r/unitedkingdom • u/ShitHouses • May 28 '23
UK ministers engaged in bitter fight to halt release of Covid secrets | Boris Johnson
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/may/27/uk-ministers-engaged-in-bitter-fight-to-halt-release-of-covid-secrets126
u/Expert_Canary_7806 May 28 '23
"Well the evidence we chose to hand over clearly shows no wrongdoing on our part, soo.... enquiry over?"
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u/rwinh Essex May 28 '23
I feel like Covid doesn't really need to be there.
Brexit, inflation, cost of living, crime, expenses... there are a lot of words that could be substituted because there are a lot dodgy open secrets in this government and each one since the Conservatives came to power.
Whatever secrets are revealed by the handling of Covid by the UK government, there will be implications across other areas. What links them all are dodgy fraudsters, grafters and other nefarious individuals masquerading as politicians.
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u/merryman1 May 28 '23
The UK along with the rest of the world was faced with very easily arguably the most severe crisis for our security and national wellbeing since WW2.
This government's response to that was to dick around for weeks at a time, only being dragged into action when people already started dying and the need for response became completely unavoidable. That happened multiple times. It then transpires that not only were the people who were supposed to be orchestrating our national response to this crisis having big piss-up parties on such a regular basis that its no surprise they were too bladdered to do any actual work, but that when they were doing work, what they were doing was things like delaying responses to established NHS PPE suppliers so they or their mate could run off to set up a dodgy shell company, throw hundreds of millions of pounds at them, and then receive a load of knock-off borderline-unusable crap from Alibaba at a 500% markup.
Honestly mate I'm not being funny, this is arguably one of the worst things that has happened in British governance in a century. The way these people acted is fucking treasonous. Tens of thousands of people died unnecessarily due to the way they handled the crisis, and increasingly it looks like that was largely because they were far more concerned with fluffing their own nest and making sure the media headlines stayed positive rather than seriously confront such a serious and important issue. More civilians died from covid than were killed when German bombs were raining down on us during WW2.
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u/Beenreiving May 28 '23
Exactly Profit before public health. The NHS had supply chains
NONE of the other suppliers could or ever did manage to supply anything any faster and especially nothing that could be used.
The likes of 3M had fist dibs when factories reopened and the Tory donors with an alibaba account were last in line and got the stuff rejected by everyone else Because it failed QC.
This was the theft of Billions of pounds of OUR money and the then Chancellor and now Prime Minister shut down the fraud teams seeking to recoup the funds that were stolen.
When faced with a crisis Boris didn’t do his Churchill moment, his first an only instinct was to steal money from the public purse while people were dying and put profits before healthcare worker safety.
FFS some of these firms were sending actual bin bags with holes for arms cut out and calling them medical aprons. And they got paid 100x the normal rates for this shit AND delivered it later than the normal supply chain did.
It’s genuinely criminal and absolutely one of the worst cases of mismanagement by leadership in British History
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u/PiERetro Hampshire May 28 '23
‘When faced with a crisis Boris didn’t do his Churchill moment, his first an only instinct was to steal money from the public purse while people were dying and put profits before healthcare worker safety.’
And party quite a lot too.
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May 28 '23
[deleted]
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u/DaftIdeas May 28 '23
They are all as guilty as the other. People only vote for one of two parties. The costs to get noticed by the public as a new party are huge. Some only focus on specific issues and that goes against any further appeal. You would think by now people would have voted for a smaller party out of protest. You would expect the media to have focused on the government more.
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u/Agreeable_Falcon1044 May 28 '23
I’m sure there’s nothing to see and they are just hiding all the information to save us hours of boredom, right? They are always so honest, transparent and above board with money…
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u/Cynical_Classicist May 28 '23 edited May 28 '23
No surprises there! Under Boris Johnson, we had the most corrupt government since Lloyd George!
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u/StiffAssedBrit May 28 '23
We still do! Government policy is that it's only fraud if the perpetrator is poor, while it's 'good business' if the fraudster happens to be rich!
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u/Cynical_Classicist May 28 '23
Reminded of Upstart Crow, where Shakespeares father says that now he's a gentleman, it's not fiddling, it's just creative accounting.
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u/StiffAssedBrit May 28 '23
Very true!
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u/Cynical_Classicist May 29 '23
I do like that show.
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u/StiffAssedBrit May 29 '23
So do I. One of the best comedies for years.
