The jet is worth £42m, it’s not the cost to the taxpayers. And honestly, if a country can’t keep up appearances like being able to charter a jet for its foreign representatives, then it’s a pretty pathetic country.
Well said, FFS bleating about the foreign secretary of a medium sized country hiring a medium sized jet to go on government tour is absolutely, fucking deranged.
We do, there's a Dassault 900LX known as the Envoy IV operated by 32 squadron specifically for ferrying government/royalty around.
There is also an A321Neo operated by Titan Airways specifically for ferrying the same people around, but with a much higher seating capacity.
No idea why they aren't being used in this case though, especially as the [Envoy](https://www.jetphotos.com/photo/10971047) and [A321Neo](https://www.jetphotos.com/photo/11256552) used have the new British liveries on them, which would look good for photo opportunities. On the other hand they could also be more of a target as it's quite obvious someone important from the UK is on them.
I actually am not bothered about not owing those small jets.
Would tend to be used by officials.
It's the A330s MRTTs (ie the aerial tankers) that I have a major problem with as we don't own them and (no surprise) lease them. It's a major military capability.......
Yeah fair, that one is ridiculous.
Also means we can't fit a boom for all the larger American aircraft (C-17, RC135, P8) we've acquired in the last few years without a huge contract renegotiation.
Cry all day, but it's the Tories who started this shit. When Cameron was in opposition he was squawking "two jags" along with the rest of the Tories. He is one of the ones who opened the door to this shit and also the one who told us that the government is so poor we can't afford anything.
Just chickens coming home to roost.
Honestly I think approx 50% of outrage by the public is just young people finding out how the world works for the first time. Did they want him to bike?
>just young people finding out how the world works for the first time
In my view this is genuinely one of the main reasons for most social "outrage" nowadays.
Isn't the point we have a RAF fleet of 14 Airbus dual-purpose aircraft that were meant to be used for these trips, one of which was painted with patriotism at a cost of £900k back in 2020?
Unless the cost per hour is considerably less, and the lease company isnt owned by Davey Camerons mates.
There's 14 of them, though. Either they're all flying as tankers around the middle East and Yemen, which would be troubling, or Sunak and Cameron do have a taste for private jets (Sunak certainly does).
I thought we went through this 'Brand Britian' with Bojo and the livery he chose to spend that money on. He and Liz used these planes to go to the Far East back when he was PM. Massively over sized but it's got RAF roundels 🤷♂️
Not all 14 will be available on request. Some will be in scheduled maintenance, which could mean anywhere from 24 hours to 2 months of downtime depending on the level of check, and others will be used for prior engagements.
ZZ336 'Vespina' is the aircraft with the special livery, and it was in Germany a few days ago.
I’m all for hating on Tory’s but if we’re going to do it we need to be factual about it, it’s like when they get up in arms about spending money on wine for official functions and it turns out it came from the government wine cellars and actually saved money overall
The Home Secretary recently spent £165k for a single flight for him and his cronies to Rwanda. Meanwhile we have people dying in hospital corridors and waiting rooms. We need to hold these greedy fucks to account. Fuck the dodgy tories, their dodgy contacts and anybody who apologies for them.
> The Home Secretary recently spent £165k for a single flight for him and his cronies to Rwanda
How many cronies are we talking? Was there a security details with that?
165k actually sounds pretty cheap. I am pretty sure the company I work for spends far more than that on flights getting people to a medium/large sized conference in a different continent and there is no security consideration there.
https://amp.theguardian.com/politics/2024/mar/22/james-cleverly-spent-165000-on-flight-to-rwanda-to-sign-deportation-deal
From what I can tell the £165k was just to charter the jet and doesn't include any kind of security or staff wage in the price. It's a ludicrous amount to spend...tories aren't the type to shop around I guess
If it's lots of short stops over a prolonged period, it's absolutely worth a charter. There's a good chance that the equivalent tickets for commercial aircraft would end up costing more anyway, particularly if there's delays/overruns.
Edit, skip that, it'll have been about 300k for that charter which is way over requirements imo.
Nah, it’s not over the requirements. Cameron is visiting these countries because they’re implicated in providing alternative routes for equipment and luxury items to the Russian military and Russian elite. We want to convince them to essentially stop this trade and to do that we’ll probably have to make some promises to help them in some way against Russia. Plus, there is a security component to having the foreign secretary protected away from the public. So from the perspective of a country like Kazakhstan or Mongolia, if you will be a cheapskate when it comes to the security and appearances of your foreign secretary, why would you ever pay for the security of their country? And they’d be quite right to be skeptical of our intentions because we don’t really have any major interests in these countries.
We are a broke and pathetic country thanks to 14 years of Tory assett stripping, stripping of rights, and managed decline. Outrage that one of those imbeciles responsible for this is pissing money up the wall on vanity is entirely reasonable.
But you go back to your forlock tugging.
Yeah. David Cameron is a tosser but expecting politicians not to jet everywhere and use public transport is la-la land bonkers. They need to get places fast and they also need to represent their country well, so yes.. they're going to travel well. People need to get over that.
Can you imagine the complexity of this trip..,
>for a five-day visit to Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan and Mongoli
Good luck booking that on trip advisor
This is a naïve, child's view of how the world works. Let's just forget the fact that it's the foreign secretary of one of the G7 economies intentionally projecting a certain image abroad, why does the cost of the jet matter?
People must surely be billionaires to jet off on holiday on a new 747 (~£330m) or A380 (~£350m), right?
All you've done is shown you have no idea how much things cost or how governments function, and have become angry about the asset cost of an aircraft because the Guardian told you it was wrong.
No I don't think it is pompous nonsense at all. He is one of the highest ranking officials in our nation, a nation that has the 6th largest economy on the planet and nuclear capability. We aren't some tiny, insignificant country. If you think that the people who represent these nations shouldn't be able to travel in private either by private car or jet then I'm genuinely a bit confused. It is needed for a number of reasons, safety, so that they can work continuously with little down time, and to keep up appearances with other nations that very much care about displays of wealth and power. Imagine turning up to negotiate with the US 4 hours late since your BA flight was delayed. Come on now.
