UK government broke the law by failing to disclose PPE contracts, court rules

[BangkokReady]

It's always funny to try and explain the difference in corruption between Thailand and the UK.

 

"Well there's still corruption, but only rich and powerful people are allowed to be corrupt.  Normal people can't."

 

And it's supposed to be better.

[Sujo]

5 minutes ago, BangkokReady said:

It's always funny to try and explain the difference in corruption between Thailand and the UK.

 

"Well there's still corruption, but only rich and powerful people are allowed to be corrupt.  Normal people can't."

 

And it's supposed to be better.

Its also funny how in thailand they.get away with it.

 

In UK the court finds them guilty.

 

Go figure.

[BangkokReady]

1 minute ago, Sujo said:

Its also funny how in thailand they.get away with it.

 

In UK the court finds them guilty.

 

Go figure.

 

Yup.  The perpetrators will be punished severely and will never do it again. ???? /s

 

Are the visas easier to get in cloud cuckoo land than in Thailand? ????

[Rookiescot]

29 minutes ago, Sujo said:

A judge does not decide on whether a law is reasonable. They decide on the law.

 

A jury decides reasonable, as in reasonable doubt.

 

A judge has no option but to rule on law. At sentencing they can consider circumstances. But that is a different issue.

 

To put it bluntly. A judge rules on law. A jury rules on facts.

 

A jury rules on the evidence presented to them which sadly is not always the facts.

Hence the high profile examples of people being wrongly convicted. 

[7by7]

7 hours ago, Kwasaki said:

<snip>

What do the UK public think, they couldn't care less less as long as NHS & health workers were getting protection.

 Except, as has been shown, this cronyism resulted not only in millions of pounds being wasted, but also in delays in health workers getting the PPE they needed because that supplied by BoJo's mates was useless!

 

How many have died because of this corruption? From last July, UK among highest COVID-19 health worker deaths in the world

Quote

The 61-page report - Exposed, Silenced, Attacked: Failures to protect health and essential workers during the pandemic - shows that, with at least 540 health and social workers having died from COVID-19 in England and Wales alone, the UK is second only to Russia, which has recorded 545 health worker deaths.

 

[Sujo]

3 minutes ago, Rookiescot said:

 

A jury rules on the evidence presented to them which sadly is not always the facts.

Hence the high profile examples of people being wrongly convicted. 

Its a standard of the law. I was just saying.

 

A jury decides the facts presented. The judge decides on the law.

 

Both sides can get it wrong. But the judge decides law and determined the govt broke it.

 

There is no reasonable concept in determining the law.

[ukrules]

23 hours ago, stevenl said:

This is about the government's refusal to disclose, after the fact,, where they bought and why.

I believe they missed a reporting deadline by about a week, nothing about hiding anything...how do you think they managed to take action?

 

If they wanted to cover it up then nobody would ever know.

[Sujo]

14 minutes ago, ukrules said:

I believe they missed a reporting deadline by about a week, nothing about hiding anything...how do you think they managed to take action?

 

If they wanted to cover it up then nobody would ever know.

Someone did and the court ruled it illegal.

 

Law and order.

[Rookiescot]

23 minutes ago, ukrules said:

I believe they missed a reporting deadline by about a week, nothing about hiding anything...how do you think they managed to take action?

 

If they wanted to cover it up then nobody would ever know.

 

Surely the party of law and order which the Conservatives proclaim themselves to be, would never engage in such activities as giving tax payers cash to cronies and friends?

Without doubt such an indomitable institution such as the Conservative and unionist party would never hive out tax payers cash to line the pockets of people who are indeed funders of the afore mentioned Conservative and unionists party.

Surely if another country such as Germany were to offer its track and trace software free to the UK then in no circumstances would 22 million pounds be spaffed up the wall developing our own system which still does not work.

[Kwasaki]

1 hour ago, Sujo said:

A judge does not decide on whether a law is reasonable. They decide on the law.

 

A jury decides reasonable, as in reasonable doubt.

 

A judge has no option but to rule on law. At sentencing they can consider circumstances. But that is a different issue.

 

To put it bluntly. A judge rules on law. A jury rules on facts.

Well done. ????

[JamesH]

 

[bkkcanuck8]

58 minutes ago, JamesH said:

 

Wow the health ministry is apparently made up of one small team that can only do one thing at a time.... I did not know the UK had such a slim administration.  There are contracts that have been signed for PPE with people who have contacts in government - that have no experience in that industry... that to me smells of corruption...   Transparency and accountability... without those you end up in a corrupt kleptocracy. 

