UK politics - Dry Your Eyes Mate, ...

[Spockydog]

2 minutes ago, Hereward said:

This line of thinking would be worrying for Tesco, Sainsbury’s et al, not to mention their customers! 
 

 

Eh? If this is a joke, I'm struggling to get it.

[Derfel Cadarn]

12 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

The entire process of outsourcing public services is extremely flawed and designed to fail. Companies are so desperate to win these contracts that they make a whole bunch of wild promises and then, well, we've seen the results all over the news this week.

There are some things that simply should not be handled by companies seeking to make profits from.

 

“Sure, we can help goods move between the UK and EU!”

”Cool, how many ferries do you have?”

”... “

[Proudfeet]

7 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

The entire process of outsourcing is extremely flawed and designed to fail. Companies are so desperate to win these contracts that they make a whole bunch of wild promises and then, well, we've seen the results all over the news this week.

There are some things that simply should not be handled by companies seeking to make profits from.

 

Sure. But I've just detailed why this isn't it. It won't help solve the issue of providing food, but the government can just withhold payment if they don't deliver. If you didn't give me what I asked for, I'm not paying you. Seems pretty simple. Its not like being late or having quality issues where you may get paid eventually or regardless which is where I see over promising come in.

I think that the problem here is that they did deliver what was agreed, outrageous as it is, or they never specified what would be delivered, which is also an outrage.

[Fragile Bird]

20 minutes ago, Proudfeet said:

Sure. But I've just detailed why this isn't it. It won't help solve the issue of providing food, but the government can just withhold payment if they don't deliver. If you didn't give me what I asked for, I'm not paying you. Seems pretty simple. Its not like being late or having quality issues where you may get paid eventually or regardless which is where I see over promising come in.

I think that the problem here is that they did deliver what was agreed, outrageous as it is, or they never specified what would be delivered, which is also an outrage.

Lol, did the government pay in advance?

[Spockydog]

Was reading an article yesterday about Covid-related public spending.

Matt Hancock's Department of Health has handed out £17 billion worth of Covid contracts, many to friends and acquaintances of UK ministers.

Some of these cases we already know about, and most are bad enough. Take Ayanda Capital, a Tory-linked firm given a £252 million contract to supply facemasks that could not be used by the NHS. Or PPE Medpro – set up by a former business associate of Conservative peer Baroness Mone, which was awarded contracts worth £200 million, just seven weeks after it was set up.  And let's not forget the landlord of Matt Hancock's local pub. He apparently got a multi-million pound contract after sending his governmental chum a whatsapp message.

On top of all this, there is still over £3 billion pounds of public money that is completely unaccounted for.

But The Good Law Project are chasing the details down. By law, the government has thirty days to publish, in full, the details of contracts awarded. They are ignoring this, and told TGLP that their claim for transparency in accordance with UK law “should not be used for the transparent purpose of trying to use the judicial process to embarrass the government at a time of national crisis“.

Can't wait for Matt Hancock's attempt to use that defence in an actual court of law.

[Heartofice]

30 minutes ago, Proudfeet said:

Sure. But I've just detailed why this isn't it. It won't help solve the issue of providing food, but the government can just withhold payment if they don't deliver. If you didn't give me what I asked for, I'm not paying you. Seems pretty simple. Its not like being late or having quality issues where you may get paid eventually or regardless which is where I see over promising come in.

I think that the problem here is that they did deliver what was agreed, outrageous as it is, or they never specified what would be delivered, which is also an outrage.

Well it’s a question of oversight really, I suspect a breakdown of communication somewhere. It’s very unlikely any of the management of the outsourced company genuinely believed it was ok to send people half a carrot, because the press from this is gonna destroy them.

They probably put out projected budgets and asked their staff to provide food based on that number, without really checking that what they were sending out was enough to feed an ant.

Im guessing a number of boxes were ticked and things were approved and  nobody even questioned it. That’s how most fuck ups happen in my experience, the problem is always someone else’s and there is a lack of culpability and questioning of decisions.

Outsourcing also means you end up with a lot of people who really don’t know what they are doing, making it up as they go along. Which would also explain a lot of this.

[Heartofice]

31 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

Was reading an article yesterday about Covid-related public spending.

Matt Hancock's Department of Health has handed out £17 billion worth of Covid contracts, many to friends and acquaintances of UK ministers.

Some of these cases we already know about, and most are bad enough. Take Ayanda Capital, a Tory-linked firm given a £252 million contract to supply facemasks that could not be used by the NHS. Or PPE Medpro – set up by a former business associate of Conservative peer Baroness Mone, which was awarded contracts worth £200 million, just seven weeks after it was set up.  And let's not forget the landlord of Matt Hancock's local pub. He apparently got a multi-million pound contract after sending his governmental chum a whatsapp message.

On top of all this, there is still over £3 billion pounds of public money that is completely unaccounted for.

