As a reality TV show host, Donald Trump rose to fame with the catchphrase: “You’re fired!”. On Monday, the US supreme court handed him – and all future presidents – the power to fire leaders of independent agencies or commissions, overturning 90 years of court precedent curbing executive power.
While Trump celebrated the decision on Truth Social as a “big win”, labor advocates, unions, and consumer advocacy groups criticized the supreme court decision on the case, Trump v Slaughter, and warned of the long-term impacts for democracy in the US.
The elected President gets to fire civil servants. Democracy therefore triumphs over institutional power. Why is this a problem for democracy?
I could understand the logic if the complaint was that this gives democracy too much power. That might even be true too. But to say that the elected get to do what they’re elected to do is a problem for democracy is a toughie to understand.
It’s quite simple really, Tim. As Andy Burnham said when the Tories changed Prime Ministers without an election, that’s anti democratic! When Labour do it, it’s an orderly transition. The right people just have to tell you what democracy actually is. You don’t get to decide…
It’s one of those irregular verbs, isn’t it?
I find the lack of scrutiny of the executive in the USA a bit alien. Win a popularity contest and be in charge of all sorts of stuff for four years, because Congress is lazy.
The purpose of this system was pretty clearly to allow Democrat agencies to go on doing their thing even if a Republican won the presidency though. Deep state stuff – the antithesis of democracy.
Because the President couldn’t fire people, Congress also couldn’t blame him for things going wrong. At least not believably.
This has changed. Hopefully this will result in more accountability all around.
Congress does scrutinize the Executive quite thoroughly. Both the House and Senate can subpoena any executive branch officer to appear before Congress under oath, and does so frequently. Congress also uses the control of funds to shape what the Executive does.
The two decisions handed down yesterday clearly show the difference between an executive agency and a non-executive agency. The Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, set up by Senator Lieawatha Warren expressively to be independent of the executive, has been ruled by the Court to be an Executive function, and therefore under the control of the President. The Federal Reserve is a creature of Congress, being authorized in the Constitution as part of the duty of Congress to control the currency.
“because Congress is lazy”
Yup, this is a lot of the problem. Congress passed lots of laws giving more powers to the Executive, without thinking.
Now they’ve got someone they don’t like as the Executive, suddenly they’re running around trying to reinvent separation of powers and limited government. Tough; you should have thought of that at the time, and listened to the people telling you that giving ever-greater powers to the Executive wasn’t a good idea.
How much scrutiny is there in a Parliamentary system? Where the executive and legislative are the same people.
No one like Kier, no one likes what he’s doing, he’s still doing it, up to and including appointing his own successor to continue.
Same thing happened in Canada with Trudeau giving way to Carney.
In a decent parliamentary system they *aren’t* the same people…
In proper constitutional monarchies executive power is *solely* vested in the monarch.
And (s)he is not just a sock-puppet like the UK and other “ceremonial” monarchs/presidents , but a functioning entity within the system, specifically put in to prevent *exactly* that problem and keep actual executive power out of the hands of Politicians.
Here in Clogland Politicians who are appointed ministers become Delegates of the Crown, and are *not* in Parliament anymore. But any Minister need not necessarily be an elected politician.
The dutch experiment with PM Schoof being specifically scouted for that role while not being in politics was a relative success, if you discount for all the derailing the politico’s did to Get Wilders Out.
( Now we got the Gay SoyBoy Europhile, and people are rapidly finding out the “Democrats” of ’66 actually very much aren’t….)
And while our Monarch officialy doesn’t do politics, and *certainly* won’t interfere directly with the goings-on in the Houses, there *is* the “Raad van State” , which is basically the Privy Council, comprised of all the current Ministers, and *anyone* the Monarch deems fit to appoint to it, chaired by the Monarch.
It’s the bit in our system going “Are You Quite Sure About That?…..” when Things get contentious, and…. overly Ambitious.
( The fact that statements from it regularly pisses off Politico’s Left, Right and Centre, and *all* of the Bien Pensants shows it’s functioning as intended….)
It’s…”the same people” , but with clearly drawn lines, and fingers slapped, sometimes pretty hard.., for crossing them.
The Nordics have similar systems, with some variations, and amazingly, we together are some of the most stable Democracies in the world…
The ones that aren’t are those where the Monarch/President is purely ceremonial, and you’ve lost that….control valve…
For the UK…. Can’t see it ever happening… Brenda didn’t *want* to, even if she were quite capable and could have bucked the System. She was, by all accounts, too Conservative. Even refused to abdicate for Fresh Blood.. Despite urgent encouragement from the “Extended Family”in the rest of the european monarchies. Mabe because :
Jug-Ears….. shouldn’t have been Monarch to begin with…
His son…..we’ll have to see if he’s capable of fighting the System.. But probably won’t be..
Problem in the UK is, and shall always be, is that the UK has always really been Governed by the ( upgraded) Barons, and not by the Monarchs for *centuries* .
And the Barons are now *everywhere* , except we call them Lanyards here… The Politicians are just a sideshow…
But maybe there’s hope… *if* Reform miraculously manage to get a majority next election, they can start with something like realising that Civil Servants are part of the *executive* , and *can* be fired…
Trust me… It’s *absolutely amazing* what it has done for the Attitude of “Rijksambtenaren” over here when they figured out/found out the hard way they could and would be fired if they were dysfuntional..
Took a while to get the Message across, but….
