Page 62 of Coronavirus, anyone starting to get worried?

See this twitter thread (if you already haven't):

https://twitter.com/JolyonMaugham/status/1291244082145177600

Jo Maugham QC (Good law project) suing govt over this. And thank God someone is or they'd just do their usual 'move on' and get away with it.

Like many things, this is probably not intentionally dodgy nepotism by people in this government, it's just this is how they have conducted their lives for their entire lives and they don't know any different.

This of course doesn't make it right, and we all do the same thing on a local level. When we want our plumbing fixed, and a friend of the family is a plumber, unless they are terrible we go to them.

Things just get very different when the money involved is more than a few hundred quid and it's not your money. :p


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Quote:
alfie noakes says...
"Jo Maugham QC (Good law project) suing govt over this. And thank God someone is or they'd just do their usual 'move on' and get away with it."
Has he actually won a case yet?

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Si Wooldridge
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Don't think this is at all like going to such a plumber Rob.
There are laws and policies in place to stop precisely this sort of thing. Single source for something like this, that isn't even fit for purpose. Wow.

Ste

Quote:
sj says...
"Don't think this is at all like going to such a plumber Rob"
The point I'm making is, the people in charge have grown up scratching each other's backs, when they weren't stabbing each other in them. This is normal for them.

It's completely wrong, but you get what you vote for. Well I think that only ever happened to me in one election my entire life, but...


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Quote:
sj says...
"There are laws and policies in place to stop precisely this sort of thing. Single source for something like this, that isn't even fit for purpose. Wow."
From Jo Maugham's thread:

Quote:
Govt bypassed normal procurement procedures that exist to guard against waste and cronyism to buy its entire predicted annual consumption – at elevated pandemic levels – of FFP2 facemasks from one adviser/supplier

What sort of financial loss does this represent? We calculate between £156m and £177m of public funds. On a single contract - entered into with the vehicle of one of Liz Truss' advisers.

I suspect you'll find that normal procurement rules were put aside during the declared national emergency that is COVID-19.

You can argue whether this is right or wrong, but I think this is why.

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Si Wooldridge
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The only reason I can think of them feeling they needed to put rules aside is due to years and years of incompetence and not managing to maintain anything close to the stocks of such items that they should have been doing.
And even that doesn't absolve them from ignoring due process and then ordering goods that were not fit for purpose.
Scary to think how many mates have profited by millions over this while the rest suffer.

Ste

Quote:
sj says...
"And even that doesn't absolve them from ignoring due process and then ordering goods that were not fit for purpose"
I think there is a difference between, "Hey NHS who know what you need, here is a large some of money to get what you need ASAP!" and, "Oh my mate says he can get this stuff for us even though his company has no proven track record of procuring PPE, lets give him a million quid"

It's a bit like procuring transport from a ferry company that, I don't know, has never owned or operated a ferry.

Circumventing rules because these are desperate times is one thing, swapping due diligence for no diligence is inexcusable.


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No, apparently it's fine, acceptable and cool to selectively ignore all that.
As is to desperately scrabble around to justify any decision made.

Ste