The news thread

[TDYER63]

13 minutes ago, AlfieMoon said:

The real trouble will start when it slowly starts to dawn on England that the UKGov simply don’t want to stop immigration.
 

It should have been plainly obvious pre-Brexit that they had no interest in doing so when there was evident huge growth in non-EU immigration - which was the bit that they already ‘had control’ over. This was all pre-boat/migrant uptick. 
 

What we’re seeing for the past 10years is the Tories tapping into a general racist undercurrent but they’ve REALLY fucking whipped it up - all in the interest of power. For that reason, I blame the Tories and UKIP waaaay more than the average meathead or middle class wanker in England. 
 

Facism is the end destination of all this current path. Arguably they’re already, but I expect it to get worse when folk realise the politicians don’t want to make anything better. 

I tend to feel terms like fascist /nazi are overused these days and because of that lose their potency  .

However this current government is definitely hurtling towards fascism. I identified 9 out 14 of these traits and I tried to be generous by eliminating any I was not convinced of. 
 

[scotlad]

40 minutes ago, Alibi said:

Yes, that whole thing is becoming ridiculous.  It's the latest "look, a squirrel" being heaily promoted by BBC Scotland at every opportunity.  Though Matheson doesn't come out of it looking good - I think a reasonable explanation of how he managed to run up such a bill is needed if he wants to maintain any credibility.

As usual, it's all way, way beyond what it should be. If it was a UKG minister the story would be in the headlines for about 5 minutes on a slow news day, but here we have people calling for votes of no confidence, parliamentary enquiries - all amplified through client media like it's Watergate, the Chilcot enquiry and the Profumo scandal all rolled into one. I think it says a lot that they're going after one of Humza's more capable ministers (not a very high bar, granted).

At the same time, though, I am curious to know how the feck he managed to rack up £11k in roaming charges! Is it maybe something as simple as something not being set properly on his device?

[StirlingEgg]

17 minutes ago, TDYER63 said:

I tend to feel terms like fascist /nazi are overused these days and because of that lose their potency  .

However this current government is definitely hurtling towards fascism. I identified 9 out 14 of these traits and I tried to be generous by eliminating any I was not convinced of. 
 

That is being generous 🙂 only the last one really is more difficult to present evidence of lately...unless we consider the Russia Report??

Are the right wing rags panicking hence their desperate headlines about SNP roaming charges? It's a bit shit but totally out of perspective for all the other stuff that's going on.

Not sure that entering a hospital can be counted as 'self defence'. Only at the weekend they made an incendiary fuss about Armistice Day which literally means ceasefire...then vote against one. 

[scotlad]

44 minutes ago, AlfieMoon said:

The real trouble will start when it slowly starts to dawn on England that the UKGov simply don’t want to stop immigration.
 

It should have been plainly obvious pre-Brexit that they had no interest in doing so when there was evident huge growth in non-EU immigration - which was the bit that they already ‘had control’ over. This was all pre-boat/migrant uptick. 
 

What we’re seeing for the past 10years is the Tories tapping into a general racist undercurrent but they’ve REALLY fucking whipped it up - all in the interest of power. For that reason, I blame the Tories and UKIP waaaay more than the average meathead or middle class wanker in England. 
 

Facism is the end destination of all this current path. Arguably they’re already, but I expect it to get worse when folk realise the politicians don’t want to make anything better. 

That's a good point. They appear to be using immigration as "carrot" for voters when really, as you say, the government has always had control over non-EU migration, even when we were still in the EU.

Most Tory MPs represent constituencies that aren't majorly impacted by immigration (the exceptions mainly being some of the very recent red/blue wall MPs) so unless it's their arses on the line I suspect it won't be something they care too deeply about at all.

[Orraloon]

24 minutes ago, StirlingEgg said:

That is being generous 🙂 only the last one really is more difficult to present evidence of lately...unless we consider the Russia Report??

 

And, there is also the fact that the PM couldn't even get elected by members of his own party, never mind the UK electorate. It was only a few select Tory MPs who were given the power to decide who our PM was. And now we have a Foreign Secretary who hasn't been elected by anybody. 

[StirlingEgg]

14 minutes ago, Orraloon said:

And, there is also the fact that the PM couldn't even get elected by members of his own party, never mind the UK electorate. It was only a few select Tory MPs who were given the power to decide who our PM was. And now we have a Foreign Secretary who hasn't been elected by anybody. 