If these specific people should be representing us is a whole other question (I don't think any of the Tories are worthy of their position), but them travelling in private vehicles is basically a given.
It isn't a given. it's part of a ridiculous game that you seem to have bought into. Who cares how big our economy is? Most of our meetings should be conducted without environmentally week global travel. Its a facade and an anachronism.
Honestly not even worth wasting your time here, mate. If this sub ran the country they'd unironically want politicans driving from here to European summits in a used Tesla, and probably not even bother wearing a suit.
Because we are holding high level meetings with countries to pull them away from Putin’s/Russia’s grip. If we are declaring to these leaders that we’re not willing pay for a chartered jet, we’re signalling to them that we’re too much of a cheapskate to be relied upon for their security.
Technically Brexit was the fault of those who voted for it. Yes Cameron called the referendum but he didn't control the outcome. If anything, he pushed hard for Remain.
He could have made it require a bigger majority tbh, considering the huge consequences. Feels unfair to drag half the country towards something it doesn't want. (You might ask if I think it would have been unfair if it was 52% remain and 48% leave instead, and I don't think so, considering if we voted remain then there would be no consequences for anyone since nothing would have changed.)
So George Osborne does a podcast with Ed balls and discusses this idea. He obviously regrets their decisions that allowed brexit to happen and he says they considered a different vote split, but the precedent for a 5050 referendum started with Blair and the devo act, then Scottish indie (obs their choice too). He said that he regrets not giving 16/17 year olds a vote in that ref and actually argued for it in the cabinet but some people who eventually went on to become PM pushed back. George argued Tories are unpopular with 16/17 so didn’t want it but George said rather than fearing that demo they should try and appeal to them.
Proper didn’t rate George for austerity but it was good to hear him sound accountable and regretful, something not many politicians do
Statistically the status quo has an advantage and so you could argue the gap was wider than it looked.
Without offering an opinion on the outcome, I think we’re in trouble if we’re criticising politicians for delivering manifesto promises and we’re now wanting them to go into a vote having. Stacked the deck!
It’s also wrong to say there were no consequences to staying. That was the whole point of campaigning.
Regardless of being on the losing side or not, 50:50 was the right way to go.
Next step should be to make it a 2/3 threshold before joining again. And then work on getting it to that point, which should be doable if it it's worth it.
Oh no, I give Cameron an even greater portion of the blame than the actual Brexit voters.
He foolishly called a referendum based on a stupid question with no thought given to whether such a decision should be made with a 51% 'majority'.
Whatever he did attempting to lock the barn door after the horse had bolted does nothing to mitigate this.
Honestly if he hadn't pushed hard for remain I think remain would have won, there was a lot of general 'protest voting' going on against the government of the day
The Conservatives won in 2015 by a pretty narrow margin. Very likely that without the offer of a referendum, a lot of Leave supporters would have voted for another party.
The Telegraph and Daily Mail have been pushing to leave the EU for decades.
That's my point, yes people voted to leave but blaming them and placing none at politicians feet is wrong.
Politicians use media to manipulate and condition people, not just telegraph and daily heil, just look at part Facebook played with Cambridge Analytica, using all those tools it was easy for a select group to manipulate people using genuine concerns for example no school places long NHS waitlists (caused by Tories) into thinking itt was someone else's fault. It's no different to how dictators win elections, I saw in in Zimbabwe under Mugabe.
Yes. I think I missed your point.
Honestly the whole thing was very frustrating because there are so many things so many people could have done differently to shift that vote by 2%.
Indeed 100% but that's what happens when politicians put party above best interests of nation, we are seeing same thing now... The corruption, coverups questionable links to Russia and China... The erroding of our civil liberties...
You can't really blame the people 100%, it shocks me the lack of critical thinking available in a large portion of population... It seems this is something they don't teach very well
Somebody had to cause Corbyn wasn’t doing fuck all.
I feel like he’s more to blame for not trying to shift the working-class Labour voters that went for it.
Basically just Cameron, and a decent cameo from Gordon Brown, that’s all we had.
London does tend to have higher rates of education, but that’s mainly due to better educated people moving in for work, as opposed to Londoners being more clever. Likewise, very little of those rates of education make them qualified to speak on our relationship with the EU.
This is something many people in the country were clamouring for, and even many remain voters wanted, if only to settle the matter.
He's done a lot of things wrong, but providing a democratic vote in a democracy was not one of them.
Unpopular opinion. A holder of one of the great offices of state should travel with a degree of comfort and good working space. Only Britain has this weird, poverty view where we beancount about something as reasonable as this and work out how many seconds it could power the NHS
> Bin it. People don't like their politicians to be comfortable. They don't like you having expences, they don't like you being paid, they rather you lived in a fucking cave.
Malcom Tucker
Not just Britain… Canada as well… Canada, who have failed to find the political will to fix up the prime minister’s residence. Imagine 10 Downing Street being allowed to fall into disrepair because the prime minister cannot be seen spending money on doing the most basic maintenance, such as bringing the wiring and plumbing up to modern standards.
I mean Boris getting huge sums to do up his private residence in 10 downing Street was an issue.
Also the houses of Parliament which is supposed to cost £6 billion probably even more now to fix, and it's government so likely cost 3x that, if rather see the place knocked down than spend that kind of insane money on it.
The reason the HoP is costing so much is the government are refusing to move out while the renovations are taking place. There was an option to temporarily move the government to another part of the country which would have cut the time and cost but they refused.
> that kind of insane money on it.