Now all that’s left is to Teach Politico’s that NGO’s and Foundations aren’t People, and most certainly do not represent the needs or wishes of actual People… They’re Lobbying Vehicles. Period.
That one’s still ongoing but we’re making headway…
So… the UK being the UK, and something between two decades to a century behind any trend… And then only picking up the Stoopid Trends…
Probably never, but Farage has a shot.. only one, but still… better than nothing…
You don’t have that system. That is simply not the system the UK has been governed under since at least 1900. The last vestiges of monarchal control were quietly put aside during the last Queen’s ‘reign’ when she continually failed to intervene when ‘her’ government clearly went off the rails.
All the executive agencies in the UK theoretically answer to the PM but you’ve also got a layer of entrenched bureaucracy that in unanswerable to anyone but the bureaucracy.
It is not even about democracy.
The Prez is head of the Executuve, so he can sack people in the executive at will.
The conflict comes when there is a question of whether an action is legislative and has to be passed by Congress.
Sometimes, partisan though they be, the district Federal judges get that last bit right and the Prez has strayed outside his permitted zone.
The worst people you’ve ever heard of keep crying and shitting themselves about 80 year old cuddly moderate Donald Trump, when they should be crying and shitting themselves over what comes after Trump.
In future, they won’t be fired from their jobs.
Tad messy though….
Don’t worry. Lanyards are biodegradable.
Seems perfectly reasonable to me:
“This lengthy 108-page decision supports the Unitary Theory of government in that the President can remove any agency head within the Executive Branch through plenary power, and the Legislative Branch and Judicial Branch cannot interfere. This is a major win for President Trump and beyond”.
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2026/06/29/supreme-court-rules-6-3-that-president-can-remove-any-agency-head-in-executive-branch/
Yup, but the US Blob don’t want “reasonable”, they want a power puppet in the White House that marches to their tune..
While I agree with this decision, insofar as I understand it, this ‘democracy’ stuff also allows, for instance, some bloke no-one even voted for at the most recent UK general election, with zero connection to the winning party’s manifesto, to get given the keys to No10 and promptly announce he’ll be doing most of this work from the front room of his Wigan council house.
It’s a highly imperfect system for important day-to-day decisions.
It’s a shite state of affairs, but I’d take our horrible shitty mess over the American variant.
The Supreme Court – even when they get it right, they prove themselves an abomination. A “court” where judicial decisions can usually be predicted based on the political party judges support is not a court of law. It’s an unelected and completely unaccountable legislative revising chamber.
And it’s worse at the federal court level, where judges feel entitled to issue blatantly unlawful rulings based on Orange Man Bad.
Lawyers, even at their best, add zero value to society. Can’t eat law. Can’t turn the law on to heat your home in winter. They’re a cost of doing business. We hate cost, even when it’s necessary. Allowing them to form their own priestly caste as the only branch of government you can’t sack was a terrible mistake.
I wouldn’t take our mess. Our unappointed courts act just as politically, but in secrecy and deniability.
That’s bollocks.
We have far too many lawyers, true, and they poke their noses in everywhere, also true.
But on the subjects of eating and heating, law and lawyers mean you can reasonably expect – until society completely breaks down – that contracts for food and kerosene or gas will be honoured, and you don’t have to start stoving people’s heads in with shovels instead.
Pleasurable as that might be.
“ law and lawyers mean you can reasonably expect – until society completely breaks down – that contracts for food and kerosene or gas will be honoured,”
Except when they aren’t:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn4g5g0vk4qo
Tbf if they want to stay in business, I’d assume the T’s & C’s allow kerosene distributers to vary prepaid orders in the event of a massive oil price spike. An order accepted is a contract, did they accept those prepaid orders or did they simply receive them? That’s why you always ask them to email you a receipt as soon as you pay. That’s evidence you can sue them with.
Since speaking to the BBC, he said his supplier had agreed to honour the contract at the original price.
Turned out nice again. And prices are way down now, Iran no longer has the ability to affect global oil prices. They’re doing horribly actually, not that you’d know it from the pro-Iranian Western media.
Are they? The regime seems to have survived the onslaught and retained the ability to fuck with traffic in the Straits of Hormuz. It still has its missiles and enriched uranium. And is apparently soon to get a few billons dollars unfrozen.
It would be silly to describe this as ‘winning’ but after getting a battering from the US and Israel*, most despots would be very happy to be in the same position.
*albeit Israel with the US holding it back
Are they?
(Churchill impression) Ho yes.
Iran is in deep shit. Economy is fucked. Nobody seems to be in charge. Their cardboard Ayatollah remains gay and dead. Hezbollah – their most powerful weapon barring a nuke – is being rolled up as we speak. Lebanon breaking free.
The regime seems to have survived the onslaught and retained the ability to fuck with traffic in the Straits of Hormuz. It still has its missiles and enriched uranium. And is apparently soon to get a few billons dollars unfrozen.
They’ve survived, which is the only “win” condition they could achieve. Not clear if the regime will survive the ceasefire tho. If you read the various statements coming out of Iran, it’s schizophrenic af. Lot of Iranian regime figures are clearly extremely unhappy about the Betrayal Most Foul that was the MoU. Which, as I predicted, was the equivalent of receiving a complement slip. Apart from a pause in fighting and some temporary relief on oil sanctions – which benefits the US more than it does Iran – they still haven’t banked any wins from the MoU.
