If Westminster is, as many say, simply a kind of club, then Peter Bone MP was a consummate club member. Peter Bone was one of those perennial backbenchers happy to pass their careers as amusing side characters. Politicians like Bone seem to recede into the Palace of Westminster itself, becoming one of its grinning gargoyles.
You know the type. The distinctive silhouette. The signature outfit (in Bone’s case, boiler room pinstripes). The belligerently encyclopaedic knowledge of Erskine May. The wry devotion to constituency issues, which are raised in the chamber even during great moments of national crisis. The reserved seat on the green benches – woe to him that unwittingly steals it. The collection of potted eccentricities. The easy familiarity with the Commons staff. People like Bone just come with the house; even their views, which are often heterodox, are simply treated as another funny quirk.
Last December Peter Bone disappeared from Parliament. This was at the behest of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards and the Independent Expert Panel – two extra-parliamentary bodies – which had each recommended Bone’s suspension from Parliament for bullying and sexual harassment. Bone was a grand old chair of British politics; suddenly he wasn’t. Very little stirred. A duly elected member of the House of Commons had been bundled from office with unnerving speed, and silence.
Bone is far from the only one. In the Britain of the 2020s, politicians – indeed entire factions of politicians – have the habit of abruptly disappearing.
Where do they go? These MPs have each come under investigation by one of several tribunals; once one of these bodies brings proceedings against an MP they find themselves dragged into a strange nether pocket from which few escape.
A nether world, because these tribunals defy description. They overlap and tangle together; they disappear and reappear. The Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards. The Independent Expert Panel. The Commons Select Committee on Standards (which oversees the Work of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards). The Committee of Privileges. The Commons Select Committee of Privileges. What exactly is their remit? Nobody knows. In July of last year, the Committee of Privileges formally rebuked several of Boris Johnson’s allies for words spoken outside of Westminster, where its writ does not run.
A nether world, because these aren’t law courts, but they have each taken on a sham judicial character, and are decked out with court-like appearance and rigmarole. These are powerful bodies: each has the right to recommend or order the suspension of an MP from the House of Commons; if this term of suspension is over six weeks, then the MP’s mandate from his or her constituents is junked and must be sought anew. But the actual penal code is seldom invoked in these places; Peter Bone was accused of a number of misdemeanours as reason for his suspension, but no actual criminal charges have since been brought against him.
And despite the judicial conceit, none of the usual freedoms of the defendant apply here. Making prejudicial statements about the defendant doesn’t bar a committee member from sitting in judgement of them. The real judicial system will only deploy gag orders when there is a physical danger to those involved in a trial; but the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards immediately slapped one on Miriam Cates the moment he announced his investigation into her in December.
‘Scandalising’ the court was abolished as a form of contempt in England and Wales in 2013. But these tribunals haven’t been so gracious; these are, again, not real courts, but they still demand that other people take them at their own swollen estimate. In a recent ruling against Andrew Bridgen MP, the fact that he “called [the Commissioner’s] integrity into question on the basis of wholly unsubstantiated and false allegations” was listed as an aggravating factor.
These tribunals are transforming British public life. We’re often told that our politics is merely a reflection of bigger social and historical churns. But these great questions can now be suspended through bureaucratic fiat. Johnsonism as a political force survived his resignation from Downing Street. What it did not survive was the Privileges Committee, which barred Boris Johnson from the Palace of Westminster itself, and intimated that his allies in Parliament might be in for the same if they criticised its proceedings.
Similarly, the coalesced Tory Right – the ‘five families’ – seemed to hold the future of Rishi Sunak’s premiership in their hands back in December. The announcement of the Cates investigation, which arrived at a very convenient hour, immediately blew all this momentum. Sunak can now openly avow that he won’t countenance any further tightening of the Rwanda bill – the five families’ signature demand.
For years this has been going on, and for years we have pretended it is normal. The Westminster lobby, which always holds itself to be a smiling sceptic of power, sedulously uses these tribunals’ own jargon: ‘public confidence’, ‘public trust’, ‘unlawful’.
But these tribunals make a mockery of representative government. An electoral mandate from the people isn’t something that can be thrown out by what is essentially an internal HR procedure. Members of Parliament are part of a sovereign legislature; they are not, and have never been, Government employees.
