Covid-19 hasn’t been about capitalism or socialism, it’s been about crapitalism and cronyism as corrupt elites destroy lives

Governments are meting out profitable Covid-related contracts to their woefully underqualified buddies. As Johnson, Trump et al waste taxpayers’ cash, their cronyism and incompetence is costing lives and livelihoods.

In African or South American nations, they’d name it corruption. In nations just like the UK and the US, nonetheless, it’s referred to as ‘networking.’ Scratch the precise again, kiss the precise arse, go to the precise college, and life will get so much simpler and extra profitable, usually because of a hefty wedge of public cash. 

Even now, regardless of – in reality due to – the Covid-19 pandemic that has torn by the planet, wrecking lives and economies, the leaders of those nations have nonetheless been meting out energy and public money to their hapless besties. 

Being bent isn’t new, after all. It’s their factor. However when the disaster dropped its gargantuan banana pores and skin in entrance of each authorities and business on the planet, with the stakes so excessive and the scrutiny so forensic (even after they level at folks in dinghies to distract us), you’d have thought they’d have modified tack. Maybe not ‘networked’ issues fairly a lot, no less than for a bit. 

As a substitute, they’ve networked the dwelling daylights out of them.

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Whereas arguments have raged about ‘What does a pandemic finest? Capitalism or socialism?’ and whether or not ostensibly pro-market governments have immediately gone all Trot by handing out billions to maintain their sinking ships from exploding as a substitute, the one isms actually in play are cronyism and crapitalism (I made that up and am very proud).

It’s jobs for the boys (or women) as typical, expertise and expertise not required. 

Extra tales emerged this week of how the UK authorities led by Boris Johnson – a person whose whole life and profession is predicated on who he is aware of relatively than what he is aware of – has used disaster to grease the palms of its buddies.

First, it introduced that Public Well being England, the chief physique whose purpose is to ‘defend and enhance the nation’s well being and wellbeing,’ is to get replaced by the Nationwide Institute for Well being Safety.

Aside from the plain buck-passing over the British balls-up of a response to Covid, the train appears to be nothing greater than giving PHE a brand new identify and a brand new boss: Baroness Harding of Winscombe. Or Dido to her pals, amongst whom you’ll discover former prime minister David Cameron, who gave her the title (which comfortably beats an iTunes voucher within the gifting stakes).

Dido’s for the job? Properly, she has form of labored within the NHS earlier than. She was in command of the federal government’s Covid-19 ‘track-and-trace’ response. The actually costly one which doesn’t work and which continues to be making an attempt to develop a functioning app whose first flawed iteration was revealed on Might 5.

Her expertise away from authorities? In 2017, she give up as boss of telecoms firm Discuss Discuss after a significant knowledge breach that led to 157,000 prospects having knowledge stolen. Nevertheless it’s high quality, it’s not like she’s engaged on an app that may maintain a great deal of private knowledge… 

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What else? Oh sure, she’s married to Tory MP John Penrose and has an in depth relationship with Well being Secretary Matt Hancock. 

Then we discovered, within the gentle of the UK’s exams debacle, that the corporate Public First had been working with the now much-maligned regulator Ofqual. PublicFirst – a analysis agency that “influences public opinion” – is run by two former staff/colleagues of Michael Gove and Dominic ‘Insurgent with a Land Rover’ Cummings. Its contract was awarded with out going to tender and the amount of cash concerned hasn’t been disclosed. You understand, the taxpayers’ cash. Our cash.

It was additionally given £840,000 ($ 1.1 million) by the Cupboard Workplace, notionally run by Gove and really run by Cummings, to analysis public opinion of the federal government’s coronavirus efficiency. And one other £116,000 ($ 151,925) by the Division of Well being and Social Care to learn the way it might “lock within the classes discovered” through the disaster.

I’m fairly certain I might have completed all this simply as successfully – and I’d have charged half the value.

Apparently skipping any form of correct process with these contracts was OK due to  “distinctive circumstances” surrounding Covid. As a result of in an emergency, why would you wish to get the most effective folks on the job when you may? And there’s a lot cash being chucked round, who wouldn’t see their mates proper, eh?

Hiring incompetents could be incompetence by an incompetent administration. It’s so incompetent that its incompetence since being elected – over Covid, Brexit, migration and just about all the things else – has baffled and enraged even the UK’s nearly uniquely right-wing and conservative mainstream press. When Fleet Road activates a Tory regime, you recognize they’re in bother.