But The Good Law Project are chasing the details down. By law, the government has thirty days to publish, in full, the details of contracts awarded. They are ignoring this, and told TGLP that their claim for transparency in accordance with UK law “should not be used for the transparent purpose of trying to use the judicial process to embarrass the government at a time of national crisis“.

Can't wait for Matt Hancock's attempt to use that defence in an actual court of law.

Well what does ‘Tory linked’ mean in this context because  the above mentions seem pretty tenuous. One of the chairs of 
Ayada capital is an advisor to the board of trade.. but so what?  
 

A former associate of Baroness Mone.. who’s job is what exactly? What was her role in the contract?

Also landlord of Matt Hancock’s local pub??? Like the use of the word ‘apparently’ there 

Look , not saying there isn’t a lot of chummy relationships happening when it comes to procurement, that’s how businsss works though, that’s why people build relationships so that it’s easier to delegate stuff and you don’t have to go looking for new companies every time. It happens all the time.
 

Also not saying there isn’t some level of corruption here, but at most a lot of this is really very tenuous , a lot of ‘this company’s CEO  once got on a bus with a Tory minister’ kind of thing. 
 

Also worth keeping in mind the situation. Massive panic for PPE etc, so not surprised the government doesn’t spend the next 6 months putting out an open tender for bids to all comers. Too much money gets thrown at the problem to the first people who’ll say they’ll sort it out.

[Spockydog]

Look, I get you want to argue with almost every single post I make on this forum, but really. 

The information is out there, if only you were to take off your blinkers. Just google Tory Covid Corruption and see for yourself.

So you don't think there is anything wrong with giving someone £250m to provide equipment that turns out to be useless. Shouldn't they at least be compelled to return some of the money?

So you don't think there is anything wrong with a brand-new company, owned by a friend of a Tory peer, being given hundreds of millions of pounds to supply medical equipment, despite having no experience in the field, or at least having to go through a tender process?

So you don't think an acquaintance and former neighbour of Matt Hancock (this is the pub landlord) supplying the government with tens of millions of vials for NHS Covid-19 tests despite having had no previous experience of producing medical supplies?

And yes, I get that there was a call to manufacturers for urgently required medical equipment but the entire process for awarding these contracts stinks to high heaven. This chumocracy shit is actually illegal.

Luckily, The Law does not give a toss what you think and Hancock and Johnson are going to have to answer for this. 

 

 

[mormont]

1 hour ago, Proudfeet said:

Sure. But I've just detailed why this isn't it. It won't help solve the issue of providing food, but the government can just withhold payment if they don't deliver. If you didn't give me what I asked for, I'm not paying you. Seems pretty simple. Its not like being late or having quality issues where you may get paid eventually or regardless which is where I see over promising come in.

I think that the problem here is that they did deliver what was agreed, outrageous as it is, or they never specified what would be delivered, which is also an outrage.

I understand that the government did not include penalty clauses in the deal. 

[Heartofice]

3 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

Look, I get you want to argue with almost every single post I make on this forum, but really. 

The information is out there, if only you were to take off your blinkers.

So you don't think there is anything wrong with giving someone £250m to provide equipment that turns out to be useless. Shouldn't they at least be compelled to return some of the money?

So you don't think there is anything wrong with a brand-new company, owned by a friend of a Tory peer, being given hundreds of millions of pounds to supply medical equipment, despite having no experience in the field, or at least having to go through a tender process?

So you don't think an acquaintance and former neighbour of Matt Hancock (this is the pub landlord) supplying the government with tens of millions of vials for NHS Covid-19 tests despite having had no previous experience of producing medical supplies?

And yes, I get that there was a call to manufacturers for urgently required medical equipment but the entire process for awarding contracts stinks to high heaven. This shit is actually illegal.

Luckily, The Law does not give a toss what you think and Hancock is going to have to answer for this. 

 

 

My point is that I suspect most of this is fuelled by laziness, desperation and incompetence, rather than the corruption you are alleging. 
 

And I would keep replying if you didn’t keep writing stuff that needed a reply 

[A wilding]

1 hour ago, Proudfeet said:

Sure. But I've just detailed why this isn't it. It won't help solve the issue of providing food, but the government can just withhold payment if they don't deliver. If you didn't give me what I asked for, I'm not paying you. Seems pretty simple. Its not like being late or having quality issues where you may get paid eventually or regardless which is where I see over promising come in.

The problem in the UK is that this ideal process is simply not being followed.

I think it would be quite difficult to think of a case where an outsourcing company has suffered a significant pecuniary hit for failing to deliver. Far more typical is them arguing that they have done the letter of the requirement; having their failure simply brushed under the rug; or successfully complaining that it was harder than they had thought and getting either more money or reduced requirements (or both).

[Spockydog]

For anyone who is actually interested, here's a really good piece on Tory Covid Corruption. You won't see anything like this in the UK media, so thanks to the New York Times for exposing this shit.