And what’s being enforced by these tribunals is only risible. Miriam Cates is currently being accused of violating Paragraph 17 of the House of Commons Code of Conduct, which holds that “Members shall never undertake any action which would cause significant damage to the reputation and integrity of the House of Commons”. The House of Commons is of course not entitled to a “reputation” of any kind; this is the language of a school assembly, not a democratic legislature. To this dubious inventory of rules we can add the list of apparently binding General Principles of Conduct, which includes offensive inanities like “Selflessness”, “Leadership” and “Openness”.
What this represents is a fairly open attempt to impose ideological tests on MPs. Note who gets a light touch. Keith Vaz’s flamboyant personal corruption was known to all, but procedural wheels only started to turn against him in late 2016. Barry Gardiner, despite having taken a six-figure sum from a CCP influence-peddler, has simply been allowed to carry on in his career as a Peter Bone-esque house eccentric.
It’s a system that parliamentarians have to a large extent constructed themselves. MPs from all parties have connived in the HR methods that are now used against them. The powers of Britain’s Parliament are no joke; there is by definition no law above it, and those who exercise it must accept the resentment, hatred and to an extent danger that come with real sovereign authority. But at every turn MPs have sought to insulate themselves from this, and grant themselves the perks and protections of an ordinary workplace. Even MPs of the populist Right, those most menaced by these tribunals, have been all too complicit: witness Nadine Dorries’s and Mark Francois’s demands for action against those who criticise them online. If MPs are now treated as mere employees, then they must accept a large part of the blame. They do not deserve our sympathy.
But they do deserve our support. The tribunal system will be used to throw a wrench into any constitutional effort to reform the status quo. The system is a result of that breezy contempt for electoral mandates which has become common since 2016; you can see this in the term used to describe these tribunals – a ‘watchdog’ – which is a piece of vulgar brawn, machismo, and faux-scepticism. The people’s elected representatives are not to be menaced by these bodies, and any future parliamentary opposition that does not want to be steadily winnowed away must have the courage to face them down.
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Couldnt give a rats arse old boy
I guess the downvoters are protesting the absence of correctly placed apostrophe?
I couldn’t give a rat’s arse either. Trying to buy success, they should have known better.
They bought the contacts. Or rather, not any more.
“It’s politics, man. If you’re hanging on to rising balloon, you’re presented with a difficult decision: let go before it’s too late, or hang on and keep getting higher… posing the question, how long can you keep a grip on the rope?”
Have an upvote Marcus
Thank you, prick. Was it the Withnail & I quote?
…
ICL are in the University Challenge final on BBC2 next Monday. I earnestly hope that they’re trounced by their opponents, Reading University.
And I hope so too, for two reasons, as I’m a maths tutor, and the captain of Reading (Hutchinson) lives near me and teaches four of my Year 9s.
I did an engineering PhD at Imperial.
Great technical uni let down by medical knobs and snowflake admin.
I’m surprised they’re happy to be called ‘Imperial’ what with the association with the British Empire and slavery and all that.
I thought the same with Imperial Leather soap.
OMG both empire and animal skin in a single product – enough to make a woke he/she/them cease washing.
Ha! It’s only a matter of time and an article in the Guardian. Or … maybe they have protection?
It’s early days… Plenty of time for someone, somewhere to want to remove the “Imperial’ bit.
I covered a Q&A talk in their hall at the Sherfield Building once. Was promised certain lighting and seating arrangements. I learned a lot that day…
Please stay in touch with us in the forums oblong when the system crashes and we need kids, nieces and nephews to be taught practicals.
Academia. A bastion of covid nonsense. A consequence of funding, conformity of thought, effeminacy, all of the above?
The education system as a whole is essentially a process for selecting the high functioning conformists in society.
Well it damn well failed with me and many of the rest on here.
Yep. It’s not a perfect process. But it does a pretty good job, I would say.
Wasn’t always that way.
So you don’t think it has a function for the rest of the population who don’t get to boss anybody about and who mostly do the same thing at work every day?
Conformism, to use your terminology, is bashed into littl’uns when they’re five and nowadays younger too.
Once they’ve cashed your fees payment then you can just go and get lost.
Less whinge, more sue. “Loss of enjoyment” is an actionable thing.
