Keir Starmer

[seivad]

Why or how would Civil Servants or NHS staff know what was going on with the supplies received?
When a delivery is received it will be checked against the delivery note and booked in against the order requisition number.
When the invoice is received it will be checked against the order number, if correct it will then be passed for payment, no staff would know of any wrongdoing or avoidance of procedures, it is yourself that is in the ridiculous position.

Correct. I explained this to Local at the time when he asked me how PPE invoices for substandard product could be processed through accounting for payment. If everything matches up, it will flow through the system in the usual way, and processed for payment within the invoice terms. Unless an invoice is flagged for a hold on payment, there is no way that staff would know it was problematic.

The goods were shipped to the Daventry warehouse and distributed to individual trusts based on a DHSC model of each trust's needs. They were not checked or tested when received by Daventry, although I seem to recall that they should have been tested there.

The problems encountered all occurred at the beginning of the process, when due diligence wasn't performed satisfactorily. All supply chain procurement staff did was contact suppliers who came through the VIP lane. It wasn't their job to perform checks on the supplying companies. They simply passed on the company details to the Cabinet Office, and that's where it fell apart. The government has acknowledged that initially full checks weren't always performed, so I can't understand why Local fights it.

[bensherman]

The attempt to blame the NHS staff for the faulty goods is bizarre.

It shows both naivety and a desperate desire to shift blame from where it belongs. I can recall items in the "MD" section of Private Eye from at least summer 2020 which detailed how unfit for purpose much of the stuff was, and more recently how little has been done to recover the money from the suppliers..

To come to the topic of this thread, Starmer, it struck me that "charisma" was mentioned. Interesting.,..arguably the most effective PM since the war had none at all.Attlee.

Any serious study of WW2 shows how underplayed was his role in the wartime cabinet, where essentially he relieved Churchill of the burden of attending to the UK economy and industry. All based on thought, reason and consensus.

Look at how Brown , another non-charismatic, handled the post 2008 disaster.

And look at what the emphasis on charisma has done for us. Probably the most catastrophic PM of our lifetime.

It could only be topped by replacing him with Truss, who lacks anything at all.

[local]

The attempt to blame the NHS staff for the faulty goods is bizarre.

It shows both naivety and a desperate desire to shift blame from where it belongs. I can recall items in the "MD" section of Private Eye from at least summer 2020 which detailed how unfit for purpose much of the stuff was, and more recently how little has been done to recover the money from the suppliers..

To come to the topic of this thread, Starmer, it struck me that "charisma" was mentioned. Interesting.,..arguably the most effective PM since the war had none at all.Attlee.

Any serious study of WW2 shows how underplayed was his role in the wartime cabinet, where essentially he relieved Churchill of the burden of attending to the UK economy and industry. All based on thought, reason and consensus.

Look at how Brown , another non-charismatic, handled the post 2008 disaster.

And look at what the emphasis on charisma has done for us. Probably the most catastrophic PM of our lifetime.

It could only be topped by replacing him with Truss, who lacks anything at all.

It seems you are having difficulty understanding the thread and my comments, try reading it again.

You will find I am in fact defending NHS staff and Civil servants NOT condeming them,

against those who make wild accusations and slurs which would by necessity have to involve civil servants and NHS workers turning at least a "blind eye" to wrongdoing.

[Alikado]

It seems you are having difficulty understanding the thread and my comments, try reading it again.

You will find I am in fact defending NHS staff and Civil servants NOT condeming them,

against those who make wild accusations and slurs which would by necessity have to involve civil servants and NHS workers turning at least a "blind eye" to wrongdoing.

There are no wild accusations or slurs being cast in the direction of Civil Servants or NHS staff by anybody but you, it is you who keeps saying that they must be implicated in the wrong doing. We must investigate the VIP referral process, the people who set it up and their motives going to the very top, each individual referral needs examining to root out any wrongdoing.

[Desert Region]

Nothing Anti Semitic in that, it is only criticism of the Israeli Government, it's the first time I've heard of kids being kidnapped for their organs but that could be breaking news.

I still haven't read of any "breaking news" about Jewish people kidnapping Palestinian children for their organs.

Have you?

"Nothing anti-Semitic in that" you say!

It's often said that racists such as you are stupid, so it's to be expected that you don't see anything anti-Semitic in a blood libel.

[Desert Region]

I still haven't read of any "breaking news" about Jewish people kidnapping Palestinian children for their organs.

Have you?

"Nothing anti-Semitic in that" you say!

It's often said that racists such as you are stupid, so it's to be expected that you don't see anything anti-Semitic in a blood libel.

It appears that like anti-Semitism, the above post is very difficult to see...

Not that surprising on a forum with a number of posters very sympathetic to an anti-Semitic point of view.

