Current Affairs

[Gill W]

Well, were not paying Russia Billions to be told what we can and cant do.

Are you happy with the idea that the Russians are interfering in UK politics?

[barney]

Show / Tell me a Government,anywhere in the world that has never surppressed/ witheld information from the public.?
Governments are elected to govern,with that comes decisions,you and I sometimes are not going to be privy to.Sometimes,it’s better not to know.

The problem is not the government supressing information, it's that the government hasn't even bothered to investigate

Gill, every large country tries to influence other countries.
That’s including us.
This is a non story in the Intelligence world.
In fact it would be amazing if a country didn’t try to influence.
The Americans regularly do.
The Germans do.
The Chinese certainly do.
They all do.
Why would our government want to put resources into this?

[Gill W]

We'll be having a general election in 2024. Can any of the critics please recommend the perfect party I should vote for? I presume from all the jibes there is one out there somewhere.

Are you comfortable with the idea that the Russians have now been given free rein to meddle in UK affairs, because the government won't investigate?

[Gill W]

Show / Tell me a Government,anywhere in the world that has never surppressed/ witheld information from the public.?
Governments are elected to govern,with that comes decisions,you and I sometimes are not going to be privy to.Sometimes,it’s better not to know.

The problem is not the government supressing information, it's that the government hasn't even bothered to investigate

Gill, every large country tries to influence other countries.
That’s including us.
This is a non story in the Intelligence world.
In fact it would be amazing if a country didn’t try to influence.
The Americans regularly do.
The Germans do.
The Chinese certainly do.
They all do.
Why would our government want to put resources into this?

They don't want to put resources into it - it's not rocket science to work out why.

[Manoverboard]

Well.

Government actively avoids investigating Russian interference in UK politics.

There are some things that are best left in the shadows.
The intelligence community has nothing but contempt for the Intelligence Committee.
Many of those MPs are the last people you’d trust with critical and sensitive information.

So it's ok not to bother to investigate and let the Russians meddle in all future elections if they feel like it ?

Let us suppose, just for a moment, that the Russian did ' meddle ' in our elections ... pray tell what you believe they may have achieved.

I am thinking that if they fiddled the votes and the Scots failed to gain independence and if they also ‘ meddled ‘ in the Brexit vote but we still managed to leave ... well, where's the harm

[Gill W]

Let us suppose, just for a moment, that the Russian did ' meddle ' in our elections ... pray tell what you believe they may have achieved.

I am thinking that if they fiddled the votes and the Scots failed to gain independence and if they also ‘ meddled ‘ in the Brexit vote but we still managed to leave ... well, where's the harm
[/quote]

It's about causing instability and division. If they have meddled, I think they have achieved their aim.

[Manoverboard]

Let us suppose, just for a moment, that the Russian did ' meddle ' in our elections ... pray tell what you believe they may have achieved.

I am thinking that if they fiddled the votes and the Scots failed to gain independence and if they also ‘ meddled ‘ in the Brexit vote but we still managed to leave ... well, where's the harm

It's about causing instability and division. If they have meddled, I think they have achieved their aim.
[/quote]
Is it ?

What instability and division have they caused / could they cause ... can you suggest anything tangible ?
.

[Gill W]

Let us suppose, just for a moment, that the Russian did ' meddle ' in our elections ... pray tell what you believe they may have achieved.

I am thinking that if they fiddled the votes and the Scots failed to gain independence and if they also ‘ meddled ‘ in the Brexit vote but we still managed to leave ... well, where's the harm

It's about causing instability and division. If they have meddled, I think they have achieved their aim.

Is it ?

What instability and division have they caused / could they cause ... can you suggest anything tangible ?
.
[/quote]

I think you just need to look back over the last four years - this country is divided in a way it never was before, and and we are divided from the EU in a way we weren't before

However, it's all conjecture, as the government is refusing to investigate, so we'll just have to put up with it. Many people seem comfortable about it as well, so I'm not going to waste hours on this

[Manoverboard]

I think you just need to look back over the last four years - this country is divided in a way it never was before, and and we are divided from the EU in a way we weren't before

However, it's all conjecture, as the government is refusing to investigate, so we'll just have to put up with it. Many people seem comfortable about it as well, so I'm not going to waste hours on this

I accept that this Country is divided as never before but I am more inclined to blame the ' Remainers ' and ' Minority ' Parties in the House rather than the Russians or indeed any other outside force.

[towny44]

Well.

Government actively avoids investigating Russian interference in UK politics.

You are of course aware that arch remainer Dominic Grieve chaired this committee, so it was always unlikely its report would be favourable to Boris.

The report is not about 'Boris'.

It's about successive governments failures to investigate Russian involvement in elections going back as far as the 2014 Scottish Indy Referendum.

Dominic Grieve has gone - but the current committee are scathing about what has happened.

It's ironic and astonishing that many of you didn't like the EU 'meddling' in our affairs, yet just shrug your shoulders and seem not to care if Russia are doing it.

Gill, the EUs meddling was constitutional and could lead to legal requirements that we had to meet. Russia's was, if it happened, an illegal operation that tried to influence people via social media. Not that I am condoning their action, but it is light years away from any similarity to the sovereignty creep that we were experiencing from the EU.

[Mervyn and Trish]

We'll be having a general election in 2024. Can any of the critics please recommend the perfect party I should vote for? I presume from all the jibes there is one out there somewhere.

Are you comfortable with the idea that the Russians have now been given free rein to meddle in UK affairs, because the government won't investigate?

If you think they have free rein because the government are not discussing measures in public you must have a very naive view of the world of espionage and a very dim view of the security services. This is very similar to expecting the government to lay out their Brexit negotiating strategy in public or a poker player to put all their cards face up in the table. And let's not forget the Labour party bitching about this now is the same party that backed Russia over the Salisbury poisonings.

