I’m 12 pages into Jo Maugham’s 189-page witness statement. He says in it that he has been litigating against the govt. his entire professional life but has never encountered conduct of the type he describes. I summarise:
Apr 2020 - govt. awards Pestfix a contract to supply ..
Jun - The GLP issues judicial review (JR) proceedings challenging various aspects of the award of this & other contracts to Pestfix.
In the course of the JR claim both the DHSC & Pestfix claim the contract has been performed satisfactorily. ..
Nov 2020 - meanwhile the BBC (for whom 3 cheers, even from me) has made a FOI request of the HSE & obtained documents, mostly emails, showing:
• the isolation suits were no such thing
• they were accepted as fit for use as disposable coveralls only (any medic types ..
.. who want to butt in here & tell us the difference, please blaze away, although I suspect we can imagine)
• AND most egregious, the emails record unnamed persons within DHSC leaning on the HSE to falsely aver that the Pestfix PPE had been accepted when it had not.
Jo can’t ..
.. use such language but I can - this is a govt. department & its contractor deliberately lying to the court, also leaning on civil servants to lie too.
It’s the prorogation all over again, in which no one could be found to verify the pitiful fistful of documents the govt. ..
.. coughed up to prove its decision was lawful.
I hope the court goes apeshit. I’ll read the next part of the evidence if I can access it & summarise.
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I watch a Dutch TV quiz called twee voor tweelf on Friday evenings. With Dutch sub-titles on I can follow pretty well. This evening I learned the Dutch have a law which obliges companies with 50 or more employees to have a workers council. This council has various rights ..
.. including the right to be consulted on certain matters.
As a result of this flagrant socialism & recognition that employees have rights & may also have something to contribute to decision making, Dutch society is on the verge of breakdown, as you would expect. Not.
..
..
Several things interest me about this:
• it shows EU member states have wide margins to frame their own employment law, something I already knew. Almost all English & Welsh employment law is home made.
• the Netherlands is one of Europe’s more prosperous countries ..
The Pennsylvania judgment dismissing the Trump campaign’s lawsuit is quite interesting. The Trump campaign was joined by 2 republican co-plaintiffs each of whom had posted mail in ballots which had been rejected. One had failed to put his ballot paper in the ‘secrecy’ ..
.. envelope as required while the reason for rejection of the other was unknown.
Their gripe was that they should have been told of the rejection & given a chance to cure the defect (‘notice & cure’ in the American parlance). Pennsylvania’s electoral code (each state has ..
.. its own) does not provide for notice & cure but a senior state official had apparently emailed some but not all state counties suggesting it be used. The criticism was that by not telling ALL counties to adopt the procedure, an arbitrary & unequal system resulted with ..
The sheer madness of British life is perfectly encapsulated in this story about two WAGs involved in a libel suit. We are at the preliminary stage at which money is being burned relatively slowly. There has been an interim hearing ..
.. to determine the meaning of the offending words, with judgment to be given this afternoon. We’re still a long way from the trial itself, of course, with hundreds of thousands to be spaffed on settling whether Rebekah Vardy leaked to the press a story about Colleen’s ..
.. flooded basement.
The drama, the excitement, the wigs & gowns, the spiralling cost, all the fun of the fair is here.
Mark Francois - management trainee, Lloyds bank
Ann Widdecombe - admin. University of London
Iain Duncan Smith - failed management trainee GEC Marconi
Nadine Dorries - nurse, formed co. providing day care services
I’m not researching all 370 of them (& I know Widdecombe is ..
.. an outlier) but I just picked these 4 at random to check something. None of them have the kind of background you would think might equip them to understand the real impact of Brexit. We know the likes of Bozo, Mogg & Gove don’t. Raab was a solicitor I think.
Where are ..
.. the farmers, car workers, fishermen, port & customs people, trade experts etc?
Widdecombe when told of some Brexit related closure (maybe Honda, Swindon) just shrugged it off ‘oh, businesses fold all the time’ she said, or words to that effect.
• we are going to square the circle of leaving the EU while preserving the GFA
• we will secure our fish & find a way across EU tariff barriers to sell them
• we will switch from sheep farming to dairy
• we will train 50,000 customs officers ..
.. (takes 18 months & we didn’t start 18 months ago)
• we will clear Felixstowe of 30+ years’ supply of PPE so stuff can be unloaded there
• we will not piss off the EU or the USA with the IMB but we won’t withdraw it either
• we will detect incoming criminals by asking ..
.. them whether they are criminals
• there will be ‘adequate food’ (Raab)
• we will finish building all the lorry parks & they won’t flood
• issuing permits to enter Kent will not clog up roads
• everyone will be happy paying more for imported goods
• everyone will be ..
UK - we would like frictionless trade.
EU - fine but that means your regulatory system must harmonise with ours & if we amend our regs. you must amend yours. Also, if there is a dispute about the meaning of a regulation, only the ECJ can deal ..
.. with it because, otherwise, two parallel bodies of inconsistent case law will develop leading, in effect, to regulatory divergence.
UK - but we are a sovereign country. We can’t agree to that.
EU - then there cannot be frictionless trade.
UK - now see here, you sell us more ..
.. than we sell you so you’ll have to crumble in the end.
EU - not by undermining the SM & CU. Those are fundamental to our prosperity & part of the process of ever closer union.
UK - you’re acting in bad faith! You promised a FTA! You did, you weally weally did! You pwomised!