Yet another blog about hapless hospital botherer and haunted dishcloth Matt Hancock This week the Government announced an inquiry into the relationship between Greensill Capital, David Cameron and Boris Johnson’s Government. Most of the questions the press are asking are about the relationship between Cameron, Rishi Sunak and Greensill over Covid loans. But there is … Read more
Matt Hancock was found this week to have broken the law by failing to publish the details of contracts awarded without competition for goods and services such as personal protective equipment (PPE) needed during the covid-19 pandemic. This is the first of a series of Judicial Reviews by an eccentric group of lawyers called The … Read more
The Government has announced it’s new plans for NHS reform, the draft of which was leaked a week or 2 ago. Fuck is a strong word for a headline, but I am afraid that’s what is about to happen. The Lansley reforms of the NHS will be reversed, along with almost all of the internal … Read more
Maureen Colquhoun died this week aged 92. She was the first openly gay MP in the modern era. This might come as a surprise to a lot of people who believed that the first MPs to come out were Chris Smith for Labour and Matthew Parris for the Conservatives, in the 1980s. Maureen Colquhhoun was … Read more
Did Brexit help Britain succeed at Vaccinations? Did it help us do better than the EU? No. Britain’s success on vaccination has nothing to do with Brexit, not matter how many flags people wave Britain performed catastrophically badly on Covid in 2020 because the Government put their mates in charge of it, who outsourced it … Read more
Like most people I spent a lot of time reading this year, even though it was hard to concentrate at times. It felt like I read an awful lot, but struggled to remember what I had actually read; only the most intense and exciting stuff stuck in my head. I walked past County Hall last … Read more
Next week the Supreme Court will hear the case of Shamima Begum. Begum was born in the UK but stripped of her citizenship when she travelled to Syria to marry a jihadi; a so called Bride of Isis. Some people won’t have much sympathy for what she did, but stripping a British born person of … Read more
Richmond House, Whitehall, January 2021 The UK has left the EU with no deal. Food supplies are seriously disrupted, and 30% of the UK’s road haulage capacity is in a queue in Kent. The RAF are transporting essential medical supplies into the UK – Operation Airlift – but the system for getting these supplies … Read more
The last few months have seen a massive surge in the use of the identity verification service run by Gov.uk. For those lucky enough not to have to use this system in order to use key Government services you have to set up an identity verification account. Over the last few months usage of the … Read more
The Government has made a massive mess of it’s response to Coronavirus. An unmitigated disaster. Boris Johnson and his team prioritised managing the news cycle over managing the virus; too many eye catching announcements without any actual thought about whether they would work. With so many gaffes it’s hard to pick a low point, but … Read more