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u/Cynical_Classicist May 30 '23
I quite like The Thick of It too, though the writer said he stopped as British politics was getting too ridiculous to parody.
It finished in 2012.
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u/Emowomble Yorkshire May 28 '23
In an ominous development for the government, she said she had seen information regarding discussions between Johnson and his advisers about the Metropolitan police’s enforcement of Covid regulations following the murder of Sarah Everard. She said the information had originally been redacted.
and
As chancellor during the pandemic, Sunak will be a crucial figure. His correspondence will be pored over in relation to the “eat out to help out” scheme. At the time, some experts feared it would help Covid to spread.
and
Dominic Grieve, the former Tory attorney general, said: “They’ve either got to hand the material over, or they have got to bring judicial review proceedings on the basis that her request is unreasonable. I think it is likely they will be given pretty short shrift if they turn up at court to argue that.
Wow, they're fucked.
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u/Objective-Ad-585 May 28 '23
We've heard this same shit on repeat for the last few years, and still nothing…
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u/Emowomble Yorkshire May 28 '23
The difference is this is a judge lead inquiry with the power to demand evidence (as seen here). It will be far harder to sweep under the rug.
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u/_Born_To_Be_Mild_ May 28 '23
Unfortunately we sold the rug off for pennies on the pound to Tory donors.
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u/stowgood May 28 '23
These people should not have secrets. They are supposed to work for us. We should have more transparency.
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u/Locke66 United Kingdom May 28 '23
100% agree. The way the government operates in terms of transparency needs a big review. The amount of reports that get sat on or delayed due to government intervention because it's bad politics for them is ridiculous. I read that they've delayed a report on the water quality of UK rivers recently until after the next general election which is an open attempt to deny the public information they need to make an informed vote.
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u/PinacoladaBunny May 28 '23
This is what baffles me. If a request is submitted within reason at most workplaces, a staff members data - emails, messages, SMS, WhatsApp etc is all downloaded and inspected by those with authority to do so. This happens regularly in relation to disciplinary activity, or grievances. The workplace owns the data, not the staff member.
It says a lot about what sort of workplace govt is when communications and data is being redacted, hidden and denied.. to a judge, nonetheless. It's not even a grievance. It's legal! 🤦🏻♀️
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u/Noctale May 28 '23
The Tories haven't worked for us for a long, long time. They are a bunch of self-serving scumbags who would gleefully throw the whole country under the bus if it boosts their bank balance.
Johnson is particularly awful, having spent his whole life believing that he is uniquely privileged and deserves to do whatever he likes whenever he likes, without any repercussions. I would dearly love to see him go to prison, but he's surrounded himself with too many like-minded creeps for that to happen.
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u/securinight May 28 '23
Considering we already know they did things that should land them in prison, I shudder to think of the things they are trying to keep secret.
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u/TonberryFeye May 28 '23
"If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear."
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u/crazylikeaf0x May 28 '23
"Unless you're innocently standing next to any kind of protest against the government."
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u/maxative May 28 '23
I don’t know why. They’ll all get away with it anyway. The worst thing to happen is that they won’t get a media appearance for a while.
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u/ShetlandJames Shetland / Ayrshire May 28 '23
I was just thinking about the Hancock texts. They came out and everyone was talking about it for about 24 hours and now it's a complete non-story. Government without consequences
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u/PastSprinkles May 28 '23
The relentlessly fast pace of news and social media nowadays means stories like this can quite easily be nudged aside. Combined with a compliant arm of the media it's an absolute gift for governments like this.
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u/StiffAssedBrit May 28 '23
It's plain that this government is just a front to steal taxpayers' money, and put it into their rich mates pockets!
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u/Realistic-Plant3957 May 28 '23
tldr
Ministers have just days to decide whether to take the extraordinary step of launching legal action against the Covid inquiry, as part of their battle to keep secret a slew of sensitive messages from senior figures including Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak. It cites the Human Rights Act and data protection laws. Dominic Grieve, the former Tory attorney general, said: “They’ve either got to hand the material over, or they have got to bring judicial review proceedings on the basis that her request is unreasonable. Lady Hallett has warned that a failure to comply with her order would amount to a criminal offence punishable with a fine or imprisonment. The inquiry is likely to be so vast that there is an expectation it will be suspended during the next general election campaign, when its proceedings could raise major problems for the Conservatives.