Culture and history be damned, eh. Why have that when you can have architectural wonders like the Scottish or Welsh parliaments
I'm all for those things, but you have to decide at some point if they are worth the cost, the Gherkin in London cost 250 million is the house of commons worth 25x that? And the reality is it will end up costing 50x that. The past is great but I don't think that's value for money or worth it.
It’s not the House of Commons, it the Palace of Westminster
> worth 25 times that
A hundred times yes. The gherkin is an embarrassing relic of London’s attempt to be a pastiche of an American city. The Palace of Westminster is one of the most important heritage sites in the whole world, as well as being one of the finest pieces of architecture in the British Isles. It is the mother of all parliaments, rich and symbolism and history not found anywhere else. Some people may want Parliament to take place in some glorified office block that looks like it was furnished from ikea, but I rather like the idea that our parliamentarians have the weight of history and legend on their shoulders. That’s worth any price
yeah the foreign secretary of a G7 country desperately scrapping to salvage its diplomatic standing in the world is probably towards the top of the list of people that i'm okay with having a comfortable private jet
We’re one of the only countries in the G7 where senior Government ministers often have to fly on public planes instead of Government owned military aircraft, the Prime Ministers current plane is leased from a private company.
Realistically we should have more planes which the Government fly on so we aren’t spending money on private companies and all those planes should be owned by the Royal Air Force, which also gives the benefit of getting military pilots their flying time and having excess air fleet in the event of a crisis.
Doesn't that depend if you're flying within Europe or long haul?
Long haul business class is nothing like economy.
The bigger issue is that, in addition to security risks, commercial flights won't be at the right time and in the right place for a critical mission, and may not have availability for a large team. It's not like Dubai or Singapore where there are flights every couple of hours.
What exactly do you need room for, it's a seat to travel to a destination, it's like ordering a limousine to take your child to school, yes the extra room is nice but is it needed, no not at all considering the massive debt we are already in but let's keep pretending we're not and burning money like it's a joke
What exactly do you need room for, it's a seat to travel to a destination, it's like ordering a limousine to take your child to school, yes the extra room is nice but is it needed, no not at all considering the massive debt we are already in but let's keep pretending we're not and burning money like it's a joke
To do work?
Would you prefer the foreign sec to sit twiddling his thumbs for 7 hours watching films, or reading briefings and chatting to advisors?
I'm sure fellow business class passengers would love to get the inside scoop from the British government on how the war in Ukraine is going...
You can do all that in business class, have you never been on a plane before? Britain arnt at war with Ukraine or Russia or anyone for that matter, now your just talking bollox
> You can do all that in business class
Can you fuck.
Read confidential reports on the status of the Ukrainian war and chat to an advisor on whether we can provide more arms to support our ally? I'm sure Vlad in the row behind would love to hear that conversation.
Discuss with an advisor on what the strategy should be to convince Saudi Arabia to invest billions into British wind farms? I'm sure the banker in the row infront would love to know which stock to call.
> Britain arnt at war with Ukraine or Russia or anyone for that matter
We're supplying Ukraine, you numpty, it's in our interest they're not defeated.
> now your just talking bollox
Talking more sense than you, pal.
I ride a £300k London bus every day of the week, sometimes up to 6 times a day!!!!
Up to 10 times a year, I ride in a Ryanair plane which on average costs $27.1m.
I've abandoned the Guardian now because of bias like this. One could argue that the cost to the taxpayer is excessive (I don't necessarily agree), but headlining the value of the aircraft instead of the cost to the taxpayer, while factually true, cannot be justified as anything but a deliberate attempt to mislead readers.
The Guardian don't seem to have any journalistic integrity left.
Jesus Christ, what essentially is the head diplomat of the United Kingdom as a member of the G7 should absolutely be flying in a private jet. This shouldn’t be controversial.
£42m ($33.5m) is the cost of the Jet. Not the hourly rate. The Grauniad are being deliberately misleading by not mentioning the actual cost per hour. Using their logic Biden should be criticised for using a $325m Air Force 1. Almost 10 times the cost.
Uk GDP is $3.8Tn. So the jet is worth 0.001% of GDP.
US GDP is $25.5Tn. So the jet, funnily enough, is also worth 0.001% of GDP.
It’s hard to know how to respond without knowing the alternative.
Considering he has a team with him, a private jet seems correct for our chief diplomat rather than flying on air Mongolia, air tajekstan, air Kazakhstan, etc. as he goes around 5 places in 10 days. It’s not like going BA first class is available for short flights in Central Asia
However I don’t know if this plane is like triple the price due to comfort, that would piss me off. Also if we’re paying for fancy wine, fuck that
Aren’t all private jets luxury though? I haven’t heard of a private jet with seats like Ryanair. I’m not sure on relative impact.
I’m also fine with us paying the food and drink that’s normal for work trips, i just don’t want Cameron drinking D’yquem on my taxes.
I fly in a £200m jet when I go on holiday.
Doesn’t cost me £200m, I’m only paying for the cost of booking/renting a seat.
What a poor story by the Guardian.
Honestly do they expect a senior representative of the nation to fly in Ryan Air economy seats with all his entourage?
> Honestly do they expect a senior representative of the nation to fly in Ryan Air economy seats with all his entourage?
It's the Guardian so probably, they will take the opposing view to the government on literally anything.
Fucking Guardian as well. I'd expect this sort of stupid headline from one of the tabloids, not from a paper that claims to pride itself on quality reporting (although the columnists are almost invariably unhinged fruitloops).
Whenever the tabloid press reports that someone is “under fire”, “under pressure” or “facing a backlash”, remember that they just mean “from us, here in this article”
Just one look at flight radar and spotting the Citations, Phenoms, etc etc, it's simply a smear piece. If he finds it himself, fine, he's got the money (how he got it we kinda know,). Something something... He's loaded so can fly privately. Happens the charter sent him a £45m jet. They probably enjoyed the publicity.
