Believe it or not, there are still some people who haven’t twigged that Brexit has harmed the UK economy.
So here’s their regular reminder. Consider it a sort of top-up:
#bbclaurak – How much stronger would the economy be if we had stayed in the EU?
Richard Hughes(Chair OBR) – It reduces our overall output by about 4%…. it's a shock to the UK economy… like the pandemic & energy crisis… #Ridgepic.twitter.com/osfuB4pJg6
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Michael Gove: this minister (who once got caught making a joke about rape on the radio, by the way) was in charge of handing out procurement contracts for PPE. At the time, This Site pointed out that they seemed to be going to his friends.
What does Michael Gove know about the contract under which Michelle Mone’s company won a PPE contract via the illegal VIP lane?
A leaked email has shown that he was involved…
Leaked email shows Gove was secretly involved in procuring £203m of govt PPE contracts for Michelle Mone's company via the VIP lane. Mone used private emails (against the rules) to contact procurement minister Lord Agnew, copying in Gove through his private Gmail account
… but look what happened when he was challenged about it!
Michael Gove left spluttering in the face of these straight forward questions: What do you remember about the PPE contract with Michelle Mone? What do you remember about the personal email she sent you?
Apparently this will be examined by the independent inquiry into Covid-19 this spring, and it has been suggested that Gove was trying hard not to say anything that may be used in evidence.
This could be highly informative!
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This would be amusing if people weren’t so determined to believe Jacob Rees-Mogg’s falsehoods.
The tweet is clear and so is the video clip:
Best line? “By now even Larry the Cat knows he’s lying.”
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Profiting from death: after he served up this little howler – and pushed up Covid-19 infections massively, Rishi Sunak became prime minister. Shouldn’t he be paying for the consequences of his actions?
Watch the video summary:
Congratulations to Metro* for discovering that Rishi Sunak’s ‘Eat Out to Help Out’ scheme of summer 2020 actually spread Covid-19 and may have caused thousands of deaths. Better late than never!
This site, and others on the social media, broke the story in December 2020.
This is the reason people should be reading Vox Political. They should be reading Another Angry Voice, Skwawkbox, The Canary and all the other independent news-related websites because that’s where they’re going to find out the things they need to know, at the time they need to know them.
And this is the reason you should be telling everybody you know.
Rishi Sunak may be responsible for killing off thousands of UK citizens – including your relatives, perhaps – and what’s his punishment? He’s now the prime minister. He’s already the richest man in the UK. Doesn’t he deserve to be in prison for dreaming up a scheme that killed many people?
He might have been, if enough attention had been drawn to what he had done at the right time.
But it wasn’t. The mainstream media ignored it – and that meant most people did too.
And now it has been (re)discovered via Matt Hancock’s leaked WhatsApp messages:
The Prime Minister is under pressure over his ‘Eat Out to Help Out’ scheme during the pandemic with claims of a ‘cover up’ and that it spread Covid.
Leaked messages show … concern from then Health Secretary Matt Hancock about how Eat Out to Help Out was spreading the virus.
Mr Hancock told [then-Cabinet Secrtary Simon] Case that the scheme was driving up Covid cases in some of the worst hit areas and that the problems it was causing were ‘serious’.
But he added that he had ‘kept it out of the news’, according to the Telegraph.
Those WhatsApp messages were sent in August 2020. I published my story in December that year, as follows:
Tory Chancellor Rishi Sunak made certain that thousands more people caught Covid-19 than would otherwise have done so, with his Eat Out to Help Out scheme.
Research by the University of Warwick has shown that the initiative is likely to blame for 17 per cent of infections – one in six outbreaks – between August and early September (when it was overtaken by outbreaks linked to schools that had reopened at Boris Johnson and Dominic Raab’s insistence, we may conclude).
People will have died from catching the virus after taking part in Sunak’s crackpot plan.
But nobody has been asking him any hard questions!
Isn’t it time these Tories took responsibility for the fatal consequences of their decisions and left public life for good, under a cloud of shame?
Note that I quoted the Daily Mail, which seems to have done as little as possible about the story.
