Snouts in Trough shock

[albie]

Yes, scarcely credible I know, but the mates rates sleaze epidemic raging exponentially;
https://goodlawproject.org/news/conservative-politicians-vip-lane/

Same story in the Independent.

That Matt Hancock seemed such a nice lad, must have been led astray by bigger bad un's!
No point in an open transparent process, when you have a pal who can step up, no questions asked.

To think people consider us corrupt eh!

[Sprotyrover]

Fast tracking PPE...somebody needs to get a life!

[Glyn_Wigley]

Fast tracking PPE...somebody needs to get a life!

Did you know that of the £17.3 billions-worth of Covid contracts awarded up to July 2020, £17.1 billions-worth were awarded with no competition?

[BillyStubbsTears]

Fast tracking PPE...somebody needs to get a life!

Did you know that of the £17.3 billions-worth of Covid contracts awarded up to July 2020, £17.1 billions-worth were awarded with no competition?

I don't have a fundamental problem with that in fairness, given the nature of the crisis.

What I do have a problem with was the Govt breaking it's own rules in not making those contract details public so there could be some oversight of who was getting the money. Increasingly we are now seeing why ...

[Sprotyrover]

Fast tracking PPE...somebody needs to get a life!

Did you know that of the £17.3 billions-worth of Covid contracts awarded up to July 2020, £17.1 billions-worth were awarded with no competition?

I don't have a fundamental problem with that in fairness, given the nature of the crisis.

What I do have a problem with was the Govt breaking it's own rules in not making those contract details public so there could be some oversight of who was getting the money. Increasingly we are now seeing why ...

If that is the case there needs to be a reckoning,I haven't got an issue with this sort of stuff being fast tracked I applaud it, but I can't condone a process with no transparency."

[BillyStubbsTears]

Fast tracking PPE...somebody needs to get a life!

Did you know that of the £17.3 billions-worth of Covid contracts awarded up to July 2020, £17.1 billions-worth were awarded with no competition?

I don't have a fundamental problem with that in fairness, given the nature of the crisis.

What I do have a problem with was the Govt breaking it's own rules in not making those contract details public so there could be some oversight of who was getting the money. Increasingly we are now seeing why ...

If that is the case there needs to be a reckoning,I haven't got an issue with this sort of stuff being fast tracked I applaud it, but I can't condone a process with no transparency."

Agreed.

There's a Govt rule that all contracts above a certain amount must be published within 28 days of placement. The Govt was still witholding contracts this time last year that had been placed 6 months earlier. They were taken to court and lost, after having run up £1.5m in court costs. One of the contracts they didn't publish was the one for COVID masks given to a pest elimination company. Who then spent £200m buying out of spec masks that were never used.

[albie]

It is common to keep a list of vetted contractors in the specific area to be supplied, then a competitive tender to be sought.

It is not just the suspension of tender requirements due to the crisis, but that firms with no track record in relevant product procurement being awarded contracts.

These companies then acted as "fixers", seeking deals on the market for less than the amounts they were guaranteed. No surprise that quality control was lacking, and wastage excessive.

The other papers are on this now, Mirror and Guardian running the story.
Most interesting is the Daily Mail;
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10207949/Matt-Hancock-Lord-Feldman-Tories-helped-47-firms-win-Covid-contracts-worth-millions.html?ns_mchannel=rss&ns_campaign=1490

Bozo is going to be facing the 1922 Committee sooner rather than later.
What's that sound......someone edging their blade!

[Sammy Chung was King]

We live in a society where corruption is the norm, you are surprised when someone is honest nowadays.

[BillyStubbsTears]

We live in a society where corruption is the norm, you are surprised when someone is honest nowadays.

And once again, I'll point out that in respect of MPs, this is absolute nonsense. The vast majority of them are honest, hard working and not on the fiddle. The problem with this attitude is that it normalises the behaviour of the few bas**rds who ARE bent. If you just assume everyone is dishonest, you've lost the leverage to discriminate against those who truly are. And as such, you become a major part of the problem. Because the truly dishonest know that they can get away with being dishonest if people assume they are all as bad as each other.

This is the reason why we end up with a genuine pathological liar for Prime Minister. A man whose entire career has been built on a foundation of lies. Someone like that can only become PM in a society where people have stopped differentiating between the bent and the honest.

[scawsby steve]

We live in a society where corruption is the norm, you are surprised when someone is honest nowadays.

And once again, I'll point out that in respect of MPs, this is absolute nonsense. The vast majority of them are honest, hard working and not on the fiddle. The problem with this attitude is that it normalises the behaviour of the few bas**rds who ARE bent. If you just assume everyone is dishonest, you've lost the leverage to discriminate against those who truly are. And as such, you become a major part of the problem. Because the truly dishonest know that they can get away with being dishonest if people assume they are all as bad as each other.

This is the reason why we end up with a genuine pathological liar for Prime Minister. A man whose entire career has been built on a foundation of lies. Someone like that can only become PM in a society where people have stopped differentiating between the bent and the honest.