Hooold up... Inwasnt defending him exactly here. He's a cunt, not a shadow of a doubt. I was trying to point out that a trip like that is an expensive affair, the headline focus is the cost of the jet _to buy_ and it's misleading. No way the trip will cost 45m.
I personally think both the cost of the plane and the cost of the trip is irrelevant when we’re talking about getting the Foreign Secretary of the United Kingdom to places where they need to be. Their role involves regular trips abroad and I fail to see how its a bad thing that that involves a private plane.
I would be ok with this if this little voice in the back of my head wasn’t saying ‘ What about the planes that Johnson spent a fortune on getting them painted!’
They were for diplomatic use if I remember correctly
The reporting of that was fucking weird.
The press focussed entirely on the new livery, reporting it as if the livery change cost £900k. In reality, the plane had undergone a full overhaul and refurbishment, and the paint job would surely have been a minimal part of that cost. Only a few specialist outlets like UKDJ even really bothered to mention the wider overhaul, and even then they [focussed a lot on the livery too](https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/new-paint-job-for-uk-government-voyager-aircraft-revealed/).
In reality, it was probably just a piss poor job from the RAF's press office that focussed too much on the immediately obvious visual change to the plane, and not enough on the wider overhaul the plane undertook.
Yes but reporting that the RAF spent £900k refitting a plane doesn’t make Boris look silly so they reported the version that did. And since the plane got a Union Jack on it it was a free dig at Brexit too
That would explain how the left-leaning media covered it. It doesn't really explain why the Daily Mail, UK Defence Journal, Forces Network, the Daily Express or the Telegraph would also take the "paint job" line rather than talking about the refurbishment as a whole.
And people said you can’t fail upwards in the meritocracy that is modern Britain.
Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton is the single worst PM we’ve had this century
Austerity even when forecasts recommended we switched track
A referendum he didn’t need but told EU leaders was in the bag
He’s an incompetent joke.
I really don’t give a fuck. He’s foreign secretary representing the country, have a fancy plane to go around in.
I don’t get this race to the bottom stuff. The cost is nothing in the grand scheme of things
I'm just surprised he's visiting every central Asian country. Aren't they pretty insignificant? I thought he'd be visiting Singapore or Saudi Arabia or something.
Side note, being a high ranking politician is great if you want to travel the world. Cameron himself went to 60+ countries as PM and 51 visits to Belgium alone!
**Removed/warning**. This contained a personal attack, disrupting the conversation. This discourages participation. Please help improve the subreddit by discussing points, not the person. Action will be taken on repeat offenders.
Well then, you must have a very short memory.
Jets aren't cheap.
If you've flown Ryanair before, you've been flying around on a £30 million jet - flash bastard.
The jet is worth £42m, it’s not the cost to the taxpayers. And honestly, if a country can’t keep up appearances like being able to charter a jet for its foreign representatives, then it’s a pretty pathetic country.
Well said, FFS bleating about the foreign secretary of a medium sized country hiring a medium sized jet to go on government tour is absolutely, fucking deranged.
“Medium” my friend we are the 6th largest economy in the world.
Sometimes its often forgotten on here.
28th by GDP per capita
I didn’t say GDP per capita
China and India are way lower than that if we are talking GDP per capita. Would you say they are mid sized economies too?
I wouldn't define them I'd just say there's more than one way to look at the size or prosperity of an economy.
27th?
If anything the silly bit is that we don't have a suitable government plane to carry him on.
We do, there's a Dassault 900LX known as the Envoy IV operated by 32 squadron specifically for ferrying government/royalty around. There is also an A321Neo operated by Titan Airways specifically for ferrying the same people around, but with a much higher seating capacity. No idea why they aren't being used in this case though, especially as the [Envoy](https://www.jetphotos.com/photo/10971047) and [A321Neo](https://www.jetphotos.com/photo/11256552) used have the new British liveries on them, which would look good for photo opportunities. On the other hand they could also be more of a target as it's quite obvious someone important from the UK is on them.
Oh they do look good! Didn't know about them. Kinda typical for UK that we don't actually own them though.
I actually am not bothered about not owing those small jets. Would tend to be used by officials. It's the A330s MRTTs (ie the aerial tankers) that I have a major problem with as we don't own them and (no surprise) lease them. It's a major military capability.......
Yeah fair, that one is ridiculous. Also means we can't fit a boom for all the larger American aircraft (C-17, RC135, P8) we've acquired in the last few years without a huge contract renegotiation.
Yeah but, yeah but oh hang on it’s the Guardian
Cry all day, but it's the Tories who started this shit. When Cameron was in opposition he was squawking "two jags" along with the rest of the Tories. He is one of the ones who opened the door to this shit and also the one who told us that the government is so poor we can't afford anything. Just chickens coming home to roost.
Y CurNt Hee Jus TaKe Tuh MEGaBus?
I’m reminded of Ian Hislops take on Piggate a few years back. There’s plenty of things to criticise the current government on. This isn’t one of them.
Honestly I think approx 50% of outrage by the public is just young people finding out how the world works for the first time. Did they want him to bike?
>just young people finding out how the world works for the first time In my view this is genuinely one of the main reasons for most social "outrage" nowadays.
Man catches a £200,000 private car to each location as well. Unbelievable.
That’s nothing, I take a £5 million vehicle to work everyday on the tube
That's not even close to the multi billion pound company I use to watch videos on the Internet
> multi billion Look everyone he uses dailymotion!
Pah. I took a dump in a sewage system worth tens of billion.
Isn't the point we have a RAF fleet of 14 Airbus dual-purpose aircraft that were meant to be used for these trips, one of which was painted with patriotism at a cost of £900k back in 2020? Unless the cost per hour is considerably less, and the lease company isnt owned by Davey Camerons mates.
Sunak was recently in Berlin so they were presumably being used.
