Tag Archives: Covid

Emotional phone-in caller clarifies why nobody in Covid inquiry deserves privacy

“They smirked”: Boris Johnson grinned inanely and bobbed about on his bench while MPs attacked his contempt for the rules and denials of guilt, back in January 2022.

You probably know the argument already: the Cabinet Office reckons that, even after Boris Johnson waived his own right to privacy over the contents of his WhatsApp messages, diaries and notebooks, they should be redacted to protect other members of the government before being handed over to the Covid inquiry.

A caller to the BBC’s Any Answers has a very strong opposing argument, which I provide here. Be warned: it is not easy to listen to this and may trigger a strong emotional reaction.

I think her point is very good, augmented as it by the emotion with which she made it.

Considering those circumstances – and this lady’s family were not the only people to suffer such experiences while Johnson and other members of his government partied, including civil servants and ministers – what right should any of them have to privacy?

Let them all go under the public spotlight. If any of them are exonerated by it, then the exposure will be to their credit.

As for the others… people died and their relatives suffered terribly while they raved it up. Even the late Queen had to grieve alone after the death of her husband, Prince Philip, in April 2021.

You don’t forget something like that. You don’t forget the insult and injury your government does to you by stopping you from attending relatives, or friends, who are at the brink of death while they party so hard they end up vomiting over the walls of Downing Street, as has been recounted previously.

If it happens to you, you want justice. And you know you won’t get it with a veil of “privacy” drawn around the proceedings of the Covid inquiry.

I look forward to hearing how the Cabinet Office responds to the outrage of the public.

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Covid inquiry: what good is Boris Johnson’s offer to bypass the Cabinet Office, really?

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Boris Johnson: he probably thinks this is all very funny.

The latest development in the Covid inquiry saga is that Boris Johnson has offered to bypass the Cabinet Office, which has refused to give up his diaries, notebooks and WhatsApps for use as evidence.

There are just two problems:

Firstly, he seems not to have the notebooks, having handed them over to the Cabinet Office last week in the expectation that its people would pass them on to the inquiry.

He has reportedly told the inquiry, “I have asked that the Cabinet Office pass these to you. If the government chooses not to do so, I will ask for these to be returned to my office so that I can provide them to you directly.”

But why would the Cabinet Office return these notebooks to him, knowing that if it does so, he’ll hand them to the inquiry – which is what the government is demanding a judicial review to avoid?

Secondly, he hasn’t handed over WhatsApps from before April 2021 – so most of the messages covering the period requested (January 1, 2020 to February 24, 2022) are missing.

And that’s really odd, because – as I’ve mentioned already – he could grab backup copies of this missing stuff from Google Drive or iCloud (depending on the make of his phone).

The claim is that the messages were compromised because it turned out his phone number had been in the public domain for 15 years and malcontents like foreign governments could have tapped into it, so he had been advised to turn it off and keep it that way.

Why? If foreign powers have had access to Johnson’s messages for up to 15 years before he did switch it off, then shouldn’t the UK authorities know what they’ve been reading?

According to the BBC article (link above),

cyber-security expert Prof Alan Woodward said the risk of turning on Mr Johnson’s old phone was “minimal”, adding: “It is perfectly possible to do that without exposing it to the potential threat.”

So Johnson has said he’s “perfectly content” to release information he’s already given the Cabinet Office to the Covid inquiry – but in fact he’s not in a position to hand over very much that’s of any use.

What good is that?

In fact, there is method in it – from Johnson’s point of view. You see, as former government lawyer David Allen Green points out, it is possible that Johnson’s new lawyers have advised him that there is no solid legal basis on which he can resist disclosing his documents to the inquiry.

So, by saying he wants to hand over these items, even though he doesn’t have them, Johnson has done two things:

He has made it clear that, whether or not the Cabinet Office had copies of his WhatsApps, diaries and notebooks before last week, it has them now – and had them in time to honour the Covid inquiry’s demand for them to be handed over.

