6 ms·

Banana Republic Corruption

19 points by jules-jules 6y ago

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
toyg 6y ago
Brexit and Covid have been our very British "Iraq fund". In 10 years, everyone will wonder how "we" could ever allow this shocking lack of oversight.
JoeSmithson 6y ago
Craig Murray is prone to conspiracy theories. The first half of this article appears to be absolute nonsense primary "research" by Craig. The second half is the actual story which is much better reported elsewhere. For example, this FT article is much better; https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.ft.com/content/c0d439c8-18ac-499b-8115-da2bc0f18567 https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.ft.com/content/c0d439c8-18a... It appears what happened is, during the height of the crisis, a bunch of amoral City spivs thought it was appropriate to speculate on PPE.
- doublesCs 6y ago
  > It appears what happened is, during the height of the crisis, a bunch of amoral City spivs thought it was appropriate to speculate on PPE. No, the story isn't that someone decided to speculate. The story is how someone who's a speculator got such a contract. In fact, he says this explicitely > The normal public procurement tendering process has pre-qualification criteria which companies have to meet. These will normally include so many years of experience in the specific sector, employment of suitably qualified staff, possession of the required physical infrastructure and a measure of financial stability. This is perhaps obvious – otherwise you or I could simply stick in a bid to build the HS2 railway that is £10 billion cheaper than anybody else, win the contract then go and look for a builder.
  - JoeSmithson 6y ago
    Yes but that was dropped across the board, it was nothing in particular to do with this firm which is just one of many that sought to profit from the chaos. The government lifted the normal tending process in a panic, and numerous dodgy financial firms starting buying PPE to make money.
    - doublesCs 6y ago
      > Yes but that was dropped across the board, it was nothing in particular to do with this firm which is just one of many that sought to profit from the chaos. Again, the story isn't that they sought to profit from chaos, it's that they got the contract. Can we focus on that? Instead of saying "they were trying to profit", can we start from "of course they were trying to profit, but why wasn't the tender made public, and who made the decision to give it to them?"
      - JoeSmithson 6y ago
        The CM article doesn't answer your questions at all and instead for some reason digs around in the public accounts of this company. Why? The FT article goes into much more detail about the actual procurement process and the surroundings issues. > ”Around 16,000 potential suppliers contacted a 500-person buying team set up by the Cabinet Office in March to offer to supply kit for hospital staff." This is because one of them is actual journalism and one of them is a biased write-up of pointless open source research.
- jcahill 6y ago
  I read Murray's article and the FT article. I don't see: (a) any disagreement between FT and Murray on basic facts (b) any overtly conspiratorial thinking from Murray (c) any clear reason to give deference to FT, or (d) any justification for labeling Murray's article as "absolute nonsense primary "research"". I do see: (e) a few concrete criticisms of Murray's article, and (f) a few concrete criticisms of FT's article. FT in agreement with Murray, via non-AMP link[1]: > However, the process has been criticised for awarding large sums of taxpayer money to several companies that appear to have no record in supplying PPE and have small balance sheets or poor recent financial performance. It has prompted concern over the extent of due diligence that was conducted before the contract awards. […] > So far the government has published about 80 of the PPE contracts. The largest was a £252.5m contract awarded to Ayanda Capital, a family investment firm that specialises in “currency trading, offshore property, private equity and trade financing”, according to its website. […] > When contacted by the FT, Ayanda said it was a UK limited company that paid UK taxes and was “happy to confirm that the contract has been successfully fulfilled”. Possible criticisms of Murray's article: 1. Loginwalled and dead links. 2. Speculation about the pricing of intangible assets under Ayanda Capital's management. 3. Over-narrow emphasis on the one Ayanda contract. 