I think the Ayatollah is probably dead, and it’s only the pretense he’s still alive and making decisions that permits the regime to function to whatever degree it still does. Can’t keep up Weekend at Ali’s forever you know.
I’m loving this ceasefire btw, every time Iran fires a drone, uselessly, at a tanker, the Yanks ceasefire the shite out of them with precision airstrikes. Ceasefires raging across the Middle East.
Iran has retained the ability to annoy international shipping, but look at the bell shaped oil price curve. Markets have priced Iran in, the last tanker they struck only, briefly, moved the oil price by $1. This is what strategic failure looks like – the Strait was supposed to be Iran’s economic WMD, it’s rapidly becoming an irrelevant backwater instead as Venezuela, Iraq and other oil producers more than make up for reduced Iranian supply. Pipelines on the way to completely bypass them altogether.
So, a country that recently thought of itself as a major regional power, with pretensions of leading the Muslim world, is now flat broke, denuded of most of its military capabilities, hated across the region, and its proxies are all being sent to Gehenna by tough Jewish lads.
You love to see it.
“Ceasefires raging across the Middle East.” Nice ‘un.
ISTM that since the middle of the last century there have only been two ways in which misbehaving countries have been sorted out: popular rejection of the ruling class (Iron Curtain late 80’s) or bombing the actual fuck out of them, then occupying them militarily for years and forcibly changing their culture (Germany and Japan post WWII).
Obviously there’s no stomach for the latter at the moment, and Iran’s population has so far failed to rise up, no doubt partly as a result of tens of thousands of their possible leaders being culled before Trump could steam in.
Given this, what was Trump going to have to do? Settle for having properly fucked their nukes for a while, until it all has to be done again. Which is what it seems he’s done. His arms manufacturers aren’t unhappy.
Depends on how you define “misbehaving” – that does not cover Southern Rhodesia or South Africa or Argentina
Misbehaving?
It’s when they start exporting their domestic fuckedupedness.
Southern Rhodesia did not. They merely produced better tobacco than most of stuff from the USA at a marginally lower price while also producing more than enough food for their population.
Obviously there’s no stomach for the latter at the moment, and Iran’s population has so far failed to rise up
At the moment the internet and other comms are shut down and so Iranians don’t have a true grasp of what’s going on and are unable to collectively organise. I’ve read some analysis that reckons s soon as the population are released from effectively lockdown they’ll be up in arms again, not least because as Steve says above, their economy is well and truly fvcked.
This lass is worth a folly on X and her Substack for things Iran and ME.
https://x.com/zriboua/status/2071623342017151305?s=61&t=VX5cJ0-osgn_JSz7j-uowQ
Just to remind.
https://x.com/MamadMachine
That’s your man on Iran.
And just to remind again. He used to be economics editor of one of the papers in Iran. Think something between FT and Economist. He and I did a column for a year there. He might suggest a subject, I might, then I’d write it up from the Worstall point of view, he would translate, publish.
He spent 3 days in prison for one translation. Had to flee the country but not over me or my writing.
He also organised the translation into Farsi of one of my books. Which actually went to a second edition – only one of my books that ever has. Which is, you know, nice?
Anyway, this blog’s official Iran expert is Mo Machine Chian. So there. Accept no substitutes.
I remember you mentioning this before Jim.
From the piece itself:
So the contract had a perfectly fair clause allowing the supplier to increase the price of oil to reflect what it had had to pay.
This is completely standard – domestic heating oil prices track wholesale markets which can move significantly in the period between an order being placed and when the tanker actually turns up, so most (probably all) suppliers’ terms and conditions state, in one form or another, that the quoted price at order is provisional.
And the purchaser knew this.
He claims (without evidence, though I can believe it) that it doesn’t go the other way – it would be worth looking into that, but only worth doing in light of the wording of the relevant clause… and you’d probably need a lawyer to do it, or we’re back to shovels.
The BBC starts whining about it, and the supplier backs down, despite its legal position being apparently sound, in the face of the bad publicity from lefty twats who have never sourced and delivered a volatile commodity on which they need to make a profit to keep a roof over their heads in their lives.
Is this a good thing? I’d have thought not.
I believe in my word is my bond, not the weasel words of the small print in contracts. If you agree to supply someone at a given price, and take their money, you should supply them, even if it costs you money. After all if the price drops after you take the order you don’t give the customer a rebate do you? If you don’t stand my your word you’re a cunt, and you should get whats coming to you, in spades. In my world, fuel suppliers who behaved like that would find their lorries all suddenly caught fire.
Good for you.
I understand that you’re a farmer?
Say you have signed a contract to sell X tonnes of wheat at £y to Hovis, and you suddenly find the price of fertiliser has trebled.
Are you a cunt if you say, ‘I need to change the price guys, otherwise I’m going out of business’, or are Hovis the cunts for saying ‘Ha ha ha fuck off we know you’re in the shit, and we don’t fucking care’?
Of course this won’t happen because you’ll have in your contract terms to reflect sudden and dramatic changes in input costs eg index-linked or formula pricing, a price review/escalation clause with a trigger threshold, maybe an economic hardship clause or some sort of proper force majeure, or perhaps just a renegotiation clause, and the price of a loaf will go up a bit and everyone survives.
If you don’t have clauses like this in your contract, you should have – it’s NFU advice, for starters.
