Cummings wasted around a quarter of a MILLION pounds this year. Why did we pay him ANYTHING?
Nothing but a burden on public finances: Dominic Cummings and Boris Johnson.
What a waste of public money Dominic Cummings turned out to be.
Not only did he take a pay rise of around £50,000 – on top of the £95,000+ he was already getting as Boris Johnson’s chief advisor – while he was flouting Covid-19 lockdown restrictions with junkets to Barnard Castle (for example), but…
He also indirectly caused £200,000 to be wasted after an advisor to then-Chancellor Sajid Javid was escorted out of Downing Street in the wake of a confrontation with him.
Documents … show that the prime minister overruled the advice of the civil service’s chief executive, John Manzoni, in March that the government should seek a settlement with Sonia Khan, a former adviser to the then chancellor, Sajid Javid.
Johnson refused to listen to the advice, which meant that the case continued until November, driving up legal costs. Khan was eventually paid between £50,000 and £100,000 in November, days after Cummings announced he would be standing down from Downing Street at the end of this year. Legal sources estimate that the total costs including Khan’s payoff could be nearly £200,000.
That’s a loss of a quarter of a million pounds, due to the incompetence and hubris of just one man – and there are hundreds of people in Boris Johnson’s Conservative government.
Of course, Cummings won’t have paid a penny of those legal costs, just as Boris Johnson didn’t pay a penny of the extra salary he gave to the soon-to-be-former advisor. We did.
And we have absolutely nothing to show for it. Worse than nothing, in fact – because Cummings’s advice has been alleged to have caused a lot of harm to the population, especially at the start of the Covid crisis.
I know what the diehard Tories will say: “It could have been worse. We could have had a Labour government.” It’s their usual mantra.
But we don’t have a Labour government. This waste and damage was caused by Conservatives.
And if they want their criticisms of the Opposition to have any meaning, they should set a higher standard.
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.
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