This means gives the Covid inquiry an opportunity to show the Cabinet Office is in breach of the law.

And he has made it clear that he has waived his right to privacy – he is happy for the documents to be made public. That undermines the Cabinet Office’s claim that handing over the documents would breach the privacy of the people mentioned in them – partially. Others may still object, but it will be hard to maintain a privacy claim in court after what Johnson has done.

So, without actually helping the inquiry, Johnson has dumped the Cabinet Office deep in the metaphorical mire. I wonder if he feels pleased with himself.

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Covid inquiry: How did the Cabinet Office know Boris Johnson’s documents are ‘irrelevant’ – if it didn’t have them?

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Two-fingered salute: Boris Johnson’s WhatsApps, diaries and notebooks have put the Cabinet Office between a rock and a hard place – and he may be delighted, after the Cabinet Office referred him to two police forces for possible social distancing breaches during Covid lockdowns on the basis of information in his diaries.

There’s an important piece of information missing from yesterday’s (June 1, 2023) stories about the Cabinet Office taking the Covid Inquiry to court.

It is this:

Unless the Cabinet Office supplied a signed ‘Statement of Truth’ that it had seen Boris Johnson’s notebooks and diaries for the relevant period of time, the judicial review it has requested is likely to find against it.

Allow me to explain (with help from the source listed below):

You will recall that the Covid inquiry had demanded access to Boris Johnson’s unredacted WhatsApp messages, diaries and notebooks covering the period from January 1, 2020 to February 24, 2022. This requirement was communicated to the Cabinet Office on April 28 this year.

The Cabinet Office responded with an application to object to this demand, dated May 15, on grounds that it was outside the legal powers of the Inquiry to request what the Cabinet Office dubbed “unambiguously irrelevant” material and that it was for the Cabinet Office to determine what was “unambiguously irrelevant”; and that the Cabinet Office did not understand the request for the diaries and notebooks, which was new.

The Cabinet Office stated that its point about irrelevance applied “with similar force and obviousness to Mr Johnson’s notebooks containing contemporaneous notes on all manner of subjects which he was, as Prime Minister, required to consider.”

(Notice that this applies to the notebooks and not the diaries – and implies that the Cabinet Office had, or had access to, the notebooks in order to know what was in them.)

On May 22, the inquiry’s chair, Baroness Hallett explained that extracts from the diaries had been received in redacted form in draft witness statements that had been “exhibited” to the inquiry. It seems she was going to formally request the diaries and notebooks after receiving these extracts from the former and information about the contents of the latter and had merely used its April 28 notice to do so.

Then, after the close of business on Friday, May 26 (and remember, the deadline for handing over the information was the following Tuesday, with a Bank Holiday weekend in between), the inquiry received a letter from the Cabinet Office saying it did not have either Johnson’s WhatsApp messages or his notebooks. It seems the claim is that it had not had them since the April 28 demand was made.

So how could the Cabinet Office say these items contained material that was “unambiguously irrelevant”?

On Tuesday (May 30), Baroness Hallett granted an extension of the deadline – of just two days, until yesterday (Thursday, June 1).

But she added a new requirement:

She says she will accept that the Cabinet Office does not have under its custody or control the requested materials only [if] there is a full detailed explanation for why this is so – and that this explanation will need to be attested to by officials with a signed statement of truth.

That is, under pain of perjury.

The full list of conditions shows that Baroness Hallett, and therefore the inquiry, wants to know whether the Cabinet Office has had the WhatsApps, diaries and notebooks at all since February 3 this year – the date the inquiry sent its initial request for information to the Cabinet Office.

This will establish whether the Cabinet Office had any grounds for its claim that these materials contained information that is “unambiguously irrelevant”.

This Writer thinks the trap here is in the notebooks. The Cabinet Office has not been clear about what is in them but has been required to issue a Statement of Truth that they contain “unambiguously irrelevant” information.

That will be hard to do, if nobody at the Cabinet Office has seen them.

