This looks like fun

[BillyStubbsTears]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-48445430

What's the betting on where Boris will be come Xmas?

No.10 or Wormwood Scrubs?

[SydneyRover]

Missed your post!

A win here for the general public could have very very big ramifications for democracy.

[selby]

  You can have any money you want on it Billy, the Battle bus was on the News Channel with that little word COULD be spent on the NHS, which it would not be admittedly, but factually Could be.
  But more serious statements  Vote out will be out by Cameron, and Coopers statements at the Mile End Institute about respecting the referendum vote, now that could get some people pooing their pants.
 

[SydneyRover]

  You can have any money you want on it Billy, the Battle bus was on the News Channel with that little word COULD be spent on the NHS, which it would not be admittedly, but factually Could be.
  But more serious statements  Vote out will be out by Cameron, and Coopers statements at the Mile End Institute about respecting the referendum vote, now that could get some people pooing their pants.
 

If the only good outcome is that it f**ks his chances of being PM it would be money to a good cause.

[Bentley Bullet]

If Labour got its own house in order and elected an electable leader they might be able to win an election on merit instead of by means of discrediting the opposition.

[BillyStubbsTears]

That's a odd non-sequitur BB.

A more apt comment would be that if Johnson and Gove hadn't lied through their lying teeth about the £350m, we'd likely not be in the current shit storm.

[Bentley Bullet]

Rubbish! Do you honestly think that the 350 million quid claim that COULD be spent on the NHS swung it for the Leave vote? Aren't all leavers too thick, stupid, ignorant, selfish bas**rds with no common sense to bother about the NHS?

[SydneyRover]

Rubbish! Do you honestly think that the 350 million quid claim that COULD be spent on the NHS swung it for the Leave vote? Aren't all leavers too thick, stupid, ignorant, selfish bas**rds with no common sense to bother about the NHS?

If 2% of those that voted leave had voted stay ?????????????????????

[Bentley Bullet]

What about if Cameron hadn't lied about seeing out the job if we vote to leave? If he'd have been honest some would have voted leave just to see the back of him!

And what about Cameron's claim of an immediate recession? Surely that frightened potential leavers off?

And what about Osborne's porkies about immediate punishment budgets and pension cuts? Surely that frightened potential leavers off? It did me!

[SydneyRover]

What about if Cameron hadn't lied about seeing out the job if we vote to leave? If he'd have been honest some would have voted leave just to see the back of him!

And what about Cameron's claim of an immediate recession? Surely that frightened potential leavers off?

And what about Osborne's porkies about immediate punishment budgets and pension cuts? Surely that frightened potential leavers off? It did me!

I think you can put that down to speculation rather than outright bald faced lying of which Boris has an extensive form, as for Cameron it speaks for itself but Boris is a known liar.

''“Britain faces a simple and inescapable choice. Stability and strong government with me or chaos with Ed Miliband''

[Bentley Bullet]

It wasn't any less speculating than Boris' claim. The fact that Cameron and Osborne resigned instead of carrying out their promises goes a stage further than Boris' claim of what could happen. What they did actually did happen! They actually did lie!

[SydneyRover]

It wasn't any less speculating than Boris' claim. The fact that Cameron and Osborne resigned instead of carrying out their promises goes a stage further than Boris' claim of what could happen. What they did actually did happen! They actually did lie!

I think a court could quite easily make a connection from the Battle bus claim and that at least 2 people out of every hundred that voted may voted differently had that not happened, fingers crossed aye.

Didn't Cameron and Osbourne resign after the vote?

[Bentley Bullet]

Yes, they resigned after the vote! Your point?

[BillyStubbsTears]

BB


I understand that you're in one of those moods again, so I'll be patient and spell it out really, really simply.

The reason Johnson is going in the dock is not because of what people might or might not have claimed they might or might not do in some hypothetical future. Nor is it because of NHS money.

Are you ready? Big deep breath and just hold your tongue for a minute because this is REALLY easy.

He's going in the dock because he peddled a lie about an established fact at that time. We didn't send £350m/week to the EU. Ever. The National Audit Office made that clear. Johnson and Gove ignored that and carried on peddling the lie.

Got it?

[SydneyRover]

Yes, they resigned after the vote! Your point?

Fairly obvious that an offence of misconduct in public office going against Boris could be seen as being more grave if the prosecution shows what the ramifications could have been (2 votes/100) whereas who knows what the consequences are of Cameron and Osbourne being complete dicks.

Anyone sick of the country being run by dumb posh boys?

Correction: ''Mr Power said the prosecution's application was not brought to undermine the result of the 2016 referendum and it was not about what could have been done with the saved money''

[Bentley Bullet]

Yes, they resigned after the vote! Your point?

