Covid seems to have been profitable for some

As fir Mrs Mone, and her £29 million, her husband is reported to have been paid £65 million, so a grand total between them of £100 million.

Not quite right, silverlining.

Mone's (now) husband was paid £65million. £29 million of which found itself into Mone's offshore account...

The company she got through the VIP lane had only just been set up and had no experience at all in the provision of PPE. Many long standing providers of PPE to the NHS were ignored...

Thank you ladies for explanations, you can tell I’m not a scientist
It all makes sense now. We would never have been able to stock, store, and rotate enough PPE for the pandemic by the sound of it. If we stocked as much as was needed, it’d go out of date (as it did) because without a pandemic that amount of stock simply isn’t needed. My daughter, a GP, used very little PPE prior to the pandemic, mainly she used gloves, but suddenly she had to wear scrubs, apron, mask, and double gloves, clean for each patient. I don’t think the scrubs were clean for each patient, but other stuff was. This was of course for the face to face consultations that she didn’t have! But actually she did!

volver

The £29 million is shocking. But when I think of her I spend most of my energy wondering why a wummin from the East End of Glasgow thought to call herself Baroness Mone of Mayfair.

Mayfair??

And if you've seen some of her tweets...😲 She doesn't come across as a nice woman.

A friend's daughter had the misfortune to work with her for several months. It was not a good experience. I think she would certainly agree with your last sentence. The words 'a piece of work' were mentioned.

I should have said - the relabelled stock we were using had expired as long ago as 2016.

Apparently it is costing us £700000 over a period of time (I forget how long) to store the PPE that is useless.

Another nightmare.

Country has gone mad

GrannyGravy13

maddyone plastic deteriorates, it will split or become brittle which renders it not fit for purpose.

One of the reasons that PPE cannot be hoarded any in stock has to be rotated constantly.

It was hoarded prior to the pandemic, it was tested and re-labelled for use if still safe. Some things were in common use before, so it was easy to rotate stock and keep the pandemic contingency stock up to date, eg aprons and gloves. Other items were not used pre- pandemic to anything like the extent of stock needed, eg face masks. There was also a quantity issue - the outbreak escalated more quickly than expected, so the contingency stock did not last long enough. Many lessons learnt.

maddyone plastic deteriorates, it will split or become brittle which renders it not fit for purpose.

One of the reasons that PPE cannot be hoarded any in stock has to be rotated constantly.

Maddyone
Plastic breaks down.

It’s probably a stupid question, and not strictly relevant here, but how does PPE go out of date? Surely plastic aprons, masks, gloves etc can’t go out of date. My son in law had to wear PPE that covered him from head to foot when he worked in the Covid Hub during the pandemic, but I still cannot for the life of me understand how such items go out of date.

Wasn’t there a huge exercise both practical and theoretical in 2016 about testing our readiness fir serious incidents and it was found we were quite unprepared and very much wanting. Instead of dealing with this it was shelved and nothing more was done, and then there was Covid.

As fir Mrs Mone, and her £29 million, her husband is reported to have been paid £65 million, so a grand total between them of £100 million.
It’s a scandal which was allowed to happen by our Tiry government. Lucky old us.

Whitewavemark2

Governments plan for all sorts of things, from drought to floods, from pandemics to food shortage, from energy crises to war.

That is what we pay them to do.

That is what we should expect from them.

Exactly. This is such a fundamental aspect of governance, I just cannot understand why anyone would make excuses for this dereliction of duty. In my opinion, Covid brought many of this administration's shortcomings and failings into plain sight and I am sick to death of covid being used as an excuse. An epidemic, expected or otherwise should have meant that the existing suppliers of PPE to the NHS were contacted, then slack taken up by manufacturers of similar products who could adapt their machinery and staff into producing PPE. Instead, we saw the first step was to set up a VIP fast track preferential buddies and donors list and share out the spoils. There must be criminal prosecutions here, with subsequent loss of so called honours. If Ms Mone is one that we know about, just how many others are there?

Governments plan for all sorts of things, from drought to floods, from pandemics to food shortage, from energy crises to war.

That is what we pay them to do.

That is what we should expect from them.

We should also be reminding ourselves that Jeremy Hunt was Health Secretary for years, during which Operation Cygnet was run, and then quietly shelved.

That's one of the things I was thinking of when I talked of the government being unprepared for a pandemic.

There was also the fact that they had contracted out the storage and upkeep of emergency supplies of PPE to a private company and when it came to the point where it was needed much of it was found to be out of date and so useless. Whereas, of course, the stock should have been monitored and kept up to date. Yet another black mark against privatisation...

