Don’t know what the situation is over in the UK, but the right “to petition the government for a redress of grievances” is written down somewhere, over here on this side of the pond
And what is more of a governmental grievance then things like taxes, unequal distribution of government grants, and other things that amount to “mom, dad, you always liked the other kid best!”
“Controls on lobbyists” is simply “refusing to be accountable for actions”.
If person(s) A have the ability to control the life of person(s) B, then *OF* *COURSE* persons(s) B will attempt to influence the decisions of person(s) A’s actions attempting to control them.
The solution is to remove the ability of person(s) A to control the life of person(s) B, not to forbid person(s) B to attempt to influence how person(s) A controls the life of person(s) B.
In the modern day is there really any difference between a lobbyist and the media or a think tank? All the think tanks on the left and most of those on the right are funded by the government to tell the government that it should do what the government wants to do.
chris
19 days ago
If you can control lobbyists , they aren’t impactful enough to be worth controlling….
The main loophole is that lawyers step in under client confidentiality when any one tries (hi Ireland). Transparency works and UK style transparency of the lobbied works best of all those as it avoids any of the differences of intent and captures financial and in kind and soft benefits. (and no just because you declared it doesn’t make it right , stop that … ). Restricting the lunch you can buy a congressional staffer to some sandwiches whilst having super PACs not so much.
In truth the vast bulk of lobbying in UK is just getting relevant facts or opinions inserted into the regulatory debate and trying to avoid perverse consequences. Penetrating the bureaucracy is remarkably harder these dogmatic days.
If you can control lobbyists , they aren’t impactful enough to be worth controlling….
To be fair Chris that’s very similar to ‘If you can control rapists they aren’t impactful enough to be worth controlling….’
The trouble is that MPs and civil servants are the knickers on the inviting young fanny that is the public purse, and if you can find a way past those knickers it’s game on.
Lobbyists in concert with politicians and the civil service have brought us all sorts of weird and wonderful shit in the worlds of defence and pharma, just as two for-instances.
Not the point being made at all – the reason to ‘control’ lobbyists (as opposed to actual bribery and corruption) is the belief they have undue and high impact influence.
Rape is by any definition horrific and impactful to the victim and offensive to civilised society and no such analogy should be presented in this way in my view -even in a place as delightfully scurrilous as this blog.
If you can legislate against the lobbyists interests with ease then they do not have the influence over legislation you think they have (they don’t).
Government (politicians , civil service and local government) do the ‘weird and wonderful shit’. To object to lobbying is to object to the ability to comment on that ‘weird and wonderful shit’
Yes some of the commentary maybe from the perspective of the lobbyists employer – are they not entitled to an opinion now?
Yes some companies have a dependency issue on the public purse – again some will always do when they sell to a primarily PS market. The abuse of that dependency on either side is highly objectionable but its the abuse of it that is the issue not the exchange of views.
The one area i do think should be curtailed from the ‘lobbyist’ side is entities lobbying with public money as that is essentially acting outside of the ‘procurement’ of those services – which is actually banned when it is an actual procurement in most cases. This is mostly various charities in effect paid to provide services.
Government is currently putting laws straight to parliament with fictional impact analysis and marking their own homework there after – imagine how bad that gets if there is no one paid to point out the consequences of that.
Bloke in South Dorset
19 days ago
Good Lord, he’s not even pretending any more.
Bloke in South Dorset
19 days ago
Should we send him some nice smart black shorts?
Andrew C
19 days ago
Meanwhile Spud is terribly concerned at Rupert Lowe’s plan to deport migrants and how this might affect him.
“Most of the baristas I meet are from countries other than the UK”
Yesterday there was a DT article outing Enfield as England’s bennies capital. Remarkably diverse place, Enfield. What has obviously been an unremarkable but pleasant enough market town turned into exactly what you might expect.