Fairly obvious that an offence of misconduct in public office going against Boris could be seen as being more grave if the prosecution shows what the ramifications could have been (2 votes/100) whereas who knows what the consequences are of Cameron and Osbourne being complete dicks.

Anyone sick of the country being run by dumb posh boys?

I'd say the consequences of Cameron and Osborne's lies were far, far more than 2%.

[Glyn_Wigley]

  You can have any money you want on it Billy, the Battle bus was on the News Channel with that little word COULD be spent on the NHS, which it would not be admittedly, but factually Could be.
  But more serious statements  Vote out will be out by Cameron, and Coopers statements at the Mile End Institute about respecting the referendum vote, now that could get some people pooing their pants.
 

Way to miss the point.

This not about lying about what £350m could be spent on.

It's about lying about sending £350m a week to the EU.

[BillyStubbsTears]

BB

We've been through this endlessly.

The Treasury made a prediction on the economic effects of a Leave vote ALL OTHER THINGS BEING EQUAL. That predi toon was that there would be a serious hit to economic activity and to the value of the pound, stoking inflation. And that ALL OTHER THINGS BEING EQUAL, that would tip us into recession.

That reflected the broad consensus of economic experts (you know, those people who Gove told us to ignore).

Osborne made a POLITICAL judgement from that basis, that the consequence ALL OTHER THINGS BEING EQUAL would be major job losses and a significant cutback in public spending (which includes pensions) in order to hit the aim of balancing the books by 2020.

What actually happened after the vote was that the pound dropped sharply, inflation rose sharply and economic growth collapsed. We went from being the strongest growing G7 economy to being the weakest. We lost about £100m of economic growth. We were spared the worst of this, and spared outright recession because the rest of the world had a mini-boom and we were pulled along with that. Consequently, we didn't lose jobs, but we did have 2.5 years of falling real incomes.

The economic predictions were broadly correct. To equate that to Boris lying about the £350m is boringly stupid. You're neither boring nor stupid so I've no idea why you insist on repeatedly doing that.

Regarding the "punishment Budget", of course, Osborne wasn't around to implement it. Hammond chose a different path, of stretching out the pain. He accepted not balancing the books by 2020, but instead extended Austerity through to the late 2020s. So no immediate massive hit, but a long term grinding reduction in Govt spending. Caused by the economic hit. Caused by the Leave vote.

As for Cameron resigning, well, politicians change their minds. Look at Farage. He wanted a Norway deal before the Referendum then switched to insist that Norway deal would be a betrayal of the vote. That comes with the territory in politics. I don't like it. You don't like it. But that's what happens.

None of that is remotely similar to repeatedly and knowingly lying on a massive scale about an established and unarguable fact.

[Bentley Bullet]

BST. You amaze me with your political bias. Are those economic experts the same ones that threatened a severe hit to our economy if we didn't adopt the Euro? Again, they f**ked up, and Cameron and Osborne misled the public by sending every household a leaflet threatening what WILL happen, not might, based on the 'experts'.

I'm sure Boris would have had 'economic experts' providing him with figures such as the 350 million quid a week paid to the EU.

 Why can Cameron and Osborne get away with untruths because they were following advise, but Boris can't?

[BillyStubbsTears]

BST. You amaze me with your political bias. Are those economic experts the same ones that threatened a severe hit to our economy if we didn't adopt the Euro? Again, they f**ked up, and Cameron and Osborne misled the public by sending every household a leaflet threatening what WILL happen, not might, based on the 'experts'.

I'm sure Boris would have had 'economic experts' providing him with figures such as the 350 million quid a week paid to the EU.

 Why can Cameron and Osborne get away with untruths because they were following advise, but Boris can't?

BB

No remotely serious economist predicted a severe hit to the economy if we didn't join the Euro. You don't help yourself by saying daft shite like that.

It's true that there was a debate in economic circles as to the positive and negative effects of joining the Euro. And the outcome was that it wasn't in our economic interests. It wasn't a slam dunk either way. It was a nuanced decision. Brown and Blair listened to the economic advice and they were correct. I'd be quite happy to dig out the policy papers prepared for them by Prof Wren-Lewis from Oxford if you want to read them. Fascinating stuff.

Johnson wasn't advised by economists. He parotted a line devised by that odious little Kitson, Dominic Cummings. If he didn't know it was a lie initially, he DID know it was a lie when the Leave campaign got a letter from the Office for National Statistics (Not Audit Office as I said before - my mistake) telling him it was a lie. But he kept on telling that lie after receiving that letter.