Because Ed U Kay Shun
Seems the rot started a long time ago…
My uncle, a graduate of Chemistry from ICL over fifty years ago, is completely spell-bound by the COVID BS. He simply won’t engage in any discussion about it. Tells me I am “behaving terribly”.
As a graduate of chemistry he probably knows little about viruses.
What happens then is the scientist says ‘I’ll trust those that do know’ — in the case of covid this is a mistake, because he’s being denied access to the full spectrum of opinion.
What he should do is employ is ‘generic scientist skills’ to investigate the facts that he does have access to and can interpret, and compare the results with what he’s told.
But for some reason many scientists are unwilling to do this, and will instead just rely on the science-priests’ preachings.
Maybe because they’re not really scientists, but just people with degrees in science subjects.
People with bachelor, even master degrees, don’t really do much scientific enquiry. They just learn a bunch of stuff and show they’ve learned it.
In fact, I would say that intellectual curiosity is by no means a requirement to do well. It may even be a bit of a handicap.
^^^
Absolutely so. My last attempt at studying anything in earnest (at a German university) came to an aprupt end once I noticed that not even the lecturer was familiar with the content of the secondary literature we were supposed to read. Barring COVID, typical students life is (as far as I could determine) drunken partying for two months, memorizing stuff for one month, write it all down from memory in a few days, be off for three months[*] to forget it all again. Repeat.
[*] German academic year which is composed to two so-called semesters of three months with two three month long breaks in between.
I went to “Uni” along with all my peers after Sixth Form. Indebted to the eyeballs, my peers laughed at me when I refused to get a single credit card. The campus had its own branch of NatWest, FFS. They were handing them out like hot cakes.
They all borrowed thousands, handed it all to the “Student” Bar and then urinated or vomited their purchases down the toilet.
I lasted less than a year, it all felt a complete waste of time. Went and got a job. Never felt better.
Sounds like me except the get a job part. I decided to be a rock star instead. You could call that a failed career move. Seems you need talent and perseverance.
I decided to be a famous actor after two years of the job. That didn’t work out either, but I did learn a lot about life!
I think the push for all to have further education has made it a career choice rather than a calling of curiosity and excitement.
No, it’s a philosophy thing, not a scientific knowledge.
Though not a graduate in chemistry, I learned a lot of it as part of my degree but others on the same course as me, who got better qualifications from it, subscribed to the Branch Covidian cultism.
So what? I expect someone with a science degree to not only be expert in their own field but have a pretty impenetrable armour of scientific common sense which should immediately alert them to the slightest whiff of horse shit. There’s always a jolt when you encounter someone with an impressive degree who outside of their field, turns out to be a normie moron.
I expect the opposite — in general, the higher the qualification the less knowledge there is outside of the speciality.
It wasn’t always this way. In my youthful days the intellect at universities was ferocious. Not so much these days — the age of the polymath has pretty much gone.
This is the authoritarian cooperation: “I don’t question your expertise you will not question my expertise”
There seems to be a lot of bad scientists lacking curiosity and having too much trust.
Suggested reading: Carlo Cipolla on stupidity and Gustav Le Bon on crowd psychology.
Herds are always f***ing stupid – whether it’s a herd of lorry drivers, priests, scientists, highly skilled philosophical logicians, people who left formal education without qualifications, people who got PhDs, etc. etc.
Daily Sceptic’s Below The Line is the only crowd I have ever been part of. And it’s hard to be f***ing stupid along with them when your fingers are too big for the bloody touchscreen keyboard.
It’s odd how some seemingly intelligent people have just accepted the narrative (even when illogical) and won’t consider other points of view let alone check the data for themselves.
I guess it is that mass formation psychosis. But why did I do the exact opposite? I’ve never questioned the mainstream until now but covid set off alarm bells. No one was dropping dead around me, it seemed obviously wrong and I simply went and looked at data. Conclusion – no worse than a bad flu season. Then when they kept going I fell down the rabbit hole, well more jumped in looking at everything. Came to some horrible conclusions that simply fit the data and observations better. I still hope I’m wrong.
It’s quite similar to in the USSR, about which it was often observed both inside the country and by those looking at it from the outside that there was extremely strong discouragement of public criticism of ANY aspect of the reigning society, because that would be like pulling on a string and ALL of the lies would start to unravel.
That’s why “glasnost” (“openness”) was such a big thing, why there was even such a concept.