I grew up in Enfield, we moved there from my grandparents home in Hackney when I was two (1957) . My brother still lives there. Yes, what even 50 years ago still had something of the feel of a country market town is now a shithole.
Norman – 20,000 new houses on the way at Crews Hill as well – all earmarked for the invaders to take!! With this appallingly evil bastard’s full approval
You could throw out all the baristas and we would be barely notice the effect. It’s a massive, stupid thumb on the “getting a coffee” thing.
Stop people coming here, and then claiming benefits, and the price of staff will rise. This will have the following effects:-
People will invest in a coffee machine for home.
People will travel with a flask
People will get coffee from self-service machines in pubs, restaurants, garages and hotels
I reckon even without deportations, this will start to bite soon. It’s £4 for a cappuccino in Costa and £1.20 in Wetherspoons. Wetherspoons can afford to do that because the marginal cost of coffee is almost nothing. The pub is being paid for, staff only hand you a cup and you push a button. They’re operating a 16 hour operation, breakfast to midnight, where Costa are running for about 7, and have staff sorting out your coffee.
I’ve just stopped going to anywhere but spoons now. I know that some little cafe might have more charm and better coffee. But when it’s 3 times the price, fuck that.
Same with a garage machine. You need a bloke to keep an eye on it, to fill it up with coffee or whatever when it alerts, but it’s not full time. He can be selling petrol and pasties as well.
I’ve become a bit of a coffee snob, it comes with travelling a lot in Europe and getting decent coffee, and bought myself an expensive machine a few years ago.
I have to admit that you can get some quite decent coffee from some of those self service machines, not least because they use beans that haven’t been roasted within an inch of their lives.
I almost never, unless
Meeting up at work ‘outside the office’ for some work purpose buy a coffee from anywhere other than Wetherspoons or some greasy spoon. I’ve got no issue with the baristas themselves- seem nice enough and grafters. Doubt many are in the ISIS reserves either but as you say, these jobs either should not exist or should be done by permanent welfare recipients.
Agreed! I read somewhere that Spoons is (one of?) the UK’s biggest coffee shop(s) on some measures. Also, a Spoons coffee is now £1.81 – with unlimited refills – not £1.20. And their breakfasts are excellent, and the food for kids is good, too.
I make a couple of cups of decaf daily with an AeroPress, usually using M&S ground Columbian. It’s fine. I occasionally treat myself to a posh flat white, but that’s not at Costa. Fuck them with their silly trans marketing. Whenever I do I enjoy it but wince at the price.
That sounds like that stupid bint on QT who, before the Brexit ref, asked”who will make my sandwiches in Pret”.
Andrew C
19 days ago
Is this a world record for Murphy contradicting himself in the same sentence or can someone come up with something shorter?
“we live in a country which is already short of labour. Yes, I know we have unemployment in the UK, but also, we have many more people looking for jobs than we have jobs available”
Not quite the same sentence. It can be parsed as: We live in a country with a shortage of labour. We have a surplus of labour, but also a surplus of labour.
I can’t see that Spud sentence being far short of accurate. If you ignore the unemployable, you have a mismatch between the people employers are looking for & people seeking the sort of jobs they want to do, for the money they wish to earn.
I disagree with that. What they want to do is an unproductive job of work. Which is why they’re not employed, doing what they want to do.
They’re approaching the whole thing from the wrong direction. Look around for what people want & are not getting. Learn how to do it. Sell them your services. Count the cash. Don’t expect work to be some sort of combined hobby & social event. Things that are tough & unpleasant pay (more).
Probably some
Kind of Quantum infused post from AI.
The two recommendations I recalled were:
– Regionally elected senate – Obviously angling for a role
– State funded political parties – the single worst idea of all time
He remains the closest to pure evil extant in the blogosphere. Indeed he should cast an eye over his own support for genocide before condemning anyone else
Norman
19 days ago
I’ve been a lobbyist. I lobbied against damaging changes to copyright that Mandelson tried to introduce in the 2010 Digital Economy Bill, just before the election. His clause was ditched in the washup. My side won.