I agree with you about them being honest and not on the fiddle, but hard working? I've stood on Westminster Bridge on many occasions seeing them all lounging about on that veranda as p*ssed as farts for hours on end.

I can't recall any job I've ever done allowing that.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Let me get this right SS.

You've many times stood on Westminster Bridge for hours on end watching MPs drink?

And I thought birdwatching was a dull pastime...

[drfchound]

What about people who spend hours on end on a football forum during the day when they should be at work.

[scawsby steve]

Let me get this right SS.

You've many times stood on Westminster Bridge for hours on end watching MPs drink?

And I thought birdwatching was a dull pastime...

I was doing that at the same time. Not of the feathered kind though.

[albie]

More cheesy sleaze, from the Hancock stable of corruption;
https://twitter.com/JolyonMaugham/status/1505817365904244739

Worth following the thread down.
Maughan is the barrister from the GoodLaw Project (see the op).

[SydneyRover]

was there anyone that wasn't in on it?

''Private emails reveal Gove’s role in Tory-linked firm’s PPE deals
Exclusive: Tory peer Michelle Mone used private email addresses to contact Gove and another cabinet minister about PPE offer''

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/mar/24/michael-gove-private-emails-ppe-deals-tory-linked-firms

[roversdude]

We’re any of these actually established PPE suppliers

[BillyStubbsTears]

We’re any of these actually established PPE suppliers

I'm sure some were. But others were clearly barrow boy spivs on the make.

The boss of Pestfix, which got a multi-£100m contact for PPE with no competition immediately went on LinkedIn asking if anyone knew a good supplier of nitrile gloves.

His company is the one that spent £200m of your and my money on face masks that were the wrong spec and were never used.

And no-one has been, or will be held to account for this.

[roversdude]

We’re any of these actually established PPE suppliers

I'm sure some were. But others were clearly barrow boy spivs on the make.

The boss of Pestfix, which got a multi-£100m contact for PPE with no competition immediately went on LinkedIn asking if anyone knew a good supplier of nitrile gloves.

His company is the one that spent £200m of your and my money on face masks that were the wrong spec and were never used.

And no-one has been, or will be held to account for this.

Most seemed brand new companies or ones that had nothing to do with PPE supply. The only box they ticked was being mates with a minister

[albie]

Useless PPE going to be burned:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/covid-unusable-ppe-burnt-fast-track-b2030820.html

Fast tracking PPE...somebody needs to get a life!

Not looking clever, this post Sproty!

[BobG]

I looked up one of these amazing companies. It was registered at Cardiff in January 2021. It has one shareholder. Total capital base is £20. That's 20 quid. Not 20 grand or 20 million. Twenty quid. Think about what that implies... It has an utterly vague description of its purpose. Several press reports noted it was awarded a £20M PPE contract, without any competitive process being followed, 6 weeks after the company was set up.

Oh. And the sole shareholder was at Eton with Boris.  Odd coincidence that don't you think?

BobG

[BillyStubbsTears]

The Govt set up a VIP fast track for companies to quickly get PPE contracts. Not in itself a bad thing of course. Except there are myriad examples of Tory donors and mates of cabinet ministers getting contracts this way. There was the example that came to light earlier this week of a mate of a Tory peer being paid £122m for PPE that cost £46m and was then found to be useless.

 Would be bad enough if that was a lone example. But today, the National Audit Office has reported that HALF of these fast tracked companies delivered PPE that was judged unfit for purpose by the NHS.

This stinks to high heaven. There has to be an inquiry into how these companies were set up, how much profit they made and which politicians pushed their cases forward.

[BobG]

In days of yore even what has come out so far would have led to the fall of whatever government presided over such a corrupt shambles. What we are witnessing, without any doubt at all, is the decay of democracy - at an ever increasing rate.

I am not making an anti Conservative point here either. Tony Blair was a bugger for sidestepping the House of Commons too. All Fatso has done is speed up the rate of decay

BobG

[danumdon]

In days of yore even what has come out so far would have led to the fall of whatever government presided over such a corrupt shambles. What we are witnessing, without any doubt at all, is the decay of democracy - at an ever increasing rate.

I am not making an anti Conservative point here either. Tony Blair was a bugger for sidestepping the House of Commons too. All Fatso has done is speed up the rate of decay

BobG

But this is the thing, yon fella above just can't accept that this just demonstrates how MP's of ALL flavours have always been quick on the uptake and all have these corrupt tendencies, if its not someone pushing their mates into PPE contracts its others who flip their domestic and business living arrangements to better their expense's take or others who will quietly side with businesses or industry when in a government job that will "see them right" when the time comes and they are on longer tied to the ministerial code.

There are so many examples of this type of underhand and corrupt behavior its virtually become accepted that if you go into the Commons as a young , impressional and principled  individual who is going to change the face of the country , you will be leaving as a old, gnarled, unprincipled, corrupt and very rich person who did nothing for the country but feathered you nest to such an extent that you cant breath for the stuff.