(I have no arable farmers in my family, but I do have a very significant beef farmer relly who has experienced something along these lines).
Re oil, my (domestic heating) oil supplier has the following term in its contract: ‘The Seller reserves the right to amend or cancel ordered quantities without notice if the price of the product at the point of delivery exceeds the price at the point the Seller accepted the Order, such that the Seller would supply the product at a loss.’
If they were just pumping the price up for shits and giggles they would be in breach of their contract, and/or the term allowing that would be void under unfair contract terms regs, but that’s not what we’re talking about here.
Your original story was from March, when the price the suppliers were expected to pay suddenly and unexpectedly and through no fault of their own effectively doubled overnight.
These do not strike me as ‘weasel words’, and I was and remain happy to accept this clause under those circumstances.
What am I otherwise to expect?
The directors to go personally bankrupt in order to fulfil the original order, despite the contracts we all signed as sentient adults?
That’s a good way to never get any heating oil again.
There is a “force majeure” term in many contracts that cover the inability of the supplier to provide the product, but that doesn’t say that you can change the agreed price unilaterally – you would need to agree a new price. Almost certainly the newspaper is being economical with he truth, but …
“Are you a cunt if you say, ‘I need to change the price guys, otherwise I’m going out of business’, or are Hovis the cunts for saying ‘Ha ha ha fuck off we know you’re in the shit, and we don’t fucking care’?”
LOL. Shows how much you know about farming. If a farmer signs a sale contract for 1000 tonnes of grain at £175/tonne, thats what he has to deliver, and what he’ll get paid, end of story. If in the meantime the price of fertiliser goes through the roof, or the price of grain ditto, hard cheese. There are no get out clauses in farming contracts. Not for the farmer anyway. For the buyer, there’s always ways they can wriggle out, and what are you to do, sue a multinational conglomerate, who can keep lawyers paid for far longer than you can?
“If you don’t have clauses like this in your contract, you should have – it’s NFU advice, for starters.”
Even bigger LOL. The NFU negotiated the standard grain contract on behalf of farmers. They are known throughout the industry as the No F*cking Use. All the NFU head honchos care about is getting on the boards of large food retail and processing companies, or getting a nice government quango sinecure, plus a knighthood. Playing hardball with the food industry tends to mean all that goes out the window, so they don’t.
“If they were just pumping the price up for shits and giggles they would be in breach of their contract, and/or the term allowing that would be void under unfair contract terms regs, “
Ah yes, Mr Retiree is going to try and sue a large fuel supply company over a fuel bill of maybe £1000. It’d cost that just to get a lawyer to look at the case, and God knows how much more before it even got near a courtroom. And no guarantee he’d win, because the other side would probably have more expensive lawyers than he would. And companies know this. They can behave like cunts and what are people going to do? Nothing, because the law is biased in favour the the wealthy and powerful. Everyone else gets screwed.
“Your original story was from March, when the price the suppliers were expected to pay suddenly and unexpectedly and through no fault of their own effectively doubled overnight.”
Bollocks. The day Trump attacked Iran they had stock in their tanks that they had bought at the old prices. They would have had to pay more to replace it certainly, but that new high price should be paid by the people who ordered after the price rises, not before it. They were just trying to sell all their stock they bought cheaply at the new high prices. After all when prices drop suddenly do they refund people who ordered before the price drop? No of course they don’t, they demand the old high price, knowing they can replace it at a lower one. Kerching!! Its heads we win tails you lose for companies like this, and its high time they were called out for it.
Yes, as you said, suppliers can often hedge against price rises by engaging in “futures” contracts so it would be gross incompetence if they were unable to honour a contract as a result.
Do you think other industries don’t have these issues?
The law of the land allows for you to insert terms into your contract which allow for price to be varied under certain conditions.
If you can’t do that because of the power of the purchasers, they only have that power because you collectively go along with it – there’s no legal impediment to you agreeing variable terms.
If enough farmers tell them to fuck off they will change their tune.
Re the oil, the clause was in the contract and these were extraordinary times.
How do you know how much oil the suppliers had at hand, bought at what price, and what the conditions going forward were going to be?
Not to mention, I tend to the view that the price mechanism is a useful device for rationing scarce resources.
The old guy can’t sue because it’s in the fucking contract he signed.
Yes, I understand that this is (in this case) weighted to the supplier, but the jeopardy is that suppliers all go bust and no one gets any oil.
“The law of the land allows for you to insert terms into your contract which allow for price to be varied under certain conditions.
If you can’t do that because of the power of the purchasers, they only have that power because you collectively go along with it – there’s no legal impediment to you agreeing variable terms.”
Right, you try going to the few buyers of grain in the UK (the market is dominated by a few multinational conglomerates) and saying ‘Look here chaps, I know you buy millions of tonnes of grains every year and I’ve got maybe a few thousand, but I won’t sell you any grain unless you agree to my demands’ and see how you get on.
Thats why there is a standard contract that was agreed between the NFU and the trade body for grain buyers. Because there is a massive disparity of market power between John Q Farmer (sole trader, turnover £500k) and BigBucks Grain Inc (that turns over $50bn/yr). And unsurprisingly the contract agreed heavily favoured the grain buyers, not the farmers.
And you can’t get every farmer in the country to agree to ‘stand together’ because there’s a hundred thousand of them, and they can’t agree on anything. Someone will always consider that the terms being offered are OK and break ranks. Not least because they vary in size and type from James Dyson (farming 36k acres) to some semi-retired chap farming 36 acres). There is never going to be an agreed position that everyone can sign up to.
