I'm more interested in who will save our country from corrupt politics.
Good distraction though.👆
Robert Jenrick’s constituency was awarded funding by his department as part of a process that was opaque and not impartial. thetimes.co.uk/article/robert…
Robert Jenrick had a ministerial meeting with a “family friend” who had a financial interest in the future of a rival mining project that Jenrick was overseeing. theguardian.com/politics/2020/…
"Robert Jenrick should have resigned over a contentious decision to approve a major property scheme involving a Conservative Party donor, an anti-corruption expert has suggested." independent.co.uk/news/uk/politi…
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A genuinely fascinating interview with a man who managed to rise to Attorney General despite the profound handicaps in our politics of modesty and thoughtfulness. instituteforgovernment.org.uk/ministers-refl…
Interesting - for me at least - to read him struggle with a question I also do: about the analytical content of the role and responsible limits of criticism of judges.
Embedded in the (now) orthodox belief that judicial diversity is a good thing is the assumption that judges bring who they are to what they do. If this is true (and imo it is) it must follow that it can be right to ask whether who a judge is has wrongly infected their reasoning.
Just been sent a screenshot by a contact in the PPE world offering him IIR facemasks at $0.039. The 150m masks we purchased from Liz Truss' adviser via Ayanda for £97.5m we could buy today for £4.5m.
What makes this even more obscene is that the Ayanda contract had this clause in it - a clause I believe to be unique to politically connected VIP lane Ayanda - which said Ayanda could deliver its IIR facemasks late.
Here's what the National Audit Office said about how much PPE the Government bought at those top of the market prices: five years worth.
In its Manifesto for the 2019 General Election, the Conservative Party promised to "raise standards in... workers' rights." And now we learn they plan to cut them.
Here is Gavin Williamson talking this afternoon about the decision on the evening of 14 December to force Greenwich to reopen Schools: "At that stage none of us were aware of the new variant."
And here is Matt Hancock earlier that day telling the House of Commons about the existence of the new variant. hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2020-1…
Matt Hancock also spoke of "the faster spread in the South of England" but Williamson claimed: "You'd seen authorities and schools right across the North of England and right across the Midlands... with case rates much higher than we'd seen in Greenwich."
Like you, we are concerned that private providers might be looking at pandemic food provision for the vulnerable as a chance to make supersize profits.
... we now have a (completely inadequate) response from Government about its design and management of the £200m foodboxes contract (given without any tender process) which we are considering with Counsel. We expect to make an announcement about next steps shortly.
Legal stuff aside, it's just deplorable that so many providers seem to have thrown away their moral compass and now see pound signs where they should see basic decency and civic responsibility.
Changes to Government guidelines prioritised managing its reputation above the health of vulnerable children.
(With a link to the 25 page pre-action protocol letter lawyers for @GoodLawProject sent to Gavin Williamson on Thursday.) rebrand.ly/edu-0901
And here's some coverage from @tes of our challenge, the second we have been forced to bring against Government to seek to compel it properly to prioritise the education of kids in struggling families during the pandemic. tes.com/news/coronavir…
One of the issues we raised in our letter was the fact that "children will be brought into school, thus heightening the risk of infection to them and their families, purely because of their socio economic status". goodlawproject.org/news/reputatio…