Obviously, nobody involved has left public life for good under a cloud of shame.
They’re all still here, rubbing our noses in their ability to get away with – if not murder, then possibly mass manslaughter.
*In this instance – I’m sure other mainstream media outlets are also covering this story now, at long last.
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They really were lying: I never thought I’d get to use this image again.
Here’s some video evidence supporting what This Site said about Matt Hancock’s WhatsApp messages on Covid-19 testing in care homes during early 2020.
It shows both Hancock and then-prime minister Boris Johnson later denying that they knew anything about asymptomatic (the person with the disease didn’t have symptoms of it) transmission of Covid-19 at the time.
And then it demonstrates that both of them did know:
Now is a good time to take a look at claims made by Matt Hancock & Boris Johnson that they were not told about the asymptomatic transmission of covid – watch in disbelief pic.twitter.com/lx0Oupdth4
This supports what I said in my article – that they had been shown scientific evidence that people in care homes were being infected as early as February 2020 (in fact they received information from care homes about deaths there, as early as March 2) and simply ignored it.
Let’s hope this is picked up by the inquiry into the way the government handled the pandemic. We need to see major players in this fiasco receiving proportionate punishments.
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After he served up this little howler – and pushed up Covid-19 infections massively, Rishi Sunak became prime minister. Shouldn’t he – along with Matt Hancock and then-Cabinet Secretary Simon Case – be facing punishment for endangering the lives of many thousands of people?
The scheme by Rishi Sunak was introduced in July 2020 to get people to eat out. It provided vouchers supporting half the price of the meal – and was initially criticised because many people did not have enough spare cash to support paying for the other half.
But worse was to come when research by the University of Warwick published in December that year showed that the initiative was likely to blame for 17 per cent of infections – one in six outbreaks – between August and early September.
And now we know that Matt Hancock – Health Secretary at the time – knew about it and conspired with then-Cabinet Secretary Simon Case, and Sunak (who is now prime minister, remember) to hide it from us.
Because these then-ministers – and the then-Cabinet Secretary – hid the evidence, Eat Out To Help Out continued for several months and was only shown to have spread the virus much later, when it was too late to do anything about it.
Look at his WhatsApp messages from the summer of 2020:
Wow. They weren’t just greedy and ignorant, they knew.
They covered up the fact that #EatOutToHelpOut was spreading #Covid and tried to hide it from us.
News outlets like The Independent are reporting that Hancock ridiculed the scheme, calling it “Eat Out to Help The Virus Get About”.
Clearly the scheme should have been halted as soon as the concerns became apparent to Hancock. Instead he made a bad joke about it.
Who knows how many people died because they weren’t told about the danger? And shouldn’t Hancock, Case and Sunak be punished for allowing those deaths to happen?
Quick footnote: the BBC’s big story about the Hancock WhatsApps today is all about his reaction to the publication of a photo showing him kissing then-aide Gina Coladangelo.
Don’t we deserve better service from our public-service news provider? Is it because the BBC’s Chairman, Richard Sharp, is a Tory and a friend to Tories?
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I’m drawing your attention to the linked Independent editorial for all the wrong reasons: don’t believe it!
The author seems to think that the cache of Matt Hancock’s WhatsApp messages that was leaked to the press vindicates him because it shows he wanted everybody going to care homes to be tested for Covid-19, back in April 2020 and was only prevented from achieving this by a lack of tests.
It doesn’t, though. It shows that Hancock ignored scientific advice and this led to thousands of deaths. Scientists had been telling him that community transmission of the disease was already in care homes since February that year and he had done nothing. And who was responsible for the fact that the UK did not have enough testing kits if not the government?
Comments about his ambition for 100,000 tests to be processed every day are red herrings. He lied about reaching that goal, remember (by including kits that had been sent out but had not been processed).
The evidence suggests extreme failures of government when Hancock was Health Secretary. Don’t let these editorials muddy the waters (to borrow a phrase).
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The cache of 100,000 WhatsApp messages by Matt Hancock about Covid-19, from 2020, in which he discussed delaying or failing to test people going into care homes from the community, got a thorough airing on the BBC’s Politics Live and in Parliament during Prime Minister’s Questions.