Waste, Negligence and Cronyism: Inside Britain’s Pandemic Spending

Quote

When the pandemic exploded in March, British officials embarked on a desperate scramble to procure the personal protective equipment, ventilators, coronavirus tests and other supplies critical to containing the surge. In the months following those fevered days, the government handed out thousands of contracts to fight the virus, some of them in a secretive “V.I.P. lane” to a select few companies with connections to the governing Conservative Party.

To shine a light on one of the greatest spending sprees in Britain’s postwar era, The New York Times analyzed a large segment of it, the roughly 1,200 central government contracts that have been made public, together worth nearly $22 billion. Of that, about $11 billion went to companies either run by friends and associates of politicians in the Conservative Party, or with no prior experience or a history of controversy. Meanwhile, smaller firms without political clout got nowhere.

“The government had license to act fast because it was a pandemic, but we didn’t give them permission to act fast and loose with public money,” said Meg Hillier, a lawmaker with the opposition Labour Party and chair of the powerful Public Accounts Committee. “We’re talking billions of pounds, and it’s quite right that we ask questions about how that money was spent.”

The procurement system was cobbled together during a meeting of anxious bureaucrats in late March, and a wealthy former investment banker and Conservative Party grandee, Paul Deighton, who sits in the House of Lords, was later tapped to act as the government’s czar for personal protective equipment.

Eight months on, Lord Deighton has helped the government award billions of dollars in contracts –– including hundreds of millions to several companies where he has financial interests or personal connections.

Many companies and business people, often better qualified to produce P.P.E. but lacking political connections, had no access to the V.I.P. lane. Multibrands International, a British manufacturer that had been producing P.P.E. for China since December, was among them. Its owner, Rizwana Hussain, spent months trying to reach government officials through public channels.

Ms. Hussain had offered to supply the government starting in March, her emails show. She was still at it in early May when news broke that 400,000 protective gowns that the government ordered from Turkey had proved to be unusable. “I was so upset thinking, ‘Why are we listening to these disastrous happenings when we’re here and are offering our help?’” Ms. Hussain said.

She said that although her company could produce large quantities of P.P.E. at its factories in China and India, she never heard back from the government.

Government officials said that the high-priority lane was set up to efficiently prioritize credible offers of P.P.E. for the National Health Service, and that all proposals, whatever channel they went through, were assessed by the same standards.

But they have not released the names of the nearly 500 companies that made the V.I.P. list., fuelling questions of cronyism.

This article is backed up by actual facts and figures. 

[Spockydog]

13 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

My point is that I suspect most of this is fuelled by laziness, desperation and incompetence, rather than the corruption you are alleging. 
 

 

No, most of it is fuelled by greed and corruption.

[Heartofice]

Just now, Spockydog said:

No most of it is fuelled by greed and corruption.

I know that is your opinion 

[Hereward]

1 hour ago, Spockydog said:

Eh? If this is a joke, I'm struggling to get it.

You seemed to be suggesting that some things are too important, like providing food, to be left to companies looking to make a profit. Like Tesco, Sainsbury’s, etc.

[Spockydog]

4 minutes ago, Hereward said:

You seemed to be suggesting that some things are too important, like providing food, to be left to companies looking to make a profit. Like Tesco, Sainsbury’s, etc.

Don't be absurd. I can choose to buy my food from whomever I like, - Tesco, Sainsburys, Waitrose, Aldi, Morrisons, Lidl, or countless other food outlets. 

Can you spot the difference between that and people receiving these dreadful excuses for food parcels?

[Hereward]

1 minute ago, Spockydog said:

Don't be absurd. I can choose to buy my food from whomever I like, - Tesco, Sainsburys, Waitrose, Alo, Lidl, or countless other food outlets. 

Can you spot the difference between that and people receiving these dreadful excuses for food parcels?

The hostility is unnecessary. It was a joke. That said, I would suggest that the more important aspect of providing needed support to suffering people is the ability of the providers to source, select and distribute the food at a reasonable price, not whether the company is one that makes a profit or not. Therefore, the job would be better given to a capitalist outfit such as Tesco than some ideologically pure amateurs.

[BigFatCoward]

31 minutes ago, Hereward said:

Therefore, the job would be better given to a capitalist outfit such as Tesco than some ideologically pure amateurs.

Imagine if we just gave the money to the individuals direct and let them have the dignity of doing their own shopping. 

[Maltaran]

Just now, BigFatCoward said:

Imagine if we just gave the money to the individuals direct and let them have the dignity of doing their own shopping. 

But then they might spend it on *gasp* inappropriate things! *clutches pearls*

[Hereward]

2 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

Imagine if we just gave the money to the individuals direct and let them have the dignity of doing their own shopping. 

I agree. 
 

Edit: Though on reflection, as I imagine people in that bad a situation probably owe a lot of money, possibly to even more than usually dodgy people, help in kind rather than cash might be better. But I have no ideological dog in this fight.