And in fact I suspect competition law would prevent farmers banding together to manipulate market prices. As far as competition law is concerned I, as a sole trader farmer, turnover a few hundred K, is exactly the same as Tesco (turnover £70bn). I am no more entitled to collude with another farming business to fix prices than they are. Now the Competition Authorities aren’t going to worry too much if I and my neighbour do exactly that, because we aren’t going to impact the marketplace. But if tens of thousands of farmers did so, and created a bloc of businesses all colluding together, and succeeded in driving prices higher then you can bet your bottom dollar the State would be down on us like a tonne of bricks. Can’t have the peasants banding together to get more money for themselves, taking profits off the corporates, that must never happen!
If you called yourselves a trade union you could get away with anything.
“If you called yourselves a trade union you could get away with anything.”
No because we are not employees. You can’t have a trade union of businesses, only employees. We are sole traders, partnerships and small limited companies. We are not considered ‘people’ but ‘business units’. The law (see it always comes back to arsehole lawyers) sees us as exactly the same as a multinational multi billion dollar corporation.
Hence my distaste for limited companies as they are what f*ck everything up. If the ownership of businesses were all vested in actual physical human beings, not fictional legal entities, a lot of these problem would go away.
I’m not explaining the world as I like it, Jim, just as it is (legally).
You can insert terms. Of course, they don’t have to accept them. You don’t have to sell, or even grow, wheat.
I know this puts farmers in a difficult position, and I also know we need bread.
I also also know you can’t officially ‘stand together’, for the reasons you explain in your follow-up post, but then I didn’t use that phrase because it would have implied collusion.
I just said what would happen if enough farmers told them to fuck off.
Maybe the fertiliser issue will cause some sort of rupture.
“I just said what would happen if enough farmers told them to fuck off.”
How can you tell them to f*ck off? They don’t need us, they are allowed to import grain (which incidentally is produced in ways that are not allowed in the UK) as much as they like. So even if all UK grain growers told the grain buyers in the UK to f*ck off, they’d just source their grain elsewhere in the world, and we’d all be bankrupt.
Any other bright ideas?
No I’m all out of ideas, Jim.
Clearly you have absolutely no alternative, whatsoever, but to bend over and get shafted.
Or stop farming, or change what you farm. I’ve heard solar panels are profitable.
Years ago I was a member of an editorial photographers’ mailing list, populated by leather-jacketed lefties mainly doing low-end PR and magazine jobs, complaining that monopsony commissioning practices were keeping them poor.
There are fewer of these people now because it turns out the office junior with an iPhone has rendered them unnecessary.
I expect Jim would say to that: well, fine, fuck farmers and we all starve because you can’t eat solar panels.
Farming is a different class of issue to most other things, because food is, and I understand his point – that the law, in the theoretical and abstract, may not be much help.
But I’m not sure what is achieved by pissing moaning about it and getting angry and saying there are no alternatives.
I dare say a lot of us on here have been in even tighter spots than the average farmer, and there is always a way out.
Sure have.
Fuck farmers and we all starve? No, we eat the Ukrainian grain the agricorps import rather than buying from UK farmers. Prices go up a bit and Indians struggle.
‘Course I’m being contrary here and have a great deal of sympathy for Jim’s plight (and many of his attitudes; come on the Imberbus, Jim) but the problems are monopsony and oversupply.
It seems to me that economists forget that oversupply doesn’t just lower prices; it enables buyers to dictate terms. That’s certainly what happened to the snappers.
I know it’s all devil’s advocate – most of us can see various sides of any issue – but
The point as (I know you know) is what happens if the Ukrainians stop selling you grain for whatever reason. Same for steel, oil etc – in my view there are a few industries worth protecting in some way, though I’m not sure how.
“the problems are monopsony and oversupply.”
No the problem is that the UK consumer demands UK producers produce to certain standards, while quite happily eating food produced to lower standards abroad. The UK producer is screwed, laden with regulation and costs that his competitors are not forced to endure.
Make UK voters suffer the consequence of their actions. If chemical X is not allowed on UK produced food, it should not be allowed on any UK retailed food etc etc. Then prices would rise rapidly, as cheap imports were excluded from the UK marketplace. Actions, meet consequences.
Fair points.
That’s not a perfectly fair clause. It’s permitting the supplier to charge more if they have chosen to pay more. A supplier who has a pre-paid contract, as this is claimed to have been, can use derivatives to hedge their position so that they would not have to pay more if the global price rises before delivery. Since this is something that the supplier can choose to do by the customer cannot, it is unfair.
And, regardless of what a contract says, the Consumer Rights Act 2015 can override it:
62 (1) An unfair term of a consumer contract is not binding on the consumer.
…
(4) A term is unfair if, contrary to the requirement of good faith, it causes a significant imbalance in the parties’ rights and obligations under the contract to the detriment of the consumer.
So a supply contract that said the price can go up but not down would almost certainly have that term struck out by a court. And quite rightly so.
That all depends on the interpretation of fairness, good faith etc (and yes, I mentioned the consumer regs earlier).
I doubt anyone would expect the courts to uphold a price increase which was applied because the owner’s wife wanted a new car.
But a war breaking out which materially affects the solvency of the supplier and the actual existence of the retailed product?
