OuiChef46

Retired teacher, Europhile, crazy about cycling and food. Brexiteers are really hard work with their reptilian brains....

[Artur Nadolny @ArturNadol7566]

HOW BRITAIN REWARDS PEOPLE WHO TRY TO SAVE TAXPAYER MONEY: FIRE THEM

Mike Kiely spent 22 years inside BT (@BTGroup). He knew how the telecoms industry operated. So when the government hired him as a consultant to oversee the £2.5 billion rural broadband rollout, he knew exactly what he was looking at.

BT had won all 26 government contracts. All of them.

Kiely did the maths. Installing a street cabinet in Northern Ireland cost around £13,000. On the mainland, BT was charging the government between £61,000 and £80,000 per cabinet. Public money covered roughly 77% of every single one.

He suspected BT was simply inventing tasks and inflating charges to absorb as much public funding as possible without doing more work.

So he shared his analysis with local councils. The people whose job it was to negotiate these contracts and spend public money responsibly.

Then his document leaked to a broadband blog.

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport trawled his internal emails, found what they needed, and sacked him. The man who tried to protect public money.

Margaret Hodge (@margarethodge), chair of the Public Accounts Committee, told the Guardian (@guardian) she was getting increasingly concerned at the way whistleblowers were being bullied. She pointed out that hiding behind commercial confidentiality was denying the public the right to know how their money was being spent.

Her committee later confirmed what Kiely had warned all along. Taxpayers had been ripped off. £1.2 billion had gone to BT shareholders.

Kiely was eventually vindicated when a community in Oxfordshire paid £28,000 per cabinet. Exactly in line with what his numbers predicted was fair.

He lost his job for telling the truth. BT kept every contract.

This is what accountability looks like in Britain. The consultant who raises the alarm gets sacked. The company he raised the alarm about gets the cheque.

Support whistleblowers. They are the only audit most public spending ever gets.

SOURCES
@BBCNews @TheRegister @guardian @margarethodge

[Led By Donkeys @ByDonkeys]

Immigration makes Britain brilliant.

[OuiChef46 @ouichef46]

@transgreghouse And the gender fluidity of Ivan Cattaneo in the late 70s too! Playing the August feste in very conservative little southern towns. Nobody batted an eyelid.👍

[OuiChef46 @ouichef46]

@MrMatthewTodd And to then get here and find the AMOC shutdown has made it too cold to live or produce food.🤷‍♀️ Wild (and very scary) times.

[CHAIRRDRF @CHAIRRDRF]

@Roadman_Podcast Check out the work of @TheCampagKid !

[Paul Lewis @paullewismoney]

MBE? No thanks, not from this govt says disability campaigner https://t.co/ieMqg8SQIU

[Andrew Parnall @dontbrexitfixit]

You are not going to allow this are you Starmer @Keir_Starmer? Lowering our food standards is not in your remit. If you cannot see what the Trump administration is trying to do then you must step aside.

[Kim Willsher @kimwillsher1]

"Speaking outside his chateau in France".
https://t.co/dZitN5x7SL

[David__Osland @David__Osland]

Newmarket MP Matt Hancock gave a £37bn Covid testing contract to Jockey Club director Dido Harding, who subcontracted it to Grand National sponsor Randox, employer of Tory MP Owen Paterson, whose late wife chaired Aintree racecourse. That's how the Tories handled the pandemic.

[Paul Rees. ex Rucksack. @HannahIamthest1]

The lady at the charity shop today told me that she wishes people would clear out their children's old toys in the lead up to Christmas rather than after because she always sees a number of parents in the days before Christmas looking for toys for their little ones who might be strapped for cash. She said there's very rarely anything in just before, but that they get inundated with toys in the days after.

And it really made me think about it in a way I never would have before.

If you know your child is going to get lots of presents from Father Christmas this year, by clearing out your cupboards a few days early, you could make another child's Christmas a lot more special too.

Saw this & thought I'd repost.

[Carole Cadwalladr @carolecadwalla]

Gosh. What times. An extract from my High Court judgment has just been rediscovered & is going viral.

[Harry Eccles @Heccles94]

Can we get this story about Farage and his dodgy tax Retweeted 10,000 times?

#NoTaxNigel #FarageOut
#FarageTheFraud

https://t.co/2bwATYQRPS

[Harry Eccles @Heccles94]

I think @bbclaurak is scared to interview @ZackPolanski because he will expose her complicity in declining British political standards over the past decade.

What do you think?

#BBCLauraK

[terry christian @terrychristian]

Exactly why isn't this a much bigger discussion. How much influence in the UK's outdated feudal system has Russian money bought.

[Liz Webster @LizWebsterSBF]

🚨 New video shows Nigel Farage and Richard Tice platforming Nathan Gill - the same Gill who has now pleaded guilty to taking Russian bribes - treason?

In 2025, Gill’s convicted for taking Russian bribes and faces jail time.

This is same network that sold us Brexit and built Reform UK.

[Mark Hammond @MarkHam80780803]

“Nathan Gill? Never heard of him.”

[Graham Lambert 💙 @100glitterstars]

This is such a huge story, even bigger than the Kim Philby double agent spy case 1963, and yet our media sustains an ominous silence about it.
Why? What do they fear if the truth is known?

#NathanGill

[Harry Eccles @Heccles94]

Why would the political editor for @SkyNews, @BethRigby be pushing Reform, instead of asking about their current links to Russian Money?

Why are journalists promoting a far-right party, instead of investigating the huge unfolding corruption scandal?

[chrissiegrech.bsky.social @ChrissieGrech]

Come on guys...Should this not be headline news?

[Stormageddon @lawks1]

Somebody at the publicly funded @BBC has made an editorial decision to ignore the issue of the Welsh leader of a party they constantly tell us will form the next govt taking bribes from Russia to spread propaganda.

I think we have a right to know who that somebody is. #BBCNews