For those not aware, Minsk 2 is the 2015 Germany, France, Russia and Ukraine agreed peace deal. An argument over sequencing derailed it; namely, Kyiv want the Eastern border back under their control before they’d give Eastern Donbas region a vote on autonomy, and the people in Donbas want the vote before surrendering the border, fearing being surrounded by Kyiv’s forces, betrayed and then attacked.
Minsk is the only way out, but encouraged by the US/UK Kyiv is now rubbishing it.
What say the SNP? … nothing.
Also, notice how our MSM use [adversary]-backed to delegitimize and indeed dehumanise those suffering terrible human rights abuses, often with the connivance of western govts. Take Yemen, by all metrics ,the Yemeni Houthis are among the poorest people on earth. They are being bombed by US/UK supplied first-world weaponry. But it’s ok, because journos who’ve never set foot in Yemen inform us they are Iranian-backed Houthis.
The people in Eastern Ukraine can be shelled and subject to ethnic cleansing by Zelensky’s forces with western supplied weaponry because they are ‘Russian-backed’, see how this works. If ever London ordered troops to put down Scottish independence, the MSM would no doubt be informing us Scots are being manipulated by some outside actor, at a guess separatists be called Russian or Chinese-backed Scottish separatists.
The BBC Breakfast programme carried an interview with Chris Philps, MP and Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Minister (now there is a spread of jobs!).
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m00149ny/breakfast-08022022
It starts about 1 hour 38 mins into the programme. Chris Philps mentions Julian Assange demonstrators a few times during the interview. The interviewer ignored this and continued to focus on Jimmy Saville.
Craig, this may shock you, but those of us of a more conservative (please note the small c) disposition know that politicians haven’t run western nations in decades. They’re run by battalions of spads, quangos, committees, “advisory” bodies and extra-judicial tribunals of one sort or another. Collectively, it’s a tiny number of people from the same social class, or more accurately, social caste, since the word “caste” carries a hereditary element to it.
The UK is becoming increasingly like it was 200 years ago. The new sinecures are just another similarity.
They’re probably the gak dealers..
We need Citizens’ Assemblies chosen by sortition, like jury service, practising deliberative democracy.
“It is accepted as democratic when public offices are allocated by lot; and as oligarchic when they are filled by election.”
— Aristotle, Politics 4.1294be
That’s why the UK isn’t, and never has been a democracy.
It might be nice, but I don’t see how sortition could work in a mass democracy. Athens was very limited in who was allowed to vote. Representative democracy is there for a reason, because it can be done. But never to forget that Britain is a limited democracy, with less than half the deciders elected.
Britain isn’t a democracy at all, really. All that the demos get to do is to choose the people who choose the people who form a small part of the executive power, and that only once every five years. That doesn’t look like ruling to me.
Representative democracy is there for a reason, because it can be done.
Absolutely correct laguerre.
And the reason is that it takes some four days to travel from the North of England to London by horse and cart. Given that constraint it makes perfect sense.
On SPADS or SpAds.
The path of an expensive private education -> Oxbridge -> special adviser -> then parachuted into a safe seat, is inevitably going to result in a politician who is out-of-touch and has no concept of life outside the Westminster bubble. They become party careerists whose loyalty is to the system, party and finally a distant third the voters. I don’t think anyone should be allowed near Westminster until they’re at least 35 years of age. Do something else first to experience some ‘real life’.
I’m not sure that having a lower age limit would make any difference except to make to careerist MPs spend longer in the larval stage of being a SPAD.
The microbe-like multiplication of SPADs is a natural consequence of one of the main functions of “democratic” governments: to diffuse responsibility as widely as possible, and ideally so widely that no one can be held accountable for anything. Obviously the more SPAD, the easier this becomes; and so in the absence of any obstacles they multiply like rats breeding.
I agree with Mr Murray that SPADs and public payments to political parties should be abolished. Moreover, I think that political parties themselves should be outlawed on pain of extremely severe penalties such as life imprisonment, as a form of treason against the people. Parties are inevitably conspiracies against the rest of the nation, and cannot ever be expected to take any account of the national interest. Especially in countries where, as in the UK today, money is considered the highest form of good.
