What annoyed you (in the news) today?

In the midst of all the corruption and funnelling of money directly into millionaires offshore trusts, a level of near criminal incompetence lead to total covid equipment orders of £13.6 billion, of which practically £10 billion, TEN BILLION POUNDS has been written off.

In The NAO 's final reckoning: actually used, £3.7 billion's worth, burned or dumped, £9.9 Billion. Sacked for mismanagement: 0


www.forbes.com/sites/katherinehignett/2024/01/28/covid-19-uk-wasted-126-billion-on-ppe-it-never-used/

Well the suggestion is that they ordered and kept ordering without taking account the total amounts being ordered or the lead time for delivery. So ships were still arriving from China even after the pandemic was over. Because they had understocked beforehand, they were outbidding other nations by offering the peakest of peak prices at the moment when all nations were ordering, hence the colossal bill.

These orders from the gvt weren't direct with the Chinese manufacturers. Any connected local businessman with say a rubber band making machine told their government contact, "we are a ppe company!" And received orders which they then placed with Chinese firms and priced in with a 100% markup. The British taxpayer was taken to the cleaners.

21 The Parallel Supply Chain and NHS Supply Chain procured 32 billion items of

PPE between February and July. Over the same period they distributed 2.6 billion

items to front-line organisations. At that time it had not yet received most of the PPE

procured, including some that was still to be manufactured: some 6.6 billion

items (21%) had been received and another 5.1 billion (16%) were in the UK but

not yet with the Parallel Supply Chain. The Department expected two-thirds of

the remainder to be delivered by the end of 2020 (paragraphs 2.10, 2.23, and

2.25 to 2.26)

The "Parallel Supply Chain" was where the gvt was firing orders at anyone who said they could supply PPE, even if it was just the man they met in the pub who realised they could order it from Aliexpress. A large proportion turned up not meeting safety standards of the time. A government less wedded to the idea that British Businessmen could free market their way to the best supply model would have set up the department to order direct from China, quoting the current safety specifications as an essential part of the deal. This would have avoided the middleman's price gouging mark-up.

saw this coalville.nub.news/news/local-news/coalville-vehicle-hire-company-owed-more-than-ps70million-when-it-collapsed-in-may-says-report-233650

this at the end


The website says the firm's troubles can be traced back to late 2023 when an employee lost their life after a health and safety incident involving one of the company's vehicles.



The incident remains the subject of an ongoing investigation by the Health and Safety Executive.



Go Plant then put in place a number of operational safeguards, following advice, which impacted its cost base and operational efficiency.

in reality the operation was cutting corners regarding Health and safety etc, and having to do things properly costs more, I would imagine that a large payment was probably also due to the relatives of the unfortunate employee


It raises a question in my mind a big chunk of the outstanding debt is Vehicle and equipment leases,
so is the $1.6 million owed to close brothers what was owed at the time of liquidation or the value of the rest of the term.

I assume that the owners of the leased vehicles can actually take them they don't form part of the company assets

of course tracing the location of some items of plant may be difficult.

I may have posted before that I know of a scaffolding company that went bust in 2021, I know of at least one property where the scaffolding owned by this company is still up despite the works being long finished. The owner of one property phoned the company in early 2022, and was told by the administrators they would have to pay for another company to come and take the scaffolding down and return it to the defunct companies base, and that the homeowner concerned would be billed. A local scaffolding company has said once the final report from the administrators is done they will come and take it away and pay the homeowner £300.

Was that because the hospital didn't have it, or the hospital was saving it. I understand to an extent ordering from multiple sources as delivery wasn't exactly guaranteed with countries literally out bidding each other to get stuff. And at the time no one knew which vaccines would work (best) so getting a fair amount of each of them seemed sensible.