[sandGroundZero]

Keir Starmer is making headway, but …

Anne McElvoy

…gruelling house clean after the Corbyn era …a revivified Team Keir looks like a centrist revival:

• Rachel Reeves is an assiduous shadow chancellor
• Lisa Nandy is finally in the right job, taking on Michael Gove’s defence of the red wall seats in the elusive “levelling-up” agenda, and
• Yvette Cooper back to the big screen as a formidable cross-examiner of Priti Patel in home affairs
• Wes Streeting at health and
• Bridget Phillipson as one of the front bench’s breakthrough talents, at education

Crucially, the Starmer creed is gaining apostles. Peter Kyle, one of the veterans of the last Labour government re-establishing themselves as forces in the party, …
…[yet] the tactical question Kyle highlights is how broadly Labour should embrace a “progressive alliance” with the Lib Dems in England?

[or,] the SNP?

…the prospect of another referendum in Scotland, …opens a lot of questions that swing English voters would get exercised about

The perennial who's up; who's down of political commentators; which party can wangle votes out of the proverbial 'middle ground ' voters, implies that our political institutions are not a factor in the quality of our governance.

Examining the history of successive governments since the 19^th century, an impartial assessor would note that political parties in power share gaffes and successes — that Conservative party have introduced progressive measures, while the supposedly progressive Labour party has been backward- as often as forward-looking!

The cumulative impact of 150 years, or so of legislation has brought us all to the point where politics is in utter disrepute. The institutions are not democratically fit for purpose.

[local]

Correct. I explained this to Local at the time when he asked me how PPE invoices for substandard product could be processed through accounting for payment. If everything matches up, it will flow through the system in the usual way, and processed for payment within the invoice terms. Unless an invoice is flagged for a hold on payment, there is no way that staff would know it was problematic.

The goods were shipped to the Daventry warehouse and distributed to individual trusts based on a DHSC model of each trust's needs. They were not checked or tested when received by Daventry, although I seem to recall that they should have been tested there.

The problems encountered all occurred at the beginning of the process, when due diligence wasn't performed satisfactorily. All supply chain procurement staff did was contact suppliers who came through the VIP lane. It wasn't their job to perform checks on the supplying companies. They simply passed on the company details to the Cabinet Office, and that's where it fell apart. The government has acknowledged that initially full checks weren't always performed, so I can't understand why Local fights it.

This post demonstrates the general ignorance that pervades this exchange.

The lack of understanding is cringeworthy.

It again highlights my point, and it is from experience, that you simply have to have cooperation from within to commit the fraud alleged.

Everything could not match up.

Who is this new supplier?

What do we know about them?

Finance checks?

Value for Tax Payer?

I have missed a few steps
but follow the money is never a bad idea.

[Alikado]

This post demonstrates the general ignorance that pervades this exchange.

The lack of understanding is cringeworthy.

It again highlights my point, and it is from experience, that you simply have to have cooperation from within to commit the fraud alleged.

Everything could not match up.

Who is this new supplier?

What do we know about them?

Finance checks?

Value for Tax Payer?

I have missed a few steps
but follow the money is never a bad idea.

You are just highlighting what the VIP Lane bypassed, once those checks had been bypassed it was 'business as usual' for all orders, invoices and goods received. It is only after the event when things have gone wrong we have found the cuckoo in the nest and it is too late.
An inquiry is required into the saga to investigate the motives, hows, whys and wherefores of it being set up and how it was applied and who by.

[local]

How many times ?

it can't happen without cooperation within the civil service/NHS.
if it's found, march them all straight to jail it's my money their pinching

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sour...xCW0_MdzRj6_wV

[sandGroundZero]

The Labour leader's speech, almost too tiresome to endure, reinforces his focus group-lead approach to politics. As bad as he was, Tony Blair could at least deliver his jibes with pizzazz. To characterize Starmer as a 'stuffed shirt' would be too kind.

[Hamble]

The Labour leader's speech, almost too tiresome to endure, reinforces his focus group-lead approach to politics. As bad as he was, Tony Blair could at least deliver his jibes with pizzazz. To characterize Starmer as a 'stuffed shirt' would be too kind.

He is an umbolith

COMMENT
Starmer's speech proves Labour is still navel gazing
The Labour leader must stop pandering to his party and start working out what ordinary voters want

TOM HARRIS
4 January 2022 • 1:25pm
Tom Harris
The thing about contracts is that they can only be entered into willingly by each party. Announcing a new contract between yourself and X, without reference to X or to what X actually wants, seems a touch arrogant.

The Labour leader's speech, almost too tiresome to endure, reinforces his focus group-lead approach to politics. As bad as he was, Tony Blair could at least deliver his jibes with pizzazz. To characterize Starmer as a 'stuffed shirt' would be too kind.


