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11 Nov, 5 tweets, 2 min read
The former Welsh secretary Alun Cairns took a £15,000-a-year job at a diagnostics company only a few weeks before it was part of a consortium that secured a £75 million government contract for lateral flow tests
thetimes.co.uk/article/ex-min…
He agreed to work up to 70 hours a year for the BBI Group as a senior adviser “providing strategic advice to the board”

BBI Group was part of a small group of companies led by Abingdon Health in the UK Rapid Test Consortium, which was working on a Covid antibody test
Cairns started the position on July 1 last year, a month after the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) had given the consortium £10 million for the materials it needed to produce said rapid antibody test
In mid-August the government then handed the consortium a £75 million contract to produce one million lateral flow tests

The contract was awarded "without a tender due to the urgency created by the pandemic.”
The contracts awarded to the consortium have been the subject of a High Court challenge by the Good Law Project amid controversy over the accuracy of the tests and the involvement of Lord Bethell, the former health minister
thetimes.co.uk/article/ex-min…

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The Times Profile picture
12 Nov
Vanilla, sanitised messages. Apologies that don’t come across sincerely. Whole teams posting almost scripted, identically-worded tweets

Managed social media posts are undermining players and deceiving fans | ✍️ Gary Neville (@GNev2) thetimes.co.uk/article/gary-n…
It’s been obvious for some time that there’s been some social media orchestration going on in football

But it was only listening to Phil Lynch, head of Manchester United’s media channels, this week that I understood just how ridiculous this has become
A player at Old Trafford is now given a bespoke dossier of “fan sentiment graphs”, algorithms and analytics to work out if he should say sorry for having a shocker on a Saturday afternoon
Read 11 tweets
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12 Nov
Fourteen MPs – nearly all of whom are Conservatives – are using the parliamentary expenses scheme to rent homes while also letting out properties that they own in London for at least £10,000 a year thetimes.co.uk/article/mps-fi…
A loophole in the expenses system, created after the last expenses scandal, allows MPs to let their own homes while using taxpayers’ money to rent another property in the capital
Sir Geoffrey Cox QC, the former attorney-general who is facing scrutiny over the £1 million a year he earns as a lawyer, began letting his home in Battersea, south London, in 2017

He subsequently rented another property for £1,900 a month
Read 10 tweets
The Times Profile picture
11 Nov
Dr Alina Chan has an unusual to-do list. For the next few weeks she’ll be publicising her first book. After that she’s planning to change her name. The aim, she says, is to fade into obscurity to save her career and stay safe.
thetimes.co.uk/article/the-co…
If this sounds like an odd strategy for a debutant author, it helps to know that the book, which she has co-written with the British science writer @mattwridley, is about the origins of Sars-CoV-2, the virus behind the pandemic.
It’s not that Chan thinks she knows for sure where it came from.

Instead, the case she’s been making since May 2020 is that we can’t be certain that it did not emerge from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Read 11 tweets
The Times Profile picture
10 Nov
Three MPs have been accused by the Ben Wallace of “disrespecting” the armed forces after getting drunk on a flight to visit troops in Gibraltar

One Labour MP was said to have been so “incapacitated through drink” that she had to be placed in a wheelchair thetimes.co.uk/article/dressi…
The MP, whom The Times is not naming, was taken to her hotel and was unable to attend a “welcome event” put on for the MPs by the military

It is understood that she was returning to the UK today — two days early — after speaking to Labour whips
The report said that the female MP was with two SNP MPs, David Linden and Drew Hendry, who were “difficult” with customs and testing staff at the airport on Tuesday night
Read 6 tweets
The Times Profile picture
10 Nov
MPs are paid a basic salary of £81,932 but they are also allowed to work as consultants for private businesses

They must declare any earnings over £100 from second jobs

Here are some of the MPs with significant second jobs: thetimes.co.uk/article/the-mp…
Sir Geoffrey Cox (Con 🔵 – Torridge and West Devon)

Practising barrister

£970,839 without VAT for about 1,066 hours since October last year
Andrew Mitchell (Con 🔵 – Sutton Coldfield)

Senior adviser to Investec, Montrose Associates, SouthBridge & Kingsley Capital Partners

Consultant with Ernst & Young

Adviser to Arch Emerging Partners

£180,000 for 34.5 days a year
Read 9 tweets
The Times Profile picture
10 Nov
Conservative MP Daniel Kawczynski has been paid more than £250,000 to advise an international mining company – while simultaneously serving as Boris Johnson’s trade envoy to a country that produces gold, copper and coal thetimes.co.uk/article/daniel…
Kawczynski, the MP for Shrewsbury & Atcham, is the UK’s trade envoy to Mongolia

At the same time, he is paid £36,000 a year by the Electrum Group, a New York-based mining company

He has worked for the company since 2018
The MP has attempted to set up meetings with representatives of the Mongolian mining industry and has held talks with the country’s ministers
Read 5 tweets

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