There is a parallel with Treasury support for the self-employed – since there are fewer means of assessing how much self-employed people are being paid The scramble for ventilators is a classic instance of government being pricked by both prongs for these were first clamoured for as urgently required, and later denounced as over-hyped.
Almost inevitably, Coronavirus has seen them charged with both. Ministers are consequently accused of ripping off the taxpayer. If government gets that move on instead, and rushes to buy that equipment, the peacetime equivalent of the fog of war engulfs Whitehall. The second prong is that of moving too fast. If government doesn’t get its finger out, and speed up the purchasing of vital equipment (for example), Ministers are accused of letting people die unnecessarily. The first prong is that of moving too slowly. It has skewered Ministers and departments on a Morton’s Fork. Some have something to offer, others not much, others nothing at all.Īnd in modern times, there has been no crisis of the nature and on the scale as the Coronavirus. Some want to make a profit: nothing inherently wrong with that, either. Some want nothing in return others rather fancy an honour.
Some are public-spirited citizens who want to help. Come a crisis, a mass of such people come knocking on Westminster and Whitehall’s doors. The best way of thinking one’s way into the issues is to start with the tale of our former contributor. There is a cluster of others about appointments and contracts – the most striking of the latter being the £250 million PPE one awarded to a jewellry designer who is based in Florida.Ī sign of the times is that our old friend the bloke in the kimono with the baseball bat and the dead fox is in court again or thereabouts, arguing that Harding’s appointment is in breach of (you guessed it) the Equality Act. The most prominent are the appointments of Dido Harding as head of the NHS Test and Trace programme and Kate Bingham as Chair of the UK Vaccines Taskforce. This tale may be a serviceable introduction to the mass of stories swirling around the media about alleged Ministerial and governmental cronyism (claimed openly) and corruption (suggested covertly). Incompetence, unresponsiveness, idleness – etc. This was disgraceful, we were told: Ministers and civil servants were asleep on the job. E-mails had been sent and phone calls made. He or she had offered help free to the Government. When the Coronavirus pandemic first broke, last spring, our former author complained to the site. The person in question had something interesting to say on the matter, and also hoped to advise the Government about it. It became clear to us after a while that the author had a double agenda. They were perfectly good articles in their own right. During the last few years, ConservativeHome published a series of pieces by an author about a subject.
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