Don't forget ferry companies without ships. Combined with the fact your government had to settle for 33 million pounds because those contracts were awarded illegally.. I am not sure if you should be giving them the benefit of the doubt.
Don't forget ferry companies without ships. Combined with the fact your government had to settle for 33 million pounds because those contracts were awarded illegally.. I am not sure if you should be giving them the benefit of the doubt.
Keep on keepin' the beat alive!
Yeah....but....didn't -this- government want the man responsible for that farce to be Chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee?
I never supported that. That man is an incompetent twerp and I'm glad he failed to get that post.
Flixy it may be same party but it is a different government, and through the pandemic the priority with PPE has been to get enough materials and ensure they're of the right quality standards. Yes some batches have failed testing - and that includes materials bought from China, Turkey and other places as well as domestically - and that has been redeployed to other areas where it doesn't need to be medical grade.
The priority was rightly to ensure we have enough materials, if they had reacted slower and nurses had died due to a lack of PPE do you think Steely would be happier then? Or is it any excuse to have a whinge?
I think the valid question is whether all suppliers got an equal chance, whether the minimum due diligence was done, and whether connections of the government got preferential treatment. I see stories like this but don't know if there are 2 such contracts or 200, if 200 then it's obviously less surprising some are linked to friends of the government.
But especially in times like these the opportunity for corruption is huge because of the reduced oversight due to rushing, so I don't think it's a bad idea to look back and ensure there was no corruption or conflict of interests.
I think the priority you say is fine, but I'm not so naive to think nobody will try to abuse that.
Keep on keepin' the beat alive!
When the stars threw down their spears
And watered heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?
Yes there were hundreds of contracts signed. Here is a balanced article from the FT about it: https://www.ft.com/content/c0d439c8-...5-da2bc0f18567
Keep on keepin' the beat alive!
Yeah that's super dumb I would've offered to give them just as many masks for half that (paid upfront of course).
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
https://www.polygon.com/pages/ethics-statement
Expecting government ministers responsible spending billions of pounds of public money to follow the same ethical rules as people who review video games is Orwellianist Marxism.Unless specifically on a writer's profile page, Polygon staffers do not cover companies (1) in which they have a financial investment, (2) that have employed them previously or (3) employ the writer's spouse, partner or someone else with whom the writer has a close relationship. When a Polygon contributor has affiliations of prior employment experience that would represent a material conflict of interest with their reporting, that information will be disclosed in context or footnotes of that piece.
When the sky above us fell
We descended into hell
Into kingdom come
There was an interesting debate in Parliament on the subject of PPE contracts today, the government confirmed a couple of things I thought - notably that thanks to these contracts the country now has a stable supply of PPE, a stockpile of four months supply being stored in case it is needed and domestic production is up from 1% to 70% of supply.
Also explicitly mentioned was that there were a number of factors that suppliers were examined for, one of the key ones being volume. Which was intuitive to me that it would make sense and I guessed a few posts ago but interesting to see that hunch confirmed. Makes the farcical comparison of a potential supplier offering thousands of gowns versus an actual supplier who have delivered tens of millions of them look even more patently absurd and moronic.
Steely your Polygon comparison is ridiculous since you're contrasting an individual Polygon staffer with the collective government. I would absolutely expect any individual government minister to recuse themselves from any decisions with which they have a financial investment etc - but a different government minister certainly could approve such a deal if it is in the national interest. Just as if an individual Polygon staffer has prior involvement then a different Polygon staffer could review the game. Also government ministers are obliged to disclose potential conflicts of interest too, the register of interests is in the public domain.
Covid: Watchdog urges government to ‘come clean’ over deals
The government was not transparent about suppliers and services when it scrambled to award £18bn worth of Covid-19 contracts, the public spending watchdog has said.
The National Audit Office (NAO) found firms recommended by MPs, peers and ministers' offices were given priority.
It said there was inadequate explanation of key decisions, such as why particular suppliers were chosen.
Nor was enough done to address potential conflicts of interest.
Meg Hillier, chairwoman of the Commons Public Accounts Committee, called for ministers to "come clean" and publish all information about the contracts awarded.
Obviously Rand subscribes to Trumpism. As longs as his party gets what he wants, the rest can fuck right off.
Shortsighted, arrogant and a receipe for disaster. But, hey, as long as he got his, fuck the rest. Who needs the rule of law?
When the stars threw down their spears
And watered heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?
Borderline "Irish accents"
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
Swing and a miss, Irish accents style.
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
Interesting that you've had a change of heart, but that doesn't change the fact that you missed the point here.
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/...t-confiscation
Could also go into the Kafka thread. WTF, though.
When the stars threw down their spears
And watered heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?
I don't know what the deal is with Tories and food. They try and present a compassionate face the the world, but something about the fact that poor people need to eat sends them into full on screaming 'are there no prisons? no workhouses?' mode.