After that there was a two-year consultation process leading up to the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act (2013), which my gang successfully de-fanged. Let’s call it a score draw.
I sat in countless SW1 meetings where I was almost invariably the only unpaid attendee in the room. I released then that this was all a process, and it was in everyone’s personal interest that it never concluded. The lobbyists’ income depended on it, as did the “independent” government advisors; the officials didn’t care because they would shortly be rotated out. The top officials were pursuing their own agenda.
We won because in the course of this process I met and ganged up with three other individuals: two copyright experts and a LibDem IP barrister who was able to get directly through to Vince Cable, who when briefed, put a stop to the IPO’s shenanigans.
This effort took a vast amount of my unpaid time. Eventually, a client who appreciated what I’d done boshed me £250 for an imaginary consultancy session. Which was nice.
“As usual, his problem is he doesn’t know what any of the words he uses mean.”
It seems even worse than that. The impression I’ve been getting for a while is that he doesn’t even care what the words mean, just whether they make him and his loyal readers feel good.
Gamecock
18 days ago
As Gamecock teaches Project Management, one of the first things is:
“If your plans affect someone, include them in your planning.”
Elimination of lobbying will result in government projects for which they don’t even talk to the people who are involved. Project managers joke about the guy who shows up at a work desk on start up day and asks the employee, “Where do I plug in your new system?”
Media and think tanks, no.
Controls on lobbyists would not be a bad thing – though I’m not sure this fat, stupid, lobbying cunt has thought that through.
IMHO lobbying should be completely barred. It’s just another name for ‘corruption’!
But we would end up with lefty NGO’s still allowed to lobby because they are nice, and not lobbying on behalf of evil capitalists.
Wrong. Government should not have enough power to attract lobbyists.
Lobbyists – many justifiably – try to influence government actions. If government had no power, there would be no lobbyists.
Baboom tish!
Don’t know what the situation is over in the UK, but the right “to petition the government for a redress of grievances” is written down somewhere, over here on this side of the pond
And what is more of a governmental grievance then things like taxes, unequal distribution of government grants, and other things that amount to “mom, dad, you always liked the other kid best!”
“Controls on lobbyists” is simply “refusing to be accountable for actions”.
If person(s) A have the ability to control the life of person(s) B, then *OF* *COURSE* persons(s) B will attempt to influence the decisions of person(s) A’s actions attempting to control them.
The solution is to remove the ability of person(s) A to control the life of person(s) B, not to forbid person(s) B to attempt to influence how person(s) A controls the life of person(s) B.
In the modern day is there really any difference between a lobbyist and the media or a think tank? All the think tanks on the left and most of those on the right are funded by the government to tell the government that it should do what the government wants to do.
If you can control lobbyists , they aren’t impactful enough to be worth controlling….
The main loophole is that lawyers step in under client confidentiality when any one tries (hi Ireland). Transparency works and UK style transparency of the lobbied works best of all those as it avoids any of the differences of intent and captures financial and in kind and soft benefits. (and no just because you declared it doesn’t make it right , stop that … ). Restricting the lunch you can buy a congressional staffer to some sandwiches whilst having super PACs not so much.
In truth the vast bulk of lobbying in UK is just getting relevant facts or opinions inserted into the regulatory debate and trying to avoid perverse consequences. Penetrating the bureaucracy is remarkably harder these dogmatic days.
Little black book and opera tickets not so much.
Also for here – if you want less lobbying have government do less …
Yep. If politicians get to decide what can be bought and sold, the first thing to be bought and sold will be politicians.
I 100% agree with this of course.
To be fair Chris that’s very similar to ‘If you can control rapists they aren’t impactful enough to be worth controlling….’
The trouble is that MPs and civil servants are the knickers on the inviting young fanny that is the public purse, and if you can find a way past those knickers it’s game on.