If we want to have anything remotely resembling true democracy, the people should be allowed to vote – frequently – for any individuals who seem to them honest, well-informed and capable. The argument that parties are necessary in order to formulate policies and platforms is entirely specious and should be forcefully rejected. If individual MPs have to do some research and debating to decide on policies, excellent. If it takes them a lot longer than at present, so much the better. Government can do so much harm so efficiently that it is in the strong interest of all citizens that it should be weighed down as much as possible.
Are we all now to think Sir Keir is a really great guy, the victim of “slurs” and standing up to bullies with Sturgeon putting in her pennyworth in his favour?
Perhaps this is more to do with the recently revived Labour/SNP coalition or arrangement to support a minority Labour Government trope. Is Sir Keir being set up to be Tony “pretty straight kind of guy” Blair mark two?
Has Boris reasoned he has nothing to lose and could we see some more wee nuggets of truth (sorry slurs) slipping out?
Perhaps it has more to do with “least worst”, and by that standard he comes out quite well.
As Jerry Garcia used to remark, choosing the lesser of two evils is still choosing evil.
Normal, though, with democratic elections.
Well the proof will be in the pudding as they say!
The proof of the pudding is in the eating.
Johnson is helped by the fact many of his accusers are hypocrites. Take this story tonight:
‘Sir John Major set to accuse Boris Johnson of harming trust in politics over ‘partygate’ – Telegraph
This from a man who led a ‘Back to Basics’ – ‘traditional family values’ morality campaign while allegedly having an affair with Edwina Currie.
Labour MP Chris Bryant, who once said he could “punch ‘tosspot’ Ed Miliband” today claiming Johnson has incited violence .
.
The media have picked on the Savile issue rather than what it appears to have been and Johnson didn’t flag up the Assange prosecution of journalists rant.
The BBC as usual have conflated the Saville point over the Assange point as it suits their narrative.
JoCo who never likes her list of questions interrupted concentrated on poor Kier and not Assange.
Yes there will be anti – paeodophiles but both parties are quite happy to focus on Savile as are the media so it;s a confected narrative.
If Johnson is sincere ( Really?) then he can re-open the Inquiry and he can release Julian Assange from prison and also now Brexit is done he can of course get rid of VAT and whatever he wants.
No bloody chance of anything happening..
Oh there won’t be an inquiry into Starmer’s CPS tenure. 100% no chance of that. Sorry if I gave that impression.
I was merely venturing a scenario which would send shockwaves through the whole UK establishment. As to why:
Read investigative journalist Matt Kennard’s piece on the then DPP Starmer and his ‘friendship’ with now Lord Jonathan Evans who was DG of MI5 from 2007 to 2013, and specifically the Starmer-led CPS’s decision not to charge officers over their alleged complicity in torture. Incredibly, it was later revealed the UK was involved in hundreds of cases of torture, and no one has been held to account, condoning it? The decision to reject an inquiry was taken by Theresa May in one of her final acts as PM, it’s since been subject of a judicial review, i don’t know the current status.
An inquiry to unravel that lot in the UK, is about as likely as the Queen renouncing the throne and declaring the UK a Republic.
On the subject of Matt, here’s his latest:
https://declassifieduk.org/uk-spends-over-80m-on-media-in-20-countries-around-russia/
This explains why all the Baltic States have such wild-eyed, hawkish leaders. How this isn’t classed as political meddling and democratic interference in other countries, is hard to fathom. What the hell are we doing? If WW3 comes, it’ll because of this kind of shit stoking things up.
Political parties are the cabals that often run governments around the world. It is the nature of things, from Tories, et al, in the UK to the Communist Party in China and the old USSR, to Republicans, et al, in the US.
This is not some off beat conspiracy theory, but very old and very widespread, from totalitarian to “free” countries.
In America, Washington’s Farewell Address is replete with warnings and descriptions, such as “they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government”.
Sounds familiar….
There is no easy answer, no painless solution that I am aware of, other than constantly shining a light upon every one of them and every misdeed they commit.
Politicians never have and never will police themselves.
Gregory Nunn,
A recent UN publication stated this:-
“In 2017, almost half a million people across the world were killed in homicides, far surpassing the 89,000 killed in active armed conflicts and the 19,000 killed in terrorist attacks”
So – where next do we go?
I lack the sophistication to access the dark web but I’ll wager there are cryptocurrency forums along the lines of “AristocraticAssassin” “BitcoinBounty” or “EstablishmentEradicator” where the long suffering public can democratically elect (one coin one-vote!) to REMOVE miscreants from public office. Just a thought.