Super-Twat

[Beardy]

It gave me the shove I needed to close my Premium Spotify account, so that's a bonus. Hopefully others are doing so as well and Spotify are out of pocket

Spotify paid $100 million US for him.
He has the most popular podcast on Spotify. 12.5million Instagram followers. That's about the same population as Rwanda. 7.5million Twitter followers. The entire population of Libya, and some.

I don't think your drop in the ocean will help. The stupid are taking over the world. This shouldn't be a surprise- 50% of the world are of below average intelligence, and now they can share that with the other half of us.

Probably not, but if we all think like that nothing changes. And regardless, I don't want to be supporting him in any way, so goes spotify

[ian]

It's just the attraction of saying stuff that people want to hear, I guess. Cognitive resonance, if you will. It's an easy business (many of the big right-wing commentators in the US started this way, and it's basically Fox New's business model). JP just adds an intellectual veneer which makes it all the more attractive to a credulous audience.

[Mr Larrington]

Join the morons on the compost heap of Super-Twattery, Sunday Torygraph editor Allister Heath, for this piece of classic Tory Fuck You-ism.  You want Bloody Stupid Johnson to install

a David Frost-like CEO in No 10

by which I assume he means someone like Frosty the Wasteman rather than the bloke who interviewed that other celebrated political liar Richard Nixon

[orraloon]

It gave me the shove I needed to close my Premium Spotify account, so that's a bonus. Hopefully others are doing so as well and Spotify are out of pocket

What's the advantage of a Premium account?  I use Spotify ordinary now and then, don't recall the last time I heard an advert.  Is it just that I miss out on supertwattery?

[cygnet]

It gave me the shove I needed to close my Premium Spotify account, so that's a bonus. Hopefully others are doing so as well and Spotify are out of pocket

What's the advantage of a Premium account?  I use Spotify ordinary now and then, don't recall the last time I heard an advert.  Is it just that I miss out on supertwattery?

Now and then, you probably wouldn't notice much of a difference

I having been using it occasionally mostly as a digital method of dropping a few extra fractions to artists of music I own.

[pumpkin]

think I'll go for Liz Truss today after reports of her £500k trip about Bojo 1 to Australia and back.

[TimC]

think I'll go for Liz Truss today after reports of her £500k trip about Bojo 1 to Australia and back.

I'd love to know where they got this figure of £500k from.

The aircraft - an Airbus A321LR - is one of two leased full-time for Government use, to replace the 4 or 5 BAe 146s of 32 Sqn that have now been pensioned off (one arrives at Duxford very shortly). It's not chartered on an ad-hoc basis, so - depending on the deal with the operator - the costs of the trip would basically be fuel and engineering/logistic support. A 321 burns about 3 tonnes an hour, and the round trip would be about 45 - 48 hours. Call it 50 hours, and aviation fuel is about $1000 a tonne just now, so $150k (£120k-ish). Other trip-specific costs may have added £80k to that, so £200k total. I can't get it to anywhere near £500k however hard I try.

It's a matter of perspective whether governments should have access to dedicated aircraft for international travel, but it's hardly unique to the UK, and I would suggest that there are plenty of reasons (such as security and confidentiality) that can justify it. And that comes with a cost. Much as I have no time for Ms Truss as a politician, I have no particular problem with her trip to Australia as part of the business of doing the country's diplomatic and trade business, and nor do I see that using commercial flights are necessarily appropriate for such a visit.

The problem with knocking everything that government does is that you end up without government.

[rafletcher]

think I'll go for Liz Truss today after reports of her £500k trip about Bojo 1 to Australia and back.

I'd love to know where they got this figure of £500k from.