When the sky above us fell
We descended into hell
Into kingdom come
A bunch of Labour peers compelled by conscience to defy the whip, in the hopes of upholding prohibitions on rape and torture:
https://labourlist.org/2021/02/18-la...-spycops-bill/
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
Patel nominating herself as this week's chief clown. JRM puts himself forward as her running mate.
She really is a dangerously silly person to have any position in government let alone the cabinet.Priti Patel hits out at 'dreadful' Black Lives Matter protests
UK home secretary says she disagreed with last year’s protests as well as taking the knee
The home secretary, Priti Patel, has described the Black Lives Matter protests that swept the UK last year as “dreadful” and said she did not agree with the gesture of taking the knee.
The protests, in which demonstrations took place in more than 260 towns and cities in June and July, were the largest anti-racism protests in Britain for decades.
They were sparked by the death of George Floyd while in the custody of police in Minneapolis. Outrage grew at the fate suffered by Floyd, whose heart stopped on 25 May as a police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes, according to a medical examiner, with solidarity protests held across the world.
As part of the demonstrations in the UK, statues of slave traders including that of Edward Colston in Bristol, were toppled and a memorial to Sir Winston Churchill in central London was vandalised with the words “is a racist”.
There has since been a public reckoning with Britain’s slavery and colonial past. Earlier this year, a Guardian investigation revealed that scores of tributes to slave traders, colonialists and racists had been taken down or were to be removed across the UK, with hundreds of others under review by local authorities and institutions.
However, during a radio interview on Friday morning, Patel said she did not support the protests. Asked if she would be prepared to take the knee, she replied: “No I wouldn’t, and I would not have done at the time either.
“There are other ways in which people can express their opinions, protesting in the way that people did last summer was not the right way at all … I didn’t support the protests. Those protests were dreadful.”
She added: “We saw policing as well coming under a great deal of pressure from some of the protest. I don’t support protest and I also did not support the protests that were associated …”
Interrupted, she sought to clarify that she was not criticising the right to protest but rather the “dreadful” action last year.
Patel’s comments came after the Commons leader, Jacob Rees-Mogg, accused the London mayor, Sadiq Khan, of overseeing “loony leftwing wheezes” following the creation of a landmark commission to improve diversity in the capital’s public spaces.
Khan announced he would be forming the commission days after the statue of Colston, a 17th-century slave trader, was pulled down in Bristol. The commission for diversity in the public realm will review what makes up London’s public realm, discuss what legacies should be celebrated, and make a series of recommendations that will help to establish best practice, the London mayor’s office said.
The commission is not being established to preside over the removal of statues, it added.
Truly a corrupt government:
https://www.hsj.co.uk/finance-and-ef...029906.article
Topwood Ltd, which specialises in secure waste disposal, successfully won a tender competition to secure a place on an NHS Shared Business Services framework for “confidential waste destruction and disposal” at the beginning of 2019. Mr Hancock was appointed health and social care secretary in July 2018.
There is no suggestion Mr Hancock was involved in any contract awards, but the ministerial code says ministers have a “personal responsibility… to decide whether and what action is needed to avoid a conflict or the perception of a conflict” (see below).
The company, which is now based in Wrexham, Wales, was then owned by Mr Hancock’s sister, Emily Gilruth and his mother, Shirley Carter, and two men — thought to be their spouses.
Securing a place on the framework makes it easier for local NHS organisations to use the firm for their waste disposal services, by providing a “compliant route to market”, according to the published contract award notice. NHSSBS said on Friday afternoon that the firm had not been awarded any business via the framework (see full statement below).
Mr Hancock has not declared this interest in any of the published ministerial interests declarations of recent years. In the December 2017 declaration (a time when he was culture secretary), he declared only that his brother was the chief executive officer of Crowd2Fund (an investment platform). In later declarations — in March 2019, December 2019 and July 2020 — he declared no interests.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-56768601
A lot of habitual bullshitters are trying to bullshit the public about the ministerial code, in the debate surrounding this issue, but the reality is that everyone knows he should have declared this conflict of interest—and that his failure to do so is deeply disgraceful. Every non-bullshitter on this forum would have declared this potential conflict of interest, were they in a similar position.Public contract records show that the company was awarded a place in the Shared Business Services framework as a potential supplier for NHS local trusts in 2019, the year after Mr Hancock became health secretary.
The MPs' register did not mention that his sister Emily Gilruth - involved in the firm since its foundation in 2002 - owns a larger portion of the shares and is a director
[...]
ministers should declare interests of close family if they believe they might give rise to a conflict.
When he was secretary of state for digital, culture, media and sport in 2017, he did declare that his brother Chris Hancock was chief executive of an investment crowdfunding company called Crowd2Fund.
Last edited by Aimless; 04-16-2021 at 02:22 PM.
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."