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u/cryptoplumber May 28 '23
Are we expecting anything other than proof of them being Greedy little posh boys using it as a cover to feather each others nest? Theres not one person in government that knows the value of money, because none of them have done an honest days graft in all their lives. The majority from fancy pants public school educations, living in their own bubble. Without an ounce of common sense between them.
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u/ra246 May 28 '23
Hm. I feel like I should know what my tax money spent for these fucking cunts.
I want fucking jail-time for these pricks. I want punishment. I want fucking acknowledgement. I want fucking consequences. I don't want a fucking apology.
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u/Robw_1973 May 28 '23
A venal, corrupt man as PM, heading a corrupt, nationalist populist, almost fascist Government, who used a global pandemic to transfer £40 billion pounds from the taxpayer to friends, donors and other assorted enablers. Of course this wretched, morally, ethically bankrupt and corrupt government will try and hid their individual and collective corruption from public scrutiny.
And Johnson, should likely be in prison.
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u/Lemonlimetime1 May 28 '23
he is Britain's Trump and they are both blonde, they'd make great cell mates!
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u/PrinterJ May 28 '23
What’s that old cliche when they want to install cctv in streets? If you’ve done nothing wrong you’ve got nothing to worry about….
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u/SuckMyRhubarb May 28 '23
Billions upon billions were funnelled into their mates' pockets, which let's face it, is always the ultimate goal of Toryism.
Other countries would call it corruption and be out for blood, but in good old blighty we'll shrug and continue believing that nothing can be done about it.
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u/Glum_Sport5699 May 28 '23
The fact that they're fighting to stop them being released tells me all I need to know.
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u/TheJobSquad May 28 '23
Have they accidentally lost their phones/ deleted messages to free up space yet, or is that happening next week?
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u/AlanDevonshire May 28 '23
Got to protect each and everyone of the corrupt scumbags. It’s all a game and we always lose.
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u/BetaRayPhil616 May 28 '23
Glad they are spending their time dedicated to solving the issues we all want addressed.
...
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u/Top_Requirement_1341 May 28 '23
Imagine this info is released 2-3 months before next general election.
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u/brokencircles May 28 '23
Kicking off about having to hand over communications and schedule information while being paid by us, stfu and hand it over!
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u/Big_Red_Machine_1917 Greater London May 28 '23
There's a line from The Prisoner that sums this up perfectly. "The fact that you won't explain, explains everything."
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u/Unbroken-anchor May 28 '23
Well with everything is going so well in the country I suppose they do have the time.
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u/nowtnewt May 28 '23
I have hope i think English people are finally making that first step to waking the fuck up... wouldn't be a moment too soon
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u/AxiomSyntaxStructure May 28 '23
Why would there be secrets, this isn't confidential intelligence for some recent war... Where's the danger to national security as a rational reason to evade accountability.
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u/We56tam May 28 '23
And if the people of this world will let the little England get away with this there’s not a chance
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u/_Jaquen_Hgar_ May 28 '23
The trouble is, when you’re a proven habitual liar, novice is going to believe your bullshit protestations. All your capital was spent many moons ago.
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u/kosmicapotheosis May 29 '23
Few things make me angrier than knowing how badly the government have behaved and the cynical excuses being used to prevent the public from acknowledging the facts, another ruse to give them advantage at the next election who would stand for this?
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u/josemonko121 May 29 '23
I really do not understand how the entirety of the country is not outraged at this
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u/MajesticViolinist890 May 28 '23
Release or go down in history as corrupt child killers. We all know mRNA is dangerous now, why force kids to have it when it does more harm than good?
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u/macarouns May 28 '23
Who’s we? You are just speaking on behalf of your fellow conspiracy theorists. There is no scientific consensus on that, quite the opposite.
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u/MajesticViolinist890 May 28 '23
I'm afraid you're wrong. "We": obviously everyone except you. I'm not a conspiracy theorist pal. See Dr John Campbell on YouTube or Rumble for more information.
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u/macarouns May 28 '23
So you think everyone agrees that mRNA is dangerous? The public all agree now and there is scientific consensus??
You are utterly deluded… it’s breathtaking..
I have no doubt you can find a YouTube video that supports your worldview, to think that means anything is… something else…
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u/TheShakyHandsMan Yorkshire May 28 '23
Fighting to not reveal what the many billions of pounds were actually spent on.