#THREAD on grotesque dinosaur Christopher Chope, who blocked a bill to make up-skirting a criminal offence, & another making it easier to protect girls from FGM, & who has been nominated to join the privileges committee & probe into #Partygate.
Chope was chairman of the Thatcherite Conservative Way Forward group, recently relaunched by climate-skeptic Steve Baker.
During the 2009 expenses scandal, it emerged that Chope claimed £136,992 in parliamentary expenses in 2007–8. This included claiming £881 to repair a sofa.
In October 2011, Chope questioned the time allotted to a debate on MPs' pensions. The debate came before a debate into the Hillsborough disaster inquiry & it was reported that Chope had threatened to delay the inquiry, leading to widespread criticism.
Posh twat Chope was criticised following remarks made in 2013, when he referred to House of Commons dining room staff as "servants": "The service was absolutely fantastic because there was three-to-one service: three servants for each person sitting down." news.sky.com/story/tory-mp-…
Chope was appointed a Knight Bachelor in the 2018 New Year Honours for political & public service.
On 10 February 2009, free-marketeer Chope co-sponsored an Employment Opportunities Bill to the House of Commons, which would have enabled workers to opt out of the minimum wage.😬
Entirely predictably, anti-reality anti-Net Zero dinosaur Chope is highly sceptical of climate change, & attended a meeting of climate change sceptics in the Palace of Westminster in October 2010, along with fellow imbecilic dinosaur, John Redwood.
Again entirely predictably, Chope helped to lead backbench support for the motion calling for a referendum to leave the EU, & was also heavily involved in the use of private member's bills to achieve this aim.
Obviously, reactionary living fossil Chope voted against the legislation for same-sex marriage in 2013, & in 2014 Chope voted against requiring all companies with more than 250 employees to declare the gap in pay between the average male and average female salaries.
In June 2013, grotesque antiquated regressive bigot Chope was one of four MPs who camped outside Parliament in a move to facilitate parliamentary debate on an 'Alternative Queen's Speech' – an attempt to show what a future (far-right #neofascist) Conservative Govt might deliver.
In July 2017, Chope & Peter Bone tabled 73 bills between them, including privatise the @BBC & @Channel4, of which 47 were placed by Chope. To be at the front of the queue to table the bills, the pair had camped in the Palace of Westminster for three days. bournemouthecho.co.uk/news/15441893.…
In March 2019, Chope was one of 21 MPs who voted against LGBT inclusive sex & relationship education in English schools, preferring instead to disregard the needs of non-straight children. All but two of the antiquated out-of-touch MPs were Tories or DUP.
Chope is a member of a group of backbench Tory cranks who regularly object to private members bills.
This conduct, along with his involvement in cutting the public housing budget during his time in government, has earned Chope the nickname "Chopper".
Chope does not tend to object to bills aligning with his own political views. "In case anyone is tempted to believe he has a principled objection to private members' bills, please note that once again he did not object to those put forward by his friends." huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/tory-mp-…
In 2013, Chope objected to the second reading of the Alan Turing (Statutory Pardon) Bill in the House of Commons, so the government decided to act under the royal prerogative of mercy. On 24 December 2013, Queen Elizabeth II granted Turing a free pardon.
In November 2014, untrainable dumb animal Chope blocked a bill that would have banned the use of wild animals in circus performances, on the pathetically flimsy basis that a bill on EU membership should have been called before the bill.
Also in 2014, Chope, rumoured to be a landlord, with Philip Davies, filibustered a bill intended to make revenge evictions an offence, claiming the bill would have weakened landlords' ability to recover possessions, deterring them from letting properties. bournemouthecho.co.uk/news/11635068.…
In October 2015, Chope, Davies and Conservative MP David Nuttall filibustered & blocked a proposed law to introduce free hospital parking for carers by speaking in the House of Commons for 93 minutes in order to use up the time allocated for the debate.
This thread started with Chope blocking the passage of a private member's bill that would have made up-skirting a specific offence - which drew immediate criticism from Labour, other, & fellow Tory MPs, & the then prime minister, Theresa May, who expressed her disappointment.
Following his suspicious, unforgivable, misogynistic & pathetically infantile objection, the government ignored the twat & reaffirmed its commitment to introduce legislation to outlaw up-skirting. The bill passed subject to royal assent in January 2019.
In protest at his actions, staff at the House of Commons placed a bunting of women's underwear outside his office entrance. A similar bunting was also placed outside his constituency office.
Protestors also confronted Chope at his constituency surgery.
On the same day as the up-skirting bill, Chope & Davies forced a delay to the final debate on a bill which would have improved the oversight of the use of force in mental health units.
He also blocked a bill which would have given extra legal protection to police dogs & horses.
In July 2018, Chope blocked a motion calling for the House of Commons chamber to be used for a Women MPs of the World Conference in November, when MPs were not sitting. The conference was due to the mark the centenary of women's suffrage in the UK.