PMQs focused mostly on the fact that information about the government’s behaviour during the Covid crisis is starting to drip out piecemeal, meaning it is now a matter of urgency that the independent inquiry into the response to the pandemic be concluded and report in good time.
The discussion on the talk show was more about the content of the messages – and did, in fact, touch on the fact that these messages all came long after the big decisions about testing for Covid-19 in care homes had already been made.
Hancock had known since February that year that people from the community, coming into homes, were infecting the people living there, and since March that people there were dying of Covid-19.
He chose to do nothing about it until April – and then, as the messages indicate, he didn’t do enough.
So, is this a storm in a teacup?
Judge for yourself:
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Matt Hancock: the current WhatsApp controversy makes it seem he only considered testing people in care homes from April 14, 2020 – but existing information shows he had been ruling it out for around two months (since February) despite mounting deaths.
No wonder Isabel Oakeshott was so liverish on Politics Live – she was about to become the centre of a new Covid-19 controversy.
Ms Oakeshott is the person who leaked 100,000 Matt Hancock WhatsApp messages that seem to suggest he has not been altogether truthful about government plans for Covid-19 testing in care homes during 2020. She had access to them while “helping” him write his memoir.
Spokespeople for Hancock have said the messages have been doctored to present a false impression.
But my recollection is that the controversy at the time had little to do with what these messages say. I made my point on Twitter as follows:
I'm confused about this #MattHancock#Covid19#CareHomes story. At the time, the problem was that people leaving hospital WEREN'T being tested before going into homes and were infecting people there. Workers were also spreading the disease from home to home. #PoliticsLive 1/
3/ Testing in #CareHomes was not put in place at all until April 15, 2020. Advice from SAGE said on February 10 that "there is already sustained transmission in the UK" – in the community, but this was ignored. Official guidance from Feb 25-Mar 12 was … #PoliticsLive
5/ Whatever decisions #MattHancock made, it is clear that #CareHomes were NOT given the resources they needed, when they needed them, and he was responsible for that. He should have sent people to #NightingaleHospitals rather than the homes. #PoliticsLive
So there you have it. Despite advice from SAGE in February 2020 that Covid-19 was already being transmitted between people in the community, Hancock put out official guidance saying there was no such transmission and nobody in a care home was likely to be infected.
Care home staff who moved from one home to another were also not tested, meaning they were able to catch the disease from patients at one home and transmit it to those at any others they visited.
This remained official advice until March 12, 2020, despite the fact that care homes had been recording deaths related to Covid-19 from March 2 onwards – 10 days previously.
The UK only went into lockdown on March 23.
Care homes did not start testing for the disease until April 15 (of people leaving hospital), and regular tests of all staff and residents did not start until July.
Now check this against the current story (I’ll use the BBC version as the Telegraph, which broke this story, is behind a paywall):
Government guidance later mandated tests only for those leaving hospital.
In one message, dated 14 April, Mr Hancock reportedly told aides that Prof Sir Chris Whitty, the chief medial officer for England, had conducted an “evidence review” and recommended “testing of all going into care homes, and segregation whilst awaiting result”.
The message came a day before the publication of Covid-19: Our Action Plan for Adult Social Care, a government document setting out plans to keep the care system functioning during the pandemic.
Mr Hancock said the advice represented a “good positive step” and that “we must put into the doc”, to which an aide responded that he had sent the request “to action”.
But later the same day, Mr Hancock messaged again saying he would rather “leave out” a commitment to test everyone entering care homes from the community and “just commit to test & isolate ALL going into care from hospital”.
“I do not think the community commitment adds anything and it muddies the waters,” he said.
A spokesman for Mr Hancock said this followed an operational meeting, where he was advised it was not possible to test everyone entering care homes.
When the care plan was published on 15 April, it said the government would “institute a policy of testing all residents prior to admission to care homes”, but that that would “begin with all those being discharged from hospital”.
It said only that it would “move to” a policy of testing everyone entering care homes from the community.
The WhatsApp messages have it that Hancock was only advised to start testing everybody going into care homes on April 14.