A typical Soviet joke was “They pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work.”
The word “opposition” was extremely strong in that country, not just before Gorbachev but under his leadership too, right up until near the end of the regime.
There’s no glasnost in Britain. There’s no glasnost in any country in the world right now, on the specific issue of Covid or on anything else that’s important, such as children’s education, or the disgusting and utterly inhuman advance of technology that no decent person who is able to form an opinion about it for themselves would ever want, either for themselves or for future generations.
Nor is the huge social problem which is smartphone addiction – especially among young people – being seriously publicly addressed by any “respectable” group anywhere, as far as I am aware.
Nor is the sky-high level of personal indebtedness in countries where it exists, such as Britain. Even looked at through narrow “economist’s” spectacles, the (related) insane market value of houses isn’t being looked at either. That definitely won’t avoid ending in tears, just as every huge financial bubble does.
Tug on one string and… ?
Orwell was so astute when he wrote that freedom is the freedom to say two plus to makes four.
Two plus to?
Orwell is shaking and rolling, Star
Sorry to distract from your excellent comment about Glasnost. Have a tick from me.
I’m a graduate of IC (BSc Hons ARCS for what it’s worth). We used to do science and were expected to have questioning minds. Soothsaying was not on the curriculum. I’m honestly ashamed to admit to most people now that I was ever near the place.
In other news we’ve just received the following from the Royal Opera House about a performance this weekend. There’s plenty that just won’t let this go, either just plain evil or stupid. Luckily we won’t need to have the debate as we can’t afford those from row stalls seats anyway.
“Some seats in our auditorium are very close to our staff members and artists. Our staff welcome thousands of visitors every day, and we continue committed to the safety of everyone while in our building.
The front row of the Orchestra Stalls, as well as some seats near where our ushers and camera operators sit during the performance are clearly marked with a mask sign, and we ask those sitting in those seats to wear a face covering if you are able to. On behalf of our staff and artists, thank you.”
This obviously works both ways: Staff and artists are very close to members of the auditorium sitting there. Considering that they necessarily talk loudly and might even sing loudly, they should wear face coverings to protect the paying audience, many of which are probably even going to be members of vulnerable groups. Should this render the performance inaudible, staff and artists will – unfortunately – in the long run, need to find a job which doesn’t involve performing on a stage in front of a room full of people.
Judging the quality of output from their departments, I hope the degrees have been printed on something soft, strong, and thoroughly absorbant…
And non-reflective. Makes it easier to show the birthing parents over Zoom.
And featuring a QR code. Everything of any importance simply must have a QR code.
It is about time that people recognised that there’ll be cases of covid in the UK forever — it is not going to be eradicated.
Anyone that uses the excuse ‘there are still cases of covid around’ for whatever activity are being naive.
You’d think that Imperial College would recognise this — but I’m afraid that like establishments everywhere, the upper echelons are a bit thick and don’t get science. IC has it worse because they employ Ferguson who is now in too deep and can’t easily get out of the hole he’s dug by admitting that it was all a terrible over-reaction.
Ferguson is up to his neck in the reset – let’s at least be honest after all this time. The cock-up theory is well past its use by date.
I think it’s about time we realised that certain institutions are quite happy for covid to be around forever, available as a tool to further whatever they want furthered.
Even if the govt said covid was nothing to worry about now, millions would not believe them.
We’re going to be living with corona madness for the rest of our lives, millions in the UK will go to their graves being worried about covid.
A nice current example of that would be
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/mar/31/charging-covid-tests-england-infections
That’s a rundown of everything from start to finish again, with no evidence of having learnt anything about COVID since March 2020. A few key points:
Looking at the picture accomanying this load of venomous and socially (in its intent) extremely harmful tripe suggests that lady may want to get her stomach ulcer (or whatever else she’s suffering from) treated instead of lashing out at others in order to cause them some pain as well. I’d really like to have a personal talk with this female non-human being in order to tell her a little about how it feels to start to doubt if people like her will ever again allow me to meet my parents before they (or I) die because that’s just too unsafe for them.
He’s never had to before, why would he start now? The more wrong he gets it, the more gigs he’s guaranteed by the Profits of Doom.
They get it all right, but their primary motivation is funding streams and BMGF is one huge funding stream. They are official gauleiters of the UK Branch of BMGF propaganda.