Lobbyists in concert with politicians and the civil service have brought us all sorts of weird and wonderful shit in the worlds of defence and pharma, just as two for-instances.
Brings a whole new meaning to “purse-snatching”!
Not the point being made at all – the reason to ‘control’ lobbyists (as opposed to actual bribery and corruption) is the belief they have undue and high impact influence.
Rape is by any definition horrific and impactful to the victim and offensive to civilised society and no such analogy should be presented in this way in my view -even in a place as delightfully scurrilous as this blog.
If you can legislate against the lobbyists interests with ease then they do not have the influence over legislation you think they have (they don’t).
Government (politicians , civil service and local government) do the ‘weird and wonderful shit’. To object to lobbying is to object to the ability to comment on that ‘weird and wonderful shit’
Yes some of the commentary maybe from the perspective of the lobbyists employer – are they not entitled to an opinion now?
Yes some companies have a dependency issue on the public purse – again some will always do when they sell to a primarily PS market. The abuse of that dependency on either side is highly objectionable but its the abuse of it that is the issue not the exchange of views.
The one area i do think should be curtailed from the ‘lobbyist’ side is entities lobbying with public money as that is essentially acting outside of the ‘procurement’ of those services – which is actually banned when it is an actual procurement in most cases. This is mostly various charities in effect paid to provide services.
Government is currently putting laws straight to parliament with fictional impact analysis and marking their own homework there after – imagine how bad that gets if there is no one paid to point out the consequences of that.
Good Lord, he’s not even pretending any more.
Should we send him some nice smart black shorts?
Meanwhile Spud is terribly concerned at Rupert Lowe’s plan to deport migrants and how this might affect him.
“Most of the baristas I meet are from countries other than the UK”
Around my way, so are most of the roadmen.
Yesterday there was a DT article outing Enfield as England’s bennies capital. Remarkably diverse place, Enfield. What has obviously been an unremarkable but pleasant enough market town turned into exactly what you might expect.
DT article based on this? https://www.neilobrien.co.uk/p/the-welfare-atlas-of-britain
I grew up in Enfield, we moved there from my grandparents home in Hackney when I was two (1957) . My brother still lives there. Yes, what even 50 years ago still had something of the feel of a country market town is now a shithole.
Norman – 20,000 new houses on the way at Crews Hill as well – all earmarked for the invaders to take!! With this appallingly evil bastard’s full approval
You could throw out all the baristas and we would be barely notice the effect. It’s a massive, stupid thumb on the “getting a coffee” thing.
Stop people coming here, and then claiming benefits, and the price of staff will rise. This will have the following effects:-
I reckon even without deportations, this will start to bite soon. It’s £4 for a cappuccino in Costa and £1.20 in Wetherspoons. Wetherspoons can afford to do that because the marginal cost of coffee is almost nothing. The pub is being paid for, staff only hand you a cup and you push a button. They’re operating a 16 hour operation, breakfast to midnight, where Costa are running for about 7, and have staff sorting out your coffee.
I’ve just stopped going to anywhere but spoons now. I know that some little cafe might have more charm and better coffee. But when it’s 3 times the price, fuck that.
Same with a garage machine. You need a bloke to keep an eye on it, to fill it up with coffee or whatever when it alerts, but it’s not full time. He can be selling petrol and pasties as well.
I’ve become a bit of a coffee snob, it comes with travelling a lot in Europe and getting decent coffee, and bought myself an expensive machine a few years ago.
I have to admit that you can get some quite decent coffee from some of those self service machines, not least because they use beans that haven’t been roasted within an inch of their lives.
WB
You’re like some latter day Oracle of Delphi!
I almost never, unless
Meeting up at work ‘outside the office’ for some work purpose buy a coffee from anywhere other than Wetherspoons or some greasy spoon. I’ve got no issue with the baristas themselves- seem nice enough and grafters. Doubt many are in the ISIS reserves either but as you say, these jobs either should not exist or should be done by permanent welfare recipients.
