Boss of US firm given £4bn in UK Covid contracts accused of squandering millions on jets and properties
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jun/17/boss-us-firm-uk-covid-contracts-accused-squandering-millions-on-jets-properties?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
Posted by ClassicFlavour
4 Comments
As with all these things, did he deliver what was asked for and at the agreed price? If yes, he’s allowed to make whatever profit he could get, and he’s allowed to spend that profit on whatever he wants. Same with Mone – if her dodgy company delivered to contract, then she shouldn’t be pursued. If some idiot wrote “300 tonnes of PVC aprons“ in the contract rather than “300 tonnes of sterile aprons” then more fool them.
The flip side is that the government could have spend months deliberating and getting everything nailed down. If they had done that, they would probably have wasted less money, but more people might have died.
Yes they were over priced but it appears they were delivered as promised and worked as they should have done.
I’m not actually bothered that proper purchasing channels weren’t used because if you have ever been involved in government purchasing you will know that they simply aren’t geared up for this kind of thing. They are slow and and they had to act quickly because everyone else was trying to do the same.
The fact that I could get a pack of tests that worked delivered quickly and for free is really good. There was plenty that the government got wrong during covid but the testing we had available was really impressive.
TLDR version:
Dominic Cummings received an email from Chinese-American Charles Huang’ british reps about making the Innova lateral flow tests.
Dominic was Chief adviser to the Prime Minister at the time:
* Special adviser to Education Secretary Michael Gove, 2010–2014;
* Campaign Director of Vote Leave, 2015–2016;
* Chief adviser to Prime Minister Boris Johnson, 2019–2020;
> Cummings said the government needed to buy these tests secretly, “without alerting the rest of the world”.
Not sound shady at all right? Don’t know what the above posters are taking.
Add it to the list.
A majority of covid contracts were likely purposely done in a way to let tory mates or tory donations to overcharge, pocket most of the money, do the bare basic.
Millions were wasted on unusuable PPE. That hospitial that was built in record time? Closed down a year or two later when really, it could have been either kept open or turned into a different facility for the NHS.