He's already turned up unannounced in Ukraine and confirmed ongoing military support. How much does that cost? I thought we were skint. They probably checked a Tory focus group/data from Johnson's days and saw an uplift in support whenever he distracted by showing up there. Bloody performance politics just to stay in power. Then do heehaw except damage. 

[AlfieMoon]

1 hour ago, scotlad said:

As usual, it's all way, way beyond what it should be. If it was a UKG minister the story would be in the headlines for about 5 minutes on a slow news day, but here we have people calling for votes of no confidence, parliamentary enquiries - all amplified through client media like it's Watergate, the Chilcot enquiry and the Profumo scandal all rolled into one. I think it says a lot that they're going after one of Humza's more capable ministers (not a very high bar, granted).

At the same time, though, I am curious to know how the feck he managed to rack up £11k in roaming charges! Is it maybe something as simple as something not being set properly on his device?

Corporate mobile contracts and devices is something that I'm reasonably informed about due to work. 

It's been an eye opener seeing people making all sort of wild assertions and assumptions without having much clue of any of the details. It makes me realise just how much people's bias kicks in to judging these situations - and also how stupid politicians can be, both Matheson and the opposition in this case. 

To answer your question specifically: 

If the person acting in a contract admin for the Parliament doesn't add (or is not asked to add) a 'roaming' pack/bolt-on for a non-EU trip. the EE SIM he was using had a supposed £5.50 per Mb charge for data. That figure alone tells you that you can VERY quickly run up huge charges. The £5.50Mb charge was released last week by Tories leaking an old Parliament email communication. The EE bill was shown yesterday on Twitter, detailing approx. 4Gb of data usage. That's not a huge amount of data. Mobile providers are scam artists in regards to these mobile charges, but consumers and companies sign up to the T&C's and have to deal with the consequences. 

Other relevant points: 

- Warnings: He would have had no warning as charges accrued. iPads (similar to SIMs in laptops) can't receive SMS which is how mobile providers communicate. So, no roaming alert, or usage charge warnings like on your phone.  A lot of people don't understand this and are applying their consumer phone experience of roaming to accuse him of negligence in ignoring warnings. 

- SIM out of date:  He was apparently prompted (but didn't action) to change his SIM to a new Scottish Parliament Vodafone contract as the old EE one had expired. This fact doesn't seem contested. However, if ICT had wanted to force the issue, the could of course have suspended his EE SIM and provided the new one for changeover. I have seen no confirmation that would have made savings, so I think this is a bit of a red herring. I expect the new contract would have similar level of charges for scenarios where a roaming bolt-on is not used. 

- Process: There would have been a process (Matheson>Support Staff>Mobile Contract Admin (IT)) for managing his SIM. That should have been the chain to notify someone that he was roaming outside the EU, and requesting the SIM to be setup correctly. So, the blame is somewhere between him and his support staff there. 

- What was the data used for?: Tories are creating a pantomime demanding he hands in his device. This is all for show or they're just stupid. Any trackable data would be through central IT systems. Even if his browsing history isn't cleared on the device itself (unlikely from 6 months ago), it will only say what he browsed to and not what was accessed via apps. However, the bill breakdown yesterday showed a significant portion of the 4Gb data was racked up on 1 day (2nd Jan). If there was a significant amount of work attributed to that, I would expect that to be easily explained by him. The twitter theorists seem keen to speculate that he was watching the old firm game. 

- Why did he have a work device on holiday?: This one for me is super naive if you ask me, but I've seen so many people mention it. If folk really think that someone in that level of government, or a chief exec, etc. just go on holiday and don't have access to work, I think you're living in cloud cuckoo land. 

 

So, basically, Matheson comes out of it looking like a bit of an idiot and should 100% have handled it better to probably accept the charges up front, but some of the stuff getting kicked about is nonsense. 

 

 

[Orraloon]

It was his sons wot did it.

The wee fukers should be made to do a paper round until it's all paid off. 😂

[AlfieMoon]

11 minutes ago, Orraloon said:

It was his sons wot did it.

The wee fukers should be made to do a paper round until it's all paid off. 😂

All on Matheson now I’m afraid. 
Shouldnt be anyone near a government device. He’ll be gone for this. 

[aaid]

Some commentators have clearly never heard of tethering.  

[AlfieMoon]

8 minutes ago, aaid said:

Some commentators have clearly never heard of tethering.  

This is vague enough that I don’t know exactly what you mean. 

Are you suggesting the kids could have been tethering to his iPad? And does that somehow make it better? 
 

How would they get the hotspot password? 

