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Politics, politics, politics (so long and thanks for all the fish)

So let me try and follow the arguments here
- Russia interference was investigated (it wasn't)
- It would have been a political investigation (it would not)
- if there was something they would have investigated, implying there was nothing to investigate
- Russia always meddles

Hmm...this is getting a bit Trumpian. I'm out.
 
Rorschach said:
So let me try and follow the arguments here
- Russia interference was investigated (it wasn't)
- It would have been a political investigation (it would not)
- if there was something they would have investigated, implying there was nothing to investigate
- Russia always meddles

Hmm...this is getting a bit Trumpian. I'm out.
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No the argument from me is that high Level intelligence agencies and counter intelligence agencies will continually monitor such things.

That’s why places like GCHQ exists

Our security will be constantly monitoring potential enemies and vice versa. If you don’t believe that because of a statement in public that was probably politically driven rather than fact then I think you are being naive
 
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SpurMeUp said:
The intelligence service - a Ministry of Government - are not doing what the government asks? This is worse than we thought.
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Interesting choice of phrase - have you ever considered working for the Mirror?

Having initiative and investigating threats when they see them is not the same as "not doing what the government asks." I would expect all government departments to show initiative and to work without their every move having to be proscribed by the highest level of government. Unfortunately that appears to be too much to ask of many.
 
scaramanga said:
Interesting choice of phrase - have you ever considered working for the Mirror?

Having initiative and investigating threats when they see them is not the same as "not doing what the government asks." I would expect all government departments to show initiative and to work without their every move having to be proscribed by the highest level of government. Unfortunately that appears to be too much to ask of many.
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I believe it was your good self who compared MI5 to teachers and miners not doing what the government asked.

It should be clear that our government doesn't want too much attention on Russian involvement. Probably because it is a little too close to this regime - whether to Boris and donations from Oligarchs, Cummings who was working in Russia, or actors involved in Brexit. For example, Aaron Banks with his Russian spy wife, his meetings with the Russian Ambassador, and him spending more money than his companies have made on Brexit; making him the largest UK political doner ever. Where did the money come from? Leaked emails show Russia offered Banks gold mine share for peanuts. Why?

If the government didn't have a problem with investigating Russian involvement, they wouldn't have shelved this report for a year. Why else would you?
 
SpurMeUp said:
I believe it was your good self who compared MI5 to teachers and miners not doing what the government asked.

It should be clear that our government doesn't want too much attention on Russian involvement. Probably because it is a little too close to this regime - whether to Boris and donations from Oligarchs, Cummings who was working in Russia, or actors involved in Brexit. For example, Aaron Banks with his Russian spy wife, his meetings with the Russian Ambassador, and him spending more money than his companies have made on Brexit; making him the largest UK political doner ever. Where did the money come from? Leaked emails show Russia offered Banks gold mine share for peanuts. Why?

If the government didn't have a problem with investigating Russian involvement, they wouldn't have shelved this report for a year. Why else would you?
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Low impact, low priority would be my guess.
 
There is a huge difference between what Joe public are told is happening and what is actually happening with the intelligence services. They wouldn’t publicly inform and therefore Inform Russia that they are investigating them.
 
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scaramanga said:
So do teacher, miners, etc. Doesn't mean they do what they're told.
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Yes they do, they have mandatory frameworks within which they undertake their duties.
I'm going to put it out there that national security frameworks are somewhere more explicit and have greater scrutiny than Ofsted.
 
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monkeybarry said:
Yes they do, they have mandatory frameworks within which they undertake their duties.
I'm going to put it out there that national security frameworks are somewhere more explicit and have greater scrutiny than Ofsted.
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I would say there is more flexibility based on the nature of the role. If your following a man for a day you can’t report back at every point of their movements as you don’t know what they are going to do and you certainly wouldn’t escalate that information above your unit of command, that’s why there are layers in any organisation.

It’s an extreme example of course but the point is there will be a huge level of autonomy in any order and we will be monitoring Russia, Boris won’t be in charge of how and in some cases how far because there are experts to do that and the job is lineal, ongoing.

Facts are we might not as some on here interpret, open a specific investigation on Russia because we do so every day of the week.

It’s only or own egos to believe we need to know anymore than we know.
 
SpurMeUp said:
They also work under the government of the day, who tells them what to do.
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That's not actually quite true, MI5 are able to determine the areas they investigate. GCHQ and MI6 also can but are a little more controlled.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">That’s relevant to MI6 and GCHQ but even then isn’t the complete answer. Also, as members of the ISC have pointed out, MI5 is able to self task, could have moved this up the agenda</p>&mdash; Mark Urban (@MarkUrban01) <a href="
https://twitter.com/x/status/1285539223098077184
">July 21, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
 
Rorschach said:
Nope. I listened to the press conference.
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In which case I'll take from the BBC summary as it's both reasonably accurate and biased against the govt - so a good source for their defence.

