For me, and as a Scot, we all make mistakes. I get that. If he had paid all £11k himself I wouldn’t care.
But charging it as expenses and then refusing to explain it, should be grounds of immediate dismissal. If you’re happy to claim it from the public, you need to be transparent when they have questions. Even from the likes of Jackie Baillie and Douglas Ross.
But it shouldn’t come to that. Anybody with integrity would apologise and resign for failing to meet the expected standards of the position they hold, and the standards they should hold themselves to. The problem isn’t the kids watching your iPad (why they’re using official tech for watching football or why you get to use your own tech for government business is another discussion). The problem is the lies, deceit and self entitlement of not having to explain yourself.
Politicians of today, of all flavours, lack integrity, trustworthiness, basic moral standards and self awareness.
The lesson here, again, is actions have consequences.
The SNP started out as a party with good intentions and a passion for a cause (whether you agree with it or not). They have been in power for too long and have taken the power for granted, and become complacent. They now, sadly, have become the pigs in ‘Animal Farm’.
The SNP started out as a party with good intentions and a passion for a cause (whether you agree with it or not)
That’s questionable. They were originally a reaction to bigger government after WWII. The Scottish big fish didn’t like swimming in a bigger pond so they decided to try to get their smaller pond back. That’s why Labour ended up dominant in Scotland for so long, the SNP split the Tory vote and ended up gifting Labour nearly all the seats under FPTP.
The SNP ‘left’ is a relatively new thing, and arose as a reaction to New Labour being utter cunts and the lucky circumstance of the solidly social democratic Sturgeon being a protegee of the much more right-wing but successful opportunist, Salmond.
Now that Sturgeon has gone, the splits are out in the open. But they were always, fundamentally, Tory snouts looking for a trough.
Fuck mobile operators, this kind of cost should be illegal to exist at all.
So in the UK every mobile operator has to offer a spend cap. I roam a lot (and pay £10 a month for free roaming to the US and EU) so I set a £10 cap. It took seconds and I will never get a surprise bill. This was beyond careless.
Yeah. A smidge under 4 GB and it’s was a five figure cost? That is complete bullshit. We all know the actual costs are miniscule. It’s mad price gouging because most people don’t need to roam and thus they can can prey on it. It shouldn’t be possible to get anywhere close to that kinda bill without multiple explicit approvals where the costs are clearly communicated (I can’t tell if they were).
“He failed to properly disclose”, that’s one way of saying that he bareface lied.
Its OK though he’s going to pay some of it himself so that the tax payer only has to cough up £8k.
He should be forced to pay it all and sacked.
Why wasn’t there security on the device? My works devices are password protected and it’s a disciplinary offence if I share passwords or give unauthorized access.
If he gave them the login creds, then he should be penalised .
If he logged in and gave the device to non parliamentary staff, he should also be penalised.
He got caught because it cost money, which is the lesser offence. Cyber security should be more robust for ministers than it is for most companies, but seemingly not.
The amount of times I’ve told clients to change their SIM or not take their work phone abroad only to be ignored like usual, and get called on their return saying “what the hell!?” We notified them, but just like all MSPs (managed service providers) CEOs or important members will just ignore us or criticise our advice. Now he wants to blame his family who shouldn’t even have access as you mentioned. If it’s his mistake, he allowed it to happen with warning, and he gave this to a family member unsecured, surely he should be held entirely accountable?
Nope. Politicians breaking all the rules we would get sacked for in an instant at work, or even arrested.
Great standards for us lowly law abiding poor folk. An 11k phone bill would kill me; I guess my taxes will pay for his mistake then. I’m so confused how he doesn’t feel like he needs to pay that? I can’t figure out how in the fucking world what I’d need to say or do or think to avoid being responsible for that?
It’s surely simple for him to figure out. Goes to show how warped morals are being protected here.
Wow another parent who doesn’t parent what their kids do online. And then blames corpos for it, and even tries to get the UK taxpayer to pay for it. Sure roaming charges are ridiculous, but I don’t even really ever travel and I know that.
I mean that’s pretty excessive. I’m in the US and I get 5GB of high speed data in Morocco and unlimited throttled, and it’s only $25 for another 5GB. 11k for 3.8GB is ridiculous.
Is that the cost after you order some extra plan from provider or it would be the price without you doing anything? Asking because my provider charges 0.05 eur per 1MB when roaming without me doing anything, but you can get a plan for 13 eur per 1GB. So it would be 190 eur VS 49.40 eur.
Slightly surprised USA roaming cost is lower either way, I thought you had high cost for limited data domestically when compared to Europe.
That’s a complicated question because of “grandfathering.” I pay $50 per month per line for my plan, and that includes unlimited high-speed data in the US. My plan would cost $75 per month per line now for the same benefits, but there is a new cheaper plan that does not include the roaming data but it also has “deprioritized” data in the US.
That said, it’s still only $35 (I was wrong about the price above, but still not terrible) to add 5GB of international data for a month, even on a plan that doesn’t include any. There is never the “pay per MB at an insane rate” option.