[Gill W]

We'll be having a general election in 2024. Can any of the critics please recommend the perfect party I should vote for? I presume from all the jibes there is one out there somewhere.

Are you comfortable with the idea that the Russians have now been given free rein to meddle in UK affairs, because the government won't investigate?

If you think they have free rein because the government are not discussing measures in public you must have a very naive view of the world of espionage and a very dim view of the security services. This is very similar to expecting the government to lay out their Brexit negotiating strategy in public or a poker player to put all their cards face up in the table. And let's not forget the Labour party bitching about this now is the same party that backed Russia over the Salisbury poisonings.

I’m going by what the ISC committee members said. But hey, if that’s naive so be it.

As I said, I’m not going to expend any more energy on it, as everyone seems determined to believe that nothing untoward has happened. I haven’t got the energy to deal with that kind of brick wall.

But I will wonder quietly to myself how bad things need to get before you all notice there’s something not quite right happening.

Over and out on this subject.

[david63]

Just because the security services are "playing it down" does not mean that GCHQ, NCSC, MI6 etc. are not actively aware and monitoring the situation with Russia in the same way that they are doing it with China, USA and every other country on the planet.

From what little I have read about this nobody has actually stated what the Russians have done that may have affected anything.

[Mervyn and Trish]

Of course it would be so much easier if Russia had a government committee that publicly revealed every detail of what their security services are doing. If that's what we have.

[screwy]

I may be mistaken, I sometimes am, but is this all regarding some kind of ‘ manipulation’ news, etc on social media in an attempt to sway people’s views.?

Well I’m sorry but I don’t take any notice of things put out on FB, etc. Nothing on there sways my decisions on elections.

[Mervyn and Trish]

Not seen much play on this headline.

"UK chief medical officer Chris Whitty tells MPs the government followed advice on lockdown timing".

Maybe because it doesn't support the Boris is to blame narrative.

[screwy]

It still won’t wash with some.

[towny44]

Boris is the big bad bogeyman of all the London liberal elite, plus all remainers, plus all the Labour, Liberal, SNP and Plaid Cymru politicians, and therefore he must be totally at fault for everything that is perceived to be going wrong in the World.

[barney]

I may be mistaken, I sometimes am, but is this all regarding some kind of ‘ manipulation’ news, etc on social media in an attempt to sway people’s views.?

Well I’m sorry but I don’t take any notice of things put out on FB, etc. Nothing on there sways my decisions on elections.

There are obviously some who live their lives on Twitter and other social media platforms and honestly believe things that are opinions stated as fact.
What is a fact that has gone under the radar is the next step on the road to EU federalism.
Mutual debt is something that the Remain campaign said ‘ could never happen’
Well, it’s just happened.
Harmonisation of taxes will be next I expect.
Then the end of unanimity.
The Eu Parliament are actively pushing for majority voting on every issue.
So, an end to vetos?
We’ve got out just in time.

[david63]

Not seen much play on this headline.

"UK chief medical officer Chris Whitty tells MPs the government followed advice on lockdown timing".

Maybe because it doesn't support the Boris is to blame narrative.

And not to mention the other big shock, horror news today - Covid-19 will be with us for years, if not decades. Now who would have thought that

Not sure how that can be blamed on Boris but no doubt it will.

[Mervyn and Trish]

Hopefully, though I don't know this scientifically, if we get a vaccine and treatments, that may be in the same way flu is always with us. Even if it means having a jab every year as we do for flu.

[Gill W]

From what little I have read about this nobody has actually stated what the Russians have done that may have affected anything.

The issue is not what they may or may not have done, it’s that the government has looked the other way and not investigated

[towny44]

From what little I have read about this nobody has actually stated what the Russians have done that may have affected anything.

The issue is not what they may or may not have done, it’s that the government has looked the other way and not investigated

Gill, I watched the BBC news tonight and heard no hard facts that anyone did anything to influence any election, not even Laura Kuensberg could find a smoking gun amongst the reports findings. Essentially the report states that we could find no hard evidence that Russian covert tacticsa were used, but despite this the government did nothing to try and find out if in fact this negative evidence was true.
Dominic Grieve may no longer be in charge of the committee but his hand is all over the report, which in the end found nothing so why would the govt fare any better in finding the non existent evidence?

PS What they really meant was we the establishment had the referendum result stitched up with Brussels so that we could not lose, so there must have been outside influence which led to Leave winning.

[Gill W]

From what little I have read about this nobody has actually stated what the Russians have done that may have affected anything.

The issue is not what they may or may not have done, it’s that the government has looked the other way and not investigated

Gill, I watched the BBC news tonight and heard no hard facts that anyone did anything to influence any election, not even Laura Kuensberg could find a smoking gun amongst the reports findings. Essentially the report states that we could find no hard evidence that Russian covert tacticsa were used, but despite this the government did nothing to try and find out if in fact this negative evidence was true.
Dominic Grieve may no longer be in charge of the committee but his hand is all over the report, which in the end found nothing so why would the govt fare any better in finding the non existent evidence?

PS What they really meant was we the establishment had the referendum result stitched up with Brussels so that we could not lose, so there must have been outside influence which led to Leave winning.

There are no hard facts because the government has looked the other way and has not investigated to find out what the facts are.

The purpose of ISC report was not to find out the facts, but to report on what the government has done to find out the facts - and we now know that nothing has been done.

[Manoverboard]

There are no hard facts because the government has looked the other way and has not investigated to find out what the facts are ... .

On the basis that you cannot possibly have any inside information that should surely read ...

" As far as I am aware " .... There are no hard facts because the government has looked the other way and has not investigated to find out what the facts are ... .