Moreover, to announce a new contract two years after the last contract negotiations, when X rejected any notion that it even wanted to do business with your firm, reeks of unjustified optimism.

Still, this is what Leaders of the Opposition do early in each New Year: they seek to instill in the voters a sense of progress, of momentum (note the lower case “m”) that will, they hope, carry their party to victory. For Keir Starmer that task is crucial if he is to capitalise on, and even make permanent, the poll lead his party has been given by the Government in recent months.

Given that the latest national poll of voting intention gives Labour a slim three-point lead, it’s easy to see the urgency of bringing voters’ minds back to the reality of political cut and thrust, and away from the more pleasant, though less politically engaging, matters of Christmas telly, festive grub and taking the decorations down. Starmer has no time to waste.

As is the way of such “relaunch” speeches, the Labour leader’s speech was littered with language that no one, whatever their political inclination, would find offensive. Security, prosperity and respect seem to be the key words that found their way into the party’s press release headlines, words that have been undoubtedly tested repeatedly in front of focus groups in recent weeks.

He made a couple of missteps during the question and answer session with journalists, however. In response to the suggestion – often aimed at him by the hard Left – that he has reneged on the ten pledges he committed to during the leadership contest to replace Jeremy Corbyn, he stated: “I stand by those pledges.”

Oh dear. A quick review of those pledges will offer any number of hostages to fortune that Starmer could easily do without; his nervousness about abandoning (most of) them – which he will need to do at some point before the next election – suggests he remains too in thrall to the unelectable wing of his party.

Secondly, in valiantly (and correctly) defending Sir Tony Blair’s knighthood, he chose to be unnecessarily divisive by stating that Boris Johnson – who has not yet been nominated for any honour – does not deserve one. The primary task of any prime minister is to try to unite the country; falling into the petition-signers’ trap of making the honours system a matter of party political partisanship does not bode well for any future Starmer-led government.

His third mistake will probably be overlooked because it is one he has made repeatedly in the past and few can be bothered even to mention it any more: a new constitutional settlement for the entire UK based on a federal model, a model on which another former prime minister, Gordon Brown, is, as we speak, hard at work.

You would think Labour would have worked it out by now, wouldn’t you? With every new tranche of powers devolved to the Scottish Parliament, with every increase in responsibility beyond what was originally proposed in the Scotland Act 1998, Scottish Labour has withered, the SNP have increased their popularity and the Union itself has been weakened. Every. Single. Time.

And yet with all the enthusiasm of Einstein’s hypothetical asylum inmate, Labour advocate a repeat of the same action, each time expecting a different outcome. This time round, the new constitution is to be imposed on not only Scotland but the whole of the UK. Will there be a referendum to endorse this scheme? If not, why not? If so, are they in fact mad?

Still, there was a bit of sense spoken by Starmer on the other side of this constitutional coin: Labour will never enter into a pre-election pact with the SNP, nor into a coalition agreement with them after the votes are cast. This makes sense. No minority Labour government will ever be brought down by the votes of nationalist MPs, even if they demand, and are refused, their precious second independence referendum. The electoral consequences of ushering in another Conservative government – as happened in 1979 after the SNP voted with Margaret Thatcher to bring down Jim Callaghan’s Labour government – would be catastrophic for the SNP. It took them nearly two decades to recover last time; they will make no similar mistakes again.

Labour’s Twitter account grandly announced that Starmer’s speech represented a “new” contract with Britain. But there was little in it that was new. His leadership election pledges are nearly two years old, and his promises on constitutional reform have been hanging in the air like an unpleasant smell for a decade. I suppose that withholding honours from PMs you don’t like is new: it will please a handful of journalists and a good deal of his own membership, the latter of which remains Starmer’s primary focus and audience.

And that, right there, is the problem with Starmer’s approach thus far. He already has the support of his party, he can stop pandering to them now. It may sound cynical but the Labour leader needs to get beyond his perennial fear of upsetting his troops and start prioritising what ordinary voters – particularly voters who couldn’t bring themselves to vote Labour last time – want.

If he doesn’t, then 2022 is going to be a very long year for him and his party."


https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/202...-navel-gazing/

[Hamble]

COVID-19: Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer tests positive for coronavirus for a second time
It is the second time the Labour leader has had COVID-19 - he tested positive on the day of the budget in October - and it will be his sixth period in isolation since the pandemic began.


https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-...virus-12509416

[local]

Hope he's fine Boris needs him, he makes him seem like some sort of demi-god.

[Hamble]

Angela Raynor enjoyed her moment in PMQ's.
Especially Boris joke on her career aspirations.