How much is the tax payer willing to tolerate

In 2009, New Labour established a PPE stockpiling system, but the Tories left it to rot. In June 2019, the government’s New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group warned that stockpiles needed replenishing. The warnings were ignored. Beginning March this year, the government downgraded guidance on flu vaccine administration, hospital gowns, and masks instead of comprehensively dealing with shortages.

Since then, the UK has spent more on PPE than any other European country, yet with 60k dead it has by far the highest death-toll, both overall and one of the highest per capita. In Europe, over 60 percent of PPE contracts were awarded to companies without bidding (untendered). But in the UK, the figure is over 70 percent.

So, with PPE standards downgraded, to whom were the contracts awarded? Tory chums, mainly. Anthony Page, for example, quit his role managing business for the Tory peer Michelle Mone reportedly to set up a new company, based on the Isle of Man, called PPE Medpro. It was awarded £122m by the Tories without tender.

By September, an estimated £364m-worth of public money had been handed to Tory-linked corporations, some of them new microbusinesses with no PPE procurement expertise, without bids or competition. These include: £1.3m to Clipper Logistics (owned by Tory donor Steve Parkin); £93.8m to the healthcare provider and Tory donor, Globus (Shetland); £148m to Meller Designs (a beauty product supplier owned by Tory donor, David Meller); and over £120m to P14 Medical (owned by Tory councillor, Steve Dechan).

Apart from the moral question of giving untendered contracts to donors and party members, there is the issue of safety. There have been no complaints about any of the above companies, but consider the Ayanda Capital fiasco.

www.thelondoneconomic.com/politics/how-the-tories-normalised-corruption-report/14/10/

MazieD
It's not just masks. A huge amount of goods labelled 'made in china' are actually being produced in North Korea.

The Law Commission has recommended a new offence of ‘corruption in public office’. What a good idea.

I think it has been this vile is days past, but were days that many of us had hoped were civilised.

So....

Not only are we paying over the odds for PPE but some of it is being made with slave labour

www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/nov/20/uk-sourced-ppe-from-factories-secretly-using-north-korean-slave-labour?CMP=share_btn_tw

Was the world always this vile?

WWM2 Nice one!

The latest version on the Tory bus.

I mentioned the Good Law Project because, as far as I'm aware, they are the only organisation trying to hold this government to account regarding the enormous waste of tax payers money. They have been subjecting the various 'deals' to forensic examination with mind-boggling results and in spite of making their findings public they have been mostly ignored by the MSM - until yesterday when the story broke in America.
goodlawproject.org/news/the-jeweller-and-government/

Cost of track and trace system:

Ireland £773,000

United Kingdom £12,000,000,000

Guess which one works

Some of the corrupt culprits

I saw this morning -
I think on Twitter - a small U.K. company who deals with PPE was not asked to provide the equipment and are now having problems selling their stock as Amazon and Etsy are not allowing it to be advertised on their sites.
The country has gone mad!

NAO report. t.co/UCeqRhkgYn?amp=1

“Our new report on government procurement during #COVID19 finds inadequate documentation on key decisions for some contracts, such as how suppliers were chosen or how potential conflicts of interest were managed.”

This is theft from the tax payer on an industrial scale.

A windfall tax sounds good to me Dinahmo. I've thought this for a while. But no chance of it happening.

'becoming' vegansrock? It's just very obvious now.

I didn't see this thread before I commented elsewhere. I find it unbelievable that there's been so little accountability. The guy in question is due another huge payout.

We truly are becoming a banana republic.

It’s on the news at the moment.
Apparently all due diligence has been followed.??‍♀️

I don't always agree with the Good Law Project, but I have been financially supporting them in their pursuit of the truth about this mismanagement (that's me being kind) of government money in regard to PPE contracts and the obscene profits being made from them when many of the items purchased are unfit for use or over-ordered to the point where we have thirty years worth of kit that will be out of date after three years.

In any third world country the awarding of jobs and contracts in the manner of this government would lead to calls of corruption and cronyism; as 'jobs for the boys' (and girls)! Yet I've been following this for months with hardly a mention of it being made in the MSM until recently.

That people make a profit bothers me not one whit (it's what businesses do), but that the government are willing to be fleeced by profiteers really does! Many companies, with proven histories of supply, were overlooked when contracts were awarded to a hotchpotch of cobbled together companies who seem primarily to have just one thing in common - that they have links to conservatives in seats of power.

I don't doubt that there have always been elements of 'cronyism' when jobs have been awarded, but never on a scale such as we're seeing now and never with such blatant disregard for how it's playing out in the public arena. At a time when people are losing their jobs by the thousand, where food-banks are overwhelmed, where small businesses are going to the wall every day and young children lack even basic food this is pernicious behaviour and should be exposed and decision makers called to account.

Not a hope in hells chance of anything being done with this corrupt government. We will just have to wait 4 years and by then we will be in a real sorry state.

I think that there should be a windfall tax on Amazon and the large supermarkets, all of whom have made increased profits during the current year. It should of course include those companies set up by "friends and family" of the govt since they will no doubt be paying themselves large dividends.

I know the expression "You couldn't make it up" has been much over-used this year, but really!!

Wheniwasyourage

It goes right back to the beginning, when they could have used the local public health teams who are used to tracing contacts for sexually-transmitted disease control. Their skills would easily adapt to covid contact tracing and they have local knowledge. But oh no, the powers that be decided to give contracts to big firms who have already proved that they are useless.

Yes, and I have already mentioned on a previous thread that the body which governs Environmental Health professionals, over 5,000 members, also offered their experience at tracking food poisoning contacts, were not working due to restuarants being closed, and were turned down.

It goes right back to the beginning, when they could have used the local public health teams who are used to tracing contacts for sexually-transmitted disease control. Their skills would easily adapt to covid contact tracing and they have local knowledge. But oh no, the powers that be decided to give contracts to big firms who have already proved that they are useless.

In answer to your question, we’re completely powerless aren’t we to do anything? It’s all part of the contempt in which we’re held.

WW2, I saw this flagged up too. It angers me when I think of all the small business in GB who were offering their services and were ignored so that they then struggled to survive. Apart from a massive and thorough investigation into this, all we can do at this stage is insist they deliver the goods they have been paid to do. Snouts in troughs springs to mind.