4. Opaque, charged title Loginwalled links: he links to Wealth Manager magazine, which is loginwalled (but not paywalled). This is not terribly worthy of criticism if that's the best source for this story. I have not read the Wealth Manager article. Dead links: he also links directly to objects in an s3 bucket with expired access tokens. Those are from the UK govt's Companies House. Not too hard to get fresh links.[2][3] Speculation: Addressing the small balance sheet is of direct relevance. Bundling conjecture is a bit much. But only a bit. He qualifies this passage well enough. Narrow focus: This contract is the largest one. Murray claims it is symptomatic of a failing of the UK govt. So focusing on the one contract doesn't stick out as particularly conspiratorial. Title: The former criticism (opaque title) is an ok one but the latter (charged title) isn't. ____________________ [1]: https://www.ft.com/content/c0d439c8-18ac-499b-8115-da2bc0f18567 https://www.ft.com/content/c0d439c8-18ac-499b-8115-da2bc0f18... [2a]: https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/11014884/filing-history https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/11014884/filing-h... > Total exemption full accounts made up to 31 December 2019 > View PDF [2b]: https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/11014884/filing-history https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/11014884/filing-h... > Total exemption full accounts made up to 31 December 2018 > View PDF [3a]: https://files.catbox.moe/234hjx.pdf https://files.catbox.moe/234hjx.pdf [3b]: https://files.catbox.moe/c92j8e.pdf https://files.catbox.moe/c92j8e.pdf
cosmodisk 6y ago
This is possible when the electorate is made of an average Joe and Jenny,who would fail to understand even half of what this articles writes about. I live in Britain and I like it here but boy the ignorance and 'can't be asked' culture is rife. But as in most countries, people do have the government they deserve,so it's all fine I suppose.
usr1106 6y ago
That's 5£ per citizen. So I guess we can be glad about the competence of the Finnish authorities. They spent only one 1€ per citizen for ordering face masks that did not meet any quality standards from "business people" with earlier convictions for economic crime and unpaid taxes.
LatteLazy 6y ago
The same government that gave no bid contracts for shipping to companies setup a week earlier by their donors who didn't own or operate any ships? Then got re elected? The same PM who when Mayor of London lied, cheated, stole, took credit for others work, had several affairs and a love child all while too busy to actually fulfill his lackluster manifesto? I am shocked, shocked I tell you!
trabant00 6y ago
This is for me _the_ covid conspiracy theory. The leeches have used this pandemic to make such huge piles of money all over the world that I do have to wonder how much of the panic spreading news has been for profit only as opposed to convincing people to stay safe. Combined with WHO fluctuating to the extremes with "you need, you don't need a mask", Sweden no quarantine results vs rest of Europe, in general numbers not making much sense even for one country over periods of time (not comparing numbers from different countries), it's not hard to make a case that the current response to covid is for making money primarily and not caring about general population welfare.
- doublesCs 6y ago
  > Combined with WHO fluctuating to the extremes with "you need, you don't need a mask", Sweden no quarantine results vs rest of Europe, in general numbers not making much sense even for one country over periods of time (not comparing numbers from different countries), it's not hard to make a case that the current response to covid is for making money primarily and not caring about general population welfare. Are you suggesting that Sweden had good results by using no quarantine? https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries Sorting by deaths per capita, and excluding tiny countries, the countries with the highest death rate in the world were: - UK - Spain - Italy - Sweden - France - USA UK did a SHIT job (incompetent government, uneducated population; I know, I live here). Spain and Italy were the first countries to get mass infections before the world realized that covid wasn't just a China problem, of course they're gonna rank high. Then you have Sweden.
  - trabant00 6y ago
    Excluding the ones you mentioned we also have comparable numbers for Belgium, France, Netherlands, Ireland. I expected no quarantine to have disastrous order of magnitude difference in results. Does not seem so. Ofc this is comparing data between countries, which is more often than not apples to oranges. But we can ignore the numbers and just see the bodies did not pile up in Sweden streets. From this I can not say with certainty any more that quarantine was worth it considering it does not come without serious downsides.

