Cronyism is costing lives

A GOVERNMENT minister has urged people to report their neighbours to the police if they are breaking the lockdown.

Yet the former chief crown prosecutor for NW England says the police and the Crown Prosecution Service closed ranks to protect Mr Cummings, the over-powerful advisor who pulls the strings of our short-attentionspan Prime Minister, after he escaped prosecution for his drive from London to Durham with his family while they were suffering from Covid symptoms.

Seems as if there’s one rule for ordinary people and another for the privileged.

The same phenomenon occurs when the Government awards multi-million pound contracts to associates of the Conservative party, without competitive tendering, because they say they need to move quickly.

They haven’t moved so quickly with testing for Covid, a programme managed by one of Mr Johnson’s cronies and which is a shambles.

Awarding contracts to private companies whilst ignoring local public health teams is costing lives.

The Government is now blaming too many people for coming forward for tests, but the return of children to school in September has been utterly predictable for months, children have gone back to school every September for the last century, yet the inevitable resulting increase in demands for testing seem to have caught ministers by surprise.

Old Etonian hedge fund manager Jacob Rees-Mogg MP, appointed by Mr Johnson as leader of the House of Commons, has criticised people for complaining about the chaos and inefficiency in the testing system and basically told the public to stop complaining and praise the Government.

That is something I cannot do as lives are being wasted by this inept Government.

Name and address supplied RUSSIAN THREAT

IT’S now clear that Russian opposition leader Alexander Navalny was poisoned with the same Novichok nerve gas which was used in the Russian attack on KGB defectors in Salisbury which killed Dawn Sturgess. Russia also murdered Alexander Litvinenko with radioactive polonium in London in 2006.

Yet Boris Johnson delayed publication of a report into Russian interference in British politics having effectively stopped MI5 making any investigations, and Russians linked to Vladimir Putin continue to fund the Conservative

Party, including the wife of a former ally of Putin who paid the Tories £90,000 to play tennis with the Prime Minister.

When are our leaders going to take the Russian threat seriously rather than playing footsie with Putin’s friends for short-term advantage?

Name and address supplied UK FARMERS UNDERCUT

THERE is a danger that the Government’s Agriculture Bill may undercut British farmers with higher standards by authorising the import of American chlorinewashed chicken, hormone-treated beef, pork from pigs locked into steel cages, and eggs from barren battery cages – all currently illegal in Britain.

Please sign the RSPCA petition against this at www.rspca.org.uk/ agribill.

Christopher Clayton