Alongside fellow swivel-eyed loon Desmond Swayne, Chope tabled an amendment to the motion which would require the conference to invite only parliamentarians & hold a debate while using the chamber. The government resubmitted the motion with the support of several departments.
In November 2018, Chope objected to a bill which would have amended the Children Act 1989 in order to increase the protective power of courts over girls at risk of female genital mutilation. Dickhead Chope said the bill was an act of "virtue signalling".
Lord Berkeley of Knighton, who had introduced the FGM bill to the House of Lords, called for Chope to be deselected. On 8 February 2019, Chope again blocked the bill. However on 15 March 2019 - despite this old git's best efforts - the bill received its Royal Assent & became law.
On 15 November 2021, it was reported Chope had caused fury among @Conservatives Parliamentary Party when he objected to a motion from the Select Committee on Standards that would have passed the report regarding the #LobbyingScandal around the rules breached by Owen Paterson.
The Tory Parliamentary Party was hoping the vote would draw a line underneath the episode and allow the government to move on from accusations of sleaze, but Chope's intervention simply allowed the criticism to continue.
One Govt minister expressed anonymously that "He has been for many year a Jurassic embarrassment – tonight he crossed a line. The man should retire & the executive are livid".
Christopher Chope is an anachronism: he belongs in a Victorian freakshow, not the privileges committee.
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There was outrage when in 2020, the Tory Govt conceded a new bill to amend the UK's Brexit deal would "break international law" in a "specific & limited way".
But what is international law? What is the ICC?
And what were Margaret Thatcher's views on international law?
First, what is 'international law'?
Broadly (it's complicated!) it refers to the body of legal rules, norms, and standards that apply between sovereign states and other entities that are legally recognized as international actors.
The term was coined by the English philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832). According to Bentham’s classic definition, international law is a collection of rules governing relations between states. This original definition omits individuals and international organizations.
"Improving the quality of life for people of this country is perhaps the most important duty of Government."
John Prescott has died.
In September 2000, John - then Deputy Prime Minister - gave a speech at the @UKLabour Party Conference, introducing Nelson Mandela.
Nelson Mandela died in December 2013. Writing a tribute in the Daily Mirror, John reflected on his death, writing: “In my office at home I have a picture that is my most treasured possession. It’s of me shaking Nelson Mandela’s hand on stage at the @UKLabour conference in 2000."
At the Rivonia Trial, between 1963 & 1964, Mandela gave a dramatic speech from the dock.
John wrote in 2013 “When I read that, I knew that I wanted to enter politics. He was my inspiration. So when he walked free in 1990, we felt as if one of our own comrades had been freed.”
🧵
Allison Pearson posted then deleted disinformation, falsely accused three people of being "Jew haters", lied about where the photo was taken & what they were doing, then lied about what the Police said to her - and then moaned about being a victim! FFS
The Telegraph's divisive shit-stirrer Pearson falsely claimed she was told by the police who came to her home it was over a “non-crime hate incident”. Her lie was then dutifully amplified by every Reform UK MP & billionaire-owned right-wing "news" media, painting her as a victim.
Essex Police said “At no stage... was she informed that the report being investigated was being treated as a non-crime hate incident. To suggest otherwise is wholly inaccurate and misleading.”
Pearson, Farage, Musk, Young, Habib, & many other shit-stirrers who shamelessly try to normalize hateful, divisive, provocative & inflammatory rhetoric, often refer to George Orwell's 1984, but Aldous Huxley's Brave New World is much closer to the dystopia we inhabit...
Harassment, malicious communications, incitement, & threatening violence are all crimes in the UK, & have been for a long time.
Print & broadcast media, & online social media are simply platforms on which we behave or misbehave: it's not about the medium, it's about the offence.
The UK is signed up to Article 10 of the #ECHR: everyone has the right to free speech, which may only be qualified in limited circumstances, including: national security; public safety; the protection of morals & of the reputation or rights of others.
"Enoch Powell was a hero of the young Nigel, but at this point he could do without any association with the politician who made the notorious Rivers of Blood speech... the accusation of racism follows Farage & his party around like a bad smell." - Allison Pearson
"Farage has tried for years to shrug off the charge that his parties are more than “the BNP in blazers”... although I don’t think Farage is a racist, it’s a problem that racists attach themselves to Reform." - Allison Pearson
“We’re investigating a report which was passed to us by another force. The report relates to a social media post which was subsequently removed. An investigation is now being carried out under section 17 of the Public Order Act.” - Essex police spokesman
Not a lot of people know that Oxbridge alumni Fiona Bruce, presenter of 'Fake or (paid a) Fortune?', and since January 2019, the @BBC's interrupting Chair of #bbcqt, was born in Singapore.
One of her first episodes as Chair was the one that made Laurence Fox a household name.
In my widely read & reported February 2023 Open Letter to the @BBC about @bbcquestiontime, one of my concerns was about Bruce’s chairing of #bbcqt which I said was "at best, unacceptably poor."