“I hope the Prime Minister is enjoying a well deserved rest so don’t spoil it by telling him what’s happened this week:
1. The govt launched a “Fix your bike” voucher website
2. It broke in less than an hour
3. The govt said we should all lose weight
4. The govt is still issuing vouchers to help us buy burgers
5. It was revealed the govt spent £400m buying a bankrupt satellite company, OneWeb, to replace the Euro GPS system we lose due to Brexit
6. Months before, a study by MIT found that OneWeb’s tech is 6x less efficient than the EU solution: the worst of the technologies studied
7. In June the govt merged the Dept for International Development into the Foreign Office, and said the move “guaranteed there would be no cuts in International Aid”
8. This week the gov cut International Aid by £2.9bn
9. And the govt quietly granted permission for your health records to be given to Palantir, a controversial data-mining company said to have worked with Cambridge Analytica on Brexit
10. It did both these things the day parliament broke up, so there couldn’t be any questions
11. But in answer to questions about the Russia Report, the gov’s suggested solution is to (I’m not making this up) to ask Russia to tell us who their spies are
12. Ex-Russian intelligence staff say 85% of their work is not spying, but “political funding and misinformation”
13. Which brings us to: Funding and Misinformation news
14. Since 2012, the Tory party has had almost £3m in donations from members of Putin’s cabinets
15. 14 current govt ministers have received donations from individuals or companies connected to the Russian leadership
16. Priti Patel said the Russia Report could be ignored because it was now 9 months old and “out of date”
17. The govt delayed the release of the report for 9 months, and the reasons given were described as “simply not true” (aka “misinformation”) by the Intelligence Committee
18. Now Covid news, and Matt Hancock boasted he had met the targets on his “Six tests” on Covid 19
19. Full Fact found 4 of the 6 targets were missed, one target couldn’t be met because it had never been defined, and 1 “relied on a definition [that] does not reflect practice”
20. The cross-party Media & Culture Committee found that the gov’s support for arts was “vague and slow-coming” and “jeopardised UK culture”
21. The cross-party Public Accounts Committee found there was an “astonishing failure to plan for the economic impact” of Covid 19
22. It also said the policy of discharging patients into care homes was a “reckless and appalling policy error”
23. It called the govt “slow, inconsistent [and] negligent”
24. The chair of the Committee said “A competent government does not run a country on the hoof”
25. More on-the-hoof news: the gov quarantined tourists returning from Spain because Spain was a danger
26. The day before, Spain had 2 Covid deaths. Britain had 114
27. The transport secretary was on holiday in Spain, so was effectively trapped by his own dept’s decision
28. Which brings us to Brexit, and a report from London School of Economics showed a WTO Brexit will permanently shrink 16 out of the UK’s 24 industry sectors by up to 15% each. Permanently.
29. A Tory MP tweeted “ WTO here we come!”
30. Another pro-Brexit Tory MP with a grasp of what’s to come tweeted “my strong advice is: take the opportunity to live abroad”
31. Dominic Cummings tweeted that leaving the EU “could be an error”
32. And now PPE contracts, so prepare to begin eternal screaming:
33. £252m to Ayanda Capital, registered in Mauritius for tax purposes. PPE not delivered
34. £186m to Uniserve. PPE not delivered
35. £116m to P14 Medical Supplies, with assets of just £145. PPE not delivered
36. £108m to PestFix, with just 16 employees. PPE not delivered
37. £107m to Clandeboye Agencies, a sweet wholesaler. Yes, a sweet wholesaler. PPE not delivered.
38. £40m to Medicine Box Ltd, with assets of just £6000. PPE not delivered.
39. £48m to Initia Ventures Ltd, which registered itself as “dormant” in March. PPE not delivered.
40. £28m to Monarch Acoustics, which makes shop furniture. PPE not delivered
41. £25m to Luxe Lifestyle, which has no employees, no assets, and no turnover. PPE not delivered
42. £18m to Aventis Solutions, which has total assets of £332. Not a typo, £332. PPE not delivered
43. £10m to Medco Solutions, incorporated just 3 days after lockdown, with share capital of (not a typo) £2. PPE not delivered
44. In all, approx £1bn to inexplicable suppliers for PPE that hasn’t been delivered
45. The gov still polls well for economic competence. Go figure
46. Meanwhile a Nuffield Health study found after 10 years of “chronic underinvestment”, UK is at the bottom of the league table for health resources; and diagnostics and surgery by the NHS will take 4 years to return to pre-Covid levels. But £1bn for non-existent PPE
47. The gov’s “world beating” test-and-trace programme was described as “scandalous” by the British Medical Journal, and found to miss its 80% target in every Covid hotspot announced this week
48. And finally, Boris Johnson refused a public enquiry into gov handling of Covid 19.”
******
All in one week…… and just after we learned how:
1. The Tories have been taking vast sums of Russian money;
2. The Intelligence & Scrutiny Committee’s Russia Report stated the Tories have ‘actively avoided’ investigating the Russian infiltration of our democracy/elections and that Johnson lied about delaying the release of the report in four different ways;
3. Comrade Alexander Boris (clue’s in the name) proposed the son of a Russian KGB Agent for a Peerage;
4. Dominic Cummings (a man who lived in Russia for three years immediately after university and was supposedly ‘setting up a new airline company from scratch’ although this didn’t happen) was going on a tour of our Top Secret Military and Security Installations for no given reason.
If we didn’t have a media run by (and in the interests of) billionaires, this Tory government would have had to resign for corruption, cronyism, incompetence and for TREASON!
Tom Lane
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