Excusing the government by saying that it was a 'National state of Emergency', as Ug and others have done, is letting the government off the hook. It is the business of government to plan for all sort of 'national emergencies' and to be able to implement the appropriate plan speedily and efficiently at the time when it is needed.

We should also be reminding ourselves that Jeremy Hunt was Health Secretary for years, during which Operation Cygnet was run, and then quietly shelved. There is no excuse for a government which has been in power for a long time not to have contingency for emergencies, something as simple as making sure that there was an up to date directory of reputable PPE suppliers. I assume that if we suddenly found ourselves at war, we would have a list of arms manufacturers or would that be left to a Norfolk pub owner or a bra manufacturer to organise it? The first duty of any government, of any political persuasion is to ensure the safety of its citizens, and the Tory administration failed to do so.

Urmstongran

Or in a national State of Emergency?
Maybe different rules apply aka a ‘free for all’.
It was a dog’s dinner of a procurement process with everyone panicking. Worldwide.
We forget how scared we all were in April 2020.

Please read my earlier post. I did explain what should have happened in the state of Emergency. The contracts should have been published and MH had his knuckles rapped by the
courts following the Good Law Project's successful case.

Or in a national State of Emergency?
Maybe different rules apply aka a ‘free for all’.
It was a dog’s dinner of a procurement process with everyone panicking. Worldwide.
We forget how scared we all were in April 2020.

Since the PPE is unsuitable for purpose I find it strange that it apparently wasn’t returned to the supplier as unfit and the charge refunded
I have long wondered this, and have concluded that it is either yet another example of ineptitude or that the rules which apply to everyone else in society do not apply to pals of government ministers.

Since the PPE is unsuitable for purpose I find it strange that it apparently wasn’t returned to the supplier as unfit and the charge refunded. If I bought an item eg a kettle, and it was unfit for purpose, meaning it didn’t work, I would return it pronto and claim back my purchase price. Why does this not apply to government purchases? How are suppliers allowed to supply substandard goods and take the money with no refund? These are the questions we should be asking.

Maizie I in no way agree with you. Sometimes I think some people would have felt happier if the whole government had been taken out and shot after the pandemic.

MaizieD

The PPE supplied as a result of Mone's intervention was not even used, it was unfit for purpose.y

Despite being bought at the start of the pandemic and delivered in 2020, the 25m gowns were never used by the NHS after government officials rejected them following an inspection.

www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/mar/27/government-paid-firm-linked-to-tory-peer-122m-for-ppe-bought-for-46m

And, but I'm not sure if it includes Mone's, we're all still paying £1.7M/week just to store the useless PPE.

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/ppe-storage-costs-covid-uk-b2056305.html

MaizieD I have reread my email and cannot find anywhere in it where i say that those making profit or loss from dsaster is 'alright'. Do not read things into my posts that are not there.

I merely stated that this always happens and as it happens I do not think it is 'alright'. In fact I wish more was done to stop it, but people always react as if this happening is unique after each event. instead links should be made and more done to stop it.

It has been known for a long time that Michelle Mone was among the pigs with their snouts in the trough.

Whitewavemark2

You know the corruption is so bad amongst the Tories, that when covid struck and people were suffering and dying, their first instinct appears to make money from it.

In a nutshell...

Urmstongran

Mea culpa.
I suppose it was a trade off as Boris was the only politician promising to enact Brexit. The Lib Dem’s Jo Swanson just wanted to revoke it and Labour wanted a re-run. A second ‘decisive’ referendum. Cheeky buggers.

Funny how it’s only democracy when you’re on the winning side.

Is what we have now democracy?

* Government members on national TV game shows.
* Conspicuously and in full view defrauding the tax payer and then advertising their the spoils of their thefts.
* 3 prime ministers.
* Brexit which is ruining the country.
* NHS nurse strikes.
* Train strikes.

It's not government. It's a car crash.

M0nica

There is nothing in this world no matter how terrible, that someone does not make a dishonest, and, even, an honest penny for someone, even though to others, it brings only disaster.

It was the same in WW2 and the great cutting down of railings everywhere, 'to provide metal for spitfires'. Scrap metal merchants collected them up, everyone let them have their railings for free. In fact the metal was unsuitable for any armaments and after the war scrap metal merchants everywhere, made a fortune selling the metal on as scrap.

Oh, so that's alright is it then, MOnica?

It's just the way things happen and we shouldn't let it bother us?

After all, it was only very large amounts of public money disappearing into private pockets...

How many MPs from the opposition has exploited the tax payer over covid?

It seems a peculiarly Tory type of complete lack of empathy and money grubbing.

Monica good post