can’t wait…
I’ve already got my jaw cushion prepared.
Try it on this then John.
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My friendly bank chum in the UK said at Xmas he had spent 2020 dolling our money with few checks,…80%(?) guaranteed by HMG and expected to spend second half of 2021 and beyond chasing the defaulters!
The reality is that aside from with pure criminals who have taken the money and scarpered very little should actually happen anytime soon. The Pay As You Grow (PAYG) scheme for these loans means that even as some of them start coming due now companies have 3 options available to them to not have to make payments, either a 6 month payment holiday, extending the loan from 6 to 10 years or 3x 6 months interest only, so I suspect the picture of what is happening with these loans will not become clearer into 2022 at least, in theory you could ‘kick the can’ into 2023 perhaps even using PAYG.
Here goes, the latest from the Good Law Project:
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Good Law Project
Dear Jane,
Good Law Project can reveal the existence of a VIP lane for Test and Trace spend - and that ‘VIP stakeholder engagement’ was run from a private gmail address.
We are today publishing emails showing the existence of a “fast-track” for contacts of Ministers. One of those emails states: “If [offers] come from a minister/private office then please put FASTTRACK at the beginning of the subject line.”
This evidence is corroborated by the LinkedIn account for the individual who advertised himself as the lead for “VIP stakeholder engagement with Life Science Minister James Bethell”.
Good Law Project can also reveal that the “industry secondee” - a Mr Simon Greaves - used a private gmail address for his “VIP stakeholder engagement.”
The National Audit Office has previously expressed concern over the lack of transparency in relation to procurement decisions made in the PPE VIP lane. The revelation that key elements of VIP Test and Trace procurement were conducted using a private gmail address piles fuel on that fire.
How could civil servants monitor discussions between Ministerial contacts and an industry secondee when they were taking place via private gmail addresses?
Back in October, Good Law Project revealed the red carpet-to-riches VIP lane that benefited so many associates of Ministers by helping them to win vast PPE contracts. This new evidence corroborates reports in November from unnamed insiders that there was a VIP channel for testing supplies. The total spend on Test and Trace is £37bn, dwarfing that for PPE.
Responding to Good Law Project, Simon Greaves said: ‘I used a DHSC email account and computer for the majority of my time…’’ but also confirmed he used his personal gmail account from his start date in April through to May.
Good Law Project has also approached the DHSC for comment.
Further questions need to be asked about how Government came to spend over £3bn - without any competition - with Innova, whose testing kits have been described by the US Food and Drug Administration as “presenting a risk to health” and subject to “the most serious type of recall.” Good Law Project understands extraordinary new revelations about Innova will emerge in the coming days.
Thank you,
Jo Maugham
Director of Good Law Project
Only with your support can we continue to hold the Government to account. If you are in a position to do so, you can make a donation here:
It looks as though James, Lord, Bethell has been active in this appalling scandal. Another one to resign I hope, although probably after being taken to court.
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Good stuff, rotten to the core.
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someone with access to these e-mails must be thinking along the same lines.
Imagine the witch hunt going on in Westminster.
Obviously not a majority think so in Batley and Spen.
Labour held the seat in the by election thank goodness so we are spared the crowing face of Johnson and his cabinet poodles.
George Galoway result surprised me though.
He’s tapping into dissatisfaction with Starmer on the hard left - but Labour need someone siphoning their votes like a hole in the head at the moment.
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It was a thoroughly depressing campaign, and I don’t think any party can draw anything positive from the result. Labour was lucky to have a pretty ideal candidate, who I guess will be a very good MP, but for this very reason the wider party can draw little comfort from the narrow win.
Galloway I’d guess drew as much support from the Tories and the various other further right candidates that had high hopes as he did from Labour - his last political allegiance after all was Farage! He is not really seen as being on the left by people on the left, many of whom I guess didn’t vote at all, or voted for a good local lass from Jo Cox’s family despite Starmer.
The Tories see themselves as thwarted at the last moment by the Matt Hancock affair, but I doubt it - the mud sticks to politicians in general, not to one party.
In view of the profile of the candidates and campaign there was an expectation that turnout would be around general election levels - but in the event it was a typical by-election 47%. My feeling is that many core voters of all the main parties stayed at home again, so nothing here to change my view that Labour only wins nationally (except by default) when it inspires engagement by the majority that believes in a broadly socialist agenda. Unless Labour can shake the feeling in the UK at the moment that ‘they’re all the same’, it will lose to the out-of-touch pensioner vote that will turn out for the Tories in a general election.
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Problem is that “Boris” aka Maggie in the 80 has become a cult figure in many voters minds…he can say or do things that many other politicians can’t…“after all it’s Boris., what do you expect” many of the sheep like herd will say.
We’ve had two days off from the subject of the job Johnson is doing. But today here is Anthony Costello of Indie Sage. He has had enough of the incompetence, and on top of that he (fully vaccinated) has contracted Covid… It’s grim.
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I was just going to post that - they are quite literally insane.
We have another herd immunity strategy on our hands - the only lesson that has been learned is to avoid the phrase “take it on the chin”.
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I always used to start my training sessions by asking participants, either when they introduced themselves, or by brainstorming in big groups, to tell me the most important question or issue they wanted to explore in the session. I’d list them on a flipchart or whatever for all to see throughout.
Then I’d say “I’m going to answer all these questions today - so if at the end you go away saying ‘well he didn’t tell us what we really wanted to know’ - it’s your fault!”
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The problem with that is that when you have a very important subject you want to cover there are always supplementaries which turn out to be just as important.