Agreed! I read somewhere that Spoons is (one of?) the UK’s biggest coffee shop(s) on some measures. Also, a Spoons coffee is now £1.81 – with unlimited refills – not £1.20. And their breakfasts are excellent, and the food for kids is good, too.
I make a couple of cups of decaf daily with an AeroPress, usually using M&S ground Columbian. It’s fine. I occasionally treat myself to a posh flat white, but that’s not at Costa. Fuck them with their silly trans marketing. Whenever I do I enjoy it but wince at the price.
Not at all sure that they have better coffee, but Costa does have more charm then wetherspoons. It’s the charm you’re buying.
That sounds like that stupid bint on QT who, before the Brexit ref, asked”who will make my sandwiches in Pret”.
Is this a world record for Murphy contradicting himself in the same sentence or can someone come up with something shorter?
“we live in a country which is already short of labour. Yes, I know we have unemployment in the UK, but also, we have many more people looking for jobs than we have jobs available”
He’s just burbling with his brain disengaged, isn’t he? He’s probably multi-tasking, fixing something on the layout at the same time.
Not quite the same sentence. It can be parsed as:
We live in a country with a shortage of labour. We have a surplus of labour, but also a surplus of labour.
I can’t see that Spud sentence being far short of accurate. If you ignore the unemployable, you have a mismatch between the people employers are looking for & people seeking the sort of jobs they want to do, for the money they wish to earn.
Quite. Person living in the UK without a job is not the same thing as person who is capable of or willing to do a productive job of work.
I disagree with that. What they want to do is an unproductive job of work. Which is why they’re not employed, doing what they want to do.
They’re approaching the whole thing from the wrong direction. Look around for what people want & are not getting. Learn how to do it. Sell them your services. Count the cash. Don’t expect work to be some sort of combined hobby & social event. Things that are tough & unpleasant pay (more).
Probably some
Kind of Quantum infused post from AI.
The two recommendations I recalled were:
– Regionally elected senate – Obviously angling for a role
– State funded political parties – the single worst idea of all time
He remains the closest to pure evil extant in the blogosphere. Indeed he should cast an eye over his own support for genocide before condemning anyone else
I’ve been a lobbyist. I lobbied against damaging changes to copyright that Mandelson tried to introduce in the 2010 Digital Economy Bill, just before the election. His clause was ditched in the washup. My side won.
https://archive.ph/yhK1
After that there was a two-year consultation process leading up to the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act (2013), which my gang successfully de-fanged. Let’s call it a score draw.
I sat in countless SW1 meetings where I was almost invariably the only unpaid attendee in the room. I released then that this was all a process, and it was in everyone’s personal interest that it never concluded. The lobbyists’ income depended on it, as did the “independent” government advisors; the officials didn’t care because they would shortly be rotated out. The top officials were pursuing their own agenda.
We won because in the course of this process I met and ganged up with three other individuals: two copyright experts and a LibDem IP barrister who was able to get directly through to Vince Cable, who when briefed, put a stop to the IPO’s shenanigans.
This effort took a vast amount of my unpaid time. Eventually, a client who appreciated what I’d done boshed me £250 for an imaginary consultancy session. Which was nice.
To add: Orlowski knows the story well. We became mates because of this.
If he actually knew the meaning of ‘fascism’ he would be telling everyone how wrong we are and that fascism is great.
As usual, his problem is he doesn’t know what any of the words he uses mean.
It seems even worse than that. The impression I’ve been getting for a while is that he doesn’t even care what the words mean, just whether they make him and his loyal readers feel good.
As Gamecock teaches Project Management, one of the first things is:
“If your plans affect someone, include them in your planning.”
Elimination of lobbying will result in government projects for which they don’t even talk to the people who are involved. Project managers joke about the guy who shows up at a work desk on start up day and asks the employee, “Where do I plug in your new system?”