Pravda said:
The Intelligence and Security Committee report claimed the government made no effort to investigate claims of Russian interference in the EU referendum and criticised intelligence agencies for not prioritising the issue
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So at no point did anyone stop the security services from investigating, they simply saw it as low priority. Not surprising, considering how small any effect would likely be, even if the Russians had successfully done whatever it is people seem to think they did.

The government are accused of not investigating, yet the intelligence agencies didn't see any threat so the govt would have had no reason to investigate.

From the report itself:
ISC said:
we saw that when looking into allegations that Russia sought to influence voters in the 2016 referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU. Studies have pointed to the preponderance of pro-Brexit or anti-EU stories on RT and Sputnik, and the use of ‘bots’ and ‘trolls’.

“The actual impact of any such attempts on the result itself – by which I mean did the disinformation change how people voted – would be difficult – if not impossible – to prove.
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One can understand the lack of urgency in taking action based on such comments.
 
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monkeybarry said:
Yes they do, they have mandatory frameworks within which they undertake their duties.
I'm going to put it out there that national security frameworks are somewhere more explicit and have greater scrutiny than Ofsted.
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Yet the government doesn't tell them where the threats are because they don't know where they are until the intelligence agencies find them.

In order for the govt to have them focus on Russian bots tweeting, the intelligence agencies would need to have determined that was a threat and warned the govt. Given the ISC's somewhat partisan accusations, it appears that they either didn't find anything or considered what they found to not be a significant threat.
 
SpurMeUp said:
Is there anything bad in the detail of this? A plastic tax used to raise some of the money to start paying it back, supporting and stimulating a continent. I don’t get what is so bad?

Similar with the recent Apple Ireland story. On first reading of the headline an EU court has put its oar in and stopped Ireland claiming tax from Apple. The reality is more or less the opposite: the EU commission is sick of Apple, Amazon etc paying no tax - it is ethically unjust and anticompetitive. So the EU Commission tried to use state aid laws to get Apple to pay Ireland back tax. It failed on appeal as the court which looked at the laws ruled it wasn’t ‘state aid’. The EU commission will keep plugging away and find a way to make things more just for the people rather than large digital companies. It has the weight of a continent which is required to take on Apple, Amazon etc.


Sitting on my porcelain throne using glory-glory.co.uk mobile app
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I'm not really a fan of moves towards fiscal union, taxes should be set by individual countries and I think shared debt is a slippery slope that will lead to more deals like this as well as a lot of bitterness between some countries.

On Ireland in some ways people there have lost out, Varadkar lost his majority recently even though people praised his handling of Brexit and coronavirus because he pandered too hard to some of the US companies which led to huge pressures on infrastructure and a massive spike in house prices driving locals away from Dublin etc.

They could always do what the UK and I believe France are doing and put in a digital services tax but I think it doesn't capture Apple.

Rorschach said:
I've read a few articles on this now and bar the fact that not enough was ringfenced for the EU 'green new deal' (I'll always say that mind) it seems like the weighting was done largely based on need - 70% determined by a "resilience" rating taking into account population and unemployment and 30% based on how much GDP dropped because of corona. This budget needed 400% buy-in so getting everyone to agree involved compromise across the board. 90 hours of horse-trading has produced this and the commentary I have seen has marked it as a largely positive outcome, with a few caveats. Is that abject? Well, I don't know. Why do you think so?
Using the budget as a political stick to using against the growing illiberalism in some EU countries was never a card they would or could play.
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Basing 70% of it on population and unemployment, some of the EU countries (mainly Italy and Spain) have been in long term decline with weak economies and high levels of unemployment for a long time before this virus came along.
 
P.D. said:
That's not actually quite true, MI5 are able to determine the areas they investigate. GCHQ and MI6 also can but are a little more controlled.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">That’s relevant to MI6 and GCHQ but even then isn’t the complete answer. Also, as members of the ISC have pointed out, MI5 is able to self task, could have moved this up the agenda</p>&mdash; Mark Urban (@MarkUrban01) <a href="
https://twitter.com/x/status/1285539223098077184
">July 21, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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What are you on about? Of course MI5 can "self task". They don't need permission to get on with background work. But the notion that MI5 can ignore the government or, as in this case, potentially work against the democratically elected government of the day is a nonsense. If it were to investigate something the government does not want it to, it would have gone rogue. Some tweet is not going to change that reality. A government that hides a report for a year is not going to want to pursue further detail on Russian involvement, involvement that is potentially linked to this government. If you can't see that I am surprised.
 
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