As my source below – a former central government lawyer – states,

The requirement for a signed statement of truth is significant – and you may recall that the Miller II case on the prorogation of parliament was lost by the government because nobody was willing to provide a statement of truth as to the actual reasons for the prorogation.

And this Statement of Truth was required by 4pm yesterday.

And we haven’t been told whether it was provided.

But I shall ask.

ADDITIONAL: Boris Johnson’s announcement on Wednesday that he had provided unredacted WhatsApps, diaries and notebooks to the Cabinet Office and is happy to send them to the Covid inquiry makes matters even worse for the government.

In a judicial review, the Cabinet Office will no longer be able to say it does not have the disputed material – but will still be required to prove that it had not been in possession of it between February 3 and May 31. Any claim that it contains “unambiguously irrelevant” material may be dismissed as irrelevant to the main issue, which is whether the Cabinet Office knew that at the time it was claiming it to the Covid inquiry.

Source: How the Covid Inquiry may have set an elegant spring-trap for the Cabinet Office – The Law and Policy Blog

Here’s why court call over Covid inquiry’s demand for Boris Johnson’s WhatsApps is so suspicious

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Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak: what’s in Johnson’s WhatsApp messages that Sunak is going to such LEGAL lengths to hide?

The plot thickens: why does the Tory government need to stop the Covid inquiry seeing Boris Johnson’s WhatsApp messages and notebooks, after Johnson himself asked for them to be handed over?

The Cabinet Office, acting for the government, has unilaterally missed the deadline of 4pm on Thursday, June 1, 2023 to hand over the material.

Instead, it waited until the deadline passed, then said it would seek a judicial review of inquiry chairwoman Baroness Hallett’s order to release the documents.

This means a judge will have to decide whether the inquiry has overreached its legal powers.

The argument is that sight of Johnson’s WhatsApp messages might create a precedent for the inquiry to see WhatsApp messages of serving ministers, including the current prime minister, Rishi Sunak.

The Cabinet Office said handing over the material would compromise ministers’ right to privacy and could prevent them from discussing policy matters in the future.

Some might say that was a good thing. There was a debate a short while ago about whether government ministers should be carrying out government business via WhatsApp or personal email when it should all be done via government devices so it may become available if necessary – like all other governmental communications.

The government’s reasoning – and the stated fact that Rishi Sunak and deputy PM Oliver Dowden signed off the decision to launch a judicial review on Wednesday – suggests an ulterior motive: that material compromising Sunak (and/or others) is among Johnson’s communications.

Perhaps this really could bring down the government, as This Writer has already suggested.

And then there’s the question of the material Johnson has offered to provide.

It turns out that he has only provided WhatsApps from May 2021 onwards. This is because he had acquired a new phone after his old number had been listed online (now, how did that happen?) and he had received advice (from whom?) not to switch it on again.

Johnson (coincidentally?) ordered the inquiry into the government’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic that same month – May 2021.

So his part in this is looking extremely questionable.

That being said, he has offered to provide not only all his WhatsApps and notebooks to the inquiry, but also the phone – saying he has asked the Cabinet Office whether technical support can be provided so the messages it contains can be retrieved without compromising security.

And here’s a thing: WhatsApp messages are habitually backed up – on Google Drive if it’s an Android phone or on iCloud for iPhones. Unless that facility was turned off, then all the WhatsApp content of the compromised phone should be available.

And if that facility was turned off, we should ask why. If it was done by government order, why wasn’t the information backed up elsewhere (and why was the government allowing its business to be done via private phone messages)? If by Johnson, doesn’t this indicate he was trying to hide something? What could it be?

It all points to a monumental attempt to hide guilt – of the kind that Rishi Sunak himself implied would not happen under his leadership.

So we should all be able to understand why Peter Stefanovic is so angry about it in his summation of the situation:

This is outrageous behavior by @RishiSunak’s Government! It’s going to launch a legal challenge over the Covid inquiry's demand for WhatsApp messages & documents.