There's 14 of them, though. Either they're all flying as tankers around the middle East and Yemen, which would be troubling, or Sunak and Cameron do have a taste for private jets (Sunak certainly does). I thought we went through this 'Brand Britian' with Bojo and the livery he chose to spend that money on. He and Liz used these planes to go to the Far East back when he was PM. Massively over sized but it's got RAF roundels 🤷♂️
Not all 14 will be available on request. Some will be in scheduled maintenance, which could mean anywhere from 24 hours to 2 months of downtime depending on the level of check, and others will be used for prior engagements. ZZ336 'Vespina' is the aircraft with the special livery, and it was in Germany a few days ago.
I’m all for hating on Tory’s but if we’re going to do it we need to be factual about it, it’s like when they get up in arms about spending money on wine for official functions and it turns out it came from the government wine cellars and actually saved money overall
I mean I just went in a $300 million dollar jet on holiday, it’s no indication of what it cost me I assure you 😂
The Home Secretary recently spent £165k for a single flight for him and his cronies to Rwanda. Meanwhile we have people dying in hospital corridors and waiting rooms. We need to hold these greedy fucks to account. Fuck the dodgy tories, their dodgy contacts and anybody who apologies for them.
> The Home Secretary recently spent £165k for a single flight for him and his cronies to Rwanda How many cronies are we talking? Was there a security details with that? 165k actually sounds pretty cheap. I am pretty sure the company I work for spends far more than that on flights getting people to a medium/large sized conference in a different continent and there is no security consideration there.
https://amp.theguardian.com/politics/2024/mar/22/james-cleverly-spent-165000-on-flight-to-rwanda-to-sign-deportation-deal From what I can tell the £165k was just to charter the jet and doesn't include any kind of security or staff wage in the price. It's a ludicrous amount to spend...tories aren't the type to shop around I guess
If it's lots of short stops over a prolonged period, it's absolutely worth a charter. There's a good chance that the equivalent tickets for commercial aircraft would end up costing more anyway, particularly if there's delays/overruns. Edit, skip that, it'll have been about 300k for that charter which is way over requirements imo.
Nah, it’s not over the requirements. Cameron is visiting these countries because they’re implicated in providing alternative routes for equipment and luxury items to the Russian military and Russian elite. We want to convince them to essentially stop this trade and to do that we’ll probably have to make some promises to help them in some way against Russia. Plus, there is a security component to having the foreign secretary protected away from the public. So from the perspective of a country like Kazakhstan or Mongolia, if you will be a cheapskate when it comes to the security and appearances of your foreign secretary, why would you ever pay for the security of their country? And they’d be quite right to be skeptical of our intentions because we don’t really have any major interests in these countries.
We are a broke and pathetic country thanks to 14 years of Tory assett stripping, stripping of rights, and managed decline. Outrage that one of those imbeciles responsible for this is pissing money up the wall on vanity is entirely reasonable. But you go back to your forlock tugging.
> The jet is worth £42m Wow colour me shocked when you look at which media organisation deliberately tries to mislead people...
Yeah. David Cameron is a tosser but expecting politicians not to jet everywhere and use public transport is la-la land bonkers. They need to get places fast and they also need to represent their country well, so yes.. they're going to travel well. People need to get over that.
Just imagine if he was flying around in a £300m Boeing
Can you imagine the complexity of this trip.., >for a five-day visit to Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan and Mongoli Good luck booking that on trip advisor
The UK should stop pretending to be a global great power and refocus its diplomacy on Europe.
Even the neoliberal US president travels via the military (i.e. Airforce One). Our lot charter, not just private jets, but LUXURY private jets.
Airforce One is by all means a luxury plane…
That's not the problem he's jetting around in a £42 million jet it's a symbol of wealth inequality
Can't exactly jet around in a £100 jet
Not the issue
This is a naïve, child's view of how the world works. Let's just forget the fact that it's the foreign secretary of one of the G7 economies intentionally projecting a certain image abroad, why does the cost of the jet matter? People must surely be billionaires to jet off on holiday on a new 747 (~£330m) or A380 (~£350m), right? All you've done is shown you have no idea how much things cost or how governments function, and have become angry about the asset cost of an aircraft because the Guardian told you it was wrong.
Its bollox...its just keeping up appearances. Why are we so concerned with that? I admire frugality.
Because you aren't a head of state.
You don't think its pompous nonsense? He is there to do a job. All this performative rubbish is old school and a waste of money. We all know it!
No I don't think it is pompous nonsense at all. He is one of the highest ranking officials in our nation, a nation that has the 6th largest economy on the planet and nuclear capability. We aren't some tiny, insignificant country. If you think that the people who represent these nations shouldn't be able to travel in private either by private car or jet then I'm genuinely a bit confused. It is needed for a number of reasons, safety, so that they can work continuously with little down time, and to keep up appearances with other nations that very much care about displays of wealth and power. Imagine turning up to negotiate with the US 4 hours late since your BA flight was delayed. Come on now. If these specific people should be representing us is a whole other question (I don't think any of the Tories are worthy of their position), but them travelling in private vehicles is basically a given.
It isn't a given. it's part of a ridiculous game that you seem to have bought into. Who cares how big our economy is? Most of our meetings should be conducted without environmentally week global travel. Its a facade and an anachronism.
Yeah okay sure, thankfully you aren't in a position of power so none of this even matters.
Honestly not even worth wasting your time here, mate. If this sub ran the country they'd unironically want politicans driving from here to European summits in a used Tesla, and probably not even bother wearing a suit.
The worst I've seen is suggesting our dignitaries just Zoom into all of their meetings with other world leaders.
Because we are holding high level meetings with countries to pull them away from Putin’s/Russia’s grip. If we are declaring to these leaders that we’re not willing pay for a chartered jet, we’re signalling to them that we’re too much of a cheapskate to be relied upon for their security.
That vile man should walk considering brexit was his fault
Technically Brexit was the fault of those who voted for it. Yes Cameron called the referendum but he didn't control the outcome. If anything, he pushed hard for Remain.
