- Re: Outsourcing of test and trace fails Archived Message
- Outsourcing of test and trace fails - Mary November 21, 2020, 5:22 pm
Posted by Mary
on November 21, 2020, 5:33 pm, in reply to "Outsourcing of test and trace fails"
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'In a crisis that has squeezed so many, and which has cost people their jobs, their livelihoods, their businesses – as well as their loved ones and their lives – it’s unnerving to learn of those for whom Covid has been a cash bonanza. And yet there seems to be a curious pattern here. It could be Ayanda Capital, that purveyor of ultimately useless masks. Asked whether it might be relevant that the man who brokered the deal for Ayanda was also a government trade adviser, Ayanda’s chief executive told the BBC, “It’s a coincidence.” Just as it’s a coincidence that a lobbying firm, Hanbury Strategy, founded by a former Vote Leave buddy of Dominic Cummings, was handed contracts worth £640,000 without competitive tender. To say nothing of the £550,000 that went, also without competition, to Public First, the political consultancy whose two directors are former colleagues of Cummings’ patron Michael Gove. Just as it’s a coincidence that Kate Bingham, the “vaccine tsar”, is shelling out £670,000 of our money to a firm of PR consultants whose company secretary appears to be a longtime business associate of Cummings’ father-in-law. None of this is as florid, or as blatant, as the abuse of office we watched unfold in the Trump White House. But that difference can blind us to what is right before our eyes. The Good Law Project’s Jolyon Maugham says there is a reflexive impulse to say, “This is England, this doesn’t happen here. But that is a terrible complacency.” As Trump leaves the stage, we can be complacent no longer. It can happen here – and it has.' https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/nov/20/trump-johnson-sleaze-covid-nao-report-money What a stench. |
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