If you think this Government is an absolute piece of crap RT this widely pic.twitter.com/54XUtqBygv

— Peter Stefanovic (@PeterStefanovi2) June 1, 2023

To This Writer, it seems highly unlikely that even Tory politicians would go to this length if they didn’t have a strong self-interest in it. But it’s self-defeating, also: after this, would you ever trust them again?

Source: Government to take legal action against Covid inquiry over Johnson WhatsApps | Boris Johnson | The Guardian

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Politicians want people with Long Covid to work. Is it another cull of the sick?

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Long Covid: to sufferers, it is a huge burden they have to carry every day. Now politicians on both sides of the political fence want to force them to suffer that burden AND go to work as well, so they don’t have to take migrant workers from abroad. It will be a death sentence.

Politicians in both main political parties want to push sick people back into work – but isn’t that an indictment of the UK’s political response to Long Covid?

Let me explain, with the help of Samuel Miller:

According to a study by the Universities of Portsmouth and Southampton, published in Applied Economics Letters, it is estimated that **80,000 people** had left employment due to Long Covid by early March 2022.

— Samuel Miller (@Hephaestus7) May 28, 2023

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has revealed that one in 20 people in the UK who are neither employed nor seeking paid work are suffering from long Covid, with the figure more than doubling in the past year.

— Samuel Miller (@Hephaestus7) May 28, 2023

An estimated 100 million people worldwide are suffering from long Covid, and they don't deserve to be vilified by the BBC as workshy, especially since many governments flagrantly mishandled the pandemic, including the one headed by Boris Johnson.

— Samuel Miller (@Hephaestus7) May 28, 2023

You have to look behind the headlines, behind what the mouthpieces are uttering, in order to understand what they really mean.

Here’s an example:

"It seems to me what you are saying is you are going to be tougher on people who are currently on sickness benefits. Is that correct?"

Ashworth: "the word tougher brings with it all sorts of connitations.. we've got to reform the way in which our benefit assessment system works" pic.twitter.com/KyqvbZ1yLg

— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) May 28, 2023

How about this now-deleted tweet from broadcaster Jeremy Vine?

This tweet from @JeremyVineOn5 has been deleted. But we have had no apology.
What should we do now?
Join us tomorrow morning from 10:30am👇https://t.co/9PoG5vmkEi pic.twitter.com/h6y7xa5VLu

— Not the Andrew Marr Show (@Standup4Labour) May 27, 2023

It attracted a strong response:

Maybe you’d like to declare them fit for work, like the people in this document. READ IT ⬇️https://t.co/I9BZDgblbM

— Judy Hamilton (@secretspartacus) May 25, 2023

The document contains details of people who have died or committed suicide as a result of government mistreatment of their sickness benefit claims in attempts to force them back into work.

#DisabilityHateCrime #DisabilityTwitter
Report @theJeremyVine for the hatred he spews time to take him off social media @1kilroywashere @johnpringdns @mikecoulson48 @DPACSheffield @Dis_PPL_Protest @EllenClifford1 @drbobgill @SueJonesSays @blueannoyed @RandolphTrent https://t.co/9jSwR1DQbA

— paula peters (@paulapeters2) May 25, 2023

I also pointed out that most people too ill to work HAVE worked previously, and that we are ALSO tax payers, who have paid for our own support over the years. We still pay other tax contributions out of work. VAT, for example, among other stealth taxes

— Revolution Breeze (@SueJonesSays) May 25, 2023

There’s a reason they’re deemed too sick to work, it’s because they’re too sick to work. It might happen to any taxpayer at any time, why else should we pay taxes?

— Mani Isna La #NativeLivesMatter 🇵🇸 🇨🇺🕊 (@mikecoulson48) May 25, 2023

Looking at the evidence, and based on my own experience of government policy over the last 20 years (Tory and Labour), This Writer is moved to ask:

Are we looking at the beginnings of another politically-motivated cull of the sick?

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Covid inquiry’s WhatsApp demand skewers Johnson

UK end-of-year report: Michelle Mone loses Tory whip

This is about the corrupt awarding of contracts to firms that did not supply adequate materials (in this case, Personal Protective Equipment to help with the Covid-19 crisis).