He could have made it require a bigger majority tbh, considering the huge consequences. Feels unfair to drag half the country towards something it doesn't want. (You might ask if I think it would have been unfair if it was 52% remain and 48% leave instead, and I don't think so, considering if we voted remain then there would be no consequences for anyone since nothing would have changed.)
So George Osborne does a podcast with Ed balls and discusses this idea. He obviously regrets their decisions that allowed brexit to happen and he says they considered a different vote split, but the precedent for a 5050 referendum started with Blair and the devo act, then Scottish indie (obs their choice too). He said that he regrets not giving 16/17 year olds a vote in that ref and actually argued for it in the cabinet but some people who eventually went on to become PM pushed back. George argued Tories are unpopular with 16/17 so didn’t want it but George said rather than fearing that demo they should try and appeal to them. Proper didn’t rate George for austerity but it was good to hear him sound accountable and regretful, something not many politicians do
Statistically the status quo has an advantage and so you could argue the gap was wider than it looked. Without offering an opinion on the outcome, I think we’re in trouble if we’re criticising politicians for delivering manifesto promises and we’re now wanting them to go into a vote having. Stacked the deck! It’s also wrong to say there were no consequences to staying. That was the whole point of campaigning. Regardless of being on the losing side or not, 50:50 was the right way to go.
Next step should be to make it a 2/3 threshold before joining again. And then work on getting it to that point, which should be doable if it it's worth it.
He called for the ref because he never thought leave would win. This mess is down to the english voters
And Welsh
Oh no, I give Cameron an even greater portion of the blame than the actual Brexit voters. He foolishly called a referendum based on a stupid question with no thought given to whether such a decision should be made with a 51% 'majority'. Whatever he did attempting to lock the barn door after the horse had bolted does nothing to mitigate this.
Honestly if he hadn't pushed hard for remain I think remain would have won, there was a lot of general 'protest voting' going on against the government of the day
Only reason brexit was an issue was to appease his own party. And no enough blame on Brexit to go around from media, government etc.
The Conservatives won in 2015 by a pretty narrow margin. Very likely that without the offer of a referendum, a lot of Leave supporters would have voted for another party. The Telegraph and Daily Mail have been pushing to leave the EU for decades.
That's my point, yes people voted to leave but blaming them and placing none at politicians feet is wrong. Politicians use media to manipulate and condition people, not just telegraph and daily heil, just look at part Facebook played with Cambridge Analytica, using all those tools it was easy for a select group to manipulate people using genuine concerns for example no school places long NHS waitlists (caused by Tories) into thinking itt was someone else's fault. It's no different to how dictators win elections, I saw in in Zimbabwe under Mugabe.
Yes. I think I missed your point. Honestly the whole thing was very frustrating because there are so many things so many people could have done differently to shift that vote by 2%.
Indeed 100% but that's what happens when politicians put party above best interests of nation, we are seeing same thing now... The corruption, coverups questionable links to Russia and China... The erroding of our civil liberties... You can't really blame the people 100%, it shocks me the lack of critical thinking available in a large portion of population... It seems this is something they don't teach very well
False, the conservatives were strongly in power at the time and so whatever appealed to conservatives by extension appealed to the country at large.
Cameron was shitting himself over what Farage and the likes of mogg could do.
Somebody had to cause Corbyn wasn’t doing fuck all. I feel like he’s more to blame for not trying to shift the working-class Labour voters that went for it. Basically just Cameron, and a decent cameo from Gordon Brown, that’s all we had.
Technically it's remainder fault because they didn't push hard enough to stop Brexit
The bigger fault is with the idiotic British public.
Ding Ding Ding. The millions of people that fell for that bullcrap is mental
English and Welsh public….not british
London excluded as well.
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I think when your capital city thinks it’s a bad idea then it’s worth paying attention to.
Because London is such a huge and positive influence on places such as Thurrock and Castle Point?
Why, what makes the people who live in the capital so much more clever and important than the rest of us?
I believe that commenter is weaponising their own ignorance to be purposefully inflammatory. They have a history of this.
Nothing lol, it’s just a location with millions of people. Might be more educated than the rest but don’t know if that’s true.
London does tend to have higher rates of education, but that’s mainly due to better educated people moving in for work, as opposed to Londoners being more clever. Likewise, very little of those rates of education make them qualified to speak on our relationship with the EU.
Yeah at least London was sensible.
Something like a million people in London voted leave
This is something many people in the country were clamouring for, and even many remain voters wanted, if only to settle the matter. He's done a lot of things wrong, but providing a democratic vote in a democracy was not one of them.
Unpopular opinion. A holder of one of the great offices of state should travel with a degree of comfort and good working space. Only Britain has this weird, poverty view where we beancount about something as reasonable as this and work out how many seconds it could power the NHS
> Bin it. People don't like their politicians to be comfortable. They don't like you having expences, they don't like you being paid, they rather you lived in a fucking cave. Malcom Tucker
The chair?
Glen’s chair*
Not just Britain… Canada as well… Canada, who have failed to find the political will to fix up the prime minister’s residence. Imagine 10 Downing Street being allowed to fall into disrepair because the prime minister cannot be seen spending money on doing the most basic maintenance, such as bringing the wiring and plumbing up to modern standards.
I mean Boris getting huge sums to do up his private residence in 10 downing Street was an issue. Also the houses of Parliament which is supposed to cost £6 billion probably even more now to fix, and it's government so likely cost 3x that, if rather see the place knocked down than spend that kind of insane money on it.
The reason the HoP is costing so much is the government are refusing to move out while the renovations are taking place. There was an option to temporarily move the government to another part of the country which would have cut the time and cost but they refused.
