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Jo Maugham

@JolyonMaugham

26 Nov

@LondonersLondon

🧵Back in March 2020, the Government asked councils to house all street homeless people to protect them from the pandemic. It was an unprecedented move which rightly safeguarded thousands of vulnerable people from life on the streets as Covid took hold @LondonersLondon [1/4]

@LondonersLondon

Paul Atherton @LondonersLondon was one of many who benefitted from the move. He went from sleeping rough in Heathrow to staying in a hotel apartment, where he could shower, cook healthy meals and rest when his Chronic Fatigue Syndrome flared up [2/4] thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2020-0…

But by July, he had been turfed out and was facing the prospect of sleeping rough once again. Now, over a year later, the ‘Everyone In’ scheme looks like a missed opportunity to eradicate rough sleeping for good [3/4]

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Jo Maugham

@JolyonMaugham

16 Nov

“The question every journalist should be asking Michael Gove now is: why did he or his office fast-track a firm run by a major Tory donor, who also donated to his Tory leadership bid, for a lucrative £160m Covid contract? This looks like really ugly stuff” mirror.co.uk/news/politics/…

This (probably deliberately) misses the point.

If a Minister refers a friend and you're a civil servant you're going to be heavily inclined to give that friend a contract because you'll know the friend will kick off to the Minister if you don't.

That's obviously true. But these emails show it happening. Civil servants were worried that Andrew Mills would kick off if they didn't give Ayanda a contract. Another has talked about it being "career impeding" to stand in a Minister's way.

Read 4 tweets

Jo Maugham

@JolyonMaugham

16 Nov

"There was no good reason — but obvious bad reasons — for government to keep the public in the dark about these links... We now need some transparency about the equivalent VIP lane for Test and Trace contracts — on which £37bn of public money was spent." politico.eu/article/conser…

This is quite a quote from Lord Feldman.

Note, first, how it's carefully crafted to admit of the possibility he had non-commercial relationships with SG Recruitment, Skinnydip, Maxima and/or their owners.

@phill_kemp

Note, second, how there is no mention of those he does have commercial relationships with - Bunzl and Oxford Nanopore - and who won huge public contracts.

Here's the excellent @phill_kemp's story on Oxford Nanopore: bbc.co.uk/news/uk-549755…

Read 4 tweets

Jo Maugham

@JolyonMaugham

15 Nov

The Establishment is not evil - so why is it getting things so badly wrong on trans issues? At the heart of it is this. Unless you are from or alongside a marginalised community it is hard to imagine how others experience the Establishment.

If you are inside the Establishment your experience is that it behaves in ways that are fair, reasonable and which give proper weight and protection to your interests. Outside the Establishment things are... different.

If you have never lived in or alongside a properly marginalised community you really need to try hard to listen. Until you really 'get' that your experience is not universal you are likely - however good your intentions - to be a force that perpetuates unfairness and inequality.

Read 4 tweets

Jo Maugham

@JolyonMaugham

14 Nov

To an economist, the benefit of an interest free loan is the interest you would have had to pay had you borrowed the money on the open market. And the benefit of a cheap loan is the difference between the amount of interest you paid and the open market interest rate.

Putting it another way, the amount of interest the borrower pays that is less than the rate s/he would have paid had s/he borrowed on the open market is a transfer of a benefit by the lender to the borrower.

This is economic commonsense.

And it's also what the tax code says. If you are a director and you receive an interest free or cheap loan you are taxed as if you received a 'benefit-in-kind' and its value is the difference between the interest you paid and the "official rate".

Read 17 tweets

Jo Maugham

@JolyonMaugham

13 Nov

@PeteWishart

This letter seems to misunderstand the Met's role. It's not @PeteWishart's job to gather the evidence. He doesn't have power to compel the production of documents and interview witnesses. That's the Met's job. So why won't they look?

It's hard to think how you might read a piece like this and think to yourself 'nah, nothing here to investigate'. Surely, you'd at least take a look.

Once again, we are left wondering whether political interference with policing means the Tories are above the law.

It's just like PPE procurement. Everyone knows - with huge payments to politically connected middlemen - there is at least a whiff of out-and-out corruption. And yet the police are nowhere to be seen.

Read 5 tweets

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