Declan Hayes
Before looking at Ukraine’s government warrants, which gives the game away to anyone with even a rudimentary financial or mathematical background, let’s just quickly survey Kiev’s empty coffers.
The ANC is so out of touch with reality that it is now firmly ensconced in the realm of farce. The need for credible alternatives could hardly be more urgent.
The ANC has destroyed or severely damaged the post office, the national airline, the railways, the electricity system and some of our most crucial hospitals. It was recently announced that the deterioration of the country’s network of weather stations has reached a critical point. Many public buildings, as well as other infrastructure, have been abandoned and then taken apart, sometimes brick by brick, by people who have no stake in the established order – such as it is – and take what they can, when they can, to get by.
In the space of little more than two years, Boris Johnson has wrecked any notion of decency or moral authority in the seat of power. As if illegally proroguing parliament, lying to the Queen and the House of Commons or enabling corruption with VIP lanes for cronies wasn’t bad enough – now we have something even more scandalous as if that was possible. A shadow government of ultra-wealthy donors is shaping public health and economic policy.
If you have a bottomless pit of money, you can break the law with impunity by making it too expensive for people to go to Court. We increasingly see conduct with that flavour from this Government – but nothing quite like this: Government has estimated it will spend a staggering £1.2 million defending a challenge from Good Law Project. We only expect the hearing to take one day and the facts are simple. When the case was stayed, the costs were about £30,000. They repeatedly refused to give us the estimates of their costs so we could apply for a cap. Then, they told us they had spent over £600,000 and were continuing to spend.
By TruePublica: The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) support ministers in leading the nation’s health and social care and in their words – “to help people live more independent, healthier lives for longer.” Unfortunately, corruption by these ministers overtook them and billions in taxpayer funds have been blown.
The Government wasted over £9.9 billion on PPE, which is more than it would cost to give every nurse in the NHS a 100 per cent bonus on their salary.
The figure comes from the Department of Health’s Annual Report, which reveals it spent:
Cressida Dick has finally confirmed that the Met Police will investigate the parties held in No 10 Downing Street and Whitehall after we initiated formal legal proceedings against them.
A leaked document has revealed which Conservative MPs and Peers funnelled companies through a ‘VIP lane’ for lucrative PPE contracts, without competition. A staggering £1.6 billion worth of contracts were awarded as a result of referrals from just ten politicians at the heart of the Conservative party. The leaked list of the 47 companies in the VIP lane, first seen by Politico, can be found here.
This is a story that everyone in the country should hear. We’ve joined up with Led By Donkeys to expose the truth about the Government’s secret back-channel which allowed friends of the Conservative Party and other politically connected suppliers to secure billions of pounds of PPE contracts.
16 May 2021 — Good Law Project
On Tuesday, our legal challenge to the PPE procurement scandal will be heard in the High Court. It’s the first day of a mammoth five day hearing.
13 May 2021 — Good Law Project
Good Law Project has uncovered remarkable evidence that a Tory Minister brought a former Chair of the Tory Party, a man who now runs a lobbying firm, into the heart of Government to work on the massive multi-billion PPE procurement process. Having got his feet under the table that former Chair lobbied to win PPE contracts for at least one, and possibly a number, of clients of his lobbying firm.
17 April 2021 — Good Law Project
The Greensill scandal has once again exposed cronyism right at the heart of Government. The more we learn, the more shocking the revelations become.
30 March 2021 — Craig Murray
I was pretty diffident a year ago in suggesting corrupt backhanders as a potential motive for Dominic Cummings to visit GSK in Barnard Castle, because part of me resisted the idea that even the Tories would seek to make personal profit from a pandemic. Since then, of course, we have learnt of the quarter of a billion pounds (yes, £250,000,000) given to family investment firm Ayanda Capital for PPE procurement for which Ayanda was utterly unqualified and unsuited, numerous other examples of closed bids and completely inappropriate awards. The UK seems not just to have returned to 18th century levels of corruption, but to 18th century lack of shame about it in the governing class.
21 March 2021 — True Publica
By TruePublica: This article about Britain’s democratic breakdown was first published 29th January 2020 – and is ever more salient as each month passes with yet more characteristics of an authoritarian government being exposed every week.
17 March 2021 — Good Law Project
This week’s Panorama gave us the extraordinary tale of a dog food supplier turned PPE broker bagging herself millions acting as a ‘bridge’ for a Hong Kong supplier. Details of the largest contract – worth £178m – came to light only after the BBC’s probing prompted the Government to publish.
5 March 2021 — Good Law Project
3 days after the High Court ruled Government had acted unlawfully by failing to publish Covid contracts, Boris Johnson stood up in the House of Commons and reassured MPs and the public that all Covid-related contracts were “on the record”. However, the final Order handed down by the Judge today shows that what the Prime Minister told the House was not true.
4 March 2021 — Good Law Project
The law of libel has been reformed to make it harder for those who say they have been defamed to win in court. But the world the law envisages is not always the real world.
In the real world, the costs of defending libel proceedings are prohibitive for all except the wealthy. And the financial stress of defending a claim can be unbearable. The consequence is that the threat of defamation proceedings can be used to harass those who seek to speak truth to wealth and power. And they can be, and are, used to force the withdrawal – and sometimes the humiliating withdrawal – of statements which are true or at the very least a reasonable opinion.
22 February 2021 — Good Law Project
Tomorrow, the High Court will hear our application for a cost capping order in our judicial review of Government’s decision to award huge PPE contracts to questionable counterparties.
16 February 2021 — Good Law Project
“This agency is the one who are Dom Cummings / Lee Cain’s mates, and hence getting all our work with no contract BUT are also spending much money on doing all our ridiculous groups”.
These are the words of the Head of Insight and Evaluation for the Prime Minister’s Office and Cabinet Office, describing a Government contract handed to friends of Dominic Cummings. It’s just one of several explosive emails revealed in yesterday’s hearing of our judicial review of the decision to award the contract without tender.
11 February 2021 — Good Law Project
Correspondence from Government shows it plans to claim a staggering £500k-600k in costs for a one day hearing of a judicial review challenge to a contract awarded by Dominic Cummings to his friends at Public First. The higher figure is more than the total value of the Public First contract of £564k.
The New Dark Age 