Lewis Reynolds 🇬🇧🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🇪🇺

bona fide pseud

[Robert Peston @Peston]

Here are two jarring facts. The chancellor has just appointed a special Covid corruption commissioner to examine an eye-watering £7.6bn of dodgy and fraudulent contracts awarded for Covid equipment, and the PM has just appointed as cabinet secretary Chris Wormald, who is the top official in the Department of Health and Social Care, which oversaw the awarding of the dodgy contracts.

The juxtaposition of the appointments is astonishing, quite literally.

I am intrigued by what Keir Starmer asked Wormald about his financial stewardship of DHSC during the job interview. What is Wormald’s explanation for how such spectacularly loss-making medical procurement - that has explicitly and repeatedly been described by Rachel Reeves as a scandal - happened on his watch, when he was the accounting officer?

Who does Wormald think was to blame for awarding the disastrous loss-making contracts? Where does the buck stop for the debacle?

It can’t be his fault, surely, or presumably Starmer would not have promoted him to run the entire civil service? So who was at fault?

Tricky to blame the tooth fairy for this one.

Is it plausible that the corruption commissioner and the separate Covid Inquiry will give the DHSC a clean bill of health as they go through purchasing procedures and the books? That seems a stretch after the National Audit Office has said the department has written off a staggering £9.9bn on unusable and over-priced personal protective equipment? If they savage the DHSC, does Downing St already have a media plan to protect Wormald and blame others.

Everyone tells me that Wormald is sensible and impressive.  “He is interested in substance and not just a courtier” says someone who knows him and rates him highly. And lest we forget, the country and the government were in panic mode during the early Covid months, so accidents were bound to happen, milk was inevitably going to be spilled.

It was a crisis after all and the NHS was chronically short of PPE protective equipment - though whose faults was that? But the difficulty with saying forgive and forget, don’t get worked up, is that the Chancellor says precisely the opposite. She insists the lost billions are a scandal and we should all be very angry.  Though presumably Starmer has misplaced her memo

[Robert Peston @Peston]

When I had a mobile phone snatched by a biker, I gave the police precise GPS details of its two UK locations, including Google maps pictures of front doors. The police refused to go to the addresses or investigate.

This was maddening. The officers said they were not allowed to act on GPS locational data - and also that there are so many street crimes that they can’t cope. But they did want to visit me to take a pointless statement and offer me victim support, when what I actually wanted was my phone back. It is now in Algeria.

The police are significantly under-resourced but there is also an issue about how the existing resources are being deployed.

The Home Secretary says she will give the police the power to act on location data. But it is unclear when this will happen, and why the police can’t even now simply go to a property and knock on a door as a warning to the thieves that they are being watched. And as for the failure to use cctv images, don’t get me started.

Of course thefts and crimes such as the one I experienced are trivial compared to many that go unsolved. Which is why what is reported below will resonate widely.

PS I am not being funny but I thought the most counter-intuitive aspect of the Louise Haigh case is that a decade ago the police took an interest in where her phone might be

[BladeoftheSun @BladeoftheS]

Mick Lynch went on Question Time once then they banned him because he embarrassed them.

The establishment sack of 💩 Nigel Farage has been on 38 times because he tells the lies the billionaires want you to hear.

[Brexitshambles @brexit_sham]

Former boss of Vauxhall Luton confirms that the factory’s "troubles began with Brexit". https://t.co/APSlhrMmS6

[Otto English @Otto_English]

Well done @Nigel_Farage - look what your Brexit achieved, mate.

[Femi @Femi_sorry]

I honestly don't understand why the organisers of yesterday's protest even let Jeremy Clarkson speak.

If your main aim is to convince people that this ISN'T about helping rich land owners avoid paying their fair share...

Letting HIM be the face of your movement is BAT SHIT.

[Richard Murphy @RichardJMurphy]

One third of children in the UK are living in poverty and we have had a day with the media obsessing about rich farmers who want to keep their millions tax free. Who is orchestrating this utterly bizarre news agenda, and why?

[BBC Newsnight @BBCNewsnight]

“So it’s not about you, it’s not about your farm and the fact you bought a farm to avoid inheritance tax?”

@vicderbyshire speaks to Jeremy Clarkson at the farmers’ protest in Westminster where thousands of farmers are protesting the government’s inheritance tax plans.

[Trent Telenko @TrentTelenko]

Russia seems headed towards a February 1917 moment.

1. A kilogram of potatoes in Nov 2024 is 73% more expensive than in Jan 2024.
2. Interest rates reached 21% in Oct 2024
3. Mortgage rates have risen to 28%

1/
https://t.co/Fn7yQzwHJb

[Lewis Reynolds 🇬🇧🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🇪🇺 @lrr21Lewis]

@owenjonesjourno Classic AI writing

[Ryan Wichert @ryanwichert]

What a Blow Job! 💥 It only lasted 10 seconds and cost someone their job 😜 Created for a 10s ultra short Channel 4 competition, this little gem won numerous comedy awards!
•••••
#actor #comedy #short comedy #funny #slapstick #visualcomedy #ultrashort #filmmaking

[Carole Cadwalladr @carolecadwalla]

Please read this. It's literally been 8 years in the writing.

The first wave of tech disruption of democracy 2016-2024 is over. What starts now is something much, much worse: the age of information chaos.
1/
https://t.co/bsnKnag51p

[Owen Jones @owenjonesjourno]

This is a massive media scandal.

@SkyNews posted a video accurately describing what happened in Amsterdam.

It described violence perpetrated by Israeli football hooligans, and their hideous racism.

They then deleted it. This is the original.

[Martin Davies 🇬🇧 🇫🇷 🇪🇺 🇨🇦 @martindvz]

Today would have been Carl Sagan's 90th birthday.
He wrote this in 1995.

[Mike Galsworthy @mikegalsworthy]

“In one measure, closer arrangements with Europe are just common sense, they are a nearby trading partner” said David Davis.

He’s not quick, but he’s getting there. https://t.co/baV9LYlewr

[Emmanuel Macron @EmmanuelMacron]

Donald Trump was elected by Americans to defend the interests of Americans.

The question we, as Europeans, must ask ourselves is, are we ready to defend the interests of Europeans?

[George Monbiot @GeorgeMonbiot]

I’ve been called a communist many times in the past few days, because I oppose Trump. But the people levelling this accusation are perfect Soviet commissar or Chinese Red Guard material. All dictatorships are alike, and all are sustained by blindly obedient loyalists.

[Mike Galsworthy @mikegalsworthy]

I did my PhD on the genetics of cognitive abilities.

He’s not smart.

[Brendan May @bmay]

I think it's all quite cleverly balanced to please various factions, but I can't really take any budget seriously that makes no mention of Brexit or how to reverse the absolute bin fire it has brought to the entire foundations of the British economy.

I find it incomprehensible.

[Physics In History @PhysInHistory]

The science of global warming beautifully and simply explained by Dr. Carl Sagan, ca. 1985. ✍️