Words, apart from FFS, fail me.
How much did Imperial make from this student, Mr Grace, over 3 years?
The headline photo looks like an indoctrination ceremony. A bit worrying Mr. Grace, a Civil Engineering graduate (we need more engineers), hasn’t worked out his age demographic hardly die from Covid-19, but group life insurance companies are paying out from deaths in this young working age group after vaccinations…
Controlled demolition folks.
I wonder how much they paid in tuition for the privilege of having their course delivered over a zoom conference call and then being dictated to about graduation attendance. It seems that authoritarianism as well as Covid is transmissible and virulent.
I have to note the front row, and point out that for many student visitors to these shores, it’s a pure financial transaction: pay money for a degree that gets more money.
The quality of education that they may or may not receive is simply irrelevant, because once you’re in the corporate door, you can fake it until you make it. Purchasing essays is simply costed in to the price.
Mail order degrees should really be the order of the day. Very profitable for those dishing them out, and much cheaper for “students”.
Meagre offerings of a budget, growing pigs, heroes & villains, gammon racism, how brexiteers are perceived, Ukraine and much more+you meet Penny for the first time…enjoy!
https://therealnormalpodcast.buzzsprout.com/1268768/10348674-ep-45-rishi-s-dirty-dishes
If this is an example of one of the top universities in the UK,then I’m relieved that I left school aged 15 with no qualifications to my name.
ZOE R value has gone below one for the first time this ‘wave’
Has it? I thought it was 1.1 today.
Cut all Central UK Government funding immediately until they reverse this nonsense.
If Ferguson is the best of Imperial who would want to graduate from there anyway?
Lest we forget!
Make £££ by creating bullshit for the government with a computer program you wrote for this purpose and with no responsibility for the real-world effects of that whatsoever[*] is probably many a graduate’s wet dream. People don’t go to university to learn about stuff they’re interested in or to do stuff they care for, they go to uni because they’re from the social stratum where this expected (and can be financed) and ultimatively want to get a work little earn much job by doing that.
[*] for the typical prospective math/ physics/ computer-science graduate, it gets better: And get illegally laid while doing so. What’s not to like?
He studied at Oxford.
but teaches at Imperial
It was a truly great college once.
I can’t help but wonder if Imperial’s fall from sense and truth has been a result of its Chinese connections. I’m out on a limb as I don’t know the current situation but back in the day it had a lot of Chinese students and rumoured funding.
Anyone know its funding breakdown?
Does anyone else remember when there was talk of merging Imperial with UCL, with the LSE probably joining soon after? That was when all three were colleges of London University, before Imperial left.
The merged entity would have been the top research university in the world by some measures.
So you can imagine there’d be opposition from Oxford and Cambridge and probably from across the Atlantic too.
The reason I mention this is because there’s a theory that Glaxo was behind the merger plan.
There are various rumours too about less important aspects, such as that certain parties with strong connections with UCL tried to fool the bods at Imperial about the value of UCL properties in Bloomsbury but the Imperial people found out and got furious.
The 15 perfumed ponce’s
My son attended his graduation from Imperial in October.
The authoritarian communist regime led by the woke American woman in charge dictated that it was unsafe for parents to attend the Royal Albert Hall.
The very same venue that held capacity crowds to music events the day before and the day after.
My son’s experience, as a non-leftie, was one where he had to keep his opinions to himself – and so avoided the university where possible. Luckily his Computing degree is of very good standing and so he can out-earn all the woke left leaning morons!
We need to realise that the UK university system is there to educate foreign kids (many of whom do not have the qualifications they say they have) who pay the exorbitant fees that fuels the production of more left-wing thinking.
It’s time to very heavily regulate these establishments to ensure that British kids get a fair proportion of places.
The college should rebrand themselves as “LIMPerial” now they have completely sold out to the wokerati. Winkers!
It’s odd that Imperial College restrict numbers in the Albert Hall now when you could have crowded in during the Proms or pack yourself now into the Royal Opera House.
I also was baffled by their expression “largely under control”. Does it mean it’s “under control” or not? And what does “under control” mean? As many recover on any day as succumb to the virus? Numbers going down? Numbers going up but not quickly? Zero Covid? Under ten cases? Everyone masked? Everyone jabbed? Everyone masked, jabbed and boostered?