The obscenity of unfettered capitalism in the hands of this Tory Government

 Regular readers are well aware that both Wilma and I have left of centre leanings, as indeed have the majority of Scots. The fact that we've not had a Tory led country here since 1955 says it all really.

The Scottish Tory party led by the latest substitute Douglas Ross being about the fifth in a little over 5 years, the Pàrtaidh Tòraidheach na h-Alba is their name in Scots Gaelic from whence the name "Tory" comes, and in truth the Irish Gaelic Toraidheach means Outlaw/Robber !

I digress a bit there, nonetheless the principal Tory Party are the Government of the U.K. (for the time being) and are led by Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson. It is this Government that has been blatantly lining the pockets of their cronies during this Global Pandemic of Covid 19;

In one case, Saiger, a Miami jewellery designer that received £250m of contracts to provide PPE to the NHS, paid £21m to a consultant to help broker a deal for the kit. The payout has attracted widespread attention after the case became the subject of a legal dispute in the US.

 In a report released on Wednesday, the NAO highlighted contracts where the supplier had a close link to Whitehall. 

They included a £550,000 consulting deal with Public First, whose two directors previously worked for Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove, and a technology agreement worth about £1m with Faculty, whose shareholders until recently included Theodore Agnew, another Cabinet Office minister. £350m Value of the contract given to PestFix to supply PPE. PestFix has net assets of £18,000 The Cabinet Office “failed to document any consideration of any potential conflict of interest” and “failed to document why it chose this particular supplier” when it awarded the contracts, the NAO said. 

 In a third example, it said health department officials failed to consider a potential conflict of interest in a £252m contract to supply PPE with Ayanda Capital, a private investment firm. The deal was controversial because Ayanda’s board is advised by Andrew Mills, at the time an adviser to the Board of Trade. The watchdog also highlighted lucrative PPE contracts awarded outside of usual procurement methods, including a “high-priority lane” for companies referred by government officials, ministers’ offices, MPs and peers. Such companies were 10 times more likely to have obtained contracts than suppliers who pitched through ordinary channels, the NAO found. 

A person close to the report said there were “no rules” for using the high-priority referrals system, which meant there was “a risk of it being open to abuse or inconsistency”. 

 In one case, PestFix, a pest control supplies company in Littlehampton, Sussex, was “added to the high-priority lane in error without a referral”, the NAO said. This resulted in PestFix, which has net assets of £18,000, being awarded a contract to supply PPE worth £350m to the NHS. 

 In one case, a £3m contract with consultancy firm Deloitte to support the procurement of PPE was not signed until four months after the work had begun. “A clear trail of documents to support key procurement decisions was sometimes missing,” it added. “Financial and company due diligence checks were not always completed on suppliers before the award of contracts in the early weeks of PPE procurement.” It censured the government for failing to publish contracts in a “timely manner” after it found that just a quarter had been published within its 90-day target

More than half of the 1,664 contracts agreed with private companies between March and July have still not been published. 

 Meg Hillier, chair of the House of Commons public accounts committee, said: “Even in an emergency, public procurements need to get the basics right. Clearly, too many didn’t. The mistakes revealed by this report are likely to only be the tip of the iceberg.” She added the “high-priority lane” was “bad enough . . . but the failure to track how half the companies had ended up on it made it impossible to ensure proper safeguards were in place”. “The government needs to come clean and immediately publish all the contracts it’s awarded so far.” 

If the stench of blatant corruption hasn't driven you to put your head down the toilet bowl by now, then we also have a Minister of State accused of bullying and the same sneering, craven witch who has already been sacked from high office in the UK Government

The final slap in the face for the common herd is that Bojo has decreed via Rishi Sunak that there will be a public pay freeze for circa 3 years and a cessation to any increase in the Aid Budget but that there will be a £16.5 billion increase in "Defence Spending". 

I'm willing to bet that there will not be humongous rises in that sum for the average squaddie, sailor or airman ! There will be though, enormous expenditure to purchase the latest and most expensive equipment that America can manufacture and sell to their "close ally"

This is the true obscenity I referred to initially, the whole medical and care sector of society who've sacrificed life, limb and mental care to fight this pervasive and deadly virus have been rewarded with "Clapping" but no financial gratitude whilst Boris's MP's have yet again already awarded themselves a pay-rise and allowed the Ministry of Defence (who frankly couldn't buy sex in a brothel) unfettered spending.