The Corona Diaries – Day 421

Posted on by Opher

Strange showery day today. Sometimes nice, warm and sunny, next chilly and pouring with rain. Not like last yesr!

We had friends around for a meal so I took my walk in two halves. I’m still managing to maintain my consecutive 10,000 steps a day – 421 of them! I’m averaging 15,500 a day – about 9 kilometres. I don’t know if it’s keeping me fit or wearing my body out! I think the latter!

Meanwhile out in Coronaland the easing of lockdown coincides with the raging of covid. Having let the virus into the country through sheer stupidity and silliness (desperate for a trade deal with India because of the Brexit fiasco) we will now see if the panic and deployment of government cronies (Dido and co) can contain it. If the past record is anything to go on – probably not. I think we should start up a petition to declare this government the most incompetent in living memory (and that’s saying something).

How many more blunders, lies and blatant corrupt instances are they going to be excused?

Is this just a Boris Johnson personality cult? Can’t people see what a bloated, lazy dilettante the man is? His lying and duplicity extend way back and he keeps getting away with it – wife after wife, affair after affair, job after job. When will people wake up?

Having once again been far to late and lax (with airports still not segregating people) our resident clown in chief is now promising draconian action!! Whatever!!!

I suppose it’ll be another oven-ready, world-beating setting of actions – probably involving splashing billions more out to his chums while he stays at home and redecorates.

Meanwhile they are predicting that the Indian variant could cause such a surge that it will push hospitals back to January levels and kill thousands! All for two weeks of open borders!! How many thousand infected people came in from India due to Johnson’s incompetence???

Now the pigeon’s come home to roost. All those antivaxxers and vaccine hesitant people are filling our hospitals and spreading the disease. Fucking imbeciles!! I hope their irresponsible stupidity is making them think. The cases are nearly all in vulnerable people who could have been vaccinated but chose not to. How many of them will die? And how much riskier is it for everyone with them spreading the disease.

No vaccine is a 100% and the antivaxxers are likely to kill a lot of people who do not deserve to die. They were responsible.

It was interesting to see what Cummings said about them:

Dominic Cummings has claimed that government “secrecy” in its handling of the Covid crisis “contributed greatly to the catastrophe”.

The prime minister’s former adviser tweeted that its performance had been “part disaster, part non-existent”.

That about sums it up!

Stay Safe – I’m off to watch the footie!!

Matt Hancock gives a £178m contract for PPE to a dog food supplier!! She farmed it out to Hong Kong and pocketed millions!!

Posted on by Opher

The more one finds out about the dodgy deals and corruption the worse it gets. Billions of pounds have been squandered on Tory cronies. All of this huge amount of money will be paid back through years of austerity for nurses and public servants while these profiteers pocket millions.

This is from the Good Law Project.

Good Law Project

This week’s Panorama gave us the extraordinary tale of a dog food supplier turned PPE broker bagging herself millions acting as a ‘bridge’ for a Hong Kong supplier. Details of the largest contract – worth £178m – came to light only after the BBC’s probing prompted the Government to publish. It sought to explain its failure as an “admin error.” But even if true – which we doubt – this doesn’t justify a further breach of the law on transparency.

Despite the High Court ruling in our favour last month that Matt Hancock had broken the law in failing to publish pandemic contracts, the failures continue.

Meanwhile, Boris Johnson and his Minister mislead Parliament about the scale of the breaches. And refuse to come clean about the beneficiaries of its ‘VIP’ lane. In his judgment, Judge Chamberlain said “The Secretary of State spent vast quantities of public money on pandemic-related procurements during 2020. The public were entitled to see who this money was going to, what it was being spent on and how the relevant contracts were awarded.”

We agree. And so we have written to Matt Hancock launching new legal proceedings for his continuing failures to comply with the law. Our grounds focus on two key issues:

First, the Secretary of State’s failure to comply with his obligations to publish Contracts Finder notices (CFNs) within the requisite 90 days. In relation to contracts entered into on or before 7 October 2020, he had failed to do so in well over 50% of cases.

Second, the Secretary of State’s decision to obscure the key provisions in contracts. Many contracts are being published in heavily redacted form – one example from December shows the quantity, unit price, size and colour of gowns being redacted; another contract entered into almost a year ago but published only this month is so heavily redacted that no information whatsoever is visible regarding what was even purchased. Publication in this form isn’t transparency; it is advertising the lack of it.

“One unfortunate consequence of non-compliance with the transparency obligations…is that people can start to harbour suspicions of improper conduct…” said Judge Chamberlain in last month’s judgment. We agree. If they have nothing to hide why won’t they publish?

Jolyon Maugham Director of Good Law Project