Phil Moorhouse of A Different Bias lays out the situation as it stood at midday on December 7:

Keir Starmer interrogated Rishi Sunak about this in Prime Minister’s Questions – and Sunak was pilloried for his response. Note that he confirmed that Mone “no longer has the Conservative whip”:

The sideswipe from Sunak, that Labour should “stand up for working people” – by opposing industrial action by working people who are struggling to survive in an atmosphere of real-terms pay cuts while inflation spirals out-of-control – is perverse.

It’s shameful that the UK has been reduced to having a prime minister who can’t respond naturally to questions but has to read his answers from a piece of paper.

Who’s telling him what to say about this scandal?

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Tory PPE scandal Baroness Michelle Mone takes leave of absence. Will she ever return?

Leave of absence: Lady Mone. Apparently she doesn’t turn up to the House of Lords very often and rarely votes. One is led to wonder what she considers her peerage to be for.

Tory Baroness Michelle Mone, currently at the centre of a scandal over a £29 million payout by a firm said to have provided duff PPE to the government during the Covid-19 crisis, has taken a leave of absence from the House of Lords.

Watch this article on YouTube:

Mone says she has been unjustly accused of taking £29 million from a Personal Protective Equipment manufacturer in thanks for her recommending its products in the “VIP lane” for firms fast-tracked by politicians or officials.

Not only has the “VIP lane” since been branded illegal, but it has been claimed that much of the gear from PPE Medpro didn’t meet the standard.

She says she is leaving to clear her name. Her choice coincides with efforts by the Labour Party to force the publication of texts and emails relating to £200m of Covid PPE contracts secured by PPE MedPro, a company linked to the Tory peer.

And it follows accusations from former Health Secretary Matt Hancock, who said had sent him an “aggressive and threatening” email in June 2021, demanding his “urgent help” to secure a government contract for a firm that he did not name.

In his book Pandemic Diaries, which is currently being serialised by a newspaper, he wrote: ”

Baroness Michelle Mone has sent me an extraordinarily aggressive email complaining that a company she’s helping isn’t getting the multi-million-pound contracts it deserves.

She claims the firm, which makes lateral flow test kits, ‘has had a dreadful time’ trying to cut through red tape and demanded my ‘urgent help’ before it all comes out in the media.

‘I am going to blow this all wide open,’ she threatened.

I won’t be pushed around by aggressive peers representing commercial clients.

That’s pretty damning stuff!

Hancock has claimed that Mone was actively and aggressively trying to secure contracts for “commercial clients” – which implies a business relationship, so he believed Mone was being (or would be) paid by this firm for her efforts to win contracts for it.

That is precisely what the accusation against her entails and I hope he provides any evidence he has to any investigation.

And Mone has taken a leave of absence at this time. I wonder if she’ll ever come back.

Source: Michelle Mone takes leave of absence from House of Lords | The Independent

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Did underwear peer really make £65m from Covid contract corruption?

Accused: Lady Mone.

How low can our politicians go?

Just at the moment, there’s a very low bar to limbo under – but it seems former Ultimo underwear boss turned Tory peer Michelle Mone may have managed it.

The allegation in The Guardian is that, while the rest of us laboured under lockdown, desperate to keep ourselves and our relatives alive, Lady Mone was making £65 million from a Personal Protective Equipment manufacturer in thanks for her recommending its products in the “VIP lane” for firms fast-tracked by politicians or officials.

Not only has the “VIP lane” since been branded illegal, but it has been claimed that much of the gear from PPE Medpro didn’t meet the standard.

It was suggested that…

Michelle Mone, a Tory peer, her husband, Douglas Barrowman, and her children secretly received £65m originating from the profits of PPE Medpro, a company that was awarded large government contracts during the pandemic after she recommended it to ministers.

The government lubricated such questionable deal-making by setting up a “VIP lane” into which suppliers recommended by politicians or officials were fast-tracked.