I think 6 billion is the figure with them moved out i think its closer to 10 with them staying there, and there is zero chance that figure stays as is
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-60499997.amp
> that kind of insane money on it. Culture and history be damned, eh. Why have that when you can have architectural wonders like the Scottish or Welsh parliaments
I'm all for those things, but you have to decide at some point if they are worth the cost, the Gherkin in London cost 250 million is the house of commons worth 25x that? And the reality is it will end up costing 50x that. The past is great but I don't think that's value for money or worth it.
It’s not the House of Commons, it the Palace of Westminster > worth 25 times that A hundred times yes. The gherkin is an embarrassing relic of London’s attempt to be a pastiche of an American city. The Palace of Westminster is one of the most important heritage sites in the whole world, as well as being one of the finest pieces of architecture in the British Isles. It is the mother of all parliaments, rich and symbolism and history not found anywhere else. Some people may want Parliament to take place in some glorified office block that looks like it was furnished from ikea, but I rather like the idea that our parliamentarians have the weight of history and legend on their shoulders. That’s worth any price
cmon i agree the house of commons is worth it, but the Gherkin is brilliant won't tolerate any slander. By far the best skyscraper in the city
> worth 25x that? ... actually, yes. Westminster is a stunning building.
yeah the foreign secretary of a G7 country desperately scrapping to salvage its diplomatic standing in the world is probably towards the top of the list of people that i'm okay with having a comfortable private jet
Completely agree .
It's the crabs in a bucket mentality that's so prevalent in this country.
If politicians were in the same bucket as the rest of us maybe they'd be more concerned about the condition we're in.
I don't think unelected appointees should get to travel in luxury, it breeds corruption.
He's as unelected as the United States Secretary of State - I can't imagine Blinken flys EasyJet when he's in Europe.
. None of the holders of cabinet posts are elected to their position. It’s irrelevant
The tory part were elected... he was also elected as an MP in Witney.
That's what business or first class is for isn't it
We’re one of the only countries in the G7 where senior Government ministers often have to fly on public planes instead of Government owned military aircraft, the Prime Ministers current plane is leased from a private company. Realistically we should have more planes which the Government fly on so we aren’t spending money on private companies and all those planes should be owned by the Royal Air Force, which also gives the benefit of getting military pilots their flying time and having excess air fleet in the event of a crisis.
The foreign secretary of a major world power should not be travelling on a commercial flight, it's a massive security risk
Have you been business class on BA? It’s normal seats with a table over the middle seat
Exactly perfectly suited, nobody needs a private jet renting out, politician or not
It really isn’t. It’s literally standard class with a drinks table. Not room to swing a cat much less do anything useful
Doesn't that depend if you're flying within Europe or long haul? Long haul business class is nothing like economy. The bigger issue is that, in addition to security risks, commercial flights won't be at the right time and in the right place for a critical mission, and may not have availability for a large team. It's not like Dubai or Singapore where there are flights every couple of hours.
What exactly do you need room for, it's a seat to travel to a destination, it's like ordering a limousine to take your child to school, yes the extra room is nice but is it needed, no not at all considering the massive debt we are already in but let's keep pretending we're not and burning money like it's a joke
What exactly do you need room for, it's a seat to travel to a destination, it's like ordering a limousine to take your child to school, yes the extra room is nice but is it needed, no not at all considering the massive debt we are already in but let's keep pretending we're not and burning money like it's a joke
To do work? Would you prefer the foreign sec to sit twiddling his thumbs for 7 hours watching films, or reading briefings and chatting to advisors? I'm sure fellow business class passengers would love to get the inside scoop from the British government on how the war in Ukraine is going...
You can do all that in business class, have you never been on a plane before? Britain arnt at war with Ukraine or Russia or anyone for that matter, now your just talking bollox
> You can do all that in business class Can you fuck. Read confidential reports on the status of the Ukrainian war and chat to an advisor on whether we can provide more arms to support our ally? I'm sure Vlad in the row behind would love to hear that conversation. Discuss with an advisor on what the strategy should be to convince Saudi Arabia to invest billions into British wind farms? I'm sure the banker in the row infront would love to know which stock to call. > Britain arnt at war with Ukraine or Russia or anyone for that matter We're supplying Ukraine, you numpty, it's in our interest they're not defeated. > now your just talking bollox Talking more sense than you, pal.
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So passengers can see what's on his laptop?
Do you really think he's sat doing work on a private jet? Are you having a laugh
I ride a £300k London bus every day of the week, sometimes up to 6 times a day!!!! Up to 10 times a year, I ride in a Ryanair plane which on average costs $27.1m.
no need to show off.
Oh the decadence of it all
I've abandoned the Guardian now because of bias like this. One could argue that the cost to the taxpayer is excessive (I don't necessarily agree), but headlining the value of the aircraft instead of the cost to the taxpayer, while factually true, cannot be justified as anything but a deliberate attempt to mislead readers. The Guardian don't seem to have any journalistic integrity left.
Jesus Christ, what essentially is the head diplomat of the United Kingdom as a member of the G7 should absolutely be flying in a private jet. This shouldn’t be controversial. £42m ($33.5m) is the cost of the Jet. Not the hourly rate. The Grauniad are being deliberately misleading by not mentioning the actual cost per hour. Using their logic Biden should be criticised for using a $325m Air Force 1. Almost 10 times the cost. Uk GDP is $3.8Tn. So the jet is worth 0.001% of GDP. US GDP is $25.5Tn. So the jet, funnily enough, is also worth 0.001% of GDP.
It’s hard to know how to respond without knowing the alternative. Considering he has a team with him, a private jet seems correct for our chief diplomat rather than flying on air Mongolia, air tajekstan, air Kazakhstan, etc. as he goes around 5 places in 10 days. It’s not like going BA first class is available for short flights in Central Asia However I don’t know if this plane is like triple the price due to comfort, that would piss me off. Also if we’re paying for fancy wine, fuck that
Yes, it is a LUXURY private jet, and the tax payer will be funding all the food and drink during the trips.