19 points by jules-jules 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

toyg 6y ago

Brexit and Covid have been our very British "Iraq fund". In 10 years, everyone will wonder how "we" could ever allow this shocking lack of oversight.

JoeSmithson 6y ago

Craig Murray is prone to conspiracy theories. The first half of this article appears to be absolute nonsense primary "research" by Craig. The second half is the actual story which is much better reported elsewhere. For example, this FT article is much better; https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.ft.com/content/c0d439c8-18ac-499b-8115-da2bc0f18567 https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.ft.com/content/c0d439c8-18a... It appears what happened is, during the height of the crisis, a bunch of amoral City spivs thought it was appropriate to speculate on PPE.

doublesCs 6y ago
> It appears what happened is, during the height of the crisis, a bunch of amoral City spivs thought it was appropriate to speculate on PPE. No, the story isn't that someone decided to speculate. The story is how someone who's a speculator got such a contract. In fact, he says this explicitely > The normal public procurement tendering process has pre-qualification criteria which companies have to meet. These will normally include so many years of experience in the specific sector, employment of suitably qualified staff, possession of the required physical infrastructure and a measure of financial stability. This is perhaps obvious – otherwise you or I could simply stick in a bid to build the HS2 railway that is £10 billion cheaper than anybody else, win the contract then go and look for a builder.
- JoeSmithson 6y ago
  Yes but that was dropped across the board, it was nothing in particular to do with this firm which is just one of many that sought to profit from the chaos. The government lifted the normal tending process in a panic, and numerous dodgy financial firms starting buying PPE to make money.
  - doublesCs 6y ago
    > Yes but that was dropped across the board, it was nothing in particular to do with this firm which is just one of many that sought to profit from the chaos. Again, the story isn't that they sought to profit from chaos, it's that they got the contract. Can we focus on that? Instead of saying "they were trying to profit", can we start from "of course they were trying to profit, but why wasn't the tender made public, and who made the decision to give it to them?"
    - JoeSmithson 6y ago
      The CM article doesn't answer your questions at all and instead for some reason digs around in the public accounts of this company. Why? The FT article goes into much more detail about the actual procurement process and the surroundings issues. > ”Around 16,000 potential suppliers contacted a 500-person buying team set up by the Cabinet Office in March to offer to supply kit for hospital staff." This is because one of them is actual journalism and one of them is a biased write-up of pointless open source research.
jcahill 6y ago
I read Murray's article and the FT article. I don't see: (a) any disagreement between FT and Murray on basic facts (b) any overtly conspiratorial thinking from Murray (c) any clear reason to give deference to FT, or (d) any justification for labeling Murray's article as "absolute nonsense primary "research"". I do see: (e) a few concrete criticisms of Murray's article, and (f) a few concrete criticisms of FT's article. FT in agreement with Murray, via non-AMP link[1]: > However, the process has been criticised for awarding large sums of taxpayer money to several companies that appear to have no record in supplying PPE and have small balance sheets or poor recent financial performance. It has prompted concern over the extent of due diligence that was conducted before the contract awards. […] > So far the government has published about 80 of the PPE contracts. The largest was a £252.5m contract awarded to Ayanda Capital, a family investment firm that specialises in “currency trading, offshore property, private equity and trade financing”, according to its website. […] > When contacted by the FT, Ayanda said it was a UK limited company that paid UK taxes and was “happy to confirm that the contract has been successfully fulfilled”. Possible criticisms of Murray's article: 1. Loginwalled and dead links. 2. Speculation about the pricing of intangible assets under Ayanda Capital's management. 3. Over-narrow emphasis on the one Ayanda contract. 4. Opaque, charged title Loginwalled links: he links to Wealth Manager magazine, which is loginwalled (but not paywalled). This is not terribly worthy of criticism if that's the best source for this story. I have not read the Wealth Manager article. Dead links: he also links directly to objects in an s3 bucket with expired access tokens. Those are from the UK govt's Companies House. Not too hard to get fresh links.[2][3] Speculation: Addressing the small balance sheet is of direct relevance. Bundling conjecture is a bit much. But only a bit. He qualifies this passage well enough. Narrow focus: This contract is the largest one. Murray claims it is symptomatic of a failing of the UK govt. So focusing on the one contract doesn't stick out as particularly conspiratorial. Title: The former criticism (opaque title) is an ok one but the latter (charged title) isn't. ____________________ [1]: https://www.ft.com/content/c0d439c8-18ac-499b-8115-da2bc0f18567 https://www.ft.com/content/c0d439c8-18ac-499b-8115-da2bc0f18... [2a]: https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/11014884/filing-history https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/11014884/filing-h... > Total exemption full accounts made up to 31 December 2019 > View PDF [2b]: https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/11014884/filing-history https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/11014884/filing-h... > Total exemption full accounts made up to 31 December 2018 > View PDF [3a]: https://files.catbox.moe/234hjx.pdf https://files.catbox.moe/234hjx.pdf [3b]: https://files.catbox.moe/c92j8e.pdf https://files.catbox.moe/c92j8e.pdf

cosmodisk 6y ago

This is possible when the electorate is made of an average Joe and Jenny,who would fail to understand even half of what this articles writes about. I live in Britain and I like it here but boy the ignorance and 'can't be asked' culture is rife. But as in most countries, people do have the government they deserve,so it's all fine I suppose.

usr1106 6y ago

That's 5£ per citizen. So I guess we can be glad about the competence of the Finnish authorities. They spent only one 1€ per citizen for ordering face masks that did not meet any quality standards from "business people" with earlier convictions for economic crime and unpaid taxes.

LatteLazy 6y ago

The same government that gave no bid contracts for shipping to companies setup a week earlier by their donors who didn't own or operate any ships? Then got re elected? The same PM who when Mayor of London lied, cheated, stole, took credit for others work, had several affairs and a love child all while too busy to actually fulfill his lackluster manifesto? I am shocked, shocked I tell you!

trabant00 6y ago

This is for me _the_ covid conspiracy theory. The leeches have used this pandemic to make such huge piles of money all over the world that I do have to wonder how much of the panic spreading news has been for profit only as opposed to convincing people to stay safe. Combined with WHO fluctuating to the extremes with "you need, you don't need a mask", Sweden no quarantine results vs rest of Europe, in general numbers not making much sense even for one country over periods of time (not comparing numbers from different countries), it's not hard to make a case that the current response to covid is for making money primarily and not caring about general population welfare.

doublesCs 6y ago
> Combined with WHO fluctuating to the extremes with "you need, you don't need a mask", Sweden no quarantine results vs rest of Europe, in general numbers not making much sense even for one country over periods of time (not comparing numbers from different countries), it's not hard to make a case that the current response to covid is for making money primarily and not caring about general population welfare. Are you suggesting that Sweden had good results by using no quarantine? https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries Sorting by deaths per capita, and excluding tiny countries, the countries with the highest death rate in the world were: - UK - Spain - Italy - Sweden - France - USA UK did a SHIT job (incompetent government, uneducated population; I know, I live here). Spain and Italy were the first countries to get mass infections before the world realized that covid wasn't just a China problem, of course they're gonna rank high. Then you have Sweden.
- trabant00 6y ago
  Excluding the ones you mentioned we also have comparable numbers for Belgium, France, Netherlands, Ireland. I expected no quarantine to have disastrous order of magnitude difference in results. Does not seem so. Ofc this is comparing data between countries, which is more often than not apples to oranges. But we can ignore the numbers and just see the bodies did not pile up in Sweden streets. From this I can not say with certainty any more that quarantine was worth it considering it does not come without serious downsides.