[Orraloon]

30 minutes ago, AlfieMoon said:

All on Matheson now I’m afraid. 
Shouldnt be anyone near a government device. He’ll be gone for this. 

I reckon Mr Matheson was watching as well, but he just doesn't want to have to answer the most difficult question of all. 

"Aye, but which team were you supporting?" 😂

[Orraloon]

51 minutes ago, AlfieMoon said:

All on Matheson now I’m afraid. 
Shouldnt be anyone near a government device. He’ll be gone for this. 

And, his kids will grow up thinking that they got their auld man the sack. At least it's only part of his job he will get sacked from. He will still be on a healthy pay packet even if he isn't a minister. 

[aaid]

27 minutes ago, AlfieMoon said:

This is vague enough that I don’t know exactly what you mean. 

Are you suggesting the kids could have been tethering to his iPad? And does that somehow make it better? 
 

How would they get the hotspot password? 

I didn’t watch the statement and have only seen the report on the BBC.

However, what that said was that they’d used his iPad’s data.

That immediately made me think that the iPad had been set up as a hot spot and another device was tethering to it.

As far as I can see it’s entirely plausible that Mathieson didn’t know about it at the time and only found out on Thursday and that’s why he decided to pay the bill

You then get into the arguments about who set the hotspot up, who gave the password to the kids and when that happened.  Mathieson doesn’t appear to be particularly tech savvy but even assuming it was him it does point the finger at the parliament’s IT department both in terms of policy and also how nailed down devices are.   I used to work for an investment bank and something like this would never happen because everything was nailed down.  I think as we’ve seen in Westminster and also Holyrood, their IT policies are lax because they are at the driven by politicians who want lax standards.

I imagine that the deal that the parliament does with providers give a generous data allowance, possibly unlimited for a monthly fee - you wouldn’t want something serious to happen because a minister had exceeded his monthly allowance.   

I doubt that he’s the only one who lets his kids use the data.

[AlfieMoon]

9 minutes ago, aaid said:

I didn’t watch the statement and have only seen the report on the BBC.

However, what that said was that they’d used his iPad’s data.

That immediately made me think that the iPad had been set up as a hot spot and another device was tethering to it.

As far as I can see it’s entirely plausible that Mathieson didn’t know about it at the time and only found out on Thursday and that’s why he decided to pay the bill

You then get into the arguments about who set the hotspot up, who gave the password to the kids and when that happened.  Mathieson doesn’t appear to be particularly tech savvy but even assuming it was him it does point the finger at the parliament’s IT department both in terms of policy and also how nailed down devices are.   I used to work for an investment bank and something like this would never happen because everything was nailed down.  I think as we’ve seen in Westminster and also Holyrood, their IT policies are lax because they are at the driven by politicians who want lax standards.

I imagine that the deal that the parliament does with providers give a generous data allowance, possibly unlimited for a monthly fee - you wouldn’t want something serious to happen because a minister had exceeded his monthly allowance.   

I doubt that he’s the only one who lets his kids use the data.

Come on mate - this is about as clear cut and as uncontentious as it gets now that he’s effectively admitted full liability. 
 

I was perfectly happy to be open-minded about it as shown in my post a couple of hours ago. He deserves all he gets now. It would be refreshing to see you criticise someone in the SNP where it’s due. 

[Orraloon]

9 minutes ago, aaid said:

I didn’t watch the statement and have only seen the report on the BBC.

However, what that said was that they’d used his iPad’s data.

That immediately made me think that the iPad had been set up as a hot spot and another device was tethering to it.

As far as I can see it’s entirely plausible that Mathieson didn’t know about it at the time and only found out on Thursday and that’s why he decided to pay the bill

You then get into the arguments about who set the hotspot up, who gave the password to the kids and when that happened.  Mathieson doesn’t appear to be particularly tech savvy but even assuming it was him it does point the finger at the parliament’s IT department both in terms of policy and also how nailed down devices are.   I used to work for an investment bank and something like this would never happen because everything was nailed down.  I think as we’ve seen in Westminster and also Holyrood, their IT policies are lax because they are at the driven by politicians who want lax standards.

I imagine that the deal that the parliament does with providers give a generous data allowance, possibly unlimited for a monthly fee - you wouldn’t want something serious to happen because a minister had exceeded his monthly allowance.   

I doubt that he’s the only one who lets his kids use the data.

Aye, giving his kids access to the hotspot isn't the same as giving them access to the device. Unless of course he uses the same password for both, which wouldn't really surprise anybody.