The aircraft - an Airbus A321LR - is one of two leased full-time for Government use, to replace the 4 or 5 BAe 146s of 32 Sqn that have now been pensioned off (one arrives at Duxford very shortly). It's not chartered on an ad-hoc basis, so - depending on the deal with the operator - the costs of the trip would basically be fuel and engineering/logistic support. A 321 burns about 3 tonnes an hour, and the round trip would be about 45 - 48 hours. Call it 50 hours, and aviation fuel is about $1000 a tonne just now, so $150k (£120k-ish). Other trip-specific costs may have added £80k to that, so £200k total. I can't get it to anywhere near £500k however hard I try.

Maybe some depreciation factored in. I understand it wasn't just the odious Truss one her own either - there was a whole delegation.  But hey, don't let that spoil a good story.

[TimC]

The base lease covers the costs of crews, depreciation, scheduled engineering etc. It's not an additional cost per flight in the way that fuel is. It would not be charged separately.

[mrcharly-YHT]

think I'll go for Liz Truss today after reports of her £500k trip about Bojo 1 to Australia and back.

I'd love to know where they got this figure of £500k from.

The aircraft - an Airbus A321LR - is one of two leased full-time for Government use, to replace the 4 or 5 BAe 146s of 32 Sqn that have now been pensioned off (one arrives at Duxford very shortly). It's not chartered on an ad-hoc basis, so - depending on the deal with the operator - the costs of the trip would basically be fuel and engineering/logistic support. A 321 burns about 3 tonnes an hour, and the round trip would be about 45 - 48 hours. Call it 50 hours, and aviation fuel is about $1000 a tonne just now, so $150k (£120k-ish). Other trip-specific costs may have added £80k to that, so £200k total. I can't get it to anywhere near £500k however hard I try.

It's a matter of perspective whether governments should have access to dedicated aircraft for international travel, but it's hardly unique to the UK, and I would suggest that there are plenty of reasons (such as security and confidentiality) that can justify it. And that comes with a cost. Much as I have no time for Ms Truss as a politician, I have no particular problem with her trip to Australia as part of the business of doing the country's diplomatic and trade business, and nor do I see that using commercial flights are necessarily appropriate for such a visit.

The problem with knocking everything that government does is that you end up without government.

I'm sure your figures are correct.

£120 000 - that is still very high. Could have flown them all business class on a standard flight for a heck of a lot less.

[rafletcher]

I'm sure your figures are correct.

£120 000 - that is still very high. Could have flown them all business class on a standard flight for a heck of a lot less.

Except it would have probably been several different flights due to very limited capacity at the moment.

[citoyen]

It's a matter of perspective whether governments should have access to dedicated aircraft for international travel, but it's hardly unique to the UK, and I would suggest that there are plenty of reasons (such as security and confidentiality) that can justify it.

Possibly. But many other UK ministers past and present are happily in the habit of using the same transport as the plebs.

[ian]

About £8k the last time I went, though obviously there's the entire entourage, I have no idea how big that is. Like TimC says, there may have been valid reasons, though part of the problem is that no one trusts any of them to do anything sensible, so everything gets tainted by the stupid.

And, given the scale of her achievements in Australia, it might be a reasonable suggestion that she stayed home.

[TimC]

There were 14 Government peeps of various kinds, plus an unknown number of security staff and possibly journalists.

[Polar Bear]

I would have thought that, given the entourage their egos demand travel with them that they could easily have made appropriate arrangement on an already scheduled commercial flight.  With all those staff you'd think that somebody is capable of some proper planning. It's that they don't think about what they are doing which makes them all the more repulsive.

Taxpayer money has been pissed up every roll of entitled flock wallpaper for far too long and recently in disproportionately greater amounts.  These people are supposed to be public servants but they seem to have forgotten this small but hugely important and significant fact.  Their radicalised supporter base seems to have conveniently forgotten this too.

[ian]

Let's assume, say 18 people total – it's a trade delegation and Liz needs her carers – and be conservative, at £7k for a business class ticket – that's £126k plus other sundry expenses, so I doubt it's hugely disproportionate to using an already leased jet. I too don't know where £500k came from.

Like Brexit or not, and cheap jokes aside, we do need to negotiate national trade agreements, which means delegations have to meet.