I think they might look quite kindly on that as long as the triggering circumstances eg ‘wholesale cost increases’ are spelled out, not vague, and they use a clear calculation method, give the consumer notice, and allow him to cancel.
As for buying via the futures market, ordinarily sure. This was very much not ordinary.
Jim, I ordered heating oil the day before everything went tits-up and the price rocketed to over twice what I’d paid.
They delivered, at the agreed price.
So you’re right, the bunch of spivs in the BBC story are cunts.
Our unappointed courts act just as politically, but in secrecy and deniability.
Our judges can be sacked.
That’s bollocks.
No, it’s literally true. Lawyers produce paperwork. That’s their output. Like accountants, they may perform useful administrative type roles by generating paperwork (cost of business), but they don’t produce anything that’s actually useful in itself. If you were on a desert island, a law book wouldn’t help you except as firelighters.
law and lawyers mean you can reasonably expect – until society completely breaks down – that contracts for food and kerosene or gas will be honoured, and you don’t have to start stoving people’s heads in with shovels instead.
Technically, it’s the cops you can thank for that. Without men able and willing to physically enforce laws, they’re just words.
Which is the point I’m making. Not that we don’t need laws, but that lawyers are out of control and need to be brought back to their proper function. Which should be as controversial as plumbing. The job of a Supreme Court is simply to apply the relevant legislation to the facts of the case in front of them. That legislation is written down, in English. So there should be approximately zero scope for judicial surprises. The fact that it’s a horribly contentious political bunfight every time the Supremes meet is evidence of a deeply dysfunctional system.
No they can’t. I mean, okay, they can, in theory, if you squint really hard, but it’s extremely difficult, and that’s why the number English High Court or Court of Appeal judges who have ever been fired is ZERO. It’s actually much easier to fire US judges – a number have been ditched over the years inc at least one appeals court judge.
Sorry, Steve, that’s just more bollocks. Because:
That depends. If you were alone, no. But if you were part of a group of people on this island the first thing you’d probably want to do is draw up some rules governing interpersonal relationships – we could call them ‘laws’.
Otherwise you’d have anarchy – literally only the other option – and someone like me would stove your head in with a shovel and shag your wife.
Then there might be disagreement over those laws, and you’d possibly want some third party to decide on what they meant, for various reasons.
Sort of. But I don’t personally trust the cops, and not just because they’re corruptible and often stupid.
I don’t disagree that they’re out of control – I said exactly the same.
I mean, have you ever read any laws? The English language is a beautiful thing but it admits of interpretations.
Shoulda woulda coulda.
No they can’t. I mean, okay, they can, in theory, if you squint really hard, but it’s extremely difficult, and that’s why the number English High Court or Court of Appeal judges who have ever been fired is ZERO
*sigh* the elephant is sure that string must be holding him in place, because he hasn’t moved yet.
Judges are answerable to Parliament, which has ultimate control over judicial appointments, guidelines and pay.
Blair magicked a “supreme court” in a puff of statute.
What Parliament giveth, Parliament bloody well can taketh away, that’s the law of the land. Judges only seem unaccountable because nobody has yet brought them to account.
Indeed, but you raised the point that our judges can be sacked as being a distinction from the position of US judges (who, by implication, could not).
I merely point out that both lots can be sacked, but that it’s extremely hard, has never yet happened in the UK, and has happened a fair few times in the US.
Correct – but I thought we were discussing the real world as it exists today, not some future world of your imagination.
We can all imagine future worlds in which all sorts of different positions apply to all sorts of different areas. I do it all the time!
Correct – but I thought we were discussing the real world as it exists today, not some future world of your imagination.
We can all imagine future worlds in which all sorts of different positions apply to all sorts of different areas. I do it all the time!
The greatest frustrations of my life involve communication. I wish I was better at it.
I’m not imagining some hypothetical wacky Fun House scenario here (that comes later). I’m pointing out that Parliament can create entire new courts at a legislative whim.
You know the UK supreme court was created by the Constitutional Reform Act 2005, right?
Which was passed by… anyone? Anyone? VP? VP?
So, we know that the highest court in the United Kingdom, its existence, its powers and its composition are all a creature of Parliament. Why, then, do you prefer to believe judges aren’t answerable to Parliament? They very provably are.
But nobody’s sacked judges before! Well, nobody thought to enshrine carbon dioxide emissions into statute before 2008. C’mon, this isn’t a hard point to grok – the people who make the laws and control the money supply can indeed just do things. The beauty of the British constitution is that Parliament has unlimited sovereignty.
The problem, Steve, is that everyone has swallowed this Tory bullshit about The Blob. They’re told this over and over again in the likes of the Telegraph that want people to vote for the piss weak Tories.
Hardly any fucker voted Tory last time round, including most people who consider themselves Tories. No-one reads the Telegraph.
But, leaving that to one side, what is the ‘bullshit’ that ‘everyone has swallowed’?
We all know that Parliament is supreme and cannot be bound etc etc.
We also all know (because of the ineluctable logic of the foregoing) that the Blob is a figleaf with a function to perform – to allow venal lying twats to shift the blame for the shit they force on us. (The same went for our EU membership.)
So, yes, it’s a paper tiger, the Wizard of Oz, but it is unfortunately backed up by blokes with guns, and it can and does force that shit on us.
Sure, as Steve suggests, Parliament could legislate to get rid of it.
Yay! I’m all in.