Edited February 21, 2021 by bkkcanuck8

[7by7]

7 hours ago, ukrules said:

I believe they missed a reporting deadline by about a week, nothing about hiding anything...how do you think they managed to take action?

 

If they wanted to cover it up then nobody would ever know.

 

Difficult to cover up when the national Audit Office discovered it following enquiries from members of the public!

 

Personally I'm not that concerned by the government being late in reporting.

 

What concerns me is the millions of pounds of taxpayers money wasted on unsuitable PPE and the deaths of health workers caused by this blatant cronyism.

[placeholder]

On 2/20/2021 at 9:18 AM, 4MyEgo said:

 

This goes on in every government, we only hear about things like this when pressure is applied or someone gets caught with their finger in the cookie jar, and when you weigh up the jail time, well it can work out to 2 million pounds a year for sitting in a cell, eating crappy food and bending over for some, now for 2 million pounds a year x 5 years, would be tempting for some, I suppose they could call it early retirement ????

 

Good thing you're not invoking empty generalizations to mitigate the offense.

[Sujo]

17 hours ago, BangkokReady said:

 

Yup.  The perpetrators will be punished severely and will never do it again. ???? /s

 

Are the visas easier to get in cloud cuckoo land than in Thailand? ????

where did i mention punishment? 

[sandyf]

21 hours ago, BangkokReady said:

It's always funny to try and explain the difference in corruption between Thailand and the UK.

Spot on. As I tried to imply in another thread it is all about perception.

There is a mentality that can only see handing over the so called brown envelope as corruption, paying someone else to hand over the envelope is not seen in the same way. 

In the UK the envelope comes in a variety of guises.

[bkkcanuck8]

2 hours ago, sandyf said:

Spot on. As I tried to imply in another thread it is all about perception.

There is a mentality that can only see handing over the so called brown envelope as corruption, paying someone else to hand over the envelope is not seen in the same way. 

In the UK the envelope comes in a variety of guises.

I agree with you on that, there is a lot of corruption in many western countries - it is just 'made legal' in some cases and in other cases there is no 'direct link' (i.e. quid pro quo) -- just an understanding -- through buying access. 

 

Examples of 'made legal' was that for the longest time in the USA effectively insider trading was not illegal if done by Congressmen but always illegal by individuals so that you could effectively 'bribe' people with information - which politicians use to make lots of money through the markets...  There is a reason why most Congressmen leave office much richer than on entry (vs any other non-political profession).  It took a lot of pressure to finally force congress to change the laws but then they are still related to direct insider information for a given company not things that would affect things sector wide (like advance knowledge - with regards to coronavirus impact). 

 

Most companies don't give money to political campaigns out of the goodness of their heart, it is to buy direct access to the politicians (country-wide) to influence business decisions.  There is always an understanding that they payback on investment will be greater than the cost.  The payback could be as simple as having to play the game to prevent other competitors in an industry from having undue influence against their own interest - the 'honest' buying of politicians... but it is as often or more that they are expecting a payback once in office.  This money are like drugs to a politician, if they don't give a return on their investment ... then the money gets cut off ... and no politician can afford that as that might lead to being out of office (the same effect as withdrawals for drug addicts). 

 

In the UK, there seems to have been a lot of contracts that ended up with closer associates as normal... and some of them had little or no experience (they effectively were expecting to just source PPE from China and turn it around - something that the bureaucrats could have done much cheaper).  In many cases the contracts did not deliver what was contracted for - or substandard PPE -- costing taxpayers money to help those connected make money. 

 

Until there is a zero tolerance to all of this, then there is no hope of eliminating this 'hidden' corruption... just because it is hidden does not make it not corruption.

 

 

[BangkokReady]

8 hours ago, Sujo said:

where did i mention punishment? 

 

Where did I say you did?

 

Without some sort of consequence, pointing out that a court found them guilty while the same doesn't happen in Thailand is meaningless, particularly as a rebuttal to what I had originally written.

[Red Forever]

On 2/20/2021 at 2:54 PM, ukrules said:

Unlike the EU they took direct and immediate action instead of waiting for committee meetings.

 

Maybe it cost a bit more, who cares, they got what they needed.

 

No good deed goes unpunished so here we have a hard left winger government hating 'Jolyon Maugham' doing what he does best - hating government.

I note that this guy was booted out of his chambers where he's a barrister due to being such an embarrassment and an ongoing boycott against them due to him. The guy is a cancer.

Yes yes we get that you are a hater of lefties and this guy Maugham in particular but what have you to say on the proven corruption of Johnson's cabinet in handing out contracts worth billions to their right wing cronies and doners to the Tory party. These cronies and doners having no expertise in procurement, production or delivery of PPE is worrying to say the least.