He meets a man from the Russian Embassy who he thinks is a spy. They go for a burger - which is absolutely a normal response to meeting someone you think is a Russian spy.
The Russian, Sergey Nalobin, pumps Guido for information. And they become friends.
Exactly what anyone would do confronted by an agent of Putin, isn't it?
The Russian invites him to a drinks party at the Russian embassy and then the Russians start putting money into Paul Staines' business. Totally normal to have Russians putting money your way.
Paul Staines goes along to the Russian embassy and starts giving them advice. It's an event Chaired by Putin's ambassador. And it's Staines' salesman who is keen for him to go - so reasonable to think Guido gets paid for this too.
Guido's Russian friend is indeed a Russian spy, Guido's instincts, when Guido started making friends with him, turn out to be right.
This guy, Paul Staines aka Guido Fawkes, remains to this day the man Boris Johnson's Government works closely with.
And that's the story in *his* words. Staines is notoriously indifferent to the truth. Makes you wonder how much worse the real story is.
It pains me to link to the Spectator but you can read Paul Staines in his own words here (I also like the bit where he doesn't trust himself to go to Russia because there might be photos of what he does.) spectator.co.uk/article/a-very…
Also shouldn't forget that Paul Staines, via his MessageSpace entity, used to help the Russian Embassy explain its "foreign policy positions" for money.
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Funny how there's no end of police resource when it comes to peaceful protestors. And bugger all when it comes to investigating criminality at Number 10.
We bought so much PPE we spent more three quarters of a billion pounds storing it - and (as of December 2021) we continued to spend £600,000 A DAY.
Even now, having paused buying, we still have 3 years supply of aprons, 2.5 years of waste bags, 18 years of eye protectors, 9 years of gowns, 5 years of hand hygiene, 2.5 years of IIR masks, 3 years of FFP3 masks. All purchased at (on average) five times normal prices.
I guess, reflecting on this some more, for me, two things seep through the (largely) careful prose in Dr Cass' report. One is a conspicuously genuine desire to make things better for trans children and young people but the other is...
a deep scepticism, which reflects where so many who hold institutional power in the UK are, about the reality of trans existence.
If you can't shake the feeling in your bones that being trans is an illness, your instinct is always going to be to 'cure' it. So much of England still thinks, in contrast to learning elsewhere like at the WHO, of being trans as a pathology.
So Hilary Cass' interim review into gender identity services for children and young people is just out... some initial thoughts. 🧵
First, you will read lots of views about whether Dr Cass' report neutrally captures the evidence base. One of the big problems in this space is that what is fundamentally a medical issue for specialists and patients has become a political battleground.
I'm not going to add to that problem by talking about her evidence base and I'd suggest you scrutinise the expertise of those who do. This isn't an ideological assessment. Like not needing to hold views on the proper treatment of bowel cancer you don't need to hold views on this.
If you want to know how much £££ the favoured few were making from PPE contracts, and you do, then buckle up. 🧵
This judgment concerns the purchase by Uniserve Limited of 80 million IIR masks from a company called Hitex. The contract was dated 21 April 2020. bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/…
Uniserve was a VIP (gov.uk/government/new…) and was introduced by Lord Agnew (a Tory Peer who quit after complaining about pandemic fraud). It also had links to Health Minister Julia Lopez (julialopez.co.uk/news/visiting-…) and they share the same address.
Back in the day, I used to argue tax avoidance cases in court. Those cases were about making 'investments', usually in films, which would generate a loss (of eg 100) for accounting purposes which you would match against your income (of eg 100) so you paid tax on 0 not on 100.
These arrangements, which were politely called 'structured finance', were put together by clever financial engineers for a cut of the total investment of, maybe 5%, which they shared with the IFAs of the individuals who had those 100s of income they didn't want to pay tax on.
Anyway, they made some strange film choices - I saw a scheme where the poorer the box office of the film the better off the individual because he* got more losses for the same money - but the films they chose always had one thing in common.