Until then, anyone who believes that the govt and the Blob and courts either don’t really exist or have no power is welcome to stop paying their taxes and start living the libertarian vida loca.
I promise to visit them all in jail.
This is all a very long way from my original point, which is merely that we do need laws, and we therefore need lawyers, but yes, we have too many of both.
If anyone would like to argue with this fairly simple position I’m all ears.
This is all a very long way from my original point, which is merely that we do need laws, and we therefore need lawyers, but yes, we have too many of both.
Yarp.
As an ex-lawyer, let me add that we do indeed have too many lawyers, and the main impact of that is that legal-help prices are down, and more people can afford to hire a lawyer than in the past.
And maybe this is what drives the “we have too many lawyers” complaints – “now even THOSE whackos can afford to hire lawyers.”
No one ever says “we have too much wheat, it’s making it too cheap to eat.”
If you want to argue that we elect too many lawyers to positions of power, fine, but that’s not what was said.
Societies have laws and regs. Complex societies have complex laws and regs. We can dumb it down – make it a blunt and less useful system – but we went the other way, making it impossible for Joe Plumber to master child support, tax planning, property ownership, and the like. He needs a guide who knows his individual territory. That’s what lawyers do.
“Too many lawyers” simply means, our system was supposed to help me, not those others. It’s essentially an aristocratic complaint.
100% The British government, and all its noodly appendages, would like you to believe it’s an unshakable monolith put there by Allah.
It’s actually more like a deeply distressed and indebted big business. And we already know how to solve those problems: sack loads of people, cut spending, liquidate assets, refocus on core functions.
Judges, Sir Humphrey, and coppers are all salaried employees. You do indeed get to tell your employees what to do. Priti Patel was boasting she couldn’t even get the Home Office to take down the pedo-BLM flag. I’d have sacked her on the spot for that. Useless cow.
Apparently she didn’t have the wit to ask who put the flag up in the first place, or where the key is. The political establishment delights in making the simple look incredibly difficult. But even an office teaboy knows that everybody has a boss.
I was under the impression that the Civil Service Code and one of Blair’s constitutional Acts established the CC as independent of political control, making it ripe for entryism and progressive takeover, which is exactly what happened. Quangos are also beyond political control, as are the US Federal Agencies which inspired them.
Hence an actual Blob, which of course Parliament can dissolve, but is most unlikely to.
Independent of political control?
Hm. He also gave Campbell the power to boss civil servants around.
I think we can date to that decision the turbocharging of civil service pretensions to political power.
The Blob is a thing. NHS hospitals are, it seems, simply disregarding the Supreme Court’s ruling on whether girls can have willies. When Reform took over a local authority and the Reform leader of that authority ordered the town clerk to remove a ‘Pride’ flag, the impudent fellow refused.
The Blob are the cohorts of marchers through the institutions who were given the full blessing of parliament in the Blair years (i.e 1997 till now).
So, parliament can change the law. And a government with the full backing of parliament can do likewise to fire on the spot public ‘servants’ who refuse to do as they are told.
But to defeat the Blob, that same government/parliament will need a back-up plan to ensure, for instance, that, to put it neutrally, money keeps flowing to parents to ensure that someone is looking after/schooling their kids – because otherwise the teachers’ unions will bring working parents to a halt overnight.
Personally, I think that means an army of shadow workers, perhaps Elon can supply them, able to take over stuff like that more or less immediately.
I know. That’s the point – it’s an imaginary future. If you like we can discuss a world in which Parliament legislates that the only way to avoid going to jail is to paint yourself blue.
No, it’s trivially easy to ‘grok’. I’ve already said this but: I know, it just hasn’t happened, but it’s irrelevant to your original point, which was that there was a difference between our judges and US judges, and it’s that ours can be sacked.
Perhaps we need to distinguish some judges from others. I was reading t’other day about an employment judge who got the push for being a bit of a perv with female staff.
On the other hand, sacking Brenda Hale? As a practical matter it’s diff to see how an appointments committee will ever find the balls to do that. Best leave it with parliament to impeach her for her impertinence.
Parliament is the supreme court. Not the jurists now lodging over the road.
Yep, I’m talking specifically about judges from the High to Appeal to Supreme courts.
This all illustrates what’s gone wrong with our way of life – we all used to basically accept that the system sort of worked, and it sort of did.
Not saying it was by any means perfect, because humans, but we had a reasonable media which sort of held politicians and courts to account, we had a halfway educated and interested populace which understood how things needed to be run and would eventually rouse itself indignantly against corrupt politicians etc, we had posh and well-educated judges and lawyers who mostly believed in doing the right thing and were embarrassable in their clubs and villages if they did not.
Now we have no media, overtly and blatantly untruthful politicians, judges from the third world or shit comps (certainly at the lower levels) and a populace that either doesn’t understand how things ought to be run because it has never been educated as to shit like the constitution, how the courts and politics works etc, or just doesn’t give a fuck because the football is on.
It’s a mess and no mistake.
The beauty of the British constitution is that Parliament has unlimited sovereignty.
That is the terror of the British constitution as well. As long as there are 50%+1 members willing to vote that way, they could reinstall Charles as absolute monarch.
Better than Burnham, let alone Wilson!
Not really. The people are sovereign. Parliament’s terms of existence are established by the Bill of Rights 1689. Parliament itself has taken on the claim that parliament is sovereign, but that declaration itself requires sovereignty first. It’s a circular reference, and cannot stand.
