New wave of Tory government sleaze?
ACCUSATIONS of incompetence are often levelled at the dismal duo of Johnson and Cummings, but the real issue goes much deeper and is more sinister.
Cummings outsourced government contracts to private companies, often without competitive tendering. Companies that often had contributed to Tory Party funds or specifically to Boris Johnson’s leadership campaign.
Frequently these companies had little or no expertise in that business and struggled to meet targets, but were still paid. These companies included some managed by Cummings’ Leave cronies.
This chaotic outsourcing contributed to Britain having the greatest number of coronavirus deaths in Europe, with excess deaths soaring to above 60,000!
The shortage of personal protection equipment caused the deaths of hundreds of NHS staff.
The delays in its arrival were largely caused by the outsourcing of its delivery.
The latest Covid-19 Test and Track fiasco is a perfect illustration. NHSX was developed by one of Cummings’ Leave cronies. It should have been the keystone of the government’s strategy, ensuring a much smoother transition out of lockdown. It has proved unworkable.
Lockdown was seriously undermined, not so much by Cummings’ drive to Durham, but by the prime minister’s subsequent abject failure to sack him for ignoring the rules, opening the floodgates to the present crisis where government coronavirus “advice” is now ignored by many.
Johnson’s weak dependency on this adviser is dragging him down, eroding his authority and credibility still further.
Margaret Thatcher sacked a minister, described as her so-called soul mate, when he committed a sexual indiscretion. She was definitely not dependent.
Boris Johnson’s recent failure to sack Robert Kendrick when he undermined his ministerial integrity by fast tracking a billionaire’s development plans, suggest that Johnson is colluding with Cummings’ scheme to siphon off government contracts to his cronies!
Is Boris Johnson seeking to encourage a new wave of Tory government sleaze?
A key factor behind Covid-19 was human activity encroaching into the habitats of other animals.
That should serve as a wake-up call regarding the dangers of not leaving space for nature to thrive.
We need to strike a better balance between land that needs to be intensively managed and mown (such as football pitches) and land that does not (such as the peripheries of our green spaces).
As a society the idea of keeping spaces ‘tidy’ has been drummed into us for so long we tend to forget to ask ourselves what else a piece of land can offer beyond simply being ‘green’.
Bristolian. Back in the mists of time that would surely have included colourful ‘boozers’/corner/hobbies shops/ironmongers, and a myriad of architectural nooks and crannies that epitomised a vibrant localised humanitarian city.
My youthful memories have been erased and replaced with an abundance of graffitied (Stokes Croft!) buildings and office blocks/ high rise flats. Indeed, Simon Jenkins writing in The Sunday Times (June 21) wrote: “The elected mayor of Bristol, Marvin Rees, is building a 26-storey block of 375 mostly luxury flats bang in the historic centre of his city.” Add to this a growing reputation for ‘demos’ by the disaffected have left us planning to emigrate to nearby Keynsham. I shall remain a Bristolian in name only for the beloved city of my birth no longer exists! will happen on January 1st 2021, the day our transition period ends.
This is an abridgement of the statement made clear by Mr Barnier to the British side.
“All products coming into the Single Market through the borders in Ireland, Belgium, the Netherlands, and France or elsewhere will have to be checked, which of course is not the case today,” Mr Barnier said, according to a transcript of the June 23 meeting, which was published on Monday.
“We have recruited customs officers, 750 in the Netherlands, 700 in France, close to 400 in Belgium and many in Ireland as well, because we will have to carry out checks on
products coming into the European Union,” Mr Barnier said.
“We are ready,” Mr Barnier said, “everyone has to accept their responsibilities. We have accepted ours... If there is no deal, there would be tariffs and quotas on top of that, which would be very cumbersome and very complicated but we would have to do that.”
Britain will be treated like any other country outside of the EU.
Failure to strike a trade deal by the end of the transition period will mean the UK and EU trading on less lucrative WTO terms with tariffs and quotas being imposed.
Customs and haulage industry leaders warned in May that the UK was falling “many thousands” short of its target to train an estimated 50,000 new customs agents that would be needed after Brexit.
British businesses fear that the UK government’s planned entirely new IT system to check goods heading to the European Union won’t be ready in time, it was reported last week.
Readers of this news in Northern Ireland will now have to be reconciled to the fact that customs checks will take place between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
The annual wages bill for 50,000 British customs agents would be of the order of £15 billion. This cost, together with the farm subsidy costs to replace the EU CAP payments to farmers, would have to be set against the net saving we make by no longer paying the annual EU membership costs. As has been mentioned on a number of occasions, the EU has repeated it is fully geared now to implement all that needs to be done to bring in customs checks on British goods entering the EU on 1st January 2021.
The state of British readiness still seems to be a state secret. The end of seamless movement of goods between Britain and the EU will seriously increase the turnaround time of cross channel shipping.