PPE Medpro’s business was referred to the VIP lane after Lady Mone contacted the ministers Michael Gove and Lord Agnew to offer help in May 2020. A few weeks later, the government contracted to pay the firm £203m for protective equipment for the NHS.

A court later said that the VIP lane was unlawful. Perhaps worse, it was ineffective. The government is now in dispute over millions of surgical gowns supplied by PPE Medpro that it says were not up to scratch. PPE Medpro insists its products passed inspections.

Lady Mone… denies becoming fantastically rich by profiting from a company she lobbied to be awarded state contracts.

But she is also

being investigated by the Lords commissioner for standards after being accused of failing to declare an interest in PPE Medpro.

The Guardian, outraged, claims that peerages should not be a means to personal or ideological ends.

But isn’t that the best that can be said of almost any UK politician these days?

They all seem to be on the take and for many, it seems, that is the only point of being in Westminster at all.

It isn’t many years since it was possible to discuss genuine political theory when examining politicians’ behaviour – but now all we see is avarice.

Too many have been caught lobbying for the firms that gave them their second or third job, or using their position to rig the rules in their own fields of business, or seen to have set themselves up for high-paid jobs after leaving Parliament. Haven’t they?

Sadly, we don’t have a way of looking into candidates’ minds before they get elected into their Commons seats, to detect the corruption before it can do its worst.

So, what is the solution to the rot that’s making Parliament reek?

Source: The Guardian view on crony capitalism: a moral corruption stalks parliament

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Government is delaying Covid-19 inquiry, say bereaved families threatening court challenge

Satire? This image suggesting the Tories were lying about their Covid-19 strategy may be more accurate now than at the time it was made. Why is an inquiry into the handling of the Covid-19 pandemic being delayed? Is evidence being altered or destroyed before it becomes illegal to do so?

Families who lost loved ones in the Covid-19 crisis are preparing a court challenge against the Tory government, which they fear is delaying an inquiry into its handling of the pandemic.

Boris Johnson appointed Baroness Hallett to chair the inquiry in December 2021, and has said it would begin in spring this year. But spring is over and no terms of reference have been published nor setting-up-date specified.

Under the 2005 Inquiries Act, an inquiry “must not begin considering evidence before the setting up date” and once an inquiry is under way it is an offence under the Act to destroy or tamper with evidence.

So the longer the setting up date is delayed, the more evidence it is possible for … someone… to alter or destroy.

That’s the concern of the group Covid-19 bereaved families for justice, who are planning a judicial review into the failure.

Elkan Abrahamson, head of major inquiries at Broudie Jackson Canter, who is representing the group, said taking legal action is the “last thing” families want but they may be left with no choice. He said: “In the vast majority of inquiries a setting-up date is given within days or weeks of the chair being appointed, so this delay of over six months is both unprecedented and totally inexplicable.

“The consequences are extremely serious, as it only becomes a criminal offence to destroy or tamper with evidence after the inquiry’s start date. By failing to give one, the Prime Minister is opening the door to key evidence being destroyed.”

Not only that, but a delay like this means it will take longer, and be more difficult, to learn lessons from the pandemic and the government’s failures in handling it.

Perhaps most to the point, though, is this: Boris Johnson has claimed that he needs to stay on as prime minister to “get on” with tackling the issues that matter most to people – but instead he is delaying a vital inquiry.

He can’t say it’s because he had to deal with the challenges to his own leadership because he has already told us he considers them to have been nothing more than a time-wasting sideshow; he should have been handling the issues that matter – not diverting time and energy to his own self-preservation.

All the government has been able to say is that the inquiry’s terms of reference will be published shortly. Nothing has been said about the setting-up date.

So, what’s really going on here? And do we need a judicial review to establish what’s really going on at the heart of our government?

Source: Bereaved ready to take Government to court over Covid inquiry delay

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.

https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/mike-sivier-libel-fight/

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The Livingstone Presumption is now available
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Vox Political

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