But in fact, SAGE had warned him in February – two months previously – that Covid-19 was already being transmitted in the community, and it is clear that community transmission was considered likely to cause infections within care homes from the government advice that was published on February 25.
And death figures from care homes clearly showed that Covid-19 had caused deaths there from March 2 onwards, so Hancock had no reason to believe that these homes were unaffected.
But he waited nearly two months before doing anything.
The lack of testing kits in sufficient numbers has been blamed for the failure to test everybody who needed it – but this is not an acceptable response. The government had known of the threat since late 2019 but had not bothered to take timely action, and this is the reason too few testing kits were available.
And more than 43,000 people died.
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Conflict of interest: why would companies that helped run the government’s publicity campaign about Covid-19 ever want to contact people who lost loved ones because of failures in that campaign?
People who lost loved ones while the Covid-19 pandemic raged through the UK are being put off contributing to the inquiry into what happened – because a PR firm that was hired to manage the government’s response to the crisis has been hired to help run it.
23Red, which worked on government messaging including hand hygiene advice and the “Stay at home” slogan, has been sub-contracted by the Tories’ favourite advertising firm, M&C Saatchi, to run part of the Covid inquiry’s “listening exercise”.
Apparently its role will be to “help the inquiry reach those most affected by the pandemic, so that they can share their experiences”.
The Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice group has pointed out the flaw in that argument: because 23Red worked for the government in its efforts to control Covid-19, the group says, it will either screen out people with the most harmful stories to tell, or those who were most affected will be put off participating.
23Red were working with the Cabinet Office throughout the pandemic and their conflict of interest is obvious.
They shouldn’t be anywhere near the Covid Inquiry, never mind being responsible for how it reaches those worst affected. https://t.co/OY0aYcyENW
— Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice UK (@CovidJusticeUK) February 17, 2023
In the Guardian report (link above), group spokesperson Susie Flintham is quoted as saying:
The fact is ‘many of those worst affected’ will question 23red’s motivations and integrity, and won’t feel comfortable engaging with a process they’re involved in.
“The fact that these PR companies have rebranded the listening exercise ‘every story matters’, suggests they don’t have a clue on how to reach those ‘most affected’.”
“Why is the inquiry paying a hefty sum of taxpayers money, during a cost of living crisis, to a company whose involvement will put people off participating in it? It feels self defeating and like a clear waste of resources.
“If the inquiry is serious about listening to those worst affected by the pandemic then it must give them a meaningful voice, which at the very least means allowing them to speak at each day of the hearings.”
The group’s concerns were raised at the inquiry by their counsel, Pete Weatherby KC, after reporting on the matter by the website Open Democracy:
The correct response to these concerns is to remove the companies from any involvement in the inquiry.
That has not happened.
Instead, the team carrying out the inquiry has said that no conflict of interest will arise because “M&C Saatchi and 23red do not have a decision making role with the inquiry, and they have no direct access to the inquiry’s legal team or the wider work of the inquiry.
“Additionally, M&C Saatchi and 23red will not be carrying out any of the listening or have any access to the experiences shared with the inquiry’s listening exercise. Their role is only to help the inquiry reach those most affected by the pandemic, so that they can share their experiences.”
I’m not convinced. You should not be convinced either.
In an inquiry that exists to collect the strongest evidence of the worst effects of the government’s response (or lack of it) to the Covid-19 pandemic, efforts to seek out the most important stories are paramount.
Yet the inquiry team has hired companies that were intimately linked with the government’s public relations campaign during that time – Boris Johnson’s efforts to play down the seriousness of the situation and to pretend that Tory policies were succeeding when they weren’t.
More than 200,000 people have died of Covid-19 – and most of those deaths could have been avoided if Johnson, Matt Hancock and their cronies had acted more quickly and in a more responsible way (rather than diverting vast amounts of money to hastily-set-up companies run by their friends, for equipment that did not work, for example).
And the number of deaths is still increasing, as I understand it.
It is not in the interests of these companies to seek out the most damning stories of government failures when they were responsible for even part of the government’s publicity campaigning.
I fear the Covid-19 inquiry is just another Tory sham.
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