To think the conservatives are corrupt AF

[flashbac]

Just that really. A company some Tory MP is a consultant for gets a lucrative COVID-19 testing contract with no competitive tender process, vote leave friends of Cummings getting non-exec director roles, ex met police officer who dropped investigation into vote leave fraud also gets a non executive director role. Stinks of Cronyism and corruption.

More info from Carole Codwalladr:

"Um. Did anyone know that the cabinet office has ‘non-exec directors’? 4 new ones, all friends of Cummings: 1) ex commissioner of force that dropped investigation into Vote Leave. 2) Chair of Vote Leave. 3) Digital director of Vote Leave 4) someone else"
t.co/itbBuu4Lkp

Corrupt is putting it lightly.

You are right. I’d like to find a party which isn’t.

Of course they are, all watching out for each other, the boys’ club, did you really expect anything else?

If it's an urgent requirement they can go single source, justifiable under the fact that the competitive process does take time. BUT, unless they have an extremely robust justification (I mean, they could have put a PiN out months ago when this started to gauge the market, no obligation to those) for doing so and for selecting those, anyone can place a legal challenge. Let's hope the other companies who couldn't register an interest and be considered do so.

What on Earth is a non executive director in the context of the cabinet office? How odd.

To be honest, they are all corrupt. Labour would be just as bad if they were in there I think. But I think this lot take some beating.

Going by the Press Conferences, there is possibly only one Minister I would trust, but I don't know much about them, so could be wrong.

Of course they're corrupt, they're politicians.

What on Earth is a non executive director in the context of the cabinet office?

I’d like to know this too. The company I work for have 1 non-exec director on the board and she’s sort of like a guest lecturer, she’s from outside of our industry and is there to bring a different perspective to things but not have any actual responsibility or decision-making power, just attends meetings to give an opinion and runs focus groups and things. Surely if you need someone to do that you don’t get your mate in, you invite someone from a contrasting background etc.

Anyway OP YANBU, or perhaps just a little U to sound slightly surprised that this is how they’re behaving. I don’t have a solution or way out though, theoretically we can vote them out but in a FPTP system it becomes a 2-horse race and the other horse is....well, I haven’t got the energy for that rant right now

“Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority; still more when you superadd the tendency of the certainty of corruption by authority.” - Lord Acton

I used to work for the cabinet office (recently - I left within the last year) and it’s not that hard to see why they would benefit from having some external business voices on their board,.. it’s generally career civil servants.

I would imagine that most people don’t have a clue what the cabinet office actually does, it’s quite a large organisation with an enormous remit (and none of it neatly links together). There’s spending bits, constitution bits, secretariat bits delivery bits, parts of the cabinet office are in Bristol which I think would surprise many. In particular, given the amount of work they are doing on Eu exit it certainly makes sense to me that they would have non execs to guide on that process.

www.gov.uk/government/news/three-new-cabinet-office-non-executive-board-members-announced

We’ve always known that. We don’t care.

Sorry just read read and saw that you are referring to additional non-execs. One of them is Gisela Stewart (Former labour MP) so I’m not sure that fits with the tory profile! But it makes sense that she would advise on EU exit in a non executive capacity.

Name any kind of organisation, whether it be political, a private company, charity or public sector which isn’t corrupt on some level?
Old and cynical me, seen it all.

Yep.

Notice how we're all normalising it..
They all do it....

Only because we normalise it.

They always have been

Oh and let’s not forget Lutfur Rahman. The Labour mayor of tower hamlets, whose corruption was the subject of a dispatches and a panorama documentary.

The thing that upsets me the most is that his punishment for being found guilty of electoral fraud (arguably one of the worst crimes in a democracy) was a short ban on holding office and a fine. In subsequent elections he has quite openly run candidates in his place under the name of his personal political party....

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lutfur_Rahman_(politician)

The level of whataboutism..

Yes it certainly does, which company is this?

It's hard to know whether those specific cases are corruption. Just being pro leave doesn't prove anything despite some people's opinions. (after all so many were)

but yes there's a pandemic of corruption and I wish we could tackle it but when we do it never really changes anything.

It occurred to me long ago that all politicians must be corrupt if one is. Suppose you go into politics with a pure heart, intending never to break a rule.
Well you won't get far as you are competing with others who can do anything you can do AND anything underhanded too. It's like you're fighting with one hand tied behind your back.

Jeremy and John seem lovely with all their terrorist mates and squiffy views on women and jews.

Corbyn was corrupt as fuck. He took money from terrorists ffs

Oh look another Tory bot. News flash, Corbyn isn’t the leader of the Labour Party anymore. Get over it. You need to find some new buzz words to parrot, it’s getting old now.

Jeremy and John seem lovely with all their terrorist mates and squiffy views on women and jews.

Oh look, and another one. Tory HQ are getting scared.

Well this isn't really news is it?

Priti Patel is as corrupt and menacing as they come. Plus she is unaware of the difference between terrorism and counter terrorism so she's not the brightest either. 😂

Haha! Yep it’s so weird all this harping on about Corbyn! Keir Starmer is the leader of The Labour Party - you need to find something to hate about him then you can start using that! Going on about Corbyn makes y’all look as pathetic as Trump whittering on about Obama all the time 😂