Spendthrift Tories have spaffed £500 MILLION on firms run by their friends – that do NOTHING
‘Spaffer’: Boris Johnson is throwing money the UK doesn’t have at his mates’ companies. What will you do when he tells you to pay off the debt?
In a week when we learned the Tories have more than doubled the national debt to £2 trillion, a mere £500 million might not seem much.
It’s around 1/200th, or half a per cent, of the total they’ve borrowed since 2010.
But this is money they have spent in the last six months alone – on contracts with companies run by their personal friends… that have apparently done nothing useful in return.
According to the Labour Party, 13 firms run by friends of Tory ministers have won contracts related to Covid-19, without having to go through a competitive tendering process.
Here’s what they’ve done with the money:
One firm, Randox, received £133million for Covid testing.
It pays Tory MP and former Cabinet minister Owen Paterson £8,333 a month as an adviser.
Earlier this month, 750,000 unused Randox testing kits were recalled over safety concerns.
How about the Serco ‘test and trace’ fiasco?
“I was hired at the end of May… In 12 weeks I have not made a single call despite working 42 hours a week for £10.12 an hour."
The sheer, eye-watering, reprehensible ineptitude of Serco's £120 million outsourced gig, courtesy of @BorisJohnson 😔https://t.co/aWT3cSqLKB
— Dr Rachel Clarke (@doctor_oxford) August 21, 2020
Serco is paid £108million for running the national contact-tracing service and nearly £46million by the DWP to run call centres.
Health minister Edward Argar was a senior executive and boss Rupert Soames is brother of former Tory MP Sir Nicholas Soames.
In November 2019, Rupert Soames’ wife Camilla donated £4,995 to the Tory Party.
Here are the other firms mentioned in the Mirror article:
PricewaterhouseCoopers, which won seven contracts, hired Theresa May’s former top aide Gavin Barwell as a strategic adviser in January.
He is also a non-executive adviser at Arcadis – which was given a £1.5million consultancy contract with the Ministry of Justice in April.
Public First Ltd gets £840,000 to run focus groups for No10. It is owned by James Frayne, who started the New Frontiers think tank in 2003 with Dominic Cummings.
Dragontown Ltd was awarded a contract worth £675,000 to supply PPE to London’s Guys’ and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust.
Lady Xuelin Bates, a director of this firm, is the wife of Tory peer and former minister Lord Bates and has donated £30,000 to the Tories.
If we had anything to show for this emptying of the public purse, there might be some justification for these contracts – but we don’t.
This is nepotism intended to further enrich the undeserving while bankrupting the nation.
Expect Boris Johnson to demand that, now he and his spendthrift mates have run up a huge debt, you have to pay it off.
Source: Firms linked to Tories have won £500m coronavirus contracts without having to bid – Mirror Online
Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.
Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:
Here are four ways to be sure you’re among the first to know what’s going on.
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the left margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical
3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/
Join the Vox Political Facebook page.
4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.
The Livingstone Presumption is now available
in either print or eBook format here:
Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:
The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:
Oh I now have a second word beginning with C to describe Tories, corrupt!!!! Can anyone guess the first?
Haha
To the bot that’s complaining about turning off ad block I HAVE just because it’s a lazy detection method that just see’s I have it on my system even if it’s turned off I get this message. Now If I shut down the script using a script blocker I won’t see this. I whould have ignored this until I get 2 nasty email for god’s sake messages from you because you still think I have it turned on when posting a comment. So from now on it stays on you want to insult me despite me helping you. Then on goes the script blocker and ad blocker. I get annoyed at being accused of something especially when untrue I can ignore silly messages but post me emails complaining nope now you have annoyed me!!
I have not posted any emails to anyone about their ad blocker.