The Conservative Party

[mat]

The reckless cunts have learnt fuck all over the last year.

Leaks of what they will be doing over the next few weeks being fed to some press to see public reaction.

Giving false hope and security when we are still way off a safe level of cases to consider any easing of lockdown.

This March 8th reopening of care homes and schools is so flawed without the relevent people involved vacinated.

Easter is 2 weeks after march 8th, stay closed till then and roll out mass vacination in the schools of all staff re-opeing after the hoildays

The speaker will be having the PM's balls on a platter about it as well.

Getting sick to fuck of them ignoring parliament and leaking details to Kueensberg,Peston, and other client journalists they use.

 

[Vic]

we have benched a huge amount of expertise for favour of politically close incompetent companies.

That's the heart of it

 

[meltonblue]

£1.7bn of PPE contracts went through VIP 'high-priority lane'

https://www.cips.org/The%20value%20of%20government%20contracts%20for%20personal%20protective%20equipment%20(PPE)%20that%20went%20through%20the%20VIP%20%E2%80%9Chigh-priority%20lane%E2%80%9D%20was%20%C2%A31.7bn,%20according%20to%20MPs.ashx?width=300&quality=80

www.cips.org

Figure 6 in this NAO document shows the source (albeit not all sources were recorded so there is an element of working with the data we have)

“
Fewer than 250 sources for these leads were recorded: 144 leads came from
the private offices of ministers, including referrals from MPs who had gone
to ministers with a possible manufacturer in their constituency and where
private individuals had written to the minister or the private office with offers of help; 64 leads were direct from MPs or members of the House of Lords not in government; 21 leads were from officials, such as a Department of International Trade network that was looking for sources worldwide, and the private office of the Permanent Secretary of the Department of Health & Social Care; and three leads were from other identified sources that did not fall into the categories above.”

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www.nao.org.uk

Right but you were stating the breakdown of where the contracts awarded were referred from, not just into the inbox as a whole. I was wondering where that came from.

 

[Vic]

Are there still containers full of PPE clogging up docks?

 

[metalblue]

Exactly. Your reasoning is sound and logical and what should have been done for PPE and T&T. It is fair easier and better judgement to go with a company or person with proven expertise instead of trusting a bad supplier cause of his close political links. The same problems in T&T are evident in PPE, by contrast the vaccine success has been driven by experts at Oxford University and AZ. Thank god they went direct to the best people without consideration for their political ties. We have some best scientific centres in the world, genuinely the UK is a powerhouse in scientific research, testing and manufacturing yet we have benched a huge amount of expertise for favour of politically close incompetent companies.

In relation to your second point what do you consider corruption, where is your bar? If it is that Matt Hancock has taken a brown envelope off someone out the back of Downing Street, then no that is probably not going to happen. What about if his contracts unfairly awarded push up the revenue of these companies, then when he leaves government he takes a position on the board of 7 different companies each paying him a million a year for one day a weeks work. Is that corruption?

The problem with the current government is there is a huge amount of smoke around a number prominent figures. There also seems to be little accountability from Johnson awarding his mistress contracts in IT and she could barely turn on a computer, Rees Mogg involved in a hedge fund (how that is legal I will never know) to Jenrick sitting beside someone at dinner an then magically they get a favour done. The monetization of political positions is a huge problem, it is not unique to the tory party (Blair is a good example) or the UK but this cabinet are especially blatant.

On the topic of corruption my bar is of any contract given where the company was demonstrably not the best placed to provide the goods or services (ie clearly inferior in all respects) and was given the contract on the basis of a “quiet word”. The person awarding the contract does not need to have benefitted directly from it.

 

[metalblue]

Right but you were stating the breakdown of where the contracts awarded were referred from, not just into the inbox as a whole. I was wondering where that came from.

250 referrals of which 144 came from Tory MPs or peers etc. So you can work out what % of referrals came from different sources and extrapolate that % out to the contracts awarded. Statically doing it that way has a +/- 16% margin of error based on the number of data points.

Of course it might be only referrals from Tory MPs ended up being awarded contracts however that would be statistically an outlier and I would strongly question why...equally perhaps they all came from non-Tory MPs/peers but again you’d have to question that

 

[bluethrunthru]

We left to avoid being "ruled by the unelected"

 

[meltonblue]

250 referrals of which 144 came from Tory MPs or peers etc. So you can work out what % of referrals came from different sources and extrapolate that % out to the contracts awarded. Statically doing it that way has a +/- 16% margin of error based on the number of data points.

Of course it might be only referrals from Tory MPs ended up being awarded contracts however that would be statistically an outlier and I would strongly question why...equally perhaps they all came from non-Tory MPs/peers but again you’d have to question that

Ok, I thought you might have done that. So to clarify, your argument for why it’s tripe to think the awarding of contracts and referrals potentially didn’t keep to that statistical model is to state what the results of that statistical model would be if it played out as it usually would, rather than what actually happened (which we don’t know due to the lack of transparency?)

The whole argument is people questioning whether it did follow that, that’s why the case was brought in the first place. If the government has followed its own processes and law then there wouldn’t be any need to question as we’d have all the details.

 

[metalblue]

Ok, I thought you might have done that. So to clarify, your argument for why it’s tripe to think the awarding of contracts and referrals potentially didn’t keep to that statistical model is to state what the results of that statistical model would be if it played out as it usually would, rather than what actually happened (which we don’t know due to the lack of transparency?)

The whole argument is people questioning whether it did follow that, that’s why the case was brought in the first place. If the government has followed its own processes and law then there wouldn’t be any need to question as we’d have all the details.

No. What I said was a load of old tripe was this

You really know fuck all don't you? Or your love of this govt is blinding you. They DIDN'T go to the market. They opened a special "pipeline" where I’m people and organisations who had links to the Tory Party or who were "known" to Ministers, MP's and officials and that provided the overriding access to billions£ of public money.

And the evidence we all accept as impartial backs up that this is a load of old tripe. It wasn’t some sort of special Tory pipeline for Tory supporting people to get contracts. It was a pipeline where ALL MPs/peers/ specialists/officials could make recommendations on suppliers.

The last part of your post is important. Did the government act illegally in awarding contracts as per this tweet from a lord of the realm?

No.

Have they acted unlawfully in not publishing details of these contracts within 30 days? Absolutely they have and that has been proven in a court of law. And I fully support that government being held to account. They should now ensure they comply.

 

[bluethrunthru]

Its funny coz I can't find any reference to any opposition MP's or shadow cabinet ministers being named as having used the special pipeline - plenty of this though

• A deal with research firm Public First, whose owners had "previously advised or worked with" Cabinet minister Michael Gove.
• Artificial intelligence company Faculty, which was awarded contracts worth almost £3m. Cabinet Office minister Lord Agnew owned a £90,000 stake in the firm but has since relinquished it.
• Ayanda Capital supplied 50 million masks that could not be used for their original purpose at a cost of £155m. The deal was brokered by a businessman who was an adviser to the government's Board of Trade at the time.