Step forward and take a very big and very insincere bow,

Billy "20pints" Hague,

Peter "weasel" Mandleson,

Neil "windbag" Kinnock,

Every ex tory minister that has ever taken a breath in Westminster along with a good proportion of "principled and very humble" Labour MP's

Scumbags the lot of them, if anyone ever dares to mention that they aspire to become a political activist straight out of Uni with their fiddled PPE degree shoved in their back pocket then they all deserve to be looked upon and treated as the "devil incarnate" and the "evil within" for this once proud and upstanding nation.

Lions led by proper thieving  scum.

[BobG]

OK DD. The facts are what they are. If we want to change the environment, what do we do???

As an aside, purely from personal observation this last 11 weeks, the end result of what you describe is right here in South America. And it makes my blood, and my piss, boil almost every single day. Step forward  Nicolas Maduro. That man should be flayed alive, have salt rubbed all over, and then be pinned to the ground, under the baking sun, with honey where his balls once were. The ants and the sun can finish him off.

I'll shut up, because if I don't I'll still be writing this time tomorrow. That man is an abomination with neither morals nor conscience.

BobG

[SydneyRover]

Corruption in and of public office can only occur if it allowed to by the public, this must be the only time in recent political history where a known waster was elected to parliament and then to the highest office. If you or anyone cannot see the difference in that and those in his party that blindly support him and the others you mention DD then yes the UK truly is in trouble. It behoves every one of the complainers to get out there support good people and get them into government, you can't change the past and you cannot stop those that change when they do attain office but they can be voted out.

[danumdon]

OK DD. The facts are what they are. If we want to change the environment, what do we do???

As an aside, purely from personal observation this last 11 weeks, the end result of what you describe is right here in South America. And it makes my blood, and my piss, boil almost every single day. Step forward  Nicolas Maduro. That man should be flayed alive, have salt rubbed all over, and then be pinned to the ground, under the baking sun, with honey where his balls once were. The ants and the sun can finish him off.

I'll shut up, because if I don't I'll still be writing this time tomorrow. That man is an abomination with neither morals nor conscience.

BobG

Very difficult for the man in the street in a country like this that has a reputation for being very reserved and orderly to take any sort of action that will quell this type of behaviour.

I don't believe the proportional representation system can cut it as we would have compromise government that would never achieve anything and would make the short lived coalitions in Europe look like serious leadership.

The Swiss Canton referendum type local Government with national plebiscite's could be a way to stop this snout in trough type government but it would also be open to corruption and pressure from elements who think they know best and try to sway a politically illiterate and indifferent populace.

Not easy to eradicate and because of this we will plod on with our current system as no party in government has the minerals to take a lead and try to stop this political merry go round.

[danumdon]

Corruption in and of public office can only occur if it allowed to by the public, this must be the only time in recent political history where a known waster was elected to parliament and then to the highest office. If you or anyone cannot see the difference in that and those in his party that blindly support him and the others you mention DD then yes the UK truly is in trouble. It behoves every one of the complainers to get out there support good people and get them into government, you can't change the past and you cannot stop those that change when they do attain office but they can be voted out.

As a nation we, including me can all see the aberration that is this current government and i'm quite sure there will be a reckoning when the time comes for them all.

When someone like you talks about "good people" i and many others would be very suspect in what type of individual you would be pushing as to be, next years model.

We all want government to be accountable and representative as to the wishes and aspirations of the majority. I do believe that would exclude certain radical elements that some would wish for.

[SydneyRover]

Corruption in and of public office can only occur if it allowed to by the public, this must be the only time in recent political history where a known waster was elected to parliament and then to the highest office. If you or anyone cannot see the difference in that and those in his party that blindly support him and the others you mention DD then yes the UK truly is in trouble. It behoves every one of the complainers to get out there support good people and get them into government, you can't change the past and you cannot stop those that change when they do attain office but they can be voted out.

As a nation we, including me can all see the aberration that is this current government and i'm quite sure there will be a reckoning when the time comes for them all.

When someone like you talks about "good people" i and many others would be very suspect in what type of individual you would be pushing as to be, next years model.

We all want government to be accountable and representative as to the wishes and aspirations of the majority. I do believe that would exclude certain radical elements that some would wish for.

It's fairly easy, do what any normal person would tell their kids, don't tell lies and own up and apologise when you make a mistake, if someone isn't doing that before the election they are hardly going to change in office, not hard to spot is it? there fixed that for you DD

[BillyStubbsTears]

As I regularly point out, we did have a PM 13 years ago who never had his snout in the trough. There are plenty of decent politicians. If you don't vote for them, you can't complain.

[Ldr]

As I regularly point out, we did have a PM 13 years ago who never had his snout in the trough. There are plenty of decent politicians. If you don't vote for them, you can't complain.

Couldn’t agree more BST