
Banana Republic Corruption - jules-jules
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/07/banana-republic-corruption/
======
JoeSmithson
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/c0d439c8-18a...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.ft.com/content/c0d439c8-18ac-499b-8115-da2bc0f18567)

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
> 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
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
> 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
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.

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cosmodisk
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.

------
LatteLazy
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!

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usr1106
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.

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trabant00
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
> 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
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.

~~~
doublesCs
> 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.

I agree with you that naive comparison of numbers is difficult. That said,
Yes, you've just showed what's problematic in ignoring the numbers and
focusing only on what is evident. If your mind can only comprehend either "all
hunky dorey" or "bodies piling up on the street", then I indeed Sweden is
closer to the former. Bodies would never be piling up on the street in any
concievable scenario with this virus, as this virus has a case fatality rate
of about 0.1% average for the population and our society's infrastructure can
easily handle 0.1% of its population bodies spread over a period of years. I
hoped that the people in charge could be a bit more sophisticated, but
apparently that's not the case in many countries (e.g. Sweden, UK)

~~~
trabant00
Manner of speaking with the bodies in the street. I mean it is not
signifincantly worse.

~~~
doublesCs
Again, I think you're not really looking at the numbers. You're just going
"the world didn't end, lets move on". I would say it's very significantly
different from countries that did it well.

Deaths per 1M for similar size countries in europe:

Belgium - 844 [1]

Sweden - 543

Netherlands - 358

Ireland - 352

Switzerland - 227

Portugal - 160

Denmark - 105

Romania - 94

Austria - 78

Hungary - 61

[1] [https://www.politico.eu/article/in-defense-of-belgium-
corona...](https://www.politico.eu/article/in-defense-of-belgium-coronavirus-
covid19-pandemic-response/)

If you still think Sweden did a good job, I'm not sure I can help you any
more.

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toyg
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.