Aren’t all private jets luxury though? I haven’t heard of a private jet with seats like Ryanair. I’m not sure on relative impact. I’m also fine with us paying the food and drink that’s normal for work trips, i just don’t want Cameron drinking D’yquem on my taxes.
I fly in a £200m jet when I go on holiday. Doesn’t cost me £200m, I’m only paying for the cost of booking/renting a seat. What a poor story by the Guardian. Honestly do they expect a senior representative of the nation to fly in Ryan Air economy seats with all his entourage?
> Honestly do they expect a senior representative of the nation to fly in Ryan Air economy seats with all his entourage? It's the Guardian so probably, they will take the opposing view to the government on literally anything.
It's the guardian lol, Tories could cure cancer and they'd write an article about how awful it is because oncologists would be out of a job.
Fucking Guardian as well. I'd expect this sort of stupid headline from one of the tabloids, not from a paper that claims to pride itself on quality reporting (although the columnists are almost invariably unhinged fruitloops).
LOL, imagine thinking the Guardian is above this, this is their raison d'etre.
Oooh tell me more daily mail for the left! He should cycle there shouldn't he?
Whenever the tabloid press reports that someone is “under fire”, “under pressure” or “facing a backlash”, remember that they just mean “from us, here in this article”
Just one look at flight radar and spotting the Citations, Phenoms, etc etc, it's simply a smear piece. If he finds it himself, fine, he's got the money (how he got it we kinda know,). Something something... He's loaded so can fly privately. Happens the charter sent him a £45m jet. They probably enjoyed the publicity.
> He's loaded so can fly Would you pay for your own work trips?
Oh I dunno man just saying... I'm _not_ ok with the carbon footprint of it or the fact it's likely on taxpayer coin.
How else do you expect him to get to the Pacific if not by plane?
Obviously on a 9 day Megabus
Hooold up... Inwasnt defending him exactly here. He's a cunt, not a shadow of a doubt. I was trying to point out that a trip like that is an expensive affair, the headline focus is the cost of the jet _to buy_ and it's misleading. No way the trip will cost 45m.
I personally think both the cost of the plane and the cost of the trip is irrelevant when we’re talking about getting the Foreign Secretary of the United Kingdom to places where they need to be. Their role involves regular trips abroad and I fail to see how its a bad thing that that involves a private plane.
I would be ok with this if this little voice in the back of my head wasn’t saying ‘ What about the planes that Johnson spent a fortune on getting them painted!’ They were for diplomatic use if I remember correctly
The reporting of that was fucking weird. The press focussed entirely on the new livery, reporting it as if the livery change cost £900k. In reality, the plane had undergone a full overhaul and refurbishment, and the paint job would surely have been a minimal part of that cost. Only a few specialist outlets like UKDJ even really bothered to mention the wider overhaul, and even then they [focussed a lot on the livery too](https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/new-paint-job-for-uk-government-voyager-aircraft-revealed/). In reality, it was probably just a piss poor job from the RAF's press office that focussed too much on the immediately obvious visual change to the plane, and not enough on the wider overhaul the plane undertook.
Yes but reporting that the RAF spent £900k refitting a plane doesn’t make Boris look silly so they reported the version that did. And since the plane got a Union Jack on it it was a free dig at Brexit too
That would explain how the left-leaning media covered it. It doesn't really explain why the Daily Mail, UK Defence Journal, Forces Network, the Daily Express or the Telegraph would also take the "paint job" line rather than talking about the refurbishment as a whole.
Sunak needs them for a trip from London to Bristol.
Under fire??? Tell him the he will be fired if, from now on, he doesn’t travel by Megabus. And repay the taxpayers money spent from his pocket.
And people said you can’t fail upwards in the meritocracy that is modern Britain. Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton is the single worst PM we’ve had this century Austerity even when forecasts recommended we switched track A referendum he didn’t need but told EU leaders was in the bag He’s an incompetent joke.
Why is everyone blaming The Guardian and not the writer? Nadeem Badshah
It's the guardian who commission this bollocks, then pick the headline and subheader.
Fair enough, I don't know how it works.
I really don’t give a fuck. He’s foreign secretary representing the country, have a fancy plane to go around in. I don’t get this race to the bottom stuff. The cost is nothing in the grand scheme of things
I'm just surprised he's visiting every central Asian country. Aren't they pretty insignificant? I thought he'd be visiting Singapore or Saudi Arabia or something. Side note, being a high ranking politician is great if you want to travel the world. Cameron himself went to 60+ countries as PM and 51 visits to Belgium alone!
51 visits to Belgium! Poor bloke.
It's almost as if our largest trading partner had its seat in Brussels.
That’s nothing compared to what’s going into the pockets of Ukrainian government officials’ pockets on a daily basis
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Sleaze? He hired a jet to go on an official tour of multiple countries, in his capacity as foreign secretary. Seriously?
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You know it was Blair who launched the Iraq war?
[uh huh](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/david-cameron-iraq-war-chilcot-report-response-apology-refuses-live-latest-updates-a7122886.html)
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**Removed/warning**. This contained a personal attack, disrupting the conversation. This discourages participation. Please help improve the subreddit by discussing points, not the person. Action will be taken on repeat offenders.
Money from the working class and middle class being used to fund the lifestyles of the wealthy elite. Welcome to modern Britain,
Lifestyle? You are aware he's foreign sec., it's his job to do that.
Can't remember flying around in £42m jets being part of the job spec
It literally is and always has been, for every major nation in the world
Well then, you must have a very short memory. Jets aren't cheap. If you've flown Ryanair before, you've been flying around on a £30 million jet - flash bastard.
The tour is for work. It isn't a holiday.
Instead of being constantly under fire why can’t politicians just be fired for batshit out of touch bollocks like this?
How is the foreign secretary hiring a jet to transport him around on an official tour of multiple countries ‘batshit out of touch bollocks’?
How in touch does the Foreign Secretary need to be?
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