Meh. They are not privately owned. It a public company. If you force stuff on people you can get called names. Last I checked it was a particularly nasty sort of filth in Germany that drove the anti semitic laws and holocaust and took over in Northern Italy to deport people from there They were all hand in glove as the Germany dictated to their less powerful fascist allies. Spain didn't engage in the blood lust for example. I could call forcing things on people totalitarianism I suppose but throwing the added fascist barb in really just says trump up little no good rats for me.
Can we flip to something really annoying like barak Obama pretending yo give two folks about the environment. Last I checked the sole democrat to give a **** was gore and Obama flirted with giving him a role then went off and approved artic oil drilling. But the gore sold his TV channel to Qatar for oil money and was caught with his hand in the epa regulations as wel The ****ing cheek of Obama to tell young people to stay angry. Lol.
More and more evidence of Tory sleaze coming out of the woodwork, many MPs earning tens or hundreds of thousands of pounds for a handful of hours "work lobbying for firms on top of their MP salary. Many of those firms have won contracts with government. Geoffrey Cox earned a £1m working as a barrister in the British Virgin islands for the BVI government in the past year, whilst using the covid temporary rules to vote in parliament by proxy. How is he serving his constituents whilst out there. How is this allowed? It's pretty clear Boris attempted to get the rules changed on standards and get the body that monitors them removed and replaced with a committee packed with cronies because he was under investigation himself. When this was all debated in parliament yesterday, Boris didn't turn up, he hid. How can anyone keep voting for this conmen?
They're all as bad as each other. Remember the parliamentary expenses scandal in 2009? After the FOI Act came about allowing people to request information from public bodies, Harriet Harman together with 3 other Labour MP's tried to force through a motion to stop disclosure of expenses. Tony Blair's expenses were shredded "by mistake". 6 Labour MP's resigned and 10 stepped down or were deselected. Similarly 7 Conservative MP's retired or stood down.
its happened with Lord Bethell just now who was in charge of covid procurement. He had meetings and messages with Owen Patterson and the company who was paying him, who then won a no-tender contract. He has since deleted all Whatsapp messages relating to the meeting and the deal as he thought "they would automatically been backed up". This was accepted by the committee hearing the case after his original, different explanation was dismissed.
Like I said, they're all at it. In fairness if you're the party in power and a situation like this pandemic arises where you have to act extremely quickly, you're going to use your contacts. If it was the other way around, which companies would Labour have looked to use? You only have to Google to see Labour have done the same thing. In 2002 a Labour donor pharmaceutical company was awarded a £32m contract to supply vaccines, rival companies saying they weren't allowed to bid. Another Labour drug company was raided by the serious fraud squad on suspicion of overcharging the NHS.
some of the companies that were awarded massive contracts to procure PPE barely existed the only "salient point in their favour" was having a Tory donor / councillor / special adviser involved in the application .
That's whatabboutery. They need to be investigated and punished properly. Patterson was only going to get a 1 week suspension ffs! And that was too much for the Government to accept.
Of course they barely existed because the PPE didn't exist. Companies were setting up just to manufacture PPE. I was more bothered about getting the equipment quickly than I was where it came from. My son was on the front line with no protection whatsoever, if a Tory crony made a pile out of it by manufacturing equipment quickly, I don't really care, my boy and countless others got what they needed to protect themselves somewhat. If it was Labour cronies and they made double what the Tories made out of it, I wouldn't be bothered about that either.
you ask civil servants who might actually know to go find companies quick not cherry pick companies with zero ability based on politics
It's not really whataboutery is it. What I said didn't divert from the issue or throw an irrelevant accusation into the mix. I maintain that they're all as bad as each other. Tories will look out for Tories and Labour will look out for Labour. I'm just surprised that you're surprised that there's a link between politics and sleaze.
PPE exists everywhere mate, capacity didn't exist. same as the clowns hiring companies to run ferries that never existed over brexit. Theres a difference between realising that most of what actually goes on is the school tie brigades and labour have plenty of school tie merchants. A lot of businesses are actually owned or run by these sorts and of course they'll scam about. we are really just talking about made in china stuff here. Its about procurement which we already had people and trusts to do but chose to get others in to take a cut for no good reason.
of course not but they are the once in power for 11 years and are the ones getting to do these things to excess at this point. Starmer and his ilk would be ad bad. posh boy. Corbyn and his ilk would be as bad. Doesn't mean the Tories get off criticism cos they are all alike. the principle is call these guys out. if we don't its carte blanche to do it.
I'm sorry, but of course the PPE existed. It's fairly standard face masks, shields and disposable plastic aprons. There was nothing fancy or exotic required. The NHS had loads of suppliers that already made that stuff, we just needed more of it. There was loads of stories of all these companies who were going to develop new types of ventilators etc, but in the end I don't think any of it was a) required or b) actually went in to production.
This. The contracts were awarded to middle men and fly-by-night companies who, on them saying they could source it, just sub-contracted everything to chinese firms at big mark-ups.
I don't think Starmer would be as bad, he's a former public prosecutor who has had no interest in setting himself up as some sort of entrepreneur. The issue is having a set of proper standards to measure MPs by, I don't at least as stringent as the anti-bribery and corruption laws that every company has to follow and then punish those MPs who break the rules and punish them properly.
I think you've misread my comment. When I said the PPE didn't exist, of course i knew it existed in lots of industries, healthcare being just one. I meant exactly what you've said here, there wasn't enough of it and new UK companies were set up just to produce the massive amount needed. Seeing as the companies didn't even exist it would have been hard for civil servants to have them already as contacts. Before the pandemic we produced just 1% of PPE here.