These are all established facts BB. You don't have to hypothesise what might have happened.

[Bentley Bullet]

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/remaining-in-the-eu-would-be-a-disaster-for-britain-just-like-the-euro-a7059326.html

[BillyStubbsTears]

Go on BB. Indulge me. Where are these economists in that article saying that not joining the Euro would lead to a severe hit to our economy?

I can see the ones looking at a nuanced issue and considering pros and cons.

I can see a list of politicians who supported the idea of the Euro, but we weren't talking about politicians' opinions.

And I can see a quote from a journalist whose balls had barely dropped when he wrote the piece quoted, who has and had zro economics training and who, by the time the article that you link to was published, had already had his career go down the pan because he was a liar and a plagiarist.

Other than that, I'm struggling. What was the point you were trying to make?

[Not Now Kato]

  You can have any money you want on it Billy, the Battle bus was on the News Channel with that little word COULD be spent on the NHS, which it would not be admittedly, but factually Could be.
  But more serious statements  Vote out will be out by Cameron, and Coopers statements at the Mile End Institute about respecting the referendum vote, now that could get some people pooing their pants.
 

Seems it wasn't just on the Battle Bus Selby....
 

 
And there appears to be no COULD on that poster!

[Bentley Bullet]

BST. You are starting to bore me with your predictability. You believe what you want. If being on the losing side time after time rocks your boat there's now't I can do to dissuade you.

Perhaps you prefer to be in a minority because you enjoy the challenge of ducking and diving in a state of denial.

[BillyStubbsTears]

  You can have any money you want on it Billy, the Battle bus was on the News Channel with that little word COULD be spent on the NHS, which it would not be admittedly, but factually Could be.
  But more serious statements  Vote out will be out by Cameron, and Coopers statements at the Mile End Institute about respecting the referendum vote, now that could get some people pooing their pants.
 

Selby.

I'll repeat for you what I said for BB.

It's got nothing, zero, nada to do with the implied promise of NHS funding.

It's all about the fact that Johnson would have known categorically that we didn't EVER send £350m/week to the EU. That was a lie. Pure and simple. There's no ifs or buts or interpretation about it. But he hammered on that point week after week during the campaign. And in an opinion poll in the week of the vote, 48% of people said they believed that we DID send £350m/week to the EU.

This is massively important. All politicians are allowed to have their own interpretation of what facts imply. Those can and should be debated and dissected. But if we have politicians that deliberately, consciously and brazenly lie about the basic facts themselves, and convince large swathes of the population that their lies are correct, then our democracy is a sham.

And son't come back with that bone idle "they all do it" line. They DON'T. Politicians, generally and historically do NOT lie about established and easily checkable facts. Ever. They DO lie about things that they think won't be found out, sure. But not about things that can be checked easily. Because it used to be that a politician being found unarguably to have lied meant the end of their career.

But we HAVE moved into a different era now. Farage is a past master of it. He lies as easily as he breathes about things that are easily checkable (like his involvement in the batshit 2010 UKIP manifesto for example, or his contacts with Russia, Trump and Assange). Trump...well, there's not much point even discussing it is there. And Johnson, our likely next PM has made a career out of it, from lying about straight bananas to lying about the £350m.

They will continues to do this because they sense that people like you don't actually care. As long as they are telling you what you want to hear, it doesn't matter if they are demonstrated to be lying. So, if you don't care about it, running it through the courts seems like a decent second best approach.

[BillyStubbsTears]

BB.

I apologise from the bottom of my heart for basing my opinions and judgments (as best I can) on established facts. It's a failing of mine in these times, and I understand your frustration with it. But, if it's all the same, I carry on with my approach, and I'll continue to point out to other people where the facts don't support their own conclusions.

[Bentley Bullet]

The problem with your 'facts' is that you only accept them as facts because you agree with them.

[scawsby steve]

BST, your posts in this thread are totally ambiguous. You start by saying that Boris could end up in Wormwood Scrubs, and then you later claim that we've now entered a new political era where politicians can get away with telling lies.

What's your point with this thread?

[Bentley Bullet]

BST. Do you think if they put every single politician in the UK, apart from Labour ones, in prison, Labour would win an election?

[BillyStubbsTears]

BB.
Sweet Jesus, are you telling me you don't believe in the concept of objective truth? That some facts are simply facts. Like 1+1=2, not 10,000? Like if you have a pound in your hand, you have a pound, not 50p?

SS.
I started this thread with a faintly humorous line about Johnson doing time. Of course he won't. I followed up by saying that the most corrosive thing in current politics is a new breed of politician who have realised that they can lie about objective truth and get away with it because their supporters don't care about being lied to.