[TimC]

Despite the public perception that flights are still empty, they most certainly are not - though there are many fewer flights than in normal times. Getting 14 Government seats (and I would have thought that 14 is a very small party for what was supposedly an important visit) would be bloody hard without the airline bumping people off the flight. They will do that (well, BA will) for VIPs, but that bumps the price up very considerably as they will charge for the compensation, accommodation etc they have to pay those they bumped off. Also, it's normal for a fairly significant number of journalists to travel with the politicos, and their parent organisations pay for their seats on Government aircraft. It's possible there were none on this particular flight if it was at very short notice, but I suspect the story was broken by people who actually travelled with Ms Truss.

Just to add: getting 14 business-class seats return to Sydney at short notice, including the surcharge for bumping people off, would cost roughly double the regular J price, or in the order of £15-20k per seat. That's about the same as a short-notice First Class seat, but there normally aren't that many 1st seats on one flight even if there are no other passengers.

[ian]

So you're somewhere north of £250k. I doubt that's unusual for a large trade delegation and it's probably cost-effective to use the leased jet.

[TimC]

It's also worth pointing out that it would be impossible for the delegation to discuss their work with any expectation of confidentiality on a commercial flight, and for a trade delegation that's a significant factor. I've seen at first hand the mess that can ensue when boozed-up business people say a bit too much when they've been at the aircraft bar. On a 22-hour flight, the scope for that is non-trivial. Keeping your people in a bubble where they can work with some degree of privacy is a huge benefit. It's probably also easier to keep the more wayward ones under control!

[cygnet]

So you're somewhere north of £250k. I doubt that's unusual for a large trade delegation and it's probably cost-effective to use the leased jet.

You're conflating a need to bump ahead of 14 first class tickets with the travel (planned? Although one should never assume) There was not a desperate need for them to instantaneously be in Australia. Or even travel together.

7k for 24hrs difference in arrival (and I'm using the lower bound cost of bumping here vs the normal cost of a ticket)  does not equate to the amount of work or pay that any of the government could achieve.

Unless you think Truss couldn't keep her gob shut on a scheduled and planned first class flight with a couple of aides.

Then, maybe, the price starts to look sensible.

[ian]

Regardless, an international trade delegation is going to be a group of people who need to travel in the same time frame, so the cost will tot up, there are only so many flights to Australia in any given day. I'm pretty sure they all needed to be there at the same time, though I suspect there might have been some relief if Liz had arrived two days after the meeting had ended.

£6-8k is about what it costs to fly business to Australia, and I don't think unreasonable, it's a long way.

I'm minded there's no real story here.

[Kim]

I'm minded there's no real story here.

Other than perhaps Bloody Stupid Johnson perceiving Cheesoid as a threat.

[cygnet]

I'm minded there's no real story here.

Other than perhaps Bloody Stupid Johnson perceiving Cheesoid as a threat.

Not just that.

Quantas says about 4k first class, if you're easy on the dates. I expect a scheduled trade delegation to be this.

15k max. Booked 3weeks ahead. First Class.

Business Class about half that.

So someone's got something wrong. It may be journalistic maths, it may be public opinion.

[ian]

They're not exactly easy on the dates, it's an international trade meeting, you don't exactly turn up in dribs and drabs and hope the other side aren't busy. This is a significant piece of people logistics. Trust me, it's not even easy with library consortia.

Picking up a scheduled flight with a week or three notice in the pre-plague era to Australia is going to cost what I said, I don't recall paying less than £5k (though I'd usually stop off in Singapore or HK). Sure, if you've booked a few months in advance you can bring it down to about £4k, but that's not really realistic in this situation (or most business situations). TimC explained the likely scenario re pricing here, and I have a feeling he knows a little bit about these things.

I'm pretty sure big international trade delegations always cost a lot of money. I'd be minded to focus on the lack of results, since we didn't get much for their efforts.

[cygnet]

The lack of results is why she got put in here again I guess

The rest is just icing and probably belongs in PAOB.