Sovereignty grows from the barrel of a gun. Or if you prefer, sovereignty resides where men believe it resides. No more and no less.
Not always: Mao is dead (along with the 50-odd million people that he killed).
On this subject I recommend:
https://newsfromuncibal.substack.com/p/the-leviathan-and-the-smartphone
Gah! I hate how substack encourages verbal diarrhoea. It’s the high IQ obverse to those stupid 5 second videos children and dim people watch. But more isn’t better either. He uses a lot of paragraphs to say very little.
Yes, it reminds me of those Victorian serialised novels where the author was paid by the word.
Which gave us Dickens [shudder].
One blog commenter persuaded me that half the problem is that Congress is so lousy at its job. It then occurred to me that as legislators the judges have one advantage: they don’t have to raise enormous sums of money for their election campaigns. So there is a somewhat better chance that they are unbribed.
So there is a somewhat better chance that they are unbribed.
Sure but that’s because it’s paid upfront.
Kentanji Jackson is a literal mouth-breathing retard, and a US Supreme Court judge. Her qualifications for being a judge are that she’s a Democrat, and a black woman.
Nobody ever needs to wonder how Kentanji Jackson will rule in any given case, because it’s always whatever the Democratic Party wants at that given moment, laws and precedent be damned. Many such cases!
Would be better off picking them via lottery.
True.
Also true – though a concession that you would still need them. Laws are confused and confusing and sometimes, esp when they were written 100+ years ago, need reasonably intelligent people to work out what they mean.
Your current immigration issues stem from a British judge deliberately ignoring common sense and law in order to redefine words to mean what he wanted them to mean.
Your whole judiciary has been doing this for a generation. You can tell what a British judge’s opinion will be without even knowing their party – they all have the same ideology, just different names.
Nah, that’s just the rules and convention, not “democracy”. Our betters have decided that party manifestos are not legally binding; the PM is simply a person who can demonstrate the confidence of (i.e. command of) a majority of Parliament, something TTK clearly didn’t despite being party leader.
We could change this so that the PM must be directly elected, like a president, and it’s still democracy. Whether we want to is another matter.
You do have to wonder what the point is now of party manifestoes in the hands of any politician who wants to be taken for an honest man.
You are reminding me of Albanese who’s just introduced the taxes he said he wouldn’t in his party manifesto.
I can’t overstate how important (I think) it is for the Republicans to win during the midterms and then Vance or Rubio – assuming they’re as good as their word – to take the presidency for the next eight years.
If that happens, the West has a chance of survival.
If not, we’re all fucked: the left is now openly and aggressively pursuing the treasonous destruction of our countries, and judgments like this, while (I think) sound, will only give more power to them if and when they get back in.
They don’t need small judgements like this, the Left are opening saying in the US now that if they win they will pack the Supreme Court with their cronies and then will rule indefinitely.
Which will lead to more
One notable and perhaps odd characteristic of authoritarian regimes, at least in western and nominally civilised countries, is the need to preserve the veneer of rectitude.
Once they get power they need to have ‘elections’ and ‘courts’ handing down ‘verdicts’ and ‘rulings’ for sufficient of their actions, either to persuade the population that it still lives in something like a proper society or for some sort of personal psychological satisfaction.
Stalin didn’t need show trials but he still held them.
Or at least until the government receives the Ceaucescu pension plan.
Commie speak isn’t meant to inform, it is to manipulate.
warned of the long-term impacts for democracy in the US
Obviously, it has FA to do with democracy. But the press doesn’t ask follow-up questions, like, “How is that?”
Saw an interview with Zohran Madmani yesterday, where he is asked about all the destructive things happening in NYC. Madmani just smiled, and started talking about the wonderful things they are doing for working people. The interviewer seemed too stunned to speak.
According to the Holy Constitution the federal government consists of three branches. Where does it permit “independent agencies or commissions”?
The Constitution doesn’t even permit most of the agencies.
Jeff Childers is interesting on this.
Link sorry
https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/slaughtered-tuesday-june-30-2026
That does not adhere to elementary arithmetic. Should it read “first four years in office” – and even then it could be three out if five.
Good point – I hadn’t noticed that. Dunno – ask him I guess. I think his point is that it’s an undoubted spanner in the works, though I can’t see how it’s quite the spanner he says it is.
Before I even try to ask him I have to subscribe to at least three Substack themes – no way Jose
Apparently, the problem is, that to save ‘our precious democracy’, we *need* unaccountable executive agencies that can both make law and execute law.
Oh, and we need this so badly that we can’t amend the constitution to allow it.
We have people over here saying its ‘unfair’ to fire a functionary just because they issue an order the President doesn’t like. They *deserve* ‘due process’ (which seems to have come to mean ‘a jury trial along with several years of review by Art III courts) – when Trump does it.
Replace ‘democracy’ with ‘Democrats’ in most situations and it all makes sense.
Don’t know where they got this. It is ignorant. Supreme Court didn’t hand, grant or whatever power. It RECOGNIZED it. Trump fired somebody. They sued. It made it up to the SC. The court said, “Yeah, he can do that.”
The ‘handed power’ wording is partisan.
A frequently seen parallel is with the 2nd Amendment. Journalists and other Leftards say it grants the right to have guns. No, it doesn’t. It RECOGNIZES the right, saying the right can’t be abridged.