The main thing that I think this crazy situation highlights (yet again) is how easy it is for these massive corporations to basically extort money out of innocent people with impunity. The main thing that Matheson, and many thousands of other folk, are guilty of is ignorance of how these techy things work. It just shouldn't be allowed that these companies can do this. They are charging folk an extortionate amount of money for a bill that the don't even know are running up. Governments should stop this happening. It shouldn't be down to individuals to take these money grabbing fukers on. They should just be told that if you are going to extort money out of UK citizens, whether they are at home or abroad, then we will revoke your license to operate in the UK. Nobody should be able to run up a bill of thousands of pounds without giving express permission. This "It's in the terms and conditions" excuse is just a load of bollocks.

[Alibi]

had he queried it at the time, or as soon as he found out, he could have paid off the debt and maybe even had it written off if the bad publicity resulting threatened to affect whatever company charged that much for data.  It's clearly a corporate scam.  Should be outlawed.

I think this is ignorance, not corruption of any sort.  If it was corruption, the Tories wouldn't dare raise the subject as they are mired in it.  He's a decent minister so sad if he loses his job over this.

[Kirk]

No mention of the shit going on in Edinburgh today? 4 or 5 dead bodies, one thrown out a van in the middle of the road, a house petrol bombed. Someone has obviously upset someone else

[Ally Bongo]

10 minutes ago, Kirk said:

No mention of the shit going on in Edinburgh today? 4 or 5 dead bodies, one thrown out a van in the middle of the road, a house petrol bombed. Someone has obviously upset someone else

Link ?

Only Edinburgh news is of the Stone of Destiny being targeted by eco warriors (Yoons) yesterday

[Kirk]

Got sent it all on WhatsApp and can't seem to find it to send it here. Will work on it later

[aaid]

2 hours ago, AlfieMoon said:

Come on mate - this is about as clear cut and as uncontentious as it gets now that he’s effectively admitted full liability. 
 

I was perfectly happy to be open-minded about it as shown in my post a couple of hours ago. He deserves all he gets now. It would be refreshing to see you criticise someone in the SNP where it’s due. 

I don’t think it’s due and I’ve criticised plenty but then those are people who others think are beyond reproach. 

He’s admitted he’s accountable for the bill, all I’m saying is a can quite understand how this has happened without his knowledge and that breach is nowhere near as serious as is being protracted by others.

[Hertsscot]

9 hours ago, AlfieMoon said:

Facism is the end destination of all this current path. Arguably they’re already, but I expect it to get worse when folk realise the politicians don’t want to make anything better. 

Voters in Scotland need to wake up to the probability that the next Tory Government headed by Patel, Braverman, Badenoch, Mordaunt is likely to be even more right wing than the present regime. Mordaunt's links to the military worry me. They all strike me as being fairly authoritarian unlike a libertarian like Johnson.

[vanderark14]

GQ man of the year is Kim Kardashian

11 of the 20 men of the year are woman

[StirlingEgg]

2 hours ago, Hertsscot said:

Voters in Scotland need to wake up to the probability that the next Tory Government headed by Patel, Braverman, Badenoch, Mordaunt is likely to be even more right wing than the present regime. Mordaunt's links to the military worry me. They all strike me as being fairly authoritarian unlike a libertarian like Johnson.

That's what seems so stark and alarming yet a realistic conclusion to draw but is just not on enough people's radar. The roaming charges story is a gift because it feeds into the "they're all the same" political view of wasting money, greed or ineptitude. When they can put a £ figure on it too it's another bonus point. The ramifications of the likes of a failed PM, now unelected but made a life peer and in a top cabinet position are far more serious yet not remotely a concern for folk mainly worrying about their winter bills. Fair enough I suppose but it's a real problem in terms of getting a message across about being better apart. 

[Orraloon]

2 minutes ago, StirlingEgg said:

That's what seems so stark and alarming yet a realistic conclusion to draw but is just not on enough people's radar. The roaming charges story is a gift because it feeds into the "they're all the same" political view of wasting money, greed or ineptitude. When they can put a £ figure on it too it's another bonus point. The ramifications of the likes of a failed PM, now unelected but made a life peer and in a top cabinet position are far more serious yet not remotely a concern for folk mainly worrying about their winter bills. Fair enough I suppose but it's a real problem in terms of getting a message across about being better apart. 

£11K because a Scottish minister doesn't know how to work his computer properly. Which he actually agrees to pay for himself.

£140 million for planes to Rwanda that never took of yet. Anybody volunteering to pay for that out of their own pocket? Cameron or Sunak could probably afford to do it, but they won't.